Arthur Rimbaud

**Arthur Rimbaud** (アルチュール・ランボー, *Aruchūru Ranbō*) is a French spy sent to investigate the Japanese military's mysterious project related to Arahabaki. After the Suribachi City explosion, he lost many of his memories and was recruited to the Port Mafia under the alias **Randō** (蘭 (らん) 堂 (どう) ,, *Randō*), eventually promoted to the rank of sub-executive. One of the few Transcendents, Rimbaud had the ability named Illuminations.

## Description

### Appearance

Rimbaud is a tall, pale man of slim build with vacant, tired gold eyes and long black hair that reaches past his mid-back. A long section of his hair fall in front of the right side of his face, alongside a thinner strand over the left side.

Cold no matter the weather, Rimbaud always wears warm winter clothes. Over his ears is a pair of white earmuffs, and around his neck a tasseled, dark red scarf with alternating thick and black stripes. He wears a grey trench coat over a white, button-up shirt, black trousers, a corset-ed belt, and red winter boots. He also wears a pair of black gloves.

### Personality

Appearing as a gloomy individual, Rimbaud always complains of the cold and tried to avoid it as much as possible. He holds profound respect towards Ōgai Mori after rising in rank with ease. As a veteran mafioso, Rimbaud has a deep understanding of the driving forces behind the criminal world and never shows any delight in his actions as a mafioso. In fact, Rimbaud respects lives a great deal, and as such he went to lengths to ensure his opponents never suffered more than they must.

Rimbaud is far from emotionless, expressing surprise and confusion in Osamu Dazai's antics, and even laughing after he and Chūya Nakahara rightfully accuse him of being behind the predecessor's apparent "revival".

His respect extends to Chūya and Dazai, as he expressed regret in having to kill them for his own gain, but he did not hold back in attempting to kill them in order to achieve his own goals. Furthermore, he seems more prone to make drastic decisions when pushed into a corner. Struggling with slight amnesia, Rimbaud's ultimate goal was to learn what happened to his close partner Paul Verlaine. For this reason, he took an intense interest in Arahabaki's existence, vividly remembering its burning heat and how its existence exceeded human understanding.

## Powers and Abilities

### Powers

**Illuminations:** Rimbaud's ability, **Illuminations** (イリュミナシオン, *Iryuminashion*), creates hyperspaces that Rimbaud has full control over and allows him to turn corpses into abilities. As a Transcendent, Rimbaud's ability greatly surpasses that of average abilities. His hyperspace exists outside natural law, rendering Upon the Tainted Sorrow useless and overcoming No Longer Human's nullification to an extent. It is also states that Rimbaud's ability was 'to take another person hostage and use their powers as a new addition to his ability,' which is how he attempted (and failed) to use Arahabaki as his ability during the mission in which Paul Verlaine and him had to capture Arahabaki.

## Etymology

* The name **Arthur** is of Celtic origin, meaning "bear".
* The surname **Rimbaud** is of German origin, meaning "advice" (ragin) and "bold" (bald).

## Trivia

* The real-life Chūya Nakahara was greatly inspired by the real-life Arthur Rimbaud, along with the likes of other symbolist poets including Paul Verlaine, Charles Baudelaire, and Stéphane Mallarmé.
* The real-life Arthur Rimbaud was in a romantic relationship with the real-life Paul Verlaine.
	+ Verlaine shooting Rimbaud before Arahabaki's explosion in the military facility is a reference to the real-life Verlaine shooting Rimbaud in 1873. Though various sources differ in details, the so-called Brussels Affair saw Verlaine firing twice at Rimbaud in a hotel in the Belgium capital. This incident ended their two-year affair.