It wasn’t long after Kirigiri and Hakuba parted that everyone else began their investigations. Unlike their mysterious outcast, everyone was extremely unfamiliar with the layout of the school, so that became the priority of many groups. Look for anything strange, and look for a way out.
    
Conan ended up grouping with Hattori and Haibara since he wasn’t sure how many chances he would get to speak openly after this. The thirteen had planned a route of sorts: who would look into what and which rooms each group was primarily in charge of. 

Really, it was clear most of them were going to go off to search all the rooms they missed afterwards. Not because they didn’t trust each other, but because someone could easily miss something in a place like this.

(And detectives were never satisfied with another’s word alone.)

Conan’s group was in charge of the rooms around the dorms, starting with the laundry room and proceeding to the trash room with some restrooms in-between. Then they agreed to look at their chosen dorm rooms quickly and search some extra places if there was time.

So the three were in the laundry room, which was exactly what it sounded like. Plenty of washing machines and clothes lines. There was a table in the middle of the room; no windows. Clearly this was going to be finished quickly.

“Can’t wait ta see tha’ damn Hakuba’s face when they get back…” The popular conversation topic had, of course, been Kyouko Kirigiri. Hattori was searching the insides of the washing machines at one end of the room (his disgruntled voice echoing off the interior), and Conan was doing the same at the other.

Meanwhile, apparently Haibara found a magazine and had perched herself on top the table in the middle of the room. “Maybe you should have went with them, then. Front row seats to the development. I’m sure your relationship would have gotten past her ‘unfamiliarity’ clause.”

With Hattori’s snort in the background, Conan continued wryly on that note, “I’m sure Kirigiri-san would leave the minute they disagreed on something. She wouldn’t have the chance to disappoint or intimidate him.”

Conan wasn’t sure what he could possibly find in the washing machines, but at the very least, the lack of clothes told him that no one had been using them particularly recently. On the other hand, the insides were clean, so they had certainly been used since the school originally closed down. And it wasn’t just one of them - all of them were like this. All of them seemed to function properly as well.

Just how many people were hiding out here and why didn’t anyone notice?

With a sigh, Conan shut the door to the last machine and stood up. Hattori was almost done, and Haibara was still… reading that magazine. Really, he expected it enough that he knew not to scold her for not helping, but considering the situation…

The cover on the magazine did catch his eye though. He was a bit pleased he could make the connection, seeing as he only ever saw that face as pixel art on their map.

“Isn’t that the famous model that used to go here?”

“Yes. Junko Enoshima,” the young scientist began, her voice slightly more animated than usual, “she could take any style and make it a popular trend. She looks flawless, no matter what day of the year it is.”

“Ya know it’s all edited, right?” Hattori was done his part now, and was walking over to join the other two. Haibara scoffed while Conan noticed he had found something.

It was a photograph, and the two shrunken teenagers leaned over to take a look when the Osakan dropped it on the table.

It was a picture of one of the Hope’s Peak classrooms before it closed down, judging how the windows were unbarred. There were three students in the picture - all in school uniform. The most important fact was: one of them was Kyouko Kirigiri.

“Now we have definite proof tha’ she went ta this school.”

“Yeah.” Conan studied the picture carefully. He recognized one of the two other students as Makoto Naegi, if the picture on the ID card he held was anything to go by. The other one resembled a student on the map they had, but in this picture, they were clearly trying to get away from the camera, so he couldn’t be certain on who it was just from this. 

But. There was something strange with this picture. “Where did you find this?”

“In one’f th’ washers.”

“It’s in perfect condition, so someone couldn’t have left it in their with their clothes…”

“Someone wanted us to find it,” Haibara concluded for them.

The placement of this photo solidified one of the most pressing issues at hand. Was Kirigiri as innocent as the rest of them, and the true culprits wanted to cast doubt so everyone would mistrust her? Or was she guilty, and the abundance of evidence was to make them believe she had to be innocent?

“Kudo?”

“It’s too early to tell,” Conan replied, interpreting Hattori’s prompt in the only way he could. Their voices were hushed, so as to not be picked up by any microphones that likely accompanied the cameras all over the school. “We either turn away from our most valuable ally, or we let our enemy lead us astray.”

“She’s not much different from anyone else here, is she?” Haibara asked, perhaps a bit haughtily, as she slid off the table. “You can’t trust anyone in a place like this. They’re all crows, waiting until you’ve let your guard down…”

“Hey, you can’t honestly believe someone is going to commit a murder...?”

She picked up the photo and waved it. “If we are given subtle motives like this, then of course. Push the doubt onto the most obvious. It only takes one to break any trust among the rest of us.”

It was here that the three decided they would continue this conversation in the next room. Although--

“You two will search the boys’ restroom, and I’ll search the girls’!”

“Hey, shouldn’t we be staying together…?”

Haibara huffed and crossed her arms. “So you perverts think it’s okay to go into the girl’s washroom whenever you want?”

“If you had to go, you should have just said so…”

“Alright, we’ll split up then!” Hattori just waved the issue away and pushed open the door to the boys’ room. The boys separated from the brunette and immediately went to work.

“This washroom is unnecessarily fancy, isn’t it?”

“There’s even an aquarium…” Hattori watched the fish swim around in the tank attached to the wall. “Someone’s been takin’ care‘f it.”

Conan started looking through the stalls. “Hattori, what do you think we should do about Kirigiri-san?”

“I dunno but we’ll need some serious proof ta trust her.”

The smaller detective let out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. Might as well use this time to shoot out a couple theories before they found a room worth talking about. Additionally, it didn’t seem like there were any cameras in this room. Conan would look for bugs, but regardless he felt more free to be Shinichi Kudo while they were in here.

“Have you heard the rumours about the students that disappeared after the school shut down?”

“Are ya sayin’ this is prob’ly what happened ta them?”

“Yeah. Trapped in here and told to kill each other. And if Kirigiri-san was one of them--”

“--she must’ve killed someone an’ escaped.”

The two detectives may have been rivals, but Conan could really appreciate how often their ideas ended up being in sync.

“But there’s something weird about that.”

“Why is she back? Why ain’ she worried?”

“That, and, where are the other students that escaped?”

There was a big question, which led to several smaller, unsaid questions. Were the survivors working together to set this up? If so, why? Why would Kirigiri be the one to join fourteen present, when there must have been less suspicious people among them? Why blatantly reveal her connection with this place?

And Conan couldn’t erase the memories of the raw fear he saw on her face. Was she acting? There was a chance that she was working for the enemy originally, but then they turned on her. Or she turned on them.

Or maybe this was a revenge plot. The masterminds behind this were against Kirigiri for something she did. For committing murder? There was a small chance that Kirigiri escaped by killing all of the students, which might have included the mastermind.

Really, there were thousands of possibilities, but the lack of evidence made it hard to narrow them down. 

“Hey. Hattori.”

“Yeah?”

“You won’t kill anyone, right?”

Conan heard the other detective snort in disbelief, and it made him feel more at ease.

“‘Course not. D’ya have tha’ little faith in me?”

“Just making sure.”

Conan never believed that Hattori would do such a thing, but he was glad to hear him say it out loud.

“...Ya won’t either? Kudo?”

“Of course not. ...Looks like we both have little faith in each other, huh?”

The young brunet felt a hand press onto his head and he grimaced. They had been investigating separately, but Hattori had made his way over.

“Not as little as yer height, thankfully.”

“Ha ha. Funny.”

...The male detectives agreed that there was nothing left to see in here and decided to leave. Haibara was waiting outside.

“I can’t believe I finished searching a room by myself before the both of you.”

Ouch. With that, they continued to the trash room. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much they could do there since the path to the incinerator was blocked by a locked gate.

Monokuma jumped out in response to their grumbling to explain he gives one person a key to the gate and it gives them the responsibility of managing the garbage disposal. The person with this job rotates every now and then, and that if they really wanted to search the incinerator, they would have to find the person with the key. 

Of course, he couldn’t just tell them who he was going to give it to, and instead just disappeared into the darkness without answering any questions.

Their last required stop was the dorms around the corner. They weren’t the only ones at this stage: Ran, Sonoko, and Kazuha were here as well. Haibara immediately unlocked the door to Aoi Asahina’s room and said they could “go on without her” and she would “be at the cafeteria later”, and the small brunette shut the door in their faces before they could reply. 

The boys figured there was no point in persuading her, so they continued along the hall before them. They stopped when they reached the girls, who were peering into the room labelled “Celestia Ludenberg”. ...Weird, there was no ID card with that name, was there?

“Oh, Conan-kun and Hattori-kun!” Ran was the first to notice them, and the other two ladies glanced over at Ran’s voice. “How did it go? Is Ai-chan in her room?”

“Yeah, she wanted to relax for a bit before we all had to meet up again!” Conan kept a light tone and shrugged. “We found a few things… Are you three looking at your rooms together?”

Ran nodded, looking a bit sheepish. “We already looked at mine, but it seems that Maizono-san didn’t decorate it… But look at this one!”

She stepped aside so the boys could look into the room, and all they could do was stare. It seems this “Celestia Ludenberg” was into gothic lolita, because the room had plenty of blacks and reds and a few extravagant dresses. Kazuha laughed awkwardly, apparently not fond of the room.

“T-Th’ name on th’ card’s ‘Taeko Yasuhiro’... but th’ picture matched this one, and th’ key fit…”

“I guess she changed her name to this weird foreign one, but her ID kept her original name?” Sonoko shrugged. It wasn’t exactly like they could ask her, so they had to settle with that. Conan wondered if ‘Taeko Yasuhiro’ changed her entire persona into this gothic lolita person to, what, maybe stand out? She seemed to be unnecessarily fancy, after all.

“Let’s check our rooms, Ku-- Conan-kun, ‘kay?”

Conan was thankful the girls weren’t paying close attention to them, or else he would have had to kick Hattori for that slip-up. He still might kick him. He never learns, does he?

The detectives decided they would look at their own rooms individually to save time. So as the Osakan walked into the room of “Kiyotaka Ishimaru”, Conan went into his own designated room: the room that once belonged to a “Makoto Naegi”.

Shutting the door behind him, the bespectacled detective realized very quickly that this wasn’t going to take long. Apparently Makoto Naegi didn’t decorate his room. The exception being a wooden sword that sat on a desk. And-- oh, it was covered in shedding gold paint. Wonderful. Of all things to bring here…

(He vaguely recalled a place that he felt the sword could have come from, but it didn’t come to mind at the moment. He’d have to check around later.)

There wasn’t a single thing in the room that could tell him about the personality of the previous owner. Unless the lack of things was proof that he was… not very interesting. He didn’t know what he was expecting from someone whose talent was “good luck”, but Conan supposed what he saw... made... sense?

Then again, the idol didn’t decorate her room either, according to Ran.

Perhaps what surprised Conan the most is what he found upon opening some of the larger drawers. Clothes. His own clothes. It seemed the masterminds brought enough for at least a week, if not longer. He didn’t know when or how they managed to retrieve these, but it was likely everyone else would find their clothes in their rooms as well.

There really wasn’t much else to find - there was an unopened tool kit in one of the drawers. Apparently, according to a note on the wall, it was a gift intended to be used in a murder plot. Boys received tool kits, and girls received sewing kits. 

Good to know he wouldn’t be using this.

The note also said how each room had a bathroom with running water (only during the day though) and that only the girls’ had bathroom doors that locked. Except… apparently… his…

“Ehhh? You can’t get an unlocked door open, Conan-kun?” Conan didn’t hear the bear approach and he nearly jumped in response to his voice. How did he get in here? Surely, he didn’t leave the front door unlocked…

“Upupu… You’re barely tall enough to reach the doorknob! Maybe you should do more stretching! I usually do radio exercises in the morning, maybe you should join me--”

“Why is my door locked? Isn’t this a boy’s room?”

“I told you, it’s not locked! Doesn’t anybody listen to me?” Monokuma turned away, feeling dejected. But Conan really didn’t want to put up with him right now - or ever, really, but there wasn’t a choice as long as he was stuck in this school.

“So is it stuck, then?”

“Bingo! Only your bathroom has a door that gets stuck easily! Isn’t that funny? The lucky student got the unlucky door…”

“How do I open it?” He wondered if someone set this up on purpose, or if Makoto Naegi really just ended up being that unlucky. Well, he had to have been if he got stuck in this school by chance on the same year this mysterious disaster struck.

Monokuma giggled to himself before he started, because apparently the punchline to this was going to be hilarious. 

“You see… There’s a special way to open the door… While you twist the handle, you need to push the top of the door! Ta-da, it opens every single time! Guaranteed or your money back!”

Ha. That’s great. He was tempted to use that as an excuse to switch rooms with someone, but people would probably tease him for this. 

“Oops! You can’t reach the top of the door, can you? Upu, it’s a good thing there’s a restroom right around the corner…!”

Stubbornly, Conan grabbed the chair at the desk and dragged it over. He wasn’t going to give this stupid bear some ammo to use on him. Climbing onto the chair, he twisted the doorknob and reached as high as he could - standing on his toes has to be enough, right?

But next was actually pushing the door open. He had to shove and hit the door a few times, and when it finally opened, he nearly fell down, but he did it! Now to never close the door again. Hopefully there wasn’t a trick when it came to opening it from the inside…

Conan was feeling proud of himself until he noticed Monokuma was snickering quietly on the ground. Could he kick him? Kick him at maximum power? Surely, that would solve the pesky door problem.

“Well, I need to be going! I’m going to miss a new episode of ‘Bears Versus the World’! I’ve been so excited to see what Bearia does to that pesky Beart!” 
Conan had no idea what he was talking about, or if it was even a real show, but he coldly watched Monokuma skip out of the room, closing the door behind him. With a sigh, he peered into the bathroom. Shower, toilet, sink… Yeah, it was all there. He was about to leave when something caught his eye.

On the wall of the shower and close to the ground, there were smudges of red. It almost looked like it could have been… blood?

...The rest of the dorm had been clean, like no one had lived in it at all. The shower was even reflective - so someone must have missed a spot, he supposed. Or it was put there deliberately. It looked a bit like a dying message, actually - if he looked at it from another angle, it seemed to almost spell out a name. But why?

Perhaps, did somebody die here? Was it Makoto Naegi - or was he the killer? Each room only has only one key to open it, so either the murderer or the victim had to be let in. The name here made it seem like it was the murderer who came in, so. But it could have been a red herring, couldn’t it? 

...He wondered if it was possible to get information out of Kirigiri about this. It was likely she had an answer, but would she tell him?

There was no point thinking about it much right now when there were so many more pressing questions without answers. Conan left the room at last and saw Hattori was waiting for him.

“How’d it go?”

“I didn’t find much. His room is almost bare. Yours?”

“This Ishimaru lived up ta his title,” Hattori admitted. Kiyotaka Ishimaru had some academia-related talent, didn’t he? But despite that, the Osakan smiled.
“...There’s a chance I’ve met him before. He’s got a kendo sword. A practice one.” He shrugged. “Might not be a bad guy ta meet. Couldn’t tell ya if he’s alive or not though.”

Conan nodded and hesitated before speaking. The girls were in one of the rooms, it seemed, and no one else was in the corridor. It would be important to tell everyone about the “blood” eventually, but there was at least one person he wanted to consult first. Getting Hattori’s opinion wouldn’t hurt, though.

“I think I found a bit of blood. In the bathroom. It looked a bit like someone was trying to spell out a name.”

“So what’s this say about tha’ Naegi?”

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing, but I think it means something happened there. I’m going to try and confront Kirigiri-san about it, though, she might--”

Unfortunately, that very moment was when the woman they had just been talking about rounded the corner, with Saguru Hakuba at her side. Likely the most startling thing was that neither of them showed any signs of irritation from being near the other. In fact, Kirigiri was calmly talking about how they should check their rooms before returning to the cafeteria. They both stopped when they noticed there were others in the hall.

“Ah, Conan-kun... and Hattori-kun. How has your investigation been thus far?”

“You’ll find out later. Glad ta see you’re not dead yet.”

Hakuba sensed the sarcasm and responded appropriately: “I’m sure you are.”

“Which room did you pick?” Kirigiri effectively ignored the conversation between the two and brought it back to where it was previously.

“I should have the key to Byakuya Togami’s room. That room over there, correct?”

Kirigiri nodded, and a strange smile made its way onto her face. She turned towards the door to her own room and pulled out the key. “I certainly hope you don’t mind it. It’s the type of room you’d expect from someone like him - perhaps you’ll even feel at home.”

It was the first actually casual thing Conan had heard her say after her introduction in the entrance hall. It was… kind of amazing how relaxed she sounded. He had been under the impression that she was going to tell them as little as possible about their situation. Either he was wrong, or she became comfortable enough to speak with Hakuba in the last hour they were together.

...He wondered if this would somehow be useful - passing on messages to the blond detective when no one else could get a straight answer from her. It was certainly something to keep in mind, in any case.

“Are we splitting up now, then?” Hakuba spoke up as Kirigiri put the key into the lock. She didn’t twist it, and just looked back at him with a blank face. When she didn’t respond, he continued, seemingly unaffected by her stare.

“I understand - it’s more efficient. I suppose I was just hoping for the chance to see Kirigiri-san’s room.”

He shrugged, as if it was no big deal, and Kirigiri didn’t react for a moment. Conan could imagine her silently entering her room and slamming the door, leaving a defeated Hakuba in the corridor (and Hattori would probably laugh at that), but instead, the woman looked a bit perplexed.

Surprising all that were there to see, Kirigiri turned the key and opened the door. Without a word, she stepped aside, as if saying “go take a look, I certainly don’t care”. No one did anything for awhile - because it was just a shock to see. But soon enough, with a smirk and a “thank you”, Hakuba walked into the room. Conan was tempted to follow - perhaps at least get a glimpse, but Kirigiri followed him and quickly shut the door behind her. He really couldn’t tell if it was a sign of trust or not.

“Did ya see tha’ too?” Hattori was just as shocked as Conan. He was probably anticipating her rude departure as well.

“I think so. ...I think this means we should talk to Hakuba later.”

Hattori groaned in disapproval, but he didn’t argue because he knew Conan was right.