Erika: My Friend Is Obsessed with Me
Chapter 11
Chapter 11
Erica – When My Friend Obsesses Over Me
Their eyes met.
A strange man who looked about her age. Annoyingly, he was smiling.
Unlike Erica, whose disbelief had completely short-circuited her brain, his gaze was calm as a deep ocean.
Erica scowled and glared at him.
“Who the hell are you?”
Physical contact with a stranger was the last thing she wanted.
“Let go of me. Get off right now.”
The man let out a low chuckle.
“If I get off here, I’ll die. We’re up in the sky.”
A nonchalant reply.
In that split second, Erica genuinely considered jabbing him with her elbow to throw him off.
But that would be murder.
While she hesitated—
“……You son of a—”
She was pulled firmly against his chest. She might as well have been buried in his embrace.
The man’s chest pressed against her back was rock-solid. Their bodies were plastered together without a sliver of space between them.
“I told you to let go.”
Erica said, her voice laced with venom. It was an outright death threat.
“Don’t want to.”
Was this guy out of his mind?
His low, raspy voice echoed in her ear like a cavern.
“Get off right now. I was on this first.”
“Let’s share.”
“Do I sound like I’m joking? I’ll throw you off.”
“How’s a little shrimp like you going to throw me?”
“What?! What did you just—”
“We’ll both die if we fall from here, so can’t you just stay still?”
The moment he finished speaking, the wyvern beneath them sliced fiercely through the wind.
Whoooosh—!
It rocketed high into the open sky.
“Fuck……!”
Erica cursed, then choked on her own words.
She had no choice; the rushing wind poured into her mouth, stealing her breath.
Whether it was from the solid arm banded around her waist or the violent gales, Erica’s brow furrowed tightly.
“You…….”
Argh!
What an annoying! Uninvited guest!
She had been completely out of her mind back then, but looking back years later, it felt quite romantic.
Romantic?
Well, memories had a way of distorting things.
It was high above the world.
An impossibly azure sky.
An altitude so high her ears popped. An open expanse so cool it chilled the skin.
Who could have ever imagined meeting someone there, slicing through the crisp wind as if exhilarated in a white paradise?
Erica was eighteen.
It was the day she met Chaud for the very first time.
A calm voice came from behind her.
“I lost my bow.”
Still wrapping his arm around Erica’s waist, the man sitting behind her casually babbled on about his predicament.
“Looks like my quiver blew away somewhere too. I definitely had it strapped to my back.”
“…….”
Erica knitted her brows.
The deep voice vibrating right against her ear felt like it would melt her eardrum.
Where did someone get a voice like that?
Feeling strange, she jabbed her elbow backward with all her might.
“Stop whispering in my ear. Your voice gives me the creeps.”
“What? That’s a first.”
“Ugh, cut it out.”
Her ear tickled, so Erica rubbed it furiously.
The man chuckled at the sight.
“I lost one of my swords.”
“……Fuck, didn’t you say you lost your bow?”
“Lost my sword too.”
“…….”
“I usually dual-wield. Now I’ve only got one left.”
“So what?”
It must have been the sword stuck in the crown of that King Wyvern when it plummeted earlier.
To think there was a lunatic who used a longsword in an S-rank aerial combat commission.
He was completely insane.
“What are you, anyway?”
Why did she have to listen to a madman’s complaints out of nowhere high up in the sky?
“Chaud.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“My name.”
“I wasn’t asking for your name. Are you with the Lygis Knights?”
“No way. I’m a mercenary.”
The man smiled.
His forehead, revealed as the wind pushed his hair back, was pale.
His hair, fluttering softly in the harsh wind like watercolor strokes, looked remarkably fine.
‘What color is that?’
At a glance she had thought it was black, but it wasn’t.
She had never seen such a hair color in her life.
It was an ethereal shade, as though a single drop of blue had been spilled into pitch-black night.
An elegant, midnight navy.
If he was a mercenary, he was likely a commoner, but for a commoner, that mop of hair was an exceptionally high-class hue.
“What are you staring at so intently?”
“Your head.”
“Ahaha, doesn’t your neck hurt looking back like that? I’ll lower my head. Take a closer look.”
Teasingly, the man leaned forward and nuzzled his face against Erica’s neck.
It was close. Way, way too close.
Now his features stood out even more. Well-shaped brows, and the eyelashes beneath them.
His blue-green eyes were utterly clear, reminiscent of the colors seen while diving deep into the sea.
His elongated eyes curved gracefully like crescent moons.
A beauty mark dotted right beneath his left eye.
It looked so captivatingly alluring that Erica found herself staring, only for their gazes to lock.
“Like what you see?”
“……What?”
“My face. You were staring so hard.”
“Do you want to die?”
Erica turned cold, but Chaud didn’t even pretend to listen.
Instead, he leaned down further and extended the arm wrapped around Erica.
“Let’s shoot that one.”
“What?”
“Hand me the bow.”
“Let go! Why would I give you my bow?”
The more she let him slide, the more brazen he became.
Thoroughly annoyed, Erica raised her bow.
She drew the bowstring taut, then released it in a flash.
Twang—!
Thwack!
“Skreeeech—!!”
Twang—!
Thwack!!
“Kreee—!!”
Rapid-fire, hitting target after target in succession.
As she nocked another arrow to fire, a voice whispered in her ear.
“Whoa……. Insane. What are you?”
Chaud let out a stream of stunned exclamations.
“How are you this good?”
“Agh, I told you not to whisper in my ear!”
She flinched and shook her head to shake off the feeling.
Erica fired off a few more arrows in irritation.
Every single fast-moving wyvern took a direct hit.
“Seriously, what are you?”
Chaud asked again.
There was no context to his question, nor was he actually expecting an answer.
When Erica raised her bow once more, Chaud watched in a daze.
Then he suddenly made an infuriating proposal.
“Let’s hunt together.”
Erica snapped.
“What do you mean, hunt together?! You don’t even have a weapon.”
“I do. I’ve got one longsword left.”
“Are you kidding me?”
Erica scoffed with a hollow laugh.
What could anyone possibly do with a single longsword at this altitude?
Reading her expression, Chaud adjusted his proposition.
“Then how about a bet?”
“What?”
“Who hunts more before the sun completely sets.”
“Are you, by any chance, missing a few screws?”
“Now that really is a first.”
Chaud chuckled silently, the corners of his eyes crinkling with genuine amusement.
“We count our own kills. See you at the settlement office later. It won’t be fun if you run away.”
“Hey—”
“Start.”
Whoosh—
In the blink of an eye, he jumped off.
“……?!”
There wasn’t even time to react.
Crazy bastard, jumping from this height!
“Are you out of your—!”
Erica hastily looked down.
Whoosh—!
The wyvern Chaud had boldly hijacked was soaring rapidly upward.
The sound of wind tearing.
The flapping of wings.
Thrust!
“Skreeeech—!!”
The sound of a wyvern meeting its death.
Splatter—!
Crimson droplets sprayed across the sky like seafoam.
Screeches, followed by frantic, agonizing howls.
All of them were the screams of wyverns being steadily slaughtered by him, one after another.
“Crazy……. Absolutely crazy.”
He was unmistakably out of his mind.
To wield a longsword like that in midair.
Watching him leap from wyvern to wyvern high in the sky as if using stepping stones sent a chill straight down her spine.
Slaying one wyvern and immediately leaping onto the next.
‘Is something like that even possible?’
Was this solid ground? They were in the sky, without a single foothold.
That was not something anyone in their right mind could pull off.
He was completely unhinged. A man who didn’t fear death in the slightest.
The type of person who, even if he died this very second, would just think, ‘Well, that was fun,’ and plummet without a care.
Just like her master.
“…….”
Erica bit her lip.
An unnecessary sensation took hold of her. Adrenaline, pure exhilaration.
