For a moment, Naegi had almost believed it would be all right. Byakuya had looked so fierce when he'd first found Kyoko in the library — but then he'd stopped, getting a grip on himself and restraining whatever impulse had made him lunge at her. He hadn't attacked, and neither had she. They'd talked. Sure, it hadn't been the friendly rapport they'd once shared, but it also hadn't been the poisonous malice of their earlier fight in the cafeteria. Kyoko had been more open than Naegi had seen her since the game had begun, even going so far as to extend an olive branch in the form of further discussion. It could have meant so much.

And then Byakuya had picked up the scissors.

Nausea coiled through Naegi's stomach as he watched Byakuya hide the gleaming silver blades. He knew all too well just how sharp those scissors were — the relentless pain twisting up his left arm wouldn't let him forget it for long. Sharp enough to slice through human flesh like butter… sharp enough to kill. Why had Byakuya taken scissors made to be weapons?

There was only one answer, no matter how many times the question echoed in Naegi's mind. Byakuya was going to accept the olive branch Kyoko had offered… and use it as an opportunity to kill her.

Or at least he'd thought about it. But thinking wasn't doing. Taking the scissors wasn't the same as using them, no matter how cruelly Byakuya had smiled when he'd hidden them away. He might have had horrible thoughts, but that didn't mean he would act on them. He could still change his mind — and he would, Naegi just had to trust that he would. Byakuya could still resist the pull towards darkness, turn aside, choose to be the person that Naegi knew he still was —

"So you think he's gonna try to frame Little Miss Mass Murderer?"

Junko's words hit Naegi like a slap to the face, reminding him of all the fears he'd nearly managed to convince himself were groundless. She didn't believe that Byakuya would change his mind, that was for sure.

Naegi looked over at her, lounging back with one leg draped over the armrest of her chair. She seemed completely at ease, like the screens around them were showing her scenes from a movie she knew by heart. She'd even managed to scrounge up snacks from somewhere, twirling a stick of pocky between two fingers like a long cigarette.

She grinned when she noticed him watching. "Want some? I'd toss you the box, but it's not like you're gonna be able to think fast like that." She leaned forward, flicking the tip of her pocky stick in his direction. "But hey, if you want a bite of mine, I'd just love to help out!"

Naegi couldn't stop the grimace of disgust that crossed his face at the thought of sharing food with her. Junko laughed, leaning back in her chair. "That's fine — more for me! And it's probably better if you aren't distracted, anyway. I wouldn't want you to miss a minute of your darling's big moment!"

Naegi glanced back at the monitors, where Byakuya hurried from screen to screen as he followed Kyoko downstairs. Yes, there was determination in his eyes — but that could still mean anything. Junko didn't know for sure what would happen yet, no matter how certain she acted.

"Still telling yourself I'm wrong?" Junko asked, her words sounding almost sympathetic. "Well, you'll see soon, sweetie. You'll know just how it feels when the people you love turn out to be so terribly disappointing."

Naegi tried to ignore her, keeping his eyes locked on the monitors… but he couldn't shake the feeling that instead of watching the scenes of the rest of the school, Junko was watching him.


Togami was almost shocked to make it all the way to the bathhouse without being stopped by the mastermind. After all, they couldn't possibly have missed the moment when he'd taken Jill's scissors, not when the cameras had every inch of the library under surveillance. They had to know he'd armed himself.

But that was all he'd done so far. And it would take a very clever plan indeed to deflect suspicion from himself if he, Jill, and Ogami ended up in a trial to find Kirigiri's killer. The mastermind could be banking on the fact that he'd need far more than a weapon to pull off such a feat.

Well, if they wanted to believe that he was still playing by their rules, he was more than happy to take advantage of their misconceptions. Togami strode determinedly for the bathhouse entrance, running over possible strategies in his head. He'd need to be careful, that much was certain If she got a hint of his intentions before he acted, this chance would be lost. He'd have to wait until she was distracted…

But when Togami stepped through the bathhouse door, the vague plans disappeared from his mind. He stared around the changing room, almost unable to believe that it was the same place where they'd spoken to Alter Ego and conferred away from the mastermind's gaze.

A forest of fluttering scraps of paper filled the room, pinned to every available surface and even dangling from the ceiling, covered with multicolored scribbles of unintelligible writing. Long stretches of string zigzagged haphazardly from point to point, and he could hardly see a way to enter the room without getting tangled in one or another of them.

And right in the middle of the chaos was Kirigiri, arms crossed and a faint smile on her lips. "So you decided to show up after all."

Togami stared at her in disbelief. "What the hell is all of this?"

That wiped the smile off her face as she glanced around the room. "Ah. It must look rather confusing to you."

"Is this what you've been doing all day?" Togami demanded. "Turning the one room where the mastermind can't see us into a mess?"

"It isn't a mess," she said calmly, which was a baldfaced lie if Togami had ever heard one. "These are my notes about everything that's happened to us since we woke up here."

"Notes?" Togami's eyebrows shot up, and he reached out to grab the nearest piece of paper. He squinted down at it, but of course the writing seemed to be in some sort of code. In the center, the letters CF — AE were written in blue, while below that she'd added a smaller 3d? in green.

It made no sense — until suddenly it did. Togami looked up and smirked at Kirigiri. "Chihiro Fujisaki created Alter Ego in approximately three days."

She gave him a single sharp nod. "Making a fully functional AI is an incredibly impressive accomplishment, even for the Ultimate Programmer. The fact that he was able to do it so quickly, when he didn't believe that AI technology had advanced enough for Monokuma to be self-operational…" She shrugged. "It's another unanswered question."

Togami glanced back at the paper in his hand, strings connecting it to the rest of the web. He had the sudden urge to yank on it, to send the entire complex structure crashing down — but he couldn't quite bring himself to do so, not when he didn't know what it would mean. He released the paper gently instead, letting it swing back to its place in the tangle. "So what? Why waste your time writing down questions?"

"Because I needed to know where I went wrong." Kirigiri closed her eyes for a moment — but before Togami could even decide whether this was the opportunity he needed, she opened them again. "I don't think that I normally make a physical map of my thoughts and conclusions — it's dangerous to leave so much evidence sitting around for anyone to find. But when I realized that one of my major conclusions was incorrect… I knew that I needed a clearer method of determining what I can trust."

Togami frowned, staring at the detective through the tangle of strings and paper between them. He knew better than to believe a word that came out of her mouth — but he couldn't see why she'd go to all the effort of covering the bathhouse with notes just so she could lie to him. He had to be missing something… but he couldn't see what. "So why tell me about it?"

"Oh? After all the questions you've asked me, you're complaining about getting answers?" Kirigiri shook her head. "I can't act on my own any longer. Perhaps I never should have tried to do it in the first place… but then, I didn't have much choice. The truth is that when I woke up here in Hope's Peak three weeks ago… I didn't have any memories of my past at all."