Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death,

The protagonist’s full name, Philip Arminius Khoo-Hutton, is only spoken once in public in the novel. That this name is used so infrequently illustrates The Complexity of Identity for Philip. His full name reflects his multiracial heritage, enjoining his British and Chinese identities in a single hyphenated name as he physically embodies the two cultures. For most of his life, Philip is defined by the tension in these separate identities. He feels alienated from his mother, whose death has separated him from any connection to his Chinese heritage, and he feels separate from his family, who regard him as a distant, unemotional outsider.

Philip exists at the intersection of these competing identities, an issue he begins to navigate more carefully once he meets Endo. Endo helps Philip to understand himself in a grander scope, as part of a fatally paired duo who have crossed countries and lives to find one another. He is bound to Endo across many lives, a relationship that helps to put his immediate alienation into a new perspective. Philip believes that his identity, like his relationship with Endo, is part of an ongoing drive toward resolution, not something he can fix easily.