Mr. A

Mr. A
Japanese name:	A氏
Appearances
Primary franchise:	Fate
Appears in:	Fate/hollow ataraxia Fate/strange Fake
Characteristics
Species:	Human
Gender:	Male

Mr. A (A氏^?) is a resident of Fuyuki City who disappeared in the past after a family suicide. He is the protagonist of the ghost story The Little Red Riding Hood of Semina Apartments.

Profile

Background

Mr. A, a pseudonym given for the purpose of the story to hide his real name, was a student who moved to Fuyuki's Shinto in the beginning of spring shortly after turning twenty. He rented room two on the eleventh floor of Semina Apartments. There was a family suicide during the fall, and he went missing a month later. Although the police were asked to start an investigation, his older brother said that Mr. A only went on a journey of self discovery and that he will come back when he becomes a man. The story later become told as a ghost story by Ayako Mitsuzuri with an unknown amount of embellishment.

Personality

Mr. A is an introvert by nature, so he has little issue living alone. Comfortable without others, he does not care about having few friends or the prospect of living around only strangers. He prefers such solitude, not caring to be disturbed by either friends or family. He does not like simple living, so he prefers larger living space to act as a "fortress" against the outside world. Rather than liking being alone, he instead has a fear of other people coming near him and intruding within his space. The place he lives needs to be large, solid, and hard, almost "impenetrable", to reach for him to feel comfortable living there. The hallway of the apartment is particularly ideal for him, acting as a "boundary" to the outside. He does not care about the outside world so long as it does not interfere with his lifestyle, so even remembering the name of a person he often meets is of no interest to him.

Role

Fate/hollow ataraxia

Fate/hollow ataraxia begins with Ayako's telling of the ghost story based around him. Moving for the first time, living alone for the first time, and finding himself in an unfamiliar area for the first time, even he as an introvert by nature felt lost and had to take some time to adjust to life in Fuyuki. He was satisfied by the state of his life, except for the strange nature of the hallway leading to the door of his apartment and the family next door to him. Although he chose the apartment due to the hallway providing a great distance between the door and living room to act as an "obstacle" to the outside world, he felt uncomfortable with it for many months before realizing the simple fact that it had no lights. Feeling foolish because of it, it could be said that was when he had made a "wrong turn" due to not noticing it.

His second issue, a family of three, moved into the next door apartment during fall, and he only greeted them once while moving. Only knowing their surname and the name of their daughter, he would occasionally meet them in the entryway of the building and sometimes the daughter by herself in the elevator. She would always ask him to push the elevator button for her. Although such a young girl being by herself was strange, especially finding her at the entrance both the eleventh floor and first floor, he always did as she asked whenever he came upon her as he left or returned. Although he learned her name from their various meetings, he did not remember it due to his nature as an introvert, instead nicknaming her Little Red Riding Hood.

One particular day after they moved into the apartment, he heard an especially loud commotion from their apartment, including a panicked banging on his own door. While he was initially going to answer, he simply turned up the television to drown out the sound and ignored it. Believing that others need to solve their own problems, he felt it would be troublesome to get involved. After awakening the next day, he learned that there had been a family suicide in the apartment due to the police questioning him. Lying about having not heard anything, he asked about the daughter's state. The officer explained that she fled the scene, knocked at his door desperately, and then went towards the elevator where all traces of her disappeared.

The girl in the hallway

He began hearing knocking on his door every night at two A.M. after several days had passed, initially believing it to be a minor sound coming from his window. As he determined it to be coming from the door, he tried the intercom to find out who was knocking, but that only caused the noise to become louder. As he tried to see through his peephole, he could only discern something red just below it. As the knocking became even more noticeable as the days passed, he eventually decided to answer it, finding nothing initially. Feeling that it was just the guilt building up in him, he closed the door only to find the blood-stained girl at the end of his hallway. Believing that it would be the last sight he saw before death, she began to ask him to push the button, where the story ends after Kaede Makidera's scream interrupts it.

While discussing the validity of the story, Rin Tohsaka confirms that Kaede was so scared because she personally knew about the event. It is a known fact that there was a family suicide and that he later disappeared. Kaede claims that it is a distasteful rendition and that Mr. A's brother claimed it to simply be a "journey of self-discovery." Ayako mentions that she likely hadn't needed dramatize the story because retelling the rumors themselves would have been scary enough.

Fate/strange Fake

The Player of the original April Fools' Day version of Fate/strange fake has several traits reminiscent of Mr. A. The story notes that they can't enter buildings containing elevators, have visions of a bloodstained girl, and once lived in Fuyuki before coming to America fleeing something.

In the proper novelization of Fate/strange fake, the ghost story of The Little Red Riding Hood of Semina Apartments is retold by members of Homurahara Academy archery club, who were first told of it by Ayako Mitsuzuri (to the point Taiga Fujimura banned her ghost stories for being too scary), and who by that time in the World of Fate/strange Fake has graduated and only drops by the club every now and then. The contents are mostly the same, with the exception of the conclusion, which unbeknownst to them is that the protagonist of the tale fled to the United States of America to escape the Red Riding Hood.

The traits and the backstory of the Player, and thus Mr. A, are later transposed to Ayaka Sajyou, their replacement in the actual story of Fate/strange Fake. After the incident, Ayaka wandered for months, then years, wracked with guilt and avoiding entering buildings with elevators, as she would always see illusions of the Little Red Riding Hood whenever she was in an elevator.

It is later revealed that the actual truth of the ghost story is radically different in the World of Fate/strange Fake. Before the murders, Mr. A coincidentally met the real Ayaka Sajyou in the apartments' elevator, where, using suggestion, she hypnotized him to "please care" about the neighboring girl, not to the point of risking his life, but to reach out to her if anything happened. Mr. A would continue his life, but from then on would always naturally press the 11th-floor button for the little girl. And on the night of the murders, when she knocked on his door, he opened it instead of ignoring her, which led to a greater tragedy than the horror story.

After the destruction of the Neo Ishtar Temple, a dying Fillia unlocks the memories she sealed from Ayaka with hypnosis, which makes her realize she was never "Mr. A" fleeing the Little Red Riding Hood, but rather she was the Little Red Riding Hood herself, the actual murderer.