"Si-mei, there is nothing I love more than answering awkward questions."

(He is allegedly working on his calculus homework, and is actually three weeks ahead on Romance of the Three Kingdoms.)

So. She could ask a very general question, and that might be less embarrassing and awkward, but she isn't sure how to even ask it. 'People keep having deeply weird conversations that imply impossible things' is just not something that you can formulate into a question.

Or, she could ask a specific question about a specific deeply weird statement, but that way lies asking deeply embarassing things

In theory she could go 'oh, no, nevermind, it doesn't matter' but that would also be embarrassing and Wei Wuxian would never drop it.

...so specific question it is. "Is 'sucking dick' a-- metaphor?"

"Blowjobs are a metaphor but there actually is a lot of sucking when you suck dick."

"--That's a thing people do?" Which at least answers her specific question?

"Uh. Yes?"

"That seems kind of--" pointless? gross? inexplicable? "--I guess it makes some things some people said make more sense." Except for all the ways it doesn't.

"Was someone sexually harassing you, si-mei. Do Jiang Cheng and I need to go put the fear of God in them."

"No, no, it's fine, no one was doing that. It's just-- I overheard Jiang Cheng and Jing Yi having a weird conversation."

"Yeah. What the fuck was that all about."

"Jiang Cheng was angry about Jing Yi doing... something, and apparently sucking penises was involved?"

"Oh, yeah, he took Nie Huaisang's virginity and Jiang Cheng thought he wasn't nice enough about it or something and now Jing Yi and Jiang Cheng are hooking up and I am kind of confused about all of the decision-making involved here but frankly I'm too afraid to ask."

"...How???"

"How... what?"

"... They're all male?" She is valiantly resisting the urge to make contextually awkward finger-tapping gestures.

"...Si-mei, what do you know about how sex works?"

..this is the most awkward conversation in her life. Possibly more awkward than the initial Talk she had been given. But she can't back down now. "You place a penis inside a vagina--" somehow "--sperm comes out, and if it meets an egg it stops being about how sex works and starts being how pregnancy works?"

"--Si-mei I am very concerned and we should go up to your room because probably you do not want to get the sex talk in front of half of Shanghai."

She is not going to protest that she has Had The Sex Talk Already, Thank You, or be too concerned that this is somehow maybe a euphemism? "Okay."

He's going to talk about body snatching on the way to Chu Chu's room.

Which is maybe a slightly disturbing choice of topic, but Chu Chu is listening with interest.

And then he flops down on Chu Chu's bed and starts drawing.

She sits down on a free bit of bed and watches. She did not expect any explanation to involve drawings.

"Okay, so, this is your anatomy. Or, like, the fun bits, I left off your reproductive system."

"I'm not sure why you'd leave off the reproductive parts, those seem the most important?"

"Because I'm talking about the part where sex is fun and not the part where if you have some kinds of sex you can get babies from it."

"...wouldn't... most sex... involve babies?" She is sort of aware that it is in theory fun, or that at least a lot of people want it, but-- the consequences do seem more important.

"Okay, so, this is your clit." He points. "It is the single part of the human body that has the most nerves and it is the only part of the human body with no purpose other than pleasure. If you touch it when you're turned on you're going to feel really really really good and you're going to want to keep touching it, and then if you do that eventually all of your muscles are going to tense up and it's going to feel better than anything you've ever felt in your life, like, pure and absolute bliss, and all the tension is going to release and you're going to want to go to sleep. Or have another one, girls can have multiple orgasms. --It's called an orgasm."

She kind of doubts that there's any part of the body that exists just for pleasure and not for survival. Also kinds of doubts the existence of anything that could be described as 'pure and absolute bliss' but-- Wei Wuxian probably knows more than she does about these things. (Which is kind of weird, seeing as he's a guy, but here they are." "Do orgasms-- do anything? Or do they just exist?"

"Guys produce sperm when they orgasm, for girls it's just. You know. An incentive to have sex."

"So that's how the sperm gets involved." Minor mystery: solved.

"So what you want to do is start thinking about people you think are pretty and then, like, kissing them or looking at them naked or touching them-- or other things, like, you might want to think about telling them what to do or tying them up or getting tied up or, uh, being forced into sex, that one's incredibly popular-- and then you touch yourself all over your body but probably especially your breasts? Breasts and nipples are very sensitive. And then you'll start feeling all good and squirmy and then you should touch your clit."

Is there a reason this got so instructional? She's not sure.

(She is also somewhat distracted by calculating whether she counts as pretty people to Wei Wuxian. Probably not? But, also, maybe?)

"--okay. ...I'm not sure this explains whats going on with Jiang Cheng and Jing Yi?"

"I'm getting there! So when you fuck a girl, you basically do the same thing? But you have more options, because there are two people. So you're kissing and touching and stuff, and saying nice things about how much you love each other. And then she can touch your clit or kiss it-- that's called eating you out-- or rub it on your body. And then orgasms for everyone!"

"I--uh-- what."

"--okay so which bit was confusing."

"I could-- have sex-- with another girl."

"You see why I was concerned that you didn't know this!"

She should be saying sentences. Coherent phrases and words. Instead of just staring at her friend while gears turn loudly in her head.

Wei Wuxian is going to wait for her to process this information before he tries to provide more sex education.

"--And by extension, two men could have sex?"

"I'm going to make another diagram while you process that."

She is going to process that by watching the diagram get made.

With a flourish he presents:

(The diagramming process involved some redrawing as he tried to figure out exactly how he should draw lines between the bladder and the urethra and the prostate.)

Ah, the dangers of trying to do anatomical drawings.

"I do know what this is."

"That's antifeminist, you know. You know about penises but not about your clit."

"How would it be antifeminist to know anatomy?"

"You should know more anatomy! Specifically, the anatomy attached to you. --Did you know that you can track whether you're ovulating or not based on the consistency of your cervical mucus? If you're ovulating it's like eggwhites."

"That could be useful-- I mean, there are probably better ways to tell, but still."

"Why would it be useful?"

"You might want to know if you're ovulating?"

"For... some kind of very specific spell?"

"To know if you're likely to get pregnant, if you want a baby?"

"...oh, right, some people want babies. I forgot."

"I didn't know what a clit was, and you forgot babies existed: we're a matched set!"

"Well, I knew they existed! The most important feature of sex in the Scholomance is making sure they don't happen!"

"Which I guess you could achieve by only having sex with people of the same sex."

"Exactly, si-mei!"

"--That makes the conversations make more sense. I guess."

"Okay, so guys can do analogous things to the things girls can do, with hands and mouths and grinding on each other and stuff, but they can also have anal sex." He points to the prostate. "The prostate is inside a guy but when it's stimulated it feels really good and the easiest way to stimulate it is by putting fingers or a dick or a dildo inside his ass. --A dildo is a fake dick made out of metal or plastic or something. --Anal sex can also feel good for women but they don't have a prostate, there's just a lot of nerves around your butt." 

"You do kind of need nerves there-- I'm getting distracted."

"Judging from Nie Huaisang's oversharing they did things with hands and mouths and also anal sex."

"--Yeah that conversation is making a lot more sense now."

"But si-mei! You should give yourself orgasms or you're going to be full of horniness you haven't dealt with and then the second a guy gets you alone in your room and starts flirting with you and touching you and talking about sex, you'll get so horny you won't be able to think straight and then you're at high risk of babies," he says, obliviously, a guy alone in Chu Chu's room and flirting with her and touching her and talking about sex.

Chu Chu is much less oblivious about that. "I'm not too worried about that?" Seeing as so far they have managed to stay carefully at the diagram and hypotheticals stage here. They're getting an A+ on 'not doing sex things that will get them killed' so far, even if they're grades are slipping in 'not ending up in a situation where that's a concern.'

"Also it's fun and you should have fun things."

"I appreciate the thought?" That should be an appropriate response. Hopefully.

"Also you definitely can get pregnant the first time you have sex, birth control potions don't work, if he tells you he has an abortion pill he's lying, he's definitely not going to pull out of you before he orgasms, you shouldn't let him put it in you for a second just to feel it, and whether or not you'd let him do it if you loved him if he loved you he wouldn't ask you to."

"I have absolutely no intention of doing anything that could possibly get me pregnant."

"--and if someone tries to make you tell us and we'll kill him."

"...thank...you?"

"Or you can kill him yourself. That's probably better, all things considered. But if you can't manage it."

"I will keep that in mind. Thank you." She'd rather not kill anyone, regardless of what they have done, but-- that's probably not a good idea to advertise here?

"Anyway. The reason that people masturbate and sleep with people of the same sex-- or, like, one of the reasons, people like me would do it anyway because it's fun, but the reasonable responsible people like Ayako do-- is that if you don't the horniness kind of builds up and then you make terrible decisions? And if you're taking care of it proactively then that's not going to happen."

Well that's an alarming prospect. She's not sure how likely it is, but-- Wei Wuxian knows more about this stuff than she does, so maybe. "Would you notice the terrible decisions?"

"Well, yeah, but you'd kinda be too horny to care until afterward."

"Hmm. That's-- concerning?"

"Well, evolution, right, people who do things that make babies even though they don't really want babies have more kids..."

"And outside the Scholomance it-- would still be quite bad, actually, but not so guaranteed deadly."

"Yep."

"I will keep this in mind?" Because agreeing to masturbate would just be weird. And also she is not planning to agree any way just yet.

"Okay, what else is important-- uh, penises are sort of floppy most of the time but if a guy gets horny then it fills up with blood and sticks out? It's honestly kind of a bizarre system."

"I'm sure there are evolutionary reasons for that."

"Some species have penis bones! Not humans though."

"Another way we're weird!"

"Oh! Also." He points to his diagram. "The vagina isn't really that erogenous for girls? The clit is really the main event, people just think that women should enjoy vaginal penetration the best because of patriarchy. Vaginal penetration feels good but it's totally normal if you can't orgasm from it. The most sensitive part of the vagina is the G-spot. I labeled it. And if you hit your cervix back there it hurts like hell, don't let porn deceive you about this, it is painful and not sexy. --I guess you're not going to look at porn because, like, Scholomance but just in case you're wondering porn is mistaken about literally everything about how sex works."

"I solely solemnly swear to get my information from actual sources."

"Oh, and if it hurts to put things in there you might not be turned on enough or you might not produce enough wetness naturally, you can use spit or something as lube or, like, trade for something from an alchemist. And sometimes it just hurts to put things in there no matter what and that's fine, clearly vaginal penetration is not for you."

She is dying a little inside at the idea of trading for lube, and the alchemist presumably knowing its purpose. "That's-- useful to know?" She isn't entirely sure she believes it. It's kind of implausible, and there is no way he would know.

"Oh, also, everyone sexually fantasizes about weird shit."

"Define 'weird'? Do you mean the fact that sex is inherently kind of weird, or robots, or something else?"

"Uh-- so a little bit I want to say that it's normal to fantasize about, like, sex in public or sex with strangers or getting pregnant or something, like, lots of people's fantasies aren't about gentle touching and romance. And specifically it's really common to fantasize about, like, hurting people or forcing people into sex or tying them up or ordering them around or humiliating them, or the other side- being humiliated or hurt or forced into sex or ordered around or tied up. And lots of normal people do that and it doesn't mean that you actually want it in real life. Brains are just weird. And also a lot of people are into really specific stuff? Like, some people are into people wearing wet clothes, and some people are into cartoon animals, and some people are into feeding their partners enormous amounts of cake, and all of that is totally normal and not a sign that anything is wrong."

"O-okay?"

"You can ask me questions if you have any!"

"I have a lot of things I don't know, but not so much questions. --I don't know what I've missed?"

"I told you all the things I could think of?"

"And I appreciate that! I just-- have no clue how many people I assumed were just close friends... Aren't."

"Jing Yi's fucking half the male half of the school, Meng Yao and Lan Xichen are dating and I think are planning to be together for the rest of their lives, Van over in Hanoi is miserable because his boyfriend's dead? I think Ayako's hooking up with someone but she doesn't kiss and tell. Wen Qing used to date my sister but they broke up amicably."

"...this explains so much about Jing Yi."

"Like why people are constantly yelling at him?"

"That, and I knew he had a reputation? I just didn't know what for. I thought he was just the sort of person who was friends with everyone!"

"You're very cute, si-mei. I want to horribly corrupt you." He sits next to her and puts his head on her shoulder.

Wasn't she instructed not to do this a minute ago? She feels like she was instructed not to do this a minute ago. Not that she moves away. "--I'm not sure being corrupted would be good for my life expectancy?"

He puts his hand on his heart. "I will only corrupt you in ways that don't decrease your life expectancy, I swear on my ancestors. I like you, si-mei, I don't want you to die."

"I guess being corrupted wouldn't be so bad then."

"I like thinking about raping people or getting raped, and getting tied up, and tying people up, and being a brat until people have to punish me, and being praised, and sex in public, and getting knocked up. And wearing girls' clothes."

"I-- I don't think I have any fantasies?"

(This is not, strictly speaking, accurate. She has as many as several 'pleasant daydreams' that she is, as soon as she gets the time, reassess and realise are sexual.)

"That you know of!"

"--I guess I might grow into them?"

"Well, you could try thinking about pretty people and see what happens."

"Do you think that would work?" (Unfortunately there is a pretty person right next to her, and that is taking up enough brainpower that there is not much room for thinking about pretty people in a directed way.)

"Sure! There's a pretty person in your bedroom, what kind of things would you want to do with them?" he says, obliviously.

"--I think realistically I would be too awkward to do anything to them."

"You don't have to be realistic in fantasies! I can fantasize about throwing a pretty girl down on the bed and fucking her while she fights me but that doesn't mean I'd actually ever do that."

ahaHAHAHAHA

THAT IS NOT A MENTAL IMAGE SHE HAD BEFORE

SHE SHOULD NOT LIKE THAT MENTAL IMAGE, YET HERE SHE IS.

"I don't know, I think I'd get distracted by not acting in character?"

"You could imagine a very forthright and direct sexual partner. Or mind control, although probably that's easier if you have a crush on Meng Yao or Lan Xichen. Or you could always imagine that you're a totally different person."

"...I guess." ('very forthright and direct' is going into the mental image, isn't it.)

"I want to know what you're into but I guess you don't know."

"I haven't really thought about it?" (Which is technically sorta true.)

"I know for all the people I'm close to! Like Nie Huaisang and Jiang Cheng and I haven't asked Zaizai but I bet I could guess."

"They told you?"

"Oh, yeah, we used to swap porn recs and watch porn together and also get drunk and make out."

?????

"I-- guess you would end up knowing in that case?"

"Yeah, it was fun."

...is this a social interaction she will have to have? Like, not necessarily with the Shanghai boys, but... do the Chang'an girls do this and they just never told her?

She cannot imagine a more awkward interaction.

"I'll take your word for it."

"You won't have to do that, si-mei, unless you want to, we didn't invite Wen Ning or Lan Wangji. --Uh, until the latest drunken party but I'm pretty sure Chang'an doesn't have drunken parties."

"--Isn't Jiang Cheng your brother? And you got drunk?" That seems... ill advised in the Scholomance?

"It's not like we're genetically related brothers. We're, like, kissing brothers."

"...Kissing brothers?"

"Yeah! Like, you're not supposed to make out with your brother, but it's hot to do sex things you're not supposed to do."

"So, you're brothers because of that?"

"No, we're brothers because his dad raised me."

"But you still kiss him anyway?"

"Yeah! Because doing sex things you're not supposed to do is hot."

"--that still seems like a kinda bad idea."

"What is the point of life without doing things that are a bad idea?"

"I guess there are bad ideas that are more likely to get you hurt."

Wei Wuxian reaches out to hold Chu Chu's hand. "It's hardly my worst idea," he says obliviously.

Okay, so THIS IS HAPPENING.

(If she was sensible she would be pulling away now, but she can't quite bring herself to do it.)

(His hand is warn and... hand-y.)

"Suicide Club is probably worse."

"I mean, you're most likely to die at graduation, getting experience dealing with mals is useful."

Chu Chu has a very nice warm hand! He likes her so much.

"It's worth it for the experience, even if it is dangerous."

"Lots of dangerous things are worth it for the experience! Live a little, am I right?"

"If you're clever and lucky enough... And brave enough."

"You're very clever and lucky and brave, si-mei."

"--I'm not that brave."

"You're here even though you learned about magic a week before induction, I'd say that's pretty brave."

"I--" Didn't actually work for it. Got much more lucky than brave. "--guess so."

He is feeling the impulse to kiss her cheek! That's kind of weird.

He ignores it and says, "want to head back down to the Shanghai reading room?"

"I should probably get back to my statistics homework."

"Yep!" He stands up. "If you have any more questions you should ask. And I'm really curious about what you end up figuring out."

"--I can't promise I'll let you know but I will seriously consider it."

"You're breaking my heart, si-mei. Crushing it under your heel. I'm going to have to sing a sad song in the rain."

He shared, so she is kind obligated to share as well. Reciprocity, and all that. He wouldn't insist, but it would be kind of ...mean? Not to?

... This is the most awkward hypothetical conversation she can imagine.

"Is there a rain spell?" This is not relevant but I'd a worthwhile question.

"Yes, there's a bunch, historical wizards were really concerned with the fertility of their crops. --Why? You want to kiss someone in the rain?"

"I got distracted trying to work out if you could even sadly sing in the rain in the Scholomance."

"Ah, si-mei, don't you know that I'm so beautiful that I summon rainstorms whenever I'm sad?"

"It's a very useful skill!"

"Anyway"-- he grabs her hand, bows over it, and kisses the back of it-- "my lady, your statistics await."

aaaaAAAAAAAAA

"I'll head back to the reading room."

He accompanies her back to the reading room and cheerfully if trollishly explains normal distributions.

She is very interested in explanations of normal distributions.

And he proceeds to behave exactly as if this conversation had never happened!