Durarara!! - Volume 3 - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Ne Rasstraivaysya.

Class 1-A, Raira Academy

“We had quite a splendid sunset last night, but as you can see, today it is raining. Ahem. I do wonder if you’re aware of this. Ahem. There is a saying, ‘The day after a sunset is bright, but it rains after a morning glow.’ This is a product of a migratory anticyclone, and the saying holds true in the spring and fall, but not for summer or winter. Ahem. So my point is. Ahem. Even in March, our climate is still stuck in winter. Ahem…”

The homeroom teacher, Mr. Kitagoma, who was also the earth sciences teacher, rattled off a list of facts while the pouring rain rattled off the windows. It wasn’t clear if what he was saying was actually useful or not.

The elderly teacher mumbled his speech to a close, then proceeded to briskly take attendance. Everything was going normally, just like any other day. Until…

“Sonohara… Sonohara? Hmm? Strange. No Sonohara today.”

The rest of the class shared looks. It was the last person they’d expect to be absent. Some of them gave knowing glances to Mikado. He was looking around even more than necessary, clearly unnerved by her absence.

“Hmm, perhaps she is sick. Ahem. Take good care of yourselves.” The teacher gave the class a quick once-over. “Tomorrow is the last day of school. Ahem. So I’d like to properly wrap up the entire year with the entire class. Ahem.”

Kitagoma continued taking roll as if nothing had happened, but Mikado’s heart was roiling with an indescribable anxiety.

Naturally, a lot had to do with the absence of Anri, a model student. Perhaps the wounds she’d suffered from the slasher began paining her again. Maybe she’d even run across the slasher a second time. The troubling possibilities raced through his mind.

After school, he heard another piece of information that worried him even more.

Masaomi wasn’t at school, either.

Hospital room, Raira University Hospital, Ikebukuro

“What’s up, Masaomi? You seem down today,” the girl in the bed noted to Masaomi as he stared out the window.

Masaomi thought he was keeping up his normal act, but the girl saw right through him with a gentle smile.

“How can you tell? I thought I was acting normally… I guess you really must be psychic.”

Were his emotions really showing on his face? Masaomi spun back with a false grin on his lips. The girl’s smile had not changed.

“Because you hardly ever skip school to come see me.”

“Oh…yeah.”

He had ditched school to come visit her bedside. The receptionist hadn’t bothered him much about his visit, probably assuming that he was a younger college student—Masaomi was in his regular street clothes.

Just as Saki had pointed out, Masaomi recognized that his emotions were in an unstable state. After what happened the previous day, he was unsure if he could maintain his usual frame of mind. Not to suggest that the way he acted around Mikado and Anri was a pretense—but that he was afraid that if they saw him now, it might only cause them to worry. That possibility frightened him.

But at this moment, only the girl in this hospital room knew the side of him that Mikado and Anri did not. She knew the Masaomi who grew up in Ikebukuro.

To Masaomi, who lived apart from his parents, Saki was an outsider, another person that he could return to and feel like himself—despite the fact that she was part of the past he wanted to forget.

In analyzing his own emotions, Masaomi grew uncomfortable. So for the first time in ages, he asked the girl a question he had asked her countless times.

“Hey, Saki.”

“What?”

“Are you sure…you don’t…bear a grudge against me?”

Saki’s eyes went wide, but once again, her smile returned.

“You’re so dumb. I can’t believe how dumb you are, Masaomi.”

“I’m dumb?”

“Yes. Even if I did hate you, you’d still come back, wouldn’t you?” she said, confidently striding directly into the heart of his emotional turmoil. She repeated the phrase that had tormented him for so long: “You’ll never, ever be able to escape your past.”

“Never?”

“Never. That’s why you come back to me, isn’t it?”

“You just think that because it’s what Izaya told you,” he said sardonically. Masaomi knew that she worshipped Izaya Orihara. He’d known it since the day he met her.

But he still fell in love with her.

By this point, it should all have been in the past—but the past would not let him go. It was just as Izaya had once told him.

Saki looked slightly troubled by his sarcasm. “We’ll see about that. But I think it’s a good thing that Izaya told me that, you know? After all…I really love you now.”

“If Izaya had told you to hate me, you would have come to stab me in an instant, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe I would have…but you’d still love me, Masaomi.”

“But that’s over now. Kaput. The end,” he said in jest, but Saki only repeated herself.

“You can’t escape your past, Masaomi. Your current troubles are based in your past, aren’t they?”

“…”

“If you can’t escape it, you should face it and beat it in a fight.”

“Well, if it was possible to clean my slate with you by simply fighting that part of my past head-on, I’d do it.”

For the first time today, Masaomi smiled at the bedridden girl.

She saw his expression and put on her happiest smile yet. “Why don’t you?”

“I can’t fight you, Saki.”

With a self-deprecating grin, Masaomi left the room. As he left, he closed the door to cut off her happy gaze.

“That’s why…all I can do is run.”

The group wasn’t formed for fighting. I just wanted a place to hang out.

He borrowed things from his new city, pretending they were his own, in order to tell his childhood friend about his new home. Masaomi always felt conflicted about this.

It was why he wanted companions here. To find his own place in the city.

But the group was not truly a place he was meant to return.

He knew that now.

Among the Yellow Scarves…the only “place” for him was in Saki Mikajima.

Now he was working for the sake of his friend, his new place in the world.

But as he was still stuck with the Yellow Scarves, he found himself back in that hospital room.

Whom did he really love?

Masaomi stared at the ceiling of the hospital hallway, wondering what the answer was.

He did not find it.

A doctor on break spoke to Masaomi as he waited for the elevator.

“Oh, Masaomi. No school today?”

“I left early just so I could see your face, Doctor. No, really.”

“Well, at least you’re in a good mood. I hope you can share that energy of yours with Saki.”

“Yeah… How is she doing?” he asked politely. The doctor, who was in her thirties, kept a cool expression on her face.

“As I told you before, her nerves are all connected, so if she undergoes rehabilitation, she should be able to walk. It seems to be the mental shock that is afflicting her more. Oh, and she hardly ever talks, except when you and another fellow who looks a bit like a club host come by—then she’s a real chatterbox.”

After having just finished a conversation with her, it was hard to believe that Saki did not normally speak. But the doctor wasn’t lying to him. He knew that before she was hospitalized, she wasn’t the type to initiate a conversation with others.

Except for one man, the so-called “fellow who looks a bit like a club host”: Izaya Orihara.

Masaomi hid his emotions from his face.

The doctor continued, “She ought to be recovering at home by now. But she has no relatives, so… Anyway, the hospital funds are coming from somewhere, so we’re happy to keep tending to her. Make sure you keep coming so she doesn’t get lonely. She’s really been much happier lately, now that you’re visiting again.”

“I’ll do my best.” He smiled weakly.

The chatty doctor narrowed her eyes and leaned closer. “Feel like coming over tonight? I’m on the early shift, and tomorrow’s my day off,” she propositioned.

Masaomi easily deflected her advance. “Sorry, I’ve got a prior engagement.”

“Everybody always wants a piece of you. If I were your legitimate girlfriend, I’d have stabbed you by now.”

“And then helped me heal, right? The healing power of your love would work like gangbusters on me.”

“It’s both incredible and frustrating how blithe you are about everything…”

Masaomi summoned a smile with all of his heart for her and left the hospital without another word. He stared up at the sky again, unable to put a name to the emotion he was feeling now.

Every single day he talked to women, murmuring words of love to them, as regularly as breathing. It wasn’t, as Saki claimed, because he was actually trying to reaffirm his love for her. Masaomi loved all women equally, at all times.

But is what I feel…actually love?

The dark sky returned nothing but raindrops. Masaomi headed into Ikebukuro, growing damper by the minute.

Sixtieth Floor Street, Ikebukuro

“See, that’s what I’m saying—we’ve been using the word tsundere for years and years. And now that it’s grown into this mainstream thing on TV shows and everything, it makes me feel empty in the same way that you feel when a band you’ve always liked just blows up and gets huge.”

“You just want to hog your favorite things to yourself. But I don’t mind, because I’m honest about liking things that are cool.”

“Hmph! It’s not like I actually care about the word tsundere or anything!”

“Ha-ha, Yumacchi just turned into a tsundere.”

The two chattered away about the usage of the term, referring to those who pretended to dislike things they secretly loved, as they slowly made their way to Sunshine City. The rain was still falling, but they were all smiles under their umbrellas without a care for the weather in the three-dimensional world.

On the other hand, the man who walked ahead of the pair just shook his head in disgust. “I keep telling you two not to talk about that stuff in town.”

“Actually, we’re really holding back today, Kadota.”

“That’s right, Yumacchi’s doing his best to keep it light. He hasn’t quoted any lines from a manga or said the name of a single two-dimensional character!”

“Shut up.”

The grunt was muffled by the sound of the rain, but the glint in his eyes as he glared over his shoulder was enough to silence the two.

As Yumasaki and Karisawa sulked like scolded children, their overseer and guardian Kadota let out a long sigh.

They were a pair of otaku chatting about their obscure interests and a man who exuded the atmosphere of a loitering delinquent. The combination looked unthinkable at a glance, but as a matter of fact, they were always together.

Yumasaki and Karisawa looked normal, but on the inside they were irredeemable connoisseurs of the two-dimensional arts. Since the summer, Yumasaki had repeated a constant muttered refrain about a “dream demon maid,” which set Kadota on edge for no good reason.

For his own part, Kadota was a voracious reader, but he only loved books as a fiction separate from reality. To him, any book (even nonfiction) was a means to visit a world of dreams.

But Yumasaki and Karisawa, whom he’d known for years, had traveled to the world of fiction so heavily that they no longer could be trusted to discern the difference between fiction and reality, and Kadota had no way to wake them up.

“Ugh…so where should we go next?”

“I was thinking we could swing by Animate for the latest merch. But we took the train today, so space is limited. If we had the van, we could buy all kinds of stuff and stash it there,” Karisawa noted, laughing dryly.

Kadota sighed for at least the hundredth time that day. “You better pick up something for Togusa by way of apology. He was super-pissed.”

“It makes no sense. I was sure he’d be over the moon about it.”

Normally this trio traveled around in a van driven by their companion named Togusa, but when the door was recently damaged, Yumasaki had a new door installed—complete with a decal of a sparkling anime girl. Togusa nearly exploded just from seeing that, but Yumasaki made matters worse by proudly displaying a picture on his home page. Togusa tried to run his friend over with the van for that one.

“I even placed a mosaic to blur out his license plate number and everything,” Yumasaki noted with absolute bafflement. Kadota’s resulting sigh was getting to be a bit much.

“You should have placed another mosaic on him driving the thing.”

Kadota asked himself for the umpteenth time why he was hanging out with these people. He cast his gaze forward to Sixtieth Floor Street.

There were young folks with bits of yellow on here and there, but Kadota did not feel any menace from them. He knew they were on the verge of beefing with the Dollars, but very few of them would recognize him, he decided.

Kadota and the two with him were members of the Dollars. The Dollars repped no color. The group was open to any and all, so while Kadota certainly fit the bill of a street gangster, Yumasaki and Karisawa completely destroyed that image.

Unlike the Yellow Scarves, they had no distinguishing features that identified their allegiance, so they had no fear of being attacked. Thus, they felt free to stroll openly through the town. However—

“Kadota,” someone called out to the group. “It’s been a while.”

“Huh? Oh…Kida,” Kadota said, recognizing the familiar face.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Kida.”

“Why aren’t you with the usual four-eyed girl and baby-faced kid today?”

Yumasaki and Karisawa’s tone was friendly, but Kadota gave the boy a stern glance, sensing something slightly more dangerous in Masaomi’s smile.

Then, noticing the yellow cloth wrapped around the boy’s knuckles, Kadota picked up on the situation. It was the darkest he felt all day, but this time he did not sigh.

“…Are you back?” he asked, his face hard.

Masaomi nodded after a brief pause. “Yes.”

“…I see,” Kadota noted simply.

Masaomi quietly got to the point. “No use standing out in the rain… Want to go somewhere, if you’ve got time to kill?”

Yumasaki and Karisawa shared a look, recognizing that this was not his usual flippant chattiness. Kadota glanced at the loitering boys with their yellow scraps. They hadn’t noticed Masaomi’s presence, but if they kept standing around here that would eventually change.

On the other hand, if they just walked into any old store…they might find themselves surrounded by yellow in a heartbeat, depending on what Masaomi wanted to talk about.

“Sure, if we go to Simon’s place,” Kadota said, jutting his chin toward the corner of a road that led off of Sixtieth Floor Street. It was a cramped alley full of bars and restaurants.

Masaomi looked a bit unhappy at hearing the foreign name—but he summoned up his resolve and took the lead in marching toward the alley.

Russia Sushi

“Hey, Kida, Kadota. Well-cahm.”

A warm voice with a thick accent greeted them as they pushed through the colorful hanging curtain at the door. The interior of the business was an incongruous combination of Russian imperial palace and Japanese sushi counter.

While the counter was the same as any other sushi restaurant, the tatami mats of the floor were matched with marble walls in a truly clashing way. That, combined with the hanging sign promising HASSLE-FREE PRICING! ALL ITEMS MARKET VALUE! put any visitor into a skeptical state of mind.

That was the first impression every visitor to Russia Sushi received upon walking inside. The skepticism was only increased by the sight of the massive employee who stood nearly seven feet tall. He was Simon, a black Russian who spoke oddly accented Japanese.

The concept of a black Russian was unfamiliar to most Japanese, which got him plenty of funny looks, but everyone was convinced once they heard him chatting in fluent Russian with the white chef behind the counter.

His presence was the reason Kadota chose this place to talk.

Simon was the only person who could stop Shizuo Heiwajima, widely regarded as the most dangerous man in Ikebukuro—and a frequent visitor to Russia Sushi himself. Starting a fight here meant causing trouble with two of the most violent men in town. By passing through the doorway of this restaurant, Kadota figured no Yellow Scarves would want to get involved.

For his part, Masaomi was on good terms with the group, so they didn’t distrust him too much—but there was no guarantee that the other Yellow Scarves didn’t have their own ideas.

Kadota felt that it was worth having a good talk with Masaomi, so he chose the safest location he could think of nearby.

“Yo, odd combination of faces,” said the white man behind the counter, who was cutting up the pieces of fish for delivery orders with an assortment of knives. Unlike Simon, he was fluent in Japanese, but after his greeting he resumed his work in silence.

“Cheap sushi, very good. I give you good deal, Boss Kadota.”

“Boss of who? Four of your cheapest nigiri combinations. We’ll sit in the back.”

“Right away,” signaled the white chef, and Simon beamed as he guided the four to the back compartment.

“So what do you want with us? Bein’ the head of the Yellow Scarves…whether former or not, I don’t know or care,” Kadota started up immediately, as soon as Simon had dropped the napkins and left to get their tea. “It’s about the Dollars, I assume. I know what’s going on with both sides at this point in time, and me and Yumasaki’s names are listed on the Dollars’ website.”

“I appreciate you getting right to the point. Then, I suppose you know what I want to ask.”

“Let me be clear: We dunno all the details about the whole organization. Some of our people got done by the slasher, too. I dunno how much power you have now, Kida, but it’d be real helpful if you could clear that up on your side.”

“Well…”

Before Masaomi could continue, Simon came by with four teacups. They were relatively large cups, but they looked small when carried by the enormous man. He picked up the steaming hot cups with his entire palm and rhythmically presented them to the group.

“You drink tea, get your catechins,” Simon said with a thumbs-up.

Kadota smirked and reached for a cup. “Yeow!” he shrieked, dropping the cup back on the table.

Simon quickly offered him a napkin and apologized. “Oh, I sorry. Don’t worry, Boss Kadota. You meditate and clear mind, fire become cold. No get angry, you get hot.”

“I think you actually know a lot more Japanese than you let on… I’m amazed you can hold these cups without getting burned.”

“?”

Simon responded to Kadota’s admiration with a confused, uncomprehending smile. Masaomi looked at his thick, scarred palms and swallowed hard.

“Enjoy, ya?” Simon said, still smiling as he left.

Masaomi finally continued what he had been about to say. “…Well…it might only be your personal group that thinks there’s no connection to the slasher.”

“Huh?”

“The Dollars are a team of equals without any hierarchy, right? So it’s quite possible that there’s a faction that was responsible for the slashings outside of your knowledge. Plus, if they made sure to include a few Dollars in the attacks, that would move suspicion away from the Dollars.”

“…”

Kadota mulled over Masaomi’s words in his head and eventually took a brief sip of hot tea. “I see. Well, you’ve got a point there.”

Next to Masaomi was Yumasaki and facing him next to Kadota was Karisawa, but the two were uncharacteristically quiet.

A brief silence passed, then Kadota took another sip and murmured, “So what’s the motive?”

“…”

“Why would a group with no reason to make a name for itself and no monetary dealings decide to attack people indiscriminately and get rid of the Yellow Scarves?”

“If I knew that, things would be a lot easier. It could be a personal grudge of some kind,” Masaomi muttered hesitantly, but that only brought Kadota after him harder.

“Personal? I’ve never heard of any beef between the Yellow Scarves and Dollars.”

“Not the Dollars.”

“…”

Kadota realized what Masaomi was insinuating. His face went hard and he clammed up.

Masaomi spat the name out, clearly not wanting to even touch the subject. “The Blue Squares.”

A furrow appeared between Kadota’s brows the instant he heard the title. “Kida…”

“I haven’t forgotten what that team did to us. That drove me away from the gang, and things settled down eventually…but the hatred never left. That’s my suspicion.”

“And so you’ve come to me.”

Kadota held his silence for a while as he thought, but Masaomi didn’t wait for an answer. “You understand, don’t you, Kadota? Tell me who the Dollars’ boss is. And if possible…tell me which of your old friends from the Blue Squares are in the Dolla—”

Crakk.

A dry sound cut Masaomi off.

He looked over to see Yumasaki, wearing his usual expression, pulling apart a pair of wooden chopsticks.

“Come on, Kida,” he said, handling the sharp wooden implement. “You shouldn’t mix fantasy and reality.”

In a way, it was almost the very last thing one would expect the half-Japanese otaku to say. Over time, the smile faded from his face.

“The Blue Squares never existed. Isn’t that good enough?”

Just as the sentence ended, Masaomi smacked his palm on the table. The cups of tea shifted, the liquid within them swaying.

“But Saki—! You’re going to tell me that Saki was sent to the hospital by some people who don’t even exi—”

Wham.

Again, a sound cut Masaomi off.

Between the gaps of his fingers, pressed against the table, the cleanly pointed ends of the chopsticks were bent.

For an instant, Masaomi didn’t understand what had happened—until he realized that Yumasaki had slammed the points of the chopsticks in his hands into the table right between his fingers. He held his breath.

For having just thrashed the tiny pieces of wood to pulp, Yumasaki’s expression, while not smiling, did not seem very angry, either.

He was expressionless.

The force was enough that if they’d landed on the back of his hand, they might have punctured all the way through his palm. Something cold ran down Masaomi’s back, but he did not pull his hand away.

Karisawa spoke in Yumasaki’s place, her cheek resting on her hand in a pose of bored exasperation. “That’s right. Your ex got beat up by people who don’t exist. That’s good enough.”

“You don’t wanna make me angry, Karisawa.”

“You already are. Plus, Yumacchi got angry before you did. So that makes us even. You might be angry about what happened to your girlfriend, but others are going to be angry if you accuse Dotachin—in fact, the Dollars as a whole—of being the slasher. If you can’t accept us as being even in that regard, then you never should have brought it up in the first place.”

She paused for a moment to sip her tea, fixing the younger boy with a sharp look.

“While we didn’t carry out any of that, it’s true that we owe you a moral debt. But if you’re going to dredge up the past with Saki, when it was Dotachin who saved her while you ran away,” she said, staring at Masaomi with half-lidded eyes, “then maybe we need to force you to view that part of your past as a figment of your imagination.”

The response to her statement came not from Masaomi but Yumasaki, still clutching the broken chopsticks in the same position. “You’re wrong, Karisawa.”

“Huh? I am?”

“Even if the Blue Squares did exist, when that part happened, it was the Blue Squares who got attacked first. And yet he’s claiming we were the bad guys the entire time. I gotta dispute that point!”

“Oh, right. Man, I’m so embarrassed. I’m like in the super spiral of shame!”

As they carried on in their normal manner, Masaomi realized that he had lost the outlet for his anger—and lost his cool as well.

“…I’m sorry…about this,” he said, hesitantly hanging his head.

Yumasaki switched to his familiar smile, grinning away. “No, no, it’s my fault. I mean…I feel really bad about what happened with Saki.”

“No… I should be thanking you, not accusing you,” Masaomi said, his usually cool demeanor entirely gone.

Kadota, who had been silent all this time, had an unusually gentle expression on his face. “Even if you do hate me, I’m not gonna quibble… We did more than enough to a mere middle school kid to deserve that kind of hate.”

“But, Kadota, you didn’t—” Yumasaki started to protest, but Kadota cut him off with a glance.

Their leader spoke quietly and simply, but with a strength behind his words. “No matter how hard you try to deny it, you can’t escape what you were involved with.”

Masaomi’s face began to waver. Something Izaya Orihara had said to him once came back to his mind.

“And with that in mind, let me say something… I don’t know nothing about the boss, nor do I plan to go looking. And I will repeat: The slasher and the Dollars are unrelated. We have no reason to bicker with the Yellow Scarves,” Kadota said, getting it all off his chest. Suddenly, he seemed to remember something. “Oh…actually, there is one person who knows the boss of the Dollars.”

“Wh-who is that?!” Masaomi asked, leaning forward despite his best efforts to stay calm.

“Hang on… My point is, why would you even ask that? Let’s say you get the boss’s name out of that person. What will you do? Invite him out for tea and have a nice little chitchat? Or use your Yellow Scarves and stage an abduction?”

“I…I only want to track down the slasher. If the Dollars really are unrelated, I think it would be perfect just to talk it out.”

“And is that the opinion of the Scarves as a whole?”

“…” Masaomi looked away from the pointed question.

“If it’s like the old days, and you’ve got a tight grip on all of your people, then I can help you. But they changed while you stepped away from the Yellow Scarves. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed,” Kadota said forcefully, brooking no argument.

Masaomi listened with eyes shut tight and head down. He squeezed the words out of himself into groans. It was not the usual Masaomi with his self-absorbed, shallow gibberish, but a sympathetic, lonely boy pressured and at the end of his wits.

“I…I still think of them, of the Yellow Scarves, as my friends. But…it’s true that I don’t really want…to go back there permanently.”

“I can imagine,” Kadota said easily, draining the last of his tea. With the air in the room settled down a bit, he asked Masaomi, “You don’t know what you should be doing, do you? You’ve found a different way of life. You don’t know if anything you say will really reach them…and that’s a big concern to you, isn’t it?”

“…”

“Let’s just assume there really is a squabble with the Dollars. What does that even have to do with you? You left because you hated the idea of gang warfare…”

“I ran away,” Masaomi said, cutting himself down to size before Kadota could reach his point. But his eyes were slowly regaining the light, and the pathos that had racked him moments ago was easing.

“But this time…it’s not just my fellow Yellow Scarves.”

“Huh?”

“A good friend of mine from school was attacked by the slasher—someone who has nothing to do with the Yellow Scarves or the past. I can’t get over that…so I’m only using the Yellow Scarves name as an excuse to solve a personal problem,” Masaomi said, his voice full of strong will and intent, as Kadota listened. “Still, I want to know who the slasher is. That’s all this comes down to.”

“That’s all?”

“…Yes.”

“Then I’ll say no more on that. What I will say again, however…is that you won’t find the slasher in the Dollars,” Kadota repeated, another tiny sigh escaping his lips.

“I don’t—no—we don’t agree with that.”

“What?”

“Last night, we witnessed something beyond belief.”

Masaomi began to tell a story.

A story of the grotesque, otherworldly event he saw in the rain the night before.

And the undeniable truth that the “intruder” riding behind that creature carried a katana, and dozens of the Yellow Scarves witnessed the whole thing…

“…I see.”

Kadota held his cup, a look of troubled understanding on his face. When he realized the cup was empty, he grimaced and put it back down.

“I’m aware of the rumors that the Black Rider’s participated in some Dollars meetups. The other Yellow Scarves know about it, too…”

“And the fact that she helped the girl with the katana get away means that the slasher and the Black Rider must be working with the Dollars, you’re claiming?” Kadota said, sussing out Masaomi’s point.

The other boy nodded gravely. “And a guy with us named Horada got attacked by the rider yesterday…”

“Horada? Horada…”

“?”

Masaomi was confused by the way Kadota repeated the name, but he was quickly distracted by the whispering of Yumasaki and Karisawa, who had been silent for the last several minutes.

“Hey, Yumacchi. Did you notice something strange about that story?”

“What’s that?”

“The Black Rider finished off the slasher, remember?”

“Well, it was mostly Shizuo. Plus Togusa running him over with the van.”

They were speaking quietly enough to avoid being overheard on the street, but not inside while seated directly next to other people.

“What was that?”

“Huh? Uh…well, um, just…how to explain?” Yumasaki stammered.

Kadota sighed and took it upon himself to do just that. “Are you aware that the slasher seems to be more than one person?”

“Well, there were fifty incidents that happened in a single night. So, yeah, that seems clear.”

Kadota seemed hesitant to say what was on his mind, but he quickly gave up. “Well…now that you’ve seen something beyond belief, you’ll be able to believe it.”

“What do you mean?”

“There won’t be any more slashings.” Kadota tapped the rim of his empty cup with a finger. When he spoke, it was slow, in rhythm with the beat. “From what I heard on the grapevine, the slasher chose to pick a fight with—of all people—that monster Shizuo Heiwajima… Do I need to explain what happened next?”

Shizuo Heiwajima.

The instant Masaomi heard the name, something crawled from his back over his face.

Masaomi knew him well—he was a human bomb, someone people called the fighting puppet of Ikebukuro.

The slasher’s mob versus one human being.

It was an unthinkable matchup, but there was only a single person who could grant it immediate credibility, and that was Shizuo.

“No…but… Who did it, then?” Masaomi asked in disbelief.

Kadota shook his head as he scratched it. “Well…whatever. If you just want to know about the slasher, then there’s no use hiding what I know. As for the rest…ask the person who knows the boss. I’ll leave the decision up to the two of them.”

“Uhm,” Masaomi mumbled, surprised that Kadota had broken so easily.

But at the same time, Kadota’s eyes narrowed, and he delivered a warning. “However, if that goes awry and you have to declare the Dollars your enemy—”

“If we do, then what?”

“I’ll be ready for that fight.”

The supposedly calmed air between them prickled once again.

“…”

“Is that all you have to say? You’re prepared for that outcome, too, aren’t you? When you fly the flag of vengeance, it becomes more than just the usual hell-raising kids your age like to get into. You know that, don’t you?”

“I—”

Once again, a sound stopped them at the height of the tension in the room.

Thunk.

With a pleasing sound, something embedded itself into the wall next to the table.

The group recognized that something had passed between them and turned their heads slowly toward it, anticipating what they would find.

What they saw sticking out of the wooden wall was a combination of silver and black.

“Gonna scare the other customers… Take that talk outside,” said the Russian behind the counter in his brusque Japanese, working the sushi in front of him without looking at them.

One of his sashimi knives was missing from its customary spot. It was now stuck into the wall between the four.

“All ready. One Kremlin roll, two, three, four, just for you, boss,” came Simon’s cheery voice, breaking right through the chilly atmosphere in the room. “You hungry because you fight. Eat sushi, get full, full of dreams. Human stomach is dream factory. So you stop fighting, yes?”

The waiter neatly carried over four dishes of the rolls they’d ordered, balancing the plates in both hands.

“Uh…yeah. Thanks, Simon.”

“I didn’t realize kitchen knives could sink so deeply into walls.”

“Doesn’t this count as attempted murder?”

“Th-thank you for this food.”

The combination of the chef’s menace and Simon’s easygoing charm having drained the tension out of the group, the four silently ate their sushi. The food was adeptly made and quite delicious, but with the desire to finish their food and get down to business lodged in their brains, they weren’t able to fully appreciate it.

“So long, Kida. Don’t get any half-cocked ideas.”

Kadota’s group paid their tab and left the restaurant. Yumasaki and Karisawa launched back into their usual chatter, as though they’d completely forgotten everything discussed inside.

As his old acquaintances drifted away into the distance, Masaomi sat alone in the little tatami enclosure, holding his head in his hands.

“I’ll be damned…”

Someone who had made contact with the boss of the Dollars. Someone whom Kadota had declined to name. But Masaomi recognized the number that Kadota left with him.

“So…I’ve finally come back to him.”

He sat in silence for long moments, lost in the past. Masaomi was a statue. Minutes passed by.

“Ne rasstraivaysya.” (Cheer up, man.)

The voice came from over his shoulder. Masaomi looked over to see Simon with a fresh plate in his hands. It bore a few pieces of sushi that were clearly a rank above what they’d ordered earlier.

“Huh?”

Before Masaomi could ask what this was about, the cranky chef from behind the counter answered it for him.

“Gloomy faces drive business away. So eat up and leave with a smile on your face.”

“Oh…thank you,” Masaomi said, inclining his head. When the chef didn’t respond, Simon butted in with a cheery grin.

“You no fight. You already happy. Happy enough. So don’t steal happy of others. You share, everyone happy. I just learn saying: ‘White goose is loud, becomes round.’ What this mean, anyway? Why goose? You are goose, Kida?”

“…It’s ‘What goes around comes around,’” muttered the chef. Simon looked quizzical, not understanding the difference.

Masaomi popped the freshly served sushi into his mouth as he listened. It tasted like tuna collar dipped in soy sauce. When he bit into it, the fat practically melted on his tongue, mixing with the salty soy sauce in perfect harmony.

He was so surprised by the taste, which was beyond what he normally paid for, that Masaomi couldn’t help but murmur, “Wow, this is good.”

He thanked them for the food and was about to pay, but the chef told him, “They already paid for your share.” He’d gotten a free meal.

Masaomi realized that despite his hostile attitude, everyone around him had noticed his obvious misery and had tried to cheer him up in their own ways. He couldn’t help but snort.

Guess I’m still just a kid after all…

With his mind now made up, Masaomi left Russia Sushi, spurring his naive self onward toward fulfilling his purpose.

Outside of Tokyu Hands

By the early afternoon, the rain had eased up just slightly, but the wind was blowing the droplets under their umbrellas.

“Horada… Horada…”

Kadota continued mulling over the name they’d heard earlier, as the group made its way toward the Ikebukuro location of the Animate chain store.

“What’sat, Kadota? New kind of curse or something?”

“It sounds like a spell if you put a rhythm to it, like ‘Ho-radaho-rada.’ A spell of binding? For a summoning maybe.”

“Shut up and stop confusing me,” Kadota grumbled at the two muttering behind him. “Horada,” he repeated.

“So what’s up, Dotachin? You’ve been mulling this over for a while.”

“Remember how he said that the Black Rider took down a Yellow Scarf named Horada?” Kadota said, looking pensive. He revealed what was on his mind, trying to answer his own question. “It’s nothing serious, just… That’s an uncommon name. Maybe the kanji characters are different…but something about this is bugging me.”

“And what is that?”

“Well…I used to know a guy by that name.”

Kadota decided that letting his mind run in circles would be a waste of time, so he changed the topic. “Was that chef hard-core or what? One step in the wrong direction and someone would be a goner.”

“Sorry, I actually thought it was pretty cool.”

“Me, too. I can just imagine the scene: The hero of the cooking manga claims that he shouldn’t use a knife as a weapon, while the sushi chef busts out his combat sambo.”

“Ugh, you people and your inability to distinguish fantasy from reality!” Kadota groaned as he facepalmed and shook his head, more exasperated than angry.

Karisawa argued back, her eyes sparkling. “But you know, Dotachin, that chef’s actually quite a character. He was a hand-to-hand instructor in the Russian military, so I hear. And he also fought off some mafia types who came over from America.”

“There you go with your imagination again… Then again, putting the chef aside, Simon’s definitely got some serious strength and reflexes.”

“Oh, you bet. He can even stop Shizuo and Izaya from fighting. You think maybe he was the captain of some crazy mercenary band or something?! In order to avoid the notice of the state-sponsored assassins after his head, he takes on the role of a simple sushi chef!”

“Why would he start a restaurant called Russia Sushi if he wanted to avoid attention?” Kadota quipped. “But…I don’t mind, because the sushi’s good. I don’t care about their past.”

He watched a gang of yellow youths cross their path, then turned his head up to the sky and its endless rain.

The Sunshine building provided its own light to the sky around it, but there was still no sign that the rain would stop.

“In the end, the only one who can’t escape the past…is he himself.”

Masaomi returned to Sixtieth Floor Street with a renewed sense of purpose in his eyes.

The number Kadota gave him was still saved in his phone’s contact list.

Yep…you just can’t escape the past…

Izaya Orihara.

That was the name saved in his phone’s address book. The number listed next to it matched the one that Kadota gave him.

Perhaps he hadn’t bothered to say the name because he knew that Masaomi and Izaya had known each other for years.

Perhaps Kadota and the Izaya of years ago were right, and there was no escape from his past.

Masaomi’s eyes followed the groups of young men in yellow that dotted the major street, but his mind had melted into the past.

It was time to face the things he’d been trying to escape from for so long.