Togami found himself facing the very real possibility that Kirigiri had lost her mind. It wasn't completely unbelievable — weeks in the mastermind's clutches had left all the remaining students unhinged in one way or another. The pressure of the class trials must have finally gotten to be too much for her, deluding her into believing that her so-called explanation had made any sense at all.

"Monokuma did not say that you could use the ticket," Togami told her, on the off-chance that the reminder would bring her back to her senses. "In fact, it was much closer to the literal opposite."

"I don't mean what he said a few moments ago during the trial. I'm talking about their previous comments outside the Bio Lab."

Togami had to admit that did sound marginally more rational. Could the mastermind have inadvertently contradicted themselves in a way that the students could use? He cast his mind back to their investigation of the Bio Lab, trying to recall the specifics of that conversation. Had there been any trick of phrasing that could help?

If there was, he couldn't remember it. Objectively speaking, he knew a great deal must have happened, but somehow all the details of the encounter faded into nothingness. The entire encounter was consumed by that horrible moment when Monokuma had taunted him —

Had taunted him about Naegi.

"Once we determined that the Bio Lab had been serving as a makeshift morgue, it was quite obvious that the number of bodies didn't match up with the number of students who should have been killed during the game."

Kirigiri's words sounded far away, so very far away, much further than the mere expanse of the circle. His lopsided hearing distorted the distance, as if the words had to cross an infinitely long void to reach him.

"In spite of the damage to many of the bodies, it wouldn't have taken long to match the wounds to each student's cause of death. However, you intervened before we could."

What was she saying? Togami felt as though he were trying to decipher one of the few languages that he hadn't yet learned fluently. It took all his mental power simply to turn the sounds to words — comprehension lay too far beyond his reach.

"You provided us with an explanation before we had a chance to speculate on the situation — that you had Naegi's body hidden with you. It would fit with your cruel behavior up to now. We wouldn't question that you took Naegi's body away to create fresh ammunition for mocking us."

Worse than mocking, worse than scorn. He'd told the one lie Togami would give anything to make true, tangling grief with grief until the weight of it destroyed any hope of finding a way free. That lie had nearly ended in the garden, with shears and blood and pain, and he had no doubt whatsoever that the mastermind would have preferred that no other student get to him in time.

"But that wasn't all you said. You took your malice one step further, and claimed that it wasn't a corpse sitting in your hideout. On two separate occasions, before witnesses, you denied that Naegi was among the dead students — and that means he should be included as a potential subject of this ticket's criteria."

Breath hissed through Togami's teeth, and he clung to the shock of cold air like a lifeline. She'd said it. He'd known where Kirigiri's argument was going, where she had to be going — but even so, she'd actually said it.

It should have been easier to bear it, now that he'd heard the claim three times… but that was a fool's dream. Nothing would ever be easier, not when his life would never be brightened by Naegi's smile again. Hearing Kirigiri remind him of that fact only hurt more.

"Oh? So that's what you think?" Monokuma tilted his head inquisitively. "Are you saying I was lying?"

A dangerous question, made all the more so by the too-innocent tone. The foundation of this trial — no, this entire game — rested on whether the mastermind could be trusted to keep their word. They couldn't afford to let an accusation of lying go unchallenged.

But how much could that matter in this case? After all, the lie had hardly been subtle or open to misinterpretation. They'd all seen the execution. With the cameras trained on their every move, the entire world had witnessed the final moments of Naegi's life. And after all that, Monokuma had told him twice, directly to his face, that Naegi wasn't dead. In the face of all that, there was only one answer Kirigiri could give.

"No."

And that… wasn't it. Togami blinked, thinking back to the exact wording the mastermind had used. Had there been some hidden loophole he'd overlooked? Some trick of phrasing that twisted the meaning around into the opposite of what it ought to be?

He couldn't find anything of the sort as he thought through the mastermind's words — but even so, he knew it had to be there. Kirigiri must have had some reason for saying what she had, however strange and obscure. She had to be following a careful plan, had to be preparing some sort of trick, had to be doing something… because she couldn't have meant…

"You weren't lying."

Kirigiri leaned forward, eyes locked on Monokuma. "You only tell direct lies when your hand is forced — and never just to cause pain. When you strike to hurt us, your favorite weapon is the truth."

He froze, breath going still in his lungs, tension locking muscles in place. The words rang through the air with an almost physical force, so strong that small circle of podiums couldn't contain it. They echoed out to fill the room with their thunder, rumbling deep and terrible until his bones shuddered with vibrations of a sound his ears couldn't process.

"You didn't need to lie about Naegi. You told the exact and literal truth."

The room shook around him, the world blurring together in a morass of twisting shadows. His fingers clutched uselessly at the podium, trying to find some semblance of stability, but he couldn't grip the surface as tremors rocked through it. Or maybe it was his hands that were shaking — was that it? With the world trembling around him, one ear filled with a deep roar and the other a rushing void, he couldn't tell. He thought that maybe, maybe he could hear Monokuma's laughter above it all, high and bright and dreadful, but for all he knew the sound was a just a memory playing in his own head. He couldn't tell anymore, couldn't think, couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't —

Ding.

A quiet chime cut through the chaos — not the mastermind's school bells, but the familiar ding of an elevator door. Silence followed hard on its heels, and he realized the rumbling sound had gone. The only sound left in the room was the low hiss of the elevator door.

His head moved on autopilot, turning towards the entrance they'd all used just a short while ago. The elevator doors slid wide, revealing that inside — inside

Naegi sat in the elevator's thin strip of light, staring straight back out at him.