When the Magician’s turn came, he also turned over two different cards.
The turn passed back to Chi Wei.
Silver-Masked Woman suddenly got up from the sofa and walked over to watch beside the table.
She kept her thoughts to herself, and Chi Wei didn’t let her distract her. She reached out and continued inward from the cards she’d turned over along the edge.
The king of diamonds.
The five of spades.
Their luck hadn’t been great. Six cards had been revealed so far, and neither of them had found a matching pair.
Chi Wei glanced over the cards and smiled. “Looks like my luck’s not great. Your turn.”
The Magician turned over a card that hadn’t been seen before.
The five of spades.
“Then I guess my luck’s pretty good.”
He smiled and turned over the other five of spades—the one Chi Wei had revealed the previous round—making a matching pair.
So far, everything looked perfectly normal. They were still at the beginning of the game, when the cards were easy to remember. The Magician had gotten lucky and found a card that matched one he’d seen before. Nothing strange about that.
But compared to him, Chi Wei’s luck was dismal.
She kept turning over mismatched cards. The Magician memorized their positions, then seemed to have luck on his side every time, finding cards that matched ones he’d already seen. He could then turn up the other card in the pair and clear it from the table with ease.
The Magician gathered the four pairs he’d just found and held them in his hand. “I’ll take these, then.”
He already had seven pairs—fourteen cards—in his hand. Not a bad haul.
Chi Wei, meanwhile, had only one pair.
She was clearly losing.
But Chi Wei didn’t mind. “Mm. The game’s not over yet.”
She’d memorized every card they’d turned over. The fewer unknown cards remained, the easier the game would get.
Naturally, the pace would pick up as they went along.
Before long, Chi Wei was finding the matching card whenever she flipped over one she’d seen before. But after claiming more than a dozen pairs in a row, her luck ran out. She turned over two unfamiliar cards, ending her turn.
The Magician played calmly and quickly. His luck was far better than Chi Wei’s, and he kept finding cards he’d already seen.
He’d memorized all the cards they’d turned over, too. Matching them up was no challenge.
“Queen of hearts.”
“Six of spades. Here.”
“Ten of clubs. Nice. What about this one? Seven of clubs…”
Their luck couldn’t have been more different. The Magician kept adding matched pairs to the cards in his hand.
With their luck so wildly out of balance, the Magician found 27 pairs first.
He’d already won more than half the pairs. There was no point in turning over the rest.
Chi Wei had no choice but to concede.
“Don’t be discouraged. Playing cards is a magician’s weapon, after all,” the Magician said with a smile.
“All right. I’ve been taken down by your weapon.” Chi Wei nodded, then added, “But can we play again?”
“Of course,” the Magician said pleasantly.
“You might still lose next time. A magician won’t lose at cards to an amateur.”
“I just had worse luck than you this time. I’ll win next round.”
The Magician shook his head. “A magician’s luck is in the cards. If you don’t believe me, let’s play again.”
No matter how many times they played, Chi Wei couldn’t beat him.
The Magician was sure of it.
For the second game, they played rock-paper-scissors to decide who went first. Chi Wei’s paper lost to the Magician’s scissors.
Mm. Her luck really was bad.
But that didn’t mean she’d lose this game.
The Magician started by turning over two cards from the edge of the spread. They didn’t match, so the turn passed to Chi Wei again.
In fact, before he turned them over, the Magician already knew they were different.
He knew their suits and ranks, too.
But he still chose to reveal two different cards. Cheating was an art in itself, after all.
He couldn’t very well turn over 27 pairs in a row from his very first turn.
Even if he could.
That would be practically shouting to Chi Wei that he was cheating.
The Magician would never be so careless.
And Chi Wei’s supposedly awful luck had nothing to do with luck at all.
The face of every card could be identified by its back.
The backs of the cards were covered in intricate patterns. At a glance, they all looked the same, but they weren’t. Each card’s pattern had some tiny variation. Sometimes the difference was in the number of petals, sometimes in the angle of a vine or a branch. Sometimes it was no more than a single line.
Even if you looked closely, the differences were hard to spot. And in a game like this, players were focused on remembering the suits and ranks. They’d never think to search the backs for such minute details.
But the Magician had supplied the two decks himself.
He’d spent months committing to memory which patterns corresponded to which ranks and suits.
He’d trained his eye and his memory until they were practically perfect.
And that wasn’t the only reason the Magician was so confident.
The backs of all 104 cards had different patterns. Even identical cards—the same suit and rank—were marked by two different variations.
So only someone who had spent a long time handling these decks could see through the backs as if they were transparent.
Even if another player noticed something odd, they couldn’t match cards by looking for two identical patterns. There weren’t any.
That was why the Magician couldn’t lose at Duplicate Duet.
This game was his territory—a game he’d mastered through misdirection and sleight of hand.
He smiled faintly and gestured for Chi Wei to go ahead.
Chi Wei rested one hand on the billiards table and looked over the cards. “Thanks for giving me the first turn. I’ll take you up on it.”
She began flipping cards under the Magician’s watchful eye.
The ace of hearts.
“Mm.” Chi Wei seemed to consider it, then reached toward the other side of the spread.
This time, unlike in the previous game, she didn’t work her way along the edge, relying on her memory. Her choices seemed random.
But—
The second card she turned over, far across the table, was also the ace of hearts.
Chi Wei smiled.
She kept going.
Next, the ace of spades.
Then its match.
Next, the ace of clubs.
Then its match.
…
By the time she found both aces of diamonds, she was holding four pairs. She glanced at the Magician and asked, “Can I keep going?”
The Magician was taken aback. “Of course.” The rules allowed a player to take another turn after finding a pair.
He understood. It looked like Chi Wei had figured out what was special about the cards and had already memorized some of them.
That was impressive.
In the previous game, he’d noticed that Chi Wei kept track of the rank and suit of every card they turned over.
To have noticed the variations on the backs, too, and remembered some of them under those circumstances… He hadn’t faced many opponents like her.
He gave Chi Wei an appreciative look.
But this was where it would end.
Chi Wei turned over the queen of spades.
A random card, with no obvious pattern.
Her streak was about to end.
Remembering eight cards in a single game was impressive enough.
Since Chi Wei had figured out how the cards worked, the Magician decided not to hold back when his turn came. He’d end the game and knock her out.
The Magician was about to make his move when Chi Wei turned over the next card.
Another queen of spades.
The Magician froze, his hand suspended in midair, suddenly unsure where to put it.
After a moment, he opened his palm and nodded. “Go ahead.”
Had she memorized the queen of spades, too? Or had she simply gotten lucky this time?
As Chi Wei turned over the next card with a smile, Silver-Masked Woman spoke up.
“Nine of diamonds.”
As the words left her mouth, Chi Wei turned over the card in her fingers.
It was the nine of diamonds.
The Magician stared. Before he could react, Chi Wei had already found the second nine of diamonds and made another pair.
Her turn continued.
The Magician’s expression grew more serious. He couldn’t help wondering: How many cards had she memorized?
As Chi Wei’s fingers turned over the cards, Silver-Masked Woman called out their suits and ranks at the same time.
“Nine of diamonds.”
“Four of clubs.”
“Queen of hearts.”
…
Silver-Masked Woman and Chi Wei seemed to see straight through the cards. One called out each card’s suit and rank; the other always found its match!
The pressure on the Magician grew. More than that, he was stunned.
He silently counted.
The sixteenth pair. The seventeenth. The eighteenth…
The twenty-seventh!
Chi Wei flipped through the cards so quickly that she’d won before he knew it.
The Magician braced both hands against the edge of the table. For some reason, his breathing had grown heavy.
He’d been the one under pressure.
“Can you turn over all the rest, too?” he asked, eyes fixed on Chi Wei.
Just how terrifying was this woman?
And Silver-Masked Woman, too.
Had they both seen through his tricks in the previous game?
Not only that, but they’d memorized every variation on the cards after playing just one round!
In this “Lucky Game,” this was the sort of opponent he’d been up against.
A wave of pressure washed over the Magician. When Chi Wei smiled and said, “Of course,” he felt like a fish stranded on the shore, gasping for air.
When someone faced an opponent far stronger than anything they’d expected, shock and fear were only natural.
And as those instincts took hold, the Magician watched Chi Wei turn over every remaining card, pair by pair.
He was certain now: Chi Wei had memorized them all.
His expression slowly shifted to one of admiration. He held out a hand to Chi Wei and Silver-Masked Woman.
“Can we be friends?”
