Chapter 161

Chapter 161: Irene’s Astonishing Cooking

After Yu Sheng answered, Little Red Riding Hood said nothing. She just sat quietly on the grass, maybe thinking, maybe simply zoning out.

After a while, Yu Sheng heard her mutter: “This place is really quiet. There are no squirrels and no wolf pack.”

“You make that sound unlucky, like five hundred axemen are about to jump out of the grass,” Yu Sheng glanced around, uncomfortable, then looked back at her, “uh…are you okay? You look tired.”

“Of course I am tired. I am a senior,” Little Red Riding Hood rolled her eyes, “and I fell asleep in chemistry.”

He did not expect such a down-to-earth answer and went blank for a second. She did not wait for him to respond and smiled as she shook her head: “At the start I did not want school at all, especially after I awakened and knew what was coming. I had a huge fight with my former guardians. You heard the argument…was I kind of dumb?”

Yu Sheng kept quiet.

She did not care whether he answered or not.

“Now I sometimes have the same kind of fights with those older kids,” she went on, “they cannot understand why the orphanage makes them go to school and study. If their situation is better, we arrange for them to attend a regular school with ordinary people. If it is worse, they still have to take classes in the compound with a teacher. For almost all of them, what they learn will never be useful. They will not graduate, will not get a job, will not have a chance to become a designer, a technician, a driver…

“Honestly, they are right, if you only look at the fact that every kid so far averages only a little more than ten years of life.

“But the guardian who once took care of me told me people should live with hope. If this world gives us no hope, that is the world’s problem. Whether we hold on to hope is our business.

“There is very little we can control. Most things will not go the way you want. In the end, your mindset becomes the only thing that still belongs to you…even though it is often hard to control.

“She also said we might never live complete lives, but we can try to make our days before adulthood complete. She told me not to smoke, not to drink, not to do bad things. She told me to learn, to see how wide this world is. She said turning bad is very easy, and giving up is the easiest thing of all, so we should do things that are challenging, like being a good student…”

Little Red Riding Hood kept talking, saying a lot. Then she let out a long breath, lay on her back on the gray but soft grass, and stared up at the equally gray sky.

“They were not big and fancy reasons. She could not give big reasons. She was eighteen when she left,” she said softly, “she did not even get the chance to take a driving test.”

Yu Sheng turned his head to look at the girl lying on the grass: “But she taught you well.”

“Not that well. I still ignored a lot of what she said, like don’t fight. Some of her reasons I still do not agree with,” she said, “but what can I do? I cannot argue with her now.”

“True.”

Silence fell again.

She stared up at the gray sky for a long time. At last she broke the quiet: “This place is really quiet.”

“You already sighed about that once.”

“No, I mean your dream is boring. Is it only this field?” Little Red Riding Hood sat up. “A dream should at least be…strange and twisty, right? Why does this place feel like an afterlife?”

“So now you are picky?” Yu Sheng’s eye twitched. “What is wrong with a quiet dream? If you have rested enough, then go back. Find a high spot, turn your back, and fall backward. You should wake up. Or I can call Irene to kick you out. That has a one hundred percent success rate…”

“Forget it. I would rather be woken by the teacher’s chalk,” she waved fast. “You are right. A quiet dream is nice. When I doze off, I worry I will open my eyes and end up in the Black Forest again. I did not expect I could hide here in Clear Tranquility.”

Yu Sheng pouted. Just then he faintly smelled something.

“Do you smell anything?” he frowned, looking at the girl. “A weird, sharp smell.”

“No,” Little Red Riding Hood sniffed. “Just grass. Maybe your nose is acting up.”

“That is impossible. It smells like something burned.”

“You have it wrong. My nose is better than a dog’s…”

Before she finished, Yu Sheng practically sprang into the air. He blurted: “Wait. The kitchen!”

“…Huh?” Little Red Riding Hood blinked.

But Yu Sheng’s figure had already vanished.

The next second, Yu Sheng’s eyes flew open. He rolled over and felt nothing under him, then dropped onto a pile of fluffy tails.

The crackling static felt like winter flowers blooming, and their secret message was clear: the Fox Immortal in this house might really have a lightning kind of spirit root.

Howling, Yu Sheng scrambled up from the tails and almost slipped on the slick fur, nearly smashing his head on the coffee table corner. If he had hit that, it would have taken at least half an hour before he could even check the kitchen. Thankfully he did not. He bolted from the living room to the kitchen door. The second he pushed the door open, a strong burnt smell hit him.

In the middle of it, Irene’s shriek rose: “Water, water! It caught! My dish caught…I caught too!”

Yu Sheng rushed forward in one stride, grabbed Irene, who was standing on the stove with flames licking her skirt, and tossed her right into the sink. He turned off the gas, slapped a lid over the wok to smother the fire, and threw the windows open in one smooth run.

No. 66 Wutong Road was safe again.

Foxy hunched in the corner of the kitchen with her neck and ears pulled in. Irene lay in the sink with a soot-black face. The faucet roared, and the little doll began to float.

Staring at the two little troublemakers and the smoke thinning above the stove, Yu Sheng’s mind lagged behind his actions. He was still catching up when his phone buzzed twice. It was a text from Little Red Riding Hood:

“I woke up. The teacher caught me. Chalk to the head. Mad.”

Yu Sheng replied with a cheering emoji, then swept his eyes around the kitchen and scratched his hair: “So, can one of you explain what happened here?”

A few minutes later, Irene was hanging on the balcony, sleeves skewered over a clothes-drying pole, water dripping off her. Yu Sheng stood beside her with a big hair dryer, blasting away and making the little doll sway.

Feeling that was too slow, Yu Sheng dragged out the space heater and set it next to the rack.

“You do not need to hang me up. I can dry myself,” Irene whispered, eyeing his face. “I can even flip sides on my own.”

“I hung you there not to save you effort. I did it so you will remember.”

“Right. Right…”

Yu Sheng glared at the pitiful Miss Doll, held it for as long as he could, then finally sighed and lifted her down from the pole.

The little doll quickly climbed onto the heater, sat cross-legged, and thin white steam started to rise from her.

Now Yu Sheng knew why she had not noticed how close she was to the flames even with her clothes on fire.

She was not afraid of heat.

“I am happy you want to help with meals,” he said at last, helpless, “but you almost set the kitchen on fire. That is scary. It should not happen. Foxy, you can usually reheat food just fine, right?”

“I…I usually use Fox Fire to heat things,” Foxy said, neck hunched and tail tucked, ears drooping, “but Irene said she was not used to that. She said she could use the gas stove…and then she wanted to show a wok toss…”

Yu Sheng stared at Miss Doll, who sat amid curling steam like she was about to Become an Immortal: “You. A wok toss?”

Irene let out an awkward little laugh. Soot still smeared her cheeks.

“That wok is almost as tall as you. You are going to toss it?” Yu Sheng’s eyebrows shot up. “Which one of you is tossing whom?”

Irene gave a dry chuckle, shifted on the heater, and kept “smoking.”

Yu Sheng shook his head, stood, and lifted the little doll off the heater.

“Hey, what are you doing…” Irene yelped.

Sighing, he carried the doll toward the bathroom: “Stop roasting. I just remembered you should take a bath first. All that smoke and fire has seasoned you.”

Looking up while dangling by her collar, Irene asked: “So you are not mad anymore?”

“Do I have the time to stay mad all day?” Yu Sheng said with a crooked smile. “Fine. At least you did not actually burn the place down. I will go check the kitchen in a bit and figure out lunch.”