He thought back over what Shiho said. What Niijima said. He thought back over the assembly, the day this whole situation started. What that girl in front said, Ann Takamaki. He thought back over what Principal Kobayakawa said. And all the while Makoto thought about it, the car he was in pulled to a stop.

The driver, a woman in a sleek black suit, reached for a briefcase from the back seat and got out of the car. Despite her maturity, she still looked too young to have all that gray hair. She tapped on the window, startling Makoto from his thoughts. He took his hand off the side of his lingeringly swollen face, and he followed her up the ramp to a set of glass doors.

On the outside, it looked like any other office complex, but just beneath the mask, the iron bars of its inner doors gave away the prison's true nature.

"Niijima, Sae. Special Investigations," the woman said to the guard at the reception desk. "Witness interview." The guard looked up as Sae flashed her badge, and looked back down at a ledger behind the counter.

The guard turned the ledger to Sae with a pen pointed to an empty line. "Room 110," the guard said. Sae signed her name there, marking her visit as number 37. "He'll be ready in a few minutes." The guard took the ledger back and the pen and pointed to Makoto. "Who's that?"

"He was asked to sit in," Sae said. The guard pulled his head back quizzically. Off Sae's confirming glare, he shrugged and pointed the way to the interrogation room, and soon Makoto stood just outside the door. This was the door to the rest of the investigation. It was the door to the truth, whatever that truth may be. Makoto reached for the handle. He didn't have to open it.

If he wanted to turn back, this was his chance. It'd be like nothing ever happened.

"Having second thoughts?" Sae said.

He thought back to what he said on the rooftop. How resolved he felt, before he really began to search for answers. Sae probably saw this before. This must have been how Niijima felt when she got the letter from Hope's Peak.

But Makoto opened the door. Was he made of tougher stuff? Or did he just have nothing to lose? Sae eyed him with curiosity, and she followed him inside.

Large, cuffed hands settled on the edge of a steel table in the middle of a black, concrete room. The handcuffs were chained to the underside of the table. Kamoshida sat before Makoto and Sae, looking down at his warped reflection, the least imposing his massive body had ever appeared. He lifted his to Makoto. "I never wanted you to see me like this."

Makoto didn't react. As if he wanted everyone to see him like a drunk dumbass who slammed his face on the sidewalk. But here he was, still rubbing the side of his head every so often.

Sae paged through several folders from her briefcase. "Suguru Kamoshida," she read off a file with a matching photo clipped to it. "I'm Sae Niijima, public prosecutor. I'm not assigned to your case, but your statement on the second of May might be pertinent to another active investigation. Depending on your testimony here, there could be some clemency in your sentencing. Do you understand?"

Kamoshida shook his head. "You don't have to go easy on me," he said. "I sure as hell don't deserve it. But I'll help however I can."

"Fine by me. We can start with this." Sae set down a few more pages from her folder, and took out a familiar black and red calling card. She slid it across the table, covering part of Kamoshida's mirrored face. "Have you seen this before?"

Kamoshida read it over. It didn't take long for him to recognize the words, as he shut his eyes in shame. "Yes."

"And when was that?"

It was about a week before the assembly. "April twenty sixth," Kamoshida said.

"The twenty sixth," Sae said. "And your open confession took place on May second. What happened in between?"

Kamoshida recalled back to that time, and held his head low, between his hands, tugging on chain. "I'm not sure," he said. "I had a lot on my mind. I remember thinking about things, but not what, exactly. Everything, maybe. Until I just couldn't take it anymore. That's when-"

"But prior to this," Sae cut him off, "you had no such compunctions. That was only after you saw the calling card, is that right?" Kamoshida dropped his hands onto the table and gave a tiny nod. "What brought about this sudden regret?"

"I don't know. It just crept up on me, just suddenly, everything I did, I couldn't live with it."

Sae crossed her arms. "So whatever changed, it happened suddenly," she said. "If you can't explain it now, then it didn't come from this week of introspection. That leaves," Sae dragged the card back to the middle of the table, "this. This will be done tomorrow, so we hope you will be ready." She looked over her case file again, the note about Kamoshida's leave of absence. He wasn't gone until the day after the calling card. "Was that it?"

"I don't know what else it could be." Kamoshida's hands trembled and his cuffs rattled on the table.

"Or who," Sae said. "Naegi, you can take it from here."

Makoto nodded, and turned to the former coach across the table. "I think what Miss Niijima is getting at is that the Phantom Thieves are real," he said. "And that they're Shujin students." Principal Kobayakawa had told him just the same. Maybe he was right all along. "If we take this message about stealing desires at face value, then our suspects are…"

The suspects were anyone that had a motive. They were anyone that Kamoshida harassed and abused. They were anyone that thought the school had failed them. They were people like Ryuji, maimed and abandoned. They were people like Ann, forced into unfair relations.

"People like Shiho," Makoto said. "At the assembly, you said your actions made her try to kill herself." He knew someone, who did something similar. It was the day he first met Kasumi, and her sister Sumire. She had said she felt like a burden, that everyone else would better off without her. Was it the same for Shiho?

"She was in your office the day before that." The fourteenth. It was the worst of Kamoshida's abuse. "You raped her." It chilled him just to say it.

"Yes."

"Even before that, you beat her," Makoto said.

"Yes." Kamoshida's voice started to crack. "Suzui didn't do anything wrong. I wanted the team to do well. I wanted to do well. I thought. But it was really the gratification. And I resisted the temptation for a whole year, but I knew that if I wanted it, I could just take it. I know that's not a good reason to do what I did, but…"

"There's no reason," Makoto said, "at all. Ever. But at least now we know yours."

"Shiho Suzui was hospitalized in critical condition until recently," Sae said. Her level tone was cold as ice. "In your confession, you said you used Suzui as leverage to force another student, Ann Takamaki, into a relationship. What was the nature of this relationship?"

She probably had a purpose in asking, but Makoto still shot a puzzled look towards Sae.

"There wasn't much to it," Kamoshida said. "We'd just go places together. And it never got physical, if that's what you're asking."

"I'm asking in case Takamaki was a viable release valve for your frustrations," Sae said. "Did you ever attempt to coerce sex from her?"

Kamoshida looked off to the side. "I did. But she refused. When this school year started, I thought it'd be my chance, but things just got worse. All the way until… April fourteenth."

"I see," Sae said. She flipped through pages of her case notes and looked ready to move on, either to her next person of interest, or the end of the interrogation. On a transcript of Kamoshida's statements, Sae circled the name TAKAMAKI.

Makoto, however, had one more idea on his mind. "You could have just accepted the situation with Takamaki as it was," he said. "Even if it was inappropriate. Why did you push her to that breaking point?"

"I never thought she'd say no."

Nevermind. This line was going nowhere.

"At the assembly," Makoto quickly pivoted away, "you said there were several students you were going to have expelled. Who were they?"

Kamoshida took a second to gather his thoughts. "Ryuji Sakamoto, Ren Amamiya, and Yuuki Mishima."

Given what happened last year, Ryuji was no surprise. Ren, the other transfer student, didn't seem like a troublemaker, but Makoto did only ever see him with Ryuji. The last one though, "Mishima?"

Yuuki Mishima was probably the one person even less distinct than Makoto. He nodded vacantly as he recalled someone at the volleyball rally that got struck in the face. By Kamoshida.

"All three of them approached me," Kamoshida said. "They were all together when I decided to have them expelled. That's it."

"And when did you make this decision?" Sae said.

"It was the day Suzui… tried to kill herself," Kamoshida said.

"It should have been right after it happened," Makoto said. "I saw Ryuji running off somewhere. That must have been the PE office. They thought it was your fault, didn't they?"

"More than that. Mishima knew it."

"How?" Sae said.

"He's the one I told to get Suzui. On the fourteenth. I made him do a lot of things I shouldn't have." Off both Sae and Makoto glaring at him to pick up the pace, Kamoshida continued, "He was always the one I used to spread rumors about students I didn't like. Including Amamiya. He was always the one to bring the others to my office."

"So you thought you had to prevent him from speaking up against you?" Sae said.

Kamoshida shook his head. "It wasn't that. He was just there. I wasn't thinking about any of them in particular when I made that choice. I sure wasn't thinking about how the other teachers would see things. It just felt good to be in control, just for a second. It was all about me. I was never thinking of anyone but myself."

"No, that's wrong!"

Sae turned over her pen and glanced at Makoto. Kamoshida looked up, eyes open.

"I saw Shiho in the hospital," Makoto said. "She didn't really have much to add, but according to her, my name came up in your office." Kamoshida tensed his shoulders and covered his mouth. "Why? What did you want with me?"

Kamoshida started to sob. "I wanted your approval."

"While you raped Shiho?!" Makoto said. "Why did you think I'd ever be okay with that? Why did you even care?!"

"Because I thought there was a chance," he choked out. "That if you thought it was fine, then maybe it was. And because… if you could accept it, if you could accept me, it'd be like, if… Hope's Peak-"

"Don't even go there!" Makoto said. "You have to put this candidate crap behind you. You're not a Hope's Peak candidate. You never were. And neither was I. I'm just an average high school student, and you're…" Makoto sank into the back of his chair.

"Relevance?" Sae said. Makoto dropped his head. He didn't have any more leads. "Wrap it up, then. I'll be waiting just outside." Sae collected all her files back into her briefcase, and she knocked at the door for the guard.

"Makoto," Kamoshida said. "What happens to me now?"

"I don't know. You said you'd pay for your crimes, but, is that really enough?" Makoto said. "Maybe jail is what you deserve. Who's to say? But it's not like you're doing anyone any good just stuck here." Makoto shifted in his chair, ending with the good side of his face toward Kamoshida. "However long you're in here, it's what you choose after that, that really counts."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"If everyone was right, about us. If there was ever anything genuine about how you acted around me… I guess you start with that."

Makoto pushed his chair back, and knocked on the door, facing the other way. The guard let him out and locked the door behind him. Makoto met Sae outside, past the iron bars and the glass facade of the jail.

"For what it's worth, I think you handled yourself well in there," Sae said. "I suspect my investigation will take longer to conclude than yours. Well then, let's get you home." Sae got in the car, and Makoto soon after, and the engine flared to life.