Durarara!! - Volume 10 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Everyone and Their Cat

August, Russia Sushi, tatami booth

“So what’d you wanna talk about?”

Kyouhei Kadota sat with his arms folded, twisting his neck until it cracked.

Amid the notably Russian interior decor, the booth with the tatami floor was slightly more Japanese by comparison. Four young people sat at the table, including Kadota, with a rather deluxe set of nigiri sushi in front of them.

But this was not a fun get-together among friends. A heavy gloom lay over the little tatami alcove.

“…Can we at least eat first?” asked the boy sitting across from Kadota, Masaomi Kida.

Karisawa was at a meeting for a cosplay event, meaning the other two were inevitably Yumasaki and Togusa, but they seemed content to sit back and listen to Kadota and Masaomi.

“I have a feeling it’s going to be a long story. I don’t want any knives to come flying if we let the sushi dry out.”

“…That’s a good point,” said Kadota, eyeing a small but deep mark in the pillar nearby. It was the spot where Denis the cook had thrown a knife once before. Can’t believe it’s been half a year already, Kadota thought.

He and Masaomi had been eating here when that mark was made, too. Oddly enough, the situation had almost been identical, too, except for Karisawa’s absence this time. But there was one other difference.

The look in his eyes isn’t the same.

Before, Masaomi’s face was full of hesitation, even fear. Now he was practically a different person altogether.

But Kadota knew that Masaomi had always been a particularly strong-minded person before all that. The Yellow Scarves that he had built were too disciplined, too cohesive for any old chump to put together from scratch. Having clashed with them back in his Blue Squares days, Kadota could scarcely believe his ears the first time he’d heard they were primarily made up of middle schoolers.

There were two other things Kadota knew about Masaomi, however.

One, that Masaomi Kida’s heart had totally broken down once.

Two, that he’d gotten back on his feet with that heart still broken and suffered even worse because of it.

Supposedly, Masaomi had vanished after that. Given that he was here now, it was probably a good bet that he’d come to some kind of resolution. And from what Kadota could see in the other boy’s eyes, he had come back even stronger than he was before his heartbreak.

To Kadota, people weren’t like simple sticks of wood. They were more like thick ropes, their hearts composed of a number of elements woven together. The parts of broken wood or stone might not return to their former state, but as long as there was something still there, even as slender as a spider’s thread, a person could recover. It was a view of human nature that Kadota had gotten from his dad.

These thoughts and others ran through his head as they ate. Kadota sipped his tea and waited for everyone else to set down their chopsticks before he spoke again.

“So shall we get back to business?”

“…Sure.”

“You can save the longer explanations for later. First off, I just want the outline, nice and clear,” Kadota instructed, his voice crisp.

Masaomi arched his back a bit and clenched his hands where they rested atop his legs.

“I have a request to make of you all.”

“Will you leave the Dollars…and lend your help to my team, the Yellow Scarves?”

A few days later, Awakusu-kai Head Office, Tokyo

It looked just like any other business office. But the tension inside, so thick you could cut it with a knife, made it clear as day that this was no ordinary company.

While the exterior of the building was made out like any other commercial building, on the inside, it was the center of operations for the Awakusu-kai, a gathering of “professional gentlemen” affiliated with the massive Medei-gumi Syndicate. A number of menacing yakuza strolled about the place.

The source of the nervousness that currently filled the office came from a corner of the building. Specifically, a pair of men seated in the reception room.

“What does this mean, Mr. Shiki?” asked a man with sharp reptilian eyes—Kazamoto, one of the Awakusu-kai’s senior members.

The other man, Shiki, whose eyes were sharp in the manner of a different species, was of similar rank within the organization. He replied, “It doesn’t mean anything, Mr. Kazamoto. There’s simply no need to pursue the Yodogiri matter further.”

“I’d sure like to hear a convincing reason as to why.”

If Kazamoto was a snake or a crocodile, then Shiki was more of a hawk or a wolf, the lower-level members liked to whisper among themselves. None would dare say such a thing right now, though. Even knowing that the two men wouldn’t overhear, the members felt the very act of putting voice to those words was a waste of life.

It was amid this kind of nervous silence that the two men conversed.

“I assume you’re familiar with the name Giichirou Shijima.”

“Of course. He’s a relative of that stupid kid who was playing doctor on our turf. I hear we’re looking into making inroads with the Shijima Group on account of that kid.”

“That’s right. However, it’s no longer necessary.”

Despite being of identical rank within the Awakusu-kai, the men spoke politely to each other, maintaining their distance—and thus their secrets.

Kazamoto made most of his earnings through insider trading. The bulk of Shiki’s work came from barely legal multilevel marketing (pyramid) schemes and gambling books. While their operations didn’t overlap, they occupied equal shares of the power balance within the group, which made them wary of each other.

“No longer necessary?”

“Yes, as it happens…Shijima himself reached out to us, regarding the issue with Jinnai Yodogiri. He wanted to make a deal, including the matter with his son.”

“And that meant dropping the Yodogiri case?”

“Yes. He offered three hundred million yen.”

That number caused Kazamoto’s brow to furrow. “And that’s supposed to close the deal?”

“Mr. Akabayashi made it out all right, but do you really think the company president’s going to accept a sum like that after one of his own was nearly killed? So naturally, we made it clear that this was just the start of a very long working relationship. We did take the three hundred million and credited it toward the Yodogiri issue, however.”

“…And Shijima went along with everything?”

“Yes, he accepted all our conditions. It was almost suspicious. It looks like we’re going to have a nice long relationship with the Shijima clan,” Shiki said, striking the armrest of the sofa with his index finger. “However…while he claimed that Yodogiri was just a benefactor in the investment field, it’s obvious that isn’t the real story.”

“So he’s not just some wily old badger after all.” Kazamoto’s already sharp eyes narrowed.

Shiki grinned. “In any case, out of respect for Shijima, we called off the hunt and considered the matter settled…but given the stench of Yodogiri over all this, the president decided we’ll keep our antennae listening for different reasons.”

“Meaning that role is being transferred from me to you, Mr. Shiki?” Kazamoto asked, his voice icy.

Shiki smirked and reassured him, “Don’t worry, I don’t plan to swoop in and take all the credit. If I find something that seems like an opportunity for business, the president and director will decide how it gets divided. Though to be honest, I’m not hoping for business as much as I’m wishing we don’t get any more bullshit from Yodogiri.”

“You mean like with Yumeji Kuzuhara?” Kazamoto beamed, hunching his shoulders. That wiped the expression off Shiki’s face.

“You should know that Kuzuhara’s name is no laughing matter around here, Mr. Kazamoto.”

“It was his fault that Kine got kicked out of this company.”

At that moment, Ikebukuro

While that conversation happened inside the Awakusu-kai office, elsewhere and within the public side of Tokyo, the name Kuzuhara arose in totally different circumstances.

“Please, Miss Kuzuhara, isn’t there a lead you can give me?”

“I swear, if you don’t behave, I’m going to haul you in for interfering with a law officer, you got that?”

“C’mon! You don’t have to go throwing around those big scary legal terms.”

“You think I’m bluffing? You wanna find out how serious I am about giving you the third degree?”

In a residential area off the center of Ikebukuro, a police officer writing up parking tickets was dealing with a middle-aged man who didn’t want to give up.

“Listen, listen, I’m not trying to interfere with your job! I just thought that maybe Maju Kuzuhara, youngest and brightest of the famed Kuzuhara police family, might help out a troubled citizen and impart what she knows about the group called the Dollars, that’s all,” pleaded the grinning fellow, who had a jacket under his arm and an aged flat cap on his head.

But the young policewoman, pen in one hand and pad in the other, finished writing the parking ticket, sighed, and said, “I merely have many relatives in the force. You can’t butter me up that way.”

“But several of them are in the top brass, right? And I hear that Souta in Raira Academy High School and little Souji in middle school are well on their way to being officers, too. It’s an elite family, you can admit it. I’m jealous.”

“…And why do you know about my underage cousins? If you want me to put you on the stalker watch list, just come out and say it, Mr. Niekawa,” she snapped, expression growing colder by the moment.

The man named Niekawa hastily waved his pen-holding hand back and forth.

“Oh, geez, I’m sorry! That wasn’t what I meant to imply! No, I was just interviewing a kid from Raira Academy and happened to overhear their names, that’s all! You see, I was looking for information on the Dollars from the young folks…”

“If you stick your nose where it doesn’t belong, you’re going to wind up in deep shit again.”

“Oh…gosh…yes, that was bad…”

Shuuji Niekawa was a writer for a periodical in Tokyo. He’d been left outside of a hospital with terrible injuries once, which, combined with the eyewitness reports of him carrying around a knife, earned him suspicions of being involved with the infamous “street slasher” incident. But because no hard evidence had turned up, and because he was hospitalized during the Night of the Ripper, when multiple slashings happened simultaneously, he was never charged with anything. Now he was healed up and back on the job.

“I’m aware of the caliber of magazine you write for, Mr. Niekawa, but don’t you think accosting a police officer on the job for tips is crossing a line, even for you? And no special report on the Dollars is going to outdo the volume of information you can find online.”

The young woman was not at all forthcoming to Niekawa, who had a history of bugging officers for information under the guise of reporting. Her cold attitude might have been typical for the police department as a whole, in fact.

Yet, the man was nothing if not persistent. He had a very good reason for being so.

“No, you don’t understand. I’m not asking around about the Dollars for my magazine, not at all! It’s an entirely personal matter!”

“What does that mean?” Maju said, stopping in the process of returning to her vehicle.

Niekawa’s gaze wandered a bit, and he put on a self-effacing smile. “Well, it’s…it’s my daughter. She’s run away from home…”

“A runaway? How old is she?”

“She’ll be eighteen this year…”

“Did you submit a missing person’s report?”

It was the most obvious of questions, but Niekawa avoided her gaze for some reason. “Er…she sends me the occasional text saying, ‘I’m just going from friend’s place to friend’s place’… I just don’t know exactly where they are, that’s all…”

“Then I think you’ll have more luck if you submit a missing person’s report. And what does that have to do with the Dollars?” she asked.

“Well, um, I’ve never heard of her having friends before this,” he mumbled, “and I’ll admit—I’m not proud of this—that I went into her room and booted up her computer. I only thought I might find a clue if I checked her e-mail…”

Niekawa pleaded with the much younger woman, hoping for some kind of salvation. It was less guilt that he was dealing with than a powerful unease about the truth that he learned from his snooping. Or at least, that was what she could glean from his expression.

“Erm, okay. I’ll be honest. The truth is, there was a…high school teacher she became enamored with a while back, and it had…repercussions. I was worried she might still be involved with him. And then…I learned she’s interacting with some folks from a street gang called the Dollars…”

“…”

“You hardly ever see those gangs with their color themes anymore, but they say the Yellow Scarves just had a resurgence around the new year. I don’t know much more than that because I was in the hospital,” he muttered, staring at the ground. “I haven’t done much good for my daughter, so maybe my father’s intuition isn’t trustworthy, but I still want to find out as much as I can about this situation…”

Ikebukuro

“Some weirdo’s sniffing around after the Dollars?” Aoba Kuronuma asked.

On the other end of the call, the boy nicknamed Neko replied, “Yeah, apparently on his business card it says he’s a writer for a mag called Tokyo Warrior.”

The asphalt soaked up the sunlight of the late afternoon, baking Ikebukuro with temperatures in the high eighties despite the hour. Aoba walked alone through the commercial center of the neighborhood, seeking out the shade as he went.

“…It was about a year ago that the Dollars became a story. I’d have figured the fad was over by now…but I guess I’ll keep this in mind. It would be one thing if it were a huge magazine like Tokyo Walker, but this is Tokyo Warrior we’re talking about. Not really a big concern.”

After a few more comments, Aoba hung up on the call, right as he reached the crosswalk to the entrance of Sunshine 60 Street. He stopped next to the Lotteria and blended into the crowd as he waited for the signal to change. Through the people, he surveyed the throng waiting on the other side of the light.

Wonder how many of them are Dollars, too.

He chuckled to himself. He currently led a team of former Blue Squares within the Dollars under Mikado Ryuugamine’s orders, but very few people were actually aware of this.

From his position blended into the mass of humanity, he observed each and every figure across the way. Aoba’s style wasn’t to control people from the shadows of the city—he controlled the situation from the shadows of the crowd.

Even I don’t have a perfect grasp of the full breadth of the Dollars. In fact, if you include the people who never even registered online, there isn’t a single person who knows everyone involved. Even Izaya Orihara.

But now it’s time that I had Mikado Ryuugamine perform…

“…?”

As he ruminated, waiting for the light, his gaze stopped cold at a particular point.

Unlike Aoba, who was totally swallowed by the crowd, the person he spotted on the other side stuck out like a sore thumb—and it was someone Aoba knew very well.

“Bro…,” he murmured, squinting.

His hairstyle wasn’t the same as it used to be, and he was skinnier now, but that was undoubtedly Aoba’s older brother across the street—Ran Izumii.

Contrary to the peaceful sound of his name (“Orchid Spring”), he had the bearing of a mad dog, and the others waiting at the light nearby subconsciously looked away and distanced themselves.

Then Aoba noticed that the brother he hadn’t seen in several years was staring straight at him, his mouth twisted into a savage grin.

The light turned green, and the flock of people strode into the street. Aoba narrowed his eyes, blending into the wave of pedestrians, melting into the very atmosphere of the city as he stepped into the crosswalk.

But Izumii stayed right where he was, splitting the flow of foot traffic around him like a sandbar in the middle of a river.

Seems like he wants me for something. I don’t think even he’s stupid enough to stab me in the middle of the street like this, though.

Still, caution was necessary, Aoba decided. He squeezed the stun gun in his pocket and proceeded toward his brother, step-by-step, his face a blank canvas.

The moment they were close enough to speak, it was Izumii who moved first. He spread his arms and cackled, mouth open in a wide, toothy grin.

“Yo, Aoba. Been a while.”

“…Bro.”

Izumii reached out a hand and smacked the top of his brother’s head. “You ain’t grown a bit. Look exactly the same. Like a li’l preteen still! You eatin’ right, kid?” he asked, a surprisingly brotherly sentiment.

Aoba frowned. “And you seem to have changed quite a lot. You’re thinner now, and your hair’s pitch-black.”

“Well, they shave you when they lock you up. So I changed my look a bit. I almost got shaved again just before I got out, actually.”

Before his arrest, he’d had bleached blond hair styled in a pompadour, an obvious signifier that he was a street thug, but now it was a bit longish and slicked back. He was more like a fancy host club employee trying to accentuate his wild side, as far as his hair was concerned—but no one who saw his face would think he worked that job. If it wasn’t the scars and burn marks on his face, the dangerous malice that lurked in his eyes and the curve of his mouth was enough to drive off any woman—or person in general.

Maybe it was the juvie…but he just seems different, period. He didn’t feel this dangerous before.

“Your scars aren’t as bad as I’d heard.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I heard you got hit by a Molotov while fighting with the Yellow Scarves. I was worried,” Aoba lied. He intended that to be more of a manipulation than a hostile challenge, but Izumii just chuckled and grinned.

“Worried? You? About my burn scars? This coming from the guy who burned my room down.”

Aoba didn’t show any reaction to that, but inside his mouth, his jaws were grinding. This was not the same as the brother he once knew.

Years ago, after Ran Izumii took out his misplaced frustrations on his brother in a show of excessive violence, a fire had started in his room while he was gone, believed to be caused by a cigarette butt.

“I’m so glad you didn’t get hurt,” Aoba had said, with the innocent smile of the child he was.

This smile was so intimidating to Ran Izumii that he never followed up on the incident, and in fact, he never discussed the matter with his brother again. Aoba never mentioned it, either, and continued playing the role of an obedient younger brother. A role they both knew full well was a farce and yet which he maintained anyway, to send a message.

Now Ran was breaking that unspoken agreement between them by mentioning it in the open. He knew Aoba was the one who’d lit up his bedroom.

In the past, the elder brother of this pair was the one labeled “useless,” but he was a totally different person now.

“You know Dad broke my nose after that, right? You owe me for that one, Aoba, don’t ya?”

Aoba didn’t panic. He acted the same way he always had. “Oh, please, Bro. Do you really think I caused that fire?” he said, the wolf boy in little lamb’s clothing.

Meanwhile, the villager opposite him, fangs bared, leered. “Actually, it doesn’t really matter now whether you’re tellin’ the truth or lying.”

“…”

“And the idea that you left the Blue Squares under my control because you couldn’t handle ’em anymore? Doesn’t matter if that’s true or a lie, either.”

He sucked the air through his teeth, a nasty scraping sound. Then he reached out to Aoba’s face and squeezed the younger boy’s nose in his fingers.

“In any case, once I kill Kadota, Yumasaki, and Kida from the Yellow Scarves, you’ll be next. If you wanna hold that to just half-dead, you’d better start thinkin’ of a good plea for your life now, while you got the chance.”

“…Kadota?”

Kadota was one of the principal public members of the Dollars, though he denied he was that important. He seemed to be locked in an eternal struggle with Ran and Aoba.

Though Ran had no personal contact with Aoba, he’d made a name for himself with Aoba’s Blue Squares, and his eventual betrayal and exit from the group ended up being a major factor in the downfall of the gang.

During the battle against the Yellow Scarves, the very cause of that betrayal, Aoba hadn’t lifted a finger to help his brother. When the Yellow Scarves had messed with Aoba’s group before—the ones with the shark-themed beanies—they’d fought back. That earned his ilk the wrath of the Yellow Scarves as a whole, but it didn’t turn into a full-scale war, and the elder brother didn’t ask for the younger’s help then, either.

“So what’s your plan? You don’t have the Blue Squares anymore, Bro,” Aoba said, maintaining his submissive mask underneath his taunts. “Didn’t you know that Horada’s bunch got arrested for something else after they avoided juvie the first time?”

“Yeah…I hear Horada was talking all kinds of shit on the inside. I went to pay him a visit recently and put the screws on him. He had a lot to fill me in on!” Izumii chuckled, twisting his brother’s nose. “What’s the Dollars’ boss’s name…? Mikado Ryuugamine?”

“!”

“Even the guy’s name is full of itself. I couldn’t believe what I learned—he’s old friends with that brown-haired kid in the Yellow Scarves, and what’s this I hear about you being all buddy-buddy with him, Aoba? One way or another, I’m gonna hafta go introduce myself soon.”

Aoba replied to this counter-taunt with his first grin of the conversation.

“…I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Bro.”

“What?”

“He isn’t… The Dollars aren’t the kind of people you can deal with. You’ll only wind up back in prison. Also, my nose is starting to hurt.”

“…”

Izumii’s teeth creaked with the force of his jaws, but a moment later, he wore the same wicked smile as before. “You gettin’ the wrong idea? It ain’t that kind of introduction I’m talkin’ about.”

“Huh?” Aoba grunted, eyebrow raised. Izumii released his face and flicked the bridge of his nose instead. “Ooh!”

When Aoba looked up again, holding his stinging nose, Izumii had turned his back to his little brother and was walking toward the crosswalk, where the traffic light was red again.

“I’m one of the Dollars now, too…so I gotta go and pay my respects to the leader, even if he’s younger than me. Ain’t that how it works? It’s more fun to be the palanquin bearers in an organization than the guy sitting in the throne on top.”

“…”

“It was thanks to you that I figured that out, Aoba.”

Izumii walked across the street, completely ignoring the honking of the cars that had to stop or swerve to avoid him.

If only he’d get run over, Aoba thought, a rather violent idea to have about his own family member. “Well…you’re a bit better than you were before, Bro.”

But he knew that these words would be drowned out by the honking. Underneath the hand holding his smarting nose, the boy’s mouth opened into a wide smile.

“I can’t wait until the day I crush you…and the one who’s backing you.”

That night, Tokyo

“That’s all, then. See you soon, Kyouhei.”

“Good night.”

Kadota said his good-byes to the other contractors and left the construction site, where he worked as a plasterer on a remodeling job. With his work shift over, he headed down the asphalt, which was still warm with the heat of the summer.

Nothing’s happened since then… Kida sure talked a big game, though.

As he walked, eyes and feet following the shadow the streetlights cast from his body, Kadota thought back on his meeting with Masaomi Kida in the sushi restaurant a few days earlier.

“Will you leave the Dollars…and lend your help to my team, the Yellow Scarves?”

“…”

Kadota met Masaomi’s plea with silence, sipping his tea. The younger boy never broke his gaze. “Kida.”

“Yes?”

“Let me ask you something first. Do you think we’re the kind of people…who would turn our backs on the Dollars and switch allegiance to a different gang with smiles on our faces?”

“Then let me ask: Do you think I would actually come to people like you to ask for something like that?”

“…Fair point.” Kadota shrugged, then tried a different tack. “Then setting aside the question of why us, let me just ask: What are you going to do?”

“I’m thinking of crushing the Dollars real quick,” Masaomi admitted.

Togusa nearly spat out his tea. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, you make that sound so easy.”

Yumasaki added, “Yeah, Kida, that doesn’t make sense. That big fight half a year ago with the slasher and stuff sorta got swept under the rug, but I thought it was all agreed that there wasn’t any evidence, and that was that. Horada got arrested, and we destroyed the last illusion of the Blue Squares. Happily ever after.”

He spoke to the younger boy the same way he did to Kadota—as an equal.

Kida gripped his knees and said, “I want…to help someone.”

Kadota thought for a second and hazarded a guess. “Ryuugamine?”

“…”

He took the silence for confirmation and continued, “I don’t get it. I can tell he’s pretty deep in the Dollars, and given how close he is with the Headless Rider, I guess it’s clear he occupies a pretty odd position in all of this…but what does that have to do with crushing the Dollars?”

“How much do you know about the Headless Rider, Kadota?”

“Huh? Um…a bit.”

As a matter of fact, Kadota knew that the Headless Rider was living in the apartment of a former acquaintance from high school, and he attended a hot-pot party there once—but he decided that bringing them into this situation wasn’t fair, so he chose not to divulge the details.

“But I want you to answer my question first,” he said. “If you’re worried about him, you should just tell him to quit the Dollars yourself. Or why not just invite him to the Yellow Scarves rather than us?”

“…”

“Listen, I happen to think that kids like him are better off not getting involved with street gangs in the first place. I bet he’d at least hear you out if you told him your concerns.”

This was all fairly sensible, but Masaomi only dug his fingers harder into his knees. “I…I can’t do that.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you more than that,” Masaomi stated.

Surprised, Kadota took another sip of tea and said, “So…do I have this right? You can’t tell me why, but you want to destroy the Dollars. And you want us to join the Yellow Scarves?”

“That’s accurate.”

“And do you really think there’s any kind of honor in that?”

“No, sir, I don’t. So I can’t just beg or force you to join the Yellow Scarves. But at the very least, I hope you’ll leave the Dollars.”

Kadota decided that the boy was not joking or crazy but making a very serious request. He put on a stern face. “So you came here to tell me to do something you know is wrong?”

“What I’m about to do is wrong, I admit. But my coming here is with the intention of doing it right.”

“What?”

“I owe you so many things, I can’t even begin to count them, Kadota. So if I end up really getting into it with the Dollars, I was hoping that if possible I at least wouldn’t need to mess with you guys.”

“If possible”…meaning he’s willing to throw down against us if it comes to that, Kadota realized. He could see it in Masaomi’s gaze as much as his words. He closed his eyes and said nothing.

Then Masaomi added, “Don’t you think the Dollars are acting strange lately?”

“…”

“I’m not saying it’s true of all of them, but they’ve been beefing with gangs from Saitama and running purges on others within the group who got carried away and so on. The rumors are bad.”

These were all things Kadota had felt for himself. But there was still something missing, something that made Masaomi’s accusations fall short of total believability. Choosing to be cautious, he said, “The Dollars’ official colors are transparent. In other words, they can fit in with any other color. On the other hand, if anyone’s pulling some weak bullshit, others in the gang are gonna speak up about it. Probably depends on the details, though.”

“And what if there was a clear, direct reason why they’re acting strange?”

“?” Kadota appeared confused.

Masaomi continued, “What if I told you…that guys wearing shark-tooth bandannas and ski caps are infiltrating the Dollars?”

“…!”

Shark-themed bandannas and ski caps—that could mean only one thing to Kadota.

The Blue Squares.

That was the blue-repping gang that Kadota had belonged to once. It was an odd group; hardly anyone inside the gang actually saw others wearing those shark bandannas—neither Kadota’s circle nor Horada and his goons.

“What if I said it seems like what happened to the Yellow Scarves half a year ago is happening to the Dollars this time?”

“…And you think Ryuugamine’s got something to do with it?”

“Sorry, I can’t say that for certain yet. But…when I’m able to speak about it later, I promise you I’ll reveal everything I know.”

“…”

Masaomi was going to great lengths to protect his secrets, the look in his eyes told Kadota. He considered this for a while, and Yumasaki and Togusa were considerate enough not to speak in the meantime.

“…Give me a few days to think this over. If this is going to involve the rest of these guys, I can’t just take your statements at face value and leap into action. We’ll have to do a little research of our own.”

Personally, Kadota decided he could trust Masaomi in this situation. However, it was still possible Masaomi was only saying what he believed was true and was being manipulated by someone else with sinister aims. And there was at least one person Kadota could think of who would do something like that.

“All right. That’s all I wanted to say,” Masaomi said. He thanked them and got to his feet. He turned away from Kadota’s group, then swung back and said, “But if you decide you’re going to be our enemy…”

“Then what?”

Masaomi broke the nervous atmosphere with a troubled smile. “Well, I guess I’ll have to find a way to make sure we don’t come face-to-face.”

The older guys were surprised by the innocence in Masaomi’s face.

The boy shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t expect I could match you guys in a fair fight.” Then he headed to the counter, said a few words to Denis and Simon, and left the building.

When he was completely out of sight, Togusa and Yumasaki shared a glance.

“…What was that about?”

“I don’t know, but that last part reminded me of him about a year ago. When he was hanging around with Mikado.”

Kadota muttered to himself, “If he’s really going to crush them, he could’ve just gone ahead and sprung a surprise rather than tell us.” He sighed, only to smirk a moment later. “What a softy.”

“You haven’t been talking much today, Yumasaki.”

“Hey, I’m just being considerate in my own way. Plus, without Karisawa, there’s no one to pick up my comments…”

“Well, that’s unavoidable. I don’t understand half the shit you talk about,” said Togusa, who was holding the conversation with Yumasaki now that Kadota was thinking in silence. It was as though they were trying to confirm that the recent scene had been as strange as it seemed at first.

“Honestly, I wish you both would study up on the classics, Kadota and Togusa.”

“Us?! Whoa, wait, you’re saying that’s our fault?!”

Then a deep voice from the counter cut them off. “You were lucky.”

“Hmm?” Kadota looked over at Denis, the head chef, who was rinsing off his fish-cutting knife. He eyed the edge of the blade first, then Kadota next.

“If you’d made things any more uncomfortable in here, I’d have put another mark in that pillar.”

“P…please, boss, let’s save the threats,” Togusa said with a shrug. But the cold sweat running down his cheeks was a sign that he knew Denis wasn’t making idle threats.

Denis served a few pieces of nigiri sushi to people at the counter, then added, “Well, maybe the kid spoke that way knowing how I’d react. He’s a tougher customer than I took him for.”

For a Russian, his Japanese was quite fluent. “One more thing, he paid for your meals. Probably in return for the time you guys paid for his.”

“Wha…? When did he do that?!”

“When you moved seats over there. It ended up being a bit short, but I can keep that on his tab,” Denis said. He favored his longtime customers with a very rare grin. “He probably wants to minimize any kind of favors still owed. He’s fixing to be your enemy soon.”

“…”

“I don’t know the details, nor do I care to pry…but the kid’s got his mind made up, that’s for sure.”

Made up his mind, Kadota thought, remembering the conversation at Russia Sushi a few days prior as he walked. And nothing’s happened since then.

Kadota had tried to track down information on his own, and it did indeed seem that things had been strange in the Dollars recently. Some who’d been using the Dollars’ name to perform stickups were getting attacked now.

The whole point of the Dollars was that people who had no connection to the street gang lifestyle could take part for fun. If anyone could join, that included scumbags. So it was only natural that some would get involved eventually.

In the last few months, others had taken it upon themselves to hunt these miscreants, which had become a thriving trade. But it was quite excessive for a simple cleansing process, a fact that Kadota found unnerving. What had put the deepest furrow in Kadota’s brow today was the revelation that the ones undertaking this internal purge were wearing shark-themed blue bandannas and ski caps.

Up to this point, it’s all been as Kida claimed. But how does it tie in to Ryuugamine? I’ll admit that the last time I saw him, he was acting a bit weird, Kadota thought, remembering how Mikado had approached him with a sparkle in his eyes and claimed that he was the ideal member of the Dollars. Ryuugamine’s fixation on the Dollars is off somehow. And I can’t just claim that it’s this way because he’s got connections to the Headless Rider and Izaya Orihara.

While Kadota often found himself helping others, he didn’t want to step any further than necessary into their private business. He’d never had a single ounce of curiosity about Mikado Ryuugamine’s personal connections or past. But if he was going to be central to this matter, that would change things a bit.

At the same time, Kadota recalled another thing he heard six months ago.

“‘So, Kadota,’ Horada says to me, ‘all that’s left is to cook this Ryuugane guy.’ All I wanna know is, who’s Ryuugane?”

That had been a fellow Dollars member who infiltrated the Yellow Squares along with him during the war with Horada. They’d been careful to keep their distance from Horada during the operation, to avoid being recognized, but the one person who got closest managed to overhear what Horada was talking about.

“And when Kida showed up, he said, ‘I’ll use you to get access to the Dollars’ boss, Mi…Mi…Mi-something.’ You got any ideas about who Mi-something might be?”

At the time, Horada was recruiting people to the factory for the purpose of destroying the boss of the Dollars. Kadota’s group blended in among them, but they never actually found out who the Dollars’ boss was supposed to be.

But he had a guess.

He’d always suspected that Mikado Ryuugamine occupied some important position within the Dollars, so hearing these details from his companion made it pretty easy to connect the dots and suspect that Mikado had a part in the founding of the group. He knew Izaya Orihara, too, so Kadota wasn’t naive enough to assume he was simply a high school friend of Masaomi’s who got wrapped up in trouble over his head.

On the other hand, Kadota always liked the Dollars’ lack of a leader, so he chose not to dig deeper into the matter. He never asked Mikado about any of it.

After hearing Masaomi Kida’s story, that half-forgotten suspicion came back as a surefire certainty. Ryuugamine’s the boss…although it still doesn’t seem possible to me…

No matter the circumstantial evidence, Kadota had met and spoken with Mikado Ryuugamine on multiple occasions, and it just wasn’t that easy to accept. If anything, Mikado seemed like the kind of utterly normal person who would never come into contact with the world of gangs and motorcycles in his entire life.

It was better that the Dollars didn’t have a boss, and it was better that he didn’t know anything about it. That was why, during the war with the motorcycle gang from Saitama, he had answered the question of who the Dollars’ boss was with a firm “No idea.” If asked the same question under present circumstances, he might not be quite so forceful in his answer.

In order to prevent the Dollars and Yellow Scarves from fighting, he would have to make contact with Mikado, he realized. He tried calling the phone number he’d received from the boy on an earlier occasion but never got through. Yumasaki and Karisawa tried, too, to no success.

Oh well. Guess I can try Kishitani and the Headless Rider tomorrow.

He’d gotten his helpful streak from his parents, and Kadota was making full use of it to solve the problem of Masaomi Kida and Mikado Ryuugamine.

“Guess I’ll do whatever I can…since it’s not like this doesn’t affect me, either,” he muttered. He sensed car headlights approaching from behind and moved farther to the side of the road.

Just like always. There was no mistake in his actions.

Sadly, he was unaware of the irony that was about to befall him.

For inside the car, the passenger in the front seat commanded…

“Run him over.”

It was the exact same thing Kadota had told Togusa to do when they had saved Anri from the slasher so long ago.

If any part of this was not entirely fate playing some cosmic joke, it was that Kadota was not a culprit like the slasher but just a purely innocent pedestrian.

The road was very narrow, but the car’s engine blazed.

When he noticed something was wrong, it was already too late.

An instant before he could turn around—

* * *

Shock.

Roar.

And then……darkness.

Thirty minutes later, Karisawa’s apartment, Tokyo

“I see. So you haven’t seen Miikyun recently, either, Anri.”

“No. He said he’d be out of touch while he went back home…”

There were around five women in Erika Karisawa’s apartment at the moment, busying themselves with sewing and examining very thick magazines with highlighters. They were working on cosplay outfits for a big summer event and checking the participating groups in the guide catalog.

But while the others were busy, Karisawa was already finished with her preparation. She sat in the corner of the room with Anri Sonohara. A few days ago, she’d asked Anri if she wanted to try cosplaying, and Anri, with little natural defense against peer pressure, gave in and visited her apartment.

“I wonder if that’s really true. So he responds to messages, but he won’t answer the phone? I mean, what kind of boyfriend does that?”

“H-he’s not my… Ryuugamine and I aren’t…”

Karisawa had put countless cosplay outfits on her (“Just for a test!”) over the course of the evening—she was currently wearing a Halloween party costume of a wide tricorn hat and a black dress with exposed shoulders. She was already blushing and curling up, embarrassed by the exposure of the sexy costume, so Karisawa’s line of questioning was only turning her cheeks redder.

“Ha-ha-ha, I’m only joking! I get it. You and Mikapon are so shy. You’ve got your sense of propriety all figured out—like a brand-new butler and a klutzy maid, maybe? I think you’re a cute couple. You’re all moe and kyun, the swallow to the tail. Totally.”

“I don’t…know what that means…”

“And if you two are the butler and the maid, I’ll be the master. In that case, wanna try on a maid outfit next? Or a shrine priestess?”

“Y-y-you mean there’s more?!” Anri squeaked, but that didn’t stop Karisawa’s teasing. She reached for a wardrobe that was enormous for the size of the apartment it inhabited, pulled out a few outfits, and pressed the hangers onto Anri to gauge the attire.

“If your hair were a bit shorter, you could do a good version of the plain friend from Oreimo. But if I had your chest, I’d wear raised platforms and do Bajeena instead. Oooh, I know! If you wore a wig, you would be very suitable as Konoha Muramasa from C3! In a number of ways!”

“O…kay…,” Anri mumbled, uncertain of what any of these names signified.

“Speaking of which, Anri, have you grown even more in the last half a year?”

“I—I don’t think so,” she replied, blushing even harder as Karisawa ogled her chest.

“Don’t be shy now. Mikado’s the purehearted type, so you’ve got to use the weapons God gave you to clinch the deal, or you’ll never get anywhere! At least follow Kida’s example!”

“Ah…” Anri looked down at the floor at the mention of a familiar name.

“From what Yumacchi tells me, Kida’s back in Ikebukuro now, right? I hear he’s well these days.”

“Wha—?”

So Kida really is back.

A few days ago, while taking care of a cat for an acquaintance, Anri had found herself in a bit of trouble. She ran into Masaomi out of the blue, who said a few words to her before running off. She hadn’t said a single thing to him.

But that was enough for her.

She’d been worried about Mikado acting strange recently, but Masaomi’s return seemed like a sign that things would resolve soon.

I wonder if he’s met with Ryuugamine yet…

If possible, she’d like to be there to speak with them. But she couldn’t begin to guess what she should say when they met.

Part of her acceptance of Karisawa’s offer was the hope that the advice of another girl would come in handy—instead, Karisawa controlled the entire situation, and there was no easy way to broach the topic of her personal concerns.

Thankfully, Karisawa seemed to have a sense of Anri’s troubles, and the topic gradually turned to Mikado and Masaomi.

But she’s seen…what I am…

During the Golden Week holiday, she’d been attacked by a mystery assailant and wielded the alien power that resided within her—the steel blade born of flesh and blood, Saika—in front of a crowd.

A teenage girl swinging a katana around was obviously not an ordinary sight.

She thought Karisawa and her friends would be afraid and disgusted after they witnessed it. To the contrary, they were fascinated and even tried to get closer to Anri after that point.

Why is she so nice to me, when she knows I’m abnormal?

Like Karisawa, there were people who saw human beings with freakish powers not as things to be feared but the exciting advent of the 2-D world into real life. Anri couldn’t understand how their minds worked.

One reason for that was that she knew the power was ultimately beyond her control. Saika’s gradual attempts to escape from Anri’s control filled her with fear and made her more determined than ever to properly coexist with the cursed blade.

To Anri, Karisawa was one of the few older girls she could talk to about her problems—but she wasn’t quite sure if she ought to reveal the entire truth of Saika yet. There was another “older girl who could be talked to,” who wasn’t entirely human, just like her, so it seemed to Anri that the courier would be the better person to ask for advice first.

But even still, she might not want to hear about this stuff…

“…ri. Anri…”

And I can’t ask Mr. Akabayashi about this…

“Anri? Anri? Hellooo?”

“…? Y-yes?! I’m sorry! I was spacing out…”

Anri lurched backward when she realized Karisawa’s face was right up in hers.

“Ha-ha-ha, darn! If you’d spaced out a bit longer, I could have taken that off and put you in the sexy fallen angel maid outfit!”

“Wh-what?”

The words fallen angel and sexy were a bit of a shock to Anri, who summoned her courage to ask, “So Yumasaki met with Kida?”

“Yep. It was a shock to me, too, actually. It was happening right when I ran into you on the street earlier. Dotachin and them were eating at Russia Sushi, and they just happened across him right there. I haven’t heard any details about what actually happened, though.”

“Um, if you d-don’t mind, c-could you ask them about that when you get the chance? I’d really…”

“I get it, I get it! Wow, you’re really aggressive when it comes to Kida, huh? If only Mikarun inspired that kind of go-get-’em attitude.” Karisawa chuckled, swinging right back into the usual loop of teasing her helpless victim.

Just then, Karisawa’s cell phone buzzed on the table and emitted a soft and sultry “You have a call, mistress.”

“Yes, my butler, yes, até breve, obrigado,” she said, whatever that meant, and snatched up the phone to check the screen. “Oh, speak of the devil. It’s from Dotachin. True synchronicity!”

She hit the button in high spirits, ready to launch into a good chat. “Hello there, Dotachin! What’s up? …Huh? Er, oh.”

The smile vanished from her face. “Oh, you’re Kyouhei’s father! I see, of course… But what’s the occasion? Why are you calling from his…?”

“…”

It was clear something was wrong.

Both Anri and the other cosplay girls who had been quietly busying themselves around the apartment stopped and watched Karisawa.

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh… What?”

In that instant, everyone in the room innately understood that something bad had happened to Kyouhei Kadota.

They all witnessed Erika’s ever-present smirk vanish from her face.

“Kyouhei Kadota was in a traffic accident that put him into a coma.”

This fact left wide-ranging ripples, centered chiefly around the Dollars.

At a private hotel celebration…

“…Kadota did?”

Yumasaki had just finished carving an ice sculpture for his job. His narrow eyes opened wider than usual, and his work tools slipped from his hands.

In an apartment…

“You gotta be kidding me!”

Togusa answered the phone while he was sticking up a Ruri Hijiribe poster on the ceiling. The shock caused him to fall off the step stool.

Beside a river in Saitama…

“What? Kadota?”

“Y-yeah, man. So why waste your time collecting money from me when you could be payin’ him a hospital visit? What if you don’t get there in time? What if he dies and— Gbyaaa?!”

The man in the bartender’s outfit tossed the debtor through the air, then frowned. At his side were a man with dreadlocks and a young white woman. Both of his coworkers spoke to him in concern.

“That’s a guy you know, right? The one always riding around in that van?”

“I have heard he’s senior management of the quasi–gang club group called the Dollars.”

The man in the bartender’s suit was breathing heavily. He shouted, “He was just a classmate from high school…but what I wanna know is…who’s the sick bastard who ran over a person I know and fled the scene?!”

He was so furious that he kicked the motorcycle the debtor had been trying to flee on. It skipped over the surface of the water like a pond skater and crashed against the far bank of the river.

On the top floor of an apartment building in Ikebukuro…

“So…what now, Mikado Ryuugamine?”

…an info broker who had abandoned his humanity in exchange for blinding pain in his right hand stared down off his veranda at the city, a cold smile adorning his lips.

Out in front of a convenience store…

“You gotta be kidding me!”

“Kadota got run over by a car?”

“Serves you right, biiiitch!”

…a number of hooligans whom Kadota had regulated upon in the past cheered and exchanged high fives.

In Russia Sushi…

“Hit-and-run… That’s some bullshit to pull on one of our regular customers.”

Denis sharpened his knife with no outward change in his demeanor at the news.

“Yes, I go pay him visit. Calcium good for broken bones. He eat pike with bones in, good for him. I take him one nigiri with whole pike inside,” said Simon, who seemed quite relaxed despite his concern.

They took matters of other people’s life and death in stride, probably because of past experience, but that didn’t mean they were being cold and callous. This was just how they expressed their concern for Kadota.

“That’s gonna be hard to eat. And there’s no point in taking anything to him until he wakes up again.”

“It’s okay. Boss Kadota tough, if not as tough as Shizuo. Health comes first, phone call second, three o’clock is snack time. When Kadota’s friends come again, we give them sushi on the house. I’m worried more of them than Kadota.”

“You realize how many people he knows? You’re gonna put us outta business,” the restaurant manager said, stone-faced, as he examined the knife he’d finished sharpening. “But if Kadota does get out, I can make him the best damn nigiri I’ve ever prepared.”

And somewhere in Tokyo…

A fresh-faced boy, Aoba Kuronuma, spoke in darkness. “Did you hear that, Mr. Mikado?”

“…Yes. About Kadota,” murmured a boy who looked utterly normal in every way—Mikado Ryuugamine—as they sat in the back seat of a van owned by one of Aoba’s companions. “I can’t believe it. How could he be in such a horrible accident…?”

“What’ll you do? Go visit him in the hospital? They might be refusing visitors still. Could even be in surgery.”

“…”

Silence.

No one spoke for a while, the sound of the van running only underscoring the heaviness of the moment. When it eventually came to a stoplight, Mikado spoke, eyes downcast. “I wish I could do that, but if I go now, I might come face-to-face with a bunch of different people.”

Emotions swirled through him. Eventually, he settled on a sad smile. “And I’m sure that would cause a bunch of trouble… Oh, but I think you should go. He did help you out of trouble once. I don’t mind being an ingrate, but there’s no reason for you to suffer the same infamy.”

“I see,” Aoba said, reflecting the heavy mood. He shrugged. “Sure, he saved me, but I was the entire cause of that fight with Toramaru and the chase that ensued. I earned it,” he admitted.

Mikado looked up slowly. “That doesn’t matter.”

“Huh?”

“Kadota saved you. It doesn’t matter why. He saved you, and that’s that. He did it to help you, regardless of if you started the problem in the first place. I don’t think you should downplay that.”

“…You’re right. I’m sorry,” Aoba said.

Mikado grinned easily. “No, no, I probably stated that more forcefully than it needed. My bad.”

Aoba didn’t know what about that qualified as “more forceful than needed,” but he decided to let it drop.

“Then I’ll go and visit him in the hospital soon.”

“Yeah. That’s good. Just remember it’s considered bad luck to bring camellia flowers or other potted plants to a hospital room,” Mikado advised him. The others in the van shivered, but Aoba didn’t seem to feel anything in particular.

“I hope you’ll be able to stand proud and visit Kadota in the hospital someday, sir. Along with Miss Sonohara and Mr. Kida.”

“Yeah. Speaking of which…”

Mikado mumbled something, then turned to stare out the window. There was a kind of sadness in his eyes but also a purity. His gaze was steady as he looked out toward some distant, unseen place.

Something in his eyes frightened Aoba as much as it reassured him. He smiled, his emotions conflicted and unknown to Mikado.

An abnormal situation descended upon their lives.

And this was only the start. After this day, the Dollars were plunged into a state of abnormality that many of them did not desire.

But in reality, a select few of them did want it—a period of sludge and piercing, bizarre circumstances.

Chat room

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Kid: And that’s the basic mechanism for how loan sharks still operate in this day and age.

Sharo: Wow. That’s really something.

100% Pure Water: You sure know a lot about shady business, Kid! That story about backdoor school admissions fraud was entertaining, too. Are you actually a police officer or a prosecutor?!

Kid: No, I’m just sharing stories I’ve heard.

Kid: And an officer or a prosecutor isn’t going to have the time to hang out in chat rooms all day like this.

Chrome has entered the chat.

Chrome: Good evening.

Sharo: Evening.

Kid: Nice to see you again.

100% Pure Water: Eveniiing!  

Saki: Long time no see.

Chrome: Looks like we have all new members tonight. Is there a single old member here?

Saki: Mai and Kuru were here earlier.

Saki: But they had something to do, so they left.

Kid: They seemed to be in their usual moods.

Chrome: It’s been so long since I saw TarouTanaka and Setton.

Chrome: Do you think they switched to posting on Mixi instead?

Chrome: Social media’s different these days. Chat rooms like these are dying out.

Kid: I’m not sure.

Sharo: They’re probably just busy, yeah? I mean, it’s been a while since we’ve seen you, either, Chrome.

Chrome: I’ve been hammered with overtime lately…

Saki: Well, congrats on getting free.

100% Pure Water: Oh, right. Saki, you’re Bacura’s friend or girlfriend in real life, right?

Saki: Yes. We live together.

Sharo: She admits it!

Sharo: Wow.

Sharo: What?

100% Pure Water: Eeek!  

Kid: That sounds very passionate.

100% Pure Water: Then what’s Bacura doing today?

Saki: He’s busy with work. He’s been out all day.

100% Pure Water: Sounds like a hard worker! Just make sure you treat him well when he gets home so that he doesn’t work himself to death.  

Sharo: What if you treat him a little too well and keep him up all night, and then he gets into a car accident in the morning from lack of sleep?

100% Pure Water: That’s dirty! You’ve got a dirty mind, Sharo! Diiiirty!

Sharo: Really? That counts as a dirty joke, Water?!

Saki: What do you mean by “treat him a little too well”?

Saki: Can you please explain that to me? ;)

Sharo: Sorry, forget I said it. It really was a bad joke.

Chrome: Oh, speaking of asleep at the wheel…did you hear about the hit-and-run today?

100% Pure Water: Yikes! Where? Where did it happen?

Chrome: It wasn’t that far away from Ikebukuro.

Chrome: I mean, if it was in the middle of Ikebukuro, there’d be so many witnesses that they’d get caught right away.

Sharo: Was it on the news?

Chrome: No, I don’t think it’s been on the news. It wasn’t fatal.

Kid: Then how do you know about it?

100% Pure Water: Were you the one who hit and ran, Chrome?!

Chrome: Of course it wasn’t me.

Chrome: Haven’t you checked the Dollars message board?

Kid: Actually, I haven’t yet today…

Sharo: Oh, does that mean this is Dollars related?

Chrome: No, it’s much simpler than that.

Chrome: It was just a Dollars member who got run over.

Chrome: The problem is, it wasn’t your typical member.

Kid: Meaning?

Chrome: The victim was a fairly prominent person in the group, someone named Kadota.

Sharo: Hey, that’s a pretty well-known name around the Ikebukuro region.

Sharo: Are you serious?! Kadota’s dead?!

100% Pure Water: Don’t be morbid!

Sharo: Look, I wasn’t excited about it or anything like that!

Chrome: According to the info on the Dollars board, it’s not life-threatening.

Chrome: But he hasn’t regained consciousness yet.

Kid: Let’s hope he wakes up soon.

Kid: So if it was a hit-and-run, does that mean the driver hasn’t been found?

Sharo: It’s just a matter of time, I bet.

Sharo: There are some crazy motorcycle cops out there these days.

Sharo: Haven’t you ever seen them playing tag with the Headless Rider?

Chrome: Didn’t you say something like that before, Sharo? lol

Sharo: It’s a wild enough thing to bring up multiple times.

Sharo: You’ve got to be a real idiot to do a hit-and-run, though.

100% Pure Water: They probably panicked and drove off without thinking, I’m guessing?

Kid: That’d be better, at least.

Chrome: ?

Sharo: “Better” is not the same as “good.”

Kid: Oh no. I didn’t mean to imply that anything about this is positive. I’m sorry.

Kid: I should’ve been clearer. I mean, I only hope it’s just an ordinary hit-and-run.

Chrome: What do you mean?

Kid: I’ve heard of Kadota, too. It’s a name you’re bound to come across in any deeper examination of the Dollars.

Kid: He doesn’t like to admit it, but many Dollars accept him as one of the outward faces of the group.

Kid: And he’s been run over by someone who drove off. Let’s just hope it’s a coincidence.

Sharo: …You think someone hit him on purpose?

Kid: It’s a possibility, that’s all.

Kid: For example, there was that story about Ruri Hijiribe’s stalker being among the Dollars.

Kid: Let’s say there was another Ruri Hijiribe fanatic, almost on the level of a stalker. What if they saw the entire Dollars as an enemy of Ruri because of that? Or more simply, what if someone hurt by a Dollars member in the past wanted revenge? But without a leader, who can they go after? Well, how about Kadota, who’s the most well-known of them all?

Sharo: So you think it might not be personal but just a consequence of him being a kind of representative for the group? That’d really suck for him if it’s true.

Kid: That’s still not the worst that could happen.

Sharo: What?

100% Pure Water: Ba-bump, ba-bump…

Chrome: Oh, I get it.

Chrome: You’re saying…what if that’s just the beginning?

Kid: Exactly.

Kid: They’re saying the gang that reps yellow is back in action, too. The Yellow Scarves, I believe?

100% Pure Water: What? Do you think they’re starting a war?!

100% Pure Water: That’s scary. That’s really scary!

Kid: We might be getting ahead of ourselves with that.

Kid: But the elements for unrest are all there.

Kid: Especially with the rumor that Shizuo Heiwajima left the Dollars.

Sharo: Yeah. Even if you hated the Dollars, with Shizuo around you didn’t dare pick a fight with them.

Kid: And then there’s this story about a purge within the Dollars.

Chrome: I heard about that one, too.

100% Pure Water: What do you mean, purge?! That sounds really scary!

Kid: In any case, I’m sure the police are keeping tabs on the Dollars by now. That means they can’t make any big moves, but all the other gangs are free to take potshots at them.

Kid: The Dollars are known for not having a color. But all the Yellow Scarves and Blue Squares have to do is remove their bits of cloth, and they’re no different from the Dollars. If they abandoned their pride and honor, they could attempt to bring down the group…

Chrome: It would be like the incident with the slasher, perhaps.

Chrome: They never actually caught the slasher, when all was said and done.

Kid: Most importantly of all, the biggest risk factor is the fact that it was Kadota who was in the accident.

Kid: It’s like the cleanup-hitting slugger on a baseball team getting hospitalized from an accident.

Kid: They have no Shizuo Heiwajima DH and no Kadota cleanup hitter. It’s the perfect opportunity for another gang to make their move.

100% Pure Water: Ahhh! Geez! Geez! This is all Bad News Bears over here!

Chrome: ?

Sharo: He’s gone off the deep end, lol.

Kid: What’s the matter?

100% Pure Water: We’re all… Well, I’m an Ikebukuro resident, at least! Kid and Chrome, you can’t keep scaring us with all these freaky stories! Look, you’ve frightened Saki into silence!

Kid: Please pardon me. I’m sorry.

Chrome: You’re right. Saki hasn’t replied to any of this.

Sharo: Maybe she fell asleep?

100% Pure Water: Saki, are you awake?

100% Pure Water: Helloooo?

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