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
Country of Day Rotation
Sato
Fukunaga
Tsunoda
Eda
Akiyama
Kikuzawa
Kanzaki
Kitamura
Fujita
As punishment, Kikuzawa-san was removed from the smuggler rotation
for a single round of play.
It didn't feel like everyone had completely forgiven him yet,
but something was about to happen to make that immaterial.
Doubt... 100 million!
The inspector calls "doubt"!
And what do we have?!
That's 100 million!
Hell yes!
The Country of Day team intercepts 100 million in contraband!
Amazing work!
Fukunaga-san, what strategy did you use?
Strategy? I didn't have one.
If I had to say, I'd call it...
stubbornness.
When you look back at our group...
Pass\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\hEmpty
100 million\h\h\hDoubt 100 million
+100 million
Doubt 50 million\h\h\h\h\h\h\hEmpty
+25 million
100 million\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\hPass
+100 million
+50.1 million
Doubt 50.01 million 50.01 million
Empty\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\hPass
Doubt 50.02 million 50.02 million
{\fnArial Black\fnArial\fs12\shad0\bord1\c&H000000&\move(120.666,370.667,120.666,96.667,1,2050)\3c&HF6F5F3&}+50.02 million
{\fnArial Black\fnArial\fs12\shad0\bord1\c&H000000&\move(120.666,370.667,120.666,226.667,1,1340)\3c&HF6F5F3&}+90.01 million
Doubt 90.01 million 90.01 million
Akiyama's the only one who's called doubt so far.
They were bound to have noticed.
They'd think nobody here's willing to call doubt except him.
I wanted to change that assumption, so I decided to go for it even if I lost.
Being too scared to do anything would play into Yokoya's hands, right?
Fukunaga-san...
According to the rotation chart, Fukunaga-san is our next smuggler, too.
Sure.
Hey, the next inspector isn't Yokoya.
Of course not.
He can't use his little scheme with Kikuzawa anymore.
So, how much will you smuggle?
A hundred million, of course.
Fukunaga-san took the fight to them.
The result...
Pass.
And what's inside the trunk?!
It's 100 million!
Hell yeah!
Pass\h\h\h\h\h\h\hEmpty
Empty\h\h\h\h\h\h\hPass
-45.555 million Doubt 91.11 million 91.12 million +45.555 million +91.12 million
100 million\h\h\h\h\h\hDoubt 100 million +100 million
Pass\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h100 million +100 million
+419.485 million\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h+751.675 million
The Country of Day team added a quick 200 million.
For the first time in the game, we took the lead from the Country of Night.
All right!
We're winning, you guys!
That Yokoya guy's not so hot!
It's good to see the Country of Day doing so well.
No.
This is a very bad turn for them.
That was huge, right?
We can totally do this.
Huh?
Where's Akiyama-san?
Akiyama-san, what are you doing?
Checking in on the Country of Night.
Yokoya hasn't appeared in the inspection room since the Kikuzawa incident.
But I'm sure he'll make his next move soon enough.
Oh, right. It's time for our meeting.
Who's the next smuggler?
Tsunoda-san.
But...
the meeting's already over.
It is?
So, how much is Tsunoda going to smuggle?
I don't know.
What in the world?
Isn't the point of the meetings to determine what the smuggler carries?
Well...
Akiyama's not here yet, but should we decide on the next contraband?
I've been thinking.
Maybe we should let the smuggler make their own call for a while?
The hell?!
Look, we're 300 million in the lead right now, right?
I think it's best to be careful and protect that.
I think that's a good idea!
Me, too.
You're such a bunch of hopeless chickens!
I'm not saying we shouldn't carry money.
Just let people decide for themselves whether they want to or not...
I'll carry some!
If I think the timing's good...
But we're already winning, so we want be cautious! That's all!
We wanna protect the lead you earned us, Fukunaga!
We're being considerate, y'know?
And everyone agreed to that?
Everyone except Fukunaga-san.
Under those conditions, nobody's going to risk carrying money.
He was right.
Pass.
You stupid assholes!
Things remained at an impasse during our inspection turns, too.
{\fad(520,1)\fnArial Black\fs12\shad0\bord0\c&H1A1A1A&\frz9.462\frx15\fry0\move(75.979,174.698,30.312,-46.413)}Round 14
{\fad(520,1)\fnArial Black\fs16\an1\shad0\c&H1A1A1A&\frz9.462\fry0\3c&HFFFFFF&\move(259.693,180.417,213.693,-25.725)}Pass\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h100 million\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h+100 million
{\fad(520,1)\fnArial Black\fs14\shad0\bord0\c&H1A1A1A&\frx15\fry0\frz11.13\move(96.667,371.334,10.312,-36.413)}Round 15
{\fax-.1\fnArial Black\fs16\shad0\bord1\c&H1A1A1A&\frz15.16\move(101.619,380,49.333,140,1,1510)\3c&HE4E4E4&}Round 16
{\fad(520,1)\fnArial Black\fs16\shad0\c&H1A1A1A&\frz9.462\fry0\3c&HFFFFFF&)\move(348.001,232.667,290.287,-30.19)}Empty\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\hPass
{\fad(520,1)\fnArial Black\fs16\shad0\c&H1A1A1A&\fry0\3c&HFFFFFF&\frz11.91\move(396.667,423.334,310,-9.809)}Pass\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\hEmpty Empty\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\hPass
Pass\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\hEmpty Empty\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\h\hPass
That saw us through round sixteen.
Well done, all of you!
This concludes the first day of the game.
You have the following totals in your third-country accounts:
Third-Country Bank Accounts
Country of Night
1.319485 billion yen
1.651675 billion yen
Country of Day
The Country of Day is currently in the lead!
Yeah!
But do not celebrate or relax just yet.
This is merely the result after sixteen rounds.
Only after all fifty have been played
will the team with more money in their third country be declared the winner.
Now, the hour has grown late.
I encourage you to sleep well tonight.
We will resume the game at 9 AM tomorrow!
This is bad.
Can you gather the others for a talk?
S-Sure.
What's this all about?
I'm tired, man.
I want to make sure we're on the same page about what the Contraband Game is.
What do you want to accomplish in this game?
Whaddya think?
We wanna win and make money.
Do you want to win, or do you want to make money?
That's a weird thing to say.
We want both. We can't make any money unless we win.
I knew it...
You have fundamentally misunderstood this game.
Think back to the rules as they were explained.
Let's see...
To concisely explain the Contraband Game,
we're taking money from an enemy ATM
and putting it through an inspection with them
so we can evacuate it to our third-country account.
Right?
Yes.
And after fifty rounds,
the team with more money in their third-country account is the winner.
But smuggling isn't the only way to put money in your account.
You can also intercept contraband as an inspector,
or make an inspector doubt you erroneously to earn compensation from them.
We know all that.
Sounds like we're perfectly on the same page.
Then let me ask you this...
Does the team with more money in their third-country account make a profit?
Of course they do!
No, wait...
When the game's over, we don't just get the money in our third-country account.
Country of Night Account
Country of Day Account
{\bord1.5\an3\fnArial Black\fs10\shad0\c&H000000&\3c&HFFFFFF&\t(5730,12000,\fs12)\move(506.533,146.667,448.533,135.334,5730,12000)}2.7 billion
{\bord1.5\an3\fnArial Black\fs10\shad0\c&H000000&\3c&HFFFFFF&\move(507.2,295.334,446.533,327.334,5730,12000)\t(5730,12000,\fs12)}2.7 billion
900 million
Third Country
Country of Day
Country of Night
We get that plus what's in our country's ATM.
At the end of the game,
each country divvies up whatever their opponent has left in the ATM.
We ignore this fact at our peril.
Say the Country of Day smuggles 500 mil
and confiscates 1.5 billion as inspectors,
Country of Night Account
900 million
1.4 billion
2.9 billion
Country of Day Account
900 million
3.6 billion
2.1 billion
Third Country
Country of Day
Country of Night
{\fad(1,90)\an8\fs10\fnArial Black\shad0\c&H000000&\3c&HFFFFFF&\move(434,145.333,208.933,292.533,420,1320)}500 million
{\fad(250,90)\an8\fs10\fnArial Black\shad0\c&H000000&\3c&HFFFFFF&\move(426.857,275.143,216.571,133.429,666,1540)}2.7 billion
{\fad(130,90)\an8\fs10\bord1\fnArial Black\shad1.5\c&HDD5512&\3c&HFFFFFF&\pos(123.429,259.214)\4c&H4A4D4C&}+500 million
+1.5 billion
while the Country of Night smuggles 2.7 billion and gets 1.5 billion confiscated.
{\fad(130,90)\an9\fs10\bord1\fnArial Black\shad1.5\c&HDD5512&\3c&HFFFFFF&\4c&H4A4D4C&\pos(145.714,107.214)}+2.7 billion
{\fad(130,1)\an8\fs10\bord1\fnArial Black\shad1.5\c&H1511AF&\3c&HFFFFFF&\4c&H4A4D4C&\pos(133.142,151.785)}-1.5 billion
How does the game work out?
The Country of Day wins by a landslide.
But remember...
At the end of the game, any remaining money gets distributed to the other team.
500 million
Country of Night
The Country of Day only moved 500 million,
which means they left 2.2 billion in the other country's ATM.
Remaining 2.2 billion
That now belongs to the Country of Night.
2.7 billion
Country of Day
Remaining
Meanwhile, the Country of Night smuggled 2.7 billion and left nothing in the ATM.
The Country of Day doesn't get a yen.
How much does each team have when all is said and done?
Um...
Country of Night
{\fnArial Black\shad1\bord1\fs12\fad(730,1)\3c&H181818&\4c&H181818&\move(157.141,57.428,-107.141,57.428,2380,5720)}Third-Country Account\h\h\hCountry of Night ATM
Country of Day
{\fnArial Black\shad1\bord1\fs12\fad(730,1)\3c&H181818&\4c&H181818&\move(157.141,227.428,-107.141,227.428,2380,5720)}Third-Country Account\h\h\hCountry of Day ATM
Both teams were lent 3.6 billion at the start, so once we pay that back...
Repaid
The Country of Night ends up 700 million in the black,
while the Country of Day is 700 million in the red.
Funny, isn't it?
The Country of Night loses, but they get to walk away with 700 million to split.
Meanwhile, the Country of Day wins
but has to keep playing the Liar Game, 700 million deeper in debt.
I'll return to my original question.
What do you want to accomplish?
Do you really want to win?
You don't, do you?
The ideal outcome of the game is losing while making a profit.
I didn't even realize...
Knock it off, Akiyama.
You used a really extreme example to scare us, right?
It's not extreme at all.
Turn 1
Country of Day
Country of Night
Third-Country Account
ATM Total
1.910000 billion
ATM Total
Third-Country Account
ATM Total
2.318840 billion
yen
900 million
2.7 million
1.651675 billion
1.319485 billion
1.910000 billion
2.318840 billion
We just finished the sixteenth round.
Turn 16
We're dominating in terms of score,
but we have 2.3 billion left in their ATM.
They only have 1.9 billion in ours.
If the game were called now, the Country of Day's winnings
would fall nearly 40 million short of repaying the 3.6 billion we were lent.
We'd win but wind up in the red.
You mean Yokoya's...
Yes, I think that is the exact scenario Yokoya is going for.
And the Country of Night is getting closer and closer to the ideal outcome.
This is a wake-up call.
This is no time to rest on your laurels.
As of this moment, we're losing the game.
Next Time
Secret Plan