The Scholomance is ugly. Most people don't think this is the biggest problem with the Scholomance, but it's an awful grinding misery, the noise and the food and the bare metal walls that keep him up at night pressing his fingers to his eyelids and trying to see beauty in the lights it sparks.

It's not too bad yet -- he hasn't been here that long -- and he can keep it at bay, a little, with drawings pasted to his walls and poetry recited while he does push-ups and the colorful braided blanket that used to belong to an older brother. But he misses music so badly, and his ocarina only does so much for that.

So when he hears faint notes drifting through the hallway, he stops in his tracks, study group forgotten. His eyes start to slide closed with pleasure -- no, no, he can't do that, that's how you get eaten by mals or bump into an upperclassman carrying an important potion and give deadly offense -- and he's following it almost without meaning to, drawn like a moth to light.

He certainly doesn't notice what doors he goes through, seeking out the music.

Then he will wind up in the girls' bathroom. They don't notice him right away - Chloe's study buddy is supposed to be taking her turn as lookout but she's splashing water on her face instead, and this particular door isn't very noisy when opened.

When it closes, that's when the study buddy screams, and the singing stops, and Rebecca and Chloe scramble out of their stalls in alarm to see what's going on.

"You stopped," he says, looking up at Rebecca with all the disappointed gravitas he can cram into five-feet-nothing and a tiny ponytail.

"That's not a mal - weren't you looking," says Chloe.

"You're a boy!" Rebecca tells Jean, as though this could be news.

He looks down, as if to verify this fact. "--yes. Would it help if I weren't?"

Is she not supposed to sing in front of boys? He feels like there's somewhere with that rule. Saudi Arabia, maybe??

"This is the girls' bathroom!" Rebecca replies.

"I'm sorry," says her study buddy. "I'm sorry, my fault, I should've been looking better -"

"Oh."

This seems like a surmountable problem.

"...can you come sing in the boys' bathroom?"

"I'm not going to go in the boys' bathroom!"

- wait is that screaming -

- wait is that Rebecca’s voice -

Zeke thinks that this is an appropriate moment to barge into the girl’s bathroom! He is so prepared to punch a mal in the face! Or probably actually he would have to use a spell or run away or whatever but that’s not the point!

"Zeke! This is the girls' bathroom!" says Chloe.

"Well he probably heard me scream," says her study buddy reasonably.

"Can we just go out in the hall," says Rebecca. "Thank you Zeke, if there had been a mal it would have been very heroic."

“- I - uh - there wasn’t a - cool,” he says, turning around and walking out of the bathroom.

Girls follow, giving Jean as wide a berth as feasible.

Jean trots after Rebecca like a tiny ponytailed puppy.

"You have the voice of an angel," he informs her, earnestly. "If I had met you at home I would have sent you silk dresses and fresh camellias and pined away outside your windows longing to hear it."

...that's weird. "Um. Thank you?"

"Please won't you sing some more? I'm sorry about the bathroom, I never meant to interrupt you."

These are his most charmingly enormous eyes.

...Rebecca looks uncertainly at the New Yorkers.

"Make him pay you," says Chloe automatically.

“- was this guy, like, the thingy that you were afraid of? If he was then you should, like, collect for emotional damages or whatever, and then he should pay you for singing stuff too. Also I could totally get you a silk dress and camellias at some point.”

"Aww," Rebecca says to Zeke. "And yeah, she screamed because there was a boy in the girls' bathroom, I don't think he did anything else weird..."

"I can't possibly put a price on your art -- let me give you something, though, a -- not a gift, a -- tribute -- no obligation..."

He's scrounging in his pockets for anything worth giving, and comes up with a grayish lump of soft rubber. "--it'll erase most things, not just pencil, one of the Paris juniors brewed a batch -- I'm sorry I haven't anything prettier."

"- huh, um, thanks?" says Rebecca.

"No, if you take it as a gift that means you're dating," says Chloe's study buddy.

"- uh -" Rebecca's hand drops.

"Not a gift," he says, impatiently, "no obligation -- Americans -- forgive me. Like flowers for a performer. Call it payment for what you've already sung, if you must."

Rebecca takes the eraser.

He beams up at her.

"Please, do forgive me for interrupting you. I was blinded by beauty."

She's gonna shuffle a little closer to Zeke. "Um, no... harm done?"

Zeke puts his arm around her shoulder.