Ayako's general strategy in language lab, at least for now, presumably at some point it'll start on giving her new languages and then she'll be less able to do this, is to go through her work as fast as possible and then use the time to work on other homework. 

But she's hit something of a wall in her Poetries of Protest assignment and is staring out into space thinking about it when she glances over at Wen Ning to see how he's doing and...

...that's kind of a lot of lines of empty space given that he's monolingual in Mandarin??

Wen Ning has not noticed Ayako looking at his paper! He is instead writing a paragraph about The Main Idea Of This Section, which is that sound is a wave.

...huh.

Okay.

That's... weird. Not the kind of weird that she needs to poke at this very moment, so it goes on the back burner while she keeps considering her Poetries of Protest assignment, but it's definitely weird enough that she resolves to poke it next time they're alone, which should be in the post-golden-ratios study session this evening.

He very patiently attempts to do his Shinto Purification Rituals homework, while suffering from having only the slightest idea what Shintoism is.

Ayako isn't really Shinto either but there's a shrine in the Kyoto reading room and she certainly has more of an idea of what it even is. "You can copy mine if you want, or I can try to explain-- can I ask you kind of a weird question?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"...are you sure you're monolingual in Mandarin," she says, in English. 

aaaaaaaaaa what is he supposed to say to that

maybe if he just doesn't say anything she'll think he didn't understand it

"You don't have to answer me in words, you can, I don't know, nod or shake or something," she says, now in Mandarin again, "but-- I've never heard of anyone who didn't know a language at all getting assignments in it that made them write paragraphs? That's the kind of homework I get in English and I can write poetry in it."

And the thing Julia said at the bizarre drunk party. But that's not really the thing she cares about, here.

Aaaaaaaaa.

...

He nods.

"Huh. Cool."

Why did Wen Qing say he was monolingual if he's not-- except probably she didn't know? Except how and why would she possibly not know--

"So, I can tell you about the Shinto homework in English if you want the practice, or in Mandarin if that's easier," is all she says.

"I can't-- say words. In front of people."

"...ah.

And-- like with the math class, the more you try and freeze up the more scared you are about doing it next time... sorry, that's not the point, I'm not going to ask you to say words in front of people. Not even me if you don't want to."

"It's-- easier when it's the school-- the school isn't a person."

"...yeah. That... makes sense."

This is kind of filler while she debates whether or not to tell Wen Qing but whatever it's perfectly good filler.

"...are you going to tell her?"

"I haven't decided. If you have a preference that would be tiebreaking." 

This is a bit of a long shot because as far as Ayako can tell Wen Ning never expresses preferences out loud but hey, you never know, he's already surprised her once today. 

"They're... going to be even more disappointed with me."

"...well that seems like perverse incentives."

"I don't know what that means."

"It's, um--"

There's about a dozen threads to this line of thought and they don't all go in the same direction.

"So, if you're doing incentives right, then it makes people better off to be more capable of things, and it makes them better off to tell you what they're capable of? So you'd be proud of someone for knowing a language and proud of them for telling you. And if you were more disappointed in them instead, then that encourages them not to learn things, and to keep the things they can do hidden, which, why would you do that--"

(Kyoto wouldn't, she wants to say, but the more she thinks about that the less sure of it she is. Hitomi and Haruto and Rin all love her and wouldn't call her a disappointment but there's a reason for that, the reason is that she's been writing song-spells in three languages for years, and if she were Wen Ning--

--she doesn't want to think about if she were Wen Ning.)

"Anyway. Obviously that doesn't mean they wouldn't, you'd know that better than I would. But."

"People are used to the ways that I'm incompetent and they don't want to discover I'm incompetent in new and more confusing ways. Lots of people aren't good with languages. It's weird to be so scared of people you can't form words."

You're supposed to be able to tell your clavemates what your actual strengths and weaknesses are, so they can help you compensate and help you grow and make use of the things you're good at properly. That's what being part of a team is for. She suspects there is no way for her to say this that wouldn't come out wrong.

"Yeah," she says instead. "I'm... sorry, I guess, that that's how they'd treat it." 

"It's all right. I'm much better at doing my homework."

"That's good, at least." 

Is the horrifying experience over, can he go back to failing to understand Shintoism now.

He can go back to failing to understand Shintoism now. Or he can have Shintoism explained to him by someone who is trying quite hard to avoid thinking about as many as several other things. His choice. 

He will take the second one but be very anxious about it.