🐺 Week 3 | 人狼サバイバル 1 絶体絶命! 伯爵の人狼ゲーム 🧐

Japanese Reading Book Clubs
1
Week 3 November 30
Pages 32-41
Chapter 2 (part 1)
Read until …、赤くなった顔を隠した。 (paragraph end; end of page 41)
Previous week Week 2
Next week Week 4
Home Thread 人狼サバイバル 1

We’re reading this book as part of the Children’s Book Club.

Book Cover

Discussion Guidelines

  • 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!
  • Any villainous acts must be accompanied by a description of how you’re drinking your tea and/or cool animal facts.

Participation Poll

  • I’m reading along :wolf:
  • I have fallen behind and I’m planning to catch up later :paw_prints:
  • I’m reading this at my own pace :face_with_monocle:
  • I’m reading this book after the club has finished :spiral_calendar:
0 voters
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I think the paragraph that ends with " …、赤くなった顔を隠した。" is somewhere around page 42. Could anyone with a physical copy help me out?

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Very end of page 41 actually.

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Grammar/understanding questions

伯爵:「私はルール違反を止めないよ。そんな子に参加されてもゲームが楽しくないからね。」

I’m a unsure here at two points:

Firstly… is he saying that he won’t stop rule-breaking (implying that if he would, the rule breaker wouldn’t get “eaten”, and he wants that to happen)?

And secondly, why is it されても instead of されて or されたら?

With the されても the sentence sounds like it would be “Because even if such a child were to participate, the game would not be fun.”, i.e. “The game is not fun in the first place, and even adding the participation of a rule-breaking child would not make it fun either.”

Meanwhile, されて or されたら would be “Because if/when such a child were to participate, the game would not be fun.” which makes a lot more sense to me.

Chapter notes

This part was a bit harder to swallow for me because… of course, there’s no actual werewolf, right? It’s a traitor game some way or another, but the Count’s explanations never really touched on that. So the “traitor” feels a bit nebulous, with the only thing defining them being “the traitor wants everyone else to be wrongfully voted for as a traitor” without explaining why. I feel like we’re missing some kind of motivation for the traitor here, since there is no prize for the werewolf (except killing everyone else, which seems a bit too on the nose to be it, especially in a children’s book). The rules don’t even specify any penality for the werewolf if they lose.

And the kids seem… halfway unsure whether one of them is an actual werewolf? I get that they have to take the game serious in some capacity, since they are held hostage until it ends, but really?

赤いハヤブサのバッジ。

Ah, finally we get to know which animal ハヤト is! We already had rabbit, doormouse and swallow, and the “cow” was fairly easy to guess from “cow horn” even if a bit less direct than the others.

「化けている」のなら、この中の一人が「生まれつき狼だった」わけじゃない。きっとこの館に来てから、誰も気づかないあいだに狼とすり替わっているんだ。

I mean, I guess it could mean that? But since none of you know each other since birth, the wolf → human change could’ve happened at any time, well before coming to the mansion.

Also, are we all really entertaining the notion that there is an actual werewolf among you?

はっはっと犬のような息がおれの口からもれる。

ハヤト confirmed for werewolf?!

くううう、と。緊張を破るように何かが鳴った。

Actually I take it back, it’s definitely ウサギ.

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Weirdly on the Kindle edition it is p. 36. Which is strange because so far it all lined up?

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image3024×4032 2.72 MB

Edit to add: ah, actually it did not, because ch. 2 starts on p.29.

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I was just writing that :slight_smile:

I have no idea what the Kindle page numbers mean. I read online that they are meant to match the real page numbers, which they obviously don’t here. They don’t match “Kindle pages for my current settings” either though; sometimes two Kindle pages have the same Kindle page number.

Guess we’ll just have to add it to the stack of mysteries…

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this week

I guess he won’t stop rule breaking because the werewolf will just eat the rulebreaker, so there’s no need to?

I’m stumped on this too. I’ve been staring at this sentence for a while trying to figure out if we’re missing something. It really does seem to be saying ‘Even if that kind of child is participating it wouldn’t be fun.’ which confuses me. I assumed the count would be having a lot of fun with the werewolf game, given that he keeps luring people to his mansion to participate in it.

Sounds like something a werewolf would say. :eyes:
My complaint, more than whether or not there’s a literal werewolf, is that this seems like far too few participants for this kind of game. How can you have a dramatic game of voting and people being killed when there are only like 5 players?

Good point. What is the werewolf’s motivation? Does it have past trauma leading it to eat children?

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Ugh, I wish I had seen this before I started reading. I accidentally blew through the end of the section (of course the ending line was at the end of my page so I didn’t realize there was a paragraph break) so I’m gonna be a little quiet this week not wanting to accidently talk about stuff later in the chapter.

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grammar, page 36 physical

I think actually it’s something like “I won’t stop you from breaking the rules. Even if I could force a rule-breaking child to participate properly, the game wouldn’t be fun.” Implying that it’s the forcing that makes it not fun, which (spoiler for page 38 ish?) makes sense with his creepy speech later on how he wants the children to find it exciting to put their lives on the line for a fun game.

speculation

… But is that actually a given? Based on the preface I’m not sure that it is. It’s possible that this is a supernatural thriller, meaning that it is possible there’s an actual werewolf.

Based on how easily the kiddos accept this situation it almost feels like they kind of expected it to happen? :joy: Which makes me think maybe this is just the kind of thing that comes up in the newspaper every once in a while … “Five Children Eaten by Werewolf After Being Stranded in the Inaka” And they’re just like, let’s try to not end up like the kids in the news.

:joy:

Oh no! Sad!

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I’m in the same situation. :sweat_smile: I think I only have to read like 3 pages next week :see_no_evil:, but now I’m worried about spoilers.

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I would be a wreck if I had to play a real-life werewolf game like this; I just couldn’t accuse friends of being the wolf and having them killed… :cry:

Interesting to note that 狼 is in quotes the whole way through the rules. I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way this game isn’t actually killing people and the 伯爵 is in league with the adults or something, but I feel like it could go either way being a children’s book. I kind of hope they’re all serious about this, but that’s pretty hardcore if that’s the case…

Also feels fishy that the count is the one who gets to count votes. Don’t be “accidentally miscounting” now, my man. :eyes: It is interesting that he claims to be playing a parallel game with the wolf, which suggests the wolf is a real, antagonistic third party, and that the count is, in a twisted sort of way, on the kids’ side. (If only to keep the fun times rolling a little bit longer.)

Sooo… What happens to the wolf if they guess them right? Do they all go home? Or does the wolf get killed? And if we continue to overanalyze this children’s book, the count said the wolf’s already replaced a child; does that mean a child’s already died? :thinking:

And lol at ツバメ immediately declaring the police are going to arrest the 伯爵 for letting his animal loose. :rofl: A fine response! And then the kids checking each other out and confirming no tail or fangs… I’m getting 100% more enjoyment out of this than 水車館の殺人. :rofl:

Consider this: the werewolf is hungry, and this is the only way he/she gets to eat. :thinking:

This is a really good point. Have we confirmed both adults are dead? My memory is leaking horribly. Could be the voting/investigation takes a lot of page count, so we only actually end up going through two or three voting rounds.

I’d also like to point out that ハヤト made a good point: if this isn’t real, they call the police laugh it off. If it is real, it behooves them to take this seriously right off the bat. Keep in mind these are a bunch of elementary schoolers in a strange place, in the company of a creepy, unknown adult, who’s normal adult supervision has disappeared with no prior warning and all they can find is bloody clothing. I’d be pretty freaked out too and willing to play along, at least a little bit.

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I think no. He said the male leader (I can’t come up with his name and my brain says Mori and I know that’s not right because it’s way longer than that because of letter shenanigans :joy:) got eaten, but we haven’t heard anything about the female leader, iirc?

This is my big fear of where it’s going, but I also agree that there are a lot of stakes here for the reading age of this book, so it can’t be too dire. I’m curious how dark this book gets :grin:

This child is me, and I would absolutely be the first to get eaten because of it :joy::joy::joy:

Spoiler twins! :joy:

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We saw bloody, ripped clothes from both of them, but no body. This is suspiciously easy to fake :thinking: I think one or both adults could still show back up.

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Considering this page count/paragraph end mess, I’m glad we only have one more split chapter left. I didn’t even consider that it might be the end of a page; sorry :confused:

I mean, if it is an actual werewolf eating children is its prize, but why does it need to play a game to do it?

Unless it’s not just a werewolf mascarading as a child, but an actual child werewolf! As we learnt in the prologue, a werewolf is physically weaker than two adults, so maybe a child werewolf would be physically weaker than two children?

Or maybe the werewolf just likes playing with its food :thinking:

Fair enough! It’s just my assumption considering that we haven’t seen any supernatural stuff yet.

I love it :joy:

You always think getting stranded in a werewolf death game mansion only happens to other kids… until it happens to you!

(It also goes well with the fact that this book series has like 20 more books. :thinking:)

Yeah, and I’m really curious how that is going to play out here, especially for the first vote.

We have not, but the voting game pieces only seem to feature our five kids, so at least the game itself will probably only be among themselves.

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Have two cats. Can confirm. :joy_cat:

I mean, I’ve seen how emotional the vote on Survivor gets, lol, and they get to go eat good food on a tropical island for a few weeks when they get voted off, lol

No worries from me. I had planned to read to around the right page number and then look up what I was reading to, but since the kindle numbers were so off I went past it before I knew what I was looking for. I’ve never had them be this off before I don’t think, maybe just 1-2 pages off. I should have been clued in because it felt like it was taking me a really long time to read the section, but I thought it was just because I was tired yesterday. Ah well. Now I know. And like IntrepidFox said, next week I only have about 3 pages to read, so I can catch up on all of the other book clubs I’m behind in

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My speculation is that the game doesn’t stay the focus the whole way through. Maybe ハヤト gets voted off and we see his viewpoint out side the game, maybe there’s a couple of chapters of an escape attempt. Because yeah, otherwise at like 1 vote a chapter, we’re going to run out of characters pretty quick, and given the relative amount of screen time, genre savviness suggests either ウサギ is the first to go or the last to go, and given her cover prominence, I’m guessing last.

Anyway, I totally missed the ending phrase because I didn’t start looking until page 41 in my copy, so I read all of chapter 2. If you have a bookwalker copy, the end of this week’s section is halfway through page 39.

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Some of us already know*, but after such a cliffhanger I cannot wait to find out what meal awaits ウサギ and the others. Will it be as good as チーズハンバーグ?!

Well then, no time to lose! Follow me over to

*) by honest mistake, or because they are potential werewolves?!

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Will neither confirm nor deny. :wolf::wolf::wolf:

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When we continue reading and find traces of werewolves, those of you who have already been there before are pretty suspicious :paw_prints:

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Thoughts on Week 3

This is getting exciting. The premise of this book reminds me of a manga called Doubt. Or maybe Danganronpa.

Usagi’s stomach came in clutch to break the tension.

Don’t have clue who it could be and I agree about the adults. They (or at least one of them) can still be alive. Just wish they had the conversation in earshot of the kids cause now this just seems like a prank. Guess we’ll see when we have our first victim.

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