Chapter 5: Erin in the Painting

Yu Sheng felt that ever since that frog had ripped his heart out and poured its own out, he seemed to have become much more open-minded.

For instance, right now, he had woken from a strange dream that felt wrong no matter how one looked at it, opened a bizarre locked room, found a talking oil painting, and even though that oil painting clearly hid some sinister thing inside, he remained remarkably calm.

He even stepped forward, took the oil painting off the wall, and held it before his eyes to examine it carefully.

The frame had considerable weight, and the texture in his hand suggested it was of great value; upon closer inspection, he discovered the pitch-black surface of the frame was covered in intricate and exquisite patterns. Those patterns seemed like some kind of continuously written text, yet they cleverly interlocked and twisted into a vine-like structure, finally merging seamlessly with the patterns along the edge of the painting.

Yu Sheng didn't understand painting, nor did he understand art, but he felt this thing must be worth a fortune.

And that creature hiding deep within the oil painting still refused to show itself; only the hem of the skirt in the corner of the painting had retreated slightly.

Yu Sheng tried to view the interior of the painting from an angle, but saw nothing.

"I know you're inside," he shook the heavy frame and said to the oil painting, "Hiding now is just deceiving yourself."

A rustling sound came from the corner of the painting, but there was no response.

Yu Sheng placed the frame on the floor, and while squatting down, he pulled a lighter from his pocket.

He flicked the flame close to the frame, expressionless: "I'll count to three. If you don't come out, I'll set this thing on fire."

Two or three seconds later, a faint, childish voice came from within the oil painting: "... A mere mortal flame. That won't work on an eerie entity."

But Yu Sheng could be certain he heard a tone of guilt in that voice.

So he directly scorched the corner of the frame with the flame: "Oh, then I'll try lighting it—"

A scream rang out almost simultaneously with his lighting action: "Don't! You're actually going to light it?!"

Yu Sheng instantly extinguished the lighter. Immediately after, he saw a figure hurriedly jump out from the edge of the painting, which resembled thorny flower vines.

It was a young girl wearing an elaborate and gorgeous Gothic black dress, with a hairpin adorned with white lace on her head. Her long hair was jet black, her skin white as snow, and her appearance was cute, yet she possessed a pair of alienated scarlet eyes. Those eyes were now wide open, staring straight at Yu Sheng, as if confirming whether the human outside the frame would really burn the painting.

Yu Sheng admitted he was startled when that girl suddenly jumped into the center of the painting.

Although the girl in the painting, upon close inspection, was actually not scary and even quite beautiful, with such a gloomy and dim background and such a sudden entrance, whatever jumped out of the painting would be frightening. Moreover, that Miss had eyes like they were soaked in blood. She immediately leaned closer to the painting, pressing her face completely against the canvas. Those eyes nearly filled the entire oil painting, looking even more bizarre.

"Don't light the fire," the girl's voice came from the oil painting, "This is the only place I live."

"Step back a bit first," Yu Sheng subconsciously maintained some distance from the oil painting. For some reason, he felt those scarlet eyes of hers were unusually sinister; that red, when staring this way, seemed to gradually seep into his memory and thoughts, becoming harder and harder to erase from his heart the longer he looked. But to maintain the upper hand in the conversation, he forced himself not to avert his gaze. "I won't light the fire."

"Oh." The girl in the painting was quite reasonable. She seemed not to notice Yu Sheng's momentary abnormality, nodded, and retreated to the center of the painting. She sat down on a chair covered in thick red velvet, then bent down, picked up a plush teddy bear she had just thrown on the floor, and held it in her arms. Sitting on the chair, she continued to stare straight at Yu Sheng's movements.

The Gothic girl holding the teddy bear and sitting on the red velvet chair—in a daze, Yu Sheng felt he saw the painting's original "normal" image.

Immediately after, he frowned slightly and discovered some abnormalities within the painting.

He noticed the girl's exposed wrists; those were clearly... spherical structures.

Human joints cannot grow like that.

Only dolls have joints like that!

Perhaps the gaze from outside the painting was too obvious; the girl in the painting twisted her body somewhat unnaturally and frowned at Yu Sheng: "Why are you staring at me?"

Yu Sheng opened his mouth. At first, he wanted to ask about the girl's wrist joints, but before speaking, he forcibly stopped that question. He knew very little about this "world," and rashly asking about matters involving the supernatural realm might expose his weaknesses. So, when the words reached his lips, he changed the question: "... Who are you? Why are you here?" The girl in the painting obviously hesitated, but a moment later, she still answered Yu Sheng's question.

"My name is Erin," she adjusted her sitting posture slightly, as if to make herself appear more solemn. "I come from 'Alice's Cottage' and am one of Alice's dolls... but that was a long time ago."

A doll?

Yu Sheng keenly noticed this word. At the same time, he subconsciously glanced again at the obviously non-human spherical joint structure on "Erin's" wrist. Immediately after, his focus shifted to the two words the other party mentioned quite naturally:

"Alice's Cottage" and "Alice's dolls."

What did this mean? He understood dolls. As for talking dolls and dolls jumping around lively inside an oil painting, he could accept them through imagination and his open-mindedness. But that "Alice"... what was it?

That cottage sounded like a place name, or possibly an organization named after a place. And "Alice's dolls"... sounded like a collective term for some group?

Was the Miss in this oil painting a member of a large group that called themselves "Alice's dolls"?

Once the train of thought in Yu Sheng's mind opened up, he instantly couldn't stop it, and his ability to make associations began to race wildly—

Was there more than one like her? Was there a whole group? Did they all hang in houses like she did? With housing prices so high, they still occupied a room, locked the door and wouldn't let people open it, yet mocked the house owner for not having a key, but in reality, could be scared off by a single lighter...?

... It just felt like the main purpose of this organization was a bit mysterious...

Perhaps because Yu Sheng had been silent for a bit too long, Erin finally couldn't hold back and spoke: "Why did you suddenly stop talking... You aren't still thinking about lighting the fire, are you?!"

"I want to ask you something." Yu Sheng suddenly looked up, and the seriousness in his expression even startled the girl in the painting.

!.

"Ah... Go ahead and say it."

Yu Sheng looked serious: "Is that 'Alice's Cottage' you mentioned specifically taking orders to suppress housing prices?"

Erin: "... Ah?"

"Like this: someone pays money, you guys hang yourselves in other people's houses, occupy the room and lie on the floor, secretly laughing at night and locking the door during the day. The purpose is to drive down the housing prices of the neighborhood—essentially equivalent to hanging yourself at the property management entrance to help stabilize housing prices..."

Erin stared with her scarlet eyes. It took nearly half a minute before she finally caught up with Yu Sheng's insane train of thought and understood what the man holding the lighter meant. She immediately showed an angry expression: "You... You can insult me, but you cannot insult the Ancestor of Dolls and my sisters! I... We are a very powerful..."

"Then why are you hanging in my house?!" Yu Sheng directly glared and interrupted the girl in the painting. "And you locked the door! Ah yes, and that dream I had before, was that your doing too? And that annoying laugh..."

He asked a whole string of questions, sounding fierce while he was angry, but after asking, he felt a bit insecure inside. He remembered the frog on that rainy night and felt that this oil painting, which looked equally sinister, must also be a similarly dangerous thing. This painting doll who called herself "Erin" seemed easy to talk to now, but who knew if in the next second her face would change, she would suddenly attack, and with a swing of her bear, cut him down before the painting...

But soon he shook off this insecurity because he remembered that after the frog had "cheered him up," nothing major happened; he just died once. Could this painting doll, who could be scared off by a lighter, actually eat him?

Yu Sheng's heart was very open now. This world was already so sinister, and he had experienced dying from happiness once. Now he didn't want to have so many worries anymore; he just wanted to figure out what was going on with the many sinister things around him... starting with this painting.

And "Erin" was even more reasonable than he had imagined.

The painting doll did not suddenly attack, nor did she swing the plush teddy bear in her arms and smash it into Yu Sheng's face. Facing the fierce string of questions, she only shrank her body on the chair, and her face actually showed a bit of... guilt.

"I... this is an accident. I wasn't like this originally," she twisted her body uneasily, squeezing the teddy bear in her arms until it deformed. "I met with an accident a long time ago, was sealed inside this painting, and also lost contact with the other dolls..."

She raised her head again and looked at the room outside the oil painting.

"As for why I'm in your house, this... I don't know either. I'm trapped in a painting and can't decide where I get hung... Did you really buy me back from an art exhibition one day and hang me on the wall?"

Yu Sheng: "..."

Thanks to Mr. O of the Aurora Society for the Silver Donation~

(End of Chapter)