"Uh, still a little nauseous. - Sean, Manchester."

"Yolanda. Indie. Mine cleared right up when I got some water down."

"Well, apparently water affinity doesn't do... that."

"Oh, is that yours? Pretty neat."

"That's what they tell me!"

"Mine's self-buffs. I don't mind it, but there's better."

"It sounds pretty good to me."

"It's not the best for finding allies, which is more important for an independent."

"Oh. Yeah, I guess that would be an issue. Maybe you'll find someone with - synergy?"

"That'd be nice. And I'm going creative writing, so the spells I write should be useful for other people."

"I'm doing languages but I don't know many to start out, it's just kind of by default."

"That makes sense, it's safer. I bet loads of people have written useful water spells, it's so ubiquitous." UGH that must have sounded inane. 

"Yeah, I think Latin and Greek maybe. Later on Japanese maybe."

"I should probably take Japanese, it's awfully useful."

"Oh?"

"It's one of the bigger Eastern languages. Plus the character system is almost the same ad Mandarin, which I have."

"I don't have Mandarin and hear it's very hard."

"So's English if you don't grow up with it."

"Yes, but... I did."

"And I grew up with Mandarin! --And English, admittedly. My mom's Chinese-American."

"That's lucky."

"You're not wrong. And my older brother is still alive, so that's an advantage; I shouldn't be ungrateful."

"Oh, what year is he?"

"He's a junior. We're all spaced two years apart and I'm next-eldest."

"Cool. We have more spacing than - I have more, the babies are close together."

"Really? Why?"

"Mum was sick for a while after me and had to wait."

"Oh. But that didn't happen again with any of the littles?"

"No, she's fine now."

"That's good. It seems like it must be frustrating, to survive the whole Scholomance and then be brought low by something so human."

"Yeah. They think maybe she had me earlier than she should've, she was injured at graduation and waited a year and a half but maybe that wasn't long enough."

"Ooh, that could do it, yeah. Graduation hall's got nasty stuff in it."

Nod.

"Well, even if you can't personally help your little siblings, at least they'll be enclavers."

"Yeah, there's that."

"And you can help them get ready! Of course, affinity also matters a lot, I'm a little jealous of yours."

"I'll definitely have a job lined up after? If there's an after."

"...I mean, some mals aren't super biological, but a lot of them are, and anything biological has a lot of water in it."

"Oh, yeah, I guess maybe once I can handle bigger spells that might help. I could boil them or something."

"Or, like--" she clasps her hands together and then flings them apart. "Bwoosh!"

"I'd worry about splashing myself in the face with something awful."

"Point. You could make sure to keep the bwoosh smaller than however far you were from them but boiling is probably still safer."

"Or freezing. Safer still."

"It's convenient how ice is bigger than water! You can get a lot of the same rupturing effects alongside the temperature problems the mal is no doubt having, without risking suspicious vapors."

"Yeah. I'll ask the void. Dad told me to ask the void for spells often as I can, there's no better place to get them."

"I think I'm gonna have to write a bunch of my own, I haven't heard much about affinities like mine, but yeah, that doesn't mean I ought to slack on checking in with the void. If non-languages students could get away with not doing that then having bits would be less verboten."

"That's the idea, yeah."

"Probably there's all sorts of details about things like being spell-blocked that we don't know because anyone who experiences them dies."

"That's a worrying thought."

"Enclavers have loads better odds than anybody else but you're still not much higher than four in five."

"I mean, yes, but it's unnerving that there might be some risk we don't even know about it because nobody gets as far as telling."

"Fair enough, I just mean--the death rates are the death rates, you know, it's not like we're mundanes and you find out there's a serial killer in your town and your odds of dying have just skyrocketed."

"Weird number of muggleborns, this year."

"Ooh, did you not hear about Chicago yet?"

"...no?"

"Someone ganked the entire enclave. There are, like, a couple of survivors who were outside at the time, that's all."

"Bloody hell, how does that happen?"

"I don't know and neither do they! The entrances were just gone, apparently."

"That's terrifying!"

"I know, right, people are talking about it even over there," she says, gesturing vaguely at the Mandarin side of the room. 

"Double the languages, double the scary gossip?"

Snort. "It's not more languages, just different ones. And I'd rather hear the scary gossip than get blind-sided by it."

"You know what, that's fair."

"Speaking of gossip on the Mandarin side, do you know, we've already had a death this year? ...I mean. Besides, you know. Chicago."

"Already? Did someone trip on the stairs?"

"Not sure! But a Shanghai freshman they were expecting never showed up in the cafeteria."

"That's not a death, that's a rock in their shoe."

"Maybe. They're still abuzz with it, and nobody's identified a Mandarin mundie."

"It wouldn't have to be a mundie, half their regular kids don't get in."

"Point. Well, nobody's admitting to not having passed the exams, for sure."

"Would you?"

"Hey, my parents moved to the States for a reason."

"Good for them."

"The reason not actually being that they thought their kids wouldn't be able to pass the exams, but yeah, no, if I'd'a failed 'em I'd keep it firmly zipped."

"There's no way to know in advance your kids will be however smart you have to be to pass a Chinese test."

"I mean, I think it's less about smarts and more about memorizing a bunch of classics? Although that might have just been Auntie being salty so who knows."

"...classics? We do have literature courses in here but it's not really the most... important."

"Chinese wizards are way more conservative relative to modern Chinese society than Western ones are because modern China is a clusterfuck that they wish to avoid dealing with."

"I guess that's fair of them, kind of."

"According to the gossip this doesn't, like, translate to them not being extremely gay though."

He splutters a little. "Uh, oh, huh, how about that."

"As methods of birth control go it's more reliable than magic and less likely to go wacky on you than an IUD."

"I bet you're right!"