Episode 13
[You haven’t seen the newspapers, have you? There’s been a lot of news lately—people going missing and others being brutally murdered by unidentified assailants. The world has become terribly dangerous. Please be especially careful at night, miss.]
Brutally murdered by unidentified assailants.
I shut my eyes tightly.
While I’d been dawdling like this, the world had been diligently preparing for its own destruction.
“Thanks for letting me know. Please tell Harrison this for me—have him bring the item personally when he comes down. Eden Duncan Lancaster is here in this town right now. If you tell him Eden is investigating that item, he’ll understand.”
If Eden discovered the firearms, things would spiral out of control.
With so little time left, being dragged into an investigation—or worse, greeting the apocalypse from a prison cell—was not an option.
[Yes. I’ll pass it along, miss.]
I slowly set the receiver back in place and took a deep breath.
If only Eden would return to the capital, all of this would be resolved.
The immutable law of the original story.
The ominous phrase surfaced in my mind, and I shook my head sharply.
I will break that law and survive.
To do that, I needed to prepare even more thoroughly.
As I exited the station, I pulled a small notebook from my pocket to check the list of shopping items I’d written down.
Next… furniture shopping.
Do you know what the most important thing is when building the perfect shelter?
Money.
Without hesitation, I headed straight for Kindtne’s furniture district.
* * *
Brunel Village Police Station.
Eden sat at his desk, flipping through case files related to incidents in Brunel and its surrounding areas.
One file, dated from last year, caught his eye.
[The Westmore Urban Legend Incident]
Perhaps it stood out because Cherry and Vanilla had mentioned Westmore earlier.
The Westmore urban legend case had been fairly well-known within police circles. After all, ten residents of Westmore had gone missing.
Around this time last year, reports had come in claiming that screams could be heard every night from an abandoned house in Westmore. After the screams, witnesses said, there would always be sounds like an animal howling. However, when officers responded and searched the house thoroughly, they found no traces of people—or animals.
Similar to the Nottingham Street No. 61 case… yet different.
In the Nottingham case, there had been multiple eyewitnesses, and an actual monster had eventually appeared. But not with Westmore. There were only rumors. No witnesses.
That was why it was called an urban legend.
Which is why the case was buried so quickly.
The Westmore file didn’t even list the address of the abandoned house where the incident had occurred.
Tsk. Sloppy work.
Just as Eden clicked his tongue in irritation—
Wahaha—!
Loud laughter echoed through the station.
Villagers were gathered inside, sitting close together, sharing tea and gossip. A restaurant owner who’d apparently wandered in out of boredom suddenly brought up Cherry.
“Don’t you think the girl living in that abandoned house is a bit strange?”
At his prompting, the grocer and the bookstore owner chimed in.
“She keeps hauling things into that place.”
The gossip continued.
Eden couldn’t help wondering why villagers gathered at the police station to chat like this. Most people avoided police stations, didn’t they? But seeing Inspector Hans—who was in charge of the station—laughing along enthusiastically, Eden felt like he understood why.
“She’s even fixing the place up. A house is a house, I guess.”
“If you repair it properly, the framework’s still solid. It was originally a noble’s vacation home, after all. Seems perfect for committing crimes and hiding evidence, doesn’t it?”
“Oh my… then that girl in the abandoned house wouldn’t possibly—”
Listening in, Eden himself felt a flicker of doubt.
Cherry Sinclair had a way of attracting attention wherever she went. Causing trouble wouldn’t be out of character—especially considering the recent one-hundred-million-gold loan scandal.
That was a pretty big issue.
The suspicion wasn’t unreasonable.
What if she’d caused an incident she couldn’t handle and fled here to hide?
She did say she was concealing her identity.
If Brunel had been a larger town, her identity as a Sinclair would have been exposed immediately. The media loved Cherry Sinclair.
But Brunel was a tiny rural village without even a train station. Many of its residents had never left town. If she’d come here to hide her identity, it was a brilliant choice.
Or perhaps she really is hiding because of illegal arms trafficking.
Cherry undeniably sat at the center of multiple suspicious incidents. Eden couldn’t ignore that.
For now, he was observing her quietly—waiting for the right moment.
The moment to arrest her on the spot.
“Wait—what’s that?”
The villagers suddenly turned their gazes toward the station entrance. Eden looked up as well.
Through the open door, an absurd sight unfolded.
A woman was casually dragging four massive straw scarecrows, bound together with rope.
That woman was none other than Cherry Sinclair—the very subject of their gossip moments ago.
Watching her, Eden thought:
Cherry Sinclair was no ordinary strange woman.
She’s definitely not normal.
There hadn’t been a single action of hers so far that fit within Eden’s common sense.
And that was why he kept watching.
He simply couldn’t look away.
“What on earth are those scarecrows for?”
“And… is she carrying all that by herself?”
Murmurs spread through the station.
As if sensing their stares, Cherry looked up. With the station door wide open, her eyes met theirs.
“Oh, everyone’s gathered here. Hello!”
She waved cheerfully and greeted them.
“Why are you taking scarecrows with you?”
The grocer asked cautiously.
Cherry shrugged.
“Practice.”
“Practice for what?”
“Decapitating cleanly takes research, you know.”
Deca—what?
Faces drained of color.
“Oh! Don’t misunderstand!” Cherry waved her hands frantically.
“I was joking! Ahahaha!”
As she laughed and scratched the back of her head, the rope slipped from her shoulder and the scarecrows tumbled to the ground. She casually hoisted them back up again and waved.
“See you later!”
After she disappeared, silence settled over the police station.
The Cherry Sinclair Eden knew was a delicate hothouse flower who hated physical labor.
Watching her walk away with four massive scarecrows slung over her shoulder, Eden thought—
In what world is that a fragile hothouse flower?
Suddenly, her earlier words resurfaced in his mind.
“People misunderstand me a lot. I like luxury, I act reckless, and I’m always causing trouble. I look like someone who’d commit crimes without batting an eye.”
“It’s fine. I’m used to those misunderstandings.”
Maybe… it really was a misunderstanding.
Come to think of it, the arms smuggling was Howard the lawyer’s doing.
Of course, Cherry Sinclair was still suspicious in every possible way.
But one thing was clear—while eccentric, she didn’t seem as arrogant or thoughtless as the rumors claimed.
I’ll have to keep watching.
Eden turned back to the villagers.
“Does the girl from the abandoned house come into town often?”
A brief silence followed. The villagers exchanged curious looks.
Then the innkeeper spoke up.
“Oh, don’t even ask. Yesterday she wiped out the grocery store.”
He pointed to the grocer, who nodded emphatically.
“And today it was the general goods shop.”
The shop owner nodded in turn.
“She bought everything. Like she was preparing for a war.”
“No idea where she gets all that money from.”
Eden barely managed to suppress a smile.
For Cherry Sinclair, that amount wouldn’t even qualify as spending.
“Still, why’s our new young fellow so interested in the abandoned-house girl?”
“What kind of question is that? She’s gorgeous.”
Eden couldn’t deny it.
Cherry Sinclair was undeniably beautiful.
But that wasn’t why she caught his attention.
She defied his expectations at every turn—strong without complaint, resilient without display.
So much so that he occasionally felt the urge to help her.
Realizing that, Eden shook his head sharply.
What nonsense am I thinking…
