Work Text:
PHYS0030 March 14th, 2023
For Credit: Yes Attendance: Mandatory Would Take Again: No Grade: D- Textbook: n/a
Quality: 0.5 Difficulty: 5.0
this was an introductory physics class. i am a humanities major. this is a required course with no prerequisites. why the FUCK did this guy start talking about the mach-zehnder interferometer on the second day of class ?????????? he wouldn’t let anyone drop the class and talked for hours about useless shit that never showed up on exams and his notes were ass (if they were to be called notes at all) and someone REALLY needs to tell him to shut the fuck up sometimes. half a star is given because sometimes he’d show pictures of his cat in class and she was pretty cute. fuck her owner though im dropping out of college
“Hey, Fushiguro!”
Megumi turns at the sound of his name, but he ends up not needing to completely—by the time he slightly lifts his eyes from his phone, Itadori’s right by him, grinning brightly. Megumi removes an earbud from his ear, letting it dangle by his collar.
“Itadori,” he greets back with a slight nod of his head, and the two fall into step with each other. “How was your first day?”
“I was just going to ask you,” Itadori responds with a wide grin, before tilting his head to the side. “It was neat, how was yours?”
Megumi shrugs with little enthusiasm. “Was alright, I guess,” he says blandly.
“What do you think of the teachers this year?” Itadori prods, and Megumi grimaces.
“Very little,” he says bluntly. After a pause to reconsider, he amends. “Most of them are okay, I guess. Geto-sensei’s got an interesting way of presenting, I can tell he’s actually interested in the history he’s teaching.” Itadori nods enthusiastically. “But physics…”
“Right,” Itadori says with a light laugh. “Gakuganji-sensei’s not very… um, enthusiastic.”
“That’s one word for it,” Megumi mutters. “Doesn’t seem very alive at all, actually.”
“That’s a little harsh,” Itadori chides him lightly, but he sounds unconvinced of himself. “He’s old, you know.”
“So’s your grandpa,” Megumi points out. “He’s not moaning and groaning like he’s on death’s door like Gakuganji-sensei is.”
Itadori laughs. Megumi doesn’t think he’s said anything particularly funny.
“Well, maybe he’ll get more energetic as the year goes on,” Itadori offers optimistically. Megumi doesn’t quite manage to resist rolling his eyes.
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
“Hel-LO, EVERYONE! Why can’t you trust an atom?”
Megumi’s eyelids, which had previously been drooping closed, snap open immediately at the overly loud voice suddenly booming through the classroom. He blinks his eyes for a few moments, trying to shoo away the last vestiges of sleep clinging to his blurry vision to scan the classroom for the source of the noise.
“Because they make up everything!”
There’s a tremulous and absolute silence that fills the room.
“That’s not Gakuganji-sensei,” Megumi finally says to Kugisaki, sitting next to him and scribbling furiously in her notebook. She only looks up at his voice, apparently having been deaf to the previous loud greeting and horrible joke.
“Huh?” she asks loudly.
“That’s not Gakuganji-sensei,” Megumi repeats. He blinks. “At least, I don’t think.”
“I am most definitely not that old geezer!” comes the enthusiastic response from the tall man now standing in the classroom, grinning down at Megumi. He’s got shockingly white hair that’s pushed up from his head thanks to a dark blindfold around his eyes, and although Megumi assumes it’s because he’s blind, he feels strangely pierced by the man’s invisible gaze. Eventually, his head tilts to the side. “Grandpa Gaku-ji… let’s say he… retired. Yeah, that sounds good, right?”
The class yet again falls into an awkward silence.
“What does that mean—”
“ANYWAY,” the man interrupts, clapping his hands together obnoxiously loud. “Hel-LO, again, it is I, your new fantastic and fabulous—fantabulous?—physics teacher for the rest of the year.” He snatches a whiteboard marker from Megumi’s desk. Before Megumi can think to protest, the other man’s scrawled a few barely legible kanji on the board before spinning the marker in his hands.
Megumi squints at the name on the board. Satoru Gojo… probably.
“We’re going to have a great rest of the year,” Gojo chirps, and although his grin is bright, something about his entire demeanor bristles against Megumi’s skin. Some underlying intuition is telling him that this “upgrade”—for once, maybe, Megumi could get through the class without poking Kugisaki in the shoulder every two minutes to wake her up—was actually anything but. The feeling only increases when the marker in Gojo’s hand begins spinning faster. “Everyone here knows calculus, right?” Gojo asks abruptly.
He’s met by twenty-one blank stares.
“I’ll take that as a yes!” he chirps brightly, and then Megumi can only watch in horror as he pinches the marker in his fingers and swivels back to face Megumi, and then the marker’s suddenly in the air, and then the marker lands with a thwok right against Megumi’s forehead, and then it lands anticlimactically on his desk, and then it rolls to a stop against his notebook.
Megumi feels a faint throbbing in the center of his forehead.
“So, can anyone tell me what the maximum height of that projectile was?”
“I think I’m going to drop out of high school,” Megumi muses.
Itadori’s chopsticks drop from his hand. “You’re going to what?”
He doesn’t, in the end. A part of him kind of wishes he did. He’s pretty sure Toji wouldn’t care, but maybe it’s Itadori’s doleful gaze that keeps him there. Maybe it’s Kugisaki’s insistent wheedling that “if you leave, who the hell am I going to annoy in physics?” Maybe, it’s even that there actually is a class Megumi enjoys—the one he has right after physics, world history. The discussions the teacher—Suguru Geto—holds in class never fails to make Megumi actually ponder for a bit, and despite his reticent nature, he’s sometimes even opted to participate in a few discussions.
So he stays, but it doesn’t get much better. The next time he comes to class, Gojo does apologize for quite literally throwing a marker at Megumi, but not before claiming “I was aiming for the top of your head, actually” and “the impact shouldn’t have been forceful enough to actually hurt thanks to the initial velocity I gave it, you know,” and “science means sacrifice sometimes, it’s part of the process” all of which Megumi listened to with a rather apathetic expression. A marker was just a marker, after all, and if Gojo was a better teacher than the absolute drag Gakuganji was, Megumi would never complain—
—but the problem is, of course, that Gojo is just about as terrible a teacher as his personality. Nothing—not even the think like a cation and stay pawsitive poster in the corner of the room—is enough to make up for his absolutely horrid teaching method. Even method, Megumi realizes one day in class as he blankly watches Gojo scrawl line after line of illegible nonsense to cover up the entire whiteboard, is too generous a word to use for whatever it is Gojo does every day in the classroom. It goes something like this: Megumi will show up, slide into his usual seat and chat with Kugisaki for the first ten minutes of class, since Gojo’s always perfunctorily late, Gojo will enthusiastically greet his students to receive a response of dull silence, then turn to the board and begin loudly yapping about the new sector of physics they’d be studying for the day—quantum, mechanics, electrical, there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason. Whatever Gojo feels like talking about, they’ll be talking about it.
“This is super easy,” Gojo assures one day, his hand still rapidly zooming across the whiteboard, as if it can’t write the thoughts down fast enough to keep up with his mind. Megumi shares an exasperated look with Kugisaki. There are about fifteen Greek letters on the board, and Megumi has no idea what any of them stand for.
“You know,” Kugisaki whispers one day. “I heard he used to be a college professor.”
“Was he,” Megumi responds blandly. “Wish he’d go back.”
Itadori, though, absolutely adores their new physics teacher. Itadori has his class while Megumi’s in history, but there rarely goes a lunch period where Itadori’s not excitedly chattering about what new anecdote from physics he has to share. Megumi listens to them all with an odd sense of fascination—everything he describes is certainly not what happens in Megumi’s class. For one, it seems like Itadori’s period doesn’t take notes at all—instead, all they seem to do are experiments?
“Experiments about what,” Megumi finally asks one day, and Itadori’s head tilts in confusion.
“I dunno,” he eventually admits. “Gojo-sensei never really says. But they’re always really fun! He says he might need volunteers for the next few, I hope he picks me!”
“I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who wants to volunteer,” Megumi responds, but it’s only a few days later that Megumi realizes just how true his casual statement was.
He’s sitting in world history, listening in rapture as Geto talks about the beginnings of England’s empire, when a sudden distant boom sounds in the distant. Nearly in unison, all heads swivel towards the door.
“Oh,” Geto interrupts himself. “Well, we better go see what that was.”
And so they all follow Geto out of the classroom to the lab right next door. Megumi’s mouth drops open when he sees the sight inside.
“Oh, hi, Fushiguro!” Itadori says brightly, from where he hangs upside down, suspended by a rather sloppy piece of cloth tied to the ceiling and binding his feet together. He’s swaying slightly still, and there’s a fantastic bruise blooming on his forehead. Megumi’s gaze travels to the nearby dent in the wall, almost a perfect indentation of Itadori’s head.
“Suguru!” comes another enthusiastic greeting, and Megumi watches as Gojo flounces to flop himself entirely over Geto. “What’re you doing here?”
Geto gently extricates himself from the sticky grasp, but a hand remains on Gojo’s shoulder even as he does. “I heard a loud noise from here a few moments ago,” he says carefully, and his eyes flick from Itadori, still hanging, to the noticeable impact on the wall. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s okay now that you’re here, Suguru,” Gojo whines, his voice dripping with faux honey. Megumi shudders. “Just an experiment was all! Itadori-kun was my volunteer for testing a human pendulum. One of our students pushed him just a little too hard, that’s it!”
“A human pendulum,” Megumi repeats in a mutter.
“As long as you’re okay, Satoru,” Geto says with a shrug, and Megumi turns a vaguely appalled look at his history teacher.
“Itadori, are you okay?” he has to ask, and Itadori sends him a wobbly grin and flashes two thumbs up.
“Peachy!” he says, and Megumi’s eye twitches.
So they all trek back to the history classroom—their teacher, Megumi notices, seems almost disappointed leaving the chaotic lab—and the day continues. Itadori makes a speedy recovery, as he tends to do, but it’s only a few days later yet another boom resonates through the history room.
“Not again,” Megumi mutters, but he doesn’t miss the way Geto’s lips twitch into an amused half-smile.
“That was pretty loud,” he muses with faux curiosity. “We’d better go make sure no one was hurt.”
And so the cycle repeats. One day, it’s a fire experiment gone awry—Itadori’s eyebrows get singed off. The next day, it’s a wrecking ball crashing entirely through the wall to land in the history classroom—the wrecking ball being Itadori. Yet another day, it’s a bowling ball dropped from the roof—Itadori nurses the lump on his head from being the unfortunate landing pad for the next week.
“Why do you keep volunteering for these?” Megumi asks him, every time he sees a new injury on the ever enthusiastic boy.
“It’s fun!” Itadori defends, and Megumi resigns himself to a fate of bandaging Itadori’s injuries of the week.
Another aspect he still can’t seem to understand is why Geto so consistently feels the need to pop into Gojo’s classroom every single time an explosion happens. It’s now becoming nearly routine for a lecture or discussion to get interrupted by a novel thud or boom and for Geto to fake concern and bring the entire class over to the next door lab. It’s beginning to grate on Megumi’s nerves.
At the same time, he almost thinks he’d have a better time in Itadori’s period of physics than the one he shares with Kugisaki. In his period, no such experiments happen at all. Instead, it’s lecture after lecture after lecture after lecture of entirely unreadable notes and mind-addling concepts. Megumi’s beginning to think he does it on purpose, but for what reason exactly, he can’t seem to figure out—
—at least until a particularly deafening boom shakes through the room, sending vibrations into the floor that even Megumi can feel, and without another word, Geto makes for the door, and without another word, everyone, including Megumi, follows him to the lab. There’s a faint wafting of smoke emanating from the slightly ajar door, and when Geto slowly pushes it open further, everyone peers around him cautiously to witness what new catastrophe the physics class had cooked up.
It’s only because of prior experience that Megumi knows not to be surprised with the way Itadori lies with his back flat on the ground, his arms spread with a rather shell-shocked expression on his face. It’s a usual sight, at this point, and it’s made only more routine with the way Itadori springs back up to sit cross-legged.
“Hi, Fushiguro!” he says brightly.
“Hi, Itadori,” Megumi says wearily.
What’s not a usual sight, though, is the way Gojo lightly flaps his hand. A cursory glance shows a light burn on the back of his hand, and Megumi supposes that also explains the way he lightly hisses through his teeth.
“Suguruuuu,” he whines nasally. “I got hurt, won’t you kiss it better?”
Gojo’s wheedling is another usual sight. What’s not a usual sight, though, is the way Geto’s expression softens into something fond, the way Geto takes Gojo’s hand gently into his own, and the way he bends down to lightly brush his lips against the skin of his hand.
Everyone, including Gojo himself, stills completely to gape at Geto.
“Suguru,” Gojo eventually hisses. His cheeks, under his blindfold, are a scalding red. “I thought—you said—in front of the—you said—”
“Satoru.” Gojo immediately shuts up. “There’s no need to hide it any more. I’m pretty sure all your students know you only make all these explosions to get me out of the class.” To Megumi’s ever increasing horror, Geto shrugs. “I’m pretty sure all my students know I only check on you in the middle of class to see you, Satoru.”
“What,” Megumi says.
“Aww, Suguruuu—!”
“Fushiguro, I got hurt too! Won’t you kiss it better?” Itadori tries, and Megumi drags a hand across his increasingly warm face.
“I think I’m going to drop out of high school.”
PHYSICS11 September 14th, 2023
For Credit: Yes Attendance: Mandatory Would Take Again: Maybe Grade: A- Textbook: n/a
Quality: 1.0 Difficulty: 5.0
took this class expecting to have a teacher, got an asshole with a phD in physics instead. no structure, no rhyme, no rhythm at all to any of the classes, all different periods had a different experience, grading was based more on favoritism than actual class content. talks too much about his husband. 1 star for giving me a final grade of an a-. thanks I think
PHYSICS11 September 14th, 2023
For Credit: Yes Attendance: Mandatory Would Take Again: Yes Grade: A Textbook: n/a
Quality: 4.5 Difficulty: 0.5
SUPER fun class!!!!! all u ever need to do is fun!!! only materials needed is a first aid kit its a super fun and esay class but also i think he talks too much about his husband……… otherwise 5/5 i love gojo-sensei!!!!!