Chapter Text
This was the third departmental seminar Akiyama Mizuki and the rest of their lab mates had attended the past week. Normally, they would not mind because of the free food, but this one was scheduled for the late afternoon when they should be passaging their cells instead, and worse yet, the audience had already been waiting for fifteen minutes but the presenter was still nowhere to be seen. Wasn’t this supposed to be what was in essence an open interview of the assistant professor candidate for their department? Mizuki was just a grad student, so they had yet to apply for a faculty position, but wouldn’t you be struck off the hiring list if you turned up late to a Starbucks interview?
“Ah, she’s finally here!” Mizuki said enthusiastically when they saw the figure of the presenter enter the lecture hall from the side door at long last. The room was not that big, so even though their lab was seated at the very back, Mizuki could still make out the gorgeous facial features of the presenter. They immediately nudged the arm of their lab mate to their side, frustrations forgotten. “Ena, Ena, you think she’s wearing any makeup?”
“Umm…Mizuki, I think that is rather irrelevant, is it not? Hinomori-san is a respected researcher from the renowned Sekai Institute of Science and Technology. We should evaluate her based solely on her academic merit,” the person Mizuki nudged, their lab’s research associate, Yoisaki Kanade, answered quietly.
“Ahahaha, you are absolutely right, Kanade.” Mizuki might have said that, but only because they had nudged the wrong person. They rectified the mistake by nudging the person to their other side this time and repeated their question. “Ena, Ena, you think she’s wearing any makeup?”
“Shh…” Shinonome Ena, their research technician, shushed them in an irritated manner. “You heard Kanade, so be quiet.”
Mizuki only giggled behind their hand. “You’re probably just jealous that Dr. Hinomori looks more Instagrammable than you without any effort whatsoever.”
“You…!”
Ena had got to admit that Mizuki was not entirely wrong. Dr. Hinomori Shizuku’s face would make almost anybody jealous. It was weird why someone like that would pursue a career in the sciences where nobody could be bothered to wear their suit properly even during international conferences, rather than a career in the entertainment industry where she would probably look more inconspicuous alongside glamorous colleagues. But Kanade was correct to point out that Dr. Hinomori, despite looking more like a celebrity, was in fact a leading researcher in the novel field of Q-radiation, specifically its relationship to genetics. What Ena could not understand was why someone with dozens of publications in journals with impact factors above 20 would apply for a faculty position at a small private university with a somewhat contested reputation when she could easily land a job at an Ivy League institution instead. Was she a troublemaker like the genius RA, Kamishiro Rui, from the Ootori Lab? Or a two-faced weirdo like the principal investigator of Ena’s lab, Asahina Mafuyu?
Speaking of Prof. Asahina, she was paying no attention to her underlings and stared straight ahead at the presenter with her laptop open, ready to take notes. She would have to wait another five minutes before typing anything though, as Dr. Hinomori proceeded to struggle with putting up her powerpoint. She first tried to jam her USB into the HDMI port, then when she finally figured out the right port to jab the poor memory stick into, she let out a confused “Ara…???” when a message popped up to tell her that the file was corrupted. Her pink-haired companion finally could not stand it at that point and helped her set up the presentation in a matter of seconds. Ena could not help but mutter to Mizuki, “Dr. Hinomori does work for the Sekai Institute of Science and TECHNOLOGY, right? She doesn’t seem very tech savvy.”
“I heard she got ostracized out of her old job after breaking three plate readers and a confocal!” Mizuki answered with rumours that nobody knew where they had heard from – this one sounded legit to Ena though. That must be the explanation for why a world class scientist would apply to work for a university known for hiring misfits. Then again, one had got to wonder how Dr. Hinomori managed to finish her PhD back in the days. Wouldn’t she get kicked out of the building for destroying the shared autoclave or something?
They soon got their answer after Dr. Hinomori started her presentation by first explaining that the delay was caused by her getting lost after a trip to the washroom. “And I would like to acknowledge before we start that this presentation was put together by my dear friend and colleague, Momoi Airi-chan. I wouldn’t have accomplished any of the things I am credited with throughout my career if not for her help!”
Dr. Hinomori’s pink-haired companion facepalmed so hard that the entire lecture hall heard the smack. Yes, Shizuku could not piece together a decent looking powerpoint to save her life, but the audience did not need to know that! All the research ideas were hers. All the data was collected by her, and Airi just helped her program the PCR machine and check that the centrifuge was always properly set up so that it would not explode. Shizuku was an amazing thinker and even more amazing at tail vein injections, and that was all that mattered, okay!? Why did she have to undersell herself as though she had stolen all of Airi’s merit?
But the moment Dr. Hinomori got to the meat of her presentation, the audience’s doubts about her abilities eased. Ena watched with a mix of amazement and jealousy. “How did she conceive the structure of the Q-carrier-DNA complex? She didn’t even use modelling software! But it makes so much sense! Like…is she our generation’s Watson and Crick?”
“Bleh! Can you compare her to somebody better than that?” Mizuki answered. They were no fan of those two, and instead stanned Rosalind Franklin.
Prof. Asahina had other ideas. Structural analyzes could be useful in some cases, but all that anybody would care about in the end was the utility of research. Modern taxpayers could care less whether DNA was a double-helix or some type of magic mushroom – whether their tax money could convert to lifesaving medications was what they were concerned about, and rightly so.
As for Prof. Asahina herself, she was disinterested either way. A job was a job. She was just here to assess whether Dr. Hinomori was worth hiring – nothing more and nothing less.
Her criticism would be answered later in the presentation though. If DNA sequences could affect Q-carrier arrangement, and that influenced the type of Q-radiation produced, then that would mean Q-radiation signatures could be an inheritable trait. Dr. Hinomori’s analysis of a large library of human genomes and the corresponding Q-radiation signatures allowed her to identify specific sequences that induced specific features on the Q-radiation signatures. She then took a subset of the sequences that were located on the Y chromosome and edited them into an appropriate animal model at the same location on the genome, and this induced the same Q-radiation feature in the experimental subject, which was then inherited by all its male offspring but not its female offspring, confirming her hypothesis. Prof. Asahina narrowed her eyes. Though she had already seen much of this data from reading the journals in which they were published, there was some unpublished material in this presentation that made the story more complete than before. This was a discovery with many applications, but accompanying the applications were controversies and risks of misuse by parties with bad intentions. After all, Q-radiation was not a simple protein or small molecule metabolite – it was a power that could change the world as humans knew it.
“Dr. Hinomori is too truthful to spell it out for us that her research could lead to trouble. Would the administration even at a university like Hatsune Miku be willing to hire someone like that, however brilliant?” Mafuyu wondered.
Well, that was a decision for the higher-ups. Throughout the questioning period, Dr. Hinomori’s performance affirmed Mafuyu’s impression that she was most certainly the mind behind the amazing work presented, and that she easily outperformed the other two candidates to the position. Poor sense of direction and rumours of her misfortune with machines aside, she was a top scientist deserving of her accolades. Mafuyu wrote up her opinion to present at the next faculty meeting that would decide Dr. Hinomori’s fate and then closed her laptop. This would be the end of her involvement in Dr. Hinomori’s matters, or so she thought. Little did she know that this would be the mere beginning of everything…
………………………
July.
It was long past sakura season, and the increasing heat and nasty rainstorms were doing a good job of keeping tourists off the campus of Hatsune Miku University. With major national grants all handed in the previous month, and summer vacation having ferried away most of the undergrads, the Center of Biosciences and Health Technology was the very epitome of peace and tranquility.
“Even the coffee tastes better when the undergrads aren’t around!” Mizuki exclaimed. Their lab, minus their PI, was having lunch at the only eatery in their building, A Future Written by Delicacy, which most of the occupants here liked to call A Future Written by Regrets instead. Their watery coffee, oily pasta, and dried chicken breasts certainly made most customers regret their purchases, with their onigiri being the only item that sold well solely for the cheap calories it could provide to starving researchers on the 20th hour of their time course experiments. The only reason why the Asahina Lab had lunch here was that they were all shut-ins – the terrible eatery had few customers to disturb them, and even its miserable excuse for food was better than what the three of them could concoct at home. Hey, they were scientists, not cooks! Nobody taught them not to add 80 grams of NaCl to a pot of soup the way you would for a litre of 10x PBS!
“You too were an undergrad just a year ago, Brat,” Ena answered Mizuki. She turned her attention to their beloved little RA thereafter, “Kanade, try this strawberry pudding. It’s actually not bad!”
Kanade smiled weakly. “I hope it doesn’t give me gastroenteritis…”
The way Ena ignored Mizuki was short-lived. Mizuki was tugging on her sleeve again. “What the hell, Mizuki? You are making creases on my Dior shirt…”
“It’s Mafuyu! With Prof. Hinomori! The Hinomori Lab is finally moving in!” they said while waving at the newcomers at the restaurant entrance.
When Mafuyu smiled brightly in response, Ena shivered - she would never get used to the cringeworthy commercial façade that Mafuyu would show towards strangers. But Mafuyu being her boss and all, Ena kept quiet alongside the rest of their lab.
They had heard of Prof. Hinomori’s hiring last month when the office people at their building came up to their lab to sort out the space for the new group that would be moving in soon – Ena was rather unhappy that they told her to clean up her empty cardboard boxes instead of piling them atop the benches of what used to belong to the lab of a retired PI. Aside from having to move back to their assigned space, the Asahina Lab really had little interest in their new neighbours. It was rather fascinating that if you were smart enough, you could get a job even if you turn up late to an interview. But other than that, they saw little reason to care about a group that worked on drastically different research than their own. It wasn’t as though any of them was lecherous enough to hit on Prof. Hinomori for her beautiful face and nice body.
“It is great to see you all here. Let me introduce you to the lab that would be moving into the space next to ours. This is Hinomori Shizuku-san, the newly hired assistant professor in the department. I’m sure you remember the amazing presentation she gave at the seminar two months ago. And this is the Hinomori Lab’s manager, Momoi Airi-san – you have also seen her at the seminar previously. To her right is Kiritani Haruka-san, their postdoc, and to her other side is their new grad student, Hanasato Minori-san. They would be part of the Molecular Biology and Microbiology Joint Research Initiative,” Mafuyu introduced.
“Ah, the MMJ group? Cool stuff!” Mizuki answered. MMJRI was too long an acronym, so it was more common for the researchers to refer to it by the first three letters. As Hatsune Miku was a pretty small university, all the researchers doing anything remotely related to biology were shoved into the same department, hence these smaller subgroups were devised to keep track of who did what. The Asahina Lab was in the Neuroscience Research Group which employed a meagre 25 people in total, hence the nickname N25.
In a quieter voice, Mizuki whispered to Ena, “Seems like the MMJ group just increased tenfold in idol power by the joining of the Hinomori Lab!”
“Mizuki! You’re gossiping about them right in front of their faces!” Ena hushed.
To be fair to Mizuki, the Hinomori Lab would likely take over the notorious Ootori Lab to become the building’s most eye-catching lab after their move. Both Hinomori Shizuku and Momoi Airi were from Sekai, the former having worked for the very successful, nationally funded Cheerful Days Initiative for the treatment of rare genetic diseases, and the latter having worked for the QT group that discovered and developed the leading theories of Q-radiation. Kiritani Haruka was previously a researcher and spokesperson for ASRUN, the Asian Radiation Users Network, and she was known throughout the country for hosting a short television segment after evening news that educated the public about radiation. “The Idol of Scientists” was what the press called her after her TV debut, since she was well-spoken and downright gorgeous. Indeed, be it their far above average looks or top-class research, those three could be considered celebrities both amongst the public and in the bioscience sphere. The only ordinary face amongst the Hinomori Lab had got to be Hanasato Minori’s, but she was cute enough as well – she definitely had the potential to become the #1 love interest amongst the building’s grad students.
It was unclear whether the Hinomori Lab noticed the members of the Asahina Lab ogling them – if they did, they did not let it show on their faces. They happily sat down at the adjacent table upon Mafuyu’s invitation. “As your new neighbour, let me treat you to lunch today,” Mafuyu announced. Ena immediately glared at her, as though saying “Can’t you drive them off-campus and treat them to some real food instead? Goodness’ sake, you don’t try to establish good relationships with your new neighbours by giving them food poisoning!”
Mizuki tugged on Ena’s shirt again and whispered very softly to her this time, “Mafuyu has never been here either. Don’t you remember that she always eats her mom’s homemade bento for lunch?”
Ena felt like banging her head onto the table. Right. At the ripe age of 30, Mafuyu still ate her mama’s lunchboxes, called her mama when she must work late, and…secretly endured her mama’s disappointment with her not-perfect-enough career.
Seriously, what was wrong with Asamama? Hatsune Miku might not be the best university out there, but a prof position here was still quite difficult to obtain and it did pay rather decently as well!
“Umm…Mafuyu, we are about to be finished already. Why don’t we go over to the frozen yogurt place across the street for some desserts together instead?” Kanade kindly suggested in the hopes that it would deter the disaster about to happen.
“There is no need for such a hassle. We are fine with any food,” Shizuku answered.
“No, Prof. Hinomori, you’ve gotten it all wrong! Nobody is fine with the food here! Okay, we the Asahina Lab are, but that’s because we’ve already developed antibodies to the local pathogens!” Ena wanted to scream, but alas, she stayed silent in the end.
And so, disaster finally struck when Mafuyu’s nikujaga came looking like stewed cardboard, Airi’s dorayaki seeped a watery filling that looked more like bloody pork liver than red bean paste, the weird consistency of Haruka’s mint-chocolate ice cream made it look like wasabi-coloured dog feces, and Minori’s honey glazed salmon came with so much ground-up broccoli that it would be more aptly named “broccoli glazed salmon”.
Why broccoli? Poor Minori could only cringe at its sight.
They all exchanged a polite smile and came to the consensus that they would not touch the “food” on the table.
Only Shizuku seemed to not have noticed what was going on. She scarved down a big mouthful of udon, only for her face to turn green the moment she bit down on the shichimi-ladden mush that really should not be considered noodles at this point.
“If it is too spicy for you, I can finish the udon instead, Hinomori-san,” Mafuyu offered, much to everybody’s shock. Ena actually stood up and gawked. “Even if you are a closeted pervert who wants to indirectly swap saliva with Prof. Hinomori, you still shouldn’t stomach that crap, okay? Don’t you have an ounce of self-respect remaining in your bones!?”
Mizuki pulled Ena back onto her seat and quietly mumbled into her ear again. “You don’t get it, Ena. Our Alzheimer’s grant just got rejected at the letter of intent stage. We are broke as hell. Maybe Mafuyu is trying to suck up to Prof. Hinomori to get her hands on some of that delicious start-up funding…”
As though to answer Mizuki’s desperate pleas, a tearful Shizuku then broke the silence. “Actually, Asahina-san, now that both of our groups are sitting together, I wanted to talk a bit about a plan I have been conceiving. I know we work on very different fields, but I was wondering if you would be interested in a possible collaboration…”
Who cares if Prof. Hinomori’s tears were those of gratitude towards Mafuyu’s sacrifice, or was she merely driven to tears by the sting of shichimi on her tongue – the prospect of money got all of Asahina Lab to perk up their ears to what she had to say next.