Naegi knew his attempts to open the library door had been too noisy to miss, but it didn't seem like Genocide Jill had heard him approach. She certainly didn't react as he pushed fruitlessly at the door again – she just stayed kneeling in the center of the destroyed library, staring at the scraps of torn paper that littered the floor around her. For once, she wasn't wearing her usual cheery grin – in fact, from what Naegi could see, she didn't seem to have any expression at all, her face blank and slack.

"Uh – Jill?" Naegi called, trying to get her attention. "Are you okay?"

She didn't respond, but Naegi couldn't tell if that meant that she hadn't heard him or that she was just ignoring him. Part of him wondered if maybe that meant that he should take the hint and go away, leaving Jill to her thoughts while he continued looking for Kirigiri – but then he looked at Jill's face again. With her usual bright sharpness drained away, she resembled Fukawa more than ever, flooding Naegi with a sour rush of guilt. He could still see Fukawa as she'd been in the moment before Monokuma's electrodes wiped her away for good, drowning in her own terror, convinced that none of the others had cared about her.

He'd let Fukawa believe that she didn't have any friends among the other students, and it had cost the lonely girl her life. If he'd just tried harder to make her understand that it wasn't true, then maybe, maybe she wouldn't have felt driven to kill. He couldn't know for sure that it would have made a difference – but he could avoid making the same mistake again.

"Jill, I'd really like to talk to you," Naegi said, rattling the door a bit so that she might notice. "Can you let me in?"

And then suddenly, she was staring directly at him, without her head appearing to go through the motions of turning at all. With his hand on the door, Naegi was able to brace himself enough that the force of her blood-red eyes didn't push him a step backwards, but it was still a near thing.

"Oh, you want to come in?" she hissed, the words barely loud enough for him to hear. "You want to talk again? So two sets of scissors weren't enough, is that what you're telling me? If that's the case, I've got plenty more!"

Naegi winced. He didn't really want Jill to whip out her scissors in his direction again, not when the wound on his cheek still throbbed if he opened his mouth wrong – but if she'd really wanted him to go away, he was pretty sure she would have actually thrown the scissors instead of just threatening. "Look, I heard some weird noises from in there, and I just wanted to know if you're all right."

"Yeah? Well, if you're oh-so-worried about it – I'm a-okay! Never been better, that's me!" Jill tried to laugh, but the sound caught in her throat. "So get lost before something worse happens to you, Big Mac – wouldn't want to make my White Knight mad."

And with that, she took a flying leap backwards, carrying her out of range of the gap in the door.

Naegi frowned at the sliver of library that he could still see. Jill obviously wasn't going to open the door for him – but should he really just leave her like that? It didn't seem right, not when she was so clearly upset. The only way he could think of for the library to have been trashed so badly was if she'd done it herself – and if she had, then she was nowhere near as okay as she claimed. But it wasn't like there was anything he could do if she wanted to keep him out…

"What's this? Do I spy a student in need of administrative assistance?"

Naegi jumped at the sound a voice right behind his shoulder, jerking around to see Monokuma grinning up at him from far too close for comfort. "What do you want?"

"How sweet of you to ask! I'll take a nice fresh picnic basket, with no park rangers in sight!" Monokuma laughed. "But what about you, Naegi? You can't fool your headmaster – there's something you want now, isn't there?"

Naegi followed the line of Monokuma's gaze to the blocked library door. "Are you saying you could open it for me?"

"Of course I could!" Monokuma said brightly. "There's not a door in this school that I can't open if I want to! The question you should be asking is if I would!"

Naegi knew there had to be a catch, since Monokuma was never helpful, not without some devious ulterior motive – but he couldn't see what it was. "Okay, then – will you open the door for me?"

"Hmm… let me think." Monokuma tilted his head for a moment. "No."

Naegi heaved a sigh. He should have known that it wouldn't work. Why would Monokuma offer to be genuinely helpful when he could be a disappointment instead?

"Aw, don't be like that!" Monokuma said. "I can't go around opening doors without a good reason – what kind of headmaster would violate his students' autonomy that way? Nope, the only way I could open a door for you would be if you had some way to make me – some kind of contract that you could use to compel me to do what you wanted!" He grinned, his red eye gleaming. "But you wouldn't happen to have anything like that, would you, Naegi?"

Naegi stared at Monokuma for a long moment. The bear couldn't really be suggesting what Naegi thought he was, could he? Was anything in Hope's Peak really that easy? It seemed incredibly unlikely, but still – he couldn't stop himself from checking. He reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the three trip tickets Monokuma had thrown at him last night.

He hadn't given the tickets more than a cursory glance at the time, but even that had been enough for him to notice that they'd been created with the same unsettlingly childish artwork as the graffiti scribbled on the classroom chalkboards. A tiny image of Monokuma leaned out of an airplane soaring across the ticket, waving up at the viewer with a happy grin. Naegi grimaced, flipping the ticket over to hide the creepy sight.

And when he did, he realized that the back of the ticket was covered in writing.

This trip ticket can be redeemed for one day's heart-pounding excursion for the bearer and any one additional student of their choice.** Locations include any area within the bounds of Hope's Peak Academy that is unlocked at the time of redemption.

**All deceased students are disqualified from participation in trip ticket adventures!

Naegi stared down at the writing, unable to hide the disgust that crossed his face at that final line. Of course Monokuma would want to rub it in that they'd all lost the opportunity to spend more time with the dead students. But as for the rest of it – well, even if Fukawa was gone, Jill definitely wasn't dead. And the library door had only been barricaded, not locked. This ought to work – Naegi couldn't see any reason why it wouldn't.

The only thing that still made him hesitate was the wide grin on Monokuma's face as the bear watched him think. Did he want Naegi to use one of the tickets to get the library door open? Why would the mastermind want that? Or was this Ikusaba again, trying to help from behind the scenes? But if that was the case, Naegi couldn't see why she would want to risk giving herself away to try to help like this, either.

But even if he couldn't see the benefit to the mastermind, he could definitely see why it would help him. He couldn't think of very many reasons that Jill would want to barricade herself alone in the library, and none of them were good. If he could get inside and talk to her face-to-face, instead of through the tiny gap in the door, maybe he could make her understand that she wasn't alone – and stop her from trying to do anything drastic. If he could help Jill, the way that he hadn't been able to help Fukawa – well, maybe that was worth going along with whatever it was Monokuma wanted him to do, just this once.

"Okay." Naegi took a deep breath, then held out the trip ticket to Monokuma. "I'd like to trade this in for a trip to the library with Genocide Jill."