"I could hit on him. He's pretty."

"....I don't think that'd help? That seems more about your preferences!" Also Wen Ning didn't like it when Masozi tried to kiss him and probably that was only partly because of Masozi's kissing skill or lack thereof? 

"Ask me when I'm sober, drunk me is too horny for problem-solving. You have a nice ass."

"I have a nice– sorry, what? I - think I don't know what that word means, I thought 'ass' in English meant something sort of like a horse?" 

"Literally it means something sort of like a horse. Colloquially it means your butt. English likes to take two thirds of its words and give them sex-related slang meanings, at some point you'll get used to it." 

"Huh! Why does everyone think sex is so interesting, anyway? I think math is way more interesting! Oh, and being good at fighting. Fighting is interesting too."

"Around when people start puberty sex gets really interesting for no apparent reason, and some people get hit earlier than others. I assume this is because of evolution or something." 

"....What's 'evolution'?" 

"Sex is interesting because it feels really good," Nie Huaisang says before he's processed Masozi's question.

"Evolution is, uh," and then she runs directly into the brick wall of her own lack of understanding of biology.

"...you know what, I bet Wei Wuxian would love explaining that, why don't you ask him tomorrow when everyone is sober and he'll have time to explain it properly." 

"You should try jerking off! I told you to do that but I don't know if you listened."

"Okay!" 

....Oh wait no while he was thinking about Ayako's question Nie Huaisang went and asked him ANOTHER question? Unfair! 

"- I didn't try it yet? You didn't give me very clear instructions and also you said to do it in the morning but the morning is BUSY." 

Masozi is going to mentally classify the mysterious word 'evolution' next to 'sex????' and 'puberty' and 'Wei Wuxian', and probably he will remember to ask tomorrow? ....He's not sure, usually he can reliably remember to do things but usually he isn't DRUNK. 

"- You should tell me a math problem!" he announces to Ayako, beaming at her, and then stumbles against Nie Huaisang again. 

"You can probably do it in the evening. The evening also works fine."

But he has things to do in the evenings too! 

....Okay, nevermind, Masozi is not in the mood to have arguments right now. 

"- Anyway I think probably Wen Ning is way smarter and better at things than anyone thinks he is? And he's just - the ways that he's scared because of bad things that happened to him before are inconvenient for helping him look smart or good at things?" 

"That seems like a dumb problem for a person to have."

"I know! I bet he hates it too! ....I mean, it's a dumb problem for me to have that I don't know how to not offend New York and make them think I'm a scary murderer? But that happened anyway." 

Wen Ning is better at learning math than he or Jiang Cheng thinks he is, but still not very good--

and OH RIGHT there's a source of math problems, thank you Fibonacci class. "Yeah. Just because a problem is dumb doesn't mean it isn't a real problem. Okay, so Masozi, imagine a sequence of numbers that starts with zero and one, and you get the next number in the sequence by adding the last two together, how many items long is the sequence before the numbers are bigger than a thousand?" 

"....Oooooooooh! That's a really good one!" Masozi doesn't know how to answer it yet, but it's making his entire brain sparkle. 

"- Okay so. If I'm doing street fighting math then I wanna - do it far enough to figure out the pattern and then jump ahead so I don't have to do all of the steps one at a time? One is zero, two is one, three is - also one? Four is...two? Five is...three, I guess. Six is five? Seven is - eight? Nine is...thirteen? Ten is - um - twenty-one? ....Okay it's almost like the one where the next number is double the number before it? Except it's double for every two steps, not every one step." Masozi isn't sure if that makes sense outside of his head. "So....how many times would I have to double twenty to get to a thousand. Forty is one, eighty is two, 160 is three, 320 is four, 640 is five - and then next one would be a bunch over a thousand. So that's five and a half times doubling it. But twice as many steps. E....leven steps. On top of ten because that's the one in the sequence that was about twenty. I....think you'd have to go twenty-one steps into the sequence probably before you'd get to a thousand?" 

"Pretty close! It's," ah fuck she knew this yesterday when she was doing homework "eighteen, you weren't off by much."

"If you think about it," Nie Huaisang says, "you like fighting math, so it's basically another kind of liking fighting."

“- Huh! I guess some of the assumptions I made to make the problem easier wasn’t actually true, and were - all pushing in one direction of being wrong? Twenty one is actually way too big, right - my assumption was wrong so it’s probably not off by multiplied-by-two but maybe multiplied by 1.5? ….I wonder why.” Masozi stops walking in the middle of the hallway. “Do you have paper, I wanna draw a graph.”

"I do not have paper, and also c'mon, we need to get you back to your room so I have time to get everyone before curfew.

If you draw a graph tonight I'll show you a cool thing the numbers do tomorrow, though."

“Okay! I have paper in my room, I can do that! ….I like you. You have really good math questions! The person from the singing room next to us had a really stupid question but your question isn’t stupid at all!”

She vaguely wonders what math question New York would have asked. She also sort of suspects she can guess the approximate shape of the answer.

"Thank you! I'm glad you like my math questions."

Masozi beams at her! And then stumbles against Nie Huaisang again, he’s so tired.