Translator: Nox

Erika: My Friend Is Obsessed with Me

Chapter 26

Erica — When a Friend Fixates on Me

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A long time ago.

That is, not when she was very little, but around the time she had just escaped the count’s estate.

There was a time when young Erica had lived in constant anxiety.

Unable to sleep at night, she would bury her face in her sleeping bag, curling up and trembling.

She had been lucky enough to catch Pechenik’s eye and become his disciple, but she always feared he might abandon her at any moment.

A daily life of absolute bliss.

Warm, lovingly prepared meals.

A free world. Exciting adventures.

Praise she had never received in her life. The chance to learn without any cost or condition.

Days of thrilling, overwhelming growth.

At times, her heart tightened in terror that all of this might just be a dream, that in a single instant she would plunge back into hell.

Tears would well up at a despair that had not even arrived.

In the first place, she was the one deceiving her master.

She had never corrected his assumption that she was a maid from the count’s estate, and even if a blade were held to her throat until her dying day, she had no intention of ever revealing she was Count Herace’s daughter.

Though pangs of guilt weighed on her conscience, her mind was consumed entirely by one worry: how could she stay by her master’s side for longer?

‘……Should I act like a daughter?’

Pechenik had clearly stated he had no intention of taking her as an adopted daughter, but that didn’t matter.

Even if he didn’t adopt her, she thought it would be enough if she could just give him that feeling.

‘How, though?’

But Erica didn’t know how.

She didn’t know what a family was like.

She at least knew a parent’s role wasn’t to beat and trample someone like the countess did.

‘What is a child supposed to do? How do they act?’

She hadn’t the faintest idea what a child was supposed to do.

Even when she tried to recall how her older brother had treated the countess, nothing came to mind.

Eric had loathed her as if looking at a cockroach.

He would throw things if she so much as looked at him, so she had rarely ever gone near him.

‘I don’t know.’

While young Erica suffered quietly in her heart, daily training continued unabated.

Then, one day.

When she returned from swordsmanship training under the moonlit sky.

“Aira…….”

She saw Pechenik caught in a nightmare.

His face contorted, drenched in cold sweat, and a pained voice slipped out in broken gasps.

“Please, someone, please……. My daughter isn’t breath— Save my daughter, please……. Save her…….”

He sobbed in a choking gasp, as though someone were strangling him.

Though it was his daughter dying in the dream, the ragged, fading gasps came from Pechenik himself.

With quiet steps, young Erica drew closer to Pechenik.

Sitting silently beside his bed, she watched him writhe in agony.

Just watching him made her own heart ache with him.

“Aira, Aira……!”

She gazed at him in silence for a long time, biting her lip.

She could have shaken him awake from the nightmare, but she didn’t.

‘……Because he said he missed her.’

Even if only in a dream, he was seeing the face he longed for.

He was looking at the daughter he could no longer see in reality. Even if it was an illusion.

So she could not dare to intrude upon a longing of such unfathomable depth.

She had no right to meddle so thoughtlessly.

‘…….’

The day she realized she couldn’t even bring herself to wake Pechenik from his nightmare.

That was the day Erica gave up.

Tears welled up for some reason—a surge of sorrow.

She could never be her master’s daughter. It was not a place she could ever take.

Just.

She would become a great disciple.

She would build skills great enough to become his pride, and bring him joy.

That was enough. She would settle for that.

Acting like a daughter—she felt ashamed for having harbored such futile greed. The rims of her eyes burned hot.

‘It’s okay……. It’s okay…….’

She murmured it over and over, hundreds, thousands of times, like a spell cast on herself.

It was a habit she had grown used to since she was five or six years old.

When things were not okay, all she had to do was say it was okay. Ten times, twenty times, and if that still wasn’t enough, murmur it until it truly became okay.

The false peace deceived her brain.

For her life, that was enough.

‘It’s fine.’

Even like this, she wasn’t lonely.

* * *

“……rica.”

Her shoulder was gently shaken.

“Erica.”

At the voice calling her name, the world grew bright.

“Erica, wake up.”

She opened her eyes into slits. Flooded with light, a deep blue sky came into view.

The splash of river water reached her ears.

She was aboard the massive ship bound for Lekankan.

Sluggishly rolling her eyes to the side, she saw a familiar face right in front of her.

Chaud frowned as he looked at her, then took Erica’s hand.

The kneading squeeze of his grip was quite rough.

“……Ow. What are you doing?”

“It hurts? Your complexion looks terrible. You’re pale as a ghost.”

As if determined to get her blood circulating, he vigorously massaged her arm.

It was born of concern, no doubt, but the grip strength of a Swordmaster was no joke.

It hurt like hell! Forget circulation, her blood was about to burst right through her veins!

“Let go!”

The seasickness was gone now.

She wasn’t dizzy anymore either; in fact, she felt as comfortable as if she were on solid ground.

“I’m fine now.”

Of course, everything was fine. She was fine now.

“I just had a bit of a dream, that’s all.”

“A nightmare?”

Well. Was it a nightmare?

If it had been a dream of getting beaten by the countess at age five, she could at least call it a nightmare.

“No. My master showed up in my dream, and…….”

“Worried about your master?”

“No, why would I worry?”

Erica let out a small, hearty laugh. For some reason, it felt ridiculous.

“My master is the strongest in the world, what is there to worry about! Didn’t I tell you he’s a Swordmaster?”

Erica was certain.

If she set her mind to tracking him starting from the Ruins Area, she would be able to find that old man Pechenik within a month, or two at most.

She fully intended to grab him by the collar and demand he pay a fine for being late.

“I’d like to meet him too. Your master.”

“What?!”

Erica realized in an instant that she had overreacted. Ahem, ahem. She cleared her throat.

“Why do you… why do you want to meet my master?”

“Why are you suddenly stammering? Am I not allowed to meet him?”

“No, it’s not that you can’t, but…….”

Chaud.

Same age. S-rank mercenary. Unnecessarily a Swordmaster.

If Pechenik saw them side by side, what would he think?

An ungrounded irritation squeezed her heart.

‘I’m such an idiot.’

Damn it, what was Aura anyway, that she still couldn’t manifest it?

The bloodline of her biological father, Count Herace, was truly utterly useless.

“…….”

What a carefree bastard.

Looking at Chaud’s clear, innocent eyes just made her chest feel stifled.

This wasn’t envy or jealousy. It was just nothing.

So there was no helping it.

It wasn’t as if she could secretly hide someone as big as Chaud anywhere.

She would just have to be honest and tell her master that she had made a Swordmaster friend.

“I wonder what Master…….”

An illusion-like anxiety fluttered in the breeze.

“……will say when he sees you.”

“Hmm.”

Chaud rested his chin on his knee, tilting his head.

“I’m fully prepared to spar with your master.”

“……?”

That remark was completely absurd.

Erica pointed her finger at Chaud.

You, fight my master?

She had thought that even the slickest slacker in the world, Chaud, would shrink before a senior grand Swordmaster who stood as high as the heavens.

“My master is really strong.”

“You never know until swords clash.”

His confident tone was blithe and supple.

Down to the faint smile and the steady gaze fixed upon her.

He was so utterly cheeky it made her want to flick him in the forehead.

* * *

On the ship, the two often bickered.

Chaud didn’t actually think of it that way, but Erica fought alone.

“What’s with that tone?”

Her pretty eyes glared fiercely.

“Speak properly. It’s not ‘let’s say I won’—I really won!”

The arm wrestling tournament held by the sailors on the deck!

When the oak barrel underneath broke while arm wrestling Chaud in the finals, his arm had clearly tipped over more—by at least the width of a fingernail.

“Sure, sure. I told you, you won.”

“Ah, seriously, what is with that tone? Really? Want me to hit you?”

“Erica……. You shouldn’t say your inner thoughts out loud so clearly.”

That wasn’t the only thing about Chaud that got on her nerves.