Chapter 11

The rules of Sora's game sounded simple enough. Although I didn't like it, I had to commend him. He had come up with an easy to play contest that even someone like Sudō-kun could understand. This means that all of Class D will be watching with an understanding of what's going on, and no one can complain about cheating due to the fact that the rules are simple and neither of us are ever touching the deck.

"Oh and finally, please note that there are no Jokers in the deck." he finished.

"So, it's a memory game?" I thought aloud.

"Hm?"

"Obviously, the main premise of this game of yours is memory, right? At the start, the chances of guessing the right card are very low. However, as the deck gets smaller, your chances of guessing the right card go up depending on how many cards you can remember that have already been shown."

Some of my classmates looked impressed by my deduction, namely the ones like Sudō-kun, whereas many of the others like Kushida-san and Yukimura-kun wore an expression that said I was thinking the same thing. Sora merely smiled and didn't respond to my words.

"Just to clarify, no external help is allowed. So, none of your classmates are allowed to help you by remembering cards for you. Everyone except for Horikita, Hirata and me will be a silent observer."

"Right. The rules of your game do seem fair, Sora-kun." Hirata-kun said which many students, especially the girls, seemed to agreed with.

"But isn't it just a stupid game of luck? Even if you do remember a few cards, in the end it will just be whoever happens to guess right first. How is this testing either of their skill?" Kariuzawa-san said the question that was on everyone's mind.

"If you think like that, you will be defective forever. There is no such thing as luck in this world." Sora said cryptically. Kariuzawa and some of her friends glared at him.

If you ask me, that's quite an absurd thing to say. There's no such thing as luck? Even a child could clearly see that this wasn't the case - you need to look no further than a simple coin flip for proof.

Most of the class looked at Sora like he was an idiot, but he paid no attention to their gazes and instead looked directly into my eyes. His crimson red eyes seemed like they weren't looking at me, rather, they were looking through me, as if they were deconstructing my entire being. It was uncomfortable, to say the least.

"Anyway, let's start." Sora turned his back to me and approached the blackboard.

I did the same and walked towards the other side of the blackboard. This was a game about memorizing previously drawn cards in order to improve your chance of guessing correctly each round. That being said, it was unlikely for a card to be guessed before at least half of them have been revealed already. Even then, the chances would still be 1/26, or just below 4 percent. Realistically, one could only expect the correct card to be guessed when we were down to around ten cards in the deck.

At that stage, remembering all the cards that have been discarded already would be crucial. If you only remembered a few, then you would have almost no chance of guessing correctly since you could only rule out a few possibilities out of the 52 cards. In all likelihood, Sora was confident in his own memory which is why he proposed a game of this nature. I didn't mind though since beating someone on their own turf is always much more enjoyable.

I put my chalk against the blackboard and started to write. This is the very first card, so it doesn't really matter what I guess - I should focus most of my energy right now into burning the early revealed cards into my memory. It was typically easier to remember a collection of items if you always remembered them in the same order rather than in an arbitrary fashion, which is why it was important that I pay attention to the sequence at the start.

Six of Diamonds, I wrote on the blackboard. I just plucked a card out at random, since every card was still in the deck for the first draw. I looked over at Sora and he glanced towards me as well. It seemed we had both written our cards down. We both moved away from the blackboard over to Hirata-kun's desk, so that everyone could see our guesses.

I turned my gaze over to Sora's side of the blackboard to see what he had written.

Ace of Spades.

"That's the most mundane card you could've chosen. The Ace of Spades is by far the most recognized and named card, couldn't you have been a bit more original?" I belittled him.

"Mhm, you said it yourself. The Ace of Spades is by far the most popular playing card. That makes it a logical guess, no?" he explained as if it was obvious.

What kind of logic was that? That's probably the least logical reason he possibly could've given for choosing it. Even saying that he just wanted to choose his generic favourite card would've been more acceptable.

"Ready?" Hirata-kun asked.

Sora and I nodded, and Hirata-kun pulled out the card from the bottom of the deck. Since it was still face down, he lifted it and slowly turned it around.

Eyes widened around the room, but these expressions quickly turned to glares in Sora's direction. I myself was also dumbfounded, I found myself just starting at the card between Hirata-kun's fingetips.

"Wh-What..."

"That doesn't make sense..."

"He cheated somehow, right?"

Murmers spread around the students of Class D. This was because, of course, the card that Hirata-kun had revealed from the bottom of the deck was the Ace of Spades. I slowly lifted my eyes and noticed something odd.

Not only Sora and Shiro, but also Kōenji-kun as well didn't look surprised at all. Rather, those three all looked as if they knew for a fact that the Ace of Spades would be revealed first. But how? Sora couldn't have cheated, right? That would make everything he's said since entering our classroom immediately discredited, and he didn't seem like the type to go to all this effort and theatrics just to be labelled a cheater.

Also, even if he did cheat, that didn't explain why Kōenji-kun looked like everything went according to his expectations. He looked at the card in Hirata-kun's hand with disinterest, as if it was nothing to be surprised at.

"Looks like I win," Sora simply stated.

"B-but... How?" I queried, still somewhat in a state of shock.

"Because the card that I guessed was revealed by Hirata."

"W-well obviously! But how? How were you so confident the Ace of Spades would be the first card?"

A laugh echoed around the classroom, snapping all of the incredulous students back to reality. It was Kōenji, who took interest in his surroundings for the first time. He smiled at Sora and somehow, it looked genuine, not like the usual smug smile he wore when he spoke to people.

"Horikita-girl, you along with all of these other defects seemed to have fell for Sora-boy's trap right from the beginning." he said condescendingly.

"What the hell are you on about, moron? That Sora bastard obviously cheated! Stop acting like we're stupid!" Sudō-kun said, clearly outraged by the result.

"Your existence is hardly beautiful, Red Hair-kun. To anyone who had actually been paying attention, this result was obvious."

"How then? Explain." I demanded in exasperation.

Seriously. I haven't felt this irritated in a while. Something about that smug look Sora has worn ever since he entered the classroom just got ten times more annoying.

"It's simple," everyone's attention was brought back to Sora, who began his explanation. "Normally, if you pull a card at random, the chance of it being the Ace of Spades is 1/52, or 1.92 percent. However, these cards were not pulled out at random; they were taken from the bottom of the deck."

"Yeah, and so what? That doesn't make any god damn difference!" Sudō-kun shouted impatiently.

"Just keep quiet and I'll tell you. You're right that normally, it wouldn't make a difference where you pull a card from in a shuffled deck - the chance of pulling out the right one doesn't change. However, if you aren't dealing with any Jokers, pretty much every fresh store-bought deck of playing cards is in the same order. Consequently, the chance of the Ace of Spades being pulled first from the bottom of the deck wasn't 1.92 percent - in reality it was almost a 100 percent chance."

Everyone went quiet at his explanation, while Kōenji remained smiling as if he'd just witnessed the best thing to ever happen.

"Isn't that cheating? You knew the order of the cards. That's not fair!" After a couple moments of silence, Karuizawa-san accused.

"Nii never looked at the cards. He opened them for the first time in order to play this game. He didn't actually know for certain that the first card would be the Ace of Spades." Shiro spoke for the first time since we saw her.

Her voice was quiet and she spoke in a reserved manner. Coupled with her small figure and long tinted white hair, I'm sure most of Class D would agree she was very cute if not for the fact that she had just helped Sora make a mockery of our class.

"In other words, I merely used my knowledge of product trends and my history of opening a lot of packs of playing cards over the years to deduce that the Ace of Spades would have the highest chance of being drawn. I never hid any information from you. Rather, you simply neglected to gather knowledge before our game started." Sora lectured me like that.

"You were probably making deductions and thinking about things like why I had chosen a memory-based game, perhaps I have a good memory? You were likely thinking about all sorts of things, but you came to the wrong conclusion about the contest due to your lack of information. Only an idiot tries to solve a problem without all the necessary pieces. Information is the strongest weapon in this world, and your neglect to ask about the state of the deck was your downfall. Don't try to fight a battle without knowing everything first."

With that, Sora once again took Shiro's hand in his own and walked towards the classroom door, leaving Class D unable to even utter a single word. He opened the door but, just before taking the final steps to leave, turned back to say one last thing to us.

"May 1st. Chances are, if you continue as you have been, you will all have a rude awakening on that day. Later."

He had walked in with an air of arrogance, and now Sora had left with an aura of absolute superiority. All I could do was stare at the Ace of Spades, still resting in Hirata-kun's hand.

Was he trying to teach us a lesson using playing cards? Or was he just toying with us? Honestly, I have no idea.