"I don't know! You're still pretty, not sure if it's helping!"

"Must I remove the illusion disguise? You don't have an idea how much slime there is. Antennae. Bristles. Warts."

"Unfortunately, xiao-jiejie, Shanghai enclavers don't leave the enclave much so I grew up socialized by the Internet."

"Oh. In that case the ooze must wait until you buy me dinner. Tandoori lamb! Mango lassi!"

"Only the best for my tentacled goddess. --I'd get you shark fin soup but it's actually disgusting."

"Tragic! The sharks deserve to be excellent soup."

"I know, right? If we're driving the sharks extinct it should be for a soup ingredient that doesn't taste like oddly crunchy strings."

"Eeew," she giggles.

He half-covers his face with his fan. "I don't know. Maybe aliens like oddly crunchy strings."

"No. Only the floppiest soggiest of strings please the alien tongues. All six of them."

"Excellent. I'll be sure to invite you over when it's the chef's day off and Madame Yu is doing the cooking."

Nia giggles. "I will invite you over when Mum is making irio! It is peas and potatoes. And deliciousness. Secret ingredient tell no one."

"I've never even heard of irio! It must not be one of the white people foods the enclave fed us to make sure we were not entirely surprised by the concept of peanut butter when we arrived."

"It is a black people food. Kenyan. Not on the school menu. Even Indian food is not! Tragic! They had done some colonialism by the time of menu choices."

He covers his face with his fan. "Sorry. All non-Chinese people look the same to me. You and your weird eyes. Don't know how I can tell any of you apart."

"Easy. I am the oozy kind from space."

"You might have weird eyes but you have sixteen of them and they all have facets like a fly's."

"Yes. And repel mals that do not appreciate beauty."

"Of course, xiao-jiejie. Sixteen is the objectively most beautiful number of eyes. I'm taking the Golden Ratios class so I know whereof I speak."

"I do not have that one but I have math in nature. Probably it will teach us counting to sixteen."

"But will it teach you about the most beautiful numbers? I think not."

"Sixteen is very beautiful!"

"Of course. It's a power of two. Those are very pretty. Six is also excellent because if you add together all of its factors other than itself you get it."

"- oh, huh, so you do."

"Two of my clavemates are math geniuses so I had to learn some interesting math facts in self-defense."