As Togami considered the meaning of Kirigiri's words, a dark scowl spread across his face. So something had made it unsafe for her to use Naegi as a pawn? He was fairly sure he knew what she meant — and he didn't like it at all. "If you expect me to feel guilty that my efforts to protect Naegi from your manipulations made your life inconvenient, you're destined for disappointment."
But Kirigiri shook her head. "That isn't quite what I meant. Your interference was certainly an annoyance, but on its own it wasn't a real obstacle to my objective. No, the real problem was that with the two of you acting as a united front, the nature of our imprisonment here changed."
A frown creased Togami's face as he tried to follow her logic. "It's not as though we were the first people to feel some sort of affection for one another. Ogami and Asahina paired off from the day we arrived, not to mention whatever bizarre bonding ritual Ishimaru and Owada had."
"Affection isn't enough, that's true," Kirigiri agreed calmly. "But trust is a different story. The killing game is constructed in such a way as to pit all of us against one another, making trust the most dangerous risk anyone could take. It should have been impossible to have real trust in anyone in this situation — but it looked like the two of you did. By the time Celeste's trial ended, the rest of us could see that you and Naegi had complete trust in one another."
Togami wouldn't have put it in those words — but Naegi's voice echoed through his head, an inescapable reminder of the first night the two of them had spent together.
I know you didn't really want to kill me… because I trust you not to.
You trust me too, or you wouldn't be here.
Naegi had been right. Even in those first few days, when Togami had still struggled to deny what he felt… the trust had been there. Even though he'd rarely trusted anyone else in his life, even though it was a terrifying risk, even though it made no sense… he'd trusted Naegi. And he'd known that Naegi trusted him in return.
Not that it had done them any good. They'd been humiliated by Monokuma, targeted by Celeste, and doubted by the other surviving students. It was just like he'd always believed — trust was nothing but a point of vulnerability, a potential wound waiting to cripple them.
Except… that wasn't how Kirigiri had said it. The way she'd said the words… it had sounded like she thought that the trust between Togami and Naegi was more threatening to the other students than to the boys themselves. It was the same sort of rubbish that the other students had been spouting when they'd forced that ludicrous separation… and it didn't make any more sense now than it had at the time.
Togami narrowed his eyes at Kirigiri as he considered it, trying to figure out what she meant by such a ridiculous statement. "So what if we trusted each other? All it meant was that we both had our hands tied when it came to the killing game. I don't see how that affects anyone else."
"Then you aren't thinking about it hard enough." Her words turned needle-sharp — which in turn brought the unsettling realization that until this moment, the usual edge to her words had been absent. "You've always been quick enough to see potential threats in everyone around you — are you incapable of turning that thinking around on yourself?"
The challenge to his pride was such an obvious ploy that he could hardly even call it manipulation — but he let it work anyway. Left to himself, the clinging fog of grief dragged him down into a mire of misery — but that was dangerous, with Kirigiri here in front of him. If he was going to talk to her, let alone attempt to enact any kind of vengeance, then he needed his mind at its sharpest. He let her question sting his neurons into action, sparking fresh refusal to let any accusation that he might be incapable stand unanswered.
So then… would he have seen it as a threat, if it had been another pair in his and Naegi's place? What if Ogami hadn't spent those first days in the mastermind's pocket, but had been one of them from the start? If she and Asahina could have relied on one another the way that he and Naegi had… if they'd been able to trust one another freely without the seed of doubt the mastermind had planted between them… what would their relationship have looked like? And what would he have thought?
He wouldn't have trusted them. It was almost too obvious to consider — of course he wouldn't have trusted a pair who'd claimed to forge such a strong connection in the middle of a killing game. Even now, even with the consequences of it etched through his broken heart, there was still a part of his mind that couldn't quite believe it had really occurred. Without the undeniable proof he'd experienced, he wouldn't have hesitated to call such people liars.
The only question would be what lie was being told. Who was the relationship meant to fool — the other students, or one of the two themselves? After all, if someone was planning a murder, what better victim could they choose than a person who trusted them unconditionally? And if they played their role as grieving survivor well enough to convince the other students, it would be an easy path to win the ensuing trial.
But that was where the whole scheme fell apart — the relationship had to be believed for it to work. If anyone had even a shred of doubt about the sincerity of the trust, then the survivor would be the first suspect when their partner turned up dead. And much as Togami had found it irritating, the other students had initially had nothing but doubts about the sincerity of his affections for Naegi. Kirigiri could pretend she'd seen their relationship as a threat, but that very suspicion made it impossible for the trust to be used in the killing game.
But what if that wasn't what she meant?
The killing game wasn't the real threat of this imprisonment. How many times had Naegi tried to make him understand that? It didn't matter what the other students did during the game — it was all noise, insignificant filler meant to obscure the fact that the mastermind had always been the real enemy. Why was it so easy for him to forget that? Why did he always see every other danger before the one that mattered?
No… no, he couldn't think like that, not with her watching him. He had to focus, or he'd be lost. After all, she couldn't have meant the threat of the mastermind — not when she was on the mastermind's side herself.
Although her claims seemed to be founded on the premise that she wasn't on the mastermind's side and never had been. Even if he knew that had to be nonsense… it might just be related to the point she was trying to make. She'd insisted that he think about the threats that he might have seen if he'd been watching a relationship from the outside… and that would have made the mastermind an enemy rather than an ally.
Would he have thought differently about a pair who trusted one another, if he'd been focused on the mastermind instead of the game? Would it have made a difference? It couldn't have, not really… not when trust among the students would have been an even more serious threat to the mastermind than to the ones playing the game. If anything, he would have expected the mastermind to take more serious action than humiliating assemblies and mocking mind games. He hadn't really thought about it before, but he supposed that the mastermind could have done so much worse if they'd wanted.
So why hadn't they?
An answer popped into his head, but it was so absurd that laughter choked its way into his throat. It trembled against his lips with all the force of hysteria, and he knew, he knew that if he let it start it would never end. The only way to stop it was to say the words, to get them out of his head and heart.
"Are you suggesting that you thought we were working for the mastermind?"
But as soon as he said it, he knew it wasn't right. The words didn't fit into the space she'd left, didn't make a mark on her iron-cold face. The words themselves were wrong… but the idea wasn't. He could see what it would take to make them right.
"You thought that I was working for the mastermind."
