The two Special Affairs Bureau operatives and the spirit realm detective who called herself "Little Red Riding Hood" (holiday worker) left. Yu Sheng let out a soft breath at the front door and turned back into the living room.
Irene, who was watching television, immediately turned her head. "I thought you'd be talking for ages. Didn't you have all sorts of things you wanted to ask them?"
"I mostly just wanted to make a connection with them—anyway, Hu Li's already been brought out, so nothing else is that urgent." Yu Sheng said it casually, his gaze landing beside the coffee table.
The fox spirit girl, sitting on the floor guarding a pile of food, felt his look and raised her head, beaming at him. "Benefactor!"
"You need a bath—mostly you just need a change of clothes." Yu Sheng took one look at the wretched-looking Hu Li and spoke with concern.
This unlucky fox had been trapped in a foreign domain for years. When she'd first been trapped, she had still been a child, and now the clothes on her body—no one even knew which corpse they'd been stripped from back then. At a glance you could tell they fit her badly, and by now they had practically rotted into a heap of rags. She herself was filthy, smeared all over with mud. Though that foreign domain had sources of water, and she ought to have had chances to wash herself, she had after all been living out in the wild mountains, far from any civilized society—even her tails had gotten so matted they'd clumped together in tangles.
Hu Li lowered her head and looked herself over.
She had probably just gotten used to the way she was, to the point that she'd never even considered what would happen once she one day left that valley. Only now, hearing Yu Sheng's words, did some distant memories and common sense begin to trickle back into her head. She sat there blankly for a long while, just as she had recently been slowly reacquainting herself with speaking aloud, and at last began to detach from the state of a "wild beast" in her thinking.
Right—she needed to clean herself, and she needed a change of clothes. Her benefactor's cave dwelling was so clean; she mustn't get it dirty.
She nodded hard.
Yu Sheng looked over at Irene again.
Both of the little doll's arms were still broken—she really did look a sorry sight too—but she herself seemed to feel nothing at all, still watching television without a care in the world, cracking up over some utterly brainless variety show.
Yu Sheng couldn't quite stand to see it. "Should I fix your arms first?"
"Go ahead and take that fox to bathe first. She definitely won't know how to use any of the stuff in the bathroom," Irene said, waving an arm carelessly. "I'm in no hurry over here—fixing me in a bit is fine too."
"All right, then. I'll come help you as soon as I can." Yu Sheng nodded and reached a hand out to Hu Li. "Come with me."
Hu Li stood up, but then hesitated, looking at the food on the floor as if she didn't dare leave it even for a step.
Seeing this, Yu Sheng laughed. "Don't worry—food doesn't grow legs and run off. We'll eat when you're back from your bath. And Irene's here keeping an eye on it."
Yet Hu Li still hesitated. She glanced uneasily at the doll watching television on the sofa, then suddenly bent down, snatched two cans of eight-treasure porridge and two packs of biscuits from the plastic bag, casually stuffed them into her tails, and only then turned and came over to Yu Sheng.
The smile from a moment ago still lingered at the corners of Yu Sheng's mouth, but he stood there rather stupefied, not registering for a moment what had just happened. After two or three seconds he turned his head somewhat stiffly and looked at the big tail behind Hu Li.
"...Where'd you put them?"
Hu Li fished the biscuits and eight-treasure porridge back out of her tail, showed them to Yu Sheng, then immediately stuffed them back in, and blinked at him with her big eyes.
Yu Sheng was dumbfounded. "You can use it like that?!"
"Mm." The fox spirit girl nodded, still with that look of not knowing what had happened but taking it all perfectly for granted.
Right afterward Yu Sheng remembered something else. "...Earlier, didn't you also launch one of your tails out?"
"Already grew back."
Yu Sheng: "...?"
His head was swimming with question marks—so this was how fox spirits were?
But no one could answer his questions. Even Irene didn't know a second fox like Hu Li.
Keeping a straight face, Yu Sheng shook his head, temporarily flinging all those question marks aside, then hauled the fox spirit girl off to the bathroom on the first floor.
"This is the water heater. You don't need to worry about it for now—the hot water comes out from it either way. This valve controls the temperature: turn it left for hot, right for cold, and pull the spout up to let the water out... The bathtub over here works the same way, the valve's right here. This bottle is body wash, for cleaning your body—you can use the sponge beside it to work up a lather, and don't squeeze out too much. This bottle is for washing your hair... should work for washing your tails too."
Yu Sheng patiently and carefully explained all the things in the bathroom to Hu Li, speaking very slowly, and only moving on to introduce the next item after making sure the fox spirit girl had understood and nodded. Even so, he suspected Hu Li would still be fumbling around when she actually bathed.
"Anyway, as long as you know how to use the water, that's fine. You can soak in the bathtub for a good while. The towels and bath towel are all hung here beside the mirror cabinet—remember to dry yourself off before you come out so you don't catch a cold."
Hu Li nodded vigorously. "Mm-hm. Mm-hm."
"Remember to take the stuff you hid in your tails out before you bathe... never mind, just handle it yourself. It's all wrapped up anyway."
"Mm-hm. Mm-hm."
"I don't have any clothes for girls here. I'll get you one of my outfits in a bit—make do with it for now, and tomorrow I'll go to the mall and buy you some new ones."
"Mm-hm. Mm-hm."
Hu Li seemed to have nothing left but to keep nodding—whatever Yu Sheng said, she nodded.
Yu Sheng was rather worried. He suddenly found himself a little envious of Irene's easygoing nature.
After instructing her in a few more things, and having Hu Li try out the showerhead for washing herself, he finally set his heart a little at ease. He then brought over a loose set of his own pajamas and left them at the doorway before turning and leaving the bathroom, heading back to the living room.
Irene was struggling to climb up onto the sofa with her broken arms.
Yu Sheng: "...What are you doing?"
"I laughed too hard just now and fell off the sofa," Irene explained awkwardly as she clambered. "Hey, don't just stand there watching—come help me get up there."
Yu Sheng stepped forward and casually hoisted Irene up, picture frame and all. "All right, quit watching TV. Let me go fix up your body."
At that, Irene blinked. "What about the fox?"
"Bathing by herself in the bathroom," Yu Sheng said offhandedly. "I taught her how to use all that stuff."
"Will she be okay? She just got free of the hunger's effects—her head's not recovered yet, is it?" Irene hung from Yu Sheng's arm and cast a somewhat doubtful look toward the bathroom. "She's not going to blow up the bathroom, is she..."
Hearing this, Yu Sheng's steps faltered for a moment too, and he looked uneasily toward the bathroom—over there you could already hear the splashing of water. "She... probably won't, unless she suddenly launches a tail halfway through washing."
"Forget it, don't overthink it," Irene said, waving an arm, quickly easygoing again. "She's not stupid, after all. She survived in the wild all that time—she'll adapt to a new environment fast for sure. Upstairs, upstairs—fix my arms first. It's really inconvenient like this; even changing the channel is a struggle."
Yu Sheng said oh and carried Irene up the stairs.
Coming into the attic, he turned on the light and unfastened the picture frame from Irene's back, then carefully set the little doll down on that large table.
"You don't have to be so cautious—it's not like I'm made of porcelain," Irene said, amused by Yu Sheng's careful movements. "You're not going to crush me by accident."
Yu Sheng gave the porcelain-white break on her arm a strange look. "It's not that I'm being overly careful—it's just that those broken spots of yours really look alarming. Doesn't it hurt at all?"
"It doesn't hurt. It only hurt a tiny bit when it first broke," Irene said, lifting her arm to look. "But now that I take a look, it really is a bit scary... hurry up and fix it."
At this she paused, then began directing the procedure. "The process is about the same as making a body, but there's no need to make a torso—just the arms. The spirit infusion still goes the same way as last time, with me guiding it. After the arms are repaired, it's the legs—there are a few cracks in my legs, but they're not completely severed yet. You'll need to take the alchemically treated clay and activate it to patch them up. This part needs care; you'd better use the scraper to shape it properly, so I can save some strength too..."
Yu Sheng listened to the little doll's explanation, and only after she finished did he speak up somewhat hesitantly. "Right, there's something I've been meaning to tell you..."
Irene: "Huh?"
"The clay I bought last time is actually all used up," Yu Sheng said, spreading his hands. "There's no way I could go out and buy more at this hour."
Irene froze. "...Why didn't you say so earlier! Then what did you drag me up here for?"
Yu Sheng then took the lotus root he'd bought last time out of the drawer beside him...
The little doll's eyes went wide in an instant, and she nearly jumped up (but with her legs broken she couldn't). "So you just have it in for lotus root, huh! Didn't I already tell you... wait, why did you put lotus root in the drawer of the alchemy workbench! You've been plotting this all along, haven't you?!"
"I was just curious whether this stuff could actually work," Yu Sheng admitted that there was indeed a tiny bit of premeditation in it, but he filed it under the spirit of scientific exploration—just like when he'd researched how best to stew the meat of the "Hunger entity" back then, it was all for the sake of study. "Let's just give it a try—this lotus root's pretty expensive, you know."
"Try your grandpa!" Irene glared with crimson eyes. "Setting everything else aside—before spirit infusion, you have to add your blood into the material. You could work that into a ball of dough just fine. But with lotus root, how are you going to get it in there..."
The little doll was only halfway through her sentence when she saw Yu Sheng pull a syringe out of the drawer.
Irene: "...Hey, no—are you insane?!"
Chapter 58