"That makes sense. I think I like your strategy. If it works. ....Do you know if it's worked before?" 

"Records of strategies in here are not very good. No one wants to give someone else's child leg up. It isn't common, at any rate."

"Hmm." 

Pause. 

"....Well. People dying is bad. So it makes sense that you'd want fewer kids to die." 

"Number of deaths doesn't change. Mals don't eat one person, get hungry, and eat someone else. To first approximation."

"- But if you fight and kill a mal then there're fewer of them, right?" 

"Are you familiar with Malthus?"

Masozi blinks at him. "What? No." 

"More mals exist than can be fed. Most mals starve.You kill mal, and some other mal survives because there's more food for it. The system reaches equilibrium. It's like wolves and sheep."

"That - seems like it's bad and it could be better?" 

(The word Masozi is desperately searching for is 'suboptimal', but his English vocabulary does not yet include that term.) 

"...I mean, I dunno how to fix it or make it better yet? But I'm gonna try. Someone has to." 

"It's good thing to do, but while I'm here I'm worrying about people who are my responsibility."

".....I don't have anyone who's my responsibility yet."

A pause.

"...I guess except my little sister - she's the only one who's still alive in my family - but I left her with a mundane family and I think she'll be all right for another four years because they don't believe in magic. And so if I survive in here I'll go back for her." 

"That's a good thing to do. --How did you say you got here?"

"....I don't know if I said before. But - my parents died, and - I'd heard of the Scholomance. And that there was an enclave in Johannesburg. So I travelled there to see if they had an extra spot and they did."

He is going to elide the rest of that. 

"What training did you get?"

"....Dunno. My parents showed me some of their spells but they didn't usually work for me. I mostly figured it out myself." 

Meng Yao lowers himself to sit next to Lan Xichen and squeezes his hand. 

"What kinds of things can you do?"

- Eeeek, now he's on the spot, should he be honest or not aaaaah? 

This guy seems - sensible. Pragmatic. Like he won't hold it against Masozi that he can do things which other people find alarming. 

"I can sense mals if they're out of sight," he says. "It takes mana but only a little. I....think I can sort of convince them to do things? Like go away and leave students alone. It takes a lot of mana so I'd rather point them out to people who have a better affinity for killing them, though. ....And I have a ward spell and I can start fires."

"That's impressive. My own affinity is emotions, and my sworn brother's is thoughts. It seems very useful to have that for mals."

Masozi lights up to hear this. He feels appreciated and it's such a rare feeling for him. 

"I think so! ...But some people seem to think it's scary or evil. New York told me to never talk to them or go near them again." He's still a vague mix of hurt-and-confused about this; it's not like he expected anything to be fair, here, but something still feels differently unfair, about - people deciding he's probably in favour of murder and then threatening to murder him, and it feels a lot worse than just mals trying to eat his face. 

"You do feel like maleficer, but I'm not surprised by that for someone who's had no magical training and has no idea of harms."

Masozi ducks his head. 

"....I didn't know anything about it until today. I - someone told you it can - damage your brain and make you crazy and, and think that hurting people is fine - and Wei Wuxian says it's addictive - it doesn't feel addictive? I dunno. I'm going to stop doing it at all even with bugs for a while in case I already damaged my head and it needs time to get better." 

"That seems wise. When your aura is cleaner you can go back to bugs, everyone does it."

"I met a couple of people who say they don't! I didn't really understand why not. I think one of them said it was - emotional discomfort, about hurting bugs? But she didn't say it was a, uh, a moral objection? So that was really confusing." 

"Well, they are alive. Many people don't like to hurt living things."