Chapter 161

Chapter 161: Irene’s World-Shaking Cooking Skills

After Yu Sheng’s reply, Little Red Riding Hood didn’t say anything. She just sat quietly on the grass, as if thinking—or maybe simply staring into space.

After a long while, Yu Sheng heard her mutter, “It’s so quiet here. No Squirrel, no wolf pack.”

“Now that you say that, it sounds super ominous,” Yu Sheng said, looking around awkwardly before turning back to her. “Uh… are you okay? You look really tired.”

“No kidding. I’m in my final year,” Little Red Riding Hood said, rolling her eyes. “And I fell asleep in chemistry class.”

Yu Sheng hadn’t expected an answer that painfully real. He froze for a second. She didn’t wait for him to respond; she just smiled and shook her head.

“At first I didn’t want to go to school at all,” she said. “Especially after I got through the ‘awakening’ stage and knew what would happen in the future… I had a huge fight with my old ‘guardian.’ You heard what we argued about… Wasn’t it kind of stupid?”

Yu Sheng didn’t speak.

Little Red Riding Hood didn’t seem to care.

“Now I sometimes have the same kind of fights with those half-grown kids,” she said, talking to herself more than to him. “They don’t understand why the orphanage makes them go to school step by step, study, and read. The ones in better condition even get specially arranged to attend ordinary schools. The ones in worse condition still have to take lessons in the courtyard with a teacher. For almost everyone, what they learn will never be useful. They won’t graduate. They’ll never have a day where they go to work. They’ll never get a chance to become a designer, a technician, a driver…

“Honestly, they’re right. It really is a waste of time—if you only look at the fact that, so far, the average kid gets maybe a dozen years to live.

“But the guardian who took care of me back then told me that if you’re alive, you should have hope. If the world won’t give us hope, that’s the world’s problem. Whether we hold onto hope or not—that’s our choice.

“In this world, there’s very little we can control. Too many things won’t turn out the way you want. So in the end, your mindset becomes the only thing that still belongs to you… though a lot of the time it isn’t that easy to control either.

“She also said it’s hard for us to live a complete life, but we can try to make the days before adulthood complete. She told me not to smoke, not to drink, not to do bad things. She told me to learn things, to understand how wide the world is. She said it’s incredibly easy to become bad, and giving up on yourself is the simplest thing in the world. So we should do something challenging—like being a good student…”

Little Red Riding Hood went on and on, saying far more than she usually did. When she finally stopped, she let out a long breath, lay back on the gray-but-soft grass, and stared up at the equally gray sky.

“It wasn’t some amazing big reason,” she said. “She couldn’t even explain some big reason. When she left, she was only eighteen—she didn’t even have time to get a driver’s license.”

Yu Sheng turned his head to look at her. “But she taught you well.”

“Not that well. I still didn’t listen to a lot of what she said—like not fighting. And she had some reasons I still don’t agree with.” Her voice softened. “But what can I do? I can’t argue with her anymore.”

“True.”

They fell quiet again.

Little Red Riding Hood stared at the gray sky for a long time. After who knew how long, she broke the silence. “It’s so quiet here…”

“You already said that once.”

“No, I mean… you have such a boring dream.” She huffed. “Is it just grasslands? Dreams should at least be weird and chaotic, full of twists and turns, right? Why does this place look like… the afterlife?”

“Wow, you’re really picking at it now?” Yu Sheng’s eye twitched. “Isn’t it nice to have a quiet dream? If you’ve rested enough, go back. Find somewhere higher, turn your back, and fall over—you should wake up. Or I can call Irene over to kick you out. That works one hundred percent…”

“No thanks. I’d rather get woken up by a teacher’s chalk,” Little Red Riding Hood said immediately, waving him off. Then she sighed, and her shoulders loosened. “You’re right, though. A quiet dream is pretty nice. After I accidentally fell asleep, I was worried I’d open my eyes and end up in the Black Forest again. I didn’t expect I could hide out here for a bit of actual peace.”

Yu Sheng clicked his tongue, but then a faint smell reached him.

“Do you smell that?” He frowned, looking at her. “Something sharp. Weird.”

“No.” Little Red Riding Hood sniffed. “Just grass. Your allergies acting up?”

“No way. It smells like something’s burning.”

“You definitely smelled wrong. My nose is better than a dog’s—”

Before she could finish, Yu Sheng shot up like he’d been launched. His face went pale. “No. The kitchen!”

Little Red Riding Hood blinked. “…Huh?”

But Yu Sheng was already gone.

The next second, he snapped his eyes open. The moment he rolled over, the space beneath him vanished and he dropped straight into a pile of fluffy tails.

Static crackled across his skin—sharp, bright, and loud enough to make him yelp. Whatever Foxy was, she might actually have lightning roots.

Yu Sheng scrambled out of the tail pile and nearly face-planted into the coffee table when his feet slipped on the slick fur. If he’d smashed his head for real, he wouldn’t have been checking the kitchen for at least half an hour. Luckily, he didn’t die.

He staggered into the kitchen. The moment he pushed the door open, a powerful burnt smell slammed into his face.

Mixed into it was Irene’s scream: “Hey, hey—water, water, water! It’s on fire! My dish is on fire… I’m on fire too!”

Yu Sheng rushed in, grabbed Irene—who was standing on the stove, her skirt already starting to catch—and dumped her straight into the sink. Then, in one smooth chain of movements, he shut off the flame, smothered the fire in the wok with a lid, and threw open the windows.

Wu Tong Road No. 66 was safe.

Foxy had shrunk into a corner of the kitchen, neck tucked in, ears drooping. Irene lay in the sink with a soot-blackened face while the faucet roared over her. Little Doll floated up slowly, wobbling like a balloon in smoke.

Yu Sheng stared at the two disasters and the haze dispersing above the stove. His body had moved faster than his brain, and his brain still hadn’t caught up.

Right then, his phone buzzed twice. He picked it up and saw a text from Little Red Riding Hood:

“I woke up. Teacher caught me. Got woken up by chalk. Angry.”

Yu Sheng sent back an encouraging emoji, then looked around the kitchen again and rubbed his forehead. “Okay, so… can one of you explain what exactly happened here?”

A few minutes later, Irene had been hung on the balcony with a clothes pole threaded through both sleeves, water dripping off her like she’d been fished out of a river. Yu Sheng stood beside her with an enormous hair dryer, blasting her dry. Little Doll wobbled in the wind nearby.

The hair dryer was too slow, so Yu Sheng hauled out a space heater and set it beside the rack to bake her.

“Um, you don’t have to hang me up,” Irene said, watching him carefully. “I can bake myself. I can even flip myself over.”

“I’m not hanging you here to save you effort,” Yu Sheng said flatly. “I’m hanging you here so you remember.”

“Y-yeah… okay…”

Yu Sheng glared at the miserable little doll. After holding it in, he finally sighed and went over to unhook Irene from the pole.

Little Doll immediately scrambled onto the heater, sat cross-legged, and began steaming, wisps of white vapor rising off her.

Now Yu Sheng understood why she hadn’t even noticed she was too close to the fire while her clothes were burning.

She didn’t feel heat.

“I’m glad you wanted to help cook,” Yu Sheng said at last, exhausted. “But you almost set the kitchen on fire. That’s terrifying. It shouldn’t be like this. Foxy, you usually have no problem reheating food, right?”

“I… I usually heat food with fox fire,” Foxy said, neck tucked in, tail clamped between her legs. “But Irene said she wasn’t used to it. She said she could use the gas stove… and then she wanted to show off tossing the wok…”

Yu Sheng froze and turned to the doll perched on the heater, wreathed in steam like she’d ascended on the spot. “You. Toss the wok?”

Irene gave an awkward “heh heh,” her face still smeared with soot.

“That spatula was almost as tall as you when it stood up,” Yu Sheng said, eyebrows shooting up. “You’re tossing the wok? Which one of you is tossing who?!”

Irene dry-laughed, shifted on the heater, and kept “smoking.”

Yu Sheng shook his head, stood, and lifted Little Doll off the heater.

Irene panicked. “Hey—what are you doing—”

Yu Sheng sighed and carried her toward the bathroom. “Stop baking. I just remembered—you should take a bath first. You’re smoked through. It’s soaked into you.”

Irene dangled by the collar, looked up at him, and asked carefully, “You’re not mad anymore?”

“Do you think I have time to be mad every day?” Yu Sheng laughed, helpless. “Fine. At least you didn’t actually burn the house down… I’ll check the kitchen later and figure out lunch.”