"He's so smart. And good at everything. We're going to be together forever," Jiang Cheng explains. "He's going to be at my side at graduation and we're going to show everyone."

It's really weird hearing people already have plans for graduation. They're freshmen. Ayako isn't supposed to have concrete plans for graduation until halfway through junior year; until then she has a mission statement and the awareness that there'll be a bunch of things she'll have to deal with as they come up.

"He's brilliant," she agrees instead of saying that.

"He's so brilliant. He speaks every language I think and he's not even incantations-track."

"Wow, that's incredible."

"I don't have dogs because of him."

"...I don't know what that means."

"I had two dogs when I was little. Before Father brought Wei Ying home. And the dogs scared him so much that Father gave the dogs away and I haven't had dogs ever since and I'm never going to again. But it's okay because I have Wei Ying instead and he's better than dogs."

"I'm glad you have Wei Ying.

I've never had animals, what's it like?"

"They're soft. And nice to pet. And they want really simple things from you so you know you're doing it right. We had bunnies at the enclave and no one would admit to being the person who brought them in."

"That does sound really nice."

"I like animals. They're much better than people. People are assholes. Animals are never assholes."

"It's true. They're not."

"I love Nie Huaisang. He's so pretty. He's the prettiest person in Shanghai enclave, I think."

Meng Yao could, objectively speaking, be an idol if he weren't instead a wizard. "He's very pretty," she agrees instead of saying that.

"Don't you just want to hold him and protect him and keep him safe from everything bad in the world and make sure he never cries ever again?"

Jiang Cheng, she thinks, not for the first time in the last five minutes, is really cute when he's drunk.

"Not really, no, but I can't say I've ever thought about it."

"You should think about it. He's really good. He draws such pretty pictures. I want him to not have to do anything but draw pictures ever again. And kiss my face."

That's also very sweet but it's not in fact the world they live in.

"That would be really good," she says, so as not to get into a fight about it with Jiang Cheng.

"I'm going to protect him from everything," Jiang Cheng says.

Good luck with that.

"He's very lucky to have you."

"No, he isn't."

"....oh?"

"I should be better than I am. So I deserve him. So I deserve all of them."

...ah. Yeah. That's a feeling she's familiar with. But being the kind of person who thinks that way hadn't been a good way to be shaped, and so she had mostly figured out how to stop.

Not that that's something it makes any sense to say to Jiang Cheng. What is a thing that it makes sense to say to Jiang Cheng.

"...I think it's still good that he has someone who wants that," she says, for lack of anything else to say more than because it's true. (It might additionally be true. She hasn't decided. It's definitely very noble, but nobility of spirit is not in fact a good or stable or safe way to be.) 

"You think so?"