As the other students slowly settled into their places around the circle, Naegi gripped the edge of his podium with his good hand. It was a little tricky to keep his balance when his head still ached from his collapse back in the waiting room, but he was pretty sure he could keep himself upright by leaning most of his weight on the wooden posts. They seemed sturdy enough to support him for a while… as long as he had the energy to hold on.

As Monokuma launched into his usual explanation of how the trial would work, Naegi's gaze traveled around the circle. There were so many empty places that the portraits of the dead outnumbered the living, a bitter reminder of their failures to overcome the mastermind's plan for them. Four of his friends had already been made into murderers, and they'd been murdered by the mastermind in turn. Every trial so far had ended in tragedy, with a new grief that was almost too heavy to bear.

But maybe this one wouldn't. Naegi looked over at Kirigiri, midway around the circle to his left. Her expressionless eyes were fixed on Monokuma like she was paying close attention to his instructions, even though she must have known them by heart after so many repetitions. Maybe she wanted to be sure that she understood the rules completely before trying to put her plan to fight the mastermind into motion… whatever it was.

He still wished she'd trusted him enough to confide the details of what she was going to attempt, but even the simple knowledge that she had a plan made him feel a little better about going into this trial. Things still looked bad when he thought about the clues he'd seen… but at least there was a ray of hope beyond the mundane specifics of this death. For the first time, they had a chance to go beyond just arguing amongst themselves. If Kirigiri's plan worked, they would finally have a chance to strike back against the root cause of their grief.

But if it didn't work…

Naegi looked away from the pale girl, too unsettled by that thought to look at her any longer. His eyes slid around the empty circle in the other direction, drawn to his right with all the force of a magnet until he found himself looking at Togami. The other boy wasn't watching Monokuma — which made sense, since he wouldn't be able to understand anything the robotic bear said. Instead, he glared straight across the circle at Kirigiri, as intently as if he was waiting for her to make some kind of sudden move.

"I'll leave the rest up to you!" Monokuma finally concluded, smiling innocently out down at them from his huge wooden throne.

"Very well." Kirigiri turned away from the bear, looking directly at Naegi. "In that case, we should begin by discussing the victim."

Naegi started to nod — and then he frowned. Something was bothering him about that, something nudging at the back of his mind as he looked over at Kirigiri. She had her head tilted towards him, not paying attention to any of the other students… not looking at anyone other than him…

I'm trusting you to be on my side.

As Togami's words from a moment ago echoed in his mind, Naegi looked sharply over to his right. Togami glared back at Kirigiri, his mouth a tight, thin line as his eyes tried to track her face. If she was looking at Naegi, then that meant he had to see her nearly in profile. And she always spoke so quickly, wasting no time with getting her words out. It was just a speech pattern, nothing Naegi would have thought anything of before — but now, he realized what it had to mean for the trial ahead.

"Actually… before we start talking about the victim, I think there's something else we need to do first." Naegi made sure to speak slowly, turning his head so that Togami would be able to get a clear view of his mouth. "This trial is going to have to be a little different from the earlier ones."

"What are you talking about?" Ogami asked. Out of the corner of his eye, Naegi could see her frowning at the way he'd angled his head. "Are you all right? Is your head bothering you?"

"No, it isn't me," Naegi said, looking straight at Togami. The other boy had gone pale, his face frozen with an attempt at an icy mask — but with the flickers of exhaustion showing through it, Naegi could still see his boyfriend's quiet fury at the conversation they were about to have. He had to hate this, having such a huge injury announced in front of everyone… but if they were going to have a trial in such a way that he could participate, Naegi didn't see any other choice. "It's about Togami."

"What about him?" Kirigiri asked, a flicker of surprise breaking into her tone.

"Wow, look who doesn't know as much as she thinks she does!" Jill laughed, her braids flying out as she spun to her right. She was looking right at Togami, too, Naegi realized — and she wasn't speaking at her usual motormouth speed, either. "You haven't even noticed that my White Knight isn't jumping into battle today!"

She had to know already. The only reason Naegi could think of for Jill to change her behavior so drastically would be if her beloved White Knight needed it. Togami must have told her when she'd gone to meet him in the headmaster's office. Unless she'd figured it out for herself… since it would have been nearly impossible for him to hide his hearing loss from a girl who paid so much attention to his every move.

"What are you talking about?" Kirigiri asked, her eyebrows snapping together in annoyance.

Naegi looked back at Togami again, waiting a few seconds to give the other boy a chance to object — but Togami said nothing, even though he had to know what was under discussion. Naegi could see Togami's gaze dart around the circle at the girls staring at him, before finally settling back on him. With his hands clenching tight around the podium, Togami gave a single sharp nod.

"Togami can't hear anything we're saying," Naegi said, and he grimaced at the impact he could see his words make on the other boy. "There was an explosion in the room where we found the body — you must've seen the way it looked when you went upstairs. Someone attached a bomb to the corpse, and it went off when Togami tried to take a closer look."

The terror of running into that burning room flashed through his head, thick smoke filling his nostrils and the flames hot against his skin. Even the echoes of the fear he'd felt were enough to stop the words in his throat, forcing him to relive that awful moment when he'd feared Togami had been caught in the heart of the blast. The worst hadn't happened then… but it so easily could have.

"Are you telling us that this explosion destroyed his hearing?" Ogami asked, horrified. "But — surely that can't be right. You were speaking with him before the trial began!"

"He can read lips," Naegi explained. "That's why Jill and I are looking at him when we talk — so he can read our lips."

"I see, so he's still able to understand us?" Kirigiri raised an eyebrow in Togami's direction. "Very convenient."

Togami glared at her. "What is that supposed to mean?"

She shrugged. "It would have been quite a coup for the culprit in this case if you'd ended up completely unable to communicate in the middle of a murder investigation. It's a good thing for everyone else that the blast only deafened the one person able to understand us anyway."

Naegi blinked across the room at her, not quite sure what she was getting at. With a more sarcastic inflection, the words could have sounded like she'd meant to accuse Togami of faking his deafness — but from her bland tone, she could just as easily have meant it sincerely.

But since Togami couldn't hear the questionable way she'd spoken the words, his glare didn't relent at all. "Yes, this murderer has certainly made a critical misstep in this particular attack. Anyone who saw the body would know that the killer didn't position that bomb merely to wound — it would almost certainly have killed anyone close to the body when it went off." He leaned forward, his blue glare mercilessly cold. "I have every intention of making this blackened bitterly regret their failure."

"Is that so?" Kirigiri tugged on her braid, looking as though she barely cared at all what was being said around her. "In that case, I suppose I should wish you luck."

The atmosphere of the room seemed to shift as Togami and Kirigiri stared at one another, like a shadow spreading dark and ugly in the space between them. Naegi didn't like the chill it sent down his spine, or the goosebumps it raised along his arms. The pair weren't attacking each other, not exactly, but their words still had the sharp edges of blades drawn and at the ready.

"We're all going to need a lot more than just luck," Naegi said, interrupting the stand-off. Togami wasn't looking his way yet, but that was all right — these words weren't for him. "We're going to need to help each other. That's why I said we're going to need to treat this trial a little differently. Togami can only read our lips if we're looking at him, and he can only see one person at a time. When we talk, we've all got to make sure we do it so that he can understand us."

"That sounds reasonable," Ogami said, looking Togami's way with a nod. His only acknowledgment of her agreement was exhaling a small huff of air, a scowl darkening his face.

"It certainly does," Kirigiri agreed, turning to face Togami as she spoke. "After all, leaving one of the students out of our discussion due to events outside of his control would hardly be fair." One corner of her lips twisted fractionally upward.

"Exactly," Naegi said hastily, before Togami could decide to take Kirigiri's remark as a veiled insult again. "And this investigation was pretty unusual already. I don't think any of us were able to see all the different pieces — and some of you hardly saw anything! We can't afford to leave anyone behind if we want to figure out what really happened."

"That's true," Ogami agreed, a frown creasing her face. "I must admit, I'm not very comfortable with the idea of voting for a culprit when I haven't even had a chance to view the corpse. I have faith in the accuracy of your reporting, of course, but I would have liked a better understanding of the murder."

"Better? Hah — try any understanding!" Jill snapped, her scissors a silvery whirl in her hand. "All I got to see was the inside of the world's least exciting secret passage! That was definitely not worth the price of admission!"

"Huh? You're all complaining?" Monokuma tilted his head in bewilderment. "But you all had the same amount of time to investigate that you always get! It's not up to me to discriminate against your choices of personal investigation methods!"

"No one chose to be locked up or knocked unconscious," Naegi pointed out.

"But we can't expect Monokuma to bend the rules just because the circumstances have changed," Kirigiri said, before Monokuma could respond. "That's always been true, hasn't it? The rules apply to everyone."

Monokuma grinned at her, his teeth gleaming bright and sharp. "Wow, you sure get it, don't you! It's so nice to feel understood!" He covered his mouth as he snickered.

"Well, then I guess the only thing we can do is make sure we exchange all our information," Naegi said, turning away from Monokuma's unnerving face to look back at Togami. "I think Kirigiri wanted to start with the victim, right?"

"Sure, let's talk about the mystery corpse!" Jill agreed brightly. "Turning up out of nowhere, sure sounds like a B-movie plot twist to me! Let's hear it, Makyutie — was it anyone adorable enough to be worth killing?"

"Well… I don't know about that," Naegi said, frowning. "We never got a good look at her. The body was pretty well covered when Togami found her, with a mask and a coat. And by the time I saw the body, the bomb had already gone off." At the memory of the ruined corpse, sour bile surged up his throat, forcing him to stop and swallow it back.

"It's true, there wasn't enough of the body left to get a clear look at it," Togami said. "Even identifying it was more of a trial than it should have been, since several different people had gone missing last night. But now that we know for certain which of you are alive, the identification is obvious."

"The sixteenth student," Ogami said softly. "The one who'd been hiding in the school since the start of the mastermind's game. I'd feared that we would have to deal with this mysterious person eventually — but I never expected that she would only be revealed to us as a corpse."

"But that's not entirely true," Togami said, his too-loud voice harsh in the brittle air. "Our mystery student didn't die without revealing herself. Isn't that right?" His gaze burned across the circle, drawing the other students' eyes to Kirigiri's unruffled face.

She tilted her head. "What is it that you expect me to say?"

"The truth," Togami said flatly. "If you're capable of it."

"It sounds as though you wouldn't trust me to tell you anyway." Kirigiri's eyes slid around the circle until she was looking at Naegi, though she kept her face oriented in Togami's direction. "Why don't we ask someone that everyone trusts? Tell us, Naegi — what happened with the sixteenth student?"


Scheduling Note: Since Thanksgiving is coming up this week here in America, I will be taking a short break for travel and visiting my family. That means no new chapters through the rest of November. The next new chapter with be posted Thursday, December 1. Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who are celebrating!