Chapter 007

Chapter 7: Irene’s Escape Plan

Irene’s cursing was epic.

Yu Sheng had no idea how a doll sealed in a painting could have such a huge vocabulary. She had slid down an entire staircase while swearing in full sentences without a single breath. [Maybe because her real body is a doll and dolls don’t need to breathe.]

He stayed calm. She could keep cussing after she hit the floor. He still took his time down the stairs, one hand on the rail, because his back hurt. When he reached the bottom, he bent with effort and lifted the frame.

Irene glared at him from inside the painting, hair and clothes a mess, teddy in her arms as she shouted: “Are you sick in the head? Who just throws someone down the stairs like that? What if the painting had cracked?”

“Back pain. Your frame is heavy. I couldn’t carry it down,” Yu Sheng said in a normal voice as he headed toward the dining room. “I checked. The frame is tough. And if it had broken, maybe you’d be free.”

“If it were that easy, I wouldn’t still be sealed,” Irene grumbled, then rubbed her temple. “Ugh, my head is spinning.”

Yu Sheng suddenly stopped and studied the girl in the painting very seriously.

She shivered under his stare and snapped: “W what now? If you throw me down from upstairs again, I won’t forgive you. I’ll climb into your dreams every night. If you dream of a test, I’ll ring an alarm. If you dream of a game, I’ll pull the plug. If you dream of leaving through the Door, I’ll drive a dump truck after you. If you dream of dating, I’ll”

[This unlucky doll sure can trash talk.]

Fighting the urge to carry her back up and toss her down again, Yu Sheng kept a straight face and tried to sound sincere: “I want to know how this ‘seal’ works. You wanted help getting out. How do I actually help you?”

Irene clearly hadn’t expected that. She froze for a couple seconds, then asked in disbelief: “You’ll help me get out of here?”

“You asked for help,” he said with a frown, then added, “I’m just asking right now. I haven’t agreed.”

She didn’t seem to hear the second part. She rushed out: “There are three no, two ways. The first is best. Find my body. I don’t know where it is, but it must be somewhere, maybe not far from this painting. If you find it and bring me near it, I can leave this stupid painting.”

She took a quick breath and went on: “If you can’t find it, or my original body is destroyed, then the second way is to make a new one. It won’t be as good as the original, and I’ll need time to adjust.”

Yu Sheng cut in: “Make a new one how? Can I just buy a doll body from a store?”

“Of course not,” Irene said at once. “I’m one of Alice’s Dolls, a Blessed Living Doll. I’m not the same as those dolls from the Shop.”

She grew serious as she explained: “Living Dolls are born in the garden of Alice’s Little House. Our original bodies come from there. I’ve lost my connection to the garden and can’t leave this painting, so I can’t go back to be reborn. But even without the garden, we have an emergency method in the human world to make a temporary body. It’s not easy, though.”

She listed the pieces like items on a spell card: “First, you need to find Self-Growing Hair, Living Soil, Self-Healing Dead Man’s Bone, and one tear from a Living Doll. Two tears would be better, my skin turns out nicer. Then you use Alchemy to reanimate the materials and smear your own blood over them. Why are you making that face?”

Yu Sheng sighed: “Let’s go back to plan one. Finding your original body.”

Irene blinked: “You don’t know Alchemy?”

“Is that supposed to be something everyone knows?” he said, a little wild around the eyes. “And forget Alchemy for a second. Where am I supposed to find those ridiculous materials? Did you copy them from a cheap fantasy zine? And a Living Doll’s tear? If I could find another Living Doll, I’d hand you and your painting over to her so your sisters could take you home. That would be way better than me fumbling through this.”

He had only been in this world for a short time and didn’t understand much about the strange shadows and the Domains behind them. But from what he knew, the materials Irene named were not things ordinary people could get. How could she rattle them off like they were normal?

Seeing his reaction, Irene looked embarrassed. She twisted on her chair and lowered her voice: “Other materials could work too. Like clay, paint, and a wig from the internet.”

Yu Sheng stared at her like she had to be kidding: “Huh?”

She shrank a little: “I just wanted the temporary body to work better. If we can’t make the gold version, the plain version will do. Even with ordinary materials, the last step still needs a little of your blood and a bit of Alchemy. I can teach you. The ritual is simple. A normal person can do it.”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer right away. He went quiet like he was thinking. After a few seconds, he suddenly asked: “You were about to say three ways at first. What’s the third one?”

“That one’s not great. It has a cost,” Irene said honestly, waving it off. “You wouldn’t agree. I don’t want you to try anyway. We barely know each other.”

“Since you know we’re not close, stop talking so much,” he said with a glare.

Irene pressed her lips together and, for once, looked a little shy. Then she asked carefully: “Will you help me get out? The second way is pretty easy. Even a rough body is fine. As long as the ritual’s right, I can reshape it after I go in. Just don’t make it too ugly. It has to look human.”

This time, Yu Sheng didn’t banter. He thought hard for almost half a minute, then answered plainly: “I can’t promise now. I need to think.”

He didn’t trust her. Not fully. She looked honest and talkative, with a decent heart and a strong personality. She seemed harmless. But that was the impression you get after one day. If you stripped away the human-like parts, Irene was still something uncanny sealed inside a painting.

He wasn’t about to be fooled by a cute face into making her a body and setting her free. [What if she popped out, switched faces, and raised that teddy to chop down Brother Yu under her skirt?] He had died once not long ago. He wasn’t eager to try again.

Irene didn’t push. She just held his gaze for a moment, then nodded: “Oh. I get it.”

He was surprised. He had expected a long fight over this. Her being easy about it was unexpected.

She smiled like she had read his mind and added: “We’re not close yet, right? When we are, I’ll ask again.”

He snorted, but he was smiling too as he set her frame on the dining table against the wall and headed to the kitchen: “We’ll talk later. I haven’t eaten. I’m going to cook.”

Irene piped up at once: “Okay. Turn on the TV across the table first. I want to watch something.”

“You’re so fussy,” he muttered, but he still flipped on the TV. Then he grabbed the vegetables and seasonings he had left on the shelf after returning from the supermarket and started on dinner.

He actually loved to cook. After he arrived in this familiar but strange Boundary City, he cooked at home almost every meal. Only inside this Big Manor did the weird shadows leave him alone.

He didn’t mind running into a tall, thin shadow while traveling, but not when he was cooking or eating. Those two things were major events in his life. [Cooking and eating are sacred.]

Even this safe house now had an extra weirdo named Irene.

Still, compared to the shadows in the streets, the freezing rain, and the frogs, a chatty doll stuck in a painting was pretty cute. At least she wouldn’t dig out his heart.