"Blow yourself up."

"Would I do that? I wouldn't do that."

"Well, I don't know, maybe if you wanted us to trust you you shouldn't have tried to fucking take Monday morning shop."

Chu Chu has been (metaphorically) lost for the past week or so. (She has been, on a few alarming occasions, literally lost too.) Everyone else seems to know what their doing? And she has the basics. The very very basics. But not much else.

(Apparently there are some Americans that are probably even more lost than her? That sounds pretty scary. She hopes their doing okay.)

So she has very little idea what to expect in Intro To Lab. Hopefully... not anything... scary?

But she is going to go over to where the people who speak the one language she speaks and look like they know what they are doing are.

"Hello!"

"Don't say hi to random people!"

"Uh, she's not random, she clearly has a Chang'an powersharer."

"If she's not random why have we never seen her before in our lives?"

Wei Wuxian, who couldn't pick out any of the members of Chang'an enclave in a lineup, shrugs.

...So she should probably know these people. There are a lot of people she should know and does not yet-- And yes, that looks like a powersharer... probably? Probably a powersharer. (She totally knows what they can look like! Yes. Definitely.)

They must be from one of the other Chinese enclaves and... that does not narrow it down. She has barely memorised the faces of the people from Chang'an she talks to. She has no clue what city these people are from, let alone who they are or whether they're friendly. ("Friendly towards her" and "friendly towards Chang'an" are, unfortunately, separate questions, she's coming to realise.) 

"Hello, I'm Chu Chu, and I'm... new?" Is that an appropriate answer to why she does not know them and they don't know her. She hopes it is.

"Well, yeah, everyone's new. This is freshman Intro to Lab. Unless you failed last semester so you have to retake it?"

"You don't retake a class if you fail it, dumbass. You get eaten."

"New to the... enclave...?" Is that the right answer? Is she meant to admit that? She had enough trouble with people in middle school and now she is at a high school that might eat her and has ?alchemy? class and she is. Not prepared. What is she meant to do in this situation.

"How do you be new to an enclave?"

"You're new to the enclave!"

"I was six! That doesn't count!"

...she was aware enclaves were like families, but maybe not how much? Seeing as this person is apparently new despite being part of it since he was six.

How does she answer this?  And what has she got herself into?  "I was... eligible?... for induction... by surprise."

...NAILED IT.

"Man, you must have great test scores. --I'm Wei Wuxian."

"Jiang Wanyin but everyone calls me Jiang Cheng."

"Lan Wangji."

... she actually was pretty close to the top of her class in biology back in middle school. She is aware that is not the tests he is talking about, but it isn't technically a lie so she doesn't have to correct him. "Nice to meet you all!"

"How do you be eligible for induction by surprise?"

...and here she thought she had managed to escape this line of questioning. She wants a good grade in human social interaction, a thing that is both normal to want and possible to achieve, because otherwise she is going to be eaten by... social interaction.

She is pretty sure she should not give the full answer. Because the full answer involves things like "a family friend worked out I was magic" and "he used to be part of the Chang'an enclave but-- something happened?" (There was too much shouting for her to follow what exactly happened) "he decided to-- possibly because he was dying? he looked like he was dying-- try and throw me into the induction circle" and "I am pretty sure this is not how inductions are meant to go." Any part of that is probably very politically sensitive but she has no clue which, and so she should not say anything to the people from this enclave she can't identify yet.

"Did you hear about Xiao Jinli?" Because that is the one thing that she knows is... a sensitive subject, but not politically sensitive.

"No idea!" Wei Wuxian says cheerily.

"He died."

"Oh. I'm sorry for your loss."

"Uh, thank you? I didn't know him very well," read: AT ALL "but-- yes. It's sad."

She's going to get a bad grade in talking about death, something that is reasonable to want...

Uh. What do you say when you talk to people who are grieving. Wei Wuxian has known enough dead people in his life that he's pretty sure he's supposed to know this.

"So you... got his spot and now you're an enclaver?" Jiang Cheng says in a tone more normally used for people who have committed minor felonies.

She has made a terrible mistake somewhere here. She has half an idea where the terrible mistake is, but no the whole idea and--

--what would someone smarter do here--

--she has been here less than a week and she is already already alienating people and aaaaaaa--

"That's about it, yes."

"That's weird. Normally if an indie gets an enclaver's spot they don't become an enclaver."

"Maybe her parents knew someone, Jiang Cheng, stop being such an ass. Here, sit with us. Jiang Cheng and I are alchemists and Lan Wangji is incantations track, what are you aiming for?"

She will take the chair, thank you. Hopefully the chair will not eat her. (Better to assume more things are going to eat you than actually are, instead of the other way around.)

...this is a question she should have an answer for. And know what all the options are. Help. "--I'm still feeling out my options."

"That's cool! My affinity is corpses, Lan Wangji's is combat, and Jiang Cheng's is animals. What's yours?"

She does not know exactly how much Mr Xiao spent to find this out, but the fact she does not know implies the amount. (He was always very frugal, right up until a month or so ago, and got very unfrugal as soon as he worked out she was magic. She wishes she did not know what that implied.) He said it would be important preparation, and she would need every advantage she could get and he would do the best he could to help and--

"--Mine's death too."

"Awesome! Death buddies! Isn't it the coolest affinity?"

So, on the one hand, she definitely agrees. How things die, on both the large scale ("why do things get old?") and small scale ("how did this particular person die?") is the most fascinating thing ever. And it's good to be interested in death, her father always said, because everyone is going to be dead one day. Best not to be too scared of it.

... but other times she has said things along those lines, it has gone... a way. (Not that it's too bad, really. Less friends means more time for studying! That's a bright side.)

She takes a gamble. If he thinks it's cool, then at least one person won't judge her too much. "...it's pretty cool, yeah."

"What animal did you bring with you? I have cockroaches because they eat anything."

...you know, all these questions, while awkward now, are giving her a better idea of the shape of what she's missing. That's something.

"...I was told not to bring any." Which is mostly true. Mr Heng's description of malia was vague, and amounted to 'avoid it, and be very, very careful if you do have to use it, outside of cheating your food.' And there were more pressing things than working out how to get insects in her pack.

"Oh, you should definitely trade for insects, like half the in-affinity spells I've ever heard of are about reanimating zombies."

"..I'll keep that in mind." What is she going to do with zombie crickets? They'd probably be a bit too small to be useful.

"Okay! Intro to Lab. Want to be study partners, si-mei*?"

*Translator's Note: Fourth sister; the word for "four" sounds like "death" in Mandarin. 

"Sure! Study partners would be good." She needs all the friends and allies she can get, from what's she's heard. And she's good at studying. She can be helpful and not be the person in need of help, hopefully. It would be more fair.

"Apparently we are supposed to make--"

"Magic soap."

"Why are you disappointed. Are you sad you can't blow your head off with it."

"I want to learn to make something cooler than soap."

"Hopefully we'll learn something cooler soon," she says, playing along. (She is still somewhat boggled by magic anything.)

"The purpose of the first project is to teach us to measure ingredients, invest mana in items, and learn transmutation."

"Yeah, if you're lame."

"Is the soap better than ordinary soap or is it just soap?"

"It, uh, gets you cleaner. What a waste of mana. Jiang Cheng worked hard to get me that mana, you know."

This does potentially seem like a waste of mana when you could just make soap. "I'm sure the skills we'll learn will be useful."

"Step one. Cabinets. I hope no one used up all the lye before us, I really don't want to figure out how the potash instructions work."

Okay, that would be bad.

She goes up to the cupboard and opens it like it might try to bite her.

"Guy with the sword and the combat affinity opens the cabinets."

And she was correct in her assessment and is sitting back down.

"It's okay, si-mei, we can follow him."

She nods.

...and carefully hides behind Lan Wangji.

Lan Wangji inspects the cabinets carefully and says, "Clean."

"Oooh, aqua regia, we should keep that-- and gum arabic, that's useful-- quicksilver!"

"No quicksilver."

"Awwwwww."

"I think mercury soap would be bad."

"I wasn't saying we should use it for the soap. Just for future projects."

"Right. That makes sense."

They should probably keep things in the cupboard for people who need it later? That seems polite? But she isn't going to say anything about that.

"Safety equipment," Lan Zhan says, taking four sets of goggles.

"Lan Zhaaaaan, I don't need safety equipment, I'll be fine."

"Yanli."

"Thank you," she says, taking a pair of goggles. Gotta protect your eyes from chemical splashes. Safety first!

He likes this girl. She is a Good Influence.

"I think we managed to get the very last of the lye," Jiang Cheng says, as if the previous students who also had to make magic soap had all personally offended him.

"Read the safety precautions first."

"But--"

"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.

"I know a spell for telling if someone died of a bacterial infection." She deliberately speaks softly.

"Cool! You should trade that to Wen Qing, she'd love it."

"Thank you! I'll go ask her." Once she works out who she is.

"I can bring plants back to life-- which is totally not useful here-- and explode mals and do a basic shield spell and make some vaguely useful potions out of dead cockroaches."

"Exploding mals sounds very cool."

"Yeah, it's useful. I'll trade you for the bacteria spell."

"... Are you sure?" The mal one would be way more useful (unless the rate of mysterious blood poisoning is way higher at the Scholomance is way higher than expected.)

"Sure! I need more stuff that's in affinity, plus Wen Qing will be so happy with me."

And he even knows who Wen Qing is. That would be more efficient. "Sure!"

Herbs herbs herbs. "What kind of books do you like?"

She is currently doing her best to combine the oils and lye 'till emulsion'. This would be easier if she had any clue to tell when that happened. "I like biology books." (Her penchant for stories about people falling into fantasy worlds is NOT RELEVANT.)

"Oh, cool! Tell me interesting facts about biology."

...on the one hand, this is possibly the most receptive audience she will ever have for cool death facts she will ever get. But on the other, she has had unfortunate experience with finding what she thought was a receptive audience and being very, very wrong. She will... wait. If he's cool she'll be able to share cool death facts later. He has cockroaches: maybe cool insect facts would be a good middle ground. "You can put a mouse's 'put a leg here' gene in a fly, and it will grow a leg there, but it will grow a fly leg."

"That's terrible! It should grow a mouse leg. --Do you think it should grow a mouse-sized leg or a fly-sized leg? I'm not sure which one would be more horrifying," he says in a tone that implies that 'horrifying' means 'really fucking cool.'

She's just going to keep stirring until something goes wrong. That seems like a relatively safe bet. "I think if you put enough mouse genes in you could? The gene just tells it to follow the leg instructions it already has."

"Have you seen the picture of the fly genetically engineered so its legs grow out of its eyeballs?"

"That was so cool."

"I know, right? I bet you could do that with magic. Or Jiang Cheng could but he wouldn't."

"I could what?"

"Make a fly with legs growing out of its eyeballs."

"Why would you do that to a fly."

"For science." Is this emulsion? This might emulsion. She's still going to just keep stirring.

"I think that's emulsified? Should I put in my bit now. --Did you know giraffes drink each other's piss to find out if they're suitable to mate?"

"Probably a good idea to put in now. --I bet giraffes would find us just as weird."

He does. "Yeah, if there were giraffes who did biology they would probably be like 'what the fuck, humans have like a third of their orgasms in front of computer screens.' --Wait, do we?" He starts to scribble down numbers on a piece of paper.

... Okay so that's happening. She is going to... Keep stirring.While he does weird maths. Yes.

Eventually he says, "Probably like half, actually, in countries with widespread Internet access. I'd ask Masozi about Malawi but I don't think he'd know. --Tell me more death facts!"

"There's a poison that makes it much, much easier for your nerves to turn on, and harder to turn off, so you spasm all the time until you die."

"Awwww, that sounds like it would be kinky but actually it's just horrifying. No fair."

"--people dying in general is kind of horrifying? Even dying of old age."

"Dying of old age is really horrifying and not in the fun way like that one disease where all of your muscles slowly turn into bones."

"That one's fun? ... I guess it is cool..."

"Yeah! They have to be really careful because if you ever get surgery your muscles turn into bones faster!"

"--That is a cool problem to have."

"I know! I think more body parts should randomly turn into other body parts. I want to find out what happens if my spleen is suddenly my elbow."

"I wouldn't recommend finding a spell for that." The soap mixture is now kind of gloopy. "It's probably time to put this in the mold."

He starts to put it in the mold. "What poison is it?"

"Strychnine. It's used as a rat poison."

"That sounds really unpleasant for the rats."

"I don't think any of them are pleasant for the rats?" She is going to restrain herself from talking about the superwarfarins. "It's hard to kill something without it hurting."

"Maybe if you do it really fast? I think when I explode the mals it doesn't hurt them very much. If they're the sort of thing that gets hurt. --I don't want to hurt my cockroaches when I kill them."

Aww, that's sweet of him. "If you do it fast enough, I guess they wouldn't have a chance to hurt."

"But I've also got to do it in a way that leaves their bodies usable afterward. I was kind of planning to wait for them to die of natural causes."

"I heard if you make insects cold enough, that kills then painlessly. And alcohol does not hurt too bad."

"Do you think anyone will drink the drowning-cockroaches alcohol? I guess if you're desperate enough."

"I probably wouldn't, but--" it's not like she planned to do underage drinking in the death school?

"A connoisseur. A woman of taste. Only the highest-quality moonshine for you."

"--I really wouldn't know how to tell."

"Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting that everyone else doesn't have a me to get them in trouble! Previously everyone I talked to had a me to get them in trouble."

"I guess if you were in an enclave, it would all be people used to you getting them into trouble."

"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."

"You'd have to be careful, because thyroids actually... Do things." (Sorry Mr Xiao.)

"But at least they're not endangered!"

"That's true."

"What happens if you eat cow thyroids?"

"I think your heart beats too fast and you lose weight and are nervous and angry all the time?"

"I wonder if anyone has tried that as a diet."

"--Someone probably has."

"That's horrifying."

"--I don't think I know any non-horrifying facts, actually."

"Si-mei you are my favorite person."

"Because I know horrifying things?"

"Yeah!"

... This is so not how she is used to social interactions working. "Okay. You're pretty cool, too!"

"Is it terribly rude if I demand that you tell me more facts while we're working?"

"I can give it a go."

Then he will LISTEN AVIDLY TO FACTS.

She knows facts! Mostly about ways to die or what happens after you die, with a smattering of non-fatal medical and forensic things.

Those are amazing facts! Especially the gross ones.

She is not used to having such a receptive audience!

"I should come eat at Chang'an's table sometime and you can tell me more gross facts."

"I'm not sure other people would appreciate that while they're eating." Especially as she is not in all of Chang'an's good books. On the other hand: he totally should.

"Aw, Shanghai would object to it too. Maybe we should get our own table?"

...she should actually try and get further on Chang'an's good books, and not hare off to their own table. "We could try."

"Or we could hang out and talk about non-gross things! Magic theory!"

"I'd be interested in magic theory." A chance to have half an idea of what's going on!

"Cool! It's a date."

"Sounds good!" Look! She has made a friend! And also magic soap!