Hideyoshi Nagachika

Hide is a young man of ordinary height with short, tousled dirty-blond hair, dark at the roots, and olive-colored eyes. In his college days he favored loud outfits, a yellow varsity jacket over green shorts, with headphones slung around his neck reflecting his love of music. Once the Aogiri chapter passes he grows his hair out, trades the headphones for a red-and-white cap, and takes to a light-blue jacket over a red-collared shirt as a working uniform.

His later look is defined by grievous injury. Behind a scarf that conceals the lower half of his face lies extensive scarring running from above his upper lip down to his left collarbone, with flesh torn away to bare his teeth, a gap opened in his left cheek, and a vocal prosthesis set into his throat. Years afterward the skin of his neck heals to a normal tone, and he swaps the scarf for a mask that only covers his mouth. In his Scarecrow guise he wears traditional Japanese robes, a straw hat, and sandals, folding the garment right over left in the manner reserved for the dead, topped by a cloth mask painted with a simple henohenomoheji face.

Most of the time Hide is easygoing and warm, a friendly presence whose good cheer grated on people like Nishiki. Beneath the sociability he seems genuinely close to few besides Kaneki. He is strikingly observant, piecing together truths about people almost like a detective, throwing himself into whatever captures his interest until something new takes its place. He even claims a hobby of planting tracking devices on suspicious strangers and tipping off the authorities, though that story mostly disguises his real aim of hunting for clues to Kaneki's whereabouts. Once he sets a goal he holds to it stubbornly, tending to swallow his own worries rather than burden those around him, and like his best friend he touches his face when he is nervous or bending the truth.

Hide and Kaneki have been inseparable since childhood, both of them orphans, and they enter Kamii University together, where Hide studies English within the international-studies department. He stays close after the accident that turns Kaneki into a half-ghoul, and during a clash with Nishiki Nishio he is beaten badly, a crisis that first triggers Kaneki's kagune. Later he takes a part-time job at the CCG, rising to investigation assistant alongside Koutarou Amon and Akira Mado, all while quietly chasing traces of his changed friend. Unknown to most, he was the anonymous tipster who exposed the Aogiri hideout in the 11th Ward, having tracked Yamori there by chance.

His defining moment comes during the Owl Suppression Operation. Finding a gravely wounded Kaneki in the sewers, Hide reveals that he has long known his friend is a ghoul and, rather than run, offers his own flesh so the starving Kaneki can survive and push on toward the dangerous investigator waiting ahead. When Kaneki comes to, Hide is gone and the taste of blood lingers in his mouth. He has not truly vanished, though. Taking up the identity of Scarecrow, a low-rated ghoul in burial robes and a painted mask, he rescues Amon from Aogiri, drifts through the auction and the Rushima operation, and even appears in Kaneki's near-death visions to plead with him to keep living.

By the Dragon arc Hide steps back into the open. Fitted with a speaking device built by Kouitsu Chigyou to replace his ruined voice, he reunites with Amon and Akira and, asked why he would risk everything for Kaneki, answers plainly that he loves him. He brokers cooperation between the CCG and Goat, then meets Kaneki again and finally lets him see the scarred face hidden beneath the scarf. In the years after the conflict he works with the Tokyo Security Committee, traveling to spread word of peace, and stays Kaneki's friend for the rest of his life. The final chapter reveals that Hide was himself the son of a fallen investigator before being adopted and crossing paths with Kaneki.