Yusheng felt that ever since that frog had dug into his heart, it seemed as though his heart had become much lighter.
For example, right now, he had just woken up from a strange and unsettling dream.
He had opened a locked, eerie room and found a talking oil painting inside.
Even though this painting seemed to hide something bizarre, he remained quite calm.
He took a step closer, removed the heavy painting from the wall, and carefully examined it.
The frame had a certain weight to it, suggesting it was worth quite a bit.
As he looked closely, he noticed that the dark frame was covered with intricate and beautiful patterns.
The designs seemed reminiscent of some kind of continuous writing, cleverly interwoven and twisted to form a structure like vines, finally blending seamlessly into the border of the painting.
Yusheng didn’t understand art, but he felt certain this thing was valuable.
Meanwhile, the entity hidden deep within the painting refused to show itself, only the corner of a dress seemed to retract slightly.
Yusheng tried to shift his gaze to peer inside the painting, but he saw nothing. “I know you’re in there,” he said, shaking the heavy frame. “Hiding now is just fooling yourself.”
He heard a slight rustling from the corner of the painting, but there was no reply.
Setting the frame down on the ground, he crouched and pulled a lighter from his pocket.
Flicking the flame, he brought it closer to the frame, his expression impassive. “I’ll count to three. If you don’t come out, I’ll set this thing on fire.”
A few seconds later, a soft and youthful voice floated from inside the painting. “... It’s just a mundane flame. That won’t harm anything unnatural.”
But Yusheng could sense an air of nervousness in that voice.
So he ignited the edge of the frame. “Oh, I’ll give it a try—”
The scream erupted almost at the same moment he lit the flame. “No! Don’t really do it!”
Yusheng quickly extinguished the lighter, and then he saw a figure hurriedly leap out from the thorny, vine-like edges of the painting.
It was a girl, dressed in an elaborate gothic black dress, her head adorned with a hairpin decorated with white lace.
Her long hair was jet black, her skin as white as snow, and her features were cute but accompanied by a pair of unsettling crimson eyes—those eyes were wide open, fixed on Yusheng, as if confirming whether the human outside the frame would actually burn the painting.
Yusheng had to admit, he was startled when the girl suddenly appeared at the center of the painting.
Up close, she wasn’t frightening at all, even quite beautiful.
But the dim and eerie background of the painting, coupled with her sudden appearance, was enough to give anyone a scare; especially with those blood-red eyes—she leaned closer to the canvas, pressing her face against it, causing her eyes to nearly fill the entire painting, which made everything look even stranger.
“Don’t light that fire,” the girl’s voice came from the painting again. “I only have this one place to stay.”
“Could you step back a bit?” Yusheng instinctively maintained some distance from the painting.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that those crimson eyes held a strange power—a warmth that seemed to seep into his thoughts and memories.
The more he looked, the harder it became to forget.
Yet, wanting to keep control of the conversation, he forced himself to maintain eye contact. “I won’t light it.”
“Oh.” The girl in the painting seemed quite agreeable.
She didn’t appear to have noticed Yusheng’s brief shift in demeanor and nodded before retreating to the center of the painting, where she sat on a chair covered in thick red velvet.
Then, she bent down, picked up a plush teddy bear she had dropped on the ground, and hugged it tightly in her lap, continuing to stare at Yusheng with unmoving eyes.
A gothic girl holding a teddy bear while seated on a crimson chair—Yusheng for a moment felt as if he was witnessing the original “normal” version of this so-called “oil painting.”
Yet he quickly frowned again upon noticing something odd in the painting.
He saw the girl’s wrist, which was distinctly… spherical.
Human joints couldn’t possibly form like that.
It must be a doll!
Perhaps the scrutiny from Yusheng was too evident, as the girl in the painting shifted uneasily, frowning at him. “Why are you staring at me?”
Yusheng opened his mouth, initially wanting to question her wrist structure but abruptly stopped—he knew too little about this “world,” and inquiring about transcendental matters might expose his ignorance.
So he opted for another question, “Who are you? Why are you here?”
The girl hesitated for a moment before replying, “My name is Ailin. I come from the ‘Alice’s Cabin’ and am one of Alice’s dolls… but that was a long time ago.”
Doll?
Yusheng keenly noted that term, unconsciously glancing again at Ailin’s wrist, clearly different from human anatomy.
His attention then drifted to the two phrases she had naturally mentioned: “Alice’s Cabin” and “Alice’s dolls.”
What did they mean? He understood the concept of dolls.
The idea of living dolls that could speak and bounce around seemed acceptable to him, but who was “Alice”?
The cabin sounded like a place name, or perhaps an organization named after a location, while “Alice’s dolls” implied a group of some sort?
Was this girl in the painting just one of many who called themselves “Alice’s dolls”?
Once Yusheng’s thoughts began to flow, he found it hard to control them—were there more like her? A whole group? Did they hang around in homes everywhere? With housing prices so high, did they occupy houses, locked away and mocking the owners, all the while just needing a lighter to scare them?
… Something about this organization seemed mysteriously odd.
After a while, Yusheng’s silence must have stretched too long, for Ailin finally couldn’t help but ask, “Why did you stop talking all of a sudden? You aren’t seriously thinking about lighting that fire, right?!”
“I have a question for you.” Yusheng suddenly looked up, his expression serious enough to startle Ailin.
“Uh… what is it?”
Yusheng replied, “Is that ‘Alice’s Cabin’ a place that only works to drive down housing prices?”
Ailin: “... Huh?”
“I mean, do people pay money for you all to hang around in someone’s house, taking up space, sneaking laughs at night, locking doors during the day, all so you can help lower property values? Basically like hanging around the property management’s door to help stabilize prices…”
Ailin stared at him with those crimson eyes, her expression slowly realizing the absurdity of his thoughts.
After nearly half a minute, she finally grasped what Yusheng was implying, her face flushing with indignation. “You… you can insult me, but you cannot insult the ancestors of the dolls or my sisters! I… we are quite powerful…”
“Then why are you hanging in my home?” Yusheng interrupted angrily. “And why lock the door? Oh right, and about that dream I had—is that your doing? And that annoying laugh…”
He threw out a series of questions in a huff, sounding aggressive, but once he finished, a hint of uncertainty crept back in.
He remembered that frog from the rainy night and felt a twinge of wariness toward this equally eerie painting.
While this Ailin seemed agreeable, she might very well spring into action and violently confront him in the next moment…
However, he quickly dismissed that worry, recalling how the frog had seemingly led to nothing serious after it “made him happy”—just one death.
This painting’s doll certainly wouldn’t eat him, would it?
Yusheng felt lighthearted now; the world was already this strange, and he had just experienced a kind of “happy death.” He didn’t want to worry too much anymore.
He simply wanted to understand the oddities around him, starting with this painting.
Ailin, it turned out, was even easier to talk to than he imagined.
The doll in the painting didn’t retaliate or throw her plush toy at his face.
Instead, she curled up a bit in her chair, looking genuinely… guilty.
“I… I didn’t mean for this to happen. I wasn’t always like this,” she said, twisting her body anxiously as she hugged the reshaped teddy bear. “I had an accident long ago and got trapped in this painting, losing contact with the other dolls…”
She raised her head and glanced toward the room outside the painting.
“As for why I’m in your home… I really don’t know. I’m stuck in this painting and can’t choose where I’m hung… Didn’t you hang me up when you visited an art exhibit?”
Yusheng: “…”
(End of Chapter)