AN: Hello! This is a gift fic I wrote for a friend of mine, that's been sitting in my draft for far too long. Hopefully going to be working on updating fics next! As always, reviews are appreciates!
Karin was curled up on the floor of the supply closet working through her statistics homework when one of the grad students poked his head into her makeshift office.
"Good morning, student worker! Professor Akasuna gave an exam in his Anatomy 1 class yesterday, and he has scantrons that still need to be run. They're in the back of his private lab, though, so someone will need to go get them and take them to administration!" The grad student clapped his hands together and flashed her a painfully bright smile. "Good thing you aren't busy!"
Karin scrunched her nose and shifted the textbook in her lap, hoping he'd take the hint that she was, in fact, busy. "Aren't you guys supposed to take scantrons straight to admin after the exam is over?" She gestured with her mechanical pencil. "You know, to avoid like, cheating and stuff."
Kabuto held out a single key, acting as if he hadn't heard her. "This is the key to Professor Akasuna's lab. You are going to guard it like your life depends on it. You will lock the door when you leave, and you will triple check it afterwards."
Karin frowned. "And if I don't?"
"Then I can't guarantee you'll survive," Kabuto deadpanned. He immediately brightened, his expression just as corny and synthetic as his knit sweater vest. "Better to not test it!"
With that, he tossed the key into her lap with a flick of his wrist, leaning over from the doorway like undergrad was some kind of a communicable disease. "Off you go then! Remember, Professor Akasuna doesn't like things to be late!"
"I know better than you do," Karin snapped, but she obliged by slipping the key and her phone into her pocket and shoving her backpack and textbook under the tiny shelf behind her.
By the time she shuffled to her feet, Kabuto had already scampered back to whatever dark corner of the medical sciences building he'd slithered out of to begin with.
Karin sighed and walked over the department lobby, toward the stairwell.
Karin liked to think she was something of a rarity among the work studies, mainly because she actually got her work done and didn't waste her time fucking around.
Ino called it being a try-hard, but Karin liked to think of it more as being too poor to risk being disposable.
The other students—well, they varied. There were strains of them, like viruses.
On the one hand, there were the grad students like Kabuto, who would gladly pawn work off to the freshmen work studies if it meant he could spend more time shuttered away in his lab, daydreaming and giggling to himself while he listened to his murder-time true-crime podcasts.
On the other hand, the majority of the undergrads were lazy assholes who'd spend an entire afternoon completing a simple task just to avoid being assigned more work.
"Hey! Hey, Karin! Where are you going?"
Or they were Ino, and their job was a combination of Daddy won't give me drinking money anymore and It's not eavesdropping if I'm paid to be here.
Karin turned to see Ino clinging to one of the wooden dividers on the sides of the reception desk, her knees propped haphazardly on the edge of her office chair.
For a moment, Karin was almost tempted to keep walking, knowing that Ino would rather die than be caught chasing after another person.
But, if Ino had already seen her…
It'd be safer for Karin to just pay her respects quickly then move on. She held up the lab key. "Scantrons."
Ino's eyes gleamed like the pink diamonds in her ears.
"That's Professor Akasuna's key," Ino announced, as if Karin didn't already know. "You can tell because it's brand new." She flipped her straightened hair over her shoulder. "He paid for it himself a few weeks ago—custom locks for both his lab and his office. Of course, the dean threw a fit when he found out, but there wasn't much he could do about it since the work was already done."
Karin turned the key over in her palm. There was an incriminating silver sheen to it, but Karin could tell from the tone of Ino's voice - and the fact that it was Ino - that there was more to it than that.
"Yeah," Karin replied carefully. "That does sound like something he would do."
Ino's lips curled into a suspicious, cat-like smile. "In fact, I'm pretty sure you're going to be the first person - faculty included - who gets to see what he's keeping in there."
Karin grimaced. "You can stop right there, because whatever you're thinking, I'm not fucking around with Akasuna's stuff just so you can tweet about it."
Ino's hands tightened on the divider. "Oh, come on! You know as well as I do that he's gotta have something good stashed away. I refuse to believe that a guy like that hasn't hidden at least one body."
"There's literally nothing he could be hiding in there that's good enough for me to put my ass on the line. Not one single thing."
"You say that, but I know you've worked with him before. Aren't you just the least bit curious?" Ino stuck out her bottom lip. "And just the least bit sympathetic? Poor Ino, chained to her desk while Karin has all of the fun?"
"Poor Ino," Karin confirmed. "She'll just have to stew and tweet angrily about it from inside her castle."
Ino swiped one arm over the top of her divider, very nearly stumbling off of her office chair as she reached for Karin's face. "You're lucky you're out of hair grabbing range, Uzumaki!"
Karin pointedly took another step back. "Which is exactly why I'm a lot more scared of him than I am of you, because he wouldn't have missed."
Scared might not have been the most accurate term, though. Loyal felt more fitting.
Of course, she'd heard enough rumors about the Professor to make her scared of him anyway, but there were weird rumors about all of the professors at the University, and Karin was largely indifferent to most of them.
Like Professor Hatake from the business school, who had allegedly refused to show up to class for an entire semester and somehow still got tenure.
Or how one of the adjuncts, Hidan, had threatened to murder a student and—well, he definitely didn't get tenure, but he didn't get fired, either.
Even though the rumors surrounding Akasuna tended to be a little more colorful, in Karin's mind the two of them were fairly symbiotic, in the sense that he seemed to think she was more useful to him alive than dead.
Which, for an anatomy professor, really was saying something.
Karin had wisely kept her mouth shut about the clandestine errands he'd asked her to run, and he reciprocated by never looking too closely at the timecards she submitted to him afterwards.
You're one of the tolerable ones, he had told her once after she'd carted several vats of formaldehyde up to his office after hours. You don't ask too many questions.
Of course, that was the sort of thing that would only encourage Ino.
"Honestly," Karin started, "even if Akasuna does have it locked down like a maximum security prison, I doubt he'd hide anything too weird in there. He seems like the type who would think about that sort of thing in advance."
"Sounds to me like you're a big fat chicken," Ino said. "Too chickenshit to go snooping, is that it?"
Karin scowled. "I'm not afraid of anything. I just doubt he's got anything that's worth getting in trouble over."
"God," Ino rolled her eyes. "Why are you starting to sound like Sakura now? Are you gonna start lecturing me about the dangers of underaged drinking next?"
Karin gave Ino a flat look and pointed toward the discarded Airpods on her desk. "Well, unlike either of you, I'm a ways off from disposable income levels of comfortable, so no. I don't care what you do with your own money."
"Being poor just means financial aid gave you more scholarship money, so don't act like such a victim." With another blithe flip of her hair, Ino added, "I'd probably be chickenshit too after what happened to his old TA."
"What happened? Akasuna had standards way above what someone making $7.50 an hour was gonna tolerate?"
Ino shot her a dirty look but continued, "I heard about it from Hana - Kiba's sister, she had Akasuna for Anatomy I. He had TA who he really didn't like, but he was stuck with him because the dean had assigned him to his lab. Apparently they got into a big argument one day and Professor Akasuna made him stay late to like, clean up after a dissection or something.
"Afterward, the kid went back to his dorm room and it's already like, dark outside and everything, you know? So he's not really paying attention, just walks in and flops onto the bed, except when he did, there were scorpions in his bed. Literal scorpions!"
"... And so what, they stung him and he died?"
"I mean… No, but he like, had to go to student health, and he missed a few days of classes, I think. Scorpions aren't actually that poisonous, you know." Ino gave her an unimpressed look, like that was somehow supposed to be common knowledge.
Karin gave her an equally unimpressed look. "So you're saying a professor just broke into someone's dorm room and left without anyone catching him? If it was that easy to sneak a professor into a dorm, I would've figured it out already."
"Oh, shut up the fuck up about your gross old man crush. How could a scorpion get into a dorm room?" Ino countered. "Professor Akasuna's had so much plastic surgery done that he looks like a teenager anyway; he could've easily passed for a freshman."
"It's not like it's impossible for some dumbass freshman to sneak a pet onto his floor and lose it."
"Okay, but these were scorpions. In his bed. They didn't just show up there on their own!"
"I'm almost certain that you've had worse things show up—"
Ino stuck out her tongue. "I'm just saying! Professor Akasuna has a reputation," she said. "But he's also got a private lab that's probably full of all kinds of exciting stuff, and you are gonna be the first of us who gets to see it. So get your ass moving and FaceTime me when you get there!"
"Fat chance of that!" Karin held the key up once more, just to watch how Ino's eyes immediately latched onto it. "You're gonna have to wait for the next unlucky son of a bitch, 'cause I'm not sticking my neck out for you."
"Don't be fucking rude!"
Karin waved on her way to the stairwell. "Better luck next time!"
Unlike the administrative floor, almost no one ever went to the faculty floor unless they absolutely had to.
The overhead lights were turned off, and the only other light was from the window at the other end of the hall, which offered a very scenic view of the rain-damaged air conditioner on the roof.
The stairwell door banged shut behind Karin, echoing like a low-budget horror movie prop.
One of the motion detectors caught her as she made her way to the opposite end, and the lights slowly flickered on behind her, fading in and out like a radio with a bad signal.
Another thing, she couldn't help but think, that was far too much like a low budget-horror movie prop.
She didn't find that particularly auspicious.
Most of the professors didn't bother to decorate their offices beyond the name plates on their doors, but Professor Hoshigaki had left a chair outside of his with a bowl of candy and a brief, but vaguely threatening note in bold red ink—PREPARE YOURSELVES FOR UPCOMING MIDTERMS!
Karin ignored the handwritten note and helped herself to a generous handful of candy.
All of the other offices were dark, except for Professor Uchiha's, though that was nothing new. He hadn't been at the University long, but he seemed convinced that he was somehow obligated to make up for that.
Not that she minded. If she hurried and got the scantrons to administration before the end of her shift, she could always check in later and see if he had any work for her to do.
Any work. Karin had made it abundantly clear on more than one occasion that she'd be willing to do literally anything he asked.
So far, though, he'd only asked her to scan journal articles and take screenshots of his younger brother's tweets.
It hadn't been quite what she'd had in mind, but it was a start.
"I'll get back to you later," Karin promised as she popped half of a Kit-Kat into her mouth.
Professor Akasuna's lab was the last of them, tucked away at the end of the hallway.
It was impossible to actually see into the lab, though, because the windows had all been done over with black paint, which seemed like an obvious building code violation to her.
Karin stuck the key in the door. "And that's someone else's problem," she remarked as she unlocked the door and swung it open.
The lab was—well, Karin could only say that it was the kind of thing that would disappoint Ino.
As far as labs went, it was fairly standard. There were several counters along the walls with gas pipes for bunsen burners, unadorned ring stands, and several opaque, unlabeled tubs. Professor Akasuna had arranged blackout curtains along the windows of the lab which—yeah, that was definitely weird, but not weird enough to make her think twice about it.
In the middle of the lab, though, there was Beauty and the Beast-esque wardrobe. It was comically tall, and several ceiling panels had been removed in order to accommodate the ornate woodwork at the top of it.
She couldn't even begin to guess how Professor Akasuna had managed to fit it into his lab, or how he'd even gotten a piece of furniture that large up to the ninth floor in the first place.
It was definitely odd, but thankfully Karin had a carefully-crafted mantra for situations like that—"Not my problem."
The scantrons were waiting at the back of the lab in a neat stack, bound together with a rubber band. Karin lifted the bundle and gave it a good wiggle, just for good measure. "And in about ten minutes, you're gonna be someone else's problem."
She passed the wardrobe again on her way out, but she couldn't keep her eyes from straying. Were those golden handles?
Professor Akasuna had tenure, somehow, but he was still a relatively young guy—he couldn't be making that much money.
Dammit, Ino.
Karin looked around the lab, checking to make sure that she was really alone. She looked up too, because she couldn't really say Professor Akasuna wasn't the sort of guy to have cameras in his lab.
She wasn't going to tell anyone, but…
Maybe she could just take a quick peek.
"I mean, it's practically like he wants someone to look in it," Karin reasoned. Why else would he leave it unlocked in his private lab?
She set the stack of scantrons on the counter and opened the doors to the wardrobe slowly, checking the inside of the door to make sure he didn't have an alarm attached to the door or - dammit, Ino - scorpions, somehow, hidden in his massive wardrobe.
The first thing she saw was a face.
Karin stumbled back, her shoes scuffing on the linoleum floor. She gripped onto the side of the nearest counter, waiting for the face to blink or move or—or do whatever the hell it was that a face in a creepy wardrobe did.
She held her breath for a second, but nothing happened. Eventually, her eyes adjusted enough to the dim light in the lab that she realized it wasn't going to move.
"What in the absolute fuck…"
It was a dummy. Or, at least, the torso of one. Karin yanked her phone out of her pocket and turned on the flashlight to get a closer look. The light immediately reflected off of the dummy's shiny plastic body.
It was one of the models they used for anatomy lectures—there were ruts through the face and chest where the lecturer could take it apart to show its internal organs.
That was where the similarities ended, though. Most of the dummies they used were as generic as possible since, well, that was pretty much the point. It wasn't the face that mattered, but all the red, gushy stuff that was under it.
Professor Akasuna's dummy wasn't like that. It was—it was detailed to the point that it was a little unnerving. The dummy had hair, and not the plastic, painted on synthetic hair the other dummies had, but long, black-grey hair that was… almost definitely a wig.
It looked soft, maybe even like it'd been conditioned, and someone had gone to the trouble of carefully tying it back into a neat knot at the top of its head.
Karin brushed the dummy's bangs back and realized its face was painted too. At least, its eyes were. Unlike the dull blue and brown eyes other dummies had, Professor Akasuna's dummy had bright, gold painted eyes that were accented with sharp, winged eyeliner.
"Did he… pay for this?" Karin asked, though the more horrifying alternative was that he'd somehow made it himself.
"Well," she said, closing the cabinet. "That's definitely weird, but not illegal." She thought about it for a moment. "At least, I'm pretty sure it isn't illegal."
Her curiosity sated, Karin returned to her assigned task. At that point, she was only wasting time by lingering. She grabbed her stack of scantrons off of the counter and tucked them under her arm.
She was thinking about taking another long stroll past Professor Uchiha's office when the door to the lab clicked back open and the lights suddenly flashed on. Karin froze and turned toward the exit, where an impossibly tall figure was waiting for her in the doorway.
Karin took in the details slowly—his long black hair, bright yellow eyes…
It was the goddamn dummy. Standing in the lab.
Or, considering whose lab it was, haunting it.
He seemed almost taken aback. "Hello?"
"I—you—" Karin did the only thing that seemed reasonable.
Which is to say, she screamed.
"Are you—" the dummy started. He cringed. "Please, if you could just—"
Karin screamed again, stumbled backwards, and tripped over her own feet. The scantrons went flying out of her hands and fell around her in a shower of paper.
"What in the hell is that noise?"
There were several quick, sharp footsteps, and Professor Akasuna appeared in the doorway of the lab, right behind the dummy.
He glanced at it before glaring down at her. "Girl. What are you doing in here?" he snapped.
"You—he—" Karin pointed at the dummy, hoping he'd get the hint that something very fucked up was happening.
"Girl," he repeated. "What are you doing in my lab?"
Unable to form actual words, Karin could only point, once again, at the dummy.
"My husband," the professor deadpanned. "You are doing my husband?"
"Well, that's certainly news to me," his husband chimed in. "The resemblance is uncanny, but I'm afraid we've never met."
Professor Akasuna immediately bristled. "The resemblance is not at all uncanny. My vision is perfect; there is absolutely no way I could be mistaken for a girl in glasses."
His husband hummed. "Well, it was only a thought."
The professor shot him a glare. "It was a poor one." Professor Akasuna turned his discerning eye back on Karin before addressing his husband again. "Perhaps I might bear a stronger resemblance to her if I didn't leave our house for several months and refused to have my hair cut in that entire time. Would you prefer that?"
"Well." There was a pregnant pause. "Not particularly."
Survivalist that she was, Karin briefly wondered whether she'd be better off if she just sat there quietly and let him finish roasting her.
That being said, all three of them would probably be happier if she could just get the fuck out of there and back to her closet-office. "If I can just—"
Professor Akasuna's head swiveled back to her like a gun on a turret.
Karin swallowed a heavy lump in her throat. "... If I can just clean these up, Professor, I can leave you two be."
Without responding to her directly, Professor Akasuna turned back to his husband and began tapping his foot impatiently. "Remind me to lock the door behind her when she leaves. I am beginning to wonder whether that graduate student is as reliable as he ought to be, all things considered."
Taking that as her apparent cue, Karin crawled around the floor and began scooping up the scantrons, her face growing redder by the second.
Professor Akasuna's foot suddenly stopped, as if a thought had suddenly occurred to him. "Girl, how long were you in here?" After a second, he added, "What did you see?"
Karin stood and clenched the scantrons close to her chest.
If anything, her response came all too easy. "I… didn't see anything," she said. "As far as I'm concerned, nothing you do is any of my business."
Professor Akasuna watched her for a long moment before he gave her an approving nod. "Now get the hell out of my lab."
Karin dutifully scurried through the door like her life depended on it.
"See, there's a reason I like that one," Professor Akasuna remarked. "She might even last the rest of the semester."
From down the hall, Karin could hear his husband laugh.