WEEKEND SOCIALS HADN'T been much of a thing last year, but this year it came in in full swing. Our Saturday nights were packed. Baking, quiz nights, or so Miss Royce claimed when we went in for registration on Friday night.

Yunji and I exchanged a glance. Not good news. Socials among full boarders would mean we'd only really have the Sorren girls to hang out with. And if we only hung out with them, well, it wouldn't be surprising if the teachers decided we had an issue interacting with boys.

Which would also not be good.

Because that meant even more socials.

And if I'd learnt anything from last year, it was that socials were absolutely shit. They were hell on earth, and the last time I went on one, I'd ended up in a rivalry with the entirety of Aesir House.

It hadn't been fun. Even though it was somewhat absolved and dealt with now.

The first one, on Saturday, would be with us and the Sixth Form. In the Klairns Cafe, from seven thirty to nine in the evening. Activities supposedly include board games (which earned a roll of the eyes from both me and Yunji and I assumed anyone else who saw the schedule), drinks and food (which was good, but I could get that in my own dorm anyways), and inter-year, inter-year communication and discussions about school, university, and the future.

It sounded horrible.

Which had been fully expected, but it was still rather sad to see that that was the best the teachers could come up with. Honestly. A karaoke night would have been fun. Quiz night would have been tolerable.

It was with that attitude that Yunji and I went into the Klairns Cafe. Oliana had smartly chosen to stay with one of the day students for the night, and Analisse's parents were in town, so she was living with them for the weekend. Rumour was that she was becoming a weekly boarding student soon, but from what I'd heard she had no plans of that until next year.

We were one of the earliest ones to arrive. The teacher in charge was the housemaster of Wadsworth House, a history teacher, which was always enjoyable. We greeted him with smiles on our face, the kind that we had been taught to do since kindergarten. Specialty of Chinese education, I liked to think.

"Welcome, welcome!" His name was Mr Jenkins and he had a head of ferocious red, pale skin, and a narrow face. "You're from...?"

"Lok House Upper Fifth," I replied smoothly, offering a small bow of my head. "I'm Honoria."

"And I'm Yunji."

"Welcome, welcome. You're a bit early—or, well, everyone else is late, so feel free to have some of the snacks and drinks while you wait."

Yunji took no time to hesitate. She dashed to the table and immediately snatched a bag of chips. Mr Jenkins let out a laugh, and I stared for a moment before following to the table as well, grabbing a bag of chocolate chip cookies.

"Did you not have enough for dinner?" Mr Jenkins asked, shaking his head.

"Yes," Yunji replied, "but also no. I love these chips. They're so good. I love them so, so, so much. I ran out like two days ago and didn't have time to buy any new ones... am I allowed to take a few packs of these back to my dorm?"

I glanced at her. "Yunji!"

She ignored me.

Mr Jenkins waved his hand. "If any are left after the social, feel free to take them away. But not before that, please. We do need to save some food for the others."

"Of course sir, of course."

And so we waited. I took my phone out, scrolling through my messages. There were some from Jeremy, who was still knee-deep in bliss of first love (or something along those lines), and insisted on informing me of everything he and Natalie got up to daily in an effort to repay me because I was apparently the reason they were together. It was not appreciated and not at all wanted, but there wasn't much I could do about it. So I skimmed through the messages every day and pretended like I cared.

(I didn't.)

But it wasn't my right to judge, so I never said anything about it. I was not willing to burst their happy little bubble. In fact, I was more than willing to help reinforce it, not that I could actually do much.

Everyone started filing in after around another five minutes. We were immediately joined by the Sorren girls in our year (with the exception of Nicole, who sat awkwardly to the side), and we waved to the older Lok girls. The Aesir boys came in, and I made a point of ignoring all of them, purposefully turning my body away from the entrance so that I wouldn't have to see their faces.

Immature? Yes. Did I care? No.

Sometimes, you needed to put it all on your face so that people got the message. As if they hadn't already, you could argue, but it also never hurt to hammer in the fact that you disliked someone. Extremely.

And right now, in public, Theodore Yu was also roped into that category along with the other three Aesir boys.

Not that anyone would blame me for it exactly. Seb was the one who'd ruined the friendship in the first place, not me. I was just reacting to what he had done. I was almost cooperating with him, helping him achieve his goal of not saying a single word to me. Or bothering to remain friends.

But quickly after that we were split up into groups. Like the teachers said, it was a social meant to make us befriend kids in other years and houses. Thus, my group consisted of six people, two from each year. It was Jasper Gao from Wadsworth in my year. I wasn't friends with him at all, but we could barely count as acquaintances. Barely. We ignored each other as we sat down in our groups. Thankfully, though, one of the Lower Sixth was from Lok, so I immediately chose to stick to her like glue.

Before realising that the other Lower Sixth student was her boyfriend, so I awkwardly moved away from their couch, resisting the urge to shake my head in disbelief.

I fucking hated every inch of this.

We quickly got on with our "discussions" at the urging of the teachers. As expected among a sea of oversees full boarding students from China, the immediate topic was academics. Instantly Jasper and I were asking about what ACM subjects they were doing, since we had to begin picking our own in a week or so. Our provisional subject choices had to be done and dusted with by the end of this term. December might feel far away, but it really wasn't. Michaelmas term always went by quickly.

That was how things always worked. Michaelmas was always the most fun because there was little to do academic-wise but much to work with entertainment-wise. Hence, everyone partied their asses off and relaxed until the Christmas break, when the stress came down all at once.

"I take History," one of the boys said. He was in Upper Sixth, and so my attention immediately snapped to him. His name was Logan.

"I want to take History for ACMs," I told him. "How is it?"

He glanced at me, one brow raised. "What do you want to study in university?"

"Not a magical subject," I admitted. "I want to go to a human university. I'm thinking either History and Politics or perhaps PPE."

"Ambitious."

"I know, I know." I let out a huff. "But that's just the goal. But yeah, I want to study in that area."

"History isn't difficult," he assured. "Easier than JCMs, honestly. You just keep writing essays. Not that hard."

"What do you want to study in university?" I asked, tilting my head. "You're already applying, right?"

"History of Magic with Politics," he said. Ah, so he was going to a magician university. But other than that our interests seemed to align, so I straightened.

This was my chance to get any information I wanted about the university application process. "Which ones are you applying to?"

"The usuals." He tilted his head. "I have interviews soon. I think I can get in, I have pretty good grades."

"His grades are amazing," the other Upper Sixth said. "He's like, the Asian of our year."

I opened my mouth. "Oh, Jesus Christ."

"I'm not that good," Logan said with a shrug. "I'm just doing subjects I really like, that's all. What subjects do you want to do? You're starting to have to decide, right?"

"Combat, Law of Magic, History of Magic, Human and Magic Relations."

"Oh, yeah, you're definitely on a very specific path."

"It's not that specific," I said, one brow raised.

"Well, they're all of a similar style and topic. Yes, you can try for many subjects with those, but at the same time... you know. I take History, Relations, Mythology and Magica Literature."

"How difficult is Relations? I'm not very certain on that one, I feel like it might overlap a bit too much with Law and History."

"If PPE or History and Politics is your goal, feel free to take it. You have Combat to make sure your subjects are diverse enough anyways, so you don't need to worry about that."

"Huh," I murmured, tilting my head. "Sounds good, then. I think I've more or less already made up my mind regarding the subjects. I'm probably just going to stick to those."

"They're a good choice."

And then I turned to ask the other Sixth Formers about their subject choices, and Jasper occasionally interjected with a statement or two. He wanted to do the Human Sciences, Mathematics and Healing. I was almost certain he wanted to become a doctor. Which would hardly be surprising, and he would not be the only full boarding student who wanted to be set on that path. I was not one of them. I was not someone who necessarily enjoyed anything involving the sciences. They made my head spin, and I generally hated science with a passion.

Maths was tolerable. But it wasn't anything I enjoyed either, which was why I was not taking it. There wasn't much of a point.

Logan seemed to see what I saw in Jasper as well. One brow raised, he combed his hair back and asked, "You going for medicine?"

"Yeah," Jasper said with a nod. "I think medicine is going to be the thing for me. Like, both my parents are doctors."

Logan scrunched up his nose. "You are so cliche."

The Upper Sixth girl snorted. "Logan. I want to be a doctor as well."

"But you don't have two doctors as parents... right?" But his voice became less steady at the end as the girl raised a brow. "Oh shit, do you actually?"

"Just one." But then she smiled. "The other's a psychiatrist. So, technically speaking, still a doctor."

Logan swore.

I blinked. "Why is everyone going to become a doctor? What is so interesting about being a doctor? The money?"

Jasper glanced at me, and with the blandest voice, said, "Yes."

I decided to refrain from comment. He was somewhat friends with the Aesir full boarding boys—actually they were all friends, they were practically a cult—and so I thought it wise and prudent to keep some degree of distance from him. Just in case. I didn't want any misunderstandings or anything else along those lines happening.

I was far more careful than I'd ever been last year. Before, I hadn't cared much about boundaries with anyone. Even with those of the opposite sex. But now I knew better. I had no intention of repeating the Sebastian drama from last year or making it worse, and if that meant staying away from a majority of the male sex, fair enough.

I didn't particularly feel the need or wish to socialise or interact with any of them anyways. All they did was make things and life more difficult for me.

God knew the drama at my old girls' school wasn't this insane.

Or I just knew how to deal with that, and wasn't sure how to here. My skills with the issues here were still relatively fresh, one year in or not.

But I was just getting carried away now.

I could feel occasional glances and snickers coming in my direction. If anyone else in my group noticed, no one said anything about it. Every year had its drama—I could see it unfolding in this very room. I'd heard about one of the Lower Sixth Wadsworth boys liking one of the older Lok girls, and the two of them were currently being manipulated and forced into sitting next to each other since they were in a group together. Compared to things like that, what had happened between me and the Aesir boys was nothing of importance.

Yunji was with Sebastian, and looking mighty annoyed. She was next to one of the older Sorren girls from Shanghai, chattering away in Mandarin without a care for the world. That was good, that was good.

I continued listening in the conversation, paying more attention when it was something related to me and less when it wasn't. Most of the time it wasn't, so I stared out of the glass windows of the cafe into the darkness of the night, barely lit by a few lamps. The school was always rather creepy at night. Most of the time it was fine, but there were also days when I had to summon some light to be able to go through without freaking myself out.

I wasn't sure why they wouldn't just instal more lamps. Did it really hurt that much? It wasn't as if the whole place couldn't be lit up magically either.

Somewhere along the conversation my entire group decided to exchange social medias, and so we quickly did that. I'd practically deleted all my posts over the summer, so now my profile was empty and bare. I didn't mind. I think I'd been hoping for a whole new start when I did that, to erase any sign of Lower Fifth Honoria and god forbid the Honoria from before she came to England.

I didn't know why I did it. I was by no means embarrassed by who I was before. Sure, I'd fucked up, but I had no intention of smearing it all away. It was some midnight decision I'd made rashly, and it seemed awkward to unarchive all my hidden posts once I'd realised how ridiculous the choice was.

The conversation died down after a bit, and we all split up again into groups of our own choice, since the teachers were still there so we couldn't logically leave without seeming antisocial.

Yunji was still engaged in conversation, though, so I glanced around, bored, before whipping out my phone when a voice interrupted me.

"I've heard some things about you, Honoria Song."

It was Logan, the Upper Sixth from earlier. I met his eye and raised one brow. "Oh? I hope it's good."

"It's not."

"Bummer."

"It's about Sebastian Hong."

"Fuck off."

"That's a nice response."

I met his eyes. "Nothing happened. He liked me and I said no. The end. There isn't much of a story there."

"Well, he's quite butt-hurt about it from what I've heard."

I narrowed my eyes into slits. "Let me guess. You're from Aesir House."

"Correct. And I'm rather good friends with Theo. Which is where I heard all this from."

I leaned back with a huff. "Whatever you heard, it's probably not true."

"Really."

"Really."

He did not look impressed. "Oh, I know girls like you. I've encountered a few in my admittedly short years of life. You want to befriend boys, but then you don't realise how to keep boundaries. And then they fall for you—or at least they think they do, and then you start running."

"He ran first."

"After you rejected him, if what I heard from the other boys is true."

I glared at him. "It is. But do you have a point in informing me of all this? If not, fuck off."

He shrugged. Slowly. "Oh, I don't know. It's just interesting. Hasn't been much actually good drama in my year for a little bit, thought I might as well dip my nose into the business of you younger years."

Now it was my turn to be unimpressed. "Don't you have more important things to be doing? Preparing for your ACMs? Getting ready for university?"

"Not until after Christmas, I don't think."

I glowered. He smirked.

"Let me give you some advice," he drawled slowly.

"It's extremely unwanted, I assure you."

"Well, allow me to give you some unsolicited advice. But do listen anyways, because I'm older than you and I've gone through the shit you're going through right now—"

"—I am very much offer it, thank you very much."

He shook his head. "You don't get over stuff like that. Or, well, you think you do and every time you see the person in question your blood starts boiling."

Which was scarily accurate of what I felt every time I was around Sebastian Hong right now, but I didn't say that out loud. He could see it in my eyes, though, and the smile spreading across his face said everything that needed to be said.

"I'm right, eh?"

"Fuck off."

"Well, that's perfect evidence that I'm a hundred and ten percent correct."

I gritted my teeth, meeting his eyes. "You're from Shanghai, right?"

"Yeah," he said, slightly confused by the sudden turn of conversation.

"Gei lao niang gun kai." Fuck off away from me.

He let out a startled burst of laughter. "Oh, like that's going to work. Xiao mei mei, ni hai neng le dian." Little sister, you're still a bit too green.

"Wo dang ran mei ni zhe duo guan xian shi de lao ren jia na me li hai." Of course I'm not as good compared to a meddling elderly like you.

He scoffed. "Respect your elders, kid, respect your elders."

"My elders are at home. In Hong Kong. Across the fucking world. You? You're just someone who's really pissing me off right now."

He just raised his head. "Trust me. You won't get over it. Just try to control your anger. Don't be tempted to go contact him, to try to befriend him, the only person you'll be hurting is yourself. And your reputation."

"Thanks," I gritted out. "As if I hadn't figured that out by myself already."

"Which means my advice was already given too late." He tilted his head. "Well, at least you'll never make the same mistake again. That's good, isn't it?"

I'd been told that a couple times in the past year. When I'd fucked up my exams: well, you won't mess it up again. When I tried to reach out to Seb after it had all fallen apart: well, you won't do that again.

Why did the advice always come one step too late? It was almost starting to seem purposeful, except I knew that it couldn't be. Instead, I leaned back against the couch, defeated. "I'm fucking sick of it," I admitted. "I should have handled it better. And now every day I have to resist the urge to pop his head like a zit."

"Violent."

"I know. That's part of my personality. Well, just aggressive. Not actually violent. I don't actually beat people up."

"Considering how skinny you are, I don't think you'd succeed even if you tried."

I glowered at him. He was unfazed. Completely unfazed. I had the disadvantage here. I knew practically nothing about him except his name, so I couldn't even come up with any good retorts. Meanwhile, he could pick me apart with everything he'd heard from the boys, send every barbed comment straight to my heart, straight into my soul. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

It was frustrating, and also very, very annoying.

"Am I annoying you?" he asked after some silence on my side.

Without any hesitation, I replied, "Yes."

"Good," he said. "That's the point. You ought to be irritated."

I scowled. "Don't you have other things to do rather than insulting some Upper Fifth kid? Because really, this is getting pathetic."

"Wo xiang gan she me jiu gan she me." I'll do whatever the hell I want to do.

"Ni zhen de hao fan a." You're so annoying.

"I know I am." He placed his hands on his waist. "Which is why I'm currently dispensing advice to someone who's not taking any of them. But I'm sure you'll find it useful someday, which is why I'm offering it. And when that happens you'll think of me and maybe you'll thank me as well."

I couldn't help it anymore. "What the fuck?" I blurted out. "Are you fucking okay in the head?"

"I'm perfectly fine in the head."

"You don't seem to be. Need a doctor?"

"No thank you, I think you need it more than I do."

"Highly debatable and questionable."

"It's the truth. I'm older, so I'm right."

I turned my head away and decided to resort to ignoring him, taking out my phone again and scrolling through my social media. But then two seconds later a message popped up on the top of my phone. It was from one of the accounts I had just followed. Logan's account.

My eyes snapped up. "Ni nao zi you bing a?" Does your brain have problems?

He smirked. "Needed to get your attention. It worked, didn't it?"

"I have nothing to say to you."

"Oh, sure."

"I have absolutely nothing to say to you. Get out of my face."

"And if I refuse to?"

If he wouldn't leave, I would. Yunji had noticed me a little while back, and I quickly stood up and made my way to her, throwing myself onto the couch with a thump. She raised a brow, and I rolled my eyes, not bothering to explain. There was nothing to explain in the first place. How was I meant to explain that I got into an argument with an Upper Sixth student about Sebastian Hong?

It was better not to mention it at all, I decided in my head.

But then she asked, "What got you all annoyed?"

I rolled my eyes. "What do you think?"

"That sixth former?"

"He's from Aesir House."

"Ah." But she didn't ask anything else after that, as if she knew exactly why I got so mad, which was probably what happened. It didn't take a genius to link Aesir House to Sebastian Hong. Really, it was quite obvious. Painfully obvious.

We didn't leave much longer after that. I declared the social a disaster, and Yunji agreed. According to her, she only spoke to the Lok House sixth former and no one else. There hadn't been much to talk about.

"All we really did was talk about academic stuff," I admitted to her when she asked about what my group had discussed.

She let out a choked laugh. "Oh god, that is the most Asian thing I have ever heard in my life."

With a sigh, I said, "I know."

And that was the end of that.