A smile in purgatory 火海一笑 (BxB)

Life without a purpose

On a stormy tornado night, Zhou Xu was born. He was a cute lovely baby. His parents immediately doted on him.

But his birthdate corresponds to Syrius, the second most brilliant star after the Sun. It is so bright, that it engulfs the light of all the other stars around it, making them dark in comparison. Therefore, those stars would gradually distance themselves from Syrius so that THEY TOO could shine.

Eventually Syrius ends up all alone in its little corner of the galaxy.

In Chinese astronomy, Syrius is also nicknamed the Star of Loneliness. It is believed that people born under this star are extremely strong-minded and hard-working, but at the same time, they are also the most outcast members of society. They live a friendless, loveless life, isolated from any kind of human relationship.

Zhou Xu's parents went to a psychic to get help, hoping something could be done. They ended up changing his name to Zhou Zishu, because the number of strokes in his Chinese character name would bring him some good luck. It was all they could do to try and change destiny.

It did not work.

At age 2, his rich father went bankrupt overnight after the stock market crashed.

At age 3, his parents could not afford to keep him or feed him anymore, or provide him with the care he needed, so they gave him up for adoption.

He went from foster home to foster home.

At age 5, he was adopted by a family with the last name Wu. They gave him an English first name of Hanson, and took good care of him, and he thought life was good, and that he had finally settled down. But less than a year later, a fire had ravaged their apartment tower, burning down several units. His adoptive parents did not die in the fire, but did lose everything. They suspected that Hanson's birthdate was the cause of the unfortunate event. So they abandoned him, and back he went to foster care again.

When he turned 8, the Chu family adopted Hanson. Although his mother and father treated him well, his uncle lived with them, and the man molested Hanson for several months. When the boy finally built up enough courage to speak up, they did not believe him. His mother would rather trust her little brother's words, who claimed he never touched Hanson inappropriately, than to listen to her adopted son's ridiculous accusation. After that, she returned the kid to foster care.

Learning that people only wanted to hear pretty lies, not ugly truths, he developed the habit of keeping all the negative facts inside of him, only speaking positive words.

With this personality change, he quickly found another family at age 9, the Chow. The couple had 2 daughters but no son, so they wanted a boy. The parents cherished him because he was a boy. This was also his best and longest-lasting adoption. But quickly the jealousy grew and over the next few years, his two sisters did everything they could to get rid of him. They locked him outside in the balcony during winter when the parents weren't home, pushed him off the bike during playtime, stole his school lunch money, ripped his homework since he had better grades than them, but he took in all the abuse for 5 years in a row, and never spoke up. He learned from his previous mistakes and therefore did not want to risk losing his home again.

Then one day, soon after he turned 14, the girls downloaded very explicit pornographic materials into his computer, where teenage boys were raping little girls, and then they told the parents about his sick addiction. Of course they had to protect their 2 daughters - their own flesh and blood - and so they sent him back to foster care. They also asked that he get professional help for his unhealthy interests.

That triggered black-marks in his profile, and the parental meet-and-greet requests stopped altogether. Why would anybody want a psycho in their home anyway.