He doesn't see anyone who obviously meets all of those criteria.

He does, however, see Masozi himself, navigating through the cafeteria headed toward the Shanghai table, with his shoulders hunched under the weight of his backpack and his arms wrapped around his borrowed container, now emptied of mal grubs and cleaned. He looks visibly shaken, even scared. 

Lan Xichen rushes over-- doesn't recite a charm for calm-calm-everything's-all-right-calm, it scared Masozi before--

"What's wrong?" he says, fully prepared to unleash the wrath of Shanghai on whoever is responsible for this.

"I'm sorry," Masozi says, barely above a whisper. "I - need to tell you something, I, I -" making excuses is not going to help, begging is also not going to help it just makes him look desperate and thus less useful...

He lifts his chin. "I didn't know the rules and I was really rude to New York by accident, and a senior got mad and yelled at me. My friend said I needed to tell you that right away because it was politics and your enclaves are rivals or something." 

Fuck. 

He glances back at the table. Wen Qing is handling the lunch table fine, he's not needed. "We discuss this privately in my room," he says. "Do you like spell to help you calm down?"

Masozi doesn't love the idea but he is, in fact, also kind of panicking too hard to think straight. 

"Okay. Yeah." 

Lan Xichen recites a rhyme in some language Masozi doesn't know and suddenly Masozi feels-- better. Not calm, precisely. It's like someone whisked away the panic and left nothing at all in its place.

“Thank you.”

He takes a deep breath.

”…Okay, we can go to your room. If you want.”

He’s - not not nervous about this - it would be a convenient way for Lan Xichen to get him out of the way, if he wanted, if he’d decided Masozi was too damaging to his enclave’s reputation…

But he told Lan Xichen under a truth spell that he wanted to help, and he meant it, and this is the only way to help mitigate it now. 

Masozi follows him, looking calm and grim and focused and on guard. 

Lan Xichen takes him to his room and then immediately stumbles into issues expressing a complicated time-related sentiment in English. "--I was wanting to bring you here as a gift," he eventually settles on. "Because it's safest place you are since you are probably five years old."

"Oh. Thank you. I appreciate it." Masozi isn't good enough at studying wards to assess for himself how true that is, but it's definitely plausible. He was never very safe, not even when he was five years old. 

He takes a deep breath. "So - should I tell you all of the things that happened?" 

"Yes, please."

He closes his eyes, trying to focus on remembering; he trusts Lan Xichen to keep a lookout. 

"I - it was right at the start on the first day. I had tried to memorize the map and wanted a chance to walk around the school, and some freshman were going down to the senior dorm level to get supplies? It was people from New York - I didn't really follow that until later, though - and also some from Chicago, the ones who didn't know magic was real until they got inducted. They were - it looked to me like no one had any idea how to properly watch for mals. I thought it was a good opportunity to see more of the school, with it being less dangerous, and I was scared one of the Chicago kids would get stupidly killed, so I tried to go be a lookout. I...this girl sort of told me to go away, but in a way that was confusing, and then I pointed out a mal to Orion, and then she said fine I could come along if I stayed ten feet away from her and didn't go in the room – and that she'd get me new clothes if I was useful for three weeks...? I think she said something like that but I don't remember all of it exactly." 

They have got to teach this kid etiquette. 

"All right. And then what happen?"

"....We got down to the dorms and it was pretty much fine on the way? There were only a few small mals and Orion got them. But then everyone went in the room and I wasn't allowed in and there were some mals in the ceiling grate. I - was burning a lot of mana to convince them to stay there and I was worried how long people would take and whether it was better to interrupt and ask Orion to fight them– um, I don't have many good spells for killing mals that don't take a stupid amount of mana, and I didn't want to do anything that took lots of mana because I was trying to avoid needing to drain it from my beetles so early on...... Anyway. A senior came out and yelled at me to go away? I told him there were mals in the ceiling vent and he killed them, but then he still told me to leave and said it in a really scary way."

Shrug. "So I left. I was sort of confused, but it - right then wasn't more confusing than how people would pick fights with you in Malawi City if they thought they could take you? I didn't know New York was important. Lucy said it's rude to - even talk to them like you would to a normal person?" 

"I don't like that rule. Shanghai ignores it while I'm in charge. If someone wastes my time they can be banned from table on case by case basis."

"....Oh, that would maybe explain why Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji weren't mad at me or rude when I asked if they wanted me to help them find Wei Wuxian's room. I was confused about that too. But....um....it seems like there was a rule on how to be polite to New York specifically, and I - didn't know it - and I probably offended them and made them mad at me. I'm sorry."

Masozi hugs himself a little. He's still mostly-calm, but he's definitely feeling very overwhelmed and too small and slow and stupid to keep up with this bafflingly complicated school. Which would be a lot less frustrating if it were the CLASSES that were hard, rather than the....people.

"I would say I won't do it again but I still don't get all of what I did wrong so I, um..." 

"Wei Wuxian hears of rule and immediately breaks it. Even if he is from New York he never objects to someone helping him find his room. It's just not way Wei Wuxian is. --I'm not angry at you."

"Oh." Masozi takes a slow breath. ".....I might've broken a rule again, after that? I was in homeroom and people were talking about shop class times and I heard maybe Monday morning had better supplies, so I went to the closest homeroom to ask about it? And a boy there said he had it but that it was dangerous and I would die. I said I'm good at spotting mals and that if he was good at fighting them maybe we could be a team? ....I didn't know he was from New York but someone came in later and talked to him and mentioned something about New York and classes, so he might've been? And I was really stressed for a bit. But - then he did say it was fine if I wanted to take Monday shop, so I thought it was all right. Maybe it wasn't though?" 

"--I don't think there's any reason to object to you taking Monday morning shop? Other than that you might die. I'm confused too."

"The other boy said he was taking it, so I figured he had a plan, and I - it's sort of a gamble but I don't have almost anything, I don't even have mana storage, I know I have to do a lot of catching up and getting the best supplies might matter a lot? ....The New York senior told me to never talk to anyone from New York again, though, that's the rule I thought I might've broken, except I didn't know. And I guess the other kid didn't either." 

"I should send Meng Yao to talk to New York and get their side of the story. You don't understand rules well enough to know which ones you broke."

"I'm sorry! I can try really hard to learn them, just - it's so different and it's so much and it's.....hard to learn that AND learn math and Mandarin writing AND look for mals all the time."

...Oops now it sounds like he's making excuses. Masozi forces himself to straighten. "I'm not trying to make excuses. I'll figure it out." 

"I'm really not mad at you. I don't think you did anything wrong. Anyone do what you did in your situation. I want to solve problem."

Masozi actually feels like he did MULTIPLE things wrong, which are now obvious after ONE DAY of acclimatizing to this place. But it's generous of Lan Xichen to give him the benefit of doubt, and believe him that he wasn't trying to cause problems on purpose. 

"Okay. ...What should I do now." 

"You should try not to cause more diplomatic crises. I say 'stay on Sino side, I explain the situation to Sinos' but you don't speak Mandarin and many of us don't have good English..."

Okay. Deep breaths. The situation has suddenly gone from 'bizarrely and overwhelmingly good' to 'abruptly and incomprehensibly terrifying' but it's not HELPING to, additionally, be wondering if Lan Xichen is just trying to get him to let down his guard so that he can decide later whether murdering Masozi will solve his problems more effectively. 

"I can just - go to my classes and not talk to anyone?" he offers. "....Although if someone needs help with math then not being able to help them is frustrating. But I can not talk to anyone anyway. And then I can - practice Mandarin and do lookout for Shanghai in the library and not do anything else?" 

Lan Xichen has a problem.

He didn't even know the Anglos knew that Masozi existed. He's been carefully managing things on the Sino side, but that relies on his reputation as a person who deals fairly with others and who would never countenance having a maleficer. His reputation on the Anglo side is... less. They don't share a language. He's vaguely aware that Annaka is in charge of NY and has somewhat positive feelings about her, but if he thought that Annaka had employed a maleficer who threatened Shanghai he would be on the verge of war.

The thing most people would do in this situation, the one the Meng Yao on his shoulder urges him to do, is to cut his losses. Tell Masozi that Shanghai would be happy to ally with him in eighteen months, if he's still alive and he hasn't pulled malia and he's fluent in Mandarin. Lan Xichen would have done that if Masozi had spellchoked, or in some way turned out not to be useful. He likes Masozi but you can't make decisions because you like someone. Lan Xichen will pay any price to keep everyone in Shanghai enclave alive, and if he has to curl up in his bed at night and hate himself-- it's not the largest price anyone in the enclave has ever had to pay. Sometimes it hurts to do the right thing.

But it's not obviously the sensible thing to do, like it would be if he spellchoked. As he'd said to Masozi, he's an investment. And without Shanghai's help, as a maleficer with no allies or resources who's already frightened one powerful enclave, with no one to teach him the social rules he's never had a chance to learn, getting spells in a language he doesn't speak and has no native speakers to practice with, and possibly having pissed off New York-- Masozi is going to die. 

There isn't an option where he keeps his options open and checks back in in eighteen months, not really, not unless Masozi is more impressive than every other wizard in the Scholomance put together. Lan Xichen can bet all his yuan or he can leave the gambling den.

Lan Xichen has a Meng Yao on his shoulder but he also has a Nie Mingjue. The Nie Mingjue on his shoulder says it's simple, Xichen. Just do good things and don't do bad things. Nie Mingjue was the first one to invite Meng Yao to sit with them at the Shanghai enclave table, to help Meng Yao with his schoolwork, to say maybe if we helped him he could do more than just fix our plumbing. And they did, and now Meng Yao speaks English like a native and makes the most useful potions and is here to tell him what he would do.

It's a waste. He wants Masozi to steward Wen Ning and Nie Huaisang through graduation, to be ruthless enough to keep them alive and kind enough to want to. And he wants to see what he could do, for Shanghai and for the entire Sinosphere, if he had enough fertilizer to grow. They're planting enclaves in the Sinosphere. They might make their own Scholomance. He has so much potential and without him it's going to be wasted.

If there were enough time, he'd want to have a meeting with Wen Qing and Meng Yao about it, to talk through all the considerations. But there isn't time. This situation has already lasted most of a weekend, if he delays then the Anglos might talk themselves even further into a war. 

Lan Xichen decides.

"...do you want me to show you my emotions so you know I'm not upset or about to stop helping you?"

All right. Focus. He needs to think and not be stupid. 

...It turns out this is a lot harder when the main source of danger is 'bafflingly complicated geopolitics involving intricate rules of politeness between rivalrous groups of teenagers competing to survive' rather than the more straightforward dangers he's used to, of mals constantly after him and his family or mundane strangers deciding that a skinny poor boy looks like an easy target. 

If Lan Xichen does want to hurt him, then there are much easier ways than this, and....well, if Lan Xichen wants to mind control him, the most likely motive is that he wants Masozi to be compliant and useful and not inconvenient? Which - sounds like a more likely strategy for getting out of the Scholomance alive than the one he was about to stumble into. 

Masozi feels like he doesn't have nearly enough working memory to think through all the considerations on the spot, but he can't exactly get a notebook and diagram it out, that would look really suspicious. 

"...I - yes - all right." 

Lan Xichen is unaware of Masozi's thoughts and so can't say either "of course you can diagram out your response" or "why would I mind control you into being compliant and useful? That doesn't sound like something a good superior would do to his inferiors."

Instead he says another rhyme in a language Masozi doesn't speak and suddenly Masozi feels a package of emotions. He can feel them the way he'd feel his own emotions, but they're clearly marked as belonging to someone else.

The overwhelming feeling is that Masozi is his, and Lan Xichen has a duty to protect him; the sheer it is my job to get you out of here alive is so intense that it bleeds through even though this spell isn't supposed to tell you thoughts at all. 

Other feelings: Lan Xichen is worried for Masozi, scared that something bad will happen to him. Lan Xichen is frustrated, but there's a sense that it's not about Masozi's behavior but at the whole situation; it feels like he's juggling sixteen plates and if he drops any of them someone who's his responsibility will be hurt, which is the worst thing he can imagine, and every time he looks away someone throws a new plate on his hands. Lan Xichen feels an odd sort of unendorsed guilt; Masozi is his responsibility and that means that, somehow, he should have picked up Masozi earlier and prevented this from happening. Lan Xichen feels a sort of compassion for Masozi as another human being, and one who has suffered a lot in his life, and Lan Xichen feels shame about that emotion; that might make him care about people who aren't his, and the only thing he's allowed to care about are the people who are his. 

Feelings that are more in the background but are coloring everything: Lan Xichen admires Masozi greatly for his endurance in the face of suffering and his cleverness and his determination and his willingness to save others. Lan Xichen is intensely charmed by Masozi's excitement about math and Mandarin. Lan Xichen enjoys Masozi's company a good deal. Lan Xichen feels a sort of collector's pride, the kind of feeling you get when you find a mint-condition collectible for sale for a dollar at a garage sale; a sort of smugness about your own taste and your ability to pick up a good deal. 

And carefully separated off from all the other feelings is one about how Masozi is very nice to look at and it would be very desirable to kiss him.  .

Masozi is shaking and wrapping his arms around himself and has absolutely no idea what his feelings in response to this are. They aren't feelings he's familiar with or has words for. 

He's....never had anyone looking out for him. Not like that. Not even his parents, really - looking back, they...were living, each day, but they weren't fighting? They were resigned to a world that was the way it was, a world of vast forces beyond their control and sometimes those forces were monsters that took their children in the night, and they would weep quietly and dry their tears and move on, quietly resigned that either they would live or they would die and which of those it would be had never been in their power to decide... 

...and there are other notes in the packet of emotions that are confusing, even disconcerting. Why the shame - with just emotions, no thought-content, it's hard to parse what he's ashamed of, but it feels like it's - ashamed of noticing that people matter -? 

And - he's not sure that it's...strategically correct, for Lan Xichen to pick him? That once he's picked someone as one of his enclave he stands by them, THAT makes sense, the expectations of others it builds, the equilibrium it leads to... But Masozi hadn't thought he had...passed those tests, not yet. He's pretty sure that if it were his enclave, with limited resources to protect others, there would have been more tests, and Masozi would have risked automatically failing them with his recent problems-causing. And - he doesn't want to be Shanghai's mistake, he doesn't want to be the reason they lose other alliances and fewer of their people survive, that wouldn't be worth it even if it got him personally out - 

"Sorry," he manages, barely. There's no reason for this to make it impossible to talk right now, and yet. 

"I don't ally this early normally. My plan before you say that is to give you enough resources to see what you can make of yourself, and then decide whether to ally with you. But now either we throw our resources behind you or you are very likely to die, and it is a waste for you to die, so you are our ally."

A day ago he...would have said that he thought he had not-terrible chances? But, well, a lot of WHY he thought that were because of - exactly the things Lan Xichen pointed out. Because he can learn fast, and he's kept himself alive this long, and he has a valuable affinity and that makes him worth teaming up with. And, well, also he was in fact missing so much context about - well, just about everything. He's already doing better than just about anyone he ever knew before a few days ago, and that wouldn't have been good enough. 

"Thank you," he whispers into his folded knees. 

Lan Xichen kneels beside him and hugs him. "I'm certain we can get this misunderstanding sorted out."

Masozi is not sure if he's literally ever been hugged in this particular way before. Presumably his parents...picked him up, ever, when he was small...but he doesn't really remember much before he was six, and by then he was close to on his own, and certainly SINCE then it's never come up. The last time anyone touched him in a way that was even a bit voluntary on his part, aside from very small things, was....his mother on her deathbed, probably. 

It's a little bit scary - and it would be a lot scarier if he hadn't just felt Lan Xichen's emotions directly, and even with that it's a bit uncomfortably salient that Lan Xichen is much bigger and stronger than him and could physically stop him from leaving if he felt like it - but mostly it's...nice? 

"Okay," he says, still a little shaky but less so. "Okay. I'll - be more careful - I'll be so careful..." 

"I want to send you around with freshman Shanghai enclaver to teach you, but my options aren't good. If Song Lan is still alive he is ideal, but now I have Nie Huaisang who breaks into tears in the cafeteria, Wei Wuxian who never hears of a rule he doesn't break, Jiang Cheng who has a temper, Wen Ning who has no temper at all and anyway is surrounded by enclavers you can offend, and Lan Wangji who answers all questions with 'Mn.'"

"...I don't mind if someone cries. He seemed like he - maybe needed someone to look out for him, anyway? ...And I like Wei Wuxian but maybe I should just learn math and Mandarin from him, and not anything about rules." 

"--Actually I shouldn't assume you want to ally with Shanghai. Do you?"

“- I think that allying with Shanghai is the best way for me to not die and learn useful things like Mandarin and math?” Which is approximately the same thing as wanting, at least according to Masozi. 

"Welcome to the enclave. I'd say something nicer but I have to send Meng Yao to kowtow at whomever the New York second in command is."

"Oh. Okay." 

Shiver. 

"...I'm sorry?" Masozi adds again, pointlessly.