Irene’s swearing was impressively foul.

Yu Sheng couldn’t fathom how a doll sealed inside a painting could possess such an extensive vocabulary—and to be able to curse so fluently while sliding down an entire staircase without even pausing for breath.

Maybe it was because she was a doll and didn’t actually need to breathe.

Still, Yu Sheng remained unbothered. Even as Irene continued her tirade after landing at the bottom of the stairs, he took his time carefully supporting himself with the handrail as he made his way down—his back pain making it impossible to hurry. Once he finally reached the ground floor, he bent over with great effort and picked up Irene’s frame.

“Are you insane?!” Irene clutched her plush bear, glaring at him from within the painting, her hair and clothes in disarray. “Who just throws someone down the stairs like that? What if you broke the painting?!”

“My back hurts, and your painting is too heavy. I couldn’t carry it down,” Yu Sheng replied nonchalantly, lifting the frame and slowly heading toward the dining room. “Besides, I observed that your frame is pretty sturdy. And if it did break, maybe it’d free you, right?”

“If I could get out that easily, would I still be sealed in here?!” Irene grumbled, sitting back in her chair. “Ugh, my head’s all dizzy…”

Yu Sheng suddenly stopped and looked down at the girl in the painting with a serious expression.

Irene felt a shiver run down her spine under his gaze. “W-what are you planning now? I’m warning you, if you throw me down the stairs again, I won’t let you off! I’ll sneak into your dreams every night! When you dream about exams, I’ll set off an alarm. When you dream about gaming, I’ll cut your connection. If you dream about going outside, I’ll chase you with a dump truck. If you dream about romance, I’ll—”

Why did this cursed doll have so much trash talk?

Suppressing his urge to drag Irene back upstairs and throw her down again, Yu Sheng kept a straight face and tried to appear serious. “I just want to ask—what’s the principle behind your ‘seal’? You said you need help getting out… how exactly can I help you?”

Irene hadn’t expected this question and froze for a moment. After a few seconds, she asked in disbelief, “You… you’re saying you’re willing to help me get out of here?!”

“You were the one asking for help, right?” Yu Sheng frowned, quickly adding, “I’m just asking, though. I haven’t agreed yet…”

But Irene seemed to ignore his second sentence. Before he could finish, she quickly explained, “There are three… no, wait, two ways! The best way is to find my original body. I don’t know where it is now, but it must be somewhere… maybe not too far from this painting. Anyway, once you find my original body and bring me close to it, I’ll be able to get out of this damned painting…”

“But if you can’t find it, or if my original body has been destroyed, then there’s only the second option—to make a new one. But a new body wouldn’t be as good as the original, and it would take some time to adapt…”

Yu Sheng had been listening intently and couldn’t help but interrupt at this point. “Make a new one? How? Could I just buy a doll from a shop?”

“Of course not!” Irene responded immediately. “I’m one of ‘Alice’s Dolls’! A blessed, living doll! How could I be the same as those three-quarter-scale or quarter-scale dolls from a store?”

After a brief pause, Irene resumed with a more serious expression, “Living dolls are all born from the Garden at Alice’s Cottage. Our original bodies also come from there. But I’ve lost my connection to the Garden and can’t leave this painting, so I can’t return there to be reborn. Still, even without the Garden, we have a method to create a temporary body in the real world… But even though it’s a temporary solution, it’s not easy to make.

“First, you’ll need hair that grows on its own, soil that wriggles like a living creature, bones of a deceased person that can break and heal, and a drop of a living doll’s tears—two drops would be even better since it would make my skin softer. Then you need to use alchemy to reanimate these materials, coat them with your own blood, and—wait, why are you making that face?”

Stolen story; please report.

Yu Sheng stared at the girl in the painting with a blank expression before sighing deeply. “Why don’t we stick to the plan where we find your original body?”

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

“Is that something everyone’s supposed to know?!” Yu Sheng’s tone was exasperated. “And let’s not even talk about alchemy—how am I supposed to find all those bizarre materials you listed?! Are you sure you didn’t just copy that from some third-rate fantasy magazine? And as for the tears of a living doll… if I could find another living doll, I’d just hand you over to her along with the painting! Wouldn’t it be easier for your ‘sister’ to take you home than for me to go through all this trouble?”

Yu Sheng considered himself relatively new to this “world,” still unfamiliar with the strange shadows and the supernatural elements lurking behind them. But based on the sources of information he had accessed so far, the materials Irene mentioned were not something an ordinary person could obtain. How could she speak of them as if they were the most natural thing in the world?

Irene looked a bit embarrassed at his reaction. She shifted in her chair, her voice lowering considerably as she mumbled, “Well, you could use other materials too, like clay, paint, or wigs from the internet…”

Yu Sheng: “...?”

His expression screamed, “Are you messing with me?” as he stared at her, and Irene shrank back even more. “I was just hoping the temporary body would be a bit more suitable… but if you can’t make a premium version, a basic one would do.”

“Even with basic materials, you’d still need to use your blood and some alchemy skills in the final step,” Irene added quickly. “I can teach you—it’s really simple, even a normal person can do it…”

Yu Sheng didn’t respond immediately. He fell silent as if deep in thought, and after a few seconds, he suddenly asked, “You were about to mention three methods earlier, weren’t you? Why didn’t you bring up the third one?”

“…That method is… not ideal. It comes with certain costs,” Irene admitted, waving her hand dismissively. “You wouldn’t agree to it anyway, and I wouldn’t want you to try it either. After all, we barely know each other…”

“If you know we’re not close, then stop with all the nonsense,” Yu Sheng snapped, giving her a sharp glare.

Irene pursed her lips, now looking uncharacteristically cautious (as if she finally knew what caution meant), and asked hesitantly, “So… will you help me get out of here? The second method isn’t too hard. You could just make any kind of body for me—it doesn’t have to be perfect. As long as the ritual is performed correctly, I can reshape it once I enter… just don’t make it too ugly. At least make it look human.”

This time, Yu Sheng didn’t retort. Instead, he took his time to think, his expression serious. After nearly half a minute, he finally responded, “I can’t promise you now. I need to think about it.”

He didn’t trust this girl in the painting—at least, not entirely.

While she seemed honest, chatty, and harmless, with a lively personality that made her appear far from malevolent, all these impressions came from less than a day of knowing her. Stripping away this “humanized” appearance, Irene was still, at her core, an eerie entity sealed within an oil painting.

Yu Sheng wasn’t naive enough to be charmed by her cute appearance and rush to create a body for this “Phantom in the Painting” to set her free—what if she emerged and immediately revealed a darker side, cutting him down with a swing of her hand the moment she stepped out in her Gothic dress…

He had already died once not too long ago, and he wasn’t eager to die again just yet.

After receiving Yu Sheng’s response, Irene didn’t say much. She simply looked at him for a moment and then nodded naturally, “Oh, I understand.”

Yu Sheng was surprised. He had expected a lengthy back-and-forth with the girl in the painting but didn’t anticipate that she would be so unexpectedly... straightforward.

“After all, we’re not that close yet, right?” It was as if Irene could read his confusion, and she suddenly smiled, winking at him from inside the painting. “Once we’re closer, I’ll ask again.”

“...Alright, we’ll talk about it later.”

Yu Sheng chuckled too, carrying Irene’s frame to the dining room. He casually propped it up on the table against the wall and turned toward the kitchen.

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

“Okay… Oh, but could you turn on the TV across from the table first? I want to watch something…”

“You’re so demanding.”

With a flick, Yu Sheng turned on the TV across the table and then grabbed the vegetables and condiments he’d bought from the supermarket, which he had left on the shelf earlier, and went to prepare his dinner.

In fact, Yu Sheng loved cooking. Ever since he arrived in this familiar yet foreign “Border Town,” he made sure to cook every meal himself at home—it was the only way he felt at ease. After all, this house was the one place where those eerie shadows didn’t disturb him.

He didn’t mind encountering some tall, shadowy figure while traveling through the city, but cooking and eating were sacred moments in his life, and he didn’t want anything disrupting them.

…Though now, even his “safe house” had gained a new otherwordly resident in the form of "Irene".

Still, compared to the ghostly figures wandering the streets, the freezing rain, or the giant frog, a chatty doll confined to a painting was a much more tolerable presence—at least she wasn’t going to rip his heart out.