...Is that kid okay? He doesn't look one hundred percent okay. 

"Hi! Did you know, I just had coffee for the first time, and coffee is AWESOME."

Oh that explains it. 

"I did not know you just had coffee for the first time! Who is it exactly who has had coffee for the first time?"

"I'm Nie Huaisang, and I'm from Shanghai enclave, and I have an older brother-- three older brothers?-- two older brothers?-- an amount of older brothers and my affinity is art and I'm doing language track and I know how to make moonshine and the lady with the coffee sold me a bracelet in exchange for six pictures."

Blink blink. 

"My name is Wàrèn Lùsī.* I have one older brother.** We're twins."

*嗢纫琭丝=Increase thread jade silk, not a plausible name for an actual Chinese person but reasonable as a transcription.

**Chinese doesn't have a way to leave it ambiguous whether your sibling is older or younger than you.

"Do you want to speak English? I can speak English. Or French or Spanish or Vietnamese or Latin or Classical Chinese."

"I don't mind Mandarin! I have lots of languages too. And I think it's probably polite for me to speak Chinese while I'm over here on this side of the room."

"Everyone knows Classical Chinese. Because of the exams. They're stupid exams. I can write amazing poetry but I don't belong here at all."

Bounce bounce bounce bounce.

"Well...better in here than out there, right?"

"That's true! I'd much rather be here than there! There are fewer things that want to eat me and many people who are much much more delicious. You, for example, look way tastier than I am."

"Inconveniently I am also encased in tooth-repelling spidersilk."

"Oh, that's good, I want that. How do I get that? Do you have any interest in alcohol, pornography, or the fine arts?"

"Not besides for the resale value, and I'm not a retailer. My brother and I have spider familiars, we don't have much in the way of spare clothes yet but we plan to get into full production sooner rather than later."

Pause. 

"To be clear it's not actually that I have no interest in the fine arts, it's just that I have a much much stronger interest in surviving this place. I'm not an enclaver, I can't afford to sacrifice practicality for luxuries."

"Art isn't a luxury! You don't have any beautiful things and then you get depressed and go insane and get eaten by mals!"

She gestures at her clothing. "Things that are only pretty and not also practical are a luxury. My brother's affinity is thread, I'm willing to get by on magicked pretty fabric for the next four years, I can go to a museum when I'm out."

"I want pretty thread! If I have pretty outfits then someone will want to date me and then they'll be invested in my continued survival!"

"...Are you independent or from an enclave?"

"I'm from Shanghai enclave but I am very invested in my continued survival and everyone else is mostly invested in their own!"

"--Well, if you're from an enclave, the way you get people invested in your survival is that you find independents who want to be minions and you get them to be your minions. That's how it works in the Western side, anyway, maybe it's different for you."

"Oh, no one wants to be my minion because I am very useless and going to die!"

"...I'm pretty sure the way it works is that they keep you from dying and then your enclave gives them nice things and advantage on getting in?"

"Oh, Waren-guniang, they're going to want to be Jiang Cheng's minion instead because I am going to die and then where would their investment in minioning go? Nowhere! It has to be someone who loves me because then I am irreplaceable by Jiang Cheng. Jiang Cheng is not going to die. He is a cockroach. A very, very angry cockroach. --Or they're going to want to be Lan Zhan's or Wei Wuxian's. Although Lan Zhan never talks and Wei Wuxian is maybe a maleficer so I really think Jiang Cheng is the safe choice here. They'd want to be Song Lan's but I somehow outlived him? I'm not sure what that's about."

"I mean even if nobody wants to be your minion the most, these other people can only support so many minions, right? Also who's Song Lan."

"He was terrifying! Very big sword. Half his bag was hand sanitizer because he has OCD. I was planning to figure out how to distill him some pure alcohol for when it ran out. But then he disappeared for no reason."

"That is weird. Anyway, there--oh hm the Sinosphere does have fewer scrub trash independents than the Anglosphere, doesn't it. If you were from New York then people would be sucking up to you because the number of wanna-be suckups exceeds the number of suckups the high-quality enclavers can use, but maybe it's different."