Irene in the Painting

Yu Sheng felt that ever since that frog had torn out his heart and innards, he had become considerably more easygoing. For instance, right now, he had woken from a bizarre dream that felt wrong no matter how you looked at it, opened an uncanny locked room, and found a talking oil painting—with something distinctly sinister obviously hiding inside it—and yet he remained completely calm. He even took a step forward, lifted the painting off the wall, and held it up to scrutinize it closely. The frame had quite a bit of heft to it, and its feel in his hands gave the impression of something remarkably expensive. Upon closer inspection, he discovered that its pitch-black surface was covered in intricate, exquisite patterns. The markings resembled continuous cursive script, yet they cleverly linked and twisted together into vine-like structures, merging seamlessly into the patterns along the edge of the canvas. Yu Sheng didn't understand painting, nor did he understand art, but he felt certain this thing had to be worth a fortune. Meanwhile, the occupant hiding deep within the painting still refused to show herself; the hem of a skirt in the corner of the image simply pulled back a little farther. Yu Sheng tried angling his vision to peer deeper into the canvas, but saw nothing. "I know you're in there," he said to the painting, shaking the heavy frame. "Hiding now is just fooling yourself." A faint rustling came from the corner of the painting, but no answer. Yu Sheng set the frame on the floor and pulled a lighter from his pocket as he crouched down. Flicking it alight, he brought the flame close to the frame, his face expressionless. "I'll count to three. If you don't come out, I'm setting this thing on fire." Two or three seconds later, a soft, childish voice drifted from the painting: "...Just ordinary mortal fire. That stuff is useless against an uncanny entity." Yet Yu Sheng was certain he could hear a distinct note of guilt and bluff in that voice. So he touched the flame straight to a corner of the frame. "Oh? Then let's test that—" A shriek rang out almost the instant he made his move: "Don't! Are you actually doing it?!" Yu Sheng snapped the lighter shut at once. Right after, he saw a figure hastily leap out from the bramble-and-vine border of the painting. It was a young girl dressed in an elaborate, ornate black Gothic dress, a hairpin trimmed with white lace nestled in her pitch-black hair. Her skin was as white as snow and her face was adorable, yet she possessed an alien pair of crimson pupils. Right now, those eyes were wide and staring straight at Yu Sheng, as if trying to confirm whether the human outside the frame would genuinely burn the painting to ashes. Yu Sheng had to admit that he had been startled when the girl suddenly leapt into the center of the canvas. Although the girl in the painting wasn't actually frightening if you looked closely—she was even quite pretty—against such a gloomy, dim backdrop and with such an abrupt entrance, anything springing onto the canvas would have given someone a fright. Not to mention that she had eyes that looked soaked in blood. Right after leaping out, she pressed up against the front of the painting, flattening her face against the canvas so that those eyes seemed to fill the entire frame, making the scene look infinitely more bizarre. "Don't set it on fire," her voice came from within. "This is the only place I have to live." "Step back first," Yu Sheng said, instinctively maintaining some distance from the painting. For some reason, he found those crimson eyes extraordinarily eerie. When that shade of red stared at him, it felt as if it were slowly seeping into his memories and thoughts; the longer he looked, the harder it was to wipe from his mind. Even so, to keep the upper hand in their exchange, he forced himself not to look away. "I won't light it." "Oh." The girl in the painting proved remarkably easy to reason with. Seeming not to notice Yu Sheng's momentary unease, she nodded and stepped back to the center of the canvas. She sat down on a chair draped in thick red velvet, bent over to scoop up a plush teddy bear she had dropped on the floor earlier, hugged it to her chest, and remained seated there, staring fixedly at Yu Sheng's every move. A Gothic girl sitting on a red velvet chair hugging a teddy bear—in a daze, Yu Sheng felt he was looking at the original, "normal" image of the oil painting. Then his brow furrowed slightly as he noticed something odd about the picture. He noticed her exposed wrists. They had distinct... spherical joints. A human's joints couldn't possibly look like that. Only a doll's would! Perhaps the gaze from outside the frame was too conspicuous; the girl squirmed uncomfortably and frowned at Yu Sheng. "Why are you staring at me?" Yu Sheng opened his mouth, initially intending to ask about her wrist joints, but stopped himself abruptly before the words came out. He still knew far too little about this "world." Asking about matters involving the supernatural might expose his ignorance, so at the last second he switched questions: "...Who are you? Why are you here?" The girl in the painting hesitated visibly, but answered after a moment. "I'm Irene," she said, shifting her posture slightly as if trying to look solemn. "I come from 'Alice's Cottage,' and I'm one of Alice's Dolls... but that was a very long time ago." A doll? Yu Sheng picked up on the word sharply, glancing instinctively once more at the distinct, non-human ball joints on Irene's wrists. Immediately after, his focus shifted to the two phrases she had mentioned so naturally: "Alice's Cottage" and "Alice's Dolls." What did that mean? He understood dolls. He could even rely on his imagination and easygoing mindset to accept a talking doll or a lively doll scampering around inside an oil painting. But what on earth was... "Alice"? That cottage sounded like a place name, or perhaps an organization named after one. And "Alice's Dolls"... sounded like an umbrella term for a group? Was the girl in the painting a member of a large collective calling themselves "Alice's Dolls"? Once Yu Sheng's thoughts got rolling, there was no stopping them, and his imagination went into overdrive. There wasn't just one like her? There was an entire group? Did they all hang in people's houses like this? Real estate prices were so high, yet they took up an entire room, kept the door locked, and mocked the owner for having no key—when in reality, a single lighter was enough to bluff them...? ...Somehow, the primary purpose of this organization felt rather mysterious... Perhaps because Yu Sheng had stayed silent for too long, Irene finally couldn't help speaking up: "Why did you suddenly go quiet... You're not still thinking about setting it on fire, are you?!" "Let me ask you something." Yu Sheng looked up sharply, the solemnity on his face giving the girl in the painting a start. "Ah... Go ahead." With total seriousness, Yu Sheng asked, "Does this 'Alice's Cottage' of yours take commissions specifically to drive down property values?" Irene: "...What?" "You know—someone pays you, so you go hang yourselves in other people's homes, squatting on the floors and occupying rooms, giggling in secret at midnight and locking the doors by day, all to drive down housing prices in the neighborhood. Basically the equivalent of hanging yourself at the property management office to help stabilize real estate prices..." Irene stared with her crimson eyes, taking nearly half a minute to finally catch up to his lunatic train of thought and figure out what the man holding the lighter was talking about. Her expression flared into outrage. "You... you can insult me, but you can't insult the Ancestor of the Dolls and my sisters! We... we're a very powerful..." "Then why are you hanging in my house!" Yu Sheng glared, cutting her off. "And keeping the door locked! Oh, right, and that dream I had earlier—did you pull that off too? And that infuriating laugh..." He fired off the string of questions, sounding ferocious in his burst of anger, but immediately felt a bit uneasy inside. He remembered the frog on that rainy night, and couldn't help feeling that this equally bizarre oil painting had to be just as dangerous. This doll in the painting who called herself Irene seemed easy to talk to now, but for all he knew, she might change her tune the next second, erupt in fury, bring the teddy bear down, and strike him dead before the painting... Soon, though, he shook off that unease. After all, nothing terrible had really happened after that frog had sliced him open—he had only died once, that was all. Could this painted doll, who was terrified of a simple lighter, actually eat him alive? Yu Sheng was quite broad-minded now. The world was already this uncanny, and having experienced being sliced open to death, he didn't care to worry so much anymore. He just wanted to figure out what was going on with all these bizarre things around him... and he would start with this painting. And Irene was even easier to talk to than he had imagined. The doll in the painting didn't erupt into violence, nor did she swing the plush teddy bear in her arms to smash Yu Sheng in the face. Faced with his barrage of ferocious questions, she merely shrank into her chair, her face actually showing a hint of... guilt. "I... this was an accident. I wasn't like this originally," she said, squirming uncomfortably and squeezing the teddy bear in her arms out of shape. "A long time ago, I met with an accident and was sealed inside this painting, losing contact with the other dolls..." She looked up, glancing around at the room outside the painting. "As for why I'm in your house... well, I don't know either. I'm trapped in a painting; I can't decide where I get hung... Are you sure you didn't buy me at an art show one day and hang me on the wall yourself?" Yu Sheng: "..."