#ziqi

Chasing Demons, the story Fu Zhou's First Story is the EPITOME of a middle schoolers first story. I have pages upon pages of self depreciating lines about my own existence and the trials and tribulations of living.

Mu Sheng the character, is an isolated character with no past and no future. He has little people around him and only one that he truly cares about (I would say in the original novel he merely tolerates Lu Fuyi). He is destined to hide the truth of his existence, of which even he doesn't know the full scope of, until it is inevitably revealed and he looses the one person he cares about. His love life in the original novel is nonexistent, and the 'marriage' he is in is a venting of all the pain and anger he holds inside of him. A hopeless character, but even more than that he's hopeless Twice. Why?

Mu Sheng Could have everything, his parents loved each other once, his sister loves him now. But it's all out of reach for him. (We don't know how much he learns about his past in the original Chasing Demons so I won't delve much into that).

The reason that Mu Sheng can have nothing and must live his life chasing after happiness, knowing that he will never hold more than the coattails of it in his palm for seconds. Is because Fu Zhou wrote this story at his lowest. It is the representation of all the grief and that he was currently experincing at that time.

Mu Sheng's family is torn apart (father dead, mother's heart unknowingly destroyed by him, the Mu family dealing with the fallout of his own mistakes) because all Fu Zhou knows is the crashing and burning of his own family. Happiness exists just out of reach for both Mu Sheng and Fu Zhou. Without Mu Sheng in the picture, could his parents have stayed together and in love? If he wasn't sick would Fu Zhou's parents not fight? Not scream? Not cry?

We occasionally see hints of 'The End Cannot Be Changed' scattered throughout the show, earliest with Miaomiao having to constantly redo tasks because the outcome must be certain ways. The Story itself as a concept is extremely rigid because that was the thinking of Fu Zhou when he wrote it. Rigid in the belief that his past holds nothing (no friends, no great memories) and his future is set in stone (alone, abandoned, uncared for and dead). A bleak and grim outlook from a boy who is dying.

The true First Story with a cringefail self insert OC to help cope with that young teenage depression.

It speaks great depths that when Fu Zhou found a bit of light in his life, with meeting Miaomiao for the first time, he insists that she saved him. But she is not the savior of Chasing Demons. BECAUSE FU ZHOU IS RIGID IN HIS THINKING!!! He adds Miaomiao as a Prologue. She stopped the catastrophe of heavens once before, it's possible for it to be done. But the person who had stopped it before (with her weapon that literally looks like her fountain pen from real life SCREAMING) is Gone and so Mu Sheng's end is set in stone.

Mu Sheng's story changes when he becomes Ziqi, when he meets someone who starts to change his rigid thinking and allows him to be able to grasp the happiness just out of his reach.

Fu Zhou's stories start changing, from rigid cold and unfeeling, to more hopeful and healing when he meets someone who shines in his darkness and allows him to believe that happiness can happen even if it is currently out of his reach.