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God is in the detail, and Kirigiri knows that detail—no matter how seemingly irrelevant—reveals flaw and error that cannot be noticed by the unpractised human eye.
Her classmates must detest her—most of them, anyway. She displays little outward sympathy and examines corpses like it’s all in a days’ work, a spellchecker picking out grammatical errors.
Naegi Makoto is, at least, considerate of her opinion.
Sometimes, she thinks that even he must hate her – her cryptic warnings and sharp words that cut like a blade and the strange part of her brain that carries on heartlessly scrutinizing during moments of emotional calamity.
Instead, he tells her that he trusts her. It comes as a (pleasant?) surprise, and it makes her realize that he probably doesn’t have it in him to truly hate a person, let alone hold a grudge.
An ordinary boy of average intelligence; Naegi’s reaction to each murder is reminiscent of an innocent bystander witnessing a public suicide, but his initial childish naiveté has no effect on his observational skill. He analyses every crime scene in a thorough and unbiased manner that leaves Kirigiri rather impressed.
She thinks that it’s less about wanting to save his own skin and more about wanting justice; a need to understand the culprit’s motive.
Perhaps the truth is what keeps him sane.
. i
In the midst of their fourth trial (and only after having come to a satisfactory conclusion herself), she watches him catch up to her. Naegi’s face is busy, his thoughts almost visible; she can just about hear him mentally assembling the parts of the equation, piecing the puzzle together.
Two plus two is adding up to a very indigestible four.
. ii
Oogami Sakura had been honourable even in death.
The day was spent on the metaphorical battlefield, armed with the weapons she was most familiar with: disclosure, practicality, challenge, argument.
Afterwards, Naegi seems to be in a kind of shellshock. It’s different to his usual behaviour in subsequence to a trial, somehow—his movements are stiff and forced, a wooden puppet wound up tight. They step out of the elevator, and Kirigiri is the only one to notice the way his eyes film over, full and lucent under the light of the corridor.
But he blinks hard, swallows the lump in his throat, steels himself. He doesn’t want to cry in front of his friends anymore. She can understand that.
. iii
Ikusaba Mukuro. Super High-school Level Despair. A name and a title that both hold significance of some degree, but the answer is beyond her. Something akin to what Alter Ego had called the worst, most despair-inducing incident in the history of mankind is her most probable theory, but all of this guesswork feels flimsy and pathetic.
She misses cold, hard fact, the unavoidable kind, as oppose to these constant possibilities that something might happen. Letting Naegi in on the little information that she had scavenged from the headmaster’s office would do him no favours, but he is her ally - the one person she can count on to take it into serious consideration.
She supposes that they are friends. She hasn’t had many of those before, but there is something about him—something safe.
Kirigiri scoffs at herself then. The idea of finding safety in a situation such as theirs is laughable.
Reliable would be the more suitable word, she decides.
. iv
A famous suffragist had once said that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon; the words had been written in English, she remembers. They are fresh in her mind as she waits patiently for Naegi to call her bluff.
It had cost her something to lie like that, and then something else to watch his face fall and search hers, unable to read past her impassive glare. She doesn’t know if it’s guilt—she’s so out of touch with the feeling that she can barely recognize it anymore (that, or she just doesn’t want to recognize it.)
She has known fear before; known it and mastered it, so the tightness in her stomach is only something to ignore. She must press on, mustn’t let herself fall victim to her nagging conscience.
He does not reveal her lie.
. v
Bodies, Kirigiri had long ago concluded, had no sense of occasion. No matter what happened in one's life or how inconvenient it was, one's body wanted feeding and watering. Thankfully, she takes this knowledge into consideration before an unceremonious trip down the garbage chute with the rest of the trash.
Upon arriving, Naegi stares at her as though she is some holy figure fallen from the heavens above and—and, oh alright, maybe it is guilt. She doesn’t really want to think about it, but she owes him an explanation at the very least. Coming to his rescue seems to have settled her conscience somewhat, but the guiltiness scrapes persistently at her insides as he smiles at her and forgives so easily.
She tells him her truths, and it feels good, like drawing out a poison from her bloodstream.
. vi
There is so much good in Naegi, an unblemished goodness that she finds hard to stomach sometimes because she can’t quite comprehend it herself. But Kirigiri doesn’t suspect him as the mastermind. Of course, if he was, that would further explain his narrow escape from death, but she trusts her own judgement on this one.
(Heaven help her if she’s wrong.)
This time, this trial, it will be their end of ends. The heads-or-tails conclusion she wished for. She’s exhausted and her body is aching, but time waits for nobody, not even those who need it most.
She begins the final investigation alone, with tired eyes but a mind as keen as ever. Naegi stumbles across her path on his way, but he turns out to be a help rather than a hindrance.
And then, they find her father’s bones. No—Naegi finds her father’s bones. He takes one look into the box and screams, stumbling away, his face blanched. Kirigiri’s shoulders take on a slight hunch.
She requests to be left alone, and Naegi’s face floods with concern. His wrist twitches towards her (possibly to grip her shoulder, to take her hand in his own, but not to pull her into his arms or cup one side of her face) but then drops limply back to his side.
When he leaves the room, she is left with only her surroundings and one shining memory of a father who had held her once but who didn’t didn’t didn’t love her, and this was nothing, this did not change a single thing, it meant nothing—
She stares at the photograph until it blurs.
. vii
Amidst the trial, Kirigiri removes one glove, and for a moment she’s left feeling bare and defenseless. Secret-keeping is an important part of her trade, and these scars of hers are the secret she has kept the longest.
She tells herself that it’s a small price to pay for the sake of survival.
Naegi looks shocked at the sight of them, but that’s to be expected. What throws her off, however, is his lack of disgust—she’d expected revulsion of some sort, waits for it to appear in the creases of his expression, but it stands her up.
She smiles to herself, because honestly, she’s a little relieved.
. viii
Enoshima’s cheshire-cat smile falls and shifts into a split-second of open-mouthed confusion, and then she is dead.
It is brutal and blunt and definite.
And then it is over.
Kirigiri breathes a sigh of—finality, maybe? Of the end to this school life that they so longed for? She doesn’t spend much time mulling over it. Her thoughts dissolve like sugar under the tongue and make space for new ones, this time of the possible and impossible future and the outside world they are prepared to face; to fight; to revive.
As the doors open, Naegi reaches for her hand.