The Male Leads Are Trapped in My House

"‘Us.’ Are you seriously grouping yourself and me together under that word?"

“You didn’t answer my question—how do you know that? Who are you?”
“I’ll be dragged away soon. I have no strength left. All I know is that the Seagrave family made me this way.”
Ezra’s response made Ethan pause.

Seagrave.
It was a name he’d heard somewhere before.
As Ethan sank into thought, Ezra freed himself from Ethan’s grip. Adjusting the book he was holding, Ezra murmured in a low voice, “I’m being watched. I’d prefer it if you let me go.”

Watched?
Ethan snapped his head up, startled, but Ezra wasn’t looking at him.
“We didn’t have a conversation. I came here just to borrow a book.”

Ezra spoke as though he were talking to himself, his gaze avoiding Ethan. Then, without a sound, he moved away.
“Protect the child. The answer lies there. And don’t trust your father.”
With that, Ezra disappeared.

The “child” Ezra referred to could mean two people. One was Aurora. The other was “the child who drank from the spring.”
“Who the hell is that supposed to be, and why should I care?”
Nothing Ezra said made any sense to Ethan.

“Don’t trust your father.”
Those final words echoed in Ethan’s mind.
 

Gasp—
Ethan’s eyes shot open.
The familiar ceiling of the Happy House came into view—the ceiling of the room Cherry had personally prepared for him.
Wiping the cold sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, Ethan grimaced.

“Dreaming about memories I had buried deep... I didn’t need that.”
They were things he wanted to forget. Back then, he had truly respected and admired the Duke of Lancaster as a proud father.
“Thanks to that guy Ezra, I learned what kind of man my father really was.”

At the time, he had dismissed Ezra as a lunatic. Yet, to his horror, the man’s nonsense became reality the very next day. His father had brought Aurora home, introducing her as his newly adopted daughter, claiming she was his ward.
Just as Ezra had said.
Ezra had warned that the Duke wouldn’t disclose where Aurora came from, but that was untrue. His father said she’d been taken from an orphanage.

The orphanage existed. Ethan visited it, meeting the children who’d lived with Aurora, the director, and the teachers. Every single one of them had the same story about her.
But that’s what made it strange.
How could all their memories of Aurora be identical?

Someone should have had a personal anecdote—a unique memory or a meaningful conversation with her. Yet every single person said the same thing.
“Aurora is a pitiful child. She was abandoned by her parents and lost her memory from the trauma.”
“She’s a genius. She remembers everything she sees, even just once.”

“She’s gifted in science and medicine.”
How could everyone recite her traits word-for-word, as if they’d been trained to respond that way?
But the problem didn’t stop there.

The orphanage burned down. On the night Ethan visited, a fire consumed the building while everyone inside—children, teachers, even the director—perished in the flames.
That was when it began. Ethan, like a man possessed, started digging into Aurora’s past.
Eventually, his obsession reached a tipping point. The Duke of Lancaster summoned him, unable to tolerate his behavior any longer. Ethan still vividly remembered their conversation.

“Stop investigating Aurora’s past.”
“Why? Do you have something to hide?”
“Watch your tone, boy.”

“Did you set the orphanage on fire?”
“So Ezra found you after all.”
Ethan froze, caught off guard by the sudden mention of Ezra’s name.

The Duke’s lips curled into a chilling smile—one so out of place it made Ethan’s skin crawl. That smile didn’t belong to the father he knew. It was like looking at a stranger.
The father Ethan had once admired—a stern yet kind man—shattered that day.
 

“Ha—”
“Hahaha—”
“Hahahahaha!”

The Duke broke into hysterical laughter, as if he had lost his mind.
Ezra’s name had been the catalyst. It was as if the mention of that man had stripped the Duke of his mask, revealing his true nature.
When the laughter abruptly stopped, the Duke stared at Ethan.

“My son, sacrifices are inevitable for the greater good.”
“So you did kidnap Aurora.”
“Do you want proof? There isn’t any. Everything I’ve done is for you.”

“Don’t use me as an excuse, Father. Why are you doing this?”
“Oh, my one and only son. It pains me that you don’t understand your father’s heart. But, son—”
The Duke’s blue eyes gleamed sharply as he looked at Ethan, a glint so fierce it seemed otherworldly. It wasn’t the gaze of the man Ethan had once called father. It was as if something else had taken over.

"In time, you’ll come to understand the truth. Eventually, you’ll grasp the profound meaning behind your father’s actions."
The Duke of Lancaster hadn’t denied a single one of Ethan’s accusations. And whenever Ethan tried to dig into his father’s past, all he found were inexplicable actions with no concrete evidence.
Ultimately, that incident was what drove Ethan to become a police officer. It was his way of openly rebelling, investigating the Duke’s affairs and obstructing his plans at every turn.

"You won’t have much time left to rebel, anyway. Do as you please while you still can. I thought I’d raised you well without any trouble, and now your late-blooming adolescence rears its head."
The Duke only sneered at Ethan’s defiance, as though it were nothing more than an amusing annoyance.
Despite the ridicule, Ethan didn’t stop. Determined to uncover the crimes Ezra had hinted at, he relentlessly pursued Aurora’s past.

Everyone who didn’t know the full story called Ethan insane. He had abandoned his position as the Lancaster heir to become a mere police officer. Starting from the bottom, without the Duke’s influence, only fueled their judgment.
It was about a year into his police career when his identity as a member of the Lancaster family was revealed.
The way it happened was almost anticlimactic. A carriage bearing the Lancaster family crest stopped in front of the police station where Ethan was working. Out stepped the Duke’s daughter, looking for him.

"Brother, are you really not coming home?"
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to return—he couldn’t. He couldn’t bear to face Aurora.
What had he said to her as he held her hand back then?

"You said you don’t remember your past. I’ll make sure you recover those memories."
"My past is just my time at the orphanage. Even if I remember it, it won’t change much. Besides, the orphanage burned down."
"...I’m sorry."

"Why are you apologizing, Brother?"
Aurora knew nothing. She followed the Duke, calling him father, without any idea of the truth. Ethan couldn’t stand it.
He had vowed to help her recover her memories but had failed even in that.

 
"Have you heard about the orphanage fire? Apparently, that orphanage was run by the Sinclair family."
"Anything suspicious always seems to involve the Sinclairs."

The Sinclair family and the Duke of Lancaster.
Ethan had suspected there was some connection between the two. But no concrete evidence of abductions ever surfaced.
The only known link between the two was a single week ten years ago when both had been stranded in Kintner due to a storm that ravaged the Kingdom of Graydon.

"Nothing ever adds up."
Ethan slowly rose from his chair. Afternoon sunlight poured through the window of his room, a strange contrast to the apocalyptic reality outside. The peaceful scene almost made him forget the world had ended.
He hadn’t meant to sleep so long; he’d only planned to rest his eyes briefly.

"Is that guy dead by now?"
Ezra had said he was being watched. He had also been the one to warn Ethan not to trust the Duke. It was only logical to assume that whoever was monitoring Ezra was connected to his father.
"And he mentioned Seagrave, didn’t he?"

Ethan realized he had heard the name “Seagrave” before. The memory had been buried under the chaos of survival until now.
"I should let Cherry know."
He ran his fingers through his hair, disheveled from sleep.

Before the apocalypse, Ethan’s sole purpose had been to unravel the secrets surrounding his father and Aurora. But now, even that goal felt aimless—the world had already ended.
"Father is probably alive, though."
If the Duke were alive, he wouldn’t have let Aurora die. He would have sought her out, determined to keep her by his side. After all, he seemed to have a purpose for taking her.

Whether that purpose still held meaning in a ruined world was unclear, but Ethan knew he had to find Aurora.
Theodore was likely keeping her safe. But there were too many unanswered questions about her, and Ethan needed to see her for himself.
"I should expedite the underground passage development."

Then it hit him—he had been infected. Though several days had passed since he was bitten, he showed no signs of turning into a monster. Still, as Nox had pointed out, if the virus was a mutated strain, it could cause an entirely different reaction. He couldn’t afford to let his guard down.
"If I had to guess, there’s something unusual about Ethan’s body," Cherry had once remarked.
But the idea of being unique was absurd. Unlike Cherry, he hadn’t taken any suspicious supplements or undergone any strange changes.

"If I’m not here, who’s going to rein Cherry in? And if Cherry’s not around, who’ll look out for me?"
A small laugh escaped his lips.
"As if anyone needs to rein her in."

Ethan tidied himself up and left the room. Even if today turned out to be his last, there were things that needed doing.
The door to the room across from his was open. Cherry wasn’t there. He could have sworn she’d been lounging inside when he fell asleep.
He stopped Susanna as she walked down the hall, carrying cleaning supplies from the lobby.

"Where’s Cherry?"
"She went to the village with the doctor."
With Nox? To the village?

"The two of them?"
Susanna nodded, her expression puzzled at Ethan’s tone.