Theo's bet (part 2)

"I'm doubling the bet!" Theo grabbed the man's wrist and held it in place, just an inch away from the cup he was about to raise.

"Wha…" the man moaned in surprise, taken aback by the sudden change of the situation. "N-no!" he protested as the look of uncertainty first turned into shock…

But as seconds trickled by, the same smug confidence that he had on his face returned.

"The game is on already, you can't change the stakes!" the man shouted, glaring at Theo as he attempted to push his hand forward and grab the cup anyway.

"I don't care!" Theo didn't argue with his customer. Instead, he simply ignored his words. "Right now, you owe me another gold coin!"

Theo's free hand rushed to his own belt, plucking out a golden coin from the poach he had attached there. Then, before the other party could use their other hand to turn the cup over, he slammed the coin at the table and looked the man right in the eyes.

"You called me a coward before," Theo uttered through his teeth while giving a quick glance at the people around. "Now, prove that you are not the coward yourself!"

Initially, everyone in the crowd was likely to side with Theo's customer. Changing the bet while the game already went on wasn't normal, after all.

But with a single reminder of Theo about how this situation came to be in the first place, the sympathies of the crowd started to slowly turn.

"I…" the stranger hesitated for a second. Yet, feeling the pressure of all the eyes of the crowd on his back, he pursed his lips together. "Fine!" he barked.

The man then wrestled his hand away, by pulling it back rather than trying to push it ahead. He then looked down and to the side of his pouch as he reached to match Theo's bet.

Theo didn't waste this chance. Using the fact that everyone's eyes were locked on the man's movements… he used his near-inhumane agility to reach out and swap the left cup with the one in the middle.

"He moved it!" someone from the crowd shouted, proving that not everyone was watching Theo's customer's hands after all.

"Yes! I saw it too!" someone else quickly joined in on the fun, the two of them stretching their fingers to point at Theo.

"What?!" Theo freaked out. He looked at the two who saw him while pulling his eyebrows together as disgust filled his face. "Are you calling me a damn cheater?!"

If the high bet was a mild curiosity before, the sudden escalation of the situation acted like the most patent bait for the people possible.

It wasn't more than a minute before nearly everyone who happened to be on the street gathered around Theo's spot, all eager to have some fun at someone else's expense.

"You must've seen wrong!" Theo claimed while waving his hand in a magnanimous attempt to let the baseless insults of his cheating go by.

"A swindler!" Someone who just joined the crowd shouted with excitement. "We have a swindler here! Guards! Guards!"

Nothing was as sweet as some fun when one wasn't paying for it. And out in the streets where everyone ended up a victim of a scam once or twice before, everyone was more than happy to jump on a swindler that got caught red-handed!

"Wha…!" Theo took on the airs, acting as if he could believe someone could step so low as to accuse him like that. "How dare you!" he then shouted, jumping up from his stool and staring daggers at the man who dared to shout for the guards. "I can see you just want to serve some justice regardless of how blind or ignorant you are so I will let this insult slide," Theo once again escaped to acting as if he was the victim of the situation.

Then, Theo turned his eyes to his customer who stood motionless, still dealing with the shock of the rapidly changing situation.

"They either saw wrong or are they trying to kick up a fuss for some wild reason," Theo claimed before pointing his hand towards the middle cup. "Pick it up, the bet is over!"

Theo changed his voice, trying to add a sense of authority behind it to mask the signs of panic hinted all over his eyes.

Theo's customer wasn't stupid. Seeing how everyone was now accusing Theo of cheating, he knew better than to just follow whatever Theo wanted him to.

"Sirs…" the man turned around and looked up at the strangers, hoping someone would reassure him about the situation.

But Theo wasn't going to let his prey escape that easily.

"I can see you struggling to decide," he uttered with toxin filling every last word that he let out of his mouth. "So let me make this even easier for you," he offered.

Theo then reached out to his pouch only to pull out two more gold coins.

He stared at them for a second as hesitation filled his eyes. Then, Theo raised his face and looked at the crowd.

He thought about something for a moment before the look of confidence of someone sure he could get away with anything returned to his face.

And then, without any further hesitation, Theo slapped two more gold coins on the table as he looked at his prey with a small notion of pity at the very back of his eyes.

"I'm raising the stakes again. Now, you owe me three gold ones if you want the bet to go on!"

A look of triumph appeared on Theo's face.

From how his customer hesitated to pull out the second golden coin before it was clear that he didn't have much more on himself. And now that Theo threw four entire gold coins on the table, what were the chances his customer could magically come up with the money to match the bet?

The man gulped his saliva down. The look of hesitation only deepened on his face.

He then once again looked around, before settling his eyes on one of the more respectable-dressed figures.

"Sir, are you sure he swapped the cups?" he asked, clearly hesitant to go through with the bet now that it became so convoluted.

"Yes, I saw it myself," the man calmly nodded his head.

"We all saw it!" the crowd soon chimed in, unwilling to be left behind on the fun.

"Then…" Theo's unlucky customer gulped his saliva down again. "Could you help me match the bet? Those two coins…" a look of naive desperation and powerlessness appeared on his face, "were all I had!