"I don't have anything! You're more of a real Shanghaier than me or Wen Ning."

Masozi is PRETTY SURE that he is MISSING some CONTEXT and that seems bad???? 

He....is maybe not going to ask any questions right now, though. "...I don't think that makes me more a real Shanghai person? I think speaking Mandarin is important for that and I don't really yet?" 

"That's true. My position is secure."

"How come Masozi gets the magic item that makes him look hot? I want the magic item that makes me look hot."

"You look fine."

"Are you saying I'm pretty?"

"Shut up."

Masozi...knows the English word 'hot' but that doesn't make sense? 

"I - don't think my clothes are too warm?" he says, confused, and then forces down another bite of brussel sprouts. His stomach kind of hurts from how much food he's shoved in it. 

"No, you look gorgeous. All"-- he gestures-- "I'm going to murder everyone else in the whole entire world but I'm not going to murder you even a little bit."

Aaaaaaaah! 

"That sounds bad! I don't want to look like I'm going to murder anyone? How do I make them not look like that?" He already kind of loves these clothes but if they make him look even more like an even maleficer then that's terrible for his survival chances against New York and the other scared enclaves. 

"No no no! In a good way! A good way! A 'you want to make a graduation alliance with me and maybe give me a blowjob' kind of way, not a 'you should start a war about Shanghai allying with me' kind of way!"

What if Nie Huaisang DIDN'T call other people hot at the lunch table how about THAT.

Oh no Jiang Cheng has the wanting-to-murder-someone look again! Masozi is going to huddle up against Wei Wuxian and try to look harmless. 

(This....does not work nearly as well in his current clothes.) 

"He's right, you look great, Zaizai. All the boys are going to want you to fuck their throats and all the mals are going to flee in terror."

"- I don't want to fuck anyone's throat?" Masozi protests. Can they please stop talking about this it's making him feel incredibly conspicuous and also probably this conversation is bad for the dignity of the enclave or something? At least, it feels undignified to him. 

"Well, at least the mals fleeing in terror will be helpful."

...This conversation is confusing and uncomfortable, and Masozi is going to mumble something noncommittal and then go back to finishing his food while he stares at Mandarin notes. He does both activities with intense diligence. 

This is so incredibly unfair. 

Of all the magic Sophie could have woven into Masozi's clothes she had to pick this?

Lan Xichen can't stop looking at him from across the table. He ends up having to ask someone to repeat what they said because he wasn't paying attention, which never happens.

Masozi looks good. And more than good he looks like himself, like someone took everything that made Masozi most distinctly Masozi and turned it up until it radiated out for everyone to see. It makes him look handsome, in the way that people who are themselves as hard as they can be are handsome. He looks confident and strong and clever and in an odd sort of way trustworthy; it looks like he can hurt people, can hurt them very badly, but isn't going to unless it's necessary to keep other people safe.

And he looks dangerous, and Lan Xichen knows himself well enough to know how much he likes boys who are a little bit dangerous. It's one of the things he loves about Meng Yao, when that ingratiating pleading smile of his turns cold and dark and clever, and Lan Xichen knows that he'll do whatever it takes to get what he wants and what he wants is for Lan Xichen to be safe and happy and well. Ruthlessness is attractive, being able to hurt him is attractive, and the clothes make Masozi look like he has both traits.

Lan Xichen cannot stop having intrusive thoughts about Masozi shoving him up against the wall and taking him and it's probably bad to resent a dead girl but he absolutely does. 

Wei Wuxian has changed the conversation topic to PHYSICS, which he and Jiang Cheng can contribute avidly to and Wen Ning and Lan Wangji don't talk much anyway. (Nie Huaisang is taking advantage of Jiang Cheng's distraction to make eyes across the room at Tomonori.)

Masozi is entirely oblivious to Lan Xichen's thoughts and to Lan Xichen's eyes on him. He's trying to study Mandarin but the conversation about physics is fascinating and he ends up drawn into it. 

He manages to finish all the food on his plate and then, valiantly, eats a bit of his mandatory food packet. It tastes good but leaves him even thirstier, and his water is back in his room. 

The physics conversations drifts in a direction that makes him think of the the wax-melting adventures, and he interjects - speaking about a quarter of the words in Mandarin but filling in the rest with English - and asks Jiang Cheng if he has a good explanation of how wax melts, "- because we were melting it in shop this morning to make a wax cast for a knife, and it was crayons, and we weren't sure if the colors in them would make it melt different?" 

"You were in what?"