"Eh!!?"
Saotome blinked, seemingly not reacting, then after a while, she clutched her head and exclaimed in surprise: "Impossible! How do you still have an A? If you had a card, why didn't you play it just now!?"
"Mind your own business. Do you still want to play?"
Aiura Kokoro chuckled lightly: "Oh, right, I almost forgot. Your biggest card is a K. You definitely can't play now."
With that, Aiura Kokoro played her remaining three cards one by one.
A K, a J. As if not worried about Saotome playing, she unhurriedly played the last 10 from her hand.
At this moment, Saotome was still stuck with her last card.
Saotome was stunned: "Why is this happening...?"
Saotome's hand was [K, K, K, 8, 3], while Aiura Kokoro's hand was [K, A, Q, 10, 6].
Everyone could see that if Saotome had played the 8 first, she would have won this game.
But she made a mistake based on experience, subconsciously assuming that Aiura Kokoro's largest card was a K, thinking that no matter what she played, it would be fine, and saving the 8 for last.
Hanatemari Kazura stomped her foot anxiously on the side: "What happened to Meari, she actually lost...?"
Ayanokoji frowned.
Saving smaller cards for last was a habit Ayanokoji also had when playing poker. However, that was when neither side knew the other's cards. Playing larger cards first was definitely the optimal solution.
But now, Saotome Meari should clearly know that Aiura Kokoro was cheating, and her cards might all be open to the other party. Why did she still deliberately do this?
"Saotome, I thought you were so impressive. Is this all you've got?"
Aiura Kokoro laughed happily: "Are you thinking that as long as you have duplicate big cards, you can beat me? Sorry, idiot, I gave you a chance and you couldn't seize it! If you had played the 8 first, you would have won long ago!"
"All your previous impatience was just an act..."
Saotome seemed to realize it at this moment. She suddenly slapped the table in anger: "You are definitely cheating! You must have known what my cards were, so you deliberately saved that A for last!"
"Hey, hey... don't slander me. I just saw you looking so confident, so I kept a little something in reserve."
Aiura Kokoro deliberately covered her mouth and chuckled: "You're not getting anxious, are you? It's only a loss of 200,000. You're already anxious. That's why commoners are..."
"No, it's too strange! Did you make some marks on the cards, constantly knowing my cards, and deliberately used that angry posture to imply that you didn't have a card bigger than K in your hand!"
Saotome seemed to go crazy, messing up all the poker cards and scattering them on the table, her face frantic, looking at the back of each card, like a gambler who had lost his mind.
"Sigh, I already said I didn't cheat. It's just that my luck is a little better. If you're suspicious, you can take the cards and inspect them carefully."
Aiura Kokoro feigned a sigh, crossed her arms, and leaned back in her chair, generously allowing Saotome to check the back of the cards.
While Saotome Meari was inspecting the poker cards, Ayanokoji noticed that, except for the "livestock," everyone in the casino was staring intently at Saotome, their eyes glowing with a faint green light, like a pack of wolves eyeing their prey.
This sentence does not use a rhetorical device, but rather describes the current situation—Aiura Kokoro, and the crowd watching from the side, all had green pupils.
Green? Why...? Everyone in their class had green pupils?
It was mentioned before that people in this world seemed to particularly like dyeing their hair and wearing colored contacts. Even Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka's older brother, was like this, dyeing his hair after entering high school.
Ayanokoji hadn't dyed his hair, but he was already used to the people around him having colorful hairstyles and pupils, like a world where a two-dimensional animation had materialized.
When he entered this casino, he didn't pay much attention to the people around him; his attention was focused on Saotome. Now he realized that most of the people in this class were wearing dark green colored contacts.
Ayanokoji scanned the room. It seemed that only the livestock in this class had normal pupils or were wearing other colored contacts, while the group of people gathered around the gambling table all had uniformly dark green pupils.
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka suddenly remembered cheating during the entrance exam using those special glasses.
On the scratch paper provided by the school, the answers to the test paper were printed with a special coating.
Those glasses were not collected after the exam. He kept them at home as a collection and did not bring them to school.
However, in his spare time, he had observed that the lenses had a thin layer of green fluorescent coating.
Could it be...?
Ayanokoji turned and looked at Hanatemari Kazura beside him. She was looking worriedly at Saotome Meari, who was flipping through the back of the poker cards, searching for any marks.
Her pupils were normal black.
"Hanatemari, let me ask you." Ayanokoji suddenly asked: "Do you know about the cheating methods used in this school's entrance exam?"
Hanatemari Kazura shook her head: "I know many people got in through connections, but I'm not very clear about those things."
"How did you get in when you enrolled?"
"When I first enrolled in junior high, there was no need for an exam. I only needed to pass a family background check; if the family had certain economic conditions, I could enroll."
"How long have you been with these classmates?"
"We've been together for three years, in the same class since first year of junior high."
"How is your relationship with the other people in the class?"
"Before this year's Student Council President established the "Livestock System" and "Tribute System," I got along with most of the people in the class. But later, because we had to pay the Tribute, everyone started gambling, and our relationships gradually drifted apart."
Although Hanatemari Kazura didn't understand why Ayanokoji was asking these questions at this moment, she still answered him earnestly.
"Last question, do you know when they started wearing colored contacts?"
"About half a year ago, they, for some reason, suddenly all started wearing colored contacts..." Hanatemari blinked.
"Didn't anyone tell you why?"
"No, I was already a livestock at that time."
After answering Ayanokoji's questions, Hanatemari still looked bewildered, completely missing Ayanokoji's underlying meaning.
Ayanokoji sighed softly.
No wonder she's always been a "livestock"; she doesn't even realize when she was isolated...
Ayanokoji now had a clear idea.
Aiura Kokoro, or rather, everyone in this class except the livestock, their cheating method was actually very simple.
The playing cards they used were like the scratch paper Ayanokoji used in the entrance exam; they were coated with an invisible paint that could not be seen with the naked eye.
This paint was used to make marks on the back of the playing cards, to distinguish the size of the cards.
These marks could only be seen through special lenses. They miniaturized the lenses used in the entrance exam, made them the size of contact lenses, and then distributed them to the people they trusted.
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