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“This - this… How did a person like you acquire something like this?” Togami cried.
Naegi wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but ultimately decided he didn’t have the heart to tell him it fell out of the ‘MonoMonoMachine’ Enoshima Junko had dumped in one of the closets on the first floor.
“I dunno what it is, but umm… Kirigiri-san said you were the kind of person who’d like it,” he tried to hide his grimace; she’d also said the other “kind of person” was Hagakure.
Togami quickly folded his arms. The setting sun flashed an orange glint off the golden aeroplane model now peeking out under one of his elbows.
“Is that so? Disappointing as usual, I see,” he said smoothly.
It was statements like that that made Togami Byakuya one of the most-disliked guys in the class, and had Naegi wondering why he bothered to spend his free time with him at all.
He’d been hoping to be friends - he didn’t like seeing people alone, even if it was someone who deserved it and claimed to prefer it - but it’d been a couple weeks now of failed, prickly interactions, and he didn’t seem to be making any progress at all.
Togami was as unapproachable as ever. Was he ever going to open up?
“It’s a Quimbaya artefact.”
Naegi’s mind went blank for a few moments as it processed the words, his hands paused halfway through zipping up his school bag. He’d figured the conversation was over, and was packing up his stuff, getting ready to leave like everyone else already had. Finally, he turned on the spot so he could stare at Togami.
“Naegi,” Togami shook his head with exasperation. “I already knew you were uneducated, but this is a new low. Have you graduated from elementary school yet?”
That’s not the issue! You’ve never said anything to me that was this unabrasive!
Naegi tried to laugh it off. “Just for the record, I have, but: What’s a… a Kim - Kimba -”
“Quimbaya,” he was corrected, once again without any of the usual daggers shot in his direction.
Togami was now mutedly tapping his fingers on his desk, but he didn’t finish his explanation there. “It was a South American civilisation almost a thousand years old, inhabiting some areas in Colombia. It’s most notable for goldwork of great detail and accuracy.”
Naegi glanced at the model now sat on the desk, and frowned as if it depicted a dying animal. This information had given it a much more ominous air. How had Enoshima managed to get a hold of something like that?!
“S-so it’s real gold? That must be worth a lot…” he said.
“You utter dullard. Only the most shallow of people can find uses for worthless decorations made by peasants a millenia ago. I care about its shape, not what it’s worth.”
“Like… a plane?”
Naegi didn’t see the appeal. And apparently neither did Togami.
“I couldn’t care less about it being a plane. I mean what it symbolises.”
Naegi squinted, and then answered slowly; “Flight?”
Togami clicked his tongue and looked away, out the windows to his right. “Talking to you is no more illuminating than talking to a baby.”
“Wait, I don’t get it. They only invented planes in the last century, didn’t they? How come this model is older than that?”
“It took you long enough but that’s it,” Togami sighed. “How could this figurine have been made to look like an aeroplane when it was produced so long before the physics that made flight possible was hypothesised, let alone before the things were invented? It’s nothing like Da Vinci’s ridiculous flying machines. It’s clearly a modern, 20th Century aeroplane.”
He picked up the model, and held it in his fingertips, rotating it occasionally during his explanation to point out all the supposedly uncanny similarities. Naegi watched it closely, brow furrowed, only looking away to catch the way those blue eyes would smile slightly, like Togami couldn’t remember how much contempt he had for the person he was talking to.
“Mainstream archaeologists claim they were made to depict birds and lizards that were common to the area at the time, but I can’t say I agree. A pair of Germans have created scale models of these artefacts and shown that, although they lack some of the more complicated features present in the model aeroplanes, they could fly. Therefore, this could be considered a case of an out-of-place artefact, or an OOPArt.”
Hearing Togami say some informal piece of slang like “oop art” out of nowhere caught Naegi off guard enough to make him giggle.
That only brought out another tch from Togami, and he scowled, holding the golden model to his chest in a way that was uncharacteristically childish. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to understand the magnitude of just what these artefacts mean for our world history.”
Naegi waved his hands, trying to come up with a good enough lie about why he was laughing to get the conversation to continue. This was probably just about the most politely Togami had spoken to anyone in the entire school, and he didn’t want it to stop anytime soon. The only thing he could think of saying was “I wasn’t laughing at that, I just thought you were being surprisingly cute,” but decided it could have an unintended interpretation. He settled for trying to distract him by showing his interest.
“What do they mean, then, Togami-kun? I get that they’re out of place for their time period - there’s no way the Mayans had invented aeroplanes - but why do they exist?”
“They weren’t Mayans. You fool. They were the Quimbaya. And there’s a lot that can be interpreted from them. Some believe it means technology wasn’t developed naturally by humans, but that aliens either brought them to us, or suddenly influenced us to make these discoveries.”
Naegi’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.
“Wha- Togami-kun, you really believe in that alien conspiracy stuff? That ‘flat Earth’ stuff?!”
“Of course not! I’m not a lunatic!” Togami tilted his head to the floor, and with one and, pushed his glasses up so they caught the light. “They have no scientific basis at all. Only a gullible idiot would really believe in anything like that.
… I just think they’re interesting.”
Listening to his explanation did make them sort of interesting, but Naegi still privately thought the model was probably of a bird and not a thousand-year-old plane.
“That’s so surprising to hear. I had no idea you liked stuff like this. I just thought you were only into stocks and things like that.” His sentence was punctuated with the tiny whir of his bag zipping tight, and an earnest smile at having learnt something this unexpected.
“Of course I’m ‘into’ stocks. I need to fund my business ventures. And they’re an important measure of capital and business opportunity fundamental to economists.”
“See?” He gave a quiet laugh, feeling lost from that sentence alone. “That’s a whole different world to me. OOParts are so much more… Well, they’re not down-to-earth for most people, but they kinda are for you. It was sort of nice to hear you have normal interests, too.”
Togami only looked at his model and hmmed softly.
“Naegi. Come to my dormitory room.”
Naegi dropped his bag in shock.
“It pains me to live in the same country as an imbecile like you, let alone the same class. I’ll have to tutor you in basic history, at the minimum.”
There’s no way I’m the only student this year who doesn’t know anything about the Quimbaya!
“Y-you haven’t even let me say yes!”
“This isn’t an offer. It’s a command. Do you understand?”
When Togami smirked at him with that much smug conviction, he felt all desire to protest evaporate.
“I ought to accompany you. I might get blamed if you get lost and wander into traffic.”
“It’s just a short footpath across campus from here to the dorms…” Naegi sighed under his breath. With almost no effort at all, Naegi had been dragged away from the quiet night away from the eccentricity of Hope’s Peak Academy he’d been looking forward to.
Naegi was thrown a light feeling of déjà vu as he followed Togami into the room. It was like if he’d flicked on the lights in his own room one day and found someone had redecorated.
Extravagantly.
He’d left his room just about as it was, (even if he could afford it, he wouldn’t be spending the money on buying furniture for his dorm room) but it seemed Togami had spared no cost in making the place feel like his home. The bed was a four-poster canopy like something out of a fairytale. The carpet had been torn out and replaced with a smooth, polished marble. Every piece of furniture was definitely elegant - the kind of thing that’d go on auction with words like hand-carved and solid mahogany - but his eyes mostly glossed over them as the vestiges of a civilisation that lived miles above anything he could comprehend, because there were two things in the room that captured his attention.
The first was a floor-to-ceiling set of bookshelves that spanned the entire wall in front of him, at the end of the room. It held less books than the school library, of course, but was still an impressive collection to be sleeping next to every night.
The other thing was a stand on one dresser, with ten pairs of glasses folded neatly onto it.
“I don’t know if you need that many,” he laughed.
Togami traced his line of eyesight to the stand, lips pursed. “I do. I need them to see.”
“Any more than one pair is probably overkill, Togami-kun.”
“Only a pure simpleton could ever seirously use a word like overkill.” He made a point of pushing his glasses up his nose before continuing. The lenses catching the overhead lights made him look as serious as ever. “Successful businessmen, and people who’ve been through adversity - like myself - know from firsthand experience what a necessity it is to plan for everything.”
Naegi had been through adversity. Never again would he drink milk from the carton without checking the date first.
“Here.” Togami removed a thick volume from one of the shelves, and sat at the nearest desk, glaring at Naegi until he took a place up behind his shoulder.
Journeys to the Inexplicable Past, was printed on its plain white cover in glossy black letters, with a small sketch underneath it that could’ve plausibly been drawn by an Italian 16th Century inventor, if it wasn’t clearly of a flying saucer.
It looked like the kind of tome Hagakure would whack open in the middle of one of his farfetched stories. Naegi tried not to laugh.
“Was this really what you said you were gonna teach me about?” Naegi mused, watching the pages softly flipping past the contents, past the introduction, to one of the later articles.
It was titled The Quimbaya Artefacts, and there were a few short paragraphs describing details that had already been explained, from what he could see of the small print over Togami’s shoulder, and a set of large photographs. The first one, on the first page was an inventory of model planes like the one now neatly tucked away in Togami’s bag, on the plain white background of a museum display case. The next page was dedicated to close shots of one of the planes from various angles. He could notice that while it was similar enough to the first figurine he’d seen, there were visible differences in the design and decorative elements.
“I apologise,” Togami said suddenly, turning to another page to show off a third model, “that I only have pictures here. There hasn’t been enough space in this room to display my collection, so I decided to bring some of my books instead.”
That was a horrifyingly normal way of saying he owned a bunch of ancient thousand dollar relics. Naegi decided not to address that part.
He looked back, at the bookshelves almost double his height. “‘Just some’? There’s already more books there than I’ve ever read in my life.”
Manga definitely wouldn’t count as literature.
“Naegi.” Togami’s voice was icy, and he’d made no effort to look up from the double page he had open. “If you ever say anything that plebeian in my presence again I’ll have you deported.”
“I’m a natural-born Japanese person!?”
“I’ll have your citizenship revoked and you’ll be deported to Dog Island, Gambia.”
“Th-that’s harsh, even for you.”
“It’s named that because its only inhabitants, the baboons, howl like dogs. Maybe with some struggle you’ll be the smartest person there.”
“I got it!” Naegi flopped forward onto the desk. Though he took care to do it a safe distance from Togami and his encyclopaedia. “I need to read more. I got it. Please tell me all you know, Togami-sensei.”
If the teacher in question was bothered, he didn’t leave any indication, instead continuing to leaf through the book and read sections out as if nothing had happened.
They covered a few of the other “ancient alien” evidential pieces. There was the Saqqara Bird, a 2,200 year old carving that looked way more like a bird than a plane. There were the helicopter hieroglyphs of Abydos, that Togami (with some hesitation) affirmed were touched up in post-processing to look more modern than the real thing. And there were shakouki-doguu figurines from his very own Japan, from the Joumon period of before 4,000 BCE, that some theorised to depict astronauts.
Naegi’s remark of “So that’s what those Pokémon were based off,” went unappreciated.
It was an informative session; he learnt plenty about thousand-year-old civilisations and the nutjobs who thought they’d had alien contact. But much more importantly than that, it was fun.
Togami seemed to be enjoying himself more than Naegi had ever seen him this year so far. Even if he didn’t vocalise it, there was something warm about the way he’d skip to exact places in the book, like he’d read it so much he already knew where his favourite pages were. He’d get so wrapped up in his descriptions, explaining things about the relics and their creators with such detail the book lacked it was obvious he’d done further research elsewhere and memorised all he learnt, speaking confidently but without a trace of contempt like he was too excited to talk about this to think of anything else.
And when the contempt did come, when Naegi was supposedly too clueless for him to bear anymore, it wasn’t contempt anymore. It wasn’t hurtful. It was just ridiculous, like “you’d have less luck in office than Brown,” or “I hear circus monkeys take apprentices nowadays”. And he said all of them with real sincerity, like he truly thought these were the cruelest things you could say to someone.
After all, if he really hated Naegi, he didn’t have to interact with him.
Soon it was seven at night, and Naegi felt hungry enough his stomach gave a few warning growls.
“I guess I’m gonna head to the cafeteria,” he said quickly before Togami found an opportunity to criticise him somehow, and stood up, stretching with a light whine.
Togami was silent for just a moment. His thumb brushed over the sleek photograph of alien iconography found carved into a sarcophagus he’d been explaining moments before.
“Very well.”
Naegi laughed, if a little awkwardly. “‘Very well’? Are you staying here?”
“I only eat food prepared by a Togami Conglomerate-approved chef. You should know that by now.”
He saw that reply coming.
“Alright,” he shrugged, reaching for his bag. “But you should check it out sometime. It’s Hope’s Peak, so it’s the best food I’ve ever tasted.”
“How asinine. If you came to Paris’ Restaurant Le Meurice with me I’d show you what real gourmet tastes like.”
It was so snide it didn’t register he was asked out until later that night, when he’d already eaten and crawled between the sheets of his now-comfortably familiar dorm bed.
The thought passed through his head quickly, but it was so embarrassing he snuggled deeper down and pulled the duvet up past his nose. No, there was no way he’d been asked on a date with Togami Byakuya. He was definitely overthinking it.