"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."

This is literally the funniest thing that has ever happened to him.

Lan Xichen begins to rise to interrupt--

Meng Yao puts a hand on his forearm. "Shanghai is full of ridiculous people who yell a lot" is going to be part of their reputation no matter what-- they have Nie Huaisang, Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Jin Zixun-- but if there's some harmless ridiculous sex drama people will be talking about that and not about Masozi. 

He sits back down.

"And I asked! And you said yes!" 

"You said you were going to sleep with Zixuan!"

He is going to hide under the table. Why is everyone looking at him. This is the worst day of his entire life.

"--Why would you think I meant the fourteen year old I, at best, met four days ago, and not the person we both know?"

"Because OBVIOUSLY you wouldn't ask to sleep with MY ACTUAL COUSIN."

Nobody is translating all the yelling in Mandarin, and people seem really angry! Masozi is kind of terrified! Is Wei Wuxian sure he shouldn't be under the table right now. He really really really wants the angry yelling person - Jin Zixun? - to not notice him, but nudging wizards' minds is too hard and also he would get in trouble for it probably. He tries to look very small and nonthreatening instead. 

Wei Wuxian is too busy laughing to translate.

"Don't worry, Masozi," Nie Huaisang says, "Jin Zixun is just mad because Jing Yi had sex with Jin Zixuan. Nothing is wrong."

Jin Zixun is making this public of a deal over something as minor as who slept with whom? Putting aside the question of "why is anyone even sleeping with anyone yet??" Mei is pretty sure this is the sort of thing you have a private meeting about and not something you yell about in front of the entire class.

"...why wouldn't I...?" (Jin Zixun is unfortunately useful for how much of a pain he is at times.)

"Because he's my cousin! That's practically incest!"

What if he just....... flees this entire situation and spends the rest of the morning in his bedroom. That sounds reasonable. Possibly the rest of the day.

It kind of seems like something is wrong actually! This is so much shouting! Masozi is ALSO tempted to run back to his room and hide, except that he shouldn't walk there alone because someone might try to murder him, so probably actually staying where the furious shouting person is is SAFER. 

Meanwhile, on Wei Wuxian's other side, Ayako's first thought is: What if, instead of more incredibly public conflict, there were less. Has anyone considered that.

Her second thought is: Fortunately, this is not the kind of thing happening that is at all likely to affect things that are actually important— and also it can't really be construed in any way, reasonable or not, to be part of Ayako's job to deal with— but come ON.

And her third thought is: If she is very, very lucky, maybe this will mean the gossip is about Why Is Jin Zixun Like This, which will take the spotlight off of all the other things that have happened this weekend.

She has a nearly perfect straight face but is maybe smiling, just a little, as if her primary reaction were 'trying not to laugh' and not what it actually is.

Wei Wuxian steals a roll off Wen Ning's plate. "Shanghai enclave is full of ridiculous romantic drama. The order under Heaven is restored."

"Shameless."

"I don't know where you got the idea that anyone in this enclave other than you experiences the emotion of shame."

He also thinks there should be less yelling? The yelling is scary.

It is very unfortunate that he cannot simultaneously Maintain the Dignity of Chang'An And Their Ally Shanghai, express his sympathy to Jin Zixuan and 'I am so sorry I did not expect your annoyingly useful cousin to be like this,'  question how exactly it would be incest (it's not a transitive property?), and defend his own honour (such as it is.)

"And this is why clear communication about boundaries is important, otherwise innocent people get yelled at." (He is counting Jin Zixuan as innocent in this. Why on Earth would he have meant Hu Zixuan?)

(And thanks, Wei Wuxian. He feels so supported right now.)

Masozi thinks Wen Ning probably needs food, actually? And he can manage fine with a bit less, this is already, like, twice as much food as he's used to eating. He gives Wen Ning his roll. 

If Jing Yi wants sympathy for his problems they should be less funny.

"You're not innocent! You slept with him! Deliberately!"

"I feel like we would be having bigger problems if Jing Yi slept with Jin Zixuan non-deliberately," Wei Wuxian says, quietly enough that only the other freshmen hear.

"Even the peacock wouldn't do that."

"Actually, I tripped and fell right into his arms, it was kind of an impressive accident, really-- after I asked if you were cool with it. And you assumed I meant the freshman?"

"Like you wouldn't sleep with the freshman!"

Masozi is trying to focus on catching as many Mandarin words as possible, which is mana-building as well as good for learning the Nie Huaisang isn't telling him all the context because he thinks it would scare Masozi? But actually it's MORE SCARY to be confused? 

He's pretty sure he recognizes the word for 'problem'? ...How reassuring. 

Nie Huaisang is just going to keep translating things for Masozi as they happen.

Excuse you, Jing Yi is easy, but he is not unstrategically easy. "Do you want to sleep with the freshman? It would explain the assumption."

"No!" He reconsiders this. "Probably not!"

Oh good he can focus 100% on the language part and not on the scary parts. No one else looks scared except for Wen Ning, who's scared of everything, so maybe it actually is fine? 

...Also he's missing SO much subtext about why this is the kind of thing Jin Zixun would get mad about? But that's a lot harder to get a translation of in real time. 

Really making your case here, Zixun. (Life would be so much easier if it was Zixuan who was good at wards. ...actually no, but it would be a different class of difficult. Zixuan, at least, would not be doing this in public. He appreciates that Shanghai may want the distraction, but could they at least not drag Chang'an into it?)

"What a confident statement."

"You were the one who failed to specify a surname!"

"Because I had no clue of Hu Zixuan's existence."

"How is that my fault!"

He pinches the bridge of his nose. "It's not your fault, but I had no way of knowing what you were assuming, or that you had such a particular definition of incest? You are the one he knew there were two Zixuans, you could have asked!" (That is very much your fault.)

"Look, everyone agrees you shouldn't fuck your lover's cousin! I feel like this is very basic etiquette!"

"He has a point, I don't want to sleep with someone who's sleeping with Jiang Cheng."

"But you're not related."

"Thank God."

"He's still my shidi."

"We're all shidis. Doesn't that imply that if you're sleeping with one of us you shouldn't sleep with anyone of us?"

"- What does 'incest' mean?" Masozi asks Nie Huaisang, when he translates this to English. He's not familiar with the word in either language. 

"Yeah, but Jiang Cheng is my shidi shidi. You know."

"Right. I'm definitely not having sex with someone who's having sex with Wei Ying."

"See!"

"He might have diseases."

"Hey!"

Nie Huaisang processes that Masozi said something. "Incest is when you have sex with a family member."

It is so weird having a conversation where everything he says gets translated, and then creates a debate on the definition. ...Though he did walk into that one.

(And sleeping with two different cousins might be playing with fire, but that is why he asked.) "What etiquette text did you get that one out of, Zixun?"

"The Book of Is There Literally One Hole, Just One, In Which You Have Not Stuck Your Dick, Jing Yi."

"Well, I think we have established I'm not sleeping with Hu Zixuan."

"....Huh. Is doing that bad?" It certainly seems mysterious and inexplicable that someone would want to, but honestly that's already true of sex in general, for Masozi. 

"That's a complicated question."

"You watch too much porn."

"If you have a baby with someone closely genetically related to you then they're more likely to get a genetic disease? If it's gay it's fine, just like sex in the Scholomance, but unlike sex in the Scholomance most people think it's really gross and don't want to do it."

"It makes family reunions really awkward."

"Yeah, that's true. You don't want to be stuck having to talk to your ex every New Year for the rest of your life."

"According to, like, the laws of physics, your dick has to be in some locations and not in others, so I think you should devote some time to thinking about places where your dick is not and should not be. It can't be everything! Or everywhere! Can't be in everyone at once! Did you know that? Because sometimes you make me think you don't know that."

"Oh Zixun, you wound me." It is accurate that there are places his dick may take his leave of, if he's going to be insistent about it. (...but wards. Damnit.)

"Fuck you. I'm taking the wards off."

If Ayako pretends really hard that she finds this uncomplicatedly funny and she's not stressed at all, maybe it will become true. 

Probably not. That's not usually how this works. But maybe! 

"Well, if you're going to be transactional about it, and pretend it didn't mean anything--" is Jin Zixun weak to wounded puppy eyes? He hopes Jin Zixun is weak to wounded puppy eyes.

(If he loses the wards-- Leng Yue is not going to kill him, because she is "nice." But he is going to wish he was dead when he has to explain that he got in a sex comedy of errors relating to there being two Zixuans in this school, apparently, and this lead to a public fight and also losing the wards.)

"--oh god don't make that face at me. I'm pissed at you!"

"Because of an innocent mistake!" Look at how small and hurt and in love and in need of protection he is. How could you be so mean to this face?

Gosh. A master at work.

"You should have known better!"

"I had no idea you meant the Beijing freshmen. If you'd said no, I never would have done it, no questions asked." (Sorry, Zixuan. You're strategically useful, but not that strategically useful. Leng Yue will not make him regret living if he upsets you.)

"All right," he says grumpily.

Awwwww. The show is over.

Thank fucking god, the show is over. 

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."

"Yeah, that's a good point. Zaizai."

"....My older sister had a nickname for me once? She called me Nyenyezi, because I would always swim out really far in the lake so I could float and look at the stars." 

"Oh, poor Wen Ning is never going to be able to pronounce that. --We could translate it? So you could be Nyenyezi and some Chinese name both."

"What would it translate to?" 

"I don't know what Nyenyezi means."

"It just means stars, pretty much. Sometimes people use it - loosely?" There's totally a word for the thing he means here but he can't remember it in English either. "To mean something that's...really important to them." 

"Xingxing is stars but it just means, like, stars in the sky."

Masozi repeats it after him. "....I think I like that?" It's even one of the syllables that he can mostly pronounce without mucking it up in some way where he can hear that it's wrong but not how to fix it. 

"Well, now you have a birth name that none of us will call you because we don't know you well enough yet."

"Mn."

"And Lan Wangji will never call you because he has a life-threatening allergy to informality."

"- I guess I need to not die so you can get to know me well enough to call me that, then?" 

"You're not allowed to die!"

- what? That was a weirdly strong reaction and it almost looks like Jiang Cheng is mad at him???

Masozi huddles up a bit against Wei Wuxian. "I - I'll try to be careful? But I did almost die because I was stupid so I - I don't think it's the sort of thing where saying I'm not allowed makes it not happen." 

"Well, you'll just have to try harder!"

"Chill, Jiang Cheng, you're terrifying him."

"Jiang Cheng just does that sometimes," she tells Masozi, "as far as I can tell it means he likes you." 

"Fuck off."

"Oh." That's confusing but he can try to remember it and not be scared. 

...It's taking a lot of willpower to not be scared, today. Which is fine. It's mana-building. 

She's, like, eighty percent sure at this point that that also means he likes someone. He sure seems to snipe at people more when they're people he likes.

"Absolutely not, I refuse utterly," she says cheerily around a forkful of extremely rubbery scrambled eggs. 

"We can't start giving you an easy time, Jiang Cheng. Then you'd have no way to build mana."

....What's even happening here. This is an unfairly confusing social interaction. 

Someone is crossing the cafeteria toward their table! The someone is wearing somewhat stained and worse-for-wear blue scrubs, and holding an enchanted ivory dagger out in front of her. 

"Uh, is Wen Qing here? I wanted to ask her some things." 

"Yes, Marian-laoshi, what do you need?"

"- Can I have a quick private conversation with you?" Marian gestures vaguely at a space near the wall that should be out of earshot of the Shanghai table if they keep their voices low. 

Aaaaaah is something wrong is he in trouble - that's the nurse, did someone else die, are they going to blame him aaaaaah - 

Masozi tries to hide from her behind Wei Wuxian. 

Wei Wuxian hugs him.

"Yes, of course." She casts a glare across the table to make sure everyone knows they should behave.

Hugs! Hugs when he's scared are such a good thing, actually! 

Marian heads over to the wall. Pokes it a few times with her dagger in case there's a monster hiding in it or something, then leans against it. She feels tired already and the day hasn't even STARTED. 

"I - so I just found out that I was totally misreading the whole New York argument yesterday, and the person who was cleared of murder charges wasn't the crimes kid who demanded drugs? ....I don't really think Xue Yang did it, I mean, he's - have you seen him - I don't know how he could possibly murder ONE person let alone FOUR, he's, like, high half the time. And Sophie didn't speak Mandarin as far as I know so why would she talk to him? But, uh, someone pointed out that I should really bring it up anyway. Uh, unless you already did and they've investigated him too?" 

"He also seems like an unlikely suspect to me-- we're thinking the maleficer is trying to start a war between the Shanghai and the New York for some reason, and Xue Yang doesn't seem that... goal-oriented."

"He really doesn't. And he - uh, I buy that he's done some bad shit, but he's - well, last night he showed up wanting drugs and I was bawling on the floor about Sophie and he, like, hugged me and got me candy? That doesn't sound like someone who'd– wait, fuck, are you kidding me? Start a war in here? It's already a death school! Why!" 

"I wish I knew! We're the two most powerful enclaves in the Scholomance, maybe that's why... they're hoping to get our parents to fight for some reason."

"Oh my god." Shiver. "I - who else died? I didn't know." 

"Song Lan is probably dead but we've been telling the enclave someone probably just dropped a rock in his backpack to get his weight allowance to go over-- no sense in people mourning him before we're certain-- and a Singaporean named Tintin whom I sent to investigate Song Lan. A Toronto girl allegedly committed suicide but some of us think it might be caused by the same person."

"God." Marian shivers. "I - I did hear about the suicide, I didn't know it was suspicious... Are things here normally this batshit? Because this is batshit." 

"This is way too many deaths for this early in the year. Everyone's spooked, especially after last year."

Sigh. "Anyway, that's pretty much all I wanted to say. ...I've got some other announcements, but for the whole table. I think the void felt bad for sucking at IV fluids yesterday and it gave me a really sweet haul." 

"Oh?"

Marian starts leading the way back to the Shanghai table. "So I asked it for nutrition supplements - for Xue Yang, right, he's clearly not been eating enough - and it gave me an entire shipping pallet of these - I think they're, like, a shelf-stable food product meant for treating kids with malnutrition? They're made with, like, peanut butter, so they're more real food than the cafeteria stuff. I have eight hundred of them! I think this is the best possible trade good I could've gotten. And I want to talk to alchemists and artificers, see if I can trade them for actually putting together a proper ICU in there, I've got notes on what equipment I'd want to replace..." 

"Awesome. That's incredible. You know Shanghai has some of the best artificers and alchemists in the world."

"Amazing! I'd love to talk to them! I'm going to go network with New York too, I think - I sort of have an agreement with them - oh, man, if there were murders happening this weekend, though, that totally explains why Julia's sister was so abrupt with me..." 

She reaches the table, and repeats this announcement to everyone there! 

"- Oh, and also I have a bunch of random-ass medical stuff that the void kept giving me instead of IV fluids which you would think would be less complicated. Uh, if anyone has any use for like five litres worth of very concentrated sugar water, I am literally never going to need five litres of D50% and it takes up a ton of space. I'm interested in trading for - hmm, honestly right now what I most want is, like, more sheets and blankets and maybe some actual hospital gowns, if anyone here can sew? I could sketch the pattern for you, they're not complicated." It's still upsetting how she had nothing clean to dress Sophie's body. 

"I'm working on Masozi's clothes now but I like sewing and have a use for very concentrated sugar water."

"Do I want to know what the use is."

"It will get us so much mana, I promise."

"Uh... huh."

....He's going to ferment it into alcohol. Obviously this is the thing one could do with sugar water that would have the highest economic value in a school full of stressed-out teenagers who don't expect to survive their adolescence. 

Honestly, Marian cannot even slightly blame him. At this point, she could really use an opportunity to get drunk. 

"Sure, of course. I'd want you to source the fabric too - I think the supply rooms here have it, but it's not very safe for me to go myself. I'll trade you fitted sheets, two sets for each gurney, and, uh, five hospital gowns? ...With laundry services included. It's not safe for me to go to the bathrooms to wash them either."

Probably that's a reasonable deal? She hopes? 

He can probably persuade someone to do the laundry. 

"If I have to provide laundry services I want dibs on any other useless sugar water the void gives you as long as I'm providing it. And I want to be paid now and give you the gowns later-- like you said, it's just taking up shelf space for you."

Marian considers this. 

"- Yeah, okay. I reserve the right to keep some for actual patient stuff, sometimes people need IV sugar, just - not an entire crate of it." 

...Also she wants some of his booze, but she can trade other goods for that later like an adult. 

Glance around the room. "Anyway. I want to talk to artificers in particular, right now. I've got some equipment I want made. Anyone interested in trading nutrition paste for building me stuff?" 

After a glance from Lan Xichen, a couple of junior and senior artificers are very interested in this!

They have detailed questions about specs that make them sound more like engineering graduate students than like high schoolers.

Marian perches at one end of the table to discuss. 

These kids are honestly incredibly cool! It sucks that, like, probably half of them will die at graduation! 

In the meantime, though, Marian wants a monitor that can show an ECG tracing - ideally some sort of display, not paper printouts - and can check blood pressure regularly, and it would be amazing if it could also include an O2 sat measurement, they can maybe trade to get the spell from Ribo? And she wants something that will serve as an IV pump, it's pretty obnoxious to give pressors by IV push. And as an epic stretch goal, it would be really cool to have a ventilator? That might have saved Sophie and it could be really lifesaving for a kid with severe injuries affecting their breathing. Marian is aware that she can't count on keeping anyone alive for days in critical condition, in the death school, but if she can eke out minutes or hours then that might be long enough to scrape together magic healing, so that's what she's aiming for. 

After some rapid discussion in Mandarin, the artificers think that this should all be possible! (The one English speaker seems to have appointed herself the spokesperson.) They are happy to accept lots of nutrient paste in trade.

Marian is going to be a hardass in the negotiation on quantities to trade! She ends up settling on two boxes if they can get her everything, one box for just the monitoring and IV delivery. 

A few minutes into this, Masozi is curious enough to poke his head around Wei Wuxian and listen in. 

Marian is too distracted to notice this immediately, but eventually she looks around, and then makes a very confused face. 

"- Wait, aren't you -" Damn it it would be incredibly rude to say 'malnourished-looking kid', and he can no longer be accurately described as 'garbage dump kid', he's acquired new albeit questionably-fitting clothes. (Oh, right, didn't alcohol kid mention something about working on clothes for someone...) 

She looks helplessly at Wen Qing instead. "I thought he was accused of murdering people? Why, uh, is he - sitting with you guys -?" She didn't think that was how enclave politics worked at ALL. 

She snaps, "he didn't murder anyone. They just accused him because he doesn't understand the social rules."

"Oh. I - sorry - I didn't mean to say anything offensive?"

She's just SO CONFUSED, wasn't he known to be a maleficer? And don't enclaves hate that passionately? ...It would sure explain some of the weird subtext going on between Wen Qing and New York, yesterday. 

"Is he, uh," what's the polite term for 'one of those enclave hanger's-on, "is he with Shanghai, um, longer term?" Because Wen Qing isn't the only one looking fiercely protective, right now. 

"He's our ally."

She's...not sure exactly what that means, but it sounds probably more serious than the 'maintenance track' thing - wait, she's pretty sure she's only heard that word about graduation. 

Also it feels awkward to be talking about the kid like he's not there, but he's gone back to hiding behind one of the other freshmen. He looks really skittish, today. She doesn't remember him giving off such an abused-traumatized-puppy sense before. 

"- Uh, I don't know how someone being allies works, but I have a medical recommendation for him? Maybe more than one, actually. Uh, assuming Shanghai shares supplies with allies and stuff." 

"We share supplies with our allies" in a tone that implies that some people don't and she does not think very much of them.

Huh. That's also got subtext and Marian is not feeling fully up to date on all that. 

"I recommend you make sure he gets at least one of the malnutrition food packets every day for a while? On top of the cafeteria meals. He looks really underweight. Probably he should also get, like, vitamin pills? I have some, I traded for them early on." 

"Masozi, did you catch that?"

He thinks he heard the words but he's confused. "I don't think I need extra food? There's lots of food here." 

Marian, who has been subjected to the cafeteria food, DISAGREES. There is a just-barely-this-side-of-adequate quantity of calories that can technically be put in your mouth, and half of it is, in her opinion, only very dubiously food. 

...The fact that Masozi disagrees kind of says a lot about what his previous circumstances must have been like. 

"It's important," she says. "Your body and especially your brain need fuel, and you're probably still growing right now, so even more so." He's pretty tall, she noticed, which is a hint that he probably had enough to eat in early childhood, and his current concerning thinness is probably recent. She wonders what the story is, there. 

Masozi looks uncertainly at Wen Qing. 

"She's right. You need to eat enough food."

One of the seniors talks to the spokesperson, and then she says, "if Masozi is getting food packets to treat his malnutrition, then technically that's medical so we should get them for free."

Marian needs to be a hardass and not a sucker and not get walked all over - 

- she looks at Masozi. He's got a notebook open in front of him full of meticulously hand-copied Mandarin characters and less-tidy notes in - she has to assume that's some sort of African language, she can't make any sense of it, and - wow, is that IPA? There are math-looking doodles in the margins. He's not looking at it right now, though; he's sort of trying to hide behind the kid next to him, who has a protective arm around Masozi's shoulders. He seems to be ignoring the rest of his half-eaten tray of food, for which she cannot blame him at all, she tried those ""eggs"" and they managed to be WORSE than hospital food and don't even come with ketchup. 

"....Yeah. That's fair." It's not really for free, she reminds herself. It's for goodwill with Shanghai, a major enclave that has some of the best artificers and alchemists in the world and also her apprentice. "He can have, uh, two weeks' worth to keep in his room." 

"Is that going to be sufficient?"

"I don't know, we can reassess then and if he hasn't gained enough weight and I've got stock left I can give him more, and if not, hopefully you'll still have some of your two entire boxes for him. I - he's one of, like, thousands and thousands of kids in this school. I can justify some amount of 'he medically needs it a lot more than average' but not, like, that much, everyone here is kind of food-insecure." 

"That's reasonable." She kind of thinks that Marian has the only access to the infinite void of supplies but they can talk about that in two weeks. She turns to Masozi. "I want you to eat normal-sized meals, and your malnutrition packets, and your vitamins for the next two weeks. Can you do that?"

Masozi thinks that everyone is suddenly making an inexplicably and unreasonably big deal about this! "I - sure, okay? ...I don't know what you think is a normal sized meal." 

Wei Wuxian steals other people's food, Wen Ning has his food stolen, Nie Huaisang might decide to go on a diet... "Jiang Cheng eats a normal sized meal."

Masozi cranes to look at Jiang Cheng's plate. This is less than entirely helpful, because Jiang Cheng seems to have already eaten most of his food. 

"- Can you look at my food at lunch and tell me if it's a normal sized meal?" he asks Jiang Cheng. 

"Yes."

"He's going to say 'fuck you, Masozi, that is nowhere near enough food and you are going to starve to death and then where will we be?' and then you're going to do that thing you do where you hide behind Wei Wuxian and look like someone's about to murder you. So I will be in charge of determining if you're eating enough food."

He's hopefully going to get used to Jiang Cheng at some point? Masozi nods, though. Being yelled at isn't pleasant even if he can repeat on loop in his head that it's not indicative of his life being in danger. 

- yeah okay if he does that a lot, Marian should probably bring it up with Wen Qing later during their shift? Not that Marian is even slightly qualified to - what, give this kid therapy for what's presumably a horrifying and upsetting backstory? 

"Uh, right. I'd better go talk to the other tables. See you later, Wen Qing?"

She leaves. 

Masozi sighs and starts unenthusiastically eating the rest of his rubbery eggs. 

"That's just Jiang Cheng. It's how he says he likes you."

Masozi smiles very tentatively at Jiang Cheng, and then ducks his head and goes back to trying to make himself eat the food. 

After the shouting has calmed down, Luca decides that waiting until lunch is not necessary. His Mandarin is better than his manners, but he has the basics - approach the table from the side for petitioners, bow to Lan Xichen and the two flanking him. Most enclavers could openly request to sit, or even sit immediately, but Pisa probably shouldn't.

"Good morning," he says in English. "You're... Pisa, right?"

(He doesn't have a power-sharer.)

(Neither does he, technically, though he has something like one.)

"Good morning. Yes, my name is Luca Calloconti. My cousins asked me to speak with you regarding the, ah, news." He gestures toward where Holden made his announcement. "May I sit?"

"Yes, of course."

"Thank you. We assume there's a search, and of course you're a natural group to coordinate. We're willing to help; we have as much interest in catching the killer as anyone."

Fuuuuuuuck who are these people he really needs to pay more attention to the Anglos

"We're interested in help from anyone who wants to offer," Lan Xichen says noncommittally in the hopes that Meng Yao will tell him who these people are.

They seem - more confused than he'd expect. Would they know...?

"Ah. We have some expertise. As you may remember, my enclave is all experienced in the - sane - use of malia. This has some benefits when hunting for less stable maleficers."

That exists???

"Of course," he says smoothly, "and the existence of a less well-regulated maleficer leads to all sorts of-- misunderstandings. For a while, New York even thought the maleficer was a Shanghai ally!"

If Pisa is what their representative says they are, they should talk to Masozi to clear up his misunderstandings about malia, he would be very interested. Lan Xichen should ask around about this-- Hitomi might know more, or know who to ask about it. But this is a longer term plan for the maleficer is caught. If New York catches wind of Shanghai talking to sane maleficers they're going to assume Shanghai is planning to use malia.

They either had forgotten about Pisa or didn't know. Better not presume more, though.

"We noticed their commotion, I'm glad the confusion was cleared up. I'd assume you'll be leading a search? My senior cousins have more discernment for distinguishing maleficers from a distance than most. Sadly, my cousins here are only spell-competent with Mandarin, but they do want to help."

"We have to coordinate with New York but we're planning to sweep shop classes, so with luck we find them within week. Jaipur is already flagging people they think are suspicious, having second eye on that is good."

"You both have unique perspectives," Meng Yao says, "with Jaipur being very anti-malia and yourselves using it."

Subtext: Please don't talk to Jaipur.

He nods to Meng Yao, "They certainly think so. I might have hoped that our traditions would reassure them eventually, but at this point, they clearly feel their own traditions forbid it. Sweeping the shop classes makes sense and I'm sure our seniors will be happy to assist."

Subtext: Yeah we know about Jaipur, and, therefore, Luca is leaning toward you not knowing much about Pisa.

Yes, Meng Yao's lack of omniscience here is embarrassing for everyone involved.

"Anything you happen to come across is very valuable."

Luca nods. "You'll see them later today, then. If Shanghai needs anything else from us in the future, don't hesitate to ask. Our reading room is" - he gives directions. "If there isn't anything else at the moment?"

"Not at moment, thank you."

He stands, bows again. "Good luck to you all."

Then he backs away and returns to his cousins.

"That might be worth investigating more," he says to Meng Yao.

"Of course, er-ge."

"Your creepy telepathy is incredibly creepy."

"Do you want me to explain?"

"No, absolutely not, if there's one thing I've learned in the past six months it's that it's very useful to have no idea what Meng Yao is up to."

"Not everything I do is sketchy."

"I'm sure all your actions meet the highest standards of morality and justice."