The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 196

Chapter 196: 196 | Ecchi Logic Has Generated an Exposure Event

I walked toward the couch like I belonged there, because I did, and because walking like you belong somewhere is half the battle in any social situation. The other half is actually having something worth saying when you get there.

Percy looked up from his notebook as I approached. His pen stopped moving.

"You were gone for three hours and forty-seven minutes."

"Were you timing me?"

"I time everything." He said it without embarrassment, like stating a fact about gravity. "The variance from your stated destination suggests either significant unforeseen delays or deliberate misdirection about your actual activities."

"I was moving furniture."

"You said that already." Percy’s eyes flicked to the two girls on the other end of the couch, then back to me. "I noted it the first time. I also noted that furniture moving does not typically require three hours and forty-seven minutes unless the furniture in question is unusually large or the destination is unusually far."

"It was a big dresser."

Percy wrote something in his notebook. I didn’t ask what.

The two girls were watching our exchange with the kind of attention that suggested they found it entertaining rather than concerning. The one who’d smiled was leaning forward slightly, her posture open and interested. The one who’d looked away was pretending to check her phone while her eyes kept drifting back toward us.

Time to make contact.

I dropped onto the couch in the space between Percy and the two girls, close enough to include them in the conversation without being aggressive about it. The cushions shifted under my weight. The girl who’d been checking her phone looked up sharply.

Her phone slipped.

She lunged for it, her body tilting forward off the couch at an angle that should have been recoverable. Her foot caught the edge of the coffee table. Her knee buckled. She went down, arms pinwheeling, her body rotating mid-fall so that she landed on her back with her legs pointed toward the ceiling.

Her skirt had followed the laws of physics with absolute fidelity.

White cotton. A small pink bow at the center. Simple. Cute. The kind of underwear a girl wears when she’s not expecting an audience, which made seeing it feel like stumbling into something private rather than performed. The moment lasted maybe half a second before my brain registered what I was looking at and my eyes decided to be anywhere else.

She scrambled upright with her face the color of a fire hydrant, yanking her skirt down with both hands while making a sound somewhere between a squeak and a dying animal. Her eyes were wide. Her breathing was shallow. Her entire body had gone rigid in that specific way people go rigid when they’re trying to decide whether running away or pretending nothing happened would be less humiliating.

Percy had frozen mid-sentence, his pen hovering over his notebook. His eyes had gone slightly unfocused in that way that meant his Aspect was processing something he hadn’t expected to process. He blinked twice, opened his mouth, closed it again, then wrote something down with the kind of mechanical precision that suggested he was operating on autopilot while his brain caught up with what had just occurred.

The other girl, the one who’d smiled, was trying very hard not to laugh. Her shoulders were shaking. Her hand had come up to cover her mouth. Her eyes were bright with the specific delight of someone watching their friend experience something mortifying that they themselves had narrowly avoided.

〘 Ecchi Logic has generated an Exposure Event. Target: Nyx Calloway. Event classification: accidental. Probability manipulation confirmed. The Host should note that this outcome was statistically unlikely to occur naturally. Reality has been adjusted to maximize romantic tension. 〙

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