Damien Liu

Basic Information
Current year: 2023

Age: 22

Appearance: It's been a running joke in Damien's family for years to see how young they can bullshit others into thinking he is. The record was his sister insisting that he was nine when he was in fact, nineteen. He doesn't make much effort to make himself look older, and his baby face has never really bothered him, but his lack of height and physical strength does, just a little.

Early life
[TW violence, death] There's nothing like a pregnancy with several near fatal complications to bring a child into the world. After Damien was born, his mother was hospitalized for over a month and his parents agreed that they were never doing that again. Which was a shame, because Damien was only their second child, and they'd always wanted a bigger family. But it wasn't worth the risk.

Damien seemed to reflect this, being a friendly child who always wanted company. Unfortunately for him, his older sister Alice was a lone wolf who had no time for him, so he spent a lot of time with adults, which is how he ended up being "the most insufferable nerd known to man". In particular, the hours of being babysat by his elderly neighbor sparked an interest in classical poetry that he never lost.

Said elderly neighbor died when he was ten. This crushed Damien to the core, until two days later, he saw his dead neighbor standing in his back garden. That was how he learned he could talk to ghosts, but he never told anyone about it, afraid that he was hallucinating.

When he was twelve, his parents decided that even if they couldn't have any more biological children, there was nothing stopping them adopting. Damien gained a second sister, Jia, who was three years younger than him. He was ecstatic, and even though it took a while of gaining her trust, they became close, at which point his parents, who loved having more children in the house, adopted three more children over the next several years. And Damien loved it.

Adult Life
When he was eighteen, Damien started college close to home studying English Lit. He wasn't too keen to stray far from his family, unlike his older sister who had moved away at the first opportunity and had been gradually losing contact with the family over the years. No one was happy about it, but they let her make her own decisions. College was mostly uneventful for Damien and as graduation approached, he was forced to consider what he was going to do next. Whatever it was, it would probably involve leaving the small town he lived in, and he really didn't want to.

But in the end, he didn't have to decide. On a trip to the store with his youngest sister Mimi, a zombie wandered in through the door. Between him, his sister and the store owner, they fought it off and locked the doors, but in the process the store owner was bitten by the zombie, and decided to leave, giving Damien and Mimi the store to use as a hiding place.

This was a solid plan until Mimi got severely ill. With no contact to the outside world and no idea how medicine worked, Damien did his best to help her as the outside filled up with more and more zombies, the army arrived and began to destroy the town and the prospect of escape became slimmer. A few days in, someone else broke into the store. Having prepared a weapon for this situation, Damien went to see what was going on, and saw a person—not a zombie, but an actual still alive human being. Relieved, he called to Mimi to let her know it was safe, and went to say hello to the newcomer, possibly ask for help, only for his zombified little sister to bite him in the throat.

The newcomer killed her on the spot, which didn't enamor her to Damien, but he had more important things to worry about. He'd been bitten, and was therefore going to become a zombie too. The girl who'd killed his sister introduced herself as Leigh, and explained that she was immune, offering to stay with him while he turned. Over the next few days he experienced the same symptoms he'd watched Mimi go through, but to his surprise, he recovered. He was immune too. Excited to have met another like her, Leigh explained she was on her way to a safe place on the other side of town, and Damien agreed to accompany her through the wastes of his hometown.

Leigh
After one of the worst first meetings imaginable, Damien was not keen to spend a few days with Leigh while waiting for his impending death. However he was even less keen on dying alone, so when she offered to stay with him, he graciously accepted. And neither of them liked silence, so once they'd come to a truce, they began to talk. Their personalities fit together well—Damien's continual questioning was met with completely honest answers, and to both of their complete surprise, they ended up getting on well. When Damien turned out to be immune, it made sense to stick together, especially since they were both in over their head when it came to fighting zombies.

What with Leigh being the same age as Jia, Damien has projected slightly unhealthily onto Leigh while trying to cope with the loss of his family. He acts like a protective big brother (which is funny because he's so much shorter) and the two of them like to tease each other. But it's also true that he's learnt a lot from Leigh, and she's helped him through the most trying time of his life quietly and without forcing anything. Their friendship is incredibly tight, to the point where even when they're midway through a brutal argument, they're still an incredible team. The fact that they managed to get themselves through a zombie apocalypse avoiding the military by themselves after they'd both fucked up and got bit is a testament to this.

The other thing that strengthens their friendship these days is having to deal with Kat's bullshit. They're both patient people in their own way, but it helps to have someone to bitch to, and it's a tenet of their friendship that they don't judge. As well as patience they have their own kinds of optimism, which is also nice when you're travelling with a pit of negativity at your back.

Kat
Damien's fascination with how people think has both worked in his favour and bit him in the ass when it comes to Kat. Ever since their very first meeting, she interested him, because her thought patterns were so obviously contradictory, obviously hurting her, and desperate to help, Damien pushed with questions Kat didn't want to answer. This was probably a good thing in the end, because Kat was already being such a bitch that it took someone doing the same back, even if it was unintentional, to make her realise she needed to tone it down.

Even though things became a bit more stable between them, the central conflict remains. Damien's siblings came from bad homes and had horrible coping mechanisms—he's seen it before and even if he doesn't understand the exact reasons why Kat's like this, he can vaguely guess. But he still gets frustrated that she refuses to help herself. Suffering from extreme loss himself, he can't understand her way of thinking, which is something they disagree on, but usually when they fight they make up fairly quickly. Occasionally things escalate but luckily they've got Leigh to mediate in extreme situations.

The two of them both act like worried parents to Leigh, who's just as reckless as Kat but without the dexterity to pull off her stunts. In these situations where Damien can't go to Leigh with his emotions, Kat will usually let him cry on her shoulder for a bit, even if she has no comfort to offer. After the months of living on the brink of death with each other, Damien likes to think that he's won a comfortable level of trust from her, and for Kat, he definitely has, even if it's not the level he wanted.

Mina
He doesn't really know what to make of the ghost girl haunting his dreams. They've had some nice conversations, and she's given him some helpful advice, but there are one or two uncomfortable subjects that they both avoid. Damien knows she's using him to a point, though he's a dumbass who can't figure out why, and he knows this takes a toll on him that Mina's clearly willing to allow. They've only had one argument, and that was after he killed someone. Afterwards he decided that he couldn't blame her for having a reaction, and they're still friends, but it's uneasy. Something could very easily change that...