Chapter 39 – Success, But Not Quite Complete Success

Eileen’s expression looked quite sad.

Yu Sheng glanced at his “masterpiece” that had taken several hours to sculpt, then tried to put himself in her shoes. He figured that if one day his soul left his body and he had to be reborn into a shell like this, he could probably genuinely cry too…

Still, Eileen’s reaction wounded Yu Sheng’s pride a little. He suppressed his embarrassment and kept a straight face as he studied the doll inside the oil painting, trying his best to look earnest: “I really did try my best, you know. Look — at the very least, the left and right eyes are symmetrical…”

Eileen actually started crying at that: “But the head isn’t symmetrical…”

Yu Sheng turned his face away. “Well… I admit I’m a bit out of practice, but next time I’ll definitely do better. Practice makes perfect, practice makes perfect…”

“Let’s hope there isn’t a next time,” Eileen said with the air of someone who had given up on life, waving her hand dismissively. But then she seemed to remember that today was the day she’d finally managed to escape her confinement and that she should be happy, so she forcibly stretched the corners of her mouth into something resembling a smile — though it didn’t quite work. In the end, all her thousand unspoken words collapsed into a single sigh. “Haah. Well, it’s a body at any rate. I can feel that the connection has been established. Fine, this’ll do.”

She drew a quiet breath, hopped down from the chair inside the oil painting, and took a couple of steps forward. Then, as if remembering something, she glanced down at the fluffy toy bear she was holding in her hands.

After standing silently for a few seconds, she hugged the little bear tightly, then turned and placed it on the chair, as if saying goodbye.

Yu Sheng was a little curious. “You’re not taking the bear?”

“I can’t take it out. It’s… a separate entity also sealed inside this painting. Its consciousness has long since faded away. I don’t even know where it came from,” Eileen said, shaking her head gently. She reached out and patted the toy bear on the head. “It can only stay in here. But I won’t throw this painting away, so it’ll be like keeping it close.”

“I see.”

Yu Sheng nodded, then watched Eileen’s next movements with a mixture of nervousness and curiosity.

He was very interested in how the doll would “come out” of the oil painting, and how she would use the admittedly ugly clay doll sitting on the table as a vessel to “come alive.”

And then he saw Eileen in the oil painting begin to… “dissolve.”

The sight was bizarre and unsettling. Eileen looked as though she had suddenly become a wax figure being scorched by flames. Her entire body gradually took on a molten appearance and lost all its color and detail almost in the blink of an eye. Within just a few seconds, she transformed into a continuously softening jet-black substance, collapsing within the frame and slowly spilling out over its lower edge, beginning to flow across the surface of the table.

The table emitted a faint hissing sound, as if it were being rapidly corroded by some kind of strong acid. The jet-black substance flowing out of the frame started off looking like thick, viscous mud, then immediately thinned to the consistency of water — and in the next instant, it transformed into something else entirely: a… condensed black mist that refused to disperse. It began to drift and swirl around the clay doll on the table, gradually seeping into the lifeless clay.

Yu Sheng stared wide-eyed at the scene. Whether it was his imagination or not, he felt something emanating from that floating, eerie black mist — a… chilling coldness.

Had he not witnessed the mist transform directly from Eileen, he would have been absolutely convinced it was something sinister and dangerous. The atmosphere of the whole scene felt deeply unsettling. Even knowing the truth, he still found the black mist deeply disturbing. The lingering sense of icy coldness was like malice seeping into the world from some distant, pitch-black abyss — it really didn’t match Eileen’s usual carefree, harmless demeanor at all.

Yu Sheng shook his head, pushing those stray thoughts aside, and watched as the black mist accelerated its infiltration into the clay. An absurd idea suddenly crossed his mind —

What would happen if he blew on the mist right now? Or what if he poked a finger into it?

Eileen would probably tear him apart with her words…

Yu Sheng ultimately restrained the urge to mess around, and right at that moment, the mist’s infiltration swiftly neared its end.

The doll on the table began to visibly change. The crude clay figure, which could charitably be described as hideous, suddenly seemed to be granted the qualities of a living being. Its rough surface became smooth in the blink of an eye, and the previously lopsided limbs rapidly realigned and restructured. It began to take on the texture and color of skin. The crooked facial features were absorbed back into the head, then regenerated anew within the clay, gradually rising to the surface of the face…

Yu Sheng thought about it and figured that out of politeness and respect, he should turn away.

But before he had a chance to turn around, he saw an exquisite black dress already “growing” out of the doll’s body like an extension of the flesh itself, draping over Eileen’s form.

Mimicry?

The word surfaced instinctively in Yu Sheng’s mind. And just then, he suddenly felt a certain… connection between himself and Eileen.

The feeling vanished in an instant. He hadn’t even had time to make out whether that dream-like murmur was Eileen’s voice before the connection fell silent.

Yu Sheng furrowed his brow, thinking of the blood he had added to the clay while shaping the doll earlier, and felt that this brief moment of connection might have something to do with that.

He suddenly felt a little worried: his blood seemed to be somewhat unusual — could that affect Eileen’s “rebirth”?

But soon, that worry was dispelled.

The fully reconstructed doll lay quietly on the table. Its skin was like that of a real person; its hair was dark as ink; its delicate features were like a work of art.

Under Yu Sheng’s somewhat anxious gaze, the doll’s eyelashes suddenly gave a faint tremble.

And then, those eyes finally slowly opened.

The crimson irises stared blankly up at the ceiling for a moment, but in the next instant they came back to life. Eileen clumsily raised both hands and stared at them with an expression of disbelief, then slowly clenched and opened her fingers, as if feeling the texture of the air.

After standing dazed for several seconds, the doll slowly began to smile — a smile that seemed to be suppressing a surge of emotion on the verge of tears.

Yu Sheng’s voice came from nearby: “Congratulations, Eileen.”

“Mm,” Eileen pressed her hand against the tabletop and pushed herself upright, wobbling as she stood up on the table. Then she looked toward Yu Sheng standing beside her with a radiant smile, spreading her arms wide as if to offer a hug. “I’m alive! Yu Sheng! Thank you—” The doll Miss suddenly stopped, as if only just now realizing something. She held that arms-wide pose and stared blankly at Yu Sheng beside the table.

Yu Sheng: “…?”

Eileen slowly tilted her head back. “Why do you look… so tall?”

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

Eileen froze for a moment, then snapped her head down to look at her own body, and then looked up at the desk lamp placed not far away. She suddenly sucked in a sharp breath and pattered over to it, holding her hand between the top of her head and the lamp to compare heights, then stiffly turned her neck.

Yu Sheng was beginning to sense something was wrong.

“Why…” Eileen murmured blankly, “Why am I so short…”

“Uh… the doll’s size, right. Large-scale, I mean, that kind of one-third scale doll…” Yu Sheng was actually starting to panic at this point, though his face remained carefully neutral. “Wait — did I get the wrong size?!”

“…One-third my ass! A person! Standard human size! Living dolls are supposed to be the same as a human! I’m 167 centimeters!” The tiny doll Eileen jumped up and down on the table in a fury. “Where are my long legs? Where?! How am I the same height as this desk lamp?! I… I can’t even reach the chair next to me!”

Yu Sheng was completely stunned, but then felt like something still didn’t add up. “Wait, that’s not right. You were watching me while I was sculpting the body. You could see the size for yourself. Why didn’t you say anything back then?”

The tiny doll who had been leaping about on the table froze at that, seemingly realizing it only now with a delayed reaction. “Oh… right, I was watching…”

She pattered over to the center of the concentric circles where the doll body had been made, then looked back at the oil painting she had been inhabiting, and racked her brain for a moment. Some fuzzy memories began to rise to the surface.

“Right… right, your procedure was fine. The clay shell is just a medium, used to temporarily house the soul… even if the size was a bit off, my soul should have adjusted during the body reconstruction…”

Eileen stood on the table and muttered to herself, alternating between bowing her head in thought and looking up at the ritual layout around her, occasionally pinching her current body while grumbling continuously.

“Because the size difference was too great? So the adjustment was limited? That doesn’t add up either… even with a limited adjustment there should be some change… there’s no way I could end up only as tall as a desk lamp…”

Eileen held her hand above her head to measure herself, then jumped up and down on the spot a couple of times, as if trying to grow taller through that futile effort.

It was obvious just from thinking about it that it hadn’t worked.

“So… did the ritual still go wrong?” Yu Sheng watched nervously from the side, finally venturing a careful question. “The body reconstruction didn’t adjust properly? That shouldn’t be my fault, right…”

Eileen tilted her head up, and the look of grief and indignation on her face — on the verge of tears — gave Yu Sheng a fright.

“A ruler.”

The doll, no taller than a desk lamp, extended her hand toward Yu Sheng, her voice tight with barely-contained fury.

“What for?”

“To measure my height!”

Yu Sheng said “oh” and quickly ran upstairs to fetch a tape measure.

He had originally thought of grabbing a regular ruler — but he figured Eileen would probably fly into a rage and try to bite him if she saw one, so he didn’t dare.

A moment later, Eileen stood straight on the table with an old book balanced on her head, while Yu Sheng pulled out the tape measure and measured the tiny doll’s height.

Eileen sneakily tilted the book slightly to one side. Yu Sheng pressed it back down with one hand.

“How… how tall?” the tiny doll asked with great trepidation.

“…66.6 centimeters,” Yu Sheng looked at the tape measure, his voice carrying a note of sympathy. “I rounded up as generously as I could — I even counted that 0.6 centimeters after the decimal point.”

Eileen finally really did start crying.