Yu Sheng went into the kitchen and shut the door, then turned on the range hood. Amid the noisy racket of the machine, he felt his heart slowly settle.
It was as if the thin wooden kitchen door and the clamor of the range hood helped him shut a chaotic, eerie world outside for a while—at last he had returned to a place that was entirely his own. He could even pretend for the time being that he was not in that enormous, uncanny “Jiecheng” but back in the real “home” he knew so well.
This big house was different from his original “home” in every way, but this one small kitchen came close to the layout in his memory. So after he had somewhat settled into this world, he had arranged it as much as possible into the familiar shape he knew.
Every day when he cooked here, he pretended he was still in his real home, that he had not pushed open the front door that morning, had not stepped into a strange city full of eerie shadows. Sometimes, busy in here, he would even feel that if he simply looked up, he would see the familiar street scene of old through the window—the old street outside the kitchen bathed in orange-red clouds, the reddish sunlight flowing across the outer walls of the apartment buildings in his memory...
But the view outside always shattered these brief imaginings. Now, looking out, he saw only a bare stretch of empty ground and, not far away, low, old single-story houses. There were hardly any apartment buildings here, but plenty of haphazard utility poles. And that warm, comfortable sky from his memory—he had not seen it for a long time.
The sky over this city was always either blindingly bright or so dim it weighed on the heart.
Yu Sheng sighed and pulled down the blinds over the windowpane, paying no attention to the night outside, which always seemed full of shifting shadows.
He trimmed and washed the vegetables, heated the wok, added cold oil, and once the chopped scallions had released their fragrance, deftly put the ingredients in. Listening to the sizzle from the wok, he heard the sound of a TV program coming from beyond the door. This bizarre city did have a whole range of information channels, including television and cell phones. During his first days here, almost all his knowledge of this “Jiecheng” had come from watching TV programs and scrolling through news on his phone, and even now, it remained one of the important ways he learned about this “world.”
“Yu Sheng! The TV’s too quiet! Turn it up for me! Please!”
A girl’s loud, brash voice suddenly came from outside the door. Yu Sheng jumped, his hand slipped, and he nearly flipped the food right out of the wok.
He had almost forgotten that Irene was out there.
In the past, when he cooked in the kitchen, there had never been anyone outside talking!
“Hold on!” Yu Sheng shouted back with no politeness at all, then could not help muttering, “...She certainly makes herself at home...”
Soon, however, the corner of his mouth twitched into a somewhat helpless smile.
Fine. It was just as well. At least it added a little “human presence” to the house—at least it was some kind of activity.
A while later, Yu Sheng came out carrying the steaming food. He set the bowls and plates on the dining table and casually turned the TV opposite the table up two notches. Then he sat down with his back to the TV, facing Irene’s picture frame. He himself had no habit of watching TV while he ate, but he would leave it on as background noise—that way, at least, he would not be competing for the viewing spot with Irene, who could only watch TV from a fixed angle.
In the oil painting, Irene hugged her teddy bear and craned her neck to look at the food on the table. Her eyes flicked from the TV program to the dining table and back, and she muttered, “That’s quite a spread...”
“Just some home cooking,” Yu Sheng said offhandedly. “I quite enjoy cooking.”
“Oh.” Irene said “oh” and obediently went back to watching TV. But once Yu Sheng began eating, she craned her neck to peek at the table again. After holding back for a good while, she finally could not help speaking: “So I just watch while you eat?”
Yu Sheng lifted his eyes and waved his chopsticks in front of Irene’s frame. “Want a bite?”
Irene glared, but then her head drooped and she started sulking to herself.
“...Fine, fine. We’ll go through the motions.” Seeing her like that, Yu Sheng felt helpless. He sighed, fetched an empty bowl from the kitchen, portioned some rice and food from his own bowl into it, and set it in front of Irene’s frame. “I’ve left you a bowl and chopsticks—just pretend you’re smelling it. I’ll be the one eating it in the end anyway.”
Irene frowned at the bowl of food in front of the frame. She thought about it and decided that would do, so she hopped down from her chair and moved close to the edge of the frame, her face filling nearly half of it, and looked at Yu Sheng very seriously. “All right, fine—thanks. You’re actually quite considerate...”
Yu Sheng lowered his head and shoveled in a mouthful of rice, giving a vague sound of acknowledgment. Then he looked up and saw Irene with only her head visible in the frame. His gaze then fell on the bowl of food in front of the frame, and he suddenly felt that something was off...
Irene noticed nothing wrong at all. She was only puzzled that Yu Sheng had suddenly blanked out. “What are you staring at?”
Yu Sheng quickly lowered his head and shoveled in two more mouthfuls, then looked up at Irene again—
A pitch-black picture frame, a pitch-black background, the portrait of a doll girl, and a bowl of food set before the painting.
The whole scene was basically a “her voice and smile live on” memorial portrait.
The muscles in his face twitched twice. But after holding back for quite a while, he still did not dare say what he had been reminded of—not for any other reason, mainly because Irene could swear like a sailor.
With things as they were, there was nothing for it but to eat. He could only pretend nothing had happened. Under Irene’s puzzled gaze, he bent his head and ate furiously, trying his best not to look at the one across the table whose voice and smile lived on...
The entire meal felt like eating at a wake.
At long last the meal was over. Yu Sheng wiped his mouth and hurriedly cleared away all the cups, plates, and bowls from in front of Irene’s frame. He dumped them into the kitchen sink, planning to leave them to soak until he got up the next morning—mainly because his back still hurt, and bending over the sink to wash dishes was a bit much for him right now.
But the dishes could wait; the garbage could not. This time of year, a kitchen garbage bag absolutely could not be left in the house overnight. Enduring his back pain, he tidied up the garbage and headed for the door with the bag.
Irene, who was watching TV, looked up and asked curiously, “Hey, where are you going this late?”
“Do I have to report to you in my own house?” Yu Sheng retorted irritably to this overly familiar doll in the painting, but he still lifted the garbage bag in his hand to show her. “I’m going out to take out the trash.”
“Oh. Then come back soon,” Irene said, her eyes already back on the TV. “This house is so big, and I’m here all alone. I’m scared. What if a thief gets in...”
Yu Sheng rolled his eyes. In his mind, if anyone really did get into this gloomy old house and the first thing they saw was a ghostly figure moving around inside a painting, the first one frightened to death would definitely not be the person in the painting. The way Irene was, a thief would probably call the police first...
But he did not have the nerve to say that to Irene’s face.
Yu Sheng shook his head, grumbled inwardly a couple of times, and went to the entrance. After changing into his outdoor shoes, he reached out and gripped the front door handle.
He applied a little force; the handle turned, and he pushed the door open.
For some reason, he suddenly recalled that morning two months ago—an utterly ordinary morning, like every ordinary day in his ordinary life.
Back then, just like now, he had pushed open the front door, stepped outside, and walked into an enormous, suffocating, eerie city—and he still had not been able to get back.
The strange association flashed through his mind. Yu Sheng shook his head with a self-mocking smile and went out the door.
A dry branch snapped sharply underfoot, breaking the valley’s silence. The cold night wind carried a disturbing stench of decay and rank filth. The chill in the air made Yu Sheng, who had come out wearing only a thin shirt, shiver involuntarily. It took him several seconds to reboot his brain, which had just shut down completely.
He saw that he was standing amid barren, crumbling rubble. In the darkness ahead lay what looked like a dense, gloomy, grotesque forest, while tall mountains rose on both sides against the night sky like silent, ferocious giants gazing down at the valley floor from either side, bringing an unbearable, crushing sense of oppression.
Yu Sheng stood frozen in the cold night, then slowly turned his head to look back at where he had come from.
A scene of collapsed, crumbling brick and broken tiles met his eyes. It looked like a ruined temple that had been abandoned and had collapsed a hundred years ago. A battered door—or perhaps just half a door panel propped against a crooked doorframe—stood alone in the ruins. When the night wind blew, a hollow moan came from the gaps between the broken panel and the rubble.
Yu Sheng’s eyes went wide. “Where the hell have I been sent...”
He finally began to understand.
With his act of “opening the door,” what had happened two months ago had repeated itself.
He had been thrown into an unfamiliar place once again.
And this was even worse than two months ago. That enormous, eerie “Jiecheng” was very different from the “Jiecheng” in which he had grown up, but at least it was still a modern city where a person could survive. This time, the situation was not good at all.
He had been thrown into a wilderness.
A dense forest lay ahead, perilous mountains rose on either side, and behind him stood only a ruined temple that had lain collapsed for who knew how many years. One look was enough to make Yu Sheng feel that this landscape was practically begging to spawn thirty or fifty bandits right here on the spot, or a few wolf demons and fox spirits...
And the only thing he had in his hand was a bag of kitchen garbage he had just carried out of the house...
Yu Sheng thought about it, and the curses in his heart turned truly foul.
And in the very next second, just as Yu Sheng’s fragrant, refined inner curses were about to burst forth, an abrupt voice suddenly came from inside his head—
“Yu Sheng! The TV’s lost signal! When are you coming back?”
Chapter 8