sunny do NOT leave us after mentioning professor nanami. he will forever be on my mind. 😣
heres some stuff i fished out from the drafts:
nanami kento phd sets his alarm for precisely six in the morning everyday. this is important because he's already taken into account the morning rush crowd and the weather forecast has predicted sunny skies today, which is rather unlikely for ...england. so he's not buying it, there are only a few precious hours to make up for the time it takes to set up the slides and get the creaky projector to work—not surprising since the university is about eight hundred years old and has yet to figure out why students can’t find assignment posts on canvas—but out the door he goes, a loose sock falls down to his ankle like always, and he would relish in that little bit of familiarity and routine, but there isn't enough time to do so when it's already six thirty.
"attendance will be taken into account for your final grade, five minutes is the cut off point,” he announces every semester, with every new batch of students, and like clockwork, it’s followed by a chorus of groans.
but none of them try to fight him on it, they think the old man has enough to deal with, given that he’s always got the moodiest face on, brooding and emotionless. he’s barely 30 but he receives senior citizen discounts at the cafe nearby. already looks the part with his brown sweater vests and thick rimmed buddy holly glasses, shoes clacking on pavement as he's rushing from one lecture hall to another. but the pants are nice, he’s thrifted them from his first time at a market in camden (sans spectacles and or orthopaedics. those had to be custom made.)
his laptop is shoved into his worn out leather messenger bag clumsily, who cares, it's a PC, they’re sturdier and he’d rather settle for thinkpads than buying into that fruit company. the zipper's broken so he clasps it shut with his fingers, briskly side stepping slow walkers and mutters a "fucking hell," under his breath when he comes across couples making out in the open, sucking each other's faces off, he's cringing at how obscene it is, enough to turn his croissant bland. rammed into his open maw, he has no time for jams or butter, so a soggy, saliva-drenched mess will do.
about 200 people show up to his class and that's only because they started having a stricter application process, he remembers when there were more. still, the quantity doesn't phase him, because eventually students will drop out, people fail assignments. the numbers shall dwindle because he's over the hand holding. it used to be fine back when prerequisites were a jumbled up bunch of different majors, he'd help out with a little calculus here and some linear algebra worksheets, y'know, just the basic stuff. but it's about time he stopped the coddling. makes a mental note to remind himself just how much he takes this course seriously. econometrics isn't for everyone, but a bare-bones understanding of basic concepts in probability theory and statistical inference is all he asks for. "you will fail to grasp anything beyond the first week of this syllabus," he tells yuuji itadori who sits in the front row, an enthusiastic kid, eager to learn, but ultimately and unfortunately...foolish.
"what did you major in last semester?" nanami asks impassively, not at all curious really, but just to gauge where he's at. meanwhile another part of his brain is already planning and working out an alternative plan if itadori chooses to stay. maybe something simpler, he's heard accounting is all the rage, as long as he's done something relatively close to mathematics—
“sports marketing!” yuuji exclaims. so self assured, and nanami is about to rip his hair out, fisting at blonde clumps. he really shouldn’t do that, it would be such a shame to have him balding at such a young age. maybe he’ll do a silly side study on it, ‘progressive deterioration of the hair shaft over a two year period primarily caused by excessive weathering and self-inflicted damage.’ (quickly taps out a short intro in his notes app and emails it to geto and gojo with no subject and the one line; ‘thoughts?’)
nanami breathes out a deep sigh, he's going to have a not so friendly chat with the admins after this. "and why have you chosen this course, as a challenge i presume? i should remind you this is a postgraduate program," which should have been his first clue to itadori's determination.
"i just thought it'll be fun to take your class, you're like, the smartest guy i know," to which nanami can't deny him when he's so earnest about it. if he were being realistic, the chances for yuuji to achieve much are slim, or at least where this course is concerned. but nanami has never been the kind to discourage, so he just hands itadori a list of pdf textbooks he can download for free off some random account, and schedules tutoring sessions on his thursday afternoons. ('thank you @ mr_overtime for providing free and accessible academic resources!' yuuji types before posting it to a message board.)
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nanami’s moved to an old research lab the next day, the same group of students show up except there are a few who join him online in a teams channel he’s humorously named ‘ABSENT 7/3/22’ ...just to emphasise on the importance of face to face interactions. he thinks it’s funny. no one laughs. but he didn’t think they would. he’s mapped it out on a data visualizer programme he’s been working on and is proud at the very least that results were accurate. still, the conditions are less than ideal, the stone floors scuff the leather of his shoes, the heating unit is broken, and of course, no projector. “i guess we’ll do graphs today,” he says.
a choir made up of sifting hands and rustling papers start singing alongside graphite and red cedar grinding under a blade, the quick push, push, pushes of a thumb on pen, cables thrown across one table to another—there are no outputs here. with swift vertical swipes, nanami thinks he’ll suffer the clown lung and the inevitable dry, dust-filled grooves of his fingertips for this, especially because it’s been awhile since he’s used the hagoromo chalk. there’s a pause, everyone waits for the maestro, and he conducts a tune of old, one that’s been unheard in years. when his perfectly straight lines come out thick and layered like snow on a forest floor, phthalo turning into golden-sheen moss green when the sun cuts a slant of light at the right time. his rosy fingers translucent like an orange, pressing, gripping, swishhh-es lines he’s seen again and again, equations he knows by heart, the tapping of rock reverberates, and everyone else follows after its echo.
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a replica of ‘wanderer above the sea fog’ gets delivered to his office that afternoon. “still into romanticism?” gojo asks. doesn’t even try to point at the painting, already disinterested. with hands tucked into his favourite parka, he swivels his head around and bounce on his heels like a child, looking for whatever would grasp his interest, wide blue eyes taking in nanami’s office that’s untouched by renovation of any kind, it still smells a little damp and the curtains are yet again pulled shut, but gojo shines with curiosity enough to light up an entire room.
he shrugs, “‘still into’ suggests fixation, i only observe it as what it is— a painting,” nanami defends, head tilting to the side, “they were going to get rid of it, what was i supposed to do?”
“you make it sound like it were a stray animal,” gojo teases, seeing that nanami doesn’t entertain the jab, he eases the tension by the only way he knows how, bringing attention to himself, “but what do i know, i’ve only just won a nobel,” he shoots nanami a grin that curls from ear to ear. yet again, the scowl is ever prominent.
moving closer to inspect it, gojo forces himself not to pull a face. yeah no. nothing interesting here; man looking out towards a fog and endless sky. there’s no truth to it. only that the varnish is applied sloppily, and it’s cracking, nooks and crannies gathering dust, rivers splitting down the middle. is it a piece worth anything? worth saving? he doesn’t think so. an artist should just paint what’s in front of him.
nanami overachieves but never finds any meaning in all of it, who's turning into a doubter, a pessimist, "you’re always in a bad mood, must be the weight of that intellect you have," gojo likes to say. one who seeks for something beyond because he uncovers the mysteries of the world and what then? feels like a ghost, hollowed and waning. thou art a scholar horatio, speak to it. watching himself live a life he can't control, every passing moment slipping through his fingers. they're cold and slightly calloused, chalk-dusted. there's a detached way about then, a dismissive wave of his hand, brushing off excuses and late submissions and all the compliments that fall on deaf ears.
“you see yourself in it,” suguru adds from his corner, nonchalantly. he’s lazing in an armchair with book in hand. when he looks up at the two of them, they stare at him like he were speaking in a foreign language. snapping his book shut, he stretches his limbs out like a cat, “it’s a piece depicting reflection; morality, feeling, something tells me you’re lost kento,” geto gives his hypothesis. and it lingers there.
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