Kirigiri's question made Naegi blink, his mind shooting rapidly backwards through the last several hours. He remembered Togami waking him and telling him about how he'd discovered a corpse in a poisoned room up on the fifth floor… but now that he thought about it, the other boy hadn't said much about what had happened leading up to the discovery. As far as Naegi knew, Togami had been in the library down on the second floor, taking apart the abandoned Monokuma robot… classroom 5-C would have been really out of the way for him to find Ikusaba by accident.

So what exactly had happened? As the question ran through his mind, Naegi turned to look back towards Togami — only to see the other boy glaring at Kirigiri rather than answering her. Something about that seemed strange to Naegi — after all, if Togami was mad at Kirigiri for asking the question, all he had to do was explain. If he had a good answer, then that would undermine whatever point Kirigiri was driving at.

Did that mean… that Togami didn't have an answer?

"You already know, don't you?" Togami growled, his voice deeper and lower than usual. "You figured it out somehow — or maybe you've known all along."

Kirigiri raised her eyebrows. "If I already know the answer, why would I bother asking?"

"Because you know exactly how this is going to sound." Togami clenched his fists, white-knuckled like he was poised to strike a blow. "You're trying to discredit me."

"Is that so?" Kirigiri tugged at her braid, letting it twist and tangle around her fingers. "It sounds to me as though you're attempting to offer a preemptive defense against a fatally flawed explanation. Didn't you have time to fabricate a good excuse?"

For a moment, Togami looked like he was about to explode in Kirigiri's direction — but then he closed his eyes, mouth compressing into a thin white line as his nostrils flared with deep, slow breaths. Naegi bit his lip, hoping desperately that this meant Togami was trying to calm himself down before answering. Whatever Kirigiri thought she could accomplish by antagonizing the heir, Naegi wasn't sure he agreed. They all needed calm heads to deal with the trials — and he would have told Togami so, if only the other boy would turn and look Naegi's way.

But when Togami finally opened his eyes, his gaze never even flickered away from Kirigiri. Naegi supposed that this quiet, focused expression was better than the fury that had been bubbling through the other boy, but that didn't mean he liked it. The corners of his eyes burned a little as a pang of longing echoed through his chest, a useless wish for the soft smiles that crossed Togami's lips when they were alone. He knew the middle of a trial wasn't the right time for softness… but looking at Togami's steely eyes only made him wish it more.

"All right, then. I'll give you the truth, and we'll see how you plan to spin it." Togami planted both hands on the top of the podium and leaned sharply forward, like the first thrust of an attack. "I found that corpse when a tracker inside the Monokuma robot's eye led me to it."

Naegi blinked. He hadn't been sure what Togami was going to say… but that certainly hadn't been what he'd expected. Without conscious command, he found his gaze drawn away from the circle, up to where Monokuma sat enthroned above them all. The bear's lightning bolt eye gleamed with its usual fiery red… but as Naegi frowned up at the robot, for a moment it almost seemed as if the light flickered on and off, just once.

"So your explanation is that Monokuma has a built-in corpse detector?" Kirigiri's single burst of cold laughter rang brittle in the air. "I see you didn't even try to make your story sound plausible."

"A generalized corpse detector certainly does sound ridiculous." Even with the faint slur from his hearing loss, Togami's words all but dripped with scorn. "But you can't obfuscate the facts by trying to replace them with nonsense. Why should it have been some kind of imaginary device like that when a preprogrammed signal meant for a single destination would make more sense?"

"Sense? Only if you assume that someone intended to lead you to that corpse," Kirigiri said. "And while we all know how much you enjoy blaming your problems on me, I think you're going to need to come up with an alternate candidate this time. You've made quite a few accusations based on evidence you supposedly found by coming on the scene before the culprit had finished setting it up — and you can't very well say that I'm both the murderer and the source of the proof you want to use against me."

"Well, that depends on how the tracker was meant to work, doesn't it?" Togami retorted. "This corpse was obviously meant to be discovered, since the killer went to the trouble of trying to frame Ogami. And surely the Ultimate Detective would be aware that the person who finds the body always comes under particular scrutiny. But the fifth floor is so far out of the way that you couldn't count on someone finding the body — not unless you arranged a way to lure someone directly there. I just found it faster than you expected and made my way to the body ahead of schedule."

"I see I underestimated your determination," Kirigiri said, and Naegi didn't really like the dry tone to her words. It was like she was finding amusement in some kind of private joke — but he didn't see what about this situation anyone could find funny. "Unfortunately, now you've created a new problem for yourself. Exactly what kind of trick do you imagine I used to plant a tracker in Monokuma's eye? Don't forget, we're all forbidden to attack the headmaster — none of us can go around sticking things in his eye on a whim."

"No? I think there's one type of person here who could have done it quite easily," Togami snapped, his glare blazing across the circle. "A double agent who's been working for the mastermind since the beginning wouldn't have any problems using one of the Monokuma robots in her schemes."

At first, Naegi didn't understand what Togami was trying to say. Some self-defense mechanism in his own brain caught the words as they entered his ears, turning them from real sentences into empty sounds, too meaningless to cause him pain.

But he couldn't ignore the trial, no matter how much he wished he could shut it out of his head. He heard Ogami's startled gasp hiss through the air, and he could see the flash of the genocider's braids in the corner of his eye. Looking at Togami, he could see a satisfied smile twisting his boyfriend's mouth, like he'd scored a point with those words that Naegi still didn't want to hear. And on the other side of the circle, when Naegi finally got up the nerve to turn his eyes in that direction… Kirigiri's eyes had gone almost painfully wide, as if Togami had slapped her.

No… worse than slap her. Naegi felt the blood drain from his face, a dizzying chill snaking its way through his body as his defenses collapsed and the horrible words etched their way through his brain. Togami had accused Kirigiri of working for the mastermind — not as one of several possibilities under discussion while they'd tried to figure out what was going on, but as the final conclusion that he genuinely believed to be true. And he didn't just believe it — he'd said it to her face.

Naegi's free hand coiled tight around the edge of the podium, but he barely noticed the sharp pain it sent through his white-knuckled fingers. Saying something like that to Kirigiri… no, to any of the students, when the mastermind had been terrorizing all of them… making that kind of accusation in front of everyone without real, solid proof…

"You've got that wrong!"

The words burst out of Naegi's mouth before he could think about the implications, as automatically as if this were any other trial —

Except that this time, nothing happened. The echoes of his shout died away, leaving only empty silence behind as if he'd never spoken. Even with this new accusation, Kirigiri still seemed determined to ignore everyone else as irrelevant, and Togami refused to look away from her to see what anyone else might say.

Naegi scowled at the pair of them as they began to argue again, frustration a pulsing ache at his temples. Why were they being so stubborn, acting as if this trial only concerned the two of them? That wasn't right, and he didn't think it would lead them to the truth. He couldn't let them go on like this — he had to do something.

Twisting so that he could balance against the podium with his left side, Naegi quickly slid his good hand into his right pocket. It was an awkward angle, especially since he couldn't twist much without jarring the sling on his left hand, and he couldn't quite get a grip on anything. Only his e-handbook was big enough for him to grab, and as he pulled it out it sent his room key and a folded paper tumbling to the floor. He ignored them, turning back towards the circle… and before he could think the better of it, he hurled the handbook in Togami's direction.