Durarara!! SH - Volume 4 - Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

Excuse Me! Don’t Make Me Call the Police, Sir!

The next day, rental office, Saitama Prefecture

“Mr. Shijimaaa. Kidnapping women is just as low as dealing drugs. Let’s not do thiiis…”

It was late afternoon, and the sun was approaching the horizon. Jami had just shown up at the hideout and started complaining.

Shijima exhaled and asked, “What are you talking about?”

“I heard some bad-looking kids talking about it at school. They said Heaven’s Slave is trying to abduct people in Ikebukuro. The lady who runs the used item shop. That’s the Sonohara person, right?”

“…I told you, I abandoned the organization known as Heaven’s Slave… No, wait, stop. What was that? Tell me more.”

Earthworm, who’d been listening nearby, smiled lasciviously and interjected, “Oh, I just heard the same rumor from a customer today. I assumed it was you, plotting to get Saika. Or maybe you’re only after her body?” She pressed herself fully against Shijima’s back.

In a monotone voice, he replied, “You’re just enjoying yourself, knowing that that’s not the case… Anyway, go ahead and tell me the details.”

Minutes later, after he’d heard everything, Shijima readjusted his glasses and remarked, “I see… I would have ignored them if they were merely using the Heaven’s Slave name, but if they’re going after Anri Sonohara, that makes this a bit more personal.”

“Why’s that?” Jami asked.

“…Few people know about Saika, the cursed blade. I don’t know who is using the group’s name, but if there’s another group out there looking for Saika, I want to know the reason.”

“What’s Saika, Mr. Shijima?”

“I’ll tell you later,” he said, trying to get Jami off his back.

Shijima considered what to do next. Apparently, this mystery group wasn’t just going after the owner but plotting to take something from the Sonohara-dou storehouse, for reasons that were unclear.

“In any case, if their plan is getting leaked this easily, it’s going to break down imminently. We could probably let that happen without taking any action, but I’m curious who put them up to it. That might be someone with a connection to Saika.”

He coldly watched Jami, who was doing a handstand on a chair deftly balanced diagonally on two of its legs.

“…Depending on the situation, I might need to have Jami destroy them.”

Outside Sonohara-dou

“Well, Anri, take care of yourself,” Akabayashi said, leaving the building.

After a bit of a walk, he noticed a writhing blackness at the corner of the street ahead.

“You know, if you stay this close to Sonohara-dou, I’d prefer not to be seen with you.”

“It’s just as I reported this morning… I’m sorry. I lost our lead…”

“Don’t apologize. That wasn’t supposed to be your job anyway. You were staking out Anri’s place until dawn, weren’t you? If anything, I’m the one who should feel sorry.”

“I was only worried about my friend.”

“Your friend, huh…? I don’t have many of those. I’m jealous of Anri.” He smirked self-deprecatingly.

Celty tilted her helmet to the side. “Aren’t Mr. Shiki and Mr. Aozaki your friends?”

Akabayashi burst into laughter. “Ah-ha…hak…koff! Ha-ha-ha… You know, you can be a real airhead at the oddest times.”

“Uh, r-really?”

“…Well, let’s see. I find I get along with the guys at Russia Sushi even when I’m not on the job, so I suppose you might say they’re friends of mine.”

Akabayashi paused, his gaze sharpening. He bowed to her.

“Thank you, courier. I mean it. You might not need it, but let me say it anyway. You have the word of Mizuki Akabayashi that this debt will be repaid one day.”

“Mr. Akabayashi…”

He was so dead serious that she knew it would be insulting to refuse his thanks, so Celty decided it was better to accept the sentiment. Akabayashi’s usual lilting smile returned, and he struck the ground with the tip of his cane.

“You just let me handle the rest. I can’t be using my own people on a garden-variety burglar, obviously. But if Heaven’s Slave is involved, that changes things. It means I can unleash man power on the problem.”

Celty extended her senses outward and became aware that there were men in suits walking about in notable number around them. They might have seemed like ordinary pedestrians at first, but a closer examination of their general air and unceasing observation made it clear that they were on the lookout for trouble.

Are they from Jan-Jaka-Jan or foot soldiers for the Awakusu-kai? Celty wondered, pegging them as protégés of Akabayashi’s. In any case, she was relieved that Anri would not need to expose herself to trouble anymore.

If the enemy just wanted to kill Anri, consequences be damned, snipers would be a major concern. It would be easier for them to just light Anri’s house on fire, so Celty decided the guns weren’t worth worrying about.

Either way, we need to capture the people behind this as soon as possible. And preferably before Anri recognizes what’s going on.

At the same time, however, she was worried about her own job. While he earned it himself, I can’t help but be concerned for Yukihiko Natsugawara’s safety, being in the midst of this group.

After her conversation with Akabayashi, Celty found herself making a new resolution as she zipped along on Shooter.

If I don’t want Awayuki to cry over her brother, I need to nab him as soon as I find him, no matter what…

Rental office, Saitama Prefecture

“Oh my.” Earthworm chuckled, seeing the collection of intelligence stored on the laptop. “It really is a small world, isn’t it?”

“It’s a crazy coincidence, huh, Mr. Shijima? Um, also…sorry?” Jami apologized for some strange reason.

“…” Shijima glared at the screen, not taking his eyes off it.

“Who could have guessed that Heaven’s Slave had turned out to be such a complicated mess? It’s like the karma from abandoning them has blown back on you all at once.”

“It’s divine punishment, Mr. Shijima. Like I said, you shouldn’t have been doing that wicked plotting in front of Kishimojin…”

“I did nothing of the sort!” Shijima snapped. He got to his feet. “Well…I suppose it’s time to act.”

Earthworm noted his calm demeanor and flashed a seductive smile. “Act how, exactly? Are you going to cry to Daddy or Grandpa and say, Pweeze help meeee? Actually, I really want to see that. You have to do it, Hiroto.”

“Like hell I will,” he snapped again, then closed his eyes. “What I have to do hasn’t changed. I either pour gas on the fire or send the wind… Well, a breeze is already blowing, so I guess it’ll be gas this time.”

“I hate to douse your fire while you’re acting very pretentious and cool, but you make it sound like you’re setting up a charcoal grill for your food cart.”

“That’s fine. Aren’t professional grillers cool?”

Shijima put on his jacket and went to the door.

“Where are you going?” asked Jami innocently. As usual, Shijima was nothing but cold.

“Off to see the monster that sells gasoline.”

At night, Ikebukuro

The sun had just finished setting, and a reddish glow still remained in the western sky.

Yukihiko Natsugawara was in the midst of the crowds, watching the Headless Rider rush about the city in search of something.

“So that’s the Headless Rider,” he murmured, shaking loose memories from years ago. “The thing that looked for our snake and brought it back…”

Although he had only briefly glanced at her through the window then, he vividly remembered the motorcycle and riding suit that seemed black enough to absorb all light.

“Is that my dad’s henchman? Could be looking for the stuff I took with me…?” Yukihiko murmured—half correctly, as it turned out. He kept his hat on to hide the top of his face as he walked.

He’d heard about how the Headless Rider had prevented the break-in at Sonohara-dou last night. If that’s Dad’s agent, then how did she know I was involved with that shop? I hope she hasn’t already found the stuff and taken it out, he worried to himself as he hurried toward Sonohara-dou.

But a mere graze of the handle of the hammer in his pocket caused those concerns to dissipate into thin air.

Yeah, that’s right… If my plan failed, I can just steal it out of the house again. At worst, I could kidnap Awayuki and demand ransom from Dad, he thought.

The lowest of the low.

When Yukihiko arrived at Sonohara-dou, he approached the owner with his cap pulled low. If the rider had a connection to the owner, they might have photos of his face all around, at which point his presence here could be reported to the Natsugawara family at once. Deciding the chances were greater than zero, Yukihiko resolved to be cautious.

If the owner shows any sign of that, I guess I could use this thing to knock her out, he thought boldly.

“Welcome. Are you looking for anything in particular today?” the owner asked as he approached.

“Yes. Well, I’m looking for something rare… Would you happen to have any shark tooth fossils?”

She might not have organized everything in the storehouse, but if she was aware of it, she would react in some way. And if she realized that he was the culprit, he’d just have to knock her out with the hammer.

His plan was rapidly going from bold to reckless. Yukihiko squeezed the handle of the hammer.

The woman looked apologetic. “Oh…I’m very sorry. We did have one until recently, but it’s already gone.”

He very nearly uttered a twitching uh…? but managed to hold it in, pivoting quickly to a nervous “Ah, I s-see… Well, uh… What about a wooden parquet puzzle box sort of thing? My little sister loves those.”

“I’m very sorry. We also had one of those until recently…”

“…Oh. That’s…too bad.”

This doesn’t make sense. Does she know who I am? Is she saying these things on purpose? Since she didn’t say, I don’t know if we have that, and go off to check, but instead claimed, It’s already gone, should I assume that she does know the store had those things?

Dammit, who notices their inventory is growing and then immediately sells the new things? What is this bitch thinking?! fumed Yukihiko, who could not have known that there was never a register of items in the storehouse in the first place. But a possibility occurred to him. What if…she already checked the contents and used the Headless Rider to return them to Dad…? But without any confirmation, it would be reckless to go back to the family to search…

Do I just need to knock her out and question her?

Confirming that no other people were inside the shop, he started to run a mental simulation, trying to figure out how long it would take to attack the woman and drag her into the back of the shop, out of sight.

But then the door opened, and a new person entered.

Yukihiko clicked his tongue in irritation and turned to see who had come in. The sight threatened to pop his eyes out of his skull.

The visitor, dressed in a high school uniform, was holding the very megalodon tooth fossil that Yukihiko had taken right out of his family home.

“Oh, what’s the matter with that?”

“Well…I was examining this, and I found out there was a weird data card stuck inside of it. I was wondering if it was actually something important to your family, Miss Sonohara…”

“…!”

Outside of their view, Yukihiko’s eyes twitched. Dammit! It’s that kid! And he knows about the card?! What did he do—take that priceless megalodon fossil and immediately smash it to pieces?! he panicked.

Meanwhile, Anri and Yahiro were having a very matter-of-fact conversation about the item.

“Umm…I don’t think so. My father and mother weren’t good with that kind of tech; we never had a computer… It’s possible that it was sold to us while my father was running the shop over a decade ago, and it was still hanging around,” she said.

“Ah, I see.”

“I don’t know what the data is, but if it was sold to a used items store, I think it’s perfectly fine for you to have it, Yahiro. Please don’t worry about it. If it seems like the contents of the card are important, you can tell me, and I’ll try to find something about it in the ledger from my father’s generation.”

“That’s a good idea,” Yahiro agreed. Yukihiko’s jaw dropped.

No, no, no! It’s a terrible idea! That’s a micro SD card! Why would you assume it’s that old?! You could make a solid guess of when it was sold just by looking at the dates on the files! Ugh, dammit! What now? Did he bring the SD card here with him…? I suppose I could follow him, beat him up, and take the data with me… Of course, I’ll also need the data inside the puzzle box, but I doubt that will be a problem because it only looks like pornography at a glance.

With this resolution in mind, Yukihiko silently slipped out of the store.

…The main thing is, I don’t want people recognizing my face. First things first, I need to find this kid’s hideout.

“But this shark fossil seems expensive on its own, so it feels wrong to receive it for something as simple as cleaning up…”

“Oh no. Please don’t worry about that… Oh, that’s right. There was a customer who was just looking for a shark tooth fossil over there… Oh?”

If Yahiro didn’t want it, Anri thought, she could suggest that he negotiate with the other customer who was looking for one—but that person was already gone, leaving behind nothing but a clammy breeze through the open door.

Several minutes later, Yukihiko watched from a distance as Yahiro climbed into a van parked next to the store. He got on the phone and called his Heaven’s Slave companions.

“…Yeah, that’s right. It’s a van with some kind of anime character printed on one side. If you see it around town, follow it and find out where their hideout is.”

Saitama Prefecture

“…We’ve learned the location of one of the data sources. A civilian has purchased it and discovered the card, it seems.”

“What do we do? Should we retrieve it ourselves?”

The suit-wearing men were calm and collected but with an undeniable sense of menace.

“No, better to have Heaven’s Slave take the blame. We’ll just observe, like yesterday, and if they’re about to be caught, provide sniper backup. If the other side is civilians, no kill shots: just enough to scare them. Make sure the men understand that.”

“Understood. I’ll do so.”

Once the other man had finished passing along those orders to the subordinates, the leader of the group exhaled and murmured, “But the real problem…is that magician rider.”

“Our observation made it clear that the shadow effect is not a trick or illusion of some kind. We shot it when it was trying to catch Heaven’s Slave last night, and there was barely any damage. The rider just scooped up the bullet with its shadow and left.”

“Then was our prior information correct? Is that the Natsugawara Group’s secret tool?”

“What even is it…? Some kind of liquid metal controlled at will through electric current, perhaps…?”

“No point in boots-on-the-ground men like us trying to figure it out. We all know how to shoot guns, but can a single one of us list off more than five chemical equations? Is there a single person here who’s a regular reader of Newton magazine?” said the seeming leader of the group to the amusement of the men in suits. “We’ll let the boys at the lab figure out what that thing is. But you don’t need to be an expert to know at a glance that whatever it is, it’s so valuable that it could overturn the industry in multiple respects.”

He tapped the picture of the Headless Rider on his tablet, his voice flat and matter-of-fact.

“The pilot can go dead or alive. Just wait for your opportunity and retrieve the Shadow Ghost that takes the form of a bike and its rider.”

Evening, Ikebukuro

Unaware that her shadow had been given a new nickname, Celty was proceeding with the tedious work of investigating her case.

“…So with that in mind, have you heard any rumors about Heaven’s Slave?”

“Heaven’s Slave, huh? I haven’t heard anything good, that’s for sure.”

Celty was in a park, collecting information not from Shizuo Heiwajima but his superior at work, Tom Tanaka. They were on a break at the moment. Tom had a deep understanding of the local motorcycle groups, street gangs, and other delinquent sorts—at times, he even knew more than Izaya Orihara about such folks.

Celty had spent all day going from Saitama to Ikebukuro in search of Heaven’s Slave, but as Libei had said, she could find small groupings of their members but was not getting any closer to finding the body that controlled all of them.

She was beginning to feel like she was playing a game of whack-a-mole with a broken score counter. She had spotted Tom hanging out in the park when she realized she needed to be asking other people some questions.

“I just can’t get to the higher-ups. Everyone I threaten or butter up just says the same thing—that they can’t get in touch and they’re all annoyed and waiting for orders…”

“…Uh-huh. It sure does sound like the Dollars,” Tom said.

“Do you have any insight on the main group?” asked Celty, at her wit’s end.

Tom considered the question. “Well…maybe it’s possible…that Heaven’s Slave isn’t one group.”

“Huh?”

“It’s like okonomiyaki shops or what have you. There’s always the ‘original’ recipe, or the ‘true flavor,’ and whatnot… The initial Heaven’s Slave group dissolved, right? Some of those folks who no longer had any affiliation probably retained some know-how of dealing drugs, I assume,” Tom conjectured, sitting on the bench and looking up at Celty. “So if some of those leftovers drifted off to Tokyo or Saitama and recruited partners of their own and decided, I’m the new Heaven’s Slave boss now, of course you’re never going to reach the real organizing body. Because there isn’t one.”

“…But that doesn’t make sense. We know they’re working for a leader named Shijima, and while they can’t contact him, they all showed signs of having a boss of some kind giving them orders…”

“So like I was saying, inferior copies of Heaven’s Slave start popping up like bamboo shoots after the rain, right? And if there’s someone who recognizes this is happening, with longer reach and a wider perspective…he might choose to use all those inferior copies to his advantage. Someone who has to have the power to control all those hoodlums—through money, for example.”

“I see… In that case, out of all the various Heaven’s Slaves, you could choose only to use the ones who suited your purpose.”

“Exactly. And it’s easy to cut them off, like a lizard’s tail. You stay hidden in the shadows and move on to using a different Heaven’s Slave.”

Interesting. That could be possible…but it seems to me like Shijima’s been too visible for that to be true, Celty thought. Or maybe Shijima himself is being manipulated and is only, like, Heaven’s Slave number five himself…

Tom could sense that Celty was uncertain about this argument. He scratched his cheek with a finger and suggested, “Well, I don’t know the truth. But from what I hear, there are at least three Heaven’s Slave groups in Ikebukuro, one each in Narimasu and Wako, and they’re all completely independent. To the point that some of them almost started getting into turf wars. I assumed it was an internal conflict in the whole group, but maybe they’re each thinking, We’re the real originals.”

“How do you know so much about this?!”

“Lately, though, that competition has died down. Maybe one of them won the fight and they all united…or like I said earlier, some kind of generous sponsor stepped in and mediated the conflict.”

Shizuo had been sitting back and observing the conversation with his arms crossed, but now he finally spoke up. “Celty, what you’re really looking for is this Yukihiko Natsugawara and Hiroto Shijima, right? So what do you need to figure out all this complicated stuff for? Forget about the Heaven’s whatever and narrow it down to those guys. Wouldn’t that be easier?”

“That’s the problem. I was looking for Heaven’s Slave so that I could find them, so it might be putting the cart before the horse… Shijima has some distinct features, though. I might recognize him right away if I ran across him.”

“What’s this Shijima guy like?”

“Well, he’s got bandages all over his head and glasses on top of them.”

Shizuo and Tom read the message on her phone screen, then looked at each other.

“Is that the guy from the other day?”

“The one who was with the weird circus acrobat guy.”

“…?! You know him?!” Celty asked, shocked.

They turned toward her to explain—but both of them froze, looking over her shoulders.

“Ah.”

“Huh…?”

“Hmm? What is it?” Celty asked. They pointed behind her.

“…Isn’t that him?”

“What?” she began to type in response, but she stopped partway as she checked around her.

She extended her senses in that direction, toward the entrance to the park, and perceived a young man with bandages around his head standing there.

Huh? Wha—?! Are you kidding me?! she thought, completely flustered, looking between him and the two men she was with. Then she bowed briefly to Tom and typed, “S-sorry. Let me make this up to you sometime later!”

As she rushed off toward her task, Tom and Shizuo could only stare at each other yet again.

“Uh, did we…actually do anything for her?”

“I have no idea…”

By the time Celty reached the entrance to the park, the bandaged man had already moved, sliding toward the shadows of a different road.

She caught up to Shijima just as he entered a narrow alley with very little foot traffic and reached for his shoulders. He spun around and came to a stop just as her fingers extended, and he sent a chilling gaze into the darkness in the depths of her helmet.

“I suppose this isn’t really a get-to-know-you situation, Headless Rider. After all, you’re very familiar with me, and I’d like to think I know a few things about you already.”

“…You’re Hiroto Shijima?”

“And if I say yes?”

“I’m dragging you over to Mr. Akabayashi. But first, you’re going to tell me the reason you singled out Anri, and you’re going to tell me where Yukihiko Natsugawara is,” Celty stated, holding back nothing.

Shijima chuckled. “That’s not a negotiation. You’re just issuing demands.”

“…Do you think you’re in any position to negotiate?”

After her failure last night, Celty decided to use her shadows in advance this time and slipped them around Shijima’s hands and feet. Relieved that she could either hold him down or string him up if he tried to run now, she resumed her questioning.

“What do you think you’re doing with Anri? What is your goal?”

“Do I have to answer that? If you had any relationship with Izaya Orihara, you would know that all information has an equal cost.”

“And I told you that you’re not in any position to make deals with me,” she snapped, grabbing him by the collar.

But his gaze remained cold and calm. “Actually, I am.”

“…What?”

“If you take me right over to Akabayashi or kill me yourself, it will mean the death of someone you care about.”

…!

An eerie chill rushed through Celty’s body. It felt cold enough to rattle her spine.

Her first thought was of the black-market doctor in his white coat. Next, she thought of Anri, Mikado, Shizuo, the van group… Their faces each flashed in her mind.

Wait… How much does he know about me? Can I be sure it’s just a bluff?

She went utterly still, and Shijima grinned triumphantly.

“Don’t worry, monster. I don’t know where your family and friends live. Although I did just learn how close you really are to Anri Sonohara.”

With a surge of sudden relief, Celty lifted Shijima by his shirt with both hands. She extended fingers of shadow to hold the smartphone up and type into it at the same time for Shijima’s benefit.

“So it was a bluff!”

“No, it wasn’t. If anything happens to me, a couple of people around Ikebukuro are going to be shot and killed at random—that’s all.”

…?! Celty froze again.

Shijima’s explanation was delivered with chilling simplicity. “You care about everyone in this city, don’t you? In fact, it’s not limited to the city—you care about humanity as a whole, right? Look, when I say random, I mean total strangers to you. There’s no reason to feel guilty about it. I’m the one who’s at fault for doing this.”

She considered that this might be a bluff, too, but the memories of being shot the previous night led Celty to believe that Shijima was probably serious. She lowered him to the ground, arms trembling, and typed through barely suppressed anger.

“Hiroto Shijima…what do you want?!”

“I want nothing from you. I merely wanted to express that I am in a position to negotiate. I’m not some murderer, and killing innocent children minding their own business is not something that brings me any joy.”

“…So I’m supposed to trust you?”

“Well, it’s better not to trust wicked people like myself, of course, but I’d like to have a little more trust than Izaya Orihara, let’s say. I don’t want anything from you, and because of that, I have no reason to be antagonistic to you.”

He says all this after having me shot! fumed Celty, who believed that the sniper had been acting on Shijima’s order. However, losing her composure would be playing into his hands, so she decided to cool her metaphorical head and continue the “negotiation,” as he’d called it.

“Then why are we talking together now?”

“I just so happened to hear that you were out looking for me today. Do you have anything to say to me outside of the matter of Anri Sonohara, Yukihiko Natsugawara, and Akabayashi?” he asked with a shrug.

Celty balled her fists and used shadow to type on the phone. “Plenty of things. For one, stop dealing your messed-up drugs all over town!”

“Got it. I’ll stop.”

“There haven’t been that many victims yet, but who knows how many— Ummm, hang on, hang on, wait—wait, what?” typed Celty, getting confused in the middle of her sentence. She erased the message in progress and started over. “Huh? You’ll stop?”

“Yes. Even my partners told me that people who deal drugs are the worst. And personally speaking, I have no desire to make the Awakusu-kai’s Akabayashi any angrier with me. So I haven’t been selling anything to ordinary folks for quite a while.”

“I can’t believe that! The drugs are still going out all over the city…”

“Whoever’s doing that is doing so against my orders. That happened with the Dollars, too, didn’t it? People revolting against their friends and causing trouble.” Shijima sounded rather unconcerned.

“So you’re able to tell those folks to stop selling?”

“Yes, I can get them to stop within a few days… Is there anything else you want to say?”

Celty considered this question for a few moments. There was something else very important to her that she could prod him about.

“But…you were the one who was dealing the drugs that amplified and accelerated the delusions of the cult worshipping me, right?”

At the very least, Himeka Tatsugami’s two sisters had been driven mad by Shijima’s drugs. They were already leaning that way at the start, but the drugs essentially caused that clock hand to tick faster and further.

“Yeah. That was an experiment. There was no business there. The results were quite fascinating.”

“…I could punch you,” Celty admitted.

Shijima narrowed his eyelids. “Will one be enough?”

“What?” she replied, her helmet tilting to the side. Shijima pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and called someone.

“…It’s me. The Headless Rider’s going to hit me one time. It’s already part of the deal. No need for retribution against any civilians.” He hung up, not bothering to remove his glasses, and said to Celty, “All right. Hit me with whatever single punch will satisfy you, monster.”

“…You’re sure?” she asked because she was not.

Behind the glasses, Shijima’s eyes narrowed as he grinned again.

“I’d prefer it to be nonfatal.”

Shijima’s body flew sixty feet down the narrow alley in an instant.

She had created a fist formed of shadow to perform the deed. It had been a massive three feet across and too fast to see.

It had hit Shijima directly in the face, propelling him down the street as though he were shot out of a cannon. He tumbled until he hit a fence and went still.

…Huh? Was that too much? H-he’s not dead, right?!

Celty was less concerned about Shijima himself and more about the possibility of indiscriminate sniping in the streets out of revenge for his death. She rushed over to where he lay, coughing violently and ejecting spittle flecked with blood.

A piece of his broken glasses was stuck in the skin near his eyes. He made for such a miserable sight, even his attacker felt a little bit queasy about the damage she’d done.

And then, out of nowhere, blood oozing from scrapes all over his body, cradling what appeared to be a broken left arm, Shijima laughed.

“Ha-ha…ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

He laughed uproariously, filling the alleyway with gales of mirthful delight. It was like he’d gone back to being a kid again. The sight of someone so injured and so elated at the same time creeped Celty out. A different kind of chill ran down her spine.

Uh-oh, did he hit his head too hard?! What should I do? I guess I’ll take him to Shinra…or should I send him to get a CT scan…?

She panicked on the spot, momentarily forgetting that he was irredeemably wicked.

Meanwhile, Shijima seemed to have completely flipped a switch. His eyes were full of joy, and he giggled, chortled, and guffawed.

“Ha-ha…ha-ha-ha! Finally! Finally, Headless Rider! Finally it feels like someone has paid attention to me! At long last, I lost in a way that mattered to someone!”

“What are you talking about? Are you all right?”

“I’m grateful to you, Headless Rider. Because you seriously, truly punched me…not in some divine punishment sense but out of sheer emotional buildup. I feel like I’ve finally gotten back on track after being disconnected from this city!” he exclaimed, holding out his hands.

Celty was even more disconcerted by this and began to think in earnest that she needed to take him to a hospital that could give him a brain scan.

But Shijima just took Celty’s hand and gave it a vigorous shake. “I’m sure it’s only an illusion, though. I’m not going to stop my vengeance against the town now, and I’m certainly not going to turn virtuous out of nowhere. Rest assured and keep a cautious eye on me like usual. Continue to consider me an enemy.”

It was hard to believe he had looked so cold and dispassionate before. Now his eyes were glowing and bubbly, like a child about to open his Christmas presents. To Celty, this just made him far eerier than he had seemed before.

“An enemy…? What do you mean?”

“Because then I can continue to be me. I won’t get left behind by the city. That’s all I mean. Oh, sorry…just talking to myself. I don’t expect you to understand that—just forget it,” he said cryptically. But it sent a shiver down her spine.

Some of the things Shijima was saying about being “left behind by the city” and “disconnected” were phrases that had been rattling around her own head for the last several days.

Just as she was resuming her work as a courier, this man appeared, worried about the same thing she was: being disconnected from society. But the sight of someone who had traveled such a different path from her own sent Celty into disarray, even with a hint of jealousy.

What the hell is this feeling that allows him to be at ease again out of nowhere? All the while, I’m desperately trying to find a way to shrink my feeling of alienation…

But she knew that putting these questions into words and shoving them in his face was the wrong way to react. Instead, she decided to do an about-face and return to her job.

“If you’re grateful for that, then give me answers. Where is Yukihiko Natsugawara, and what do you plan to do to Anri Sonohara?”

“Rather greedy of you. If you want to know both answers, why not bring Anri Sonohara here and have her slash me with Saika?”

“…I feel like possessing you with Saika would be dangerous. Just answer the question.”

“You’re right to be wary. It’s not Anri Sonohara I want. It’s the power of Saika. Although I’m not all that fixated; if I never get it—oh well,” said Shijima, his eyes cold again. His voice was sluggish and aloof.

But Celty was not going to take that for an answer. “What are you talking about? You broke into the place and even tried to kidnap her.”

“Well, I won’t anymore. How’s that?”

“If promises were actually binding, there would be no point to having cops.”

“Do you want to turn yourself in with me, then? No-Lights Reckless Rider?”

Ugh…

She had no answer for that taunt, and he smirked, very pleased with himself.

“In the end, both you and I are outcasts of society. I’m not saying we should get along. Let’s just struggle and rage on the dark side of town—that’s all.”

Shijima turned on his heel and dragged himself, cracked bones and all, away from the spot. As he went, he gave Celty one of the answers she sought.

“I’m almost done with Yukihiko Natsugawara. Once that’s finished, I’ll hand him over to you, alive.”

Once Shijima was gone, Celty was left to stare at her own hands.

A tiny tendril of shadow thinner than a strand of hair stretched from her wrist and connected to the street, where it continued to lengthen endlessly.

There we go. I’ve snuck a little piece of shadow onto his shoelace. I don’t know what he plans to do with Yukihiko Natsugawara, but I’m going to find Shijima’s hideout before that happens and rescue the boy.

Or…abduct him? Why did Yukihiko Natsugawara choose to cozy up to such a creepy guy anyway…?

Saitama Prefecture

Foreign gentlemen in black suits covertly filmed the interaction between the Headless Rider and the young man. They shared curious glances.

“Who’s that kid?”

“What were they talking about? First it looked like the rider punched him, and then they were shaking hands.”

“The guy was laughing, it seemed like…and the rider used that shadow power right in the open.”

“Yeah… It might have been an empty alley, but still… Unless it’s the nature of their relationship that she can afford to easily show it off?”

“Perhaps the punch was some kind of test. He was talking with someone on the phone just beforehand.”

Because their assumption was that the Headless Rider’s shadow was the latest technology from the Natsugawara Group, they were only confusing themselves more. They alternated between overthinking and grasping at straws. Despite not realizing that they were on the wrong track, they made plans for their next move.

“Just in case, seize everyone who appears to have close ties to the rider. They might serve as hostages. We should try to pry information out of them.”

Ikebukuro—parking lot outside Russia Sushi

There was a paid parking lot across the street past Russia Sushi. A young hoodlum sat inside a van, watching from a distance. He was reporting in to Yukihiko.

“That’s it, Mr. Natsugawara.”

“Good. Nice work,” Yukihiko said, confirming that the van they pointed out was the same one that the high schoolers had gotten into earlier. He removed several ten-thousand-yen bills from his wallet and tossed them to the ground at the hoodlum’s feet.

“Heh-heh-heh, thanks,” the hoodlum laughed, his cheek twitching. He bent down to pick up the bills.

Yukihiko turned away from the man to look at the van. From the oddly decorated sushi restaurant on the corner across the way came a loud, deep but bright voice.

“Ohhh! You come again!”

Drawn by the voice, he saw the large restaurant employee seeing off a group of several guests.

“You all full, boss? Full stomach, full dreams, then your happiness share to the neighbor, ya? You want to take souvenir? We have special price right now. What is price, you say? Don’t be silly—of course it has rice. It comes locked in special treasure chest with no hinge. That is eggshell. You get egg sushi and crab sushi, packed like sardines in cardboard box.”

“…Uh…how many tens of thousands of yen does this ‘souvenir’ cost…?”

“Thanks for the meal.”

“That was really good.”

The three teenagers—Kuon, Yahiro and Himeka—left the restaurant with a wave for Simon, the restaurant worker, who was giving them a very hard pitch. Himeka waited until Togusa came out last and said, “Thank you so much, Mr. Togusa.”

Togusa shrugged it off with a casual wave. “Nah, don’t even mention it. Paying a single five-hundred-yen coin for an entire dinner, tax included? No sushi place has prices like these.”

After leaving Sonohara-dou, Togusa had driven Yahiro to where he was meeting Kuon and Himeka. At that point, Togusa had said, “Well, hell, if you guys are getting dinner, I’ll pay. I still haven’t made good on your help with the car the other day anyway.” Because Russia Sushi was right in the area, they had dinner there.

“I had no idea what fish a lot of them were… And what was that Borscht Roll on the menu…?” wondered Kuon, looking a bit queasy.

“Well,” Togusa said, going back to Himeka’s gratitude, “from my perspective, I feel so bad for my poor van when she’s driving around the same people all the time! Kadota’s one thing, but Yumasaki and Karisawa keep leaving their stuff…” He thought of the stacks of manga in the back seat and sighed.

However, his downcast mood lasted only a moment, replaced by a glint in his eye. “Plus, it’s part of my duty as one of the single-digit members of Ruri’s fan club to explain what makes her so great to the younger generation. A piece or two of sushi is a cheap price to pay for that opportunity.”

“Well, I feel like I learned a lot. When I was in elementary school, I always thought that Ruri Hijiribe was just a very mystical person and wanted to know more,” Kuon said.

“Exactly, man, you get it!” Togusa replied, happily taking Kuon’s facetious statement at face value.

Under his breath, Yahiro asked Himeka, “Was that too much? Sorry to drag you along for all that.”

“Oh, I’m fine. I like Ruri Hijiribe, too, you know. I had fun.”

“Ah, okay. That’s good to hear,” Yahiro said, relieved that he wasn’t at odds with society on this one.

Topics like Ruri Hijiribe that could be shared with a great many people were good to know about. He felt truly envious of her; how incredible one must be, to be beloved by so many people at once.

The three high schoolers piled into the back seat, and the sliding door automatically rolled shut behind them. As Togusa started to drive away, Kuon chose to bring up a different subject.

“…By the way, you mentioned it briefly earlier, but did I hear that there was an SD card in the shark tooth you got, Yahiro?”

“Yeah. This is it…” He pulled the micro SD card out of his pocket. He’d glued the tooth back together, keeping the card separate.

“Hmm…same brand as mine,” Kuon muttered.

“The same?” Yahiro asked.

“Er, yeah… Well, the truth is…there was an SD card in the box I got, too.”

“Oh, the one you said you couldn’t put on your blog?”

“That’s the one. Did you take a look at the data on the card? What was it?”

Yahiro made a face. “Well…the thing is, I don’t have a device that can read it…and it doesn’t work with my smartphone, it seems…”

“We can use my tablet to read it. You can stick a micro card right in there, no adapter needed.”

Kuon pulled the tablet out of his bag and inserted the card. In his head, he was thinking, It’d probably be bad if Himeka just sees a huge list of porn on it, like with mine…but then again, I’d be curious to see how she reacts to that…

Instead, however, the only file shown was a single program.

“What is this…? I’ve never seen this program before… Doesn’t seem like it’s a virus, but you never know…,” Kuon muttered.

As Kuon tinkered with the file, Yahiro kept his gaze firmly to the rear window of the van.

“What’s wrong?” Himeka asked.

“I think…someone’s following our car,” Yahiro answered.

“Huh?”

Togusa and Kuon both stopped what they were doing to listen in.

“Earlier today, I couldn’t help but notice that there were a bunch of people around Sonohara-dou who seemed extremely tense… And before we got into the car just now, some people were watching us from afar.”

Yahiro hadn’t known that Akabayashi’s men were staking out Sonohara-dou—he merely felt their attention on him, and his cautious instincts told him to be on the lookout for an attack.

“Why does it seem like every time you take a ride in my van, you find someone dangerous…? Like that street attacker recently.” Togusa groaned.

Yahiro apologetically explained, “Well, this time it doesn’t seem like one person… Oh, maybe there’s an extra car…?”

“Wait, you’re talking about cars? Oh…actually, that car has been following me for a little bit…” Togusa grunted. Out of caution, he took an unplanned turn down a side route.

Despite being a small alley that would normally not see any traffic, multiple vehicles followed them in.

“Shit…what do they want…? Don’t tell me Izumii didn’t learn his lesson last time and is coming around again,” Togusa growled, assuming this was a personal grudge involving him. He started to plan out how he could let the high schoolers escape. “Hang on—I’m gonna head for a police station with a parking lot, where you guys can… Wha—?!”

Another car appeared at the corner just ahead, turning in diagonally to block the van inside the narrow alley.

“Tch!”

He tried to back up in a hurry, but another car was already behind them. They were totally blocked off.

Togusa clenched his jaw, reached for the umbrella on the passenger seat to use as a weapon, and made to get out of the car. “Listen up—I’ll keep them busy. You find a way to esc…”

But the words caught in his throat when he turned back to look at them.

All he saw was Yahiro as Snake Hands, wrapped in black shadow, already in the act of opening the door.

“Hey, Yahiro…,” Saburo said in an attempt to stop him. But then he recalled something he’d said to Anri the other day: “Yahiro’s kind of like Celty; he’ll rush off on his own.” It didn’t seem like he was going to get anywhere with the younger boy.

“…Aaah, dammit! Hang on—I’ll go with you! Don’t do anything crazy!”

“Oh, someone’s comi… What the hell?”

Natsugawara clenched his hammer, starting to disembark once he saw the van stop—but he did not expect the man who emerged first.

It was utter shadow, as if it had sucked in the surrounding light. The fluttering darkness made it look like a surface that had been ripped straight out of the world, offering a glimpse through to the nothingness behind it, all in the shape of a person.

One of the thugs, unable to process the situation, rushed at the shadow in a confused state, deciding to just do what came naturally and swing his bat.

But the next moment, the bat was wrenched from his hands, and the end of it was slammed directly under his nose. The ugly sound this produced filled the alley, and the man passed out, bleeding from the nose and mouth.

“Wh…wh-wha…?”

Natsugawara began to tremble. He had to clench his hammer to summon the courage to keep going. No matter how many times he squeezed it, however, he couldn’t stop the trembling.

The hypnosis effect of the supposedly cursed Bannanjin completely evaporated in the presence of what might be called a true demon—and Yukihiko Natsugawara was instantly returned to being a small, petty excuse for a villain.

That was when the real monster began to use its snake hands on Yukihiko and the other terrified members of his gang.

Near the entrance to the alley, the men in the black car blocking the road watched the chaos unfold.

“This is insane… Is he…using the same kind of Shadow Ghost as the magician rider…?”

“Is he a part of the Natsugawara Group, too?!”

“What do you think? Should we pull out?”

“…We can’t have Yukihiko Natsugawara being captured. Help him escape. Do nothing else.”

The foreign men belonging to the Natsugawara Group’s rival organization were perturbed by recent developments, but they decided to stick to their previously established plan.

Heaven’s Slave members scattered to the wind in the face of overwhelming violence, and the foreign men decided to fire warning shots to stop anyone who would chase after them.

In order to intimidate the monster standing next to the van, they pointed their rifle barrel at the rear window, taking aim through the scope.

The van that had blocked the rear part of the alley was already gone. Terrified by the strength of the monster that appeared from the van, the driver had left his companions behind and peeled off.

Because the hoodlums had run down the side alley, the shot from the larger street, where the shooter sat, was nice and clean.

“All right…ready to fire,” said the sniper in the back seat in English. He aimed at a strange sticker on the rear window of the target van and pulled the trigger.

He had no idea that the lead bullet he fired would unleash an even greater monster.

“Whoa!!”

A sharp, shattering sound filled the van; Kuon covered Himeka’s head and hunched over her. “What was that? What happened?!”

The door opened, and Yahiro hurriedly checked out the inside. “A gun! The window’s been shot!”

“What?!”

The rear window had spiderweb cracks all over it, with a small hole gouged in the center of the effect. The bullet had passed through the interior of the van because there was a similar hole near the top of the front windshield, on the passenger side.

“H-hey, we don’t wanna deal with guns, Yahiro! C’mon, let’s get outta here! Call Mr. Togusa back! We can reverse and turn down the side alley… Uh…wha…?” Kuon stammered, his panic giving way as he noticed something was wrong.

Togusa had returned inside the van through the driver’s side door, but he froze in place in his seat as his eyes locked on to the bullet hole in the rear window glass. His soul had left his body.

The teens assumed that it was shock at the damage to his beloved car. Only Yahiro noticed the extra detail.

The location of that shot…

Around the hole, warped and twisted, was some kind of pattern, and Yahiro recognized what it was: a now-warped sticker of a mascot character based on Ruri Hijiribe.

Whether intentional or by accident, the bullet had passed right through the brain of the Ruri Hijiribe illustration.

After several seconds of silence, something took possession over Togusa’s soulless body.

He reached for the stick, yanked it into reverse, and slammed on the gas pedal.

Instantly, everyone else inside the van lurched.

“Wh-wh-whoa! What?! What?!”

“…!”

Kuon tumbled to the floor of the van, cradling his tablet, while Himeka fell sideways onto the seat, with Yahiro huddling over her. It felt like they were on a roller coaster making a sudden shift in speed.

While Kuon and Himeka were taken by surprise, only Yahiro understood the situation unfolding.

If he were to abbreviate various complex emotional movements and reasonings, the current situation could be summed up in one simple statement.

Saburo Togusa had snapped.

“Good, the shadow user’s back inside the car.”

“The driver’s pulled back, too. Let’s make sure the Heaven’s Slave guys are… Huh?”

“What?”

The attackers in suits noticed at this point that something was wrong with the van.

First, it backed up at an abnormal speed; then it started racing forward again, blazing through the alley at a speed over sixty miles per hour.

“That’s crazy…,” the sniper muttered. The next instant, they were forced to flee the spot even faster than Heaven’s Slave had.

Ikebukuro

There was one more.

Saburo Togusa’s road rage caused another power to awaken.

This was a very mighty power caused by the complex entanglement of various elements. A guardian of the law, emitting engine exhaust, backed by the power of government authority. A power in the form of a man—but so terrible that the nonhuman Celty Sturluson considered him a monster.

“Station to all officers. We have two vehicles in a chase along the Kawagoe Highway toward Saitama. Reports of occasional gunfire from the lead vehicle. Proceed with all haste,” came the message over the radio. It was a virtually unthinkable situation in modern Japanese traffic.

The man listening to the message narrowed his eyes, staring through sunglasses, and replied, “Ten-four. I’m on my way.”

He straddled his police motorcycle and yanked on the handles.

A number of dark shadows burst forth from the black of night. And with his trusty white partner beneath him, the man launched himself out into that blackness.

He was prepared to execute the justice he believed in.

That reason alone was enough to risk his life.

Meanwhile—shopping mall construction site, Saitama Prefecture

Here we are.

Celty Sturluson gazed up at a massive construction site across the street.

It was a major shopping mall that was nearly complete, just waiting for its tenants to enter the premises and open for business.

The advertisements were already out in full force on TV, promising a “Brand-new Mega-giga-tera-peta-level Mall!” which sounded like gibberish. When they promised a new movie theater as well, it was tempting enough that Celty wondered, Would I be allowed inside with my helmet on? If it’s blocking the view for the people behind me, I can take it off…

She had followed the shadow string she stuck on Shijima to this shopping mall. The string was clearly heading inside the building, indicating that he was here.

I don’t know if Yukihiko Natsugawara is being held in here or not, but I should at least find a clue. If needed, maybe I can nick a cell phone or computer…

No. There’s a good chance that Yukihiko’s working with Shijima of his own accord. Shijima just happens to think of him as a tool, since he mentioned being done with him or whatever that was, Celty thought, pitying the boy she’d only seen in photographs.

She pulled Shooter over to a corner of the parking lot. Work on the mall was paused at the moment due to delays in the interior contracts with tenants and other paperwork, so there wasn’t much reason for anyone to go in or out aside from security. And the security guards simply showed up at a specified time, did a single round, then left. She’d witnessed the security company’s car leaving the lot earlier.

Are they simply evading the security patrol, or did they buy them off…?

She wondered why Shijima would choose such a place for his hideout, and she found the answer when she noticed that the sign outside the building site said, DEVELOPMENT: SHIJIMA CONSTRUCTION.

At the very least, I know someone’s got a rifle with a sound suppressor on it. That’s got to be the biggest danger to watch out for…

She kept herself shrouded in a mist of shadow, remaining in darkness even as she approached the building.

However, Celty did not yet realize that she had already been under observation since before arriving at this location.

“…A shopping mall?”

With raised eyebrows, the enemies of the Natsugawara Group received the report that the magician rider had gone into a mall under construction.

“It’s not far away.”

“And it’s not all that far from the Natsugawara mansion. Maybe the rider’s making contact with someone.”

A few minutes later, another report added corroborating evidence.

“…! I knew it. My guess was right.”

The leader grinned, certain in the accuracy of his foresight, and rose from his seat.

“I just received word that someone from the Natsugawara family went inside through a different entrance. Yes, it was Target D, who evaded our trackers outside of school and home. That settles it.”

He slapped the table and boomed, “All available field agents, head to this spot at once. But don’t draw any attention before anything happens. Once we’ve taken care of that circus performer, we’ll retrieve the Shadow Ghost and withdraw before the police arrive. And just in case, carry out the abductions of the Sonohara-dou owner and others at once.

“If all goes well, we’ll have both a Natsugawara member and their technology… Won’t that be fun?”

Several minutes later, Ikebukuro

“You know that rider in black, don’t you?” asked a voice in flat, unaffected Japanese, causing Tom and Shizuo to stop in their tracks.

They had finished their rounds and were heading back to the office, walking down a quieter street when about ten men, all of them at least six feet tall, suddenly appeared and surrounded the two.

“…Who are you guys?” asked Shizuo, narrowing his eyes with displeasure at the menace in their demeanor.

Tom could sense the possibility of bad outcomes ahead. He tried to answer without provoking either the men or Shizuo. “Well enough to trade a few words if we run into each other, I’d say. Are you with the media? Because we don’t have any information that hasn’t already been on TV. You’d be better off asking someone else.”

“We’ll be the ones to determine the depth of your relationship. Come with us,” said one of the large men dressed in black, pulling out a knife and pressing it to Tom’s stomach at an angle that kept it hidden from any other eyes. “And if you try to raise hell, you know what’ll happe— Gublaaah?!”

He was that close to finishing the sentence before he flew a hundred feet down the road.

“?!”

The blow from the man in the bartender’s vest seemed to overturn everything they knew about physics, and it left the rest of the large men frozen on the spot.

If they were professional mercenaries, they might have succeeded at reacting in a calm and rational manner. Unfortunately for them, they were hardly better than hooligans, hired by the Natsugawara Group’s enemies to be disposable foot soldiers.

“I ain’t all that smart…but I’ve figured out one thing,” growled Shizuo in a voice from the depths of hell. He stared in a circle around him. “You’re Tom’s enemies, Celty’s enemies, and mine, too.”

Anyone else walking the streets in the vicinity understood implicitly that Shizuo Heiwajima was around when they saw the man fly down the street. Some quickly scampered away from the scene, and others gathered to watch from a comfortable distance.

Amid the attention, Shizuo clenched his fists and roared at the men, all of whom were rooted to the spot, totally intimidated.

“Which means you gotta be prepared to die three times!”

Sonohara-dou

Jan-Jaka-Jan, who’d been keeping their eyes on the area, were busy capturing the members of Heaven’s Slave who’d still been after Anri. And inside Sonohara-dou, a blond woman, who seemed like nothing but a curious foreign visitor, gazed at the various items on the shelves, which seemed to exist in a strange middle ground between antiques and secondhand items.

However, this woman was another disposable foot soldier hired by the Natsugawara Group’s enemies. These people assumed they were elites, not interchangeable pawns; they simply didn’t realize that ever since the helicopter-downing incident two years ago, their parent company had considered them a lost cause.

The woman’s mission was to inject the owner of Sonohara-dou with a tranquilizer, then pull her into the group’s car out front the moment she fell unconscious.

I feel sorry for this girl, but I’ve got to do this for the sake of payme…for the sake of the mission, she thought, trying to convince herself that this was for a more noble purpose than money. She inched closer to the woman behind the counter.

The moment the young woman turned around to take something down from the shelves on the wall behind the counter, the agent silently made her move.

“Umm…what is that syringe for…?”

“It’s a tranquilizer…Mother…”

Less than a minute later, the shop was occupied by only Anri and a faithful child who had fallen victim to the self-defense system of the Saika that made its home in Anri’s body.

The woman’s eyes were completely bloodshot, while Anri’s glowed crimson, compelling the attacker to answer truthfully.

As for Anri herself, she didn’t understand the situation surrounding her. All she knew was that she’d have to close up the shop early in order to question the woman.

Not that it made a big difference. There were no other customers in the building, and Anri had been planning to close up shop once the woman left anyway.

Inside a car

The black car headed for the mall construction site. In the back seat, the leader of the group was flustered. “…What does that mean?”

“What’s the matter?” asked another man.

“I’ve lost contact with the men who went to retrieve the guy in the bartender’s vest and the one with the dreads. And Orca, who was supposed to go after Sonohara-dou’s owner, hasn’t been in contact with her transport team. She’s vanished.”

“…That’s an ominous sign. What should we do?” another said, suspecting a trap.

The leader shook his head. “Either way, if those members have been captured, withdrawing only makes our activities more difficult. If we don’t at least manage to recover a piece of that magician rider’s Shadow Ghost now, while we’ve got everyone together, we really are going to be left out to dry.”

Of course, the leader had no idea that the company considered his team to be nothing but disposable pawns to begin with.

“The rider’s left the bike outside. At a bare minimum, we can at least take that with us.”

Kawagoe Highway

“Dammit! What’s up with that van?! We’re at our max speed already!”

“That’s not standard speed for a van like that! He’s tuned it up!”

All members of the car, from the driver to the sniper, looked pale and nervous as the decorated van roared after them with tremendous speed.

“Can’t you shoot the driver?!”

“Not at that speed! I—I mean, I’ve been timing it out and trying to hit him, but it feels like the driver’s actually dodging the shots!”

“Don’t be stupid! Only a monster could do something like that!”

The men were in a panic overall, but the one sitting in the passenger seat still had enough sense to call for backup on his phone. That was when he realized that they’d received their next encoded instructions.

“We have orders! The magician rider’s at a shopping mall near the hideout, and all available units are to meet there! We’ll have the numbers to fight back!”

Inside the mall

I don’t see him, but the shadow string continues in this direction…

Celty was on the second floor of the mall, deftly using her shadow to stay hidden, following the string she’d attached to Shijima’s shoe.

The interior of the mall wasn’t engulfed in total darkness; there were emergency lights installed already, and a number of night-lights were around for construction or security purposes, too.

This wasn’t enough to light up the whole structure, though; more than two-thirds of the mall was still in the dark.

If they’re using this place as a hangout, you’d think they would at least have some lights on…

Celty was curious about the utter silence around her, but she kept moving regardless. Eventually, she noticed that the string was leading to a store that was almost entirely furnished.

That must be it. Careful, Celty, careful…

She delicately manipulated her shadow to climb up the wall and then the ceiling like a spider. She used this angle to peer down into the shop—but there was not a single shape moving inside.

“Where are they…?”

The company agents slipped inside through multiple entrances and spread out through the mall, searching for the magician rider and Target D.

Although they were covering a large area with several teams of multiple members, the mall was so large that they couldn’t cover it entirely.

After dispersing from the first through third floors, the teams cut off contact and silently proceeded forward.

Neither Celty nor the company agents, however, were aware that there was one person within the mall tracking everything both sides were doing.

As soon as she realized she was looking at a shoe store, Celty had a bad premonition.

Don’t tell me…

She steadily followed the thread to a spot next to a sign inside the shop that was modeled to look like a shoe—and atop the display stand, Shijima’s discarded sneaker.

He got me! Is it a trap?! Did he know what I was doing?!

She grabbed the shoe in a panic, then heard a crumpling sound, realizing that there was a scrap of paper inside it.

…?

Celty turned on her smartphone light to read the writing on the paper.

“Sorry about this. The part about indiscriminately shooting civilians was just a lie. I don’t have any guns.”

What? Celty thought, taken aback. Then she realized that the message continued.

“I realize it’s not much of an apology, but to make amends, I’ll introduce you to the guys who do have the guns. They’re my enemies and probably your enemies, too. Anyway, good luck.”

Pardon? She was having difficulty understanding what he meant by this.

“I meant it when I said thanks for punching me…and sorry for using you.”

Just as Celty finished reading the message, bright light filled the mall.

All the interior lighting turned on at once, clearing away the darkness that had previously cloaked the shop.

What’s going on?!

She hurried outside, and that was when she encountered the very people mentioned in the note.

Celty poked her head over the open railing and met the stares of many men spread out over the first and third floors. Several of them had taken off night vision goggles due to the sudden influx of light—and they were all carrying pistols, assault rifles, submachine guns, and other firearms of the like.

…Umm…this is still Japan, right? Celty wondered, losing her grip on reality for just a brief moment.

“There she is! It’s her!”

“Capture her!”

The men roared, and the mall was suddenly full of gunshots and the sound of silenced bullets slicing air.

As she retreated back into the shoe store, Celty wailed to herself, But I was watching out for guns after being sniped last night! I was watching out for this…!

I just didn’t realize I was dealing with such a huge and heavily armed group!

Electrical utility room, mall basement

“All right, time to begin the opening sale. Let’s make it a fireworks show to remember.”

Shijima was the one who had remotely turned on the mall lights. He leisurely strolled toward the exit.

Unfortunately, a gun-toting company agent promptly peered around the corner up ahead.

“…”

Shijima looked worried about the possibility of trouble, but it was short-lived. The man suddenly lurched forward and toppled to the floor. Jami’s face emerged from the corner just behind him.

“Yoo-hoo, Mr. Shijima. That was a close one!” He grinned.

Shijima sighed. “You startled me on purpose.”

“Yeah!”

“Piece of crap…,” he muttered back at Jami.

“You know, it’s honestly kind of shocking to me that you called me a piece of crap.”

“Shut up.”

Around the corner were a number of other armed men, all unconscious. They didn’t seem likely to wake up anytime soon. Certain that this was Jami’s doing, Shijima asked the lackadaisical boy, “Aren’t you scared of the guys with guns?”

“Depends on who’s using them. These guys weren’t scary.”

“…But you’re scared of Shizuo?”

“That’s because he’s not a person. He’s totally out of my league. At least for now…but if I keep working out, I might be able to stand a chance in the future…or not… What do you think?” Jami cackled. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Well? What are we doing now, Mr. Shijima?”

“Nothing. We’re leaving,” Shijima said, staring coldly at nothing in particular. He continued muttering to himself.

“I’ve finished dousing the place in enough gasoline.”

Exterior, shopping mall

“Hmm…? Did you hear gunshots?”

The group of men working on taking away the black motorcycle in the corner of the parking lot were distracted by the sound of percussive gunfire from inside the mall.

Most of the guns the company agents were equipped with had suppressors, but some of them were naked. Assuming that someone had panicked and fired, it seemed likely this would only speed up the police’s eventual arrival at the scene.

But these men were not the most sensitive ones to gunfire.

“C’mon—let’s hurry and take this… Aaaaahh!!”

The bike reacted so suddenly that it seemed like it could only have been in reaction to the shots. It dispersed like smoke—but in the next moment, there was a headless horse standing before them.

“What…the…? Grlf!!”

Before they could even process what they were looking at, the doomed horse thieves were hit with a vicious kick and knocked unconscious.

Shooter, now in horse form, rushed off toward its master.

Like a declaration that it was said master’s sword and shield, all in one.

And at that precise moment, another car raced into the parking lot at ferocious speed. It was the vehicle of the sniper team, on the run from Togusa’s van.

“Okay, we made it! That’s one of our cars!”

“Hurry up and find them! Dammit…crazy van… I’m gonna shoot that thing up, anime decals and all!”

“Yeah! ******!”

“****!”

Suddenly feeling emboldened, the agents in the car uttered a string of untranslatable English profanity and slang.

They did not rejoin their comrades, however.

A headless horse suddenly appeared in the driver’s line of sight.

“Aaaaaahhh!!”

This impossible vision struck fear into the driver’s heart, and he yanked the wheel to the side at full speed.

“Aaaaaaahhh!!”

The car turned and rolled, tumbling wildly, until it smashed into the parking lot’s light pole.

“Rrg…urgh…”

The sniper crawled, dazed, out of the upside-down car.

A shadow flitted overhead, and then something stomped down on his head.

“Gbgh!”

“Does that hurt…? You son of a bitch…”

It was Saburo Togusa, his voice as cold as a practiced killer’s while his features were twisted with rage.

“You killed Ruri, didn’t you?”

“Ruri…? Wh-who?” the sniper asked. He couldn’t have killed anyone with the trajectory of his shot. Then his body was dragged out the rest of the way and slammed faceup against the ground. His thoughts reeled with pain and confusion. “Gah!”

“Who gave you the right to not know who Ruri is?”

The driver straddled the man’s chest and began to punch him in the face so hard his fists might have broken.

“What you shot was a part of Ruri’s soul… It was entrusted…to me…and you shattered her soul right before my eyes! You ruined her! Die! I will avenge Ruri!” Saburo shouted, which the sniper would not have understood, even if he weren’t about to fall unconscious. Saburo was furious enough to keep punching the sniper or perhaps even get back into his car and run it over his face.

But someone else rushed in and put him in a full nelson, shouting, “Calm down, Saburo!”

“Let go, Yahiro! He killed Ruri… He killed Ruriiii!”

“Saburo! If you get arrested over Ruri, it’s only going to make her sad! It’d be, like, a scandal…yeah! It’ll be a huge scandal!”

“…”

The effect of the word scandal was immediate and dramatic. Togusa rose to his feet, tears streaming from his eyes.

“…You’re right. Sorry. And it’s not like killing him is going to bring back that piece of Ruri’s soul…”

He literally thinks that sticker has her soul inside of it, Yahiro realized, not daring to speak aloud. Instead, he patted Togusa’s shoulder.

“…What in the world am I looking at?” wondered Himeka, poking her head out of the car to see Yahiro in Snake Hands form, consoling a distraught Saburo.

Meanwhile, Kuon was pale-faced on the floor between seats, desperately trying to hold back the urge to vomit.

“I’m never…riding in Mr. Togusa’s van again…”

“…You’ve really screwed things up, haven’t you?” said a voice over Saburo’s shoulder, just as he was finally calming down for good.

“……!”

Saburo realized he recognized the voice and slowly turned around.

It was an incredibly menacing traffic officer in sunglasses, riding a white motorcycle.

He was accompanied by a number of other officers, who presumably were under his wing. Some of them were even rescuing the men in suits from the overturned car.

“I’ve called in an ambulance and a fire truck already… So, Togusa…I always had a feeling you’d end up doing this, and I’ll be damned if you haven’t… You might get more than just a suspended license for this…”

“K…K-K-K… Officer Kuzuhara…,” Saburo stammered, tears streaming, now joined by huge beads of sweat on his forehead.

Startled by the sudden appearance of the traffic police, Yahiro could only look back and forth between the two without a word.

“…Hmm? Who’s this guy?” asked Kuzuhara, noticing Yahiro at last. He gave the boy a careful examination. “That black stuff looks an awful lot like what that monster produces… Maybe we should have a talk…,” he growled.

But his train of thought was interrupted by an explosion and gunshots from inside the mall.

“What was that?!”

Kuzuhara barked a few commands to his officers and rushed toward the noisy shopping mall. He was, of course, still riding on his trusty vehicle—but no one was going to warn him that it was dangerous.

With this, various paths would finally cross.

Inside the mall

How did it come to this?

Gunshots echoed back and forth.

Explosions rolled and roiled.

The sky over Saitama was rife with destruction and clamor.

It was the arrival of Shooter, bursting through the door from the outside, that broke the settling stalemate.

The headless horse reached Celty’s side despite being hit by many bullets and whinnied loudly, ignoring its wounds and nuzzling its master with its neck.

Indeed, the bullets had done very little to it. The wounds healed themselves right away, and when Shooter turned back into a bike, dented bullets scattered across the floor.

…I think Shooter might actually be tougher than I am, Celty thought, distracted. A moment later, a grenade flew into the shoe store, and she had no choice but to rush out into the mall, into combat with enemies who would have to be subdued.

Celty ran through the gunfight, her mind a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts.

But no weapon could successfully stop her or Shooter. She watched the lead bullets tinkle to the ground from the shadow that swallowed them, thinking wryly, Uh-huh. I guess there’s no wonder that humans call me a monster.

There was a note of resignation in her heart now.

It’s not that I fell out of sync with humanity—we were never aligned to begin with. Oh, well. All I need is Shinra. I suppose it was arrogant of me to assume a monster could live among humans and pretend to be one of them.

She was exhausted by how much this world fought her. She considered giving it all up and leaving for unknown destinations with Shinra.

Oh, Shinra, I’m sorry. I might end up indulging in your kindness. If I can’t be human…and if, say, I give in to anger and become a killer, slaughtering all these men…even then, there’s a part of me that knows you’ll still forgive me, Celty thought, preparing herself for the moment she became an enemy to all humanity.

Regardless, she endeavored to overcome the situation as best she could.

The main thing is this isn’t going to resolve itself. Can I hold them all down with shadow?

But if someone’s hiding somewhere around here, they might get away… Probably better to look for whoever might be a leader and pin them down…

Pin them… Pin… P-p-p-p-pin… Pin…?

And in the next moment, she remembered that it wasn’t just herself who demanded that she not fall out of sync with society. It was Ikebukuro that demanded none of its residents fall out from its own flow.

The city’s anger showed up to greet her in a new form—a form that laughed off any meager, measly sensation of disconnect.

It reached out for her, as if to say, Just because you feel asynchronous doesn’t mean you’re off the hook.

Celty Sturluson’s greatest fear had come for her in person, ready to drag her back into the flow of the world.

Wh…wha…? Huh?

Why?!

Why are you here?!! This is Saitama!!

“Looks like you’re really makin’ a mess of things…you monster.”

The motorcycle officer Kinnosuke Kuzuhara surveyed the furor and billowing flames inside the mall, his eyes sharp and glinting behind his sunglasses.

“So how much of this mess is your doing?”

“Shit! The police are already here?! It’s too soon!” swore the leader of the team of company agents. “Was it a trap?!”

“It’s just one person! Don’t let them call for help!”

The men, unaware that multiple traffic officers had been drawn to the scene by Togusa’s rampage, began to fire in a wild, hasty panic.

While the men were merely pawns of a large conglomerate, Celty worried a single officer would not stand a chance against so many guns all at once. She extended an umbrella of shadow in a frightened panic, trying to protect Kuzuhara.

“Get out of my way,” he barked.

Huh?

Kuzuhara raced out from under the umbrella, weaving behind the mall’s pillars and nimbly avoiding the hail of bullets flying in his direction.

What? What?! What?!? Celty gaped.

A grenade, pin removed, hurtled toward Kuzuhara’s location, but he used the slope of the mall’s fountain to launch himself high into the air.

“Did you think a bike cop would be helpless indoors…?”

He nimbly flicked the motorcycle’s wheel, deflecting the grenade in midair.

N-no way…!

“N…no way…!”

Miraculously, Celty’s thoughts and the grenade thrower’s voice were in perfect sync—and then the projectile exploded in midair, showering the men, who were dressed only in suits and not military gear, with fierce shrapnel.

“There’s just one thing I have to say.”

Kuzuhara used every tool available to him in the hellscape that was the mall interior, even Celty’s paths of shadow, to easily avoid every bullet and knock down every attacker as he roared past them.

“Don’t fuck with traffic cops, you criminals,” he said, a line strikingly similar to something he’d said to Celty once. His destructive sense of justice reigned supreme and terrible.

“You lowlifes won’t ever fuck with traffic cops again.”

Hours later, Shinra’s apartment

“Waaaaaah! Shinra, Shinra, Shinra, Shinraaaa!”

As soon as she was inside the door, Celty was clinging to her partner, shivering.

“Well, well! Did you get chased by Officer Kuzuhara again? How many times has this happened by now?” said Shinra with practiced ease, hugging her back to help calm her down.

“N-no, it was different this time. It was different, but the traffic cops are monsters these days! I mean, he’s the monster…or more than that…a god…?”

“It’s all right, Celty. You’re the only god to me.”

“O-oh…thank you, Shinra…,” she said, taking Shinra’s absurd statement as a comforting compliment. She must have been really terrified. “It was so horrifying… He was avoiding submachine gun and assault rifle fire with only his bike. That’s inhuman! He even used my shadow to launch himself off the shopping mall rooftop to land on the bad guys’ car as they drove off, then bounced onto another one and wrecked them both! And Kuzuhara himself didn’t take a scratch! Was that all a nightmare?”

“Compared to such a terrifying man, you’re just an adorable little sweetheart, Celty, hee-hee-hee.”

“Th-thanks… Wait, that’s not what I want to hear!” snapped Celty, regaining a bit of her usual rapport with Shinra. “Phew… I think I’ve settled down a little.”

Her shoulders rose and fell in the manner of exhaling a deep breath. But as her anxiety subsided, doubts arose.

“Anyway, what’s even happening with all this madness…? If it wasn’t Shijima who had me shot, then who were those guys talking about being rich and covering things up…?”

At that very moment, the e-mail notification went off on Celty’s phone.

Oh, it’s Mr. Akabayashi.

She’d been wondering what happened with Anri. Celty opened the message to see what it was.

Sender: Akabayashi

Re: The time has come to pay back that favor

And when she saw the body of the message, Celty was so baffled and rattled that she ended up clinging to Shinra again.

An hour earlier, near Sonohara-dou

Yukihiko Natsugawara raced through the city, quieter now that it was after midnight.

He clenched the bizarre hammer in his hand.

His destination was not the storehouse of Sonohara-dou, which he’d broken into previously, but the residential part of the shop itself.

There wasn’t a moment to waste.

He would literally beat the store owner awake with his hammer, presuming she was already asleep, and take her hostage to recover the SD card from that student.

In all honesty, he more or less knew what was contained in that data, but what it could actually do, what it had achieved, and what effect it would have on the rest of the world—these things he could not possibly know or even imagine.

All he knew was that the data could be sold to another company for money, and he wanted to use that to set up the rest of his life.

It was crucial that he did not lose the data.

Out of rebound from the terror of Snake Hands, his current mood was more attributable to sheer desperation than to any great courage. He raced toward his destination with madness in his step. When he reached Sonohara-dou, imagining the violence that was soon to ensue, a sadistic smile crossed his lips.

Yukihiko swung the hammer through the lock on the door, grinning crudely. Any practical thoughts of the sound summoning the police or leading to his arrest were long forgotten.

He was going to prove that he was special, that he could do anything and get away with it. He lifted his hammer high above his head to swing it at the door—but the weapon never came down.

“That’s far enough.”

Something grabbed his raised arm from behind.

Yukihiko spun around to see a man with tinted glasses and a walking stick. The streetlight gleamed coldly in his eyes.

“…Who the hell are you?!”

“That’s what I was going to ask you.”

“Who do you think you are…? Get lost! You want money—I’ll give you money!” the boy blustered, pulling a fat wallet out of his pocket and hurling it at the man in the tinted glasses.

But the man just shrugged, as if to resign himself, then swept Yukihiko’s legs out from under him, slamming his head against the ground.

“You don’t need your money? Then I’ll be sure to put it all in the donation box at the convenience store later.”

“Ah, gah, agh,” Yukihiko uttered as the tip of the walking stick pressed against his throat. He trembled.

The man in the glasses, Akabayashi, pulled an insurance card out of the wallet and spotted the name Yukihiko Natsugawara on it.

“Hmm…? Natsugawara…?” His mind worked for a bit, delivering him eventually to a realization. “Ah, all those folks we caught earlier, to a man, said, ‘Mr. Natsugawara told us to kidnap the owner’… I thought the name was familiar. So you’re from that huge company… Meaning the one who was using his family’s power to hush things up was you, not Shijima.”

Akabayashi thought some more, then relaxed the force behind his cane just a little.

“Is it possible that you’re the one the Headless Rider’s been searching for?”

Message: I have Yukihiko Natsugawara in my possession. When I’m done with him, I’ll hand him over to you alive. Don’t worry.

Celty read and reread the message several times, but it did not fail to confuse her on each reading.

Why is Mr. Akabayashi telling me the same thing Shijima did…? And why does Mr. Akabayashi have Yukihiko…? What is going on here…?

It was a long and agonizing night for Celty, who did not realize that the first part was a simple coincidence. She felt disgusted with herself for succeeding at her courier job because of someone else’s help and without interacting with Yukihiko Natsugawara himself in any way.

“Say, Shinra…do you think I’m not suited to be a courier…?” she grumbled.

Shinra gave her a beaming smile and said, “The one thing you’re best suited to being is my wife, Celty…would be my dream answer. But in fact, you’re best suited to just being Celty. Whether it’s as a courier, or a dullahan, or a hero, or a villain, you should do whatever you want.”

“Shinra…”

“You might fall out of step with society at times, but eventually the city will understand you, too. Just like how I understand you. You just have to have faith that sometimes the city will slow down to match your gait.”

“…You’re right. I’d like to believe that,” Celty typed, deciding to be true to herself.

But Shinra wasted no time in working himself up in his usual way. “Oh, but speaking of being a wife, I would be happy to take your name, too! Shinra Sturluson. That’s great! It feels like we’re one and the same. I feel closer to you than ever before! Besides, calling you Celty Kishitani would make it sound like Dad took you in as a foster child. So what do you say? We could go and have another wedd-ded-ded-ded-ded—”

She used her shadow to hold Shinra at bay as he tried to leap on her and answered him with a wry “Good grief. I’m remembering now that you were the one who threw me off my game to get me here in the first place. Originally, we should have been living in completely separate worlds.”

“Celty…”

He looked anguished, as though she was about to say she was leaving again. But she was going to do no such thing.

“Thank you, Shinra. At this point…I’m incredibly grateful that you dragged me off the proper path.”