Keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the air vent, Togami hauled himself to his feet, gripping the back of Ogami's chair to make sure he didn't stumble from the hurried movement.
"What's wrong?" Naegi asked at once, worry making the words as sharp as Naegi's voice ever got. "Did you see something that doesn't look right?"
"Yes." Slowly, Togami approached the wall beneath the vent, stretching up to run his fingers over the bottom screw. It didn't move at all, turned until it was complete tight and flush with the wall, just like the other three. Someone had definitely been meddling with it — which had to mean they'd removed the knife.
But he couldn't check to be certain. He scowled, cursing the fact that he'd left his screwdriver lying on the library floor instead of bringing it back downstairs with him. And since Naegi had traded his toolkit away for Asahina's sewing kit before she'd gotten herself killed, he couldn't even go across the hall to borrow a spare.
"Do you think whoever snuck in left more of that drug from upstairs in the vent here, too?" Naegi asked from behind him. "But… if it were, wouldn't we already be knocked out?"
"Presumably. It was fast-acting." Togami stepped back from the vent and turned to look at Naegi, a faint frown creasing his face at the other boy's alarmed expression. "The drug wasn't in the vent upstairs, though — it was much lower to the ground. And once I realized what was happening, I was able to detect the smell. There are fewer distractions to mask a chemical scent in here, so I'm sure we'd notice in time to deal with it."
"Then what are you looking at the air vent for?" Naegi asked.
Togami sighed. "Do you remember the knife we found on the fifth floor?"
"Sure," Naegi said, nodding easily. "You took it for safekeeping."
"Yes. And that is where I hid it." Togami gestured up at the vent. "And the vent cover is no longer the way I left it."
"But… you said the person upstairs was drugged," Naegi said, frowning.
"And stabbed," Togami clarified. "That's why I didn't notice the drugged air immediately — the corpse had an obviously fatal murder weapon sticking out of her chest. I couldn't see the knife clearly, but judging by the size, it could easily have been the one I had hidden here."
"But there's still a whole block of knives in the kitchen," Naegi said, a shadow falling across his face. Togami scowled, recognizing the reference to Maizono's murder plot. "Why would someone go to all that trouble to take the one you had? It didn't seem like it was special or anything."
"It wasn't," Togami agreed. "The size and design were unique, yes, but beyond that, it would have been no more effective than the kitchen knives. In fact, it might even have been less effective, since it's easily identifiable." He frowned. "Unless that's what the culprit wanted."
"You think that might be the change they wanted to sneak past us while Ogami was asleep?" Naegi bit his lip, looking up at the vent. "Then we need to know if that knife really is missing."
Togami crossed his arms. "I'm not leaving you here with a murderer on the loose just so I can fetch my screwdriver from the library."
"No, I know you wouldn't do that." Naegi considered the air vent a moment longer. "Those screws don't look too big or heavy. They wouldn't take much leverage, right?"
"No, they're reasonably lightweight," Togami said, regarding Naegi with a frown. "Are you suggesting that I use something else instead of a screwdriver? That… actually might work, if we could find decent substitute." He tried to think of what he had in the room that might be thin enough to fit in the groove of the screw's head. Something from the bathroom, maybe?
"I think I have an idea." Naegi tried to shift his good arm across his body, but Togami reached out to catch him before he could strain his muscles in whatever idiocy he was attempting.
"Don't do that," he ordered flatly. "What on earth are you twisting around for?"
"I've got some Monocoins in my hoodie pocket," Naegi explained. "They should be about the right size."
Togami nodded slowly. From what he'd seen of those stupid coins Naegi insisted on collecting, they would be just about thin enough. They wouldn't have been able to handle the larger, heavier screws on the door hinges, but for the smaller air vent screws, it might just work. "Your hoodie pocket, you said? On the left?"
Naegi nodded, and Togami tugged the grimy, bloodstained fabric of the hoodie further away from Naegi's body so that he could more easily slip his hand inside. There really wasn't much reason for Naegi to keep carrying a lot of heavy things around in his pockets, not when he needed to conserve his energy, so Togami just turned the pocket inside out and dumped the lot on the bed beside Naegi.
Monokuma's obnoxious face gleamed up at him from several coins, spilled between Naegi's e-handbook, dorm room key, and a few ridiculous trinkets he'd apparently gotten from that worthless machine in the store. With a grimace of distaste at having to touch something adored with that horrible bear's image, Togami took the nearest coin. Naegi seemed content to inspect the other belongings, picking up his handbook rather than trying to do anything else that might be too strenuous, so Togami returned his attention to the vent.
He wasn't quite tall enough to reach the screws on his own, and he couldn't commandeer the chair he'd used originally without pushing Ogami onto the floor. Fortunately, a few moments of looking around the room presented another option. He crossed to the table, dumped the medicines and other bottles out of the box Ogami had used to carry them to the room, and carried the crate over to place it on the floor below the vent. It wasn't quite as much height as the chair had given him, but it was much more solid.
Togami braced himself against the wall with one hand, and with the other, he slid the edge of the coin into the head of the screw. It didn't quite fit, not as easily as the screwdriver had, but all his work with disassembling the Monokuma robot upstairs had given him plenty of practice in using tools that weren't quite designed for the tasks he needed to accomplish. In a few moments, he managed to get each of the screws unfastened, and carefully tugged the vent cover away.
And just as he'd feared, the air vent it revealed was completely empty.
Or — no. Not completely empty. Just at the edge of the vent's mouth, where it might have carelessly been snagged by the edge of the metal, a long strand of pale hair glimmered up at him.
