Durarara!! - Volume 4 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Youth Magazine MAO “New Spring Life! High Schoolers’ Tokyo Debut Special! Ikebukuro Edition”

“Everything gets refreshed in the spring!

A new life and new encounters in a new town!

Have you found new people since your move to Ikebukuro?

If you have, leap up to the next step by following this guide to enhance your Ikebukuro life and meet the perfect partner!”

The boy skimmed through the article, then promptly took the magazine to the register.

His name was Mikado Ryuugamine.

He was a student entering his second year at Raira Academy, a private school in the heart of Ikebukuro. It was his second year in Ikebukuro, but for some reason, he was searching for articles about starting a new life in the neighborhood. There were already three such magazines in his bag.

The boy left the convenience store and headed right into the karaoke place next door. It was well known for serving restaurant-quality food and having an ample selection of songs available to sing.

Mikado walked inside, looking nervous, and told the employee at the desk that he was meeting someone, then gave the room number.

In a large room on the sixth floor, he found that several people were already waiting inside.

“Yoo-hoo! How you been, Mika-poo?”

“You’re late. We already ordered a big ol’ pitcher of oolong tea!”

The first two to speak were a boy and girl in casual, stylish outfits. They looked as sharp as fashion models, but that image was ruined by the mountains of manga, books, games, anime DVDs, and merchandise stacked around them.

Next to them was a blushing girl wearing the same uniform as Mikado, holding a figurine of a girl wearing a scandalously revealing outfit. When she noticed that he was there, she shrieked and quickly returned the figurine to Karisawa.

“Uh, err…may I sit next to you, Sonohara?”

“…Um, yes!” the quiet girl with the glasses said, her face red. In truth, her own proportions were worthy of the figurine’s. “W-welcome, Mikado.”

“Sorry about showing up late. Sorry to you, too, Karisawa and Yumasaki,” Mikado said, dipping his head. The other boy and girl smiled kindly.

“It’s okay. We’ve got plenty of time around midday.”

“That’s right. Essentially, we’re free to hang out during the business hours of any bookstore.”

Unlike the relaxed street-clothes duo, the uniformed couple was awkward. An employee came into the room to take a drink order, the door shut, and then they were ready to get down to business.

“So, what did you want to ask us?”

“Well…I feel awkward even having to ask…,” Mikado began, sighing heavily and looking for the right words before continuing.

“Can you…teach us how to guide someone around Ikebukuro?”

Two hours earlier

Raira Academy was brimming with new students after its official entrance ceremony.

Mikado and Anri were in the same class again and voted to be the representatives for the second year running. After they attended a brief meeting with the other student body representatives, Mikado was hurrying to catch up to Anri when he was stopped from behind.

“Um, excuse me! Are you Mr. Ryuugamine?”

He turned around to see a boy wearing the Raira Academy uniform.

“Uh, and you are… Let’s see, we just had introductions. Aoba?”

“Yes! Aoba Kuronuma, first-year student!”

The sparkling-eyed boy had a girlish face and short stature, which made him look like a middle schooler at a glance, if not outright elementary school. Mikado knew that he himself skewed young in appearance, but the boy here had him beat in that regard by a mile.

“I was so surprised to overhear you introducing yourself! It’s really you!” the boy chattered excitedly, but Mikado was confused.

Who is this? Have I met him somewhere before?

If that was the case, it would be rude to have forgotten his face, even if he was a lower-ranking student. Mikado’s face scrunched up as he tried to remember, but nothing was coming to mind.

The boy named Aoba Kuronuma recognized the troubled look on his face and smiled gently. “Oh, I’m sorry. Don’t worry. It’s our first meeting. I only just learned your name a minute ago!”

“Oh, I see. Wait…why were you so surprised, then?” Mikado asked, a perfectly reasonable question. The boy’s eyes lit up with excitement.

“Because…oh.” He shut his mouth for a moment, looked around cautiously, then whispered.

“Aren’t you…in the Dollars?”

“…!”

Mikado’s eyes went wide, and his mouth worked soundlessly.

“Wh-what do you mean?” he finally squeaked, just as he heard the vibrating of his cell phone from within his schoolbag. Based on the length of the sound, it had to be an e-mail.

“Oh, you finally got it,” the boy said, grinning.

Mikado hastily pulled his phone out and saw a message from the Dollars’ mailing list. It was a message to all from one of the hundreds of people on the mailing list that read, “I’m recruiting new members from Raira Academy! Please tell me how it’s going at other schools!”

Mikado noticed the username “Wakaba Mark” and looked back at the other boy.

“Wait, are you saying…?”

“Yes, I’m Wakaba Mark! I was just about the six hundredth person to join the Dollars, but you remember how the registration site got trashed and went down? So my name’s not in there anymore…”

“H-how did you know I was one of the Dollars?” the older boy asked, clearly rattled, while the younger just showed off a cheeky, confident smirk.

“I didn’t know for sure. But…remember when we had that Dollars meetup in real life a year ago? You were there in the middle, talking to that woman who was our target, right? The image just stuck in my head ever since!”

The Dollars were a unique organization that increased its power through the Internet.

They were ostensibly categorized as a color-based street gang, but the ties that bound the group together were loose at best, yet extremely wide ranging. They had been in a state of conflict with another gang called the Yellow Scarves until recently, when the hostilities abruptly cooled, and now both sides were keeping calm.

If the Dollars were a color gang, the color they repped was either “colorless” or “camouflage.” They blended into the town with alarming ease, never gathering with a unified color to announce their presence.

They were connected through cell phones and the Internet—hidden bonds that rarely took physical form in modern society.

The teenage girls or housewives you passed on the street could be Dollars. The ability to plant that seed of doubt was the Dollars’ shield. And the possibility that it was true was the Dollars’ sword.

The Dollars were a gang with an eerie form of expansion. Their founder was shrouded in mystery, and almost none of its members knew who the leader was.

And at this precise moment, the very founder and source of that mystery was sweating buckets at some uncomfortable questions from a new kid at school.

“Umm, uhh, you don’t have the wrong idea, do you?”

“You got that e-mail.”

“Ah, ahhh. G-good point.”

“So you do keep it hidden! Don’t worry. I can keep a secret! I’m very good at protecting others’ secrets, in fact!” Aoba said, his eyes shining with reverence. Mikado was frozen still, completely at a loss for how to respond.

In fact, Mikado had found himself in trouble a year ago, when a huge company was—

“But what was so special about that night? Mr. Ryuugamine, are you actually an officer of the Dollars or something?”

“No, no, no! The Dollars don’t have those! I-I’m just an errand runner, that’s all!”

“Oh, really? Well, anyway, I’m just excited to know that someone from the Dollars is so close nearby!”

His childlike impression extended to his actions, not just his looks. From a distance they looked like middle school brothers, but they were both fully fledged high schoolers.

Mikado wavered on how to respond, then gave up and, with a careful look around, told his younger schoolmate, “All right. But you shouldn’t talk about it at school, and I’d appreciate it if you kept this as secret as possible.”

The words were cold and distant, but Aoba’s face broke into a delighted beam. “Sure thing! But I have one request of you…”

“Request?”

“I don’t really know much about Ikebukuro. So can you show me around the city?”

He conferred with Anri after that but still didn’t feel confident in his ability to give a tour, so he resignedly turned to people he knew who were more knowledgeable about the area—and that turned out to be Yumasaki and Karisawa.

Man, if Masaomi were still here, I wouldn’t have to go through all this trouble, Mikado grumbled to himself, then banished the thought.

Masaomi Kida was a longtime friend of Mikado’s who had vanished on him and Anri. As a major figure of the Yellow Scarves, who were feuding with the Dollars, he decided he needed to get out of town after they learned each other’s secrets. It didn’t really matter to Mikado, but Masaomi had his own thoughts about the ordeal, and Mikado wasn’t going to pry.

Don’t even start. If you can’t handle this without relying on Masaomi, then you can’t hold your head up and smile when he comes back.

Mikado waited for Masaomi’s return for his own reasons. Praying that on the day the three of them came together, they could laugh and smile again.

“Mikado! Mikado, what’s up? Hellooo?”

“Huh?!” he said, snapping back to attention as he heard his name.

“Are you sleepy? Should we give you a wake-up call with some anime songs?”

“Uh, er, aaah! S-sorry!” Mikado stammered, back to reality after his long contemplation of Masaomi and the Yellow Scarves.

When they got down to the details, Yumasaki and Karisawa were more gung ho on the idea than he expected. They began to argue among themselves about which spots were best to show a young man around Ikebukuro.

At first, the pair was recommending Animate, Toranoana, Yellow Submarine, and other hard-core nerd spots, but Mikado was relieved that they eventually settled into more mainstream, recognizable names.

Suddenly, Karisawa looked up at Mikado and suggested, “Why don’t we just go with you?”

“Huh?”

“You’re not going to have much time to learn detailed info about the places we’re listing off for you. So shouldn’t we just go with you? Plus, we don’t know what this younger kid is like. It might be best to make adjustments to the plan on the fly after we meet him in person.”

“Well…”

Mikado wasn’t sure how to respond. It would be a huge help, of course, but he didn’t know what kind of impression they would leave on a relatively normal schoolmate. They looked normal, sure, but all they had to do was open their mouths to reveal their status as ambassadors from the 2-D realm. What’s worse, they had no intention of meeting people halfway in that regard.

It didn’t bother Mikado that much, but what would Aoba Kuronuma think?

Well, they’re approachable, and they’re pretty nice. It shouldn’t be a problem, Mikado thought, an eternal optimist who blindly believed in the concept that if you just talked to someone, you could find common understanding.

“Are you sure you’d be up for that?”

“Oh, sure thing. We’re free this evening, anyway.”

“It’s not going to create a work conflict or anything?” Mikado asked in concern, but Karisawa just looked nonplussed.

“Oh? We didn’t tell you?”

“?”

“Yumacchi and I are freelancers, so we can make our own schedules.”

“Freelancers…?” Mikado asked curiously.

Karisawa took a sip of oolong tea and continued, “That’s right. Dotachin’s more of an artisan type. And Togusacchi lives off the rent from the apartment building that he and his brother inherited from their parents. His brother manages the place, while Togusacchi collects the rent money. The reason we can hang out with them so much is because we set our own hours. Of course, until a year ago, everyone except for Dotachin was unemployed.”

Now that she mentioned it, Mikado could tell that they weren’t salaried office types, given that they were meeting him in the middle of a weekday like this. And when he saw them around town, they were always hanging around in their own clothes, no uniforms. They were often with Kadota’s group, but he had to admit that he just assumed the whole bunch had no jobs.

“I make money by selling engraved accessories on the Net, and would you believe what Yumacchi does? What is it, ice sculpting? People pay him to make those ice sculptures you see at parties and stuff.”

“Whoa!”

“Actually, I’m not even that great. I don’t have exclusive arrangements with a hotel or anything reliable like that, so I never know when my income will dry up. But the character sculptures I’ve done for publishers’ parties lately have been a big hit, so if I can survive on that, it’s my dream job. Wanna be the next Kaiyodo.” Yumasaki smiled shyly, referencing a famous figurine maker.

Mikado murmured in surprise, impressed that the two had actual jobs. Based on how wide Anri’s eyes were, he wasn’t the only one who assumed they were unemployed. Given the piles of books they seemed to be buying every single day, that income was pretty sizable. Of course, knowing them, they were probably cutting into their food budgets to squeeze in more books.

He bowed to the pair. “In that case, I’d be delighted to have your help! Hope to see you tomorrow!”

But when Yumasaki followed that up with, “In that case, we’ll start off with a pilgrimage of all the holy sites of Ikebukuro that appear in anime and manga,” Mikado’s gratitude quickly plummeted into regret.

Two hours later, Ikebukuro West Gate Park

“We’ll pay the bill. Just let us sing,” Karisawa had said. Mikado and Anri reluctantly agreed and were treated to a two-hour medley of anime theme songs for their trouble.

They hardly recognized any of them, but Karisawa and Yumasaki were surprisingly talented singers and as comfortable as if they’d practiced singing hundreds of times. In fact, it was probably true that they had practiced the same song hundreds of times before.

They especially seemed to like a recent anime theme sung by a pop idol named Ruri Hijiribe—both Yumasaki and Karisawa chose it on different occasions.

After the karaoke was done and they left the singers behind, Mikado and Anri were walking through West Gate Park, chatting.

“Thanks for coming with me today.”

“Oh, it’s fine. I needed to thank them, anyway…”

“You did? For what?”

“For some stuff a while ago…,” Anri said vaguely. Mikado didn’t want to intrude, so he searched for a new topic. He was going to ask her if anything interesting had happened to her over spring vacation when something odd caught his eye.

It was a white gas mask.

In a corner of West Gate Park was a man wearing the strange combination of a white gas mask and lab coat, speaking with a tall Caucasian fellow.

Mikado didn’t want to stare, so he kept tabs on the man out of the side of his eye as he noted, “I wonder what that guy in the white gas mask is all about… The foreigner next to him isn’t wearing one, so it can’t be a gas leak…”

But Anri didn’t respond.

He looked over in case she hadn’t heard him and instantly noticed that something was wrong with her. Anri was looking in the same direction that he had just been doing, but her eyes were wide with shock.

“Um, Sonohara…?”

“Oh…sorry. I was just thinking, that white gas mask is very strange…”

“Huh? Uh, yeah. Yeah, it sure is,” Mikado remarked, glad that Anri was back to her usual smile, before he headed for home.

Meanwhile, Anri started on the route to her apartment—but once she checked to make sure that Mikado was completely out of sight, she returned the way they had come.

“Well, if you want to know more…shall we find a more private place to talk?”

“The details are in the data you gave me, aren’t they? No use for idle chat.”

“I think you’d be better off hearing me out. Don’t want you to examine the data and assume it’s just a joke.”

“What do you mean?”

The two men were keeping their expressions hidden, albeit in different ways.

The large white man was utterly stone-faced.

And the Japanese man was hiding his entire face behind a gas mask.

Anri carefully approached the tense, uncomfortable scene. Instantly, the white man sensed her and turned around, looking down with a gentle smile.

“Did you want something, sweet little girl?” he said in perfect Japanese, despite his obviously foreign origin. Anri tensed instinctually, sensing something dangerous from him. But running away now would defeat the purpose, so she bowed to him and then turned to the man in the gas mask.

“Um…thank you…for the other day,” she said, then belatedly regretted it, as she didn’t even know his name. Still, she could clearly remember the day last month when she was talking with Celty, and the same man had butted in to ask, “Are you the daughter of the Sonohara-dou?”

Given his outfit, it would be hard to mistake him for anyone else. She bowed again, and he seemed to recognize her at last. The man in the gas mask glanced at the white man and said, “As long as it’s brief,” then turned back to her.

“You’re the girl from the Sonohara-dou. I’m afraid I left quite a miserable impression on you back then.”

“Um…do you know my parents?”

“Well, I should say that yes, I do. And on an extension of that, I also know about the sword you possess.”

“…!”

Instantly, a voice ran through Anri’s right arm.

A voice that only she could hear, going straight to her brain.

Ooh. If it isn’t my former owner.

That voice, which belonged to a plane distinct from physics or psychology, was not the “cursed words” that constantly ran in the background of her mind like empty Muzak, but a proper voice with its own logic and reason.

But he only had me cut down the soul of some strange monster overseas. He didn’t let me love any humans.

Just as Mikado Ryuugamine held a small secret—that he was the founder of the Dollars—

Just as Masaomi Kida struggled with a big problem—as leader of the Yellow Scarves—

Anri Sonohara had her own secret past hidden within her.

Saika.

A being without form in most cases.

It lurked within Anri Sonohara’s right arm, singing accursed words into her mind.

If she bothered to tell a doctor about this, any professional would likely agree that the reason had to be within Anri herself—but as a matter of fact, the source of the voice was completely outside of her brain and did not stem from her own mind.

It was a being removed from rationality, neither physical nor mental in nature.

Saika was what many considered to be a “cursed blade.” It lurked within Anri’s body and could physically manifest as a katana at her beck and call.

Anri, in fact, was the central figure behind a series of random slashings several months ago that the papers decided to label the “Night of the Ripper.” But she was not, in fact, responsible for the attacks themselves—they were caused by offshoots that Saika had created.

Saika wanted “children” that served as proof of its love with human beings. These children were created through a true curse, implanted into the victims of the blade with a part of Saika’s mind.

There was another girl that had been slashed before Anri became Saika’s host. The “child” of Saika implanted into that girl desired a twisted love from humanity in the same way its parent did—and the result of that rampage was the Night of the Ripper.

The incident was ultimately resolved when Anri brought all of those “children” under her control. With the slashings stopped, she returned the normal minds of all of those victims of Saika to their hosts, only ensuring that their memories of the slashings reflected a more convenient story: No one who was slashed could remember the face of the attacker.

However, this incident sparked a conflict between the Yellow Scarves and the Dollars, plunging Anri’s closest friends into a war without her realizing it.

After all of this, Anri had accepted Saika but was not particularly happy about it.

Part of it was that it had caused the death of her parents, but mostly it was the unease of knowing that there were people out there aware of her state.

Saika’s voice had returned to its normal chorus of “I love you.” The reasoned, logical words she’d heard a second ago had been an occasional presence ever since the Night of the Ripper. And Anri suspected that Saika was speaking the truth.

She took a quiet breath and cautiously stared down the man in the gas mask.

“What do you know…and how much do you know…?”

“Ahh, well, if I were to answer that question, I would have to say that I know about you, up to an extent. But very well. As the saying goes, ‘Even the starving hawk is too noble to ransack the crops,’ and powerful beings like you would not prey upon weak little me, even if you were in trouble.”

“…? Um, I’m afraid I don’t…”

“At any rate, we can talk more upon that matter on another occasion. I am currently having a business conversation. Allow me to give you my card; you may contact me here.”

The man in the gas mask pulled a business card out of his pocket and handed it to Anri.

“Nebula Pharmaceutical, Special Advisor: Shingen Kishitani,” the card read, along with a number of methods of contact.

Anri looked at the card—her mind working fast—when she felt the pat of a hand on her shoulder from behind.

Instantly, a nasty sense of pressure engulfed her entire body.

A cold sharpness ran through her shoulder, and for a moment, time froze within her.

It felt like her freedom of movement had been stolen, like her body was being manhandled all over.

Gushk, gushk. Her nerves were gouged out.

Zig-zig-zig-zig. Her mind eerily creaked and cracked.

Zigshk, zigshk, zig-zig zig-zig zig zig-zig-zig zig-zig-zig-zig zig-zig-zig-zig zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig zig-zig zig-zig-zig zig-zig-zig zig-zig-zig zig-zig-zig zig-zig zig-zig zig zig-zig zig-zig-zig-zig zig zig zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig—

The march of the ugly creaking reached its peak, and every cell in her body screamed, warning her of the danger of the man behind her.

Warning her that he was far, far more dangerous than she could imagine.

Anri slowly turned around, feeling cold sweat bloom from every pore of her body.

It was the smile of the white man, who had been watching the conversation from close by.

“Please forgive me, sweet little girl.”

It was a smile meant to reassure and set at ease, but Anri’s nerves stayed utterly taut. She stared him dead in the face.

“We are having a very important business conversation. Let me make it up to you by treating you to dinner sometime,” he joked, pretending to hit on her. The man shook his head and moved in between Anri and Shingen.

“Oh…I see. I’m very sorry to interrupt,” Anri said, burning the white man’s face into her mind. She left the scene.

She mustn’t forget that face. Her reason and instincts both told her so.

At the fork in the road leading to the underground tunnel, Anri turned back one last time.

The white man was still watching her.

She felt that twitching at her back and committed his face to memory one last time, just to be sure.

But ultimately, it was the last time she ever saw that face.

Because several hours later, Shizuo would hit him in the face with a bench, which meant that if he ever faced off with Anri again, he would look like a totally different person.

Night, apartment, Ikebukuro

“The serial killer Hollywood…and they still haven’t caught him? That’s scary,” said a boy to the TV inside his cheap apartment close to the train station.

Without anything better to do, Mikado decided that he would flip through the news on TV all day. The recent topic of interest to the media was the mysterious serial killer.

While the news itself did not report on the nickname, anyone who browsed the Internet or tabloid magazines was fully aware of the “Hollywood” moniker.

The first time he saw it covered on the news, it seemed like the events of some distant country, even though the incidents were taking place right there in the city. But through the Internet-enabled Hollywood nickname, the idle chats with friends, and the sites that popped up attempting to track down Hollywood’s identity, he couldn’t help but feel not just the fear of that eerie killer, but the tasteless, guilty allure of curiosity. Just who was Hollywood?

Society seemed more interested in the identity of the Black Rider than this mystery killer, but given that Mikado actually knew who the Headless Rider was, the still-unmasked Hollywood held much more fascination for him.

On the other hand, it seemed like following up a meeting with Anri by watching depressing news pieces only left a bad aftertaste. So he picked up the remote and muttered, “Maybe I can find a happier news segment.”

As he surfed through the channels, he came across a report that Yuuhei Hanejima’s photo book had sold twenty thousand copies in its first week. On the screen was a portrait of a young man with far better looks than Mikado’s.

“That’s incredible. Twenty thousand copies at three thousand yen apiece… Even if he only makes ten percent in royalties, that’s six million yen. And his movies are doing gangbusters. He’s really got it all going on…”

He was inferior in every single way to the perfect superhuman on the screen. Mikado sighed dejectedly.

You know…I feel like this Yuuhei guy reminds me of someone I know…

The thought had occurred to him every time he saw the star actor, but no answer was forthcoming. Mikado continued flipping through every channel that was currently playing the news. Around the point that they all started covering the weather forecast, he decided it was time to check the TV guide in the paper.

With the schedule transition that April usually brought, most stations would be airing their own special programs starting in the next time block.

One of them was titled Ikebukuro’s 100-Day Front, Undercover! Shining a Light on the Hellhole That Is Ikebukuro, Live!

Hellhole…? That seems unnecessarily harsh.

But he would be lying if he said he wasn’t interested. In the end, Mikado decided to watch the show on the chance that he might see an acquaintance of his on live television.

Ultimately, his guess was correct.

But it was not the kind of acquaintance that he was expecting.

One hour later, he was watching a pitch-black shadow on the screen as it raced away from a motor officer.

“Celty…,” he mumbled. He would never mistake that shadow for anyone else. He left the TV on and turned to the window.

The place they were showing on the program was not anywhere close, so naturally he couldn’t see the events from his apartment. He tried to focus his ears to hear something, but that didn’t turn up anything, either.

Meanwhile, Celty grew giant black wings on the screen and flew through the sky, like some kind of phantom thief.

“I don’t know… That looks bad. Should I mobilize the Dollars…? I guess there’s no way to do that,” Mikado murmured, the very personification of the word naive. Back on the TV, they had returned to the news studio. He was worried for the sake of the inhuman dullahan that would normally have no connection to him whatsoever, but she was a member of the Dollars, after all.

“Well, I guess Celty can handle things for herself. Right?” he said and headed for the familiar chat room.

All the while, he was secretly harboring both excitement and anxiety over the Ikebukuro guided tour he would be leading the following evening.

Chat room

TarouTanaka has entered the chat.

TarouTanaka: Oh, no one’s here.

TarouTanaka: I suppose I’ll check back in a few hours.

TarouTanaka has left the chat.

The chat room is currently empty.

Bacura has entered the chat.

Bacura: Hmm?

Bacura: So nobody’s here?

Bacura: Okay,

Bacura: Now I can write anything I damn well please on this unclaimed ground.

Bacura: Listen up, Johnny.

Bacura: When I was in elementary school,

Bacura: A girl in my class played my recorder.

Bacura: When I caught her in the act,

Bacura: In exchange for keeping her secret, I said,

Bacura: “What you really want to put your mouth on is my face.”

Bacura: So rather than my recorder, she locked lips with my whistle instead.

Bacura: And when another boy saw it happen, he stuck his fingers in his mouth and tweeted away.

Bacura: HA-HA-HA

Bacura: It’s both a true anecdote and an American-style joke!

Bacura: Cool,

Bacura: Now I just spam the chat to wash that backlog away.

Bacura: Sound off!

Saika has entered the chat.

Bacura: 1

Saika: good evening

Bacura: 2

Bacura: Eek!

Bacura: Evening.

TarouTanaka has entered the chat.

TarouTanaka: Good evening.

TarouTanaka: What are you doing, Bacura?

Bacura: Good…eve…

Bacura: C’mon, laugh.

Bacura: Everybody laugh at meeee!

TarouTanaka: Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Bacura: You’re really laughing?!

Kuru has entered the chat.

Mai has entered the chat.

Kuru: I do not approve of the act of mocking a person upon your first meeting, but as you have requested it yourself, and I believe that the proper act as a human being in this case is to laugh at you long and loud, I am prepared to mock you as mercilessly and thoroughly as I can manage. And now…

Mai: (lol)

Kuru: Kya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ah-haaa.   Aha, ah-ha-ha! Fweh…fweh-heh… Kya-haaa! Kya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Aaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha, ah-ha-ha! Wai…sto…stop! It’s too funny! It’s really funny…stop…no, please, let me goooo! Hee…hee…aha…kya-hee… Kya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Mai: (lol)

Bacura: Evening…

Bacura: Wait,

Bacura: Who are you?!

Bacura: Wow, you sure found a way to laugh that causes both despair and rage!

TarouTanaka: Good evening.

TarouTanaka: Is this our first meeting?

Saika: good evening

Kuru: Please forgive me. This is the first time that I have met everyone here. We will be visiting this chat room occasionally from this point onward and have come to pay our respects. My name is Kuru. Normally, I would have introduced myself as the first point of order, but I believed that it would have been rude to Bacura to put my introduction before the mockery of his very impassioned joke.

Mai: I’m Mai.

Bacura: You seem a lot like Kanra to me.

Mai: I’m sorry.

Bacura: I wasn’t talking about you.

TarouTanaka: It’s nice to meet the two of you.

Kuru: The pleasure is all mine. By the way, Bacura, it occurred to me that you might be a woman…and if that were the case, the recorder would have been shared by two girls, leading to a kiss between females, the aesthetically pleasing and tantalizing image of which is now saved in my mind. It has put me into a state of, shall we say, trancelike ecstasy.

Mai: Naughty.

Bacura: I’ll leave it up to your imagination.

TarouTanaka: Great, more weirdos…

Saika: its nice to meet you

Bacura: Oh yeah, did you see that thing on TV a few hours ago?

TarouTanaka: The one about Ikebukuro?

Bacura: Yeah, that one.

Saika: did something happen

TarouTanaka: The Headless Rider was caught on camera during a live broadcast.

Kuru: Oh, what a coincidence. We were just viewing that program as well and went outside to perhaps catch sight of the Headless Rider before coming back in and joining this chat room. Unfortunately we were not able to witness the living urban legend in the flesh, but the pleasure of walking the streets at night with that hope in mind was an indescribable thrill.

Mai: Too bad.

TarouTanaka: Oh, so you two are from Ikebukuro as well?

TarouTanaka: Pretty much everyone who uses this chat is from Ikebukuro or Shinjuku.

TarouTanaka: Well, enjoy yourselves.

Kuru: I am most humbly grateful, Mr. TarouTanaka, for the truly kind hospitality that you have shown to such an inconsiderate boor who is nothing more than mineral deposits on a grain of sand in the ocean that is the Internet. I believe I might even fall in love. But only on the Internet.

Mai: Thanks.

Mai: Love you.

TarouTanaka: I don’t know how to respond to this, ha-ha.

Bacura: I have a feeling Kanra is punking us…

Saika: what is punking

Bacura: It means this is all a hidden-camera prank.

TarouTanaka: At any rate, tomorrow I’ll be around Ikebukuro, guiding and being guided.

TarouTanaka: I’m still a newcomer to this city, so it’s good to meet you.

Kuru: That is a coincidence. We, too, have plans to travel through Ikebukuro tomorrow. Perhaps we might even meet face-to-face and fist-to-fist.

Mai: We’re gonna punch ’em?

TarouTanaka: If we do, go easy on me, lol.

The next morning, in front of Animate, Ikebukuro

There is a short passage from the intersection to the west of the Sunshine building until you reach National Route 254. This stretch includes a number of shops that sell fan-made doujinshi and merchandise explicitly aimed at females, which earned it the name Otome (Maiden) Road.

On this sunny afternoon, two boys and a girl strolled down that very street. The girl was Karisawa, and one of the boys was Yumasaki.

The other male, who served as both guardian and brake system for the other two, was Kyouhei Kadota. He kept his knit cap pulled low and listened to the conversation of the pair walking behind him. Though to be honest, he was only concentrating on about half of it.

“That’s the thing. What I think is, you should argue about your opinions of an anime. If each side debates its side logically, it can only help the other. But the people who prop up their favorite anime by saying, ‘If you don’t get what makes this good, just watch your panty-shot anime instead’ are the worst, and they don’t realize that they’re indirectly insulting the very anime they claim to like so much.”

“Oh yeah. There were people saying that on the official forum for the Gunjaws! anime. I understand that you get mad when people make fun of you, but why bring another genre down to get back?”

“Exactly! I love hard-core series that have nothing but dudes in them, and I also love moe series full of panty shots and nip slips—hbwah?!”

“Yumacchi, you dummy!”

Karisawa abruptly slapped him on the cheek. He looked at her, stunned. “Wh-what was that for, Karisawa?”

“Claiming that moe anime means panty shots and nip slips is only going to cause misunderstandings! Moe is defined by the soul of the viewer! In that sense, it applies to every piece of animation in the entire world! Even the ancient animal illustrations of the Choju-giga are excellent moe scrolls, and you’re here limiting it to—”

“No, you don’t understand! When I’m speaking of panty shots being connected to moe, I’m only speaking of a particular method, while also encompassing all of the romance and fantasy of ”

“ at my stage, I can find every male character in Gunjaws! to be moe ”

“ Karisawa, I think you’ve got the wrong idea about ”

“ moe moe moe moe-moe ”

“ moe moe-moe? moe ”

As they droned on and on, their companion finally broke his silence.

“Please, you two, just stop talking about your moe stuff out in public like this,” Kadota pleaded, sighing and pressing his forehead with his fingers.

Whether in the warmth of April or the chill of winter, the topic of conversation for those two never changed. If anything did change, it was merely the title of whatever anime or manga they were discussing.

“Can’t you just get off the topic of 2-D stuff already?”

“Sure thing.”

“Tsk.”

Surprised that they actually obliged him, Kadota was delighted to have some silence. It lasted only a second.

“By the way, the figures that the sculptor Zetsumu Youen makes have been getting sexier around the waistline lately, don’t you think?”

“No, it’s the barely raised stomach lines that show off the ribs of his slender characters that are the true moe his style inspires!”

It was the exact same stuff as before. Kadota bellowed, “I just told you to stop talking about that!”

Yumasaki and Karisawa were taken aback by his anger.

“What do you mean?! Figures are 3-D!”

“Not quite, Karisawa! Figures are actually 2.5-D!”

“…When I’m with you, sometimes I wonder if this is actually Japan at all,” Kadota grumbled, half-resigned. He resumed walking toward his destination: the Tokyu Hands department store.

When they rounded a corner and the pedestrian traffic wasn’t so thick, he turned back and asked, “It’s tonight, right? You’re gonna take Mikado and whoever around those stores and stuff?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Wanna come?”

“Nah, I’d only scare them away.”

“You think so, Dotachin? If you took your cap off and laid your bangs flat, you’d make a pretty convincing honor student!” Karisawa teased. Kadota ignored her and kept walking—until he saw something unfamiliar.

“See, we’re just askin’ questions, yeah? Askin’ if you know anything about the Black Rider, yeah?”

“You girls want money, right? Well, so do we. So don’t hog all of it, yeah?”

“Why don’t you invest some allowance in us? If we score the ten million yen, we’ll pay you back physically. With interest.”

“Yeah, and we’re almost the same age as you, so it won’t count as prostitution. Seriously. I’ll even do it for free.”

A group of men chanting extremely stereotypical taunts had surrounded two teenage girls. Each of the men wore imposing, tough-looking clothes, and one of them was in a full motorcycle-gang uniform with stripes.

“Awright, I get it. You girls are the Black Rider.”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“That’d be hilarious.”

“So why don’t you have ten-million-yen worth of fun with us?”

The content of their taunts and challenges were like a slice from another period in time. It made them seem quite out of place in the big city.

Kadota watched the men for a bit, then muttered, “I never expected to see such stereotypical street thugs in this day and age.” The trio strode forward, shaking their heads.

Meanwhile, the men hadn’t noticed their observers. They continued to harass the girls.

“Actually, if you two hang out in this neighborhood, you must be pretty loaded, huh?”

“Filthy. Filthy!”

“C’mon, don’t just clam up. Say something, huh?”

“Hang on, you guys. Don’t you see they’re scared? Sorry about that. As an apology, why don’t we take you somewhere you want to go? Huh?”

When one of the thugs started to initiate a weak attempt at a good-cop-bad-cop routine, Kadota decided it was time to open his mouth.

Several hours later, in front of Tokyu Hands

The few days surrounding Raira Academy’s extended break were half days that ended at noon. It was meant to smooth out the transition between vacation and study, but the students just thought, I get to hang out all afternoon, yay, which was, in a way, the point.

When the day’s curriculum ended, the town overflowed with Raira uniforms. The school allowed for personal clothes to be worn, so once out in the town, those students melted into the crowd, while the uniform wearers stood out as a distinct group. Almost like a color gang.

Mikado slowly strode through the neighborhood, wearing that very uniform. When he reached his destination, Anri and his junior at school were already there.

“Oh? You made it before me? Sorry, were you waiting long?”

“No, I just got here.”

“Me, too.”

Anri and Aoba both seemed a bit reserved, and they didn’t appear to have been talking before he arrived. It was probably true that they had just gotten there before him. Once the greetings were out of the way, Aoba bowed to the both of them.

“I’m sorry about this. I’m just using up your valuable free time with my own selfish request…”

“That’s not true. We didn’t have anything to do, either,” Mikado said. Anri nodded.

The younger boy looked thankful at their thoughtfulness, then piped up curiously, “Mr. Ryuugamine and Ms. Sonohara, are you a couple?”

Time stopped between the two.

To someone who was just meeting them, this seemed like a perfectly normal assumption. Aoba had specifically asked Mikado for a tour of Ikebukuro, and yet here was Anri as well. It was only natural to assume that there was a romantic bond there or at least something more than just classmates.

Mikado was clearly stunned by the question, while Anri looked down, her cheeks pink. It was hard to tell if they were confirming or denying that accusation, so Aoba watched them curiously and asked, “Am I wrong?”

“N-no-no-no, it’s not like that… We’re still just, um, friends. Friends!”

“Ohh. Does that mean you’re available now, Ms. Sonohara? Shall I nominate myself for the position?”

“Wha—!”

Mikado found himself actually feeling admiration for the boy’s straight-faced lack of caution.

How can he just…say that? And he comes off even smoother than Masaomi!

Mikado’s lips trembled, ready to say something…but no words emerged. He was racked with both frustration that a younger schoolmate beat him to the punch and respect for the boy’s game in putting himself out there to the opposite sex.

The younger boy turned to his immobile senior and hesitantly clarified, “Um, Mr. Ryuugamine, you know that was a joke, right?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, you don’t have to look like the world is crumbling around your ears…”

“…Did…did I look like that?” Mikado asked, going red with embarrassment. He glanced sidelong at Anri. In her usual way, she was looking awkwardly at the ground, listening to the conversation.

The pair looked like bashful little kids. Meanwhile, the one who looked closest to an actual kid laughed and whispered to Mikado, “I’m glad. I thought since you were with the Dollars, you would have a scary side…but I’m happy to know that someone like you is in the group.”

“I dunno. I mean, I appreciate that, but…”

Huh? That was a compliment, right? Mikado wondered, unsure if it was meant to be sarcastic. He smiled politely.

Emboldened by the effect of his last question, Aoba decided to push further. “So…are the people we’re going to meet today also Dollars?”

“Well, yes…but don’t worry, they’re not scary, either.”

Not scary in the way you’re thinking, at least, Mikado thought, imagining the machine-gun chatter that was Yumasaki and Karisawa’s specialty. He looked around, checking to see if they were approaching.

But their next visitors were not the nerdy duo.

“Do you have a moment?”

“We’d like to pray for your happiness.”

On either side of Mikado was a tall man approaching six feet.

“—?! H-h-how can I help you?”

“Just let me see your face.”

The tall men grabbed him without permission, their manner suddenly cruel.

“This the guy?”

“Yep, that’s him! Bingo. Got confirmation.”

The men looked at each other happily, whatever their “bingo” was. Based on the lip piercings and crooked teeth black from nicotine, they did not appear to be pacifists. Mikado was a believer in not judging a book by its cover, but in this one situation, he felt confident that these books were exactly what their covers suggested.

As Aoba and Anri watched in stunned confusion, the men leered gleefully and leaned in toward Mikado, their faces reeking of cigarette smoke.

“Hey. You were there, right? You were there recently?”

“Th-there…? Where?”

“You were there, ya know? You were at that junked factory with the Black Rider that one time that Kadota’s group kicked the shit outta us. Yeah?”

“Did you get a little sloppy today, just ’cuz we weren’t wearin’ yellow?”

“…!”

The mention of the word yellow plunged Mikado’s mind into chaos.

“…You must be…”

The remnants of the Yellow Scarves?!

But these were not the proper Yellow Scarves that Masaomi had gathered to his side. They were the leftovers of a gang called the Blue Squares who had infiltrated the Yellow Scarves in a takeover attempt. They were ultimately crushed by a different infiltration team led by Kadota.

“Well, whatever. We don’t care why you were there when it happened.”

“It’s just, we want the ten million yen, ya know?”

Ten million yen.

That was the last piece of the puzzle to click into place. They weren’t coming after Mikado to enact revenge against a member of the Dollars…

“You know where that Black Rider is, don’cha? Huh?!”

“Let’s go. You can donate your cell to our cause, huh? Got the phone number right in there, I bet.”

They crudely grabbed at his bag, yanking it open to pore over the contents.

“Wait…stop that!”

“Shuddup!”

Mikado tried to resist, but he was hopelessly outsized and didn’t have the combat training to make up for it. Just when he was afraid that the six-foot-tall giants would steal his cell phone—

“Hiii, Mikah-do.”

A shadow loomed behind the men, a head taller than even they were.

“?!”

“Wh-what the…fu…uh…?”

It was an enormous black man in a white T-shirt. For an instant, Mikado wasn’t sure who it was, either, but he recognized the man within moments. The lack of the sushi-chef outfit was what threw him off, but in fact, the man was quite a recognizable figure in the area.

“Simon!”

“What wrong? Fight is no good. You get hungrily-hungrily. Our sushi shop closed today. So you fight, you starve.”

“H-hey! Leggo…”

“C-can’t move…”

He was only holding the shoulders of the two men, but they struggled as if they were trapped at the bottom of the ocean. They couldn’t even budge their own fingers.

Despite the incredible pressure he was exerting on them, Simon’s expression was as cool as a cucumber. “You pick up bag. Leave these ruffians to me and run to safe-tee,” he said in the style of some kind of samurai movie, his pronunciation as awkward and endearing as ever.

It was the kind of line that usually signaled an imminent death, but in this case, that fate was more likely for his hapless victims.

“B-but Simon…”

“You no fight when girl around. Run to Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, go, go, go.”

“Th-thank you! We’ll all come have sushi soon!”

“Ohh, very good. In thanks, I charge you only ten percent interest on market price.”

It probably came out more intimidating than what Simon meant to say. Meanwhile, Mikado picked up his bag, grabbed Aoba and Anri, and raced off.

As they ran through the streets of Ikebukuro, Mikado bowed to Anri and his schoolmate.

“S-sorry! I didn’t mean for you to get dragged into that nonsense!”

“Um, dragged into? You were the only one who suffered any consequences,” Aoba noted. Mikado found that he was right, but he couldn’t help but feel ashamed and embarrassed that they’d been put through that frightening experience anyway.

It was his first underclassman since coming to high school. Did he just get carried away because of all the reverential gazes Aoba was giving him? Did he get cocky and think he was cooler than he really was?

There was plenty of time to regret, but no time to reflect.

From out of the alleys came a group of men who must have been alerted by the previous punks via cell phone.

“Hey, what about the other guys?!”

“Forget ’em! We couldn’t beat Simon with our entire group, and starting a brawl there will only draw Shizuo’s attention!” the men yelled as they chased after the trio.

The distance was short enough that they could catch up in twenty seconds if they sprinted. But unluckily for them and luckily for Mikado, this was the area where the students were supposed to be meeting their friends.

“Eep!” Mikado shrieked when the van suddenly stopped in front of them, thinking that it was a fresh round of pursuers. But then he recognized the man in the passenger seat, and his face lit up.

“K-Kadota!”

The next moment, Karisawa poked her head out of the door and yelled, “Why are you being chased?! Anyway, get in, get in!”

Just in the nick of time, Mikado, Anri, and Aoba piled into the van and shut the door before the thugs could reach them.

Togusa started the engine at the exact same moment. One of the thugs reached for the handle of the passenger-side door, but Kadota’s fist flew out of the open window and put a stop to that.

“Y-you—you—you saved us!”

“Hey, it’s all good. Sorry for being late to our meeting spot!” Karisawa said, cackling.

The van was surprisingly cramped, with the rear being taken up by Mikado’s trio, Karisawa, and Yumasaki—and a pair of girls who Mikado did not recognize.

The girls in the very back of the van were possibly twins, because aside from one having glasses, they looked exactly the same.

“Um…what are you two doing in here?” Aoba Kuronuma asked, surprised.

They know each other? Mikado wondered, but before he could say anything, they heard an obnoxious horn from outside and a dull thud against the side of the van.

“Damn, they found us,” the driver grunted, irritated. Mikado looked out of the side windows. He thought the Yellow Scarves they’d ditched had caught up in their own car, but instead, what he saw through the tinted windows was a gang of modified motorcycles bearing men in striped gang uniforms.

“Stop the damn caaaah!”

“Gonna fry ya up in motor oiiil!”

“What happened to our backup?!”

“They can’t come; they found the Black Rider! We’re supposed to join them now!”

The gang of bikers shouted back and forth among themselves, but Mikado couldn’t make out their messages from within the van.

“Wh-what’s going on? What’s happening right now?”

“Well, you see, I have an unfortunate announcement. You basically jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. Too bad, so sad. We are currently inhabiting a troubled dimension just as treacherous as a certain academy city researching supernatural powers. We’ll just have to wait for the saga of the one whose right hand will bring down this ugly illusion…”

“What in the world are you talking about?!”

“Let me just make sure: Do you know any doctors who look like a frog? That’ll bump your odds of survival up about ten percent. Actually, speaking of frogs, Hakusan Meikun would work, as well.”

Mikado gave up on interacting with Yumasaki’s utter nonsense and turned to Kadota in the front passenger seat instead. When their eyes met through the rearview mirror, the older man looked a bit apologetic.

“Yeah, some…stuff happened. Sorry.”

“Wh-whaaaaat?!”

Thus began a guided tour of Ikebukuro that was more thrilling than anyone asked for.

The group was locked into a deadly chase without a finish line.

Just at the moment that the next step was impossible to predict (if you even wanted to)—

They heard the whinnying of a headless horse approaching from the front.