Durarara!! - Volume 9 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Izaya Orihara

Tokyo, on the street

“Hey… What’s that the courier’s holding?” asked one of Heaven’s Slave’s young dealers to his companion.

The other one sighed and muttered, “Same thing as yesterday, a laptop bag.”

“You think it’s a laptop in there?”

“Probably. Or money or…casino chips, maybe.”

This was the third day they’d been keeping tabs on the Black Rider and Izaya Orihara. They considered just abducting Izaya directly, since he probably knew something they could use, but he had Dragon Zombie goons for protection, so they couldn’t get him while he was on the move. He was also quick enough to give them the slip when they tried following him back to his hideout, so they couldn’t get to him that way, either.

As for the Black Rider, they could trace the urban legend on the job, but once again were unable to follow the trail back to any kind of home base. On the bright side, they were able to put together a good picture of what the rider was doing on the errand.

At each location, the courier made contact with people of various positions and affiliations. One of them just so happened to be a Heaven’s Slave customer, so when they called him later, they learned that he was also a client of Amphisbaena’s underground casino, and he claimed he’d been asked over and over about that.

By using his drug source as leverage, they were able to pry some interesting information out of him: The Black Rider had bought his Amphisbaena chip at a truly preposterous price. He seemed to think he could just claim that he “lost it” the next time the casino opened, but they would likely never contact him again.

More concerning was the fact that the Black Rider was collecting the casino’s electronic chips, riding around in search of several different members to retrieve them from. That occupied the young men’s attention and drew it away from Izaya.

Following in their car, the dealers eventually realized the Black Rider was taking a different action from usual today. She stopped the bike on the side of the road, pulled a laptop out of the bag, and opened it up.

“…What’s going on there?” said the thug in the passenger seat, watching the woman through a pair of binoculars. He was able to make out what looked to be a map on the screen.

The rider closed the laptop and stuffed it back into the bag without turning it off. It was probably in some kind of sleep mode. As they followed the motorcycle, the dealers decided to call Shijima and relay this new information.

“Is there any way you can steal that laptop?”

They wanted to explain that it was impossible, but the mental image of the member with the dart stuck in the bridge of his nose convinced them to at least say, “We’ll try,” before hanging up.

“Steal it…? How we gonna do that?”

“We can’t just hit the bike to make it stop, not in the middle of the city like this…”

They continued their stealthy pursuit, feeling gloomy.

But just then, they witnessed something unexpected. Just a bit ahead, the Black Rider slowed down and pulled over to the entrance of a rather quiet, secluded park. She checked something on the laptop again, then headed into the green space.

There was a man sitting on a bench there, who watched as the courier approached and showed him a cell phone or some other device.

Is he another member of that casino? they wondered, just as they noticed something else.

Hanging off the handlebar of the motorcycle was the bag that held the laptop, completely unattended. The courier must have assumed that the conversation would only take a second.

“…!”

It was the best opportunity the dealers could have hoped for. They sidled up to the motorcycle, reached out the window of their car, and quietly lifted the bag off the handlebar.

Yes! And the courier hasn’t noticed yet!

They were ready to roll quietly away and vanish before anyone noticed their crime, except…

Hhhhrrreeeeeeeeeee!!

The black motorcycle produced a sound like an enormous horse bellowing and lifted its front half into a wheelie, despite the lack of anyone riding it.

“Wh-wh-what the—?!”

Even more shocking, the bike’s outline was writhing and shifting like smoke, morphing into the form of a giant horse without a head.

“An anti-theft…? No, what the fuck is that?!”

“Muh-mon…mons, monstraaaah! Whaaaaa—?! Aaaaah!”

At the sound of the beast’s whinnying, the courier spun around and came rushing back from the bench.

“F-f-f-fuh-fuh! Floor it!” stammered the man in the passenger seat. It took him so long to get the words out that the driver already had his foot jammed onto the pedal.

They achieved their goal. They had the courier’s laptop. The only thing left to do was get away, they told themselves, teeth chattering. They raced for the thoroughfare ahead.

In the rearview mirror, the courier was bearing down on them.

“Aaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaah!”

They drove.

Drove, raced, sped.

The car’s engine rotated fit to burst into flame as they peeled away without a thought for potential accidents, obstacles, or anything that wasn’t putting as much distance as possible between them and the Black Rider.

Once on the main road, they sped significantly over the speed limit before darting down one side street, then another, desperate to escape. After turning the third corner, the driver looked into the mirror—and saw nothing behind them. After the fourth, they were back on the main road, part of an endless flow of vehicles, where the passenger had time to scan the area.

The Black Rider was nowhere to be seen. The only disturbance was from the car behind them, which honked at their forceful merge into the lane.

All was normal.

It was exactly what you’d expect to see in the city. No room for monsters here.

In a daze of half disbelief, they set to check on the laptop in the bag. The man in the passenger seat got out his phone to let Shijima know.

“Thanks. Bring me the laptop at once. Kumoi will be slightly pleased with this.”

Despite the clipped nature of his statement, he sounded a bit reassured about it, but that was nothing compared with the relief of the dealers.

Once their pulses returned to normal levels, they shared a look.

They had escaped.

From there, we head forward, to a dark place.

Tokyo, out-of-business bar

“Heaven’s…Slave!”

Somewhere in Tokyo, inside an establishment that had once been a bar, Earthworm’s eyes went wide upon hearing the introduction from the man named Shijima.

She’d just been about to torture the info dealer to get the information she wanted about this group—so why were they here all of a sudden? She’d never heard that they were allies of Izaya Orihara’s, but maybe that was just a sign of her own lack of understanding. If it was true, this was a perilous situation.

Just as Earthworm began to wonder if she could use the man with the burlap sack over his head as a hostage, Shijima proved that to be unnecessary.

“Ah, is that the info broker the Awakusu-kai hired to give them info on you…Izaya Orihara?” he said with a brief glance at the imprisoned man.

Hesitantly, Earthworm replied, “You…don’t know him?”

“Hardly. Although we did utilize him to discover this location.”

He snapped his fingers, and a man came through the door with a laptop, which he placed on the counter so that everyone could see the screen. There was a map on it, with a horde of red dots arrayed all over the diagram.

“This is the program that displays the locations of the transmitters embedded in all your chips. Although I admit I don’t know what sort of system you’re using yet.”

It was the Amphisbaena chip-management program.

“…! How did you…?!” Earthworm gaped.

Shijima shrugged. “How, indeed? And how did we decipher the signals being sent by the chips? You’ll have a better answer from him than me, I suspect.”

“…The info dealer?”

“He gave the Black Rider this laptop to do his snooping around for him,” Shijima said, glancing at the tied-up man with an oddly happy smile on his lips.

For her part, Earthworm stared at the bound man in shock. “I had no idea he knew that much… So does that mean he knew the location of this hideout a long time ago?”

“Who can say except for him? All I know is that we were following him around, he went into a building, and a group of your people came back out. They were carrying a very large suitcase, big enough to hold a grown man. And the funny thing is, one of the red dots on this map was moving along with them.”

Shijima approached the seated man and began to feel around in his pockets. On the third try, he found and removed a single casino chip.

“See? Here it is. He had one, too.”

“…I guess we can chalk that one up to our people for not properly searching him first,” Earthworm said, glaring at her companions. They turned to one another and began the process of deflecting responsibility.

Shijima watched the distress among the group and asked, “So, are you the leader of Amphisbaena?”

“…No. The real owner hardly ever shows up among us. I don’t know where he is.”

“That’s a clever way of doing it. Our leader is rather similar. But we’ll have plenty of time to talk about that later, once we’ve gotten rid of this info dealer,” Shijima said, resting a hand on the head of the man under the burlap sack. “We figured that we were going to abduct him and do it ourselves, but now you’ve saved us the trouble. I guess there was no need to send anyone after his sisters after all.”

“…? You were after his sisters, too?”

“What? You too?” Shijima looked a bit surprised.

The caution never left Earthworm’s gaze. “I just gave the order about an hour ago to take them both, one at a time.”

“…Well, that’s a shame. We understand that the girls are dangerous on their own, so we sent some of our best after them. I’m not afraid of the two sides getting into a squabble…but I’d prefer if we didn’t draw the attention of the police. I suppose I’ll call my people off. We don’t need the hostages anyway.”

He pulled out his cell phone. “I hope you believe me when I say we’re not interested in being hostile with you. I came to discuss business…and I’d prefer to avoid the Awakusu-kai finding out about it. That’s all.”

As he spoke, he looked through the list to find the text addresses of his dealers who went to abduct Kururi and Mairu Orihara, but a ringtone filled the room before he could finish. It came not from Shijima’s phone but from one on the counter of the bar.

“…Is that me?” Earthworm wondered. It said the number was unlisted.

Who is it? Maybe…the owner?

She answered the phone, equal parts worry and excitement. “Hello…?”

“…”

The other end of the call was silent. Shijima was curious about this sudden call, too, his fingers still as he listened in.

But just then, he got a call, too, the vibration clear in the quiet room.

“…?”

His call was also from an unlisted number. With trepidation, he answered it.

What he heard was a woman saying, “Hello? Hello?” into her phone, right in front of him.

“…Huh?”

A shiver of cold air slid down his back. Earthworm looked abruptly toward him as she heard his grunt through the phone.

Neither of them understood what was happening. Then, after a few seconds, a third voice entered the call.

“Hey.”

“Who?” “…Who’s there?” they asked, Shijima and Earthworm hearing each other through the phone and the air.

The other person on the call announced in a clear, crisp voice, “I’m glad the three-way call seems to be working. I’ve never tried it before.”

“Who are you…?”

“Oh, sorry, sorry. We haven’t spoken yet, have we? But you both know me pretty well, I’d say.”

“…No way.”

Both underbosses got the same nasty premonition.

And then, as though measuring the perfect amount of time for his payoff, the man on the phone introduced himself.

“Would you recognize the name…Izaya Orihara?”

Both of the listeners heard a rolling sound then, right near their eardrums. It was the sound of muscles tensing due to their jaws clenching.

Why now?

Why did he have their numbers?

But the situation was so bizarre, so unexpected, that they were both late to arrive on the most important question of all.

In unison, they turned their heads, ever so slowly, toward a single spot in the room.

To the man with the burlap sack over his head, who had been silent all day.

Again in unison, they wondered the exact same crucial question.

Then…

…who is he?

At that moment, Ikebukuro, office

“Huh? That’s weird…”

“What is it, Tanaka?” asked his coworker.

Tom Tanaka looked around and answered, “I’m supposed to be on the night shift with Shizuo and Vorona…but I don’t see Shizuo anywhere…”

Vorona was scanning the area right there with him, but there was no sign of the man in the distinctive bartender outfit anywhere in the office.

“He’d better not have gotten involved in more funny business.”

In a dark place

“You’ve both got rather extreme methods, wouldn’t you say? Abduction! Are we going to find out that you’ve been responsible for a number of missing detectives, too?” said the voice on the phone.

Earthworm hardly registered it.

Who…? If the man on the phone is Izaya Orihara, then…who’s under this sack?

She knew Izaya Orihara’s face from photos. It was this source that she’d been using to envision the face of the man under her care, enjoying his potential expressions. And now the entire basis for her actions had been overturned.

Numerous possibilities came and went inside her head, but they were all groundless fantasies that melded into the swirl of chaos, which, combined with the unexpected arrival of Heaven’s Slave, took her brain into a deep, dark place.

“…”

With her mind empty, Earthworm reached over to the burlap sack and placed her hand on the knotted drawstring. It was still tied tight.

“…I’m going to take this off. I mean it,” she muttered; it was unclear whether this was to the man underneath or herself. She made to simply rip the bag right off his head with the knot still tied tight. She stuck her fingers under the opening around his neck and yanked the fabric upward.

In the space she opened, the hair hanging down the back of the man’s neck was black.

Ikebukuro, office

“Hey. Sorry I’m late,” said Shizuo as he came through the door.

Tom exhaled and grumbled, “What happened, man? You’re never late like this.”

“Sorry. I had to help the boss with something.”

“Oh, I gotcha. Say no more.”

“What is the conduct of a duty contracted from the president?” wondered Vorona.

Tom exhaled harder this time. “It’s basically bodyguard work. Our boss has a number of enemies, see…but I can explain that all some other time.”

Relieved that Shizuo’s absence hadn’t been due to some unexpected trouble, Tom took his phone and headed for the door.

I’ll take peace and quiet over unpredictable excitement any day of the week, he thought, as he headed out to his notably violent job of collecting unpaid debts from deadbeats.

“Let’s just head out there and do a normal day’s work.”

“Gotcha.”

“I am understanding.”

…With two subordinates who were even more violent and dangerous than the job required in tow.

At that moment, Rakuei Gym

“Hey, where’s Eijirou?” asked a man with a squat silhouette, like a giant tree stump. But being squat did not mean he was actually short; in fact, he was reasonably tall, but that paled in comparison to his bulging armor of muscles like melded tires.

“Sir! Eijirou hasn’t been seen all afternoon!” said an apprentice.

“So he’s gone and run off again. The little bastard…,” said the muscled man, Eiichirou Sharaku—Eijirou’s brother. He exhaled a breath as massive as he was.

“And it’s one thing if he’s just ditching work… I just hope he’s not getting into some fight on the street again.”

In a dark place

Like Earthworm, Shijima was in a mild panic.

That isn’t Izaya Orihara?

As the woman desperately tried to rip the burlap sack off the seated man’s head, Shijima focused on the voice coming from the phone.

“So you’re Shijima, huh? It would’ve been more interesting if that Kumoi person had come.”

“…You know about Mr. Kumoi?”

“No, not really. Listen, I would’ve been happy not picking on you, but not only did you make an open attempt on my life, you also thought you could get my sisters involved. And that’s a problem for me.”

Shijima ground his teeth together.

How much does he know? And…more importantly, what should I do? Get away from here for now? Does he have his own cat’s paws in the room with us? If anything, I can’t even trust my own people anymore! Who’s the guy tied down? Is he with Izaya, too?!

If the man who was tied down started to struggle, would it be dangerous if they were here?

What if he was a police officer or Awakusu-kai yakuza? What if he saw their faces?

Out of these two possibilities, Shijima’s concerns about the former gradually faded. The man sitting in the chair, judging by the state of his body, had little physical training. In fact, he seemed to have no connection at all to brute strength or martial arts.

At that moment, Tokyo, back alley

“…Man, this is the biggest pain in the ass I ever had. Look at this. Look at y’all. Buncha morons with no value but in numbers,” slurred Eijirou Sharaku, who stood in the midst of a crowd of about ten men, all knocked out.

At odds with the violent machismo of the scene, a bright and cheerful girl’s voice said, “Are you okay, Master? Are you hurt?”

“Course I ain’t. And shouldn’t that be my question to you?” he griped to Mairu, who giggled.

“But if it were just me, it really woulda been bad. These guys were super-tough!”

“You’re damn lucky I happened to be skippin’ work to wander around town and just happened to spot you and those morons followin’ you around.”

“Yeah, right. I bet you were keeping tabs on me. This morning, I talked about how some weird guys’ve been stalking me for days! And you’re just shy and humble enough not to admit what you were doing! Thanks for lookin’ out for me, Master! You sure you aren’t into little girls?!”

“Hey, where’d that last part come from?! That had nothing to do with your thanks!”

From a distance, another man watched the pair talk. He was of a different affiliation than the people who actually attempted to attack her—he was from the group selling Heaven’s Slave.

There was a bowgun in his hands, which he had trained right on Eijirou’s body.

You gotta be kidding me. I was gonna shoot her in the leg to make it easy to carry her away, and then this happens… Oh well, at least they’re alone now. I’ll get rid of the guy first.

He had no thought of giving up on the plan— in his mind, the best idea was to take the girl and blame it on the strange group that attacked them. The bowgun was modified such that it was easily lethal if it struck the wrong spot. After witnessing the man’s power in combat, the watcher pulled the trigger without a second thought.

But…

“Besides, Mairu… Whoa!” Eijirou yelped, twisting backward.

Something collided into the alley, the sound ringing out.

His right foot was extended high over his head. A second later, some kind of long object fell from above, rotating wildly. He snatched it out of the air and saw that it was a bowgun dart.

“…”

Without speaking, Eijirou picked up a stone from the ground at his feet, then hurled it at the bushes of the park just beyond the alleyway. The rock shot like a bullet right into the leaves.

“Buh—,” came a brief shout, then the sound of something collapsing.

Satisfied that he’d hit his target, Eijirou rolled and cracked his neck. “If you’re gonna try to sneak attack, you either gotta snipe from farther away or light my house on fire while I’m asleep. Am I right?”

“Y’know, you threw that rock really hard. If you hit him in the wrong spot, he might even be dead,” noted Mairu, looking at the bush.

“I’ve been thinking,” Eijirou said. “A martial artist needs to be ready at all times for all possibilities, so a sneak attack ain’t exactly unfair…but if you flip that around, then anyone who tries to ambush a martial artist in public can’t complain if they wind up dead, y’know? This ain’t regulation competition.”

“Hopefully, the police agree with you.” Mairu grinned. Eijirou headed for the bushes, grumbling. While he went, Mairu’s smile vanished, and she took out her phone.

She’d been on the way to see her sister, and this abrupt encounter made her worry that Kururi was under attack, too. Fortunately, she answered the phone immediately. Mairu warned her that it was dangerous and that she should wait in a crowded place.

Kururi’s answer surprised her.

“Safe…already…done…” [It’s all right, everything’s done here.]

“Huh? What do you mean, it’s done?”

“…Spooky… Saved… Me…” [The Headless Rider protected me.]

“…Thank… Thank…” [Thank you very much.]

Kururi bowed to the being standing across from her right after she hung up on Mairu. Her voice was tiny, barely audible.

Celty kindly typed, “If you want to thank anyone, thank your brother.”

“…Brother…?” [My brother?]

“He asked me to watch over you while your sister was safe at the dojo,” said Celty, who was standing in the midst of a group of unconscious men. They were all wearing protective goggles and masks, like survivalists—but only on their faces.

Most likely, they’d had advance warning that she carried a defensive spray with her. The strange thing was that a different group of men had attacked in the middle of the first one. They were smart enough to run right away.

Relieved that the girl was safe for now, Celty couldn’t help but wonder one thing.

Where is Izaya himself, and what is he doing now?

In a dark place

“Oh, this is quite enjoyable. I love hearing panic over the phone,” said the man on the call.

Shijima ground his teeth together even harder, and in as calm a voice as he could manage, he asked, “What do you want?”

“What do I want? Let’s see…is that Earthworm over there? Anyway, the Amphisbaena girl seems to have set down her phone, so could you make sure she’s holding it? We can’t continue without that.”

Shijima might as well have tsked his tongue in irritation. He approached the woman, who was still trying to rip off the burlap. “He wants you to get on the phone.”

“What…? What do I have to say to…? Ugh, forget this!”

She was clearly battling her own confusion. She kept tugging on the knot of the sack with her left hand and reached down to pick up the phone with her right.

“Hello, are you back on the call now? I can hear you breathing.”

“…I just…want to know…who this guy is!” Earthworm screamed, all her confidence and cockiness replaced with panic.

The delighted man on the other end of the call announced, “It’s time for a quiz!”

“Huh?”

“Is this a joke?”

“Question one. What do Lizard, the owner of Amphisbaena, and Kumoi from Heaven’s Slave have in common?”

Both Earthworm’s and Shijima’s hearts skipped a beat. It must have felt like they’d both been drenched in ice water, such was the chill the question caused to run over their skin.

“How do you know…the owner’s nickname is Lizard…?”

The quiz show MC on the phone ignored Earthworm. “Bzzt! Out of time. The correct answer is they both have symmetrical moles under each eye! On to question two!”

“How…how do you know…what the owner looks like?!”

“…”

While Earthworm stammered and failed, Shijima was pale and silent. No one else in the room understood what they were talking about; both Earthworm’s and Shijima’s subordinates were looking around in confusion.

“This question is about the man in the burlap sack. Do you suppose that under the sack, he’s got…moles on his face?”

“Huh…?”

“…!”

“And lastly, question three! What I want to know is, Who will we find under that sack—Lizard…or Kumoi…?”

Their brains shut off for just a single moment.

Earthworm didn’t want to know what the caller meant. But Shijima’s mind was consumed with a different kind of fear.

You’re kidding, right…? C-could Izaya Orihara really have taken Kumoi…? But if true, then that’s very bad news.

He recovered from his mental paralysis and instantly found his mind flooded by a number of different thoughts that pushed him into immediate action.

“That’s a lie…a dirty lie! The owner… It can’t be the owner!” Earthworm wailed, clutching her head and crouching as she remembered all the things she’d done to the man before her.

Shijima stepped between them, and feigning internal calm, he said, “This is pointless. I’ll cut the knot open.”

He removed a small knife and slowly, slowly brought it toward the man’s neck. But then…

…the arm with which he held the knife suddenly stopped moving—as it was held in the grip of the man in the burlap sack.

“Huh…?”

“Wha…?”

His hands should’ve been tied behind his back, but now they were free. And not only was his left hand firmly on Shijima’s arm but the right was holding his own knife, out of nowhere.

“What were you going to try just now…?” the man taunted, holding up the knife to his own neck and carefully inserting it into the gap between his skin and the fabric.

With a few popping and ripping noises, the knot flew open, along with a corner of the sack mouth. He then folded his knife and slowly pulled off the kerosene-soaked fabric.

What emerged was a smile.

It was not a smile of derision, or of loving friendship, or of delight; nor was it creepy or pleasant. It almost seemed intended to be impossible to interpret.

“Hi,” said the smile.

But Earthworm and Shijima knew that this was no true smile; it had another proper name. But their knowledge surpassed the chaos and confusion in their minds and dragged them down into total darkness.

“Or should I say, it’s nice to meet you?”

“Izaya…” “Orihara…?” they said one after the other.

It was none other than the same Izaya Orihara they’d seen in so many photos.

So who was on the phone, then?

And why was he here?

And why was he laughing?

Mysteries, mysteries, mysteries.

A cavalcade of inexplicable phenomena assaulted Shijima, who’d only just recently arrived. But Earthworm had been here with him all along, and now she looked ready to cry. “Owner…help me?” she whined.

“Now, I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting to have kerosene dumped on me. Oh, and since you asked, unlike paint thinner, you can’t get high off this stuff.”

“Huh?”

“Ah yes, I suppose I have some questions to answer. As for whether people are essentially self-interested or put priority on others…the clichéd answer is ‘It depends on the person.’ And that’s the fun part, that every case is different. Is human nature good or evil? Will reason or desire triumph? Will hope or despair win out in the end? The thing that makes humanity fun is that there’s no single answer.”

That was Izaya Orihara’s answer, inexplicable smile on his lips, to the quiet questions Earthworm had asked him minutes earlier.

“Oh, and as for the lethal level of water, it’s somewhere between ten and thirty liters. It depends on the person’s weight, so for Kururi and Mairu, even less than ten liters could be pretty dangerous.”

“…”

“As for the connection between Mikage Sharaku and me, I guess I would call her one of my old groupies. You’d have to ask Mikage what it all meant to her. I got her involved in a bit of an incident back then, which ended up with her leaving high school…so I suppose she might still hate my guts.”

“…”

From the moment he removed the hood, Izaya’s and Earthworm’s positions had completely switched. Now it was the man doing all the talking and the woman unable to speak. The fact that he was responding to everything that had happened in the room today was sure proof that he was the very man who’d been wearing the sack the entire time.

“…H-huh? The…info dealer…?”

“Oh, you can speak again? I’ll admit, your idea of torture was quite entertaining. I was expecting you to pull all my fingernails out, but you really didn’t want to physically hurt me.”

“…Uh…ah.”

“How was it? I know I didn’t scream at all for you. Is my voice the way you imagined it? You were enjoying imagining my face underneath that sack, but I don’t need imagination. I’m enjoying the reality of the situation, the outcome… I love that stupid look on your face, for example. Oh, but when I say love, I don’t mean I actually love you personally. Just to make that clear.”

Then Earthworm recognized at last that the voice she heard over the phone and the voice of the man speaking to her in person were completely different.

“Oh…uh…then…who’s on the phone…?” she mumbled, looking back and forth between the phone in her hand and Izaya. The voice on the other end of the line broke into a crude laugh that was nothing like the way it had been speaking before this.

“Ha-ha…! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Hey, did you give away the game already, you piece of shit?! Fine, whatever! Here’s question four! Who…am…I?”

At that moment, the door to the bar opened to reveal a man with a phone pressed to his ear. The right half of his face had a horrible burn scar, and the eyes behind his sunglasses glinted with malice.

A number of men appeared behind him, wearing riding jackets with bone patterns on them, making the reasonably spacious bar feel even more crowded. The last of them was a muscular woman with spiked hair, but by this point, Earthworm had lost all interest.

“What…the hell…? Who are these people…?”

Shijima’s companions were overwhelmed, too, huddled in a corner of the bar, so that there was a tense three-way standoff developing. But a proper standoff would be better balanced between the factions. Izaya and his third party had the reins; both Amphisbaena and Heaven’s Slave were clearly intimidated.

What orders to give? Unlike Shijima and Earthworm, who were feverishly thinking about their next step, Izaya seemed unconcerned with any change in the situation.

“Let’s see, what else did you ask me?” he wondered. “Oh yes! As far as my weight and height go, you don’t think insurance company info is that easy to get your hands on, do you? You’re not Tsukumoya here. And even if you tried to hire him, I doubt he’d accept your offer.”

“…”

“And those numbers? I simply gave you my own height and weight. I take care of my health, you see. I always weigh myself after a shower.”

“…Wha—?”

Just stop it, Earthworm wanted to shriek, but her brain was in such chaos that she could barely even breathe, much less work her tongue.

“You…gave me…your…what? Huh?” she mumbled, practically sleep-talking.

Izaya chuckled and asked her, “Did that Informant B you hired, the one whose name or look you didn’t reveal…happen to go by the username Chrome?”

“How. Did. You…?”

“Listen, that was me.”

“…? …Huh?”

He put a hand to Earthworm’s cheek and spoke to her, slow and gentle, like to a puppy. “The truth is, I was aware of you before the Awakusu-kai hired me. You made contact with an online info dealer that I operate under a different name.”

“You’re joking…”

“I’m not. In fact, it made me laugh that you came to hire my services while I was working the job for the Awakusu-kai. When I saw ‘I want information on Izaya Orihara,’ I had my first real belly laugh in ages. I almost thought I was going to rip open my stab wound from this spring,” he said, rubbing at his side.

Then something in his smile changed. It was more wicked now, clearly plotting.

“So I realized something while I was working with you.”

“No… Stop…”

“It kind of seems like your group’s ‘owner,’ as you call him, hasn’t made contact with you in quite some time, has he? Perhaps he’s actually abandoned you…”

“Stop it!” she bellowed, bringing the low background hum of conversation to a halt. “Kill…him…”

“Oh?”

“Hurry! Someone do it, anyone! Just kill him and get him out of my sight!” she shrieked to her companions in the back of the bar.

Right on cue, Shijima sent a meaningful look at his companions. He jutted his chin at the spiky-haired woman in Izaya’s crew, a silent signal to take her hostage.

About a half-dozen men perfectly interpreted his gesture and rushed upon the woman.

Bjurnk.

It was like the sound of a cardboard box being stomped on.

“…That wasn’t even a sneak attack, you guys,” said Mikage Sharaku, the spiky-haired woman in question. She looked practically bored.

She’d spun in place and slammed an elbow directly into the nose of the first man to reach her, who’d grabbed her collar.

“Haaah?!”

The other men faltered, alarmed by the sight of their buddy gushing blood from his shattered nose. In the next instant, Mikage’s toe slammed into the temple of one of them. It was a one-legged high kick at maximum power, and the steel-plated toe of her safety shoe knocked him unconscious before he even had time to scream.

Then, without lowering her leg, she bent her knee, and with perfect balance, she rammed her toes into the neck of another man. She didn’t break the skin, but it did make a disgusting sound, propelling air out of his nose and mouth. His eyes rolled upward, and gravity pulled him down to the ground.

“…”

Mikage lowered her leg, glared at the remaining Heaven’s Slave dealers, and then gave them a beckoning gesture with her hand.

Nearby, the members of Dragon Zombie watched without much concern. Clearly, they understood that she didn’t need any assistance.

“Who the hell is she…?” Shijima muttered as Mikage continued to kick ass.

Izaya shrugged. “That’s Mikage, the girl who popped up in the conversation a minute ago. So, where were we…?”

He started to say something but was drowned out by the sound of breaking glass behind him. Izaya spun around to see Earthworm holding a broken bottle in each hand, glaring at him with a look of madness.

“What…is your deal…? Why did you do…such a preposterous thing…?! Why would you go to the trouble of pretending to be kidnapped…just to get here…?”

“This is lovely. You’re much more natural in this mood than when you were putting on that terrible wheedling voice earlier.”

“Answer the question!”

“Very well. I suppose I’d say it’s a similar purpose as to what Shijima over there said.”

Shijima flinched at the unexpected mention of his name. But Izaya ignored him, hoisted himself up to sit on the bar, and began to explain.

“I could have just contacted the Awakusu-kai, told them about this location, and had them shut it down. But it would seem a bit mean to let those big bad men have their way with you helpless youngsters, wouldn’t it? So I came here in an attempt to convince you to stop running your illegal casino, I suppose. You see, I’m not your enemy.”

“…?”

“As for the rest of it, I was engaging in some human observation. You can actually see out of that bag pretty well. It seemed like a rare opportunity to glimpse the adorable face of an amateur torturer. So I let you capture me, expecting that some finger bones and nails would be a worthwhile price to pay for that. Pretty simple, really.”

Earthworm’s features twisted at the nonchalance in his voice, and she turned to her group, bottles brandished. “What are you doing?! Hurry up and…,” she started before her voice trailed off, “…kill…him…?”

She fell completely silent once she noticed the state of her companions.

“?”

Shijima followed her lead and glanced at the members of Amphisbaena—and like Earthworm, he, too, stiffened on the spot.

Izaya kicked his dangling legs as he sat on the bar counter. “Do you know how I was able to get here unharmed? Without a single punch or kick? As well as how I was able to get out of the ropes tying my hands back?”

“…What’s going on here?”

“I bet you don’t. In fact, I don’t think you’ll even believe me if I explain it to you.” He smirked and looked toward the back of the room to see for himself.

All the members of Amphisbaena had the deep-red color of blood where their eyes should have been white. They all stood there—eyes crimson, faint smiles on their lips, and totally still.

“The truth is, I’d have been happy to take my time and allow your subordinates to betray you, but with this Heaven’s Slave stuff, there wasn’t enough time. So I cheated a little. For that matter, the Black Rider is kind of like cheating, too.”

The mention of the Black Rider brought a glimmer to Shijima’s mind.

No way. Did he…intentionally get us to steal the laptop…? In order to lure us…no, to lure me here?

But his suspicions vanished in the face of the red-eyed group. He assumed they were under the influence of some kind of drug; the idea that it was some supernatural phenomenon was beyond his imagining at the moment.

Earthworm was under a similar impression. She spun back to the info broker, clutching her broken bottles. “Izaya Orihara…what have you done to my subordinates?”

“What did I tell you? You aren’t going to believe my answer,” he replied.

She leaped at him, as though that response alone were good enough reason to kill him. The propulsion of her jump was explosive. In fact, the speed of it surpassed the range of almost everyone present. Even Mikage, who was still fighting near the entrance, stopped in her tracks for a moment and uttered a note of impressed surprise.

Without losing an ounce of momentum, the torturer thrust the deadly weapon in her right hand at Izaya’s throat, intent on proving that she was more than met the eye. With a little flick of the wrist, she’d easily be able to sever his carotid artery.

But at the last possible instant, Izaya dodged out of the way and toppled back behind the counter. She raced around the bar, but he was already gone.

“Where did you go?!” she bellowed.

Yet now he was somehow on the outside of the bar counter. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Gosh, I’m not sure what to do. I don’t like hitting girls.”

“That’s very funny, Izaya Orihara! You want to play the chivalrous gentleman now, after all of this…? I suppose you’d be happy to let me kill you, then!”

“I don’t think the chivalrous label really fits in this case. And I certainly would prefer not to be murdered.” He chuckled.

With superhuman agility, she leaped up on top of the counter, ready to jump on him.

“Instead, I’ll let my friend handle this,” he said, right as a shock ran through her knee.

“…?!?!”

Something in her body broke. She lost all sensation below the knee and toppled to the counter.

“~~~~~! …!”

She couldn’t even breathe due to the pain radiating from her knee to her entire body, much less scream or speak. The bottles fell from her hands all the way to the floor, where they shattered loudly.

Through the terrible impact of the pain, Earthworm tried to jolt her brain into motion, to make it tell her what happened. The answer came to her not through her logical mind but through her eyes and ears.

“You just scored a zero on that quiz, didn’t cha?”

Resting his elbows on the counter right in front of her was a man whose voice she recognized. It was the man who’d pretended to be Izaya on the phone.

“Which means it’s time for the pretty young lady to undergo our very entertaining penalty round.”

“Rgh…aaau… Son of a… Fuck,” she swore, all thoughts of ladylike behavior gone. She glared at him through the pain. Right on cue, the man with the sunglasses and the burn scar on his face swung down his rubber-coated hammer onto her fingertip.

“…………!!!”

Coincidentally, the location where he crushed her finger was the exact same spot she had smashed on her enemies in the past. Her own blood ran over the old stain.

She screamed, and Ran Izumii, the man in the sunglasses, shoved a piece of cloth into her open mouth.

“Mrruh!”

Instantly, Earthworm understood what the fabric was. The rough texture against her tongue and the nose-stinging odor of oil told her it was the burlap sack over Izaya’s head just minutes ago.

“Happyyyyy birthdaaaay!” Izumii jeered, pulling out a lighter—and sure enough, he immediately set the fabric in Earthworm’s mouth ablaze.

A few dozen seconds later…

Earthworm was at Izumii’s feet, covered in agonizing wounds. She’d rolled off the counter onto the floor to put out the flaming fabric stuffed in her mouth. That part of the plan succeeded, but she wasn’t thinking about the minefield of broken glass on the floor. Her unharmed knee fell prey to Izumii’s hammer next, and the pain of all this knocked her completely unconscious.

“Ha-ha… Y’know, this reminds me of the old days. Don’t it?” Izumii cackled madly, rolling the woman over with his foot. “Hey, she’s pretty hot when you get a good look at her.”

And despite the huge crowd present in the room, he reached out for her clothes, and…

“Knock it off, Izumii,” warned Mikage, bringing him up short.

“What the hell? Why you stoppin’ me? She’s a sicko; she’s tortured multiple people,” he complained.

“Yeah, so I’m not going to stop you if you smash her face with that hammer or burn her alive,” Mikage said without batting an eye. “But if you’re going to defile her as a woman…it’ll be my turn to hurt you, Izumii.”

He clicked his tongue in obvious disgust and dropped his hand to his side.

“I don’t gotta follow your orders…but I suppose you can owe me one. You’re gonna make up the favor to me yourself, right? Huh?”

“Go ahead, assuming you can get the best of me,” she retorted, murder in her voice.

He clicked his tongue again and left the room, leering.

Having watched the scene in stunned disbelief, Shijima was relieved that at least one of the more dangerous individuals was gone. But it also imparted a terrible truth to him: All his Heaven’s Slave friends who’d attacked Mikage were wiped out.

What is this? What…am I watching happen?

There was only one thing he knew for sure: At this moment, he had not a single ally in the bar who was capable of helping him.

Izaya Orihara approached him and whispered into his ear, “Hi. You capable of talking yet?”

“…”

“By the way…when I was wearing the sack earlier, you tried to stab me, didn’t you?”

“…!”

Shijima flinched and spun around despite himself. All his people were either knocked out by Mikage or groaning on the floor, unable to stand. They wouldn’t be able to hear Izaya’s whisper.

“It’s all right. I’m not going to reveal that to your friends. Very bold of you, though. It takes real guts to assume that it’s Kumoi under the sack and go in for the kill.”

“…”

“My assumption about you and Kumoi was right, it seems,” Izaya crowed.

Shijima felt the sweat running through his clenched palm. “What…are you going to do with me?”

Izaya replied to the young man’s question by glancing at Earthworm first, then saying, “If you want, you and your people can stop getting into mischief that draws the attention of the Awakusu-kai, then give yourself up to join the Dollars. I can set you up with them.

“With the Dollars’ information network…you might even be able to learn the location of the missing Amphisbaena owner and your Kumoi.”

“Very clever of you to pull the grandson of a powerful man into the group,” said a woman outside the entrance to the bar, when Izaya stepped through it.

“I wasn’t trying to get access to an influential figure. He was just a little bonus I received for taking the Awakusu-kai’s contract,” he told the long-haired woman.

Haruna Niekawa smiled and said, “So what should I do now?”

“I have a feeling I won’t find any success trying to convince that Earthworm girl. Would you give it a shot for me?”

Haruna smiled and smiled and smiled, her eyes sparkling. For some reason, there was a bandage wrapped around her neck. “If I do as you say, will you really let me see Takashi?”

“Whether you can or not depends on you. All I do is give you the information.”

“Hmm…”

The next moment, there was a sharp metallic sound between the two. Izaya had his knife free, which he’d used to block Haruna’s own knife lunge.

“…Too bad. I figured that if I could control you, I’d know Takashi’s location right away.”

“The thing is, I love human beings. I’m not interested in the least in being under the control of some inhuman monstrous thing.”

“Says the man who’s making use of a monster,” she retorted.

He shrugged. “You’re right. It’s half against my better judgment. But I’ve made use of the dullahan for so many things already, I had to draw the line there. I won’t use your power unless absolutely necessary, and in this case, things were going to get very, very messy without you.”

He paused, then admitted, “Actually, I respect you as a human being. You’re not like Anri Sonohara, who completely accepted Saika and gave up on being human. You conquered Saika through your own power and rule her as a human.”

“My Saika is a weak thing compared with that little thief,” she said, grinning as her head inclined to the side. “And…it wasn’t my own power. It was the power of my love for Takashi.”

Izaya smiled back at her, waved, then turned away.

“Have no concern. Your Saika power might be weaker than Anri Sonohara’s, but that’s what makes you stronger.”

“You’ve beaten Saika’s stranglehold on you twice now.”

Several days later, Tokyo, in a luxury sedan

“…So it turned out that Amphisbaena had already effectively ceased activity. The club owner nicknamed Lizard was already long gone by the time I started looking into him. I’m sure he’s far away by now. I have no doubt that the usual customers at the gambling rings you oversee will be returning shortly,” Izaya proudly declared, sitting on the left side of the backseat.

In his usual way, Shiki said, “And you don’t know the whereabouts of anyone aside from the leader?”

“I did look into it, but the majority of them were ordinary civilians. I doubt we’d learn anything from talking to them, and given the fact that the group is inactive, what’s the use of putting the screws on them?”

“That’s for us to decide…but fine. If they start up again, you’re going to give us the full list for free.”

“Certainly. And since I didn’t manage to track down their leader, I don’t need any follow-up payment. Just the up-front money will do,” Izaya said, shrugging sadly.

“By the way, about those college student dealers…,” Shiki began, “they’ve been gone from the market for the last two days. Any thoughts about why that is?”

“Dunno. Maybe they fought it out with what’s left of Amphisbaena,” Izaya suggested gleefully.

Shiki grinned—and offered earnestly, “Info Broker…don’t assume the world will always work out in your favor.”

His words were delivered with a smile but as heavy and piercing as a bullet to the gut.

Unfazed, Izaya took the statement head-on and shot back, “Oh, please. It’s the fact that things don’t always go your way that makes the world fun.”

Shiki glanced at Izaya without changing the angle of his head and steepled his fingers. “You don’t think we’re totally ignorant, do you?”

“…”

Izaya said nothing, but Shiki didn’t push him any further on that point.

“So, getting back to business… Ah, right. Our Akabayashi wants to speak with you. You may contact him at a convenient time,” Shiki said, back in work mode.

Izaya replied, “Yes, I’ll get back to him soon.”

He grinned, then laughed sardonically.

“I make my living by being used by everyone I can.

“That’s what being an info dealer…no, what being Izaya Orihara means. That’s my bliss.”