fic - Johnny's and Associates - Five things that would be true if KAT-TUN were Chemistry Majors
Title: Five things that would be true if KAT-TUN were Chemistry Majors
Author: virdant
Length: 3558 words; oneshot
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General.
Pairing: None.
Summary: UCSD!AU; Five things that would be true if KAT-TUN were Chemistry Majors.
Warning: UCSD!AU. Excessive chemistry terminology.
Notes: UCSD!AU. For the purpose of this story, I've taken the liberty of placing them in an American research university due to not knowing how the school system in Japan works. Since none of them are chemistry majors, this is AU. This is also probably the story that spawned UCSD!AU. Ask for more details about this AU (like what Arashi are. That's a good question to ask)
Five things that would be true if KAT-TUN were Chemistry Majors
I: Nakamaru is a computational chemist, and Ueda has no idea how he does it.
Nakamaru is a straight chemistry major. He prefers this, in a way; sometimes he wishes he had a suffix to stick before “chem” when he's introducing his major, but he's good solid Nakamaru. Everybody else can be a biochem or pharm-chem or even “molecular synthesis” major, he'll take good solid Chemistry with a Capital C. It's really awkward introducing himself at Chemistry Society meetings though, because people go, “Oh, I'm a biochem major,” or “I'm doing organic chemistry,” and he's stick starting strong with “I'm a chem major,” before he trails off and mutters, “just chem.”
After an entire quarter of meetings where Domoto-sempai and Domoto-sempai (vice presidents internal and external respectively) encouraged everybody to get into a real research lab with a professor and do some legitimate research, Nakamaru decides to go into computational. He doesn't know if he wants to be a organic chemist or a physical chemist or a biochemist, so he decides to be none of those, and go into one of the smallest fields in chemistry instead. It doesn't have a fancy letter before it, and nobody really knows what computational is other than the fact that involves computers. Anyways, computers are cool, aren't they?
Ueda disagrees; he finds computers completely baffling and not cool at all, and he has no idea how Nakamaru manages to use them for actual research. Ueda still has to go to Academic Computing Services every other day to try to get his computer to connect to the internet, though now he's decided that Nakamaru's not only more effective than ACS, but also cheaper.
“It's easy,” Nakamaru tries to explain, connecting Ueda to the internet yet again and handing him back his laptop.
Ueda waves a notebook full of mechanisms at Nakamaru instead. “Want to run my reactions for me?” he demands in return. Ueda works in an organic synthesis lab, but sometimes he feels like he should do something like physical organic because he actually enjoys physical chemistry a lot more than the rest of the people in his lab.
He takes chemistry seriously; he faces the material firmly, and he never goes into a class with the belief that he's going to hate the material, because that's just setting yourself up to fail. Perhaps because of that, he likes it-likes all of it. He likes trying to understand it, from the convoluted mess that's quantum mechanics (and doesn't agree with Akanishi's method of getting drunk to gain “illumination”) to the delicate construction of a molecule in organic chemistry. He doesn't want to do physics, doesn't care for bio, can't see himself doing anything other than just chemistry.
The only problem is that there's nothing that will let him do “just chemistry.” Every chemist ends up specializing, even the computational ones, in their own way.
Either way, Ueda's not going anywhere near a UNIX shell.
“You wouldn't be able to recognize it for what it is anyways,” Nakamaru mutters under his breath as he takes Ueda's laptop and fixes it for him again.
II: They meet in Honors General Chemistry (and completely skew the curve)
Koki hates the people in his Honors General Chemistry discussion.
He's used to being smarter than the rest of his classmates; he was in the top 10% of his graduating class in high school, and it's weird to look at a question and not see the answer straight away. It's even weirder to be sitting next to some short kid with a face that looks vaguely like a horse's who simply walks up to the chalkboard and works out the problem straight on the board in less than a minute.
“Fuck,” Koki mutters under his breath, because he can already see where he's going to be on the curve-a good two points above the average, but not nearly high enough to put him in the A range.
“Fuck sounds about right,” some kid says from behind him. When Koki turns around, the kid waves lazily. “Hey. I'm Akanishi Jin.”
Akanishi Jin turns out to be taking this class because his best friend from “since forever”-who Koki realizes was the popular guy in Koki's high school-is taking this class and he's coming along for the ride. He's a chemistry major, but only because he wants to make explosions. And he's an idiot, but he's smarter than he looks and acts, because he's the one who catches Horse-Face's mistake, pointing out that it's molecular mass over grams instead of the other way around as he pops a wad of gum in his mouth.
Koki grits his teeth and decides that he's going to be kicking Akanishi's ass on their stoichiometry exam next week.
Horse-Face flushes bright red, and Koki would feel sorry for him-he's so thin he looks smaller than Koki's brother in high school-except this is college, and he's got to kick everybody's ass, Horse-Face included.
Horse-Face's name is Kamenashi Kazuya, Koki finds out when they walk out of discussion. He's in honors general chemistry because he aced through his AP classes, but he still needs a year of gen-chem for medical school. He's also almost adorably shy and awkward when confronted by a classmate instead of a TA.
“Fuck,” Koki mutters to himself, before he pats Kamenashi on the shoulder and suggests that they grab a snack over by the dining hall nearby. “We can study together too, you're really smart and I bet you can help me on the test coming up” he adds to convince the kid, who looks appropriately flattered and agrees. That somehow that ends up being an invitation for Akanishi to invite himself and three other guys in their discussion. The other three guys look suitably uncomfortable around Akanishi and his enthusiasm-it's not 8 in the morning, but it's Friday afternoon and way too late to be doing chemistry, and Koki decides that maybe this won't be entirely too bad.
The other three guys are Ueda, Nakamaru, and Taguchi. Koki remembers Taguchi as that kid in his math class who made bad puns when the professor mentioned derivatives, but Ueda and Nakamaru are familiar only in the sense that he might have seen them at 8 in the morning this week for lecture.
They're all in different colleges; they spend a good solid half-hour arguing about who's GE's are worse-Akanishi loses immediately, and Kamenashi and Taguchi duke it out for a while even though Taguchi is enthusiastic about six quarters of required writing class and Kamenashi is just resigned. In the end, they agree to band together-even if they're located at various corners of campus-and study so they completely kill the curve, just because they can.
(That doesn't mean that they sit together and pass notes in class like middle school brats. Ueda sits in the back with Nakamaru; Ueda takes naps while Nakamaru pays attention and clicks in for both of them, juggling clickers for him, Ueda, and his roommates and suitemates so they all get their 40 attendance points. Koki sits with Taguchi in the middle, because 8 in the morning is too early to be up, and even Taguchi is hard-pressed to be cheerful until at least 9:30 when class is over. Kamenashi sits in the front with Yamashita-Akanishi's roommate and “best friend since forever”-and Akanishi, listening to the professor and answering his questions while Akanishi sleeps on his shoulder. So they're kind of paired off, but that's only because 8 AM classes are better with a buddy to poke you awake when the prof's pointing his laser pointer at you and shouting.)
III: “Akanishi is an idiot.”
“Akanishi is an idiot,” Kamenashi gripes at Yamashita while they wait for math discussion to start. It's late, they're in the basement of an old worn-down building that looks like it was built before asbestos was outlawed, and Kamenashi had just spent the past hour feeling awkward while eating dinner with Yamashita and Akanishi, who are not only roommates but friends since they were in diapers or something.
“Bakanishi,” Yamashita agrees readily as he fixes his eyes on the empty blackboard. Kamenashi sometimes thinks that Yamashita doesn't like him, but Akanishi says that Yamashita's just really focused on his studies because he wants to graduate in less than 5 years, which is virtually impossible for an engineering major.
“He wants to study abroad spring quarter,” Kamenashi blurts out, because this isn't one of his normal complaints about Akanishi ditching study group to sleep in.
Yamashita nods. “I know.” Of course Yamashita would know already, Kamenashi thinks as the TA walks in and starts the discussion. Of course Yamashita would know already; he lives with Akanishi.
“Doesn't that bother you?” Kamenashi asks when discussion ends and they're packing their bags to leave. “Aren't you going to be assigned a new roommate? Doesn't this just... make you upset?”
Yamashita says with placid practicality, “If that's what Jin wants to do, then he'll do it. Stopping him won't achieve anything.”
“He's going to study abroad,” Kamenashi says. “He's going to go off and learn some foreign language because that's the only thing you really learn when you study abroad. And then he'll come back and be behind a year and-”
“It's only a quarter,” Yamashita says, and that's that.
It's only a quarter, but the quarter drags without Akanishi. The rest of them study together, and they still kill the curve in their third quarter of gen chem, ruining the lives of bio majors all around campus. It's strange to be taking their first quarter of chemistry lab without Akanishi there to copy their pre-labs, but they're all separated anyways, Kamenashi in the same lab as Koki and Ueda, and Nakamaru and Taguchi in separate labs.
“It's not right,” Kamenashi says quietly over Skype to Akanishi on one of those rare moments when he's not cramming information into his head. “It's different without you. Come back. We miss you.”
Akanishi laughs, “I miss you guys too,” he says carelessly. “It's great here. I love the environment. I'm learning lots,” he says, and Kamenashi can't help but wonder what Akanishi's learning if his voice is slurred and his eyes don't quite focus on the webcam properly.
“But are you going to come back?” Nakamaru asks when he's on a break from programming code.
Akanishi nods. “At the start of next quarter. I'll be back for ochem. I promise.” Nakamaru wonders about Akanishi's promises; he's promised to stop copying their homework hundreds of times.
“We're taking honors,” Ueda says calmly on the phone. “Register for the discussion section on Wednesday.”
“Sure.”
Akanishi ends up registering for the discussion on Monday.
“Bakanishi,” Tanaka says when they file into their lecture Tuesday evening. “Even Taguchi's smarter than that.”
Taguchi smiles so his eyes curve into crescents and asks in a whisper loud enough for the professor in the front to hear, “In LA, did you do it on a table periodically?”
IV: Kamenashi is pre-med
Kamenashi gets a lot of flak for being pre-med. He gets brownie points for being biochem in the chemistry department, but the minute he opens his mouth to add the words “pre-med” he can feel people's curiosity waning. Chemistry majors don't approve of pre-meds in general; pre-meds tend to be biology majors-human bio, not even molecular bio-and chem majors do not approve of biology majors.
He doesn't really blame them; most biology majors are a drag to be in the same class with. They ask questions like, “What's an sp3 orbital,” in organic chemistry class even though they should have learned that in general chemistry a year ago.
It's hard to be pre-med in the chemistry department. He has to take biology classes in addition to his chemistry classes, and chem classes aren't easy. He memorizes phylum for his evolutionary biology class as he counts drops for his analytical chemistry lab-he can feel hatred for titration after only the first day of counting drops of water, but he's used to hating his classes. He thinks about the Krebs cycle-and now that he's taken some organic chemistry, it's all starting to make sense-and swirls his flask in a desperate attempt to get his bromocresol green indicator to to back to green from the pale yellow it turned. He runs from physics for science and engineering majors to his biology class, and his classmates tell him he's a fool to be taking advanced physics as opposed to their physics for biology majors class.
“You're all fools,” Kamenashi feels like saying to them. “This makes me stand out more to med schools. This and my volunteer work at local hospitals and my research in a biochemistry lab.” But he keeps his mouth shut, because pre-med's a competitive track, and he needs every advantage he can get. He's not selfish, just practical; the faster he weeds out competition, the faster he succeeds.
When he thinks he can't stand any more biology, he heads to Akanishi and Yamashita's shared double. “Biology majors are idiots,” he begins, and Yamashita, to his credit, doesn't slam the door in his face but instead bursts into raucous laughter.
“Tell us something we don't know!” Akanishi shouts back, rapidly pressing buttons on a game controller. Ueda's roommate Nishikido Ryo is sitting next to Akanishi on the floor, kicking Akanishi's ass in Brawl.
Yamashita hands Kamenashi their shared math textbook, because textbooks are ridiculously expensive and it makes no sense for Kamenashi to buy his own copy when he spends most of his time with Yamashita and Akanishi anyways. “Go do the math homework,” he says. “I don't get question 7, and Ryo-chan refuses to look at the homework until the morning before the midterm.”
“I don't even know why I'm taking this math class,” Kamenashi grumbles as he pulls out Yamashita's chair and shoves Yamashita's papers across the desk to get free space. Yamashita sprawls on his bed and watches Kamenashi solve eigenvalues in pen. “It's not like I need it for my major.”
“You need a year of college math for med school.”
“So I'm taking a quarter of linear algebra,” Kamenashi mutters.
“Don't complain,” Nishikido shouts as his character thoroughly pummels Akanishi's. “At least you're not an engineer. We have to take YEARS of math and physics.”
“Your major is applied math and physics,” Kamenashi says, not looking up from the textbook. Nishikido, like Yamashita, is a chemical engineer.
Nishikido crows. “Which means I'm higher on the purity scale than you!”
Kamenashi looks up from the textbook and smirks. “Except, y'know, you're an engineer, which automatically means you're not in the pure sciences anymore, so you're not higher on the purity scale.”
Nishikido glares. “Pre-med,” he shoots back.
Akanishi laughs. “He has a point, Kame.”
Yamashita pats the textbook and grins at Kamenashi. “It's okay, Kazuya. I appreciate you.”
Kamenashi stares at the linear algebra homework he doesn't need to do for his major. “At least I'm not a biology major.”
V: Taguchi likes biology. A lot.
Taguchi likes chemistry a lot too; back in high school, he would sit in the front row of his AP chemistry class and take notes while absorbing as much information as he could. He likes doing chemistry; it's a bit like juggling while tap-dancing, except there's no tap-dancing involved in chemistry, just number juggling and maybe chemical juggling too. He likes physics too-that's like billiards, with forces and acceleration and angles. He ends up spending most of his time in the biology classroom though; the teacher's nice, and there's a small turtle that swims in an aquarium in the back of the classroom that Taguchi likes tapping the shell of.
“You're crazy,” his classmate from high school said when they were applying to colleges, and Taguchi tells him that he's not sure what he should actually study. “Why on earth are you even considering physics?”
So he goes to college, and he decides to take honors general chemistry, because you need general chemistry for almost every single science major there is, be it chemistry or biology or even physics. He's in the honors class not because he passed out of gen chem with AP credits and he needs a year for pre-med, like most of the other people in his major. He actually loves chemistry enough to want to take another year of general chemistry, which isn't like most people in his major.
“I hate biology majors,” Tanaka Koki tells him one day at 7:58 in the morning, two minutes before their honors general chemistry class is supposed to start.
“Eh?” Taguchi manages, trying to find his clicker in his bag. He stayed up late last night playing DotA and LoL and HoN with Ninomiya-senpai-who he met at the Biological Sciences Student Association when he was looking for a student org to join-and everything was a bit hazy today.
“Biology majors,” Tanaka repeats, and points at a cluster of pre-meds sitting two rows down. “They just sit around and memorize and then complain to the professor if they don't have an A.” Taguchi knows they're pre-meds because he met them only a few weeks ago at the general body meeting for the BSSA. “At least they make the curve gorgeous.”
“Oh,” Taguchi says.
Later, when the six of them are studying together in the library, Ueda comments, “I can't stand those pre-meds. They don't care at all about chemistry itself, just about the grade.”
Taguchi opens his mouth, “It's not that bad,” he begins to say.
Tanaka interrupts him though. “Kame's a pre-med.” He says loyally, “Not all pre-meds are that bad. Just the bio majors.”
Kamenashi just looks up from his textbook and glares at them for gossiping instead of studying. Tanaka hurriedly bends back over his homework. Akanishi pops his gum.
When Taguchi's back in his dorm-a double he shares with Kato Shigeaki-he sits down next to the aerospace engineer and says, “I wonder if they know I'm not a chemistry major.”
“Your study group?” Kato asks. He has a study group of his own, with a mechanical engineer and a structural engineer-the structural engineer, Kusano Hironori, is actually Kamenashi's roommate, which Taguchi sometimes wonders if it's fate or not.
“Mmhm,” Taguchi says, as he ties on his dance shoes to go to Dancesport.
“Do you think they'd care?”
Taguchi smiles. “Yup. They're chem majors.”
Kato peers at him from over his glasses. “What?”
Taguchi grins. “Yup. See you at two in the morning.”
They don't see each other at two in the morning because Kato's already out like a light by the time Taguchi gets back, but next morning at eight, Taguchi slides tiredly into his seat next to Tanaka and says before the words have even registered in his brain, “I'm not a chem major.”
“We know that, stupid,” Tanaka says, and that's all they manage to exchange before class starts. Once it ends, Tanaka drags him to where the others are arranging the next study group time, and says, “Taguchi's got an announcement.”
They look at him, and Taguchi smiles. “I'm not a chem major.”
The rest of them exchange glances. “We knew that already,” Nakamaru says, turning to rummage through his bag for his planner.
“Don't think that telling us means you'll be able to slack off, idiot” Ueda says, and punches him firmly in the shoulder.
“Huh?”
Kamenashi pats the shoulder Ueda just punched, his planner already in hand and turned to the right page. “Attention whore. Can we just pick a time for our study group?”
Akanishi says, “What? You're not a chemistry major? What are you then?” He pops his gum obnoxiously, and Ueda punches him.
Tanaka kicks Taguchi none too gently. “He's a stupid bio major.”
“I like bio,” Taguchi says to them. “I like the bio of molecules. Don't you think bio's great?” He beams at them.
KAT-TUN exchange glances. “He really doesn't know how to read the atmosphere, does he?” Ueda comments. “We're in a chem class here.”
Taguchi laughs, because it's true.
Kamenashi nudges him gently with an elbow as they file out of class. “Take stupid bio with me, kay?” he asks, and Taguchi nods, because Kamenashi's pre-med, and it's lonely to be in classes alone.
Taguchi is a lone biology major in a group of chem majors, but even though they pick on him mercilessly now that he's come out about his major, Taguchi doesn't regret his major at all. Not if it means that he sits next to Kamenashi in his biology classes and plays games on his phone while Kamenashi takes notes for the two of them.
End.
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Author: virdant
Length: 3558 words; oneshot
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General.
Pairing: None.
Summary: UCSD!AU; Five things that would be true if KAT-TUN were Chemistry Majors.
Warning: UCSD!AU. Excessive chemistry terminology.
Notes: UCSD!AU. For the purpose of this story, I've taken the liberty of placing them in an American research university due to not knowing how the school system in Japan works. Since none of them are chemistry majors, this is AU. This is also probably the story that spawned UCSD!AU. Ask for more details about this AU (like what Arashi are. That's a good question to ask)
Five things that would be true if KAT-TUN were Chemistry Majors
I: Nakamaru is a computational chemist, and Ueda has no idea how he does it.
Nakamaru is a straight chemistry major. He prefers this, in a way; sometimes he wishes he had a suffix to stick before “chem” when he's introducing his major, but he's good solid Nakamaru. Everybody else can be a biochem or pharm-chem or even “molecular synthesis” major, he'll take good solid Chemistry with a Capital C. It's really awkward introducing himself at Chemistry Society meetings though, because people go, “Oh, I'm a biochem major,” or “I'm doing organic chemistry,” and he's stick starting strong with “I'm a chem major,” before he trails off and mutters, “just chem.”
After an entire quarter of meetings where Domoto-sempai and Domoto-sempai (vice presidents internal and external respectively) encouraged everybody to get into a real research lab with a professor and do some legitimate research, Nakamaru decides to go into computational. He doesn't know if he wants to be a organic chemist or a physical chemist or a biochemist, so he decides to be none of those, and go into one of the smallest fields in chemistry instead. It doesn't have a fancy letter before it, and nobody really knows what computational is other than the fact that involves computers. Anyways, computers are cool, aren't they?
Ueda disagrees; he finds computers completely baffling and not cool at all, and he has no idea how Nakamaru manages to use them for actual research. Ueda still has to go to Academic Computing Services every other day to try to get his computer to connect to the internet, though now he's decided that Nakamaru's not only more effective than ACS, but also cheaper.
“It's easy,” Nakamaru tries to explain, connecting Ueda to the internet yet again and handing him back his laptop.
Ueda waves a notebook full of mechanisms at Nakamaru instead. “Want to run my reactions for me?” he demands in return. Ueda works in an organic synthesis lab, but sometimes he feels like he should do something like physical organic because he actually enjoys physical chemistry a lot more than the rest of the people in his lab.
He takes chemistry seriously; he faces the material firmly, and he never goes into a class with the belief that he's going to hate the material, because that's just setting yourself up to fail. Perhaps because of that, he likes it-likes all of it. He likes trying to understand it, from the convoluted mess that's quantum mechanics (and doesn't agree with Akanishi's method of getting drunk to gain “illumination”) to the delicate construction of a molecule in organic chemistry. He doesn't want to do physics, doesn't care for bio, can't see himself doing anything other than just chemistry.
The only problem is that there's nothing that will let him do “just chemistry.” Every chemist ends up specializing, even the computational ones, in their own way.
Either way, Ueda's not going anywhere near a UNIX shell.
“You wouldn't be able to recognize it for what it is anyways,” Nakamaru mutters under his breath as he takes Ueda's laptop and fixes it for him again.
II: They meet in Honors General Chemistry (and completely skew the curve)
Koki hates the people in his Honors General Chemistry discussion.
He's used to being smarter than the rest of his classmates; he was in the top 10% of his graduating class in high school, and it's weird to look at a question and not see the answer straight away. It's even weirder to be sitting next to some short kid with a face that looks vaguely like a horse's who simply walks up to the chalkboard and works out the problem straight on the board in less than a minute.
“Fuck,” Koki mutters under his breath, because he can already see where he's going to be on the curve-a good two points above the average, but not nearly high enough to put him in the A range.
“Fuck sounds about right,” some kid says from behind him. When Koki turns around, the kid waves lazily. “Hey. I'm Akanishi Jin.”
Akanishi Jin turns out to be taking this class because his best friend from “since forever”-who Koki realizes was the popular guy in Koki's high school-is taking this class and he's coming along for the ride. He's a chemistry major, but only because he wants to make explosions. And he's an idiot, but he's smarter than he looks and acts, because he's the one who catches Horse-Face's mistake, pointing out that it's molecular mass over grams instead of the other way around as he pops a wad of gum in his mouth.
Koki grits his teeth and decides that he's going to be kicking Akanishi's ass on their stoichiometry exam next week.
Horse-Face flushes bright red, and Koki would feel sorry for him-he's so thin he looks smaller than Koki's brother in high school-except this is college, and he's got to kick everybody's ass, Horse-Face included.
Horse-Face's name is Kamenashi Kazuya, Koki finds out when they walk out of discussion. He's in honors general chemistry because he aced through his AP classes, but he still needs a year of gen-chem for medical school. He's also almost adorably shy and awkward when confronted by a classmate instead of a TA.
“Fuck,” Koki mutters to himself, before he pats Kamenashi on the shoulder and suggests that they grab a snack over by the dining hall nearby. “We can study together too, you're really smart and I bet you can help me on the test coming up” he adds to convince the kid, who looks appropriately flattered and agrees. That somehow that ends up being an invitation for Akanishi to invite himself and three other guys in their discussion. The other three guys look suitably uncomfortable around Akanishi and his enthusiasm-it's not 8 in the morning, but it's Friday afternoon and way too late to be doing chemistry, and Koki decides that maybe this won't be entirely too bad.
The other three guys are Ueda, Nakamaru, and Taguchi. Koki remembers Taguchi as that kid in his math class who made bad puns when the professor mentioned derivatives, but Ueda and Nakamaru are familiar only in the sense that he might have seen them at 8 in the morning this week for lecture.
They're all in different colleges; they spend a good solid half-hour arguing about who's GE's are worse-Akanishi loses immediately, and Kamenashi and Taguchi duke it out for a while even though Taguchi is enthusiastic about six quarters of required writing class and Kamenashi is just resigned. In the end, they agree to band together-even if they're located at various corners of campus-and study so they completely kill the curve, just because they can.
(That doesn't mean that they sit together and pass notes in class like middle school brats. Ueda sits in the back with Nakamaru; Ueda takes naps while Nakamaru pays attention and clicks in for both of them, juggling clickers for him, Ueda, and his roommates and suitemates so they all get their 40 attendance points. Koki sits with Taguchi in the middle, because 8 in the morning is too early to be up, and even Taguchi is hard-pressed to be cheerful until at least 9:30 when class is over. Kamenashi sits in the front with Yamashita-Akanishi's roommate and “best friend since forever”-and Akanishi, listening to the professor and answering his questions while Akanishi sleeps on his shoulder. So they're kind of paired off, but that's only because 8 AM classes are better with a buddy to poke you awake when the prof's pointing his laser pointer at you and shouting.)
III: “Akanishi is an idiot.”
“Akanishi is an idiot,” Kamenashi gripes at Yamashita while they wait for math discussion to start. It's late, they're in the basement of an old worn-down building that looks like it was built before asbestos was outlawed, and Kamenashi had just spent the past hour feeling awkward while eating dinner with Yamashita and Akanishi, who are not only roommates but friends since they were in diapers or something.
“Bakanishi,” Yamashita agrees readily as he fixes his eyes on the empty blackboard. Kamenashi sometimes thinks that Yamashita doesn't like him, but Akanishi says that Yamashita's just really focused on his studies because he wants to graduate in less than 5 years, which is virtually impossible for an engineering major.
“He wants to study abroad spring quarter,” Kamenashi blurts out, because this isn't one of his normal complaints about Akanishi ditching study group to sleep in.
Yamashita nods. “I know.” Of course Yamashita would know already, Kamenashi thinks as the TA walks in and starts the discussion. Of course Yamashita would know already; he lives with Akanishi.
“Doesn't that bother you?” Kamenashi asks when discussion ends and they're packing their bags to leave. “Aren't you going to be assigned a new roommate? Doesn't this just... make you upset?”
Yamashita says with placid practicality, “If that's what Jin wants to do, then he'll do it. Stopping him won't achieve anything.”
“He's going to study abroad,” Kamenashi says. “He's going to go off and learn some foreign language because that's the only thing you really learn when you study abroad. And then he'll come back and be behind a year and-”
“It's only a quarter,” Yamashita says, and that's that.
It's only a quarter, but the quarter drags without Akanishi. The rest of them study together, and they still kill the curve in their third quarter of gen chem, ruining the lives of bio majors all around campus. It's strange to be taking their first quarter of chemistry lab without Akanishi there to copy their pre-labs, but they're all separated anyways, Kamenashi in the same lab as Koki and Ueda, and Nakamaru and Taguchi in separate labs.
“It's not right,” Kamenashi says quietly over Skype to Akanishi on one of those rare moments when he's not cramming information into his head. “It's different without you. Come back. We miss you.”
Akanishi laughs, “I miss you guys too,” he says carelessly. “It's great here. I love the environment. I'm learning lots,” he says, and Kamenashi can't help but wonder what Akanishi's learning if his voice is slurred and his eyes don't quite focus on the webcam properly.
“But are you going to come back?” Nakamaru asks when he's on a break from programming code.
Akanishi nods. “At the start of next quarter. I'll be back for ochem. I promise.” Nakamaru wonders about Akanishi's promises; he's promised to stop copying their homework hundreds of times.
“We're taking honors,” Ueda says calmly on the phone. “Register for the discussion section on Wednesday.”
“Sure.”
Akanishi ends up registering for the discussion on Monday.
“Bakanishi,” Tanaka says when they file into their lecture Tuesday evening. “Even Taguchi's smarter than that.”
Taguchi smiles so his eyes curve into crescents and asks in a whisper loud enough for the professor in the front to hear, “In LA, did you do it on a table periodically?”
IV: Kamenashi is pre-med
Kamenashi gets a lot of flak for being pre-med. He gets brownie points for being biochem in the chemistry department, but the minute he opens his mouth to add the words “pre-med” he can feel people's curiosity waning. Chemistry majors don't approve of pre-meds in general; pre-meds tend to be biology majors-human bio, not even molecular bio-and chem majors do not approve of biology majors.
He doesn't really blame them; most biology majors are a drag to be in the same class with. They ask questions like, “What's an sp3 orbital,” in organic chemistry class even though they should have learned that in general chemistry a year ago.
It's hard to be pre-med in the chemistry department. He has to take biology classes in addition to his chemistry classes, and chem classes aren't easy. He memorizes phylum for his evolutionary biology class as he counts drops for his analytical chemistry lab-he can feel hatred for titration after only the first day of counting drops of water, but he's used to hating his classes. He thinks about the Krebs cycle-and now that he's taken some organic chemistry, it's all starting to make sense-and swirls his flask in a desperate attempt to get his bromocresol green indicator to to back to green from the pale yellow it turned. He runs from physics for science and engineering majors to his biology class, and his classmates tell him he's a fool to be taking advanced physics as opposed to their physics for biology majors class.
“You're all fools,” Kamenashi feels like saying to them. “This makes me stand out more to med schools. This and my volunteer work at local hospitals and my research in a biochemistry lab.” But he keeps his mouth shut, because pre-med's a competitive track, and he needs every advantage he can get. He's not selfish, just practical; the faster he weeds out competition, the faster he succeeds.
When he thinks he can't stand any more biology, he heads to Akanishi and Yamashita's shared double. “Biology majors are idiots,” he begins, and Yamashita, to his credit, doesn't slam the door in his face but instead bursts into raucous laughter.
“Tell us something we don't know!” Akanishi shouts back, rapidly pressing buttons on a game controller. Ueda's roommate Nishikido Ryo is sitting next to Akanishi on the floor, kicking Akanishi's ass in Brawl.
Yamashita hands Kamenashi their shared math textbook, because textbooks are ridiculously expensive and it makes no sense for Kamenashi to buy his own copy when he spends most of his time with Yamashita and Akanishi anyways. “Go do the math homework,” he says. “I don't get question 7, and Ryo-chan refuses to look at the homework until the morning before the midterm.”
“I don't even know why I'm taking this math class,” Kamenashi grumbles as he pulls out Yamashita's chair and shoves Yamashita's papers across the desk to get free space. Yamashita sprawls on his bed and watches Kamenashi solve eigenvalues in pen. “It's not like I need it for my major.”
“You need a year of college math for med school.”
“So I'm taking a quarter of linear algebra,” Kamenashi mutters.
“Don't complain,” Nishikido shouts as his character thoroughly pummels Akanishi's. “At least you're not an engineer. We have to take YEARS of math and physics.”
“Your major is applied math and physics,” Kamenashi says, not looking up from the textbook. Nishikido, like Yamashita, is a chemical engineer.
Nishikido crows. “Which means I'm higher on the purity scale than you!”
Kamenashi looks up from the textbook and smirks. “Except, y'know, you're an engineer, which automatically means you're not in the pure sciences anymore, so you're not higher on the purity scale.”
Nishikido glares. “Pre-med,” he shoots back.
Akanishi laughs. “He has a point, Kame.”
Yamashita pats the textbook and grins at Kamenashi. “It's okay, Kazuya. I appreciate you.”
Kamenashi stares at the linear algebra homework he doesn't need to do for his major. “At least I'm not a biology major.”
V: Taguchi likes biology. A lot.
Taguchi likes chemistry a lot too; back in high school, he would sit in the front row of his AP chemistry class and take notes while absorbing as much information as he could. He likes doing chemistry; it's a bit like juggling while tap-dancing, except there's no tap-dancing involved in chemistry, just number juggling and maybe chemical juggling too. He likes physics too-that's like billiards, with forces and acceleration and angles. He ends up spending most of his time in the biology classroom though; the teacher's nice, and there's a small turtle that swims in an aquarium in the back of the classroom that Taguchi likes tapping the shell of.
“You're crazy,” his classmate from high school said when they were applying to colleges, and Taguchi tells him that he's not sure what he should actually study. “Why on earth are you even considering physics?”
So he goes to college, and he decides to take honors general chemistry, because you need general chemistry for almost every single science major there is, be it chemistry or biology or even physics. He's in the honors class not because he passed out of gen chem with AP credits and he needs a year for pre-med, like most of the other people in his major. He actually loves chemistry enough to want to take another year of general chemistry, which isn't like most people in his major.
“I hate biology majors,” Tanaka Koki tells him one day at 7:58 in the morning, two minutes before their honors general chemistry class is supposed to start.
“Eh?” Taguchi manages, trying to find his clicker in his bag. He stayed up late last night playing DotA and LoL and HoN with Ninomiya-senpai-who he met at the Biological Sciences Student Association when he was looking for a student org to join-and everything was a bit hazy today.
“Biology majors,” Tanaka repeats, and points at a cluster of pre-meds sitting two rows down. “They just sit around and memorize and then complain to the professor if they don't have an A.” Taguchi knows they're pre-meds because he met them only a few weeks ago at the general body meeting for the BSSA. “At least they make the curve gorgeous.”
“Oh,” Taguchi says.
Later, when the six of them are studying together in the library, Ueda comments, “I can't stand those pre-meds. They don't care at all about chemistry itself, just about the grade.”
Taguchi opens his mouth, “It's not that bad,” he begins to say.
Tanaka interrupts him though. “Kame's a pre-med.” He says loyally, “Not all pre-meds are that bad. Just the bio majors.”
Kamenashi just looks up from his textbook and glares at them for gossiping instead of studying. Tanaka hurriedly bends back over his homework. Akanishi pops his gum.
When Taguchi's back in his dorm-a double he shares with Kato Shigeaki-he sits down next to the aerospace engineer and says, “I wonder if they know I'm not a chemistry major.”
“Your study group?” Kato asks. He has a study group of his own, with a mechanical engineer and a structural engineer-the structural engineer, Kusano Hironori, is actually Kamenashi's roommate, which Taguchi sometimes wonders if it's fate or not.
“Mmhm,” Taguchi says, as he ties on his dance shoes to go to Dancesport.
“Do you think they'd care?”
Taguchi smiles. “Yup. They're chem majors.”
Kato peers at him from over his glasses. “What?”
Taguchi grins. “Yup. See you at two in the morning.”
They don't see each other at two in the morning because Kato's already out like a light by the time Taguchi gets back, but next morning at eight, Taguchi slides tiredly into his seat next to Tanaka and says before the words have even registered in his brain, “I'm not a chem major.”
“We know that, stupid,” Tanaka says, and that's all they manage to exchange before class starts. Once it ends, Tanaka drags him to where the others are arranging the next study group time, and says, “Taguchi's got an announcement.”
They look at him, and Taguchi smiles. “I'm not a chem major.”
The rest of them exchange glances. “We knew that already,” Nakamaru says, turning to rummage through his bag for his planner.
“Don't think that telling us means you'll be able to slack off, idiot” Ueda says, and punches him firmly in the shoulder.
“Huh?”
Kamenashi pats the shoulder Ueda just punched, his planner already in hand and turned to the right page. “Attention whore. Can we just pick a time for our study group?”
Akanishi says, “What? You're not a chemistry major? What are you then?” He pops his gum obnoxiously, and Ueda punches him.
Tanaka kicks Taguchi none too gently. “He's a stupid bio major.”
“I like bio,” Taguchi says to them. “I like the bio of molecules. Don't you think bio's great?” He beams at them.
KAT-TUN exchange glances. “He really doesn't know how to read the atmosphere, does he?” Ueda comments. “We're in a chem class here.”
Taguchi laughs, because it's true.
Kamenashi nudges him gently with an elbow as they file out of class. “Take stupid bio with me, kay?” he asks, and Taguchi nods, because Kamenashi's pre-med, and it's lonely to be in classes alone.
Taguchi is a lone biology major in a group of chem majors, but even though they pick on him mercilessly now that he's come out about his major, Taguchi doesn't regret his major at all. Not if it means that he sits next to Kamenashi in his biology classes and plays games on his phone while Kamenashi takes notes for the two of them.
End.
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