His friend blinks, and briefly pauses in craning his neck to get a good look at the upper shelves of Shakespearean Analysis. He did not expect this question. Fortunately, he knows the answer. "Orion Lake."

Excellent. He has put considerable thought into his list of questions that you're supposed to ask your friend in order to be sure you have the correct information about them. "What's your affinity?"

"Oh, it's killing mals!"

That's a good affinity. Lan Wangji wishes he had that affinity. 

"What's your track?"

"I haven't actually picked one, yet..." Oh, this is small talk, they're doing small talk. "What's yours?"

"Incantations."

"Cool, yeah..." There is not obviously anything haunting Shakespearean Analysis. How about, what's this next to it... it's more Shakespearean Analysis, how much analysis did this guy need??

"Where are you from?"

"...New York." Did he not know that. He admittedly wouldn't be the first but most people seem to figure it out.

They did almost fight a war with New York enclave but Lan Xichen said that everyone is supposed to take pains to have positive interactions with New York as they come up (e.g. Disney wars, at least if Wei Wuxian is around to prevent international incidents), and if they're not very sure it's a positive interaction they should avoid them, and under no circumstances should they offend New York. Lan Wangji is pretty sure this is a positive interaction, because they're killing mals together, which is a very friendly and supportive thing to do.

On the other hand, he's engaging in small talk with Orion now? Small talk seems potentially offensive. Lan Wangji would be offended by it. On the other hand, being friends with someone but not knowing basic facts about them is probably also offensive. 

He skewers a bookworm that was devouring some Harold Bloom. "What classes are you taking?"

"Uh, the stuff everyone takes and... Sophocles and Greek mythology since the school wants me on Ancient Greek... and modern magical history, and American history, and intro mechanics? And history of magical conflicts." He explodes a bookworm; he has a cool chain-reaction spell now from the void that he can use to kill a lot of little things in a row if he does it right, which he doesn't always. "You?"

"Magical Military History, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Asia in the Modern World, How Shanghai Got Its Start, Applied Mathematics, Reading Fiction: Dysfunctional Families, Applied Mathematics, and Street-Fighting Mathematics."

"What is street fighting mathematics?"

"Guessing answers to math problems."

"There's a class on guessing? Can't you just write 'four' for all the answers if you're supposed to guess?"

"Mn,"  Lan Wangji says, because Orion has spoken in multiple sentences and this is taxing his ability to understand English.

"Well, I guess at least it's easy." He has run out of bookworms to practice his chain reaction spell on. There are bookworm guts all over Collected Interpretations of the Sonnets volumes one through six but that seems like not a huge deal. Onward!

"What do you do for fun?" Lan Wangji asks.

"...this."

What a reasonable answer. His friend has such good hobbies. 

"I play guqin," he volunteers, because he's pretty sure you're supposed to also volunteer information when you have friends.

Is that a sport. Is it a Chinese video game. Is it Chinese for "chess". "Sounds great!"

He has concluded the small talk. He neatly folds up his sheet of paper, puts it in his pocket, and stabs a skitterer hanging out on top of a book by someone named Ben Jonson. 

Oooh a skitterer maybe there's more of them up high. Orion climbs the shelf.

Lan Wangji steps back and supervises, mentally preparing the feather fall spell he learned after the time Wei Ying fell off the third floor of a building and broke three of his limbs. (He didn't have the mana capacity to cast it until two weeks ago but he wanted to be prepared.)

Orion doesn't fall, he just kills all four skitterers and then whoops and climbs back down.