Executed for murder. Naegi froze, the words reverberating through his head until he couldn't hear anything else. He hadn't put everything together before, too frantic at the thought of his other friends dying to realize what the outcome of Junko's manipulation would be. If Byakuya had gone through with it… if he'd really used the weapons that she'd handed him to kill one of the three surviving girls… he would have been participating in the killing game.
The game that hadn't ended yet. The game that still ensnared all of them.
The game that executed any murderer who got caught.
"What are you talking about?" Byakuya asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
"Oh — didn't you realize?" Kyoko raised an eyebrow, and Naegi felt a smile rise to his lips at the familiar gleam of a successful deduction in her eyes. "The surest way for the mastermind to win this trial would be if we were all dead by the end of it."
"But —" Byakuya stopped short, freezing still just for a moment before his mouth snapped shut with an audible click.
"Ohhhh — I getcha!" Jill grinned, baring her teeth with no humor whatsoever. "Queen Junkyard up there said a murder would help out the mastermind — but she never said it was gonna be a freebie."
No… she'd implied it, but never actually made the promise. She'd let Byakuya believe that he would have been able to join them if he'd proved himself with murder… and she wouldn't have told him the truth till after he couldn't take it back.
That horrible thought twisted through Naegi's throat, tight enough to strangle, and only a small, muffled sound managed to tear its way free. He so easily could have lost Byakuya like that, drowning in the blood of their last precious friends. If that had been the end of the trial, if he'd had to watch that final execution… what would have been left when it ended, and he had no one else?
"Then — this was your plan all along? The two of you meant to kill us all before we could complete the trial?" Sakura clenched her fists, glaring from Naegi to Junko. "After claiming that you would give us the opportunity to face you in a fair fight, you meant to go back on your word?"
"Huuuuh? You caught us?" Junko's eyes widened into huge, startled circles, and her hands flew up to her chest in a ridiculous cutesy pose. "Aw, nuts — and here I thought our teamwork was so sneaky!"
"No — that wasn't teamwork," Kyoko said flatly. "This was plan was all your doing."
Naegi flinched, bracing himself for another onslaught of accusations — but it didn't come. The claims she'd flung at him like knives throughout the earlier part of the trial were gone. Slowly, he turned to look and see what had changed.
Kyoko stood at her podium, as fixed and unshakable as she'd ever appeared, arms crossed and face impassive. She faced forward with all the force of a falcon preparing to dive for its prey — and her unwavering eyes never moved from Junko.
"You've been the one urging this trap on from the start," she said, calmness belying the force of her words. "You first suggested murder as a viable approach for Togami. You gave him a motive, provided the weapons, and set up a moment of opportunity — even while the person you claimed outranked you begged you to stop."
The person she'd claimed outranked her… it took Naegi a moment to realize that Kyoko had meant him. The description certainly fit, of course, but… she'd said Junko had "claimed" that he outranked her? After all the arguments Kyoko had thrown at him until now, why would she phrase this particular accusation in such a roundabout way?
"Well, sure — we had to set it up that way!" Junko giggled, a high-pitched schoolgirl noise that grated like nails on a chalkboard. "How else were we supposed to see if Romeo there really had what it takes to embrace despair? It was just an eensy little test to see if he could handle tuning out his boyfriend's voice!"
"I don't think so." Kyoko smiled, a faint sliver of an expression that he might have missed if he hadn't known the telltale hints to look for. "There wouldn't be a point to that kind of test if you only meant to kill him at the end of it. And if Naegi had really wanted Togami to commit murder — well, I'm sure there would have been easier ways to convince him than arguing against it."
"Wait… are you suggesting some kind of internal conflict between those running the killing game?" Sakura asked, eyebrows knitting together as she tried to follow Kyoko's deductive leaps. "You think that Enoshima has decided to undermine Naegi's plan, for her own agenda?"
"That's one possibility… but if she wanted to work against Naegi this openly, why did she put so much effort into saving him?" Kyoko finally broke her gaze away from Junko, letting her eyes flicker to the center of the circle, where Naegi sat in his wheelchair. "She could easily have claimed he died from those injuries, even if he'd survived the execution itself — and he certainly couldn't have gotten from the data center to the trial room without her assistance."
"Maybe she just wanted to see his face when her plan worked!" Jill tapped a pair of scissors against her palm, the movement all the more worrying for being so unobtrusive. "Nothing beats seeing your victim's eyes when he realizes he's through!"
"No — no, that doesn't make sense!" The words burst from Byakuya in a breathless gasp, torn from him as he gripped the edges of his podium with the desperate strength of a man who feared he might collapse if he let go. "That can't be the reason — because — because —"
"Because the mastermind had to be the one who arranged for Naegi's execution." Kyoko picked up the thread when it became obvious Byakuya couldn't bring his own thought to its conclusion. "No one else could have orchestrated that trial — not even an assistant in control of Monokuma. The plot would have been too obvious, and the mastermind would have had too many chances to derail it if they weren't the one behind it all."
Naegi stared at her, standing there as collected and clever and calm as he remembered. "K…Kyoko…?"
She met his eyes head on, and for the first time in days, he felt like he could see past her mask to the woman she'd kept hidden away. "I should have seen through the traps sooner, instead of letting it cloud my judgment. A better detective would have taken the appearance of betrayal as another clue, instead of the answer to the mysteries… and a better friend would have had the courage to consider that you might be exactly what you seemed."
"Then… you're saying that… you believe me?" Naegi could hardly manage to speak the words louder than a whisper.
"That's right." Kyoko gave him a single, sure nod. "You're not the mastermind."
