Togami stared at Kirigiri, trying to make sense of what she'd just said to him. "No memories — you're claiming to have amnesia?"
"That's right." Kirigiri met his eyes without flinching, her impassive mask locked in place. "It's not as bad now, of course — a few things have come back to me as I've searched the school for answers. But when I first woke up, my mind was a complete blank. The only thing I knew for certain was my name, Kyoko Kirigiri."
"That is the most ridiculous story I've ever heard." Togami glared across the room at her. "You can't possibly expect me to believe that."
"Which would be why I haven't said anything about it until now," Kirigiri said calmly. "I'm well aware of how unbelievable it sounds, and I know that no one here has any reason to trust my claims."
Naegi would have — the certainty roared through Togami's mind with all the fury of an inferno. He could see the naive, trusting boy nodding along with every poisonous word, sympathizing with her manufactured plight — and it was all he could do to keep his hands from reaching for the scissors hidden at his waist.
To distract himself from thoughts that would ruin any chance he had of succeeding, Togami reached for one of the hundred questions roiling through his mind. "Did you try to feed him this pack of lies?"
"Him — you mean Naegi?" Kirigiri shook her head. "I never intended to confide in anyone about my situation, not if I had any other options." She must have been able to see the suspicion in his eyes even from across the room, because she let a small sigh escape her. "Don't get angry about what I didn't say to Naegi — the lies that I did tell him are more than bad enough."
Togami froze. He knew that Kirigiri had lied to Naegi about something, he'd never doubted it for a second — but he hadn't expected her to admit it. She'd always covered up her lies until now, cloaking herself in the safety of plausible deniability… why would she change her strategy now?
"I know you don't believe me," she went on, not giving him enough time to decide how to react. "That's fine. It's better than trusting me too much. The mastermind can predict my movements too well for that."
"Are you choosing to be incoherent, or is it coming to you naturally?" Togami said sharply when she trailed off into silence. He hadn't come to the bathhouse to hear what she had to say — but the disjointed half-explanation grated painfully against the raw edges of his mind. "If you're going to talk to me, make sense."
"Then you're willing to listen?" Kirigiri smiled, and it burned to know that he'd done something to make her pleased. "Good. Then you'll need to come closer. There's no point in having this conversation away from the cameras if we have to shout across the room."
She gestured to his right, and following the motion, Togami could see a narrow gap winding through the mess of string and paper. It was a path of sorts, leading into the center of the maze where Kirigiri was waiting. He almost wanted to turn and walk away, just to wipe that revolting smile off her face. What right did she have to smile when Naegi would never smile again?
But the hard line of Jill's scissors cutting into his side reminded Togami about why he'd come here in the first place. So what if Kirigiri was happy? Let her be — soon she wouldn't be able to smile about anything else again. Strengthening his resolve, Togami gritted his teeth and entered the tangled web.
The path wasn't much of one, forcing him to edge past branching knots or duck beneath low-hanging snarls. Every unexpected brush of paper against his skin made him want to rip the whole thing away and ruin whatever Kirigiri meant for it to do… but Togami knew that annoying her wouldn't accomplish anything. He continued without a word, letting the record of her thoughts wrap its way around him until he reached the girl herself.
Without the draping strings and notes obstructing his vision, Togami could see her more clearly than he'd ever wanted… and he couldn't help but notice that the iron mask of control that she used so often had begun to crack. The dark circles lurking beneath her eyes and the lines around her mouth reminded him too much of the trial, when he and Naegi both had worn the same marks of exhaustion on their own faces. Was it possible to fake physical signs of fatigue? And even if it was, why would she bother faking it while she stayed hidden away here? But… it couldn't be genuine either… because what reason would the mastermind's agent have to lose sleep?
She had to notice his scrutiny, but she didn't comment. She just nodded once for some reason that presumably made sense in her own mind if not to the rest of the world, and dropped down to sit cross-legged on the floor. After a moment's hesitation, Togami did the same, making sure that he stayed just out of arm's reach from her.
"You told me to make sense," Kirigiri said, before he even had to prompt her to begin, "but that's a more difficult request than you might expect. I've been trying to make sense of everything I know since the moment I woke up."
"With your memories mysteriously gone." Togami didn't bother to try keeping the derision from his voice — she might as well know he wouldn't be an easy mark for her lies.
Unfortunately, it didn't seem to faze her. "That's right. I didn't even know that we were meant to be students at Hope's Peak Academy until I ran into Enoshima outside the classroom where I woke up. And even after I understood the situation, I still had no way of knowing how much of what I'd been told was true. I couldn't trust anything or anyone."
"And what, you think that makes you special?" Harsh laughter tore its way free of his throat. "Every single one of us was in the same position."
"Maybe… but I didn't know that for certain." Her eyes fell away from his, and she reached up to twist her fingers through one of the remaining locks of long hair left where her braid had been. "The only path I could see available to me was to search for information and solve as many of the mysteries in this school as I could."
"Very appropriate for the Ultimate Detective." Togami tried to smirk, but tension kept his mouth from twisting.
"Yes… appropriate and predictable. Whoever is behind this must have known that I'd start investigating." She sighed. "They've been one step ahead of me the entire time. Even when I thought I was making progress, they always had a new way to stop me."
"It's almost as though they had some way to watch every move you made."
"I'm not the one who's been known to forget about the cameras."
The sudden reminder of his time with Naegi, broadcast to both the world and the other students, struck him like a slap across the face, knocking away the retort he might have made. All he could do was stare at her, mouth open to speak words that he no longer knew.
"That was… uncalled for." Kirigiri grimaced. "I'm sorry. I know it's know excuse, but… it isn't easy for me to speak so openly."
Togami didn't trust himself to reply… not when the only answer he wanted to give would come in the form of silver blades. He forced his mouth closed with an audible click and dropped his gaze to the ground between the two of them. If he couldn't see her face, he might be able to bear her words more easily.
"Well… regardless of whether it was accurate or not, I suspected that the mastermind knew more than they could have learned through cameras alone," Kirigiri went on after a moment's pause. "And I know you thought the same. Like you, I'd considered the possibility that the mastermind had planted a spy in our group almost from the start… but a spy wasn't the only potential danger. There was a chance, however slim, that the mastermind had infiltrated our group themselves."
"I thought of that as well," Togami snapped, unwilling to let her think she'd outsmarted him in any way. "I simply dismissed it as a possibility, since it would have been a highly inefficient method of observing us."
"Yes, that's true," Kirigiri agreed. "I did say it seemed unlikely. But I couldn't ignore the possibility that the mastermind might value the ability to influence our actions directly over the knowledge gained from the cameras."
"So everyone was a potential enemy and you trusted no one," Togami summarized impatiently. "Fine. Get to the point."
"No, that's not quite it," she said. "Trusting no one would have been ideal — but the killing game made it impossible. As soon as the first murder occurred, I realized that the class trials would present a significant drain on my time and attention, making it even more difficult to get anywhere with my own investigations. Ignoring them wasn't an option, since failing to identify the true culprit would mean death — so I had to make sure there was someone else who could get us safely through the trials."
Togami saw what she meant instantly — and it made his fingers curl into angry fists. "Naegi — you're talking about Naegi."
"That's right. I thought that out of everyone here, it would be safest to rely on him." Kirigiri took a deep breath. "Until it wasn't."
