Chapter 10
This was exactly why I had hesitated to step into the police station. I knew I would be interrogated like this.
Should I ask to use the telephone? Or should I just leave? While I was agonizing over the choice, I noticed the man sprawled on the floor.
He was trembling violently, not even daring to move his head for fear that the glass resting on it might fall.
I swallowed hard and glanced at Eden. I’d known it before, but this man was truly something else.
When I remained frozen and unable to answer, Eden flashed a bright smile and introduced the man on the floor.
“He’s a domestic abuser. Please, don’t misunderstand. This piece of trash doesn’t deserve to be treated like a human being. His wife was rushed to the hospital because of a liquor bottle he swung at her. She still hasn’t regained consciousness.”
“Good heavens. And you’re letting him live?”
At my response, Eden burst into a delighted laugh.
I would bet Harrison’s glasses that Eden was the one who had turned the man’s clothes into those tattered rags.
Eden pulled a pocket watch from his trousers, checked the time, and stood up.
“So, what brings you to the station? Ah, perhaps you’ve come to invite me to your mansion?”
“I’ve come to the wrong place. Excuse me.”
I quietly closed the door, exactly as I had opened it.
On second thought, using the telephone would mean having a conversation inside that tiny station, right in front of Eden’s ears.
‘That is absolutely out of the question.’
The moment the station door clicked shut, the sound of a Scotch whisky glass shattering against the floor echoed from within.
“I believe I told you that if you broke that, you’d die? Oh, were you perhaps looking for a death wish?”
“Aaaargh—!”
Leaving the screams echoing inside the station behind me, I quietly hurried away.
‘I must never, ever get involved with that man.’
In the end, I had no choice but to travel all the way to Kintne, the neighboring village, to find a telephone.
However, Kintne was merely a slightly larger village than Brunel; it was still very much the countryside. The only places with telephones were the train station and the police station, and as luck would have it, all the lines were down.
‘Are you kidding me? Nothing is going right.’
Giving up on the phone, I decided to send a letter from the post office instead.
I wrote to Harrison, asking if any firearms were accidentally included in the weapons he was procuring and checking for any news from the capital. No matter how I looked at it, Eden being stationed in Brunel was just too suspicious.
I didn’t forget to add a request for him to find a way to get Eden kicked out of this village if at all possible.
It would take some time for the letter to be delivered, but it was better than calling him in front of Eden.
On my way back to Brunel, I stopped in Kintne to buy today’s daily newspaper.
[Social Season Hits Slump in Absence of ‘Gossip Girl’… Where is the Highly Anticipated Cherry Sinclair?]
Was it even possible for the social season to hit a slump just because I was gone for a moment? They were probably just bored because they ran out of things to gossip about.
The article that followed wasn’t particularly interesting either.
[Segrave Family Revealed to Have Actual Links to Ancient Artifacts…]
The Segraves were a family that existed only in legends, not in reality. They appeared often in the storybooks I read as a child—heroes who protected the world from evil, or guardians of humanity. It was the kind of story you’d see in a hero movie. That was why children loved them so much.
‘If a family like that actually existed, I wish they’d show up and do something about the virus.’
I let out a deep sigh.
At any rate, there was no news regarding the virus monsters I was waiting for, so I discarded the newspaper without regret.
Having finished all my errands, I finally returned to the mansion.
Now, it was time to begin the repairs and cleaning in earnest.
I stood still in the middle of the garden, staring at the exterior of the mansion I had purchased.
This problematic, secluded estate looked eerie and filthy enough for a ghost to appear at any moment. Since Vanilla never gave a detailed description of the mansion in the original story, I hadn’t realized it would be this bad.
The mansion was two stories high, with sections of the outer walls crumbling here and there. The garden, too, had been neglected for so long that it was overgrown with weeds.
The interior was in even worse condition. It was filled with abandoned furniture and trash, with thick layers of dust settled everywhere. To be honest, it looked no better than a haunted house.
Before starting the cleaning, I decided I needed to give the mansion a name. I felt like I could never grow fond of this wreck otherwise.
<Cherry’s Temporary Shelter>
I ambitiously crafted a sign, but the phrasing felt dull and didn’t sit right with me.
“Hmm. It lacks soul.”
I revised the text.
<Cherry’s Temporary Shelter: Happy House>
I placed my hands on my hips and quietly admired the sign.
“Now that’s a bit cuter.”
I smiled with satisfaction.
Had I known what ‘Happy House’ would eventually come to mean to humanity, I would never have given it such a name.
I had no idea then that the name ‘Cherry’s Happy House’ would one day be etched into the history books.
Regardless, I hung the sign in front of the main door, brushed off my hands, and stepped inside.
In the first-floor lobby, I spread out the blueprints I had received from Vanilla on the floor. I needed to grasp the layout of the mansion.
The two-story mansion was shaped like a U-bracket (⊓) rotated ninety degrees clockwise, with a fountain in the center.
There was a garden in front of the fountain, which contained a well and a hut. The hut appeared to be a storage shed.
Only after passing through this garden did one finally reach the front door of the mansion.
‘As Vanilla said, the garden is spacious, so it’ll be perfect for a vegetable patch.’
I had never gardened before, so I had already bought a stack of related books. Since it was a matter of survival, I had to make it work somehow.
‘I can do this.’
To survive the next two years safely, I first had to create an environment where I could be self-sufficient with food and water. I also needed to build defensive walls so the mansion would be safe from monster attacks.
However, I noticed something strange written on the back of the blueprint. There were traces of someone writing something in fountain pen and then crossing it out.
‘Huh?’
I held the blueprint up to the sunlight streaming through the window to examine the letters closely.
[Things to remember.
No. 1 is Brunel, No. 3 is Spring, No. 6 is Haig, No. 8 is Notium.]
That seemed to be what was written, but I couldn’t make out the rest of the words at all.
‘What does this mean?’
I knew ‘Brunel’ was the village name and ‘Notium’ was the name of a street in the capital, but what were ‘Spring’ and ‘Haig’?
It was a memo full of questions.
But with so much work to do immediately, I pushed the cryptic phrase to the back of my mind and focused on my tasks first.
‘I have to prioritize.’
Deciding to tour the mansion calmly, I stood in the first-floor lobby.
To the left of the lobby were two rooms, a banquet hall, and a kitchen; to the right were three rooms and a large salon.
One of the rooms near the banquet hall and kitchen received excellent sunlight. I chose that room, which had a window facing the garden, as my primary living quarters.
The room was very messy, containing only an uncleaned bed and a broken wardrobe. However, it had a fireplace, making it seem quite decent for living alone.
‘I’ll need to clean the fireplace, too.’
I sat down in front of the fireplace first. Some of the bricks on the mantel shelf had collapsed, blocking the firebox.
As I cleared away the broken bricks, I saw the iron grate inside, which was filled with half-burnt logs and piles of ash.
“Wait… what was being burned here…?”
I spotted what looked like a scrap of fabric among the logs. This, too, was partially burnt.
There were pieces of fabric that looked like a man’s jacket and a sleeve from a dress. And beneath those, I saw a stark white, hard stick.
“This is…”
As I looked at it curiously, a thought struck me.
‘Is this… a human bone?’
Startled by the thought, I jerked my hand away. The scrap of fabric fell from my fingers back onto the ash heap. A cloud of fine ash puffed into the air.
“Cough, cough!”
Goosebumps erupted over my skin, and the hair on my body stood on end. After a moment, the dust cleared, and I could see the inside of the fireplace more clearly.
The fabric I had just dropped lay atop the ashes, and the white stick was visible beneath it.
Looking closer, it was just a piece of blackboard chalk.
“Phew… You scared me.”
I stroked my chest in relief.
Even though I knew it wasn’t a human bone, I felt a bit creeped out being alone in this room.
‘Why on earth are torn scraps of fabric in the fireplace?’
That part was incredibly strange. After staring at the fireplace for a while, I left the room.
‘I’ll clean the fireplace later.’
Coming out of the room, the hallway looked somewhat bleak.
Was it because I had been so startled? The hallway, which had seemed fine just moments ago, now looked as if a ghost might truly appear.
“No, Cherry. Don’t be weak. This is your home from now on!”
Slapping both cheeks to snap myself out of it, I walked toward the central lobby.
‘Right. Vanilla lived here and survived in the original story. I can do it too.’
I steeled my resolve as I walked.
