Out in the hall, Togami didn't look back at his door, heading out of the dorms and straight for the more public areas of the school. There was no point in lingering in the area – he had to find answers as quickly as possible so that he could return before Naegi could get worse.

The first possibility to address was the slim chance that there had been some kind of technical failure unique to his room. Once he'd reached the middle of the central area of the first floor, Togami looked at the nearest camera and raised his voice again. "Monokuma!"

He let a full minute tick by before nodding to himself. He hadn't really expected a response, since he was fairly certain the mastermind would have taken immediate, drastic measures if an area of the school had fallen off the grid – but it had been worth confirming that question before moving on.

Togami frowned, considering his next move. So Monokuma wasn't responding to a direct summons – but most of the time he showed up to speak to the students without being directly called. There had been several occasions when Monokuma had popped out unexpectedly to enforce the school regulations or shoo the students away from something forbidden. Would his newfound silence extend to ignoring rule breaking?

Togami headed for the stairs, making his way up to the fourth floor and its collection of annoyingly locked doors. If he wanted to see if he could get the mastermind's attention, that seemed like a good place for it. Not that Togami actually planned to break the locked door rule – but in the past, Monokuma had intervened before anyone could make the attempt. If anything was going to bring Monokuma out of hiding, this ought to do it.

On the fourth floor, Togami headed for the closest locked door, the one in the central area leading to the mysteriously named data center. He'd never been certain exactly what this room was meant to be. Every other area they'd unlocked had seemed like something that could plausibly be found in a very well-equipped school – everywhere except this room. The A/V room should have covered electronic equipment, so why have a second space devoted to technology? And why keep it so firmly locked away? Togami had puzzled over it when the room had first been revealed, but he hadn't come up with any good answers.

All he knew for sure was that the door was locked, and that the mastermind apparently had some investment in keeping it that way. So Togami gave the strange, sleek door a long look, then reached out and put his hand to the knob.

All the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and quivered as his fingers closed around the cool metal, as if he'd touched a live wire instead of a simple door. The sensation of something watching him crawled across his skin like a flurry of bristling spider legs, and in spite of himself his shoulders twitched from the physical sensation.

But when he turned to look at the hall around him, it was just as empty as it had been a moment ago. Monokuma hadn't materialized at the sight of Togami's hand on the data center door any more than he had at the sound of Togami shouting for him to appear.

Well, Togami hadn't really done anything yet, no matter how it felt to him. He tried to turn the doorknob, rattling it against the lock as loudly and obnoxiously as he could. He even yanked on the door for good measure, shaking it in place as if to try to pull it off the hinges. It didn't work, of course, since the door was much too solidly built for him to open, but the attempt should have looked good.

Or then again, maybe it didn't. The mastermind would have known exactly how strong these doors were, wouldn't they? Maybe they knew Togami didn't have a shot of breaking the lock by rattling it – and more than that, they knew Togami knew it. They could be choosing to maintain their silence because they didn't feel threatened.

Well, then maybe he needed to make an effort to be more threatening. If a false effort wouldn't work, a real one just might. Of course, Togami still wasn't quite desperate enough to try actually breaking a rule – but he didn't necessarily have to. He turned away from the data center and crossed to the other side of the fourth floor, where the headmaster's office lay.

He couldn't make a real attempt to get into the data center without violating the locked door rule – but with the broken lock to the headmaster's office door, that rule might not apply. Yes, the door was barricaded, but if he could work out a way past the barrier, there was nothing to stop him from going inside. If the mastermind was still watching, they would have to take an attempt to get past the barricade seriously.

Togami stopped in front of the double doors leading into the headmaster's office, crossing his arms and glaring at them for a moment. He'd already investigated them pretty thoroughly this morning, but that had been before it had occurred to him that these doors wouldn't fall under the rule about locked doors. He'd inspected the doors, but the only thing he'd done to try to get through had been to test the handles. Well, now he'd see what else he could come up with.

He knelt down in front of the doors, studying the wood around the knobs carefully. From what he could tell from the way the wood splintered around the knobs, it looked like Ogami had broken the locks by applying force at the right angle. If that was all it had taken to open these doors, the locks couldn't have been very high quality – which was strange, considering the unbreakable locks the mastermind had installed on the dorm rooms. Why rely on the rule about locked rooms to keep the students out of this office, instead of just installing another one of the unbreakable locks?

Well, whatever reason the mastermind might have had didn't matter. The important thing was that the doorknobs would be the weakest part of the door now, especially after Ogami had already broken them. Togami stood, glancing up at the nearest camera to make sure that it would have a clear view of him – and then spun to land a solid kick on the thin line where the two doors connected.

It hurt, but he'd been prepared for the pain. He'd had enough self-defense training to take care of himself, in case one of his rivals for the position of Togami heir had decided to eliminate the competition in a more permanent way than he personally had preferred, and he knew how to kick without breaking his foot. He knew he was no match for someone like Ogami, of course, and he wouldn't have had much of an effect on an untouched door. But after the abuse the door had already undergone – did it give a little under his foot?

He rattled at the handle again to check his suspicions – and it seemed like maybe, just maybe, he could move the doors a hair more than he'd been able to manage before kicking them. It was a barely perceptible change, though, and at this rate it would take the rest of the day to achieve anything useful – but it did seem like this might eventually lead to something.

And it still hadn't gotten a response from Monokuma. Togami turned to look directly up into the camera, so that his words would be impossible for the mastermind to miss.

"It looks like your barricade isn't worth much after all – and since this door isn't locked, you can't do anything to me for breaking through it. If you don't want to talk, I'll just have to get the answers I want from behind this door."