Chapter 22 Part 1
Ye Qiao was somewhat disappointed by Lu Qing. Though she could understand
his cautiousness, she found his indifference disillusioning. Perhaps it was because
Lu Qing had been her idol in her youth and in the eyes of a little girl, he was
supposed to be a righteous hero.
Ye Qiao realized that she had been a bit unreasonable. After returning to her room,
she tried to get on Weibo to distract her mind.
Her signal strength was only at one bar and she constantly received notifications
saying “Please check your network connection.” She kept trying with little hope.
Surprisingly, the page updated with a new post.
It was a post by Zhou Tingsheng whose account she had followed a while ago when
she was bored. He basically never posted anything, it was practically a ghost account,
since she’d followed. Just as Ye Qiao had almost forgotten about him since coming to
the village, he suddenly posted some pictures on the Weibo.
With the weak signal in the village, it took ten minutes for one of the pictures to
download. Ye Qiao was amazed at her own persistence. She kept trying over and
over again until she finally saw the entire picture------a milky white kitten lying down
next to an imposing black dog, sleeping with its eyes curved in two crescents. The
black dog guarding it as if she was his mother.
It was Ophelia and Desa.
Then Ye Qiao discovered that Zhou Tingsheng had posted several similar pictures
of the two: eating together, going out together, sleeping under the sunlight together…...
Zhou Tingsheng, being a man of few words, didn’t seem to bother captioning the pictures.
There was only one picture that had a caption, it showed Ophelia sleeping on the balcony
with the words------ “taking Ophelia to look at the stars, but couldn’t find the Uranus.”
The kitten was sleeping inside a green, eggshell shaped swing chair under a brown
arbor and on a soft woolen blanket inside the chair. The slumbering kitten was curved
into a fuzzy ball, melting the hearts of anyone who saw the picture.
Ye Qiao certainly knew that this was Zhou Tingsheng’s latest attempts at luring her in.
Even their pets had become his tools.
Yet, the trick was rather effective on a woman’s heart. Ye Qiao was busy filming in a
remote village and there wasn’t much to do after filming. Whenever she had the time,
she would struggle with the intermittent signal just to see whether she could see more
pictures. Shen Ting’s cell phone carrier somehow had a better connection, which
Ye Qiao took advantage of to get on Weibo.
After three days, Shen Ting pointed out to Ye Qiao: “See, his followers has increased
so much. These days, anyone who posts cute pictures of their pets become instantly
popular. The fans are now calling the owner to show his face.”
Ye Qiao took a look. The sharp contrast between Ophelia and Desa had gathered a
large following on Weibo, especially from a short video clip. In the video, Desa stood
tall and majestically while Ophelia circled around between her legs. Ophelia would
sometimes stand up to hold Desa’s neck, scratching rather mischievously, to the large
dog’s indifference. But when Ophelia went overboard and almost tripped, Desa would
use her paws to steady him. Most of the comments under the clip were from teenage
girls who would say that the video was like reading a 100K character novel about an
overbearing boss!
Ye Qiao was amused: Didn’t they know that Desa was a female dog?
The number of fans snowballed in the next few days. Some resourceful fans even
dug up the details of all the pet toys and furniture in each picture, along with the
unusually lavish pet food served to Ophelia and Desa. They concluded------ “that dog
has a better life than a person!” “Do you still want another cat!” Some would cry out
under the pictures where he held the cat------ “that hand is so beautiful!” “release that
cat, let me hold it!”
Even Qianxi would mention the posts when she called Ye Qiao: “Cousin, don’t let
those messy thoughts bother you. I’ve already found a reliable psychiatrist for you.
He’s a colleague of Dr. Fu’s father that just came back from abroad. After you come
out from the countryside, you can meet him. For the time being, just relax and let the
wilderness cleanse your soul. If that doesn’t work, you can watch some cute animals!
I can recommend a Weibo account that has gone viral lately, it’s called-------”
Ye Qiao almost dropped her cell phone.
He used her pet cat to attract so many followers, had he gotten her permission?
However, all of that was besides the point.
The point was that she had finally gotten online after so much effort only to discover
that Zhou Tingsheng hadn’t updated his account today.
Chapter 22 Part 2
Ye Qiao put her phone down. In the past couple of days, she didn’t have
much filming to do. She could go stay at the nearest town, but she didn’t
like the bumpy drive back and forth and chose to stay in the village instead.
Now that there weren’t any new posts to entertain her, she decided to roam
around the mountains. She found the desolated forest and lake rather
peaceful. No wonder nowadays city folks liked to visit the countryside. Not
noticing the time, she return just in time to have dinner. Afterwards, she
was told that she had a visitor.
Who would come to this remote mountain village just to visit her? There
was no signal for her to find out. She was told that Shen Ting had gone to
greet the person on her behalf.
She went to look for them and saw a tall man leaning against an all terrain
vehicle casually talking to Shen Ting. The light of the evening sun fell on his
shoulder and reflected off a metal button. As if he had a hunch, he turned his
head just at the moment when Ye Qiao drew closer.
Zhou Tingsheng broke into a smile at the sight of Ye Qiao and extinguished
the cigarette between his fingers.
Ye Qiao walked over with a long face: “Why are you here?”
Shen Ting was busy distributing all the drinks that Zhou Tingsheng had
bought for the whole crew. She smiled and was about to compliment Zhou
Tingsheng when she saw the cold face on Ye Qiao and tactfully excused
herself: “Then, I’ll be off?”
Zhou Tingsheng nodded and after Shen Ting had walked away far enough,
he leaned forward to whisper besides Ye Qiao’s ear: “I missed you.”
Ye Qiao sneered: “You couldn’t find other women?” She noticed from the
side mirror of the car that crowd of the film crew were looking at their
direction. She frowned: “We better not keep in touch in the future.”
Zhou Tingsheng didn’t seem to mind: “I knew you would say that.”
“You knew and still came here?”
“I’m bored, so I just come for an outing.” He was brazen-faced and figured
that she wouldn’t turn him down. “I’ve heard that you like to hike in the
mountains lately?”
Ye Qiao was alarmed: “So?”
Zhou Tingsheng opened the car door and said: “Since I’m already here,
you can at least show me around, can’t you?”
The looks and whisperers from the crew members made her uneasy. She
figured that if she turned to walk away, it would inadvertently create even
more unnecessary gossip. She decided to go along, nodded, and got into
the passenger side.
She buckled up the seat belt and heartlessly warned him: “Just for one hour.
I’ll charge you if you go over the time limit.”
Zhou Tingsheng started the car. Despite the steep road, he kept the drive
rather smooth. Ye Qiao didn’t respond to his chatter but quietly watched the
scenery outside the window.
Zhou Tingsheng looked at her face in the rear view mirror. She didn’t have
any makeup on, her eyebrows were slightly gathered, and she didn’t look
too happy. However, in his eyes, she was still fascinating to look at, he
couldn’t look enough at her.
He abruptly burst into laughter.
Ye Qiao asked: “What are you laughing at?”
Zhou Tingsheng didn’t answer the question: “You look a bit darker.”
Ye Qiao was stunned, she had never heard anyone saying that she had dark
skin. She flatly said: “I’ve become ugly?”
Zhou Tingsheng replied quite naturally: “You look healthier. You were so pale
before.”
Ye Qiao mocked him mentally, he could even say such flattery so sincerely.
The vehicle was now deep far along a small trail. There were many trails just
like this one around the village. It was the routes villagers would use them to
go gathering herbs and hunt. But they had gone so far that trees and bushes
covered the trail and they couldn’t see where they were going.
Chapter 22 Part 3
Zhou Tingsheng suddenly stopped the car, right in the middle of the untrodden
forest.
Ye Qiao had a hunch what he was up to. She looked at her wrist watch: “It’s been
43 minutes. If we don’t head back now, you’ll be over the time limit.”
“How much for each minute overtime?”
“You can’t pay with money.” Seeing that he had no intention of turning back, Ye Qiao
adamantly released her seat belt and jumped out the car, walking towards the way
they came, without looking back.
Zhou Tingsheng circled his arms around her waist from behind, keeping her tight in
his arms: “Then what can I use to pay for it? How about with my body.”
Ye Qiao struggled but couldn’t free herself from his grasp. Zhou Tingsheng’s warm
breath tickled the back of her ear. Ye Qiao’s temper flared, her voice grew harsh:
“I don’t like to be forced.”
“No one is forcing you.” His strength was stronger than she had imagined. He turned
her around to face him, her head hit his solid shoulder. “What have I done to irritate
you, Ye Qiao?”
Ye Qiao quieted down all of a sudden.
He hadn’t irritated her at all. Everything was fine before that night. It had been so
nice that she had almost forgotten that it was just an affair, she had fallen under
the illusion of sharing a simple and warm family with him.
She was the one who wanted to end the relationship unilaterally. It seemed a bit
unfair to him. But……she thought that he was a womanizer, always looking for
his next love affair, and wouldn’t hang around her for long. So she had no misgivings
for being the cold-blooded heartbreaker. They had never expressed love for each
other to begin with.
Somehow, it seemed that reality was the opposite of what she’d surmised.
As she was lost in thought, Zhou Tingsheng abruptly picked her up from the ground
and sat her down on the hood of the vehicle. As she came to a rest with a thud, he
unleashed a string of scorching kisses followed with passionate mumbling: “Ye Qiao,
I really like you.”
Ye Qiao was lost in the forceful, long kisses and had difficulty discerning the truth in
his words. She seemed to taste blood and couldn’t tell whether it was from her or him.
After a long while she pushed him away, gasping for air. In the confusion, she had
forgotten why she came out of the car and asked him out of instinct: “While I wasn’t
there, did you touch anyone else?”
“No.”
He was telling the truth, besides there was no need to lie to her.
Ye Qiao returned to her senses and even smiled: “I would mind very much if you did.”
After saying those words, it felt to her that she was quite a moody person. Regardless,
in that moment she realized that all those mixed feelings she had been grappling with
had now become meaningless. What if she was indulging herself? If she had to give
up on the intimacy right in front of her, then her life would be too pitiful.
“There’s no need for that.” Zhou Tingsheng was delighted and pushed his forehead
against hers: “Are we going back?”
Ye Qiao countered: “Do you want to go back……” She drew closer to him after speaking
nd started to lick his warm lips, which came with the taste of blood.
She became a blood sucking animal, lightly sucking on his lips.
Zhou Tingsheng felt the sting on his lips. Ye Qiao suddenly grabbed the back of his waist.
Her slightly cool fingertips went under his shirt and lightly caressed his back. His breathing
grew heavier and he asked in a low voice: “How about in the car?”
“No.” Ye Qiao slyly smiled and pointed downward with her finger. She whispered next to
his ear: “Right here.”
Chapter 22 Part 1
Ye Qiao was somewhat disappointed by Lu Qing. Though she could understand
his cautiousness, she found his indifference disillusioning. Perhaps it was because
Lu Qing had been her idol in her youth and in the eyes of a little girl, he was
supposed to be a righteous hero.
Ye Qiao realized that she had been a bit unreasonable. After returning to her room,
she tried to get on Weibo to distract her mind.
Her signal strength was only at one bar and she constantly received notifications
saying “Please check your network connection.” She kept trying with little hope.
Surprisingly, the page updated with a new post.
It was a post by Zhou Tingsheng whose account she had followed a while ago when
she was bored. He basically never posted anything, it was practically a ghost account,
since she’d followed. Just as Ye Qiao had almost forgotten about him since coming to
the village, he suddenly posted some pictures on the Weibo.
With the weak signal in the village, it took ten minutes for one of the pictures to
download. Ye Qiao was amazed at her own persistence. She kept trying over and
over again until she finally saw the entire picture------a milky white kitten lying down
next to an imposing black dog, sleeping with its eyes curved in two crescents. The
black dog guarding it as if she was his mother.
It was Ophelia and Desa.
Then Ye Qiao discovered that Zhou Tingsheng had posted several similar pictures
of the two: eating together, going out together, sleeping under the sunlight together…...
Zhou Tingsheng, being a man of few words, didn’t seem to bother captioning the pictures.
There was only one picture that had a caption, it showed Ophelia sleeping on the balcony
with the words------ “taking Ophelia to look at the stars, but couldn’t find the Uranus.”
The kitten was sleeping inside a green, eggshell shaped swing chair under a brown
arbor and on a soft woolen blanket inside the chair. The slumbering kitten was curved
into a fuzzy ball, melting the hearts of anyone who saw the picture.
Ye Qiao certainly knew that this was Zhou Tingsheng’s latest attempts at luring her in.
Even their pets had become his tools.
Yet, the trick was rather effective on a woman’s heart. Ye Qiao was busy filming in a
remote village and there wasn’t much to do after filming. Whenever she had the time,
she would struggle with the intermittent signal just to see whether she could see more
pictures. Shen Ting’s cell phone carrier somehow had a better connection, which
Ye Qiao took advantage of to get on Weibo.
After three days, Shen Ting pointed out to Ye Qiao: “See, his followers has increased
so much. These days, anyone who posts cute pictures of their pets become instantly
popular. The fans are now calling the owner to show his face.”
Ye Qiao took a look. The sharp contrast between Ophelia and Desa had gathered a
large following on Weibo, especially from a short video clip. In the video, Desa stood
tall and majestically while Ophelia circled around between her legs. Ophelia would
sometimes stand up to hold Desa’s neck, scratching rather mischievously, to the large
dog’s indifference. But when Ophelia went overboard and almost tripped, Desa would
use her paws to steady him. Most of the comments under the clip were from teenage
girls who would say that the video was like reading a 100K character novel about an
overbearing boss!
Ye Qiao was amused: Didn’t they know that Desa was a female dog?
The number of fans snowballed in the next few days. Some resourceful fans even
dug up the details of all the pet toys and furniture in each picture, along with the
unusually lavish pet food served to Ophelia and Desa. They concluded------ “that dog
has a better life than a person!” “Do you still want another cat!” Some would cry out
under the pictures where he held the cat------ “that hand is so beautiful!” “release that
cat, let me hold it!”
Even Qianxi would mention the posts when she called Ye Qiao: “Cousin, don’t let
those messy thoughts bother you. I’ve already found a reliable psychiatrist for you.
He’s a colleague of Dr. Fu’s father that just came back from abroad. After you come
out from the countryside, you can meet him. For the time being, just relax and let the
wilderness cleanse your soul. If that doesn’t work, you can watch some cute animals!
I can recommend a Weibo account that has gone viral lately, it’s called-------”
Ye Qiao almost dropped her cell phone.
He used her pet cat to attract so many followers, had he gotten her permission?
However, all of that was besides the point.
The point was that she had finally gotten online after so much effort only to discover
that Zhou Tingsheng hadn’t updated his account today.
Chapter 22 Part 2
Ye Qiao put her phone down. In the past couple of days, she didn’t have
much filming to do. She could go stay at the nearest town, but she didn’t
like the bumpy drive back and forth and chose to stay in the village instead.
Now that there weren’t any new posts to entertain her, she decided to roam
around the mountains. She found the desolated forest and lake rather
peaceful. No wonder nowadays city folks liked to visit the countryside. Not
noticing the time, she return just in time to have dinner. Afterwards, she
was told that she had a visitor.
Who would come to this remote mountain village just to visit her? There
was no signal for her to find out. She was told that Shen Ting had gone to
greet the person on her behalf.
She went to look for them and saw a tall man leaning against an all terrain
vehicle casually talking to Shen Ting. The light of the evening sun fell on his
shoulder and reflected off a metal button. As if he had a hunch, he turned his
head just at the moment when Ye Qiao drew closer.
Zhou Tingsheng broke into a smile at the sight of Ye Qiao and extinguished
the cigarette between his fingers.
Ye Qiao walked over with a long face: “Why are you here?”
Shen Ting was busy distributing all the drinks that Zhou Tingsheng had
bought for the whole crew. She smiled and was about to compliment Zhou
Tingsheng when she saw the cold face on Ye Qiao and tactfully excused
herself: “Then, I’ll be off?”
Zhou Tingsheng nodded and after Shen Ting had walked away far enough,
he leaned forward to whisper besides Ye Qiao’s ear: “I missed you.”
Ye Qiao sneered: “You couldn’t find other women?” She noticed from the
side mirror of the car that crowd of the film crew were looking at their
direction. She frowned: “We better not keep in touch in the future.”
Zhou Tingsheng didn’t seem to mind: “I knew you would say that.”
“You knew and still came here?”
“I’m bored, so I just come for an outing.” He was brazen-faced and figured
that she wouldn’t turn him down. “I’ve heard that you like to hike in the
mountains lately?”
Ye Qiao was alarmed: “So?”
Zhou Tingsheng opened the car door and said: “Since I’m already here,
you can at least show me around, can’t you?”
The looks and whisperers from the crew members made her uneasy. She
figured that if she turned to walk away, it would inadvertently create even
more unnecessary gossip. She decided to go along, nodded, and got into
the passenger side.
She buckled up the seat belt and heartlessly warned him: “Just for one hour.
I’ll charge you if you go over the time limit.”
Zhou Tingsheng started the car. Despite the steep road, he kept the drive
rather smooth. Ye Qiao didn’t respond to his chatter but quietly watched the
scenery outside the window.
Zhou Tingsheng looked at her face in the rear view mirror. She didn’t have
any makeup on, her eyebrows were slightly gathered, and she didn’t look
too happy. However, in his eyes, she was still fascinating to look at, he
couldn’t look enough at her.
He abruptly burst into laughter.
Ye Qiao asked: “What are you laughing at?”
Zhou Tingsheng didn’t answer the question: “You look a bit darker.”
Ye Qiao was stunned, she had never heard anyone saying that she had dark
skin. She flatly said: “I’ve become ugly?”
Zhou Tingsheng replied quite naturally: “You look healthier. You were so pale
before.”
Ye Qiao mocked him mentally, he could even say such flattery so sincerely.
The vehicle was now deep far along a small trail. There were many trails just
like this one around the village. It was the routes villagers would use them to
go gathering herbs and hunt. But they had gone so far that trees and bushes
covered the trail and they couldn’t see where they were going.
Chapter 22 Part 3
Zhou Tingsheng suddenly stopped the car, right in the middle of the untrodden
forest.
Ye Qiao had a hunch what he was up to. She looked at her wrist watch: “It’s been
43 minutes. If we don’t head back now, you’ll be over the time limit.”
“How much for each minute overtime?”
“You can’t pay with money.” Seeing that he had no intention of turning back, Ye Qiao
adamantly released her seat belt and jumped out the car, walking towards the way
they came, without looking back.
Zhou Tingsheng circled his arms around her waist from behind, keeping her tight in
his arms: “Then what can I use to pay for it? How about with my body.”
Ye Qiao struggled but couldn’t free herself from his grasp. Zhou Tingsheng’s warm
breath tickled the back of her ear. Ye Qiao’s temper flared, her voice grew harsh:
“I don’t like to be forced.”
“No one is forcing you.” His strength was stronger than she had imagined. He turned
her around to face him, her head hit his solid shoulder. “What have I done to irritate
you, Ye Qiao?”
Ye Qiao quieted down all of a sudden.
He hadn’t irritated her at all. Everything was fine before that night. It had been so
nice that she had almost forgotten that it was just an affair, she had fallen under
the illusion of sharing a simple and warm family with him.
She was the one who wanted to end the relationship unilaterally. It seemed a bit
unfair to him. But……she thought that he was a womanizer, always looking for
his next love affair, and wouldn’t hang around her for long. So she had no misgivings
for being the cold-blooded heartbreaker. They had never expressed love for each
other to begin with.
Somehow, it seemed that reality was the opposite of what she’d surmised.
As she was lost in thought, Zhou Tingsheng abruptly picked her up from the ground
and sat her down on the hood of the vehicle. As she came to a rest with a thud, he
unleashed a string of scorching kisses followed with passionate mumbling: “Ye Qiao,
I really like you.”
Ye Qiao was lost in the forceful, long kisses and had difficulty discerning the truth in
his words. She seemed to taste blood and couldn’t tell whether it was from her or him.
After a long while she pushed him away, gasping for air. In the confusion, she had
forgotten why she came out of the car and asked him out of instinct: “While I wasn’t
there, did you touch anyone else?”
“No.”
He was telling the truth, besides there was no need to lie to her.
Ye Qiao returned to her senses and even smiled: “I would mind very much if you did.”
After saying those words, it felt to her that she was quite a moody person. Regardless,
in that moment she realized that all those mixed feelings she had been grappling with
had now become meaningless. What if she was indulging herself? If she had to give
up on the intimacy right in front of her, then her life would be too pitiful.
“There’s no need for that.” Zhou Tingsheng was delighted and pushed his forehead
against hers: “Are we going back?”
Ye Qiao countered: “Do you want to go back……” She drew closer to him after speaking
nd started to lick his warm lips, which came with the taste of blood.
She became a blood sucking animal, lightly sucking on his lips.
Zhou Tingsheng felt the sting on his lips. Ye Qiao suddenly grabbed the back of his waist.
Her slightly cool fingertips went under his shirt and lightly caressed his back. His breathing
grew heavier and he asked in a low voice: “How about in the car?”
“No.” Ye Qiao slyly smiled and pointed downward with her finger. She whispered next to
his ear: “Right here.”
