| “ | What should I say next? Anything will do, as long as it's something to cause her to grow a negative image. ...And that would just be getting started. | ” |
–Siva, Volume 4, Highlights | ||
Siva (シヴァ, Siva) is a highly-skilled hacker for .mmm employed by Chegar. He runs a computer repair shop called PC Doctor's Studio that doubles as his personal work space. His real name is unknown, and his codename is Siva, stylized s_i_v_a.
Characteristics[]
Appearance[]
Siva is a thin young man with a kind and gentle expression. Over his clothes, he wears a blue apron with the repair shop name.
Personality[]
Siva's kind and honest face is only mask. In contrast, his true personality is twisted, and Chegar considers him worse even than Irasawa. His hobby is playing with other people's lives. Using his elite hacking skills, he enjoys destroying the lives of people he selects at random by impersonating them, exposing their secrets, fabricating scandals, or spreading lies. His acts have pressured people into committing suicide, and his unique method of social elimination has earned him the nickname "The Cracker" in the underground. He counts many politicians, executives, and celebrities seeking to take down their rivals among his regular customers. At some point, Siva became tired of choosing famous names as targets, as they already commit acts of corruption, and he finds more fun in making them up himself and turning the life of an ordinary person into any narrative he likes. He enjoys playing god and is fully aware of the envy it sparks in Chegar.
Background[]
Just prior to the start of the story, a political candidate hired Siva to destroy the reputation of his opponent, a congressman named Yamanaka. Siva spread rumors of Yamanaka's corruption and infidelity, and the heat the politician received in response caused him to withdraw himself from reelection.
Around the same time, Siva targeted a regular company employee named Yusuke Aoyagi, posting hundreds of negative reviews on a local Italian restaurant from Aoyagi's work computer. Siva continued the posts even after Aoyagi was reprimanded and quit his job, and the incident causes him to eventually commit suicide.
Shortly after, Siva selected Kazuki Saitoh at random to be his next target. Saitoh had been job searching, and Siva sent him an email posing as a company with a job offer. When Saitoh downloaded the attached file, he unknowingly installed a virus that gave Siva control of his computer, from which Siva sent death and bomb threats to government officials. Saitoh voluntarily submitted himself to questioning by the police cybercrime division, and they found thousands of photos of nude middle school-aged girls on his computer. While in Saitoh was in custody, Siva sent nude photos of young girls from Saitoh's phone, unwittingly proving his innocence. Siva blames the failure on himself for going overboard with the pornographic photos.
Synopsis[]
.mmm Arc[]
Excited by the prospect of killing someone, Siva closes his shop when Chegar arrives so that they can discuss their next target, and little-known hacker going by the name "macro-hard." Siva uncovers his identity quickly, the team heads to Manabu Kuroiwa's apartment shortly after, gaining access by posing as uniformed movers. They drug their victim and carry him and his computers out of the building without arousing suspicion. Afterward, they drop Kuroiwa and Irasawa off at Irasawa's home, and Chegar and Siva continue to the repair shop so that Siva can inspect macro-hard's computers. Siva spends the next several hours looking through the files on macro-hard's computers, finding folders on roughly 30 famous and influential people the hacker had extorted, including Kazuo Matsuda. Siva finds evidence of Kazuo's son and a hacking incident that Kazuo had covered up many years prior. The virus used by the son resembled an early, elementary version of Flammulina, a virus created by blackleg_nameko, a hacker on .mmm's blacklist. Siva finds evidence of some of blackleg's brazen recent activity and guesses he has avoided arrest due to a connection to the police cybercrime division. Because of blackleg's lack of stealth, Siva can trace his signal back to an internet cafe in Nakasu. Using the cafe's surveillance cameras, Siva and Chegar get a good look at their next target, Enokida.
Siva creates a post on Undergroundjobs.com with with a 500,000 yen bounty on blackleg's head and his current location. When blackleg attempts to delete the post, a new one is created with the time and his current location. Siva and Chegar watch his location and update Irasawa, leading him to a bathroom in a subway station in Nakasu. When Irasawa finds only blackleg's discarded laptop inside, Siva realizes that blackleg has hacked his own computer with a virus, controlling it remotely, and has successfully crashed Undergroundjobs.com, making the post with a hit on him inaccessible.
Siva is both annoyed and impressed by blackleg's narrow escape. When Irasawa brings him blackleg's laptop, he is able to access the other hacker's recent SNS messages. At Chegar's orders, he looks into blackleg's credit history and finds a recently purchased bullet train ticket for Tokyo and an airplane ticket for Busan. Discovering a recent book purchase in the Imaizumi neighborhood of Tenjin, Siva uses surveillance cameras to find blackleg on the street and track his movements, waiting for him to leave the public eye.
They listen as blackleg receives a phone call from an associate confirming his escape route. With only an hour until his friends arrive, and his apparent intention to remain at a crowded family restaurant until that point, Siva suggests cutting the power at the restaurant long enough for Irasawa to abduct their target. Aided by night vision goggles, Irasawa captures blackleg without a hitch, and Siva erases the security camera footage with Irasawa in it. After a long, tense evening of chasing the hacker around the city, they allow themselves to rest.
When Siva wakes up in the morning, he receives his payment from Chegar and decides to look for another victim to eliminate socially. Settling on an up-and-coming model, he hacks into her social media account and creates a fake post that will upset her fans and agency. As he plans his next post, he notices a figure reflected in one of his monitors. The Niwaka Samurai has silently entered the locked room and is standing behind him. Caught in the act of ruining someone's life, he attempts to fight back but is easily outmatched. Banba stabs him through the chest with his sword.
Gallery[]
