Masozi is eating FOOD. An entire normal sized meal as judged by Nie Huaisang! The cafeteria line selection was not great, today, and the tray he managed to gather was initially judged inadequate, but Nie Huaisang donated one of his vending machine snacks, a bun of some kind in a plastic wrapper. The expiration date is well past but it's not moldy or anything and non-moldy bread is probably fine? 

He sits down next to Wei Wuxian and opens his Mandarin notebook and promptly forgets to actually keep eating while he practices various syllables under his breath. 

Marian approaches the table from the other end and waits to be acknowledged. 

"It's not enough to get the food, you also have to eat it."

"Marian-laoshi, what do you need?"

"I've got something for Masozi? At least, I'm pretty sure the uniform Sophie made is for him, that's what New York was saying, right...?" She holds out the bundle. 

Masozi is not paying any attention to this! Without even looking up from his notes, he manages to tear open the plastic wrapping for his bun and bite into it. It...unexpectedly has filling? Weird tasting filling, too. Eh, it's better than the burnt crispy bits from the edges of the casserole tray. 

"Thank you. We'll return it if it's not his."

"Should I, uh, be checking with New York in case there's weird politics stuff?" Marian wrinkles her nose, making it very clear what her opinion is of weird politics stuff. 

"I think Lan Xichen can handle it."

"Okay, just as long as he knows he's got to. Anyway. Masozi?" She's preeeetty sure that's him, mostly hiding behind the Shanghai kid again. "Do you want to come try on your new school uniform? You can change in the infirmary if you want." 

Masozi, mouth full of weird-filling-stuffed roll, glances at Lan Xichen as though for permission. 

After a quick explanation from Wen Qing in Mandarin, Lan Xichen looks at Masozi and says, "Go ahead."

Then he will go with Marian, hastily chewing the rest of the bun. (He doesn't think he especially liked the bun. The filling has a weird unpleasant sour aftertaste.) 

Marian will let him use her bedroom to change in, for privacy! ...She should trade food packets for curtains. Curtains would be great. Curtains would have made the dead body situation so much less awkward. Although maybe they'd be a hiding place for mals... It seems complicated. 

Masozi is pretty baffled at the concept that he shouldn't want to undress in front of someone! Maybe it bothers Marian, though? He can go in her bedroom and take off Song Lan's clothes that he's wearing and put on the uniform that Sophie made for him. 

The uniform fits him. It's not tailored so he'll outgrow it; it's made to be let out as he grows. The fabric is soft, and it stretches a bit - more insurance against the weedlike growth of a teenage boy with a steady food supply. He'll have a few years with it, even though Sophie won't be there to let it out for him.

The pants are black, and relatively simple; the shirt is white. Not the crisp, starchy white that you'd expect from a school uniform, but a more gentle color, almost dove-grey. It has embroidery on it, mostly the sleeves, in a brighter white that might be silk thread and jet-black that seems upon inspection to be human hair. Sophie's hair. The patterns are subtle but lovely, not drawing the eye but keeping it where it lands.

There's magic in the cloth, in the seams, in the patterns. The phrase dripping with magic would imply waste, which is incorrect; none of it is wasted. It's brimming with magic. Gentle magic, clean magic, the magic that comes from making something that knows exactly what it wants to be. It wants to be Masozi's. It knows him, loves him, as Sophie wanted to know him and love him. It wants everyone to know.

Here is Masozi. He loves the world that has been cruel to him. He told a girl to be dangerous, because she was not, and he wanted her to live. He is clever, and he is good, and he will not back down.
 

Masozi starts crying. 

There's so much of Sophie in it and he's never going to forget her and he wants her to not be dead it's not okay it won't ever be okay and he doesn't even know who killed her... 

(And it would be simpler, it would be easier to bear, if he could want to find the person who killed Sophie and kill them too. But he can't. He doesn't have a mental direction for wanting someone to be dead, no matter what they've done, and so he just has hurt and confusion.) 

Shit aaaaah what's happening in there. Is the kid getting attacked by one of the psychic mals?

Marian knocks on the door. "Masozi! Are you all right?" 

Mumblesomething. 

"I - sorry - I'm going to check on you, sorry..." She opens the door. 

Scrawny completely naked black kid standing with an embroidered shirt in his hands, sobbing! 

.....This is incredibly awkward. (Also, wow, this kid needs to be FED. He doesn't look as bad as the pictures she's seen of kids seriously affected by famines - his arms and shoulders are ropy muscle rather than just skin and bone - but his shoulder blades and hipbones stick out like wings, and she can count all of his ribs.  ....And she needs to stop staring at the naked kid, seriously, ack.

"Are you hurt?" she says stupidly, eyes fixed a yard to his right. 

"No." He gulps. "I just - Sophie..." 

She would offer the poor kid a hug but he's NAKED. 

"You miss her?" she says, gently. "I - I think she cared about you a lot. She - wanted to say sorry - for, she thought she'd gotten you in trouble..." 

Masozi had JUST started to calm down, and now he bursts into tears again. 

Wow she keeps fucking this up. Marian mumbles something apologetic and backs out of the room and shuts the door. 

Masozi sits down on the nurse's bed and takes deep breaths and tells himself firmly that he can have his feelings later. Right now he has work to do, namely eating lunch. 

He puts on the clothes. They hug his body in a way that no clothes ever had, before. The pants go all the way down to his feet. The fabric is so soft and pleasant against his skin. 

...He is not going to cry again. He is going to appreciate and be grateful for Sophie's work, and never forget her, and he's going to go back into the cafeteria and eat the rest of his food. 

"Thank you," he tells the nurse, politely, when he steps out of her bedroom. 

"....Wow." 

Marian can't tell directly that the clothes are magic, of course. She suspects it, though. The kid looks so - vivid. So bright and alive and real and there. The fit makes him look slender and elegant, and long and lean and dangerous, rather than just half-starved. She could imagine him on a magazine cover, wearing that. 

Masozi doesn't know how to respond to that reaction, so he just bobs his head and smiles at her and says 'thank you' again, and then leaves the infirmary and heads back toward the Shanghai table. 

Meng Yao puts a hand on Lan Xichen's arm and gestures towards Masozi with his head.

Lan Xichen looks up.

Oh fuck.

His mouth goes dry.

"Oh, you're a real Shanghaier now," Nie Huaisang says to Masozi. "Magic clothes!"

"Sophie made them for me," Masozi says, and his voice is very tight and controlled but he doesn't cry. "She - she wanted the suit to, to know me? ...There's her in it. Her magic. I can feel it." 

Masozi takes a deep breath. Lan Xichen....looks kind of upset? Or something? Masozi is actually having a lot of trouble parsing that particular facial expression. 

"I - what? Are the clothes bad?" 

Speech. He needs to form phonemes and arrange them into words which are then arranged into sentences. This is a thing that toddlers are capable of and so therefore he can do it when his brain is mush. 

"They're very good clothes. Go sit with the freshmen."

"I wonder if it's going to start having opinions."

"It has to be a really good magic item before it starts having opinions."

"That's true, my fans don't." He flutters it in appreciation.

Is Lan Xichen mad at him or something? Probably Masozi shouldn't just ask in front of everyone. He goes back to sit next to Wei Wuxian, in front of his remaining food. There's still a lot of it. Inconveniently, he can't practice Mandarin pronunciation when he's instead shoving brussel sprouts and burnt casserole crusts into his mouth. 

"Masozi, look," Nie Huaisang says. He flicks his fan in a certain way and then there's an odd sort of shimmer around his body. "Try to touch me."

"- Sorry, what? Um, okay." That looks like a shield, maybe? He reaches out and tries to tap Nie Huaisang gently on the shoulder. 

A few inches away from Nie Huaisang's body, where the shimmer starts, the air is sort of squishy-but-solid, and Masozi can't push his fingers through.

"Whoooa! That's really good. Does it stop mals too?" Masozi says this with his mouth full. 

"That's what it's for."

"I have Zidian, it has opinions." Jiang Cheng flicks his arm. His ring transforms into a line of purple lightning, curled around his arm like a snake. It has a sense of being very still and very very dangerous.

"That sounds really useful! Jiang Cheng can I look at yours too or can you show me how you'd fight with it?" Masozi pokes at his remaining brussel sprouts with his fork. "Do I have to eat all this food?" 

"Yes."

"Maybe Lan Wangji and I can spar tonight. Then you'd get a chance to see Bichen too, Lan Wangji's sword. It's not very impressive-looking, it just stabs things."

"Yes."

"I saw him use Bichen!" Masozi bounces a little. "When Wei Wuxian forgot his room number and we had to check the whole floor. Wei Wuxian, do you have a magic thing like that too?" 

"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?"

"- We only went to the Sinosphere area of the shop!" Masozi protests immediately. "We were staying out of the way of anyone who might've wanted to assassinate me!" 

"Did you skip class?" Jiang Cheng says to Wei Wuxian. 

"No, I have Monday morning shop-- come on, Jiang Cheng, it'll be fine, and you know Monday morning shop has the best stuff--"

"It is not fine."

"I am going to break your fucking legs, Wei Ying, what the fuck were you thinking--"

"It'll be fine, I'll be fine, a-Cheng, don't worry about it-- I'm really good at magic, you know that, I'll survive it--"

"You didn't even know the New Yorkers were there! You couldn't have! Fuck you, I am going to break your fucking neck, how dare you--"

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah it's the shouting again and Masozi is instinctively terrified, his mouth goes dry and his stomach is churning and he wants to hide under the table - 

- but it's not him under attack, it's Wei Wuxian, and after a moment he finds that, despite it being really scary, he feels - protective? 

Instead of fleeing or hiding, he moves closer, putting himself between Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian. He looks Jiang Cheng in the eye, levelly, and hopefully it doesn't show that his heart is pounding in his chest and his palms are clammy.

"Please stop threatening him," he says, and his voice only trembles very slightly. 

"I'll stop threatening him if he stops being a fucking idiot!"

"Yanli."

"You're right, yeah, both of you are going to talk to Yanli right now."

Why are they talking to Yanli now. Is she the expert on Monday morning shop? That doesn't make any sense! 

Masozi sits down, though, and resists the temptation to glance helplessly at Lan Xichen in hopes of support here. It...probably was, in fact, stupid to go to shop, and he just trusted Wei Wuxian and in hindsight that was not a great idea. 

"a-Cheng what's wrong?"

"This idiot signed up for Monday morning shop!" He points to Wei Wuxian. "And this idiot went with him."

"It's fine, shijie, it's fine, everything is fine. We started our knives and we didn't get eaten! At all! Masozi totally noticed all of the mals, he's really good at it, and we got some great supplies--"

"Oh, Xianxian," she says. "What am I going to do with you?"

Oh, no, don't use the voice. He hates the voice.

The voice isn't really working on Masozi. He's mostly just very confused about what interaction they're supposed to be having right now, he thought it was going to be getting advice but 'what am I going to do with you?' isn't advice, or if it is it's very unhelpful... 
 

"Jiang Cheng, go finish your lunch please, I don't want you to go hungry."

He obeys. Grumpily.

"Xianxian," she says. "You just wanted to get the good supplies, right?"

"It's the best shop, everyone knows it, and I can make such cool things with my affinity--"

"But it's also the most dangerous," she says. "And I'm already so worried for you."

...oh no.

Masozi isn't sure why Wei Wuxian is making such an upset face about this! Of course Yanli is worried for him. The Scholomance is dangerous. This doesn't really seem like new information. 

He has learned that the best way to handle social interactions that he's confused about is to be quiet and not do things, so he holds very still beside Wei Wuxian. 

"I always used to clean up your scrapes when you were little, remember?"

"Yes, shijie."

"And-- I just wish I could keep you safe now," she says. "I'm up late at night, worrying--"

"Shijie! You need your rest for your fibro!"

"But I can't if I'm scared that every Monday lunch I might see Wen Qing walking over to the table and telling me that you died."

"...yes, shijie."

He feels like the worst person in the entire world.

Masozi remains confused about what new information that conversation could possibly have contained for Wei Wuxian! There's no possible way he was unaware of the risk-benefit tradeoff in going to Monday morning lab? 

He will continue to be very still and quiet and wait to see if Yanli is going to talk to him too. Maybe she'll give him advice that is actually advice and has any new content. 

"You have to take these things seriously," she says. "I love you, shidi, I love the way you look at life-- I don't want to take away your courage and your optimism, it's what makes you you-- but you have to temper it with caution or you're going to die." Her voice breaks on the last word and she starts to cry.

"Oh, no, shijie, don't cry-- I'll be careful, I promise-- I'll be so careful, I'll be so good at staying alive-- please don't cry--" He hugs her.

"Promise me you'll join Jiang Cheng in Tuesday morning shop?"

"I promise."

....Is she doing a secret plan to make Wei Wuxian pay more attention to danger by crying about the danger? Masozi...will acknowledge that this does seem to work on Wei Wuxian, somehow. Maybe it's just that Wei Wuxian is very distractible and has a hard time paying attention to lectures, but crying and hugging gets his attention more? 

Masozi is going to try to offer Wei Wuxian a hug too once he's done hugging Yanli. It looks like maybe that conversation was upsetting for him and he could use one. 

Yanli, still crying, turns to Masozi. "Masozi, could I ask you for a favor please?"

"I...maybe? Can you tell me what it is?" 

"Xianxian means well, but he can be a little... reckless."

"Shijie..."

She looks at Masozi with teary sincerity. "You're so careful and cautious-- can you help take care of him, please? And tell him not to if he's about to do something that's too much of a risk?"

"...Yeah, I was already doing that? I made him wait for me to check all the cupboards." 

"But Monday morning shop is very dangerous," she says. "Only juniors and seniors should take it, and even then many of them die."

"All of the New York freshman are taking it because of Orion! I know it's not as safe for us because New York is mad at Shanghai, but he'll still get most of the mals, he likes killing them so much." 

"If New York assassinates you," Jiang Yanli says, "they're not going to do it by deliberately killing you. They're going to do it by having Orion not kill a mal and then, oh no, what could Shanghai have expected, we knew that shop was dangerous, there's nothing that could be done--" She starts to cry again. "And then you'll be dead and maybe a-Xian will be dead and there's nothing any of us can do about it."

Translating this is making Wei Wuxian feel like he kicked a puppy.

....Oh no he hadn't considered that - or he had but he hadn't thought it all the way through, he'd just figured that Wei Wuxian was good at fighting - but of course Wei Wuxian would try to save Masozi, if he were under attack, and - he wouldn't think to be careful, and if Masozi were hurt then he might not be able to remind him, and....actually it seems possible that Wei Wuxian wouldn't even listen if Masozi told him to RUN AWAY instead of trying to save his life... 

"...That makes sense. I - maybe we can just go next week again, if the mals still aren't very bad - or we could go with a lot of people right after curfew and clear it out...?" He really wants Monday morning shop! He got so much stuff! 

"I'm very worried that Xianxian won't be careful enough even with you there."

That's fair enough but ouch.

She takes Masozi's hands in hers. "I know it's really hard for you to think these things through-- it's hard for everyone-- but Xianxian is so impulsive and he'll do whatever seems like a good idea at the time. And I know you can be smart and careful enough in this school even though it's so different from what you're used to. And then you can keep yourself and Xianxian safe."

"....Okay. I'll try. I...guess even if that means not going to Monday morning shop." He looks over at Wei Wuxian. "Can we still change which shop we go to, now?" 

"No, but we can run in quickly for assignments and skip a different class to go to shop then-- you can get someone to look through your schedule and figure out what'll be easiest to get the assignments for--"

"--Wei Wuxian, I heard that you were in Monday morning shop, but obviously I knew you would never do something so stupid."

Oh come on.

"We were just talking about this, a-Qing-- please be gentle with them, it was an honest mistake, everyone makes mistakes their freshman year--"

"Yes, and that's why three-quarters of the people in this school die."

Masozi thinks it's kind of unfair that everyone is getting mad at Wei Wuxian - or sad at him, which he seems to find worse - for taking Monday morning shop, when Masozi ALSO did this. 

He's not going to bring that up, though. This conversation is stressful and draining enough already. Also he...doesn't feel entirely well? Mostly just in a vague way where he would sort of prefer to lie down. Maybe he ate too much food again. 

"I promise I'll help Wei Wuxian be more careful," he assures Jiang Yanli. "I - if I want to go back to my room and study Mandarin some more, should I get someone to walk with me there?" 

"I'll walk with you after I'm done scolding both of you. --Wei Wuxian, you idiot, you can't do things that mean you're going to die. What do you think the graduation plan for the freshmen is? It's you, because you're brilliant and can pull some clever plan out of nowhere to get both Wen Ning and Nie Huaisang to safety. What chance do you think they have if you wind up devoured by a mal freshman year because you couldn't wait two years to get to raid the Monday morning shop cabinet? Or ask a Shanghai upperclassman if you want something! It's not like we don't have artificers!"

"Sorry, a-Qing."

...Okay the Monday morning shop was probably a mistake. Masozi doesn't think he could possibly have known enough to judge this when he picked it, but Wei Wuxian probably should have, and Masozi probably should have been able to point out that both of them going at this point was a terrible idea. 

(Masozi does not feel guilty, exactly. He's slightly frustrated and restless about having misjudged something, and wants to mull on it until he's propagated whatever he was wrong about and made sure he'll remember the lesson in future.) 

"Don't call me a-Qing when you're in trouble. --And you," she says to Masozi. "You were told to stay in your room and study Mandarin, and not to take a class with New Yorkers on the most dangerous level of the school. Don't you remember we almost fought a war to keep you alive?"

"But Wei Wuxian said it was...." Masozi trails off. 

"Wei Wuxian is an idiot and you shouldn't listen to him about whether things are safe."

"--I'm sorry, someone should have told you that explicitly."

- okay he really is feeling kind of bad now. Not emotionally bad, actually physically bad. 

"....Can someone walk me back to my room now." 

"Yes, I will."

Does Masozi want interesting facts about the difference between medieval Arabic and medieval Chinese medical magic on his walk?

He will listen to interesting facts but he's more subdued about it than usual. 

When they get to Masozi's room, Wen Qing says, "Do you get along with Nie Huaisang?"

"- Yeah? He's - nice. He tries to help a lot." Why is she asking this question. It's very mysterious. 

"I'm tempted to assign him to-- teach you how the Scholomance works? Since you don't have the education most people in Shanghai have."

Masozi is not especially clear on what she means by that! It does seem like he's missing quite a lot of important education, though. He nods. 

"If you have any of the complaints about how he treats you, please tell me right away."

Complaints like what, Masozi thinks but doesn’t say. He nods. “Of course.”

Can she please leave now so he can lie down on his bed and drink some water and hope this fixes the Badness. 

Yes, she does.