Chapter 107

Chapter 107: Financial Pressure

Foxy was obedient to a fault. The moment Yu Sheng gave the order, she didn’t ask a single question. She grabbed Irene’s painting, stuffed it into her tail, spun around, and bolted for the attic.

Irene sat on the bed, still clinging to hope. “Hey, Yu Sheng, do you think something mira—”

Before she could finish, both Little Dolls’ eyes went dim as if someone had cut the power. They stiffened and collapsed onto the mattress.

Yu Sheng watched with a blank expression. Then he tilted his head toward the ceiling at a forty-five-degree angle.

“Looks like it won’t.”

A few seconds later, he shouted down the hall, “Foxy! You can come back now!”

Quick footsteps pounded on the stairs. Foxy sprinted down from the attic, rushed into the room, pulled the oil painting out of her tail, and handed it to Yu Sheng with both hands.

“Benefactor! Here you go!”

The two dolls on the bed shot upright again, eyes a little unfocused.

Yu Sheng casually hung the painting on the back of one shell, turning her into player one Irene.

Instead of immediately complaining about the failed miracle, Irene blinked at Foxy and said flatly, “Can’t you tidy up inside your tail?”

Yu Sheng raised his brows. “Huh? You can see inside her tail? What does it look like?”

The sentence sounded wrong the moment it left his mouth. In any other context it would’ve been unhinged, but the longer he thought about it, the harder it became to find what was actually wrong—aside from the fact that Foxy’s rocket-boosted Dora-Ari tail made normal conversation feel like a fever dream.

“It’s pitch-black,” Irene said, gesturing as if she could see it in front of her. “I don’t know how big it is. I can’t see the end. But there’s a huge pile of stuff in the middle—like a trash mountain. The top is all food, plus leftover dishes. The moment I opened my eyes in the painting, I had half a box of instant noodles poking me in the face, and there was a roasted chicken with a bite missing…”

“I-I didn’t steal it,” Foxy blurted, looking terrified. “I told Benefactor! And the leftovers too—it would’ve been a waste to throw them away, so I took them. They won’t go bad in my tail.”

“Then at least organize it!” Irene snapped. “Who piles things up like a trash mountain? If you won’t clean it, then next time you go shopping, buy two shelves and stuff them into your tail. The kind supermarkets use to stock goods. They’re cheap.”

Yu Sheng listened as the conversation spiraled into questions like whether mixing cargo and passengers in a tail violated basic food safety, and whether it was reasonable to install shelving inside a fox demon.

He finally cleared his throat. “Let’s talk about Irene.”

Both Irene and Foxy reluctantly dragged the topic back.

“Ahem.” Yu Sheng steadied himself. “We’ve confirmed it: at least one doll shell has to stay within five meters of the painting. If not, both bodies go offline and Irene’s soul returns to the painting.”

“Next,” Irene added, “we test how far the secondary body can go while the main body is carrying the painting.”

“How do we test that?” Irene frowned. “The house might not be big enough. Go outside? Into the city? For this kind of test we’d have to avoid ordinary people, and that sounds like a hassle…”

“That’s why there’s a place more suitable than the city.” Yu Sheng smiled.

Before he could explain, both dolls spoke at once, excitement bubbling through the echo.

“The valley!”

“It’s huge,” Yu Sheng said, nodding. “From one end to the other is far enough, and we won’t have to worry about anyone bothering us. But before we go, we still need to head out. I want to buy some things.”

The moment he said buy, Irene lit up. Both bodies scooted to the edge of the bed, words tumbling out.

“Shopping?” “What are we buying?” “Clothes?” “Food?” “Are you finally buying something for me?” “I want a new outfit too—”

Yu Sheng raised both hands. “Use one body to talk. Don’t yap together. My head’s going to explode—and it’s going to keep exploding if you do this all day.”

Irene pouted, but she reined herself in.

“First we’ll buy more food,” Yu Sheng said, ticking items off on his fingers. “Two cases of instant noodles and vacuum-packed chicken legs for Foxy as reserves. Then vegetable seeds. And if we’re doing that, we’ll need farm tools too.” He paused, frown deepening. “Oh, right. We also need to hit the building materials market… Maybe we should slow down. That expense might be a bit big.”

The worry settled over him like a weight.

Another shopping run like this and his savings would hit bottom. He still hadn’t found a direction for his new draft. The “Hotel” wasn’t running any real business either. Yesterday he’d taken Little Red Riding Hood on a commission, but he didn’t even know when the payment would come through. The client said it could arrive as early as today, but they’d stressed it was only as early as.

These days, money only went out.

And most of it went straight into Foxy.

Clothes and daily supplies were short-term, one-time costs. Feeding Foxy was a different kind of problem entirely.

And yet… Yu Sheng had to admit every bit of food money spent on her was worth it. Twenty chicken legs for one tail sounded absurd until you remembered what that tail could do.

Where else could you buy a cruise missile for the price of twenty chicken legs?

Give him a chicken farm and he might actually feel confident enough to let this young lady lay down firepower across all of Old Quarter.

On the other hand, Irene’s spending at home was basically zero. Aside from cheap materials for reshaping her body, he’d never bought her clothes or food. The only thing he’d ever bought her was a small red hair clip—something Little Red Riding Hood had picked up while they were shopping. A childish little trinket… and it had made Irene happy for an entire day.

Thinking about it now, Yu Sheng felt a faint twinge of guilt.

She was loud, bad-tempered, always pushing her luck—weak but cocky—but when it mattered, she showed up.

If it really came down to it, he could tap that “disaster reserve fund.” And if he still couldn’t make ends meet…

He could go to the Special Operations Bureau and see if they’d buy that iron lump they’d found last time.

Yu Sheng’s muttering caught Irene’s attention. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly, standing up. “Pack up and get ready to go out. We won’t go far. The farmers’ market next to Old Quarter should have everything we need.”

He glanced at Foxy. “Also, let Foxy carry you out as camouflage. Bring the painting so you don’t disconnect on the way.”

“Oh.” Irene nodded. She had her other body sit back against the headboard, then awkwardly controlled her main body—the one carrying the painting—to climb down. She wobbled across the floor, then let out a relieved sigh.

“Not bad. If the other body stays still, it’s much easier to control this one alone.” She tilted her head. “By the way, how are we getting there? A taxi?”

“There aren’t saved coordinates over there,” Yu Sheng said with a sigh. “Otherwise I’d open a door straight to it and save the fare. We can only take a taxi.”

About ten minutes later, Yu Sheng and Foxy—now disguised as a black-haired girl with long, straight hair—waited at the nearest intersection for their ride.

“When we have money, we should buy a car,” Irene’s voice said in his head, bright with hope. “We can’t keep squeezing into rideshares forever…”

Yu Sheng glanced at the doll in Foxy’s arms. “What if it’s another car from the Special Operations Bureau?”

“…Then rideshare is better.”

Yu Sheng grinned, then let his imagination wander.

“Honestly, we could just buy an electric scooter,” he mused. “A big one, so it can carry someone. Foxy sits in back. In the city we ride normally, and when we get somewhere with no people, she opens her tail and we have a nine-tailed, rocket-boosted scooter. One hundred kilometers for twenty cents of electricity and three steamed buns. If the scooter can handle it and recover power, we might even get paid back for the electricity…”

“Your imagination is really something,” Irene muttered. Then she suddenly reacted. “Hey, wait. Where do I sit?!”

“I’ll put you in the front basket.”

“…Yu Sheng, your uncle!”

While they bickered, a smooth silver-gray car slid into Yu Sheng’s view. Irene—who’d been about to lunge up and bite someone the moment there were no witnesses—immediately went limp again, behaving in Foxy’s arms to maintain the camouflage.

The car stopped in front of them with a soft squeak.

Foxy leaned close to Yu Sheng and whispered, “Benefactor, is that the car you called? It got here so fast?”

Yu Sheng froze. He checked the rideshare app, then compared the plate to the car in front of him.

“…No,” he said slowly. “The car I called is still two intersections away, waiting at a red light.”

As he spoke, the silver car’s window rolled down.

Good news: it wasn’t Xu Jiali’s old Xiali that shook like it was about to die.

Bad news: the face in the driver’s seat was still someone he knew.

Ren Wen Wen smiled brightly. “It’s you! Going out?”