Togami gripped the wooden key tightly in one hand, crossing his arms to press it against his body. If Kirigiri decided to try to retrieve it by force, he had no intention of being easily overcome.

But instead, she leaned back and raised a skeptical eyebrow. "And what do you plan to do with that?"

"Keep it away from you," Togami said promptly. "Maybe you don't trust anyone else with access to that poison – but I don't trust you with it. So far, you're the only one who has admitted to having a plan to use that poison. Why should I let you be the only one who can get to it?"

"So you intend to keep both the poison and the knife?" Kirigiri asked, an amused smile flickering across her face. "Do you plan to collect all the dangerous items in the school and hide them in your room?"

Togami gave her a withering glare. "Don't be ridiculous. A determined murderer could make anything dangerous. But if this really is the only poison available to us that can kill by inhalation, then I want it well away from you."

"And you're going to take responsibility for what happens to the key?" Kirigiri asked, a smirk curling across her lips. "Well, you've certainly had practice with that job."

Togami shot her a dark look for that jab about his confiscation of Ogami's key. He was well aware of how ineffective that had been, resulting in nothing but personal inconvenience and getting suspected of murder. He didn't especially want to go through that again – especially not if Kirigiri was trying to put some kind of strange plan into motion.

But he couldn't just hand the key over, either. It was bad enough that there were weapons all over the school – he refused to let Kirigiri have sole access to the last remaining bottle of a unique poison. There had to be a way around this, where he could make sure she couldn't get at the poison without needing to hold onto the key personally.

Could he trust anyone else with it? Ogami was obviously out of the question, barely worth considering, even if Monokuma had lifted her order to commit a murder. She was still a traitor, after all. And Jill – well, there was a time when he might have told her to do it, back when she and Fukawa had been desperate for him to order them around, but those days were long gone. No, both of the two remaining girls seemed to have been badly unhinged by yesterday's trial – he'd hardly trust either of them with access to poison more than Kirigiri.

And while he trusted Naegi not to try to use the poison himself, he didn't believe for a moment that Naegi would be remotely effective at keeping it safe from the other students. He had difficulty walking across a hallway, let alone keeping track of a dangerous item. Between that and his continued gullibility when it came to the other students, anyone who wanted to get the key from Naegi could do it in moments. He might as well just leave the key in the lock.

Was there some other option for the key that didn't involve someone personally holding on to it? Could they store it somewhere, perhaps? But if they did, they'd have to figure out some way to secure the new location – it would be the same set of questions all over again. If there were more students left, it might have been possible to find some location to keep the key where it would always be under observation – but with only five of them remaining, that wasn't a viable option.

Togami scowled. Maybe he was approaching the entire issue from the wrong direction. The question wasn't actually about securing the key, after all – it was about securing the poison. The key was nothing more than a means to an end. And unlike the situation with Ogami's dorm room key, the locker key wouldn't need to be in continual use. In fact, the best situation would involve never using the key at all.

He looked up at Kirigiri. "You said you want to keep the poison bottle intact as some sort of insurance policy?"

"You can put it that way if you like," Kirigiri said, shrugging.

Togami nodded slowly. "Well, you shouldn't need to open the locker in order to use it that way. The only point at which you'd need to produce the unopened bottle would be if someone else had died of poison. If your purpose is what you're saying, then the safest scenario for you is one where this locker is never opened."

"That sounds like the safest for everyone," Naegi said. "No one should need to open the door."

"None of us should, at any rate," Togami agreed. "If it came to an investigation, we wouldn't even need the key. When Monokuma was explaining the rule about locked doors, he told us that he's willing to open a lock for us – if it's necessary to our investigation of a murder."

"So you're saying that none of us should have the key?" Naegi asked, frowning. "You want to throw it away? But then – that wouldn't be very safe. Anyone could find it in the trash."

"Which is why I didn't mean we should stop at throwing the key out," Togami said. "I think we should burn it."

He kept his eyes fixed on Kirigiri as he made the suggestion. If she meant to object – if she tried to claim that there was some reason that she needed to keep the key intact – then he'd have her cornered. She wouldn't be able to explain her way out of refusing, not unless she admitted just what she wanted to keep the bottle intact for. And either way, whether she actually told the truth about something or was revealed for the liar she was, he'd count that as a win.

"Very dramatic," Kirigiri said at last. "But I wouldn't expect any less from you. All right, then, if you're so set on it." Her most obnoxious smile danced across the corners of her mouth. "Let's burn the key."