"Hello, si-mei! It's your new best friend," a loud voice says.

"Hi!" She shuffles over as much as she can to make some room for him.

"I brought my shidi Jiang Cheng."

"Hi."

Ah, the one who didn't want Wei Wuxian talking to strangers and disapproved of flies with leg-eyes. "Hello."

"I think the food is racist. Don't you think the food is racist, Jiang Cheng?"

"It's pretty racist," he says, poking suspiciously at a Brussels sprout.

"It's definitely--" she deliberately does not say 'exotic' "--different."

"The fucking Anglos designed this school and filled it with weird-ass Anglo food. I'd kill for congee."

"Stinky tofu."

"Lotus root soup."

"Lotus root soup."

She is very grateful that she is getting food at all, but she is going to take a moment to be nostalgic about her dad's roujimao. "I can see why they made it bland, so everyone could eat it... but it could be spicier."

(There are confused glares from some of at the Chang'an table, about what these Shanghai people are doing here and how did the interloper lure them?)

"See, I knew you were my favorite person, si-mei."

She is getting a good grade in making friends, a thing that is normal to want... "You should come to Xi'An after you graduate. We have the best spicy food."

"We don't talk about after graduation."

Right. Yes. That makes sense as a superstition. And as a predictable faux pas.

What if she just hides under the table? ...no, then she'd spend the next four years as the person who hid under a table in the middle of dinner.

"Right. Sorry."

"I love hot sauce so much. Back home I used to eat everything covered in hot sauce."

"Until it was inedible to everyone else."

"I'm a great cook."

"Everything should have hot sauce on it. And prickly ash."

"The thing is that you're totally right though?"

"The start of an excellent friendship."

"I thought it had already started."

"You're probably better than me at this, you're my second friend that I didn't grow up with."