The Male Leads Are Trapped in My House-Chapter 37

There’s a corpse disposal site in the basement of the police station.

To sum up—

We needed to find the phone at the police station to check the situation in the capital. And to get to the station, we had to open the gates of Happy House and head out.

The problem was that monsters were swarming around Happy House, and getting through them looked incredibly difficult.

It seemed the process of knocking Ethan out and dragging him to Happy House had been way too noisy. Thanks to that, the monsters’ attention had been completely drawn here, and they kept gathering more and more.

Even as time passed, there was no sign of their numbers decreasing. We needed something else to distract them.

‘Looks like I’ll have to use the bells after all.’

The first thing to try was the bells.

I stood by the wall next to the banquet hall on the first floor. That was where I had set up the rope connected to the bells in the forest.

The rope was tied tightly around a small protruding rod. As I skillfully began untying the knot, Ethan spoke up from behind me.

“When did you even set this up...?”

He looked completely clueless about what I planned to do with the rope. Then he glanced past the wall at the rope stretching toward the forest.

Suddenly, as if something had clicked in his mind, he looked at me with wide eyes.

Watching his series of facial expressions while I unraveled the rope was pretty entertaining.

“Don’t tell me that time you went out with a bunch of bells...”

I cut him off before he could finish and changed the subject.

“I’ll ring the bells to draw the monsters’ attention toward the forest. Meanwhile, Officer Ethan, you monitor their movements from the watchtower.”

Ethan looked at me with suspicion.

I knew it sounded sketchy, even to me.

But I also knew Ethan better than he thought. He hated uncertainty, and he was naturally curious. So even if he didn’t trust me, his curiosity would push him to climb up to the watchtower.

Sure enough, after a moment of silent deliberation, Ethan finally nodded.

“Fine. It’s better to try something than sit around doing nothing.”

Following my instructions, he climbed up to the roof and looked down at me from the watchtower. After exchanging a quick glance with him, I grabbed the rope tied to the wall.

Taking a deep breath, I pulled it.

Jingle, jingle, jingle—

Jingle, jingle—

The sound of bells echoed through the forest.

Kraaaaah! Thump, thump, thump—

I could hear the monsters moving toward the forest. The beastly cries that had surrounded the mansion gradually faded.

Did it work?

I kept pulling the rope.

But the problem was, the number of monsters was far greater than the bells I had prepared.

After wandering in the forest for a moment, the monsters started gathering around the mansion again.

‘Are you fucking kidding me?! Why the hell...!’

I wasn’t asking you to stay! Just leave already! Why are you clinging like obsessive male leads in a damn romance novel?!

Ethan came down from the watchtower to report the situation.

“It’s not working. There are too many of them, and their noise is drowning out the bells.”

It seemed the bells only worked when there were fewer monsters. Damn it.

Feeling utterly defeated, I collapsed onto the floor.

Right. Of course, there was no way this would be solved so easily.

*****

I gave up on the bell strategy without hesitation.

Instead, Ethan and I climbed up to the watchtower to keep an eye on the surroundings and come up with another plan.

We spent the entire day on the roof, monitoring the monsters’ movements.

Grrr—

Krrk-krrk.

What the hell was that noise? The eerie, grating sound—like claws scraping against metal—made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Long-nosed monsters, resembling anteaters, were pressed right up against the outer walls, sniffing incessantly.

I couldn’t help but feel on edge, half-expecting them to leap over the walls and invade Happy House at any moment. I hadn’t heard of monsters with exceptional jumping abilities yet, but you never know.

There were occasional cases where monsters developed absurd physical traits depending on their pre-infection bodies—some becoming enormous or unnaturally fast.

Yeah. I already knew that much.

The sourc𝗲 of this content is freēwēbηovel.c૦m.

But in reality, monsters like that were incredibly rare. Most of them were brainless, only capable of walking or running forward like idiots.

Scratch—scratch—

Now there was one clawing mindlessly at the stone walls, its talons scraping against the surface.

Of course, the walls weren’t going to crumble that easily. I had prepared for the worst and built them triple-thick. They were about 3 meters tall, reinforced after I was traumatized by seeing a 2-meter-tall monster before everything fell apart.

Honestly, I hadn’t expected to finish such a massive project in such a short amount of time.

‘Money really is amazing.’

While scanning the area near the walls with opera binoculars, I suddenly felt a sharp gaze drilling into the side of my face.

I turned to see Ethan resting his chin on his hand, staring at me with his head tilted. Then he lazily pointed at the binoculars with his finger.

I lowered the binoculars and looked at him.

“Where did you even get those?”

His tone made it sound like I was some kind of bizarre creature. I glanced down at the binoculars in my hands.

Even before the world ended, he always acted like this whenever he visited Happy House—constantly asking questions about everything I did.

‘Honestly, even I’d find this suspicious.’

But there was no way I could just tell him, “I stocked up on binoculars because they’re essential in an apocalypse filled with monsters.”

So instead, I said, “Where else? I bought them to go see an opera.”

Ethan’s sharp eyes narrowed.

“There’s no opera house in Brunel.”

“There’s one in Kintney.”

“There isn’t.”

“There should be.”

“There isn’t.”

“Then maybe in the next town over...?”

I didn’t know what town was next to Kintney, but whatever—it was somewhere nearby.

My bullheaded answer successfully shut Ethan up.

He gave me a look of exasperation, but I ignored it and pretended to focus on scanning the village through the binoculars.