Repair

Thirty minutes later, Yu Sheng watched the little doll lying on the "alchemy workbench," a touch nervous. Irene propped herself up with her hands and slowly sat up, staring blankly as she pondered life. Doll, 66.6 centimeters, giving off the faint scent of lotus root. The experiment was a success. After watching her for a while, Yu Sheng decided that Irene didn't seem to have any real problems, and his confidence gradually built back up. "See? I told you it'd work. You can even use flour, so why couldn't you use lotus root...?" "Just hold on and let me sort this out." Irene raised a hand to cut him off, then stared at her own hands with a strange look. "I just don't get it. How could this work? It doesn't make sense, you know? How did it just... work...?" Yu Sheng twitched the corner of his mouth. "You're the one who told me to try it. How come, now that I've tried it, you're the one who won't believe it?" "I never should've let you try! How was I supposed to know you'd actually succeed?! Now my arms really have turned into lotus root!" Irene glared at him, puffed up with anger. "I just wanted to watch you flounder for a laugh—there's no way this half-baked 'alchemy' of yours could've worked! I just wanted you to give up once you saw how hard it was... no, wait—how did you even succeed, huh? How did it work?!" "I don't know," Yu Sheng said, a little dazed himself. "You agreed to let me try, so I tried. You never said you just wanted to watch me fail—I thought you were really supporting my scientific research..." Irene instantly wanted to leap up and bite someone, but since her legs still weren't fixed, the leap failed, and she could only sit on the table and curse up a storm. "Scientific research my ass! What kind of damn science is this?! You turned my arms into lotus root—now what am I supposed to do?! They've really fused together now! How the hell did you pull it off? The power of pondering? Huh?!" Yu Sheng pondered it over, and figured it really must have been the power of pondering that had pondered it into being. But Irene's fierce reaction right now genuinely caught him off guard—he had no grounding in alchemy at all. Everything he'd done was just following the doll's instructions, one word from her, one step from him. When he'd poured blood into the two segments of lotus root and performed the spirit infusion, he hadn't been thinking about anything, and had no idea this was a hopelessly impossible, slapdash operation. The instant the two spirit-infused lotus root segments suddenly writhed beside Irene's elbow and turned into arms, he had simply taken it all as normal. He hadn't expected to scare the little doll this badly. "Sorry..." Yu Sheng thought for a moment, and actually started to feel a bit uneasy. "Then how about we swap them out again? I'll go downstairs and find an axe..." Before he could finish, Irene shut him down with a glare. "Fine, forget I said anything." "What's done is done—what else can I do." The little doll sullenly raised her arms, looking utterly resigned, worn out in body and spirit. Then, with great caution, she clenched her fists and moved each of her ten fingers one at a time. She looked so nervous, as if a Doctor Octopus tentacle had been grafted onto her body, as if the slightest move might make these two arms Yu Sheng had haphazardly attached suddenly go out of control. But she soon discovered that the two hands Yu Sheng had cobbled together in his reckless tinkering were actually quite handy. Even if the raw material was lotus root. "Um... done testing?" Yu Sheng watched warily from the side, and only broke the silence after confirming the doll wouldn't suddenly spring up and bite him. "They should work normally, right? They don't hurt, do they?" Irene sighed. "Ugh, yeah, they work. No real discomfort." "If they work, they work—what's with the sighing? You scared me." Only then did Yu Sheng truly relax, and his gaze fell on Irene's two legs that couldn't stand. "Now it's time to fix your legs. Let me see how bad the damage is." Irene gave an "oh," but suddenly looked up and stared into Yu Sheng's eyes. "Hold on—what are you planning to fix them with? Let me warn you, if you pull out a bag of lotus root starch, I swear you'll get hit by a dump truck in your dreams tonight..." Yu Sheng found this rather baffling. "I just don't get it. Your body's made of clay—you don't even mind using flour as a stand-in—so why are you so against other similar materials?" Irene lifted a hand and pointed at Yu Sheng's nose, but because her hand was so small, the gesture had no intimidation or provocation to it whatsoever. "You humans keep pets, don't you? So why don't you keep cockroaches? What you eat is all organic matter, so why don't you eat sh—" "All right, all right, I get it, you don't have to say it." Yu Sheng hurriedly cut the doll off, instantly grasping just how vast the gap in perception between different species could be. "Don't worry, I've got proper repair materials." As he spoke, he opened the drawer on the other side of the table and took out a small jar of epoxy resin putty. "In theory, the best thing for repairing a clay doll is the same kind of clay, but I've run out of clay now, so using this as a substitute works just the same—what matters is treating it with alchemy, right?" He checked with Irene. "I just smooth it over you with a scraper and that's fine, right?" "This... I guess it'll do." Irene finally nodded, reluctantly, then grew a little curious. "When did you prepare that?" "It was a free gift that came with the clay I bought before. I'd stuffed it at the very bottom and didn't notice at the time." Yu Sheng spoke casually while studying the instructions on the packaging. "All right, now let me see your wounds." Only then did Irene relax. She slowly lifted the hem of her intricately lace-trimmed skirt a little, then slid down the long stocking on her right leg. Her ivory-like calf was covered in black cracks, large and small; some even ran through the knee, all the way up to near her thigh. Yu Sheng was instantly startled. "...Holy shit!" "At least they didn't break." Irene still seemed utterly unconcerned. "If they'd broken, you'd have grafted another segment of lotus root onto them." "It's not about whether they broke—how can you be so unconcerned...? Does it really not hurt at all?" Yu Sheng's voice had gone a little tight. Though he'd grown used to the sight of blood these past two days, used even to seeing his own mangled, bloody form, when he saw the shattered state of Irene's legs, for some reason his heart still gave a thump. It was a shock completely unlike getting a hole punched through him by some monster. It was probably because the sight was too eerie and ghastly—even more frightening than the doll's severed arms. He reached out and touched the cracked places on Irene's leg, feeling that around those cracks the flesh was hard as wood. Irene's normal limbs were soft, no different from a human's, and this hardened texture showed that the structure near the cracks had begun to gradually lose its "soul sync"—delay even a little longer, and the next step would be just like her arms before, breaking and shattering outright. Irene herself actually laughed out loud. "Haha, don't rub it, it tickles... It doesn't hurt, not one bit... okay, fine, it hurts just a tiny bit, super, super faint." Irene gestured with her hands, bringing her two index fingers very close together, as if to emphasize just how slight the pain was. Yu Sheng sighed, took up a small knife and slit open the back of his hand, then began mixing his blood into the repair material. As he blended it with the scraper, he muttered, "You're way too scary, you know that? I've got no idea what the deal is with you living dolls' bodies, but next time you get hurt, could you not be so calm about it? If something's serious, say so sooner—after all, in the end I'm still the one who has to patch you up..." Irene rolled her eyes. "You were plenty scary too when you died with your eyes wide open. I didn't even bring that up." Yu Sheng pursed his lips, finished the remaining steps of processing the material, and carefully spread the putty over Irene's wounds with the scraper. "Ah, that tickles..." "Hold still. Don't move around." "Okay." Irene was quiet for a while, then—probably finding the wait for her repairs boring—couldn't help chattering again. "Those two Special Affairs Bureau operatives we met today, I actually wanted to chat with them, to see if they had any way to contact my sisters at Alice's Cottage. I mean, I can't quite remember the specifics of this Special Affairs Bureau, but they're presumably Jiecheng's 'official organization,' so they ought to have dealings with Alice's Cottage..." "Then why didn't you say anything?" Yu Sheng asked without lifting his head, his hands still carefully carrying out the repair. The scraper spread the putty, filling the cracks in the doll's legs. The moment the repair material mixed with fresh blood was applied, it gave off a faint hiss, then melted into a black sludge and mist, gradually fusing with the doll's skin and restoring a flesh-like texture and elasticity. "I don't know. I just suddenly felt a bit panicky," Irene said. "A spiritual premonition—it left me feeling unsettled... Maybe it's because I just met those two, and I don't quite dare trust them yet? Or maybe it's because I've been out of touch with the outside world for too long. I'm not even sure what the situation is now among the various factions in the boundary zone..." Yu Sheng paused what he was doing and looked up at the doll. "Then next time we meet them, should I still bring up your situation? They've already seen you today, and when they head back, they'll most likely report it along with everything else..." "I'm not afraid of them reporting it. There's no living doll in this world who stands 66.6 centimeters tall, so when they file their report, they'll probably just take me for some kind of living-doll-like alchemical creature—that's nothing unusual in their eyes. As for the next time we meet..." At this, Irene hesitated, looking into Yu Sheng's eyes. "We'll see how it goes. If their identities check out, if they're confirmed to be people from an official organization, then ask them about Alice's Cottage. And if they can help make a connection, help me find the other living-doll sisters in this city, that'd be even better. Meeting my own kind... I'd probably feel a lot more at ease." Yu Sheng rarely saw the doll wear such an anxious, hesitant look, so torn over every possible gain and loss. But he felt he could understand this hesitation and wavering. If he'd been sealed away for half a century or even longer, then suddenly released to face a world that had turned completely unfamiliar—not knowing what had become of the things he'd once known, nor knowing the current order of the world or its power structures—then seeking help from other factions... it truly would become something that had to be handled with great care. Yu Sheng let out a soft breath, set down the scraper, and gently reset the joint of Irene's knee. "Try standing up."