Togami slumped back against the door, palms braced against the smooth surface like the world might lurch around him at any moment. This new knowledge trickled through his mind like tendrils of acid, eating away at the last few solid foundations he'd been able to use for support. He'd thought that Naegi had been a helpless victim murdered by the mastermind and their allies while he was too weak and injured to fight back… but the truth was so much worse.
Naegi had chosen to die — not because he'd given up, as Togami had feared when Ogami first brought up the possibility, but because he hadn't.
"Hey, White Knight? You doing okay back there?"
In the time it took Togami to blink, Jill had spun in place to peer directly into his face. "Cause even if you beat out everyone else, I've gotta say that this isn't your best look."
He could hear the words, but he couldn't quite make sense of them in his head. It was as though his brain had stopped accepting new input, shutting down entirely as it tried to process the information already overloading it. He needed to think, needed time to think, if he ever wanted to realign his mental landscape into a place he knew how to navigate.
"Togami… are you all right?"
But time was the one thing he couldn't have here, with those girls surrounding him and flinging even more words his way. Concern prickled out from Ogami's voice, stretching out to scrape against the raw wounds exposed and vulnerable on his heart.
"Perhaps you should sit down, at least until you stop shaking."
She stepped towards him — but he jerked instinctively backward, cracking his head on the wall in his haste to maintain some semblance of protective space around himself. White-hot stars burst across his vision, but even with the room obscured for a brief moment he could still feel the weight of the other people pressing in around him. So many people, there were so many more than just the three girls standing here watching in person. Billions of eyes stared at him through the mastermind's cameras, gawking at the moment when the last piece of his heart fell apart into dust.
An entire world was watching… all except the one person whose gaze didn't hurt. For all the times Naegi had seen right through Togami's defenses, it had never left him feeling so weak and raw. When Naegi had looked at him… it felt like he wasn't alone.
But that feeling had only been a brief illusion, underscoring the painful reality until he couldn't ignore it any longer. Even though he'd asked Naegi time and again to stay, stay with him, stay… it hadn't mattered in the end. Naegi had left him alone here, stripped of the emotional shields he needed to defend himself against the staring eyes of the world. And with all his weak points laid bare in this sharp-edged world, how could there be any hope that anyone else would ever be on his side again?
"Togami? Can you hear me at all?"
And suddenly Ogami was there, directly before his eyes where he could no longer ignore the look in her eyes as she frowned at the broken mess Naegi had made of him. Nausea twisted through his stomach at the knowledge in her eyes, the living proof that the world could see his pain. What right did she have to look at him that way, staring straight at the truths he would have done anything in his power to conceal?
His face curled into an instinctive sneer before he had to make the conscious decision to defend himself. "Clearly the idea of taking a hint when someone ignores you is too difficult a concept to master."
The words should have been an attack — but for some reason his voice sounded thin and breathless in his ear. If he really sounded so horrifyingly fragile, it was no wonder Ogami didn't back away as he'd intended. If anything, the lines of tension in her face actually eased, as though she'd found something reassuring in his attempt to lash out at her.
"I see… then I'm glad that was all," she said, with a twist to her mouth that set his teeth on edge. What was that look supposed to be? Was she humoring him now? "In that case… perhaps you can stop guarding the door now. You can sit down for a few moments to rest before the announcement, and —"
"I don't need to rest!" he snapped, and that time he had the bitter satisfaction of seeing her draw backward. "Do you actually think that trying to nursemaid me into eating and sleeping will help anything?" He couldn't stop the shudder in his voice — it took all the strength he had left to stop it from turning into a broken sob. And even then he couldn't swallow it back entirely, his shoulders shaking as the sound twisted its way out of him in a low, unsteady laugh.
Ogami blinked once, then glanced off to either side where Kirigiri and Jill were watching. Did she actually think either of those two vipers could contribute anything useful? The thought only made more laughter choke its way through Togami's throat.
"You — you're not all right," Ogami said slowly, as though she were only coming to that shockingly obvious conclusion now. Of course he wasn't all right — he could barely even stretch his memory back to the time before he'd come to Hope's Peak, to know what all right felt like in a world without Naegi in it. "Then do you need —"
"I don't need anything!" The suggestion was intolerable, drawing the world's attention straight to his inability to cope. "Is leaving me alone that difficult a concept to grasp? Or is it just that you need me as a crutch to ease your own guilt?"
He'd only said it to push her back, to get the breathing space he needed — but all the color drained from her face the instant those words left his mouth. Togami froze for an instant, the accusation settling through the dust of his mind until he could see it clearly. Guilt, of course she felt guilt, it had left her broken and on the brink of despair after her actions led to Asahina's death in the fourth trial. All that she'd done to help Naegi had stemmed from that moment, her guilt over her dead friend leading her to protect the only one she could still save.
And now… it was the same thing. There was a cold sort of satisfaction in the way the pieces finally clicked together in his head, bringing an almost triumphant smile to his lips at the realization that yet another person had proved his cynical worldview right. "I see. Well, that certainly explains a lot."
She was already shaking her head before he'd even stopped speaking. "No — that wasn't why!"
But the truth was written right there on her face for anyone to see. Togami raised an eyebrow. "So you don't feel a shred of guilt for giving Naegi the weapon he used to bring on his own death?"
Even with his damaged hearing, he could hear her hiss of pain as the blow landed. Well, that was only fitting, wasn't it? After all, Naegi had suffered so much more… Naegi, who had never done anything to deserve it…
"Not that I'm complaining about hearing you talk, darling — but you sure you wanna waste your gorgeous voice on words like that?" Jill punctuated her words with the rapid click of scissors as she tapped them too fast against her palm. "I mean, you start giving it away for free, what are you gonna have left to throw at someone who's really to blame?"
"You mean like you?" Togami turned his glare on the genocider, still wearing a skirt shredded to display rows after row of self-inflicted wounds. "You nearly murdered him yourself two days ago — and it's your fault he was too weak to defend himself during the trial!"
Jill's fingers snapped closed over the scissor blades as they hit her palm. "That's what you think, baby?" Her voice sounded bright and cheerful as ever… but Togami could see a few flecks of blood at the edges of her palm as she clenched her fist around the scissor blades. "You're gonna say I'm the one at fault?"
"Not just you." Kirigiri's voice sliced through the room, speaking Togami's thoughts in the instant before he could say them aloud. He turned to glare at her — but his expression faltered as he met her steel-cold gaze. "You see it, don't you, Togami? You know exactly who to blame."
Her calm, quiet words brought fury blazing red behind his eyes. "You're going to say that? You? What have you ever done but try to lead Naegi into danger? If he hadn't trusted you —"
"He'd still be alive." When Togami couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence, Kirigiri did it for him. "Yes… you're probably right."
He couldn't stand there and listen to her any longer, not with the flat voice and emotionless eyes she had as she spoke about the boy she'd all but murdered. He wanted to scream, to lunge at her, to tear at her skin with his nails until she bore a physical mirror of every invisible scar he could feel on his heart. He wanted to see her hurt.
And there was nothing he could do about it. He could feel his hands shaking, his knees on the verge of collapse, his heart pounding against his ribs as if he'd already run a marathon. He couldn't touch her, not when he was like this. He couldn't — couldn't do anything —
He spun and threw the cafeteria doors open, rushing out of the room and away from those three girls who had done so much to send Naegi to his fate. He didn't think about where he was heading, too desperate to put as much distance between himself and the girls as he could — and he only realized that he'd been moving on instinct when he found himself in front of the locked door to his dorm room.
A door he no longer had the key to unlock.
Togami reached into his pocket and pulled out the only key he still had… Naegi's key. It felt impossibly leaden in his hand, even though he knew it was no different than any of the other dorm keys. No… the only difference was that this key had stayed in the dorms, while its owner… hadn't.
He felt as though some outside force turned his body slowly in place, rotating him around the key in his hand until he found himself staring blankly at the opposite side of the hall. And before he could even decide whether he wanted to look, the undeniable pull of gravity dragged his eyes straight to the door across from his own. The door that the key in his hand would open.
Naegi's door.
Togami walked across the hall and slid the key into the lock… but then his hand froze, unable to complete the final motion necessary to open the door. For all that he'd wanted this key so desperately, the thought of actually using it felt like an impossibly daunting task, as far beyond his reach as flying to the moon. Entering Naegi's room without him… the one room in the school where traces of the other boy would linger in every corner… what kind of strength would it take to face such a thing? He could have stood there for the rest of the night, too ensnared by indecision to move either way — but he didn't have such a luxury.
Ding dong, ding dong.
The nighttime announcement rang through the hall… meaning that the cafeteria had just become off limits. Any moment now, those girls would leave… and the only thing worse than having the cameras capturing his inability to open the door would be if Jill, Kirigiri, and Ogami saw it in person.
Without giving himself the time to think the better of it, Togami turned the key and opened the door… and stepped into Naegi's room.
Schedule note: I'm still undecided about a permanent schedule... but first, I have to adjust for the end of the year. Due to various holiday travel plans and other time-consuming things, I'm going to stick to an every other week schedule for now, but the chapter length might get shorter again. Next chapter will be posted on Christmas Eve, December 24. See you then!
