Chapter Text
It’s January in the heart of Greenwich Village, and despite the new year, I’m stuck with my old ways. As always, I’m a few minutes early to class to snag a good seat– right in the middle of the second row. Not too eager, not too invisible. The lecture hall smells like dry-erase marker, old carpet, and burnt coffee, which is exactly the way a Monday morning neuroscience class is supposed to smell.
I’m in the middle of setting up my notoriously neat notes for class when I feel a light tap on my shoulder, and I twist towards it to see a familiar blond face smiling at me. Armin sits down next to me clumsily, too focused on me to notice his bag slipping off his shoulder until it thuds against the side of his desk, making him wince before he laughs under his breath.
“Y/N! I haven’t seen you in a year,” he jokes, his eager smile drawing a small laugh from my mouth. “I can’t believe we managed to find enrollment spots for Professor Hange’s class. Imagine having to take Cog Neuro with Ackerman or Smith.”
“Tell me about it,” I say, shaking my head as I slide my Apple pencil back into its spot atop my iPad. “I swear Hange’s class filled up in like, thirty seconds.”
Armin laughs, pushing his bag under his desk fully this time. “Same. Eren almost picked a stats elective out of sheer panic.”
“That would’ve lasted all of two days,” I say, recalling his late-night complaints to the groupchat about Calc II last semester.
“Two hours,” Armin corrects, grinning.
Before I can respond, a familiar voice cuts in from the row behind us. “Are you two done gossiping?”
I turn in my seat just as Mikasa drops into the chair behind me, calm as ever, with Eren sliding in beside her, looking half-awake and fully annoyed.
“Good morning to you, too,” Eren mutters, running a hand through his disheveled hair. At least he made it on time, I think to myself. Usually, Eren runs on a personal clock that’s a minimum of five minutes behind everyone else’s.
The room starts to quiet down, and at first I barely notice– just a shift in volume, a few conversations cutting off here and there. I glance towards the front of the room, expecting Professor Hange to be breezing in late with a sugary iced coffee in one hand and a stack of folders in the other.
Instead, a man is standing at the front of the classroom by her chair. The class watches intently as Professor Levi Ackerman places his portfolio on Hange’s desk. He glares down at the now-silent room.
“Good morning. I know you all were prepared for an easy class with Professor Hange, but there’s been a change in plans. My name is Dr. Levi Ackerman, and I’ll be your professor for this semester.”
The lecture hall falls into stunned silence. Eren elbows Mikasa sharply, whispering something I can’t quite hear behind me. Professor Ackerman lifts his eyes from the roster and surveils us with a steely gaze from under his thin black-rimmed glasses, and the room suddenly feels about ten degrees colder. He doesn’t have to raise his voice to bring the low simmer of whispers to a stop– he simply raises his brow.
Professor Ackerman tosses a stack of papers onto the first row’s desks, and the loud smack of papers makes me wince. “Let’s make one thing clear,” he says, his tone even and flat in a way that somehow lands harder than if he’d snapped. “If you enrolled in this class under the impression that it would be an easy A, it’ll be just as easy for you to drop the course. I won’t be offended if you do. Now– the syllabus.”
Next to me, Armin lets out a breath through his nose. “He’s worse than his Rate My Professor reviews,” he says under his breath. Ackerman snaps his gaze towards Armin.
“Something you’d like to say, Arlert?” He challenges, his expression unreadable as always. Armin shifts uncomfortably in his seat, and he shakes his head before muttering a soft no. Seeing his face turn bright red, I kick his foot with mine gently under the table– a small gesture of support. I’d never guess it would be Armin to take the first beating in class. Eren is usually the expert there.
Professor Ackerman adjusts his glasses, eyes moving across the lecture hall row by row, and I get the strange feeling that he’s indexing us. Not just our faces– posture, attention, who’s taking notes, who’s whispering.
When his gaze passes over me, it lingers.
Just for a second.
Still, it’s enough to leave my stomach in knots.
“There will be one weekly lab report and reading quiz, a midterm, and a cumulative final,” He says. “Attendance will be taken. It will not count towards your grade.”
At the mention of attendance and will not count, light chatter breaks out again in small groups throughout the classroom. Professor Ackerman clears his throat, and the talking dies down just as quickly as it had started.
“Attendance will not count positively towards your grade. But seeing as this course requires lecture attendance, any missed classes will count towards a deduction of two points per absence towards your final grade.”
Eren groans, which earns him a death glare from our professor. Eren has the decency to look mildly ashamed for all of half a second before he sinks lower in his seat, arms crossed over his chest like that’s somehow going to make him invisible.
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing and glance back up at the front just in time to see Professor Ackerman turning a page of the syllabus. He doens’t look flustered by the interruptions. In fact, it’s almost like he’s anticipated them. It would make sense for him to expect resistance, considering the reputation he seems to have on campus.
“Office hours are listed on the last page,” he continues. “Use them if you need help. Don’t waste my time with mindless questions or to ask for extensions.”
With that said, Ackerman sets the syllabus down and clasps his hands behind his back. His presence is unsettling. It’s almost like he’s been preparing for this moment his entire life, with how meticulously everything about him is arranged– every crease in his crisp white shirt pressed flat, every movement measured, every word placed exactly where he wants it to land. But it would be quite naive of me to assume he’d overprepared. That’s simply who he’s known to be– cold, calculated Professor Ackerman.
“Neuroscience,” he says, pacing once in front of Hange’s desk, “is full of people who are very comfortable using words they don’t understand.” He stops just short of the whiteboard, marker in hand, and turns to face us like he’s issuing a warning instead of starting a lecture.
“This course is designed to challenge that.”
Ackerman uncaps the marker with a soft click and begins writing out what seems to be a diagram of the dorsal attention network. I lower my eyes to my notes and redraw the diagram exactly as he has it, my handwriting suddenly looking messier than usual compared to his pristine penmanship. This is going to be a long semester, I think to myself.
The rest of class flies by, and by the end of it, I have a small textbook’s worth of notes to review.