She never had the habit of waiting for a nod of permission before doing what she wanted. Her mother had once laughed and said she had no idea where she got that from.
"What are you all doing?" Milady met their gazes, acting perfectly at ease, as if she were born into this circle. "Just chatting?"
Her attitude was so natural that the youths from the other families assumed she came from a family of similar standing. Her own cousins were clearly too embarrassed to say anything in front of outsiders—after all, the so-called ranks of high and low were merely unspoken concepts, and Haidu had always prided itself on equality and freedom. Within minutes, Milady had already blended into their conversation.
"Is this it?" She glanced at the device under the evening lights. "Your games are so boring. There's no prize for winning."
"Then what do you find so interesting?" one of her cousins asked, unconvinced.
"Don't you even know how to play cards?" Milady said lazily.
A few people from the other families laughed. "Just playing cards? What's so new about that?"
"There are plenty of novel games you've probably never heard of," Milady said, a hint of a challenge in her voice. "I could come up with a simple one right now that I guarantee you've never played."
"What kind of game?"
"I don't have any cards on me," Milady said with a shrug. "But I'll explain it. We take five red cards and two black cards from a deck and lay them out. Then, you draw one card at a time... I bet you can't draw three red cards in a row."
This line was meant for the clever ones who thought they understood probability. Her greatest advantage in facing a group of well-educated peers was that she didn't need to spell things out.
One of her cousins thought for a moment, then sure enough, he scoffed.
"So, if I'm playing against you, the odds of drawing a red card the first time are five to two, right? The second time, it's four to two. The third time, three to two... How are those low odds?"
"Right," someone said with a nod. "There are more red cards than black, so the chance of drawing a red is higher each time. And you're betting we *can't* do it?"
Milady replied, "In a best-of-five match, I don't think you could pull it off. In a single game... I'm not so sure."
"The more you play," a short, thin boy said with a laugh, "the more likely the side with the higher probability will win! How can you not even understand that?"
As if the question truly stumped her, Milady frowned in thought for a moment before shaking her head. "No, I still think the more you play, the less likely you are to win... It's a shame we don't have any cards. Otherwise, I just got a really interesting new device we could use as a stake."
When the inevitable question, "What device?" arose, she took out the Shadow Appearance Mechanism and described it with just the right amount of embellishment. Sure enough, just as she had everyone itching with curiosity, she put the device away. "But without cards, what can we do?"
Hearing this, the group of youths took the bait with unconcealed delight, and even her own cousins couldn't resist. Everyone thought Milady was about to lose her new device; a moment later, someone produced a deck of cards from out of nowhere.
"So we're really playing," Milady said, looking at the cards on the table and taking a sharp breath. The crowd immediately roared with laughter.
She glanced around, pretending to notice Terry's boyfriend, Wei Lian, for the first time. Terry had little interest in anything other than her boyfriend, but Wei Lian was staring at the cards eagerly, clearly wanting to take a shot at winning the device. He wasn't the only interested person at the table, but he was Milady's true target.
It only took a few words from her before Wei Lian pulled his arm free from his girlfriend's, personally shuffled the cards, and laid them out in a row.
Milady, looking very nervous, fiddled with the Shadow Appearance Mechanism in her arms and made a point to ask, "So, it's best of five, right? If you don't win three times in a row, I don't have to give you the device... But what if you lose? What do I get? It has to be something of equal value."
Wei Lian wasn't short on cash. Without needing another word from Milady, he placed a sizable bet amidst the goading of his friends.
At this, Terry grew a little nervous too, leaning in to watch her boyfriend's hand. When Wei Lian drew the first card, her face instantly lit up: it was a red card.
The second card was red.
The third was still red.
As Milady cursed under her breath, Terry cheered and clapped while her boyfriend couldn't suppress the smile in his eyes. The thin boy from earlier seemed disappointed. "Hey," he asked Milady, "now that you've lost that device, what's left to bet? I'll take the next round."