Please blur/hide any major events in the current week’s pages (however early they occur), like so: text here (that’s [spoiler]text here[/spoiler]).
If you have a question about grammar, vocab, the story, cultural things or literally anything else related to the book — ask! There is really no need to be hesitant. If it’s something you are wondering about, chances are someone else will be thankful you asked first, lots of people enjoy answering questions, you learn something new, and the thread gets more lively. It’s a win-win on all fronts!
Participation Poll
I’m reading along
I have fallen behind and I’m planning to catch up later
I’m reading this at my own pace
I’m reading this book after the club has finished
0voters
After reading this week’s part, I think the werewolf is most likely…
ハヤト
ウサギ
ヤムネ
ツバメ
ギュウカク
0voters
(To avoid spoilers, this poll will always contain all participants, no matter what happens to them in the book.)
I’m really curious what this chapter will bring (a sentiment that will probably be with me for at least the coming 2 weeks too). Pity I won’t have time to read until tomorrow.
I’m not sure “3 of you will die, but then the last survivor wins for sure!” could be called a “balance”.
「ね? ちょっと調べてみない?」
I wonder if she’s trying to get him to break one of the rules? That seems like the only way that the werewolf can win, but I don’t remember any of the rules that are easily accidentally breakable.
…okay, considering how that chapter went, I guess maybe not.
部屋に戻ったおれは食われた奴らのことを思いだして、少し、泣いた。
One of the weaker parts of this book is that the characters supposedly believe that their friends die, but barely seem affected by it. Sure, there’s a bit of panic while the whole thing happens, and maybe shortly after, but the next day after a good sleep they don’t seem too bothered of it.
It’s a bit too late into the book to fix that now with a passing mention that ハヤト actually has feelings.
黒宮ウサギは自分に投票した。
I… kind of half-expected that after their conversation earlier. I certainly did not expect it to happen in this chapter though, otherwise I would’ve written about it earlier. Wow.
What’s your play here, ウサギ? According to her, ハヤト isn’t the werewolf either, so this decision has nothing to do with nonsense like “I want werewolf ハヤト to win”. She did pause and think earlier, so… please, let this be a smart thing. Please.
I can only see the next chapter starting with “ウサギ isn’t the werewolf” (we still have 3 chapters left, folks!), but… what then? If ハヤト isn’t the werewolf, does the game continue?
I’m so confused.
Oh, and I actually have a grammar question this time!
「二人とも狼じゃなかったりしてね。」
What’s the たりする doing here? It doesn’t seem to fit with the usual “among other activites” meaning.
I started this chapter late last night and had to stop when my eyes were “blinking” for way too long. I feel like I had a whole scheme figured out how a vote could work but I think I was just half dreaming
I also don’t see how this works out. There’s no specifications in the rules about what happens when the werewolf losses, right? Just that they do?
I also paused for a moment reading that, pondered, thought I understood it, and now that you point it out again I’m like, huh. I could, you know, like go look it up in a dictionary or something, but gross.
It says that “all participants win and get to go home” if I remember correctly.
But wouldn’t she have lost anyway if she is the werewolf, even with the votes being 1:1?
The only thing I can see is: She isn’t a werewolf, is sure that ハヤト isn’t either and decided that a 1:1 vote would knock them both out without identifying the werewolf (=all participants get eaten), so she wants at least ハヤト to survive and solve the game on his own. How all of that can be possible without going against the rules and what the Count said so far is an exercise left to a smarter reader than me.
Answer to grammar question
I should’ve just looked it up in a dictionary
I will do penance by typing out the entry I found:
I think if a grammar point is not in A Handbook it just doesn’t exist. It’s so good. (Meanwhile if it’s not in DoJG that’s just business as usual.)
So… time for tinfoil hat theories. Are you all wearing your club-issued tinfoil hats? If not, I have enough for everyone here.
Ready?
I think I might've solved it. (This is *not* a troll post, so if you want to try to solve it yourself don't open this.)
There were three reasons why I was convinced that the werewolf is one of the kids:
The rules say it’s one of them.
If there is an unseen participant on top of the kids they would need to vote on punishment of being eaten, and unless they are a ninja on top of being a werewolf I think it’s safe to say nobody else is voting.
Even if the unseen participant somehow wouldn’t need to vote, without there being any colored badges for them the kids couldn’t vote for the unseen participant.
So… I’ve just read the rules again, and I discovered that they always use 参加者 with one exception: When describing where the werewolf can be found. At that time it’s suddenly 君たちの中, not 参加者の中. That implies or at least makes possible that the werewolf is not a 参加者.
All the other rules apply to 参加者. So it’s possible the werewolf doesn’t have to vote.
So… how could the kids possibly vote for the werewolf if it’s not one of the five colored voting badges? Well, first of all, the rules only state that “you vote with badges” (投票はバッジと投票箱を使って行う。), not that you have to use those specific voting badges. And secondly, we do have two other badges. ピンバッジ. They are even colored. They read 「RHR」(gold) and 「IMAKO」(silver) respectively.
So, is it Orihara or Imako? That’s where I get a bit less sure.
Orihara’s shirt is “ripped to shreds and has a sticky red substance on it”. I can see either “shirt got ripped and bloodied while he was eaten by Imako” or “turned into a werewolf so the shirt ripped, and he got blood on it while eating Imako”.
(By the way, all the kids saw the ripped bloody shirt and the badges. Maybe one of those things is the fabled “hint that all of them know”? My money is on the RHR badge being something clever that I can’t figure out.)
If I had to guess my money is on Imako being the werewolf. The “bloodied shirt is the shirt of the victim” sounds less far-fetched. It’s also the only one of the two badges that is still complete (which might or might not be important for voting purposes).
Also Imako is the one who discovered the building in the first place and wanted to go there, while Orihara was the one far less convinced:
And later:
Maybe one of you have a better idea? Maybe the remaining RHR or the removed OIAA mean something?
Also as a side note, both of their clothes (and probably their badges) were in chapter 5 in a basket in the laundry room:
脱衣かごには、ズタズタになったオリさんと今湖さんの服が入っていた。
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
edit: I’m just now realizing that IMAKO is OKAMI backwards. That’s one O short of 狼. Maybe we could take that O from a different nameplate…?
No idea what to with the remaining IAA letters though. I think they might be red herrings to make the missing O less obvious.
If we had another M we could make it “I AM A OOKAMI”
All of that is just idle speculation though, because we know the IMAKO plate is still in one piece and not OOKAMI-fied, the letters are just missing.
God, this took so long to research and write. I hope I’m right
Comments about speculation. Here be dragons. Or... werewolves?
I’ve never had enough patience to go back and look at the rules (like maybe if I was reading physically, but I’m not going to go back and find them in the ebook), but as soon as it wasn’t going to be ハヤト I knew that it had to be an outsider, and also, wild how we had some adults and they just disappeared. Wow so crazy. Now don’t think about them again
So I figured it would come down to some crazy rules lawyering and this absolutely sounds correct to me. Good job finding it!!
I was SO sure that the detail about how the name badges had removable letters was gonna come back but like, how and why. I think this also has to be right, or really close to right.
If you’re not right, you’ve now written a better story than what it turns out to be
I still think you’re on to something here. The dual meaning of バッジ has to be a part of the solution… but maybe it’s just that.
I think the final thing we’re missing is what is the ヒント that everyone could have known from day one? (Or do you think that’s just the 参加者 vs 君たち? I could be convinced by that).
Yeah, I still think those badges can be used to vote for their original owners, but I’m less sure what the point of the missing letters is since the O has not been added to IMAKO. Maybe it’s just “this badge is broken and cannot be used for voting, but the removed letters mean nothing”.
Originally I wanted to write that I feel like the 参加者 vs 君たち is not clear enough by itself to be a hint (because it could just as well be a red herring), but now that I’m thinking about it… maybe the whole rule paper is the hint? All of them got one.
The 参加者 vs 君たち opens the possibility of the werewolf not being one of the kids. And the fact that following the rules while considering the werewolf being one of the kids boils down to “the werewolf will always lose” strongly points to the werewolf actually not being a kid. Then we get to “but who else is there”, read the rules that says that the badges are used to vote and realize we have two name badges with only one of them intact (?).
Yeah, I kinda regret not adding more options, but back then I was young, naive and so so sure this will just be a straightforward werewolf game…
If the kids’ badges had their names on them instead of colored animal motives I’d rest my case there, but as things stand the “RHR is not a valid name, so it’s not a valid badge” is the only part I’m unsure of. It’s still colored after all. (Is OKAMI an animal motive? )
I do want everything else to be true though
You should read the Legato version of the novel. There the kids’ badges do have names on them!
Is this going to be how the werewolf gets them? I’m tempted to go look at the kids on the next book’s cover (but I feel like someone already did and it’s different kids? And I don’t feel like that definitively answers the question anyway).
The badge/missing letters/one intact badge is the last loose thread in your theory, imo… I wonder if it’ll come to me as a shower thought
I’m still convinced that “being eaten” does not equal dying and you’re just “out of the game”. And that will be some ridiculous hand wavey rules lawyering in the last or second to last chapter when they discover the other kids aren’t dead after all.
We’ve seen ripped clothes and blood (and for that matter werewolf fur, but I’m not convinced that matters for this), but we also saw ギュウカク get swallowed whole, which involved no blood or clothes ripping… so unless the werewolf spits out owl pellets in the form of bloody clothes and fur, I wonder if the ripped clothes are just a red herring…
I have no idea why my details drop-down wasn’t working there so now it’s a spoiler.
Ah I figured it out, I needed to escape the quotes in my title for the drop-down. Oh well.