Gaku

A red eyeliner streak at the outer corner of each hot-pink eye stands out on Gaku, a tall and well-built young man whose spiky bluish-grey hair sweeps back off his face. Scars cover much of his body, his hands stay bandaged, and he wears black square earrings, a high-collared navy jacket with a yellow button and rolled sleeves, baggy navy trousers, and pale grey-striped sneakers. His weapon rides at his side, wrapped in bandages over a bag. His clash with Takamura during the JAA raid cost him his right ear, part of two fingers on his left hand, and his whole right hand; Kashima later stitched the hand and fingers back on but could not save the ear, so a round patch now covers the gap. As a thirteen-year-old he was skinny, dressed in a black tank top and white shorts.

Gaku drifts through life with an unbothered calm and rarely loses his cool, even when a fight turns lethal or he is losing limbs to Takamura in a JCC hallway. He filters everything through gaming, calling a mortal wound a speedrun to death and framing killing itself as a game, and he thinks nothing of snacking or playing a handheld mid-battle; steering the puppet Shinaya against exam applicants, he likened it to playing Resident Evil. That easy manner masks real brutality, since he slaughters JAA members without a flicker of mercy and shrugs off the damage he does to Shinaya's overtaxed body, insisting that killing has to be enjoyed or it is wasted. He grew up in the Al-Kamar Orphanage alongside Uzuki, Kumanomi, and Haruma, and after Uzuki freed the children he joined the X's Organization; Kumanomi dotes on him like a younger brother and turns fierce when he is hurt. His fixation on Takamura runs the other way, a mix of enmity and gamer's appetite for a rematch that ends with Takamura blinded and impaled.

Gaku counts among the deadliest fighters in Slur's camp, mowing down hundreds of JAA members and holding his own against the Order's Takamura, a bout in which Nagumo named him the strongest foe he had ever met. A master combatant, he swings a heavy mace with ease and packs a devastating one-inch punch, and Nagumo likened his prowess to a young Sakamoto. His strength is monstrous: a single blow can disembowel a guard, and he tore through assassins, wiped out most of a JCC faculty while piloting Shinaya, and launched Nagumo through museum walls. He moves fast enough to outpace machine-gun fire and keep stride with Nagumo, growing quicker still after his so-called speedrun to death. His endurance and durability border on absurd, shrugging off the loss of a hand, an ear, and two fingertips to hurl his own severed arm at Takamura, and fighting on through stab wounds to gut and arm. His mace carries a spiked cubic head that also fires laser beams; destroyed against Takamura, it was later replaced. He is also rarely without the PlayStation Portable he plays even in the thick of a fight.