Akiyama (Root of A)

Feat Liar Game (Root of A) 1. Story Overview * Five years before Akiyama and Nao got involved in the Liar Game, a younger Akiyama (22 years old) was studying at Teito University, the most selective elite institution in Japan. At that time, Akiyama was a fourth-year student and held a bachelor's degree in psychology. Because of this, Akiyama decided to take a class taught by Professor Okabe, a teacher who always exuded a gloomy, depressing atmosphere and had an indifferent, laid-back, and creepy personality. Expecting a lecture on criminal psychology in the first session, Akiyama and the others were instead given an assignment by Professor Okabe called “Profiling: Information Retrieval.” Okabe wanted his students to use deduction to figure out the identity of the sender of a letter, even though the name and address had been smudged. The letter had been tied to a balloon and released into the sky, a method known as a balloon letter. Akiyama's group consisted of four other people: Natsuki, Hitoshi, Jiro, and Masami. 2. Analyses by the Psychology Student Group * Jiro analyzed the letter and noted that the writer used the word “Bokutachi” (a masculine form of “us” in Japanese). Based on this, Jiro concluded that the person who wrote the letter was a male. * Natsuki narrowed down the time the letter was written, from spring to a specific range: March 24th to March 31st. This deduction was based on the fact that the graduation ceremony had already taken place (between March 10th …