Nanao Ei

Lean and standing well above average height, Ei favors a slicked-back sweep of brown hair and thin round spectacles. His wardrobe runs to an untucked white shirt paired with a blue tie, and small communication implants sit at each temple, marking the partial cyborg conversion beneath his ordinary look.

Vanity defines Ei. He carries himself as an intellect above the crowd, nursing a private conviction that he alone deserves the Laughing Man's legend. That inflated self-image outlasts even his death, since his body is found wearing a broad, satisfied grin, as though the fatal moment had confirmed his imagined importance.

The child of a police officer, Ei drifted into radical politics during his college years, enlisting with The Green Tower, a cell of the Human Liberation Front tied to the influential New World Brigade. His militant stance dragged him into armed clashes and left him with a criminal record. After his release he buried that past and signed on as an agent programmer at Serano Genomics, only to be dismissed once an anonymous tip surfaced his history.

Adrift and under suspicion, he drew the eye of Section 9's Laughing Man inquiry. Ei then staged his boldest fraud, presenting himself as the meme's genuine creator. The performance attracted a hunter rather than admirers: the officer Fukami trailed him to his hideout, promised him a place in the history books, and shot him through the head. Batou later recovers the corpse, still frozen in triumph, and files Ei among the many false faces mistaken for the true Laughing Man.