Lily…
Yawned!
“Yaaaawn…” she said, out loud!
The Host was shocked!
Judge was shocked too, though her face was hidden behind Tricksy’s anti-cheating fox-face spirit-mask!
The three mahjong sharks seethed!
And…
Mr. Cat was concerned!
“Nyabai…” he muttered. “If only we had those energy drinks…”
Lily…
Was only eight years old!
It was way past her bedtime!
She had been staying up late here and there, during her super chores…
But she was still a little girl!
She needed a good night’s sleep!
A late-night semi-secret gambling match was no place for a little eight year old girl and her pet cat!
Even if he was inhabited by the spirit of a super-gambler sent from the Heavens!
But…
The mahjong sharks didn’t realize!
They thought the Countess from France and her pet cat were looking down on them!
Why else would she say ‘yawn’ out loud like that?!
They were agitated!
They were angry!
And…
They lost what little flow they had!
Mahjong isn’t the kind of game you can play angry!
It favors three kinds of people…
A suave, calm, collected cool cat who seizes opportunities daringly!
A desperate man who puts his all into every draw with intense focus!
And…
Young girls wearing sailor-suit costumes!
Coco, the Goddess of Shopping, clapped her hands up in heaven at the sight of Lily winning handily!
“Yay!” she squealed. “Lily looks so cute in that outfit! And with a shrine priestess behind her, it’s simply divine!”
But the Gods of Literature, Death, and Gambling were worried!
“Lily needs to win six or seven games of mahjong in a row! And she needs to do it before she falls asleep at the table!” the God of Literature said.
“Wait, is it six or seven?” Hades, the God of Death, asked.
“Six seven! Kukukukuku…”
Another Goddess laughed ominously…
It was Lady Rikka! The Goddess of Delusions and Middle Teens Syndrome!
Six seven!
It was a secret phrase that drew in the youth like moths to a flame!
“Er, no, Rikka, it’s a math question…”
And the Goddess Rikka…
Stopped laughing!
“Uh, math?” she asked.
A bead of sweat formed on her brow!
“Yeah, do you know the answer?” Hades asked her.
And…
Rikka started panicking a bit!
She wasn’t ready for a math test!
She just heard the funny numbers!
The Goddess of Winds sighed and blew a gentle breeze her way, before Rikka’s flop sweat messed up her makeup!
Thanks, Goddess of Winds!
“Agh!” Rikka suddenly yelled. “The power… in my right arm… It’s overflowing! Agh!”
With terrible acting, she snuck a blessing down to Lily!
If there’s one thing Middle Teens are good at…
It’s staying up late!
Even though Rikka was a bit of a silly Goddess…
She loved Lily, too!
“Ahh, the waves of power are subsiding…” she said. “My math powers have gone, and won’t return for at least a fortnight…”
The other Gods and Goddesses all rolled their eyes!
“Ahem.”
The God of Gambling cleared his throat!
“Lily needs to win seven games of mahjong in a row! On her first hand she won one thousand points, and the points double for each subsequent hand. So on this hand…”
“Meow!”
“Tsumo!”
Lily had just won again, by drawing her winning tile!
“On this hand, she wins two thousand points, and now she has a total of three thousand points!”
Rikka and the other Gods and Goddesses nodded along with the God of Gambling’s explanation!
“And so if you calculate the sum… two to the ex minus one…”
Everyone kept nodding!
Like they knew what he was talking about!
“And so you can see that after six victories in a row, she’ll have sixty-three thousand VIP points! She’ll need to win one more hand after that, and then she’ll have one hundred and twenty-seven thousand VIP points!”
Back down in the mortal realm…
In a dingy underground gambling den…
The Host…
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Was really not worried!
Even though this Countess from France was winning every game…
“Meow!”
“Ron! One han fifty fu, fifteen hundred points… yawn…”
She was winning with really small hands!
The Host was worried about just one thing.
Money!
Losing a few hundred dollars here and there, even a few tens of thousands of dollars…
That was nothing!
His gambling den raked in over a hundred thousand dollars a night!
Just like the Crown Prince had ordered!
VIP points were the draw, but they were largely worthless!
They were just the bait on the hook!
And he was playing the averages!
Even if every now and then, a fish got away with the bait…
As long as most people lost it all, and sank into debt…
He was doing just fine!
Judge was less calm!
She could feel divine pressure upon herself!
Tricksy’s mask on her face didn’t weigh anything…
But it blocked her cheating signals to the mahjong sharks!
And she was worried…
Was this Tricksy’s Trial, or would there be a worse trial, later…?
“Nyeheheheh…”
Kanako could hear Tricksy’s giggle!
It sent a shiver down her spine!
“Meow!”
“Kan! Tsumo! Uh…”
Judge leaned forward to check the score of the sixth round they had played so far…
Once again, the little Countess and her pet cat had won!
So far it had only been with very small hands, but this time…
“Oh dear…” she said. “Rinshan Kaihou, the flower blooming on the mountain… and the ura dora…”
“Bonus han, meow,” the silver cat with a pulsing aura said!
“Gulp… four ura dora…”
Rinshan kaihou was a winning move worth one han!
Lily had gotten four of a kind of the red dragon tiles!
The red dragon tiles were already worth one han!
And each ura dora was worth one han!
Six han total: a haneman hand!
And Lily was the dealer, so the hand was worth 18,000 points!
“H-haneman, six thousand all,” Judge declared!
Suddenly, the mahjong sharks and Host got super worried!
They had already lost a few points here and there before now…
And it had added up!
Lily was in the east seat, and the shark in the south seat had 15,000 points, the west seat shark had 14,500 pionts, and the north seat shark had 13,000 points left after this latest win!
Lily had a total of 57,500 points! She had more than doubled her initial score!
But…
“Yawn…”
Each game took a few minutes!
And Lily was really sleepy!
Like, really sleepy!
“Mr. Cat… How much longer…” she asked.
Mr. Cat…
Frowned!
He frowned at the machine shuffling the tiles!
So did all the other players!
This was the most dangerous moment!
If Lily fell asleep, she’d forfeit the entire game!
She’d lose all the money she had bet, and would be thirty-seven thousand VIP points shy of what she needed to enter the Prince’s Palace Casino!
And Mr. Cat, inhabited by the super-spirit of gambling…
Knew!
He knew!
He could see the Host starting to get nervous!
There was a lot of money on the line now!
The Host had been fine to lose a little bit of money here and there…
But if Lily was going to win big like this…
He might ban her from the Underground Gambling Den!
And that’s exactly what the Host was thinking!
Tsk… I thought she could only get those cheap, fast hands. But if she’s going to win big…
The sharks wiggled their eyebrows at each other.
Slow down!
Drag it out!
Wait for her to fall asleep, take all her money, and then we win!
They didn’t care about VIP points.
They only cared about winning!
With a whirring noise, the old mahjong table put the tiles up.
Everyone started drawing their initial hands…
And there was something strange about the tiles Lily was drawing!
A gentle breeze caressed Lily’s face, and filled the gambling hall!
Everyone held their breath!
The wind blew!
It rushed down the steps from the outside, and swirled around the room!
There was the faint chime of ringing bells!
“This… this wind…” Kanako, the Judge, gasped.
A divine wind!
Lily assembled her hand, and yawned!
She was super sleepy!
“Meow! Lily, hang in there! Draw your first tile!” Mr. Cat said.
Lily was the dealer, and she got to go first!
“Okay…” she muttered.
She reached across the table, and drew the tile…
And it slipped from her hand!
It was…
An east wind tile!
A big gust of wind blew, and swirled around her!
Her entire hand tipped over!
“Meow!” Mr. Cat cried!
“Tsumo… yawn…” Lily said it out of habit!
The mahjong sharks were stunned speechless.
Judge felt sweat drip down her forehead, and Tricksy’s mask disappeared.
She was as pale as a ghost.
“Th-that…”
Host bit his lip.
And…
He let his shoulders slump.
It was over.
Tonight was going to be a loss for his casino.
He had been lulled into complacency by the earlier small wins!
And now the game was over.
“Th-this is… I’ve never seen this before…”
Kanako gulped.
This was too much.
“Tenhou… Daisuushi… Yakuman, sixteen thousand all…”
“Huh?” Lily rubbed her eyes.
“Oh, sorry. Winning on the first draw is a ‘Heavenly Hand,’ and you have triplets of all four winds, and a pair of the white dragon tiles, which is the big four winds hand… That’s a double yakuman, even though we cap the hands here at one yakuman…”
Big four winds!
A triplet of the East, South, West, and North wind tiles, and two dragon tiles to boot!
Up in Heaven, the Goddess of Winds smirked!
The God of Gambling tipped his hat to her!
Rikka, the Goddess of Delusions, applauded and said “Oooh!”
It was a blowout victory!
Back down in the mortal realm, Kanako looked at Host nervously. Was she in trouble…?
But Host shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.
There was nothing they could do!
The heavens had clearly sided with Lily!
The game was over, and it was Lily’s complete victory!
She won all the money, and got all the points she needed!
She had started with fifteen thousand dollars, and had won thirty thousand dollars. Ten from each of the mahjong sharks! Now she had forty-five thousand dollars, and one hundred and twenty-seven thousand VIP points!
She was a high roller eligible to enter the Prince’s Palace Casino!
But…
Lily was falling asleep!
Lily’s Mama scooped her up!
“Meow,” Mr. Cat said, and he tapped his forepaw on Lily’s Lucky Gambler Card on the table. “Don’t forget to update her VIP points, meow!”
“R-right away!” Kanako did so, and also placed four stacks of ten thousand dollars in front of the silver-haired cat. Lily’s Mama put the money in her purse.
It was more money than she’d ever even seen in her entire life.
But she didn’t care about it right now.
Right now, her daughter was conked out!
“Mayor George, do you know where we can stay for the night? Preferably not in the swamp?”
“Hmm, yes, I know a tavern…”
That was the last thing Lily heard before she succumbed to sleep.
In her dreams, peacocks and dragons danced around a field in the breeze…
