Togami stared across the circle at Jill, trying to parse out the meaning behind what she'd just said to him. She'd gone beyond just attacking Makoto, gone so far as to claim she thought Kirigiri had an actual point instead of a load of nonsense… but was she really serious about it? This was Fukawa's alter ego, after all, born from the same mind that painted lurid fantasies that had no basis in reality and babbled out her every thought as easily as drawing breath. A girl like that, as capricious and wild as the genocider acted, would have no trouble spouting out vicious words that she didn't really believe.
But that wasn't the girl who looked back at him. Her eyes still burned blood red, but the laughter was gone. She didn't wave arms or twirl scissors, didn't cackle or dangle a lascivious tongue towards him. She stood as calmly as Fukawa ever had — or even calmer, considering that Fukawa had been a twitching bundle of neuroses even at her quietest. She hadn't lied to inflict pain, sent the words flying across the circle that cause the greatest impact regardless of their accuracy. The girl standing still at her podium, meeting his gaze with fierce determination, meant exactly what she'd said.
He looked away first, eyes flickering around the rest of the circle. So many empty podiums, so many gray portraits loomed around them, and only two other living students remained from the group who'd begun. In the surrounding gloom, Kirigiri and Ogami stood shoulder to shoulder, pale but unflinching in the dim beams of light. It only took a glance to see they'd joined forces, working together towards an impossible goal.
And now, Jill had sided with them, too. He'd started this trial believing it would be the four of them against the mastermind, but somehow all three girls had turned away. Maybe they'd spouted pretty ideals of unity and alliance, but faced with a real challenge, they'd abandoned any attempts to work together. They'd given up on all their promises of standing together and left him and Makoto alone.
And for some reason, that seemed to fill his stomach with lead. His gaze darted around the circle once more, from fierce eyes to a steady scowl to a guarded mask of steel, and he couldn't stop the barest hint of a quiver in his shoulders as the weight of those first few weeks settled back on him. Only now that it came back could he see that it had eased at some point. The distrust and fear of living with threats at all sides had faded, and he'd actually let himself believe that these three girls might not be enemies.
Stupid. Stupid, beyond any other mistake he'd made during this game. Didn't he know better than to let his guard down when it came to other people? Makoto was nice, good and kind and honest, but that didn't mean other people were anything but what he'd always known them to be.
"So that's what you've decided." His voice fell flat in his own ear, any attempt to ring out with haughty pride swallowed by the dark around them. "All of you — you've decided to go on with this. A few coincidences against Makoto that you couldn't explain away, and suddenly everything he's done till now is meaningless. You're all going to fight us." He straightened his shoulders, and dragged up some semblance of a smirk. "Fine, then. Think what you want. But I'm not going to let your delusions touch either of us."
And he wouldn't. He couldn't, not when Makoto needed his protection so desperately. As smart as he knew Makoto could be, the injured boy clearly didn't have that level of exertion in him now. Sitting silent and trembling in the wheelchair, there was no chance he could participate in this trial as he was. Togami had to take on the fight for the both of them. For the first time since letting Makoto into his life, he had to face the arguments alone.
"You're very certain that we're the ones who are delusional." Of course Kirigiri was the one to answer his declaration, her arms crossed and her mouth a thin line. "But I've told you the reasons behind my logic. I've laid out the pieces for anyone to put together. Drawing the obvious conclusion when faced with evidence is hardly a delusion." She raised an eyebrow. "In fact, I'd say that delusion might be ignoring it to believe the opposite."
His eyes narrowed at her. "I have weeks of behavior to back up my beliefs. Coincidences aside, Makoto has never once done anything to earn this kind of suspicion."
"Weeks," she repeated, letting the word linger in the air for a moment. "The weeks that we've been together in this game. Even if we all knew one another before, you don't remember that time. You're drawing conclusions based on knowledge of his behavior from less than two months of interactions. That's hardly a significant amount of time to risk your life on, wouldn't you agree?"
Her eyes locked onto his before he could look away, and he could hear exactly what she wasn't saying. A few weeks isn't enough time to prove sincerity. A few weeks can be acted, can be manipulated, can be false. A few weeks can be a lie, and you would never know the difference.
"Except that it isn't just a few weeks," he shot back, before turning towards Jill again. "Imagine whatever you like about what-ifs and could-have-beens, but you can't deny that Makoto and I knew each other for two years before we lost our memories. When you first introduced yourself in the second trial, you thought we all had our memories as well — so as far as you knew, Makoto and I had been an item for ages. You never once suggested that our interactions had changed, or that Makoto's personality had altered."
"Well, excuse me if 'memory alteration and possible backstabbing spies' wasn't the first thought that crossed my mind!" Jill didn't even crack a smile. "I'm a simple girl, you know — it's not like I expect to see lies and deceit everywhere I turn!"
"And I can't imagine that you had all that much experience with any of us," Kirigiri added, interrupting smoothly before the stream of chatter could continue. "After all, if none of us ever noticed that you and Fukawa were separate identities, you must have been dormant for the majority of interactions with the rest of our class."
Jill shrugged. "Sounds about right. Once I started paying attention, I figured I might not know as much as I thought I did."
"Then that just shows that you've lost sight of what's important!" Togami snarled.
"Have we?" Kirigiri shook her head before meeting his eyes again — and just for a moment, she let him see past her iron mask of control. Knowledge jolted through him as he saw what she'd hidden.
Fear, bottomless and terrible in its intensity — but beyond that determination, a burning drive to find the truth that had been hidden from her. And more than that — hurt, an open wound within her that she hadn't wanted to acknowledge — and something that almost, almost looked like sadness.
He recognized all of it in the flash of emotion crossing her face, each of them barely present long enough to observe before she locked them away again.
He'd meant to send another retort flying across the circle, but the unexpected rush of information knocked it from his lips. She'd shown him what she was thinking on purpose, he knew she had too much control to make a slip like that — and he'd known what the expressions meant, even though he'd hardly seen her emote before this, even though he didn't have any frame of reference in his conscious memories. Could she have faked a manifestation of her inner feelings, when neither of them remembered what they might recognize?
"I haven't lost sight of anything," she said, as he tried to process the flood of confusion. "I've always kept sight of the fact I told you all at the start. This trial is the four of us against the mastermind."
