The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 347

Chapter 347: 347 | My Boyfriend is NOT Coming in Second

Caden stared at me.

Marco stared at me.

"You noticed that." Caden’s voice carried a different frequency now. Lower. Less performance. "About Rina."

"Percy noticed the pacing structure. I noticed the pattern. Rina deserves better than being last every day because the system is built for sprinters."

Something changed in Caden’s expression. The campaign sign behind him suddenly seemed irrelevant. Whatever he’d been performing for the past hour, the jokes and the slogans and the theatrical self-deprecation, the actual Caden who lived beneath all of it had surfaced for a moment to process what I’d said.

"I’ll think about it," he said.

That was more than I expected.

I took my coffee and moved toward the dining table where Percy sat with Rina, their notebooks and diagrams spread between them in a collaborative chaos that somehow made sense to both participants. Rina’s sheep mug sat at the table’s edge, her white hair catching the common room’s warm lighting while her purple eyes tracked my approach with the specific awareness of someone whose Aspect made her sensitive to the emotional state of everyone within proximity.

"You’re running." Rina said it without question.

"I’m running."

Her tail swished once. "Good."

Percy looked up from his Venn diagram. "Your candidacy introduces significant variables into my electoral model. I’m going to need to revise columns three and four."

"Percy, you’re literally running against me."

"Competing and analyzing are not mutually exclusive. I can advocate for my own candidacy while simultaneously maintaining objective assessment of the competitive landscape." His pen moved to the VARIABLES column with the precision of someone who had already mapped this conversation in his head before I sat down. "Also, you’re polling at twenty-five percent among the cohort according to Marco’s preliminary data. That gives you the second-strongest male position but insufficient momentum to overtake Theo without either reducing his support base or expanding your own coalition beyond the classmates who already view you favorably."

I sat down across from him. "Tell me more."

Percy’s eyes unfocused for half a second as Analyze activated. His brain ran calculations that would take most people hours to complete. When he spoke again, the stutter vanished completely. His voice came out clean and steady, the version of Percy that emerged when he stopped performing uncertainty and operated in the space his brain actually occupied.

"Theo’s support comes from three sources. First, genuine personal warmth that creates positive associations across the entire cohort regardless of subgroup. Second, his Kinetic Bank makes him the most physically imposing student in the class. That creates an unconscious association between physical capability and leadership suitability. Third, Theo has never made anyone uncomfortable. In a cohort full of volatile personalities and complicated interpersonal dynamics, that represents an actively desirable quality."

Rina nodded beside him. Her tail curled around her own thigh. "People trust Theo because he’s safe."

"Your support comes from different sources entirely," Percy continued. His finger traced a line connecting two nodes on his diagram. "Name recognition from the interview and your parents’ legacy. Perceived tactical intelligence from the training exercise results. And a quality that I can only describe as..." He consulted his notebook, found the phrase he’d written earlier, committed to it. "Magnetic chaos."

"Magnetic chaos."

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