Durarara!! - Volume 10 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Birds of a Feather

The next day, Shinra’s apartment, near Kawagoe Highway

“Kadota’s in a coma?!”

Shinra Kishitani was stuck in his bed, covered with bandages and casts all over. The black market doctor failed to practice what he preached—good health—and now he was bedridden in his own apartment until he recovered.

While his injuries were bad enough that it would take him half a year to fully recover, thanks to the help of his beloved life partner, he seemed fairly happy with the whole arrangement. He was often smiling through the pain and inconvenience.

Now that smile had turned into shock at the news that said beloved life partner had just brought to him.

“It was a hit-and-run, apparently.”

“Hit-and-run?!”

“Yeah. He got hit on some street, and the locals who heard the noise came out, found him on the asphalt, and called for an ambulance,” the life partner typed onto her PDA, rephrasing the information she gained via e-mail.

Shinra peered up at the screen to read her message and made a face. “Is his life in danger?”

He wasn’t that close to Kadota, but they had known each other in high school, and he’d invited the other man to this apartment on multiple occasions. Most important of all, he was one of the few people who knew about and accepted the nature of Shinra’s partner.

Shinra cared about his partner above all else, so it was only knowing of her safety that allowed him the wherewithal to be concerned about anyone else. Unlike the circumstances in which a different friend got stabbed, here he was genuinely worried for Kadota.

“He did pull through, but he’s still unconscious for now. Let’s hope he recovers.”

While his partner typed worried messages on her PDA, none of her emotions showed on her face.

But that was only because she didn’t have a face to begin with. Instead, her concern manifested by the trembling of the darkness that issued forth from the surface of her severed neck.

Celty Sturluson was not human.

She was a type of fairy commonly known as a dullahan, found from Scotland to Ireland—a being that visits the homes of those close to death to inform them of their impending death.

The dullahan carried its own severed head under its arm, rode on a two-wheeled carriage called a Coiste Bodhar pulled by a headless horse, and approached the homes of the soon to die. Anyone foolish enough to open the door was drenched with a basinful of blood. Thus, the dullahan, like the banshee, made its name as a herald of ill fortune throughout European folklore.

One theory claimed that the dullahan bore a strong resemblance to the Norse Valkyrie, but Celty had no way of knowing if this was true.

It wasn’t that she didn’t know. More accurately, she just couldn’t remember.

When someone back in her homeland had stolen her head, she had lost her memories of what she was. It was the search for the faint trail of her head that had brought her here to Ikebukuro.

Now with a motorcycle instead of a headless horse and a riding suit instead of armor, she had wandered the streets of this neighborhood for decades.

But ultimately, she had not succeeded at retrieving her head, and her memories were still lost.

Celty knew who stole her head.

She also knew who was preventing her from finding it.

But that meant she didn’t know where it was.

And she was fine with that.

As long as she could live with those human beings she loved and who accepted her, she could happily go on the way she was now.

She was a headless woman who let her actions speak for her missing face while she held these strong, secret desires within her heart.

That was Celty Sturluson in a nutshell.

She assumed nothing would change. In fact, she prayed that nothing would ever change, that she would always be her “usual self.” But this summer seemed determined to turn every part of that on its head.

Her head, in fact.

She finally knew the location of her head, the very reason for her being in this country in the first place.

But once she was in the presence of the person who possessed her head, she had backed down. She’d done nothing.

It’d happened right after her beloved Shinra was attacked, and she was consumed with rage at the time. She still hadn’t fully processed the waves of emotion that had overcome her then. Did the same thing happen to human beings? Or was she different from them in this regard, because she was a dullahan?

Ironically, this worry of hers was a very human kind of concern. Nonetheless, Celty didn’t know how much difference there was between her heart and a human’s. It was hard enough just for two human beings to process emotions the same way. As a different species altogether, the idea had always plagued Celty.

In this case, she’d been in an extreme state of mind when she’d heard about Kadota, which only made things worse.

Why are all these crazy things still happening?

Oddly enough, she was worried about the same things that people had been talking about in the chat room without her last night.

Is there some connection between all this? I’m sure the stalker panic is unrelated, but something just feels wrong. And I can’t believe that the Jinnai Yodogiri who Izaya was talking about has anything to do with Kadota… Could it really have been just an accident? Or is something bigger going on that I don’t know about?

Her fear led to doubt, and that doubt fueled only more fear.

Normally, being next to Shinra helped Celty ease that fear, but because she was keeping the fact that she knew the location of her head a secret from him, the guilt was another kind of shackle chaining her down.

“Well, even if I were in perfect health, I’d still recommend that he go to a normal hospital after being hit by a car. We’ll just have to hope for a solid recovery.”

“Huh? Oh, good point,” she typed, coming back to her senses. She focused on the matter of Kadota again. “I’d like to go and visit him, but I don’t think the hospital will let me in…”

“Well, if he doesn’t wake up, they’re not going to allow visits, period.”

“Good point.”

“But it is worrying,” he said, his expression clouded.

Celty put a reassuring message into the PDA. “It’ll be all right. He’s a tough guy.”

To her surprise, Shinra added, “No, Celty, you’re the one I’m worried about.”

“Huh?”

“If Kadota comes back around, he’ll still be in the hospital for a while, right? I just hope no funny business happens with the Dollars in the meantime. We’ve seen this with Mikado—when people get in trouble, you can’t help but get yourself involved, Celty.”

Oh my goodness. He’s on the same line of thought as me.

There were times when Shinra showed himself to be keenly capable of reading Celty’s feelings, but if he was actually tracing her line of thought here, he’d have to be a psychic.

No, it’s okay. Shinra’s not psychic. We just happened to be thinking about the same thing. I didn’t know he was worried about that kind of stuff, though, she reassured herself and put that feeling into words to Shinra.

“I’m not so sure. The Dollars don’t have a hierarchy. I bet Kadota being gone isn’t going to change anything in the big picture.”

“You sure about that? I’ve always thought that Shizuo served as a physical restraint and Kadota served as a mental restraint—both to others and to the group. If you messed around, Shizuo was going to flatten you, whether you were in the gang or not. That’s a simplistic view, I’ll admit.”

“But you’ve got a point.”

“Meanwhile, if you got on Kadota’s bad side as an outsider, he would galvanize a part of the Dollars around him to fight you off, and if you were an insider and he went after you, you’d have a real bad time within the Dollars,” Shinra explained.

Celty didn’t have a real counterargument.

“He denies he’s a big public figure in the Dollars, but the thing about big groups is that when stuff happens, people look to someone they can rely on. There just aren’t that many people out there who are strong enough to make decisions about everything on their own. I bet even Mikado was leaning on Kadota for a lot of stuff.”

“That might be true, but…”

It only made Celty feel worse; Anri had told her that Mikado had been acting strangely, too.

I just hope that Kuronuma guy doesn’t use this opportunity to start any funny business.

Shinra seemed to sense her concern. He sat up in bed, ignoring the pain. Before she could ask him if he was all right, he gave her a kindly smile.

“It’s okay, Celty. You should do what you feel is right, no matter what happens to the Dollars. If you have to take on the rest of the entire world, I’ll still be with you.”

“Shinra…thank you.”

“You don’t need to thank me for anything. I’m doing this for my own sake.”

“Well, don’t worry. I’m not going to be that foolish,” she typed quickly, to hide her bashfulness. The little tendrils of shadow coming from her fingers flitted about, dancing over the keypad like black flame.

“In any case, you should be more worried about Kadota than about me. You don’t have any outright friends other than Izaya and Shizuo, so that’s one of the few acquaintances you can actually talk to casually.”

“Oh, please. What are you expecting from me? When my friend Izaya got stabbed, I didn’t even bother visiting him.”

“Forget about Izaya—he earned that one!” she typed, chuckling on the inside.

The feeling of normalcy returning only made her wish harder that Shinra would heal soon, so that she could feel this way forever.

But life was not going to be so kind.

Right as she got up, intending to fix something simple for Shinra to eat, her cell phone buzzed.

Who is that?

Celty pulled it out and saw a message from an unfamiliar source. She opened it up, assuming it would be another spam e-mail from a dating site or an overseas scam.

Then time stood still for a brief moment.

The title of the message was “This is Aoba Kuronuma.”

Aoba Kuronuma.

The name of the boy who knew what Celty was, where she lived, and who was trying to put weird ideas into Mikado’s head. The boy she’d been worried about making his move just a few minutes ago.

Her worst fears were confirmed true at the worst possible moment.

“I’d like to talk to you about something. Can you come outside for a bit?”

The short message put another chain of unease around Celty’s heart.

At that moment, Shiki’s private office

“And what is it that brings you here today, Mr. Newswriter?”

“…”

They were in the art trading office that Shiki used as his business front for the Awakusu-kai. Shuuji Niekawa sat on the leather sofa for guests, but contrary to its plush softness, he was as stiff as a board.

This was the second meeting of Niekawa and Shiki, the first of which had been for the purpose of a column called “Tokyo Disaster Almanac” for a tabloid that mostly ran features about street gangs.

“Given that you didn’t bother to schedule an appointment first, I’m guessing you’re not doing research for a piece.”

“C-correct. Listen, I hate to bother you about a personal matter, Mr. Shiki, but…”

“I don’t mind. If anything, it’s bringing us closer together,” Shiki said with a thin smile, putting himself on equal footing with his guest. “But whether I help you or not depends on the request. Given that you came to me, I would assume it’s a particular kind of trouble that you have.”

Shiki’s eyes gleamed with a chilling light, sensing the truth. Niekawa was worried about his daughter and came to the office out of sheer desperation, even knowing the nature of the people he was seeking out.

The writer steeled his courage and said, “Well…I’m embarrassed to admit it’s a family matter…”

Several minutes later…

“I see. Your daughter and the Dollars.”

Shiki gave Niekawa a hard look now that the entire situation had been explained.

“P-please, anything you can do. I just need to know more about them,” Niekawa stammered.

Shiki put his hands up in a calming gesture.

“Are you sure you actually came to the right place? Common knowledge is that the Dollars are a street gang, but they’re really just a bunch of amateurs. Like an online club that anyone can join, full of teenage girls, office workers, even little kids. They don’t even have operations that pay tribute to more professional outfits like us or others in our line of work.”

“Yes, I…I’m aware of that…but it sounds like the Dollars are getting more dangerous these days.”

“It stands to reason that such types would be in the group. Because of the nature of the gang, the Dollars aren’t a monolith—they’re more like a mountain made of several strains of rock. There might be water and plants growing on top, but there could be sulfuric acid running beneath it.”

“…”

Sulfuric acid was an even stronger choice of words than poison. Niekawa was stunned; it didn’t sound like a simple threat. As a beat writer, he came into contact with many kinds of people, and it was easy for him to imagine what this meant in terms of the underside of society.

“I-I’m aware of that, Mr. Shiki. It’s exactly why I’m worried. Including past attempts, I’ve talked with people all over town who claim Dollars membership, and I’ve never gotten any good information from them. None of them recognize my daughter’s face or name. I haven’t even got any leads on the people who she was trading messages with… So I came to the conclusion that maybe the people who make their living on the underside might have better connections…”

“Ah, I see… Usually, I’d advise you to contact the police or a detective and have you leave, but I’ll assume that your presence here says you’ve already run through all your other options.”

For his part, Shiki treated the writer as though he was perfectly aware of who he was dealing with. He didn’t bother to try hiding the truth. He let the consequences be known.

“I can’t offer you help personally, but I can introduce you to someone who might be able to provide you with the information you seek,” he said.

“Y-you mean Orihara? I haven’t been able to contact him. It looks like he moved out of his office in Shinjuku…”

“No, I’m not speaking of an outsider. I mean someone within my organization.”

“R-really?! A-and what would I owe you for…?”

Niekawa was prepared to hand over everything he owned, what little there was. But even then, he wasn’t sure he had enough for the likely asking price. He could reach out to an expert from the publisher who knew about this exact kind of negotiation, but he wasn’t going to get others involved in his personal matter.

But the answer wasn’t a number.

“Don’t be silly. This is a give-and-take relationship, isn’t it, Mr. Newswriter?”

“Huh?”

“I cannot accept your money,” Shiki said, shaking his head. He leaned forward, placed his hands on his knees, and fixed Niekawa with the stare of a lion hunching toward its prey. A friendly smile crossed his face.

“Instead, the next time we need help, we’ll ask you for advice. That’s all that’s necessary.”

Based on the words alone, some might think Shiki a kind and generous man. Others might find him the chivalrous kind of yakuza who was rarely seen in modern times. But Niekawa was well aware that this did not describe the actual offer Shiki of the Awakusu-kai was making him.

They were going to use him, a tabloid writer, as part of the group’s shady business. Rather than making it a onetime financial transaction, Shiki determined that it was more worth his time to keep a connection to a writer at a magazine that circulated in convenience stores and bookstores, even if the publisher was tiny. The last time, he’d introduced an external information source, but this time it was to another person in the same organization. That was surely a sign that they intended to maintain a working relationship with him.

You’re going to be our lapdog, Shiki was saying. He’d probably get asked to write about them favorably in an article. In a sense, having that kind of personal connection to the Awakusu-kai was a much worse outcome than a simple financial loss.

But then Niekawa recalled just how abnormal his daughter had been acting over the past year. He took several long breaths, steeled his courage, and bowed his head.

“I understand. Your generosity is greatly appreciated, Mr. Shiki.”

“Don’t be silly. As I said earlier, this is a reciprocal relationship, Mr. Niekawa.”

The first use of his actual name rather than “Mr. Newswriter” didn’t inspire friendliness in Niekawa. He felt like icy vines were tangling around him.

“I’ll phone my colleague, then. He can be a…slippery fellow, but I bet you’ll get along with him just fine.”

“Um, a-and who is this…?” Niekawa asked, nervous about the new Awakusu-kai member he was about to become acquainted with. For the first time, Shiki gave him a wicked grin that had nothing to do with salesmanship.

“…Well, they call him the Red Ogre, but don’t worry. His horns and fangs have been well-rounded down by now,” he lied.

Apartment bar, Tokyo

“Ahh. A Mr. Niekawa, writer for the Tokyo Warrior. Understood. Well, I’ll be at the usual bar, so just send him my way.”

In the back of a bar built into an ordinary apartment, Akabayashi ended his call and sipped his plum sake. He swallowed, then gaped and murmured an apology.

“Oops, I didn’t mean to completely derail our conversation by taking that call. My bad. I must be getting old—I just assumed I was drinking alone, like always.”

“Please don’t let it bother you. We were nearly done anyway,” said a young man dressed in black despite the summer heat. His smile was as cold and jagged as though it were etched into obsidian—this was Izaya Orihara.

Akabayashi picked up where those chilly words left off and asked the info broker, “So are these materials correct…? Is this Mikado Ryuugamine the founder of the Dollars?”

“Yes. I was quite surprised when I found out. One of the students at my alma mater, a central figure of the Dollars!” he remarked theatrically.

Akabayashi swirled his cup and smiled. “Let’s not stoop to bullshit, informant. You knew that in the first place, and it was why you approached Ryuugamine at all, isn’t it?”

Izaya could only shrug and throw his hands up. “I’ll leave that to your imagination. You asked me for information on Mikado Ryuugamine, not information on myself, right?”

“Am I hearing this right? Are you willing to sell the details of your own schemes for the right price?”

“People’s thoughts and feelings aren’t a product to be sold, Mr. Akabayashi.”

“Ah. Quite. Accept my apologies, then.”

They chuckled without a hint of mirth.

He really is hard to get a handle on. The Red Ogre of Awakusu…

Because of his aloof attitude and the tinted glasses that hid his eyes, it was very hard to read Akabayashi’s mannerisms. It was a toss-up as to who was less forthcoming with information, him or Shiki, Izaya mused. But the two men were temperamentally different.

Shiki kept his mind locked behind hard iron, while Akabayashi was as impossible to grasp as liquid—except he wasn’t just harmless water but gasoline or some other unsettling substance that could explode at any moment.

Izaya was not afraid, however. He returned to their chat about business. “Isn’t that why you came to me in the first place? You knew he was an important figure to the Dollars.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But I did hear a fascinating rumor from a guy fresh outta the clink.” Akabayashi put his finger on the picture of Mikado Ryuugamine sitting on the table and began to rotate it. “I’ll admit I thought you’d keep the Dollars’ boss a secret from me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, I figured that having an associate in my profession learn something like that might be inconvenient for a fellow in the business of selling information.”

“You think too highly of me. I’m not clever or powerful enough to orchestrate plots that involve keeping secrets from the Awakusu-kai,” Izaya said, not rattled in the least.

“Is that so? A guy like you ain’t living if he ain’t plotting, as far as I can tell.” Akabayashi lifted up the photo he’d been spinning and stuck it into the pile of materials that Izaya had given him. “The kind I’d have beaten to death without a reason in the old days.”

“Let’s not make any threats.”

“Please don’t worry. I’m not that young anymore. The old bloodlust is gone. Plus…” He paused and took another sip of his plum sake.

“Plus?”

“It looks like I don’t need to bother. That young fella in the bartender getup is trying to beat you to death himself. Leave the violence to the younger generation, I say.”

“…”

For an instant, the smile vanished from Izaya’s lips. Then he expelled that moment of weakness with a sigh. “Please don’t be silly. What can that beast of a man do?”

“It’s rare to hear about a human being who can beat a wild animal in a fight.”

“Which is why we have weapons. Individually and socially.”

Akabayashi considered this for a moment, and his gaze sharpened behind the glasses. “And are you planning to use the weapons of society?”

Izaya didn’t answer him. All he did was smirk.

Akabayashi didn’t seem annoyed. He straightened up the papers and stuffed them back into the manila envelope. “That’s all right. Well, you keep bringing me info on Mikado Ryuugamine. I’ll make sure you’re paid for the trouble. Did you want to order anything? The T-bone steak is excellent.”

“I’d love to take you up on that offer, but I’ve got business to get to…”

“If you say so. The downsides of being a hard worker! Just don’t work yourself into an early grave,” Akabayashi said, waving good-bye to Izaya as the younger man stood. Something in that friendly advice sounded like a warning. “Information overload is bad for the constitution.”

“…I appreciate the advice.”

“Oh, and one more thing.”

“Yes?” Izaya came to a stop.

“I’m sure you know there’s smoke coming from the Dollars lately,” Akabayashi said in his breezy manner. “Be careful. The Dollars are like an entire neighborhood to themselves, and the town’s beginning to smolder.”

“What’s this all about?”

“Even if you were the first one to light that fire, the sparks don’t stay contained to any one place,” he said cryptically, practically to himself, as he stared down at the surface of his drink.

“When an arsonist sits back in a safe spot to watch the fire he set, it ain’t rare for him to get burned by someone else’s blaze. Especially in our world, y’know.”

Night, Namie’s apartment

Namie Yagiri was on the run.

She’d stolen the head of a dullahan, an extremely precious secret, from her former company and had been on the run ever since. But she wasn’t trying to get as far away from Tokyo as she could. Even worse than being caught was the thought of being separated from Seiji Yagiri, her beloved little brother.

At first, she’d been living in an apartment arranged by her new employer, Izaya Orihara, but because she didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, she now rented a different place under a false name.

She took the utmost caution that she wasn’t being trailed whenever she “commuted” to Izaya’s office and had never gotten sloppy about it once. If there was any way in which she was playing fast and loose, it was that she assumed nobody working for Yagiri Pharmaceuticals was going to cause a fuss in broad daylight, so she didn’t take any real pains to disguise herself. She was also forgetting that she had attempted to abduct Mikado Ryuugamine on the street once, but since it’d been well over a year since then, without any reprisal, the idea never crossed her mind.

But in the interest of upholding her good name, let it be said that she was otherwise exhibiting every last bit of caution, as usual. She arrived home absolutely certain that no one was following her.

This time, however, there was one factor that set off her sense of wariness. Normally, there was almost no traffic past the apartment building at this time of day—but now there was a single black van parked down the street. It was very large and seemed totally out of place in the cramped, dense streets of urban Japan.

“…”

With a mild uptick in her sense of caution, Namie glanced around the area without slowing her pace or stopping.

The next moment, all her senses went absolutely taut.

Right as she had turned to look behind her, she saw another black van emerging from the entrance of the alley she’d just been walking down.

They trapped me!

She hoped it was just a misconception, but that wasn’t a good enough reason for her not to take the next logical action. Rather than bolting into a sprint, she kept walking, feigning total calm.

If the people in the black cars were enemies trying to track her down, they’d be assuming she would bolt into action as soon as she realized it. By playing defenseless, she could wait until the closest possible distance to act.

With this idea in mind, Namie continued acting dumb, all her nerves on edge just enough to keep the strings from going completely taut, while she formulated the most effective way to escape.

But no sooner had she started on this bold idea than another man appeared near the door to her building. When she saw his face, the strings she’d been keeping as loose as possible tugged so hard they threatened to snap.

It was a face she knew very well.

“It’s been a while, Namie,” said the man with the graying hair, without much emotion. “Don’t tell me you thought we had no idea about this.”

Cold sweat trickled down Namie’s back.

“President…Yagiri…”

The man sighed and shook his head. “I have your severance papers all filed. You don’t need to use that formal title with me anymore. Just call me Uncle Seitarou, like you used to.”

He sounded wistful and disappointed. Seitarou Yagiri took another step toward his niece. “We’ve been aware of where you were the whole time. I just wasn’t sure if it was right to put pressure on my dear niece like that.”

Namie snarled and clicked her tongue at this ostentatious show of concern. “You used my father’s company like a sacrificial tool, and now you’re going to play the family ties card, Uncle Seitarou?”

“You’ve got a point,” he admitted and straightened his cuffs. After checking the time on his wristwatch, he reached a hand toward Namie. “We can catch up later, though. We don’t want to block the street here.”

“…Don’t you mean, we don’t want to attract attention?” she snapped sardonically.

“Precisely. We would appreciate your cooperation,” said an icy female voice, sending a shiver down Namie’s neck.

“?!”

She spun around to see a woman dressed in a business suit.

Who? When did she…?! Wait…I recognize her!

The businesswoman wore expensive glasses and a very sharp-looking suit. The cold gaze on her pretty face put Namie in mind of an emotionless cyborg from some kind of tokusatsu action movie with special effects.

That’s…the secretary of Yodogiri, the guy Izaya’s been investigating…

Namie recalled the name written beneath the long-range photo of the woman she’d seen on the computer screen and stared her in the face.

“Kasane Kujiragi…”

“I’m flattered you know my name.”

“What would the secretary of Jinnai Yodogiri be doing with Uncle Seita…?!”

Namie pretended to be stunned, then stopped in the middle of her sentence to throw a surprise palm right at Kujiragi’s face.

“…!”

It was true she’d been stunned at first, but the idea to do a sneak attack instead popped into her head.

I don’t know why Uncle’s with her, but I’m not putting up with any bullshit.

While Kujiragi’s line of sight was momentarily impeded, Namie used her other hand to pull the stun gun out of her open bag and swung it toward the woman’s solar plexus without missing a beat.

But before she could connect, Kujiragi twisted, evading the business end of the weapon and grabbing Namie’s wrist. The chilly texture of her leather glove froze the sensation in the wrist. The stun gun hissed and crackled just short of Kujiragi’s suit.

“Ugh…!”

“…”

Namie glared at the other woman with disgust, but Kujiragi was still emotionless in the face of her foe.

“You look quite smug about all this,” Namie spat. “Are you the frigid type, like that Russian mercenary girl?” This helped her put on a brave face while she shifted her center of gravity for a counterattack.

…? I can’t…move…!

But it felt as though the point on her right wrist where the other woman had her pinned might as well have been the center of her being. The pressure on that point alone caused pain and tightness all over her body.

“I’m under no obligation to answer that question,” Kujiragi said, ignoring the barb. She put her free left hand up to the elbow of her other arm, the one holding Namie’s wrist.

“?”

Namie was confused by this, wondering what it meant. Then there was a quiet click, and a jolt ran through her entire body.

“~~~!!”

Understanding came instantly. A very strong electrical current had just run through her captive wrist.

A stun gun… No, a stun…glove?!

It was a freakish chimera of leather glove and stun gun, with an electric cord connecting the glove to an external control mechanism. It was the kind of tool you’d see in a preposterous spy action movie—and Izaya Orihara had once bought one, mostly for fun. If the metal electrode was embedded in the palm of the glove, maybe that explained why her grip felt so cold.

Only because the surge of electricity had been a momentary pulse and not a constant current was she able to summon the concentration to analyze the situation this way. But while her mind recovered instantly, her muscles refused to respond.

Kujiragi ignored Namie, who was glaring up from her knees, and asked Seitarou, “What shall I do? I can knock her out, if you want.”

Either she was going to use another blast from the stun glove or some kind of drug. Namie tried to think of a way out of this, despite her uncooperative physical state. But Seitarou’s answer stopped that line of thought in its tracks.

“No, you can just tie her up. I’d rather not have to wait for her to wake up when we bring Seiji around.”

Something crackled at the back of Namie’s skull.

“We know that no other residents nearby are home. You can’t scream for help, Namie. And if the people at the top of the building happen to notice, nobody’s going to interfere with an uncle bringing his niece back home to her parents. There’s no lie in that.”

Namie ignored his mocking barb and repeated the name. “Sei…ji…?”

All the tension went out of her body. Slowly, so slowly, she glared up at her uncle, like the demon-possession subject of some kind of supernatural video footage.

“It’s the most effective way to get you to obey, isn’t it?” he said. “It’ll only hurt Seiji a little bit, but if you don’t want that…”

Instantly, on willpower alone, Namie ignited her paralyzed muscles and lunged at her uncle with fangs bared.

“Wha…?!” Seitarou faltered, frightened for an instant that she might actually sink her teeth into his windpipe. But she came up short.

Kujiragi wasn’t taken unawares by Namie’s sudden lunge. She kept firm pressure on the other woman’s wrist. Namie snapped back as though held in place by wires. Another current ran through her from the stun glove, sending her into convulsions.

“…! Ah…ghk…!”

Again, it only lasted for a moment, but the strength was truly gone from her muscles this time.

“Please be careful what you say, President Yagiri,” the woman warned. A number of figures appeared behind her, men in suits from the black van. Two more showed up behind Seitarou from the other vehicle.

“People like this can even override their own sense of pain for the sake of love.”

“Huh…? Ah y-yes. You’re quite right, Kujiragi.”

The use of the word love seemed to throw off Seitarou quite a lot, but he was too preoccupied to go into it. He was still grappling with the fact that he’d been momentarily frightened by his niece’s aggression.

“You’re a very bad girl, Namie. Threatening your own uncle with violence!” the man scolded, conveniently omitting the fact that he just stated the intent to take his nephew hostage. Kujiragi had a set of thumbcuffs in her hands now, and she used them to chain Namie’s hands together, then motioned to the men to load her into the car.

But Namie sprang to her feet on her own, defying them. “If you do…anything to Seiji…”

She neither fled nor complied, summoning all the strength she had for one last proclamation: “I will use a machete…to flay all the skin off your bodies… I will melt your flesh with acid…and I will whittle your bones with a grater, starting with your toes…while you’re still alive… Hell, I’ll do it even if you’re dead already!”

None of this threat was a lie in any way. Seitarou had known her since she was a child, but if he hadn’t witnessed her utter fury a moment earlier, he would have taken this for a tasteless bluff.

Now he wasn’t so sure. Namie Yagiri was utterly intent on making good on her threat, Seitarou was certain of it. But he still held the upper hand. With Seiji Yagiri as his shield, she couldn’t harm him. She would prioritize the safety of her brother over her own life, he knew.

“You have a filthy mouth, Namie.”

“…”

“Do you think Seiji will like someone who speaks of such violence? Not that he would ever pay attention to anything other than that head,” Seitarou taunted. That only inflamed Namie further. Behind her, Kujiragi’s eyes narrowed.

On this day, Namie Yagiri vanished from Ikebukuro society.

She vanished from the sight of Izaya, her employer.

All the while, the only thought on her mind was of her beloved brother—the one thing more important than her own life.

At that moment, Raira General Hospital

As the night grew later, visiting hours concluded, and the hospital waiting room went quiet. Normally, there would be no one there at this point, but in fact, there were around ten people sitting silently in the general waiting area with pained expressions. Among them were Anri Sonohara and Erika Karisawa.

Kadota was in his second surgery now. He’d been back and forth between the ICU and operating room, all without regaining consciousness. His father was in the waiting room immediately outside the operating room now that he was off work, but all nonfamily members were forced to wait in the general waiting area for news of the surgery’s outcome.

While he wasn’t in critical condition anymore, he was far from safe. This worrisome state lasted for over an hour after the surgery began, and there was no sign of it ending anytime soon.

All Anri could do was stare at the floor in distress. Karisawa turned to her and said, just quietly enough that only Anri could hear, “You don’t have to do this, you know. It’s boring waiting around, isn’t it?”

Anri was quiet to begin with, and now her voice was barely audible. “No, I want to be here.”

“Well, if you insist. But I’ve owed him so much over the years, and Azurin and Rei have crushes on Dotachin, so it makes more sense for us to stay.”

Azurin and Rei were two of Karisawa’s cosplay friends, girls around Anri’s age or a bit older. She’d been around them on a few occasions over the last few days. Karisawa had revealed their affection for Kadota on their first meeting, right in front of them.

The girls had looked panicked and bopped Karisawa’s shoulders with teary eyes, wailing, “Why would you just spill a secret that big?” But now they were sitting silently at the front of the waiting area, shoulder to shoulder, praying for Kadota’s recovery.

“Trust me, they aren’t the only girls after Dotachin. He doesn’t realize it because he’s really dense, but the truth is, women are really into him,” Karisawa said, oddly detached, with her usual smile. “I bet you barely slept at all last night, Anri. I’m so sorry. This really isn’t your problem to worry about.”

“That’s not true. I owe Kadota for his help on many occasions…”

And for Ryuugamine and Kida, too, not just me…

She chose not to mention that part and rushed past it by asking, “Have you slept at all, Karisawa?”

Anri had gone back home already and only returned to the hospital when she heard about the second surgery. When she got there, all she saw was the smiling Karisawa in the waiting room, dark bags under her eyes.

It wasn’t just Karisawa, either. Azurin—Azusa Tsutsugawa—and the others looked like they’d spent a sleepless night. Kadota’s father had gone to his daytime job without a wink of sleep and came to the surgery waiting room without any rest.

“Enough about me. Everyone else here is more worried about Dotachin than their own health right now. In a sense, none of us can survive without him around.”

“Huh…?”

“Dotachin’s a genius when it comes to helping people. He can’t see someone in trouble and not do something. He’s such a stereotype that way—you don’t even see people like him in manga anymore. All you have to do is look at how many people here have been touched by his life to see what an old-fashioned helpful guy he is.”

Anri thought back on the events of the day.

After the news about Kadota’s accident, she tried to help Karisawa calm down the panicking Azusa and others, then followed them to the hospital. The visiting hours for the hospital were long over, but there was a group of ten to twenty people outside the hospital regardless. When she learned they were all people who rushed here out of concern for Kadota, Anri was amazed at the sheer power Kyouhei Kadota held.

Once it was revealed he wasn’t in critical condition anymore, some of the people trickled away, but from what she’d heard, his visitors had been coming and going throughout the following day, and there had always been at least one person present for Kadota’s sake at any time.

“Even though there’s no way to see him yet. Must be annoying for the hospital to have people constantly flowing in and out at all hours. Well, whaddaya gonna do?” Karisawa laughed, so gently that it would be easy to forget about the bags under her eyes.

Anri could tell that her smile was helping ease her own nerves. But it also gave her another question to think about.

Dozens of people had come to lend their support to Kadota over the course of the day. That said a lot about the feelings Kadota inspired, but there was something that bothered Anri about it: These people were those whom Kadota had helped in the past, but the most prominent of all had never shown up.

She figured that person would be in the inner waiting room along with his family, but that didn’t explain why Karisawa was out here. After a few minutes agonizing over whether she should ask or not, Anri finally gave in to the unpleasant pressure burgeoning inside her.

“Um…where are Yumasaki and, um, the van driver…?”

Karisawa looked away for a few seconds. Instead of answering the question, she continued what she’d been saying earlier.

“…You know, Dotachin acts all grumpy most of the time, but the truth is, he’s always searching for new ways to help.”

“?”

“Once he decides he’s on your side, even if you’re the kind of scumbag who ordinary people would cut ties with, he’s going to stick with you to the end. If you do something wrong, he’s going to chew you out,” Karisawa said, her voice steadily getting deeper and darker. Anri subconsciously held her breath. “You see, Dotachin’s our support…and our brakes.”

“Brakes?” Anri wondered.

Karisawa stared at the ceiling as she spoke. There wasn’t much of an expression on her face anymore, just like how she’d looked in her apartment, right after they first heard about the accident.

“I guess it’s not entirely true that the reason I’m here is purely out of concern for him. I believe in my heart of hearts that Dotachin’s a lot tougher than the ordinary person.”

“Then why…?”

“The reason I’m here…is so that I can find the answer as soon as possible once he wakes up.”

“?” Anri gave her a quizzical expression.

Karisawa continued, “Then I’m going to call Yumacchi and Togusacchi and tell them all that Dotachin’s awake, and it’s all okay now.”

Her voice was dry. There was no anger within it, but Anri found it intimidating nonetheless. A year ago, she might have been able to shrug that tone of voice off as someone else’s problem, but now that she was closer to a number of different people, she’d learned enough to sense the cold flames hiding behind it.

Karisawa exhaled, glanced at Anri, then smirked self-deprecatingly. “Otherwise, they won’t stop.”

“Won’t stop…?” Anri asked. Instantly, her brain told her she shouldn’t have asked this, but there was no going back now.

In a voice so quiet no one else could hear, Karisawa admitted to her, “If they find out who did the hit-and-run before the cops do…I think they’re going to find the guy and kill him.”

“…!”

“Especially Yumacchi. Once he snaps, only Dotachin can stop him.”

Anri knew this wasn’t an exaggeration. Because what Karisawa said next came with her typical smile.

“That’s what I want to do, too.”

Her smile told Anri’s instincts that this statement was the truth. The other girl could do nothing but allow Karisawa’s words to hang in the air as uncontested fact.

The sounds of rain began filtering in from outside, moistening the mood within the quiet hospital. Naturally, Kadota was still unconscious—there’d been no word of the surgery being finished. Anri could feel the general unease around her generating into a different kind of fear.

I wish I could be confident that I’m overthinking things…but this makes me worry that something bad might happen to Ryuugamine and Kida, too…

It was just a nasty premonition with no evidence to back it up. But the ugly trend of events that she’d witnessed around her for the past six months seemed to be picking up momentum. She wanted to deny it, but there was nothing she could use to sweep the feeling away.

The sound of the intensifying rain danced within her, matching the rhythm of the words of love that Saika sang from the inside.

In a park, Tokyo

At a central park in an area neighboring Ikebukuro, students from Kushinada High School were loitering in front of a convenience store close to the school.

Kushinada was known in the area for having many delinquents. In the past, it had been a stout counterpart to Raijin High in Ikebukuro, but after Shizuo Heiwajima graduated, and Raijin combined with another school to become Raira Academy, it no longer had its old troublemaker reputation. That meant Kushinada High became the accepted kingpin of the schools in the area.

The biggest thugs among the seniors were hanging out in front of the store when the rain began pouring down. The clouds that had been drenching Ikebukuro were over here now.

“Aw shit, it’s raining.”

“It’s not too bad yet.”

“Damn, this new brand of pudding is so good.”

The teenagers lounged around, largely unconcerned with the precipitation for now. They heard the sound of a car entering the parking lot. A van was coming their way.

Normally, they wouldn’t care, but this vehicle had one extremely prominent feature that caught the delinquents’ attention.

“Dude, are you shitting me?”

“That is hella anime right there.”

Drawn on the side door of the van was a beautiful anime girl, so prominently that no one could look away from it. That was the only part of the van that had any kind of anime print on it—the rest was ordinary. In that sense, anyone who was familiar with the concept of gaudily decorated itasha cars would consider this to be half-assed, but these teenagers had never even heard of the term, so it was all the same to them.

“C’mon, let’s clown on this nerd.”

They approached the vehicle as a pack and got ready to accost the driver when he stepped out of the van. Maybe they could even hit him up for his cash—but when the driver got out, the nearest boy was taken aback.

Instead of an otaku dweeb getting out of the car, they saw a young man with mean eyes and an attitude that said he was clearly used to fighting and not keen to mess around.

Ahh, might as well.

They decided to go ahead with the plan anyway, but before they could accost him, the van driver said, “That’s Kushi High’s uniform, yeah?”

“Huh? What you want, old man?”

“Yeah, what’s it to you?”

They crowded closer. The driver said, “You’re on summer vacation, but you’re wearing your uniforms to go out and harass people. Man, you guys never learn.”

“What?! You disrespectin’ us, bitch?”

In an instant, they had him surrounded. Tension was thick in the air.

After a few seconds of intense stare downs, the situation was defused by a large youth who popped his head out of the store. “What the hell are you guys doing?”

“Huh? Oh, this guy was starin’ us down, so…”

The way they explained themselves made it clear that this new kid was the leader of their little group of hoodlums. All the group fury that had been ready to explode on the driver vanished as they waited for their orders.

“What…?” The leader of the group squinted at the man they were surrounding. Then his eyes widened. “Oh, shit…that’s Mr. Togusa!”

“Huh?!”

The boys surrounding their target turned as one and gaped at Saburo Togusa.

“Yeah… You’re the youngest Kurakawa brother, right?” Togusa asked.

“You used to be like a hero to my brother! What’s the matter? Did these idiots say anything to you?”

“I’m s-so sorry! I had no idea you were from our school!” the teens stammered, bowing their heads in apology upon a fierce glance from the larger boy.

Togusa held up a hand to keep them from getting down on the ground to beg. “Don’t worry about it. I’m honestly just an alum now, that’s all. I didn’t come back here after five years to act like a big shot around the current students.”

“Th-thank you, sir!”

The younger students bowed and scraped repeatedly to him; the school was apparently quite strict on hierarchy. The leader, the one named Kurakawa, gave him just a single bow before asking, “So what brings you here today? You’re not just passing by, are you?”

“No…I came by to see if I could ask something…”

“…Is it about Kadota?”

“Oh, so the news reached you, too?” Togusa chuckled with a little shrug. There was no mirth in his eyes.

“Listen…we’d love to help you catch whoever did it, but…,” Kurakawa mumbled, trailing off.

Togusa waved his hand. “No, I get it. I’m in the Dollars. You don’t want stories spreading around about Kushinada High bein’ part of the Dollars, do you? As a graduate myself, I get why that wouldn’t be great.”

“…Sorry, sir. I appreciate it,” said Kurakawa, bowing again. That had saved him the trouble of having to admit something rather uncomfortable. Then the question occurred to him again. “Wait, but…then why are you here today?”

Togusa gave him a gentle grin and said, “Actually, I was worried I might affect your ability to find a job and live your life.”

“?”

“Look, a graduate committing vehicular manslaughter isn’t going to help Kushinada High’s reputation get any better, is it? I figured I should go and apologize to y’all first, rather than the teachers and staff, since you’re the ones who’ll be affected. If the worst should happen, I want you to pass the message on to everyone else.”

“…?!”

Kurakawa reacted to this statement of intent by glancing over at his buddies. “M-manslaughter…? You gonna kill the guy who ran over Kadota? That’s a joke…right?”

Togusa didn’t answer the question. He watched the sky, where the raindrops were getting larger and fatter. “Well, Ruri didn’t get seriously hurt, so I was figuring her stalker could get off easy with just getting killed by a car…”

Who’s Ruri? His girlfriend? they wondered. But his quiet pressure filled the air, and they couldn’t interrupt him to ask.

“But this guy ran over one of our guys and drove away. Obviously, he’s gonna have to suffer hell. Am I wrong?” Togusa asked, flashing a smile. They couldn’t say a word. He continued, “So if whoever did that hit-and-run is one of your group, I don’t want you to hide ’em. That’s all I’m asking for.”

As the rain beat harder and harder on the roof of the van, Togusa gave the younger kids one last warning and got back into the driver’s seat, leaving them speechless.

“I’d hate to have to run over some kids from my old school.”

The van left, and the rain came down even harder, but the teenagers were stuck in place. The sensation of cold water on their skin brought them back to their senses.

The van with the anime print was gone. They had to wonder if what had just happened was nothing but an illusion.

Part of the reason for that was the hope that the deep, homicidal glint in the other man’s smile was nothing but a dream.

Parking garage, Tokyo

As rain lashed the city, about ten boys were hanging out in a large karaoke room just outside the neighborhood. They didn’t show up there as a group but instead trickled in over time.

They wore different outfits when they walked in, but once inside, they all took out new items to attach to themselves.

One had a ring with a yellow tiger’s eye decoration.

One had a yellow wristband.

One had sunglasses with yellow lenses.

One had a yellow leather belt.

And despite the summer heat outside, there was a yellow scarf wrapped around the neck of the boy in the very back of the room—Masaomi Kida.

“So who’s still missing? Just Yatabe?” he asked, seated in a chair. His tone of voice was light and informal, but everyone else there understood this was just a facade.

These were the members of the Yellow Scarves, and they were not there to sing. Each person or group to come through the door delivered a fresh report on what was happening in the city to Masaomi.

They had a deal with the employees at the karaoke establishment, so their use of this place as their meeting area was a secret from the outside world. The members here now were the original Yellow Scarves’ core, the ones Masaomi had known since he’d transferred to Tokyo for school.

During the war with the Dollars half a year ago, Horada’s former Blue Squares faction had managed to eliminate the original squad of Yellow Scarves from the gang, and several of them had suffered physical injuries in the process.

But when Masaomi Kida put out the call to the original crew, every last one of them showed up. Some of them hadn’t even been involved in that confrontation; they were simply schoolmates of Masaomi’s at Raira Academy. They knew about Masaomi’s new life with Mikado Ryuugamine and Anri Sonohara, and they knew about his relationship with Saki Mikajima, so they played it cool and acted like strangers at school. He didn’t want to drag them back to the gang, and they didn’t want to get involved in his new life.

This time it was different, however. Masaomi Kida had given them a direct invitation to the resurgence of the Yellow Scarves. They’d always trusted his judgment, so now they rushed eagerly to his side. While the gang was a fraction of the size it had been half a year ago, they were back to being the original Yellow Scarves of two years past.

It was an unexpected outcome for Masaomi.

He had abandoned the Yellow Scarves once, and when he’d returned in order to catch the street slasher who’d attacked Anri, he had failed to notice what was happening to the group with Horada’s Blue Squares and as a result had put his friends in danger.

He didn’t presume that asking for forgiveness would work. He put in the call expecting them to beat him up until they were satisfied or to just not show up at all.

Instead, they celebrated his true return. They didn’t want his apologies. The guilt in him was so strong that it drove his determination even harder—so he delivered a message on the first day they all met up.

“The reason I came back to this city, repping the Yellow Scarves, was my own selfishness. A friend of mine, a friend I care about as much as you guys, is going the wrong way in life. I’m gonna beat the crap outta him to stop him, if I have to…but I might not be able to pull this off by myself. So please…if you don’t mind, lend me your help. Let me use you all…for my own selfish reasons.”

And the original Yellow Scarves crew accepted his selfish reasons as their own.

“C’mon, Shogun, you know you’ve always been that way.”

“Yeah, and you’ve always indulged our selfishness in return.”

“Besides, it’s just plain fun doin’ stuff with you, man.”

“It’s creepy when you apologize to us, Shogun.”

“You guys really wanna keep calling me that?”

While their personal relationships were varied—some had always looked up to him, and others were old Raira Academy schoolmates who were always on equal footing with him—they were all consistent in calling him Shogun. Masaomi found that both pleasing and a bit excessive, and he smiled just the way he used to back in the day.

“Now that I think about it, getting called Shogun is just plain embarrassing.”

“You just started thinking that now?!”

“There’s no way it’s a bad thing!”

“Not at all.”

“You’re gonna be Shogun for life!”

Seeing their faces light up brought Masaomi the absolute determination he’d been hoping for. From this moment on, he would be Mikado Ryuugamine’s enemy.

If his friend was so tangled up in the complex strings of the Dollars that he couldn’t get back, Masaomi was going to cut them for him. He had to be his enemy in order to save him.

Before that oath to himself could soften, Masaomi faced the group.

“There’s something I want you all to know. I want this to be an absolute secret between all of us. This doesn’t leave the room. The guy I’m willing to beat up to stop is named Mikado Ryuugamine. Some of you might know him.

“He’s the founder of the Dollars.”

That was over a week ago. Now that he’d revealed Mikado’s secret, there was no turning back.

But Masaomi felt no regret. If there was anything he regretted, it was that when the leader of Toramaru told Mikado, “You’re not cut out to be a leader,” he had left without consoling or reassuring his friend in any way.

If he’d just said something, even knowing it would hurt the both of them, Mikado might not have broken down at that moment. In fact, Masaomi’s trip out of the city was probably part of the reason as well. He had wondered if it was the right choice, but given his mental state at the time, he didn’t think there was another option.

That just made it all the more important that he didn’t hold back now. No running away. He had to pull Mikado out of that swamp, even if it meant being the villain. Before Anri worried any more than she needed to.

First was getting an accurate picture of the state of the city and rustling up as many of the old members as possible. Masaomi and the rest of the OG crew had started meeting every day at this karaoke spot to trade information and discuss plans.

The only one left to arrive today would be Yatabe, after which they’d issue their reports and discuss future preparations.

“I woulda figured Yatabe would be here by now,” Masaomi muttered. The rest of them looked at one another.

“I hope something didn’t happen to him.”

“I’ll try to call.”

It was hard not to be worried after what happened six months ago. One of the group pulled out his phone to make contact—but Masaomi’s buzzed first.

“…It’s Yatabe,” he said, once he read the screen. The rest of the group looked relieved. “Hey, what’s up? You’re late!”

They could hear Yatabe’s voice through the phone, which put them even further at ease—until Masaomi’s expression hardened, and tension crackled through the room again.

“…Yeah, okay… No, it’s all right. Bring him with you,” he said cryptically, then hung up. “Yatabe’s outside the building.”

Without changing his expression, he shrugged and continued, “But he’s got a guest with him.”

“Hey, hiya, hiya, how many days has it been, Kida?”

A few minutes later, Yatabe showed up in the room with Yumasaki, who had his backpack over his shoulder, acting like it was any other day. There was definitely one very odd aspect to this, however: the fact that he was alone.

Normally, he was with the rest of Kadota’s little clique or with Karisawa on one of their trips around the usual bookstores and anime shops.

Masaomi knew that Kadota wasn’t in any state to be out and about, though. “I really didn’t expect to see you here.”

Obviously, Masaomi had been around him many times, but the rest of the group looked highly uneasy. While he was just one guy, the ones who had been Yellow Scarves for years knew Yumasaki as a former member of the Blue Squares. Since Yumasaki had also saved Masaomi’s girlfriend Saki, it was a delicate and uneasy mix of emotions they felt, with no clear choice of how to react.

Instead, Masaomi carried the conversation with their visitor. “I’m surprised you knew where to find us,” he noted.

Yumasaki didn’t bother to play coy. “Actually, I feel bad admitting this, but…Yatabe? Basically, I followed Yatabe here. They say he’s like your right-hand man, so I figured if the Yellow Scarves were getting back on the scene, he’d have to be involved.”

“…How did you figure out where to find Yatabe?”

“I bought the details from Izaya.”

“…That piece of shit,” Masaomi muttered, his cheek twitching. Guess we’d better use a different meeting spot next time.

It was absolutely imperative that they avoid Izaya having tabs on what they were up to. Mikado was working with Aoba Kuronuma, the former Blue Square, and there was no way Izaya wouldn’t mess with them. In that sense, Masaomi was very aware of what kind of person Izaya Orihara was. Of course, he’d learned that lesson from personal experience, so obviously he would be wary.

The brief flash of past memories irritated him, but he shoved that aside and asked Yumasaki, “So what is it that brings you here?”

“Oh, come on, Kida. You know why,” said Yumasaki, his eyes narrowing even further. He leaned against the door, grinning.

Masaomi wasn’t sure how to respond, so the other boy spoke first.

“Are you the ones…who ran over Kadota?”

Tokyo

A building located outside of the urban center lay dormant, the renovation process paused for some reason. There were scorch marks here and there on the concrete walls and floors, and parts of the wooden floor had holes, possibly caused by bullets.

Up to the second floor, it looked like a typical, functioning building, but everything above that was in the process of construction when it was stopped. The exposed beams cast an eerie silhouette against the night.

A number of youths were hanging out on the second floor. Most of them had the proper delinquent appearance to suit this barren place, but the two at the center of the group didn’t seem like they belonged here at all.

The two baby-faced boys were Mikado Ryuugamine and Aoba Kuronuma. As Aoba examined the area, Mikado said, “This place looks all messed up. What is it?”

“A company was paying for renovation when business was good, and then their funding went sideways, and so it’s been abandoned ever since. And there was some yakuza squabble or something recently, which only pushed people further away—except for the ones who like killing time with tests of bravery,” Aoba answered with a chuckle.

Mikado patted the concrete wall. “It does seem like a good place to use as a meeting spot. I’m just not a fan of how far from Ikebukuro it is.”

“Farther is better. If we’re constantly meeting up in the middle of ’Bukuro, people are going to realize where we are right away.”

“I see. That’s a good point,” Mikado admitted. He sat down on a mound of construction materials left in the corner of the room, opened a laptop, and booted it out of sleep mode.

After about fifteen seconds of tinkering, he nodded in satisfaction. “Good, looks like we get a signal here. Now we can tell what’s going on with the Dollars.”

Even more important to Mikado than the commute was whether they could get online. That was a big factor in Aoba recommending this location as their base of operations.

Mikado was soon connected and collecting information. Rather than using the laptop’s trackpad, he deftly tapped the tab key and a number of shortcuts to control the browser, literally surfing the web with his fingertips.

Yoshikiri, Gin, Neko, and the other Blue Squares watched in amazement as he typed as swiftly as a sewing machine threading stitches, but Aoba was paying more attention to the speed at which the screen and Mikado’s eyes shifted.

Is he actually reading all that?

Fast fingers or not, he’d have to stop to actually read and process what he was seeing on the screen. But Mikado never stayed on a single tab more than a few seconds at most while he was reading. The only exceptions were when he was actually entering information for himself.

The comparison of the rapidly shifting screen info and the look of hasty, furious concentration on Mikado’s face thoroughly impressed Aoba, although there was a good amount of exasperation in there, too.

Without slowing the pace of his keyboard commands, Mikado murmured, “Seems like things have gotten really bad over the course of today.”

“For the Dollars?”

“Yeah. It’s probably because of what happened to Kadota.”

It was true that the Dollars were acting strangely around the city. No matter how much he denied it, it was public knowledge that Kadota was a figurehead for the group. Therefore, he had always been a hammer hanging over the heads of those who wanted to use the Dollars’ name for their own personal gain. In fact, Kadota’s presence alone had been keeping in check the same people whom Mikado was now using the violence of Aoba’s Blue Squares to suppress.

If only we had another…five or so people like Kadota, this might not have happened to the Dollars, Mikado thought as he typed. Some people on the Dollars message board were openly cheering Kadota’s injury. One post said, “Tonight’s dinner tasted great, knowing that Kadota nearly died!”

Mikado used his admin privileges to ban those users from the board. In the past, he might’ve left it alone, but now he was using his authority without hesitation. It was one very clear change within his personality, but he had no recognition of it.

He continued the process of gathering and sorting information, annoyed at the very undesirable state of his Dollars now, when he came across one particular post and stopped typing.

“…?”

Aoba noticed the odd change in his friend’s demeanor and leaned in to stare at the screen for himself. The information he found there was very interesting to him, indeed.

Karaoke place, Tokyo

“…It wasn’t us. Do we look rich enough to have a car?” Masaomi shrugged in answer to Yumasaki’s question about Yellow Scarves involvement in the hit-and-run. “But I understand why you’d suspect us. It’s only been a few days since I went to talk to Kadota. Honestly, if I were in your position, I’d probably suspect me, too…”

“What? No, I’m not suspecting you, Kida.”

“Huh?”

“I’d like to think I know you decently well. You might not be a saint, but I know you’re not a piece of shit. You don’t seem like the kind of character who would do the same thing Izumii did to Saki,” Yumasaki explained. The use of the word character seemed fitting for him. “But while I know you, I don’t know all about the current Yellow Scarves. Can you state the group’s innocence for a fact? Elements of unrest within a group and characters who go on joyrides when the boss isn’t looking are a fact of life, and not just in books. It’s a borderless zone between reality and fiction.”

“Well…”

“You can’t deny that. That’s what it was like half a year ago, right?”

“…”

Masaomi had no answer.

“Plus, there are already rumors online about you guys getting back together.”

“…”

“Someone was raising hell about you guys planning an ambush, drawing the first blood.”

“…I see,” Masaomi muttered, his expression hard.

Yumasaki continued, “In fact, since no culprit was ever caught in the slasher case, people online are acting like the war between the Dollars and Yellow Scarves never officially ended.”

It was like he was giving them a synopsis of a show, describing events to them that they had experienced for themselves just half a year ago.

“If this war was like a comic book or a novel, the reader would think that if the Yellow Scarves were back in action, the slasher and the Dollars were working together, and that as the victim, the Yellow Scarves would be looking for revenge. So what’s the easiest way to get back? Drive your car over one of the most famous and powerful Dollars…”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that starting up the Yellow Scarves again means facing those suspicions…get it? So let me ask you one more time. Can you swear that none of you had anything to do with running over Kadota?”

One of the Yellow Scarves got annoyed with the questioning and interjected, “Hey, man, give it a rest—”

“Stop,” said Masaomi, cutting him off. He carefully steadied his breathing, surveyed the entire group in the room, then told Yumasaki, “I believe everyone here, and I can swear to you I didn’t do it. If it turns out one of our guys ran over Kadota…”

“Then?”

“…then I want you to do whatever will make this right for you.”

“…”

Yumasaki said nothing. Eventually, the edges of his mouth curled up, and he put his hand on the doorknob. “All right. I’ll take your word and search for the true culprit. Sorry for doubting you guys like that.”

“Please…I understand. If we learn anything, we’ll let you know at once.”

“That’d be great. Honestly, I’m glad to hear you’re not responsible for this one.”

On his way out, he glanced at a pile of songbooks on a table in the corner of the room and exclaimed with delight. “The cover of this album list is of Haruka Nogizaka.”

“Huh? Uh…okay,” Masaomi mumbled, assuming he was talking about some anime or another.

Yumasaki waved at him, and before he left the karaoke room, he added, “I’m really glad that the portrait of Nuit Étoile didn’t get burned.”

He left them on that incomprehensible note. Silence filled the room for several moments. Eventually, one of Masaomi’s friends turned to him and said, “Before rumors start up that we did Kadota, maybe we should go chase that guy down and kick his— Agh!”

Masaomi smacked his friend on the skull and gave him a furious expression. “If you do that, it only makes us look more suspicious to everyone else, idiot!”

“Oh, y-you’re right. Sorry.”

“Also, you’re acting like kicking Yumasaki’s ass is just a given.”

“Huh? But…he seemed so wimpy,” his companion said, completely confused.

Masaomi glared at him and sniffed loudly and conspicuously. “Are y’all stuffed up or something?”

“Huh?”

The rest of them followed his lead and sniffed the air.

“Wh-whoa…is that…gasoline?”

“Probably kerosene. Whatever it is, it smells like something that’ll burn quickly, doesn’t it?”

The Yellow Scarves all noted the stink in the air, the acrid tang of paint thinner.

“He had that stuffed in his pockets or his backpack. And if we had run over Kadota, and he figured that out by visiting us, this whole room would be…”

“Oh yeah! I forgot one thing!”

The door of the room bolted open, cutting Masaomi off.

“Whoa!” “Eeep!”

The sudden appearance of Yumasaki’s face in the doorway elicited cries of surprise from the nervous crowd.

“What? Why are you all so startled? Wait, is there the ghost of a beautiful girl right behind me…?”

Clearly, Yumasaki was back to his normal self. But the smell of kerosene was indeed wafting off him in a haze, particularly from his backpack. The boys in the room felt sweat run down their spines.

“No, there are no ghosts there. What is it, Mr. Yumasaki?”

“Oh yeah, I meant to ask: Did you hear the big news? You didn’t have anything to do with it…right?”

“What news?” Masaomi asked, raising an eyebrow.

Yumasaki nodded to himself and continued, “Well, I was just checking the Dollars’ message board for myself, and…well, I don’t know if it’s as much of a surprise as it is a long-awaited moment of reckoning.”

“What are you talking about?” Masaomi asked again. The other young man’s eyes widened slightly with agitation.

“Apparently, Shizuo Heiwajima finally got arrested by the cops.”

Ruined building, second floor, Tokyo suburbs

“Shizuo, getting arrested…? You think it’s true?”

The interior of the torn-out building rang with the background noise of pounding rain.

When he first saw the message on the Dollars’ board, Mikado wasn’t sure if he should believe it or not.

“Shizuo Heiwajima arrested!”

He could see the newspaper headline in his mind.

Of course, there wouldn’t be any such article, but to Mikado, it might as well be as shocking and disruptive as a news story about a famous celebrity getting arrested for drug possession.

On the other hand, he was certainly guilty of numerous counts of destruction of property, and in fact, it was a very curious thing that he hadn’t been taken in before this point. But the fact that he’d been chilling out recently just made this sudden detainment all the more unexpected to Mikado.

“It’s still just a message board post, so we can’t say for sure. Maybe he hasn’t actually been arrested. The police might have taken him to the station for a simple questioning. Or maybe he just visited the station for some reason or another, and whoever saw it is blowing it out of proportion,” Aoba suggested.

“Good point,” Mikado noted. “There have been rumors like that before…but the person who wrote this post has been one of the more reliable and believable sources of intel before.”

“…Are you saying you remember each username and the things they post?”

“Not all of them. Just the ones that stand out.” Mikado grinned, but he looked worried. In this moment, he was a normal teenager concerned about someone he knew. If you tried to tell anyone that this boy was one of the founders of the Dollars, they’d laugh it off.

That wouldn’t last long once they heard what he said next.

“But…I’m glad.”

“What?” Aoba said, curious as to what could be good about this.

Mikado smiled warmly and explained, “I’m glad that if Shizuo really got arrested, at least it was after he quit the Dollars.”

“…”

Aoba didn’t know anything more about Shizuo Heiwajima than the rumors said. But if he were here and heard that statement—even if he was a chill person—wouldn’t he accost and punch Mikado for those words? It certainly seemed that way to Aoba and suggested that this was exactly the spot inside of Mikado Ryuugamine that was so spectacularly broken.

Did it break because Aoba and his friends had shown up? Or had it always been broken and only became obvious now? There was no way to know. But Aoba understood that this damaged part of Mikado was exactly the kind of place where people like him could take root and thrive.

Perhaps it was for this reason that Aoba found himself showing Mikado true deference and (partial) honesty. He was someone Aoba could use, as well as an object of fear.

Mikado Ryuugamine was truly unlike anyone Aoba had ever met.

Yeah, I can see why that fan of humanity would be pleased, Aoba thought, not daring to say the words aloud. “But what are you going to do now, Mr. Mikado?”

“Do?”

“Kadota’s in the hospital, and Shizuo Heiwajima got arrested. If the Dollars are a hunk of raw meat, then Kadota’s the preservative, and Heiwajima’s the fire that surrounds it to keep it safe from harm, right? Kadota’s sharp gaze kept it from going bad, and Shizuo’s scary enough to keep all the hungry hyenas from the outside at bay. All you needed to do was carve up the meat and serve it however you wanted.”

“That’s…quite a vivid analogy.” Mikado grimaced.

Aoba traced scorch marks on the concrete wall with his fingertips. “But at this rate, the meat’s going to spoil before you even finish cooking it.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Until now, my way has been to put the meat in a cold, dark place where the animals can’t see it, and it won’t go bad—in other words, go underground and hide. But that’s not what you want for the Dollars, is it?”

“Hmmm. Yeah, I’d say that’s accurate,” Mikado agreed, after a pause to think it over.

Aoba turned his back on him and spread his hands. “The Dollars are a group where anyone can help anyone else, regardless of standing. While there are limits to what they can do, it’s still a fascinating thing that you can share information online without knowing who anyone else is. I find that quite attractive.”

“?”

“So when I heard about Kadota’s accident and realized this might spell major consequences for the Dollars…I started thinking. I decided to ask for the help of someone who could take over for Kadota or Shizuo, someone who could be the new face of the Dollars, their symbol…”

“The symbol of the Dollars?” Mikado repeated, propping his face on his hand to think.

“Someone not in a position to be in the public eye but with little to lose as a result. Someone who can move about freely,” Aoba hinted. He paced around the ruined building. Meanwhile, his Blue Squares friends leaned back against the walls, grinning as though they already knew the answer.

“Someone everybody knows but nobody knows well,” he continued. “And yet, someone well-known to be a member of the Dollars. There’s still one left.”

“…You don’t mean—”

Mikado gaped as a face popped into his mind. Technically, it wasn’t a face at all but a body with a helmet.

“The person I’m thinking of would probably be happy to help cleanse the Dollars. Someone normal people would view with envy and curiosity and whom the enemies who are eating the Dollars from the inside out would see as a freakish terror.”

“Isn’t that right, Headless Rider?”

At the top of the stairs leading from the first floor of the abandoned building up to the second, a shadow appeared. A literal shadow, the entire body aside from its helmet covered in a riding suit made of shadow itself.

It had been quite some time since Mikado had been in the presence of the urban legend in the flesh.

“Celty?! What are you doing here?!” yelped Mikado, utterly shocked.

Ummm, she thought, I wish I knew the answer.

Aoba had told her to come up when he called for her, so she’d been waiting on the first floor. But she had no idea he was planning for it to be such a dramatic entrance. This made it look like she and Aoba were thick as thieves, aligned with the same goals and dreams, a thought that did not put Celty at ease.

Determined to explain to Mikado in detail exactly how it was that she came here, she thought back on the details.

A few hours earlier…

“I want you to help me…no, me and Mikado.”

Celty had answered Aoba’s summons to the quiet basement parking garage. She figured he would bring a bunch of his cronies, but to her surprise, he was alone.

Very bold, I’ll give him that. Or is he trying to keep me from seeing his friends’ faces?

She kept her senses on alert for anyone hiding nearby as she typed into her PDA.

“Help you?”

“Yes. You heard about Kadota’s accident, right?”

“Yeah. I found out just before you contacted me.”

“This is a major problem for the Dollars. It means the Dollars are losing one of their principal public faces. I’m hearing that some people are already using this opportunity to get into trouble they couldn’t otherwise,” Aoba said, in the tone of a middle manager lamenting the future. “Now that Shizuo Heiwajima’s quit the gang, we really need a new symbol, I believe.”

“And you want me to be that symbol? No thanks.”

“You didn’t consider that very long.”

“The best part about the Dollars is that we don’t have recognizable symbols.”

That’s right, she told herself. There’s no way Mikado would want this.

But the forcefulness of her reply did not stop Aoba in his tracks. “It won’t be forever. If someone disgraces the name of the gang, you show up and make them behave with a show of force. You’ll be helping the normal Dollars who aren’t doing anything wrong. It only has to last until the people who are harmful to the group stop messing around—out of their fear of you.”

“From my perspective, the most harmful person to the Dollars is you.”

“You might be right about that. But I’m behaving now, aren’t I?” he said, without a hint of shame.

Celty rolled her nonexistent eyes and changed her tack.

“What are you after?”

She had witnessed the moment Aoba made his move on Mikado. But she hadn’t seen the point where Mikado actually made his decision. Was he really on the same team as Mikado now? If so, how had he convinced Mikado? Celty was significantly wary of Aoba Kuronuma—far more than his age would suggest was necessary.

He really is just like Izaya, she felt, though she’d never tell him that.

Aoba thought over her question for several seconds, then grinned. “A place to swim…”

“What?”

“I want a place to swim. That’s all. That’s a metaphor, of course.”

“Just tell me clearly what you want.”

She thought she had an idea of what he meant but felt it would be dangerous to play along and decided she should force him to clarify.

“It’s hard to put into words,” Aoba prefaced, searching for the right way to explain himself. “I’ve got emotions that probably won’t exist in another five years, the kind only a twisted person in his rebellious phase feels. I guess I’m testing to see how high I can ride that feeling before it just vanishes entirely…”

It was almost like he was just talking to himself. Annoyed, Celty typed, “What do you mean, hard to put into words? You just want to break things.”

“If that was true, I’d be working out and challenging Shizuo Heiwajima to a fight. And if we wanted to pick on the weak, we wouldn’t have joined the Dollars. We can do that on our own.”

“So what is it?”

“Like I said…the phrase that best describes it to me is ‘I want to swim.’”

This wasn’t getting them anywhere, so Celty decided to drop that particular detail. Instead, she asked, “Are you sure about this? Even if I agree to your offer, I have no intention of following your orders. I might determine that you pose the most danger of all and hunt the Blue Squares right away.”

“That’s fair. But I think you’ll find that means you’re taking down Mikado, too.”

“That’s ridiculous. Mikado’s not like you.”

“…How much do you actually know about Mikado, Headless Rider?”

…Huh? Uh, I guess that’s a good question.

“Well, I would say he’s like an ordinary friend to me…,” she typed to save face. Then it occurred to her that she only knew Mikado Ryuugamine’s hidden title and a part of his personality. Just that he was the Dollars’ founder and a bit of what he was like in person. There were times, as with Anri Sonohara’s Saika, when she was more aware of what was going on around him than he was, but she couldn’t say she actually knew Mikado Ryuugamine.

And when Anri told her something was wrong with Mikado, that was like a thorn tearing away at the image of Mikado in her mind.

“All right, I’ll admit, maybe I don’t know him super-well…”

“Then wouldn’t it be a bad idea for you to state a bunch of very forceful ideas without knowing where Mikado is mentally?”

That one stung. Celty had to stop and think.

Eventually, she bobbed her shoulders and typed a suggestion to Aoba on her PDA.

“Then let me talk to Mikado first. We can have this discussion after that.”

And back to the present.

Yeah, that’s right. I came up with the idea on the spot, because I felt like he was going to talk me into a corner…

“Huh? Wait, huh? What does this mean?! I know you two met once outside of the factory before…but when did you become acquaintances?!” Mikado yelped, looking back and forth between Aoba and Celty like a pathetic puppy. “Okay, technically, I guess you were acquainted at the point you met, but you seem like you’re…friendly? Is that it? What’s going on, Celty?!”

…Yes, this is the usual Mikado.

She had been prepared to see Mikado done up with a Mohawk and a studded leather jacket, but this was the same old baby-faced pushover she knew. He stumbled over to her, so she typed, “It’s been a while, Mikado.”

“Yes, it has. But why are you really here?”

Before she could type the answer to that question, Aoba interjected, “I spotted her at random, so I chased her down to apologize about what happened during Golden Week. Then we exchanged e-mail addresses, and we’ve been keeping in touch every now and then.”

He really has no shame, does he?

In fact, he had barged into her apartment building and caused a scene with Shinra, but he lied like a true natural.

I did tell him to keep that night’s events a secret from Mikado, admittedly… Guess I’ll play along. But you’d better watch out, kid…

Celty erased the message she’d started writing and replaced it with “Yeah, that’s about right.”

Mikado looked satisfied and relieved by her message. He told Aoba, “I had no idea that ever happened. You could have told me.”

“Sorry. I thought it would make for a fun surprise.”

“Well, it sure was a surprise! I never expected to see Celty in a place like this… Oh!” Mikado seemed to remember something. He mumbled to Celty, “Can I ask you a favor…?”

“What is it?”

“Can you keep me being here a secret from Sonohara? I actually told her I was visiting my parents back in Saitama, so…”

“You did? Why did you lie to her?” she asked.

He wore a sad, lonely smile. “I don’t want her to worry, and I don’t want her to know what I’m doing now.”

“…I see,” she replied and mulled this over.

It is odd, to be sure…but what is he doing here with the Blue Squares in the first place? Is it something he can’t admit to Anri? In fact, I hadn’t noticed until just now…is Mikado injured?

There were fairly fresh marks on his face and skin. Out of concern, Celty typed, “You look beat up. Who did this to you?”

Was it Aoba’s gang? Did they beat you up and force you to do what they said? If so, I could just truss them all up here and take Mikado home safe and sound, and that would solve the whole matter.

It was the quickest and simplest answer to this whole problem, and a part of Celty wished it were true. But Mikado’s answer was completely different.

“Oh. It was some bad guys.”

“Huh?”

“I need to be working harder than anyone, but I’m so weak at fighting that I just get knocked around instead. It’s so pathetic and frustrating,” he said, distraught. Something about this struck Celty as off. But she found it very hard to pin down exactly what it was that bothered her. All she knew for certain was that something was strange.

When Aoba mentioned things like “cleansing the Dollars” and “trying to make the group healthy,” I figured he was talking about getting rid of the people who were doing muggings… They aren’t saying that Mikado’s going around trying to fight them himself, are they?

She had no idea that this unfathomable idea of hers was actually correct.

So did he use Aoba’s group to put a stop to the muggers in the gang, and one of them happened to find out about Mikado and got back at him in revenge? And he doesn’t want me to let Anri know, to keep her from worrying…

That seemed like it made sense to her. She continued, In that case, I suppose I could put a stop to those hooligans, but at any rate, it doesn’t change that Mikado’s getting himself into dangerous stuff here.

No…wait. If I can talk Mikado down here, that might remove the cause of Anri’s worries. That’d be two birds with one stone! I figured I could use my Dollars connections to get info on this Jinnai Yodogiri, but it might be easier just to solve the problem here first.

She was still furious about Shinra being attacked. If she happened to see Adabashi, the actual attacker, or this Yodogiri man, all that pent-up anger was likely to explode, and she didn’t know what she would do then.

But Celty wasn’t the kind of person who let anger cloud her judgment such that nothing else entered into her mind. Like Kadota, she had a tendency to help others in need, and in this case, she was indebted to Mikado Ryuugamine for something in the past.

It was an incident that helped her feel that it was okay for her to not have a head and still be allowed to live her life. If the Dollars hadn’t existed, that incident might never have been resolved the way it was. The fact that she was a member of the team, and the truth that she was indeed a part of this city, was helping her find personal salvation.

How can I use this situation to repay that debt? Should I help Mikado or force him to stop what he’s doing…?

She wasn’t sure what the answer was, but her first step toward finding it would be asking Mikado for his thoughts.

“Before we continue, I want to clear something up… What is it that you’re using Aoba and his friends to accomplish?”

“Huh?”

“I’ve only heard the barest details from Aoba. I want to hear this from you. What do you want to do with the Dollars, Mikado?”

“Well, that’s obvious…,” he said, not at all hesitant. Celty awaited his answer, feeling nervous.

Ktok.

A crisp sound echoed off the walls of the husk of an interior, cutting Mikado off. In fact, it was so firm and strong that it erased both Mikado’s voice and the sound of endless rain for an instant.

It was impossible to tell where the echoes were coming from. Everyone, including Celty and the Blue Squares, looked around for the source of the sound.

Eventually, their eyes met on the same point.

“Sorry to interrupt your conversation.”

From the stairs connecting the first and second floors, the spot where Celty had been just a minute earlier, came a man’s clear voice—followed by the man himself, ascending the steps.

“It’s just, from down here, I can’t see what’s written on your phone, or computer, or whatever it is.”

Mikado and Aoba both looked totally nonplussed. They didn’t know this man. The same went for the other Blue Squares, who were at a loss for how to deal with the unexpected visitor.

Only Celty recognized the man, and she exhibited a different reaction from the others.

Wait… What?!

It was so sudden that she wasn’t prepared for it. Shock raced through her.

Wh-wh-why? Why is he here?!

She recognized the man.

“Who would’ve guessed I’d end up in this place multiple times in the span of a year? Coincidence is a scary thing.”

He was a tall man in his thirties, wearing a dazzlingly patterned suit. He was at that age: not young but not entirely middle-aged, either. There was a striking scar on his face that drew the eye.

Resting on his nose was an expensive pair of tinted glasses, and he clutched an ostentatiously designed cane, making him look like he just stepped off a classic movie set.

Despite the cane, he didn’t seem to have difficulty walking. The earlier sound was just him rapping the end of the cane against the concrete walls or floor.

Ah. Aaah. Ah.

“Celty?”

“Do you know him?”

Both Mikado and Aoba noticed that she was acting strangely. But she didn’t have the presence of mind to respond to their concern.

Mr. Akabayashi?!

He was one of Celty’s courier customers, one who often had her deliver goods like fresh crabs.

Of course, she knew he wasn’t really in the seafood business. She also knew that his real line of work made him exactly the kind of person to keep away from Mikado at this very moment.

Why…why here?!

No one heard her silent cry, of course.

Akabayashi graced his sudden entrance with a lazy smile. “I don’t know what y’all were talking about before this, but do you mind filling me in on the conversation?”

“You don’t mind, do you, Mikado Ryuugamine?”

Chat room

.

.

.

The chat room is currently empty.

The chat room is currently empty.

The chat room is currently empty.

Chrome has entered the chat.

Chrome: Good evening.

Chrome: Oh, nobody’s here.

Chrome: Normally, it’d be livelier at this hour.

Chrome: Well, it’s midsummer, so I suppose they’re spending time with their families and partners.

Chrome: I had a hot-pot party just a short time ago.

Chrome: It was fun.

Kanra has entered the chat.

Kanra: Goood eeeevening!  

Kanra: It’s everyone’s beloved idol, Kanraaa!  

Kanra: What’s this? Just Chrome tonight?

Chrome: Good evening.

Kanra: Why, isn’t this so very sad and lonely.  

Chrome: Indeed.

Kanra: Hot pots are wonderful, aren’t they? Everyone gathering around it, eating and chatting. It’s so much better than eating alone.  

Chrome: Indeed.

Kanra: Oh, but don’t you think the best thing of all is when you’re alone with that special someone, blowing on that hot oden soup to cool it off? Ooh, it’s so romantic! Eeek!

Chrome: Indeed.

Kanra: Are you just blowing off responding to me-ow? I’ll tug on your cheeks until they’re all saggy!

Chrome: Indeed.

Chrome: So, Kanra.

Kanra: Ooh, what is it?   Eek!  

Chrome: Shouldn’t you be jumping off the roof of a building by now?

Kanra: What?! What do you mean by that?! That makes no sense! Ooh, you meanie!

Chrome: But the fact that you’re angry is proof you do understand.

Sharo has entered the chat.

Sharo: Heya.

Sharo: Man, after the day I had at work, I’m just beat.

Sharo: You guys are like an odd couple.

Chrome: Good evening.

Kanra: Good eve-meow!   Sharo, you should change your name to Meowro! That would be cute!

Sharo: Sad.

Sharo: This is really sad, Kanra.

Chrome: I agree.

Chrome: I agree with Sharo.

Kanra: Awww! What’s with you two? A real man wouldn’t pick on a sweet, helpless girl like me!

Chrome: That’s a good point. Or it would be…if you were a sweet, helpless girl.

Sharo: Right, right. And you can consider me a chick if you want.

Kanra: Arrrgh! Why can’t you learn from Kadota’s example?!

Sharo: What’s up? You know Kadota?

Chrome: Did Kadota happen to know any sweet, helpless girls?

Sharo: Huh? Were you acquainted with Kadota, too, Chrome?

Chrome: No. As I said yesterday, I just check the Dollars’ website for information often. But from what I can tell on there, he doesn’t seem to have much feminine companionship.

Sharo: Mmm. Well, like *I* said yesterday, I see him around town a lot. There’s a chick he’s often hanging out with, but she doesn’t seem like his girlfriend, and she definitely ain’t helpless.

Kanra: Oh, you brutes! There you go ignoring this sweet, helpless lady and talking about other women! How rude!

Kanra: Fine, fine! Then I’ll tell you a little piece of information that will make you willow-thin sissies tremble with fright!

Sharo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m so scared.

Chrome: Isn’t that precious.

Kanra: There might be a war between a motorcycle gang and a color gang in Ikebukuro!

Sharo: Huh?

Sharo: Now where did you get a dingbat idea like that?

Kanra: It’s true! Remember how Kadota got run over by that car? Meow!

Sharo: Shut up with the meowing.

Kanra: Are you aware of the recent rumors about the Yellow Scarves coming back?

Kanra: They’re saying the Yellow Scarves might be preparing to wage war against the Dollars, right meow.

Kanra: That whoever ran over Kadota was with the Yellow Scarves, and it was meant as a declawration of war.

Kanra: But did you know there are other rumors, too?

Sharo: Hey, I thought this was gonna be something silly. It sounds like bad news.

Sharo: You oughta be serious when you segue into a topic like this.

Sharo: And enough with the cat shit.

Chrome: What’s this other rumor?

Kanra: There are actually two rumors.

Kanra: One is that the Dollars are having an internal purr-ge.

Kanra: In other words, it was one of the Dollars cat-nibalizing a rival. Scary!

Chrome: Cannibalizing?

Chrome: But Kadota’s a prestigious member of the Dollars. Why would they…?

Kanra: From what I hear, Kadota’s a very chivalrous and upstanding person. Unlike you two!

Kanra: So if anyone was abusing the Dollars’ name for personal gain, Kadota would put them back in line. If anything, Kadota was the one who was meowsing up their plans.  

Sharo: Okay, I get it.

Sharo: I guess that makes sense. The Dollars aren’t one of those tight-knit groups where everyone’s on the same page.

Sharo: Technically, I’m one of them, too.

Kanra: The other rumor is…DragonZ.

Sharo: Dragonz?

Sharo: Er, got that mixed up. DragonZ?

Chrome: You mean Dragon Zombie, the motorcycle gang?

Kanra: Ding-dong, ding-dong! Dinga-ding-dong! As your prize for being correct, I give you a meow-meow. Meow!  

Chrome: No thanks.

Sharo: Ohhh, you’re talking about that motorcycle gang.

Kanra: Indeed! People wearing the Dragon Zombie jackets were seen loitering around the spot where Kadota’s accident happened.

Sharo: As if they did Kadota?

Kanra: Dragon Zombie doesn’t just ride meowtorcycles. They’ve got cars, too.

Kanra: They could be making their move fur the Dollars’ territory.

Chrome: I see…

Kanra: But the thing is, those two rumors aren’t actually mutually exclusive.

Sharo: Huh? Why’s that?

Kanra: As a matter of fact, people are saying there are Dragon Zombies within the Dollars! Tons of them!

Sharo: Huhhh?

Sharo: Well, anyone can join the Dollars, so I guess it’s totally possible…

Sharo: But wait!

Sharo: Is this what Dragon Zombie’s trying to do, then?

Sharo: Infiltrate the Dollars, take them over from the inside, and create one huge Dragon Zombie?

Chrome: That would certainly seem to fit all the stories.

<Private Mode> Chrome: By the way, Kanra…

<Private Mode> Chrome: There’s something I want to speak to you about in private.

<Private Mode> Kanra:

<Private Mode> Chrome: What’s that? You just posted a blank line. Like a total newbie.

<Private Mode> Chrome: So…who are you?

<Private Mode> Chrome: You’re not Kanra, are you?

Kanra has left the chat.

Sharo: Huh?!

Chrome: I wonder what happened.

Sharo: Ah-ha! I bet Kanra got bummed that I spoiled the big surprise and ran off…

Chrome: Perhaps Dragon Zombie already put a hit out.

Sharo: D-don’t scare me like that…

.

.

.

Izaya’s apartment, Ikebukuro

“Never expected that one of my throwaway accounts would end up being used by an impostor.”

Izaya leaned back, his chair creaking, and wondered who might be using the Kanra name.

At first, he suspected his sisters, but a check of the IP address removed that possibility. Based on the things they were saying, and the fact that they chose to use the name Kanra, the admin of the room, it would seem to be a malicious act by someone who knew that Izaya was Kanra.

“Tsukumoya…? No, I doubt it’s him… Well, I guess it doesn’t matter who it is.”

He imagined whoever it might be behind the false Kanra, posing as him and stirring up trouble, and grinned wickedly.

But then his smile abruptly vanished.

“…I don’t like the cat puns, though. Not at all…”