episode_0083

Having lost at poker, I handed over the chips entirely.

Eventually, chips inscribed with B (Billion) indicating a billion dollars, going beyond M (Million) for a million dollars, had appeared, and the money I had exchanged was truly ripped away in vain.

As the dealer, acting as referee, collected all the chips to Victor with a tool shaped like an iron rake, the amount of chips remaining in front of me was truly paltry.

Expensive chips were still piled high, but it was as if all the small change had been ripped away.

Is this what gambling is? I was so dumbfounded that a word naturally escaped my lips.

“Wow… How can you not go easy on me even once?”

“No matter if you’re Hyung-nim, isn’t this a man-to-man match?”

With those words, one of the men assisting Victor put a cigarette in his mouth.

For a cigarette, the leaves inside were bluish, and the rolling paper itself looked quite peculiar, I thought, but when he lit it, its unique forest scent spread even here.

“The kid-playing service ended a long time ago, Hyung-nim.”

Strictly speaking, it was the smell of strongly burning grass.

It seemed to be marijuana.

It was a scent I was smelling for the first time, but he was puffing out smoke ostentatiously right in front of my nose, which I didn’t like at all.

“It’s just surprisingly so. At first, you folded easily, but then as the stakes went up, you attacked like a ghost and won everything.”

“Poker is, after all, a battle of wits and psychology.”

He tapped his head lightly with a thick finger, then ground out the marijuana he’d only smoked a few puffs of in the ashtray offered to him.

“Is it a Korean characteristic to make pathetic noises after losing for no good reason?”

It was an utterly childish provocation.

I picked up a chip with an ‘M’ inscribed and flicked it upwards as I opened my mouth.

“Well, it’s not that I’m angry about losing 200 million dollars, I was just thinking, how about adding one more rule from now on?”

“A new rule? Surely… you don’t mean that you’re going to show your tail and run away after just this much?”

“That will never happen even in my dreams, so don’t try to provoke me clumsily for nothing.”

Bang!

“Rather, it’s the opposite. Instead of dragging it out indecisively, it means let’s go all-out even more.”

Shifting my weight forward, I clutched the remaining chips and pushed them all in.

The money I had exchanged beforehand was 600 million dollars, and I pushed in that amount all at once, which was twice the sum I had lost so far.

“From now on, betting will be double that of the previous game. And whether your hand is good or not, from now on, you don’t fold and go all the way to the end. How about it?”

At that, the onlookers who had been looking for drinks around them stirred.

Even if they couldn’t understand the Korean spoken between the two of us, they murmured, perhaps sensing something unusual from the very act of betting it all in one go.

“……In that case.”

The usually relaxed Victor formed a slight crease between his brows.

He racked his brain, as if trying to figure out what scheme I was up to, then during our conversation, he glanced at the hand that had just been dealt, and showing off his tiresome gold teeth, he revealed his cards.

There were a staggering three Kings (K).

A strong hand that could already decide the match, even though all the cards hadn’t been dealt yet.

“……”

2, 3, 10

On my side, in contrast, was a combination of numbers that were far apart and mismatched in suit.

It was a garbage hand with nothing more to see, even if more cards came in, meaning a complete defeat.

“If it’s like this, I’ll take all of Hyung-nim’s assets, won’t I?”

As he spoke, the dealer, who was acting as referee, scraped all the chips away once more, as if raking a field with an iron rake.

He swept away all my stakes that had been laid out in front of me, without leaving a single one behind.

The gallery cheered.

No matter who won or lost, the cheers grew louder, as if all they needed was to fill their own entertainment dopamine.

Victor laughed heartily at me, who had gone broke after pushing it all in one go.

As if it were a skill to fool suckers, he lightly raised his sunglasses and commenced another provocation.

“So what will you do now? Shall I lend you some money, or will you take a short break and go find more?”

“…Why would I do such a thing and drag out time?”

I exhaled inwardly.

It’s finally over.

This tedious script that would only be complete if I kept losing, that is.

“I’ve already prepared everything so that the audience wouldn’t have to wait.”

As I mumbled, Woo Miae, who was watching from behind, turned on her radio.

“……Yes, now is the time.”

Low, short English.

As she murmured a few words of instruction, only then did the real show, what could be called the big deal, begin.

Thump! Thump!

A heavy sensation of weight reverberated throughout the entire casino building.

At the rough, clattering noise, I turned my head, and everyone looked up, as if testing the limits of their eyelids.

Everyone in the gallery watched with dropped jaws from afar as that, which entered the casino majestically, came into view.

It was shimmering gold bars.

Neatly arranged masses of lustrous, golden gold bars entered, carried by forklifts.

Heavy 10kg gold bars, difficult to even lift, stacked neatly on pallets, were transported as if offering food to a king, divided among three medium-sized forklifts.

Armed mercenaries for security and even my bodyguards came in alongside them.

Making rattling heavy machinery sounds, they were safely stacked with the guidance of bodyguards providing cover for any unforeseen situation.

Immense gold bars.

A surprise item that had probably not even been in Victor’s plans.

“It’s 10 tons. In dollars, it’d probably match the value of the billion dollars you’ve gorged yourself on so far.”

“!”

“No, if you calculate by the pure value of the gold bars, it would easily exceed that, wouldn’t it? With this much, your gold teeth implants could be produced like popcorn.”

As soon as Victor saw the shimmering gold lumps, his face stiffened.

It was obvious he was trying to regain composure somehow, but as if his eyes were drawn to it automatically, he turned his eyes towards the shimmering gold inside his sunglasses, and swallowed, wetting his throat.

Gold was, by its very nature, a powerful presence.

Seeing a pile of gold lumps, it had the magic to bring out greed even where none existed.

An alluring quality that even a meditating monk would glance at once.

“Is it really… real gold?”

“It’s already been certified upstairs. Is there any need for me, a busy person, to bother bringing in fakes and waste time?”

When I raised a finger and pointed upwards, the Asian Casino King fell silent.

Of course, those beings up there were no different from the ‘true judges’ who would watch this and decide the victor.

So Victor pondered deeply.

It was obvious he was trying to maintain his composure somehow, figuring out how the current situation was unfolding.

“Khk…!”

Nevertheless, he couldn’t suppress his desire for the shimmering gold bars from the side.

Even if he didn’t know the true intention behind suddenly bringing out gold bars instead of chips, he sweated for the first time, grinding his gold teeth that he had been so proud of, such was its allure.

“Victor, it’s gold! Gold!”

Even my brother-in-law, whose eyes had spun at the sight of the gold lumps.

As if telling him to fight back, when I gently dabbed his face with a handkerchief from the side, he let out a long-drawn sigh.

“…Alright,”

raising his paltry gold teeth, which paled in comparison to the real gold, he offered a wry smile,

“If you insist on paying the price with heavy gold, it’s always welcome. Since it must have been difficult to even bother bringing such a gift.”

“Alright, nothing is as certain as gold. Then, considering this as payment, shall we continue the game?”

At the continuation of the game, my brother-in-law spread his arms, welcoming it.

“By all means! Then, the cards that will decide our fate—”

Bang! Bang-bang-bang!

-Aaaah!

-What?! What’s happening!?

Sudden gunshots.

As the mercenaries guarding the gold fired a few shots, screams erupted everywhere.

The police, distracted by the massive gold bars, frantically went into armed stance, and I stood up, clapping my hands to clear the air of this rapidly worsening atmosphere.

“Calm down, calm down! Police officers, don’t worry. Because from now on, we’re just going to start a fair game.”

“Hey! W-What is this─”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s happening’? It’s the process of normalizing the game.”

I answered Victor, but my gaze did not linger there.

Taking advantage of the confusion, I quickly closed the distance.

I snatched the wrist of the dealer and referee, whose eyes had wavered for a moment at the gunshots.

“……!?”

Just like that, I abruptly rummaged through his pockets.

I immediately grabbed the thin cards caught in his front and inside pockets and scattered them onto the table as if throwing them.

Four Aces, one for each suit.

And besides those, Kings, Queens, etc. — cards with the same back as the playing cards used in the game that came spilling out.

“Wow, you really took good care of your boss, didn’t you?”

“……”

Every time I lost consecutively in the game, I meticulously observed what trick he would use.

Where he hid the cards he swapped while dealing, and when his hand went to his pocket.

Because dealer bribery is a common trick in gambling.

Moreover, it would be a natural course of action if the employer he worked for was the casino owner.

It meant it was a common and petty trick.

“How about it, my dear brother-in-law? Something came out of your subordinate, do you have anything to say?”

“……Well.”

Even though I exposed him openly, this gangster bastard was calm.

As if it were a common occurrence, he very calmly performed a ‘tail-cutting.’

“I don’t know. I have no idea at all why cards came out of the dealer’s pocket─”

“Then take that out too, right now.”

“……?”

I tapped his ear.

“Take out that in-ear monitor stuck in your ear like some damn thing.”

“Huh…?”

“The gunshots just now, I ordered them to be fired at the CCTV hidden in the statues and pillars, you see.”

“……!”

“Now you won’t be able to tell what hand I’m holding, so it’s useless, take it out.”

His calm face crumbled.

As if belatedly checking, he put his hand to his ear, trying to hear the sound, but then, perhaps realizing the surrounding gazes, he took his hand off again.

In this moment, I confirmed the target shot by the armed mercenary I had hired.

After showing the audience the camera, hidden like cicadas waiting for their metamorphosis inside the pillars, which had been hit and shattered, I threw it on the floor.

This too was obvious fraud.

Petty and cowardly fraud that made one wonder if he truly was the Casino King.

“Why, why is this…?”

Nevertheless, he pathetically denied that he ever did such a thing.

As he tried to put on a clumsy act, I pointed out yet another thing.

“Your subordinate you planted was loitering behind me, clearing his throat as if he were a VIP, and it kept getting on my nerves, you see?”

“!”

“He’s an uninvited guest, so it’s alright to remove him, isn’t it?”

Having heard this much, Victor, finding it harder to maintain his expression, completely lowered his neck to the floor.

His face stiffened, perhaps realizing his greed had gone too far after easily extracting money from me, thinking I was merely a sucker.

I approached my cute brother-in-law, who was still racking his brain, even after having been utterly disgraced by using clumsy tricks while handling enormous amounts of money, and whispered.

‘Cheer up. It’s not that I’m saying let’s stop the game with a fraudulent bastard who uses dirty tricks.’

‘……!’

‘It means let’s play fair and square from now on. Unless I’m an idiot, if I enter a game I’m clearly going to lose, I’m the only one who loses, aren’t I?’

“……”

‘It’s a 1:1 game that’s truly escalated, just as you wished. But… is our brother-in-law-nim sweating profusely?’

When I approached and looked down, his hands, clutching tightly on his knees, were drenched in sweat.

Sweat glands that had leaked so profusely that even the rings on his fingers would slide off if he wasn’t careful.

When the fellow who hadn’t lost his composure until now turned pale, like a dog that had misstepped and fallen deeply into a swamp trap, I slowly returned to my spot.

Thinking I’d finally have fun taking him for everything, I gave a bright smile.

“From now on, stop your petty tricks, and let’s play properly, you bibimbap bastard.”

Anyway, the people around wouldn’t understand much of it, so I satisfyingly hurled insults at the fraudulent bastard.