"I don't give a shit."

Nie Huaisang presses on. "I bet Ennis has some really useful makeup. Lipstick that detects poison, maybe."

"I don't wear lipstick! You wear lipstick, because you're a faggot."

"You jerk off to videos of men sucking dick."

"I don't see what that has to do with me being a faggot."

"I just like to be pretty."

Yes and it's VERY CRUEL to JIANG CHENG SPECIFICALLY.

"I don't know why you think I'd want to talk to the girl with the makeup affinity."

He opens his fan and flutters it. "Oh, I'm sure I don't know-- don't make me say it-- it's fine--"

Oh. Right. That.

He self-consciously reaches up to touch his cheek and then jerks his hand away from it like it's on fire. 

Thanks for the reminder that puberty hit him like a freight train and in the totally wrong direction. He's still five foot nothing but by god his face looks like the surface of the moon. 

Sorry that not all of us can be as pretty as you, Nie Huaisang. 

"Think about it!" Nie Huaisang says cheerily, and then runs off to share the Shanghai reading room with [gets on stepstool] [pulls out megaphone] HIS BOYFRIEND. "I bet she's in the Manchester reading room."

He is NOT going to the Manchester reading room. That is STUPID and EMBARRASSING and he has WORK TO DO.

…

After asking for directions, he goes to the Manchester reading room.

The Manchester reading room doesn't contain the freshmen yet, but they come up the stairs in a pack of six when their lunch period concludes. "Hello?" asks one of the girls. "This is Manchester's."

"I want to talk to Ennis," he says, like he'd carefully practiced in his mind on the way here.

"I'm Ennis," says one of the boys. "What is it?"

Ennis is a boy???

A really pretty boy, gosh. 

Instead of saying anything Jiang Cheng stares at his feet.

"Is this about cosmetics, or something else," Ennis says.

'Cosmetics.' What does 'cosmetics' mean. He doesn't know that word.

"You speak Mandarin?" he says, enunciating carefully.

"No. English, Gaelic, Latin."

"Wo hui shuo putonghua," says one of the girls.

"Translate?" he says.

"He asked if it was about makeup or something else," she tells Jiang Cheng.

"Yes. Makeup."

"You want me to make you something?"

"Yes, please, for the--" He touches his cheek.

It's really unfair that he has to have this conversation in front of multiple people, one of whom is a very pretty boy.

"- Gail, would you come with us to the lab?" Ennis ask the girl who hui shuo putonghua.

"He should pay you," says a different girl.

"I'm from Shanghai, I can offer mana. Or a favor. I'm an alchemist, I could make something for you in lab-- my affinity's animals." Or math tutoring but that's probably not good across the language barrier.