Chapter 40: Things Are Not as Expected

Irene cried her heart out.

Yu Sheng didn't try to comfort her. Firstly, he genuinely had no idea how to comfort someone in this situation; secondly... he was afraid that if the doll got too sad and lost her mind from grief, she might get overstimulated by his words, jump up, and bite him.

Well, she actually *did* need to jump up to bite him now.

Of course, the good news was that she could bite people now, whereas back in the painting, she could only blabber.

After a very long while, Irene's grief finally subsided just a tiny bit. Yu Sheng hurried forward a couple of steps toward the table, and said with some hesitation, "Look... stop crying. Next time I'll make you a new body, a normal-sized one. For now... can you just make do with this one? If it really doesn't work out, I'll get you another one tomorrow..."

"Th-this is all I can use for the time being," Irene sniffled twice, wearing an expression of grief and indignation. "Just leave it like this for now, you don't need to go through the trouble—even if you made me a new body tomorrow, I couldn't transfer into it right away. A living doll's soul can't handle constantly changing vessels; it takes, at, at least a few months..."

As she spoke, grief welled up in her heart once more, and it looked like she was about to burst into tears again.

Yu Sheng hurriedly grabbed a small glass bottle and held it right under Irene's face to catch them.

"What are you doing?" Irene asked, sniffing as she looked at Yu Sheng's inexplicable action.

"A living doll's tears, of course," Yu Sheng said with a completely serious expression. "When I make you a body next time, let's try using high-grade materials. Over the next few months, I'll collect some materials and make you one that glows with golden light..."

Irene thought about it for a second, then wailed, "Yu Sheng, you jerk... Ah—!"

After another long while, the doll's sadness finally settled down once more.

Irene climbed onto a nearby stack of old books, sat cross-legged on top of the pile, dazed and pondering the meaning of life. Yu Sheng sat beside the table, keeping the doll company while pondering the meaning of life along with her.

"At least, at least it's better than before," Irene mumbled quietly, not quite sure whether she was talking to Yu Sheng or to herself. "At the very least, I can run around on my own now."

"And you can watch TV by yourself," Yu Sheng quickly chimed in. "That's way more convenient than before, right?"

Irene let out a long sigh, seemingly wanting to appear heavy and solemn, but because she was so tiny (66.6 cm), this sigh didn't convey an ounce of weightiness.

Yu Sheng turned his head to secretly size up the current Irene, his gaze falling upon her exposed wrists and knees.

The ball-and-joints characteristic of dolls looked particularly striking.

"To think that even though we used a clay figurine as a vessel, it still ended up with these marionette-like ball joints," he said thoughtfully.

"Duh, it's an action doll, how is it supposed to move without joints?" Irene glanced sideways at Yu Sheng. "This is what my appearance looks like recorded in my soul, so no matter what form the vessel originally took, after the soul completes the remodeling, the body will turn out like this—if you don't like ball joints, there's nothing I can do."

"Oh, well, it's not that I don't like them," Yu Sheng said offhandedly. "Though, speaking of what's recorded in your soul... your soul also records that you were originally one meter sixty-seven..."

Irene instantly bounded off the book stack onto Yu Sheng's arm, grabbing his thumb and trying desperately to bend it backward. "Would you stop poking at my sore spots?!"

Yu Sheng let out a yell and jumped up, struggling hard to yank the very small (66.6 cm) yet fiercely strong doll off his arm while hurriedly explaining, "I was just curious! Curious! Exactly what went wrong with your remodeling process? Even your looks didn't get distorted, so why on earth did your size shrink so much..."

"How would I know!" Irene had been pulled off Yu Sheng's arm and was now dangling in mid-air by her collar. "There shouldn't have been any problems, everything felt completely normal during the regeneration process, yet somehow the final size got all messed up... Hey! Can you put me down first?!"

"Then you have to promise me you won't try to break my fingers anymore," Yu Sheng said, holding Irene by the collar with a serious expression, only lowering her back onto the table once she nodded.

"Sigh, whatever, thinking about it is useless," Irene sighed again, pacing back and forth across the table a few times before shaking her head. "I still need to find a way to contact the sisters at Alice's Cottage. If I can go home, the sisters will definitely have a way..."

Hearing this, Yu Sheng grew curious. "You keep mentioning Alice's Cottage and the dolls... Where are those sisters of yours usually located? Are there any other dolls in this city besides you? By the way, what does your 'organization' actually... normally do?"

These were questions he had been wanting to ask all along, but one tricky situation after another had kept cropping up, and only now did he finally get the chance to speak.

"Us? We're a race created by the Ancestor of Dolls. As for our mission... actually, there isn't really much of a mission. Sometimes we deal with otherworldly anomalies, sometimes we help other organizations handle tricky entities, but most of the time, dolls just do whatever they enjoy doing," Irene recalled, speaking as she thought back. "Most of my sisters don't operate in the human world, but there should definitely be a contact point here in Border City... As for where exactly it is, I don't remember. Besides, after all these years, the contact methods and contacts themselves must have changed..."

She climbed back up onto the stack of old books, rested her chin in her hands, and continued slowly amidst her memories: "Whenever we operate in the human world, we always use some kind of disguise. Living dolls look a lot like humans, so it's very easy to blend into crowds. This city is so huge—without a specific contact method or finding a specific liaison, it's not easy to just stumble upon hidden living dolls like that..."

Listening from the side, although he had previously guessed that all sorts of weird creatures might be lurking in this city, Yu Sheng still found it somewhat astonishing. "Unbelievable... I always used to think the only residents of this city were humans..."

"How could that be?" Irene shot Yu Sheng a sideways glance. "This is the Borderlands, after all."

"The Borderlands..." Yu Sheng softly repeated the words.

"In a place like the Borderlands, anything can happen. Not to mention anything else, even right here in this old district, doesn't it hide a weird guy like you who thinks he's just an ordinary human?" Irene waved her hand and hopped down from the stack of old books. "Let's head downstairs first. I've had enough of staying up here; now that I finally have the ability to move around freely, I'm going to take a good walk around this big house~"

"Fair enough," Yu Sheng exhaled, patting his face to snap himself awake. "Shaping a body for you took the better part of a day, and I'm starving. Let's head downstairs and make something to eat."

With that, he turned and walked toward the attic exit, but he had only taken two steps when he heard Irene shouting from behind: "Hey, wait for me! I haven't gotten down yet!"

Yu Sheng turned his head and saw Irene taking a running start from the table, leaping hard onto the creaky old chair, then scrambling to the edge of the chair and sliding down the chair leg using her hands and feet. After quite a struggle, she finally made it safely onto the floor...

Yu Sheng: "..."

Irene scampered over to Yu Sheng's feet on her short little legs, only then noticing the gaze fixed on her. She immediately lifted her chin, trying hard to plant her hands on her hips to look majestic. "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing," Yu Sheng shook his head. "Just thinking you're pretty c... cute."

He almost let the word "comical" slip out.

Irene blanked for a moment, failing to notice the suspicious pause in Yu Sheng's sentence. "R-really?"

Then she followed Yu Sheng as he started walking forward again. After taking just two steps, she reached out and tugged at his pants. "Oh, right. Thank you."

Yu Sheng lowered his head, tugged at his waistband, and looked at her in confusion.

"Thank you for helping me prepare a body. Things were too chaotic earlier, I didn't get to thank you properly," Irene said with a very serious expression.

Yu Sheng couldn't help but look the doll (66.6 cm) up and down, holding back for a long time before finally failing to restrain himself: "You're in this state, and you're still thanking me?"

"Business is business. The size issue happened because I don't know what went wrong during my own remodeling, but the body itself was indeed carefully prepared by you," Irene tilted her head upward, trying to look exceptionally solemn (though it didn't really show). "Even though it's a bit ugly."

"...... You could've left that last part out."

"A-anyway, what I promised you before still stands," Irene quickly said. "I'll help you from now on, whether it's fighting or needing occult assistance, I'll be very useful. Even if I find the other sisters and return to Alice's Cottage in the future, I'll still come back to help you. Just..."

She paused here, thinking for a moment.

"J-just let's set it for a hundred years?" She looked up at Yu Sheng, cautiously confirming, "You'll probably die of old age by then, right?"

Yu Sheng: "...I'll do my best."

"Then let's set it for a hundred years," Irene smiled happily, her mood suddenly brightening for no apparent reason. Then she turned around and scurried toward the attic exit on her short little legs. "Then let's hurry downstairs—"

Her voice cut off abruptly. She pitched forward heavily, falling like a marionette with its strings suddenly cut, tumbling a long way on her running momentum until she crashed hard against the opposite wall.

The smile on Yu Sheng's face froze the exact moment Irene tumbled out.

"What the... what the hell?!"

He was dazed for a second, then rushed over to Irene's side in a few strides, bending down to pick the little doll up off the floor.

The doll's eyes were tightly shut, her entire body devoid of any tension. Her limbs, which had still held warmth a second before, were now as cold as ordinary clay. Her skin still retained its soft, active touch, yet no trace of life could be felt.

Yu Sheng was completely dumbfounded.

And then, he heard Irene's voice, coming from the large table not far away—

"Yu Sheng! I-I'm back inside this thing!"