The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 402

Chapter 402: 402 | The Gap Is The Point [GT BONUS]

The question didn’t ask what I could do. It didn’t ask how I’d done what I’d done. The question asked me to articulate the space between what my file said and what the room had witnessed, to frame the inconsistency in terms of the lecture’s thesis about information asymmetry.

The answer Dravid wanted was the answer that served his curriculum. The answer Dravid was also asking for was the one that would tell him whether I understood what I was hiding and whether I was hiding it competently.

Both answers were the same answer.

"The gap is the point, sir." I kept my voice level and conversational, the register I used when I wanted people to lean in without realizing they were leaning. "My file says I’m a mid-tier Channeler with limited range and moderate output. Anyone who reads that file walks into an engagement expecting to handle me with standard Channeler countermeasures. They’ll maintain distance past fifteen feet, deny me objects within my weight threshold, and focus on closing the engagement before my stamina depletes." I paused long enough to let the room hear what I was actually saying. "Every one of those countermeasures is designed for the person my file describes. If the person my file describes is not the complete picture, then the countermeasures fail at the exact moment my opponent commits to them."

Dravid’s expression did not change. His grey eyes held mine for three full seconds of silence that stretched longer than physics should have allowed.

"You’re describing deliberate information concealment as a tactical asset," he said.

"I’m describing the gap between registration and reality as a variable that exists for everyone, sir. My file has a version of me. The field has a different version. The space between them is where I operate."

Dravid’s cane tapped once against the platform floor, a single clean sound that echoed off the reinforced walls and the tiered seating and the thirty-eight silent teenagers who were all processing the fact that I had just told an instructor, on the record, in a classroom with documented attendance, that my registration did not match my actual capabilities, and I had done it by framing the admission as a lesson in tactical theory.

"Adequate," Dravid said.

He returned to pacing. The lecture continued. Thirty-eight teenagers slowly released the breath they’d been holding, and the room’s ambient noise crept back toward its normal operational volume.

Felicity’s knee pressed harder against mine under the desk. Her pen still hadn’t moved, and when I glanced at her tablet, the screen had gone dark from inactivity. She was looking at me with her full attention pointed directly at my profile, and the wink from five minutes ago had been replaced by something that lived in the territory between fascination and the specific brand of hunger that I was learning to recognize on the faces of women who had decided I was worth the trouble.

She leaned half an inch toward me, close enough that the vanilla note in her morning product reached my nose and close enough that anyone watching from behind would have attributed the proximity to the narrow seating.

"That," she whispered, her lips barely moving, "was the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard in a classroom, and I once watched a man defuse a bomb while quoting poetry."

"That didn’t happen."

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