The wind on Montmartre Heights carried a musty scent of cheese.
“We’re here.”
Vivian looked up.
Before her lay a wasteland. Waist-high weeds and a few moss-covered tombstones were all that broke the monotony.
“Here?” Vivian glanced around. “We’re not looking for a graveyard, are we?”
Cicero pulled a Gear from his pocket and held it out to the air, as if he were about to toss the coin into an invisible slot.
“Watch closely.”
At the very instant the Gear touched some point in the void—
“Zzz—”
The air twisted, curling and peeling away like a scorched film. On what had been empty ground, a house suddenly “grew” into existence.
It was a crooked three-story wooden house, its windows like mismatched eyes blinking in rhythm with the wind.
Colored soap bubbles burst from the roof, each one trapping a shrill, tinkling laugh inside.
“Heehee.”
“Haha.”
Vivian shivered.
“This is Madame Elodie’s ‘Irrational Number Space.'” Cicero pocketed the Gear and pushed open the door painted with a weeping face.
“Remember, whatever you see inside, don’t act surprised. Madmen hate normal people the most.”
“Don’t worry, I’m so hungry I could eat a person right now—my mental state is extremely unstable.”
On the other side of the door, the world was so quiet that only the ticking of a pendulum could be heard.
Yet it was as if a dozen clocks ticked at once, each with a different rhythm.
“Tick-tock, tick-tick-tock, tak, tick—”
“Is anyone there?” Vivian called out.
No answer.
She felt something brush her ankle and looked down.
It was a porcelain hand, with tiny brass ball joints at the knuckles. Crawling across the floor like a spider, it used its five fingers to scurry past—and as it passed Vivian, it gave her shoelace a tug.
Cicero used his cane to sweep away a porcelain knee that was climbing up his pants leg. “These are all discarded parts.”
They entered the hall—and it was nothing short of a claustrophobe’s nightmare.
Limbs from dolls piled high on the walls, ceiling, and floor.
Headless dolls in splendid Rococo gowns twirled in a dance; legless dolls swung from the ceiling; dolls with only half a face sat in corners, their glass eyes fixed unblinkingly on Vivian.
The air was thick with the smell of turpentine and machine oil.
“The decor here…” Vivian pinched her nose and grumbled, “How should I put it? It’s got that ‘sacrificed too much for art’ aesthetic.”
“Shh.” Cicero suddenly stopped in his tracks.
At the deepest part of the hall was a massive red velvet sofa.
Its back was to them. A woman sat there, humming a tune—off-key, but sweet.
“Good child… don’t move… Mommy is combing your hair…”
Her voice was so gentle it sent chills down the spine.
Cicero shot Vivian a look: Go.
Vivian rolled her eyes: Why me?
Cicero: Then together.
Vivian straightened her back, and together they circled to the front of the sofa.
Vivian froze.
The woman on the sofa wore a once-white but now yellowed court lace dress. Her hair, white as snow, was an untamed mess.
Her face was caked in heavy powder, lips painted scarlet, like a clown about to take the stage.
Was this the legendary Madame Elodie?
But it was what lay across her lap that truly caught Vivian’s attention.
A Doll Head. But this head… was too perfect. The skin was made of mutton-fat jade, each eyelash implanted one by one with real human hair.
Most importantly, the face resembled Vivian’s current one—at least eighty percent.
“This is just…” Vivian touched her own face. “Is this the tragedy of having such a common face? Even dolls end up looking like me?”
Madame Elodie seemed utterly oblivious to the two living people standing before her, lost in combing the golden hair of the Doll Head with an Ivory Comb, enraptured.
“So beautiful… Look at this nose, look at these lips…” Elodie murmured.
“But… something is missing… What is it?”
Suddenly, she looked up. Those clouded eyes locked onto Vivian.
“Ah!” Elodie shrieked, tossing the Doll Head off her lap. It rolled twice on the floor and even blinked at them.
“Perfect Skeleton! Perfect Proportion!”
Before Vivian could react, Elodie had already rushed up to her.
“Wait, I’m just passing through—”
Elodie’s hands clamped onto Vivian’s shoulders like iron vices. Her grip was terrifying, nothing like the feebleness of an old woman at death’s door.
“Cicero! Help me!” Vivian felt her collarbone about to shatter.
Cicero stepped forward, cane held horizontally between them.
“Madame, we have some questions for you.”
Elodie turned, her neck emitting a sickening “crack.”
“Clang!”
The dolls around them, once motionless, suddenly sprang to life. Seven or eight, missing arms or legs, lunged at Cicero.
“Damn.” Cicero frowned. “Without a steam source, how are they moving?”
Meanwhile, Vivian had been forced into a chair shaped like a Surgical Chair.
“Don’t move!”
Elodie, from who knows where, produced a roll of soft measuring tape—and a pair of scissors… half a meter long.
“Just a little trim…” Red light blazed in Elodie’s eyes as the scissors snapped open and shut.
The cold tape pressed against Vivian’s neck, and the point of the scissors hovered just three centimeters from her eyeball.
Vivian could feel the hot breath steaming from the blades, making her eyelids twitch.
At a moment like this, resistance would be fatal.
So—she had to use her wits.
Vivian put on her most world-weary and acerbic face—the one she wore during rush hour on the subway.
“That’s it?” Vivian said.
Her tone was full of disdain, as if she’d found a fly in a Michelin restaurant.
Elodie froze. The scissors stopped in midair.
“What?”
“I said, this is your idea of aesthetics?” Vivian jerked her chin at the dolls in their elaborate lace dresses.
“These layers and layers of lace, these corsets that squeeze the breath out of you…” Vivian clicked her tongue twice, shaking her head.
“Too tacky. Really, unbearably tacky.”
“Tacky?!” Elodie was like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. “This is Rococo! This is—”
“Outdated.” Vivian cut her off.
“And that ridiculous pair of scissors is blocking my view.”
Vivian shoved the scissors aside. Her hand was shaking a little, but her aura didn’t waver for a second.
“You’re not seeking beauty at all. You’re just projecting your anxieties onto objects.”
“Look at that Doll Head.” Vivian pointed at the one Elodie had just thrown aside.
“True beauty has flaws. It has vitality. That one clearly doesn’t.”
“You… you…” Elodie, reeling from this barrage, staggered back two steps, her scissors trembling.
“This… this…” Elodie stared at the Doll Head in her hand, then at Vivian’s vibrant, living face.
“My work… really has no soul?”
The dolls that had been attacking Cicero seemed to sense their mistress’s doubt, their movements slowing.
Cicero seized the moment, kicked away a wooden arm, adjusted his collar, and walked over with practiced elegance.
He glanced at Vivian, admiration in his eyes for the first time.
“Moreover,” Vivian wasn’t finished. She decided to deliver the final blow.
“Look at all these things you’ve made—who are you imitating? Marie Antoinette?”
“You’re not creating, you’re just making fan merchandise! And it’s the low-quality, bootleg kind!”
“Uwaaaah—!!!”
Madame Elodie finally broke down, dropping her scissors and collapsing to the floor, bawling like a lost child.
“I didn’t want this! I didn’t want any of this!” She pounded the ground as she sobbed.
“But my Muse is gone! She was stolen from me!”
Vivian and Cicero exchanged a glance.
“Stolen?” Cicero stepped forward, his tone suddenly gentle, almost hypnotic.
“Who stole her?”
Elodie, still sniffling, lifted her tear-streaked, ruined face. Now she truly looked like a clown.
“It was… a Golden Masked Man…”
“He said he could grant her real life… He said that with ‘that thing,’ I could see her again…”
“‘That thing’?”
“But I didn’t want to give it to him!” Elodie suddenly became agitated.
“That man… that man doesn’t understand art at all! He wants to turn my daughter into a monster!”
“He took her away… Where did he take her?” Cicero pressed.
“I… I don’t know…” Elodie shook her head, snot and tears mingling.
She rummaged through a pocket of her tattered dress and pulled out a crumpled slip of paper.
It was a Black Card, gold powder letters spelling out a line:
[To the ghosts of the old era: You are invited to attend the New World’s Opening Ceremony. Venue: Garnier Opera House.]
Cicero took the card, his face instantly darkening.
“Twilight Society,” he muttered.
“Twilight Society?”
Cicero turned and headed for the door. “Looks like we have to work overtime.”
“Will there be overtime pay?”
“No.”
“Then I’m not doing it!”
“I’ll buy you two croissants.”
“Long live the boss!”
Vivian cheered, springing from the chair.
But before leaving, she glanced back at Madame Elodie, still sitting on the floor, clutching the Doll Head as if it were her dead child.
Outside that strange house, the air was still thick with coal smoke.
“That speech you gave just now,” Cicero said as they walked, “sounded like nonsense.”
“It was nonsense,” Vivian replied with conviction. “I don’t know a thing about this stuff.”
Cicero’s mouth twitched, as if he wanted to laugh but held back.
“But,” he suddenly stopped and turned to look at Vivian, “there’s something odd.”
“What?”
“Elodie said the stolen doll had your face.” Cicero’s gaze rested on Vivian.
“Are you sure… you really are yourself, Miss Vivian?”
Vivian’s heart skipped a beat.
A cold wind blew by, sending a chill down her spine.
“Boss, that’s not funny,” she forced a laugh. “If I were a doll, would I still feel hungry?”
“Maybe,” Cicero replied, turning away.
Vivian stood there, staring at Cicero’s retreating back.
She touched her neck instinctively—there, where the tape had pressed, a red mark lingered.
But… why didn’t it hurt?
It was as if that patch of skin… never belonged to her at all.
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