Nick Hallelujah

**Nick Hallelujah** (ニック・ハレルヤ, *Nikku Hareruya*) is a renowned spiritual artist.

## Background

Nick is, in colloquial terms, a magician, but prefers to be officially called as a spiritual artist, who practises "spirit magic", allowing him to perform stunts such as levitation. He has his own shows, managed by Yoshinaga and assisted by his assistants onstage including Julia Kaneko, whom he is rumoured to be dating.

On 9 January 2016, he had a show at Hotel Cadenza in Kyoto entitled *Spiritual Art Show*. That night after the show, he drank sake with Julia and eventually fell asleep on his room couch. At around 11:07 p.m., he received a call from his manager, confirming his schedule for the following day as part of their routine. While still on the phone, he discovered the bloodied corpse of Julia, cradling it out of dismay.

## Appearance

Nick is of average height with short curly black hair. While performing on his shows, he dresses in an all-black ensemble that resembles that of a magician, including a black dress shirt, velvet-embossed sleeveless vest, trousers, and dress shoes.

## Personality

As a spiritual artist, Nick is knowledgeable in the field of performing magic, one of his known tricks being levitation. Though he claims this is thanks to his so-called "spirit magic", this is later debunked when it was revealed to actually be a thin transparent wire, which was durable enough to carry his mass and make it appear he was levitating.

Outside his professional career, Nick has a low tolerance to alcohol, allowing him to be able to sleep anywhere regardless of the place, such as a couch. In worse situations, he has the dangerous tendency of inflicting property damage and becomes violent when drunk, having caused a lot of trouble in the past.

Together with Yoshinaga, they formed a routine every night during his performances confirming his show schedule for the succeeding days. Furthermore, he seems to have earned the trust of his show assistant and rumoured lover Julia, to the point of giving her a spare key to his hotel room. However, he seems to be short-sighted due to the fact that he did not notice Julia's apparent affair with his own manager.

## Plot

### Hotel Cadenza Homicide

On the night of 9 January 2016, after one of his shows at Hotel Cadenza, the Kyoto Prefectural Police investigate Nick's hotel room, where Julia Kaneko's corpse is discovered. Despite allegations of the police that he was the suspect behind the murder, he pleads to Hisashi Nabeshima that he is not the culprit.

Later, criminologist Hideo Himura arrives with Alice Arisugawa to aid in the investigation. Initially, Himura appears disinterested in the case and asks irrelevant questions as perceived by Nick and his manager Yoshinaga. To his panic, Nick asks Himura to hurry in solving the case in order to find Julia's killer and prove his innocence. After the interrogation, Himura finally concludes that Julia had been dead before Nick had found him, claiming to have been stabbed to death and hidden behind the curtain in his room before he arrived. Later, when he received the phone call from Yoshinaga, Himura explains that this was a trap for him to discover Julia's corpse, which had been pulled by his "spirit magic"; that is, his signature wire from across the room being inhabited by Yoshinaga. With these remarks, Himura names Yoshinaga as the killer and also exposes Julia's two-timing with the latter, much to Nick's surprise and disbelief.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 *Screaming Castle Murder Case*