Karin's hand is blocked inches away from the snooze button. "Hnnng."
"Class is in half an hour, Karin," Itachi says patiently, over the siren scream of her alarm. "One delay is enough."
"Mhm." She rolls over onto her back and moans, deep in her throat, as the sunlight hits her face. "Motherfucker."
Even with the increasingly loud blare from her phone, Karin finds herself slowly falling back into sleep. With a sigh, she rolls off, turns off the alarm, and grabs her glasses. Across the room, her roommate - Tayuya - is snoring, all but dead to the world. "Dammit."
She rubs at her eyes as she rolls over the mattress, turning until her legs flop off the side, the rest of her body slithering along with it, all the way to the floor. Her hand fumbles for the bed frame to steady herself, the drop from her too-high twin bed feeling extra dangerous on her wobbly, freshly awoken legs.
8am classes weren't what they used to be.
In high school, by 8am, she'd already be in her first period class, doodling in her notebook while she pretended to pay attention. Even when she and Naruto got their licenses and were able to drive to school, they had to be out the door by seven, and wake up much earlier than that.
Now, though, the morning doesn't feel like it starts until 9am, something her university doesn't seem to appreciate.
Quickly, without a lot of care, she brushes her teeth and lightly washes her face, trying not to remove too much of yesterday's mascara. Every minute counts before 8am, she's gradually realized, and every minute she spends doing makeup is a minute earlier she has to be awake.
"Twenty minutes, Karin," Itachi warns her as she shuffles back into the room and starts digging through her drawers. He politely looks away while she changes, switching out her older, ripped yoga pants for a slightly newer, somewhat cleaner pair, and buttoning a flannel over the tank top she slept in.
"Alright." When she's done, she throws her pajamas onto the bed for her afternoon nap between classes. "Good enough, I guess," she says, as she hefts her backpack onto her shoulders.
It's Tuesday, which means physics in the morning, and her writing elective in the evening. Itachi usually skips physics, though he gets a little antsy when she's away for too long. "See you later, alligator," she tells him as she slips out the door.
She makes it just in time for class, only to spend the next ninety minutes working through a single practice problem, banging her head against her desk as she tries to figure out why the damn block is accelerating so fast. Her brain is fried by the end of the lecture, her notebook filled with haphazard, inscrutable jottings trying to make sense of the professor's calculations.
Her writing elective is still hours away, so she drags herself over to the dining hall, swiping a sandwich and chips from the cafeteria before slouching home, debating whether she's feeling disciplined enough to wake up early before her night class to shower, knowing she's unlikely to do it afterwards, but not bold enough to put it off until the morning.
Or sit through Itachi's nagging if she does…
And that, she supposes, is one of the hardest things about living with your high school friend's dead brother. The damn guy gets so judgey about little things like sleeping in, or how often he showers.
Karin crinkles her nose as she swipes back into her building. At least he gives her privacy in the shower.
Itachi is in the hallway when she returns, watching her RA hang motivational posters along the walls—Drink and Drive? Let's Think and Thrive.
He doesn't so much as turn when she rounds the corner, but after she skillfully stacks her lunch into the crook of one arm and manages to find her keycard, he slips in behind her to watch as she unloads everything at her desk.
She doesn't need to see him to know he does this; one odd side effect of tethering their life forces together is that - regardless of whether she wants to be - Karin is constantly aware of where Itachi is, even when she's halfway across campus, and he's wandering the halls of her dorm, looking for entertainment.
At times, if she concentrates, she's able to feel a mental impression of him, even from far away—not enough to know what specifically is on his mind at any given moment, but enough for her to get a general sense of what mood he'll be in when she gets back to the dorm.
Whether or not that extends both ways, he's never said. She sleeps much better at night assuming that, even if he had the option, he'd prefer knowing less about her than he already does.
Thankfully, once she opens the door, she finds that Tayuya has already left, either for class or for marching band practice, which seems to take up the bulk of her schedule and happens at any hour of the day.
"Fall break is coming up in a few weeks," she starts, as she kicks her boots into a heap by the bed. With a grunt, she drops down into her desk chair, before picking away at the plastic wrap around her sandwich. "I'm going to go see Grandmama to see if we can figure out a way to lengthen your leash a little."
A muscle in his cheek seems to twitch in response to that, but he nods anyway. "That would be… preferable," he says carefully. "As is, I find it difficult to travel beyond the lower floors of this building, if I do not accompany you directly."
Karin glances over at the empty perfume bottle on her dresser, where she'd kept Itachi for most of the summer as she was moving out of Minato and Kushina's house. That seems to function as an anchor for him, letting him stay here even when she's gone. Even that, though, has a limited reach for him.
"I'm guessing she'll at least have an idea of how to fix that." She shoves half of her sandwich in her mouth and finishes it in a few bites, suddenly ravenous.
Itachi looks away as she starts on the other half. Nodding towards the other side of the room, she asks, mouth half full. "She touch any of my shit while I was gone?"
Itachi gives her a dry look from the corner of his eye before he shakes his head. "While I do try to give her some privacy in your absence, I did not see anything of interest." He pauses a moment, hesitating for a moment before adding, "She is much less… restrained when you are not around. I find it best if I am occupied elsewhere."
Karin grimaces as she takes another bite. "She's more naked, you mean."
"I assumed you could put it together on your own, yes." There's a brief pause. For a moment, she thinks he's going to add something else, but he doesn't.
"Well, I have that lit class again tonight if you were planning to tag along." She finishes the rest of her sandwich and rolls the plastic into a ball, which she shoots across the room like a basketball. "Yeah?"
"Ah—yes, I'd like to go." He looks away again.
Karin narrows her eyes, unsure if he's being a dweeb about her manners or being fussy about something else. "It's entirely up to you. We're just talking about that one story with the bitchy old lady." She turns back to her desk and starts to sort through the mess of papers—worksheets, syllabi, packets of reading assignments. "It doesn't really make a difference to me either way."
"No, yes—I will go tonight." He shakes his head. "It is rather—what I had wanted to ask before, when you were talking about the upcoming fall break…" His voice trails off, before he adds, "There are a few things I would like to do as well when you return."
"Yeah?" It takes her a moment to realize what he means. "Oh. Yeah, I—yeah. I don't know if Sasuke is going to have break the same time we do—"
"Of course," Itachi says, cutting her off. He's standing much straight now, visibly on edge. "He is. He will."
"Okay…"
"His—before we left, I had the opportunity to see his class schedule. I was able to memorize the times where he would be home."
Even now, even after months of living off of her life force - and not Sasuke's - there are still moments where Karin can't help but wonder if Itachi is still a little too attached to Sasuke, but she supposes she can't really say too much, having never been dead herself.
And it isn't like she wouldn't have ended up in a similar position herself, once upon a time. All things considered, she probably would have made for an even nastier ghost than Itachi did.
"Well, I was planning to go see him anyway if he was around, so that isn't a big deal." With that, Karin digs out her physics homework and starts skimming over the problems, trying to decide if it's worth it to attempt any of them. It quickly becomes apparent that the three questions she's been assigned are going to amount to at least an hour's work, and more brain power than she's got right now.
With a grimace, she tosses the packet on her desk and hauls herself up onto her twin-sized mattress. She groans the second her head hits her pillow, her eyes suddenly too heavy to open. "I've got a few hours until the next class starts, so I'm gonna catch up on some sleep."
She's already half-asleep by the time Itachi finally says, "Sleep well, then, Karin."
.
.
.
Less than an hour later, she's woken by the loud thump of bass from the room below her. The music is so loud that her thin walls rumble, thrumming like the dance floor at a shitty club. "What the fuck," she groans.
For a moment, she tries to escape the music under her blankets, but the rhythmic vibrations are impossible to escape. "I hate people," she mutters as she rolls over again, poking her head up from under the blankets.
Itachi is sitting at her desk, looking intently at the papers she'd left out before going to bed. Aside from him, the room is empty, Tayuya still conspicuously absent.
"I should start leaving a movie on or something," she says, which finally catches his attention. "You know, so you have something to do while I'm gone. You've got to be bored out of your mind here by yourself."
"It's not the most enriching environment," he says diplomatically.
Karin isn't entirely sure how to parse that. Itachi had the annoying habit of saying things in such a way that made it difficult to tell if he was agreeing with her or just blowing smoke up her ass.
"Well, let me think about it," she says. "I'm sure there's something."
She sits up and lazily finger combs her hair, working her way through the worst of the tangles. "Want to watch a movie or something while I shower?" she asks.
Itachi responds with a noncommittal shrug, so she turns on the television and finds a news station. That seems like the type of thing he would have watched when he was alive.
"Probably more entertaining than the RA, at least."
.
.
.
Several hours later, she's working at her desk when Tayuya smacks into their door, tuba first. The music from her AirPods is blaring so loud that it's audible. Without so much as an acknowledgment, Tayuya strips off her uniform, tossing her tuba, hat, and embroidered jacket and pants on the floor on her way to the shower, in that exact order.
Karin has never been the type to keep her thoughts to herself, but Tayuya also gives off the energy of someone who can and would beat her ass, so she's foregone trying to push her boundaries in that regard. As long as she leaves her shit on her own side of the room, Karin isn't going to get too pissed about it.
She turns behind her just in time to catch Itachi's grimace as he averts his eyes, doing his best to avoid her roommate. He's perched on top of her mini dresser, sitting on top of a pile of unsorted t-shirts and gym shorts she uses as a holding area for her sleeping clothes.
"Lab report is done," Karin says as she skims over her typed up portion. "Once I study for the chem quiz Friday and finish my shit for physics, I'll be set for the rest of the week."
"Good," Itachi says, a hint of relief creeping into his voice. As the shower turns on, he seems to relax more, knowing Tayuya will be in there for the next hour or so. "It is easy for one to fall behind in their first year of college."
"For some people, maybe." But Karin has always been on her own, in one way or another. Minato and Kushina had certainly kept her out of much, much worse circumstances - ones she doesn't care to dwell on in the least - but Karin understood from a very young age that by and large, she alone was responsible for her own survival.
With a sigh, Karin grabs a mug and fills it with water from her sink, before sticking it in the microwave. She pretends to ignore Itachi's judgmental curled lip as she sorts through the boxes of tea Grandmama sent her as part of her graduation gift.
They're all labeled, not by the type of tea they are, but the supposed benefit she'll get from drinking them. Without much fuss, she selects Concentration, given that's probably the one thing she needs the most for her first semester.
"Guess we'll see if this stuff really works," she says, as she gives the box a shake.
.
.
.
Several hours later, Karin is shuffling her papers together and stuffing them back into her desk drawers. Her lab report is finished, her chem note cards updated, and her physics problem set for the week is… mostly finished.
"It'll get done eventually," she says. Without waiting for a response, she digs a (clean) flannel out of her drawers and starts to button it over her tank top. "You coming tonight?" she asks.
"I'd like to," he says mildly.
Karin scrunches her nose. Sometimes it's impossible to tell his politeness from his sincerity. "Well, let's try to get good seats this week."
The walk to class is quiet. Sometimes, she'll walk with earphones in to hide the fact that she's talking to an invisible person. Itachi's mood seems to have improved drastically, so she leaves him be as they walk to class.
"Flannery O'Connor tonight, yes?" he asks as they approach the language arts building.
Karin looks both ways before popping in a headphone and toying with her phone, though all she's doing is running her thumb over her lockscreen. "Yeah, just some short stories. We're starting a new unit next week, so probably just the quiz and a lecture to close out."
"It sounds promising," he says.
Tragically, he sounds sincere when he says it.
The lecture hall is partly filled when they arrive, despite there being more than fifteen minutes left before class. It's a popular one, despite their professor being a known hardass, and a small group of athletes and stoners have already commandeered the seats farthest in the back.
Karin picks a mid-level seat, one that should hopefully keep her out of the professor's line of fire while also giving her a good view of the blackboard at the front of the room. The seat next to hers is open, and Itachi parks himself there as the professor struts in and tosses her shoulder bag onto the desk.
"Hey, kids," she says, with a sarcastic wave at the try-hards sitting in the front row. "Hope you're ready for tonight."
"The woman with the pigtails is sitting close to the front this time," Itachi says, pleased. "She was very involved in the last open discussion your class had."
"She's a bitch," Karin mutters.
Itachi nods, not disagreeing in the slightest. "Hopefully she came prepared for this week."
"Alright, you brats, take your seats." The professor claps her chalky hands and wipes them off on her pants. "Five questions on the board. Pass answers down the line, and then we can get to the lecture. If I can't read your chicken scratch, that's on you."
Karin answers the questions with hardly any trouble. While it would be nice, in theory, to have a ghost partner sharing her course load with her, Itachi has stated with emphatic terms that he would "not take part in any academic dishonesty."
So she's stuck, basically, with a ghost who won't even help her cheat a little on her gen ed requirements.
Karin flips her paper over on her desk and waits for the rest of the class to finish.
The professor has her purple hair pulled up in a rough clip, strands fanning behind her like a parrot. This week, she's wearing what appears to be a mesh bodysuit underneath her tan skirt and jacket, though it isn't entirely clear if she's wearing any underwear at all.
"You think that's a skin tone spandex underneath that?" Karin asks. Itachi, as she expected, doesn't answer. "It's gotta be."
With a nasty scowl, Professor Mitarashi heads up and down the aisle to collect their papers, bitching about an ex of hers she'd seen at the bus stop as she goes. The lecture starts about fifteen minutes later, after she's exhausted both her story and the steady stream of questions thrown her way by classmates trying to keep her off topic.
Karin takes lazy notes and only pays half attention to the discussion that follows. Itachi is paying rapt attention, hands clasped politely in front of himself as questions ping pong around the lecture hall.
"Not every mention of gender is inherently about sexism," the girl with the pigtails argues, sounding bored. "If this were really an intersectional analysis, why are we ignoring how her age plays into it as well?"
Itachi lets out a bemused snort at the professor's annoyed expression. After a few more volleys between her and the professor, with a few half-assed comments from other students, he comments, "She makes good points. The order in which they die is obviously intentional."
Karin hums, only half listening, as she jots down a few ideas for her midterm paper, which will more or less be a regurgitation of their professor's ranting.
A guy in a polo shirt from the other side of the room adds something that makes Itachi shake his head. "He did not read that section correctly at all, otherwise he would not be referencing that specific line."
"Probably SparkNotes," Karin murmurs in response. The discussion is animated enough, at least, that she can let out a comment or two by without accidentally inserting herself into the classroom discussion.
She glances back up at the PowerPoint, which she assumes Professor Mitarashi prepared on the bus ride to campus. They'll be starting The Haunting of Hill House after the next lecture, meaning she should get a copy from the library sooner rather than later if she doesn't want to fork up $20 at the campus store.
At the end of class, Itachi is still animated, craning his head to watch the other students filter out. "I would be curious to know what her actual major is," he comments as Karin zips her backpack shut.
"Huh?"
"Temari," he says. At her confused expression, he adds, "the woman with the pigtails. Her name is Temari."
"Oh." Karin shrugs. "Probably political science or something. I think she's in one of the student groups or something."
"She's quite a bit ahead of the rest of the class," he says approvingly.
"I think she gets off on it." Karin pops her AirBuds back in and jerks her head towards the rough direction of the library. "Quick stop before heading back."
She elbows her way through the crowd, ignoring the weird jerks and looks people throw in her rough direction as Itachi follows behind her, a permanent cold spot in his wake. His lips are curled in a look of immense displeasure, though he's assured her that it's not at all painful—merely unpleasant, though significantly so.
"You didn't have much to say about the readings this week," he tries once they're out on the sidewalk. "I know that you did the reading."
Karin scrunches her nose as she starts up the steps to the library. "Meh. Participation is only 5% of your grade, and I heard she basically just gives it to you if you show up to class."
He gives a disapproving shake of his head. "College is more than just grades, Karin."
Eat my whole ass, nepo baby. Instead, she says, "Not to me it isn't."
Itachi falls silent—he apparently didn't like that.
Well, he had his chance. Being dead doesn't give him the right to dictate how she lives her life, especially when their circumstances are so different. Not everyone goes to college to read Tolstoy and sniff their own farts.
Karin finds The Haunting of Hill House easily, one of several copies left. Itachi has occupied himself on the other end of the shelf, scanning the rows of titles. "You good?" she whispers.
He shrugs. "I don't suppose you'd be able to check one of these out for me?" he asks, pointing to the shelf. "I read Interpreter of Maladies during college but not her recent books."
She grimaces. "I mean, I can, but it's not like I'm gonna sit there all day and turn the pages for you."
He stiffens. For a moment she thinks he's going to argue with her, before his shoulders fall. "No, of course not. I hadn't fully thought that through."
"Meh." He follows her as she heads down the stairs, book tucked under her arm. He looks dismal, but not in the way he was when she originally found him. Rather than the dark, thunderstorm darkness that had surrounded him then, this is something gentler, and much less dark—a dreary, cloudy day.
As they head back towards the ground floor, a display catches her eye, and she wavers. "Well. You can check those out if you want," she says, pointing towards several smaller shelves of audiobooks. "Or whatever."
His eyes slide to hers slowly, as if anticipating some trick. "You do not mind if I browse?"
She checks the time on her phone. "I won't get shitty about a couple minutes."
Itachi hesitates, before nodding slowly. "Then yes. I would very much like that."
Though she has no intention of rushing him, he power walks through the shelves and, within minutes, has pointed out two books for her. "These two. If you could, please."
Karin picks up one of them - some Russian novel - and shrugs. "We'll just have to find a way to work around Tayuya, I guess."
They head down to the ground floor, where a single student is working the front desk. He looks older, maybe a junior or senior, and has long blond hair and dark eyes.
"These," she says without preamble, before digging into her backpack for her student ID. "Gimme a second."
The guy doesn't say anything, and when she finally looks up, card in hand, he's giving her a blank, stupid kind of look.
Karin waves her card. "Yeah?"
He blinks, before shaking his head and flopping the book open. "Freshman?" he asks, almost conversational.
"What's it to you?"
"Haven't seen you here before, is all." He scans the barcode on the back of The Haunting of Hill House, not once looking up at her, and frowns. "You know this is just a story, right? It's not…"
"Seriously?" His question sounds so genuine that she can't tell if he's being a dick to her or not. "D'you think I'm some kind of idiot or something?"
"No," he says quickly, before moving on to the audiobooks. "I was just curious."
The scanner spits out a receipt, which he tears off. "But even if you aren't a freshman," he says, as he writes something on the back, "if you ever need anything, don't hesitate to reach out."
He slides the receipt over, his phone number written in neat little letters along with a C next to it.
"Huh?" is Karin's only response.
"I'm on the e-board for the Athletic Students Association," he says primly, if a little hurried. "So I know a lot of people and—well, if there's anything that you need help with, I'm someone you can reach out to. College… it can be challenging to be on your own for the first time."
Karin scoffs, even as she tucks the receipt into her book. "Am I supposed to be impressed by that or something?"
C frowns, the deep dimples on his face giving him an eerie resemblance to Sasuke's dad. "It can be hard adjusting, is all. You can take it or leave it."
You can take it or leave it? Was he hitting on her or not? "Whatever you say, dude."
Karin shoves the book and CDs into her backpack and turns to go. "Some men really are shameless," she mutters, as she swings the backpack up and around her shoulders again. "What kind of name is C, anyway? Sounds like a total loser. And the Athletic Students Association? He must think he's some big man on campus or something."
She looks over. Itachi is trailing beside her, silent as a real ghost. "You think he was trying to hit on me?"
A muscle seems to twitch in his face, and he shakes his head. "I do not believe so."
Strangely, she's almost a little offended by that. Did Itachi think he was out of her league or something? "Then what's with the whole dick swinging routine he did back there?"
"I'm not sure." For a moment he's silent, but before she can respond, he says, "But I do not believe his intentions were sincere."
"I'll say." With a sigh, Karin turns to make a detour through the student center. "I'm starving," she tells him. "Let's hit the cafeteria one more time."