...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."

"Crap. The fact that the Americans get all the seats is going to kill me after all. Do you know any Americans who want an androgynous Chinese useless artist boyfriend, I hear that's very popular there. I can write them poetry. My type is women who are six feet tall and have enormous swords."

"I'll ask around. If I find you a kickass amazon girlfriend you owe me a favor."

"I will design you some very pretty clothes."

Dunya has been watching the Shanghai group and now sees a way in. She walks over to Nie Huaisang

"Hi! My name is Dunya!"

Vi notices a bald Asian guy chatting in Mandarin to a bald white girl. They're talking to each other like they don't know each other well, but she's not sure. 

"Hi," she says in Mandarin. "Have you guys eaten yet? I've heard some of the food here is sketchy, so I wondered if you had any recommendations." (She doesn't sound at all like a native speaker and she hopes no one's a dick about it.)

"Depends. Are you looking for safety or taste? I am getting things set up so that I can sell my enclavemate's ability to make food taste better but that's still in the works so this is a serious question. Don't worry about nutrients, they're all nutrient paste deep down."

Oh great, he's an enclave kid.

"Wow, that's a cool affinity. What track are they? I think I'm going to settle for food that's safe to eat and just deal with the taste."

She wonders if the bald girl's his enclavemate, but it's maybe rude to ask.

"Alchemy! The safest food to eat is the Brussels sprouts but they're absolutely disgusting. I have never had a Brussels sprout before and I have to say I don't appreciate the experience. --Has it occurred to anyone that the food available here is racist? I'm going to go the next four years without congee."

"Yeah, I kinda accepted I'm gonna miss a lot of foods from home. No offense but you can tell a bunch of white British wizards made this school. Though I'm not sure that explains the Brussels sprouts?-- I'm Vi, by the way."

"I'm not sure anything explains the brussels sprouts," Lucy snorts, "but apparently it's still better than the nutrient sludge they used to have here, so there's that. I'm Lucy."

"Maybe magic likes being Brussels sprouts."

Oh no she sounds stupid.

"Nice to meet you, Lucy. Have there been mal sightings yet or were my parents overexaggerating how often people get eaten the first week?"

"A guy I was talking to found one and Orion Lake killed it."

"Normally you're good until Field Day."

"It wasn't a very big mal or anything."

"A very small mal could still definitely eat me!"

"If I see one in your vicinity I'll yell for Orion Lake again. You'll probably live until Field Day."

"It's good that we have a bit of time to get our bearings and build mana. What do you know about Orion Lake? I've heard a lot about them* but we haven't met, I don't think."

* Vi has never heard of Orion Lake before, thank god for ungendered Mandarin pronouns.

"Orion Lake is from New York and he's the second coming of Sun Wukong he's so good at killing mals."

"Do you think he wants a boyfriend?"

"I dunno, and I don't think I have sufficient in with the New York enclave yet to find out. Maybe later."

"So you've talked to the New York kids? They kinda seem cliqueish to me. But I do want to meet Orion properly maybe. They* seem cool."

* same deal, Vi's clueless

"I want a hot American boyfriend who kills mals. It's exotic. He can teach me about cowboys."

"I met Orion Lake briefly to tell him about a mal. He probably couldn't pick my face out of a crowd. I have a lead on maybe selling some slippers to a different New Yorker but I don't think that's particularly close to you having a hot American bodyguard slash boyfriend."

"I should engineer a meet-cute. Trip and fall into his arms and gaze up at him longingly."

Aw Orion is a boy. Good to know but not as cool.

"Honestly you have good taste. Killing mals is objectively badass. Maybe he could teach you self-defense against mals... Unless it's some inborn affinity thing?"

"I dunno, all I have to go on is rumor and that one incident."

"Valid. In the meantime, do you know what classes you're taking? I want to do artificing as soon as I can, on top of the basic stuff, and it might be good to have a buddy to go to the shop with."

"I'm languages track. My brother is an artificer, though, he made our clothes."

"I'm incantations, it's safest."

"Languages incantations or creative writing incantations?"

"Languages. I'm good at languages."

"Cool! So am I. What languages do you have?"