The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 287

Chapter 287: 287 | Research Voyeurism is a Valid Field of Study

The alarm went off at five-thirty, which was a personal attack on everything I believed in.

I dragged myself out of bed with the enthusiasm of someone walking to their own execution. The shower helped. The cold water blasting my face at five forty-two helped more. By the time I pulled on the Halloran gym uniform and checked my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I looked almost human. Almost.

The gym uniform was simple enough. Navy shorts that hit mid-thigh, a white compression shirt with the academy crest on the left chest, and trainers that the equipment team had fitted during orientation.

The compression fabric clung in ways that probably said more about my current physical condition than I wanted the average observer to notice.

Demigod doing its work underneath the surface, building muscle density that my frame had never supported before the transmigration. Hard to hide capability when your clothes are designed specifically to broadcast every physical detail to anyone with working eyes.

I grabbed my water bottle. Considered whether five-forty-seven in the morning was too early for my life to be complicated. Decided that the question was irrelevant because my life was already complicated and the morning air was not going to care about my feelings on the subject.

I headed out.

The fog hit first, thick and damp in the specific way that coastal California mornings specialized in.

The training fields were somewhere ahead in the grey, visible as vague shapes that suggested suffering was waiting on the other side of visibility.

Other students emerged from the dorms around me, most of them moving like people reconsidering their life choices. Some were jogging. Most were walking. A few looked like they were seriously considering just lying down in the grass and letting institutional consequences happen to them.

The resigned energy was universal.

Felicity found me before I’d made it twenty steps past the dorm entrance.

"You look terrible," she announced, falling into step beside me with the specific brightness of someone who had slept an appropriate number of hours and was prepared to make that everyone else’s problem.

Her blonde hair was pulled back in a high ponytail that caught what little light the fog was permitting.

Her gym uniform fit in ways that my brain registered on three separate levels simultaneously—aesthetic appreciation, tactical awareness that other people were definitely also noticing, and the distant acknowledgment that I was too tired to fully process any of this.

The white compression shirt did not believe in subtlety. Neither did the rest of the uniform. I filed the entire situation under "morning complications" and kept walking. "Did you sleep at all?"

"Sleep is for people without complications."

"That sounds like a yes but also a story I need to hear immediately. Like, right now. Before we get to whatever fresh horror Steele has planned."

"It’s really not that interesting."

"Liar." She linked her arm through mine with the casual physical confidence that seemed to be her factory default setting. The contact was warm. I was cold. The math worked out in her favor.

"I heard voices in the hallway around midnight when I went to get some water downstairs. Multiple voices. Near your room, actually. Which is super weird because I also heard Camille’s voice, and I definitely heard Petra’s voice, and neither of them has any reason to be in your hallway at midnight unless something very interesting was happening that you are now going to tell me about because I’m invested."

I kept walking. "You have good ears."

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