Chapter 85

Chapter 85: Hotel

Irene noticed the form in front of Yu Sheng immediately. Little Doll dashed over, practically buzzing with excitement.

“We’re starting an organization!”

For some reason, she was even more excited than Yu Sheng himself. “Have you picked a name yet? It has to sound awesome and mysterious—the kind of name that gets you jobs just by saying it…”

“A name… yeah, I’ve thought of a few,” Yu Sheng said, pen in hand, thinking as he spoke. “What about you?”

“Call it the Irene Vanguard Squad!”

Yu Sheng lifted his eyes to the fox girl. “What do you think we should call it?”

Irene bounced in place. “Hey, don’t ignore me! What’s wrong with Vanguard Squad? Just because we’re small doesn’t mean we can’t be a Vanguard Squad!”

Foxy looked at the doll hopping around, then at Yu Sheng and the form on the table. After thinking for a long time, she finally spoke carefully. “I don’t really understand this… can we call it the Happy Family…?”

Yu Sheng’s face went completely blank.

Irene practically bounced into his face. “See? That name is worse than mine! Don’t listen to this silly fox—listen to—”

Yu Sheng sighed. He really couldn’t count on these two clowns, so he wrote down the name he’d decided on long ago.

Hotel

Irene craned her neck to look. When she saw the word, she froze for a second. “‘Hotel’? That’s the name? Why? It feels kind of weird…”

Yu Sheng had to reach out and nudge the doll’s head aside because it was blocking his view. “Because of my ‘door.'”

Pushed off to the side, Little Doll folded her arms and thought for a moment, as if she was starting to understand what Yu Sheng meant.

Those doors that led far away, those unbelievable sights, and the distant “place” Yu Sheng had been searching for all this time.

“Always on the road, huh…” Irene nodded and muttered softly. But she stayed quiet for barely two seconds before the trash talk bubbled back up. “Then why don’t you add my element too? Put ‘doll’ in front, and add the silly fox’s element too—like her tail or something. The full name would be ‘Doll Tail Hotel’… If not, then fine, whatever! Don’t glare at me!”

Yu Sheng sighed, but he was used to the doll causing trouble by now. He ignored her and kept filling out the rest of the form.

In the slot for initial team members, he carefully wrote Irene and Foxy’s names.

“Leave the identification card number blank for now,” Ren Wen Wen said, glancing up at Yu Sheng’s progress. She pointed at the portable card printer sitting on the table. “The chip cards are already inside. Once the data transfers over in a few minutes, they’ll activate. For now, please fill in the basic info below for the personnel.”

Yu Sheng said, “Oh,” hesitated for a few seconds, then looked up at Irene and Foxy.

“What’s your education level?”

Irene immediately folded her arms and lifted her chin proudly. “A doll doesn’t need school! A doll progenitor passes down ancient knowledge directly during creation, and then we share experiences through the connections built by the Alice Garden to grow our post-birth knowledge!”

Foxy hesitated, looking a little embarrassed. “Back then… I was still in elementary school, and then something happened…”

Yu Sheng sat there with his mouth open for a long time, as if he had suddenly noticed some cold, brutal reality. At the same time, it felt like the grand ambitions and hopeful expectations he’d been building from the start were collapsing little by little under that reality.

Half a minute later, he let out a long sigh and filled in two entries in the founding team member info for Hotel—entries that were destined to shock the whole industry:

Prenatal education.

Elementary-school dropout.

Seeing this, Ren Wen Wen came over to comfort him. “You don’t need to worry about it. Otherkind situations are complicated. Many races’ education systems aren’t compatible with the Borderland, and degrees aren’t mutually recognized anyway. This field is mostly just for reference…”

“Normally, the ones who register an organization in the Borderland are ‘locals,’ right?” Yu Sheng glanced at the clerk. “Don’t bother comforting me.”

Ren Wen Wen blinked, as if she still wanted to say something, but just then a sharp buzzing came from the portable card printer on the table.

“Ah, the ID data has transferred.”

A moment later, Foxy and Irene finally received their identification cards—two small plastic cards that looked no different from ordinary people’s identification cards.

“I think this photo is kind of ugly,” Irene complained after turning the card over in her hands for a long time. She looked up at Ren Wen Wen. “Do you people train specifically for taking ID photos or something? No matter how good-looking someone is, the photo always makes them look miserable—and you even changed my eye color…”

“That’s so the ID can be used in most everyday situations—though you probably won’t use it much yourself,” Ren Wen Wen said casually while sorting through the form Yu Sheng had filled out. “Look, Miss Foxy doesn’t have any complaints.”

“Mhm, I think it looks great,” Foxy nodded repeatedly. Then she carefully tucked her identification card into her tail, looked up at Yu Sheng, and smiled happily. “Thank you, benefactor, for running around for me~”

Yu Sheng smiled and didn’t say much. He just reached out to rub her hair and scratch the soft fur behind her ears.

Foxy really liked that. She narrowed her eyes, looking utterly content.

“Then the registration process is complete,” Ren Wen Wen said as she gathered everything up. She stood from her chair while speaking to Yu Sheng. “We can’t make the license on-site. Someone will deliver it in a couple of days. Also, there’s one more thing—it’s for you.”

As she spoke, she rummaged in her backpack—a bag that looked like it could hold endless things—and handed Yu Sheng an item.

It was a brand-new mobile phone.

Yu Sheng stared at what she was offering, too surprised to even take it for a moment. “Huh? Why?”

“It’s a special device. It comes preloaded with an intelligence-sharing and communications platform established by the Special Operations Bureau. You can also use it to activate support nodes placed around the Borderland, plus a few other auxiliary functions—like keeping communications running under harsh conditions, or finding the nearest contact station outside the Borderland in areas managed by the Bureau. If you’ve met other spirit-realm detectives before, you’ve probably seen them use this. It’s different from an ordinary phone.”

Yu Sheng blinked and remembered the phone Little Red Riding Hood used.

The style really did look similar to the one in Ren Wen Wen’s hand.

He hesitated. “This thing… is it free?”

“It’s not. It’s still reasonably priced,” Ren Wen Wen said with a smile. “But you don’t need to worry about that—our Director is giving it to you as a personal gift.”

Only then did Yu Sheng reach out to accept it, still a little stunned. “Director Bai Li Qing is giving it to me? Is that… appropriate?”

Yu Sheng listened in a daze and muttered a couple of “Oh”s. The “care” Ren Wen Wen was conveying felt strange, but he couldn’t quite point to what was wrong.

A moment later, he noticed the clerk still didn’t look like she was about to leave, and curiosity got the better of him. “Uh, is there something else?”

Ren Wen Wen opened her mouth, looking hesitant. She seemed like she really had something to say, but she was nervous and couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“Just say it,” Yu Sheng laughed. “If it’s something the Special Operations Bureau asked, I’ll do my best to cooperate. You’ve helped me a lot.”

“It’s not the Bureau… it’s my own thing,” Ren Wen Wen said after hesitating for a long time. She finally gathered her courage, and the competent, practiced demeanor she’d had during registration was completely gone. “I just wanted to confirm—did you write ‘The Blizzard Mystery Case’?”

Yu Sheng’s expression froze for an instant. Then he reacted, looking at her uncertainly. “Uh… yeah, I wrote it. You are…?”

The clerk lit up. “I-I’ve read your work! A lot of it! I read it on my phone!”

Yu Sheng finally confirmed what he’d suspected. He straightened up immediately and turned his head to look at Irene. “What did I tell you? See? What did I say? I’m a—”

Before he could finish showing off, Ren Wen Wen whipped a notebook out of her bag and shoved it in front of Yu Sheng with the intensity of someone about to stab him. “Could you please sign for me?”

Yu Sheng was so delighted he could barely contain himself. He happily took the notebook and pen and agreed again and again. “Sure, sure…”

“This is amazing! When I first saw it in the files, I didn’t dare believe it. I recommended your writing to our captain, and he said he couldn’t understand it…” Ren Wen Wen was practically dancing with excitement. “Listen, my favorite character you wrote is Lin Qi. I totally ship him with the Nightblade…”

Yu Sheng stared at her.

“…What?”

His signing hand started to shake.