## Chapter 109 – Orca. Bad Friend #2
Tap, tap – Aser, making dainty footsteps, ran through the hallway without sparing a glance anywhere else, heading straight for the courtyard.
She only looked at the main gate, running while panting for breath. Charlotte, who was sweeping the yard with a broom, noticed Aser and called out.
“Hey, kid! Where are you off to again? You’ve been going out a lot lately, did you get a boyfriend or something?”
Before Arwen unwillingly stepped down from the throne, Aser was a vibrant girl that could be seen anywhere.
Her only flaw, if it could be called that, was that she had far more energy than others her age.
Aser briefly stopped running and, holding up her pinky finger, yelled at Charlotte, who was being sarcastic.
“It’s none of your business!”
Seeing Aser yell at her, Charlotte immediately broke the broom she was holding and glared with a venomous look.
“That… that rude little…! Who did she take after to be like that?”
Aser didn’t care that Charlotte was clutching the back of her neck and approaching her; instead, she stuck out her pink tongue and teased her before dashing out of the castle gates.
She was walking along the mountain path that had to be passed to get from Arwen’s castle to the town when someone greeted Aser briefly from between the trees.
“Hey, over here.”
Burning red hair, eyes with a mixture of red hues. If fire were personified, wouldn’t it look like this? That’s how strong the girl’s impression was.
Aser found her and waved her hand in greeting, looking happy. The reason Aser came outside in the first place was because of that girl.
“Orca!”
Aser, unable to contain her joy, rushed between the trees where Orca was and shook her hand up and down.
In the castle, where Arwen, Charlotte, and the chef were the only adults, Aser lived a somewhat stifling life. Whenever she wanted freedom and went outside, she was always addressed with honorifics by adults older than her just because she was Arwen’s child. Orca was the only friend her age who taught her what freedom was.
She still vividly remembered their first meeting.
She happened to pass by a back alley and saw Orca lying among the piles of garbage, looking up at the sky with an expression as if she would die at any moment. Aser gave her a piece of bread she had bitten into and left, and that was their first meeting.
Aser, who had lived on a stage where bright sunlight always shone, receiving love from people, and Orca, who was born to a prostitute mother who met this man and that man whenever her body desired, not even knowing her father’s face, living a rough life in a back alley where it wouldn’t be strange to die at any moment, admired what the other had not experienced. It was perhaps inevitable that two people with completely different starting points in life would be drawn to each other.
After a brief greeting, they arrived in town together and were looking around the market when Orca gave Aser a sly smile and said.
“Hey, wanna see something fun?”
Aser’s eyes sparkled as she asked.
“What is it?”
Orca’s words and actions always piqued Aser’s interest, and without even realizing it, she came to admire her a little.
“Just stay here. Look around naturally.”
After advising Aser, Orca pulled her wide-brimmed hat down to cover her face and disappeared into the crowd of the market as if melting into it.
If it weren’t for the red hair sticking out from behind the hat, she wouldn’t have been able to recognize her.
She purposely bumped into the person in front of her, nodded her head, gave a rough apology, and then approached Aser again.
Orca, returning with a triumphant expression, opened her tightly clenched fist in front of Aser, and in her grasp was a small pouch.
Opening the mouth of the brown pouch revealed that it was full of silver coins.
“Did you see? That guy doesn’t even know his wallet was stolen from his pocket. He’s probably going to be really flustered when he gets home?”
Aser gave an interested look to Orca, who had stolen the wallet in the blink of an eye and burst into hearty laughter, but soon spoke cautiously with a worried expression.
“But isn’t that stealing? Shouldn’t we give it back?”
Orca erased the smile from her face and shrugged her shoulders with an expression that she didn’t understand.
“Why? Isn’t it the fault of the guy who got it stolen?”
A confident expression that she had done nothing wrong. Since they had grown up in different environments, it was inevitable that their ways of thinking were different.
For Orca, who was used to a life where you get robbed if you’re careless and you take if you have power, this was as natural an act as breathing or eating.
Even so, when Aser made an uncomfortable expression, Orca put her arm around her shoulder and spoke in a friendly voice.
“Don’t make such a fierce face. I’ll buy you something delicious with this.”
“O-okay….”
Of course, they didn’t only have good times.
She thought she had become quite close to Orca, but there were times when she didn’t understand her.
When Aser was bored, she would often go out to the streets to find Orca, and when she did, she could easily find her by searching the back alleys commonly found in District 7.
However, every time, Orca was covered in blood and fighting with someone.
No, from the start, it couldn’t be called a fight.
A fight is established on the premise that the two sides are evenly matched.
What Orca was doing was closer to unilateral violence.
Moreover, the opponent was not someone her age.
Her opponents were mainly adults with significantly larger heights than her. In addition, there were several instances of 1 against many, not just 1 against 1.
However, in front of her, who possessed overwhelming power already completed at a young age, the number of people, regardless of gender or age, didn’t really matter.
Joy and madness could be seen in Orca’s expression as she brutally beat down adult men with her two fists.
After a series of fights, when she wiped off the blood and gave a pure smile, Aser wondered if that was really the same Orca who spoke to her so kindly.
Aser had once asked her after she had finished a fight.
Why do you fight with people, why are you so eager to fight, how much more do you have to hurt and be hurt to be satisfied?
Orca, hearing the questions pouring out at her, answered at length in a voice that was endlessly serious and subdued.
It was a very long speech, similar to a lecture, which was rare for her, who usually liked to speak briefly and concisely about her feelings.
“I like fighting. Fighting with bare hands, fighting with long weapons, fighting with magic, everything. When the face of the opponent I hit with my fist distorts and I feel fear in that expression, when the opponent’s hot blood splatters on my body, I like it even when my flesh is torn by sharp objects. When I realize I can’t win and grab the hair of the opponent trying to run away in an ugly manner and grind their face against the wall, or when I trample on the head of a guy who has lost the will to fight, I feel so refreshed. Some of them are persistent, so they get up again and again, but when I crush them so hard that they can’t get up again, I even feel an unknown emotion. Yes, that’s the moment when I can finally feel that I’m alive. Other people may not understand me, but what can I do? I was born this way. I’ll stop if I find something more fun than fighting, but will there really be such a thing? Aser, I’m sorry to you, but I don’t think there will be such a thing in my life?”
After Orca’s long words were over, Aser stood there and couldn’t speak for a while.
She knew from the beginning that she was a crazy girl, but she didn’t know she was this far gone.
But shouldn’t a friend be able to embrace and handle even such flaws?
“Then you can fight with me. Don’t drag other people in for no reason.”
She blurted out those words without even realizing it, because if things continued like this, it seemed like Orca would cross a river from which she could never return.
If a friend was walking down the wrong path without even realizing it, it was the role of a friend to correct them.
Orca seemed surprised by Aser’s statement, widening her eyes and looking at her face for a while.
Orca frowned, made a hmm – sound as if lost in thought, or crossed her arms and looked at the sky or the ground, showing a look of contemplation.
Soon, as if she had found an answer, Orca’s expression brightened more than before, and she grabbed both of Aser’s shoulders and opened her mouth cheerfully.
“Yeah, why haven’t I been thinking about that all this time?! Besides, you’re the Demon Lord’s daughter, right? Then you must be pretty strong. It’ll be fun.”
She felt like something was going wrong, but seeing Orca so happy, she couldn’t back down.
Orca’s hands gripping Aser’s shoulders tightened.
“Then please take care of me from now on. I’m telling you in advance, I’m not going to go easy on you just because you’re my friend.”
After that, the relationship between the two changed a little from before.
Even when they were laughing and playing as usual, if Orca stared silently with a blank expression, Aser would get up from her seat without complaint. Orca staring intently was a kind of signal that she wanted to fight now.
Accustomed to her request, the two headed to a dark back alley to prepare for a fight as usual.
At first, she couldn’t easily adapt to fighting, which she had never done in her life, but people are creatures of adaptation, aren’t they? Aser was strangely wondering about herself for not feeling anything strange about this act.
As a result of the fight, unlike what Orca had said at first, that she wouldn’t go easy on her, the winner was always Aser.
That fact was an unchanging law that would not be broken even after several years.
In some ways, it was a natural thing.
In the first place, Orca’s abilities were close combat based on overwhelming physical abilities and firepower from the absurd attribute of the Seven Flames of Fire, that is, abilities that were only effective when approaching the opponent.
For Aser, who had been manipulating space since birth, even approaching was impossible.
She would suddenly teleport into the air and fall with the debris of a building, and just when she thought she was close, she would be far away again. Sometimes, Aser, angry at her provocative remarks, would use space to cut her skin, and she would often bleed profusely because she couldn’t see a way to avoid the attack.
Seeing Orca, who had never won a single victory and had a resentful expression but at the same time had a refreshing smile because she could satisfy her desires, Aser could confidently say that her choice at that time was not wrong.
