"Care to explain why you aren't dead?"

Naegi flinched at Kyoko's question, asked in her most neutral and emotionless tone. He'd heard her use that voice countless times in another lifetime, when she'd worked as the Ultimate Detective to interrogate enemies and uncover lies — but he'd never thought she'd use it on him.

But no — he couldn't let himself think like that. Kyoko preferred to take a cautious approach to new situations, he knew that. She hadn't meant for her words to hurt him, and so it wasn't fair to react to her simple question as if she'd launched an attack. She wouldn't do that, not without a good reason.

He sighed, letting his fingers trace a few last gentle lines across Byakuya's forehead. His boyfriend hadn't even noticed the girls speaking, and Naegi doubted it had anything to do with his hearing loss. The trial wouldn't stop just because they needed room to breathe, he knew that… but even so…

"It's kind of hard to explain," he said at last. "Can you give us a few minutes to —"

"No!"

Sakura's snarl cut him off mid-sentence, taken aback by the fury of her explosion. He'd never seen her glare at anyone so viciously, not in old memories of fleeing from despair-stricken crowds or new memories of friends being forced to turn against friends.

"You think we'll let you stay near him looking like that? When you've done who knows how much damage to him already, just by appearing?" Her podium groaned with the pressure of her fists clenched tight around its edges. "How dare you lie to him about Naegi!"

… Oh. Well, he supposed that explained her reaction. It even relieved a few of his worries to see how fiercely Sakura wanted to protect Byakuya, even if she'd misunderstood the situation.

"I'm not lying," he assured her. "It isn't a trick. I really did survive the execution, and —"

Silver flashed across his vision, and Naegi's eyes focused on a pair of quivering scissors embedded in the top of Togami's podium.

"Keep spouting that shit and you're gonna be short a finger!" Jill grinned at him, but the cheerful expression only underscored the complete lack of humor in her eyes.

"But I —" Naegi swallowed back the rest of his protest when he caught sight of Jill's fingers flexing to throw. He didn't want to spur her into flinging more blades around the dark room, especially not near Byakuya. He nodded once instead of answering.

"Better!" Jill sang out brightly. And then she lunged forward, eyes flashing furiously. "Now — get away from him!"

No. No, not that. He'd do a lot of things for his friends, almost anything else they asked of him… but he couldn't move away while Byakuya still knelt with his head in Naegi's hand. He wouldn't.

But Jill didn't look interested in listening to any explanations. She glared at him with all the hatred she could muster for a fake who'd apparently showed up just to torment and mock her beloved White Knight. With that look in her eye, he was lucky she'd started out with a warning shot instead of aiming for blood straight away.

He hadn't decided what to do yet — but she reached the end of her patience. "I told you to —"

"Don't talk to him that way."

Even breathless and raw from crying, Byakuya's voice could bring Jill screeching to a halt. She snapped her mouth shut with an audible click, watching through narrowed eyes as he slowly raised his head to glare at her. "No one is going to threaten him in front of me again. Not you — not anyone. Never again."

Guilt twisted through Naegi's stomach at the intensity driving those words. Sure, he was here with Byakuya now, but that couldn't erase the nightmare he'd forced his love to endure. Nothing would fix the past two days.

And not just for Byakuya. Jill might be willing to stop talking at his command — but Sakura wasn't. Her glare darkened when she saw Jill's mouth close, until Naegi almost expected the force of it to send his chair rolling backward. "This has nothing to do with threatening Naegi — you don't know that's him!"

"Yes. I do." Slowly, Byakuya pushed himself to his feet, struggling to manage one-handed so that he could keep his fingers pressed to Naegi's pulse. "Do you really believe that I can't tell the difference between my boyfriend and one of the mastermind's tricks?"

Doubt flickered across her face, just for a moment — but she shook her head. "I don't know. If the trick was good enough, maybe."

"Fine." Byakuya glanced down at Naegi. "This is still a class trial, after all — so prove it." He smirked, in a flash of his familiar confidence. "Give them proof that you really are Makoto Naegi."

Not even a trace of doubt that Naegi could do it — that brought warmth to his heart, even as he tried to cudgel his brain into gear. What would prove to his friends that he wasn't just a trick of Junko's? He could have come up with half a dozen ways if they'd all had their memories, but not now, with only Jill's memories of the past to match against his own. He'd only officially met her during the game, so all the memories they'd shared would've been lost with Toko. And anything that had happened here in the game wouldn't work, because Junko's cameras had let her watch everything —

No… not everything. He would rather not have used this particular option, but he couldn't think of anything else that might work. With a sigh, Naegi looked back across the circle to meet Sakura's eyes.

"When Byakuya and I asked you about the fight I saw between you and Monokuma, you didn't try to argue or defend yourself. You just admitted that you'd been helping him, and even when I tried to explain the rest, you said you had no excuses."

Sakura's jaw locked at the reminder of what she'd done, and one more knot of guilt twisted into Naegi's soul. How many times would he have to keep hurting his friends? It might not be much next to all the rest of what Junko had done to them, but that didn't make him feel any better about it. Nothing did, not even the practiced way Sakura pushed the pain all too quickly from her expression.

"You're right — that's what happened." Some of the fury burning around her drained away, morphing into confusion. "And we were in the bathhouse, without cameras — the mastermind wouldn't have known." She blinked once — twice — and — "Naegi?"

"Uh… yeah." He tried to muster a smile in the face of her shock. "Hi?"

"So if you're both convinced," Kyoko interrupted before Sakura or Jill could say another word, "I'd like an answer to my question now."

If they're convinced… meaning she'd never doubted him. This time Naegi had no trouble beaming a smile at her. She didn't return it — but of course they were still in a trial. Naegi tried to focus back on her words with the level of seriousness that she'd expect of him.

"You were asking why I'm not dead, right?" Naegi couldn't help the sigh that escaped him at the thought of it. "Like I said, it's a long story… but basically, the execution didn't kill me. I was pretty hurt afterward, though, so I don't really remember exactly how it happened. But apparently J— well, the mastermind — found me and brought me back to the control room for treatment."

Naegi hadn't quite meant to swallow back Junko's name from his explanation — but he supposed it made sense as an instinctive move. No one else knew she was the mastermind, so it would just confuse and distract them to bring it up now. He — he didn't want to name her, not unless he had to. And that was —

"So you're saying you're cute enough to make the mastermind of the killing game switch teams to play healer?" Jill rolled her eyes. "Some people just have no artistic commitment!"

"The mastermind saved you?" Byakuya asked, as baffled by the idea as Naegi still was. "Why would they do that?"

"That is an excellent question," Kyoko said, one eyebrow arching up. "And I have one more. Why would the mastermind save you, and not any of the others?"