Chapter Text
“Leave the files on top of the stack on the desk over there.” Togami gestured vaguely to one of the desks in the corner of the small office space they occupied. “I’ll get around to them later after contacting some of the other members of Future Foundation.”
“Are you sure you don’t need help?” Naegi asked for the umpteenth time after grudgingly placing the files down. He knew the heir was capable of dealing with more work than what was humanly possible, but after seeing the full stack of papers that could probably rival his own height, it was hard not to worry that Togami was taking on more than he could handle.
Togami raised an eyebrow. “Are you underestimating me?”
“N-no! Not at all!” Naegi waved his hands in a placating manner. “It’s just…it’s alright to rely on me to help you sometimes. I don’t even have much to do right now since the Future Foundation’s been refusing to give me any substantial work or letting me know how the Captive situation is going…”
Togami seemed to consider his words for a second–a large improvement over their time in the killing game when he would immediately shut down any offer Naegi would bring up–before huffing. “It’s fine. I wouldn’t have got to where I am…was…” he corrected reluctantly, “without being able to do this at the very least.” And with that, Togami turned and walked out into the hallway and towards one of the communications rooms.
And then there was just Naegi and Hagakure left in the room, Kirigiri, Fukawa, and Asahina all having left over an hour ago. Sighing, Naegi walked back over to his desk that was situated right by the barred-up windows and grabbed his things. It wasn’t like he and Togami were on bad terms–the man offered to pay him an absurd amount of money to do absolutely nothing, he willingly spent time with him whenever Naegi wanted to see him, and he trusted in Naegi’s own words enough to break free of his doubts in the final trial against Enoshima–but it was like there was still an unmistakable distance between them, an invisible wall that Togami continued to put up despite Naegi attempting to knock it down.
“Yo, Naegi-chi! I got a question for you.” Hagakure called, shaking him out of his thoughts.
“Hagakure? What’s up?” They were friendly with one another, but Naegi was always a little wary around the Clairvoyant. Mainly when it came to his not-so-accurate predictions or conspiracy theories.
“Your birthday’s tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah…yeah, it is, how did you know that?” Naegi himself almost forgot about it, truthfully.
“It’s on the calendar over there,” Hagakure pointed towards the calendar the five of them–well, technically, Asahina–had set up when they arrived at Future Foundation. She claimed that they should at least be able to celebrate their birthdays, even if holidays are kind of defunct nowadays.
“…Right. What about it though?”
“What about it?” Hagakure asked incredulously. “Naegi, it’s only the most important birthday you’ll ever have!”
“Is it because I can legally drink at 20?”
“No!” Hagakure refuted automatically before reconsidering. “Well, that’s not a bad thing. But it’s something even better!”
“Better?” Naegi questioned, his head tilting in confusion.
Hagakure reached for his crystal ball, grasping it in his hands as if it would tell Naegi whatever nonsense that he was about to spout itself. He closed one of his eyes, the other peeking up at Naegi from where he was sitting. “Of course! When you turn 20, you can become a wizard!”
Naegi could tolerate a lot, but he really wasn’t in the mood to deal with one of Hagakure’s crazy theories right now. “A wizard?” he deadpanned.
“A wizard!” Hagakure repeated. “But that’s only if you’re a virgin. Though I’ve predicted you probably are,” he guffawed.
“Uh huh, okay, thanks for the heads-up, Hagakure,” Naegi muttered, stepping back slowly so that he could exit the conversation sooner.
“No problem, dude! If you get magic powers, you gotta show me ’em! I’m jealous that I couldn’t get any, so you have to show me what I missed out on!”
…Does that mean he…and someone else…? No, I’m not even going to entertain that train of thought. It’s not like he believed whatever the other was saying; in fact, it’s not the first time he’s gone off about weird supernatural happenings. And it was one thing dealing with robotic talking bears and people with extraordinary talents, but magic powers? That might be pushing it.
“Will do, see you tomorrow,” Naegi waved and, promptly and not-so subtly, bolted for the door towards the dorm rooms set up for the Future Foundation members.
Upon entering his room, he just walked over and flopped down on his bed face-first. It wasn’t like he was tired or anything–he didn’t have much to do at work aside from filing reports–but he felt like it was an appropriate reaction after being told that you can get magical powers just because you’re a virgin at 20 years old.
He still didn’t believe Hagakure, though, even if the man claimed he was right 30% of the time.
Deciding that a shower would be a better use of his time rather than sinking into the comfort of his bed, he begrudgingly dragged himself to the bathroom to wash away the apprehension that tomorrow would bring. He couldn’t really bring himself to feel too excited about his birthday, especially since the last time he remembered celebrating it was with his family, who were nowhere to be found and–even though he refused to believe it–were most likely dead.
But maybe tomorrow could change that.
Changing into a t-shirt and shorts, Naegi once again plopped down onto his bed, watching his alarm clock slowly count up from 11:59 to 12:00.
“Happy birthday to me,” Naegi whispered into the empty space as the clock hit 12:00, drifting off to the thoughts of what his life would be like from here on out.
⁂
“Happy birthday, Naegi!” Asahina screamed in his face the second he stepped into their office, a messily made cake thrusted in front of him. Kirigiri and Hagakure wished him a happy birthday as well, though Fukawa just turned the other cheek and Togami simply nodded, which was more than he could have expected from the two of them.
“Thanks guys, you really didn’t have to do much. Where did you even get the ingredients for a cake anyway?” Naegi wondered. It’s not like there were any grocery stores left that weren’t overrun with Monokumas.
“They have them in the kitchen downstairs! It took a while to figure out how to bake it, but I think I got it down. Heh, I could even be the Ultimate Cook!” Asahina smirked playfully with one hand on her hips and the other on Naegi’s shoulder.
I messed up too many times… Hope it tastes good… I wonder if I could run my own donut shop if I was the Ultimate Cook…
“I’m sure you could,” Naegi replied.
“Huh? I don’t think I can be a different Ultimate than what I am now,” Asahina laughed awkwardly, removing her hand from his shoulder to scratch her head.
“What? No, I mean—”
“Wait, the ingredients you used…were those the ingredients that were sitting in those cardboard boxes?” Kirigiri asked, her hand cupping her chin as her eyebrows furrowed. “Those have been sitting there long before we got here.”
“You mean…they’re expired?” Asahina paled.
“Most likely,” Kirigiri affirmed.
“Y-you were trying to p-poison him?!” Fukawa stuttered, pointing her finger accusingly at Asahina.
“Of course not! I just wanted to do something nice, I didn’t know the ingredients were expired…”
Asahina pulled the cake in her arms back and away from Naegi before he had the chance to grab it, placing it on one of the desks and staring forlornly at her inedible creation. Clapping her hands together, she shook off her dejection and plastered on a smile. “Well! We can always celebrate with a group dinner. How about it, Naegi?”
Naegi was honestly a bit lost as to what was happening, flicking his eyes towards all the people he now considered friends. It was enough that some of them even wanted to celebrate his birthday right after dealing with the killings that nearly tore them apart. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”
“Great! See all of you later!” Asahina waved, making it clear that everyone would have no choice but to attend the birthday dinner.
After that was all said and done, everyone scattered to their places in the office. Though, since they were new members, they got the office that was the equivalent of a storage closet. Togami had nearly chewed out the head of Future Foundation after seeing the room they were placed in, but he held his tongue since this was the only organization that would take them in. Because of that, all of their desks were practically on top of one another, making it so that Hagakure and Fukawa were situated across from him, Kirigiri and Asahina were diagonal to him, and Togami was on his left right next to him. He found it odd that the man wanted to sit at the desk next to Naegi instead of by himself at one of the desks farther away from the group, but Naegi wasn’t complaining.
“You six!” someone called from the doorway, making all their heads turn. “Are you Ultimates naturally forgetful or something? If you miss this meeting, the boss will have your heads!”
“Shoot,” Naegi cursed, the meeting with Towa Group completely slipping his mind…as well as the minds of Fukawa, Hagakure, Asahina, Kirigiri and Togami surprisingly, given the panicked look on all their faces. They all dashed to the room the meeting was held in, just in time to exchange pleasantries with the clients.
Some high-school brats… Bah, these are the Ultimates Future Foundation rescued…? Waste of time…
Did I leave the stove on…? I can’t believe I’m forced to talk to teenagers on what should be my day off… Need to take care of the cat…
As Naegi shook hands with each of them, it felt like he heard their voices coming from inside his head. He couldn’t see their lips moving, but it seemed like they were talking directly to him.
Six survivors… He’s a short one… A bit boring looking, eh?
“I’m not boring looking…” Naegi mumbled. He himself may have thought he was painfully average in looks, grades, and basically everything, but it was another thing being told that by someone else.
“What?” The guy raised an eyebrow.
“Nothing, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
The meeting proceeded like any clientele meeting, but Naegi couldn’t help but think back on what he figured were thoughts he was hearing from people. Were they actually thoughts, though? Was he experiencing auditory hallucinations? Was this just a weirdly realistic dream?
The meeting ended before he could come to any definitive answer.
Kirigiri, Fukawa, Hagakure, and Asahina shuffled back towards their office, leaving Naegi and Togami behind to clean up after the meeting this time. They worked in silence, Togami neatly picking up the reports and spreadsheets laid out on the table and organizing them at the same time while Naegi just grabbed everything he saw and would deal with fixing them later.
“Let me take care of it since you don’t know the first thing about properly arranging files,” Togami sighed, taking notice of Naegi just stacking the papers in his hands randomly on top of one another.
“I was going to organize them eventually…”
“Tch, of course you ordinary folk would rather wait until later to deal with problems instead of dealing with them right away,” Togami scoffed.
Without warning, Togami reached out to snatch the papers from Naegi, their hands briefly making contact.
It’s too cold… Remember Naegi’s birthday dinner later… Did he notice…?
Huh? Naegi blinked, trying to make sense of the voice of the Ultimate Affluent Progeny floating around in his head.
Just now…did he hear Togami’s thoughts when he touched his hand? He remembered that Asahina’s voice and the voices of their clients sounded just like Togami’s just now—like the voices were echoing in his head. And they all had physical contact with him, too…
Naegi decided to see if his hypothesis held water. As Togami was about to grab the last report from him, he reached out and placed his hands on top of Togami’s. Togami raised an eyebrow at the sudden contact, his face oddly blank and his body seemingly paralyzed.
His hands are soft… I want to tell him… At least he won’t have to work too hard if I do it all for him…
The voices that barreled into his head and started flitting around were disjointed, one sentence not flowing with another, but the intent was all the same.
Togami…is that…affection, in your voice?
“What are you doing?” Togami recovered from his paralyzed state, his typical sneer adorning his face. “Do you want my help or not?”
Say yes.
Naegi nodded, his voice not cooperating with him as he got whiplashed by the Togami visibly speaking in front of him and the voice of Togami that’s bouncing around his head like a computer screensaver.
Togami scoffed. “That wasn’t a question you needed to answer. At least you answered right, regardless.” He grabbed the last sheet from Naegi’s hands, fixing them so that they were aligned appropriately, and strutted out the door towards the office.
Deciding not to bother with what he assumed were definitely hallucinations, Naegi made his way back to the office.
Hagakure stopped him before he could reach his desk, steering him away from the group. “Naegi-chi! How is it being a wizard?” Hagakure elbowed him jokingly. “Are you gonna show me your powers?”
I bet Naegi has super speed… Or he can shoot lasers out of his eyes… Maybe he can even read minds…
“Read minds…?” Naegi spoke, sucking in a breath as he realized that just because Hagakure is only right 30% of the time, doesn’t mean that he’s never right.
“Woah, you can read minds? That’s pretty sick, dude! Can you read my mind?”
“…I think I just did.”