Hotel Between Worlds

Ever since that frog had clawed out his heart, Darian felt as though his own heart had grown much broader.

Like now, for instance. He had just woken from a bizarre dream that felt all kinds of wrong, opened a strange locked room, found a talking oil painting—which clearly hid some kind of eerie presence—and yet he remained surprisingly calm.

He even stepped forward, took the oil painting off the wall, and examined it carefully up close.

The frame was heavy, with a weighty texture that suggested it was quite valuable. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that the dark, lacquered surface of the frame was covered with intricate and exquisite patterns. These designs resembled some kind of flowing script, yet they were cleverly connected and twisted into vine-like structures, ultimately blending seamlessly with the ornate edges of the painting.

Darian didn't understand painting or art, but he was sure this thing had to be worth a fortune.

The entity hiding deep within the painting still refused to reveal itself, though the edge of a dress in one corner of the image subtly shifted back again.

Darian tried tilting his view to catch a better look inside the painting, but saw nothing.

"I know you're in there," he said as he shook the heavy frame and addressed the painting. "Hiding now is just lying to yourself."

A faint rustling sound came from the corner of the painting, but there was no response.

Darian placed the frame on the ground and, crouching down, pulled a lighter from his pocket.

He flicked it on and brought the flame close to the frame, his expression flat. "I'll count to three. If you don't come out, I'll burn this thing."

A couple of seconds passed before a soft, childlike voice echoed from the painting: "…It's just ordinary fire. Such a thing has no effect on eerie entities."

But Darian could clearly hear the guilt and panic in that voice.

So, he simply touched the flame to the corner of the frame. "Oh? Then let's test that theory."

A scream erupted the instant the fire touched the frame. "Stop! You're actually setting it on fire?!"

Darian immediately put out the lighter, and right after, he saw a figure hastily leap out from the thorny, vine-like edge of the painting.

It was a young girl, dressed in an elaborate, gothic black dress. A hairclip with white lace adorned her head, her long hair was jet-black, and her skin pale as snow. Her face was delicate and lovely, but her eyes were a striking, unnatural crimson—eyes that were now wide open, staring directly at Darian as if trying to confirm whether this human outside the frame truly intended to burn the painting.

Darian admitted, the moment she suddenly appeared in the center of the painting, he was startled.

Even though the girl herself didn't look scary up close—she was even quite beautiful—her sudden entrance against the eerie, shadowy backdrop made it frightening no matter what popped out of the image. And her eyes… they were like pools of blood. What's more, she leaned forward until her face was pressed right up against the canvas. Her crimson eyes filled almost the entire painting, making her appear even more unnerving.

"Don't set it on fire," the girl's voice came from the painting. "This is the only place I have to live."

"Then step back a bit," Darian instinctively kept a slight distance from the painting. For some reason, he felt that those crimson eyes were filled with something sinister. That red gaze seemed to be seeping into his thoughts and memories the longer he looked. It became increasingly hard to erase from his mind. But in order to maintain the upper hand in conversation, he forced himself not to look away. "I won't set it on fire."

"Oh." The girl in the painting was surprisingly agreeable. She didn't seem to notice Darian's brief hesitation and simply nodded before retreating to the center of the painting. She sat down on a thickly cushioned red velvet chair, bent down, and picked up a plush teddy bear she had thrown to the floor earlier. Hugging it tightly to her chest, she sat there on the chair, continuing to stare intently at Darian's every move.

A gothic girl sitting in a velvet chair, hugging a stuffed bear. For a fleeting moment, Darian felt like he had seen the painting's original, "normal" image.

But right after, he frowned slightly. He had noticed something off in the painting.

His gaze fell on the girl's exposed wrist. It clearly had a… spherical joint structure.

There was no way a human's joints looked like that.

Only dolls had joints like that.

Perhaps his gaze had lingered too obviously, because the girl in the painting shifted uncomfortably and frowned at him. "Why are you staring at me?"

Darian opened his mouth. At first, he had wanted to ask about the joints in her wrists, but just before speaking, he forcibly swallowed the question. He still knew too little about this "world," and recklessly asking about supernatural matters might expose his ignorance. So, he changed the subject at the last moment. "…Who are you? And why are you here?"

The girl in the painting clearly hesitated, but after a moment, she answered Darian's question.

"My name is Irene," she said, adjusting her posture slightly, as though trying to appear more formal. "I come from 'Alice's Cottage.' I was one of Alice's dolls… but that was a long, long time ago."

Doll?

Darian keenly picked up on that particular word. At the same time, he instinctively glanced again at the spherical joint on "Irene's" wrist—so clearly inhuman—and then, his focus shifted to the two terms she had so naturally mentioned:

"Alice's Cottage" and "Alice's dolls."

What did that mean? He understood what a doll was. He could even, with some imagination and a sufficiently open mind, accept a talking doll or one that moved about inside a painting. But that "Alice"… what was that?

The "cottage" sounded like a place name, or perhaps an organization named after a place. And "Alice's dolls"… that sounded like the collective name for some kind of group.

So the girl in the painting before him was part of a larger group that called themselves "Alice's dolls"? Once that thought occurred to Darian, it started spiraling out of control, and his mind raced with wild speculation.

There was more than one like her? A whole group? Were they all hanging in houses across the country? With property prices being so high, they still occupied an entire room, locked the door, refused to open it, and even mocked the homeowners for not having the key… yet could be scared off with a simple lighter?

Something about this organization seemed oddly suspicious.

Maybe Darian had been silent for too long, because Irene finally couldn't hold back. "Why did you suddenly stop talking… You're not still thinking about setting me on fire, are you?!"

"I've got a question for you," Darian suddenly looked up, the serious expression on his face startling the girl in the painting.

"Uh… okay, go ahead."

Darian looked completely earnest. "That 'Alice's Cottage' you mentioned… is it some sort of agency that takes commissions to suppress housing prices?"

Irene: "…Huh?"

"Like, someone pays you, and you guys go hang yourselves up in other people's houses, take up space, lie around all day, lock the doors, laugh secretly at night. The whole goal is to drag down the value of the neighborhood. It's like spiritually hanging yourself in front of the HOA to do your part for market regulation…"

Irene stared at him, those crimson eyes wide with disbelief. It took nearly half a minute for her to catch up with Darian's completely deranged line of thought and finally understand what this lighter-wielding man was talking about. Her expression immediately turned indignant.

"You… You can insult me if you want, but don't insult the Founder of the Dolls or my sisters! We… we're part of a very powerful—"

"Then why are you hanging in my house?!" Darian snapped, cutting her off with a sharp glare. "And the locked door! Oh, and that weird dream I had—was that your doing too? And that creepy laugh…"

He fired off a series of questions, fueled by his temper, making himself seem rather imposing. But after venting, his confidence began to waver. He remembered the frog from that stormy night and couldn't shake the feeling that this strange painting might be just as dangerous. This so-called "Irene" seemed easy to talk to now, but who knew if the next second she'd suddenly flip out, attack him, and smack him to death with that plush bear she was holding…

But he quickly shrugged off his hesitation, remembering that nothing particularly bad had happened after the frog "opened his heart." He had only died once, after all.

And this painting-dwelling doll who could be intimidated by a lighter… could she really eat him alive?

Darian was far more open-minded now. The world was already bizarre enough, and after experiencing death once in a rather absurd fashion, he didn't want to keep overthinking everything. What he really wanted was to understand what the hell was going on with all these strange and creepy things around him—and he would start with this painting.

To his surprise, Irene was more agreeable than he expected.

The doll inside the painting didn't lash out, didn't raise her plush bear and smack him in the face. Even after facing such an aggressive barrage of questions, she simply shrank back slightly into her chair. And, astonishingly, she actually looked a little… guilty.

"I… I didn't mean for it to happen like this," she said, fidgeting nervously as she hugged her stuffed bear so tightly that it became misshapen. "A long time ago, I was in an accident. I ended up sealed inside this painting and lost all contact with the other dolls…"

She lifted her head again and looked at the room beyond the painting's edge.

"As for why I'm in your home… I don't know either. I'm stuck in this painting—I don't get to decide where I get hung up. Are you sure… you didn't buy me yourself at an art exhibit one day and hang me on your wall?"

Darian: "…"

(End of Chapter)

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