It was a few days after MARS Incident 2.0, and things were still not back to normal. Jehan didn’t think they ever would go back to normal.

He'd managed to hold off the tears until he'd returned to his dorm, but they had quickly turned into tears of anger, anger at Dorian for just denying what had happened, for lying about them and obviously not valuing their friendship, whatever level of friendship it had been. But the anger had disappeared just as quickly, because Jehan couldn't stay angry at Dorian for long. Then the sadness came again because Dorian had a right to regret what had happened, but why then couldn't Dorian have just not done anything, not said anything in the first place? And above everything else, Jehan was just so confused. What did Dorian want from him?

The situation between Jehan and Dorian since then could be summed up as one of avoidance. Their usual Saturday MARS session didn't happen, of course. Unlike last time, Jehan didn’t - couldn’t - pretend that nothing was wrong. He figured that he should keep his distance from Dorian, based on the reasoning that if Dorian regretted what had happened, he probably didn’t want Jehan to be around him. As such, Jehan had spent quite a lot of the weekend alone, especially given that he didn’t want their other friends to get awkwardly caught in the crossfire of this, whatever it was. Classes were a relief, a welcome distraction from this horrible new variety of normal.

Jehan felt very sorry for Cleo throughout the lesson and, following a quick glance around, was relieved to confirm that she wasn't actually present. It must be bad enough to go through the whole thing without having your status as a not-quite-human exposed to the entire school, and in such a clinical fashion. Humans were overrated anyway, he would have told Cleo, and he was sure that learning how to defend oneself about veelas wouldn't help with people's perceptions of Cleo. After all, if she was actually dangerous she wouldn't be allowed at Sonora, so learning defences against her was unnecessary. Right?

Still, he supposed one might encounter a veela in the wild, so he dutifully took notes. He idly wondered if there had ever been cases of male veela. Now that would be interesting.

All of a sudden the topic of conversation was hijacked by a boy in his brother's year, asking the most inane question. Even if Jehan hadn't heard the two words together before, he understood them separately, so the term sexual orientation hardly needed explained. Then he rebuked himself for not thinking of Dorian and Tatya, who might actually benefit from an explanation. And then he rebuked himself again for thinking about Dorian, because that was just painful.

The class discussion (if one could call it that) spiralled from there, and Jehan found himself getting increasingly frustrated with Kir, who had disrupted a lesson to start playing professor and informing everyone about a perfectly simple concept in the most complex of ways. To make matters worse, Professor Hawthorne was joining in, and Jehan's opinion of the professor, who had previously seemed a decent enough sort, was fast dropping. Admittedly she did try and relate things back to veela, but overall it was a mess. This conversation was unnecessary, overcomplicated, and hardly relevant. Feelings were feelings, and to analyse them and discuss them and make them public in such a way just took all the meaning out of them, and seemed wrong, in a way he found it hard to fully explain to himself. Such things weren't a matter for classroom debate. It was as bad as Professor Hawthorne and Professor Skies teaching everyone that Cleo was some kind of dangerous non-human.

In his frustration he put down his pen, refusing to take any notes on this. He glanced around to see what everyone else seemed to be thinking, when he caught sight of Tatya, who didn't seem to be doing so well. Luckily he was sitting next to her, so he was able to lean over and check on his friend. He gently put a hand on her shoulder to subtly get her attention, and realised that things definitely were not okay, given her snappy and upset response.

“What's wrong?” he asked, not bothering asking if she was okay when she obviously wasn't, but unsure as to what exactly the problem was. It could be a difficulty with understanding - the professor and Kir seemed to be inventing unnecessary words left, right, and centre - or maybe Tatya was just frustrated, like him.

“I can explain it later, but it's glupyy anyway,” he reassured her, trying to cover both bases and hoping that he'd got the Russian right.

OOC: Jehan's opinions don't necessarily represent mine, and I actually think the professors are handling the situation rather well. Also I hope I got the Russian right, if not I'll blame the internet/my lack of Russian dictionary. I’m attempting to say stupid.