The threat to Brian's life came not from a stranger, but from the 'family' member who had once helped him.
To be precise,
it was Brian's uncle, Billy Kamor.
Before the live burial incident,
Brian had always revered this uncle.
When he was eight and entered the Children's House, his outstanding appearance nearly led to a few warm-hearted male caretakers and the 'Clan Leader' subjecting him to puffy hotdog COSPLAY.
To avoid being attacked from both front and back,
he had no choice.
Having never killed a chicken in his past life, Brian took a preemptive strike, utilizing fire to purify these sins.
No one would suspect an eight-year-old child of being a criminal.
Brian thought he was safe.
But he wasn't.
A good thing, incapable of self-protection, too easily attracts the watchful eyes of evildoers.
After transferring to another Children's House, he experienced similar incidents.
That time three caretakers died in an accident.
Then,
came four adoptive families.
Outsiders can hardly imagine the filth hidden within.
Just as Brian earned the moniker 'Disaster's Child' and felt he was about to be exposed for continuing down this path, he found a way to contact his relatives in New York.
His uncle personally rushed to Los Angeles.
After learning about the 'accidental incidents' Brian spoke of and his current reputation,
the uncle found a kind and normal couple to adopt him.
Thus, Brian stopped walking the path that plunged deeper into distortion and, after a period of recurring nightmares, began living a normal life again.
Brian was truly grateful to this uncle from the bottom of his heart.
Especially when Brian turned ten,
his uncle Billy Kamor moved the remaining dozen or so members of the Kamor family to an Italian-American community in Los Angeles and regularly invited Brian to family gatherings.
Clan Leader Uncle Billy took great care of and valued his nephew by marriage.
Although the other family members were involved in drinking, prostituting, gambling, smoking, committing murders, and all sorts of evil, they were still reasonably friendly to this relative of the same blood.
Over time,
Brian began to feel a sense of belonging to this Mafia-originated family.
His part-time job as a Vehicle Appraiser was arranged by the family.
Otherwise, ordinary people couldn't even enter the industry.
At best, they would be controlled and used as a tool by those gangs.
At worst, they would be killed by rivals who had their business stolen.
However, those vehicles were practically affiliated with the 'brokerage company' established by the Kamor family; with every transaction, the company took a commission. In return, the company offered protection for them.
Otherwise, they would not bother to spend money on an appraisal certification.
Even though the family made more, Brian was still grateful for the opportunity to earn money given to him.
Therefore, when his uncle approached him to give up his life plans and join the Forensic Bureau in Los Angeles County, he thought of the care and recognition the family had previously given him and ultimately compromised.
Brian never thought he would become a forensic assistant.
He loved studying the art of the human body.
But definitely not in the way a forensic assistant studied it.
The pleasures of both were not the same.
Brian had an impressive resume.
He completed his university credits in just two years, and all the more importantly, several prestigious male professors gave him excellent reviews.
Thus, he passed the interview smoothly and joined the Forensic Bureau.
After joining the Forensic Bureau,
Brian was very uncomfortable.
His position was that of a forensic assistant.
It sounded prestigious,
but in fact, he was just a general technical worker, mainly responsible for photographing corpses, sending various body tissues for tests, collecting fragmented bodies... and all other miscellaneous tasks arranged by the forensic doctor.
When he first joined,
seeing those severed limbs and fetid internal organs of his kind...
Brian vomited for more than two whole weeks, lost over twenty pounds before slowly adjusting.
This was entirely different from causing accidents and sending others off this world.
This intense discomfort even led to Brian developing a severe psychological disorder.
He could only vent his stress and alleviate his psychological problems through certain physical activities, as suggested by an illegal doctor, to maintain his outward normalcy.
...
In the two and a half years since he started working at the Forensic Bureau,
the Kamor family had never arranged for Brian to do anything.
But to ease his increasingly severe mental issues,
his daily life was fractured:
By day, he examined the bodies of the deceased brought in; by night, he examined the bodies of those dreamers with ambition, occasionally taking care to support the working and studying federal college students in their pursuit of independence and self-sufficiency.
At first, this kind of life brought a sense of novelty and thrill.
Over time,
Brian and his brothers became numb.
He thought about restraining himself a bit,
but the result was that his brothers were not numb anymore, but his heart began to feel numb, like a walking corpse, growing more and more depressed.
During this time,
Brian felt that he couldn't go on like this, thought about leaving Los Angeles, and then settling down with an honest woman to lead a more normal life.
He submitted his resignation letter in the morning.
By the afternoon, he was almost buried alive.
It was not until the cold, foul earth of the graveyard covered him that Brian truly realized.
The so-called family affection was all bullshit!
The real purpose his granduncle had for placing him in the Forensic Bureau was far from the simplicity he had imagined!
It was ridiculous that he, wanting to repay the Kamor family, had given up a glamorous career as a dentist and became a low-prospect, low-status technician in the Forensic Bureau—even risking mental breakdown—all while suspecting that the family wanted him to engage in illegal activities, but he didn't hesitate.
The problem is!
Just say what you want directly, dammit!
To threaten with one's life without saying a word, what does that count for?
Brian felt like a tool, appointed randomly for a certain purpose, not needing to know why, to be replaced when no longer fitting, devoid of any familial affection.
...
It made Brian, who was an orphan twice over and craving family affection, feel extremely angry and disheartened!
Over the following month,
he obtained some raw materials through the channel of that unlicensed psychiatrist and crafted over ten pounds of explosives, planning to send his granduncle and the involved clan members away at the first opportunity.
But then… an accident occurred.
His foster parents, who treated him as their own son, fell seriously ill.
Brian's foster parents suddenly were diagnosed with a rare genetic disease.
Conventional medical treatments would make them live in pain, the kind of agony that even painkillers couldn't alleviate; while better treatments required self-funding.
Brian also suspected this was a conspiracy.
He spent money to get experts to treat his foster parents, but the diagnosis was indeed true, just coincidental.
Everyone will die.
Brian didn't harbor illusions that his foster parents could get through this calamity.
But he hoped to lessen their pain a little, to let them depart with dignity.
Maintaining dignity required money.
A lot of money.
People are not beasts.
Once you have a weakness,
Brian, for the sake of his foster parents' peaceful passing, could only resign himself to fate.
...
There's no way out.
Reality isn't like the movies.
Those people in the Kamor family were not little lambs.
The funds of the Kamor family were laundered through specialized methods and were all deposited in overseas banks.
The account and password were only known to Uncle Billy.
Brian was clear about his own capabilities.
His gun skills were terrible, his IQ average at best—he could only play dirty tricks, either send those people away in one go or get retaliated against and perish. It was next to impossible to torture the bank account information out of his granduncle.
Furthermore, Uncle Billy, to pacify Brian, let slip a little detail.
The reason he had Brian join the Forensic Bureau more than two years ago was for an important arrangement in three years' time.
As long as Brian cooperated afterward and achieved his objective,
the Kamor family would cover all of Brian's foster parents' subsequent medical expenses.
At that time, there was less than a year left until the three-year agreement.
Left without choice,
Brian could only work overtime and take on side jobs while placing his hope in the promise offered by his granduncle to appease him.
...
Now, the time had nearly come to fulfill the three-year term.
This matter was about to reach a conclusion!