Shun Zhang: The Red Beast

First Stance

In school, I was once asked to fill out a career questionnaire. Many didn't think much of it, but I had taken a lot of time to think: what kind of person would I be?

But for a twelve-year-old Zhang Shun, a boy who was as naive and mentally deranged as the family he had been forced to grow up with, the outcome of all that thinking was as silly as one would expect.

"The... power to run away really fast."

The teacher gave me a raised eyebrow, and the sarcasm in the way she had read my questionnaire was met with an uproar of laughter.

"The Chinese boy can't understand Japanese?"

"Running away is his career? How stupid!"

And I remember being confronted by that same teacher and held true to my response to this day.

The power to run away.

To be able to obtain such power in the near future was always a dream I wanted.

My father was a psychopath. He enjoyed abusing the rest of us whenever something good happened. It was almost like he was allergic to good things. The day me, and my brother, Zhang Wen, had our birthday, my mother had bought a duck to celebrate. My father proceeded to flip the table and yell at us for no good reason.

My mother wasn't any better. She believed every hobby I had was "dangerous". A "Christian" woman, who took her faith to the realm of schizophrenia. She caught me playing video games and ordered I throw them into the trash because she believed it was "controlling me".

Needless to say, the idea of escaping such a family was almost like a dream.

I would do anything to escape this family.

But I wasn't exactly someone particularly intelligent, like Wen. Wen was a prodigal, he escaped easily. But I was stupid.

And so I would resort to anything.

Anything to escape my life with these people.

CRUNCH. CRUNCH. CRUNCH. CRUNCH. CRUNCH.

"Shun Zhang of the Red Circle Triad!" Several voices echoed in the distance.

"We know you're there!"

"Come out! And pay for what you did to Master Leung!"

I slowly emerged from the darkness, the cloth that contained Leung's head slung to my side like a prized trophy.

Several Masters gasped upon seeing the severed head.

Many more reacted with outrage.

"How could you... how could you!" A Master shouted at me, a polearm brandished in his hands.

"Master Leung was a good man! A loving father! A caring teacher! Yet you ruthlessly killed him! And you dare to have his head as a troph-"

I stomped on the ground with tremendous force, unleashing a shockwave that repelled everybody back.

Dozens, if not hundreds of martial artists had surrounded me. All wielding swords and weapons of every kind.

Even gang members from rival Triads had come to try to take me down.

I slowly ran my hand through my hair. The blood-soaked bandages left behind a streak of red against the black.

"Master Leung was a target. The greatest martial arts practitioner in all of Hebei Province. Now that you see the might of Boss Lok's son, I am disappointed that you still have the audacity to try to threaten me."

My Mandarin was still a little off, despite my parents being of Chinese descent. But I definitely got the point across.

Because the masters became even more enraged.