Chapter 3
Chapter 3♡
"Go ahead and try to pounce on me if you can♡ Even with such a clear opening…… you still can’t lay a finger on me, can you? What a spineless cowardly childhood friend……♡"
Her brazen taunt tickled my ear.
"Erica…? W-wait a second."
"I don’t want to~♡"
Ignoring my plea, Erica pressed herself deeper into my arms.
She knelt up on the bed, and the candlelight caught in her eyes, making them glow a deep red.
The fragrant scent of her skin filled the cramped room, so rich it made my lungs feel numb every time I breathed it in.
"Hnn. Still not falling for it?"
Erica pouted as if disappointed, then went a step further and settled herself right on my thighs, pressing herself even more tightly against me.
The swell of her breasts crushed against my chest, soft friction blooming between us with every movement.
"Why are you so stiff, Eric? Scared? Or am I just not attractive enough?"
"It’s not that……!"
"Heeey, fine."
Erica tightened both hands around my neck and forced my head downward.
Then, with the tip of her small, soft tongue, she gave my earlobe a sly lick.
Lick……♡
"Nng……!"
A shiver shot down my spine.
Before that jolt could even fade, her voice grew thicker, more intimate, and slid straight into my ear.
"You know, Eric. Have you ever imagined this? You, the one who always gets called 'scrub' and lectured and looked down on by me…… climbing on top of me and doing whatever you want, utterly ravaging me?"
"……What are you talking about, Erica."
"Me—Erica, this arrogant, brilliant first-class magician—completely pinned beneath you, crying 'I’m sorry……♡ I’m sorry for acting so full of myself all this time. From now on, please do whatever you want, Master……♡' while I spread my legs and beg?"
Her voice was indecently seductive.
As if she were savoring my reaction, Erica slowly traced the skin around my lips with her fingers and whispered sweetly, as though she meant to bring me utterly to ruin.
"Look at that face turning red. Eric, you actually want to see that, don’t you? You’re dying to hear me begging with my head gone blank from pleasure……♡"
"Erica…… I……"
"Come on, stop pretending to be so proper. You can do whatever you want. Tear up my clothes, too—rip apart that haughty pride of mine and make a mess of it all. Hm? Be honest, you scrub♡"
"……Ugh!"
"Use that tiny body of mine to pin me down with yours, and violate me until I’m the one begging for forgiveness. I won’t even be able to resist—I’ll just turn into a slut fawning over you……♡ So come on……♡"
My heart pounded like it was about to burst.
Erica’s temptation was flawless in the most miserable way possible.
I wanted to shove her onto the bed at once, bite down on those pretty lips, and watch her collapse beneath my feet.
The pleasure of becoming her master, of owning and controlling everything.
But just as I was about to drown in that desire, a cold warning rang out inside my head.
No. The moment she becomes mine…… I’ll face the tragedy of losing something precious again.
My childhood.
The last moments of my mother, wrapped in a straw mat and growing cold, pressed heavily against my chest.
The scar of that winter, when the most precious thing in my life was taken from me, froze my whole body from within.
Erica was too precious.
She was the one and only light that had saved me.
And that was precisely why I could never possess her.
The moment she became mine, this cruel world would surely wrench her away from me right before my eyes.
If the only alternative was to endure that hellish agony of losing something precious all over again……
then it was better to have nothing at all.
The contradictory terror of having to push away this blazing salvation even while it stood right in front of me tore at me mercilessly.
Suppressing the heat burning through my lower body, I shoved Erica away with a rough, almost convulsive motion.
"……Enough."
"Ah……!"
Staggering from the sudden push, Erica backed away in flustered confusion.
Her golden hair was disheveled, and beneath it her expression had gone blank.
"Wh-what……? Scrub? You’re……"
"I told you I don’t like that kind of joke. What do you take me for?"
"A joke……? I’m throwing away all my pride, saying things this filthy, and trying to seduce you, and you think this is a joke?!’"
Water welled in Erica’s blood-red eyes, which were shaking hard now.
She hurriedly straightened her clothes, but her voice trembled thinly with humiliation.
"You’re seriously unbelievable. You’re running away because you’re scared, right? I laid everything out for you like this and begged you to fuck me, and you still don’t have the guts?"
"It’s not about guts. Not right now. I’m not in that kind of mood!"
Leaving her behind, I got up from the bed and went to the window.
Even as I drew in the cold night air…… the ache in my chest, where the wish to hold her and the trauma of never wanting to lose her had tangled together, showed no sign of cooling.
"Hey, Eric! Are you seriously rejecting me right now? Are you out of your mind? Are you impotent or what?!"
"Yeah, maybe I am out of my mind! So please, just stop already, Erica!!"
My sharp shout dropped the room into silence.
Erica glared at me fiercely, lips pressed tight together.
The moment I saw the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes, a stabbing pain shot through my chest.
Because I knew the truth beneath her usual arrogance—the pure affection she reserved for me alone…… it hurt even more.
But keeping this distance was the only way to keep myself safe.
"……Hmph, fine. If that’s how it is, then forget it. I’ve lost all interest in a cowardly scrub like you anyway. Don’t think you’ll get another chance!"
Erica whirled around and yanked the blanket over herself up to the very top of her head.
Even in the dark, I could see her shoulders trembling faintly as she sniffled.
"……Good night, Erica."
A long while later, a tiny voice, stained with hurt, drifted out from beneath the blanket.
"……Idiot. A total idiot who’ll never even understand how I feel……."
That was the last conversation we shared through that savage night.
■■■■■■
By the time the rough, ragged breathing that had filled the room began to settle.
Erica, who had lain on the bed as if dead, quietly tossed back the blanket and sat up.
Her cheeks were still flushed red with humiliation and resentment.
But the look she turned on Eric’s sleeping back was filled with deep suspicion.
There was no doubt that Eric’s eyes had held an intense desire for her.
The physical reaction he’d shown just before pushing her away had been far too honest to hide.
Then why had he rejected her as though he’d seen a monster?
"Seriously, for a useless scrub…… you’re driving me insane."
Erica slipped soundlessly off the bed and approached the sleeping Eric’s pillow.
With a light snap of her fingers, a faint violet current of magic spilled from her fingertips.
Ghost Dive, the highest-tier mind magic.
A forbidden spell that let her peer into the deepest abyss of another person’s subconscious and memories.
I didn’t want to use a spell like this on a scrub……
Biting her lip, she reached toward Eric’s forehead.
Even for a genius magician like herself, rummaging through someone else’s mind was not a pleasant act.
And especially not when that someone was Eric.
But if she couldn’t break through the invisible wall he’d put up, their relationship would remain trapped in a maze forever.
The instant the violet magic seeped into Eric’s mind, Erica’s consciousness plunged into his memories.
Fssshhhh.
The moment the gate to his mental world opened, what greeted Erica was…… suffocating darkness and a stench of blood so thick it made her chest tighten.
Then unfolded Eric’s deepest trauma.
This place…… the earl’s barn?
In a dark, damp corner of the barn, ten-year-old Eric was crouched in on himself, crying in silence.
In front of him was his mother, wrapped in straw mats and going cold as the servants carried her away.
The terror and despair little Eric felt poured directly into Erica’s soul as if synchronized there.
The scar of that winter day, when the most precious being in his life had been helplessly violated and stolen from him.
Precious things are always taken away. So if I can’t have them, then rather than suffer the tragedy of losing them in the first place, I won’t let anyone become mine.
At the poisonous monologue rising from the depths of his subconscious, Erica was about to let out a heavy sigh.
So that was it—his rejection wasn’t some grand refusal at all, but a wound so deep that he was terrified of breaking something precious by holding it too tightly.
Idiot…… where do you think I’d ever go without you……
She was just about to close the spell, moved by the truth of his heart, when it happened.
Out of the darkness, a pitch-black aura suddenly began to swirl, and an unthinkably grotesque fantasy started to play across the screen of memory.
It was the essence of Eric’s true “sexual kink,” the one he had felt when watching her in the training hall earlier that day, and again just now on the bed.
"……Ah?"
Erica held her breath at the images that erupted without warning inside her mind.
In the fantasy, she was pinned beneath some unfamiliar man, her magic sealed away.
She, who had always been arrogant and untouchable, was being mercilessly soiled by rough hands, her face smeared with humiliation and tears.
And the most shocking part of all:
Eric wasn’t trying to stop the man at all, but stood hidden beyond the crack in the door, watching the scene in real time with his breath held tight, getting aroused by it.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
[Haaah! That dick is so different from Eric’s… hngh…! Ahh…!♡]
[Shut up and focus on the pussy. You shameless horny bitch!]
[Ahh… hngh! Eric, I’m sorry… just for a little while… ngh, I’ll only cheat when we’re having sex…♡]
Within that filthy betrayal……
Eric’s soul, freed from the fear of being taken away, was bursting with a grotesque bliss.
A twisted fetish that bloomed in place of possessiveness, one born from watching himself being violated by another.
Swish—
The spell unraveled, and Erica’s consciousness was violently hurled back into reality.
"Haa……! Haa……!"
Erica stood at the bedside, breathing hard.
Eric’s true inner desire: hiding behind the distance of childhood friends, he would rather watch her be thoroughly ravaged by another man and indulge in that warped catharsis than risk losing her himself.
That twisted underside of him—she had seen it with perfect clarity.
"……Ha ha… ha ha ha!"
She’d expected anger or frustration to flood through her.
But what slipped from Erica’s lips was a breath of an entirely different kind.
"……Ahaha♡"
Bathed in moonlight, Erica’s red eyes curved with ecstasy.
Her mouth arced upward, a line so sharp and uncontrollable it seemed almost possessed.
