"You thought that I was working for the mastermind."

Just saying the words made Togami's skin crawl. The idea of working for anyone was unpleasant enough on its own, but when he thought about putting himself in thrall to the mastermind — the person who'd brought him here, the one behind every horrible event that had torn his world apart during the past few weeks, the one who'd murdered Naegi — he could feel the revulsion shaking through his entire body. And not only had Kirigiri had the nerve to suggest it, she'd dragged him through the train of thought that made such an outrageous conclusion look logical.

"Of course I suspected it." Kirigiri met the glare he threw at her without so much as a flinch. "After the fourth floor opened, anyone who thought about the situation would have seen the possibility."

Anyone except him — she didn't have to add the phrase for Togami to hear it in her words. How dare she imply that he hadn't put any thought into their situation? He'd done nothing but think ever since the third trial had ended, and —

Wait. That wasn't what she'd said… not quite. The trials drew his memory as the most obvious events to divide up the days spent in this monotonous prison… but she'd actually referred to the moment the fourth floor had opened.

After the fourth floor had opened… that was the day after the trial had ended. A single night wouldn't normally be enough to make much difference… but that particular night was a different story. That was the night Kirigiri had manipulated Naegi into visiting the hidden room… the night Togami had first realized how much of a threat she could be to the boy who'd won his heart. That had been the moment he'd understood Naegi needed to be protected…

And according to Kirigiri, it was the moment she'd seen their relationship as a danger.

If he believed her story, anyway. She was a liar, he had to keep reminding himself of that crucial fact. He'd almost let her story draw him in, almost let himself forget the one thing he had to believe… she was the mastermind's agent who'd forced Naegi to die for her crimes.

But that didn't mean everything she'd said had to be false. The best lies were built on a foundation of truth… and it made too much sense to see that moment as a turning point. They'd all chosen their allegiances after that night… and kind, trusting Naegi had been caught in the middle of it all. He'd tried so hard to balance everyone — but the moment he'd shown a hint of loyalty to someone other than Kirigiri, she'd turned on him. Naegi had been so hurt by her refusal to hear him out… and she'd used those feelings of guilt to do even worse the next day.

"And I suppose you think this explains why you forced me away from him," Togami sneered, pouring as much venom as he could into the words in the hopes of masking his grief. "You weren't being cruel and petty, you just wanted to protect innocent little Naegi from the mastermind's big bad spy!"

"Call it whatever you want." She shrugged like it didn't matter to her either way, and try as he might, Togami couldn't tell whether or not it was an act. "I just knew that I had to investigate your relationship with Naegi if I was going to solve any of the mysteries facing me." She hesitated for a moment, one finger tapping a rapid beat against her knee. "I… I did tell myself that this investigation would benefit Naegi as well as myself… that it would provide the impartial evaluation he wasn't capable of doing for himself… but my primary goal wasn't so altruistic. If it had been only his own safety in question… I doubt I would have intervened."

No, of course not. She wouldn't have lifted a finger to help Naegi… even though Naegi would have done it for her. Togami had to bite down on the inside of his cheek to stop the words from boiling past his lips… but even so, he couldn't stop thinking them. Naegi would have done anything in his power to help a friend if he'd thought for a moment they might be in danger, regardless of the killing game occurring around them. He was the only person who —

No… that wasn't right, was it? Naegi hadn't been the only one who'd tried to protect a friend in the middle of the killing game. Hadn't Asahina done the same thing just a few days before? She'd fought to protect Ogami, even if she hadn't been as clever or capable as Naegi. They'd both fought for someone else… and they'd both been murdered for it.

That was what the mastermind had done from the start, wasn't it? They'd created a game where thinking about yourself and your own life was the only guaranteed path to survival. Their every move had only reinforced the danger of trusting anyone else… and no matter what excuses Kirigiri might invent now, she couldn't deny that her actions had fed directly into that goal. How could she expect him to believe anything she said now, when so much of what she'd done had aided the mastermind's agenda?

"In any case, I knew I didn't have much time to act on my decision," Kirigiri went on after a moment of silence. "The situation with Ogami was clearly coming to a head, and I wanted to find an answer before we were forced into another trial."

"Except Fukawa acted before you could, and you've been suspicious of me ever since," Togami filled in impatiently. "And since you couldn't find an answer, everything you've done has been to figure out if I'm —"

"No, that's not it," Kirigiri cut him off flatly. "I did find an answer — not incontrovertible evidence, but enough to satisfy myself that you were unlikely to be part of the mastermind's team after all."

Togami narrowed his eyes at her, trying to figure out where she was going with these claims. Up until now, he'd been certain about her motive for making these claims — she knew he suspected her true identity and wanted to give him a plausible explanation for why it wasn't true. If she could convince him there was another reason that she'd been acting so suspiciously, he wouldn't have grounds to continue insisting she was a double agent — and what better reason could there be than to claim she'd thought he was the suspicious one? But now she was undermining her own strategy… and he couldn't see why.

"So what exactly was this evidence?" he demanded. "And how did you get hold of it? I don't recall giving you anything of the sort."

"It isn't anything physical. Call it an absence of proof." She sighed. "A spy would feed information to the mastermind… so I gave you a hint about my investigation to determine whether the mastermind would act on it."

"A hint?" Togami quickly sorted through his memories of the time he'd been separated from Naegi until a possibility leapt out at him. "Ah — you mean the morning that you dragged me to the third floor and wrote some nonsense about the headmaster?"

"It was a sign that I had more information than I should have," Kirigiri corrected him. "And it was in direct contradiction to the data that Alter Ego uncovered. You were the only one I told, and at the time there shouldn't have been anyone else you could confide in… so I waited to see if the mastermind found out."

Togami stared at her, trying to fit the pieces together in his head. It wasn't a bad plan — if he'd been trying to unmask a hidden spy, he might have tried a similar ploy. "So that was enough to convince you I couldn't possibly be a spy?"

"Among other things," Kirigiri said. "Your behavior, for one — it was a little too unbelievable that the person who declared he would win the killing game in the first moments that we learned about it would make such a dramatic about-face to the person who protected Naegi when he was injured and defenseless. And…" Her fingers drifted upward to tangle in the broken strands of hair where her braid had been. "And no matter how I tried, I couldn't find any hint of falsehood in your feelings towards him. My ability to read people isn't infallible, but it is good… and everything I saw said that you genuinely cared for Naegi."

Togami didn't want to hear that from her, not after everything she'd done. "Then if you were so convinced, why did you keep coming after us?"

"Because you weren't the only one I told a secret to during that separation." Her already-quiet voice dropped even lower, until Togami had to lean forward to catch the words. "Naegi and I helped Alter Ego try to break into the school network through the hidden room… and Alter Ego ended up destroyed."

Togami blinked at the apparent non-sequitur. "Yes, because the mastermind obviously noticed the attempt. What does that have to do with anything?"

"It made me wonder." Kirigiri dropped her eyes to the ground between them, staring at it like it held the answers she'd been searching for. "I didn't want to think about it… I didn't want to believe it could be true… but I had to consider the possibility."

A terrible sense of dread prickled across the back of his neck. "What are you talking about?"

"The possibility that Naegi was the one working with the mastermind." Kirigiri's emotionless mask twisted into something darker, a nightmarish rictus of remembered terror. "I wanted to be wrong. I wanted it to be nothing more than a figment of my imagination. But I didn't know… and I had to be sure." She took a breath, and Togami could hear her shaking as she exhaled. "I gave him a test, the same kind that I gave you. I told him a pack of lies about meeting Mukuro Ikusaba, knowing that the mastermind would have no choice but to act on that information. And after I told him… Ikusaba turned up dead."

It felt as though her words existed in some other reality, where their logic couldn't touch him. From some far-off distance, Togami heard a voice that sounded strangely like his own ask, "You mean you seriously thought that Naegi was working for the mastermind?"

"It was one possibility." Kirigiri's words were no more than a whisper. "But the other one, the one I wanted to disprove… was that Naegi was the mastermind himself."


Scheduling note: Since next week is Easter, I won't be able to get a chapter posted. Sorry! Next chapter will be up on Sunday, April 8. Happy Easter to those who celebrate it, and happy spring to those who don't!