Note: Reposted! I apologize for the formatting issues - that will teach me to upload without checking that it worked correctly!
Togami frowned at the dojo locker door, searching for some evidence of lock picks or other similar meddling. But no matter how he examined the lock, there didn't seem to be any evidence that someone had tampered with it. Well, that did seem to make a certain type of sense — whoever had opened the locker door had apparently gotten away with it, however they'd managed it. After Asahina's execution for failing to exploit a loophole correctly, Togami doubted that the mastermind would let another student get away with flouting the same rule.
And if Kirigiri really had been the one to open the locker, Togami had no doubt that the wretched girl would have managed to do so successfully. That was exactly what made her so terribly obnoxious — she was smart, far too smart for someone who revealed so little of herself. He'd known from the start that she had to be hiding something, since somehow no one knew where she'd come from or what her ultimate talent could be — and if that was the case, then she'd been playing a much longer game than she seemed.
Years of experience with backstabbing siblings and corporate politics had taught Togami that someone who didn't have a solid reason forcing them to remain his ally would turn to an enemy as soon as they had the power to do so. Naegi had been the only exception he'd ever encountered, sweet and soft-hearted and nice even when he'd had every opportunity to be otherwise. There was no way that a girl like Kirigiri had that depth of kindness buried in her heart. It was all too easy to envision her turning on them, tricking them into believing the poison had been sealed safely away while intending to retrieve and use it all the while.
Except… as well as that explanation fit Togami's knowledge of how the world operated, he wasn't sure it matched the specifics of the situation. It would have made sense if the poison had been used against him and Naegi, or even against Jill or Ogami, but that wasn't how matters had played out. The dead girl in classroom 5-C, burned into an unrecognizable slab of blackened meat with a Fenrir tattoo on its hand, had to be either the mysterious Mukuro Ikusaba or Kirigiri herself. Naegi seemed determined to believe that the girl had to be Ikusaba… but he didn't have any proof beyond his unreasonable belief that Kirigiri would never lie to him. And considering that Naegi had also trusted Maizono so easily that she'd nearly succeeded in framing him for murder, Togami wasn't inclined to take the boy at his word.
Of course, he wasn't about to start arguing with Naegi about it, either. He'd seen the hurt in Naegi's eyes, stark and stinging like a fresh bruise, when they'd tried in vain to figure out which girl that corpse might be. Togami might find Kirigiri horrible in every way imaginable — but Naegi cared about her, little though she might deserve it. Whether she turned out to be a victim or a murderer, the truth would hurt Naegi badly… and there was nothing Togami could do to protect the other boy from the pain that was coming. Of all the reasons Togami had to despise Kirigiri, the decisions she'd made and problems she'd caused, this might well be the worst.
If he couldn't spare Naegi the pain of knowing what had happened to Kirigiri, at least he could delay the inevitable a little longer, until Naegi had regained more strength to cope with the truth. Togami glanced back over his shoulder to check on the other boy, just to make sure he was still safe and well — and yes, to his relief, Naegi still rested on the ledge across the room. But even from this distance, Togami could still see the other boy's hands trembling as he tapped at his e-handbook, the device's eerie electronic glow highlighting the pallor of his skin. He needed true sleep, not the illusion of peace that the dojo offered… but that would mean the dorm rooms. And unfortunately, he still didn't look up to an attempt at the stairs.
Togami had originally intended to rest for a while himself along with Naegi when he'd steered them into the dojo… but now, he found that he couldn't face the thought of turning away from the impossibilities of the lockers. Someone had worked out a way to get past these locked doors, and if he gave up without figuring out what they'd done, it would be as good as admitting they'd outsmarted him. He had no intention of doing that — especially not with Naegi watching. He wanted to present the other boy with triumphant solutions to their problems, not slink back in ignominious defeat with the riddles looming worse than ever.
So with fresh determination, he returned his attention to the lockers — but this time he took a step to the left, swinging open the door of the next locker over. Maybe he could find some kind of hint if he examined an opened locker instead of the locked one. They all ought to be identical, after all.
And as far as he could see, the second locker did look exactly like what he remembered of the corner locker. The interior was made of solid wood, its walls unmarred by any scratches. It briefly crossed his mind that breaking through the connecting wall between the two lockers might not count as breaking down a locked door… but whether or not that was a viable loophole, a mere glance was enough to show that the killer hadn't even tried. There wasn't so much as a knothole in the locker wall, let alone a large enough opening to fit the bottle of poison through.
Togami sighed, resettling his glasses in a fruitless attempt to relieve some of the pressure in his aching head. Maybe after the long day and longer night, he'd just ended up too exhausted to think his way through this problem. Or maybe he was thinking too hard, and the answer really was as simple as a picked lock. He gave the open locker door a frown, tapping at the back of the simple lock mechanism. It sprang easily back and forth beneath his fingers, shiny metal flashing out from under the dark wood…
Wait.
The locker door was made of solid wood, just as all the locker keys were. It wasn't a complicated mechanism, little more than a simple twist that circled from open to closed — a device that could easily have been made entirely from the same wood as the locker itself. So what was that bit of metal doing in the midst of it?
Togami pressed slowly down on the lock mechanism, letting it gradually switch from locked to unlocked. The wooden lock shifted, moved, and revealed a small metal panel embedded in the mechanism. It didn't seem visible if the door was locked or unlocked, though — the only way to reveal it was if the lock stopped just on the edge of one of those two states. But what good did a bit of metal on the back of the door do?
A flicker of suspicion tingled at the back of Togami's mind, the baying call of a hunt that had finally sighted its prey. He took the spare locker key and tried to slide it into the locked door again. This time he held it in place, a mere inch into the lock, and watched with narrowed eyes as the device shifted. With the dark wood, he hadn't noticed it the first time… but now that he was paying proper attention, he could see what he'd missed.
In the spot where the metal panel would be, the lock had turned just enough to reveal a small keyhole in the locker door.
