"Academic Rival" with no hope of survival.
SUITOR: "A shrimp fried this rice...?" | Academic Rival | Male Denial. Tsundere. incredibly sheltered, so he has almost no point of reference for his feelings. Smug until he's disproven. Y/N: "Apartment complex? I find it quite simple really." | Academic Rival | Gender-Neutral Slightly pretentious. Loves to show-off, but is a genuinely decent person. General scenarios & head-canons.
High-school should have been easy, and it had been for the past three years.
But the academic was now a senior, and you were now his biggest problem.
What the hell?
Being at the top of his classes had always been natural. Ever since middle-school, people had just begun expecting it, and it was a routine standard that no one dared to break. Some had tried, but very few people could scratch the surface of his intelligence.
Math? Such easy calculations. Science? Well, it was the way the world worked, and Earth had hardly changed in the past 17 years, no? And even every arts-related subject was easily excelled. It was just what he did. It was what he prided himself on.
So when he suddenly found himself being verbally-bested in a class-discussion--an "ethics bowl" in Honors Language Arts-- he found himself clawing at the chair below him, and hardly listening to your squeaky arguments.
It was not like he could listen to you even if he wanted to, anyways. The steam pouring out of his ears made it hard for him to hear anyone. So when the bell rang 30 minutes later--an entire 30 minutes where he, for once, had not been interrupting his measly classmates--the teacher had to shake him by the shoulders for him to leave.
Just what had you done to him? Who the hell were you? What the hell were you?
Not once had he ever been challenged like that. Even in this school, which was a private academy with top-notch teachers and incredibly advanced classes...
You must have bought your way in. So he would pressure you out, just like you had pressured him out of the class debate.
That night, he spent three hours finding anything that he could about you: social medias, past awards, and even your profile in the class's digital roster. That was how he found out that your shared classes did not end there, and that you two actually had a very similar schedule.
It was a shame that such fervent research stumped him, and had caused his AP Physics homework to be forgotten.
"The- the homework? Uhm. Yes, of course I... have it... done... ah. Oh. Ooooh no..."
Honestly, who was this guy? You were just trying to correct your work (well, more like doodling in the margins with your red-pen, because you hadn't made any mistakes...) when he suddenly popped up next to you.
He demanded for you to show him your homework, and when you looked over, you saw that his paper had been crumpled, as though he had just now quickly done all of it. It'd be impressive, if he was actually half-as-right as he thought he was. But instead, you saw why he needed your work as reference, because his answers were far from correct.
"Sure," you told him with a shrug. You pushed it over with a slight grin. "Just don't copy it too much."
"Copy? The whole point of this class is to collaborate and check our answers with one another. Of course, you wouldn't know that, because you have never had this professor before, but--"
"Professor? We're in high-school."
He narrowed his eyes, "but he used to be a real professor, which is why he is teaching such a high-level class. Surely, you know what you signed up for, right?"
Your eyes flickered down to his paper, where he was hastily crossing out all of his wrong answers. "I should be asking you that."
His fist clenched around his pen. "But I think we both know the answer to that."
You hardly thought so, but whatever made him stop nagging you. He was sitting way too close for comfort, and all you wanted to do was go home and continue your piano lessons.
"You play piano?"
Somehow, you two have become consistent lab-partners in the advanced chemistry class. Perhaps, it was because the teacher found out you were both in the ecology club (another weird coincidence), and found it funny to push the only genuine-science-enthusiasts together.
Which... yeah, it was funny, especially since he seemed so flustered about it. You could talk on all day, and he would just listen in angry silence.
Today, though-- he responded to a particular ramble of yours.
"I do." You said, readjusting your goggles. "Can't say I'm great at it, but I like to think I'm kinda competent."
He hummed, staring at you from your left peripheral. He reached over to your head, before pausing, and then dropping a hair-tie in front of you. You picked it up and tied your hair back.
He spoke again, "I do choir, but that's only because I now lack the time for instruments. I can sing in the shower, but I can't exactly pull out a grand-piano whenever I want to."
You shared interests outside of academia? You perked up at that, and turned to him. "Wait, do you actually play piano, or is that just an example? What instruments are we talking about?"
"Well, historically, I'm more equipped in the brass-section..." He admitted with a growing smirk. "But how hard could it be to best you in piano?"
You raised an eyebrow, finding yourself with a growing grin as well. "Considering you haven't touched an instrument in an assumably long time, I'd say it's harder than whatever you're thinking right now."
You had gradually gotten closer, and his eyes widened. For all of his talk, he seemed immediately defeated, and his surrender quickly swept in.
With a sudden pull-back, face red, he nervously tugged on his uniform tie. "Pfft.... yeah right."
"You're... you're going where..!?"
The scholar had tried to be nonchalant for a number of reasons. Firstly, he could hardly admit to himself that he was slowly becoming more infatuated with you. And secondly, he knew that if you ever became aware of his feelings, you'd never take them seriously!
But when he overheard your conversation with your math teacher, he couldn't stop himself from craning his face slowly to you with a horrified expression. You'd been boasting about your early-acceptance-letter to a top-school across the country...
And it was the exact same school that he had been accepted to last night.
"...Is something wrong with the school? Why are you looking at me like that?" You asked, oblivious to this horrible fact.
Oh, Y/N-- poor, academic Y/N. You're too smart for your own good, because now you've got a puppy that's going to trail after you for college. He hadn't even realized the leash before, and now he was hoping and praying that you'd remain just as oblivious.
"Nothing." He said softly, "I just heard it's... expensive."
He'd see you in hell.
