“Sided with the wolves.” For a moment the phrase hangs in silence, but then there is a swirl of whispers, questions, murmurs and shouts.

  “I didn’t… expect this, but I’ll take it.”

  `“Could the game really be this easy? If I’m counting right, then there’s just two more left.”

  “Y-you’re the reason for this awful game! H-hurry up and die!”

  “Bang! Bang! Bang! The piggie’s right for once—time to fire in those votes!”

  But finally, a familiar brook-like voice breaks through the cmoring: “I’m not a wolf. I’m really not! The Rat has to be telling a lie.”

  Lily stands to her full, short height, one of her arms thrust down on the table as though to thoroughly quash that untruth. Her brown eyes are clouded, and her face is shaded by a disappointed look. The Rat, on the other hand, has a shine to his eyes—despite the fact the lighting of the trial chamber itself remains dreamily dim.

  “No, it’s definitely a fact. Horse, you’re good at math, right?” Rat strikes back.

  “Hah… about that. I’m in the ‘Honors Course,’ but the course most students do in my year is ‘Math for Engineering’, so I’m actually a little behin—”

  “Let’s say I’m not the seer. What are the odds the seer guy’s already dead?” Rat suggests.

  “Oh! That kind of problem is easy.”

  The Horse pulls out a pair of reading gsses and rifles through her knapsack. She collects yet another notepad, monogrammed T.H, in elite cursive tumbles. I’ve seen that same pad on my hotel room’s night stand.

  “The vilge’s special roles were given out just st night. This means that we know for sure that the Goat and the Monkey aren’t seer, though we saw the Monkey’s Card so, um, we know what his role was anyway,” she says. “Since there were ten of us alive that night, there was a one-in-ten chance that the Rooster was seer and died!”

  “I think the chance the seer’s dead is a little bit higher. A wolf wouldn’t kill another wolf, right? So st night, if there were three wolves and seven vilgers, the wolves had a one-in-seven chance of killing that strong role,” Lily returns helpfully, finger on her chin.

  “I told you I wasn’t good at math! Then I got it wrong—the answer is actually then, um, about fifteen percent!”

  “In other words,” the Rat finally concludes after the girls’ exchange. “There’s an eighty-five percent chance that the seer survived the first night.”

  Screens, screens, screens, screens, dark and smooth and useless as bnk granite sheets surround us all. I think this room could really use a whiteboard, and the Ox seems to agree. He thrusts a pencil deep into his own notepad, scribbles and pauses, pauses and scribbles, then accidentally breaks the implement in a clenched fist. “Okay, so we tossed around a lot of numbers. Say it in English, what’s the big idea?”

  “The dog’s calling me a liar, right? But, if I’m not the real Seer, there’s a high chance the real one is alive with us right now. An eighty-five percent chance; so why does that seer fail to speak?” the Rat says. “There’s only supposed to be one seer. They should be screaming about now. ‘He’s not the real seer! I’m the real seer, so the rat must be wolf!’ But funnily enough, they’re silent.”

  “Maybe the ‘real seer’ doesn’t want the wolves to kill them!” Lily almost shouts. It’s a voice that comes as close to yelling as she can, without breaking poise.

  “B-but then t-the healer might be alive… the healer can watch over the seer… then the seer will never die. So there’s no reason for the seer to stay silent—please don’t stare at me!”

  The Pig needn’t have worried, since everyone looks at the Rat once more. What presence! What pallor! What sickness his sloppy confidence brings to my heart! He hops over the bar stand and clomps to the circle’s center in a set of hi-top sneakers, and makes eye contact with us one by one with his little bck beads.

  “Since no one else said that they’re seer, you know that I’m telling the truth. All we have to do is vote for the Dog…”

  His swiveling ends as he meets my eyes. He speaks casually, familiarly, like the two of us are the best of friends—and I suppose of everyone in the past two days, I’ve technically talked to him the most.

  “Since I’m seer, all we have to do is vote for the Dog. Isn’t that right, little Snake?”

  Ah. That’s why he was acting so suspiciously, with his cims to be seer.

  It wasn’t because he was a wolf. He might be. He might not be. But that doesn’t really matter; all that matters is that one hundred percent of the other pyers are about to press ‘Dog’ on their screen.

  “You’re correct. If that’s how it is, then everyone should certainly vote for her,” I murmur.

  “Yuri?” Lily asks, with upturned eyes.

  “If that’s how it really is,” I can only repeat, “then there’s no other choice.”

  I thought Werewolf was a game where murderous wolves deceive the rest of the vilge, but even vilgers lie to one another in this complicated game.

  Let’s say for a moment that the Rat really is the seer; since no one disputes his cim, that part’s probably true. But I also think the Rat is lying about what he found out st night. Not because I believe in Lily; whether she’s a wolf or a town, I don’t know.

  The reason I think the Rat made up his report on Lily is because st night, he told me that he was the seer. If I were a wolf, I surely would have used that information to kill him: revealing his role to me without knowing my alignment would have been a risky py. So he must have had a reason to believe I wasn’t a wolf…

  Yet, I led the vote on the Monkey, a person who had a clear, if misguided, pn to help the vilge. I’m the most suspicious person in this game and yet the Rat still entrusted me with his role at 2:00 AM.

  So he must have known that I was a vilger in advance—and he’d only know that if he had used his Seer powers to check me, and not that anxious girl. But why would he lie in the first pce?

  It all has to be for this…

  “I’m the real seer. Execute him,” I say.

  “Sorry guys, was just messin’ around. The Snake’s the real deal,” the Rat triumphantly grins.

  A role swap. I’m forced into a role swap, just like the one the Rat had wanted me to do st night. He noticed that I was protecting Lily and held her hostage to get me to do what he wanted, that bastard.

  “Huh? What just happened?” Lily blinks.

  “We wanted evidence, right? I thought I’d pretend to be seer to get reactions from everybody, and those reactions would help us pick who to vote for. Again, my bad. Hahaha…” the Rat ughs and ughs.

  I bite back my humiliation: to be outmaneuvered like this in a ‘social deduction game’ by someone with no social skills whatsoever! When he’s away from her...

  Lily seems somewhat relieved,while everyone else gazes at the Rat with varying degrees of confusion and contempt. The Dragon adjusts his tie and clears his throat, an echo that bounces off the chairs and tables and eventually escapes, through a hidden seam that only a sound can find. “One moment. Snake, you’re saying that you’re seer? And Rat, you’re not the seer? Just to be clear.”

  “Is. There. A. Problem?” I grit my teeth.

  “Perhaps. I’m sorry to say I found this whole conversation rather bemusing, since between the three of us, I’m the one whose actually seer.”