"Cool! I'll see you then." 

“Okay. Um. Goodbye.” 

"Bye."

After he leaves the reading room she turns. Rin is not laughing at her, but she's very conspicuously not laughing at her, and Hitomi has that incredibly specific look that means she agrees with whatever Rin is doing but doesn't want to say so or admit to it because that would be undignified.

"Look," she says, "it's practice teaching things for when my underclassmen get here as freshmen, and it's practice in colloquial English, and it's genuinely helpful for getting my thoughts together to work on my essays and it doesn't even take that long." 

"We're not judging you."

"I don't know, I feel like you kind of are."

"I'm not judging you, but it is extremely funny to watch."

And Ayako does, kind of, have to agree that that's fair.

(Elsewhere, Clay holds out his hand, and Tommy gives him all his mana for the day. In return, Clay hangs out with him for two hours, even though he could be hanging out with Nick and George rather than some annoying freshman. Tommy spends the time sewing and talking Clay's ear off, and Clay spends it nominally studying but mostly laughing and joking with Tommy. It's easier, when Tommy thinks of it as a trade.)

For the rest of the day and on Thursday she's not looking for Tommy, exactly, and she's not really even keeping an eye out— she has meals at a variety of enclave tables, spends her work periods in reading rooms and alchemy labs— but, you know, she has a name and a connection to put to the face now and she notices when Tommy comes up. 

Tommy's generally tagging along with an older boy. The older boy is wearing a prominent power-sharer and seems to regard Tommy with a sort of fond annoyance; he saves food for Tommy at lunch. (Tommy takes the food gratefully rather than go through the lunch line himself.) Whenever the older boy isn't around, Tommy spends his time alone; he cold-approaches people on occasion, like he did Ayako, but most people aren't as receptive (or curious) as she was.

That's... weird. Like actually really weird. If Tommy were from the same enclave as the senior— presumably Clay from Manchester — it would be an interaction she would recognize but would still think was moderately unusual for Anglo enclaves; as it is she has no idea what that is. 

But Friday comes without further incident, and she nods to Tommy in class and meets him in the library again. 

"HELLO."

"Hi!" This week Rin is not there but the other upperclassman from last week is, along with a couple of juniors and a sophomore none of whom Tommy recognizes.

Tommy is going to get out his sewing kit and start fixing a hole in his jeans while they talk. "Dude, I fucking hate class. I'm--I know you're all smart and shit, but seriously, how are you supposed to think for that long."

"Honestly for me it's relaxing. For forty-five minutes my primary concern is theatre and poetry, both of which I like and am good at and know I can do." 

"Yeah, I should've thought you'd say that, you fuckin', 5000 IQ bitch."

"I also have a related affinity and have been specializing in this in particular since I was about five, there's a reason I'm the one doing all of my yearmates' lit homework and it's not that I'm smarter across the board. But yeah, fair enough."

He is going to sew more aggressively. (He pricks himself with the needle, enough to draw blood, and doesn’t react aside from a sharp intake of breath.) “Guess you were a good person to ask for homework help from, then.”

Bleeding's not great but as a group they're hardly easy targets and by the time Tommy leaves the reading room it'll have scabbed over. And furthermore it won't be their problem, she reminds herself slightly more aggressively than she has to. "Guess I was! So, this week's the balcony scene, I'm thinking of doing something about how their dialogue forms a sonnet but I don't think I can get a whole essay out of that--" 

And they can discuss Shakespeare! Well. Mostly Ayako explains it to Tommy, who alternates between kinda-sorta getting it and his eyes glazing over. He understands the balcony scene better than he did the Queen Mab monologue, at least, and his thumb scabs over pretty quickly.

That's good! Ayako is getting somewhat better at explaining things, and she's definitely getting better at calibrating what level of understanding Tommy's at and where she can realistically get him. And she doesn't wind up needing to ask her upperclassmen for help this time; she barely seems to register their presence at all. 

That's also good! Tommy is definitely very much registering their presence, but if Ayako isn't going to talk to them then neither is he. And he successfully gets through the rest of the study session without stabbing his thumb again.

"BYE."

"Bye," she says cheerily, "see you Monday."

By this point she has already made her case to all of the people who might be inclined to raise an eyebrow about her choices here so she's not going to do it again unprompted but she sure is ready to.

And the next day, the upperclassman that Tommy follows around approaches Ayako in the library when she's looking for a book. "Hello."

"...hello," she says.

As far as anyone who might hypothetically be observing can tell, she's got her attention half on him and half on this shelf, which is on 20th century cultural exchange between Japan and the West.