Akari let out the breath trapped in her chest all at once, almost choking on her own anger.
This was not merely a provocation aimed at the heroine, Shiori Saitō.
It was a provocation aimed directly at everyone watching the series.
Who on earth had cast that mushroom-haired bastard in the role? How could someone be so disgusting, so irritating, so utterly unbearable?
On the screen, Mushroom Head laughed with near-maddening arrogance, as if every word he spoke was not directed at the players in the game, but at the audience's intelligence.
From the very beginning, this game had contained three teams of eight.
Three teams of eight?
But there were only twenty-two participants.
How could twenty-two players form three groups of eight?
Akari opened her mouth, ready to curse the screenwriter, Sora, for completely losing his mind. But before the complaint could leave her throat, a flash of realization shot through her head.
No way…
On television, Mushroom Head did not even give the audience time to think. He lifted his chin and continued with a nauseating confidence.
Among the twenty-two participants in the game, it was possible to form three teams of seven people, leaving one person as a free agent. All that free agent had to do was push every other contestant into joining those teams. In that way, each group of seven, once he was added to it, would become a team of eight.
Three teams of eight people.
Three supposedly unbeatable teams.
And as long as he could guarantee, in each of those three teams, that everyone voted for the same side he belonged to, that side would inevitably become the minority.
It was a simple logical trap.
If three eight-person teams all used the "eight-member guaranteed victory method" to vote, then in the first round, the apparent result would become twelve against twelve.
But those three fake teams of eight had been assembled from only twenty-two players. Mushroom Head occupied one position in each of them. In other words, two votes had to be subtracted from the side he actually voted for.
So, in the first round, the side he belonged to would end up with ten votes against twelve.
By the same logic, in the second round, his side would have four votes against six.
And in the third round, inside all three teams, he had suggested that Shinichi, the elegant woman in white, and the leopard-print man vote "no."
He alone would vote "yes."
The final result would become the perfect score of one against three.
No need to go through a tie.
No need to rely on luck.
From the moment Mushroom Head created the three teams, he had already crushed everyone else through sheer intellect. The final winner of the game could only be him.
There would be no second victor.
That was the true Minority Game: a structure perfectly manipulated from the very beginning so that Mushroom Head alone could win and take every last part of the prize.
"That filthy bastard… how are you supposed to play against that?"
Akari was not the only one thinking that. At that moment, countless viewers across Japan were going through the same mental storm in front of their televisions.
The fans who, the previous week, had proudly predicted online that episode four would show two unbeatable teams trapped in endless third-round ties began quietly deleting their posts with astonishing speed.
It was too embarrassing.
They felt as if, instead of showing off their intelligence, they had exposed just how little of it they had.
But what now?
How would the story continue?
Was that disgusting mushroom-haired creep truly going to be the final winner?
Just thinking about it made Akari's stomach twist.
Then the series turned again.
This time, the one who laughed was Shinichi, the protagonist.
His signature arrogant smile appeared on his handsome face, calm and almost cruel, carrying a cold trace of pity for his enemy.
"Your so-called guaranteed victory method is full of holes."
Shinichi's voice rang out.
The result of the fourth vote in the third round was revealed.
He had chosen "yes."
Before Mushroom Head had even exposed his true strategy, Shinichi had already betrayed him. He had not voted according to their agreement.
The third-round score became two against two.
A tie.
Why?
Akari blinked, stunned.
Why would the protagonist choose "yes"?
Had he already figured out that Mushroom Head was X? And not only that, had he also realized that Mushroom Head had built three teams of eight?
Otherwise, there was no way he would have voted "yes."
On the television, Shinichi soon explained that he had seen through Mushroom Head's scheme long ago.
The reason was simple: every eliminated player had remained emotionally stable after leaving the game. No one collapsed. No one broke down.
And that was the biggest problem.
They were carrying debts of ten million yen. Ordinary people, after losing that kind of money, should have panicked, despaired, or lost all composure. If those people had such extraordinary psychological endurance, how could they have failed so badly in society that they ended up participating in a dangerous Liar Game like this?
From that moment on, Shinichi knew.
Someone was using a far larger strategy behind the rounds.
And the scores of ten against twelve in the first round, then four against six in the second, perfectly confirmed his suspicion.
As for identifying the person who was playing one role in each of three separate teams, all Shinichi needed was the result of the second vote. After that round, only he and Mushroom Head remained alive in his own team.
At that instant, the traitor's identity was already certain.
The reason Shinichi had exchanged votes with the heroine before the second round also came from that. From the very start, he had suspected Mushroom Head, so he chose to vote on the same side as him, entering the minority and advancing to the final.
"So there were two monsters playing dirty…"
By the time Akari reached that conclusion, she felt as if her brain could no longer keep up.
She hurriedly grabbed her cola and took a sip, as though she needed sugar just to continue following the story.
But how could this situation be broken now?
Two absurdly calculating players, plus the leopard-print man and the elegant woman in white. Would the next Minority Game vote truly come down to luck?
Impossible.
The plot could not end by relying on luck.
This was Liar Game. Naturally, everything would be decided by strategy.
From the very beginning, the work had revolved around guaranteed methods of victory within the rules of the game. There was no way it would throw everything to chance at the end.
And then came Shinichi's personal showcase.
Since the third round had ended in a tie because of Shinichi's betrayal, a revote was quickly arranged.
Shinichi walked onto the stage. After presenting the voting question, he did something completely unexpected.
"The most important thing in life is money."
"My answer is: no."
He announced his choice in front of every participant.
An open vote.
A public declaration.
"What, are you playing poker now?"
Akari still did not understand why the protagonist would do something like that when Shinichi began to explain.
In a four-person Minority Game, the only way to win was to create a result of one against three.
If he openly declared that he would vote "no," then anyone who also voted "no" would definitely not win.
But if the other three were thinking only of their own victory and all voted "yes," then the winner would be Shinichi.
In other words, as long as Shinichi did not care whether he won or lost and continued revealing his choice every round, while the other three thought only about winning for themselves, the only person who could win would be him.
But if someone did not want to let Shinichi win and voted "no" with him to form the majority, that person would be self-destructing.
Whoever followed Shinichi's "no" would either tie with him or lose alongside him, be eliminated, and leave the game with a ten-million-yen debt on their back.
So, among Mushroom Head, the woman in white, and the leopard-print man, which two would be willing to sacrifice themselves so that an unknown third person could win?
Shinichi looked at everyone and declared with absolute calm that none of the three would ever do that.
"An open conspiracy… with no solution."
Akari's mouth fell open.
For the first time, she truly understood how repulsive the Minority Game was.
As long as someone like the protagonist appeared in the final circle - someone who did not care about winning - no one else would be able to win either.
That vote could only end in a tie, under the desperate hesitation of Mushroom Head and the other two.
It was then that the elegant woman in white took the initiative and proposed another guaranteed victory method.
"There's still another expert here?"
Akari no longer knew how many twists she had witnessed in episode four of Liar Game that night.
How could there still be another guaranteed method of victory?
Every one of those characters kept appearing with some so-called unbeatable plan, and by the end, all of them seemed to turn into clowns.
In just two episodes, the series had already shown Shinichi's guaranteed eight-person team method; Mushroom Head's improved version, using three fake eight-person teams; and Shinichi's open-vote strategy at the start of the third round.
And now the woman in white had another plan.
What kind of divine series was this?
Had the screenwriter named Sora really come up with this script in just one week?
The woman in white's guaranteed victory method was simple: she, Mushroom Head, and the leopard-print man would form a team.
As long as the three of them worked together, Shinichi would certainly lose.
Akari froze for a moment. Then, after thinking it through, she realized it made sense.
Originally, Mushroom Head had deceived three teams. The three remaining participants in the third round had all been stabbed in the back by him. Under normal circumstances, cooperating again should have been impossible.
But the problem was precisely Shinichi's open vote.
Faced with that move, they had no other choice.
The condition for forming the alliance was signing a new contract and redefining the division of profits.
Aside from each person's individual debt of ten million yen, the eight-person team contracts signed by the woman in white and the leopard-print man stated that if either of them won money, they would have to share responsibility for the debt with the other members of their teams. The possibility of winning, handing over half the prize money, and withdrawing from the game no longer existed.
All the money would now have to be used first to repay the debts of the fourteen people in the two teams. Whatever remained would then be divided according to the new contract. On top of that, the person who won that money would still be unable to leave the game; they would have to participate in the third stage.
But at the very least, they would not be eliminated with a ten-million-yen debt.
At the end of that negotiation, the three agreed to first force a tie in the third-round vote, then discuss in detail how the prize money would be divided afterward.
Watching this, Akari began to feel suffocated.
What now?
If those three cooperated, Shinichi's open-vote tactic would become a joke.
In the Minority Game, as long as participants could reach an agreement over their interests and work together as a team, they were practically invincible.
But in that very vote, where everyone planned to tie first because the profit distribution had not yet been settled, the woman in white betrayed them.
Shinichi, as if he knew nothing at all, continued openly declaring his vote as "no."
The leopard-print man and Mushroom Head, meanwhile, openly voted "yes."
If the woman in white did not vote "no," the three of them would lose. Because of that, Mushroom Head and the leopard-print man were confident. They did not even bother watching her. They simply registered their own votes first.
But it was precisely that woman.
At the most decisive moment.
She voted "yes."
With three votes already revealed, she voluntarily chose to become part of the majority and hand victory to Shinichi.
The score became three against one.
Akari froze in front of the television once again.
What the hell was this plot?
On the screen, Shinichi looked at Mushroom Head and the leopard-print man with an expression full of mockery.
It was almost as though he were also laughing at every viewer sitting on the other side of the screen.
You did not expect that, did you?
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