Naegi sank back against the headmaster's chair, Monokuma's final words ringing in his ears. Kirigiri wore her gloves to cover up something on her hands? The image of the corpse's tattooed hand burned in front of his eyes — that would definitely be nasty. Togami had brought up the possibility once already, but that had just been speculation, one idea among many. Now that Monokuma had confirmed Kirigiri did have something to hide on her hands, he couldn't dismiss it quite so easily.

"Well?"

Naegi looked up, startled, to see Togami frowning at him, arms crossed. Of course… Togami hadn't heard any of Monokuma's hints, had he? The only clues he would have gotten were the few details he could have picked up from Naegi's responses. Annoyed though he looked, the other boy had actually been waiting pretty patiently, all things considered — he could easily have demanded that Naegi repeat every sentence so that he could follow along as the conversation happened. But instead, he'd waited, trusting Naegi to repeat the conversation after it ended… so Naegi supposed he'd better follow through, no matter how difficult it would be to go through some of it again.

"It got kind of complicated," Naegi said slowly. "He told us about Ikusaba —"

"Yes, you told me that part."

"Right, and you said he didn't play fair," Naegi agreed. "But he said yes he does, because he has to follow the rules, too — and that the person making the rules is a participant in the game."

"A participant?" Togami blinked. "That's the word he insisted you use to describe Ikusaba. Is he implying that she's the one making the rules? Or does that mean that the actual rules of the game are being decided by someone other than the mastermind?"

"I don't know," Naegi said, sighing. "But it's got to be Ikusaba making the rules, if it's a participant doing it. He said for sure that there are only sixteen people in the game, and…"

"And most of them are dead," Togami finished, when Naegi didn't want to say it. "That does limit the options." He frowned. "Is that why he took the student roster — to stop us from learning too much about Ikusaba?"

"Maybe, but he didn't say so," Naegi said. "He said it had too much information in it… but we were looking through it for a while, and he didn't bother us until we got to Ikusaba's page." He looked down at the desk where the roster had been, wishing he'd tried to read it a little faster. Maybe if he'd turned to her page immediately instead of getting distracted by the other students, he would have had the chance to learn more.

"Well, at least we managed to confirm her membership in Fenrir," Togami said.

Naegi stared at him blankly. "What?"

"Ikusaba's profile." Togami gave him an odd look. "The headmaster wrote that he was concerned about her interactions with the other students because of her time with Fenrir."

"I didn't get to that part." Naegi frowned. "So… it said that she really is a member of Fenrir? With a tattoo and everything?"

"Presumably," Togami said. "We already knew it — but I suppose that does confirm that the Hope's Peak administration were aware of it, as well. We don't know what Kirigiri had on her hands, but it doesn't seem likely that they would have known about one student's role in Fenrir and not another."

Naegi bit his lip. He didn't want to repeat Monokuma's parting hint, not when he wasn't sure what exactly it meant… but letting a comment like that pass without explaining would be just as bad as lying outright.

"Actually… we do know something," he said at last. "Monokuma said she had something on her hands that she wanted to hide, and that's why she wore the gloves all the time."

"Is that so?" Togami blinked, processing the new information. "Well, a Fenrir tattoo would certainly qualify. But… if that's what he meant, why would he give you information that can identify the body now, after making such a point of leaving it out of the Monokuma File a few minutes ago? The situation hasn't changed. And if he wanted us to figure out that the body is Kirigiri's, why do it in such a vague way?"

Naegi could see where he was going with that line of reasoning. "He didn't give me this clue so that it would be easier to identify the body — he wanted to make it harder."

"It looks that way," Togami agreed. "We'd just found the page that confirmed Ikusaba's membership in Fenrir, and it wasn't mentioned in Kirigiri's profile at all. If Monokuma hadn't intervened, we might have been close to making an identification — but now we're back at square one. That corpse has to be Mukuro Ikusaba or Kyoko Kirigiri, and with Monokuma's new hint, we have no way of telling which."

Kirigiri or Ikusaba… right from the moment they'd found the corpse, those had been the only options. Between the mask and the bomb, the culprit had clearly gone to a lot of trouble to make sure they couldn't figure out which girl was which… and the mastermind seemed to be all too willing to help them out. Of course, Monokuma never made the trials easier if there was a way to make them more painful, but he'd never gone so far as to obstruct their investigations, either. Was this just his usual attempts to drive them into despair, or was there something else going on? After all, Togami had said the girl had been labeled a traitor, before the bomb had gone off… who had she betrayed?

There was no way to know, not until they'd figured out who had died. Togami had been right — they had to focus on identifying the body before they could answer any other questions. Wondering about the possibilities with no way to determine the truth would only drain his energy.

But the problem with that approach was that they didn't have a way to determine the truth at all. Ikusaba was definitely a member of Fenrir, according to both the student roster and her own words. Naegi tried to think back to the conversation he'd had with Kirigiri about it. He'd been so tired after a full day of climbing up and down the stairs, but he was pretty sure that Kirigiri had said Ikusaba had lifted her shirt or her sleeve or something — and she'd actually seen the tattoo. With the roster's confirmation, there was no reason to disbelieve it.

But on the other hand… Monokuma had said that Kirigiri wore those gloves to cover up something on her hands. It could have been a lie, but… cruel as he could be, Monokuma had never actually lied to them that Naegi could remember. And what kind of secret could Kirigiri possibly have on her hands that could make her want to wear gloves constantly? He couldn't recall a single moment when he'd seen her bare hands, not even during meals.

He thought back to the tattoo on the corpse's hand. It had been pretty large, hadn't it? Could it have been low enough on her wrist that the gloves wouldn't cover it entirely? He frowned, trying to envision the scene as clearly as he could. The body's hand had been near the data center key, curling palm down away from like she'd reached out to catch herself against the floor when she'd fallen. The explosion had scorched her hand badly, not so much as to obscure the tattoo, but enough that her long fake nails had begun to melt from her fingers.

Her nails…

Naegi sat bolt upright. "It isn't her!"

Togami stared at him. "What — you mean the body? It isn't who?"

"Kirigiri! It isn't her, it can't be!" Naegi nearly laughed as giddy relief flooded through him. "She wears gloves all the time, we've all seen them — and the girl upstairs couldn't have! She had long nails, didn't you notice? If Kirigiri really does have something she wants to hide on her hands, then she would never have worn nails like that. The gloves wouldn't fit over them!"

Naegi grinned at Togami… but the other boy didn't so much as crack a smile. Staring at Togami's stony expression, Naegi felt his joy drain away, leaving only a small, tight knot in the middle of his stomach. "Did — did you not catch that? I said —"

"I understood," Togami cut him off. "And I see what you mean. But if you're so sure that body belongs to Ikusaba… then how exactly do you think she ended up that way?"

"Well… we talked about it upstairs, right?" Naegi said. "The headmaster has to be the mastermind, and he'd probably here in the school somewhere. If that's Ikusaba upstairs, then I guess she must have been telling Kirigiri the truth about trying to help us. The headmaster found out about it and killed her as a traitor."

"That's one possibility," Togami said, but he didn't look as though he considered it a convincing one. "But do you really think we can jump to that conclusion so easily?"

"I don't know if I'd call it easy," Naegi said, thinking back to their terrifying experiences in classroom 5-C with a shiver. "We've been trying to work it out for ages."

"Because our information was limited," Togami said. "We haven't been uncovering these clues ourselves — Monokuma just appeared out of the blue and started giving us hints. He's never done anything like that with the other trials — why would he start now?" He shook his head. "There's some kind of trap being set here, that much is obvious."

"A… trap?" Naegi blinked. That didn't sound obvious to him at all. "You think Monokuma is trying to trap us into… what, making the wrong choice during the trial?"

"That's probably part of it," Togami said. "But that doesn't explain everything Monokuma's been telling you. He just went to a lot of trouble to make sure that we understood exactly what role Mukuro Ikusaba had, stating unequivocally that she's one of the sixteen participants in the killing game. Why would he bother to do that if she's dead?"

"He told me he didn't want any of us to complain later that things were unfair," Naegi said. "You and I knew about Ikusaba, but… well, that's only because of what Kirigiri told me. No one else knew about her… so I guess no one but us could have identified her as the victim. He would have had to make sure everyone had the same information before the trial starts."

"Yes… so that the trial can be fair," Togami said. "But it's only possible to have a fair trial if the rules are in effect in the first place."

Naegi blinked. "Why wouldn't they be?"

Togami shot him a scathing look. "Don't act stupid — it doesn't suit you. The rules are only in effect if this murder is part of the killing game, and the game only has sixteen participants — the fifteen we met in the entrance hall and Ikusaba herself. If it was just a case of the headmaster killing a subordinate, that wouldn't qualify."

"So the rules wouldn't matter… because that kind of death wouldn't be part of the game in the first place," Naegi said slowly. "We wouldn't even need to have a class trial for something like that."

"But instead, we are having a trial," Togami said. "And that means that the victim and the culprit both have to be participants in the killing game."

"But that would mean —" Naegi stopped short, the words freezing on his tongue. But it didn't matter if he said it aloud… he knew what Togami was trying to say. There had never been all that many possibilities for this murder… and if Ikusaba had been murdered by another one of the students, then the only person who could have done it was Kirigiri.

"It can't be that simple," Naegi said at last. "She wouldn't have done something like this just to win the game, not after she fought the hardest of any of us to find a way out of here."

To Naegi's surprise, Togami nodded. "I agree with that much, at least. Whatever happened between those girls is much, much more complicated than the mastermind would like us to believe. There's something they don't want us to find out — that's why they've been influencing this investigation so much."

A little bit of the tension in Naegi's shoulders eased at those words. The situation was still horrible… but at least Togami hadn't made up his mind completely yet. He wasn't going to start losing all rationality about Kirigiri, not this time. He'd help Naegi look for the truth. And if the truth turned out to be something terrible… well, at least Naegi knew he wouldn't be facing it alone.

"Is that everything Monokuma said to you?" Togami asked. "If he's trying to trick us into something, even the smallest clue could be important."

"Um… yeah, I think that was all of it," Naegi said, frowning as he thought back through the conversation.

"You're sure?" Togami pressed. "He did talk for a while."

"But most of it was just his usual talk," Naegi said. "Insulting us, pretending to be a real headmaster, making stupid jokes about how this is our first date… I don't think it meant anything."

Togami rolled his eyes. "As if there's anywhere in this hellhole worth going for a date. And a first date needs to be properly impressive — a five star restaurant, or a private theater box, or —"

"Ice cream in the park," Naegi said, the words popping out of his mouth before he could stop them.

"Excuse me?" Togami's eyebrows shot up. "What are you talking about?"

"Nothing, sorry," Naegi said hastily. "It just occurred to me all of a sudden that it would be a nice first date."

He'd almost seen it, just for a moment — a long expanse of fresh grass surrounded by vibrant flowers, graceful trees stretching out to meet their twins in a rippling reflecting pool, and a cool wrought iron bench tucked at the edge just out of the way.

"It sounds boring."

Naegi blinked, something in him drooping sadly at Togami's abrupt dismissal. "Well… maybe a little, next to all that stuff you were talking about. I'm sure that's all really nice, but… I've never really wanted to go to theaters or fancy restaurants or anything like that. I'd go if you wanted to take me, but it would be a little intimidating. But I like ice cream and parks. That's where I would want to take you."

"They're full of people," Togami pointed out, his lip curling in distaste. "I've had enough of being in public."

"But no one would pay any attention if we were just out like a normal couple," Naegi said. "We'd be part of the crowd, not faces on a television screen. No one would give us a second glance. We could sit together for as long as we liked without worrying, and… watch the sky until the sun set and the stars came out…"

He trailed off, the heavy office walls pressing in on his awareness like a tightening vise. What was he doing, rambling like this? There was no way for them to watch the sunset, not when they were still trapped inside the school. If they couldn't figure out a way to outsmart the mastermind, they would probably never see the sky again.

"Sorry." Naegi closed his eyes, not quite about to look Togami in the eye after that flash of what he wished could have been. "It was just a silly daydream, I shouldn't have brought it up —"

"I accept."

"What?" Naegi looked up sharply to find Togami scowling at him.

"You heard me," Togami said shortly. "I accept your invitation for a real first date. Be warned — I expect to be impressed."

Naegi couldn't help it — a small smile lifted the corners of his lips in response to that, in spite of everything horrible happened around them. "I'll do my best."