Polite, no whips, just polite-

"Trying to be polite."

Oh no. Oh no oh no it's happening again.

"Well, stop being so goddamn weird."

He tugs Tomonori back to the table. 

"Thank you goodbye."

He hates it here he hates it he hates himself why. Oh, the table. Nice table. He squeezes Nie Huaisang's hand and wants to just lean into him but they can't because maybe then there will be Zidian.

"I'm sorry. Let's just wait a few minutes and then we can go. I'll look out for mals."

"Let me handle him, okay? You stay here."

He heads back to Jiang Cheng's table. "a-Cheng..."

"What."

He throws himself into Jiang Cheng's arms. "a-Cheng, I'm scared of the cabinets. There could be so many mals in them and some of them are mimics and I don't know how to tell them apart from the other ones and some of them I'd have to fight and you know I'm no good at fighting, I'm so scared--"

He looks up at Jiang Cheng, his eyes watery.

"You're useless," he says.

"I know," he says, "I know, a-Cheng, I'm so useless, but I don't want to be useless and devoured by a mal-- please help-- you have Zidian, it's easy for you, all I have is this fan--"

"Fine. I'll help you once."

"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, a-Cheng, I could never do this without you, thank you so much--"

"Shut up," he says, shoves Nie Huaisang away, and starts looking through the cabinets.

He smiles at Tomonori. "See? Handled."

"...that was amazing. How did you do that?"

"Natural talent."

Now please don't notice how much I've been operantly conditioning you because that would be very inconvenient. 

"You're good at so many things! Do you think we should do anything else for him because he's helping you?"

"Why would I do that?"

"So that he knows you appreciate him."

"But he'll do things for me without me having to do that."

"Okay."

Tomonori thinks that's incredibly rude but it probably makes it easier to survive? So that means it's the right thing to do. Instead of trying to discuss that further, Tomonori will try to change the topic to the assignment, which is very exciting! The process of making the mold is actually the most interesting, and he can go on about that until Jiang Cheng returns with their supplies.

Gosh. Has Tomonori realized that he is so incredibly smart and knows so many things about making molds, unlike Nie Huaisang, who is very stupid and incompetent in this field and will probably need Tomonori to do all his homework for him?

This particularly brand of flattery does not seem to be effective. Tomonori starts trying to explain how to make molds.

It's actually quite simple when you just look at it in the right way!

Why is Nie Huaisang flattering Tomonori? Why is he touching Tomonori's forearm? Why is TOMONORI trying to EXPLAIN things to Nie Huaisang who doesn't know how to do molds?! Jiang Cheng would do his molds FOR him like a GOOD boyfriend. 

Oh no he messed up the mold. :( Tomonori help!