Samson Lau

Sam is, at first glance, a pretty normal guy for his age. He stands at 177 cm if he doesn’t slouch, with an average, wiry build. Physically, he is quite fit, with a lot of endurance.

With dark hair, tanned skin, and average Chinese features, there’s not much that’s remarkable about his initial physical appearance aside from the scarring near his unseeing eyes. He had let his hair grown out since his arrival.

Both of his eyes look mostly normal, if a little blank, but the area around them were scarred — Burnt patches of skins that looked like they had been melted. The severity and extensiveness of the burn scars cause people to stare at best and run away at worst. However, since coming here he had worn his sunglasses less and less.

Under his clothes, he is covered in scars. Burns, knife wounds, cuts, chemical burns, all sorts of injuries from his time in the triads. However, those are always covered up by his shirt and trousers. There is a tattoo on his left shoulder of the Chinese character that means “blind”. （盲目）

Usually, he dresses in cheap clothes, all a little loose, subtle and worn. Efficiency is more important than style. His school uniform was always unruly and untucked.

Sam doesn't want to actually hurt you. That's probably the most important thing about him. He doesn't want to actually hurt anybody, despite how he might seem on the outside. A lot of his exterior is more a defence mechanism built up from years of living on the streets and having to fight for his life.

Meeting Sam, he seems like a confident, assertive kid, quick to talk and quicker to make a move. He is bold, sometimes to a degree where he seems arrogant. He doesn't appear to take much seriously, with a light-hearted approach to life. He enjoys joking as a method of socialisation, but his sense of humour may seem offensive and lewd due to the crowds he is typically accustomed with. Now that he had been here for a while, he had learned to show some restraint.

Sam is as fast with his temper as with his words. He doesn't think before he speak, and can become extremely aggressive when provoked, especially about his past or his blindness, and when he gets angry typically he starts a fight. Some restraint had been learned since he had come here, though. He doesn't aim to hurt the opposing party, rather only to scare them. He does have an honour code to not fight anybody younger or smaller than him, but he will still hold a grudge. However, he holds respect to anybody who can hold their ground in combat with him, or treats him with the same respect they would "normal" people.

In terms of friendships, Sam enjoys surface-level partnerships, taking part in activities together but not much other than that. He can be sometimes insensitive and is not good at talking about serious problems, nor is he happy to open up about himself. He doesn't trust easily and takes a long time to properly warm up to someone, but on the exterior he seems happy enough to chat with anybody that comes across him.

Despite how bold and violent Sam might seem, he doesn't actually enjoy inflicting pain upon others. His fighting with words and fists had been the only way of life he had known and the only method he has to protect himself. But he does feel guilt if he is aware that he had actually hurt somebody, physically or emotionally, and will try to reciprocate for that as well as he can. He is still largely out of touch with his feelings, and frequently uses violent as a way out for his lingering guilt,

He believes that the world is a dark and ugly place, but he does believe that it is worth fighting for, his honour - based upbringing contributing to that. Once you had gained his trust he is loyal to a fault.

Sam was born in a small, cramped apartment (if you could even call it that) in Hong Kong and named Lau Ka Ming, after his mum’s father. He was brought up there by his mother and his three siblings until her financial standing could not possibly support raising another child. So, at the age of 3, Sam’s mom sold him to the first people who would buy him - a group that happened to deal with human trafficking.

Because of his young age, he was deemed useless at the time and kept locked up the building that the traffickers used, in a cramped broom closet, with little human contact and no freedom. He lived like this until he was 5, when the door was left open by the man who brought him food. He saw the opportunity and immediately tried to escape. However, being only 5 years old and inexperienced, he did not succeed. The men caught him.

To punish him and ensure he’ll never do this again, caustic chemicals were poured carelessly into his eyes. It immediately caused severe burns to the retina that lead to blindness, as well as third-degree chemical burns to the skin surrounding his eyes. The scar tissue would remain there forever. Afterward, he was thrown out onto the streets since the group had no use for blind kids.

A member of the triads (Disclaimer: I have zero ideas how the Hong Kong triads work. This is pure creative license pls don’t kill me. The Triads for the unknowing is basically the mafia.) found him the streets. Seeing that he was blind, they decided that he was useful as a courier since he wouldn’t be able to see what he was delivering nor reveal their address to others.

So this is what Sam did. They renamed him Samson, after the blind biblical figure. , and gave him a pair of cheap adult’s sunglasses to wear so people didn’t gawk at him. He slept in the on whichever couch that was free in whichever triad member’s flat. Food depended on who felt like buying him a bowl of noodles from the shops downstairs. The rest, he learned very quickly to do on his own. In the day. he delivered drugs and illicit weapons tucked into his Thomas The Tank Engine backpack and sat in the corner in silence as the junkies and criminals counted out their money to dole to him. Quickly, he learned how to separate money by touch and how much they gave to him.

This was how he lived for the next 4 years. He received smatterings of basic education by the triad members who took care of him, so he understood some basic English. By the time he was nine, some of the triad members had decided that he was old enough to learn how to fight, with fists, knives, and guns. A handgun was put into his small hands and eventually, he learned how to shoot without the recoil sending him reeling. He learned a fighting style that was fast, hard, dirty, and not particularly named, from a wizened old blind man who also taught him braille. Everyone he fought was bigger than him, and he lost. He was small and could sneak into places that grownups would not be able to fit. So he learned how to steal. How to bypass security. Where the blind spots of security cameras were, and how to disable them. How to pick locks. How to sweet talk his way out of situations. Although he was exposed to illicit drugs and started drinking alcohol and smoking a little at a young age, he never tried to do drugs as it made him feel “funny”.

He did all of this without vision in his eyes. but of course, he had his own way of “seeing.” His enhanced hearing allowed him to sense even more things than he did when he saw. Perhaps he could not read what that sign said, but he could hear your heartbeat and know exactly where you were, how tired you were, and know where you are injured by just listening to your breathing. He could hear footsteps from blocks away, a police siren across town. A sniff of the air revealed who was there before and what drugs they had been injecting. Feeling the heft of a gun revealed how many bullets there were in it.

By the time he was 12, Sam had already built a bit of a reputation for himself. A skinny little blind boy with his sunglasses who could beat a scrawny but grown man in a fight. During a robbery with some of the other members, the police were alerted and they didn’t have a way to bail. Panicking, Sam focused as hard as he could on finding a way out - and then he was standing in a pile of rubble. A part of the building had collapsed, burying the police under it, and opening an escape path for him and the other gang members. In their altered state, the boys didn’t question the situation and left as fast as they could.

Later, Sam experimented and found out that he was indeed able to lift small objects with his mind. He was disinterested in this, because he thought that having this ability was “cheating” and he didn’t want to bring too much attention to himself. The days passed by essentially as they always had before, Sam fighting other boys and men under the care of the wizened old man, engaging in petty theft, still acting as a courier and now a bodyguard and mercenary as well. He bought braille schoolbooks with his own money. Eventually, he taught himself how to read the words on a printed page by touch. His reputation grew with his age and height.

When he was 16, a rival gang confronted him in an alley. It was 7 armed men against one boy with a switchblade. He was outnumbered. This may be the end of him. Instead of fear, the only thing he felt at the situation was anger. Anger on the gang members for teaming up on him, and anger at himself for putting himself into a situation like this unarmed, and anger for the world for throwing him into the world of gangs in the first place. He brought this anger together and directed it at the gang members.

When he came to, he was in police holding. The officer explained to him his choices. First was to face his charges for manslaughter, illicit carrying of bladed weapons, and whatever else they can press against him. The second choice was to respond to the correspondence letter from somewhere called Starlight Academy and attend school there. It was his own choice.

Well, Sam wasn’t that big of an idiot, yet.