CHAPTER 30 - A Game

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Earl's Daughter, Yuriko von Sora, Russiva Imperial Year 782 Month 4, Day 22, Sora General Store Branch #3, Deutsche Empery

She looked as intimidating, yet beautiful with the perfect contrast of her unhealthy looking pale skin and dark hair, and even though she was out of her military uniform she seemed as every bit as formidable and fierce even when wearing a white sleeved blouse, along with a long skirt that reached a few centimeters below her knees, long enough to ensure that she wasn't taking any chances for men to take a lucky peek of whatever what was underneath, though it was quite a wardrobe mismatch considering her footwear was clearly the same boots she wore during battles.

But what made Yuriko think that the person in front of her, who came running through the front door of the shop she was drinking tea in like a madman, wasn't because of the obvious militaristic and authoriative atmosphere around her, but rather the deep eyes which had a shade of red that seemed unique only to her.

"Schwertspinne-san?" Yuriko called out while she was sitting on one of the many tables in the premises, drinking what seemed to be green tea.

Actually, Yuriko almost dropped the tea in surprise due to what she thought to be Reichel's very unexpected arrival, since this was a store where you could buy food exotic to the Far East Asean countries, considering that Yuriko literally saw Reichel run away crying after tasting the food from the same origin.

"Ah! It really is you! Schwertspinne-san!" Yuriko's mood lightened up as she put down her cup of tea as she confirmed that the woman in front of her was indeed who Yuriko thought she was.

Normally, this would be a clear hint that the person that they were trying to talk to didn't want to talk to them, and that they should kindly mind their own business.

It was a clear sign of intentional ignorance that any sensible person with half a point of social insight should be able to see that ...

However ...

'Maybe she didn't hear me?'

Yuriko as she was right now, was an extremely insociable individual who has had only 1 friend of her age throughout her life,and completely lacked the insight needed to recognize such a signal.

'Hmmm, maybe she's too amazed at the exotic architecture of the building to hear me?' Yuriko assumed something that was entirely off.

Yuriko had heard from her older brother that sometimes when humans are so preoccupied or focused on something, their brain would immediately shut off all other senses for maximum focus.

'Yes, that must be it!'

*criiiiik* Yuriko stood up and cheerfully made her way to Reichel, who obviously was trying her best not to look behind her.

"Guten tag, Schwertspinne-san!" Yuriko said as she pat Reichel's shoulder.

*Tsk!* A sound that quite closely resembled the clicking of a tongue was made, however since it was timed perfectly well with Yuriko's shoulder pat, Yuriko didn't quite get to hear it.

"Y-Yo, Guten tag to you as well, Frau Sora."Reichel said as she tried her best to conceal her annoyance with a smile.

 "What brings you here to this part of town? Did you somehow get lost?"

"No ... I just wanted to buy some ingredients and food here ..."

'Sugoi! So she really is here because she was really interested by the food!' Yuriko breathed a sigh of relief as the misunderstanding as to why Reichel ran away during their first encounter was briefly solved.

"Well do you need me to suggest some things? I know some really good things on the menu!" Yuriko said as she put her fist to her chest, which was an imitation of the Deutsche Empery's military salute.

"No need actually, I've already done my research and gave the old lady on the counter a list while I was walking here." Reichel immediately waved her off, declining at an incredibly fast rate.

And in doing so, a normal person would once again be able to pick up on the signal that Reichel just wanted to wait for her order in peace.

"Woah! Schwertspinne-san really is a person who knows her stuff!

 But then again, Yuriko wasn't one to notice such a small thing.

"Schwertspinne-san, come sit with me! I have some tea that you might like!" and just like that Reichel was also lured in by the scent of green tea she just now noticed, coerced into being in a situation where she didn't want to be.

 "Schwertspinne-san, so how have you been the last few days? It's really been quite rare to see you, actually, I even saw you a few times in the school premises, and when I tried to call you during all those times you suddenly ran away!"

*shrug* Reichel uncomfortably jolted at the mention of running away.

"Well, I've been doing a lot of things these days and I hadn't really had much free time to interact with you so I'm quite sorry ..." Reichel used all her acting skills to seem as sorry as possible, and fortunately Yuriko's perception was far too low to notice something like acting.

"Ahhhhhh, in all actuality, I've been have the same problem too!"

"You do?"

"Right, yes! A few days ago one I lost one of my family's most prized bento bo--lunch boxes, and ever since then mother punished me by saying I have to work in one of our branch stores until I cough up enough money to replace it!"

*shrug* Reichel uncomfortably jolted at the mention of lunch box.

'She was forced into working into some lowly position like a waitress just because her mother was angry that she lost some damn ancient tupperware? Even here in another world it seems like asian moms will always be asian moms!' is what Reichel currently thought of Yuriko's situation at the moment, but of course Yuriko would have no way of knowing that unless she was kind of special ESPer.

"So I guess this is why you also have this yuk--weird outfit on then?" Reichel said, her words almost trailing off to say yukata.

"Ah yes, mother says  I have to wear it while I'm working always or the working hours I dish out not wearing it won't count, and the lunch box was quite expensive too so I'll have to keep wearing this during my free time for a few months to earn enough money!"

'Money ...'

 And then Reichel, suddenly remembering something at the mention of the word money, reached into her pocket to reveal a pink wallet with a spider keychain, which given to her as a gift by Anny.

 Reichel stared into her wallet, and then quickly closed it with wide eyes and cold sweat flowing down her forehead.

 "Schwertspinne-san, is there something bothering you?" Yuriko asked Reichel with curious eyes while tilting her head.

But then as Reichel stared into the eyes of Yuriko, it seemed like Reichel found something more to Yuriko than just an acquiantance she only spoke to just once, and the expression was strong enough that even Yuriko had felt it.

'I hope she sees me as a friend who can share her problems with! I myself am in need of friends too ...' Yuriko sighed as she remembered that her only friend in Yuropa had left her in order to be some daring hero in the military.

But little did Yuriko know, that Reichel didn't see Yuriko as a friend at all.

In fact, it was something more like a man who had just been announced financially broke, and then been given a winning lottery ticket.

"Hey Yuriko, wanna play a game?"

"A game!?"

"Yes, a game, to pass the time, you said that the orders here would take long right?"

"Well ... I guess so ..."

"And besides, we're friends aren't we? What's wrong with going a fun round just like good friends too?" Reichel emphasized the word friend more than she should be emphasizing, but again Yuriko wasn't one to notice such obvious details and was easily swayed by Reichel's words.

'Frieeeeeeeeeeeends ...'  Normally this scam wasn't really something an adult like Yuriko would fall into, but Yuriko was pressured into something so painfully obvious that even a child when shown candy would have shown much more resistance.

"Okay! So what are we playing?"

"Erhm, do you have a deck of playing cards?"

"Ah, yes of course! I have always have my trusty pair of cards in my pocket!" said Yuriko as she reached down to the pocket of her pants to reveal a small box of playing cards in her hand.

"You always have a pair of cards in your pocket?" Reichel asked Yuriko as if that was something weird, and the answer was Yuriko once again tilting her head as if she had just heard something weird.

"You mean it's not normal to always have a deck of playing cards on hand?"

"No, well, what would you use them for anyways? It's not like you expect to go out everyday gambling right?" Reichel said so, finally considering for real whether she should put Yuriko in her mental weird person list or not.

"Well of course I don't expect to suddenly be invited to gamble everyday, and I keep them for the more obvious reason of course!" Yuriko said as she started to open the box and take out the cards, all while Reichel neared her, looking interested at what the more obvious reason was.

"What is this more obvious reason you're talking about?" Reichel said as she put her index finger and thumb on her chin, expressing genuine curiousity.

"What else? I keep them for good luck!" Yuriko had heard from her little brother that symbols from a game or activity that required luck would increase her luck stat overtime, and Yuriko as an easily-influenced person was also easy to fall into her little brother's words and had ever since kept some playing cards in her inventory wherever she went around ever since she was 16.

"..." Reichel on the other hand was silent as she finally put Yuriko in her weird person list, adding to the numerous amount of potentially mentally unstable people she had ever met during the period of her life.

"The game is quite simple, we each pull out a single card, and then guess if your card's value is lower, higher, or equal to value when compared to my card." and in the end Reichel just decided to ignore what Yuriko just said and moved on to explain the mechanics of her newly created game that she just made on the spot.

“Ohhhhhhhhh, I see!”

“... You don’t understand do you?”

“... no.”

Reichel barely stopped herself from clicking her tongue in a fraction of a second.

Reichel didn’t like explaining things at all but she well understood that sometimes the less fortunate humans need a deeper understanding of something, before they are able to actually understand it.

 Not that Yuriko would know though.

"Okay, so each turn we pick a card randomly from the deck, and then switch every turn in guessing whether your card would be higher, lower, or equal in value." Reichel said as she flipped around the cards repeatedly while making multiple 

'Ohhhh, so in essence, it's a game of prediction! I see I see!'

 "Fufufufufu, I'll have you know that I used to do palm-print predictions when I was a child!"

"Cool, cool, so what are you betting?"

"Eh?"

Yuriko's mind paused. A bet? She wasn't informed about anything like this beforehand!

"A-A bet?"

"Well normally, this is a game right? Why not add in a bet to make it more fun! Isn't it more fun to play with something on the line?"

"Well that is right ..." Yuriko said hestatingly, she liked to play games herself but her big brother often times about people who would try to cheat her out of her money when it came to harmless games.

Yuriko lingered on it for a moment, and just as she was about to decide otherwise, Reichel picked up on her signal and intervened at a speed comparable to lightning.

"Okay you agreed to it, so how about if I win ..." Reichel didn't let Yuriko linger around in her thoughts, fearing that she would change her mind.

And as Reichel cut off her own words, she looked around, pretending to see if there would be anything of value that she could scam-- play Yuriko for.

But she already knew what she was going to ask for, just had to keep up appearances is all.

"If I win, let's say ... everything I just ordered will be on the house?"

"Okay!" Yuriko agreed to it almost immediately, that meant that she wouldn't be cheated out her money since the food belongs to her parents anyways.

'And besides, it's probably just a few items from the menu ... it'll be barely noticeable!' Yuriko tried to constrain herself, rationalizing that it would only be of low cost if she lost anyways ...

But that's where she was wrong!

While Reichel had been ignoring Yuriko's calling at the start when she came in, she had already gave her order to the old lady of enough exotic eastern food that could feed an army for an entire year! And the reason as to why she tried to play Yuriko, Reichel's wallet was currently empty and she only just remembered that the old man Blohm is her source of money and that she herself had none at the moment, and it just so happened that a convenient gold mine came into vision.

Essentially, this was a gamble worth hundreds of thousands of Yuleas.

Not that Yuriko knows though.

*fwip!* Reichel started by swiping away a card on the deck, and then brought it face-down, not revealing it until Yuriko draws a card and makes a prediction of her own.

*fwip!* Yuriko imitated by doing the same actions as Reichel, except she looked at her card first.

'Four of clovers ...'

"Then I'll go with Lower."

"Alright."

*fwip!* Reichel and Yuriko turned their cards, revealing them to one another, making them be able to see the value of each other's cards.

And the round went to ...

"My prediction was right on spot!"

Reichel, who had drawn a king of clubs, was higher in value compared to the four of spades that Yuriko picked out, and since Yuriko predicted that her card's value was going to be lower, then that meant that Yuriko had scored in the first round.

"Well done, you're getting the hang of the game so quickly." Reichel said so as her eye twitched ever so slightly, staring at the deck of cards and then swiping away another card after Yuriko swiped another one.

'Let's see here ...' Yuriko looked at her card ...

'A king of diamonds!' Yuriko smiled as she held her card close, hidden from Reichel's peering eye.

Reichel on the other hand ignored this, and instead picked her card from the deck.

*fwip!*

"I think my card is ... higher." Reichel said as she looked at her card first, and then at Yuriko's expression.

And without delaying it by a breath, Yuriko and Reichel flipped both of their cards at the same time, not delaying the suspense any longer.

 And the result was …

The value of Reichel's card was lower.

Compared to the nine of spades that Reichel had, it was just but one point away from being the same value from Yuriko's card.

"Woahhhh! I think I'm getting the hang of this game!"

"Haha ... right ..." Reichel said as she simply took another card from her hand, and then placed it face down on the table as Yuriko pressed to do the same while maintaining her cheerful attitude.

'An eight of spades ...'

"I think I'll go with higher again!" Yuriko said as she didn't think it through that Reichel might have drawn a larger value-card, and instead relied on the fact that Reichel would have a lower-value card due to mere odds.

*fwip* Reichel threw the card she was holding along the wooden table's surface as it slowly came a stop, revealing what the value of Reichel's card was ...

'A seven of hearts!'

'Sugoi!' Yuriko smirked playfully as she saw that her prediction was indeed correct.

"I think I'm on a lucky streak! Don't you think so--" Yuriko looked up at Reichel who was sitting across her, only to find something that made her go silent.

"Schwertspinne ... san?"

There were no traces of any hospitality or kindness in her face anymore.

Reichel simply stared hard at the cards that Yuriko dropped towards the table, seemingly searching for something that Yuriko couldn't figure out.

And how she stared at the cards, picked up a few of them, and even started sniffing them before putting them back.

And that's where it all happened.

'!?'

As dense as Yuriko may be when it came to subtle and small details, she knew dangers when she felt it, and when it came to the woman in front of her, something deep inside the very fiber of her being was telling her to stop the fuck right then and there.

Forfeit, throw the game, do anything in your power just to get out of that situation, is what the deepest part of her conscience was trying to tell her ...

"Reichel ... I think we should stop playing, I think you're kind of being too absorbed in this, it's sort of a bad habit ... is what I think ..." Yuriko trailed off, voicing her thoughts to Reichel who was merely looking at her without any sort of visible sign on her face to express any emotion whatsoever.

"Too ... absorbed?"

"Besides, it's just a game anyways! It won't be a problem if we just forget about it! Oh, and I think that your order is almost ready so I'll just check up on oba-chan just to see how--" Yuriko trailed off, trying to persuade Reichel to drop everything and just try to fill her request in order to make her happy and leave ...

However there was one thing that Yuriko overlooked!

"Yakamashii! Kono kuso onna!" (Shut the hell up! You shitty woman!)

Life wasn't as generous as she hoped.

'She knows how to speak Kyuushun!?' Yuriko thought, it was quite rare for her to see another person who could speak the same language in Yuropa but of all people she really didn't expect a native-born Deutsche citizen like Reichel to actually know how to speak her mother tongue, considering the thought that Yuriko thought that Reichel hasn't even left the Deutsche Empery once.

But more than that, there was something that Yuriko needed to address first ...

'Shut the hell up? Shitty woman?'

 Yuriko got upset at the rather crude use of language, as the daughter of an immigrant noble in the Deutche Empery, she received quite a decent amount of racism and hate comments from Deutsche patriotism radicalists, and she learned how to put up with some slurs like 'Chopsticks' and 'Rice Farmer'.

But never had she seen someone in Yuropa use her mother tongue for that kind of language ...

Yuriko was going to reprimand Reichel for using her mother tongue in such a way, however when she started to speak she felt some sort of intimidating presence that threatened to choke her if she started saying anything that wasn't related to the game.

'!?'

'What ... was that?' Yuriko's breathing suddenly became more erratic, like she had just finished a running for 6 hours with no breaks, taking short breaths and gasping for air, but what gripped her wasn't something as measly as fatigue ... it was something more than just that ...

Panic? Anxiety? A combination of both?

Yuriko didn't really know, but whatever it was she definitely knew it wasn't good ...

 "Pick another one ..." Reichel said as she looked at her card from her hand and then faced it down, sliding it in front of Yuriko.

"Wait, but isn't it your tur--"

"Hurry up." Reichel said as she looked towards Yuriko with focused eyes, commanding her silently to shut up and play.

*gulp* Yuriko swallowed a chunk of her own saliva out of anxiety, and her eyes drooped to the deck of face-down cards that were on the table.

*fwip!* Yuriko took one from the very top of it with a shaking hand.

'Please be something low!' Yuriko thought as she peered into the contents of her right hand.

An king of spades.

'I got the second most highest-value card!?'  Yuriko had a look of utter despair as she looked upon the value of her card.

So far, the card with the most value in average deck of cards was the ace, and second to that was the king, queen, jack, and so on in that order.

It wasn't a problem that a king had popped up, rather it was a lucky move even for Yuriko.

'I can just go for lower ... no wait!'

There were still 4 aces in the deck of cards, meaning that if Reichel had a card that was an ace in her hand then that would have meant that Yuriko would win again, and although it was a far chance she still couldn't get off with the fact that there was still such a chance that such a thing would happen.

A 4 in +30 chance that Reichel might get an ace.

Compare that to the chance that Reichel would get another king, since already 2 other kings have already been removed from the deck, then it was more logical to choose the only other remaining option.

"I think t-that I'll go with ... equal."

Equal, the option which had the lowest possible chance that would make it succeed, since it was only literally in more than 1 in 30 chance that Reichel could ever pick another king in the deck of cards, she decided when compared to the  danger of the 4 out of +30 chance that choosing higher would pose.

It was only the most natural option to go for the least odds that would make her win, considering the situation she was in.

"Equal ... huh ..." There was a disgusted tone in Reichel's voice, but eventually decided to let it go, knowing that she was the one who told Yuriko to choose anyways ...

'Will it be correct!?'

Yuriko's hand was an ace, the second highest most valued card in the game, and one of the last two remaining in play.

And the card in Reichel's hand ...

*fwip!*

"No ... way ..."

Widened Yuriko's mouth in an impossible manner of disbelief.

King of hearts.

It was the only remaining king which was one of the four king cards in an average deck, with Yuriko's hand also being being from the card category.

Which meant that ...

"Spot on equal huh ..." Reichel said as her face's expression turned darker ...

The difficulty that Yuriko had breathing suddenly amped up, and cold sweat started to form down her forehead, no longer as a sign of anxiety, but one transformed into fear.

"Don't worry about it! I'll pay for your expenses nonetheless! It's on the house! It's just a game anyways!" Yuriko tried to speak to Reichel, who was muttering incomprehensible things at a fast pace that she couldn't hear.

"A ... game?" Reichel looked at Yuriko with curious eyes.

"Yes, and besides! This is a game that you just invented yourself a while ago right? So it may be possible that there are some tweaks that you may have just overlooked during it's initial stages of design, which means that you need to work extra hard on it and balance it enough for it to be available for entertainment use!" Yuriko appealed to Reichel, trying to come up with whatever excuse or words that sounded plausible all in an attempt to reason with Reichel.

"Design ... overlooked ..."

And for some reason, it actually paid off despite it's hastily-made nature, it seemed like Reichel actually accepted that train of thought.

'Right right!'

*criiiiik* Reichel's wooden chair sounded somewhat melancholic even, as she dragged it back to a position where she could sit properly.

"I see ..."

'Phew ...' Yuriko breathed a sigh of relief as she saw Reichel sink back to her seat, still looking like she was deep in thought.

"I don't know what came over me ..." Reichel said as she put her palm on her face.

"Haha, don't worry Schwertspinne-san! Everybody just gets caught up in the heat of the moment sometim--"

"The answer was so painfully obvious ..."

And that's where Yuriko's sense of danger once again reignited, and where everything hit rock bottom.

She assumed that Reichel was an understanding individual, ruled by logic, which she was for the most part, and that she treated such trivial games as something not to be taken seriously ...

And that was the most severe miscalculation that Yuriko had ever made in her life so far.

Because what Yuriko was playing against, wasn't an understanding individual at all, this was a woman who believed herself as the woman who would eventually outplay the gods, and stand at the pinnacle of humanity.

Someone who had the word pride so far up her arse that she would have actually become an actual goddess if she found the Essence of Pride, instead of the Essence  of Gluttony that day one year ago.

"You cheated, didn't you?"

In short, Yuriko was currently facing against the single-most sore loser in the history of mankind ever.

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