"Yeah, and we don't really talk to mundies."

"I guess that makes sense. There wouldn't be a lot for you to say."

"Also China is kind of a batshit country."

"--it's better than some other countries--"

"You can't show two guys kissing on TV."

"...we have schools?"

"That's true. It's better than Malawi. Malawi sounds like hell."

China: solidly better than Malawi. She'll take it. "You have a friend from Malawi?"

"He became our ally three days into freshman year which I'm pretty sure is some kind of Scholomance record."

"That's pretty impressive." And probably beats her, depending on how they define the record.

"That's what we almost had the war about, some assholes got offended."

"Because you made allies?" Why is the Scholomance so high stakes about everything.

"Well, he used to be a maleficer. But he stopped!"

Oh. Yeah. That'd do it. "Right."

"And it's not his fault! He didn't know pulling malia was bad and now he knows."

"That's good." How... How did he not know? Even she knows not to do it!

"But he's great! He's really good at math and Mandarin and he doesn't know anything so he gets really excited whenever I tell him about anything."

Oh no, former maleficers should not be relatable. "That's good!"

"You should come tell him about horrifying poisons, I bet he would"-- he reconsiders-- "I bet he would think they are horrifying and not cool. But he's wrong."

"I know some non-horrifying facts. ... Some facts I think are non-horrifying."

"Tell me! Tell me the non-horrifying facts!"

"There were some small towns in America where people kept getting heart conditions, and it turned out it was because they had accidentally left the cow thyroids in their burgers."

"How do you leave cow thyroids in a burger?"

"They stopped completely draining the cows of blood, so their thyroids didn't stand out as much. And they also stopped selling the thyroids to pharmaceutical companies."

"I bet they could sell it to traditional Chinese medicine practitioners. Cow thyroids sound right up their alley."