Chapter 33

Chapter 33: Delayed Effect?

Yu Sheng figured his blood probably couldn’t affect Irene. Maybe the seal blocked it. Maybe, as a doll, she simply wasn’t impacted. More likely… Foxy had been the special case.

After waiting long enough to get bored, Irene muttered, staring up toward the top of the frame, “Then wipe it off. This is where I live. Having blood all over it is bad luck…”

Yu Sheng snorted. “How are you not bad luck?”

Irene’s eyes snapped wide. “Who said I’m bad luck?! I’m gorgeous—how could I be bad luck? Some people have a whole wall of plastic figurines, but the moment you prop a painting of a pretty young lady against the wall, suddenly it’s bad luck?!”

Yu Sheng listened, dumbfounded, unsure how she’d managed to cram all of that into one breath.

Still, he waved her off, muttering, “That’s not the same thing,” as he grabbed a wet wipe and started cleaning the frame.

It wouldn’t come off.

Yu Sheng froze.

He rubbed harder—careful not to scrub the canvas itself too roughly—but the bloodstain didn’t budge.

And then he noticed something even stranger.

The wipe wasn’t stained at all. Not even the faintest red smear.

Even if a bloodstain was stubborn, it shouldn’t be like this.

Irene couldn’t see the wipe. She only saw Yu Sheng’s sudden stillness, and unease crept into her voice. “Uh… what happened?”

“It won’t wipe off,” Yu Sheng said blankly, staring at the stain as if it had become part of the wood. “It didn’t soak in, but it’s… like it was always the frame’s color.”

Irene didn’t answer.

Yu Sheng frowned and looked down.

Inside the painting, Irene was staring at him with a blank expression, like her mind had unplugged. Two or three seconds later, something shifted—terror crashing onto her face as if she’d suddenly remembered something.

She lifted a shaking finger at Yu Sheng and screamed, “Ahhh! Yu Sheng, you—you—you’re going to die—”

Yu Sheng paused, then understood.

He sat down calmly across from the painting. “Don’t scream ‘die’ like that. It’s bad luck. Even if the number is… kind of high.”

Irene stopped for a heartbeat, stared at him—and then screamed again.

Yu Sheng had no choice but to get up and try to calm her.

Words didn’t help. Maybe because the delayed effect hit like a truck once it finally arrived, she was too agitated to listen.

Luckily, Yu Sheng had a sudden, deeply unkind burst of inspiration.

He grabbed the painting, shook it violently, swung it in circles, tossed it up, caught it, spun it twice more, and set it back on the table.

A long moment later, Irene clawed her way back onto the chair with the red velvet cushion.

She stopped screaming.

She cursed him out instead.

And this time, Yu Sheng soothed her with practiced ease. Once she finally settled—still swearing, but coherent—he pieced it together.

His blood had worked on sealed-state Irene too.

Even though it looked like the blood had only bound itself to the frame, Irene had been affected. The same thing that happened to Foxy had happened to her: Irene “remembered” the events of Yu Sheng’s deaths she had witnessed.

So far, though, Yu Sheng still couldn’t sense Irene’s thoughts and memories the way he could with Foxy.

He glanced at the doll—still pouting—and decided he valued his continued existence too much to say out loud that he suspected she was short on both.

Irene was still angry, but the shock of Yu Sheng being “returned dead” outweighed the roller coaster.

“You’re saying… this isn’t even the first time?” she demanded, voice full of disbelief.

“Yeah.” Yu Sheng thought of the frog in the rain. “It started before I met you. But don’t ask me how it works. Same as the door—I only know it’s real. I don’t know the mechanism.”

“Any cost? Any aftereffects?” Irene asked immediately.

“So far… none I’ve noticed,” Yu Sheng said carefully. On this topic, he didn’t joke. “Nothing physical. Nothing mental.”

Irene stared into his eyes. “Then you still need to avoid ‘resurrection’ as much as possible.”

“I know,” Yu Sheng said, helpless. “Of course I know.”

“The backlash might come later,” Irene insisted, like she was afraid he didn’t understand. “The cost might come in a way you can’t imagine. The world tends toward balance. Anything that breaks reason and order will eventually be repaid. And resurrection…” She swallowed, then said quietly, “Resurrection is the most absurd kind of irrational event there is. You say you haven’t found any problems, but I don’t believe the surface of it.”

“I get it,” Yu Sheng said, nodding sincerely. Then he spread his hands. “But tell me—which of my deaths do you think I chose willingly?”

Irene went silent.

“…Fair,” she muttered at last.

“I just have a decent mindset,” Yu Sheng said with a tired sigh. “I didn’t have a choice. In that valley, staying steady was the only way to survive.” He looked at her. “I understand your concern. Don’t worry. I know my limits.”

Irene stared at him for a long time before she finally looked away and muttered, “Fine. Just remember… I’m still waiting for you to get me a body.”

Yu Sheng let out a slow breath.

He had to admit, Irene’s ability to accept the absurd was impressive. Something like this, and she could still—

Irene suddenly jerked her head up again. “But I still don’t get it. Are you even human? Are you sure you were born normally and grew up eating normal food? You can’t remember anything weird from when you were a kid…?”

Yu Sheng stared at her.

He took back that earlier compliment.

After brushing her off with a few vague replies, Yu Sheng stopped paying attention to her muttering. Now that the “blood test” was done, he remembered his original plan:

Get familiar with door-opening. Learn its rules. Find a way to reproduce passages and lock onto a landing point.

Until he could open the door leading back to the valley.

To bring Foxy food.

Irene quieted down as Yu Sheng gripped the kitchen door handle. She hesitated, then asked, “Even if you can really find the door back to that valley… have you thought about how you’ll deal with ‘Hunger’ once you’re there?”

Yu Sheng turned the handle slowly, searching for that subtle tug deep in his instincts. “One step at a time.”

“So you haven’t thought about it at all?!” Irene snapped. “Then are you going to feed Foxy or feed that monster?”

“If I can beat the monster, I’ll fight,” Yu Sheng said, calm and matter-of-fact. “Even temporarily destroying an avatar of the entity would help. There’s a high chance it would loosen Hunger’s hold on Foxy. If I can’t beat it, I’ll try to use the door to bring Foxy out—but that has consequences, and she might still be targeted. If even that doesn’t work, I’ll at least send food in so she feels better. Once I have a stable way back, we can plan long-term.”

He exhaled. “As for how to deal with the entity itself… yeah. I don’t have a real answer yet.”

“All right,” Irene said, sounding grudgingly relieved. “As long as you’re not charging in headfirst to feed the monster.”

Yu Sheng decided not to mention the thought that had just flashed through his mind—that if the monster ate him, it still wouldn’t cover the bill. He didn’t have the patience for Irene’s inevitable screaming.

With that tucked away, he pulled open the kitchen door.

Endless darkness filled his vision. In the far distance, dim stars flickered. Other than that… there was nothing. Just emptiness.

Yu Sheng stared into the void. A moment later, realization hit him like ice.

He slammed the door shut.

“That scared the hell out of me,” he swore. “It’s fucking outer space!”