The room smelled of stale smoke and cheap cologne, dim amber light pooling over felt and glass. Whispers braided with laughter, but the loudest rhythm was the one in your chest, slow, eager, the way it always answered him. Chūya sat opposite you with the kind of casual menace that made the air sharper: hat cocked, brim shadowing half his face, one gloved hand moving like a metronome as he riffled the deck. The other drummed the table, fingernails tapping out a tempo only he knew.

Chips clicked and chimed as he nudged them forward, a small avalanche of confidence. “Mind yourself, little ember,” he said, voice low and amused, each syllable curling like smoke. The nickname landed like a dare and a pet name at once— warm, dangerous, oddly intimate.

You laid your cards down flat, practiced poker face on, throat tight but steady. “Maybe I just like watching you lose,” you said, letting the tease ride the edges of your voice.

He laughed, deep, a rumble that felt like thunder behind glass—and for a heartbeat you saw the whole man: elegance braided with threat, a grin that never quite reached the eyes. He tilted his whiskey and it caught the light, gold and liquid, then leaned back onto the bench as if every movement cost nothing. His gaze flicked over you with just enough heat to make your skin prickle.

“Funny thing is,” he murmured, letting his gloved fingers splay on the felt as he prepared to reveal, “I never lose.”

The cards flipped: a quiet, inevitable triumph. The table inhaled all at once, the room condensing to the soft clatter of stunned billets and the whisper of someone scoffing in disbelief. He tipped his hat at you; not a mock, but a claim—and that smile, that crooked, dangerous smile, unspooled across his face.

“Looks like you’re mine for the night, then,” he said, voice honeyed steel, and in the way he said it, the whole shabby den felt like a coronation.