Durarara!! - Volume 13 - Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way

Shinra’s apartment—several months earlier

“By the way, Celty, did those three ever make up?”

“Make up? Who are you talking about?”

Celty was watching a comedy show on TV when Shinra brought up this bit of idle chat.

“You know, the ones from Raira.”

“Oh, you mean Mikado and his friends.”

“Well, I only know Anri and Ryuugamine. Was just wondering if anything new had happened with them.”

“I don’t know… That’s their problem to deal with. It’s not up to us to solve it for them.”

Shinra read the words off her PDA screen and shrugged. “Well, I suppose you’re right about that.”

“It’s strange for you, of all people, to be worried about others.”

“From all you’ve told me about them, I’ve started to think of my own high school days,” Shinra remarked wistfully.

Annoyed, she typed out, “Stop that. They’re not as perverted as you.”

“Perverted? What a blunt assessment. It’s not an issue of sexual proclivities but of human relationships. Since Anri is the girl of the bunch, I guess that she would be in your position, Celty. With Orihara and Shizuo being Mikado and, uh, Masaomi, is it? If they were us.”

But Celty wasn’t quite buying his comparison yet.

“Who are you?”

“The Saika possessing Anri, I suppose.”

“Don’t try to stretch your analogy too hard.”

Undaunted by her snark, Shinra happily continued comparing his high school experience to the current-day teens.

“I think our relationship is exactly the opposite of Mikado and his friends’.”

“The opposite?”

“Yeah. They’ve all got secrets they’re keeping from one another. But they managed to make that work, and they all wanted to keep things friendly, I think.”

“You could be right about that,” Celty typed, shrugging. It was the closest she could get to a nodding gesture.

“But in comparison,” Shinra continued, “Orihara and Shizuo never bothered with any secrets. Well, Orihara actually had plenty of secrets, but he never tried to hide what kind of a person he was. And the result was a relationship that was the exact opposite of Mikado and Masaomi’s. And unlike Anri, you were basically an observer, if anything, at that point, Celty.”

“Well…at the time, I didn’t really want anything to do with humanity.”

“I think that’s fine. But while it might have been fun, when I consider the potential future we could have had with you making four of us, all getting along, I hope that Mikado and his friends can figure this out.”

“Are you jealous of them?” Celty teased.

Shinra shook his head. “Not at all. I mean, I’m perfectly happy with you, and I can’t imagine a life surpassing this so much that I would be ‘jealous’ of it.”

“…You say the most embarrassing things with the straightest face.”

It should have been a dash of cold water on Shinra, but his sappy reflections didn’t stop there.

“You know, I guess you could say that I’m completely the opposite of Saika, too.”

“How so?”

“If Saika is a girl pining with love for all of humanity, then I’m a man who’s only ever cared for something that isn’t human…and only one in particular: you.”

Celty’s chest rose and fell as though she were inhaling and exhaling a sigh. Then she typed, “And that’s all you really wanted to say.”

“Yep. That’s all I wanted to say,” Shinra admitted.

Shadows stretched out from Celty’s body. The solidified darkness became a black cocoon, enveloping Shinra’s body within its shadow.

“Stop being so embarrassing,” Celty wrote on the PDA, then realized she couldn’t show it to him this way. Then she noticed that the cocoon was strangely quiet.

…? That’s strange. He’s not carrying on like he normally does.

By way of answering her question, Shinra’s voice came out of the cocoon.

“Lately, I find that the dark makes me feel relaxed.”

“…”

“I think that this shadow is a part of you, Celty. It’s the color that belongs only to you in the entire world, a black that absorbs all light. As far as I know, at least.”

She could sense him smiling in the darkness.

As a matter of fact, he was. “Maybe the reason that I wasn’t scared of the dark, even as a child, was because I felt your presence within it. So while I can’t see a thing in here, there is one thing I can say with pride.

“You are truly beautiful, Celty.”

~~~!

Celty’s limbs and shadow quaked, undoing the cocoon. She promptly used that shadow to hold down Shinra’s hands and feet.

“I told you! Stop saying things that embarrass me! Geez!”

To hide her embarrassment, she rolled Shinra out into the hallway, then went back to focusing on her comedy show.

It was a little act of domestic happiness that happened often in Shinra’s apartment.

But it was the accumulation of such trivial scenes that made Shinra Kishitani who he was.

His daily life, filled with bliss as it was, did indeed create something within Shinra.

And while Celty did not know what this was, it was something that Shinra treasured and kept safe.

Even if others would laugh at him for it or shun and fear him for being “abnormal.”

Kawagoe Highway, outside Shinra’s apartment—present day

“Ah, what a beautiful sky,” said a man in a white lab coat, staring up at an abnormally dark sky above his apartment building. “That’s my favorite color.”

Shinra Kishitani.

He was back.

He returned home while Kadota and the others ventured out. His stepmother tried to stop him, but he barreled over her with a stream of excuses and within minutes was poking his head into the entrance of his apartment again.

He was wearing his usual white coat now, not the pajamas. He had wrapped bandages all over his body and was carrying a crutch made out of a mop wrapped in aluminum foil.

“Hey, you look the part.”

“Oh! You’re still here?” he said to Manami Mamiya, whom he’d met only moments ago.

“I was going to ask you more about Izaya.”

“That’s very dedicated of you.” He chuckled, plopping down the crutch and hobbling around with it. In fact, it looked exactly like a proper injured person’s movement—except that both then and now, his eyes were dyed dark red.

“What…are you?”

“I’m merely a doctor.”

“I’ve seen several people Niekawa sliced whose eyes went red like that, but you’re the first one I’ve seen acting normally afterward.”

It was the kind of question that only someone who’d seen the Saika-possessed would ask. Shinra thought it over and said, “Ah…yes. I suppose I must have reached the same side Niekawa did. It’s kind of like hypnosis, except that I forcefully undid the hypnosis and learned how to use it myself…I guess.”

“You also sound livelier than you did before.”

“I gave myself a painkiller.”

But even Manami, who was not a professional doctor by any means, could tell that Shinra’s skin tone was not good. He looked as if he ought to be in a hospital bed.

Thinking about hospital beds reminded her of the time she tried and failed to stab Izaya while he was hospitalized. She chided herself at that bitter memory and tried to get past the topic by asking, “Where are you going that you’re forcing yourself to move around like this?”

“That’s a good question. Where should I go?”

“What?” She drew her eyebrows together.

“Celty Sturluson,” Shinra said.

“Huh?”

“That’s the name of the woman I love. I want to go see her, but I’m wondering where I should go to do that,” he explained, looking up at the sky.

“That’s the name of the Headless Rider, right?” Manami asked.

“She’s a dullahan. I don’t know exactly everything that’s happening…but I have a feeling that she might have recovered her head.”

“…”

Manami’s dull, cynical eyes darted away. She was the one responsible for taking the head from where it had been safe.

“She’s probably back home by now, right? Izaya told everyone that the Headless Rider had the memories of home in her head, and her role, and all that old information.”

“If that’s true, then I’d make preparations right now to leave for Ireland.” Shinra tottered along, gazing up at the sky, bliss making his features slack. “But Celty is still in this city. I can tell.”

“How?”

“The sky…it’s the same color as Celty.”

“Huh?”

Manami looked up with him.

There was nothing there.

No starlight.

No moon.

Not even the atmosphere reflecting back the dull glow of the surface lights, that feature unique to large cities.

Manami was used to that light, so the abnormal darkness of the sky was eerie to her.

Shinra looked up at it with eyes like a boy talking about his dreams for the future. “Just knowing that Celty’s somewhere up in that sky means that I have no reason to stay locked up in my house.”

“…”

“I don’t even care if she never comes home. I’ll go to her instead.”

It was the kind of thing that a stalker might say, but Shinra’s red eyes sparkled crisp and clear as he said it. Manami found herself ever so slightly jealous.

“…I envy you a bit.”

“?”

“I don’t have any forward-looking dreams like that. I only want to torment Izaya Orihara,” she said, admitting her hesitation for the first time.

But to her surprise, Shinra said, “Really? That sounds like a wonderful dream.”

“Huh?”

“I mean, of all things, ‘tormenting Izaya’ is a huge dream. It’s quite forward-looking. In fact, making him absolutely regret doing something might be a more difficult dream than getting elected to the Diet.”

She didn’t know how seriously to take the man’s statement. “Aren’t you normally supposed to stop someone when they say something like that?” she asked him.

“Did you want the normal answer? For one thing, whatever humanity does to Izaya, he’s earned every last bit of it. I guess Celty might say something like ‘It’s a waste to become a murderer for someone like him. Just half kill him instead.’”

Shinra was so smitten, he could inject Celty into his answer to a completely unrelated question from a stranger. He gazed up at the starless sky like an innocent child.

“My dream is very simple. I want to continue to love the person I love forever. I want to be with her forever. That’s all. I’d like for my beloved to be happy forever, too, of course, but that will always be second place for me.”

“…Sounds obsessive, like something a stalker or abuser would say.”

“I agree. But if anything, I’m the recipient of domestic violence in this relationship,” Shinra said, his cheeks dimpling as he thought back fondly on the times that she’d hit him. “But what I’m about to do might be far worse than any punching or kicking you could imagine. Still, I have to do it. Otherwise everything I’ve said to Celty up to this point will be a lie.”

He looked mournful about this but turned it around into a smile again as he looked up once more at the sky.

“Even if it means Celty with her memory back is going to kill me.”

Interior of building under construction

Kujiragi kept her distance as Vorona and Mikage Sharaku stared each other down. She felt an eerie disquiet in her breast.

It wasn’t her own senses. It was something that she felt through the Saika under her command. But she wasn’t holding it directly at the moment, so the sensation was dull, indirect.

“…”

In any case, the woman wearing the dogi was not the kind of opponent you wanted to fight barehanded.

She considered going back to retrieve the Saika she was using to restrain Celty Sturluson, but if she left Vorona to fend for herself, there was a very real possibility that she would lose.

And just when she thought about suggesting retreat to Vorona, she felt a subtle vibration in her suit pocket. Recognizing the rhythm of an incoming call to her cell phone, Kujiragi took it out and looked at the screen without emotion.

When she saw that it said “Karisawa (Cosplayer  ),” she inclined her head in curiosity. When they’d traded numbers, she hadn’t thought the girl was the kind of person to insensitively call in the middle of the night, and she couldn’t imagine what kind of emergency would necessitate it.

“Don’t you want to answer your phone? We can wait, if you want,” said Mikage, blocking the way to the stairs with a confident smile.

Kujiragi ignored her and put the phone to her ear. “Kujiragi speaking.”

“Oh, Miss Kujiragi?! Thank goodness…You’re all right!”

“?”

Why would she need to be “all right”? Kujiragi wondered.

The voice on the phone continued, “Listen, Miss Kujiragi! I just managed to escape myself. Stay away from the Ikebukuro Station area! If you can, flee to Saitama or Chiba!”

“…You sound rather flustered. What is it that you escaped from?”

“More street slashers…uh, dozens of people with red eyes! No, hundreds! This guy who seems like their leader mentioned your name and was talking about burying you and attacking you and stuff!”

“…”

Kujiragi stayed calm, but this did cause her look to darken.

The Saika-possessed? Me?

Would it be Haruna Niekawa or Anri Sonohara? But she said the leader was a “guy,” and that didn’t make sense.

“…What would you say this man’s features were?”

“Um… He had a fancy nightclub-host-style haircut, and he was talking to that long-haired girl—you know, the one with you and Sonohara at the cafeteria in the hospital. But she was saying weird stuff to the guy, like ‘Yes, Mother,’ and it just didn’t make any sense…”

“…”

Takashi Nasujima.

Based on that information, that was the most likely identity of the Saika-possessed. He was a pawn originally created to keep Izaya Orihara’s pawn Haruna Niekawa in check or bring her over to this side.

But since Izaya had destroyed her “Jinnai Yodogiri” system and there was no longer any need to watch out for Haruna in particular, she had essentially let him go loose.

I thought I gave him some menial task to keep him occupied and out of trouble, though… Did he overturn Saika’s curse somehow?

In order to break Saika’s control and use it at will, one needed mental strength that surpassed the cursed words that poured in through a cut from the blade.

I would not have pegged that Nasujima man to have that kind of mental fortitude…

But Kujiragi underestimated Takashi Nasujima’s powerful self-love. She wasn’t able to accept that he could overcome Saika’s power on his own. And yet, if Haruna Niekawa was calling Nasujima “Mother,” then at the very least, he must have “overwritten” Haruna’s Saika curse at some point.

And beyond that, the talk of a swarm of Saika-possessed in Ikebukuro’s streets was worrying. If they were going to make a kingdom of Saikas on their own, she was content to let them do it—except that Karisawa said they were definitely talking about going after her.

“I’m sorry to have worried you. Thank you. Please get away from there at once, Karisawa.”

“I will. The red-eyed people aren’t surrounding me anymore, so I think I’m all right… Just be careful. I’ll do whatever I can to help, so call me back if you need anything!”

“…Your concern is appreciated.”

She hung up the call, then considered what her next move should be, given the arrival of this unexpected enemy. Should she break through here, or at least remain inside the building long enough to confirm the ending of her primary foe, Izaya Orihara? Or should she put off ascertaining this fight and rush to eliminate the trouble surrounding Saika?

After moments of thinking, however, the path forward made itself clear in an unexpected direction.

“Oh? What are you doing here?”

“?” “?” “!”

Three women turned in the direction of the voice and saw a freakish figure wearing a gas mask.

“Huh? You’re the guy I see talking with my brother at the gym sometimes.”

“Ah, then you must be Eijirou’s…I mean, Shingen Kishitani Mk. III’s little sister.”

“Mk. III…?” Mikage asked, a question mark floating over her head.

Shingen continued talking to an audience of himself. “The first one is wise! The second is refined! And the beauteous peony, that walking lily, is Mk. III! A beauty that grows in the telling, you might say! Fortunately, unlike that dried-up husk of a young man, this sight is a much more attractive one. They often say that three women gathered together is a cacophony, but this is looking more like fisticuffs than anything else, no?”

“If you don’t explain why you’re here, I’m going to footsie-cuff your jaw until you drop like a stone.”

“I would prefer to be kicked in the buttocks instead… But that aside, I was coming here to speak with Kujiragi. Thanks to you two, I didn’t need to climb all the way up the building. Thank you for that,” Shingen said, completely oblivious to everything else going on.

But rather than looking displeased, Kujiragi asked, “What did you have in mind?”

“Well, that wire you used to tie up Celty returned to its katana form and fell to the ground. I was going to ask if I could have it.”

“You will need to pay an appropriate price for it.”

“I’m glad you brought that up. See, if you agree to overlook my invocation of the finders-keepers rule, I am willing to neglect reporting you for illegal possession of a weapon. In fact, I’ll even be willing to ignore the fact that you set that horrid stalker upon Shinra to injure him,” said Shingen, choosing to give up on avenging his son.

Kujiragi replied, “While that was Jinnai Yodogiri’s suggestion, I will admit I bear some fault for authorizing it. But I will not be giving up Saika at this moment.”

“Listen, let’s go outside and talk. You were just coming down, weren’t you?” Shingen said, which struck the three women as odd. They shared a look.

“Your suggestion is unclear. I desire a rendezvous with Sir Shizuo. When the situation is so close at hand, the reason to descend the building is nonexistent,” said Vorona, speaking for the group.

Shingen made a grandiose pantomime of looking confused, given that his face was covered by the mask. He chuckled and said, “Actually…both Shizuo and Izaya jumped down onto the street and left quite a while ago.”

An unpleasant, clammy breeze blew between the three women.

“…”

“…”

“…Huh?”

Mikage stood at the center of the staircase, arms folded, head tilted to the side. Sweat trickled down her cheeks.

Shingen shook his head theatrically. “Was that Japanese too difficult for you? Shizuo! Izaya! Not here! Go back to town. Human, good-bye. Shingen, no tell a lie.”

“Do I need to kick your face in?” Mikage asked, vein twitching on her temple.

Shingen waved his hands and backed away. “Now, now, not so fast. I apologize for joking around, but I’m telling the truth when I say they’re not here anymore.”

His breath exhaled from the exhaust port of the gas mask.

“Besides, do you think that a true battle to the end between those two could be contained within a single building?”

Out in the city

The only way to describe the vending machine was “unlucky.”

It just so happened to exist along a street that Izaya ran down and happened to be the one that Shizuo decided to pick up and throw.

It came crashing and bouncing into the darkened street. Izaya dodged it with inches to spare, but he wasn’t moving as sharply as he usually did, perhaps because of his painful fall.

Normally, he might have shaken off Shizuo’s pursuit by now. But while he could still hop over fences and up electric poles in parkour fashion, he simply wasn’t as fast as normal. Because he was only barely succeeding at staying away, Shizuo had the occasional opportunity to strike, and a little part of the city was destroyed each time.

If it continued for long enough, it might be classified as a small-scale natural disaster, but the police had not yet showed up to curtail their chase. Not because they were sleeping on the job, however.

Every available officer on the Ikebukuro force was already occupied with a different matter.

The rooftop of a mixed-use building, Otowa Street

“Mikado… Is that you, Mikado?!”

Of the many emotions in Masaomi’s voice, joy at their reunion was overshadowed by the confusion of not yet being certain of what was happening.

While Masaomi was dazed with shock, Mikado smiled sadly. “It has to be a question?” Then something occurred to him. “If I were you, I’d say something like ‘Then who am I?’”

Masaomi gasped with a start, chuckling. “Multiple-choice question. One, Mikado Ryuugamine. Two, Mikado Ryuugamine. Three, Mikado Ryuugamine…right?”

He grimaced, thinking back to the day that Mikado came to Ikebukuro.

“And you completely ignored that joke of mine.”

“I still think it was a terrible, embarrassing attempt at humor.”

“What was it again? √3 points?” Masaomi’s grimace gradually turned into a smile. Tears bloomed in his eyes. “Mikado… It really is you, Mikado…”

“Who else would it be?”

“I dunno… I just can’t believe it. I wouldn’t have expected to see you right behind me, out of nowhere…!” Masaomi shook his head, finally recognizing the situation, filled with joy at their reunion. “Oh…that must be it. I guess Rokujou must have cleared it all up already, huh?!”

That was how Mikado knew to come here. He’d been told this was the place where the hostage would be handed over, Masaomi guessed.

Except that Mikado immediately proved him wrong.

“I’d guess Rokujou is over by Tokyu Hands right now, fighting with Aoba and his friends.”

“…Mikado?”

“I did give them bats and stuff, but he’s not going to be that easy to beat, is he?” Mikado said, with that same familiar smile. Masaomi’s joy immediately flipped over into concern.

“What…what do you mean?”

Then Masaomi remembered.

He remembered when his old friend here had set fire to the man who’d tried to attack Anri. He had smiled then, too, right after he’d nearly burned a man alive.

With that same smile now, Mikado said, “Rokujou isn’t the type of person who takes hostages and demands a deal. I had a hunch that he was playing up the villain role in the hope that you and I would meet.”

“…”

“With the Dollars’ information network, I found you and Rokujou right away. I had Aoba’s friend follow you guys. And another person I sent to Tokyu Hands said that Toramaru didn’t appear to be setting up an ambush around there.”

“Ha-ha…wow, you Dollars really are something else. It’s the middle of the night!”

“It just means that many of the people wandering around the city at night are part of the group,” Mikado said.

Masaomi couldn’t even take a step closer to him. Normally, if he were meeting an old friend again, he might have rushed over to share in the joy. Perhaps they’d replay a scene from some movie about the inspirational struggle of growing up, where he’d punch his friend and then say, “Hit me back!” Perhaps he’d smack his friend’s shoulders, happy to see him safe and sound.

But Masaomi couldn’t move.

His experience as the leader of the Yellow Scarves, the senses he’d honed by living through street battles, caused him to falter and stay away from his friend.

That was Mikado Ryuugamine over there, all right. But something about him was fundamentally different from the Mikado he knew, causing Masaomi’s joy to steadily morph into doubt and suspicion.

No, this is wrong. If you run away now, it’ll be exactly the same as before.

He held his ground, swearing to himself that he wouldn’t flee this situation, too.

“Then I guess there was no need for me to have shown up as agreed over the phone, huh?” Masaomi said with a shrug, trying to keep the conversation going.

Mikado just shook his head. “It seemed like the perfect opportunity.”

“?”

“I wanted to show you something, Kida.”

“Show me…?”

Masaomi thought it odd that Mikado was switching between calling him Masaomi and Kida, but the content of his words was more pressing right now.

“Well, you didn’t actually see the first meeting of the Dollars, did you?”

“…True. I heard the stories, though. In fact,” Masaomi said self-deprecatingly, “considering it now, I must have looked like a real clown when I came to all excited, saying, ‘Hey, Mikado, did you hear about this?’”

“Yeah… Sorry, Kida.”

“?”

“I know it’s a little late to be saying this, but I’m technically the founder of the Dollars.”

“…Wow, that is really late.”

It was something that Masaomi had known for quite a while now, but when he heard it from Mikado’s lips, the truth took on a heavy mental weight.

“I told myself that I’d only say it when Sonohara was here, too…”

“So why don’t we call Anri up? She called you, didn’t she?” Masaomi asked. He looked at his own phone. The call he’d gotten was long expired. There was a message on the screen saying, “Call received: Saki Mikajima.”

Saki?

At the exact moment that Anri was calling Mikado, Saki had tried to call Masaomi. While he wondered what this could possibly mean, his friend said, “I would have liked to call Sonohara here so I could show her what I’m about to show you, but…I just think it would be too dangerous.”

“What is it that you’re gonna show me? I’ll happily check it out if it’s a dirty mag,” Masaomi joked with a shrug. But that was not Mikado’s answer.

“A meeting of the Dollars.”

Outside of Tokyu Hands

“Hey, you got a moment?”

Chikage turned to face Aoba, his face red from the blood streaming down it from his skull.

“As far as I can tell, you seem to be the leader of these guys.”

At his feet were about a half dozen Blue Squares, victims of his fighting prowess.

“Don’t you find all those looky-loos out there kinda strange?”

“…”

Aoba returned his question with silence.

He had noticed it, too, by the time he arrived outside of Tokyu Hands. The pedestrians around them were acting strangely. And unlike what his friend said over the phone, it did not look like “fans excited about a secret pop idol concert.”

But they weren’t interfering with his business, so he largely ignored them—except that now the brawl had broken out, they weren’t running or making noise or recording videos with their phones at all. That part was eerie.

Aoba was curious about the mob that was literally “merely observing,” but in all honesty, the eeriness of that was far outshone by Rokujou’s abnormal strength.

“What are we gonna do, Aoba?” asked one of his friends in a blue cap. “This guy’s crazy!”

“We’ll call for Yoshikiri from the van,” Aoba replied. “Oh, and wake Houjou up, too.”

Chikage looked lonely. “What, are you just gonna ignore my question?”

“I’m sorry. You’re so tough—I’ve got bigger problems to worry about.”

“Actually, I’m goin’ easy on you kids. After all, I don’t wanna accidentally beat Mikado Ryuugamine to death.”

There was no way for Aoba to tell whether he was bluffing or not about going easy on them. All he knew for certain was that the man before him had instantly incapacitated five of his followers.

“…I’ll admit it. I didn’t realize what we were up against with a Saitama gang.”

Chikage, for his part, greeted the gang leader’s words with a shrug.

“Look, I’m not hoping to keep up this fight forever, y’know. If you could pay me back the money for the bikes you burned up as an apology, I’d appreciate it. And as far as the number of my guys you beat up, we can ante up the guys I’ve just beaten and call it even.”

“I get the feeling that you’ve already gotten us back twice over for what we did.”

“You took out ten of mine. So I’m only halfway there, but out of respect for Kadota…”

Chikage paused. He had heard a sound that any motorcycle gang member would recognize. It was the sound of engines revving, exhaust, and the obnoxious clamor of the musical horns that had long been outlawed.

Chikage didn’t make that kind of racket when he rode, because one of his girlfriends said she hated loud noises—but there were plenty of rival gangs who had a very strict code when it came to motorcycle noise: Bright makes right. They did everything they could to be obnoxious.

That sounds like…Gozumezu Guns from Nerima, maybe? No…I can hear the guys from Poliseum as well.

The sounds being played by the approaching horns were familiar to Chikage, who had to wonder what this was about. Would there really be a gang ride at this exact moment?

Chikage was an optimist at heart, but he wasn’t naive. This was not just a coincidence. Alarms were going off in his head.

But before he could do anything about it, they reached his view.

A number of bikes that even from a distance obviously belonged to a gang rounded onto Sixtieth Floor Street. Once he could make out some of their faces, Chikage was aghast.

“Wait a minute, it really is Gozumezu Guns and Poliseum together.”

“Not quite, Mr. Rokujou.”

The clamor of the motorcycles was loud enough that Aoba could barely hear any of what Chikage said, but he understood the gist of it. Amid the noise, he murmured, “They’re not together until after this.”

And then, just to prove him correct, more and more bikes, dozens of them, and even some cars and vans, came into formation along the road. It was clear at a glance that this was more than merely one or two gangs.

“Plus, they’re not motorcycle gangs anymore.”

His face twisted in a dark smirk, Aoba spoke words that no ear could hear.

“They’re Dollars now.”

Outside of Russia Sushi

“What’s this? What’s happening?”

The roar of the motorcycles was enough to draw Nasujima’s attention at last.

The Blue Squares he’d infected with Saika hadn’t said anything about this. Either they hadn’t been informed, or something major had happened out of the blue.

It wasn’t only the biker gangs. Some street-thug types were prowling over on foot as well, and some of them were among the Saika-possessed, but the rest of them were clearly taking part in whatever this was reluctantly, as though they’d been invited by their friends or forced to attend by senior members.

The one thing they all shared in common was that they were the kind of people who would threaten others for money any day of the week.

“Yeah, whatever. The common rabble are easy to deal with,” Nasujima said to himself with a leer, conveniently describing his own army of Saika-possessed as well.

“Either way, they’ll all be my pawns in the end.”

Tokyo

“Got it. Keep an eye on it from a distance.”

Akabayashi was in the process of traveling when he got a report over the phone from the motorcycle gang Jan-Jaka-Jan, who were working directly for him.

“Now, you said you saw thirteen gangs and that was only what you could confirm? This isn’t some big regional alliance thing; cut us some slack, people.”

After hearing more from the other end of the call, he narrowed his eyes and ordered, “Don’t you get involved in the festivities. Keep your distance from the red-eyed folks. No point in having a zombie hunter turned into a zombie.”

With that warning, he ended the call. Akabayashi sighed heavily, the smile gone from his face.

“You’re getting a little too rambunctious, young Ryuugamine.”

The rooftop of a mixed-use building

“Hey…what is all that?”

Masaomi peered over the edge of the roof to ascertain what all the motorcycle roaring was about in the streets below. As usual, the expressway blocked the view of the main street, but based on the sound, it was clear that whatever was happening, it was abnormal.

“Shit…can’t see. Damn, how many bikers they got down there? Sheesh…”

Over his shoulder, Mikado clarified, “It’s not just bikers.”

“…Mikado?”

“There are others from Chiba and Saitama. I guess you’d call them street thugs?”

It was a simple enough statement, but there was a whiff of disdain in Mikado’s voice, along with no small measure of hatred.

“So…you brought them here?” Masaomi asked, turning around to face his friend. “How did you…? No, forget that—this is crazy! I mean, Mikado…you hate those kinds of people, and that’s why…”

“That’s why I went around with Aoba’s group eliminating them, yes. But in fact, I personally could barely do any of it,” Mikado said with a self-deprecating snort. “I was keeping busy with kicking them out of the Dollars…but then I realized that doing that wasn’t enough.”

“…You realized?” Masaomi repeated.

Mikado continued, “Well, I was researching them.”

“?”

“It’s very strange. They’ll beat people up, almost for fun, but the moment you bring up information about their family, they freak out. But if you ‘request’ the cooperation of their leaders, the rest will happily go along with it as a group activity. In other words…they’ll fight and commit violence just to go along with the group.”

“Uh, dude…what are you talking about?”

Masaomi couldn’t understand what Mikado meant by all this. Or to be truthful, he half expected it, but he didn’t want to admit it might be true.

Essentially, Mikado had obtained the sensitive secrets of people that he hated and had manipulated them into coming here. He didn’t need to do it for all of them, just one, and the rest would willingly come along for the spectacle. That was all the reason they needed to commit violence.

There were two things Masaomi didn’t want to accept about this.

One was that he didn’t want to think Mikado would do such a devious thing.

The other was that he didn’t have a reason to do it.

“This is crazy… Even if every last member of Toramaru was here, there’s no reason to gather such a huge group…”

“Oh, you’ve got it wrong. Rokujou and Toramaru have nothing to do with this. I feel a bit bad that he’s gotten wrapped up in it, but technically, I am the one calling the shots for the Blue Squares, so…”

“What are you talking about, Mikado?!”

He wasn’t acting right. Masaomi felt that he had to hit him, if that was what it took to make him see sense. He stared at his friend—and then noticed something.

An object clutched in Mikado’s dangling right hand.

The pistol Mikado got from Ran Izumii was already in his hand. His finger wasn’t on the trigger yet. It was pointed at the ground.

He didn’t have it raised with both hands, so there was only so much an amateur like Mikado could do with it in this situation. But if he felt like it, he could shoot it at any moment.

And because he was an amateur, there was no telling where it might go.

“Mikado…?”

Masaomi immediately recognized that it was a gun.

And instantly, he knew that Mikado was not the type of person who would bring out a realistic model gun to use as a bluff. Even now, in his broken state, that was an unchanging part of Mikado’s nature.

Given the many facets of the situation, Masaomi’s guess that the gun was real quickly evolved into certainty.

“Where…did you get that…?”

“Oh, you know.”

But Masaomi didn’t turn his back to his friend. His righteous indignation was outweighing his fear of the gun for now.

“Mikado, what are you trying to do? Setting up this ridiculous gathering, carrying that thing around… What is your plan for the Dollars?!”

“…”

“I feel pathetic! I thought I was your friend, and now I can’t even figure out what is going through your head…” Masaomi despaired, venting anger at himself.

Mikado just shook his head. “It’s all right; it’s not your fault. I planted the seeds for all this myself.” He smiled sadly, still holding the gun. “And if I can’t restart it, then it’s better for the Dollars not to exist at all.”

“Huh…?”

At last, he spoke aloud the answer that he had reached for himself.

“As of today, the Dollars will be no more.”

Shortly before Masaomi and Mikado faced off, there was a post on the largest message board within the Dollars’ online community.

It was a single line.

Just one very simple sentence.

A lone individual post that barely anyone would even notice.

Probably mistyped, or some lame bit of trolling, trying to get attention.

Nobody even responded to the message, and any who saw it forgot it just as quickly.

But this message, in fact, was announcing the future of the Dollars’ entire organization.

“The Dollars will disappear.”

That lone sentence, posted by an unknown individual, was quickly swept along by the vast, ceaseless flood of activity on the board, lost in the depths of a sea of information.

Symbolizing the fate of the Dollars group itself.

Sunshine building—rooftop

Upon the stage of Ikebukuro, many players with varying desires began to dance.

Driven by desire, hatred, obligation, honor, fear, and other such forces, they made their way into the open, wriggling and butting up against one another.

There was one impartial observer of the chaos unfolding.

To be more precise, there was one impartial head that observed the city below it.

A severed head, with a beautiful face and hair, being held by a body astride a headless horse.

Celty Sturluson.

With her head recovered now, she sent her shadow streaming far and wide, silently observing the city she presided over. The shadow blanketed the sky itself, covering the entirety of the city of Ikebukuro.

There was no visible emotion on her severed head, but its eyes were open, and it moved and reacted in a way that suggested it was part of one organism with the body that held it under its arm.

It was impossible to guess as to what she was thinking, and there were no humans present who might attempt to do such a thing. The only being that understood her thoughts was the headless horse, which Celty had called Shooter before she got her head back. It brayed to the sky.

QRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…

It sounded like a scream, like a roar, like the sound of the wind blowing past, all at once. The sound vibrated the vast expanse of shadow, extending far across the sky of Ikebukuro.

Celty did not react in any way to the horse’s call. She simply observed the city below.

And more specifically, the clearly visible figures of Mikado and Masaomi.

Kawagoe Highway

“Whew, I think I should be safe at this distance…but on the other hand, what’s up with all the motorcycle gangs? Is someone having a retirement ride?”

Karisawa had escaped the area where all the red-eyed people were and, following the instructions in Yumasaki’s text message, was now heading for Shinra’s apartment.

“At least I was able to give Miss Kujiragi the message. Now I just have to get in touch with Mikarun. Did we ever trade numbers…?”

She was looking through her phone book for Mikado’s information as she walked, when a car passing by her in the street suddenly sidled over and stopped right next to her.

“Huh?” She looked over and saw a very familiar van. “Ahhh!”

She raced over toward it. When she saw the face in the window, there were already tears in her eyes. “Dotachin! You’re all right!”

But then…

“Oh no! We weren’t in time! We’re too late!”

“Huh?”

Yumasaki opened the back door and jumped out, and as soon as he saw Karisawa’s eyes, he promptly pinned her arms behind her back.

“What?! Yumacchi! What?! What are you doing?!”

“Calm yourself down, Karisawa! We’ll give you an exorcism now! Take it away, Shakugan no Anri!”

“Huh?! What the—?! Why is Anri here?!”

“I-I’m sorry, Karisawa…! I’m going to scrape your fingertip a little bit!” Anri got out of the vehicle next, her katana in her hand.

“Wh-what?! Wait—what’s going on?!”

“Listen to me, Karisawa,” said Yumasaki. “You might not realize it, but you’ve been infected by a blade-shaped alien parasite, and now you’re its earthling puppet body!”

“What are you talking about?!” she snapped, baffled, but he held on hard.

“Don’t even try to talk your way out of this! Those red eyes of yours are all the evidence we need to identify the problem!”

That was when Karisawa finally remembered: In order to fool the slashers, she’d popped in those red contact lenses.

“Huh?! Ohhh! No, no, no! It’s not what you think!”

A few minutes later, Karisawa slumped exhaustedly in the back seat of the van. It was only when Anri, sword in hand, saw her and realized that her red eyes were not those of a Saika-possessed that she was fully out of trouble.

“Good grief. Totally ruined my emotional reunion with Dotachin.”

“Sorry about that, Karisawa,” Kadota said from the front passenger seat.

She waved him off. “Oh, it’s fine. I’m over it. Besides, Azusa’s the one who should be clinging to you in tears, not me. Let that be the foreshadowing for your eventual marriage to her.”

The brief confusion had actually jolted her out of her funk and back into her usual state. She breathed deep, in and out, and looked around the van again.

“So I’m kind of in the dark here. What’s with the festivities?”

Not only were the people in the van different from the usual lineup, there were more than could safely fit inside. Because traffic was barely moving, Yumasaki trotted alongside the car and kept tabs on the surrounding environs.

There was a distant roar of what sounded like an endless gang of bikers somewhere up ahead, and every now and then, a few more of them wove through the lanes past Togusa’s van.

“Where do we even begin…?” Kadota wondered. Before he could launch into an explanation, new information came in over the car radio.

“As for today’s forecast, we’ve got… Excuse me, folks, there’s been a breaking news bulletin just now.”

The DJ’s voice was followed by the sound of a piece of paper being flipped over. If they were postponing the usual weather forecast, it had to be pretty urgent news indeed. Everyone in the van listened intently, all their faces serious.

The contents of the report were far more serious than they could have imagined.

The rooftop of a mixed-use building

“What do you mean…the Dollars will be no more?” Masaomi asked.

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Mikado answered. “As of today, the Dollars will vanish.”

“You mean break up? And this obnoxious biker gathering is just to commemorate the occasion?”

“Not exactly…but I suppose you might consider it something like that. It’s going to be the final in-person gathering, basically. It’s just that I want to show you and Sonohara what happens when people gather under the Dollars’ name… What the Dollars really are,” Mikado said mournfully, standing in the middle of the rooftop. “So you can see what I created.”

From the edge of the roof, Masaomi said, “You said you started the Dollars ages ago, because you were bored… Is this what you wanted?”

“I know… At the start, it was more exciting. I thought I was finally about to get what I was hoping for,” Mikado said, grinning like a schoolboy. He shook his head. “But now it’s different. So I thought I should make it a place where I could actually welcome you and Sonohara. I want to usher you into a Dollars that I feel proud of.”

“That makes sense. So why is it vanishing?”

“After the first meetup, Izaya said something to me.”

“…?!”

Izaya. The mention of that name froze Masaomi solid. He choked on his words, flashing back to all kinds of memories from the past.

Mikado reminisced about just one, however.

“After the Dollars’ meetup, Izaya said…you want to escape ordinary life, but you’ll get used to the extraordinary right away.”

“…”

“He also said, if you really want to escape the ordinary, you have to keep evolving. I thought I understood what he meant at the time, but I don’t think that the lesson really sank in until it came to this,” Mikado said, smirking at himself. He looked at the gun in his hand. “The Dollars became very ordinary to me…and I hit a block. Izaya was right.”

“Stop it!” Masaomi shouted. “That’s all his usual bullshit! He’s manipulating you! That son of a bitch tells you one thing, then goes to someone else and tells them the polar opposite, just to enjoy seeing what happens!”

“You might be right about that,” Mikado said, not denying Masaomi’s words. “But I think I would have noticed it even if Izaya hadn’t told me.”

“He made you think that! That’s what he does! Listen, no matter what kind of group the Dollars are, you’re still you! Did you think that me and Anri would change our minds and hate you, whether you’re just high school Mikado or the boss of a gang of stupid thugs?! Don’t insult us like that!”

He made to rush over to his friend. The young man couldn’t be right. Either he was full of himself, or as had been the case before, he was still under Izaya Orihara’s spell. Whatever the case, Masaomi knew he had to wake Mikado up.

He would grab his shoulder and shake him, and if that didn’t do the trick, he’d punch him in the mouth—except that he had to pause when he saw Mikado pointing the pistol at him.

“…Are you seriously pointing that gun at me?”

The answer was obvious; he didn’t need to ask. But the boy was holding it with one hand, the weight making its aim uncertain. He also didn’t have his finger over the trigger, so it was hard to tell what Mikado intended to do.

On the other hand, the fact that Masaomi might not know where the bullet was going made the situation that much more erratic and dangerous.

Masaomi stopped in his tracks, but he didn’t shy away in fear. Mikado kept the gun pointed at his old friend and said, “I thought you might come and try to hit me regardless of the gun…but I guess even you’re afraid of it.”

He wasn’t making fun of Masaomi; he was asking out of honest curiosity.

Masaomi clenched his jaws, stared Mikado straight in the eyes, and said, “Yeah, I’m afraid of it.”

But there was no fear in his eyes. They began to smolder with quiet anger.

“Obviously I’m going to be scared when I see something like that pop up out of nowhere.”

“Ah…yeah, that makes sense.”

“But.”

“Huh?”

Masaomi finally let all his pent-up anger explode into a howl of indignance.

“What scares me the most is this whole situation that would put the nicest guy I know in possession of something like that!”

“Masaomi…”

“Screw this! What the hell happened to make a kindhearted guy like you carry a gun?! It makes no sense! It’s not right! How did it get to this?!” he demanded, clenching his fists so tight the nails dug into his palms. Then, lowering his tone of voice, he continued, “Was it…my fault?”

“…”

“Yeah, I guess so… I mean, Rokujou just said as much to me.”

Now it was Masaomi’s turn to smirk self-deprecatingly, if only for a brief moment. He stared back into Mikado’s eyes.

“If I was putting that much pressure on you, then go ahead. I can’t complain if you shoot me,” he said.

“You shouldn’t get desperate, Masaomi. I was the one who chose to become this way. It’s not your fault.”

“Then why are you pointing that at me?” Masaomi asked him, the question of the moment.

Mikado was at a loss. “I’m…not really sure.”

“…About what?”

“About who I should point this at next.”

For a moment, Masaomi’s face went slack—and when the meaning of this statement sank in, he shouted, “If that’s the most commitment you can summon, then you don’t need that damn thing! Go and dump it in a river somewhere before you end up firing it! Or hell, I’ll go and get rid of it for you! You don’t need to be putting yourself in danger like this! At worst, as long as you don’t shoot it, you can always say you just ‘found it somewhere’! You know?”

Without pointing the gun away, Mikado said happily, “That’s the part that will always make you Masaomi. You’re so much kinder at heart than I am.” He shook his head, still not moving the gun. “I’ve already fired it.”

“…Huh?”

For an instant, it didn’t make sense to Masaomi. His brows creased.

So Mikado told him the simple truth.

“I already shot it twice. On the way here.”

Inside the van

“We have details about a string of shootings within the city,” said the voice over the radio player in Togusa’s van. “One shooting happened at the entrance to the Ikebukuro Police Department and the other at the entryway of the personal home of Chairman Dougen Awakusu of the Awakusu-kai, an organized crime operation affiliated with the Medei-gumi Syndicate.”

The newscaster continued, crisply elocuting, detailing the unfolding situation.

“At the scene of the shootings were acts of spray-painted graffiti, put down before the guns were fired, with the police saying that the words written correspond to the name of a delinquent group active around the Ikebukuro area, which they are investigating now…”

“…What does that mean? ‘Delinquent group active around the Ikebukuro area,’” Togusa wondered. But he already had a very good idea of what it meant.

Kadota spoke that idea out loud for him, his expression grave. “I’m guessing…it must be referring to the Dollars.”

“So…what’s gonna happen, then?” Karisawa asked from the back. Kadota could only give her his best guess.

“It means the Dollars just picked a fight…with both the law and the outlaws of this city.”

Tokyo—office

“…I’ll be damned. He’s cracked even worse than I imagined.” Aozaki, the Awakusu lieutenant, sighed after he got the report from a subordinate. He got to his feet from the leather chair and pulled his jacket off the hook.

“Wh-where are you going?” the other man asked.

“To the old man’s place. I’ve got to apologize for what just happened.”

When he heard about shots being fired at Dougen Awakusu’s home and the police department, the first thing to pop into Aozaki’s mind was the face of Mikado Ryuugamine. It should have been obvious, since he’d handed over the gun mere hours before, but even putting aside the matter of the firearm, only Mikado would come to mind so quickly as a suspect in such a self-destructive act.

Aozaki didn’t expect that after passing him the gun through Izumii, Mikado would cause an incident before a single night had passed. But he was experienced in the ways of combat and precarious situations, so this did not faze him.

“The front porch of the boss’s house might as well be the very face of the Awakusu. It was my action that led to this insult, so I need to be ready to sacrifice a finger or two,” he said. But part of the threat he represented was that in the same breath, he could order, “Seize Mikado Ryuugamine and bring him in.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Personally, I’m not against that kind of wildness…but all that’s out the window if you go after the head of the organization. He might be a kid, but depending on circumstances, he could end up sleeping with the fishes.”

With his orders in place, Aozaki headed for the door of the office to make his way to his boss—until one of his men rushed through said door.

“Hey, what’s all the commotion?” he demanded.

The out-of-breath subordinate delivered his message, and the name he mentioned caused the otherwise calm Aozaki to furrow his brow.

“Mr. Akabayashi came here alone, says he wants to talk to you…”

The rooftop of a mixed-use building

“Hey…what are you thinking?! You really are gonna destroy the Dollars…and more importantly, you’re going to get yourself killed!” Masaomi shouted after hearing exactly where Mikado had shot the gun. He prayed it was just a bad joke.

But Mikado only agreed with him. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“That’s all you have to say about it?!”

“But it does mean that the Dollars will cease to exist as a real thing.”

“What…?” Masaomi gasped.

Mikado explained, “When word of this gets around, nobody’s going to want to join the Dollars, and the people who have been part of it will all want to hide their pasts.”

This was true, of course. Nobody would want to be associated with a group considered an enemy of both the police and the yakuza, especially when there was no actual benefit to being a member.

The only people you could imagine doing so would be tried-and-true rebels full of spite and attention-seeking idiots with no ability to foresee consequences, and both of those groups would earn what was coming to them.

At the very least, the people taking part for entertainment or out of a sense of obligation and the people who thought the Dollars were just some fun, harmless college-club type of gathering were going to be the first to distance themselves.

Like rats fleeing a sinking ship, they’d jump into the sea, withdrawing into anonymity and keeping their heads low for quite a while.

And then, perhaps inappropriately, Mikado said, “The Dollars will become an urban legend.”

“Urban…legend?”

“Yes. Just a stupid urban legend,” he repeated, eyes sparkling like a child. Masaomi recalled where he had seen that look before: when Mikado was new to Ikebukuro and watched the Headless Rider go past. It was a look of awe and horror, buoyed by overwhelming joy.

“But the thing is, urban legends evolve over time. They turn into rumors and take on more rumors as they go, spreading throughout the city,” Mikado said, elaborating on his theory with some of what Izaya told him mixed in. “When the actual body is gone, only the name stays behind, continuously giving birth to false legends.”

And with full self-assurance and pure delight, Mikado made his declaration.

“That is my ideal for the Dollars, I realized.”

Masaomi felt like the background in the distance was warping, stretching.

“You mean…you shot a gun at a yakuza office and the police station…for that nonsensical reason?”

“Yup. The Dollars itself is a nonsensical idea. But if they were born from nonsense, then it makes sense that they’d disappear into nonsense,” Mikado said with resignation.

“Even then, people will use the name for mischief,” Masaomi argued.

“That’s fine. Those people aren’t Dollars anyway. They’re just people using the Dollars’ name. I figure, if anything, they’ll help fuel the urban legend, hopefully,” his friend said, smiling. Masaomi felt a chill run down his back.

Was this boy across from him really Mikado Ryuugamine?

Gun pointed in Masaomi’s direction, Mikado said casually, “So…what are you going to do? Stop me?”

“Or are you here…to settle the Blue Squares versus the Yellow Scarves?”

Outside Tokyu Hands

“I’m grateful to you, Mr. Rokujou,” said Aoba, still wearing his ski mask.

The motorcycles were coming to a stop at the start of the street, keeping the sound of all that engine noise distant, so that it was quiet enough for them to have a conversation.

Chikage Rokujou stood in the middle of a semicircle of motorcycles. The bikers around him realized very quickly that it was the leader of Toramaru, and they began to buzz among themselves but didn’t immediately pick a fight or start taunting him. For one thing, given that they’d all been coerced by force or by dirty tricks into taking part in the Dollars’ group, none of them could say for sure that Toramaru wasn’t also among their number.

Chikage glanced at the punks surrounding the end of the street around him and shrugged. “Well, well, another bunch of nobodies showin’ up. I don’t even see anyone on the level of Dragon Zombie or Jan-Jaka-Jan.”

“With enough time, we might have gotten them in the group, too.”

“That’s a big play. Who else…? I don’t see Nuimura from Big Dog Stars here. If you had an idiot like him around, I’d have to start expecting trucks to come roaring through here,” Chikage said, mentioning names of other notable bikers as he surveyed the scene.

Then he turned back to Aoba, who seemed to be the one calling the shots for the guys in the blue caps.

“What does your boss think he’s gonna do with all these people?”

“I don’t think he means to do anything,” Aoba admitted, to Chikage’s confusion.

“Uh…meaning, let the chips fall where they may?”

“Our boss has no ideals. No beliefs. All he’s got is sentimentality and curiosity. And he’ll do stuff like this based on those things alone. When you factor in luck, this is why I have such respect for him.”

It was as though he was happy to be a supportive victim of Mikado Ryuugamine’s wild rampage. Then, like a child excited to show his friend the latest toy, he explained, “You need guts to have ideals and beliefs and even dreams. But he doesn’t have that. His group just ballooned up on him, and he got puffed up with some empty ‘conviction’ with nothing behind it. Mr. Mikado had nothing to put his feet against, but he spun and spun and spun those legs, until he finally reached this point.”

Aoba shrugged, and when Chikage said nothing, he continued, “Maybe that’s something that you wouldn’t understand, if you’ve always had these things.”

Chikage had been silently listening to this speech. At last, he cracked his neck and said, “I don’t like it when people try to cover up the truth with some embarrassing poetry shit like that. Though I do have a girlfriend who likes that stuff, so I’m not gonna say it doesn’t have its place.”

Rokujou glanced over in the direction of the mixed-use building, then smirked. “I just heard that Kida wanted to save his friend who went crazy, and so I decided to help him out on a whim.”

“Oh, come on, that’s a gross oversimplification.” Aoba chuckled, his eyes shining with mirth. “There are some things only a crazy kid can pull off.”

“Yeah, whether you’ve got some big, fancy reason behind it or not,” Chikage said with annoyance. But as a matter of fact, he’d heard the general version of events from Masaomi already.

Even knowing that this was just the result of a kid named Mikado pushing himself into a corner with no better way out, Chikage said to Aoba, “I’ll tell you one thing.”

“?”

“It doesn’t matter your reason. At the point you rustle up the night like this, the point you cause hell for other people, there’s no difference. Everyone who does it is scum. And that includes me. And you guys,” he said, coming clean. “Are you gonna go around to all the people you’ve fought and the folks whose sleep you disturbed and state your case for them? ‘Look, these are the tragic reasons we’re doing this!’”

“…”

“Whether you’re mugging people to get cash to blow or mugging them to buy medicine for your sick parents…”

Behind Chikage, a Blue Square approached, brandishing a bat. But Chikage merely twisted a few inches and smashed the other guy in the face with a backhand. He looked over to see the thug crumple to the ground, then sighed and finished his sentence.

“…there’s no difference to the innocent people you’re beatin’ up and robbing. It’s ridiculous to suggest otherwise.”

He turned on his heel and began to walk, not even bothering to look in Aoba’s direction. “I’ve lost interest here… If he already knows everything that’s goin’ on, then I guess Mikado Ryuugamine must have gone to Kida by now.” He headed back for the mixed-use building he’d come from.

Aoba was not in any particular rush. “Sorry to tell you this after your moving speech, but we can’t have you going back there.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes, Mr. Mikado and Masaomi Kida are back there. But it’s only the two of them,” Aoba said with a cocky smile, typing something into his phone. “It’s not for any of the rest of us to interfere. Including me and you.”

Two large shadows loomed in Chikage’s path. They belonged to Houjou and Yoshikiri, well-known for being the two biggest and burliest of the Blue Squares’ fighters. Chikage looked up at them, one a man yawning as he approached, the other a very tall boy with squinty eyes, and smiled.

“Oh, so you finally brought out someone worth my time. That’s much better.”

But those two were not the only ones in his way. Suddenly the guys sitting on their bikes began to pull out their phones. While the engine noise largely drowned it out, Chikage could faintly hear their ringtones going off.

“…Is that a notification of a mass text message?”

“Well sleuthed. I just sent them a very short, simple instruction.”

The bikers got down off their vehicles and turned vicious expressions toward Chikage. In the face of this malevolent aura, Aoba told Chikage what the rest of the group already knew.

“Chikage Rokujou is the enemy of the Dollars.”

Outside Russia Sushi

“…Looks like something’s happening. They’re taking out phones… So are we assuming that one guy in the ski mask is Mikado? Whatever the case, he seems to be the leader,” Nasujima said to Haruna with a leer. They were watching the scene in front of Tokyu Hands. “If it turns into a brawl, we’re gonna have our people rush them all.”

“Yes…Mother.”

Inside Russia Sushi

“Is it just me, or are the motorcycles really loud outside?” Tom wondered, his face gaunt with exhaustion. “Anyway, if we’re desperate enough, I think we can jump from the roof here to the ramen place next door…but I don’t think it gives us a way out of this mess—it only traps us in a different place instead.”

“Oh, if pull no good, try push instead. You get discouraged, make hungry,” Simon advised as he and Denis checked on some kind of equipment.

Tom didn’t ask what it was for, and he was planning to pretend he never saw it, if necessary. But then Denis said to him, “We were unlucky. If Shizuo were here, he coulda flattened all those folks outside by himself.”

“You might be right, but I’m also glad that’s not the case.”

“Oh?”

“If you take Mr. Kine’s word, that’s all just some kind of fancy hypnotism, right? It’s one thing for people to pick a fight with him and earn what’s coming to them, but I can’t let him go around smashing ordinary folks who can’t control themselves.” Tom sighed.

Kine broke his silence to say, “Is that all you want in life? You get a guy like that on your side, you could conquer this city.”

“You’ve got the wrong idea about me. Shizuo’s an underclassman from our middle school days, and now he’s a coworker,” said Tom, stretching. There was a lonely look in his eyes. “Shizuo looks so sad when he’s raging the way he does, but I can’t even join in the carnage with him, much less stop him… It’s not much to be proud of.”

The rooftop of a mixed-used building

“Well, let’s see.”

After Mikado asked him what he was going to do, Masaomi was silent for a while, clenching his fists.

“I couldn’t do anything for you. And I guess even talking about doing things to help you is kind of condescending, huh?”

Masaomi took a step closer to the gun. Mikado’s hand twitched. But Masaomi did not stop his forward progress across the rooftop.

“I might not be that smart. I’m a coward. It’s pathetic to admit it, but the only thing I’m good at is fighting, to some extent…”

There were two firm acts of determination in Masaomi’s mind.

One was the determination to risk his life, like he did when he stood up to Horada. Not to throw his life away but to make his friend wake up.

The other was the determination to be his best friend’s enemy—again, in order to wake him up to the truth.

“So the least I can do is fight you,” Masaomi said with a smile, just like he did as a child. “If you wanna go crazy, I won’t stop you. But I can choose to go crazy, too.”

“Masaomi…”

“I’m gonna drag you, kicking and screaming, back into the ordinary life you hate so much.”

There was no hesitation in his eyes anymore.

“I’m gonna punch you, I’m gonna make you cry, and I’m gonna force you to remember.”

Masaomi spoke forcefully, projecting his will, such that even if his friend had truly become something no longer human, he would deny that and will it out of existence.

“You are not an urban legend like the Headless Rider. You’re just a guy named Mikado Ryuugamine…a normal, scrawny human being who tries to do right by everybody!”

For a moment, Mikado’s expression vanished from shock. Then tears began to pool in his eyes.

“You’re so strong, Masaomi.”

“…”

“I was always jealous of that. It’s why I really wanted to beat you,” he said, summoning up not hatred from the pit of his stomach but envy. “It’s why, no matter what I have to do, no matter what names people call me…”

With a look of respect for his childhood friend, Mikado put his finger against the trigger of the gun.

“…I will deny your words with all my strength.”

And a few seconds later, the dry pop of a gunshot expanded into the sky over Ikebukuro.

Outside of Tokyu Hands

The sound of a gunshot from above reached the street in front of Tokyu Hands.

“What was that?”

Everyone present looked around for the source of the unfamiliar burst, but no one found it. The closest were a few bikers, who muttered that they heard it from up above, subsequently gazing at the expressway, the Amlux building, and the Sunshine building in turn.

That was when they finally realized that the night sky was colored an abnormally dark black.

The top of the soaring Sunshine building, in fact, seemed to be shrouded in some kind of black fog, completely hiding it from view.

“Hey, what’s that…?”

The murmuring among the crowd began to spread, until it all came to an abrupt stop some fifteen seconds later.

A dark shadow suddenly raced through the group of men.

“?!”

The shadow leaped and bounced off motorcycle and car alike from roof to hood, easily speeding its way through the densely packed crowd of bikers and thugs.

“Hey!” shouted one of the bikers whose motorcycle had been used as a stepping-stone, furiously following the shadow with his eyes. “What the hell? Kill that—”

But before he could finish ordering his friends, his voice caught in his throat.

He’d heard the sound of ugly, unpleasant scraping behind him.

It was so abnormal that the bikers spun around, wondering what it was.

And when they saw what the man back there was dragging around, they lost the ability to speak.

“Hey, did you hear something?” Chikage demanded, shoulders heaving as he breathed, but no one responded.

He was like a solitary island in the sea of bikers and Blue Squares around him. Even then, he challenged his foes, not backing down from the fight.

“Hah… Ain’t that a mystery. Up against every last one of you, and I don’t feel scared in the least.”

“Don’t try to play tough with us, Rokujou! You’re done for!” yelled one of the senior members of the rival Gozumezu Guns, but Chikage wasn’t bothered by it.

“I’ll be honest,” he taunted. “I felt a lot more presence when I fought this guy who was as tough as a kaiju, about three months ago…”

But he trailed off. The black shadow was racing toward Chikage, rushing over the heads of the other men. It was a man dressed in black.

“…Who’s that?” Chikage wondered, appraising the injured man. That man just grinned at him and surveyed the situation.

“…More people than I expected,” he said. Then he noticed the crowds of red-eyed people and added, “Half of them possessed by Saika. Whatever. That suits me fine.”

And with that little brag out of the way, he looked toward Otowa Street.

When Aoba saw the man, he clenched his jaws.

“Izaya…Orihara!” the boy snarled.

Just at that moment, an enormous mass leaped over the heads of the stunned bikers and flew toward Izaya.

When they recognized it as one of the motorcycles parked right in the middle of the street, even the Saika-possessed were quick to back away.

The vehicle crashed explosively against the street and slid over its surface, bits and pieces spraying off it. Izaya dodged the projectile by a tiny margin and stood in the middle of the space that had opened up in the crowd. There he awaited the monster.

Everyone present turned in the direction from which the vehicle flew and instantly cleared the path.

“Ah!” Chikage gasped.

Walking down the newly created space toward him, exuding dozens of times more intimidation than the crowd of a hundred-plus bikers, was a man in a bartender’s outfit.

“It’s you, Heiwajima!”

Then he turned to Aoba with a bitter smirk.

“Wait, is that guy the one you called in to help?”

“No. He’s…not in the Dollars anymore.”

“Wha…?” Chikage drawled.

Under his ski mask, Aoba’s face was devoid of expression.

“In fact, I think him leaving the Dollars was one of the reasons that Mr. Mikado broke down.”

After Shizuo threw the bike he had been dragging along one-handed, he continued his steady pace toward Izaya. But the other man did not attempt to leave the scene.

It was almost as though he had been hoping to lure him here from the start.

While Masaomi challenged Mikado, who wanted to be an urban legend, Izaya Orihara was challenging an established legend in the flesh.

Izaya pulled out his most trusted weapon, a large folding knife, signaling that all the little tricks were over now.

“Shall we begin?”

Despite being in the same circumstances as Masaomi, Izaya gripped his weapon for almost the exact opposite purpose.

He wanted to carve into the world the fact that Shizuo, who tried to be human, was truly a hideous monster.

Inside the van

“Did you hear something earlier?” Anri asked with concern.

In the passenger seat, Kadota replied, “Yeah, it sounded like a gunshot.”

“C’mon, man… Don’t try to scare me like that…,” Togusa griped, his cheek twitching.

Next to him, Anri looked at the sky through the window. Then she noticed it, too:

The sky over Ikebukuro was covered in an abnormal darkness. When she detected the oppressive darkness surrounding the top of the Sunshine building, she couldn’t help opening her mouth—to speak the name of the creature she trusted most.

“Is that…Celty?”

In time, they gathered.

In the place where the Dollars began.

To bring the Dollars to their end.

And almost as if retracing the very steps of that first in-person meetup, a woman cloaked in black shadow began to wriggle and writhe. Unlike at that meetup, however, she was riding a headless horse rather than a motorcycle.

As well, rather than racing down the side of the Tokyu Hands building, she started from the roof of the Sunshine building, the tallest in Ikebukuro.

What was once the Headless Rider was now in true, complete dullahan form.

And so she descended into Ikebukuro once again.

She would display to the city the change that had come over her.

Chat room

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The chat room is currently empty.

The chat room is currently empty.

The chat room is currently empty.

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