Nine

NINE／九重新 ナイン / 九重 新（ここのえ あらた）

Gender:Male

The protagonist of this work. A highly intelligent and always calm and collected male high school student. Seventeen years old. He wears dark navy-colored self-framed glasses. He conspires with Twelve at the nuclear fuel reprocessing facility in Aomori to steal a small atomic bomb secretly developed by the Japanese government. Six months later, he begins living in Tokyo as a high school student. In his childhood, he was housed in a facility that gathered talented orphans for the Athena Project, but he escaped from there with Twelve eight years ago, leading to the present. He plants bombs in buildings related to the New Peace Academy members, but after placing a bomb in the subway, he retrieves it himself due to Hive's intervention. Later, to prevent a false crime notice from the fake Sphinx prepared by Hive, he goes to Haneda Airport with Twelve and Lisa. (Lisa heads to Haneda separately from Nine and Twelve.) At Haneda Airport, Nine engages in a chess match using the airport with Hive to find the location of the bomb, acting separately from Twelve. He tells Twelve, who says he is going to rescue Lisa, who was captured by Hive, "Please don't go," but is betrayed by Twelve and goes alone to retrieve the final bomb at the school. Later, he turns himself in to the Metropolitan Police Department and demands a press conference. However, the press conference cannot be held due to Hive's interference, so instead, he broadcasts a pre-recorded video, notifying the Japanese public that the stolen small atomic bomb will explode in two hours. At the end of the video, he removes his mask and reveals his face. The bomb is suspended by a balloon, rising to the stratosphere and finally exploding, generating a massive electromagnetic pulse and aurora. His true purpose was to create a situation that could not be suppressed by anyone by causing a terrorist incident and making the situation significant. Another purpose was to find someone who would uncover this and come to capture him. He envisioned Shibazaki as the person to fulfill that role. Therefore, he tells Shibazaki, who came to arrest him, "You were Oedipus yourself." When Lisa asked him, "What song are you always listening to?" he replied, "It's a song from a cold country (Iceland)." When the U.S. military arrived, he threatened to "activate the detonator set at the nuclear power plant and cause an explosion," but immediately after, Twelve was shot dead, causing him to become enraged and attempt to press the detonation switch. Stopped by Shibazaki, he does not activate the detonator and instead entrusts it to Shibazaki, leaving him with the words, "Remember us, remember that we lived," before experiencing tinnitus, collapsing on the spot, and dying.