31. The Showdown
“Alright, let’s settle this. Old man, flip five cards at once.”
The dealer nodded silently and gathered five cards in his right hand. Everyone except me turned their eyes toward the table.
When the five cards were revealed, small cheers rose from the onlookers.
I lifted my lowered head and saw: Club 3, Club King, Diamond Ace, Diamond King, and Diamond 5.
If I had stayed in the hand, I would have completed a diamond flush.
The sight nearly made me shout in frustration, “That was a flush!” But I had already folded. There was nothing I could do.
I quietly observed the reactions around me. There were two clear groups:
The men to my left looked devastated, as if they were on the verge of death. The men to my right had smirks on their faces and were glancing at the woman sitting next to me.
“I’ve got three kings!”
The man to my right loudly flipped over his hole cards and declared his hand.
He had the Spade King and Diamond 7. It was a decent hand, and in this situation, it was quite strong. Cheers erupted around him, but the man at the top of the table smiled fearlessly, and the cheers quickly died down.
“W-what’s with that grin, man!?”
“Sorry. Looks like the goddess of victory smiled on me at the very end…”
With those words, he flipped over his own hole cards: Diamond 2 and Diamond 4. He had completed a diamond flush.
“…Shit!!!!”
In an instant, the situation reversed. Cheers erupted for the top man’s hand.
Meanwhile, the men to my left stopped showing their cards and wore bitter expressions like they had swallowed a bug.
But none of them looked worse than I did.
I lowered my face again, desperately suppressing the urge to cry like an idiot as I accepted the harsh reality in front of me.
If I had stayed in, I would have won with a jack-high flush.
I didn’t know what the woman was holding, though.
At that moment, I looked back at the table.
Come to think of it, the woman still hadn’t revealed her hand.
With a faint hope, I turned my gaze toward her cards. Slowly, she flipped over her two hole cards with her own hand.
“Wha—!?!?”
The man on the right let out a shocked cry when he saw her hand.
The woman’s cards were the Heart King and Heart Ace. She had a full house. The winner of this game wasn’t the top man—it was the woman sitting right next to me.
“My win, it seems.”
The shocking conclusion left the men who had been ogling her completely frozen. They had forgotten about groping her chest. The game was over, so there would be no fight, but that was beside the point.
No one could move. They could only stare at the woman, trying to process what had just happened.
“Damn… I got completely played,” the top man muttered.
While everyone else remained frozen, he alone stood up from his seat.
“I never want another night like this again.”
Leaving those words behind, he departed. The men on the left quickly followed, fleeing the scene. The dealer, as if suddenly remembering his job, gathered the chips on the table and brought them to the woman.
“Thank you.”
The woman pulled the pile of chips toward herself and offered words of gratitude.
I thought she was talking to someone else and ignored her, but she turned to face me.
“Thanks to you, I managed to win all this money.”
“Y-yeah… I’m glad…”
I replied weakly. The woman then traced a circle in the air with her finger. A mysterious space appeared, and she swept all the money from the table into it.
As I stared blankly at the scene, the woman looked at me again. Suddenly, her right hand reached out and grabbed my left arm.
She pulled my left hand toward her chest and gently pressed it against her breast.
“This is just a little thank-you gift. See you.”
She returned my arm to its original position and left.
By the time I came to my senses, I was the only one left at the table. The other men had already scattered.
“Hey, kid. We’re closing up for tonight.”
The dealer’s voice snapped me back to reality. I put the thirty-four copper coins that made up my entire fortune back into my pocket and left the tavern.