"I know it," she says, with a beginner's overemphasis on the tones but tolerable pronunciation, "but it's my worst language right now. I need practice."

"Cool! We can talk in Mandarin. Tell me if I talk too fast, I know I do that a lot. --I'm Shanghai enclave."

"I'm New Orleans. My name is Bella, it's nice to meet you."

"--Man, it's weird to talk to someone I didn't grow up around. Everyone I know is someone I've been playing with since I was born. Shanghai's really reclusive because of, you know, the way China is."

"What is it about China that makes it that way?"

"Well, there was a bunch of genocides and then a famine and then the Cultural Revolution and now there's a different genocide and also people get disappeared for saying things the government doesn't like and all things considered we mostly hang out together in our enclave and don't touch whatever the regular people are getting up to."

"I see. Sounds lonely. Was that your sister earlier?"

"Yeah! Yanli. She's great. Makes excellent lotus root soup although you're not going to get to taste it because guess what they have no ingredients for here. --If you get any lotuses in the vending machine you should give them to her."

"I'm not sure I know what it looks like."

"Well, I don't think they generally come in vending machines anyway."

"I heard once someone got a whole -" Pause. "How do you say 'coconut'."

"'Coconut.' Well, in that case, if you have paper I can draw a picture of one."

"I don't have any on me yet, I need to make a supply run tomorrow."

"Terrible. I don't have any paper because I'm carrying half of Nie Huaisang's supplies so he could fill up his weight allotment with pornography."

"...why."

"A bunch of people's trade goods are picked by their parents so pornography is massively undersupplied, especially since a bunch of people are trying not to have sex. He also knows how to produce moonshine. Similar logic."

"I... guess probably the richer upperclassmen have a few people who will buy his pornography. Maybe."

"People need entertainment! You can't go killing mals all day, you'll go mad."

"I think you can probably get the void to give you novels if it's in a good mood."

"Oh! I should try that. Good opportunity to practice my languages. --What's your affinity?"

"Metamagic!"

"Oh, wow, that sounds really good for an alliance."

"That's the hope, yeah. If for some reason I got into a duel it would be great for that but fortunately that is not one of the major dangers."

"I do dead things! --Not killing things," he clarifies. "Things that are already dead. Not very helpful for the Scholomance but I have some cockroaches and I'm hoping to be able to do some things with corpses once they start happening."

"Huh, I've never heard of that. Does it work on plants? Bacteria?"