Whatever game Kirigiri was playing with her bizarre warnings and her shifting facades, Togami decided that his best bet was to refuse to engage with it. He had no idea what she was trying to achieve by such a vague warning, but he hardly needed her to remind him not to be careless. He was never careless – well, hardly ever. The incident with the unlocked door had been a stress-induced aberration, one that he had no intention of repeating.

So instead of getting distracted by her nonsense, he approached the row of lockers. He'd looked at them before, of course, but if Kirigiri had been meddling with them, he needed to examine them in much more detail.

The lockers had been built from dark, heavy wood with no windows to show which might have something inside, but it was still obvious which one Kirigiri had used. The one on the far right was the only locker that didn't have its key stuck in the lock ready for use – if those wooden tags could even be called real keys. The design was laughable simple, the sort that people used when they didn't plan to secure anything of great value within – but of course, with the rule against breaking down locked doors, even the most pathetic lock could be an impassable barrier in this school.

He was so intent on inspecting the lockers that the swish of the door caught him off-guard. He turned his head towards the sound automatically – and his eyes met Naegi's.

His heart felt as though it shuddered in his chest, jolting electricity through his veins instead of blood. Despite the exhausted lines etched deep into Naegi's face and bloody wound torn along his cheek, his eyes were as clear and open as ever, exposing every shade of his emotions no matter how much he might try otherwise. Determination, trust, and kindness that went too deep to believe – he felt like he was seeing straight through to Naegi's soul, and found all of it tangled up with every beat of his own heart.

Only the sound of Kirigiri moving from her place beside the lockers snapped Togami out of his daze. He jerked away, twisting back and staring intently at the lockers as though they held all the answers to this school's mysteries. Had he really just been staring across the room at Naegi like some kind of preteen in the throes of a first crush? And in front of Kirigiri? No wonder she felt free to make insulting remarks about his carelessness. He had to get control of himself.

When he was sure that his face wouldn't betray any of his momentary lapse, he turned away and approached the last locker in the row, where Kirigiri already stood. He kept his gaze firmly on her as Naegi approached, not letting his eyes so much as flicker in the other boy's direction.

"All right, then," Togami told Kirigiri, gesturing at the locker. "Get on with it – unless you've come up with another transparent excuse for delaying."

"No. I'm prepared to follow through on my decision." Kirigiri reached into her jacket pocket and produced a wooden tag, identical to the ones in the other locks. She slid it into the lock and, without further ceremony, pulled the door open.

Togami had half-expected the locker to be empty, leading up to some fabricated explanation that he'd have to argue with her about – but to his surprise, there really was a small brown bottle sitting in the bottom of the locker. From what he could tell at first glance, it did appear to be the third and final bottle of the mystery poison. So it seemed that Kirigiri had been telling the truth about this much, at least.

He shot out a hand to grab the bottle before Kirigiri could take it – but she didn't even reach out to try. She just raised an eyebrow at him, tilting one hand towards him in a "go ahead" gesture. Togami curled his lip at her before lifting the bottle up to scrutinize it.

The first thing he checked was the seal around the top – and just as Kirigiri had claimed, it was whole and unbroken, locking the cap firmly in place. This bottle didn't seem like it had ever been opened. But that didn't necessarily prove anything – there were other things she might have faked.

He peered at the label, reading over it to see if it matched what he remembered. He didn't see any discrepancies – but on the other hand, he hadn't seen the poison bottle up close during the trial, and his memories from his brief initial examination were fuzzy. Still, no matter how closely he examined the label, he couldn't find any evidence that it had been tampered with or changed in any way.

Well, there was still one other possibility. He held the bottle itself up to the light, turning it in all directions – but he couldn't see the twinkle of cracks from any angle. And as he tilted the bottle, the liquid inside moved, but didn't slosh. The bottle was entirely full, no part of it drained away at all.

Finally, Togami couldn't think of anything else to check. He looked up from the bottle to scowl at Kirigiri. "It… appears to be intact."

"Of course." She smirked at him. "Satisfied?"

He glared at her. "I will find out what you're planning."

"Good luck with that," she said, letting her gaze drift away as if she were too bored to bother paying attention to him. "Let me know if you do."

"Oh, I will," Togami said grimly. He'd tell her, all right – as soon as he worked out her plot, he'd rub it right in her smug face.

"Can I see it?"

Naegi's voice yanked Togami's attention away from Kirigiri, nearly pulling his gaze back in the other boy's direction before he remembered himself. Instead, he held the bottle out for Naegi to take, keeping his gaze fixed loftily in the air just above Naegi's head. It still let a few spikes of Naegi hair intrude on his vision, but he could ignore that, even if it made his fingers tingle with the memory of running them through the soft, fluffy strands.

Those were dangerous thoughts, too distracting to allow at a moment like this. Togami forced himself to turn so that Naegi was no longer in his line of sight as he examined the bottle, focusing instead on Kirigiri. If anything could stop him from being overly sentimental, it was the sight of that girl. She'd locked her impassive mask back on her face as she watched Naegi's investigation, and she tapped the wooden key absently against one gloved palm. With anyone else, that would look like a symptom of impatience – but with her, he didn't trust any action she took to mean what it seemed.

Naegi didn't take quite as long with the bottle as Togami had, but he definitely took the time to give it a thorough look. At least he wasn't taking Kirigiri's word for the state of the bottle – Togami could be grateful for that much, anyway. But then again, the apparent confirmation of her claims would probably just bolster his insistence that she was telling the truth.

"Okay," Naegi said at last, handing the bottle back to Kirigiri before Togami could stop him. "This definitely looks like it hasn't been opened. So – what do we do now?"

That was actually a good question. Togami hadn't really considered what they would need to do if it turned out that Kirigiri was actually telling the truth – he'd thought that he'd be able to unmask her for the liar she was. But on the off-chance that this part of it, at least, was true, then that meant this really was the last bottle of the mystery poison. And if that was the case, he had no intention of leaving it in her possession.

"We should get rid of it," he said at last. "If the three of us go dump it down a sink, then we'll all know what happened to it – much safer than simply hiding it."

"No," Kirigiri said flatly.

"Why not?" Naegi asked her, puzzled. "It sounds pretty reasonable to me."

"Because as long as this bottle is here, safe and unsealed, it's proof that it hasn't been used," Kirigiri said. "If we open it, then we lose the ability to confirm what happened to it."

"So?" Togami said, raising an eyebrow. "If that's really the poison, then what does it matter if we pour it out? It would all be gone, so you wouldn't need to prove anything."

Kirigiri shrugged. "Possibly. But I prefer to keep the proof nonetheless." She set the bottle back in the locker and swung it closed.

But Togami had expected that – and before she could reach for the key, he grabbed it from the lock.