"I don't give a shit."

Nie Huaisang presses on. "I bet Ennis has some really useful makeup. Lipstick that detects poison, maybe."

"I don't wear lipstick! You wear lipstick, because you're a faggot."

"You jerk off to videos of men sucking dick."

"I don't see what that has to do with me being a faggot."

"I just like to be pretty."

Yes and it's VERY CRUEL to JIANG CHENG SPECIFICALLY.

"I don't know why you think I'd want to talk to the girl with the makeup affinity."

He opens his fan and flutters it. "Oh, I'm sure I don't know-- don't make me say it-- it's fine--"

Oh. Right. That.

He self-consciously reaches up to touch his cheek and then jerks his hand away from it like it's on fire. 

Thanks for the reminder that puberty hit him like a freight train and in the totally wrong direction. He's still five foot nothing but by god his face looks like the surface of the moon. 

Sorry that not all of us can be as pretty as you, Nie Huaisang. 

"Think about it!" Nie Huaisang says cheerily, and then runs off to share the Shanghai reading room with [gets on stepstool] [pulls out megaphone] HIS BOYFRIEND. "I bet she's in the Manchester reading room."

He is NOT going to the Manchester reading room. That is STUPID and EMBARRASSING and he has WORK TO DO.

…

After asking for directions, he goes to the Manchester reading room.

The Manchester reading room doesn't contain the freshmen yet, but they come up the stairs in a pack of six when their lunch period concludes. "Hello?" asks one of the girls. "This is Manchester's."

"I want to talk to Ennis," he says, like he'd carefully practiced in his mind on the way here.

"I'm Ennis," says one of the boys. "What is it?"

Ennis is a boy???

A really pretty boy, gosh. 

Instead of saying anything Jiang Cheng stares at his feet.

"Is this about cosmetics, or something else," Ennis says.

'Cosmetics.' What does 'cosmetics' mean. He doesn't know that word.

"You speak Mandarin?" he says, enunciating carefully.

"No. English, Gaelic, Latin."

"Wo hui shuo putonghua," says one of the girls.

"Translate?" he says.

"He asked if it was about makeup or something else," she tells Jiang Cheng.

"Yes. Makeup."

"You want me to make you something?"

"Yes, please, for the--" He touches his cheek.

It's really unfair that he has to have this conversation in front of multiple people, one of whom is a very pretty boy.

"- Gail, would you come with us to the lab?" Ennis ask the girl who hui shuo putonghua.

"He should pay you," says a different girl.

"I'm from Shanghai, I can offer mana. Or a favor. I'm an alchemist, I could make something for you in lab-- my affinity's animals." Or math tutoring but that's probably not good across the language barrier. 

"- Isla can you go ask Paige if we're okay with Shanghai now," says Ennis. Isla ducks into the reading room; the other two boys of the freshman pack go with her.

Okay, confusing things are happening in the language he doesn't really speak.

He's going to-- not look at the cute boy's cheekbones, that would be embarrassing. He's not going to look at the cute boy's mouth either. He's going to stare directly at the wall behind the cute boy's left shoulder, how about that.

Isla reports after a moment that they're tentatively okay with Shanghai and Ennis and Gail can go down to the lab to make concealer for a favor.

He's going to follow along then and… not say anything? He guesses?

Why don't people speak Mandarin. They should speak Mandarin.

Well, Gail does. "You want concealer for the zits?" she asks him. "Do you want it magic, Ennis's concealer also does painkilling a little bit and he's experimenting with making it also hide you from mals."

"Is that more expensive?"

"Yeah, he can do a non-magic kind faster with fewer ingredients."

So on the one hand spending mana on magic concealer is even more stupid than spending it on concealer at all. On the other hand, if he has magic concealer, he has a good reason to wear it that isn't going to make people laugh at him. 

"Hiding from mals is good," he says, "I'm not sure my face gets hurt very much?"

"The zits don't hurt? Huh, mine do."

"Not really?" Maybe he's just used to it.

"I can tell him nonmagical is fine."

"Yeah, okay." Now the decision is made for him so it's fine. Fine.

"Nonmagical," Gail relays to Ennis.

"Is he sure? I can sell the rest of the batch more easily if it's magic."

She translates that.

"Hiding from mals is useful, pain relief isn't."

Ennis nods.

When they reach the lab he says, "I have some of the things I'll need already stashed in my project locker, but if you'd care to check a few cabinets I can try to get as close as possible to your skin tone." And he goes to his locker and takes out ingredients, hmming thoughtfully about them.

Right. He will go check cabinets.

...

What is he even looking for.

Ennis watches from a ways back. "That powder, top left, I want that, and the white stuff there."

Once this is translated, he brings it to Ennis.

Ennis sets up. Takes a close look at the least blemished part of Jiang Cheng's face. Wants to know if he used to get much sun, outside the Scholomance.

"My enclave had sunlamps?"

"Are you likely to get much lighter here or did you spend about the same amount of time under those as you will in the cafeteria?"

"I think I'll get lighter," he says, more miserably than the sentence really warrants.

(They had a garden, and animals...)

With this in mind Ennis mixes up some concealer, a decently large batch. "Pay Gail the mana before I pigment it for you," he says, and Gail translates that and holds her hand out.

"Say when," he says.

He's going to feel like an idiot if Gail is the maleficer.

Gail doesn't malefice him, just takes a chunk. Ennis finishes the concealer, tests it on the back of his own hand for texture, adds a little of something. "Do you want me to put it on you and you'll owe me a favor?" he asks Jiang Cheng. "You can hold my compact mirror so you can see how I do it."

"Yes, please," he says, and tries not to think about how much of this is wanting to do it right and how much of this is wanting cute boys to touch his face.

Ennis produces from his pocket a very pretty compact mirror, and starts concealing Jiang Cheng's various blemishes with lots of taptaptaptapping. He keeps up a bit of a running commentary during the process, which Gail translates while revolving slowly on the spot to keep watch. "You have fantastic bone structure," Ennis says, "if you put on a little eyeliner too you'd look great, everyone looks good in black eyeliner - maybe a little eyebrow pencil, especially if you look pissed off all the time, might as well play it up -"

"Does eyebrow pencil make you look better if you look pissed all the time?" What is an eyebrow pencil.

"Well, you're constantly doing the angry eyebrows thing, people are going to look at your eyebrows more than they look at most people's eyebrows, so filling them in wouldn't hurt."

"I'm not constantly doing the angry eyebrows thing," he says, doing angry eyebrows.

"It won't do you any harm if you look happy for a moment either. But I don't have an eyebrow pencil yet, I didn't bring any makeup in, I'll have to make it all here." Conceal conceal.

"I could buy one. Maybe. Especially if it's magic."

"I don't have magic for eyebrow pencils yet. I can ask the void."

"Can't you just put the same spell in it?"

"No, it has to be relevant. An eyebrow pencil wouldn't be a painkiller or a disguise from mals. I'm not actually sure what an eyebrow pencil could be enchanted for, to be honest."

"Something related to anger. Apparently."

"Not really something I've given thought to." Taptaptap and Ennis adjusts the mirror so Jiang Cheng can see.

With the zits invisible he really does have amazing bone structure.

"I look. Okay."

"Well, if you want to look stunning try me again in six weeks when I have more products." He scrapes the rest of the concealer into a jar for Jiang Cheng and hands it over. "I'll let you know when I think of a favor."

"Thank you," he says.

"You're welcome. Let me know when you need another batch, maybe I'll have the mal-repellent part worked out."

"I will," he says.

And then he runs away from the cute boy.

...well that's kind of dumb but it's the first week and probably won't get him killed. Gail and Ennis go up the stairs more sedately.

Jiang Cheng runs to the nearest bathroom and looks in the mirror.

He looks... okay. He's still not Lan Wangji, who if the magic thing doesn't pan out could take up a second career as an idol, but he looks serviceable. It is possible, maybe, to imagine that someone might want to kiss him. 

Apparently he has good cheekbones. He looks at them suspiciously. He's never thought of any part of his body as being good before. Mostly they range between "bad" and "barely acceptable."

Without thinking about it he turns on the water and angrily splashes it onto his face. He scrubs until all the concealer is off. 

The face in the mirror is more familiar. He'd say it was a face only a mother could love but, well.

He goes back into his room and shoves the concealer underneath his mattress and closes his eyes and pretends to himself that he's not thinking about it.