He almost doesn't notice, at first, since he too is watching the back of the departing freshman - 

("- I know, he's gone, your brother's dead, and it's horrible and hard, and it's going to keep being horrible and hard, but you've got to keep moving, you've got to survive, it's what he would have wanted, for yourself and the ones who love you, you have to keep going...you can generate mana and learn spells and protect yourself and maybe pay it forward down the road one day, listen, you need to know this and it'll help you stay safe -")

( - little sis lying withered in a pool of blood - ) 

( - it's not enough it's never enough there isn't enough of him to go around no matter how much he makes of himself, and he can't just give forever he's going to die - ) 

Hira's words finally percolate through his brain, and Alexius jumps and turns and - 

- whoa. That's not fair, you can't just spring all that pretty on a cloistered fourteen-year-old boy without warning, he'll break. "Gah, uh, yeah," Alexius chokes out. "I hope so. I mean, uh, I hope it helps. That they are. They need - uh - a lot." O words, O words, why hast thou deserted me. 

Stranger: impressed. 

'Awkward' isn't really her thing (she thinks, she hasn't had enough experience to be sure), but he made a good first impression. Hira will wait to judge.

"They would. They're not trained for this the way we are. How long do you think they have?"

"Ninety fucking years." 

If she wanted to boil away the awkward, that sure was the right question to ask. Alexius stares into the distance for a moment, then runs his hand through his (short-cropped) hair in frustration. "I don't know. I feel like there has to be a better way, like this school can't possibly be the best that a planetful of wizards can come up with. And then I remember those textbooks I read about trading and incentives and game theory -" so as not to get ripped off in the Scholomance, of course, isn't that going wonderfully well - "and it...makes too much sense, that it all shook out this way." Another frustrated hair-grab. "And yet - half the kids in this place act like the sooner the other half die, the better for everyone. And that I don't get, not even selfishly, the way our ancestors fought their way out of the wilderness wasn't by sacrificing each other to the wolves, it was by banding together and specializing. The next dead newbie could be the one with a killer affinity, and we'd never know if they don't survive the evening showers." 

-she barely knows where to start. Passionate, which is a plus, but passionate about fixing the Scholomance, which is asinine. Maybe they can solve the maleficaria problem one day, but the Scholomance is their best fix for it right now. Fixing the school is- well, it's worth it, if you can pull it off, but it's small potatoes. And no one can think long-term, can they? They need to make sure their kids make it.

Hira wants to make it out of this place alive more than she wants to make sure the lost, confused mundane with a killer affinity gets a fair shake, and she doesn't think that's 'morally wrong'- as if that matters anyway.

It's really tempting to start to care, when you run into someone who comes up with speech like that at the drop of a hat.

She still doesn't, though; as long as there are mals out there, it's her or them, and Hira wouldn't be Hira if she didn't pick her every time.

"That's what graduation alliances are for. Banding together with the kids who can't hack it, in the first week? You'd have to be way more than not selfish to do that."

"Do I look banded to you? Maybe I just want to butter up the newbies." Yeah, Alexius, that's totally it. "Advice isn't hard to come by, anyway. And I plan to collect a lot of mana, which is the one renewable trade good that all the newbies can produce. Not many special advantages there." 

"You seem like a smart kid."

'Kid' is a translation, when the thing she wants to be saying is 'darling' or 'poppet' or- English is a weak, frustrating language and she wishes half of the school's coursework were in something a little more thorough. Walking around with English on her tongue is like leaving her vocabulary in her room to be infested by mals. The fact that Mandarin of all things is the alternative- there she goes, getting frustrated about the reality of the Scholomance. It's contagious.

"As long as you're getting more than you're giving, anyway. I admire the effort, I do, but I just don't want you to burn yourself out. First day and all..."

She does not actually twirl her hair, because there isn't nearly enough of it left for that.

"Why thank you." He does not pick up on the lack of hair-pulling or the lack of satisfying English diminutives, but that sure is a smile. "Alexius Marcus, Jacksonville, alchemy and languages track, soon-to-be seller of bulk eidetic memory potions and sundry other niceties. Pleasure to meet you." 

Pretty much everything this boy says is an even mix of pros and cons, huh.

"Ambitious! Hira Khan, Jaipur. I'm considering languages. Nothing for sale so far, myself- but I'm holding onto some enchanted earrings for the rest of Jaipur, if you're in the market and they don't all want theirs."

If she can trade them for something better- most of the girls have already told her what they'd be willing to lose an earring for; she knows two of them who would take a potion like that, although maybe his case of bleeding heart isn't that terminal.

"I'm in the market for enchanted earrings, sure. What do they do and how well do they do it?" He's going to need to trade for almost all of his enchanted gear, might as well get a head start. 

"Grace, poise, elegance- they can help whether you want to look good or stay balanced during a fight."

Hira demonstrates; it isn't as obvious when she was standing still, but when she walks, Alexius can see it in her bearing. To really drive home the point, she 'trips' and is able to spin back into a balanced fighting stance.

"It won't win a fight, but it could save one."

Alexius does not gawk at the graceful self-confident beauty, because gawking while discussing business is rude. Right? (He really doesn't gawk; his initial shock aside, he has near-total control of his features when he's actually exercising it). "That's excellent. I will probably get a spell for it in the next six months or so -" this spoken with complete surety and lack of irony "- but I'd want it on, like, all the time, so that'd be a huge mana-saver. The potions last ten days for me and five to ten for everyone else, they're not permanent, but they do exactly what it says on the tin, and extensive testing suggests a 60-80% retention rate even after they wear off. It's better if you rehearse the material shortly after the potion runs out. Not a fighting tool, obviously, but I'm going to fleece people so hard during finals." 

Confidence is hard to resist. This is exactly the kind of boy Hira was looking for. If he's right to be this sure of himself- most boys aren't.

"Well, then I'll have to talk to the enclave about your offer. How did you develop a potion like that already? They must have worked you hard back home."

"As it happens, my affinity lets me cheat as long as I plan to drink the potion." He taps his chin thoughtfully. "The last enclaver I talked to managed to guess my affinity based on that, my abnormally large collection of personal spells, and one other clue; want to try your luck at one-upping them?" 

"Magic that affects you?"

It feels like a trick question, but Hira never passes up an opportunity; better to answer quickly and wrongly than over-think it.

"Yep! On that note, if you happen to feel like swapping spells, I have some good personal boosts. My favorite is an envelope shield, fits like a scuba suit with gloves and costs very little to maintain. A bit costly on repelling attacks, but I'd rather lose a chunk of mana than a chunk of leg, right? And the long-term efficiency is great." 

If he's recommending these, she hopes the mana costs aren't denominated in his own mana- Hira won't have his luck if the spells haven't been tested by anyone else.

"That does sound like a good deal. I have a basic mal-zapper that worked at home, but it needs water. I have one to help you tolerate the cold, if that's something you want after a couple of days in this place."

His mana-hours metric was in fact based on the average of five mages for one hour, none with special mana affinities. But some of the spells he can cast on himself would not be feasible for others without a power-sharer. 

"What kind of a mal-zapper needs water? Not that I'm complaining, I'm a bit shy on combat spells that aren't 'shield and run away.'" Not completely shy, of course, but he's got to save some cards for when he needs them. "Cold tolerance is kinda niche but I do love accumulating affinity spells. Swap you...hmmm, we should probably compare languages first, shouldn't we. I have English, Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Arabic, Russian, Mandarin, Hebrew, and Sanskrit, and six of those are proof the potion works." 

"Ice spike. It's cheap for me, so I used it a lot. I have other options, but they're less reliable. Like you said, shield and run away. As for languages...English, obviously. Mandarin, Hindi, Tamil, Rajasthani, Bhil, Punjabi, and Sanskrit."

"Ah-huh. Hmmm, not a lot of overlap, lemme think...I have two different stimulant spells, one single-cast and one maintained, in English. I've got a few that tailor the gut microbiome to do specific things like cover nutrient deficiencies, they're tricky to use right but handy for nutrition and healing. One in Mandarin for thinking slightly faster, the effect isn't huge but it does help for long-term mental work. I picked up a nice one for reflexes from the Montréal enclave today, still need to learn it all the way but I can pass it along. English." See, he can do subtext and networking and shit, he totally has an in with another enclave already. "Oh, and a spell in Mandarin that stops bleeding and helps oxygenate what's left, it's very elegant but it takes about thirty seconds to cast, not ideal for the use case. I'll swap any of the above for your ice spike first, cold tolerance second, one-for-one." 

He really likes thinking long-term. Maybe he'll change the world, if he makes it out. Hira hopes so.

"I'll take faster thinking and stops bleeding in Mandarin, please. We should get together for language study sessions once classes get started."

"Absolutely. Which of yours do you recommend for someone just breaking into the language family? Eidetic memory and affinity for self will be strong factors there. Latin is my top pick, by the way, it's got a huge spell body." He almost says "corpus" but that's a Latin root and he probably shouldn't say it in the same sentence as the language itself. 

"You said you have Arabic, right? I would start with Hindi- there are enough loanwords in there that I wouldn't recommend it to someone who wanted to avoid Arabic, but you won't have that issue."

"Hindi it is, then. Oh, by the way, the Montréalers and I are planning a supply run after orientation, if you want to join. I need to scrounge some potions ingredients, myself." 

"I'm all set, sorry. The Jaipur freshmen are going together. Do they need the numbers?"

"More is always better, but they've got an alert combat specialist and at least three others. It's not a pressing need."