The Male Leads Are Trapped in My House

This was exactly why I had hesitated to enter the police station. I’d been afraid he’d interrogate me like this.

Should I just say I needed to use the phone? Or should I leave?

As I debated, I noticed the man lying on the floor trembling. He was so scared of dropping the glass balanced on his head that he couldn’t even move.

I swallowed nervously and looked at Ethan. I’d always known it, but he really wasn’t a normal person.

Seeing that I was frozen in place, Ethan smiled and casually introduced the man on the floor.

“He’s a domestic abuser. Don’t get the wrong idea. This trash isn’t even worth being called human. His wife is still unconscious in the hospital because of the bottle he swung at her.”

“Good heavens. And you let him live?”

Ethan burst out laughing at my response, clearly amused.

I was willing to bet Harrison’s glasses that Ethan was the one who shredded the man’s clothes into rags.

Ethan pulled out his pocket watch, checked the time, and then stood up.

“So, what brings you to the police station? Oh, are you here to invite me to the mansion?”

“I’m in the wrong place. My mistake.”

I calmly closed the door I had just opened.

On second thought, using the phone here meant I’d have to make the call inside that tiny police station—with Ethan listening in.

‘No way in hell.’

As soon as the door shut, I heard the sound of glass shattering inside.

“I told you I’d kill you if you broke that. Or… did you want to die?”

“AAAAHHHH!”

I quietly slipped away as screams echoed from the police station.

‘I’m never getting involved with that man.’

In the end, I had no choice but to head to the next village, Kintne, to find a phone.

But Kintne wasn’t much better than Brunel—it was just slightly larger. It was still a rural village, and the only phones were at the train station and the police station. Naturally, both were out of order.

‘Seriously? Is nothing going to go right today?’

I gave up on making a phone call and decided to send a letter through the post office instead.

I wrote to Harrison asking whether the weapons he was sourcing included firearms and also checked on the situation in the capital. No matter how I looked at it, Ethan’s sudden reassignment to Brunel seemed highly suspicious.

I even added a request to find a way to get Ethan transferred out of this village, if possible.

The letter would take a while to arrive, but it was still better than having Ethan eavesdrop on my calls.

On my way back to Brunel, I stopped in Kintne to pick up a newspaper.

[Social Parties Enter a Slump in the Absence of the Gossip Girl... Where is Cherry Sinclair?]@@novelbin@@

A social slump just because I was gone? More like people were bored without something to gossip about.

The rest of the articles weren’t particularly interesting either.

[Seagrave Family Confirmed to Have Connections to Ancient Artifacts...]

The Seagrave family was supposed to be nothing more than a legend. They were often mentioned in fairy tales I’d read as a child—heroes who protected the world from evil or served as humanity’s guardians. The kind of story you’d expect in a superhero movie. Kids loved those tales.

‘If a family like that really existed, I wish they’d show up and do something about the virus.’

I let out a deep sigh.

Anyway, since there was no news about the virus monsters, I tossed the newspaper away without hesitation.

Having taken care of all my errands, I finally returned to the mansion.

Now it was time to start the serious work—renovating and cleaning the place.

*****

I stood quietly in the middle of the garden, staring at the exterior of the mansion I had purchased.

This isolated mansion was so gloomy and filthy that it looked like a ghost might pop out at any moment. Vanilla hadn’t described the mansion in detail in the original novel, so I hadn’t expected it to be this bad.

The mansion was two stories high, with parts of the outer walls visibly crumbling. The garden, too, had been neglected for so long that it was overgrown with weeds.

The interior was in even worse condition. The rooms were filled with abandoned furniture and piles of trash, with dust blanketing everything. Honestly, it looked no better than a ruin.

Before starting the cleanup, I decided the mansion needed a name. Otherwise, I doubted I could grow attached to this rundown place.

“Cherry’s Temporary Shelter.”

I proudly made a sign, but the wording felt too plain and didn’t sit right with me.

“Hm. It feels soulless.”

I rewrote it.

“Cherry’s Temporary Shelter—Happy House.”

Placing my hands on my hips, I admired the sign in silence.

“This is a bit cuter.”

I smiled in satisfaction.

If I had known back then what kind of significance Happy House would one day hold for humanity, I never would have named it that.

I had no idea it would end up in history books as “Cherry’s Happy House.”

Anyway, after hanging the sign by the front door, I dusted off my hands and entered the mansion.

I spread out the floor plan Vanilla had given me on the first-floor lobby floor to get a sense of the mansion’s structure.

The two-story mansion was shaped like a backward L turned 90 degrees clockwise, with a fountain in the center.

In front of the fountain was a garden, which had a well and a small shed. The shed probably served as a storage space.

Only after passing through the garden could you reach the mansion’s front gate.

‘Just as Vanilla said, the garden’s spacious enough to grow a vegetable patch.’

Since I had never grown vegetables before, I had already bought a stack of gardening books. My survival depended on this, so I had to figure it out somehow.

‘I can do this.’

To survive for two years, I first needed to create an environment where I could produce my own food and secure water. I also needed to build defenses to protect the mansion from monster attacks.

Then, something odd caught my eye on the back of the blueprint.

There were faint traces of something written with a fountain pen and then scratched out.

‘Huh?’

I held the blueprint up to the sunlight streaming through the window and examined the letters carefully.

[Things to Remember.
1 is Brunel. 3 is Spring Water. 6 is Hague. 8 is Notium.]

That’s roughly what it seemed to say, but the rest of the text was impossible to make out.

‘What does this mean?’

I knew “Brunel” was the village name and “Notium” was a street name in the capital, but what were “Spring Water” and “Hague”?

It was a puzzling memo.

However, there was too much to do right now, so I decided to put this mystery aside and focus on my tasks.

‘Priorities first.’

I calmly began inspecting the mansion and 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 more rooms and a large salon.

One of the rooms near the banquet hall and kitchen had large windows that let in plenty of sunlight. Since it faced the garden, I chose it as my main living space.

The room was extremely messy, containing an unmade bed and a broken wardrobe. Still, it had a fireplace, so it seemed decent enough for me to stay in.

‘I’ll have to clean the fireplace too.’

I knelt in front of the fireplace. Some bricks from the mantel had collapsed and were blocking the firebox.

After clearing the broken bricks, I saw the metal grate for holding logs. Inside, there were partially burned logs and piles of ashes.

“Wait a second… What was burned here…?”

I noticed what looked like pieces of fabric among the logs—also partially burned.

There were scraps that resembled the fabric of a men’s jacket and others that looked like the sleeve of a dress. Beneath them, I saw something white and rigid.

“This is…”

I stared at it curiously.

‘Could this be… a human bone?’

The thought startled me so much that I flinched and dropped what I was holding. The fabric fell into the ashes, sending a small cloud of soot into the air.

“Cough, cough.”

Goosebumps spread across my skin, and my hair stood on end.

Once the dust settled, I looked inside the fireplace again.

The fabric I had dropped still lay on top of the ashes, and beneath it was the white object.

Upon closer inspection, I realized it was just a piece of chalk.

“Hah… That scared me.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, pressing a hand to my chest.

Even though I knew it wasn’t a human bone, I couldn’t shake the eerie feeling of being alone in this room.

‘Why are there torn pieces of fabric in the fireplace?’

It was too strange. After staring at the fireplace for a while, I stepped out of the room.

‘I’ll clean the fireplace later.’

As I walked out of the room, I saw a slightly chilly hallway.

I was so surprised that the hallway, which had been so clear just moments before, seemed to be haunted.

“No, Cherry, don’t be weak. This is your home from now on!”

I slapped myself hard on both cheeks, barely regaining my composure, and walked out into the main lobby.

‘Yeah. The original Vanilla survived here. I can do this.’

I thought to myself.