Junko tapped her nails lightly on the side of her throne, not bothering to listen to the rest of the argument. There was no point paying attention to all the blustering, not now that Ogami'd finally caught up with the lesson. It had taken a lot more work than she'd wanted to put in, but at least her precious friend had managed to grasp that cute little Naegi's encouragement had been the catalyst behind Asahina's death.
Freaking duh he had. Junko huffed out a sigh, switching up her tapping mid-pattern. She did love her darling friends, of course, but they sure could be dense sometimes. Didn't they see the way one action led into another and another and another until it all spiraled together into the inevitable destruction of anyone and anything they'd cared about? Ugh, she just didn't understand how it took so long for other people to drag their brains through these connections.
And god, the tapping of her own nails was just the most obnoxious sound she'd ever heard, every click clacking against the throne in exactly the pattern she'd set no matter how many swerves she threw in the mix. Why did everything have to be so boring?
And in time with the final click, right on the cue where she'd planned for it to be, Ogami's voice blasted into a shout.
"He should have known! If Naegi intended to say such dangerous words in a fraught atmosphere, he should have realized that they might cause harm! One of the most important lessons any fighter must learn is how not to injure others — and we've all seen the power his words can have in the trials. If he meant to urge Hina to action, he had the responsibility to consider the consequences!"
"His responsibility? What about hers?"
And there came Togami's defense, predictable as clockwork.
"Asahina knew those toolkits came from Monokuma, and she heard him tell us that only the keys could open the locked dormitory doors. Was she really so incapable of putting those two facts together to see that there would be measures in place to prevent us from using one to circumvent the other?"
"Don't you dare insult Hina!"
Junko stifled back a yawn as her friends glared across the circle at one another. She didn't even have to look at them to know the precise extent of the angry aura crackling out from Ogami, or the minute twitches of tension through Togami's clenched fists. Same old, same old… sheesh, it almost made her miss the days when she could interrupt the tedium with Monokuma's tired quips!
"It's hardly an insult to state simple facts!"
"Hina tried her best to get around the lock — just because you can see a flaw in it now, it doesn't mean she should have! She was desperate, after I left her alone and Naegi pushed her into acting!"
"Desperate or not, Asahina chose to act without doing the work of putting the key facts together. That happened."
Their glares blazed at one another again, and Junko began the mental countdown. Three… two… one…
"You're right — that is what happened," Kirigiri broke in, just as the numbers hit zero. "Asahina did act without thinking through all the consequences — and anyone who knew her well enough could have predicted that's what she would do." She narrowed her eyes, and poor Naegi flinched back against his chair again. Man, it was a good thing there was padding on the back of that thing, or he could've really hurt himself!
And it looked like Togami had finally spotted the point Kirigiri wanted to make, because he clamped his mouth shut instead of making the obvious counterargument. Naegi shouldn't have known Asahina anywhere near well enough to make that kind of prediction, since they'd all had their memories wiped.
Except that Naegi's memory wasn't erased anymore. She could see the attack poised at the forefront of Kirigiri's being, just waiting for an opening to launch it. Naegi had all his memories of their years at Hope's Peak back now, and they only had his word that he hadn't had them all along. And even if he were up to making that argument, Junko had already put a whoooole lot of work into making sure his former bestie wasn't in any mood to listen to her number one suspect.
"So you're saying Mahkyutie here used secret knowledge from the last two years to trick the idiot swimmer into getting herself shot into Swiss cheese?"
And there went Jill, leaping to her White Knight's aid in defending his sweet little boyfriend — which only proved that genociders these days just couldn't live up to the hype. What a disappointing serial killer, to let her crush live happily with someone else instead of crucifying them both in their own blood. She could have taken out the competition by flinging a pair of scissors across the circle — but instead she just planted a hand on her hip and went blithely on.
"Have you even been listening to him? Because if you haven't, I can fill you in. Sure, we didn't get a formal introduction till I had my big come-out here, but I still got a few sneak previews back in the day. And there's no way the kid I saw is up to that kind of mindscrew!"
"But someone is." One thing she could say for Kirigiri, the girl didn't miss a beat. "Whoever is behind this game has been manipulating our every move from the start — and that requires intimate knowledge of how we all think."
"Anyone with the resources to run this game could easily have arranged for surveillance," Togami said, but she was shaking her head before he was through.
"No, observation wouldn't be enough. It would be impossible without actually interacting with us, both individually and as a group — and the only time all the participants in the game were together were during those missing two years." She raised an eyebrow at Jill. "And unless you recall someone introducing themselves as an evil mastermind plotting our eventual demise, whoever it was must have hidden their motivation and pretended to be harmless."
"Hey, it's not like I saw everything! I don't know what you all got up to with Gloomy!" Anyone else watching probably thought Jill sounded confident as ever, but Junko could hear Kirigiri's words hitting home. She'd started wondering, even if she didn't believe it yet. And that meant it was only a matter of time.
Junko stole another peek over at her favorite new playmate, evaluating the darkness in Naegi's eyes. Oh, he looked miserable, all hurt and broken from his friends turning on him. The silly boy might even think despair had taken hold of him.
But it hadn't. Not yet. The shock of it had knocked him down, but she could still see the light of hope glimmering in his heart, ready to burst forth in a blaze of glory when challenged.
She couldn't wait to see the expression on his face when that light was finally extinguished.
