Geometry is math that's about shapes, Masozi thinks? Probably?? In any case, if that's what it is then it sounds AMAZING and he's so excited. 

He still pauses at the entrance to the classroom and carefully scans the entire room for any sign of mals. Maleficaria Studies has left him EXCEPTIONALLY jumpy, which is really saying a lot. 

"Pardon," says a voice behind him, "you cannot be walked through, and are so unlike a door in that way."

"Is there something wrong in there?" asks another voice.

Masozi jumps six inches in the air at the voice behind him! And then steps out of the way. 

"Sorry!" he says, in heavily-accented English. "Looking for mals." 

"- oh, it's you. Are there any?"

"- Probably not? There usually aren't right now and I haven't seen any yet..."

Masozi is still holding off on deciding whether or not to actively burn mana and scan for hidden mals until he knows whether anyone else in this class is non-useless at situational awareness. Rebecca.....is pretty useless at that. The other girl who he doesn't know, is ?????? on this front. 

"Hey, what's holding up the line, did someone die in there already?"

"No, he's looking for mals, it's his - thingy - affinity."

"...and? Did he find some and nobody wants to be the first one in, or does looking take a long time?"

Looking does, in fact, take kind of a long time when Masozi is trying very very hard to minimize mana usage because apparently even ""cheating"" by taking mana from bugs might risk causing him brain damage right now?? that would make him stop thinking that people dying was bad?? 

He scans the room visually, first, but he's accumulated a decent chunk of mana from this (horrible) morning in Maleficaria Studies, and doesn't need to use any malia to do a couple of brief spot-checks. 

"- There's some eggs laid up there," he says, flatly, pointing at a random spot of ceiling, though in fact he means the ventilation pipes somewhere above it. "Think it's fine for now." 

And he looks around for free seats. And takes the most dangerous-looking spot nearest the ceiling vents, since he knows he can handle it and he really doesn't want anyone else to die. 

Rebecca sits behind him so he won't be looking at her because he's KINDA creepy but like in a useful way so she wants to be nearish.

Bobbie takes a sensible seat not right next to the vents and checks her desk for mals even though Masozi said it was clear.

"Hey. Chicago. It's safer farther away from the vents."

"My name's Rebecca," she says, but she sits a seat farther back.

"Rebecca, then."

She should try to remember that if she wants to try to keep Rebecca alive. In the long run that's probably a doomed prospect but - She feels bad for her, and wants to try to at least give her a shot if she can.

Rebecca's geometry textbook appears. Rebecca sighs long-sufferingly and opens it to the page with a worksheet sticking out of it, since apparently if you don't do your work it EATS YOU. Which, what the fuck, but she can't exactly skip homework to go to a karaoke bar, now, can she.

Masozi spots a textbook at the desk where he'd planned to sit, so he sits down and opens it. 

- Ooooh. Wow. That's - okay it's pretty hard to follow, right now, Masozi does not exactly have any formal education in math - but it's also beautiful and amazing and he's captivated.

"Does anyone in this school have calculators," Rebecca asks Bobbie, after getting stuck on needing to divide something.

Masozi turns around in his seat. "- What's a calculator?"

"Maybe one of the other mundanes happened to have one on them for some reason? But no, it's not worth the weight limit, and the school doesn't supply them 'cause they're electrical."

"I don't remember how to do long division..." Sigh. "Calculators're little machines that do math for you. Not like all of it but most of the most annoying parts."

"Here, you just - fuck, I don't know how to teach long division. Sorry. I'll try to help you out with that if I've got time left after mine."

"Thanks, but if you don't have time I'll ask Zeke."

"...Can't you do it in your head?" Masozi says, with some confusion. "You just - pretend it's all little boxes that you're piling up and you're trying to make a pile of them that's this wide - that's the number you're dividing it by and you stack them and then if you don't have a whole row at the top you pretend each of the boxes is ten littler boxes and you just do it again....?" 

"No, I can't do long division in my head! I mean, I can for small numbers if I'm like how many measures would it take to get this many quarter notes down in this time signature but I can't do it for big numbers, nobody's like 'all right now let us sing this one in 147/4 time'."

"....But that's just a forty - that's ten fours - and then a hundred, and eighty is two forties so that's twenty fours so thirty, and then another twenty which is five fours so thirty-five, and then seven is one-and-some - so thirty-six - and then you pretend the leftover three is thirty, and twenty-eight is...five plus two fours so that's seven-of-ten, and then you pretend the leftover two is twenty and that's five fours, so it's just thirty six and seven-out-of-ten and five-out-of-a-hundred." 

Masozi says this like it's all completely obvious. 

"....Also what's a 'time signature'?" he adds, after a few moments.