Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Don’t Open Doors at Random

After he went into the kitchen, closed the door, and turned on the range hood, the loud hum made Yu Sheng feel his heart slowly settle.

It was as if the thin wooden door and the chaotic noise of the fan temporarily sealed away the eerie world outside. For a moment, he was back in a space that belonged entirely to him. He could even pretend—just for a little while—that he wasn’t living in that massive, twisted Boundary City, but in his real home.

This manor was different from his old home in every way, but the kitchen’s layout was strangely familiar. After he’d settled into this world, he’d tried to arrange it to match what he remembered.

Every day when he cooked here, he pretended he was still in his original life. He pretended he hadn’t opened his front door that morning, hadn’t stepped into a strange city full of shadows. Sometimes, while he worked, he even felt like if he looked up, he’d see the street he remembered through the window—the old road outside his kitchen, washed in orange-red clouds, warm sunlight sliding over apartment walls.

But the view outside always shattered those brief fantasies.

Now, when he looked out, he saw only bare ground and low, old single-story houses in the distance. There were no apartment buildings—only messy utility poles. And that warm, relaxed sky from his memories… he hadn’t seen it in a long time.

The light in this city was either painfully bright white, or so dim it pressed on his chest.

Yu Sheng sighed, pulled down the blinds, and stopped looking out into the blurry, shadowed night.

He washed the vegetables, heated the pan, poured in cool oil, sautéed scallions until fragrant, and tossed the ingredients in. The sizzle calmed him. Beyond the door, the TV murmured—a reminder that this strange city still had familiar channels, like broadcasts and phone news. In the early days, almost everything he’d learned about Boundary City had come from staring at screens.

“Yu Sheng!” Irene’s voice came from outside the kitchen. “The TV is too quiet! Turn it up! Please!”

Yu Sheng startled so hard his hand twitched, and he almost flipped the food out of the pan.

He’d nearly forgotten she was out there.

Back when he cooked, nobody talked outside the kitchen door.

“Hold on!” he shouted back, then muttered under his breath, “…She really acts like we’re close.”

Even so, the corner of his mouth tugged up in a helpless smile.

Fine. It was fine. At least the house had some noise now. Some “life.”

A while later, Yu Sheng carried out steaming hot dishes. He set them on the dining table, turned the TV volume up two notches, then sat with his back to the screen, facing Irene’s frame. He didn’t have the habit of watching TV while he ate, but he liked the background noise. And this way, Irene didn’t have to fight him for the view, since she could only watch from one fixed angle.

Inside the painting, Irene hugged the teddy bear, craned her neck toward the table, then flicked her gaze back to the program.

“Pretty fancy,” she muttered.

“It’s just home cooking,” Yu Sheng said. “I like cooking.”

“Oh.” Irene kept watching, but once Yu Sheng started eating, she leaned forward again. After holding it in for a long time, she finally asked, “So you just eat while I watch?”

Yu Sheng lifted his eyes and waved his chopsticks in front of the frame. “Want a bite?”

Irene stared at him, then lowered her head and sulked.

“Fine. Fine. We’ll do it for show.” Yu Sheng sighed, went to the kitchen for an empty bowl, scooped some food into it, and set it in front of Irene’s frame. “There. Bowl and chopsticks. Pretend you can smell it. In the end, I’m still the one eating it.”

Irene frowned at the bowl, considered, then decided it was acceptable. She hopped down from the chair and leaned to the edge of the frame. Her face filled nearly half the painting as she looked at him seriously.

“Alright,” she said. “Thanks. You’re actually pretty considerate…”

Yu Sheng shoved a mouthful of rice in and mumbled something back.

Then he looked up and saw Irene’s head floating by itself inside the painting, and the bowl of food sitting right in front of her frame. Something about the whole setup made his skin crawl.

A black frame. A black background. A doll girl’s head. A bowl of food.

It looked like a “still here in spirit, smile still on the face” .jpg.

His face twitched. He held it in and didn’t say what he was thinking—mostly because Irene’s mouth was vicious enough to ruin his entire night.

So he kept eating, pretending nothing was wrong. Under Irene’s puzzled stare, he lowered his head and ate like his life depended on it, trying very hard not to look at the “still here in spirit” figure across the table.

It felt like a banquet in a funeral hall.

When he finished, Yu Sheng wiped his mouth and quickly cleared everything away from in front of Irene’s frame, dumping the dishes into the sink to soak until morning. His back still hurt, and bending over to wash dishes tonight would be torture.

Dishes could wait.

Trash couldn’t.

In this season, a kitchen trash bag couldn’t sit inside overnight. Yu Sheng endured the pain, gathered the garbage, and carried the bag to the front door.

Irene, watching TV, lifted her head. “Hey, where are you going so late?”

“I’m in my own house and I still have to report to you?” Yu Sheng snapped, but he still lifted the bag so she could see it. “I’m going out to throw away the trash.”

“Oh. Then come back early,” Irene said, already turning back to the TV. “This house is huge. I’m scared alone. What if a thief comes in…”

Yu Sheng rolled his eyes. In a gloomy manor like this, if someone broke in and the first thing they saw was a living doll moving inside a painting, the thief would be the one scared to death. With Irene here, a burglar would probably call the police first.

He didn’t say that out loud.

Yu Sheng grumbled to himself, changed into his shoes, reached for the doorknob, and pushed the door open.

For no clear reason, he remembered two months ago—a plain, ordinary morning, like any other day.

Back then, just like now, he’d opened a door, stepped outside, and walked into a massive, suffocatingly strange city. He still hadn’t found his way back.

The thought flashed through his mind. Yu Sheng gave a bitter smile, shook his head, and stepped out.

A dry branch snapped under his foot, sharp in the silence. Cold night wind carried a rotten, fishy stench that made his skin crawl. He’d gone out wearing only a thin layer, and the sudden chill made him shiver hard. It took him several seconds to restart the part of his brain that had just shut down.

He was standing among ruined rubble.

Ahead, in the night, a dense forest loomed—sinister and grotesque. On both sides, mountains rose into the dark sky like silent, ferocious giants. They looked down over the valley floor and pressed him with an unbearable weight.

Yu Sheng went rigid, then slowly turned his head and looked back.

Collapsed bricks and broken tiles filled his view. It looked like a ruined temple that had been abandoned for a hundred years. A rotten door—no, maybe only a crooked doorframe with half a door plank still clinging to it—stood alone in the rubble. When the wind blew, hollow, whimpering sounds seeped through the gaps.

Yu Sheng stared.

“Where the hell did I just get sent…?”

He finally understood.

When he’d “opened the door,” what happened two months ago had repeated.

He’d been thrown into an unfamiliar place again.

And this time was worse.

Boundary City had been terrifying, but at least it was still a modern city where people could survive. Here, he’d been dumped into wilderness.

A wild forest ahead. Dangerous mountains on both sides. Behind him, a ruined temple that had collapsed who-knew-how-many years ago. Yu Sheng looked once and felt that if this place didn’t spawn thirty or fifty bandits, or a few wolf demons and fox immortals, it would be wasting perfect terrain.

And the only thing in his hands was the bag of kitchen trash he’d just carried out of his house.

Yu Sheng’s curses, in his heart, were ugly.

And then—right as they were about to burst out—a voice snapped through his mind.

“Yu Sheng! The TV has no signal! When are you coming back?”