That probably could have gone worse? 

Masozi lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holding, and droops against Wei Wuxian's shoulder.

He pokes at his tray of food, and then decides that was a totally reasonable amount of food to eat. He's not hungry; actually he ate way too much candy last night and then felt kind of ill for half the night and had trouble sleeping, and also SHEER TERROR is not very good for wanting to eat things. 

He consults his book, practices by muttering under his breath, and then slides the tray toward Wen Ning. "You want?" he tries to ask in Mandarin. 

"You're very sweet." He flops his head on Jin Zixun's shoulder, because physical contact is very good at making people like you. (Hey, twinsies!) "--I should probably head back to my own table." He doesn't move, because letting other people make the 'sensible' choices makes them feel less bad about it, and like you care about what they think and they can influence. ...and also because if Jin Zixun needs his ego stroked some more, breakfast is not the worst place to do it. 

"You can stay a little bit," he says grudgingly.

"No, thank you, sir," Wen Ning says in Mandarin.

"He says 'no thanks.'" Wei Wuxian swipes another roll from Wen Ning's plate.

"I understood that! Mostly." And half guessing from context and body language, but still. He's so incredibly pleased with himself. "Why do you keep stealing his food, though?" 

"He's not using it."

Wen Ning nods.

Masozi sort of feels like Wen Ning is being unfairly bullied here! He doesn't want to press any harder and risk making Wei Wuxian mad at him, though. "Oh. ...I guess you can have my food too if you want, then, I'm not using it." 

"Oh, but I can't steal from you."

"I don't see why it'd be okay to steal from Wen Ning but not me!" 

"Because he's my shidi and I've known you for four days."

"I feel like that makes it more okay to take my food? ...Also what's 'shidi', I don't remember that word." 

"It's like clavemate but-- it's the people you grew up around? Trained with? We've known each other since we were born."

"Oh."

Masozi looks wistful. He wishes he had that. Wishes there were any possible way that some of his siblings could be here with him. 

"You don't even really have a name!"

"I have a name!" Masozi protests. 

"In Shanghai enclave you have two names. Your courtesy name is what most people call you and your birth name is what people close to you call you. So I'm Wei Wuxian but Jiang Cheng calls me Wei Ying. And Jiang Cheng's courtesy name is Jiang Wanyin but absolutely no one calls him that."

"Thanks!"

"Oh. I - have I been being rude by calling people the wrong name?" Oh no. An avenue of social fuck-ups he hadn't even known to consider! 

"In general you can call people whatever name they introduce themselves by. If Jiang Cheng wanted you to call him Jiang Wanyin, he'd introduce himself as Jiang Wanyin, but he doesn't." 

Which has its own massive host of implications, of course, which maybe will be elaborated on at some point?

"But you don't have a courtesy name, or maybe not a birth name, and you don't have characters. So if I wanted to call you by an affectionate nickname I would have no idea where to start."

"See, we don't have this problem, you'd just add -chan to the end. But affectionate nicknames don't have to be based on your actual name, either, my upperclassmen call me suzume-chan--"

"We could say Ma is your family name and then your courtesy name would be Souzai? And then I could call you a-Zai."

"Zaizai, I think."