Chapter 39
He doesn’t budge, even though I’ve arrived.
Is he angry? Or did he perhaps fall asleep with his eyes open?
Knowing full well the weight of my own sins, I slunk over to his side and sat down quietly. Only then did Eden turn his head toward me. It seemed he hadn’t been sleeping with his eyes open after all.
“……I’m sorry. You should have woken me. Aren’t you tired?”
Eden crossed his arms, a look of sheer disbelief crossing his face as he let out a dry laugh.
“I went down there thinking something might have happened. You were dead to the world. I thought your snoring was going to bring the ceiling down.”
“I-I snored?”
I asked back, mortified. Then again, I had slept so deeply that it wasn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility.
“I’m joking. To be honest, you were sleeping so still and quietly that I thought you were dead.”
“The sun isn’t even fully up yet. Sir Eden, you should get some shut-eye, even if it’s just for a moment…….”
“I don’t think sleep will come.”
“Then shall I go back and sleep some more in your place?”
When I asked as if I’d been waiting for the chance, Eden stared at me with an expression that clearly said, ’What kind of person is this?’
“In times like these, the proper response is: ‘Then I shall stay and keep you company.’”
“I don’t really want to be your ‘company,’ though.”
I have a feeling I’ll just end up being interrogated again.
“Honestly…….”
Eden shook his head at me, looking like he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Has anything happened while I was out?”
“Nothing. No survivors in sight, and the number of monsters seems to be increasing.”
I listened to Eden as I sat down before the observatory railing. Then, I handed him the water bottle I’d brought.
“I can’t tell you how lucky I am that I filled the water tanks before the town ended up like this.”
I’ll have to craft a new filter before the tanks run dry, though.
Eden took the bottle from me and immediately gulped it down.
“Indeed. I feel as though luck follows me whenever I’m by Lady Cherry’s side.”
I couldn’t exactly say, ’That’s because I roughly knew the future and prepared for it,’ so I simply offered a smile.
“What if… what if the whole country is like this? What if the world has truly ended?”
“That won’t happen.”
“Look out there. Did you see how fast people turn into monsters? The infection rate was a hundred percent. It’s a very real possibility.”
Eden pressed his lips thin. Then, he leaned his head slightly against the railing and gazed at me intently.
“Then does that mean you and I are the only ones left in the world?”
Hearing him say that felt incredibly strange.
It’s foul play for him to say something like that while looking at me so sexily in that posture.
“Don’t you think there are others like us, hiding somewhere and surviving?”
At the very least, Aurora would be alive. Along with her men.
“I should pray that’s the case. One needs at least that much hope to keep going.”
Eden murmured quietly. To my eyes, the way he spoke made it seem as though he was the first to have abandoned hope.
With a face full of complicated thoughts, he gazed out toward the town. There was a heavy atmosphere clinging to him, one quite different from his usual self.
A moderately uncomfortable silence stretched between us before Eden cautiously spoke again.
“If the apocalypse really has come and we are the only two left in this world, it might be a bit dangerous.”
“Why would it be dangerous if there are only two of us?”
“That’s exactly why it’s dangerous. Do you trust me, Lady Cherry?”
Eden, who was leaning his arm on a bent knee, asked while looking at me. A somewhat wicked smile played on his lips. It was likely a question meant to test me.
Why was he being so cynical? I thought he’d keep his wits about him since he’s such a principled man, but his eyes already looked a bit frayed at the edges.
Is it because of me……?
I felt the need to help Eden pull himself together. Or rather, let’s call it a sense of responsibility.
Eden has to remain righteous. Because that was the Eden I knew from the novel Love in a Ruined World.
“I trust you.”
“To what extent?”
Is he planning to keep raising the stakes?
“Up to the point where I can handle it.”
“And where exactly is the line you can handle?”
“Right before I feel the urge to punch you?”
In other words, as long as he doesn’t piss me off enough to make my fists fly, we’re good.
Eden stared at me blankly, looking lost for words. Then, as if he found it absurd, he burst into laughter. He really is beautiful when he smiles.
After slowly wiping his face with his hand, he spoke to me.
“I wondered why, of all people, it had to be Lady Cherry I was left with, but now I find myself thinking it’s a relief that it was you.”
“Don’t insult me to my face.”
“It was a compliment.”
Eden replied, shaking his head. Still, I was glad to see the life return to his eyes compared to a moment ago.
I picked up the binoculars and scanned the town again. I’ll have to move once the sun is fully up.
However, Eden’s confessional “what-ifs” weren’t over yet.
“I have wondered before… if the world were to end tomorrow, what would be the last thing I’d say to people? Not that I ever actually wanted things to turn out like this.”
I didn’t think a man like Eden would indulge in such fantasies. As I tilted my head in confusion, Eden asked me again.
“Doesn’t everyone imagine things like that? Is it just me?”
“Yes. I think it’s just you, Sir Eden. I don’t do that.”
I’d thought of famous quotes like, ’If the world were to end tomorrow, I would plant an apple tree,’ but I didn’t engage in such sentimental imaginings. If the world was ending, my only thought was that I needed to build a bunker immediately.
“Lady Cherry, you…….”
Eden trailed off and fell silent.
“What is it? Don’t just trail off like that. It makes me look weird.”
“It’s just that it’s my first time meeting someone who thinks as one-dimensionally as you do.”
“There you go, insulting me again.”
“I told you, it’s a compliment.”
“It’s an insult.”
“Living like you do is probably happier than having a complicated mind.”
“I was living happily. Emphasis on the past tense.”
Until I remembered my past life, and until the world went to ruin, I was happy.
I turned to face Eden and leaned my back against the railing.
Did his words just now mean that he considers himself to have a complicated mind? That was a bit unexpected. Judging by his looks and his behavior, he didn’t seem like the type to live so complicatedly.
‘Well, I suppose becoming a police officer instead of inheriting the Dukedom of Lancaster is the definition of living a complicated life.’
“Do you have a complicated mind, Sir Eden? You’re different from how you look. Was that why you were unhappy?”
“I wasn’t unhappy. I just had a lot of grievances.”
Facing me, Eden’s expression was calm. Yet, at the same time, it was a face that seemed to hide many stories.
‘There wasn’t much mentioned about Eden’s past in the novel…….’
That made sense. Eden wasn’t a male lead candidate; he was positioned as the heroine’s older brother.
“What were you so aggrieved about? Anyone else would give anything to live as the heir to the Lancaster Duchy.”
“That was the grievance. The fact that I was the heir to the Lancaster house.”
What was he talking about now?
“My father is an honorable man. Or so I believed for at least five years.”
Five years ago would be around the time Aurora was adopted. Did he feel rebellious because a girl he’d never met suddenly became his sister?
“The Duke of Lancaster still has an excellent reputation, doesn’t he?”
“Publicly, yes. It was a perfect mask—so perfect that even I, his son, was completely deceived.”
“A mask……?”
I don’t recall anything like this in the original story. Aurora’s family circumstances were never detailed.
“He simply doesn’t get blood on his own hands, but he is involved in all sorts of crimes and illegal activities.”
Eden spoke of his family’s shame—and his own—so freely, even though others would have hidden it.
I was a bit flustered. Was it alright for him to tell me this? I am Cherry Sinclair, after all.
“Is that why you became a police officer?”
Eden nodded.
“You could call it a cowardly escape.”
“It was conscientious. At least you didn’t turn a blind eye. Unlike me.”
I knew that the Sinclair family committed many illegal acts to expand their business and make money.
But unlike Eden, I had no conscience. I didn’t care about the pain of others or how they saw me; I only pursued my own happiness.
Eden stared at me intently. Though he didn’t say it out loud, he too must have thought about the many affairs tied to the Sinclair family.
Eventually, he let out a sigh and spoke.
“I’m not that conscientious either. I couldn’t bring myself to take my father down, so I simply walked out on my own feet to atone elsewhere.”
Like an idiot.
He muttered the last part so quietly I wasn’t sure if I heard it correctly. Regardless, Eden’s tone remained stoic.
“I’m telling you this because you seem to have the misconception that I’m some virtuous police officer. My intentions for becoming one were impure to begin with……. The Lancaster blood doesn’t just disappear, does it?”
“No matter how it started or what your intentions were, the people you’ve helped must be grateful to you.”
It was a comment I’d offered with some care, but it didn’t seem to provide much comfort. He continued in a low voice.
“It was just a promise to myself. To lock up people like my father. So that one day…….”
Eden didn’t finish his sentence. But I could half-guess the words he’d swallowed.
He was planning to take down the Duke of Lancaster one day, wasn’t he?
“I thought you were a person just like my father. That’s why I disliked you, Lady Cherry.”
“……Wait, are you attacking me all of a sudden?”
He even said I was like his father. I don’t know much about the Duke of Lancaster, but that felt quite insulting. It was also my first time hearing a man tell me I reminded him of his father.
