To be fair, Nagito and Kokichi interact in the Talent Development thing. Kokichi tried to trick Nagito, felt sorry, and took it back.
I’m afraid that’s not what actually happens in their talent development interaction at all! I referenced the event and went back over it while writing the previous meta about Ouma and Komaeda, and while there’s definitely some stuff about the two of them trying to size each other up, there’s nothing about Ouma feeling sorry or trying to take any of his lies back.
Their scene in the talent development plan opens up with Komaeda saying he gives up. Ouma pretends that they were playing a game together and that it was a “long and intense match,” but Komaeda clarifies that that’s not the case at all, and that what he’s “giving up” at is trying to find any information about Ouma’s “secret organization” and “Supreme Leader” title.
He says that he looked absolutely everywhere he could think, relying on his SHSL Luck all the while, and literally nothing turned up proving that Ouma’s “evil, secret organization” exists, or even any definitive details on Ouma himself and why he got accepted to Hope’s Peak.
Ouma very cheekily chimes in that this is because secret organizations are supposed to stay secret, and Komaeda reluctantly agrees and says that Ouma’s information must be really well-hidden if even his luck couldn’t find it. He then (in my opinion, very sarcastically) throws in a line about how, “it’s not like someone on his worthless, talentless level is doubting that Ouma’s talent is real or anything.” Which, given how smart Komaeda is, I personally took to mean that he’s absolutely doubting it. Why else would he have looked into it in the first place, if he didn’t have doubts about Ouma’s talent being real?
Ouma then says that if Komaeda wanted to know all about him and his secret organization, he could’ve just asked, and Komaeda says that asking directly for all the secrets from an “evil, Supreme Leader” would’ve been too much responsibility for “someone as worthless as him.” To which Ouma assumes Komaeda must be bored of him already and complains that he was going to take all of Komaeda’s assets as payment for answering his questions.
Komaeda assumes that this means he could’ve just paid money to get some answers and seems surprised by this, but Ouma clarifies that he wasn’t talking about money at all and says that the price to learn a “Supreme Leader’s” secrets is much, much bigger than that, so Komaeda has to be prepared for the worst. If I had to bet, knowing Ouma, he’d probably say the price was “shipping Komaeda off to work in Siberia” or something along the lines of what he told Saihara in his FTE—empty threats that sound really ominous but don’t have anything to back them up whatsoever.
Komaeda then says he’s all too happy to pay whatever price is necessary as long as someone like him can pay it, but adds that he doubts anything Ouma says will be true anyway and that Ouma would probably just avoid answering even if he did pay the price. And Ouma, amused as all hell, says a (equally sarcastic, in my opinion) line about how impressed he is that “Komaeda understands him so well.” The scene ends with Komaeda saying that he understands Ouma well enough to know he’ll never willingly tell the truth about himself, and that’s pretty much it.
As you can see, there’s a lot going on here, but none of it involves an apology or anything like that. Ouma is absolutely trying to play things close to the chest and keep Komaeda from finding out anything definitive about him or his organization, in my opinion; he wants to keep tricking Komaeda because, as Komaeda succinctly puts it, Ouma is the type of person who won’t ever talk about himself truthfully. And Komaeda meanwhile seems to desperately want to know whether Ouma’s organization exists or not, and even whether his talent is real or not, since again, Komaeda is someone who pretty much defines a person’s worth (both his own self-worth and other people’s) by whether they have a SHSL talent or not.
Given the double-meanings behind a lot of what’s said in this little scene between them, especially some of the really tongue-in-cheek moments like Komaeda going “oh, not that worthless trash like me is doubting your talent or anything <3” and Ouma being like “wooow, I’m so happy you understand me so well, Komaeda-chan”, this is the main reason I said in my other post that I don’t think they would ever genuinely be friends with one another. There’s too many mind games going on here, and also they’re just fundamentally very different and incompatible when it comes to their personalities and motivations. But I do think their interactions are actually very interesting and pretty hilarious, and the idea of them being “frenemies” who talk about each other behind their backs still cracks me up.
Anyway, I hope this could clear things up, and that this was a good summary of their talent development interaction together! I highly recommend checking out @kaibutsushidousha’s translation of their talent development plan interaction here, since it’s really, really good. Just to be sure I double-checked the localization translation of this scene too and it was more or less the same, but I’ve got to recommend Comun’s translation because he managed to put a horse pun into it.
