Not a Competition (Narrator: It Was) part 2
Chapter 2 You Got a Name (Nerd!Jo X F!reader)
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content tags: #chapter two #reader insert #second person pov #mild obsessive behaviour #mild swearing #no other content warnings apply #slow burn #forced proximity #rivals to lovers #first interaction
Synopsis: He showed up at 7:43am to an empty lecture hall, sat down directly next to you, and said hi like it was normal. It wasn't normal. None of this is normal.
Then Dr. Yamamoto assigned the semester project.
Nine months. Forty percent of your grade. Him.
you are going to be so professional about this.
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The lecture hall at 7:43am looked like a different building entirely.
No scrape of chairs, no low murmur of people pretending to care about wave mechanics. Just pale morning light coming in flat through the high windows, four rows of empty seats, and you — third row from the front, second from the left, exactly where you always sat — with your thermos and your annotated notes and seventeen uninterrupted minutes before anyone else arrived.
This was your time. You had built your entire morning routine around this exact window. Library at six. Coffee by seven. Lecture hall by seven-forty, quiet and empty.
You were in the middle of re-reading the last graded test, 94% btw, but always room for improvement, when someone sat down next to you.
Not nearby or in the same row like a normal person navigating an empty room.
He didn't say anything. Didn't explain himself or apologise for the intrusion or do any of the normal human things a person does when they've just inserted themselves into someone else's personal bubble. He just — sat there. Legs stretched out under the seat in front, arms loose, head tilted slightly like he was waiting for something. His bag wasn't even open. He had a single pen behind his ear that you were fairly certain was decorative.
The silence lasted four full seconds.
What..? What! What is happening?! Why is he — there are forty-seven empty seats in this room right now and he has chosen — why is he —
You knew this already, objectively, but this close — this unreasonably, unnecessarily close — they were almost unsettling. Light in a way that didn't feel entirely natural. Pale lashes that caught the morning light.
You hated that you'd noticed. You'd catalogued it in approximately 0.8 seconds and you hated every single one of them.
He was still looking at you.
"...Hi," said Satoru Gojo.
Something in your brain buffered.
You were a person who corrected professors. Who argued with TAs about wave function collapse until they conceded the point. Who had, on three separate occasions, submitted coursework feedback to department administration because the marking rubric was inconsistent. You were not, as a rule, someone who lost words.
"You have a name," he said. Still quiet. Still looking at you with that expression that wasn't quite a smile yet — "Right?"
And there it was. The corner of his mouth moved into a shit-eating grin like your reaction was exactly what he'd been sitting here at 7:43am waiting for. Like he'd set a very small trap that you walked directly into it.
He found this all genuinely, privately, delightful.
Satoru reached into his bag — so the bag did open, apparently — and pulled out a paper. Set it on the desk between you with two fingers. Flat. Deliberate.
Your last marked test stared up at you.
Your best mark this semester. You had been, if you were to admit it — regardless of re-reading it — quietly proud of it.
His paper landed on top of it.
You looked at it. You looked at him. He looked back at you with the patience of someone who had absolutely nowhere else to be and nothing else he'd rather be doing, which was insane, because he was Gojo Satoru — this generation's new-age Newton of physics, a boy genius from birth.
He winked at you with that shit-eating grin.
"You," you said, "are so —"
"Satoru," he cut you off. "Since we're introducing ourselves."
"I know yours too." He said it looking real pleased with himself for whatever stunt this was. "Took me a while to get someone to tell me. You're weirdly hard to find information about."
The words landed strangely. You filed them away to be horrified about later because Dr. Yamamoto had just walked in, and then the rest of the class in a shuffling tide after, and Gojo Satoru was pulling out his notebook like nothing had happened, like he hadn't just — sat down next to you and said hi and looked at you like that and —
His pen was still behind his ear.
You did not speak to him again for forty minutes.
You took notes. You asked a question about the boundary conditions on the third problem that made Dr. Yamamoto pause for long enough to feel satisfying. You did not look to your left. You were an academic with a GPA to maintain and absolutely not giving into whatever Gojo Satoru was trying to stir up.
You were doing extremely well until Dr. Yamamoto said: "The semester project."
The room shifted — that particular collective tension of students hearing the words semester project and immediately calculating how many other things they had due.
"As posted on the module page, this will be a paired research project. Nine months. Final submission counts for forty percent of your grade." He let that number breathe for a moment. "Pairs will be assigned. Not chosen."
Someone behind you made a noise of protest. Dr. Yamamoto ignored it with the efficiency of a man who'd been doing this for decades.
"The scope of this project is significant. You'll be expected to produce original research to dissertation standard. Choose your attitude toward your partner accordingly."
He started reading names.
You were writing down everything he'd said about the marking criteria. Nine months. Dissertation standard. Forty percent. This was fine. You were good at this. Whoever you were paired with, you could manage them, direct them, ensure the quality of the output met your —
Dr. Yamamoto was looking at his list.
You turned your head slowly.
Gojo Satoru was already looking at you. He had been, you suspected, for some time. That expression was back — the shit-eating grin, and he was almost unbearably pleased with himself. Like the universe had just done him a personal favour.
"Huh, what are the odds?" he said softly, just for you.
"I was going to say this is great news," he said, in a tone of complete sincerity that somehow made it worse. "Nine months is a long time. We're going to get to know each other really well."
Forty percent of your grade. Nine months. Him.
You picked up your pen. Wrote DO NOT COMMIT A CRIME in the margin of your notes. Underlined it twice.
Gojo leaned over slightly to read it. You felt rather than saw him smile.
"I was just going to say —"
"I know what you were going to say."
He laughed — low and quiet, mostly to himself. Like forty percent of your grade and nine months of forced proximity with his stupid blue eyes and that pen he never used were all part of some plan you were not consulted on.
Dr. Yamamoto was still talking.
You were going to be soo professional about this. You were going to be so controlled and focused and completely unaffected and you were going to produce the best dissertation this module had ever seen if it killed you, which it might, because he was still sitting next to you and he smelled annoyingly good for someone who had shown up to an 8am lecture with decorative stationery.
Forty percent, you reminded yourself.
You could survive anything for forty percent.
Suguru was waiting outside.
"How was —" He took one look at Gojo's face and stopped. "What did you do."
"Nothing." Gojo fell into step beside him, hands in his pockets. "We got paired for the semester project."
"Forty percent of the grade."
Suguru was quiet for a moment. Then: "You didn't have anything to do with that."
"The pairs are assigned."
"Randomly assigned," Gojo said. "By Dr. Yamamoto. Who I have never spoken to outside of academic contexts."
Suguru gave him the look. The long one. The one that meant I have known you since we were children and I know exactly what your face does when you're lying and also when you're not lying but you're still somehow responsible.
Gojo smiled at the ceiling.
"She wrote something in her notes," he said. "When they read our names out. Couldn't see all of it. Just do not and then something underlined."
"No idea." He sounded genuinely delighted about this. "I've been thinking about it."
"You're going to be insufferable about this."
"I'm going to be a very good research partner," Gojo said, with complete sincerity. "Dedicated. Present. Thorough."
"She's going to actually kill you."
"She's going to be fine," Satoru murmured.
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