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 -"

" - hi, Orion. if it's Morse code it's comms not an alarm, you're supposed to try to decode it. No mals, but do you want to pass a note to Annaka for me?" She rips a sheet out of her notebook and starts writing. 

"Yeah, sure. - oh, is that mal-spotting-kid, what's wrong with him -"

Has he missed ALL announcements for the last several days. "We're - investigating whether he murdered someone."

"What? Yikes?"

The Shanghai senior shouldn't be this amused by Oblivious Freshman but she totally is. 

She tries to catch Rin's eye to see if she's also amused.

Rin is absolutely also amused, not that she's going to say anything about it. 

"Here's your note. Annaka's in the reading room, I think, but knock, don't just try walking in, okay?"

"Okay! Bye!" says Orion, pocketing the note, and off he trots.

Masozi is so tired of being afraid.

And he's...vaguely aware, that if he spends the next many hours panicking, he's going to be exhausted, and not very able to think, and - his survival - his sister's survival - everything he could ever try to do or build or fix in his entire life - is maybe dependent on doing things exactly right in the next few hours. 

He focuses on his breathing, and tries to do the meditation exercise like Wei Wuxian taught him.

(This is actually mana-generating when he's upset, it turns out. Normally it's not very good for that at all, because it's too pleasant and not hard enough, but dragging his mind away from the misery and terror over and over is one of the hardest things he's ever done.) 

Masozi forces his body to relax, and once his heart is pounding less intensely and his breathing is level, he forces all of the stupid pointless emotions down into a corner and boxes them away. It's not helping, right now, and he knows that in a fight for your life, you need to set aside all the things that don't help - and this is a fight for his life, just as much as any of the mal encounters in the wilderness of Malawi were. It's an unfairly confusing fight, but reality isn't trying to be fair, how could it. 

Lan Wangji thinks very very carefully because this calls for political subtlety, which is not his strong point. Sizhui and Xichen got all the political subtlety in the family. He got being really good at hitting mals with a sword.

Then he thinks very carefully because English is a very difficult language.

"I think Lan Xichen is honorable person who make sure justice is done," he announces.

...Unsure whether this is a reason Lan Wangji shouldn't be here or the precise reason that Lan Wangji is here??? Politics gives her a headache.

"So are we all, all honorable men," says Olivia dully, staring at the wall. 

This is why Lan Wangji doesn't do politics. He has no idea what that means.

It's the speech from Julius Caesar, and it's stunningly apropros. She has substantially upgraded her opinion of this Shanghai kid. 

Rin thinks maybe she was too harsh on Olivia. 

"I have always known him to be faithful and just," she agrees. 

What is happening! He's so confused. This needs to stop.

He opts for Silence.

Oh wait can this be entertaining instead of just being smelly guard duty, that sounds way more fun. She raises an eyebrow slightly at the Sinosphere kids. "To refuse a crown, though, that would be unlike him, from what I've heard of him, no one rules an enclave as a sophomore without their share of ambition and then some."

"And yet, he hath brought many home to Rome, whose talents did the general coffers fill." 

We're... quoting Shakespeare at each other now?, the Shanghai sophomore thinks. At least she thinks it's Shakespeare. Maybe it's Chaucer or Milton or someone. Anglos are weirdly unlikely to just make a list of the books you need to read to be an educated person.

He is very quietly screaming on the inside and he wants to go back to his room and play his guqin until the world stops being so loud and bright except that he doesn't even have his guqin because of the weight allowance so actually he's going to go back to his room and bite himself until the pain drives all the noise out of his head.

"And where will those talents take a budding maleficer in two years, do you think, when Lan Xichun graduates and isn't around to hold him in check? For the evil that men do lives after them."

What is happening here. Is this some kind of bizarre ritual. Are they…casting a spell? To murder him?? He’s SO CONFUSED.

No one is paying attention to Lan Wangji so maybe he can give Masozi a sympathetic eyebrow tilt????

Olivia sees that and parses it as commentary on their Shakespeare sparring. She's so impressed with the cultural education these Sinosphere kids get. No way could she even vaguely keep up on their famous historical texts.

Masozi has no idea what this means, so he just looks at Lan Wangji with no expression at all on his face.

Eyebrow tilt of sympathy and support and agreement that this is all very frightening and upsetting! Probably more frightening to Masozi, who isn't even going to get to go be by himself and bite his wrist or play the guqin. Masozi doesn't even know how to play the guqin.

"Xichen," she corrects, before she can help herself. "But in this, I think, the good will not be interred with his bones. He has successors appointed, and when that the wounded cry, Wen Qing hath wept; ambition should be made of sterner stuff."

"A grievous fault, in such an extraordinary man, to place his trust so poorly."

"If it were so, it was a grievous fault," she disagrees politely, "and grievously shall Xichen answer it."