Naegi and Togami reached the dining hall just as the other four students were about to leave it. They would have been there sooner, but they'd had to stop in Togami's room first so that he could put on fresh clothing. This made the second time he'd had to do that, and for a moment, Naegi had considered suggesting that Togami leave some fresh clothes in Naegi's closet so that they'd be on hand. He hadn't quite been able to muster the nerve to say it, though – it sounded very personal, even if it did make sense from a logical point of view.

"Oh – you're here," Asahina said, giving them a startled look when Naegi and Togami entered to find the other students just standing up from their seats. "You're all right!"

Ogami turned to check the clock, then gave them a reproachful frown. "You're late."

"Hey, looks like they found something better to do than show up for breakfast," Hagakure said with a grin. "Can't be helped if that's the case, right?"

"Of course it can be helped," Kirigiri said, her words clipped and chillier than usual. "And in the future, it should be. We have a standing breakfast meeting for a reason. A person with a moderate amount of self-control should be able to confine their personal activities to the other twenty-three hours of the day."

With that, she brushed past Naegi and stalked out the dining hall door. Naegi turned to watch as she headed for the gateway to the rest of the first floor, frowning in bewilderment. "Did something happen this morning?"

"Yes – you didn't show up!" Asahina glared at him. "Obviously she was worried about you! She said she was about to go down to your room to check on you before we started exploring."

"Oh." Naegi winced. Of course Kirigiri would be especially worried when he didn't show up for breakfast – she knew he'd gone to investigate the hidden room last night. When she didn't see him this morning, naturally she would have assumed the worst. That should have occurred to him sooner. "I should probably apologize to her, then."

Togami snorted softly. "You don't owe her anything."

"Ugh, I knew it," Asahina said, shaking her head. "You're just going to be a bad influence on poor Naegi now, aren't you? You're making him late, telling him to be mean to people – I bet it's only a matter of time before you start trying to get him to say he'd kill all of us."

"Don't be ridiculous," Togami snapped, before Naegi could object to this unfair statement. "Why would I want to encourage anyone in a course of action that would end with me dead?"

"Oh, don't worry, you won't," Hagakure said with a cheerful grin. "You're not going to die – there aren't going to be any more successful murders!"

Everyone turned and stared at Hagakure after this pronouncement. He beamed at them all, apparently oblivious to their confusion.

"What makes you say that?" Asahina asked at last, when no one else seemed inclined to say anything.

"I predicted it last night!" Hagakure announced proudly. "Since it revealed itself to me from the ether, there's no doubt about it!"

"And is your fortune-telling ever actually right?" Togami asked, lip curling with disdain.

"You bet!" Hagakure said. "I can usually hit twenty or thirty percent on a good day!"

Togami rolled his eyes. "Yes, that's about what I expected you'd say."

"I hope your prediction turns out to be true," Naegi said, before Togami could elaborate on that note.

"Well, I won't murder anyone," Hagakure said brightly.

"Me either," Asahina agreed. "I would never."

"Nor would I," Ogami said, closing her eyes as she made the declaration.

"Me too," Naegi said, nodding firmly. "I could never kill any of my friends!"

Everyone turned and looked at Togami. He scowled at the others. "Didn't I cover this yesterday? I don't see what will come of restating it."

Naegi reached out and caught Togami's hand in one of his, letting their fingers intertwine. Togami didn't look down at it, but he did squeeze Naegi's hand back, heaving a put-upon sigh. "Fine. As the current circumstances stand, I have no intention of committing a murder."

Naegi grinned. Hearing everyone reaffirm their commitment not to kill anyone was a strong encouragement, bringing them all together. He could feel them all uniting into a team, a single force powerful enough to take on the mastermind. As long as they all stuck to the promise they made in this moment, there was nothing the mastermind could do to force them into murder.

"To be honest, I wish Kirigiri and Fukawa were here for this, as well," Ogami said, looking away from the others.

"Yeah, it's too bad Kirigiri didn't wait," Asahina said. "But Fukawa is so hard to deal with – especially now that she realized her white knight really isn't interested in her."

"I've told her the truth about that from the beginning," Togami said, scowling. "She can't pretend I've misled her. She can only blame her own outrageous delusions if she thought otherwise."

"Yes, no one is accusing you of stringing her along in any way," Ogami said. "But that doesn't change the fact that she's withdrawn even more from the rest of the group over the past few days. I would feel better if she were here to speak for herself."

"Why would you want to talk to someone who's gone off the deep end?" Hagakure asked. "We're better off without her, I say."

Naegi sighed. Maybe they'd had a moment of unity – but that was all it was, a single moment. He could see that they were still fractured, with Fukawa and Kirigiri absent and the others still suspicious of Togami's actions. Whatever bond the group shared was still fragile, and with fault lines that would fracture under any real pressure.

"Well, we were about to head out to start our search of the school," Asahina said, shrugging away the dark mood that had fallen on all of them. "We had another trial, so there should be –"

"Another floor open," Togami finished, sounding bored. "Presumably the fourth floor, this time. Fine, you can all feel free to go on ahead with whatever it is you usually do. We'll be up shortly." He headed back towards the kitchen, and since he didn't seem inclined to let go of Naegi's hand, Naegi found himself towed along behind as the others shrugged and headed out the door.

Figuring they shouldn't delay too much longer than they already had, Naegi grabbed a few breakfast foods that he knew he could eat quickly. Togami, on the other hand, appeared to consider several cups of coffee all that was necessary for a complete breakfast.

"Don't you want to eat anything?" Naegi asked, in between hasty bites of a granola bar. "You need to keep your energy up."

"That's what the caffeine is for." Togami took another sip of coffee, and Naegi wondered how he managed not to scald his tongue on the hot liquid. "I thought you were the one who wanted to hurry."

"Okay, fine." Naegi went back to eating his breakfast, but even trying to move at his fastest, Togami still finished before he did. Naegi finished off his last few bites of a sliced apple as they headed up the stairs to the fourth floor.

They stepped off the staircase to find a hallway very similar to the others they'd seen so far, but this time lit with a dark golden brown.

"Do you think we'll find any clues here?" Naegi asked, peering down the hall.

Togami shrugged. "Possibly. But first we'll need to find everything the mastermind wants us to see here, so that we can try to figure out what it is they don't want us to see."

Naegi nodded. "Right. Okay, then, let's go!" He reached out and caught Togami's hand in his own. If they were going to search together, they might as well do it as a team.

Togami led the way, taking a right hand turn down a branching path at the first opportunity. Naegi let him take the lead, since it wasn't like either of them really knew where they were going anyway. This first blue door, the data center, was as good a place to start as any.

Except that when Togami reached out to try the door, it only rattled beneath his hand.

"It's locked?" Naegi frowned and tugged at the door himself. Sure enough, the door was stuck fast, and the knob wouldn't turn no matter how he twisted it.

"What is that supposed to be?" Togami glared at the data center door with an almost personal outrage. "Why is there a locked door here? How are we meant to investigate properly if there are places we can't get to?"

"I think that's probably the point," Naegi said, trying not to smile at Togami's indignation at being locked out of a place he wanted to go. "If it's locked, we're not supposed to investigate it."

Togami glared at the door for a few more seconds, and for a moment Naegi thought he might kick it out of pique. But Togami managed to get ahold of himself before it went that far, and he turned away from the door and dragged Naegi further down the hallway.

"Wait, aren't we going in those rooms?" Naegi asked as Togami strode past a pair of doors.

"They're just classrooms," Togami said over his shoulder. "Those are all the same. Why waste time there when there are more interesting rooms around?" He turned a corner, and his eyebrows shot up as he caught sight of the room at the end of the hall. "Ah – you see?"

Naegi followed Togami's gaze to the plate above the door at the end of the hall. "The headmaster's office?"

"Much more worthwhile than yet another classroom with childish graffiti all over the chalkboard," Togami said, approaching the door. "Now, then, let's see –"

The knob rattled under his hand.

Togami stared at the locked door in disbelief. "Another one? Is this some kind of joke?"

"I'm pretty sure Monokuma is the only one who'd think it's funny," Naegi said. "Look, let's just keep trying the other doors, okay? There are still some other rooms on this floor. They can't all be locked."

"None of them should be locked," Togami muttered angrily, giving the door a last dark glare. "Keeping us out of certain rooms is cheating."

Naegi decided not to comment on that one, instead heading a little ways back down the hall to the door they'd passed as they zeroed in on the headmaster's office. This one was just labeled "office," and while that didn't sound quite as intriguing as the other rooms, maybe that meant it would be open.

And sure enough, when Naegi tried the office doorknob, it turned under his hand. He grinned at Togami. "See? I knew they couldn't all be locked."

"Yes, but it won't be as interesting as the locked rooms," Togami said. "That's where the useful things will be." He looked around the office as they entered, giving the whole thing a single glance before scowling. "See? Just an administrative suite with atrociously orange fake flowers. Boring."

But despite declaring the room to be devoid of interest, Togami went further in, peering around closely as he walked down the rows of desks. He didn't examine the room quite as thoroughly as Kirigiri seemed to investigate the various spaces of the school, but he also didn't do it halfway, either. He scanned the plants and opened all the desk drawers, continuing even when he didn't find anything of interest in the first several he tried.

To speed things up, Naegi forced himself to let go of Togami's hand so that he could poke around the room as well. Figuring he might as well carry on with what Togami was doing, Naegi went to the second row of desks, intending to examine those. But before he could start, a colorful paper on the ground caught his eye.

"What's this?" Naegi bent to pick it up as Togami circled around to his side, looking at the paper over Naegi's shoulder.

"A photograph?" Togami asked, reaching out to run a suspicious finger over the photo's glossy surface like he suspected it of not really being there.

Naegi couldn't stop staring at it, even with Togami's finger in the way. The picture showed Yamada and Celeste fighting over a camera while Maizono laughed in the background, in a school where sunshine easily streamed through the open windows. They looked so energetic, so full of life – so different from the bloody, mangled corpses that had been the last he'd seen of any of them. In fact, they looked happy, in a way he'd never seen them while they were all locked here in this twisted version of Hope's Peak. The sight made a dull ache rise behind his eyes, like he wanted to cry but had gone somewhere beyond tears.

"It's exactly the same!" Naegi said, the hand holding the photo beginning to tremble. "It's just like the photo I saw before!"

Togami turned sharply to face Naegi. "Before? What photo are you talking about?"

"When we were exploring the third floor for the first time, I saw another photo like this," Naegi said. "Well, not exactly like this – it was Kuwata, Owada, and Fujisaki in that one. But they were all together, in a classroom with no iron plates on the windows, smiling like they were normal students."

"And you didn't think to mention it?" Togami demanded.

"I told the others," Naegi said. "If you'd been at the meeting where we talked about what we found, you would have heard it, too. But we all thought it was a forgery – just like this one." He shook his head, eyes still locked on Maizono's laughing face. "Monokuma must have faked this!"

"Or maybe you're the fake!" Monokuma called out, bouncing up beside them with a laugh and snatching the picture out of Naegi's hand. "A forgery plot? What, do you think the moon landing was faked, too? Come on!"

"Then you're saying that picture is real?" Naegi asked, craning his head to try to get another glimpse of it.

"And if you're claiming it is, then why only show it now that the students in it are dead and unable to corroborate your story?" Togami added, pinning Monokuma with his glare.

"Oh, is that what I'm doing?" Monokuma tilted his head questioningly.

"Obviously it is!" Naegi said. "Is the picture real or fake?"

"Aw, Naegi, you're always so eager for the black and white answer," Monokuma said, grinning. "Are you trying to get yourself split in half like me? Do you admire the binary beauty of my black and white coloring? Well, sad to say, it's just no use. If you try to split something into black and white when it can't be split at all, you'll just end up bloody."

"Is all that gibberish supposed to mean something?" Togami asked, glaring at Monokuma.

"It means the picture is real," Monokuma said. "No more, no less." And with another burst of laughter, Monokuma disappeared, taking the photo with him.

Naegi bit his lip, looking up at Togami. "Do you believe him?"

"I don't know." Togami crossed his arms, staring at the place where Monokuma had been. "But I do know that he wants us to focus on that picture instead of on anything else on this floor – and I'm not at all inclined to do what he wants." He turned and headed for the door. "Come on, let's get the rest of the floor over with."

Naegi followed after Togami, but try as he might, he couldn't quite put the picture out of his mind. If it were real – if Monokuma was telling the truth – then did that mean the others had known each other before arriving at Hope's Peak? Could it be possible? And if so, why wouldn't they have mentioned it?

Togami headed back the way they'd come after leaving the office, making for the hallway they'd ignored on their way to the data center. The walls here were a dark violet leading up to an elaborate wooden door, the word "music" on a sign above it. Togami glared at the doorknob as he tried it – but this one turned easily under his hand.

The music room turned out to be closer to a concert hall than a classroom, with high arching ceilings and plush red benches facing a raised stage with a grand piano on it. But Naegi couldn't really spare much attention for the room – his eyes had gone immediately to the person standing in the central walkway.

Kirigiri crossed her arms and surveyed the two boys. "So you two finally decided to show up."