Chapter Text
It's not that academia comes easily to Gen, he works hard to maintain top marks in all of his classes. It's just that he is, in fact, better than everybody else.
This is especially true in his poetry workshop, in which he is expected to write three poems throughout the semester, the dates of which he already signed up for on the first day of class. Each time, he has to print out a copy for everyone in class to take home, and then sit around silently the following week while they all discuss and try to critique his work. Likewise, he reads and critiques his classmates’ lesser quality poems each week. Gen is a biochemistry major, so creative writing courses are easy work in comparison.
So now he's here, sitting silently in class, pretending to take notes when really he’s trying to create his own sudoku puzzle, all while his classmates praise the poem he submitted the week before. It's flawless. The only critique he's received so far is that, “It’s so beautiful that I wish it was longer,” which isn't actual criticism at its core.
And then it happens.
A typically quiet guy with a stupid-ass bowl cut raises his hand.
“Soshiro,” Professor Hasegawa asks fondly. “Do you have anything to add?”
Gen glances up from his sudoku briefly before deciding that he’s seen enough of this man’s bowl cut for one day. Whatever he has to say, it isn’t important.
“Well,” he starts and his voice is already grating on Gen’s ears. “I think the language is nice, but there’s no heart behind it. What is this piece meant to be about? I recommend focusing a little less on the style and a little more on the substance.”
Gen grips his pencil so hard that it snaps in half.
“Excellent observation. Does anyone else want to add on to Soshiro’s point?”
Some nobody NPC with frizzy brown hair and glasses raises her hand next. “Actually, I agree with Hoshina and was just thinking the same thing.”
In a flash of hot rage, Gen looks up at the bowl cut bastard to find a sinister smirk glaring back at him. As more and more of their classmates raise their hands to find flaws in Gen’s flawless work, he abandons his sudoku and begins to plot out his revenge.
~
Two weeks later, Gen is once again in his poetry workshop, but this time it’s Bowl Cut’s turn to get his poem ripped to shreds. Gen didn’t read it, he never actually reads anyone else’s poems, but he’ll piece together the general gist after hearing everyone’s comments about it and then earn his participation credit near the end of class. This method has never failed him.
Until today.
Gen raises his hand not even five minutes into the discussion and stares down Bowl Cut directly across from him as he scribbles down notes in a pretentious leather-bound journal. The desks are shaped in a horseshoe so everyone can make uncomfortable eye contact with each other. Professor Hasegawa sits at the very end and calls on Gen with a sigh.
“Gen, what did you-”
“Yeah, so here’s the thing,” he interrupts. “I just feel like this poem is bare bones. Maybe even simple, for lack of a better word,” he says, knowing full well that there’s a plethora of better words that he can’t use in an academic setting. “I’m not going to lie,” which is a lie in itself, “I didn’t really see the point. Is this a rough draft?”
Professor Hasegawa rolls his eyes as he calls on the NPC with ratty brown hair and large framed glasses from last week. “Your response, Konomi?”
“With all due respect, Soshiro’s poem is a minimalist piece. Simplicity is the point,” she argues, an unspoken “dumbass” hanging in the air between them. “Obviously, this is about the state of the lower class under late-stage capitalism.”
“…” Gen only knows what half of those words mean, but that’s not going to stop him from arguing back to this side character. He’ll just keep it vague and condescending like he usually does. “Oh? Is it now? Could have fooled me.”
Across from him, there’s a brief, low chuckle. A snort, perhaps. Maybe even a thinly veiled cough. Gen looks over to see that damn Bowl Cut smirking into his notes.
“Oi, you got something to say, jackass?”
“Gen,” Professor Hasegawa cuts in, holding a hand up to silence him. His eyebrows are stern, but that doesn’t make him look any different than how he usually appears. “Behave or get out.”
“But-”
“I will not say it again.”
He sighs in defeat. Gen can feel his veins ready to burst as he slouches back down in his seat with his arms crossed.
Fine. If that's how it's going to be, then Gen will play by his own rules.
~
Four weeks have passed and it's once again Gen's turn to submit a piece of poetry to the class. Since Bowl Cut’s last submission, Gen has spent every class session glaring daggers in his direction and figuring out words that rhyme with “stupid” and “jackass.”
In the end, he decided on something much simpler than that. If his nemesis is going to write minimalism - a word Gen had to look up in the dictionary - then he will use even less words to get his message across: a haiku.
The spiteful fox leers
From the safety of the bush
Jealous of the wolf
It's not his best work, but it comes from the heart, which is what Bowl Cut himself asked for in the first place. Luckily, there’s a nine line minimum for submissions, so Gen submits two more haikus that he believes gets the message across crystal clear:
Small-minded foxes
Believe they can trick the wolf
What a foolish thought
Say less to say more
Okay, fine - How about this…
Foxes are stupid
“Gen, these are…” Professor Hasegawa starts, scratching his head. He gives the sheet of paper with Gen’s haikus a consternated look. “How do I put this… The form is correct, and the punctuation is right, but this is still not how haikus are… conventionally written.”
“I like them.”
Everyone turns to look at Bowl Cut, who just spoke without raising his hand like an academic heathen. Even Gen is surprised at this confession, though that feeling of triumph quickly morphs into a deep-seated suspicion. What is that fox hiding?
“You do? Care to elaborate?” Professor Hasegawa asks as though he doesn’t believe him. Just because Gen is suspicious of Bowl Cut liking his poems doesn’t mean other people are allowed to suspect him - his haikus are great and no one should be questioning how enjoyable or profound they are.
“I quite like them,” Bowl Cut reiterates. “There’s something so simple and childlike about how they’re written. It reminds me of cartoon rivalries like Tom and Jerry, or Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.” Then, he looks at Gen to deliver the finishing blow. “Are these meant to be for a children’s collection?”
In a perfect world, Gen would be Mount Vesuvius and that damn Bowl Cut would be little ol’ Pompeii cowering at his feet. But no. Gen has to reign it in or else he’ll get another long email from Professor Hasegawa about his “abruptive and inappropriate behavior” during class. So instead of firing back an insult, he breathes through his nose and grinds his teeth.
“Konomi,” Professor Hasegawa says. “Do you have anything else to add?”
Rat Hair starts yapping it up about how much she agrees with Bowl Cut and blah blah blah. Those two are obviously conspiring against Gen, so whatever she has to say is irrelevant.
The only compliment Gen's haikus get are from the old man in the back who works at the school as a janitor and is getting his degree part-time. His name is forgettable, but his eyebrows are not.
“Kafka, what is your impression of these pieces?”
“I think foxes and wolves are both really cool, so pitting them against each other seems like a battle between brains and brawns.”
Brains and brawns… that would be true if Gen wasn't both strong and brilliant, or if Bowl Cut wasn't as weak as he is stupid. Oh well. At the end of the day, a compliment is a compliment and the Old Man still thinks his poems are cool. Art is subjective and all that useless crap.
The class gets hung up on that point and, by the end, they don't reach a conclusion that Gen is satisfied with. When everyone's notes get passed back to him, Gen scans all but one of them for an iota of intelligence, but ends up finding none. Not one of them brings up how the wolf obviously knows where the fox is hiding and yet doesn't hunt him down out of the goodness of his heart. What's worse is that none of them consider that the wolf is the hero of this story.
Dumbasses, all of them.
Gen is the first to bolt out of the classroom when class is dismissed, making sure to bump Bowl Cut’s surprisingly non-bony shoulder on the way out.
Huh.
Gen thought he'd be easier to push over than that… Maybe he wears a weighted vest?
…Yeah, that must be it.
~
Bowl Cut’s response comes two weeks later when he submits his next poem. Or poems, to be more accurate.
The bastard wrote fucking haikus. And the worst part is that they’re obviously written to mimic Gen’s style because no one is capable of having an original thought anymore.
Remind me again
Who’s the wolf and who’s the fox
Nature deceives you
The foolish bunny
Lazes beneath the bush and
Thinks himself a wolf
Run little bunny-
The hungry fox approaches
Readying to strike
Gen’s blood is boiling over the lid, the veins in his forehead popping down from his crown to his temple. Grinding his teeth won’t cut it this time, he needs to bite something. Or someone. Across the horseshoe, Bowl Cut leans into the table with his head propped up in his hand. He grins at Gen, eyes closed, and sends a little wave.
“You prick,” Gen mutters. It’s meant to be under his breath, but he’s not capable of such subtlety at this moment in time and, unfortunately, Professor Hasegawa hears him.
“What was that?”
Bowl Cut looks at him all innocent and coy like the deceptive fox he is, smug under the protection of Professor Hasegawa’s shadow. Gen swallows. Hard. “Nothing.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Somehow, everyone in the class has vastly different opinions about Bowl Cut’s haikus than Gen’s, especially that nerdy Rat Hair.
“While I agree that the use of first-person perspective in the first haiku and then switching to an omniscient narrator for the latter two is… an interesting choice, this collection speaks to a sense of rivalry and unspoken ferocity between two individuals. The mention and disappearance of a wolf combined with the sudden introduction of a bunny indicates a role reversal in which the fox is predator rather than prey.”
Okay, it’s actually not that serious, though.
“It's homophobic. Ain't that right, Reno?”
In a rare moment of solidarity, both Gen and Bowl Cut look over dumbfounded at the guy with a pink pompadour and sharp teeth in the back of the horseshoe, situated right in between the Old Man and a disappointed looking sophomore with white hair that he's way too young to have. Poor guy. He must be under a lot of stress. Pinky, meanwhile, is leaning against the table on his elbows, bored out of his mind.
“I think you mean ‘homoerotic,’ Iharu,” the sophomore, Reno apparently, corrects. “Homophobic means something else.”
“Hah? But the bunny is afraid of the fox, so it's a phobia…?”
Reno pinches the bridge of his nose and shakes his head in defeat, an action that seems to be second nature to him. “No.”
“Tch.” Next to Gen is the only person in this class that he semi-respects, but only kind of - a stuck-up freshman with mean pigtails and an even meaner scowl. Shinomiya Kikoru. “The only thing anyone's afraid of around here is your devastating stupidity. Hope it's not contagious for everyone else's sake.” She scrunches her nose and waves her hand in front of her face like she's trying and failing to fan away a bad odor.
“Hey now, that wasn't nice, Kikoru. You should apologize.” The Old Man - Kafka? Whatever his name is - looks at her with all the sternness of a golden retriever and stares her down as though he genuinely expects her to listen to him.
“Pfft. Why should I take orders from a part-timer?”
“Because if you don't, then I'll run up to you and shout your name with my dirty rags and toilet plunger the next time I see you in the hallway.”
“You wouldn't dare!”
“Try me, Little Missy!”
Professor Hasegawa slams a hand down on the table and the shock of it can be felt all around the horseshoe.
“Everyone. Let’s get back to Soshiro's haikus,” he hisses with a vein popping out from his knuckles and up through his forearm. “Gen. Your thoughts. Now.”
“Unoriginal,” Gen says without missing a beat. “Haikus are so two weeks ago.”
Professor Hasegawa doesn't appreciate that answer, but, to Gen's surprise, Bowl Cut seemingly does.
“Heh.”
Gen blinks out an entire S.O.S signal in Morse code before processing that Bowl Cut just chuckled at his insult.
…
This is a nightmare.
Having the enemy laughing at his expense is quite possibly the worst case scenario in any situation, so it's fair to say that Gen will be dropping out of college and devoting the rest of his life to vengeance via small-scale acts of cyber bullying after this class ends. He'll find out Bowl Cut's email address and sign him up for every bit of spam mail Gen can find. Then, he'll sign him up for dating services designed for people ages fifty and up, create a profile, and begin setting him up with people who already have grandchildren and second mortgages and shit. Is that identity theft?
Who cares.
What's even more mortifying, which he’ll never admit to out loud, is that Gen finds Bowl Cut’s smile to be… cute? Charming? Handsome?
No.
No no no no no.
He's evil and slimy and shady as all hell. Soshiro is not cute.
Shit, no, fuck, he meant to say Bowl Cut. That's his name: Bowl Cut. Not So-whatever the fuck.
Gen looks up across the horseshoe to find Soshiro watching him, studying him, with a grin that takes up his whole stupid face. His eyes are sharp and wide open for a change, a vortex of rich violet staring him down and leaving Gen’s mind scrambled. He's shocked at how he's never once noticed before how stunning they are and-
…
Did he just…?
No.
No, thank you.
Not today, Satan. Or tomorrow. Or ever.
Gen retreats into himself until the workshop ends, hunched over and crafting sudokus in the margins of his notebook until he runs out of space and has to look for new pages to fill. And whenever thoughts of poetry or foxes or purple prose enters his mind, he adds another layer to his puzzles. And another. And another. And another after that.
Under no circumstances does he acknowledge the feeling of Soshiro’s eyes beating down on him for the remainder of class.