"Works for me. I'll swap into Shinto Purification Rituals, too - it looks way better than what it originally gave me. Aand that's my third swap, so I guess can't match your schedule any better than that."

He would prefer not to learn about Shinto purification rituals but preferences are SCARY.

"Do you really think the school will let you get away with not taking shop?" she asks Nie Huaisang. "Why do you want to avoid shop anyway?"

If we will not submit to the mortifying ordeal of expressing preferences when we have them, we will wind up submitted to the mortifying ordeal of nobody else knowing or acting on those preferences.

"Cool, so we're all done."

Tomonori, who until now has been sitting quietly and trying not to stare too hard at the beautiful sword in the room, is looking at his schedule with some disappointment. There aren't enough classes related to divination here.

"Excuse me. Does anyone have any classes about divination?"

"Shop is further down in the Scholomance! It could get me killed."

"Shinto Purification Rituals probably includes the ones where you cleanse yourself of a bad fortune after a divination? That's probably not what you're looking for but I think it's the closest I've got."

Hmmmmm.

After conferring with Mei to confirm what slot that class is in, Tomonori concludes he doesn't want to take the gamble on giving up Intro to Economics. He is willing to trade out Number Theory for a chance at something divination-related, which works out in his favor; apparently there's a course called 'Akkadian Divination Texts'!

"Well, good luck with learning Akkadian." Mei has no idea what Akkadian is and speaks of learning with roughly the same attitude one might use about ice swimming.

"Thank you. What about you, what are you taking?"

She shows him her schedule, which currently looks like:

Monday: Romantic Poetry, History of Mathematics, Elixirs of the Shangqing Revelations, Buddhist Mantras from the Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Traditions, Language Lab
Tuesday: A Close Reading of the Romance of Three Kingdoms, Intro to Shop, Freshman Composition, History of Japanese Theater & Storytelling
Wednesday: Maleficaria Studies, History of Mathematics, Elixirs of the Shangqing Revelations, Buddhist Mantras from the Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Traditions, Language Lab
Thursday: A Close Reading of the Romance of Three Kingdoms, Intro to Lab, Freshman Composition, History of Japanese Theater & Storytelling
Friday: Freshman Maleficaria Studies, History of Mathematics, Elixirs of the Shangqing Revelations, Buddhist Mantras from the Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Traditions, Language Lab

"Street-fighting should get me out of History of Mathematics, so hopefully the Language Lab will just go there. Shinto Purification Rituals is going to replace Romantic Poetry, but that's fine because I'm swapping into Ayako's poetry class to get out of mantras, so I'll still have a poetry class, and Shinto rituals is thematically close enough to Buddhist mantras that hopefully the school's satisfied and doesn't move around the other stuff, the elixirs one looks cool."

"Oh, that sounds exciting! All of the class names make me curious about what they're about."

Hrm. Well, they say fortune favors the bold, right?

"You're from Shanghai, right? Are you in the market for a bodyguard?"

"Yeah, it doesn't really give us a lot of info to work with, does it?"

Having decided on her swaps, Mei turns in her revised schedule and starts doing kumihimo to build mana.

"I would be but I don't have money or resources to trade for one unless you really like pictures of birds."

"Can you get me a seat at the Shanghai table in the cafeteria and/or library."

"You know you can just sit there at the cafeteria, Lan Xichen's looking for new allies among the freshmen indies."

(Does Nie Huaisang know that he could have just said yes.)

"--What, really? It's Shanghai, doesn't he have his pick?"

"He has his pick but he doesn't know which ones are good until they talk to him."

"Huh. I think most of the enclaves wait for people to do impressive things on their own before talking to them."

"I think Lan Xichen is an extrovert."

"I guess that makes sense. So do I just say--hello, I would like to apply to be a Shanghai minion?"

Tomonori resumes admiring the beautiful sword he's not allowed to touch.

This doesn't build mana, so he also works on writing with his left hand while he tries to understand its magic.

"I think you want to subtly work into the conversation all of the incredibly impressive things you've done in the past."