ryololart - Tumblr blog

ryololart · 21 days ago

Text

Preview 1st Chapter of Syllabus Week

Chapter 1.1: September - “The Lab is not OSHA Compliant”

For someone who wanted to spend the rest of her life in a lab, creating new possibilities and innovation for the future of biology, damn did she hate university labs. Currently, it is syllabus week, Monday morning at 9am and she is sitting in the famous CHEM/BIO/PHY 328 - Interdisciplinary Experimental Lab. A required course for all STEM related majors to take their fall junior year. It might be the bane of her existence for the rest of her semester.

A STEM major’s worst nightmare, registration day. She remembered sitting down in the Quad, laptops out, shaking her leg, carefully watching the time hit the 11:30 am time slot to hit register for class. As soon as the minute went from 29 to 30 she hit the register button and bursted up from her seat, arms locked next to her laptop screen, her breath coming heavy and fast, her tongue between her teeth. Stress couldn’t describe the feeling she was currently experiencing. The norepinephrine bursting through her body unnecessarily itself was its own sort of high, a high she didn’t welcome. Shoko sat next to her sighing, stubbing her cigarette out in the ash tray that was the center of their picnic table. Shoko was good at hiding her anxiety behind her nonchalant face, but even then Sumi always noticed when she hadn’t taken a full breath in over a minute. Choso sat across from them, his head resting in his hand and the free finger kept hitting the button over and over, his eyebrows narrowing every time it just buffered and buffered. He huffed in annoyance. The page continued to tweak and load until their schedules appeared on their screens.

“I got into all of them!” Sumi’s heart dropped as Shoko announced to the group she had gotten every single class on her list. Following the exclamation, choso nodded and actually smiled, agreeing. She brought her thumb to her lips and bit down on her nail, please please please, she begged silently in her mind. Then the little circle wheel stopped spinning and ping! the notification came up on the screen. All classes registered. Sumi jumped up and cheered, silently thanking the universe. Flashback to months later, here she sat, finally in the lab itself, Choso to her left, Shoko to her right, all in disbelief at this horrendous syllabus in front of them. The first day of classes clearly meant nothing to Choso as he wore those stupid grey cargo shorts Sumi swore every man owned and a black hoodie. The strings were tied into a bow, just the way Sumi left it last time she borrowed it. Had he even washed it all summer? He didn’t smell any different, mango vape and weed. At least he tied up his unruly hair that somehow would shed onto everything she owned. Her car was coated in dark brown strings. Shoko wore a nice t-shirt, a black skirt, and tennis shoes. Her hair was brushed and sat respectfully at her neck.

Sumi woke up this morning at 5am.

She ambitiously said to her friends from home: “I am going to start the school year right. Wake up early, drive out to surf, then head to class on time.” She even swung her legs over the side of her Twin XL forcing herself to at least brush her teeth, only to end up falling asleep face first into her laptop barely snorting herself awake on time to jump into her car and arrive two minutes late. She was a proven night-owl. This explains why her outfit was sweatpants, a tank top with a Taco-Bell beef stain from last year, and her sandals that sat over mismatched socks. At least her hair was somewhat brushed and pulled into a claw clip. The wavy blonde mess she let Yuki dye blue underneath was always a pain. Not quite straight, not quite curly, always puffing up in humidity, yet fighting her curling iron at all cost. It never bent to her will, no matter what TikTok tricks she tried.

In her hands sat this syllabus, only one page long, yet disgusting. No wonder all the upperclassmen including Yuki warned them about this class. You have to choose your own research groups, come up with something no one has done before, and write an entire thesis. She might as well just hit the waves now and become a statistic. She let out a sigh and ran her hands through her hair, letting the face framing layers peel out of the clip.

Dr. Griggs, the professor, stands before the class addressing everyone. “Hello students, welcome to your first day of 328. Firstly, I know this class is rumored to be torture among the upperclassman. I actually agree with this sentiment as this class is set to be a simulation of a real lab. No money, no access to higher-level tools, and horrible communications. This is an opportunity to learn skills to deal with these things,”

Choso rolled her eyes next to her, she couldn’t help but notice the red tint to his sclera. This man couldn’t even wait a day of being back on campus to get high. To be fair, she would probably end up making him go buy from Shiu and roll tonight anyways. Couldn’t catch herself being hypocritical. Plus he did the best rolls she knew and she would never admit it but he always had the best taste in vapes. For being the three STEM majors in the group they were probably the most self-destructive. Some call that a metaphor others call it fate.

“Today you will pick your groups. I advise you to choose wisely, you cannot pick new groups, and if you actually read my syllabus you would see the bottom of the page where it says note, you will be graded as a group, even if you are the only one doing the work. Welcome to the STEM field folks.” He continued. Most of the other students looked like they were gonna be sick in the class, all these introverts having to actually talk and work with each other. This project would just be an excuse to do a late night smoking sesh. Help justify the money they would spend on weed this semester because at least they did it together and it was for academic purposes.

Sumi watched the guy in front of her, clearly a physics student as his hair was worse than a McDonald's grease trap, lean over to the girl next to him and ask to partner and get rejected so fast that even the lightspeed needed a second to catch up.

“God,” Shoko muttered under her breath, “it is like a middle school dance, at least with people who wear deodorant.”

Sumi just chuckled, leaning towards Shoko, giving her the worlds best fuck me eyes, “Will you be my dear partner Ieiri Shoko.”

Choso kicked her stool from her side, clearly over her shenanigans already. “Can we go claim our lab table? The guy in the front row with the neon orange crocs trying to make eye contact with me.”

“Is that the guy who tried to work with you in Biochem 110?” Shoko asked, pushing away from the current desks they were sitting at.

“Yea, I ended up doing the entire project myself.” He rubbed his eyes, making them even more red.

They sit down at one of the lab tables. Beakers, faucets, lamps, all the equipment they were allowed to have sat in front of them. Sumi started to rack her brain of ideas of something that they may be able to pull off. Too bad ⅔ people at the table worked better intoxicated.

“We could do microplastic bioaccumulation? Something we could fake in lab reports but most look decent in post editing.” She offered, opening her laptop. That thing had been through hell in the back. She couldn’t count on her fingers how many times she spent crying in Choso’s dorm that her laptop had too many tasks in the task manager and she didn’t know where they came from. He would open it just to look up at her in disbelief and tell her it’s a background windows 32 process. The blue lenovo had no case, at least 20 ocean stickers, and a crack through the left side of the screen. Compared to his own macbook, sleek, clean of dust or stickers, a beautifully set up notion that he never would actually use, her computer looked like it survived World War One. Shoko’s little macbook had cigarette burns on the keyboard wrist rest, typical.

“Boring,” Choso replies, pulling out a stick of spearmint gum. “What if we just created something?”

“Clarify something,” Shoko squinted at him, opening up Word and starting a list of working potential paper titles. Their library resources were already opened in a side screen.

“I dunno, what if we make a synthetic compound? Mix that shit with a protein, see what it reacts to, heat, stress, I don’t know, feed it dopamine inhibitors.”

“So we are making a depressed goo?” Sumi deadpanned.

“Stress-responsive biomaterial,” Shoko corrected, her face lighting up behind her screen. “This might actually work if we spin it just right. Simulate cortisol release.”

“Can we make it glow,” Choso added, eyes hopeful in only the ways that Shoko and Sumi could pick up one. There was a certain stoner-puppy-dog eyes that he does that tells them he may actually work on this if they said yes.

Sumi scoffed but smirked, “We are making bioluminescent stress slime.”

“We’ll name it Steve,” He waved a new stick of gum in her face, “C’mon.”

She just shook her head, “Shoko what we got on present research articles that we can write a lit review for?”

“Honestly, there is much about examining how cortisol levels play a factor in stress of non-human creatures. Maybe we can simulate the blob to be like a sea cucumber or something.” Shoko replied, waving her hands, and touching her head as she talked.

“We can subject it to a playlist of Mitski titled ‘looming deadlines’” Sumi added and they all laughed.

“Or we just give it to Nanami while he is TAing that economics class with those dreadful freshmen, if it can grow hair it may actually just go bald.” Choso started to put links into the group doc of potential ideas.

As they laughed about this project, putting a positive spin on this hell of a class, Dr. Griggs was counting the days of how long till her retirement. Each wrinkle and line on his face was the representation of regret.

The three of them spent an extra thirty minutes in that lab, pretending to organize equipment and search through bins while just spiraling deeper into their potential goo’s rabbit hole. Once they left, their group chat with Yuki and Suguru titled “Lab Rats with THC” exploded with memes about the blob dubbed “Steve” by Choso.

LAB RATS WITH THC

Yuki: So what is this I hear about your 328 project??? Choso: Embrace the prophet, Steve Suguru: What now? Tatsumi: Steve Shoko: Steve Yuki: We went from stoner cult to stress-blob cult Tatsumi: Dr. Griggs looked like he is ready to join as a number below stats of the suicide hotline. Shoko: lol Suguru: I think that’s just his face Sumi. Choso: Tough Yuki: Anyhow, where are we smoking tonight? Thank god we are finally out of those damn dorms. Tatsumi: Speak for yourself, gotta use more gas now :C Shoko: But at least we live by the beach now Sumi Yuki: yea we literally picked this place for you to surf, dumb dumb Choso: I mean yall got the perfect smoke spot now Suguru: Just be happy you don’t share a wall with Gojo like I do Tatsumi: Does he moan like a girl Suguru: Don’t even go there Sumi, it’s like listening to a girl fake an orgasm, tragic Yuki: Feminist Suguru :P Choso: Never had to hear that :P, just saying Shoko: says the one is too high to remember your hookups half the time anyways Tatsumi: probably better that way with some of girls at Satoru’s parties, why is he inviting all these freshman Suguru: Easy money, they’ll pay the frat fee Yuki: Imagine if he made us pay that Tatsumi: no upperclassman would go LMAO Choso: True Shoko: y'all pop out at 9pm, we’ll smoke on the roof Choso: We allowed it to crash? Yuki: yea Suguru: word, I’ll drive Choso Tatsumi: DO NOT BRING SATORU GOJO

An hour later, Choso and Suguru show up with the one and only Satoru Gojo.

At least Shiu gave them their own weed. Do not get her wrong, Sumi liked Satoru, he was one of her good friends, fellow party planner. He knew how to get that vibe that would make any high immaculate. However, tonight she knew he was gonna do something that would just piss them all off.

Whining..

The group sat together on the rooftop of Shoko, Yuki, and Sumi’s new apartment for the year. The three girls finally were able to room together after the mandatory two years on campus. Yuki was a year older than the other girls but they became fast friends being the only WOMEN IN STEM in their group. Yuki had a bunch of drama with her roommates from last year and was happy to join their lease.

Their rooftop was small but cozy, a little turf rug, fairy lights, lawn chairs, a fake fireplace Shoko found on Facebook MarketPlace. Truly the vibes. Choso and Sumi sat next to each other in their respective lawn chairs, sharing the same blunt he rolled from them. This had been their thing since freshman year BIO-110 and CHEM-110. The two sat next to each other on their first days, like two stoner magnets. They both say they don’t remember how they became friends, they exchanged numbers at some point to study together and then re-met at a party. The rest of history once they shared a smoke. Choso was quiet, nonchalant, nothing bothered him. Everything bothered Sumi, yet she kept her cool when it mattered. The polar opposites yet best friends. Nothing could throw the two of them for a loop, as long as they had a bag of weed and a good ass playlist they would pretty much ride off the storm.

Gojo is quick to make himself right at home. Plopping right in the center of the rug, pulling out a speaker like some sort of cursed golden retriever in designer sunglasses. “Let’s get the vibes going here, c'mon gang.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I love Chappel Roan, but if you play one more trap-remix of Pink Pony Club I am gonna blow my own eardrums out.” Shoko said not even looking up from her phone.

“But it had a vibe, Shoko!” he insisted, drawing out the vowels in her last name. They never called her Ieiri. She had mentioned a few times that she just never felt really connected to the name, her mom called her it whenever she was mad so she’d rather go by something else, so her last name was fitting enough.

“I’ll remove your bluetooth privileges,” Yuki grumbled leaning over to get a hit of Choso’s thickass blunt, which is begrudgingly passed over, having to be respectful as a guest. “I swear to god, don’t test me.”

Sumi just laughed and added, “He’s only allowed on aux when he is not having his regularly scheduled god complex hours.”

“Sumi, you mean never,” Suguru deadpans and cracks a beer, nodding up to Choso if he wanted one.

Choso reached across, picking up the beer offered to him, and worked on getting the blunt back from Yuki. She wasn’t quick to release her prize, but gave up quickly with a wave from Sumi behind him. He settles deeper into his chair and lets out a fat sigh. The coastal air was so soft and damp, and not what he was used to in Sendai city. The city was congested and full of hustle and bustle. Here it felt like his bones were falling into place with the ease of relaxation. Of course there would always be the stressors of class and future, but right now, in the clandestine summer nighttime air, all he needed to think about was the beer and the blunt.

The group hadn’t been able to get together too much. Only a few of them lived close enough to grab coffee once or twice. Sumi herself lived all the way down south on one of the various islands. She grew up a typical island kid, living just above poverty in her small town that never got enough tourism. Her father owned a restaurant while her mother worked at the laundromat.

Often her days were filled with cheap weed and her surfboard that had taken her 2 years to save up for. As soon as she was old enough to converse with foreigners she became a waitress at the family restaurant. She hadn’t minded the work. Not when that work would dust off the sand pressed on her shorts from watching her friends surf. Everyday that she rode her bicycle she fixed up from an old junkyard to school and passed the surf shop. Another fairy must have gotten its wings because the smile on her face was wider than the rings around jupiter.

All she wanted to do was be free. And god was she free she was while on her board. Arms out like a gull’s wings, screaming out into the open ocean air, not a care in the world. Her hair, long then, would flow in the wind behind her, sea mist flooding her senses with pure and utter happiness, nothing matter asides how her feet adjusted to the waves below her.

However, was it enough to be free by herself? She could have stayed after high school, found a good enough job, and helped her parents out. She could have stayed with that beautiful board and sea air. Despite that, something was always nagging her in the chest. Rot sat and eroded at those beautiful lungs. Her parents, who did everything they could to raise their beautiful baby girl would grow up in the same predicament they were raised in. They had dreams, they had aspirations, they wanted more out of life. Yet, they would be stuck here, burdened by the debt in their accounts. The restaurant hadn’t been doing well and her mother had been hospitalized after the years of inhaling bleach caught up to her. The bills came steady and hard and without the extra support they were running low on savings.

Sumi couldn’t do that to her parents, blissfully doing enough just to get by in life while her parents struggled to just get to the next day. She had to do something more with her life and give them the same opportunities they had made for her. She wanted her mom to see the sunset on Mount Fuji at least one time before her last agonizing breath. No more bleak hospital rooms, lights and plastic white walls. Dying surrounded by formaldehyde was no way for an ocean woman to leave the planet.

In her last year of high school her surfboard began to collect dust. Even the shelf itself had a thin coat of it. She thought the only way she would ever feel free was out on the open ocean. So why did when she opened that acceptance letter to university did every rock sitting on her chest evaporate into thin air. It was as if energy had been destroyed, breaking the laws of physics.

The night ended how most nights ended. Clinking of bottles in backpacks down the stairs, followed by stoned, high, or crossed university students looking like they were climbing down Mount Everest. Suguru ended up crawling into bed with Shoko like he usually did. Some people suspected a relationship between the two of them. His eyes just followed her in a way that screamed more than “friend”. They glided so smoothly across his sclera, as if screenshotting the milliseconds of her movements. Shoko always denied something further, but when she opened the door just a little wider to see if he was going to follow her the story painted itself.

Satoru found his way to the couch, not without the help of Yuki, who had one of his arms over her shoulders. He was drunkenly rating the new apartment, ramblings of taxes, side tables, and window lengths were quickly replaced by snores. Her careful hands turned off the lamps, threw the throw blanket over the man's body, and retired to her room with the click of the door handle.

Sumi had Choso’s hand in hers. There were no threaded fingers, or tight hold, but just enough to lead him behind her. The faucet turned on with a tap and a glass filled. It was pressed into his now cakey and warm fingers. The instruction to drink was faint on her tongue. She could see the red in his eyes from high and the smell of beer on his breath. He would never admit it now, but a hangover was summoning itself like a monsoon in that head of his. He leaned into a counter and squinted his eyes to see her in the soft refrigerator light. She was bent over, looking for a munchie snack, appearing with raspberries that probably hadn’t been washed. Her bangs were starting to fall off the two clips she used to push the right side out of her face. Her fingers adorned with old, chipped, blue nail polish frustratingly pushed the wisps away. A scoff leaves the pink, bitten and picked at lips. She offered some of the berries but he refused with a motion, not wanting to be throwing up that acidity in the morning. Water would be his killer tonight. The girl tucked a few into a paper towel and extended her hand once again.

He followed behind her into her bedroom, freshly moved into, and decorated. The first thing his violet eyes landed on was this shadow object by the window, wedged between beach shelfs and her desk. After a closer look he realized it was a surfboard taken all the way from home. The lines and old reminiscence of coral scratches reestablished itself in the timeline of Sumi. Whenever he looked at her he saw the moonlight waves, it was the scent etched into her soul. An ocean spirit created by Posiden himself. He rested his glass on the matte wood by her laptop. The surface is already covered in open notes and chemistry books. The wall in front of him had fairy lights poorly hung and posters half fallen. The room just felt right. It felt like her.

The view from the window was astonishing, he could see the waves crash against the cement barriers guarding the city from storms of the East Chinese Sea. His apartment did not have such a view. He lived in the dedicated Frat house a mile from campus with the other boys. He had a hole in his floor, the stench of cigarettes caked into the walls, and a laundry room already overrun by men trying to figure out how a washer works.

In her day clothes and raspberries in hand, crawled into her bed not even bothering to pull down the covers. Her hair had fallen out of its clip and rested on her collarbone. The blue peeking out from behind, making an appearance like a secret behind a curtain. He kicked off his sneakers next to her bed, pulled his sweatshirt over his head, and sat down right next to her. She had raspberry stains on the side of her mouth like a little kid. They fit in right with those big teal eyes of hers, always curious and asking more. He used the sleeve of his shirt to rub the edges of her lips.

“Messy like a baby,” He grumbled as if he was annoyed. He wasn’t.

She pouted at him and challenged him with a furrow of her eyebrows. Once he finished, she just popped another raspberry in her mouth.

“Smelly like a divorced dad,” She wrinkled her nose at the smell of beer.

“Now that is just insulting,” Choso rolled his eyes as if he was offended.

“Remember being offended is a choice, Choso,” She teased, tongue between her teeth and a raise of her shoulders. She often felt like she hadn’t had a place in the world, or maybe he just made her feel that way. When she was with him it was like the only place she needed to be in the entire universe was next to him. Like covalent bonds.

“Lets go to bed, Spitfire,” He took the paper towel, now empty, and tossed it to the floor to deal with later.

“Someone is grumpy,” She argues, sitting up straighter, protesting.

“Someone is gonna be grumpy tomorrow,” He pulls on the side of her cheek. “When she has to wake up for her 8am lecture and can’t get out of bed because she didn’t sleep till 3 in the morning.”

“Touche,” Her shoulders sink and her eyes dart away from him.

“Goodnight, Tatsumi,” He said, pushing some of the hair out of her face. She pouted her cheeks at her full name.

“Whatever,” She slinks under the covers and turns away from him with a huff. He just laughed under his breath. His fingers find the lamp by her bed and pull the chain with a click. The room is showered in darkness and only the subtle glow of moonlight from the window gives it a blue hue. He lets his arm rest behind his head, his chest open to the girl next to him. They both cherished these quiet moments, just the two of them, just enough silence to have independent thoughts. After a few minutes of sulking, she gives up and rolls over to face him, raspberry stains and all.

“Are you ready to be a junior? I mean we have two more years left.” Her questions are quiet and innocent but full of anxiety and uncertainty,

“I think that trying to think about it too hard is gonna rot that pretty head of yours,” He touches his free hand to her forehead, like a press of a button.

“You’ll stay till the morning?”

“I’ll stay,”

With that she rests her arm over his stomach and presses her head into his side. His arm below his head comes around her gently.

“Goodnight Choso.”

This is like 4k outa 16k guys enjoy

#choso #choso kamo #oc #jjk #jujustu kaisen #geto #suguru geto #shoko ieiri #gojo #gojo satoru #yuki tsukumo #yuki #mei mei #choso x oc #college au #jjk college au #syllabus week #preview #this is sucking out my soul

1 note · View note