Durarara!! - Volume 13 - Chapter 11

Chapter 11: Like a Dragon Given Wings

Hallway, Raijin High School—in the past

“Hey, are you ready to be up and walking around already…? Oh, why do I even ask?”

“…Oh, it’s you, Shinra. Where’s that cockroach? I’m gonna squash him like the bug he is, until he says he’s going to change schools,” growled Shizuo bitterly as he passed Shinra in the hallway.

Shinra shrugged and jokingly responded, “You got hit by a truck, and rather than worrying about your own health, your first priority is hitting others? But I guess you’ve grown as a person, since you’re not destroying the school campus itself until Izaya shows up.”

He sighed, then glanced at Shizuo’s hair. “To be honest, I was stunned when I saw you with blond hair after all that time. I thought you’d finally turned into a bad boy.”

“…Oh, shut up. I didn’t dye it blond because I wanted to.”

“Then why? You can get your way on anything with force alone. Why would you dye it blond if you didn’t want to?”

“It was an older guy in middle school who told me to do it… But whatever, that doesn’t matter. What class is that mosquito bastard in?” Shizuo demanded, his temple pulsing. He was seething with anger despite the fact that he’d just met the guy the day before.

“Are you intending to get kicked out of school? At least control yourself while in the building.” Shinra cackled.

Shizuo clicked his tongue but did as his schoolmate said, this time turning his anger upon Shinra himself. “And what the hell were you thinking, introducing me to that filthy little trash bug?”

“Oh, come on. He’s the only friend I made in middle school, so I wanted to introduce him to you, the only friend I made in elementary.”

“Let me give you a warning. Choose your friends carefully.”

“Really? You’re going to say that, Shizuo?” Shinra quipped to his old friend with a grin. “Look, at least take it easy at school. You don’t want to get expelled right at the start of the school year and cause your family a bunch of grief, do you?”

“…”

The mention of his family made Shizuo’s scowl even deeper. “Fine, fine,” he grumbled. “I guess I can wait until after school to kill him.”

“Can we at least remove ‘killing him’ from the options? What is it that has you so furious about him?”

“…I just hate guys like that, who talk around people in circles but don’t actually do anything on their own.”

“Ah, I see now.”

It was quite a bold statement for Shizuo to make about the personality of someone he’d barely met, but Shinra didn’t push back on it. He knew that Izaya was exactly the kind of person Shizuo described.

Instead of arguing, he smiled and said, “But if you’re going to go down that route, I’m also a person who’s all talk.”

“That’s true. You annoy me all the time, too,” Shizuo said with a mean glare.

Shinra backed away in a hurry. “H-hey, don’t look at me like that. Whoa, whoa—easy, easy. Let’s be cool.”

Shizuo’s brow stayed furrowed as he stared at his old friend. “The thing is, you might tell a lot of really stupid-ass jokes, but you don’t just lie for the hell of it. That, at least, makes you better than that fleabrain.”

“I think you’re confused. I’m not some pure, innocent soul, and I’ll lie if I need to.”

“…You’re dumb enough to talk about wanting to dissect people in broad daylight. Why would you even need to lie?” Shizuo said, intending it to sound like casual conversation. Shinra thought that one over.

“Hmm… Good question. I’m in love with a girl.”

“So?”

“If I needed to, I would lie in order to fulfill my love for her. I would be a villain.”

“Okay, fine. Hey, if you wanna be a villain for the sake of the woman you love, knock yourself out,” Shizuo shot back, annoyed at the sappy romantic talk.

But Shinra waved his hand in denial. “No, it wouldn’t be for her sake exactly. It would be for my sake.”

“What?”

“If I was going to lie out of malice, it would be to her.”

“What do you mean?” Shizuo’s brow furrowed even deeper. The other students were steering so clear of him, they wouldn’t even venture into the hallway.

“I mean, I really, really love her. In fact, it’s probably closer to a desire to own her than to love her. So if she was drifting away from me for some reason…I would do whatever it takes to keep her at my side, even if it meant being a villain. I might even kill a person.”

Even Shizuo had to take this admission in silence. Eventually, he said, “Nah…that’s no good. If you killed someone, she wouldn’t want anything to do with you anymore.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Which is why I’d keep it a secret from her. Or maybe I’d lie and say, ‘It’s your fault I became a murderer!’ and make her feel really guilty about it. Then maybe she’ll stay with me forever.”

“You’re kind of a piece of shit, huh?” Shizuo let out a huge sigh and looked at Shinra with pity in his eyes. “I think the reason you don’t have many friends is because you say whatever’s on your mind like that.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever hear that from you…but I won’t deny it.”

“What kind of love is it that makes life worse for the other person? If that’s love, it’s a pretty twisted strain of it.”

“Look, I’m not saying I wouldn’t rather have it a different way, right? I’d prefer to lead a normal romantic life and be able to say stuff like ‘As long as I can pledge my life to you, I don’t need anything else!’ That would be best of all,” Shinra said, nodding to himself, as proper as you please.

Shizuo gave him a disgusted look. “I feel really sorry for whatever woman you fall in love with. Just don’t be surprised if she stabs you when she finds out what you’re like.”

“I don’t know… She’s really sweet, so maybe at the end of it all, she’ll actually forgive me.”

“At least you’ve got a field of flowers in that skull of yours…,” Shizuo said, shaking his head. He was tired of the topic. “But whatever. If it comes to that, I’ll smash you up into the sky so your woman won’t have to.”

He meant it as a way to tell off Shinra, but the other boy just smiled. Whether he was serious or joking, Shinra said, “I’d appreciate it if you did. And I’d appreciate it even more if you do it softly enough that I don’t die.”

“I’m not as tough as you, after all.”

Building under construction—present day

The flame of the match acted as a trigger, sending up a huge amount of heat and light from the flammable gas filling the area and causing dull sounds of destruction.

Izaya stood atop the beams, but he’d moved to a safer location away from the searing waves of heat after he dropped the match. But even then, the gusts of wind from the gas explosion sent jets of raging heat right past him.

He had to hold tight to the steel pillar to protect himself and ensure the gust didn’t knock him off. That was enough to pull his eyes off Shizuo for the moment.

There was always the possibility that Shizuo could be entirely burned to a crisp, without oxygen in his lungs, and still come after him. At the very least, Izaya expected, he wouldn’t be able to escape with his legs paralyzed like that…

But then he noticed something off.

The darkness around them had somehow gotten thicker.

“…?”

This wasn’t typical night darkness. The light of the flames was being sucked up directly into the sky—such was the abnormal dark around the building.

It was often said that the stars were invisible in the city because of the illumination around you, but in this case, it was as if the sky had snuffed out all the light on the surface of the planet.

And not just the light. The wind, heated and fueled by the fire—even the flames themselves—vanished into the darkness. A shadow reaching down from the sky was grabbing the fire and devouring it.

Izaya recognized this shadow.

“…”

And realizing that he knew what this mysterious shadow was, he narrowed his eyes and muttered, “I thought it had no memory… What does that monster think it’s doing?”

For just a moment, he gazed up at the sky. There were no stars above, nothing at all but unnatural darkness.

But he couldn’t afford to pay much attention to it now. He was in the midst of a battle for his life.

Out of the suspicion that the shadow might seek to interrupt or interfere with their battle, Izaya gave it a bare minimum of caution as he searched for Shizuo Heiwajima below.

The flame had not spread far but was collected into a small area, probably due to the effect of the shadow. Yet he did not see a human figure amid the fire.

Where is he?

Izaya squinted, looking for the figure of a man charred to a crisp. Then he felt a dull shaking at his feet and grabbed the steel beam for support.

An earthquake?

It was fierce and yet muffled, like the earth itself was rumbling and rocking.

No, that’s not it.

An ordinary person would chalk it up to a quake. But Izaya knew.

There was no coincidental tremor right at this exact moment. There was one possible source that was far more likely, given the circumstances.

Izaya gripped the corner of the pillar and gazed into the center of the shrinking, focusing flames.

And then he saw it. Right in the center of the fire.

There was a large shadow, right around the spot where Shizuo had been kneeling earlier. But it was not in the form of a human figure consumed by the fire.

It was a massive hole in the floor with cracks spreading away from it like the web of a spider. A shiver ran down Izaya’s back.

That monster. Did he punch through the floor with his upper-half strength alone?

Moments ago, Shizuo had been paralyzed on the floor due to lack of air. He was able to move his torso but hadn’t recovered enough oxygen to use his legs to stand.

So he had used whatever muscles he could to inflict enough damage to break through the floor. Perhaps it had been with his fists or elbows or forehead; Izaya couldn’t tell.

All he knew was that the smashing sound he had heard earlier along with the burst of heat and light hadn’t been from the explosion but had been the sound of the floor crumbling with the force of Shizuo’s blow.

Did he fall through a hole to escape?! Or maybe…

There were two possibilities.

One was that he had punched a hole in the floor and escaped the flames by falling through it.

The other was that, like a grasshopper slamming its legs against the ground for greater recoil, the sheer force of hitting the floor had buffeted the rest of his body clear out of the center of the flames.

In either case, there was just one conclusion to be drawn.

Izaya leaned forward atop the steel beam, looking down the length of the pillar beneath him to its base. And there he saw…

“…”

…the figure of Shizuo Heiwajima—clothes, skin, and hair singed here and there—grabbing the base of the steel beam with a look of absolute fury.

Uh-oh!

Izaya tried to leap away to safety, but a larger shaking threw off his momentum. The beams around him bent and twisted as the very foundation of the wall of the building began to crumble.

Shizuo pried the beam he was holding out of the frame of the building and held it the way he normally held streetlights and electric poles when he removed them and swung them around.

As Izaya fell, off-balance, from his previous foothold, he saw the metal beam swinging straight at him.

“Guh…”

Out of either calculation or pure instinct, Izaya instantly twisted, swinging his shoe out to catch the beam.

The next moment, the sole of his shoe made contact with metal—and Izaya’s body was struck toward the starless mound of the sky, a baseball diamond without pitcher or fielders.

Ikebukuro

“…Kinda weird, huh?”

Chikage was on the way toward their transaction point, with Masaomi walking next to him.

“Yeah, sure are a lot of people out and about.”

“Exactly… Doesn’t feel like the hours before dawn.”

They were going to get to the trade-off spot ahead of time and scout it out, to see whether they could learn how many people Mikado intended to bring. Perhaps there was an emergency staircase at a nearby restaurant or other late-night establishment that they could use as a vantage point.

But on the way there, the two noticed that something felt off. Not only did Masaomi, as a resident of Ikebukuro, sense it, but even Chikage, from distant Saitama, could tell that something was wrong.

“I’m getting a bad feeling about it. This crawling on my back? It’s like when the yakuza would get involved with my gang.”

“Don’t scare me like that…,” Masaomi said, cheek twitching, but he didn’t seem particularly afraid. There was one concern on his mind, though: “I just hope that Izumii asshole doesn’t interfere…”

Chikage had put the hurt on them at the parking garage, but they weren’t the type of folks who gave up easily.

“Can’t believe they’re bringing in guys like that…”

“Hey, anyone can join the Dollars, right? I heard there are little grade school kids, too.”

“But even still…”

Masaomi thought back to how Izumii and his gang had nearly brought down the Yellow Scarves from within. It was a galling memory.

“Anyway, better to steer clear of that guy in the shades,” Chikage said cheerily as he glanced around them. “That’s the kind of guy who’ll hurl Molotov cocktails at anyone he decides is an enemy, even in the middle of broad daylight.”

They were still keeping their distance from the shopping district and not approaching the crowds directly. During the day, they might have slipped in among the throng, but they weren’t careless enough to wander over into an abnormal situation.

“Got any ideas as to what this is about? I mean, I’d believe it if you told me there was a World Cup match today or somethin’.”

“I dunno… Do they look weird to you, too? It’s like they’re just wandering back and forth…”

A cold sweat began to trickle down Masaomi’s back. The eeriness of the sight was starting to surpass curiosity into the realm of horror.

Don’t tell me this has the Dollars’ fingerprints on it, too…

I guess all those people there…could be Dollars, perhaps…

But then again…

Masaomi had heard the legend of the Dollars’ first meetup, but this seemed strange even for that.

“Fine, fine. Let’s get inside somewhere, just in case,” Chikage suggested and headed for a nearby door. “As long as we can get onto the roof.”

“We gotta plan it a bit more than that,” Masaomi said, chagrined. He glanced at a different nearby building. “Let’s go to that one. The rooftop has a good view, and it’s easy to get up to.”

“You’ve been on the roof there?”

“I was going all over the place back in the days when we fought with the Blue Squares. My worst adviser, Orihara, seemed to be oddly well-informed about them,” Masaomi said, his face twisting at the bitter memories of the wars in the old days.

Chikage cackled and clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, listen to you, juvenile delinquent. I guess I can turn a blind eye to your past exploits in this case, then.”

“…Like you aren’t about to engage in trespassing yourself.”

Inside a van

Togusa’s van featured an anime decal all across one side of it, thanks to Yumasaki. Normally, it had the space for four to relax in relative comfort, front seat and back, but now it had twice that population density.

Togusa was in the driver’s seat, while the injured Kadota sat in the passenger seat.

In the middle row were Namie and Mika, with Seiji seated between them, while the back seat contained Yumasaki, Anri, and Saki. If Karisawa were along as she usually was, they’d be over capacity—but she was not in the vehicle.

She’d been out on the streets searching for Kadota when all communication from her had stopped. The rest of the group decided to head toward the Sunshine area of Ikebukuro to find her, where things tended to be busiest.

“I think you girls should have stayed behind,” Kadota said to the two girls in the back seat, conveniently ignoring that he was still injured and had no business being there. “How about if you lie low for a while? I’ll ask Shinra’s mom if she’ll take you in for a bit.”

But Anri shook her head. She looked more fervent than usual. “No…I will go, too. I have to go.”

Kadota saw her eyes through the rearview mirror and sighed. At first, Anri had been too confused to process the entire situation, but from the moment she learned that Karisawa was in danger, she insisted on coming along.

“Did something happen with you and Karisawa?” he asked.

“She…she helped me in various ways when I was having trouble,” Anri replied, her head drooping just a bit, as she recalled all that had happened in the last few days.

If Karisawa hadn’t been there, then Izaya Orihara’s words alone might have succeeded in destroying Anri’s will. The realization gave her a fresh appreciation for what Karisawa had done for her.

It was why she had made up her mind—to face all the aches related to herself.

When she looked up again, Kadota wore a pensive expression.

“Huh? What’s up, Kadota…?” Togusa asked as he was reaching to turn on the engine. He followed Kadota’s lead and looked into the rearview mirror at Anri. “H-hey, kid! What happened to your eyes?”

The rest of them all turned to look at her. One thing was immediately apparent.

Anri Sonohara’s eyes were glowing red.

The red light shone through the lenses of her glasses, flickering and floating within the van like will-o’-the-wisps. Kadota and Yumasaki had seen Anri fighting with glowing red eyes in the park before. But they’d never been able to confront her about that and hadn’t planned to ask her in the future.

Anri looked at the rest of them with those powerful red eyes and stated, “I think that the slasher in the neighborhood is related to me.”

She steadied her breathing and suppressed her normal hesitant tone of voice to produce something far harder and stronger than anything they’d heard from her before.

“And that’s why…I need to go.”

Commercial building—rooftop

On the spacious roof of a building that contained multiple restaurants and bars within it, Chikage and Masaomi secretly surveyed the city around them to get a better picture of what was happening.

For being the middle of the night, there were just too many people around.

And they were especially clustered in the area they were planning to go next—the block in front of Tokyu Hands. But that spot in particular wasn’t the densest; that honor seemed to go to the block before that, heading to the bowling alley.

“Can’t see that way around the building… Did something happen around Russia Sushi’s area?”

“Something’s fishy about what they’re doing. It’s all mechanical or something, like they’re on a loop… Like a character in the background of a video game level, ya know?” Chikage suggested. But while he seemed nonchalant, Masaomi was unnerved by the sight.

“Shit… What’s going on over there…?”

“Are their eyes red, too?”

“Huh?”

“It’s hard to make out from here… In fact, you can’t really make out the sidewalk from here, because of the highway.”

From their position, the crossing bridge over the Metropolitan Expressway was angled such that it blocked the intersection where Sixtieth Floor Street met Otowa Street.

“If only this building were as tall as the Amlux or Sunshine buildings, we’d have a real clear view of it.” Masaomi groaned, tilting his head sideways to look at the Amlux building across the expressway from Tokyu Hands. But it seemed impossible to sneak onto the roof there, and even if the Sunshine observation decks were open twenty-four hours a day, it would take several times as long to get over to that one.

“Still, it’s an improvement having a better look at Sixtieth Floor Street, ya know?” said Chikage, watching the streets below. But then he spotted something that looked off.

Around the entrance to Tokyu Hands, there was a new group that looked noticeably different from the generic crowds elsewhere. To a person, they wore blue beanies and ski masks, creating a vivid distinction from the rest of the nighttime masses.

When he saw the smaller group of blue, Masaomi clenched the roof’s railing.

“There they are… It’s the Blue Squares.”

Outside of Russia Sushi

“…Some new customers?”

Nasujima noticed the van stopping in front of Tokyu Hands to let out a group of boys wearing eerie shark-pattern ski masks and grinned to himself.

“Don’t mess with them yet. Just control the ones taken over with Saika, got it? I’ll give the command when it’s time. Don’t want to create an opening that the folks in the sushi place will use to escape.”

“…Yes, Mother,” said Haruna, her eyes dull. He rubbed her head and smiled.

“Mikado Ryuugamine, huh? All I remember is that his name stuck out and he was otherwise completely forgettable,” Nasujima said, trying to remember his old student, but because it had been a different class than his own homeroom and Mikado had been a boy, he couldn’t recall the face.

“Anyway. So the boss of the Dollars is a guy without any notable features, eh? Kids these days are crazy.” He chuckled to himself. He looked over the blank-faced Haruna and the terrified Shijima.

“Education’s not what it used to be, is it?” asked the former teacher. Neither Shijima nor Haruna said anything about the irony.

The rooftop of a mixed-use building

“So which one’s Mikado Ryuugamine? See, I’d never forget a girl’s face, but…”

Chikage scanned the area. Masaomi focused on one specific point in the crowd.

“Shit…there are a couple of guys with the same build as Mikado wearing ski masks, so I can’t tell which one might be him…”

Even at a distance, Mikado’s innocent, babyish face would stand out among the Blue Squares. And Masaomi had eyesight good enough to just barely pick him out at this range, despite the darkness.

“I see. So they were trying to avoid their leader getting taken out by an ambush right off the top,” Chikage said. “Or maybe he’s still in the car…but I can’t see it because of the damn expressway!”

“They used cars a lot, so I doubt they’re walking or on bicycles.”

“Dammit, can’t see. Stupid expressway… Why does it have to cost so much?” Chikage complained, which was neither here nor there.

But Masaomi had a different concern. “You know, before we came up here…I saw the big road under the expressway, but it seemed like there were way fewer cars than usual…”

There was no way to confirm that from this angle. The only thing visible was the stream of cars whizzing along the raised expressway, unconcerned with the problems below.

“Lots of people but no cars? Even weirder.”

“Something’s wrong with Ikebukuro today…”

“Well, at least the crowds actin’ weird don’t seem to have nothin’ to do with these guys in blue,” suggested Chikage, who turned his back toward Masaomi. “Well, it’s almost time. I’m gonna go down there. You stay here.”

“H-hey, aren’t you gonna need me?”

“You’re the wild card. The main event. I’m gonna tear their masks off, so you watch from up above and come on down when you see your friend. If he’s not among them, then I’ll make them tell me where to find him, and I’ll call you with the answer.”

The expressway blocked their view of the group, leaving them without even a solid head count of enemies. And yet Chikage spoke as though losing wasn’t even a potential outcome; to him, victory was a given.

Abruptly, Masaomi called out, “Mr. Rokujou!”

“What?”

“Um…thank you.”

“You can thank me later. When you do it at this point in the movies, that’s a sign that I’m gonna die after this,” Chikage said, waving him off with a bitter smile and heading down the stairs. “Plus, you don’t know if you’ll want to thank me for the results yet.”

“Huh?” Masaomi frowned.

Chikage shrugged and said, “I might get so carried away that I wallop your buddy along with the rest of ’em.”

Residential area

Manami Mamiya was an agent of vengeance.

She lived to make life miserable for Izaya Orihara in every way possible, you might say.

Her life should have ended in a real-life suicide meetup. But now, there was an engine that kept her alive—her hatred for Izaya, who had insulted and dismissed both her intentions and her despair.

So in a way, you could say that Izaya was the one keeping her alive. Manami knew this herself but didn’t particularly care about it one way or the other.

If she got the chance to see Izaya die a miserable death, his face twisted with horror and gloom, it would all have been worth it. And that conclusion allowed her to do many horrible things without a second thought.

For example, tossing a severed head into the open space in front of Ikebukuro Station in the middle of the day. This announced the existence of Celty Sturluson’s head to the world at large and stole one of Izaya’s advantages.

She hadn’t actually calculated how this would hurt Izaya. She just knew he would hate it, and so she did it.

Now, for the same reasons, she was engaging in a new activity without considering the finer consequences.

“…So this is the next one,” she muttered coldly to herself as she stared up at a small building in a residential area of the city.

It was one of the hideouts of Jinnai Yodogiri, a broker and enemy of Izaya Orihara’s—at least, according to the information recorded on the computer in Izaya’s office. She had stolen a plethora of information from that computer and copied it to a USB stick she kept in her pocket.

Now she was traveling to the various hideouts recorded in that list of information, hoping to hand over Izaya’s data to Yodogiri for free, if she could find him. But though she’d visited over ten of the addresses so far, none of them showed any sign of being occupied.

She even sneaked inside a number of them, but she had nothing to show for it. She knew this was an extremely dangerous thing to do, but she didn’t even care if Yodogiri spotted her and killed her.

As long as an enemy formidable enough that Izaya would be wary of him ended up with Izaya’s data—that was all she wanted. It would be unfortunate not to actually see Izaya suffering for herself, but if she died here, then that was as far as her energy to live got her, nothing more.

It was a very warped way to rationalize her own actions. And that rationale took her to the back door of this building, too. Through the clouded glass, she could see the lights turn on.

“…”

Cautiously, she focused all her senses. She heard the lock open from the inside, and then a young man’s face emerged from the opening door.

His pajamas were covered in red stains here and there, and he was dragging one foot in what looked like a cast. Whatever was going on, it was abnormal. He was either the victim of an attempted murder or perhaps the perpetrator, coated in the blood of his prey.

And then there were his eyes, clearly bloodshot behind his glasses.

“…It’s the Saika-possessed,” Manami muttered, though not out of fear. If Saika was controlling him, then he must be one of Haruna Niekawa’s pawns.

Perhaps Izaya had foreseen what she was up to and sent him there to Yodogiri’s hideout ahead of her. But as soon as the thought occurred to her, she realized it might not be the case.

She recognized this man.

She’d seen him in a photograph when studying every bit of information about Izaya Orihara she could find, for revenge.

He was…the unlicensed doctor…

Shinra. That’s right. Shinra Kishitani.

Izaya Orihara had any number of pawns to do his bidding, but she remembered that the only one he considered a friend was this black market doctor. But what was he doing here?

“…Why, good evening. Don’t be alarmed. There’s nothing wrong here,” said the bloodstained man. He smiled at her and approached, dragging his foot. He was holding a mop that he’d clearly found inside the building as a crutch.

“Shinra…Kishitani.”

“Huh? How do you know my name?” asked the red-eyed Shinra. So he wasn’t Niekawa’s cat’s-paw.

Izaya Orihara’s friend, Manami considered. Would he suffer if he learned that his friend died?

She concentrated on the ice pick she kept concealed on her person. Shinra, meanwhile, had the red eyes that were a dead giveaway of Saika’s possession, but he beckoned to her just as if he was normal.

“Have I given you a checkup in the past, perhaps? If so, I’ve got one little request,” Shinra said, approaching her.

Manami wasn’t sure whether she should pull out the ice pick yet and kept her hand on it. “Mr. Kishitani, do you know Izaya Orihara?”

“Hmm? Well, he is my friend. And?”

“I don’t know much about having friends, you see… What did you think when he got stabbed a little while back?”

It wasn’t the kind of thing you asked a man in bloodied pajamas. She seemed to be plenty abnormal herself—but Shinra considered the question seriously.

“Let’s see… I think I figured, He must have earned it.”

“…”

“When he called to tell me about it, I said, ‘Oh, cool,’ and hung up. Was that mean of me?”

“No. It’s all his fault. I think that’s a perfectly reasonable response,” said Manami. She exhaled and let go of the ice pick she was keeping concealed.

Everything Shinra said was indeed true, but it was so far from the typical concept of a “friend” that she saw no value in killing him. Plus, Izaya was the kind of person who would watch a friend die with a smile on his face.

It was why he filled her with such hatred, Manami knew. She asked the man in front of her, “Are you hurt badly?”

“Oh, this? I’m all right. Thanks. It hurts a whole lot, but I’ll manage,” Shinra said, not realizing that the girl whose concern he appreciated was the very person who threw Celty’s head before the eyes of the world. “Actually, this might be a strange thing to ask, but…can I borrow your phone?”

“…Pardon me?”

“I need to go somewhere, but I don’t have a phone to arrange a ride… I need to call a taxi and then either my mother-in-law or my dad… Actually, not my dad,” Shinra muttered to himself, eyeballs bright red.

Manami thought it over and decided to offer Shinra her shoulder.

“Oh no, it’s fine; I can walk on my own.”

“But it must be painful.”

“You know, a girl shouldn’t be giving suspicious people a shoulder to lean on in the middle of the night,” the red-eyed man said, which was a strangely specific piece of advice, but Manami’s expression did not change.

“No, it’s fine. All you have to do is answer something for me.”

“?”

“About Izaya Orihara,” she said, her voice flat and mechanical. “Tell me if you know anything that he really, really hates to have happen.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to kill him, and I want it to be awful for him,” she admitted freely.

Shinra smiled as he dragged his leg along. “What is that, jealousy? Or one of those emotions? No, that’s love.”

“You’re wrong,” Manami said flatly, neither angry nor pleased.

“Let’s see… Something he would hate… Ah! Ah!”

Shinra winced occasionally from the pain in his joint as he walked. But otherwise he maintained a thin smile that, combined with the red eyes, made him look like a creepy clown.

He decided to go to the main street to catch a taxi, and as they walked together, he reminisced about the past as a means of answering the girl’s question.

“Let’s see… Izaya is never disappointed or disgusted by people. So anything involving human relationships or the ugly side of people, like betrayal or death, isn’t going to bother him.”

“…”

“But actually, I don’t think that’s because he’s mentally strong or anything. Just the opposite, in fact.”

“?”

Manami gave him a questioning look. He leaned onto her shoulder for support as he made his way slowly down the street.

“People think of him like some cold-blooded monster, but he’s more human than anyone I know; he’s so fragile inside. If you pumped him full of love and betrayal and such, I think he’d fall apart. I think that’s why he decided to love humanity by letting everything wash over him. Do you see what I’m saying? He accepts everything, but he doesn’t take it in. He lets it wash over him.”

“Wash over…?”

“Yes. Think of those koinobori poles, with the carp streamers that blow in the wind. At first glance, they appear to have wide mouths and insides that happily swallow everything into them…but there’s no bottom to that container. It’s just a hollow tube. So of course they can accept everything into their mouths; they don’t actually hold it. Of course he can love everything.”

It was hard to tell exactly what Shinra thought of his friend’s disposition. But the little smile never left his lips.

“Oh, sorry,” he said to Manami. “You didn’t want to know his nature, just the things that he hates.”

He closed his eyes and exhaled quietly.

“I think…simple pain, heat, agony… He hates those things.”

Ikebukuro—inside an office building

“Kahk…”

Breath returned to Izaya in the form of a cough.

The air he expelled contained flecks of blood.

His attempt to seize understanding was besieged by ferocious pain.

“…!”

For an instant, he forgot who he was and why he was here.

The awful pain was inseparable from heat in his mind, creating the brief illusion that his entire body was on fire. Agony tore through his being, preventing him from even passing out.

I’m still alive.

Izaya was not the type of person to argue about guts and willpower overcoming flesh. But he didn’t rule it out, either.

He summoned all his mental strength, forcing the pain aside so his brain could work unimpeded.

What happened? I was atop the beams, and…I fell…

The shock was so strong that even memories ten seconds old felt vague. He reached back what felt like ten years to arrive at last at an answer.

That’s right. He hit me. The monster used a metal beam like a bat and hit me like a ball.

“…Monster,” he spat.

If his opponent had been a human, Izaya would have praised the strength of the man who hit him, near-lethal blow or not. But Izaya no longer recognized Shizuo Heiwajima as human.

All he felt was horrible, detestable pain, his entire body being devoured by seething agony.

Apparently, he was inside a building. After being struck, there had been a shock against his back and a sound like glass breaking, as he recalled it.

“…”

He looked around, his back against the ground, and saw a number of office desks. So he was inside of an office of some kind.

I was lucky.

After Shizuo struck him, he’d flown into the building across the street and crashed through a window. Perhaps the glass of the window had cushioned him, because aside from a number of lacerations on his clothes from shards of glass, his arteries were miraculously intact.

Instead, the blood oozed from a myriad of smaller cuts all over him. Izaya looked to the broken window.

He couldn’t tell what was happening outside. There was only one thing he could say for certain.

He’s going to come here to finish the job.

But the death sentence that was the truth also sent Izaya’s heart trembling.

That means it’s not over yet.

And when he’d reached that point, there was a sound of breaking glass up above. It could mean only one thing.

Shizuo Heiwajima had jumped here from the building across the way.

With legs powerful enough to kick a car like a soccer ball, a narrow alley was an easy gap to cross in a single leap. But few people, even if they had the same leg strength, would jump from such a tall building to another, knowing that a fall would be fatal.

If only he’d fallen, Izaya thought briefly, but then he remembered how Shizuo had kicked aside the forklift that had fallen from that height. No…maybe a fall of that distance wouldn’t kill him. And why would I hope that he went to his own demise? The entire point is that I’ve got to purge the monster from existence.

He chided himself for indulging in such a naive thought and smirked.

“Yes, that’s right.”

He clenched his fists, telling himself that at least the nerves there still worked. And then, withstanding withering pain all over, he got steadily to his feet.

“I’m here to vanquish a monster.”

Perhaps it was his one-sided, selfish love for humanity that brought his willpower back to him. And yet, not a single “beloved” human face came into his mind’s eye.

Not the parents who raised him.

Not the sisters who looked up to him.

Not the brother-loving woman who made for such a capable, unquestioning secretary.

Not the crazy friend who was the first to see his true nature.

Not the many unfortunate, despairing people he’d sent into ruin.

Not the naive fools who thanked him for sparing them on an idle whim.

Not even the boys on the border between normalcy and ruin.

Not a single face came to mind.

But still, he loved humanity.

Izaya Orihara, possessing a view of humanity that was as blank as the void, got to his feet.

“It’s not to run away.”

When Shizuo Heiwajima descended the stairs, the door to the office was still open.

“…” He watched carefully, saying nothing. Normally he would be shouting something like “Where did you go, fleabrain?!” But this situation was anything but normal.

He held everything inside, even his voice, conserving and converting all his energy to the purpose of eradicating Izaya Orihara from the earth.

Shizuo made his way slowly into the office, until he noticed a bloodstain on the floor near the center of the room.

Despite all his fury and hatred being turned solely on Izaya, Shizuo was not yet a raging, berserk animal. That might have been the benefit of all the time he had spent waiting and perhaps even what he yearned for.

Shizuo had misjudged his jump and crashed through the glass an entire story above where Izaya had landed, but he did not simply stomp his way through the floor to get down there.

The lights were out, so he wasn’t worried that some innocent person might get hurt. But even still, Shizuo’s furious instincts gave him a warning. He’d clashed with Izaya Orihara so many, many times before that he knew one solid fact.

Unless he watched himself kill the man, Izaya would not be dead.

It didn’t matter if he was buried under rubble. There could be no rest until Shizuo saw the body. And when you couldn’t see him, that was when you were in Izaya’s danger zone.

That wasn’t a rational, known fact that he kept in his brain. It was something that Shizuo had come to understand innately, through years of near-fatal brawling with Izaya.

There was no point to it unless he finished Izaya off visibly.

He could pack the man in concrete and dump him into the sea—and as long as Izaya was still alive when he disappeared under the waves, there could be no rest.

And even if he was dead, the unease would still live on in the city. His dead body could turn up in the rubble of the building, and people would still think, Does that body really belong to Izaya Orihara?

Among those who knew Izaya Orihara, the unease would live on, like a swelling that would not subside. And that was why Shizuo Heiwajima was here, to ensure that it did not happen.

He had to witness the sight of Izaya Orihara being eliminated from the earth.

However much rational sense Shizuo still had now, if he was his normal self, he would say something like this: I’m not here for the sake of all the people Izaya’s harmed. It’s all for my own selfish reasons.

On the other hand, if he were the sole target of all of Izaya’s malice, it would not have come to this situation, either. It was the way the malice was entangling all those around him, like Vorona, like Akane Awakusu, Shinra, Celty, and Tom, that had Shizuo so cornered and furious.

In a sense, it was ironic.

If he were the Shizuo from before he fought the crowd of Saikas and began to feel differently about his own strength…

If he were the Shizuo from before he met Akane Awakusu and learned how to use his strength to protect…

If he were the Shizuo who’d become trapped by his own violence and chosen to place himself at a distance from his surroundings…

…then he might not be in this position now.

Or if he was, then maybe he’d be screaming and chasing his opponent around like he so often did before.

But he did not this time.

Shizuo Heiwajima accepted people, connected to people—and because of that, he was tormented when they were hurt, and he trapped his unprecedented anger within himself, so that now it exploded.

It might lead to nothing but tragedy, but there was no stopping him now.

In a sense, it was his connections to others that created the single devastating weakness of the demon that was Shizuo Heiwajima.

And now Shizuo was falling into his least favorite development.

Izaya Orihara was nowhere to be seen.

He was gone, leaving behind only a bloodstain in the office.

Perhaps he was setting up an ambush. Shizuo stared around, then began lifting up the office desks one-handed, one after the other. But there was no sign of him hiding anywhere.

He couldn’t have had time to set up some flaming gas trap, like he did earlier.

“…”

Shizuo headed out of the office and glanced around the building. Aside from the green emergency exit panel, there was just one illumination glowing.

The elevator light.

He approached without making a sound and confirmed that the light was moving. It was indicating that the elevator was traveling downward from this floor. Of course, it was possible that the elevator was just a feint and that Izaya was still hiding on this floor.

But that, too, was merely another facet of escape.

“It’s not to run away,” Izaya had told himself, and yet mysteriously, he had vanished from the building.

Shizuo hadn’t heard him say that, but he could sense that the man truly intended to kill him. He gave not a single thought to what Izaya might actually be plotting and sneaked back to the office area.

Then he stuck his head through the broken window.

Izaya could pop up behind him and push him through it. He could have gone up a floor during the elevator distraction and prepared a rope or something to hook around Shizuo’s throat.

But Izaya knew full well that these things would mean nothing.

So instead, he chose to allow Shizuo to catch sight of him.

The elevator hadn’t been a distraction at all, merely a straightforward means of exiting the building.

When Shizuo saw Izaya, dressed in his usual black clothing, running down the dimly lit alley, his expression did not change one iota.

Instead, he placed his foot upon the frame of the broken window, as though this were a perfectly ordinary thing to do—and stepped out into the open air the way a person would walk down a staircase.

Alley

“Why, hello there, young Orihara. What has you in such a hurry?”

“…”

Shingen, wearing a gas mask like always, spotted Izaya leaving the building, but Izaya gave him no more than a glance before scampering away.

“Hrm… Well, how about that, Egor? I’ve just discovered that being totally ignored by a person younger than myself hurts more than I realized it would.”

“Are you saying you’ve never been ignored before this?”

“Why did you phrase that question as though it seems only natural that I would be ignored? Not only that, he was one of my son’s few friends, and—whether he did it or not—he was brought in by the police for stabbing my son years ago! Surely my presence would earn some kind of reaction…”

Egor ignored Shingen, who then launched into a pointless speech about nothing important. Instead, Egor focused on the building above them.

“…What?! Egor, are you ignoring me, too?! Don’t forget that not only are you younger than me, you are also a pawn I hired with money! But do not worry! I am a man of generous and forgiving spirit! I can be friends with a man I hired with money and be close enough to send him a holiday card containing a photograph of me and my new wife being disgustingly sappy togeth— Whoaaa!!”

Egor grabbed him by the collar midsentence and yanked him closer with one hand. The force of it caused Shingen to smack against the wall next to them.

“Gwah! What was that for?! Was all that bragging about my new wife making you jealous?!” spluttered Shingen.

“I’m sorry. It was because—,” Egor started to say, but then a human being came plummeting down on the spot where Shingen had stood seconds ago.

“…?!”

“—you were in danger there.”

The man who descended just feet in front of the shocked Shingen silently glanced toward where Izaya’s shadow fled the scene.

“…”

And without blinking an eye, he began to race after him. Egor watched him go, then shrugged.

“…He’s like the Terminator.”

“Yes. And while this is exceedingly awkward for me to admit, I suppose that I owe you an…apology?”

“No, you don’t. Besides, it’s true that I’m jealous of how hot your wife is,” Egor said with a dashing smile. Then he eyed the middle-aged man slumped over lifelessly at the side of the alley. “What should we do with him?”

“Hmm?”

Shingen followed Egor’s head bob and saw Seitarou Yagiri muttering to himself.

“It’s gone… My…head… Dullahan… My…head…head…”

He approached his old friend, who seemed to be in the midst of a dissociative episode, and waved. But Seitarou gave no reaction. Shingen sighed through the mask.

“So this is what becomes of one whose heart is stolen by that which lives on the flip side of reality. What a pitiable shame.”

“Yeah, it’s like seeing your own son’s future, right here,” Egor noted archly.

But Shingen just shook his head. “No, Shinra would not break down over a little trifle like this. If anything, he would say something like ‘Adversity is but a trial on the path to love’ and become even more hyperactive and tunnel-visioned.”

“That’s not much of an improvement, though. Um…what are you doing?”

Shingen had pulled a felt-tipped pen out of his pocket. “I found this pen by rifling through my pockets. It seems like a good opportunity to scribble something mischievous on Seitarou before he comes to his senses. Hmm…is it still valid to draw the kanji for meat on someone’s forehead, or is that passé now? What do you think, Egor? Have you got any brilliant avant-garde ideas…?”

Shingen turned and stopped in the middle of his sentence when he saw the look on Egor’s face. “Ooh,” he murmured with fascination.

Egor’s face looked just the same as it had moments ago. But with one very distinct difference.

The whites of his eyes were now red and bloodshot as they gazed into the distance. Shingen reacted to this eerie sight by remarking, “So I suppose you got cut by Saika at some point. Your possession doesn’t seem too strong, however. I’m guessing it was Sonohara.”

He nodded, reassuring himself of this supposition, and continued, “So has something changed with the Saikas?”

“I’ve been noticing for the past few hours…that another mother and her children and grandchildren are spreading their aura rather thickly.”

Shingen nodded a few more times. Then, resigned, he shook his head.

“…Ah. Well, it certainly can’t get much more troublesome than this.”

Inside the van

“So this is…um, Saika.”

By means of demonstration, Anri allowed the tip of the katana to protrude just a bit from her palm.

“Ooh, that’s amazing. How does it work?” asked Saki, who was sitting next to her and staring with interest. Togusa peeked through the rearview mirror at the exhibition, and his jaw dropped with shock.

“Huh. That’s real strange,” said Seiji, without much apparent interest. True to character, Namie followed that up with “You don’t need to pay attention to her, Seiji” as she brushed her fingers through his hair.

But the most dramatic reaction by far belonged to Yumasaki, who first trembled when he saw the blade emerge from Anri’s hand. Then he began to emit an eerie moaning sound: “Ooh…ooooooooo…”

Lastly, he grabbed Anri’s wrist, staring at the blade closely. Tears began to drip from his eyes.

“Um, what…?” she stammered.

“The promised day has arrived at last!” he shouted. “I always knew that I would one day get the chance to earn supernatural powers of my own! And now…and now! Will I be able to have a Saika of my own?! If so, then I am not opposed to taking lessons from an iai dojo every day to prepare for the coming battle against the all-powerful enemy!”

His excitement flustered Anri. “Um…er… First, when you have the sword, Saika sends a curse seeping through you, trying to love humanity.”

Yumasaki abruptly came to a standstill. “Humanity? Like…three-dimensional humanity?”

“Three-dimensional…?” Anri repeated.

Kadota threw her a lifeline. “He’s asking if you mean actual living people, not just anime characters and whatnot.”

“Um…Saika has never shown an interest in manga or novels…as far as I know…”

Instantly, the boy deflated and let go of Anri’s hand. “Oh…I see… Then I respectfully decline my suggestion of having a cursed blade.”

“Huh?”

Anri was surprised to learn that he was being serious about “having” a cursed blade at all and failed to grasp where he was going with this. He looked at her apologetically and explained, “I would do almost anything to build a bridge to two-dimensional characters, but I’ve got better things to do with my time than help facilitate three-dimensional romance.”

Annoyed, Togusa turned to Yumasaki and said, “In that case, why couldn’t you use that cursed blade to make some hot woman your girlfriend?”

“Huh? Do I stand to benefit in some way by making a three-dimensional girl my girlfriend?”

“Honestly, I’m kind of amazed at how firm you are on your standards,” Togusa said, half in admiration.

“But all of that aside! I can’t wait to see Karisawa again so we can share in the joy of knowing that the cursed blade is the pathway to two dimensions! Let’s go rescue her as soon as we can! What are we doing, Togusa? Hurry up, hurry up, run, run, run!” He smacked the window.

“Shuddup!” Togusa bellowed. “Don’t get fingerprints on the window! I’m driving as fast as I can, but I can’t change a red light!”

While the driver and back seat passenger argued, Kadota glanced over his shoulder and said to Anri, “Just checking, but…if Karisawa turns out to be under that Saika thing’s control, can you do something about that?”

“…Yes. If I find the mother of Karisawa or the other people afflicted by Saika in town—in other words, the source of the possession—and I use my Saika to overwrite their curse and set them free, then they should return to normal.”

“Okay…well, on the rare chance that it’s actually the case, we’d appreciate your help with that. I’m sorry about this,” Kadota said, tilting his head forward into a bow from his awkward position.

Anri quickly waved him off. “Oh no…I was the one who got her involved.”

“What do you mean? You didn’t do anything. I don’t know whose fault this is, but you shouldn’t trouble yourself over it.”

“But,” she said sadly, lowering her face, “if we can’t find her Saika mother, then I’ll have to hurt Karisawa a bit…”

She looked forlornly at the blade protruding from her palm. Kadota asked, “Do you, uh…have to cut ’em to a point where it becomes life-and-death?”

“N-no, just the tip of the finger would work, I think.”

“Then there’s no problem. Karisawa isn’t going to be upset about something like that.” Kadota chuckled, trying to cheer her up. “I’m telling you it’s fine. You have my permission. I’ll take responsibility.”

Feeling the warmth of his words, Anri looked at Kadota through the mirror and said, “Um…”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you.”

“What did I just say? We’re the ones who need to thank you,” Kadota said with a smile. The image of Karisawa’s face floated into Anri’s mind. It was the same kind of warmth she felt when Karisawa said, “I can forgive you of everything.” Maybe Kadota and Karisawa were rubbing off on each other because they spent so much time together.

And then there’s me… I spent all that time with Ryuugamine and Kida, and I couldn’t do anything… I didn’t try to change myself…

And that was why she had to do something now. It was that resolution that led her to reveal the situation to everyone here in the van—but their reactions were far from what she feared might happen.

She imagined that when they learned her secret, they’d treat her like a monster, or suspect her of being the actual street slasher, or perhaps even subject her to some kind of medieval witch hunt.

But their reactions were so normal that it actually left her confused and shaken.

“Um, aren’t you…afraid of me?” she said, to her own surprise.

Yumasaki tilted his head, as though he couldn’t fathom why she would ask such a thing. Namie snorted and said, “I might look down on you for it, but I certainly don’t have a reason to feel afraid of someone as meaningless as you.”

“You don’t have a reason to look down on her, either, Sister.”

“Oh…I-I’m sorry, Seiji! That was just a saying—it wasn’t what I really feel!” she stammered when she caught the whiff of criticism in her brother’s stare.

Saki smiled and said, “It was a surprise, but I’m not afraid of you,” as simply as if they were talking about any ordinary topic.

Anri replied, “But I’m…I’m not human…”

Kadota butted in to say, “Listen, young lady.”

“Y-yes?”

“Would you dare say that around Celty?” he asked in all seriousness.

“…!”

She had no answer.

“She’s far less human than you are, but nobody in this group dislikes her.”

Namie looked displeased with that. “Well, I don’t—”

“Read the room, Sister.”

“…F-fine, Seiji. Don’t worry, your big sis is more than capable of being tactful.”

Kadota ignored their banter and continued addressing Anri: “Whatever it was like the first time, none of us are afraid of Celty now, because we know her. We know what she’s been doing, what makes her happy, and what makes her sad. Just maybe not as well as Shinra does.”

“…”

“When people are afraid of something, it’s because they can’t see the inside of what that is. Even a walking explosive like Shizuo Heiwajima doesn’t have to be scary to someone who understands exactly what it is that gets him pissed off,” he continued, drawing on another example. “So we’re all able to accept you because we know what kind of a person you are.”

“Uh…”

“Whether you were being sincere or polite, that accumulation of your interactions with others led to this result. Do you get that? So be confident in who you are,” he said, keeping his tone light. But even so, the words permeated her heart deep down.

Mika, who had held her silence in the seat ahead of her, suddenly turned around and bowed. “Anri…I’m sorry!”

“Huh? Huh? H…Harima?”

“The truth is, I knew. I knew you were possessed by that sword…”

“?!”

Anri’s mind went blank at the revelation.

“I don’t want to go into why, because it’s a long story…but in the end, I chose to go with Seiji over you… I knew that you were struggling with personal problems, but I never cared about anything but Seiji!”

That explanation didn’t actually explain anything exactly, and the mood in the car turned to awkward silence.

Namie and Seiji knew about Mika’s situation, but neither of them made much of an effort to argue for her. In fact, Namie saw it as an opportunity to kick a downed rival.

“Seiji, any woman who would abandon her friends is trash. Especially if she chooses a moment like this to admit it, hoping that she’ll get an easy chance at forgiveness. You should break up with her soon.”

“What about you, Sis?”

“I don’t have to worry about that, because I don’t have friends!”

“Well, at least you’re thinking positively.”

As she listened to the others talk, Anri found that she accepted their arguments much easier than she’d expected.

Anri’s image of Mika Harima was of a person who could do just about anything. If you took away the stalkerish side of her personality, she really did fit Anri’s mental image of a perfect human being.

The revelation that she also knew about Saika did not produce a particularly powerful shock to Anri. Nor was she stunned that Mika knew about Saika and had chosen to put herself at a distance.

She chose Seiji Yagiri, not Anri Sonohara.

That was an honest statement.

Anri knew that if it came down to it, Mika would prioritize Seiji’s life over her own. So it wasn’t Anri’s call whether to forgive her or not. That just didn’t matter.

There was only one worry on Anri’s mind.

She looked at Mika, her red eyes flashing, and asked, “Um…are you sure…you’re not afraid of me?”

Mika beamed at her and said firmly, “Listen, Anri.”

“Yes?”

“The next time you ask me that, I’m going to get angry.”

That was enough for Anri.

This was the girl who’d saved her in the past when she was being bullied. The arrival of Seiji had made it seem as if that girl had gone for good, but here she was in the van right now.

The world within the picture frame in Anri’s mind suddenly shook. She realized with a start that the van was with her, on this side of the frame. Or perhaps it was the size of the frame itself that had just widened.

“Thank you… Thank you…so much…!” she said to the group of them. Big drops began to fall from her glowing red eyes.

“Now, now, don’t cry. You’ve got to save those happy tears for Mikado and Kida,” Mika joked warmly. “If some other car looks at us, they’ll think that Togusa’s band of thugs have kidnapped a couple of girls.”

“You know, I don’t appreciate that you only think of me as the ringleader in those situations, rather than Kadota…,” Togusa said.

The rest of the car laughed awkwardly at that. Anri smiled, too, and felt a resolve form within her.

She would find a way to bring Mikado Ryuugamine and Masaomi Kida within this ring of friendly connections she had now.

Maybe neither of the two boys wanted that. Maybe it was only her own selfish desire.

But this time, she was going to be selfish.

And with that honest admission to herself, she retracted the Saika blade into her palm.

But in that moment, she felt as if she heard Saika’s voice again.

“You’re going to discard me? No matter how you struggle, you will never escape from me. Don’t forget, it’s my role to love people.”

Anri smiled to herself and treated these words, mixed among the sea of love curses, as nothing more than a misheard statement at the worst.

Someday, I hope to love people with you. Me and you…learning to love in the truest sense.

The curses of love stopped for just an instant, then Saika’s voice resumed.

“I keep telling you. Humanity belongs to me.”

The tone was sulking, but Anri didn’t detect any force behind it.

As usual, Saika’s curses reverberated throughout her mind.

Saika’s intelligent words. Were they just an illusion that Anri’s own mind was creating? Or were they Saika’s true personality speaking to her? She did not know.

But it was odd that, even before Anri got into the van and admitted her secret to these people, she had felt the distance between herself and Saika was smaller than before.

It seemed that Saika was happy that more people had accepted the existence of the cursed blade without having to use those accursed words of love—but again, Anri would never know whether that was just a trick of her own mind or not.

The hollow sound of hands clapping brought Anri’s consciousness back to the interior of the van.

Yumasaki had struck his hands together and did a wriggling little dance with his upper half. He said to her, “At any rate, now this means that Anri has officially become a member of the guild!”

“…‘Gild’?”

“The Adventurers Guild. That’s the group that Dr. Kishitani put together to solve this problem!”

“Oh…”

Anri wasn’t very familiar with the English word guild, but she was definitely on board with solving the problem, so she let it slide in this case.

“The problem is that the founder, Dr. Kishitani himself, was abducted by a mysterious woman in glasses who produced wires from her hands. Let me tell you, though, those wires were really cool.”

“Huh?” That sounded to Anri as if it could refer only to one woman. “Do you mean…Miss Kujiragi?”

Suddenly, the inside of the van stirred, and all the attention gathered on Anri again.

“You know Kasane Kujiragi?” demanded Namie.

Anri nodded. “Yes, I got her business card. It only has her phone number, though…”

“Card?!”

The others murmured even more, but Anri remembered something else about that meeting and added, “Oh…I’m sorry. The card is still in my schoolbag, so…it’s at home.”

There was no saying whether Kujiragi would answer the phone, but given the circumstances, that was valuable information.

“What do you think? Should we go get it?” Togusa asked.

“Nah, let’s pick up Karisawa first. It won’t be too late after that,” Kadota suggested.

It was then that Anri remembered another tidbit. “Oh! Karisawa has one, too!”

“Has one what?”

“Karisawa-san got a business card, too, because she was going to join the cosplay club. Miss Kujiragi, I mean.”

Even Kadota looked shocked by this. His eyebrows rose. Now it was the turn of everyone else in the van to look bewildered.

“Cosplay…club?”

Near Russia Sushi

“…”

In the chaos of the night district, a red-eyed Karisawa walked slowly onward.

But she hadn’t been sliced by Saika.

No, she was just pretending to be a child of Saika and walking right through the town, out in the open.

Fifteen minutes ago, feeling that she would soon be caught, Karisawa decided to take a gamble.

She went into the cosmetics she carried around in her usual backpack for cosplay purposes, pulled out red contact lenses for cosplaying, and stuck them in her eyes. They didn’t cover the white of her eyes, so if you paid attention, it would be obvious right away.

But she cleverly narrowed her eyes to keep them showing only the red irises and walked nice and slow. Thankfully, the other red-eyed people around only briefly glanced her way from time to time but otherwise passed without reaction.

Karisawa was very lucky.

The children and grandchildren of Saika could sense the presence of other instances of Saika, if not as strongly as their parents could. But in the midst of a crowd of Saikas like this, the haze of all that aura made it much harder to pick out the negative space of one ordinary human.

A Saika mother—the original one from which the others stemmed—might have finer control of the senses, but to the grandchildren whom Nasujima and Haruna had ordered to cut any human entering this area, the ultimate means of detecting Saika spawn from humans was essentially just the color of the eyes.

And though Karisawa wasn’t aware of it, she was also lucky that the Blue Squares had shown up and drawn much of the overall group’s attention. She kept walking down Otowa Street beneath the raised expressway toward the Sunshine area when she noticed something new.

Whoa, there’s a ton of people right outside Russia Sushi. Are Simon and the boss okay in there?

Despite her concern, however, she attempted to pass by it—until she spotted a familiar face and came to a stop.

It was Anri Sonohara’s friend, the one she had met in the hospital cafeteria earlier in the day. She was crouched down on the street outside of Russia Sushi and seemed to be acting differently than the other red-eyed people.

I wonder what the matter is. Maybe she’s still in her right mind?

It was hard to tell from this distance, so Karisawa tried her best to approach slowly, avoiding notice. If the girl wasn’t affected, there might be a way to sneak over and help her get away, she thought considerately.

As she approached, she noticed a man talking very excitedly next to the girl. On the other side of him was a boy with normal eyes, looking terrified at the scene around him. The trio clearly stuck out amid the crowd.

What…is that?

Karisawa approached from their blind spot. About half of the group around was focused on Russia Sushi, and the other half was looking at the exterior of Tokyu Hands for some reason. She didn’t have to worry about them spotting her.

Keeping her eyes narrowed, Karisawa got close enough to hear the man speaking. That was when she heard a name she recognized come out of his mouth.

“So the blue guys are here now… Shijima, which of them is Mikado Ryuugamine?” Nasujima demanded.

At his side, Shijima glanced through binoculars and reported, “Everyone who had Mikado Ryuugamine’s build is wearing those masks with the cut-out eyes… So he might be one of them. Shall we call the Blue Square lookout you took over and have him figure it out for us?”

“That’s going to be our only option in the end. But they’ll be suspicious if we straight-out ask for his location. If he hasn’t actually come to this street, that’ll only give him the chance to scamper away,” Nasujima said carefully. Then he added, “On the other hand, if we can get the Dollars under control, they’ll be all the muscle we need. Then I’ll have the Dollars find Jinnai Yodogiri’s location for me. And his secretary, Kasane Kujiragi, too.”

“Even the secretary?”

“Yeah…she’s the one who made me Saika-possessed to begin with. She’s like old Yodogiri’s secret backup weapon.”

“You’re right… It was the secretary who first suggested investigating the Dollars,” Shijima recalled. It reminded him of just what a twisted position he was currently in and how he’d gotten here. It was depressing.

In fact, it was Yodogiri who had ordered him to infiltrate the Dollars and “make contact with the Headless Rider,” but Nasujima had added one instruction on top of that.

Now that it was clear that Nasujima’s goal was to take over the Dollars, he realized exactly how completely up shit creek he was. He had accepted Nasujima’s invitation thinking that it might be the ticket out of Izaya and Yodogiri’s control, but now he regretted that choice.

Escape seemed impossible now. The only thing Shijima could tell himself was that he was wandering around a nightmare and that he should try to drag down as many others as he could.

“So what are we doing about Yodogiri and Kujiragi?”

“We can overpower them with enough numbers. But it’s not clear whether either Yodogiri or Kujiragi is capable of being controlled with Saika. So let’s just bury them somewhere.”

Bury them—i.e., kill them. Shijima felt a chill go down his back.

He had operated a drug-dealing organization and should have been used to cold, hard talk like this. But that kind of brutality coming from someone with the power to overrun the shopping area with zombie-like pawns terrified him.

Nasujima snickered to himself, whether aware or not of Shijima’s fear, and said, “But before you bury that Kujiragi woman, I’d like to have some fun with her.”

Nearby, Karisawa overheard this suggestion and felt both disgust for the man who said it and a powerful unease.

Mikado Ryuugamine and Kasane Kujiragi. Both distinctive names, the kind that you would never hear by mistake.

Why is he talking about Mikarun and Miss Kujiragi?

Whatever the reasons, it was clear that this man was attempting to go after them. If he was the leader of these red-eyed people, then whoever was his target didn’t stand a chance, unless it was a military battalion or his name was Shizuo Heiwajima.

Karisawa swallowed hard and made to leave the scene, keeping her eyes narrowed.

In the midst of that motion, Haruna Niekawa turned in her direction, and their eyes met. The other girl’s eyes were red, too, just like the people around them.

Aw, darn. Already infected by the slasher. Oh, well. I’ll come back with Dotachin and the gang to save you. Hang on until then, Karisawa thought. Niekawa kept staring at her. Uh-oh… Am I in trouble? Did she spot me?

Karisawa quickly turned away but not before she saw Haruna’s mouth move—and suddenly a cell phone ringtone cut through the scene before she could say anything.

“What’s that?”

The man and the boy next to Haruna turned toward the sound. But it wasn’t coming from Karisawa’s phone. It was coming from the phone in Haruna’s hand.

“What’s up? You hardly ever get any calls. I mean, you didn’t even give your old man the number,” the man said, mystified. Then he demanded she give it to him.

“…Yes, Mother.”

Karisawa heard this unnatural back-and-forth as she made her way out of the area as nonchalantly as she could. She needed to tell Kujiragi and Mikado about the danger encroaching upon them.

But because she did, she failed to learn that the phone call Haruna Niekawa received was actually from a girl that she knew quite well.

“What does this mean? Why is her contact info saved in your phone?”

The name on the screen was Anri Sonohara, a former pupil he’d tried to assault. But his shock soon turned to sick glee, and he licked his lips.

“Well, that doesn’t matter. I’ve come up with a good idea.”

Within the van

“She’s not picking up,” Anri announced sadly to the passengers of the van.

She’d called Haruna’s phone, hoping her friend might know something that could help them, especially since they’d recently traded contact info, but all she got was an endless ringtone.

“Well, it’s pretty late. Almost morning, in fact. Most people wouldn’t pick up,” Mika offered.

“And if she were actually the ringleader, she wouldn’t pick up regardless,” Saki suggested.

Anri considered these things and said, “But when I met her yesterday, she didn’t seem like she was about to do something like—”

Abruptly, the ringing of her call paused, replaced by the sound of wind.

“Hello? Is that you, Niekawa? Um, I’m sorry to bother you in the middle of the night…,” Anri said, thinking she’d gotten through.

Instead, the voice she heard was one she could never have expected.

“It’s been so long, Sonohara.”

“…Huh?”

The man’s voice caused Anri’s body to tense up.

“You’re a very bad girl to be awake at this hour of night. Have you turned to a life of delinquency? Your teacher is very sad.”

It was an unctuous voice, practically clinging to the skin of her shoulders through the phone. She hadn’t heard that voice in half a year, but it was very familiar to her.

“M…Mr.…Nasujima?”

Mika and Seiji looked up when they heard that name. It belonged to a teacher at Raira Academy who had been hospitalized in February and then went missing. Why would Anri be talking to him all of a sudden, when she had been calling Haruna Niekawa’s phone?

Even Mika, who knew some of the backstory, was surprised by this. She stared at Anri’s phone in wonder.

“Wh-why would you be picking up…?”

“That doesn’t matter. Ah, it’s really wonderful to be hearing your voice again, Sonohara.”

On the Night of the Ripper, Nasujima had seen her holding a katana, and then he ran, screaming in fear. It was the last memory she had of him. But now he was gloating through the phone, as though he were completely in control of her fate.

“Oh, how I wish to see you. Can you make it here now? I can help you with any problems you’re having.”

“Um, what happened to Haruna?!”

“Oh, Niekawa? She’s sitting right next to me. She keeps calling me ‘Mother, Mother.’ It’s very sweet, really.”

“…!”

That told Anri quite a lot. Through circumstances she did not yet know, Nasujima had become a Saika carrier. Whether he had an original or was someone else’s child was unclear. All she knew was that he had cut Haruna Niekawa and now controlled her.

“Where…are you?”

“Now, now, no rush. You know where Tokyu Hands is? Right outside of the Sunshine building. We’re just hanging around that area until morning, so if you’ve got some time, swing by. If I see you, I’ll call out to you.”

“Haruna is safe, I assume?” Anri said, her voice tense. This seemed to catch Nasujima by surprise.

“Wait, are you worried about her? When did you two make up? I seem to remember you turning blades on each other because you were fighting over me.”

“Answer the question!”

“Don’t worry—I haven’t messed with her yet. Once tonight’s party is over, we’ll be taking our time with a very special private lesson.”

“Release Haruna at once…or else…”

She had to fight to ensure that the blade didn’t rip right through her hand and the phone she held in it.

That wasn’t the way that someone being ruled by another’s curse talked. Like Haruna once had, Nasujima had somehow overcome Saika’s control. Anri knew that Niekawa was in great danger. Her mind raced, trying to pin down where they were.

Only half a day ago, Haruna had declared that she would kill Anri in the same breath that she suggested they be friends. But Anri felt an odd kind of empathy for her. Perhaps it was because they were both possessed by Saika, or perhaps there was something about them being girls of the same generation; she didn’t know for sure.

Unlike the people in the van, Haruna was more of an enemy than a friend—but Anri still felt a terrible shock when she realized that the girl was under Nasujima’s control.

And the shock didn’t end there.

After he’d enjoyed the panic in Anri’s voice for several moments, Nasujima chuckled slimily and added, “There are two other people you know coming to the party, too.”

“Huh…?”

“Mikado Ryuugamine and Masaomi Kida. You were close with them, weren’t you?”

“ ”

Her mind froze. She nearly dropped the phone.

At first, she didn’t understand what he was saying to her. But then Nasujima continued, driving home her despair.

“If you want to tell the cops about this, be my guest. I’ll just play dumb, and Ryuugamine and Kida will back me up with statements that support my story.”

“No! Wait! What…what have you done to them?!”

“Nothing…yet. I just invited them to the party.”

And with a chuckle, he hung up the phone.

Outside Russia Sushi

“Now, Shijima, I want you to keep an eye on them for a while. I’ll give orders to the Saika-possessed, too, though.”

“Keep an eye on them?” Shijima asked.

Gleefully, Nasujima explained, “Knowing Sonohara’s personality, she’ll probably rush to call Ryuugamine about this.”

“So if he’s one of the guys in the ski caps outside of Tokyu Hands, then we’ll know that whoever answers a phone next is him.”

Inside the van

After Anri hung up, she told the others what the call had been about.

“No way, man…,” marveled Togusa. “Why would he bring up Ryuugamine and Kida out of the blue?”

With a frown, Kadota offered, “Dunno. But there’s definitely been some bad business going on in Ikebukuro lately. There’s no telling what might happen.”

“And there’s Karisawa to worry about, too… Let’s rush over to Tokyu Hands! Speaking of which, what’s up with all the red lights?!”

The trip from Shinra’s apartment to Otowa Street wasn’t that far in terms of distance. Even during rush hour, this should be about the time they would finish the trip. But for some reason, the van was barely halfway to its destination.

“No, it’s not reds, it’s just plain old traffic. Shit, why is it like this so late at night?” Togusa swore. He turned on the car radio to see if he could pick up a traffic report. Fortunately, it was right at the late-night news, five minutes past the hour.

“…a number of traffic accidents in the Ikebukuro area, causing gridlock all over…”

“Accidents?” Togusa repeated.

“…and there are also multiple sightings of groups of people out on the street committing acts of violence. Perhaps that’s connected to the accidents themselves…”

And almost as if timed to the radio broadcast, there was the sound of multiple motorcycle engines roaring behind the van. A few seconds later, there was a clamor of exhaust and blaring musical horns as several loud and flashy bikes passed them.

“Meetin’ up at this hour? And they’ve still got those obnoxious horns? Didn’t they go outta fashion? That stuff’s outlawed now,” Togusa grumbled.

But more and more motorcycles blazed past them. A few seconds would pass before more bikes went by, then another ten or fifteen, trickling bit by bit. All in all, quite a large number of motorcycles were heading toward Ikebukuro.

“What is this, some biker gang head honcho retiring? There’s so many.”

“They’re not going to turn out to have red eyes, are they?” snapped Namie, who didn’t care how this question might affect Anri.

But the girl shook her head. “I didn’t feel even the slightest hint of Saika from the people who just passed us…so I don’t think that’s it.”

“Damn…feels like everything’s working against us,” hissed Togusa in frustration.

It almost seemed as if getting out and running would be faster, but he wouldn’t suggest that. If he did, Kadota would actually hop out and try to run it with them. Kadota played it off bravely, but in his present state, he could barely walk. They’d given up on trying to stop him from going with them to help Karisawa, but Togusa wasn’t going to allow him to try anything beyond his means.

While the van was stuck in place, the swarm of motorcycles heading toward Ikebukuro’s city center made Anri worried. She decided to take out her phone.

“I’m…going to call Ryuugamine and Kida now.”

Saki turned to her from the adjacent seat and gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry—I’ll call Masaomi for you.”

“Oh…thank you. I appreciate that!”

Anri bowed to the other girl, then brought up Mikado’s contact information and hit the call button.

But neither of them got an answer to their call, and the mood in the van soon turned uncomfortable.

Anri prayed that they were just at home sleeping. In the meantime, she made a resolution to herself: If the two of them had been possessed by Saika due to Takashi Nasujima, she would have to slice Nasujima herself.

It was ironic that she had once told her teacher that she hated him, and now she was preparing to attack him with a sword that existed to love others. But Anri’s determination was quiet and crisp.

She would not hesitate. She was going to slash a man not worth slashing.

Outside Tokyu Hands, Sixtieth Floor Street—at that moment

“So…what now?”

Down on the street, Chikage headed over to the crosswalk so he could check out the scene across the way.

This was a place where taxis often stopped to wait for riders, but for some reason, there was not a single one here today—but Chikage, not being very familiar with Ikebukuro, didn’t pick up on the distinction.

Instead, his attention was drawn by the vehicles stopped at the entrance to Sixtieth Floor Street. At the spot where the expressway had been previously blocking their view, there were many more cars than he’d initially imagined. Some of the stopped cars might have belonged to ordinary drivers, but given the number of youths in blue beanies and ski masks loitering nearby, it seemed clear that nearly all of them belonged to the Blue Squares.

“Well, well! For a group started by middle and high schoolers, they got better cars than Toramaru!”

Chikage had heard that they had a number of legal adults in their gang, too. He waited at the light for the crossing signal to turn green, feeling excited.

This is nice. They’re ready to rock, even though it’s the middle of the city. The only problem is…

He was looking forward to the simple pleasure of a good fight with the Blue Squares, but it was the ordinary citizens wandering around that spooked Chikage.

You’d think that with a bunch of guys repping colors around, they’d be more nervous or would try to clear out. But they’re just standing, wandering around, doin’ nothing.

He felt an eerie kind of danger from all the people walking around without any apparent purpose.

Then again, I did tell him I’d handle this.

But when the light turned green, he stepped out into the crosswalk with a grin.

“Yo!”

When he got to the other side, he clapped a hand on the shoulder of the nearest boy with a blue beanie.

“…Huh? The hell you want?” the boy asked suspiciously.

“If I said I was a friend from Saitama whose motorcycle you guys burned up, would that ring a bell?” Chikage asked.

The boy’s face paled immediately. He looked over Chikage’s shoulder.

“…? Wait, are you alone?”

“Dude, I got lots of girlfriends. I’m not lonely. Now, you look single to me, but don’t give up, buddy. You enjoying your youth?”

“…I see,” said the boy with a grin and beads of sweat on his cheeks, ignoring Chikage’s taunt.

“You know, being single’s not all that bad.”

The next moment, two more thugs approaching behind Chikage swung wooden bats at his head in succession.

There was a loud, crisp smack, and one of the two bats snapped.

“Ha! But you’re gonna be all alone in your coffin, old man!” the boys laughed.

They all imagined what would happen in the next moment, when their accoster crumpled to the ground. And yet…

“…See, something’s not right.”

Chikage grinned at them, blood streaming from his head.

“?!”

They flinched and took a step away from him. Chikage motioned with his chin toward the “normal” people walking around Sixtieth Floor Street. “You gotta be crazy to hit a guy in the head with a bat in the middle of a crowded place like this…but it doesn’t make sense, right? Nobody’s watching; nobody’s calling the cops… This ain’t the usual bit about city folk not carin’ what happens to your neighbor. There aren’t even any looky-loos whipping their phones out to take video.”

“…”

The boys exchanged a glance. It must have occurred to them, too.

Chikage took a step closer to them, smiling.

“But all that aside…”

“?”

“That kinda hurt, you sons of bitches!”

He swung a majestic hook punch at the boy holding the still-unbroken bat.

“Gbya—?!” the boy shrieked and spun himself sideways. He was about Chikage’s size, but the difference in strength between them was vast.

On that signal, a number of other youths wearing blue who hadn’t noticed Chikage up to this point suddenly grasped the situation. On top of that, even more boys emerged from the vans parked in the street—and some adults, too. And still, the ordinary people on Sixtieth Floor Street did no more than occasionally glance over and resume their wandering.

Yeah, something about that is creepy, Chikage thought, a shiver running down his back. He cracked his neck to warm up and focused on the approaching opponents instead. Whatever. I can whup all these fools before I worry about them.

“Hang on—do any of you even care what happens to Masaomi Kida?!” he shouted in the midst of countering a kid who came swinging at him.

Another kid in a ski mask answered, “Yeah, it doesn’t matter what happens to Mr. Kida.”

“Wha…?”

Aoba Kuronuma pulled off his mask, smirking and cackling with glee.

“I already know everything.”

The rooftop of a mixed-use building—a few minutes earlier

“Damn, you really can’t see anything from here…”

Masaomi was still on the roof, watching, as Chikage instructed him to do. His cell ringtone went off loud and clear from his pocket.

“Whoa!”

He’d been so focused on lying low that the sound made him panic before he realized that it was probably inaudible from the ground, and he took out his phone with relief.

But at the same time, he got an odd feeling of wrongness.

As if he’d sensed some other sound, not the ringtone, echoing behind him.

“…”

A clammy sweat broke out all over Masaomi’s body. He turned on the spot, slowly.

Slowly, slowly, so slowly…

He didn’t know why he felt this way, but he had a strong premonition that he shouldn’t turn around. That he might lose something precious to him.

A variety of worries racked Masaomi within the span of just a second or two. He almost felt as if the moment he spun around, he would witness some horrid, unrecognizable monster that would twist his head right off his shoulders.

But once he started, he couldn’t stop. He had to turn the whole way.

There ended up not being a monster, so Masaomi’s fears were unfounded.

He was not, however, relieved by what he saw.

Because the other sound he heard was most definitely the ringtone of a cell phone that didn’t belong to him—and he understood what it was that had caused the anxiety within him to explode.

He recognized that ringtone.

“…”

At first, he thought that he was completely alone on the rooftop. But eventually he saw, within the darkness, a little light flash on behind the large external air-conditioning unit.

“…Who’s there?”

Masaomi’s phone continued to go off. The screen said “Saki Mikajima” on it, but he didn’t have the frame of mind to even look at it.

Across the roof, the person staring into the little light of the other phone read out the name of the person listed for that incoming call.

“It’s from Sonohara.”

It was a familiar voice.

But even though he was looking right at his ringing phone, he did not answer it.

“I wonder why she’s calling now. It’s nearly morning.”

It was a voice Masaomi didn’t want to hear out of nowhere like this. He was here specifically to hear that voice, but this was a sneak attack. It felt as if he were climbing the stairs to a bungee-jumping platform only to lose his footing and fall all on his own.

The boy stood there, wearing a smile.

A rather troubled smile on his childish features.

It was so typical. The very face that Masaomi remembered when he thought of him.

“Hi, Masaomi.”

“Mikado…?”

“It feels like it’s been forever.”

Now that he was faced by Mikado Ryuugamine wearing that same old smile, Masaomi found that he couldn’t say anything.

The ringtones of the two phones mingled, turning into one mangled sound, echoing across the darkened rooftop.

The sky was devoid of even the stars.

Only the writhing shadow above them watched the two.

Silently, secretly.

Enveloping all below it.

Chat room

Kuru: It would seem this place is coming to an end.

Mai: It’s sad.

Kuru: Well, perhaps it is just the changing of the times. Even if this had not happened, the very concept of the chat room itself might be fated to die out. New tools for communication evolve out of the online ether by the day, such as Mix-E and Twittia and Bodybook and FINE. It is only natural that people would trickle from chat rooms onward to new places.

Kuru: Of course, the truly good things will last beyond the ages. This chat room might be a closed place, but it was not a place everyone would call home. That is the extent of it.

Mai: I wonder.

Kuru: But the world changes with the times. Perhaps someday there will be an age when this chat room is necessary. Whether that will be in three days, or three years, or only in the moments before our death, when we reflect upon the past. Let us hope that the program still exists on the server at that point.

Mai: Let it happen.

Kuru: That is not how it works. And if it worked, it wouldn’t actually revert our minds back to this state.

Kuru: Well, any more of this pontification will only muddy the waters. Rather than needlessly draw out the ending, perhaps we should simply take our leave.

Mai: You’re showing off.

Mai: Ouch.

Mai: I got pinched.

Kuru: And now, my best to all of you.

Kuru: Despite the ending, it was not displeasing. In fact, I’m even grateful that I was able to see an entertaining show to round it out. I wish I could have spoken with others like Kid and Saki more, but I will have to look forward to our next meeting under different circumstances.

Kuru: One of the best parts of being online is the countless paths one can choose to form connections.

Mai: You can do that off-line, too.

Kuru: And now everyone, a very good sign-off to you.

Mai: Bye-bye.

Mai: It was fun.

Kuru has left the chat.

Mai has left the chat.

The chat room is currently empty.

The chat room is currently empty.

The chat room is currently empty.

.

.

.