"Shut up," Xunyu says, voice raw, and kisses her.

Oh. This was... unexpected

Pleasant, though. After Chengsu collects herself, she starts to kiss back.

She curls around Chengsu even more, somehow. 

Well, all right.

(It's actually very nice to have a warm, breathing, living body so close.)

"I love you," she says after a while. "You're not allowed to die."

"Ah."

"I'll... constrain my actions appropriately."

"...Thank you." Exhausted lean.

" - I'm - sorry."

"Pretty sure I should be the one saying that."

"No. I - you did something stupidly heroic for me, and - I'm making this about my feelings. And not about - what you need."

"What I need," Chengsu repeats contemplatively.

Hum.

...Quiet snuggle. 

"That's not... a way I'm used to thinking."

"I'd - I'd like it if you did."

"You've been - I'm lucky beyond my wildest dreams to have known you. I want - I want to be the same for you."

"Oh."

"I... don't think I can answer right now. If that's okay."

"...It is, yeah." Kiss?

Kisses: still fun.

Definitely. 

Meanwhile...

Someone else is having a bit less fun, and a bit more of a sense that the world has been thrown into disarray and she's trying to land on her feet without being able to see the ground. 

But there's opportunities. Probably. If she doesn't just get herself killed. But that's just the Scholomance. (Now Scholomance plus a dead mawmouth.)

Liesel had been keeping an eye on the mawmouth once Lake illuminated it - and so she saw the thing explode, and the way the three girls were standing, and the empty expression on Higgins' face, and - everything about how they interacted. 

She mentally dismisses the youngest Li dragging off her minion - or, sets it aside for later. There's something going on there, but... Less than what's still in front of her. 

Like the girl broadly expected to take over from her aging mother as next Shanghai Domina, Li Jiana - rumor'd had that as something in doubt, but Jiana's twin Jiaxiang went for valedictorian like he had something to prove, and Jiana beat him out for the spot despite no clear signals she was even trying. 

(She's going to have to watch out for shakeups on the Shanghai side over the next week. She bets there'll be some.)

Like the two girls in her year, the daughter of Gwen Higgins - who's apparently the exact opposite of her mother's reputation - and the girl she's been allied with and apparently dating since freshman year. (They must have known each other before induction, El has a roughly similar accent, but Liesel still knows nothing about El's background, not even her family name, which... Is vexing. And especially vexing now when El just helped kill a mawmouth.)

Like the daughter of Gwen Higgins, standing unshielded as a mawmouth dissolves around her, staring with unrecognizing hunger at the other students. 

Like the expression on Li Jiana's face, as Liesel watches her watch Luthien Higgins.

'Calculating' is perhaps a good way to describe her expression. Suspicious, maybe. Like pieces of an old puzzle are considering slotting into place in her mind.

She quickly returns to a neutral expression though, to managing the fallout (and shielding her younger sister from anyone who might bother her).

"Something's up," she murmurs to Bea.

"Yeah, I see that. Opportunities?"

"Shanghai knows something," she says after a moment. "So do Higgins and her girlfriend... But I don't think it'll be any easier to get closer to those two. Though perhaps through the underclassmen..."

"I think everyone's going to be trying to get at them by breakfast. Shanghai might be easier to reach, they're more vulnerable now."

"People might not think to hit all the weaknesses... I think Lake for one is closer to them than New York has been admitting. But, true overall - and Shanghai has more internal fractures."

"Between the Li junior and Li senior for sure."