The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 411

Chapter 411: 411 | Anxious Is A Strategy [SPACECRAFT BONUS]

If this went well, I could spin it into genuine career momentum. Diane had mentioned that three agency scouts pulled my file this week. The interview clip continued accumulating views. Professor Crane had singled me out in lecture as someone whose brand awareness operated at a level most active Heroes never achieved.

If I walked out of this meeting with the Lang Agency’s informal approval stamp, the story wrote itself. Late-blooming Hero candidate. Son of fallen Heroes. Third on the entrance exam. Endorsed by Margot Lang’s operation before completing his first semester.

That was magazine cover material. Not the glossy celebrity kind. The industry kind. The kind that Diane would frame behind her desk next to the photograph of herself and my mother from their academy years and never mention to anyone because the photograph’s presence communicated everything words would diminish.

I ate lunch standing at the kitchen counter because sitting felt like wasted time. Tonkotsu ramen from the cafeteria, reheated in the microwave Percy had convinced me to purchase after two weeks of watching me eat convenience store sandwiches over the sink.

The broth was decent. The chashu was passable. Everything about eating alone in a student apartment before the most consequential meeting of my life existed in that specific category of adequate where you know you should be tasting the food and cannot make yourself register anything beyond sodium and temperature.

My brain was already in the conference room, running through probable questions and acceptable answers, cataloging the gaps in my story that Margot Lang might identify if she was half as sharp as her reputation suggested.

The Oracle Feed had been quiet since this morning. No commentary. No dry observations about my strategic positioning or Felicity’s clothing selections. Just silence, which was either a vote of confidence or the interface deciding this particular situation was interesting enough to watch without editorializing.

I finished the ramen at one fifteen. Rinsed the container. Set it in the drying rack next to yesterday’s coffee mug and the single plate I used for meals that required utensils.

At one thirty I changed into the shirt Felicity had selected during yesterday’s intervention. Dark blue. Fitted through the shoulders in a way that communicated I had a shoulder structure worth fitting. The collar sat properly this time because I had not allowed Diane to touch the iron settings. I checked the mirror and found a person who looked like he belonged in rooms where decisions happened.

The Demigod trait had been working overnight again. Refining jawline definition. Broadening shoulder structure. Small increments that individual observations registered as lighting or posture but three weeks of cumulative adjustment had made my entrance exam photograph look like documentation of a younger brother who shared my name and very little else.

The amber eyes staring back at me from the bathroom mirror carried a weight that eighteen-year-old eyes shouldn’t possess, and the scar through my left eyebrow gave the whole arrangement an edge that Crane would call brand-appropriate and Hiro would call aesthetically irresponsible.

I looked good. I looked like someone who deserved to be in the room where decisions happened. Whether that was true remained the subject of active institutional debate.

At one forty-five I left room 205 and took the stairs because the elevator ran slow during afternoon class transitions.

The fourth floor conference room occupied the northeast corner of the administrative wing, a space I’d walked past six times without entering because student representatives did not typically access faculty areas without scheduled appointments.

The hallway carried the sharp tang of fresh paint layered over old carpet and printer toner, a combination that institutional buildings produced when someone important had visited recently enough to justify maintenance.

Faculty offices lined the corridor on both sides. Steele’s door was closed with no light visible beneath it. Dravid’s stood half-open with a small printed sign taped at eye level: OFFICE HOURS: TUES/THURS 10-12. Percy had photographed that sign on the second day of classes and filed it in a notebook I’d watched him annotate during morning conditioning.

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