Togami glared down at the spot where Ikusaba's corpse had been, every bit as viciously as he would have if the girl herself were standing in front of him. How could the body be missing? Nothing else from the room had been removed. When he took a brief moment to glance to the side, he could see that even the humidifier components, which had unquestionably been a part of the murder trial, still sat piled in the corner where he'd last seen them. Only Ikusaba's body had been taken.
"Is something wrong?" Ogami asked, eyes darting from him to the empty space on the ground.
He spun to turn his glare on her. "You can't possibly be that unobservant! Or do you think that there's no problem at all that we're looking at a murder scene without a victim?"
"Oh… I see." She looked back at the ground, tilting her head as though deep in thought. "But… why does that distress you? In every previous occurrence, the mastermind has always removed the bodies after the class trial ended."
"No," Togami said flatly, crossing his arms. "No, that's not what they've done. In the past, the mastermind has gotten rid of all evidence that a murder took place, to the extent it's been possible to do so. But this time they broke with their usual pattern. The body is the only thing missing from this scene, and that doesn't make sense!"
Ogami's eyes widened at the furious frustration blazing through his words. "It certainly does sound like a deviation from the mastermind's usual methods, and I can't imagine that they would do such a thing without some reason. But I don't understand what you mean when you say it makes no sense for the body to have been removed. Surely it would have been unreasonable to leave a dead body to rot here."
Did he really have to explain this? Togami's lip curled up in a sneer. "If you're under the impression that the mastermind and 'reasonable' belong in the same sentence, you've taken one too many blows to the head. Or do you think that trapping a class of new students in this over-the-top game of murder is reasonable?"
She looked away, fingers tightening into fists. "Of course I don't."
"Exactly." He nodded sharply. "The mastermind doesn't make decisions based on normal perceptions of rationality — but even so, they always have a method to their madness." He scowled down at the empty floor again. "I just wish I knew what it was."
"Wow, what a heartfelt plea!"
The bright, cheery voice sent chills down Togami's spine, even as he spun around.
Monokuma grinned up at him from the center of the room. "What kind of headmaster would I be if I didn't answer such an earnest request, huh?" He raised a paw to beckon them onward. "Well, go ahead — consider this an extra special tutoring session! If you want to know, all you've gotta do is ask!"
Junko leaned back in her chair and beamed proudly at the screen in front of her, showing the Monokuma robot's view of Togami and Ogami. It did her headmasterly heart so much good to see her pupils excelling beyond all expectations. She'd thought that she'd have to prompt and nudge and nag to get them thinking along the right lines — but nope, here they were, well on their merry way to the conclusions she wanted them to reach.
In fact, it was starting to look like just a little more time might be all they needed to work their way to the finish line by themselves! She knew where the credit for that belonged, of course — who'd have thought Togami would turn out to be such a model student? Seeing him make such leaps and bounds of progress was the sort of thing every devoted teacher dreamed of, no matter how impossible it might have seemed for her students to achieve it. And now, when he'd jumped right up to the top of the honor roll, staring at her Monokuma with such beautifully honed hatred, it all just brought a tear to her eye.
With so much progress, she hated to interrupt his efforts — but unfortunately, even doing his very best wouldn't be enough to meet his deadlines. He needed one good, solid study session to go the full distance… and she was sure this little pop quiz session would do the trick.
"All right, if you're going to pretend to be helpful, answer me — why did you only get rid of Ikusaba's body?" Togami raised his chin imperiously as he asked the question… but someone really ought to tell him that his favorite oh-so-dramatic poses just didn't have the same oomph when he was wearing a common tracksuit that wasn't quite long enough for his legs.
Two years ago, when she'd begun to live among them all as the Ultimate Fashionista, she could have told him herself… but that personality was gone forever now, worn out from overuse. She wouldn't reach back for it even if she could remember how it felt. Monokuma could have said the words, twisting them into a taunt crueler than the Fashionista's teasing… but the thought of rewording the idea she'd already had weighed down at her mind. Boring, boring, why did everything turn out to be so boring?
So she threw the words away, consigning them to her never-quite-forgotten heap of things that would never come to be, and leaned towards the microphone to answer her impatient students. "Hm, really? So all you want to know about is the school's janitorial work? I can tell you all about our super-secret tips for scrubbing the bathrooms, too, if that's what you're into!"
For some reason, Togami reacted to her generous offer with an even more vicious glare. "Don't be ridiculous. I want to know why you didn't get rid of the other remnants of the murder when you disposed of her body."
"Oh, so you just expect your headmaster to do all the school chores for you?" Her fingers flew across the buttons as she spoke, sliding Monokuma's fanged teeth and gleaming claws into view. "You want everything handed to you on a silver platter? Well, I'll have you know that I'm an extremely busy bear — those Monokuma coins won't hide themselves!"
"So you're saying you were too busy to follow your usual post-trial procedure?" The outrage just dripped from the poor boy's voice as he found himself confronted with an answer that didn't fit into his tidy, logical framework. "You have something better to do than follow through on your own insane plans?"
"What can I say? A headmaster's duties can wear you away to a skeleton if you're not careful!" Junko grinned as she tapped out Monokuma's explosion of laughter. She just knew that poor Headmaster Kirigiri would appreciate knowing that at least one of his former students still kept him in her thoughts!
Togami sneered at her for that, which seemed awfully uncalled for considering how patient she was being with him! "I should have known. You never had any intention of answering my question honestly."
Junko clucked her tongue disapprovingly at this rudeness. If that was how he wanted to behave, she had half a mind to turn this classroom around and leave the pair to their own devices!
But on the other hand… it was hardly fair the rest of the class to let one student's attitude ruin everyone's experience.
"What a terrible thing to say! There's not a single ounce of deception in my one-hundred-percent genuine stuffing!" She made Monokuma huff indignantly, but for now she kept her fingers well away from the button that would make Monokuma disappear from the room. "Of course I was busy. After all, this trial left me with an awful lot of extra work to do!"
It was more of a nudge than she'd expected to need — but at least it did the trick. Togami's eyes narrowed as he finally made the final leap to where she wanted him to go.
"So it's not just the clean up… you're admitting that there was something unusual about the entire trial we just had." He leaned forward, eyes flashing with determination. "And you're going to tell me exactly what it was."
Schedule Note: Due to the mid-week holiday here in the US this week, there won't be a Thursday chapter. Next one will be up Sunday 7/9. See you then!
