Starlight Has No Past

Chapter 19 Part 2

There was a long line at the checkout. They pa.s.sed the time by discussing

potential names for the cat.

Zhou Tingsheng was rather disinterested in the discussion, his mind seemingly

elsewhere. When they pa.s.sed the counter, the array condoms on the shelf caught

his attention. He looked at the fruit flavored ones and whispered to Ye Qiao's ears:

“Which flavor do you like?”

Ye Qiao considered slapping him, but she stopped herself since they were in public.

Zhou Tingsheng acted as if she had just hit him anyways, turning his face sideways,

and frivolously asked: “Aren't you going to the countryside in two days? Are you sure

you won't miss me?”

Ye Qiao cursed then giggled: “Didn't I get a cat to keep you company. You won't care

whether it's a person or an animal, will you?”

They spent a pa.s.sionate night together until both of them were exhausted.

Ye Qiao nestled against his arm and caught the faint smell of tobacco. The starlight

fell through the window, illuminating their tangled bodies. Suddenly, she spoke: “I

thought of a name.”

“What is it?”

“Ophelia.”

Zhou Tingsheng thought she was taking the name from some poem or literature.

He blew out a puff of smoke: “What does it mean?”

“It's the name of the seventh moon of Ura.n.u.s; it's the name of the heroine in

.” Ye Qiao added: “All the moons of Ura.n.u.s are named after characters

from Shakespeare's plays. Ophelia is my favorite one.”

She asked: “Have you seen Ura.n.u.s before?”

“No.”  

“It's the most beautiful of the eight planets.” Ye Qiao was half awake and for some

reason had the desire to keep talking: “It's a brilliant green. They all said that the

earth is blue but it's a motley blue. The color of Ura.n.u.s is pure. It's far away from

the earth; we can't see it with the naked eyes. It's very quiet.”

Zhou Tingsheng had gotten used to her habit of speaking about random things

before she went to sleep. Sometimes, she would talk about the constellations,

sometimes it was the fierce animals on the African savanna.

He thought she shouldn't be an actress since the entertainment circle was far from

the kind of “pure” or “quiet” that she was after.

He tried to keep up: “Don't they say that Saturn is the prettiest. It has a necklace.”

“That's its ring, not Saturn itself.” Ye Qiao continued: “When you look at Saturn in

the telescope, it's like a scarlet eyeball, huge, like the eye of a monster.”

Zhou Tingsheng grabbed her arm and put his head on it. Her tired eyes were clear;

there was not a single distraction in her eyes, only the starry sky in her imagination.

He felt her eyes were like those glistening stars in the night, a pair of pure and limpid

stars inviting others into her own galaxy.

Ye Qiao noticed that there were scratches on the wrist of his arm. With the faint

moonlight, she could also see the many bite marks over his body.

Ye Qiao couldn't remember what she had done earlier and asked, eyes wide:

“I did that?”

Zhou Tingsheng chuckled at her sudden bout of amnesia and coughed some smoke:

“I just slept with a cat.”

Her feeling of guilt quickly evaporated: “Then you deserve it.”

“I may very well deserve it.” He nonchalantly looked at her: “But, Ye Qiao, do you

know that you have s.a.d.i.s.tic tendency?”

Ye Qiao was stunned: “......Is that so?”

“Maybe a slight tendency.”

Zhou Tingsheng was unperturbed, but Ye Qiao was having a hard time accepting

it. She thought she had always been quite normal and didn't even think s.e.x was

all that important to her.

She couldn't imagine that she would be a.s.sociated as a s.a.d.i.s.t.