The one thing I really learned, and learned well, in group therapy was that you don’t die if someone doesn’t like you.
Julia bounces over to the nurse's office as soon as she'd made herself eat lunch, which is tuna melts and brisket and corn on the cob. She feels that the Scholomance should not pretend to serve fish because fish that tastes vaguely suspect is more nauseating than, like, bread that tastes vaguely suspect.
"Marian?"
There's a girl - probably a girl, she's wearing a too-large sweater and it's a little hard to tell? - lurking outside the room, now, like she's not really sure whether there's a password to get in.
"Hi! Are you here for group therapy? Come on in, we're still doing introductions." Honestly if it's a boy that'd be good because their gender balance is a little off!
"Hello?" Ennis says to the new girl. "...welcome? I'm Ennis, and conveniently enough I like cosmetics since that's my affinity, and massages, and, hmm, those nature sound recordings."
Anemone takes off her shoes and sits down. "My name is Anemone, and I'm from Jamaica. I like swimming, flowers, fresh fruit, tarot, meditation, and cartoons."
She waves the girl at the door in and pats the spot on the blanket next to her.
There is also a boy. He comes in too. Everyone has taken off their shoes for some reason so he'll follow suit? And find a place to sit where there's space, although this involves some folding himself up at this point. There are kind of too many people in this room.
"Hi, I'm Leander, I'm from Scotland, I like fiction podcasts and linguistics and Lord of the Rings."
(He's given thought to what he wants to talk about here but had not anticipated he'd have to come up with interests. Hopefully that doesn't sound too much like he was looking for an excuse to bring up liking languages?)
- oh she has to introduce herself, too!
"Hi Leander! I'm Karen, and I like - hm. I like cookies, and I like writing fiction, and I like history and really old narrative poetry, and I like Nintendo games and specifically really like Pokemon. I actually accidentally brought my old GameBoy in, if anybody can charge it and wants to play it sometime. Oh, and I'm from Illinois, down by St. Louis."
Orion is pacing back and forth out in the hallway and as he goes by the door he chirps, "I'm Orion and I like killing mals! And also Star Wars and sometimes anime with like ninjas in it."
...oh no, did everyone else say something already? Did the other Asian girl say something yet? Is she holding everyone else up? What does she like -
"I'm Ayako, I'm from Kyoto, I like singing and stage shows and drawing. And anime but the kind with magical girls not the kind with ninjas."
"What's your favorite anime." Julia is not actually a huge fan of anime but she has for the last several years only been allowed to watch TV if it's international (for the cultural education) or if she's working on her movie-illusion-spell, so she is no longer the kind of person who has only seen Death Note. Though she did see Death Note. She felt it was lacking compelling female protagonists who were hot and funny and shallow but not mass murderers, which makes them kind of unrelatable.
Oh no!! That was the last person who might not have said something!! She has to think of something, quick!! How many things? At least three things? Three things is a reasonable number, right? Okay. She does like cookies, that's one thing. But she doesn't want to be a boring person who only likes food, that's a bad first impression and you only get to make a first impression once! She likes writing, too, but what if that sounds like bragging, or like she's copying everything that Karen said, then everyone will think she can't come up with her own opinions! Quick, think of an original opinion -
"Bleach or maybe Naruto!" says Orion, pacing back in the other direction now.
"Sailor Moon-- the original not the remake-- but I also like Princess Tutu and Shoujo Kakumei Utena, and I have a soft spot for Madoka Magica even though it's kind of depressing."
"We started watching that one but my mom kept crying through it so I told her I wasn't that into it."
Awww the tiny children are so adorable This is probably not a helpful way to be thinking about the situation? These teenagers can do MAGIC which Marian cannot do, and they've - most of them, at least - been training for this their entire lives, which she also hasn't been doing.
....Marian honestly has a lot of feelings that she wishes she could talk about but she is the school nurse and group therapy for the students is not the time or place. So she will just smile at everyone as they speak, instead.
"Oof, yeah, that'd be brutal to watch with your parents past episode four, I am suddenly grateful I didn't try to. Are there any you did like?"
"Man, you all are going to think that I have absolutely no taste, but I kind of have to say Dragon Ball Z? Just because there's a sense in which it's not very good, right, but there's also a sense in which it's sort of the very height of shonen fighter shows, both in terms of the power levels within the show and in terms of the power of the show itself, because so many people have seen it, and the idea of a godlike protector of humanity in a universe that's mostly full of ridiculously powerful aliens is just really compelling, you know? I promise I also like things that are good, though."
If Jeremy is stressed and scared less than a week into his time into the Scholomance because he doesn't like lying to Briar, he is going to die. So he isn't going to therapy because he's stressed and scared, because he isn't allowed to be stressed and scared, which means that he isn't. Jeremy is going to therapy because New York is hosting therapy, and definitely not for any other reasons.
Briar and someone from one of her math classes drop him off at the New Yorker's dorm room. He had been a little worried that Briar would want to come and talk about her dead sister and New York would decide they were just lost causes, but she had decided of her own initiative to work on her math homework instead.
People seem to already be talking when he arrives, but hopefully New York won't be too upset with him for being late?
"Hi, um, I'm Jeremy. Are we talking about ... anime? I've heard good things about Jojo's Bizarre Adventure." Jeremy has never in his life watched anime but at least he can name one.
"Hi Jeremy! There's space on the bed, sorry we're a little squeezed in here. We're talking about who we are, where we're from, and what are things that we find relaxing or soothing or therapeutic. I'm Julia and these are Rebecca Karen Orion Leander Ayako Ennis Mary and -" she doesn't know the pronouns of the next kid - "that's as far around as we'd gotten."
"Pen," she says, but it's so quiet that she suddenly worries that not a single person heard her, or if they did they just heard a really vague sound that they couldn't hear any of the parts of. It would be awkward to say it twice if people did hear her? But it was so quiet.
"I'm Pen," she says, making a real effort to speak up this time, so it's a more normal amount of quiet. "And, um, I liked Fruits Basket. But I've only read the manga."
THERE!! THAT WAS PROBABLY ALMOST A NORMAL THING TO SAY!!!
"Maybe we can convince the Void it'd be therapeutic to commandeer one of the history classroom projectors and let us show each other our favorite anime but probably shouldn't get ahead of ourselves."
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