REAPER SCANS
Translator: Ryuu
Editor: Nine
Discord: https://dsc.gg/reapercomics
◈ The Male Leads are Trapped in My House
Chapter 10
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What Should I Do When I Know the World is About to End? (5)
I didn’t want to be interrogated like this. This was exactly why I hesitated to enter the police station.
Should I just ask to use the phone? Or should I leave quietly?
While I was mulling it over, I noticed the man lying face down on the floor. He was trembling so much, but he couldn’t even move his head lest the glass fall off. Swallowing nervously, I glanced at Eden. I already knew this, but that man was no ordinary person.
Noticing how I had frozen in silence, Eden flashed me a sly grin and gestured toward the man sprawled on the floor. “This man is a domestic abuser. Do not get the wrong idea,” he said. “This filth is unworthy of being considered human. His wife was hospitalized after he hit her with a bottle of liquor. She has yet to regain consciousness.”
“Oh my God,” I exclaimed. “And you let him live?”
Eden laughed as though my reaction was the funniest thing he had ever heard. Judging by the shredded state of the man’s clothes, I would bet Harrison’s glasses that Eden was responsible for his condition.
Eden pulled a pocket watch from his pants pocket, checked the time, and stood up. “So, what brings you to the police station? Were you going to invite me to your mansion, perhaps?” he asked.
“I came to the wrong place. My apologies.”
I carefully closed the police station door the same way I had opened it. Then it hit me: if I wanted to use the phone, I would have to do it inside that tiny police station, right in front of Eden. That was absolutely not an option.
As soon as the door clicked shut, I heard the sound of glass shattering, followed by Eden’s voice.
“I told you if you broke that glass, you were dead. Oh, what’s that? You wanted to die?”
The man’s screams rang from the police station as I walked away in silence. I absolutely could not get involved with that man.
Left with no choice, I made the trip to the neighboring town of Kintne to find a phone.
However, Kintne turned out to be only marginally larger than Brunel. It was still very much a rural area. The only phones in town were at the train station and the police station, but, of course, both were out of order.
Was this a joke? Could nothing ever go right for me?
In the end, I gave up on making a call and decided to send a letter at the post office instead.
In the letter I wrote to Harrison, I asked if there were any firearms included in the weapons he was procuring for me and inquired about the situation in the capital. I also requested he find a way to get Eden transferred out of the village, if possible. Something about Eden’s assignment to Brunel didn’t sit right with me.
It would take a while for the letter to reach its destination, but that was better than making the call in front of Eden.
On the way back to Brunel, I bought a newspaper since I was already in Kintne.
[Gossip Girl’s Absence Has Thrown High Society Parties Into a Slump… Where Is the Much-anticipated Cherry Sinclair?]
Was it really fair to blame the stagnation of social events on my brief absence? They were probably just getting bored without anything scandalous to talk about. The rest of the articles weren’t particularly interesting, either.
[The Seigrave Family’s Connection to Ancient Artifacts Revealed…]
The Seigrave family was purely mythical and didn’t exist in real life. In the fairy tales I read as a child, they were often depicted as heroes or protectors of humanity who fought against evil. It was the kind of stuff you could expect from a superhero movie. Naturally, children loved those stories.
If such a family truly existed, I wished they would just show up and deal with this virus already.
I sighed deeply. Since there was no news about the virus monsters, I tossed the paper aside without a second thought.
With all my errands done, I finally returned to the mansion.
It was time to start cleaning and repairing the mansion in earnest.
Standing in the middle of the garden, I gazed up at the mansion I had purchased. The isolated building had an eerie and unkempt appearance, as if ghosts could pop out at any moment. Vanilla hadn’t gone into much detail about the mansion in the original novel, so I hadn’t expected it to be in such bad condition.
The mansion had two above-ground floors. Sections of its outer walls were crumbling in places, and the garden was overrun with weeds due to years of neglect. However, the interior was even worse. Furniture and trash were scattered everywhere, and a thick layer of dust blanketed everything. Honestly, it was no better than a ruin.
Before cleaning, I decided the mansion needed a name. Otherwise, it would be impossible to garner any affection for this wreck.
[Cherry’s Temporary Shelter]
I enthusiastically painted the name on a wooden sign, but it immediately struck me as far too plain and uninspired.
I hummed thoughtfully. “It’s missing something,” I muttered.
REAPER SCANS
Translator: Ryuu
Editor: Nine
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/reapercomics
So, I revised it.
[Cherry’s Temporary Shelter Happy House]
With my hands on my hips, I admired the sign and smiled in satisfaction. “Now it’s cute.”
Had I known what the Happy House would one day mean to humanity, I never would have named it that. I had no idea it would go down in history books as “Cherry’s Happy House.”
I hung the sign above the front door, dusted off my hands, and entered the mansion. Spreading the blueprint Vanilla had given me across the floor of the first-floor lobby, I studied the layout to familiarize myself with the building.
The two-story mansion was shaped like a “ㄷ” turned ninety degrees clockwise (⊓), with a fountain in the center. In front of the fountain was a garden that featured a well and a small shack likely used as a storage shed.
To reach the mansion’s main gate, one had to pass through this garden. Vanilla was right. The garden’s size made it ideal for a vegetable patch.
Although I had no experience gardening, I had already bought a stack of books on the subject. Since my survival depended on it, I would figure it out.
I can do this.
To endure the next two years, I had to fortify the mansion against monster attacks and create a self-sufficient environment capable of providing food and water.
As I flipped the blueprint over, I noticed something unusual written on the back. It seemed like someone had used a fountain pen to write something before scribbling it out.
Hmm?
Holding the blueprint up to the light streaming in through the window, I made out a few faint words beneath the scribbles:
[Important things to remember:
1 is Brunel, 3 is Semmul, 6 is Hague, 8 is Notium.]
The rest of the text was too faded to decipher.
What does this mean?
I recognized “Brunel” as the village’s name and “Notium” as a street in the capital, but what were “Semmul” and “Hague”? The note was a complete mystery.
Still, I had more pressing matters to attend to, so I tucked the puzzling memo into the back of my mind and focused on the task at hand. Priorities first. Straightening my back, I began exploring the mansion systematically.
The first-floor lobby branched out into two wings. The left side housed two bedrooms, a banquet hall, and a kitchen. The right side had three bedrooms and a large salon. One of the bedrooms near the banquet hall and kitchen had a window overlooking the garden, so it received plenty of sunlight. I decided to claim that room as my living quarters.
The room was filthy, with an unmade bed and a broken wardrobe, but it had a fireplace that made it seem livable for one person. I needed to clean out the fireplace, so I knelt in front of it to inspect it more closely. The mantle above the fireplace had partially collapsed, and the bricks blocked the firebox. Clearing away the broken bricks revealed the grate inside, which was full of half-burnt logs and a pile of ashes.
“Wait a second… What were they burning in here?” I wondered aloud.
Among the charred logs, I spotted a couple pieces of fabric. They were still identifiable, albeit partially burnt. One looked like it belonged on a man’s jacket, while another resembled the sleeve of a dress. Beneath them was a hard white stick.
“This is...”
A horrifying thought crossed my mind, and I jerked my hand away, terrified.
Was that a human bone?
Panicked, I dropped the fabric scrap back into the pile of ashes, kicking up a bunch of dust. It made me cough as goosebumps rose all over my body.
When the dust settled, I looked into the fireplace again, more closely this time. The white stick was still there, peeking out from beneath the ashes. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was just a piece of chalk.
I breathed a shaky laugh. “You scared me,” I muttered, sighing in relief and patting my chest to calm my racing heart.
Although it wasn’t a human bone, the thought of staying in this room alone gave me the creeps now. Why were shredded pieces of fabric thrown into the fireplace? It was undeniably strange.
After staring at the fireplace for a moment longer, I left the room. I decided to deal with it later.
Upon exiting the room, I found myself in a slightly chilly corridor. Was it because I had been so spooked? A hallway that had seemed perfectly ordinary moments ago now felt eerily haunted.
“No, Cherry. Pull yourself together,” I told myself. “This is your house now.”
I slapped both of my cheeks to snap myself out of it, then made my way back to the central lobby. If Vanilla could survive here in the original story, then so could I.
With that thought, I tried to steady my nerves.
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