"It's okay! I can sit wherever's convenient."

"I want to be as far away from that disgusting display as I can."

"...still, it was distracting for me so it was probably also distracting for you."

"Maybe I would be better at doing my work if Nie Huaisang weren't cuddling Tomonori?"

Really Jiang Cheng was the distracting one here, Wen Ning can't really handle yelling, but Wen Ning has gone through his entire life avoiding Jiang Cheng's attention and doesn't intend to stop now.

Yeah, Jiang Cheng was the distracting one for them both, but she is zero percent inclined to say that where Jiang Cheng can hear it. 

"I just sort of expect that fewer social undercurrents would leave everyone with more spare brain to work with." 

"I think Nie Huaisang should focus on his work so he can pass this incredibly stupid math class that isn't even really a math class it's an art class."

Hmm. What, if anything, is the politic way to handle this.

...well, when she puts it that way it's sort of obvious. "He'd be very good at art, if he were focused on art instead of on wizard towers."

(The dismissiveness on the words 'wizard towers' is... well it's not real, actually, but it's the fake version of a real thing, which is a little like being real if you squint.)

"Yeah! Exactly! He should learn about golden ratios and use it to make better pictures instead of wasting his time with this bullshit."

"Right. --anyway. Studying in my room or yours, Jiang Cheng." The library would also work but the trouble with the library is that if she sits in the Shanghai spot that has implications and if she brings them to Kyoto's that also has implications and she has tracked so many implications today. 

"I think my room has better wards."

"Wen Qing got Zixun to do mine and Mei's and Julian's, actually, but your room's fine. Lead the way." 

Jiang Cheng's room is spartan. A terrarium has been set up but there aren't any animals in it yet.

...Ayako isn't totally sure how to interpret the terrarium but she is zero percent inclined to comment. She sits down on the bed, leaving plenty of space. 

"So usually with Mei I wind up reading out loud because she hates reading and I hate studying alone, with Ning-san we'd agreed to quiz each other with flashcards, how do you usually study." 

"Wei Ying and I quiz each other." Which he can't do because he's in the fake math class for failures.

"Alright! I can do that. --what track are you on, I don't remember if I asked, I was assuming artificing from our history class but I'm creative writing so that's not actually a very sound assumption." 

"Alchemy, actually. I think they're not offering History of Alchemy this term in Mandarin."

"Oh, cool, like your sister? I wasn't really following the conversation she and Mei were having earlier but it seemed like she was good at it, anyway."

"My whole family is alchemists. My sister, my--" he pauses. "Wei Ying."

.....right. Okay. There's history there. There's a lot of history there, it sounds like. Probably she should ask... someone other than Jiang Cheng... what the history there is.

"Huh, cool. So you're probably going to want to focus on the natural world parts of this class rather than the architecture parts— personally I'm looking forward to the music section since I do so many song-spells—"

"My affinity is animals, I wonder if it'll give me animal spells."

Oh, that's the most reassuring possible explanation for the terrarium.

"I think one of the classic examples of fibonacci spirals is nautilus shells? And the table of contents had something about body proportions, I didn't read ahead that far though." 

"I hope I don't get a spell to change animals' proportions, that seems like it would hurt them."

"I also hope that! But I just meant it's clearly not affinity-irrelevant, right, it might not be your hardest math class but the point of giving it to you seems like it isn't the math." 

Wei Ying doesn't have a corpse math class, he doesn't say.

Instead he angrily opens his textbook. "Wen Ning, do you have the flashcards?"

"Yes." He hands them over.