While Shorter is no fool and doesn't go on blindly hoping that everyone will be good and friendly if they just talk, he doesn't like to believe that there's no hope at all for the future. When Ash gets involved in the Banana Fish conspiracy, Shorter is the one who tries to cheer up his friends most of the time with the idea that, no matter how bad things get, at least they are together and they will survive to fight another day.

Just like Ash, Shorter has had a hard life. He may not have been chosen by a boss mob to be groomed and abused, but he knows he “owes” a debt to the Lee family for “bringing” him and his siblings to America and that debt can be hard on him. Still, Shorter doesn’t believe he’s inferior to others, nor that jail and crime are his only options. Even before the Banana Fish conspiracy disturbed the delicate balance of the gangs’ territories in New York, Shorter was one of the few friends Ash had who believed they could get out of the gang life.

Shorter was raised to understand that being loyal to his family was very important. But while for others that means to obey the "Family" that controls the Chinese-American gangs and crime families, for Shorter it meant to go against said Family if they threatened his true friends. When he finds out that the Lees are part of the conspiracy that left Ash's brother a vegetable, Shorter tries to help Ash only to be forced into spying on him when the Lees take Shorter's sister hostage.

This goes hand in hand with the fact that Shorter Wong won’t give up no matter what. It’s not just a matter of Shorter being stubborn and not wanting to lose more friends if he can help it, but that even when he is forced to go against what he believes in,—be it by blackmail as to when the Lee’s made him spy on Ash, or by brainwashing, like when they injected him with Banana Fish—mentally, Shorter never stops fighting or trying to find a way to beat those who hurt his friends.

Probably the most tragic part of Shorter’s character, and the one thing that makes him so memorable for the viewers, is that when Shorter says that he’d die before hurting his friends, he means it literally as we find out when he’s injected with Banana Fish and told that he has to kill Eiji. His will is strong enough that Shorter can stop himself from actually shooting Eiji, but even then, he knows he’s no match for the drug and so, Shorter begs Ash to kill him before he loses the fight.