An Alternative Strategy

[Zhou Changqing] was an illegal immigrant from southern Guangdong, China. Back then, Japan was thriving, a land of dreams for countless East Asians.

As an undocumented resident, his early years were spent doing filthy, grueling labor for meager wages. Beneath the dazzling neon lights, he lived like a dog.

He regretted it—regretted coming to this unfamiliar country.

But one event changed the trajectory of his life. He met a fellow illegal immigrant, a black man who was a robber, and by chance, they obtained a pachinko balance card that had been taken out.

The two used a card reader to crack the pachinko cards and began selling them in secret. They contacted buyers through public payphones, confirmed locations, and chose crowded places for quick transactions. Sometimes even the buyers didn't realize the deal was done. A flood of black cards hit the market, making this cheating method wildly popular for a time.

Naturally, this method stepped on others' toes. The shop owners didn't need mentioning, but the fraudster syndicates lost a revenue stream. With black cards circulating en masse, the cheating technique was no longer a secret. From then on, they made enemies of the yakuza and syndicates.

That damn black man—Zhou Changqing had warned him countless times not to use the homemade black cards to play pachinko at the shops. The idiot acted like he'd never seen money before and went behind Zhou Changqing's back to play. He got caught and spilled everything.

In the end, the black man died, stuffed into a sack. Zhou Changqing was also captured by the yakuza, experiencing for the first time the taste of teetering between life and death. Luckily, a middleman from the [Kisen Group] took some interest in him. In a way, the flood of black cards had also made them realize they needed new countermeasures.

So Zhou Changqing was recruited and became a shadow guard. He'd learned martial arts from his father as a child, so his skills were decent. If he hadn't been useful, he figured he'd have ended up like that stupid black man, his corpse stuffed into a sack.

To become a shadow guard, you had to understand all kinds of cheating methods and the properties of different machines, spending long hours patrolling the machines to catch cheaters and fraudsters. After all, only a cheater knows a cheater.

Now he sat on the steps, smoking a cigarette. Twenty-eight years had passed since that incident. With machine upgrades, the shadow guard's role had gradually been phased out. These days, their main duty was just being bodyguards.

He'd been assigned to a shop at a school funded by the Japanese government as a shadow guard.

"Fuck, living day to day like this, just waiting to die."

The shop wasn't as big as the ones outside, but it was small yet fully equipped. Both pachinko and pachislot machines were there.

Most customers were casual players, and occasionally students would come by. But at the end of the day, this was a school, not the outside. Look outside—any decent shop would have a long line by morning. Here, only evenings and holidays counted as peak hours.

The pachinko shop staff had tedious work; one employee could cover most roles.

With the current low foot traffic, there were several staff members, each assigned different tasks. They were all cleaning floors, tidying bathrooms or offices, restocking, counting beads—trivial stuff.

Only when it got busy would the staff and shadow guards put in full effort to patrol.

Zhou Changqing stood up and wandered around idly.

He noticed the petite Star Color, who was focused on playing a feather machine.

Zhou Changqing watched.

Star Color could get the balls into pockets 1 and 2. But every time the feathers opened, she couldn't land them inside.

Zhou Changqing sneered. Sure enough, a brat's a brat. Coming to play pachinko on a school day, wasting time. This school was way too lenient, couldn't teach students properly. After all, Zhou Changqing occasionally saw students playing pachinko. The front desk took the money, and he got a cut, so he couldn't be bothered to lecture them.

Back in the '90s, a prodigy had emerged from the arcade scene, sweeping through all the pachinko parlors in Japan, black market or not. He made a fortune and survived a full yakuza siege—a real tough guy.

[Silver Bee Striking the Heart] was his alias. In the end, he was recruited under the [Kisen Group].

Zhou Changqing had been lucky enough to see him play a feather machine. He'd developed a stop technique: when a ball entered pocket 1 or 2, the feathers would spread for a fixed 0.4 to 0.8 seconds. He'd aim for that window to shoot the ball in, wasting not a single ball in the whole process—a monster with zero mistakes. Like a perfect stamp pressing the same numbers on a slot machine, calm and decisive.

The feather machine's gimmick was whether the player had the timing down and the eye to spot the machine's characteristics and nail deviations. Even identical machine models could have slight errors during calibration.

But unfortunately, that was a trick from over twenty years ago. It might work on newer models, but with non-mechanical slot machines, you couldn't use skill or motion sensors to hit the jackpot. Simply put, mechanical slots relied on the reels stopping with matching patterns to win, and winning was determined by a wheel spinning one full rotation in 0.0145 seconds. Both pachinko and pachislot machines ran on this clock mechanism.

By now, the mechanical issues had been fixed. The [Kisen Group] had switched new-generation machines to screen-based electronic ones. The probabilities were entirely preset, so even if you could land perfectly, you were still at the mercy of the machine's odds.

This brat in front of him had some skill, but not much. What was the point of opening the feathers? If she couldn't perfectly land the ball inside, she'd never win.

Star Color was sweating a little, taking a sip from a can of oolong tea, her eyes locked on the feather machine.

Zhou Changqing found it boring. This brat was just a sucker, destined to be devoured by the machine.

He'd seen it countless times—tragedies caused by these little steel balls. Young girls turning to selling themselves, beating their parents for money, wandering out in a daze and getting hit by cars—endless examples. And those were just the ones you could talk about...

"Forget it, I'll go take a break."

With the crowd so thin, sneaking a little rest was fine.

Half-asleep, Zhou Changqing heard a voice from the walkie-talkie.

"Hey, get to B section, machine 32, now!"

Machine 32 in B section? Zhou Changqing scratched his head. That was the brat's machine. What the hell had she done?

When he stepped outside, he was stunned. In that short time, she'd racked up thirty baskets of steel balls.

Pushing past the staff blocking his way, he saw something unbelievable.

There was the brat, casually twisting the controller, steel balls clattering down fast, while the screen's center showed a spinning slot machine. Her slender, small hand slapped the middle button.

How was this possible! She was using the balls! She'd caught the timing of the feathers retracting. As the ball passed the nails, she used it to jam the feathers open, keeping them spread!

(Check the interlude for a rough sketch.)

If the feathers were propped open, that meant no need to painstakingly aim for pockets 1 and 2. Just shoot the balls into the feathers, and she could keep triggering the slot machine jackpot! Even with probability, if she entered enough times, wouldn't the probability problem be completely shattered?

"Hey! You little brat, that's damaging the machine! Stop playing!"

Zhou Changqing shouted.

Star Color pulled down her mask, tore open a transparent wrapper with her teeth, and tossed the candy into her mouth with a flashy pose.

"The nail on the left side of this machine is off by negative 0.02. How did you guys calibrate it? Without this machine, I probably wouldn't have won so easily. It's really great, thanks to your negligence, I'm raking it in."

Star Color was calm and composed, turning her head to look at Zhou Changqing with those eyes—unfathomable, impossible to read what emotions they held.