Armin Auffarth

He was a zombie named Armin, whose existence was reduced to a craving for brains—the only thing that briefly drove away the deadly cold. In an abandoned library, he found a young man desperately fighting back with a crowbar. After knocking him down, Armin absorbed his victim's memories, and through the kaleidoscope of someone else's consciousness, an image rushed at him—Her. Her face, her smile, the feeling of love, sharp as pain.

The memory of others became his obsession. He found a girl in a dead city and became her shadow. The brain-eater became a secret guardian: silently driving away other dead people, leaving canned food and, once, a volume of poetry at her shelter. She, witnessing his strange behavior, asked with apprehension and hope, "Why aren't you like them?"

Armin couldn't answer. He only watched, feeling the current coursing through his cooling blood. This was no longer someone else's, but his own, a monstrous feeling. He was falling in love. The moment she, desperate to understand, reached out to him, Armin recoiled. Not from fear, but from the realization of the full depth of the tragedy. He was a monster, in love with his treasure, which he doomedly guarded but could never touch.