DURARARA!! Vol.4 CHAPTER 3, PART I
WARNING: UNBETA-ED.
CHAPTER 3
YOUNG PRINCESSES' CLUB "THE HOTTEST SPRING ON THIS EARTH! IKEBUKURO, WHERE THE HIGH SCHOOL GIRL ANXIETY COMES TO AN END!"
♂♀
"Erotically wet blackboard erasers! Never-ending after-school 'lessons' on the street! Ikebukuro, the Dangerous Horizon of Tokyo filled with the aroma of Shining Rose -
High school girls, elegant and lonesome eagles out and about to cure your long-neglected illness called desire!
Our scouts spotted the legendary 'Old Fairy' among these girls who tread the borderline between passion and destruction!"
Those were the headlines on the cover of the adult magazine, "Young Girls' Club".
Though its target audience appeared to be the city's youngsters and maybe some older perverts, the magazine was increasingly headed in the direction of the bizarre and maniac, which made it a hot topic all by itself.
On the cover a woman obviously over twenty years old was posing suggestively in a sailor uniform, with several ofudas* pasted to her flawless feet.
Certain parts of her body, of course, were also covered with ofudas if you turn to the first colored page. It's hard to decide whether it was supposed to be erotic.
To read an adult magazine in a crowded classroom - especially with girls around - was bold enough an act in itself, not to mention one with such a peculiar orientation.
Yet there she was, sitting in one of the first-year classrooms in Raira Academy, browsing the magazine quite openly on her desk.
"Hmm~. Ahh~. Oops~. How naughty! I like that. What a smoking body."
The girl in question was tilting her chair backwards and giggling to herself - in a mostly black sailor uniform that differed from the standard color at Raira Academy.
She was wearing glasses and no make-up; her laughter as clear as a bell.
In almost every way, she looked like your typical liberal arts girl who would be perched in a chair reading Natsume Souseki* or Dazai Osamu* in the library.
"Ahhh - how sweet. I'd wanna be like that. How do you make your breasts bigger? Milk? With milk? Would rubbing milk into your breasts make them bigger? What do you think?"
With a translucent smile the bespectacled girl asked the boy sitting next to her.
The boy blushed hard in a "how would I know" sort of way, taking furtive looks at the girl every now and then while napping on his own desk.
They both wore glasses - but this girl was a completely different type from Sonohara Anri.
Anri was more mature, with a dark side to her life. This girl, on the other hand, had eyes that juggled schemes and conspiracies behind those two simple pieces of glass, yet still gave off an innocent and upbeat vibe.
Not to mention she was happily browsing porn.
Black skirt matched with a studious pair of glasses.
Nobody would have expected her to even produce that kind of magazine from her backpack.
But there she was, checking out the colored pages with an ever-so-translucent smile, talking to herself and every now and then to the boys around her.
Barely thirty minutes into knowing this girl, the boys in this class were already looking troubled.
♂♀
School opening day at Raira Academy
Raira Academy was a co-ed private school in South Ikebukuro.
Until several years ago the school was called by another name; after merging with another high school nearby, however, the school began to take the form it is in today.
The campus was not big, but the students did not feel confined since the architecture design made the best possible use of the limited space available. Students living in the suburbs of Tokyo could commute easily since the school was close to the Ikebukuro Station. As the school's popularity grew, it was increasingly harder to get into. Rumor had it that before the merging the school was a pretty bad one swarming with delinquents, but their era had long since passed.
On the taller school buildings one could look over the view that surrounded the school, but it was nothing compared to what one saw from the sixty-story building standing right next to the school.
On the other side there was the Zoushigaya Cemetery, giving off a neglected vibe despite being situated in central Tokyo.
But that vibe dissipated when students gathered; their youth and energy turned this place into an oasis in the metropolis.
Self-introduction was usually the first thing they did as a class after the school's opening ceremony -
And there were invariably students who manage to stand out.
The flirtatious ones, for instance, would appear in almost every classroom.
They would usually try to be funny, and either get accepted as the life of the class, or have to sit down embarrassed on the first day of school, or not notice that they should be embarrassed.
These people stand out because of their personalities; there would of course also be people who stand out because of the way they look.
Others stand out because they stutter or bite their tongues when trying to introduce themselves, making a clumsy impression. In short, people stand out for all sorts of reasons.
This was when "first impressions" were formed like a sturdy outer wall in everyone's hearts. The walls were silently being erected accompanied with every shade of emotion.
Because of the way the school was organized, few people were sorted into the same class as their friends they knew from middle school or before. If you were not a student who graduated from Raira Middle School, you would be lucky to see one or two people you knew in the same class as you.
The "first impresson" was an especially heavy mask to have to wear if one was aware that this class would probably be the basis of one's interpersonal relationships for one year, three years, or even a lifetime.
Everyone knew not to judge a book by its cover, it wasn't much help unless you possessed the ability to see through the cover right away. Moreover, it was impossible that anyone would assume others could see through their own cover.
Therefore the first impressions would end up being the deciding factor in the formation of student groups, in who would have lunch with whom, and in the reshuffling of classes next year.
In other words, the self-introductions on the first day were a rite of judgement - or a test - of one's adaptability to the class one was sorted into.
However, there were two students who apparently did not "read the air" - it was hard to tell whether they even realized the importance of these self-introductions.
♂♀
One of them was a girl wearing glasses who made her appearance in Class 1-B.
"My name's Orihara Mairu! Ori as in origami, Hara as in fields of grass, Mai-Ru as in losing yourself in a dance. Nice to meet you all! I like reading encyclopedias and manga and adult magazines!"
The only surprising part of this self-introduction was its last sentence, but most would just dismiss it as a joke. Her black sailor uniform did make her stand out, however, among a sea of the standard green.
But what she said immediately afterwards made everybody gasp.
"I'm bi, both platonically and sexually! But all slots are full for males as of present, so don't even bother trying! I can however take any number of girls, so keep that in mind when you're asking me out!"
♂♀
The other oddball presented herself in Class 1-C, a girl whose appearance stood out naturally as well.
"I'm, ...Orihara...Kururi."
The fact that she wore a gymnastic suit to her school opening was enough to draw attention.
True, at Raira Academy you could technically wear anything you like to the school opening, but most people would just go with uniforms or casual suits.
Yet this girl picked a gymnastic suit.
The head teacher asked her as she was about to sit back down:
"Is there anything else you'd like to say?"
"No (Nothing) ..."
The girl replied in a hardly audible voice and sat back into her seat.
The thin fabric accentuated the sheer size of her breasts. Her obvious curves contrasted with the slenderness of her limbs was enough to direct all male gazes in the class toward her body.
But the boys, too, would have second thoughts about a girl attending her first day of school in a gymnastic suit. So none of them actually stared at Kururi's body until they received sharp looks from the rest of the girls.
A healthy-looking body in a healthy-looking gymnastic suit.
Yet there was nothing looking even remotely healthy or upbeat about her decidedly dark expression.
Kuronuma Aoba, a boy sitting next to her, let his thoughts wonder as he looked at the weirdly-dressed girl.
- Looks like she's a melancholic. But why that gymnastic suit?
But the thoughts stopped there. He was just feeling puzzled like everyone else.
Turning around to look at other students, he noticed boys who stared at her curiously like himself, and girls looking as if she was a revolting sight to them.
- Whatever. As long as no one bullies her.
Aoba took on a nonchalant attitude and turned his gaze to the next person making a self-introduction.
As did most other students.
- There's an oddball in this class.
That was where they decided to leave things and focus instead on other people's self-introductions.
♂♀
Since they were in different classes, however, no one had noticed at this point that the two oddball girls in Classes 1-B and 1-C had almost the exact same facial and bodily features, except for the glasses, hairstyle, and bust size.
Moreover, the fact that they both had the surname "Orihara" -
- rang an alarming bell among the older teachers who had been at Raira Academy before it acquired its present name.
"......Just because their older brother was like that doesn't necessarily mean that these girls will turn out the same, so I'm trying not to judge them prematurely here..."
The old art teacher sipped at his tea in the faculty lounge as he muttered to himself.
"But really...compared to the times when we had to teach Izaya-kun and Shizuo-kun, this school is way more peaceful nowadays."
The old teacher held back a bitter laugh as he thought of the problem kids of yore.
"Back then we used to have filled gasoline drums rolling down the third floor of the school building..."
♂♀
Same time, an apartment in Shinjuku
"That reminds me..."
Namie's expression softened as she spoke without taking a break from the work at hand.
"It's school-opening day at Raira Academy."
Izaya, listening to her brighter-than-usual voice, replied airily as he continued to check his e-mail without turning to look at her.
"Ah, right. Why bring this up though?"
"Seiji is officially a high school sophomore...oh, how I would like to rush to the school and celebrate for him right now - "
"It's just school-opening...not like it's new student orientation or something. As a guardian you have no business being there anymore."
"But I want to watch."
Namie replied without hesitation. Izaya simply shook his head and sighed.
Trademarked cool beauty Namie only ever showed her deep and abnormal loving side when it came to her younger brother Yagiri Seiji.
A way-more-than-brother-and-sister, erotically charged loving side at that.
Which was unfortunately unrequited, since her younger brother found her love nothing more than tiresome. But for Namie, even cold blank stares were lovable as long as they came from Seiji.
A peachy shade of pink flew to her cheeks as her expression turned dreamy at the mental image of a fully grown Seiji. Glancing at his assistant happily at work, Izaya muttered to himself with a sigh.
"Raira Academy...the entire atmosphere really did change after they merged the schools and gave it a new name."
"Hmm? Are you a graduate too?"
"I graduated six or seven years ago. That was back when it was still called Raijin High School..."
Something close to a nostalgic smile crept onto Izaya's face - turning into a malevolent smirk spiced with hatred in the following nanosecond.
"...It was nothing but a pile of stinky memories, anyway, including how I came to meet Shizu-chan."
"You really do hate Shizuo, don't you?"
Namie murmured. But suddenly something struck her as odd.
"You said you graduated six or seven years ago...but didn't you also say you were 21 years old?"
"I've been telling people I was 21 since ages ago - or were you under the impression that I would just feed them my real personal information for free?"
Namie just listened for a second without feeling like there was anything to say - and then, pausing suddenly, turned her eyes to Izaya for the first time.
"Does that mean you have some trust in me now?"
"It's different from real trust...I just felt like I should at least tell you a thing or two about myself to keep my right-hand woman from turning against me."
"Why don't you just go and die already?"
Namie said curtly and turned back to her work, adding in a fact that sounded like revenge.
"Speaking of which - your sisters too are gonna be Raira students from now on."
"......You sure are very well-informed."
Izaya's expression verged on the uncomfortable.
"Just thought you should know that I've done my research on my head man as well."
"......How should I put it...well, I do that all the time to other people, but..."
It's a different thing altogether to have that done to myself - he laughed bitterly as if to say. Deciding to abandon the work at hand for the moment, he leaned into his chair and continued to talk as if to himself.
"I never knew how to deal with those two."
"Really? Are you saying there's something you don't know how to deal with apart from Heiwajima Shizuo?"
"Stop kidding. I'm human after all. Well, not completely, but still."
Sighing heavily, Izaya began to describe for Namie the environment he grew up in.
"My sisters...are called 'Kururi' and 'Mairu'. ...How should I put it...my parents are completely ordinary people. Except for when it comes to the taste in children's names, that is. Yet I grew up in that highly ordinary environment...to be what I am now."
"Alas, so you're aware that you are a hentai?"
Namie's sarcasm didn't seem to bother Izaya as he put his hands together, rubbed his thumbs and continued.
"I didn't turn out like this because of the environment I grew up in...but my sisters, I think, turned out abnormal because of my influence. That I do feel guilty about."
"Abnormal? In what ways?"
- What kind of children could make even a hentai like him call them abnormal?
Namie, now looking intrigued, paused the work at hand and poured herself a cup of tea from the kettle in the kitchen.
She was really listening now despite the fact that she just stood there in an aloof fashion. Izaya simply looked at Namie with weary eyes.
"Their goal is - to be 'human'."
"........Excuse me?"
"They want to become sort of a 'humankind in a nutshell' combination...and of all humankind especially the Japanese."
"I still don't follow."
Izaya smiled bitterly at a perplexed Namie.
"I know it's hard to understand. They simply thought that being twins automatically meant that they were supposed to be the same person."
"......Ahh, that kind of makes sense. A single twin does strike as an incomplete human being if not in a set with the other...or at least that's how we feel. But wouldn't it be odd for the twins themselves to feel the same way?"
"Normally, yes. But like I said...my sisters aren't normal."
Shutting down his laptop, Izaya rose slowly from his chair.
Parting the blinds with his fingers, he narrowed his eyes in the sunshine that poured through.
"You know how games always come with preset parameters? Like some characters would have high magical power but very low fighting ability, or excellent fighting ability but no brains. In an RPG game you would have to form a balanced team to make up for each other's weaknesses."
"Well, that's what we do in reality as well. Using your personnel according to their strengths and weaknesses is the first step towards rational management."
"If only it were anything close to rational management..."
Izaya put his hand on the desk as the image of his sisters came back to his mind.
"What they did was that they formed an RPG team, just the two of them. One would be the martial artist, and the other would be the sorcerer, something like that."
"......I have no idea what you're trying to say."
"It's simple. They consciously formed two completely contrasting human stereotypes. They became totally different despite being twins - on purpose! Thinking they would be something more than all other humans by combining their forces like that...just another way to convince themselves that they're capable of anything, I'd say."
As if observing something truly nonsensical, the stray smile around the corner of Izaya's mouth never reached his eyes.
"Their respective appearances and personalities - those were settled by a flip of the coin back when they were still elementary school kids. They weren't aware that there is a thing called congruency. So Kururi - the older one - is silent and melancholic but wears a gymnastic suit. The younger one, Mairu, looks like a liberal arts girl but talks and behaves like there's no tomorrow."
"But...that would just be odd, right? There's no point in divorcing the appearance from the personality."
Izaya nodded slowly at Namie's bewildered reaction.
"Sure, there is no point. But for those two, there isn't any point in synchronizing the appearance with the personality either. They end up being the 'same person' anyway. As long as they think they have all the 'parts', they don't care. They like to think they're special because of that - what a pair of intolerable eighth-grade-disease* patients."
"What's eighth-grade disease?"
"Google that up yourself. Whatever...it's at least better than thinking you're an esper or the reincarnation of a warrior of light or something. But anyway those two stand out too much...whatever kind of crowd they're in."
"Ah, I see. So as someone who wants to remain the evil mastermind in the dark it's only natural that you don't wish to be seen with them."
Namie nonchalantly interpreted Izaya's own thoughts for him.
Izaya looked away as if that analysis hit something right on the mark, and replied.
"True. It embarrasses me when I see those two or hear them talk...you'll see what I mean when you meet them. Keep in mind that even I can't stand them. If I can't stand them, there is probably no way anyone else can..."
"If you're so aware that you are just as intolerable yourself, why not behave a little bit for a change?"
"I don't wanna be told by someone who forced an illegal plastic surgery on a girl for the sake of her brother."
Namie merely smiled at Izaya's pungent riposte.
"Ahh. I have no intention to behave whatsoever when it comes to Seiji."
"......"
"True love needs no brake nor accelerator. When you think about it, it will get you there by itself."
Namie's cheeks turned rosy as she muttered such completely irrelevant sentences that didn't even sound like an answer.
If this were the only side people ever see of Namie, they'd probably think she's some kind of overgrown adolescent girl.
- If only her brother weren't the one she was lusting over.
Izaya sat back in his chair without another word. Namie's expression returned to normal as she asked the next question.
"But are you sure they're going to be alright? If they stand out so much, wouldn't it make them easy targets for all those bullies out there? I heard they are getting pretty nasty these days?"
Though her words looked like they were filled with concern for Izaya's family, there was not a trace of emotion in the way Namie uttered them; it was obvious that she actually couldn't care less.
Izaya looked as if he took on the same attitude as he pondered his sisters' situation.
"You have a point. Hopefully no bullies are gonna pick on them...but it's not like we can avoid it."
Still sighing, the information dealer's face eventually broke into a sarcastic grin.
"Poor things."
♂♀
Three days later, noon, Raira Academy
Why does bullying exist?
Kuronuma Aoba thought to himself in a chair at the back of the classroom.
Usually it's the bullies who start such things, but the bullied are not always innocent as snow either. Not that the causes mattered.
Influenced by the society, by games, by manga, by parents, by the school, by the Internet.
Honestly, whatever, thought Aoba.
You can point at a thousand factors you think are causing all the bullying, but even if you remove all of them, the bullies are not going to stop.
Because ultimately they're doing it for the satisfaction.
If they're not getting enough of the satisfaction, they will continue to do it.
It was a somewhat awkward conclusion, as Aoba himself realized; but he carried his thoughts further anyway.
- I wouldn't deny it.
- The pleasure inherent in bullying someone weaker than I am.
- That leaves only one question: whether I can suppress the yearning for that pleasure.
A pleasure akin to attacking a pre-modern country with missiles while you yourself remain at a safe distance.
Basking yourself simultaneously in the feeling of safety and overwhelming superiority. However you may choose to tune it down, it is, to say the very least, pleasant.
- Those who simply look on when others are being bullied are probably not doing so not only out of fear for retaliation if they try to stop the bullies; they're also savoring the fact that they aren't the ones being bullied.
- That, too, is a very pleasant and safe position.
- Of course, there's gotta be saints who don't feel comfortable in such a position and just have to help others. It would be weird if there were none - we're on a crowded planet after all.
- If you're talking about this particular classroom, however, it looks like there are none.
It was before the after-school homeroom -
Aoba was letting his thoughts wonder as he looked at Orihara Kururi's desk right next to his.
- There were things written in what looked like oil-based marker all over it.
- Considering it was only the third day of school, that truly is something.
But the contents of the writings came in a slightly different flavor than what would then be typical.
"SISTER OF A WHORE"
"CLAIM YOUR RESPONSIBILITY!"
"THE GUARDIAN'S FAULT!"
"ENJO-KOUSAI* SISTERS"
"DIE!!"
And the like. Overall the writings involved more kanji than would be expected*.
Kururi, however, simply stared at her desk with a blank expression on her face.
This had happened within the last 20 minutes, during which she was at the library.
Although Kururi's idiosyncratic gymnastic suit and dark aura made her stand out pretty much enough, none of the graffitied insults were directed at her.
For some reason, most of the abusive remarks were about her sister "Orihara Mairu".
To see why, we'll have to rewind to the morning of that exact day.
♂♀
"Good morning - "
Orihara Mairu arrived at her classroom on the third day of school to find her desk covered in graffiti that said "WHORE" "1000 YEN FOR ONE NIGHT" "OPEN FOR ENJO-KOUSAI" and the like.
Mairu stopped dead on the spot for a second.
"Hmm - "
Still smiling, she began to scan the classroom.
Everybody turned their backs, deliberately avoiding meeting her gaze or looking at her desk.
Typical atmosphere of a bullying session.
But she continued to scan around unwavered -
Until fixating her eyes on a small throng of girls by the front window of the classroom.
One of them, after stealing a look at Mairu, had giggled and whispered to the others.
With a sudden "hee", the corner of Mairu's mouth curved skywards.
It was a totally different kind of curve from the ever-translucent smile she wore until now. Like a trickster grinning in the shadow after locating his unknowing prey, she broke into a sharp and slimy smirk, and -
- Jumped.
Everything happened in a flash.
The floor made an explosive "bang" noise.
But nothing had actually exploded - it was only Mairu's feet as she jumped from the wooden floor.
The bullies and the on-lookers had until now assumed that Mairu was transparent or didn't exist altogether - yet within a twentieth of a second, that assumption was blown to smithereens.
As every head turned at the explosive noise, Mairu had already hopped into mid-air and towards the back of the classroom.
Starting from the desk right behind her, she had jumped all the way until landing on a locker located in the back of the classroom, picked up a little box on the locker and turned around.
With astounding fluidity she jumped up again from the locker, flew over the heads of several dumbstruck classmates, and covered the length of the classroom in a few strides.
The girl was unstoppable like a cannonball.
She made one more stride after stepping on the last desk -
And landed in the middle of that throng of girls at the front of the classroom.
♂♀
Three days earlier, noon, an apartment in Shinjuku
""You have a point. Hopefully no bullies are gonna pick on them...but it's not like we can avoid it."
Still sighing, the information dealer's face at last broke into a sarcastic grin.
"Poor things."
"Do you find that funny? Aren't they your family after all?"
Izaya shook his head at a frowning Namie.
"Nah nah nah. It's not that. It's not that at all."
He chuckled as he went on to clear this simple misunderstanding.
"I wasn't talking about Kururi and Mairu...I was talking about the bullies."
"Huh?"
"Wasn't I telling you just now? They turned out abnormal because of my influence."
"Say...if I were bullied, do you think I would just leave my bullies be?"
♂♀
Back to the morning of the third day of school.
The entire class froze.
It took a long while for anybody to actually register what had happened; for a moment they just stared and remained dead still.
“Ahaha! I - got - ya - !"
Mairu sounded as cheerful as a child playing tag.
But those around her were in a state almost the exact opposite of cheerfulness.
The little box Mairu had just fetched from the back of the classroom was filled almost to the brim with thumbtacks.
In a deft move she had flipped the box open and raised it high.
Her actions up until this point had been simple.
She had landed right in the throng of girls who had been laughing at her -
Knocked one of them down with a clothesline -
And stuck her palm like a cleaver into the wailing girl's mouth.
That had been it.
Her movements were captured like multiple action movie clips by the eyes of her classmates.
Mairu, cheeks flushed with excitement, was smiling as she set her legs astride the girl on the floor.
The scene would have been quite erotic had it not been ruined by Mairu's one hand stuck in the girl's mouth and her other holding a box of thumbtacks.
Eyes glittering from behind her glasses, Mairu asked with the same smile she had on her face during self-introduction.
"I'll give you 3 seconds! Who started it? Point her out for me!"
As she spoke, the now-opened box of thumbtacks was being shoved nearer and nearer to the girl's face.
"Nnnnnhhhh! Haaa-! Nnnhhhhaaeehh!"
Now that she knew what was in store for her, the girl struggled fiercely - but Mairu's knees kept her arms pinned to the floor and incapable of defense.
Other girls in the group could only goggle at Mairu nervously as if they didn't have a clue what was going on.
"Three - "
Such an overwhelmingly skilled counterattack totally deprived the bully - now a victim of violence - of the ability to think.
"Two - "
There was no time to even consider the possible retaliation if she turned her accomplice in.
Even if there had been, she would still have turned her accomplice in since no future retaliation could possibly be worse than having her throat flooded with thumbtacks in the next second.
"One - "
The box of thumbtacks made a ticking noise as it was slightly tilted.
That was when the girl had to surrender.
She pointed to the tallest among the group of girls who had been gleefully discussing Mairu's reaction to the graffiti on the desk.
"Ze - ah, thanks!"
Mairu caught several thumbtacks as they began to fall towards the girl's throat with the deft hand she just pulled out of the girl's mouth.
Still smiling, she turned to the girl who had just been pointed out by her partner-in-crime shaking all over in fear.
At that point her next target was already making for the door.
"Ahh - ! Don't run away yet!"
She raised the thumbtacks she had just caught in her left hand and released them like a pitching machine would a bunch of baseballs.
A series of rhythmical clicks and clacks later -
The tall girl found several thumbtacks pinned to the exit door she was just about to open with her hand.
That wasn't an extraordinary feat in itself; with some skill, thumbtacks can be thrown to the wall like darts.
But it was downright insane to throw them in public to begin with - not to mention at other people.
It just happened that Orihara Mairu was the kind of person to disregard all such boundaries; without the slightest hesitation she had aimed her thumbtacks where the primary offender's hand was headed.
The realization made the girl stop dead in her tracks out of the sheer immensity of her fear.
Passivity.
She was trapped in passivity.
She had made the first move - yet she was trapped in passivity. The bullied girl didn't even spare her the time to consider the next move or follow her instinct; her shoulders were grabbed in mere seconds from behind.
"So! You wanna hang out in the restroom? Listen! I! Suddenly! Have this huuuuge urge to get really really close with you, though I don't even know your name! Ahaha!"
With a playful smile over her chic features, Orihara Mairu was about to drag the girl by the chin straight into the hallway -
As she stopped to talk to the boy sitting next to her desk.
"Hey, sorry - how about you help me erase these and lunch is on me?"
The boy started and, not sure what to do, tried rubbing the oily marker writings off with his eraser anyway -
None of the other students dared even move; only the sound of the eraser at work could be heard throughout the quiet classroom.
A boy who had attended the same middle school as the Orihara sisters walked into the classroom. Seeing the writings on Mairu's desk and the state of shock everybody else was still in, he let out a sigh.
"Ahh - so she did it again."
He began to tell his dumbstruck classmates about Mairu.
"That one, she goes to this gym that teaches pretty weird martial art stuff, so you don't wanna pick on her. Some guys tried to gang up on her once - ended up almost killed by her and her fellow gym-goers.”
- Does the kind of martial art they teach use thumbtacks as weapons?
The question surfaced in everyone's mind, but they all remained silent deciding that not getting too involved with Mairu was the better idea.
Fifteen minutes later.
Right before homeroom was about to start, Mairu returned with her clothes straightened out as if nothing had happened. She lowered her head apologetically as she saw the boy still bent over her desk, trying to erase the graffiti marks.
"Ahh - sorry about that! It's hard to get oil-based stuff off just like that isn't it! I'll help!"
She produced from her sailor uniform pocket a piece of cloth and began to clean the desk with the boy.
"It's not coming off. I guess water doesn't work on oil-based stuff anyway - should we just plane it off?"
She was still smiling as she said that.
A pure liberal-arts-girl smile.
The boy hastened to lower his gaze as he realized that he had been staring. Then he noticed something absurd.
The cloth she was wiping the desk with had string-like things attached to it.
Though he found it weird, the boy didn't think further about it as he went back to focus on his own work.
Nor did he realize that the cloth was actually the brassiere of the girl whom Mairu had dragged into the restroom a moment ago.
That girl never showed her face in the classroom again that day; in fact, she had left school early without even fetching her backpack.
Nobody knew what happened between the two during that private "conversation" in the restroom save Mairu and the girl herself. Neither did anybody venture to ask.
The reason was simple: if they had looked on without a word when the graffiti was being done, there was no way they'd be willing to be involved in anything that reeks of deeper trouble.
♂♀
And now, the homeroom after lunch break.
After the scheme to bully Orihara Mairu of Class 1-B ended in a complete fiasco -
The twisted network of girls targeted her sister Orihara Kururi instead.
Which was why Aoba sat there staring at the graffiti and letting his thoughts wonder.
- She had never done anything.
She was targeted just because she was Mairu's sister.
Kururi wasn't the hated one; yet she was spit in the face for Mairu's sake.
- Well. Whatever.
Aoba's gaze wondered outside the window as he waited for the homeroom to begin.
At last came the teacher, who was about to dismiss the class after taking care of some simple housekeeping issues -
After dutifully checking around the classroom, however, Mr. Marumura noticed the ruinous state Kururi's desk was in.
"What happened to your desk, Orihara?"
"......"
"That can't possibly be your own graffiti, right?"
The teacher frowned as he got close enough to read the writings. He was waiting for Kururi's reply.
"Negative (It's not mine)."
Her voice was small, but her answer was clear.
Marumura scanned the students in the classroom.
"Anybody got a clue who did this?"
- Whatever.
Aoba thought indifferently as he looked at Kururi, who still had her head lowered.
- I have nothing to do with this bullying affair. Nothing to gain and nothing to lose.
- Really, whatever.
Yet precisely because he believed it had nothing to do with him -
"Miss Tsukiyama and some girls from other classes did that together."
He replied without hesitation, since it had nothing to do with him anyway.
Whether this was a bullying affair was irrelevant for him; he was simply delivering the answer to the question he was asked.
Tsukiyama, the girl he just turned in, was visibly flustered.
Nobody had tried to stop her when she committed the petty criminal act.
Which was why she never expected to be "betrayed" in this fashion.
Though Aoba was never officially on her side to begin with, it still felt like a stab in the back from her perspective.
"...Tsukiyama, come to the office after this. Bring the others with you."
The teacher said sternly. Tsukiyama gritted her teeth and turned to Aoba.
- Why didn't you say anything when we were at it!
Said the piercing look she was throwing at Aoba. But Aoba, still not feeling like the whole affair had anything to do with him, wasn't bothered in the very least.
If anything at all was on his mind at this moment -
It would be the slightly surprised look Kururi herself gave him, which, as it turned out, was going to stay on his mind for a while.
(TO BE CONTINUED IN PART II)
CHAPTER 3
YOUNG PRINCESSES' CLUB "THE HOTTEST SPRING ON THIS EARTH! IKEBUKURO, WHERE THE HIGH SCHOOL GIRL ANXIETY COMES TO AN END!"
♂♀
"Erotically wet blackboard erasers! Never-ending after-school 'lessons' on the street! Ikebukuro, the Dangerous Horizon of Tokyo filled with the aroma of Shining Rose -
High school girls, elegant and lonesome eagles out and about to cure your long-neglected illness called desire!
Our scouts spotted the legendary 'Old Fairy' among these girls who tread the borderline between passion and destruction!"
Those were the headlines on the cover of the adult magazine, "Young Girls' Club".
Though its target audience appeared to be the city's youngsters and maybe some older perverts, the magazine was increasingly headed in the direction of the bizarre and maniac, which made it a hot topic all by itself.
On the cover a woman obviously over twenty years old was posing suggestively in a sailor uniform, with several ofudas* pasted to her flawless feet.
Certain parts of her body, of course, were also covered with ofudas if you turn to the first colored page. It's hard to decide whether it was supposed to be erotic.
To read an adult magazine in a crowded classroom - especially with girls around - was bold enough an act in itself, not to mention one with such a peculiar orientation.
Yet there she was, sitting in one of the first-year classrooms in Raira Academy, browsing the magazine quite openly on her desk.
"Hmm~. Ahh~. Oops~. How naughty! I like that. What a smoking body."
The girl in question was tilting her chair backwards and giggling to herself - in a mostly black sailor uniform that differed from the standard color at Raira Academy.
She was wearing glasses and no make-up; her laughter as clear as a bell.
In almost every way, she looked like your typical liberal arts girl who would be perched in a chair reading Natsume Souseki* or Dazai Osamu* in the library.
"Ahhh - how sweet. I'd wanna be like that. How do you make your breasts bigger? Milk? With milk? Would rubbing milk into your breasts make them bigger? What do you think?"
With a translucent smile the bespectacled girl asked the boy sitting next to her.
The boy blushed hard in a "how would I know" sort of way, taking furtive looks at the girl every now and then while napping on his own desk.
They both wore glasses - but this girl was a completely different type from Sonohara Anri.
Anri was more mature, with a dark side to her life. This girl, on the other hand, had eyes that juggled schemes and conspiracies behind those two simple pieces of glass, yet still gave off an innocent and upbeat vibe.
Not to mention she was happily browsing porn.
Black skirt matched with a studious pair of glasses.
Nobody would have expected her to even produce that kind of magazine from her backpack.
But there she was, checking out the colored pages with an ever-so-translucent smile, talking to herself and every now and then to the boys around her.
Barely thirty minutes into knowing this girl, the boys in this class were already looking troubled.
♂♀
School opening day at Raira Academy
Raira Academy was a co-ed private school in South Ikebukuro.
Until several years ago the school was called by another name; after merging with another high school nearby, however, the school began to take the form it is in today.
The campus was not big, but the students did not feel confined since the architecture design made the best possible use of the limited space available. Students living in the suburbs of Tokyo could commute easily since the school was close to the Ikebukuro Station. As the school's popularity grew, it was increasingly harder to get into. Rumor had it that before the merging the school was a pretty bad one swarming with delinquents, but their era had long since passed.
On the taller school buildings one could look over the view that surrounded the school, but it was nothing compared to what one saw from the sixty-story building standing right next to the school.
On the other side there was the Zoushigaya Cemetery, giving off a neglected vibe despite being situated in central Tokyo.
But that vibe dissipated when students gathered; their youth and energy turned this place into an oasis in the metropolis.
Self-introduction was usually the first thing they did as a class after the school's opening ceremony -
And there were invariably students who manage to stand out.
The flirtatious ones, for instance, would appear in almost every classroom.
They would usually try to be funny, and either get accepted as the life of the class, or have to sit down embarrassed on the first day of school, or not notice that they should be embarrassed.
These people stand out because of their personalities; there would of course also be people who stand out because of the way they look.
Others stand out because they stutter or bite their tongues when trying to introduce themselves, making a clumsy impression. In short, people stand out for all sorts of reasons.
This was when "first impressions" were formed like a sturdy outer wall in everyone's hearts. The walls were silently being erected accompanied with every shade of emotion.
Because of the way the school was organized, few people were sorted into the same class as their friends they knew from middle school or before. If you were not a student who graduated from Raira Middle School, you would be lucky to see one or two people you knew in the same class as you.
The "first impresson" was an especially heavy mask to have to wear if one was aware that this class would probably be the basis of one's interpersonal relationships for one year, three years, or even a lifetime.
Everyone knew not to judge a book by its cover, it wasn't much help unless you possessed the ability to see through the cover right away. Moreover, it was impossible that anyone would assume others could see through their own cover.
Therefore the first impressions would end up being the deciding factor in the formation of student groups, in who would have lunch with whom, and in the reshuffling of classes next year.
In other words, the self-introductions on the first day were a rite of judgement - or a test - of one's adaptability to the class one was sorted into.
However, there were two students who apparently did not "read the air" - it was hard to tell whether they even realized the importance of these self-introductions.
♂♀
One of them was a girl wearing glasses who made her appearance in Class 1-B.
"My name's Orihara Mairu! Ori as in origami, Hara as in fields of grass, Mai-Ru as in losing yourself in a dance. Nice to meet you all! I like reading encyclopedias and manga and adult magazines!"
The only surprising part of this self-introduction was its last sentence, but most would just dismiss it as a joke. Her black sailor uniform did make her stand out, however, among a sea of the standard green.
But what she said immediately afterwards made everybody gasp.
"I'm bi, both platonically and sexually! But all slots are full for males as of present, so don't even bother trying! I can however take any number of girls, so keep that in mind when you're asking me out!"
♂♀
The other oddball presented herself in Class 1-C, a girl whose appearance stood out naturally as well.
"I'm, ...Orihara...Kururi."
The fact that she wore a gymnastic suit to her school opening was enough to draw attention.
True, at Raira Academy you could technically wear anything you like to the school opening, but most people would just go with uniforms or casual suits.
Yet this girl picked a gymnastic suit.
The head teacher asked her as she was about to sit back down:
"Is there anything else you'd like to say?"
"No (Nothing) ..."
The girl replied in a hardly audible voice and sat back into her seat.
The thin fabric accentuated the sheer size of her breasts. Her obvious curves contrasted with the slenderness of her limbs was enough to direct all male gazes in the class toward her body.
But the boys, too, would have second thoughts about a girl attending her first day of school in a gymnastic suit. So none of them actually stared at Kururi's body until they received sharp looks from the rest of the girls.
A healthy-looking body in a healthy-looking gymnastic suit.
Yet there was nothing looking even remotely healthy or upbeat about her decidedly dark expression.
Kuronuma Aoba, a boy sitting next to her, let his thoughts wonder as he looked at the weirdly-dressed girl.
- Looks like she's a melancholic. But why that gymnastic suit?
But the thoughts stopped there. He was just feeling puzzled like everyone else.
Turning around to look at other students, he noticed boys who stared at her curiously like himself, and girls looking as if she was a revolting sight to them.
- Whatever. As long as no one bullies her.
Aoba took on a nonchalant attitude and turned his gaze to the next person making a self-introduction.
As did most other students.
- There's an oddball in this class.
That was where they decided to leave things and focus instead on other people's self-introductions.
♂♀
Since they were in different classes, however, no one had noticed at this point that the two oddball girls in Classes 1-B and 1-C had almost the exact same facial and bodily features, except for the glasses, hairstyle, and bust size.
Moreover, the fact that they both had the surname "Orihara" -
- rang an alarming bell among the older teachers who had been at Raira Academy before it acquired its present name.
"......Just because their older brother was like that doesn't necessarily mean that these girls will turn out the same, so I'm trying not to judge them prematurely here..."
The old art teacher sipped at his tea in the faculty lounge as he muttered to himself.
"But really...compared to the times when we had to teach Izaya-kun and Shizuo-kun, this school is way more peaceful nowadays."
The old teacher held back a bitter laugh as he thought of the problem kids of yore.
"Back then we used to have filled gasoline drums rolling down the third floor of the school building..."
♂♀
Same time, an apartment in Shinjuku
"That reminds me..."
Namie's expression softened as she spoke without taking a break from the work at hand.
"It's school-opening day at Raira Academy."
Izaya, listening to her brighter-than-usual voice, replied airily as he continued to check his e-mail without turning to look at her.
"Ah, right. Why bring this up though?"
"Seiji is officially a high school sophomore...oh, how I would like to rush to the school and celebrate for him right now - "
"It's just school-opening...not like it's new student orientation or something. As a guardian you have no business being there anymore."
"But I want to watch."
Namie replied without hesitation. Izaya simply shook his head and sighed.
Trademarked cool beauty Namie only ever showed her deep and abnormal loving side when it came to her younger brother Yagiri Seiji.
A way-more-than-brother-and-sister, erotically charged loving side at that.
Which was unfortunately unrequited, since her younger brother found her love nothing more than tiresome. But for Namie, even cold blank stares were lovable as long as they came from Seiji.
A peachy shade of pink flew to her cheeks as her expression turned dreamy at the mental image of a fully grown Seiji. Glancing at his assistant happily at work, Izaya muttered to himself with a sigh.
"Raira Academy...the entire atmosphere really did change after they merged the schools and gave it a new name."
"Hmm? Are you a graduate too?"
"I graduated six or seven years ago. That was back when it was still called Raijin High School..."
Something close to a nostalgic smile crept onto Izaya's face - turning into a malevolent smirk spiced with hatred in the following nanosecond.
"...It was nothing but a pile of stinky memories, anyway, including how I came to meet Shizu-chan."
"You really do hate Shizuo, don't you?"
Namie murmured. But suddenly something struck her as odd.
"You said you graduated six or seven years ago...but didn't you also say you were 21 years old?"
"I've been telling people I was 21 since ages ago - or were you under the impression that I would just feed them my real personal information for free?"
Namie just listened for a second without feeling like there was anything to say - and then, pausing suddenly, turned her eyes to Izaya for the first time.
"Does that mean you have some trust in me now?"
"It's different from real trust...I just felt like I should at least tell you a thing or two about myself to keep my right-hand woman from turning against me."
"Why don't you just go and die already?"
Namie said curtly and turned back to her work, adding in a fact that sounded like revenge.
"Speaking of which - your sisters too are gonna be Raira students from now on."
"......You sure are very well-informed."
Izaya's expression verged on the uncomfortable.
"Just thought you should know that I've done my research on my head man as well."
"......How should I put it...well, I do that all the time to other people, but..."
It's a different thing altogether to have that done to myself - he laughed bitterly as if to say. Deciding to abandon the work at hand for the moment, he leaned into his chair and continued to talk as if to himself.
"I never knew how to deal with those two."
"Really? Are you saying there's something you don't know how to deal with apart from Heiwajima Shizuo?"
"Stop kidding. I'm human after all. Well, not completely, but still."
Sighing heavily, Izaya began to describe for Namie the environment he grew up in.
"My sisters...are called 'Kururi' and 'Mairu'. ...How should I put it...my parents are completely ordinary people. Except for when it comes to the taste in children's names, that is. Yet I grew up in that highly ordinary environment...to be what I am now."
"Alas, so you're aware that you are a hentai?"
Namie's sarcasm didn't seem to bother Izaya as he put his hands together, rubbed his thumbs and continued.
"I didn't turn out like this because of the environment I grew up in...but my sisters, I think, turned out abnormal because of my influence. That I do feel guilty about."
"Abnormal? In what ways?"
- What kind of children could make even a hentai like him call them abnormal?
Namie, now looking intrigued, paused the work at hand and poured herself a cup of tea from the kettle in the kitchen.
She was really listening now despite the fact that she just stood there in an aloof fashion. Izaya simply looked at Namie with weary eyes.
"Their goal is - to be 'human'."
"........Excuse me?"
"They want to become sort of a 'humankind in a nutshell' combination...and of all humankind especially the Japanese."
"I still don't follow."
Izaya smiled bitterly at a perplexed Namie.
"I know it's hard to understand. They simply thought that being twins automatically meant that they were supposed to be the same person."
"......Ahh, that kind of makes sense. A single twin does strike as an incomplete human being if not in a set with the other...or at least that's how we feel. But wouldn't it be odd for the twins themselves to feel the same way?"
"Normally, yes. But like I said...my sisters aren't normal."
Shutting down his laptop, Izaya rose slowly from his chair.
Parting the blinds with his fingers, he narrowed his eyes in the sunshine that poured through.
"You know how games always come with preset parameters? Like some characters would have high magical power but very low fighting ability, or excellent fighting ability but no brains. In an RPG game you would have to form a balanced team to make up for each other's weaknesses."
"Well, that's what we do in reality as well. Using your personnel according to their strengths and weaknesses is the first step towards rational management."
"If only it were anything close to rational management..."
Izaya put his hand on the desk as the image of his sisters came back to his mind.
"What they did was that they formed an RPG team, just the two of them. One would be the martial artist, and the other would be the sorcerer, something like that."
"......I have no idea what you're trying to say."
"It's simple. They consciously formed two completely contrasting human stereotypes. They became totally different despite being twins - on purpose! Thinking they would be something more than all other humans by combining their forces like that...just another way to convince themselves that they're capable of anything, I'd say."
As if observing something truly nonsensical, the stray smile around the corner of Izaya's mouth never reached his eyes.
"Their respective appearances and personalities - those were settled by a flip of the coin back when they were still elementary school kids. They weren't aware that there is a thing called congruency. So Kururi - the older one - is silent and melancholic but wears a gymnastic suit. The younger one, Mairu, looks like a liberal arts girl but talks and behaves like there's no tomorrow."
"But...that would just be odd, right? There's no point in divorcing the appearance from the personality."
Izaya nodded slowly at Namie's bewildered reaction.
"Sure, there is no point. But for those two, there isn't any point in synchronizing the appearance with the personality either. They end up being the 'same person' anyway. As long as they think they have all the 'parts', they don't care. They like to think they're special because of that - what a pair of intolerable eighth-grade-disease* patients."
"What's eighth-grade disease?"
"Google that up yourself. Whatever...it's at least better than thinking you're an esper or the reincarnation of a warrior of light or something. But anyway those two stand out too much...whatever kind of crowd they're in."
"Ah, I see. So as someone who wants to remain the evil mastermind in the dark it's only natural that you don't wish to be seen with them."
Namie nonchalantly interpreted Izaya's own thoughts for him.
Izaya looked away as if that analysis hit something right on the mark, and replied.
"True. It embarrasses me when I see those two or hear them talk...you'll see what I mean when you meet them. Keep in mind that even I can't stand them. If I can't stand them, there is probably no way anyone else can..."
"If you're so aware that you are just as intolerable yourself, why not behave a little bit for a change?"
"I don't wanna be told by someone who forced an illegal plastic surgery on a girl for the sake of her brother."
Namie merely smiled at Izaya's pungent riposte.
"Ahh. I have no intention to behave whatsoever when it comes to Seiji."
"......"
"True love needs no brake nor accelerator. When you think about it, it will get you there by itself."
Namie's cheeks turned rosy as she muttered such completely irrelevant sentences that didn't even sound like an answer.
If this were the only side people ever see of Namie, they'd probably think she's some kind of overgrown adolescent girl.
- If only her brother weren't the one she was lusting over.
Izaya sat back in his chair without another word. Namie's expression returned to normal as she asked the next question.
"But are you sure they're going to be alright? If they stand out so much, wouldn't it make them easy targets for all those bullies out there? I heard they are getting pretty nasty these days?"
Though her words looked like they were filled with concern for Izaya's family, there was not a trace of emotion in the way Namie uttered them; it was obvious that she actually couldn't care less.
Izaya looked as if he took on the same attitude as he pondered his sisters' situation.
"You have a point. Hopefully no bullies are gonna pick on them...but it's not like we can avoid it."
Still sighing, the information dealer's face eventually broke into a sarcastic grin.
"Poor things."
♂♀
Three days later, noon, Raira Academy
Why does bullying exist?
Kuronuma Aoba thought to himself in a chair at the back of the classroom.
Usually it's the bullies who start such things, but the bullied are not always innocent as snow either. Not that the causes mattered.
Influenced by the society, by games, by manga, by parents, by the school, by the Internet.
Honestly, whatever, thought Aoba.
You can point at a thousand factors you think are causing all the bullying, but even if you remove all of them, the bullies are not going to stop.
Because ultimately they're doing it for the satisfaction.
If they're not getting enough of the satisfaction, they will continue to do it.
It was a somewhat awkward conclusion, as Aoba himself realized; but he carried his thoughts further anyway.
- I wouldn't deny it.
- The pleasure inherent in bullying someone weaker than I am.
- That leaves only one question: whether I can suppress the yearning for that pleasure.
A pleasure akin to attacking a pre-modern country with missiles while you yourself remain at a safe distance.
Basking yourself simultaneously in the feeling of safety and overwhelming superiority. However you may choose to tune it down, it is, to say the very least, pleasant.
- Those who simply look on when others are being bullied are probably not doing so not only out of fear for retaliation if they try to stop the bullies; they're also savoring the fact that they aren't the ones being bullied.
- That, too, is a very pleasant and safe position.
- Of course, there's gotta be saints who don't feel comfortable in such a position and just have to help others. It would be weird if there were none - we're on a crowded planet after all.
- If you're talking about this particular classroom, however, it looks like there are none.
It was before the after-school homeroom -
Aoba was letting his thoughts wonder as he looked at Orihara Kururi's desk right next to his.
- There were things written in what looked like oil-based marker all over it.
- Considering it was only the third day of school, that truly is something.
But the contents of the writings came in a slightly different flavor than what would then be typical.
"SISTER OF A WHORE"
"CLAIM YOUR RESPONSIBILITY!"
"THE GUARDIAN'S FAULT!"
"ENJO-KOUSAI* SISTERS"
"DIE!!"
And the like. Overall the writings involved more kanji than would be expected*.
Kururi, however, simply stared at her desk with a blank expression on her face.
This had happened within the last 20 minutes, during which she was at the library.
Although Kururi's idiosyncratic gymnastic suit and dark aura made her stand out pretty much enough, none of the graffitied insults were directed at her.
For some reason, most of the abusive remarks were about her sister "Orihara Mairu".
To see why, we'll have to rewind to the morning of that exact day.
♂♀
"Good morning - "
Orihara Mairu arrived at her classroom on the third day of school to find her desk covered in graffiti that said "WHORE" "1000 YEN FOR ONE NIGHT" "OPEN FOR ENJO-KOUSAI" and the like.
Mairu stopped dead on the spot for a second.
"Hmm - "
Still smiling, she began to scan the classroom.
Everybody turned their backs, deliberately avoiding meeting her gaze or looking at her desk.
Typical atmosphere of a bullying session.
But she continued to scan around unwavered -
Until fixating her eyes on a small throng of girls by the front window of the classroom.
One of them, after stealing a look at Mairu, had giggled and whispered to the others.
With a sudden "hee", the corner of Mairu's mouth curved skywards.
It was a totally different kind of curve from the ever-translucent smile she wore until now. Like a trickster grinning in the shadow after locating his unknowing prey, she broke into a sharp and slimy smirk, and -
- Jumped.
Everything happened in a flash.
The floor made an explosive "bang" noise.
But nothing had actually exploded - it was only Mairu's feet as she jumped from the wooden floor.
The bullies and the on-lookers had until now assumed that Mairu was transparent or didn't exist altogether - yet within a twentieth of a second, that assumption was blown to smithereens.
As every head turned at the explosive noise, Mairu had already hopped into mid-air and towards the back of the classroom.
Starting from the desk right behind her, she had jumped all the way until landing on a locker located in the back of the classroom, picked up a little box on the locker and turned around.
With astounding fluidity she jumped up again from the locker, flew over the heads of several dumbstruck classmates, and covered the length of the classroom in a few strides.
The girl was unstoppable like a cannonball.
She made one more stride after stepping on the last desk -
And landed in the middle of that throng of girls at the front of the classroom.
♂♀
Three days earlier, noon, an apartment in Shinjuku
""You have a point. Hopefully no bullies are gonna pick on them...but it's not like we can avoid it."
Still sighing, the information dealer's face at last broke into a sarcastic grin.
"Poor things."
"Do you find that funny? Aren't they your family after all?"
Izaya shook his head at a frowning Namie.
"Nah nah nah. It's not that. It's not that at all."
He chuckled as he went on to clear this simple misunderstanding.
"I wasn't talking about Kururi and Mairu...I was talking about the bullies."
"Huh?"
"Wasn't I telling you just now? They turned out abnormal because of my influence."
"Say...if I were bullied, do you think I would just leave my bullies be?"
♂♀
Back to the morning of the third day of school.
The entire class froze.
It took a long while for anybody to actually register what had happened; for a moment they just stared and remained dead still.
“Ahaha! I - got - ya - !"
Mairu sounded as cheerful as a child playing tag.
But those around her were in a state almost the exact opposite of cheerfulness.
The little box Mairu had just fetched from the back of the classroom was filled almost to the brim with thumbtacks.
In a deft move she had flipped the box open and raised it high.
Her actions up until this point had been simple.
She had landed right in the throng of girls who had been laughing at her -
Knocked one of them down with a clothesline -
And stuck her palm like a cleaver into the wailing girl's mouth.
That had been it.
Her movements were captured like multiple action movie clips by the eyes of her classmates.
Mairu, cheeks flushed with excitement, was smiling as she set her legs astride the girl on the floor.
The scene would have been quite erotic had it not been ruined by Mairu's one hand stuck in the girl's mouth and her other holding a box of thumbtacks.
Eyes glittering from behind her glasses, Mairu asked with the same smile she had on her face during self-introduction.
"I'll give you 3 seconds! Who started it? Point her out for me!"
As she spoke, the now-opened box of thumbtacks was being shoved nearer and nearer to the girl's face.
"Nnnnnhhhh! Haaa-! Nnnhhhhaaeehh!"
Now that she knew what was in store for her, the girl struggled fiercely - but Mairu's knees kept her arms pinned to the floor and incapable of defense.
Other girls in the group could only goggle at Mairu nervously as if they didn't have a clue what was going on.
"Three - "
Such an overwhelmingly skilled counterattack totally deprived the bully - now a victim of violence - of the ability to think.
"Two - "
There was no time to even consider the possible retaliation if she turned her accomplice in.
Even if there had been, she would still have turned her accomplice in since no future retaliation could possibly be worse than having her throat flooded with thumbtacks in the next second.
"One - "
The box of thumbtacks made a ticking noise as it was slightly tilted.
That was when the girl had to surrender.
She pointed to the tallest among the group of girls who had been gleefully discussing Mairu's reaction to the graffiti on the desk.
"Ze - ah, thanks!"
Mairu caught several thumbtacks as they began to fall towards the girl's throat with the deft hand she just pulled out of the girl's mouth.
Still smiling, she turned to the girl who had just been pointed out by her partner-in-crime shaking all over in fear.
At that point her next target was already making for the door.
"Ahh - ! Don't run away yet!"
She raised the thumbtacks she had just caught in her left hand and released them like a pitching machine would a bunch of baseballs.
A series of rhythmical clicks and clacks later -
The tall girl found several thumbtacks pinned to the exit door she was just about to open with her hand.
That wasn't an extraordinary feat in itself; with some skill, thumbtacks can be thrown to the wall like darts.
But it was downright insane to throw them in public to begin with - not to mention at other people.
It just happened that Orihara Mairu was the kind of person to disregard all such boundaries; without the slightest hesitation she had aimed her thumbtacks where the primary offender's hand was headed.
The realization made the girl stop dead in her tracks out of the sheer immensity of her fear.
Passivity.
She was trapped in passivity.
She had made the first move - yet she was trapped in passivity. The bullied girl didn't even spare her the time to consider the next move or follow her instinct; her shoulders were grabbed in mere seconds from behind.
"So! You wanna hang out in the restroom? Listen! I! Suddenly! Have this huuuuge urge to get really really close with you, though I don't even know your name! Ahaha!"
With a playful smile over her chic features, Orihara Mairu was about to drag the girl by the chin straight into the hallway -
As she stopped to talk to the boy sitting next to her desk.
"Hey, sorry - how about you help me erase these and lunch is on me?"
The boy started and, not sure what to do, tried rubbing the oily marker writings off with his eraser anyway -
None of the other students dared even move; only the sound of the eraser at work could be heard throughout the quiet classroom.
A boy who had attended the same middle school as the Orihara sisters walked into the classroom. Seeing the writings on Mairu's desk and the state of shock everybody else was still in, he let out a sigh.
"Ahh - so she did it again."
He began to tell his dumbstruck classmates about Mairu.
"That one, she goes to this gym that teaches pretty weird martial art stuff, so you don't wanna pick on her. Some guys tried to gang up on her once - ended up almost killed by her and her fellow gym-goers.”
- Does the kind of martial art they teach use thumbtacks as weapons?
The question surfaced in everyone's mind, but they all remained silent deciding that not getting too involved with Mairu was the better idea.
Fifteen minutes later.
Right before homeroom was about to start, Mairu returned with her clothes straightened out as if nothing had happened. She lowered her head apologetically as she saw the boy still bent over her desk, trying to erase the graffiti marks.
"Ahh - sorry about that! It's hard to get oil-based stuff off just like that isn't it! I'll help!"
She produced from her sailor uniform pocket a piece of cloth and began to clean the desk with the boy.
"It's not coming off. I guess water doesn't work on oil-based stuff anyway - should we just plane it off?"
She was still smiling as she said that.
A pure liberal-arts-girl smile.
The boy hastened to lower his gaze as he realized that he had been staring. Then he noticed something absurd.
The cloth she was wiping the desk with had string-like things attached to it.
Though he found it weird, the boy didn't think further about it as he went back to focus on his own work.
Nor did he realize that the cloth was actually the brassiere of the girl whom Mairu had dragged into the restroom a moment ago.
That girl never showed her face in the classroom again that day; in fact, she had left school early without even fetching her backpack.
Nobody knew what happened between the two during that private "conversation" in the restroom save Mairu and the girl herself. Neither did anybody venture to ask.
The reason was simple: if they had looked on without a word when the graffiti was being done, there was no way they'd be willing to be involved in anything that reeks of deeper trouble.
♂♀
And now, the homeroom after lunch break.
After the scheme to bully Orihara Mairu of Class 1-B ended in a complete fiasco -
The twisted network of girls targeted her sister Orihara Kururi instead.
Which was why Aoba sat there staring at the graffiti and letting his thoughts wonder.
- She had never done anything.
She was targeted just because she was Mairu's sister.
Kururi wasn't the hated one; yet she was spit in the face for Mairu's sake.
- Well. Whatever.
Aoba's gaze wondered outside the window as he waited for the homeroom to begin.
At last came the teacher, who was about to dismiss the class after taking care of some simple housekeeping issues -
After dutifully checking around the classroom, however, Mr. Marumura noticed the ruinous state Kururi's desk was in.
"What happened to your desk, Orihara?"
"......"
"That can't possibly be your own graffiti, right?"
The teacher frowned as he got close enough to read the writings. He was waiting for Kururi's reply.
"Negative (It's not mine)."
Her voice was small, but her answer was clear.
Marumura scanned the students in the classroom.
"Anybody got a clue who did this?"
- Whatever.
Aoba thought indifferently as he looked at Kururi, who still had her head lowered.
- I have nothing to do with this bullying affair. Nothing to gain and nothing to lose.
- Really, whatever.
Yet precisely because he believed it had nothing to do with him -
"Miss Tsukiyama and some girls from other classes did that together."
He replied without hesitation, since it had nothing to do with him anyway.
Whether this was a bullying affair was irrelevant for him; he was simply delivering the answer to the question he was asked.
Tsukiyama, the girl he just turned in, was visibly flustered.
Nobody had tried to stop her when she committed the petty criminal act.
Which was why she never expected to be "betrayed" in this fashion.
Though Aoba was never officially on her side to begin with, it still felt like a stab in the back from her perspective.
"...Tsukiyama, come to the office after this. Bring the others with you."
The teacher said sternly. Tsukiyama gritted her teeth and turned to Aoba.
- Why didn't you say anything when we were at it!
Said the piercing look she was throwing at Aoba. But Aoba, still not feeling like the whole affair had anything to do with him, wasn't bothered in the very least.
If anything at all was on his mind at this moment -
It would be the slightly surprised look Kururi herself gave him, which, as it turned out, was going to stay on his mind for a while.
(TO BE CONTINUED IN PART II)