Note: And again, reposted! Please let me know if the formatting issues are still causing problems.
Togami studied the keyhole for a long moment, trying to work through how the mechanism might operate. It was impossible to be certain without taking the door apart — an action that would certainly count as breaking the rule about locked doors — but based solely on the positioning, there was only one thing that this keyhole could be meant to do. This had to be some kind of alternate way to open the dojo lockers, without using the wooden keys.
It was obvious from a glance that a wooden key like the one they'd burned wouldn't fit in this keyhole. That key had been large, blocky, and unwieldy, suited only to open something as basic as the obvious lock mechanism. This seemed to be a more traditional keyhole, smaller and subtle, fitted to a key of more ordinary size. Togami frowned, searching his memory, but he couldn't recall seeing any keys that might fit this lock at any point during their imprisonment.
Could Kirigiri have known about it? Togami didn't see how she could have, not when her entire motivation for locking the poison away had been to keep it out of use. She must have missed the lock during her investigation, just as he and Naegi had. After all, she'd left the poison in that locker before she ever told them about it, when she'd still been fighting to keep her plan a secret — so she must have believed she could trust the locker to stay closed.
And they'd all been wrong about it. Togami scowled at the locker one last time before turning away and heading back over to Naegi. At least he had something useful to share with the other boy, even if it did seem to pose more questions than answers.
Naegi looked up at him as he approached, a tired smile lifting the corners of his mouth. A few of the lines in his face relaxed, some of the tension draining from the tight set of his shoulders. In spite of the nightmare that trapped them, a small, secret bit of happiness burrowed its way into Togami's heart at the knowledge that he had the power to ease a little of Naegi's misery, just by staying nearby. Even with all Naegi's injuries, with his fears for his missing friends and his inability to identify the corpse rotting across the hall, he still smiled when he looked up into Togami's face.
But happy as that thought made him, Togami was absolutely not going to say it aloud, not with the mastermind's cameras might still be capturing their every word. That moment of happiness was theirs, his and Naegi's, and he had no intention of sharing it with an enemy.
Instead, he frowned, crossed his arms, and announced, "Those locker doors have hidden keyholes in them."
Naegi blinked, his expression slowly morphing into one of confusion. "What? You mean… other than the obvious ones?"
"Yes, two keyholes per door," Togami confirmed. "The one where we left the poison was still locked, but it doesn't matter now. There was a way someone could have gotten the door open."
"You mean with a master key?" Naegi nodded thoughtfully. "I guess that makes sense. I mean, this was a school before the mastermind took it over, right? So there would probably have been a way for the teachers to get into all the students' lockers, in case of emergencies or something."
"That's true," Togami said. "The mastermind does seem to prefer to leave the school's existing furnishings in place, as far as I can tell. It seems likely that those hidden keyholes were present all along for the Hope's Peak staff to use, not something new that the mastermind had installed."
"Not just the staff." Naegi looked as though he would have gone pale if he'd had enough color in his cheeks to do so. "The headmaster."
Of course. Now that Naegi said it, the idea seemed obvious. Who else would have control of such an important item as a way to open locked doors but the man in charge of everything? It was certainly another clue pointing towards the idea that the Hope's Peak headmaster was behind all of this. With the keys, the bomb, the secrecy… everything about this murder was starting to make it look as though the only person who could have done it was the headmaster himself.
Or… was that true? After all, there was supposedly one other person in the school who had access to a portion of the mastermind's toolbox.
"What about Ikusaba?" Togami asked, crossing his arms. "If she's the mastermind's agent, she might have known about the second keyhole."
"Well… Kirigiri did say that Ikusaba was going to open some locked areas of the school," Naegi said. "So… I guess that means she must have had keys to those areas. I thought she was talking about rooms, though, not just any old lock."
"But there's no reason to hide the keys to empty lockers if she has access to the keys for locked rooms," Togami pointed out. "But even beyond that speculation, this does narrow down the possibilities of what could have happened. Someone had a key that could open that locker."
"So… whoever has that key has to be the culprit," Naegi said, not looking very excited about this conclusion.
"Or whoever had access to it during the right time frame," Togami added. "Keys can be hidden, if you don't want to keep them on your person at all times."
"And even if you try, they can be dropped or stolen," Naegi said. "It would really open up a lot of possibilities again if we found a key just lying on the floor somewhere."
Togami rolled his eyes. "I'd expect a killer to be far more careful with their keys," he said. "Locks are dangerous here. It's not as though we're likely to come across any mysterious keys sitting where anyone could —"
He stopped short, an awful thought occurring to him. It seemed impossible, and yet…
Togami reached into his pocket and pulled out the strange metallic object he'd found lying beside the dead girl's hand. It was small and oddly colored, a blue rectangle decorated with geometric shapes attached to a longer black piece, patterned with grooves and indentations. Looking at it carefully, it was just possible that this was some kind of key.
