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[River gives a small giggle.

But she wonders if she would've gotten one if only the Academy had more time to test her, if she would've been less an alpha release of herself.

She frowns at a candy and eats it almost angrily.]

Both exceptions. Both early releases. They'll be writing manuals based on what we do.

[Frisk unwraps another and pops it into their mouth, rolling it around with their tongue.]

Maybe. Maybe we can just be anomalies together.

An anomaly... Something unprecedented, unaccounted for, something that exists outside of rigidity and structure.

I like it. Not even forces of entropy, entropy exists within the system. Entropy is accounted for. We're larger than that.

[Entropy. That's one of those big words, like quantum and metatemporal and stuff, a word they remember reading in one of those big books in the library. It's a word that stands for...decay, they think. Or the universe's general equivalent.]

Yeah. We're...undefined. Get to define ourselves. No one tells us who or what we are except us.

[Defining oneself. Something River struggles with. Here, I'm not a monster. Or no one can shoot like that that's a person. She's been sure she's something different than human, fought against that. This is the one topic on which everyone else is better informed than she is. She's not a person, she's Serenity, she's not a monster, she's nothing at all...

An anomaly. That comes closer to describing her than anything else. An anomaly. She can be an anomaly.

And the best part of that is, she's not even alone in it. Her friend is an anomaly, too.

Her friend.]

Being exceptions makes us exceptional.

I'm glad you're my friend, Frisk. You make more sense than anyone else.

Really?

[It's a weird thought, that they make sense to anyone when they can hardly make sense of themself on a good day. But it's not an unwelcome them. The initial thrill of shock soon fades into a startled smile.]

I'm...glad you're my friend too.

[Was it weird to say? River looks away, kind of embarrassed.]

It's just that... it's hard to define what I am. To think that I'm simply undefined... I hadn't considered it.

Well, I'm technically a, um...spacetime anomaly. [They sound out the word delicately. They're not entirely sure what it means, but it's got to mean something important; it sounds awfully complicated.] That's the definition of undefined. But I'm...still here anyway. So it's okay to feel alone, but it's okay to...not be alone. 'Cause you're not.

Spacetime anomaly... Right. Because you can do everything again and again. Endless days.

[She wouldn't want that power. She can barely stand to experience anything once.]

I'm the only one from my time. The only one from my 'verse. Hardly anyone else even speaks Mandarin here. Suppose that's only one way of being alone.

[Yeah. Again and again and again and again. It can be convenient, but mostly it's just a burden they want off their shoulders.

Frisk draws their legs up to their chest, draping their arms across the tops of their knees.]

Mandarin? Is that the...other language you talk sometimes? It's - it's really pretty. I mean, it sounds really pretty.

Yeah. Most everyone's bilingual in my 'verse. English and Mandarin. You grow up speaking both. Or at least all the swear words.

[She looks at them suddenly.]

Bet you could learn.

Could you...could you teach me?

[Suddenly they sit upright, eyes sparking with a strange enthusiasm. They've never had to learn another language before, and it actually sounds really fun.]

[She grins.]

You want to learn the swear words first or last?

[Frisk snorts, giggling.]

How - how bad are they?

Basic ones aren't too bad. Lots of cursing ancestors. 他妈的, it's the most common one, cursing some nebulous mother. [Like Mom? ...Let's ignore that for now.] Follow the tone, too, 's important, or else you're saying something else. Tā māde. Now you say it.

[Oh wow. They're about to learn a language. And they're about to learn - bad words in that language. Frisk sits up straight, attentive, and tries to sound out the words in the same way River said them.]

Ta...mah-deh?

Not deh, like duh, it's... It's kinda like saying "tomato" funny. Tā māde.

[They try it again, stretching the words thoughtfully.]

Tā māde. And that means, like...like saying son of a...

[Frisk coughs, too embarrassed to finish the phrase.]

[Frisk almost swears in English, and River bursts into a fit of giggles.]

Yeah, yeah, it's the same! But you say it for everything! 他妈的, I stubbed my toe! 他妈的, I'm caught in the event horizon!

[She stifles more giggles.]

I'll teach you more than swears. You can learn all about tones! Have to pay attention to tone, because tone is the difference between Mom and a horse. Māma mà mǎ. "Mom scolds the horse". Same pronunciation, different tone. Makes a tongue twister.

[They bite back an undignified snort. Swearing in another language is easier, absurd as it sounds to put it like that. River said no one seems to speak Mandarin here, so no one would know what they were saying, and they wouldn't get in trouble! It's a perfect solution.

Frisk wrinkles their nose at the subtle variations in the pronunciation.]

So I might end up saying "son of a horse" instead, because of my tone?

Exactly! The tone can be neutral, high, up, down, or down and up. So pay close attention when you repeat words.

Hmm... Prob'ly a Mandarin grammar book in the library. Can teach you out of that. I've never tutored anyone before. Corrected homework, but not as a teacher.

Yeah. I...think I'd like that. I like to read anyway.

[It'd be like having a friend. They are friends. And they can teach each other stuff, the way friends do.]

[And maybe she can manage to enter the library again now that everything is fine between her and Frisk.]

We'll leave writing and reading hànzì for after you know the words, though. Might be too hard otherwise. It's not like the English alphabet.

Is it...big? I mean, bigger than twenty-six letters?

[And here they'd been hoping they could find a translation dictionary and start there, but it doesn't sound as immediately intuitive as they might have thought.]

Much bigger. Tens of thousands of them. They're each a word, or two or more are a word. But don't be scared. You won't have to learn all of them. Just the ones you'll use.

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[action] for fun i tried to read this aloud and instantly remembered i cant speak chinese

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