Junko scowled up at the television monitors, kicking away from the desk and letting her chair skid back across the floor until she hit the door. The walls of monitors soared up around her, each of them giving her a perfect view of the school she controlled completely…
And each of them just as empty and boring as the last! Junko slumped down in her chair, drumming her fingers against the armrests as she watched Ogami climb the stairs to the second floor. She'd known things would start to get tedious once she hit the home stretch, but she hadn't realized just how dull it would be with only a few students left to keep tabs on.
It was almost enough to make her wish she'd kept her disappointment of a sister around after all. Or at least her corpse — it wasn't like there was much difference in how much Mukuro could've held her interest either way. And she did miss having someone around to talk to.
Junko looked up at the camera feed for classroom 5-C, checking on the scene again. That bomb had really done a number on the room, hadn't it? And not just the room. A giggle burbled up as she looked at the ruined body of what had once been her sister.
No, this was better than she'd expected, so much better. Maybe Mukuro was actually going to be something other than a disappointment for once! Junko was sure her precious sister would have been so proud, if only she knew.
A flash of movement snagged her attention back to the second floor, just in time to see Genocide Jill explode out of the boys' bathroom and take off at top speed for the stairs upward. Looked like Togami was about to get a nasty surprise coming his way! A nasty smile spread across her lips as she located Togami, sorting through all the useless dreck the headmaster had cluttered his office with.
And then she glanced back at the first floor, just to make sure no one was trying to sneak a bit of rule-breaking in on the sly… and another laugh choked its way out of her throat. So even in dire straits, her beloved friends weren't going to let her down after all! She grinned up at the two different camera feeds and settled back to enjoy the show.
Togami sat on the couch in the headmaster's office, words blurring before his eyes as he tried to sort through the most important-looking of the files that had been scattered across the floor. There had to be important clues hidden in these documents, he was sure of it… but how was he supposed to uncover them when his eyes burned with exhaustion every time he tried to focus?
It had been so much easier when Naegi had been here with him. The other boy always seemed to know what he was thinking, ready with the next step of his thought process as easily as reading his mind. Togami had never believed he'd meet anyone who could understand the way his mind worked so completely… but in a matter of days, he'd already found himself relying on Naegi's ability to do exactly that.
How had he ended up this way, so dependent on another person? It was a little disconcerting to find that he couldn't quite put his finger on the moment when it had occurred… and he wasn't sure he liked what that meant.
Caring for Naegi was one thing, he'd come to terms with that… but he'd let himself get used to having someone to share his thoughts with. Instincts honed in the vicious corporate world the Togami family operated in all told him that was dangerous… but when it came to Naegi, those instincts felt blunted and far away.
But even if everything was better with Naegi around, that didn't make it impossible with him gone. Togami gritted his teeth as he glared down at the file in front of him, then flipped it violently aside to start on the next one in the stack. But without the satisfying crack of paper snapping through the air, tossing the file aside didn't make him feel much better.
The words on the next file wove back and forth before his eyes as he tried to read them, distracted by the empty rush of noise filling his ears. With one of his senses gone, the world seemed a little more muted, a little more distant… and he didn't need anything making the world harder to reach right now. He scowled down at the paper until sheer force of will made at least the title of the document weave itself back into tidy, understandable letters.
Hope's Peak Academic Calendar. For a moment, Togami's interest sparked — before he realized that it was an older document, dated for an earlier class that must have long since graduated. It was probably only kept around for reference — not a likely source of clues for whatever mysterious weapon had been kept in the headmaster's office.
In fact, he'd yet to see the slightest hint to support Monokuma's revelation that there had ever been a weapon in here. Everything he'd seen of the office seemed mundane enough, if scattered into a huge mess. He was almost starting to wonder whether he shouldn't have taken Monokuma's hint about a weapon seriously after all. Maybe it had just been meant to mock his inability to enter the office. After all, what kind of weapon could be dangerous enough to take out every student in the school? Why would something like that be kept in the headmaster's office, of all places? It made no sense!
Maybe he'd been approaching this wrong from the start. After all, if the weapon had been stolen from the office, someone must have managed to find it in the first place — presumably the same person who had torn the office part in a mad search, leaving every drawer upended every shelf scattered in a stark contrast to his own more methodical investigation. He'd been as careful as he could be, trying to ensure that he saw everything… but someone who would leave such wreckage in their wake hadn't cared about most of the materials in here. They'd been looking for one thing in particular, and discarded everything that wasn't that object… so maybe he ought to be trying to figure out what the other searcher had been looking for.
He looked around the room, studying the mess with new eyes. Whatever it was must have been something small enough to fit in one of the drawers, considering all the attention paid to them… but it also must've been immediately recognizable, since the objects had been flung aside instead of sorted into potentially meaningful categories.
With papers thrown every which way, he was almost tempted to believe that the mysterious intruder had been looking for an important document of some sort… but that didn't make sense, because he could see dozens of places a completely flat piece of paper might have been hidden, like behind a picture in one of the portrait frames or between the pages of a book. But none of those hiding spots had been touched — only the drawers and shelves had been ripped apart. That seemed to point to a bulkier object than paper…
Assuming that the person who'd done the searching wasn't a complete idiot, of course. If that was the case, then all his suppositions were useless, because who could judge what a stupid person would do? But… considering the limited possibilities of who might have searched the room, he doubted it. After all, there were really only three options — one of the two girls who had entered the office, Kirigiri and Ikusaba, or the mastermind themselves. And whatever he might think of those three, he didn't believe any of them were stupid.
So if that was the case, if someone with a moderate amount of intelligence had searched this office looking for a small object… what had they found? Togami put the stack of files aside and levered himself to his feet, turning around in a slow circle to take the room in again. Glass cabinet of memorabilia, mostly untouched — the desk, he'd have to look at that more closely — bookcases, mostly emptied now — the door, ajar and… and shaking?
He only had a moment to freeze, eyebrows snapping together in confusion, before the door slammed open and Genocide Jill burst into the room, her face distending in a wild grin as she caught sight of him.
Togami stared at the girl in horror as she bounded over to his side. His crazy stalker was the absolute last person that he wanted to encounter now, badly exhausted and with one of his senses gone. His words had been his only real weapon against her in the past, and how was he supposed to use them if he didn't know what she was saying?
She was certainly saying quite a bit now, her lips flying through a tangle of mad chatter, but he couldn't make out more than a few words from the rapid-fire babbling. White knight, murder, adorable… based on those glimpses, maybe he didn't actually want to know what she was saying.
What was she even doing here? With the way she'd disappeared off somewhere in the middle of the night, he'd been half-convinced that the murderer had taken her down as the second one of their allotted deaths. Even if she was alive, he certainly hadn't expected her to turn up mid-investigation. Had it just been a coincidence after all, and she'd just spent the night asleep in her room until the morning announcement? But if so, how had she known where to find him? She'd shown a disturbing ability to know where he was at times, but surely the headmaster's office would have been trickier to figure out…
And she was staring at him.
She'd asked him a question, he realized, inky dread curling through his stomach at the pressure of her expectant eyes burning against his skin. Somewhere buried in that rambling blather she'd been spewing since entering the room, she'd actually had a question that she was waiting for him to answer — and he had no idea what it was.
Could he bluff his way through a response that didn't give away his inability to hear? Icy disinterest was generally a safe reaction to anything that came out of her mouth… but not always, not if he didn't frame it right. And Jill had an almost uncanny understanding of him at times. If the tone of his answer was even a hair off, she'd catch the moment of weakness.
She was even starting to notice it now. He never hesitated like this when presented with the opportunity to insult her, and now he could see the start of a puzzled crease between her eyes, the thoughtful tilt of her head to one side. He had to say something, but —
Her mouth started moving again, even faster than before, pouring out another torrent of rubbish that he was almost glad he couldn't hear. Maybe with this new explosion of chatter, she'd lose track of whatever question she'd asked a moment ago — unless she asked another. Then he'd have the same problem, because her lips might as well have been a blur of motion. He could only catch occasional snatches of a word, nothing intelligible. He could recognize her demeaning nicknames for him littering her babble, along with a few other repeated syllables. What was she going on about that used the word mac so much —
No. Not mac. Makoto.
At the realization of what she was really talking about, Togami's gaze locked onto Jill's lips in a way that would have nauseated him in any other circumstances. But no matter how desperately he tried to find some sense in her chatter, it didn't help. Her words were too fast, too jumbled, too unpredictable for him to read.
Not like Naegi's words had been. With the other boy, he'd been able to understand the words almost as clearly as if he'd heard them. He could see now how much Naegi had been trying to make things easier by speaking slowly, looking directly at him, and enunciating clearly. Reading Naegi's lips had been so easy that it had lulled him into a false confidence in his skill, letting him believe this was no more than a mild inconvenience — but Jill's incomprehensible speech hammered home the fact that it was worse. She was talking about Naegi… and he didn't know what she was saying.
The need for that information burned through his skull, every nerve alive with the agonizing question of what it was she knew. Had she run into Naegi? Was something wrong? Had the exertion been too much for the injured boy, leaving him broken in a heap on one of the lower floors? He had to know. It was impossible to go on searching with this dreadful possibility that something had befallen his boyfriend.
But as far as Jill knew, she'd already told him the answers to those questions. Presumably that was the subject of the blather she'd been directing at him, interspersed with her usual inanities. How could he convince her to repeat the same information, slowly and clearly enough for him to understand, without giving away his vulnerability?
He couldn't. Of course he couldn't, there wasn't a chance of making that work. He should just ignore her, turn aside and pretend he didn't care, hide his weak point and protect himself. But…
Naegi's face flashed before his eyes, slack and bloody and empty.
"Stop talking," Togami said, hoping the words sounded sufficiently imperious even though he couldn't hear them himself. "Now, tell me again what happened to Naegi. Speak slowly."
Jill stared at him, a pair of scissors flashing into her hand as suspicion slowly dawned in her eyes. And it didn't take an expert to read the word "Why?" on her lips.
She wasn't stupid. He'd forgotten that behind the ridiculous demeanor and the off-putting instability, Jill actually possessed a sharp enough mind to get away with murder time and again. She knew how to make use of the brain that Fukawa had frittered away on useless fantasies… and given a few more seconds, she would work out the obvious answer.
Better to forestall that eventuality and at least put his own spin on matters.
"There was a bomb set to go off when we discovered the body, and I was caught in the blast." Togami took a deep breath. "And I've been having difficulty hearing things clearly ever since."
