She doesn't want to give the list in front of Bella; New Orleans wasn't very high on it. "Why, if I tell someone with an affinity like yours what all the best enclaves are, you'll beat me out for them."

"Well I'm guessing Toronto's not as high on the list as it used to be, considering."

"List modifications of the day have been Sacramento down, Toronto way down, Boston up, New Orleans up, Santa Barbara down. Should I post live rankings somewhere? That sounds like a great way to die, actually."

"What happened with Santa Barbara again?"

"I don't know, the Toronto sibling deal is still really hard to beat." Julian privately thinks he could get it a la carte, but he shouldn't be insensitive about it. 

"I mean, yes, but an enclave affiliation in here is worth a lot less if your enclavemates - I guess, realistically it was probably a one-off - uh, Santa Barbara is just going off Bella's comment that the girl was friendly with the Pisa maleficer."

"Oh, right. I guess that's worth a small adjustment, even if it's probably just the one kid."

"What's wrong with Sacramento?"

"This morning they heard about Chantal and had a big collective freakout, it turned out because they have a - suicidal sophomore who they were previously only supervising during the day and now will have to do something about at night?"

"...what kind of sophomore can't kill themselves at night? Did they take away all his sharps?"

"His sister has strongarmed the rest of them into burning a ton of resources keeping him alive, or maybe they all just collectively agreed to do that. Such as, for example, babysitting him at night."

"I have no idea why the Void news changed anything, I did not exactly ask! I actually did not ask the stressed-out Sacramento seniors any questions but I did ding them secretly on my list."

"Maybe I can ask Raleigh next time I see him if it doesn't seem like it would be - too soon, or whatever."

"Maybe the depressed kid is really central to his year's graduation strategy and they think he'll snap out of it?" 

"Can't rule it out. Maybe he can get meds from the nurse or something."

"Depressed kid is a sophomore."

"....they could have planned in advance?"

"They probably grew up with him and even the ones who aren't literally his sister think of him as a brother and it's hard to let go. But - if I were him it'd make it even worse. That I wanted to die and instead I was taking everyone I cared about down with me."

"Yeah." Not really a lot you can add to that. 

Nod nod.

"Wonder how much of the enclave will be left before he dies?"

"In Surabaya sometimes with really old families, the ones who don't have an enclave but they own their land and it's very well shielded and maybe not all the paths precisely obey geometry, when your grandmother or your mother gets very very old, and forgetful, you start guarding her, because she can't do it herself, guarding her like you would a child only it's even harder because she's fully grown and has lots of mana, and then one day you just fall asleep because you're so tired, and then that's that, and no one blames you, even though they would if you hadn't tried at all. 

My grandparents told my parents not to do that. Because objectively it's not actually the slightest bit better to work yourself to exhaustion first, it's just a game."

"...makes sense," murmurs Bella. "If looking out for him hasn't killed anybody yet they might just think they can get him through it, though..."

"If it works out I will, uh, give them my points back on the list, I guess."

"I guess I don't know how true it is that watching someone all night is actually impossible."