Yolanda enters the room, looks around critically at the architecture, and finds her own seat. She recognizes nobody so hopefully it isn't too presumptuous to sit wherever. 

Lan Wangji doesn't share a homeroom with Wei Wuxian. He's unreasonably upset by this even though they're only going to homeroom once.

He collects Nie Huaisang and escorts him to homeroom.

...Isn't that the guy who had a sobbing breakdown about his dead brother in the cafeteria yesterday? Yikes. Poor guy, she was glad to find out her older brother was still alive and she doesn't even like hers much. 

Also if she recalls the gossip correctly sobbing breakdown guy was Shanghai enclave. 

She scoots closer to him. "I'm sorry about your da-ge," she tells him sincerely. 

Hi Nie Huaisang-- she makes eye contact with him and nods and doesn't get between him and the person offering apologies that sounds destined to end in tears-- "Hi," she says to the boy who came in with him.

(Until she has her schedule it'd be pointless to worry about Wen Ning and Mei; she's very deliberately not looking at her desk.)

"Thank you," he says to Yolanda sniffily. "I'm Nie Huaisang. Probably everyone knows that."

"Pleased to meet you. I'm Chu Lanhua."

Nie Huaisang looks up sniffily at the beautiful, beautiful boy with a giant sword who's already in his enclave and who might be persuaded to take pity on someone very pathetic.

Lan Wangji totally misses that this is happening.

Wen Ning is dropped off in class by Julian.

He is terrified by this fact.

Why does he have to talk to strangers.

-- oh good, Wen Ning is in the same homeroom as her, that makes things much easier.

"Hi," she says cheerily, and gestures for him to sit next to her. "I don't remember if I introduced myself to you yesterday, I definitely did to your sister but I know that's not really the same. I'm Mochizuki Ayako."

"It's nice to meet you, ma'am. I'm Wen Ning."

She keeps her smile on. "You don't have to call me ma'am. So we're going to be doing our classes together."

"a-Qing says I'm supposed to try to do languages if I can because there are fewer mals."

"Okay, I can work with that. I'm doing incantations track too but I'm creative writing. This first term it's probably easier to just take all our classes together, though, so Mei and I will be near you and you can copy my homework-- hey, Mei, I think you got your schedule--"

Mei's dorm is pretty far from her homeroom, but she still gets there with time to spare. She puts her bag down at a desk between Ayako's and the nearest air vent, then makes a circuit around the room checking screws on air vents and light fixtures, pointedly inspecting every inch of the room except for her desk.

Until Ayako lets her know her schedule's appeared, at which point she returns to her desk and takes a seat. "Thanks. What's your schedule look like?" she asks, looking over her own.

An obvious maleficer briefly enters the room, looks around for unattended papers, doesn't find one, and leaves.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?????

"Did anyone else see that????"

"Huh, I wonder what he was doing here."

"Is this going to happen all the time? My homeroom invaded by maleficers?"

"We only have homeroom this one day, so not that particularly, but I did notice a concerning number of black fingernails in the cafeteria yesterday."

Nie Huaisang closes his eyes. "Come on, paper, paper, give me classes in places with no mals and lots of Lan Wangji."

"Mn."

"Do you have a crush on him or do you just want him to kill mals that might get you?"

"It could be both. He's a very beautiful man."

"Mn," he says in horror.

She waggles a finger at Nie Huaisang. "That's what the word just was for."

"You can't be subtle with boys. They're very stupid. They'll never figure out you like them."

"I wouldn't know, I've never liked a boy," she admits. 

"As if girls will. --oh wow Wen Ning your schedule looks perfect and it's close enough to mine that I can just change my classes to match it, is that alright?" 

"I've never really liked a girl either, everyone back home was pretty enh."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Still don't have to call me ma'am. Alright, cool, so that's both of us sorted-- Mei, one of the ones I got originally was Mathematics for Streetfighting, you're probably going to want to take that one while I'm in the one on golden ratios--" 

"I can't speak to girls, I have no experience."

"You have no experience with boys."

"Harsh, Lan Zhan! Harsh!"

"Ooh, I want the class on golden ratios, that sounds way better than algebra."

"You seem alright speaking to me. Am I not a girl?"

"You are the most beautiful of all girls and I am not worthy to have you speak to me."

Wen Ning is very pleased that someone else made all the decisions for him so he doesn't have to have preferences about a high-stakes topic like his class schedule.

His classes are:

M, 8:45-10:20 AM

     Shinto Purification Rituals

MWF, 10:45-11:30 AM

     History of Artificing

MWF, 11:45 AM-12:30 PM

     Language lab

MWF, 2:15-3:00 PM

     Poetries of Protest and Self-Determination

MWF, 3:15-4:15 PM

     The Golden Ratio in Arts, Mathematics, and Nature

TTH, 8:45-9:30 AM

     History of Asia from the Nineteenth Century

TTH, 9:45-10:30 AM

     Visual Storytelling Traditions in the Eastern and Western Worlds          

T, 10:45-12:30 AM 

      Intro to Shop

TH, 10:45 - 12:30 AM

      Intro to Lab

TTH, 2:15-3:00 PM

     History of Japanese Theater and Storytelling

TTH, 3:15-4:15 PM

     Milton's Poetry

WF, 8:45-10:45 AM

     Freshman Maleficaria Studies

"Let me look at that, I want to see if you have any other good ones. --Aw, man, Visual Storytelling, I want that. I currently have shop then. Do you think I can convince it that I don't need to take shop?"

Yeah, she's looking forward to that one too. "Probably not but you can request the same time block as we have! And it's safer then too, someone else has already cleared out the classroom that morning." 

If she were talking to literally anyone else this would be absurdly insulting. There is no way in heaven or on earth that Shanghai enclave has not run through several mock schedules and gone over this a dozen times. But she isn't talking to anyone else.

"Visual Storytelling does look interesting...I want as much comp and lit as possible, I'm creative writing track."

"I'm going to request classes that are incompatible with shop and see if the school notices."

"Whoa what, Mathematics for Streetfighting? Awesome! It had me in History of Mathematics, I'm definitely swapping. Is anyone else in Buddhist Mantras from the Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Traditions? It looks really hard..."

Lan Wangji stares at his sheet. What he wants to know is which classes Wei Wuxian is in. But he suspects that the answer is "almost none", because Wei Wuxian is a genius at math and Lan Wangji is mostly a genius at stabbing things, and Wei Wuxian breathes artificery and Lan Wangji likes incantations due to their use when stabbing things, and because the Scholomance hates him. 

"I want Street-Fighting Mathematics too." It has math, which Wei Wuxian is good at, and fighting, which Lan Wangji is good at.

"Here, it's in J block. What have you got in I block? I need to manufacture a conflict for this mantra class."

"Reading Fiction: Dysfunctional Families." This is not relevant to his life. His shufu* and xiongzhang** are both wonderful. 

*Uncle
**Brother, formal

"I gotta say, that does not sound any better." Mantra class may involve languages she doesn't know, but at least mantras are usually short.

"That block I've got Poetries of Protest and Self-Determination, which doesn't sound like a class you'd love but at least you can copy my homework." 

"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."

Lan Wangji's sword is in fact very magic! Mostly in the direction of being very good at killing things.

"What if you haven't actually done a ton of impressive stuff yet."

"You could try telling them things that imply that you're going to do very impressive things in the future. Not sure what, I'm an inherently unimpressive person."

"So what does this look like, in practice, do I...find someone on the edge, ask to sit next to them, and lowkey brag until they tell Lan Xichen I might be worth something? Do I compliment Lan Xichen's clothes-or-something and hope he invites me to converse with him further?"

"Why would I know that? I've never tried to join Shanghai enclave."

"You knew other things! ...But fair enough, sorry."

Eventually Mei looks back at her desk and sees her finalized schedule has appeared:

Monday: Shinto Purification Rituals, History of Alchemy, Language Lab, Poetries of Protest & Self Determination, Street-fighting Mathematics 
Tuesday: Materials Identification, Common Ingredients in Traditional Chinese Medicine, Into to Shop, Freshman Composition, History of Japanese Theater & Storytelling 
Wednesday: Freshman Maleficaria Studies, History of Alchemy, Language Lab, Poetries of Protest & Self Determination, Street-fighting Mathematics 
Thursday: Materials Identification, Common Ingredients in Traditional Chinese Medicine, Into to Lab, Freshman Composition, History of Japanese Theater & Storytelling 
Friday: Freshman Maleficaria Studies, History of Alchemy, Language Lab, Poetries of Protest & Self Determination, Street-fighting Mathematics