Julian's been up for an hour, alternating Middle High German grammar and furious ink-stick grinding. (He's always hated calligraphy, which makes his set just about worth the weight). 

"Who's that?," he asks without looking up. He's not looking away from his verbs unless it's important. 

"It's Naima," says the person in the hallway, sharply, only sounding a little bit out of breath.

...important. He gets up and opens the door. 

She's a little more obviously out of breath, now that the door is open, but she's trying very hard not to look it. 

"I need your help, and you want to give it to me."

Julian blinks.

On the one hand: He has something that Naima wants! Quite badly, by the looks of it. He's not sure he's ever seen her ask for help before, come to think of it, which means she must think he's competent and trustworthy and their tentative little definitely-not-an-alliance is likely to stick. 

On the other hand: he has to negotiate with Naima about it. He's only known her for three weeks and change, but that's enough time to tell who has the comparative advantage in bargaining.

Ah, well. All he can do is try to sound confident and hope that if he humiliates himself too badly she can be persuaded not to tell Annisa and Malak. 

"...that seems reasonably likely, yes. Would you like to come in and discuss it?" 

" - if you want," she says, and steps in and shuts the door - and then realizes that she just shut herself in a room alone with a boy she met three weeks ago, and awkwardly opens it back up a crack.

"I have an economics essay due tomorrow. I've written it. It's good. But the class is in Chinese, and - my writing's just not fast enough. I can do fine for shorter work, but there's just no way I can translate and copy the whole thing out again in Mandarin before tomorrow morning. I'm betting you can. And you want to, because the reason I'm in this position is that I've been taking on work for half the class in my Avicenna course, which is mostly upperclassmen. Which means that if you help me get my economics essays in, I'll be able to get you junior-level wards for your room in exchange."