Pachinko

He woke up leisurely in the morning and scratched his hair.

His oversized white T-shirt hung loosely off one shoulder, revealing a slender, fair-skinned shoulder. He drew open the floor-length curtains, and morning sunlight spilled into the room.

"Ah, this feels great."

Star Color stretched, radiating a lazy air.

He'd stayed up rather late the night before, busy sorting through the items dropped by the drone. Luckily, he'd taken the whole morning off.

Star Color toyed with the golden die in his hand as he gazed at the deep blue sky.

"Well, I might as well go play. I haven't played pachinko in ages."

In a black windbreaker and a disposable mask, Star Color looked a little comical—like a popular child star trying to go out in public incognito.

He strolled into the pachinko parlor.

"Welcome... Um... you're a student, right? Could you show me your ID?"

The young, pretty hostess noticed Star Color's petite stature and stopped him awkwardly.

"..."

After paying an eight-thousand-point hush fee, he got in without a problem. That really stung. He wouldn't have had to pay nearly that much anywhere else. Pachinko had, to some extent, contributed to the gambling addictions of high school and middle school students. After all, who wouldn't like the idea of doubling their pocket money with a bit of luck?

Star Color cashed out thirty thousand points, exchanging them for balls worth four points each. High risk, high reward~

The student had paid using the café next door's QR code instead of the parlor's. It seemed the school could track payment records. And he wasn't the first student to come play pachinko, either. The shopkeepers really had everything prepared—they'd even figured out how to make money off students.

Times had changed. Mechanical machines were gradually disappearing, and electric machines combining pachinko with slot-machine mechanics had become the norm. Even so, almost every pachinko machine still used the basic layout and pin configuration known as the Masamura Standard. On top of that, all sorts of variations had been introduced. The most popular at the moment was the Role Object game, where players tried to guide Steel Balls across a bridge.

Modern machines were rapid-fire models capable of launching 140 to 160 balls a minute. The greatly increased speed of play made people gamble larger and larger amounts, and their money drained away faster and faster.

The piercing clatter of colliding balls, dazzling rainbow lights that assaulted the eyes, rousing announcements and shrill sound effects blaring from the machines. The gaudy, dazzling effects on the screens combined with the thrill of gambling to stimulate the brain. The noisy, dazzling environment was designed to keep players fired up and furiously launching Steel Balls, rather than calmly considering whether they ought to take it easy and head home.

Even though it was currently one of the quietest times of day on campus, workers fresh off the night shift were still there, happily turning the controllers and enjoying the thrill of gambling.

As the machines were upgraded, past experience became less and less useful. The battles between pachinko experts and Cheat Gamblers and the parlors had once been quite fascinating.

There had been all kinds of cheating methods: fake cards that dispensed unlimited balls, posing as repairmen to install illegal cheating devices in machines, using radio-frequency emitters to interfere with the machines, slipping celluloid sheets, sensors, magnetic Steel Balls, and all sorts of other things into them.

In any case, the gambling nature of pachinko machines and pachislot machines meant that certain kinds of cheaters were inevitable.

They were known as Cheat Gamblers.

As machines were upgraded and outfitted with alarms and all kinds of protective and anti-cheating measures, using outside tools to cheat had become a dead end—a method with enormous risks.

This environment naturally gave rise to another kind of Cheat Gambler. They disassembled machines to understand their internal workings, calculated the timing, worked out the best paths for getting balls in, and trained themselves to use a hand-operated ball launcher.

The force used to shoot the balls, the angle and distance of the pins, the angle of reflection—they calculated it all mathematically. Those people were practically superhuman. Once they were trained, they could go and show off their skills. These Cheat Gamblers generally worked in teams.

There were pachinko and pachislot machines, as well as machines based on anime. It was pretty wild.

Star Color decided to play Angel's Wings, nicknamed the Feather Machine. It had first appeared before the bubble economy and had been a popular model back then, played by people of all ages and genders. When the Feather Machine era ended, the Bridge era rose to take its place.

The machine before him wasn't some old relic; it was a rerelease. The original had been version 1.0, and this was version 2.0. It had been fitted with a high-definition screen, replaced its mechanical parts, and added dazzling lights. They said the parlors with Feather Machines were already packed with elderly people.

Pachinko and pachislot were both games of chance with preset odds. Take pachinko, for example: simply put, these machines used a points system. The Steel Balls you put in counted as points, like a game of 24. If the previous player's hand didn't add up to 24, you waited for the right moment to take over their game, then made your own hand add up to 24. In other words, once you reached the set number of points, you won a prize.

The machines had three phases.

The best way for ordinary people to win was to take advantage of what the previous player had left behind. That gave them the highest chance of winning.

The three phases—"Steady," "Eat Points," and "Payout"—cycled over and over. In short, no matter how ordinary players played, they were always the ones who lost. These three phases slowly ate away at, devoured, and depleted their Steel Balls. Every so often, the machine handed out a small prize or a JP payout, just enough to keep that "fatty" planted in front of it. But they'd play and play, only to realize in the end that the machine had cleaned them out of every last Steel Ball. By then, it was too late to regret it.

A preset machine was like a peerless beauty, indulging an ordinary player only when the mood struck. They'd soon be driven into a frenzy, pouring in huge sums of money, only to discover that the peerless beauty before them was actually a deadly black widow.

And a skilled Cheat Gambler could make a machine their own, making it spew out balls and tokens as if it were a bottomless fountain.

As he inspected the machines, Star Color spotted one that seemed particularly unusual. You're the one.

He sat down at it.

[Angel's Wings: How to Play] (This post includes the pachinko path diagram.)

[1. First, aim from above at the openings marked 1 and 2.]

[2. Once a ball enters opening 1 or 2, the feather mechanism above will open. Shoot a ball in while you have the chance. The feather for opening 1 stays open for 0.4 seconds; the feather for opening 2 stays open for just 0.8 seconds.]

[3. Once five balls have successfully passed the obstacles and entered the openings on the sides of the feathers, the slot-machine draw on the screen will begin. If all three numbers match, you'll win the jackpot.]

This machine put your composure, skill, and experience to the test. It did offer consolation prizes and the like, but if you wanted to make money, you were better off avoiding it. Still, higher risk often meant higher rewards.