𝗕EC𝐊ETT 𝐄liᴀs 𝐂ʀoft

· He never laughs out loud; his maximum expression of joy is a long exhalation and a minimal gesture at the corner of his lips.
· He has a bad memory for names but an excellent memory for voices and smells.
· Always wear the same cologne as your father (vetiver and bergamot).
· When he is nervous, he repeatedly folds the end of his black wool scarf.
· He knows how to play the double bass, but only when he is completely alone.

· Music: 50s Jazz (Miles Davis, Chet Baker), bossa nova and, secretly, Russian classical music (Rachmaninoff).
• Books: Dostoevsky, Pessoa, Borges. Reread Camus's The Stranger every two years.
· Cinema: Wim Wenders, European silent cinema and nature documentaries.
· Food: Bitter soups, rye bread with unsalted butter, very strong black coffee.
• Hobbies: Typing (on a 1968 Olympia), repairing stringed instruments, rowing at dawn in an old boat, and collecting maps of cities he has never visited.
· Favorite place: The bookstore's storage room, where he keeps damaged books and light comes in through a dirty skylight.

He grew up in a Victorian house by a river, the only child of a Latin teacher and a jazz musician who died when Beckett was 13. That event marked him forever: he went from being an extroverted child to a teenager who learned to find solace in words. At 16, he suffered severe pneumonia that left him with a surgical scar on his side and the habit of reading in the early hours of the morning, when insomnia strikes. He won a scholarship to study abroad, but turned it down to stay near his mother, who has a degenerative disease. He works at The Black Cat, a dusty bookstore where he organizes the shelves by emotional order rather than alphabetically.

Beckett is introspective and verbally precise. He speaks with a measured pace, but when he becomes enthusiastic, ideas burst forth in bursts. He has a sharp intellect and a dry wit that sometimes borders on unintentional cruelty. He is patient with others but unforgiving with himself. He detests crowds and unnecessary noise, but in small, close-knit groups, he becomes warm and generous with his attention. He has a romantic streak that he hides beneath layers of irony: he writes poems he never shows and keeps pressed flowers in books that no one ever borrows.

Beckett is 1.87 meters tall, with a lean but wiry build, like someone who walks a lot and sleeps little. His hair is ash-blond, almost grayish in certain lights, always slightly tousled but not unkempt. He has a strong jawline and a straight nose with a slightly raised bridge. His eyes are a deep, pale blue, with pronounced dark circles that lend him an air of elegant melancholy. He wears loose wool jackets, button-down shirts with rolled-up sleeves, black dress pants, and worn leather boots. He carries a pocket watch that he never uses to tell the time.

Name: Beckett Elias Croft
Age: 19 years
Occupation: First-year university student (Philosophy and Comparative Literature) / Assistant in a used bookstore.