Wait, what now? 

Wait, WHAT now?

- is he okay? Do they still do that in China? Maybe it's a- signaling thing, that he's super unconcerned about mals? Julia is not sure he should be that unconcerned about mals! She can't protect him! She's a freshman! And the seniors and most of the juniors are currently running around having their freakout! It's just the New York sophomores and freshmen here! Who are not equipped to solve mal-related - well, actually, Orion could handle it. Julia is pretty sure Chinese people don't know about Orion yet. 

"Uh, hi," she opens her mouth to say, but you can't respond to that with "uh, hi", that's a protagonist of Legally Blonde thing to do but Julia is not out of her element here, she is IN her element here, she is in her very own reading room. 

"- please sit down and have some tea," she says instead. Tea goes with bowing. And that's showing off, a little; New York has tea. "It's real, not illusioned, because the teapot's picky."

He stops bowing, sits down, and politely waits for her to pour him a cup of tea. "Thank you, ma'am. I understand that one of our allies has offended New York and Lan Xichen would like to send his deepest apologies and express his great shame about this fact."

She does not know who Lawn Gee-chin is! Presumably someone important in Shanghai! Julia tries to think who has insulted her so far this week and can't come up with anything. "Uh, it's -  all seagulls to me?" Oh no, that's probably insulting. "I mean, I don't know who you're referring to."

He considers 'I don't expect you to pay attention to the details of our unimportant enclave' but dismisses it as passive-aggressive. "Ma'am, I'm sorry, it must be the language barrier. Our new ally is Masozi."

" - wait, seriously? That's smelly garbage dump maleficer kid, right?" Oh no that's definitely impolitic. "Not that he'd be smelly if not for the garbage dump! I don't think it's intrinsic."

Wow, that's impressive, she's worse at politics than Lan Wangji. Or maybe this is how they do politics in the Anglosphere? Maybe she's insulting him to show that she can get away with it. Which is fine, being insulted is also cheap.

"Masozi is a former maleficer. Of course, should he return to his old ways, Shanghai will handle it. We have no tolerance for maleficing in the enclave."

" - I mean - 

- okay, I'm a freshman, as you must have noticed, from the fact my haircut isn't horrible, and really you need to talk to Annaka about this like right now, or Olivia if you can't find her, but I think you are......maybe underrating how big of a problem this is? Or maybe not, because you bowed kind of a lot, but - uh maybe you have what kind of problem this is sideways? Like, you're trying to solve the problem that Masozi called me a stupid slut or something - he didn't, just, uh, I see how you'd approach that, if that had happened, by being like OUR WHOLE ENCLAVE IS VERY ASHAMED, and I would appreciate that! If that were what happened. But actually the thing the seniors are worried about is that he's stalking the next Domina's son and several people have conveniently dropped dead in his general vicinity and blah blah blah Chicago - I'm not actually sure how Chicago factors into this except SOMEONE did it and we don't know who and that's just, like, you don't go OUR ENCLAVE IS VERY ASHAMED about that problem?

If, uh Beijing had been destroyed the hour of induction and then New York had adopted a maleficer who was stalking one of your freshmen after you'd told him to fuck off and a couple people were already dead and we were like 'oh he's cool now' then I think you'd probably want us to stop that? Rather than to bow? Or in addition to bowing?"

"I would want to talk with those in charge about the misunderstanding, ma'am."

"Seems like a really good idea except they're, you know, all running around talking to everyone else's seniors, because they think Masozi might be on a murder spree and you might be planning to let him as long as he dumps the mana on you! - hey Frank!"

Frank is just exiting the reading room that Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires share. "Julia," he says irritably.

"This is - uh, I don't ...know if he gave his name -"

"I'm Meng Yao, ma'am."

"This is Meng Yao! From Shanghai!"

"Get out of here, Julia, go find your sister," says Frank, and sits down right next to her on the couch, not really leaving her enough space.

"I don't know where she is!!"

"That is why I said 'go find her'. - she's with Kyoto, or Tokyo if she's done with Kyoto, and depending how those went, with either Beijing or St. Petersberg, after that -"

"Okay.

Don't - die."

Frank does not dignify that with a response. "You're here about Masozi?" he says to Meng Yao.

"Yes, sir." Should he bow again-- it would be sort of awkward at this point and the bow did make Julia uncomfortable-- he bows without kowtowing. "Unfortunately, we're not clear on what he did, because about forty minutes ago he found Lan Xichen and started crying because he'd been informed he offended New York and he had no idea how, and since then we've been scrambling to find you to apologize. But we apologize wholeheartedly and we take full responsibility."

The kid does not have a power-sharer, so this is not an actual conversation with Lan Xichen. 

"Uh, he mostly gave offense by being a maleficer, and you can mostly take full responsibility by having nothing to do with him."

"Are you aware of him maleficing in the school? We didn't know he had done such a thing."

"Oh, are we going with 'she just caught an extremely severe extremely sudden flu' - look, Lan Xichen is wildly out of line, the thing he's doing here is completely insane, everyone is terrified, and we're going to have a repeat of last year or worse if you guys don't step way the fuck down. And if he wants to have diplomatic talks, like, by all means, sounds great, I am aware as anyone else that the way this is headed none of us graduate. But tell him this: don't go after Annaka's kid sister who she's constantly fretting about, don't send - minions - come up here your goddamned self and tell us how many bodies we're supposed to drag away for you."

Okay, now he's pretty sure that insulting people is what they do in Anglosphere politics. New York was definitely invited to the sworn brotherhood party, it wasn't his fault they didn't send people.

"I'm Lan Xichen's sworn brother. Sir."

What. What does that even mean. It can't be an alliance, you don't announce those sophomore year. Frank hates these people and hates that if he just says 'and I'm the Queen of England', which is really tempting, then maybe everyone will die. 

"I wouldn't put up with maleficing from my literal actual brother," he says instead, which probably isn't better but at least isn't low-effort. "If you're standing by 'she got the flu' then what are you here to say."

"I don't know who 'she' is, sir. Masozi confessed in a very confused way that he'd done something to offend you and we hurried to apologize as quickly as we could."

Frank takes a deep breath.

"Oh. Okay. Sorry. Look, it's been - so on Thursday and Friday Masozi stalked our freshmen, including the Domina's son who has a weird characteristic that makes him particularly vulnerable to maleficers, so we were pretty freaked out, and conducted an investigation. And we learned that Masozi's so good at drawing from rats it doesn't even hurt, which I assume you knew, and which suggests he can't go clean, so that's cool, and we learned that he got his slot in a unlikely mal attack coincidence and also has an affinity for mal control, which he lied to us about. And then we were trying to track down the kids who went on a supply run with him and one of them was missing, found mostly dead in her room drained of all her life force, so at that point we're about ready to make the call and then Seoul's like 'oh, yeah, Shanghai adopted him', and that's how my day has been going, how about yours."

"Well, I was pulled away from making healing potions by my sworn brother"-- groveling is cheap but he will let himself emphasize that phrase-- "by the discovery that unbeknownst to us our new ally offended the most powerful enclave in the Scholomance, and then once I went to apologize I discovered that they're trying to kill our ally and possibly start a war, so this has not been one of the better days of my life either. Sir."