Actually, you might be interested to know that canon presents us with a different possibility: That neither Kokichi nor Kaito were actually poisoned, and the entire trial was a ruse.

Let me draw your attention to this line from chapter 4:

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If you recall the timeline of events in chapter 5, Maki mentions having seen Kokichi sneak out of the hangar at one point and Monokuma is still trapped at this point. We also know that Kokichi has been poking around Shuichi’s lab in chapter 4 and a bottle of poison was taken out- Because of this, Kokichi may have had the same thought Maki did and thus have re-checked if this particular bottle of poison had been replaced.

There are other suspicious details to consider here too, for example the fact that Kokichi wants to go against Monokuma yet he commissioned hammers, a device that even Maki might be hard-pressed to use against Monokuma. However…it’s not so strange if Kokichi had a need to make Maki to do a certain thing only she could do, which would be to use an Exisal to enter the hangar as only she can leap high enough to disable the lock.

Also, in reviewing the scene where Maki sees Kokichi and Kaito, we can only see Kaito being blue in the face while Kokichi’s face is obscured. The thing we should recall here though is that Kaito is dying at this point and so this can’t be taken as proof that both of them are poisoned, especially if you consider that torture serum is supposed to be extremely painful but the two never appear to speak in a manner suggesting they’re in any more pain than they would have from you know, being shot.

Anyway, to address the next point: ‘Press covered with blood’

Shuichi mentions a machine that uses paint, and this is interesting because paint fumes can be diluted using water (Something that’s plentiful in the toilet). Going by the theory that this was a ruse, we would then assume what was being dragged to the press wasn’t Kokichi at all, but ‘something else’ filled with diluted paint, some blood and who knows what else.

Someone’s told me before that the inconsistency between Kokichi and Kaito having gone to the press controls with no blood being dripped and the wide trail to the press means nothing since they wouldn’t bleed all over the floor without the wound being pressed, but I would have to doubt this is the case because of how the trail starts from the toilet- Were this to be true, I’d think the trail should start somewhere around the press since it’d be odd for Kokichi to return to the toilet after filming Kaito being ‘crushed’ to discard his jacket if he’s already going to die. Why not just dump it before doing the filming, so Kaito doesn’t have to drag him? Furthermore, if they could still do the filming standing up it’s not likely Kaito would need to drag him in the first place.

In short, the trick here would be that you can’t know the victim or culprit so Monokuma has to go with the ‘wrong’ answer as he doesn’t know either and so the only thing which has Kokichi paralleling Nagito here is that the both of them started planning things out around chapter 4.

Hope that helps!

I’ve written about this HTTPS://OUMANOUS.TUMBLR.COM/POST/170464564018/I-FEEL-LIKE-THE-ONLY-ONE-WHO-THINKS-THAT-OUMA-AND before!

Basically, to me chapters 1 - 3 are played pretty straight in V3 in that there’s not much to observe beyond what happened while chapters 4 - 6 were intentionally designed to hide certain things that wouldn’t be evident unless you were paying attention to what Kokichi’s actually doing behind the scenes.

 In other words, things like the script book are hints that he’s been preparing for what happened in chapter 5 for a reason, he could only accomplish this due to a certain ability (As I pointed out over a year back, the imagery used for Kokichi in terms of his emblem, his warnings being disregarded, 100% accuracy in predicting deaths and so on link to only one possible talent- The Ultimate Seer, which perfectly fits with what Kodaka said about Kokichi being thematically linked to the game as the most famous seer was someone who spoke the truth but was regarded as a liar, therefore ‘truth and lies’).

That aside, there’s no way Kokichi would be with Kaito in the Exisal as his true objective to crash the killing game could only be accomplished from the outside (Electrobombs, anyone?) and Kodaka’s given many hints that Kokichi and the mastermind have a long history together, with the most obvious coming from chapter 4. Hope that helps clarify things, anon!