MLTMH 10

This was exactly why I had hesitated to enter the police station.

Because I was afraid he would question me like this.

‘Should I say I want to use the telephone? Or should I just leave?’

While I was thinking about it, I saw the man lying face down on the floor trembling. He could not even move his head because he was afraid the glass might fall.

I swallowed hard and looked at Eden.

I already knew it, but that man really was not an ordinary person.

When I stood there frozen without answering, Eden smiled brightly and introduced the man lying on the floor.

“He is a domestic violence offender. Don’t misunderstand. This piece of trash isn’t even worth treating like a human being. His wife was taken to the hospital because of the liquor bottle he swung at her. She still hasn’t regained consciousness.”

“My goodness. You left that thing alive?”

At my answer, Eden burst out laughing as if he found it amusing.

I would bet Harrison’s glasses that Eden was the one who had turned the man’s clothes into rags.

Eden took a pocket watch out of his trouser pocket and checked the time before standing up.

“So, what brings you to the police station? Ah, are you perhaps inviting me to the mansion?”

“I came to the wrong place. Excuse me.”

I quietly closed the police station door exactly as I had opened it.

Thinking about it again, if I wanted to use the telephone, I would have to make the call inside that tiny police station, with Eden listening.

‘Absolutely not.’

As soon as the police station door closed, I heard the sound of a glass falling to the floor and breaking.

“I believe I told you that if you broke that, you would die. Ah, did you perhaps want to die?”

“Gyaaaaaah─!”

I left the police station quietly, ignoring the scream coming from inside.

‘I absolutely must not get involved with that man.’

In the end, I had no choice but to go all the way to the neighboring village, Kintne, to find a telephone.

However, Kintne was simply a slightly larger village than Brunel. It was still the countryside.

The only places with telephones were the train station and the police station, but unfortunately, all the telephones were broken.

‘Does this make any sense? Nothing is going right.’

In the end, I gave up on the telephone and decided to send a letter from the post office.

I asked Harrison whether the weapons I had requested might include firearms, and I also asked how things were in the capital.

No matter how much I thought about it, Eden being assigned to Brunel was too strange.

If possible, I also added a request asking him to find a way to drive Eden out of this village.

It would take some time for the letter to arrive, but it was still better than making a phone call in front of Eden.

And on my way back to Brunel, since I had stopped by Kintne anyway, I bought today’s newspaper.

[Social parties enter a slump due to the absence of the Gossip Girl……. Where on earth is the Cherry Sinclair everyone is waiting for?]

Did it really make sense for social parties to fall into a slump just because I was gone for a little while?

They were probably just bored because they had lost something to gossip about.

The article that followed was not particularly interesting either.

[The Segrave family revealed to actually be connected to ancient artifacts…….]

The Segrave family was a family that existed only in legends and did not actually exist.

They appeared often in the fairy tales I read when I was young.

They were heroes who protected the world from evil, or guardians of humanity.

It was the kind of story that could appear in a superhero movie.

That was why children loved them so much.

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

I let out a deep sigh.

In any case, there was no news about the virus monster I was waiting for, so I threw away the newspaper without any regrets.

After finishing everything I had to do, I finally returned to the mansion.

Now I had to seriously begin repairing, maintaining, and cleaning the mansion.

I stood quietly in the middle of the garden and looked at the exterior of the mansion I had purchased.

This isolated mansion was gloomy and filthy enough to make me think a ghost might appear.

In the original novel, Vanilla had never given a detailed explanation of the mansion, so I had not expected it to be this bad.

The mansion had two floors above ground, and parts of the exterior walls had collapsed here and there.

The garden had also been left unattended for a long time, so weeds had grown everywhere.

The inside was in an even worse condition.

There were abandoned pieces of furniture and piles of garbage everywhere, and a thick layer of dust had settled over everything.

Honestly, it looked no different from an abandoned house.

Before cleaning, I first thought I should give the mansion a name.

Otherwise, I felt like there was no way I could grow attached to this abandoned house.

[Cherry’s Temporary Shelter]

So I ambitiously made a sign, but I didn’t like it because the words felt too plain.

“Hmm. It feels like it has no soul.”

I rewrote the words.

[Cherry’s Temporary Shelter Happy House]

I put my hands on my hips and quietly admired the sign.

“Now it’s a little cute.”

I smiled with satisfaction.

If I had known in advance what meaning Happy House would one day have for humanity, I would never have named it this way.

At that time, I had no idea that the name ‘Cherry’s Happy House’ would one day be written in history books.

Anyway, after hanging the sign in front of the entrance, I dusted off my hands and entered the mansion.

Then, in the first-floor lobby, I spread out the mansion’s blueprint that I had received from Vanilla.

I did this so I could understand the structure of the mansion.

The two-story mansion was shaped like a Korean-style square bracket turned 90 degrees clockwise, with a fountain in the center.

There was a garden in front of the fountain, and the garden had a well and a small hut.

The hut seemed to be a storage shed.

And only after passing through this garden could one reach the mansion’s main gate.

‘Just like Vanilla said, the garden is large, so it will be perfect for growing vegetables.’

I had never grown a vegetable garden before, so I had bought a whole pile of books about it.

Since my survival depended on it, I had to somehow make it work.

‘You can do it.’

To survive the next two years safely, I first needed to create an environment where I could provide my own food and drinking water.

I also needed to build defensive walls so that the mansion would be safe from monster attacks.

But then I noticed something strange written on the back of the blueprint.

It looked like someone had written something with a fountain pen and then crossed it out.

‘Huh?’

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

[Things you must remember.

Number 1 is Brunel, number 3 is Spring Water, number 6 is Hague, number 8 is Notium.]

That was roughly what it seemed to say, but I could not make out the rest of the writing at all.

‘What does this mean?’

I knew ‘Brunel’ was the name of the village, and ‘Notium’ was the name of a street in the capital.

But what were ‘Spring Water’ and ‘Hague’?

It was a mysterious note full of questions.

However, I had too many things to do right away, so I pushed the meaningless message to the back of my mind and decided to focus on what needed to be done first.

‘There are priorities.’

I straightened my back and calmly decided to look around the mansion.

To the left of the first-floor lobby were two rooms, a banquet hall, and a kitchen.

On the right were three rooms and a large salon.

One of the rooms near the banquet hall and kitchen had plenty of sunlight.

I chose that room, which had windows facing the garden, as the room where I would mainly stay.

The room was extremely dirty, and there was only one uncleaned bed and a broken wardrobe.

But it had a fireplace, so it seemed quite suitable for living alone.

‘I need to clean the fireplace too.’

I sat down in front of the fireplace first.

Some of the bricks around the fireplace mantel had collapsed and were blocking the firebox.

After removing the broken bricks, I saw an iron grate for holding firewood inside.

It was filled with half-burned firewood and ashes.

“Wait……. What were they burning here……?”

I found something that looked like pieces of cloth among the firewood.

They were also partially burned.

There were pieces of cloth that looked like a man’s jacket and pieces that looked like a dress sleeve.

And beneath them, I saw a pure white, hard stick.

“This is…….”

I stared at it suspiciously.

‘Could it be a human bone?’

The thought startled me, and I quickly pulled my hand away.

The piece of cloth that fell from my hand dropped onto the ashes.

A cloud of ash dust rose into the air.

“Cough, cough.”

I got goosebumps, and all the hairs on my body stood on end.

After a moment, the dust cleared and I could see inside the fireplace more clearly.

The piece of cloth I had dropped earlier was lying on top of the ashes, and beneath it was the white stick.

Looking closely, it was simply a piece of chalk.

“Ha……. You scared me.”

I sighed in relief and rubbed my chest.

I knew it wasn’t a human bone, but somehow, being alone in this room felt a little creepy.

‘Why on earth are these torn pieces of cloth in the fireplace?’

That part was extremely strange.

I stared at the fireplace for a moment before leaving the room.

‘I should clean the fireplace later.’

When I left the room, a slightly chilly hallway appeared.

Maybe because I had been so startled?

The hallway, which had seemed completely normal just moments ago, now really looked like a place where a ghost might appear.

“No, Cherry. Don’t become weak. From now on, this is your home!”

I slapped both my cheeks and somehow managed to pull myself together before walking back toward the central lobby.

‘That’s right. Vanilla from the original novel survived here just fine. I can do it too.’

I desperately encouraged myself as I tried to steady my heart.