Lan Wangji is upset. 

He doesn't like or understand politics. New York is upset because they think Masozi killed someone. He doesn't understand why they can't just say "no, Masozi didn't kill someone, we were with him the whole time and also he promised under a truth potion not to and also why would he do that and risk his alliance with Shanghai," and then the entire problem would be over and he could go back to studying. Now Masozi is scared and crying on the bed and he's not allowed to comfort him and he has to spend his whole afternoon keeping Masozi from murdering people, a thing Masozi is perfectly qualified to do himself.

In lieu of anything else to do, he glares icily at New York's representative, whose fault this all is. 

This experience is not making the Shanghai senior feel better about her job here. 

Olivia glares icily back! It really seems like the problem here started when Shanghai adopted a maleficer! They could simply have not done that!

Rin understands perfectly well why they couldn't have just sent a freshman but nonetheless it would be very nice if the person whose job it was to be managing things with Shanghai were in charge of this, instead of Rin being here while Hitomi pulls triple duty instead of double.

She is not glaring icily at anybody because she is capable of putting aside her own feelings. She is somewhat judging Lan Xichen's brother, and also Olivia. 

Do they really think it's going to take that many older, more powerful kids to prevent him from killing anyone. Even just Lan Wangji by himself could do that just fine. 

...Maybe they want enough people there that they can kill him as soon as they've gotten everyone to agree to that? Masozi is now also kind of having a panic attack about this! He tries to control his breathing, because hyperventilating is making him lightheaded, but instead he keeps imagining Sophie dying. Alone. Scared. Never having had a chance, and now she never will - and neither will any of the Sophies in the future, either, because Masozi screwed this up and he's going to die before he can fix anything at all. 

He huddles in a ball on his bed, and thinks of his sister, and how he's failed her too and she won't ever know - and the worst part is that he still doesn't know what he missed, where he stumbled in the dark, which mistake was the fatal one, and he probably won't even have a chance to say sorry to Lan Xichen for breaking everything around him...

"Anyone mind if I cast a spell for ventilation," says Olivia. The room literally smells like shit for some reason.

Masozi does not feel that his current position is one where he's allowed to object to anything the New York girl wants. If she wants to kick him in the face he's planning to just let her. 

"No, go ahead." 

"Mn," he says pissedly.

"Uh, sorry, I don't have Mandarin, is that yes or no."

"I'm pretty sure he doesn't have English."

(Sending Lan Xichen's brother makes perfect sense, but not enough to outweigh how little sense it makes to send a freshman who doesn't understand English and is this bad at speaking to people. Who exactly thought this was a good idea.)

In Mandarin, she repeats, "Is it okay if she casts a ventilation spell?" 

Lan Wangji is supposed to provide comfort to Masozi, without letting anyone know that Lan Xichen is still totally on Masozi's side and expects him to be proven innocent. Why is he being assigned an impossible task. He is pretty sure this is New York's fault and he hates them.

"I speak some English," he says slowly in English.

The Shanghai senior thinks that she should be allowed to go give Masozi a hug. She's not cut out for glaring at random crying fourteen-year-olds.

"It smells in here," Olivia says slowly back. You're not supposed to respond to people not speaking English by speaking English at them louder and slower, that's rude, but if they speak a little English then maybe it's fine? "May I cast a spell. For the air. So it does not smell in here."

He is so tempted to respond with "Mn."

"Yes."

Masozi clears his throat. Maybe he can say something and not get shouted at? 

"You can take the box out?" he says, making eye contact with Lan Wangji only and pointing at it. While making sure to only move very slowly and look non-threatening. "If it's bothering people."

It had never occurred to Masozi before that the smell of poop would bother someone. It comes out of your body! It just seems inconvenient to hate how it smells! 

Maybe he is being helpful?

"Yes." He does so.

Masozi curls up and waits to find out if he's going to get shouted at or hit because he dared to talk. 

The Shanghai senior comforts herself by thinking that no one is going to look at this sad pathetic child and say "probably he's a serial killer." She watched several documentaries about Yang Xinhai as a kid and she's pretty sure that serial killers look evil.

They're law enforcement, not domestic abusers, they're going to kill him if he's a danger to others, they're not going to yell at him for talking out of turn. 

"You can, uh, shit in the Void, if you don't have a bathroom buddy," she says, though they're probably going to kill him in a couple hours so she's not sure why she's bothering, really. Innocent until proven guilty?

(Rin is completely inured to crying fourteen year olds and it's frankly a little concerning that nobody else in this room seems to be. This isn't even one of her freshmen.) 

He...probably should just tell them true things? 

"That's not why. S'for my dung beetles." His voice is thick and choked from crying, which makes his accent even harder to understand. 

...did they really need another thing to happen. Is that seriously what they needed. 

"Does someone want to inform the people making decisions of this."

"On it," Olivia says, less than delightedly. If a powersharer went bad it would be really really bad, and New York's engineers are the best in the world and allow a healthy margin of safety, and so there's an upper bound on how much they can do - trying to make them be cell phones/recording devices/autonomous guidance counselors is outside current safety margins. Though there's an experiment going in a chamber in the enclave somewhere.

- anyway, you can send messages with a New York powersharer but only in morse code with the distress button and it's incredibly fucking annoying. Bleep beep beep bleep beep bleep. Beep beep. 

Orion was not paying attention during Morse code lessons and he skids into the hall at top speed, looking for mals that aren't there, and jogs to a halt. "- did you buttdial me, or -"