Chapter 085

Chapter 85: Hotel

Irene spotted the form in Yu Sheng’s hands right away. The little doll rushed over, thrilled, and said: “We’re starting an organization!”

“For some reason she’s more excited than I am,” Yu Sheng thought as he said, pen in hand: “I do have a few names in mind. Do you?”

“Irene Vanguard!” she announced.

Yu Sheng turned to Foxy instead and asked: “What do you think we should call it?”

“Hey, don’t ignore me,” Irene protested, bouncing on her toes as she said: “What’s wrong with ‘Vanguard’? Just because we only have a few people doesn’t mean we can’t be a vanguard!”

Foxy looked at the hopping doll, then at Yu Sheng and the form. After thinking a long time, she said carefully: “I don’t really understand names. Can we call it One Big Happy Family?”

Yu Sheng’s face went blank.

“You see?” Irene exclaimed. “That’s worse than mine. Don’t listen to the silly fox. Listen to me-”

Yu Sheng sighed. He knew better than to rely on these two. He put pen to paper and wrote the name he had already chosen long ago:

Hotel.

Irene craned her neck to look, froze when she saw it, and asked: “‘Hotel’? That’s the name? Why? Feels kind of weird.”

Yu Sheng had to nudge the doll’s head out of his sightline and said: “Because of my ‘The Door.’”

Miss Doll folded her arms, thought for a bit, and seemed to catch his idea. The Doors to faraway places. The wonders beyond them. And the far-off “place” Yu Sheng had always wanted to find.

“On the road, huh,” Irene murmured, then only stayed quiet for two seconds before more nonsense bubbled up: “Then add my element too. Put ‘Doll’ in front. And the silly fox’s element, like a tail. The full name could be ‘Doll Tail Hotel’… No? Okay, okay, you don’t have to glare at me.”

Yu Sheng sighed again, now used to her chaos, and ignored her. He kept filling out the rest.

Under Initial Team Members, he carefully wrote Irene and Foxy.

“Leave the Identification Card numbers blank for now,” Ren Wen Wen said, glancing at his progress and pointing at the portable card printer on the table. “The chip cards are already loaded. When the data comes through in a few minutes, they’ll go active. Please fill in the basic info for each member below.”

“Right,” Yu Sheng said. He hesitated for a couple of seconds, then looked up at Irene and Foxy and asked: “What’s your highest education?”

“Dolls don’t need school,” Irene said at once, lifting her chin proudly. “Dolls receive ancient knowledge from the Progenitor of Dolls during creation. Then we grow by sharing what we see and learn through the link built by Alice Garden.”

Foxy paused, looking a bit embarrassed, and said: “I was… still in grade school, and then the accident happened…”

Yu Sheng stood there with his mouth open. A cold bit of reality slid in. He felt the big dreams he’d been warming up start to sag. After half a minute he let out a long breath and wrote two lines in the team file of “Hotel” that were sure to shock the industry someday:

One entry was “prenatal education.” The other was “primary school, incomplete.”

Ren Wen Wen came over to comfort him and said: “Don’t worry. Otherkind have complicated situations. Many species’ education systems don’t match the Borderland’s, and diplomas don’t transfer. That field is mainly for reference.”

“Usually the ones registering organizations in the Borderland are ‘locals,’ right?” Yu Sheng said, giving her a look. “You don’t have to comfort me.”

Ren Wen Wen fell quiet, as if she wanted to say more, but the portable card machine on the desk started humming.

“Ah, the card data is here.”

Moments later, Foxy and Irene had their Identification Cards, two small plastic cards that looked no different from normal ones.

“I think this photo is ugly,” Irene complained, turning her card over and over in both hands. The card was a bit big for her. She looked up at Ren Wen Wen and said: “Are you all trained to make ID photos worse? You take a pretty face and make it gloomy. And you even changed my eye color…”

“That lets the card work in most everyday situations, though you probably won’t use it much,” Ren Wen Wen said, tidying the forms Yu Sheng had finished.

“Mm, I like mine,” Foxy said, nodding fast. She carefully tucked her card into her tail, looked up at Yu Sheng with a happy smile, and said: “Thank you for running around for me, Benefactor.”

Yu Sheng smiled and said nothing. He just rubbed her hair and scratched the fur behind her ear.

Foxy loved that. She closed her eyes, clearly enjoying it.

“All right, the registration process is complete,” Ren Wen Wen said as she packed up and stood. “We can’t make the license on site. Someone will deliver it to you in a couple of days. There’s one more thing for you.”

She dug around in her bottomless backpack, then handed Yu Sheng a brand-new phone.

Yu Sheng stared, surprised, and didn’t take it at first as he asked: “Huh? Why?”

“It’s a special device,” she said. “It has the Bureau’s intelligence-sharing platform built in. You can also use it to activate support Nodes placed around the Borderland. There are other features too, like keeping a signal in harsh conditions or pointing you to the nearest liaison station in areas outside the Borderland that the Bureau manages. If you’ve met other Spirit Realm Detectives, you’ve probably seen them use this. It isn’t the same as a normal phone.”

Yu Sheng blinked and thought of Little Red Riding Hood’s phone. It did look similar.

“It’s free?” he asked.

“It costs money, though it’s affordable,” Ren Wen Wen said with a smile. “But you don’t need to think about that. This is a personal gift from our Director.”

Yu Sheng finally accepted it, still a bit stunned, and asked: “From Director Bai Li Qing? Is that… appropriate?”

“You eliminated the Entity entrenched in Night Valley and brought two Bureau agents and a Spirit Realm Detective safely back to reality,” Ren Wen Wen said earnestly. “This gift is only a small thank-you. Also, the Director and our Captain told me to say this clearly: if you need anything, you can contact the Bureau directly. Especially if ‘supernatural reasons’ cause problems in your daily life, please tell us. Don’t worry about bothering anyone.”

Yu Sheng made a vague sound. [This ‘special care’ feels strange, but I can’t say why.]

After a moment, seeing that the clerk wasn’t leaving yet, he asked with a smile: “Is there something else?”

Ren Wen Wen opened her mouth, hesitated, then finally gathered her courage and said: “It isn’t Bureau business. It’s personal. I wanted to confirm… did you write ‘Blizzard Mystery Case’?”

Yu Sheng froze for a second, then realized what she meant. He looked at her and said: “Uh, yeah, that was me. You are…”

Her face lit up at once as she said: “I’ve read your stuff! A lot of it! On my phone!”

Yu Sheng’s guess was confirmed. He straightened up on the spot and turned to Irene, saying: “What did I tell you? See? What did I say? I’m a-”

Before he could finish showing off, Ren Wen Wen whipped a notebook from her bag and thrust it at him like she was going in for the kill, saying: “Could I get your autograph?”

Delighted, Yu Sheng took the notebook and pen and said: “No problem, no problem at all.”

“Great! When I first saw it in the file, I didn’t dare believe it. I even recommended your work to our Captain, but he said he didn’t get it,” Ren Wen Wen said, eyes sparkling. “Let me tell you, my favorite is Lin Qi. I totally ship him with Nightblade.”

“…?”

Yu Sheng’s signing hand suddenly trembled.