It would be sad to see the rest of her bloody mary go, but Natsuko’s logic was that it meant Sofiane owed her, which further meant that if she spent half a bloody mary getting tomato juice and horseradish all over some punk ass high-ranked Hero, she could earn a full bloody mary later, which was half as much more by her reckoning.
Just as Xiquan was drawing his first card of the second match, Natsuko “tripped” over a table leg and spilled her drink all over the Hero. His bright green silk sash turned Christmas colors from the tomato, celery ended up on his lap, and a lime slice slapped neatly onto his exposed chest. After a moment of shock, his face went as red as the front of his outfit.
“You idiot! You clumsy, 1st-gen moron!” Xiuquan screamed, hanging his arms out like a clothesline while they dripped.
“Oopsie! Me so dumb. Me not have good enough Finesse stat to not trip,” Natsuko said.
Xiuquan’s eyes flicked to a bewildered Sofiane. “Is this some kind of shitty attempt at psychological warfare? You won’t win anyway, you forgotten nobodies, it just makes you look more pathetic and desperate.”
Natsuko slapped Xiuquan’s wet shoulder and lowered her sunglasses.
“At least I’m not cold and wet, dork,” she said, cackling as she raised her sunglasses and went back to the bar to put a replacement drink on Sofiane’s tab.
Shuixing looked over at Sofiane. He appeared calmer. If Natsuko’s spill had poked even a tiny hole in that aura of superiority, she could call it a win. Anything to get Sofiane out of his own head.
“Go ahead, draw. You’re holding up my drying off,” Xiuquan said. “And oh, one of you judges, go get me a towel.”
“We’ve been asked to have two sets of eyes on this table at all times,” one of the judges explained.
“I don’t care. If you don’t want to wake up at 4am tomorrow, go get me a gods-damned towel!” Xiuquan barked.
One of the judges leapt to. Even with one pair of eyes, cheating was going to be difficult, especially now that Pechorin was off somewhere else.
Sofiane led with his usual energy ramp and Xiuquan with his slow accumulation of things to attach to the inevitable Snob Goblin. As obnoxious as the card was, Shuixing did think the art for the card was kind of cute. It was a little goblin guy with the usual big, warty nose, but he had a monocle and top hat and was sipping tea. He just seemed so sweet.
“Hey look, it’s your old friend,” Xiuquan said, laying it down. “I’ll even be nice enough to give you a piece of advice, despite your pitiful last-ditch efforts: Don’t attack him.”
“That’s cute, Xiu,” Sofiane said. Hardly the kind of barbed wit he usually had, but it was at least token resistance.
As he continued to build up, Sofiane was forced to let Xiuquan hit him over and over with the Snob Goblin, 47 health, 44, 40, 35, 29… The pounding got worse as cards tacked onto the dapper goblin to make it hit for more damage. All the while, Sofiane could only sit there and pull cards. If he didn’t get something that let him wipe the board soon, he was going to have to start throwing his combo pieces down, which would only help him lose slower.
Sofiane looked at the judge out of the corner of his eye and saw the judge looking back. Damn. It wasn’t going to be easy to confer with Shuixing. He’d have to use charades. He snapped his fingers under the table to grab Shuixing’s attention, then tapped the underside of the table, made a wiping motion, then finished by rolling his wrist and opening his palm like he was asking a question.
Shuixing pursed her lips, did a quick mental calculation, and put three fingers on top of one knee and five on top of the other.
“Is the delay deliberate? Very petty of you, Sofi,” Xiuquan said.
“Believe me, I want the horseradish smell out of my nose as quickly as you do,” Sofiane replied, laying down a card draw instead of a monster to defend himself with.
He did his best to keep a poker face as a Mythic Celestial Hurricane card went into his hand. Its effect was that everything on the board except for Elemental Fonts went into each player’s discard pile. He couldn’t use it this turn, so Sofiane passed to Xiuquan.
“Well then, Sofi, let’s not disappoint all these nice people that bet you wouldn’t make it to a game three,” Xiuquan said with a vicious smile.
He dropped three cards down all at once that automatically attached to his Snob Goblin on the same turn.
“That brings it to 10 force with double-attack, you have nothing to defend yourself with, so that brings you to… oh, nine, I believe? Is that math correct, judge?”
The judge nodded. Sofiane flipped the abacus built into his side of the table down to nine to show his current health.
Shuixing could see the outline of teeth chewing the inside of Sofiane’s cheek. The revelation of the betting against him had rattled Sofiane again. She watched Xiuquan patch up the hole in his aura of superiority in real time.
Sofiane started his turn, drawing a card with a trembling hand. Without thinking he moved to lay the Mythic Celestial Hurricane down.
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Shuixing cleared her throat. “Mr. Xiuquan. You are a-a— a dick.”
Everyone at the table stopped to look at her. The insult sounded alien coming from Shui’s tender voice. After a stunned silence, Xiuquan burst out laughing.
“If you only knew half the things little Sofi here has said about forgotten Heroes like you,” Xiuquan said, wiping away tears of laughter. “I might be a little rude. Especially when nobodies keep wasting my precious time and spilling drinks on me, but good luck finding someone at my level who isn’t. But Sofi here? I’m pretty sure he once joked about paying low-ranked Heroes to go into new dungeons and having them kill themselves on the trap for us.”
“Shut your mouth, Xiu,” Sofiane said.
“Or how about that time you said seeing the faces of 1st and 2nd-gen Heroes made you want to vomit? Or how they were all lazy and their brief success at the top of the Use-Ranking was handed to them? Did you conveniently forget to mention all of that to your new posse?” Xiuquan crossed his legs and turned towards Shuixing. “Honestly, compared to the vile stuff that has come out of this guy’s mouth, I’m a saint.”
Shuixing looked over at Sofiane but he refused to look her way.
Cards bent under Sofiane’s curling fist, but his anger had a precision to it. The frustration of being overawed by a superior was replaced by personal, vengeful animosity.
It felt so silly to respond through a stupid card game, but Sofiane could at least take satisfaction in knowing that Xiuquan had probably bet a lot of money on himself. Tapping his cards for energy before wiping the board, he played the Mythic Celestial Hurricane to take the game to a clean slate before throwing down the two cards he needed for his infinite combo and ending the game.
Fury flared in Xiuquan’s eyes as he picked up his cards. “You fucker.”
Sofiane felt no satisfaction at the win. He was still trembling with barely contained embarrassment and anger, and he still couldn’t look Shui in the eyes.
“Sofi…” she said.
“I’m taking my five minute break,” Sofiane said, shooting up from his chair and walking off.
“Where are my fucking towels!?” Xiuquan said.
A minute or so later, Natsuko and Pechorin returned, with the former doubled over in side-splitting laughter and the latter carrying a teetering stack of towels, towelettes, and napkins. Shuixing didn’t even know Pechorin had been watching the spilled drink exchange.
“Shui, look at this friggin’ goober!” Natsuko said, pointing at Pechorin.
“I was not able to confiscate all of them, but I have deprived our enemy of as many resources as I could,” Pechorin said.
Shuixing managed a small chuckle.
“I do hope you enjoy your small satisfaction. I know your depressing lives don’t have many of them,” Xiuquan said, standing up and walking over towards Pechorin. “But I’ll take my towel now, thank you.”
Xiuquan grabbed one of Pechorin’s shoulders and slammed his fist into Pechorin’s stomach. The single punch brought Pechorin within a few hundred HP of death as he coughed blood onto the towels. Xiuquan went back to his seat after wiping himself off.
Shuixing’s medical rod materialized in her hand and cast healing waters with a ring of the bell.
“Are you alright, Pech?” she asked.
“I’m—” Pechorin’s stomach sucked in, his eyes water, and his throat trembled as he tried to keep himself from giving out another un-dark and un-mysterious cough. “—fine.”
Natsuko took off her sunglasses and growled. “If he knew I could chuck his ass into the void right now…”
“Please calm down, Natsu. We don’t want to ruin Sofiane’s hard work by flying off the handle,” Shuixing said.
“I’m not gonna fly off the handle! I’m fucking calm,” she said, sinking into her seat and sipping on another bloody mary.
Shuixing gave Pechorin a look to let him know he was on Natsuko-sitting duty and went to find Sofiane. As she wandered through the labyrinth of card games towards the bright purple splotch on the other end, Xiuquan’s words rang in her ear.
Shuixing wished she was shocked by them, but she wasn’t. It was all variations on stuff she’d heard before. Natsuko had told Daisy that they lived in Vermögenburgh because it was cheap. The truth was, if the two of them wanted to, they could live comfortably in Tianzhou or Shikijima by doing a quick dungeon in the morning.
They lived in Vermögenburgh because they were trying to be forgotten. Otherwise they would have to hear the kinds of things Xiuquan claimed Sofiane said on a regular basis.
It also meant she couldn’t retreat into believing that Xiuquan was lying. There was no doubt in her mind that Sofiane really did suggest paying desperate Heroes to be trap-finding fodder, or that they deserved their fate for being lazy. Telling Natsuko about it was off the table.
She found Sofiane pacing in front of a bamboo screen near the reception desk.
“Hey,” she said.
“What?”
“Are you going to be ready for the next game?” she asked.
His pacing ground to a halt and he stared at her with numb frustration. “Aren’t you going to ask?”
“I don’t need to. I know you said those things,” Shuixing replied.
“And?”
“And what?”
“And— gods, Shui, you can be a sadist when you want to be. Making me come right out and say it, honestly…”
She adjusted her glasses. “Um, I don’t really know what—”
“Do I have your forgiveness or not!?” he said, loud enough to turn a few heads.
“I-I guess? You don’t mean those things now, right?”
Sofiane paused and a moment later, his eyes darkened. “I don’t really know. Not with the same vitriol, but if I said Use-Rankings don’t matter in my estimation of things, I’d be lying to both you and myself. But I…”
His words hung long enough for Shui to get a word in edgewise.
“Um, I don’t really know what to make of it, but Natsuko did say something to me on the day we decided to disband our adventuring party,” Shuixing said. “I-I’ll abridge it, because it was mostly cursing and insulting the Yishang and stuff like that, but she said there was no going back. Once we’re out of the Use-Ranking competition, we’re out for good, and we needed to start thinking about what being on the outside meant and commit to it.”
“Hold on,” Sofiane said, “wasn’t she all gung-ho about the abandoned dungeon we went to because it could help her climb the rankings again?”
Shuixing shrugged with a shuffle of her dress. “People change, and sometimes they say things they don’t mean, and mean things they don’t say, and it’s not because they’re trying to lie, but because they really don’t know what things will be like in the future. It’s why the archetype system is rather silly when you take a step back. A lot of things in the Use-Ranking competition are silly like that.”
Sofiane took a long exhale. From across the room, the two judges waved them back.
“I don’t know, Shui. It feels like I’m caught between two worlds. If I give up what I still have, I’ll feel like an idiot. I admire what you do, dangerous as it is. Hell, I almost even kind of admire Natsuko and her ability to not give a shit. But I’m not there yet. And I’d be lying if I said I wanted to be down there with you.”
The last part hurt Shuixing more than the spiteful things Xiuquan claimed he’d said.
Sofiane started to walk back towards the table. “Let’s go play some cards.”