With Jill standing so close in front of him, Naegi couldn't have moved if he'd tried – so instead, he braced himself against the swaying bookcase as best he could, meeting her blazing eyes directly. He didn't know what Jill wanted from him, or why she was keeping him pinned in front of her – but until she explained, he wasn't going to cower or try to hide. He couldn't do that to her – not after Fukawa.
"All right," Naegi said, hoping his voice sounded steadier to Jill's ears than it did to his own. "If that's what you want, I'm not going anywhere."
Jill narrowed her eyes at him. "Well, don't you think you're brave? Standing here all sugar and spice and oh so nice, acting like we can all get along if we just try hard enough. Does it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?"
"No," Naegi said, his shoulders dropping a little as he was forced to remember just how badly everyone had proven they could get along over the past few days. "Nothing here does. I'm not pretending to be some brave hero, or whatever it is you think I'm doing. That's not why I came in here to talk to you. It's just – we don't have anything else to rely on but each other, you know?"
"You think so? How sweet!" A wild laugh tore its way from Jill's throat. "So you want me to rely on you, is that it? Better tell my White Knight if that's how you feel – you know I'm game for a double feature any time!"
"That's not what I meant!" Naegi protested, a little alarmed at that misinterpretation. It had to be deliberate, right? Even if she wasn't aware of his fight with Togami, Jill couldn't really think he was propositioning her for a threesome in the middle of the library. "I just meant – well, friends should be able to trust each other, that's all. So I wanted to be someone you could trust."
Jill had gone very still in front of him as he said the words – and only as he noticed it did Naegi realize just how unusual that was for her. She always seemed to be moving somehow, whether she was bounding across a room, twirling her scissors, or gesturing wildly. The constant motion almost never stopped, drawing any available eyes in her direction. But now – now she wasn't moving at all, and in spite of himself, a faint chill of warning began to creep its way down Naegi's spine.
"Friends, is it?" Jill's voice was little more than a hiss through the air, hardly audible even though she was so close to him. "Friends should trust each other? So are you my friend, then?" She leaned closer still, until he could feel her breath hot on his face. "Or were you hers?"
Naegi stared at the girl in front of him, but it wasn't just the genocider he saw looking back at him. Another girl with the same face had said the same thing to him at the end of the last class trial, in those few moments she'd had to explain herself after they'd all voted for her guilt.
You'd be her friend.
You'd rather have her around than me.
Naegi had never felt that way, not once – but he could see how those thoughts would have wormed their way into Fukawa's head. The two personalities couldn't both exist at the same time – everything about them had to be one or the other, writer or genocider, depressed lack of confidence or cheerful extroversion. When their whole lives were divided by a sharp line of either/or, of course both girls would see a move towards one as a move against the other.
But no matter how understandable those kinds of thoughts might be, Naegi hated even having to acknowledge them in the privacy of his own head. Liking one of the personalities didn't mean he had to hate the other. Fukawa would never get the chance to understand that idea – but Jill still could.
"I'm both of your friends," Naegi said. "I was hers, even if she didn't know it, and I'll be yours – if you want me to be. I know I haven't actually spent that much time with you, but – well, that doesn't have to matter. Not if we don't let it."
Jill's eyes tracked him like a snake's, flicking across his face to follow even the tiniest change in his expression. "Just like that?"
Naegi nodded. "Just like that."
Her hands slammed against the bookcase, almost shaking Naegi off his feet as the entire structure rattled behind him. His head cracked back against the hard wood, too close to the same place that he'd fallen to the floor that morning, and bright stars of pain burst across his vision. He couldn't see anything but searing white, but that didn't stop him from hearing the words Jill snarled in his ear. "Then you're an idiot."
Naegi's vision cleared to find Jill leaning in so close that he could feel wisps of her bangs brushing his forehead, glaring at him with eyes as red as freshly spilled blood.
"You think you can just call someone your friend, and it happens?" Jill said. "That saying the words is enough to make it true?" She laughed again, so loudly that the sound rang painfully through Naegi's aching head. "If that's the case, then tell me – how exactly are you supposed to be someone's friend if you haven't got their back?"
Naegi blinked, trying to push back the aching in his head enough that he could focus on what Jill was saying to him. "But – I do. I wouldn't turn on you or anything like that. You can trust me."
Her laugh stopped sharply, leaving the air ringing with the sudden silence. "Bullshit."
Naegi didn't reply, not quite sure what to say to such a stark answer.
"How can anyone trust a person who can't even pick a side?" Jill demanded. "You say that you're friends with both of us? Well, all I hear is a coward trying to wriggle his way out of a tough choice."
"That's not true!" Naegi protested, stung by the accusation.
"Oh, so it's just a coincidence that you never once thought to say any of this while Gloomy was still out and about?" Jill laughed again, bitter and cold. "Not a bad play, really, even if you won't admit it. If she'd heard someone who'd claimed to be her friend saying the same thing about me?" She shook her head. "She'd have hated you as much as she hated me."
It was the same thing Jill had said to him yesterday, moments before she'd thrown her scissors at him – that she could feel Fukawa's hatred of her. He didn't believe that the death knells echoing through Jill's head could be the entirety of how Fukawa had felt about her alter ego – but the last time he'd tried to say as much, he'd ended up with his face sliced open. There had to be some other way to approach the issue, to calm her down and make her understand.
"I'm not making any kind of play," Naegi said at last, squaring his shoulders and straightening his spine. "Maybe – maybe Fukawa would've seen it the way you think – but if she had, I'd have tried to explain it to her, too. Right now, with the mastermind manipulating us, it's would be so easy to turn on each other – but if we want to have any chance at all, we can't let them. We have to trust each other – all of us do."
Jill snorted, a puff of heat against Naegi's cheek. "So you're saying you'd even drag the dead kids into your little fantasy world? Planning to join hands with the corpses for a campfire singalong?"
Naegi felt the lines of grief crack across his face, just for a moment, before he managed to pull himself together again. "No, not that. But – even if the others are dead – we can't let everything that's happened twist them into something they weren't. The only reason any of us turned on the other is because the mastermind keeps forcing us to be the worst parts of ourselves. But that isn't everything – and whatever Fukawa felt in that last moment isn't everything, either. It couldn't have been. I mean, you don't hate her, right?"
Jill didn't answer, staring back at him with an expression Naegi didn't know how to read. "Is that what you think?"
A shiver of unease flickered through the back of Naegi's mind at her words – but he wasn't sure what he could do about it, other than tell the truth. "Yes."
"Really?" Jill tilted her head to look at him from an angle, a snort of laughter escaping from her. "You think I don't hate a gloomy little coward who had to build herself a wall of words just to pretend she had something worth living for? Someone who spent all her life wishing she could be someone else so hard that she actually made it happen – and then didn't like what she got? You think I wouldn't hate a girl like that?"
Naegi nodded slowly. "Right."
"You're really sticking to it!" Jill laughed again, louder than before, and Naegi could feel the bookcase wobble behind him as she pressed forward. "You sure don't give up once you've got an idea in your head, huh? You actually believe that Gloomy and I could've –" A giggle choked off the words for a moment. "Could've gotten along, learned to coexist – even been friends!"
"I don't know about that," Naegi said hesitantly. "I mean – I don't know very much about how split personalities work. But it seems like it would've been a good solution for you both."
"Oh, I'll just bet you think that!" Jill's laughter shook through her so hard he could see her trembling, harsh and broken. She drew back a hair, arms falling to her sides – but Naegi couldn't bring himself to move away. "Living in a golden little bubble where you can make the world what you want it to be! Tossing aside any part of reality that doesn't match!"
Jill's laughter rose in wild cackles through the air, jagged as shattered glass. "You're just like her!"
As she screamed those final words, her hands shot forward to shove against Naegi with a flash of silver that screamed bright across his arm – and hit the shaking bookcase with just a little more force than it could withstand. As it collapsed in an avalanche of tumbling hardcover books and splintering shelves, something dragged Naegi backwards with it, pinning his arm to the crumbling shelves. He fought not to move with it – but when he tried to pull his arm away, agony blazed through him with unexpected ferocity. White hot and blinding, the only escape from it was to let the pain drag him down into the merciful darkness of unconsciousness.
