Page 75 of Ghost Ribbon

The answer surprised me. Not because liking stars was strange. A lot of people liked stars. They were beautiful.

But Alexei liking them felt… odd.

Like finding out a wolf collected flowers.

I shifted awkwardly on my bare feet. “Is that why you’re studying astronomy?”

He nodded and I tilted my head. It really didn’t fit him. “Your major seems… unexpected.”

“Why?”

“Because you are…” I searched for a word that wouldn’t get me killed. “You.”

His cigarette paused halfway to his mouth. “And what am I?”

A trap.

The question was a trap. I knew it. Every instinct in my body knew it.

Still, my mouth, traitorous and exhausted, answered before my survival instincts could stop it. “Scary.”

Alexei looked at me.

No anger moved across his face. No amusement either, at least not the kind I recognized. He just watched me.

I swallowed hard. “I didn’t mean—”

He turned his gaze back to the stars. “You’re not wrong. But I like stars enough to study them,” he said.

“What is so great about them?”

Alexei’s head turned. He looked at me in a way I couldn’t name. It wasn’t the usual look. He seemed…offended?

No.

Not offended.

Sulky?

The thought was so bizarre that my brain latched onto it helplessly. Alexei Morozov, sulking? No. Impossible.

And yet there was something in the faint tightening of his mouth, the slight stillness around his eyes, like I had insulted something personal without meaning to.

I blinked at him. “Did I… say something wrong?”

“No. You simply asked the wrong question.”

“…There’s a right one?”

Alexei looked back toward the sky. “The better question is why I think they are great.”

I hugged the oversized shirt tighter around myself.

“…Okay. Why do you?”

The cigarette burned lower between his fingers before he finally spoke.

“…I met someone. He told me a little about the stars back then. I guess I caught an interest from that.”