Chapter 30
‘It can’t be. It can’t…….’
I turned around and stepped inside Happy House. I headed straight for the banquet hall where I had first discovered the wolf.
There, amidst the fragments of a broken dining table, lay a mess of torn clothing.
I wanted to run away. But my feet were already moving toward it. One slow step. Then another.
I walked to where the clothes were.
A neat, dark green tailored suit and a flare skirt of the same color.
Before leaving for the train station this morning, I had said goodbye to Susanna, who was busy packing the last of the things at the mansion. This was the exact outfit she had been wearing then.
Only then did I notice another unidentifiable corpse lying in a corner of the banquet hall.
The creature, which looked like a bear, was about the size of a young child, and something resembling a metal skewer was driven into its head.
Thud. Without realizing it, the strength left my legs, and I collapsed onto the floor.
‘The wolf I just killed…… was it Susanna?’
Whether it was the bear or the wolf, it seemed certain that one of them was Susanna.
I hadn’t known Susanna for very long. Only about half a year at most.
But she was one of the two people I had desperately wanted to protect if the world were to end.
‘And yet, I killed her with my own hands. My own hands…….’
My hands felt numb, as if paralyzed.
I sat blankly on the floor, staring vacantly at the tattered hem of Susanna’s clothes.
‘By my own hands…….’
If I hadn't told Susanna to come down to Brunel, would she have been okay?
In the novel, the population of the capital, excluding Aurora’s party, was described as being completely wiped out, but perhaps there were other survivors who remained hidden, simply unmentioned in the text.
Susanna might have lived.
‘What use are these assumptions now? What use…….’
Something rolled down my cheek. It took me a long time to realize they were tears.
Boom—!
I snapped back to my senses at the sound of a distant explosion. I didn't even have the luxury of time to grieve.
The sound came from the direction of the Happy House main gate. Monsters were still swarming outside the walls.
I tried to remain as silent as possible.
I carefully gathered Susanna’s torn dress and placed it in her room, then dragged the bear from the banquet hall and threw it out into the garden.
I don’t know how I managed to process all those tasks.
‘I have to live.’
That’s why I came here.
With a dazed mind, I chewed on those words like a mantra. I hoisted the collapsed Eden onto my back and moved straight inside.
To think I would end up protecting Eden. Of course, he would scoff if he heard me say that.
The original plot had shifted, but that wouldn't stop Aurora from meeting the scientist male lead, Ezra, right?
Ominous thoughts flickered through my mind, but I decided to focus on the present first. I couldn't afford to lose the present while worrying about the original story.
For now, I laid Eden on the bed in the room across from mine. Then I sat beside him for a moment, leaning my body against the bed.
‘This is only the beginning.’
That was the reason I had come down to Brunel Village to avoid the protagonists in the first place. Because I didn't want to go through things like this.
“The two of them must have been very loved by God. To be taken away so early.”
I suddenly remembered the words Harrison had said to me as I cried in front of my parents' grave years ago.
Right. That’s it. God must have wanted to see Susanna sooner.
‘But even so, the fact that I sent her away with my own hands doesn't change.’
Leaning against the bed, I buried my face in the blankets and sobbed.
I couldn't believe it. Why did this have to happen to us?
I cried and cried until I collapsed from exhaustion.
As my eyes grew heavy with fatigue, a faint thought of Harrison surfaced.
‘What about Harrison……?’
Could the reason Harrison failed to arrive at the station today be because he had already been attacked by those things?
‘No. Let’s not think negatively.’
Harrison will be safe too. I can save both of them. And Eden as well.
‘I can save them. I built Happy House to survive, Cherry. You can do this.’
I kept repeating those self-suggestions until I finally fell asleep right there.
*
Early afternoon on the day the world ended.
At Cherry’s request, Harrison had packed five suitcases filled with weapons.
Perhaps because of Eden, the police had caught wind of something and were inspecting carriages leaving the capital, making it impossible to travel safely by carriage.
Instead, Harrison decided to use the train, acting as if he had nothing to hide.
The train running to the southern part of the Graeden Kingdom was owned by a company the Sinclair family invested in.
Because of this, Harrison was able to load the weapons into the cargo hold after paying a suitable bribe.
It was a somewhat reckless and dangerous move, unlike the usual Harrison,
“Come quickly, Harrison.”
But he had no choice, as Cherry’s urgent voice kept echoing in his ears.
There were four stops in total from the capital, Benton, to Kintne.
And there was only one stop left until Kintne Station. Just one stop.
The train, which had stopped at Westmore Station, showed no sign of departing.
Suddenly, an announcement came that roads were being blocked starting from Westmore and that the train service would also be suspended following instructions from the police authorities.
Harrison sat anxiously on the train, debating whether he should switch to a carriage.
AAAAAGH!
At that moment, a man in torn clothes screamed and ran into the train. That was the beginning.
The man collapsed onto the train floor, twisting his body grotesquely, and suddenly began to transform.
Fur sprouted in an instant, his legs elongated, and three eyes appeared on his forehead. Within his gaping mouth, sharp, pincer-like fangs were visible. And then, it began to devour the people nearby.
AAAAGH!
KYAAA!
From then on, hell was unleashed inside the train.
Eerie, bizarre-looking monsters continued to appear, and the number of survivors dwindled.
People fled in a frenzy, pushing and trampling others, even throwing fellow passengers to the monsters as bait to save themselves.
As a result, the train exits became completely blocked.
Harrison quickly hid under a seat. The situation made it impossible to escape outside.
The floor of the train within his sight was drenched in blood.
Grrrk.
Harrison held his breath. He heard something like a monster’s growl right nearby.
Thump. Thump.
A pair of hairy feet passed by the seat where he lay prone.
‘I wish I had a weapon on me.’
Of all things, the weapons he had brought were all in the cargo hold.
Suddenly, Harrison recalled the day Cherry had come to him out of the blue, asking him to procure weapons.
“Why do you suddenly need weapons?”
“Because I want to protect myself.”
Wasn’t the reason he was heading to Brunel with weapons right now also because of Cherry’s request? It felt eerily consistent with the current situation.
Furthermore,
[Exclusive Report! Heiress Cherry Sinclair Borrows 100 Million Gold for Overseas Business! What Exactly is This Non-Existent Overseas Business……!]
She had borrowed 100 million gold without a word to him and then disappeared to Brunel.
Then, Harrison suddenly remembered something Cherry had said.
“Harrison, the truth is, the world is going to end soon. An infectious disease that turns people into monsters is about to spread. I’m going to Brunel to prepare for the apocalypse.”
Cherry knew. She knew the world would become like this.
‘So that’s why she suddenly bought a mansion in a rural village and did all those strange things.’
Harrison felt as if all the puzzle pieces were finally clicking into place. Cherry’s suspicious behavior finally made sense.
But if that was the case, how could Cherry have known such a thing in advance?
‘Whatever the case, I just hope she’s safe.’
Asking for the full story would come later.
With the super strength Cherry possessed, she might be able to overcome this situation without much difficulty, but if the number of monsters was this high, that was a different story.
‘Still, to think that taking that medicine at Chairman Sinclair’s insistence would help like this.’
Cherry had been born with a weak constitution.
Chairman Sinclair, who was always worried about her, had suddenly brought some medicine from somewhere one day.
After taking the medicine for a year, Cherry’s health improved noticeably. However, the effect was so excessive that she developed incredible super strength.
She had desperately hidden her strength. A woman being strong was hardly considered a virtue among the upper class.
Harrison, respecting Cherry’s wishes, had also refrained from acknowledging it.
Without imagining that even Brunel Village would be in such a state, Harrison calculated the timing to escape the train, hoping that the Imperial Family and the Benton police would take swift action.
He had to hurry. Because Cherry was waiting.
