Had he thought Ikusaba might be the mastermind? At Kirigiri's question, Togami's thoughts flashed back to the previous night, when he'd wondered about that very thing. He hadn't mentioned the theory to Naegi until much later, since at the time there hadn't seemed to be much point. It had sounded like Kirigiri was already in the midst of whatever trap had been set for her, and he hadn't wanted to upset Naegi by speculating on the fate of his supposed friend while the injured boy should have been focusing on his recovery.
But once they'd found the dead body, the situation had changed. He'd needed Naegi to understand the full range of possibilities they might be facing — including the idea that Ikusaba might have been the one behind it all. Even after they'd discovered that the corpse almost certainly belonged to her, he hadn't fully abandoned the thought that she still could have been their captor — not until Monokuma had resurfaced from his long absence. With the bear back in action, throwing them into another trial as gleefully as if he'd never disappeared, it had become painfully obvious that Ikusaba couldn't have been the real mastermind.
But even so, that didn't change the fact that Kirigiri was right — he'd suspected it. And with that connection spelled out, he was started to get a very bad feeling about where she intended to take this accusation. He didn't dare confirm the truth for her, not with the jaws of her trap prickling tight around him — but before he could come up with a way to dodge, her smile shifted to a satisfied smirk.
"I think we all know exactly what you would have thought," Kirigiri said, her head never turning away from him for an instant even as her eyes flicked from Jill to Ogami. "Don't bother trying to deny it — not after spending so much time proving to us just how very clever you are. There's no way you could have missed such an obvious conclusion."
Togami recognized the ploy for what it was — after she'd said that he must have recognized the possibility, claiming that he hadn't would be a serious blow to the image of perfection he worked hard to project. She didn't believe he'd be able to do it — and even if he proved her wrong, she'd set up the dialogue so that the other girls wouldn't put any stock in his words. He'd played this kind of game with opponents before, but he'd never expected to find himself on the wrong side of it.
"Wait… I'm not sure I understand." Next to Kirigiri, Ogami raised a hand to draw attention to herself, giving the bizarre impression that she was asking permission to address a classroom. "Why would it matter if it looked like Ikusaba might be the mastermind? She's dead now, so it can't be true."
"The point isn't whether or not she really was," Kirigiri said calmly. "The point is whether Togami had reason to believe she was, at a point before the events of her murder took place. Keep in mind that this conversation happened while Naegi was recovering in Togami's room, in the time before you were knocked unconscious — and since we've determined that Ikusaba was the one who did so, she must have still been alive at the time."
"Alive and making plenty of trouble," Jill added, red eyes flashing dangerously. "Sneaking around and shoving innocent young maidens into creepy hidden rooms!"
"Yes, that's true," Kirigiri said, picking up from the genocider's train of thought as smoothly as if her mind aligned perfectly with the other murderer's. "Ikusaba would have been out wandering the halls at the very time that Naegi was explaining all of this to Togami — and with the map showing everyone's location, it would have appeared as though the mastermind herself had emerged to walk around the school while the rest of us were busy elsewhere."
"None of it happened that way," Togami snapped, hoping that a flat contradiction might derail the girls. "I never saw Ikusaba appear on the map. I doubt it would even have shown her, anyway — why would the mastermind give any of us a tool that could reveal the existence of their hidden agent?"
"Because Ikusaba was a player in the game," Kirigiri countered, crossing her arms. "If the map shows the locations of all the students, then it would have had to include her as well — isn't that right, Monokuma?" She glanced up towards the bear with a raised eyebrow.
Togami didn't trust the manipulative girl to report Monokuma's words with any accuracy. As soon as the bear ceased the contortions that went along with his words, Togami looked in Ogami's direction and demanded, "Well?"
Ogami blinked in surprise at his query, but after a moment she responded. "Monokuma informed us that the map shows the locations of all living students in the game who are in areas covered by the security cameras."
Which meant that Ikusaba would have appeared on the map, at least until she'd succumbed to the poison. Well, that was no reason to back down. Togami scowled and repeated, "I don't care what that bear says — I never saw Ikusaba on the map."
"But sadly, you can't prove it." In spite of her words, Kirigiri didn't look sad about it in the slightest. "And why should we believe you when you have every reason to lie?"
"And I gotta say, darling, it's not like you've gotta be embarrassed about it or anything!" Jill clasped her hands to her chest as her mouth twisted into a facsimile of an adoring grin. "It was a pretty solid plan for something you made up on the fly. No one but my White Knight could've pulled this one off!"
"Except that he didn't — not quite," Kirigiri pointed out. "You can't give him credit for killing the mastermind when he only took out one of their agents."
"I didn't kill anyone!" Togami snarled.
"I wish I could believe you, baby," Jill said, heaving a sigh. "I really do."
"Then why do you continue to doubt him?" Ogami asked, looking genuinely baffled. "Even if he believed that he had identified the mastermind, why would Togami of all people act so impulsively as to murder her without thinking the plan through?"
"Because based on Naegi's behavior, he seems to need serious medical attention soon," Kirigiri said, before Jill could jump in with more of her incomprehensible babble. "And he's certainly not going to get it here. But kill the mastermind and that's the end of everything — there's nothing left to stop us from leaving."
"So that's it." Ogami looked over in Naegi's direction, taking in his deteriorating condition… and to Togami's horror, he saw the first stirrings of doubt creeping across her face as she finally looked back to the rest of the circle. "I suppose that isn't an unreasonable motive. We even discussed the limitations of the school's medical supplies at one point. I can understand why he might have seized an opportunity to get Naegi out of here… even if it meant that he had to kill the mastermind to do it."
"So are we done playing catch up for the slowpokes?" Jill demanded, spinning a pair of scissors in a flashing whirl that came dangerously close to her own cheek. "Cause I think we can all see how this must've gone down."
"If you think so, then you're all out of your minds!" Togami raised his voice so loudly that he could hear the glimmers of it through the emptiness filling his ears. "This entire scenario is nothing but a patchwork of guesses and what-ifs, without a shred of proof to back it up! Are you really going to disregard all the evidence pointing in her direction just because of an unsubstantiated theory?" He gestured across the circle at Kirigiri, who ignored his jabbing finger with her most irritatingly impassive expression.
"No — you're right," Ogami said, shaking her head sharply. "This might have happened, but without more proof, we can't say for certain. And even if it did — even if Togami did mistakenly kill another student instead of the mastermind — I can't believe that we would be debating it in this manner. If you're all right, that would mean he's been working to hide his guilt so he can win the trial and survive… and condemn the rest of us to death." She shook her head again, more slowly this time. "I don't believe he's capable of doing such a thing to Naegi."
