My Scumbag System-Chapter 276: Disorder in Mind, Order in Formation

Celeste Vance had perfected the art of walking without actually being present.

Her body moved in flawless synchronization with the other Argent Sentinels, their white and silver uniforms catching the last rays of the setting sun like a squadron of particularly well-dressed soldiers. Their formation was textbook. A perfect wedge, with Professor Anya Petrova at the apex, her heels striking the pavement with the regularity of a metronome. Click. Click. Click.

Each step was a countdown. To what, Celeste wasn’t entirely sure. Perhaps to the moment she finally lost her mind from boredom.

"The Onyx Hounds are scavengers." Professor Petrova’s voice sliced through the evening air like one of her crystalline blades. She didn’t turn to address them. She didn’t need to. Her words carried the weight of absolute authority. "They lack the breeding, the training, and the discipline to compete with us on equal footing. They rely on tricks. Deception. Chaos."

Chaos sounds nice, Celeste thought, her expression remaining perfectly serene. At least it would be different.

"Tonight, we do not merely coordinate with these... individuals." Petrova’s lip curled on the last word as if it tasted sour. "We demonstrate. We show them the gap between a diamond and a rock. Am I understood?"

"Yes, Professor," the group replied in unison.

Celeste’s mouth formed the words automatically. Her mind was elsewhere. Specifically, it was replaying the moment she had woken up that morning to find her room immaculate. Her clothes pressed. Her shoes polished. Even her hairbrush had been cleaned.

Noah had been there. Sometime in the night, her bodyguard had slipped past the academy’s high-security systems, past the Argent dorms’ reinforced locks, past everything, just to do chores. Because Noah didn’t trust the academy’s automated cleaning drones. Because Noah was a ridiculous, wonderful, paranoid person who expressed affection through acts of domestic sabotage.

The memory warmed something in Celeste’s chest. A tiny flame in an otherwise cold existence.

"Don’t worry, Celeste."

The warmth evaporated.

Julian Valerius had materialized at her side. He walked a half-step behind Professor Petrova, as was his designated position as class representative, but he kept drifting toward Celeste like a moth to an expensive, disinterested flame. His golden hair caught the fading light. His sapphire eyes gleamed with that particular brand of confidence that came from never being told no in his entire life.

"That commoner who made such a spectacle at the draft?" Julian’s jaw tightened. "He got lucky. Caught everyone off guard with his little performance. But tomorrow, in the Gate, there won’t be any audiences to impress. I’ll expose him for the fraud he is."

He tried to catch her eye. Celeste looked straight ahead.

"You won’t have to worry about him coming near you," Julian continued. "I’ll make sure that stray knows his place."

His place, Celeste thought. And where is that, exactly? Because he chose his own place. He walked away from everything we’re told to want. And you’ve been obsessing over him ever since.

She said nothing. She never said anything.

"Oh, Julian!"

Monica Von Astrom appeared between them like a particularly cheerful torpedo. Her honey-strawberry blonde hair bounced as she physically inserted herself into Julian’s path, her amber eyes wide with perfectly calculated innocence.

"You’re so fierce! I can practically feel the warrior spirit radiating off you!" Monica clasped her hands together. "But maybe we should save all that wonderful energy for the actual monsters? The briefing is supposed to be about cooperation, after all. Team building! Synergy! All those lovely words Professor Petrova keeps using!"

She was smiling. She was always smiling. But her body language had created an impenetrable wall between Julian and Celeste, and she wasn’t moving.

Julian’s eye twitched. "Of course. You’re right, Monica. I was simply reassuring Celeste that—"

"And I’m sure she feels very reassured!" Monica’s smile somehow became even brighter. "Now, I think I see a particularly stubborn weed over there. Do you think it’s plotting something? Weeds are so ambitious."

She physically steered Julian away, chattering about botanical threats with the enthusiasm of someone who genuinely found the topic fascinating.

Celeste exhaled. Just slightly. Just enough that no one would notice.

Monica caught her eye over Julian’s shoulder and winked.

Thank you, Celeste thought. Again.

They continued their march. The formation never wavered. Professor Petrova’s heels never faltered. And Celeste Vance remained trapped in her own personal prison of silk and silver, putting one perfect foot in front of the other.

The landscape began to change.

It happened gradually at first. The manicured lawns of the First-Year Ward’s central sector gave way to more modest groundskeeping. Then to barely maintained grass. Then to patches of bare earth where the landscaping drones had apparently given up entirely.

The streetlights flickered here. Some were missing bulbs. The pavement developed cracks, then holes, then sections where it had been patched so many times it looked like abstract art. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

And through every crack, every fissure, every broken piece of infrastructure, life pushed through. Weeds. Grass. Stubborn little flowers that had no business blooming in such inhospitable conditions.

"Disgraceful." Professor Petrova surveyed the environment with the expression of someone encountering an offensive smell. "Disorder in surroundings breeds disorder in mind. This place is a sty. Small wonder its inhabitants perform at such substandard levels."

The other Sentinels murmured agreement. Julian made a show of stepping around a particularly defiant dandelion as if it might attack him.

Celeste looked at the weeds and saw something else entirely.

Resilience, she thought. Survival. Growth without permission.

The Argent dormitories were beautiful. Pristine. Perfect in every measurable way. They were also sterile. Dead. Places where nothing unexpected ever happened because the unexpected had been systematically eliminated.

This place felt lived in.

Her thoughts drifted, as they had been doing with increasing frequency, to Satori Nakano.

The Stray Dog. The boy who had rejected the script. The commoner who had looked at the entire hierarchy of Hunter society and said, in essence, no thanks.

She had watched the draft footage seventeen times. Not because she was obsessed. She was simply... curious.

That’s what she told herself, anyway.

Julian saw Nakano and felt contempt. Professor Petrova saw him and felt disdain. The VHC saw him and felt concern.

Celeste looked at him and felt something far more dangerous.

Envy.

He was free. He had chosen his own path, his own guild, his own future. While she was here, in formation, walking toward a briefing she didn’t want to attend, surrounded by people who saw her as a piece on a board rather than a person.

What had Nakano been doing while she practiced tea ceremonies? While she memorized VHC protocols that would govern her life for the next fifty years?

While she smiled at Julian and pretended she didn’t want to freeze his mouth shut?

Onyx House loomed out of the twilight like a creature from a different era.

It was old. Traditional. A sprawling estate that had clearly seen better centuries but refused to apologize for its current condition. The architecture spoke of history, of battles fought, of lives lived fully and messily. Paint peeled from the shutters. The garden was more wilderness than landscaping.

And through the walls, Celeste could hear music. Bass-heavy. Aggressive. The kind of music that Professor Petrova would have classified as "auditory assault."

It was the most alive building she had ever seen.