When dinner is finished, Nie Huaisang says in English, "come to my room so I can measure you to tailor your clothes."

"- Oh, all right." Masozi glances over at Lan Xichen for approval of this, he's not sure if he was expected to be on lookout duty or something, but he didn't have other specific plans tonight so this seems fine. 

Lan Xichen nods slightly.

Then Masozi will follow Nie Huaisang so he can get his clothes modified to fit better! (He has never experienced this process before and is very curious about what it involves.) 

Nie Huaisang does not give the impression of having the best situational awareness in the world, so Masozi is extra careful– well, more accurately, he goes back to his previous default level of careful about looking for mals. 

"I'm Nie Huaisang, I don't think we've gotten a chance to talk really? I'm an artist. I do a little bit of everything-- some drawing, some sewing, some writing-- used to do photography and painting but supplies for that are harder here--"

That seems like a weird skill for someone to prioritize in the Scholomance. "Is that your affinity?" 

"Yep! Visual art. Not very useful for survival but I think it's important to have those little pleasures that make life worth living, don't you?"

Nie Huaisang has mastered the art of watching for mals while apparently focusing on his conversation partner.

Masozi has no idea how to respond to that comment, so he just makes a noncommittal sound and keeps following Nie Huaisang.

Nie Huaisang chatters about drawing until they get to his room. Masozi might incidentally wind up learning a lot about shading techniques.

This is actually pretty interesting and Masozi pays attention despite himself. He doesn’t really have anything to add in this conversation.

Nie Huaisang's room has a sign in front that says in both English and Mandarin:

Nie Huaisang's Goods, Oddments, and Little Luxuries

Currently available:
-Commissioned sketches
-Commissioned stories
-Visual pornography
-Tea
-Perfume
-Tweezers
-Scented candles
-Scented soaps
-Dry shampoo
-Chapstick
-LED strips
-Mana
-Mana storage bracelets
-Stimulant pills
-Nicotine
-Alcohol preorders
-Makeup preorders 
-Ask and we'll see if we can get it!

Hours:
-Weekday work periods
-Saturday and Sunday afternoon
-Evenings by arrangement

Please check back for updates on our stock!

The room itself is decorated as if by someone who is very determined to make it look pretty but who has also had only two days and a supply run with which to do so, and also is running a store and not allowed to have drawers. This is as it happens the case. 

A crumpled picture of a bird has pride of place over the desk.

Masozi carefully reads through this entire list. He's not a fast reader even in English. He can proudly point out about four total characters that he recognizes on the Mandarin half and make wild guesses based on which line items match up with the English version. 

Nie Huaisang corrects him about the meaning of the various characters, and also keeps a watch out for mals.

Masozi has caught on to the fact that Nie Huaisang actually has much more situational awareness than he appears to on the surface, and is correspondingly way more relaxed than he was at the start of their walk. 

...They're here for clothes, though, not Mandarin lessons, and also he can't reasonably take notes while standing in the hallway. So they should probably go into the room, and then...hopefully Nie Huaisang will give him instructions on his involvement in the process here? 

His involvement in the process is that Nie Huaisang is going to take a ribbon with numbers on it and hold it up to various parts of Masozi's body while muttering to himself and occasionally scratching down numbers in a book.

...Sure? This is confusing but Masozi patiently holds still for it and tries not to distract Nie Huaisang. 

"I am going to get so much mana for this," he says, "see, you're already contributing to us surviving graduation."

"...Good?" Masozi says uncertainly. And then stops and frowns. "- How does getting mana now help with graduating?" 

He holds up his power-sharer. "Mana goes in here, the seniors can draw on it during graduation."

Masozi goes very still. 

"...You can do that?" he breathes, a long moment later. "That's - so amazing - how hard is it to make one, I need to make one of those -" Maybe he can find a book on it in the library, and hopefully if he shows up extra-early for Monday morning shop, he can scope out safety first and decide if it's worth risking digging for supplies before the others show up...

"If you graduate you can get one. --In the short term you probably want to make mana storage, that's a project a freshman can do."

Okay now he has EVEN MORE reasons to be determined to graduate. "How do I make one? Are there books in the library with instructions?" 

"You'll probably get instructions in shop, everyone gets that at some point."

"I don't want to wait for the shop to give me instructions, I want to do it now! Maybe I can go to the library and find a book and then - can you go to the shop on weekends, is that allowed -?" 

"Yes, but it's low down and no one else will be there and you might die."

Okay, fine, that would be stupid. "Maybe I can find some other people who want to go too and have better combat spells? ...I could ask Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian if they wanted to go, and I can do all the checking for mals." 

Masozi really wants mana storage. He hadn't quite known the right questions to ask about it, before, and everything was so overwhelming, but now that he has the beginnings of a plan he's so impatient. 

"Oh, they'd both be excited to do that. Wei Wuxian loves danger and Lan Wangji loves stabbing things."

"I should ask them after. ...Is there anything else I need to do for the clothes now?" 

"No, but I've decided that your life is horrible and you need some more nice things and you're going to have to sit here while I give them to you. --Normally when people give you gifts they're asking you out but I'm not asking you out, I'm just taking pity on an ongoing tragedy."

"My life isn't horrible!" Masozi protests. "Today was amazing." 

He sits down, though. And puzzles over what 'asking out' means. Is it an idiom he's not familiar with? Taken literally it obviously makes no sense, you can't go outside when you're at the Scholomance, that's the entire point. 

"Right. And now it's going to be more amazing." He takes out a cup and pours some water into it, then sets it heating over a Bunsen burner. "Properly this should be a full tea service with a Yixing teapot and snifter cup and a brush and looseleaf, I can't believe I'm going four years using teabags, but needs must." 

"I don't know what any of those things mean! ...Um, I know what tea is, just not the other things. What does a brush have to do with making tea?" 

"You use the brush to spread the wasted tea evenly over the tea tray, so that the stain creates a pleasing color."

"...That seems not really about the tea?" He's confused. "Why does it matter what the tray looks like." 

"Because it's part of the whole experience. Everything involved is beautiful." The water is hot enough and he puts in the tea to steep.

Masozi still doesn't really get it but he's content to watch, and try to notice the apparent visual appeal of the process. 

Nie Huaisang gives him the cup of tea. "I don't think this is new, the tea I can get in the Scholomance is really quite bad. --I should show you perfume."

Masozi sips the tea. It...is kind of nice, actually, having something genuinely hot to drink. It doesn't in his opinion taste like very much. 

"What's perfume for?" 

"In theory you put it on your body so it smells nice but in the Scholomance I just sniff it, I don't want to run out."

"What does smelling nice...do? Does it give you mana? Is it - like the thing where I need to shower so I don't smell bad, except more?" 

"It makes you happy." He flips through his scents. "L’Air des Alpes Suisses, YSL Y, Bengale Rouge, Hyde... Oh! Tobacco Rose. This will do nicely."

A small bottle, barely wider than a piece of string, is uncapped near Masozi's nose. "Breathe in." 

Masozi breathes in, and then goes very still, looking startled and then thoughtful. 

"...How does it smell like flowers?" he asks eventually. "I don't see any flowers in there." 

"They extracted the chemicals that make roses smell the way they do and put their concentrated essence in the bottle."

"That's so interesting! And then you can - smell flowers even when you're in here and not going to see the outside for years? ...Is there anything that smells like lakes. I miss the way the lake smelled." 

"Oh, you want Cool Water-- I don't normally like it, aquatics are so simple and cheerful and I prefer a more complex scent, but I thought it would be popular in here?" He carefully caps the Tobacco Rose and opens the Cool Water. "You want to take a big sniff of the air between them to clear out your nose so you can appreciate it."

Masozi obediently follows these instructions, and then leans in to sniff the 'Cool Water' smell. 

...He closes his eyes. Breathes in again. It's not exactly what Lake Malawi smelled like, but it - somehow holds a same sort of essence in it? He smells it and it's like he can feel the expanse of water, stretching out to the horizon, the bright line where it meets the sky - if he closes his eyes then he can, for a moment, imagine that it's right there - 

- for some reason this automatically comes along with imagining that he's a small child, again. Small enough that he hadn't, yet, realized that his parents were inevitably going to die. 

(Masozi has now been holding very still for quite a long time.) 

Nie Huaisang wouldn't be sure whether this is a good still or a bad still but, like, it's perfume, how could it go wrong. So he holds the bottle, his hands steady as if it contains a liquid more precious than gold, until Masozi seems to be done.

There are certain memories and emotions that, on reflection, are not actually pleasant or a good idea to dwell on in the Scholomance, and Masozi - with some effort - tries to fold and shove them away, to the quiet corner in the back of his mind along with all his pointless loneliness and pointless regrets. 

"That - was nice," he says, his voice only very slightly shaky. 

"Anytime!" Nie Huaisang says cheerily. Probably Masozi is shaky because of how wonderful perfume is. He very carefully caps it and puts it away, then says, "Hm... what do I want to show you next... porn!"

Oh good a distraction. “What is porn?”

"Sexy pictures! Do you know if you like men or women better? And what kinds of things you fantasize about?"

Masozi does not have the faintest idea, and stares blankly at him. 

"All right, I'll get you both. Something nice and softcore."

He takes out two pictures. One is of a Chinese man, thin to the point of being underweight, with long hair and no body hair; his eyes are half-lidded and his mouth open in arousal as he strokes his erect penis. One is of a white woman with round hips and a big ass and thick thighs and a bit of a stomach and breasts half the size of her head; she contorts herself so the viewer can look at her breasts and her ass at the same time and looks at the viewer with a huge smile that lights up her whole face.

Masozi...continues to be very confused about the point of this! Probably he's supposed to say something, though. 

"...The woman looks like she's probably rich?" he offers. "She looks so healthy. Like she has enough to eat all the time." 

Is that how sexual attraction works in Malawi? Nie Huaisang knows nothing about Malawi.

"...you can have that one if you want," he says, "I don't like girls very much."

"What am I supposed to do with it?" 

...Nie Huaisang raises his estimate of his amount of confusion about Malawi.

"You're supposed to look at it and then get hard and then touch yourself until you come while thinking about fucking her?"

Masozi REMAINS CONFUSED and has no idea what questions to even ask to resolve this! 

"But I...don't think I want to fuck her?" he says finally. "I guess maybe I...want to imagine that she could be my baby sister's new mother, because she'd take such good care of her, but that doesn't seem like the same thing." 

"Okay, but what kinds of people do you want to fuck?"

How on earth is he supposed to know the answer to that question??? 

"I...never thought about it before?" Masozi says slowly. 

"... ... ...I'm not sure how you could avoid thinking about it? It just sort of happens?"

"I don't know when I would've had time to think about it! I just got here and before I got here I didn't have time to think about anything except fighting off mals and learning English better!" 

"Right, but you're looking at someone and it just sort of pops into your head... wow this person is pretty I want to touch them... wait, you do know what sex is, right?"

"Yeah! It's how women get pregnant with babies. And I guess people do it just because? ...My parents did it a lot. I guess that's why my mother was always pregnant." 

"Oh that's not very good sex ed at all."

'Sex ed' is a really baffling concept!

Masozi clears his throat. "Are you - do people usually go to classes on how to fuck?" 

"Okay, so, sex feels nice? Which is why people like doing it. It's actually the most intense physical pleasure you can experience unless you take drugs. In the outside world if you have sex with girls there's medicine she can take to keep from getting pregnant but it's not very reliable in here, so you shouldn't have sex with girls until you graduate. And you shouldn't go 'oh, I'm going to go be alone with this girl and kiss her but not have sex', because kissing makes you want sex and then you might end up having sex with her anyway."

(Nie Huaisang takes this on faith because he can't imagine any other process that would make him want to have sex with a girl.)

"But you can have sex with guys because if you have sex with guys you can't have kids. So you kiss and touch each other and say nice things to each other. And sometimes if you're into that kind of thing you can hurt him or tie him up or say mean things to him or boss him around, some people like that-- or the other way around, like, maybe you want to get hurt and bossed around. And then when you really want to you can touch his dick or put his dick in your mouth or rub your dicks together or put your thighs together so he can rub his dick between them. Or you can get some spit and spread it on your ass and then you can put fingers in it or his dick or a dildo, and that feels really incredibly good. And then you both come and you feel all happy and cuddle."

"...I'm still confused," Masozi says, blankly. "- I don't get why people take drugs either - wizards, I mean - it sounds like it'd be really bad for keeping a lookout for mals." 

"Because it's fun and makes them happy?"

"But learning spells is fun too and it's more useful for surviving?" 

"Okay, so, I think what you need to do is next time you wake up hard you should touch it and then this will rapidly answer your questions about why people have sex." He considers this dubiously. "I think it still works if you don't have anything sexy to think about."

"...How long does it take to test it? I usually have things I want to do in the morning before breakfast." Namely, sneaking into the bathrooms and collecting mal grubs to add to the little mal-grub-terrarium he's set up in one of his dismantled drawers, next to the one with the dung beetles, covered in mesh from the shop supply room.

"Maybe ten minutes? I don't know if it'd be longer because you don't know what you're doing or shorter because you haven't come much."

"...Come?" Masozi says blankly. He's not familiar– well, he knows the word but in this context it's just baffling. 

"The part where your penis shoots out white stuff and it feels incredibly good and then afterwards you are kind of flopped and happy. --It's, uh, the primary part that makes a baby if you're having sex with a girl but you definitely shouldn't put your penis inside a girl at all, they can get pregnant before you come."

"- Oh. That. I think that's happened a few times when I was sleeping but I don't remember what I'd been dreaming about before. Is it...does it happen when you dream about things related to fucking?" 

"Yeah. Or people you're attracted to, or kissing."

Nie Huaisang tries to remember if there's anything else he's supposed to mention. "Don't have sex with girls or kiss girls in private places" covers a lot of the potential problems.

"Also, if you're having sex with someone you're only supposed to have sex with people who are enthusiastic about it, having sex with people who are meh on it tends to fuck them up. If someone says 'no' don't try to convince them."

"Okay. ...So - if I'm not enthusiastic about it then I shouldn't and I should say no if someone wants to?" 

"I mean, sometimes you have to have sex with people to get things you want? They shouldn't take advantage of it but that doesn't mean it isn't the best thing for you to do."

Tricking people into thinking you're into them, he decides, is the Advanced Class.

Oh. That makes sense. 

"- Do you think there's anyone who would trade fucking for mana storage?" 

"You're really pretty-- lots of guys would kill to be as skinny as you-- so probably? Especially once I get you some clothes that fit. But I think that's the kind of thing Lan Xichen would frown on as being contrary to the dignity of Shanghai unless you're more subtle about it than I think you can be."

Is that too close to an admission? Eh. It's probably fine. 

"Oh. How - do you do it subtly? Is it the sort of thing you have to practice?" 

"You want to pretend you're just into it for the sex-- or romance, I'm not sure if you know what romance is either-- but sort of let them know through subtext that you want mana storage a lot and you'd be so happy if they gave it to you, and then they know that the sex and/or romance are dependent on you getting mana storage."

"....Oh. That sounds hard." Probably he should - ask Lan Xichen if this is even a good strategy for getting mana storage, compared to building it himself in shop or trading for mal lookout duty. 

"If you're an enclaver-- not an ally-- you have to know about this kind of thing because people are going to be constantly pretending to be into you so they can get nice things."

There. A perfectly good explanation for why he thinks about this.

"That sounds confusing! How...do you even tell when someone is pretending to feel a way that they don't really?" 

"Well," he says judiciously, "probably they're going to try to get you to give them mana storage."

"So if I don't have anything useful to give people and they seem to like me then probably they really do?" 

"Yes."

"Oh. That's less complicated then." 

Masozi waits to see if Nie Huaisang wants to show him any more nice things. 

He tries to figure out if there's anything else he should tell Masozi. "--Romance is when you can't stop thinking about someone and your heart beats fast and you feel warm and happy when you think about them, and you want to hold hands with them and hug them and kiss them and give them presents and spend time together just the two of you, and it's really important that they think well of you. You should avoid girls you have romantic feelings for because if you spend time with them you'll want to have sex with them. But if it's a guy you should tell them because romance is fun." He thinks. "I guess it is also distracting from killing mals."

"I don't think I've ever had that feeling. Is it...nice?" 

"I don't think I've had it either but I'm told it's very nice."

"Hmm." 

Masozi...is trying to figure out if he has the 'romantic' feelings about Wei Wuxian or about Lan Xichen. He...definitely really likes being around both of them, and conversations that feel one-on-one are very good, especially with Lan Xichen. That makes him feel warm and happy? Though, so does just being at the Shanghai table; it feels a little bit like he can pretend he has a family again. He wants both of them to think well of him, and...it feels like that isn't just for strategic reasons? 

He had never considered whether he would expect that to go along with wanting to hold hands. Let alone wanting to do fucking together. ...Holding hands with Lan Xichen sounds nice? His brain is still giving him an error message for the latter, though. 

"We're kind of young," Nie Huaisang says, "so we're more likely to just do kissing and things, and not have sex until we're older."

"Holding hands sounds like it could be nice, if it was with someone I liked." (Where 'liked', right now, mostly means 'teaches him interesting things and seems clever and careful enough to trust'.) "I don't know if I would like kissing, I've seen people do it and it just looks....wet?" 

"You could try kissing me? I'm a good kisser. --Kissing people you don't really want to kiss is fine," he explains. "If you're trying to figure things out. If people's clothes are coming off or genitals are involved you should either definitely want it to happen or know exactly what you're getting out of it."

“What makes someone good at kissing or not?” Masozi says uncertainly.

"Paying attention, following the other person's cues, not slobbering all over the other person's face?"

"Oh. Okay." Paying attention to what, he's still not sure. "I...guess you could kiss me so I can see if it's nice or not." 

All right! The first time using his newfound skills on another wizard!

He kisses Masozi on the lips.

That is way more...something...than Masozi was expecting! (He's not sure what he was expecting? Maybe that it would be mostly like eating, which isn't very interesting, but it's not very much like that at all. Then again, it's not like he would normally smush his lips on food.) It turns out lips are warm? This isn't surprising in hindsight but he somehow hadn't been expecting that either. 

He holds very still, because he has no idea what 'cues' he's supposed to be paying attention to and doesn't want to do the wrong thing. And also because he's very startled. 

Okay, normally he expects that people would kiss... back? But he can work with this. 

Masozi will now be inducted into the mysteries of Holding Someone Close, Lip Nibbling, Tongues, and Putting Your Hand In Their Hair Wait We're All Bald Now I Guess Hand On Scalp Works Too.

This manages to be shockingly overwhelming! It’s very hard to tell if he likes it or not because mostly there is just way too much going on! 

He does tense up and pull away slightly when Nie Huaisang demonstrates kissing with Tongue, less because it’s actively unpleasant than because what.

Well, if he pulls away Nie Huaisang is going to stop. 

"What did you think?"

"It's...interesting?" Masozi says uncertainly. "It felt like - more? Than I was expecting it to?" 

"It is very more," Nie Huaisang says.

"I don't think I'm very good at it though." 

"Well, you haven't had any practice. If you're sitting there being overwhelmed you definitely won't be good at it." He considers. "Some people would like that though. It's an innocence thing. 'Look, it's the first time I've done any of this, show me how great it can be.'"

"Huh." Masozi looks thoughtful about this. 

"Anyway," he says. "Have you had candy?"

"Not really. I licked a candy once when we found some, but then I gave it to my sister to eat." 

"Oh, this you'll like! Or possibly find too overwhelming to enjoy!" He opens a box full of assorted things wrapped in plastic. "I'm going to try to be careful with these, they have to last all year, but I think this is a special occasion." He unwraps something green and labeled in Chinese and hands it to Masozi. "Guava candy."

Masozi examines it and then cautiously puts it in his mouth. 

...That is ALSO a lot of sensory experience! It's much more unambiguously pleasant though! Masozi grins at Nie Huaisang. 

"Suck on it, don't bite down, it'll last longer."

Masozi is content to do that! Candy, it turns out, is a very nice experience to be having! 

Watching Masozi have a nice experience is also a very nice experience to be having!

Masozi can, with great discipline, let the candy slowly melt in his mouth over almost five minutes. He silently basks in the experience the entire time. No wonder people like eating candy, and even put some of their weight allowance toward it. This is much less confusing than the entire porn thing! 

When he's done, Nie Huaisang says, "that's all the things I have! But you should feel free to stop by the store during operating hours."

"Okay! Thank you, that was very interesting. - And thank you for fixing clothes for me. I appreciate it very much." 

"You're welcome! Look good in them!"

"I...think looking good is a thing about clothes and not me?" Masozi says blankly. If Nie Huaisang wants him to do something in particular to look good in clothes then Masozi is going to need INSTRUCTIONS. 

"And they will look fabulous because I'm good at my job! See you at breakfast."

And with that Nie Huaisang sits down to earn Shanghai enclave so much goddamn mana.

Masozi troops back to his own room. He's not particularly worried about doing it alone, not this early in the session when there are still hardly any mals by his standards. 

There is a person with a Shanghai powersharer in front of his room casting a spell with a VERY disgruntled expression.

Masozi freezes midstep. 

- he can pull mana from his dung beetles from here, the DOOR is OPEN. Who is this person and what are they doing to his room and why do they look so angry aaaaaaaah–

He considers, briefly, running and getting Lan Xichen, but he doesn't actually know where Lan Xichen is, and besides he isn't helpless. 

"What are you doing," he says, very calmly. 

"Setting up your wards."

"- What?" Masozi says blankly. "Um. Why? I don't - I can't trade anything for them?" Is this some sort of extortion scheme where he'll be in trouble with Shanghai if he doesn't frantically figure out how to pay for wards he didn't even ask for - no one would believe he didn't, though, if the other kid wants to lie about it... 

"--They didn't tell you? Fucking typical."

This is just making less and less sense and it's very stressful! "Who didn't tell me?" 

"Lan Xichen! That you have wards now. Because he doesn't want you to get eaten."

The man's tone of voice implies that he personally is indifferent to the question.

"Oh." This is really confusing! "Does...he want me to trade something for them? I don't have anything except for helping spot mals and I'm already doing that for the clothes." 

"I assume in two weeks he's going to ask for either your eternal loyalty and devotion or a blowjob."

"- Oh." That explains it, then. Sort of? Maybe Lan Xichen is just waiting to see if he can learn Mandarin in two weeks and he'll decide then whether he wants Masozi to keep helping Shanghai? He'll just have to work very very extra hard. 

(Masozi is not a native English speaker and does not have the slightest idea what a 'blowjob' is.) 

"I fucking hate this enclave," Jin Zixun says, mostly to the door.

Masozi really doesn't want this kid to be mad at him! It's honestly sort of terrifying! 

"Do you want mana for it?" he says, slightly frantic. (He is NOT going to use his dung beetles for it, he WON'T, but he's got a decent reserve of mana from his exhausting day, and apparently he doesn't need to try to cast his own protection spell tonight?) 

"No," he says, "because then Lan Xichen will be like 'where did this mana come from, Zixun, did you do a bunch of pushups' and I'll be like 'Masozi gave it to me in exchange for doing his wards' and then he'll be like 'go give it back, we're giving him wards because of the benefit to Shanghai.' What fucking benefit to Shanghai."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Masozi also doesn't know what benefit to Shanghai! Which probably means that someone is going to spring it on him out of nowhere and he needs to try to figure out what it is first! 

Instead of trying for any more interaction, he scurries into his room and sits down and is very quiet. 

Jin Zixun is going to take this as an opportunity to complain at a captive audience.

"What the fuck is wrong with Lan Xichen," he says. "You know, I've had to do wards for four fucking people this week. Wen Qing wants the nurse to stay alive! Wen Qing wants her useless goddamn brother to have bodyguards! And now we've known you for two days, don't even know your family, and we want to ward you to keep you safe. And then one of the fucking bodyguards quits because he thinks you're Lan Xichen's pet maleficer, like, that's a laugh, I wish he had the balls to get a maleficer to keep us safe."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. 

Is that why Shanghai wants him??? It makes a really scary amount of sense! They did make him promise he wouldn't use malia again, but - of course they don't want him to have the maleficer aura, or go crazy and murderous from it too soon. But they know about his affinity, and they know he can pull malia from rats without it hurting him, and - of COURSE that would be a useful weapon for them to have in reserve, not to use right away, but to display and show that they could, if they wanted... 

He's so scared. 

"I'm glad that Wen Qing wants to save her useless goddamn brother and Nie Mingjue wants to save his useless goddamn brother and everyone wants to save fucking Yanli, really I am. It's sweet. But every bit of mana we're putting into trying to cure Yanli's fibro or paying bodyguards for Wen Ning is mana we don't have for graduation, and I don't fancy dying because some people are too sentimental to cut the fucking deadweight."

"....Is Wen Qing's brother going to be okay?" Masozi manages finally. "I - maybe Lan Xichen wants me to take over for that - I, I didn't know I - made his bodyguard quit..." It's very upsetting. 

"He'll be fine, Wen Qing won't let him die. At least until we all get fucking eaten by Patience at graduation."

"I'm sorry!" 

Why is this random person he doesn't even know so mad at him personally for things he didn't ask for! It's really unpleasant and stressful and it's making it hard to think through the considerations on how likely it is that Lan Xichen wants him in reserve to do maleficing again if it's necessary to save Shanghai kids. 

"And, you know, we gotta save the minions too, except you can't call them minions, they're allies now. Gotta make sure all the maintenance track kids pass their classes. 'They're part of Shanghai enclave too' no they fucking aren't. They didn't grow up around us, they're not us, and they're never going to be us, and if we keep defending people who aren't us all of us are going to die." 

Masozi is just going to be very quiet and try to look non-threatening and wait for this to be over. 

"You know, I'm starting to think the Anglos are right about all this shit. No sex in the Scholomance. Lan Xichen might not get a baby from you or Meng Yao but both of you sure are making him an idiot."

That makes SO LITTLE SENSE and somehow manages to be really scary anyway! 

With that statement, Jin Zixun stomps off muttering under his breath.

Masozi shuts his door and, for lack of a way to lock it, drags the desk over against it. 

And then sits down on his bed and tries to think. 

Probably Lan Xichen doesn't, actually, want him to do maleficing again. It...doesn't seem like his style. Though of course that's putting an awful lot of weight on his assessment of Lan Xichen as a person, who he only just met. 

If they do ask him to pull malia again, he can - just say no? And then Shanghai will stop giving him any help and he'll probably die, but...if he used malia he would die anyway. Right? At the very least, he has to hold off until graduation or just before, so that he has time to get his baby sister before he slowly goes crazy and then rots from the inside. 

...If Lan Xichen wants to have sex with him, then– no, he can't possibly, when they met Masozi smelled like garbage. If he did, though, that...would still be better than dying. And honestly better than having to do all the maintenance shifts or something, like he's heard some other kids do for different enclaves. 

Now that the terrifying yelling kid is gone and he's had a chance to calm down, he thinks that probably things are fine actually? And he should just - figure out how to help Wen Qing's brother and Nie Huaisang and Yanli survive, and earn his clothes and his wards that way.