Togami blinked at the door for a startled moment. After all the difficulties with locked doors in this school, he hadn't expected it to open so easily. He turned to frown at Kirigiri. "What password did you use?"

"I —" She shook her head. "No, it doesn't matter. We can't waste time on the mastermind's tricks." She strode forward and plunged into the new room without hesitation.

Togami wasn't about to let her search an untouched room alone. With the sound of the bomb that destroyed so many clues on the fifth floor ticking in his ears, he hurried after her, with Ogami and Jill close behind. The three of them together ought to be enough to stop Kirigiri from doing anything stupid.

Fortunately, she seemed to have regained some measure of her usual competence, standing in front of the table in the center of the bare-bones room to survey it rather than launching an immediate search. Togami glanced down at the table to see what had her so enthralled — and his eyes widened sharply.

A brightly-wrapped gift box perched atop the table, exuding a cheeriness that had no place anywhere in this school. It grated against his nerves with the same horrifying wrongness that Monokuma evoked… and that made it all the more sinister.

"That has to be a trap." He didn't raise his voice, but his words still seemed to ring too loud in the heavy silence.

Kirigiri shook her head, so slowly that it took him a moment to realize the motion was deliberate. "No… not the kind of trap you're imagining, anyway."

"It looks very suspicious," Ogami said, studying the box doubtfully. "But… if the mastermind wished to prevent us from searching this room… surely they would have made the trap less obvious to trigger?"

"Yeah, a box like that might as well scream 'open me!' when we got in the door!" Jill added. "It's got my fingers itching to take a peek!"

"And that's what we're meant to do," Kirigiri said, her gaze never wavering from the box. "We're supposed to find out." Her mouth twisted upward in a dark echo of a smile. "They wanted us to know all along."

Togami narrowed his eyes at her. "All right, then — you clearly have some idea about what's in that box, if you're so sure it isn't a trap. So let's hear it. What exactly are you expecting to find?"

For a moment, he thought she would refuse to answer… but then she sighed. "Information about the headmaster. The mastermind knows I came to Hope's Peak to find him. I'm… I'm almost certain that it will have definitive proof about his whereabouts."

There was still something she wasn't saying, Togami was sure of it — but he was equally sure they didn't have the time or the means to pry the rest out of her if she was so determined not to share. If he'd learned anything about Kirigiri over the last few weeks, it was that she knew how to keep her mouth shut when she wanted to do so.

But… even if she didn't want to tell the rest of them what she'd deduced… did that mean she'd willingly send them into danger when she could have prevented it? She'd done it to Naegi too many times to count, just for the sake of furthering her own investigation… was this the same thing? Did she want one of the others to take the risk of opening a potentially trapped box so that she could gain the information inside?

Kirigiri was more than capable of doing all those things, he knew that too well. Given the right motivation, she had no problem manipulating others into danger for her own gain. To uncover the school's mysteries and unmask the mastermind, she'd been willing to do anything.

But… would she behave the same way for information about her father? For a trap that could be nothing more than an attempt to distract them from the truth about the killing game?

It would be stupid for her to do that, after using her own life as part of the stake in her final gamble with the mastermind. However much she might want to know about her father, however much she might be willing to sacrifice others to gain that information… it wouldn't do her any good to learn it at the cost of her own life. And no matter how many crimes he'd laid at her door in the past few weeks, Togami had never genuinely believed that Kirigiri was stupid.

So the only question left was how far he was willing to rely on her judgment.

Togami shook his head once, short and sharp. He could let the thoughts spin round and round through his brain till they drove him mad, and all it would do was waste what time they had left before the trial. That would hand over victory to the mastermind just as thoroughly as any other method… they'd only be dragging it out through an interminable and unresolvable argument. And… he hadn't dragged himself out of the garden to argue himself to death.

Before he could remember all the reasons it was a terrible idea, Togami strode up to the table and reached for the box. He paused for a split second, fingers hovering a hair away from the box's surface, just barely long enough for Kirigiri to interrupt him if she thought the better of her position — but when she stayed silent, he pulled the box's lid off.

And found the bone-white eye sockets of an empty skull staring back at him.

The breath froze in Togami's lungs, a block of ice lodging beneath his chest as he realized what he'd uncovered. A tangle of bones filled the box beneath the skull, bones of every shape and size he knew of… human bones. Enough human bones to make a full skeleton.

Someone had wrapped a shattered human skeleton up like a birthday gift and left it in the headmaster's room for them to find.

Togami turned around, hardly even thinking about what he was doing until he met Kirigiri's eyes. He tried to think of the words he needed to explain this travesty of a gift to her — but before he could, she gave a single nod.

"I thought so." Her voice didn't tremble, bespeaking an unimaginable amount of will. "After Alter Ego told us that the headmaster was still somewhere in the school… I thought so."

"The headmaster?" Ogami caught her breath. "But — you mean —" Her voice died away as she stared down at the contents of the box.

"Guess that's why the mastermind's been saying their pet robot gets to lead the school now — victory by conquest!" A burst of dark laughter exploded from Jill's throat, though there was no real humor in it.

"And Monokuma introduced himself as headmaster from the start," Togami remembered, mouth twisting into a grimace at the thought of his first sight of the bear.

"Of course. It would hardly be a fair game with spare players cluttering up the board." Kirigiri swallowed, hard enough that the movement showed along her throat. "I think — I think that I would like to be alone for a while. I need time to consider — all of this."

Time to come to terms with the death of her father — that was what she needed. At least she would be able to pull herself together here, away from the prying eyes of the cameras. If the mastermind had been able to get to Kirigiri now, who knew how much damage they could cause? Better to give her the time alone that she needed before the investigation period ended, he could see that much easily.

But even so… a shiver of unease whispered through the back of his mind at the thought of leaving Kirigiri alone with her father's skeleton. Even if she'd requested it, even if she needed it in order to prepare herself for the trial… he couldn't quite rid himself of the lingering worries. If they left her alone and unwatched here, with neither cameras nor company to keep an eye on her… what would she do?

Naegi would have known how to respond to her. He would have had the right words to soften what they'd found, to make the pain just bearable enough to keep moving forward. He would have seen a way to purge the poison from the mastermind's malicious trap.

But… Togami knew that he couldn't. Even if he knew the right words to say, they'd ring hollow from his lips. None of the remaining survivors could reach Kirigiri now.

All they could do was give her a farewell nod and file quietly out of the hidden room, leaving her with all that remained of the man she'd come to Hope's Peak to find.


Schedule Note: As you may have noticed, we are getting remarkably close to the endgame of this story! With that in mind, I need to take some time to outline the rest of the story in more detail, to make sure it all works out the way I want. Between that and the approaching holidays (and related real life obligations), I'm going to put the story on a brief pause for the rest of the month. The next chapter will be posted the first Sunday in January, 1/6. Happy holidays, whichever of them you celebrate! See you all in the new year!