六人の嘘つきな大学生 ABC 🔍 | Week 4

Japanese Language Book Clubs
1

六人の嘘つきな大学生 Book Club - Week 4

Find the Home thread here!

View the nomination post here!

bdb32e44f420aebbd21237f7a76401509cde0461_2_264x375
bdb32e44f420aebbd21237f7a76401509cde0461_2_264x375264×375 36.2 KB

Week 4 19th April 2025
Chapters Chs.5+6
Pages 43
Previous week Week 3
Next week Week 5
Home Thread 六人の嘘つきな大学生

Discussion Guidelines

Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice

  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.

  • Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

Trigger Warnings

Summary of trigger warnings

Discussion of topics including:

  • Bullying

  • Suicide

  • Abortion

Proper Nouns

Will be added to throughout the book.

Name Reading Notes
波多野祥吾 はたの しょうご Narrator of Part 1 - one of the 6 candidates
嶌衣織 しま いおり One of the 6 candidates
九賀蒼太 くが そうた One of the 6 candidates
袴田亮 はかまだ りょう One of the 6 candidates
矢代つばさ やしろ つばさ One of the 6 candidates
森久保公彦 もりくぼ きみひこ One of the 6 candidates
鴻上達章 こうがみ たつあき Hiring Manager
相楽ハルキ さがら はるき Famous singer

Participation

Will you be reading along with us this week?

  • I’m reading along
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m still reading the book but I haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’m reading this book after the club has finished
  • I’m no longer reading the book
0 voters

If you’ve already read this book but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have finished this part.”

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion! :mag:

2 Likes
2

Chapter 5 was insanely long! And it’s too late to finish chapter 6 today, so it’ll have to wait for tomorrow, but for now I will post thoughts on chapter 5.

Chapter 5

This was such a cool chapter. And I feel really stupid for not expecting the book to throw some more plot twists our way :smiley:

I’m not 100% sure on the timeline of the pictures being taken. They say that at the time the picture of 九賀 was taken, 森久保 said he had an interview on that day, when they weren’t even aware of the changed rules for the interview. Which means, there was no need to lie and pretend he had an interview. That makes sense. But that would also mean that there wouldn’t have been a need to find „dirty secrets“ of the other candidates either, so why were the pictures taken so early, before the rules change was known?

But into the interview part of this chapter:

あの会議を通して俺たちが誤った「犯人」を指摘してしまったと後になって気づいたとき、本当に悔しい気持ちで一杯になった。

This was the first moment in the interview with 森久保 that made me go „wait“… and then it just got better and better from there.

And then of course

自分に惚れている人間に封筒を持たせる。

But I don’t think I realized at that point that 森久保 was talking to the culprit, so that came a bit later, with the part with おめでとう…仕事は楽しい？…自分のことを好いてくれていた人を踏みにじってまで手に入れるだけの価値は、やっぱりあった？
So good.

So basically, 波多野 is the official „culprit“, since he doesn’t have an alibi, which means that he is dead during the time of the interviews? But 森久保 figures out later that it was 嶌. And 嶌 got the job and スピラ thinks they accidentally almost gave the 内定 to the fake culprit 波多野, but actually the real culprit got the 内定. At least if 森久保’s theory is true.

But I reread the opening paragraph of the book… and that really really makes it sound like 波多野 is doing the “調査”? But in this chapter 森久保 is obviously interviewed by 嶌. So maybe the book opening was just misdirection? But it literally says 調査の結果をここにまとめる。

And of course, we still don’t know how 嶌’s alibi works.


Edit: Finished the very short chapter 6.

Chapter 6

No real surprises in this chapter. I really hope we get to see the contents of 嶌’s envelope.

And I want to know why she started taking the pictures on the 20th of April, long before the announced change.

Two alibis is brutal, she must have had someone else take the pictures for her…

7 Likes
3

Wow, finished too.

Summary

That was a lot. It was not where I was expecting it to go. Literally my only gripe with this section was how much stuff they fit into “30 minutes” compared to every other voting period. But it had me gripped from start to end. I may write more when I’m back home tomorrow, but while I’m here:

Here’s what I think - it’s the only thing that makes sense to me timeline wise and without disrupting the layout of the book. Wild theory time!

The time isn’t put for when the intro was written. I think that 波多野 may have done his own investigation, in the period between the interview ending, and when it tells us he dies. It may be put as the intro for the book, but what if it’s the intro for something else? This basically allows for 嶌 to have been conducting these interviews in part 1 all along, like I actually thought was the case a few weeks ago until rereading the intro. I will say, I did notice that throughout the entirety of every interview, it never once ruled out either 嶌 or 波多野 being the interviewer directly, up until the reveal at the end (as far as I’ve been able to work out)

I’m incredibly looking forward to seeing what twists part 2 brings. Will have to physically restrain myself from reading ahead, or spoiling anything for myself! Given how much of the book is left, I’m presuming quite a lot must happen. Even now that the stage is kind of set, there’s still lots of details, and perhaps some more truths to uncover.

6 Likes
4

I noticed that too, haha, looking up phone numbers and doing like 10 phone calls in 30 minutes, sure :grinning_face:

The theory that 波多野 did his own investigation that is different from the interviews in the book makes sense. 嶌 must be the one doing all the interviews since chapter 1, since there is always a reference to the interviewer being the one who got the job, who earns a lot of money at スピラ, etc.

I will say the placement of the introduction of the book was very smart, since it made me think completely that it was 100% him all along. It never named any names during the interviews of course, but the book managed to always confirm this preconceived notion in my mind, even though there was still the possibility that it wasn’t 波多野. I guess I just convinced myself that there was no other possibility :sweat_smile:

7 Likes
5
This week

Oof, that was long. I read all night and now it’s 2.30 a.m. and I want to go to bed but I feel like I have to put my thoughts down before I forget them because I also didn’t have time to make proper notes.

…Not sure how I feel about this conclusion. On the one hand, I’m glad we got a plot twist and making Hatano the victim so that we can feel him getting his heart crushed from the inside was kind of brilliant. But the whole chain of events during the group discussion still left me somewhat dissatisfied. I feel like Shima’s eventual full success depended to much on people being blantantly stupid at certain points and 30 minutes never being 30 minutes long. I’ll think about this some more after a good nights sleep.

When they’re talking about Morikubo’s alibi, they mean the night of the nomikai, which happened just before Spira told them that they changed the rules. During this meeting, Morikubo and Kuga made an appointment to meet on the 20th and the former mentioned in front of all the others that he has an interview on the 20th.

I think this must be it. Unless I misunderstood, there was a remark early on in Morikubo’s interview that someone else had asked suspicious questions about Shima, so that might have been Hatano. If so, I wonder if part 2 will tell us what he did with his own research results.

5 Likes
6

I finished early and am ahead now but didn’t see the new thread until now. I wrote my comments after I had finished this week’s reading so no future spoilers are in it.

Summary

Bruh ultimate simp Hatano amirite/s

I knew there was a chance they could go the “least suspecting person route” and have it be 嶌さん, but for a while I was thinking they’d do the opposite and have 波多野さん be the culprit but pin the blame on her instead. But either way, I did not expect 波多野さん to be the one who had died.

Looking back, I think one hint that the person doing the interviews was 嶌さん is that 矢代さん talked so frankly about her period. A lot of Japanese women wouldn’t talk about how it was the heaviest day etc. with a guy she hardly knows.

Good point too about how you don’t really know how a company is until after you already enter it, and they lie just like students.
I remember when I was applying for jobs there was more than one where it said thr job used X% of English, but when I got to the interview/dug deeper into the info it turned out there was hardly any.

More words I learned from work:
獲得
奏功
終盤

8 Likes
7
Blasted through Chapters 5&6

Wow.

So I was right about 嶌 being the culprit, though obviously not for the “reason” I wrote about last week. There was a point around midway Chapter 5 where the most viable theory seemed to be that 波多野 had multiple personalities, but I’m glad it didn’t turn out that way.

Kudos to 波多野 for not making a scene and trying to expose 嶌. Not sure if it was because he still loved her, or he was planning to take revenge on a longer course, or simply gave up everything. Maybe we’ll find that out in part 2. Though I was kinda expecting him to vote for someone other, that would’ve been a sign for the others (he was constantly voting for 嶌 during the whole session, maybe they would’ve thought about the sudden change).

One thing I just can’t understand. After it became apparent that 森久保 is not the culprit, finally they wanted to open all the remaining envelopes. And then 波多野 said that “I promise I haven’t done anything wrong, so please don’t open mine”, and they accepted that?! What was that?

7 Likes
8

Finished too !

Multiple plot twist this week, the biggest of which being that 嶌 is doing the interviews, not 波多野. It fits well with the book theme of people not being truthful, and nothing being what it seems.
And I have to say this book is really growing on me. Just like @Malinkal さん, I’ll have to restrain myself not to read ahead !
So I’m really looking forward to part two… I just hope the explanations as to what really happened won’t be too far-fetched (a common gripe of mine with Japanese novels where absolutely anything goes…) because so far I find the book really well written.
And lastly….. we now know that underage drinking can really lead to big problems later on !

6 Likes
9
Replies

Yeah, that was one of the moments where I lost my suspension of disbelief. I think we’re supposed to believe that the others gave in so easily because he lightened the tension with his joke and they were all thankful because they couldn’t bear the tension anymore and were sick and tired of the envelope discussion and then the alarm chimed at just the right moment, but it didn’t really convince me.
I mentioned last night that there were a couple of moments where I felt like too much of the plot progression depended on people acting too stupid, and this was one.

Some of the others were when Kuga and later Morikubo didn’t take their chances to defend themselves and instead just started blubbering and cursing. These are people who have supposedly been chosen from a pool of over 5000 after several rounds of interviews that were supposed to test them for leadership potential, so this can’t be the first time someone tried to put them under psychological pressure. I don’t get why someone like that would lose their ability to form coherent sentences in this situation. Especially Morikubo, who had several minutes to see the accusation against him coming while they were watching the video footage in real time (for reasons I also don’t understand) and had plenty of time to phrase the truth that the envelope was send to him and he thought it was from Spira HR in a convincing way. Instead, he botches it and this fact only comes up when it’s too late, and the possibility that the envelope was really planted by someone in the company is never even mentioned again.

It also would have lost her her easy win if he’d voted for someone else, because then there would have been a tie, which would have led to more discussion. Instead Hatano completely self-distructs and takes out the last shreds of evidence against her. This also felt overly convenient.

fighting off violent 変な家 flashbacks

7 Likes
10
Agree !

Exactly ! and if you want more of the same, just head over to Home thread for 眼球堂の殺人 ~The Book~ ! (uh, no, don’t. Really.)

5 Likes
11

My question is, why would Shima need to take pictures and investigate everyone on the 20th? Which is before they learn about the rules change. Hatano even uses this line of thinking regarding Morikubo („we didn’t even know about the changed rules yet, so Morikubo had no reason to make up a fake interview as an alibi“), but he doesn’t question why the culprit would take undercover pictures on the 20th already.

5 Likes
12

Not sure I understand your question correctly, but the 20th was after they learned about the rule change, they did so right after the nomikai. As for why she picked that day - I actually just reread the section where they talk about this during the nomikai, and it makes this really obvious in retrospect. Hatano suggested that since Morikubo and Kuga were meeting anyway, they could move their next regular meeting to the 20th. So everyone looked at their schedules and everyone but Hatano already had appointments and said so in front of everyone else. Which made the day perfect for Shima’s photoshoot.

6 Likes
13

There was one sentence though which may hint that 嶌 began the investigation way before. Maybe she got her hands on some inner info. After all, the earthquake happened earlier, so the decision regarding the change of the last round could’ve been made earlier, too. The sentence in question is 波多野’s thought in the endgame (page 150):

今思えば、あのときのあれは僕に対する宣戦布告だったのだ。

I can’t think of anything else other than the crying scene that this could be referring to. “I know you love me, but I’ll ruin your career regardless” kind of crying. Oh, and 嶌’s eyes were red during the discussion, so she was probably crying through the whole night before too, or something like that.

5 Likes
14

Thanks, now I know what not to read next :joy:.

Timeline

I agree, it makes sense to assume that. Another reason is that otherwise the timeline for her investigation is awfully tight. I tried to find out when exactly the nomikai took place, and my best bet is the 15th or 16th - Hatano mentions that he had his interview with the other company on the 21st and before that, he was in a slump that “continued for 4 days”. Since I didn’t want to reread the entire part of the chapter, I didn’t look up if this 4 days slump period started immediately after the announcement of the rule change or if he describes the day afterwards in detail and it starts after that. But in any case, Shima probably had no more than 3-4 days after the change announcement to set up all her photo opportunities and her alibi for the 20th. It doesn’t sound feasible to do all the initial research in that time frame, too, so she must have done that before.

7 Likes
15

Okay, then I messed up the timeline in my head. I thought the 飲み会 was on the 20th (with the pictures being taken in the afternoon before the nomikai), but it makes sense now that they say that Morikubo already mentioned his interview during the nomikai before the rules change, but the pictures being taken (the day of the interview) was after that. Thanks for clearing that up!

6 Likes
16

Oof this book is dense. It took me a while to finish reading this week’s assignment, and in the meantime and kept seeing the number of responses on the thread increasing :eyes:
Now I can finally read all the reactions!

Some notes I took while reading

Chapter 5

漁夫の利
profiting while others fight

灰色のオーラを纏って、会議室内の置物となっていた。
オーラ【灰色（グレー）】の意味は？性格や特徴を解説｜Sensing of Life

すでに体が真理よりも、平穏を欲し始めている。
Nothing, I just liked that sentence.

image
image827×398 47.3 KB

Pretty sure here 二枚目 just means the second picture but today I learned x)
Reminds me of the time where JPDB taught me 孫の手 = backscratcher, when in the context of the book I was reading, no backscratcher, it was just a grandma holding her grandchild’s hand x) (but hey now I still remember that word so whatever works, not complaining!)

爪楊枝
new vocab for me, wouldn’t have guessed from the kanji. 楊 is a willow tree apparently.

The situation at the end of chapter 5 made me realize that the setup is very similar to the board game Werewolf haha, where you know that there is one werewolf, but everybody has to say that they are not the werewolf, and you have to find who’s lying. And if even if you’re not the werewolf, you might get accused of being the werewolf if everyone agrees.

何かの危険な心理実験か、あるいはソフトでチープなデスゲームものみたいだった
Right you could also just call it a death game, didn’t know that term.

Chapter 6

奥歯
Esthetically pleasing word.

Was not surprised at 島 being the culprit, but surprised that 波多野 was not the interviewer. And that means that 波多野 is dead now? Wow. Interesting detail (maybe), is that he left with the envelop that has 嶌’s secret (?) in it.
Also beautiful how the percentage of my book says that we are exactly at 50% now. So more to come I guess!

Comments on comments

Yes definitely that! They barely said 2 sentences between vote 4 and 5 (when 波多野 got the lead), but before the last vote they had time to check every single alibi (and people were always immediately available on the phone) and go back and forth between many different theories. Hmpf.

Seeing his reaction in Chapter 6, he definitely doesn’t want to expose 嶌. So my theory is that he wrote his version of the story, and send it to 嶌, and she did the interview and now is writing the story out to clear his name, maybe feeling bad that he died.

Wow. I did not make it in one reading session, had to spread on several sessions on two days, so I’m impressed!

This is actually a very valid strategy in Werewolf. If you are the Werewolf, let people speak outloud and compromise each other, don’t say anything, they agree on killing a random person, you go with the flow and you win :joy:

Haha that’s well observed.

8 Likes
17

Week 5 up! Moving on to part 2 of the book!

4 Likes
18
  • There’s a passage in 矢代’s interview where she starts listing the students’ names, starting with 波多野. It seemed like a weird thing to say while you’re literally talking to the person. At the time I thought it might be a hint that the interviewer wasn’t 波多野, but in Japanese it’s normal to refer to someone by their name instead of a pronoun anyway, so it might not mean anything. She also mentions 嶌 in the same list, so there’s a tiny chance that some of the interviews are being conducted by an unknown party… or it’s just nothing.
  • The argument that the culprit wouldn’t have gotten an accomplice to take the photos is not convincing to me at all.
  • Leaving any of the envelopes unopened is crazy. They should have opened all of them at the same time, before proceeding with any more votes.
  • This is a lot of trouble just for a job at a social media company. Did no one tell these kids that Google has a Tokyo office? :smiley:
  • I think there’s a decent chance that 波多野 isn’t really dead and that he and 嶌 are working together to catch the true culprit or something.
  • I also suspect that Part 2 will somehow end up with the same characters meeting in a room and opening more envelopes.
8 Likes
19

Nice, I like those theories!

4 Likes