Togami knelt down beside the corpse so that he could both have a decent view of the girl's outstretched hand and keep Naegi easily in his line of sight. He did want to take another look at the tattoo, but he couldn't afford to let himself get too distracted again.
Not that the tattoo provided all that much distraction. There had been a chance that he might have overlooked something in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, when he'd still been mentally reeling from this new world of silence he'd woken into — but that didn't seem to be the case.
The girl's hand looked the same as he remembered from his earlier examination, partially burned until her tattoo was almost but not entirely obscured. If Naegi had doused the flames even a few moments later, there probably wouldn't have been anything left to see at all. The arm down to the wrist had gone blackened and crisp, and the heat had already begun to melt the obnoxiously red fake nails, leaving them to ooze down her fingers like bloody talons aimed at the bit of metal on the ground beside her. It was only sheerest luck that the back of her hand hadn't been made as thoroughly unidentifiable as her face.
Or was it luck? Could the culprit have managed to control the explosion so precisely that it would leave the girl's face destroyed but the mark on her hand visible? It was an interesting possibility to consider as an intellectual exercise — but based on his knowledge of explosives, Togami doubted it wouldn't work when put into practice. There were just too many variables that a plan wouldn't have been able to account for — what exact direction the flames would spread, whether Togami would actually be knocked unconscious, how quickly Naegi would be able to retrieve the bucket of water, and so many other details that could have gone just a little bit differently. Anyone smart enough to try to time the burning that closely would have to be smart enough to know that it would never work.
Which had to mean that the tattoo had been something the killer hadn't wanted them to find. A small kernel of bitter satisfaction coiled up in the center of Togami's chest. This was at least one clue they had that they could use against the killer, a weapon they hadn't been meant to possess. He wasn't sure precisely how they'd wield it yet, but he would figure it out.
Or maybe Naegi would. The other boy always managed to put the different pieces of the murders together in exactly the right way, even if it sometimes took him a few tries to get there. With that thought bringing a ghost of a smile to his lips in spite of the unpleasant sight before his eyes, Togami couldn't help but look up to check on Naegi again, just for a moment.
To his surprise, he found Naegi looking back at him. The smile bloomed across his face when their eyes met, instinctive and instant — before he realized that this meant Naegi had apparently decided to stop trying to rest. Damn, he'd hoped that he'd get at least a few more minutes before Naegi started trying to act like he was perfectly fine again.
He could see Naegi's mouth moving, but the other boy hadn't quite managed to raise his head high enough for Togami to read the words from his lips. Irritation burned at the back of his mind, curling the fingers of one hand into a fist at his side — but he pushed it back again. Naegi had enough to worry about without seeing the anger and misunderstanding what it meant.
"I didn't see that last sentence," Togami said, once he was sure he wouldn't express his anger by snapping at the innocent boy. He pushed himself up to his feet so he could see Naegi's mouth properly. "Do you need something?"
"I asked if you found anything else," Naegi said, with a remarkable lack of irritation about being forced to repeat himself. From the expression on Naegi's face, he hardly seemed to mind at all that their conversation kept faltering.
"Yes — that other bottle was from the chemistry lab, too," Togami said. "It was a reagent that neutralizes poisons."
"So we don't have to worry about the poison anymore, if someone used that reagent to get rid of it," Naegi said, nodding. Then he blinked. "Wait — does that mean the culprit came back in here just to get rid of the poison?"
Togami frowned. Now that Naegi pointed it out, that did sound unlikely. "If they returned to the scene, I would have expected them to take the opportunity to get rid of some of the other evidence, too," he said, thinking over the possibilities. "I suppose it might have been automated somehow — a trick with the string, a pulley between the two sponges, something along those lines. They might have set that up and intended to return later on."
At that thought, Togami's head snapped back towards the door, and he scanned the room again to make sure they were still alone. He didn't see anyone — but between the shadows and the broken furniture, he couldn't be certain the room really was empty. There were all too many places that someone could hide if they wanted to make sure that some evidence of their crimes would never make it out. And between Naegi's collapse and his own deafness, Togami knew it would be all too easy for a killer to deal with them.
It would be against the rules, of course, since Monokuma had stated quite clearly that a blackened could only kill a maximum of two victims — but that only held true if they were still playing by the killing game's rules. And between the note declaring the victim a traitor and the information Alter Ego had shared about the headmaster… it was starting to look like this hadn't been part of the game at all. Whether the death had been a loyal agent eliminating a student who knew too much or multiple members of the plot turning against one another, there was no real reason to think that Monokuma's rules held any longer.
And that meant that he and Naegi weren't safe here. With one death already confirmed, they should have been fine as long as they stayed together — but if they couldn't rely on the rules any longer, just being in a pair was no protection. In normal circumstances, Togami might have considered risking it — but not now, when he wouldn't be able to hear either the signs of an approaching enemy or any warnings Naegi might try to share.
He frowned in Naegi's direction, wondering whether he ought to share this particular conclusion — but from the look of dawning horror on Naegi's face, he'd already put together at least some of the pieces.
"Do you think they might come back now?" Naegi asked.
"The longer we stay, the likelier it seems," Togami admitted with a heavy sigh. He didn't particularly want to ask the next question, but he couldn't see any other option. "Do you feel up to moving to another room?"
"I think I have to be," Naegi said — which was not the same as agreeing. Still, Togami knew it was probably the best he was likely to get. At least Naegi wasn't screaming now.
He started to head back over to Naegi when a flash of metal next to the corpse caught his eye. He glanced back down and realized that it had come from the small metal rectangle that had fallen near the corpse's tattooed hand. What was that? He hadn't had a chance to work that out yet, and he didn't like the idea of leaving an unidentified object sitting around a murder scene when he was about to leave. But he didn't have time to waste pondering over it, either…
Well, it clearly wasn't attached to anything — it had fallen too far from the body for that. And with no wires or electronics attached, it couldn't be part of another bomb. Assured of that much, Togami shrugged and scooped the metal rectangle up and dropped it in his pocket. He could think about it more once he and Naegi had gotten somewhere safer.
