Durarara!! - Volume 7 - Chapter 3

Ordinary B: Outcast Concerto

Six years ago, Ikebukuro

What is this?

What am I looking at?

He was a tremendous fighter.

Even among the mobsters that the government euphemistically termed “violence groups,” he wielded a violence that was second to none.

The rest of society knew him as a strongman, and he believed in that strength.

He had thrived in the shadows of modern society on his might alone; he had made a living just by being good at fighting. He could be proud of that life.

New-school “intellectual” yakuza, the Anti-Organized Crime Law… These changes were the wind; they meant nothing to him.

It was important to adapt with the times, but the law of the street still reigned supreme: If you didn’t command respect and fear, you were done.

All he could do was handle things the way he knew best.

A few years ago, some men who worked for a fellow in his line of work—a rival of his, some said—were beaten up by a kid in a bakery. He felt pity, mirth, and anger all at once. It had to be a joke. He didn’t believe the story.

Later, that very kid would don a bartender’s uniform and become a kind of urban legend—but the man couldn’t have known this at the time.

So he decided to keep fighting, to show his companions how a real man fought.

Fight, fight, fight.

He sought to gain everything he could see through sheer violence alone.

He knew it was impossible. But he didn’t stop.

He couldn’t stop.

No stopping the endless impulse from within.

The intoxication of violence.

There was no way not to test the technique honed by true experience, the muscle built and forged.

No way not to display it.

Even if nothing but ruin lay ahead, he was determined to use his strength exactly as he desired.

Then, one day…

He met a monster.

What the hell is this?

It was not the oft-rumored Headless Rider on a silent motorcycle—but the more recent phenomenon of a slasher with a katana.

What am I looking at?

No one knew about it at the time.

They couldn’t have known.

Even now, only a scant few aside from him actually knew the truth.

Is this…real life?

This slasher was a shape-shifting monster in the truest sense of the word.

A red-eyed monster sprouting katana blades from all over its body, leaping and darting like no human being could.

He didn’t know the monster’s name.

“Damn you…”

He didn’t know the name of Saika, the cursed blade that loved humanity.

“What the hell are you, dammit?!”

He received no answer.

The tip of the monster held in that red-eyed human’s hands cut through a part of his body.

And then time passed…

May 4, late night, Tokyo, club

A club pulsing with lascivious sound and light.

It was classified as a “café” for the purposes of the Adult Entertainment Business Act, but in reality, it was closer to a nightclub or a disco of the previous era. The proprietors rented out the space every night to a different production company, hosting events of all kinds.

Tonight, young men and women danced and writhed on the dark floor, indulging in a variety of pleasures, their bodies and minds stimulated by the insistent pounding of the bass subwoofer.

Some danced to the beat of the music, some watched the dancers, some savored their drinks and the tunes, and some let their excitement move them to call out to members of the opposite sex.

All these activities and more were captured in vivid detail by the pulsing, strobing light system. But in addition to all the above, there were some people in this particular club who carried out their own activities, unaffected by the overwhelming stimuli.

Inside the men’s bathroom, the club’s sound system was muffled.

“Hey…you’re holding, right?”

“I brought the money for it. Okay? Okay?”

Young women in heavy makeup hissed impatiently. They felt no hesitation or anxiety about being in the men’s room.

Facing them were three tough-looking men. Striking tattoos were visible around their collars, and while they weren’t any older than their early twenties, they surrounded the younger girls with an eerie, menacing vibe.

The slimmest of the three men leaned in with a wide smile. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry. We’ve got the stuff.”

Relief flooded over the girls’ faces. But there was little color in their skin, which was slick with a sheen of messy sweat.

“The problem is, you know how hot this stuff is right now. It’s hard to come by on the street. You know how it goes, right? So I’m gonna keep the price the same, but this is all you get,” he said, producing a ziplock plastic bag and dangling it in front of the girls. There were white pills inside.

One of the girls reacted with despair. “But…that’s only half the usual amount…”

“Actually, to tell the truth, I was saving this for a VIP customer, but you girls look really desperate, right? And we hate to sit back and do nothing for cute girls who really need help.”

“…Fine. Then…I’ll pay double…just gimme the normal bag,” she gasped, not even able to complete a full sentence in one breath. She was swallowing quite often, as if desperately thirsty.

One of the men rubbed each of the girls’ cheeks in turn and laughed. “Don’t worry—we’ll help you find some work to pay it off. Don’t look so gloomy, sweet cheeks.”

The man with the bag waved it in front of their faces—like dangling a carrot in front of a horse.

But this carrot was snatched up by a sudden cross breeze.

The sound of flushing water came from one of the stalls.

“?”

The men glanced over at it, annoyed.

It was the stall closest to the door, but it had been empty when they first came into the bathroom—or so they thought. And unbeknownst to the girls, the men had two friends on guard outside the bathroom to tell anyone who wasn’t a client or a friend that the janitor was working inside.

“…”

Perhaps it was one of those guards who used the stall, but they hadn’t noticed anything before this point. Not even the sound of the door closing.

“C-come on, gimme…,” said one of the girls.

“Shut up,” one of the men commanded, watching the door cautiously.

The next few seconds felt many times longer. Whoever it was, he was probably police.

If it was just an ordinary visitor to the club who managed to wander in while the guards weren’t paying attention, he would be easy to threaten or drive off. But they hadn’t even heard any toilet sounds, nor the unrolling of paper. Whoever was in there simply flushed the toilet, nothing more.

When the door began to open, that confirmed that whoever was in there wasn’t flushing to mask the sound of his business. In other words, he had gone into the stall, went completely silent, then flushed—but why?

They weren’t inclined to think that he merely spat into the bowl. And the very presence of an unannounced visitor was quite far from the expected for them. This was their turf, the place they used to peddle an illegal drug—and their experiences had taught them to be wary of what just happened.

“Hey. Who’s there, huh?” one of the thugs threatened, inching closer to the open stall door.

It opened silently, and a man emerged.

Contrary to what they had been afraid of, he was not an investigator.

But neither was he just a normal person who had wandered into trouble.

“Hey.”

He was rather odd.

“Look at you young fellas. All worked up, doing your thing.”

A tall man dressed in a flashy suit. Somewhere in his thirties, they gauged. Not young, but not yet middle-aged, either. He was slender and wiry with a scar on his face—not a pushover by any means. There were expensive tinted glasses on his nose and an ornately designed walking stick in his hand; he was like a memorable character from an old movie, decked out in props.

Despite the walking stick, he had no trouble moving around. He smirked at them as he made his way lazily out of the stall. The tattooed youngsters glanced at one another.

“Come on, old man.”

“Listen, we’re doin’ business, so would you kindly fuck off?”

“…”

The last of the trio said nothing. He merely stared at the man’s face, as if reminded of something.

Meanwhile, the girls were desperate to get the plastic bag they’d been promised. The one dealer pushed them back, while the other two approached the man without fear.

“This bathroom’s out of order. Go somewhere else.”

“My, my, kids these days are so hot-blooded! Uh-oh, am I gonna get my front teeth yanked out for saying that? Actually, you’re probably too young to get that reference, aren’t you?”

“The hell you talkin’ about, old man?”

“Oh, it’s fine if you don’t know. Read more manga! You could use some bizarre adventures. Young folks like you shouldn’t be old and cynical like me—you gotta get your fix of hard work, friendship, and victory!” the man cackled. He cracked his neck and held out his free hand.

“…?”

The others paused. Held between his fingers was the same little plastic bag the tattooed men had been taunting the girls with earlier—only this one was totally empty.

They stared at the man in the tinted glasses, expressions frozen. He smiled and continued, “Sorry to interrupt your deal. The fellas at the door had some pretty nasty stuff in here, so I was just flushing it away. You know how it goes with toxic material—either sterilize it or flush it down the drain. I don’t think it’ll clog any pipes; I’m assuming it dissolves in water.”

“…You asshole!”

The dealer grabbed the older man’s collar with a powerful hand. He didn’t even spare a thought for what might have become of those guards at the door.

“Oh, come on now, guys.” There was a brragk sound, like a wet stick snapping. “You don’t grab the collars of your superiors.”

He moved slowly, smoothly—and somehow, the body of the youngster was now spinning through the air in a gorgeous arc. The only part of him that clashed with that pristine curve were the fingers that had been grabbing the collar, now broken and twisted.

Yet the spinning man didn’t even scream. His body hurtled over and over until he landed flat on his back.

“?! Gh gh-kh-kh-gk!—?!—?—!”

It was worse than having the breath knocked out of his lungs. He felt like all the oxygen and carbon dioxide in his blood vessels was being squeezed out as well.

A sensation that was impossible to distinguish between pain or numbness stole upon him, starting with the fingertips—and then he felt a shock run through his Adam’s apple.

The man’s walking stick was pressed against his throat. The hapless youngster passed out from the pain.

“You’re lucky I’m not trained in martial arts, fella. I’d have broken more than your fingers,” the older man said. The other two dealers froze in place. Time seemed to stop still.

“H-hey, what are you doing? Sell us the stuff!” the girls clamored, breaking the silence. “We have nothing to do with this dumb fight!”

One of the tattooed men bellowed, “Shut up!”

“Aaah!”

He elbowed one of the girls in the face as she tried to snatch the bag over his shoulder and then turned back to their foe.

“Now that’s no good.” Suddenly, the strange man was right in his face. He saw his own features, agape with shock, in the reflection from the tinted glasses.

“Wh-whoa—?!”

He tried to swing out on impulse, but there was no technique to the punch, just arm strength, and his fist hit nothing.

“Your elbows aren’t meant to hit girls. You gotta be gentle with ’em.”

Suddenly, the tattooed man felt a clamp on his ear, pulling him downward. “Aah…hey…you’re gonna rip…”

The threat of a lost ear jolted his body’s instincts, and he automatically lowered himself to keep that from happening. The man in the tinted glasses easily flipped the bruiser’s feet out from under him, forcing him into a painful kiss with the bathroom floor.

“Bwuh…fuck! Blrgh?!”

Furious, he tried to stand, but to no avail. A foot stomped on the back of his head, breaking his nose and front teeth and sending him into the land of unconscious dreams.

His two partners’ fate was sealed in stone now. The final drug dealer had terror imprinted on his features.

Now I remember.

But his fear was not caused by the violence wrought by the interloper.

Guy with a walking stick, flashy suit, tinted glasses.

He had recalled who this man was and what group he was affiliated with.

That’s him…Akabayashi from the Awakusu-kai!

“W-wait, sir! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry about this!” he wailed, getting down on hands and knees to beg on the bathroom floor.

“Hey, c’mon, kid. That’s nasty. Don’t put your hands on the bathroom floor,” Akabayashi said with a chuckle—a strange admonishment from a guy pressing a man’s face into said floor. “And let me give you a piece of advice: A man shouldn’t prostrate himself of his own accord. And I ain’t of a mind to accept an apology that cheap. You got me?”

The prostrate young man felt the sweat on his body go cold. Through trembling lips, he mumbled, “I’m…I’m s-so sorry! I…I didn’t realize you were Awakusu at first! I never would have challenged you like that…”

“Listen, you don’t gotta apologize like that. If anything, I was the one who picked this fight with you.” Akabayashi smirked. Then, for the first time, the permanent smile weakened a bit. He crouched and muttered, “If you’re gonna apologize, I’m the wrong person. Right?”

“Huh…?”

Akabayashi picked up the little baggie of drugs and held it in front of the dealer’s face. “This club has a number of business ties to our operation, you see. I hate to sound like a stereotype, but I’m obliged to ask: Who said you could deal this shit on our turf? Hmm? Tell the nice man.”

“Er…well, I…”

“Mmm?” Akabayashi tilted his head curiously, his eyes never leaving the young man’s face.

“I wasn’t…umm…!”

When he caught sight of Akabayashi’s eyes through the tinted lenses, he felt every muscle in his body tense up. “I—I—I d-didn’t know this was Awakusu-kai territory! I s-swear, we’ll pay your share f-from now on…!”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha,” Akabayashi laughed mirthlessly. “Oh dear. You really don’t know anything, do you?”

“H…huh…?”

“Don’t you know the law, kid? Here in Japan, pills like these are illegal. But as far as I knew, you could be selling little hard candies, so I made sure to have a friend of mine examine them before I came here.”

He shook his head theatrically and leaned closer to the young man. “And the thing about the places we run, like right here? We don’t write the laws any different when it comes to dealin’ this stuff. Got that?”

“Wha…?”

Are you kidding me? Why did I never hear about that?! the young man thought, stunned.

Akabayashi waggled a finger in his face and tsked. “But even if we did play that way, you don’t really think we’re the kind of easygoing folk who will accept an answer like, ‘I’ll pay your percentage off the top, sorry about that,’ do you?”

“Uh…I…”

“So it’s time to choose.”

“Ch…choose?” the young man rasped. He realized that his breathing had been gradually getting faster and heavier. It was hard to tell what this man was saying. All he knew was that his fear of the Awakusu-kai was quickly being rivaled by that of the man before him.

He recalled the knife he had in his pocket. Should he use it or not?

Will it even work? He’s a yakuza. No, I can’t.

 It’s not like anyone knows who I am. If I kill him, I can get away.

I can’t. I can’t escape from the yakuza. But what if they don’t find out?

 Dammit, why is this happening to me? It’s not supposed to be like this!

Will my knife even work on this guy, anyway?

 He probably has a bigger one. Or a gun. I can’t. I can’t.

I can’t. I can’t, I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t…

A cavalcade of thoughts rushed through his brain, but not a single one was hopeful.

“The thing is, I’m what you’d call a hypocrite. See, since I am in this line of work, I do plenty of bad stuff—running gambling, setting odds, brokering sales of crabmeat of suspect origin. But personally, I just can’t stand the drugs. That’s right—it all comes down to personal likes and dislikes. So feel free to call me a hypocrite.”

Akabayashi took off the glasses and leaned closer to the young man, who looked back into those eyes and realized something was wrong.

One of his eyes looks weird… Is it a prosthetic?

It was an odd thing to be preoccupied with at the moment. The information was meaningless to him.

“Years ago, I was in love with a lady whose old man did her wrong on account of these drugs. Ever since then, I’ve really, really hated ’em. And the reason I’m with the Awakusu-kai now is because my likes and dislikes can actually mean something.”

Akabayashi chuckled dryly—and then abruptly stopped. His smile waned. “Ah…right. You were going to choose… Which option do you prefer?”

“Um…option?”

“For the Awakusu-kai to tie a bow on you fellas and hand you over to the cops? Or to simply have both your arms broken?”

! ! !

The youngster’s breathing went so ragged it simply caught in his throat for several seconds.

The man was going to use him as bait to strike a deal with the police. And if he said no, his arms would be broken. Given what had just happened to his partners, he knew better than to assume it was a bluff.

“N-no…no…stop, p-please…I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he blubbered and rubbed his forehead against the bathroom floor again.

Akabayashi grimaced and shook his head. “For God’s sake, how does a guy with the guts to get a tattoo whimper and whine like this? You’re a disgrace to your artist.”

“Th-these are just decals! W-we’re not that tough, sir! I—I play it straight most of the time! It’s just a little m-money on the side, they said! It wasn’t my idea! I just did what they said! Please let me go! Please, please!”

“Ha-ha. In that case, you’re a disgrace to whoever made that tattoo sticker… Well, damn.” Akabayashi chuckled, got up, and snapped his fingers.

Suddenly, some young men in suits entered the bathroom.

“Huh? Wha—?” the dealer babbled.

“If someone’s calling the shots for you, then we need to hear some more details,” Akabayashi said, waving to the suits. “Take him away. Let Kazamoto handle the rest.”

“Yessir.” “Right away, Mr. Akabayashi.”

The men in black bowed and got to work. Akabayashi rapped the floor with his stick and, in rhythm with the beat, said, “The thing is, I’m a bit squeamish when it comes to interrogation methods.”

All the frightening vocabulary words had an effect. The young man finally stopped groveling and got to his feet.

I gotta run.

Even a small-time dealer wearing fake tattoos to look tough knew what would happen if he got taken to the yakuza office. He pulled out his knife and made a beeline, swinging it around threateningly.

“Hey, shithead!” “Knock it off!” Akabayashi’s subordinates yelled, but the fleeing man wasn’t listening. The glint of light off the silver blade as it swung about wildly elicited screams from the girls hiding in the corner of the bathroom.

“Outta my way! You wanna get stabbed?!” Fake Tat screamed, which was funny, because if he was going to hit anyone swinging the knife around like that, it was going to be a slash instead.

Akabayashi exhaled.

Not a sigh. Just a brief collecting of breath.

The young man raced straight toward him in the center of the bathroom.

“Outta—”

—my…way?

Something lightly struck the hand swinging the knife around. An object, something cylindrical, had stretched out from his blind spot and knocked the blade out of his hand.

The walking stick?

By the time he realized it, the tip of Akabayashi’s cane was already out of sight again. The man’s body rolled across the floor, and the end of the stick appeared from a different direction this time.

Although he held the stick like a spear with both hands, there was hardly any of its length above the left hand, so the young man’s instincts told him that it wouldn’t reach him. That wasn’t true, of course, but the visual information his brain received resulted in that fateful illusion.

Akabayashi pushed the other end of the stick with his right hand—a very simple action—but to his victim’s eyes, it looked like the point of the walking stick stretched from out of nothing.

“Whua-ffh!”

A scream of surprise and a grunt of shock both issued from his mouth simultaneously.

The tip of the cane pushed into his throat, crushing the Adam’s apple. He didn’t feel pain or numbness. The only thing his nerves and brain registered was something bursting.

His eyeballs instantaneously shuddered into the back of his head, and he collapsed to the floor like a rag doll.

“Okay, get him outta here,” Akabayashi directed the men in suits, still smiling easily.

Once they had carried the unconscious dealer out of the bathroom, Akabayashi turned toward the end of the stalls. “Now, about you girls…”

“Eeek!”

“P-please don’t…”

Until just recently, the girls had been desperate for the drugs, but the brief scene of violence and resulting conversation had made it quite clear whose presence they were in. Fear won out over desire, and they were now huddling in the corner, trembling.

“Listen, don’t shiver and shake like that. Y’see, just an hour or so ago, I had to make a very pretty Russian lady sad. I’m feelin’ down about upsetting the female kind right now.” He chuckled, pulling out a pocket handkerchief and offering it to one of the girls. “Look at that nosebleed. Was that from the elbow? You all right? You oughta see a doctor.”

“Er, uh…thank you, sir.”

“You really should be quick about it. Need an escort? I mean, you’re lookin’ pretty pale.”

“Er, uh…n-no, I’ll be…fine.”

The girls were shivering, trying to avoid looking into his eyes. They didn’t understand what he wanted.

“P-please, help, I’ll…I’ll do anything…anything!” one of them pleaded, ready to cry.

“Aww. Oh dear. Do I really look that scary?” Akabayashi asked self-deprecatingly. He rapped the floor with the stick. “Don’t you realize how lucky you are? If I were someone else, you might’ve been sent to an establishment for grown-up ladies, or perhaps a home-visit service, or a DVD filming studio.”

This only made the girls shiver harder.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to claim you owe me a favor. You heard me earlier—I’m a hypocrite, right? I’m not going to hurt you. In fact, I’m going to go the extra mile for you.”

In a way, it was an even worse punishment he was proposing.

“I’m going to send you girls back home and take it upon myself to explain to your fathers and mothers exactly what kind of medication you’ve been taking.”

“…!”

“And the rest is up to you and your families. See? You’ll be in a hospital no matter what.”

“Oh, and…depending on circumstances, there might be some business between your families and us.”

Several minutes later, in a taxi

Akabayashi gave his subordinates their orders and left the club alone. Then he got into a cab, muttering to himself.

“Always leaves a bad aftertaste when you make a girl cry.”

The driver overheard this and decided to meddle. “What’s that? Have a fight with your lady?”

“Let’s call it that. No punches or anything, but she was quite sad about the whole thing,” Akabayashi said, shaking his head.

The elderly driver laughed and scolded, “Shouldn’t do that. You gotta be gentle with women.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying.”

A few minutes later, Akabayashi’s cell phone rang. It played the latest hit from the singer Ruri Hijiribe.

“Oh, sir! What do you know, it’s your lady friend!”

“Ha-ha-ha…if only,” Akabayashi replied, indulging the driver.

He hit the accept button. “Hello? It’s your buddy.”

“Don’t answer the phone like a creep. It’s me,” said the caller—Akabayashi’s fellow Awakusu-kai lieutenant, Aozaki.

He’d been involved with the Russian trouble just a few hours ago, so Akabayashi assumed the call was related. “What is it, Aozaki? Something happen with our Russian guest?”

“No, it’s not that. You hear about the young miss?”

“You mean how Heiwajima and the Black Rider helped her? I’m guessin’ that Mikiya’s probably giving her a scolding for running away from home and feelin’ relieved on the inside.”

The “young miss” was Akane Awakusu, the daughter of Mikiya Awakusu, underboss of the Awakusu-kai, and furthermore, she was granddaughter of Dougen Awakusu, the head of the organization. She’d run away from home for the past few days and wound up in quite a bit of trouble, including being kidnapped by the Russians in question. It was only this evening that they got word she was safe again.

“No…not quite. Apparently, she’s been acting odd,” Aozaki answered.

“Odd?”

“Well…this is all secondhand, so I don’t know for sure, and it ain’t really my business to care. But you’ve known her pretty well since she was a little girl, yeah?”

“I suppose. I’ll ask Mikiya about it tomorrow… Funny that you should be concerned, though. I thought you hated Mikiya,” Akabayashi teased.

“Don’t give me that shit,” Aozaki growled through the speaker. “Yeah, I’m not fully on board with Mikiya, but Miss Akane is the old man’s granddaughter. If anything happens to her, we go to war. Of course I’m concerned.”

“But isn’t that what you want, Aozaki?”

“…I said, don’t give me that shit, you bungling clown,” Aozaki snorted, clicking his tongue, and hung up.

Akabayashi looked down at his phone, shaking his head.

At that moment, the driver asked, “Is this a good spot for you, sir?”

“Uh, sure. Just up at that corner.”

“You got it.”

Compared with earlier, the driver’s smile was forced and unnatural. He’d heard enough from that call to recognize Akabayashi’s occupation.

“Sorry I couldn’t give you a longer trip fare. Here, keep the change for your trouble.”

“Oh! Oh no, sir! I couldn’t take this whole bill!”

“Trust me, it’s fine,” Akabayashi insisted, shoving the ten-thousand-yen bill into the driver’s hand. He exited the taxi, cracked his neck, and looked up at the neon-lit night sky of the big city.

“…Things’ve been strange lately.”

The Black Rider.

The return of the slasher.

The rise of the Dollars.

Trouble with Ruri Hijiribe.

Jinnai Yodogiri.

And now this incident with the Russians and Akane.

“Well, there’s always been troubles in any city,” he muttered to himself, then headed for the apartment where he spent his nights.

But even still, things’ve been strange. It’s like the light and the dark side of town are bleeding together. Maybe those folks on the bright side are having trouble keeping to their own.

He looked back up at the sky, realizing that it was pointless to wonder. The light of the town and the dark of the night mingled, hiding the stars behind the muddled haze.

Akabayashi gazed at the ambiguity and mumbled, “I don’t like that sky.”

“Bright or dark—make up your damn mind.”

Six years ago

The man who had dyed himself with the color of violence would hurt others again today.

He felt a glow of ecstasy every time he saw the scars he inflicted on someone else.

That scar is me.

The blood they shed, the red of their exposed flesh, the sound of their bones breaking—these are the things that make me as a person.

It was less a statement of pride or ideals than a shallow fantasy, a daydream.

He would fall apart unless he hurt someone.

This self-created illusion acted as a wicked mold of his instincts.

In this city, the scars he left on others were his footprints.

With each act of violence, his glory grew and so did his intoxication.

With no fatigue and no reflection upon the past, as if it were his reason for living.

Change came to him at last when he took on a certain job.

The owner of a certain business owed a debt, and the man’s organization took it on.

It wasn’t quite in the midst of the busy shopping district, but it was still land in the capital.

So the job was quite simple: Seize the land as collateral for the debt.

But things went awry. Somehow, the owner got the money and paid back what he owed.

A simple story of bad luck, if it had ended right there.

But the business owner, seemingly mad, demanded money from the organization.

He tried to blackmail them, to threaten them with legal trouble for an illegal collection scheme.

The owner’s mind was probably not on sound footing at that point.

They decided that he could not be reasoned with and gave the man a new job.

Put the hurt on him.

Nice and clean. Nice and simple.

The owner had a family, too, so if necessary, the man was allowed to involve them.

Of course, it couldn’t look like the work of the man’s organization, so he had to make it appear as a robbery and rough them up in a nonfatal way.

On the night of the new moon, the man put on a ski mask and headed for the business in question.

It was an antique shop in Ikebukuro.

The name: Sonohara-dou.

May 5, morning, home of Mikiya Awakusu

The residence of Mikiya Awakusu, waka-gashira underboss of the Awakusu-kai, was virtually indistinguishable from any of the other homes in the distant suburbs of Ikebukuro and gave no indication that its occupants were anything but normal.

On the contrary, it was the kind of house so pristine that the cynical might be prompted to claim, “The only people who would live in a house so nice are the ones who do dirty deeds for dirty money.” In short, it was just a very fancy house.

Once inside the home, the tottering steps of a young girl rushed to greet him.

“Mr. Akabayashi!”

“Ahh, young miss. It’s nice to see you again.”

In fact, it had been years since he’d popped his head in. In the past, he’d often come by to visit and spend time with the girl, but now that Akane was getting on with school, he had bowed out and kept his distance, respecting Mikiya’s wish to keep the family business a secret from her.

Ultimately, that concerted effort had fallen through, and she had learned the truth of what her father did for a living. From what Akabayashi heard, it was the reason she ran away from home, but thankfully, she was back safe and sound now.

“…I heard you wanted to see me, miss?”

“Yeah!” she said, nodding vigorously. She seemed to be bursting with lively cheer, but that seemed unnatural for one who had been kidnapped just a day ago.

Normally, he would have gotten the details of the incident from Mikiya at the office. Instead, it was Mikiya who had approached him.

“My daughter wants to talk to you. Will you come to the house with me?”

“Me? What for?”

“I wish I knew, but she won’t tell me.”

Acting odd indeed, he’d thought, recalling the phone conversation with Aozaki the night before. Still, Akabayashi wrapped up his afternoon business early and headed off to see Akane.

Once the little girl saw him in person, she reached over to tug his sleeve, eyes sparkling. “I have something I want to talk about in private, Mr. Akabayashi. Can you come to my room?”

“Now, Akane,” Mikiya warned, but the man waved him off.

“Oh, it’s fine, Director. I don’t mind.”

He started off to follow the girl, but this time it was Mikiya who pulled on his sleeve.

“I trust I don’t need to warn you not to fill her head with nonsense?”

“I know, sir.”

“And keep your hands to yourself.”

“…Mikiya, do you actually know how old your daughter is?” Akabayashi snorted, shaking his head.

“Ah. Y-yes, of course, sorry. I thought maybe you had intentions of…”

“No, I didn’t. Not in the least, Mikiya.”

“You’re right… I’m sorry. It’s just, I remember when you were looking after some girl somewhere a few years back. I thought maybe your tastes ran… No, never mind. Ignore me. You weren’t messing around with that kid, either.”

“No, it’s fine. I get it—I don’t have a wife or even a woman. Some folks whisper that I’m not a ladies’ man in the first place. Ha-ha,” Akabayashi chuckled easily and headed for Akane’s room without sign of offense.

When he walked through her door, Akane greeted him with a serious expression on her face. “Listen…I want you to keep this a secret from my parents.”

“Of course, I get it,” he said with a smile, crouching down to put her at ease.

She started off innocently enough. “Umm, so…uhh…”

But then it got much worse.

“How can I…get good at killing people?”

Her eyes were innocent, pure, and so serious.

Well, I’ll be damned, Akabayashi thought, feeling a rare cold sweat break out on his skin.

He sighed—but never let that easy, lazy grin leave his lips.

This is a hell of a lot more than “acting odd.”

Thirty minutes later, in a car

“…So what was it that Akane asked about? She said ‘talk to you later,’ right at the end. Are you going to see her again today?”

“Oh, it was just a bit of small talk. And a secret, too.”

They were in the backseat of a luxury car on the way to the Awakusu-kai office. Akabayashi smirked carelessly as usual from the seat next to Mikiya’s.

“…Akabayashi.”

“Really, it was nothing major. Maybe what happened yesterday gave her some ideas? She said she wants to get stronger. I happen to know someone who runs a dojo—more like a sports gym—that teaches women and children self-defense in addition to the usual stuff. I said I’d take her there this afternoon.”

“Oh…I see. Why would she ask you, though?”

“Ha-ha, well, that’s the funny part.” Akabayashi chuckled, pulling out his cell phone.

“What are you doing…?”

“Do you know how the young miss learned about our work?”

“…No.”

“This thing here.” He showed Mikiya his phone screen, which was displaying a webpage.

“Ahh…I recognize that.”

It was an Internet encyclopedia—Fuguruma Youki.

The site was a freely editable online encyclopedia in the mold of Wikipedia, where users congregated to add their own information and build a massive database. While much of the information was faulty or based on rumors and lies, these things could be corrected by other users or even the people featured in the articles themselves.

“I had the younger guys correct a lot of the particularly sensitive bits.”

The site’s article on the Awakusu-kai had all kinds of detailed information on their operation—even down to the names of principal members—right there in the open for anyone to read. Mikiya saw his name on the phone screen and scowled.

“So she could have seen it on her phone? Convenience is making our job harder now.”

“This is what happens when you give a kid an online-accessible phone without thinking. But the cat’s out of the bag now, and that ain’t my problem.” Akabayashi chuckled.

Mikiya glared at him, then down at the phone again, where he saw his underling’s name on the article as well. It featured simple profiles of the group members, and his read, “A capable fighter with many legends under his belt. Along with Aozaki, they are known as the Red Ogre and Blue Ogre of the Awakusu-kai, respectively.”

“Look at how they puff us up. Basically, the young miss read this nonsense, and since she knew me from her childhood, she decided to ask me for self-defense help.”

If Akabayashi wore a permanent, lopsided grin, Mikiya’s face was equally frozen in a frightening scowl. “Well…better you than Aozaki. But I would have hoped that Akane would talk to me or her mother first.”

“Ha-ha, she probably just doesn’t want to make you folks worry more than she already has. She’s a good daughter.”

“My daughter trying to keep me from worrying is the most concerning thing I can fret over. So…I assume this dojo or sports gym or whatever is a trustworthy place?”

“Oh yes. It’s a regular old place, no yakuza operation. It’s the one over near Zoshigaya Cemetery. You know that German fighter, Traugott Geissendorfer? It’s kind of a worldwide chain that teaches his dojo style…”

The conversation continued on in this manner.

At this point, Akabayashi was not outright lying, but he also wasn’t telling the entire story. And for his part, he knew that Akane hadn’t told him everything, either. He chose not to pry into it—but the girl had clearly been partially broken by someone.

Resigned, Akabayashi decided that what Akane needed right now was to interact with more people, those who wouldn’t treat her like something exotic and special. The best option for that was the dojo.

There will be plenty of other girls there, too.

He mulled over the benefits of asking Akane for more information later in the afternoon versus keeping his distance and observing her more.

Next to him, stone-faced, Mikiya decided to broach a completely different topic. “You cracked down on some kids pushing last night, didn’t you?”

“Ah, that? I put Kazamoto in charge of it.”

“…Well, it’s turned into a bit of a thing.”

“Pardon?”

Despite all the ups and downs of what happened with his daughter, Mikiya’s frank, flat delivery betrayed no emotion. “I assumed they had to be working under some group or other…but nothing. They say it’s just a regular college club.”

“Club?”

“They’re students at Raira College… Just normal students by most accounts, but those ones you pulverized all had the same stickers on their necks, right? The fake tattoos.”

“That’s right, they did,” Akabayashi said, recalling the young men from the previous night. He’d nearly forgotten the details already.

They had flashy tattoos visible around their throats and collarbones, but even they admitted that the marks were just removable decals.

“Raira College is actually a fairly prestigious school. Just goes to show, there are idiots to be found anywhere.”

“I see. So I guess they just cultivated and mixed those pills themselves? Y’know, there’s something to be said for young entrepreneurship.” Akabayashi chuckled, shaking his head.

Mikiya noticed that the smile did not extend to his companion’s eyes and glanced at the cell phone again. “Well, they’re certainly crafty. Everyone in their operation from the dealers on up communicate only through phones. They change numbers regularly, so they must be using burners.”

Burners were phones registered under falsified names designed to be used for short periods of time. It was easy enough to pay a large number of people a small amount of money (or a bit of debt relief) to sign up for a phone and then collect the phones for anonymous use. Once the cellular contract ran out or the police got involved, the phones were unusable, so you just switched to the next disposable phone. It was a favored tactic for scam artists and others outside the law.

As a matter of fact, Mikiya and the Awakusu found burners to be handy tools at times, too. “Kazamoto said he’d run the numbers of the phones past his burner dealer, but it’s not clear if we’ll be able to track down whoever’s at the center of this operation. Apparently, they’re all college students, though…”

Mikiya tsked his tongue, his expression still flat. “It’s an ugly time to be alive. Normal-lookin’ kids, using the Internet or whatever to get into our side of the business? People talk about the yakuza blending in with regular professionals—but these kids are just straight-up normal.”

“Good point. If those guys yesterday didn’t have the fake tattoos, they’d just look like ordinary fellas who happened to be well-built.”

“…By the way, you know about a group of kids called the Dollars?”

“Where’s this comin’ from?” Akabayashi asked, not bothering to mention or deny his registration as a member of that very group.

“Well, the kids who Kazamoto ‘questioned’ yesterday told us a whole bunch of stuff…but one of the things they mentioned was that there was some kind of upper organization that they only talked to on the phone…”

“Apparently, they were founded after the Dollars’ model—only this group just sells drugs online.”

The same moment, Awakusu-kai headquarters

The Awakusu-kai was an organized crime operation, or what the rest of society termed a “violence group.” It was a large group, one of the midsized members of the Medei-gumi Syndicate. No one outside of the gang had a firm grasp on their total number, but the name itself carried quite a bit of clout within Ikebukuro.

In the depths of the office building that the group used as a headquarters, a spare room held an overbearing atmosphere, as a person spoke in a gravelly voice.

“Ahh. There is no problem with that matter.”

The timbre of the voice marked him as a significantly elderly man. But there was powerful strength to it, as well as a solid menace, like a looming craggy mountain.

“We have no intention of souring our relationship with you. However, we cannot handle the matter ourselves, you understand. With reconciliation with the Asuki-gumi at hand, it would not do to have rumors that we are killing our own. If he screwed up, that would be one thing, but this is entirely your own request.”

There was no answering voice from within the room; he was apparently speaking on the phone.

“But…I can promise you that however you wish to settle things with him, the Awakusu-kai will not take action. If he should meet an unfortunate accident or turn up missing, that would not weaken our position with the Asuki-gumi.”

He spoke in clear, polite language, neither debasing himself nor patronizing his conversation partner. It was clinical and businesslike, with no hint of personal emotion.

“On the other hand, you will not harm anyone else of ours. If anyone else, be it member of our organization or their relatives, is brought into this—there will be a reckoning.”

After this there were a few more statements, and the speaker ended his call. A wrinkled hand set down the receiver gingerly, as if licking at the air.

During the call, he had been perfectly composed and utterly in control, but his next words were a lament. “Even after decades…I just can’t get used to this phone thing.”

Hanging lanterns and a little shrine altar decorated the space, making it the only room in the place, decked out as it was like some kind of securities office, that looked like the chamber of a traditional yakuza.

Sitting in the back of this head honcho’s office was the speaker, sunk deep into a rich leather chair. It creaked, releasing some of the suffocating tension in the room. He leaned back behind his desk—which was simple in design but clearly built of very fine wood—and gave a toothy grin.

“Funny thing is, most of my teeth are fake by now. Got a couple of bolts jammed into my pelvis. Wouldn’t that make me a— What’s the thing from the movies? Cyborg? A robocop? And somehow I don’t know my way around a machine. God musta made some mistake with me.”

He rubbed the silent phone receiver and addressed the large man standing near the door. “What about you, Aozaki? You like phones?”

Aozaki and the old man were the only ones in the room. He bowed his head and rumbled, “If you want me to, boss, I’ll destroy my own cell phone in a snap.”

It sounded like a joke, but the tone of voice indicated otherwise. The old man, Dougen Awakusu, just chuckled and shook his head.

“If you don’t call me ‘Chairman,’ you’ll get an earful from our director and Shiki, too.”

Dougen was in his early sixties, if appearance was any judge. His actual age was a mystery, but the full white beard did a good job of projecting maturity. It was well-kept, so he looked more like Santa Claus than some ragged old hermit from a fairy tale.

The other man, one of the most combative and aggressive of the Awakusu officers, said politely, “There’s no one around to hear me, boss. So was that call about the you-know-what?”

“Hmm? Ahh yes. Is that what you’re here to talk about, too?”

“Indeed. I’m surprised that those remnants are still going after him—and even more surprised that they actually called you directly, boss. Say the word, and I’ll have them wiped out within a day,” Aozaki said.

His words were rough, but his deference to the boss was unmistakable. He was an overbearing man by nature, and he often slighted Mikiya, the actual heir to the group—but he had nothing but deep respect for the Awakusu boss before him.

“Ha-ha, I’m sure you could. You’re not the Blue Ogre of Awakusu for nothing.”

“Don’t mention that, please. It makes it sound like I’m just great pals with that Red Ogre guy.”

“What’s the harm in that? You know you respect Akabayashi’s skill.”

“Oh, he’s trustworthy in a fight, that’s for sure, but it means nothing against a whole organization. He might have that little group of pet bikers under his wing, but the man’s not suited for working with a team.”

Aozaki paused, squinted up at the ceiling.

“Which is probably why stuff like this comes up.”

Dougen Awakusu cackled dryly and said, “Perhaps. Those remnants want nothing more than to kill Akabayashi. Nothing else matters to them.”

“What group are they affiliated with now?”

“You promised to snuff them out in a day without knowing the answer to that question? Well…I suppose I should have expected that from you.”

Dougen leaned forward off the back of the chair, resting his elbows on the desk. He tapped the surface with his index finger and smiled cruelly. “Apparently, a number of them got out of jail recently and decided to start their own group. It operates under the guise of a small realty office.”

“They never learn.”

“Can you blame them? They’ve still got their suspicions,” Dougen said, stroking his beard with an eager smile.

“They still think it was Akabayashi who killed their old boss.”

There was a rumor about Akabayashi.

While he was an important officer with the Awakusu-kai, he hadn’t come up through the organization. In fact, he had originally been a muscle man for a rival group that had fought with the Awakusu for territory in Ikebukuro.

He wasn’t really just a disposable muscle man used for suicide missions, but a highly prized all-around weapon for the group. His presence there was invaluable…

But the group did not last.

The kumicho—the boss of the group—was murdered.

At the same time, the police discovered a large drug-smuggling operation the group was running and arrested most of them. It was essentially disbanded.

But Akabayashi, one of the most notable of its members, was absent from the major arrest. And he had been the bodyguard with the kumicho when the murder happened.

These two facts were enough to plant suspicion in the minds of the men who got caught. Perhaps he had killed the boss and ratted them out to the cops.

Their suspicions festered and grew, but no evidence supported them.

And now, Akabayashi was a principal member of the Awakusu-kai, their former rivals. Regardless of suspicions of murder, this was more than enough to earn the rancor of his former comrades.

But then the Awakusu-kai were brought under the umbrella of the Medei-gumi, and the remnants of that now-rival gang were totally powerless to do anything about the matter.

And now, the man in question was known as the Red Ogre of Awakusu. However, most of the fame behind that moniker stemmed from his past exploits; since joining the Awakusu, he had been a valuable member but was seen as a relative moderate among the muscle flexers.

And of course, there were those like Shiki, who saw Akabayashi’s aloof attitude as a mask to hide his true nature and stayed cautious of the man.

“Most of the ones who handled the drugs are still locked up, but for those who did manage to get out early, I bet they were sure Akabayashi did it, once they found out he’s with us now.”

“Normally, when you kill your own, you don’t last long in our world. Where there’s smoke, you gotta assume there’s fire…and yet you brought him aboard, boss.”

“I suppose I like to go against the grain. And I wasn’t going to be shy about a few rumors when there was good money to be made. Somehow, he really gets around with the younger folks.” Dougen cackled.

“But you just cut down that money tree on the phone right now,” Aozaki cautioned.

“Perhaps I did.”

“Let us settle our score with Akabayashi.”

That was the request the brand-new group had been making of Dougen recently.

They were former rivals, fresh out of prison. Normally, this matter would have been ignored, but from the very start, these fellows seemed suicidally desperate.

“We don’t intend to start anything with you. But none of us can go to our deaths knowing that we haven’t avenged our boss. If you cover for him, we’re prepared to go out in a blaze of glory.”

Ultimately, Dougen ended up giving them his answer, minutes ago: “If you make it unrelated to our group, through accident or disappearance, we will not retaliate.”

This wasn’t out of some yakuza tradition of honor or recognizing a wrong that ought to be made right. It wasn’t out of respect for their desperate gamble to avenge their slain leader.

To Dougen, it was sheer practicality: Starting a war now would make the Medei-gumi look bad and lower their standing before making peace with the Asuki-gumi.

On top of that, men fresh out of prison would naturally be under police scrutiny. Starting trouble with a desperate gang was a risk for very little reward—even if they could be crushed “in a day,” as Aozaki promised.

They were no fools. They were men of the night, responsible for building the darkness of Ikebukuro.

“You see, I can’t betray my men…but I can abandon them.”

Six years ago, Tokyo, near Sonohara-dou

It was supposed to be like any other night.

The job was simple: Act like a robber and rough up a store owner.

He had given up a tender conscience long ago. He never even thought about guilt anymore.

What possible threat could the owner of an antique curio shop pose?

The man’s arrogance was a symbol of his violence.

He had little interest in money or women. But he didn’t glorify poverty, and he wasn’t attracted to men. He just loved being a conduit for violence.

“If necessary, involve the wife and kid,” they’d told him, but he wasn’t particularly interested in doing that. He just wanted to rough up the owner and be done with it. He’d never been violent against women and children, but it wasn’t out of some sense of kindness or chivalry—he just found no interest in doing so, because it wasn’t worth bragging about.

He didn’t know how he started learning how to fight. What was more important was that he had honed his skill through constant combat and experience.

He had no interest in humans themselves—they were vivid targets for exhibiting violence, but little else. His fist was clenched today for the sole purpose of displaying his strength, to create new scars that would speak of his existence.

But as he approached Sonohara-dou, he noticed a figure standing in the street. He had chosen a moonless night, so the only light to illuminate the person was the flickering streetlamps. He couldn’t really tell who it was.

“Hey…who are you?”

He couldn’t just ignore them and continue on his way.

There was a long silver object in the figure’s hand—a katana.

“…A shock trooper sent to eliminate me? If you think havin’ a sword will give you the edge, you’re gonna learn a real painful lesson,” the man threatened, cracking his neck aggressively.

Normally, he would seize the advantage by throwing something before talking, but on this day, he didn’t. Something about the figure, something eerie, chilled his instincts.

Once he was within ten steps of the katana’s range—

The blade flickered, like a heat haze in midsummer.

That ripple in the darkness threw off his sense of distance. It felt as if the figure had approached five steps within a single flicker of the streetlight.

But in fact, there was another part of the scene he felt closing the distance.

The sword…stretched…?!

The blade should have been an ordinary length for a katana, but in the span of that brief moment, it changed shape, stretching to nearly double the length.

The man knew from experience that while a solid thrust or iai drawing of a blade could create the illusion of shifting distance, this was not one of those cases.

The reason he couldn’t understand it was because the truth was that the blade really did stretch.

The streetlight flickered on again, and he was able to see the figure clearly.

A woman?!

It was a woman wearing indoor clothing—her eyes glowing red like the light on a police car.

Wait, is that who they talk about…?

Like two red moons shining from her eye sockets.

Gleaming. Blazing.

The slasher…

The next time the light flickered on, his mind reached further depths of confusion. Somehow there was another katana stretching for him, but from where her shoulder met her neck, rather than her hand. The tip reached out to him, desperate to pierce his skin.

—!

He leaped sideways on reflex, evading the two oncoming blades by just the slimmest of margins. When he recovered his stance and turned back, ready to fight, his body froze.

What is this?

Blades.

What am I looking at?

Not just from her shoulder.

What the hell is this?

The silver of the blade was protruding from her limbs, her back, her stomach—even the ends of her long hair. It wasn’t chaotic growth like wild mushrooms, but functional and methodical, sprouting from locations like her elbows, such that the blades were like bits of body armor.

What am I looking at?

A mechanical puppet, a robot bristling with blades.

Those red glowing eyes had to be made with light bulbs, he imagined. It was an utterly nonsensical image, but the thing was there. Right in front of him.

Is this…real life?

It was a monster. The slasher was a monster.

A red-eyed monster sprouting katana blades wherever it wanted on its body, performing impossible feats.

He didn’t know this monster’s name.

“Dammit…”

He was unfamiliar with Saika, the cursed blade that loved humanity.

“What the hell are you, dammit?!”

There was no reply. The monster clutched in the red-eyed woman’s hand spurred its wielder’s body onward into a direct leap toward the paralyzed man. It was the jump of a female lead in a romance movie, leaping into the arms of the man she loved.

But this sword’s lips did not caress the man’s mouth or his cheek.

He managed to break out of his emergency paralysis and tried to move out of the way.

But the tip of the sword stretched out even farther…

And split his right eye, directly down the middle.

Present day, Tokyo, empty room

There was an air of abnormality shrouding the shop.

It was an empty building that combined a storefront and living space under one roof, plopped down in the midst of an ordinary residential area far from the station and shopping district.

There was a sign out front reading SONOHARA-DOU, but the letters were faded and missing so that it was nearly impossible to make out any longer. All the furnishings that identified it as an old antique shop were still there, but the display cases visible from the outside were full of nothing but piled-up dust.

It was obvious at first sight that the building was abandoned, though the details of the empty display cases and oddly patterned pillars gave the place a type of presence that went past strange and right into creepy.

A man stood in front of it, unbothered by this aura, giving the building a wistful look.

“Five years, and this place still hasn’t sold. Figures.”

After dropping Akane off at his acquaintance’s gym, Akabayashi came to visit this abandoned store by himself. He wasn’t doing anything in particular—just staring at the place through his tinted glasses—when he heard a faint voice nearby.

“…Mr.…Akabayashi?”

“Hmm?” He spun around and saw a girl standing there. She looked shy and quiet and wore the Raira Academy uniform, along with a pair of glasses. She’d probably been watching him approach with trepidation before calling out, but the gangster broke into a grin.

“…Ohh! Is that you, Anri? You’re so much taller now. How long has it been…? Two years?”

“Yes, it’s nice to see you again… What brings you here?” Anri asked, bowing. She didn’t seem afraid of the man.

“Oh, I was just in the area. What’s with the uniform? Shouldn’t you be on break today?”

“I had to show up at school for the class representatives’ meeting… I was just getting home now.”

“Gotcha. Must be hard having to go to school during your vacation,” Akabayashi offered with a breezy smile.

“Umm…I really should thank you for what you did.”

“You know, you say that every time we meet, but you really don’t need to. I’m the one who owes a debt to…to your mother.”

“But…if you hadn’t helped me find a new apartment back then, who knows what might have happened to me…? I lost my father and mother and had to leave the house…”

She put on a rare, gentle smile, one of pure gratitude.

Anri Sonohara lost her parents years ago in an incident.

She wound up passed around among her relatives, a time of great upheaval—and ultimately, they sold off many of the remaining Sonohara-dou items to put together a fund that would pay for her living costs until she was an adult.

The person who helped deal with this inheritance fund was a man named Akabayashi, who came to pay his respects at her parents’ funeral. Later, when she decided to move out on her own and save her relatives the trouble, Akabayashi was there to help arrange an apartment for her. He claimed that he owed her parents a favor and helped her with a number of very important things, all for free. She felt nothing but gratitude toward him.

She bowed, over and over, so Akabayashi scratched his head uncomfortably and changed the topic.

“So, uh, is that the Raira uniform? You’re in high school already, then. Wait…second year?”

“Yes, that’s right…”

She bowed yet again, and Akabayashi scratched at his cheek this time.

Suddenly, he recalled things Mikiya had said in the car earlier in the day:

“I don’t know if it’s like a game to them or what, but even in this college club, the guys at the top are bad news. They believe they’re totally safe from trouble, even against the real thing like us… They had beef with another gang in the past, and the fellows in that group got attacked.

“You need to be careful. Don’t hang around with Akane too much. I’ll set it up so that someone else goes to the dojo tonight to get her.

“In any case, this is very abrupt stuff, so while I’ll spare some protection for Akane, I don’t have the extra leeway to guard you, too. You’ll have to fend for yourself.”

Something about what Mikiya said snagged in Akabayashi’s head. He said to Anri, “I’m curious—I have a question about school fads for you.”

“Y-yes…? Well…I’m really not that up on fads, either…”

“It’s fine. I’ll take whatever you can tell me,” he said and decided to bring up the name, figuring she wouldn’t know. “Anri, have you ever heard the name Dollars at school?”

Her breath briefly caught in her throat. He noticed the change and asked, “You know something, then?”

“N-no…just…that I’ve heard a friend talk about it… But I don’t know any details.”

“…”

It was painfully obvious that she was lying. Akabayashi wasn’t going to rake her over the coals for it, but he also wanted more information.

“Ah, I see,” he said and patted her on the shoulder with a smile. “They’re dangerous folks I hear, so steer clear of them. And if anything happens, you let me know at once.”

“Oh no… I couldn’t impose on you any further…”

“No, I insist. You know I got a lotta clout around here, right? So call on me for anything. You got a problem? Just call that number I gave you. On the other hand…since I’m so well-known, there are folks who don’t like me. So if you happen to see me around town and don’t have anything to ask, feel free to ignore me.”

“Uhh…”

Perhaps she didn’t realize what he did for a living; in which case, the girl probably thought he was acting rather strange. Akabayashi gave her his usual tilted grin and was about to say something to put her at ease—

When a third party interrupted him.

“Is that you, Sonohara?” said the voice. He spun around to see a young man.

“Oh…Yagiri,” said Anri. It was Seiji Yagiri, the boyfriend of her best friend, Mika Harima.

The newcomer glanced around the area. “Wait, so…does that mean you’re done with whatever you were doing with Mika?”

“Huh…?”

She was confused, and now, so was he.

Recognizing that the two were friends, Akabayashi turned his back and waved to her. “Well, I’ll just be going now. You take care of yourself, hear?”

“Oh…yes! Of course! Thank you!” she replied, still bobbing up and down, until Akabayashi left the vicinity of Sonohara-dou.

“So who was that?” Seiji asked.

She smiled and said, “That was Mr. Akabayashi. He knew my mother…and he’s done a lot to help me.”

“What does he do?”

“Umm…I heard he delivers fresh crabs or runs a café or something… I think he does all kinds of stuff.”

“Huh… Seems like a strange guy…”

Seiji was still curious about Akabayashi, but then he came to his senses and returned to the topic on his mind.

“Oh, right. So are you saying you weren’t the person who called Mika earlier?”

“What…?”

Within seconds, Seiji Yagiri realized the truth and headed in a rush for a certain pharmaceutical company’s warehouse lot.

But that’s another story.

Six years ago

A shock ran through the skin around his right eye.

He could feel that much.

But whatever happened after that was a mystery.

A voice.

“I love you.”

A voice, an overwhelming voice that drowned out everything else, commanded his brain.

It was coming from around his eye, where he just felt the shock.

Oh, I see.

Understanding was instantaneous.

That katana hit my right eye…

And it was as if the eye itself was screaming in pain.

The voice raced from his eye through the rest of him, shredding his nerves, his bones, his muscle, his brain.

It was an unstoppable flood of words that threatened to wash his mind away. It was as if they had form, a solidity like lead that rocketed around inside his body.

For the first time in his life, he felt fear. He felt his mind and flesh being devoured from the inside out.

The voice speaking of “love” might erase him entirely. It might alter him, re-create him as something else.

The man who lived through nothing but violence now felt a bizarre, foreign fear.

However—amid his fear, he felt a different impulse rising within him.

This, too, was an overwhelming urge that he had never experienced before.

Hey… What the hell is this? Why now? What am I thinking?

But all the while, the voice grew, increasing its pressure.

It grew to hold its own will, flooding his heart with words of love and

and

and

love

love

was all

ve, love, love, lo

ause of love.” “So mu

ust love people.” “Don’t be ridicu

“Don’t talk about who you love, that just

o, no, no! I love all, all, all of humanity equally

“Shut up for a second.”

What do I love? Don’t be ridiculous! It’s everything

love blood splatter.” “I love hard bone.” “It’s love.” “Nice

so I forgive you.” “So you can forgive me, too, okay” “I won’t

all of this.” “Ah!” “The slice of meat during the moment of ecstasy

I just love the soft and yet hard muscle that rips right apart!” “And there’s

that hard bone, so smooth and supple, weak yet sharp, tough and cracking!” “Love

trembling and soft and silky and squishy sticking and sticking and sticking tight together

as voices echo with cries of love, yes? I’m so jealous I wish I had words of love to speak but I

don’t so I want you to love me instead I want to be filled but yes oh yes but oh yes I’m so jealous even dying can be a form of love lust is a powerful form of love but no you can’t try to narrow love to a definition that’s blasphemy against the heart there is no definition of love all that you need are those simple words I love you I love you I love you I love you

“Shut up.”

I love…lo…? …ve? …love…love…love…love?

“I said, shut the fuck up, stupid eye!”

The echoing words of love inside of him abruptly stopped.

At the same time, there was a click, a snapping sound from around his right eye.

The first was merely a mental sound; the second was a physical process in his retina.

“…!”

It was actually the slasher who was most surprised by this change.

He had reached up to the eye that was just cut—and gouged it out with his own hand.

Then he crushed it in his palm and stood boldly before the slasher. The fear from moments ago was gone now, and in what light could be gleaned from the now-stabilizing streetlight overhead, his remaining eye glared fiercely.

An ordinary person might have yelped in the face of that glare. But the slasher chose to speak to him instead.

“…You’re really something.”

“…”

“I’ve never seen someone escape from this girl’s voice before. Saika was so shocked that she drew back inside of me. Maybe she’s feeling like she just got dumped,” the woman said, her voice soothing, perhaps even relieved.

It certainly didn’t sound like the voice of a mad, indiscriminate attacker. She walked closer to him. The countless blades were gone from her skin, leaving only the one katana in her hands, now its ordinary length.

“I’m happy… I thought no one would ever try to stop her…”

Large tears spilled from her glowing red eyes. The droplets caught that red light, making it look as though blood was dripping from her tear ducts.

“Are you going…to finish me at last?” she asked. It sounded like a request to die.

He shook his head. “No…sorry. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Then he started striding forward, no fear of her deadly sword. “But…I had something I wanted to tell you. I had to shut up that annoying noise first—that’s all.”

Already he was within the katana’s range. But she did not slice at him.

“What’s your name?”

“…”

“Actually, never mind. I don’t need your name.”

Then he was close enough to reach out and touch her. He came to a stop there.

And as the red-eyed woman watched in surprise and confusion, he spoke.

—Spoke the words brought by that other impulse within him, spoke his mind in a way he had never done before.

“…I’m in love with you.”

“…Huh?” she said, red eyes wide.

Those simple words represented his entire life being staked on a gamble.

He had built himself through the scars he’d inflicted on others. And now the words tumbled out of him as if he were trying to eject all those ugly red marks at once.

“For the first time in my life, I believed a woman was beautiful. I wanted to hug and squeeze one.”

“…”

“I don’t care if you’re human, or a monster, or even some kind of Buddhist goddess. All that matters is that I love you as a woman,” he said, his speech getting gradually faster as his self-control failed to hide his agitation. “Even I know that this is crazy to say, comin’ right after we just met, and you sliced my damn eyeball…but I ain’t pretending it’s based on logic. Please—marry me!”

The entire scene had only taken a few minutes. She was a monster. He just lost the sight of one of his eyes forever. Anyone would assume that his sanity had buckled under the extreme circumstances.

But the man’s brain was operating quite normally, successfully withstanding the pain and loss of that eyeball. It was much later that he realized that not only was it “love at first sight,” it was also “love at single sight.”

A person he’d only ever identified as a target to be hurt—a “weak, fragile” woman—had turned out to be a presence every bit his equal, completely capable of killing him.

The ghostliness of those glowing red eyes, the feminine figure, the flowing black hair melting into the darkness of night—all these things melded together in womanly beauty and enchanted his heart.

He’d never professed love before.

This innocence, his first ever feelings of romance, got under the cracks of his protective pride—his violence—and shot it someplace far, far away.

But that very first confession ended in failure.

“…Thank you. I’m very flattered that you said you love me, even like this,” she chuckled with a hint of sadness. “But I’m afraid I can’t return the feeling.”

She shook her head and spoke the only two words that could cut him deeper than her katana already had: “I’m married.”

“…!”

“I still love my husband and daughter. So I can’t reciprocate your sentiment.”

The sheer finality of that statement made his knees quake. Whether through sadness, anger, embarrassment, or the strange beauty of her rejection, he promptly slapped his cheeks with both hands. The blood drooling from his mutilated eye socket stained his hand even further. Intense pain shot through his face.

But he held fast without yelling, silencing the trembling in his knees through willpower alone.

“I see… That’s too bad. But…can I at least get your name?”

“…”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to bother your husband or daughter.”

She seemed hesitant, but something in his gaze eventually convinced her. She summoned up some level of commitment and said, “That’s right… If you harm my daughter or husband, I will cut you down with everything I have.”

“Ha-ha… I’ll have earned it.”

“My name…is Sayaka Sonohara.”

The name jolted him.

Sonohara.

The name of the antiques dealer he was just about to go beat up.

“Well, well… I guess it’s fate. You just saved your hubby.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Talking to myself.” He smirked. Then he turned his back on the slasher and walked away from the scene. “My name’s Akabayashi. Let me know if you ever get tired of that husband of yours.”

“Believe me, I’m a worthy enough man to take care of both you and your daughter.”

Present day, Ikebukuro, taxi

“Yo, Akabayashi,” said a familiar voice over the phone.

“Is that you, Aozaki? You really do love calling me when I’m in a taxi, don’t you?”

“I don’t give a damn about your schedule or where you are.”

“So what’s the call about, then? If it’s about the young miss, things have calmed down a bit.”

“Nah. I just called to say my farewell,” said the low-pitched, jovial voice through the phone.

“Why’s that? You gonna kill me once and for all? Or are you staging a mutiny and leaving the Awakusu-kai?”

“Don’t be a moron. You know there’s nothing to be gained in that.”

“Of course not. If there’s one thing that’s real about you, it’s your devotion to Chairman Awakusu.”

“Just shut up and listen,” Aozaki snapped in irritation. “You’ve been living too free these days.”

“Those ghosts from five years ago have come back to destroy you.”

May 5, night, ruined building

Quite a ways away from the center of the city stood an unfinished building, its construction halted for some reason or another.

The first two floors were finished like any other building, but everything above that was stuck in skeletal form, the concrete bars standing open in the air and looming eerily over the night.

Men quietly surrounded the building.

“That him?”

“Yep, it’s him.”

The men in hoodies had bandannas wrapped around their faces. What little skin could be seen of their arms and necks featured fake tattoo stickers with similar patterns. They carried metal pipes, knives, two-by-fours studded with nails, and other crude weapons. These weren’t youngsters about to enjoy a spooky rite of passage at a haunted abandoned building—they were outfitted to bust those ghosts themselves.

“I can’t believe we’re gettin’ paid two hundred thousand just to wax that old man.”

“Even better, they said they’re also gonna give us the lion’s share of the shipment when we re-up.”

“I heard they were gonna raise our commission on deals.”

The information each of them possessed was varied and wild-eyed, but the tattoo-stickered men all shared one particular fact: Their job was to go into the abandoned building and kill the man named Akabayashi.

Hardly any of them knew that he was a lieutenant of the Awakusukai. For the most part, they were unaware of the Awakusu-kai at all. But they were drug dealers drawn to a reward for killing a man, so it was possible that even if they did know what the Awakusu-kai was, they would still leap at the offer.

In essence, they were the lowest, most disposable pawns in the drug operation. But here they were, right at the destination of their target.

“Man, the Dollars are so useful,” one of them said, staring at his phone. Earlier this evening, he posted to the Dollars’ message board a picture of Akabayashi attached, saying, “I’m looking for this man. I owe him my life, but I don’t know where to find him! Let me know if you see him, so I can thank him!”

And in the very same evening, they found out that he used this abandoned building as a hideout.

“Just when I figured we’d never find his lair, it turns out he’s doin’ a homeless gig.”

“I dunno, man, I heard he’s crazy tough.”

“Nah, no worries,” said another of the gang. He held up a cylindrical object: a Molotov cocktail. “I brought a couple of these, so we can just burn the building down.”

He seemed gung ho on the idea, and the others laughed and agreed that it was a good plan. Some of them grabbed the bottles with eyes glazed over; they’d clearly been dipping into their product.

“So once he runs outta the building, we just nab him, take him out into the hills, and…end of story.”

“Exactly.”

“Let’s burn it down.”

They all laughed, including the ones who still looked sober. In that sense, from the moment they put on fake tattoos, they were already losing their grip on reality.

The same moment, inside

“…I can’t believe you’d show yourself like this, Akabayashi,” said a stone-faced man, sitting on a toppled oil drum inside the abandoned building. There were nearly a dozen men with him, all clearly members of the underworld.

Standing across from them, dressed as usual with walking stick in hand, was Akabayashi. He maintained his breezy, aloof manner in the face of their open loathing and said, “Well, it’s a summons from the gentlemen who taught me so much, back in the day. I can’t just blow that off.”

“You talk different than you used to. Was that all just an act to fool us back then? Or are you playing coy like this now so you can devour the Awakusu from the inside like you did to us?”

“Actually, you may be surprised to learn that people change and grow. I always assumed that I would be the same person forever after I hit twenty…but the thing is, shocking experiences have a way of changing you,” he announced, rapping the floor with his stick. “Such as being attacked by a slasher on the street or falling in love with a woman at first sight for the first time in your life.”

“Cut the bull—”

“On the other hand, you said you wanted to talk one-on-one, but it looks like you’ve got quite a gathering of familiar faces here. Unless I’m mistaken or hallucinating?” Akabayashi said, cracking his neck as he surveyed the group.

The other man’s expression softened a bit. “That’s right, I’m the only one talking. No guarantees about anything else, though.”

“Ah, I see. I didn’t see any cars around the building, though. Did you all walk here?”

“…?”

The confident smile never left Akabayashi’s face, even in his present danger. The other man cautiously replied, “No…we thought you might get spooked and run. So we parked them a ways off. But I didn’t really think you’d show up. If necessary, we were going to rustle up someone you knew and kidnap them as a hostage.”

“Which is exactly what I showed up to prevent. But it helps that you don’t have cars,” Akabayashi said, scratching his cheek. His grin deepened.

“…?”

“Well, if you had lots of cars around, you might get spooked and run, after all.”

“What the…hell are you talking about?”

“My line of thought was the same as yours. Yeah, we can talk one-on-one, but I’m not so much of a hero that I’d bother to fight you all on my own.”

“?!”

Suspicion flitted across their faces.

Did the Awakusu betray us?

They tensed up, preparing for some sudden sign, but they still needed to find out what Akabayashi was really doing.

“So…you really don’t realize that the Awakusu left you out to dry, do you, Akabayashi?”

“What’s that? You already cleared this up with the boss?” he replied.

Now the other man was truly confused. “The Awakusu-kai will not interfere with you and me in any way. You might have thought you called for backup, but no one’s going to—”

Ktok.

Right in the middle of the man’s menacing speech, Akabayashi cut him off by rapping the bottom of the stick on the floor.

“Ha-ha-ha. When did I say anything about the Awakusu-kai?”

“?!”

“It never occurred to you that I might have connections beyond just the Awakusu?”

“No way…!”

Belatedly, the men reassessed the fact that they had called Akabayashi here to make him pay the price for killing their old boss. A nasty sweat broke out on their backs.

Did he bring in yet another yakuza gang…?

“…You’re bluffing.”

“Think so? Go ahead and look out the window,” Akabayashi taunted.

The man glanced over at one of his companions, signaling that he should look outside. The bald man sucked in his breath and headed for the window. He approached the empty window frame carefully, keeping his weight low as he watched for snipers.

Suddenly, the room was full of the sound of breaking glass.

But the building was incomplete, and there were no panes in the windows. The source of the sound was soon quite apparent.

The man with the shaved head instantly began to scream, his body enveloped in flames.

“Aaauuughh! Gaaaaahhhh!”

Some kind of liquid was spreading on the ground, and a second later, it, too, was ablaze.

They realized it was a Molotov cocktail immediately, but before their bodies could react to that knowledge, more flaming bottles entered through the window, shattering in rhythm.

“Outside! There are people outside!” screamed the bald man, who had succeeded in putting out the flames on his face by rolling on the ground. Just before the first bottle had hit him, he’d seen a crowd of figures surrounding the building.

Some of the men inside rushed farther to the back of the room, while others headed for the window on the opposite side. One of them put his back to the wall, peering through the window from the side—and pulled out a gun.

Without hesitation, he started firing into the crowd outside.

When the very first pop went off, the drug dealers assumed that something inside the building must have exploded. They only realized their mistake when one of them trembled and crumpled to the ground.

“H-hey, what just…?”

“Oh, G-God, my…my leg…”

There was a round hole in the thigh of his jeans, with a red stain spreading outward from it. They only realized it was a bullet wound when the second and third shots rang out.

“Oh, shit! It’s a gun! Holy shit, the guy’s packin’!”

“Kill him!”

Foolish as it was, they were still under the mistaken assumption that they were dealing with a single man. If they were at least professionals used to undertaking an attack of this sort, they might have scouted out the place and made sure to confirm a number inside. But not only were they rank amateurs, they also weren’t even all sober. The gang was in no state to carry out their mission.

Those few who were in a proper state of mind wisely fled the scene, but most of the agitated men decided instead to charge into the building in search of vengeance.

A small war had just erupted, here in this building far from the center of the city…

And neither side understood who it was they were fighting.

Inside the chaotic, flaming building, the man who had faced off with Akabayashi bellowed, “Akabayashi, you son of a bitch! You set us up!”

The ex-con looked around, but there was no sight of his foe anywhere. As a matter of fact, Akabayashi had slipped out at the moment the bald man first caught flame and drew the attention of all his fellows.

“I knew you killed the boss, Akabayashiii!”

From where he was standing, the man in question murmured, “It wasn’t me.”

He was leaving the building via the back door, as nonchalantly as if nothing was happening. “I just let it happen.”

On the ground at his feet were two men with fake tattoos, who were supposed to be guarding the door. Once he had put a little distance between himself and the building, he saw several police cars drive past.

“Oooh, there they go. Perfect timing—glad I reported it ahead of time,” he said, hiding out of sight as the cars passed. He started down a back alley to get farther from the scene. Inside one of the cars, an officer had the receiver in his hand, probably to report a confirmation of the burning building and gunshots.

Akabayashi headed away, pulling out his phone to check the Dollars’ home page and delete his own post reading, “Oh, I know him. He’s staying at an abandoned building here on the map in this link.”

The post had a picture of the building, too. He deleted it all, shut off his burner phone, and returned it to his pocket.

Then he looked up at the night sky, wearing his usual smirk, and muttered to himself.

“Yeah, the Dollars are useful. But truth is they’re also pretty scary.”

May 6, morning, Awakusu-kai headquarters

“Skirmish breaks out between criminal organization and youth gang! Sixteen injured! Mass arrests in the middle of the night!”

The tabloid front page blared the latest lurid news, behind which an elderly man murmured, “Oh, look at this, Aozaki. Ruri Hijiribe’s going to put out a photo album.”

He was looking at the celebrity news page, totally unrelated to the front-page article, and cackled, “There’ll be a three-thousand-unit limited edition, too. That’ll fetch a good price. Couldn’t ya just buy ’em all up and sell ’em on that hee-bay thing?!”

“I don’t know… I’m not the right guy to ask about that. Check with Shiki or Kazamoto…”

“Ahh. Well, at any rate, tell one of the kids to go and buy three for me.”

“Please, boss, think of your age. You gotta set an example for the young guys,” Aozaki pleaded. He glanced at the front page of the newspaper held open across from him. “So, boss…did you know this would happen?”

He was referring to the outcome of the two incidents involving Akabayashi, of course. All those men fresh out of jail who had gone after him were promptly arrested again. The kids with the fake tats were all rounded up, too, which would certainly set off quite a lot of police and media investigation into the student-run gang.

While neither group was a real enemy to the Awakusu-kai, the incident certainly cleared two potential annoyances out of their hair and had the added bonus of drawing police attention away from them for a time.

Without taking his eyes off the paper, Dougen Awakusu answered, “I had a hunch. A bit of this, a bit of that. I knew that Akabayashi could handle his own matters—and it seems that someone else was watching out for him, too.”

“…Whatever do you mean?”

“I suspect someone tipped him off that he was being targeted. He couldn’t have arranged such an elaborate trap in advance without knowing about it,” Dougen commented, his eye peering over the top of the paper at Aozaki.

“I don’t know who would have done such a thing, sir…but I suspect that since we weren’t going to take action, that person figured words didn’t count.”

“Hah! Never took you for the type to tell jokes. So you wanted to settle your score with Akabayashi yourself, huh?”

“Now you’re the one joking, boss,” Aozaki replied, shaking his head with a grin. “Maybe in the old days, but now that he’s gone soft, there’s no point to killing him.”

“You know, soft can be a good thing, too. Lots of stuff bounces off you when you’re soft…”

The phone on the desk rang. Dougen fumbled the receiver loose, cleared his throat, and put it to his ear. From Aozaki’s position, what sounded like a scream of anguish squeaked through the speaker. Perhaps the brand-new gang that got itself arrested last night was now calling for help.

Dougen maintained the same cold, steady tone of voice he always did when on the phone. “Why, I don’t know what you mean. We said we wouldn’t take action against you, and that was that. If you tried to attack Akabayashi and wound up in a trap, that’s none of my concern.”

They were no fools. They were men of the night, responsible for building the darkness of Ikebukuro.

Dougen ended the call and returned to his newspaper—with a sadistic smile on his lips this time.

“You see, I can’t betray my trading partners…but I can abandon them.”

Five years ago

The man changed after his meeting with the slasher.

He told people that he’d been attacked by the slasher but made up the details: “It was a huge old man, over six feet tall, with white hair.” He was actually just quoting a manga he’d read recently, but no one recognized it, so the others within the group merely laughed and said, “Turns out he’s human after all.”

Because of his injury, he got a temporary reprieve on the Sonoharadou job. He’d started the job, and he would finish it, he said. So he spent his time investigating the business, trying to find a way to save them—to save that beautiful, bewitching slasher…

One day, he learned that the slasher had struck at Sonohara-dou, killing the two parents.

The husband’s head was lopped clean off, while the wife’s stomach was slit in a manner resembling seppuku.

The daughter was still alive but in a state of terrible shock, unable to speak.

When he heard about it, he couldn’t believe it at first.

A terrible sense of loss infused his entire being. It was far worse than the feeling of losing his eye—it felt like his entire life was being ripped away.

But through his grief, he knew.

He knew that the wife, Sayaka Sonohara, had committed suicide.

She was the slasher, after all. Whatever happened, she ended up cutting off the head of the husband she loved, then turned the blade on her own belly.

But why had she done it?

Weren’t her husband and daughter equally precious to her?

It wasn’t the entire family, just her husband, who she killed before committing suicide, leaving only the daughter alive. Whatever could have happened to her body?

He was temporarily broken out of this train of unanswered questions by the sound of his boss’s voice.

“Hey, Akabayashi. No need to worry about Sonohara-dou anymore.”

“…Sir?”

Akabayashi was often tapped to serve as the yakuza boss’s bodyguard, in recognition of his skill. Today, the boss was heading to his favorite lady companion’s house alone, taking only the one guard.

“The people who own Sonohara-dou are both dead, as you know. And now we get the land without having to deal with them. Long live the slasher!”

“…”

“Whoops. I shouldn’t have mentioned that—forgot you lost your eye to him,” the boss said, a distasteful sneer on his face. “But the place would’ve been done for in either case.”

“…?”

“I gave the owner a little taste of medicine, you see.”

“…?!”

It was obvious what he meant by “medicine.”

Akabayashi had always hated drugs. As a man to whom strength and violence were everything, the idea of making your own bones more brittle was unfathomable to him. He didn’t have a crusade to stop the gang from doing its drug business; he just didn’t bother to think about it.

The boss cackled with delight and explained, “We already had a contract that gave us the right to seize his land as collateral, but I figured we could squeeze more out of him… So I made him an offer. Take out life insurance on your family and let’s make some money, I said.”

“…!”

“From what I hear, he was always the violent type at home. But once he got hooked on the dope, it got way worse. That stuff must’ve really fucked with his head,” his boss bragged—he’d probably had a few drinks. “They didn’t put this in the papers, but from what I heard, the kid had marks around her neck. The police thought it was the slasher who did it, but I’m betting that at some point, the old man tried to strangle his own daughter! All to raise the money to support his drug habit!”

“…”

“See? Crazy, right? You’re not gonna get the insurance if you kill the brat yourself! But maybe he actually thought he might get away with it? In either case, it’s laughable.”

The yakuza boss might as well have been intoxicated on his own speech. He wasn’t paying any attention to his surroundings.

“The thing is, that kid looked like she’d grow up to be a pretty fine-lookin’ woman herself! I figured I could whip up a convincing little IOU form and collect on the girl—she could make us a fortune! Maybe I could even get first dibs? Then again, she’s only what, twelve? Can’t have much experience yet, gah-ha-ha!”

There were a number of things the boss wasn’t paying attention to—that he failed to pay attention to.

One: the increasingly icy manner of the bodyguard charged with attending to his safety.

Two: the fact that they were in a totally empty back alley.

And three: that a man with a knife was approaching with murder in his eyes.

“Hmm…?”

At last, the boss noticed the third of these details. The man with the knife stared at the gleeful yakuza, seething with hatred.

“You bastard…”

“Who the hell are you? Who’re you with?!” the boss demanded.

But the tear-streaked young man with the knife responded, “You’ll pay…for what you did…to my sister…”

“Huh…? Oh, I get it. You must be that one girl’s brother. Yeah, now I remember seeing you in that family photo she carried around.”

“You got her hooked…on your damn drugs! It’s all because of you! Now they say…she might never wake up and walk around again!”

Apparently, the interloper had a score to settle with the boss over the gang’s drug-dealing operation.

“Hah! If anything, you should be thanking me for letting her last memories be blissful, then! C’mon, Akabayashi, do your job. Grab this ungrateful little shithead and squeeze the life outta…ah…ah…ah…”

He spun around to give Akabayashi his orders but froze in place.

As the saying goes, one can look down on another person like an ant—but in Akabayashi’s case, the gaze he was giving the shorter man was full of such disgust and anger that he might as well have been trying to squash that ant through visual pressure alone.

The gaze was so strong that the boss felt as though his shoulders were being held down. All that unstoppable pressure was emanating from the prosthetic right eye.

“Wh-what the hell…are you staring at me…like that…for…?”

He could barely even form the words to accost his subordinate. The pressure flowing from Akabayashi was so all-consuming that the boss completely forgot that he was in a dire situation that allowed for no distractions.

Several minutes later, the yakuza boss was lying facedown in the street, twitching. Red liquid pooled beneath his upper half.

A short ways away, the young man trembled, his knife dripping with blood.

“…”

Akabayashi took a step closer, causing the boy to turn the knife toward him. But either he instinctively realized he didn’t stand a chance against a much larger man, or he was satisfied at completing his revenge; in any case, the young man sat down on the spot.

“Kill me… Just kill me already! I can’t… There’s nothing I—”

Akabayashi slapped him. “If you die, who’s going to take care of your sister? Huh?”

“…! …? H…huh?”

The boy turned his trembling face to look up at Akabayashi. He clearly didn’t understand what the man was saying.

“Just…go. Hide the knife and get out of here. If you’re lucky, they’ll chalk this one up to the slasher.”

“…?! Ah…aaah… Th-tha…thank you!” he stammered, getting to his feet and hiding the knife under his shirt.

No doubt the young man had no idea why his life was being spared, but hearing the word sister had brought some measure of control back to his mind and spurred him away from the scene.

“‘Thank you’?” Akabayashi murmured, looking down at the corpse of his boss. “Don’t thank me, kid… You should hate me.”

“I just turned you into a murderer…”

Present day, near a Yamanote Line station, shopping district backstreet

“Ooh, Ruri’s got a photo album coming out? Better get my preorder in.”

Akabayashi strode down the street, reading the same tabloid as Dougen Awakusu had.

Suddenly, his eye stopped on a particular word in the article. “Oh, right, she changed agencies. And they haven’t found Yodogiri yet? Guess Shiki’s got his hands full.”

The word in question was the name of Ruri Hijiribe’s new talent agency. “Jack-o’-Lantern, huh?”

It was a very peculiar and memorable name, but Akabayashi snorted and thought, Hell, it’s me.

While it wasn’t widely known in Japan, a jack-o’-lantern was a pumpkin-faced spirit often associated with Halloween. It started off as an Irish legend: a human turned away from heaven for his wicked deeds but also shunned from hell for cheating the devil and therefore doomed to wander the earth as a ghost forever, carrying a lantern carved from a pumpkin.

In the world of the yakuza, the most forbidden act was to kill one’s parent—the boss.

Akabayashi didn’t do the deed himself, but there was no denying that he abandoned his boss to a certain death. Naturally, he wasn’t going to wind up in heaven, either.

He was something like a ghost, unable to exist fully in the light or the darkness, wandering aimlessly.

Maybe calling myself a jack-o’-lantern is a stretch. That’s cooler than I deserve.

Akabayashi chuckled as he walked along the street, paced from behind by a smaller figure.

This sneaking follower carried the sharp glint of a knife in its hands.

However…

“Yah!”

“!”

Akabayashi knew he was being trailed. He spun around, grabbed his assailant’s hand, and snatched the knife right out of it.

It turned out to be a boy, maybe fifteen years old.

“Come on, kids should be kids, not playing with toys like this. Go back home and play some video games. You can’t hurt anyone doing that.”

“Eep! Aa…aaah!”

The boy raced away. Akabayashi watched him go and tucked the knife into his pocket. “Hmm… Does a small knife count as recyclable? Or is it classified as metal garbage?”

He wondered about the boy. There had been a tattoo sticker on his neck, which meant he was one of the remaining members of that gang. Or perhaps he was hoping to get in, and they ordered him to stab Akabayashi as a means of initiation.

I’ll be damned. If it weren’t for the fake tat, I really would have no idea.

He considered the Dollars and the way Anri reacted yesterday and couldn’t help but feel that something in the atmosphere of the city was eerily lukewarm.

It’s like the kids these days really don’t know how to tell the difference between day and night. Not that a pumpkin head like me has any room to call them out.

He murmured, “Still, I’m allowed to pray.”

If possible, I’d like to at least keep the boundary between day and night clear—so that Anri and Miss Akane can avoid being collateral damage.

He thought about the daughter of the first woman he ever loved. The way she was growing up to resemble her mother reminded him of the slasher.

Maybe…

Just maybe, if he continued wandering the boundary line between hell and heaven like a jack-o’-lantern, he might one day run into that slasher again.

That’s stupid. I must be reading too much manga.

He smirked at himself again, rapped his walking stick, and continued on his way.

“But if the girls say they prefer the night…well, it ain’t my place to stop them.”

And so, the man began to walk as the sun set,

Following the boundary line between the light side of town and the dark.

With the scar of his first-sight love burned permanently into one eye,

The man once more vanished into the depths of the city, smiling easily.