We can't protect anyone.
The words roared through Togami's head, etching fire-bright memories across his vision. He could see the first bloody wound that had matted Naegi's hair to his head and left him reeling – the poisoned needle that had left him too weak to stand – every time he'd driven himself to the verge of collapse, through sheer desperation to find some way to resist the mastermind's plans.
Togami had tried, with all the skill that had made him his family's heir, to keep Naegi safe and protected – and time and again he'd failed miserably. Naegi had sustained more injuries than any of the other surviving students so far. Yes, most of them had been because of Kirigiri's manipulations, but the point remained – Togami's protection hadn't been enough.
It had been obvious from the start that mastermind had set up a zero-sum game, of course. Celeste had spotted it the first time they'd tried to talk over the situation as a group. With the way the rules had been drawn, there could only be one victor from among the students. In order for one person to win, everyone else had to lose. But that was only the case if they were working against one another to win the game.
As soon as he'd changed his mind and decided to withdraw from the game, to focus on escape rather than victory, the rules had changed in a way that he hadn't fully processed. The other students weren't the enemies he should have been focusing on – the mastermind was. And unlike the reasonably equal competition among the students to become the successful blackened, the fight he'd chosen to have with the mastermind was anything but fair. It wasn't intended to be, not when the mastermind had given themselves every advantage, from watching the students' every move to controlling their access to information to enforcing the rules with gunfire and outlandish executions.
Celeste had seen that, too, much faster than he had. You can win against the other players, but you can never beat the house. She'd said those words to Naegi before her execution, smiling sadly at the boy as she'd explained why she hadn't been able to believe in the hope that drove him. She'd seen the impossibility of defeating the mastermind when no one could approach them as an equal. Every time they'd thought they had a weapon they could use, the mastermind had turned out to be in control after all. Alter Ego's data had been a plant, the cache of documents in the hidden room had been emptied out, and the broken door to the headmaster's office had been barricaded.
And how could anything be safe from an enemy that couldn't be fought? How could his claim to want to protect Naegi mean anything when he had nothing to throw against the mastermind but empty defiance?
Ogami smiled at him, full of bitter satisfaction. "I knew you understood."
To his shock, Togami realized that his face had changed, expression going slack and uncontrolled in the moment that the realization had hit him. His usual aloof mask had fallen for those few seconds – and Ogami had seen the fear and uncertainty eroding the foundations of his confidence.
He reassumed the mask with a speed born from years of practice, letting icy indifference settle over his features. "Don't assume that your failure means the rest of our efforts will end the same way. The only guaranteed way to fail is to give up without trying."
And at that, she actually had the gall to give him a look of knowing sadness, like she'd been able to grasp something that was still beyond his reach. "I thought the same thing once. And because of it, the person I cared about the most paid the price." She shook her head. "You still think that giving up would be the same as losing – but it isn't. It's the only thing we have left."
"That sounds like the excuse of a loser to me," Togami snapped.
"Because you haven't really understood how the mastermind operates," Ogami said. "They want us to fight, don't you see? I may not know all the rules of this game, but I know how to read the effect my attacks are having on an enemy. Every hit the mastermind has made against us has left a scar, but we've never seen them so much as sweat once, no matter what we've tried. As long as we choose to play the game they've created, they win. But if we stop playing – it's the only thing we can do to hurt them."
"Yes, we can mildly inconvenience the person who imprisoned us here, by sacrificing any hope of returning to our real lives," Togami said, curling his lip in a sneer. "I can't imagine how the rest of us failed to come up with such a brilliant plan."
"It's better than having your attempts used against you," Ogami said. "The mastermind has a counter for every choice we make. They'll take our good intentions and poison them, twisting what we feel for each other into our own destruction. The friendship I felt for all of you made me turn on the mastermind – and that shattered any trust that had been built among the rest of you. I tried to strike a blow against the mastermind – and it took out four of you instead. And – Hina –" Her voice cracked as she said her friend's name. "Our friendship was the reason she wanted to talk to me, and the reason I let her in. And that was what let the mastermind kill her."
Togami scowled. "Don't exaggerate. Asahina wasn't killed because of how she felt about you, even if it was extremely naïve of her to keep viewing an admitted traitor as a friend. She died because the mastermind deliberately made the rule about locked doors unclear. If Monokuma had spelled out just what it meant to break down a door when he first told us about the rule, I doubt Asahina would have been stupid enough to try her screwdriver plan no matter how desperate she was to talk to you."
"Which is exactly why the mastermind made the rule vague in the first place," Ogami snapped, leaning forward. "It was a trap, and Asahina's friendship for me was the bait that lured her into it. Don't try to claim you haven't noticed the pattern – not when you've said yourself that trusting Kirigiri keeps getting Naegi hurt."
"True," Togami said. "But that abuse of trust is her fault, not the mastermind's."
"And does that really make a difference?" Ogami demanded. "It's still happening. Anything we find here that seems to be good, that looks like it can give us the strength to fight – it's just another weapon the mastermind will turn on us when we least expect it. The only way to disarm them is to stop trying – stop fighting, stop caring, stop hoping. That's all we have left now."
Togami stared at her, disgust roiling within him – not just revulsion at her own words, but at his recognition of the sentiments behind them. It would be better not to fight the mastermind if that brought the risk of losing something he valued – he'd thought that. He'd said it, during the fight he and Naegi had had yesterday morning.
I'd rather stay trapped in this hellhole for the rest of my life than lose you!
He'd meant it as an expression of how much Naegi mattered to him, how far he'd go to protect the other boy – but in the face of Ogami's words, it sounded different. Giving up one thing to safeguard another had sounded reasonable at the time – but wasn't it just the first step down the path that would end with sitting alone in a darkened room, refusing to make the slightest move lest it bring about something worse?
He couldn't let himself move towards ending up like this, broken and despairing with no hope in sight. He'd never lost a contest before he'd ended up here, and he wasn't about to let the mastermind, whoever they were, be the first to say they'd beaten him – especially not by manipulating him into forfeiting of his own accord.
He glared down at Ogami, with a spark behind the expression that he hadn't felt for days. "You're free to roll over and play dead for the mastermind if you like – but I'm not going to follow your lead."
And with that, he turned and walked out of the room, letting the door slam behind him without so much as a backward glance at Ogami's startled face.
