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The neighbor’s cat is stuck in the tree. Dice is seven years old, invincible in the way that all children believe themselves to be, and he climbs to the top of the old tree, ignoring the way the weary branches creak underneath him. When the branches give way, the cat simply leaps to safety as Dice plummets down. In the brief moment before he hits the ground, he feels like he could free-fall forever.
In the hospital an hour later, he tells his mother he wants to climb the tree again, so he can keep feeling the way he did when he was falling.
-
On his first day of middle school, Dice stands up and declares himself the luckiest boy in school. He is subsequently, objectively, proven wrong: he is beat up by third years who confiscate all his pocket money; he fails three of his tests; he is turned down by the second-year he develops a crush on; and he is banned from the school roof, after the teachers catch him standing on top of the railing looking down one too many times.
“You’re the unluckiest guy in school,” his former crush tells him, his face more exasperated than worried, helping him up after the older boys play another rousing round of kick the can featuring Dice’s rib cage.
“Nah,” Dice says, patting himself down and wiping the blood from his upper lip. “Even with all this, I’m not dead -- that makes me lucky!””
His schoolmate looks dubious, but Dice knows it’s the truth.
-
Dice is fourteen when he discovers gambling for money. For a lifetime spent, to that point, tempting fate in how fast he can run from bullies, how far he can jump off the top of the swingset, high far he can fall before he breaks something he actually needs, it’s almost a blessing, for his parents: he spends his pocket money, which is less than the constant emergency room bills, and he doesn’t spend more than that.
He knows only the games he plays with classmates, at first. 500 yen here, 2,000 yen there -- his parents pockets are deep, and they indulge him well enough, so long as he keeps afloat with their expectations of him. They reward him for jobs well done by giving him more money, and he gambles it away on school poker games, bets on local sports tournaments, childish competitions where he says he’ll get a higher score than someone else.
He wins as often as he loses, in these days: teenagers aren’t good at blackjack, and half the time, it really is a matter of luck.
-
The first time he’s stabbed is his second year of high school. He’d known better than to buy into stakes that had that many zeroes at the end when he was already broke, especially when it was with people he didn’t know, but Dice scrapes by on luck, and what’s luck without a little bit of chance?
It turns out that one of the kids has connections to the yakuza, and a knife that’s engraved with his name on the handle, which Dice thinks is a pretty dumb idea. He says as much, after he’s stabbed, and he doesn’t stop telling it to anyone who’ll listen, even when he’s recovering in the hospital, down all of his valuables and a few pints of blood.
His parents kick him out as soon as he can walk. They’ve had enough, and he can’t blame them.
He goes to the roof of his (former, now, because it’s not like he’s going to go if his parents aren’t paying tuition) high school, looks out onto the evening sky scape of Tokyo, and laughs until he goes hoarse.
-
Dice is eighteen, and broke. He runs into his old senpai, of all people, at an illegal gambling bar, and feels all his middle school butterflies slam back into his stomach like they never even left. You never get over your first crush, or something like that, Dice thinks. They both lose all their money -- Dice makes bad bets; Kenji buys too many drinks -- and neither of them can afford the train home, so they walk.
They fuck against Kenji’s front door once they’re inside, and in the morning, all Kenji has is regrets: he kicks Dice out and curses him, tells him it’s his fault.
He never would have gambled if it wasn’t for Dice.
Dice walks the streets without a shirt for three days and counts it as losing a bet, and no amount of free ramen from the old man down the street manages to make his stomach settle down and unclench itself. The butterflies are bats, now, as rabid as anything, and all Dice can do is claw out whatever was left behind before this disease took him over.
-
Ramuda stirs his beer with his lollipop, which Dice thinks is about the grossest thing he’s ever seen in his entire life, and he tells Ramuda that. Ramuda kisses Dice, and it should be pretty gross, to drink beer and lollipop straight from Ramuda’s mouth, but it winds up tasting not entirely terrible.
Gentarou laughs at them both when Dice says that, and refuses to let Ramuda “prove it’s good, come on, Gentarou!” Dice gets lost in the way Gentarou’s hand moves across his face to cover the smile, and it’s a good thing Gentarou does it, because everytime he sees the smile Dice’s stomach flip-flops over, teleporting back to a time when all Dice can think about is butterflies and city nights.
Ramuda pays for them to drink too much, and Gentarou pays for them to eat too much, and Dice doesn’t pay for anything, which feels like a trick until Gentarou says, “I’m sure you’ll pay us back when you win big.”
“Yeah, of course I--”
“That was a lie,” Ramuda offers, sprawled across both their laps and doodling someone in a ponytail wearing a miniskirt with too many straps. “Right?”
“You never win big,” Gentarou agrees, and Dice disagrees so vehemently that he dislodges Ramuda. The shortest member of Fling Posse berates him for it half the way to Gentarou’s apartment, up until the three of them find it hard to keep anything but base impulses in their head, much less actual conversation.
-
“You’re a demon,” Gentarou says, laying on the futon and pulling Dice’s discarded jacket over his head. He makes a noise of disapproval -- Dice hasn’t done laundry in awhile -- but doesn’t move past that.
“Yep!” Ramuda chirps, cheerful enough to break wine glasses and also Dice’s head open. “If you make a pact with me, I’ll make sure to chase away a~ll the pain!”
“That’s a lie,” Gentarou says, before Dice can believe it.
“Didn’t we already kinda do that?” Dice says.
Gentarou groans, and Ramuda laughs, sitting down at the kitchen table to draw on all of Gentarou’s scrap paper.
Dice is twenty years old, hungover, broke, wearing someone else’s haori to cook pancakes at nine in the morning, and he knows that he was right all along that he’s the luckiest man in Japan.