Durarara!! - Volume 11 - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Ivory Tower

Ikebukuro—karaoke room

While the entire nation, not just Ikebukuro, was roiling in reaction to the freakish news, Hiroto Shijima sat in his chair, sweating profusely.

He had a headband pulling his hair back and dark sunglasses to hide his eyes, in an apparent attempt at disguise. And he was in a very precarious position at the moment.

Until just recently, he’d been a member of a group that sold illegal drugs. In fact, you might even say he was the one running it. But in the midst of a squabble with another organization called Amphisbaena, Izaya Orihara had plunged him into the very pits of hell.

Now he was both making contact with the Dollars as Orihara’s cat’s-paw and secretly working on orders from Jinnai Yodogiri. If they found out that he was a spy sent by Izaya, the Dollars would probably dispose of him. If Izaya found out he was a spy for Yodogiri, he would definitely dispose of him.

So should he be honest and tell Izaya Orihara that Yodogiri made contact? Or should he tell the Dollars that he was an Orihara spy?

No matter how much he examined the two sides, Shijima was totally unable to determine which one represented the safer choice to him. In the end, he was unable to betray either side, thus tightening the noose ever closer around his neck.

If I’m going to hell, I might as well take them all with me, Shijima concluded.

He’d continue being a double agent for as long as he could, find as many vulnerable secrets from each camp as he could, and let them all loose just before he crashed and burned at last.

It was a reckless gamble, and the chance that he survived it was extremely small. But the pressure on Shijima was such that he didn’t have much of a choice but to roll that die anyway.

If he went to the police and spilled all the beans, he’d wind up in prison, but at least he might survive. Prison, however, meant losing all the fame he’d built up and might as well represent death to the name of Hiroto Shijima. And ever since the start, he’d never entertained the option that he might be the only one who died.

Now he was sitting in this chair, sweating away.

No one was in the room with Hiroto now. The only sound was the menu screen music of the karaoke machine.

The reason for his disguise was that he was soon to meet an agent of Yodogiri’s. They made contact on a regular basis, but phones left a trail, so they met in person at karaoke places like this one.

They each entered and left at separate times. Shijima would borrow the room under the offered alias, and the Yodogiri-side contact would pay for it. That would make it harder to trace them, but Hiroto knew from personal experience that it wasn’t wise to underestimate the strength of Izaya Orihara’s information network.

He didn’t even know how many pawns Izaya had working for him. There was always the possibility that the employee working for the karaoke place was Izaya’s henchman. Hence the disguise, which he put on every time he went out into the city.

About thirty minutes later, Shijima’s eyes bulged when he saw the man who entered the room.

He had pulled a heavy beanie low on his head, despite it being summer, and he wore a mask over his mouth. He wore sunglasses, too, but his look was so obviously dodgy that it seemed more likely to attract attention than divert it.

Even then, as soon as the man came inside, he spat something out of his mouth. Shijima saw that it was gauze and dentures for a disguise as the man peeled off his fake whiskers.

“Pardon me. Seems like I was late,” the man said, sitting down in a position where he couldn’t be seen from the door. “I’m Mr. Yodogiri’s agent. You must be Hiroto Shijima.”

“Th-that’s right.”

“I’m sorry. That must have startled you,” said the man with a pleasant smile.

Shijima timidly asked, “Um…I know why I need to wear a disguise, but I’m not sure why you needed…”

“Oh, excuse me. I’m not currently able to walk around in the daylight with my face fully exposed. I owe some money, and I’m being very careful not to get caught by that horrifying debt collector dressed like a bartender. Doing errands for Mr. Yodogiri like this is my collateral, in a sense.”

Shijima figured his counterpart would cut a more intimidating figure, but this fellow was quite ordinary. The disguise was startling, but his reason for it made sense. As someone who got around in Ikebukuro, Shijima understood the danger that Shizuo Heiwajima represented on an instinctual level.

“But the rumor says that the debt collector got arrested.”

“Yeah. Rumor. I don’t believe rumors, and even if I did, maybe they already let him out today… Sorry. I’m kind of cowardly by nature.”

The man used the remote to order a drink, then put the mask back on without another word. Soon the employee arrived with his order, and once the coast was clear again, he took off the mask and put it on the table.

Bemused by all this, Shijima asked, “But…aren’t you ruining the whole idea by showing your face to me? I mean, the beanie and sunglasses don’t do that much if I can basically see your whole face.”

“Ha-ha, it’s cool. I trust you.”

What is he talking about? wondered Shijima, who was not buying the man’s pleasant attitude.

The man noticed the look on his face and laughed. “Oh, sorry. I guess it does sound very fishy when someone you just met seconds earlier says he trusts you. But if there’s one thing I want you to know…it’s that I am not your enemy. Even if Jinnai Yodogiri is.”

“…? What do you mean by that?”

“I’m going to be frank with you. Jinnai Yodogiri was in a car accident last night.”

“?!”

The news caught Shijima like a sucker punch. The flow of his emotions came to a standstill.

The man took advantage of that to say, “According to his secretary, Kujiragi, he won’t be on his feet for another six months. He’s an old man, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if he never recovers.”

“Th-then…”

“Now, hang on. You can’t just assume you’re free. Kujiragi’s got her eyes peeled, and as her errand boy, I’ve got information on you. Either way, you’re Izaya Orihara’s errand boy, aren’t you? I know about him. You’ve made a very nasty enemy. My sympathies.”

“…”

This unwelcome bit of news took Shijima down to the dumps, even as the man maintained his friendly demeanor.

“Hey, hear me out. It’s not like I swore allegiance to Jinnai Yodogiri or anything. Although I will admit that his secretary, Kujiragi? Yeah, she’s a damn fine woman. Wouldn’t mind takin’ it to her one of these days. But that can come later… Anyway, here’s my point. Why don’t you and I work together and make a killing?”

“Huh…?”

“I’m saying, let’s make off with a nice little chunk of Jinnai Yodogiri’s wealth.”

What the…? Is this guy really old Yodogiri’s errand runner?

No, watch out. He might be trying to play me—to see if I’ll betray them. I shouldn’t agree to anything he says unless I know that Yodogiri was really in an accident.

It was all too sudden. This only made Shijima’s suspicions stronger.

“But I guess it would be more like one of his trade routes, rather than his actual estate.”

“…Um, that sounds kinda dangerous.”

“Ha-ha, the one in danger now is Yodogiri. Right? He really screwed up, letting this happen at a time when the Awakusu-kai are after him. In fact…the rumor says that the guy who ran over him is one of Izaya Orihara’s henchmen.”

“…?!”

The sudden revelation threw Shijima for a loop.

Damn! How much of his info do I take at face value? I don’t think I can trust a single thing this guy says.

Shijima decided that his best course of action with the other man, who seemed a decade older than him, was to keep his silence. But the man just nodded to himself, as though he could see right through Shijima, his eyes narrowing behind the sunglasses.

“Oh, I get it. You can’t trust me, can you? Makes sense—you’re hanging off a cliff. Of course you’re wary. You can’t take my word without anything in return.”

“Well, sure,” Shijima mumbled.

“Kyouhei Kadota.”

“?”

“Do you know the name Kyouhei Kadota? Big guy in the Dollars.”

“I heard that he got run over a few days ago…”

When he was looking into the Dollars earlier, Shijima studied up on Kadota, who naturally showed up as one of the more prominent members. But the first he had heard of the accident was last night, when he’d met Mikado Ryuugamine for the first time and learned about it as part of the current rundown of the Dollars’ situation.

“A bunch of different people are going crazy searching for that driver. I wouldn’t be surprised if the guy gets lynched.”

“Yeah…I suppose that makes sense. But why did you bring him up now?” Shijima asked, trying to get a glimpse of the man’s eyes.

But the dark tint of the shades, combined with the overall gloominess of the room, hid his facial details.

The man glanced at the door to make sure it was firmly shut, then spoke at barely more than a whisper.

“What if I told you I know who did it?”

Silence.

Until he could process what the man said and attempt to judge it for himself.

“…Hang on. You…know who did it?”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” said the man. Shijima considered this.

I see. So is he going to let me have the glory for finding the culprit? But where’s the proof that whoever he identifies is actually the one who did it? What if he’s just trying to use me to screw over someone else?

“…Now that’s hard to believe. It’s not just the cops looking for him. Even with all the people in the Dollars working the case, they can’t find the driver. How would you know who it is? Do you have evidence?”

He might be able to hear out the man about the evidence and use that as a hint to discover the perpetrator independently. But what the man cited was far more convincing than he imagined.

“Sure, I’ve got evidence. Here.”

The man pulled out his phone and brought up a photo on the screen. It depicted a young man lying on the street, clearly taken just after a traffic accident.

“Is that…?”

Something about the picture immediately struck Shijima as being wrong. The car lights shining on the victim of the accident…were clearly coming from the direction the photo was taken. Inside the car.

Shijima felt a fresh rush of freezing sweat trickle down his spine. In a very blithe and welcoming way, he’d just been shown something exceedingly dangerous.

Yes, the man seemed pleasant enough, but now he could identify something leering and persistent about that smile. The next moment, Shijima’s fears were proven correct.

“I took that photo from the passenger seat.”

“…”

Shijima couldn’t move his mouth.

Not just his mouth; his fingers and legs were frozen with fear, too.

He’d just assumed that the other man was a simple errand boy for Yodogiri. When he took the mask off his face, he just didn’t look important compared to Izaya Orihara or Yodogiri. He seemed exactly like the kind of guy who had enough good looks to land a woman who would give him money to gamble on pachinko, go into debt, and wind up sealing his own doom.

Which made the admission of such dangerous information land with that much more terror.

You gotta be kidding. This boring, nice-looking guy, who seems so unassuming…?

The man continued, dragging Shijima and his trembling shoulders farther down into the swamp.

“That’s right. I did that. I told the driver, ‘Run him over.’”

“…Uh…but…”

“And the driver just ran him over. So the driver’s your culprit. And I watched it from two feet away. What greater evidence could you need? Sadly, I have no intention of going to the witness stand, so if you want to sell this information, you’ll have to go to the thugs in the Dollars rather than the police.”

Shijima still couldn’t come up with a word to interject. The man continued by tapping his finger on the table.

“Do you think I’d be charged with a crime in this case? Well, I guess they could make a case for instigating murder, that’s definitely a crime. But they can’t prove I said to run him over, and even if I did, can’t I just claim that I was sleep-talking? Or what would happen if I tried to claim that I meant, ‘Let’s run him over to the pub for a drink’? I guess we’ll never know unless it goes to trial.”

Yodogiri’s errand boy smiled happily and swirled his drink. But Shijima couldn’t even move the hands he kept on his knees, much less take a sip of his own beverage. All he could do was ask, “Why are you telling me this…?”

“I want you to trust me. I’ve got dirt on you, see, so now you have dirt on me, too. We’re fifty-fifty. Don’t you think that makes us much closer and more relatable to each other than Yodogiri or Izaya, who have the scoop on you without any give-and-take?”

He couldn’t reply on the spot.

Who is he? Who in the world is this guy? I’ve never seen him before. He doesn’t look like he’s got anything to do with yakuza. At best, he looks like an employee from a third-rate host club.

The man just seemed so insignificant compared to big players like Izaya and Yodogiri. If Shijima was going to team up with anyone, this man would clearly be the easiest to betray and cut loose.

If they stole Yodogiri’s fortune, and then he cut this guy out of the picture, could he actually have the chance to live for himself again? The temptation was strong but not enough to force Shijima’s hand. Instead, he stalled.

“So…why Kadota? Was it on Yodogiri’s orders?”

“Nah…I don’t have anything against him, and I didn’t get any direct orders from Old Man Yodogiri or anything. It just means someone was gonna be really happy with Kadota out of the picture. But if you want to know on whose request I did it, we need to build up a bit more trust first.”

The man took an ice cube from his drink into his mouth, rolling it around on his tongue as he spoke. “The primary reason is that I wanted to learn if my new pawn was disciplined enough to act on my orders.”

“Pawn?”

“Er, sorry. Just talking to myself. So what’s the deal? Are you in or not?”

Shijima thought in silence. Only when he was certain did he summon his courage to ask, “May I have…a more detailed explanation?”

He couldn’t really sink any lower than he already was. Izaya and Yodogiri knew about his weakness, but he was the only one who had this man’s sensitive information. As long as he could cover his own ass, he might be able to use this as blackmail information for a good long time.

The other guy must really be a lightweight if he was offering a deal that promised so much for so little. If it were Izaya Orihara, any offer that seemed too good to be true would certainly have strings attached. But since this man was after nothing more than money, that seemed much less likely here.

With his mind made up, Shijima reached out and clasped the other man’s hand.

“Fantastic. You’ve made a wise decision, Hiroto Shijima.”

“…Speaking of which, I haven’t heard your name yet.”

“Oh, pardon me. My name is ”

Thirty minutes later, after an explanation of their activities and some sharing of information, they parted ways.

Both men sensed that it would be dangerous for them to linger for too long. And Shijima did not seem to put his full trust in the man, either, though the man knew it. He watched Shijima leave the room first—and he sat back and smiled to himself.

“The idiot. That information wasn’t dirt on me in any way, shape, or form.”

The man perilously close to disaster did nothing else inside the karaoke room except smile to himself ceaselessly.

“I mean, Kadota saw both me and the driver, clear as day!”

Tokyo—ruined building

“…Huh?”

Inside the ruined building that Mikado Ryuugamine, Aoba Kuronuma, and the members of the Blue Squares were using as a temporary hideout, a news headline popped out to Mikado as he was scrolling through social media on his phone.

“This can’t be…Celty’s head, can it…?”

The story about a severed head being tossed into a crowd of pedestrians completely knocked Mikado out of his rhythm. Upon hearing the salacious details, the other Blue Squares around him turned their attention to the TV they’d brought into the building.

“Harima?!” Mikado shouted, still scrolling through the Internet for news. They turned back to him again. He had spoken that name on reflex because the uploaded image he saw of the severed head was identical to that of a girl who went to his high school.

But he promptly arrived at a different possibility. In fact, he determined that this one was much more probable.

Upon a closer examination of the image, which seemed to have been taken by a hi-def phone camera, Mikado realized that the head was just too pristine. It looked as if it were alive. None of it was smeared with blood, even around the cut.

“…Isn’t that Miss Harima…?” mumbled Aoba Kuronuma in awe as he examined the picture on a separate computer monitor.

But Mikado just shook his head. “No. I’m pretty sure…that’s Celty.”

“Huh?”

“Harima got plastic surgery. To make her look more like Celty’s head… Er, sorry, it’s a long story. I’ll sum it up for you later.”

Then Mikado went searching for information online that might confirm his hypothesis.

—I saw the head, too. It must be fake. It didn’t even seem dead.

—The person who took the video uploaded the pics, and they said it was actually alive.

—Not on a normal video site?

—If you put up video of a dead body, they’re just gonna ban your entire account, obviously.

—Look at 1:34 on the video. Did you see the eyelids twitch?

—OMG, they do!

—How did you even notice that?

—So is it fake, then?

—What if it was actually alive, though?

—Think it’s the Headless Rider’s head?

—Could be.

Mikado focused not on any threads of people debating who did it or what kind of drugs they were on, but on the reactions of the people who had seen it in person.

Then he decided to download the video for himself. Of the initial links he saw for it, he avoided two for containing viruses and succeeded getting the file on the third.

He let the video play without further delay—and noted that the eyelids indeed seemed to twitch for a brief moment. You heard a lot about rigor mortis; did the eyelids of a dead body also flutter as they hardened? He was curious but decided that there was a much more reliable method to get to the bottom of this than searching for scientific facts.

“…”

Mikado used his phone to call an acquaintance’s number. After a few seconds of ringtone, it switched to an answering machine message.

“Hello, this is Mika. If you’re calling because you’re worried about me, thanks! The head on the news isn’t mine, so rest assured I can hear your message after the beep!”

It seemed to have been just recently recorded, to Mikado’s relief. That, in turn, solidified the answer in his mind.

The head of Celty Sturluson—his savior and the dullahan whom he admired and wished he could be like—had been revealed to the world at large in this moment, in this way.

It was the instant that common sense and the world of the grotesque crossed paths.

But…Mikado was a bit taken aback.

Not out of curiosity as to why the head was thrown into the middle of the public—but about a change in his own mind after he understood what had happened.

Huh?

Is this…all it is?

I’ve been waiting for this day for what seems like forever…but I don’t feel any excitement.

He’d had such an obsession with the extraordinary, such a desire to witness the moment that the accepted order of the world was completely overwritten, that he couldn’t help but doubt himself when he felt such shockingly little interest in the event when it arrived.

What is it? Am I feeling the lonely feeling you get when that obscure manga or musician you like suddenly gets famous?

No, I don’t think that’s it…

Mikado’s mind worked away as he gazed at the computer screen, his expression steadily clouding over.

…Maybe I’ve just…gotten too used to Celty. Maybe I’m not capable of thinking of her as extraordinary or abnormal anymore.

Then he remembered what Izaya Orihara told him on the night of the first Dollars’ meeting in real life.

“In three days, the abnormal will simply become normal to you,” Izaya had said to him as he left that gathering behind.

While Mikado was getting the feeling that Izaya might have been right about this, he also took the opportunity to re-examine himself. Could it be that what he was seeking was actually just ordinary life?

Did he want to take the excitement of that first night the Dollars came together, the thrill of first meeting Celty, and simply stop time right there? After the abnormal became his new, static normal, he never accepted the possibility of further evolution from there. It was why he was here with the Blue Squares now.

The recognition of this led Mikado toward the stairs to the roof of the abandoned building. He told Aoba and his friends, “I want to think about things for a bit. Can you let me be alone in peace?” and headed up the stairs with his phone in hand.

As he went, Aoba gave him the most absolutely delighted smile imaginable.

Mikado reached the roof and gazed up into the sky, breathing deeply. The sun was still high in the sky, shining softly through the gauzy clouds.

He looked at the Sunshine 60 building in the distance and let himself indulge in a private moment before he lifted the phone to open its contact list and click on a particular name there.

It was a number he’d tried a few times recently and mysteriously failed to reach every time. He was worried that he wouldn’t get through today, either, but he felt motivated by a belief that at least trying would be better than doing nothing and a hunch that the extraordinary nature of the situation would actually get him through this one time.

“…”

Mikado sucked in a deep breath and pressed the call button on the contact.

He steeled himself for the task ahead, imagining what might happen as a result of this.

Ikebukuro—Bikkuri Guard

Ooh, another police vehicle. I wonder if something’s happened.

Izaya felt his heart leap as he witnessed each passing police car and crime lab van.

He was on a street underneath the train bridge on the south side of Ikebukuro Station that was colloquially known as Bikkuri Guard. After his hospital visit, he had been strolling this direction, hoping to get an idea of what was happening in the city.

A few members of Dragon Zombie were following a short distance away, but far enough that if a hostile group attacked him with intent to do serious harm, he wouldn’t stand a chance. But Izaya beamed happily, soaking in the thrill of danger.

The MRI and CAT scans showed some damage to his skin but no internal bleeding or other effects to his brain. But his good mood had nothing to do with the clean bill of health.

Nothing wrong with my brain, huh? I guess that means that my personality isn’t anyone or anything else’s fault but simply a product of my own self.

Izaya considered the conversation he had before the exam, when he talked to Anri Sonohara about the inhuman. What would have happened if Karisawa hadn’t stepped in to mend the situation? Would Anri have cut him with her sword? Or would she have broken down first?

He had faced down an alien being eating away at a human soul, and if anything, Izaya found the experience to be utterly delightful. But it was not Anri’s inhumanity that excited him—it was Karisawa’s assertion that this creature was her friend.

Ah yes. Karisawa and Yumasaki are so very entertaining. It’s people like them who make the world such a delightful place. He chuckled to himself. What would happen if the majority of people on earth accepted the inhuman like they do? If such beings were able to interact and dwell in the open, would I be able to observe them the same way that I do humans?

He had to admit that he felt disgust at those like Anri Sonohara who decided to abandon their humanity. But aside from her head, he felt almost nothing at all about Celty Sturluson. Izaya’s interest was reserved for all of humanity and what awaited after death.

If death was simply an empty void, that would be the saddest thing he could imagine. It would mean he could no longer hope to observe humanity. But if he could be a spirit of some kind, even if permanently prevented from ever interacting directly with the mortal realm, it would be like heaven to Izaya. That represented the best possible outcome.

But Celty Sturluson had presented Izaya with a totally new set of values.

Spirits or no, Izaya didn’t believe in heaven or hell at all. He didn’t accept any consolidated “new world” that continued after the mortal one. They were just fictions reflecting the finer differences in cultures.

Until a dullahan, a being straight from legend, appeared in Ikebukuro. If she was indeed an inhuman being, and exactly what the folklore stories said, then couldn’t there be a heaven, or a hell, or perhaps the Valhalla of Scandinavian myth and its eternal battleground?

Izaya didn’t desire to go to heaven. He knew that if he were bound for either destination, it was probably going to be hell.

What he wanted to know was what the humans did in this continuation of the world, in their spiritual or soul form. When people committed suicide hoping for permanent oblivion, how would their souls react when told, “Sorry, nothingness was just a myth, your consciousness will suffer for all eternity”?

When people assumed that killing one or a thousand people carried the same sinful weight and were executed for their role in mass killings, how would they react if told, “Sorry, they’re not the same thing”?

And on the other hand, what would you get from those who died terrified of leaving their families behind—“Congratulations, now you can watch over them from here”? How long would they actually observe their families? A year? Two? Ten? Forever? Or would the knowledge that they could do it for eternity actually bore them after mere hours?

The afterlife was an unknown quantity for everyone. What would the people plunged into that world of the unknown think? What actions would they take?

He imagined the possibilities, indulging in his own private bliss, like an innocent child swept up in the world of his dreams.

Meanwhile, the part of Izaya not daydreaming wondered what the police were up to and took out his phone to check the news on the Internet. The sudden buzzing of an incoming call brought him entirely back to reality.

The screen displayed: Ryuugamine, Mikado.

He clutched the phone for several seconds, thinking hard.

Mikado. I haven’t heard from him in a while. I wonder what’s been happening.

Left unsaid was the fact that he had been intentionally ignoring any of Mikado’s attempts to get in touch.

Why this exact moment? Is something going on?

Izaya had just left the hospital and wasn’t aware of the news about Ikebukuro. After several rings, he finally pressed the call button.

“Hello. It’s been a while since I heard from you, Mikado.”

“Oh, um…yes, it’s been a good while, Mr. Orihara.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t answer the phone for a bit. I’ve been very busy with work.”

“No, I’m sorry for bothering you. I know you’re busy…”

With the formalities out of the way, Izaya got right down to business.

“So what is it? Got a problem?”

“Sorry. Actually, I wanted to ask you something…”

Abandoned building

“And what’s that? I might be able to answer it for free, but if it impinges on my business, I’ll have to charge you,” said the voice over the phone, which was just the same as any other time they’d talked. Mikado took a deep breath.

Are you aware of the news about the head? That was the first question, no matter what. But Mikado kept the words trapped in his throat.

After a long pause, he instead asked the question he’d been wondering about since last night. “Mr. Orihara…are you familiar with a person in the Awakusu-kai named Akabayashi?”

“Yes, I am,” he replied instantly. His voice was cheerful, like always. The fact that a teenager was namedropping yakuza lieutenants had no effect on him.

“…Well, this might be a very strange thing to ask, so I apologize in advance if it upsets you.”

“What is it?”

“Was it…you who told him about me?”

And rather than the few seconds of silence that Mikado anticipated after the question, Izaya answered without missing a beat.

“You’re half-right, half-wrong, I’d say.”

“Huh…?”

Izaya had to stifle a chuckle at the confusion in the voice on the other end of the call.

“Remember what I told you before? Out of respect for you, I wouldn’t sell the information that you are the founder of the Dollars. It’s just that there are exceptions.”

“Exceptions…?”

Izaya considerately explained, “One is outside of my business. For example, if I felt like telling a personal friend that you were the founder of the Dollars for their own benefit, rather than as a business transaction, I would do it. That would be an instance that I thought was in your benefit, too.”

This was partly the truth and partly a lie. When he told Masaomi Kida about the identity of the Dollars’ boss, it was indeed outside of business. But he never considered it to be for the sake of Masaomi or Mikado. It was entirely to suit his own ends.

Outside of that, it wasn’t Izaya who had leaked Mikado’s information to the thug named Horada but Namie. So for the most part, Izaya was telling the truth.

“The second example—and this would be in the case of Mr. Akabayashi—is if the other side already suspected that you were the founder of the Dollars and hired me to collect intelligence that would prove it. I can choose not to tell the truth, but if I simply lied, I would be negating the entire point of my personal business.”

This, too, contained a bit of untruth.

He hadn’t told Akabayashi pure, unvarnished fact. Instead, he said something like, “I never imagined that a student at my old school would be the boss of the Dollars.” He had lied to Akabayashi’s face as part of his business—albeit with the understanding that Akabayashi was smart enough to see through that lie.

But Izaya wasn’t lying about this now for self-preservation. He was setting fire to the rope Mikado Ryuugamine was crossing.

“Do you understand? The moment he came to me, Mr. Akabayashi already had an idea that you were the leader of the Dollars.”

“…”

The only sound through the phone speaker was breathing. Izaya continued.

“In other words, consider that your secret is not actually a secret at all on this side of society. And not just this side. In time, the rumors will hit the public, and by the start of second semester, you might get a tap on the shoulder and turn around to hear a classmate asking you, ‘Is it true you’re the boss of the Dollars?’ as if he can’t really believe it himself.”

“…Yes, I can see how that might happen.”

“So now I have a question for you. Why are you still over there? Just abandon your position and play the part of an ordinary student. I’ve been hearing stories about how you’re teaming up with an underclassman at school and doing all kinds of menacing things.”

Through the speaker he picked up the sound of Mikado chuckling.

“Ha-ha… You really are incredible at this. So you’ve heard about that, too…”

“Let me be up-front and reveal that I know Shizu isn’t a member of the Dollars anymore, and Dotachin’s been in an accident. I can anticipate that you are aware of these things, too. So why are you still there? You know what sort of danger you’re in.”

“…And now the yakuza are aware of me, too.”

“Exactly. This is your last chance. If you hand over the Dollars to someone else and go back to being an ordinary student, the Awakusu-kai aren’t going to have any reason to mess with you. Your name will soon be forgotten,” Izaya said, knowing full well this was never an option.

As he expected, Mikado was silent and did not offer any words of agreement. Then the information dealer put the screws to him with a false argument.

“What’s wrong? Didn’t you want the extraordinary in your life? With what’s happening to you now, wouldn’t an ordinary and boring life actually be more extraordinary at this point?”

“…I believe you were the one who said that in order to taste the abnormal…I either had to accept it or continue evolving.”

“Yes, I did say that. But you don’t have to take my word at face value. You’re the one who makes that choice.”

“I know. Which is why I can be up-front about this. Even if you weren’t pulling any strings behind the scenes…I’m pretty sure that I would’ve ended up in this position.”

At long last, it was Izaya’s turn to fall silent.

But it was not shock at learning his actions were already known. It was a silence of deep-seated, trembling fascination and delight.

“My goodness. You make it sound as though I’ve been sneaking around behind your back,” Izaya said hopefully.

Without betraying any anger or disappointment, Mikado said, “But of course you would be up to something, Kanra. You were the one who told Masaomi about my secret first, too, weren’t you?”

“What if I said you were right about that? Would you scorn me? Would you hate me?”

“…The way you said that tells me it was you.”

Izaya fell silent, a tacit admission. He got a better grip on his phone, making sure he could clearly hear what Mikado would say next. The statement came imminently.

“Thank you.”

It seemed to come out of nowhere. But Mikado’s voice was completely level, not sarcastic or ironic in the least. “If that hadn’t happened, I think I would’ve just kept my secret…from Masaomi and from Sonohara, too. I mean, I know that every human being has a lifelong secret or two…but I’m just a teenager. I’m not strong enough to keep going with my secret identity hidden in my back pocket, like the protagonist of some comic book.”

“…”

“I would’ve been buffeted by the waves of the Dollars and buried it all in the midst of my ordinary life. All the while feeling guilty about hiding it from the people I really care about.”

“And you don’t feel guilty about what you’re doing now?” Izaya asked, suppressing the surge of excitement running through him. “You’re beefing with the Yellow Scarves…and I don’t suppose I need to sell you the details of who leads them, do I?”

Mikado wasn’t shaken by this at all. If anything, his response was almost cheeky. “My guilt is for creating the Dollars, period. That’s why I want to drag the Yellow Scarves and every other bothersome thing involving me into the Dollars so I can reset everything. In video game terms, I guess you’d call it a New Game Plus.”

“Putting things into video game terms? You sound just like one of the kids these days.”

“I am one of the kids these days.” Mikado laughed, his self-mockery apparent through the phone. “I want to take the Dollars back to their original state… Back to the night of our first gathering. To do that, I need to destroy everything clinging to the edges of the group. That’s all I want to do. And that includes the war with the Yellow Scarves.”

“You don’t think that the way you’re trying to take over the Dollars for yourself makes you one of those very clingers?” Izaya teased.

Mikado laughed it off. “Oh, please. This isn’t like you.”

“You think so?”

“I mean, I’ve always been a clinger. It’s why I’m destroying all of it, including myself. Once everything is back to normal and the Dollars are returned to their original state, I want to start something new. Maybe it would be interesting to properly include Sonohara and Masaomi in the Dollars.”

“…”

Yes! Fascinating! He’s the best!

Mikado Ryuugamine, I must confess I’m a bit surprised and in awe of you.

You’re the greatest kind of clown I’ve ever seen. You are humanity itself! I always had a hunch, and it turned out to be bang on!

“Nice! That’s right, you’re human. If anyone is human, it’s you, Mikado Ryuugamine.”

“Huh?”

Izaya was so moved that he didn’t realize he’d spoken that part aloud. “You’re selfish, but you think of others, you commit crimes as a means of penance, you withdraw into your shell in order to change the world. You inhabit so many contradictions, and yet not everything falls under that particular logic—which is what makes you so human, in my opinion. I happen to think that one of humanity’s defining traits is the willingness to switch things up—to step into the crosswalk with your right foot first every single day, then start with your left today, for no particular reason.”

“I don’t know what it is that you see in me, but I’m obviously not human in some archetypal sense. I’m just indecisive, that’s all.”

“Oh, I wasn’t paying you a compliment. You’re indecisive, and yet your ability to act is unparalleled. You act slowly and smoothly but in unpredictable ways. Just like a pinwheel firework, spinning very slowly.”

“You’re suggesting I’m destined to explode and die at the end,” Mikado noted darkly.

Izaya stifled a chuckle. “That’s not my call to make. You do understand that I’m only assisting you kids in your struggle to move onward, right? It’s up to you to decide which direction you take that. And while we’re on the topic, Mr. Akabayashi being the one to come from the Awakusu-kai side is a huge opportunity for you. He’s not the kind of person who keeps threatening those who walk away from their side of society. You understand what I mean by that?”

“…You’re saying that if I turn back, it has to be now?”

“Yeah. As your senior in life, I’m undecided at the moment. I’ve got connections to him and the Awakusu-kai, as you know. I could get shot and killed at any moment. I don’t know whether I should take your hand and show you how to navigate the depths of this treacherous sea, or push you back up to the safety of the beach and the sunlight.”

“Mr. Akabayashi said the same thing to me. But where I want to be is neither of those places, I think.”

“Oh?”

“In your analogy, I guess I want to be right at the breaking point of the waves at the shore. I feel like whether ordinary student or Dollars, if I choose just one, I’ll be destined to get bored with it. I’m not looking for life-risking thrills and chills. But I’m also not enamored with boring peace. That’s what the last six months have taught me.”

The boy’s true wishes came through the phone, his voice clearly painted in complex and tangled emotions. The fact that there was still a note of uncertainty present spoke to just how truthful he was being about himself.

“In the end, I just want to keep seeing things that are different from where I am now. So if I could just sit in a boat, right at the breaker, spinning and rocking with the waves…I guess…”

Izaya did his best to suppress his emotion, eyes sparkling like he was about to open the mail-order box he’d been waiting for. “So this is what you’re saying,” he teased. “You always want to be the guy gawking just at the barest margin of safety in all those videos capturing shocking events. You want to be the arsonist and the firefighter. You want to be the scientist who creates the giant monster, then the one to call the superhero for help. You want to cause trouble and get the credit for stopping it. You want to hog all the misery and joy, right from a front-row seat. Like you’re some kind of God.”

Mikado’s response to this mockery was quite simple. “I would think that’s the devil, not God.” But he didn’t deny any of it. “It occurs to me—that would be you, Izaya.”

“Is it a coincidence that you just called me Izaya instead of Mr. Orihara? Or by design?”

“Is it that important? I called you Mr. Orihara earlier because it had been a while and I felt some distance, but it’s a bit of a mouthful.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to call you out,” Izaya said. “It’s just that because my hobby is observation, I’m very sensitive to minor changes. I must say, though, I’m relieved. You haven’t changed at all.”

“Huh?”

“To be honest, I was worried. I thought you might’ve changed since the last time we spoke. But no, nothing about you has changed since that very first meeting. I mean, independent of personal growth. You’re moving forward while retaining who you are.”

Despite the fact that he’d just mentioned how it was human nature to switch things up out of nowhere, Izaya was now complimenting Mikado for his nature never changing. But it didn’t seem to fully register with the younger boy, whose voice was uncertain, hesitant.

“Do you…think so?”

“Yes. What you’re doing now is so extreme that you’ve been worried about yourself, haven’t you? Worried that you might be going crazy somehow.”

“…”

Izaya took his silence as agreement and sang his praises. “Right now, the people around you are probably thinking things like, He went crazy, and He’s acting weird, and Someone’s fooling him. Particularly the people who know you well, like Anri Sonohara, Masaomi Kida, Dotach…er, Kyouhei Kadota, and Celty Sturluson.”

“…! I was trying to hide it from them…but I guess…I’ve been worrying folks like Celty.”

“Yes, I believe you have. She’s not human, but she’s got a strong image of humanity that she models herself after, based on TV shows and books and the like. In a sense, that’s what makes her seem so human for being so inhuman. I guess she can’t help but think that you’re running wild at the moment. Because from a normal person’s perspective, you seem to be going totally out of control.”

Izaya followed his preamble with a more forceful answer.

“However, you don’t need to worry about this, because I can guarantee that you, Mikado Ryuugamine, have not changed a bit from the moment you formed the Dollars! If you’ve gone mad, then it happened right at the time you formed your group, not now! When you got all those people together and declared war on a huge corporation with a single text message, that was when you were insane.”

“…”

“And yet, you persisted in treading your ordinary daily life, with that air of madness inside of you. I’m quite jealous. I wasn’t able to do that when I was in high school,” Izaya said wistfully.

Mikado reacted to his mentor’s plaudit with a soft snort. “And…what do you intend to do with the Dollars, Izaya?” he asked.

“What do you mean, what will I do?”

“I’d like to think I know a bit about you. Even this very conversation has told me something. You’re not just sitting back and quietly watching this unfold. Also, since this started up, I’ve been doing some research into the past.”

The past.

It was a word Mikado said with great meaning. But he otherwise did not change his tone of voice and didn’t beat around the bush in revealing what he knew about then and now.

“You’re trying to do to us what you did to the Yellow Scarves two years ago, aren’t you?”

Silence reigned.

A train passed over the bridge above, and Izaya said nothing until the roar had passed.

Mikado heard the noise through the phone speaker and waited patiently.

After ten seconds of a very noisy silence, Izaya smiled. His eyes sparkled with surprise and delight. “With the distance you put between yourself and Kida, I didn’t think you’d figure that out. Who did you hear that from, Tsukumoya?”

“No…I searched out people who were low on the Yellow Scarves totem pole back then and lead normal lives now. I only got bits and pieces, but when put together from twenty different people’s stories, I finally started to see the big picture.”

“Do you despise me?”

“If anyone would, it’d be Masaomi, wouldn’t you think? Oh, but…if Masaomi’s big injury back in March had anything to do with you, then I suppose I should despise you… I wonder what the answer is. I guess I’ll consider that again once things are back to normal between me and him,” Mikado reflected, detached.

“I see,” Izaya replied. “We’ll put that off until later, then. Honestly, I was going to stay quiet about the whole thing, but at this point it doesn’t seem like there’s any reason to hide it.”

He leaned against the wall of the tunnel, free hand in his pocket, looking up at the ceiling.

“It’s true, I intend to mess with you two. But I’m not deciding if I’ll be your ally or your enemy. Frankly, I think that remaining an observer is the fairest choice and will allow me to observe people in their most natural state, but that might be difficult at this point. You and Kida can’t solve your issue anymore just between you and the people you have doing your dirty work. The fact that Mr. Akabayashi’s involved should make that clear, right?”

Still, he didn’t bring up the issue of Kasane Kujiragi. He could have gone ahead and revealed that Hiroto Shijima was his own cat’s-paw but decided against doing that. He knew that actions he took while elated often had a way of coming back around to bite him.

But usually that happened because he couldn’t help himself and did it anyway.

Mikado took Izaya’s statement with a grain of salt. “If possible…I’d appreciate having you on my side. As one of the people who knows what the Dollars were on that first meeting…”

“Well, that’s tricky. Even I can’t tell what I’ll be doing up ahead. Ultimately, what I want to see is other people, not myself. My biggest pleasure in life is observing what others do when placed in unpredictable circumstances. So yes, I will start all the fires and put them all out to that end.”

“…It wasn’t you who arranged the stunt with the head, was… Aaah!!” Mikado yelped. Izaya’s eyes narrowed in curiosity at the sudden shift in his voice.

“Oh! That’s right!” Mikado continued. “That’s what I wanted to call you about!”

“?”

“Were you aware of today’s news, Izaya?!”

“No, I just got done with something. I haven’t checked the news recently. Did something happen?” Izaya asked, sensing something abnormal in the tone of Mikado’s voice.

“You’d be better off just turning on the TV for the news, rather than hearing it from me! You could even check the news on your phone! In fact, I was calling because I wanted to ask if you had anything to do with it…but based on your reaction, I’m guessing you didn’t,” Mikado said, clearly agitated. Then he claimed he would call back and hung up.

Izaya recalled the police cars he’d seen passing by and decided to just check it out on his phone. In all honestly, he’d have preferred to bask in the splendidness of humanity, out of respect for young Mikado Ryuugamine, but he felt a note of unease in his chest and pulled out a separate smartphone so that he could launch his own special news-aggregating app.

Maybe Shizu broke out of the holding cell. Man, it would be awesome if they would just shoot him down…

He gazed at the screen of the smartphone, holding to that faint hope—and when the headline “Woman’s Head in Crowded Ikebukuro” appeared, his mind froze.

It was less than a second, but if Shizuo Heiwajima just so happened to be throwing a vending machine at him in that moment, he would have perished without any means to avoid it.

Once the momentary shock—powerful enough to expose him to fatal threat—had passed, Izaya scanned the details of the article, then launched another online app.

A quick check of the obscure, underground image site brought him what he was looking for very quickly. The instant he saw the face that was identical to Mika Harima’s, Izaya understood.

It was not Mika Harima’s head. It was the head of Celty Sturluson, which was supposed to be in his possession.

The culprit was likely Manami Mamiya.

And her motive was simple: provocation.

It was for that reason, that extremely personal and petty reason, that she threw the entire city into a panic and totally destroyed a portion of Izaya’s plans.

And Izaya’s reaction to losing one of the best aces up his sleeve was overwhelming joy.

“I see… So that’s how you want this!”

He had accepted Manami Mamiya into his team as an irregular element that would interfere with him. His goal was not something experimentally productive like forcing his operation to tighten up by including an enemy among the ranks. No, it was for the most Izaya of reasons: a desire to observe what a girl who lived on nothing but hatred for him might do.

Naturally, he was under the assumption that she would do something.

She’d report their activities to the police, or try to kill him in his sleep, or dump poison into the water tank of the building, knowing full well it would harm other members and innocent residents.

He maintained a minimum of caution, of course, since getting himself killed wasn’t the idea—but what she ultimately did far surpassed his expectations. He anticipated that she would steal the head, but his guess was that she would either give it back to Celty, take it to Nebula, or offer it to Kasane Kujiragi.

I never expected she’d get the entire world involved in it.

It was as though, by shining the spotlight of the public’s attention on the head, she was exposing everyone and everything in this secret state of affairs—Dollars, Jinnai Yodogiri, Awakusu-kai, Izaya, even the dullahan and Saika—to the world at large.

“…Ha-ha!”

He could no longer hold back his laughter.

Gales of it burst forth, echoing off the walls of the tunnel, laughter that threatened to bowl over the entire world.

When a new train passed over, the clatter and roar of it harmonized with the laughter in ugly ways, chilling both any pedestrians in the area and even the Dragon Zombie members who waited a short distance away.

This is what makes humanity so wonderful!

I admit it, Manami Mamiya—I’m taken aback by your actions. In fact, you might even say I’ve been put on a major mental defensive. And I couldn’t be happier!

But this isn’t the end, is it?

He considered the current affairs anew, a sign of utmost respect for the girl who’d placed him in great danger.

I guess this means I should start moving in earnest, then. Shizu’s stuck with the police thanks to that thing with Earthworm, so I can move around in safety. And thankfully, Kasane Kujiragi’s Saika children will extend his time in captivity.

You know…that meeting with Anri Sonohara this morning seemed portentous. After talking with Mikado, I feel like today is marked by fate. In order to turn coincidence into inevitability, I suppose I should work on Kida later tonight, perhaps.

Malevolent plans swirled in his heart, blissful smile on his lips.

Now, in the moment, when his plans were in danger of being destroyed, he felt the pure opportunity of human observation, a hope that no one else would ever bother to believe in.

Parking garage, Tokyo

It was one of Tokyo’s uncountable unmanned standing garages, not very far from Ikebukuro. This had once been a hangout for the Blue Squares, but after the past squabble, the Yellow Scarves had used Izaya Orihara’s information to root it out and take over the territory.

When the Blue Squares broke up, and after Masaomi left the gang, some local teens occasionally loitered around the area—but now the folks in yellow were back in full force.

Not that they ever bothered the cars that used the garage. They didn’t even sit out in the open where people would take notice. They knew that if any of the usual people complained, the police would come down on them at once. Apparently the cops regularly patrolled the area back in the days of the Blue Squares.

Masaomi Kida made use of that information, using the garage less as a base of operations than a clandestine hideout. Even after he left, the practices he had put in place had been followed, so it was extremely rare that an officer ever came around anymore.

On the roof of the garage, Masaomi was holding a meeting with the other Yellow Scarves.

“Okay, so we’ve got to watch out for this huge guy with the sleepy eyes. If the rumors are accurate, he’s probably a guy from Kushinada High called Houjou.”

The plan to lure out and strike the Blue Squares yesterday had worked up to a point. But when the large youth got out of the van, the entire skirmish ended in a draw and mutual retreat.

“So…I guess they’re serious about this,” said Kouji Yatabe, one of the senior members.

Masaomi nodded gravely. “Same goes for me. I was dead serious about fighting them off. If it weren’t for the Blue Squares, he and I could’ve had a good fistfight and gotten this all over with already.”

“How many times have you said that, Shogun?”

“Yeah, you can’t keep playing the old hits.” His friends chuckled, annoyed. Masaomi laughed, too.

“I’ll say it as many times as I want. Thanks for sticking around through my personal battle, guys.”

“This is so dorky.”

“Ahh, bittersweet youth!” they joked to hide their embarrassment.

Masaomi prepared himself to get serious again so they could discuss their next actions—but he sensed a silhouette moving out of the corner of his eye and glanced that way.

A young man dressed in casual attire emerged from the elevator. Probably just an ordinary person getting his car, Masaomi mused and turned back to his friends.

But then he realized that something struck him as wrong, and he glanced back.

He understood what it was.

The man wasn’t heading for any of the cars parked on the roof. He was walking straight for their group.

“Hey,” Masaomi said, and his friends turned to look.

They got to their feet, sending dangerous warning glances. There were only five or so of them, but this was one man. If he was with the Blue Squares, they could handle him.

Most importantly, their shogun, Masaomi Kida, was here. This wasn’t like when they had sparred with Houjou yesterday.

They stared the man down, putting their full trust in Masaomi’s presence. But for his part, Masaomi was feeling a light layer of sweat break out.

He knew the man approaching them.

You’ve gotta be kidding me. What’s he doing here…?

At first, he didn’t recognize the man. After all, the previous time they met had been under drastically different circumstances.

When he’d been secretly listening to Mikado Ryuugamine talk to this man on the street, his face had been covered by many bandages. It was only the sight of his distinctive hat that gave him away.

“Chikage…Rokujou…,” he muttered.

The other members turned toward him. “Huh? You know this guy, Shogun?”

“I don’t know him… I’ve never talked to him. But that’s the head of a motorcycle gang from Saitama called Toramaru.”

“Saitama?” they repeated, befuddled.

All the while, Chikage Rokujou continued forward, until he was close enough to have a dialogue with.

He stopped there and raised a hand to them. “Yo. You guys are Yellow Scarves, right?” he said breezily.

Yatabe and the others shared an uneasy look, but Masaomi stepped forward. “That’s right… I don’t see your girls with you this time, Chikage Rokujou.”

Chikage looked surprised. He gave the smaller boy an appraising glance. “Yeah. Sounds like something gnarly was happening right outside the train station. I sent them back home. But, um…more importantly, sorry, kid. Have we met somewhere before?”

“No. This is our first time talking. But you’re pretty famous, you know that?”

Chikage considered the words, then smirked. “Ah, I see. This is just a hunch, but I’m betting you must be the boss of the Yellow Scarves, huh?”

“Technically, yes. Once divorced.” Masaomi snorted.

Rokujou readjusted his hat and said, “Well, I don’t think I need to introduce myself, then, but I’ll do it anyway. I’m Chikage Rokujou. I run a little gang called Toramaru over in the Kawagoe area.”

“Masaomi Kida.”

Chikage cracked his neck and gave Masaomi another once-over. “Hmm. I was imagining more of a burly bandit type. You’re smaller than I expected.”

“If anything, I bet the rest of society would be more surprised to learn that you lead a street gang.”

“You think so? Well…it’s true that I kind of stick out against the rest of my boys.”

“So what brings you here today?” Masaomi asked, neither sucking up to nor looking down on his visitor, merely cautious.

“Oh, right, right. My business.” Chikage chuckled. He answered the question with another question. “You guys are at war with another group called the Dollars, right?”

“…Yes, that’s true.”

“Well, I’ve got a complex situation with them. Lots of favors owed back and forth,” the young man said, always breezy and friendly. “So I know this is sudden, but I was hoping you could choose for me.”

“…Choose what?”

“Whether you want your gang taken over or destroyed entirely.”

Ikebukuro Park

Anri followed Haruna Niekawa to a park located next to Sunshine Street.

Despite it being midday during summer vacation, it was only sparsely populated. The familiar blue vinyl tarps were visible in the back of the park, but there were no homeless around at the moment, just a few people taking a break from their nearby offices and several students enjoying their vacation. Nobody was even sitting at the stone benches in front of the fountain. Upon close inspection, hardly anyone was actually off their feet.

The only person she could see doing so was an office lady perusing a magazine on a bench under a tree, farther away from the fountain.

“…Shall we sit here?” Haruna asked and lowered herself onto a stone bench at the fountain. Anri was cautious, unsure if she should take a seat with some distance between them.

“Oh, don’t be so timid,” the other girl said, smiling softly despite the overt hostility. “Given the power of your Saika, it doesn’t matter how far apart we sit, does it?”

Anri found the offer creepy but sat down next to her anyway. Right before them was a beautiful water fountain, the liquid cascading down stone steps, but Anri was not in any state to relax and enjoy it.

“Umm…Miss Niekawa…” She was still the first to speak, bobbing her head and avoiding looking at the other girl. “I saw on the Dollars’ website…that your father is looking for you…”

“My dad is? Oh, I see. It’s been awhile since I left home.”

“I think it would be best if you went back to him,” Anri suggested.

“No,” Haruna replied flatly. “I’m grateful to him for raising me, but I don’t revere him as a person. It’s more important to me that I look for Takashi than help my dad feel better.”

Takashi.

Anri recalled the teacher: Takashi Nasujima. He worked at Raira Academy, then disappeared after the street slasher incident. Rumors said that he was kidnapped by some fellows he owed money—but Anri’s memory of him was completely isolated from the rumors and his image as a teacher.

He had singled her out right at the start of school and would do her favors so that he could then take advantage of her in various harassing and inappropriate ways. He had also had a relationship with Haruna Niekawa, and it was at her fanatical, besotted hand that he’d been slashed.

Anri had no interest in him. In fact, despite her lack of negative feelings toward others in general, she had a rare distaste for him personally.

But no matter what he was like, Haruna was madly in love with him. In fact, she started the slashing incident and tried to kill Anri, just so she could monopolize his affections. For his part, Nasujima was terrified of Haruna.

Anri recalled the events of half a year ago and hesitantly asked, “Are you…going to do all that again?”

“‘Again’? You mean my love for Takashi? What a strange thing to say, Sonohara.” Haruna slowly panned over to look at her, still smiling. “Love might begin at one point, but it does not resume. If love ever ends, even temporarily, then it was never love to begin with.”

She then put a finger to her cheek in contemplation and continued, “But I’m not selfish enough to claim that a married couple who divorces and gets back together ‘wasn’t actually in love.’ That wasn’t love coming to an end. They just changed the way they love each other.”

“O…kay…”

“Being together forever is love. Putting distance between you is also love. Even hating is love. There are countless ways to love, and all of them are valid. That’s what I’ve come to believe. And it’s because you stabbed me, and I’ve grown more deeply intertwined with Saika.”

Words of gratitude. Yet, Anri could keenly sense that none of the hatred and hostility in the other girl had dimmed. She stayed on guard, prepared to launch Saika from anywhere in her body in case a blade came hurtling toward her.

The idea filled her with self-loathing: She was ready to utilize Saika without a second thought.

No ordinary person would simply play along with Niekawa’s invitation. Izaya’s words earlier today had jammed themselves deep into her heart. She had completely accepted that she was not human.

…I thought I gave up already.

After leaving the hospital, she tried to call Mikado many times and only reached his voice mail. She didn’t have any better luck getting in touch with Celty.

Izaya had warned her that her friends might be in trouble, and yet here she was, calmly spending time with Haruna Niekawa. She really wasn’t human, she told herself. And despite her self-loathing, she never even considered letting go of Saika, the root of her contradiction.

“So…did you come here to kill me?” she asked.

A woman sat on a bench in the shade of a tree, reading a magazine.

Kasane Kujiragi could sense the presence of other Saikas in the park aside from her own.

Two of them.

Based on the auras, she suspected that one of them was a Saika she branched off twenty years ago, and the other had been an offshoot of that one.

She had assumed at first that they’d tamed Saika’s voices enough to sense her presence here and were coming to her for some reason—but when she glanced over at them, she saw that they were sitting on a distant bench instead, having a conversation. They didn’t seem to sense her.

Anri Sonohara.

Kasane knew that much. The sight of the girl with the glasses gave her pause. Apparently, it was a simple coincidence that brought them to this park with her.

So what now?

A magazine full of information and mother-and-daughter Saikas.

Which would be easier, defeating them both and presenting them to Seitarou Yagiri or handing over her own Saika (or a newly branched one)? The latter would be far easier.

So Kujiragi turned the pages of her magazine, pretending not to notice anything.

…Except for the occasional cries of stray cats, which prompted her to glance around dispassionately.

“Did you come here to kill me?” Anri asked.

Haruna never lost her smile as she answered, “Yes, I did…or I wish I did. But no. I forgive you.”

“…?”

“The old me would never have forgiven you—or any woman that Takashi loved. But after you controlled me, I matured a little. So as the older, more worldly woman, I can make a special exception for you.”

Anri wasn’t sure what to make of this. There shouldn’t have been any question of forgiveness—Anri had never done anything to Haruna—but even setting that aside, there was something wrong with what she was saying.

For one thing, none of the hostility emanating toward Anri had abated in the least. It made no sense that she was talking about forgiving, when the fires in her eyes suggested murder.

It wasn’t even a matter of holding back anger. She didn’t look like she was doing her best to stifle hatred. She was simply smiling.

Unsure of how to process all this, Anri waited for her to continue.

“I still hate you. Enough to torture you to death if I had the chance. You stole Takashi’s heart from me and left. And you had the gall to reject him. I swore…what you did was unforgivable…”

She glanced away, seemingly out of shame. “But then I was exposed to Saika’s voice…the real voice you’ve been hearing all this time, and you conquered me…”

“Uh-huh…”

“I’m all screwed up now. I just wanted to slice Takashi, have him slice me, and mix us together in one sticky mess. I wanted us to be one in our endless love…but your mind defiled my body first. It ran rampant over me. But then I remembered: No matter how dirty I might be, no matter how much Takashi despises me, my love for him will never change. I can even turn my hatred for you into love.”

“? ??”

Umm…what exactly is she saying?

Anri wasn’t following. The more she talked, the more the confusion mounted.

It would’ve been easier if she’d just decided that it was pointless trying to understand someone with a few screws loose, but Anri considered Haruna Niekawa to be firmly within the range of “normal human beings.” In fact, she even respected her for her proactivity when it came to romance.

But respect and understanding were completely distinct concepts, so ultimately Anri was at a loss for how to respond to any of this.

“I overcame the power of your Saika all on my own, Anri Sonohara. But I only overpowered it. I might be maintaining my human self by a thread, but your Saika is still within me. It should have been separate from my Saika, but they’ve begun mixing within me.”

“Th-they have?”

Anri was the host of Saika, but she had never been sliced and turned into a “child.” It was possible to imprint one’s will and orders on any child of Saika’s blade edge, but the child’s thoughts did not get back to her unless by the child’s own mouth.

“Why are you acting like this is someone else’s problem? I want you to take responsibility. And then I can take responsibility for being stabbed by you.”

“…Huh?”

“I’m saying, let’s work together.”

Anri was not expecting this suggestion at all. She still had no idea how to process any of this.

“Mikado Ryuugamine and Masaomi Kida,” Haruna continued. “You’re interested in both of them, but you’re not cheating on one with the other.”

“…!”

The mention of her friends’ names brought a flash of color to Anri’s eyes. Not figuratively—literally. Her eyes flashed red.

“Don’t…don’t you dare mess with them!” she snapped.

Haruna chuckled mockingly. “Oh, I’m not going to do anything. Because the people important to you are also important to me.”

“What…do you mean by that?”

“I’m not like the people who got cut when Saika ran berserk. You cut me of your own conscious will, with the intent of controlling me.” Haruna leaned over, drawing her shoulder close to Anri’s, close enough to breathe on her, hot and trickling against the back of her neck, the voice almost sensual next to her ear. “Did you think…that it was only Saika’s voice that came flooding into me?”

“?!”

“I didn’t realize it at first, either. Not until I could overpower Saika’s voice. But…once I was able to regain control, I noticed that there was another emotion inside of me. For Mikado Ryuugamine and Masaomi Kida. Two boys I’ve barely even met, much less talked to.”

“No!” Anri turned to face Haruna directly at last.

The other girl’s face, nearly close enough for their noses to touch, was brimming with madness, but curiously, this imbued her with a kind of beauty. “It’s a good thing you felt hesitation about it. And it’s a very good thing your feelings for either of them hadn’t reached the level of love. There is no definition of love, but at the very least, I was relieved that your emotion was a far cry from what I felt for Takashi. If you had feelings for them that were the same as my love for Takashi, I might have had to split my body into three parts.”

“My…feelings?”

“Yes. It might not have been love or romance, but I could tell that you cared about them. Now those emotions have permeated me, along with Saika’s power. All I want is for you to take responsibility for doing that.”

Haruna took Anri’s hand and ran her fingers over the back of it. In her own way, she seemed to be testing Anri, using whatever methods came to her.

“I was forced to peer into your heart, you see. While it may have been inevitable, my attempt to kill you was the start of all of it, so I will take a step back from there.”

“But…how do you want me to do that?”

“What have I been saying this whole time? I’m a part of you now, and you’re a part of me.”

“!”

Something in those words brought back Saika’s voice to Anri’s mind.

“I’ve become just a little bit you, and you’re just a little bit me.”

Had she and Haruna Niekawa become connected at some point in their hearts, the way she and Saika had? As a test, she thought about Nasujima, but no affection of any kind surfaced.

Secretly relieved about that, she said, “I don’t think that’s true…”

“Regardless of what you think, that’s just how important human emotions are to me. So while I really, really loathe you, I’m willing to classify that as self-loathing instead.”

Haruna squeezed Anri’s hand, and pressed her forehead with her own. It was the act of two close friends, but that hatred never disappeared from the act.

“So I want your help in making my love for Takashi bloom.”

“Ohhh… Wait, what?!” Anri yelped.

“And in exchange, I’ll help you with your own romance,” Haruna continued, watching Anri’s expression for any changes as she trod further and further into the other girl’s heart. “How much do you know about what’s happening with Ryuugamine right now?”

“…!”

That question was a terrible blow to Anri’s mind, coming so soon after Izaya’s unsettling metaphor earlier in the day.

“Do you…know something about that?”

“Why, yes, of course. When you work running errands for Izaya, you hear those two names so often it gets obnoxious.”

“For Izaya Orihara?!”

“Ooh, I felt the anger there. Did something happen between you and him? And yet you were still polite enough to refer to him by his full name. I guess that does seem like you. Oh…I guess I’ve just been calling you Anri this whole time. Is that all right, just calling you by your first name? I mean, we’re friends already.”

It was a brazen thing to drop the term friends when she wasn’t even bothering to hide the murder in her voice. “If we get closer than we are now, I might even come up with a nickname for you. Oh, and you can call me Haruna, too. I know you’re younger than I am, but since we’re such good friends…”

“Haruna, please just tell me about Ryuugamine! What is Izaya Orihara going to do to him?! What’s he going to do to Ryuugamine and Kida?!” Anri demanded. It was telling of her personality that despite her panic, she immediately followed the other girl’s suggestion about her name.

Haruna’s eyes crinkled with delight at the mention of her name, but this did nothing to her malice. “How should I know what that sadist plans to do? It’s bound to be whatever the other person wants least at the moment he does it. And if you want to know what those boys are doing…it’s probably better to use Saika’s power and hear it from them yourself, rather than asking me.”

“But…”

“I still have plenty of children from Saika around the city. Some clever control of them should help you find who you’re looking for very quickly.”

“…”

Despite the concrete suggestion, Anri was unable to reply. It wasn’t that she’d never considered the idea. But even she couldn’t tell anymore if her hesitation was because she didn’t want to use Saika’s powers, or if she just didn’t want to intrude on the problem between Mikado and Masaomi.

This was why Haruna’s incredible ability to act and think positively made her so envious.

Haruna watched the other girl hang her head and said, “You know…you’ve changed a bit.”

“Huh…?”

“When you cut me, you said, ‘Saika gets lonely, so please love her back. It hurts to hear you talk about suppressing her or using her.’ And yet, I’ve just been talking about overpowering and using Saika, and you haven’t called me out for it… In fact, it’s just like you’ve been trying to hold back Saika.”

“…!”

She was right.

Anri always told herself that she was a parasite. That depending on Saika, depending on the rest of the world, was just how she survived and made her way through life.

But since the slasher incident, she’d had more and more interaction with Mikado, Masaomi, Celty, Shinra, even Aoba, and all of this had effected a clear change in her surroundings.

The influence of that created instability in her heart. Anri was aware of the change, but she had gone out of her way not to acknowledge it, afraid that the moment she did so, she would lose everything that made her who she was.

“…Hmm. You seem serious. That’s ironic. The moment I suggest that we should leech off each other, now you’re the one who’s trying to control and use Saika. Maybe I rubbed off on you…? No, that’s not true. Even as friends, that would never happen.”

It was strange that Haruna was harping on the word friends so often, but Anri was in such an extreme mental state she didn’t notice.

Haruna sighed and continued, “Well…how about this? How about I take your Saika for you?”

“M…my Saika?” Anri replied. For an instant, she wondered if that was even possible, then shut the idea completely out of her mind.

At the current moment, the only way she could help the boys was to use Saika, regardless of how she felt about that. And if the conversation with Izaya had taught her anything, it was that this was not the moment for her to lessen her options for action.

And a more fundamental question would be why she should ever hand over her original Saika to the woman who willfully engaged in a campaign of indiscriminate violence.

“…I don’t think I will.” Anri squeezed her fist, eyes gleaming.

“You won’t? I thought it was a good offer,” Haruna replied, playing the part of an innocent schoolgirl. She smoothly got to her feet, took a few steps toward the fountain, then turned back around.

Anri’s level of caution instantly shot up to maximum.

“!”

Haruna was merely smiling with her eyes closed—but suddenly there was a large knife in her hands.

“At the very least, I’m sure I could use it better than you can now,” she said, still smiling, eyes wide open. “Thank you for turning me down. Now I have a reason to fight you.”

Her eyes were bloodred and shining. She brandished her blade at Anri without a second thought.

“Even between friends, you sometimes have a fight to the death… It just happens!”

Seconds earlier

“…Meow,” Kujiragi murmured, her expression blank.

Her eyes were focused on a cat that had wandered up to her bench. Now others were poking their heads out of the nearby bushes in interest.

“…Meow. Meow-meow.”

Not only was she doing it without expression, she wasn’t even mimicking the wheedling tones of an actual cat, just saying the word meow in a deadpan monotone. It was like one of those computer-generated voices programmed to read your e-mail out loud.

No one aside from her could possibly know what was going through her mind as she did this, but it did suggest that she viewed cats with some fondness. She began rifling through her pockets for some kind of food to offer them.

She didn’t find anything and eventually realized that it probably wasn’t good to give food to stray cats anyway, so she gave up. But the one especially friendly kitten came forward anyway and rubbed its side against her ankles.

“Mrow?” The kitten pressed its tiny pad against her heel.

She crouched down and held out her hand to the cat, nearly at ground level.

If you want to pet a cat, slowly approach under its chin…

Just when she was about to make contact…

A sharp metallic clash rang through the park.

The cats, who had sharper hearing than humans and even dogs, flinched and turned to the source of the noise, then scattered into the bushes like a nest of baby spiders.

“…”

Kasane was left with her hand in the air and nothing to pet. She turned her head to observe, her expression unchanging.

And there she saw the owner of the original Saika, stopping one of two knives with a blade growing from her palm, while the other knife was pressed to her throat.

“That’s checkmate, Sonohara.”

“…”

“Consider the fact that I’m not stabbing a hole in your throat to be evidence that my offer wasn’t a lie.”

Haruna grinned devilishly, her eyes burning red. The bloodshot color was deeper than the usual “children”—perhaps an effect of being slashed by the original Saika twice—and it was focused around her pupils. In the light of day, it was almost impossible to distinguish from Anri’s original red eyes.

“You’re so nice. If you’d just attacked me without any warning at the start, it never would have reached this point,” Haruna continued.

“…I might have a reason to cut you but not to kill you.”

“Don’t glare at me that way.” Haruna chuckled. Like before, she tapped her forehead against Anri’s. “Why, it doesn’t even sound like you’re bluffing. As if you would kill me, even if you had a reason.”

“…!”

Anri felt her entire body tense. What had she been thinking that caused her to say what she did?

I don’t have a reason to kill you.

It was the sort of thing that a hit man or a trained killer bent on revenge would say to someone who wasn’t their ultimate target in an action-thriller movie.

If she did have a reason to kill, would she have actually done it? Would she have swung at the other girl’s throat from a distance with her Saika and cut it open? Would she have impaled her through the heart?

“You don’t still think you’re human, do you?” Izaya’s words repeated in her mind, stabbing at her heart once more.

Was he right? Was she no longer human? She couldn’t be certain.

A true nonhuman like Celty would probably hear out Haruna’s quip and boldly state, “You’re just playing with words.” Masaomi would joke something like, “Sure, I’ve got a reason to kill. How about my parents being murdered?”

But Anri Sonohara only wanted an answer that came from within herself.

Am I…am I really mixing…with Saika…?

If Saika’s words were true, was this a phenomenon she ought to accept? She couldn’t even answer that question. She had nothing but confusion.

Even sharper than the blade Haruna had pressed to her throat were the girl’s words, which tore at Anri’s heartstrings without any resistance—but it helped that Izaya had already scoured the places that were cut, to make it all the easier.

“…What’s wrong? It’s like the old you who cut me was an entirely different person,” Haruna said, realizing what was wrong at last. Her anticipatory smile vanished. “So what now? Will you beg for your life? Or will you briefly withdraw your blade and emit it from a different place to pierce my chest? Shall we have a contest to see which of us can slice the other faster?”

“I…I wish you would stop this.”

“What? Wait, are you actually going to beg?”

“No…I’m just not sure…what I should actually do now…”

Despite having a blade at her throat with utmost malice, Anri showed no sign of actual fear. But she wasn’t exactly implacable, either. From her side of the picture frame to the other, she asked weakly, “Do you…think I’m human? Or…do you think I’m a monster…?”

Haruna’s brows knitted. “You’re not human or monster. You’re a parasite… That’s what you said to me ages ago.”

“Oh… You’re right. I did say that. I’m sorry…,” Anri said, with a forlorn smile. Then she closed her eyes and withdrew the sword back into her body. “That’s right… In any case, I’m not human.”

“…?”

Haruna seemed to find Anri withdrawing all her defenses eerie and didn’t press her advantage.

“Then I choose to latch myself onto you, Haruna the human.”

“Oh? What’s with the change of heart? The way you’re acting so nice and obedient all of a sudden is frightening me.”

“I think that I’m not capable of processing things the way that a normal human would anymore. I can’t even tell if what I want to do is actually going to help Ryuugamine or Kida.”

So in that case, would it actually work out better if she just followed all of Haruna’s suggestions? Would Haruna even be misled by Saika’s words?

That’s wrong, Anri thought. If I let her call all the shots, things will go very bad, fast. The street-slashing incident will come back but all over the city, in a much more vicious way.

“Please…just tell me one thing.”

It was a decision made by the logical mind of no one else but Anri Sonohara, but after being consecutively shaken by Saika, Izaya, and Haruna over the course of a single day, it was nearly impossible for her to trust her own judgment.

“Would you be able to save Ryuugamine and Kida…?”

“…”

Haruna didn’t expect that question. She fell silent.

In fact, she found Anri’s sudden hesitation and timidity to be creepy. Wouldn’t it be better just to kill her and take Saika away? Or was this some kind of tactic?

She pulled her second knife away from Anri’s neck and pointed it at her face instead, hoping to find out Anri’s intentions. The tip stuck in her cheek, nearly ready to slice—

“The cats are running away.”

A third party’s voice entered the scene.

Apparently, it had been directed at Anri, whose mental grip was getting tenuous.

Somehow, there was a woman standing right next to them. She glanced at Haruna, then at Anri, and said, “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a mother and child in a battle to the death, but you’re really just being a bother. Could you please do that somewhere else?”

The new woman was unafraid to scold the two Saikas. While she and Anri were both quiet and wore glasses, the resemblance stopped there. She looked plain at first glance, but on closer examination, her skin was so smooth it was practically clear, perfect as porcelain.

The one black glove on just her right hand was a bit eccentric, but aside from that, she looked like some pretty secretary enjoying a lunch break on her workday.

“…Who are you?” Haruna glared, suspicious of the sudden interloper. “Can’t you tell we’re in the middle of something important?”

Without a moment’s hesitation, she thrust the knife that was not pointed at Anri’s face toward the new woman—not as a threat but an actual attack.

Anri held her breath, and then she realized what it was that struck her about the woman’s words.

Mother and child.

Why had she used that description to refer to two girls wearing school uniforms?

She came to the answer at the same moment that a dull metallic impact rang throughout the park.

“…Huh?”

It was Haruna Niekawa who gaped. The look on her face was much like the time that Anri first showed her the full form of Saika. She glanced back and forth from the woman to the thing.

“What…is that…? Who are you…?”

Something like metal fingernails had promptly jutted from the fingers of the woman’s left hand, catching Haruna’s knife blade. While it was not at all like a katana, each and every one of her nails was its own sharp little edge.

With her eyes blazing red, the woman answered, “Forgive my late introduction. I am Kasane Kujiragi. This is an original Saika blade.”

““!””

Both Anri and Haruna reacted to the woman’s simple revelation with shock.

Saika. She had definitely said it.

Before Anri could ask a follow-up question, Haruna leaped into action.

With her one knife still tangled with the woman’s nails, she used the other to swing at the target’s neck—but it was forced to a stop partway.

A silver wirelike cord shot from Kujiragi’s ankle and locked up Haruna’s body.

“Rrgh…aaah…!” She winced, gritting her teeth against the pain of the silver rope digging into her skin, but never stopped trying to swing her arm.

“I have no problem with resisting your mother. There are many reasons one might do so: rebellious phases, becoming independent. But I draw the line when it comes to open physical hostility,” Kujiragi said with clinical dispassion and grabbed part of the silver rope with her gloved hand.

Then she deftly wriggled the tip of the rope and caused it to press a switch hidden on her arm.

“~~~~!”

Haruna let out a silent shriek, her body jolting. After a few seconds of convulsing, Kujiragi instantly undid the rope, retracting it into her body. Her finger blades were gone, too. All that was left was Kujiragi, standing normally, and Haruna falling to her knees.

As a helpless bystander, Anri could only demand, “Wh-what did you do to Haruna?!”

“Merely an electric current through my glove. It is not a fatal flow, but I did run it through her entire body, so she won’t be able to control her muscles for a little while.”

“Aaa…au…”

Haruna writhed on the ground, just barely clinging to consciousness. She looked up at Kujiragi with eyes full of hatred and suspicion.

“Haruna, are you all right?!”

Anri crouched down and tried to lift Haruna’s body, but it was still trembling and twitching, and the process was too difficult.

“You should just let her lie there. She will recover soon.”

Anri looked up at the woman named Kujiragi again.

Who is she?

Why does she have Saika?

One of the “children” I don’t know…?

No. That can’t be right.

A normal “child” can’t do what she just did.

Is she…a magician?

…It can’t be.

Thoughts came and went in a wave.

Anri swallowed hard and tried to catch one of the countless questions swirling around in her mind to ask the woman. The best she could come up with was, “Um…why didn’t that electricity paralyze you, too?”

With no affect whatsoever, the woman said, “Oh, it did. My right arm and left leg are temporarily immobilized, but it is not a problem.”

But her right arm and left ankle, the places where she was connected to the silver rope, did not actually seem to be trembling.

There was clearly something wrong with this woman. She was not an ordinary human. That much was apparent.

“When you say Saika…what do you mean? Saika is inside me. Plus…what you just did didn’t look like Saika to me…”

Fingernail blades and steel ropes—it just didn’t seem to add up to Saika when the woman said that name.

But instead of answering Anri’s question, the woman said, “On the other hand, you don’t seem to be making full use of Saika at all.”

“Huh…?”

Kujiragi glanced down at her feet, where Haruna was still moaning. “Before I stepped in, you could have produced two Saikas and easily overcome this woman, it seemed to me.”

“Two…Saikas?”

“…Don’t tell me that you think Saika can only take the form of a single katana,” Kujiragi exclaimed without emotion. It put Anri in mind of something Saika said to her at the hospital this morning.

“It’s how your mother was able to use me better. She could do a number of things that you cannot.”

She had forced Saika’s voice down to where it didn’t bother her, but now she was curious about this.

Something I can’t do? Use two Saikas…? Dual wield…?

Were her nails and that rope…a different form of Saika?

But Saika is inside me… How does she have that?

She also noticed something else that bothered her: Just as had happened when she encountered Izaya, Saika’s endless chanting of love had vanished from her mind.

As if afraid of this Kujiragi woman or disgusted.

Kujiragi.

Who…is she?

And what was that about cats?

The more she thought, the more questions she had to answer, filling her head and dragging her deeper into confusion.

After watching Anri for a while, Kujiragi opened her mouth and said, “It was coincidence that I was in this park. I did not follow you here.”

“?”

“But I’m uncertain now. Perhaps meeting you so soon after gaining my own freedom is an act of fate,” Kujiragi said, unaware that it was the same cat-ear headband that had brought both of them to the same area. “And since you do not know how to utilize Saika, I have a question for you…”

She paused there to recollect her thoughts and finally asked Anri, “Do you have any interest in giving your Saika to me?”

Again, Anri was left nonplussed.

She wanted Saika. The request sounded just like Haruna’s a moment ago.

But this woman already had her own Saika. Anri had only seen it in her nails and rope, but the truth started to dawn on her as confusion faded.

There isn’t just one Saika.

Based on the remarkable nature of a cursed sword with a will of its own, Anri had always assumed that the “original” Saika she held was a one-of-a-kind thing.

But it might have been a mistake to apply her own common sense to something like a cursed sword in the first place. On the other hand, if her opponent’s weapon had been in the form of a katana, she might not have believed that was Saika at all.

It was the property that surpassed the laws of physics, the fact that she saw the fingernail blades appearing directly from the woman’s body that had convinced her it was Saika.

The problem was, this understanding broke the logic of the woman’s last statement.

“Why would you want it…? You already have your Saika, Miss Kujiragi.”

“Yes. I already have my own Saika.”

The next instant, a long blade grew from her left hand, until it fit in her palm in the form of a katana. It shone for an instant, then vanished back into her body.

There was no longer any room for doubt. Anri asked, “Then why…?”

“My home vehicle and my products are different things.”

“Products?” Anri repeated. Her eyes widened, but on the inside, this didn’t surprise her that much. The truth was, she already knew. Saika was an item that had ended up at her parents’ antiques shop as a product.

“Is Saika even something that can be bought and sold among different people?” she had to ask.

Kujiragi nodded. “That was my business.”

“?”

The past form of the statement confused Anri.

Kujiragi realized what she’d done and looked away for a moment. “Pardon me. I’m trying to decide if I should continue that business at all. But the last product for which I am under contract is Saika.”

“?!”

Saika, a product to be sold. So somebody actually…wants this thing?

“At worst, I will deliver my own Saika as a product, so I am not forced to buy or take your Saika from you, but…”

The blithe way she mentioned taking it away was alarming. Kujiragi looked into Anri’s eyes and continued, “Based on my observation, you do not control Saika the way I do, but you also haven’t been controlled by it, like past owners. Coexistence is a very rare case, but if you do not need that Saika, I am willing to buy it from you.”

At last, Haruna began to rise unsteadily. She glared at Kujiragi with pure hatred, her smile completely gone. “What kind…of nonsense are you talking…?”

“Are you all right? I wouldn’t force yourself to get up just yet.”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, talking that way…for an assailant… But whatever. More importantly, if anyone gets Anri’s Saika, it’ll be me. Who do you even think you are? You just show up in the middle of our conversation, then say you want Saika. You little cat burglar.”

“Cat burglar…” Kujiragi seemed to think this over and, without changing expression, said, “I like that.”

“You like what?”

Haruna was suspicious of her, and Anri was paralyzed with uncertainty.

The grown woman thought for a bit, came to her own conclusion, and told the girls, “Well, let’s see… In order to make this a proper business deal, there are many things I will have to explain in detail. On the other hand, stealing it creates quite a hassle for me, so I want to avoid that option.”

Then she reached down to pick up the magazine she’d dropped in the earlier bout with Haruna and flipped through its pages. “I’d like to tell you about Saika at a nearby café. Do you think I could borrow some more of your time?”

Anri and Haruna looked at each other. Based on what had already happened, they expected the scene to head into a sword fight, resolution or no, but this suggestion had thrown them for a loop.

In contrast, Kujiragi never broke her expression or made one in the first place.

“Even setting business aside… Don’t you want to know more about Saika?”

At that point, there was no way Anri could reject the offer.

Tokyo—parking garage

“Did I hear that wrong? Did you just ask if I preferred getting taken over or crushed?” Masaomi Kida asked.

Chikage Rokujou answered, “Yeah, I did.”

A sudden surge of tension and hostility charged through the five or so Yellow Scarves present.

Chikage recognized that the situation had changed between them but detected that their leader still wanted to hear him out, so he shrugged and said, “Hang on. Masaomi Kida, right? Listen, I understand I’m being unreasonable, too. When a guy walks up and says to choose between getting destroyed and getting taken over, the obvious conclusion is that he’s picking a fight with you.”

“…Is there any other conclusion I’m supposed to draw from this?”

“Hey, it could be a friendly buyout, right? What do they call that in stocks? A…white something?”

“You mean a white knight?”

“Yeah, that’s it.” Chikage nodded. “I’ll just be straight up with you: Wanna work for me? That’s the deal.”

“Well, that patronizing offer certainly fits the suspicion that you’re picking a fight.”

“Yeah, that’s right. I’m not a white knight. I came here to pick a fight,” he announced, hiding nothing.

Anger flooded the faces of the Yellow Scarves. They sensed they were being mocked.

“Hey, ease up, guys,” Chikage responded. “You know Kadota, by the way? From the Dollars.”

“…Well, yeah.”

The mention of Kadota’s name turned Masaomi’s anger into bewilderment. He had seen Mikado and Chikage talking, but he didn’t see the fight between Kadota and Chikage or how it ended.

So they fought one-on-one, I guess? Whatever happened with that…?

He didn’t need to ask, because Chikage promptly said, “See, Kadota really whooped my ass. I said I’d withdraw from Ikebukuro for now, and that settled the matter. But now I hear he’s been in an accident. So I got curious and decided to do some research of my own.”

Strictly speaking, he had seen the news about a dead body at the train station, sent the girls back home just to be safe, then found himself with lots of extra time to wander the town.

“I got in touch with a recent friend from around here, and whaddaya know? Turns out the Yellow Scarves and Dollars are in the midst of high tensions.”

He leaned against a nearby light pole and adopted a very annoyed expression. “You guys got a bad rep. From what I hear, you had the run of the area before we showed up. Hittin’ people up for money, making everyone miserable.”

He was probably talking about the period up to half a year ago, when Horada’s group had been calling the shots.

“I heard that Kadota and his folks knocked you out then. So I was wondering if you ran over him outta revenge. I asked around and learned about this place.”

“It’s not what you think!” one of the members protested. “It wasn’t Shogun’s fault things were bad back then!”

“Stop it,” Masaomi commanded. Then he said quietly, “So you’re gonna destroy us, because we look suspicious? Why would you stick up for Kadota like that?”

“Hey, I didn’t say for sure I was gonna destroy you. That’s why I keep throwing out the option of working for me, too. Besides, I’m not doing this out of loyalty to the guy or anything. But I do owe those folks for saving my girl Non. I figured I’d help them search for the ones who did it.”

Then Chikage sighed, and the lackadaisical lilt to his expression vanished. “And now it’s gotten me wrapped up in a buncha nonsense, too.”

“?”

“You know about this faction within the Dollars that’s carrying out an internal purge or whatever?”

“…!”

Mikado.

Masaomi didn’t even need to ask. He was talking about the boy who was the very reason Masaomi was here. Mikado Ryuugamine was the one standing atop the faction Chikage was describing.

“From what I hear, they’re exactly like a group of folks back in the spring who kicked my boys’ asses and lit their bikes on fire. All the details match.”

A chill ran down Masaomi’s back.

He was acting as leader of the Yellow Scarves and preparing for the possibility of war with Mikado, and possibly the Dollars, as a means of stopping his friend.

But now the possibility of a separate group displaying antagonism toward Mikado made him indescribably worried. This man and Toramaru were on a different level from the kind of thugs who might swear vengeance after a group purge or stragglers like Horada’s circle.

Masaomi hid that unease beneath his exterior and said, “I see. And you want to use the Yellow Scarves to light a fire under those people.”

“I’m glad you’re so quick on the uptake,” Chikage said, followed by something that gouged at Masaomi’s heart even further. “The part where it gets complicated is they’re apparently leftovers from some gang called the Blue Squares, but from what I hear, most of the holdovers from the Blue Squares went to the Yellow Scarves. And the Yellow Scarves apparently destroyed the Blue Squares back in the day… The twists and turns just keep coming.”

“…”

It was all true. Masaomi had no response.

He hadn’t even been able to tell that a number of old Blue Squares had infiltrated his gang, yet he had to accept that complication and forge on as the leader of the group.

But Chikage had no idea about any of that. He stared up at the sky and continued, “I just don’t get all the complicated details. I wanted to make things simple.”

“?”

“This is a place where I should be making things right with the entire Toramaru team, but I’m just here by myself now. I haven’t told the boys a thing, and I don’t intend to until I’ve caught these guys by the tail. Do you know what this means?”

The question had been posed. Masaomi had a general idea of what he meant, but he chose to wait rather than answer.

Chikage didn’t seem to expect one, either. After a few seconds, he continued, “It means this. If you decide to gang up on me now and beat the shit outta me, you won’t be advertising your hostility to Toramaru as a group.”

In a sense, this action was practically suicide.

Given that he came to pick a fight with them, the only possibility that he might walk away unscathed was if he impressed upon his opponents the retribution they might face from the fearsome Toramaru gang. And Chikage had just abandoned that weapon.

On the other hand, Masaomi and his friends were neither scummy nor stupid enough to decide to kick the crap out of him.

Even before the matter of if he deserved it or not, none of them was going to take his statements at face value. If he was lying, then the moment they attacked him, he could use that as a pretext to bring his entire organization here for “justified payback,” and strike back.

But from what I saw when he was talking to Mikado, he doesn’t seem like the sort to pull bullshit like that, Masaomi suspected.

“Look, this is just one of those things,” Chikage continued. “I wish I could act like some cool manga character and say, ‘Hey, let’s be like brothers.’ But honestly, I’m not reckless enough to do that with some guys I don’t really know that well. So I figured, since you guys have a bad reputation already, I could try to force you to hear me out.”

And as for things that Masaomi didn’t know about the other man, Toramaru had actually started with Chikage beating up a motorcycle gang member who tried to mess with his girlfriend. As a matter of fact, he had double-digit girlfriends, so between all the girls, family members, and friends who might get into trouble and need help, he was constantly destroying small-time gangs of ruffians in his vicinity.

Finally, for the dirt-simple reason of “If I’m going to let them go afterward, why don’t I just keep them all in check?” he formed the gang called Toramaru.

And because he cared for the people he associated with, he attracted not just street punks who followed the might makes right of hierarchy but others drawn to his charismatic personality.

So for Chikage’s part, he was considering simply absorbing the Yellow Scarves in the way he understood best. It was just that, without the justification of getting revenge for a girlfriend, he had only his own selfish reasons to motivate him and thus felt a bit apologetic about it.

“The thing is, I’m planning to use you guys for my own ends, but I have no intention of helping you out in return. So if I came to you and said, ‘Let’s be blood brothers,’ I could never face my honeys again for as long as I live. Can we just make this a simple fight and get on with it?”

“…Then what are we supposed to get out of this?”

“Oh, there’s something in it for you,” Chikage said, flashing them a confident smile. “If I lose, I’ll be your muscle.”

“…Pardon?”

“I’ll be your shock trooper, helping you out with the fight against this weird group within the Dollars. I mean, win or lose, I’m gonna be fighting the Dollars in the end, alongside you Yellow Scarves.”

The officers of the group reacted to Chikage’s plan by sharing a look. Masaomi’s face pulled into a tired, annoyed grin. “Um…are you stupid, man?”

“I get that question a lot.”

“Why would we fight, then? Why don’t you just help us out?”

“I would’ve considered that if you had a better reputation,” he admitted and started doing squats to loosen up his knees.

“Oh, man, this guy’s rarin’ to fight.”

“Listen, if none of you want to get hurt, that’s fine. Just give me whatever info you have on the Dollars. Then I’ll just go over there myself.”

“Sounds perfect. So you’re going to annihilate them for us and let us keep our hands clean?” Masaomi quipped, looking up at the sky with a grin. Then he turned back to the other boys behind him. “Sorry, guys. Don’t get involved with this.”

“Uh…Shogun, what’s up?” wondered his friends. Masaomi faced Chikage again.

Man… How did it come to this anyway?

Well, I guess it’s my fault, he thought, reflecting on his past.

As he rolled and loosened his neck, Masaomi made his offer to Chikage. “I’ll take you up on that fight. And no, we’re not gonna do five or six against one.”

“Sh-Shogun!” one of his friends exclaimed.

“You don’t have a problem with that, do you? I’d appreciate it—fewer people injured to worry about.” He took a step closer to Chikage.

“…Ha! I like you. You don’t look that serious, but you’re actually pretty old-school, huh?”

“Look who’s talking,” Masaomi shot back.

Chikage winced and rearranged his hat. “See, maybe relying on the rumor around town ain’t the way to go, after all. I think I do like you. Want me to help you for free?”

“No. I’m gonna win and force you to be our muscle.” Masaomi steadied his breathing. “I don’t want you going overboard and wiping them all out, either. Once you’re our muscle, you’ll have to listen to what I tell you and obey.”

For being ready for an imminent fight, Masaomi’s face betrayed no worry or panic. He was as calm as if having a nice little chat as he stared into the face he was about to smash.

Then he swore under his breath, “If only you’d knocked out Mikado back then…”

Back then being the moment that Mikado declared he was the leader of the Dollars. If Chikage had just settled his score with Mikado then, it might never have come to this.

Just one simple punch. If this man had taken Mikado at his word, things wouldn’t have gotten so screwed up. The three of them with Anri could have been friends again, laughing together like old times.

No. Stop thinking about that.

He let his hatred from watching that entire scene start to finish dissipate into thin air. Chikage had done nothing wrong then. If anyone was worthy of blame, it was himself for not reaching out to Mikado when he was crumbling.

“Huh? You say something?”

“No. Just misplaced anger.”

“What?” Chikage wondered, his brow darkening.

“I’ll tell you the whole story once we’ve settled all this,” Masaomi said blithely.

“Okay. Guess I better make sure not to break your jaw, so you can still talk after this.”

“And I’ll guarantee that I don’t rupture your eardrums.”

They laughed at their little joke. Then, as Masaomi approached, Chikage lifted his foot to close the gap—and his opponent leaped into motion.

“!”

Caught in the midst of his action, Chikage had to reorient himself from movement to defense. Directly in front of him, Masaomi leaped again, pushing himself to the side. His foot landed on, then pushed off a parked car bumper and into the air.

“Ooh…”

Chikage marveled at his feline, predatorial movement. In the span of less than a second, while he was caught between the options of defending and evading, the toe of Masaomi’s shoe slammed into Chikage’s face.

Got him!

It was a solid hit. Masaomi hadn’t expected it to work so smoothly, but catching him off-balance with that surprise charge had paid off.

He was certain of victory. It was almost too easy.

Snag.

And then a hand grabbed his ankle where it still hung in the air.

Huh?

No sooner did the surprise run through his mind than he realized it was the reeling Chikage who had grabbed him. And despite the slight dent in the bridge of his nose, Chikage’s mouth was twisted into a smile.

That didn’t knock him out…

He felt a tug on his captured ankle and a terrifying chill that ran through his entire being.

The next moment, Masaomi’s body swung forcefully toward a pillar, to the sound of the Yellow Scarves’ exclamations.

But before he hit the surface, Masaomi recovered his balance and “landed” on the side of the pillar. Then he turned his body ninety degrees so it wasn’t parallel with the floor anymore and hit the ground.

“Man, if that wasn’t enough to knock you out, how tough are… Whoa!”

In the process of raising his head, he had to dart to the side—because the soles of both of Chikage’s feet were rushing toward him.

Masaomi instantly slid away, and Chikage’s feet passed through the space where he’d just been, smashing into the pillar. It shook with the impact, knocking dust loose from the light overhead.

“Holy crap, man. I’d have died if I took that.” Masaomi yelped, even as he rushed back toward Chikage.

He launched a high kick at his opponent’s temple as the older man spun, but Chikage just barely dodged it, swinging a fist in return—only to take a second reverse kick, with full rotation, right into his solar plexus.

“Hrgh…”

Chikage’s grunt told Masaomi he had gained the advantage for sure this time—but a grunt was all he got. His opponent continued to attack, his fist bearing down on Masaomi’s back.

But Masaomi reacted quickly, launching another kick as a counter to the other guy’s punch.

There was a loud smack—and the Yellow Scarves who had been watching the scene dumbfounded finally caught up to what was happening.

The heads of the Yellow Scarves and Toramaru had only initiated the opening stage of a devastating fight.

Raira General Hospital—interior café

“…And that is the reason that you and I have the same Saika. Do you have any questions?”

It was a sight that would give vastly different impressions to those who understood the context and those who didn’t.

An intellectual-looking woman was giving two high school students a lecture, using a tablet PC. If one didn’t know better, it would look like she was trying to sign them up for some kind of insurance.

But with full context, it was not only eerie but downright ghastly.

After all, this was two different women with full Saikas infused into them, and a child Saika transferred through a cut, who later broke free and regained control—all sitting at the same table.

“No…I’m fine. I get the gist of it.”

“…”

Despite her consternation, Anri accepted the explanation of “branching” and the revelation that Kujiragi’s employer had once sold the very Saika that was inside of Anri now. Haruna said nothing, wearing her murderous smile the whole time. Her wrath was fixated on both Anri and Kujiragi now.

The fact that Haruna might erupt into violence at any time kept Anri’s nerves taut, but Kujiragi went ahead and gave them her speech on Saika, her tone all business.

Kujiragi did not touch upon the identity of Jinnai Yodogiri at all. She only gave them information about Saika and her own business handling it. It wasn’t that she felt any need to hide this; she simply judged there was no need to point it out.

“Branching, huh…?” Haruna muttered, wearing that sick smile of hers. “If you can do that, could you give one to me, too?” she asked Kujiragi.

“Based on previous transactions, a single Saika would command 6.25 million yen. And because of the nature of the product, I will only sell it to trusted customers.” It was the line that Jinnai Yodogiri had taught her to say whenever she had to explain these things.

Haruna couldn’t tell if 6.25 million yen was expensive or cheap.

For a supernatural sword outside of the bounds of all common knowledge about the world, it seemed so pedestrian as to be nearly free, but the hurdle to becoming a “trusted customer” was probably exorbitantly high.

In any case, it wasn’t the kind of money any teenage girl could command. But if money was all it took, Haruna could just use her Saika to cut some rich person and get them to pay for it.

“At present, a client who meets those two conditions desires to have Saika. I wish to avoid branching, because as more and more Saikas spread throughout the world, their price as a product goes down.”

With that out of the way, Kujiragi asked, “Anri Sonohara, I wish to confer with you again. Are you certain you’re not willing to part with your item?”

“…Is that even possible? Can you…take Saika out of my body…?”

“If you want to let go of it…if you really want to be rid of it, you could just throw it away somewhere. But if you do give it to me, I am prepared to offer you some amount of money as part of the deal. Please consider the offer.”

She made it sound so easy. Anri had to think.

Give up Saika.

She’d never considered the idea. Could she even live without Saika at this point? Kujiragi’s offer filled her with anxiety and uncertainty.

Then Haruna stepped in. “If you’re going to sell it to this woman, give it to me. I could find a better use for it. And I’ll also cut Ryuugamine and Kida with it and make them fall in love with you.”

“Stop that!” Anri pleaded, not a shout but forceful all the same. “I still think it’s just…wrong to use Saika that way.”

“Oh? How is it wrong?”

“Once you’ve cut a person with Saika…they’re not the same as before. Once Saika’s power has made them a slave, they’re not the person you like anymore, they’re something else…in my opinion.”

“So it’s a difference of values,” Haruna said, neither agreeing or disagreeing. Then she turned her darkening, murderous smile to Kujiragi. “And what’s your opinion, Miss Kujiragi?”

Kujiragi sipped her cooling coffee and spoke honestly. “It’s case by case. Saika’s control allows for the user to manipulate the subject. For example…if you cut someone and made them do something, then never activated that control again, that victim would most likely live out the entire rest of their life without ever realizing that Saika’s curse was within them. It might be an extreme step to label such a person as someone else entirely.”

“But—” Anri protested.

Kujiragi cut her off with an explanation that was much more fluid than the previous. “If you want something to happen, consider that using Saika’s power is one available method. The same way that men and women utilize looks, finances, intelligence, and courage in matters of romance. You ought to view Saika as one of your valuable assets.”

“My…assets?”

“If you think it’s unfair to use something others don’t have, that would mean that anyone who has used considerable good looks, smarts, or winning personality as a means to capture the affection of another is also cheating. I think you should view Saika’s power in that light. It may be trite to say, but it is up to the wielder of a power to decide how they should use it,” Kujiragi finished, her affect completely flat the whole time.

Anri considered this for a time, then shook her head. “But…I still think…Saika’s power is not the same as a human one. It’s not the kind of thing you can achieve by working for it…”

“Because it’s not a human power, it shouldn’t be used for love?”

“…Someone recently told me that I wasn’t human. And I’ve been uncertain since then. Maybe I’m really not human anymore. And if so, maybe I don’t have the right to fall in love like a normal person and enjoy normal happiness…,” Anri murmured ruefully.

She knew the Headless Rider, who was very much not human and yet loved a human man. But she also knew that Celty, while inhuman, had the most human heart she’d ever seen. By comparison, Anri looked human, but her heart only got further and further from the mark. This was the rationale behind her statement.

“Does that also apply to me?” Kujiragi asked, without emotion.

“Huh…? Oh!” Anri gasped.

As she’d just explained, Kujiragi owned a Saika, and everything Anri said about herself could be construed as referring to her, too.

“I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that…,” she stammered, bowing.

Kujiragi’s eyes briefly dipped toward the floor. “Miss Sonohara, even if you are not human, as you claim, the simple act of giving up Saika would make your body human again. I’m not certain what standard you are using to judge a ‘proper’ human heart, but at the very least, Saika would no longer complicate your thoughts.”

“I—I see.”

Anri felt very awkward. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t.

Huh? That’s strange…

This whole time, I thought she never showed any emotion…

Yes, her face hadn’t changed in the least.

But something deeper than the surface—in her glances, actions, breathing—gave Anri just the slightest hint of some mental shifting.

For a moment, Anri wondered if it was anger at being treated like a monster—but while it was indistinct, it struck her as something more like sadness.

“You can go back to being human just by giving up Saika. But…”

At that moment, time stopped for Anri and Haruna.

An abnormal aura was exuding from the woman sitting across the table from them.

“You cannot give up your flesh and blood.”

“…!” “?!”

The two girls froze, trying to ascertain the source of the feeling.

There was no change in any of the other people in the room.

Why was it just them?

The reason became imminently clear.

The words of Saika’s curse had stopped inside of them—and then the rustling began.

Haruna’s roiling curses, as the child, were nowhere near as intense as Anri’s. But even still, she trembled at how the quiet curse began to wail in disgust.

What is this…?

Anri’s inner voice was dozens of times more intense than Haruna’s. It made her a bit dizzy.

Not only did Saika’s curse spill into her eyes and turn them a vivid red, it even began to add a pinkish film to her vision. Against that filter of red light, the woman across from her appeared as a black shadow—from which she could see countless tiny black wings extending and writhing.

“…Could you see anything?” Kujiragi asked, and the palpitations of Saika that had racked the girls vanished entirely.

Their vision, the room, and Kujiragi across from them were all completely normal, as though nothing had just happened.

Anri and Haruna each glanced toward the other, just far enough to notice the sweat dripping from their faces.

Kujiragi ignored their reaction and continued, “Are you saying that, regardless of Saika, someone born as not exactly human does not have even the right to live like a human, to love like a human, to enjoy life like a human? Is that your point?”

“What…what are you…?” Anri gulped.

The answer was, as usual, emotionless. “I cannot answer that question, biologically speaking. But from a social standpoint, I can give you a very precise response.”

“…?”

“I’m what is commonly known as a villain.”

It was so abrupt, so simple, so forceful.

An objective answer, delivered with no guilt or mocking delight, just fact.

“Human or monster, if my past actions were ever revealed to the world in full detail, a good eighty percent of Japan would find me to be a sinner deserving of judgment.”

“…Where did you get that number?” Haruna snarked, but Kujiragi gave her a serious answer.

“From intuition based on experience. But whether it is a hundred percent or ten does not matter to me. I’ve broken a number of laws, and if it is proven and I am arrested, I will break out of captivity. If that does not define me as a villain, this country would have long ago become either a lawless land or the Garden of Eden.”

“Break out…?”

“Even without Saika, I have enough innate strength that I could reliably escape on my own. I will not tell you more concrete details than that, but suffice it to say that I am that sort of person,” Kujiragi said, as dispassionately as though reading a form letter aloud. “One day, my life will likely come to a miserable and hideous end at the hands of some entity proclaiming itself an arbiter of justice, or a person seeking vengeance for my past deeds. I deserve to be harmed, defiled, and tortured with my pleas unheard. I am prepared to suffer this, but I do my utmost to delay that eventual day as long as I can and, ignoring the feelings of any of my victims, to enjoy the present.”

With her black coffee half-gone, Kujiragi added milk and sugar. She stirred it with her teaspoon, the lukewarm liquid not dissolving the grains of sugar entirely. All the while, she kept her eyes directly on Anri.

“Miss Sonohara, you might not be an arbiter of justice, but at the very least, you have a sense of kindness toward others. That makes you different from me. You ought to be in the sunlight at all times, not staying here and speaking with villains like me. As for Miss Niekawa, I suppose it would depend on the outcome of the love you speak of,” she murmured, completing the report of her observations.

Stunned, Anri tried to protest. “I…I’m not that special. I can’t live on my own…so I have no choice but to leech off others and Saika… I’m just a parasite. If I seem like I’m considerate of others…it’s only because I’m ultimately concerned about myself and how I might be affected.”

“That is fine. The majority of humanity is a parasite that feeds off something else. And if someone is allowing you to live off them for a long period of time, it likely means that they are receiving something from you in return,” Kujiragi said, which was certainly one way to respond to a girl resignedly calling herself a parasite. “That is no longer parasitism. It is symbiosis. There is no need for you to feel guilty about this.”

They were kind words meant to make Anri feel better, but she said them in the monotone of someone reading another person’s words out of a book.

“No matter how pure Saika’s love for humanity is, it is still a sword that corrupts the world of man. That is a fact, and I do not intend to deny it.”

“…”

“In the same way, by your ethical standards, I would undoubtedly fall under the category of evil.”

Anri wondered what she was trying to say.

The answer: “Gentle souls like yours are not meant to possess Saika. In conclusion, I feel that it would be in the best interest of both sides for you to transfer the sword to me.”

“!”

“There are two ways to handle Saika in a form other than a katana. Either control it entirely, like me, and use it as a slave, or do the opposite and open your entirety to Saika. In the former case, you can reshape the blade into any shape, but Saika will no longer tell you how to fight. In the latter case, you can transform, but your fighting style will be entirely determined by Saika.”

It seemed as though she might continue at greater and greater length explaining the finer details of Saika. Instead, she gazed at Anri and described the girl’s inner nature as she saw it.

“You are not capable of either, I suspect. You are kind. And because you are kind, you hold Saika in, so as not to hurt others. Meanwhile, you are also kind to Saika. So you cannot master it completely and use it as a slave. You are indeed traveling the path of symbiosis.”

“…”

“Ultimately, this will put you in a corner. You will have all this power and continually sacrifice yourself not to use it.”

She closed her mouth for just a moment, giving Anri a piercing gaze.

“Saints like you are not meant to have Saika.”

Anri clenched her fists, preparing to say something in return.

But Haruna suddenly chuckled.

“…Haruna?”

The other girl smiled with great delight. “She’s stupid, isn’t she, Sonohara?”

“Huh?”

Haruna favored Anri and Kujiragi with a nasty, sticky smile.

“You’re going to be killed by someone out for revenge? If that’s any moment, don’t you think it would be now?”

“…”

Kujiragi was silent. She understood what Haruna meant.

Anri did not, however, and was going to ask—when the other girl went on.

“Miss Kujiragi…don’t you know that the Saika you sold is the reason that Anri’s parents are dead?”

For a brief moment, Anri felt that her personal sense of time had stopped.

Then, after several seconds, she detected that her knees had begun trembling.

But that did not matter to her now.

She was under a vast shock and incapable of processing such phenomena further.

One of the people responsible for her parents’ death was right before her.

If Kujiragi had never unleashed Saika upon the world, she might be leading a very different life right now.

But that was not what shocked her. It was that, until Haruna pointed it out, the issue of her parents had never even occurred to her.

Were they nothing but a relic of the past in her mind by now?

And in the process of trying to reclaim and reshape her stunned psyche, Anri came to a conclusion. But the past that it caused her to remember made her eyes brim with even greater sadness.

“No…”

“Huh?”

“You’re wrong, Haruna. I think…it’s thanks to Saika that I’m here right now.”

“…What…are you saying?” Haruna asked, smiling and perplexed.

“If there had been no Saika…my father would have killed me.”

She had dredged up her awful memories of what happened five years ago.

The sensation of her own father strangling her, as fresh as if it happened yesterday. If her mother hadn’t cut off his head with Saika…

She shook her head to dispel the horrid recollection and said to Kujiragi, “I’m sorry…I still can’t let Saika go yet.”

“…I see.”

“I still…haven’t made it up to Saika in any way… So I can’t just run away from it all on my own,” Anri said, piecing together the strength of her will as she spoke. In some way, putting the idea into words was helping her reach this determination.

“Plus…I have a promise to fulfill, to tell some people I care for very much about Saika. So until then, I want to remain who I was last year.”

Kujiragi took this in impassively, staring into Anri’s face, then exhaled. “Very well. Please contact me if you change your mind.”

Then she took a blank business card and a pen from her shirt pocket, wrote down a phone number, and gave it to Anri.

“What, you’re not going to give me your card?”

“I have no reason to do business with you at the moment, Miss Niekawa,” she declared.

Haruna cackled to herself, getting to her feet. “I might not be able to do business with you, but I can rob you. Wouldn’t it be fun if I ripped that Saika you’ve got right out of you?”

“Do you wish to be electrocuted again?”

“If you think that’s going to work on me twice, you’re much less capable than you seem.”

An ugly, sludgy haze hung in the air between Haruna and Kujiragi. Since Kujiragi never showed any emotion of any kind, that meant it was entirely coming from Haruna.

“P-please stop this, Haruna…,” Anri protested, but the other girl’s eyes were already filling with blood.

People at other tables noticed something was happening and started glancing over at the trio. Neither Haruna nor Kujiragi paid them any mind.

Kujiragi finished her coffee and quietly set the cup down.

“I’m ready whenever you are.”

Without changing her expression, the aura around her started getting darker, denser. And then—

“Oh, there she is. Anri! Anri! Big, big news!”

A voice tore through the café and the unfolding scene within.

“Karisawa?”

“Hey, I saw your message. Sold out, huh? Too bad.”

Before she came here, Anri had texted Karisawa to tell her the cat-ear headbands were sold out and that she would be meeting with some people here for a bit before she returned to the others.

“So these are your friends, huh? Wait. Huh? I thought you said it was sold out?”

She was reaching for the bag from the cosplay store. Since the furry cat-themed paraphernalia was slightly visible through the familiar bag, Karisawa assumed it was Anri’s and reached for it.

Another hand shot in and stopped her. “I’m sorry. That belongs to me.”

“Huh? Oh! I’m so sorry!” Karisawa said, blushing. But when she saw Kujiragi’s face, she exclaimed, “Wow! You’re so beautiful! Er, sorry to shout. Do you mind if I ask…do you cosplay?”

Karisawa had a way with asking extremely forward questions to complete strangers. Surely, when she saw the pretty woman with flawless skin in possession of a cat-ear headband, she must have assumed Kujiragi was a kindred spirit.

“…Cosplay? I am interested, but I have no experience,” Kujiragi admitted. With the way she never showed any emotion, it came off as a polite but firm rejection, but the only words Karisawa registered were I am interested.

“If you’re interested, why don’t you join our club? We’d be happy to welcome any friends of Anri’s!”

“No, I…”

“We’ve got about 270 highly customizable costumes, and we can size them for you, too! We can get you everything from miko priestesses to slutty fallen angel maids!”

With no one around to put the brakes on her, Karisawa’s excited pitch went on and on. “Oooh! And she looks like she could do a mean cosplay, too! Geez, Anri, you should have introduced me to these cuties earlier! I could totally see you in a themed trio with them!”

She was agitated enough that if Yumasaki were there, he’d say, “Karisawa, if they’re normies, you’re going to make them give poor Anri the most exasperated reaction!” The other customers around them figured it was just a conversation about manga or something, put the incident with the original trio out of their minds, and returned to their food and chat.

Haruna had been taken aback by the sudden entrance at first, then turned back to the table, ready to ignore the rest of it and attack Kujiragi. But…

“Do you have Gothic Lolita outfits, too?”

“Of course! We can get you over a dozen adult Goth outfits to try on!”

“And idol costumes?”

“I’ve got a number of handmade pieces based on Ruri Hijiribe outfits!” Karisawa reassured her, with a hearty thumbs-up.

“…Here is my contact information. Please tell me the number for your club. I will contact you within the next few days.”

Like she did with Anri, Kujiragi jotted down her number on a blank business card.

““What?!””

Both Anri and Haruna were shocked by this. They stared at her, wide-eyed. But as usual, Kujiragi had no expression, making it impossible to detect what she was up to.

The only giveaway was that Anri’s faint detection of her mental state, when she’d gotten a whiff of sadness earlier, was now indicating what might have been a tinge of delight.

Haruna just stared at the exchange, dumbfounded, and sighed at the end.

“…I’ve lost interest. I’m going home. Maybe something’s finally changed by now.” Then she grabbed Anri’s phone and pulled out her own, and with a device in each hand, she performed a few operations. “There. Now we have each other as a contact. I’ll get in touch tomorrow, and we can meet up again.”

She never let go of her murderous hatred of Anri, but she was smiling as she left.

As though there was nothing in her future but bright, bright hope.

“Umm… So was that girl just, like, not interested in anime at all? I guess it was mean of me to invite her, too… I’m sorry if she acts weird around you after this, Anri,” said Karisawa sadly, much more under control now that she’d exchanged information with Kujiragi and the group was smaller.

“Oh, uhm, actually…thank you. You saved me.”

“?”

This threw Karisawa for a loop, who wasn’t expecting to be thanked. Then Anri asked, “Um, what brought you here…?”

“Oh, right! I got so excited I completely forgot!” the other girl exclaimed, her face breaking into a huge smile. Perhaps her earlier moment of excitement had been buoyed by whatever had her in a good mood already.

“Listen, listen. Dotachin’s awake again, and they say we can see him in person tomorrow!”

Tokyo—parking garage

A bit earlier in time, when it still wasn’t clear if Kadota would regain consciousness, Masaomi and Chikage were fighting on the roof of the parking garage.

Based on the present arrangement, it would seem that Masaomi had the advantage. He had landed several clean hits and continually avoided Chikage’s attacks by razor-thin margins.

But their expressions told a story just the opposite.

Despite blasting his opponent with many devastating blows, Masaomi didn’t seem to be doing any lasting damage. And each time the man’s strikes rushed past his head, Masaomi felt like his very life was being whittled away.

Holy crap. I’m not hurting him at all, and I feel like even a scratch from him is going to make me woozy.

Masaomi wasn’t blessed with stature. He wasn’t born tall, and he didn’t have a muscular frame.

But he’d been used to scrapping since he was a kid, throwing knees and elbows in unpredictable ways on the road to beating opponents who were much larger than he was.

None of the Yellow Scarves could beat him in a fight, and outside of complete freaks of nature like Shizuo Heiwajima, he was definitely one of the tougher guys around.

But Chikage Rokujou was so strong that it almost made Masaomi wonder if he was in the same category as Shizuo. There were multiple points in the fight where he felt a chill run down his back.

Still, as long as his fellow Yellow Scarves stood around cheering for him, he couldn’t let himself falter now.

I guess blows won’t do the trick.

Masaomi gathered his breathing and calmly switched tactics.

After just barely dodging one of his opponent’s attacks, he chose to swing around behind him rather than strike back. Since he moved into the blind spot of the attack, it would’ve looked to Chikage like Masaomi had simply vanished.

“Wha—? …Oofh!”

He launched himself onto the back of his opponent, working his arms around the man’s neck.

It was a standing sleeper choke hold. Masaomi leaned backward, trying to force his taller foe into submission. He dug his arm deeper under the chin, hanging onto Chikage’s back with sublime balance.

The Yellow Scarves were certain he’d just won. The more you struggled in that position, the worse it got. A professional fighter might know the trick to escape it, but an amateur brawler would be at a loss. They knew how Masaomi’s original sleeper hold worked and the effect it had.

However, Chikage Rokujou withstanding four punches from Shizuo Heiwajima was not a fluke. When he realized that he was soon going to lose consciousness, he did something that no ordinary human being would ever do.

With his neck in a choke hold, Chikage ran up the bumper of a parked car and onto its roof, then leaped for the fence surrounding the structure.

Huh?

Masaomi’s mind briefly went blank, and then he remembered that including the roof the garage had three levels.

They were going to fall from the roof of a three-story building.

Every cell in his body screamed out, and Masaomi instantly let go of the man’s neck. Right before he was about to pass over the fence, he grabbed the light pole fixed there.

For his part, Chikage simply fell straight downward without further acrobatics.

“Crazy asshole!” Masaomi screamed, clinging to the pole.

It was high enough to be fatal. He felt a cold sweat break out at first—and several seconds later, another one but for a different reason.

Chikage fell directly onto his back. And after a few coughs, he simply got to his feet, as simple as that.

“Hey, if you’re gonna grab me, don’t chicken out and jump off, yeah?”

Chikage laughed up at him from the ground. Yet another trickle of sweat ran down Masaomi’s back.

Well, damn. We haven’t even fought with the Blue Squares yet. Why am I throwing down with the ultimate secret boss first?

Masaomi climbed up the pole so that he could swing back over the fence. But the moment he reached the top of it, he met an abnormal sight.

His vantage point up high made the scene below quite easy to follow. And yet upon first glance, it made no sense to him. It was as though crossing the fence had warped him to a completely new location.

He should’ve been able to dispel the sight as an absurd hallucination as soon as he saw the other Yellow Scarves—but the problem was that they, too, were looking in that direction…

Toward the ramp leading down to the second floor of the garage…

Where a gang of a few dozen figures stood, clearly not affiliated with the Scarves.

Standing at the head of the rabble of thugs and mobsters was a man who cackled up at him. He held a hammer of hardened rubber in one hand, and his face featured a very visible burn scar.

At first, Masaomi didn’t know who he was or the rest of the group trailing behind him. It could’ve been reinforcements from Toramaru, but that was hard to imagine, given Chikage’s personality.

It could have been the Dollars, too, but he didn’t see any of the youth who looked like Blue Squares. If anything, these were more like the street thugs who were getting purged from the Dollars.

The burned man spoke up. “Heh-hya…I guess it’s true that idiots and smoke like to gather in high places, huh?”

Brrh.

The instant he heard that voice, the hair all over Masaomi’s body rippled.

He recognized it.

Before his brain could even recall the name, the other cells of his body surged with anger, terror, hostility, and anxiety.

“Hang on! I’m gonna climb back up now! Wait for me!”

Chikage was down on the ground. He didn’t realize what was happening on the roof.

But Masaomi didn’t hear him.

Then the burned man spoke again.

“Here’s your question! When I broke Saki Mikajima’s leg…who was the pussy who abandoned her and ran away?! Kee-hee-hya-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

And something in Masaomi burst.

The fear, anxiety, and regret in him all transformed into rage that surged up and out of his throat in the form of a name.

“Izumiiiiiii!”

Fury controlled all of Masaomi’s being. He leaped down from the fence and began charging toward the group of dozens without a second thought.

As though willing all the strength of his legs that he hadn’t used on that fateful night into this very moment instead.

Such was his possessed manner that the ruffians of the group subconsciously leaned away from him.

Ran Izumii leered through his sunglasses and lifted his hand with the hammer in it.

And then…