The voting began and ended with a fast Tadasu-chan sweep, but it wasn’t Game Over for her yet. She could still steal a win by guessing the villagers’ prompt, and with Mashiron’s enormous hint of a certain senpai already having held one, the odds were in Tadasu-chan’s favor. It wasn’t like Mashiron to slip up in a werewolf game, but I chalked it up to her being unfamiliar with this win-stealing rule. And thus, Tadasu-chan’s final guess was:
“A... An eighteen-plus live stream?”
“You’re kidding...” I said.
Alas, I’d gravely underestimated the magnitude of blue thoughts that went on in that head of hers. But whatever. It was time for a GM change! And the last round!
“Shuwa-chan-senpai.”
“Hm?”
“Don’t think I’ll forget this. I’ll make you rue the day.”
“I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”
Oh, jeez. Talk about scary.
Finally, we faced down the last round of today’s collab, presided over by our lovely GM Churiri-sensei. With three rounds behind us, I anticipated a complex discussion filled with mind games and bluffs. However, that expectation was shattered from the very first sentence.
“Oh, well this is nice!” Tadasu-chan said.
“Huh?” Both Mashiron and I couldn’t hide our surprise. My prompt was “raw garbage,” and it seemed so was Mashiron’s. Apparently Churiri-sensei had picked two vastly different prompts, which was on brand to say the least.
For the next two minutes, it was an absolute Tadasu-teasing fiesta. I felt a little bad for our student council president, this being her second time as the werewolf, but that was an inevitability given that we’d all come up with our prompts separately.
By the end of the game, however, I realized my pity had been seriously misplaced. That moment of reckoning came after the time limit was up, Tadasu-chan was voted out, and it was her chance to steal a win. The only hint she had was her own prompt, which was “earthlings.” As Mashiron and I had realized early on that she was the werewolf, both of us, learning from previous rounds, had tried our best to give absolutely nothing away. We’d given her zero additional hints, I was sure of it, and yet...
“Since it’s Churiri-sensei, I assume the topic is ‘raw garbage’?”
She guessed the correct prompt just like that. A phenomenal win-steal. All of us were dumbfounded, but it was the originator of the prompts themselves, Churiri-sensei, who was the most surprised. “How?!” she said. “How did you know?! You didn’t cheat, did you?!”
“As if I, Miyauchi, would ever resort to such underhanded tactics. I even turned you away when you came to me for help, didn’t I?”
“Then how did you know?!”
“Intuition.”
“I-Intuition?”
Tadasu-chan then went on to explain to Sensei, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, how she’d managed to pull off the Hail Mary.
“Well, first, I knew the prompts must be related somehow. The diligent person you are, I didn’t believe you’d flout the rules for a joke. From there, it was easy to surmise the corresponding phrase would be negatively connotated, given your well-known disdain for ‘earthlings.’ Thus, raw garbage.”
“No, no, no, no,” Sensei stuttered. “‘Thus,’ my ass! Garbage, maybe. Trash, maybe! But ‘raw’ garbage specifically?!”
“Either of those options wouldn’t have been scathing enough for a cynic of your caliber. But yes, you’re right. I can’t explain myself any better, because at the end of the day, it was truly just intuition.”
“I... I can’t accept this...”
“Luckily you don’t have to. I guessed it, so it’s my win.” Tadasu-chan chuckled smugly. “So? Still going to kick all of us earthlings to the curb?”
Sensei forced a breath out through clenched teeth.
“It would hurt me to think we don’t understand each other by now.”
“E-Excuse you?! We are streaming!”
“Oh? Is someone getting bashful?”
“You brat...!”
: oh no, im dying from preciousness overload. tell my family I
: oh dear, oh my ￥50,000
: rebutting the raw garbage and earthling association with the phrase kick to the curb is hard
: Reminder: This is the same person who guessed eighteen-plus live stream in the previous round
: I feel the love for sensei and sensei only
Mashiron and I burst into a round of applause. Even though we’d lost, it certainly didn’t feel like it.
And that was the game, coming to a fitting end thanks to our kouhais! Good job, you two!
“I know I’m complicit, but,” Mashiron said, “did this turn into a AwaMashi-TadaChuri flirt-off or is that just me?”
“We were not flirting!” Sensei yelled.
Tadasu-chan fell into thought. “Mashiro-senpai coaxed out a proposal from Shuwa-chan-senpai, I nailed Sensei’s prompt with a blind guess, and Sensei, albeit unintentionally, manifested her individuality to my prompt. But Shuwa-chan-senpai...”
Hm? True. What was my contribution to the stream again?
“...completely failed to read between the lines of Mashiro-senpai’s prompt, and sexually harassed the heck out of me as GM!”
The call plunged into silence, the only sound a strained exhale from my end. Ha...ha... Isn’t that strange? How silence can weigh so much?
“Mashiro-senpai, Sensei, methinks there’s a werewolf in our midst.”
“Wueh?” I said.
“Agreed,” Sensei said. “As Mashiro-san said at the start of the first round, this one has the heart of a dog.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” What’s happening?! “Girls, girls! What are we doing? Were we not ending the stream on that fuzzy, feel-good note?!”
“Awayuki-san. What is Word Wolf but a game of verbal wit to find and lynch the werewolf among us?” Sensei asked.
“It is, but not when you say it like that!”
“Shuwa-chan.”
“M-Mashiron, my savior! You’re on my side, right? You can see this isn’t right, can’t you? Help me out here!”
“Sure thing. Want to elope?”
“You don’t see jack shit!!!”
Tadasu-chan burst into laughter. “How do you like me now, Awa-chan-senpai? I told you you’d rue the day!”
: my sides
: What goes around...comes around.
: If there's one thing Live-On can be counted on to provide...it's content.
: Is this the Live-On werewolf game I've heard so much about?
: At least everyone's having fun (＊◜ω◝＊)
For reasons beyond my comprehension, the Word Wolf stream ended with me as the sole loser.
A few days later, at the crack of dawn, I was awoken by a mysterious and unexpected phone call.
*RING* *RING* *RING*
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I squinted at my phone’s screen, the name “Dagger-chan” on the caller ID instantly snapping me awake. Just what could be the matter at this hour?
“Hello?” I bleated, only to be greeted by a panicked, almost frantic voice on the other end.
“Master, hello? I... I don’t know what to do. I think... I think I’m gonna be fired.”
“...What?”
It took precious seconds for my mind to process the reality that had just been presented to it.
Dagger-chan is going to be...fired?!