She's already gotten sushi reservations - "For four, if you want to come!" she tells Rhonda - " at a very fancy place.

"--Oh wow," Wei Ying says when she sees where the reservations are for, at least for a moment thoroughly distracted. 

"They do amazing things with salmon! You have to let the itamae pick for you, though, you can tell him what you're allergic to and that's it."

"Conveniently I am not allergic to anything. Neither is Lan Zhan."

"Do magical girls even have to be allergic to things at all?"

"I don't think so but you might forget to fix one! Or be surprised!"

"Well, if anyone's going to be surprised I don't think we'll be able to warn the servers beforehand."

"That's fair, that's fair. Everybody make sure you won't go into shock if you eat surf clams and let's go."

The sushi is really really good.

Wei Ying is so impressed with the sushi! It is very distracting. She makes little noises while she eats it. 

The little noises are also very distracting. Lan Zhan's ears flush. 

Shi Qingxuan eats a lot of sushi with a lot of soy sauce on it and exuberantly praises the chef every time he makes eye contact with her.

"Are you flirting with him?" asks Wei Ying, who is much better at seeing the specks in other peoples' eyes than the log in her own. 

"Only if he wants me to be!"

"Good luck!"

"Thanks!" Om nom. Shi Qingxuan treats them all with the casual unconcern of someone who has been living off investments for a hundred years.

This is both reasonable and highly convenient for all of them except Lan Zhan, who is somewhere on the lucky side of the hereditary wealth inequality, but is probably still less personally wealthy than Shi Qingxuan. 

"I can probably still do some productive research on witches, even if I can't revolutionize the whole ecology," Wei Ying sighs, after the distractingness of the sushi has worn off a little. 

Handsqueeze. 

"Yeah. Maybe there are some that aren't as bad as others? Like if they make people... depressed or something that's still bad but not as bad as setting things on fire, and they'll get better when the witch dies..."

"Yeah...there are probably people who would consent to that, in exchange for enough money. It would take some working to make sure it didn't end up as a reprehensible social institution, if it worked, but that's still loads better than people dying."

"Yeah I don't know how you'd do it but it doesn't sound totally impossible."

"Assuming the depression thing works. The animals thing didn't, I shouldn't...pin that many hopes to something like that again." She makes a face. "Good thing I had a bunch of grief seeds already at hand, I reacted badly, that's not safe."

"Hence sushi party!"

"And I appreciate it!"

"Do you wanna do more fun distracting stuff after we're done? I can zoom other people around on my fan!"

"--Ohmygosh yes."