The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 357

Chapter 357: 357 | A Truly Alarming Number of Butter Packets

The hallway outside Room 214 swallowed the noise of twenty students scattering toward their next obligations, and I stood in the current of bodies with my phone already in my hand, thumbs moving before my brain caught up.

Me: Won the election. Male rep for 1-B.

Sloane’s response came in under four seconds.

Sloane: Obviously.

Sloane: My boyfriend doesn’t lose.

Sloane: Celebration tonight. My room. 8pm. Wear something I can take off.

The Devotion’s Echo hummed warm in my chest, her satisfaction bleeding through the connection like sunlight through a window. She wasn’t surprised. She’d never been surprised. The woman had decided I was going to win before I’d decided to run, and the universe had apparently received the memo.

Me: Yes ma’am.

Sloane: Good boy.

I was still grinning at my phone like an idiot when a hand closed around my wrist and pulled me sideways into the flow of traffic heading toward the main building exit.

"Nope." Felicity’s voice was bright and non-negotiable. "Phone away. You’re mine for the next three hours."

"I have Combat Theory at two."

"Combat Theory is cancelled."

"It’s definitely not cancelled."

"It is for you." She steered me around a cluster of second-years without breaking stride, her grip warm and surprisingly strong. "Dravid will understand. His star pupil just got elected to represent twenty of the most chaotic first-years in Halloran history. That’s worth one missed positioning drill."

"Dravid will absolutely not understand." I tried to slow down. She just tightened her hold and kept moving. "Dravid will document my absence in seventeen different color-coded files and use it as evidence for whatever psychological profile he’s building on me."

"Then we’ll give him something interesting to document." She glanced back at me over her shoulder, blonde ponytail swinging with the motion, blue eyes carrying that particular gleam that meant the conversation was over and I just hadn’t accepted it yet. "Come on, bestie. You just gave the speech of a lifetime in front of our entire class. The speech. The one where you somehow managed to be funny and competent at the same time. You can’t go straight back to getting your ass kicked by Camellia Thorn. That would be narratively unsatisfying."

"Narratively unsatisfying."

"The worst kind of unsatisfying. Trust me."

I knew that tone. I’d heard that tone from Sloane approximately fifteen hundred times in nine years. It was the tone of someone who had made a decision about your immediate future and was now gently but firmly escorting you toward the outcome she’d already mapped.

Fighting it was technically possible. Winning was not.

"Fine." I pocketed my phone. "Three hours. But if Dravid asks, you held me hostage."

"Deal." Felicity beamed at me like I’d just agreed to something considerably more binding than an afternoon at the campus cinema. "You’re gonna love this, I promise. The Reel does these throwback screenings on Tuesdays. Old hero documentary footage, agency PR films from the nineties, stuff from before the ranking system got standardized. It’s like watching archaeological evidence of how weird this industry used to be."

We hit the main doors and she pushed through into the afternoon light, the September sun catching the gold in her hair and the curve of her shoulders in her cropped hoodie. The Ecchi Logic trait pulsed in my peripheral vision like an unwanted notification, registering the way her high-waisted skirt moved against her hips, the glimpse of toned stomach between fabric edges, the confident swing of her stride.

I dismissed the observation the way I dismissed most observations about Felicity Hardy. By acknowledging it existed and then filing it under things I was choosing not to act on.

"Where exactly are you kidnapping me to?"

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