Monika leaves the ladies' room as Sophie hustles past.

"Wow, who pissed in her cornflakes?" she wonders. Then she sees Pete. "Okay, by default I'm going to assume it was you, but I'm still curious."

"It was absolutely me but search me, I have no idea what I did, we were having a nice conversation."

"That's completely unsurprising given everything I know about her, but I do need some more context if I'm going to... diagnose..."

She stops talking and briefly facepalms.

"Am I giving you romantic advice, or making-friends advice?" she mumbles around her hand. "I need to calibrate how annoyed to be with myself."

"...I mean she's gorgeous but so is everyone else in this damn school and right now what I'm trying to do is figure out whether her situation with Hywel is one where I should be trying to get Hywel off her back or get her to see him in a new light or something."

"...sort of ambiguously romantic advice, then," she sighs. "Fine, whatever, I'm nosy and I do know way too much about those two, they're Interesting. What set her off? She's got a lot of hidden triggers."

"Uhh, I don't even remember? It was, uh, she said something she claimed was melodramatic, I said that as a pink shirtless femboy I am not allowed to judge her for the melodrama, she said that it wasn't any of that it was the blazer over shirtlessness like some anime boy that made that true, I said... something Quirky about how it's the whole ensemble of things that suggests that I'm okay with melodrama? I may have mentioned Bayesian evidence. And she went super quiet and mad, and I was like 'don't worry about it I just say things sometimes' and she got even madder and then left."

"...what's Bayesian evidence? -I mean, I don't care actually. But she's not better at math than I am, and I only even knew Bayesian means a math thing because I took a couple of calculus classes. And unlike me she thinks being bad at math means she's, like, going to Hell. And, uh, she's physically incapable of saying don't talk about math please because that would be way ruder than looking at you like you just killed her dog."

She shrugs. "That was probably it, anyway."

He blinks slowly. "So she... ran away because she didn't want me to talk about math? I only talked about one math."

"I mean, I don't think it logically followed from that? I think somebody with a normal amount of social anxiety and less trauma from thinking she's dumb would've just been kind of uncomfortable or laughed it off? But, uh. Sophie."

"Unfortunately I've been here one and a half days so 'but, uh, Sophie' is exactly the kind of thing I am learning right now. And it seems odd to me that—I mean, I guess she did mention that—the Sophie Hywel seems to be in love with does not seem very socially anxious? That's the Sophie I talked to this morning at the cafeteria."

"Oh, wow, you're kind of smart." (This comes out very condescendingly surprised, but also approving.) "Yeah, when he's around, or the conversational topic, or whatever, she completely forgets to have an anxiety disorder because she's too pissed off. I'm not sure that's how it works IRL but it's definitely how it works here."

He is going to ignore the veiled insult. He's kind of used to it, anyway, most people expect hot guys to not be smart so it's happened before. "...IRL?"

"We're in a boarding school. In England. This is not RL."

"Boarding school I'll grant you, but England? Are you not British, then?"

"Yeah, my accent's super ambiguous. A lot of people can't tell until it's pointed out to them."

...now that it's pointed out to him, she doesn't have a British accent. It's kind of hard to tell what it is. American seems likeliest? But 'non-native speaker taught English by an American' also seems possible? She might just be one of those people who watched a lot of American TV and caught the accent?

"So where are you from, then?"

"Japan, and also New Jersey. Work travel, you know. Got to the point I couldn't really tell them apart."

"Huh. Cool. I'm actually gonna start learning Japanese, here." He kind of wants to ask her why she's here then but that would invite her to ask the same and he hasn't actually come up with a good enough excuse. ...wait, was it a faux pas to ask her where she's from, in this world, with Travelers and all? Well, what's done is done.

"...give me a year and I'm sure I'll be able to make sense of that. Maybe two."

That's not true, of course. He got the language superpower so it will definitely be a lot less than that. Though it doesn't make him understand everything, it seems, not automatically. Word-by-word, "who also understanding cannot do thing to say's regarding that fun! right?" can probably be massaged into making sense but not on the fly like that, not before he knows any grammar.

...but honestly it's a lot of fun to try to imagine what the grammar that produces a sensible sentence out of those words could be like.

"The ne? part is basically 'innit'. If that helps."

"I have watched sufficient anime to catch that particular bit. It's just all the everything else."

"Anyway, I should get going, don't want to distract you from seeking your fortune. Also I have a standing appointment with my copy of Neverwinter Nights. See you probably."

"You almost certainly will," he agrees, and resumes his way to...

...to...

...where's he going next, exactly? It's—almost dinnertime, right, so he should probably. Do something? In the meantime?

He notices he's started to feel antsy all of a sudden.