My Scumbag System-Chapter 435: The Perfect Game
Carefully, I extracted myself from the pile of sleeping beauties, moving with the kind of stealth I’d learned from dodging Kimiko’s suspicion and Luka’s well-meaning dad talks. Natalia mumbled something that sounded like my name but didn’t wake. Emi’s hand twitched toward where I’d been, found empty space, and settled back down with a soft sigh.
I grabbed my sweatpants from the floor, stepped over Akari’s discarded nightie, and opened the door just wide enough to slip through.
The hallway was blessedly empty. Silent except for the usual creaks and groans of an old building settling into night. I made it down the stairs without incident, my bare feet silent on wood that had probably seen better days before the Academy decided to dump the reject guild here.
The kitchen light was on.
I paused at the doorway, suddenly very aware that I was shirtless, covered in scratches and hickeys and god knows what else, smelling like five different women’s perfume mixed with sex and divine intervention.
Braxton Miller stood at the counter, pouring himself three fingers of something amber from a bottle that definitely wasn’t regulation Academy issue. His shirt was unbuttoned, his hair more disheveled than usual, and there was lipstick smeared on his collar in a shade I’d seen Professor Hanae wearing every day.
We made eye contact.
His eyes dropped to the scratches on my chest, the bite mark on my collarbone, the general evidence of what I’d clearly been doing for the last however many hours.
I opened the fridge and grabbed a Thunder-Strike sports drink in electric blue, the neon liquid sloshing as I twisted the cap off.
Braxton raised his glass.
I raised my bottle.
We stood there in mutual understanding, two men who’d clearly had very different but equally exhausting nights.
"Practice is postponed until sixteen hundred hours," he said, his voice carrying that rough edge that came from cigarettes and too many years fighting things that wanted to eat him.
I nodded, taking a long drink. The sugar hit my system like a brick of pure energy, chasing away some of the bone-deep exhaustion.
Braxton’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. Something between approval and resignation.
"Congratulations on the perfect game, Nakano."
I nearly choked on my drink.
He knew.
Of course he knew. The man had survived A-Rank Gates and underground poker rings run by information brokers. Thin walls and teenage hormones weren’t exactly classified intel.
"Thanks, Coach," I said, because what the hell else was I supposed to say?
He knocked back his whiskey in one smooth motion, set the glass down with a quiet clink, and walked past me toward the stairs. He paused at the doorway.
"Four PM," he repeated. "And if I were you, I’d clean up my room tonight. Kimiko called. She and Lukas are arriving tomorrow afternoon for a wellness check."
Fuck.
My.
Life.
"Understood," I managed.
He disappeared up the stairs, leaving me alone in the kitchen with my sports drink and the dawning realization that I’d successfully completed Aphrodite’s Impossible Mode quest but now had to survive the actual impossible mode of explaining to my mother why her stepson’s room smelled like a brothel.
The air in front of me shimmered.
Not the System blue I was used to. This was pink and gold, warm and alive, smelling like rose gardens and something older than roses. Something that existed before humans had words for desire.
Aphrodite manifested fully for the first time since this whole nightmare began.
She wasn’t a chibi avatar anymore. She wasn’t a tiny sprite with an attitude problem. She stood at her full height, maybe five-foot-six, and she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The kind of beautiful that hurt to look at directly. The kind that made you understand why men started wars.
Her hair was gold. Not blonde. Actual spun gold that moved like water and caught light that didn’t exist in the room. It fell in perfect waves past her shoulders, and I could see each individual strand like my brain was suddenly capable of processing detail it had never noticed before.
Her eyes were the color of Mediterranean seas at sunset. Turquoise shot through with copper and something warm that made you want to dive in and never surface.
She wore white. A dress that looked Grecian and timeless, held up by golden clasps at her shoulders. It moved wrong, like the fabric was liquid or the laws governing how cloth should behave didn’t apply to goddesses.
Her skin was flawless. Bronze and sun-kissed and glowing faintly with internal light.
She was barefoot. Her toenails were painted gold.
And she was smiling at me like a proud mother watching her son win a championship.
"Well," she said, her voice like honey and wine and promises whispered in the dark, "I must say, I did not think you would actually pull it off."
I took another drink, because what else was I supposed to do? Bow? Grovel? My legs were half-jello from the workout I’d just put them through.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," I muttered. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢
She laughed, the sound filling the kitchen with warmth. It felt like standing in summer sunlight after years underground.
"Oh, Satori." She stepped closer, her bare feet making no sound on the tile. "Only a son of mine could accomplish such a feat in a single evening. The transparency, the honesty, the sheer audacity of laying your soul bare before five women and somehow convincing them not only to stay but to surrender so completely."
She reached up, cupping my face with a hand that felt simultaneously solid and weightless.
"Alas, you are not mine in this life, Rome. In this..."
She blinked.
Her expression shifted from maternal pride to something like confusion, then to barely contained panic.
"Nevermind that," she said quickly, too quickly, her hand dropping from my face. "You performed admirably! The honesty, the passion, the tears during the third round when both Akari and Emi professed their love while you were, well."
She gestured vaguely at my torso. "The ratings were exceptional. The Audience wept. Even Zeus found it moving, and that man has the emotional range of a particularly vindictive rock."
"Right," I said slowly, filing away the fact that the literal goddess of love had just accidentally called me Rome for later analysis.
"So about those rewards."
