Chapter 8: Don’t Open Doors Recklessly

Chapter 8: Don’t Open Doors Recklessly

After entering the kitchen, closing the door, and turning on the range hood, Yu Sheng slowly felt his heart calm down amid the machine’s noisy hum.

It was as though the thin wooden kitchen door and the clamor of the range hood had temporarily sealed off a chaotic and bizarre world outside. He had finally returned to a place that belonged entirely to him. He could even temporarily pretend that he was not in that enormous and uncanny Boundary City, but had returned to the familiar, real “home” he remembered.

This large house was different from his original “home” in every way, but this small kitchen alone was very close to the layout in his memories. So after settling down in this world, he had arranged it to resemble the place he knew as much as possible.

Whenever he cooked here, he pretended he was still in his real home. He pretended that on that morning he had never opened his front door, never stepped into a strange city filled with eerie shadows. Sometimes, while busying himself here, he would even feel that if he looked up, he would see the familiar streets of the past through the window, see the old street outside the kitchen bathed in orange-red clouds, and see the reddened sunlight flowing across the walls of the apartment buildings from his memories...

But the scenery outside always shattered those brief fantasies. Looking out the window now, he could see only a barren open lot and some low, old houses in the distance. There were no apartment buildings here, though there were plenty of messy utility poles. As for the warm and comforting sky he remembered, he had not seen it in a very long time.

The sky above this city was always either blindingly bright or oppressively dim.

Yu Sheng sighed and casually pulled down the blinds over the glass window, refusing to look at the shadowy night outside that always seemed indistinct and unreal.

Picking vegetables, washing them, heating the wok and adding oil, then quickly tossing in the ingredients after frying chopped scallions until fragrant, Yu Sheng listened to the Sizzle. coming from the wok while also hearing the sounds of a television program from outside the kitchen. This strange city actually possessed various means of obtaining information, including televisions and mobile phones. During his earliest days in Boundary City, nearly everything he learned about it came from watching television programs and browsing news on his phone. Even now, those remained among his most important ways of understanding this world.

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

A girl’s loud voice suddenly came from outside the door. Yu Sheng jumped and nearly flipped the vegetables out of the wok.

He had almost forgotten there was still an Irene outside.

Back when he cooked in the kitchen, nobody talked to him from the other side of the door.

“Wait a minute!” Yu Sheng shouted back rather rudely, then could not help muttering, “...She sure gets familiar with people fast...”

Soon afterward, however, he tugged at the corner of his mouth and revealed a somewhat helpless smile.

Well, fine. It was not a bad thing. At least it added a little “human presence” to the house. At the very least, there was some noise now.

A while later, Yu Sheng came out carrying steaming dishes. He set the bowls and plates on the dining table, casually increased the television volume by two levels, then sat down opposite Irene’s frame with his back to the television. He did not have a habit of watching television while eating, but he liked having it on as background noise. In that respect, he was not competing with Irene for a viewing position, since she could only watch from a fixed angle anyway.

Inside the painting, Irene hugged her teddy bear and stretched her neck to look at the food on the table. Her eyes shifted between the television program and the dishes as she muttered, “That’s quite a spread...”

“It’s all home-style cooking,” Yu Sheng replied casually. “I like cooking.”

“Oh.” Irene answered and resumed watching television obediently, but after Yu Sheng started eating she kept sneaking glances at the table. She held back for quite a while before finally blurting out, “So you’re just going to eat while I sit here watching?”

Yu Sheng raised his eyelids and waved his chopsticks in front of Irene’s frame. “Want a bite?”

Irene stared at him, then lowered her head and started sulking by herself.

“...Fine, fine. We’ll go through the motions.” Seeing her like that, Yu Sheng sighed helplessly. He fetched an empty bowl from the kitchen, transferred some food from his own bowl into it, and placed it in front of Irene’s frame. “I’ve set out a bowl for you. Just pretend you’re smelling it or something. I’ll be the one eating it in the end anyway.”

Irene frowned at the bowl in front of the painting. After thinking it over, she decided it was acceptable. She jumped down from her chair and moved to the edge of the frame, her face occupying nearly half the painting as she looked very seriously at Yu Sheng. “Alright, that works. Thanks. You’re actually pretty thoughtful...”

Yu Sheng lowered his head and shoveled a mouthful of rice into his mouth, responding vaguely. Then he looked up and saw Irene’s head alone inside the painting. His gaze shifted to the bowl of food in front of the frame, and suddenly he felt that something about the scene was wrong...

Irene noticed nothing unusual. Instead, she found Yu Sheng’s sudden daze strange. “What are you staring at?”

Yu Sheng quickly lowered his head and took two more bites of rice before looking up at Irene again.

A dark frame, a dark background, the doll girl’s head, and a bowl of food placed before the portrait.

It looked exactly like a memorial photograph at a funeral.

The muscles on his face immediately twitched twice, but after holding back for a long time he still did not dare voice the association in his mind. Not for any special reason. Mainly because Irene’s insults were vicious.

At this point, all he could do was focus on eating. Pretending nothing was wrong, he buried his head in his meal under Irene’s puzzled gaze, doing his best not to look at the memorial-like figure sitting across from him... The entire meal felt like a banquet in a funeral hall.

After finally finishing dinner, Yu Sheng wiped his mouth and quickly removed all the bowls, plates, and cups from in front of Irene’s frame. He dumped them into the kitchen sink and planned to leave them there until the next morning before washing them. Mainly because his back still hurt. Standing bent over the sink washing dishes was a bit too much for him right now.

The dishes could wait, but the rubbish could not. At this time of year, kitchen garbage could not be left indoors overnight. Enduring the pain in his back, he tidied up the trash, picked up the bag, and headed for the front door.

While watching television, Irene looked up curiously and asked, “Hey, where are you going this late?”

“Do I have to report my movements to you in my own house?” Yu Sheng replied irritably to the overly familiar doll in the painting, though he still raised the garbage bag in his hand for her to see. “I’m taking out the trash.”

“Oh. Then come back soon.” Irene’s attention had already returned to the television. “This house is huge. I’m scared being here by myself. What if a thief comes in?”

Yu Sheng rolled his eyes. He thought that in a creepy house like this, if someone broke in and saw a ghostlike figure moving around inside a painting, the first one frightened to death definitely would not be the girl in the painting. In Irene’s current state, a burglar would probably call the police first...

But he did not have the heart to say that in front of her.

Shaking his head and grumbling inwardly, Yu Sheng arrived at the front door. After changing into his outdoor shoes, he reached out and grasped the doorknob.

He applied a little force, turned it, and opened the door.

For some reason, he suddenly remembered that ordinary morning two months ago.

Back then, just as now, he had opened the front door of his house, stepped outside, and walked into an enormous, suffocatingly bizarre city. Even now, he had not managed to return.

The strange association flashed through his mind. Yu Sheng shook his head with a self-mocking smile and stepped through the doorway.

The crisp sound of a dead branch snapping underfoot shattered the silence of the valley. The cold night wind carried a rotten, fishy odor that instinctively inspired unease. The chill in the air made Yu Sheng, who had gone outside wearing only light clothing, shiver involuntarily. It took several seconds before the brain that had momentarily stopped functioning began working again.

He found himself standing amid barren rubble and broken stones. In the distant darkness seemed to lie a sinister and grotesque forest. Mountains towered on both sides beneath the night sky, like silent and ferocious giants overlooking the valley floor, bringing with them a suffocating sense of pressure.

Yu Sheng stood frozen in the cold night. Then he slowly turned around and looked back the way he had come.

What entered his sight was a heap of collapsed bricks and shattered tiles. It looked like a ruined temple that had been abandoned and fallen apart over a century ago. A tattered door, or perhaps more accurately a crooked frame supporting half a broken door panel, stood alone amid the ruins. When the night wind blew, hollow wails drifted from the gaps between the broken panel and the scattered stones.

Yu Sheng stared with wide eyes. “Where the hell have I been dumped this time...?”

At last, he gradually understood.

The thing that had happened two months ago had repeated itself when he “opened the door.”

Once again, he had been thrown into an unfamiliar place.

And this was even worse than two months ago. That enormous and bizarre Boundary City might have differed greatly from the city where he had grown up, but it was still a modern city where a person could survive. This time, however, the situation looked bad.

He had been thrown into the wilderness.

Ahead lay dense forest. Mountains rose on both sides. Behind him stood only a ruined temple that had collapsed who knew how many years ago. One glance at the place made Yu Sheng feel that if thirty or fifty bandits, or a few Wolf demons and fox immortals, failed to appear here, the terrain itself would be offended.

And the only thing he possessed was a bag of kitchen garbage he had just carried out of his house...

Yu Sheng thought about it and mentally cursed with great enthusiasm.

Then, at the very next second, just as those elegant profanities in his mind were about to burst forth, a sudden voice rang out inside his head:

“Yu Sheng! The TV lost its signal! When are you coming back?!”