Naegi knew he couldn't have been waiting in the hallway for more than thirty seconds since Togami had disappeared into classroom 5-C, but it felt like hours had passed since that moment. Watching Togami walk away from him, he'd almost called out for the other boy to stop, wait, think of another plan that wouldn't send him into danger — but what other plans were there? Anything else they could do would still involve entering the room and exposing themselves to the drugged air.
But at least he knew Togami would be cautious about it. The heir was always cautious to the point of paranoia, suspecting the other students of any number of machinations against the two of them. That sense of self-preservation would surely be enough to keep him safe even in a murder scene with drugs poisoning the air around him. Togami had survived for years in a world that Naegi barely understood. He knew how to protect himself.
And then an explosion shook through the hallway, and all Naegi's justifications burned to ash.
He clutched at the music stand pole with his good hand, trying not to lose his balance and crash to the ground. Noise rang through his head, sending waves of the dizziness he'd thought he'd conquered roaring back. The hallway seemed to twist and tilt beneath his feet, threatening to dump him to the ground — but he knew he would never be able to pull himself back to his feet one-handed. If he fell now, there was no one left to help him.
And he couldn't let that happen, not when Togami had been in the room with that explosion. If Naegi had heard the force of the blast even out in the hall, then how bad must it have been inside that room?
What if the explosion had left a second corpse smeared across that floor?
Naegi started moving towards the classroom door before he could let himself dwell on that thought. His knees trembled at the movement, a sure sign that he'd started walking too soon after being so badly shaken, but as long as he wasn't actually going to collapse, that didn't matter. Nothing mattered but getting into that room as quickly as he could, before it was too late.
If it wasn't too late already. In spite of his best efforts not to think about the worst possible outcome, Naegi couldn't silence the insidious voice whispering through his head that surely Togami would have come running out already if he were capable of doing so. If he hadn't left the room, it had to mean that he couldn't leave…
Hot tears blurred across Naegi's eyes, but with one hand injured and the other gripping the music stand pole, he had no choice but to let them slide freely down his face. Togami would hate seeing him that way, vulnerability written across red eyes and damp cheeks for all the cameras to capture. Naegi just prayed the other boy would get the chance to scold him for it again.
Finally, finally he reached the doorway and plunged over the threshold into the classroom — and he saw the flames devouring a half-charred body at the far end of the room.
A strangled sob choked all the air from Naegi's lungs, catching halfway through his throat in tight, wheezing pain. He lunged forward, the pole scrabbling roughly against the floor as he forced himself to stay upright. There had to be something he could do, something to stop this from happening — this couldn't be how everything ended.
Heat blazed against his skin as he approached, every one of his cuts screaming at the burning air. The fire pulsed out at him with an almost physical presence, like it wanted to force him back from it, to compel him into allowing it free rein within the classroom. But Naegi's eyes locked on the sprawled form of a body in the flames, and he gritted his teeth and kept pressing forward, trying not to gag at the stench of scorched meat. Whoever that was — and he wouldn't, couldn't name them, not without knowing — but whichever of his friends that was, they deserved better than fire and ash in a room that had already been a graveyard.
He tried to squint through the hazy heat to see the fire itself. The actual flames hadn't grown that big yet, only burning part of the body — but he could already see them spreading, grasping for more fuel. And with so much broken furniture in the room, so much wood, the classroom could easily turn into an inferno.
Naegi turned, desperately scanning the room for something that might help. Weren't schools supposed to have things to put out fires, in case of emergencies? But if the classrooms of Hope's Peak had ever been equipped with such safety precautions, the mastermind had stripped them away. No fire extinguishers, no sprinklers, not even a blanket he could smother the flames, there was nothing —
Water. There was water, nearly a whole bucket of it, tucked away with a mess of other scattered paraphernalia where it would have disappeared into shadow without the blaze of fire lighting this side of the room. Naegi staggered the few steps towards it — but as he reached it, he realized that there was no chance he could lift something so heavy. He only had one good hand, and he knew if he let go of the music stand pole he had no chance of staying upright even without the bucket.
But there was another option — there always was, if he could just think of it in time. His hands might be weak, but he still had his feet. Leaning heavily on the stick for balance, Naegi used his foot to kick the bucket away from the other broken trash, past the lazily blowing fan and the discarded bottles and the dripping sponges. It was slow, maybe too slow, but what other choice did he have?
He couldn't just sit back and do nothing. He'd chosen to do nothing when he'd waited out in the hall while Togami went into this deathtrap at his request. He'd done nothing but stay behind when Kirigiri disappeared on her bargain with Ikusaba. And there had been so many others, Alter Ego and Asahina and Maizono and Fukawa and all the rest, one after the other, so many friends he'd been forced to watch die at the mastermind's hands — and he'd done nothing.
But not this time. Now, close enough to the burning body that his own skin felt as though it might blister, where he could no longer ignore the fleshiness of the smoke around him, now he could act. He checked the bucket's position, took careful aim, and with a solid kick he sent the water splashing over the body.
The fire went out in a smoky hiss of protest, the room growing sharply darker with the only light coming from the lantern fallen midway across the floor.
Naegi sagged down against his walking stick, wanting to collapse to the ground but knowing that he couldn't allow himself to do so. He wasn't going to let himself do nothing — not ever again.
