#this is such a shameless excuse to use all the cool literature knowledge i aquired in high school tbh

[the-hilda-librarians-wife]

Inutilia Truncat

Pairing: Sketchbook (Kaisa/Johanna)

Summary: Inutilia truncat: one of the five latim mottos of the arcadist, or neoclassical movement. Literally translates to "cut out that which is not useful"

Kaisa is an English and History major in the University of Trolberg. Her biggest pride has always been excelling in everything she set herself to, at whatever cost. One of her seminars, however, has been a hinderance to her, leaving the girl with no choice but to swallow her pride and seek out the one person who seems to know what they're doing better than her.

Notes: YAAAAAAAY I'm posting again!! You guys, You've no idea how freaking happy I was when the idea for this fic struck me in like, late November (thanks to that flower anon, whose fic I still want to read :’)) and I was able to write again. I hope you enjoy this as much as I've been enjoying working on it

Also, amazing news!! For the first time ever, I have a beta reader! Huuuuge thank you to @waddles-ex-machina for not only letting me ramble to her about this verse, but also for proof reading this so kindly. You made the process of working on this fic even more fun <3

One last thing before I allow you to go on and read it, please be mindful that all of my knowledge on the inner workings of universities outside of my country comes from reading other college aus and watching Monster’s University. And that is *it*. So I am asking you to suspend your disbelief and focus on the gays instead of the logic

Read it on ao3

Kaisa barely refrained from snapping the pencil she was holding in two. It had happened again.

Of course, what she did instead was take a deep breath and swiftly wriggle her way out of the mass of students that were heading to the English department’s notice board. It wasn’t out of shame that she went away; regardless of not being in the top of that class, her score had been high enough to be proud of, even for her. Rather, it was because being in the middle of a crowd only ever made her feel uncomfortable, and because with her current state of nerves she wouldn’t put it past her to snap one of her classmates in half.

And it was all because of her.

Kaisa had spent her first two years in college delighting in the classes taught by professors who shared their scores publicly. Up until now, she had been consistently getting the highest grades out of everyone who took the same disciplines as her, acing every test and perfectly completing every assignment. Any voices who insisted that she hadn’t deserved her scholarship, that she wasn’t smart enough, that her getting upper education was a waste of time had either been silenced or become inaudible in the bubble of self satisfaction that Kaisa had painstakingly managed to submerge herself in. 

That is, of course, until she signed up for the neoclassicism seminar this semester and had begun constantly getting lower grades than that damned Art History major. Kaisa had nothing against her, personally. Though the girl’s far-too-bright personality had startled her on their first day of class - nothing wrong with the greeting, Kaisa just wasn’t used to people on campus talking to her for no apparent reason, and really, why did this random student introduce herself to her on the first day completely out of the blue? - she hadn’t given much thought to her until the first grade came out on the History department’s notice board. Kaisa’s essay, which she had worked on through the night until it was flawless in her eyes, had still scored lower than that of the person she’d begun to think of as Golden Retriever Girl.

It wasn’t that Kaisa didn’t know her name. After so many graded assignments (and this professor in particular liked them a lot), she’d had enough chances to stare at Golden Retriever Girl’s name to memorise it five times over. And Johanna Magnolia Pearson would somehow, magically, inexplicably, always score higher than Kaisa.

Though the first few times it had happened Kaisa had only swallowed down her frustration and promised herself to work harder next time, it had become a bothersome pattern and something that was actually causing her irritation even when she wasn’t actively thinking about it. It was, therefore, something she had to fix immediately, because an irritated mind can’t focus, can’t be productive, and can only disappoint. 

If she talked to Tildy, the woman who had been her mother for as long as her mind could remember, and the very reason she had been given a chance at university, she was sure she’d be dismissed as worrying over a non-issue, and be told she should be proud to be the second best student on the seminar. She couldn’t blame her for it; Tildy had been with her all the time, but she hadn’t lived her life. She couldn’t know what it was like to have to prove yourself all the time to the people around you.

So she couldn’t go to Tildy, which meant she had to solve it herself. And though she could try simply copying Golden Retriever Girl’s actions - sitting in the front seats, asking lots of questions and being extremely active in class discussions - that couldn’t possibly be where she was failing, since her trustworthy seat at the back corners and her strategy of silently observing and jotting down notes on her notebook had never failed her on any of her other disciplines. Neither did she think that muscling through this course even harder was the answer. If she pushed herself any harder, Kaisa was actually afraid she might faint, and that would definitely affect her efficiency.

Bracing herself for the task ahead, Kaisa balled her fists by her side and stiffly walked down the two flights of stairs that led to the courtyard, leaving the mass of desperate students behind her fighting to see their grades. If she wanted to talk to anyone else in her seminar, she’d simply wait for them by the notice board until they managed to get a glimpse at their score on their latest exam. But not Golden Retriever Girl. No, for some reason, she never stayed to look at the score sheet with all of their grades as soon as they were divulged like the rest of them, instead climbing down those stairs to head to places unknown after every single lecture. Not that Kaisa had been observing her. That would have been creepy.

The Humanities building, unlike the other ones in their university, was very quaint and old-styled, due to it having been the first to be built, shortly after the founding of Trolberg. Kaisa climbed down the stone stairs, and the tall ceilings made her steps echo. Autumn had barely begun, so it was still relatively warm outside and the inside was fresh without having to be cooled. The scent of grass became noticeable once the first flight was over, making Kaisa realise that she was probably going to enter the building’s gardens for the first time since she began studying there. She had known it was there, she could see it through the windows, but they didn’t lead anywhere in particular and she never had time to dedicate to admiring them, so it had simply slipped her mind to go meet the grounds.

She supposed that would change today.

The staircase ended in a corridor which had on its left side a wall filled with rows of classroom doors, and on the right a few columns for supporting the ceiling with stone benches between them. Students occupied some of those, reading or listening to music on their headphones or furiously typing away on their notebooks, but Kaisa did not recognize on any of them the head of auburn curls she was looking for.

The garden was beautiful, that was the first thing she noticed once she stepped outside into it. The grass was well kept and neat paths filled with gravel led to a fountain in the middle. The Humanities building surrounded it on all sides, making it a rectangular haven in the middle of it. But it was a contained, boring sort of beauty if you asked Kaisa. There were no butterflies or any other sort of more interesting animal in sight, the ground had been cleaned off of any typical autumn leaves, and its little flower beds certainly paled when compared to the wildflowers in Tildy’s yard.

But still, Kaisa supposed, it was nice. The little Tildy voice in her head told her to stop being such a grump, and she could see why people would like to spend their time there. 

Following the gravel path in front of her with her gaze, she spotted the person she had been looking for right on the edge of the fountain, shoulders hunched forward and immersed in whatever it was that she was writing on the sketchbook she was holding. That’s what she couldn’t even wait until she saw the test’s results to do?, Kaisa thought bitterly.

She knew her bitterness wasn’t directed at miss Golden Retriever, though. It was at herself, for not doing better, and at the fact that someone was doing so well in their class seemingly without feeling like they were selling their soul to their studies like Kaisa did. So she bit down on her tongue, twisting her ring around her finger like she usually did when nervous or bored, and stepped onto the gravel, feeling and hearing it crunch under her boots with each step. This was the mature thing to do. Better to get it done already, quick, easy and (mostly) painless.

When Kaisa got close enough that her feet were noticeable in the girl’s field of vision, Johanna’s writing hand became still and she lifted her eyes to her, removing her earphones when she realised that the person she was seeing was coming in her direction, and honest to God smiling when she recognized who exactly that was. It wasn’t a wide, toothy grin but it felt just as bright, lifting the corner of her lips high and making the skin over her cheekbones flush only slightly. Kaisa wavered for a moment. After their first interaction, she hadn’t ever talked to that woman again. She had absolutely no business looking that happy to see her, and neither had her heart in doing such a stupid little somersault in the face of her smile.

“Hi!” Golden Retriever Girl greeted warmly. Kaisa was coming to wonder if that was the only way she knew how to do things.

“Hello.” Kaisa shifted her weight from one foot to the other, suddenly self-conscious and rethinking this whole interaction. Why had she thought this was a good idea? This was stupid. She was stupid. What was she doing, acting like her being the best student on campus was something that the universe owed to her? Was she really so immature? She should have taken this to therapy, for fuck’s sake, not to the classmate she had only ever exchanged five words with.

“Lovely day, isn’t it?” The golden retriever cut through her train of thought, bringing Kaisa back to the present and preventing her from spiralling further down. “I don’t usually see you around the gardens, though. What brings you here?”

Had Kaisa been a bit more grounded, she would have noticed the implicit ‘I pay attention to whether or not you’re around’ hidden in Johanna’s words. That not being the case, however, she was only able to notice (and be thoroughly confused at) how Johanna sat up straighter and tapped the place next to her on the fountain’s edge when she, with all the dignity she could muster, informed her that she had come looking for Johanna, actually.

“Well, it’s good to talk to you again, Kaisa!” Closer now that she had sat down besides her, Kaisa could see that Johanna looked like she truly meant it. Her smile hadn’t once left her face, and she had grown even more flushed. She wondered if maybe it was the heat, even though the sun was already setting and Johanna was sitting on a place which the building cast a shadow over. Even though it was not hot at all. “Forgive me, but what is it you study, again? You told me when we met, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.”

Kaisa had not, in fact, told her what she studied. When the Golden Retriever Girl had introduced herself on their first seminar, she had been too stunned that someone with so much energy was talking to her (or, even more pathetically, that anyone at all who didn’t want something from her was talking to her), that she hadn’t really aced that social interaction. She had said her name when asked (and was surprised to find out now that the girl remembered, even if she herself had memorized her full name), but when Johanna said she was an Arts History major, Kaisa herself had only said “cool” and continued to try and find a place in her used and almost-full textbook for that subject. Which, in hindsight, had probably been why Johanna had given up on trying to talk and had left to find her seat.

Why had Kaisa thought that this was a good idea, again?

“I’m on English and History.” She said, and Johanna let out an appreciative hum. It looked like Golden Retriever was about to try and begin to make small talk around that, but before she could Kaisa spoke up again. “This may seem a bit random, but I was wondering if you could help me.”

“Oh!” A glimpse of disappointment crossed Johanna’s eyes for just a second, and the left corner of her lip twitched just so, but Kaisa was completely unaware. “Of course. What can I do for you?”

As she asked it, Golden closed her sketchbook, and in doing so brought Kaisa’s attention to it. Now that she was closer, she could see for a split second that in it weren’t writings as she had thought, but drawings. She supposed that made sense, given the girl’s area of studies.

Kaisa didn’t feel the need to clarify which class it was that they took together, since Golden Retriever Girl seemed to remember her, so she went straight to the point.

“You’re doing well at the seminar.” She began, looking straight forward and not at the expectant face by her side. If looking at people’s eyes already made her lose focus normally, it was especially so when that person already unnerved her in any way. And especially so when said person’s eyes were a mesmerizingly beautiful shade of hazel when observed closely. “Like, exceedingly well. Phenomenally. I never see you stay and look at the grades, so I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but you had the best grade in class on every graded activity so far. The results for our first exam are just out, by the way. You did it again. Congratulations, an impressive 9,5 on that honestly evil test.”

Not before Kaisa could worry about coming across as creepy for knowing her score, but before she could apologise for it, the girl laughed. Not a full belly sound, but a cute little snort that she seemed to have been holding back.

“You must think I’m so laid back! I always come here after the seminar because it’s dusk, and it’s honestly so gorgeous from here that I don’t want to lose it. But after the sun is set I always climb back there and see the results. Thank you for telling me, though, I had been worried about that exam. I don’t think the professor had our best interests in mind when she wrote it, honestly.”

Kaisa made an agreeing sound with the back of her throat. A part of her wanted to rush to assure that she hadn’t thought of Johanna as lazy or happy-go-lucky in any way, but that wasn’t actually true. Besides, the curious and honest part of her brain won out over the social skills part of her brain in the end (though, given past experiences, she wondered if her brain even had a social skills sector at all).

“Why, though? I mean, the buildings block the view from all sides, it’s not like you can actually see the sunset. The sky gets some pretty colours, but can’t you see those from the windows?”

Beside her, Johanna chuckled. Kaisa heard the sound close to her ear, and felt the small rush of air from her mouth on her skin. When she turned, she saw the glimmer on Golden’s eyes. It felt weird, being that close to someone. And it felt new, that the chuckle hadn’t sounded diminishing, or ironic, but rather like she was looking at something sweet. Like Kaisa was something pure and worth protecting.

“Look around.” Golden whispered, and Kaisa did, trying her best to see it through her eyes. The students coming out of their classrooms all around them. The gentle chatter of friends who were meeting to study together, or to carpool home. The beginnings of an evening breeze toying with the ends of their hair. The soft light that made even the well-trimmed trees look mysterious, and their nearly completely golden leaves glow.

Oh.

There was a moment of extreme softness, watching all the beauty around them, its mundanity making it no less special, and even a bit more so. If they were in a movie, it would be a cue for sweet classical music to begin playing, Kaisa thought, symbolising a growing bond between the two protagonists or whatever. She wasn’t a cinema major. So, of course, she ruined it by clearing her throat and going back to the task at hand.

If she was anything like a movie protagonist, she wouldn’t have lost her top-of-every-class title, now, would she?

“You have a point. Anyway, I came here to ask you if you have any tips for studying this subject. I generally draw schemes while reading the textbook and then look for practice exercises. It has worked well so far, but clearly you have something that works better. You don’t have to share it if you don’t want to, of course, but if there’s any tips you could give me, I’d be grateful.”

Golden Retriever Girl only stared at her for a beat, her silence making Kaisa retrace her words and wonder if she’d said anything offensive. When her answer came, it startled her enough to make Kaisa turn to glare at her.

“I don’t do anything special. I just enjoy it?”

“Enjoy it?” Kaisa asked with the tone of someone who felt like there had been an attempt to fool her, and hadn’t fallen for it. Golden gave no signs of falsehood, though. She only shrugged and turned her eyes down to the closed sketchbook on her lap, twirling her pencil around.

“Yeah. I relate a lot to neoclassicism. I spent my first years in my grandfather’s cottage out in the wilderness, so all the paintings of farm life feel familiar to me. Like they’re images that are close to my heart. Also the fugere urbem feeling in the writings speak really deeply to me, I had a hard time adapting when my parents brought me over to Trolberg when I was a child. I think that’s all there is, really. My study strategy doesn’t come close to being as neat as yours. I just… enjoy it.”

It shouldn’t have left Kaisa speechless, but it did. She didn’t even know why, it wasn’t like it was something out of this world. She herself had chosen her major, and this seminar, because of affinity, but somewhy it simply hadn’t crossed her mind that passion alone could get you that far. Which wasn’t to say that the Golden Retriever Girl (and really, she had been talking to her for a full five minutes, so maybe she should stop thinking about her that way) didn’t put in the effort; her behaviour in class alone was enough to tell Kaisa that that wasn’t the case. But being told that actually, that was the secret to her success wasn’t something she had even considered. Hell, most times Kaisa was so busy studying for all her classes she actually forgot that she had ever enjoyed her subjects to begin with.

“I see.” She said, hoping to not seem rude to the person who by this point already had reasons to think she was a stalker. Luckily, it didn’t seem like Johanna had taken offence.

“You don’t seem convinced.” She said playfully. “I have something to suggest. Why don’t we have our next study session for this seminar together?”

This snapped Kaisa out of her surprised haze.

“For real?”

“I mean, yeah, why not? If you’d like it, that is. I know some people only study well alone, and I totally respect it if that’s your case. But if you’d like to give it a go, I’m sure it would be fun. And you’d get to see how my studying isn’t nearly as effective as yours.”

She was smirking at her, and looking like she was actually hoping for Kaisa to say yes, for some reason. And though all her instincts told her to come up with an excuse to not do it, she couldn’t actually think of a single reason why that was a bad idea.

“Sure.”

Johanna blinked, and Kaisa realised that though she had been hoping for it, Johanna hadn’t actually expected her to say yes.

That’s what you get for ignoring someone who tries to make small talk on the first day.

“Great!” Golden chirped. “You free on Saturday?”

Kaisa mentally opened her schedule in her mind’s eye. Saturday was when the Sparrow Scouts had events, sometimes. She couldn’t remember if the one Frida had asked her to tag along to was this one or the next.

“I’m not sure, to be honest. I think my little sister asked me to go with her to a scouts thing, but I could have gotten the date wrong. I get really confused with my appointments when I have exams, it feels like my mind erases any information unrelated to them. Can I check that and get back to you?”

“Sure! Give me your hand.”

Kaisa blinked with surprise. Partly because she had half been expecting Johanna to give up on the idea. After all, why would she bother insisting on something she’d get nothing out of? Mostly, though, because being asked to give her her hand hadn’t really seemed to have been in the realm of possible answers. She did as she was told, however, and Kaisa watched as Johanna picked a ball-point pen from her jacket’s breast pocket and took it to her palm.

Too confused and focused on watching Golden Retriever Girl’s face to see what she was writing, Kaisa didn’t notice what it was right away. After having finished, she let her go and smiled once more.

“There you go! Text me or call me when you have the answer, whichever you prefer. I’ll see you around?”

She probably wouldn’t see her around, that was the only class they were taking together that semester and it only happened once a week, but Kaisa found herself nodding anyway. Having completed her goal (sort of), she stood up just as the first lamps began being turned on around them. It wasn’t nearly as pretty anymore with the artificial light, but somehow Johanna’s smile didn’t look any less bright. Kaisa bid her goodnight and got a “goodbye” handwave in response, walking away before she could fully process that interaction, and way before she allowed herself to interpret her emotions during it.

It was only when she was taking the long walk home, practically alone on the sidewalk of the highway that connected their campus to the city, that it occurred to her to check what had been written on her skin before she put on her noise canceling headphones and begun listening to a recording of the Advanced Grammar lecture she’d had in the morning.

She pulled back her sweater, which had only not been covering the tips of her fingers, to find a phone number and a winky face. Underneath, she had written “Jo from the seminar”, as if Kaisa could possibly forget.

That girl was insane, that was Kaisa’s verdict. When she got home and told this story to Tildy, she’d be advised to let this insanity rub off on her a bit, it would do her good.

And well, she had gone to her to learn her secret, hadn’t she?