On Saturday, Ayako puts her 'ask Jiang Yanli what on earth is going on with her brother' plan into practice.
('Are you sure this isn't a little early to be doing even more interpersonal bullshit,' some hypothetical person might say, and Ayako would tell them, 'I am not sure of that at all, but it needs to happen sometime and it's not like I have anything else scheduled right now.')
Yanli is in her room. "Hello?" she says when Ayako knocks.
Her entire body hurts and she was looking forward to spending today curled up in bed resting, but she's smiling wide; she doesn't want to trouble Ayako with her problems.
...something's wrong with that but she isn't sure what.
"Hi," she says, and closes the door behind her. "I... spent most of yesterday studying with Jiang Cheng and I was wondering about a few things and you seemed like the person to ask?"
"Of course!" she says cheerfully and sits down. "You know, it's been two years but I still feel terrible whenever I can't offer a guest tea."
...
Ayako sits down next to her and doesn't comment on the fact that Yanli is absolutely, definitely, 100%, putting on a face right now. The fact that 'performance affinity' doesn't just mean singing and theatrical acting is one she'd like to keep up her sleeve for a while yet.
"We can go to the vending machine together sometime, maybe," she says, deliberately keeping the offer vague so that Yanli doesn't have to turn her down directly if she would rather not. "Anyway, um-- so he keeps saying things very angrily about Wei Wuxian's math courseload, and only calms down when I mention you? And usually I'd leave it alone but I'm trying to work out how to manage that without stressing out Wen Ning and it occurred to me that I could ask instead of just going ahead with trial and error."
"Oh, Jiang Cheng," she says fondly. "He didn't change at all."
Is that a deflection? Usually she can tell when she's being deflected but Wen Qing said Yanli had fibromyalgia and the putting-on-a-face might just be that she's in pain.
"He... seems like he'd be very sweet if I knew how to avoid the things that rile him up, I just. Don't."
"Everything riles him up," she says, "he's... not good at emotions other than 'angry.' I can usually calm him down but I think that's harder for people who aren't me."
"Ah. That..."
What is the right thing to say, here.
"...makes sense of the thing where I think the closest to relaxed I've ever seen him was when I said 'oh, you must be Yanli's brother' in our history class."
She smiles. "Both of my brothers love me very much. They're quite filial in that way."