These drugs are really good!

The walls are really fascinating. He spent ten minutes running his hands along them marveling at what they feel like. And then he started staring at the door. The door is so beautiful. How did he not realize the door was so beautiful before?

He feels warm and safe and happy and at peace. Everything in the world is incredibly good.

He should find Lily and tell her the world is good! She might not know. He likes her so much. She's the best person in the world probably.

Lily hears someone (or something) coming towards her, and turns with a hand on her athame. 

"Oh," she says. "It's you again."

He flops on the floor next to Lily and is immediately distracted by the floor. The floor is so good???? He pats it. 

Okay, something is definitely off about Stalky Maleficer right now. Best to keep a close eye on him.

"What is it now?", she asks.

Oh!!! Lily is still there. He likes Lily.

"I love you," he announces.

"Really now."

Yep, this kid is definitely on something.

"Yeah!!! You gave me candy!! For free!!! And didn't hit me."

Wow, this kid's standards are incredibly low. Kind of makes sense if he's illiterate and a maleficer, but still.

"Well," she says, as one might to a particularly slow dog, "If you want to help me, you can by being quiet and letting me study."

"Oh! Okay. I can be very quiet." He returns to petting the floor.

She waits a moment to make sure Xue Yang is actually obeying, then cautiously goes back to her work.

Wow! This book is so pretty. He wants to take it out and look at it.

Shapes!! The letters are shapes. They're such good shapes. He's going to flip through the book admiring the shapes and the feel of the paper.

Lily looks over and sees Xue Yang playing with her dictionary, and sighs. "I'm using that book. You can have this book instead." She hands over the densest of her Latin readers, the one she's probably not going to get to today. As an added bonus it happens to have some nice illustrations that might hold his attention.

Wow! This book has pictures?! And some of the pictures are of horrible bloody battles?! Truly Xue Yang is the most blessed person in the world.

"I love you," he announces again. "You're good."

She has a sudden urge to pat him on the head, which is obviously insane so she doesn't do it. 

She carefully retrieves the dictionary. "You're being very good. Now just stay quiet for me, alright?"

!!!!!!

He's good! Xue Yang has never been good before. He likes being good. It makes him feel glowy.

Lily said to be quiet but even if he's quiet he can very quietly put his face on her leg. Sofffffffft.

Lily startles, and pulls away a little - 

But honestly it's kind of hard to take him seriously as a threat when he's like this. 

And she has work to do. 

She lets him stay, and keeps writing.

Soft. Soft soft soft soft. Nice to pet. Lily is the most perfect person in the world and her leg is also so soft???? How can this be. It is a mystery. He must investigate it thoroughly with petting. 

Okay that's a little much. 

She gently takes Xue Yang's hand off her leg. "No touching, please."

The best person in the world was unimaginably mean to him. :(((((((

He goes over in the corner and starts crying. Very quietly, so he can be good. He is suspicious that perhaps good people get candy.

Oh no she was mean to the maleficer - 

He's high and also PROBABLY EVIL and definitely stupid. 

... she still feels guilty though. It's like she kicked a puppy that was trying to bite her. 

She opens her pack and digs out a pack of smarties she got from Kevin and pours a handful into her hand and holds it out. 

MULTIPLE candies!!!

...

...

...

holy shit candy tastes amazing on drugs

Lily has broken the Xue Yang

He's kinda cute when his brain goes all frizzy like that. 

She's petting his hair before she really realizes what she's doing. 

Hairpets and candy!!!! This is the best day of Xue Yang's life.

What is she doing???

She carefully removes her hand from Xue Yang's hair. "Now please be quiet and let me study."

He will!! He will do such a good job at quiet!!!

The book is so pretty.

At last, some peace and quiet.

This is the hardest thing Xue Yang has ever done but he just keeps reminding himself that he's good.

Enough time passes that she can almost forget he's there. He really is being good.

She gives him another small handful of smarties for proper behaviour.

!!!!!!! 

He goes into the library and obtains another book. In this one the letters have different shapes. Maybe it's intended to be decorative?

She returns to studying, since Xue Yang seems to be occupying himself.

Being quiet until Lily talks to him is VERY HARD but Xue Yang is VERY DETERMINED.

At a certain point a bunch of pretty lights start dancing in front of his eyes and he can entertain himself for a long time by watching them.

Eventually she's stuffed enough Latin into her brain that she should really change topics and do her homework. 

Xue Yang's being really quiet. She glances down at him and sees him staring off into space. Yep, that seems about the size of it. 

God damn it why is she getting attached to the crazy high maleficer boy. This is absolutely the worst thing she could possibly do for her survival. 

"Hey," she asks. "You okay?"

He was good! And now Lily is talking to him.

He says, "you're the best person in the whole world. If anyone is ever mean to you I'm going to murder them."

Well that's a nice little reminder. "Please don't murder people for me, it'll probably get me killed."

"But if they're mean to you they deserve it."

"Being satisfied would not make me any less dead."

"If you don't kill people when they insult you then they'll think you're a wimp and kill you."

"The people here don't do that. They do kill you if you do murders. Trust me on this."

Lily is very naive and has no idea how the world works. He will have to protect her with murders. Quiet murders. 

He tries to think about what else you should do for people who are very good.

"Do you want to fuck?"

What the hell kind of question is that?

"No." 

"I'm really good at it!"

"Somehow I seriously doubt that's true especially when you're intoxicated."

"I had lots of repeat clients!"

"You were a prostitute??"

"Yeah? How else would I earn money?"

"You know what, forget I asked."

"I haven't had sex with a girl but I bet it's the same principle."

"The same principle... as what?"

She should not have asked that but it's like she's staring at an ongoing trainwreck and she can't look away.

"Sex with men? You moan a bit and act like you like them and don't use teeth."

What was she expecting. 

"I see. Well, I'm not interested."

"Okay."

This is very sad. Lily is very soft. Probably if he touched her under her clothes she would be even more soft.

"...What do you want?"

"I want you to do your studies so you don't fucking die to homework next to me."

"Okay. I can do that. --The homework kills you?"

"If you don't do it it comes to life and attacks you. That's part of why I'm doing homework now."

"Is that normal at schools?"

"Only at this one."

"I wish I could do your homework so it wouldn't eat you."

"You would need to know a lot of complicated things to do that, starting with how to read in English and Mandarin and do simple arithmetic, which is incidentally your exact class load."

"...so if I learn things I can help you?"

"If you learn things you can help me. And I am willing to help you learn things because that makes you less of a danger to me because it will mean you don't attract killer homework, and then you could maybe help me with my Mandarin lit class because you probably understand spoken Mandarin better than me even if your reading is terrible. You'll still probably get me killed for associating with a maleficer but frankly I doubt I can get rid of you at this point."

"I could... watch you quietly from far away to make sure you don't get hurt?"

"I'm not helpless, I have a force spike spell and a rip-apart hex and my athame which is also spelled. I survived a year on my own after my sister died."

"But if there are two of us watching you you're even less likely to get hurt!"

"That's fair, but again, associating with a maleficer."

She pauses. "If you've killed somebody already this would be a really good time to tell me."

"...can we talk about this somewhere privately?"

"We can use my room, it's before curfew."

"Does that mean we're going to have sex?"

She laughs bitterly. "No."

"Oh. Okay." He thinks about it. "I should get you candy."

"I'd definitely take it. Now let's get going, curfew is in only a couple hours."

He thinks he should hold her hand on the way to her room.

She lets him.

!!!!!!

The drugs are wearing off but this is still the best thing in the world. It is maybe (he suspects) better than chocolate.

Such a cute little maleficer. 

She opens the door to her room, steps inside, and sits down on the bed.

He closes the door.

"I killed a dude to get here and Tintin because he caught me. --And I'm going to kill the entire Kunming enclave."

She just sighs. "Why, what did they do to you?"

He holds up his left hand, which doesn't have a pinky finger.

"Okay, that's justifiable. But you're going to bring hell down on me if I help or am even vaguely in the vicinity when you do that. I strongly advise against, and if nothing else could you please do it far away from me?"

"But if I kill them some other time there are going to be a bunch of adult wizards who might kill me."

"You say, when there are still plenty of seniors here who might kill you just the same."

For the first time in his life, Xue Yang considers the subject of delayed gratification.

"So you're saying I should wait until I'm stronger... and then kill them later?"

"Exactly. And that way I can maybe actually graduate if you're clever enough."

"I can do that."

"Very good! Here, you can have the rest of the package of Smarties for that." She hands it over.

He devours the Smarties.

"...where do you get the candy from?"

"I got into the scholomance by carrying a bunch of luxuries like candy for Chicago. Then Chicago up and vanished. So I have a bunch left over."

"So the candy's going to run out?"

"Not for a very long while."

He considers delayed gratification for a second time.

"We should... be careful with the candy?" he says questioningly. "So there will be more later?"

She nods. "Very good!"

"And then you can have candy too!"

"I mean, if you want to share. I would rather trade candy for something more useful like spells or enchanted items."

He's confused about this. Why would you want something more than candy?

Employing his new concept of Delayed Gratification, he decides that probably this is so you can get more candy later. 

"In any case, I need to keep studying. Can we continue this back at the library?"

"Yes."

Off to the library! More handholding?

More handholding!

He is going to pick up one of these books and learn how to read. How hard can it be.

She is going to quietly write in her book in Mandarin. 

She writes: 

Lily's Luxury Emporium

- My stalker 

- has admitted 

- they are the cause

- of your missing freshman 

- plus one other

- please help

Next to it she draws her best sketchy rendition of a lily flower. It's not very good.

Marian has been kind of stewing in the back of her mind ALL AFTERNOON about the horribly traumatized illiterate maleficer kid who she gave either ketamine or MDMA (who knows which? she can probably make a guess by asking him about the effects but it's not like she's an expert on either.) 

After dinner, she finally gets up the courage to leave her warded infirmary again. She managed to sweet-talk the void wall into giving her two entire 1L bottles of Pedialyte; literally the only thing she can remember about this is that they had a teenage patient once who took MDMA for a rave, stayed up all night dancing, and then collapsed of dehydration. 

Knife at the ready, she asks various students until she's able to learn from the Shanghai table that the creepy Mandarin-speaking maleficer kid is stalking some other girl. Lily? And someone saw them in the library earlier. 

Well, if Wen Qing is willing to accompany her, they have some MEDICAL FOLLOWUP to do. Which is an important component of nursing care that Wen Qing also needs to be learning about, so. 

Carrying her knife in one hand, with a bottle of Pedialyte awkwardly shoved into both her front pockets, she treks library-ward with Wen Qing. 

Oh no. Reading is hard.

Why are they trying to keep the maleficer alive again.

Lily looks up at the sound of footsteps, and barely keeps the look of relief off her face. It's Wen Quing. She's saved.

Marian can try to explain, quietly, while they're on the stairs. 

"He's our patient. I'm not - if there's, like, a justice system in here, I won't stop the enclaves from deciding to execute him? But medical ethics means that you do your best for every patient. Even if they're a convinced criminal. ...I had a patient once who was brought in from prison." 

.......wait did he get a girlfriend? She's so confused. 

Marian smiles and waves at Xue Yang. 

"Hi - you must be Lily? I'm the school nurse. I gave him some drugs earlier because he, uh, came to the infirmary and wanted that. So I wanted to follow up and make sure he's all right." 

She offers the bottles of Pedialyte to Xue Yang. "Uh, can one of you who speaks Mandarin tell him that it's important to drink lots of fluids when you take the drugs I gave him. This has electrolytes and stuff too." 

To Xue Yang in Mandarin: "It is important to drink this or you'll get sick."

Xue Yang has never drunk this weird thing when he's on drugs before and he's still alive. He looks at it suspiciously.

"It's just water with sugar and some salt in it. ...Did he eat supper?" 

In English: "Yes, I'm Lily. And it's been apparent. He's been staring at things all afternoon and being very touchy feely." She pets him on the head. 

To Xue Yang, she says: "Please drink it for me? I can give you a little candy with it." 

Then she looks over at Wen Quing. 

"Wen Quing. A pleasure to see you here. Would you please look at this new design for a shop sign I want to show to Nie Huaisang? It's very important to me that he get it right."

She tears the page out of her binder and offers it, badly done lily and all.

Petition! For things! To stop happening!

She takes out her acupuncture needles, aims carefully, and throws them. 

...Suddenly he's collapsed on the floor and he can't move. 

He struggles against the needles piercing his wrists and ankles.

Marian goes rigid. 

"Wen Qing. What. Is happening." 

"Apparently he killed Song Lan."

"That's–" 

"Oh." 

"Fuck." 

"Or so Lily claims. I'm not going to believe her without some sort of the investigation-- no offense intended, Lily."

In Mandarin: "Lily! Lily! She hurt me! Lily, help!"

Marian is INTERNALLY SCREAMING but she has a lot of practice at keeping that sort of thing internal. 

"Yeah," Marian says tightly. "I - sorry - but he's my patient so there had fucking better be an investigation." 

In English: "Respectfully, I'm so fucking dead if I'm lying, mostly from him. But I'm willing to submit to truth potion."

She pats his head softly. In Mandarin: "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do."

"Did he, like, literally confess it to you? Are you sure he was telling the truth?" 

Marian...doesn't, actually, doubt that this kid would have killed another kid to get in. He did, in fact, talk to her about doing crimes. She just...doesn't want him to die. Because she's attached. Like an idiot.