A pleasant, prerecorded female voice plays in the background, sounding throughout every coach. “Nü shi men, xian sheng men, huan ying nin cheng zuo gao tie dong che …” I don’t even register that it’s in Chinese at first because I’m shocked to find I actually understand what she’s saying. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard the bullet train … It’s not the first time this has happened since I landed in Shanghai. It’s as if something in the back of my brain has been unlocked, allowing the Chinese words floating around me to settle in.

“Unnecessarily close, might I add” Cyrus is saying. “Some buffer time would be nice.”

We’d been right on schedule when we gathered down in the hotel lobby this afternoon, but then one of the sporty girls, Krystal, had to use the bathroom, and as if they were all biologically synced through the power of friendship, the other girls in her trio needed to go too. Then, just as we were about to head out, Sean had reported with the highest urgency that his phone was missing. The case was only closed when he thought to check his left coat pocket half an hour later, by which point Wang Laoshi had already helped conduct a thorough search of his room. And all of that could possibly still have been fine, because we’d budgeted for extra time, but then the bus had broken down halfway to the railway station.

“No, really. I’m not even exaggerating when I tell you that was the second most stressful experience I’ve ever had,” Oliver says, rotating his seat in the row ahead so that it’s facing me and Cyrus. Our group has taken up the front of the car: Daisy’s curled up by the window next to Oliver, and Krystal’s friends are lounging in the seats across the aisle, kicking their legs out on the footrests. It’s surprisingly spacious inside, with more than enough room to walk up and down, and cleaner than I would expect any form of public transport to be—at least based on appearances. Even Cyrus looks only moderately disgusted as he sanitizes everything within a four-foot radius of him.

“The second most stressful experience?” I ask Oliver. “What was the first?”

“Other than being birthed into the world and just, like, general human existence? Probably when we had to shut down my father’s winery in Australia because of the possum problem,” Oliver says with a shudder. “The baby possums were having baby possums.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t mind keeping a baby possum as a pet,” Daisy muses.

Oliver snorts. “Of course you wouldn’t. I bet you’d even throw it a tea party.”