Chapter 25

Chapter 25: Dream Fox

Irene’s reaction didn’t look fake.

In fact, ever since Yu Sheng had started dealing with this doll, he hadn’t seen her put on an act even once. Everything she said and did carried a blunt, straightforward honesty—as if her skull really were solid. Either her acting was unbelievably good, or her head was, in fact, solid.

Yu Sheng kept the first possibility in mind, but he leaned toward the second.

He described the dead doll he’d seen, along with the enormous shadowy abomination that seemed to have taken her down with it. Irene’s answer didn’t change.

“I don’t know.”

Yu Sheng frowned and fell silent.

Irene tilted her head, curiosity bubbling up. “Hey, why’d you suddenly come ask me all this? Weren’t you going upstairs to sleep?”

Yu Sheng hesitated. In the end, he decided to tell the doll about the changes in the room upstairs. It didn’t involve his own secrets, and it might even be connected to her. Saying it out loud might shake something loose.

“Something’s wrong with the room upstairs…”

He told Irene exactly what he’d seen. For once, she didn’t babble through the whole thing. Her eyes just kept widening, and when he finished, she stared at him for a long moment before finally snapping back.

“Wooooow—”

Yu Sheng immediately regretted having any hope.

“Looks like you don’t know what’s going on either,” he sighed. “You haven’t seen that mirror before, have you?”

“Never. No idea,” Irene said, nodding without a shred of embarrassment. Then she added, “But I think your house is getting weirder and weirder.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I think so too.” Yu Sheng rubbed his forehead. “Opening a door could lead anywhere. Rooms can change their layout overnight. Mirrors can reflect places from who knows when and where. I used to think this place was pretty livable…”

Irene stared at him, unblinking, crimson eyes fixed on his face. When he trailed off, she hesitated. “So… are you planning to move? Not live here anymore?”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer right away. Truthfully, he’d thought about it.

He could endure a haunted mirror that showed up now and then, furniture of unknown origin, suspicious appliances, even whatever had sealed Bi Bi inside that painting. If he wasn’t even afraid of dying, he could treat it as extra spice in life.

But a door that might drop him into some other world?

That was different. You couldn’t just grit your teeth and get used to it.

For Yu Sheng, the worst part about an otherworld wasn’t that it might kill you. It was that you might not make it back. That alone was enough to make him consider moving somewhere else.

Seeing him stay silent, Irene waited a moment, then said quietly, “If you find a place you like, tell me first, okay? Find a way to get me into their neighborhood, and I’ll drive the housing prices down for you…”

Yu Sheng froze. “I was just joking… You don’t think that’s insulting your doll progenitor and your sisters?”

“I thought about it carefully, and I think your whole process is very logical,” Irene said solemnly. “And if I help you knock the price down, that kind of counts as paying you back for letting me live here, right?”

Yu Sheng realized she was just afraid that if he left suddenly, he’d leave her behind.

He didn’t say it out loud. He only shook his head. “Let’s not talk about that. I’ve thought about it, but I’m not moving yet. Don’t worry. If I do move, I’ll bring you with me. A painting doesn’t take up much space.”

“Oh, alright!” Irene brightened immediately.

Then the worry crept back into her face. “Um… the dead doll you saw in the mirror—were her eyes closed?”

“I… don’t think so.” Yu Sheng replayed the image. “Why?”

Irene’s lips parted. She looked strangely sad. “When a living doll breaks, if her eyes close, her soul returns to the garden of Alice’s little house. We resurrect there. But if her eyes are still open… then she’s still ‘there.’”

Yu Sheng’s chest tightened. He regretted answering before he’d asked what it meant.

“We don’t even know what place the mirror is showing,” he said softly after a pause. “But if she appeared in the mirror, she might be connected to this house now. Maybe one day we’ll find her. For now, don’t think too much about it. You’re still stuck here yourself.”

“Yeah… you’re right.” Irene sighed. “Sometimes a sister goes out and we lose contact. We’ll meet again. Yeah. We’ll meet again.”

Yu Sheng realized this doll wasn’t as cold-hearted as he’d assumed.

After talking a while longer, he went back up to the second floor.

He checked the room at the end of the hall again. When he confirmed it was still exactly as he’d seen earlier, he left it alone and turned into his bedroom.

He drew the curtains and lay down. Exhaustion sat heavy in his bones, but his mind was a mess, and sleep wouldn’t come. Thoughts churned like turbulent currents—Irene’s situation, the valley under night, what he knew about otherworlds, the fox young lady who’d fought to stay rational until the last moment and told him to run… and his own resurrection.

He didn’t know how long it took before he finally sank into a heavy sleep.

His awareness slipped into a gentle, hazy pool. Even after he fell asleep, those currents kept circling. Through a layer of fog, he watched fragments of memories drift past, heard muffled voices near his ear, and only when his consciousness touched the bottom did everything gradually fall silent.

Yu Sheng wandered through dim dreamlight. He saw himself crossing a wilderness, and in the distance there was a small hill.

He felt like he’d been circling it for a very, very long time, with no destination and no idea who he was.

Then a strange glint of color caught the edge of his vision and made him stop.

Between the muddled sky and earth, he spotted a patch of brightness. He walked toward it without thinking, and the next instant his vision blurred—he was suddenly standing right in front of it.

A silver-furred demon fox lay sleeping on the open plain. Even curled up, she was two or three meters tall.

Beautiful. Elegant. Serene.

A breeze stirred the thin wild grass and lifted the silver fluff along her body. She didn’t so much as twitch, just lay there quietly, curled in on herself. Thick tails coiled behind her—some tucked beneath her paws, some draped over her like a blanket.

Yu Sheng stared, stunned. Somewhere along the way, he’d become keenly aware that he was dreaming.

After a moment, he stepped forward and cautiously tapped the fox’s front paw.

“…Foxy? Is that you?”

The white fox kept sleeping, completely unresponsive.

He tried again, then again, even tugged at a tail. Nothing.

Yu Sheng frowned and backed away a few steps.

Why would this fox appear in his dream?

He had been thinking about a lot of things before he fell asleep. He had thought about the fox trapped in an otherworld. But this didn’t feel like an ordinary dream shaped by idle thoughts. He could feel it—Foxy was truly “here.”

As he was thinking, something tugged at his attention. Yu Sheng looked down at his right hand.

A tiny bead of blood seeped from his finger, circled by a faint ring of bite marks.

He’d gotten it when he’d snatched the chocolate back from Foxy. Her food-guarding instinct had kicked in, and she’d bitten him.

Yu Sheng stared at the mark and remembered what had happened in the valley, when he’d suddenly “seen” fragments of Foxy’s memories and sensed pieces of her thoughts.

“Because of the blood?”

The idea clicked. Maybe her appearance here had something to do with her accidentally tasting his blood.

But then another question rose immediately. That frog in the rain and that abstract flesh monster had swallowed his blood too—so why weren’t they here?

That flesh monster had eaten him several times, far more than Foxy ever had…

Before his thoughts could wander somewhere truly unpleasant, he sensed something behind him. A low, mocking chuckle drifted out of the bushes.

It sounded familiar.

Yu Sheng snapped his head toward it, and Irene’s furious whisper came at once. “I told you not to laugh! Not to laugh! Can’t you hold it in? See? Now we’ve been found…”

Yu Sheng stared blankly at the oil painting frame sticking out of the bushes, and at Irene inside it—hugging a teddy bear and grinning like acting cute would get her out of trouble.

“Watching TV got boring,” she said, as if that explained everything. “So I came to see what you were dreaming about…”