"Read."

She feels a little bad about taking the last of the lye, but she does not want to be the one person trying to make soap with potash.

She reads the instructions. ...She knew lye was corrosive, but knowing that, and knowing that and being able to handle it are very different. And it's 50% concentration. That seems like a lot. She kind of wishes she had more safety equipment. Thick gloves. A blast shield. That sort of thing.

(She chants under her breath "add lye to the water, not water to the lye,"  and hopes it sticks in her head.)

"Don't worry! This is one of the least deadly things in the school!"

"--I guess if this is our first project..."

"The unfinished project is way more likely to kill you than lye! --Si-mei, do you want to work with me, and Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng can work together?"

He may be revising his position on how much he likes Chu Chu.

She has no idea her opinion is being lowered. "Sure!"

"So how's your first week been?" he says, putting on gloves (you can stop glaring anytime, Jiang Cheng, he's being safe).

Very disorienting and terrifying. "Not too bad." And gloves for her. Because lye.

"Oh, my week was the worst. I don't know how much attention you're paying but New York almost started a war with us for no reason."

"--is that not normal?"

"If people kept starting wars for no reason I'm pretty sure we'd be even more likely to die than we are."

"I guess so." Though the Scholomance so far has seemed like School But More, and near wars were a definite feature of middle school. "That does sound like a bad week."

"And then it turned out that there's a serial killer targeting Shanghai!"

"... That sounds... Not good."

"I know, right? Weeks are not supposed to be this interesting."

"It would be better if there are no serial killers or wars."

They'd better get a move on. She'll weigh out the lye and dilute it... Very gingerly.

"Apparently you're supposed to try NOT to breathe in the toxic fumes."

He sticks his tongue out at Jiang Cheng.

"That would be bad," she says distractedly. (The lye is threatening to steam and she is going to break the rules and add water to it until it stops doing that.)

Wei Ying is going to mix together the herb thing that's the magic part and put some mana in it!

(To his left, someone goes "ow! Fuck!" as their Bunsen burner splits in two.)

It's good Wei Wuxian is doing that part. She sort of knows how to do it, but-- best to let the person who actually knows what they're doing do that. (... Though maybe that will leave her at even more is a disadvantage in the future. Too late now.)

"Are you okay?" she calls out to the person with the unfortunate Bunsen burner accident.

"I'm fine," she says, "just have to get a new one from the cabinets."

... And she would love to help there. But, unfortunately--

"What spells have you learned so far? Maybe we can trade," he says while he's working on the herb thing.