Durarara!! - Volume 3 - Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Reality’s a Bitch, Huh?

Two years earlier

It was two fateful encounters that happened at the same moment.

At the same time that Masaomi met Saki Mikajima, he also happened across the information agent.

“Me? Let’s see… I’m kind of like a guardian of Saki’s. Don’t worry, I’m not her boyfriend. And badger games have gone out of style,” the man said, unsolicited.

When Saki came to see Masaomi at first, he was like a ghost following her around. He claimed to sell information from his base around Ikebukuro, but Masaomi didn’t have much interest in the man. Or to be honest, he didn’t want to hold any interest in him.

Contrary to his pleasant features, the man had a downright eerie atmosphere to him. The things he said put him at odds with society, but he was often frightfully insightful. That strange sense of being unmoored from the rest of the world must have been inspiring to those who wanted an escape from reality. So oddly enough, the man named Izaya Orihara found himself surrounded by a variety of people.

The girls who followed him around like a personal retinue were practically his own little cult. Saki was one of them. Whether serious or not, she showed Izaya the greatest respect and claimed that he was psychic.

If Masaomi was ever uncertain about anything, she would claim, “Just ask Izaya, and you’ll be fine,” even if it had nothing to do with the older man. The Yellow Scarves disliked the informant at first, but things did get much easier when they started following Izaya’s suggestions. The group slowly came around to him.

Except for Masaomi.

The first night he met her, Masaomi asked Saki, “If Izaya told you to kill yourself, would you do it?” After a few seconds of hesitation, she said, “I think I would.”

Wow, I feel really sorry for her.

Masaomi decided he ought to stay away from her—but it felt so good to bask in her obvious affection for him. Nowadays, after he’d grown older and known many other girls, he would have felt danger in her eerie nature and kept her at bay.

But back then, Masaomi didn’t have that personal defense. He kept meeting Saki.

He felt that somehow he could break her free of Izaya’s chains.

Izaya wasn’t bilking Saki out of money or making her his slave, but it was clear to see that her reverence for him was abnormal.

And Saki—obsession with Izaya aside, an adorable and ordinary girl—was absolutely one of the most desirable women that Masaomi had ever met, in both personality and looks.

If he could just fix that one flaw, they could have a perfectly normal relationship. It was with this calculation in mind that Masaomi spent time around the city with the girl.

About a month after they’d first met, Masaomi had a rare opportunity to be alone with Saki. He nonchalantly asked, “Would you say the two of us are going out?”

“What do you think?” Saki countered, chuckling.

Masaomi continued, “Listen, why are you even with me?”

“Umm, because I like you?” she replied, matter-of-fact.

Masaomi raised an eyebrow. “Did that Izaya guy tell you to like me?”

“Mmm, only at the start. Izaya doesn’t really interfere much in romance.”

“Then why do you still like me?”

“Because you’re cool. Mm, no—because you’re cute, I guess.”

He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. Saki turned the question on him. “And Masaomi? Do you like me?”

“If you stop fanatically worshipping that Izaya guy, I might decide I like you.”

He figured that this would make her mad, but Saki only giggled and owned up to it. “I can’t help it. I’d appreciate it if you could just overlook that one little flaw I have.”

“…So you know it’s a flaw?”

“Yeah. I just don’t want to fix it.”

What’s up with her?

Masaomi felt like he understood her even less than before. He had no idea how to respond. But his mouth had a simple message that it delivered on its own.

“If it’s a flaw, then fix it.” It was as close to a confession of his affection as he’d ever given. “I’m here… I’ll help you get over it.”

From that point on, Masaomi and Saki were a couple.

Masaomi stopped hitting on girls altogether, and everyone who knew him was more than a little shocked that he’d been tied down to a single girl.

But no one blamed him for his choice. The Yellow Scarves had more pressing concerns than the love life of their leader.

It was the Blue Squares.

They were a street gang that staked their turf in Ikebukuro, just like the Yellow Scarves, but they differed in that they had a wider range of ages and a greater inclination toward violence.

It started when the Blue Squares saw the signature yellow cloths and decided to pick a fight, arguing over “territory.”

And they’d accepted that fight.

Masaomi thought it was just another situation like any other. But it wasn’t.

This enemy’s numbers and style of fighting were completely unlike anything they’d faced before.

When they approached, they went to great lengths to hide themselves and only attacked when they were certain they had the advantage in numbers. There was no attempt to justify their attacks. They only picked fights they knew they would win, methodically and mechanically.

The gang of over a hundred was picked off one by one, and fear rapidly spread through the group. Masaomi was frightened as well at encountering a completely different kind of foe, but without experience in leading organized battles, he wasn’t able to respond with the same strategy. Neither was he able to remove their yellow signifiers and break up the gang.

The majority of his comrades were sick of being taken down. But even stronger than that anger was Masaomi’s fear.

He was afraid of breaking up the Yellow Scarves and losing the place that he’d finally carved out for himself. At the same time, he felt like he would be losing everything he’d gained as a member of the Yellow Scarves.

When he looked at the girl who was first and foremost on that list, she wore her typical smile and said something meant to comfort him.

“You should just ask Izaya what to do.”

Masaomi’s memory was fuzzy when it came to exactly how he got involved with Izaya.

The only impression he still had was walking into Izaya’s apartment somewhere in Ikebukuro and seeing Izaya throw his arms wide with an ostentatious “Welcome!”

In retrospect, it wasn’t a “welcome” to his home. He was welcoming Masaomi to his side of the city—the seedy underbelly. But Masaomi didn’t realize this at the time. He just wanted to use Izaya’s information to help his team win.

He believed this was the right choice without an ounce of hesitation. Later, Masaomi would reflect upon his choices at the time and see himself as being drunk on his own power. He was drunk on himself, waving the sake of his companions around like a get-out-of-jail-free card.

But part of him had to be uneasy about it. He did not tell his old friend back home about these events in their chat room. In fact, he was chatting with his friend less and less often.

“After all, it’s much healthier to have a personal relationship face-to-face, rather than through mere words on a screen,” the experts on TV would say when discussing Internet addiction or crimes committed as a result of such issues. Masaomi used that very logic as an excuse to cut down on his Internet time.

The Internet eats away at your mind, he told himself, as he moved away from the bracing, refreshing one-on-one fights lionized in comic books and plunged further into a deep, dark war.

Izaya’s knowledge dramatically changed the Yellow Scarves.

He offered them not just the Blue Squares’ hideouts, but their methods of fighting as well. Bit by bit, they turned the town back to yellow, the way it had been before.

At first, Masaomi was alarmed at the way Izaya strategically manipulated the Yellow Scarves. But that alarm was soon forgotten, replaced by a different emotion—one that Masaomi had never been able to indulge in before.

“We can win.”

The next thing he knew, Masaomi was smiling with absolute certainty in their triumph.

He had already forgotten that winning fights wasn’t the reason he was doing this.

He forgot the face of his old friend, banishing him and the sights of his country home to oblivion. All he experienced was one long bask in the glory of victory.

Until he got the call that Saki Mikajima had been abducted by the Blue Squares’ van.

It was on a night when the Yellow Scarves were truly beginning to dominate their foe. Masaomi’s phone rang out of the blue.

The screen said that it was from Kijimura, one of the lieutenants of the Yellow Scarves, so he answered it without hesitation.

“Is this Masaomi Kiiidaaa?”

The voice that came out of the speaker was unfamiliar, insistent and unpleasant.

“…Who is this? It’s not Kijimura, is it?”

“Nice—to—meet—you. This is Izumii, leader of the Blue Squares, at your service.”

“…!”

Masaomi’s entire body began to tremble. His mouth worked soundlessly, while the man on the other side smeared the raw reality of his sticky voice into Masaomi’s eardrums.

“We’re having a quiz show tonight.”

“Hey, wait a second… What happened to Kijimura?!”

“Here’s your question: ding-ding! Kijimura’s already been sent to the hospital. Instead, we have a very special guest with us. Can you guess who? Here’s a hint! It’s someone very, very, verrry important to you—you—you—you…”

The instant his last sentence finished, Masaomi’s body stopped trembling and broke into a chilling sweat. His every pore screamed. He could barely squeeze the breath out of his lungs.

“Hey…”

“Tick, tick, tick. Bzzt! Time’s up. But I’ll cut you some slack. You did think of someone very specific, didn’t you? In that case, ding-ding-ding! You’re correct!”

“No, not Saki! What did you do with Saki?!” Masaomi raged.

The voice continued, unperturbed. “Question number two!”

“Shut the hell up! Saki has nothing to do with anything!”

“What do you think your dear girlfriend looks like right about now?”

“…!”

“Well, I’ll leave you hanging on that one until you can see for yourself. But question three is the bonus round! There we go…”

A moment later came the sound of something hard breaking. A familiar voice shot into Masaomi’s brain as a scream.

“Now, that was the sound of which bone breaking? Here’s your hint: She probably won’t be walking for a while.”

“ !”

Masaomi raged with a silent scream. The man on the other side of the receiver—the leader of the Blue Squares known as Izumii—abandoned his jovial tone and went heavy and dark, the words stabbing like knives.

“Now for your final question… If you don’t come to the following location, all alone, in the next twenty minutes… Or alternately, if you decide to alert the police…”

“…then what will happen to this lovely young lady…?”

Several minutes later, Ikebukuro

“Whaddaya say, Kadota? You really oughta swing by,” cackled a young man in a blue hat, a carbonated beverage in his hand.

His conversation partner, himself wearing a knit cap colored blue, had a sharp gleam to his eyes. He leaned back against the side of the van, looking unconvinced.

“Where to?”

“You know, him. The guy. Yellow Scarves. We’re gonna go destroy their leader.”

“I told you, I’m not into this latest fight. First of all, I thought this guy was supposed to be cautious. It would be one thing if we were in the country, but invading his house in Ikebukuro? The cops will be raiding us before we’re even done with the guy,” said Kadota.

The young man in the blue hat grinned wickedly. “Nah, I’m telling you, Izumii abducted his girlfriend.”

“…Huh?”

“She’s just a kid, really, but pretty cute. I figured she’d be like a club girl, but I guess she’s more of a rich girl. Exciting, right? It’ll be plenty of fun, even if Kida never shows up.”

“…Oh, you kidnapped her.”

Kadota looked up at the sky for a bit as he thought it over. Eventually he smiled and clapped a hand on the shoulder of the man across from him. “I see… In that case, I’m going.”

“Right? You gotta get in on this!”

“Tell Izumii something for me when you wake up.”

“Eh?”

What did he mean by “wake up”? the young man in the blue hat couldn’t help but wonder.

“Tell him… ‘Later, you piece of shit.’”

Kadota’s forehead smashed into the bridge of his nose.

“Hey, guys… You wanna take a trip somewhere far off? Like, go to an onsen hot spring or something,” Kadota suggested to his companions inside the van as he climbed through the door.

“Whuh?”

“What’s up, Kadota?”

Yumasaki and the others glanced dumbly back and forth between their unconscious crewmate outside and the enlightened look on Kadota’s face.

“What I’m saying is…you wanna go on a vacation or something, until the tempers cool down?” Kadota said enigmatically.

Karisawa had been listening to their conversation from her window seat, and she snickered now. “Rather than run for safety, why don’t we just not inflame the tempers further?”

“Look…I’m not saying I necessarily think it’s the right thing to do.”

And then, Kadota explained to the rest what he was thinking of doing, as matter-of-fact as if he were planning out a picnic.

They would betray their team, the Blue Squares, and rescue the girl from the dozen or so members who had kidnapped her.

“I’m not going to force the rest of you into the plan, and I ain’t dumb enough to play heroic and go on my own… I’ll let you decide.”

The other people in the car all smirked together.

“Look, we’re following you. We have no attachment to the Blue Squares.”

“To be honest, I actually hated Izumii and his little brownnoser Horada.”

“We taking my van? I’m not gonna complain.”

“If we’re going to a different city, I’m going to request somewhere with an Animate, a Toranoana, and a Manga no Mori location.”

“I agree with the above.”

With the group unanimous, Kadota smiled to himself. He pulled off the blue cap he’d been wearing and tossed it into the van’s trash can.

“Aw, man. It would have been so much cooler if you’d thrown that hat out the window,” Yumasaki grumbled.

Kadota grinned impishly. “Nah… I make it a point to keep the town clean.”

After the call finished, Masaomi stood stock-still, clutching his phone.

He decided he must be stuck in a dream—and prayed.

Prayed, prayed, prayed.

All he could do was pray.

He couldn’t take a step. He couldn’t take the phone from his ear. Time slowly slipped away, moment by moment.

How many seconds did it take before he was able to accept it as reality?

Masaomi wondered why he didn’t rush out the instant he heard about Saki to go save her.

No, wait. I can’t save Saki by acting rashly. That’s just what they want. Gotta be cool… Be cool, Masaomi… Ah…aah, aaaaaaaa…

“Aaaaaaaaaa

“Aaaaa aaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaa

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

Masaomi wailed and slammed his phone to the floor.

How was he still stuck in place, making excuses for himself?

I’m so worried about her. Saki, Saki—I need to save Saki.

Saki, Saki, Saki!

The memories of her flooded his brain.

All those countless smiles that Saki had given him had been mercilessly crushed by the scream through the phone.

But still…his legs wouldn’t move.

It was that unease he always felt.

The smoldering little spark had finally evolved into outright fear that was now assaulting him. But he had never anticipated that it would be this terrible.

He always thought that what he did was just an extension of the silly fights that kids had.

That no matter what happened, they were still just middle schoolers.

Subconsciously, he always imagined that he would get a free do-over.

That mental rule was predicated upon the assumption that his opponents would understand. And thus, he had never imagined a situation like this.

But to be accurate, he had anticipated this, just after their gang war started. But when they began to turn the tide of battle, the sheer catharsis of victory swept away even that natural anxiety into the back of his mind.

And now he was faced with undeniable reality.

Agonizingly aware of every single second, Masaomi frantically searched for a plan. But he couldn’t put anything into motion. No matter his ideas, he couldn’t escape the unease of not knowing what would result.

“Ahh, dammit… What am I doing?!”

He slammed his forehead and fists into the wall. Suddenly, he reached an idea.

Izaya might know.

He no longer had any hesitation about the idea. Just like the girls who had formed Izaya’s personal retinue, just like Saki, Masaomi would hang on every word that came out of the shady informant’s mouth.

He quickly scooped up the phone he’d slammed onto the floor and checked the screen, silently praying. Thanking his lucky stars that the display was tough enough to still work, Masaomi flipped through his history until he reached Izaya’s number.

But the only thing that greeted him was the repetition of the call tone. No one was picking up.

Pick up. Come on…pick up the phone!

“I’m sorry, I cannot answer your—”

He hung up as soon as the answering machine started and redialed the same number.

Over and over and over.

More time passed.

Masaomi felt urged by some unseen pressure to go outside. He started racing for the parking garage they’d told him about over the phone. All the while, he had the phone pressed to his ear, calling Izaya over and over.

But the phone did nothing except announce his acquaintance’s absence. It only fanned the flames of Masaomi’s panic.

As he raced through the town, his mind writhed at the brink of despair.

Saki’s smile. Her scream.

The sound of breaking bone.

I have to go.

I have to go…right to the people who made Saki scream like that… and kill every last one of them!

At the very moment he channeled this powerful determination, the parking garage came into sight in the distance.

He saw a van drive into the entrance—and through the gaps in the walls, a number of young men wearing blue…

His feet stopped.

The instant he saw the gang of blue, Masaomi’s will instantly crumbled to dust.

He felt the chill of the air around him and was fully reminded that he was just a single teenager in middle school, completely helpless in the world.

His immobile legs had just reminded him of his own cowardice.

Why…why am I so afraid?

Saki’s in danger…yet I can’t even move my feet!

Why am I so afraid? This is for Saki’s sake… I thought I would do anything for her! That shouldn’t…have changed…!

Move, move, move!

He pounded his legs, willing them to proceed.

The trembling eventually turned to nausea, and he crumpled to his knees on the asphalt.

On the screen of his cell phone, the clock mercilessly displayed the time—the end of the countdown.

Already, he could not remember Saki’s smile.

Parking garage, Ikebukuro

In a standing parking garage a short distance away from the shopping district.

Tucked away in the corner was a large van even bigger than Kadota’s, surrounded by a number of men.

On the inside of the van, behind the tinted windows, a number of menacing men loomed over a prone young woman.

“I think the chick passed out, Izumii.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. That ain’t no fun. We only broke her leg in a few places so far. I was hoping to get more screams outta her from what we’re gonna do next.”

A man with several missing teeth sighed. The breath escaped through the gaps in a high-pitched whistle that sounded oddly like a scream.

“Whatever. But it’s already been over twenty minutes. Do we need to send this one into overtime for Masaomi Kida?”

The time limit had passed five minutes earlier, and the boy was nowhere to be found.

“Maybe he pussied out and ran? He’s still just a kid, ya know? Even a full-grown man can’t handle this.”

“If he doesn’t show, that’s fine with me. Let’s start the filming now, so help strip her… No, wait, I’d rather have her awake. That’s more exciting. Hey, wake her up somehow. No one’s gonna buy footage of an unconscious woman,” Izumii said, his matter-of-fact tone at odds with the horrific brutality of his comments. His companions cackled and turned their gazes on the girl lying in the corner of the van.

“I don’t think that’s possible. She’s unconscious, not sleeping. I mean…you think she might die? Not that I care.”

“Nah, she’s fine, right? She’s not bleeding,” Izumii grunted, laughing. The others joined his laughter obediently.

Their laughter was answered by the side door of the van slamming open.

For an instant, they thought it was the leader of the Yellow Scarves, but if that had been the case, the members outside would have warned them.

It was someone else who greeted the nervous figures in the van.

“Heyaaa! Oh my God, you really did kidnap her.”

“…Oh, it’s you, Yumasaki.”

Izumii and his cohorts breathed a sigh of relief when they recognized the half-Japanese young man. “I didn’t expect you to show up. Where’s Kadota?”

“Yeah, I thought you didn’t go for real women.”

“Gonna put some kind of anime mask on her?”

“Bwa-ha! So creepy!”

It was clear from their comments that they didn’t think much of Yumasaki, but they didn’t go out of their way to antagonize him any further than that. After all, Yumasaki worked beneath Kadota, a powerful figure in the group, and it was well-known among the Blue Squares that Yumasaki himself was mentally unstable.

“So that’s her, huh? The poor little princess?” Yumasaki murmured uneasily, looking at the unconscious girl, her leg red, swollen, and tilted at an unnatural angle. “And this is how in reality, unlike in movies and manga, girls are terrorized and assaulted, with no heroes to the rescue. Reality’s a bitch, huh?”

Yumasaki cackled and spread his arms theatrically. “So here’s what I think.”

“What?”

“If a hero shows up right now to save her, the world will turn to two dimensions, and then I can save a fantasy realm with my new magical powers, and I’ll get all flirty with the girls, which leads to ahem-hem-hem… Anyway, time to reach out for those dreams!”

The others in the van looked at one another in complete bafflement at the nonsensical string of spell words Yumasaki was putting together.

The Blue Squares grumbled, “God, you’re such a creepy weirdo. Anyway, our hero in this case decided to run off to save his own skin, so stop waiting for Kida and…”

“Ta-da-da-dahh!”

Yumasaki was already absent from the three-dimensional world.

“Here’s the new plan to turn reality into a heroic 2-D story with a happy ending! Bask in the blessing of the new hero’s attack! Hurray!”

“Wha—?”

The next moment, they saw Yumasaki pull two glass bottles out of nowhere and hurl them into the van.

The next moment after that, they caught the whiff of oil from the flying bottles.

“Wha…?”

Yumasaki ignored the look of shock on the others’ faces as he pulled a lighter out of his pocket and flicked it.

The men screamed and leaped out of the van, its interior glowing with blue flame. They rolled around on the parking garage concrete, trying to bat out the fire licking at the ends of their clothes.

The last person to jump from the vehicle was Yumasaki, carrying the prone girl. Some of the flaming oil had caught on his leg as well, but he did not stop until he reached the other van parked nearby.

“Get in!” Kadota shouted as he slid the door open. Yumasaki plunged through.

The other young men standing around just watched Kadota’s van, unsure of what was happening at first. Within a few seconds, some had picked up on the situation, and the officers who had finished stamping out their flames bellowed.

“Kadota! You sons of bitches!”

“After them! Get the car moving!”

“The car’s on fire!”

“Then put it out, dammit!”

Amid the chaos, Kadota’s van peeled out of the garage.

It never returned to their side.

Once safely out of the parking garage, they laid the injured girl down in the van as they headed for the hospital.

“You said you were just going by to take a look…”

“Well, she wasn’t tied down or anything, so…sooner the better! Totally set a new speed-run record on that one,” Yumasaki giggled to himself. Meanwhile, Karisawa and the others tended to the girl.

“I don’t think we should try moving her. She needs to get to the hospital right away,” Karisawa said, placing a blanket over Saki.

Togusa looked over from the driver’s seat. “Hey, is that…the kid from the Yellow Scarves, right?”

Kadota looked up and through the windshield to see a familiar boy kneeling over on the asphalt.

“I guess he did make it here…and then his legs failed him.”

“Well, I don’t blame him…”

“What should we do, Kadota? Pick him up?”

“It’s not like we’re doing this to get in with the Yellow Scarves. Plus, with the state she’s in, I doubt he’d believe us if we told him we saved her.”

The van drove past the boy and disappeared into the night. Along the way, they passed several police cars, likely drawn to the garage by some kind of report. Kadota watched their red shining lights, gloom in his eyes.

“Let’s just hope this is the end of everything.”

After that, Kadota’s group left Ikebukuro behind—but they wound up back there before long.

There were three reasons for this.

One, after the gang war calmed down, Saki’s testimony to the police resulted in the arrest of Izumii and his group.

Two, the Blue Squares immediately caught the notice of the “professional” gentlemen in the Awakusu-kai, right around the same time they picked a fight with Shizuo Heiwajima. This led to their forced disbandment. Incidentally, during this uproar, Izaya tricked Shizuo into getting arrested, and he moved to Shinjuku immediately afterward.

And third, because they learned of the existence of a new group on the Internet.

A strange, different group called the Dollars.

Several weeks later, Raira General Hospital

Saki opened her eyes.

And yet, two weeks after hearing about it, Masaomi still hadn’t visited her.

Once again, he came to the hospital but couldn’t bring himself to walk through the doors.

His legs naturally went dead as he approached, the same way they had before.

Can’t do it. Forget this.

He turned on his heel to leave but was interrupted by an unfamiliar voice.

“Hey.”

“Huh…?”

“You’re the guy from the Yellow Scarves… Kida, right?”

He turned around and saw a man wearing a black beanie, as well as a strange boy and girl hanging behind him.

“Um…who are you?”

“Uh…how to explain? First of all, I’m Kadota,” he said, his face wry.

Masaomi came to a sudden realization. “Oh, from the Blue Squares?”

“You know me? You…aren’t gonna attack me?”

“I heard from Izaya that you betrayed your friends and rescued Saki. Um…thank you.”

Masaomi bowed deeply to the trio, clearly feeling conflicted. Kadota was momentarily taken aback by the boy’s politeness. When he found his voice, he said, “Look, we’re just leaving from a visit to see her. She says you haven’t gone yet?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“You’re not in any position to tell us what rights we have here. Listen, we’re only here because she asked.”

“Huh…?”

Masaomi looked up. Kadota jabbed a thumb back at the hospital building. “You can see this spot from her window.”

“…!”

“She asked us to send a message to you.”

Masaomi went pale.

“…‘Thanks for always coming,’ she says.”

“…!”

Masaomi froze on the spot.

Even after a long silence, he was rooted to the ground.

Kadota watched him for reactions, then eventually sighed and continued, “We told her that you ran full speed to reach her, and it was only a blockade of Blue Squares that kept you from being in time…rather than the truth.”

“?!”

“And she didn’t decide she hated you for not making it in time. See ya.”

Kadota started to walk off, but within a step or two, Masaomi bit into him. “Why…why would you say that?! When did I ask you to do that?!”

“You never asked me to do anything. I’ve seen you in town a few times here and there, but today’s the first time we’ve ever talked. And even if you asked me to do something, I wouldn’t listen. You could have asked me not to, and I’d tell her exactly the same thing.”

There was power in his cold gaze. Masaomi lowered his face toward the ground, pushing his anger inward. He grumbled, “You know what happened. I…I ran away. My legs gave out. I couldn’t move.”

“Yeah, I know. And you’re still running away from her now,” Kadota replied, daring Masaomi to deny it, but the younger boy did not show any outward signs of anger.

“You…you want me to lie to her? After I completely abandoned her?!” Masaomi asked, pleading with Kadota. The other man grabbed him by the collar and yanked him upward.

“Get your head outta your ass,” Kadota grunted with just the slightest note of irritation. At a distance, it looked like an older ruffian shaking down a helpless middle schooler for money, but Karisawa and Yumasaki did not budge from their spots.

“I wouldn’t like it if you clicked your heels and said, ‘Aw, gee, thanks. Lucky me!’ But I don’t like your current attitude much, either.”

Masaomi clammed up, while Kadota continued his lecture. “You don’t want her to hate you, but you ditched her. But you don’t want to lie to her. And you still feel guilty about that. You’re like a kid who gets caught shoplifting and says, ‘I’m really, really sorry, just don’t tell the police or my family.’”

“…”

“If you really feel guilty about leaving her there, then you should bear the discomfort of lying to her for the rest of your life. That’s how you can repay what you owe her. And if you don’t want to be dishonest to her…then stop running and say it to her face.”

Finally, Kadota dredged up the past—but in a different way than Izaya had.

“I’ll forgive you for running from the past.” He let go of Masaomi’s collar, and as he turned away, he left a parting comment. “But at least…stop running from the present and future.”

Just as Kadota turned his back on Masaomi, the image of his perfect exit was ruined by the inconsiderate comments of his companions.

“Ohh? Kadota’s dropping some really cool lines over here!”

“Awesome! From now on, we ought to call Dotachin ‘Poet Poe-tan’!”

He stiffened and turned back toward them. “You…you heard that?!”

Kadota turned beet red. Karisawa and Yumasaki looked quite proud of themselves.

“Fweh-heh-heh! I bet you thought it was for his ears only, but that’s pointless against our hearing. Don’t you know we grew up watching late-night anime at super-low volume to avoid the family’s notice?”

“It’s pointless to stop us! Pointless-pointless-pointless-pointless-pointless-pointless!”

“Just use headphones!” Kadota snapped back weakly, rather flustered.

Yumasaki only irritated him further by honestly answering his pointless suggestion with, “Then we won’t hear our parents coming toward the room!”

“Just shut up!”

Masaomi watched the three squalling friends walk off, then turned back to the hospital.

Finally, his leaden legs took him a few hesitant steps forward.

Toward the hospital room of the girl he still loved…

So that he could tell her they were breaking up.

That night, for the first time in ages, Masaomi reached out to his old friend and invited him to the chat room. Seeing how much fun his friend was having talking to him again, Masaomi naturally felt his frayed nerves growing calmer.

But the peace he felt only put his loss into sharper relief.

What could he do to fill it? Could he bury that empty space by falling in love with a different girl? These thoughts swirled in the back of Masaomi’s head as he chatted. Meanwhile, his old friend shifted gears to a new topic of discussion.

“So I guess we have our big school exams this year. Do you know what high school you want to go to?”

Masaomi imagined the innocent, friendly face of the boy on the other side of the screen, and his answer came naturally.

“I’m going to test for Raira Academy. It’s nice and close.”

He really had no interest in high school plans, but for this moment, he found himself praising the school he would likely attend, playing up its many attractions.

He finished by typing, “You should come, too.”

A year later.

Masaomi reunited with Mikado and met Anri, a girl who was mysteriously aloof from the rest of the world.

At first, he got along with Anri, using her to tease his old friend and push him along. But as time passed, he realized that she meant something to him, too. Was it the same emotion he felt toward Saki? Was it the same as the emotion he felt toward other girls?

Another year with these thoughts passed…

He found out that Anri Sonohara was attacked by the slasher.

And then he was right back where he started.

He himself had proved Izaya Orihara’s words correct.

Masaomi found himself visiting Saki again.

We return to the present.