Lucien does not really have opinion on this and instead eats his stir-fry quietly. 

"Hi Lucien," says Isabella, pitching her voice to not really interfere with the history project argument. "Mr. Carruthers assigned groups for our history project today."

"Ah. Are you in their group?"

"Yes, but I find that for once I do not have the strongest opinions in the bunch."

"You normally have strong opinions?"

"Yeah, but in this case my strong opinion is 'we should come to an agreement on a topic, any topic, so we can start the project'."

He really likes the idea of her having strong opinions.

"I hope I don't have any group projects this semiquarter. Partners are fine, less time wasted on coordination that way."

"Yeah, Carruthers said something about not wanting to grade ten projects when he could put us in groups of five and grade four."

"I guess that means more time is spent figuring out what ideas are good but less of his time is spent on that."

"Yeah, hopefully one of the parties will convince the other and then we can settle in to read about one or the other."

After a bit Lucien is done with his food.

"I'd like to go back for seconds again I think." he says, nervously making eye contact with Isabella.

"Yeah, you'd think they'd have larger plates. Grab me a couple scoops of pistachio ice cream while you're up."

Eee his secret plan worked. "Yes!"

Lucien comes back with ice cream. He even remembers to get his own food as well this time.

Om nom nom pistachio ice cream. "Being able to eat real food is so good."

"I think I'd still appreciate the option of the virtuality feeding to be honest. Eating actual food is really nice but it takes so much time out of my day."

"Huh. I mean, you can still eat while doing a lot of things, especially if you like stuff that you can drink through a straw."

"I have to be careful about that, if I get too distracted I end up failing to eat. Especially if I've been sleeping less than normal."

"...huh, I'd expect using magic to make your appetite reassert itself, when you started working on the power were you imagining you'd expand it in some way having to do with hunger?"

"The appetite is still there, it's the ability to steer my attention or multitask that's decreased I think. So I feel hungry but end up too absorbed in something more interesting to actually eat."

"Inconvenient. No immediate brilliant ideas are coming to me besides 'sleep a normal amount'."

"I try."

Mostly.

"One day you will have some spare time and you can fix it so it works correctly."

"Most of my schedule-branches have it waiting at least 50 years."

"You're planned out that far? And making your sleep skipping sustainable isn't on there for that long?"

"My plans that far ahead are very tentative, more like hypothetical paths I've thought about than anything definite. My sleep skipping doesn't work that badly, and there are a bunch of other abilities which would incidinetly decrease the side effects - like having multiple threads of attention."