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ceruark · 1 month ago

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campus crush, pt. 2

synopsis: blue lock boys as crushes you’d develop at university! [ft. isagi yoichi, itoshi rin, and michael kaiser (pt. 2)] (pt. 1 here) words: 2.6k notes: gn! reader. a/n: thank you to everyone who supported part 1! let me know who else you'd like to see for this series :>

kaiser pt. 2 req taglist: @lizzzmm @mochiii-sama @anyaslittlepeanut rin req taglist: @levihanmyotp @ieathairs

isagi yoichi - lab partner

general education courses are the bane of your existence. wasn’t that high school’s job? why should you be forced to pay to take a class you have absolutely no interest in when you could be putting your time to good use pursuing what you love instead?

whether it’s as a gen ed course or a prereq for your major, you somehow find yourself in a chemistry class that, of course, starts at the crack of dawn (8 a.m.). you go into the class fearing for your life; you’ve heard horror stories from your friends about their own lab partners who would skip the lab period, slack off, and push all the work onto them while reaping the benefits of earning the same grade.

fortunately for you, your lab partner is nothing like that. isagi is the epitome of politeness, and as the semester goes on, you find him to be super sweet and extremely competent— at times, you find yourself feeling bad because he picks up the material much faster than you and sometimes ends up doing the brunt of the work. he always brushes off your apologies, saying that he doesn’t mind at all and that you’re plenty helpful during lab.

it’s extremely easy for you to get comfortable around isagi. his kindness is so genuine that it’s easy to fall into a real friendship with him. you end up grabbing lunch with him after lab every week, waving to him when you pass each other on campus, and even texting him about things other than your shared class, and soon enough, you find yourself mentioning him more frequently in conversation. you start talking about him so much that your friends start teasing you about having a crush on him, which you vehemently deny despite the blush that paints your cheeks bright red.

it’s around midterms when their casual teasing becomes far more serious, though, when two of your friends get out of class early one day and decide to sit with you and isagi at lunch. unintentionally, isagi is a social butterfly and hits it off with your friends immediately, who are just as charmed by his warm nature as you are.

“that’s boyfriend material manifest,” your friend says the second he’s out of earshot, “you better get on that, and fast.”

you spend the next couple of weeks continuing to spend time with isagi outside of class whenever you can, and skirting around your friends’ accusations of a crush. isagi is sweet, very much so, but it’s simply just not like that. besides, sometimes you worry that he’s a little too nice. you’re plenty capable of taking care of yourself, but it might be nice to have a boyfriend who can bite back on your behalf.

your doubts go up in smoke one day when you walk into lab a few minutes later than usual, only to see a tall blonde standing next to isagi at your shared workstation. you can’t see the stranger’s face, but you can see isagi’s: lips pulled down into a mean sneer, eyes blazing as he fires out insult after excruciating insult, exposing you to some of his more… colorful vocabulary. you feel yourself blush despite yourself, trying to crush the butterflies in your stomach.

it’s— well, it’s hot, to be quite honest.

you’re not really able to act normally around him after that. the feelings you’d been denying and suppressing have now arisen completely, refusing to be stamped down. you’re a blushing mess around him and, despite your best efforts, are now acting like a shy, awkward schoolgirl around a guy you’ve been casually talking to for months now. that would be embarrassing enough by itself, but everything is made worse by the fact that isagi isn’t stupid, and he’s able to pick up on your shift behavior and the likely feelings behind it—which, of course, leaves him a blushing, stuttering mess as well.

you’re wallowing in frustration over your helplessness, slouched over the workstation with your head in your hands before lab starts, when you hear something being placed down in front of you.

you look up, surprised. a box from a popular bakery near campus sits in front of you. you lift your head further and lock eyes with isagi, who is flushed red—from nerves or the late spring heat, you can’t tell, but you can appreciate the way his tank top shows off the toned arms you’ve rarely gotten to see in time’s past.

he scratches the back of his neck sheepishly, clearly riddled with nerves, yet you can see the determination in his eyes, which he refuses to avert away from yours.

“the first showing of this semester’s play is this saturday,” isagi says, fidgeting a bit with the hem of his sleeves. “i was wondering if, uh, you’d like to go with me? and maybe get dinner before that? if you’re available, of course.”

you lift the lid of the bakery box. inside is a cupcake of your favorite flavor, which you had offhandedly mentioned to isagi in conversation once.

you smile up at him softly. “of course,” you say, “i’d like that.”

you both stay like that for a moment, smiling shyly at each other, until the professor walks in and loudly asks isagi to take his seat.

the fanfare your friend group chat meets the news of your date with does little to distract you from the side glances and sweet smiles he shoots you throughout the period.

itoshi rin - library worker

you seriously regret taking this literature course.

you’re just taking it to fulfill a requirement. it’s supposed to be a low-stress class; you’d done your research, and the professor was very lax, making the course an easy A so long as you were competent in stringing together an argument and structuring an essay. the only thing that gave you some pause was the fact that there was a research component to it, but a friend who had taken the course told you that it wasn’t anything super intense or difficult, so you went ahead and signed up for the course.

and it’s been fine the whole semester. the assignments haven’t been stressful at all, and the professor is incredibly funny and kind. it’s everything you could have asked for in a class. but things have taken a turn since midterms hit, which is when you had to start pulling together an outline for your final research paper. you have free range over the topic, and you’ve settled on exploring victorian gothic literature, so it’s not the paper itself that’s giving you grief, either.

no, it’s the damn student worker stationed in the library who’s been giving you your daily dose of migraines these days.

of course you know of itoshi rin; he and his brother are notorious on campus for their beauty yet cold personalities that leave them “untouchable.” your friends have fawned over the younger one more than once, given that he’s the same year as you all. you can admit that both brothers were attractive—you’d either be a liar or a contrarian to say otherwise—but you never really understood openly gushing over them when they could both be quite rude.

and now that you’ve actually interacted with rin, you are firm in your belief that the itoshi brothers are overrated and undeserving of their many admirers.

rin glaring at you when you approached the reception desk was enough on its own to rub you the wrong way—god forbid you ask a man to do his job. and then, when you asked him to point you in the direction of the section related to your research topic, he sighed under his breath like you were inconveniencing him and told you the approximate location of what you were looking for in a deadpan voice that still somehow managed to come across as condescending.

it only escalates from there. he seems to always be on the clock whenever you have time to stop by the library to pick up books you checked out, and the cool glare he greets you with always manages to get under your skin.

it’s as you’re checking out a copy of wuthering heights and returning a copy of dracula that he says, “your picks are very basic.”

your eye twitches. this is the first time he’s spoken a word to you outside of what his job requires him to say, and of course, it’s something that pisses you off.

“they’re classics for a reason,” you respond easily, feigning nonchalance.

rin gives a noncommittal shrug, but you can feel the condescension in his gaze as he hands you the book, grating on your nerves.

next time, you request a copy of the beetle by richard marsh. the mysteries of udolpho by ann radcliffe next.

you’re picking up the last novel you selected for this paper, flatland by edward abbott, when he finally bothers to talk to you again.

“this one hasn’t been in print for very long,” he mumbles as he scans it into the system, registering your rental.

“i know,” you say, not bothering to keep the smugness out of your voice. “not a very basic pick, is it?”

he fixes you with that blank stare again, but you don’t quite miss the way the corner of his lip quirks up into the slightest of smirks as he slides the book over the counter to you.

despite the fact that you really don’t need to, you keep renting out a book from the library every week even after you’ve finished your essay. every time, you make sure it’s something that’s in the realm of horror but not a super common title, spending hours researching and compiling a list of novels that fit your criteria. it’s got absolutely nothing to do with the smart-mouthed guy handing the books off to you every week, who you’ve actually gotten to the point of bantering with (because, quite frankly, you don’t think your takes on the novels are as bad as he claims they are).

half your friends think you’ve just picked up a new hobby. the other half think you’ve gone insane. only one knows the truth, when they catch you taking a handwritten note out of the most recent book you’ve just picked up from the library, shaking your head and scoffing at whatever’s written on it, but also struggling to keep the smile off your face.

her curiosity spurs her into following you to the library the next week, where she catches you and itoshi rin in heated discussion over the novel, the man actually fully engaged in the conversation and having eyes only for you.

well, she can keep a secret just this once. far be it for her to interfere with your accomplishment of the impossible.

michael kaiser - study date (pt. 2)

you shouldn’t have agreed to come to the cafe with him—you’re in way over your head.

it’d taken four hours, the consultation of every friend you have on campus, and a seemingly endless amount of cycling through every article of clothing you own, but eventually, you’d looked into your full-length mirror and deemed yourself ready for your date with kaiser.

you thought that calling it a “date” was being generous, but your friends insisted otherwise. he asked you to go to a cafe with him, one-on-one. to study, you’d argued, but they just amended their statement to call it a study date. which is a thing, apparently.

regardless, you’ve gone with a relatively safe outfit—nothing too fancy, in case it really is just another study session, but still something nicer than you would normally wear around campus, especially to the library.

you headed out at about six-twenty, since you’d agreed to meet at the library at six-thirty. sucking in a shaky breath and wiping your sweaty palms off on your shirt, you threw your laptop into your bag and slung it over your shoulder, then began the trek to the library.

it felt like a death march. each step closer to the entrance had your heart rate increasing, and by the time you found yourself climbing the final steps to the floor that your usual study spot is on, you felt like you might have actually been having a heart attack with the way the organ felt like it was about to burst out of your chest at any moment.

remember, he asked you, your friend’s voice echoed in your head as you steeled yourself and ignored the instinct to turn tail and flee while you still could.

now, you’ve been sitting with kaiser at a cozy table by a window in the back of the cafe for just over an hour now, but you’ve felt like your face is going to melt off the entire time. the cool detachment from your previous encounters is gone now, leaving you in the wake of the flirtatious nature you’d only heard about from others, something so rare to behold it’d become something of a myth on campus.

an hour, and neither of you had brought out a single notebook or laptop. after ordering your drinks and sitting down, you didn’t feel like you had a moment to even breathe; kaiser kept your gaze trapped within his own intense one, his blue eyes locked onto yours as he made “casual conversation,” which mostly just ended up being him coaxing you into talking about yourself.

he answered some of your questions, too, about his major, plans post-grad, and even the people he insisted weren’t friends (you’d felt your nervous smile go a bit fond at that; he could say whatever he liked, but if he really didn’t like alexis and yoichi, he probably wouldn’t be spotted around them as much as he was). after expertly dodging your questions about his home life and family twice, you took the hint and backed off, steering the conversation back to yourself.

there’s finally a lull in your conversation, prompting you to finally tear your eyes away from his and look down at your backpack. fidgeting with the hem of your shirt, you ask, “should we, um, get started on work?”

a sense of deja vu washes over you when you don’t get a response. it seems his silence is a command for your attention, and you shyly peer up at him, nearly cowering under the bored glare he’s now sending you that very much reminds you of the day in the library that had landed you in this situation to begin with.

“why bother?” he asks, tilting his head against the palm it’s propped up against. “it’s irresponsible to start another assignment when you haven’t finished the one you’re currently working through.”

you raise an eyebrow at the implication behind that statement but decide to indulge him, anyways. “and just what assignment might you be working on right now?”

his smirk reemerges, and you feel your own face heat up again. “a research project, of sorts,” he answers breezily. “i’ve yet to collect enough data to satisfy me.”

“what a shame,” you say, somehow managing to keep yourself together enough to go along with the bit. “do you plan to gather more?”

he lets out a hum, then begins to trace his finger in circles along the rim of his mug. his eyes are so sharp as they gaze into yours that your breath hitches before he even answers.

“if my subject is willing to meet with me again, then yes.”

yeah, you’re definitely way in over your head with this one.

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reasonsforhope · 1 year ago

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"The world's coral reefs are close to 25 percent larger than we thought. By using satellite images, machine learning and on-ground knowledge from a global network of people living and working on coral reefs, we found an extra 64,000 square kilometers (24,700 square miles) of coral reefs – an area the size of Ireland.

That brings the total size of the planet's shallow reefs (meaning 0-20 meters deep) to 348,000 square kilometers – the size of Germany. This figure represents whole coral reef ecosystems, ranging from sandy-bottomed lagoons with a little coral, to coral rubble flats, to living walls of coral.

Within this 348,000 km² of coral is 80,000 km² where there's a hard bottom – rocks rather than sand. These areas are likely to be home to significant amounts of coral – the places snorkelers and scuba divers most like to visit.

You might wonder why we're finding this out now. Didn't we already know where the world's reefs are?

Previously, we've had to pull data from many different sources, which made it harder to pin down the extent of coral reefs with certainty. But now we have high resolution satellite data covering the entire world – and are able to see reefs as deep as 30 meters down.

Pictured: Geomorphic mapping (left) compared to new reef extent (red shading, right image) in the northern Great Barrier Reef.

[AKA: All the stuff in red on that map is coral reef we did not realize existed!! Coral reefs cover so much more territory than we thought! And that's just one example. (From northern Queensland)]

We coupled this with direct observations and records of coral reefs from over 400 individuals and organizations in countries with coral reefs from all regions, such as the Maldives, Cuba, and Australia.

To produce the maps, we used machine learning techniques to chew through 100 trillion pixels from the Sentinel-2 and Planet Dove CubeSat satellites to make accurate predictions about where coral is – and is not. The team worked with almost 500 researchers and collaborators to make the maps.

The result: the world's first comprehensive map of coral reefs extent, and their composition, produced through the Allen Coral Atlas. [You can see the interactive maps yourself at the link!]

The maps are already proving their worth. Reef management agencies around the world are using them to plan and assess conservation work and threats to reefs."

-via ScienceDirect, February 15, 2024

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