🐺 Week 5 | 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 5 December 14
Pages 51-66
Chapter 3
Read until End of chapter
Previous week Week 4
Next week Week 6
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!

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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Ah, the joys of actually reading something exciting. Reading it all in one go still takes some time, but it’s hard to put down anyway :slight_smile:

Chapter thoughts

それに狼が入れ替わったタイミングはここに来てすぐかもしれないだろ。夜にピアノの音を聞いてるかどうかなんて、この話とは関係ないだろ。

Yes! Thank you!

一日目の夜中にテントから脱走したのは？

Kinda curious for what reason this 大室さん (I guess a classmate?) “escaped their tent in the middle of the night”. Seems like it was big enough to be discovered at least.

誰が狼か分からないなら、いちばん役に立たない人が消えるべきだと思う。

Damn. Ice-cold, ツバメ. And so quick to decide. Just as if she doesn’t care, like, let’s say, a werewolf.

Definitely not a smart move though, being the first to point your finger to somebody, because…

「人を狼あつかいするおまえがいちばん狼っぽい……！」

…yep. Because of this. Whether you are a werewolf or innocent, you definitely don’t want to appear overeager unless you have solid proof.

「伯爵。このバッジ、全色混ぜていいか？ 今回はしょうがないけど、このままだと誰がどれを取ったのか丸分かりで、すげえ投票しづらい。」
「かまわないよ。ルール上、問題はない。」
ギュウカクは五色のバッジをじゃらじゃらと混ぜ合わせ、紫色のバッジを手にする。
「あ、青山くん。何で……!?」

That one confused me for a bit. Is he mixing them so that in future votes it’s more of a secret who takes which badge?

(Why would he think that’s a good idea though? Seems like that only benefits there werewolf, but nobody calls him out on it, huh.)

テーブルの根本の床が裂けるように開いた。
投票箱をのせたキノコ型のテーブルはネジを回すように穴に吸い込まれ、ぱたんと裂け目も閉じる。
がたがた、からからという騒がしい音が床下を伝い、壁を伝い、二階へ。
伯爵は床からせり上がったテーブルを軽くたたき、カギで投票箱を開く

I had to read this thrice. The whole table? Not just the box, or the chips in the box? What a madman :laughing:

どだん、と誰かが転ぶ音。見ればヤマネが階段の途中で転んでいた。
「ヤマネ!! ……っウサギ、先に行け！」

Oh no. This is really brave, and I really hope that it doesn’t turn into a “If one of us is the werewolf, and Hayato was the last one to be with her before she vanished, then…”.

Welp. And there goes ヤマネ. :frowning:

I like that both ハヤト and ウサギ wanted to help her despite being in a scary situation, even if a portion of it might’ve been guilt over being party responsible due to having voted for her.

I wonder if they will try to shelter the victim in one of the rooms next time. The rules say that you have to be in your own room (or you will be eaten), but they don’t say anything about not having somebody in your room. (Although I guess what could happen is that the room just doesn’t close, and the werewolf comes and eats the victim while ignoring the rule-abiding, not-voted-for sheltering person.)

Btw, since the doors are so close together, the whole game could’ve been given away right there and then by ヤマネ loudly going like “Oh, 〇〇さん, you managed to open the door?! Please let me in!” when the door unlocked, before seeing that a werewolf comes out of it… :laughing:

どこからか、伯爵の声が聞こえた。

Seems like you were right on the money with the “piping sound into rooms” theory, @eefara.

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I didn’t mean to read the whole chapter in one go, but like, where exactly in that chapter would I have stopped :joy:

Thoughts

My money was kinda on ウサギ prior to this chapter as the “who could have seen it coming” twist that would be totally obvious to anyone who’s read more than 2 mystery books ever. But now I’m not so sure…

ALSO, her choice was based on who was the least useful. Since ヤマネ spent her whole day crying, I feel like she was really aggressively not the werewolf just from that. Of course there’s always a, having known you know play where you could go pretend to sob and really be the werewolf, but that can kinda be said of pretty much any action.

Anyway, at the end of this chapter I think it’s the salad eater. I mean, maybe she knew she was going to devour a whole kid so she ate light earlier :joy:

Yeah I was a bit confused here too. I guess they couldn’t see which pile you were taking from… but then he mixed them up and we knew exactly which stone he picked up, so was there even a point to it?

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Answers to shitsurei & musings on who could be the werewolf

Wait, why her and not ヤマネ for the “who could have seen it coming”? And what about that chapter made you change your opinion away from ウサギ?

The more I think of it, after this chapter she’s kinda my top candidate. My ordered list would be:

  1. ウサギ - conveniently only remembers that she wants ヤマネ to be helped once inside her room, asks ハヤト to do it despite the danger of him not being able to enter the room in time. Which of course would mean that the werewolf gets to eat two participants, which is excellent for the werewolf.
  2. ギュウカク - seems to want future votes to be secret, which I can only see as sowing distrust, which is good for the werewolf.
  3. ツバメ - I feel like the whole “let’s vote for the weakest participant” was kind of in character, and she shouted at ハヤト to go to his room, which is bad for the werewolf. If she was the werewolf, she could’ve just not done that without arising suspicion.
  4. ハヤト - only possible if he’s an extremely unreliable narrator :laughing:

I would be very split on ヤマネ being a potential werewolf. Her behaviour was in line with what we know about her (homesick and according to her profile, easily scared), so that might well be the reason for her being “useless” during the team efforts, but not doing anything useful (and holding back the team when somebody else also has to watch you) could also have been a decent way to help the werewolf.

Yeah. At first I thought it’s either because he wants to choose randomly, or to keep his deliberate choice secret, but then he openly and deliberately (he tells us why) chose ツバメ’s badge.

But I think it might be for secret deliberate future votes:

今回はしょうがないけど、このままだと誰がどれを取ったのか丸分かりで、すげえ投票しづらい。

So essentially he (for some reason I don’t understand) gives up on doing it secretly this time, but he wants it to be possible in future votes because he considers that less “しづらい”.

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More werewolf musings

ウサギ: I’m mostly operating on meta-knowledge for her because I feel like all the textual evidence for or against her can be red herrings. From a story level, she seems very obvious to be the werewolf because ハヤト is going to protect her no matter what. She could want to get rid of ハヤト because he’s the most likely to catch her if she slips up, but then again since we’ve established that all of the kids remember what happened in camp I feel like even if she was the werewolf, getting rid of her best ally first doesn’t make a lot of sense.

ギュウカク: Honestly right now he feels likely to me, but only because he’s the kid that we probably know the least about. If I had to guess, we spend the next chapter with him quite a bit :joy: That said… I feel like we didn’t hear anything about him once the lights went off and they were running back to their rooms… :thinking:

ツバメ: Seems most obvious right now because she’s the one who got ヤマネ eaten, but that’s still not a ton of evidence.

I had a thought after I wrote my message last night but before I fell asleep that it’s possible that ハヤト doesn’t know he’s the werewolf (having been asleep with the adults got eaten). If we go to exactly what we heard:

「～～～～～～～！！！」
ヤマネの甲高い悲鳴。思わず両手で耳をふさぐ。『何 か』は身をひるがえし、ど たっ、ど たっと階段を下っ て いく。

I’m not saying that it’s super likely that it wasn’t the werewolf there, but it’s not conclusive proof that it’s not-the-werewolf capturing her for ハヤト to devour after he drinks his werewolf water later.

I don’t know where I stand enough on each kid to make a ranking, but these are my current thoughts.

I think this is what threw me. Like, he’s the one making a whole deal about it being better to be secret for #reasons and then he just came out and said who he was voting for. I feel like he could/should have just waited until next time to ask.

Unless he’s the werewolf and he was just playing with his food :wolf:

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Thoughts on chapter

Ok, that was exciting! :sweat_smile:

I’m not 100% clear on the voting and the box disappearing etc, and not quite sure what the point of that was either. Also, was this a secret ballot? Anyway….

ツバメ did not hesitate! Not sure whether that makes her more or less suspicious, but if she is not the werewolf it’s a bit of a weird move. Also, voting off the weakest link (supposedly) so early on might not be the wisest.

ウサギ hasn’t done much this chapter to make herself less suspicious in my books, “nice” of her to send ハヤト into harms way (potentially).

Also, why was ハヤト so keen to save ツバメ?

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The whole table with the box on it disappeared into the floor and moved upstairs to the Count so he can do a dramatic unboxing of the votes.

That’s a good point that I also found odd at the time, but then didn’t think about later.

The only thing I can come up with is that his vote would make it 2:2, so I guess he could feel like he’s not the one actually deciding things in the end? Doesn’t sound like something he’d do though. No idea otherwise. Maybe it’s going to be explained in the next chapter when they have more time to ponder and talk than during the “lights go out and everything is getting spooky real fast” phase.

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Never forget that our count is :sparkles: extra :sparkles:

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Replies

Quite the contraption.

That’s possible. But at the end of the day, they would come to the end of the game faster. Though what would have happened if ツバメ is actually the werewolf? Would the game end?

He sure is….

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Replies

By voting for ツバメ, you mean? Going just by what happened, I wouldn’t have thought her to be any more likely to be the werewolf than ヤマネ , to be honest.

I think ツバメ was just trying to go all rational “if we don’t know who the werewolf is, let’s at least not make the team weaker and vote for a non-useful member”, as cold and misguided as that is. I don’t think that’s a good werewolf move in a game where at least one person will be eaten per voting anyway. If she’s a werewolf, there was absolutely no need to make herself stand out like that. (And equally unnecessary and actively bad for the werewolf: She told ハヤト to get out of harm’s way.)

Yep:

ルール④ 参加者が「狼」の正体を当てた場合、君たち全員が解放される

Also, thinking about it, it says 君たち全員. Not “the ones left” or “the survivors” or anything like that. Huh. I guess it also doesn’t say anywhere that anybody is actually killed, just “eaten”, whatever that actually means.

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comment on replies

This has stuck with me since we got the rules.

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Reply

Not necessarily the werewolf, but they would be down two people already. Ok, then it would be a very short book….

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Wow, what an intense chapter. @.@ It ending with “今夜のゲームは終わりだ。良い夢だ。” was :kissing_smiling_eyes::pinched_fingers:

Replies

Shitsurei. :rofl: But I’m actually kind of in love with the idea that it’s ハヤト somehow unconsciously being the bad guy. As Legato said,

So it’s very possible “eaten” children are simply held captive or eaten by the count himself and the “werewolf” is the designated otherwise-innocent child they have to blindly guess at. Granted, that’s a lot less fun perhaps from the Count’s point of view, since you can’t really have any valid reasoning to puzzle out, just bad feelings amongst the group making decisions.

Count me as another confused reader in the ギュウカク doing his things with the badges bit.

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I thought it might be fun to do a regular poll to see who we think is the werewolf!

After reading this week’s part, I think the werewolf is most likely…

  • ハヤト :eagle:
  • ウサギ :rabbit2:
  • ヤムネ :mouse2:
  • ツバメ :dove:
  • ギュウカク :ox:
0 voters

(To avoid spoilers, this poll will always contain all participants, no matter what happens to them in the book.)

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Rant/overanalysis

I think the Count might actually like the drama of kids arguing and fearing for their life, but it would definitely be less fun from my perspective. Definitely my least favourite version of how this could go.

At first I thought this would be a straight-up mystery/psychological traitor game. One of the children is and has always been a traitor, and will get something out of deceiving everyone in this game. This way we could’ve had lots of drama figuring out who the traitor is from behaviour and (hopefully) actually believable motivations. That doesn’t seem possible though if a child has been “replaced”, and it’s doesn’t seem like there’s a monetary reward or anything either, so no idea what the traitor would be in for.

An alternative that I could see in a non-children’s book would be that all the children are innocent before the game, but one of them is informed and blackmailed by the Count to be a traitor. I.e. “if you don’t win, bad things will happen”. Fits a little with “a child has been replaced”, but seems a bit too dark for a children’s book?

If a child has actually been seemlessly “replaced” as the Count suggested… I guess it’s rather likely to actually be supernatural? From a game/mystery standpoint that feels a little bit like a downgrade for me, especially since it muddies the waters a lot on how exactly you could figure out who the werewolf is (just behaviour I guess, if the werewolf is kind of dumb?), but hey, still exciting.

But if there’s no actual traitor, i.e. the traitor has no idea even that they are the traitor, and the only way to figure out the traitor is just guessing right by pure coincidence during the vote (as the Count seemed to suggest in this chapter), there’s isn’t even any behaviour to look out for. Seems like a pretty lousy game to be honest. 1/5 stars, would not play again.

And it kind of reminds me of an equally lousy joke variant of The Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow that is actually part of the rulebook: The Black Death. The game is played as usual, with the moderator seemingly waking up the werewolves at night to choose a vicitim, except there are no actual werewolves and the moderator is just choosing who to kill themselves.

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Digression

Wouldn’t players know something was going on if they woke up one turn but not the next? :thinking:

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Overanalysis

I’m really hoping that this is not going to go down like this, I would be super disappointed. Ok, I know it’s a children’s book, but still. But at this point I don’t really have a better guess. Maybe we are completely hoodwinked and one of the kids is in on the whole thing.

I’m kind of wondering how the villagers from the preamble will connect to the story. Maybe one of the kids is the decendent from one of the people from there? And that kid would be the traitor/werewolf? Or maybe there is no connection and that was just a quick setting the scene story?

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I don’t understand why they don’t just all go into the same room together. I mean, I guess cause they think then they’ll all get eaten. But they would also know who the werewolf was! :joy:

I mostly don’t get why Hayato voted for mouse-girl … there seemed to be genuinely no rationale there?

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Digression

The game always goes like this:

  • Everyone sits in a circle.
  • Night:
    • Moderator: “Everyone, close your eyes.”
    • Moderator: “Werewolves, open your eyes and point to who you want to kill tonight.”
    • Werewolves choose who to kill by pointing.
    • Moderator: “Werewolves, close your eyes.”
    • [Additional roles are called one by one if they are part of the game.]
    • Moderator: “Everyone, open your eyes. Everyone… except X, who was killed tonight.”
  • Day:
    • People discuss, vote who to execute as a werewolf, moderator tells everyone if the person they voted for was a werewolf or a villager.
    • Back to the night.

In The Black Death, the only difference is that in the night, “Werewolves choose who to kill by pointing.” is replaced by “Moderator chooses who to kill.” The game flow is exactly the same from a non-werewolf villager perspective.

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Re: Overanalysis

I’ve been thinking about that a lot after last week’s reading. It is heavily implied that a literal werewolf is going to be in the group.

Also, if this is true, from a biological perspective, a werewolf’s metabolism must be crazy because they’re eating whatever food the kids eat plus an entire child every day? :joy:

This is actually kinda a good point. I don’t remember the minutia of the rules but maybe it’s in there?

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