Durarara!! - Volume 1 - Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Dollars, Opening

The Yagiri Pharmaceuticals lab

In the meeting room of Lab Six, seated on a chair in the corner, Seiji grumbled to himself, head downcast. His sister Namie gently embraced him in an attempt to ease his discomfort.

“Everything’s fine, Seiji. Leave this to us. We’re going to get her back. Don’t worry about a thing.”

The police dragged Seiji to their box station after Shizuo knocked him out, but without a victim to finger him or even a firm consensus on who was the victim, he was released without any charges or punishment.

Maybe it was my sister pulling strings. She did arrive to pick me up extremely fast, Seiji thought. It didn’t actually bother him. I know she’s in love with me in some kind of sick way. It only comes out of a weird possessiveness. But I don’t mind. No matter who else loves me, it won’t change my own choice. I live for my own love and nothing else.

And if I have to stomp all over the love others give me in order to do that, so be it. I’m sure she’d be happy knowing she served as a stepping-stone for the sake of her beloved.

Meanwhile, Namie could read Seiji like a book. But she didn’t mind. As long as that head was in her possession, Seiji needed her. That head, the very target of her darkest jealousy, was the key to the equation. Namie grinned in self-mockery at the irony of it all.

The sight of her shamelessly doting on her brother put a kind of fear in the minds of everyone who witnessed the scene.

One of her employees overcame his consternation and called out for her attention.

“You don’t need to worry about a thing, Seiji. Leave everything to us.”

And with that, his sister quietly left the room.

“Do we have details?”

“We’ve got the address of this Ryuugamine that Mr. Seiji spoke of. It’s a run-down apartment building right next to Ikebukuro Station.”

Namie was receiving the report from her subordinates slightly down the hallway from the meeting room. The fact that the employee was giving Seiji that title spoke to the strength of the Yagiri family within the company.

Unlike her warm, loving manner in the meeting room, Namie was as cold as ice as she gave the orders.

“Then gather up the underlings and retrieve the target.”

“That’s a conspicuous place for a daylight operation—”

“I don’t care,” she stated flatly, brooking no further discussion.

If we wait for nightfall, my brother’s going to run off and try to find this Ryuugamine on his own.

Namie cared more about Seiji’s safety than the danger of the situation. But she was professional enough not to show the tiniest ounce of this priority when Seiji wasn’t around. She was all business.

“Inform all of our available muscle at once. I don’t care who’s there or if they’re taken dead or alive. Depending on the circumstances, I may want you to dispose of them on the spot.”

There wasn’t a shred of humanity in her eyes. The other men felt cold sweat trickle down their backs.

Today was the start of normal classes for Raira Academy. But even then, it mostly consisted of teacher introductions and guidance on the course of the entire school year, and the only classes with real lectures were math and world history.

Nothing else noteworthy or problematic occurred. The first day passed by.

If anything weighed on Mikado’s mind, it was the absence of not only Mika Harima, but now Seiji Yagiri, the Health Committee representative. After Anri had explained what happened between the two of them the day before, it was hard not to feel a connection in their absences. An uneasy murmur rose in his chest.

On top of that, there was also his unease over the girl with amnesia back at his house.

She did not remember anything more after waking up this morning and refused to go to the hospital or police. The suggestion of the hospital, in particular, brought a look of terror into her eyes.

“Oh…I’ll be fine! I’ll just stay here and wait for you!” she said, looking far calmer today than she had the day before. In fact, she looked quite secure and focused for someone suffering memory loss.

That at least gave Mikado enough confidence to leave her behind while he was at school, but he still had no idea what to do with her after that. Without knowing her identity, there was no getting around the fact that she’d need to be handed over to the police at some point. He thought about the option of Masaomi’s house, but Masaomi commuted to school from his family’s home.

Mikado spent the entire day mulling over what to do, and before he arrived at an answer, the day was done. There was a brief introductory meeting for all of the class reps, after which he headed outside with Anri, hoping to ask for any updates on Mika Harima.

“Have you heard from her?” Mikado didn’t have anything else to talk about and felt awkward not saying anything, so he decided to be direct.

“Actually, I haven’t heard a thing from her since yesterday afternoon…”

“Oh, I see…”

He shouldn’t have asked. Now he was even more worried about the fact that Seiji was absent as well. He began to wonder about the possibility of some kind of murder-suicide but didn’t dare say that out loud to Anri.

Masaomi’s presence would have helped out a lot, but from what he heard, the Discipline Committee was still busy with introductions. Apparently, Masaomi and the representative from Mikado’s class had launched into an argument that no one else was quite able to stop.

He decided his best action was just to go home for today and was preparing to say good-bye to Anri at the ornate Western-style front gate when someone shouted at them from the side.

“Aha! That’s him, Takashi, right there!”

A girl was pointing in Mikado and Anri’s direction. It was the one whose cell phone had been stomped by Izaya yesterday, and she was escorted by a burly looking guy.

Before he could even register a sense of dread at the unfolding situation, Mikado was lifted up by the collar.

“I hear you know the guy who busted my girl’s cell.”

“I don’t know him know him—”

You should be telling the police about this, not your boyfriend, Mikado wanted to yell at Bully A next to the guy, but he couldn’t speak with a hand pulling him up by the collar.

“So where’s this dick you were standin’ around with?”

Straight as an arrow—he asked about Izaya directly, without allowing Mikado any say.

Elusive as quicksilver—a pitch-black bike silently appeared behind the man.

Swift as the wind—still on the bike, a humanoid shadow kicked Takashi to the ground.

Survival of the fittest—out of nowhere, Izaya Orihara landed on the fallen man’s back with both feet.

Man’s inhumanity to man—Izaya jumped up and down on his back repeatedly.

Like greased lightning—this happened before Mikado’s eyes in the span of ten seconds.

“Thank you.”

Izaya bowed ostentatiously in the direction of the shocked Anri, her bully, and all the other students who happened to be passing by. He was still standing atop the unconscious Takashi.

“You knew that hitting girls wasn’t my thing, so you made sure to prepare a guy for me instead! Now that’s the sign of a dedicated woman. I’d love to make you my girlfriend, but sorry. You’re just not my type. Get lost.”

It was all very cruel, but the girl was off and running before he even finished speaking. She didn’t even spare a backward glance at Takashi underneath Izaya’s feet. Mikado had to admit that he felt a bit sorry for the guy.

The girl’s face already vanishing from his memory, Izaya turned to Mikado.

“Heya, it’s too bad we were interrupted yesterday. I don’t think we have to worry about our friend Shizu butting in here. I thought it would be rude to look up your address and barge in, so I decided to lie in wait at the school entrance instead,” he said, smiling all the while. Mikado didn’t know why Izaya was smiling or what reason he would have to seek him out. But that actually wasn’t true—he knew of one possible reason. Mikado couldn’t openly acknowledge it, though. He clenched a fist.

Seemingly unaware of the boy’s train of thought, Izaya tilted his head in confusion.

“By the way, what’s the Black Rider doing here?”

I could ask the same of you, Celty thought to herself.

She had indeed found the student who escorted her head away yesterday. She intervened to save him from being pounded, but Izaya’s presence was a mystery to her.

Celty couldn’t imagine Izaya getting involved with an ordinary person, much less a teenage student. Was he the son of some powerful politician? Or some kind of despicable pusher, spreading drugs to children in elementary and middle school?

But whoever the boy was made no difference to Celty now.

All that mattered was whether he knew the location of her head or not.

Mikado snapped to his senses with a shock when he realized that Anri was even more dazed by the incident than he was.

“W-well, Sonohara, I should really be going!”

“Huh…? Um, okay…”

And with that awkward farewell, Mikado quickly left the scene. As he suspected, the shadow and villain followed him. Once a safe distance away from the school, he timidly turned back and decided that Izaya was more likely to understand him.

“Umm… I don’t know what’s going on here… But if you’d like, we can go back to my…”

Mikado stopped and held his breath. If he took them back to his house, the Black Rider would find that girl. In fact, she was probably the only reason that the Black Rider had come for him in the first place.

“Uh…well, actually, there’s something I’d like to ask the rider in black…”

Celty pulled a PDA out of the shadow riding suit and typed, “What is it?”

So there was a way for them to communicate after all. Mikado was slightly relieved but also noted that the situation was taking a turn into even more surreal waters.

I feel like crying.

Just a few minutes away from the station by foot was a building. It was hard to guess exactly how old it was, but the countless tiny cracks in the walls and the abundant ivy said enough on their own.

Once the building came into view, Mikado stopped and said, “Well, my apartment is on the first floor of this building…but I want an explanation first. Who in the world are you people?”

Celty avoided mentioning anything about her head or her true identity. She only typed, “I recently ran into a girl I knew who had gone missing, but she fled for some reason I cannot fathom.”

But Mikado was not naive enough to take such a transparent excuse at face value. Celty decided that she didn’t have a choice but to give him the truth.

She asked Izaya to give them some momentary privacy, then took Mikado around the back of the building. Summoning her courage, she started typing on the PDA.

“How much do you know about me?”

Mikado stared at the tiny LCD screen, then gave the question some thought.

“Well…you’re sort of an urban legend, and you ride a motorcycle without headlights that makes no sound. And…”

He paused, sucking in a deep breath, then letting it all out at once. Along with the fear in his voice, there was something expectant, even excited.

“…you don’t have a head.”

Celty typed, “And do you believe all of it?”

She showed him the screen, then immediately regretted it. What human being would possibly believe that? But Mikado nodded.

Huh?

She couldn’t hide her shock. Mikado went on.

“Um…can you show me what’s inside your helmet?”

Celty stared him right in the face.

Aha, just like yesterday.

That strange expression again, a mix of fear, expectation, despair, and joy all in one. And the student with all of these emotions in his eyes wanted her to expose her true face to him. Celty hesitated, then typed in her PDA.

“Do you swear you won’t scream?”

She knew it was a stupid question, but she had to be sure. Celty hadn’t removed her helmet for anyone in the last twenty years but Shinra. There had been a few times it popped off in the middle of a fight, but the only reaction she got from the witnesses was a grimace of terror.

But this young man named Mikado was facing his fear directly. He believed that her word was not a lie or a joke and still asked her to see. It was foolish to ask such a man if he wouldn’t scream.

Mikado’s reaction was exactly as she expected. His head nodded vigorously, and at the same time, Celty pushed the visor of the full helmet upward.

Darkness. There was nothing before his eyes but empty space. Technically, it wasn’t empty in the vacuum sense, but that made no difference to Mikado. It was a space where what should exist did not, and the presence or absence of anything to fill that space was immaterial.

Nothing. There’s nothing there. It’s not a magic trick—but if it were, I’d sure like to know how to pull it off.

For the first instant, Mikado’s eyes were wide with terror, but it did not lead to a scream. He stifled that emotion, and his shock turned to elation. There were even little tears forming at the bottom of his eyes.

“Thank you…thank you.”

What he was thanking her for was unclear, but his eyes were full of childlike wonder. She was completely at a loss for what to do.

It was rare enough for her to be thanked, much less meet acceptance for the idea that she had no head, that the situation was entirely baffling—but not in a bad or uncomfortable way.

After Celty explained the situation to him, Mikado happily agreed to let her see the “head girl.” When he told the dullahan that the girl’s memory was gone, Celty had no immediate answer. She said she had to see the girl so that the misunderstanding could be corrected.

They called Izaya back at this point, but he claimed that his business could wait until later. He stayed back and watched the other two.

“All right… Please wait here for now. I’ll go in first and talk to her. I don’t want her to see you first before I can explain your presence here, in case she gets the wrong idea.”

“I understand.”

Izaya piped up with a sarcastic-sounding “Very cautious—that’s a good stance to take.”

They waited outside the apartment building as Mikado went in. As they stood there, Izaya said, “By the way, courier, I hadn’t caught your name before this. Didn’t realize you weren’t from around these parts.”

He grinned. Based on the smirk, he probably already knew that, and it was meant to be a dig at Celty’s uptight refusal to name herself. She understood all of this already and chose to ignore him. It was possible that he even knew what she was—but only cobbled together from eyewitness accounts, not because he recognized her as a fairy.

Not to mention that any levelheaded person would not even imagine that the Black Rider could be anything but a human being. The problem was that Izaya was not levelheaded. He was not a man to be underestimated.

“So what’s taking him so long?”

It had been more than five minutes. Even if he had failed in his negotiation, he should have at least come back out to explain by now.

“Maybe I should take a look.”

The apartment building was too quiet. Celty felt a creeping unease steal over her. That unease was amplified by a cleaning service van parked next to the building.

A professional cleaner at a dump like this? Not likely…

Her fear was well-founded.

“I’ll ask again… We know you were keeping a girl here in your apartment. We just wanna know where she is now.”

“There’s no use denying it. We found a woman’s hair in your bed. Pretty short cut but clearly longer than yours.”

Two men were waiting for Mikado when he entered his apartment. They were wearing work uniforms, but one look at their faces said they weren’t simple laborers. Mikado was shoved to the floor before he could say a word, and they kept interrogating him, over and over, in low, menacing voices.

They were looking for the “head girl,” but Mikado wanted to know her location just as much as they did. Either someone else had already taken her away, or she’d gotten up and run off on her own…

“I-I don’t know! Please, I really don’t know!”

“Listen, kid. You’ve seen our faces. We could make you disappear right now,” one said like some kind of gloating movie villain. Mikado felt tears of fright welling up in his eyes. He felt so stupid—just moments ago, he’d been filled with joy at the sight of something inhuman and alien, and now he was mired in terror of plain old humanity again. He lamented his carelessness.

“Someone’s here!”

The men jumped up without hesitation and raced out. In a few moments, the van’s engine started outside.

“Whew…I’m saved…”

In particular, he was saved from the shame of shedding tears of fright. He did not, however, avoid tears of relief.

Celty raced past the door of the apartment and made to chase after the van, but Izaya said there was no need to do that.

“I’m pretty sure they’re from Yagiri Pharmaceuticals. I recognize the van,” he noted, a free piece of intel from the info broker.

“Yagiri…Pharmaceuticals…?”

“Yep. A company down on its luck, in danger of being bought out by foreign capital.”

When he processed that name, Mikado’s teary eyes went wide. Yes, it was the same name as his classmate—but he recognized that name from something else.

The tears drained back into their ducts.

A girl bearing a head gone missing. A dullahan. Yagiri. Pharmaceutical company. Missing people. Mika Harima. Anri Sonohara’s story. Seiji Yagiri. Kidnappers. Dollars.

Various fragments of information floated into Mikado’s head and disappeared. The free flow of concepts coalesced into a theory.

In the now-quiet apartment, Mikado quickly started his computer. While he waited for it to boot up, he turned on his phone, which had been off since school, and immediately checked his e-mail.

Celty watched him curiously. In contrast, Izaya was like a hunter watching over rare prey, his sharp eyes gleaming wickedly.

“You know, I had my doubts,” the information broker started. Mikado opened his Internet browser the instant his computer had fully booted and typed in some kind of code with tremendous speed. He was logging into a website. After that came the rhythmic sound of mouse clicking.

Mikado examined the page for a little while, then turned to his guests.

Celty shivered despite herself. His eyes did not have the bedraggled look of the boy who’d been helpless to stop the circumstances around him for the past hour. His were the eyes of a hawk following its quarry, endlessly deep and sharp. He bowed to them.

She was taken aback. He didn’t seem to be the same weak-willed student who was just here moments ago.

“I need your help. Can I count on your assistance for just a short while?” he asked, full of purpose and determination. “The pawns are in the palm of my hand.”

Izaya patted Celty on the shoulder and boasted as though he’d just found a new toy. “Jackpot.”

Celty looked back and forth between the two, unsure of what Izaya meant. She didn’t know what had just happened, but she could tell that Izaya was more excited now than she’d ever seen before. And even more excited was Mikado Ryuugamine.

His face still had the trappings of childhood, and now his eyes were shining like a boy who’d just received a new toy. There was no sign of the tears of terror anymore, only an expression of strong will and elation that said he was in full control of himself.

Over the last few days since his arrival in Ikebukuro, Mikado had run across a number of baffling, inexplicable events. And right before his eyes, they were all connecting into one convoluted case.

He breathed heavily, mentally examining each piece of the puzzle to make sure they fit together.

Boring days. Familiar sights. Stuck in place with no future.

It was to escape all of these things that he decided to move to Ikebukuro. And now he could feel himself achieving that escape at last.

Mikado Ryuugamine realized that he was becoming a kind of lead player in this story. At the same time, an enemy had appeared that threatened his new life—and his life, period.

In his state of excitement, he felt no hesitation or fear toward the need to eliminate that foe.

The time had come to speak. He started to explain everything about himself to Celty and Izaya.

In the hallway outside of Lab Six beneath Yagiri Pharmaceuticals, a cold voice split the air.

“What do you mean…she wasn’t there?”

“Apparently, when the underlings reached the place, there were signs that the lock had already been pried open…and no sign of the girl inside.”

“So someone got the jump on us?”

“The place is a dump, so it’s unlikely to be a burglar.”

Namie’s brows knitted together in thought. If the student took her out, then what would be the purpose of breaking open the lock? On the other hand, she couldn’t think of anyone aside from her company who would want the girl.

“And the student who lives there?”

“When they returned to report, they claimed they were prepared to bring him back with them, but he had…company.”

“So why didn’t they bring him, company and all? Such incompetence…”

She clicked her tongue in irritation just before her phone started ringing. The display said it was an unlisted number, but she answered anyway on the chance that it was important.

“Hello?”

“Um, is this Miss Namie Yagiri?”

The voice was young. It sounded like a teenage boy, probably in middle school.

“Yes. Who is this?”

“My name is Mikado Ryuugamine.”

“—!”

Namie’s heart silently upped its pulse. Her brother’s classmate, the one who took the girl away with him. There was an eeriness to the fact that he was calling right as they’d been talking about him. She wondered how he’d even gotten her number.

Meanwhile, the voice on the other end of the call continued on its business.

“As it happens, we have a certain young lady under our care at this moment…”

After a brief pause, the phone produced a message that made no sense at all, devoid of even the slightest bit of tension, as matter-of-fact as if it were asking her out to dinner.

“…How about we make a deal?”

11:00 p.m., the same day, Ikebukuro

Night had fallen on 60-Kai Street in Ikebukuro. The shutters were down on virtually every business except for the bars, and unlike during the day, the pedestrians no longer ruled the street—there were actual cars going to and fro now.

A young man in a bartender’s uniform leaning against a streetlamp spoke to an enormous black man.

“What is life? What do people live for? Someone asked me that once, and I beat him within an inch of his life. It’d be one thing if it was a starry-eyed dreamer of a teenage girl, but from a grown man who wanted to be a yakuza but tried to get out because he didn’t like running errands? It’s practically a crime.”

“That’s right!”

“Everyone’s free to think what they want about their own life. No one can deny you that. But why the hell would you ask for answers from another person? So I told him, ‘This is your life, live so you can die,’ while his pupils dilated. Then again, that was the bar manager, so I probably screwed up again.”

“That’s right!”

“…Simon, I get the feeling you don’t understand what I’m saying.”

“That’s right!”

Shizuo Heiwajima bellowed and threw a nearby bicycle at Simon, who caught it one-handed. The town swallowed up this scene, assimilating it—business as usual.

When night hit Ikebukuro, it was a completely different place than during the daytime. It was just as crowded and chaotic, but blackness swallowed everything, so that the world seemed to be in negative. Nowadays, more people were utilizing cheap manga cafés to spend the night than more expensive hotels. Missing the last train was no longer the big deal it had once been.

On streets close to the train station, karaoke barkers hustled about, latching onto groups of students and new employees out for a celebration. Most of those groups already had their next destinations picked out, and they gradually faded away from the street.

People left drinking establishments and headed home, young people partied through the night, and smatterings of foreigners dotted the scene. It wasn’t on the same level as when the sun was out, but the night had its own crowded bustle.

However…

In front of the Tokyu Hands store that intersected the main road, two people stood apart from the crowd.

One was a student wearing his uniform jacket. The other was a grown woman wearing a business suit.

Now that they were both at the agreed-upon location, Namie Yagiri asked the boy, “You’re Mikado? You’re so mature—not at all the child I was expecting. Or is it the polite ones who are most dangerous these days?”

Her voice was soft but rimmed with infinite frost.

They did not leave for another location to talk, but stayed in place right outside the building. The chilly, overbearing air she wielded kept all of the karaoke and host clubs’ solicitors away, as well as any overeager men looking for companionship.

Meanwhile, Mikado wore his Raira Academy blazer, but no attitude that made him anything but a normal student. The solicitors weren’t going to bother upselling a lone teenager like him. In fact, it was more likely that if he hung around in his current outfit, he’d draw the attention of the police for being where he shouldn’t.

They were two souls who didn’t fit in the scene for opposite reasons. A quiet tension fomented between them.

“So…what is your proposition?” Namie asked.

He’d managed to get her to negotiate in person; he probably knew just about everything. The girl must have told him all that she knew over the course of the evening.

“It’s simple. As I told you over the phone, I have the person you’re looking for.”

This did not unnerve Namie. If he was proposing this deal in possession of all of the facts, he really had to be a child. It was the height of folly.

He must have designated this location right in the middle of 60-Kai Street thinking that such a public location meant they couldn’t play rough with him. But of course, she had not come alone. The company’s security team, normally in charge of guarding the research lab, was disguised in the crowd as ordinary salarymen. Nearly a dozen loyal employees were on standby with stun batons. Just in case they were necessary, vans parked along 60-Kai Street and in side alleys contained more underlings and other hired muscle types, about twenty in total.

It wasn’t just the one boy, of course. He wouldn’t be trying to strike such a deal without others on his side. Hence the necessity of such a large force behind her.

In addition, Namie had brought a reasonable amount of cash to help strike a deal, in recognition of his admirable pluck. As long as she got the girl back, they could crush the boy in an instant if he thought he could open his mouth.

“How much do you want?” she asked directly. No need for theatrics in such a silly transaction. There was no telling where he might have hidden a recorder, if she was careless and gave away some kind of personal secret.

But his answer caught her by surprise.

“It’s not money, actually.”

“What are you dealing for, then?”

“Don’t you know? The truth.”

What does he mean? she wondered, baffled.

Mikado laid out his conclusion. “Let’s start with an admission of what your brother—Seiji Yagiri—is responsible for doing.”

“ !”

The warm spring air instantly turned to midwinter chill. After a long silence, Namie fixed him with a stare that froze anyone who looked at it and spoke in a voice that demolished any who heard it.

“What…did you…just say?”

“Confess what your brother did to Mika Harima—and what you did to her body after that. Unfortunately, since there’s only circumstantial evidence, I’ll need you to turn yourselves in.”

Despite the easiness of his speech, sweat flooded Mikado’s palms. Black rage was exploding off of her. If he let his guard down just the tiniest bit, he might burst into tears.

“I think that course of action would do the least damage to your company.”

“Oh, dear… Yes, I see… You don’t want money at all. You just want our lab to be shut down for good…”

“In order to guarantee her freedom—not to mention my safety, since she ended up at my home—that seems to be the only option. If you simply bow out, I don’t see why that should lead to the downfall of the company.”

As he spoke, Mikado noticed that her reaction had started to go strange.

“Oh…oh…such a shame… You see, the company means absolutely nothing to me.”

She pierced Mikado with a look that he couldn’t distinguish between laughing or crying. He grappled with this new revelation, waiting for her next line. All of Mikado’s hair stood on end as he fought against the pressure of receiving his death sentence.

She didn’t even seem to be the same coolheaded woman who arrived in front of the department store building—but her voice was still soft and calm.

“You can crush my company, bomb it to hell, burn it to the ground, and I wouldn’t care a whit. But…the one thing I won’t stand for…is someone who tries to stand between my brother and what he wants.”

Her answer was simple. So simple, in fact, that Mikado’s eyes narrowed in a kind of relief.

Oh, I get it. She’s one of those people. No wonder she’s been doing things that go above and beyond her company’s bottom line.

At the same moment that her fists clenched, Mikado tightened his own grip on the cell phone in his pocket, pressing the button to send an e-mail.

This would explain it.

He was nearly bowled over backward by her incredible fixation on her brother but held his ground and glared back at her.

One person’s already been killed, the body was used to create a totally new person, and now she’s trying to have me killed, too. I think the last part is what makes me angriest. I care about myself most of all. I would do anything for my own sake. That’s what makes people like her, who replace the “my” in “my sake” with another person, so aggravating. And someone who would use that excuse to ruin the lives of others is especially, especially, especially unforgivable!

Anger began to bubble up within Mikado. He was obsessed with all things extraordinary and abnormal but being the victim of irrational, unfair circumstances was something else entirely. He launched into Namie.

“I’ve never heard such an awful thing. You’re going to make Yagiri miserable for your own twisted, selfish reasons.”

“What do you mean? If you’re going to brave the depths of the underworld at your age, and all you can come up with is that clichéd garbage…then shut that impertinent mouth of yours right now!” she roared like some kind of witch’s curse, closing a step toward Mikado.

But he did not pull back.

“You’re right, I only know how to speak in clichés. But what’s wrong with that? And which one of us is incapable of comprehending the obvious fact that there’s a price to be paid for taking a human life?”

Mikado took a step of his own, returning her glare.

“You’ve watched too much TV. The old-fashioned kind with a moral at the end of the story! Do you know where we are?! This is the real world! You’re not on TV, you’re not in a magazine, and you’re not a hero. Learn your place, boy!”

They each approached another step. Namie’s voice was overflowing with cold fury, but those words on their own were not enough to stop him. He’d suffered the nonsense of Masaomi Kida’s conversations every day. Compared to them, her arguments were at least logical, and thus easy to rebut.

“That’s right. I want to see what’s clean and unsoiled. I want things to act in harmony. All those clichés and predictable outcomes are familiar and beloved to me. But what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with wishing for that to happen in real life? It’s because of the nature of reality that we desire them! I’m not going to claim it’s for the sake of others; I want them because I enjoy seeing that! Yes, it’s a common cliché. And the fact that it’s such a cliché just shows you how much everyone thinks about it!”

He tried to overwhelm her with statements and questions, some of which he didn’t even believe in himself. But he wasn’t just trying to provoke her out of desperation—he was trying to keep her attention focused on himself for as long as he could.

When he felt the moment was right, Mikado tensed the finger waiting on his phone button.

Once I press this button, there’s no going back. I’ll be entering a place one should never go. I wanted to avoid this if possible, but based on her reaction, I don’t have another choice. I don’t have the strength or intelligence to challenge someone who doesn’t respond to logic. And I don’t have the time to try, because I’ve got to find a way to survive this situation first.

Mikado sucked in a deep breath of determination and pushed the switch as he let it out.

So my only choice—is to rely on numbers!

“This is ridiculous. Enough discussion,” Namie said, then slowly raised her hand. “I don’t care how many friends you have. We can come up with plenty of truth serum.”

Her face glowed with a radiant smile as her hand stretched overhead. She never realized that there could be such pleasure in eliminating her brother’s enemies.

Some of Namie’s subordinates saw her hand rise.

“That’s the signal. Just grab the kid.”

“Hey…hang on, what if he’s working with the cops? We could be screwing ourselves…”

“At this point, who cares? She certainly ain’t seein’ the big picture. Bring on the cops—once the dust has settled, the broad will handle everything.”

The more gung ho of the men ignored his hesitant partner, dropped his drunken salaryman act, and did a brief scan of the area.

“Huh…?”

He noticed something and checked with his partner. “It’s like…eleven o’clock, right?”

“Yeah.”

He felt a subtle chill creep over him.

“Then…where’d all these people come from?”

Just as the first man burst out of the crowd and smoothly, naturally made his way closer to Mikado—

Beebeebeep, beebeebeep.

It was the sound of a cell phone receiving a text.

At first, the man thought it was his own, but then he realized he didn’t have his phone on him. It was just someone else’s message tone coming from very close by.

But when he turned in the direction of the sound, he saw a very large black man, towering well over six feet tall. It was the giant well known along this street—Simon. The man averted his gaze and kept walking so as not to make more eye contact.

Then the bleeping beeps were followed by a little song.

He turned in the direction of that sound and saw a bartender wearing sunglasses—Shizuo Heiwajima, the so-called brawling puppet of Ikebukuro. What was he doing there?

He turned in yet another direction and saw several people of an entirely different type, each one busy reading an e-mail off of their phone.

“…?!”

That’s when they noticed something. As several different chimes played on, more songs started up, forming an ugly, clashing harmony.

Beebeebeebeep, beebeebeebeep.

More text notifications, at least a dozen from every direction.

“?!”

At last, Namie and her men realized that something strange was happening.

The mixed crowd of countless milling figures had grown into what would more accurately be termed a mob. Even those whose phones hadn’t gone off were pulling them out of pockets, drawn by the vibration setting. But the vast majority were beeping and ringing incessantly.

And then…

Too late to do anything about it, the little group was drowned in waves of ringtones.

Tone, tone, tone. Melody tone ringtone, ringtone, harmonic tone, harmony.

tonetonetonetonetonemelodymelodymelodyringringringringtonetoneharmonicnicnicnicharmony

harmonyharmonyharmonytonetonemelotonedytonemelotonetonetonemelotoneringtoneringtoneingtonetonehartoneringmeltoneingnictonehartoneritoneingharmingtonemelotoningringmeloharmo

tonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetone

tone, tonetonetonetone, tonetonetonetonetonetone, tonetonetonetonetone, tonetonetone tonetone

tonetonetone, tonetonetonetone, tonetone, tonetone, tonetonetone, tone, tonetone tonetonetone, tone

tonetone, tone, tonetonetoneto, tonetonetonetonetonetone, tonetonetonetone, tonetonetone, tone

tone, tonetone, tone, tone, tonetonetone, tone, tonetonetone, tonetone, tonetone, tonetone, tone, tone

And as the ringtones gradually calmed and faded out, Namie’s group found they were the center of attention.

Gazes. They were singled out from the crowd by a sea of gazes.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of people in the surrounding crowd were all turned in their direction, staring—sometimes speaking with the person beside them—casting them into sharp relief, as though they were the players of some kind of theater, performing in a special space cut out of the surroundings…

“What…what is this…? What’s happening…? Who the hell are these people?!” Namie screamed. The scene had overturned not just her expectations, but everything she thought was normal.

But the stares did not stop. It was as though they had made enemies out of the entire world.

Lost in the terrible shock of the moment was the fact that the boy she’d been negotiating with had slipped into the crowd, disappearing into the sea of gazes.

The founder of the Dollars turned into one of the mob, unbeknownst to anyone.

“Whoa, can you believe that? Izaya and Shizuo on the same street, and they’re not fighting or anything!” Karisawa bubbled. She was sitting in a van parked on the side of the street.

“That’s just because Shizuo hasn’t noticed him. Still, this is wild. Is it me, or are there even some students in the mix? Not that hardly any of them are wearing their uniforms at this time of day.”

One of the cars parked on 60-Kai Street was the van that Kadota, Yumasaki, and the others drove. Inside, Kadota’s friends—and a new girl they just picked up this morning—watched the scene outside with trepidation.

The girl was one they’d kidnapped before she could be kidnapped, from a rickety, old apartment building near Ikebukuro Station. By torturing those thugs, the group learned that a Yagiri Pharmaceuticals research lab was behind the event. Just as they were about to finish up with their victims, the leader of the thugs got a text message that appeared to be a code.

After forcing him to decode the message, they learned that it contained an address, with a note that there was a “girl with a scar on her neck” there, and a simple text drawing of a door. There was also an image attached to the e-mail—creepily enough, it was a picture of the girl’s severed head. In the image, it almost looked like it was alive, but the file labeled it a “re-creation.”

Kadota asked the thugs what the door was supposed to mean. They said it was a corruption of D.O.A.—dead or alive. With that in mind, the group decided to swing by the apartment before anyone else arrived, pick the lock, and take the girl to safety.

All the other kidnappers who got the same message must have been stationed outside of Toshima Ward, because Kadota’s group was first on the scene in Ikebukuro and succeeded in their mission.

They didn’t know who the girl shivering in the back of the van was yet, but Kadota made sure to report it through the form on the Dollars’ website. It was designed to reduce conflict between the various members of the Dollars, but it was almost unheard of for members to run into each other on the street.

Even if they did, it was typically no more than the friendly relationship that developed between Karisawa’s team and Kaztano, the illegal immigrant. Until this moment, none of them knew that Simon and Shizuo were also members.

The idea of illegal immigrants being on the Net was strange, but it turned out that they were recruited through old-fashioned word of mouth in real life. The Dollars were apparently growing through more mediums than just the Internet.

And that led to today—the group’s first-ever meetup.

“Sheesh, how many people is that? Y’know, it looks less like a gang meetup than some kind of flash mob from a major forum or something.”

“Well, the Dollars aren’t exactly your typical color gang. Hell, the team color is camouflage.”

“By the way, what’s the leader like?”

“No idea…”

As Yumasaki and Karisawa chattered happily away, Kadota groaned in the driver’s seat. “Geez… Is this what the Dollars really are? Damn… What’s going on…?”

He was conflicted with equal parts bewilderment at having been part of such an inexplicable group and astonishment at the sheer power of the sight. It was far beyond the scale of any color gang.

At a glance, it didn’t look like a meetup at all. Each person wore their own outfit and stood where they were without order or reason. They were simply there as they were—on their own or in small groups of like-minded friends.

Some were office workers, some were teenage girls in their high school uniforms, some were exceedingly plain college students, some were foreigners, some fit the image of a color gang perfectly, some were housewives— Some were— Some were— Some were—

That was the group collected in this scene. Many of them were on the younger side, to be certain, but from a distance it looked like nothing more extraordinary than a larger than usual crowd for this time of night.

Even the police could easily be fooled if called. That was exactly the point of the group, and thus it melted into the town without suspicion.

Until a single e-mail reached the entire group.

Mikado waited for the right moment and sent a preprepared message to essentially every member of the group with a mail address on their cell phone, all at once.

“Right now anyone not looking at messages on their phones is an enemy. Do not attack, just stare silently.”

Namie and her goons were instantly singled out in the crowd, overwhelmingly outnumbered.

A single dullahan observed the scene from far above. She had to determine who was an enemy and who was a friend.

The ones who still brandished weapons in the midst of the stares, taking positions to protect Namie. They were the enemy to her and to the Dollars.

In exchange for her help with the plan, Celty got to meet the girl with her head earlier in the evening. She approached the girl, neck covered in gruesome stitched scars, and simply asked for her name. It was a fatalistic question—she assumed the girl would not remember—but the answer was the worst thing she could have imagined.

The girl stared at Celty’s helmet with awful, empty eyes and said just one word.

“Celty.”

That cleared my head.

As soon as the word registed in her mind, she felt a deep despair, as well as the invigorating rush of being set free of some kind of curse.

Celty gazed down on Namie’s squad, isolated from the enormous crowd—and announced her presence by letting her Coiste Bodhar roar.

All at once, the crowd of Dollars looked away from Namie and up at Celty on the top of a looming high-rise building.

Satisfied, she spread her arms—

And dropped vertically down the outer surface of the building.

Before the screams started down on the ground, the shadow that enveloped her expanded to its maximum, an even blacker cloud against the black of night. The shadow eventually covered the bike, weaving its way between the tires and the wall so that both rubber and steel seemed to draw the other in as it raced breathless and vertical.

The Dollars and Namie’s group, gathered below on 60-Kai Street, were getting a glimpse of a world where physics held no sway.

The bike leaped away from the building and landed on the opposite side of the Dollars, trapping Namie’s group in the middle.

It was like a scene from a movie. Some held their breath, some quaked in terror, and some shed tears without knowing why.

And without a care for the public attention on her every move, Celty drew the shadow from her back, forming the giant pitch-black scythe.

As Namie trembled, one of her henchmen approached Celty from behind and smacked her collarbone area with a special police baton. The helmet fell off of her neck, exposing the empty space.

Shouts and screams arose, while those at the rear of the pack couldn’t see or react to what happened. Panic shot through the crowd.

But Celty had not an ounce of doubt or hesitation.

Yeah, I have no head. I’m a monster. I don’t have a mouth to speak my case or eyes to convey my passion to others.

But so what?

So damn what?

I’m right here. I am here, and I exist. If I don’t have any eyes, you will simply have to observe all of my actions instead. Let your ears take in the screams of those who have felt firsthand my monstrous wrath.

I am right here. I’m here. I’m right here.

I am already screaming, screaming.

I was born here—so that I could carve my existence into this city…

And then, they heard. The sight turned into a tremendous noise in their brains.

The scream of the dullahan, a sound they should never have heard, painted the main street in the color of battle.