It took me a while but I couldn't resist playing with this just a little:
“What the hell are Dixingren anyway?” Zhao Yunlan asks the world, and Shen Wei forgets how to breathe. “Don’t believe the nonsense rumors you hear online. I can tell you straight up, they’re people. And just like you, they laugh, love, rage, and grieve, they break their hearts, they die, they live like people.” The constant drumbeat of fear in Shen Wei’s chest is slowing at last, taking on a new tempo, resonating to that familiar, that cherished voice. They laugh, love, rage, and grieve—He can’t take his eyes off Zhao Yunlan’s unwontedly serious face. “Just because they come from a different planet, they live in a different place, they have different powers—should they be treated like monsters?” Zhao Yunlan draws breath. “I’m telling it like it is,” he says, gentler, “we’re tongbao.” Brothers. Comrades. He says it in Dixinghua. Shen Wei can feel himself go still with shock, his head ringing. Such small changes—tonbao for tongbao, ji for zhi...the Haixingren listening to the broadcast may have noticed nothing, but for Shen Wei—and for the others, he realizes, the many Dixingren who live quietly in Haixing and never draw the Black-Cloaked Envoy’s overt attention, Professor Shen’s silent tongbao... Tears are coming to his eyes. He blinks, swallows hard, focuses again on Zhao Yunlan’s, Kunlun’s, Zhao Yunlan’s face and voice, listening once again to his heart.
no subject
“What the hell are Dixingren anyway?” Zhao Yunlan asks the world, and Shen Wei forgets how to breathe. “Don’t believe the nonsense rumors you hear online. I can tell you straight up, they’re people. And just like you, they laugh, love, rage, and grieve, they break their hearts, they die, they live like people.”
The constant drumbeat of fear in Shen Wei’s chest is slowing at last, taking on a new tempo, resonating to that familiar, that cherished voice. They laugh, love, rage, and grieve—He can’t take his eyes off Zhao Yunlan’s unwontedly serious face.
“Just because they come from a different planet, they live in a different place, they have different powers—should they be treated like monsters?” Zhao Yunlan draws breath. “I’m telling it like it is,” he says, gentler, “we’re tongbao.” Brothers. Comrades.
He says it in Dixinghua.
Shen Wei can feel himself go still with shock, his head ringing. Such small changes—tonbao for tongbao, ji for zhi...the Haixingren listening to the broadcast may have noticed nothing, but for Shen Wei—and for the others, he realizes, the many Dixingren who live quietly in Haixing and never draw the Black-Cloaked Envoy’s overt attention, Professor Shen’s silent tongbao...
Tears are coming to his eyes. He blinks, swallows hard, focuses again on Zhao Yunlan’s, Kunlun’s, Zhao Yunlan’s face and voice, listening once again to his heart.