Me After Meeting You

A hand crept over, picked up Amber’s phone that was resting against her neck and forcefully terminated the call. A finger brushed against Amber’s ear, a cold sensation, cool but itchy.

She resisted the temptation to rub it with her hand and accidentally knocked over some of her mah jjong tiles instead and ended up hastily trying to reorganize them.

Billy, seeing the situation, couldn’t help but ask, “Are you alright? Why don’t you just admit defeat and surrender your body?”

Amber ignored him, meticulously arranging her tiles and starting to focus on the game. However, her tiles were too crooked, her playstyle too untrained and her hand movement unbearable to look at. Even Ansell started worrying for her. “Do you need someone to teach you?”

“No.”

And then she threw out a pair of tiles, one of the pairs that she had picked up from the table previously. Ansell and the others were speechless. “Chief Ian, you’ve really managed to find a woman who’ll lose your entire fortune,” said Billy.

But before he could finish, Amber asked, “Seven pairs form a set, right?”

“Yes.” Ansell answered, preparing to explain the rules and the combos to her in a detailed manner. “A set of seven pairs-”

Amber displayed her tiles one set at a time and flatly declared, “Then I’ve won.”

And at this time, they all silent for a moment.

Ian smiled upon seeing the situation, a slight curve on his lips. His eyes were unexpectedly clear, good looking and even showed a glimpse of mirth. That, combined with a sense of kindliness, actually dispelled some of his body’s natural frigidity.

Amber looked at him out of the corner of her eyes and unconsciously held her breath. Ansell and Billy, on the other hand, seemed used to this behavior. The latter even unhappily grumbled, “Does winning once make you this happy? Your winning streak won’t last long. We’ll slowly whittle you guys down until you lose your pants.”

Ian, indifferent as always, merely replied, “Speak for yourself when you win.”

Ansell looked at Amber’s tiles. “If you were going for seven pairs, then why did you throw out so many pairs earlier?”

Amber innocently said, “I didn’t know what I was going for back then.”

Billy thumped the table as he heard their conversation. “Just beginner’s luck afterall!”

Amber smiled as each of the two gave her a small stack of chips from the piles in front of them. She had already received plenty of chips from winning this round.

She returned the chips that Ian had given her initially. Billy snickered as he saw this. “Hey, you don’t think that everything’s going to go well just because you won this round, do you?”

Amber shook her head. “I just don’t want you guys to label me as someone who squanders money.”

“Good, you should be ambitious!” Ansell praised her as he laughed.

Even as the game continued, Amber’s technique remained poor. One round after Ansell had won, he leaned over to look at her tiles and couldn’t help but laugh. “You even threw out your reclaimed tiles?”

She was still at a loss for how to play.

But regardless of how poor her technique was, it couldn’t mitigate her good luck. She didn’t seem to win with low scoring tiles at all, but when she did win, it was always with a high scoring hand. Her combinations like the previous seven pairs easily trounced everyone else at the table.

Ian also won a few small hands, but Billy remained the only one who hadn’t won since the start of the game. He had to call another attendant over to get some more chips, grinning at Amber as he did so. “Keep winning while you still can.”

And Amber did keep winning. At the start, Ian and Ansell had won a few rounds intermittently, but after midnight, Amber had finally solidly grasped the rules of the game. At that point, even they couldn’t win anymore. The three of them looked on balefully as Amber made move after move for another two hours. No matter how little they cared, even they were growing exasperated, who didn’t want to win?

Billy knocked his tiles over as his frustration overflowed. He directly asked Amber. “Did you really not know how to play or were you just acting dumb?”

“I’ve never gambled before in my life.” Amber said dispassionately as she threw out a few more tiles and picked new ones up, before pushing her whole set down once again. “Set of flowers, same suit.”

The other three people in the room couldn’t even find words to respond.

Billy couldn’t help it and he also threw his tiles down. “Forget it, I’m not playing anymore!”

The other two shared his sentiment.

Over the course of the entire game, everyone else’s tokens had migrated in front of Amber. The club attendants came over to help her convert her tokens into earnings and she tallied it up silently, a few million dollars. Given the current housing prices in the city, just these few hours of gambling was enough for her to buy a house near the hospital she worked at.

As she walked out of the room, she found that Ian and the others had already left. Luckily, the club had the contact information of all their club members and Amber managed to get ahold of Ian’s number and call him. “You forgot to return the car keys to me.”

“Oh.”

“Then what am I going to do?”

“Find a solution yourself.” Given his cold tone, was he throwing a fit after losing money to her? It couldn’t be Ian had always been calm and indifferent from the beginning.

Luckily, one of the attendants at the club saved her. “If you register for a membership, we can send you out for free.”

Amber was relieved. “How do I get a membership?”

The attendant helped her set one up and then asked her, “Would you prefer to keep your earnings here or have them transferred to your bank account?”

It was only then that Amber remembered that she had earned a large sum of money. “Is Mr. Axton a member here?”

“Yes.”

“Then put it all into his account.”

“All of it?”

“Yes.”

She loved money, but was even more conscientious about her money’s provenance. The money she had received today was nothing more than ill gotten gains to avoid any future problems, it was better to return it all.

The attendant was sure that there was some gossip hidden in there somewhere, but he didn’t pry and efficiently handled all the requested transaction.Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

“Do you want to leave a message to go with the transaction?”

Amber smiled lightly. “Prostitution fees.”

Given how considerate he was to send her condoms, then shouldn’t it be normal for her to be polite and settle the score?

Still holding a grudge from being abandoned, Amber had thus done a very irrational thing. She regretted her words almost as soon as she said them, but it was already too late.