Chapter 8 Don't Open the Door
He walked into the kitchen, closed the door, and turned on the range hood. As the machine made a loud noise while running, Yu Sheng felt his heart slowly calm down.
It was as if the thin wooden door in the kitchen and the noisy sound of the range hood helped him temporarily isolate himself from the chaotic and strange world outside - he finally returned to a place that belonged completely to him, and could even temporarily pretend that he was not in that huge and strange "boundary city", but returned to his familiar, real "home".
This big house was different from his original "home" in every way, but this small kitchen was the only thing that was very close to the structure in his memory. So after settling down in this world, he tried his best to arrange it in a way that was familiar to him.
Every day when he cooked here, he pretended that he was still in his real home, pretending that he had never opened the door that morning, and had never stepped into a strange city filled with strange shadows. Sometimes when he was busy here, he even felt that as long as he looked up, he would see the familiar street scene through the window, the old street outside the kitchen bathed in orange clouds, and the reddish sunlight flowed on the outer walls of the residential buildings in his memory...
But the scenery outside the window always broke his brief imagination. Now, looking out the window, he could only see a bare open space and a low, old bungalow not far away. There were not many residential buildings here, but there were quite a few messy electric poles. He had not seen the warm and comfortable sky in his memory for a long time.
The skylight in this city is always either blindingly bright or depressingly dim.
Yu Sheng sighed and pulled the blinds outside the glass, ignoring the night outside that seemed to be always dim.
He picked and washed the vegetables, heated the pan with cold oil, sautéed the chopped green onions, and then put the ingredients into the pan quickly. Listening to the sizzling sound coming from the pot, Yu Sheng heard the sound of a TV program coming from outside the door. This strange city did have a series of information channels including television and mobile phones. In the initial period of time, much of his understanding of this "boundary city" was almost entirely achieved through watching TV programs and checking the news on his mobile phone. Even now, this is one of the important ways for him to understand this "world".
"Yusheng! The TV volume is too low! Please turn it up for me! Please!"
Suddenly, a girl's noisy voice was heard outside the door. Yu Sheng was startled and his hands shook so much that he almost flipped the food out of the pot.
He almost forgot there was Irene outside.
In the past, no one talked outside when he was cooking in the kitchen!
"Wait!" Yu Sheng replied loudly and rudely, and couldn't help muttering, "...She is quite familiar..."
But soon he pulled the corners of his mouth and revealed a somewhat helpless smile.
Well, that's good. It adds some "popularity" to the house. At least it's some movement.
After a while, Yu Sheng came out with the hot meal. He put the dishes on the dining table, turned up the volume of the TV opposite the table by two levels, and then sat opposite Irene's frame with his back to the TV - he didn't have the habit of watching TV while eating, but he would turn it on as background music, so as not to compete with Irene who could only watch TV from a fixed angle.
In the painting, Irene was hugging a teddy bear and stretching her neck to look at the food on the table. She glanced at the show and then at the table, muttering, "It's quite sumptuous..."
"They are all home-cooked dishes," Yu Sheng said casually, "I like cooking."
"Oh." Irene said "oh" and continued to watch TV obediently. But after Yu Sheng started to eat, she leaned over to glance at the table again. After holding it in for a long time, she finally couldn't help but ask: "You're the only one eating while I watch?"
Yu Sheng raised his eyelids and waved his chopsticks in front of Irene's frame: "Would you like to have a bite?"
Irene glared, but then dropped her head and began to sulk to herself.
"...Okay, okay, let's just go through the motions." Yu Sheng felt helpless when he saw the other person's expression. He sighed and took another empty bowl from the kitchen, put some food from his own bowl into it, and put his hand in front of Irene's painting frame, "I've left the bowl and chopsticks for you - just think of it as smelling it, I'll be the one eating it in the end anyway."
Irene frowned as she looked at the bowl in front of the picture frame. After thinking for a while, she decided that it was okay, so she jumped down from the chair and moved to the edge of the picture frame. Her face almost took up half of the picture frame. She looked at Yu Sheng seriously, "Okay, that's okay too - thank you, you're quite considerate..."
Yu Sheng lowered his head and took a bite of rice, responding vaguely. Then he looked up and saw Irene, whose head was only visible in the picture frame. Then he looked at the rice bowl in front of the picture frame and suddenly felt that something seemed to be wrong...
Irene didn't notice anything wrong at all. She was a little surprised at Sheng's sudden daze: "What are you staring at?"
Yu Sheng quickly lowered his head and took two more mouthfuls of rice, then looked up at Irene——
A dark picture frame, a dark background, a doll girl’s head, and a bowl of food in front of the portrait.
The whole voice and smile are still there.jpg.
The muscles on his face twitched twice, but he held it in for a long time and still didn't dare to say what he was thinking - not because of anything else, but mainly because Irene's swearing was very ugly.
At this point, he could only eat. He could only pretend that nothing had happened, and ate voraciously under Irene's suspicious gaze, trying not to look at the person across the table whose voice and appearance were still vivid...
The meal was like a funeral party.
After finally finishing the meal, Yu Sheng wiped his mouth and quickly removed all the cups, plates and bowls in front of Irene's frame. He threw them into the kitchen sink and planned to soak them until the next morning before washing them - mainly because his waist still hurt, and bending over in front of the sink to wash dishes was a bit of a burden for him now.
But the dishes can be left unwashed, but the garbage cannot be thrown away. The garbage bags in the kitchen cannot be left at home overnight in this season - he endured the pain in his waist, picked up the garbage, and walked out the door carrying the bag.
Irene, who was watching TV, looked up and asked curiously, "Hey, where are you going so late?"
"Do I have to report to you when I'm at home?" Yu Sheng replied unhappily to the overly familiar puppet in the painting, but still raised the garbage bag in his hand to show it to the other party, "I'm going out to throw away the garbage."
"Oh, then you should come back earlier." Irene's eyes had already fallen on the TV again. "It's such a big house, I'm scared to be alone. What if a thief comes in..."
Yu Sheng rolled his eyes and thought to himself that in such a gloomy house, if someone came in and saw a ghost-like figure swaying in a painting, the first person to be scared to death would definitely not be the person in the painting. With Irene's condition, even a thief would have to call the police first...
But I didn't have the nerve to say this in front of Irene.
Yu Sheng shook his head, muttered a few words in his mind, and walked to the door. After changing into his going-out shoes, he reached out and grasped the door handle.
He exerted a little force in his hands, turned it, and pushed it open.
For some reason, he suddenly recalled that ordinary morning two months ago, which seemed like any ordinary day in his ordinary life.
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At that time, he was just like now, pushing open the door of his home, walking outside, and entering a huge and suffocating strange city. Until now, he has not been able to go back -
A strange association flashed through his mind, Yu Sheng smiled self-deprecatingly, shook his head, and pushed the door open to go out.
The crisp sound of dead branches being stepped on broke the silence in the valley. The cold night wind carried an unsettling smell of decay and stench. The chill in the air made Yu Sheng, who was only wearing a single layer of clothes when he went out, shiver subconsciously. It took him several seconds to restart his brain, which had just stopped working.
He saw himself standing among a desolate and dilapidated area of rubble. In the distance, there seemed to be a gloomy and bizarre dense forest in the night. There were high mountains on both sides standing in the night sky, like silent and hideous giants, overlooking the valley from both sides, bringing an unbearable sense of heavy oppression.
Yu Sheng was frozen in the cold night. He then slowly turned around and looked towards where he came from.
A pile of collapsed and dilapidated bricks and tiles came into view. It looked like a dilapidated temple that had been abandoned and collapsed hundreds of years ago. A tattered door - or perhaps it could only be said to be a crooked door frame with half a door panel hanging on it - stood alone in the ruins. When the night wind blew, a hollow whimper could be heard from the gap between the broken door panel and the rubble.
Yu Sheng stared: "What are you doing to me..."
He finally began to understand.
As I "opened the door", what happened two months ago happened again.
He was thrown into a strange place again.
And this is even worse than two months ago - although that huge and strange "Jiecheng" is very different from the "Jiecheng" where he was born and raised, it is at least also a modern city where people can survive. But this time the situation is not so good.
He was thrown into a wilderness.
There was a dense forest in front, dangerous mountains on both sides, and behind him there was only a dilapidated temple that had collapsed for who knows how many years. Yu Sheng took one look and felt that it would be a shame if he didn't spawn thirty or fifty bandits or a few wolf demons and fox fairies on the spot...
The only thing he had was a bag of kitchen garbage he had just brought from home...
Yu Sheng thought about it and cursed in his heart.
And in the next second, when the fragrant and elegant words in Yu Sheng's heart were gushing out, an abrupt voice suddenly came from his mind -
"Yusheng! There's no TV signal! When will you be back?"
(End of this chapter)
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