Naegi stared up at Jill, looming over him with wild eyes and a smile bright enough to cut. Fukawa had hated her – was that true? He couldn't say for sure, but Fukawa had certainly never expressed much affection for the murderous half of herself. And if that was how she felt, Jill would have known it.
What would it be like to have to cope with an existence like that? Naegi didn't know exactly how Jill had come into being, but from everything she and Fukawa had said about it, Fukawa had been the original personality. Jill had been born from some dark part of Fukawa's mind, only existing long enough to act on the desires Fukawa hadn't been able to express. If what Jill said about it was true, then all her thoughts, feelings, and even her personality had been formed in response to Fukawa.
Would Jill have ever been able to interact with people on her own? Had she ever had the chance? She'd been so gleeful at the prospect of being allowed to wander around freely after the second trial had concluded and they'd all known about her existence – and when could she have had anything like that before this? She was a wanted serial killer, and the police report had already identified her as having multiple personalities. Any hint of Jill's existence would have drawn suspicion to Fukawa immediately.
No, now that Naegi thought about it, he saw that Jill could never have had the opportunity to talk to others, not unless she'd been pretending to be Fukawa. Through however many years she'd existed, her only link to the rest of humanity would have been through her alter ego, the girl whose body and emotions she shared.
And now Fukawa was gone, ripping away the only other person who had consistently been in Jill's life.
Naegi couldn't even say for sure that Fukawa hadn't died hating Jill. After all, Fukawa had been so lost to despair when she'd been erased, Naegi was horribly sure that she'd been furious at all of them at the time. And judging by everything she'd said about Jill, she hadn't had any positive feelings towards her alter ego at all. If Jill said that Fukawa had hated her in those last moments – well, she was the one feeling the emotions. She was probably right.
But that awful ending didn't have to eclipse everything else.
"I don't think she hated you," Naegi said, looking into Jill's blood-red eyes. "Not really."
"Yeah, right. Always got to be a sugar rush with you, doesn't it?" Jill said, tongue curling close to Naegi's cheek. "What do you think, would I get diabetes if I took a little taste?"
Naegi gritted his teeth and didn't pull away, even as her tongue threatened to snake across his skin. "I'm serious. Monokuma's executions – those bring out the worst in everyone. They're meant to! But that doesn't mean she hated you all along."
"What, are you trying to cheer up a murderer now?" Jill laughed, and Naegi could feel her breath hot on his face. "Sorry, Macaroon, but the only thing that'll get me going now is a nice rush of blood under my scissors!"
"So that's why you cut yourself?" Naegi asked.
Jill's expression changed as her eyes jerked over to her arm and the long line of tally marks stretching up. "No. I had to keep count."
"Oh." Naegi frowned, trying to follow along. "So wait – these are for yesterday? You mean all of them are for Fukawa? But – even if you want to count her – why would you need more than one?"
"Gotta count every time I kill someone, don't I?" Jill said, shrugging. "That's how I do it – the counting is the last thing I do, to seal the death off, like a nice little epitaph to remind me of a happy moment. So I have to do it, every time." Her hand trembled around the scissors, clutching the metal so tightly her skin went white. "Every time I feel her screaming…"
She looked so uncertain in that moment, like the whole world was shaking around her, and it sent a wave of sympathy rushing through Naegi. Fukawa had been his friend, even if she'd died not knowing that he thought so. He couldn't let the only part of her that lived on believe that she was equally alone. And so he gathered up his courage and reached up to place a comforting hand on her shoulder.
Jill immediately jerked away, scissors snapping along the edge of Naegi's wrist as she retreated. "And what the hell is that supposed to be?" she snarled, putting some distance between them. "You think I need your pity, is that it? You think I'm sad and moping because Little Miss Gloomy left me high and dry? Well think again! I'm glad to be rid of that loser – she was nothing but a millstone around my neck, and without her dragging me down I'm free to embrace my gloriously murderous self to the max!"
"Really?" Naegi held his cut wrist to his chest, trying to use the edge of his jacket to put pressure on the wound before it could bleed too much. "Well – I just wanted you to know that if you do miss her, you're not the only one."
Jill's hand lashed out, and Naegi heard a whistling sound beside his head. He turned to see a second pair of scissors embedded in the doorframe, a few strands of his hair drifting down from them. That had been even closer than the last.
Something wet trickled down his cheek. Naegi frowned, reaching up to touch it –
And pain seared hot and sharp along his cheekbone and over his ear, in the long line that Jill's scissors had scored across his face. Black spots exploded at the edges of his vision, and Naegi found himself slumping back against the wall, gasping to breathe through the pain.
"I don't miss her," Jill's voice hissed into his awareness. "I don't care about her. And I definitely do not need her." Blood red eyes burned in the center of Naegi's wavering vision. "Say otherwise again, and you'll lose more than a little blood."
Naegi wanted to protest, but he couldn't find the breath to say the words. By the time his vision had cleared, Jill had gone, leaving nothing behind but the two pairs of scissors still stuck in the wall beside his head. He reached up and tugged at one with his uninjured hand, but they might as well have been hammered in for all that he could budge them.
"Are you all right?"
Naegi looked up at Kirigiri as she peered at his face. "Yeah – I think so." He would have wiped away the blood dripping down his cheek with the edge of his sleeve if Kirigiri hadn't caught his arm before he could.
"Germs," she said, giving his hoodie a pointed look. "You should go down to the nurse's office and bandage that properly."
Just the thought of facing all those flights of stairs again so soon after the first time made Naegi's knees tremble in protest. And besides, he couldn't go back already – not when he hadn't even found Togami yet. This was still his best chance at knowing where the other boy would be, and he couldn't give up on it so easily.
"Not yet," Naegi said, hoping that his voice didn't sound as shaky to Kirigiri as it did to him. "Not until we've finished checking the floor."
"Hmm." Kirigiri gave him a skeptical look. "Well, if you're sure about it. We seem to be nearly done, anyway." She pursed her lips. "But as soon as we've seen the rest of the area, you're going to clean and treat that."
"Sure," Naegi agreed, relieved that she wasn't planning to drag him downstairs immediately. Togami wouldn't have been so easily convinced – he would have insisted that Naegi drop everything else, no matter how important, until he was certain that this new injury had been taken care of.
But Togami wasn't here to object – that was the point. Naegi felt himself drooping at the thought of the other boy, and so he forced himself to put his imaginings of what Togami would have done out of his mind. Instead, he focused on following Kirigiri as she led the way out of the garden and towards the areas of the new floor that they hadn't explored yet.
They passed the hallway back to the stairs and headed in the opposite direction. There was another door labeled 5-C tucked in a corner, but it looked like it was just going to be another of the identical classrooms to Naegi. Kirigiri seemed to think so too, heading past it and down a long, almost industrial-looking hallway.
As they walked, Naegi got the unsettling feeling that the lights were dimming around him. It didn't seem to be true, at least not when he looked up to check the actual state of the lighting – but that didn't stop the sensation of walking into the darkness.
Approaching the door sent a cold shiver down Naegi's back as he realized that what he'd assumed was decoration was actually dripping white graffiti. Someone had painted the word RAW down one side of these doors – but since the paint looked like it was long dry, it couldn't have been any of the students. They'd only gotten access to this area a few hours ago. Had the mastermind done it? If so, why would they bother? The sign above the door declared this room to be a Biology Lab – not exactly the sort of place Naegi would associate with that kind of graffiti.
When Kirigiri tried the door and found it locked, Naegi was almost relieved. Something about the writing on that door told him that whatever was beyond, he didn't want to see it.
Kirigiri didn't look anywhere near so pleased about it, though, her mouth twisting in a scowl. "Well, back to the last classroom, and then you're going down to the nurse's office," she said, heading back the way they came.
Naegi sighed in disappointment as they headed back to that final classroom. He remembered how Togami had grumbled that the classrooms were boring when they'd explored the fourth floor together – it hardly seemed likely that Togami would be in there. Maybe he'd been mistaken that Togami would spend today searching the new area of the school – or maybe the other boy had spotted him and purposefully avoided him as they both searched the floor. Naegi wasn't sure which would be worse.
As they approached the final classroom, a sudden sense of unease hit Naegi, startling him with its intensity. There was something here – something bad, something wrong –
He opened his mouth to beg Kirigiri to stop – but before he could, she swung open the double doors.
And the sour stench of blood and death flooded out, choking its way down Naegi's throat until he gagged from the foulness. Blackness flashed in and out of his vision as he gasped for breath, his sight flickering in and out as his coughing sent lances of pain through his injured face.
And in between the dizzying explosions of darkness and pain – he could almost see figures in the room, falling and bleeding out across the floor. Dizziness roared in his ears, and through it he could hear screaming, the desperate wails of voices that he almost knew. And in the center, always there at the root of it all – he could almost remember –
Naegi sagged against the door, clutching at it in a desperate attempt to remain upright as the ground seemed to buck beneath his feet – but with the added pain from Jill's cut to his hand, he couldn't manage it. He lost his grip on the door, collapsing towards the ground –
Until a pair of strong arms caught him, giving him the strength and support not to fall apart as they lowered him gently to the floor. The familiar smell of fresh soap washed away the reek of corpses, letting him draw blessedly clean breaths. And when Naegi managed to open his eyes again, the ice-blue gaze peering anxiously down at him was the best thing he could imagine seeing.
And then Togami let go, leaving Naegi sitting on the floor in a heap as he straightened sharply. The cold mask from that morning settled back over his features, as if the concern on his face had never been there, and he turned to Kirigiri with a freezing glare.
"What the hell did you do?"
