Naegi had known what Togami was going to say before he asked the question, but that didn't make it any easier to hear. He'd only just let himself believe that this body really might be Ikusaba instead of one of his few remaining friends, and his stomach clenched up in nauseous protest at the thought of having to consider the possibility again. The knowledge of what it would mean if this really was Kirigiri, if this ruined corpse had been the ultimate result of his own actions, loomed ahead of him with dark promises of pain and guilt… but he couldn't let that distract him from figuring out what had really happened.
Could Kirigiri have had the Fenrir tattoo on her hand all along? Togami had posed the question without malice, without accusations, without any of the viciousness he'd thrown at Kirigiri in their earlier fights. He'd just asked, because they had to know whether or not this was a legitimate possibility. Naegi knew he couldn't just ignore the question.
"I'm not sure," he said at last, trying to think back to the different interactions he'd had with the mysterious girl. "She always wears those gloves… I'm not sure I ever saw her hands without them."
It did seem a little strange, now that he thought about it. All he knew about fashion was the little he'd picked up from his sister, but he didn't think gloves were all that common among high school girls. Kirigiri didn't seem like the type to wear an unusual accessory just for the look, not like Celeste or Enoshima might have. And no matter how far he thought back, he couldn't remember a single occasion when she'd taken them off — not to eat, not to type on Alter Ego's laptop, not even when she'd examined the dead bodies.
"No," Naegi said at last, hating the words even as he had to say them. "I never saw her hands. But… she could have had another reason to keep her hands covered. She could get cold easily, or just want to avoid leaving fingerprints."
"You wear two jackets at all times, and I've never seen you bother with gloves," Togami pointed out. "And it's not as though we've been running prints in our investigations, so why would she care about that?" He shook his head. "The only reason I can think of to wear gloves as constantly as she does would be if she has something to hide."
"But that doesn't mean she's hiding this," Naegi objected. "She might just not want us to see the burn scars."
Togami blinked, frowning at Naegi's mouth. "What are you talking about? Say that again, I don't think I got it correctly."
"Oh — sorry." Naegi tried to calm down enough to slow his words, so that Togami would be able to read them from his lips. "I said that she could have other reasons to hide her hands, like a scar."
Togami sighed. "It's possible that she had another reason, yes. This could all be nothing more than coincidence. But I think we need to consider the possibility that it isn't."
The possibility that Kirigiri had had that tattoo hidden beneath her gloves right from the start — the tattoo that signified a member of Fenrir. The possibility that she'd been a member of Fenrir all along, and that everything she'd ever said to him had been a lie. Could she have been one of the mastermind's agents, just like Ikusaba? Or… could that story about Ikusaba have been a lie, too? After all, what proof did he have that she'd been telling the truth about meeting some mysterious student that none of the rest of them had ever seen?
But… no. No, that was the wrong way to think about things. Kirigiri was his friend — he had to believe that. She'd worked with him on investigations. They'd tried to help Alter Ego together. She'd helped him understand the truth about Maizono's friendship for him, when he'd been trying to come to terms with her betrayal. After everything they'd been through, he couldn't let himself believe that their entire friendship had been nothing more than a ploy to win his trust.
Naegi looked up directly at Togami, not wanting the other boy to misunderstand these words. "I don't believe it," he said slowly and distinctly. "I know I don't have any proof… but neither do you. And until I have a real, solid piece of evidence that something's not right, I'm going to trust my friends."
"I suppose I shouldn't expect anything else." Togami sighed, a little more heavily than he'd probably meant to. "But no matter how much you want to trust her, try to remember to keep an open mind. If we do find some evidence, I don't want you to let your trust blind you to reality."
"I won't," Naegi told him. "I haven't wanted to believe the worst of any of our friends in the other murders, either… but you can't argue with facts. If we know someone did a terrible thing, then… I think it's better to know the truth about it than to let fear and suspicion eat away at us."
"It's always better to know the truth than to hide from it," Togami agreed. "And it's not as though any of these deaths have been tragic accidents. Someone deliberately murdered every body we've found — just like someone killed this girl." He glanced back down at the body for a moment before looking back at Naegi to continue the conversation. "And I think I have an idea why."
Naegi frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Before I touched the head and set off the bomb, I noticed one other thing about the body," Togami said. "The knife wasn't just stuck through its chest — it was pinning a piece of paper there. There's not much left of it now, after the fire, but I managed to get a pretty good look. And there was only one word on it — traitor."
"Traitor?" Naegi echoed blankly. "What is that supposed to mean? Who do they think she betrayed?"
"Exactly the right question," Togami said with an approving nod. "I've had longer to think about an answer than you have, and I can only think of two possibilities. Either the sign was meant to accuse her of working for the mastermind when she should have been on our side — or it was meant to announce that she'd worked for us instead of the mastermind."
Which was exactly what Kirigiri had said Ikusaba had offered to do, Naegi realized. "Why would someone leave a note like that on a dead body — especially if they were just going to burn it anyway?"
"That depends on what the message meant," Togami said, shrugging. "The way I see it, it could be a warning… or it could be a threat. But the dead can't read messages, so whatever it was meant to do, it was aimed at us — the ones who are still alive."
