Chapter 5: Aileen in the Painting

Yu Sheng felt that ever since that frog had ripped out his heart and lungs, he’d become a lot more easygoing.

Take this moment, for example. He’d woken up from a bizarre dream that was wrong in every way imaginable, opened a locked room that was equally suspicious, found a talking oil painting, and even discovered that the painting clearly contained something sinister—yet he remained perfectly calm.

He even stepped forward, took the oil painting off the wall, and examined it closely, holding it up to his eyes.

The frame was fairly heavy, and the feel of it in his hands suggested it was worth a pretty penny. After a closer look, he found the dark black surface of the frame covered in intricate, exquisite patterns. The lines looked like some kind of continuous cursive script, yet they cleverly intertwined and twisted into something like vines, eventually merging seamlessly with the patterns at the edge of the painting.

Yu Sheng didn’t know much about paintings or art, but he was sure this thing had to be valuable.

As for the thing hiding deep within the painting, it still refused to show itself. The hem of the skirt in the corner of the picture had only retreated a little further.

Yu Sheng tried looking sideways into the painting, but saw nothing.

“I know you’re in there,” he said, shaking the heavy frame at the painting. “You’re just fooling yourself hiding like that.”

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

Yu Sheng placed the frame on the floor, crouched down, and pulled a lighter out of his pocket.

He lit the flame, brought it close to the frame, and said expressionlessly, “I’ll count to three. If you don’t come out, I’m torching this thing.”

Two or three seconds later, a light, childlike voice came from the painting: “...Ordinary flames like that mean nothing to an anomalous entity.”

But Yu Sheng was certain he could hear a note of uncertainty in that voice.

So he moved the flame directly onto one corner of the frame. “Oh, then let’s test that—”

The scream came almost simultaneously with the flame: “Stop! You’re actually going to do it?!”

Yu Sheng immediately extinguished the lighter, and the next moment, he saw a figure hurry out from the edge of the painting, which was covered in thorny vine-like patterns.

It was a young girl, dressed in an elaborate Gothic black dress with a white lace headband in her hair. Her hair was jet-black, her skin as white as snow, and her features were adorable. But she had a pair of unnatural crimson irises—those eyes were wide open now, staring straight at Yu Sheng, as if trying to confirm whether the human outside the frame would actually burn the painting.

Yu Sheng had to admit, he was startled when the girl suddenly jumped to the center of the painting.

Though when you looked closely, the girl in the painting wasn’t actually scary—she was even quite pretty—but against that dark, gloomy background and with such a sudden appearance, anything popping out of the picture would give you a shock. Especially with those eyes that looked as if they were soaked in blood. She pressed her face right against the canvas, her eyes nearly filling the entire painting, making it all the more eerie.

“Don’t light the fire,” came the girl’s voice from inside the painting. “This is the only home I have.”

“Take a step back first,” Yu Sheng said, instinctively keeping some distance from the painting. Somehow, he felt those crimson eyes were exceptionally sinister. The red seemed to seep into his memories and thoughts as they watched him, becoming harder and harder to erase from his mind. But to maintain the upper hand in the conversation, he forced himself not to look away. “I won’t light the fire.”

“Oh.” The girl in the painting was surprisingly agreeable. She seemed not to notice Yu Sheng’s momentary discomfort. She nodded and retreated to the center of the picture, sat down on the thick red velvet–covered chair, then bent down to pick up a plush toy bear she’d dropped on the floor, hugging it to her chest. She sat there, staring straight at Yu Sheng, watching his movements.

The gothic girl sitting in the red velvet chair, hugging a toy bear... For a moment, Yu Sheng felt like he was seeing the “normal” version of this “painting.”

But then he frowned slightly, noticing something abnormal in the picture.

He spotted the girl’s exposed wrist. It was clearly... a ball joint structure.

Human joints couldn’t possibly look like that.

But a doll’s could!

Probably because his gaze was too obvious, the girl in the painting shifted uncomfortably, frowning at Yu Sheng. “Why are you staring at me?”

Yu Sheng opened his mouth, initially about to ask about her wrist joint, but before he could speak, he stopped himself. He still knew too little about this “world.” Asking directly about supernatural matters might expose his ignorance. So he changed the question: “...Who are you? Why are you here?”

The girl in the painting hesitated for a while, but eventually answered Yu Sheng.

“My name is Aileen,” she said, adjusting her sitting posture as if to appear more dignified. “I’m from the ‘Alice’s Cottage.’ I was one of Alice’s dolls... but that was a long time ago.”

Dolls?

Yu Sheng caught the word immediately. He unconsciously glanced again at the obviously unnatural ball-joint structure on Aileen’s wrist. Then his attention shifted to the two terms she had mentioned so naturally:

“Alice’s Cottage” and “Alice’s dolls.”

What did that mean? He understood “dolls,” and he could accept talking dolls and animated dolls in oil paintings with imagination and an open mind. But what about “Alice”?

The “cottage” sounded like a place name, or maybe an organization named after a place. And “Alice’s dolls” sounded like a collective term for a group.

The girl in this painting was one of a larger group who called themselves “Alice’s dolls”?

Once Yu Sheng’s mind started making connections, it all went into overdrive. His imagination began running wild—

There were more like her? A whole bunch? Were they all hanging in people’s houses just like this one? With housing prices this high, they’d take up an entire room, lock the door, and laugh at the homeowner for not having the key, but one lighter was enough to intimidate them...?

...He got the feeling that this organization’s main purpose was a bit mysterious.

Probably because Yu Sheng had been silent for too long, Aileen finally couldn’t help asking, “Why did you suddenly go quiet... You’re not still thinking about burning it, are you?!”

“Let me ask you something.” Yu Sheng looked up suddenly, his serious expression startling the girl in the painting.

“Ah... go ahead.”

Yu Sheng said with complete seriousness, “Is the ‘Alice’s Cottage’ you mentioned a business that specializes in driving down housing prices?”

Aileen: “...What?”

“Like, someone pays you, and you hang yourselves in other people’s homes, occupy the space, lie around, laugh secretly at night, lock the doors during the day, all with the goal of bringing down the neighborhood’s housing prices. It’s like hanging yourself at the property management office as a contribution to stabilizing prices...”

Aileen stared at him with her crimson eyes. It took her almost half a minute to catch up with this lunatic’s train of thought and figure out what the man with the lighter meant. She immediately looked annoyed. “You... you can insult me, but you can’t insult the Mother of Dolls and my sisters! We are a very powerful...”

“Then why are you hanging in my house?!” Yu Sheng cut her off, glaring at her. “And locking the door! Oh yeah, and that dream I had earlier—was that your doing too? And that annoying laughter...”

He threw out a series of accusations, sounding fierce in his irritation. But as soon as he finished, he felt a bit of doubt. He remembered that frog in the rainstorm, and he suspected this equally sinister-looking painting was just as dangerous. This doll calling herself Aileen might seem easy to talk to now, but the next moment she could change her expression, launch an attack, and cut him down in front of the painting with one swing of her bear...

But he quickly shook off that unease. He remembered that after the frog had “opened his heart,” nothing catastrophic had happened—he’d only died once. Could a doll in a painting that could be intimidated by a lighter really eat him?

Yu Sheng was very easygoing now. The world was already this twisted, and he had already experienced dying from joy. He didn’t want to have so many worries anymore. He just wanted to understand what all these sinister things around him really were... Let’s start with this painting.

And “Aileen” was more cooperative than he’d expected.

The doll in the painting didn’t suddenly attack or swing her plush bear at his face. Faced with his fierce barrage of questions, she only shrank back in her chair, her expression actually showing a hint of... guilt.

“I... I’m in an unusual situation. I wasn’t like this originally,” she said, fidgeting uncomfortably, squeezing the toy bear out of shape. “I had an accident a long time ago. I got sealed in this painting and lost contact with the other dolls...”

She looked up again, peering at the room outside the painting.

“As for why I’m in your house, I... I don’t know either. I’m trapped in a painting, and I can’t decide where I end up hanging... You don’t mean you bought me at some art exhibition and hung me on your wall yourself?”

Yu Sheng: “...

[Thanks to Aurora Society member O for the Silver Ally. ~]

(End of chapter)