Tsuzumi had little naught in his life; most of his time was taken by the patrols and polishing his fighter - not no mention fiddling around with Tomozoru. With Black Dragon Casino being practically out of his reach, he rushed into Shinkaku Station as soon as he heard that recent shipments also included several games. One of them was Mahjong - in which his life had been bet few times in the past two years.
He have been spending his time idly at the table, slowly tapping is feet to the music.
"Looks like I ended this round, again."
"NANI?! How the hell you...!"
The groan of the young Kusari could be heard almost in the whole bar. The reason behind that - he have lost, again, against local pro in Riichi Mahjong*. This time however, he lost good chuck of the money, that was his weekly pay.
"It looks like you lost again, Mori-kun," one of the tux-wearing men said steadily, eyeing the Tsuzumi's behaviour. "I can't help it, our player is very strong."
"And lucky today!" exclaimed the man that won good chuck of money against young Exile, then put the paper from his pocket. Paying in way like this was to be assured that shady Hogosha deals would never be noticed by local authorities. Even if the base was way outside the Kusari Core Territory.
The young loser had no other way but to sign the paper - he lost several million credits in this game, once again, what was a bad thing for the petty low-rank officer. Shortly after signing, he pushed paper forward to the Hogosha gambler.
"See? That wasn't that hard, boya**."
"I see no further round today, anyway... I'm out of cash." Tsuzumi stood up and peeked over two other players. They lost money as well, at least the other player that was supposed to be his game partner - but he knew that all except him were in the band. If they lost money, they did not care usually - they were to bait poor players and even worse gamblers, of course.
"Sure, have your money," murmurred the young boy. "But one day I'll return here and beat up your damn arse!"
"Of course you will!" the man held his laugh, but failed miserably. "Out with you, NEXT!"
Without even bowing a bit, the young Kusarian had rushed to the exit with intention of leaving the station. Instead, he crashed with someone inside the door. Of course, known for his hot-headed attitude after losing a game, he spilled out with even thinking: "Teme, watch how you-!"
In the very same moment he said these words, he stood up in place and saluted hastily with pure mixture of surprise and fear inside his eyes.
"S-Sakuma Sensei!"
--- APPENDIX
*Riichi Mahjong is a Japanese version of the four player game called Mahjong - which is similiar to the rummy-family game with skills needed akin to those in Poker. Riichi is mostly distinguished by the minimal random, almost mathematical, factor of all game variants throughrough the world - and based mostly more onto skills than intuition and luck.
**Term boya was a popular wasei-eigo (the borrowing from foreign language, such as Renzu = Lens) word equivalent to the "boy", especially in the late 40s and all 50s in Japan.
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