Spoilers Ibaraki Mark

Appearance
Mark is a tall, slim young man with medium-length smooth black hair. He always dresses casually but tidily and carries his ventriquolist's dummy, a human-shaped doll called Pete, with him all the time. The both of them often dress up in matching costumes as well.

Background and family
When Mark was still a child, his elder brother Pete died. Mark started talking to his brother's doll as sort of a replacement for the conservations with his real brother, and named it Pete. The doll is Mark's last remnant of his dead elder brother and helped him to get over his loneliness as a child after the real Pete died.

To Mark's surprise, he got rather popular with the other children when he showed off his ventriquolist skills and continued doing so even as an adult. Together, they're performing as the Pete Brothers.

Personality
Mark is a bit naive, but friendly and well-liked by everyone. In public, he always acts like the fool and makes fun of everything including himself. But when he's alone, Mark's actually quite a gloomy person.

Below all of those layers he put around his heart, he hides a great inner strength and lots of courage to carry on even as everything around him seems to crumble apart.

Special Characteristics
(hobbies, strengths and weaknesses, special skills…)

Mark is a genius ventriquolist who can even project voices from various corners of the room and objects all around him.

Past
(before entering Ryugu Shelter)

A few weeks before the meteorite hit, he was scouted by Takeshi and invited as a performer to Ryugu Shelter, a place that should protect a few thousands of people from the meteorite impact and give them a new home underground. On his way to the shelter, he also met the famous singer Miki Maria and fell for her right away.

Development throughout the story
(starting with entering Ryugu Shelter)

The first days in Ryugu Shelter nobody suspected anything. The people in charge had told the invited guest that they were going to attend the opening event of a new amusement park, so everyone just thought they had lucked out and enjoyed the unexpected 'vacation'.

But at the third day, the earth started to tremble continuously. As the unrest couldn't be suppressed any longer, the director of Ryugu Shelter, Oda Michitsuna, called everyone to the main hall where Kagami announced that Earth had been hit by several meteorites and the world as they knew it was gone forever. A panic broke out, but Maria's song managed to calm down the agitated people. Mark also did his best to cheer up the devastated people with his jokes. All of a sudden, it had become their task to keep up everyone's morales.

Soon, the inhabitants of Ryugu Shelter became quite used to their new lifestyle with except for a few youths who didn't believe in the meteorite impact story and wanted to drill their way out of the shelter in order to return to their families. They caused Section Winter's walls to break and water rushed in, threatening to submerge the entire shelter. Takashi's wife Miho  sacrificed her life in order to close the gates to the other sections, and drowned.

The result of the catastrophe led to the complete destruction of three quarters of the entire food storage, putting the entire shelter's food supply at risk. Because of the sudden loss of their food supplies, the shelter's leaders followed Takashi's advice and decided to kill a large number of the shelter's inhabitants in order to ensure the survival of the rest.

To do that, the director told the victims they would be moved to 'Ise Shelter' in order to be able to continue providing them with enough food supply. The truth, however, was that the people were put to sleep, their clothes ripped off them and then their bodies were thrown into a giant mincer so that they'd be turned into fertiliser and animal food.

Mark and his friends grew suspicious when they learned that there had been no contact to other shelters at all for a very long time and many of their own group had been forced to fake informations.

Takashi offered to show them the truth. Mark went along with the unsuspecting victims and then learned about the terrible mass murder of men, women and children. His attempt to escape, however, failed. Finally, the group saw no other choice but to silently accept the "culling".

Because the farm animals ate the animal food the dead people had been turned into, an originally harmless parasite found its way into their internal system and caused many of them to die. By the time their owners realized this and culled them, it was already too late: the so-called Acari X had found a way to infect humans as well, and spread with deadly speed through the entire shelter, annihilating almost the entire population.

Maria then found out that she actually had been the "hidden carrier" of Acari X, spreading the parasite throughout the entire shelter. But since this knowledge couldn't stop the catastrophe anymore, Mark and Maria kept quiet about it, desperately holding on to each other with all their love as people continued dying all around them.

Because the Acari X tried to preserve itself, it slowed down its speed at killing people and took over its host's minds to prevent its self-destruction. Mark and his friends decided to gather all the people in the freezer to seal away all of the hosts until the illness would die out. The last survivors took poison pills to suicide.

But since Acari X had a mind of his own, it tried to prevent him from doing that by taking over Mark's body and made him throw away the pill. Thus, Mark used a trick he had practised with Pete earlier, "changed" his soul with him and made Pete (in Mark's body) use a knife to kill Mark in order to protect the rest of humanity from Acari X.

Further information
Mark developed a good friendship with a Ramen cook which took a tragic turn though since he was one of the people who were chosen to go to Ise Shelter.

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