“I just got lucky, that’s all. Don’t worry about it!” I said, flashing him a smile. It was cold, a mirror of the one he had given me earlier when I spilled the water. The smile was condescending, but with none of the malice.
“Don’t give me that!” Yuto shot back, his voice louder now. “You read everything I would do perfectly, four straight rounds in a row. That’s not possible - you had to be cheating somehow, there’s no way you played that stupidly in the first round, unless those later rounds were just a fluke?” I simply stared with a blank face since the question was more directed to himself than it was to me.
“I used the first round to gain data on you. Winning wasn’t my priority. Once we announced our bids, my priority was getting data on you.” I spoke quietly, trying to act disinterested.
“Getting data? What do you mean?” He tilted his head.
“I was creating a psychological profile. Figuring out what your exploitable weakness was.” I paused, waiting to see how Yuto reacted. He was silent, processing what I said. I decided to continue. “Once I had done that, I used the rest of the first round to set a trap. I used that data for the rest of the game to make sure I knew how you would think, what you would do. That’s how I won.” Yuto blinked, his frustration mounting. Then, he shot back with a fierce reply.
“What do you mean? It’s just a special version of rock-paper-scissors!” His voice rose, his panic and confusion clear. “Isn’t it just randomness with a tiny bit of strategy!” I wanted to make sure my friends were ok, but this entire plan would only take a few minutes.
“At its core, ‘Rock Paper Scissors!’ should be a game about randomness. But that’s not completely true. There are subconscious tendencies to choose certain options. These can be analysed over a large number of rounds. I understood that I could speed up the game in order to exploit these weaknesses.”
“What?” Yuto’s voice was filled with spite. He was so frustrated that he couldn’t help but cut me off. I kept going.
“For example, most people wouldn’t play the same option three times in a row if they only had a second to think about it. That changes once you give them a few minutes to analyse everything in depth. Their subconscious tendencies get overridden by their logical analysis.” Keiko started nodding her head, understanding my point. I kept going.
“When playing with people you know, this leads to mind games where you need to predict the other person’s decision making process. But against strangers, you run into the ‘Wine in front of me’ concept.”
“Haha” I turned around as I heard Keiko let out a faint chuckle. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I’m just surprised that you knew that concept was the key principle this game tests.” I turned back around as Yuto pressed me for explanations.
“What are you guys talking about?” His anger softened just a bit, being overridden by his intellectual curiosity. I quickly started explaining.
“The concept refers to a game where a murderer sits across the table from his soon to be victim with a glass of wine in front of each of them. He reaches over to the victim’s glass and shakes it as he remarks that one glass has been poisoned, and then laughs as he reaches down at his own glass and explains that the other glass is safe to drink from.” I paused, looking at Keiko’s reaction. She simply nodded along.
“He smiles as he toys with his victims, saying “Would I be brave enough to poison the glass in front of me? If you think I’ve poisoned your glass, I’d be happy to switch drinks with you.” While the victim is busy agonising over these tormenting words, the murderer laughs as he revels in his victim’s anguish-”
“Who cares about a murderer poisoning drinks? What’s the relevance?” I could see that Yuto was getting impatient. He already thinks my win was a fluke, so my long winded response was probably aggravating him.
“Let him continue, you'll get your answers soon.” Keiko’s eyes were glued to mine. She wasn’t just watching me. She was studying me. Why? Was she feeling cautious around me? Curious? Entertained? I’ll have to find out once I’m done with this.
“Would he really poison his own drink? There’s no way he could do that - wait no! That’s what he wants me to think! He’s poisoned his drink and wants to bait me into switching glasses with him! I should keep my own glass! But wait - what if he predicted that I would realise that? If he predicted that, it would mean he would actually poison my glass, so I should in fact swap with him! But what if he predicted that…?”
“You’re just going around in circles. What’s the point?” Yuto still hadn’t calmed down, so I quickly finished explaining.
“My point is that the victim gets so caught up in this recursive thinking, or “going around in circles” that they lose their ability to think critically. When you reach this stage of recursive thinking, it doesn’t matter how good you are at mind games, this is essentially a 50/50 coin toss.” I paused to give Yuto a second to connect the dots, but Keiko interrupted my explanation.
“So why is it that the murderer keeps winning? After all, he leaves the decision to his victims, so shouldn’t one of them have gotten lucky? Once you realise this, you can deduce what must really be going on.” We both watched as Yuto figured it out.
“He must have rigged the game so that he’ll always live, and his victim will always die, no matter what drink gets chosen…”
“Exactly.” Keiko nodded as I confirmed Yuto’s understanding was correct.
“How would the killer even do that?” He finally lowered his voice, but the spite was still there. He had also missed the point of my analogy. Rather, in a last ditch effort to protect his pride and intelligence, he’s intentionally choosing to miss the point. I was just about to redirect the conversation down its correct path, but Keiko interjected again.
“Well, the actual mechanism doesn’t matter. For example, both glasses could be laced with a specific drug that the murderer has developed a tolerance to, or perhaps has already drunk an antidote for-”
“You’re lying! This has nothing to do with the game.” I glanced at Keiko but she seemed oblivious. She’d made his outburst worse by showing her understanding, since that forced him to accept that his intellectual understanding of the game wasn’t just below mine. It’s below both of ours. I decided to end this explanation here and now. I wouldn’t let him run away from this any longer.
“The key takeaway of this story is that the murderer gets away with this because he creates a situation where he can distract his victim from what’s really happening, whilst taking away their ability to analyse the situation carefully. That’s the exact same way I managed to win this game.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
I stopped talking and I walked towards Yuto. He was still standing, but he’d let go of his intensity. He refused to look at either of us, making it clear that he was still in denial.
“You lost because you let me control your decisions.” I removed all emotion from my voice.
“What do you mean?” Yuto wasn’t angry anymore. He was simply confused. His eyes quietly pleaded with me to give him an answer, and his voice was the softest it’d been so far. He just wanted to know what went wrong.
“I knew that if I got stuck in a guessing game with you and fell into the recursive thinking I just explained, this game would basically come down to luck. I wanted to avoid that, so I used the first match to make a psychological read on you. It wasn’t difficult to notice your overconfidence.”
I paused. I needed to make sure he felt the weight of my next few sentences.
“Everyone has a weakness. The second I saw just how big your ego was, I knew this was your flaw. A weakness for me to exploit. A string I could pull at. A path to my victory.” His fists clenched, but he stayed silent. Keiko looked at me with a quiet concern, or maybe it was curiosity? I couldn’t tell which, but I pressed forward.
“Once I noticed it, I fed into your ego and your superiority complex so I had more information on your decisions. This way, the game was no longer about recursive thinking and luck. I created a situation where this game came down to skill, without you realising.” I paused and took a deep breath. “I played into your ego until you were thinking exactly how I knew you’d be thinking. I let you think you were in control, that you were one step ahead. All the while I was leading you the entire way.”
I took a second. I’d been speaking for a while, so I wanted to give him an opportunity to speak. Keiko stood in the corner. I kept noticing her glancing at the camera. What was she so nervous about? Meanwhile, Yuto’s eyes finally landed on mine. I seized the moment and kept going.
“While I was analysing you, manipulating you, what were you doing? You knew nothing about the real me and my real thought process. You just saw the facade. An act. In fact, I already told you all of this-”
“What?” Yuto’s voice was soft. He wasn’t sad - just defeated. I’d successfully pushed him into intellectual despair, forcing him to confront his own ego, but I had to keep going.
I had to push him deeper.
“I already told you that I faked being nervous, that I spilled our glasses on purpose. I did all of that because I knew how you would react once I challenged the superiority complex I worked so hard to foster.” He looked away. He was ashamed that he fell for my trick, even when I told him what I was doing. “I built this facade specifically so you would underestimate me. Your superiority blinded you to the fact that I’d been shaping your perception of me from the very beginning. You lost because of your ego. Your carelessness. That’s all there was to it.”
Ego.
Facade.
Superiority complex.
Act.
Leading you the entire way.
Your carelessness.
I’d carefully crafted these words. I knew they were echoing in his head as we stayed in silence. He had dropped his chin, probably so he didn’t have to look at us. I took the moment to turn back and look at Keiko. I could sense some vague emotion earlier, but I could see it with full clarity now. Her straight, guarded face with her stiff back - she was analysing me with a building anger. Did she see my words as unnecessarily cruel?
I could tell she wanted to interfere, but she was staying composed and letting this scene play out. But why? I’ll have to figure that out later. Back to the task at hand. I placed my gaze back onto the defeated Yuto and I waited in silence. I waited for him to speak.
“That… just can’t be true…” Yuto raised his head as he kept his eyes locked onto mine. I respected that he was able to maintain eye contact in this moment of weakness. His voice was wavering, almost as if he was trying to convince himself more than he was trying to convince me. I couldn’t tell if he genuinely thought that my strategy wasn’t human, or if he was still trying to consciously deny everything to protect himself.
“That... that can’t be true! Let's say you’re telling the truth, then how? How did you do all this?” He still couldn’t accept that I’d out maneuvered him in such a meticulous manner. I turned around at Keiko and briefly smiled at her. Most people wouldn’t bother trying so hard to drill this into him. Anyone that was willing to was probably doing it for their own ego. However, I had a different motivation, and I wanted Keiko to know it so she didn’t interfere.
“First of all, I noticed a very important detail in the game’s rules. “The attacker will decide when to start each round”. I already explained how pushing the tempo is a powerful weapon to elicit and punish a predictable subconscious tendency, so I developed a plan based on two key concepts:
- Control the speed of the game
- Put you in a position where you can’t see the full picture
That’s also why I spilled your drink after the first match. I didn’t want you to use it as an excuse to buy yourself time to think while I was attacking.” I turned around to hear Keiko sharply exhale. I could tell that she was impressed like the last time she laughed, but this was much more complicated. She didn’t want to laugh because she’d started growing hostile towards me.
“I intentionally bid low on the first round since I’d be using it as a throw away to get some data on the way you think. That way, I could save up my points for the second and third round to bid big and ensure I’d be the attacker so that I’d have the initiative in our mind games.” I expected another interruption as he tried denying everything, but he stayed silent. I was starting to get through to him, and I didn’t waste that momentum.
“After that, I used the data I gathered in the first round to predict what choices you would make. That would start a domino effect, since I knew that once you realised how easily I could read you, you would start to lose sight of the big picture. That would make your decisions even easier to predict.” He stayed silent for a few seconds before his blank face turned into a smile. His shoulders rounded back as he made a confident declaration.
“Well, now I know you’re lying, and that all this truly was a fluke.” I heard Keiko laugh again, but by the time I looked back at her, she’d already turned away. When I looked back at Yuto, I realised that Keiko’s laugh hadn’t fazed him in the slightest. “If you truly are this smart… if you truly could read me so well… then it’s simple, right?” He paused as he smiled again, nodding his head and reaffirming his confidence in his theory.
“Why would you need the advantages of being the attacker to beat me? Couldn’t you have just defeated me by defending against me? That way, you’d minimise the points you were wagering… that would be the most optimised move for someone so confident in their abilities.” I turned around at Keiko one last time, and for a brief second, we made eye contact. Her cautious face said it all.
She already knew.
She was worried that I’d use this to shatter his confidence just to feel better about myself, or to take revenge because he was being condescending to me earlier.
But I couldn’t let her impression of me stop me from doing this.
“Wrong. You’re assuming there’s no reason for someone to intentionally throw a match in this game”
“What?” My words were so surprising that they completely disarmed Yuto’s sense of confidence.
“After seeing how few points you bid in the first round, I intentionally threw that round. It wasn’t about losing - it was about controlling the overall flow of the game. I wanted you to feel confident and secure, believing that the first round was a clear sign of how easily you could win if you got the attacking role again.” I heard Keiko sigh as she realised what I was doing, but I ignored it and continued.
“If I had won, you might have second-guessed the power of the attacker and played more cautiously. But by letting you crush me, I ensured that you’d bet big in the next rounds, thinking you could dominate again and win the game.” I could see the life being drained from his eyes. I’d forced him to accept the reality of the situation.
“You… you lost on purpose?” Our eyes met once again. For the first time, he genuinely started to understand just how outmatched he was. I noticed his gritted teeth and clenched fists, and I really didn’t enjoy what I was about to do, but I had to do it.
It’s for his own gain.
I justified it to myself before looking down at him. I lowered my neck. And I smiled.
I smiled.
I hated doing it, but everyone in the room would understand it soon.