Far too many minutes passed before Togami felt capable of doing anything more strenuous than laying still on the hallway floor, taking breath after breath of clean air. He never would have thought that he would appreciate the clinical dryness of the school's recycled air, but after the foulness of the classroom, nothing could be sweeter.

And slowly, Togami found his energy creeping back to him, a little more with every new breath he took. It wasn't the rest and sleep he needed, not by a long shot, but it was at least enough to let him use the edge of the door frame to haul himself to a sitting position. His head spun at the movement, but nowhere near as violently as it had when he'd been in the classroom. That had to be a good sign — he must not have gotten a strong dose of whatever he'd been breathing. Maybe the effects would wear off entirely soon.

That certainly couldn't happen soon enough. He might be out of immediate danger now that he was no longer breathing the foul air, but that didn't mean he was safe. There was still a corpse in that classroom — and a trap that had nearly killed him before he'd been able to identify the body. He couldn't be sure if the trap had been meant for him specifically, or if it had only been intended to kill whoever discovered the body first — but either way, it meant that whatever the killer was trying to accomplish, they weren't finished yet. And at the moment, he was the only one who knew about their plans.

Which meant that he couldn't stay here. The killer could return at any moment, and he wasn't exactly in a state to defend himself. He needed to get back to the first floor, both for the safety of numbers and to alert the others about what he'd found. As soon as he thought his legs could bear the weight, he used the edge of the wall to lever himself to his feet, clutching at the corner while his head readjusted in a dizzy whirl of spinning lights. He could still feel his legs shaking unsteadily beneath him, but at least he didn't seem likely to collapse again as he started moving towards the stairs.

Exhausting as it was to drag himself along the hallway, putting distance between himself and the ruined classroom helped. He could feel his thoughts sharpening again, regaining their usual piercing clarity. He might not have his physical strength back yet, but at least his head seemed to be working again — and he'd take mind over muscle any day. Strength on its own would be useless if he couldn't think how best to use it.

And so, as he began lowering himself down the stairs, step by careful step, Togami began trying to put the pieces of what had happened together. He'd found both a corpse and some kind of vent blowing chemicals into the air — that couldn't be a coincidence. After all, he might have gotten caught in the air vent trap, but he was fairly sure that he hadn't actually triggered it. The vent had already been drugging the air by the time he'd arrived. And with the body so close to the adulterated air, it would hardly be a leap of logic to think that the unidentified student might have been the first victim of the trap. And if an airborne toxin had played a role in this murder… well, the obvious connection was impossible to ignore.

Two nights ago, Kirigiri had revealed the murder plan she'd concocted to distract Monokuma… a plan that had involved pumping a gaseous poison into a sealed room. Yes, she'd claimed that she'd never meant to go through with the murder, but her intentions didn't do anything to defang the plan's potential.

Or did they? After all, Kirigiri hadn't just told them about her murder plot — she'd also locked the poison away in one of the dojo lockers. The poison had definitely been sealed in the locker when they'd left the room, and Togami knew he'd burned the locker key himself. None of the other poisons could be administered as a gas, if he could trust Kirigiri's word on that matter. Did that mean the similarity was a coincidence, after all?

Or perhaps the killer had simply adapted Kirigiri's plan to the new circumstances. Other things could be pumped into the air than poison — it could just as easily have been some kind of knockout drug, especially given that its main effect on him had been to drag him towards unconsciousness. Togami knew he'd seen several medications in the nurse's office that could knock someone unconscious, though at the time it hadn't occurred to him to check whether they could be used as gases. Still, medical offices did use gaseous anesthesia all the time, so it wasn't out of the realm of possibility.

And if the chemicals in the air had been drugs, rather than poison, that would explain the knife he'd seen sticking out of the body. The culprit wouldn't have needed the knife if the gas itself had been deadly — they could have just left their victim in the path of the air vent until the poison did its work. But with a drug that only knocked the victim out, the killer would have had to get their hands dirty in person — though having the victim already unconscious undoubtedly made the deed easier.

Easy enough to take down a trained killer? Togami frowned at the thought. He'd doubted that the corpse could be Mukuro Ikusaba, since it wasn't likely that a Fenrir soldier would submit to being stabbed in the chest… but if she'd been drugged first, that was a different story. It wouldn't take any fighting ability at all, or even much physical strength, to stick that knife into a soldier who couldn't fight back.

Togami scowled as he reached the bottom of the stairs and continued making his way to the dorms. He should have checked the corpse's identity immediately, instead of wasting time worrying about who it might have been. It would only have taken a few seconds to determine, and if he'd managed, then he might have had answers to at least a few of these unanswered questions.

At least he was steadier on his feet now than he'd been when he'd left the room. He still had to brace himself against the wall as he walked to stop himself from swaying drunkenly with every step, but at least he was able to walk without fear of collapse. He'd feared that he might end up as weakened as Naegi had been after he'd been stabbed with Fukawa's poisoned needles, but with the effects of the drug wearing off the further he got from the ruined classroom, that didn't seem to be the case.

Cursing the layout of the school and its poorly-positioned staircases under his breath with every step, Togami finally managed to make it all the way across the first floor to the dorms. He slumped against the wall outside his room, pushing the doorbell in a long, hard buzz. He might not feel quite on the verge of collapse any longer, but that didn't mean he felt like dealing with the heavy door to his room, not if he didn't have to. Better to conserve his strength and let Ogami deal with the door. He tilted his head back against the wall, shoulders heaving as he tried to catch his breath, and waited.

And waited.

There could have been a dozen perfectly good reasons that Ogami might not have come to open the door — but with one confirmed dead body already lying upstairs, the excuses rang hollow. Togami groped for the door handle, fingers clumsy with sudden terror as he clutched at the unlocked knob and tore the door open —

But nothing seemed out of place at first glance. He'd been fearing blood, weapons, some evidence of a struggle — but the room looked more or less the way he'd left it. Naegi slept on the bed in the same half-sitting position he'd had before, propped up with pillows and his arm newly bound in a sling. Ogami still sat in the chair at the bedside, slumping sideways against the wall, arms hanging loose at her side and her eyes closed. Was she asleep? That seemed unlikely, after she'd given her word to look after Naegi.

Togami took a deep, suspicious breath, searching for even the slightest hint of chemicals lingering in the air, but he couldn't detect any of the sharp undertones that he'd smelled up in classroom 5-C. The only sound of a fan that he could hear came from the air vent high in the wall, and nothing else seemed to stir the air in the rest of the room.

So this didn't seem to be the same drug that had been in the trap upstairs. He might have dismissed it as nothing more than negligence, with Ogami falling asleep on the job instead of keeping her vow to keep Naegi safe — if it hadn't been for the fact that apparently even the loud doorbell hadn't made her so much as stir. Togami frowned, slowly crossing the room towards the girl, intending to try to wake her and demand an explanation.

But as he drew close to the chair, his foot crunched against something on the floor. Togami glanced down — and saw shards of broken glass scattered along the ground. The largest shards lay at the foot of Ogami's chair in a pool of dark liquid, her nerveless fingers dangling inches above.


Author's Note: And this is the end of the short posting schedule. Regular updates will resume on Sunday!