Durarara!! - Volume 13 - Chapter 10

Chapter 10: A Tiger Dies and Leaves His Skin

Raijin High School—in the past

“Hey, Orihara. You had quite a fight yesterday,” chirped Shinra Kishitani as he approached the young man, who was reading a magazine. They’d been friends since middle school, and currently Izaya Orihara was sitting on the landing of the stairwell that led to the roof.

For his part, Izaya narrowed his eyes. His lips pulled into a subtle smile, and he offered with some annoyance, “Fight? Whatever are you talking about? That monstrous amoeba nearly murdered me—that’s what that was.”

The “fight” Shinra was referring to was a brutal battle to the death, itself practically a bad joke, that started after he had brought Shizuo Heiwajima and Izaya Orihara together.

“What is up with him?” Izaya complained. “I lured him right into that accident, absolutely perfectly, but I didn’t expect that he’d take a hit from a truck and just walk away without a scratch.”

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” Shinra pressed. “You said that you loved humanity, so I thought you might take an interest in him.”

“That’s not a human being. That’s a wild animal or a monster.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Shinra shrugged. “I’m hoping that you two will learn to get along, though.”

Izaya shot him a venomous look. “Why?”

“Because unless you learn to get along, you and Shizuo have the worst chemistry imaginable,” Shinra said simply. “Based on what I saw yesterday, someone is going to die. At the very least, one of the two of you might.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“But if either you or Shizuo calms down a bit, that might be a different story.”

“You were the one who introduced us to each other, Shinra,” snapped Izaya.

“You go to the same school. I just thought it would be easier for you to be friends if I was in the middle. But if it doesn’t work out, then it’s not meant to be. If you guys try to kill each other, then I’m only out one or two friends.”

He said it like a joke, but Izaya knew that when Shinra gave off that sad, troubled smile, it was a sign that he felt serious about something. “Well, look who’s above it all.”

“If one…or both of you die, I’m sure I’ll be sad about it, but I can live with that result.”

“What a swell guy to have as a friend.”

“I can’t help it. Every last human being in the world could die, and as long as my beloved girlfriend survives, I’ll still be happy,” Shinra said with a distant look in his eyes. Whatever he was imagining, his mouth curled into a dopey grin.

“Ugh, you’re so creepy. I feel sorry for whatever woman you fall in love with.”

Izaya had a pretty good idea of who his “beloved girlfriend” was, but he chose not to mention that. Instead, he returned to his magazine.

Unfortunately, that was when Shinra decided to get philosophical. “Ah yes…have you ever heard the quote, ‘A tiger dies and leaves his skin, but a man dies and leaves his name’?”

“?”

“Shizuo would be the tiger. If Shizuo dies, the pelt that surrounds him…the stories of his superhuman power would be passed on and treasured, taking on a life of their own and becoming urban legends,” Shinra said, as excited as a grade schooler who had spotted a fascinating insect—while speaking about his friend as if he were a fascinating insect.

“And he wouldn’t just be a tall tale,” Shinra continued. “He’d be an urban legend that actually existed! In fact, it might be only after his death that Shizuo Heiwajima is truly complete—as a being that transcended humanity.”

Izaya felt himself getting irritated.

Him? Living on as an urban legend? A being who transcends humanity?

Nonsense. He’s nothing more than a dumb beast.

Izaya realized that even considering their extravagant fight yesterday, he was extraordinarily annoyed at Shizuo Heiwajima. “And you’re going to autopsy that monster and get famous that way?”

“Sure, I’d like to give him an autopsy, out of scholastic curiosity. But I don’t have any special interest in dissecting men, nor do I wish to become famous for it. And I have no hobby of dissecting girls, either. Although I will admit that my affection for my beloved started with dissection,” Shinra said rather ominously.

“…?” Izaya was confused at first but decided that this was just Shinra being Shinra. “So assuming that tiger will leave his skin, how do you plan to leave your name, as a person? I’m kind of holding out hope that you’ll go down in history as a horrific serial killer.”

“As a person…?”

Shinra thought it over. His smile vanished. He looked toward the light coming down from the roof above.

“I want…”

Ikebukuro, atop a building under construction—present day

Which of them was first to move?

No one witnessed the moment happen.

Perhaps even they themselves were not aware of it.

Neither Shizuo Heiwajima, who had turned into a pure system designed to destroy the man before him, nor Izaya Orihara, who still retained his rational human mind.

They were atop a building under construction, shortly before dawn.

The battle to the death started without even a provocation to initiate it.

To the two longtime foes, this fight was an undeniable turning point. But for such a momentous occasion, it certainly started in unmemorable fashion.

Then again, given that their mutual hatred essentially stemmed from the feeling of I just don’t like the guy, perhaps it was also fitting that it happened unceremoniously.

Their astonishing, overwhelming battles, going back to school days, made you doubt the accuracy of that old saying “The more you fight, the closer you really are.”

There was no high-minded chivalry in this duel, no respect for the other side whatsoever.

And in the case of this stunning battle in the wee hours of the morning, there was once again not a shred of respect for the other combatant. Not once did either of them ever view the other with the positive aspects inherent in the word rival.

So when they met again on the upper portion of the construction site, there was not a single word of dialogue between them.

The only exchange of words was the phone call that Shizuo Heiwajima received from Izaya Orihara as he climbed up the stairs of the building.

Less than a minute earlier, when Shizuo slowly opened the door to the top of the building, where construction was still ongoing, the first thing that stung his nose was the odor of evaporated gasoline.

Then he realized that it was coming from the liquid flowing along the ground at his feet.

But Shizuo didn’t show any signs of panic. Even when flames shot up around him the next moment, he barely blinked.

Not because he’d expected it, nor because he’d instantly thought of some means to counteract it. It was just that the fury compressed into his body dulled the ordinary human senses, leaving him incapable of typical reaction.

“…”

Ordinarily, that kind of lapse in focus would be fatal—but Shizuo grabbed the door in silence, wrenched it off its hinges, and stepped over it.

That was all he did.

But the abnormal physical strength with which he performed the feat flattened the flames spreading at his feet and caused a gust of air that pushed back the wind blowing in from outside. The flames practically danced in the resulting eddies of air.

Shizuo used the trampled door as a stepping-stone to leap forward, using the swirling force of the flames as momentum. Parts of his clothes were singed, but he was able to get clear before they actually caught fire.

Before the secondary effects of the heat and the lack of oxygen could inflict any damage on him, however, a steel beam hoisted on the crane swung at him like a pendulum.

The beam was moving with enough force that it would easily go straight through a typical automobile—but once again, Shizuo barely batted an eye.

His right arm was still dangling at his side, ever since he’d deflected the forklift minutes earlier, but the anger in him dulled both his pain and his common sense.

He swung his good arm upward, delivering a solid uppercut to the oncoming beam. In the moment of impact, the steel crumpled, and the floor under construction made an unpleasant sound around Shizuo’s feet.

But despite being in the midst of the two expressions of force, Shizuo was unhurt.

The deflected beam slid loose of its supporting wires and plummeted back down onto the construction site.

He glanced toward where it fell, and he caught sight of a man. It was Izaya, who showed no sign of alarm or reaction of any kind when the giant piece of metal crashed right next to him.

The two men were united in their lack of surprise at dramatic changes in the situation, but unlike Shizuo’s, Izaya’s face was fixed into a cruel smile, and he at least displayed enough intelligence to calculate how to kill another person.

From Izaya’s perspective, however, he wasn’t killing a “person” at all.

This was the beginning of Izaya’s quest to vanquish a monster.

In this case, the monster wasn’t evil, and Izaya wasn’t the hero.

The battle to the death wasn’t undertaken on any basis of good and evil at all. The two of them were both, in their own way, in a place far from any concept of righteousness and wickedness.

All the unconscious restraints were gone. All there was to do was face the other.

Nothing until now had risen to the level of a battle to the death. Those were like introductions.

The two men faced off, glaring each other down—until the urge to kill condensed into the space between them and exploded outward all at once.

Which of them was first to move?

There was a moment in time containing the answer to that question, one that no one would ever be able to answer later.

The slaughter began without a clear point of initiation.

Just thick, boiling air seething with heat.

Ikebukuro—Russia Sushi

In the middle of Shizuo and Izaya’s battle to the death, there was activity happening elsewhere.

It was the time of sleep in the city, when several hours still remained until dawn.

The time that even the twenty-four-hour karaoke booths, the bars that stayed open until morning, and the seedy girlie clubs saw reduced foot traffic. And yet…

“Well, dammit.”

Tom peered out through the barricade erected behind the window out of tables and other furniture. He was watching the steady gathering of people outside the building who sported bloodshot-red eyes.

They weren’t rioting, nor were they zombies in search of a meal.

They just stood out there, facing the restaurant, smiling silently.

But that was even worse than the alternative.

“Am I having a nightmare or what?” Tom lamented, squinting through the glass.

Next to him, a man with a shaved head doing the exact same thing muttered, “Saika possessed them.”

“Huh? You know something about this…uh, buddy?”

“It’s Kine.”

“…Oh, right. I’m Tanaka. So…you know what that means, Mr. Kine?”

Kine? As in…the former Awakusu-kai Kine?

Tom had cleaned up his tone of voice a bit, sensing that his conversation partner was a “professional” gentleman. The hairless man, Kine, furrowed his brow and said calmly, “Well, it’s probably a waste of time trying to convince you to believe me, so I’ll put it simply and say that it’s kind of like a hypnosis that makes people into slaves.”

“…Hypnosis?” Tom repeated. But based on the view of the outside, it did seem to make more sense than, say, a zombie invasion. “Well, whatever. If it’s hypnosis, that means someone did it to them, right?”

“You get right to the point.”

“I can’t do the job I’ve got now unless I can process new information quickly… So you got any thoughts about who the hypnotist is…?”

“I’ve got a few ideas, but I can’t imagine any of them would want to surround this place,” Kine replied.

Tom sighed and hissed back at the nearby employees of Russia Sushi, “Hey, what about you guys? Is there any kind of dangerous bullshit this place is getting sucked into?”

Denis shot Tom a nasty glare and said, “I don’t know. Why don’t you speak for yourself?”

“I don’t think I’ve done nothin’ to get a hypnotist pissed at me… Well, I guess there was that one person I saw outside. Who was that again…?”

“It doesn’t have to be you specifically. Could be folks who have a problem with Shizuo,” Denis pointed out.

Tom envisioned the boss of the company he worked for—and then his subordinates, Shizuo and Vorona.

“…Well…yeah, I guess you have a point there. But why me, then?”

“Probably means you’ve got more personal sway than you realize,” Denis offered as he continued calmly cleaning up the interior of the restaurant.

“I think you’ve overestimated me,” Tom said with a shrug.

Then Simon returned from the back, smiling. “Hey, we have sleepover here tonight. I have many fireworks ready, too.”

There was something that looked like a dirty sack in his hands. Apparently, he’d been digging it up from under the floor of the kitchen.

“Don’t bring all that dirt over into the restaurant,” Denis snapped, but Simon just grinned and pulled something out of the sack. When Tom saw what it was, his cheeks twitched, and even Kine’s expression darkened.

It was clear from the look of the object, which resembled a black spray can of hair mousse with a handle and pin attached to it, that it did not belong in a sushi restaurant or in any Japanese city to begin with.

Simon gestured with the black tube—a military flash grenade—and spoke in his typical tone of voice, as if nothing about the scene was any different than usual.

“Edo is famous for fires and fighting. But fighting no fun, makes your face flush. Replace fires with fireworks, and everyone friends, no fighting.”

Ikebukuro

“Are you all right, Sonohara?”

“…Yes, sorry to worry you.”

“You shouldn’t push yourself if you can’t do it. Want to rest somewhere?” asked Saki Mikajima, who had noticed that Anri Sonohara was looking pale and uncomfortable.

“I’m fine…”

Anri’s voice was clearly unsteady, but Saki seemed to conclude that she wasn’t going to get the answer she was looking for and didn’t press the issue any further.

The girls were making their way to a specific destination.

They considered taking a taxi, but since the place was close, they leaned toward walking the distance instead—and right around the point that they passed by Ikebukuro Station, Anri suddenly found herself racked with a powerful anxiety.

On the inside, something much more reliable than simple animal intuition was giving her unmistakable signals: The Saika slumbering within her was stirring.

What…is this…?

Even during the Night of the Ripper, when Haruna Niekawa brought forth a great new influx of Saikas, she had never felt a stirring of this scale.

Part of that was the fact that she hadn’t fully accepted Saika yet at the time, but she could tell that the trembling from the cursed blade within her was abnormal beyond whatever difference that would make.

It felt like the Saikas were resonating. Like she was on the inside of a gigantic bell, and the roar from the outside was reverberating directly into her body.

This mental resonance blasted Anri’s mind. It made her see spots.

But she couldn’t stop now.

After talking with Saki, Anri decided that whatever trouble was happening at the moment in Ikebukuro, she ought to involve herself in it.

Izaya Orihara had hinted to her that Mikado Ryuugamine and Masaomi Kida were in the path of some terrible oncoming disaster. He was not the kind of man whom she trusted at all, but there was something in his vague, suggestive words that she found highly believable.

And both Anri and Saki shared that view.

I wonder if Saika’s surge…has something to do with them…

What if someone aside from her caused Mikado and Masaomi to be made part of Saika? The thought sent a terrible shiver down Anri’s back.

Fortunately, her fears were unfounded.

But as it happened, Mikado and Masaomi were indeed caught in the midst of a terrible ordeal.

It just didn’t have anything to do with Saika.

Abandoned factory—late night

“Now, let’s see… Which one of these numbers belongs to Mikado Ryuu-ga-mi-ne…?”

The cheery voice was quite at odds with the oppressive setting of an abandoned factory in the middle of the night.

“Aha, there it is! Wow, when you see it with the kanji and everything, ‘Mikado Ryuugamine’ sure looks imposing,” Chikage Rokujou chattered happily as he fiddled with the cell phone. “Emperor of Dragon Peak—hah!”

The phone’s owner, Masaomi Kida, sighed and said, “I told you, he’s not going to answer a call from some number he doesn’t recognize. The guy’s really shy and suspicious like that…”

It wasn’t clear whether Chikage was actually listening to him, because he went ahead and read the number off Masaomi’s phone, inputting it into his own smartphone. “But that was the old Mikado Ryuugamine, right?”

“…”

“If the guy’s cracked as much as you say he has, he’ll pick up. Trust me,” said Chikage, smiling confidently. He pushed the call button on the screen.

But many rings later, there was no indication that the call was going to be answered.

“…”

“…”

“Wanna pretend that conversation never happened?”

“…Sure, sounds good.”

To break the awkward silence between the two, Chikage launched into conversation again, as if nothing had ever happened.

“Doesn’t he have a social media account somewhere? Like on Mix-E or Twittia? Something he would definitely look at, rather than ignoring by default.”

“You really are exhausting all your options, huh…?” Masaomi said, abandoning any pretense of respect for his elder. Then he sighed again and thought it over. “Someplace he would look… Maybe a Dollars-related web forum…”

“Don’t really want a lot of people seeing this.”

“Hmm… Social media, huh…? But whatever he might potentially be doing, I’m not linked to him, so… Oh!”

Masaomi snatched the phone out of Chikage’s hand, remembering something out of the blue. He connected to the Internet in a hurry.

“Maybe he’s still checking that one chat site every day…”

A dozen or so seconds later, when the chat room filled the screen, Masaomi’s eyes bulged.

TarouTanaka: I don’t understand what you mean. Who is Kujiragi? What are you after?

NamieYagiri: You’re the one who’s after something. What do you think you’re doing?

NamieYagiri: Why don’t you look around yourself?

NamieYagiri: I just want to bring an end to what’s going on. So help me.

NamieYagiri: You have no idea about anything, and yet you’re connected to everything.

NamieYagiri: Wake the hell up. You’re the key.

“What is this?”

Chikage peered over Masaomi’s shoulder and said, “Whoa, this chat looks pretty gnarly. What’s up with that?”

“It’s not usually like this…”

On the screen, a woman named NamieYagiri was taking TarouTanaka—the handle name of Mikado Ryuugamine—to task with blistering force. It was all just on a screen, of course, but her posting was powerful enough that it practically grabbed the collar of the reader.

“Yagiri…? Does that person have something to do with Seiji?” Masaomi wondered, thinking of the boy he’d known from school. Confused, he continued reading.

And after a while, he froze up again.

It wasn’t only Mikado.

There was another familiar name in the chat room.

NamieYagiri: Same question about your girlfriend, Anri Sonohara.

NamieYagiri: You know that she’s a monster, too.

NamieYagiri: You must have seen her with a katana at some point.

NamieYagiri: Want me to tell you what she did during that incident with the street slasher?

Abandoned factory

“…”

Masaomi was frozen, unable to continue scrolling down, so Chikage picked up the slack.

“Oh, Anri? Yeah, she had a katana.”

“No…wait. Hang on. There’s just too much…I can’t wrap my head around…”

“See? You think you know your friends, but you know them a lot less than you realize, huh?” Chikage sagely mocked. It was easy for him to say, since none of this had to do with him. He snatched the phone away and checked the web address, typing it into his own smartphone.

Then, eyes sparkling like a child who’d thought up a good prank, Chikage began typing his own text into the chat room.

Tokyo—abandoned building

“Mr. Mikado! Mr. Mikado!”

Despite it being late in the middle of the night, Mikado Ryuugamine showed no signs of sleep. He heard the sound of his underclassman from school and the very reason he’d been dragged down into this position—Aoba Kuronuma.

Mikado put the object he was holding into a box and turned to face Aoba, who came up the stairs a few moments later.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, like it was any old interaction.

Aoba waved his phone and said, “You saw how some weirdo was jacking up the chat just now, right?”

“Yeah, but that’s not an issue anymore. I’ll have Kanra, the administrator, delete all of it tomorrow.”

“No, I’m not talking specifically about the troll… I got curious, so I was watching the chat after that,” Aoba said, showing him the screen of his phone, “and some other weirdo showed up going on about Masaomi Kida…”

“…”

Mikado’s brow furrowed the tiniest bit. He grabbed his laptop in silence and used it to connect to the wireless hot spot they were using for Internet. When he logged in to the chat room, he found a very one-sided message waiting for him there.

Chat room

Rocchi has entered the chat.

Rocchi: Pardon me for interrupting the bloodbath in here.

Rocchi: Uh, can everyone see these posts?

Rocchi: Man, it’s been so long since I was in a chat room. Everyone’s moved on to social media now, y’know?

NamieYagiri: Who are you?

NamieYagiri: You have nothing to do with this. Butt out.

Rocchi: Based on your name, I’m guessing you’re a woman? It’s a cute name.

Rocchi: It’d be nice to have a proper chat in person sometime, so I’m sorry, but I’m gonna have to butt in for just a moment. I really am sorry.

Rocchi: For one thing, it’s not exactly true that I have “nothing” to do with this.

Rocchi: Mikado Ryuugamine, right?

Rocchi: You got that call earlier.

Rocchi: You really shouldn’t ignore a call like that.

Rocchi: What, you can’t pick up a call from an unfamiliar number? Well, now we know each other, right?

Rocchi: Though the truth is, we did meet before this.

Rocchi: Anyway, my point is, you should answer your phone.

Rocchi: Once you see this message, go and dial back the number that called you about five minutes before this post.

Rocchi: Otherwise, who knows what might happen to your buddy Masaomi Kida, huh?

Rocchi: You don’t want your friend getting hurt any worse, do ya?

NamieYagiri: Shut up, nobody cares about any of this.

NamieYagiri: Save it for later.

NamieYagiri: Ryuugamine, you have a duty to uphold first.

Rocchi: And how’s Seiji doing, Sis?

NamieYagiri: What?

Rocchi: Oh, come now, you don’t want Seiji seeing you rampaging like this, do you?

NamieYagiri: How dare you threatenlkbe kujehbb ubakjbkm

Kuru: Oh my, what a strange turn of events.

Mai: It’s exciting.

Abandoned factory

“Hey, you can’t just go typing whatever the hell you want. On the other hand…what the hell is happening in this chat room?”

Masaomi hadn’t been in the chat for almost half a year, but it was still an important place to him. He felt disturbed at the way it seemed to be careening toward collapse.

Before he could say anything else, however, the sound of a ringtone echoed off the walls of the abandoned factory building. Chikage saw that the number on his screen was the same one he’d typed in minutes ago, and he grinned.

“Hey, it’s from your pal.”

“…!”

Masaomi couldn’t hide his surprise. That had worked out better than he’d expected. He reached out for the phone without thinking.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on. I’m the one who has to answer it.”

“No, I’m the one who has business with…”

“Once he finds out you’re safe, he’s gonna hang up. I’ll answer.”

Chikage stretched his finger toward the answer button, glanced at Masaomi, and added, “Oh, and…before I go through with this, sorry.”

“?” Masaomi frowned at that. Chikage put the phone to his ear.

“Yo.”

“…Are you Rocchi, then?”

“Yeah. I’m glad you checked my messages so promptly. The truth is, we’ve met before.”

“…”

“Do you recognize my voice?” Chikage asked. His tone was light, while the voice on the other side of the phone was flat and unemotional.

“You’re…Chikage Rokujou, aren’t you?”

“Wow, nice one. Round of applause for this guy. Listen, I’m sorry about what happened back there. I should’ve believed it when you said you were the boss of the Dollars.”

“…”

Sensing that Mikado wasn’t going to give him a response, Chikage continued, “I’ll be straight with you. Your friends, these…Dollars? Have been messing with us again. And I’m here to square up that account.”

Masaomi’s mouth fell open, but Chikage held up a hand to silence him. He must’ve been formulating an idea, so Masaomi chose to stay quiet and listen for now.

But then Chikage closed his hand into a fist and used it to rap against Masaomi’s cast.

“…?! Urgh?! Ah…aaah!”

Waves of pain enveloped his broken bone. Masaomi involuntarily yelped with pain.

Then Chikage pulled the phone back away from Masaomi and snarled quietly into the phone, “You heard him. If you can’t meet me man-to-man, your friend here’s goin’ somewhere very far away.”

A few minutes later, the phone call over, Chikage cackled and smacked Masaomi’s head.

“There we go. Now we’ve got a destination. You’re my hostage, and I’m gonna hand you over in public. That seems like a fair compromise to me.”

“…Since when did I become a hostage? Dammit, that really hurt, you know!” Masaomi protested, but Chikage just shrugged.

“Hey, I did apologize before I did it, didn’t I?”

“You don’t think I could have played along without having to inflict actual pain?”

“Actually, a good spontaneous scream’s a lot harder to pull off than you think.” Chikage hummed.

Masaomi exhaled and shook his head in disgust. “Fine, fine, whatever. So where are you handing me over to Mikado?”

“Oh yeah. It’s a place that even I’m familiar with. I remember it well.”

Chikage swung his arms in big circles, like he was warming up for some kind of athletic performance.

“There’s an all-girls school right nearby.”

Abandoned building

“You’re not going to go there alone, are you?”

Aoba looked over at Mikado, who was staring without emotion at the phone he’d just finished talking into.

“Huh? I mean… Oh yeah, I guess he didn’t specify any details about the number of people.”

“Rokujou is the name of the guy who we messed with first. You don’t need to go for yourself. We can go and get Mr. Kida back,” Aoba suggested casually.

Mikado thought it over. “That reminds me, how exactly do you guys see Kida anyway?”

“How…? He’s your friend, right?”

“But he was your enemy and the leader of the Yellow Scarves, wasn’t he?”

“Maybe to my brother, but it wasn’t like we were fighting directly against him,” Aoba replied, shrugging. “To be honest, I don’t have any hatred for Mr. Kida, but neither do I have any fondness. If you said that we should go and rescue him, we’d follow your orders.”

“Okay, that’s good to hear. But Masaomi might not think very highly of you guys. He might look like a frivolous guy, but he’s always been very serious at his core.”

“…”

As they talked, Aoba sensed a change in Mikado.

Can’t help but notice that the way he refers to him keeps changing, between Masaomi and Kida…

Maybe it was nothing, but he couldn’t help but feel that it was actually very important.

Perhaps Mikado himself didn’t even realize what he was doing. Maybe he wasn’t fully conscious of what kind of connection he had to Masaomi Kida personally—or to all the people he knew, including Anri Sonohara—or what he wanted that connection to be.

At least, that was how it seemed to Aoba. He watched, silent.

And then, when Mikado wasn’t looking, he let the corners of his mouth tuck into a sneer.

Yeah, he’s just so fascinating. He’s the best.

Then, watching the back of the broken boy standing before him, Aoba let the smile vanish and asked, “By the way, why did you designate that particular location?”

The place Mikado mentioned during the phone call for the exchange to go down was a location Aoba knew well. While it was the middle of the night, it was also a fairly noticeable locale.

“…”

It was certainly a reasonable question to ask, but Mikado merely went silent. He pondered it heavily, like a computer asked to do something beyond its processing capacity, and when he spoke, it was slow and halting, trying to convince himself of the words as he said them.

“It’s…an important…place.”

“An important place?”

“As I think you know already…it’s the place where it all began, for me and for the Dollars,” Mikado said, nostalgia and fondness wreathing the name of the gang. He smiled boyishly. “But Sonohara and Kida weren’t there at the time.”

He wasn’t even talking to Aoba anymore. In fact, it seemed that he was thinking of his reasoning for that choice after the fact, bit by bit. That was how it seemed to the younger boy.

But it was true: The place was very special to Mikado Ryuugamine.

It was where the Mikado of now got his start, when the ordinary and extraordinary completely switched places.

The intersection in front of Tokyu Hands.

It was the start of the major road that passed by the Sunshine building—or, alternately, the end of it.

It was an answer that came to Mikado naturally. And in his case, inevitably.

He made the decision as the Dollars’ founder and as a member—in order to welcome Masaomi Kida, who wasn’t there on that day.

If possible, he hoped Anri would be there, too.

But despite his desire, Mikado had to keep his hopes under control, knowing he couldn’t be that selfish.

That was because he knew that after this, something bloody and ugly was likely to happen there.

A part of him was aware that Anri’s secret was far more gruesome than a typical youth rivalry, but he still refused to intentionally get her involved.

Or perhaps it was still a bit of youthful stubbornness that remained within him.

Ikebukuro—apartment bar

“…”

In the meantime, a man in a line of work that was completely removed from youthfulness looked hard at his screen, just as Mikado had.

“What’s this, then?” grunted Akabayashi, lieutenant of the Awakusu-kai.

The old scar on his right eye was bothering him. He was sitting in a special unlicensed bar built into a private apartment that had been outfitted for business, collecting information for his own purposes.

What Akabayashi was examining was not one of the several Dollars-related message boards or a report message from his errand boys, the gang called Jan-Jaka-Jan. It was a chat room that he’d been introduced to by a girl he helped take care of.

The chat room was oddly well-connected with what was going on in the city, so Akabayashi made it a point to pop in at least once a day, both for information and to check on his patron there, the girl who was like a niece to him.

Something odd was going on in the chat now.

“What’s the matter, Mr. Akabayashi?” asked the middle-aged barkeeper, who must have noticed his expression.

“Oh, just some trouble with work.”

“Ah, I see.”

The bartender did not ask further. Whether he was aware of what Akabayashi did or not, he clearly came to the determination that it wasn’t worth asking about.

But Akabayashi gave him a lilting smile and offered freely, “It’s odd. I’d say that we took a shot from a direction that I wasn’t expecting.”

He looked back at his smartphone. In the chat, a woman named Namie Yagiri was throwing a tantrum and tearing into Mikado Ryuugamine. That alone would strike Akabayashi as nothing more than some internal Dollars trouble, but what alarmed him was when the real name of the girl who invited him to the chat room appeared in the conversation.

NamieYagiri: Where is that headless monster?

NamieYagiri: Same question about your girlfriend, Anri Sonohara.

NamieYagiri: You know that she’s a monster, too.

NamieYagiri: You must have seen her with a katana at some point.

NamieYagiri: Want me to tell you what she did during that incident with the street slasher?

Normally, one might take statements like that as the ramblings of a person undergoing a psychotic break.

But Akabayashi understood them perfectly.

And that was unfortunate, because the words that this Namie woman was saying did indeed relate directly to Anri Sonohara.

Monster.

Katana.

Street slasher.

The old scar on his right eye itched.

A searing pain assaulted his brain, centered around the scar—as though the prosthetic embedded into his socket was radiating the heat itself. But Akabayashi just took off his sunglasses, pressed his eye lightly, and smiled sadly to himself.

Calm down already. You’re not some kid in puberty.

He reflected fondly on his past.

His first love had come late for a man of his type, but it was very hot and painful.

The woman seemed barely human. She pierced both his eye and his heart.

The mysterious blade was contained within her body, and her eyes burned red, marking her as the slasher.

Akabayashi could clearly remember the first woman he’d ever fallen in love with.

She had been a blade personified and yet died from a blade wound through the stomach.

But Akabayashi knew more than that. Not from seeing it for himself but out of personal certainty.

She—Sayaka Sonohara—had cut off her husband’s head before running the sword through her own stomach.

Where had the katana housed in her body gone?

The police said they never found the murder weapon. So even though the wound looked exactly like a self-inflicted one, they couldn’t rule it a suicide without the weapon there, too.

Had the police coroner found anything abnormal with her body? If they had, perhaps they hadn’t announced it to the public because it was too abnormal—but what if the sword was still intact and well after Sayaka Sonohara’s death and had moved on to inhabit someone else?

In that case, the most likely host by far would be none other than Anri Sonohara.

The thought had occurred to him a number of times, but he’d always laughed it off as a nonsensical daydream.

And yet just a few lines of text from this chat room had given him clear evidence.

The katana that pierced his eye had moved on to Sayaka’s daughter, Anri.

Heat bloomed on the right half of his face.

The moment that his conjecture seemed more likely to be truth, he felt his own cold blood suddenly roar to a boil.

But that was where the surge stopped.

Akabayashi stilled the throbbing in his eye with force and pushed his emotions back into the memories of the past.

I said, calm down. Anri inherited a memento of her mother. That’s all this is.

If this were back in his more short-tempered days, he might have already been out the door. This meant that a part of the woman he loved was still alive within her daughter.

But Akabayashi was too mentally mature to hold some kind of twisted romantic affection for Anri, a girl young enough to be his own daughter.

The one I fell in love with…was a crazy woman named Sayaka Sonohara.

Not that buzzing, annoying sword.

Recalling the flood of obnoxious “words of love” that flooded into him the moment his eye was slashed, Akabayashi drained the last of his drink and called out, “Hey, bartender.”

“Yes, sir?” the other man asked.

Akabayashi gave him another lilting smile. “Let’s say you were in love with a woman, and she didn’t choose you. She ended up marrying another man.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And say her daughter was in some kind of trouble, real bad stuff about to happen. If you wanted to help the girl get out of it, would that qualify as ‘not being over it’?”

“…”

The bartender thought it over, returned the glass he was polishing to the shelf, and said, “Whether you can’t get over the girl’s mother or not, you don’t strike me as the kind of person who would intentionally turn a blind eye to the child of an acquaintance being in danger, Mr. Akabayashi.”

“Well, you might think too highly of me. You can close me out now,” Akabayashi said, getting up from his seat and pulling out his wallet. He didn’t really need to ask the man that question. He just wanted an excuse to go ahead with it.

But it was true gratitude that he felt for the bartender as he took his time leaving the little room.

He was going to poke his nose into this incident but only in the way that a proper man on the underside of society would do.

Along Kawagoe Highway

“…This is the apartment building.”

“And is this person really going to be that helpful?” Saki asked, not to cast doubt on Anri’s offer but just to get some reassurance.

“Yes, she’s a very helpful…person…”

The hesitation around the word person was not simply an unconscious hitch of the tongue. Anri looked up at the building. It was a place she’d been a number of times. It was the home of a mutual acquaintance—and savior—of both Anri Sonohara and Mikado Ryuugamine: Celty Sturluson.

The troubles that surrounded Mikado and Masaomi seemed like too much for Anri herself to solve. And for one thing, she had no idea where the two of them even were at this moment.

So she didn’t want to make things worse for anyone, but she also really wanted someone to speak to. The first person who popped into her head was Celty.

But it was already late into the night. Society did not approve of two young women walking around on the streets at this hour, but Anri, at least, wasn’t worried about prowlers or delinquents bothering them. She harbored a weapon inside of her that no half-hearted attacker could ever overcome.

Just because the girls were able to go around in search of a solution at this hour didn’t mean that Celty would be available at the drop of a hat, however. Anri felt that a sudden visit at the door in the middle of the night would be in poor taste, so she had at least tried calling on the way. But despite multiple attempts, she got no response from Celty, who was usually very prompt in responding, even in the middle of the night.

“Maybe she’s asleep already.”

“I suppose so… Oh!” Anri had a sudden epiphany and pulled out her phone again. “Maybe she’ll be in the chat room.”

“Chat room?”

“Yes…there’s one I use online. I actually interact with her more often there than by text messages.”

“I see. Then I’ll try contacting Masaomi. He didn’t answer yesterday, but maybe since it’s a new day, he’ll be in the mood to talk,” Saki suggested, opening her bag so she could get out her cell phone.

Most likely, Masaomi was avoiding talking to her in order to keep her at a safe distance from all the trouble, Anri thought, but there was still a greater-than-zero chance that he might pick up, so she let the other girl go ahead and glanced down at her own phone.

“Huh…?”

Her expression tightened.

“What’s the matter?” Saki asked. It was clear that something abnormal had happened. She paused, her thumb hovering over the buttons of her phone.

“Oh no…”

A woman calling herself Namie Yagiri was raging in the chat, throwing around Mikado’s and Anri’s names. For the moment, Anri’s mind went blank; she was unable to process what was happening.

Then Saki peered over her arm at the screen and said, “Hang on. Is the chat room you were talking about…the one that Kanra runs?”

“Huh?” Anri was startled to hear the name of the chat room’s moderator from Saki’s mouth. “Miss Mikajima, you’re familiar with this chat?!”

“Yeah. I go by the username Saki. And on that topic, Bacura is Masaomi.”

“…!”

It was all so sudden. Anri froze all over.

And though it was without malice of any kind, Saki made it worse by continuing, “Also, Kanra is Izaya Orihara… Did you know that before you joined?”

“…I…? …?! …Huh?”

Anri’s mouth opened and shut without anything to show for it. She couldn’t process this.

Not only was she unable to keep up with the string of revelations, the murmuring of Saika inside her was getting stronger and stronger.

Then, right as the dizziness was getting so bad that she might faint, Anri heard a familiar voice.

“Anri…?”

It was a voice she’d heard the other day, but at this moment, it felt old and nostalgic and comforting.

The voice of the girl who had always come to Anri’s aid when the bullies were picking on her in middle school. The friend who had accepted her on her side of the picture frame—and acknowledged the metaphor of the frame altogether. The bright and shining host whom she’d lived off when she thought of herself as a parasite.

Anri looked up, suspecting that she was just hearing things, and stared into a familiar face.

“Mika…Harima…?”

Normally, she would never expect to see this person at this hour, at this place.

Mika Harima rushed over to her old friend. “What’s the matter? What are you doing out so late…?” she asked, her voice loud and clear.

Anri stammered, “I…I wanted to talk to Celty about something… But what about you…?”

Mika Harima had been to this apartment before, too, to teach the group how to cook sagohachi-style pickled sandfish and other tricky dishes. They’d hunched around a hot pot together, so Anri knew that Mika was familiar with Celty and Shinra, but it was still abnormal to run across her in the middle of the night like this.

“Uh…some stuff happened, y’know? In fact, there’s stuff happening right at this moment, too…”

“?”

Anri gave Mika a quizzical look; it wasn’t a particularly helpful explanation. Just then, a group of people came into view over Mika’s shoulder.

“What the—? Is that Anri?”

“…Hey, it’s the Sonohara girl…”

“Don’t push it, Kadota!”

It was the van gang but without Karisawa present. That seemed ominous to Anri, but more worrisome than that was the paleness of Kadota’s face and the obvious pain with which he was walking.

Behind them, she could also see Seiji Yagiri, his arm over the shoulder of an older woman. He was unsteady on his feet, too, but unlike Kadota, he didn’t look pale or weak.

“…Oh, Sonohara. What’s up wi…ung…”

“Seiji! Don’t hurt yourself; the anesthetic hasn’t worn off yet! Forget about that girl possessed by the cursed blade!”

“Cursed…? What are you talking about, Sister…?”

Huh?

Yet again, Anri found confusion taking over. And to make things worse, the sickly-looking Kadota did his best to put on a brave face and told her, “You should get out of the area for a while.”

“Huh?”

“Remember that slasher who attacked you a while back? The one with the bloodshot eyes…”

“…!”

A nasty chill crawled over Anri’s skin. Not one of Saika’s murmurs but a feeling of fear from Anri herself.

Was it Haruna Niekawa, or Kasane Kujiragi, or the third party that Kujiragi said she would “sell” Saika to? Whoever it was, Anri was certain now that another slasher had appeared under Saika’s influence. She clutched her trembling fists.

And then Kadota added the devastating clincher:

“There’s some people around with their eyes all red like that slasher…but there’s tons of ’em.”

Ikebukuro—shopping district

“…What is this?”

Erika Karisawa hid in the darkness from the lights of the city, clutching her phone.

She was peering out at a major road from a narrow alley between two large buildings. And she was looking at a crowd of people.

It wasn’t as many as one would expect in the middle of the day, but it was still far too many for this hour of the night.

She’d seen this once before: a year and a half ago, when the Dollars held their first meetup. But the aura surrounding the people occupying the streets was not at all like that gathering.

They were all just loitering around, not going anywhere, standing still like automatons waiting for some order to fulfill.

And most alien of all—their eyes were a deep crimson, to the very last man.

Karisawa recalled the same event that Kadota did. The incident with the street slasher, half a year ago.

It was exactly how the slasher had looked, up until they’d hit him with Togusa’s van. It hadn’t been the end of it all, given that the Night of the Ripper had happened a few days later, when dozens of people were attacked at once. But even then, she hadn’t expected to see a return of that phenomenon out of nowhere.

“If I was gonna get lost in a two-dimensional situation, I’d have preferred a sports manga over a horror movie,” Karisawa grumbled, in characteristic fashion. The entire reason that she was here was because she’d gone looking for Kadota after he’d left the hospital without warning. It was by coincidence that she’d spotted this sight.

The group of red-eyed people approached the occasional ordinary pedestrian who passed by them and gave their victims a simple, easy scratch, like a zombie. The pedestrian would spin around at the pain, angry—but within a few seconds, their eyes would be just as bloodshot, and they would promptly join the group.

Karisawa herself had been watching from a distance, until a number of the red-eyed gang noticed her and began to approach, forcing her to run and hide where she stood now.

Yumasaki called her a couple of times while she was hiding, but she declined the calls, wary that answering the phone might draw attention by the noise and cause her to lose concentration.

“And a phone going off? That’s such a death omen,” she murmured to herself. That kind of monologuing sounded confident, but in fact, she was nearly trapped at the moment.

He did send a text message, however. It said, “Kadota’s fine. He’s saying either come to the black market doctor’s place or go home and hide.”

It was a relief to learn that Kadota was okay, but that meant the bigger question now was if she could actually safely escape this alley or not. Careful not to get too distracted, she typed back, “Kind of stuck right now. If anything happens, you can have my hard disc and doujinshi, Yumacchi.” Then she went back to watching the crowd for a chance to escape.

It looks like the people are getting scratched by their nails… I wonder if I’ll be a slasher, too, if they get me, Karisawa thought, remembering Anri.

The other girl, unlike this mob with their bloodshot eyes, actually glowed from her eye sockets when she swung her katana around. It seemed certain that there was some connection between them, though.

Maybe that was why she was being singled out by the slasher. But Karisawa didn’t mistrust or bear a grudge against Anri. She simply smiled sadly to herself.

Rather than being made one of the zombie horde, I’d rather get sliced clean with Anri’s katana, so I could be a katana wielder, too. Actually, I’d rather have a giant scythe instead. Just like Death.

Whether she simply felt no impending danger or was acting blithe to drown out her fear, Karisawa was still being utterly herself.

“What the…?”

A boy in an area not particularly close to Karisawa’s saw the gathering crowd and took out his phone. He was a Blue Squares member and was here scouting out the location of the “transaction” on Aoba’s orders.

“Hey, Aoba, is this a festival night?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a whole lotta people out at this hour.”

“Is it Toramaru?”

The boy glanced at the mob again. But none of them seemed to be members of a motorcycle gang. They were all normal types, like salarymen and young adults going home from drinking with friends.

“Nah, they’re all ordinary—businessmen, office ladies…a few kids in school uniforms.”

“This late at night? Well, watch for a bit longer, just in case.”

“Got it. I’ll call if I learn anything.”

The boy hung up the phone and approached Sixtieth Floor Street.

Then he noticed something. The density of the crowd seemed to increase as he went in one direction.

What’s going on?

The people were gathered between the intersection next to Tokyu Hands and the building with the bowling alley inside. Right around where those Russians ran the sushi restaurant.

The boy approached, wondering whether there was a hostage situation in there or something—when he passed by a pedestrian and felt a sharp pain on the back of his hand.

“Aah…,” he hissed. There was a little cut on the skin of his hand. He must have scratched it on something when he passed by.

He spun around, wondering whether he should yell at the man.

And then he realized that the scratch was throbbing, pulsing.

…

He stopped. Examined the wound.

……ve.

Just a little scratch. Nothing serious.

l ov e

The bleeding had almost stopped already.

ove lo e love l ve

But the itching didn’t stop. The pulsing was only getting stronger.

I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you Mr. Nasujima I lovelovelove

And then the boy noticed.

I love you I love your flesh your hair your soul blood voice memory future everything

The throbbing wasn’t pain; it was a voice that was echoing throughout his love you love you love you love you love you love you love you love you love you love love love love love love love lllllloooooooovvvvvvvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeeeeeeee……………………

“…Hey, Aoba?”

The boy was back on the phone; this time his eyes were abnormally red with blood and shining emptily.

“What did you learn?”

“Turns out there was some kind of unannounced idol concert, so it’s just a bunch of people loitering about after it finished. If anything, it’s good cover for messing around.”

“Okay. Then I’ll tell Mr. Mikado about it.”

When the call was over, the boy looked to the man standing across from him.

“Well done,” the man said. “Very good acting.”

“Thank you…Mother,” the boy replied, then wandered unsteadily away among the throng.

The man, Takashi Nasujima, watched him go, chuckling, and said to a man and woman standing at his side, “This is interesting. Mikado Ryuugamine’s actually going to come right out here into the open. And with a motorcycle-gang leader from Saitama and Masaomi Kida, to boot.”

“Yes, Mother,” said the woman, Haruna Niekawa, with empty eyes.

But the man next to her, Shijima, was more confused. “What? Mikado Ryuugamine?”

Nasujima ignored his question. He smiled happily with the information he’d just gained. He’d been giving all the Saikas under his command a constant order—“Bring me any useful information you learn”—and the boy who’d wandered away had done the job admirably.

Nasujima, too, had his eye on Mikado Ryuugamine, the founder of the Dollars. He was considering whether to put him under Saika’s control tonight or threaten him into behaving, like he had with Shijima. But if the boy was going to come here all on his own, that was a happy surprise.

And not only that—there was another bird coming home to roost.

“Masaomi Kida. There’s a name I didn’t expect to hear tonight.”

When Nasujima was a teacher, Kida had caught him sexually harassing Anri Sonohara and used that knowledge to threaten him. He wasn’t a teacher anymore, but at the very least, he still felt the anger and hatred of being mocked and toyed with by a student.

“Sounds good. I can take him over and make him dance naked. I’ll record it, upload it to the Net, then undo his mind control and see how he reacts.”

Nasujima chuckled to himself over his trashy idea, then glanced toward Russia Sushi. “I was thinking of just tearing down the place all at once, but I wouldn’t want to cause too much trouble and put them on edge.”

So he decided to have the crowd lay low for now. More important was how he was going to get Shizuo Heiwajima’s supervisor under his control while inside the restaurant.

Nasujima had a few of his Saika-possessed victims standing outside of Russia Sushi with one of those old cell phone signal jammers that used to be popular years ago. In fact, it had been tampered with to augment the effect. If he walked a few yards closer, his own phone would stop working.

The restaurant’s landline had already been cut, and there were no signs of a broadband or cable TV wire.

Nasujima had cut off all means of contact with the outside world, putting him at an overwhelming advantage over whoever was inside of Russia Sushi.

But he wasn’t completely filled with confidence. Shizuo Heiwajima remained a source of anxiety and a target for his caution.

Not only did he have the trauma of being beaten by Shizuo in the past, but it also seemed that Saika itself viewed Shizuo as a special human being somehow. Therefore, he needed control over Shizuo’s boss—his Achilles’ heel—without drawing Shizuo’s attention. If that monster showed up now, it would all be over.

Nasujima placed a phone call to another number, but it did not get picked up.

“Tsk…damn info dealer. Can’t get him when I actually need him,” Nasujima swore, conveniently ignoring the fact that he’d stolen money from that same man’s office.

Next, he called the secretary of Jinnai Yodogiri, the man he was planning to betray in order to take over his business. As far as Nasujima knew, the secretary’s information network was trustworthy. She might even have knowledge on what Shizuo Heiwajima was doing right about now.

But she, too, did not pick up the call.

“Shit, doesn’t anybody around here answer their damn phone?” he snapped, ignoring the fact that he was calling in the dead of night.

But of course, he didn’t know that at this moment, both Izaya Orihara and Yodogiri’s secretary, Kasane Kujiragi, were in the same building.

Or that, more importantly, Shizuo Heiwajima himself was there with them.

Building under construction—lower levels

Down in the lower levels of the building where Shizuo and Izaya were fighting to the death, the foundation was very strong and mostly complete. The interiors were entirely finished in parts.

But given that the only lights were the fluorescents in the hallways, it was still quite a barren sight and not much better than a cleared-out empty building.

It was in this environment that three young women faced off.

This was not a glamorous scene or a bright and chatty one. Each of the women had suffered equal physical damage.

“Ha-ha! You two are good,” said Mikage Sharaku, a woman built like a street fighter, enjoying herself despite the wounds to her cheeks and arms. “I underestimated you. I shouldn’t have.”

The other two, Vorona and Kasane Kujiragi, gave her expressionless looks.

“In typical times, this phenomenon would cause my entrails to boil, but at present I deny to do battle with you,” said Vorona.

“I agree with her. I have no reason to fight you.”

It wasn’t a three-sided fight. Vorona and Kujiragi were heading to the top of the building, and Mikage was trying to interfere with their progress. On the other hand, Vorona and Kujiragi did not know each other well and were not capable of teaming up against their foe.

If Slon had been here instead of Kujiragi, Vorona would be three or four times as deadly, but it wasn’t until moments ago that she even learned Kujiragi was capable of fighting at all.

All she knew was that the other woman wasn’t weak but in fact had superhuman athleticism of her own. Mikage sensed as much through their pugilistic exchange. She gave her a cocky smile.

“I guess it’s true that you can’t judge a person by their looks. I never expected someone who looks as brainy as you to be a good fighter.”

“You have overestimated me. If I were truly brainy, I would not be in this place at all. And if I were as powerful as you make me out to be, I would be leading a different life right now.”

“Look, I’m not talking about some vague crap like your ‘strength as a person.’” Mikage looked toward the third woman and said, “Vorona, right? I wish I could’ve fought you at peak condition instead. Though knowing you, I bet you’d just use a gun or something.”

Vorona glared and pursed her lips. She’d suffered bruises all over her body from the steel beams dropped off the building’s roof. And in fact, she did have a gun, which had gotten trapped under the pile of beams.

Still, Vorona knew that even if she were in peak condition, the woman she was fighting was not one to be trifled with. She could be partially armed and still lose that battle.

As evidence of that, Mikage was currently fighting two capable women—even if uncoordinated with each other—and had stopped them short.

In between Vorona’s practiced martial arts and combination attacks, Kujiragi would strike with inhuman reflexes and speed. That was the kind of impromptu combination work that would take down any novice fighter, even a man with bulging muscles.

But Mikage blocked all of Vorona’s hits with her palms and evaded Kujiragi by just a hair. And in the moments when the two women switched attacks, she even countered with kicks of her own.

While Mikage wasn’t getting away scot-free, neither side was able to totally neutralize the other. The fight was turning into a stalemate.

If Shizuo was some djinni or spirit that transcended humanity, then this woman was an amalgamation of advanced technology.

Normally, Vorona would be delighted. If she could destroy this woman, who had pursued the extremes of human strength—or if she herself was utterly destroyed—then at last she could measure the strength of humanity.

But though she was facing an opponent who might fulfill her long-held wish, Vorona was not in the mood to celebrate.

Across from her, guarding the way to the stairs, Mikage smirked. “Want me to let you in on something? Whether you go up there or not, it won’t make a difference,” she said, grimacing with frustration that she couldn’t be there to see it. “This is a fight beyond that kind of interference, I bet.”

The building itself seemed to back her up there, as a dull crash from above traveled downward.

“The combatants up there are a guy whose body quit being human and a guy whose brain quit being human,” Mikage said.

With absolute certainty, Vorona replied, “There is no inevitability that a fight should be valid. There is no possibility of victory over Sir Shizuo. It is the direction of my duty that should stop the beating of his heart.”

“You sure talk some crazy Japanese…,” Mikage said with a grin as she shook out her hands. “As to your statement, I’ll admit, I didn’t think Izaya stood a chance against that monster, either…but the truth is, I’ve never actually seen what he can do.”

“?”

“He’ll happily lead a person to their downfall, but he doesn’t use his own violence to directly destroy a person. I mean, he’s got that whole shtick about loving humanity or whatever.”

Mikage glanced up at the ceiling for a moment, looking anguished that she couldn’t actually be up there to see their fight.

“So I think this might actually be the first time he’s ever used all his power and seriously attempted to kill a human being.”

Building under construction—upper levels

“Ah… What a view.”

Izaya let his eyes travel down from the starless sky overhead.

“I think the view of the night under a sky without stars is the height of beauty. It’s a crystallization of human industry,” he said entirely to himself, the words melting into the darkness.

Izaya Orihara was not, in fact, holding any kind of conversation with the man who knelt at the center of the construction site.

That was Shizuo Heiwajima, grimacing with anguish on the ground.

It was an unthinkable sight: Izaya sat unharmed atop the steel beams of the building frame, looking down at Shizuo, who bore a number of wounds all over his body.

They’d been inflicted by wire and nail-gun traps that Izaya had set up.

All the traps would be instantly fatal to a normal person, but they were little more than scratches to Shizuo. They shouldn’t have had the ability to bring a being like Shizuo Heiwajima to his knees—and yet that was exactly where he was, on the floor of the building.

“…”

Shizuo said nothing. He merely glared up at Izaya, sitting off to the side, his expression pained. In fact, he was finding it difficult to even breathe, not that he wanted to say anything if he could.

It was not pain or blood loss that stole the freedom of his monstrously powerful body.

The first things to assault him were dizziness and fatigue.

There was no way he’d be feeling tired given the situation, but by the time he was aware of the abnormal feeling in him, it was already too late.

All the strength had left his muscles. He could no longer stand on his own.

It was lack of oxygen.

Just as simple as oxygen deprivation. It seemed unlikely, happening in a construction site that was little more than vinyl covering over steel building frames, but it was indeed none other than a trap set by Izaya.

The fire, the crane attack, and all the other traps were nothing more than red herrings meant to hide the existence of this one.

Specifically, it was the fire-extinguishing system that had already been built into the building. Izaya tampered with the pipes from the carbon dioxide gas tank meant to snuff out fires, filling the building with the gas very quickly.

It would not have worked without Izaya’s brilliant calculations, predicting the wind direction and flow of air and guiding Shizuo to the place where the oxygen concentration was lowest.

It was thanks to the unprecedented level of murderous intent in Izaya’s mind—a true aura of lethality shrouding his brain, perhaps—that his concentration hit peak values.

However much gas was being pumped into the area, regardless of it being outside, the spot where Shizuo was standing had dangerously low levels of oxygen. He inhaled, not realizing this, and quickly lost full control of his body.

In fact, if the oxygen levels had been any lower, he might have fallen unconscious. And if the fight had been taking place in an enclosed interior, Shizuo could have died from lack of oxygen.

But sensing that an “enclosed space” was always temporary given Shizuo’s strength when in a rage, Izaya chose to employ this strategy instead.

How does one kill a creature to whom guns and blades mean nothing? The answer, to Izaya, was suffocation.

And as a result, the monster who’d taken a hit from a truck without blinking was now helpless on his knees.

But there was no joy or arrogance on Izaya’s face.

Shizuo Heiwajima was still alive.

That simple fact meant that he was in the presence of a threat to his very life.

Perhaps if there had been no wind blowing between the buildings or if the night had been perfectly still, the situation would have been different. In any case, it was fortunate for him that his strategy was effective enough to stop Shizuo in his tracks in an outdoor environment at all.

How many minutes would it take before he recovered from the lack of oxygen? How many seconds?

Izaya couldn’t put on his usual confident grin, because any estimates based on normal human physiology meant nothing here. Normally he would have been running and darting about, smiling cockily as he fled, but there were two reasons he wore no such smile now.

He was full to the brim with loathing for his opponent.

And he knew, on an instinctual level, that one wrong movement would lead to the end of his life.

I don’t care if I die.

But I don’t want it to be at the expense of this monster surviving.

The monster can’t live among the human beings in a world without me.

Pretending to be human, pinning down humanity with his strength.

Love, hope, malice, plotting, intelligence, technique, experience.

All the things that humanity has built, he ruins.

“…Yeah, that’s right.”

The words spilled right out of his mouth.

But whether they were meant for anyone aside from himself, as his eyes narrowed with turgid black emotions, no one could say. Not even the man who said them.

“I ought to kill you, whether there’s a good rationale or not.”

Any display of emotion had disappeared from Izaya’s face. He stood atop the steel beam and took out an object.

It was an old-fashioned box of matches, with the name of some business or other on it—the same implement he’d used to burn the chess pieces in his apartment a while ago. He lit a match and dropped the little spark below.

The wind had already blown free the extinguishing gas that was meant to remove the oxygen that might fuel any flames.

Now there was a different kind of gas surrounding Shizuo.

The flammable gas that had been flowing across the outside area from the moment that he’d first emerged there.

As he watched the match falling toward him, Shizuo could also sense the odor of the gas filling the space around him. But no one could say whether he currently had the brainpower needed to process that information accurately.

All that was certain was he hadn’t recovered from the damage the lack of oxygen had caused, and he wouldn’t be able to generate the same kind of wind he had earlier when kicking down the door.

So he couldn’t leap out into the open air. The gas surrounded him on all sides. He was trapped.

And then the flame of the match reached the layer of gas.

Red light flashed against the starless night sky.

Ikebukuro

Because it was late at night, only a very limited number of people witnessed a part of the night sky turning red.

But within the confines of a dense metropolis, even a limited number can mean quite a lot—in this case, several hundred people.

Mysteriously, however, the light vanished nearly as quickly as it appeared. From a distance, it was as though the roof of a specific building flashed, then returned to darkness in less than a minute.

But many of those witnesses failed to detect something off about the phenomenon.

The blinking aircraft warning lights atop the building in question had vanished as well.

Only a handful of those witnesses actually noticed what happened.

There were Shingen Kishitani and Egor, looking up at the building under construction from its base.

And also, watching from the window of a distant building, a man whose eyes were bloodshot red.

The man’s skin was peeled off here and there, his flesh scraped away, as if he had wrenched his way free from some kind of physical bondage. He had done a minimal amount to stop the bleeding, but there was plenty of blood on his clothing.

He watched the distant sight as if he were gazing upon someone beloved, with those bright red eyes. And he did know what happened.

On the roof of a building about two-thirds of a mile away, a shadow had plunged from the sky, scooped up a flame that was about to burst throughout the area, and extinguished it within its darkness.

At a brief glance, it was as if the light had rapidly dwindled. But the man, who had observed the freakish shadow longer than anyone and knew it better than anyone, understood immediately how it had extinguished the fire, even from a distance.

It was as though the night sky had a will of its own and had chosen to put out the fire.

And in knowing what it did, the man exulted.

Exactly because he knew what it had done.

Saika’s accursed words of love surged within him.

When Kujiragi possessed him with Saika’s power, she commanded him to stay put and behave.

But he used his own love to pin down both of these things—and spoke the name of the one to whom he dedicated his unstoppable love.

Moaning, singing, his own word of love escaping his throat.

“Cel……ty……”

It was just a name, but to him, it was a word of love.

He hadn’t driven out Saika’s curse, the way that Akabayashi once had, by gouging out his own wound. Instead, he had repeated Haruna Niekawa’s method, mastering Saika’s mad song of love from the inside.

He was able to overwhelm Saika much faster than Haruna had—perhaps because Saika loved “humans,” while what he loved was “inhuman.”

Did he even know what had happened to himself?

The man cut by Saika, Shinra Kishitani, faced the darkened sky with red eyes and smiled.

Full of love for what seemed to be the dark of the night itself that coated the city.

Raijin High School—in the past

“So if that tiger’s going to leave his skin behind, as a person, how will you leave your name behind? I’m kind of excited about the thought of you being remembered as a serial killer.”

“As a person…?”

The smile vanished from Shinra’s lips as he looked up at the light coming down from the rooftop door. He imagined a great shadow beyond that light, sucking up everything into its midst.

“I don’t need to leave anything behind.”

“But I thought people died and left their names behind. If you’re not a tiger or a human, then what do you intend to be?”

“Good question. If I’m not a person or a tiger, then I guess I’m going to be some kind of weird folklore monster,” Shinra joked—or made what could only be taken as a joke—smiling worriedly.

“But if I could be with her…then I wouldn’t mind not being human.”

Chat room

Kuru: Well, well. My, my. For claiming that she would flame TarouTanaka until he showed up, Miss Namie does seem to have given up posting all of a sudden.

Mai: Mysterious.

Mai: Maybe she got hungry.

Kuru: We can only hope the reason is as benign as that.

Kuru: But who do you suppose this “Rocchi” is? This message board is supposed to be accessible by invitation only, so I would assume that Rocchi must know one of the members. Or perhaps Masaomi Kida is in fact a member of the chat, and Rocchi threatened him into giving up the address. Who could this Masaomi Kida be…?

Mai: This is shameless.

Mai: Ouch.

Mai: I got pinched.

Kuru: Be that as it may, since neither Rocchi nor Namie has left the room, I would assume they’re still watching?

Mai: Exciting.

Rocchi: Yo, I’m here.

Mai: Yo.

Kuru: Oh my. So you’re still around. Very clever of you to stay quiet and spy on the chat, pretending that you are away.

NamieYagiri has left the chat.

Kuru: Oh my. Already giving up, Miss Namie? Or did she have some pressing business to attend to?

Mai: I pressed the trapdoor button.

Rocchi: Sorry about that. I was just planning a party with my friend.

Rocchi: Are you two girls, by the way?

Rocchi: Because I’ve got a bit of time until the party.

Rocchi: Do you mind if I hang out here and chat until then?

Rocchi: Is that okay with you?

Kuru: Oh my. Should you really be talking to ladies in such a forward manner online? You never know, we might be men pretending to be women.

Mai: Gender undisclosed.

Mai: Mysterious!

Rocchi: Nah, I can tell. You’re not pretending. You’re both girls.

Kuru: That’s a very entertaining guess, but do you have evidence? I believe that you might be better suited to writing rom-coms than playing detective. The Internet is the shining darkness of the modern world, where no one can see the other’s face. What makes you so certain of the fact that I must be a woman, just because my manner of communication is so blatantly feminine?

Rocchi: A hunch.

Rocchi: I can tell from the writing when someone’s a cute girl.

Mai: You’re scary.

Mai: You’re a philanderer.

Rocchi: Can’t deny that one.

Kuru: What a strange gentleman. Oh, pardon me. I did not take into account the possibility that you might be a woman.

Rocchi: Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Am I cool for bearing the burden of the shining darkness of the modern world?

Kuru: Anonymity is a thing of the past, after that previous outburst. Miss Namie has most crudely revealed the identities of those who inhabit this place. This entire chat room was predicated upon a delicate balance—made of a group of people who know each other but do not know each other’s aliases. Now it is ruined and must be reset. No score, no game, no future.

Mai: That’s sad.

Rocchi: I mean, it sure sounds like you know who everyone is.

Kuru: Yes, we had the pleasure of the superiority of knowledge, knowing all and being mere observers. Now this valuable place of play will be lost to us. It is a shame, but I suppose there is little one can do but chalk it up to the work of fate.

Mai: Very sad.

Rocchi: That’s not true, is it?

Rocchi: There are many things you can say when you’re not looking the other person in the face, but there are also lots of things you can say because you know who you’re talking to, right?

Kuru: Oh my. Such as what?

Rocchi: A confession of love.

Mai: Incredible.

Rocchi: Of course, you can also do that when neither party knows the other very well and get into a load of trouble because of it.

Rocchi: I mean, look, I don’t know the first thing about this chat room.

Rocchi: But since I happened to be here for its ending, it would be nice to get to know you.

Kuru: You really will say whatever you want, won’t you? Who in the world are you?

Mai: Who are you.

Rocchi: Just a passing ne’er-do-well.

Rocchi: And I’m heading to a ne’er-do-well party in Ikebukuro.

Rocchi: I wouldn’t go outside until the night is over, if I were you.

Kuru: Oh my. You speak exactly like a certain someone I know. Just when I was preparing to head out into the city, to relieve myself of the loneliness of knowing this special place has been irrevocably broken.

Mai: We’re in sync.

Rocchi: Pardon me.

Rocchi: But in fact, this place isn’t special.

Rocchi: Out there, in here—it’s all the same.

Rocchi: I mean, when you pass people on the street, you both might as well be anonymous, right?

Rocchi: You never know where an acquaintance might be hiding in plain sight.

Rocchi: And that can break down out of nowhere, just like this message board.

Rocchi: Well, so long.

Rocchi has left the chat.