Chapter 127 – The Orphanage

Chapter 127 – The Orphanage

That night, Yu Sheng slept fitfully.

Perhaps it was because too many things had happened recently, draining too much of his energy. He actually fell asleep fairly quickly, but once asleep he began having a jumbled mess of strange dreams—sometimes dreaming of that museum, sometimes of his hometown as he remembered it, sometimes of the Dark Forest. He felt as though he’d woken up several times in the middle of the night, even hearing the sound of Eileen talking in her sleep, but those awakenings seemed to be nothing more than yet another strange dream.

This restless sleep persisted until the latter half of the night, when he suddenly felt a wave of relaxation wash through his mind. All the chaotic, indistinguishable-from-reality dreams seemed to suddenly become tamed, and he slept peacefully through a gentle, comfortable stretch of light dreaming until the next morning.

Then the moment he opened his eyes, he saw two Eileens pressing down on his arms, one on each side. Both arms had gone completely numb.

Yu Sheng took a long while to recover, finally yanking his arms free with great effort. The tingling, aching, sore sensation immediately made him grimace.

Eileen also gradually woke up along with him, sitting up with a head full of messy hair while rubbing her eyes: “Good morning… yawn, why did you sleep so restlessly last night?”

Yu Sheng had been shaking his arms with an irritated expression, but when he heard the little doll’s mumbling he paused for a moment, immediately catching on: “You helped out in the second half of the night?”

“Your dreams were disturbing my sleep,” the two Eileens grumbled simultaneously as they got up, straightening each other’s clothes and hair. “It was so annoying that I just went in and calmed things down for you.”

Yu Sheng let his arms dangle, his expression somewhat subtle. After a brief moment, he cleared his throat with two dry coughs: “Ahem, well, thanks then.”

“It wasn’t a big deal—come help me brush my hair.”

“You had my arms pinned down all night, they’re still numb. Do it yourself,” Yu Sheng said helplessly, shaking out both arms. “I bought you two small combs, they’re on the nightstand. Besides, with two bodies now you can brush each other’s hair easily enough.”

“Oh.”

The two dolls climbed over to the nightstand together, found the small combs Yu Sheng had mentioned, and began grumbling while taking turns brushing “each other’s” hair: “This is exactly why human bodies are so inconvenient—they break down at the slightest thing. Press here, bump there, and it’s either numb or painful. Look at us dolls, so much more convenient. We could shatter into pieces all over the floor without making a peep…”

Yu Sheng listened to Eileen’s rambling in a bit of a daze, though he wasn’t really paying attention to what she was saying.

Bright morning sunlight streamed through the window. Two identical gothic dolls sat in the sunlight, taking turns brushing each other’s hair and straightening each other’s dresses—one had to admit, if only their mouths could be sealed shut, this scene would be nothing short of picturesque.

Yu Sheng stared at the scene somewhat lost in thought, and couldn’t help but imagine—if two dolls waking up in the sunlight was already this beautiful, what would it be like if he really ended up with a whole room full of Eileens…

What kind of chaos would that be?

The beautiful image in Yu Sheng’s mind ground to a halt at the scene of Eileens scattered all over the floor, crawling everywhere in dark, writhing masses, bouncing off the walls and shrieking. He immediately shook his head: what a shame the doll had a mouth—now it was two mouths.

After getting washed up, Yu Sheng’s arms finally recovered. He went to the kitchen and threw together a quick breakfast (it wasn’t really that early anymore), fed Hu Li who had been wandering around the house foraging the moment she woke up, and then prepared to head out to the address Little Red Riding Hood had left him.

“Shouldn’t we bring some kind of gift?” Yu Sheng suddenly remembered this just as he was about to leave. “This is our first visit after all. Showing up empty-handed seems improper.”

“I think so?” Eileen had already deftly climbed into Hu Li’s arms by this point, ready to be “disguised.” Hearing Yu Sheng’s words, she looked up again. “How about some cookies and candy? She seems to have a lot of kids over there…”

“Wouldn’t that be a bit cliché?”

“You can’t exactly show up and hand everyone a tube of blood—that would certainly not be cliché, but they’d call the police.”

Yu Sheng thought about it and decided Eileen had a point.

So he headed out with Hu Li and Eileen (P2), stopping first at the small supermarket at the Intersection before hailing a cab, buying a bunch of candy and snacks to carry along. Then he flagged down a taxi on the roadside and headed to another district following the address Little Red Riding Hood had left.

As an aside, Eileen (P1) stayed home to watch TV—this doll was getting more and more accustomed to life with two bodies.

Boundary City was large, but fortunately the address Little Red Riding Hood had left wasn’t too far. After about half an hour on the road, Yu Sheng and his companions arrived near their destination.

After getting out of the car, the first thing Yu Sheng noticed was… the scarcity of pedestrians around them.

And the further they walked following Little Red Riding Hood’s address, the fewer people there were.

Where they’d gotten out was a junction on a main road. When Little Red Riding Hood had sent the address, she’d specifically marked out a short walking route from the drop-off point. Yu Sheng left the main road and followed a quiet, somewhat worn Small Path into an old residential area behind the commercial district. It looked slightly newer than the district where No. 66 Wutong Road was located, but not by much. After walking for about ten minutes, he noticed there wasn’t a single passerby in sight anymore.

Then he saw the Small Path open up ahead, and a large complex of buildings came into view. It was a compound composed of two rows of connected buildings and several smaller structures, forming a large courtyard. The grayish-white buildings looked like they had been around for quite some time. A tall perimeter wall enclosed all the buildings within, and the wall appeared to have once been adorned with bright, colorful murals, but most had now become mottled and peeled away, leaving only faded patches of wall surface.

A gate of iron bars that appeared to have been specially reinforced stood before Yu Sheng, but what drew his attention more were the objects flanking the gate on both sides, lined up along the perimeter wall—several familiar metallic obelisk devices.

Those were “nodes” set up by the Special Operations Bureau.

The reason for the gradually vanishing pedestrians along the way had been found.

The entire “base” of Fairy Tale had been subjected to cognitive isolation according to Otherworld standards.

A flash of red entered Yu Sheng’s vision. He saw Little Red Riding Hood emerge from a guard booth on the inside of the iron gate. The girl opened a small door beside it and walked briskly toward him.

“You’re earlier than I expected.”

Little Red Riding Hood came up to Yu Sheng, a somewhat complicated smile on her face—seemingly welcoming, yet also carrying a hint of nervousness and reserve.

It was the first time Yu Sheng had seen such an uneasy expression on this precocious high school girl’s face.

“I was worried about being late, so I left a bit early.” Yu Sheng smiled and nodded, his gaze looking past Little Red Riding Hood’s shoulder toward the entrance of the compound.

On the section of wall beside the iron gate, several metal characters that had once been mounted on the wall had fallen off and were damaged, but the remaining traces were still there, faintly revealing the words “XX Welfare Institute.” Beyond that, this enclosed compound bore no other identifying marks.

An orphanage, hidden deep within the city, one that even required “nodes” to maintain its lockdown… an orphanage.

Yu Sheng wasn’t surprised. Before coming, he had already vaguely guessed at some things.

“Follow me. I’ve already told the family,” Little Red Riding Hood turned to the side, making an inviting gesture. “I don’t have classes today, and nothing else going on, so I can show you around properly.”

Yu Sheng and Hu Li followed behind Little Red Riding Hood, stepping into this compound that looked somewhat old but not at all dilapidated.

As they passed the guard booth, Yu Sheng noticed a girl sitting inside who was dozing off. She looked about the same age as Little Red Riding Hood.

“That’s ‘Cinderella.’ She always looks half-asleep like that during the day, but she’s actually very alert,” Little Red Riding Hood introduced casually. “Normally during the day there are dedicated ‘security guards’ here—staff sent by the Council—but on weekends the ‘parents’ here take turns standing guard. By parents, I mean the older kids, like me.”

“People sent by the Council?” Yu Sheng frowned slightly, a note of surprise in his tone.

“Fairy Tale is an independent organization, but a group of orphans who can’t grow up leading a group of even younger children will inevitably run into many practical problems they can’t solve. And from another angle, identifying children affected by the ‘curse’ as early as possible and gathering them in secure facilities requires the involvement of a governmental organization like the Council,” Little Red Riding Hood explained slowly. “So we established a cooperative relationship—

“This orphanage is nominally operated and maintained by the Borderland Council. They provided the premises and a portion of the funding, and regularly send ’employees’ to help us deal with many real-world issues like social identity registration, school enrollment for children, and outside medical visits. But in practice, the orphanage is internally self-governed by Fairy Tale. We take in the children who are sent here and use our own methods to minimize their loss of control as much as possible, or… even if they do lose control, to keep things contained within these walls.”

Little Red Riding Hood paused at this point, then summarized in a single sentence: “In short, ordinary matters are handled by ordinary means, and extraordinary matters by extraordinary means.”

Yu Sheng listened quietly, walking alongside Little Red Riding Hood across the Open Space within the walls. After a moment of thought, he gently shook his head: “It’s not quite what I imagined.”

“Only after actual contact do you realize that every seemingly bizarre aspect of the current situation has a reasonable explanation behind it,” Little Red Riding Hood said evenly. “At least for us right now, this is the most comfortable arrangement—we can live at our own preferred pace and in our own way, with many things under control. And for the administrators of the Borderland, ‘under control’ is exactly the return they most hope for.”

“No, what I mean is… I assumed it would be the Special Operations Bureau handling these things. I thought they’d be your ‘governing department,’ since they’re the experts when it comes to the extraordinary domain.”

Little Red Riding Hood’s steps faltered slightly.

“…The Special Operations Bureau also deals with us frequently. You’re right, they are indeed the experts in handling extraordinary incidents. But in most cases, the ‘extraordinary incidents’ that occur in this facility can be handled by us on our own without any additional help,” she said slowly. “So the relationship between the Bureau and us is generally limited to ‘professional dealings.’ It’s actually with the ‘ordinary people’ sent by the Council that most members of this orphanage share a closer bond in terms of daily life.”

Yu Sheng looked thoughtful: “Is that so…”

“Yes,” Little Red Riding Hood nodded. “After all, this compound doesn’t only house ‘parents’ like me. The much larger population here is actually just children who have nightmares.”

(End of Chapter)