A few seconds earlier. 

The beggar at the entrance of the twelfth deck had been suffering from persistent hiccups for the past few hours. Be it the water or the sugar, no matter what or how much he took, they weren’t stopping. The pain was affecting his senses. And the fact that just after he had gone to get some water, Everna cured some people’s illness didn’t help him either. Currently, pressing his hand against his chest, he cursed his own life and the constant bad luck that surrounded it. As seconds passed, his hiccups worsened. However, when he turned his head and looked at a rider’s face and their eyes briefly met, his hiccups halted flat out, and a frozen expression appeared on his face like a greased lightning. He stayed the same until the clunky footsteps of the hooves faded away.

At the same time inside the hall, Jehez announced, “Since the ticket number 181818 is lost, we will skip this round and move on to the next round!”

“Yeah!” most people showed their support to Jehez’s decision. There was a spirited environment in the hall once again.

“Heehaw,” just then a peculiar and rackety, bitter bray echoed in the hall. Many heads turned and looked around, but most of them couldn’t locate the source of the sound.

In that time, silence endeavored to infest the surroundings. The lighting in the hall slightly dimmed down. The wind sped up, and dust and dried grass fell in people’s eyes and hair. The few cats having fun outside the cat home ran back in, their tails in shivers. The ants forwent their food and slipped back into the cracks in the walls. Even the rats and bandicoots hiding deep in their holes squeaked as if responding to the call of the donkey, or maybe something else entirely. A man sitting on a rum barrel with his upper half of the body curled down was secretly sipping alcohol through a straw. The owner of the barrels noticed what he was doing, and then began to hit him, but the drunkard was too dodgy, so the owner missed during one of the hits and ended up hitting an innocent man, and that turned a two-man fight to a three-man brawl which then escalated, and soon many more joined in the fight. Before the referee could do anything, different sections of the crowd were duking it out for different causes. Despite the weather somehow turning colder, men’s emotions escalated. Serenity deserted people’s souls as their passions were at war. Peace prospered in the hall no longer. Only pandemonium was at play.

“Wow, that spiraled quickly.” Arms folded, Lirzod tried to stand still as he got pushed around, and different people stepped over his feet. “That hurts! Watch where you are going!” he scolded, but nobody listened, let alone cared. “Tch! This is going nowhere.”

Unlike Lirzod, Sariyu, Burton, and a few other people had sensed the rising tensions and long moved away from the feuding masses and now just played witness.

After seeing that Sariyu was getting laughs from seeing his troubles, Lirzod tried to get out of the choking masses, but it wasn’t as easy as he thought. He kept getting pushed here and there, and just when he started to use a bit of force and push others around. He saw a green-haired kid holding an empty plate got his lower lip punctured and was getting shoved around. Lirzod pulled him close and hugged and guarded the kid by lowering his body. “Let me get you out!” As he tried to come out, some random elbows greeted him from many directions, but he took them all without flinching. Though the kid couldn’t see Lirzod’s face, every time a hit landed on Lirzod, he could feel the vibrations, too.

A few seconds later, as Sariyu stood on her toes and tried to spot Lirzod in the crowd, he broke out of it along with a kid. He looked at the kid to see if he was fine, “Are you okay?”

“I’m alright. But you…” the kid looked in Lirzod’s eyes.

“I’m super alright,” Lirzod rubbed his hand on the boy’s hair. “Anyway, what’s that plate for? You didn’t let go of it even when it came in the way.”

The kid’s eyes broadened a bit. “Uh, I’m sorry, but I should go and get more bread. Thanks for your help, Brother.” Saying that he left in a hurry.

“Careful,” Lirzod raised his hand a bit, but the kid left in a jiffy.

The next moment, Sariyu approached him and sarcastically asked, “Is everything okay?”

“O-Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?” Lirzod said in a firm tone and stood straight, but then his hand slowly reached to his back and scratched it. His face, too, subtly warped as he looked at the ongoing fight. These mean bastards, they’ve massaged me like anything.

Sariyu put her hand on her mouth and tried to control herself from laughing.

“Ahem, anyway…” Lirzod’s eyes took in the chaos and maybe also the confusion birthing in the locality. “I want to wrestle with a cat and win, but can I go in to take the test with things like this?”

"Heehaw!" the distinctive sound once again got many people's attention, despite them being engaged in fighting.

“Lost are... you people—not the ticket,” then the sonorous voice that came from the slurring lips of a man reached many ears and especially jerked that of Gonn. On the other hand, all the pleasantness vaporized off Jehez’s face pretty damn quick. “I came here after hearing one gets to throw their meat at the pussies, but dang, how wrong I was. I don’t want to compete with a wretched cat, hic, but now that I came here anyway, I guess I’ll play with you pussies a little.”

“Something doesn’t smell right,” the long-nosed man rubbed his nose and looked around, trying to find the source through sniffing.

When Jehez hastily looked through the gaps in the crowd, while covering his face against the short burst of the wind, he caught glimpses of a man riding a dressed-up donkey. Wearing and a yellow-collared red shirt under a blue coat which had lemony star-shaped buttons, the mischievous-looking man used a fishing rod to suspend a carrot in the air in front of the donkey and guided the donkey by carefully maneuvering the fishing rod so that the carrot always stayed out of the donkey's reach. A baby crow was resting atop his red hat, and three small gilt bells decorated his bull-buckled baldric sword belt that supported an ultra-fine ethereal sword on his back while a fine wine-bottle was hanging by his waist, and a few knives in between. A gold coin served as his right earring, whereas a golden dice served as his left earring. The letters N, A, G, A, R, V were tattooed on the fingers of his left hand. With a face mostly coated in some white powdery substance, lips decorated in crimson, and a subtly showcasing twenty-four fingers in total, he was a man not at all hard to agnize by appearance alone, or so he seemed.

One man among the crowd raised his brows. “Eh? Who the hell are you?”

“Did he just call us pussies? Or, was I just hearing things?”

“Who’s this drunk dude on the donkey anyway?”

"Is that a gown that the donkey's wearing?"

"Who gives a shit about that donkey! Someone must show that dude how deep the oceans are!"

As he blew the red, round fan in one of his hands, he alighted from the donkey and tapped the floor rhythmically with his high-heeled, red-soled black boots. "Woo-hoo! My shoes are dancing without me." With a simple wave of his hand that held the fishing pole, he made the carrot drop in the donkey’s mouth. He tossed the fish pole onto the donkey before beaming at everyone with partially open eyes. “Hic, it’s my pleasure to meet all the jackasses on the twelfth deck,” he bowed deeply with elegance, but his words twitched many veins of the crowd.

"Who are you calling jackasses, you stupid drunk!" many nostrils among the crowd flared.

The man in the red hat tilted his head in different directions and took a look at all those who just spoke before promptly replying, “I’m not drunk, hic!” He was a little over six feet and looked sinewy. Though his exact skin color was hard to tell, the tan on his hands subtly showed he had spent quite some time under the sun.

“No, you're not just drunk—you are wholly drunk!” no one in the crowd was stupid enough to believe his words.

"Care to tell us where you got to drink so much on this deck, buddy?" some others couldn't help but pose that question.

“I’m not drunk,” the mischievous man in the red hat replied again, standing straight, his eyes still half-closed.

“But you look really drunk,” one big-browed man approached him.

“Do I?” he tap-danced and struck the feet of the big-browed man, causing him to back away in surprise and a bit of pain.

“What was that for!” the big-browed man barked in frustration.

“Do I still look drunk?” he asked.

“Yes, you punk,” the big-browed man angrily said.

“That’s too sad then.”

Lirzod, who was standing about fifteen feet away, raised his hand and asked aloud, “How many fingers do you see?”

“Mm?” the man in the red hat glanced in Lirzod’s direction and halted a moment as their gazes met. The wind that had been carelessly blowing about in the hall came to a standstill at once. Silence dressed as peace burgeoned in the hall, at least fleetingly as everyone waited for an answer. The man in the red bent forward to bring his face closer to the donkey. “Tell them I’m not drunk.”

The donkey, however, was busy licking its lips, for it had just completed consuming a carrot.

“Huh?” most people in the crowd got shocked, and some jumped out of their shoes, and some simply sighed and shook their heads, whereas a few had their lips curled one way or the other.

“Heehaw is busy, so she can’t speak,” the man in the red hat said in a slurred fashion, but no one in the crowd was even remotely ready to believe his words, except maybe for one, though.

“Ah, then we can wait till the donkey finishes eating,” Lirzod said.

“Eh?” everyone in the crowd was baffled at Lirzod’s response. “You believed his words? Tell us you’re joking.”

“What’s there to joke about?” Lirzod’s reply messed with their minds. "Animals can be trained."

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“His words made some sense,” Lirzod said, “but your words aren’t even making a shiver of sense. Please elaborate.”

“Forget it.”

“Except for that boy, none of you seem to be having a silver of trust in my words…” the man in the red narrowed his eyes for a moment as his eyes took a once over at the crowd. “All right. Can anyone among all of you jackasses answer a simple question of mine then?” he looked around with eyes that demanded an answer, but because they were half-closed, his stare wasn't that effective.

"Screw you!" the crowd bellowed back at him. "We are not jackasses. You are a jackass! Your mother's a jackass! Your father's a jackass! Your entire family's full of real jackasses!"

The man in the red hat seemingly paid no mind to their words, for he cleared his throat a bit before responding, “Eyes that can’t see, ears that can’t hear, and hearts that can’t hearken… who has all these?” he asked, but only silence replied.

“Hmph, who will answer your stupid question?”

“Just get lost from here already.”

Some men barked at him; however, some other men murmured among themselves, but none were able to come up with an answer, including Jehez.

“Eyes that can’t see… It must be a blind person.”

“Ears that can’t hear… It must be a deaf dude or a deaf dudess.”

“And then hearts what?”

“Who has all those together, huh?”

“Whoever it was, they must be living a pretty lackluster life.”

“Hey, tell us the answer.” Though the masses wanted to ask him that question, their pride came in the way; however, Jehez didn’t want to waste time, so he put the question forward.

“Hic,” the man in the red hat smiled to himself before answering, “Everyone here except Booboo.”

“Booboo? Who’s Booboo?” the men among the crowd looked around at each other's faces.

“Hey, are you Booboo?”

“No, I’m not. I heard you loud and clear, and my eyes can certainly see too—you fool!”

“Booboo... I feel like I’ve heard the name somewhere, or maybe not.”

“I’ve never heard that name before. Who’d have such a lame name?”

As the men in the crowd were in a discussion, the man in the red hat stated in a rising and stretching tone, “I’m Booboo.”

“Eek!” after the truth sunk in during the next couple of seconds, the blood of most people in the crowd boiled quickly. “You dare try to make fools out of us!”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

“I didn’t,” the man in the red hat, Booboo, said. “One doesn’t need to fool a fool. A fool fools one and all, starting with himself.”

“Shut up, you meathead!” some men among the crowd howled back. “It’s a miracle that you were able to climb up to this deck, looking like this!”

“Go back to your room, clown! And don’t show us your face again, or don’t blame us if we disfigure your face. Not that it’s any good now.”

“Kekeke,” some men snickered together.

Booboo smiled a little as if joining their joy, his eyes still partially closed. “It seems that, even with me being as less able as I’m right now, hic, none of you can still see through the hiddenness of my heart, which makes you all nothing more special than my Heehaw who's struggling to fill the shoes of Screamoo, a typical bull I used to ride before. Still, I put my pact before nobodies like you. Those who believe in me shall benefit.”

“Enough with your Heehaw bullshit,” some popped their knuckles and were about to step forward. "You'll now pay the price for that loose tongue of yours. We are gonna pull it all the way out for as long as your chicken brain can take it."

“Then let me wet my tongue so your hands won’t burn,” Booboo took the wine bottle off his waist, opened its lid and tilted his head a bit backward to take a sip, and the little crow that had been resting on the cat all this while now slid along the surface of the hat, forcing the crow to abruptly fly away.

One man, who noticed the wine bottle, squinted his eyes and took a closer look, and upon spotting the word ‘Naive’ labeled on it, he stopped mid-stride. “T-T-That’s Naive Wine!”

“Eh? What?” all the men who were stepping onward stopped straight away.

“Don’t joke. Why would a twerp like him own Naive Wine?” as the crowd observed the bottle with no expectation, their eyes gradually swelled upon seeing the five-letter word printed on the glass bottle. “I-It’s... It’s really Naive Wine!”

The mouths of many men hung open.

“W-Why, why does he have such an expensive wine?”

“He probably stole it from someone. Taking his getup into consideration, I won’t be surprised if my guess hit the nail.”

“How lucky he must truly be to get his hands on such a precious thing! What did his parents do?”

Envy filled many hearts to the extent they throbbed. Several men had long set their eyes on Booboo’s earrings, but now, this wine bottle was not something they could act their way through as if they had never noticed it, especially when it came as a surprise.

When a few drops of wine got wasted on Booboo’s black trousers, many men inwardly cursed his recklessness. Some even wanted to lick the wasted wine off his pants but couldn’t come forward for trivial reasons.

Meanwhile, Gonn was standing silently among the crowd, his brows furrowed to the max. Seeing Gonn’s expression, Jehez hurried off to Booboo. “Hey, mister, you said that you have the ticket, didn’t you?”

Booboo scanned Jehez from top to bottom with his half-closed eyes, “Are you the referee?”

“Yeah, if you have the ticket, then be quick,” Jehez said in haste, “we can’t waste any more time.”

Booboo took out the ticket—a small card with cat painting, deck number 12, and the entry number 181818 on it—from under his belt and handed it to the referee.

After confirming the ticket, Jehez nodded. “Hm, you can choose a cat.”

“Just send in a random cat,” Booboo said, giving a half-smile. “By the way, can I make a bet on myself?”

“No, you can’t bet on yourself,” Jehez was quick to reply, "but you can let someone else do that for you, given you trust them, of course.”

"Of course, of course," Booboo pointed his finger toward the donkey behind him. “Can Heehaw bet for me?”

“You mean the donkey?” Jehez was startled. “No, you can’t. Since it doesn’t have required intelligence or conscience, you can’t use it.”

Upon hearing their conversation, the crowd responded with hoots of laughter.

“My ears weren’t hearing things, or did that dimwit really say he wanted the donkey to bet for him?”

"He sure did."

“A donkey becoming a bettor like us? How insulting!”

"Yeah, this is a joke. I'm sure that stupid ass is just as drunk as its master, if not more, haha."

"Yeah, this drunken fool's taking things too far."

Booboo’s gaze shifted toward the men who had just spoken about him. “Are you lot laughing at me?” His words alerted those men into holding their laughter back; however, Booboo’s next gesture truly confused them, for he gracefully bowed a little,  “It's a pleasure to be laughed at, too.” As he was rising back, he stumbled and fell to his front. Luckily, Jehez caught him before he crashed into the ground.

“Geez, man, you’re a mess,” Jehez made him stand straight. “Are you sure you want to participate in the test like this?”

“Sure? Yeah, sure as death—of this one, hic,” Booboo's thumb pointed toward the donkey as he stepped past Jehez and wobbled on his way toward the Cat Ring. At that time, a green-haired kid approached him to sell hot and risen bread. After taking a loaf, Booboo flicked a silver coin and walked past him. The kid tried to tell him that the cost was only twenty copper coins, but the bald man standing behind the kid snatched the silver coin out of his hand and put his finger on the mouth and grinned as if telling the kid that one got to make use of drunkards' weakness during times like these. After that, the kid could only go silent.

“Did you hear that? ‘Sure as death,’ he says,” some men among the crowd snorted, letting derision detail their expressions. “I bet a silver that he hasn't a clue on how hard this test could get. Before taking part in any deck test, the least an entry could do is devise a plan, however stupid it may seem, but I doubt if this dunce even thought of it.”

“Haha, we should be somewhat thankful to him, though, guys. After all, we can be sure that we have a loser this time around."

"Yeah, it's time for our pockets to finally profit."

"Kekeke." The words of the crowd were icicles of scorn—slung right at their common target. Having lost a lot of money in the last few rounds, it didn't take much for the crowds to gather their disdain and direct it at the contestant through all means that came to their minds.

“Planning before participation? Hic,” Booboo just entered the ring and seemed unbothered by the cold spells the crowd cast at him without cessation. “What’s the big deal? Putting the fear of Booboo into a pussy should be a piece of piss.” Booboo’s voice was as if wine continually bubbled at the back of his throat. It seemed as if he was capable of altering his voice like a mimicry artist.

Jehez’s heartbeat spiked as he gave a secret glance at Gonn, but upon seeing Gonn stand rooted to the ground with subdued ire shaping his expression, the stiffness in Jehez's facial muscles loosened to some degree.

“Wasted on wine, and as drunk as a skunk,” Lirzod opined, one of his eyes closed as he watched Booboo. “It’d be a shocker if he gets through the test somehow.”

“I too highly doubt that he can win,” the long-nosed man, who still stood beside Lirzod, said in a hurry. His nose was longer than any of his fingers, and he could bend it all the way up to his chin without even using his hands. “Anything you can smell before you can see is either exceptionally good, or extremely bad. I don’t have to tell which category that fellow falls into.” He bent his nose all the way to the chin to block off the smell. “Look, many people are already betting against him because it’s too obvious. I wouldn’t be surprised even if some of them are willing to bet a silver or two.”

Sariyu was all ears. What an unsettling appearance. It’s as if arrogance and ignorance got suited and booted into being. She thought of Booboo and then took a glimpse at Burton, who stood like a rock at a distance. She shifted her gaze in the direction of a cat that Lirzod previously sent flying away with a kick. Currently, that cat was chasing after the baby crow, which was hovering in the skies while sticking close to the ceiling. The cat fearlessly jumped on people’s shoulders, heads, and all other surfaces it could make use of as it desperately stretched the duration of its hunt, not wanting to face the failure at the end of it.

The baby crow came flying in Lirzod’s direction and excreted as it hovered past him.

Lirzod heard a faint sound and felt a strange sensation but didn’t bother much about it; however, the long-nosed guy took a step away from Lirzod and shut his nose without delay. “Ew!”

“Mm? What’s wrong?” Lirzod glanced at him, and immediately, his eyes enlarged, and his hands clutched the nose. “I knew it! Who emitted wind down their bottom?" he looked around, and his gaze eventually stopped at Sariyu.

Sariyu gave back a deathly stare. "Do you want to die?"

"I-I never said it was you," Lirzod turned his head back toward the long-nosed man. "Was it you?"

"No," the long-nosed man cried out.

"Then who was it? Who was that foul fellow?" Lirzod’s voice held a sense of urgency.

“It was a bird.”

“B-Bird?” Lirzod knitted his brows. “What the heck are you talking about?”

“Just look at your shoulder—there’s something on it that none would be pleased to see.”

“My shoulder?” the moment Lirzod’s eyes took notice of the nasty stuff on his shoulder, his expression darkened, and a second of recollection was all it took for him to recognize the culprit, and rage overtook his face as he glared directly toward the ceiling. “Which damn bird had the heart to shed its weight on me! If I don’t beat some dread into its guts, then—” However, the moment his eyes lay on the baby crow, all the tightness in his face loosened just as fast as it had formed. “Wait, that chick… Is it the one from the—library?” he couldn’t help but remember the time when he met a baby crow in the unauthorized library on the tenth deck. After reminiscing the past, Lirzod’s gaze sharpened again as he darted his eyes at the baby crow, “I gave you a nut for free, yet this is how you repay that kindness.” He clenched his fists, and a vein popped out in his neck, “Thankless chicks are always on my list.”

“Bwuff,” Sariyu could barely control her laughter.

“What’s so funny?” Lirzod’s took a gander at her, his voice—sharp and stony.

“I could totally imagine why it gifted you the way it did,” Sariyu replied, still covering her mouth with her hand. “I’m sure you must have given a spoiled nut to that bird. No wonder it came looking for you because it held a grudge against you.” Her words ignited animosity in Lirzod's stomach, brought forth a distaste up into his mouth, which further reflected through the flicker of hatred in his eyes.

“Spoiled?” a vein in Lirzod's forehead protruded through the skin as he controlled himself from lashing out his tongue. “Yeah, as per human standards, you can consider it that, but as per crow standards, it still was as toothsome as any nuts a crow could find.”

“Uh, you might be wrong,” the long-nosed man scratched his jaw as he voiced his mind, “crows don’t have teeth, or do they?”

Lirzod slowly turned his head and gave an icy glance toward the long nose of the man, “If you speak again, I might do unspeakable things to your nose out of frustration.”

Lirzod’s voice was a cold blade that threatened to cut through the long-nosed man’s habit of mind, and it made him spontaneously cover the nose with his hands. "Please don't do that. If this nose is gone, then I'm gone," he said, but the very next moment, his eyes bulged. "Sorry, I won't speak again." He shut his mouth with one hand while the other hand took care of the nose.

Lirzod felt a burning desire to at least pinch his nose, but another urge took over its pace, making him shift his attention back to the baby crow which seemed to have almost emptied its energy tank and would land at any moment, but the cat also appeared to be waiting just for that.

Just as the baby crow plummeted down for landing, the cat sprang in the direction of the fall, but Lirzod also dashed straight toward the spot. “Wait, you shitty cat! That bird's mine. The only one who should be bothering that chick is me!”

However, he was a bit too late to react, and the cat successfully caught the crow by its mouth in midair. With a few hops, it separated from the crowd and went off to a secluded spot, startling both Lirzod and the assistant referee who had been trying to catch the cat all this while. But because the test for Booboo was about to start, the assistant referee couldn’t chase the cat any more. Lirzod, on the other hand, went after the cat like a scalded cat.

As he weaved through the throng, he ended up nudging an eight-year-old, green-haired boy, who was holding a plate with loaves of risen bread on it. The plate ended up falling to the floor, but Lirzod was so focused on the bird and the cat that he didn’t even realize what he had done.

A couple of people in the crowd ended up stepping on the bread without even realizing it.

The young boy was left in shock.

“What have you done!” a bald man pushed the crowd aside and walked over to the young boy and lifted him up by the collar. “You’ve dirtied the bread. Five loaves are worth a silver. How are you going to pay me back?”

“I… I’m sorry,” the young boy began to cry. It was his first day at the job after leaving the child booth. He was expecting a great day, but he wasn’t expecting this.

“Your sorry isn’t worth my shit,” the bald man started slapping the young boy left and right. “I know very well how to get my money back from pathetic kids like you.”

Sariyu, who was watching that, immediately started to walk toward that spot; however, someone else had already stopped the bald man by grabbing his hand.

“Hey,” Burton grabbed the bald man’s forearm, making him glance down to his right. There was a half-a-foot difference in their height, and the bald man’s arms were twice as big; however, Burton’s eyes glinted with bate. “Everyone makes mistakes at times. And it wasn’t entirely his fault. If your son was in his place, would you have treated him the same way?”

“Ah, who the fuck are you?” the bald man tried to pull his arm out of Burton’s grip; however, to his surprise, his arm wouldn’t move.

Burton pressed the bald man’s arm a bit more, making him frown.

“Let go of my arm, you punk!” the bald man let go of the boy, then turned a bit to his right and stormed his fist at Burton. His fist hammered in Burton’s face in a bang. “Heh, that’s what you get for messing with me.” However, soon after he said those words, he realized that his arm was still in Burton’s grip.

Burton’s face gained a bit of redness, but nothing much happened. He turned his head and said aloud, “You better not be sleeping. Mr. Referee!”

“I’ve seen everything,” Jehez ran toward the spot and barked at the old man and handed the bald man a yellow card. “For hitting a child, and also for punching this young man’s face in the hall, you will face a review.”

“What?” the bald man was shocked. He knew that if he were to face a review, he’d probably not get paid even copper anymore by the green-haired boy.

“You should leave the hall,” Jehez coldly said.

“Wait, this kid owes me a silver,” the bald man hurriedly said, “Let him pay first, and then I’ll leave.”

“No, the judge will decide that,” replied Jehez.

“What? I can’t do that,” the bald man spoke back.

“Do you want to receive a red card?” Jehez’s voice gained weight.

The bald man’s eyes enlarged. A yellow card wasn’t all that troublesome, but a red card would mean a harsh punishment. A black card, on the other hand, would get one banned from that deck itself. The bald man could only swallow his pride and turn back toward the exit of the hall.

Afterward, the kid came and thanked Burton, who picked up a dirty loaf of bread off the floor and then handed him a silver.

“Learn to be more watchful, always,” even though the kid kept refusing, Burton dropped a silver coin in his pocket and then walked away as he blew the dirt off the bread and then chewed on it.

“Thank you,” the green-haired kid deeply bowed and was in tears.

Tens of seconds later.

Inside the Cat Ring, Booboo and the white cat had been eyeing each other with half-closed eyes. After enough bets were placed, Jehez signaled the start with a meow.

For the first half a minute, there was nothing but a simple stare off between Booboo and the white cat.

“Hehe, he’s so drunk that he didn’t even bother to take any food. Now, the cat will, without a hitch, worst him.” A chorus of delirium spread throughout the hall as good as the anticipation reflected in the eyes of many bettors. "This is our win."

With the leaden cloud that forecasted a loss as it hung in the air above Booboo, it seemed as if he’d succumb to the heartless harrying done by most of the audience. Though it was a customary illusion the crowd always cast, it still worked wonders against the weak-willed contestants. Even if the cloud just leaked out a drizzle, an already hypnotized contestant would consider it as a downpour, and only a few could go further in the contest with the storm cloud.

Booboo lifted his arm and swayed it slowly and smoothly in the air, puzzling many audiences, but the slurred words that came out of his mouth next added up to a distinctive ditty that truly dumbfounded and dismayed them all.

“Sleepy cat, sleepy cat

Shut your eyes, shut your mouth

Just go to your sleep mode

Shitty cat, shitty cat

Open your eyes, open your mouth

Just come at me clawing out

Do either of those

Or I shit you not

I’ll fuck you out.”