"More sports victories and"-- he exhausts his knowledge of American sitcoms-- "cheerleading... victories? Do you win at cheerleading?"

"You must. Why else would they bother to do it?"

"What do you think they rate them on?"

"Boob size," Wei Wuxian says with tremendous confidence.

"Really?"

"Oh yeah," he says confidently. "There's like a bikini portion and a portion where they're in evening dresses and another portion where they're in costume and they have to give a speech and show off a special talent. And do backflips."

"I'm pretty sure that's beauty pageants."

"Come on. Like Americans have both cheerleading and beauty pageants."

Masozi was up kind of late last night practicing Mandarin. (And had more mana to sneakily dump on Wei Wuxian this morning; he's trying very hard to earn his keep here.) He's not used to getting to sleep as much as six entire hours uninterrupted, though; it feels like the world's greatest luxury, and then on top of that there's MORE FOOD. This is so many meals a day to get to eat. 

He tells everyone 'good morning' in Mandarin, and asks 'how did you sleep'; he speaks it with a very thick accent but he's got the tones aspect fairly solid and it's usually clear what he means. 

"- They made an announcement that I didn't do the murders?" he says hopefully to Wei Wuxian. "Does that mean I can go to Monday morning shop?" 

"No, you don't get to go to Monday morning shop because they said I couldn't make my knife and your knife and I need to prove them wrong."

"That's not a good reason, Wei Ying."

"Someone will try to assassinate him."

(The freshmen are speaking all of their sentences in both English and Mandarin, which is a great way to include everyone, practice languages, and build mana.)

Ayako is SO TIRED of thinking about whether or not people are going to be assassinated based on what she has been firmly telling herself all morning was not her fuckup or her responsibility or her job to prevent.

"On a more cheerful note, at least in Japan cheerleading is a sport and it mostly involves doing dangerous gymnastics tricks. You definitely can win at it though." 

"Is there a bikini portion?" Wei Wuxian says hopefully.

"But I want to learn how to make a knife!" Masozi, who is utterly uninterested in Japanese cheerleading (and in fact has no idea what 'cheerleading' is) protests. 

"I'll give you tutoring in a month when this has all died down, Masozi, promise."

Mei suspects these announcements imply Important Political Events but does not know what the party line here is. Maybe she should be paying more attention to the random African kid who keeps showing up? Hopefully Ayako has this handled.

On the other side of the table, Jin Zixun yells "FUCK YOU" at Jin Zixuan, stomps two tables away to Chang'an enclave's table, and drags Jing Yi to the table by his wrist. 

On absolutely no level does Ayako have this handled but, fortunately, their seniors do. They can talk about it later when Wei Wuxian isn't there--

-- hey quick question what is happening.

Masozi is briefly distracted trying to figure out if he could have said that whole sentence in Mandarin! He knows the word for 'want' and for 'make', he...might know how to say 'learn' but it's buried in his notebook somewhere. Which he really needs to just entirely recopy, he's had an idea for a much better organization schema, but he only has one other notebook and it seems rude to use up all of Shanghai's paper just because he writes a lot of notes. 

"- How do I say 'knife' in–" 

He breaks off and, startled, tries to dive under the table for cover. 

Wei Wuxian grabs him. "Don't worry, Masozi, it's fine, it's fine. Jin Zixun's being an asshole somehow."

Mei has no idea what this is about but she readies herself to throw up shields over her and Ayako.

Masozi is even unhappier about angry people being near him after yesterday! He will glue himself to Wei Wuxian instead of hiding, though. 

And so Jing Yi is being dragged now. (Leng Yue on the Chang'an table is doing her best to communicate, purely through body language, that she has no association with either of these ridiculous people.)  "Is this necessary? --Hi, Shanghai."

"You SLEPT with my COUSIN."