Erika: My Friend Is Obsessed with Me
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Unaware that Erica’s face was flushing red with anger as she blinked blankly, Pechenik laughed boisterously.
“Hey, little maid! How did you know it was my birthday and bring a candle? How thoughtful!”
“……Ugh.”
Erica gnawed on her lower lip.
Her worn, stained clothes and messy hair certainly didn’t make her look like a count’s Lady, so mistaking her for a maid was understandable.
But blowing out someone else’s birthday candle was downright rude.
A grown man, acting less mannered than a child—where had all his years gone?
“……It’s not your birthday, mister.”
“Hm?”
Yet looking at the extinguished candle, Erica couldn’t bring herself to get angry, speaking dispiritedly instead.
“It’s my birthday.”
She wanted to express her anger, but she was unfamiliar with it. She simply didn’t know how to let it out.
Instead, a sigh-like sorrow packed tight against her heart.
“This was my wish……. It’s the only day in the whole year……. where I get to make a wish.”
The slender, blackened candle, wisps of smoke rising from its wick, seemed to whisper to her.
Silly girl, today isn’t your birthday.
Feeling like she might cry, she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.
Since someone else had stolen her birthday wish, Erica couldn’t make one anymore.
“Well…… I’m sorry.”
Pechenik scratched his beard.
Even dead drunk, his senses weren’t entirely dulled. Today was likely this little maid’s birthday.
“Instead of the candle, I’ll grant your wish. How about that? I have plenty of money, so I can buy you whatever present you want.”
Pechenik pointed to the worn teddy bear beside the girl.
“How about a rabbit doll, much bigger and cuter than that grimy clump of cotton?”
Erica didn’t answer.
Pechenik mistook her silence for agreement.
“I’ll have it sent to the count’s estate at first light tomorrow. Which room do you work in? The kitchen? The laundry? I’ll just have it delivered to the Head Maid so you can pick it up, all right?”
“…….”
Erica gripped the egg tart in her right hand.
With her left arm, she clutched the teddy bear.
“I don’t need it. That’s not what my wish was.”
Erica stood up from the fountain.
“Make a wish yourself, mister. You’re the one who stole my turn.”
“No, no. I don’t have any wishes.”
“Liar. Who in the world doesn’t have a wish?”
“I used to, back in the day.”
Drunk as he was, Pechenik began rambling about his personal life without being asked.
“You wouldn’t believe how much I prayed just to see my sweet daughter grow up and get married.”
“…….”
“Then one day, thinking I’d been too greedy, I dialed back the wish. Just let my daughter live for one more year, that was all.”
“…….”
“Do you know how much money I poured into the Temple praying back then? With the donations I gave, the Temple could probably have built two mansions like this.”
“……You must be really rich.”
“Of course. No one in Tenearha is poor.”
“…….”
Tenearha.
At the familiar word, Erica looked up.
She couldn’t believe this foolish-looking middle-aged man belonged to the same knight order of the Heavenly Emperor’s Castle as her father.
“So just name anything. What can I buy you?”
Pechenik asked again.
If he snatched a scruffy little maid’s birthday candle, brought her to tears, and then just feigned ignorance, he wouldn’t be in the mood to drink anymore.
So his plan was to promise her a birthday present and return with an easy conscience.
“……So that I can leave the count’s estate.”
Erica spoke.
“Please help me.”
Her clear, bright eyes looked up at Pechenik.
“That was what I originally meant to wish for.”
The man was so tall she had to crane her neck as if looking at the sky.
And Pechenik was hardly courteous enough to bend his knees for a mere child of a maid.
Their gazes met.
For a while, Pechenik said nothing.
Only now did his gaze thoroughly examine the child.
‘……She must be getting bullied among the maids.’
The marks and scars etched around her eyes and on her forearms.
When he first saw her, he simply thought Count Herace’s estate disciplined its young maids quite strictly.
But even taking into account that she was a maid, her appearance was excessively ragged.
While it was impolite to judge the standard of a count’s servants, on a day like this when guests were present, even young maids were usually dressed in clean clothes.
Yet the child looked no different from a beggar from the slums.
‘This goes too far.’
For a young maid to want to leave the count’s estate of her own accord, something had to be wrong.
He knew well enough that Count Herace paid zero attention to his household.
There was likely a problem with how the Countess or the Head Maid managed the servants, but—
“……That would be difficult.”
Pechenik could not intervene.
There were unwritten rules in high society.
He was close friends with Count Herace, so if he asked tactfully, taking away a single young maid wouldn’t be impossible—but the hassle involved in asking tactfully was far too great.
“If you don’t need a present, I’ll be on my way.”
“…….”
“Are you sure you don’t want it? The rabbit doll?”
“…….”
“I’m leaving, then?”
“…….”
In the end, Erica gave no response, and Pechenik turned around.
“…….”
Erica stared blankly at his massive back as he walked away.
There was no particular meaning behind it.
After just a few paces, Pechenik stopped dead in his tracks.
His broad, bear-like back turned around.
“Right, happy birthday.”
He said, scratching his nose awkwardly. Midnight might have already passed.
“……Um.”
Erica hugged the teddy bear tightly. She felt shy.
“Thank you.”
It’s the first time I’ve ever heard that.
To be honest, it wasn’t my birthday yesterday, nor is it today. It was just a day I picked on a whim.
She swallowed down the thoughts rising to the tip of her throat.
“Happy birthday to you too, mister!”
Erica smiled for once.
Her radiant smile, eyes curving into crescents, was so genuinely childlike and lovely.
“Happy birthday, Daddy!”
As if struck across the back of the head, Pechenik was reminded of his deceased daughter.
“……Yeah.”
Right then, he realized he was in serious trouble.
“……Thank you.”
It was a disaster.
The box of memories he hadn’t opened in so long had been violently torn apart.
Without question, a disaster.
How hard had he tried to forget and live on? How deeply had he loved his daughter? And yet, when he opened his eyes, he was left all alone in this life.
The revived nightmare engulfed Pechenik like the epidemic that had claimed his wife and daughter all those years ago.
“…….”
Even when he returned to the drinking table and drank himself senseless all night, even after collapsing into sleep.
Even after picking up his sword for the knight order’s morning training that began without fail.
“……Damn it.”
Longing effortlessly gouged at his heart.
Like a scent carried away by the wind from a box thrown wide open, those who could never return.
A life without a single bit of joy, whether wielding a sword or laughing like a fool.
The emptiness that had begun was a bottomless abyss.
One year later.
Erica met the strange man again.
Pechenik held his birthday party at Count Herace’s estate once more.
The count’s household was dumbfounded enough to faint, but from the Countess’s perspective, it was fortunate—if anything—that he had given advance notice this time.
“My Lady, did you know? A little maid here shares the exact same birthday as me. I happened to find out last year.”
“Oh my, how marvelous. I should tell the Head Maid to give the child a slice of cake.”
The Countess replied, wearing a gentle mask.
She couldn’t care less about an estate maid’s birthday, but putting on a display of noblesse oblige in a moment like this was easy enough.
Of course, the Head Maid couldn’t find any maid with a birthday today, and in the end, the cake was delivered to no one.
As for Erica, the actual birthday girl, she stuck a candle into a small bun she had secretly pinched.
She knew now that turning eight meant she was supposed to put eight candles on it, but she had no way to get that many candles.
For fear of missing her chance like last year, she hurriedly blew out the candle with a whoosh and made a wish.
‘Please help me leave the count’s estate.’
It was a wish rushed out in a flurry of words.
Then, Erica spotted Pechenik in the hallway.
The person who shared her birthday. Overjoyed, she ran up to him and spoke first.
“……Mister.”
