LIAR GAME

The game in which you'll all be participating.

It is called...

The Downsizing Game!

Of the nine players present, whoever is downsized will be the loser.

The remaining eight will be winners.

Could she be...

There'll be eight winners?

Hang on a minute!

That's not what we signed up for!

I beg your pardon?

Everyone here lost the second-round game!

We're at least 100 million in the hole!

We were told we could wipe our debts clean if we came here!

That description is not incorrect.

The hell it's not!

Is there a prize or isn't there?!

The loser will be forced to surrender 100 million yen.

That 100 million will be split among the eight winners.

That is the prize.

So we'd only get 12.5 million each?

That's barely a drop in the bucket!

You are mistaken.

The prize is not the only way to make money in this game.

As you can see, the venue is barren.

Neither food nor drinking water are available.

To survive this game, you will find yourselves needing various things.

You may use your M Tickets to purchase these things.

For instance, let us say you are desperate for a drink of water.

Another player offers it to you for 500 yen.

You agree to this deal.

At this time, both buyer and seller will write

the terms of their exchange and the arranged price on their M Tickets.

A tournament official will certify them, thus completing the trade.

Anyone who fails to fulfill their part of such a deal

will be issued a penalty of 100 million yen.

Those who find the prize insufficient need only sell what they can to earn more.

You can buy or sell absolutely anything with M Tickets.

They did mention that on the invitation...

That we could bring anything in with us.

I didn't bring anything anyone would want to buy.

There's not a damn thing we could bring that'd fetch hundreds of millions!

Damn it all!

All will become clear once the game begins.

The most unexpected things may fetch a high price indeed.

Now, allow me to move on to an explanation of the game.

This is an L Ticket.

It is a ballot slip with five spaces for names.

In these spaces,

you will write the names of players you wish to see move on to the third game.

You may write the same name five times if you wish.

However, you may not write your own name,

nor may you write ineligible names.

You will vote once per hour, for a total of ten times.

Then, once the voting is complete,

the player with the fewest votes will be downsized.

They will be declared the loser.

Now, let the game begin!

The first vote will take place three hours from now.

Even if I won, I'd still only earn 12.5 million...

That's not nearly enough to save Akiyama-san.

And these M Tickets...

Will I really find a way to utilize them before the game ends?

Plus, there's one other thing I don't understand.

Everyone here seems so strangely calm.

It's as if they all feel assured of their victory...

Heya, Nao-chan.

Need a drink?

Miura-san?

I've got a whole selection!

There's mineral water, there's ginger ale...

All the vending machines here are busted.

N-Not at the moment.

Sheesh.

I'm not gonna earn squat with these M Tickets.

Um, can I ask why you seem so calm?

You and everyone else here...

Why d'you think?

We all know who's gonna lose.

Fukunaga's getting downsized hard.

Everyone agrees on that.

The eight of us here besides you...

We were all in the same group for the second game.

Oh, that's right!

And you probably know that every last one of us ended up 100 mil in the red.

I'd like to do a whole lot more than just see that little weasel lose.

I'd dish out a whole bloody beating if I could.

I see it now. They're all clearly avoiding Fukunaga-san.

I get it. If I were in their shoes...

Okay, everyone. Listen up.

We have three whole hours before the vote.

To kill time before then...

How about we hold a little pitch meeting?

Pitch meeting? The hell?

So that we can all make our case.

About how much we want to win.

Take your little schemes and shove 'em!

You're not changing what we've all agreed on!

That you're going down!

Perfectly fine by me.

Don't go getting the wrong idea.

I'm genuinely just trying to kill time.

I'm fully aware that I'm walking out of here a loser.

But what about the rest of you?

Come the third game, you'll be back to fighting each other.

When that happens, you'll need to figure out who to cut loose.

You should use this time to consider it...

"Who's on the chopping block after her?"

Yeah, I guess.

Not like we have much else to do for three hours.

And so the pitch meeting began.

Everyone had their reasons for wanting to win.

"I'll never reach my dream if I go bankrupt."

"It'll upset my parents."

Everyone made a desperate pitch in the hopes of their own survival.

And when my turn came...

May I ask a question?

What exactly are you doing here?

What do you mean? A tournament official came by...

You know that's not what I mean.

How deep in debt are you again?

I'm not in any debt.

What? No debt at all?!

She's not...

...in debt?

Wait, are you telling me you won big in the second game?

Yes.

But you knew that, didn't you?

Hey, everyone, did you hear that?!

She's not like us at all!

Not only is she not in debt, but she made bank in the second game!

In that instant...

I could tell that the way they looked at me changed.

That's all I needed to know.

I can't wait to hear why you're playing,

even though you're already swimming in cash.

Go on, make your pitch!

I was trapped.

Fukunaga-san had planned this all out.

The feeling in the hall, united against her up to that point...

suddenly turned against me instead.

You've become the odd woman out, Nao.

Fukunaga-san!

You tricked me, didn't you?!

I most certainly did.

But not just you.

I tricked everyone else, too!

Wh-What do you mean?

All of that was just a feint.

I've cleared a guaranteed path to victory for us.

Did you say... "us"?

There's a surefire way to win this game.

If the vote were about who to downsize,

either you or I would inevitably lose.

But that's not how the game works.

We vote for who, besides ourselves, we'd like to see go on to the third game,

and the person with the fewest votes gets downsized.

Right...

Which makes it simple.

You and I need only vote for each other.

I'll write your name in all five slots on my L Tickets.

In exchange, you do the same for me.

How many votes will that earn us?

Ten rounds of five votes each...

Fifty votes.

Exactly.

And in this game, once you have fifty votes, it's impossible to lose.

There are nine players here, each with fifty votes to spend.

That's 450 votes available.

You and I guarantee each other fifty votes.

For us to be at the bottom,