Junko had tried to kill him because… his memories had been coming back? Naegi frowned. Could that be true? He remembered the past two years now, but that had only been the case since he'd woken up after the execution. And while yes, exhaustion and injuries had made his thoughts kind of unstable the last few days, he was pretty sure he would have noticed if he'd suddenly had a lot of new memories about people he'd thought he'd only met a few weeks ago.

Or… would he? There had been those strange dreams, scenes of a peaceful school life that he'd dismissed as wishful thinking… but now he knew they hadn't been anything of the kind. Phrases that had echoed through his mind had been fragments of actual words he'd heard his friends say. The sunny hallways from his dreams had been the corridors of the real Hope's Peak Academy, before it had been reduced to rubble. And the moments he'd imagined sharing with Byakuya… they hadn't been a string of wistful might-have-beens. He'd somehow managed to glimpse the relationship they'd had before, strong and sweet enough to help the both of them find more courage than they would have had facing the Tragedy alone.

Was that the danger Junko had wanted to avoid? If her goal was to keep them playing her nightmarish game, then maybe it made sense that she couldn't let them remember the truth. After all, just a few days of a new relationship had made Byakuya give up on his plan to participate — so how much more impossible would the game have become if the students had realized the strength of their friendships? The motives seemed almost insignificant now, when he compared them to how much all of them had valued one another. With despair sweeping the world and destroying everything they'd loved, those friendships had been all the sixteen of them had had left. Not a single one of them would have considered murdering the rest of the group, just to escape from the shelter.

Especially not when it would only take them back into the chaos outside.

The image from the motive video he'd received at the start of the killing game flashed before Naegi's eyes, his home in ruins with no trace of his family — but now the scene filled in beyond what the video could show. The stench of charred ash burned through his nostrils, and the screams of nearby looters rang in his ears. They'd left the house little more than a skeleton, robbed of everything that had made it the childhood home he'd loved.

The same was true for all of them. Even if they'd escaped the school… they had nowhere left to go. They'd thought they were fighting to get their lives back… but that chance had been lost long ago. Nothing they did here, not participating in the game or fighting against the mastermind's control, could alter that painful reality.

A burst of enthusiastic applause startled him away from the horror, and he looked back to see Junko beaming at him proudly.

"There you go — I knew you'd get there eventually!" Her hand shot forward to give him an approving pat on the head, too fast for him to flinch away even if he'd had the strength to move. "You're so much smarter than you pretend, sweetie — that's why I picked you for my scrapbooking project after every trial! If your memories had stayed erased like they were supposed to, you'd have used all those clues to figure out just enough to make things more exciting! But I didn't count on the erasure weakening from all the physical trauma."

Physical trauma? His mind went to Jill's scissors in the library… the poisoned needle that had caused him to black out… when Junko had attacked him in the hidden room… and even their first day, when Mondo had knocked him out with a punch meant for Byakuya. Physical trauma couldn't be the only way to retrieve lost memories, not if Junko had been worried Kyoko would find something in the dorms — but he supposed he probably had been through enough to make it happen. When he thought about it that way, it made sense.

But if he took the thought just a step further, it didn't. So yes, injury on top of injury had restored enough of his memories to make him a threat to the killing game, one that Junko had taken seriously enough to frame him as a culprit. But in that case…

"Why did I save you?"

Junko spoke the words at the same time they ran through Naegi's mind. His eyes widened at the sound of his own thoughts in her voice, and she laughed.

"Oh, come on, sweetie, it was written all over your face. Man, you're so open and honest — how were you not the first victim?" She shook her head, looking puzzled. "Ultimate Luck strikes again, huh?"

No… it hadn't been luck. Naegi remembered Sayaka huddled alone in a classroom after seeing her first motive video, terrified to the point of desperation. Luck hadn't led her to play the killing game… she'd been driven to it by a deliberate act of cruelty. Throughout the entire game, every culprit had been manipulated into killing by the mastermind's determination to keep the game going.

The same mastermind who had gone on to save Naegi's life after the execution failed to kill him. Why had she done that? As long as he knew the truth, he was a threat to her plans — she had to know that he'd try to stop the game if he got a chance. So why —

"You don't need to overthink it so much, you know?" Junko propped her chin on one fist and smiled down at him with what almost looked like affection. "Don't get me wrong, I'm flattered that you just can't get me out of your head — but it's just not all that complicated." She shrugged. "Everyone knows quality television is even better when you watch with a friend — that's all."

Television…? At that word, the chill of new horror spread its icy fingers through his stomach. Until now, he hadn't spared much thought for the fact that they were in the data center… but maybe he should have. After all, if she'd only wanted to get him out of the trial grounds so he could recover, she could easily have found a place more suited to medical treatment. But instead, Junko had brought him here, to the room where she could watch the camera feeds from the rest of the school. So then… what had she wanted him to see?

Naegi's frantic gaze shot past her, scanning every monitor in his limited range of vision. His eyes darted across screen after screen of empty rooms, desperate for a glimpse of his few surviving friends. Where were they? What had Junko done to them while he'd been unconscious?

After an eternity of terror, a flicker of pale movement snagged his attention up to the monitors showing the fifth floor. And — yes, there, frowning at the armor display in the fifth floor dojo he could see Sakura Ogami, whole and unharmed. She looked unhappier than ever, face shadowed by painful grief… but she couldn't be otherwise, not after losing Hina so horribly. She was alive, that was the important thing, alive and no worse off than she'd been before. And if she was alive, then maybe… maybe…

He didn't dare finish the thought, just focused on the other dojo camera feeds until finally, finally, there at the edge of the lined up dojo lockers — he saw Byakuya. His eyes locked onto his boyfriend —

And cold horror stole the breath from his lungs. Misery had torn Byakuya's handsome face apart, rending deep lines into pale skin and twisting his mouth into a thin-lipped slash. His hair hung lank and untended, and he'd given up on his finely tailored uniform for an ill-fitting tracksuit. Makeshift bandages covered both his hands, the material flecked with the ugly brown of dried blood. And when Naegi looked into Byakuya's eyes… even from this distance, even separated by the monitors, when he looked into his boyfriend's eyes he could see a grief too deep to hide, laid bare for the world to see. And there was only one reason for Byakuya to have those eyes.

He thought Naegi was dead.