I stared at the notification for a solid three seconds while Hiro waited for me to respond to whatever he thought my silence meant.

Rivalry Gauge. The System wanted me to unlock a Rivalry Gauge with the pretty boy whose entire personality was built on the conviction that heroism should look good while being good.

The irony was thick enough to choke on. Here was a guy who’d just accused me of treating people as tactical resources, and the interface in my head had immediately responded by categorizing him as an obstacle to heroine progression and assigning me a quest to establish dominance.

The System had no shame. Zero. Negative shame. The System operated in a deficit of shame that should have violated fundamental laws of the universe.

But the thing was, the quest wasn’t wrong.

Not about Hiro being a threat to my operational flexibility. The Pure Hero Philosophy that Hiro preached, where every action carried weight and every decision reflected on the sacred calling of the profession, that philosophy created exactly the kind of social pressure that made my job harder. Every time Hiro opened his mouth about dignity and public trust, he was establishing behavioral standards I couldn’t meet without blowing my cover or tanking my Temptation progression.

And the failure penalty. Fifteen percent decrease to image-conscious heroines if I let Hiro establish narrative control.

That meant Petra. That meant Camille, probably. That meant anyone in the cohort who cared about how things looked as much as how things worked.

Hiro Sato was a genuine problem I’d been ignoring because his primary mode of engagement was complaining about costume aesthetics during lunch conversations.

But standing here in the golden hour light with his Corona glowing and his jaw set and his eyes full of sincere conviction about my moral failings, I could see the shape of what he could become if I let him.

A competitor. Not for rankings or case resolution rates or tactical brilliance. A competitor for the story.

Heroes were brands. Crane had taught that in the first hour of her class. The public didn’t remember what you did. They remembered what you meant. Radiant wasn’t number one because his Aspect output exceeded everyone else’s. He was number one because he’d figured out how to be a symbol before anyone else understood that symbols were what mattered.

Hiro understood symbols. Hiro was building himself into a symbol right now, every day, with every perfectly styled hair and every dramatically positioned arm and every golden beam that looked incredible on camera.

If I let him establish the narrative that I was the guy who kissed people for tactical advantage and treated colleagues as resources, then every success I achieved would be filtered through that frame. Every win would come with an asterisk. Every climb up the rankings would be accompanied by whispers about whether I deserved it.

I needed Hiro Sato to hate me.

Not because I wanted him to suffer. The guy was annoying and self-righteous and desperately in need of someone explaining that not everything required background music, but he wasn’t evil. He was just inconvenient.

But hate was useful. Hate created stakes. Hate turned a pretty boy with a strong Aspect into a proper rival, the kind of rival that made your victories mean something.

I was aiming for number one. Not top ten. Not respectable ranking for a former Unmarked kid who somehow made it through the academy system. Number one. The spot Radiant currently held, the spot that came with the ability to walk into any room in the country and have everyone know what you stood for before you opened your mouth.

That climb required friction. It required someone pushing back, someone who wanted the same spot badly enough to fight for it, someone whose existence in the ranking made your presence there mean something.

Hiro Sato wanted to be a symbol of pure heroism. I wanted to be the guy who proved that methodology mattered more than morality.

We were going to collide. The only question was whether that collision happened on my terms or his.

So I smiled.

"You know what your problem is?" I said.

Hiro’s Corona brightened. His shoulders squared. His entire body language shifted into the posture of someone who had been waiting for the other shoe to drop and was now bracing for impact.

"Enlighten me."

"You actually believe this stuff." I gestured vaguely at his chest, at the golden glow radiating from his Aspect Core, at the perfectly composed stance and the artfully tousled hair and the everything about him that screamed main character energy. "The dignity of the calling. The sacred trust. The idea that heroism is something pure that gets corrupted by people like me who treat it as a job instead of a religion."

"It should be treated as more than a job."

"See, that’s where you lose me." I took a step closer. Not aggressive. Not confrontational. Just close enough that the conversation became intimate instead of theatrical. "Because you don’t actually want heroism to be pure. You want it to look pure. You want the aesthetic of purity, the performance of dignity, the image of someone who rises above the mercenary calculations that lesser heroes make. But the minute you actually had to choose between doing the right thing and doing the thing that photographed well? You’d hesitate."

Hiro’s jaw clenched hard enough that I could see the muscles flex beneath his skin. His Corona flared bright enough to cast harsh shadows across the training field, and for a moment I thought he might actually throw a beam at me.

Good. Anger was useful. Anger was engagement.

"You don’t know me," he said.

"I know your type." I kept my voice level. Almost friendly. "Pretty boys who grew up being told they were special. Who manifested early enough that they never had to learn what it felt like to be ordinary. Who built their entire identity around being the protagonist of a story where they were always going to win." I watched his hands curl into fists at his sides. "You’ve never failed at anything that mattered. You’ve never had to choose between your principles and your survival. You’ve never been in a situation where the dignified option was also the stupid option and the smart play required doing something that would make you look bad."