Naegi could feel the insight rushing through his thoughts like a tidal wave, sweeping away Junko's rickety walls of lies until only the solid foundation of truth remained. Junko was here in front of him, alive and well… so the girl murdered by Monokuma before the first trial hadn't been Junko at all. Mukuro had taken her place all along, from the day she'd met them in the entrance hall… to those horrible final moments when Monokuma launched his Spears of Gungnir.

No… not Monokuma, not the mastermind, not any of the other masks of anonymity she'd worn. Junko had been the one to launch the spears, using a mechanism so elaborate that it had to have been set up in advance. She'd planned on killing her double all along.

The moment flashed before Naegi's eyes again, blood splattering across a girl's horrified face. Pain and confusion flooded her eyes as she used her final breath to ask the mastermind why… and now, Naegi understood what she'd really meant to ask. Why had the mastermind decided to kill one of the allies who'd brought her plan to life?

As much as Naegi hated to sling such a horrible accusation at a girl who could no longer speak in her own defense — a girl who he'd considered a friend both of the times he'd met her — he couldn't see any other possibility. Both her appearance and mannerisms had to have been altered so that her introduction as Junko Enoshima would be believable… and such an elaborate disguise could only have worked with her active participation. Mukuro must have been involved with the plan, not one of the innocent students who'd been mind-wiped and thrown into the killing game. But in spite of all of that, she'd still become a victim in the end.

Because Junko had murdered her own twin sister in cold blood.

Sick horror lurched upward from his stomach, burning a path up his throat to flood sour and sharp into his mouth. He retched, dry heaves of pain shaking through him as his empty stomach tried to rid itself of the disgust. Her sister, her own sister… the thought thrummed through his blood, filling his own veins with slime. He wanted it out, out of his head, out of his life, out of the same world where he had to live — but the truth of it only grew clearer as he struggled against it.

Without a way to purge his body of the horrors, the waves of nausea turned to coughs, tearing open new avenues of pain with every hacking shudder. He tried to swallow it back, tried to hold it down, but his sandpaper-dry mouth spasmed violently against every attempt. He couldn't even draw a full breath of soothing air without violent tremors interrupting, building into a dull ache in his lungs.

It was too much to bear, too much pain and too much knowledge, and he couldn't find the strength to endure both. In spite of his best efforts, he could feel himself losing the battle to keep his heavy eyelids open, and every time they fell shut the charred remnants of Mukuro's corpse blazed against the darkness. And even if she'd betrayed them, even if she'd helped create the nightmares of the past few weeks, that didn't make it easier to see how she'd been abandoned by the sister she'd betrayed them for. Every fresh grief hammered away at his weakened body, pain on top of terrible pain, blurring into each other until he could barely tell one from the other. It all hurt, every nerve and every neuron, everything hurt so badly that he didn't know how he could bear it —

And then cool hands brushed across his forehead, smoothing his clammy skin with softly repeated motions. It didn't stop the pain, nothing could… but the gentle sensations gave him a small space of relief. And when the nightmares in his head tried to reassert themselves, tried to fill the newly freed space with worse ideas than before — a quiet murmur shushed the horrors before they could form. He could hardly hear the sound clearly enough to recognize it as a voice, but even so it was enough to keep the terror at bay.

There was something familiar about the sound… something he knew… but the answer was tangled up with pain and screaming and fear. He knew he could find the reality of it if he only tried… but even the thought of reaching back towards the source of all that pain sent him cringing in the opposite direction. He couldn't bring it all back on himself, not knowingly. Even though it was important, even though he knew he'd regret the choice, he couldn't. Not again.

But without warning, the soft hand lifted from his brow and the murmuring faded from his ears. Without those fragile barriers, the pain came roaring back at full force, even worse than it had been. Thoughts had been the cause of it, he knew that somewhere in the back of his mind, but they'd fallen away under the force of overwhelming physical sensation. He would have cried if he'd had the strength, would have wept and pleaded for anything, anything that could help. Even if the price was high, even if he regretted it later, none of that mattered if only the pain would stop.

But it didn't, of course it didn't. This had been coming for days, injury after ignored injury biding their time until they could launch an assault that his weakened body couldn't wish away. Telling himself that he had to try harder to work through it didn't work, not this time. The pain screaming through his veins didn't weaken at all — if anything, it got worse, with a sharp new twinge pinching the skin of his inner right elbow. It was a strange feeling, small against the rest of it… but present in a way the larger pains weren't. Why did it feel different from everything else…?

Why was he able to think coherently enough to ask himself that question?

Naegi blinked slowly, the data center ceiling wavering into focus above him as he regained some small measure of control over his senses. What had just happened? All that pain out of nowhere… well, that much made sense, considering what he knew of the scope of his injuries and the continual emotional stress. He could still feel it, woven through his blood and bones… but it had receded just a hair back from his awareness, just enough to give him space to think. He didn't understand why it would do that, though… he might not be a doctor, but he didn't think bodies worked that way. Not unless —

His gaze shot towards his right arm, just as the pinch of fresh pain eased — and he was just in time to see Junko withdrawing a syringe from his elbow. Their eyes met, and a brilliant smile lit up her face.

"Welcome back, sweetie! Man, I'm sure glad I remembered where I left those needles before the pain drove you off the deep end!" She laughed, as if she'd made some kind of joke. "I mean, I'd rather chat when you're clean and sober, but drugged up is way better than crazy!"