Tena Sorimura

Tena Sorimura (雪車村 天鵶 Sorimura Tena), nicknamed the Phantom Solitaire (怪人 ソリティア Kaijin Soritia) by Tsubaki Iwanome, is one of several troublemakers in Shinjuku who fall under the jurisdiction of Materials Compiling Group No.3.

The spirit of a girl who uses a wheelchair currently haunts him. The girl appears to be worried about the path that Sorimura is traveling down.

Appearance
Sorimura has dark, wavy hair and long bangs, a pencil mustache, and dark circles underneath his eyes. While in the police's custody, his arms are restrained with a white straitjacket worn over a prisoner's uniform; somehow, he manages to free himself from this straitjacket when he escapes.

Outside of prison, Sorimura is often seen wearing a shoulder cape over a business suit and keeps his hair slicked back so his eyes are visible. He occasionally dons disguises for stealth purposes.

Personality
Whimsical and waggish, Sorimura is a showman who auditions on Shinjuku's stage for a hypothetical supernatural audience whose ranks he desperately wants to join. The ordinary people tangibly bothered by his prestidigitation and legerdemain are props first and a tangential audience second, which Sorimura targets when he needs to recruit the masses for crowdsourced information. Sorimura's only criteria for the occult is that it be real; he seeks not only concrete evidence of real magic but of ghosts, UFOs, spirits, mythological creatures, and all other phenomena under the occult umbrella. Anything.

Sorimura's panache hardly dims outside the limelight such that one cannot readily tell what degree of it is natural or affected; it may simply be that Sorimura is naturally performative. Indeed, he is theatrical: he likes to don a nefarious grin when he has the dramatic upper hand; he believes in having a signature sign-off; and he twirls and bows and skips through life while declaring life is enjoyable when one enjoys waste.

Most of the time, Sorimura is naturally garrulous, including in dangerous situations. When he is not, he might be deliberately garrulous as a distraction tactic, such as when he rhapsodizes on the aforementioned virtues of wastefulness in life to Fire-breathing Bug. That he admits he was using wordplay to distract Bug perhaps casts doubt on whether his claims about waste in life were sincere.

If the time Sorimura spent wallowing in prison was a waste, he has wasted little of his time as a fugitive. He had fallen into despair and doubted magic's existence only after a three-year spirited criminal campaign failed to receive a supernatural response. but a single promising sighting is all it takes for his tenacity to return twofold. He allies with erstwhile enemies and calls on existing allies; he hijacks Tokyo's airwaves to expose a mafia-concealed symbol and propose police corruption; he throws himself into the sight of snipers, police, and preternaturally dangerous beings at the merest hint of a supernatural lead.

As Fire-breathing Bug opines, Sorimura is a moth drawn to a flame. Sorimura frequently has to bluff his way through what situations unfold due to his impulsiveness, which he does with exaggerated confidence. This gusto backfires on him in more than one instance of him incorrectly guessing someone's identity, but Sorimura, once burned, is never twice shy. He will even bolster his bluff with lies rather than retract it, a habit perhaps symptomatic of his inability to escape a metaphorical flame.

Background
Three years before the start of the series, Sorimura commits his first crime: he steals a painting from a certain museum. He leaves it on the doorstep of Shinjuku's Studio Alta, placing it in an air-conditioned, curtained case to keep it undamaged. In his public statement, he claims his motive for the theft was "to give the Youtubers of Shinjuku something to talk about."

For his second crime, Sorimura manages to camouflage the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building's outer walls to match the sky and cityscape—an optical illusion that convinces many onlookers that the buildings have vanished overnight. His self-professed motive: "I wanted to prove that the Tokyo sky is much larger than we give it credit for."

Among the other crimes Sorimura commits in this three-year period are the "jumbo jet teleport," the "case of the Shinjuku Imperial Garden Dream Fireworks," and the kidnapping of Prime Minister Yumenosuke and every opposing party leader. The political kidnappings, which took place in one day, resulted in Sorimura's name becoming known worldwide.

Despite his skyrocketing infamy, Tena turns himself into Shinjuku police at some point before the reincarnation of the Corpse God on account of being unable to take the "lackluster response" to his crimes. When Comps-3 manager Tsubaki Iwanome points out that Tena is the subject of global discussion, Tena clarifies that he is disappointed by the radio silence from the "real deal."

According to Sorimura, he performs tricks and sleight of hand to attract the attention of those who are 'real' magicians and are genuinely supernatural, whom he regards as the 'key' to becoming a real magician in his own right. Moreover, he wants to prove to the world that real magic exists. He embraces Iwanome's accusation of him carrying out a "middle-school fantasy" rather than deny it. Iwanome has him arrested on the spot. Sorimura is incarcerated in a straitjacket.

Iwanome will later remark that Sorimura "clearly wanted to be arrested" and made a show of resistance for the sake of a show. By this time, Iwanome has already dubbed Sorimura 'Phantom Solitaire'; it sounds similar to Sorimura's real name.

Prison Breakout
After Youtoukorou suffers a visit from Lemmings, Sorimura is paid a visit by Iwanome and Kōzaburō Arase, the former of whom fills Sorimura in on the skeletons sighted at the Shakuzawa Building fire. He suggests that the arsonist could have been Fire-breathing Bug since Bug always poses as an insider at his target locations and spends a long time methodically planting gunpowder and detonators around the area. However, Bug must excel at disguises and have the means to come and go as he pleases. In other words, he would need to be just like Sorimura.

Sorimura accuses Iwanome of testing him by withholding information, correctly guessing that the true culprit behind the incident is "The Know"—an average criminal posing as the real Fire-breathing Bug. He adds that Iwanome had omitted the second half of Fire-breathing Bug's signature phrase earlier because it is kept secret from the media; in a similar vein, Iwanome had selectively mentioned arson sites that are known to the media, thereby omitting classified ones. Iwanome asks how Sorimura knows so much, but Sorimura refuses to 'spoil the fun.'

The Bureau calls Iwanome's phone; Iwanome tells Arase and Sorimura that Fire-breathing Bug attacked a patrol car transporting a pyromaniac. Sorimura does not care about Bug "feeding on its impostor" or anything else except those photographed skeletons. The lights switch off on cue a minute later, allowing Sorimura to escape his straitjacket and Tokyo Penitentiary around 5:30 PM. He immediately begins plotting his comeback tour.

By eventide, Sorimura has paid The Grocer ¥30,000,000 to "buy out" the broadcasting rights for Tokyo at minimum or otherwise hijack the radio waves for all channels. He dons a business suit and shoulder cape for the live broadcast that night and announces that "Phantom Solitaire" will have a comeback performance in one week. The one week is a generous grace period with which the police can and should prepare.

Post-broadcast, Sorimura admits to a present Fire-breathing Bug that he had not expected Bug to answer his summons so readily. After Bug proves that they do recognize Sorimura's ringtone, they disparage Sorimura for wasting his life and demand he explains how he found out about 'it' and 'the computer.' Sorimura tosses a playing card and is unsurprised when it bursts into flame. He asks if Bug intends to burn him as they had burned their pathetic impostor. Bug answers with fire. The Bug and the Moth's ensuing duel mainly consists of the former playing offense and the latter playing defense via magic tricks, athletic ability, and a spirited separate defense of waste as a good thing.

Sorimura eventually laments that Bug is neither magic nor supernatural like that manifested in the Shakuzawa fire. He wonders whether Bug will deem the supernatural phenomena another bug to incinerate. Bug asks what Sorimura shall do if they deem it as such; Sorimura answers that he will only decide when the two arrive.

The next day, Sorimura spends some time in Shinjuku's VR Zone, exits the building satisfied, and is immediately recognized by people outside. After posing for several cellphone photos, he says he must resume working on the program for his show in six days and that he looks forward to the police's moves in the meantime—privately hopeful that their actions might "show [him] the way to an illusion." Two patrolmen promptly recognize him and give chase.

At a later point, Sorimura arrives at a building in which the Bug—its figure larger and thus different from when Sorimura last met with it—is busy setting ablaze in addition to several people affiliated with the Yougangami. One of those people was a man who took a small scroll of parchment from a fireproofed safe. Sorimura peeks out behind tall stacks of bills in the saferoom and twirls over to pick up the scroll—which he realizes is not made of parchment, but potentially human skin—and then dives through a closed window to make his escape.

Once Sorimura reaches a rooftop some distance away, he holds the unfurled roll up to the moonlight. He decides the strange symbol written upon it will be the material for his comeback performance.

Comeback Performance
Sorimura returns to Tokyo Penitentiary in the guise of a security guard and opens the door to the younger Gator Sister's rooms for distraction purposes on his way to The Grocer's cell. He says he will buy any information Grocer has on the strange mark, babbling trivia about his playing cards and paper cuts in proffered exchange, but the Grocer rejects both as worthless. Still, the Grocer is willing to disclose that the mark is a simplified version of a more complex symbol and that one of its lines represents a sword.

The Grocer says further information will cost three trillion yen, a price he has calculated based on the fact he knows Sorimura could earn that much in his lifetime and on his reasoning that the symbol is worth half of Sorimura's life: he believes the information on the symbol will change Sorimura's destiny—though he admits it could also be a 'toxin' which destroys his life.

Sorimura decides to put the deal on hold in favor of arriving at the answers he seeks by his methods; however, not eschewing Grocer's help entirely, he proceeds to ask how much it would cost him to fly a dirigible fleet over Shinjuku next week. The Grocer warns him to be careful, insisting he was serious about calling the knowledge a potential toxin.

On the day of Sorimura's comeback performance, a fleet of airships saturates Tokyo's airspace. The strange symbol is painted on the sides of each dirigible, albeit with an additional horizontal line crossed through its center—a deliberate choice on Sorimura's part. He reads a magazine for a little while on top of one of the airships until, fifty-eight minutes after the dirigibles go up, a sniper takes aim and shoots—only, the bullet hits a dummy in Sorimura's place.

Sorimura is quick to film another live broadcast somewhere else, where he shares footage of the shot dummy and suggests a secret organization "capable of infiltrating a hit on [him]" has infiltrated the police. Pointing out that the organization tried to silence him the moment the symbol was made public, he offers a 300 million yen prize to anyone who can give him information on the organization affiliated with the symbol before signing off.

Later, Sorimura phones someone he calls "Granny" for information on police movement while walking in Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. "Granny", says multiple people have tried hacking into the police bureau following his stunt, with one hacker—Takumi Kuruya, affiliated with a new fortuneteller in Shinjuku—appearing to have a clear objective in mind. Sorimura decides to have his fortune read.

Invisible Hands Incident
The next day, Sorimura disguises himself as "Shouta Yamanoura"—a real citizen with nothing to do with Solitaire—using Hollywood stage makeup and waiting in line to read his fortune. Ahead of him are Mikoto Saimyouji and a pair of teenage girls. Saimyouji's glowing praise of the fortuneteller as the "real deal" makes Sorimura all the more excited to meet him.

During his fortune reading, Corpse God—in Polka Shinoyama's body—warns him he is on a sinking vessel. This is an allusion to the still-secret accounting fraud at Yamanoura's company, hot reading work which Sorimura assumes is Takumi's doing. While he is majorly disappointed at the thought the fortuneteller might be ordinary after all, he asks regardless if the Corpse God has any information on the symbol "that Solitaire guy" was talking about. The Corpse God says his eyesight does not extend 'that far'—but he can tell there is something off about the symbol and declares he will borrow power to shed light on what the symbol does not need.

The pencil on the table autonomously begins drawing something on a piece of paper. Sorimura is initially more fascinated by the pencil than any of the 'divinations'. Still, his eyes widen at the sight of the pen drawing the original simplified symbol, which Corpse God declares has no horizontal line. Sorimura's heart-rate skyrockets as he wonders whether a mysterious organization would 'so readily' disclose this information and whether he is being tested.

Sorimura stands to leave once he has calmed down, but the Corpse God stops him to ask whether he remembers a girl with braided hair sitting in a wheelchair. However, the Corpse God cannot tell what the girl is saying; she seems to be plainly worried about the path 'Yamanoura' is taking. Sorimura exits into the corridor, sure that the Corpse God is no fraud, as the girl is tied to his personal past, and he walks away all the more curious about the fortuneteller's knowledge.

Sorimura finds the two high school girls about to be caught in the rain outside the building. The brunette offers her friend her umbrella while she puts on her raincoat, upon the back of which is the phrase, "Watch out for fires." Sorimura leaves the premises thus aware that Fire-breathing Bug has 'zeroed in' on the place as well.

At 3:00 AM, Sorimura arrives on the rooftop of the building housing the fortunetelling shop and attempts to open the door to the stairway. Xiaoyu Lei—by all appearances, a child—intercepts him by throwing three kunai his way, all of which Sorimura blocks with his playing cards. Sorimura asks "Corpse God—or should I say, Polka Shinoyama-kun" what organization he is with and what meaning the symbol, but is thoroughly taken aback when Xiaoyu coldly demands he not confuse him for 'that weakling.'

Though at a loss as to who the 'kiddo' is, Sorimura tries to deceive Xiaoyu by acting as if he is still on top of the situation. Xiaoyu, retorting that he is nineteen, slashes three more blades at Sorimura's throat in the blink of an eye. Sorimura dodges away unscathed, but is flabbergasted when Xiaoyu's fingers extend into sharp binding cords, which he lashes in Sorimura's direction

After Sorimura continues to dodge his attacks, Xiaoyu stops and asks him whether he is looking for someone named Hosorogi. Although Sorimura does not recognize the name, he bluffs that he owes Hosorogi a debt; Xiaoyu asks why a wanted criminal would owe a debt to a police inspector and then muses whether Sorimura orchestrated the sniper shooting. Sorimura insists that was someone else's doing. Bemused, Xiaoyu shifts into a fighting stance again and charges forward despite Sorimura's warning that he will be in for a 'shock'; the next moment, Lemmings drops between the two interlocutors.

Xiaoyu instantly retreats at the sight of Lemmings, and Sorimura—who has heard of Lemmings in more vague terms—pretends he intended Lemmings to be the 'shock' from the start. Lemmings look at him, and he freezes, allowing Xiaoyu to throw more kunai at Lemmings' back. Lemmings lets the blades make contact, but shrugs them off easily; he lets Xiaoyu bind him with his electric cords and breaks through them.

As Lemmings advances towards Sorimura and Sorimura boggles at how Lemmings is still walking, Xiaoyu realizes Lemmings and Sorimura were not in cahoots after all. Angered, he prepares to attack both of them—but the hot, humid air abruptly turns cold, and all three cautiously look around.

Sorimura attributes the phenomenon to a 'bad feeling' and tosses a card at Lemmings while Lemmings is distracted, only for the card to crumple midair. Both Lemmings and Xiaoyu deny having anything to do with it. Lemmings advance toward Sorimura only for invisible forces to grab at him, ripping tears in his clothing when he tears himself free. Similar invisible forces act upon Sorimura, though he notices that Xiaoyu is unaffected.

Deciding it is time to make a getaway, Sorimura unleashes a considerable quantity of smoke and balloons, clinging onto a hot-air balloon with no basket (an idea from the magazine he read on the airship) so that he too may soar to freedom. As he rises into the clear night sky, a writhing mass of gigantic black hands chases after him from the rooftop—a sight which to him is one of hope.

While fleeing from the arms (by bouncing off his own balloons), he wonders if the arms are the same as the bones in the Shakuzawa fire and swears to "get to the bottom of this" and meet the one responsible again. Lemmings lunges at him without warning from a plume of smoke, but fails to grab him and falls back down; with a stern look, Sorimura says he never wants to see Lemmings again if he can help it.

Police Station Break-in
Two days later, Sorimura breaks into Superintendent General Jirotarou Takanosu's office in the headquarters of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department headquarters and settles into Jirotarou's chair to wait. When Jirotarou arrives, Sorimura welcomes him with an analogy that compares people to playing cards. When all players have hands full of 'wicked' cards, Sorimura muses, the higher-level players will scrutinize each other's poker faces.

Jirotarou questions if Sorimura is accusing him of being a mastermind; well, says Sorimura, he is, at minimum, a high-level player. After passionately arguing that everyone is a player, Jirotarou asks why Sorimura has visited him. The trouble is that Sorimura did not plan anything beyond breaking into Jirotarou's office, motivated by a vague curiosity as to whether Jirotarou would admit to ordering the hit on his life. Since Jirotarou admits to nothing, however, Sorimura must improvise.

A ringtone sounds within Sorimura's immediate vicinity; a small mobile phone, it seems, has been stashed in a secret compartment of the chair's right armrest. Sorimura privately wonders if the caller could be his would-be sniper as he declares, "Looks like my hunch was right." Jirotarou interprets this as mean Sorimura came here without evidence or a plan. At Jirotarou's invitation, Sorimura answers the call and hears the voice of Grocer, who asks if he has mishandled the delivery. Jirotarou says he has not and bids him to relay his news. Grocer has two pieces of intel:


 * 1) Iwanome appears to have communicated with one former Inspector Hosorogi, a name that takes Jirotarou and Sorimura by surprise.
 * 2) Chief Superintendent Habaki has received a number of incoming calls from a middleman in Shibuya. Unlike the previous report, this one is one Jirotarou had expected.

Jirotarou refuses to give Sorimura a direct line to the Grocer when asked, so Sorimura implicitly threatens to tell the press that the station's Superintendent General personally instructed a criminal to wiretap internal calls. In the face of blackmail, Jirotarou begrudgingly asks what he wants, be it the mastermind's identity, "whatever lies 'beyond'," or something else. Sorimura considers it momentarily before replying that he wants Iwanome's cell phone number.

Sorimura calls Iwanome and claims he has information on the 'mastermind' about whom Iwanome and Officer Horosogi had just spoken; surely, he cajoles, Iwanome must want some 'hard evidence.' After this call ends, Sorimura offers to repay Jirotarou in anything but jail time for all the fascinating information. Jirotarou asks for an explanation as to how Fire-breathing Bug causes fires. Although Sorimura refrains from an outright explanation, he does hint that Fire-breathing Bug is "one person, but not one person" that personifies 'the fruits of technology.'

Collusion with Bug
Fire-breathing Bug causes a station blackout that allows Sorimura to escape the premises. Later, they summon Sorimura to a certain location. Sorimura arrives with great excitement, for Bug has never summoned him before, and he offers Bug's captive a lofty greeting: "I see you're finally awake." The captive, Kuon Higuro, appears to be an ordinary man on a second look. Sorimura questions whether Fire-breathing Bug is attempting to frame him for kidnapping rambles about what would happen if he kidnapped someone with 'truly terrifying' supernatural powers, and asks Higuro if he has discovered Fire-breathing Bug's identity or is acquainted with Habaki. Either way, Higuro probably has something to do with the mysterious symbol.

Sorimura's subsequent joke that Fire-breathing Bug intends to use his abilities to extirpate Habaki and Higuro's organization is precisely on the mark. Higuro requests his freedom to no avail since Solitaire says he smells like a recurring killer. Even if Higuro were an 'ordinary citizen,' well, bothering ordinary citizens is Sorimura's trade. Sorimura photographs Higuro with his smartphone.

Fire-breathing Bug opines that their and Sorimura's collaboration will fill Sorimura's craving for the supernatural, for the organization's 'ancestor' is a "bastard child who came from the other side of the sky" that now "[eats] away at this world." Though Bug knows not what the other side of the sky is nor who lurks therein, they think Sorimura has progressed one step closer. Sorimura surmises that Bug is implying his dirigibles stunt was the catalyst for recent events and that everything is interconnected.

Sorimura spends the rest of the day taking more photographs of Higuro. He returns on the morrow with a laptop. He spends much of the day attempting to turn concert footage of Ryouma Kannagi into a deepfake video where Kannagi, with Higuro's head, asks members of the public to contact Solitaire with information on the Bastard Children of Sabaramond. The laptop's technical limitations inhibit his progress, so he commissions "Nanny" ("Granny") to finish the job. Higuro meanwhile asks if his captors cut off his cell phone—Bug has already burned it—out of concern that the police could track him down, apparently more afraid of them than either Bug or Solitaire. What about the Bastards? asks Bug. Sorimura accepts Higuro's feigned ignorance at face value and suggests, as ignorant comrades-in-arms, they together uncover the organization's secret. Nanny soon emails Solitaire a  container of the finalized video project.

In short order, Sorimura uploads the deepfake video to his "Solitaire TV!" YouTube channel. In just as short order, the video begins trending on Twittia. Sorimura meanwhile projects the video on the wall for the viewing entertainment of Bug and a stunned Higuro, the latter of whom asks why the video was made. To surprise the Sabaramonds, answers Sorimura. "And...?"

Sorimura, genuinely perplexed, asks, "Are you implying...I need another reason?"

Higuro screams with Solitaire-induced frustration but quickly recovers, admitting that he has not screamed so since Kindergarten and that he does have a connection to the Bastard Children. However, he claims he is only their 'errand boy.' Emboldened by his admission of honesty, he asks why Fire-breathing Bug has spent the past century burning the Sabaramondians. No one, it seems, saw fit to explain this to a mere errand boy.

That Bug has been around for a century is news to Solitaire. Who immediately speculates that Bug's "organizer" must be over a hundred years old. Bug rejects Solitaire's speculation and describes themself and the Bastard Children as non-existent "'insects' scorched into this world."

Someone leaves several comments on Solitaire's deepfake video that indirectly hint at the location of where they intend to imitate Solitaire's crimes. Solitaire also reads a post by someone with the same username that alludes to a particular rooftop. The next day, the NDK reports that several loose items on the street became airborne and that leaflets advertising the "SolitaireTV!" YouTube channel were scattered in the wind. It is widely assumed that the stunt is Solitaire's doing. Solitaire heads to the aforementioned rooftop to confront his impersonator: "Long time no see...Ikebukuro's emperor troublemaker... Deus Ex Kinema-kun!"

Lulu timidly steps forward with a certain shark plush in her arms. Solitaire has no idea who she is. Soara Habaki and Civil A. Sabaramond step forward as well. The latter introduces the three of them as the fans who commented on Solitaire's video and tosses Solitaire a copy of what he says is the national emblem of the Byandy Empire in its proper rendition as opposed to the simplified symbol that Solitaire broadcasted to the world. In exchange, he wants Solitaire to spread the word that he and his companions are related to Sabaramond.

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Etymology

 * His family name, Sorimura (雪車村), means 'snow car village'. The first part of his surname, Ten (天), means 'heaven'; the last part, a (鵶), appears to be an archaic or otherwise uncommon character for the bird 'crow'.

Trivia

 * Solitaire is currently featured in a gaiden novel serialized in the Young Gangan app "Manga Up!"
 * While the Yen Press translation translates his moniker as "Mystery Solitaire" up to Chapter 18, it begins using the more accurate translation "Phantom Solitaire" from Chapter 19 onward. The digital edition of Volume 2 has been updated to use "Phantom Solitaire."
 * Sorimura's weapon of choice is his custom playing cards, made out of a special alloy that makes them razor-sharp and rather heavy despite being paper-thin.
 * Sorimura's burner phone ringtone is Paul Mariat's "El Bimbo."
 * The Grocer considers Sorimura to be one of his best customers.
 * A running joke in the series is Sorimura failing to decide on a sign-off catchphrase.
 * The prototype character of Sorimura was originally set to appear in Narita’s Weekly Shonen Jump manga, Stealth Symphony; however, the series was canceled before the character’s debut.