Chapter 8: Don't Open Doors Recklessly

He walked into the kitchen, closed the door, and turned on the range hood. Amid the noisy clatter of the machine running, Yu Sheng felt his heart gradually calm down.

It was as if the thin wooden kitchen door and the racket of the exhaust fan had temporarily separated him from a chaotic and eerie world—he had finally returned to a place that belonged entirely to him, where he could even briefly pretend he wasn't in that enormous and sinister "Boundary City," but back in the familiar, real "home."

This big house differed from his original "home" in almost every way, but only this small kitchen closely resembled the structure in his memory. So after settling down a bit in this world, he had done his best to arrange it exactly the way he was used to.

Every day while cooking here, he pretended he was still in his real home, pretending that morning he hadn't pushed open his front door, hadn't stepped into a strange city filled with eerie shadows—sometimes, while bustling about in here, he even felt that if he just looked up, he would see through the window the familiar street scene of the old days, the old neighborhood outside the kitchen bathed in orange-red clouds, the reddish sunlight flowing over the residential building facades in his memory…

But the view outside the window always shattered those brief illusions. Now, when he looked out, all he could see was an empty patch of barren ground and some low, old single-story houses nearby. There were hardly any residential buildings—plenty of messy utility poles instead—and he hadn't seen that warm, cozy sky in a long time.

The sky of this city was always either glaringly white or depressingly dim.

Yu Sheng sighed, casually pulled down the blinds outside the glass, and stopped paying attention to the night outside, which always seemed shadowy and indistinct.

He washed and trimmed the vegetables, heated the pan with oil, let the scallions sizzle, then swiftly tossed in the ingredients. Listening to the crackling sound from the wok, he also heard the television program stirring outside—this bizarre city did have information channels including TV and cell phones. In the early days, almost all his understanding of this "Boundary City" came from watching TV shows and scrolling through phone news, and even now it remained one of his main ways of learning about this "world."

"Yu Sheng! The TV is too quiet! Turn it up for me! Please!"

A girl's noisy voice suddenly came from outside the door, startling Yu Sheng so much he nearly flipped the food out of the pan.

He had almost forgotten there was still an Eileen outside.

Back when he used to cook in the kitchen, nobody talked out there!

"Hold on!" Yu Sheng shouted back, not at all politely, then couldn't help muttering under his breath, "…She sure gets familiar fast…"

But soon the corners of his mouth lifted into a helpless smile.

Well, fine—at least it added a bit of "human presence" to the house, brought some life to the place.

After a while, Yu Sheng came out carrying steaming hot dishes. He set the bowls and plates on the dining table, casually turned up the TV across from the table by two notches, then sat down with his back to the television, facing Eileen's painting frame—he didn't usually watch TV while eating, but he liked to have it on as background noise, and this way he didn't block the view from Eileen's fixed angle.

Eileen, hugging her teddy bear inside the oil painting, craned her neck to look at the food on the table. Her eyes flickered between the TV show and the dishes as she muttered, "Pretty lavish…"

"They're just home-style dishes," Yu Sheng said casually. "I really like cooking."

"Oh." Eileen made an acknowledging sound and obediently went back to watching TV, but once Yu Sheng started eating, she leaned forward to sneak another look at the table. After holding it in for a while, she finally couldn't resist speaking up: "So you eat while I just watch?"

Yu Sheng raised his eyelids, then held out his chopsticks and waved them in front of Eileen's frame. "Want a bite?"

Eileen stared at him, then dropped her head and started sulking.

"…Fine, fine, let's at least go through the motions." Seeing her like that, Yu Sheng felt helpless. He sighed, went back to the kitchen, grabbed an empty bowl, scooped some of his own food into it, and placed it in front of Eileen's frame. "There—I've left you a bowl and chopsticks. Just pretend you're smelling it. I'll eat it anyway in the end."

Eileen frowned at the bowl in front of the frame, thought it over, and decided it was acceptable. She jumped off her chair, crowded up to the edge of the frame, her face taking up almost half the painting, and looked at Yu Sheng seriously. "Okay, that works—thanks, you're pretty considerate…"

Yu Sheng lowered his head and took a bite of rice, mumbling a response, then looked up to see just Eileen's head sticking out from the frame. His gaze then fell on the bowl right in front of the painting, and suddenly something felt off…

Eileen didn't notice anything wrong. She was just puzzled by his sudden blank stare. "What are you spacing out for?"

Yu Sheng quickly lowered his head and shoveled down two more mouthfuls before looking back at Eileen—

The dark frame, the dark background, the puppet girl's head, and a bowl of food in front of the portrait.

The whole setup was exactly like a memorial photo—

He couldn't help twitching at the corners of his mouth, but after holding it in for a long time, he still didn't dare say what he was thinking—not for any other reason, but because Eileen had a really foul mouth when she cursed.

There was nothing to do but eat. He pretended nothing was wrong and wolfed down his meal under Eileen's confused gaze, trying as much as possible not to look at the dearly-departed-looking figure across the table…

It felt like eating dinner at a wake.

Finally finishing the meal, Yu Sheng wiped his mouth, quickly cleared away all the cups and plates from in front of Eileen's frame, tossed them into the kitchen sink, and left them to soak until morning—mainly because his back still hurt badly. Bending over the sink to wash dishes was too much of a strain right now.

He might not have to wash the dishes, but he couldn't leave the trash. This season, he couldn't let the kitchen garbage bag stay overnight—he endured the back pain, sorted the trash, and carried the bag toward the front door.

Eileen, who was still watching TV, looked up curiously. "Hey, where are you going this late?"

"Do I have to report to you in my own house?" Yu Sheng snorted back at the overly familiar painting puppet, but still raised the trash bag for her to see. "I'm going out to throw out the trash."

"Oh, then come back soon," Eileen said, her attention already back on the TV. "This big house scares me when I'm alone. What if a thief gets in…"

Yu Sheng rolled his eyes. He thought to himself that if anyone actually came into this gloomy big house and saw a ghost-like figure flickering inside a painting, the one who'd get scared to death first definitely wouldn't be the person in the painting—with Eileen in this state, even a thief would call the cops first…

But he didn't have the heart to say that to Eileen's face.

Yu Sheng shook his head, muttered a few complaints under his breath, walked to the door, changed into his outdoor shoes, and grabbed the doorknob.

He applied force, turned, and pushed it open.

For some reason, he suddenly remembered that morning two months ago—the ordinary morning like any other day in what seemed like his ordinary life.

Back then, just like now, he had pushed open his front door, stepped outside, and walked into a huge, suffocatingly bizarre city, from which he still hadn't returned—

The strange association flashed through his mind. Yu Sheng smiled bitterly and shook his head, then pushed the door open and stepped out.

The crisp snap of a dead branch breaking shattered the stillness of the valley. A cold night wind carried some unsettling decay and a stench of rot. The chill in the air made Yu Sheng, who had only come out in a thin shirt, shiver involuntarily. It took him several seconds to restart his brain, which had momentarily stopped functioning.

He found himself standing among barren, collapsed rubble. In the distance, the night seemed to reveal a sinister, grotesque dense forest, while mountains on both sides towered into the night sky, like silent, terrifying giants looking down from either side of the valley, bringing an unbearable weight of oppression.

Yu Sheng stood frozen in the cold night, then slowly turned back to look at where he had come from.

A tumbled heap of broken bricks and rotten tiles met his eyes—it looked like a ruined temple abandoned and collapsed a hundred years ago. A dilapidated door—or maybe just a half-rotten door panel leaning on a crooked frame—stood alone among the ruins. The night wind blew, producing hollow sobs from the gaps in the broken door and debris.

Yu Sheng stared wide-eyed. "Where did this dump me…"

Gradually, understanding dawned on him.

With his action of "opening the door," what had happened two months ago was repeating itself.

He had been dumped into a strange place again.

And this time was even worse than two months ago—that huge and bizarre "Boundary City," though different from the "Boundary City" where he had grown up, was at least a modern metropolis where people could survive. But this time, the situation was far less promising.

He had been thrown into a wilderness.

In front of him, a dense forest; to the sides, dangerous mountains; behind him, only a ruined temple that had collapsed who knows how many years ago—Yu Sheng took one look and thought that this place would be an obvious spawn point for three dozen bandits or a few wolf demons and fox spirits…

And the only thing in his hand was a bag of kitchen trash he had just brought from home…

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, and his mental cursing was quite colorful.

And just then, as his mind was overflowing with profanities, an abrupt voice suddenly came from his consciousness—

"Yu Sheng! The TV signal's gone! When are you coming back?"