Standing in the trial room, Naegi felt a strange kind of deja vu, echoing all the way back to their first murder investigation. He'd stood at a podium just like this one, a crossed-out portrait of Maizono looming to his right as he came to the horrible conclusion that she'd been killed during a failed murder plot. And now, so many deaths later, here he was again, speaking ill of another dead girl by implicating her as a would-be killer.

Not that it was the same, of course. Maizono had been another victim of the mastermind's, pulled into this gruesome game and given no options but survival… and before she'd chosen to put her desperate plan into motion, she'd been one of his friends. He still had to believe that much was true.

But Ikusaba, on the other hand, had been at least partially complicit in keeping them all trapped in the mastermind's killing game. If she'd really plotted murder, the way it seemed she must have, then her actions were cruel… but they weren't the same kind of betrayal that Maizono's had been, even if they still felt similar. He'd never even gotten a chance to meet her these past few weeks, since she'd been hidden away as the mastermind's agent. He liked to think that if they'd really gone to Hope's Peak Academy as planned, she would have been one of his friends… but he supposed they'd never know.

"Naegi?"

He jumped at the sound of a familiar voice calling his name, snapping him out of the dark thoughts that had distracted him. Had the others gone on talking while he was thinking? He couldn't quite be sure, not when the growing ache in his head made his thoughts spin dizzily as he tried to concentrate. He took a deep breath and looked up into Togami's impatient eyes, nodding slowly to reassure the other boy that he was still with them. "Sorry. Did you say something?"

"Yes, several times now," Togami informed him, crossing his arms. "If we accept your theory, then are you suggesting we believe that Ikusaba is the one who attempted to frame Ogami?"

Naegi frowned. "Well… I guess she must have been, right? I mean, if she was the one who broke into your room, drugged Ogami, and took the knife, she must have planted Ogami's hair in the vent, too. No one else could have done it."

"Yeah, maybe that all checks out in your head, baby, but you gotta give it a try in the real world to work out the kinks!" Jill said. "If all our super-soldier gal pal wanted was to get the Ogre blamed for offing someone, what would she screw around with stealing and planting hair and all that other crap? Why not make it easy and use the victim on hand?"

"The victim — oh." Naegi swallowed hard, clutching at the edge of the podium to keep his knees from buckling. "You mean me, don't you? If Ikusaba just wanted to kill anyone and frame Ogami for it, she could have killed me."

"It would have been very difficult for me to refute an accusation if you were found dead while under my care," Ogami said, her lips so tight as to be bloodless in her already-pale face. "Considering the ease with which she incapacitated me, I believe she would have been able to take the next step quite easily."

"But she didn't." Togami's voice vibrated with suppressed emotion, strung as tight as a quivering wire. "Even if Ikusaba was the one to steal that knife with murder in her heart, she left you alive."

"So… someone else was the target," Naegi realized. "Someone other than me or Ogami."

"Apparently so." Kirigiri didn't sound as though the conversation had interested her at all — but when Naegi turned her way, he found that her steel-cold gaze had moved away from Togami to lock on him. The pressure of her stare pierced through him like a knife through the heart, demanding things of him that he didn't quite understand. She expected something of him, something important enough that she'd broken her ongoing staring contest with Togami to make sure he knew it — except that it wasn't working. He didn't know.

Did it have something to do with the conversation they'd had away from the cameras, about her plan to unmask the mastermind? He didn't see how Ikusaba's intended victim could have anything to do with the mastermind's identity.

But on the other hand… that hadn't been all that he and Kirigiri had talked about. Naegi bit his lip, thinking back to the rest of that conversation. The mastermind was targeting her — that was what Kirigiri had said. If that was the case… then was it possible that Ikusaba had wanted to kill her?


Scheduling Note: And I'm afraid that's where I'll be leaving you for the rest of the holidays! Sorry to stop mid-trial, but unfortunately timing is not on my side right now. I'm traveling, and I don't have enough time to write from now through the new year. The next chapter will be posted in two weeks, on January 5. Happy holidays to those of you who are celebrating! See you in 2017!