Naegi stared down at the sewing kit, trying to think what it might mean that the needles were missing. That looked bad for Ogami – but it didn't mean anything conclusive, not necessarily. Everyone knew that all the girls had sewing kits in their rooms, so anyone could have taken the needles from hers.

So if all six needles from the sewing kit were missing, that meant five were still unaccounted for. Naegi grimaced at the thought of scouring the entire room for something as tiny as a needle. They could be hidden anywhere, and he was sure they couldn't have that much longer before the trial would start.

But on the other hand, he wasn't going to find anything by sitting around and worrying about it. Naegi sighed and began rechecking the other desk drawers. Unfortunately, he hadn't missed anything the first time. They were as empty as before. So where else could the needles be?

The bookcase seemed like a possibility. The culprit might have stowed the needles along the back of the shelves. Naegi headed carefully towards it, trying to ignore the way the room seemed to wobble around him with every step. But when he made it there, the shelves didn't contain anything, either.

Well, where would he put a bunch of suspicious needles if he needed to hide them? Naegi frowned, trying to think about it – but it was hard to envision needing to hide weapons at all. If he needed to get rid of something, all he had to do was toss it in the trash. He glanced automatically down at the trashcan beside the bookcase as he had the thought –

And saw something silver glinting in the bottom.

Slowly, Naegi eased himself to his knees in front of the trashcan, biting his lip. The thought of looking through a girl's garbage made him feel slightly guilty – but if the killer really had tried to use this to dispose of the murder weapon, he didn't see any other choice. He peered down inside. He could see a few sheets of crumpled paper, a dark brown bottle, and below them – several needles, edged with blood and bits of yellow residue.

Sticking his hand into a trashcan full of poisoned needles didn't sound like a very good idea, so instead, Naegi gently tilted the can so that the contents slid out onto the floor. Tucking his hand into his sleeve, he used his fabric-covered knuckles to separate the needles out. He could see two – three – no, four of them had fallen onto the floor, and he nudged them into a small pile.

Was that all of them? He checked the trashcan to see if the fifth one might be in there, but no, he'd emptied everything out. Then did that mean there was still one missing?

Well, maybe not. Naegi frowned at the crumpled papers that had been tossed into the trashcan with the needles. It was just possible...

He began smoothing out the tangle of papers, checking to see if the last needle might have gotten caught inside. He couldn't help noticing that at one point, they seemed to have been partially covered with writing, but at some later point it had been scratched over with heavy black ink. Only a few phrases remained readable.

I hate to do it like this…

All of this is because of my own weakness…

This won't end with me just accepting your hatred…

Naegi frowned, a chill going down his spine at the sight. There was something about those words that he didn't like at all, something ominous. But that didn't make any sense, did it? The murder had already happened.

He wrenched his attention away from the unsettling words and smoothed out the last sheet of paper – and there, caught in a crumpled fold, was the final needle.

Naegi put it with the others, and after a moment of thought, he gingerly nudged all of them onto one of the papers so that he could move them. He didn't know how much poison was left on the needles, but he didn't want to take any chances by leaving them lying around on the floor. He set the paper with the needles safely on top of the bookcase, just as Kirigiri left the bathroom.

"Ah. I see you've had some success." She headed over to peer down at the needles.

"Yes, five of them were in the trash," Naegi said, nodding. "With the one from earlier, that makes all six."

"Not quite." Kirigiri held up a small jar. When Naegi looked inside, it held a lot of cotton swabs – and six more needles.

"What?" Naegi frowned, looking from the needles Kirigiri held to the ones piled in front of him. That didn't seem right – where had the extras come from?

"But that wasn't all I found." Kirigiri jerked her head towards the bathroom. "Look for yourself."

"Uh – is that okay?" Naegi asked, giving the door a hesitant look. "I mean – well, should I really be going through a girl's bathroom?"

Kirigiri gave him a blank stare. "How else are you going to see what's in there? Now hurry up before the announcement sounds."

Naegi sighed, reluctantly heading for the bathroom. He supposed it was probably all right if Kirigiri was there, too – and he could always apologize to Ogami about it later. So with that in mind, he went ahead and stepped inside and began looking around.

The bathroom looked more or less like his own, with the front part containing a sink and mirror while the back area was split between a shower and a toilet. Nothing that he saw seemed immediately out of place, though. What was it that Kirigiri had wanted him to see? It couldn't be anything too hidden, though. She'd said that she noticed something first when she'd been in the middle of treating his puncture wound, so it had to be at least somewhat unusual.

He checked the area with the sink first, since that was where Kirigiri must have been when she'd noticed something. The mirrored medicine cabinet didn't seem out of the ordinary, though, even when Naegi opened it to give the contents an embarrassed glance. A lot of it seemed to be muscle treatments of various sorts, and he wasn't sure how to tell what was supposed to be there and what wasn't.

But when he gave the sink a quick glance, he frowned. There was water pooling in the bottom, even though the drain didn't seem to be plugged. Was there a clog or something? Gingerly, Naegi reached into the water and poked at the drain, stirring up a few tendrils of pulpy white gunk. He snatched his hand away before whatever that was could touch him, wiping his fingers hastily on his pants.

Could the clogged sink be what Kirigiri had wanted him to look at? Naegi wasn't sure, but it did seem to be the only unusual thing he'd found so far. He bent down to check under the sink – and as he did, a small bit of something white caught his eye from the back of the faucet. He reached for it curiously, and it turned out to be a small scrap of paper. There wasn't enough to read much of what had been written on it, but Naegi could tell from the few letters that it was definitely different from the writing on the papers he'd discovered in the trashcan.

That seemed like a much more likely thing for Kirigiri to have noticed than just the clogged sink – although Naegi supposed that with her, it could be hard to tell what she might consider important. With that in mind, he gave the bathroom one more quick glance, just to be on the safe side. The toilet looked ordinary, no different from his, and the shower seemed okay, with a few bottles of soap and a towel abandoned in a heap in one corner –

Wait. Naegi frowned at the towel. What was that doing there? Everyone in this room should have been unconscious when the water came back on at seven this morning, so no one would have had a reason to use a towel in the shower. And while Ogami might have used it last night, it just didn't seem likely that a girl who neatly stacked rows upon rows of weights would leave a towel on the floor like that. Naegi walked over and picked it up.

And a small screwdriver fell out onto the floor with a clatter.