Chapter 655 | Gothic Math

Chapter 655: 655 | Gothic Math

I heard the stepladder creak behind me as Ophelia turned around.

"Is that oat milk lavender?" Her voice went up at the end, and her grey eyes narrowed over the top of the window frame. "Did you look at my Instagram, Belmont?"

"You posted a photo with a caption about suffering, so I took a guess."

"That’s stalking, and you’re going to lose twenty points for it." She held out her hand from the top of the ladder, wiggling her fingers down at me like she was summoning a very disappointing pet. "Give it to me, and I’ll consider making it ten."

I walked over and held the cup up toward her. She leaned down from the second step to reach it, and the ladder shifted on the worn floorboards with the kind of groan that meant someone should have fixed this in 2004. She grabbed the window frame with one hand to steady herself.

The frothy black skirt swung forward over my head for half a second. The world went dark. It smelled like baby powder and velvet, and there was a bat embroidered on something lacy and black that I did not ask to have memorized but now did anyway.

I stepped back fast and locked my eyes on the ceiling, where a water stain shaped vaguely like Ohio had been living since the Clinton administration. I had never been more interested in Ohio in my entire life.

\[Ecchi Logic Event: Ophelia Lin. Ladder instability detected. Constructive malfunction probability elevated. The Host has visually confirmed a bat motif on the subject’s undergarment. Temptation Gauge 6%. Note: the Host’s commitment to ceiling-based distraction is admirable but statistically doomed.\]

"Did you just look up my skirt, Belmont?"

"I looked at the ceiling, and it’s very interesting today." I waved the cup blind in her general direction without breaking eye contact with the drywall. "Ohio is coming along nicely. I think it’s expanded south."

She made a noise like a teakettle about to blow, climbed down the ladder in two aggressive stomps, and snatched the latte out of my hand hard enough that some of it sloshed onto the lid. She stood in front of me with the cup pressed against her chest like a shield. Her cheeks had gone hot pink under the white foundation. The eyeliner made her look like a furious, heavily armed owl.

"You’re at negative two hundred and four cute points, and I’m adding the stalking charge to the skirt incident, and I’m not explaining my gothic math to you because you don’t deserve transparency." She took a sip, closed her eyes, and her shoulders dropped half an inch. The parasol drooped. "Fine. You get five back for the extra shot, because I can taste it, and it’s the correct ratio."

"Grandma Lin says you owe her a mop."

Ophelia went rigid with the cup halfway to her mouth.

"That’s a lie, she definitely knows it’s a lie, and the mop specifically owed me, so you can report back to Grandma Lin that her information source has a documented credibility problem."

She marched over to her desk with the latte held against her chest like she was protecting classified documents, climbed onto the surface in one fluid motion that involved no acknowledgment of skirt physics, and opened her parasol between herself and the rest of the room with a snap that sounded terminal.

"Mr. Stitches, you are authorized to inform him that this is categorically none of his business and that I’m filing a harassment complaint if he pursues the line of questioning."

Mr. Stitches said nothing from his position on the radiator. His stitched X eyes stared forward with the kind of unwavering neutrality that felt like its own form of commentary.

Dralun set down his pen with the specific kind of deliberate care that suggested he was choosing not to engage with anything that had just happened. He looked at me for the first time since I’d walked in. His eyes tracked from my face down to my feet, and they stayed there long enough that I started cataloging what he might be reading from the angle. Posture, weight distribution, something about the shoes that had apparently registered as operationally significant.

"Steele read you the report, kid?"

"She read all nine words of it out loud to the entire class, and Caden told me afterward that he’s workshopping a musical number about the phrasing." I crossed my arms. "It was extremely educational."

He made the noise that Ophelia had told me earlier meant no, but with the kind of grudging affection reserved for situations that were technically stupid but had produced acceptable outcomes.

Then he leaned over the arm of his chair, reached under the desk with one clawed hand, and pulled out a cardboard shoebox. It had a dent in one corner like someone had kicked it at some point and decided the structural integrity was still fine.

He dropped it on my desk hard enough that my laptop screen bounced against the hinge.

"Open it, Belmont. Don’t make a face when you do."

I opened it. Inside sat a pair of black work boots with steel caps visible at the toes, scuffed in the specific pattern that came from actual use rather than aesthetic distressing. The laces were loose, frayed at the ends, and the leather had the worn-in quality of something that had been resoled at least once. They looked older than me by a solid decade. They smelled like leather polish, motor oil, and the inside of a garage that had seen better organizational days.

"These were my nephew’s before he went to Fresno with my sister, and he never wore them, because he decided he was going to be a dentist." Dralun picked up his sister’s mug and drank from it, his tail shifting across the floor.

"Those sneakers of yours are going to get you killed on Delancey, so put the boots on, and if they don’t fit, you’re going to lie to me about it."