Togami could feel the weight of Kirigiri's words as they sank through the air of the bathhouse. Those words meant something to him, something terrible… or at least, they should have. But even though he could recognize the import of what she'd said… he didn't know how to translate her words into meaning.

Or maybe he didn't want to know. Knowing would force him into reactions and responses, another cycle of nightmares and pain. And he'd had all the pain that he could bear.

But the world never asked what anyone could bear. Nightmares never ended… they just continued until there was no one left to break. And no matter how much he ached for a moment of peace… Kirigiri wouldn't stop her words from stabbing into the broken remnants of his heart.

"If I'd had more time to think, I might have seen the truth of the mastermind's trap," she went on, voice soft… as though volume could somehow lessen the sting. "But as soon as I came back from investigating the locked dorms, it began to close around me, fitting too well with what I thought I knew. I meant to reexamine the letter in the library that discussed the closing of Hope's Peak… but instead, I found you, following the device that led you to Ikusaba's body. The situation looked too suspicious to ignore, and so I decided to follow you in turn."

So she'd followed him… and he hadn't noticed? Togami knew there had been a time when he would have denied it furiously, outraged at the suggestion that he might have failed to spot her… but he couldn't find even the starting spark of that anger in him now. So what if she'd followed him? It was as likely to be true as anything else… and it wasn't as though such a minor misstep would make much different either way against the graver failures that already besmirched his name.

"I recognized the set-up as soon as you opened the classroom door," she went on, fixing her eyes on him as she spoke, "and I left to retrieve the neutralizing agent that I'd taken as part of my fake plan. I'd left it in a locker here in the bathhouse, thinking that it would be safer to separate the different pieces of the plan. By the time I was able to retrieve it and return to the fifth floor, you'd already left the classroom."

Meaning that he must have failed to see her once again… but it was hardly surprising that he hadn't been at his best mere minutes after escaping the poisoned air. Standing upright had been an almost insurmountable challenge, let alone spotting a sneaky detective determined to stay unseen. It made sense… but that didn't ease any of regrets twisting through his chest.

"Since I knew what to expect from the set-up, it wasn't too difficult to switch out the poison for the neutralizing agent," she continued, lines of tension creeping down her jaw as she spoke. "And between the neutralization and the natural dissipation of the poison, it only took around fifteen minutes for the room to be safe enough to enter for a short period of time. I went inside and found the body… and I thought I understood what was happening."

But she hadn't understood. She'd said that already, and the memory echoed back through Togami's mind in spite of his unwillingness to think about it. She'd been wrong about something, wrong enough to force her to speak so openly… wrong enough to change her mind. He could have seen what she meant by it, if he'd tried to work it out… but he didn't want to know.

So of course that meant that she didn't give him a choice.

"I thought that I had been betrayed. When I realized that the corpse had to belong to Ikusaba, I couldn't think of any other possibility. The suspicions I'd set out to test all seemed to be confirmed… and the mastermind had turned my own test against me. All Naegi would have to do was repeat the story I'd told him, and no one would believe that I'd had nothing to do with the murder. I'd be punished for a crime the mastermind had committed."

She took a deep breath, bracing one hand against the floor as though she needed the physical support. The shadow of her fingers trembled as it stretched across the floor, and Togami watched the movement without letting himself think about what it might mean.

"I couldn't let it happen. Seeing the closed-off part of the second floor brought some of my memories back to me, and I knew I'd come to this school for a reason. I — I couldn't let the mastermind kill me before I'd accomplished it, with all their mysteries still unsolved. And so, in the few minutes I had before someone else came back to the scene… I did one thing that a true detective should never do. I altered the crime scene."

On anyone else, the expression on Kirigiri's face would have been called guilt… but on her, Togami supposed it had to have some other meaning.

Or maybe it didn't. Maybe she did regret what she'd done, if only because it went against her principles as a detective. What did it matter how she felt about it now, after everything was over? It wasn't as though she could take it back.

"I wanted to draw attention to the real killer," she went on, apparently oblivious to the pointlessness of her explanations. "I wanted to make sure the mastermind had to be a part of the trial. If I could force the discussion to address the question of the mastermind's identity rather than the killer, I thought I might have a chance. So I made the only change I could think of — I removed the knife from the corpse's chest and stabbed it back through a note that declared Ikusaba a traitor."

The note that had been pinned to Ikusaba's body…? The one that had cause so many questions about the culprit's relationship to the victim…? Kirigiri had been the one to plant it… after she'd found the girl already dead?

It had to be a lie, some new way of twisting the truth of what she'd done. After all, even if tampering with a murder investigation was unethical, it was still better than being the killer herself. This had to be an attempt to hide from her guilt, because if it wasn't… if she was telling the truth…

Then everything he'd done since finding the body had been for nothing.

All the time he'd spent on the investigation flashed before his eyes, every moment that he and Naegi had fought so desperately to find answers… and as painful as the memories had already been, now the bitterness of wasted time made them immeasurably worse. They hadn't been working to uncover the truth — they'd just been chasing a different lie. They might as well have slept away the time until the trial, for all they'd accomplished.

Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. Maybe the mastermind's trap would still have taken Naegi even without Kirigiri's interference. But even if that was true… there was no way to know. She had interfered… and Naegi had died.

"I was so caught up in the idea of making the mastermind betray themselves that I couldn't see how I was playing right into their hands." Kirigiri's words seemed to cross a vast distance to reach him, sounding so small that they had to come from far away. "From the start, this game has depended on playing us against one another and making sure no one could trust the others. When I began to target Naegi… even though my intent wasn't to win the game by murdering him… the moment I made that choice, I'd already lost my battle against the mastermind. Even when I thought I was challenging them directly —"

She shook her head sharply. "That doesn't matter. You know how the mastermind manipulated me now… and how I was stupid enough to let them do it. And…" She paused to meet his eyes, locking their gazes until he couldn't have looked away if he'd tried. "And you know that the mastermind really did set this up so that they could circumvent the rules. They cheated."

That was certainly true. Naegi had been innocent, that much should have been obvious to anyone with a functioning brain… and yet the vote had landed on him. By all rights, every student left in the game should have died for that error… but that hadn't happened. Only Naegi had been killed, as if he'd really been the blackened. Maybe Naegi's claim that he was guilty in those final moments had given the mastermind an idea, or maybe they'd meant to end the trial this way all along… but either way the result was the same. When the mastermind had sent Naegi to die… they'd broken their own rules.

"And that gives us leverage." A spark flashed behind Kirigiri's eyes, filled with determination that Togami hadn't seen in her before. "This is the first real mistake they've made. We can use it against them — but only if we work together. They'll use it against us if they can, we've both seen how good they are at that. So we can't give them the chance. We have to approach them as a united front if we want this to work."

So… this was what she'd been after. He'd known there would be something. This hadn't been the goal he'd expected, though… and it didn't fit with what he thought he knew of her. "Why?"

She blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Why bother trying anything? What does it matter if it works?" Togami shook his head slowly, more from confusion than anything else. "Why do you care?"

"Oh… I see." Kirigiri sighed, one hand curling upward to tangle in the hair where her braid had been. "I want to find out who did this to us… but it's more than finding answers. I want to stop the mastermind's game… and get every innocent person out alive. Naegi believed that it was possible… and he trusted me to do it. So… I have to. If there's any chance at all, I'll do it."

She looked like a different person now, saying those words with determination burning in her eyes. Was this a new side of her that had only just come into being… or was it just that he'd never seen it in her before? Maybe this was the Kirigiri that Naegi had seen… the girl he'd trusted so completely for no reason that Togami had understood.

"Tell me… do you believe me?" She spoke as though it was just another question… but with that look on her face, anyone could see that she didn't feel that way. The answer would matter to her.

And it would matter to him, too. Did he believe her? When he'd entered the bathhouse, he'd sworn not to believe a word she said, intending to listen only long enough to find the opportunity to use Jill's scissors. But even so, even knowing that this could all be an elaborate ruse to justify her actions… he couldn't stop the feeling that her story sounded plausible. If events really had played out the way she'd described, with her lost memories and the timing and the tests… too many pieces would start fitting together.

He didn't want to believe her. He didn't want to live in a world where this was true. Even now, his body rebelled against it as a curt, cruel refusal leapt to his tongue, poised to dash whatever hopes she'd pinned on him.

But he couldn't say it. If this new determination that he could see in her now really had been born of Naegi's sweet, innocent, stupid trust in her… then he couldn't bring himself to shatter it with a lie.

"All right, fine." He grimaced, every word crawling reluctantly from his lips. "I believe you."

The small, relieved smile that darted across Kirigiri's face might well have been the first genuine one he'd seen from her. "Then you'll help me?"

Togami didn't return the smile, and it faded from her face as quickly as it had appeared. "I would rather die."