Though if this works well enough... The lower years might be able to start working together sooner than the back half of senior year. 

It'll be good if they can get a leg up.

They'll need it. 

Mm.

She doesn't feel great about leaving Jialin behind.

...Yeah.

It wouldn't be safe to bring her out with them, though. Probably a lot less safe. 

She knows.

They'll figure something out. 

That's what they do.

Yeah, it is.

Kiss.

Soft kiss. 

Nothing for it but to keep working.

Keeping working... Goes more or less non-terribly, which is better than could have been reasonably expected. They're able to get the different language groups in some kind of reasonable order - the English language group is the largest and most unwieldy, and the Hindi language group is extremely suspicious of the Higgins sisters, but they keep people alive and shambling forwards at least. The Chinese language group gets to 'basically functional' fastest - their head start matters a lot, beyond everything else going on.

It's a start.

They might be ready to push further soon.

Combined groups?

Yeah - though some of the groups might need more drilling... Or having their successors observe at least the better-drilled runs; the best ones are fairly smooth.

Might be good to get them in now, yeah. Before crunch time hits.

The course will only get more dangerous over time, too.

Then this is their best window.

So, this Friday?

Friday.

El will make sure things are ready on her end.

And Xunyu will work on hers.

Time for her to find Jialin.

She's studying pretty intensely - with a couple other indies in her year, and a few in the year below (she's been taking her future position very, very seriously, and has been working hard on networking with El and Lu's other hangers-on).