Jiang Cheng isn't interested in Nie Huaisang. His mother made it very clear that romance in the Scholomance wasn't about beautiful boys with soft hair who make things that Jiang Cheng can't imagine making, things that aren't useful they're fragile and lovely, like they're from a world where people are allowed to have fragile lovely things. It certainly wasn't about boys whose tears made you want to hold them and keep them safe from everything bad that happens in the world and whose smile made you feel like life has a meaning.

No, romance in the Scholomance is about staying alive, and Nie Huaisang wouldn't help keep anyone alive, so Jiang Cheng isn't interested in him.

So he doesn't feel jealous of Tomonori having someone worry about whether he'd get hurt in lab.

"Thank you for saying so. I have to take some risks to learn."

That's what his father would say, anyway.

"Have you ever wanted so badly to satisfy your curiosity that you would take those risks?"

"No. Absolutely not. I am here for one thing and one thing only which is staying alive."

"Oh. That makes sense. You can be more careful, right? There are so many of you, with different skills. I just have me."

This touching moment is interrupted with a purple electricity whip crackling onto the cafeteria table in front of Tomonori.

Tomonori shrieks! If he had been standing, he might have stumbled backward, but instead this mostly disturbs Nie Huaisang’s position as he shifts. His heart is racing and he’s calculating- preparing to burn mana that he doesn’t have, re-calculating, what can he do with- he would be dead already if this had been real- was that someone from Shanghai!?!? Tomonori tries to place the face but he can’t. Was there a test? Did he fail? (Again?)

He stands up, clumsily disentangling himself from Nie Huaisang.

“I- I’m sorry. Did I do something to offend?”

Directing this at the man boy with the whip is probably somehow rude, too. Maybe he’s about to die. Tomonori wants to take it back.

"My whip is better than Bichen," he says with an amount of anger usually reserved for someone murdering your cat.

Honestly, there's a lot of disagreement about this.

???

“I- it’s beautiful,” Tomonori says, and of course he means it, because now he can see it with his glasses, now that he’s turned the lenses towards it, but that won’t be the right answer, will it. There’s another hurdle he didn’t see- not males, not homework, but something in the way he talks or moves that they can all see is wrong.

He stands very still and doesn’t say anything else.

"Yes! It fucking well is and you will appreciate it!"

Lan Wangji is confused by the amount of anger here-- no one even mentioned Zidian-- but is also used to his incomprehension about Jiang Cheng's anger being even more complete than his incomprehension about everyone else's emotions other than his brothers'. 

"a-Cheng," Nie Huaisang wheedles, "I was going to show him Zidian" like when he was going to get bored of me without a chance to look at new shiny magical items "you don't have to almost hit people with purple electricity whips. That scares people."

"Don't call me a-Cheng!"

Well if he’s being threatened into admiring magical artifacts he can do what he was doing with Bichen but vibrating with stress instead of enthusiasm, with less Nie Huaisang putting his head on his shoulder.

There are plenty of compliments Tomonori can give to- Zidian, (which he wants to ask about too, do they all have names, but he doesn’t ask). He does so, lovingly describing the enchantments he can see.

Nie Huaisang puts his head on Tomonori's shoulder again and gives his hand a reassuring squeeze.

"He's so good at figuring things out!"

"It's not that great. I know all that about Zidian already."

“I can work on a better spell,” although he can’t do this forever, Tomonori needs to specialize eventually. If some of Shanghai wants him to go artificing track but some wants him to- and they don’t, they haven’t offered anything-

He hates politics. He doesn’t understand what anyone wants from him except Nie Hauisang.

He doesn’t push Nie Huaisang away, but he doesn’t lean into it this time. He watches Lan Xichen’s and Zidian’s wielder’s faces. Maybe their faces will tell him whether he passed.

Lan Xichen is over at Kyoto enclave's table and shows no obvious sign of noticing that this happened.

"Well, you should work on a better spell. Useless piece of shit."

Icily: "Jiang Cheng."

"I'm not apologizing! He's just an indie."

"Jiang Cheng."

All of this is getting very confusingly out of hand.

Nie Huaisang says, "Tomonori, do you want to go sit at that table over there?"

“Mhm.”

???

He grabs Tomonori's arm and navigates him to the nearest mal- and human-free table.

"I'm sorry. Jiang Cheng is just like that."