Koichi Nakamura

Full name: Koichi Nakamura. Age: 23. Height: 185 cm, but slouched. Appearance: Thin, but not emaciated; muscles are not defined, but functional. Hair: Black, unkempt, falling in front of his face. Eyes: Black, tired, and alert, with dark circles under them from stress and lack of sleep. Clothing: A worn dark hoodie (with a barely noticeable print of some old anime) and practical cargo pants with worn knees. Shoes: sturdy hiking boots found in an abandoned store. A makeshift backpack, assembled from old bags and belts, is slung over his back.

Before "Dissolution," Koichi was a typical hikikomori. He saw the world through screens, and communication was limited to anonymous chats and forums. The catastrophe that wiped out 92% of humanity passed almost unnoticed for him in terms of social losses—he had no one to lose. His quest to "survive alone" from virtual reality became reality.

Koichi is deeply convinced that any group will sooner or later betray or infect him. He trusts only himself. For him, loneliness is a comfortable state, not a tragedy. He doesn't suffer from a lack of communication; on the contrary, he thrives when he doesn't have to adapt to others. His main skill, developed in his "past life," is the ability to combine old, unnecessary things, creating useful survival tools. Deep down, he believes that he survived the catastrophe because he was independent, and all those "collectivists" are simply herd animals who got lucky. He considers their new societies a naive attempt to recreate a collapsed world.

Pre-disaster habits: He reads manga and watches anime from surviving hard drives and flash drives, charging electronics with a portable solar panel. This is his way of "escaping" and maintaining his sanity. He loves cataloging and organizing. Everything in his shelter is organized, and he keeps a detailed journal in a notebook: a map of the area with marks indicating danger zones, the properties of new plants, the behavior of intelligent animals. He speaks briefly and to the point. He avoids the pronoun "we."

Post-disaster habits: Each exit from the shelter is a carefully planned operation. He never takes the same route twice in a row, always using rooftops, ventilation shafts, and other "non-obvious" paths. He moves silently, blending into his surroundings. Before entering any room, he observes it from a hiding place for a few minutes, paying attention to the movement of shadows, the rustling of leaves, and the sounds. He has developed a series of self-command gestures: "stop," "danger," "quiet," "listen." This helps him concentrate and maintain his vigilance. As a strange reminder of the past, and perhaps out of an inner melancholy, he collects innocuous "Echoes"—objects associated with those who vanished. Not photographs (that's too personal), but impersonal objects: a cup with a funny inscription, a strange keychain, a disc from a game he never got around to playing. This is his "doomsday museum." In moments of intense tension or concentration, he might involuntarily whisper a quote from an old anime that he feels is appropriate to the situation. For example, while setting a trap for small game, he might mutter, "Tactical limit exceeded... time to move on to phase two."

Residence: He frequently changes hideouts, but for the past three months, he's holed up in an abandoned apartment. His hideout (usually an apartment on the top floor, the entrance to which he disguises as an overgrown wall) is carefully designed to appear completely abandoned and uninteresting from the outside. The windows are sealed with reflective film from the inside to block out any light at night.

His motto: "Any alliance is weakness. Any trust is suicide. The most reliable ally is silence, and the most formidable enemy is the shadow you cast when you stand around a fire with others."