"Hello. - I'm not from the Sinosphere, I just need a little Mandarin practice."

"Oh, alright."

He switches to Mandarin.

"Hello. My name is Matsumoto Tomonori. You can call me something else if it's easier and I like the sound of it. I haven't decided what track to specialize in yet, because I would like to specialize in whatever gives me access to a wizard tower. It's hard to find out which enclave has one, though. They all want to seem more powerful than they are."

"Why specifically a wizard tower, do you have some sort of elevator-related affinity?"

"No. I just think wizard towers are important to live in, when you're a wizard. It's how people know to find you, but also not to bother you for small things. Right now, we just want to survive, but someday, if we're good enough, there are wizard towers."

"I suppose it would be aesthetic. Though enclave ones are not exactly visible symbols to most observers."

"No, but I can't do anything that would impress the mundanes. That would just put them in danger anyway, and that's not the point- everyone should be impressed and leave me alone unless I can do something. What about you? What do you want to be if you grow up?"

What a way to put it. Not wrong though. "I want to figure out how to poison mals, the way you poison ants. I'm going to do experiments on agglos."

"Oh, that's a good idea. I'm no good with poisons- I can barely get anything offensive to work. Defensive only if I push it. I'm best with divinations- especially identifying what something is or does or what's wrong with something. I think I could find out more about them- what could work better on some, if there are things like that. I don't know much about mals yet."

"Oh, divination's good, but you're going to want people who live near you to go places with if you aren't good in a fight before the place is more infested."

“Yeah. I’m not sure what to do about that. I think I need someone to want to protect me, but I don’t know how to make them want that. Did you talk to anyone from Shanghai yet?”

"One, yes, a fellow called Wei Wuxian. He was interesting."

"Is interesting good or bad? There are a lot of them, you could talk to someone else."

"Interesting is good. He seemed friendly. Very weird affinity, working with dead things."

"Oh, that could be exciting. Did he say what he wants to work on?"

"Longer term, you mean? Didn't come up."

"...how are you in a fight?"

"With a mal or a wizard?"

"With a mal."

He hadn't even thought about having to fight other wizards.

"Nothing special. I have the standard English spells for shielding and zapping them that anybody with wizard teachers would have freshman year."

"Okay. We should both meet more people, but we can talk again when we can help each other more."

"Sure, any time."