Naima is here, in a sea of Chinese people. This is her punishment for trying to get out of language lab, she's pretty sure, so next time she's not going to do that, even if she does already have eight perfectly solid languages. Now she's going to have to spend a semester polishing her Mandarin, which is... fine, probably a good thing to be doing anyway.

She waves.

"Ni hao, Naima."

At least talking in Mandarin builds mana, not that she's actually short on that after this weekend, given she still doesn't have anywhere to put it.

"Hi. The school put me here when I swapped out of Monday morning shop. Hopefully it's interesting. I have not studied economics before."

"I took it on purpose because I want to learn economics and practice Mandarin! Do you want to do the homework for it together during work period? I have an English economics book in case."

"Sure, that sounds useful."

So many Chinese people!

Also this Japanese boy, who recognizes Bella. He waves.

"Hello!"

"Ni hao. Tomonori, shibushi?"

Oh! Right. Tomonori will alternate between Mandarin and English as needed.

In Mandarin, "Hello! I forgot that you wanted to learn. I'm Tomonori, although of course you're supposed to call me Matsumoto because we're very professional, very serious students."

"How do you want to tell me when you're confused?" he asks in English.

It's possible that he hasn't realized Bella and Naima were already talking.

"I can say 'I'm confused' in putonghua," she assures him, in Mandarin. "My putonghua is mostly okay! I am only a little nervous about doing economics in it."

"That's good! Economics is easy if you break it into small words but schools never do. Should we talk about economics so you can practice?"

"If I get stuck in the book I would like that!"

Alexius looks up from trading spells with another freshman. Oh, it's Bella and Tomonori. Nice. He's got time to say hello, he reads fast and will probably be ahead in classwork soon anyway, plus he likes economics. 

He thanks the freshman politely and gets up to visit. "Ni hao, Tomonori, Bella." 

"Ni hao! Alexius, Naima; Naima, Alexius."

"Pleased to meet you, Naima." He has the accent of someone who acquired most of his Mandarin from the Internet, can read it fluently but has rarely conversed in it, and a dash of Lan Wangji. 

"Hi, Alexius," she says, which may or may not be enough to determine that she's in about the same boat.

If he could tell then he might have a less-awkward accent himself. "My affinity is myself, been trading personal spells. What about you?"

(Meanwhile, one of the actually Chinese kids is frowning over her textbook, taking sparse notes like she's in a hurry.)

She feels like she must have misheard or like he must have misspoke, that doesn't sound like the sort of thing that makes sense to have as an affinity? There's - probably no good way to say that. "I do healing."

"Healing! That's amazing. I bet we have good overlap, too. Do you want to trade spells after class?" 

"Uh, sure. Honestly I'm kind of overloaded with the huge spell tome the void gave me this weekend, I think it's probably some medieval Persian doctor's life's work, but if you have anything good that isn't hyper-specific then I can see if I have anything you want for it."

He doesn't want to take up too much time hawking spells, they can always coordinate later... "One in Mandarin to staunch bleeding and oxygenate the remaining blood? A few other generic ones that heal cuts or speed normal healing or the like, nothing else you wouldn't have already." 

Bold of him to assume she knows a bunch of spells in an area just because it's her affinity, but she's not going to correct him; she'll have a ton of them in a couple weeks anyway, given how the void's been treating her. "Sure, I'd trade for that. What languages do you have, a majority of my healing spells are in Arabic or Persian."

"I don't have Persian," YET, "but I do have Arabic. Also Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Russian, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and of course English." 

She automatically counts those up and then mentally kicks herself, once again, for not taking language lab and getting saddled with this course instead of learning whatever the school meant to teach her in whatever language it was trying to give her. Next time she's going to try not to make that mistake.

"Would you trade it for an Arabic spell for bringing fevers down?"

"Absolutely!" He's got time to jot down his spell in Mandarin and trade it, sure. 

Tomonori, who had gotten absorbed in the book, finally replies to the greeting someone lobbed in his direction. The guy- he probably already said his name, and now Tomonori will need to ask when it's not awkward. He can never tell when that is.

"Ni hao," he says, even though greetings are the worst because they're empty gestures. It's not even nice, it's just a waste of everyone's time. Where does he even know him from- he's having trouble placing the face, which means it's probably one of the people from the supply run. Or breakfast on Friday? Or one of his classes.

"I have a spell that tells you when something has gone bad, or what an enchanted object is enchanted for, and one to detect poisons."

"Ooh, I might want that first one."

"Ooooh, same." Alexius is not great at keeping his tools from trying to eat him. He should work on that, and also get a spell to check. Hopefully it will be cheap enough he can use it even with his affinity jacking up the price. "I wonder if reflexes or sharper perception would be in-affinity for you?"

"Perception might be! How does it work?"

Tomonori starts writing out the identification spell.

"What would you would use it for?"

"Makes it slightly easier to make out visual details, more or less. Good for spotting mals pretending to be things, especially if you've seen 'em before. On the order of ten percent, maybe, but a ten percent better chance of spotting a mimic goes a long way. It's in Sanskrit, though, that might be a hangup." 

蘇格蘭哲學家和經濟學家亞當·斯密在1776年將政治經濟學定義為「國民財富的性質和原因的研究」，他說：

經濟政治學是一門政治家或立法者的學問，研究如何同時提供人民基本的物質所需和充足的利潤、同時對地方或國家的公家部門提供足夠的經費。

Sigh. She can read it, mostly, but she's really hoping that this class is light on the essay writing.

Tomonori is excited to learn about economics!

Probably also they will learn useful spells but he's mostly interested in the economics.