Chapter Text
Asami usually let her body do all of the work, and kept her mind well out of the equation, tucking it near the back of her psyche until the sex was over. But here, with the blue eyes staring at her, tracing every micro-movement Asami released, she wanted to be wholly present. More than ever.
It was a lie to say the evening up until this point hadn’t been anything short of extraordinary.
The money around the casino flowed about as well as it always did, a few groups scattered between the craps and roulette tables spending money like it was out of fashion. They were throwing down heaping loads of chips monogrammed with the Sato family crest on one side and their value in yuans on the other. Sometimes Asami could see the flash of hundreds of yuans hitting a craps table, or thousands splitting the difference between twenty and twenty-one on a hand of blackjack. Every now and then someone would hit just the right high roll and spread liquor all over the marbling and green felt of each games location, drunk and suddenly high from the hit of a huge win. Asami liked to watch. The noise was always the thing to draw her into the action – between five hold ‘em and the glimmering banks of slot machines around the walls, she was always pressed for choice and never far away from having her eyes enamoured by the artillery of lights. The mixture of the hot red and sparkling sources from every angle was enough to intoxicate her, even if she didn’t play. To that effect, she rarely played. But Asami Sato loved to watch.
Around her, scattered in the surrounding blackness and decorated walls, the deep orange-red lights typically bathed the games. Future Industries was more than a casino and hotel, but Asami rarely cared about the other arenas of the building Father owned. Near always, especially on a holiday (even the lesser ones), she found herself here. She’d be first taking in those lights and then the reflections from the faux silver and gold that laced the tables before finally picking a game herself to play.
Her own odds usually favoured roulette, and she was luckier than most when making a bet. Asami always called for Seventeen Black.
Ghazan remained close to her side; alert and ready to bull rush anyone whose intentions he didn’t know. Father had demanded that she be guarded. It wasn’t so much a request with Father, but an order and not one Asami could resist. She would be flanked by Ghazan on the casino floor, P’Li when in her apartment suite, Ming Hua when abroad, and Zaheer was her driver. The four had only come into Father’s employ when he had bought the Red Lotus Hotel and Casino a few streets away; one of his more lascivious acquisitions, and Asami Sato knew that her father enjoyed his acquisitions more with each one. She even knew her codename when passing between each of the four, or moving from one room to the next.
They all called her ‘Ruby’ on account of how much red she loved to wear. The same was true tonight – Asami graced the casino floor in a gorgeous red gown of the richest blood red. It hugged her figure better than Father could, from bust to ankle, with an opened back that showed off her shoulder blades and vertebrae as if they were a dragon’s hoard.
“Stay close, Miss Sato, we’re looking at increased activity tonight, a lot of tourists from the Fire Nation,” Ghazan grunted. His voice was as earthy as old stone and just as gravelly. “Ruby moving into the pit floor,” he called into either P’Li, Zaheer, or the security room. Asami knew where it’s door was, right by the slender waterfall obscuring the placid light from the lobby.
Nothing snuck into the casino, except money.
While Ghazan was one of her more talkative bodyguards, Asami could never come to truly like him on account of how gruff and plain he was. Still, he was accommodating and never refused her when she made a request. Zaheer and the rest were not unkind but took their jobs more seriously than Asami had ever liked. They would overrule what she wanted, or make things needlessly complicated when they were simple. Their sense of security was her sense of strangulation. She longed for the days of old, before her mother had died when she was allowed out alone and unsupervised. Republic City had been her oyster then, in her youth, but she’d not been out without a bodyguard since – taxing wasn’t close to how she felt about. But Asami wouldn’t bring it up to Father, she knew that was beyond pointless.
“It’s fine, Ghazan. They’re all too busy spending money,” Asami countered a little casually, still passing through the main glut of the casino floor. His beefy presence kept close to her, not ever touching her, but close enough to pick her up in an instant if he needed to.
Multiple times, Father had mentioned how Ghazan could hold lava in his hands. Surely a story, but Asami wouldn’t have put it passed Ghazan’s capabilities. He was a monster of a brawler in the couple of times she’d seen him actually fight. No man could touch him, let alone lava.
She moved ahead of her guard, Ghazan towered over her and most of the crowd, a full head and then some beyond even Asami’s taller-than-average stature. Beyond a craps table she jerked a little in her skin at a sudden slam dunk win at one of the poker spots. A man clad in a rather sleek crimson suit with a fiery bow tie slammed his cards down hard, spilling someone’s drink over and leaping up from his stool. One of his friends had joined him, both pounding their chests together as their fellow players loomed over and hunched in melancholy. By the sheer size of the stacked chips the dealer was handing to the fiery man, Asami guessed that his winnings were somewhere in the thousands. She could only think of how it was all fun and games to the wider casino – Father had made sure to instil within her the working knowledge of how his establishment operated. The House always wins, Asami thought. She knew that even if that winner took his chips and made for the exchange desk, Father would be raking hundreds of thousands more than he could ever lose given the odds of the games. Poker was one where skill came into it, but surrounding the fiery man with his chips overflowing from his fists there were roulette tables, craps shootouts, and a near infinite number of one-armed bandits holding their money tighter than a turtle-duck’s behind. Money never left the casino, regardless of how much its patrons would be taking home, Asami knew that, and smiled at the winner with liquor over his shirt.
“Looking for a game, Miss Sato?” A voice called out from behind another bank of slot machines, a small presence wrapped up in copious amounts of green velvet and the finest silken scarf. “I hear there’s plenty of money lost on roulette tonight, waiting for the right bet.” He knew her favourite game.
Asami turned as Ghazan caught up with her, the skirt of her wine-red dress flowing across the ornate carpet underfoot. Her eyes met her new companion as he rounded the slot machines. The smallest diamond was positioned perfectly in the bosom of the pine-green silk scarf stuffed into the folded breast of his waist coat. It reflected what had become of his family’s fortune, and here the poor boy was possibly about to make beggars of the lot of them.
“Wu... Always a pleasure,” she stomached as he approached her.
Ghazan knew the boy. He stood aside and allowed the smaller ‘Prince’ into the profile of security he’d created. Asami always wished he didn’t, having to bend down more than a little as Wu came to kiss her cheeks. Mako, his own bodyguard was in attendance, that stoic sense of aloofness somehow more alert than all four of the Red Lotus squad combined. Asami had rarely engaged with Wu enough to have more than a short conversation with Mako, but she knew of his brother, the movie star. Bolin frequented the casino following a premiere; so many of his movies held their red carpet events in the Fire Nation Theatre only a few blocks away.
“You’re looking absolutely ravishing as usual, Asami. Glad you decided to come down and enjoy the holiday with the rest of us lunatics,” Wu flattered, his short stature and boyish face something she could never seem to escape at times like these.
“And you’re looking... much the same as usual, Wu,” Asami forced, trying to find something to compliment him. There was not much – he wore the same arrangement of green velvets and silks at Father’s birthday only a month ago... then at Bolin’s latest premiere weeks before that... and even at Asami’s own twenty-sixth the year before. The only difference this time was the size of his rings, which had become substantially smaller since the light time he had held her hand. “Any winnings your way tonight?”
He was buffing the faux-gold against his lime-green smoking jacket, Mako with his fingers in his ear at the ear piece. “I’ve been a little lucky so far,” Wu declared. Asami looked about herself, trying to spot anyone else she knew to come and save her – Opal and Kuvira would be her saviours, they always were, if she could somehow spot them. “Mako dropped a couple hundred yuans on a hot blackjack hand that I was playing, and we each came away with some winnings.”
“Which ‘Prince’ here then threw away on a pretty bad losing streak around the craps tables,” Mako rebuked, slipping into the conversation as if just to remind Wu how much of his bodyguard’s money he had apparently lost. “You didn’t even know how to play the game!” the bodyguard near screamed into Wu’s ear
The ‘Prince’ waved him off. “Don’t listen to him,” he swatted Mako away flippantly and desperately, looking as if the gemstones would fall off of his body if Mako remained. “Tell me, have you seen Opal yet tonight? I had some business I needed to discuss with her aunt but I can’t find her anywhere...”
It came only as half a relief to Asami, still looking for the Beifong Heiress herself. Finding Lin would be a similar uplift as finding her niece, but it was Kuvira that Asami was now begging for, anything to get Wu away from her before he made another advance or asked about her father. The boy had a tumultuous losing streak in business as well as gambling now that his own aunt had hit the sickbed and refused to see anyone. Asami knew that Wu had made terrible dealings with the Cabbage Corporation, much against her own and Opal’s advice. Cabbage were not a safe security or a viable stock (and even those seemed to lose Prince plenty of money), and they had a reputation for actually collecting their collateral. Wu was running from foxhole to foxhole merely to stay afloat. Some part of Asami felt sorry for the boy, much younger than she was and in command of his auntie’s entire estate as she lay dying. Yet she couldn’t help him, she wasn’t in any position to; her own fortune was entangled so much with Father, and he was les frugal than a government.
“I’m sorry Wu; I’ve gotta leave you to your search. I’m meant to be meeting a friend around the poker tables in a few minutes. I don’t want to leave them waiting...”
Spirits knew why she had said it, or even where it had come from. Asami could sense even Ghazan giving her a look from the side as he kept his watchful eyes on the crowd still swelling into the casino. The tourist presence seemed to be reaching a critical mass, and he wouldn’t have been happy to let Asami wander the floor forever. She had come down from her apartment suite to play some games, waste the night away with free drinks and eventually run into Opal and her partner. None of those objectives had even begun yet.
“Poker, huh?” Wu smiled, a little dumber than even Asami expected – he knew all of her friends, guilty of association even if neither of them knew for how much longer. “Shrewd, Asami, very shrewd. I didn’t think poker was your game right now. On a hot streak?”
A red blush overtook her cheeks, the lie needing stretching in order to get away.
“You could say that... I got lucky one time and I guess I really like it now. You know, all that power over your opponents, trying to get them into the pot before you bluff them totally out of it,” she continued, speaking as if her tongue had robbed a bank and was trying to sprint out of the doors before the alarm sounded. None of it was true; Asami was a terrible hand and an even worse liar. She had tried to once play against Opal and her family, and couldn’t win a single pot. Even Opal herself had obliterated her. Still, Asami’s lips spoke for her, unclear of what she was really even saying. “I’ve been waiting for a full house like this for weeks just to get in a good night, you know?”
Wu’s eyes lit up like spotlights, creating a black hole of regret deep in the pit of Asami’s stomach. “Have I got the table for you!” Wu gleefully, reaching for her arm. “I left right before it got filled up, plenty of yuans, I promise!”
Ghazan caught him in his eyes but relented from shunting the tiny heir and let him grip Asami’s wrist. She’d desperately wished he hadn’t, before Wu was pulling at her like some child needing her to see something. Just like that they were on the move, Wu dragging her toward the exclusive tables near the far back of the casino floor. The lighting was lower there and they were sequestered from the rest of the pit by glass doors and shutters, keeping the players in and separate. It was where the pros took almost millions if the night was right. Judging by the looks of their robes and flash suits, it just may be the right kind of evening. Wu almost pushed her to the doors, squeezing her in just as the last centre card was being called.
Instantly, Asami noticed one of the players – Shady Shin. He was clad in a river-blue jacket and gambler’s waistcoat made of shimmering silk and matted with velvet aside from cotton. He wasn’t one of money, but everyone knew where his funds came from and how he managed to find himself in a room like this. As Wu pushed and pushed at her well-dressed and opened back, Asami could see more of them, the same kind of people as Shady Shin. Mushi was with him, not playing but in the gallery-like wings around the table. His lips were plump and soaked with the red of some kind of vintage, his sharp collar a muted and light green. There was Two-Toed Ping as well, sitting next to Shady Shin, his shirt black as coal and the scar across his left eye illuminated by the intense lights above them. Asami spotted Zhen sitting below where she had ended up standing, his bald head catching the same light as Ping’s scar and stroking his beard. He was the only player she noticed who didn’t look up from his cards as Wu forced Asami into the den. And then, a ways from where Zhen was seated, Asami spotted more profound men with cards in their hands. Viper was smiling as she stumbled through the last precipice of the door, his hat low and the only member of the player base to be as disrespectful as to keep it on. The golden chain threaded through a yuan coin pendent and the collar of his jacket reached almost up to his ears. But Viper wasn’t even the worst of the gamblers.
Sat inches away from him, near the back of the left wing of room sat his boss.
“Miss Sato... What a beautiful pleasure. We had no idea that Hiroshi’s daughter would be joining us tonight...”
Lightning Bolt Zolt was a slightly elderly man, beyond middle-aged but not as old as Zhen under Asami. The grey and white mixture that made up his soft matte of hair was not unlike Father’s, with defined lines to separate the two tones. His face was wide and his cheeks sagged ever so slightly to fully give the impression of his age. But his body was not the same. Asami knew him to be stronger than even Mako and perhaps Ghazan (who was now stationed on the other side of the glass, his eyes fixed on Zolt as much as Asami’s were). He was dressed in a pristine wine robe-shirt, with a straight collar fixed by two golden clasps with dragon ornaments. Underneath was a double-breasted and layered waistcoat made from what looked like carpet over satin – Asami knew it to be Earth Kingdom cotton, the finest finery one could find outside of the Fire Nation. It was sublime mustard yellow, with yet more dragons wrapping and weaving around to breathe fire at each other on either side of the coat. The buttons were unlike any golden mimicry that Asami had seen, and she could tell that they were real too. A thin and wine-purple scarf framed his whole look, of the same quality as the rest of him.
She could smell the scent of money and cologne intrinsically tied to him, as if Lightning Bolt Zolt had bathed in paper and aftershave.
His fingers, thick and withered from both age and what must have been countless beatings, were practically golden themselves. On each hand were ornate rings. His left index, ring finger and pinky were caressed in rings the size of nuggets, each crested with either a special signet or a ruby. Zolt’s right had the middle and thumb wrapped in more gold, another dragon wrapping around the latter, which he was already twisting maliciously.
On his hands alone was more money than Wu would ever be worth.
Asami could assume that Zolt’s namesake came from his eyebrows, both of which split his forehead like the sky during a thunderstorm. The more he leered at her, the more cemented her assumption became, the gilded daimyo of the Triple Threat Triads coming closer to her. At the same time as she felt fear swelling into a rancid knot at the pit of her stomach, she wanted to reach behind her and throttle Wu to within an inch of his life. What was he thinking? Asami could continue to assume, and assume that he wasn’t.
Zolt reached for her hands with his own, an elderly and respectful yet menacing greeting she reciprocated by letting his touch hers. As her hands felt his grip, she could feel the shocks of leathery skin rub against her own, folds of flesh coarse to the touch where much older calluses had ruined his body’s complexion. It was as if thunder had wreaked havoc on his limbs, shocking his fingers more than once. Asami could understand why Ghazan remained outside. While Zolt wouldn’t think about touching her anywhere, let alone her father’s own casino, his presence was still terrifying.
“You look more beautiful than your mother, Asami,” Lightning Bolt Zolt told her, unafraid and insensitive enough to mention her.
“A thousand thanks, sir. Coming from you, that’s a high honour to be sure,” Asami responded, knowing better than to skip out on her manners when facing down the glare of a mob boss. Wu cowered behind her gown, trying to cover his smaller frame. “I did not mean to interrupt your game.”
Zolt released a small yet hearty chuckle, her hands still kept warmly within his own, wrinkles between her fingers. “Nonsense. The boys don’t mind you joining in, do you boys?” Zolt leered, looking around the table that was filled mostly by his own gang members. Asami had spotted them all and identified them clearly in her own mind. She looked from Shady Shin to Mushi, and then to Two-Toed Ping and the younger man seated next to him. Asami realised she hadn’t bothered to look at the younger man before. His hair was lucid, with ripples atop like it was one set of waves dyed a watery black and as slick as anything. It came into a rippled tail, a tuft like a dog’s ear at the front. Combined with the lewd expression of hungry eyes and a near drooling mouth, Asami instantly decided she didn’t like whoever he was. “We would be honoured to receive the daughter of Hiroshi Sato,” Zolt added.
All of the men around the table, even the younger man she’d noticed now blundered an approving negative. Each was ready to give up his seat except the leering boy, his expression still lewd as if he was making love to the more naked portions of her body in his mind. It was karmic when Zolt’s gorilla-like finger pointed to him casually. “Tahno,” he called.
“Uncle?” Tahno responded, as if he’d been caught doing something he ought not to.
“Give up your seat so Miss Sato can run a few hands,” Zolt ordered him, his voice hard with gravity. “Hopefully in that chair she’ll have the same luck as you’ve been hording.”
“Uncle, I...”
“It’s alright, I don’t mind watching the games. Or, actually I think it’s best if I find another table. I don’t wanna intrude on you gentlemen,” Asami excused, wanting anything more than to sit at the table, let alone in Tahno’s place when his face looked at her like that. “I really didn’t mean to intrude.”
Lightning Bolt Zolt’s hardy and honourable expression returned to her in a flash. “Not at all, sweet Asami. I’d be dishonoured if your father found out you were excluded from sitting with us. Tahno will give up his seat for you,” he offered again, the steel in his voice telling Tahno to stand or risk dishonour.
“Uncle...” Tahno griped again, his voice low and like the trailing slime of a snail’s tracks.
“You’ve had your fun, nephew,” Zolt told him plainly, his hands returning to twist his ring. “Step aside for Miss Sato, boy.” When the younger man once more refused by proxy of a spoilt silence, Zolt turned his whole frame to face his nephew, his broody lips upturned into a displeased frown. “Now,” he demanded.
Tahno must have realised that Shady Shin, Mushi, Two-Toed Ping, even the older Zhan were glaring at him. Viper’s lips were curled into a smile at the boy dressed in black and slick blues. Asami checked the table. The River had been drawn and Tahno had accidentally left his cards naked in a boyish upheaval. Viper was laughing at his bluff. Only the pair remained staked in the game and Tahno’s hand was a pair of average nines. The deal stood at two sevens, a queen, a five and a ten. Asami’s eyes could see the flicker of two more fives hidden in Viper’s clutch, meaning he had a full house. Regardless of another round of bets, Viper had the pot, which looked heavy.
“I don’t even have any chips...” Asami murmured lightly, suddenly realising.
“Viper,” Zolt called.
The man’s hands were hastily scooping up his winnings, reaching for the middle of the table. He pulled back what looked like thousands, his teeth greedily shown and his chin’s beard making him like as deceitful as his namesake. Asami decided that she’d rather not accept anything from Viper, but her shortlist of people she would accept from was a brief one name. Zhan, and he stayed sitting. Zolt called for Viper again, his voice a little more vicious than before.
His second-in-command pulled out a small clutch from his abnormally large pocket once his winnings were pooled in front of him. It was a small case lined with chips. He offered them across the table, handing them to Zhen. The older man stood and bowed before Asami, offering the case of chips ringed with the name of Father’s casino. “A small gift from your father some months ago for good business dealings,” Viper hissed from his seat in a savvy wave of his ringed hand. Asami knew that meant a returned bribe, or display of affection for darker dealings. She felt the knot in her stomach move to her heart. “It’d be an honour to stake his daughter.”
Zolt was already at Viper’s back, his hand on the man’s shoulder and crumpling his jacket up. Asami heard Viper wince before he did it, Zolt’s fingers digging into his shoulder muscle and collarbone. “It is a gift...” he spoke for Viper.
“That’s... very generous, sir. But I can’t accept,” Asami tensed, trying to get out of there. She’d forgotten about Wu behind her, still hiding from Zolt and the rest of the mobsters.
“You would honour me, Miss Sato, by accepting,” Zolt told her, his fingers still deep into the flesh and tendon under Viper’s clothes.
She had to, she knew that. Gingerly and with her own bow she accepted the small clasp of chips from Zhen and allowed the old man to return to his seat. She could see that Zolt had spotted Wu behind her, given how the boss was looking around her waist for where the ‘Prince’ was hiding. Wu’s eyes met his and they glanced at each other. Finally, Asami broke away from her companion and he was naked before the whole gallery of mobsters, the last place he wanted to be.
“Wu,” Zolt greeted, taking his hand back from Viper’s shoulder. He looked almost happy; a quaint facade to smoothen the boy into calming, falsely. “How’s your aunt?” Zolt asked.
It forced Wu to straighten up, standing up fully as Asami moved around the table with her chips. “She’s... alive... still... I think...”
“Maybe you should go check, and leave the men to the games. Or maybe a drink. Miss Sato is thirsty.” She wasn’t, but it didn’t matter. Zolt didn’t want Wu in the room and so Wu was out of it before he could utter a response. Asami couldn’t say she was ready to object, but still disliked how pushy the whole thing had happened.
It was safe to assume that Wu wouldn’t be coming back. Finally, she sat down in Tahno’s chair.
The table felt much, much bigger around her now that she was among the members at its precipice. Zolt himself clapped his hand next onto Shady Shin’s shoulder, and the lackey knew better than to keep his ass in the seat. He immediately gave it graciously to his overboss and snuck for another in the wings. All of his chips were now Zolt’s, and Asami could only assume that every other chip at the table was his as well, save maybe for the ones she had clasped in the case between her palms. Tahno had left his drink – something in it smelled of whiskey, but she couldn’t bring herself to smell anymore. Once he’d realised, the younger man returned to retrieve it, Zolt reminding him of his manners around Asami.
This side of the table, Asami could see plenty more faces now.
Beyond the turn, either side of the dealer (who looked abnormally calm) she spotted Xi, a racketeer from the east side of Republic City, with Flat Feng flanking him. Whatever either of them were doing here was beyond her. The same went for Longyuan, who Asami knew to be one of the President’s appointees to the city, not that far below the Mayor. The Bohai Brothers followed Longyuan, two almost identical twins each of menacing mass and abundant scars who were famous for deeds done in the dark near the docks. After them, Asami saw the rather charming face of Mo Ye, niece of the Lady Butterfly from the Earth Kingdom. She was a wider woman, with cheeks that sagged and oiled black hair that rivalled the shine of the most polished jet. She wore floral greens and some sample reds, her perfume was strong enough to detect, the lavish underlie of peach accompanied with lavender for a sweet blend. Next to her was Zhen, and on his own right Asami could see the so called ‘Baron’ Chengying from Whaletail Island. She had remembered Father saying he had arrived in Republic City for the weekend; evidentially he was here longer. Beyond was Father Dai, one of Zolt’s own family but not father to Tahno. And then...
Asami felt the small stack of gold-coloured chips falling from her fingertips onto the green felt of the table’s surface. Her own eyes fluttered in disbelief, enough to water as she spotted the next gambler at the table, who was directly across from where she was sitting how.
How hadn’t she noticed the woman when she came in? Whoever she was, her profile entranced Asami’s attention as if she was fire personified and the whole building was burning. In her peripherals, Asami could tell that Ghazan was watching her closely, and Zolt even closer. He could see who she was looking at.
Within an instant, Asami made out a plain yet handsome bob of chocolate-brown hair cut just above shoulder length, with a strong neck to prop up the most gorgeous face Asami had ever looked at save for her mother’s. Her vision tracked stronger-than-most shoulders with biceps that could rip a door from one of her father’s cars. A rugged bust didn’t hide away a generous cup size, obfuscated by a high-coloured shirt with a lazily half-done tie. The shirt was the whitest white, making her practically glow before Asami saw a glacial blue waist coat with coal-black buttons. The jacket was only over her shoulders, really giving way to the woman’s strength and the sheer size of her biceps under the starched sharpness of her shirt, which must have been a size too small, otherwise she really was that big. Asami’s eyes turned to dinner plates in an instant, and the woman opposite her more than a simple snack.
Her body was a three-course meal, and Asami wondered what could possibly be desert.
“Miss Sato...”
The voice of Lightning Bolt Zolt returned her to her body and she realised that the golden hundred-yuan chips were scattered before her fingers and she’d not toppled the rest of the case into neat stacks like the rest of them. Her head was a beehive, her chest just as frantic and her mind suddenly very aware that every mobster around the table was looking at her with eyes ranging from smug superiority to contempt. She could feel that same lewd expression from Tahno somewhere behind her, and the exerting pressure mounting from Zolt himself.
“Are you ready to begin?” Zolt asked her, his head poke out just beyond Two-Toed Ping sat between them.
“I... Yes!” Asami stammered, looking across the table at the woman again.
Her skin was so beautifully dark, browner than everyone else at the table which was a telltale sign of the Water Tribes. The small bracelet suddenly noticeable around her right wrist showed the sigil of the South, and Asami breathed. Her eyes shot to the woman’s face, and they were met by the brightest gemstones of icy sapphire.
They were the most beautiful things Asami had ever seen in her life, staring directly back at her the whole while.
“Your bet...” The woman spoke across to her in a quiet and common voice. It was plucky, charming in a roguish way, and not stuffed with the lascivious intent the rest of the mobsters had.
“My what?” Asami asked her in the same quiet way.
“Your bet, Miss Sato,” Two-Toed Ping repeated next to her, leaning into her ear while people began to look again. “Tahno was the big blind next... You’re in his seat.”
“The bet is to you, Miss Sato,” the dealer suddenly declared. “Please pitch the needed five hundred, then the game can begin.”
Mo Ye was sipping her drink, a rather small and thin thing compared to her paw-like hands, which were fatter and larger than Zolt’s. Asami stared down at her chips, half still in the case. She gathered up two of the green-coloured chips, each labelled as two-hundred and fifty yuans and threw them to the middle. Viper had been allowed to claim his own pot and Ping had replaced it with two golden hundred chips as well as a silver fifty. The baton passed to Guangli beside Asami, a thin creature with whiskers and a thin beard like noodles, closer to Zhen’s age than to her own, who stroked and called her five-hundred yuans. He was looking at his cards held firmly against the green felt of the table, bending them almost enough to form a full fold.
It was at that moment that Asami had realised she hadn’t looked at all, and in addition, that she was absolutely terrible at playing poker.