Casino
When James finished his thoughts, he heard Colt’s voice.
“I get to see a little more of the world too, thanks to you.”
“……”
Up until now, Colt had been able to make money by being sold as part of a package deal with James, but from here on out, things were going to be a little different.
“...Colt might have a rougher time of it from now on.”
After long consideration, James—who had lost the enormous goal of avenging himself on Andrew—had been able to set a new one. He had already laid out a new plan for finding meaning in his life.
If everything goes according to plan, Colt should be able to live a different life too….
“Why?”
James had somewhere else he needed to go.
“I need to head overseas. It’s going to take a while.”
“What?”
Las Vegas was a city that changed fast. If he stayed away for even a few weeks, there was a good chance he’d be forgotten by the show planners.
“Where exactly are you going?”
“It’s something related to my magic. I’ve been stuck in a rut lately, too….”
Not only had his magic gone stale, but he also needed something to breathe new life into him. For that, he had to leave Las Vegas and go somewhere else.
“Hah… so the good days are really over.”
“Think it’ll be hard to get back on a stage after you return?”
“Of course. No one’s going to remember you, will they? Especially not me!”
“Still, you’ve saved up a lot by now, haven’t you?”
“What, and live off that for the rest of my life?”
“You’re being too greedy. That should be more than enough.”
James had diligently set aside the money he earned from his performances. He had made a considerable profit while working shorter hours than Colt, and Colt, who should have accumulated far more money than that, actually didn’t have much left in the end.
“The more money, the better!”
“Really?”
James’s eyes gleamed at Colt’s words. Truth be told, he felt the same way.
“Hey… that look in your eyes was pretty dangerous just now.”
“Colt. Colt. Colt.”
“Hey!”
“Want to go check out the casino?”
“...What?”
“I’ve actually been avoiding the casino on purpose until now.”
“On purpose?”
Colt had thought about it too. He’d imagined how many chips James could rack up if he started using magic at the tables. But because he knew James’s personality firsthand—because he was a dependable guy, in Colt’s eyes—Colt had never been able to bring himself to suggest that James use magic in a casino.
But James had already decided everything after recently choosing to leave Las Vegas.
“...You were thinking of going to the casino?”
“I need to make one big score at the end. Until now, I’ve never gone once so people wouldn’t get suspicious.”
Colt was grinning just from the thought of it.
“Heh.”
“Uncle Colt. First, let’s figure out our performance schedule.”
“And then?”
“Before we finish every show and leave Las Vegas….”
Gulp.
Seeing Colt’s expectant eyes, James said,
“We’re going to become millionaires.”
“Mmph!”
Colt clapped a hand over his mouth before laughter could burst out.
“That happy about it?”
“Obviously!”
“Heh. Then let’s strip Las Vegas’s casinos bare that day.”
“But… if we get caught, we die.”
“How are they going to catch me? Got any proof?”
“Ah….”
James was a one-of-a-kind magician in this world.
“To borrow Harry Potter’s words… those mere mortals don’t have a chance of figuring out my method.”
“Exactly!”
“Do we have a show today?”
“The next one’s tomorrow. We’re free today.”
“Then why don’t we do a dry run today?”
“A practice run? Didn’t you say you were avoiding suspicion?”
To avoid suspicion, they had to stay away from the casino until the very last day.
“If we’re going to start something, we might as well do it right.”
James explained that rather than going on the first day and winning everything, it would be more effective to go early and lose a little on purpose.
“...Right. Yeah. Better to go early and show that we’re there to enjoy the casino too….”
“What are you waiting for? Get dressed.”
“Colt.”
“Good. Colt-Colt-Colt, Colt.”
“……”
Colt was so nervous he didn’t even react to James’s teasing.
“Come on. The best Casanova in Las Vegas is getting nervous?”
“When did I say I was nervous?!”
But Colt’s fingertips were trembling faintly.
“You’re acting like you’re going there to lose….”
“Yeah. Yeah. Let’s go lose.”
That day, for the first time, the two of them entered the hotel not for a performance, but for the casino.
After exchanging dollars for chips, the two of them started off lightly with roulette.
“……”
Colt kept glancing nervously at the casino staff.
“Why don’t you ask them to arrest you right now?”
“...Ahem.”
Only after hearing James’s words did he try to look calm, but by then it was already obvious.
“Now then….”
James watched the wheel spin with easy confidence. The betting was already closed, so he’d have to aim for the next ball.
I should use this chance to run an experiment….
James subtly adjusted the Mana so that the ball would settle into the number he wanted.
Ping.
But the wheel’s rotation kicked the ball upward.
Failed. Try again.
He guided the ball, which was bouncing around and looking for a home, toward another path.
Into number nine….
James tried to slot the ball into 9, but it landed beside it instead, on 3.
...This isn’t easy.
That was exactly why he had come to the casino early today.
Gambling really is hard.
Still, being able to place it next door was a considerable advantage.
No one had bet on 3, so he couldn’t collect the 35-to-1 payout, but someone who had bet on a dozen did win, and James was able to take the 2-to-1 payout from that.
“Yeah!”
James piled every chip he had exchanged that day onto the empty table. It was $200 in chips, so if he landed the 35-to-1 payout, he’d get $7,000 back.
“Straight 34.”
“!”
When James put everything on 34, Colt was startled and asked quickly,
“Hey. You trying to end this right here?”
“What’s gambling for, if not gambling?”
Before Colt could stop him, the wheel spun, and James watched it with lazy ease.
If the ball comes anywhere near 34, I’ll intervene. If not, whatever.
After all, they had come to the casino to lose. But the ball rolling around was tempting him.
...Huh?
As the ball’s speed slowed, it drifted toward a number near 34, and James, who was just about to move his Mana, calmly held back and watched.
Clack.
In the end, before he could even use Mana, the ball came to a stop.
“Winning Number 34!”
James didn’t need to lift a finger.
“Woo! James!”
“I just got lucky.”
Quite literally, it was luck.
The dealer pushed over chips worth $7,000, and James scratched the back of his head as he took them.
“Now I’m thinking we shouldn’t have come.”
Today was turning out to be one of those days when fortune actually sided with him.
“James, which number should I pick?”
“...Bet whatever you want.”
Because today was not the day they were going to strip the casino bare.
“Still, tell me. I feel like your luck is pretty good.”
“Hmm… 9?”
“Great.”
This time, Colt put all his chips on 9.
“You sure about that?”
“Nope.”
“What?”
“Colt, you haven’t forgotten why we came here today, have you?”
Colt remembered that they had come to the casino to lose.
“……”
“Just look around. Most of the staff here know our faces.”
The two of them frequented the Las Vegas performance halls so often that not only the hotel staff but even the casino dealers knew their faces. When James had won chips at roulette just now, the dealers who recognized him had even winked and acknowledged him.
“...Yeah.”
The next spin came, and this time luck didn’t favor them. Or maybe it was because Colt had placed the bet.
Clatter.
“Damn it.”
“I’ll lend you the chips.”
They had both already accepted that today’s chips would all be lost.
“Let’s try something else.”
They needed to find the game that would yield the most chips.
“How about this?”
Colt was pointing at a slot machine.
“Slot machines are off-limits.”
A slot machine was a game that couldn’t be manipulated with Mana-based magic.
After that, they went around trying blackjack, baccarat, and the other games the casino had on offer. In the end, James found the game that could earn him the most chips.
So it really is the obvious choice.
James chose poker. It was a game that used the cards, which were his specialty.
Good thing I came early.
Poker tables were divided by betting level—in other words, by the size of the chips you had. Since you had to keep showing your face and gradually move up to higher-stakes tables, it was difficult to reach the top-tier tables in a single day.
“You’re going to play poker?”
“Yeah. I’ve got about $5,000 in chips now, so I can start at a small table.”
He was still a long way from the tables with pots of over $100,000, and even farther from the VIP tables where the stakes reached the million-dollar level.
“Fine.”
“You go drink somewhere.”
“Tch.”
Even after James had loaned him chips several times, Colt had lost them all.
“And don’t go looking for more money.”
“Just another hundred dollars….”
“Colt. Colt.”
James handed him chips and told him to go play the slot machines, then made his way to the poker tables.
Now then….
In poker, the chips he won would come not from the casino’s losses but from the pockets of the players at the table, so he might have been able to relax. In practice, though, he still had to be careful inside a casino.
Poker players are the casino’s important customers.
The casino took a commission from a portion of the chips won in poker, which was why people who played with enormous pots were treated as VIPs there.
“Raise.”
Slash.
But poker games with small pots like this weren’t important enough for the casino to care much about them.
“Call.”
“Fold.”
These people are just steps on the staircase I’m walking over.
“Raise. Two thousand.”
That’s some nerve, bluffing with no pair at all.
In James’s eyes, the other player’s hand and the remaining cards in the dealer’s deck were laid bare. Mana was reading the backs of the cards and feeding him the information. James only had a one-pair 7, while his opponent was bluffing with nothing.
“Raise. Three thousand.”
“……”
At James’s follow-up raise, the other player fell into thought, then folded his cards.
“Fold.”
After securing more than $2,000 in chips in his first poker hand, James deliberately lost a few rounds in the smaller games that followed, then won a few higher-stakes ones to steadily grow his stack. By the end of it, he had increased his chips to $25,000. He had gone from exchanging a mere $100 in chips to getting here.
“You’re on quite a roll today, Mr. James.”
“……”
James confirmed the dealer’s face and gave a slight nod. This was another person who had gotten to know him through his frequent visits to the casino for performances.
“If you’d like, I can take you to another table.”
It was an offer to move to a table with higher betting limits.
“I’m only lucky today. If I go to another table, I’ll lose everything.”
“As you wish.”
After that, James went on to lose several hands in a row and watched his chips dwindle.
I have no intention of becoming a person of interest on the very first day.
James was a magician who performed card tricks, so if suspicion ever started to grow, things would spiral out of control.
“Just look at this. Luck, my ass….”
“The goddess of fortune is fickle, but she always comes back eventually.”
But after that, luck never came back to James.
“That’ll do for today.”
By the time James called it quits, he was back down to $7,000 in chips.
This is enough to avoid suspicion… and I’ve checked everything I needed to check.
“I had fun.”
James went looking for Colt, and found him immediately in front of a slot machine.
“Colt, let’s go.”
“Wait. I’ve got one last spin left.”
With eyes a little bloodshot, Colt pressed the slot machine button, and, unsurprisingly, it was a complete bust.
“You’ve really blown it all away.”
“...What? I didn’t lose that much.”
“Yeah, just a hundred dollars….”
James was about to say it was nothing, since Colt had only lost $100, but then he remembered how much time had passed since they’d split up.
If he’d kept playing the slot machine the whole time….
It was impossible for him to have survived until now on the $100 in chips James had given him.
“Colt. How many times did you cash out?”
“...Not that many.”
That meant he had made extra withdrawals after being told not to.
“Honestly, Colt shouldn’t get a taste for casinos.”
“I didn’t do that much….”
“So how many times did you withdraw?”
“Three times….”
“How much total?”
“……”
The number of times didn’t matter. What mattered was how much he’d withdrawn and poured into the slot machine.
“Why aren’t you answering?”
“...A thousand dollars.”
“Then adding the initial $100, that makes it $1,100?”
“……”
James shook his head from side to side at Colt’s nod.
“What would you have done if I hadn’t won?”
“Oh! How much did you win?”
“Seven thousand.”
“As expected, James!”
“Why don’t you pay me back, then? You owe me a total of $600 in chips so far.”
“...I was borrowing them?”
“Did you think I was just going to let you swallow them up?”
“...Tch.”
“Pay me back later.”
“Even though you won $7,000….”
James added under his breath,
“If you spend it that day, it won’t even leave a trace.”
“!”