"Are you the kid who did my calligraphy? I'll give you a virgin pina colada if you make me some beautiful Buddhist spaceship art for my Buddhist spaceship room," Julia says to Nie Huisiang.

The room is polished to a Star Trek sort of silver shine on the walls, and the furniture's been hauled off and replaced with a metal desk and shelving. The shelving is mostly full of a rock arrangement. The floor has an ornate Tibetan prayer rug.

"I'll get them home," Silas says. "- thanks, though."

"Two virgin Pina coladas, coming right up!! Fiona, gimme your cup, we don't have enough of them."

"I didn't do your calligraphy and I definitely charge more than a drink for art, even from very pretty girls."

She saw! She's been going to the group therapy Julia hosts, mostly because she was curious and it seemed like an easy enough way to get a better sense of the English-speaking side of the school. It remains a very pretty room.

...also she is just simply going to ignore Nie Huaisang that seems like the best move all around.

"No problem," she says to Silas, and "Thank you," to Julia.

"Well, then I guess the second one is for me," Julia says, giggling, giving one to Ayako and pointedly not giving the other to Nie Huaisang.

That's okay! Nie Huaisang is way too drunk to be bothered by this.

"Was your calligraphy person angry constantly at nothing, constantly spinning his sliderule and refusing to shut up, completely silent and terrified, or completely silent and totally expressionless and also he has a big sword?"

"He wasn't very chatty? Do you mean a literal sword or a, you know, sword. I didn't see his, you know, sword."

Oh wow that's really sweet. She was not expecting it to be that sweet.

"He means a literal sword."

"No sword!!!"

"Right, so that's Wen Ning. He's a sweetheart. He doesn't actually... speak... English? So I'm not sure how you communicated with him?"

This conversation is pretty audible a room over. 

"Wen Ning is VERY GOOD!" Masozi offers. 

"Oh, yes, also he's very good and we all love him."

"He's also the person whose room they're all in."

"He speaks English fine! He might not write it but I wanted the sutras in Chinese anyway, that's how the other kid who did them did it."

"Nooooo he doesn't, he's monolingual in Mandarin. Maybe it was a non-Shanghaier."

Shrug. "Maybe. He didn't say where he was from." She's not totally sure he said anything? He did pretty calligraphy, though. 

Huh.

Weird.

"Here's your cup back, thank you."

"Uh huh! Good luck herding the drunk maleficers!"

"Anyway! Great to meet you, stop by my store sometime, and I think Ayako is gonna walk me back to my room now."

"We should head back too, guys," says Silas, standing up. 

"Okay Mom," half of New York responds, and then bursts into more hysterical giggling.

Masozi totally heard that! 

"Hey! I don't think anyone else but me was ever a maleficer!" 

"Zaizai, please go back to giving Wen Ning a backrub. --Sorry!" he yells in New York's general direction.

Wen Ning agrees with Wei Wuxian about this although he is zero percent tracking the politics.