DURARARA!! Vol.5 CHAPTER 3, PART II
Just in case: make sure you've read the updated PART I before proceeding to this part.
♂♀
Sonohara Anri was an ordinary human.
Or at least had been until five years ago.
She came to host an "otherworldly" being in her after her fate brought her into contact with an "otherworldly" being like Celty Sturluson.
Namely, a demon blade Kishitani Shingen - Shinra's father - had once used to cut the Headless Rider's soul and steal her head.
"Demon blade" was the only way one could describe it.
After he had finished using it, Shingen had sold the demon blade named "Saika" to the antique store Anri's father had run. After a series of events, Anri ended up losing her parents, and the demon blade ended up in her body.
The demon blade had not caused her parents' death.
In fact, she and her mother would probably have already died under her father's violence had it not been for the demon blade.
That her mother would have died either way was indeed a thought that rendered her wordless, but Anri had come to accept the fact that only she was saved just like she accepted the existence of the demon blade in her body.
Anri had had such thoughts before:
Had her consciousness been completely in the demon blade's control like the way things were in the slasher tales set in old times, she would probably been able to feel better about her life.
Or, alternatively, had the blade been one that could talk to her freely like the ones in manga, she would actually have felt fortunate.
But Saika was nothing more than a wicked curse that had found a home deep down in her heart.
Saika had only one wish.
To love humans.
To fall in love with the entire human race.
That was it.
But for Saika, "loving" meant becoming one with the person it loved.
In other words, with the entire human race.
It wanted to infect every human being in the world with its curse and fill their bodies and souls with its loving whisper. In that way, it wanted to swarm the earth with its countless "daughters" born in its union with human consciousness.
That was all to Saika's wish.
But it was suppressed to a certain degree by Anri's consciousness.
Anri, who had always seen things around her through a "picture frame", simply regarded Saika's overwhelming "loving whispers" as yet another picture far, far way from her in the frame.
She was never loved by her father, and the instant she felt loved by her mother - her mother slitted her own belly with Saika.
What she felt for Saika, which loved human beings as if it could never get tired of it, was - a strong sense of uneasiness and a smidgen of friendship and overwhelming jealousy.
- This child……Saika…she can love anyone in the world as if her life depended on it.
- How fortunate.
A powerful sense of guilt seized Anri as she caught herself having such thoughts; yet the sense of guilt was not directed at anyone.
On the other hand, Saika did nothing to save Anri from her hell.
It couldn't hurt Anri, who was its host, so it had to exclude Anri from the humans it "loved".
Anri admired Saika. Saika used her but was at the same time suppressed by her.
It was not a form of symbiosis; more like mutual parasitism.
If Saika had bequeathed anything on Anri -
It would be the overwhelming amount of "experience" etched into Saika's consciousness.
♂♀
In the split second the other female was about to thrust the garden scissors at her -
Anri's body had at some point gotten itself out of her attack range.
All the fighting experiences that made up Saika's consciousness had begun to take over Anri's body.
Utilizing these experiences without realizing it herself, Anri had moved her own vulnerable body in the most efficient way.
"I don't think I know you……are you sure you're not looking for someone else……?"
As she said this Anri had already put her own situation in a "picture frame" of her mind.
What she saw in front of her eyes was now for her nothing more than a painting of faraway objects.
In fact, even if they weren't Anri, the situation would probably have felt surreal to anyone if they had been attacked by a woman in a mask with a pair of garden scissors in her hands.
Anri prayed that the woman had indeed been looking for someone else as she searched her brain for the most peaceful solution. At the same time, she moved the blade so that instead of straight out of her torn pajamas, it was now coming out of her palm.
Like a shark's fin appearing from under the surface of the sea, the tip of the blade glided its way through the white skin on Anri's arm and revealed its breathtaking shape at the other end of her palm so that Saika, now a complete katana, was held firmly in her hand.
"Um……in case you're a burglar……I don't have money at my home……so please go back."
Vorona couldn't help but bit her lips at the sight. She scrutinized the girl's body for an instant.
That was when she noticed that her target's eyes were starting to gleam red.
It was as if her eyeballs themselves were red sources of light.
John Carpenter's remake of "Village of the Damned" was released under the title "Gleaming Eyes" in Japan - she was instantly reminded of this piece of information she had read from a book several days ago. But it did nothing to help her understand what was going on.
- What?
Question marks flooded Vorona's brain.
- What is this girl in front of my eyes?
Despite that, her body had begun to move on its own.
She pirouetted to get her own body into the katana's attack range and readied her elbow for aiming a knock-out blow at the opponent's chin.
Yet -
Hoosh
She was ensnared in the chilling air that seemed to emanate from her own body.
- Ah, I'm, going to die.
That thought crossed her mind for a second.
She gave up trying to attack with her elbow and instead hopped as far backwards as she could.
The white blade flashed dangerously close to the tip of her nose.
Judging from the aim and the speed it was probably not meant to be fatal.
It felt more like an attack meant to hurt her than to kill her.
- So what happens if I……get cut?
She had already saw the extraordinary way in which the katana was unsheathed.
Taking into the fact that the blade had some sort of surreal quality to it, it was only logical to presume that being touched by the blade was in itself a danger.
- What, is this girl?
- A human……?
She was different from everything she had read about and experienced before.
Vorona felt all sorts of emotions wash over her heart as she stared at the girl right in front of her eyes.
- ……Somehow, I feel warm.
- I've had this feeling before.
- This is……the same thing I felt when……
It was the same feeling she had when she had first killed a person - in the split second before she was about to take his life. Vorona stepped backwards again as she realized this.
- Right now I'm, not calm.
Vorona tried to assess her situation with a cool head and thereby force her heart to cool down as well, yet -
She heard the horns of a truck blaring in the night.
- !?
Turning sharply, she saw the trucked parked right next to the apartment building flashing its headlights at her in their agreed code.
- Emergency.
Vorona froze her own heart instantly and said to the target in front of her:
"You, incredible. Very fascinating."
"……"
"I will appear again. Looking forward to it."
Vorona ran towards the truck, keeping an eye on the girl in case she would attack from the back.
But it seemed that the girl had no intention of doing so. Before her heart could fall back to its place, however, a new alarming sound reached her ears.
The neigh of a horse.
A totally eerie feeling seized Vorona as she heard the neigh coming from somewhere extremely close to the truck.
She was unmoved, however, as she walked past the driver's seat and signaled to Slon to start the truck.
The sound of tires rubbing madly against the asphalt came as the truck, with a momentum proportional to its weight, charged forward like a bull.
Vorona jumped onto the bed of the truck and turned around to check on the "abnormality" coming for them from behind -
And saw that it was more than "abnormal"; it was "otherworldly".
The pitch-black motorbike without a headlight was slowly coming closer.
It was not coming for them at its greatest speed.
Instead, it approached them as if it wanted to make sure of something before it attacked -
Without doubt, it was the rider whose head Vorona had sliced off not long ago.
That she was able to confirm almost instantly.
Because the rider had an even more conspicuous trait than the Black Motorbike he was riding - than anything else.
The rider astride on the motorbike - had nothing above his neck.
- ……?
Before she could feel fear, the woman felt doubt.
It was the second "otherworldly" phenomenon she had witnessed in a row. She began to suspect that she had swallowed something hallucinogenic without realizing it.
She also considered the possibility that she had been dreaming, but it felt way too real.
- Anyhow, the situation's dangerous.
Maybe it was a dream. Maybe there was no need to do anything about it -
But the situation had forbidden her from such comforting thoughts.
Vorona stood in a corner at the back of the truck and opened the door manually with her dexterous hands.
- ?
That was when she noticed something weird.
She had failed to notice all along that a thread-like object had extended through the slit in the door into the inside of the truck.
The thread was attached to the back of the motorbike she had been riding.
Just as she saw through the open door the motorbike coming for them -
The horse neighed more fiercely than before and the motorbike accelerated hard.
- !
- That neigh, from the motorbike……!
It was after she realized this that Vorona was able to notice what was extraordinary about the Black Motorbike.
- What she had failed to notice before because she was distracted by the engine sounds from her own motorbike.
No sounds of an engine came from that motorbike - there was only the horse's neigh.
- Danger!
Sonohara Anri's apartment was situated on a road with perhaps the least traffic in all Ikebukuro; they had seldom seen other cars or people on their way.
But that was about to end at the traffic light in front of them.
Beyond that, what they were about to enter was Tokyo's downtown traffic network with zillions of vehicles.
Even if they tried to scare other vehicles into making way for them with the truck's sheer size and momentum, the motorbike would probably be able to catch up with them within 100 meters.
- Danger! Danger! Danger! Danger! Danger!
Vorona's judgment was bold and her action almost immediate.
As she rolled into the back of the truck, she took off the cover on "something" that had been sitting next to the entrance.
The Black Motorbike had accelerated further and shortened its distance from the tail of the truck.
But as soon as it saw what had been revealed under the cover - it decelerated instantly.
What had just been revealed - was an aggressively-shaped black object with a metallic shine.
An .50 Russian anti-material sniper rifle.
It was the kind of rifle used against tanks and helicopters. Its range varied with the bullet used, but it was said that rifles of this kind could easily tear open the armor of a tank from 1-2 kilometers away.
It was a last-resort killer weapon she had in case they would be hunted down by patrol cars or helicopters. Vorona had never expected herself to have to use it under such circumstances.
Kneeling down on her right knee, Vorona lifted the rifle and placed its stock on her right shoulder.
The rifle weighed more than 10 kilograms, but Vorona was skilled enough with it to be able to position herself and adjust her aim.
In fact, shooting other combatants with a .50 rifle was explicitly forbidden by international treaties. Vorona had acquired that knowledge in a certain book she had read before. Lingerin had also said to her: "Don't shoot people with this. Otherwise they'll explode like red water balloons and you'll never be able to clean up the mess."
But for Vorona, the rider with nothing above his neck did not fall under the category of humans to begin with.
Despite that, she still decided to avoid aiming at the rider's body. Whether she did that out of hesitation or the fact that it was simply easier to aim at the motorbike, it was impossible to tell -
Anyway, just as she would an armored car, Vorona aimed the shot at the motorbike the Black Rider was on and pulled the trigger without hesitating.
Thunder.
Ikebukuro's streets shook as if a cannonball had just exploded. Pedestrians had to cover their ears at the deafening noise without the slightest idea where it was coming from.
Several seconds later, the apartments nearby began to light up as the residents opened their windows to try and see what was going on.
Vorona, on the other hand, couldn't see what was going on behind the truck from inside it.
The dense smoke from the anti-material rifle had completely clouded her sight.
It took a few seconds for the forward movement of the truck and the dispersing effect of the wind to enable her to see again -
By then, the Black Motorbike was nowhere to be seen.
- Not even its remains.
The rifle was specially constructed so that its recoil was not as powerful as one would expect from a rifle of its size and capacity - but even with all things taken into consideration, there was no reason for her to fire a second shot. She lowered the rifle and looked around with alarmed eyes.
As soon as she did so, she noticed that the black thread was still attached to the back of the motorbike she had parked at the back of the truck - without hesitation, she picked up her garden scissors and tried to cut it.
But the black thread was far more resilient than she had expected. She tried and tried, but was unable to cut it.
"Slon. What happened the Black Motorbike?"
"No idea. He kind of disappeared, is all I can say. At least no longer showing up in the rear mirror. Speaking of which, did you use that thing, Vorona?"
"I affirm. It was an emergency."
The truck came to a stop soon enough.
It seemed that they had arrived at the crossing leading straight to a main street.
Vorona closed the back door immediately. The truck turned into a main street as the traffic light turned green.
She fell into deep thought for a couple of seconds and pulled the black thread with no expression on her face. After it became obvious that the entire rear part of the motorbike was entangled in the web woven by the single black thread, she spoke to Slon via the transceiver.
"There should be an abandoned factory close by. Drive us there please."
"? What do you wanna do?"
"The motorbike is tailed. I am going to throw it away."
She considered this for another couple of seconds and muttered with a face devoid of expression just like her father's:
"Or use it as a trap for our ambush."
♂♀
In front of Anri's apartment
"Celty-san……!"
Before she knew it, Anri had run out of the apartment as she heard the sudden explosion.
The assault had left her in confusion, but what surprised her even more was the sight of the "otherworldly" creature she knew going straight after the truck the assailant had jumped onto.
Not to mention that the explosive sound reminiscent of a cannonball came only several seconds after.
If anything happened to Celty - the thought alone was enough to make Anri forget about her own situation and rush onto the road -
[It's dangerous.]
A PDA screen appeared in front of her with these words displayed on it.
Right after - she was dragged back to her own apartment by a hand that came for her from the side.
Anri turned sharply to find the rider with nothing above her neck standing there.
"Celty-san! ……Eh?"
Celty should have been after the truck. So why was she here?
Celty shrugged to a confused Anri and began to type.
[Well……I don't know either……she made a move to shoot me……so I made this super thick wall with my shadow, but ended up being blasted all the way back here anyway……um……I don't know if 'blasted' is the right way to put it……hmm……it was still dangerous……probably. Shooter……could have been blown to pieces.]
Celty used a lot of "……"-s in her typing - perhaps she had not figured out what she wanted to say herself either.
As she focused on her surroundings, Anri saw that the Black Motorbike was parked right behind Celty's back. There was also a misshapen chunk of metal in Celty's hand - it was probably what remained of the bullet that was fired at her.
"I wanted to keep tailing them, but since they weren't afraid to fire their rifle even in the downtown area, I felt like I would get the residents on the street into unnecessary trouble if I upset them further……"
"Rifle……how……"
"Why did they attack you, Anri-chan?"
"Um……I have no idea……"
Anri's expression turned into one filled with uneasiness.
"I don't know if they're going to come back or not."
Celty banged her chest with a "thud" to ensure Anri that she would be safe.
[No problem, just stay with us for the night. Our apartment is pretty secure.]
"B - But……"
Seeing that Anri was still hesitating, Celty waved her hand in front of her face - or where it should have been.
Her headlessness made the gesture meant to soothe look extremely weird instead.
[It's alright! You've stayed at ours before, haven't you? We have too big an apartment anyway! And it would be a good idea to think about what to do with those people when we're together!]
Since Celty had said this Anri saw no reason to refuse. With a hardly audible "Thank……you……" she accepted the headless woman's offer.
Celty, on the other hand, slapped her own shoulder as if she had just remembered something and asked:
[Speaking of which, do you have a mask or a helmet at home?]
"Eh?"
[My helmet was thrown onto the street……I was going to pick it up, but it was already run over by a dump truck……and my spare helmet's at home.]
Celty looked seriously bothered. Anri considered this for a moment -
[Um……why not make yourself a black helmet with your shadow like the one you made for me before......?]
A brief silence fell between the two of them.
It lasted for about 10 seconds until Celty turned around somewhat embarrassedly, made herself a round helmet with her shadow and showed Anri her PDA:
[Didn't think of that……]
♂♀
With that, the first day of the Golden Week came to an end.
Different creatures were experiencing their respective non-daily lives without realizing that the same thing was happening to others as well.
The night was slowly being replaced by a new morning.
The sun shone down on the earth as it would when the people were leading everyday lives -
And simply watched from afar the weird changes taking place in Ikebukuro.
♂♀
Morning of May 4th, Mikado's apartment
- Turned out I did not get that much sleep after all……
Mikado leaned back into the chair in front of the computer and covered his exhausted face with his hands.
He had been collecting every bit of information he could find right after hearing about the "Dollars Saitama Incident" in the chatroom.
He hadn't been forced to; neither was it his responsibility to begin with - yet Mikado somehow felt like he "had to."
For Mikado, one of the founders of Dollars, Dollars was already part of himself.
Not that it was necessary for living or anything.
But just like cell phones or the Internet, it was something hard to take out of his life once it had an established existence in it. That was what Dollars was for Mikado.
Although new members were no longer pouring in at the previous rate, the number was still growing. In fact, even Mikado himself had lost count of how many exactly there were.
That was why he had always feared that the members would go wild on their own.
He had once closed down the Dollars website.
When they had first made the website, they had a half-joking rule that said "All new members of Dollars must confess the worst thing they've done." and made a new member registration page for that purpose.
That page no longer existed. They had deleted it for two reasons.
Firstly, certain members turned the comment function on the "confession" board into a sort of chatroom; some even began to spam it with download links of prohibited content or game modification codes. The board had lost its original purpose.
Secondly, the "confession", which had started out as a pastime for fun, was turning into a dangerous sport itself.
The first confessions were the likes of "I've grabbed food with my hand" or "I've drawn eyebrows on my dog's face", but soon after they began to warrant more attention as confessions of theft and violence became more frequent.
Some even scoffed at others for not having the guts to do something "more mature" and bragged about the worse things they had done. After seeing a certain post that said "I stole for the first time in my life so that I can join Dollars", Mikado decided to delete this page altogether.
Dollars was an organization founded for fun.
Not for destroying the social order, lowering the morals or bragging about violations of the law in real life.
That was why he just had to do something to stop Dollars from going rampant if he could.
He had no idea if he would succeed or not, but he would be shifting a founder's responsibility to others if he didn't even try to investigate.
Or at least that was what he had thought.
Until, several hours ago -
He got a call from Orihara Izaya.
♂♀
"Hello, this is Ryuugamine."
"……Yah, long time no see, Ryuugamine-kun. Or should I call you Tanaka Taro-kun?"
"Kanra-san. It's been long since I got a call from you."
""I just checked out the chatroom log. I've caught wind of that incident in Saitama, too……it looks like Dollars is in a very strange situation right now."
"……Yes. I'm looking into that incident myself."
"Good. So what have you found?"
"I think…..it was probably done by some new Dollars members."
"Yeah, that's what I figured. What are you gonna do about it?"
"I want to try to stop them, but……"
"Why?"
"Eh……"
"There's no rule in Dollars's book that says 'Thou shall not pick fights outside of Tokyo', is there? There's no need for you to interfere at this point."
"But……"
"Or have you gotten afraid of those Color Gang games after you saw what happened to the Yellow Turbans? I heard that was what separated you and your best friend?"
"It's not like that. Masaomi's still my friend."
"Let's hope he feels the same way about you."
"……Why do I sense a little sarcasm here?"
"Nah, you bet there's none. I'm just being a little jealous of my young kouhais enjoying the best times of their youth. There were no such friends for me, you see. All I had was this freak of an old acquaintance and that irritating violent thickhead."
"……"
"Anyway. Back to the topic."
"Yes."
"Whether you had wished for it or not as a founder, Dollars is now not only a concrete existence but also more or less a force to be reckoned with. It's only natural that you'll see people toying with the idea of making Dollars an even better-known organization by marking more territory and thereby promoting their own names as well, isn't it?"
"……That I realize."
"It's going to be OK. There's virtually no horizontal structure in Dollars. Even if those who picked on the Saitama folks will have to face retaliation, you'll be fine as long as you don't say anything. That's just how Dollars is, isn't it? If you want to help, you go ahead and do it, but if you don't, it's OK to just stay lazy*. Freedom. Yeah, that's what you call freedom."
* Here Izaya uses the "dara-dara" (being lazy) expression, which was the origin of the name "Dollars".
"……Are you calling me just to say this?"
"Ahh, nah nah. It's not like that. Speaking of Saitama, that reminds me. I heard several bousouzoku gangs have been after you last month? Quite scary, wasn't it?"
"Ah, yeah. We got out of it safely, though, thanks to Celty-san, Kadota-san and others……"
"I heard that one of those gangs were the same gang that was attacked by Dollars members in Saitama."
"Eh……?"
"The Captain of that gang - I guess it suffices to say that he's after every woman in the world……but he's also a guy who would resort to violence to solve anything. He'd stomp on people's face even after he had kicked them to the ground."
"Is he that dangerous……?"
"YES. That's why it's a better idea to not take girls with you when you go out in the evenings, you know what I'm talking about? Like that friend of yours, Anri-chan. Try your best to watch out for her safety."
"……I don't think Sonohara-san has anything to do with this."
"I wouldn't be so sure. If they knew that you're a Dollars member and that there's this girl you really like, what do you figure they'd do……? There's no guarantee that your opponent will not touch ordinary people who are not 'part of this'. They're here to revenge, you know."
"……"
"You've used Dollars on many occasions yourself, haven't you? Like when you got into trouble with Yagiri Pharmaceuticals. It's not going to make sense to them now even if you tell them to 'Stop doing bad things.'."
"……So what do you want me to do?"
"Shouldn't you ask yourself before you ask me?"
"I only want to 'do something about it'. I've said that already."
"Ahaha. Looks like I'm not convincing you. In short - if you don't want to involve Anri-chan or yourself in this, just forget about Dollars. Forget everything about it if you can. Or at least forget about it until things have calmed down."
"But……"
"I'll try to explain. Let us assume that you really want to keep Dollars out of any kind of conflict with your own hands……or stop Dollars from going rampant and attacking others……and let us also assume that you've succeeded. If so, this organization will no longer be 'Dollars'. If you're able to control how everyone within the organization moves, it will have become something else……I think that should be pretty self-explanatory."
"That I do understand."
"Dollars, I think, is something 'beyond' Color Gangs. It'll probably sound like an exaggeration if I say it's like a country or nation……but it's made up of people with different goals and intentions. Some of them are good, and some are bad. There's no way you can know how outsiders view this group. You won't know whether they'll see the good Dollars or the bad Dollars……Because that you don't get to choose."
"……"
"Sorry, I've been talking too much. I was annoying, wasn't I?"
"Ah, no. Um……thank you, for telling me all these things."
"………"
"……What is it?"
"Mikado-kun."
"Yes?"
"Aren't you feeling a little excited?"
"……Sorry?"
"Nothing, I was just trying to picture your face on the other end of the phone."
"What nonsense are you talking about…?"
"But isn't this your favorite non-daily life?"
"I never said I liked anything that's not 'daily'."
"Really?"
"Of course……"
"When you closed down the Dollars website you wrote in the explanation that it was because people were spamming with the registration page, and that the 'bad things' they confessed were getting more serious in nature……I won't say anything about the former part, but the latter kind of concerns me. Did you not like it because you thought they were too thoughtless?"
"That should go without saying."
"If that was really what you're thinking, you'd have already given up on Dollars, disbanded it and erased all traces of its existence. That, or leave the organization and go back to living like an ordinary person. All you'd have to do is ignore the text messages. It's not like you'd be punished."
"I'm one of the founders……how can I do something that irresponsible?"
"It's alright. No one in Dollars expects you to take on any responsibility. If you still insist on taking on some responsibility, you're one mature kid……that's what I was going to say, but I don't think you're that type."
"Why are you saying this all of a sudden?"
"Whatever, I guess it's better not to say it. It's always better to not know what others think of you, isn't it?"
"Isn't it too heartless to stop here when you've already said this much? ……Please go ahead and say it, I promise I won't mind."
"Really? Alright. This is nothing more than my own guess, so if it's wrong, you're free to just disregard it. Information brokers enjoy talking nonsense, you see."
"OK."
"……You're not fearing that Dollars will go rampant. Am I right?"
"Eh……"
"You're fearing that you will fall into the position of a mere bystander while Dollars keeps changing, aren't you?"
"It's not like that!"
"……"
"Ah……"
"That was a fast denial. You know that only makes it sound more suspicious, right? You'll want to be more careful about that next time. That would only mean that you're already having the same thought."
"……"
"You're not good at fighting. You're not even a delinquent to begin with. You've probably never touched cigarettes or alcohol. You don't like people who brag about stealing things - you're just an ordinary good human being. Not that I don't consider it a virtue - but you founded Dollars and kept it running till this day exactly because you were tired of it, didn't you? Isn't it your dream to get away from your daily life?"
"……"
"That's why I'm worried about you."
"Eh……?"
"Haven't I told you before? If you really want to get away from your daily life, you'll have to keep evolving. But you don't necessarily have to do it alone."
"Kanra-sa……Orihara-san……"
"Izaya is fine. Kida-kun calls me Izaya-san, too. That's right, you have many companions even if you don't count the Dollars members. Don't you ever forget that. There's Anri-chan and Kida-kun……well, if there's anything I can do, I'll be glad to help you out, too. That's why I'm saying there's no need for you to try to keep everything to yourself and do everything on your own this time. I just wanted to tell you that."
"……Um, Izaya-san."
"Yes?"
"Thank you……very much."
"I didn't do anything you should be grateful to me for."
"Maybe I was just trying to talk you into something. Maybe I had ulterior motives. ……Just maybe."
♂♀
Mikado couldn't help but smile in a self-ironic way as these dialogues came back to his mind.
- Izaya-san. At first I thought he was just a weird person who did all sorts of things I didn't know -
- But he's a nice person after all.
Mikado simply felt encouraged by Izaya's words.
Had his brain not been so overloaded with thoughts on Dollars, he would perhaps have remembered what his best friend had said to him the first day he came to Ikebukuro.
"Never have anything to do with Orihara Izaya."
It was probably the most important piece of advice his friend had to offer.
But right now it simply failed to reach Mikado's ears.
Because Mikado still didn't know exactly what Izaya had done to Masaomi in the entire Yellow Turbans incident.
After that, the boy gathered his spirits and tried to think of a plan -
"……I can't think of anything......"
He did feel grateful to Izaya for what he had said towards the end of the call; but it was also true that he had felt shocked when he heard what Izaya had said before that.
He could no longer understand himself.
- Do I…really…..want to keep Dollars from going rampant?
He still didn't know the details about the Saitama incident, such as who did it and what exactly they had done.
But it was certain that some people had committed a violent crime in the name of Dollars.
- But how would I be excited about anything like tha……
He tried hard to convince himself, but he was not sure he succeeded.
He wanted more than anyone else to get away from his daily life. It was a fact. He had that wish even now.
Even after he had met being furthest from "daily" like Celty Sturluson, the smokeless flame in Mikado's heart still didn't feel completely satisfied.
- ……I'm a coward.
- Just like Izaya-san said, I……never tried to put up a fight with anyone. Neither have I ever been beaten up by a large group of people.
Wasn't that just shameless of me to say that I wanted to keep Dollars from going rampant when I'm like that?
With that question lingering on his mind, Mikado ended up wasting his time and not coming up with anything at all.
Before he realized it, sunlight was pouring in from the window and the short arm of the clock was almost pointing at 9.
"……No time for sleep."
The time he had fixed with Anri and Aoba was 11 a.m..
There was no preparation to be done, but he would without doubt be late if he fell asleep now.
Luckily for him, he got some sleep after school and before the night.
So there shouldn't be any problem - he thought as he opened the fridge to reach for the nutrition drinks -
The doorbell rang from the doorway.
"?"
- Who could it be?
Newspaper salesmen?
They had come a few times before, but Mikado had only talked briefly and then basically told them to leave without opening the door. They had left right away without complaint, probably because they weren't expecting to get lucky in the first place when they saw the old, creaky apartment building.
But he was not poor.
In fact, Mikado paid for his own living expenses apart from his tuition.
His parents hadn't wanted him to come to Tokyo, but he had insisted saying that he would find part-time jobs and pay for everything apart from the tuition. His parents would send him some money now and then - but that all went into his savings.
He had told them that he was working part-time, but in fact, his income was from conducting all sorts of online business, which took a large slice of Mikado's spare time to manage.
But he was still something for being able to earn his own living in this way when he still had schoolwork. Mikado, however, did not consider it in any way remarkable; he simply saw it as part of his everyday life.
- Just like he did the doorbell. Without much thinking, he opened the door.
An entire world of brightness shone in front of his sleepless eyes. Mikado felt his eyeballs twitch.
He couldn't help but raise his palm to shield his forehead from the sunlight as he looked out of the door -
The one he saw standing right there was no other than the boy he had just seen yesterday and was supposed to meet up with in a couple of hours.
"Good morning to you, sempai!"
"A - ……Aoba-kun?"
It was Kuronuma Aoba, his kouhai who was supposed to tour the Ikebukuro streets with him today.
"Is something up? I thought we were meeting 2 hours from now."
- Eh?
Mikado had sensed vaguely that something was not right.
- When did I tell Aoba-kun where my apartment was?
"Yeah, it's just that I have something I really need to talk to sempai about before we meet up with Anri-san……"
"You could have just called. Also, how did you know that I live in this apartment……"
"It's about Dollars."
Aoba cut in as Mikado tried to ask in a diplomatic tone. He kept the refreshing smile plastered on his face as he continued to say.
An eerie chill ran down Mikado's spine.
Aoba, seeing that Mikado's expression had stiffened, put his face close to Mikado's and flashed the smile of an angel at him:
"This is not a good place to talk. Shall we move to somewhere better?"
Mikado noticed something else that was weird as he heard this.
A hand had been pressed firmly against the open door.
It was not Aoba's since he had already walked into the apartment. Of course, it was not his own either.
The mysterious fingertips he saw from inside the aged door were forcing the door open as if its life depended on it.
Looking at Mikado's wordless face, Aoba kept smiling as he proceeded to say something still eerier:
"If it's just several minutes for changing your clothes, 'we' won't mind waiting."
♂♀
20 minutes later, an abandoned factory in Ikebukuro
It was a seldom-visited area, dramatically different from downtown Ikebukuro from which it was somewhat removed.
Several factories stood in a row on the side of the road, among which one looked especially desolate.
It had probably been the shell of a steel factory or something like it.
Rust had crept all over the building's gray walls, giving the impression that it had been abandoned for years. Recycled material were scattered on the factory floor gathering tea-brown rust, but the machines that were supposed to process them had been moved away.
For some elusive reason, an almost brand-new motorbike was parked in the factory as well. Rather than standing out on the background, it seem to bring out the eye-catching color of its rusty surroundings.
Chaotic and empty, it wasn't a pleasing building to behold.
Young, vivacious voices rang throughout the rotten old factory.
"Hmm, what's with that motorbike? There was nothing like that parked here yesterday."
Aoba tilted his head looking perplexed. A tall boy next to him replied:
"Someone trying to hide stolen motorbikes here, I figure?"
He was about as tall as Shizuo was.
Tanned skin, protruding muscles, and a tank top revealing the assorted tribal tattoos all over the arms and the neck.
His features were fierce. His mustache made it hard for Mikado to believe that he was still in high school - although Aoba had introduced him to Mikado as his "middle school classmate."
Led by the tall boy, people gathered around Mikado and one by one began to talk to Aoba.
"Speaking of which, I feel like this place's full of cockroaches and centipedes. It's really annoying. If we have to meet somewhere anyway why can't it be a five-star hotel?"
"Are you gonna pay for that, bastard?"
"They're just cockroaches. You eat them and everything's fine."
"Are you gonna eat them, bastard?!"
"Heheh."
"How much would you pay me if I ate them?""300 yen.""That's cheap.""I'll do it!""No kidding!?"
"OK, that's the deal, now get him some cockroaches and fry them!""Isn't he gonna eat them raw?"
"Uwohh!""Don't throw up!""But……I pictured him eating the cockroach and I……"
"Oi, Aoba. These guys are annoying. Can I beat them up?""No.""Heheh!"
They were all about the same age as Mikado was. These boys of different types surrounded Mikado and Aoba, making Mikado follow them further into the abandoned factory.
He was also sure that he saw several men looking well over twenty. They were no longer here, but they had driven Mikado and the other boys here in their cars.
- Why did I follow them?
It was way obvious by now that the atmosphere in this place is abnormal.
He knew very well that he shouldn't have agreed to come with them. But the atmosphere had left him with no room for refusal or escape.
In the meantime, the abandoned factory began to feel strangely familiar to Mikado.
- This abandoned factory……I've seen it at some point before……
- ……!
Realization hit Mikado only after he had searched his brain for a while.
- That's right, this is the same place……that several months ago…….
But before the boy could think any deeper on that matter - Aoba had sat down on a nearby pile of steel skeletons and raised his eyes to meet Mikado's:
"You were asking the people last night on the Dollars message board if they knew anything about the Saitama thing, weren't you sempai?"
Aoba alone was wearing the same refreshing smile as he always had. But that creeped Mikado out more than anything else.
He was probably the one person who shouldn't be saying it, but Aoba, too, had a very childlike face.
The boy looked like a middle school student surrounded by a gang of fierce-looking delinquents - yet he smiled as if it was but everyday life for him. That was what creeped Mikado out the most.
"Ah, yeah……I did. I was kind of curious……"
"I happen to know the details, so I was planning to talk to you about it."
"! Really!?"
Mikado immediately forgot all about this eerie situation he was in; some color even came back to his face.
Usually when the other person says "I happen to know the details" under such circumstances, one would at least sense vaguely the other possibility.
But Mikado didn't even for a split second.
For Mikado, it was close to impossible to associate the appearance and aura of Kuronuma Aoba with the other "possibility".
Which was why when Aoba himself declared it a fact the very next instant -
Mikado simply couldn't seem to understand what he was saying.
"It was us."
"……Eh?"
"We did it."
Aoba confessed it with his usual smile on his face.
"I, and all of the gentlemen here……we attacked those people in Saitama in the name of Dollars."
"……Eh? I'm sorry?"
Mikado asked with a stiffened smile threatening to peel off his face.
He was hoping that Aoba had been joking.
But Aoba kept stating the facts with an innocent, childlike expression.
"You know this gang called Toramaru? They were among the guys who were after Kadota-san's van and the Black Motorbike last month."
"Ah, eh? Ah, ahh, yeah."
"We burned several of their motorbikes and sent around twenty of their men into hospital."
The fierce-looking boy with tattoos added after he had heard Aoba say:
"You mean you threw Molotov cocktails into the parking lot they used for gatherings, Aoba."
Mikado finally began to take everything in after he had heard them uttered from a "he-looks-like-that-type" boy's lips.
"……Eh……ah……"
But perhaps his brain was still in denial - Mikado simply stared at Aoba, trying to move his lips but failing to issue a single sound.
Aoba, on the other hand, continued to voice even more facts in front of Mikado.
- While slowly looking up at Mikado's eyes as if waiting to savor his reaction:
"We're Dollars……but we have another name as well."
"……Another……name?"
"Blue Square - ever heard of it before?"
Morning of May 4th, CHATROOM
Bakyura-san has joined the chat.
Bakyura
Good morning
Bakyura
YEAH!
Bakyura
Hmm,
Bakyura
I see. Just like I thought, no one's online -
Bakyura
But it's the morning, I guess it can't be helped.
Bakyura
Alas~
Bakyura
The last time I came here,
Bakyura
was like already a week ago.
Bakyura
Sorry I've been missing out on our chats lately.
Bakyura
I had some work to do,
Bakyura
Namely, I had to go on a lovey-dovey rendezvouz trip to the Northeast with my girlfriend.
Bakyura
How's everyone~
Bakyura
All right, I'm going to sample everyone's Golden Week plans from the chatroom log YEAH~
Bakyura
Eh,
Bakyura
Yesterday's log and everything before it were erased.
Bakyura
Wonder if something went wrong
Bakyura
Whatever,
Bakyura
I'll see you guys later~
Bakyura-san has left the chat.
No one is in the chatroom right now.
No one is in the chatroom right now.
No one is in the chatroom right now.
.
.
.
END OF CHAPTER 3
♂♀
Sonohara Anri was an ordinary human.
Or at least had been until five years ago.
She came to host an "otherworldly" being in her after her fate brought her into contact with an "otherworldly" being like Celty Sturluson.
Namely, a demon blade Kishitani Shingen - Shinra's father - had once used to cut the Headless Rider's soul and steal her head.
"Demon blade" was the only way one could describe it.
After he had finished using it, Shingen had sold the demon blade named "Saika" to the antique store Anri's father had run. After a series of events, Anri ended up losing her parents, and the demon blade ended up in her body.
The demon blade had not caused her parents' death.
In fact, she and her mother would probably have already died under her father's violence had it not been for the demon blade.
That her mother would have died either way was indeed a thought that rendered her wordless, but Anri had come to accept the fact that only she was saved just like she accepted the existence of the demon blade in her body.
Anri had had such thoughts before:
Had her consciousness been completely in the demon blade's control like the way things were in the slasher tales set in old times, she would probably been able to feel better about her life.
Or, alternatively, had the blade been one that could talk to her freely like the ones in manga, she would actually have felt fortunate.
But Saika was nothing more than a wicked curse that had found a home deep down in her heart.
Saika had only one wish.
To love humans.
To fall in love with the entire human race.
That was it.
But for Saika, "loving" meant becoming one with the person it loved.
In other words, with the entire human race.
It wanted to infect every human being in the world with its curse and fill their bodies and souls with its loving whisper. In that way, it wanted to swarm the earth with its countless "daughters" born in its union with human consciousness.
That was all to Saika's wish.
But it was suppressed to a certain degree by Anri's consciousness.
Anri, who had always seen things around her through a "picture frame", simply regarded Saika's overwhelming "loving whispers" as yet another picture far, far way from her in the frame.
She was never loved by her father, and the instant she felt loved by her mother - her mother slitted her own belly with Saika.
What she felt for Saika, which loved human beings as if it could never get tired of it, was - a strong sense of uneasiness and a smidgen of friendship and overwhelming jealousy.
- This child……Saika…she can love anyone in the world as if her life depended on it.
- How fortunate.
A powerful sense of guilt seized Anri as she caught herself having such thoughts; yet the sense of guilt was not directed at anyone.
On the other hand, Saika did nothing to save Anri from her hell.
It couldn't hurt Anri, who was its host, so it had to exclude Anri from the humans it "loved".
Anri admired Saika. Saika used her but was at the same time suppressed by her.
It was not a form of symbiosis; more like mutual parasitism.
If Saika had bequeathed anything on Anri -
It would be the overwhelming amount of "experience" etched into Saika's consciousness.
♂♀
In the split second the other female was about to thrust the garden scissors at her -
Anri's body had at some point gotten itself out of her attack range.
All the fighting experiences that made up Saika's consciousness had begun to take over Anri's body.
Utilizing these experiences without realizing it herself, Anri had moved her own vulnerable body in the most efficient way.
"I don't think I know you……are you sure you're not looking for someone else……?"
As she said this Anri had already put her own situation in a "picture frame" of her mind.
What she saw in front of her eyes was now for her nothing more than a painting of faraway objects.
In fact, even if they weren't Anri, the situation would probably have felt surreal to anyone if they had been attacked by a woman in a mask with a pair of garden scissors in her hands.
Anri prayed that the woman had indeed been looking for someone else as she searched her brain for the most peaceful solution. At the same time, she moved the blade so that instead of straight out of her torn pajamas, it was now coming out of her palm.
Like a shark's fin appearing from under the surface of the sea, the tip of the blade glided its way through the white skin on Anri's arm and revealed its breathtaking shape at the other end of her palm so that Saika, now a complete katana, was held firmly in her hand.
"Um……in case you're a burglar……I don't have money at my home……so please go back."
Vorona couldn't help but bit her lips at the sight. She scrutinized the girl's body for an instant.
That was when she noticed that her target's eyes were starting to gleam red.
It was as if her eyeballs themselves were red sources of light.
John Carpenter's remake of "Village of the Damned" was released under the title "Gleaming Eyes" in Japan - she was instantly reminded of this piece of information she had read from a book several days ago. But it did nothing to help her understand what was going on.
- What?
Question marks flooded Vorona's brain.
- What is this girl in front of my eyes?
Despite that, her body had begun to move on its own.
She pirouetted to get her own body into the katana's attack range and readied her elbow for aiming a knock-out blow at the opponent's chin.
Yet -
Hoosh
She was ensnared in the chilling air that seemed to emanate from her own body.
- Ah, I'm, going to die.
That thought crossed her mind for a second.
She gave up trying to attack with her elbow and instead hopped as far backwards as she could.
The white blade flashed dangerously close to the tip of her nose.
Judging from the aim and the speed it was probably not meant to be fatal.
It felt more like an attack meant to hurt her than to kill her.
- So what happens if I……get cut?
She had already saw the extraordinary way in which the katana was unsheathed.
Taking into the fact that the blade had some sort of surreal quality to it, it was only logical to presume that being touched by the blade was in itself a danger.
- What, is this girl?
- A human……?
She was different from everything she had read about and experienced before.
Vorona felt all sorts of emotions wash over her heart as she stared at the girl right in front of her eyes.
- ……Somehow, I feel warm.
- I've had this feeling before.
- This is……the same thing I felt when……
It was the same feeling she had when she had first killed a person - in the split second before she was about to take his life. Vorona stepped backwards again as she realized this.
- Right now I'm, not calm.
Vorona tried to assess her situation with a cool head and thereby force her heart to cool down as well, yet -
She heard the horns of a truck blaring in the night.
- !?
Turning sharply, she saw the trucked parked right next to the apartment building flashing its headlights at her in their agreed code.
- Emergency.
Vorona froze her own heart instantly and said to the target in front of her:
"You, incredible. Very fascinating."
"……"
"I will appear again. Looking forward to it."
Vorona ran towards the truck, keeping an eye on the girl in case she would attack from the back.
But it seemed that the girl had no intention of doing so. Before her heart could fall back to its place, however, a new alarming sound reached her ears.
The neigh of a horse.
A totally eerie feeling seized Vorona as she heard the neigh coming from somewhere extremely close to the truck.
She was unmoved, however, as she walked past the driver's seat and signaled to Slon to start the truck.
The sound of tires rubbing madly against the asphalt came as the truck, with a momentum proportional to its weight, charged forward like a bull.
Vorona jumped onto the bed of the truck and turned around to check on the "abnormality" coming for them from behind -
And saw that it was more than "abnormal"; it was "otherworldly".
The pitch-black motorbike without a headlight was slowly coming closer.
It was not coming for them at its greatest speed.
Instead, it approached them as if it wanted to make sure of something before it attacked -
Without doubt, it was the rider whose head Vorona had sliced off not long ago.
That she was able to confirm almost instantly.
Because the rider had an even more conspicuous trait than the Black Motorbike he was riding - than anything else.
The rider astride on the motorbike - had nothing above his neck.
- ……?
Before she could feel fear, the woman felt doubt.
It was the second "otherworldly" phenomenon she had witnessed in a row. She began to suspect that she had swallowed something hallucinogenic without realizing it.
She also considered the possibility that she had been dreaming, but it felt way too real.
- Anyhow, the situation's dangerous.
Maybe it was a dream. Maybe there was no need to do anything about it -
But the situation had forbidden her from such comforting thoughts.
Vorona stood in a corner at the back of the truck and opened the door manually with her dexterous hands.
- ?
That was when she noticed something weird.
She had failed to notice all along that a thread-like object had extended through the slit in the door into the inside of the truck.
The thread was attached to the back of the motorbike she had been riding.
Just as she saw through the open door the motorbike coming for them -
The horse neighed more fiercely than before and the motorbike accelerated hard.
- !
- That neigh, from the motorbike……!
It was after she realized this that Vorona was able to notice what was extraordinary about the Black Motorbike.
- What she had failed to notice before because she was distracted by the engine sounds from her own motorbike.
No sounds of an engine came from that motorbike - there was only the horse's neigh.
- Danger!
Sonohara Anri's apartment was situated on a road with perhaps the least traffic in all Ikebukuro; they had seldom seen other cars or people on their way.
But that was about to end at the traffic light in front of them.
Beyond that, what they were about to enter was Tokyo's downtown traffic network with zillions of vehicles.
Even if they tried to scare other vehicles into making way for them with the truck's sheer size and momentum, the motorbike would probably be able to catch up with them within 100 meters.
- Danger! Danger! Danger! Danger! Danger!
Vorona's judgment was bold and her action almost immediate.
As she rolled into the back of the truck, she took off the cover on "something" that had been sitting next to the entrance.
The Black Motorbike had accelerated further and shortened its distance from the tail of the truck.
But as soon as it saw what had been revealed under the cover - it decelerated instantly.
What had just been revealed - was an aggressively-shaped black object with a metallic shine.
An .50 Russian anti-material sniper rifle.
It was the kind of rifle used against tanks and helicopters. Its range varied with the bullet used, but it was said that rifles of this kind could easily tear open the armor of a tank from 1-2 kilometers away.
It was a last-resort killer weapon she had in case they would be hunted down by patrol cars or helicopters. Vorona had never expected herself to have to use it under such circumstances.
Kneeling down on her right knee, Vorona lifted the rifle and placed its stock on her right shoulder.
The rifle weighed more than 10 kilograms, but Vorona was skilled enough with it to be able to position herself and adjust her aim.
In fact, shooting other combatants with a .50 rifle was explicitly forbidden by international treaties. Vorona had acquired that knowledge in a certain book she had read before. Lingerin had also said to her: "Don't shoot people with this. Otherwise they'll explode like red water balloons and you'll never be able to clean up the mess."
But for Vorona, the rider with nothing above his neck did not fall under the category of humans to begin with.
Despite that, she still decided to avoid aiming at the rider's body. Whether she did that out of hesitation or the fact that it was simply easier to aim at the motorbike, it was impossible to tell -
Anyway, just as she would an armored car, Vorona aimed the shot at the motorbike the Black Rider was on and pulled the trigger without hesitating.
Thunder.
Ikebukuro's streets shook as if a cannonball had just exploded. Pedestrians had to cover their ears at the deafening noise without the slightest idea where it was coming from.
Several seconds later, the apartments nearby began to light up as the residents opened their windows to try and see what was going on.
Vorona, on the other hand, couldn't see what was going on behind the truck from inside it.
The dense smoke from the anti-material rifle had completely clouded her sight.
It took a few seconds for the forward movement of the truck and the dispersing effect of the wind to enable her to see again -
By then, the Black Motorbike was nowhere to be seen.
- Not even its remains.
The rifle was specially constructed so that its recoil was not as powerful as one would expect from a rifle of its size and capacity - but even with all things taken into consideration, there was no reason for her to fire a second shot. She lowered the rifle and looked around with alarmed eyes.
As soon as she did so, she noticed that the black thread was still attached to the back of the motorbike she had parked at the back of the truck - without hesitation, she picked up her garden scissors and tried to cut it.
But the black thread was far more resilient than she had expected. She tried and tried, but was unable to cut it.
"Slon. What happened the Black Motorbike?"
"No idea. He kind of disappeared, is all I can say. At least no longer showing up in the rear mirror. Speaking of which, did you use that thing, Vorona?"
"I affirm. It was an emergency."
The truck came to a stop soon enough.
It seemed that they had arrived at the crossing leading straight to a main street.
Vorona closed the back door immediately. The truck turned into a main street as the traffic light turned green.
She fell into deep thought for a couple of seconds and pulled the black thread with no expression on her face. After it became obvious that the entire rear part of the motorbike was entangled in the web woven by the single black thread, she spoke to Slon via the transceiver.
"There should be an abandoned factory close by. Drive us there please."
"? What do you wanna do?"
"The motorbike is tailed. I am going to throw it away."
She considered this for another couple of seconds and muttered with a face devoid of expression just like her father's:
"Or use it as a trap for our ambush."
♂♀
In front of Anri's apartment
"Celty-san……!"
Before she knew it, Anri had run out of the apartment as she heard the sudden explosion.
The assault had left her in confusion, but what surprised her even more was the sight of the "otherworldly" creature she knew going straight after the truck the assailant had jumped onto.
Not to mention that the explosive sound reminiscent of a cannonball came only several seconds after.
If anything happened to Celty - the thought alone was enough to make Anri forget about her own situation and rush onto the road -
[It's dangerous.]
A PDA screen appeared in front of her with these words displayed on it.
Right after - she was dragged back to her own apartment by a hand that came for her from the side.
Anri turned sharply to find the rider with nothing above her neck standing there.
"Celty-san! ……Eh?"
Celty should have been after the truck. So why was she here?
Celty shrugged to a confused Anri and began to type.
[Well……I don't know either……she made a move to shoot me……so I made this super thick wall with my shadow, but ended up being blasted all the way back here anyway……um……I don't know if 'blasted' is the right way to put it……hmm……it was still dangerous……probably. Shooter……could have been blown to pieces.]
Celty used a lot of "……"-s in her typing - perhaps she had not figured out what she wanted to say herself either.
As she focused on her surroundings, Anri saw that the Black Motorbike was parked right behind Celty's back. There was also a misshapen chunk of metal in Celty's hand - it was probably what remained of the bullet that was fired at her.
"I wanted to keep tailing them, but since they weren't afraid to fire their rifle even in the downtown area, I felt like I would get the residents on the street into unnecessary trouble if I upset them further……"
"Rifle……how……"
"Why did they attack you, Anri-chan?"
"Um……I have no idea……"
Anri's expression turned into one filled with uneasiness.
"I don't know if they're going to come back or not."
Celty banged her chest with a "thud" to ensure Anri that she would be safe.
[No problem, just stay with us for the night. Our apartment is pretty secure.]
"B - But……"
Seeing that Anri was still hesitating, Celty waved her hand in front of her face - or where it should have been.
Her headlessness made the gesture meant to soothe look extremely weird instead.
[It's alright! You've stayed at ours before, haven't you? We have too big an apartment anyway! And it would be a good idea to think about what to do with those people when we're together!]
Since Celty had said this Anri saw no reason to refuse. With a hardly audible "Thank……you……" she accepted the headless woman's offer.
Celty, on the other hand, slapped her own shoulder as if she had just remembered something and asked:
[Speaking of which, do you have a mask or a helmet at home?]
"Eh?"
[My helmet was thrown onto the street……I was going to pick it up, but it was already run over by a dump truck……and my spare helmet's at home.]
Celty looked seriously bothered. Anri considered this for a moment -
[Um……why not make yourself a black helmet with your shadow like the one you made for me before......?]
A brief silence fell between the two of them.
It lasted for about 10 seconds until Celty turned around somewhat embarrassedly, made herself a round helmet with her shadow and showed Anri her PDA:
[Didn't think of that……]
♂♀
With that, the first day of the Golden Week came to an end.
Different creatures were experiencing their respective non-daily lives without realizing that the same thing was happening to others as well.
The night was slowly being replaced by a new morning.
The sun shone down on the earth as it would when the people were leading everyday lives -
And simply watched from afar the weird changes taking place in Ikebukuro.
♂♀
Morning of May 4th, Mikado's apartment
- Turned out I did not get that much sleep after all……
Mikado leaned back into the chair in front of the computer and covered his exhausted face with his hands.
He had been collecting every bit of information he could find right after hearing about the "Dollars Saitama Incident" in the chatroom.
He hadn't been forced to; neither was it his responsibility to begin with - yet Mikado somehow felt like he "had to."
For Mikado, one of the founders of Dollars, Dollars was already part of himself.
Not that it was necessary for living or anything.
But just like cell phones or the Internet, it was something hard to take out of his life once it had an established existence in it. That was what Dollars was for Mikado.
Although new members were no longer pouring in at the previous rate, the number was still growing. In fact, even Mikado himself had lost count of how many exactly there were.
That was why he had always feared that the members would go wild on their own.
He had once closed down the Dollars website.
When they had first made the website, they had a half-joking rule that said "All new members of Dollars must confess the worst thing they've done." and made a new member registration page for that purpose.
That page no longer existed. They had deleted it for two reasons.
Firstly, certain members turned the comment function on the "confession" board into a sort of chatroom; some even began to spam it with download links of prohibited content or game modification codes. The board had lost its original purpose.
Secondly, the "confession", which had started out as a pastime for fun, was turning into a dangerous sport itself.
The first confessions were the likes of "I've grabbed food with my hand" or "I've drawn eyebrows on my dog's face", but soon after they began to warrant more attention as confessions of theft and violence became more frequent.
Some even scoffed at others for not having the guts to do something "more mature" and bragged about the worse things they had done. After seeing a certain post that said "I stole for the first time in my life so that I can join Dollars", Mikado decided to delete this page altogether.
Dollars was an organization founded for fun.
Not for destroying the social order, lowering the morals or bragging about violations of the law in real life.
That was why he just had to do something to stop Dollars from going rampant if he could.
He had no idea if he would succeed or not, but he would be shifting a founder's responsibility to others if he didn't even try to investigate.
Or at least that was what he had thought.
Until, several hours ago -
He got a call from Orihara Izaya.
♂♀
"Hello, this is Ryuugamine."
"……Yah, long time no see, Ryuugamine-kun. Or should I call you Tanaka Taro-kun?"
"Kanra-san. It's been long since I got a call from you."
""I just checked out the chatroom log. I've caught wind of that incident in Saitama, too……it looks like Dollars is in a very strange situation right now."
"……Yes. I'm looking into that incident myself."
"Good. So what have you found?"
"I think…..it was probably done by some new Dollars members."
"Yeah, that's what I figured. What are you gonna do about it?"
"I want to try to stop them, but……"
"Why?"
"Eh……"
"There's no rule in Dollars's book that says 'Thou shall not pick fights outside of Tokyo', is there? There's no need for you to interfere at this point."
"But……"
"Or have you gotten afraid of those Color Gang games after you saw what happened to the Yellow Turbans? I heard that was what separated you and your best friend?"
"It's not like that. Masaomi's still my friend."
"Let's hope he feels the same way about you."
"……Why do I sense a little sarcasm here?"
"Nah, you bet there's none. I'm just being a little jealous of my young kouhais enjoying the best times of their youth. There were no such friends for me, you see. All I had was this freak of an old acquaintance and that irritating violent thickhead."
"……"
"Anyway. Back to the topic."
"Yes."
"Whether you had wished for it or not as a founder, Dollars is now not only a concrete existence but also more or less a force to be reckoned with. It's only natural that you'll see people toying with the idea of making Dollars an even better-known organization by marking more territory and thereby promoting their own names as well, isn't it?"
"……That I realize."
"It's going to be OK. There's virtually no horizontal structure in Dollars. Even if those who picked on the Saitama folks will have to face retaliation, you'll be fine as long as you don't say anything. That's just how Dollars is, isn't it? If you want to help, you go ahead and do it, but if you don't, it's OK to just stay lazy*. Freedom. Yeah, that's what you call freedom."
* Here Izaya uses the "dara-dara" (being lazy) expression, which was the origin of the name "Dollars".
"……Are you calling me just to say this?"
"Ahh, nah nah. It's not like that. Speaking of Saitama, that reminds me. I heard several bousouzoku gangs have been after you last month? Quite scary, wasn't it?"
"Ah, yeah. We got out of it safely, though, thanks to Celty-san, Kadota-san and others……"
"I heard that one of those gangs were the same gang that was attacked by Dollars members in Saitama."
"Eh……?"
"The Captain of that gang - I guess it suffices to say that he's after every woman in the world……but he's also a guy who would resort to violence to solve anything. He'd stomp on people's face even after he had kicked them to the ground."
"Is he that dangerous……?"
"YES. That's why it's a better idea to not take girls with you when you go out in the evenings, you know what I'm talking about? Like that friend of yours, Anri-chan. Try your best to watch out for her safety."
"……I don't think Sonohara-san has anything to do with this."
"I wouldn't be so sure. If they knew that you're a Dollars member and that there's this girl you really like, what do you figure they'd do……? There's no guarantee that your opponent will not touch ordinary people who are not 'part of this'. They're here to revenge, you know."
"……"
"You've used Dollars on many occasions yourself, haven't you? Like when you got into trouble with Yagiri Pharmaceuticals. It's not going to make sense to them now even if you tell them to 'Stop doing bad things.'."
"……So what do you want me to do?"
"Shouldn't you ask yourself before you ask me?"
"I only want to 'do something about it'. I've said that already."
"Ahaha. Looks like I'm not convincing you. In short - if you don't want to involve Anri-chan or yourself in this, just forget about Dollars. Forget everything about it if you can. Or at least forget about it until things have calmed down."
"But……"
"I'll try to explain. Let us assume that you really want to keep Dollars out of any kind of conflict with your own hands……or stop Dollars from going rampant and attacking others……and let us also assume that you've succeeded. If so, this organization will no longer be 'Dollars'. If you're able to control how everyone within the organization moves, it will have become something else……I think that should be pretty self-explanatory."
"That I do understand."
"Dollars, I think, is something 'beyond' Color Gangs. It'll probably sound like an exaggeration if I say it's like a country or nation……but it's made up of people with different goals and intentions. Some of them are good, and some are bad. There's no way you can know how outsiders view this group. You won't know whether they'll see the good Dollars or the bad Dollars……Because that you don't get to choose."
"……"
"Sorry, I've been talking too much. I was annoying, wasn't I?"
"Ah, no. Um……thank you, for telling me all these things."
"………"
"……What is it?"
"Mikado-kun."
"Yes?"
"Aren't you feeling a little excited?"
"……Sorry?"
"Nothing, I was just trying to picture your face on the other end of the phone."
"What nonsense are you talking about…?"
"But isn't this your favorite non-daily life?"
"I never said I liked anything that's not 'daily'."
"Really?"
"Of course……"
"When you closed down the Dollars website you wrote in the explanation that it was because people were spamming with the registration page, and that the 'bad things' they confessed were getting more serious in nature……I won't say anything about the former part, but the latter kind of concerns me. Did you not like it because you thought they were too thoughtless?"
"That should go without saying."
"If that was really what you're thinking, you'd have already given up on Dollars, disbanded it and erased all traces of its existence. That, or leave the organization and go back to living like an ordinary person. All you'd have to do is ignore the text messages. It's not like you'd be punished."
"I'm one of the founders……how can I do something that irresponsible?"
"It's alright. No one in Dollars expects you to take on any responsibility. If you still insist on taking on some responsibility, you're one mature kid……that's what I was going to say, but I don't think you're that type."
"Why are you saying this all of a sudden?"
"Whatever, I guess it's better not to say it. It's always better to not know what others think of you, isn't it?"
"Isn't it too heartless to stop here when you've already said this much? ……Please go ahead and say it, I promise I won't mind."
"Really? Alright. This is nothing more than my own guess, so if it's wrong, you're free to just disregard it. Information brokers enjoy talking nonsense, you see."
"OK."
"……You're not fearing that Dollars will go rampant. Am I right?"
"Eh……"
"You're fearing that you will fall into the position of a mere bystander while Dollars keeps changing, aren't you?"
"It's not like that!"
"……"
"Ah……"
"That was a fast denial. You know that only makes it sound more suspicious, right? You'll want to be more careful about that next time. That would only mean that you're already having the same thought."
"……"
"You're not good at fighting. You're not even a delinquent to begin with. You've probably never touched cigarettes or alcohol. You don't like people who brag about stealing things - you're just an ordinary good human being. Not that I don't consider it a virtue - but you founded Dollars and kept it running till this day exactly because you were tired of it, didn't you? Isn't it your dream to get away from your daily life?"
"……"
"That's why I'm worried about you."
"Eh……?"
"Haven't I told you before? If you really want to get away from your daily life, you'll have to keep evolving. But you don't necessarily have to do it alone."
"Kanra-sa……Orihara-san……"
"Izaya is fine. Kida-kun calls me Izaya-san, too. That's right, you have many companions even if you don't count the Dollars members. Don't you ever forget that. There's Anri-chan and Kida-kun……well, if there's anything I can do, I'll be glad to help you out, too. That's why I'm saying there's no need for you to try to keep everything to yourself and do everything on your own this time. I just wanted to tell you that."
"……Um, Izaya-san."
"Yes?"
"Thank you……very much."
"I didn't do anything you should be grateful to me for."
"Maybe I was just trying to talk you into something. Maybe I had ulterior motives. ……Just maybe."
♂♀
Mikado couldn't help but smile in a self-ironic way as these dialogues came back to his mind.
- Izaya-san. At first I thought he was just a weird person who did all sorts of things I didn't know -
- But he's a nice person after all.
Mikado simply felt encouraged by Izaya's words.
Had his brain not been so overloaded with thoughts on Dollars, he would perhaps have remembered what his best friend had said to him the first day he came to Ikebukuro.
"Never have anything to do with Orihara Izaya."
It was probably the most important piece of advice his friend had to offer.
But right now it simply failed to reach Mikado's ears.
Because Mikado still didn't know exactly what Izaya had done to Masaomi in the entire Yellow Turbans incident.
After that, the boy gathered his spirits and tried to think of a plan -
"……I can't think of anything......"
He did feel grateful to Izaya for what he had said towards the end of the call; but it was also true that he had felt shocked when he heard what Izaya had said before that.
He could no longer understand himself.
- Do I…really…..want to keep Dollars from going rampant?
He still didn't know the details about the Saitama incident, such as who did it and what exactly they had done.
But it was certain that some people had committed a violent crime in the name of Dollars.
- But how would I be excited about anything like tha……
He tried hard to convince himself, but he was not sure he succeeded.
He wanted more than anyone else to get away from his daily life. It was a fact. He had that wish even now.
Even after he had met being furthest from "daily" like Celty Sturluson, the smokeless flame in Mikado's heart still didn't feel completely satisfied.
- ……I'm a coward.
- Just like Izaya-san said, I……never tried to put up a fight with anyone. Neither have I ever been beaten up by a large group of people.
Wasn't that just shameless of me to say that I wanted to keep Dollars from going rampant when I'm like that?
With that question lingering on his mind, Mikado ended up wasting his time and not coming up with anything at all.
Before he realized it, sunlight was pouring in from the window and the short arm of the clock was almost pointing at 9.
"……No time for sleep."
The time he had fixed with Anri and Aoba was 11 a.m..
There was no preparation to be done, but he would without doubt be late if he fell asleep now.
Luckily for him, he got some sleep after school and before the night.
So there shouldn't be any problem - he thought as he opened the fridge to reach for the nutrition drinks -
The doorbell rang from the doorway.
"?"
- Who could it be?
Newspaper salesmen?
They had come a few times before, but Mikado had only talked briefly and then basically told them to leave without opening the door. They had left right away without complaint, probably because they weren't expecting to get lucky in the first place when they saw the old, creaky apartment building.
But he was not poor.
In fact, Mikado paid for his own living expenses apart from his tuition.
His parents hadn't wanted him to come to Tokyo, but he had insisted saying that he would find part-time jobs and pay for everything apart from the tuition. His parents would send him some money now and then - but that all went into his savings.
He had told them that he was working part-time, but in fact, his income was from conducting all sorts of online business, which took a large slice of Mikado's spare time to manage.
But he was still something for being able to earn his own living in this way when he still had schoolwork. Mikado, however, did not consider it in any way remarkable; he simply saw it as part of his everyday life.
- Just like he did the doorbell. Without much thinking, he opened the door.
An entire world of brightness shone in front of his sleepless eyes. Mikado felt his eyeballs twitch.
He couldn't help but raise his palm to shield his forehead from the sunlight as he looked out of the door -
The one he saw standing right there was no other than the boy he had just seen yesterday and was supposed to meet up with in a couple of hours.
"Good morning to you, sempai!"
"A - ……Aoba-kun?"
It was Kuronuma Aoba, his kouhai who was supposed to tour the Ikebukuro streets with him today.
"Is something up? I thought we were meeting 2 hours from now."
- Eh?
Mikado had sensed vaguely that something was not right.
- When did I tell Aoba-kun where my apartment was?
"Yeah, it's just that I have something I really need to talk to sempai about before we meet up with Anri-san……"
"You could have just called. Also, how did you know that I live in this apartment……"
"It's about Dollars."
Aoba cut in as Mikado tried to ask in a diplomatic tone. He kept the refreshing smile plastered on his face as he continued to say.
An eerie chill ran down Mikado's spine.
Aoba, seeing that Mikado's expression had stiffened, put his face close to Mikado's and flashed the smile of an angel at him:
"This is not a good place to talk. Shall we move to somewhere better?"
Mikado noticed something else that was weird as he heard this.
A hand had been pressed firmly against the open door.
It was not Aoba's since he had already walked into the apartment. Of course, it was not his own either.
The mysterious fingertips he saw from inside the aged door were forcing the door open as if its life depended on it.
Looking at Mikado's wordless face, Aoba kept smiling as he proceeded to say something still eerier:
"If it's just several minutes for changing your clothes, 'we' won't mind waiting."
♂♀
20 minutes later, an abandoned factory in Ikebukuro
It was a seldom-visited area, dramatically different from downtown Ikebukuro from which it was somewhat removed.
Several factories stood in a row on the side of the road, among which one looked especially desolate.
It had probably been the shell of a steel factory or something like it.
Rust had crept all over the building's gray walls, giving the impression that it had been abandoned for years. Recycled material were scattered on the factory floor gathering tea-brown rust, but the machines that were supposed to process them had been moved away.
For some elusive reason, an almost brand-new motorbike was parked in the factory as well. Rather than standing out on the background, it seem to bring out the eye-catching color of its rusty surroundings.
Chaotic and empty, it wasn't a pleasing building to behold.
Young, vivacious voices rang throughout the rotten old factory.
"Hmm, what's with that motorbike? There was nothing like that parked here yesterday."
Aoba tilted his head looking perplexed. A tall boy next to him replied:
"Someone trying to hide stolen motorbikes here, I figure?"
He was about as tall as Shizuo was.
Tanned skin, protruding muscles, and a tank top revealing the assorted tribal tattoos all over the arms and the neck.
His features were fierce. His mustache made it hard for Mikado to believe that he was still in high school - although Aoba had introduced him to Mikado as his "middle school classmate."
Led by the tall boy, people gathered around Mikado and one by one began to talk to Aoba.
"Speaking of which, I feel like this place's full of cockroaches and centipedes. It's really annoying. If we have to meet somewhere anyway why can't it be a five-star hotel?"
"Are you gonna pay for that, bastard?"
"They're just cockroaches. You eat them and everything's fine."
"Are you gonna eat them, bastard?!"
"Heheh."
"How much would you pay me if I ate them?""300 yen.""That's cheap.""I'll do it!""No kidding!?"
"OK, that's the deal, now get him some cockroaches and fry them!""Isn't he gonna eat them raw?"
"Uwohh!""Don't throw up!""But……I pictured him eating the cockroach and I……"
"Oi, Aoba. These guys are annoying. Can I beat them up?""No.""Heheh!"
They were all about the same age as Mikado was. These boys of different types surrounded Mikado and Aoba, making Mikado follow them further into the abandoned factory.
He was also sure that he saw several men looking well over twenty. They were no longer here, but they had driven Mikado and the other boys here in their cars.
- Why did I follow them?
It was way obvious by now that the atmosphere in this place is abnormal.
He knew very well that he shouldn't have agreed to come with them. But the atmosphere had left him with no room for refusal or escape.
In the meantime, the abandoned factory began to feel strangely familiar to Mikado.
- This abandoned factory……I've seen it at some point before……
- ……!
Realization hit Mikado only after he had searched his brain for a while.
- That's right, this is the same place……that several months ago…….
But before the boy could think any deeper on that matter - Aoba had sat down on a nearby pile of steel skeletons and raised his eyes to meet Mikado's:
"You were asking the people last night on the Dollars message board if they knew anything about the Saitama thing, weren't you sempai?"
Aoba alone was wearing the same refreshing smile as he always had. But that creeped Mikado out more than anything else.
He was probably the one person who shouldn't be saying it, but Aoba, too, had a very childlike face.
The boy looked like a middle school student surrounded by a gang of fierce-looking delinquents - yet he smiled as if it was but everyday life for him. That was what creeped Mikado out the most.
"Ah, yeah……I did. I was kind of curious……"
"I happen to know the details, so I was planning to talk to you about it."
"! Really!?"
Mikado immediately forgot all about this eerie situation he was in; some color even came back to his face.
Usually when the other person says "I happen to know the details" under such circumstances, one would at least sense vaguely the other possibility.
But Mikado didn't even for a split second.
For Mikado, it was close to impossible to associate the appearance and aura of Kuronuma Aoba with the other "possibility".
Which was why when Aoba himself declared it a fact the very next instant -
Mikado simply couldn't seem to understand what he was saying.
"It was us."
"……Eh?"
"We did it."
Aoba confessed it with his usual smile on his face.
"I, and all of the gentlemen here……we attacked those people in Saitama in the name of Dollars."
"……Eh? I'm sorry?"
Mikado asked with a stiffened smile threatening to peel off his face.
He was hoping that Aoba had been joking.
But Aoba kept stating the facts with an innocent, childlike expression.
"You know this gang called Toramaru? They were among the guys who were after Kadota-san's van and the Black Motorbike last month."
"Ah, eh? Ah, ahh, yeah."
"We burned several of their motorbikes and sent around twenty of their men into hospital."
The fierce-looking boy with tattoos added after he had heard Aoba say:
"You mean you threw Molotov cocktails into the parking lot they used for gatherings, Aoba."
Mikado finally began to take everything in after he had heard them uttered from a "he-looks-like-that-type" boy's lips.
"……Eh……ah……"
But perhaps his brain was still in denial - Mikado simply stared at Aoba, trying to move his lips but failing to issue a single sound.
Aoba, on the other hand, continued to voice even more facts in front of Mikado.
- While slowly looking up at Mikado's eyes as if waiting to savor his reaction:
"We're Dollars……but we have another name as well."
"……Another……name?"
"Blue Square - ever heard of it before?"
Morning of May 4th, CHATROOM
Bakyura-san has joined the chat.
Bakyura
Good morning
Bakyura
YEAH!
Bakyura
Hmm,
Bakyura
I see. Just like I thought, no one's online -
Bakyura
But it's the morning, I guess it can't be helped.
Bakyura
Alas~
Bakyura
The last time I came here,
Bakyura
was like already a week ago.
Bakyura
Sorry I've been missing out on our chats lately.
Bakyura
I had some work to do,
Bakyura
Namely, I had to go on a lovey-dovey rendezvouz trip to the Northeast with my girlfriend.
Bakyura
How's everyone~
Bakyura
All right, I'm going to sample everyone's Golden Week plans from the chatroom log YEAH~
Bakyura
Eh,
Bakyura
Yesterday's log and everything before it were erased.
Bakyura
Wonder if something went wrong
Bakyura
Whatever,
Bakyura
I'll see you guys later~
Bakyura-san has left the chat.
No one is in the chatroom right now.
No one is in the chatroom right now.
No one is in the chatroom right now.
.
.
.
END OF CHAPTER 3