Minority Rule?
What?
I've never heard of that before.
Allow me to explain.
First, you will be presented with a binary question.
Each player will cast a vote of either "yes" or "no" to answer.
Once the votes are tallied, the answer that receives fewer votes wins.
The winners will move on to the next vote.
The losers will be eliminated from the game,
at which point they must return their 100 million yen and leave.
In the event of a tie, the vote will be repeated.
Voting will then continue in this manner
until either one or two players remain.
At that juncture, there can no longer be a minority,
so the game will conclude.
The prize money will be paid out from the initial pool:
2.1 billion in the event of one winner,
and one billion each in the event of two.
One billion each?
It's fixed!
There are plants from the LGT Office in the crowd,
and they're gonna rig it so the rest of us can't win!
Right?!
How could we possibly do that?
If this were "Majority Rule,"
we could ensure victory by having over half of the participants be plants.
But this is "Minority Rule."
There is no way for us to rig that.
What are you after?
What's the purpose of running this game?
We wish to choose the true Liar King.
That is all.
Minority Rule
In this world, some are willing to pay vast sums of money for "genius liars."
The Liar Game is funded by such people.
I cannot give their names, but the LGT Office does not cheat.
We have no reason to.
Now, I'm sure you're all hungry.
We have prepared dinner for you.
A sumptuous banquet was rolled out before us.
But the game to come would leave nearly all of us 100 million in debt.
Hardly a situation to whet the appetite.
The only people eating as if nothing were wrong
were Akiyama-san and one other...
A man in sunglasses who wore the number 15.
You're not going to eat?
I don't know how you can in these circumstances...
The battle ahead of us won't be easy.
You need to keep up your strength.
The battle ahead of us...
That reminds me!
How did you get in here, Akiyama-san?
You weren't invited, were you?
I could ask you a similar question.
I told you to ignore this, so why are you here?
W-Well...
I came here to stop you, but I was too late.
By the time I arrived, you were already inside.
I wandered around for a while, considering my options,
and then I ran into a woman.
What's wrong?
I... I don't know what to do.
Are you a Liar Game participant?
Y-Yes...
She told me she'd stolen the entire 100 million yen
from her opponent in the first round.
She didn't go into particulars, but she said she was racked with guilt
and had come to return the entire sum to the tournament office.
She's said as much to the agent who came to greet her,
before giving him a check for 100 million yen and dropping out...
Or so she thought.
"So she thought"?
She didn't actually drop out,
because the agent who took her check was fake.
In reality, he was another participant in the game.
She didn't realize this until a real official explained the situation.
We all wear these masks.
Anyone who entered the mansion earlier was a player.
It was already too late.
In the blink of an eye, she'd lost her chance to drop out.
So I offered to fight in her place
on the condition that I would take both the prize and the liability.
The office accepts anyone as a participant so long as they have an invitation.
Hence...
Michiko Takata
Your name...
So even though I came here to stop you, I wound up drawn into the game myself.
I-I'm so sorry.
Now that we're here, we'll just have to win and get out.
You got that?
I was happy to see him, but more than anything...
I was relieved.
We will now showcase a rehearsal for the game.
Please, come this way.
I will once again explain the rules of the game.
First, a questioner will be chosen via lottery.
Number 18, if you please.
M-Me?
You may ask anything at all.
However, the question you pick
must be answerable with either "yes" or "no."
Now, come up to the stage.
This is but practice, so you've nothing to fear.
W-Well, then...
A-Are you a woman?
There. We have our question.
"Are you a woman?"
Please submit your answers using the slips we handed out earlier.
Each slip contains your player number and either "yes" or "no."
If you wish to vote in the affirmative, please place your "yes" slip in the box.
In order to prevent cheating, you will not be writing your answers.
This is to stop players from voting in anyone else's name.
After a question is posed, you will be given time to think.
Precisely six hours.
Six whole hours?
Why so long?
You may vote immediately if you wish,
or you may wait until just before the time limit.
Should you fail to vote within six hours, however, you will be disqualified.
Caution is advised.
This round is merely a rehearsal, so the time limit will be ten minutes.
Now, begin.
Which should I do? I'm a woman...
But this is Minority Rule.
Um...
There are only six women here, including me.
Fantastic! I'm in the minority!
This might be easier than I thought.
Time is up. We shall now tally the votes.
Number 5: "Yes."
Number 11: "No."
Number 19: "Yes."
The votes were counted monotonously...
But I was shocked by the result.
In the end, fifteen voted "yes" and seven "no."
In other words, the answer of "I am a man" was the minority.
How did men end up in the minority?
You voted that you were a man, didn't you?
I voted "woman."
I mean, there are obviously more men, so I thought I'd get ahead of it...
The object of the game is to try to be in the minority.
The accuracy of your answer is irrelevant.
This is how the Liar Game works.
The question posed by the asker is a mere formality.
What matters is getting yourself into the minority.
How well can you fool others into joining the majority?
Minority Rule is about strategy—about feeling out your opponent's intentions.
That is why you are given six hours before the vote.
This game has incredible depth.
If you read others and strategize perfectly, you can secure a vote of 21-1.
It is possible to win the game in a single round of voting.
The critical factor to seizing control of the game...
is time!
So much that it feels like too much!
The one who can best control time will be the winner of Minority Rule!
It is inevitable.
This now concludes our rehearsal.
E-Excuse me.
Won't we be able to go home today?
The real game begins tomorrow.
Two rounds will be held per day.
We must ask that you all stay the night.
Your stay here will be all-expenses-paid,
so please make yourselves comfortable.
However, should any of you feel you absolutely must leave,
we will not stop you.
You are free to do so.
There was no way anyone was leaving.
He said the game wouldn't start officially until the next day,
but we'd already been given our 100 million yen.
In other words, the game was already in progress.
Anyone who left would be judged as having forfeited
and saddled with a debt of 100 million yen.
Kanzaki-sama, this is your room.
It's so fancy...
We will fetch you one hour before the game begins.
Make yourself at home.
What do I do?
Is there a clear way to win at Minority Rule?
The one who can best control time will be the winner of Minority Rule!
So it's about how we use our time?
Spend six hours finding out whether each player is voting yes or no
I could spend my six hours finding out whether each player's voting yes or no!
No, I can't do that. They'd trick me for sure.
What should I do? What should I do?
Stay by the voting box and peek at the votes
I could stay by the voting box and peek at their votes!
No, there's no way that would work...
I know!
Gather allies to create a majority
I can gather allies and create a majority!
No, this is Minority Rule...
You can't win unless you're in the minority.
I don't know what to do!
What do I do?
Am I... going to lose?
No, no, no!
Someone help me!
Someone, help me! Akiyama-san!
Help me!
Akiyama-san!
It's me! It's Nao!
Are you there?! Akiyama-san!
Where are you?!
I ran all through the hotel looking for Akiyama-san.
And then, I stumbled upon...
where many of the players had gathered.
Perhaps like me, they were unable to contain their anxiety.
Akiyama-san!
I can't think of a way to win this game!
At this rate, I...
Quit crying.
If you want to survive, the first rule is not to cry.
The second is to know your enemy.
Know your enemy?
There are fourteen players in this lobby right now.
Interact with as many of them as you can.
Learn their personalities and circumstances.
That's where you should start.
Everyone there was behaving differently.
Some were talking. Some stuck to the wall, observing others.
Some ignored me when I tried to talk to them,
while others spoke to me with abandon.
Fumio Matsubara, age 57 Ironworks Manager
I run a small factory. It's deep in debt.
We were genuinely considering family suicide
when I received the Liar Game invitation.
I won 20 million in the first round and used it to pay off over half of my debt.
But then came the second round,
and they said I'd need to pay ten million to drop out...
I'd already spent the money paying back my debt!
How was I supposed to come up with more?
Takayoshi Miura, age 25 Part-Timer
I won just by stealing two of those million-yen stacks.
You didn't want to drop out?
Never even crossed my mind.
I figured the second round would be easy money, too.
But can you believe this bullshit game?
A hundred million in debt if we blow it?
They fleeced us for sure.
Hey, whaddya think happens if we lose here?
I mean, I don't really know...
This org is shady as hell, man.
You just know they've got human trafficking connections.
They're gonna sell us!
You're young and pretty, so you'd fetch good money, I bet.
O-Oh my goodness!
How did it go?
Most of the people here ended up
in the Liar Game due to money problems.
I see.
And most of them won their first-round game with ease,
so they thought they could win the second just as easily.
No one was expecting the second-round game to leave almost all of us
100 million yen in debt.
Good work.
You can get some rest and prepare for tomorrow.
Um, I...
Am I going to be sold?
Will I be sold to some other country,
never to see my father again?
Quit crying. Tears won't solve anything.
But...
Don't worry. You're not going to lose.
There's a foolproof strategy to win this game.
A foolproof strategy? What is it?!
We can't talk here. Let's go to my room.
What would you count as "winning" this game?
You survive to the end and get the 2.1 billion, right?
But if two people remain, you only win half of that.
Would that be losing?
That's still a huge victory! You still get a billion yen!
So what if we dropped that all the way down to forty million?
Down to forty million? That's still a lot of money.
It'd still be a big win.
If they'd let me drop out, I wouldn't even ask for a single yen.
I'll get straight to the point.
My foolproof strategy won't win us 100 million, let alone a billion.
But 40 million, I can guarantee.
Is that really possible?
Yes. We'll form a team.
I thought about that myself.
But the minority has power in this game.
You can't win by building a team.
I'm not talking about forming a majority.
I'm talking about using a team to make minorities.
A team to make minorities?
First, we'll need a team of eight people.
Then we'll need them all to act in a prescribed manner.
We start the Minority Rule game with 22 players.
In the first round, four from our team will vote yes and four will vote no.
There's no way to know how the other fourteen will vote,
but what would the turnout be in the case of the closest possible vote?
Um...
If they split evenly into sevens,
we'd have to redo the vote,
so six against eight would be the closest possible scenario.
Correct.
Of the ten that remain, four will be members of our team.
In the next vote, we'll once again split up evenly, this time in pairs.
What's the closest vote there?
There'd be six people left,
so two against four.
Correct.
The following round, we'll have one player each vote yes and no.
What happens then?
If the rest split up, they'd have to revote...
So to be final, it would have to be zero against two.
We'd win!
Someone on our team would win for sure!
The final winner will pay half of the 2.1 billion to drop out,
leaving them with 1.05 billion.
After paying back the buy-in for their seven eliminated teammates,
they'd have 350 million remaining.
And if that were split evenly among all eight?
Let's see... That'd be 43.75 million each?
What?!
You could win forty million yen and still drop out!
That's amazing! It's just amazing!
It really is foolproof! You're amazing, Akiyama-san!
Settle down.
The plan still isn't without its issues.
For instance, there's how I ended up here in the first place.
The fact that a player stole 100 million yen from someone?
Yes. Let's call the culprit "X."
We must distinguish X from the other players.
What makes them a danger is that they have that check for 100 million yen.
Anyone who loses here lands themselves 100 million in debt.
But X could pay that off with their check.
In other words, they're the one who doesn't have to be afraid of losing.
My plan requires eight people who will vote in an agreed-upon way
and who will split the prize with the team if they make it.
There is no room for betrayal.
Therefore, no matter what happens,
we cannot allow X to join our team.
But what is this "X" person even like?
The victim said it happened so fast, she didn't remember a thing.
Only that it was a young man.
And there are so many young men here...
Wait, but that's good!
Akiyama-san, we can make a team!
One that definitely won't have X in it!
There are five women here besides me!
We can form a team with them!
That's five women, plus us for a total of seven.
We're one person short.
That's okay!
There's the man with the factory!
He's obviously not a young man!
That makes eight! We have our team!
Well, true enough.
I'll go back to the lobby and talk to them!
Hey, wait a minute!
One Hour Later
Akiyama-san, I've brought everyone!
All six of them!
Are you serious? You actually got them all to come?
Well, she did cry and grovel and whine, "I'll die if you don't come!"
You'll die? You cried and groveled?
I mean, this is no time to worry about appearances, right?
Right.
We don't have time to hesitate.
We'll have to proceed with this team.
All right. Let's execute the plan.
Next Time
Alliance