Togami's eyes widened at Ogami's unexpected display of confidence in him. He'd noticed that she seemed to understand more about his feelings for Naegi than the others… but did she really believe that he'd sacrifice his own life for the other boy? He'd fight to save the boy he loved, obviously, but her words had implied something altogether different. If he'd really found himself in such a hopeless situation, faced with a choice between Naegi's death or his own… what would he do?
No… that was a pointless train of thought, full of nothing but useless pain. He hadn't killed Ikusaba, so he didn't have to make that kind of soul-destroying decision. The choice couldn't possibly matter, and he did his best to shove it from his head and focus on the ongoing trial.
Looking back at the circle, Togami saw that whatever Ogami thought about the situation, Jill clearly disagreed. She'd flung her head back in what seemed to be laughter, although she didn't look like she was actually amused. A grin still warped her mouth as she looked back at the rest of them, making her words even harder to read than usual. "You think my White Knight would actually go that far? You think he'd die for his boytoy? Please — no way he'd throw himself away for good on a high school sweetheart!"
Ogami shrugged. "Perhaps not — but even if he chose to act as you say, I don't believe that he would be able to conceal his unhappiness from the rest of us. And besides, if this truly was his plan, surely he would have enacted it in such a way that he didn't end up deafening himself."
"Assuming that he's telling the truth on that score," Kirigiri said, raising an eyebrow at Togami.
He sneered back. "Oh, yes, because there have been dozens of conversations that I could have spied on among the rest of you by pretending to be unable to hear — is that what you're implying? Don't be absurd. The only thing I've gotten from that bomb is a great deal of inconvenience."
Kirigiri just shrugged a single shoulder, like she couldn't even be bothered to complete the gesture. "There might be other reasons for subterfuge — convincing us you didn't know about the bomb, for instance."
"I'm sorry, but I don't see how that would make sense," Ogami said, looking uncomfortable at directly contradicting Kirigiri. "How could he have set up a bomb in the first place? Someone allied with the mastermind might have had access to such things, but as for the rest of us — we've never found anything of the sort elsewhere in the school."
Kirigiri looked as if she intended to respond, but just as she opened her mouth, a flash of silver drew Togami's attention back to Jill. The genocider had lunged forward, pointing her scissors at Ogami — and facing her in profile, Togami couldn't quite make out the words flying across her lips. He thought he could see the word wrong woven in and out of her chatter, but beyond that she might as well have been spouting complete gibberish.
When she'd finally finished whatever she'd been going on about, Ogami shook her head slowly. "No — I didn't see anything of the sort."
Togami narrowed his eyes at her. "What are you talking about?"
Ogami seemed confused — but to his irritation, Kirigiri grasped the problem immediately. "Jill says that there was actually a bomb available for any of us to use," the obnoxious detective informed him. "Apparently you yourself managed to unearth one during your dissection of a deactivated Monokuma robot — a fact that somehow never made it into your account of your investigation."
The bomb — Togami remembered his first glimpse of it all too clearly, tangled in the robot's mechanical innards. He'd hardly dared to breathe wrong until he'd ascertained that it wasn't active. But even if the bomb had been available… he shook his head. "No — I left it in the library. As far as I know, it's still there."
Ogami gave him an unhappy frown. "Well — that's what I was saying. I'm afraid that it isn't. I checked the library just before the trial began, and I didn't see anything of the sort."
Togami tightened his lips, cursing his inattention. With both a bomb and an explosion appearing in the school within mere hours of each other, he should have spotted the connection far sooner. Claiming that the bomb was still in the library when even the closest thing he had to an ally in this debate said it couldn't be had only made him look worse in the eyes of the other two girls. But how was he supposed to have guessed that the bomb could have disappeared? After all, he knew it had still been there when the tracking device had lured him out to discover the body.
Although now that he considered the matter… it did make sense. The room had still been full of poisoned gas when he'd entered to find the body, but when he and Naegi had returned later, the culprit had used the reagent to clear out the air. That meant they must have been inside the room at some point between his two visits — and considering the amount of time he'd taken investigating the dorms and getting Naegi up the stairs, there would have been more than enough of an opportunity to set up the explosives.
But if that was the case… then he'd missed the perfect chance to unmask Ikusaba. The bomb couldn't have been in place when he'd first entered the room. If he'd moved just a little faster, he might have been able to remove her mask before the poison had taken effect. If he'd managed to learn the victim's identity before going downstairs to meet with Naegi… how differently would their investigation have turned out?
Well, it hardly mattered at this point. There was no use wishing events had occurred differently — the important thing now was to deal with the situation he was currently facing. He looked at the girls around the circle with the most unconcerned air he could muster.
"The killer must have taken advantage of my absence to remove the bomb, then. They would have had quite a number of opportunities, since I didn't have any reason to return to the library once the investigation began."
"Provided they knew the bomb was there to be taken, of course," Kirigiri said, tugging idly on the end of her thin braid.
She would notice that. Togami curled his lip in a sneer. "There's hardly much point in debating what the culprit might or might not have known. You can say they couldn't have been aware of the bomb, and I can propose a dozen ways they could — but without proof, it's meaningless."
"I couldn't agree more." A chilly hint of a smile touched Kirigiri's lips as she spoke, and a shiver of ice slid down the back of Togami's neck. "Proof is the key point here — solid evidence that could be used to identify a single culprit."
"Yes, we're all well aware of that," Togami snapped. "Why bother bringing it up now?" Suspicion flared, and he narrowed his eyes at her. "Are you suggesting that you've been holding back some piece of evidence during the whole trial up that could have made a difference?"
"Of course not," Kirigiri said calmly. "I'm not the one who's fond of theatrics. If I'd had a key piece of evidence, I would have brought it up far sooner — and in fact, I did. We began the discussion near the beginning of the trial… but unfortunately, you seemed quite intent on taking the conversation down a different track."
The beginning of the trial? Togami frowned, casting his mind back through the various elements of the murder they'd discussed. They'd talked their way through all of it, as far as he could recall, hammering point after point into the ground with no definitive culprit to show for their efforts. The timing, their alibis, the knife, the poison —
The poison… that should have been safe behind a locked door.
Togami met Kirigiri's gaze, both their eyes grim. "You mean the poison, don't you? We never discussed how the killer got the poison out of the dojo locker after the three of us burned the key."
"Of course," Kirigiri said. "If Ikusaba really did die from the poison, then that's quite a critical point, wouldn't you say? Although now that I think about it… you did insist on carrying the key yourself, didn't you? And you made such a point of rushing ahead to the trash room a few paces before Naegi and me."
Togami rolled his eyes. "And so I must have swapped the key out? Where exactly would I have gotten another dojo key to burn? Don't forget, you'd only just told us about your murder plan — it's not as though I could have prepared anything ahead of time."
"Hmm… well, maybe not." She twisted her braid round and round her fingers in an almost hypnotic whirl. "But it's not as though someone could have broken into the locker to get the poison out — not with the rule about locked doors. Or are you suggesting that it might not apply to a locker?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Togami shot back. "Who in their right mind would assume a locker doesn't count under that rule? But it doesn't matter — the culprit didn't need to wonder about breaking the rules." He crossed his arms with a smirk. "Naegi and I discovered during our investigation that the dojo lockers have a second, hidden keyhole. The poison was never truly secure in the first place."
"Is that so?" Kirigiri's eyes widened — but something about her expression struck a nerve somewhere in the exhausted recesses of Togami's mind. It wasn't deception, not exactly — he knew he could have identified that easily enough. This was something else, something more complicated… something he hadn't expected. But a blink of the eye later, and whatever it was had gone, leaving only an iron-cold mask behind. "Well, then, if that's what you found —"
She stopped short, eyes shooting to her right. At her side, Ogami went pale, mouth moving too fast for Togami to read any words from it — not that he needed to. Not when both girls were looking in the same direction.
He felt as though he had to fight against the inexorable pull of the tide as he forced his head to turn. Centuries could have passed in the fraction of a second it took for him to turn his head and see what had happened… but as soon as he saw, he would have given anything to wipe it from his memory.
Naegi had collapsed to the ground behind his podium, crumpled on his knees with his good arm shielding his head from the floor.
