by Yuu Kamiya
“First, tell me why I lost!! If you don’t, there’s no way I can accept this!!”
“Hm… So you ask not that we release you, but that we explain?”
—…Huh?
“…Steph…do you…actually like it?”
“O-of—of course not! Do you mock me?!”
But Sora and Shiro would never miss the moment it took her to deny it.
“Craaap, I thought that kind of thing only existed in porn games…”
What should we make of the unjustifiable scorn of the one who made her do it in the first place?
Never before had Steph so strongly cursed Lord Tet and his prohibition against violence. The pressure of her stare was so great that Sora had to say something.
“O-okay, okay, I’ll tell you… Card counting.”
“Card…uh, what?”
“Card counting. To put it simply, you convert the cards into numerical values and count them. For instance, you can make 2 through 6 one, face cards minus-one, and 7 through 9 zero.”
“…? What does that tell you?”
To Steph, who still looked a few steps behind, Sora stated decisively.
“It tells you what card will come up next.”
“—Pardon?”
While Steph wondered whether this was some kind of magic, Sora, going on blithely:
“From the cards that have already been played, you can predict the cards that are left in the deck, and then you can mathematically deduce the odds for what card will come up next. If you know the next card, you won’t lose, right?”
“—I see…”
It seemed the very idea of using math for a game was a revelation to Steph. She even forgot that she was stuck “sitting” here because of her loss to it, and simply sat in awe. She took out a memo pad to try to collect what she’d understood so far.
—But, as her pen raced, she suddenly realized.
“Hey—hold on!! Doesn’t that mean you were cheating?!”
To this complaint, still Sora rebutted promptly with his face calm and clear:
“If you say playing wisely is cheating, then that makes reading your opponent’s moves in chess cheating, too, doesn’t it?”
“B-but…”
—In Sora’s old world, card counting was in fact categorized as cheating. But Sora went on without mentioning it.
“Cheating is more like that deliberate shuffle tracking you were doing.”
What.
“—You—you knew?!”
With a chuckle and a face that asked What do you take me for?: Sora.
“I’ve tried it on Shiro many times, though she always catches me. It made it easier to count the cards, too.”
Sora, who in his heart had wanted to lose, said this with a sigh. Steph, transitioning naturally from “sit” to “lie down,” sprawled on the ground.
—Her trick had been caught and, on top of that, used against her. The fact that just pointing out her cheating would have been enough under the Ten Covenants. And yet she had been defeated by exploiting it, which made Steph wet the ground on which she still lay with her tears.
But then something flashed in Steph’s mind.
—In that case, what if it really were a game of pure luck? Couldn’t she win in that case?
“…Heh-heh-heh… Sora! I challenge you once more!”
Steph shouted defiantly, still in the “lie down” position, raising just her face. It was, how to put it—strangely pitiful.
“Steph…after this morning, are you serious? What are you gonna bet?”
It was enough to make Sora reflexively think, “Should I just step down for you?” But.
“The same thing as this morning—that you get a life!”
“(Immediately) All right, then.”
The nature of her wager vaporized his drop of compassion.
“…Brother, the game…”
“Shiro!! Do you think there’s a one-in-a-million chance your brother might lose to Steph?! Hmmm?!”
“…I’ll put it…on the one-in-a-billion-trillion…chance.”
That was the siblings for you—no, anyone could see it—but they could see through everything.
“…I’ll play, too… As Blank…we accept.”
—That meant. She wasn’t just facing one of them, but the whole and true “greatest gamer among Immanity.” But whatever, thought Steph. Skill was irrelevant in a game of pure luck. The odds were always fifty-fifty!
“…Steph, if you lose…you’ll obey…one command from me.”
Steph must not have seen it. Within the blank face of one half of the greatest gamer among Immanity. The fire blazing bright deep within her eyes.
“Heh-heh, that’s quite all right. Now, it’s time: the game—!!”
Steph pointed violently to the street corner.
“Whether the next person to come around the corner will be male or female—you must guess!”
After thinking for a moment about the game, Shiro answered.
“…Best…out of…ten. Aschente.”
“Perfect! Aschente!”
At Steph’s enthusiasm, still Sora. Gazed at Steph with vacant eyes and a grand sigh.
“H-how—how, how could it beee?!”
The result……nine versus one. As it hardly bears saying, Steph lost disgracefully.
“It’s—it’s impossible! What did you do to score 90 percent in a game of luck?!”
Sora, who, in his heart, had wanted to lose, explained mumblingly as if his heart were torn out.
“—You think people go around that corner for no reason?”
“…Huh?”
“While having tea here, I was watching who walked this road and at what intervals. Using the trends I observed, Shiro was able to apply the sex ratio of the population masses in this area by time frame, as well as the employment rates, occupational demographics, etc. to deduce the sex ratio as judged by the reason they would travel this way.”
“…V.”
—Shiro, having accomplished all this just with memorized data and mental calculation, held up two fingers for victory. At that V sign, Steph finally started to sense a certain hostility…but first and foremost—
“A-a-aren’t you just like children?!”
Just how far did they intend to take a dumb game of guessing the sex of the next person to come around the corner!
—But, when it came to Sora and Shiro, that was a foolish question. The answer: the same distance they took every game—all the way.
“…And now…”
The victorious Shiro made her demand, according to the wager.
“All your undies…are belong to us…”
“—Hungh?!”
“Wha-what was that?!”
But the wager by the Covenants had already been pronounced.
“Errrk! Wai—p-please, anything but that!”
The Sixth of the Ten Covenants: Wagers sworn by the Covenants (Aschente) are absolutely binding. The Covenants were absolute—none could defy their power. Though Steph protested as she removed her panties. Shiro showed zero engagement and took them unceremoniously. Therewith—the picture of Steph sitting on all fours, face beet red, with no panties was complete. But then the one who panicked most was Sora.
“Hey—my—my sister! Don’t you think this is a little over the line?!”
“…I’m…e-leven…just a kid…so, I dunno.”
With these words, Shiro placed Steph’s panties over her own head. Still expressionless, putting her index finger by her mouth and tilting her head with a clunk.
“Wha—you’re going to write this off as the innocent play of a child?! Your selective use of that is too glaring to look at!”
Now it was more the young girl with panties on her head that attracted the attention of passersby. Which meant, ultimately, Steph’s panties being exposed to the public… U-unbelievable. She was one kid you didn’t want to mess with—that Shiro! But Sora felt unease about her unusual lack of mercy and asked:
“H
-hey, you’re, like, going all out today, huh? Are you in a bad mood for some reason?”
“…Not in particular?”
But it was in questioning Sora himself that the reason for her mood lay. Shiro responded with half-closed eyes and a lack of apparent interest.
Steph’s resistance to Sora, who’d commanded her, “Fall in love with me.” It wasn’t “Rescind the command,” but “Become a decent person,” and what that meant.
…You’d think one would be able to figure it out with a little bit of thought.
“…Hff…”
It seemed the eleven-year-old girl who moodily returned to her book was the only one who noticed it.
—Meanwhile. Steph was dressed up as a dog, with her panties pillaged and shown to the public.
“Heh, heh-heh… I don’t care… I gave up on my chastity the day I lost to Sora…”
Father, Mother, Grandfather… Your Stephanie has been sullied. Heh-heh, huh-huh-huh-huh, Steph laughed, and Sora winced.
“Uh, you know, Shiro, I really don’t feel right about this—I mean, looking at her makes me depressed.”
“…It’s okay…”
It wasn’t clear what was okay, but that was what Shiro said, with the panties on her head.
But then, suddenly, as she lay on the ground, holding her skirt down. Wetting the ground with her tears, Steph thought of something else. It was strange—there must be such a thing as a game of pure luck in this world. (That’s right. Even just now…they did fail at least once!) In other words—guesses were just guesses. Shiro had specified “Best out of ten” because they could fail. Which meant—!
“So-So-Sora! I-I-I have a new game for you!!”
Faltering, apparently unwilling to stand up without panties, Steph.
“S-sure, but…are you really okay?”
With Steph already made into a dog and deprived of underwear. If Steph tried to double down now, wouldn’t it totally be R-18—? But Steph continued, forcefully:
“It is no matter!! All temporary setbacks stand insignificant before the cause of revealing your hand!!”
—What was it? Somewhere, there was a hint of why Elkia had been reduced to this state.
“…I-I see. So, same wagers; what’s the game?”
“How many seconds will it take till that bird takes flight; closest guess wins—best out of one!!”
In the direction indicated by Steph’s forceful finger.
“Cwoop-coo.”
A nasty white pigeon sat on a roof. “Blank can’t lose,” but, in a single round of luck—just you wait! Probably, they’d turn down the match. But even that was enough if she could find a weakness to exploit—! Steph then found her expectations betrayed by Sora’s casual acceptance.
“Sure thing. I’ll let you guess first. Aschente—so, how many seconds?”
“Uh, yeah, aschente…w-well—thirty seconds, I do say!”
Though Steph for a moment had been taken aback that he’d betrayed her expectations and accepted.
—It seemed very unlikely that the pigeon would stay there for more than a minute. Which meant that, whether it was early or late, the easiest approximation was the value in the middle. Racking her brains, Steph produced this answer. But, as if he wasn’t even listening, Sora played with a stone in his hand and spoke.
“Then I say—three seconds.”
He’d hardly finished speaking when he swung his arm over his head and threw.
“—What?!”
The stone that had been in his hand, thrown with all his might, zipped right beside the pigeon. The pigeon, startled—flapped away.
“…Done… Brother wins.”
To Shiro, saying this without lifting her eyes from her book, with the panties on her head. Steph raise her voice in furious argument.
“H-h-wait a minute!! How is that not cheating?!”
But, as if well aware of what she was trying to say, Sora.
“When did we set a rule that you can’t intentionally make the pigeon fly?”
“Wha—”
“This is what happens when you don’t set out the rules of the game carefully.”
S-so childish—just how childish could these two be?! But Sora, having sat back in his chair and returned to his book, spoke seriously.
“—There’s no such thing as luck in this world.”
“…Huh?”
—No such thing? Steph furrowed her eyebrows at the irreconcilable cognitive dissonance.
“Rules, premises, wagers, psychology, skill levels, timing, condition… All these ‘invisible variables’ determine the outcome of the game before it even begins. There’s no such thing as luck.”
—Luck. Was just another name for an unpredictable fate, dictated by invisible variables.
“For example, let’s see…imagine a facedown card.”
Without diverting his eyes from the book, continuing his talk adroitly, Sora.
“What’s the probability that it’s the ace of spades?”
“…Uh, there are fifty-two cards in a deck, so one in fifty-two, right?”
“Sure, that’s the typical way of looking at it. But what if the card is the one from the bottom of a new deck of cards, fresh from the box?”
“…Huh?”
“New decks are pretty much always in the same order. So, if you take out the jokers and then take the deck out and lay it facedown, and then you deal the card at the bottom of the deck, it’s always going to be the ace of spades.”
“Uh, b-but…”
That’s—Steph tried to argue, but Sora—
“That’s right, I never said it was a new deck fresh from the box—i.e., you didn’t know?”
—went on to explain that that was just the point.
“That’s the thing. If you know, 1.92 percent becomes 100 percent. So those who don’t know bitch that they got bum luck, while those who know are fated to seize the victory.”
And so Sora said with a sigh:
“You got it? That’s the trick to winning at games. The reason you lost to me at blackjack. And, by the way, also the reason Immanity has been losing hand over fist—”
And then—with a sour face and a cluck, Sora said:
“—and the reason we’re trapped.”
……Huh? Trapped?
“In this month, we’ve gone through every damn book in the country, and, I gotta say, you don’t know shit about other races—or countries, you could say. We can’t find an opening. For God’s sake, what is wrong with this country—”
“Uh, if I may… What do you mean?”
“—What, did you think all we were doing in this month was sitting in our room and playing games?”
“Yes, that is exactly and precisely what I thought,” said Steph, loud and clear without a moment’s hesitation.
“Well, whatever,” Sora mumbled, then spoke up:
“Let’s say we attack the Furry Kingdom—I mean, the Eastern Union.”
As thought to make it clear he’d still not given up, he continued.
“But practically all we know about Werebeast is that the enemy uses a sixth sense.”
“Y-yes…they do say they can read minds…”
“If they can read minds, bluffs aren’t going to work, and there’s no way we can play mind games.”
Rank Sixteen, Immanity, the lowest-ranking of the Ixseeds, had no special abilities or magic. Thus, if they intended to come out on top in a game with a race that used “supernatural powers”—
“It’s not even a game if we don’t at least know something about the enemy.”
And yet—Immanity hardly had any information to speak of on the other races. Of course, each of the races must have been concealing their information, because having it known would put them at a disadvantage. But, even so, this was too much. This was what he was complaining about when he was griping about the books in the library.
They didn’t know what kind of games they played, what kind of abilities they had. But the other side knew t
heir features inside and out—which meant “invisible variables” visible right from the start—and that was a whole different story. If they went in with no advance information, they were doomed to fail. For exactly the same reason that Steph had lost to Sora—they’d be fated to lose.
“That’s why we’ve spent a whole month and we still haven’t found an opening to attack.”
“B-but…” said Steph to Sora as he crossly closed his book.
When Sora spoke as if to condemn her grandfather’s choice to attack anyway. Steph had to speak up, and she argued feebly.
“E-even so, nothing will happen if we don’t do something!”
—But. Sora’s words, uttered with no particular feeling.
“Look…if we make one wrong move, it’s over.”
Echoed with enough weight to flatten Steph on the ground.
“—Our position now is just that bad. Don’t forget it.”
—For a moment. Though really just for a moment. Sora’s face displayed an anger that made Steph freeze.
It was easy to forget, since they hardly ever acted like it. But the fate of all three million lives of Immanity rested on the shoulders of the two. Immanity’s greatest gamers, without a doubt, who had even vanquished Elf, albeit indirectly. They said—they were trapped. The meaning, the weight of that, finally became clear to Steph, and it weighed on her so that she couldn’t stand.
—If they made one wrong move, millions of lives would end. Under that kind of pressure—Steph thought, holding in her breath, and then, Sora stretched languorously, fiddling with his task scheduler. “—We only know one way out and we don’t have the key. Damn, what to do.”
To be able to stay calm like this, what kind of constitution did he have? Steph felt the hint of a chill—
—…and then. A sudden shadow instantly enveloped their surroundings in night.
“…What? Why is it suddenly…night—”
Sora shifted his gaze—and widened his eyes. Even Shiro widened her usually half-closed eyes and let the doughnut drop from her mouth. In front of their gazes, now directed straight up, the blue sky that was just there was no more. As if a piece of the earth’s crust had been ripped away—a huge rock bed was drifting.
