Kobayashi

Tall and lean, Koba has cropped black hair, deep-set dark eyes, and piercings standing in where eyebrows belong. He wears a business suit of black and white beneath a striped grey-and-black cap, and four rings ride his left hand, among them a cross-topped band on the index finger and a star-shaped one on the ring finger.

Level-headed and driven by logic, Koba is a crafty operator who reaches for dirty tactics without a flicker of hesitation and takes life without regret. Sadism runs in him too, and he relishes the sight of a victim dying slowly under his poison. His flaw is his temper: let a plan sour or an insult land, and his composure cracks as he lashes out, and that very slip is what brings about his death.

Koba operates as a hitman paired with Higuchi on a job to take the JAA chairman's family captive, a contract likely passed down by Sei Asaki. The two get on well, swapping jokes, and he leans on his partner's strength. His signature tool is a poison gas he brews inside his own body and breathes out, odorless and colorless and agonizing, quickening the more its victims move, since a racing pulse spreads it faster, which makes sealed rooms lethal. With it his gas snares Uzuki, Rion, Nagumo, and Kindaka together with the chairman's daughter and wife, heedless of whether the hostages survive, and he manages to put Rion, Nagumo, and Kindaka down. His run ends when Sakamoto creeps up behind him and strangles the life from him. He also totes an assault rifle and throwing knives, keeps an antidote handy for his allies, and carried a bounty of 600 million.