"Okay. Unsupported by experiment, I think cuts and burns and hair-pulling are good, strangulation and having my movement restricted and actual hitting are bad. For instance."

"...Was healing practice not enough experimentation to figure out your feelings on cuts?"

"And burns! But no, not really, these were little, I don't think I had to be kinky, especially since I'm not attracted to Shifu Hayaka. I mean I haven't messed with those things in context."

"Okay," says Dao.

"Questions, comments?"

"I really like you, you know that?"

"I am happily reminded on a daily basis."

He grins. "Okay."

"But I meant questions or comments about the details."

"Um... I dunno," he says, blushing.

"Or you don't wanna say."

"No, like - I have to let myself think about it first, and I have all this practice doing the exact opposite of that, so it's hard."

"I don't suppose I can help?"

"Uh... I dunno," he says. "Still getting used to the part where I can talk about it, at all, to anybody."

Beila pats his hand.

He smiles a tiny little smile.

"Do you want to talk about it or d'you want me to go away for a while and let you get some processing done?"

"Um... is there a third option?"

"I could... sit here and read stuff on my screen while you think?"

"I mean an option where I am hanging out with you and not thinking about... conveniences," he says.

"Oh." Pause. "Yeah, sure, if that's what you want to do, we can talk about - I dunno, that book we started in Literature, it looks terrible, I don't think a single thing anyone wrote during the Hundred Years' War was not terribly depressing."

He laughs. "I'm sure there's some book somewhere from around then that's not, but you're right, it's a theme for sure."

"I wonder what the Literature class book selection process is like. Like, are the teachers all sitting in a room at some point between terms going, 'Okay, let's flip a yuan, and if it lands elements we'll use this story about an earthbender coming of age under Fire Nation rule, and if it lands statue we'll use that one about the same exact thing."

Dao cracks up.

"I mean, I'm sure there are six interesting ways to handle that premise. But there aren't forty, and there aren't forty plus a hundred-odd sequels, and it's not a particularly landmark feature of literature, it's just something that got a lot of attention for a century. But because it got so much attention we have to read one. Could be worse, we could be reading terrible thinly veiled political rants about bender/nonbender conflict early in Korra's time."