erica castro

i will wrench the truth from your degenerate maw.
【 intj 8w9 (853) spsx 】
upper right thigh down
overview
research consultant & average emotionally dead businessman. detached & aloof on the surface belying a greater apathy & callousness. at best she's sarcastic & teasing, silently accommodating, lenient in her tolerance for the more unorthodox behaviors of a select few. at worst she's cruel, paranoid, & vindictively possessive, a slave to her need for control. has little empathy for others & has no qualms about taking advantage of them to advance her own agenda.

displayed no rot symptoms in childhood but developed rapid overnight onset rot in her early teens in her right leg, climbing to above her knee within the few hours prior to being rushed to a hospital. her mother remarked with resignation that erica took after her late father who had passed from the same unusually rapid variant of rot. her condition was grinded to a near crawl through expensive, experimental medicine that she's continued to use since. the rot has since claimed most of her thigh. deeply resents the rot for making her a slave to own body (→ desperate gambit to control the fate of an already written ending).

involved in under the table information brokering to strengthen her own network and to secure the capital needed to fund her personal research into the mechanisms of the rot. her illegal activities are kept under tight wraps & she's methodical in leaving behind no traces of her involvement.

connections
lamia - her first friend and first love, the subject of her sx fixation. became acquainted in high school after lamia picked a fight with her & the rest is history. the only person who can consistently make her feel something, positive & negative, without much actual resistence from erica. the most tolerant of lamia's antics even if she won't participate in them herself, quietly cleaning up any messes lamia leaves behind. a relationship comparable to that of a person taking care of a stray cat; averse to actually trying to tie lamia down to avoid the possibilty of severing their current bond (subverted in worse timelines & snapping in a paranoid rage, forcibly chaining lamia to her & disregarding any respect that exists between them).

vincent - sometimes loosely defined friends, sometimes bitter rivals.

mother - overbearingly doted upon by her mother as her only child & remaining piece of her late husband.

paxtyn - BL lesbian hate sex. an immoveable mountain vs an infinite ocean.

kai - family friends, but an otherwise indistinct & distant relationship.

afterword
→ lives alone in a nice high rise apartment in the central city notwithstanding spontaneous stays from lamia; constantly stocked with various bottles of alcohol as a result.
→ cooking is bothersome so she eats out at a nearby restaurant after work every day. she's an otherwise fine cook thanks to her mother but is of the opinion that it just makes more sense to eat the cooking of someone who's actually skilled at it (← the opinion of someone who has never not been able to afford to eat out). the kind of person to be satisfied eating the same meal every day as long as it was convenient.
→ suspects there is more to the rot than what meets the eye.