The four of us against the mastermind — Togami recognized those words. Kirigiri had said the same phrase earlier, just before they all entered the elevator to the trial room. Before they'd gone, she'd been so nervous… and she'd asked them to remember that the mastermind would be their true opponent.
What else had she said? He wasn't sure he wanted to remember, but her words echoed back through his mind in spite of himself.
"During the course of this trial, a moment is going to come when we find ourselves at odds. And when it does… no matter how reasonable it seems, no matter how separate from the mastermind's actions it appears… when it happens, I want all of us to remember this conversation. Remember that this trial will be the four of us against the mastermind… and anything else that distracts us from that fact is going to be part of the mastermind's plan."
It had sounded so ridiculous at the time. With the three girls working with him to find impossible answers, with pain and grief fueling a desperate search for the truth behind this nightmare, he'd assumed that nothing could shake them enough to turn the situation as dark as she'd described.
And now that it had happened, he could see just how inevitable it had been from the start. "So even that was part of your plan. You pretended to encourage us, and all along you were plotting betrayal."
"If that's how you want to look at it." She shrugged one shoulder, the barest hint of movement in the shadows. "You could just as easily say I've found evidence, developed a theory, and presented the information accordingly."
He couldn't stop the scornful laugh from twisting his mouth into an ugly sneer. "If you ignore the specifics, the consequences, or any of the rest of the context."
"Yes." She leaned sharply forward, eyes flashing. "Ignore them. Think for a moment. Remember what you thought before the trial began."
"When you lied to me."
She shook her head. "I'm not claiming that I wouldn't lie if necessary — but in that instance, I didn't. I told you what would happen when we started the trial — and it did."
He couldn't deny that, much as it grated to grant her even the smallest of concessions. Even if she'd planned out her manipulative tactics before going into the trial, she'd still kept her little speech innocuous enough that it gave nothing away. She hadn't shown her hand until the trial had begun — until they'd gotten too far into their fight for Monokuma or the mastermind to intervene.
"You didn't argue at the time." Her words hammered further at his defenses, reminding him of facts that he would rather have ignored. "You thought I was worth listening to, before we got down here into the trial. I know a lot of things have changed since the trial began — but why that?"
"Because you attacked Makoto!" He left the trailing word obviously off the sentence, only present in his tone. "Why the hell would I take any of your stupid theories seriously when you based them on an attempt to drag down an injured, frightened victim?"
"Why wouldn't you?" she shot back, as simply as if it made all the sense in the world. "I've given reason after reason, logical deduction after deduction — surely that's worthy hearing out at the very least, with all our lives on the line. This is a class trial, where we argue for the truth — and if you really intend to work towards answers, you can't dismiss my conclusions so easily."
"Of course I can." His grip on Makoto's wrist had loosened at some point during her little rant, so he forced his fingers to tighten again. "I know you're wrong about Makoto, so nothing else you say can be worth hearing. You're wrong, and that's it!"
Ogami shifted her stance, leaning forward into the light. "That sounds like something Ishimaru might have said about Owada, when he defended his friend so fiercely. But I recall that he believed in Owada because of their bond, not because of sound reasoning."
Togami flinched back at that. He recalled that trial all too clearly — how could he forget the backdrop for the errors he'd made, when it had led to the first time Makoto had out-thought him? And he knew just how ridiculous Ishimaru had been, with his blind faith in the murderer he'd called a friend. The idiot had refused to see the truth until he'd heard it from Owada's own mouth, regardless of the facts everyone else had flung in his face. He'd given his trust whole-heartedly to his friend, and it blinded him to reality.
"The situation is not the same." But he couldn't muster enough certainty to give the words the iron edge that would have cut down any opposition. "I have far more reason to believe in Makoto than Ishimaru ever had for his friend."
"Yes… much like Hina had when she defended me against your arguments." Ogami looked down, lines of tension turning her shoulders to stone. "I'd been kind to her from the start. I'd acted as though she was the person most important to me in this school. But when it came down to the facts, I'd betrayed her trust all along."
He glared at her. However fond Ogami had been of Asahina, even she had to admit that the aftermath of discovering the mastermind's spy had not been the girl's finest hour. Driven to desperation by uncontrollable emotions, rounding with fury on anyone who disagreed, determined that she and she alone knew the real situation — in those few days, she'd embodied so much of the behavior he despised.
Was that how the girls saw him now? Not as the lone voice of reason, but as the emotionally-crippled fool who couldn't look beyond his heart? And… in the world beyond the school walls, where this conflict played out on all the television screens… was that what everyone else saw when they looked at him?
Disgust churned through his stomach, roiling nausea for such an image of himself splattered across the globe. Bad enough they'd seen the rest of the game, but this on top of it? This was the role he'd cast himself in as this drama played out for their captive audience? Sweat prickled along the palms of his hands, turning his grip on Makoto slick and unstable.
"Not like I'm a hundred percent up on what she's on about, darling, but I know one thing." Jill stared straight at him, red eye eerily sharp in an unflinching face. "You're not the type to shut your eyes to facts, just like you wouldn't let me do it when I knew Gloomy was on the hook. It sucks to be in that spot, but I know you aren't gonna let it break you. You're stronger than that."
Stronger… well, he'd always thought so, anyway. She did have a point that the person he'd been before the game would have been repulsed by his current behavior. But that had been wrong, hadn't it? That had been the mindset that led to mistakes, led to Makoto's suffering, led to his own personal nightmare… surely it must have been wrong. Even if he'd believed it for so long.
"You don't have to believe me if my theory doesn't hold water." Kirigiri braced her hands against the podium, leaning forward ever so slightly. "If you can find a hole I can't explain, I'd take you seriously. All I'm asking is the same treatment." She met his eyes. "Hear me out, and listen. Don't ignore me."
And even though he knew she was wrong, even though it went completely counter to his bone-deep belief that Makoto would never act against them… Togami couldn't see any choice but to nod his agreement.
