It wasn't difficult to guess that Song Nan was Stock's killer.
She had become the captain of a large cruise ship in M State as a woman of Chinese descent, which was enough to prove that her abilities could overcome such conventional prejudices.
Her calm responses and way of thinking in the face of a crisis showed that she wasn't someone who acted on emotion.
Yet someone like her had clashed with Stock right at the start, when everyone needed to work together to survive.
Although Stock had provoked her first, Xie Qi didn't think she was the sort to be unable to tolerate it.
Of course, what made Xie Qi most suspicious was that, before anyone had seen Stock's body, everyone else had been doubtful about his death. Only Song Nan had repeatedly considered matters on the assumption that Stock was already dead.
From the perspective of criminal psychology, this was a trait only the killer, who was certain Stock was dead, would display.
Now that he had identified his suspect, Xie Qi kept an occasional eye on her reactions over the next two days.
Although the wound on Stock's neck showed that the killer's technique was practiced and didn't look like a novice's work, Xie Qi could tell from the somewhat messy bloodstains on the floor at the scene that this was probably the killer's first time taking a life.
A person could practice their technique beforehand, but the feeling of a life slipping away at their own hands wasn't something they could experience in advance.
It reminded Xie Qi of the first time he had killed someone.
He had only been eighteen then, having just started college.
To save up in advance to repay his student loans, he had spent nearly all his time outside class working part-time jobs.
Through an acquaintance, he had once found work as a dealer at a casino.
Although he had never dealt with gambling before, he was clever and nimble-fingered, so he could handle a job like dealing cards after watching it just once.
But the casino was a murky place, full of one trick after another. Even dealing cards concealed all sorts of traps.
If a guest was on a winning streak, he had to quietly deal them bad cards in the final few rounds; sometimes he also had to help the casino owner entertain an important guest, in which case he had to deal them good cards...
He had to remember all these unwritten rules. If he made the slightest mistake, the casino bosses with underworld connections behind them wouldn't care about the life of one little dealer.
If it weren't for the generous monthly salary, Xie Qi would never have risked his life earning money there.
At the time, he had only planned to quit once he had earned his tuition, then get by on odd jobs to cover his everyday expenses.
After all, although he lived in M Country, he was also half Z Country by blood, and his mother had told him since childhood to stay away from pornography, gambling, and drugs.
Although that sounded a little out of place in M Country, he had kept her words in mind since he was young and had never thought of breaking them.
Later, though, his mother had been the first to take drugs, breaking her own rule. But considering that she had become mentally ill, Xie Qi forgave her.
So, although he worked at a casino, he had never considered joining in himself.
Seeing the gamblers at the tables go from frenzy to joy and finally to despair, Xie Qi had felt something strange. He had only thought that he disliked those crazed people and hadn't examined his feelings any further.
Then, on an ordinary day, a gambler accused him of cheating while he was dealing.
Things like that happened more than a dozen times a day in the casino, and Xie Qi had dealt with them plenty of times.
He first raised his hands to show the gambler that he had no cards hidden, then looked over at the bodyguards standing nearby, signaling them to come and handle it.
But the sudden turn came at that very moment.
The gambler's eyes turned bloodshot, and he fell into a frenzy. Whether he had lost everything he owned, no one knew.
As though he hadn't seen Xie Qi raise his hands, he pulled a knife from inside his clothes and lunged at him.
The guests around them cried out, all doing their best to avoid the madman. No one stepped forward to help Xie Qi restrain him.
The bodyguards saw the disturbance and rushed over, but they couldn't get there as fast as the man lunged.
Xie Qi had still been young then. He had never seen anything like it.
His mind went blank. Everything before his eyes seemed to move like a slow-motion film, from the man's clenched teeth to the dagger gripped tightly in his hand, as if it were all his life flashing before his eyes.
But he found courage from somewhere. Instead of dodging backward, he charged straight at the man, just as the man had charged at him.
Perhaps the man hadn't expected Xie Qi to be so bold either. His hand stopped for a second, giving Xie Qi a chance to strike back.
Xie Qi thrust out his arm and pressed his fingertips against a nerve in the wrist of the hand holding the dagger. The dagger slipped from the man's suddenly weakened grip and fell into Xie Qi's waiting hand.
The moment Xie Qi gripped the metallic handle, something snapped in his mind and a surge of excitement rose abruptly within him. Before reason could pull him back, his wrist turned, and the blade flashed across the man's neck.
Blood flew—
Warm blood sprayed across Xie Qi's face.
A trace of confusion crossed his pale face, as if he didn't know what he had done.
The man's body fell backward to the floor, drained of blood, and the screams around him jolted Xie Qi awake.
He staggered back a few steps and looked down at the bloodstained dagger in his hand.
He had killed someone?
What should he do? What should he do? He'd done it in front of so many people! If he was taken to the police station, his life would be ruined!
His father had been executed after killing someone, and his mother had been sent to a mental hospital after losing her mind. Couldn't he escape that fate either?
Only then did the fear hit him.
Compared to any guilt over killing someone, the loss of his future filled him with far greater panic.
But that was when the man appeared, just before Xie Qi was to be taken to the police station.
The casino owner who had more or less saved his life and guided him down a different path could also be called his teacher.
He saved Xie Qi then, helped him master all kinds of gambling techniques, and had him play cards against gamblers at the casino as a guest expert.
At first, Xie Qi had been deeply grateful to him and had wanted to repay him with his abilities, but the longer time passed, the more disagreements arose between them.
From the beginning, a person who could save a helpless young dealer and train him without regard for gain or loss had never been suited to surviving in such an environment.
And in the end, the man did die as a result of an act of kindness.
Xie Qi fought his way out while under attack from various factions, successfully won over the man's former subordinates, and took over the casino.
But without the support of the power behind it, the casino could only be devoured by the large casinos in Las Vegas.
With that as the only card in his hand, Xie Qi quickly grew from a college student who knew only how to play cards into a seasoned gambler who could maneuver and maintain a balance among various factions, surviving in the cracks between them.
Thinking of the years when he had once held sway, Xie Qi shook his head with some amusement and came back to himself. He looked at the tense-faced Song Nan, who seemed far too green to him.
It was only killing someone. What was there to be afraid of? Do it a few more times and you'd get the hang of it.