Editing Kakegurui Trip Fulltext (section)

==Chapter 5, part 5==

Oh god, why? Why is this happening? Why did she show up? What does she want? Am I her target or is this about something else?
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I spotted one of my Kansankai subordinates in the corner of the hall. When he saw that I was looking, he averted his eyes like he was ashamed. He had a walkie-talkie on him so he should have had some warning that Kirari was coming. There were no ships scheduled for today so Kirari had to have arranged her own transport. Anyway, this didn't matter.
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What mattered was that she saw though the trick. I didn't expect she had figured out the technical aspect of it yet, but she made it clear she understood that a cheat was in play.
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The way Yumeko had been acting, it was safe to assume she had caught on as well. That on it's own would not have been a problem because her protest could have been brushed aside as nonsense from a sore loser. Kirari's command couldn't be brushed aside, however.
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I could not stage a power play against the council. Not yet, anyway. Also, the public may grow suspicious if there would be so much fuss about a dealer change. I couldn't suddenly start arguing that it mattered who was handling the cards.
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I had mastered the riffle shuffle. I practiced for countless hours. When I was good enough to do it blind, I kept practicing while reading so I could dedicate even more time to perfecting the skill.
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I could split the deck in two perfect halves and interleave the cards from them in perfect alteration. This was the essence of the cheat. When shuffling cards like that, the end result is predictable. In fact, if some number of perfect riffle shuffles are preformed one after the other, the deck would return to it's original state.
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I had considered to alter the card shuffler so that it would shuffle the cards in a predetermined way. This proved to be way too complicated to pull off on such a small table-top machine. It was much easier to rig the device to not shuffle the cards at all, while still making it's familiar, mechanical noise. 
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The card decks stacked on the table looked like they were factory sealed, but they too were altered. Thy were carefully prearranged. By picking a deck from a specific stack and preforming a perfect riffle snuffle on it, I got a card arrangement I wanted. 
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I could set up any player at any position on the table at any time with a fantastic hand. All I had to do was use a new deck from the right stack and not fail to perform the perfect riffle shuffle.
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The ceremony of unsealing a new deck, using the mechanic shuffler and then riffling the cards gave any ordinary onlooker the impression we were fair and thorough. In reality, every step of the process was compromised.
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I made some other Kansankai practice the perfect riffle shuffle. Only a small number of them ended up actually pulling it off reliably. This was fine. I didn't need many co-conspirators. The cheating only needed to happen at the tables where Mitarai was playing. All other tables got a working card shuffler, pristine decks and a fair dealer. 
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If Mitarai doesn't win, it would be a disaster. We don't actually have enough on hand to pay out the 500 million Yen prize money and all the side bets placed on Yumeko. We could technically make it work by asking ours investors for some leniency. This would however mean balancing on the edge of bankruptcy and having our customers wait for their money. The damage to the reputation of the casino would be very severe in that case. If everybody would think we were reckless amateurs, we would be done for, and so would my future career. 
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If Mitarai loses, Ryouran Island loses and I lose. It's the last thing I want to happen, but I no longer control the situation. I could have strong-armed Yumeko, but doing that with Kirari was impossible. Now I can't stop the tournament and I can't control the cards.
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It was all over for me. Was Yumeko the one to pull the stunt of bringing Kirari here? Not that it mattered much now, but it would have been nice to know who was hammering the nails into my coffin.
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