LIAR GAME

Dictatorship

He kept you... under his thumb?

Well, it wasn't just me.

Yokoya had our entire school under his control.

I was in my third year there when he showed up.

We have a new student with us today.

Meet Yokoya-kun.

The second I saw him, my instincts told me...

"This guy's gonna get bullied."

All right, Yokoya-kun.

Go sit next to Kikuzawa in the back.

Yes, sir.

This guy's kinda freaky.

Pardon me.

May I ask who controls this school?

Controls...?

Is he afraid of being bullied?

Sasaki and Kinoshita from Class B, Sunao in Class C, Ishihara in Class D...

You're gonna wanna keep off their radar if you can.

Understood.

Your help is much appreciated.

H-Hang on, man!

Why'd you bring a mouse to school?!

Sorry to startle you.

I just love mice.

They're like the physical embodiment of subservience.

They let me enjoy the feeling of being in control.

The hell's he going on about?

Hey, Kikuzawa.

Heard you got a transfer student in your class.

Yeah, he's a weird little guy.

Don't go too hard on him, okay?

Yeah, right. Who'd bother with a pipsqueak like that?

I actually know that guy.

He's the son of some big-shot CEO.

Oh? A rich kid, huh?

Maybe I'll pay him a visit after all.

Yokoya-kun, I hear your family's loaded.

How about you spread some of that love around?

Was that meant to be a threat?

I'm afraid I don't have any money on me.

The hell you don't!

Lookie here!

Give that back!

One, two, three...

Whoa, this guy's packing a hundred grand!

Please stop!

I need that to buy a uniform after class!

Shaddap!

Get back here!

The hell just happened?!

You fell right into my trap, you fools.

I suspected you might come after me, so I prepared a photographer.

I'll be filing a report with the police promptly.

Th-The police?

You'll officially have a criminal record.

Your last year of high school and you're threatening extortion...

That's the kind of rap that could ruin a person's life.

You bastard!

You want to hit me? Go right ahead.

That would look fantastic on a medical report.

That said, I have no desire for us to be enemies.

Join me, and I won't turn you in to the police.

In fact, I'll give you all of this money here.

So? Will you join me?

Or...

would you rather be enemies?

In just two days, Yokoya had Sasaki's crew totally at his beck and call.

In other words, he was effectively the top dog in school.

And to make sure he went unchallenged, he set up a strict hierarchy.

Every student was given a rank from A to E.

Yokoya himself was the exclusive holder of rank A,

while Sasaki's group occupied the B ranks.

The rankings were absolute.

Anyone who defied them got a violent beating from Sasaki and company.

I happened to be out of school for a week while this was all going down.

By the time I came back, it was like a different world.

Hey, Tanaka, been a while.

I finally beat that damn cold I had.

So how are things going with that Yokoya kid?

Getting bullied to hell and back, right?

The hell are you doing?!

Don't insult Yokoya-san in front of me!

Yokoya-san?

Anyway, you're rank D.

You'd better watch how you talk to a C-ranker like me.

School was absolutely brutal that year.

The people in the lowest rank, E, were basically slaves.

Everyone was desperate to move up in rank.

But the only way to do that was either to pay off someone in rank B

or find and snitch on people who talked shit about Yokoya.

Lying, violence, betrayal, scheming...

That's all it was, day in and day out.

I sold out a ton of my friends. It was to protect myself, but still...

At the end of the day, there was no one at school I could trust.

They paid off the teachers,

and as the school fell to pieces under his reign of terror...

Yokoya just watched it all, happy as could be.

But then there was a shift.

That fall, four months before graduation, Yokoya suddenly transferred away.

"So things went back to normal with him gone?"

That's what you'd think, right?

But all we got was a power vacuum and a struggle to fill it.

The school was pandemonium.

He'd given them a taste of what power looked like, and it made them all crazy.

I was no exception.

Yokoya knew that, so when he saw me in the inspection room after all that time,

he said to me...

Kikuzawa.

Work with me, and you can rule the Country of Day.

What do you say?

I didn't even need ten minutes to make up my mind.

Kikuzawa-san...

I think...

No, I'm sure of it.

Yokoya's got the Country of Night completely under his control.

The Country of Night is Yokoya's dictatorship.

That's all I can tell you.

All right, then...

What should we do with this traitor?

To start...

I want ten clean shots at his face.

Fukunaga-san!

C'mon, that's just the baseline.

You got off easy, Fukunaga.

That bastard worked me like a slave!

I want twenty clean shots.

Me, too!

Yeah! Me, too!

W-Wait a minute!

I understand how you all feel.

Kikuzawa-san did betray us.

But the fact that Akiyama-san saw through his scheme and outsmarted him

has put our team slightly ahead.

What's that got to do with it?

I have a proposal.

Let's take the prize money he earned by betraying us,

all 290 million, and divide it among the rest of us.

Kikuzawa-san, please promise to distribute your winnings.

S-Sure.

With that, I'd like to ask the rest of you to let this go.

What?!

That jerk used me as a footstool!

Hearing Kikuzawa-san's story made me realize...

Yokoya-san must be extremely intelligent.

Even I can tell that much.

What I mean is that he's smart enough to know we would figure out

that Kikuzawa-san was working with him.

We're talking about someone who could take complete control

of a school within two days of transferring there.

I don't think he'd pin everything on the assumption that his first plan would work.

Don't you agree?

Yeah, that's true...

So I think if we let Kikuzawa-san's betrayal fracture our team,

we'll be playing into Yokoya-san's hands.

You think this is part of Yokoya's strategy?

I do.

You said it yourself, Kikuzawa-san.

The Country of Night is Yokoya-san's dictatorship.

In other words, they're united.

If we beat up Kikuzawa-san and isolate him, he might betray us again.

This is a team game.

We'll lose if we're divided!

Well, Kikuzawa pisses me off, but Yokoya pisses me off more.

Fukunaga-san...

I'm pissed off, too,

but give us all the money you confiscated and I'll call us square.

Me, too.

Yeah, same.

Thank you so much!

Kikuzawa-san.

They've agreed to my terms and forgiven you.

Please don't forget what they've done for you.

Oho. Nao Kanzaki has stopped the fraying of the Country of Day team.

She truly is an interesting one.

But Yokoya has already taken his next steps.

They'd better stop him soon, or they'll certainly regret it.

The money Kikuzawa-san stole

was divided evenly among the other eight team members.

290,000,000

yen

36.25 million yen

36.25 million yen

36.25 million yen

36.25 million yen

36.25 million yen

36.25 million yen

36.25 million yen

36.25 million yen

Country of Day Rotation

Sato

Fukunaga

Tsunoda

Eda

Akiyama

Kikuzawa

Kanzaki

Kitamura

Fujita

As punishment, Kikuzawa-san was removed from the smuggler rotation