My Scumbag System-Chapter 407: Four Open Doors, One Right Choice

Gradually, one by one, people started peeling off toward bed. Juan first, because Juan was technically still asleep. Marco carried Malachi’s bonsai tree up the stairs for him, because Marco was like that. Jaime delivered individual motivational speeches to each person as they left, which slowed the process significantly.

By midnight, the common room had thinned to background noise and leftover pizza.

I said good night to the last few stragglers.

Climbed the stairs.

Started down the hallway toward my room.

And stopped.

Four doors were open.

Not all the way. Just enough to let light spill across the floor in thin strips.

My door. Natalia’s door, which was next to mine. Skylar’s door, across the hall. And at the end of the corridor, Cel’s door, where I could see the pale blue glow of her reading lamp.

I stood in the middle of the hallway.

The building creaked around me. Braxton’s office had its light on, because he never slept before two. Somewhere below, Carmen’s music was still going.

I stood very still.

My internal monologue, which was usually a sharp and useful tool, had apparently chosen this moment to go completely offline. Replaced by something that sounded like screaming in four different pitches.

Natalia.

She appeared in her doorway like she’d been waiting, which she absolutely had. Silk shorts. My old shirt. The Cryo-Lich Ring catching the light. Her purple hair was down and she was looking at me with an expression that communicated several things simultaneously, none of them suitable for polite company.

"You told Sterling you’d live for someone tonight," she said.

"It was a figure of speech."

Her eyes were doing the white-streak thing.

"Natalia."

"I’m not upset."

"You’re literally glowing."

"That’s just my natural radiance."

"Your natural radiance is currently forty degrees below ambient temperature."

She crossed her arms. The door behind her was open all the way now. An invitation that wasn’t subtle by any standard of measurement.

"I watched the interview," she said.

"Everyone watched the interview."

"She smiled at you."

"Cel smiles at lots of things."

"Not like that."

I didn’t have a response to that because she wasn’t wrong and we both knew it.

From across the hall, Skylar’s door opened a little wider. She didn’t come out. Just leaned against the frame in a black oversized shirt, barefoot, headphones around her neck. Her violet eyes went from me to Natalia and back.

"This is already a disaster," she observed pleasantly.

"No one asked you," Natalia said.

"No one has to ask me. I’m standing in my own doorway."

"Conveniently."

"Extremely."

At the end of the hall, Cel’s reading lamp clicked off. A moment later, she appeared in her doorway in soft gray sleepwear, silver hair loose. She took in the scene with periwinkle eyes that catalogued it with the same speed she used to analyze Gate environments.

She said nothing.

Which was somehow louder than anything she could have said.

I looked at Natalia.

At Skylar.

At Cel.

And then, because the universe genuinely hated me, Emi’s door opened.

She stood there in an oversized yellow hoodie, her sapphire hair half out of its braid, rubbing one eye. She blinked at the tableau of four women in the hallway, blinked at me, and then her antennas drooped with the weight of understanding.

"Oh," she said quietly. "Oh no."

"Go back to bed, Emi," Skylar said, not unkindly.

"I wasn’t, I mean, I just heard voices and, I mean." She was turning spectacularly pink. "I can go back to bed."

"You don’t have to," Natalia said, which surprised everyone including Natalia.

Emi looked like she was considering fainting.

I was considering fainting.

"Okay," I said. "Everyone, please."

"Please what?" Natalia asked.

"Please be normal for five consecutive seconds."

"Normal is relative," Skylar said.

"Statistically improbable," Cel added.

Emi just made a sound.

I pressed my thumb and forefinger against the bridge of my nose. The burns on my arms were healed enough that the gesture didn’t hurt, which was the one thing going right in this hallway.

Four women.

Four open doors.

One increasingly tired person with broken ribs and a god’s debt and a conspiracy trying to kill them.

The thing about my life was that it had never been simple. Back when I was Kaelen, simple wasn’t an option. Complicated was just Tuesday. Surviving meant reading every room and making the right call before anyone else saw you make it.

This was not a Tuesday.

This was something considerably more complicated than that.

"Here’s what’s going to happen," I said.

Everyone looked at me.

"Emi, you’re going back to bed because you have early training."

She opened her mouth.

"And I will come by in the morning," I added, "and walk you to breakfast."

She closed her mouth. The antennae perked. She retreated, but slowly, like she wanted to make sure the offer was real.

"Skylar."

She raised one eyebrow.

"I know what you’re doing."

"I’m standing in a hallway."

"You’re doing it on purpose."

"Everything I do is on purpose."

"Go to bed."

Her mouth curved. Not the sharp smile she used as a weapon, but the real one, small and honest. "Fine," she said. "But you owe me."

"I know."

Her door clicked shut. Not a slam. Just closed.

That left Natalia and Cel.

Natalia, who was my queen and my partner and my first, who had put herself between me and death more than once and whose soul was literally tied to mine by something the universe had decided to make permanent.

Cel, who had held my hand in a dying dimension and tended my burns with strips of her own clothing and kissed me in the ruins of a garden while both of us were bleeding.

The hallway was very quiet.

"Cel," I said.

She tilted her head, waiting.

"You did well tonight. The interview, all of it. I mean it."

Something in her expression shifted, gentle. "Thank you."

"Get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be loud."

She looked at me for a moment longer. Looked at Natalia. Back at me. Whatever calculation ran behind her periwinkle eyes resolved into something dignified.

"Good night, Satori," she said.

Her door closed softly.

Natalia and I stood in the empty hall.

She was still doing the temperature thing, but it had dropped from catastrophic to merely chilly. Progress.

"You’re exhausted," she said.

"Extensively."

"Your ribs still hurt."

"Constantly."

She pushed off the doorframe and walked to me, slow, deliberate. Put one hand flat against my chest, over where the worst of the damage had been. The ring on her finger pulsed cold.

"Come to bed," she said. "My bed."

"Nat."

"I’m not asking for anything. I’m telling you to stop standing in the hallway looking like you’re calculating odds and come to bed."

She wasn’t wrong that I was calculating odds.

She also wasn’t wrong that I was tired.

"Okay," I said.

Her expression did something complicated. Not the possessive fire I expected. Something softer, which was more dangerous.

She took my hand and led me through her door.