Note: This character is featured in a story. To avoid spoiling the whole story, some (juicy) details are excluded from the bio and some given information is based on the character's point of view and can be misleading.
Note 2: The story is a work in progress, and nothing is certain yet.

Appearance

"You should take Misha running! He just keeps getting wider and wider."
"Come on, it's muscle. I go to gym. Running is from arse. It hurts both body and soul."
Mikhail is 185 cm tall (6 ft 1 in) tall, sturdy man. His strength is mostly on his upper body and he has wide shoulders. He's not really into exercising on a regular basis, though, and he can't resist good food: he definitely has some extra weight on his belly. His skin is light and his hair is dark brown. He has a stubble, his eyebrows are thick and he has cheek dimples. He has a relaxed look in his eyes and their color is best described as light brown with a tint of warm gray. His voice is deep and calm.

Mikhail has a good posture and a tranquil, confident attitude. He stands still and often keeps his hands in his pockets. He often has a faint smile on his face and overall his facial expressions are subtle and he looks very calm. But when he is enthusiastic about something, he can't (or don't want to) hide it: he starts to move around more, he smiles widely, sometimes bites his lower lip and if he had a tail, he would wag it around wildly. Mikhail usually wears casual and loose clothes, and when he's outside, he wears a flight bomber jacket and leather boots. However, he loves to dress up and he has clothes for every occasion.

Skills

Mikhail has a remarkable memorizing skill. He thinks it's more of an annoyance to clearly remember things he wants to forget, but his ability has definitely helped him on his academic career. He learns new languages astonishingly fast and shortly can even mimic regional dialects in his speech. Besides Russian, he is fluent in English (with a Mancunian accent), Mandarin Chinese and, as the story goes by, German. He has also knowledge on at least Polish, Spanish and Shanghainese.

Personality

"It's funny. You seem so tough with your opinions and boots and metal plays through your headphones and you've done every possible crime, but in reality you listen to Phil Collins and you are such a - soppy, romantic softy. Hahaha."
Mikhail has a laid-back, humorous and extroverted nature, and he will gladly take a chance to get to know people. He is a pleasant person to talk to: he can run the conversation smoothly and effortlessly, he is polite, he asks questions and he is genuinely interested in people and their point of view. He has a desire to debate and question other people's opinions, though; some find this annoying. His honesty and outspoken points make almost everybody at some point think he is an arrogant asshole, but he doesn't do it to show dominance, but to challenge others - and also himself - to see a bigger picture and change their ways if needed. Mikhail is open-minded and he is happy if someone can make him change his views, but then again - he always tries to have the last word.

Mikhail is extremely intelligent and perceptive. He is a master in manipulating: he knows what makes people "click", and he uses the knowledge to say and do the right things to get what he wants.  People who are not as predictable as he first thought they would be, interest him the most. He craves for mental simulation, and he gets bored easily if he can't be challenged, and that's why he loves to interact with complicated people.

Nothing seems to get under Mikhail's skin. He doesn't care if random people don't like him or his friends get mad at him every now and then, and even when people think they're having a fight with Mikhail, Mikhail himself thinks it's just a "heated conversation". Still, he has a lot of sensitivity inside him. He does nothing half-heartedly, he always goes full speed, and he can't snap out of it just like that: he dedicates his whole soul for the people he loves, and since he can't forget things, every disappointment in a close relationship hurts him deeply for a long while. He is also very sensitive about troubled people's well-being: especially depressed people worry the heck out of him. When Mikhail himself is emotionally troubled, he finds it extremely hard to share with anybody, and then he acts out: he starts to look for more troubles and hurts himself eventually even more.

Backstory

"For real. I've made all the terrible choices in my life. When I made enough of them, I realised that I can't go on like that and I was good for a couple of years. And then I started it again in Britain. And just when I thought I got stability in my life for once with a person I loved, that crumbled down as well. I have no idea what I should be doing and still I always keep going at full speed. That doesn't make sense."
Mikhail was born and raised in Saint Petersburg. His parents were wealthy, and only when Mikhail was studying abroad he was broke for the first time in his life. His childhood was pretty good for the first four years of his life, but when his younger sister Daria was born, their mother got sick and the family dynamics changed completely. Mikhail was a bright kid, he learned things much faster than the rest of his classmates, and soon the school started to bore him. He was afraid of going home and he was bored at school, so he started to skip classes to wander around in the city. Once on the streets he met a kid called Nikolai, who came from a poor and abusive family. These two troubled kids became friends, and they started looking for troubles together.

Mikhail and Nikolai were horrible teenagers, they were smoking, drinking, stealing, taking drugs, anything as illegal as possible, really. Mikhail's father was a lawyer and he was able to get the boys out of the troubles many, many times. One time Mikhail actually realized what a hero his father was. This thought was enough to make Mikhail change his ways: he started to focus on school and he spent more time at home and less with Nikolai, though they still remained friends. Mikhail studied English for one year in a university, but it wasn't challenging enough for him, so he had to ask his father a favor once again to avoid conscription and go study both English and Chinese in Britain. So began his five-years academic studies in Manchester.

In Britain Mikhail started to make bad decisions once again, some of which still make him feel uneasy. And once again he came to his senses, and he met Nora, a girl of his dreams. They moved in together, and after a passionate start Mikhail refused to see the signs of a slowly dying relationship. His study year in Shanghai was probably the worst time of his life, as he desperately tried to keep his relationship somehow alive from the other side of the world. Nora finally left him some months before his graduation, and Mikhail is still trying to heal his broken heart.

One of Mikhail's professors was impressed of Mikhail's linguistic skills, and he contacted his acquaintance, who needed a translator in Düsseldorf. Mikhail took the chance and moved to Essen where his friend had an apartment empty for a year. Earlier that year Mikhail and Nikolai had made a great amount of cash with some well-timed investments with the help of their friend Semyon, so Mikhail didn't have to worry about money anymore.
In Essen Mikhail met an engineering student Karl. Soon Mikhail understood that Karl was way more troubled than he claimed to be: he had based his whole life on other's assumptions and was really close to break down completely, and Mikhail wanted to help him find his own voice.

Extra info

• Has smoked for years and thinks about quitting it, but is not serious about it.
• Mikhail is really enthusiastic about books. He buys new books frequently and every time he moves he sells all of them because he has quite a collection, but immediately after settling in he starts to gather new ones. He reads pretty much anything, but satires and sci-fi stories are the ones he enjoys the most.
• On his free time he wanders around the city, cooks, goes to gym, reads books and writes his own fictional story.
• Doesn't belong to any church and is an agnostic.
• His birthday is in February.

Relationships (storywise meaningful ones)

"Well, Karl is right. I might get him piss drunk once or twice a month and drug him once with psychedelics, but if he says I'm good company, you should listen to him."
Karl Huber - friend
Nikolai Fomichyov - best friend
Semyon Selivanov - friend
Daria Belyakova - sister

Trivia

• Mikhail was first created somewhere around 2010 for a story taking place in World War 2. I re-created him for this modern-era story in 2018.
• At first Mikhail was supposed to be the arrogant asshole other characters think he is. After I understood his character better, I could make him more approachable and complex.