It was a voice that sounded completely hoarse. A rough voice, like scraping metal against a wall.
It was so faint and weak that I couldn’t tell whether I had actually heard it or if it was just my imagination.
I turned around in surprise and carefully scanned the room.
The room, submerged in thick darkness, was as silent as an endless abyss. I couldn’t see clearly ahead, and it was just eerily quiet—enough to make my skin crawl.
I stood still and listened closely to see if there were any other sounds. But there was nothing. If it had been a hallucination, there was no trace of it now.
‘Maybe I’m just tired.’
I tilted my head and left the room. Ethan was stepping out of the room across from mine. I asked him:
“Did you just tell me not to go anywhere? Was that you, Sir Ethan?”
Ethan raised his eyebrows as if to say, ‘What are you talking about?’ That reaction told me that the voice I had just heard hadn’t come from Ethan.
Ah, this is driving me crazy. Is this some kind of horror story? Even when I was cleaning up Happy House before the apocalypse, it gave me chills. This feels seriously wrong.
“Do you think someone’s here?”
Ethan had a revolver in his hand. I hadn’t even noticed when he pulled it out. He scanned the surroundings, his posture tense and alert. I looked around the room again.
Considering what the voice had said, “Don’t go,” it didn’t seem like something an intruder would say. And the voice itself had sounded far too strange. Maybe I really had imagined it because I was so tired.
“It’s just... never mind. I must’ve misheard something.”
Ethan, looking unimpressed, lowered the gun. While checking the revolver’s cylinder, he said:
“If the water and phone lines are down, we should come back here. It’s better to stay in one place until reinforcements arrive from the capital. The whole country can’t be in this state.”
I bit my tongue to stop myself from saying that the entire country probably was in this state. Ethan slid the revolver back into the holster strapped to his thigh.
“It’s better not to use guns unless absolutely necessary. The sound of gunfire will only attract more attention. Do you have any other weapons?”
Ethan gestured to something attached to his waist. A sheath.
It was a real sword—the kind knights had used in the old days.
“Oh, I thought it was just decorative.”
“It is. Mostly.”
Then he pulled out a short black rod from his back pocket. With a quick flick of his wrist, the rod extended into a baton. A police baton. I clapped.
“You’re carrying three weapons?”
“Well, it’s regulation.”
Ethan shrugged and retracted the baton, hooking it back onto his belt.
I slung the axe holster I’d used on Notium Street over my shoulder and slid the axe into it. Ethan, watching this, tilted his head.
“Is that insane strength of yours natural?”
“No, it’s probably a side effect of some drugs. My parents gave them to me, and I ended up like this.”
Ethan gave me a look like he found it strange but interesting. Honestly, I thought so too.
But there was no one left to ask anymore. My parents were gone.
“Strength and an axe... It suits you—”
Ethan suddenly stopped mid-sentence. At the same time, something clicked in my mind.
The brooch I’d dropped back on Notium Street.
Damn it. Things had been so hectic that I’d completely forgotten about it. That was a big mistake.
I took a step back, but Ethan grabbed my arm. His icy blue eyes gleamed like those of a predator that had just found its prey. The sudden change in his demeanor was so fast that I didn’t even have time to be surprised.
The man who had been rough but still courteous just moments ago was now looking at me like a stranger—as if he might devour me whole.
“It’s you.”
His gaze was so sharp it felt like it could pierce straight through me. My breath caught, and I stammered like an idiot.
“W-what do you mean?”
Unbelievable. Even with all my strength, I was still frozen under this pressure. What a joke.
“The woman who killed the monster on Notium Street. That was you, wasn’t it? This is yours, right?”
Ethan roughly pulled something out of his jacket pocket—a rubellite brooch.
The initials “C. S.” were engraved on it.
Damn it. I’d been caught.
“What are you talking about? What even is that?”
I widened my eyes and feigned ignorance, pretending I didn’t know what he was talking about.
Ethan let out a sharp scoff at my pathetic attempt to deny it.
“Oh? You’re going to play dumb?”
Ethan’s lips curled into a smile, but his eyes sparkled like he was watching a child put on a performance. He was still gripping my arm tightly.
Ethan leaned in closer, closing the already small distance between us, and whispered in my ear.
“Don’t pretend. ‘C. S.’ Cherry Sinclair. If you really don’t know what I’m talking about, should I explain it to you? Tell me why you ran away that day. You know something about this situation, don’t you?”
His low voice crept into my ear, devoid of any mercy—or any emotion at all.
“Now that I think about it, it seems like you had a reason for saving me, doesn’t it? I feel like I’ve been played by you, Cherry. So you better start talking.”
I struggled to stay calm. Clenching my fists, I pressed my nails into my palms and sharpened my focus.
There was a reason Ethan’s nickname was “Benton’s Mad Dog.” Anyone caught in his sights was torn apart—whether physically, mentally, or through sheer force of will. Whatever the method, Ethan never let his prey escape unscathed.
Getting on his bad side was the worst possible scenario right now.
‘If it comes to it, I’ll just knock him out cold.’
I couldn’t exactly ditch him, not with monsters swarming outside, and running away wasn’t an option either.
Either way, it was clear this was going to be an absolute pain to deal with.
“I didn’t want anyone to know about my strength. Have you ever heard rumors about Cherry Sinclair being strong? No, right? I’m well-known, so why haven’t you heard anything? Because I kept it hidden. I hid it.”
I quickly gave up trying to deny it and admitted that I was the “axe woman” from 61 Notium Street. Ethan’s eyes narrowed as if he hadn’t expected me to fold so quickly.
“Why hide it?”
“Don’t you know that frailty is considered a virtue for women in high society?”
Ethan raised one eyebrow at my retort and smirked.
“Oh, really? Cherry Sinclair was worrying about feminine virtues?”
“I wanted to be a noble.”
I shot back and tilted my head in the same mocking way he had earlier.
“Why? Is it any different from the heir to the Lancaster Dukedom deciding to become a cop?”
Ethan’s sharp glare told me I’d hit a nerve. He paused, visibly annoyed, then slowly covered his face with one large hand. His shoulders began to shake.
He was laughing again.
What the hell? How does someone that good-looking manage to be so annoying?
After a moment, Ethan straightened and wiped the expression clean off his face. He was back to looking as cold and emotionless as before.
“Fine, let me ask something else. Why were you at 61 Notium Street at that time? And how did you kill the monster? Oh, and—was it you who sent the letter to my sister?”
“Oh, come on. Could you stop talking down to me? It’s pissing me off.”
Ethan didn’t care. He even had the nerve to smirk.
“Don’t get so worked up. You saw it, didn’t you? At the station? How I deal with criminals? So you should already know—this is just the kind of guy I am.”
He tilted his head slightly, looking down at me with that arrogant expression again. There was a glimmer of madness behind his eyes, and it made my skin crawl.
If looks could kill, I’d already be dead—bound and suffocated by his stare alone.
Yeah, I knew it. His usual tone was rougher than this, so this might actually be him holding back. At least he hadn’t started swearing at me yet. And somehow, that felt like a relief.
“You’d better stop dodging the question and answer me properly. The fact that you had an axe with you means you knew there would be monsters there.”
My mind raced for an excuse.
‘Wait, didn’t Aurora say she received a letter from someone?’
Clinging to that idea, I replied as smoothly as I could.
“I got a letter too. It said there would be monsters at 61 Notium Street and that people would die.”
It wasn’t half bad as an excuse. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. Moving forward, this might be a good cover story for anything I knew about the future.
‘But seriously, who did send that letter to Aurora?’
Before I could dwell on it, Ethan’s voice cut through my thoughts, heavy with disbelief.
“You should probably tell me who sent that letter. And while you’re at it, explain why you didn’t report it to the police. It was suspicious, wasn’t it?”
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The sharp tone of his words and his constant use of informal speech grated on my nerves. I locked eyes with him and snapped back in the same casual tone.
“Would you have even believed me if I had? You know about the monster incidents, right? The ones people reported over and over again? And no one believed them.”