Chapter 12
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 10
Chapter Title: Happy House
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This was why I’d hesitated to enter the police station. I was afraid he’d interrogate me like this.
Should I tell him I wanted to use the phone? Or should I just leave? I was debating what to do.
I could see the man on the floor, trembling, not daring to move his head for fear the glass would fall.
I gulped and looked at Ethan. I already knew it, but this man was no ordinary person.
When I froze, unable to answer, Ethan smiled brightly and introduced the man on the floor.
“He’s a domestic abuser. Don’t misunderstand. This piece of trash doesn’t deserve to be treated like a human. His wife was taken to the hospital because of a liquor bottle he swung at her. She still hasn’t woken up.”
“My goodness. And you let him live?”
Ethan burst out laughing at my response, as if he found it amusing.
I’d bet Harrison’s glasses that Ethan was the one who’d turned the man’s clothes to rags.
Ethan pulled a pocket watch from his trousers, checked the time, and stood up.
“So, what brings you to the police station? Ah, perhaps you’re here to invite me to your mansion?”
“I seem to have come to the wrong place. Excuse me.”
I quietly closed the police station door, just as I had opened it.
On second thought, using the phone would mean making a call inside that small police station, right in front of Ethan.
‘That’s absolutely out of the question.’
The moment the door closed, I heard the sound of the scotch glass hitting the floor and shattering.
“I believe I told you that you’d die if you broke it? Ah, were you perhaps hoping to die?”
Aaaargh!
Leaving the screams from inside the police station behind me, I quietly slipped away.
‘I must never get involved with that man.’
In the end, I had no choice but to go to the neighboring town of Kintne to find a phone.
But Kintne was just a slightly larger town than Brunel; it was still the countryside. The only places with phones were the train station and the police station, and as luck would have it, all the phones were broken.
‘Is this for real? Nothing is going my way.’
Eventually, I gave up on the phone and decided to mail a letter from the post office.
I asked Harrison if the weapons he was procuring included firearms and checked if everything was alright in the capital. No matter how I thought about it, Ethan’s transfer to Brunel was just too strange.
I also didn’t forget to add a request to find a way to drive Ethan out of this town, if possible.
It would take some time for the letter to be delivered, but it was better than making a call in front of Ethan.
On my way back to Brunel, I stopped in Kintne and bought a copy of today’s daily newspaper.
[Social Scene Stagnates in the Absence of Gossip Girl… Where in the World is the Much-Awaited Cherry Sinclair?]
The social scene is stagnating just because I’m gone for a bit? They must just be bored because they have nothing to gossip about.
The next article wasn’t particularly interesting either.
[The Segrave Family, Revealed to Have a Real Connection to Ancient Artifacts…]
The Segraves were a family from folklore, not one that actually existed. They appeared often in the fairy tales I read as a child—as heroes who saved the world from evil, or as guardians of humanity. The kind of story you’d see in a superhero movie. That’s why children loved them so much.
‘If a family like that really existed, I wish they’d show up and do something about this virus.’
I let out a deep sigh.
In any case, there was no news about the virus monsters I was waiting for, so I tossed the newspaper without a second thought.
Having finished all my errands, I finally returned to the mansion.
Now it was time to begin the real work of repairing, renovating, and cleaning the mansion.
* * *
I stood silently in the middle of the garden, gazing at the exterior of the mansion I had purchased.
This problematic, secluded mansion was so gloomy and filthy it looked haunted. In the original story, Vanilla never described the mansion in detail, so I had no idea it would be this bad.
The mansion was two stories high, with parts of the exterior walls crumbled away. The garden, too, hadn’t been tended to in a long time and was overgrown with weeds.
The interior was in even worse condition. It was filled with neglected furniture and trash, and a thick layer of dust coated everything. To be honest, it looked no different from an abandoned house.
Before I started cleaning, I decided I had to give the mansion a name. Otherwise, I didn’t think I could ever grow fond of this derelict place.
<Cherry’s Temporary Shelter>
So I ambitiously made a sign, but the phrasing was too plain for my liking.
“Hmm. It lacks a certain something.”
I rewrote the sign.
<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 in satisfaction.
Had I known then what the Happy House would one day mean to humanity, I would never have given it such a name.
At the time, I had no idea that the name ‘Cherry’s Happy House’ would be recorded in the history books.
Anyway, after hanging the sign in front of the main door, I dusted off my hands and went inside.
In the first-floor lobby, I spread out the mansion’s floor plans that Vanilla had given me. I needed to get a grasp of the layout.
The two-story mansion was shaped like a U rotated 90 degrees clockwise (⊓), with a fountain in the center.
In front of the fountain was a garden, and in this garden were a well and a small hut. The hut was probably a shed.
Only after passing through this garden did you reach the mansion’s main gate.
‘Just as Vanilla said, the garden is large, so it’ll be perfect for a vegetable patch.’
I’d never tended a vegetable garden before, so I bought a pile of related books. My survival was on the line, so I had to make it work somehow.
‘I can do this.’
To survive the next two years, I first needed to create an environment where I could be self-sufficient in food and water. I also had to build up defenses to keep the mansion safe from monster attacks.
But then, I noticed something strange written on the back of the floor plan. It was the trace of something written with a fountain pen and then crossed out.
‘Huh?’
I held the plan up to the sunlight streaming through the window to get a better look at the letters.
[Things to remember.
Number 1 is Brunel, Number 3 is the Springs, Number 6 is Hague, Number 8 is Notium.]
That seemed to be what was written, but I couldn’t make out the rest of the letters at all.
‘What does this mean?’
I knew ‘Brunel’ was the town’s name and ‘Notium’ was a street in the capital, but what were ‘the Springs’ and ‘Hague’?
It was a memo full of questions.
But with so much to do, I decided to push the meaningless phrase to the back of my mind and focus on the tasks at hand.
‘Priorities first.’
I decided to calmly look around the mansion and stood in the first-floor lobby.
To the left of the lobby were two rooms, a banquet hall, and the kitchen. To the right were three rooms and a large salon.
One of the rooms near the banquet hall and kitchen got excellent sunlight. I chose that room, with its window facing the garden, as my main living quarters.
The room was extremely dirty, containing only an uncleaned bed and a broken wardrobe. But it had a fireplace, so it seemed decent enough for living alone.
‘I’ll have to clean the fireplace, too.’
I sat down in front of the fireplace first. Some of the bricks from the mantelpiece had collapsed, blocking the firebox.
When I moved the broken bricks, I could see the iron grate inside, filled with half-burnt logs and a pile of ash.
“Wait… what was burning in here…?”
Among the logs, I found what looked like a scrap of fabric. It was also half-burnt.
There were scraps that looked like they came from a man’s jacket and a dress sleeve. And beneath them, I saw a hard, white stick.
“This is…”
I stared at it, puzzled, when a thought struck me.
‘Could it be… a human bone?’
Startled by the thought, I dropped it. The piece of fabric fell from my hand onto the pile of ash. A small cloud of soot puffed up.
“Cough, cough.”
Goosebumps broke out over my skin, and the hairs on my arms stood on end. After a moment, the dust settled, and I could see the inside of the fireplace more clearly.
On top of the ash lay the piece of fabric I had just dropped, and beneath it was the white stick.
Looking closer, I saw it was just a piece of chalkboard chalk.
“Hah… That scared me.”
I sighed in relief, my hand on my chest.
Even though I knew it wasn’t a human bone, I suddenly felt a little creeped out being alone in this room.
‘Why on earth would torn pieces of cloth be in the fireplace?’
That part was just too strange. After staring at the fireplace for a moment, I left the room.
‘I’ll clean the fireplace later.’
As I stepped out of the room, the slightly chilly hallway came into view.
Was it because I’d been so startled? The hallway, which had seemed perfectly fine just a moment ago, now looked genuinely haunted.
“No, Cherry. Don’t get weak. From now on, this is your home!”
I slapped both my cheeks, barely managing to pull myself together, and walked back to the central lobby.
‘That’s right. The original Vanilla survived here just fine. I can do it, too.’
I thought, trying hard to steady my resolve.