Chapter 7 – Eileen’s Escape Plan

Eileen’s cursing was truly something awful to hear.

Yu Sheng had no idea how a doll sealed inside an Oil Painting could possess such a rich vocabulary — and on top of that, she managed to curse nonstop all the way as she slid down the Stairs, not even pausing to catch a breath in between.

Probably because her true form was a doll, so she didn’t need to breathe at all.

Yu Sheng, however, remained perfectly calm. After Eileen slid off the Stairs and onto the floor, he let her curse all she wanted while he leisurely made his way down, gripping the railing at a slow, unhurried pace — mainly because his back hurt, so he couldn’t move fast anyway. Once he reached the first floor, he bent down with great effort and picked up Eileen’s painting frame.

“Are you out of your mind?!” Eileen glared furiously from within the Oil Painting, clutching her plush bear, her clothes and hair a complete mess. “Who just tosses someone down the stairs like that?! What if the painting got damaged?!”

“My back hurts. Your painting is too heavy to carry down the stairs,” Yu Sheng said without a hint of remorse, lifting the frame and slowly making his way toward the dining room. “Besides, I looked it over — the frame is very sturdy. And who knows, if the frame did break, maybe you’d be free?”

“If it were that easy to get out of here, would I have stayed sealed until now?!” Eileen flopped back into the Chair in annoyance. “Ugh, my head is spinning…”

Yu Sheng suddenly stopped and looked down, studying the Girl in the Oil Painting with great seriousness.

Eileen felt a little uneasy under his gaze. “You… what are you planning this time? I’m telling you, if you throw me down the Stairs again, I won’t let you off easy. I’ll sneak into your dreams every night while you’re sleeping — if you’re dreaming about an exam, I’ll ring a bell; if you’re dreaming about gaming, I’ll yank the cord; if you’re dreaming about going outside, I’ll drive a cement truck at you; if you’re dreaming about dating someone, I’ll…”

How does this wretched doll have so much to say?!

Yu Sheng barely suppressed the urge to drag Eileen back upstairs and toss her down again. He kept a straight face and made himself sound as serious as possible: “I just wanted to ask — what exactly is the principle behind this ‘seal’ of yours? You said you needed someone to help you escape… so how would someone go about doing that?”

Eileen hadn’t expected this to be what Yu Sheng wanted to say. She was stunned for a moment, then stared at him in disbelief for two or three seconds before speaking: “You… you’re agreeing to help me get out of here?!”

“Didn’t you say you needed someone to help you escape?” Yu Sheng frowned, then quickly added, “I’m just asking first. I haven’t agreed to anything yet…”

But Eileen seemed not to have heard the second half of his sentence. Before he could finish, she was already speaking rapidly: “There are three… no, two methods! The first is the best — find my body. I don’t know where it is right now, but it must be somewhere… probably not far from this painting. In any case, once you find my original body, everything becomes simple. Just bring me close to it and I can get out of this cursed painting…

“But if it can’t be found, or if my original body has already been destroyed, then we’d have to use the second method — create a new one. Of course, a newly made body won’t be as good as the original, and it’ll take some getting used to as well…”

Yu Sheng had been listening attentively the whole time. Unable to help himself, he cut in: “Create a new one? How? Would buying a ready-made doll from a doll shop work?”

“Of course not!” Eileen said immediately. “I am an ‘Alice’s Doll’! A blessed living doll, understand? How could I be compared to those mass-produced three-inch or four-inch dolls from a shop?”

She paused for a moment, then continued with a slightly serious expression: “Living dolls are all born from the garden of Alice’s Cottage. Our original bodies also come from there. But I’ve already lost my connection to the garden, and I can’t leave the painting, so I have no way to return to the garden for rebirth. However, even without the garden, we do have a method to create a temporary body in the mortal world for emergencies… But even though it’s just an emergency temporary body, it’s not easy to make.

“First, you need to find hair that grows on its own, soil that wriggles like a living creature, the bones of a dead person that break and then heal themselves, and a single teardrop from a living doll — two drops would also work, that way my skin will be a little better — then you use alchemy to re-animate all these materials, then smear your own blood… hey, why are you making that face?”

Yu Sheng stared at the Girl in the painting with a deadpan expression, and after a long silence let out a sigh. “…Let’s talk about the plan to find your original body instead, shall we?”

Eileen blinked. “…You don’t know alchemy?”

“Is that supposed to be something everyone knows?!” Yu Sheng looked a little frantic. “And forget about alchemy — where am I supposed to find all those ridiculous materials you listed? Are you sure that whole setup wasn’t copied from some third-rate fantasy magazine? And a living doll’s teardrop… if I could find another living doll, I’d just hand you — painting and all — straight over to her. Wouldn’t it be better to have a sister of yours bring you home rather than have me fumbling around?”

Yu Sheng was well aware that he hadn’t been in this “World” very long and didn’t yet fully understand those strange shadows or the extraordinary realm lurking behind them. But based on the information he had encountered so far, the “materials” Eileen had mentioned were absolutely not things an ordinary person of this world could get their hands on. How had she rattled them off as though it were the most natural thing in the world?

Eileen’s expression seemed to grow a little awkward after seeing Yu Sheng’s reaction. She shifted slightly in the Chair and, in a somewhat lowered voice, said: “Actually, other materials can work too — like buying some clay, paint, and a wig online…”

Yu Sheng: “…?”

He stared at the Girl in the painting with an expression that clearly said, “Are you messing with me?”, and Eileen shrank further back in the Chair: “I just wanted the temporary body to be as functional as possible… but if I can’t get the upgraded version, a basic one will do.

“Even with those ordinary materials, the final step still requires your blood, and a little bit of alchemy technique. I can teach you — it’s very simple, something an ordinary person can manage…”

Yu Sheng didn’t respond right away. He fell silent, seemingly lost in thought, and after several seconds suddenly said: “You were about to say there were three methods at the beginning, weren’t you? Why didn’t you mention the third one?”

“…That method isn’t great. There’s a cost to it,” Eileen waved her hand dismissively, looking quite candid. “You probably wouldn’t agree to it, and I don’t want you to try it either — after all, we don’t know each other very well…”

“Since you know we’re not that close, stop talking so much nonsense.” Yu Sheng said offhandedly, shooting a glance at the Girl in the painting.

Eileen pursed her lips and looked at Yu Sheng with a slightly restrained air — she apparently knew how to show restraint now — and carefully asked: “So… will you help me get out of here? The second method is actually fairly simple. Even if you just casually shape a body, it doesn’t have to be perfect — as long as the ritual process is correct, I can reshape it once I enter the vessel… just don’t make it too ugly. At least make it look like a person.”

This time, Yu Sheng didn’t banter with Eileen. He thought about it very seriously, deliberating for nearly half a minute before giving his answer with great solemnity: “I can’t promise right now. I need to think about it.”

He didn’t fully trust this Girl in the painting. At least not entirely.

She appeared honest and sincere, a little chatty but not bad-natured at heart, with a distinct personality that seemed harmless — nothing about her felt malicious. But all of this was nothing more than the surface impression formed from less than a single day of acquaintance. Stripping away all those “humanizing” impressions, Eileen’s true nature was still that of a strange entity sealed inside an Oil Painting.

Yu Sheng wasn’t about to be fooled by her adorable appearance into building a body without a second thought and releasing this “painting ghost” — what if she revealed her true face the moment she got out and brought a teddy bear down on his head, cutting him down beneath her Gothic skirt?

Yu Sheng had just died once not long ago. He had no desire to die again anytime soon.

Eileen, upon receiving this answer, said nothing. She simply stared at Yu Sheng for a moment, then naturally nodded her head: “Oh. I understand.”

Yu Sheng was genuinely surprised. He had expected to need to wrangle with the Girl in the painting over this for a long time, yet she turned out to be unexpectedly… gracious.

“After all, we don’t know each other that well yet, right?” As if she had seen through Yu Sheng’s confusion, Eileen suddenly smiled and winked at the world outside the Oil Painting. “Once we know each other better, I’ll ask again.”

“…Fair enough. We’ll talk about it later.”

Yu Sheng smiled as well. He carried Eileen’s frame into the dining room and casually set it upright, leaning against the wall on the dining table, then turned and headed for the kitchen.

“I haven’t eaten dinner yet. I’m going to cook first.”

“Alright… hey, can you turn on the TV across from the table first? I want to watch something…”

“So demanding.”

Yu Sheng turned on the TV across from the dining table, then picked up the vegetables and seasonings he had bought from the supermarket earlier — left sitting on the shelf — and went to prepare his dinner.

He was actually someone who loved cooking very much. And ever since he arrived in this familiar-yet-strange “Boundary City”, he had been cooking nearly every meal himself at home — after all, it was only inside this large house that none of those strange shadows came out to disturb him.

He didn’t mind running into gaunt, elongated ghost figures on the city streets, but not while cooking and eating — those two things were major events in his life.

…Though now, even this “safe house” had gained the strange presence of “Eileen”.

But compared to those ghost figures, freezing rain, and frogs that haunted the city streets, a wretched little doll who could do nothing but chatter endlessly from within an Oil Painting was, all things considered, far more endearing — at the very least, she couldn’t reach in and rip out his heart.