Meng Yao has two siblings this year, a brother and a sister. Last year he had three. His year he was the only one; apparently even Jin Guangshan would only commit so much adultery when his wife was pregnant.

He sits down across from his sister. "Hello," he says. "I'm your half-brother."

— wait, what? 

She has siblings here— she's never had siblings before, she'd wondered what it was like— she hadn't expected to have family, in the Scholomance. Maybe she should have?

She beams up at him. "Hello, gege. My name is Sun Lei. It's nice to finally meet you." 

"It's nice to meet you too." She's pretty, of course she is; Jin Guangshan had a taste for beautiful women. Meng Yao thinks Jin Guangshan isn't very beautiful himself; Jin Zixuan at least isn't especially handsome.

(Meng Yao takes after his mother, and is small and delicate and easy to underestimate.)

"There's a lot of us." And he goes through them one by one, and concludes with "and Jin Zixuan is his legitimate son."

Oh.

That's... a lot of illegitimate children.

But— it'll be fine. It has to be fine. The Scholomance is hard and dangerous but Sun Lei has worked hard her whole life and she's prepared and it's going to be fine, she's going to be good and smart and it'll be good enough. 

She nods, carefully. 

"...which story did he tell your mother."

She swallows.

"That. He was going to be-- needed, with magic things, but he'd take care of her and me if he could-- and if I made it to the Scholomance I'd have a chance and if I was good enough there'd be a spot in--"

And her voice stops working because Meng Yao sounds like he's saying it isn't true but it can't not be true, it has to be true--

Breaking it gently isn't a kindness. She has to understand if she's going to survive.

"Our father told my mother that he loved her and would marry her if he could, and if I survived he'd have enough clout to be able to."

"Oh," is all she can say.

"I learned this the hard way." (He remembers the laughter, and the feeling of the blood dripping down his skin as his head hit the wall, and the way it mixed with his tears.) "So I decided to talk to the others, so they wouldn't have to."

"Oh," she says again, which makes her sound like an idiot; she recovers herself enough to say "Thank you gege" before her throat stops working again.

"His affinity is love. Understanding what things people love and why. Making people love each other. Making people love him."

The implications take a moment to catch up with her.

When they do, though.

"There are... a lot of us."

Okay. 

Okay, she thinks she's processed enough that she can stop being stupid. Meng Yao has spent the last few meals openly cuddling the head of the Shanghai enclave. So there has to be a way. 

"How did you get close to Shanghai?"

Oh. She's so hopeful.

He really doesn't like doing this. It's the least pleasant part of this part of the year, going around crushing his younger siblings' dreams. (When he gets out, he thinks, he'll do it before induction. More efficient.) But if they're not crushed by him they're going to be crushed by someone else, and he can do it quickly and cleanly if not kindly.

"I was trapped with the de facto leader in a classroom for three days while we desperately warded off the mal outside trying to kill us both."

...oh. That's... not something you can bank on.

Still, though, it clearly isn't impossible. "Do you know how other independents have done it?" 

"You don't want to be in Shanghai."

"Why?"

"If you're in Shanghai you're going to spend the rest of your life as Jin Guangshan's bastard daughter with a whore."

"My mom isn't--" 

My mother was, he doesn't say.

"No one here cares. As far as they're concerned, all of Jin Guangshan's lovers are whores, and their children are too until proven otherwise."

"If being part of Shanghai is so bad why are you doing it." 

Because there was one thing his mother wanted from him for his entire life, and he wants to make her proud more than he wants to be happy.

"Because I love him."

"Oh," and apparently it's back to sounding like an idiot again. "That... that makes sense."

(She had one plan, only one, and it isn't going to work, and someone older than her and more experienced than her says she shouldn't try it even if it would, and she doesn't have any others, and she can't be having this thought here because they're in public and she cannot show herself to be the sort of person who cries in public--)

"How did you prepare?"

"I have Mandarin and Classical Chinese and Korean and I can read anything that uses hanzi and I'm the fastest in my school." She's not unprepared. She's not-- the people with the very shiny enchanted clothes, or anything, but she wasn't stupid, she worked for her slot, she's not-- she has a chance she has to have a chance she has to believe she has a chance--

She's absolutely doomed. 

"...you're very pretty and they already think you're a whore, I'd suggest making use of it to find someone to protect you. Other freshmen won't want much beyond kissing but if you can handle sex a junior is better. Enclaver if you can, they have more spare resources to throw your way. Don't have PIV, if you get pregnant you'll probably die. --I don't suppose your idol mom taught you to do plumbing."

"I'm not a--"

Meng Yao is really really tired of people who are outraged by the prospect that they might be his mom.

"I suggest you get over that. You can't really afford to have scruples in here."

Sun Lei bites down, hard, on her tongue.

"I. Yes. Thank you gege."

"Do you know what your affinity is?"

"...no. Should I?" 

"Everyone with a chance of survival had their parents hire a diviner when they were eight to figure it out and they've been spending the past six years figuring out how to best use it to stay alive."

She cannot cry. She cannot cry in public, she cannot be someone who cries in public. 

"Then," she says, and her voice is not shaking, because she cannot be someone who cries in public, she is not Nie Huaisang of Shanghai, "I guess I'll have to figure it out fast." 

"I ended up on Shanghai's maintenance track because our apartment was crap and our landlord didn't care so I've been fixing things since I was seven years old. And then from there a Shanghai enclaver took an interest in me and-- I could have survived even without Lan Xichen falling in love with me. But it's the useful skills that matter. And the magic, and the wealth, and the connections."