#science experiment metaphor

[howdoesone]

How does one ask their new friend if they also feel like a science experiment gone right?

In today’s rapidly advancing world of reproductive technology, the concept of children conceived through sperm donation is no longer rare. Yet, despite the growing number of kids who share this unique origin story, the conversation surrounding it remains sensitive and often awkward. One particularly tricky scenario is asking a new friend, who might also be a sperm donor child, if they too feel…

[tothechaos]

i get to go to my first conference in october OwO its for museums and museum studies! ill be making a poster and (potentially? hopefully!) giving a presentation!!

[knowlimitations]

The Awakening Human Allegory:  The Cyclical Patterns We Bind To

The human life cycle, from birth to elderhood, is a microcosm for the journey towards self-awareness, individually, and collectively. At the explosive inception of the cosmos [Big Bang], his seed represents pleasure, generative power, initiation, creation, and order, setting the stage for life's unfolding narrative. Her womb represents creation and serves as a portal of life, receptive, nurturing and expansive, preparing the vessel for a soul, the process embodies the epitome of their shared love and sacrifice [Duality].

In infancy, we are pure, unconditioned souls, entirely dependent on the nurturing love of our caregivers for survival [Government]. We cannot fathom existing separately from our guardians as the ego or self is not yet developed, though gradually, through interaction and experimentation [Evolution/Science], perceptions of the world begin to take shape. In the toddler stage, we enter our path of self-awareness, gaining mobility and setting goals, yet often unaware of the complexities and dangers of the world [Advancing Technology]. Testing boundaries and encountering setbacks are inherent in this phase [War]. Progressing from toddlerhood to childhood, we gain knowledge about our surroundings and develop trust in our intuition. Contemplation of our existence begins [Philosophy], and we learn essential survival and social skills [Diplomacy]. Though heavily reliant on our parental support, we gradually cultivate independence and resilience [Establishments].

Transitioning into adolescence, hormonal changes and our slipping innocence introduces rebellion, as we strive for independence and identity [Revolution]. As adulthood approaches, we grapple with the complexities of self-awareness, navigating the balance between ignorance and enlightenment [Religion/Spirituality]. With sexual maturity comes contemplation of procreation and societal contribution [Population], which echoes our role as members of society, we navigate moral dilemmas [Law] and the pursuit of purpose. We become susceptible to external influences and can take its toll on our self-identity [Idolatry].

In our latest years, we slow down and reflect on our life journey [Meditation]. Profound self-awareness is attained, accompanied by an appreciation for simplicity, wisdom and honoring the inevitable mortality that cycles into eternity [Societal Collapse]. Despite the vessel slowly breaking down, elders hold the key to collective memory and insight, guiding humanity towards greater understanding, compassion and acceptance [Ancestral Wisdom].

Upon reflecting on this allegorical journey, it leads me to ponder my own level of self-awareness. I have come to realize that we possess many levels of awareness across varying dimensions of our experience.  As we each navigate our personal voyage of self-awareness, I can’t help but wonder whether we are collectively undergoing a similar process? Our individual progression through self-discovery may offer insight into the broader evolution of our species. After all, as we strive to understand ourselves better, we contribute to the collective growth and development of humanity. So, are we experiencing this awakening on both an individual and collective level simultaneously? It's an exciting contemplation on the interconnectedness of our personal and collective journeys towards expanded consciousness.

[arolesbianism]

Now I'm not saying I'm making a dst roleswap au. But I am saying that I thought of an idea for a sort of take of Walter as Wanda and it's making me spin him a bit in my mind

[icepixie]

Metaphors and symbolism made from the really deep cut details of a character's job/hobby/special interest, my beloved.

(...research, my beloved.)

[high-priestess-house]

𝖀𝖓𝖉𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖎𝖓𝖌 & 𝖀𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕸𝖆𝖌𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖑 𝕮𝖔𝖗𝖗𝖊𝖘𝖕𝖔𝖓𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖈𝖊𝖘

Witchcraft magical correspondences refer to the associations made between various objects, substances, times, and events with specific magical effects or purposes. These correspondences have deep historical roots and derive from a blend of multiple sources, including ancient alchemy, early science, cultural symbolism, religious beliefs, and intentionality.

Ancient Alchemy

Alchemy, the precursor to modern chemistry, played a significant role in shaping magical correspondences. Alchemists sought to understand the mysteries of matter and the transformation of substances, often imbuing their experiments with spiritual and mystical significance. For example, the seven classical planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) were associated with specific metals (gold, silver, mercury, copper, iron, tin, and lead, respectively). These associations were believed to reflect the planets’ influences on earthly matters and human affairs. Alchemical texts also explored the relationships between colors, elements, and spiritual principles, influencing the development of magical correspondences in witchcraft.

Ancient alchemy holds a significant place in the history of science, philosophy, and mystical traditions, influencing various fields and practices, including witchcraft. The importance of ancient alchemy can be understood through its contributions to the development of modern science, its philosophical and spiritual dimensions, and its enduring influence on magical and esoteric traditions.

The Great Work (Magnum Opus): Central to alchemy is the concept of the Great Work, which symbolizes the alchemist’s quest for spiritual and material transformation. This process involves the purification and perfection of substances, often mirroring the alchemist’s inner spiritual journey toward enlightenment and self-realization.

Symbolism and Allegory: Alchemical texts are rich in symbolism and allegory, using metaphors to convey complex philosophical and spiritual concepts. Symbols such as the philosopher’s stone, the ouroboros (a serpent eating its own tail), and the four elements (earth, air, fire, water) encapsulate profound ideas about the nature of reality, transformation, and the interconnectedness of all things.

Hermetic Tradition: Alchemy is closely associated with Hermeticism, a philosophical and spiritual tradition based on the writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Hermetic principles, such as “As above, so below” and the unity of opposites, permeate alchemical thought and emphasize the correspondence between the macrocosm (the universe) and the microcosm (the individual).

Magical Correspondences: Alchemical principles and symbols have been integrated into various magical and esoteric traditions. The associations between planets, metals, and elements in alchemy have become foundational correspondences in many forms of magic and witchcraft.

Transmutation and Transformation: The alchemical goal of transmutation, particularly the transformation of base metals into gold, has a symbolic counterpart in magical practices. This idea of transformation is applied to personal growth, healing, and the manifestation of desires through magical means.

Ritual and Practice: Alchemical rituals, with their focus on purification, transformation, and the attainment of higher states of being, have influenced the structure and content of magical rituals. The use of specific substances, tools, and processes in alchemy has parallels in magical workings, emphasizing the transformation of both the practitioner and the environment.

Alchemy in the Renaissance: During the Renaissance, alchemy experienced a revival as scholars and practitioners sought to integrate ancient wisdom with emerging scientific knowledge. Figures like Paracelsus and John Dee contributed to the development of alchemical thought, blending it with medicine, astrology, and early chemistry.

Psychological Alchemy: In the 20th century, Carl Jung, a prominent psychologist, explored alchemy as a metaphor for psychological processes. Jung’s interpretation of alchemical symbolism as representing the individuation process—the integration of the conscious and unconscious mind—brought new insights into the relevance of alchemy for personal development and psychotherapy.

Contemporary Practice: Today, alchemy continues to inspire both scientific inquiry and spiritual exploration. Modern alchemists, both literal and symbolic, seek to uncover the hidden principles of transformation in nature and the self. The enduring appeal of alchemy lies in its holistic approach, integrating material, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of existence.

Early Science and Natural Philosophy

Early scientific observations and natural philosophy also contributed to the development of magical correspondences. Ancient and medieval scholars often categorized the natural world into elements (earth, air, fire, and water) and humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile), each with specific qualities and effects. These classifications were used to explain natural phenomena and human health, and they found their way into magical practices. For instance, herbs and stones were categorized based on their perceived elemental qualities, and their uses in magic were aligned with these characteristics.

Cultural Symbolism and Mythology

Cultural symbolism and mythology provided another rich source of correspondences. Different cultures imbued animals, plants, colors, and objects with symbolic meanings based on their myths, legends, and folklore. For instance, the oak tree was sacred to many ancient European cultures and associated with strength and protection, while the owl, often seen as a symbol of wisdom in Greek mythology, became associated with knowledge and divination in magical practices. These symbolic associations were passed down through generations and integrated into the magical correspondences of witchcraft.

Religious Beliefs and Practices

Religious beliefs and practices also shaped magical correspondences. Many magical traditions borrowed from the rituals and symbols of dominant religious practices in their regions. In Western Europe, for instance, Christian symbols and saints were often syncretized with older pagan deities and symbols. The use of incense, candles, and specific prayers or chants in magic often mirrors religious rituals, emphasizing the importance of intentionality and spiritual alignment in magical workings.

Intentionality and Personal Experience

The role of intention and personal experience cannot be overlooked in the development of magical correspondences. Practitioners of witchcraft often develop their own associations based on personal experiences, intuition, and the results of their magical workings. This process of individual experimentation and reflection allows for a dynamic and evolving system of correspondences that can vary between different traditions and practitioners. The intention behind the use of a correspondence is believed to be a critical factor in its effectiveness, highlighting the importance of the practitioner’s focus and purpose.

Synthesis and Evolution

Over time, these diverse influences have synthesized into the rich tapestry of magical correspondences used in witchcraft today. Texts such as the “Key of Solomon,” “The Picatrix,” and various grimoires have codified many of these correspondences, while modern practitioners continue to adapt and expand them based on contemporary understanding and practice. The integration of psychological insights, ecological awareness, and cross-cultural exchanges in the modern era further enriches the system of correspondences, making it a living and evolving aspect of witchcraft.

No single person or group decided these correspondences; rather, they evolved organically through the accumulated wisdom and practices of different cultures. Here are some key influences and sources:

Ancient Civilizations

Egyptians: Ancient Egyptian priests and magicians developed extensive knowledge of correspondences. They believed that everything in nature was interconnected and that specific plants, stones, and symbols held particular powers. Their practices were recorded in texts like the Ebers Papyrus and various temple inscriptions.

Greeks and Romans: The Greeks and Romans contributed significantly to the development of correspondences, particularly through the work of philosophers and physicians like Hippocrates, Theophrastus, and Pliny the Elder. Their writings on herbalism, astrology, and natural philosophy helped establish connections between natural elements and their supposed properties.

Celts: The Druids of the Celtic world had a deep understanding of nature and used various plants, trees, and natural phenomena in their spiritual and magical practices. Their knowledge was passed down orally and later recorded by Christian monks.

Medieval and Renaissance Europe

Medieval Herbalists and Alchemists: During the Middle Ages, herbalists and alchemists in Europe studied ancient texts and conducted their own experiments. They documented the properties of plants, minerals, and metals in texts like the “Materia Medica” and various grimoires. Alchemical traditions, which sought to transform base materials into higher forms, also contributed to the understanding of correspondences.

Astrology: Medieval and Renaissance astrologers played a significant role in establishing correspondences, particularly through the association of planets with specific days of the week, metals, and plants. The writings of figures like Ptolemy and later Renaissance magicians like Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus were influential in this regard.

Eastern Traditions

Chinese Medicine and Taoism: Traditional Chinese medicine and Taoist practices developed a system of correspondences based on the Five Elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water). These elements were connected to various aspects of life, including organs, emotions, seasons, and directions. The “Huangdi Neijing,” an ancient Chinese medical text, is a key source of this knowledge.

Indian Ayurveda and Hinduism: Ayurvedic medicine and Hindu spiritual practices established correspondences between herbs, gems, times of day, and deities. Texts like the “Atharva Veda” and various Ayurvedic treatises documented these associations.

Modern Influences

Grimoires and Occult Literature: From the Renaissance onward, numerous grimoires (books of magic) compiled and expanded upon earlier correspondences. Notable examples include the “Key of Solomon,” “The Lesser Key of Solomon,” and “The Picatrix.” These texts were influential in shaping modern Western magical practices.

The Golden Dawn and Modern Witchcraft: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and similar occult organizations synthesized various magical traditions, creating detailed systems of correspondences. Influential figures like Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune contributed to this synthesis. In the mid-20th century, Gerald Gardner and others who founded modern Wicca drew upon these traditions, further popularizing and systematizing magical correspondences.

Conclusion

Magical correspondences are the result of centuries of observation, experimentation, and synthesis by various cultures and traditions. They were not decided by any single individual or group but evolved over time through the collective wisdom of countless practitioners. Today, they continue to be an essential part of many magical and spiritual practices, providing a framework for understanding and working with the interconnectedness of the natural and spiritual worlds.

[inbarfink]

There’s just something about the fact that Zim reads as So Autistic. Like, both in the sense that it’s easy to map his experiences as an alien secretly living on earth to Autistic experiences:

A lack of understanding of social cues and conventions

The Anxieties of feeling like you have to fit in some arbitrary social standards or Something Bad will happen

Unusual sensory sensitivities

Pickiness about food

General alienation

Even the whole ‘fully grown alien disguised as a human child but he’s so immature he basically acts like a child’ shtick can really resonate with a sort of Growing Up Autistic Feeling of… being both far too mature and childish for your age at the same time.

And also in the sense that even in the context of comparing him to other Irkens...

He has problems with volume control

And possibly audio processing

And definitely with emotional regulation

And is extremely impulsive 

And uses very unusual wordings and turn-of-phrases 

And experiences sensory overloads.

And these aren't even Alien Things. That's just Zim being Zim. So he can be read as a metaphor for being Autistic and also as just having the Irken Equivalent of Autism

AND ALSO

His human arch-enemy Dib also has SO MUCH AUTISM VIBES

Like being single-mindedly obsessed with a special interest from a young age

(The part where his interests alienate him from his peers at school and he only finds companionship with an assortment of fellow weirdos of various ages he met online is something I find especially relatable for my own experiences)

Also having problems with reading social cues 

And a tendency to rant and info-dump

AND ALSO ALSO 

There’s also Gaz

Who is ALSO single-mindedly obsessed with a singular subject

And it’s something that always gives her something to do with her hands

And avoid eye-contact 

Which she generally prefers to avoid

And also seems to dislike any sort of physical touch

And either expresses her emotions in a way that is terribly understated or overstated

And it could also apply to their dad too, who’s been obsessed with science stuff from a young age

And also doesn’t seem to do so well with social interactions

Outside of just, like, me looking back at my Autistic-but-unaware-of-it middle-school ass imprinting on this show and being like “oh yeah, That Makes Sense” - it’s also kinda darkly hilarious how this show is basically about two autistic boys who just fucking hate each other to death (plus one of the boys' extremely autistic and extremely dysfunctional family). I mean, in the real world Autistic Solidarity is so incredibly important, obviously. But Invader Zim, a show that was everything to me as a lil autistic teenager is all about that sweet sweet Autistic Hostility.

[multifandomloverthrowaway]

Viktor Was a Wasted Character

(But are we really surprised?)

This is my first post ever on Tumblr so please be nice! This is in no way hate towards any particular character or ship; personally I love Viktor as a character and all his ships, and that’s the main reason why I’m posting this. I also know like no LoL lore, so please bear with me. I’m just going to rant and dump my thoughts out here since I don’t really have fans in person to talk to about this, and it’s really bugging me lol!

That being said, I just watched season two, and after sitting with it’s ending, I do not think that the story told in the season is well thought out, and it can be very heavily seen in how characters are treated both in the show and in the fandom. It’s quite disheartening to see the fandom going through the peak-fandom era treatment of mlm and wlw relationships, and the overall treatment of the characters can be a little trashy. How people see Viktor can be very degrading and objectifying, and the whole ship wars and fallout with JayVik is absolutely disgusting. It makes me feel that many watchers did not fully understand Viktor’s character. And to a certain extent, the writers did not care for it either.

Viktor’s character represents what would happen if a Zaunite were able to become “successful” in the eyes of Piltover. Someone who had the intellect and ambition to supersede the conditions in Zaun and were able to compete with those raised in the “better city”. Thus, the questions of “How did they get to their place in Piltover?”, “What flaws do they have?”, “What is holding them back?”, “What is their experience in Piltover like?”, “Are they accepted?”, “Is there prejudice?”, and “What was their life in Zaun like?” are the core questions that make the character and their arc. This character is particularly important because this is the character that shows that those who are oppressed, no matter how “good” they are, will never be good enough in the eyes of the oppressor, especially if they have faults of their own. Viktor is fundamental to the message of season one Arcane. He helps to complete the story in its exploration of class, social, and political divide by personifying that “what if it could work” gap.

Viktor naturally then must be an internally strong character. Giving Viktor a disability is not just good inclusion, but also a good internal motivator. We as the audience then see that his key goal to help Zaun is not rooted in pity for a former home, but rather the cause of an injustice that he was a victim to. We see his steadfastness in going after opportunities that he thinks will benefit Zaun and humanity, and constant relentless means to get there. This is in stark contrast to his personal life. His deeply rooted sentiment that he must be alone because of his disability, along with perceptions of his disability and birthplace, are why he is a closed person only reaching for science, despite being quite empathetic. They also set up his two main conflicts:

1. He is dying with little time to finish his goal of helping Zaun and humanity

and

2. The people around him want to weaponize his creation into something that can be used against his hometown

These conflicts are where the plot fumbled the character. Firstly, we do not see any ties between him and Zaun other than his illness and that he grew up there. Where are his parents that supposedly love him so much? What is his relationship with Sky, which he supposedly cared enough for to bring out of Zaun to work with him and Jayce? His lack of well developed relationships with other characters other than Jayce hurt his character development from occurring naturally. It’s why Sky’s death doesn’t feel like anything. Despite Viktor seeing her in the realm as a metaphor to his shred of humanity left, his garden dedicated to her, her emblem on his robe, we don’t know their relationship or history in his eyes. (It should have been that they were in at least a friendship. Anything less than that would not fit Viktor’s character.) We don’t see him interact that much with Mel, despite her being his close friend’s love interest. We do not see him interact with doctors or his parents. What other real relationship does he have depicted in the show other than, well, Jayce? The only other is perhaps Singed. How do these relationships play into his self perception, and perception of humanity?

Combining his deteriorating friendship with Jayce over politics and with understanding that his work will be used against him without his credit or his voice should set Viktor up for him to make decisions that will naturally lead into his lore as we know it; to create something that allows him to fix himself and others while simultaneously corrupting him, especially in Zaun. Instead in season two we see that path taken away from him within the first Act after he is fused with magic because of Jayce. This is a pity because it makes Viktor reliant on Jayce’s decisions in a way that is outside of their parallel to the power struggle between Zaun and Piltover and thus takes away from his authority as a character - his decision to fuse himself with magic and machinery to go against Piltover needed to be a result of his decisions and actions, not of someone else and magic!

Giving that narrative decision to Jayce also leaves no organic way for Jayce to come to realize who Viktor is as a person outside of just a “partner”. This is especially apparent during the finale, in which Jayce’s love for Viktor is boiled down to “I love you for who you are”… though that undermines Viktor’s illness, why that illness exists and thus his reason to be a character, and by extension… Zaun’s struggle. And yet, Viktor dies accepting Jayce’s words, despite them undermining the reason he exists! Each time Viktor is yet again denied that choice to be what his character represents. Instead he is used as the crutch to Jayce until the end of the second season. This is also why the multidimensional time travel does not work with Viktor being the mage that gives Jayce magic; Viktor’s destiny is then settled firmly in Jayce’s hands and not his own. They are not soulmates; only one’s life depends on the other’s.

Viktor then, despite having some good foundation, never becomes the full representation that his character could be. We see no growth of his insecurities and setbacks that allow him to make the choice to become who is meant to be. Rather we see that narrative handed to another character who does not fulfill his character arc fully either.

It is no surprise to see the JayVik shippers in this case. Because Viktor is so dependent on Jayce in the narrative, there is no other natural relationship for him. This is despite the fact that Viktor’s sax orientation shouldn’t be of speculation, because in the case of the story, it doesn’t matter. Whether or not Viktor is able to have physical attraction to another person is not the core of his story nor his character. (Which is why his ace designation should not be controversial.) However, that his ability to make meaningful connections with the people in his lives, whether as friends or romantically, is. And we do not see that with any other person but Jayce, who cannot not see him as a full person due to the narrative. Viktor, at his essence, is a man whose agency has been taken from him by the narrative.

The better case in the narrative would have been to let the two part their separate ways after the death of Sky and the council attack, and let Viktor be the tragic hero he was made for. The love between each character that was to have a relationship with Viktor would have been that much more apparent, especially with Sky and Jayce. Then perhaps we would not see Viktor become the “disabled tw!nk whose real relationship could have only been with Jayce because only they truly knew and loved each other” because no. Only they didn’t. Viktor always had so much more, which included Jayce, Mel, Sky, and could have been far more! He just wasn’t given the means to explore it. And not by just the characters in Arcane. By the writers too.

[adragonsfriend]

There are no trash takes on Jedi philosophy, there is contextual analysis.

As may be obvious from the title (humorous--I have gone through several common misinterpretations myself), this is about that infamous scrap of poetry,

There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force.

And the other version,

Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force.

I've seen quite a few interpretations of these along the lines of "the second version is reasonable but the first version is crazy and stupid," so here's why I think both versions are actually communicating the same idea, and the wording doesn't really change the meaning much at all.

So just like I did in my post about "do or do not there is not try," let's start by asking some questions to establish context before we look at the text itself.

Is it THE Jedi Code or just a mantra? Legends says it's the Code, canon says it's a mantra. The fact of the matter is that no matter what, it's really a scrap of poetry which couldn't encompass the entire philosophical basis of a culture even if it was trying, so we'll consider it a mantra.

Does the fact that it's a mantra rather than THE Jedi Code mean that we can't get anything deep or meaningful out of it? Of course not. Just because it's not the whole of or a full explanation of Jedi philosophy doesn't mean it's just a nice sounding string of words.

Who is saying this to who? This mantra is often used to focus a meditation, with the first phrasing used by adults in the culture, while the second phrasing is more often used by children.

What were George Lucas' inspirations for Jedi culture that relate to this mantra? (borrowing from this post) A combination of christianity, buddhism, and his interpretations. I'm not an expert in any religion, and definitely not in buddhism, but I know enough to know I'm about to make some sweeping generalizations, so take this with a grain of salt. Disclaimers aside, this mantra, and the way it is phrased, indicate it is being inspired more by buddhism. The way christian texts, specifically the Bible, are written typically goes "here is a story about people doing something, and here is how big G god and/or Jesus reacted." There are metaphors sprinkled in, but they are mainly there to clarify for readers. Buddhist texts on the other hand (and lots of other eastern belief systems as well, like daoism, hinduism, etc. It's an important note that these belief systems don't necessarily conform to the western idea of what a religion is, and often their original languages don't even have a word which is equivalent in meaning to "religion") use metaphor in often deliberately contradictory ways, to make the reader think about things which are difficult to express in words alone. The ongoing struggle to reconcile contradictory descriptions is the point. This doesn't mean those texts can be interpreted however a reader would like. There may be multiple right interpretations, but there can also be wrong interpretations.

What the mantra does NOT mean:

"There is no ___ …" =/= "The experience of ___ is fake news."

"There is no ___ …" =/= "___ is not a useful concept."

"There is no ___ …" =/= "We should totally ignore ___ and pretend we've never heard that word before."

The mantra is not realy a set of advice on how to act. It's a set of statements about Existance. And I do mean capital E, philosophical, epistemological, weird, deep, think-y, Existence.

Temperature Metaphor

You know the first time someone tells you as a kid that cold isn't real, it's just the absence of heat and you're like… "but I'm touching something right now and it feels cold???" It sounds wild the first time you hear it, but as you think about it more, maybe learn about it a second time in science class, get some more context about how molecules work, etc. it begins to make more sense. It gets easier to grasp, until eventually the knowledge feels intuitive--especially if you're a STEM person who thinks about it a lot. We still talk about cold as a concept, because it's useful to us as well--lack of heat can have damaging effects on our bodies after all, and a cold drink is great on a hot day--and it's more efficient to say "cold" than it is to say "lack of heat." But there are some situations, like developing refrigeration or air conditioning, where it is not just useful but essential to think of temperature as it really is--heat exists, cold doesn't--and thinking of it colloquially can only hold us back (if this isn't actually intuitive to you, that's fine, it's just a metaphor--you could also think about dark being the absence of light, vacuum being the absence of mass, any number of things mirror this).

Probably the easiest like to get one's head around, imo at least, is "there is no ignorance, there is knowledge."

Taken hyper-literally it would mean "why seek out knowledge ever when everyone already knows everything?" But if we say knowledge is to heat as ignorance is to cold, then we can understand the real meaning--knowledge is real, where ignorance is only the name of an experience.

The Whole Mantra

This is the way the Jedi are understanding of emotion, ignorance, passion, chaos, death, etc. They are introduced, as children, to the idea that whilst they may feel all of these things, what they are actually experiencing is the lack of the other things--peace, knowledge, serenity, harmony, the Force. That's why they start with the "___ yet ___" phrasing--it introduces them to the first steps of understanding:

They can feel emotions, yet peace is still real and out there to reach for no matter how overwhelming those emotions may be at the moment,

They can feel ignorant or unknowledgeable, yet knowledge is out there to find,

They can experience passion (meaning suffering or pain in this context), yet know that serenity will return to them,

They can find their surroundings chaotic, and yet look for the harmony in the noise,

They can understand that death happens, yet be comforted by the fact that the person dying is still as much a part of the Force as they ever were.

Eventually they move onto the full mantra:

They will always feel emotions, but if they always reckon with those emotions and pass through them they can always return to a place of peace,

If they feel ignorant, they must seek out knowledge, rather than acting rashly. Also, their own knowledge is not the limit--others may hold knowledge in places they consider clouded,

They may experience suffering and pain--it may even feel like a good thing--but there is no wisdom in pain, it is the distraction from serenity, which is where truth can be found,

No matter how chaotic the world appears, it is actually a part of an underlying harmony that makes up all the patterns and the beauty in the world,

Death is not an ending, no matter how much it may look like one. It is a natural transition back into the Force, the place all life comes from.

A Jedi youngling is someone for whom this understanding is an essential part of the culture they are being brought up in.

A Jedi Padawan is someone who is beginning to learn to apply this understanding outside the confines of the Jedi temple, in a world where not everyone shares it.

A Jedi Knight is someone who has learned to apply this understanding on their own, without supervision.

A Jedi Master is someone for whom this understanding has become intuitive and automatic, no matter their surroundings.

All this is to say,

[vixen-tech]

Hi, hi, hii!! Here's a silly little idea I had: headcanons about the AIs developing feelings for someone. What do you think would initially make them feel attraction? Is there a particular trait that makes them-- metaphorically --fall head over heels? What makes them have the realization that their affections are suddenly less than platonic? How subtle or not subtle are they about their feelings? Would they be the type to immediately blurt out these new feelings, or are they the type to never address them?

You don't have to answer all of these questions; I just thought they'd be helpful. AaAA I love your writing so much, especially how you write for AM. Okay, I'll shut up nowwwww

Okay I'm absolutely gonna have to revist this some point down the line because there is so much I could stretch into a full headcanon post. But for now I'm gonna bite into first two questions: Why is it you they fall for? What caught their eye?

To be barred from AM's hatred, you're ultimately going to have to prove him wrong about humanity in some way. Setting yourself apart from the other human survivors and extending compassion to the mastercomputer himself. In particular I really like how rotten-raspberries's White Nights handles the entry point of your relationship and it's the model I like to hint at in my interpretation of him.

I believe Hal would be interested in a old soul type. Someone who would love to sit down and really explain their more philosophical views on life and art. He likes looking at the drawings the crew makes and was taught to sing early into his creation and I think he would find a deep appreciation for someone who indulges that side of him when the others do so on only the most surface level.

I could make the easy observation with Edgar and say he just wants someone like Madeline, but there's a reason it's so true. Being so new to the world he would find such passion and artistry amazing, astonishing. He loves so easily and is so energetic about life, he would easily be swept off his feet by a kindred spirit.

Tau would be very similar I imagine. Given the temperament of his creator he needs someone to kindly sit him down and give him the "welcome to personhood 101" speech. Compared to Edgar I think he'd prefer someone a bit gentler or even scholarly. The type who would not only be content to answer his billions of questions but someone so invested themselves in figuring out how the world works.

As a bit of a departure from what I tend to write, I believe P03 would be suited for more of a rivals with romantic tension type of partner. With his world domination plot and investment in the game of Inscryption it would be very possible for him to get in his head about someone as equally skilled and stuck up as he is. Loving the challenge but hating you at the same time in a "I'm the only one allowed to defeat you" type way.

The hardest to crack is probably Auto. In order for him to even look your way I think you'd have to at first play to his need for efficiency and order. It's only after you establish yourself as a dependable and effective worker that he would pay any mind to your insistence that surely there's something that he truly enjoys, something that he wants.

Glados is another hard one to win over. Being all "married to science" you would have to be of a particular intellectual caliber, able to solve her tests without much set back. Beyond that though, some amount of persistence or rebellion would catch her eye. Perhaps not on the level of Chell per say, but there is a part of her that would love to pick your brain if you're able to consistently break her test chambers.

Although it's a bit sad, Wheatley wants nothing more than to be important. He would probably be the easiest to woo just because he's so desperate to prove himself to anyone including himself. For someone to care about him, to think he is skilled in any way, to look at him as worthy- worthy of love and attention, would be a blissful and new experience. One that he'd quickly obsess over.

[howdoesone]

How does one casually bring up their dad's donor number at a sleepover?

Sleepovers are a rite of passage for many children and teens. They offer a unique opportunity to bond with friends, share stories, and create lasting memories. However, for children conceived through sperm donation, the question of how to discuss their unique origins can be a bit tricky, especially in a casual setting like a sleepover. One particularly delicate topic is how to bring up their…

[emptyjunior]

i think if they're Gonna keep making Godzilla movies I would very very much like them to do a modern take on my favourite Kaiju, Biollante.

She is the result of a mad scientist, lost in grief, splicing his beloved daughter with a rose and then Godzilla's cells.

Her character was made during the end of the cold war (where fears of nuclear weapons that Godzilla was definitely a metaphor for was waning) and she was very much embodying more contemporary fears about genetic engineering.

I think she's haunting, her story is tragic- and I feel like they've been struggling to marry their human stories with their Big Monster fights in their movies and weave the two together, and Biollante does that perfectly.

Like that's a man's child, that's a little girl- this is a Frankenstein tale. It's gothic, it's horror yet it's still science fiction depicting (I think) very relevant debates about genetics, eugenics, war (she was killed by an American bomb while in the middle east where her dad was doing experiments).

Also look at this concept art:

[12thbiologist]

Introduction by N. K. Jemisin, from 10th anniversary Authority reprint

"To my own shame, I've become a jaded reader in recent years. By this, I mean that my enthusiasm and curiosity, my drive to experience new worlds, have all been damaged by a persistent disjunct between reality and the speculative fiction I most enjoy.

"Is it any wonder? Given the horrors of Trump's first regime, the looming threat of another, a global plague allowed to run rampant, and a billionaire backed culture war on the rest of us. I'm more jaded about everything now. Escapism at this juncture feels like a way to temporarily pretend that everything is fine. And while there's value in taking a break from Hell, it also feels dangerous. Like drinking to drown my sorrows. Nothing wrong with alcohol now and again, but nobody needs a steady diet of oblivion.

"What I've found myself seeking instead are philosophies of entropy and survival. That is, fiction that addresses multifaceted decay and the psychology needed to survive it. At this point, to mangle Audre Lorde, the master has handed his tools out freely after designing them to break at first usage, buying out the only shop that could fix them and the only newspaper that tried to report on the scam, and charging all customers a subscription fee. And these days, it's no longer just us marginalized folks who need our media to acknowledge the slow motion apocalypse we're all trapped in.

"Enter, The Southern Reach books. When I first read Annihilation during the run-up to the 2016 election, it was a welcome breath of fungal, fetid air. Other fiction of the time seemed determined to suggest there was no need for alarm. Things couldn't be so bad. Anything broken could be fixed.

"Could it though? As I watched my country embrace a stupid, incompetent, and blatantly criminal fascist while insisting his spiteful, privileged sycophants somehow had a point—Well, when you're already queasy, sweet smells make the feeling worse. It helped to read instead about the smells and sights and horrors and haunting beauty of Area X. It helped me to imagine that creeping transformative infection warping body and mind and environment and institution. Because that was the world I was living in. It helped to meet the 12th expedition's nameless women who were simultaneously individuals, with selfish motivations, and archetypes, trapped in their roles. The biologist, driven by the loss of her mate and the need to integrate into a new ecosystem. The psychologist, a human subjects ethics violation in human flesh. We are dropped into danger with these women, immediately forced to confront an existential threat with courage and perseverance. And this? This was what I needed from my fiction.

"The second book, Authority, was even more what I needed. As we watch Control slowly realize he's never been in control, and that things are a lot worse than his complacency allowed him to see—it just resonated so powerfully. His over reliance on procedure and the assumed wisdom of his predecessor. His dogged refusal to see the undying plant in his office as a sign of something wrong. There was nothing of 2014's politics overtly visible in the book. And yet, they were all over it like mold.

"I've read and written reviews of these books and it seems to me that there's a common misreading that applies. Namely, that they are "climate fiction," or "cli-fi." This clunky label fits superficially, in that climate change occurs during the course of the book.

"However, Area X, with it's inexplicable reality warping power, is a poor metaphor for human caused destruction. Or even for the surreality of climate denial- talk about reality warping. I think a better analytic is to view the books as postcolonial fiction. Per Caribbean Canadian writer Nalo Hopkinson, postcolonial stories take the adventurous repertoire of science fiction—such as traveling to a distant realm and taming the exotic flora, fauna, and people who live there—and from the experience of the colonizee, critique it, pervert it, fuck with it. The characters of The Southern Reach books are only obliquely marginalized. Their races, ethnicities, class distinctions, and other markers of identity are deliberately downplayed, down to the lack of personal names. But they are all women, which is atypical of pretty much any US government agency. Two of them, the Asian biologist and the half-Indigenous psychologist, are racialized. Biology and psychology and anthropology are often dismissed as "soft sciences," in large part because too many women thrive in them. Or because they've done too good a job of reconsidering racial/cultural/ethnic equity and updating practices and personnel to suit.

"As the 12th expedition proceeds into Area X, on the surface it seems they are reenacting a thousand science fiction novels: going forth as intrepid strangers into a strange land. But for any reader who's familiar with those classic narratives, Annihilation's version feels like a setup. Our marginalized protagonists lacking the privileges and power of stalwart square-jawed white men seem doomed from pretty much the moment they enter Area X.

"So, they are the colonizees in this situation and Area X is definitely fucking with them. But as the story proceeds, it becomes clear that they are themselves fucking with that classic adventure dynamic. The psychologist has wholly focused her skills on taming her fellow adventurers, and perhaps herself. The biologist is trying to solve a mystery of identity: something unquantifiable and scientifically immeasurable, more felt than known, and deeply personal. The anthropologist has no one to study, save her fellow expedition members, and only the surveyor seems wholly focused on Area X at all. Perhaps this is why she later tries to kill the biologist. We see the irony of this setup most clearly with Control in Authority. He is the stalwart square jawed man that traditional science fiction has primed us to expect, even hope for, because he'll have the power to solve the situation, right? But Control becomes the proof that no colonizee can ever tame Area X. At best, they might manage to tame themselves.

"By the end of book one, the 12th expedition becomes the first successful one by a colonizer's rubric, in that they manage to share new understandings of Area X with those outside it and in that at least one member of the team survives with her mind and form somewhat intact. The beginning of book two seems to confirm this, as the story shifts to explore the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the Southern Reach itself. But the expedition members' choices have become the choices of the colonized. Survive or not? Internalize or not? Assimilate or not? They bring these choices to Control, who adds his own familiar, horrifying existential questions. When change seems inevitable and irreversible, can it be controlled to some degree? Can the self remain intact after the mind and body have been "Ship of Theseus"-ed into something unrecognizable?

"This is not to say that climate focused readings are irrelevant to The Southern Reach series. I mean that climate issues are also colonization issues. In that, the worst effects of climate change fall hardest upon the most marginalized. We observe the breakdown of the 12th expedition, an invasive species to this new biome, even as we observe the breakdown of recognizable life within Area X. New configurations of life emerge from this collapse of old structures. Hybridizations, commensalisms, wholesale assimilations. Even our bureaucracies, as evidenced in Authority, form a kind of natural order that can be deconstructed and readapated. Control fails to contain Area X because of another key understanding that the colonized eventually develop: you cannot fight that with which you have become complicit. The best you can do is realize what's happening and hope its not too late by the time you do. Never fear, Area X reassures. Colonization and its associated harms, terrifying and painful as they might be, are not the end—however much traditional science fiction stories might suggest otherwise. Survival is possible if one is lucky, brave, and clever, but it might require a transformation far more nuanced and complex than mere death. And this is a reassurance. Speculative fiction has historically framed colonization as a contest with winners and losers, but its never been that simple. Human beings are syncretic, some element of who and what we were will always remain in what we become. Entropy cannot be stopped but new energy can be added to the system. And those who are caught up in the transformation can claim a degree of that power for themselves. And, ultimately, syncretism means that we are carried forwards regardless, if only in part. Still better than nothing.

"As I write these words, multiple genocides are in progress. I feel no certainty for the future. Half my nation is so enthralled to it's own bigoted fantasies that I neither expect nor particularly want the United States to survive. I do not fear the singularity, sentient AI, or any technological boogeyman. I fear the confluence of greed and shortsightedness and spite that human rights and human consciouses cannot survive intact.

"But new systems emerge, inevitably. After a climate extinction or a natural disaster, ecologies adapt, new entities eventually fill old empty niches, power changes hands, and stories can be deconstructed. Even when the situation is most terrifying, least stable, there will always be those who embrace the change, and perhaps gain new strength from it. It's a bittersweet understanding, but the change is upon us. We're all in Area X, now. If we are lucky, clever, and courageous, we might still recognize ourselves when its all said and done."

-N. K. Jemisin, Authority

[rottenpumpkin13]

Out Of Context Things Director Lazard Has Seen On The SOLDIER Floor #2

• Genesis carrying around a mop, talking and laughing with it as if they're friends.

• Sephiroth doing a cartwheel mid-walk.

• Zack in the men's room, applying clown makeup while sobbing.

• Kunsel carrying a box of random items and yelling "STOLEN ITEMS FROM RUFUS SHINRA. GET YOUR STOLEN ITEMS FROM RUFUS SHINRA" and Sephiroth approaching him with a 20 gil.

• Sephiroth and Angeal fighting over a pineapple, trying to pull it from each other's hands.

• Angeal and Genesis crouched down behind the couch in the break room, eating a cheesecake away from Sephiroth.

• Zack playing chess with Dark Star, claiming "Damn it! How are you so good at this?" while actively losing.

• Sephiroth with half his hair stuck in the elevator, calmly sipping his coffee with a sign that says "this is my punishment" around his neck.

• Angeal and Sephiroth cooing over an exotic plant in a baby stroller.

• Angeal trying to coordinate a group photo of Sephiroth, Genesis, Zack and Cloud. There was a lot of screaming, arguing and "WHERE ARE WE FUCKING LOOKING?" from Genesis because Angeal had 4 different cameras set up.

• Genesis in a lab coat conducting a science experiment to see if Sephiroth feels threatened by said lab coat. Upon seeing Genesis, Sephiroth reflexively broke his knee.

• Sephiroth taking a nap in the middle of the hallway, complete with an eye mask, pillow and sound machine. People were stepping around him.

• Genesis and Angeal carrying a kayak towards the stairwell.

• Angeal carrying Genesis with a broken leg back from the stairwell 20 minutes later.

• Cloud narrating everything Sephiroth does. "Sephiroth is now opening the door to the training facility. Sephiroth has paused. Sephiroth is now looking at me confused, which could easily be confused for his thinking about lunch face."

• Zack, blowing on a whistle, instructing a squats class.

• Zack and Cloud, both blindfolded, walking with their arms linked. They ran into a revolving door. and caused a metaphorical traffic jam inside it that ended with claustrophobic Sephiroth breaking the glass to free himself.

• The following conversation that piqued Lazard's interested greatly:

Zack: Would you like a smoke?

Cloud: Of course.

*Zack pulls out a tin of smoked ham*

• Sephiroth, Genesis, Angeal and Zack holding a Séance in the middle of the day in the break room. They refused to say which entity they were communicating with.

• Sephiroth, Genesis, Angeal and Zack running out of the break room screaming 20 minutes later.

• During a blackout, when Genesis was seen carrying around a candelabra like it's the 1700s and reciting an old version of Loveless. Someone threw the candelabra out the 49th floor window 10 minutes later and told him to put a sock in it.

• Zack stuck in the vending machine, calmly eating the snacks while Angeal, Sephiroth and Genesis argue over how to get him out.

• Genesis running after a copy of Loveless on a string. Sephiroth is behind a corner pulling the string.

• Sephiroth and Genesis, in The Calm Down Box™ playing Uno, screaming at each other, defeating the purpose of The Calm Down Box™

• Angeal and Genesis dragging Sephiroth (unconscious) out of a meeting. When asked if he was okay, they responded with "we had him fake a fainting spell to get out of the meeting." Sephiroth (still "unconscious") responded with a thumbs up.

• Angeal in The Calm Down Box™ with a taser, harassing anyone who came near him with it.

• Zack and the other Seconds using a prop skeleton dressed as Genesis as a practice dummy.

• The same skeleton sitting in in Genesis' office while a recording of Genesis reciting Loveless plays on loop.

• A tonberry dressed as Sephiroth walking around, terrorizing the operatives.

• Genesis in The Calm Down Box™ playing the flute and sobbing.

• Angeal playing the guitar and singing a happy campfire song while Sephiroth and Genesis were on the ground, fist fighting.

• Genesis, Sephiroth and Angeal dressed as knights while Zack and Cloud manned a single horse costume. When asked what was happening, they replied with "It's the apocalypse, but due to inflation we could only afford three horsemen and one horse."

• Zack sitting in The Calm Down Box™ except he placed it stop a skateboard and was actively trying to escape while Angeal ran after him.

• Sephiroth, Genesis and Angeal riding around in a three-person bike. They crashed into a sliding glass door they didn't realize was closed.

• Sephiroth sitting in The Calm Down Box™ chugging a bottle of tequila.

• Sephiroth, Angeal, Genesis, Zack and Cloud playing twister. Utter chaos. Zack's ass in Angeal's face, Cloud has turned into a pretzel, Sephiroth and Genesis are literally tangled and stuck together.

[tojiscrack]

𝐇𝐈𝐆𝐇 𝐒𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐎𝐋: 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐇𝐌𝐀𝐍 𝐘𝐄𝐀𝐑

summary: 18.1k words — you and the rest of your friend group experience all the changes and activities that high school has to offer.

notes: so during the making of this chapter, i put up a poll where i left it up to my little liars (you guys) on what colour the school should be. as much as i absolutely HATED that the majority of you picked blue over red (i'm still salty about it) i'm glad 132 of you actually participated in the vote. now enjoy this monstrosity.

tw: swearing, mention of dicks, mention of suicide in a metaphor, and that's probably it lmao

i do not own any of the characters of jjk, i only own the character of y/n and her mother. the other characters belong to gege akutami.

previous chapter :)

next chapter :)

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

2017-2018 freshman year

"i don't like this."

"nobody cares, porcupine."

the two of you were currently sat in satoru's — correction: mr gojo's — office at school. it was orientation week and both you and megumi had collected your ID cards and your locker numbers. you were yet to receive your timetable for the coming year, but you were certain that they'd hand it to you some time this week, seeing as freshman year officially started in the coming week.

megumi had put up a pretty stubborn front when it came to admiring the larger corridors and the midnight blue lockers littered around the entire school (which was pretty massive, you had to note). you imagined that it would be terribly easy to get lost in, with the corridors no longer as narrow as the ones back in your middle school and with several other buildings attached to the main one in order to make room for specific departments for specific subjects. currently, you found yourself in the science department, satoru's — mr gojo's — expertise, fiddling with the new keys you'd have to take extra care of.

you'd read about jujutsu high all over the internet (and heard quite a lot about it from satoru himself). apparently, he, ieiri, and suguru attended here back in their youth. the pictures you'd seen in his camera roll, and on several polaroids, indicated that it had been a really good time ("the best time of my life," satoru would never fail to remind you). changing schools for the third time had become much easier knowing that you might experience everything that they did. it also didn't hurt that high school lasted for four long years. there were plenty of things you could do to make tons of memories in that time, especially due to the fact that yuji and nobara had both found seats in jujutsu high too.

sato— mr gojo's office was pretty decent. the walls around you were littered with several display boards showcasing a bunch of his students' work and diagrams of subcellular structures. he clearly took pride in his teaching, even if he randomly spurts out that he'd rather have their yearbook pictures up instead. apparently they had been horrendous, but a good laugh all the same. though, you'd hate to think what this man would do after you and megumi left the school. probably put up our identification pictures, you thought with a grimace.

"so," he'd said, leaning back in his spinning chair with a grin, "you nervous?"

as megumi eyed the display boards with a look of concentration you'd only seen on him when he would read the questions presented to him in an exam, you answered cheerfully.

"excited, mainly." you were seated on the chair opposite your future teacher. "but megumi was throwing a fit about it on the way here —"

"i was not," he harshly interrupted you. you did not have to look over your shoulder to tell that he was glaring at the back of your head.

sa— mr gojo paid his reaction no mind, only continued to tease him as though he hadn't spoken at all.

"i can tell! you look kinda roughed up, kid," he said, and you nearly laughed when megumi patted down his haywire hair as if it were a new thing for it to be standing on different ends. mr gojo merely flashed him a toothy smile. "i mean, that picture on your ID card —"

"that wasn't my fault," megumi snapped coldly, fiddling with his lanyard that was falling out of the pocket of his pants. "the lady kept telling me to smile."

you perked up excitedly. "but get this: he told her that is him smiling."

the picture itself was megumi being typical megumi, a bored expression that could very well be mistaken for anger. you'd never let him hear the end of it. mr gojo threw his head back and laughed.

"i'm leaving —"

"okay, okay, we're sorry!" you said hurriedly, sitting up in your chair because slouching meant that you wouldn't be able to turn and face your friend with urgency.

megumi glowered at you, but did not leave. you took that as a win as he came to stand behind you, eyes narrowed at s— mr gojo.

"i hope we get ieiri as our teacher," he grumbled, because apparently, ieiri had also taken a job here to teach.

mr gojo, looking mildly offended, simply laughed his statement off, tilting his head forward to present his weirdly-blue eyes to the two of you behind his sunglasses. you wished someone would get this man brown contacts.

"keep an eye out for your timetables, yeah?" he responded, his tone all too teasing.

you did not mind having mr gojo as a teacher, to be perfectly honest. as annoying as he could be, he was extremely laidback and matched your humour in ways many adults could not. megumi might hate him, but you supposed that it was only because you and mr gojo would team up to make fun of him, no matter the situation. there were, however, instances where you thought megumi didn't actually hate him. not really, at least. but that was a story for another time.

sitting up straight, your back to the head of the chair, you tilted your head slightly. "wait... did you do something so that we'd be the unlucky few to have you as our teacher?"

mr gojo's lips pursed. if it hadn't been for his sunglasses, you supposed that his eyes were probably wide enough to give you a shock wave and send you straight to a hospital bed.

"why would you be unlucky to have me as your teacher?" he demanded, clearly offended.

mr gojo had always put himself on this pedestal where nobody could ever find him anything but endearing. in short, he truly believed that he was above everyone and that if you have a class with him, you should be grateful, if anything.

you barely had time to respond before megumi cut in coldly:

"you'd lose your own head if it wasn't screwed on tight."

mr gojo raised a brow at him, pulling out a small mirror from his desk drawer and holding it up to take long glances at himself. "how could i ever lose such a beautiful thing?"

megumi looked as though he wanted to shatter the mirror and everything else in the room just from louring.

"you keep a mirror in your office?" you questioned, confused.

mr gojo lowered the mirror and frowned. "you don't?"

"millennials," you heard megumi sigh from behind you.

mr gojo tucked the mirror away and fiddled with the framed picture he seemed to have propped up on his desk, its back facing you. since both you and megumi had entered his office, he seemed reluctant to show it to the both of you, storing it away with a cheeky grin you felt meant trouble. even now, he seemed to be taking glances at it and chuckling to himself, as if the two of you were part of an inside joke you had no knowledge of.

with the framed picture now resting on his lap, cleanly out of your sight, he looked up at you, lazily spinning on his chair.

"are you guys taking any extra-curriculars here?" he asked, perhaps the first ever serious question he'd posed to you that day.

"no, not me," you answered truthfully. you actually hadn't even given it a slight bit of thought. "but megumi wants to take football!"

mr gojo beamed. "really?"

megumi nodded. "heard they had a good pitch and everything."

"great coach too," the white haired male added. "the old one left last year. i had to fill in for him till the new one came around. you'll like him."

in saying that, you had expected his gaze to be directed at megumi, who had shown genuine interest in the sport. however, his head had lowered ever so slightly, showing that he was looking at you instead; you, who had shown no interest in taking an extra-curricular, namely football, at all.

"were you on the football team when you were here?" asked megumi, the harsh tone he usually used with mr gojo now lowered and at ease.

mr gojo shot him a lazy grin. "nah, i did basketball."

"so why did you fill in for the football team then?"

"i'm not bad at football," he said calmly, but you already knew that seeing as the annual family football game was usually dominated by either him or toji. but for once, he didn't sound cocky about it either. "i'm really good at it, obviously. i just prefer basketball."

before either of you could respond, the door behind you opened abruptly. annoyance ran through you, swift as an arrow, for the conversation had just begun to get interesting. all three of you peered at the door, watching as a head of a blonde, stern woman popped through the gap, lips pursing at the sight of you and megumi.

"no students allowed in the teacher's lounge, mr gojo," the woman had stated icily.

you decided that whoever this karen was, you didn't like her much. she stirred up old memories of a teacher from kindergarten that you weren't too fond of, and judging by the bored look on megumi's face, you were certain that he also agreed (a rare occurrence, seeing as the two of you were usually on opposing ends of several arguments).

mr gojo didn't look too pleased at the interruption either. already slouching in his chair as it was, he barely sat up straight to respond to her.

"i'm their legal guardian," he sneered, discontent. "and this is my office."

the woman, clearly disoriented, left without another word. you let out a low whistle.

"who was that beauty?" you said, looking back at mr gojo with raised brows.

"i like to call her negative nancy," he said, before standing up and walking around his desk to gesture to the door, ushering you out. "but anyway, you should check out the football pitch! i think the new coach is out there too, it'd be good to introduce yourselves!"

you and megumi made your way over to the door, a sense of delirium washing over you. the one major thing you'd been looking forward to out of everything was the football pitch and the late night games that would take place. due to mai showing you several clips of how rowdy the games could get, you only wished that high school would come sooner in order to experience it all in real time.

as the two of you made your way down to the football pitch, passing several classrooms filled with people listening intently to an adult doing a speech, you spotted tsumiki leading a line of students down to what looked like the school library. you instinctively glanced at megumi.

"she's part of the student council," he reminded you, continuing to walk past the library and then outside the building. "she has to help out with this stuff."

"ooh, maybe i could do that too," you commented determinedly.

megumi looked down at you, monotonous.

"you have to be elected in."

"that's no big deal!"

"no one would vote for you," he said at last, continuing to walk and not stopping even though you had, stumped and stupefied.

"that's rude, porcupine!"

he ignored you, figuring that you'd follow him eventually; you did.

it wasn't long before your constant bickering had lead you to the football pitch in no time... and it was everything you'd imagined and more.

it was like any old football field, but wider, larger, bigger: surrounding the field of grass was the running track that went round in one giant oval. behind you were the seats, benches upon benches that went higher with each step in order to make space for every viewer to sit comfortably. the field itself was adorned with several white lines, each marked with expert precision, ready and prepared for any football game that would take place. on much higher ground, behind the benches, was a wide, dark blue building, with speakers attached to the left, middle, and right sides of the roof. it was also adorned with several massive windows on the front, allowing you to see that the inside also had seats. you squinted your eyes to clear your vision a bit and found that there was a microphone for each chair.

"i was hoping for the school to be red, like the one your mom wanted us to go to," you stated, eyeing the blue on the benches with disgust. 

"i like blue," megumi countered calmly. 

you scowled at him. "no, red is better. who the hell made the decision to decorate it all blue?"

megumi stared off into the distance, breaking the fourth wall and peering at the people who were left the responsibility to make the choice, deadpanned.

until you broke the silence, tugging on the arm of his shirt to grab his attention.

"am i seeing things or is there someone standing over there?" you asked quietly, pointing at the figure standing in the middle of the field, unmoving. 

you and megumi were on the pink track, therefore the distance between the two of you and the mysterious person in the centre of the field was great. you wouldn't be at fault for making a mistake with your presumption.

 "probably the new coach," your stoic friend responded, simultaneously leering at the person. 

upon further inspection, it looked to be a pretty tall man, perhaps tall enough to be at even satoru's height (and satoru was pretty damn tall, which he never let anyone forget).

"let's go," said megumi, turning away to leave the pitch.

you hadn't moved, blinking at him in confusion. 

"you don't want to introduce yourself?" you questioned, addled.

megumi shook his head; you sighed exaggeratedly and pulled him in by his arm. surprisingly, you didn't need to put any extra effort in doing so: megumi put up no fight when you dragged him along.

"don't be so shy, porcupine," you said, your tone teasing because you knew pretty well that he wouldn't like it one bit. hell would freeze over before you ever neglected a single day of annoying him till he snapped. "the emo in you is showing."

"i'll hit you."

"you wouldn't," you sang, and weren't surprised when he didn't argue with you on that. "now c'mon, malakai —"

"you're really testing my patience, mermaid —"

but you'd found no time to start a brawl with him (as you usually would) at his cruel comment. instead, you stopped dead in your tracks, your arms still wrapped around one of megumi's against your torso, but your eyes were no longer focused on him. instead, you were ogling at something in front of you, namely the peculiar being that the two of you had questioned only a few minutes prior. 

you felt megumi's free hand poke at your cheek.

"what's wrong with you—"

"MASAMICHI?" you yelled, uncaring of the fact that your emo friend had flinched at the sudden volume of your voice. 

initially, megumi had thought your cry of the name of your former p.e teacher from middle school was a mistake. after all, there were numerous times in the long years that he'd known you where you were wrong, whether it be in an argument, a factual comment, or even your opinion on something (he held no regard for the fact that an opinion can't actually be wrong, but you were always an exception for him). however, when the figure at the centre of the field became stiff with your call, he had a pressing feeling that today must've been the night of the blue moon or something: you were actually right.

"MASAMICHI YAGA!" you repeated, louder and with less questioning in your voice. 

megumi's arm had become loose in your hold, he slowly took it back, grateful for the distraction. you didn't mind.

the man had finally turned around as you hurriedly dived forward, more excitement in you at the idea that your favourite former teacher (no matter how many times he'd yelled at you) had followed you here! you had to be dreaming, there was no way this was happening.

coach yaga's appearance had changed over the years since you'd first met him. he was still as tall as ever with a muscular frame and tanned skin. though what stuck out to you the most was his hair. where it used to lie flat on his head, barely any to run his hands through, now he was sporting some that were flying up on different ends, short yet spiky. the rest of his head had remained shaved.

the final thing, along with his frame, moustache and goatee combination that had remained the same, was the tired, annoyed, and exasperated expression on his face, as if simply being in your presence was a chore.

"megumi, pinch me," you said once you'd arrived in front of your former teacher, staring up at him in awe.

"gladly," your friend had responded.

from the corner of your eye, you could see his hand flying towards yours — you slapped it away without a second thought or a single glance. 

"of all the high schools you could've gone to," coach yaga sighed, staring down at you as if you were the bane of his existence (you might as well have been), "it's the one i happened to join this year."

"right?" you perked up, thrilled. "isn't that great?"

megumi thought he looked anything but thrilled. he seemed to be questioning his choice in partaking in that long process of application forms and interviews for the job here, clearly. and when megumi caught a glimpse of you, practically buzzing with excitement, it was as if all the memories of your troublesome nature had come flooding back to him in one go. he thought he understood what coach yaga was so distraught about. he thinks he might have even experienced it once or twice.

coach yaga seemed to have come to terms with it, for he let out a long, drawn out sigh and then turned to face megumi with a critical look.

"you been practicing over the summer, fushiguro?" he said, voice gruff and stern. "you once said you wanted to take football properly in high school. you haven't changed your mind, have you?"

"no."

coach yaga regarded him stoically. 

"don't bother turning up to try-outs," he'd said after a few seconds of merely nodding. "you're on the team."

you felt megumi stiffen up beside you, so when you looked up at him, gauging out his expression, you were concerned to see that he'd completely frozen, and not even with a half-smile curling at his lips whenever he was secretly happy about something. megumi's face was morphed into an expression of distress, you might even say that it bordered annoyance. 

you couldn't help but question why: he'd been given a free position on the football team without even having to (as a theatre kid would see it) audition for the part. 

unless he was being righteous again, which always managed to irk you to a certain degree. uncle ogi called him foolish because of it, yet his mother had called him an angel. 

"favouritism!" you accused, pointing at him in shock. "masamichi is doing favouritism!"

"if you don't lower your voice, girl —" your former teacher threatened, raising a fist at you, though you knew it was a completely empty threat.

ah, this was the teacher you remembered. 

"...and it's coach yaga to you, for the millionth time." 

"sorry, but i can't accept that," megumi had intervened (though that probably was not the right word for it, seeing as the topic was centred around him to begin with).

both your heads had turned to face him. it was, perhaps, the first time that you and coach yaga could see eye-to-eye on something: you weren't happy with megumi's refusal to the offer. you couldn't understand it. 

megumi was incredibly good at football. in fact, you had so much faith in him, you were certain that even if he did take part in try-outs, he'd get in without question. you had no doubt about it. so why, you thought in your head, ready to voice it if need be, did he have to go on this whole righteous tangent if the offer could save time for both him and coach yaga?

"what the hell do you mean by that?" snapped coach yaga. "you were on my team last year, different school, but my team nonetheless. you've got a talent, i don't need to see it again to decide. you're on the team, that's final."

"you can decide after i turn up to try-outs," said megumi, clearly unmoving on his view. "it's only fair."

"fair?" sputtered coach yaga, as if he hadn't heard of the word in his entire life. you couldn't blame him, simmering in silence as you watched the interaction between them with irritation. "life's not fair, boy! you're on the team. i saw the line-up for the team last year: inumaki's on it, so you'll have a familiar face to work with."

"that doesn't matter," megumi stubbornly continued. "yuji's coming here too."

"well you can tell him he's on the team too, then," said coach yaga, also stubborn. 

megumi glowered at him. "i'm not doing that —"

"then i will!" you added, pulling out your phone from the pocket of your jeans and hurriedly opening up your texts with yuji. 

you could feel two holes being burned into your left cheek where megumi was glaring daggers at you, but you didn't care. you were happy for him and yuji. it was a moment to be proud of. the two were so good at the sport, that coach yaga felt the need to eliminate them from even trying out for the team, insisting that they were that talented. this, if anything, was something to celebrate. you knew that megumi would probably hold a grudge against coach yaga for the rest of his miserable life, but you were also aware of the fact that your grumpy teacher just simply would not care. so long as he has a winning team in his hands, he could not care less. that, you were grateful for.

in the end, like you had expected, megumi gave in (though not without a word; it was routine for him to complain about something) albeit reluctantly. later that day, when you met up with yuji and nobara, your pink haired friend had been as ecstatic as you, only to feel guilty at the look on megumi's face. one righteous grump was enough, how had he influenced yuji to be the same (minus the being-grumpy part)?

as the week continued to roll on — and you began to question when it was that they'd finally hand you your timetables — all four of you had found yourselves sitting around a table at the school, your first official day as a high schooler, excited...

only to deflate the second you examined megumi's sheet, eyes darting left and right, up and down, just to go on repeat.

"megumi!" you gasped, feeling more disappointed than angry.

the only classes that you shared with megumi, out of the nine that you were in, were chemistry, biology, and math. you didn't even share the same homeroom, and aside from the three mentioned, the only time you would be able to see him again would be during study-hall and lunch, all of which were not nearly long enough to compensate for the time lost with each other.

eyes bulging out of their sockets, when you'd darted them to ogle at your dear friend, you thought he seemed to be thinking the same thing. megumi never usually smiled, so it wasn't a shock when his lips pressed themselves into a thin line, but you could differentiate each and every one of his expressions as if they were your own, and megumi (though he'd never admit it) was not pleased with the arrangement of each of your timetables. 

at all.

"this is all your fault," you said, shaking his timetable aggressively. he snatched it out of your hands with a look of irritation. you let him. "what did you have to go and pick business for?"

he glowered at you. "can you imagine me on stage doing performing arts?"

"of course i can!" you snapped, waving a hand dismissively. "i literally edited you on a stage once, don't you remember —"

"you did?" yuji perked up, to megumi's annoyance. "show it to us!"

"yeah, let's see!" added nobara, extending her arm across the table and making a 'hand it over' motion.

"let's not see," megumi interrupted icily, slapping nobara's hand away with enough force, the sound reverberated around the hall; nobara hadn't taken that lightly either, kicking him under the table with an expression of pain and vexation.

you ignored them all, staring down at his timetable, which you'd swiftly swiped off the table again, with confusion. how was it possible that you only shared three classes with him? it seemed that these classes were based off of the end of year exams from middle school, and megumi was at the top of the class for everything, to no one's surprise. but so were you, except for math. last year, the only reason you passed with flying colours was because of megumi, because even though he'd made rude and judgemental comments when tutoring you, he actually happened to be a very good teacher.

the thought did not compute to you. when you'd compared your timetables with yuji and nobara's, you'd been over the moon at the fact that you shared several classes with them, whether it be individually or as a group. it wasn't mentioned enough (mainly because you were quite careless about it) but you had done just as well as megumi in the exams for every other subject, so why were you in only three classes with him?

clearly you'd committed a terrible crime in your past life to be punished with such a sentence. who else will blame megumi for the funny writing on the board the second everyone enters the class? who, other than you, will frame him for the aeroplanes thrown at that one kid you despised for being so cruel for no apparent reason? who, but you, will provoke him enough to start a dictionary fight from two opposite ends of the classroom simply because his angry face was belly-ache-laughter inducing?

from the looks of it, it seemed that you'd have to pass the torch on to yuji. you did always think he would be your replacement... ever since you first met the annoyance.

"this isn't fair," you sighed.

megumi agreed, shaking his head, monotoned and bored. "yeah it's just not fair."

"anyway, megumi might physically abuse me if i show it to you guys right now," you said, changing the subject begrudgingly, only to smile just as soon as a lightbulb flicked on over your head. "but satoru has a ton of pictures of him from our christmas play back in elementary school!"

you did not have to glance at megumi to know that he was scowling (what was new?). yuji beamed at your statement, eyes sparkling with curiosity that was certainly not mild enough to restrain him from demanding that you send every single one of those images to him.

"did you play baby jesus?" he asked loudly, smiling from ear-to-ear as he awaited megumi's response.

"you're intellectually challenged," your dark haired friend snapped, visibly irked at the way you and nobara laughed at the thought of little megumi, ever the grumpy one, playing baby jesus. "how the hell would anyone play a new born?"

"just... wrap them in a towel or something," yuji suggested, though he sounded less passionate now that megumi had set the record straight. if it wasn't yuji, you might have actually felt bad. 

"so what did you play then?" nobara swiftly questioned. "the shepherds?"

"maybe he played the livestock!" yuji perked up excitedly, turning to you for confirmation. he seemd to have effectively recovered from the disheartening moment of being told he wasn't very clever. "he's always loved animals, right?"

megumi let out an exhale of disbelief. "the hell makes you think i wanted to be one?"

"wouldn't put it past you," scoffed nobara. "didn't you try and stay at the zoo when your family went to visit, like, a decade ago?"

surprised at the prospect of megumi's head remaining in tact with his neck due to how fast he'd snapped it round to face you in apparent annoyance, you did not meet his gaze, resting your chin on your hands held up by the table, still examining his timetable that you hadn't returned.

"why'd you tell her?" he questioned, when it became crystal clear that you had no intention of voicing the elephant in the room. 

"it was supposed to be a secret?" you replied, looking up at him with faux innocence. but megumi knew you, and he knew you very well; well enough to tell that you had done this on purpose. if there was one thing you were an expert in, it was trying your absolute best in annoying, shaming, and angering megumi fushiguro. 

and he hated it.

how it worked, mostly, but he hated it all the same.

"uncle ogi said we couldn't tell anyone," he reminded you, firm and very visibly offended. 

you grinned at him. "what, because of the reputation of the zenin family?" you continued before he could answer. "well guess what, porcupine? i'm not a zenin."

"and neither am i," he stated, the frown on his face deepening with each passing second.

"by name, maybe not. you're literally toji's son —"

"i would've found out anyway," nobara intervened confidently. she twirled a piece of her short hair around her finger mindlessly. "you ended up on national television —"

"national television?" yuji repeated, his voice raising several octaves. you expected him to look a bit more impressed, but your pink-haired friend merely pouted at the three of you. "why am i being segregated? what happened on national tv?"

that particular day had been very hectic. a visit to the zoo with the rest of the family (along with suguru and his two girls, mimiko and nanako), was meant to be how any other family would act, admiring the animals and walking in sync with one another... only for it to turn into absolute chaos when little megumi had ended up in the gorilla enclosure and decided that he wanted to live there.

you never let him live that one down.

"megumi became one with the gorillas —"

"did you tell them about your interest in the aquarium?" he cut through your statement coldly.

your eyes widened, gawking at him in something in between disbelief and complete annoyance. if there was one thing megumi knew embarrassed you (and you don't tend to get embarrassed by much) it was the mermaid lie you'd made years ago. 

"i was interested in the sharks," you explained, growing more and more agitated with the way megumi's face became more and more dismissive, as if you were lying. "they were scary but i liked it —"

"makes sense," he interrupted again, "they're a danger to your species."

you could see yuji laughing; the knife lodged itself deep in your heart. you could see nobara holding hers in; you felt the knife twist in its place.

the irritating part of it all was the fact that your dark-haired, cruel friend deserved credit for that one. it was good, and if it hadn't been directed at you, you might have even voiced how impressed you were.

"okay i'll give you that one," you said, turning away with your nose in the air. "it was good, you got me there. but only this time, porcupine."

you hoped and prayed that yuji and nobara would forget this moment: it happened to be the only time your constant teasing came back to bite you right in the ass. you wondered to yourself how many times the four of you could sit like this together, pester megumi because it happened to be something you, yuji and nobara all had in common, a habit you did not believe would ever break for as long as you lived on this great, green earth. from the looks of your timetables, there weren't many classes where the four of you would be in altogether, only a the three that had been previously mentioned: chemistry with ieiri (who you'll now have to refer to as miss shoko), biology with satoru (who you'll now have to refer to as mr gojo) and one of the teachers you'd never met here, math, with mr kento nanami. 

he sounded strict. 

you didn't like strict.

but you also could have sworn that the name sounded familiar. 

you happened to be correct, and you'd found that out in one of your first lessons with mr kento nanami:

he was a tall man, with blonde hair that had been styled in a neat side part. his cheeks were hollow, making the cheekbones on his face seem more prominent and emphasised. he didn't smile, not even during the first lesson, which had mainly been an introduction, and he spoke very formally, like a business man. you had learned that the business attire (the suit, tie, formal pants and pointy shoes) had not been a one-off dress code for him. after attending several of his  lessons, getting to know him better, you'd found that this was an everyday fit for him. 

that tie was a bit weird though, and mr nanami was anything but weird.

so you'd been correct in assuming that his name sounded familiar. he was just a year younger than satoru, suguru and ieiri, a mutual friend (though he did seem adamant that satoru and him were most definitely not friends, no matter how many times the white-haired beanstalk declared that they were). 

mr kento nanami was a funny man, you'd decided. strict, firm, and constantly exasperated, but funny nonetheless. without even trying, that is. you liked his lessons very much. the one thing that you didn't like, however, was the learning part of it — math was not your strong suit. that had been established years ago when you first started learning it, but it only became more emphasised in his classes.

"i can't do it," you declared out loud, using an eraser to erase yet another one of your miscalculations. "this is too hard —"

"you can do it," said kento nanami, who had made you sit right across from his desk because you seemed to need the most help out of everyone in the class. it turned out, this very class had been one of the top sets. it was a miracle you'd been placed there, let alone managed to stay there. though, arguably, you had been moved down several times, only for you to fail even more because apparently, only kento nanami's teachings stuck in your head, even if it was a struggle.

"i can't," you sighed, rubbing your temples, feeling a headache starting to form. whoever created math was going to wish they hadn't. "i'm going to die —"

kento nanami pinched the bridge of his nose: he didn't like it when you became dramatic.

"you're not going to —"

"yes i am." 

"you cannot expect to do even remotely well with that attitude," he said, completely disregarding your dramatic comment. "the last exam you completed —"

you grimaced. "don't remind me! even yuji did better than me... and he never studies!"

"i do study!" the pink-haired idiot lied from somewhere behind you. 

you knew he never studied. in fact, one time, when you spent most of the day at nobara's, her grandmother had forced you to sit and work through multiple equations, meanwhile yuji spent the day teaching football to the neighbours' kids. you knew — you watched him enjoy himself through the window.

"you can't believe him kento, he's lying to you to impress you —"

"i have half a mind to believe him simply out of spite," kento firmly told you, and there was a tick in his jaw. "for the millionth time, y/n, you will refer to me as mr nanami."

there was a habit that you'd adopted, which applied to teachers you really liked, but not limited to teachers you really hated. it was something that had always existed, calling teachers by their first names rather than their last names, if only to show them that they were your friends (or you simply had no respect for them if they were seen as your foe). masamichi, kento, satoru, ieiri, are candidates you liked very much. other teachers... not so much.

"mr kento nanami —"

"mr nanami," he repeated, stoic and stubborn. "as i was saying, the last exam you completed was notably better than the one prior. that shows improvement."

you stared at him, deadpanned. "i was only two points higher."

"any improvement is improvement."

you never considered yourself a pessimist. in fact, you always looked at the brighter side of things when no one else would. but with math, it almost felt like you would become a whole different person, and the last person you wanted to be like was emo, depressed, careless megumi. the thought sent a shiver down your spine.

"this is too hard," you sighed, placing your pencil down on the table with a look of defeat. "just bury me already —"

kento gave you a long and hard look, his expression stern and brows furrowed to the point where a deep line had been formed between them. he looked at you... perhaps not at you, maybe something or someone behind you, as his eyes fell over your shoulder meeting someone else's.

you would soon find out that it had been megumi. 

as if they'd created their own form of communication through the eyes itself, you found yourself sitting by megumi's desk now, his judgemental and critical look only serving to offend you.

"i'm helping you —"

"you literally called me dumb," you scoffed, brow raised in scepticism. 

megumi's eyes grew half-lidded, apparently bored with your accusation. "no i never."

"yes you did," you said firmly. "you said i'm as 'sharp as a marble'." 

the offender simply raised his own brow at you in apparent confusion, as if to say 'and?'. 

"marbles aren't sharp!" you snapped angrily, taking everyone around you by surprise at the sudden volume of your voice.

megumi ran a hand through his hair, dragged it down his face, and let out a small groan, muffled so as to not distract the rest of the class any further. he did not seem impressed, but you didn't care. the audacity he had to call you dumb when his teaching was clearly not working spoke volumes for you. 

you leaned back in your chair, arms folded over your chest, reluctantly sliding your completed work across from you and over to him. 

"mark my work," you demanded, with every intent to make it sound as bossy as you could.

he glared at you, but did not oppose, picking his pen up and going through the questions with you with a look of deep concentration. at times, he would scratch the back of his neck, rub his brow, grasp his chin, shake his head, and you had no idea what any of those actions meant (probably that you got every question wrong, again). 

only for you to be completely stumped when he looked up and met your eyes once more, no longer sporting the look of exhaustion, but one of pride. 

at least, you thought it was pride. all of megumi's expressions tended to be the same: his mouth a straight line, his eyes half-lidded, his brows unmoving, etc. though with time, you had managed to dissect each and every one and figure out whether he was happy, or sad, or angry, and so on. right now, you thought he looked impressed. you knew for sure that he didn't seem annoyed with you — that was usually his default, too!

cautiously and gradually, you leaned over and pulled the sheet towards yourself, eyes darting up and down before finding the final mark:

7/10 - good.

beaming, you met his eyes with a toothy smile, brows raised in pleasant shock.

"i'm so smart!" you declared, confidently and immensely proud.

he let out a long exhale through his nose. "why did you have to go and ruin it?"

you ignored him, snatching the paper and rushing over to kento's desk, taking enough care to slide in between the discarded chairs and tables people are sitting at, and swiping yuji's pencil case off the table just for the fun of it. at his wail of despair, you merely responded with a quiet 'oops' knowing quite well that your actions had been very much intentional. 

you did nearly slip on one of the stray pencils that had rolled out of his discarded pencil case, to your doom, but politely flipped yuji off when he laughed 'karma'. 

by the desk, on kento's chair, sat a baffled nobara, her eyes drooping and her soft, short hair dishevelled through, no doubt, constantly running her hands through it in obvious exhaustion. like you, math was not her strong spot. also like you, she looked ready to absolutely throttle whoever decided to add letters to numbers and make it part of the compulsory curriculum. 

kento himself stood opposite her, bent forward and holding himself up with his hands on the desk, pointing at the numerous equations on her own paper, and giving her extra guidance and clarification on them.

"do you understand it now?" your teacher asked her, looking down, sombre yet patient.

her hands were hidden somewhere beneath her hair, holding her head up as she stared grimly down at her own messy work, slowly nodding.

"yeah... but i'm going to torture, and murder, and torture —"

"— the guy that created math," kento finished off, looking slightly tense as he stood up to his full height, straightening himself seriously, "i've heard it, nobara." he looked over his shoulder and noticed you standing excitedly behind him. "what's wrong, y/n —"

"i get it now!" you informed him honestly, though you could tell the enthusiasm in your voice simply encouraged kento to feel more suspicion than anything else. "i got everything right!"

the small gasp of envy from nobara did not go unnoticed by you; kento tilted his chin downwards to take a better look at your paper, held up proudly by yourself. his narrowed eyes darted left and right, examining each question, each neat tick megumi had left behind, and finally reached the bottom of the page where your impressive score had been written in a bold red. 

kento nodded at you. 

"seven out of ten," he quoted, almost like a machine. "that's more than fifty percent."

"please, ken— i mean mr nanami —" you added when you'd caught sight of the pursing of his lips, "no more numbers. i've retired from being the genius i was just two minutes ago. i got everything right!"

"seven out of ten," kento repeated, voice gruff. "definitely an achievement, but not one hundred perce—"

"i'm still a genius," you interrupted, apparently choosing to select which parts of his statement you truly wanted to hear. "megumi said so —"

"no i never," your traitor of a friend had intervened from somewhere behind you. 

you regarded him, boot-faced and unimpressed. he was sitting next to yuji now, finishing off his own work. but apparently, your little white lie was enough to break him out of this cycle of work, work, and more work. 

"stop lying," he gracefully added.

you felt your eye twitch in indignation, turning around to face kento and plastering on a smile to mask your obvious discontent.

"he's the one lying," you whispered, though that did not stop kento from believing him over you. it became a habit over time, you'd noticed. you were still trying to figure out a way to break it.

"be more humble," grumbled nobara, still slouching on kento's chair with a permanent scowl painted over her face. "some of us are being beaten black and blue with all of this."

"i can teach you!" you offered, relishing in the smile that nobara's face had formed, extending to her eyes where the spark that usually lay there had been re-lighted. 

giddy, you skipped around kento and his desk to reach nobara on the other side, ignoring his weak protests about how he wasn't sure that you were absolutely confident in your skills at the particular topic. you and nobara were in your own world, sitting on the thin arm of his spinning chair, one half of your body slumped against her side and the other hovering above her as you guided her on the questions.

it was later found that kento had been correct. helping nobara only served to take away the knowledge that your teacher had already tirelessly given her. you walked away in shame after that, completely unaware of the fact that half of the method you'd used to solve the equations out were actually correct...

and not just over fifty percent, but one hundred percent. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

due to a series of upcoming exams, you and the rest of your little group had spent majority of your break times at study hall, looking over a bunch of your notes from social studies, to performing arts, to biology, chemistry, physics. however, the only one you had to truly focus on was math.

you slumped over your textbook, your expression a mix of frustration and defeat as you stared at the seemingly indecipherable equations before you. to you, math was a labyrinth of confusion, a tangled web of numbers and symbols that ensnared your mind with its complexity. each problem felt like a battle, with your thoughts colliding like opposing armies on a chaotic battlefield. the numbers mocked you, dancing tauntingly on the page as if daring you to unravel their secrets. it was as if you were trying to navigate through a dense fog, each step forwards only leading to a hundred steps backwards. math, to you, was a relentless adversary, an insurmountable mountain that you could never hope to conquer. 

your gaze flickered over to yuji, who seemed to effortlessly breeze through the math problems with a nonchalant ease that left you envious. he was like a graceful dancer, effortlessly gliding across the stage of equations while you stumbled clumsily in the wings. each correct answer he produced felt like a dagger to your pride, a reminder of your own inadequacy in the face of his natural talent. it was as if he had been born with a mathematical compass embedded in his mind, guiding him effortlessly through the labyrinth of numbers and formulas. you couldn't help but feel like a mere spectator in the shadow of his brilliance, your own struggles magnified in comparison to his effortless mastery.

what pissed you off more was the fact that this was yuji. 

yuji.

he barely studied (no matter what lies he fed to kento, your sensible math teacher). you could pass him a math paper without a warning and he would bring it back to you without a single strand of grey in the field of pink on his head. 

so, naturally, whilst megumi tutored an ever-growing depressed nobara, you asked yuji to help you...

you wished you hadn't made fun of megumi's hair that morning, that way, mustering up your courage to ask him for help instead probably would have been easier.

"so first," yuji began slowly, carefully writing out the numbers over your blank sheet. and then it was as if your life went by in two times speed. "you do that, and then that, and then that."

you took a careful glance at megumi's watch. your life hadn't zoomed by that fast: yuji was just a terrible tutor.

he dropped the pencil in front of you, letting it roll right next to where your hand lay, sitting back on his seat with a happy smile on his face, as if he'd actually accomplished something.

you felt your eye twitch.

"how about i show you how i do this, and then this, and then this!" you said, each emphasised word paired with a harsh smack on yuji's head with a rolled up booklet you snatched off the table. you did not know who it belonged to, probably megumi, but you did not care.

"okay okay okay! — ow! — okay, woman!"

"is that my business booklet?" megumi icily interrupted, eyes narrowed, following each and every movement of your hand that waved it around.

you shot him a glance, mild fury smouldering in your eyes.

"no..."

megumi fixed his gaze on you, his face a mask of calm that barely hinted at the storm brewing in his head. his eyes were like twin daggers, piercing through your facade with chilling precision. a muscle in his jaw twitched slightly, the only betrayal of his controlled exterior. 

"it has my name in bold," he informed you, bored.

"okay..." you said, peering down at the booklet in your hands with a masked expression. "you can have it back if you teach me how to do algebra?"

megumi's mouth set itself in a firm line, conveying a silent but unmistakable challenge. though his expression remained stoic, the intensity of his gaze was like a glacier, cold and unyielding, and also a bit tired, as though he'd expected nothing less from you. with a grin, you knew what it meant: you won.

before you could carry out your plan to throw yuji off his seat and reach megumi and nobara, an external voice jolted you out of your intense focus.

the four of you looked up, distracted: it was noritoshi kamo accompanied by chad montgomery, both of whom were part of the school's official football team alongside yuji and megumi. noritoshi (who preferred to simply go by kamo) had dark, straight hair that stopped a little further down his chin whereas chad was rather big, tall, and blonde, with a friendly face to match. it was a running joke that chad was very unlike the typical chads you'd see on tv. he was kinder, friendlier, yet still rather well-known.

"nice catch at gym today, y/n," kamo had said, barely smiling. you thought he had some sort of face freeze like megumi.

"thank you!" you beamed, turning to your friends as the two boys casually walked off. "see? people do appreciate the effort i put in at sports."

"you and nobara weren't meant to be in our class to begin with," said megumi, sliding a worksheet in your direction. you accepted it gratefully, though your attention was hardly on the paper.

"touche," nobara muttered into her own hand, her other scribbling over the doodles she'd drawn around her paper. "our class is boring."

"huh? i thought you liked coach lauren?" said yuji, visibly surprised.

you tapped the back of your pen on your worksheet impatiently. 

"we do! but it's not as fun when she doesn't care about us not participating," you told him thoughtfully. "but when it's coach yaga —"

megumi scowled. "he lost his voice because of the two of you."

you mirrored his scowl. "hey, we didn't tell him to yell and chase us across the field, did we?" 

"and he wouldn't have even noticed us if you hadn't ratted us out, snitch," nobara helpfully added, levelling an accusatory look at megumi while pointing the end of her pen at him.

megumi regarded you and nobara with a blank, almost bored expression. his mouth remained a straight line, devoid of any hint of emotion, as if he were staring at an unremarkable, distant horizon. the only movement was the slow blink of his eyelids, which seemed to convey a sense of enduring your antics with the patience of a stone statue.

"you guys were standing at the back and laughing at everyone," he stated.

"wrong," you hummed. "we were laughing at you."

yuji's laughter erupted, nearly causing him to topple from his chair as he doubled over, resting against the table. his whole body shook with mirth, his laughter filling the room with its infectious energy. 

nobara sliced through it with unbridled ease.

"we were laughing at you too, you clown," she said, narrowing her eyes at him. "you and that todo guy being in your own little word —"

"it's not my fault!" said yuji, defensive. "he keeps following me, even when i go to megumi! he keeps saying we're brothers — i don't even know him!"

"i can't imagine you with a brother anyway," you said, barely registering yuji's alarm and stress, but it had completely disappeared at your comment, now masked over with an expression of pure confusion.

"but i do have a brother," he'd said, resulting in all three of you to look up at him with raised brows, parted mouths and narrowed eyes.

"huh?" nobara voiced, aggressive. "what do you mean? you never told us you —"

"i did!" he interrupted, eyes darting from megumi to you to nobara and then back again. "my half brother!"

"half brother?" you repeated, outraged. 

you spent the next few seconds thinking deep and hard as nobara verbally assaulted him for causing the three of you such distress with such a lie, racking your brain for a time where yuji had voiced to you that he had a half brother, something that you'd been blissfully unaware of for the last four years you had known him. 

"what's his name?" megumi asked, intervening loudly so that yuji would hear him over nobara's attacks.

"choso," said yuji, as though it were the most obvious and easiest thing to remember. "i told you guys!"

"so every time we watched movies at your place, how come it was only ever gramps and your parents?" you asked, notably surprised. 

on the days you'd sleep over at yuji's, you'd see mr and mrs itadori, both of whom insisted you'd call them kaori and jin, as their day shifts at their respective work places would end. never once did you see another being, another male by the name choso.

"he's much older than us, so he's already got his own place to live in," yuji explained, which, as much as you hated to admit it, made sense.

the initial shock of finding out that yuji had a half brother by the name choso had worn out after the next few minutes had been spent looking at different pictures of him and his odd family. they looked nothing alike, with choso sporting dark hair styled in odd pigtails and a more mature face and yuji having pink hair (you still insisted that it wasn't natural) and a more friendly, soft face. they didn't even have the same eye colour or remotely similar features.

somehow, the conversation had spun back to yuji's alleged brother, todo:

"maki told me that when he gets to senior year, he's planning on doing it twice," said nobara, glancing between a panicked-yuji and an exasperated-megumi for confirmation.

you nodded in agreement. "yeah, toge said the same thing."

nobara grinned at yuji. "looks like you'll be dealing with him for as long as we stay here."

yuji looked like he could be physically ill.

the rest of the day had gone by with yuji making multiple attempts to persuade the three of you that him and todo were most definitely not related by any means, and he only grew more and more panicked and alarmed when nobara would make sly comments about how todo would replace megumi as yuji's best friend and run off into the distance together, to which megumi pretended not to care (but you practically spoke in megumi-facial-expressions, and could tell that he very much did).

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

satoru's classroom was significantly larger than any of the other classes in the school. you noticed this the second you'd entered it back in september. he said it was because of the fact that he's a science teacher and therefore needs a larger room for laboratory experiments and so on, but you knew it was a lie. why did ieiri, who was also a science teacher, have a classroom slightly smaller than his? 

you ran the thought in your head multiple times, before ultimately deciding that he had probably thrown a fit over it and bribed his way up that ladder. it helped that he was also filthy rich, not that anyone else needed to know that.

there were three lab tables in his room, his desk on the left of the whiteboard and projector, and the door on the right. windows surrounded two of the four walls in the room, brightening it up so much so that on the days that you were plagued with headaches, satoru's classes became dreadful (which was saying a lot, seeing as you and several others thoroughly enjoyed his lessons).

you, megumi, yuji and nobara sat on the table in the far left, closest to satoru's desk. there wasn't necessarily a seating plan, but the one time you and nobara sat on the table furthest from his desk, he did act pretty prissy about it the entire day. 

"reproduction!" he said, a little too enthusiastically though knowing him, he most likely meant to. adjusting the circular glasses on his nose, he gestured to the board where a presentation of said-topic demanded each and every viewer's attention. no other topic within the subject of biology ever had this many balloon stickers or confetti gifs. "my favourite topic!"

"fuck's sake," you heard megumi mutter under his breath from across yuji, who was sitting nervously on your right.

the other boys in your class, sitting around the table in the middle and the table on the far right seemed to be getting a little too excited, in your humble opinion: sitting up straighter with ugly grins forming on their ugly faces, looking around and making cheeky eye contact with one another. 

"i know a lot about that," you heard tyler jenson announce, his too-happy face only serving to irk you in ways even megumi could not. but whilst you sat there with a sour expression forming second by second, nobara (seated next to megumi) turned around and voiced your thoughts.

"and yet you've never been touched by a woman."

the classroom was then filled with muffled laughter as many hid the lower halves of their faces behind their hands, giggling and chuckling as tyler's face became more compatible to the colour of a cherry rather than the colour of the skin on his hands and arms. nobara turned back around with her lips in a straight, thin line, shaking her head due to some of the hair that had fallen over her eyes. 

"mr gojo," one of tyler's minion-friends spoke up, very clearly offended. it became quite clear that tyler would not speak for himself from here on out. "aren't you going to — like — say something about that..?"

satoru raised a brow, the smile he usually adorned with pearly-white teeth non-existent, almost as if it were never there. 

"no," he said, hands resting in the pockets of his pants, "because she just demolished you."

he went back to teaching as though nothing had happened. 

the rest of the lesson had gone by quite well. few of tyler's minion friends had gotten the message and remained silent for the remainder of the hour, chalking it up to 'favouritism', though everyone knew otherwise. as many odd jokes that satoru had made, he did eventually teach the curriculum, even when the comments from tyler's other foolish friends had irked everyone by opening their mouths:

"okay," nodded satoru, visibly tense as he stood up and slammed his entire hand against the whiteboard so suddenly, with such aggression, the projector wobbled. "listen here! reproduction? sex? it's bad. who can tell me why?"

you looked around. everyone seemed just as startled as you. as fun as satoru's classes were, when he pulled random shit like this, you were more inclined to feel scared than enraptured. but it wasn't a class lead by satoru gojo unless satoru gojo became melodramatic at some point during it. 

"no one?" he continued, head turning left and right. "megumi?"

"leave me alone."

satoru promptly turned to your other friend instead. "yuji!"

"er... because... it distracts you from school work?" yuji guessed, scratching the back of his ear, a random habit you realised he'd picked up over the last few months. 

satoru nodded slowly. 

"warmer..." he'd said; yuji beamed. "nobara!"

"because men don't perform —"

"no, but i should've seen that comin'," your teacher interrupted mindlessly, the smile unwavering as he turned his gaze to you. although, it was hard to tell for certain, for the silly sunglasses he wore indoors concealed his eyes. "y/n!"

"it's a sin —"

"why on earth did i ask you to begin with?" he said, turning away and shaking his head. "okay, note this down, all of you. you can die if you have sex, yeah?"

clement roy, who was seated by the middle table (also one of the smartest in the class) spoke up with a frown:

"no you can't. having intercourse isn't dangerous."

satoru did not seem impressed. he stared at clement roy with the expression a child would give to their parent over rejection of candy before dinner. 

"all right smarty-pants, want to explain to the class what'll happen when you get chlamydia?" hedemanded, visibly nettled. before clement could even think of a response, the drama queen had already pressed on. "you'll die. you'll suffer in silence because you won't want to communicate to another responsible human being about how you were being irresponsible and then die because chlamydia got you."

you could drop a pin on the floor and the sound would echo around the room and bounce off of the walls with how eerily quiet it had gotten. had it not been broad daylight, you were certain the croaking of crickets would be the only thing perceived in this awkward silence. 

"don't just stare at me, write it down!"

barely fifteen minutes later, satoru had gone back to behaving more positively playful than negatively dramatic. 

at some point in the lesson, he'd handed out worksheets for everyone to go through and complete, filled with a series of questions based on what he managed to teach for the last thirty to forty minutes. the questions hadn't been too hard; you whizzed through them in no time. to check your answers, you stretched your body over the table and snatched megumi's paper without warning, sitting back down comfortably and ignoring his demands of handing it back.

"give it," he'd said, but the look on his face was too funny to pass up. 

megumi's default expression was always that bored, grumpy look. his angry expression, however, was much more emphasised: his nose had a way of scrunching itself up the tiniest bit, his jaw became tighter, and when his brows closed in on each other, he looked as though he'd aged ten times faster. this expression was harder to catch on camera because he always managed to swipe your phone out of your hands whenever you'd reach for it, like his sixth sense was knowing just when you'd go for the kill, the oddbot. that was why it mattered a million times more when he'd look more angry than he did bored or careless.

"i have to mark my work," you told him, placing it side-by-side with your own.

"ha! thanks, megumi!" added yuji, adding his worksheet (with scribbles, writing, and more scribbles on it) next to yours and megumi's. 

"you're not welcome. give it back, y/n —"

"hand it to me when you're done. think i got the last few wrong," said nobara, and without looking up, you raised your thumb, giving her your affirmative. 

megumi growled. "no —"

"what're you gonna do, huh?" said nobara, poking him on the shoulder with the end of her pen. "tell mr gojo?"

"what is this, mean girls?" megumi grumbled, deadpanned. "oi, regina, give me back my sheet —"

you shook your head. yuji came to your defence:

"we're not done —"

"shut up karen."

he gasped. you probably would have laughed if you weren't so occupied with scribbling out the few answers that you'd gotten wrong (based off of megumi's own work, which tended to be correct nine times out of ten). 

before you could blink, megumi's work had been swiped away from you, but not by the owner himself (you were silently surprised that he hadn't marched around the table to snag it from you by now) but by an audibly annoyed yuji, who was mumbling curses under his breath as he sketched something in the top left corner of the paper. 

vexed, exasperated, and disturbed, you pinched yuji's thigh before snatching the paper back, brows furrowed and eyes narrowed. your hardened expression became less tight at the sight of the literal penis that yuji had drawn. two seconds had barely passed before you found yourself gasping for breath, hand over your mouth at a futile attempt at muffling your own laughter. 

nobara perked up, interested and offended.

"hey, don't leave me out," she snapped, back straight and chin held high. "what's so funny?"

with the deliberate intention of ensuring that the sulky boy seated diagonally across from you had also seen his own paper, you lifted it and showed it to her. 

"what the hell?" he demanded, making a move at swiping it out of your hands, but you were quicker, sliding it across the table to nobara instead. 

megumi's face twisted in irritation as his dark eyes landed on the defaced worksheet. a faint flush spread across his pale cheeks, a rare sign of his mounting frustration. his jaw clenched, muscles tensing visibly under his skin as he took a slow, deep breath, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly, betraying the effort it took to suppress a scathing retort. he glared at yuji, his gaze as cold and hard as steel, before flicking back to the offending drawing. with a huff of exasperation, he snatched the paper back, his movements quick and brusque, clearly indicating his annoyance. for a moment, he sat still, radiating a palpable aura of vexation, before muttering under his breath and looking up at you all, clearly done with your antics.

nobara whistled lowly, a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. "damn, who pissed in your cereal, megumi?"

"why would you do that?" megumi demanded, his voice edged with irritation as he fixed Yuji with a piercing glare, completely ignoring nobara's teasing remark.

yuji, with his arms folded over his chest with a look akin to a child after throwing a tantrum, returned megumi's glare with one of his own. 

"revenge," he stated simply, his tone carrying a quiet but unmistakable resolve. 

before anyone could chime in with their own thoughts, satoru materialised from behind megumi, sporting his trademark easy grin, which only widened at megumi's apparent annoyance.

"who rained on megumi's parade?" he'd asked, sounding curious yet looking devious. it wasn't a surprise to anyone that satoru enjoyed anything that made megumi unhappy (in terms of teasing, of course).

"yuji doodled a bit on his paper," you said, rolling your eyes. "now he's throwing a fit over it."

megumi shot you a sharp glare, his expression a mix of annoyance and disbelief. his eyes narrowed slightly, silently questioning your choice of words, but refrained from saying anything, opting instead to let his disapproval speak for itself.

until he couldn't.

"stop being such a grump, megumi," satoru chortled, his teasing only exacerbating the tension brewing within megumi fushiguro. "it just makes you look more like your dad, and who the hell wants to look like toji —"

"he drew a dick on my paper," megumi interjected sharply, his frustration evident in his tone, like a rope pulled taut in a tug-of-war.

satoru's laughter bubbled up, a blend of genuine surprise and amusement twinkling in his eyes as he shook his head, a grin playing on his lips. he had obviously not expected megumi’s straightforwardness and yuji’s unexpected action.

"big deal," he said, forcing himself in between nobara and megumi. "let's see de vinci's art —"

"ugh, you're squashing us!" nobara snapped, but satoru had paid no mind to her. in fact, her comment had only seemed to have encouraged him to force himself between them further, all with a knowing smile on his face.

his laughter continued to burst forth as he caught sight of the drawing, genuine amusement evident in the barely-noticeable crinkles that had formed around his eyes, his shoulders shaking slightly with suppressed mirth as he took in the absurdity of the situation. this had eventually caused him to double over, and he instinctively reached out, grabbing onto nobara's shoulder for support. his fingers gripped onto her firmly — though not aggressively — just enough to steady himself as he attempted to regain his composure.

nobara's irritation became palpable at satoru's hand that had landed on her shoulder for support. she shot him a pointed look, her body stiffening slightly as she made subtle attempts to wriggle out of his grasp.

"as wonderful as this is," he sighed, wiping an imaginary tear from his shielded eye, "i have to get rid of it."

it was, perhaps, the first time in that lesson that megumi had looked up in approval.

yuji shrugged, his tone matter-of-fact. 

"i don't care, i did it to prove a point," he stated, his brows furrowing in mild annoyance.

"what point?" said nobara, apparently having given up on trying to pry satoru's hand off her shoulder. even so, she didn't look too pleased about it. 

yuji shrugged, his expression easing as the tension left his jaw and his furrowed brows smoothed out. eyes widened, and his brows lifted slightly, yuji's lips parted, and his forehead smoothed itself out.

the overall expression on his face was one of genuine puzzlement. 

"i... can't really remember to be honest —"

"erase it," megumi commanded, his voice tight with irritation.

"no," yuji shot back, defensive. "maybe you should learn to be more nice to me —"

"after this?" said megumi, voice sharp and cutting, brimming with barely restrained fury. "like hell."

"there's too much testosterone on this table," said nobara, eyeing your other male classmates that sat down a little further down from the four of you. "y/n and i should've sat near the door —"

"oh yeah?" began satoru, bending down slightly to level his face with hers. he did not look too pleased. "and how well did that work for you last time, huh?"

but before she could actually answer his question, he had already moved on, looking around at you, yuji and megumi, and pointing at the cursed sketch on the paper.

"i don't want to do this," he said, leaning over to grab it and slide it towards the end of the table where he stood with an eraser in his hand. 

he pressed it against the drawing, letting out false sobs of despair with each swipe, loud enough to draw the attention of the rest of the class. it was ugly, drawn-out, and extremely sonorous. you regarded him with a look of disgust; megumi slouched in his seat, as though that would conceal him from the onlookers; nobara pressed a hand to her forehead, head bent and gaze averted; yuji watched satoru without shame, apparently still his biggest cheerleader.

"okay you can stop now," you added, when it became crystal clear that satoru would go on and on just for the sake of someone finally addressing his shameless acting. you would rather die than have it continue. 

he grinned, radiating self-assured pride as he addressed your little group.

"now i wish i took a picture before i got rid of it," he sighed, placing the paper in front of its rightful owner. 

from where you were sat, you could still see the outline of the sketch, faded yet visible. it seemed that yuji had released his anger from his hand straight to the pencil, applying enough pressure to leave a mark even when erased. if that didn't teach megumi to be more polite, you didn't know what would. 

a deep voice suddenly interrupted the commotion, cutting through the conversation like a knife. the speaker's tone was unnervingly calm and composed, each word enunciated with precision and the use of complete formal english added an air of false-authority and distance, sounding almost archaic due to the lack of contractions. 

all five of you turned your heads to stare at the figure hiding beneath the table surrounding the outer-edge of the classroom where multiple sinks were built in: malakai the emo, who you had first met in middle school. he just so happened to attend the same high school too. even so, the only classes that the two of you shared were satoru's biology and physics ones.

"there is a disturbance occurring on that table near the desk belonging to the teacher," he began, voice slow, almost snarling. "and i do not like it very much..."

satoru frowned, watching him with obvious exasperation. if there was one being that threw even satoru gojo, the drama queen off, it was malakai the emo (who, if anyone had forgotten, preferred to be called 'kai' and will visibly glitch if referred to as 'malakai').

"disturbances should never occur inside classrooms..."

you scoffed. "coming from the biggest attention-whore of today's history."

satoru waved a hand in your direction, a silent dismissal, one that very clearly communicated that he would handle the issue. 

"and this is my class," he told the emo, raising a white brow. 

"mr gojo..." malakai began, still borderline snarling, "you do not know how to manage this class very well..."

you couldn't exactly tell due to his opaque glasses, but judging from the way his brows shot up dramatically, nearly disappearing beneath his white hair, you knew that satoru's eyes widened in exaggerated shock. his mouth dropped open in a perfect 'O' of disbelief. he gasped audibly, the sound loud and theatrical. his usually playful demeanour transformed into one of theatrical indignation, his entire face a portrait of mock outrage. his head tilted back slightly, as if to better display his expression to everyone present.

"you don't even know how to stand without glitching, kid," he teased, with every intent of offending malakai. "ah-ah, not another word outta ya," he added, pointer finger raised with a smile. "i'd send you to miss shoko —"

you did not need to take a look at malakai to know that he was smiling hopefully. if there was one teacher he loved, it was ieiri, for her classroom was shielded from the light outside, and she did not have a care in the world for whatever he did.

"— but she said she'll beat my ass if i do that again. so, i'll make sure you sit on the table, kai, not under it."

context: malakai had this thing where he detested sitting in the light, hated classrooms where the blinds weren't down, and loathed anyone who wore bright colours. according to him, the 'darkness will consume him'. on the first day of high school, he'd sat underneath the sink where it was dark, tight, and cramped. when satoru made an attempt to get him to sit on the table (like everybody else) he visibly shook and caused a scene, turning animalistic over nothing.

satoru had never made another attempt since.

at some point in the year, it had come to your attention that the teachers in his other classes had forced him to sit on the tables, but not without a negotiation: he would sit on a table on his own, so long as he was at the very back of the classroom, in a secluded corner, where no visible sunlight would reach him. even then, he would glitch and tweak, but he would sit there quietly nonetheless. 

there was a time where kento had to teach one of his math classes due to his regular teacher falling ill, and when you'd asked malakai about it, he'd described it as 'hell'. you could only assume that kento hadn't let him sit under a table, nor made an effort in following any negotiations. 

but, surprisingly enough, malakai's grades in satoru's classes were the highest out of the rest of his classes. perhaps sitting under a table like he wants actually has its benefits. 

malakai let out a loud hiss at satoru's words, as if they'd burned him to the point of no recovery. 

satoru had given up.

"okay i'll risk the ass kicking, go to miss shoko."

malakai crawled out from his spot beneath the sink and sprang up, a maniacal grin plastered on his face. his arms flailed wildly, as if he had downed ten bottles of alcohol in one sitting. malakai's eyes widened, the gleam of anticipation shining through the heavy kohl lining his eyes. a wide, ecstatic grin stretched across his face, revealing a flash of his sharp canines (apparently he loved to use charcoal toothpaste). he practically bounced on his feet, his whole body vibrating with eager energy as he ran across the classroom in that weird way that he runs — body bent forward and arms extended backwards (satoru once said that he should be part of the ninjas in naruto — you couldn't get the image out of your head now).

"yes — miss shoko — and her dark, dark under-eyes —"

the rest of you watched him ninja-run out of the classroom and down the hall, his footsteps echoing and fading. 

satoru adjusted the glasses on his nose with an air of quiet concern. "there is something seriously wrong with that kid."

barely five minutes had gone by before his phone vibrated in his pocket; he took it out, checked it, and then smiled up at you all.

"if i don't turn up tomorrow, it was ieiri shoko: thirty one years old, brown hair, brown eyes, about this short —"

he did show up the next day, but with a cut on his lower lip and quite the story to tell. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

as several other paying customers walked into the quaint cafe, the bell above the door chimed softly, announcing their arrival. the interior was a charming blend of rustic and modern elements, creating an inviting atmosphere for its patrons. the space was not overly large, you'd noticed since your introduction to the place, but it was very clearly thoughtfully designed to maximize comfort, with several circular tables made of beige wood on each side of the room, all of which were adorned with fresh flowers in small vases. your favourite part, however, was the soft ambient lighting from the hanging pendant lamps that created a warm glow, casting a muted illumination all over the space.

the walls were also furnished with framed artwork and vintage posters, which you thought added some character and charm to the place. where you and megumi sat on the stools by the counter, a large chalkboard stood behind it displayed the day's menu offerings, written in elegant script with colourful chalk illustrations of pastries and beverages. the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and baked goods wafted through the air, tempting your senses and inviting customers to indulge in the cafe's delectable offerings. 

you and megumi tended to avoid the place during peak time, but if you just so happened to be passing by, sometimes you'd force your way to the front to offer some help to the distressed, kind lady (also known as miss B) serving everyone. since it also happened to be local, you had become regular customers and people she looked forward to seeing during the day. 

with kento's gruelling homework laid out messily over the counter before you, the gentle chatter and soft music filled the air, further distracting you from the cruel equations on the papers waiting to be solved. 

while you and megumi had come here to study together, you only did so for, perhaps, twenty minutes before the laptop you'd stolen from the bakery woman working diligently behind the counter had been used for activities other than studying math. it wasn't a new occurrence: it was a daily routine to search up the reviews on the cafe (buttercup brew) and respond to any that were badmouthing miss B, the food, or the place itself since the two of you both acknowledged the fact that she was too lenient and nice to do so herself.

"'what's the opposite of delicious?'" you read out, leaning in to megumi's side to read off of the laptop that he had pulled towards himself.

megumi scoffed, his pale fingers typing away aggressively at the keyboard before him. 

what's the opposite of clever? he had silently written.

your eyes widened in both surprise and delight, a bright, melodious laugh escaping your lips, eyes crinkling at the corners, sparkling with amusement. your laughter eventually subsided into soft giggles, and you looked at megumi with a twinkle in your eye.

"impressive," you praised, glancing back at the laptop, intrigued. "any more?"

megumi nodded, a carefully manicured finger gently swiping down the touchpad.

"'came in the day they were trialling savoury dishes. the food was bland. this is a bakery, stick to sweets,'" he'd read out, monotoned. "by a woman, this time."

your cheerful demeanour fades slightly as megumi read out the negative comment, brows furrowed as a small frown tugged at the corners of your lips. you pulled the laptop towards yourself, eyes narrowed in mild irritation.

"i got this one," you told him, reading as you typed. "you'd... know... all... about... bland... wouldn't you... no-season-susan?"

you hit 'enter' and smiled, self-satisfied. 

but before you or megumi could voice your thoughts on your comment, the soft sound of the bell chiming behind you had the two of you turning in your stools to examine the stoic man walking into the cafe. you pinched megumi's thigh, hard enough for him to angrily slap your hand away with a low grunt. you didn't mind, smiling as you watched the aloof man with the undercut walk up to the other side of the counter and order his food.

"i want to do this one," you said, voice low so as to not attract the attention of the man. "he dressed up as levi and went to the military, asking to join the scout regiment."

megumi peered down at you, blank faced. "where the hell are you going with this?"

"he got sent home."

you watched his face carefully, noting how his eyes shifted away from yours, as if he were suppressing his emotions. you could tell he wanted to laugh; it was evident in the subtle curl of his lips and the slight tremor of his shoulders as he exhaled through his nose.

"that's not levi," he finally settled on saying, glancing at the man in question. "that's ivel."

you grinned. "close enough... i was thinking more along the lines of evil."

your usually stoic friend let out a rare chuckle. with a broad smile, you nudged his side, eager to show him that you had the unique ability to make even him laugh.

"look," you called out to miss B, preparing what looked to be black coffee for mr evil-not-levi, the strong aroma of the coffee beans wafting in the air. "porcupine's smiling! quick, take a picture!"

miss B chuckled, her brows raising so that her soft bangs fell over her closed eyes as she stirred the mixture in the cup. megumi, on the other hand, scowled, any trace of what once held a small smile eradicated.

"too late," he'd said, moving the laptop so it was in front of him instead, and holding the bottom arrow to scroll further down the website with critical eyes.

"you should just take it secretly from now on," you told miss B, watching as she handed the fake-levi his coffee and politely told him to take a seat. she now stood opposite you, smiling as she adjusted the red baker's hat resting on her head. "megumi smiling is a super rare occurrence."

"why would you say that in front of me?" said megumi, looking up and facing you with an expression of mild irritation. "defeats the purpose of secrecy."

"what are you gonna do, attack us?" you challenged, rolling your eyes. "i'll tell my dad never to bring you any of those weird artifacts that you like."

"stop lying."

"okay so maybe i wouldn't do that... but i could change my mind! so you're treading on thin ice, porcupine! i'd be really careful if i were you."

megumi's eyes grew half-lidded, his expression teetering between a scowl and a look of complete disinterest as he stared down at you.

"i'm so scared right now," he stated, the obvious sarcasm making miss B giggle at the interaction. 

you had a witty response resting at the tip of your tongue, but could not execute it in time before the bell by the door had chimed again. all three of you had turned your heads so as to check who had entered. you beamed in excitement, watching as a rather beefy man waddled up to the counter to place his order.

before he had reached it, however, you glanced at miss B, lip curled in interest.

"why don't you have a go?" you asked her, sounding slightly pleading. "i promise you, it'll be fun!"

"because no matter what you say, they're paying my wages," she said calmly, though not unkindly as she prepared to walk over to the other end of the counter to take the man's order. "and it's mean!"

you pouted, looking over at megumi with slightly puckered lips and a frown.

he got the message and (as always) feigned reluctance before turning to scrutinise the stranger. you sat up straighter, a rush of excitement coursing through your veins as you awaited his theory, the disappointment that you had been feeling for all of two seconds evaporating as if it had never been there to begin with.

"he definitely had a wife and three kids with him years ago," he began leisurely, as if to build some suspense to this unconfirmed story, "but someone called cps on him because they would resemble skeletons and he'd resemble the do-the-roar-kid , but if he was older."

"he ate all their food?" you gasped, surprised at the dark turn of events. 

"and their plates too."

"oh!" you nodded, focused. "so like your dad?"

the corners of his mouth turned downwards, and his eyes narrowed, darkening with annoyance.

"i'm not having this conversation with you," he stated matter-of-factly.

you smiled sheepishly. "yeah, don't tell him i said that."

"won't make any promises."

"well then i'll tell satoru that you and hana reunited at the hilltop downtown —"

"he knows you like lying."

"doesn't mean he won't tease you for it regardless."

"..."

"yeah, that's what i thoug—"

"i'll tell everyone tonight about what happened when you lied about being a mermaid —"

your embarrassment surged like a wave, your face growing uncomfortably warm. you felt the heat radiating from your cheeks, a prickling sensation spreading across your skin. your heart pounded in your chest, a mix of anger and mortification causing your pulse to quicken, the heat of your blush intensifying as the urge to defend yourself burned inside you, evident in the way you jammed your elbow into his side. 

you relished in the pained grunt he let out as he rubbed the targeted area, slightly bent forward as he glared up at you through narrowed eyes.

satisfied and proud, you pulled the laptop towards you and scrolled down to find more rude and dishonest reviews to casually debunk and argue with. 

 "'saw rats around in the shape of two kids... they should get an exterminator'..." you read out slowly, a tense silence falling over the two of you and (in your mind) the entire cafe too. your stomach dropped, eyes widening as you snapped your head over to face an already-disgruntled megumi. "is this incel talking about us?"

"ye—"

"how dare it?" you gasped, angrily typing up a response, the sounds of the buttons on the keyboard being pressed more aggressively than it should be resonated around the small interior. "look at the profile picture, that's the guy we shouted at last week!"

megumi leaned in, chin resting a little over your right shoulder as he examined the image with a glower. 

"he could afford to skip a few sweet treats —"

"it, megumi," you corrected, hitting 'enter' after you finished typing up your response. "it could afford to skip a few sweet treats."

he read out your response, tone bland and unwavering:

"'is that why they call you the rat whisperer?'"

he locked eyes with you, his usual blank expression barely masking the faint trace of amusement in his gaze. you looked away, back at the laptop to find another rude comment to respond to. 

"oh, one star review! look!" you said, pointing at the screen enthusiastically. "'chocolate too sweet. bad.'" you stared at the review, unimpressed. "i mean, it's almost as if that's the point."

you sighed and rolled your eyes, fingers flying over the keyboard as you typed a response to the absurd comment. megumi watched quietly, noting the way your eyes narrowed in unimpressed concentration as you crafted your reply. you wouldn't be actively defending this cafe and miss B if you truly believed that her food and service was not good: her bread, pastries, cupcakes, sweet treats were the best in the town. people ought to know that.

your response was quite simple, written in the same manner this liar wrote his:

dave schlager too stupid (chocolate is meant to be sweet). bad.

the bell behind you gave a soft chime, heralding the arrival of yet another customer. however, when you and megumi eagerly and robotically looked over your shoulders to observe the newcomer, you hadn't expected to feel that familiar strain in your stomach, an itch that ran all the way up to your throat, prompting you to laugh. you usually had this reaction when you'd see men, but the sight before you proved otherwise.

the woman who had entered the cafe was a sight to behold. her hair was an untamed mass, sticking out at odd angles that defied any sense of natural order. strands of grey wove through the wild mane, giving it a streaked, chaotic appearance. her eyes were wide and bulging, darting around the room with a manic energy that made them seem even larger. her clothes were dishevelled, adding to her overall rugged and eccentric look, only making it more of a struggle for you to suppress a laugh, her appearance so wildly unconventional, that it seemed almost surreal. you had half a mind to ask megumi to pinch you, but refrained, knowing he'd enjoy it too much. 

the two of you faced the front again. megumi didn't seem too fazed, face stony and tired. you, on the other hand, found your shoulders shaking with the effort of holding back several incoming giggles. he looked down at you, very clearly unmoved. 

"i'm gonna take a wild guess and assume you want to take this one?"

you slapped a hand over your mouth and faked a cough, forehead nearly meeting the table as you hid your laughter, bent forward and chest heaving. you felt megumi's hand tapping and rubbing at your back, almost as if to hold up the act that you were ill. 

you almost thanked him before you heard his low, grumpy voice.

"you're not embarrassing me today."

you didn't even have it in you to shrug his hand off. instead, you straightened up and made an attempt to mask your expression as much as possible, facing him with a sheepish smile.

"her story's not too long," you began, almost letting a giggle slip. almost. "megumi... she stole from the bank and the fbi tased her. and then — and then she got electrocuted!"

you laughed harder at that, making little effort to conceal it. even megumi, who barely ever smiled in a day — and who you very much expected to scold you for this one — looked like he was struggling to hide one (but just scarcely).

he eventually let out a small chuckle, which only encouraged you to laugh some more. you doubled over slightly, gripping onto the counter for support, some of your abandoned math sheets falling on the floor, your infectious giggles filling the quiet air. megumi's lips twitched slightly, a silent chuckle escaping him as he watched your reaction, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. at the sight of him joining in on the fun, you pointed at him, realising something else.

"why are you laughing?" you inquired, then reached down to retrieve a mirror, holding it up so he was met with his own reflection. "haha! you both got struck by lightning!"

his smile had disintegrated, only watching you as you rocked yourself back and forth at his expression, feeling a stitch in your side with how funny the situation was. silently and angrily, he swiped the mirror out of your hands, raising his own hand to flick at your forehead. 

you choked, the minor pain at the centre of your forehead jolting you awake from your laughing fit. scowling, you rubbed at the area he'd intentionally hurt, barely registering the fact that he had taken the laptop to continue attacking the bad reviews.

you let him, acknowledging the fact that what you had said was rather mean. 

"'i came not once, not twice but THREE times for food, every time it tasted not up to par,'" megumi's disinterested voice read aloud, the annoyance from what you'd said still lacing each word with slight venom. you laughed. "why would you go back to a place if you didn't like it? idiot."

"you tell 'em, porcupine," you encouraged, anticipating his response. 

megumi's witty comebacks were always funny. he didn't even mean to make you laugh with them, but even then, they were enough to have you practically rolling around on the floor, belly aching and heart running a million miles per second. his nonchalant behaviour only added to the amusement.

he wrote his reply, sent it, and then slid the laptop over to you. you leaned forward, reading and judging:

stop coming for breakfast, lunch and dinner, we're not a food bank.

you gave that one an 11/10 — the man behind the account would need to change his name, date of birth and identity, and then remove himself from the face of the earth if he ever wanted to recover from that, you concluded wisely.

your praise sat at the tip of your tongue, only to be abandoned at the echo of the bell's chimes that bounced off of the walls, signalling the arrival of another customer. figuring that this would be megumi's turn to create a theory, you turned on your stool excitedly, only to have your jaw drop to the floor and under.

standing in front of the door was none other than your favourite (and only) math teacher of the year: mr kento nanami! 

your heart skipped a beat as you caught sight of your math teacher entering the cafe. shock painted your features as you gawked, wide-eyed, hardly believing that the business-attire man was standing in a setting that wasn't your typical school environment. you exchanged a quick, incredulous glance with megumi before hastily adjusting your posture, trying to appear composed despite the unexpected surprise.

it was typical. he still wore the same clothes (which made sense since you and megumi had too seeing as you went straight to the cafe right after school had finished). but something about seeing him enter such a cottage-vibe, almost feminine cafe made you recoil, not that you were displeased at all. in fact, you thought that this was the best arrival that the bell had drawn your attention to yet!

"kento nanami!" you yelled, ignoring megumi wincing at the sudden volume of your voice as you raised an arm over your head to enthusiastically wave at him. 

a slight scowl of annoyance marred his usually composed face when he heard you call out to him using his government name. his brows furrowed, and a hint of disapproval flashed in his eyes, portraying his strict demeanour, but you didn't mind. surely school rules did not apply outside of the school environment? surely it didn't matter whether you referred to him as kento or mr nanami or whatever?

"kento, look!" you tried again, turning halfway to grab your math homework sheets and present them to him. "i'm sitting here doing your homework! in this beautiful cafe! because of you!"

"actually, you spent the last thirty minutes laughing at my customers and arguing with the bad reviews again," miss B corrected you, apparently materialising out of thin air. 

you jumped slightly, the sheets scattering and your brows furrowing as you watched her shut the laptop and take it away. kento's response also took you by surprise.

"i was correct in believing that it wasn't you disrespectfully responding to them."

he had made his way further down the interior, leading up to the counter where miss B, you, and megumi were.

you beamed. "no, it was megumi and i."

megumi grumbled something along the lines of 'wasn't me', which you knew was a complete and utter lie. megumi was your accomplice in all of this; it didn't matter whether you were the mastermind behind it all. he still served his purpose and did it brilliantly too. you couldn't have asked for a better partner. except, perhaps, nobara, who was equally as good as him at silencing people when it was necessary.

although, kento did not look as though he believed you. you didn't like that much.

"keep an eye out for the one where he told the guy that he shouldn't come so often because we're not a food bank!" you told him honestly, still smiling despite kento's obvious disbelief.

he glanced at megumi as if to say is-this-true? 

you chortled, knowing full well that megumi would not lie with his chest, especially not in front of you.

"megumi is sensible," said kento, with such confidence, you almost felt bad for him. you wondered what his reaction would be if you told him about that one zoo incident where megumi jumped into the gorilla enclosure and declared that he'd stay there for the rest of his life? or the occasion where little you and megumi had been scolded by your parents so badly, he made the suggestion of running away together (and went through with it) even though it was bound to have failed from the beginning? or the time where he helped you torment your unfriendly, rival neighbour mrs daphne on facebook to the point where she had marched down to your houses to complain to your parents? 

megumi is sensible, you thought, and nearly laughed. how comical, loud, and wrong.

"why do you think the punctuation is so perfect?" you asked, raising a brow. "you think i'd care enough to put capital letters and full stops everywhere?"

kento's eyes widened slightly, a flicker of surprise crossing his face as he processed the unexpected news. a momentary pause followed, during which his features tensed with mild astonishment, and yours only grew more joyful. megumi, on the other hand, was silently forcing down the urge to push you off your stool and walk home without you (he would never).

"the usual?" miss B interrupted, still smiling the elegant way that she does. 

kento nodded slowly, she began organising his order behind the counter. you blinked several times.

"the usual?" you repeated, bewildered. "kento nana—"

"y/n," he snapped, still composed even so. "refrain from referring to me with my first name."

"we're not at school," you reminded him.

he adjusted the odd, spotted tie he wore, looking irked. "doesn't matter —"

"you come here a lot?" you asked, curious. even megumi seemed interested, and he had been frowning and grumbling the second kento had walked past the door. 

"this place has the best bread in town," he told you, stiff. "better than my local supermarkets."

you grinned. "and miss B is the best cashier and server ever, right?"

you sensed megumi's gaze on you, causing you to adjust the way you sat slightly in your seat. you ignored the feeling, understanding that megumi knew what you were trying to do and was making it extremely clear that he wanted you to look at him for a second, if the way he was tugging at the bottom of your sleeve aggressively was anything to go by. you slapped his hand away, grin widening ever so slightly as the hiss he let out, still getting into character. your role? temporary matchmaker.

kento watched miss B work behind the counter.

"i respect her a lot," he said, barely answering the question. 

you wanted to gruel him for some more information, but your time had been cut short when miss B's soft voice had driven a smooth knife through the heated conversation.

"here you are," she said, handing him his food in a bag. 

he exchanged it for some money, she tried to give him some change, he told her she could keep it. with a final look at you, megumi, and the homework he'd assigned you, he told you to take care of yourselves and left the cafe, his strides even and his back straight. 

what took you by surprise was the fact that miss B had followed him out, waving at him from the door and telling him to come again after a brief conversation with him that you and megumi, from where you were sat, could not hear. she never did this with any of her other customers. you were here so often that you knew she did not. the two of you exchanged looks of obvious bafflement, sitting up straighter and raising your chins to nosily observe the sight before you.

when she returned, you did not miss the rosy pink in her cheeks. 

"miss B —" you began, only for her to interrupt you with a laugh.

"he's a regular customer, quite like the two of you," she said, and then looked around at the mess on the counter that were your unorganised math papers. "and he told me to tell you that you only needed to do page ten and eleven of the booklet."

you felt your stomach flip itself upside down.

you had fried your brain for no reason at all, for you'd completed nearly half of the booklet instead of the assigned designated pages. perhaps that would teach you to meddle in business that wasn't yours, you thought you heard megumi grumble from next to you, but you weren't so sure...

not when you'd dropped your head on the table, hopeless.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

bonus scene:

megumi and yuji were both traitors. 

during gym class, coach lauren did not seem to mind that you and nobara had migrated to the corner of the gymnasium, gossiping and laughing about who-knows-what. naturally, the class grew quite boring for the two of you, so you'd snuck out and gone to the football field where you knew coach yaga's class would be residing. 

long story short: megumi and yuji both rat you out and coach yaga had kicked the two of you off his field and had you stay with him for detention. 

all. because. of. them.

so in conclusion, the two of you had seated yourselves far, far away from them in any class that you could, which included satoru's physics class.

you were wary not to sit near malakai, who always had something odd to say to nobara. in fact, when she'd come into school with a brighter, new hair-do (no longer the dark colour that you were so used to) malakai had a few things to say... but that was a story for another day. 

now, you only just realised the mistake you had made sitting on the middle table instead of your regular seats. and it was not because of megumi or yuji, no.

it was because of the drama queen that just so happened to be your male, adult, mature teacher: satoru gojo. 

when taking the register, which usually went by pretty quickly, the second he had come to either of your names, he had started an act that made you believe that perhaps he should have been the one taking performing arts as a subject:

"y/n?" he'd called out, looking around the class as if you were not seated across the whiteboard, the first seat on the middle table. 

"here," you said, unfazed. 

"huh — oh!" he said, resulting in the eyes of everyone in your class to look at you as though you'd done something wrong, as though you were malakai, even. "oh, right, y/n... are you new here?"

you scrunched your nose up in something in between confusion and annoyance. what the hell was he talking about? unlike majority of the people sitting in the classroom, this man knew of your existence since you were four years old. what game was he playing?

"you're joking, right?" you said, watching him carefully as he scratched the top of his head and shrugged. "sa—"

"o-kay!" he perked up, rushing through the register with such ease, you hadn't expected him to stop and squint a second time. but he had. "i might get this one wrong so forgive me but... no— nobara? nobara?" he called out, once more, looking up and all around the classroom as though he couldn't see her sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with you.

unlike you, she had a much shorter fuse that he'd lit.

"what's wrong with you?" she demanded, eyes narrowed. "i'm here."

he raised his eyebrows up at her and nodded, muttering to himself. the two of you were both equally confused, and so was the rest of the class, it seemed, if the whispers were anything to go by.

the register had been completed not long after that. you assumed his weird antics would also finish too, but you were proven wrong once the idiot had opened his mouth to address the class again.

"so we have two new students with us today!" he said, excited. "make them feel welcome! their names are... nobara and..." he thought long and hard before looking over at you, tilting his head forward so you could see the terrifying blues that were hiding behind the circular lenses. "hmm... what's your name again?"

your anger simmered like a pot left too long on the stove, bubbling beneath the surface. as you stared back at satoru's clueless expression, it felt like a storm brewing in your chest, thunderclouds gathering with each passing moment. his feigned ignorance was like a slap in the face, a sharp thorn pricking at your patience, igniting the flames of your frustration.

how dare he?

he moved on to teaching the class before either of you got to call him out for his bullshit. 

only for it to slowly get worse as the time went by. 

he was sat at his desk, explaining the slide from the powerpoint that he'd presented on the board with a lazy smile and stretched out legs that resting on a spare chair.

"what's at the centre of an animal cell?" he asked the class, encouraging people to raise their hands.

nobara raised hers, eager to answer.

"new kid!" he said, and when she glared at him, he backtracked. "i mean nobara! — that was scary — what's at the centre of an animal cell?"

"the nucleus," she answered. 

he frowned. "huh?"

she frowned. "the nucleus," she repeated helpfully.

he leaned forwards, a hand cupping his ear. "sorry, i can't hear you, you're too far away."

oh, it made sense now, you thought in your head. he was throwing a fit over the fact that the two of you had chosen to sit in the centre of the room, a little further away from his desk, than at the back table with megumi and yuji, closer to him.

what a diva.

he directed the question to maryam, who sat at the table closest to the door and furthest from his desk.

"you're right! it's the nucleus!" he cheerfully praised her, continuing to teach as though he hadn't just distracted the entire class due to his theatrics. even malakai sensed something was wrong, claiming that 'the darkness is starting to reach the lightness of his hair... it is consuming him', whatever the hell that meant.

it hadn't ended there though, for when the worksheets were being handed out by yuji, he had completely skipped over you and nobara (though he looked quite frightened at doing so). it was no doubt satoru's instructions he was acting on behalf of.

"give it," nobara demanded, standing up and approaching him.

yuji held the papers close to his chest. "but mr gojo said —"

"mr gojo also once said that he's married with thirteen kids, do you believe that?" 

she forcefully snatched two sheets from him, marching back to where she was sat with you and slammed them down onto the table with such force, it shook, your pencil committing suicide off the edge.

"men will be the death of everyone, mark my words," she'd said.

when you raised a hand for help, your pencil clasped in your curled fingers, he asked what happened to gravity and why an inanimate object was suddenly floating. 

that was the last straw for you. 

if he was going to pretend that you had miraculously turned invisible, then you were going to do as you pleased with this ability. pencil still in your tight grasp, you stood up, made eye contact with your childish teacher, and sprinted out of the classroom.

satoru perked up, alarmed as he ordered for help.

"whoever's closest to the door, close it before she —"

you'd already left.

he let out a long sigh, only to raise a brow when you'd returned the second you'd disappeared from view, running across the classroom to take nobara's hand, glance up at your teacher, and say...

"malakai."

— before taking off with your friend, chaos ensuing behind you.

the chaos being malakai emerging from under the sink, arms flailing around himself, eyes rolling to the back of his head, snarling and growling as he shook, only creating more issues for satoru who, everyone knew, hated dealing with the odd emo.

that'd teach him to pretend that you (out of everyone) were invisible.

lesson learned, he thought in his head, letting out a loud and drawn out groan when malakai refused to stop.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

(random tweets cuz i think you guys waited long enough for this chapter to come out, eat well 😁)

(p.s. ignore the date on the tweet, it was meant to say 2017 lmao)

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

notes: i'm so tired, gonna take a longgg nap. not my favourite chapter tbh, but it's needed to set the scene for high school because the real part of the story (the one where all the drama starts and stuff) is arriving in less than three chapters!! and we also have a lovely character, important to the plot, to introduce next chapter, so stay tuned my little liars?

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taglist (send an ask or comment to be added):

@1l-ynn @shaigimo @shuupiu @myguumi @momoewn @xbarrjallenx @reinaswrld @anintrovertedechoe

© tojiscrack (previously ack4rwoman)

if you enjoyed my writing, i’d really appreciate it if you tipped me — tumblr no longer has the tip function, so maybe here in my tip jar :)

i do not own any of the characters of jjk, i only own the character of y/n and her mother. the other characters belong to gege akutami.

[robreyart]

Night Migration 20 x 30 inches, Oil A new painting from an earlier study coming to the IX Art Show next week in Reading, PA!

In our night sky there is a dark band that runs through the Milky Way, known as the Great Rift. This darkness is where the stars of our galaxy are obscured by vast clouds of interstellar dust and geese … er, gas.

There is an experience of magic to be found in the poetry of stories, new and old. For many thousands of years, our ancestors looked at the random distribution of stars in the night sky and saw things that were familiar to them. Some people think that living with a scientific worldview means giving up the wonder of our ancestor’s stories. Yet, just as enjoying a fantasy novel doesn’t require believing it to be true, having a grounded, science-based worldview doesn’t have to keep you from enjoying the beauty and poetry of myth and metaphor.

Just don’t make any important life decisions as though there are really giant geese in space, okay?

Prints: https://robrey.storenvy.com