"...I mean. I'm also going to die but I'm not going to die of somehow making it to age fourteen with no experience fighting monsters and long grabbable hair. If you seriously think you're not that seems... surprising." Is it going to turn out that this place has a ninety percent survival rate and he's totally read the room wrong. Is that what his luck is like today.

"Oh, I'm super going to die, implying you're going to die isn't the thing, although it's also not a great idea because you want to project a little more confidence than is warranted and you don't want people to think you're not even trying. It's the - if you say 'oh, the ones who are going to die,' what that is doing is implying very heavily that you are not a part of the category being discussed, which is deceptive if in fact you are a part of that category, which at the time I was pretty sure you were." 

"Hm. Okay. That only for things that affect how valuable an ally you are?"

"...no, in general people will be bothered by it if they think they're being deceived, even about things that don't really matter, because if you're deceiving them about things that don't matter that tells them about your willingness to deceive them about things that do." 

Okay, that makes it substantially more likely Leander is just trying to play him for a sucker.

Admittedly the part where everyone here agrees that people get attacked by monsters all the time is suggestive of their words being connected to reality in a way otherwise limited to weather forecasts and math homework.

He needs to discreetly feel out whether magic parents tell their children about Santa Claus without admitting that his lied to him in case that's an important tell. How the fuck does he do that safely.

"Oh. Yeah, because you're getting worrying amounts of practice in, I guess."

......that isn't wrong exactly but it's a very I-guess-dot-jpeg sort of not wrong. 

"Uh. So, part of it is that, but mostly it's that in the Scholomance there isn't... really... any such thing as a low-stakes thing to lie about? If someone trusts you, and they're modeling the world wrong because you told them an untrue thing on purpose and they believed you, that has a substantial chance of getting them killed no matter what the thing they're wrong about is."

"I intend to be as honest as a meteorologist with a PhD in math." Possibly starting after he figures out how to even do that but.

Blink blink. "Is that a thing people say where you're from, that's great." 

"It's. Well." Right, the right answer depends on whether he has ever heard anyone else say it. He has to stop to think about that for a second. "I don't really know the answer to that? Because I'm from a lot of places and they have different people." Ugh this is so awkward.

"--oh, sorry, I meant, is that a regionalism slash common idiom, not, is it a thing any person has ever said."

"I don't think it's common?"

"Fair enough. Still great, though." 

"Thank you. Say, how do you square being honest with overselling your chances of survival, anyway?"

...god Leander is so fucking doomed. 

"Empirically when I want to have an ongoing relationship with someone I go all the way for honesty and abandon the confidence. I would not recommend this strategy because it is probably going to cost me an alliance and get me killed but I don't have a better one in my pocket or anything." 

Oh, he thinks he gets what Leander's up to with all his talk of honesty, now. He's making people think he's trustworthy. Cool.

"I think maybe the better strategy is to actually not be going to die but. Well. I'm trying."

"Well, yes, if you can pull it off that is the way to go."

"Really, if making alliances keeps you alive, is it dishonest to convince people you're going to live so they ally with you?"

"I-- have no idea. Suspect it depends on implementation details." 

"Fair enough, I guess."

(Is this just what talking to people is going to be like from now on? Deeply awkwardly trying to cross inferential gaps while having no idea what if any common assumptions he can rely on them both having? Probably not, right???)

"So one last thing, can you point me in the general..." direction of the bathrooms, he was going to say, and now instead he's coming to the horrifying realization that being female is strategically relevant. Fuck. He can totally say it. Totally. Eventually. Any minute now.

"If you're looking for directions to somewhere we should go together, actually, and maybe get someone else too since neither of us have any mana after induction, it's not a good idea to go off places alone." 

"Oh, huh, that must be why it's so much safer here. All the teamwork. Do you know, I have literally never had someone offer me anything like that before." It's like fucking Girl Scouts, actually, but his mouth is on autopilot saying things that aren't horrifying.

"You know, I've only ever heard the explanation that we're in the middle of the Void and the school is specifically designed to be hard for mals to get into, but that could very well be part of it too."

"Yeah. Um. - Are the bathrooms here gendered or can pretty much any group bodyguard each other."