Chapter 6: The First Step Towards Friendly Exchange
This novel is translated and hosted on Bcatranslation
The girl inside the painting, who had introduced herself as Irene, and Yu Sheng, standing firmly outside the frame, stared at each other with wide, cautious eyes. Neither of them trusted the other, not even a little.
Yu Sheng couldn’t be sure if anything this “person in the painting” said was true. She talked about a place called Alice’s Little House and claimed she was sealed inside the painting—words he’d never heard before. So, when Irene said she didn’t know why she was in this house, Yu Sheng simply refused to believe her.
At the same time, Irene seemed certain that Yu Sheng might try to set her on fire again. She kept sneaking looks at his hand, watching carefully for any sign of that lighter’s flame.
“I still think you must have bought this painting yourself and just forgotten,” Irene insisted. “Isn’t that what people usually do? You humans see something strange, pick it up, and then let it gather dust somewhere, right?”
Yu Sheng had to admit that she had a point. He didn’t even know where half of the things in this house came from. After all, he’d only been here for two months. He was not only unfamiliar with this world, he barely knew himself. For all he knew, the owner of this house—him, in some other state—could have been a completely different person two months ago.
But that thought only flickered through his mind for an instant. He looked back at Irene’s crimson eyes and shook his head firmly. “That can’t be right—this painting looks expensive, definitely not something I could afford.”
“Oh, come on. What if it’s not expensive at all?” Irene hugged her teddy bear closer and shifted forward as if to convince him. “Fake antiques are everywhere these days—maybe I was sold in a batch of counterfeits for just a few coins. Or maybe some clueless reseller picked me up for next to nothing!”
Yu Sheng gave her a doubtful look. “The frame’s solid wood, and there’s gold inlay around the edges.”
Irene paused, then spoke quickly, “Redwood veneer filled with resin! And that gold could actually be copper-coated wire.”
Yu Sheng sighed. “That would still cost more than a few coins.”
“Alright, four coins, but not one more!” Irene declared, as if haggling in a marketplace. “Any higher and no one would buy it.”
Yu Sheng’s shoulders relaxed, and he couldn’t help but sigh again. He ended up crouching in front of the painting and soon found himself chuckling quietly. This was all so ridiculous. Here he was, sitting on the floor of an empty room, arguing with a girl trapped in an oil painting about whether her own frame was a cheap knockoff.
Not that long ago, he’d nearly had his heart ripped out by a frog in a freezing rainstorm. Compared to that, this felt almost surreal.
Irene, however, grew uneasy as Yu Sheng laughed. With her frame now sitting on the floor, she could see the plain ceiling and hear his laughter echoing around the empty space. Finally, she couldn’t contain herself. “Hey, stop laughing! What’s so funny?”
Yu Sheng slowly calmed down. He slid a bit closer to the painting and fixed Irene with a serious look. “That strange dream I had—was that your doing?”
He was talking about the dream where he’d swung an axe at a locked door, only to hear eerie laughter on the other side. Meeting Irene made him suspect that everything in that dream was somehow linked to her. He remembered straining his back in that dream—and the dull ache was still there now.
“It wasn’t me!” Irene shook her head quickly, then hesitated. “Well… not completely.”
Yu Sheng frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean? Don’t talk in riddles.”
“The dream was yours,” Irene explained, trying to sound patient, “but I sort of slipped inside it. I sensed someone dreaming and thought it was a chance to find help. I wasn’t trying to harm you! How was I supposed to know you’d try breaking down the door with an axe just because you lost your key… and got so angry about it?”
Yu Sheng listened carefully and began to piece things together. “So, the door itself had nothing to do with you, and the dream wasn’t created by you. You can just… enter other people’s dreams?”
“Exactly!” Irene nodded, looking rather pleased with herself at first. Then her excitement faded. “I used to be able to do a lot more than that. But now that I’m stuck in this painting, my abilities are really limited.”
Yu Sheng remained skeptical. Still, he had more questions. “You said you wanted to find someone to help you. Help you with what, exactly?”
“To help me get out of here, of course!” Irene replied, as though it should be obvious. “Out of the painting would be ideal, but if that’s not possible, at least help me move someplace nicer. Being stuck in that empty room is awful. If there was even a television on the wall across from me, that would be something! It would be best if it had voice commands, since I can’t hold a remote…”
Yu Sheng realized Irene’s mind wandered wherever it pleased. If he didn’t keep her on track, she’d drift off into her own little world, imagining all sorts of nonsense.
So he cut in before she could wander off too far. “Then what was with that laughter I heard? When I was trying to open the door in the dream, I heard someone laughing. Why?”
“That wasn’t me!” Irene said quickly, raising her hands as if to show her innocence. Then she held up her brown teddy bear. “It was him!”
Yu Sheng stared at her with a blank expression, as if asking silently, “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“I’m telling the truth!” Irene insisted, looking a bit desperate now. She shook the teddy bear in front of him. “He was sealed in the painting with me. I think it’s been so long that he’s lost a few screws, so now he just laughs. Sometimes if I poke him, he laughs. Sometimes he just starts laughing on his own. Honestly, it creeps me out too.”
Yu Sheng kept his face straight and studied Irene closely. After a moment, he felt a small spark of belief taking root. Maybe she wasn’t completely lying. He glanced at the teddy bear, then shrugged. “Alright, then. Make him laugh. Let me hear it.”
Irene looked confident for a second and poked the teddy bear’s head.
Silence.
Irene blinked, confused, then poked the teddy bear a bit harder. Still, no sound. The doll’s face fell, and she looked like she might burst into tears.
“Umm… sometimes it doesn’t work,” she said with a trembling lip. “I poke him, and he just doesn’t laugh…”
Yu Sheng’s mouth twitched. “So sometimes when you poke him, he laughs, and sometimes he doesn’t. And sometimes he laughs without being poked at all.”
He let out a sigh as if concluding a complicated puzzle. “So the laughing has nothing to do with you poking him.”
Irene’s eyes darted to the side. “Uh… yeah, I guess so.”
Yu Sheng decided he’d had enough of dealing with this strange painting for now. The laughter and the dream were starting to feel like old news. At that moment, his stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since coming home and dozing off.
He stood up slowly, wincing at the stiffness in his back.
“Hey, are you leaving?” Irene asked, a note of panic in her voice. “You’re not going to leave me on the floor, are you? At least hang me back on the wall! The view was better there—I could see the wallpaper. The ceiling’s just plain and boring.”
Yu Sheng bent down, picked up Irene’s frame with a grunt, and pressed a hand to his aching back. “I’m taking you to the living room, so stop whining,” he said calmly.
Irene’s worried frown melted into a delighted smile. She snuggled into her chair within the painting, clutching her teddy bear closer. “Oh, good! You’re not so bad after all. By the way, is it dinnertime? What are you having for dinner tonight?”
Yu Sheng glanced down at her. “Can you even eat?”
“I can watch!” Irene replied cheerfully.
He wondered, for the hundredth time, why he was bothering with her. Still, he carried the heavy frame out of the room, his back protesting every step. Irene chattered nonstop as he moved through the hall, heading toward the living room and the stairs.
“Your house is so big! I had no idea there was all this outside the room.”
“What’s in there? Your bedroom? Is anyone else here?”
“Should I say hello to them? Would that freak them out? Well, they probably don’t see a talking doll in a painting every day…”
“Oh, I forgot to ask your name before! Yu Sheng, right? That’s a strange name. It doesn’t mean anything like a fish dish, does it?”
“What’s wrong with your back, anyway? You’re young. You should take better care of it. Human joints are so fragile! You can’t just replace them like—hey, why are you glaring at me like that? It’s kind of scary…”
They reached the top of the stairs at last. Yu Sheng looked down at the steps leading to the lower floor. Usually, these stairs felt normal, but with a painful back and a heavy painting in hand, they seemed to stretch down like a steep hill.
He paused, thinking it through. Carrying Irene’s frame in his current state would be torture. He needed a new plan.
Sensing the shift in his mood, Irene stopped talking. Her eyes grew wide with worry as she watched Yu Sheng’s face darken.
“Irene,” he said softly, lowering his gaze to meet her red eyes inside the frame.
She flinched slightly. “Y-yes?”
“I think your frame looks quite sturdy.”
“Uh… I suppose,” she said uncertainly.
Without another word, Yu Sheng carefully placed Irene’s frame at the top of the stairs, balancing it so it faced downward.
“It might get a bit bumpy,” he warned, his tone matter-of-fact. “Hold on tight.”
Irene’s eyes grew huge as the realization sank in. “Wait, no—”
“Off you go!” Yu Sheng gave a light shove.
With a series of loud clatters, the frame skidded and bumped its way down the stairs. Irene’s panicked, furious shrieks echoed the whole way down.
“Yu Sheng, you… Ahhh! Aaaahhh! Whoaaa! *&%$#@—!”