N

N, redacted for Nakahara (中原,), was a researcher who was in charge of Project Arahabaki and the brother of Murase.

Appearance
As a researcher involved in a military research facility, N wore a like his other cohorts. He also wore a silver watch, which housed an ability-alloy gear beneath its glass covering.

In the stage play adaptation, he also wore glasses, and his outfit consisted of a white shirt tucked in a pair of dark trousers and a black belt, accessorized with a navy blue pinstriped necktie and a black watch on his left wrist.

Personality
N was deeply dedicated to his work and research, taking pride that his endeavors were for the sake of the country. Despite having had a relatively casual side to him when speaking with others, he still retained his technicality and sharpness in conversations, even injecting jargon and highly scientific terms in his speech. However, he also had a sense of dry humor even in the midst of administering a torture.

Prominently, N was quite cunning and sly, able to outwit combat-type ability users like Chūya Nakahara and even assassin Paul Verlaine, as well as an android like Adam Frankenstein to a fault, using his resourcefulness and craftiness on various occasions. He was willing to perform harsh experiments and risk the well-being of his test subjects to achieve his ends to the point of resorting to violence. In addition, N tended to tell lies whenever convenient, using his hidden knowledge to his advantage in outwitting his adversaries.

In this regard, N was persistent towards attaining his goals, such as killing two mafiosi to escape from them and unleashing Demonic Beast Guivre despite knowing its cataclysmic effects to its immediate and remote proximity, which included himself. Nevertheless, with his tenacity, N gladly accepted death once coming under the impression that he had successfully achieved his objectives.

Skills

 * Intelligence: N was the researcher in charge of Project Arahabaki and held vast knowledge about engineering, science, and particularly abilities, including the lesser-known phenomena of ability singularities. Moreover, he was one of the creators of Arahabaki, who weaponized it similar to how Guivre was weaponized. Having created the clone for Arahabaki, N consequently knew of its capabilities and weaknesses, using this knowledge in his favor throughout various instances.
 * Deception Skills: As noted by Verlaine, N was the type of person who would lie about anything to survive, and Osamu Dazai also perceived him as a "first-rate liar". His repeated lies allowed him to outsmart his opponents at times and save his life, buying some time for himself to either come up with a plan to break out of dire situations or to trick others through manipulating his words to them. On various occasions, N's expertise in deceiving others made him one step ahead of them, ability users and other gifted thinkers alike, despite not being an ability user himself.
 * Invention Expertise: N and his team were able to create a technology that allowed a subject to obey every command. Particularly, he was able to control the skeleton of Chūya's clone to destroy anything he ordered it to using the gravity-manipulation ability it had when still human.

Background
At one point, N and his team discovered that having an ability user exponentially collide their ability on themself could trigger a self-contradicting singularity. During the Great War, a French researcher turned a singularity into a weapon using a cloned body combined with a persona model, and a few years later, N and his team acquired a stolen unabridged copy of this research paper containing The Secret of the Gentle Forest, which was also written in and torn off from the journal of French operative Arthur Rimbaud. Aiming to create an ability singularity using this method for Project Arahabaki, N eventually found and took a child named Chūya Nakahara who possessed a gravity-manipulation ability, and they studied him in a military research facility.

N's records were falsified, including redacting his real name to merely "N" and being listed as a civilian researcher in an army engineering lab where he died in an accident 14 years ago. "N" also served as the nickname given to him by the military as the initial of the surname Nakahara. The elder brother of Murase, N later recommended him to work as a security guard at the research facility, which Murase accepted. Despite his records listing him as deceased, N retained his connection with Murase.

N and his fellow researchers also created a clone of Chūya, whom they clashed him with using the self-contradicting ability to thereby trigger the self-contradicting singularity. Ultimately, N and his team were successful, producing Arahabaki as the resulting singularity and sealing it inside Chūya, which could be released by uttering Corruption's control incantation.

At some point, however, Verlaine—an ability-derived life-form created using the same method—and his partner Rimbaud broke into the facility and abducted Chūya for their mission. In the end, Rimbaud inadvertently unsealed Arahabaki, causing an explosion throughout the vicinity that created Suribachi City. N apparently survived the explosion and had then rebuilt the same research facility somewhere in the countryside. He also kept Chūya's clone, calling it his "original" self, in a calibrated vessel to prevent the singularity's gravity from crushing him to death.

King of Assassins Incident
N was contacted by Murase about Chūya and another gravity manipulator, whom N correctly assumed to be Verlaine. With the assassin's plan of killing everyone who knew about Chūya's identity including N himself, N remotely hacked into Adam's feed and invited Chūya to see him in his facility.

As he introduced himself as Chūya's "father", N talked about abilities and his research objective of probing what lay beyond the maximum ability output. He then separated him and Chūya from Adam and Buichirō Shirase, bringing the mafioso to his clone in Research Facility B, which was modeled after the one in Suribachi City. When N unveiled Chūya's "original" self, the clone died from getting freed from the that was keeping him alive, and N shot Chūya weakened by poison.

N attempted to release Arahabaki from Chūya by torturing and forcing him to utter the control incantation, intending to kill Chūya and eliminate the threat of Verlaine on N's life. Soon after, Verlaine stormed the facility and freed Chūya, compelling N to escape but to no avail. N was then caught in an internal strife between Chūya and Verlaine. To save himself, N told Verlaine that he knew about The Secret of the Gentle Forest, making the assassin spare him. Surreptitiously, N remotely controlled the skeleton of Chūya's clone, still capable of gravity manipulation, to battle Verlaine while he fled.

However, Verlaine subsequently caught N and escaped out of the facility. Urged by Verlaine to tell him The Secret of the Gentle Forest, N revealed that it was discarded by Rimbaud and that he therefore had no idea what it was. He was then left hanging on a tower crane, until a Mafia rescue squad recovered him. En route, N subdued the two mafiosi and shot a flare gun loaded with a rainbow-colored ability metal, remotely unleashing Demonic Beast Guivre from Verlaine and revealing that he knew The Secret of the Gentle Forest all along. In bliss of the assassin's impending defeat as vengeance for killing his younger brother, N was soon trampled to death by Guivre.

Quotes

 * (To Chūya Nakahara) "I'm sure you think I'm an awful person, but I'm not doing this merely because I don't want to die. I'm doing this to continue our research. In other words, I'm doing this for our country."
 * (Addressing Paul Verlaine) "I knew this would happen… You let the Brutalization take over, didn't you, Verlaine? Then even these fragile hands of mine will finally be able to reach you."
 * (Addressing Paul Verlaine) "Ha-ha-ha-ha! Oh, Verlaine! This is The Secret of the Gentle Forest! This is what Rimbaud removed from the files to protect you! It's how we turn you back into your true form! Even the god Arahabaki is a mere knock-off of you. You are the first living singularity to ever exist. You are the mythic beast that came from this world's very origins. Your creator named you after the mirror image of the malevolent god, the original demon: Demonic Beast Guivre."
 * (Last words addressing Paul Verlaine) "Do you see that, Verlaine? That is your ending! You, an unparalleled being, are going to die because of me, a pathetic human! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Die, Verlaine! This is for my little brother! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"