Nia tags along down to the snack bar with a trio of Spanish-speakers from Argentina who don't really want to include her in their conversation but don't mind her accompanying them on the walk. Her tokens are in her pocket but she might hold on to them, it depends.

She waves cheerily at Nie Huaisang rather than hazard a guess that he speaks anything she does.

He waves back. "I hope you speak English," he says to her cheerily, "because I'm pretty sure you don't speak Thai or Cantonese."

"I do speak English! It would be hard not to growing up in England, went the reasons."

"I'm sure you could. Experimentally-minded enclave that only speaks Latin and doesn't let the kids leave the enclave, maybe."

"Not an enclave. Swahili at home, Spanish at school, English all other places."

"Good spread." He eyes his chocolate suspiciously. "Do you think you can get food poisoning from chocolate?"

"If it has mold on it? Not if it has just wizened like a forgotten fruit, I think. You might save it for when very hungry?"

"Right, but then it's going to get older, and maybe more likely to poison me. --I guess we don't have mold."

"Cheat the mold away!"

"Good idea." He tries to pull mana from any lifeforms present in this chocolate, and doesn't get any.

"Hmmm," she says, peering at the vending machine. "I should possibly save tokens in case the food is all eaten by maggots every meal for a day, but perhaps spending only one..."

"--I'm going to make two more attempts and see if I get something tastier and less suspicious."

He gets a Snickers bar without a date and a package of oatmeal raisin cookies two years past its expiration date. He sighs.

"I will wish you excellent luck!"

"Do you think the best strategy here is to eat the expired things because they're only going to get worse or the unexpired things because they won't give me food poisoning?"

"Sell them to people who spend less time on thoughts of food poisoning."

"Good idea." He pockets the two pieces of expired food and eats the Snickers bar. "Not bad."

Nia puts a token in. She gets a foil pack of beans and weiners, dated 2012. "I will have a fun surprise opening this when next very hungry," she remarks.

He slowly waves his fan. "In retrospect I really should have memorized food expiration dates."

"Maybe a spell for it would come out of the void for you?"

"Or something that helps me figure out whether it's expired. Maybe I'll get my clavemate Yanli on it, her affinity's food."

"That sounds very good for this! Does she have a spell for charming vending machines?"

"I don't think so, she mostly does alchemy."

"She could branch out! Sell a guaranteed good snack for an extra token to keep herself. Bury herself in Mars bars."

"Oh, she wouldn't though, she's a soft touch. People would go tell her how hungry they are and she'd give it away for free."

"...she must have a lot of boyfriends."

"--People in Shanghai enclave don't have straight relationships."

"Huh. My father tells us that if you give presents in the Scholomance it means you are dating."

"I understand that people have sometimes gotten confused about this!"

"So it's still like that for the Asian kids?"

"I mean, you're not going to give things away for free. --Unless you're Yanli who's too nice for her own good."

"Why does the enclave allow her?"

"Unfortunately, she's been too nice for her own good her entire life, and we all grew up with her, so we love her."

"Awwwwww."

"So, you're an indie?"

"What gave me away?"

"Not being an enclaver? Unless there's a third option."

"Space alien!" she proposes.

"Well, you have a human forehead."

"Maybe I am hiding a tail. Maybe I am under illusions."

"That's going to cost you a lot of mana!"

"Maybe my space alien parents beamed me in with an artifice that makes me look human at all the time."

"I think your space alien parents should have beamed you in to a different planet with fewer mals!"

"Our planet was worse!" she suggests. "Planet made entirely of mals. Like science fiction ice planets and desert planets but just mals."

He half-covers his face with his fan. "You must feel so safe here!"

"I could just fall asleep right here," she chirps, putting her beans and weiners in her bag. "Also probably can grow back a foot or something if a mal eats it. Advantages of space aliens."

"You could get a couple extra feet. Could maybe help you run faster."

"Haven't enough shoes," she sighs tragically. "What is your name? I'm called Nia."

"Nie Huaisang but I don't mind if English speakers butcher it."

"Nyeh Why-song?"

"Eh. Close enough."

"Oh good. Earth sounds are so difficult for us space aliens."

"I'm sure I'd do worse in your language which consists entirely of clicks."

"That's not Swahili! You're thinking of... Bantu. I think. Maybe also others."

"I meant the alien language. Unless you're saying space aliens also speak Swahili."

"We do. It's a good language."

"How did it get to Earth then?"

"Oh, we learned it from Kenyan radio."

"You guys should listen to Chinese pop! --I guess," he adds judiciously, "I have no idea whether it is better or worse than Kenyan music."

"I am learning French next but maybe I will consider Chinese after!"

"A bunch of Asian pop music has English lyrics, actually." He sings a snippet of BTS's War On Hormone: "Tell me what you want right now / (Hello hello) (what!) (Hello hello) (what!) / Imma give it to you girl right now." His voice is very beautiful.

"Oh, you're a good singer!"

"Thank you!"

"Do you do lots of singing magic?"

"A little! I'm hoping I can learn more song-spells, but my affinity is visual art."

"Ooh, what do you do with art?"

"Mostly make paintings that move around, unfortunately."

"Like in Harry Potter? Those paintings can open doors and remember things they hear..."

"Maybe when I have more mana capacity!"

"That would be cool! Can you do magic sculptures too?"

"I haven't tried! I've focused on drawing. Maybe I'll get sculpture assignments in shop."

Please God let him get sculpture assignments in shop.

"You could make the prettiest constructs."

"Do we know if there are any mals repelled by things being very very pretty?"

"How would I know? They would never come anyplace near me." She tosses her head.

He bows. "Of course, xiao-jiejie. This humble one is blinded by your radiance."

"Oh no. Too much with the space alien lasers and things." She waves her hand in front of his eyes.

"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."

"Do you write them on a little shield so they will read them and go 'huh' instead of pressing attacks?"

"No, that's what you do with the problems. Write 'what is the largest number of pie pieces you can get with six straight cuts of a pie?' and then you can knife them at your leisure."

"Can you cut the top of the pie off or does it have to be straight down?"

"Straight down."

"Then I don't know. Alas that pies will not appear in nature so my class will not tell me."

"Really very inconsiderate of nature. Pies are delicious."

"They should grow on trees."

"Think of all those deer who go through their whole entire lives without tasting a single pie."

"On another hand though if you put up a bird feeder full of pie you would have deer after it and not only squirrels."

"That would be a good thing to do. Leave pie out for the woodland animals so they can enjoy pie for the first time in their lives."

"Let me know if you find any pie and deer!"

"Oh, I'm sure they're here in the Scholomance somewhere."

"Under a chair. Hiding around corners. Secret menu of the cafeteria."

"Really lucky vending machine token."

"It might! It might do a little pie of the McDonald's kind."

"No, I was thinking it would drop an entire deer. That's food in some cultures!"

"I would try deer meat! With barbecue sauce maybe."