After rescuing Naegi from the trash room, and the trial of Mukuro Ikusaba Mark II was underway. Kirigiri was off investigating by herself, looking for proof to who the mastermind might be, as well as conclusive proof that the mastermind wasn't her.
"It has to be the mastermind. It wasn't Naegi. And the other four have alibis. Leaving me to be the only one without a firm alibi."
Kirigiri was so lost in thought that she almost didn't notice that she had run into Togami on the 3rd floor.
"So you went and rescued him?
"Indeed."
"I'm curious. Why did you go alone?"
"Why are you so concerned about me going alone?"
"Because whether I like or not, after Celeste's execution, you and Naegi are the only other competent people here."
"Did you consider Celeste competent?"
"Of course, I didn't interact with her much. But after hearing that she won a shogi tournament, I did play a game of shogi with her."
"You're lucky Fukawa wasn't there."
"Indeed. But anyway, I barely beat her, and then she told me that she didn't know how to play."
"What?"
"Yes, apparently, she won a shogi tournament without knowing how to play."
"That's - what?"
"Even so, her moves on the board were superb. In other words, her learning curve was extremely steep."
"I see. And that's why you considered her competent."
"Between throwing out gaming concepts like the Prisoner's Dilemma on the fly to our situation, and her ability to stragetize. Yes. Hmph. You know Naegi harbors a small crush on you, do you not?"
"Hmmm."
"Hmmm. What? He's incredibly loyal to you, and I'm not surprised. You patched him up emotionally after Maizono's betrayal. See, I took your advice about not discounting emotions as pointless."
"Then you should know why I went after Naegi."
"Because without him, we don't have a chance."
"If that's what you want to believe."
"Indeed. Naegi has forced the endgame. I suspect, much sooner than the Mastermind wanted."
"What makes you want to say that?"
"Well, if you look at it from this angle, the fewer people there are, the harder it gets to murder. Once you get down to three people alive, it becomes downright impossible."
"Why?"
"Well, alright let's say you have Person A, Person B, and Person C alive."
"Okay."
"And one person kills Person C."
"Then you're left with two people left at the trial."
"Precisely. Is the non-murderer really going to let themselves get executed?"
"I see your point."
"So you reach an impasse at best. At worst, the murderer is proven even though it's already known. And that leaves one person."
"And what happens to that one person?"
"Well, it's safe to say that they wouldn't get to leave. They didn't murder someone after all. That one person has to live here for the rest of their life, slowly going insane without anybody to talk to, knowing that the ghosts of their classmates haunt these walls. And I suspect that's what the mastermind wanted. To broadcast a lone person slowly losing their mind."
"So what's your point?"
"My point is that I had this figured out about a lone person going insane from the get-go. I wanted to be the one person that survived."
"Why? You would just go mad like you said the mastermind wanted."
"Not necessarily. You see, Kirigiri, do you know what it means to be an introvert, especially considering you're one yourself?"
"I know what an introvert is."
"Then you should that I am one. My goal was to win this game without murdering."
"So your plan basically amounted to staying alive until the murders stopped and having everyone still alive just waiting until the mastermind ran out of patience."
"Exactly. I'm an expert at manufacturing backdoor ways to succeed at tasks. And I've discovered that every fair set of rules have weak points that you can exploit."
"And why didn't you mention this before?"
"Because then Monokuma would just patch the rules."
"Togami, a question about your what-if scenario, what-if last person alive got leave regardless of whether they murdered or not?"
"Then what would happen is that everybody else would hope everybody else murders someone else."
"That's dark."
"But you see, what it means is that nobody would actually murder. Which is the exact opposite of what the mastermind wants. All of us would simply wait for everybody else to die off. That's what the motives were for."
"Motives?"
"Yes, the motives were meant to make us lose patience with getting back to the outside world. I also suspect they were meant to keep the mastermind from getting bored."
"SO... are you suggesting we should have spent our time from Day 1 trolling the mastermind and generally acting like obnoxious teenagers until we got out?"
"Well, I suppose that might have worked, but who's to say the mastermind wouldn't have just added new rules to stop us from trolling. Do you remember Enoshima? He provoked her into violence so he could flat out destroy her. Who's to say he wouldn't recycle that idea?"
"Recycle? Togami, that's brilliant."
"What is?"
"I suspect there's more to this case than meets the eye."
"What are you, a classic Transformers fangirl? We already know that."
"No, no. 'Recycled.' I'm going to go up to the biology lab. You continue looking for information."
" I said you were competent. I didn't say you were the general."
Kirigiri grinned.
"No, that's Naegi's job."
"What? No. It's not."
"Oh, no, I'm Byakuya Togami, and screw the rules, I have money!"
"What?"
"It's a Yugioh Abridged reference. Because you're like Seto Kaiba."
"Okay... Who's Seto Kaiba?"
"Togami, first order of business when you get out of here. You need to spend more time on the Internet."
"The internet? What's wrong with a good old biography? Or case files?"
"Nothing except it puts you so severely out of your element when you have to interact with other teenagers like a normal one."
"Hmmph."
Kirigiri walked off, leaving Togami behind her.