Togami couldn't believe that he'd been stupid enough to trust Kirigiri. Even with his mind clouded by the grief of believing Makoto was gone, he should have known better than to put any faith in her words. She'd thrown Makoto into danger too many times to count during her investigations, demanded they separate due to her unfounded suspicions, plotted against them throughout the previous trial, and eventually even voted for Makoto's death. How could he have thought anything she said might be worthwhile?
And now — now, when it was most critical for the surviving students to work together against the mastermind — now she'd hurled yet another vicious accusation at Makoto. As bad as her other crimes had been, she'd still managed to top herself with this one. It must have taken a great deal of work to come up with an attack so terrible that not even the kindest and friendliest boy in the world could convince himself she'd meant him anything other than harm.
Because as innocent as Makoto could be at times, he was very far from stupid. That was all too obvious now, as he stared across the circle at the girl he'd still believed was his friend. He'd finally caught up with the rest of them, finally understood why Togami had been warning him about her all along… and the heartbreak in his eyes made Togami wish Kirigiri's true colors could have stayed hidden just a little longer.
She didn't even have the decency to look sorry about it, either. She just watched Makoto with that look she'd kept locked on her face every second of their early days here. For a while there, Togami had actually thought that she'd eased up on the mask, that he'd caught a glimpse of the person lurking behind the emotionless emptiness… but that was obviously not the case. The only thing she was hiding behind that iron mask were more lies.
And even now, she was still pretending that she thought Makoto was in any state to answer her idiotic question. Like she thought he could actually offer up a defense against her attacks while fragile, injured, and on the verge of tears. Anyone with eyes could see that Makoto was in no shape to tell her anything, and yet she still had the nerve to act like she was waiting for a response.
So he'd just have to give her one.
"Does it make you feel better to come up with convoluted conspiracy theories?"
The insult froze unspoken on Togami's tongue as he heard the words ring out from another direction. He spun towards the unexpected voice — and found himself staring up at where Enoshima lounged on her throne.
"I mean, seriously. Could you have picked a less interesting topic to drill down on?" She tugged on one pigtail, twisting the curls around and around her finger. "Just sounds kinda boring to me."
Togami narrowed his eyes at her. "What exactly do you think you're doing?"
"What, disappointed you didn't get to defend your sweet little boyfriend?" Enoshima quirked an eyebrow at him. "And here I figured that if you were gonna play knight in shining armor, you would've done it already. Looked to me like the poor little guy had no one left with his best interests at heart."
Togami refused to acknowledge the brief jolt of guilt that her words sent twisting through his stomach. "Well, you were wrong. He doesn't need your kind of help."
"For real?" She clucked her tongue. "Well, if that's the case, guess I should've left him in the wreckage, then."
The demolished school building from Makoto's execution flashed before Togami's eyes, and even the sound of her mocking giggle couldn't stop his instinctive flinch away from that terrible image.
"So now that your latest round of 'making up dumb ideas' is done with, I'd say it's about time to get this trial back on track," Enoshima declared, clapping her hands with all the artificial cheeriness of a kindergarten teacher. "You all were supposed to be figuring out what happened to my least favorite twin, remember?"
"So is this the twin you already straight up admitted to murdering?" Jill asked. "Or have you got another one stashed in a closet somewhere?"
"Wow, she's got two twins? Any more and we might start having to call 'em triplets!" Enoshima lifted her Monokuma robot in front of her face again, wiggling him back and forth as she spoke.
Something about that sounded off, but Togami refused to let himself get distracted down that particular rabbit hole. "You can't hide from this one. You gave us the answer to that question yourself — so that's one mystery we can check off our list as solved!"
"Eh? You think so?" She plopped the bear back into her lap and grinned directly at Togami, chilling as an icy finger on his spine. "That's weird! I could've sworn our plucky little kid detective said she thought the mastermind did it. And huh, who was it that she was accusing again?" She tapped one perfectly painted fingernail against her lips in a gesture that Togami just knew was nowhere near as innocently thoughtful as she was pretending.
"I fail to see how that matters at this point," Ogami said, crossing her arms. Clearly she knew a feint when she saw one, even if it was verbal rather than physical. "However we came to the answer, we have it."
"Do you really, though? I mean, what if I was lying?" One of Enoshima's hands flew to her chest in gasp of horror, and there was nothing subtle at all about the way she pressed into the neckline of her barely-buttoned blouse. "You might wanna be sure you have more evidence than just my word, if you wanna be safe about it!"
That definitely sounded suspicious. "You seem awfully determined to get us to talk about Ikusaba again," Togami said, narrowing his eyes at Enoshima.
"Hey, I'm just here to keep things interesting!" She raised her hands as if in a gesture of innocence. "I mean, you know how fickle audiences can be — one lull in the action and they'll start changing the channel!"
"Except that you said you took over all the airwaves," Togami reminded her. "There aren't any other channels."
"Oh — figure of speech." She shrugged. "Fine, then maybe they'll go set fire to the rainforest again or something. I heard there were a few trees left that no one got to yet. The point is that you all need to stay on task if you don't want the audience getting bored!"
But looking up at her, Togami knew that wasn't the point at all. She was trying to distract them from something… something about that argument Kirigiri had been making about Makoto being the mastermind.
The question was why she would want to stop them from talking about that.
