Chapter 39

Chapter 39: It Worked, but Not Completely

Irene looked genuinely heartbroken.

Yu Sheng stared at the masterpiece he’d kneaded for hours and tried to put himself in her shoes. If his soul ever had to crawl into something like that to resurrect, he’d probably cry too.

Still, her reaction stung. He kept his face steady and tried to sound serious. “I worked really hard, okay? Look—at least the eyes are symmetrical…”

Irene burst into tears. “But the head isn’t symmetrical!”

Yu Sheng looked away. “Uh… yeah. I’m still not used to it. Next time I’ll do better. Practice makes perfect. Practice makes perfect…”

“Let’s not have a next time,” Irene said weakly, waving a hand in despair. Then, as if she remembered today was supposed to be a victory, she forced her mouth into a smile—failed—and finally let everything collapse into one long sigh. “Fine. It’s still a body. I can feel the connection is already established. All right. It’s this one.”

She took a slow breath, hopped down from the chair inside the painting, and walked forward two steps. Then she paused and looked down at the plush teddy bear in her arms.

After a few seconds, she hugged it tightly, then turned and placed it back on the chair like a farewell.

Yu Sheng couldn’t help asking, “You’re leaving the bear?”

“I can’t bring it out.” Irene’s voice softened. “It… is another individual sealed inside this painting. Its mind has long since dissipated. I don’t even know where it came from. It can only stay in here.”

She patted the teddy bear’s head gently. “But I won’t throw away this painting, so it’s like I’m keeping it with me.”

“Oh.” Yu Sheng nodded, then leaned forward, nervous curiosity tightening his chest.

He really wanted to see how Irene would come out of the painting—and how she’d live using the ugly doll body on the table as her vessel.

Then Irene began to melt.

It was eerie in a way Yu Sheng didn’t have words for. Like a wax figure held over flame, she lost color and detail in seconds, collapsing into a soft, pitch-black substance that pooled at the bottom of the frame. It seeped over the lower edge and flowed onto the tabletop.

A faint sizzle rose from the wood, like acid biting into it. At first the black substance was thick as sludge. Then it thinned like water. And in the next instant it became a concentrated black mist, swirling around the doll body—rising, falling, circling—before it began to sink into the lifeless clay.

Yu Sheng stared, wide-eyed. Maybe it was his imagination, but the mist felt cold. Wrong.

If he hadn’t watched it come from Irene, he would’ve thought it was something sinister and dangerous. Even knowing the truth, the sight unsettled him. That lingering chill felt like malice leaking into the world from a distant black abyss—nothing like Irene’s usual carefree act.

He shook off the thought and kept watching as the mist seeped faster and faster.

A ridiculous idea flickered through his mind.

What would happen if he blew on it?

Or poked it with his finger?

Irene would probably curse him into the ground.

He swallowed the impulse. At that moment, the infiltration reached its end.

The doll body began to change.

The crude clay figure—ugly enough to be called hideous—suddenly took on the qualities of a living thing. Its rough surface smoothed in the blink of an eye. The crooked limbs balanced and straightened. Skin tone spread over it, texture forming where there had been only clay. The warped features sank into the head, then re-formed from within, reshaping the face with steady, unnerving precision.

Yu Sheng thought, out of basic decency, that he should turn around.

But before he could, a delicate black dress had already grown over the doll’s body like it was part of her flesh.

[Mimicry?]

The word surfaced in Yu Sheng’s mind. Then he felt it—some kind of connection between himself and Irene, thin as a thread and sharp as a needle.

It vanished in an instant. He couldn’t even tell whether the whisper he heard just before it broke had been Irene’s voice.

Yu Sheng frowned, thinking of the blood he’d mixed into the clay during the shaping. That brief link probably had something to do with it.

A worry rose in his chest. His blood seemed… a little special. Would it affect Irene’s regeneration?

But the worry didn’t last.

The reshaped doll lay quietly on the table. Skin like real skin. Hair like black ink. A face delicate enough to look carved.

Under Yu Sheng’s tense gaze, her eyelashes trembled.

Then her eyes opened.

For a moment, Irene stared at the ceiling without focus. Then life returned to her crimson gaze. She lifted both hands, staring at them in disbelief. Slowly, she clenched her fists, then spread her fingers again, like she was trying to feel the texture of the air itself.

After several seconds of stunned silence, she began to smile—except the smile looked like it was holding back tears.

Yu Sheng let out the breath he’d been holding. “Congratulations, Irene.”

“Mm.” Irene pressed a hand to the tabletop and pushed herself upright, wobbling as she rose to her feet. Then she turned to Yu Sheng with a brilliant smile and threw her arms wide, as if to hug him.

“I’m alive again, Yu Sheng! Tha—”

She stopped.

Her arms stayed open. She stared blankly at him, frozen mid-motion.

Yu Sheng blinked. “…What?”

Irene slowly tilted her head up. “Why do you look… so tall?”

Yu Sheng thought about it. “Could it be because you’re short?”

Irene went rigid. Then she jerked her head down and stared at her own body.

She looked toward the desk lamp, sucked in a sharp breath, and hurried over. She measured herself against it with her hand, then turned her neck stiffly, like she didn’t quite believe what she was seeing.

A cold weight sank into Yu Sheng’s stomach.

“Why…” Irene’s eyes went vacant as she murmured, “why am I so short…”

“Uh…” Yu Sheng’s mind scrambled. “Doll size. A big one. I mean—the one-third doll kind. Wait. Did I mess up?”

“One-third, my ass!” Irene shrieked. She began hopping in place on the table, furious enough to shake the lamp. “Standard human size! A living doll is the same as a human! I’m 167 centimeters!”

Still only as tall as the desk lamp, Irene jumped and yelled, “Where are my long legs? Huh? Huh? Why am I the same height as the lamp? I—I can’t even reach the chair beside me!”

Yu Sheng was too stunned to speak for a moment. Then the logic finally caught. “That’s not right. You watched me make the body. You could see the size. Why didn’t you say anything then?”

Irene froze mid-jump. She looked like she’d just been slapped by the realization. “Oh… yeah. I watched…”

She ran back to the concentric circles where the body had been shaped, then glanced at the painting she’d lived in. She forced herself to think, and blurred memories surfaced.

“Right… the clay body was only a medium,” she muttered, pacing. “A temporary vessel for the soul. Even if the size was off, when my soul reshaped it, it should’ve adjusted…”

She pinched her current arm, stared at the ritual setup, and kept muttering under her breath.

“Was the size difference too big?” she said. “So the adjustment was limited? That still doesn’t make sense… Even if it was limited, it should’ve changed a little. It shouldn’t be lamp-height…”

She held her hand above her head, then jumped twice, like she could force herself taller by pure will.

It did absolutely nothing.

“So… the ritual still went wrong?” Yu Sheng asked carefully, hovering on the edge of panic. “The body didn’t adjust properly? That shouldn’t be my fault, right…”

Irene looked up at him.

The grief and fury in her expression—the way she looked one breath away from sobbing—made Yu Sheng flinch.

“Measuring tape,” Irene said through clenched teeth, holding out her hand.

Yu Sheng blinked. “Huh?”

“Measure my height.”

Yu Sheng sprinted downstairs and grabbed a tape measure.

For half a second, he’d considered a ruler. Then he imagined Irene seeing a ruler and trying to strangle him with it, and decided he valued his life.

Back upstairs, Irene stood straight on the table with an old book balanced on her head while Yu Sheng pulled the tape out and read the numbers.

Irene tried to tilt the book upward by a hair. Yu Sheng pressed it flat with one hand.

“H-how tall?” she asked carefully.

“…Sixty-six point six centimeters,” Yu Sheng said, staring at the tape with open sympathy. “I tried to round up. I even counted the 0.6.”

Irene finally—truly—burst into tears.