My character, Kage is the ebodiment of despair, He thinks the world and life itself is meaningless and is a bit of a manipulative prick.
He does have a reason to be this way (His dad was a serial killer, His parent were shot by the police, He was in a toxic, emotionally abusive relationship, he got thrown in a battle royale type game) he does learn to cope throughout the story but I don't want him to be seen as edgy or emo due to his brooding nature
In this instance a would probably crate a character who likes nature or some other kind of "happy place". I see you already have a flower listed in his character overview and you could use this as his "happy place", but also I see he's allergic to pollen so maybe something else. How I would probably go about this is giving him solo moments in the story where he's sitting in a field, letting bugs land on his finger, and him quietly smiling to himself. While he's around other people however, you could write him to the side and have him observing the bugs around him and have him open up more about his character this way. I don't know how your world works, so this might not work for you, but this is just what I would do and something for you to think about.
Well, I did make it him like small animals, I don't see him sitting in a field but I can see him letting bugs land on his finger, Anyway thanks for your advice