Togami reached out towards the hair dangling in the air vent. He didn't intend to touch it, of course — he wasn't stupid enough to try something like that. But he positioned his hand to block the illumination of the light behind him, trying to give himself a clear view of the pale strand without the reflecting gleam on it.
Silver or white, that was the question. He could tell at a glance that this wasn't Jill's dark hair, but he couldn't immediately eliminate either of the other two girls. Both Kirigiri and Ogami had long pale hair, after all… but Kirigiri's shaded just a little more toward silver than the strand in front of him. This one seemed to be the pure white of Sakura Ogami's hair.
Togami let out a long breath, the strand of hair quivering in the faint breeze. If that hair belonged to Ogami, it made a kind of sense. He knew for certain that she'd been in the room during the past few hours, when the strand must have been caught. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to think that she wouldn't notice a loose hair being snagged on the metal.
Or it wouldn't be if she hadn't been unconscious, anyway. Togami scowled at the hair one last time, not bothering to replace the vent cover as he climbed down from the box. He almost wished it had belonged to Kirigiri, after all — its presence would have been incomprehensible, yes, but at least it might have suggested a different picture from the one that all these puzzle pieces were beginning to form.
"Was the knife really gone?" Naegi asked, setting his handbook aside.
"Yes, and there was a piece of Ogami's hair in its place." Togami crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, taking a moment to wait for his head to stop spinning after moving so quickly up and down.
"What? But — she couldn't have been the one who took it," Naegi protested. "She's asleep! How could she have gotten the knife all the way up to the fifth floor?"
"She might have done it before falling prey to the drugged coffee," Togami pointed out. "I don't know how long that body had been hidden in that classroom by the time I found it. She would have had more than enough time to take the knife, go upstairs to commit murder, and return while you were still asleep."
"You can't really think that!" Naegi's jaw dropped in a hurt kind of disbelief. "Why would Ogami have been drugged if she was the culprit?"
"Yes, and how would she have known the knife was there? Why would she go up to the fifth floor to commit a murder when you would have been right here in front of her? Why would she bother using gas to knock her victim out when she's devoted her life to mastering physical fighting abilities?"
Naegi stared at Togami as he listed the litany of questions, problem after problem with the idea that Ogami had been the one to do this. "Then… you don't think it was her?"
Togami looked over at the slumped figure in the chair, tightening his lips in a frown. "It isn't impossible that someone might drug herself to try to create an illusion of innocence — but that kind of plan would take a depth of cunning she's never demonstrated. And if she's been lying to us all along to craft this deception, her willingness to reveal herself as a traitor makes even less sense. So… no, I don't think she is the one behind this scheme. But I think someone wants us to think she is."
And that didn't leave a lot of possibilities. Togami could read the thoughts from Naegi's expression easily as he realized how limited the options were. Jill wouldn't use a knife to kill someone, not when she had her scissors available — and even if she'd run out of her preferred weapon, it was hard to believe that she'd go through so much trouble to disguise her handiwork. With the genocider eliminated, of course it would only take Naegi a few moments to work out that the only possibilities left were Kirigiri and Ikusaba.
Before the other boy could say something to make his new understanding obvious, Togami pushed away from the wall to propel himself across the room, dropping down to sit on the bed beside Naegi. He leaned down until his lips could brush against the curve of Naegi's ear, whispering so that the cameras wouldn't catch the rest of their conversation.
"I didn't tell anyone where I hid that knife, and I don't see any traces that this room was searched. Whoever took the knife knew exactly where it was — and the only way someone could have known that would be if they saw me hide it."
He didn't look towards the cameras — but he didn't need to. After weeks under the mastermind's observation, Naegi would be able to figure it out.
And sure enough, it only took a few seconds before Naegi nodded slowly, tilting his head up until he could answer in equal secrecy. "But why?" he said, once Togami lowered his head the last few inches. "If you think Ikusaba did this… what would be the point?"
Togami could think of several — but there was one that glared up at him, far more obvious than any of the others. "To get away with murder," he answered simply. "Why else has anyone done anything during the mastermind's game?"
It made a horrible kind of sense, in a way that Ogami's guilt didn't. The cameras would have shown Ikusaba the knife's hiding place, and if anyone could have snuck into the dorm room to drug the coffee without Ogami noticing, it would be a Fenrir-trained soldier. And since as far as Ikusaba knew, only Kirigiri should have been aware of her existence, pinning a murder on someone else would have been easy.
Especially if Kirigiri was the victim lying in the ruined classroom upstairs.
Togami grimaced. He hoped that wasn't the case, and not just because it would probably make Naegi cry again. If the mastermind and their agents had switched from inciting murder to committing it themselves, this game had just gotten an order of magnitude more dangerous. Dodging a murder attempt by the other idiot students was one thing, but avoiding a scheme by someone unseen and out of reach who had the entire school under constant surveillance was something else altogether. Could they even accuse Ikusaba of being the murderer, if it turned out that was what had really happened?
This turned the situation from bad to critical — and it meant that they had to know who the corpse upstairs was. Togami looked down at Naegi again, evaluating the steadiness of the boy's eyes and the extent of trembling in his arms and legs. "Do you feel up to standing? I think we need to look at the body upstairs."
