Maybe there's a world, Zhao Yunlan thinks, where he survives this and walks away even though Shen Wei doesn't, where the university calls the SID's chief in to sort through Shen Wei's personal effects because for all that Professor Shen had colleagues and admirers legion there'd never been friend.
A world where Zhao Yunlan starts paying for a no-longer-necessary phone bill, just so he can dial it sometimes and hear those familiarly measured tones: Hello, you've reached Shen Wei at Dragon City University…
(Or maybe it doesn't exist at all because that Zhao Yunlan gets his Shen Wei out alive somehow, because if time travel can be real then so must parallel universes with endings happier than these; but in this one all he asks is to hear Shen Wei's voice even just one more time, before the Lantern takes him.)
Guardian; Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Maybe there's a world, Zhao Yunlan thinks, where he survives this and walks away even though Shen Wei doesn't, where the university calls the SID's chief in to sort through Shen Wei's personal effects because for all that Professor Shen had colleagues and admirers legion there'd never been friend.
A world where Zhao Yunlan starts paying for a no-longer-necessary phone bill, just so he can dial it sometimes and hear those familiarly measured tones: Hello, you've reached Shen Wei at Dragon City University…
(Or maybe it doesn't exist at all because that Zhao Yunlan gets his Shen Wei out alive somehow, because if time travel can be real then so must parallel universes with endings happier than these; but in this one all he asks is to hear Shen Wei's voice even just one more time, before the Lantern takes him.)