"You do also look nice. Oh, Hua Cheng, I meant to ask, I assume most of the people who live here aren't potential magical girls, what do they see? Like in terms of...sky and stuff."

"They can see the flowers. I cover most of the surfaces in flowers."

"Fair enough. --Right, you did mention that when I was asking you all those questions online." 

"If you do not want things, are there any charities you like?" Lan Zhan asks Xie Lian quietly. 

"I like Sikh temples, I used to eat at one every day."

"I read in a book that a major Sikh religious figure was the only known person in the ancient world to willingly die for another religion's right to practice."

"Oh, I didn't know that! That's neat. They're lovely people."

Nod nod. 

"I have literally never heard a bad thing about Sikhism, which is impressive, Buddhism has been mean."

"I met a Sikh magical girl whose hair was fourteen feet long because she couldn't cut it and magical girl hair doesn't fall out by itself."

"Huh, that's neat. Did it drag or did she do the Tangled megabraid thing?"

"Fancy turban. Incorporated into her magical girl outfit and everything. Apparently it was controversial because usually only men wore them traditionally."

"Gender is a lie and a trap."

"I'm not sure what that means."

"Uh okay so what do you know about modern queer theory. If anything. I'm not judging you if it's nothing."

"It's nothing."

"Okay, so you know how sometimes people who start out as boys become magical girls, and after that they are girls?"

"I resemble that remark!"

"Yes, I know about that."

"Okay, so even without magic, some people who are born as boys want to be girls, and some people who are born as girls want to be boys, and some people who are born as one or the other want to be neither, or both, or something more complicated. And there are social elements who are like, 'no, if you're born with a penis you have to be a boy and if you're born with a vagina you have to be a girl' and those people also say girls shouldn't kiss girls and boys shouldn't kiss boys, so people who have such desires, and people who are socially aligned with them, say things like 'gender is a lie and a trap' and 'be gay do crimes' and so on."

"This sounds confusing. I don't think I need to keep track of it, though, I took a vow of chastity when I was seventeen."

"You what?"

Wow that sounds like a HUGE disappointment for Hua Cheng. 

Hua Cheng doesn't look particularly surprised or disappointed.

"It was customary for magical girls where I grew up. I would have adopted an heir, if it had, uh, come up."

"Huh. I've never heard of a vow of chastity for non-religious reasons before."