Chapter 6 – The First Step Toward Friendly Communication

The Girl in the Painting who called herself ‘Eileen’ and Yu Sheng outside the frame stared each other down in a standoff, the two of them having failed to establish even the slightest degree of mutual trust so far.

Yu Sheng had absolutely no way of confirming whether what the ‘Person in the Painting’ — who looked like some kind of cursed object — was saying was true or false. That included what she mentioned about Alice’s Cottage and the claim that she had been sealed inside the painting; he was hearing all of it for the first time. And it was precisely because of this that when Eileen said she didn’t know why she had ended up in this house, he didn’t dare believe a single word of it.

On the other hand, Eileen was convinced that this human called Yu Sheng was definitely still plotting to set her on fire with his lighter, and her gaze kept drifting to watch that lighter’s every move…

“I’m sure you bought the painting yourself and hung it up at home, then turned around and completely forgot about it,” Eileen repeated once more. “Doesn’t that happen all the time? You humans see something unusual and want to collect it, then you bring it home and let it gather dust…”

Hearing her say that actually made Yu Sheng feel a little uneasy, because he truly couldn’t be certain about the origins of everything in this house. After all, he had only really arrived ‘here’ about two months ago. Never mind being unfamiliar with this world — he was barely familiar with himself. Who knew what state this house and its owner had been in before those two months?

Could it have been another ‘Yu Sheng’?

But those thoughts only flashed through his mind for a moment. Faced with the crimson gaze of the Person in the Painting, Yu Sheng instinctively shook his head and replied, “That’s absolutely impossible — one look at that painting and you can tell it’s expensive. It doesn’t look like something I could afford.”

“Hey, what if it was really cheap!” Eileen hugged her toy bear and scooted forward. “These days there are plenty of fake bottles, fake fans, and fake calligraphy paintings. Maybe the previous seller bought me wholesale from some fake antique dealer at two-fifty a pound along with a bunch of other paintings, or maybe a middleman didn’t know what he had…”

Yu Sheng made a strange face. “That frame of yours feels completely solid when you pick it up — real old timber — with gold wire inlaid along the edges…”

Eileen thought for a moment. “Redwood veneer with resin poured inside! And copper-plated wire underneath.”

Yu Sheng: “…At that point the cost is already well beyond two-fifty a pound.”

“Four-fifty works too, can’t go any higher than that. Any higher and nobody’s going to buy it.”

Yu Sheng: “…”

Eileen glared with her crimson eyes. “Hey, why’d you go quiet?”

Yu Sheng crouched in front of Eileen’s frame and suddenly felt something like amusement, and then he genuinely burst out laughing. He sat back down on the floor with a thud, laughing as he tilted his head back to stare at the Ceiling, his whole upper body leaning back with mirth — never in his life had he imagined he’d experience something like this: crouching in an empty room, trading nonsense with a doll sealed inside an Oil Painting, all just to debate whether the frame holding the sealed doll was wholesale fake goods at two-fifty a pound or four-fifty a pound…

And not long ago, a frog that had spawned in the freezing rain had ripped his heart right out of his chest.

All of this was way too damn interesting.

Eileen, however, was startled and a little unsettled by Yu Sheng suddenly bursting into laughter. She and her frame had been taken down from the wall by Yu Sheng and placed on the Floor, so now she could see the bare Ceiling and hear the laughter coming from beside her, which finally made her unable to hold back. “Hey, stop laughing! What’s so funny about this?”

Yu Sheng slowly brought his laughter under control. He shifted his body forward and looked at Eileen in the frame, his expression turning suddenly serious. “Earlier I had that strange Dream — was that you?”

He was referring to how he had swung an axe at a locked Door in the Dream earlier, and then heard strange laughter coming from behind it. Now it seemed that the eerie Dream and the Girl in the Painting before him were absolutely connected.

Oh right, he had also thrown out his back in the Dream — and it was still hurting now.

“No!” Eileen immediately shook her head, but then stopped and her expression wavered. “Well… it’s not entirely not me either…”

“What do you mean?” Yu Sheng frowned. “You’re going around in circles.”

“The Dream was yours — you made it yourself — but I did slip into it,” Eileen explained patiently. “I originally just sensed someone dreaming and wanted to use that method to find someone to help me. I wasn’t trying to do anything bad! I didn’t know you couldn’t open that door, and that you had such a temper — forgot your key so you just hack the door down with an axe…”

Listening to Eileen’s rambling, Yu Sheng gradually pieced it together. “So you’re saying you didn’t lock the door either? You didn’t trigger the Dream? You just have the ability to enter other people’s dreams?”

“That’s right — and actually, there’s a lot more I can do!” Eileen nodded, a look of pride on her face, but that pride quickly dimmed. “But now that I’m sealed in the painting, I’m left with almost nothing but this ability…”

Yu Sheng was half-convinced and half-skeptical of what Eileen was saying, and at the same time he had more doubts and thoughts about what he had experienced in that strange Dream. And right after that, he had a second question. “You said you wanted to find someone through the Dream to help you — help with what?”

“Help get me out, of course!” Eileen said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Getting out of this painting entirely would be best, but if that’s not possible, at least getting me out of this room. There’s nothing here at all — it’s empty. Even if you could hang a TV on the opposite wall that would be fine, a voice-controlled one would be even better since I can’t use a remote very conveniently, and one with a good Brand would be nice…”

Yu Sheng noticed that this Girl in the Painting was a classic free-associating personality — whenever no one was keeping her in check and she was left to ramble on her own, her train of thought always wandered to places you’d never expect. And it usually drifted in the direction of getting completely carried away.

So he interrupted her without hesitation. “Then why were you laughing ominously while trying to find someone to help you? What was that mocking laughter I heard from inside while I was ‘opening the door’?”

“That wasn’t me!” Eileen quickly waved her hand, then held out the brown plush bear she was holding. “It was this! It was laughing!”

Yu Sheng said nothing. He just looked at her with a blank expression, his eyes full of ‘do you take me for an idiot.’

“Really!” Eileen looked a little frantic. She shook the toy bear vigorously. “It was sealed into this painting along with me, but maybe because so much time has passed, its Head isn’t quite right anymore. Now all it can do is laugh foolishly — normally if you poke it, it will let out a weird laugh, but sometimes it’ll suddenly start laughing on its own without being poked. Even I get startled by it all the time…”

Yu Sheng listened with a straight face as Eileen eagerly explained, and after noticing the serious look on the Girl in the Painting’s face, he gradually became somewhat half-convinced. His gaze finally fell on the plush bear, and after a moment of hesitation he nodded. “Then have it laugh for me — let me hear if it sounds the same.”

Eileen immediately reached out and poked the toy bear’s Head.

The toy bear showed no Reaction whatsoever.

Eileen was taken aback. She poked the toy bear’s Head hard again — still not a sound. She herself looked like she was about to cry. “O-occasionally it does this,” the Girl in the Painting said with a mournful face. “I poke it and it doesn’t laugh…”

The corner of Yu Sheng’s mouth twitched.

“So what you’re saying is: sometimes you don’t poke it and it laughs anyway, sometimes you poke it and it doesn’t laugh. In short, whether you poke it or not, it might laugh or it might not —” he rattled off the analysis like a tongue-twister, and arrived at a Conclusion: “So does whether this bear laughs or not have anything to do with whether you poke it?”

Eileen froze, then slowly nodded. “Y-yeah… you’re right.”

Yu Sheng felt somewhat disinclined to keep engaging with this ‘cursed Oil Painting’ whose Head seemed not entirely right.

And he had also stopped caring about the mocking Sound he had heard in the Dream earlier.

A rumble came from his stomach — the dinner he had missed by passing out the moment he got home was now making its presence known. Yu Sheng smiled and shook his head, then slowly got to his feet.

“Hey, are you leaving?” Eileen saw this and her voice immediately went a little panicked. “You’re not going to leave me on the Floor like this, are you? At least hang me back on the wall — there’s wallpaper on the opposite wall to look at, the Ceiling has nothing on it at all…”

Yu Sheng reached out and picked up Eileen’s frame from the Floor — and then grimaced in pain from his bad back.

“I’m taking you to the living room, so stop whining.” He said it casually.

Eileen immediately cheered up, hugged her toy bear, and settled back into her Chair, watching Yu Sheng drag her frame toward the exit. “That’s more like it. You’re actually pretty nice, you know. Oh right, is it dinnertime? What are we eating tonight?”

Yu Sheng glanced down. “Can you even eat?”

“I can watch!”

Yu Sheng felt like he must have had a screw loose to keep engaging with this girl.

Bracing his back, he painstakingly lugged Eileen’s frame and slowly made his way toward the Stairs leading to the living room, accompanied the entire way by an unceasing stream of chatter from inside the Oil Painting —

“Hey, your place is pretty big! Didn’t realize there was this much space outside that room!”

“What’s in the room across the way? Your bedroom? Hey, does anyone else live here?”

“Do I need to say hello to them? Will they be scared? Normal people probably haven’t seen a talking doll or painting much, right…”

“Oh right, I still haven’t asked your name! What are you called? Yusheng? What a weird name… It’s not the raw fish kind of ‘yusheng,’ is it?”

“What happened to your back? Wrecking your back at such a young age? Let me tell you, you have to take care of your lower back — you humans’ joints are such a hassle, and you can’t just detach and reattach them freely… Huh? Why are you glaring at me? Your eyes are really scary…”

Yu Sheng finally, painfully, hobbled his way to the top of the Stairs and looked down at the Steps below — normally he wouldn’t think anything of it, but today, having thrown out his back and now lugging an especially heavy painting frame on top of that, those Steps suddenly looked exceptionally steep.

He had originally planned to hold Eileen’s frame with both arms as he went down the Stairs, but now he suddenly realized that his body’s condition did not seem to permit that.

Yu Sheng lowered his head and thought in silence.

The noisy Girl in the Painting seemed to sense something. Her voice gradually trailed off and her expression slowly grew tense.

Yu Sheng dropped his gaze and looked at the Girl in the Painting who had been chattering nonstop the whole way — and whose Topics had been getting more and more deserving of a smack. “Eileen.”

The Girl in the Painting jolted. “Yeah… yeah?”

“I think this frame of yours is pretty sturdy.”

“Is… is it?”

Yu Sheng silently set Eileen’s frame down at the Starting Point of the Stairs.

“It might rattle a bit. Hold on tight.”

Eileen finally realized what was happening. Her eyes went wide in an instant. “Hey, wait —”

“Away you go!”

The painting frame launched into a clattering, crashing grand adventure down the Stairs.

Accompanied the entire way by Eileen’s warm and heartfelt expressions of gratitude: “Yu Sheng you son of a — I… AHHH AAAH WAHHHH AAAH AHHH OHH AHHH *&%¥#*——”

(End of Chapter)