4℃

4℃ (シド, Shido?) is a minor antagonist who first appeared in the Steins;Gate visual novel as the cheating opponent and sore loser to Faris in the Rai-Net Access Battlers Championship. His real name is Kouichi Suzuki (鈴木功一, Suzuki Kōichi).

Appearance
4℃ is incredibly skinny, to the point of almost being anorexic. His skin is very dark from excessive tanning, typical for rebellious young people like him who are part of Japan’s Gyaruo/Gyaru subculture. His hair is bleached white, and he wears a hat to cover a bald spot.

Personality
Similarly to Okabe, his persona makes him appear delusional, but the difference is that 4℃ truly believes what he says, not putting up an act. 4℃ acts like a Chuunibyou believing himself to be powerful and cunning. He is angered easily, for example when he reacts aggressively to Okabe bumping into him in the Steins;Gate: My Darling's Embrace game. He tends to act smug around others as well as treat them as inferior to himself unless it benefits him. Furthermore, 4℃ is extremely selfish and always seems to react in an unfeeling and uncaring way towards others.

4℃ believes himself to have ESPer powers from the goddess Gaia, and is extremely fond of the word “kuro”, meaning “black”. He likes to monologue about his elegant evil black ways he has from Gaia and other nonsense. He also has the catchphrase “Did you know that dry ice burns?” which is incorrect because dry ice is actually very cold, not hot, and he is annoyed whenever Okabe corrects him on this. He also has an embarrassing bald spot on top of his head that is covered by a hat, which Okabe notices the first time they meet when Okabe angers 4℃ and 4℃ attacks him and then 4℃’s hat falls off, revealing his bald spot.

He is the leader of a violent street gang known as the Viral Attackers, and wins Rai-Net Access Battlers tournaments by beating up or intimidating other Rai-Net teams into not showing up. He also hates Faris NyanNyan with a passion, as well as hating catgirls and maid cafes. He refers to himself as part of the “New Generation”, making an approving reference to the New Generation Madness serial killings that occurred in Shibuya a year earlier, in 2009 during the events of Chaos;Head, and trying to falsely claim credit for at least some of the serial killings (which he actually had nothing to do with).

Steins;Gate Chapter 7
In Chapter 7 of Steins;Gate, which takes place on the world line with divergence 0.409431% of the Alpha Attractor Field, 4℃ is a minor antagonist who defeats Faris NyanNyan at the Rai-Net Access Battlers championship by cheating (specifically having his fellow Viral Attackers shine lasers in her eyes and doing things to distract her so she can’t think). Faris is depressed after this and convinces Okabe to use the Time Leap Machine to go back and give her sunglasses and earplugs prior to the Rai-Net championship for protection, claiming that if he does this, she will remember what D-Mail she sent.

Okabe time leaps back to before the Rai-Net championship happened, and manages to get Faris to accept the sunglasses and earplugs, although she is very difficult. Faris only uses the earplugs but not the sunglasses, though, so Okabe has to find the Viral Attacker in the audience at the tournament who is shining a laser in Faris’s eyes and put a stop to it. Faris wins the tournament, and talks to Okabe about she was probably lying about being on the verge of remembering what D-Mail she would send, as well as explaining her “Cheshire Break” ESPer ability to tell whether other people are lying, tell how they are feeling, and predict their behavior.

4℃ overhears this and has his gang, the Viral Attackers, chase Faris and Okabe, who end up hiding out in the same building where Faris’s maid cafe May Queen Nyan-nyan exists in other world lines. While hiding out there, Faris remembers everything, not just about May Queen Nyan-nyan, but everything else that happened in other world lines, including what D-Mail she sent. After some Viral Attackers make their way inside and attack, Faris and Okabe manage to escape outside, only to be surrounded by Viral Attackers and have 4℃ show up again, and 4℃ beats Okabe bloody. Faris’s dad Yukitaka Akiha shows up in a limousine, almost plowing straight into the crowd of Viral Attackers, sending the Viral Attackers scattering in fear, but avoids actually hitting anyone with the car, and he rescues Okabe and Faris.

After this, Yukitaka Akiha drives Okabe and Faris back to the apartment Faris and her dad share, where Okabe spends the night, and Faris tells Okabe how her D-Mail saved her dad’s life and how if she undoes it, her dad will be dead. But Faris also gives Okabe permission to undo the D-Mail and promises to help him, since it is necessary to save Faris’s friend Mayuri Shiina’s life. The next day, Okabe gets to decide whether or not to send the D-Mail to undo Faris’s D-Mail. If he does not send it, he gets Faris’s ending, but if Okabe does send it, the Steins;Gate game moves onto Chapter 8, the chapter about Luka Urushibara, and while it stays in the Alpha Attractor Field, the world line divergence increases to 0.456914%.

Steins;Gate Faris Ending
In Faris’s ending, while both Mayuri Shiina and Kurisu Makise get to live (Mayuri dying in the Alpha Attractor Field and Kurisu dying in the Beta Attractor Field), it is not the Steins Gate world line with a divergence of 1.048596%, but rather a world line with a negative divergence number of -.275349%, part of the not-well-understood Omega Attractor Field, and moreover, not only is Faris’s dad alive but Akihabara is an otaku paradise where everything is moe, 2 things that were thought to be mutually exclusive back in the Alpha Attractor Field. This world line is achieved by Faris sending a different D-Mail than the cancellation D-Mail, one to give the IBN 5100 to Okabe.

In this -.275349% Omega world line, hardly anybody knows who Rintaro Okabe is, not Kurisu, not Itaru Hashida, not even Mayuri, since apparently Okabe never founded the Future Gadget Lab and Mayuri forgot who he was years ago, seeming to indicate that the Okabe of this world line never declared himself to be Hououin Kyouma or declared Mayuri to be his hostage. Okabe’s only friend who remembers him is Faris, who it seems has been his girlfriend for some time, having met him at a Rai-Net Access Battlers tournament, and in this world line, rather than playing Rai-Net by herself, Faris plays with Okabe as her partner, and it seems he was quite skilled, at least prior to sending the D-Mail that landed him here from an Alpha world line and replaced his memories with those of an Okabe who wasn’t any good at Rai-Net.

It seems to be a peaceful world line, although there are some worrying signs, like the presence of a Divergence Meter at Yugo Tennouji’s house, which seems to indicate that something bad does happen in the future that makes Suzuha Amane have to go back in time and bring a Divergence Meter with her that she then gives to Tennouji for safekeeping so that he can one day give it to Okabe. This is also a worrying sign since the Divergence Meter is supposedly something Okabe invents in the future in world lines where things end up going very badly. These signs seem to indicate some similarities with the Alpha world lines, so there is a possibility that SERN and the Rounders are still a threat or there might be some other dystopian future in store for everyone, perhaps World War III, although things seem peaceful in the year 2010 at least. But due to the fact that the Future Gadget Lab never existed, the PhoneWave and Time Leap Machine do not exist either, so if Okabe screws up, he no longer has any way to go back in time or to send a message back in time, and it seems he is stuck in this world line, for better or worse.

Although Faris has been dating Okabe for some time in this world line, he has only ever known her as a friend and not really had romantic feelings for her in the past, but she is the only person he can rely on, and she is very helpful to him, especially because with her Cheshire Break ability, she can tell that he is telling the truth about what happened and not lying. Faris persuades Okabe to continue to be her boyfriend and her partner in Rai-Net Access Battlers, pledging that she still loves him, and Okabe accepts her as his girlfriend and the one person keeping him grounded in reality in this strange new world, and promises to stay with her and grow to love her over time.

In the end of the Faris Ending, Faris has been working to train Okabe in Rai-Net Access Battlers in preparation for the championship against the Viral Attackers led by 4℃, and while Okabe has been slowly learning the basics of the game, he is still not even remotely any good, all of his knowledge of the game being erased by his Reading Steiner overwriting it. Regardless, the two of them go to the championship game to face the Viral Attackers and 4℃, with Okabe preparing for a showdown against a very formidable opponent, knowing that if he screws up, he will not have the chance to go back in time and redo things anymore like he could do in the Alpha world lines.

This ending of the Steins;Gate game ends right before the Rai-Net Access Battlers game against the Viral Attackers begins, so we do not see what happens or who wins, but one can assume that going up against 4℃ with only extremely basic skills in the game and no way to go back and redo things is definitely not good, although thankfully Faris’s skills are unmatched so the outcome of the game could go either way.

Plot in other works
In Steins;Gate: My Darling's Embrace, 4℃ is briefly encountered in the prologue warning Okabe to not enter Faris’s cafe claiming it sucks and is a waste of time and money. Later in the game in the Faris route, the timeline greatly differs as 4℃ is infamous among the maid cafe world for using skeevy strategies and scare tactics to monopolize maid cafes around Akihabara.

He is a minor antagonist in pretty much every Steins;Gate game, even ones like the retro adventure game 8-bit ADV Steins;Gate.

Nickname
Though 4℃ prides himself on being called 4℃, pronounced “Shido”, Okabe prefers to belittle him by calling him "Yondo". "Yon" being an alternate reading for the number 4 in Japanese.