The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 615: 615 | I Learned From the Best

She held the door for a long moment. Then she nodded once and closed it.

On the landing, Dralun didn’t say anything for three flights of stairs. At the bottom he stopped and looked at me.

“That was good talking,” he said.

“I didn’t say much, though.”

“That’s why it was good.”

Not every door went like that.

At the corner of Ninth and Rourke a man in a stained undershirt opened his door and saw Dralun and started yelling before either of us could say a word. He yelled about the fourteen-minute response times. He yelled about the Heroes in Creston who showed up for the cameras and left before the smoke cleared. He yelled about his brother, who had died in a building fire in 2019 while he waited on the sidewalk for somebody to come. He yelled for a full four minutes, and Dralun stood on the stoop and took it with his hands at his sides.

I stood behind him and let the words roll off me. The old version of me, the one with a gacha wheel and an ego, wanted to explain things. I wanted to tell him that Dralun was the only one who stayed, that the dragon had just walked into a fire twice, that the system upstairs was broken and not the man on his step. I kept my mouth shut.

When he ran out of air, the man looked at the watch in Dralun’s hand. It was a cheap silver Seiko with a cracked face.

“That’s his,” he said. His voice broke in half. “That’s my brother’s.”

“I know,” Dralun said. “I’m sorry it took this long.”

The man snatched it and slammed the door. We walked down the steps.

“Nice talking back there,” I said.

“You didn’t say anything.”

“I learned from the best.”

He grunted twice. Ophelia, trailing behind with Mr. Stitches under her arm, informed me that two grunts meant no, but the affectionate kind of no, and that I shouldn’t let it go to my head.

By four in the morning we had returned thirty-one pieces. By five we had returned thirty-eight, and nine of the addresses in the ledger belonged to people who had moved, died, or gone somewhere Grandma Lin couldn’t follow. She met us back at the laundromat with pork buns and a thermos of tea so strong my Demigod liver filed a formal objection. We sat on the plastic chairs by the dryers and ate in silence.

Ophelia fell asleep against my shoulder at 5:22.

I know the exact time because the interface told me.

〘Proximity Event: OPHELIA LIN has entered unconscious contact with Host.〙

〘Temptation Gauge: 7%.〙

〘Note: She is drooling on your jacket. The support track will bill you.〙

She was a surprisingly heavy sleeper for someone her size. Her head had slid down until her cheek rested on my collarbone, and one of her long drill curls had worked its way inside my collar and was tickling my neck. Her arm had fallen across my lap. The parasol lay on the floor by her boots, and her skirt had ridden up when she tucked her legs under her, so the black garter strap and its little metal clasp were pressing into the outside of my thigh through my trousers. I could feel every ridge on that clasp. I could smell five-spice and baby powder and the dryer sheets that clung to her dress.

I looked at the ceiling. The ceiling was water-stained and deeply uninteresting.

Dralun watched me from across the room with a pork bun halfway to his mouth.

“Don’t wake her up,” he said. “She gets mean.”

“She’s already mean,” I whispered.

“Then she gets meaner.” He finished the bun. “You can move if you want.”

I didn’t move. I sat there for forty minutes with a sleeping goth lolita drooling on my Halloran crest, and I watched the windows turn grey. I told myself it was because moving would wake her. The interface did not believe me, and I didn’t bother arguing with it.

When she woke up at six she jerked upright, stared at the wet spot on my jacket, and turned a shade of red I had only seen on emergency lighting.

“That didn’t happen,” she said. “Mr. Stitches, tell him that didn’t happen.”

“Mr. Stitches saw everything. He’s filing a report.”

“Minus fifty for using my own bear against me.” She grabbed her parasol and snapped it open between us. From behind the lace, her voice dropped. “Plus ten for not moving.”

My phone buzzed at 6:14.

The first message was from Sloane. So were the next eleven. She was fifteen miles away across the river, well past the fifty-meter range of the bond, and I could tell from her punctuation that she hated every inch of that distance.

you never texted from the bus back. are you alive

lukas

LUKAS

i swear to god if you died again i will kill you

It’s been EIGHT HOURS

I typed back with one thumb while Ophelia glared at me through her parasol.

Alive. Worked a case all night. Will explain later. Love you.

She replied in two seconds.

a CASE?? you’re PROVISIONAL. homeroom is at 8:58. if you’re late steele will skin you and I’ll help her

The interface helpfully pointed out that I had been awake for twenty-two hours and forty minutes, and that conditioning with Steele had started fourteen minutes ago without me. I decided that was a problem for a version of me with more sleep.

We did the last two returns at seven-fifteen. One was a gold chain for a woman who ran the bodega where Dralun got his coffee, and she tried to pay us in lottery tickets. The other was the pair of pearl earrings, and they went to a retired schoolteacher on Fourth who didn’t say a word. She held them in her palm for a long time and then invited us in for coffee. Dralun declined for both of us, which I resented, because her kitchen smelled like cinnamon rolls.

Back at the laundromat, dryer number four was empty. Somebody had stuck a sticky note on the inside of the door while we were gone. It said THX GOLDEN BOY in green ink, with a dark plum lipstick print on the corner and a tiny drawing of a snake eating its own tail.

It smelled like strawberries. I peeled it off and put it in my pocket without letting Ophelia see.

Dralun walked me out to the curb at 7:48. He had soot in the grooves of his horns and a pork bun wrapped in wax paper in his hand, and he held the bun out to me the way somebody hands over a parking ticket.

“From my aunt,” he said. “She says you’re too skinny.”

“Everyone keeps telling me that.”

“Everyone’s right.” He crossed his arms. His tail swept a slow arc behind him. “We don’t have a budget for a car. You take the bus back, or you order one of those rideshare things.”

I pulled up the app. Nobody wanted to drive east of the river at rush hour, so the surge pricing had turned a fifteen-mile trip into eighty-four dollars and a twenty-two minute wait. I showed him the screen. He looked at it and snorted a small puff of smoke.

“Bus is two-fifty,” he said.

“I’ll take the bus, then.”