Irene was cursing up a storm.
Yu Sheng had no idea how a doll sealed inside an oil painting could possibly have such a rich vocabulary—or how she could keep up a nonstop stream of abuse the entire way down the stairs without once pausing for breath.
Probably because her true body was a doll, and dolls had no need to breathe at all.
But Yu Sheng remained perfectly unruffled. Once Irene had slid down the stairs and hit the floor, he let her curse all she liked, and he came down slowly and unhurriedly, one hand on the banister—mainly because his back hurt, so he couldn't have walked fast anyway. Only after reaching the first floor did he painfully bend down and pick up Irene's picture frame.
"Is there something wrong with you!" Inside the painting, Irene clutched her teddy bear and glared, eyes wide, her clothes and hair a mess. "What kind of person just throws someone down the stairs like that? What if you'd broken the painting!"
"My back hurts, and this painting of yours is too heavy. I couldn't carry it downstairs," Yu Sheng said with a perfectly calm face, carrying the frame toward the dining room. "I checked. Your frame is very sturdy. And if I did break it, maybe you'd get free?"
"If getting out of here were that easy, do you think I'd still be sealed in here all this time?!" Irene sat back down on her chair in annoyance. "Ah, my head's spinning..."
Yu Sheng suddenly stopped and looked down at the girl in the painting, very seriously.
That gaze made Irene's skin crawl. "You... what are you up to now? I'm telling you, if you throw me down the stairs again, I won't let you off. Every day, while you sleep, I'll crawl into your dreams. If you dream of taking an exam, I'll ring the bell. If you dream of playing games, I'll pull the plug. If you dream of going out, I'll come after you in a dump truck. If you dream of going out with someone, I'll..."
Why did this miserable doll have so much trash talk?
Yu Sheng fought down the urge to drag Irene up to the second floor and throw her down again. Keeping his face straight, he tried hard to look serious. "I just want to ask—what's the principle behind this 'seal' of yours? You said you were looking for someone to help you get free... so what would it actually take to free you?"
Irene hadn't expected that to be what Yu Sheng wanted to say. She froze, and only after two or three seconds did she speak, as if unable to believe it. "You... you're agreeing to help me get out of here?!"
"Weren't you the one saying you needed to find someone to help you get free?" Yu Sheng frowned, then quickly added, "I'm just asking first. I haven't agreed yet..."
But Irene seemed not to have heard the second half. Before he could finish, she hurried on. "There are three—no, two methods! The first is the best: find my body. I don't know where it is now, but it must be somewhere... maybe not far from this painting. Anyway, once you find my original body, everything's easy. Just let me get close to it, and I can come out of this damned painting...
"But if you can't find it, or my original body has already been destroyed, then there's only the second method—make a new one. Though a newly made body definitely won't work as well as the original, and getting used to it is a pain..."
Yu Sheng had been listening attentively, and at this point he couldn't help cutting in. "Make a new one? How? Can I just go to a doll shop and buy one ready-made?"
"Of course not!" Irene said at once. "I'm one of Alice's Dolls! A blessed living doll, understand? How could I be the same as those one-third or one-quarter scale dolls in a shop?"
Here she paused, then went on with a slightly solemn expression. "Living dolls are all born from the Garden at Alice's Cottage, and our original bodies come from there too. But I've lost my connection to the Garden now, and I can't leave the painting, so there's no way for me to return to the Garden and be reborn. Still, even without the Garden, we have a method for making a temporary vessel in this world as an emergency measure... but even as an emergency vessel, it isn't easy to make.
"First, you need hair that grows on its own, soil that writhes like a living thing, dead men's bones that break and then heal, and a tear from a living doll—two tears works too, that way my skin will come out a little better—then you use alchemy to reactivate all of those materials, and after that you smear on your own blood... Hey, what's with that look on your face?"
Yu Sheng stared at the girl in the painting with a flat expression, and after a long while he sighed. "...Let's talk about the plan for finding your original body instead?"
Irene blinked. "...You don't know alchemy?"
"Is that stuff supposed to be something everyone knows?!" Yu Sheng's expression verged on going berserk. "And never mind alchemy—where am I supposed to find all those ridiculous materials you listed! Are you sure this isn't copy-pasted from some third-rate fantasy magazine? 'A living doll's tear'... If I could find another living doll at all, I'd just hand you over to her, painting and all! Wouldn't it be better to let your sister take you home than to have me blunder around?"
Yu Sheng reckoned that he'd only been in this "world" a short time and didn't yet understand much about those uncanny shadows and the transcendent realm behind them. But judging at least from the sources of information he'd encountered so far, the "materials" Irene had mentioned were definitely not things ordinary people in this world could get their hands on. How could this girl talk about them so matter-of-factly?
Seeing Yu Sheng's reaction, Irene looked a little embarrassed too. She shifted in her chair and, once she'd changed position, lowered her voice considerably. "Actually, other materials would work too—like ordering some clay, paint, a wig, that sort of thing online..."
Yu Sheng: "...?"
He looked at the girl in the painting with an expression that said, Are you messing with me? Irene couldn't help shrinking down in her chair again. "I just wanted the temporary vessel to work as well as it could... but if we can't build a gold-tier one, a plain one will do.
"Even with those ordinary materials, though, the last step still needs your blood and a little bit of alchemy. I can teach you. It's very simple—even an ordinary person can manage it..."
Yu Sheng didn't answer right away. He stayed silent as if sunk in thought, and only after a few seconds did he suddenly say, "Just now, at the start, you were going to say there were three methods, weren't you? Why didn't you mention the other one?"
"...That method isn't very good. It comes with a cost." Irene waved a hand, looking honest. "You probably wouldn't agree, and I don't want you trying it anyway—after all, you and I barely know each other..."
"If you know we barely know each other, then stop rambling so much." Yu Sheng said it offhandedly and shot the girl in the painting a glare.
Irene pressed her lips together and looked at Yu Sheng with a certain reserve (so now she knew how to be reserved), then asked carefully, "So... will you help me get out of here? The second method is actually pretty easy. You could even just slap a body together any old way—it doesn't matter if your craftsmanship is a bit rough. As long as the ritual procedure is right, I can reshape it after I enter the vessel... just don't make it too ugly. At least make it look like a person."
This time Yu Sheng didn't bicker with Irene. He simply thought it over very seriously, and only after nearly half a minute did he give a solemn answer: "I can't agree to that right now. I need to think about it."
He didn't trust this girl in the painting—at least, he didn't dare trust her completely.
Sure, she seemed honest and sincere, a bit of a chatterbox but not a bad sort, vivid in personality and harmless to a fault; she didn't give the impression of harboring any ill intent. But all of that was only a surface impression formed over less than a day of acquaintance. Strip away those "humanizing" impressions, and Irene's essence was still that of an uncanny thing sealed inside an oil painting.
Yu Sheng wasn't about to be so taken in by her cute looks that he'd build a body for this "ghost in the painting" without a second thought and let her out—what if, the moment she got out, her face changed and she raised that bear and cut him down beneath her Gothic skirts...
Yu Sheng had died once not long ago, and for the time being he had no wish to die again.
Yet Irene said nothing when she got her answer. She just looked steadily at Yu Sheng for a while, then nodded quite naturally. "Oh, I understand."
Yu Sheng was surprised. He'd expected to have to wrangle with the girl in the painting over this for a long time, but he hadn't expected her to be so unexpectedly... gracious.
"We barely know each other yet, right?" As if she'd read the doubt in Yu Sheng's mind, Irene suddenly smiled and winked toward the outside of the painting. "Once we're better acquainted, I'll ask again."
"...Fine. We'll talk later."
Yu Sheng smiled too. He carried Irene's frame into the dining room, set it upright on the table against the wall, and turned toward the kitchen.
"I haven't had dinner yet. I'm going to cook."
"Okay... hey, turn on that TV across from the table first, would you? I'll watch some TV..."
"So many demands."
Yu Sheng switched on the TV across from the dining table in passing, then picked up the vegetables and seasonings he'd bought at the supermarket and left on the shelf earlier, and went to fix his dinner.
He actually loved cooking, and ever since coming to this familiar-yet-strange "Jiecheng," he felt uneasy unless he cooked almost every meal himself at home—after all, only inside this big house did those uncanny shadows stay away and leave him alone.
He didn't mind running into some long, thin shadow figure while out on the road, but not while cooking and eating, because those two things were major events in his life.
...Though now even this "safe house" had gained an uncanny "Irene."
Still, compared with the shadow figures, freezing rain, and frogs that prowled the city streets, a hapless doll who could only prattle on from inside an oil painting was much cuter—at least she wouldn't dig out his heart.
Chapter 7