Chapter 396: Trauma bonding

Electra’s POV

I let out a light scoff the moment Irina asked me how she thought we became best friends. The question felt almost ridiculous considering the situation I was in, and I couldn’t help the small shake of my head that followed. “Have you forgotten that I don’t remember the last twenty years of my life?” I asked her, raising a brow. “You’re asking the one person who definitely wouldn’t know the answer.”

Irina rolled her eyes a little at that, but there was no real irritation in the gesture. If anything, she looked like she expected my reaction. “I know you don’t remember,” she said calmly. “I’m not asking you for the real answer. I’m asking you to take a wild guess. Just guess how you think we became close.”

I stared at her for a moment, thinking about the question more seriously than I originally planned to. If I was being honest, the answer didn’t seem obvious to me at all. I didn’t know the old version of myself, and I didn’t know what kind of person I had been before all my memories disappeared. The only thing I had to go on were the little pieces they had told me and the small instincts I felt about myself now. Still, I tried to think about it logically.

After a few seconds, I shrugged slightly and gave the only answer that seemed possible to me. “Well,” I said slowly, “from everything I’ve heard so far, it sounds like my life wasn’t exactly easy. So if I had to guess… maybe you had a hard life too. Maybe that’s how we became friends. Two miserable people finding each other by accident.”

I turned my head slightly to look at her, trying to read her expression and see if my guess had been anywhere close to the truth. Irina stared back at me for a second before suddenly letting out a quiet chuckle. It was the kind of laugh someone made when they found something unexpectedly accurate.

“That’s called trauma bonding,” she said.

The phrase made me blink slightly.

Irina leaned back against the rooftop railing and looked out over the campus for a moment before continuing. “Besides Roxana and Penelope, there was someone else too. Her name was Deena. All five of us used to be close, and in one way or another, we were all dealing with something heavy in our lives, and somehow we ended up finding each other. That’s how it started.”

I stayed quiet, letting her speak.

“The reason you and I became the closest,” she continued, “was because we met first. The others came later, but by then we were already inseparable.”

She paused there for a moment before turning to look at me again. The expression in her eyes had changed slightly, and there was something in it that I couldn’t quite place.

“To me,” she added quietly, “you weren’t just a friend.”

I tilted my head slightly.

“You were my savior.”

That word caught me off guard, and for a moment I didn’t respond. I simply looked at her, waiting to see if she would explain what she meant. Something about the way she said it felt too serious for me to interrupt.

Irina noticed my silence but didn’t seem uncomfortable with it. Instead, she took a slow breath and continued talking as if she had already decided that this conversation needed to happen.

“I told you earlier that I grew up in a family full of men,” she said. “Five older brothers and one younger brother. When people hear that, they usually think it must have been fun growing up with so many siblings, but for me, it wasn’t like that.”

Her voice wasn’t emotional, but there was this heaviness underneath it that made me listen more carefully.

“My father was a powerhouse in Varin,” she continued. “A very respected one, so everything in our house revolved around strength, discipline, and the idea of carrying on the family legacy. From the time we were children, my brothers were trained to follow in his footsteps. They were taught how to fight, how to command soldiers, and how to think like leaders.”

She paused before adding the next part. “And my father made it very clear that if I wanted to have any value to him, I would have to do the same.”

I frowned slightly. “That doesn’t sound very reasonable,” I said.

Irina gave a dry smile. “It wasn’t,” she said. “The problem was that my father didn’t see me as his daughter. He saw me as another soldier who just happened to be born in the wrong body. So he trained me the same way he trained my brothers. Harder, actually, because in his mind, if I wanted to prove that I wasn’t useless, I had to work twice as hard.”

I frowned slightly as I listened to her. The way she described it made my chest feel strangely heavy, even though the story wasn’t about me.

“He pushed me the same way he pushed my brothers,” she continued. “Training, discipline, and constant competition. The difference was that no matter how hard I tried, I could never be as strong as them. They were bigger, faster, stronger… and that meant I was always falling behind.”

She shrugged, but I could see the tension in her shoulders. “So I spent most of my childhood living in their shadows. My father barely looked at me unless it was to criticize something, and to him, I was always the weak link in the family.”

I let out a quiet breath before asking the first question that came to mind. “What about your mother?”

Irina scoffed at that. “My mother?” she repeated. “She wasn’t any better.”

She turned her head slightly, staring at the sky above us as she spoke. “I’m pretty sure the entire family was disappointed when the sixth child turned out to be a girl instead of another boy. My mother adored my brothers. She doted on them constantly, praised their strength, and treated them like they were the pride of the family.”

Her voice dropped slightly. “As for me… I might as well have been invisible.”

The way she said it was so calm that it somehow made the words even heavier.

“She rarely acknowledged me unless it was to remind me that I needed to work harder to catch up with the boys. So between my father’s expectations and my mother’s indifference, I grew up feeling like I didn’t really belong anywhere in that house.”

She fell silent for a moment before continuing. “That’s why they sent me here.”

I looked at her. “To Elysium?” I asked.

She nodded. “I was only ten years old when they sent me to Elmeria,” she said. “Most people thought it was because my family wanted to give me a good education. The truth is that my father simply didn’t want me around. Sending me away meant he could continue living as the proud father of six strong sons instead of admitting that one of his children didn’t fit the image he wanted.”

The rooftop was quiet again after she finished speaking. The wind moved gently around us, and I found myself staring at the ground as I tried to process everything she had just told me.

“That sounds…” I paused, trying to find the right word. “…miserable.”

Irina shrugged slightly. “It was just a normal life for me.”

I studied her face for a moment before asking the question that had been sitting in my mind since she called me her savior.

“If that was your life,” I said slowly, “then how exactly did I save you?”

She turned her head and looked at me again, and the expression on her face was something I couldn’t fully understand. It wasn’t just gratitude. It was something deeper than that, something that looked almost like admiration.

“No one else knows this story,” she said quietly. “Not Roxana, and not Penelope.”

I raised an eyebrow, watching as she continued.

“When I first came to Elysium, I was completely alone. I didn’t know anyone here, and I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. The pressure from my family followed me even after I left Varin, and I kept hearing my father’s voice in my head every time I thought I failed at something.”

She paused briefly before finishing her sentence. “Eventually, it became too much.”

I watched her carefully now. “There was a day,” she said quietly, “when I decided that I didn’t want to keep living like that anymore.”

My chest tightened slightly.

“I was ready to end it,” she admitted.

The words stayed in the air between us, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what to say.

“And that’s when you showed up,” she continued.

Her voice softened slightly. “You found me before I could do anything stupid. I don’t even remember what you said exactly, but you refused to leave me alone. You stayed there with me for hours, arguing with me, insulting me, and refusing to let me leave your sight so I wouldn’t hurt myself.”

She smiled faintly at the memory. “You were stubborn, annoyingly stubborn.”

I blinked slowly. “That sounds like me,” I muttered.

Irina nodded. “Eventually you dragged me away from that place and forced me to come back here with you. That was the first time anyone had ever fought that hard just to keep me alive.”

She looked directly at me now. “So yes,” she said quietly. “You saved my life that day.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. The idea that the version of me who existed before had done something like that felt strange. It was like hearing a story about a completely different person who just happened to share my name.

Irina continued watching me for a few seconds before adding one final thing. “That’s why I said you’re my savior,” she said.

Her voice was calm, but the meaning behind her words was unmistakable. “And that’s why you’re the only person I would ever be willing to protect with my life.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep