As Naegi left the cafeteria, he could see Kirigiri in the dormitory hallway, already ringing the bell outside Jill's room. But by the time Naegi made it to her side, there was still no answer.
Kirigiri looked at him and shrugged. "She may have left already."
Naegi nodded. He might be worried about Jill, after how unusually quiet he remembered her being last night, but she wasn't his main concern. Not after everything Ogami had said.
As Naegi moved past Jill's door to continue down the hall, a sense of déjá vu struck him. He, Kirigiri, and Togami had followed this exact path yesterday morning, when they'd rushed out to check on the students who hadn't shown up for the breakfast meeting. Even Kirigiri had seemed unsettled as she'd tried door after door with no response – or no, even before that, when something had driven her into the cafeteria to begin her hasty search. Naegi just prayed that this hunt for missing students didn't end as horribly as yesterday's had.
Again, Kirigiri reached the door long before Naegi could, and he held his breath as she pressed the bell, hurrying towards her as quickly as he could. But the sound of his footsteps in the empty hall only reinforced the silence around them as the door remained stubbornly closed.
"Maybe she didn't hear," Naegi said, reaching out to push the bell again, longer and harder than Kirigiri had.
Kirigiri raised an eyebrow at him. "You seem very concerned."
"Aren't you?" Naegi said, Ogami's words echoing in his mind. Dead, I could protect you all. "We shouldn't have left her alone, not after what happened to Asahina."
He reached out, intending to rattle the doorknob – but to his surprise, it turned easily under his hand. Had it not been locked? Or – Naegi remembered closing the door behind him after the investigation had ended. He hadn't locked it, and Togami had still had Ogami's key. He must not have returned hers – and Naegi wasn't quite sure how to feel about that, when Togami had made such a point of giving his back.
He pushed the door, letting it swing open on the dark room. The lights were off – did that mean Ogami wasn't here after all? His legs ached already at the thought of needing to scour the entire school for her – but before he could do more than contemplate it, a shape moved in the darkness.
"What… are you doing here?" Ogami's voice croaked, thick and raw from too many shed tears.
"We came to check on you," Naegi said, squinting into the room to try to get a look at her. He couldn't see much more than a silhouette standing against the far wall. "You didn't come to the breakfast meeting. Are you okay?"
And then, with a small sigh of annoyance, Kirigiri reached past him to flick on the light switch, and the dark shape resolved itself into Ogami. The girl sat slumped against the far wall, looking like she might collapse if she didn't have the wall holding her marginally upright. Even from across the room, Naegi could see the redness to her eyes, the smudged streaks of tear tracks cutting down her face. She hadn't even tried to clean up after the trial, her skin and clothes still grimy with blood and dirt from the firing squad.
As much as Ogami's broken appearance hurt to see, Naegi couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. She was still alive. She might be unhappy and grieving for her best friend, but she hadn't done anything drastic about it, not yet.
"Am I okay?" Ogami echoed Naegi's question. "That's what you're worried about?"
"Well, yes," Naegi said. "Yesterday – it was awful for everyone. You shouldn't be alone after something like that."
"No. You're wrong," Ogami said, her eyes like dark holes in her face as she stared at Naegi. "I should be alone. None of you should come near me."
"That's not –"
"Four people are dead because of me," Ogami cut him off sharply, her voice rasping like she'd had to force the words from a closed throat.
"None of that was your fault!" Naegi said, eyes widening at the idea.
"Wasn't it?" Ogami said. "You were all starting to work together – until I sparked the division among you that led to all of this. None of this would have happened if you'd all been able to work as a united front."
"You can't know that," Naegi said, taking a few steps into the room. She hadn't invited him, but he thought that this kind of conversation might be easier if they weren't straining to speak from opposite sides of the room. "The mastermind would probably just have tried to use something else against us, and it could have been just as awful."
"But we'll never know," Ogami said. "Because they used me." Her shoulders heaved in a long, shuddering sob. "I should have killed myself the moment I chose to go against the mastermind."
"What?" Naegi stared at her, horror hitting him like ice. She couldn't really think that, could she? "Don't say things like that! Killing yourself wouldn't have made anything better – it would have just let the mastermind win!"
"And what do you think they've done now?" Ogami said, her face twisting with a gruesome laugh that chilled Naegi to the bone. "I thought that I could help you all – that I could give my life to protect you from the evil I'd been aiding. I thought I could fight. But I was wrong. This isn't a battle, and we aren't up against an enemy that we can beat. The mastermind will take everything from us, and there's nothing we can do to stop them."
"That isn't true," Naegi insisted. "If you just give up like that now, then it's like saying that all the friends we've lost died for nothing!"
"They did die for nothing!" Ogami shouted, surging to her feet. "Don't you understand? Every bond we make, every friendship we form, every time we choose to trust – those are what the mastermind is using to destroy us!"
Naegi rocked back at the words, unable to deny their painful truth. Ogami was right – every murder they'd seen so far had involved someone's trust being betrayed. He'd let Maizono use his warm feelings towards her to manipulate him. Fujisaki had gone to meet Owada alone in the middle of the night. Yamada had believed Celeste's lies unquestioningly. Jill had thought that her alter ego wouldn't act against her. Trust had been woven into each of the murders, a stark warning against getting too close to anyone else.
And not just the murders. Looking at Ogami's face, Naegi knew what she had to be thinking about. Asahina had been desperate to talk to her best friend – desperate enough to defy Monokuma's rules. And that act of friendship had been the mastermind's excuse for murdering her.
"What happened to Asahina was the mastermind's fault," Naegi said fiercely, looking up into Ogami's eyes. "They're the one who killed her. Not you."
But Ogami just shook her head. "It doesn't make a difference anymore." She bowed her head, the sudden burst of fury draining out of her. "All she wanted was a few minutes to talk to me – and now I'll never talk to her again."
"Ogami…" Naegi reached out a hesitant hand to touch her shoulder in reassurance.
"Don't." She shook him off immediately. "Just – don't say anything to me. Not right now. Just get out."
Naegi bit his lip. "I'm not sure that's a good idea."
"What?" Ogami looked up at him sharply, the look dark enough to make Naegi's insides quail.
But he didn't dare give in – not if what he was afraid of might be true.
"I don't think you should be alone right now," Naegi said. "Not when you're so upset."
Ogami stared at him for a long moment. "You think I'm going to kill myself." She shook her head. "You'll be better off if I do."
"Don't say things like that!" Naegi said. "Asahina wouldn't have wanted you to!"
"You can't possibly know what she would have wanted!" Ogami snarled. "She's dead. She's dead, and it should have been me!"
"It shouldn't have been anybody!"
But even as he said the words, Naegi could see that he was talking to closed ears. Ogami's grief was too powerful for him to break through right now. Maybe if he'd said this to her after giving her time to recover, she might have been more receptive – but if he waited to convince her, he might never get the chance at all.
If his words weren't helping, maybe someone else's would. Naegi turned to look back to the door, where Kirigiri still stood watching the exchange. He didn't know what to say to her that wouldn't make Ogami more upset to hear, so he just had to hope that she could understand his plea for help from his face. After all, she'd never had trouble seeing through him before.
Kirigiri tilted her head, looking at him for a long moment – and then she shrugged and looked past him to Ogami. "Killing yourself would be very troublesome for the rest of us."
Naegi's jaw dropped at Kirigiri's blunt statement. How could she say something so coldhearted to a grieving girl who'd been threatening suicide?
But as he looked back at Ogami, some of the heartache clouding her eyes seemed to have faded a bit in the shock of Kirigiri's words. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me." Kirigiri crossed her arms. "The mastermind would certainly require us to investigate and hold another trial. We would have to prove that you genuinely had been the one to kill yourself – and then deal with the repercussions."
Ogami frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"The true culprit is the person who planned the crime," Kirigiri said. "That's the rule. So tell me – what happens if the culprit herself is already dead?"
"There wouldn't be anyone to execute," Ogami said.
"Maybe." Kirigiri shrugged. "Or maybe the mastermind would choose the next best thing – the person who seems to be driving you to it." Her gaze slid over to Naegi.
"That –" Ogami went even paler than before. "That wouldn't –"
"Are you really going to pretend that you understand what the mastermind will do?"
Ogami flinched at the cruel reminder of her belief that she, not Asahina, would be the one executed for the rule-breaking.
Kirigiri nodded sharply. "All right, then. I think that's enough." She turned on her heel and left the room.
Naegi looked from Kirigiri's retreating back to Ogami's slumped shoulders. "I –"
"You win," Ogami said, her words low and bitter. "Are you happy now? You win. I won't – do anything. Not now."
"Ogami – I'm sorry," Naegi said desperately. "I didn't think she'd say something like –"
"It doesn't matter," Ogami interrupted, turning away. "Nothing matters anymore. Just go."
Naegi hesitated – but Ogami did seem to have been convinced by Kirigiri's argument. And with the way that Kirigiri had used him to manipulate the other girl, he could understand why she might not want him in the room any longer. He nodded and turned for the door.
Just before leaving, he looked back over his shoulder. Ogami stood at the corner of her bed, staring down at the clean, unblemished sheets, so different from the blood-stained mess that had been there yesterday. One of her hands rested on the crisp white pillow where Asahina had lain.
"I'm sorry," Naegi said, one last time. "And – I'm glad you aren't dead."
He closed the door behind him as he left, leaving Ogami alone with her grief.
