Durarara!!

♂♀



An upscale apartment building on Kawagoe Highway


Sitting on the living room sofa, Shizuo drank tea from a stainless steel cup and tilted his head as he wondered aloud:

"Speaking of which, Shinra, do you always wear that white coat even when at home?"

Shinra, upon hearing that only-to-be-expected inquiry, straightened up proudly for some reason and replied:

"Ahh, that's because Celty always wears her black rider suit. If I'm dressed in the contrasting color, we'll be like light and shadow, won't we? On the surface light and shadow are polar opposites, yet like a pair of love birds they never appear without each other! In manga and movies they always go the Dark Side this and the Dark Side that, but that's just the Dark Side being royally tsundere. You can say that being tsundere is another form of being possessive but I won't mind at all if Celty wants to possess me bofuu!"

"Shut up."

All Shizuo did was flick his finger at the Shinra's forehead, yet the underground doctor felt like he had been hit by a bamboo katana.

"And you had the guts to say that you were the light? Next to Celty you're more like a Dark Side guy inside and out."

"If you know what a verbal comeback is, could you avoid using a physical one? Personally I find that better for the sake of world peace."

Tom, who had never met Shinra before, muttered to himself as he listened to the conversation:

"I see. He does sound like a freak……"

"What……what's with that confirming tone? Shizuo, what were you telling your colleagues about me!? ……Well whatever. If expressing my love for Celty makes me a freak, than a freak I shall be. Freakiness too will transform into love."

Shinra covered his swollen red forehead with his hand and repaced his breath -

"So, should we hear now what you have to say about the situation?"

His gaze fell on the little girl crouched up in a corner of the room.

"I had to let you bring her in since you said you'd explain once we were inside, but I don't think I can watch any longer with indifference. See how scared she is?"

Shinra exhaled deeply and scrutinized Shizuo with dead serious eyes:

"Why did you kidnap her?"

"We didn't."

Tom was the one to reply almost immediately.

He must have kept track of Shizuo's mood and was therefore trying to stabilize him by quickly answering the question for him. It worked: protruding veins were already visible on Shizuo's face but they were going back to normal.

The man named Tom continued to give Shizuo looks meant to forestall his anger as he proceeded to tell Shinra - who was just beginning to realize how close he was to being killed - exactly what had happened.



♂♀



30 minutes ago, Sunshine 60 Street


"Die!"

- Argh?

Shizuo, being tall, was not able to catch what the little girl had said while flying straight towards him.

Tom did, however, as he followed Shizuo out of the restaurant; his expression immediately changed to one of disbelief as he began to question his own hearing.

Unfortunately, there was nothing wrong with Tom's ears. The little girl kept smiling while pressing something she had been holding tightly in her hands to Shizuo's waist.

And then Tom saw it.

White-blue sparks splattered from Shizuo's waist accompanied by a fierce sizzling, crackling noise.

"Ouch, 'hat hurts!"

Shizuo groaned slightly and pushed the girl's hand away from his abdomen.

"Ahhh!"

A rectangular piece of instrument that looked like a transceiver rolled off the girl's hands.

Shizuo had not the least idea what had just happened; therefore he did not "get mad" right away.

He picked up the "thing" the little girl had just dropped onto the ground and looked at it closely.

The black rectangular item looked like some sort of walkie-talkie or emergency light.

"……That hurt a lot…..what the hell? What's this?"

Shizuo saw something that looked like a switch and tried pushing it -


A sizzling, crackling noise filled the air as white-blue sparks splattered from the metal part located at the front of the instrument.

"What's this? A stun gun?"

But even then it was still hard for Shizuo to associate stun guns with elementary school girls. He stood there a few minutes longer and pondered this over -

"Oi, Shizuo……"

- Until Tom's voice dragged him back to reality from behind.

He looked around and noticed something: passers-by had stopped in their tracks and watched him in silence from afar.

He had a stun gun in his hand.

And a little girl crouching down at his feet.

His brain finally began to register what kind of situation he was in when one of the onlookers started to run towards the police officer standing close to the the game arcade.

"God, we're in trouble. It's the same cop who came to arrest the shoplifter."

Tom was able to analyze the situation in a second and grasp Shizuo's shoulder with force.

"Just run for now. We won't have the time to explain."

With that, Tom began running at a godly speed he had came to acquire in his time working with Shizuo.

"……Eh, ehhh - ?"

Having completely missed his chance of "getting mad", Shizuo muttered blankly and instead began to run after Tom without the slightest idea what he was doing.


Things should have ended with the mysterious little girl finding herself under the protection of the police while Tom and Shizuo fled the scene -

But Shizuo, still running, suddenly felt some additional weight on his back.

He kept running and turned around - and saw strands of hair flying in the wind in his lower peripheral vision.

Shizuo's absurd power made it take more time for the realization come to him than it would an average human -

The little girl had at some point grabbed onto Shizuo's back and belt. He had effectively been taking her with him on his back all the while when he had been running.

"You can't……run away……die……die……!"

The little girl hung on to Shizuo as if her life depended on it and muttered ferociously.

It was simply impossible for Shizuo to understand what she was saying.

He just couldn't get why such a little girl would want to kill him.

He had been shot on one occasion before; back then he had missed his chance to "get mad" since it didn't occur to him in time that the shot had been "unfriendly fire". Now the same thing was happening again.

"Tom-sempai, what should we do about this kid?"

Shizuo asked as he kept running. Tom glanced at the girl on Shizuo's back and couldn't help yelping "Uwahh, we're in real trouble now!". He calmed down immediately, however, and asked Shizuo:

"Anyway, are there any friends of yours living nearby!? We'll be find out in no time on the streets!"

"What about the office building?"

"We can't afford involving our company in this! Ah right, how about your brother's home?"

"There are always reporters for magazines and the like waiting outside his home."

Another face came to Shizuo's mind as he said this.


"……If it's just an underground doctor, then we probably can afford involving him, right?"



♂♀



"I see. Anyway……I have only one thing to say to you."

After he had heard Tom tell the entire story, Shinra stared at Shizuo with a serious face and inquired solemnly:


"Why did you kidnap her!"


Crack.


There was a weird noise. As Shinra blinked and looked at Shizuo again, he found Shizuo's fist tightly closed.

Nonsensical as it would sound, the steel cup he had been holding was nowhere to be found.

Except that it was found a a moment later.

As Shizuo showed his palm again, there was a ball sitting on it made of what looked like aluminum foil, which had only seconds ago been a cup.

"Sorry, I'll pay for the repair."

"……That's alright. I was meaning to buy new ones anyway."

"No, I don't want to trash the work of the maker of this cup."

"Hmm. It would be nice if you saved this modesty for the guardrails and street lamps you trash on a regular basis. But I need to apologize with all my heart to you. Sorry. Nah, how would you ever bother to kidnap anyone? With your power it would be much faster to go to a bank and tear down the door of its vault if you wanted the money. Kidnapping would be way too slow for you."

Cold sweat seeped out of Shinra's back as he darted his gaze towards the corner of the room, where the little girl was shaking harder than ever.

"So you ended up not getting any useful information from this kid?"

"She began to shudder and stuff. Even if she used this toy on me it would have been too much to start interrogating her."

Shinra took the stun gun from Shizuo's hand and muttered as if relieved:

"Good. Good to hear that you still have a human heart after all. If you began using violence on even such a little kid there would have been no chance left for your soul."

Shinra walked towards the girl and slowly bent his knees to crouch down and meet her gaze.

"Are you alright? You can feel safe now. Must have been hard for you, getting dragged around by such scary big guys. I assure you I'm a lover of peace unlike that humanoid weapon over there."

"Calm down, we have a kid here, remember? Remember?" - Shinra heard Tom's voice warning Shizuo coming from behind. He smiled to the little girl -

"…………"

The little girl didn't say anything but stare at Shinra's face with unwinking eyes.

She appeared decidedly tough, but her body was shaking harder and harder.

She had no intention to run; yet, despite the fact that she kept telling Shizuo to "Die", she did attack either.

"…………"

From her attitude Shinra sensed that something about her was not right. He pressed his palm to her forehead and felt her temperature.

The underground doctor's face immediately changed; with a serious expression he began to give orders out to the duo.

"There are guest towels in the drawers in the innermost room. Get them for me!"

"?"

"This kid has a terrible fever! Boil some water, now!"

The air in the apartment went tense at Shinra's words.

The little girl also seemed to be sensing something from Shinra's attitude - her highly wound-up nerves finally relaxed, her body allowed itself to give away, and her consciousness was gone.



♂♀



30 minutes later


Shinra made sure that the girl was safe and sound in the bed in the innermost room before finally exhaling in relief.

Nothing had suggested that she was ill; her heat was probably a result of her extreme pressure. But he still had to be careful.

Shinra stood in front of the hidden cabinet in his home and examined the prohibited drugs inside as he looked for a solution - until his attention was drawn to the weight in his pocket again and he took the item out.

It was the stun gun Shizuo had thrown into his hands earlier -

As soon as Shinra tried switching it on, white-blue sparks splattered from the stun gun and a crackling sound filled the room as currents shot through the air.

The stun gun had apparently been modified. Shinra watched its sparks intently and thought back on what Tom had told him.

"……This has obviously been modified to produce more intense currents."


"……And all he felt was 'Ouch, 'hat hurts' when she used this on him……? I feel like it won't be too long before he becomes a real monster."



♂♀



Night of May 3rd, a street in Ikebukuro


- This is bad.

Celty Sturluson sighed as she considered her future plans.

- I got a pretty troublesome job to do this time.

Apparently, the job Shiki had just given Celty was enough to make her entire aura seem darker than usual.

The motorbike without a headlight neighed from its engine as she stopped in front of a red light.

- Thank you, Shooter.

Celty stroked her partner's handle and broke into a smile in her heart.


- ……Speaking of which, this job may keep me away from home for a few days to come.

- Should I try to contact Shinra right now?

- Or should I go back home and explain everything first……

She saw the traffic light turn red at the crossing in front of her as these thoughts raced on her mind.

So Celty simply waited for the light to turn green for her on the left side of the two-lane road and was about to let Shooter charge forwards when -

In the exact second before the traffic light turned green, she sensed another motorbike stopping right behind her.

Celty couldn't help but shudder thinking it was the White Motorbike, which was always on her tail - but as she turned around she saw a pretty ordinary motorbike instead of a white one.

The rider was wearing a full-face helmet and dressed in a black rider suit just like Celty was.

It looked like he or she was no more than a typical motorbike rider and not someone that warranted extra caution on Celty's part -

But in Celty's sense of vision, there was a strange flicker.

- ?

Before she could realize what that flicker was, Celty's spinal reflex had reacted to the green light and started the engine.

"Good evening, Knight Halloween."

In that second - the rider behind her muttered.

In a voice only Celty's sense of hearing would have been able to catch.

It was probably a whisper for the rider's own ears and not really meant to be heard.

Celty had no idea what the sentence had meant. She kept accelerating on her motorbike -


"For kid's play, time is over. Pity, pity."


As the rider kept whispering as if to no one else -


Celty felt a sudden rush of impact on her upper body -

Before she could realize what had happened, her body was already crashing onto the asphalt.


- "The job for you this time is to be a bodyguard."


What Shiki had said in the day came back to Celty's mind before the dull pain could register.


- "Though we have no idea where to look……"


- "But I hope you can help us find this person, and protect her without letting her know it."


It sounded ominous to her from the start that Shiki had to entrust a bodyguard job with her.

But there was no way she could turn it down, either.


- "……There's a possibility that someone will try to murder her. But we can't tell you the details regarding that……"


- "The person we want you to bodyguard is the one in this photo."


Shiki had produced a photo for her to see.


It was the photo of a girl about ten years old.


Though her expression was somewhat cloudy, she still looked pretty happy on the photo.


- "Her name is Awakusu Akane."


- "The granddaughter of our 'Manager'."


- "She has run away from home apparently because she didn't like the business we actually were running."


- I can't really say I like it either.

Celty groaned as she felt the pain from all over her body. Her worst premonition had turned out to be true.

She still had no idea what was going on.

But she knew that she had been attacked. And that was enough.

Because she had confirmed two important facts.

The first was that her helmet had been sent flying into the air upon that impact.

The other was that she was already knee deep in something highly perilous.

And with that, Celty, the most surreal being of them all -

Was embroiled, against her will, in the reality humans had created.








Night of May 3rd, CHATROOM


Tanaka Taro-san has joined the chat.


Tanaka Taro
Good evening.

Tanaka Taro
Looks like no one's online - . Is everyone out having fun?

Tanaka Taro
I thought I got here pretty late today. But no one's online, not even Setton-san……


Kyo-san has joined the chat.

Mai-san has joined the chat.


Mai
Good evening.

Kyo
I bid you good day, Taro-sama. The fact that you're spending your first day of the Golden Week in the chatroom makes me feel a little sympathy for your solitude. But then, in the cyberspace there is no distinction between holidays and workdays, day and night. No one is going to punish you for this. If you do wish to be punished, however, I would be more than willing to do it with words. Behold, this will be the moment you either prove yourself a true sadist or a true masochist!

Tanaka Taro
Ah, good evening.

Tanaka Taro
I see you haven't changed.

Kyo
This will be the moment!

Tanaka Taro
Why did you have to say it twice!?

Mai
Sorry.

Tanaka Taro
Mai-san, you have nothing to apologize to me for.


Saika-san has joined the chat.


Tanaka Taro
Ah, good evening~

Mai
Good evening.

Kyo
Alas, yet another holiday wanderer without a home for the heart? Shutting yourself in during holidays can be lethal. It's a common superstition that rabbits die from loneliness, but you realize that humans can die from loneliness, right?

Saika
I'm sorry

Tanaka Taro
Why are you apologizing, Saika-san? lol

Kyo
……I don't know how to react when you apologize so sincerely.

Tanaka Taro
Sincerely? But there was nothing to apologize for in the first place.

Saika
I'm sorry

Tanaka Taro
Why are you apologizing again!?

Tanaka Taro
Speaking of which, what about Kyo-san?

Tanaka Taro
Aren't you chatting here as well?

Kyo
Don't you worry about me. Mai and I were enjoying the times of our lives on the Ikebukuro streets the entire day today. We ate every kind of dumplings they had to offer at the Dumplings Stadium in Namja Town and shopped like crazy at World Import Mart and Alpa. Then we witnessed a kickass scene on 60-Story Street where a handsome young man took down a shoplifter. It was an awesome day.

Mai
The dumplings were delicious.

Tanaka Taro
A shoplifter? Was there a commotion?

Tanaka Taro
……You said 60-Story Street, right? Was it a black man who works as a hawker for a sushi restaurant or a man in a bartender suit?

Kyo
Alas.

Mai
Shizuo-san.

Tanaka Taro
Ah, you know Shizuo-san?

Kyo
How rude of me to have written such a short reply. But really, Tanaka Taro-san, I had imagined you to be a meek human being who wouldn't even kill a mosquito from the way you talked in the chatroom. To think that you know Shizuo-san! You must be a terribly social person. Is it even possible that in reality you're a huge guy with tattoos, scars and steely muscles all over your body? Or someone who sells dangerous drugs for a living?

Saika
Is it Heiwajima-san

Tanaka Taro
Sorry, I can't type fast enough to point out all that's wrong with what you said.

Tanaka Taro
Eh, even Saika-san knows him?

Saika
Just a little

Saika
I'm sorry

Tanaka Taro
Why are you apologizing lol

Kyo
Too bad the man I saw today wasn't Shizuo-san. It was a playboy-ish man with an eye mask and bandages over his face. He wasn't the feminine sort of pretty boy - he's a handsome man with just the right amount of muscles.

Mai
And a throng of girls at his heel.

Mai
So jealous.

Tanaka Taro
That certainly would make one jealous. But he must have been something if he could take down the shoplifter like a cop.

Kyo
Speaking of cops, we saw something interesting on the nightly street just now.

Tanaka Taro
What was it?

Kyo
A lot of people were having a gathering near the overpass. It was crowded. There were at least several scores of men. There wasn't enough space on the overpass so some had to gather under it as if it were some sort of pushing game.

Mai
It was so crowded I could cry.

Tanaka Taro
Really?

Kyo
I figured it was a bousouzoku gathering or something of that sort……speaking of which, does everyone here know about Dollars? It's said that it's an evil dark organization insidiously taking over Ikebukuro. Apparently its members are all fearsome characters making it worthy of being called the Flower Bed of Evil.

Mai
Dollars.

Tanaka Taro
Well, I've heard of it.

Saika
I don't really know a lot about it

Kyo
The name Dollars, some say, is short for "dishonored lovers". Others say it stands for "people who are only worth one dollar", "the organization of folks who would kill for one dollar", "gang of Daidarabotchis*", and many more. In short, it's a mysterious team! I heard it's like a Color Gang, except that it doesn't have a color. It's a gang of lunatics who blend themselves into the city before anyone can take notice!

* Daidarabotchi: a gigantic demon in Japanese mythology.

Mai
It's awesome.

Tanaka Taro
How is it a gang of lunatics?

Kyo
There's no other way to call it. It doesn't even look like it has a purpose. Had it been a typical Color Gang, people would have assumed it was a gang meant to channel destructive energy on the streets. Even if they were mere goons for money under violence organizations people would have been more sure of their identity and presence. But Dollars is none of these.

Mai
What is it?

Tanaka Taro
You're thinking too much into it.

Kyo
Dollars has no actual structure. They don't even know who the other Dollars are. A student on the street or a housewife you happen to pass by may be one of them. Even your schoolmate talking to you casually on the street could turn out to be a Dollars member……honestly, no one knows how many members it has.

Tanaka Taro
You're right about that.

Tanaka Taro
But it could also be as innocent as an extracurricular club, right? I feel like it's just a group of people calling themselves members because they wanted some sort of identity. It's like calling yourself a Saitaman or city folk.

Kyo
That's kind of overstretching the concept. You're a Dollars member from the moment you identify yourself as such. Even if it's online only, they do have an Internet-based community to exchange information. Their network is loose, but they are tied to each other with the common identity as Dollars members. Doesn't that sound scary to you at all?

Mai
That's scary.

Tanaka Taro
Why is that scary?

Kyo
It's like - say - having surveillance cameras in the form of human eyes everywhere on the streets. The only difference is that these surveillance cameras are capable of thinking. The ones under such surveillance have no way to know whether they are being "shot" or not. If you happened to have done something indecent on the street, it would be like exposing your weakness to Dollars itself through its members' eyes.

Mai
It's scary.

Tanaka Taro
You're thinking too much into it. I don't think it's like that.

Kyo
……Why is Tanaka Taro-san defending Dollars, a mere Color Gang, as if your life depended on it? I won't dig deeper into that now, but can you really say for sure that Dollars won't try to take advantage of others' weaknesses? It's a Color Gang after all. Those gangs are antisocial to begin with.

Mai
Gangs are horrible.

Tanaka Taro
That's true, but…

Mai
That hurts.

Mai
I was pinched.

Tanaka Taro
But I hear that even though they are a Color Gang, they're just a group of people who gathered because they were intrigued by the idea floating on the Internet, right? They do have offline meetings and stuff, but I don't think they're capable of much havoc.

Kyo
Then I'll ask you again.

Kyo
Can you say for sure that things are the way you think they are?

Kyo
If you were a Dollars member, you'd probably not be so sure that others would not do such things just because you wouldn't. There are so many of them in Dollars, and if what I heard is true, they have hardly even met each other in real life. ……If all these are true, it's hardly going to surprise anyone if it turns out that some people have already committed crimes in the name of Dollars, right?

Tanaka Taro
That's true.

Saika
Um

Saika
Please do not fight

Tanaka Taro
Ah, no, we're not fighting, Saika-san lol

Kyo
I don't think I'm fighting either. Personally I don't harbor any grudge or animosity towards the individual called Tanaka Taro. On the contrary, I'm pretty fond of you as a chartroom pal. I want to kiss you. CHU!

Mai
Sick.

Mai
That hurts.

Mai
I was pinched again.

Saika
I'm sorry

Tanaka Taro
That's why I asked why you were apologizing, Saika-san lol

Tanaka Taro
Anyway, anyway. I'm not saying that I think such things are impossible. But it's also true that there has been no news about Dollars members taking part in gang violence or other horrible stuff in Ikebukuro. The worst they do is probably the kind of individual fighting you see everywhere on the streets.

Kyo
That's not necessarily the truth. Their vortex of lunacy is going to keep rotating on the Ikebukuro streets. Centrifugal forces are bound to push the lighter ones of inferior quality to the outer layer of the vortex, aren't they?

Mai
Clunk clunk pop~

Kyo
It looks like some Dollars members have been picking fights outside of Tokyo. In fact, it was more like they were just beating people up. They punched their opponent's heads - as if they were hard-selling violence - and kept swinging fists at them regardless of whether they tried to fight back or not until they could no longer move. To think how horrible that must have looked.

Tanaka Taro
Eh?

Mai
I heard too.

Mai
There are people in Saitama

Mai
Who were attacked by Dollars members.

Tanaka Taro
Did you really?

Tanaka Taro
Where did you get this information from?

Kyo
Are you aware of the existence of Pacry*, the social networking system?

* Just like the Dollars website and chatrooms, a real-life version of Pacry has been created by fans at http://pacry.sns-park.com/

Tanaka Taro
I'm actually kind of already a member.

Kyo
How lucky for you! Unlike mixi, it has an open policy allowing you to apply for membership on your own. Even if you don't have friends who will send you an invitation, you can still register there. Oops, I'm sorry. I did not mean to imply that Tanaka Taro-san strikes me as someone who doesn't have many friends. That's a judgment I will have to postpone till I've observed you long enough. Speaking of which, I'm not allowed to register at mixi yet because I'm not old enough.

Tanaka Taro
Sorry, where on Pacry did you find…?

Kyo
Ahh! I'm so sorry! I get carried away every time I begin to talk!

Kyo
You can start from searching for communities on "Saitama bousouzoku problem" in Pacry.

Tanaka Taro
I'll do that.

Kyo
There should be a thread titled "About Dollars" in that board. That's where I got my information from. If they turn out to be baseless rumors I would have been giving Taro-san unnecessary trouble.

Kyo
If that's indeed the case, I will without hesitation apologize and ask for your forgiveness. To make up for my sins I will give you my body and heart……my body is but second-rate, so I don't know how satisfactory a compensation you'll find that to be. But I'll be immensely honored and pleased to be able to offer you even a tiny bit of consolation.

Mai
Dirty.

Tanaka Taro
I'll go check that out.

Kyo
Am I being ignored? I sense these thoughts of solitude wrapping themselves around my body. Please be sure to take up the responsibility.

Mai
Dirty.

Kyo
Self-proclaimed Dollars members were picking on the bousouzoku in Saitama. If this was part of somebody's master plan, I think it's adequate to say that it shows the downside of not having a gang color. Anyone can shift the blame on Dollars as long as he or she claims to be a member.

Saika
Scary

Tanaka Taro
Sorry, I checked out that thread.

Tanaka Taro
I have some stuff to do tonight, so I'll excuse myself if you don't mind.

Kyo
Ah, then we'll call it a day as well.

Saika
Good night

Tanaka Taro
Thank you so much.

Tanaka Taro
Also I'm really sorry, Kyo-san. I might have said things that offended you.

Kyo
Not at all, not at all. Please don't mind.

Tanaka Taro
Thank you.

Tanaka Taro
I'm leaving then.

Tanaka Taro
That was a good chat -


Tanaka Taro-san has left the chat.


Kyo
So, everyone, since it's only the beginning of the Golden Week, watch out for yourselves and try to have as much fun as you can……speaking of which, Setton-san, Kanra-san and Bakyura-san are all absent today.

Mai
Goodbye to you.


Kyo-san has left the chat.

Mai-san has left the chat.


Saika
Good night

Saika
Sorry

Saika
Looks like I missed them


Saika-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 2

INTERLUDE OR PROLOGUE B VORONA AND SLON (CROW AND ELEPHANT*)

* "Vorona" and "Slon" are Russian for "crow" and "elephant" respectively.




Somewhere in Russia


The whispers in Russian slowly sank into the soil as they were blown away by the wind.

“......This is so weird.....I mean, this is so weird..."

Against the backdrop of an immense expansive field, a man seemed to be wound up over something.

He wasn't tall per se, but his skeleton was wide, and the muscles covering it were strong - making him look one size larger than an average guy of his height.

He was somewhere around 40. Donning a white coat over an already white jacket, he could easily have been mistaken for a polar bear from a distance.

Layers of scarves were wrapped around his head. White puffs of moisture were coming from his open mouth as if he were a steam engine train.

"This is really weird. I don't feel like there's a way out of this......"

Around him there were about ten other guys, one of which - a bespectacled middle-aged man, asked with all seriousness in the world -

"What could possibly be bothering you, Comrade Lingerin?"

“Huh? Ohh......ohhh. Listen Drakon. This is really weird."

"What exactly is it?"

The man who had just been referred to as "Drakon" asked as he looked at the other man's hands.

He saw two narrow-necked jars - which the man named Lingerin had somehow squeezed his left and right hand into respectively.

"Look at this, Drakon."

"......"

Lingerin raised the jars high without trying to retract his hands.

His silhouette looked as if it were wearing boxing gloves. Drakon eyed him with a serious face and - without even a drop of cold sweat on his back - spoke again.

"What happened to you, Comrade Lingerin?"

Lingerin replied to that with a serious face of his own as he shook the jars slightly.


"I can't get my hands out."


Silence reigned for a while among the men; Drakon, however, simply pushed his glasses as he replied.

"That is really a big deal."

"I was trying to get something inside these jars, and somehow can't get my hands out."

Anyone else would have thought they'd been made fun of at this point and laughed hollowly - yet Drakon replied again with unabated seriousness.

Though his reply had a tone of resignation to it.

"Well. If worst comes to worst, you'll just have to spend your whole life like that."

"That would be problematic. How am I supposed to eat or shit like this?"

"Nothing is impossible in the great Russia. The immense expanses of Russian soil would take the likes of Comrade Lingerin any time with motherly warmth to feed the growth of a new generation."

"Hmm? .......Did you just say I'm gonna be buried or something? Did you just skip a lot of chapters about my life? Why, Drakon?"

Lingerin tilted his head. Drakon pushed his glasses again as he spoke.

"Then I'll just be straightforward. Give up the thought of living. Both physically and mentally."

"Even when you say you're straightforward you're basically telling me to die in a long-winded way. Aren't you just getting more fearsome?"

"I was just kidding, Comrade Lingerin."

Drakon deadpanned.

Just as the men around them began to suspect that Drakon's face was made of wax - Drakon stated his wish rather matter-of-factly.


"If you are going to die, please do so after we've survived this crisis situation."


Upon hearing this, Lingerin at last turned to face the men around him.

With the exception of Drakon, these men were all of unknown age to him.

They wore bullet-proof face masks and titanium helmets, and vests with various utility pockets over assault suits. For some reason a few of them were also wearing gas masks, making them look like some sort of special force from a remote country.

But there was no uniformity whatsoever in the way they were equipped; it seemed like they just picked up whatever they found easiest to use.

Several of them were carrying automatic firearms, which made the atmosphere tense in these Russian woods.

As he looked around at these men, Lingerin made noises as he flexed his neck and spoke.

"So who exactly are these nuisances here?"

”Thirty-seven armed illegal immigrants. Looks like they were planning to go to the Western countries via Russia, but decided that we, who happened to have overheard their plan as they were discussing it, needed to be dealt with first."

"We just happened to overhear? What horrible people. Or did we really?"

“If ‘you were tapping their car thinking it was our rival's and therefore overheard their plan, then told them that we overheard just so that you could try to talk them into buying our weapons’ counts as 'we just happened to overhear', then yes."

"Wow, then we really just happened to overhear."

Though Lingerin laughed bitterly as he said this, his hands, which were still stuck in the jars, made this entire scene a joke.

Drakon continued to show no emotion whatsoever as he moved his lips robotically.

"So it turned out they attacked the village we were staying in with the intention of robbing us of the weapons. Judging by how quickly and unhesitatingly they made the move, they might have been planning on obtaining weapons in that fashion from the very beginning."

"Really......so in short, they're a bunch of robbers without borders?"

"That was not what I was trying to say at all. But since Comrade Lingerin's head is dumb, that would suffice."

"Ahh. You know you've got an outstanding military staff when he knows where to find points of compromise. I trust you, Drakon."

The flow of the conversation made little sense. Nevertheless, Lingerin Douglanikov - the head of this small weapon business flexed his neck once more and waited for more enemies to appear on the scene.

"Really, what a pain in the ass. If only we still had those two I'd be able to just sleep through it."

"Are you talking about Samia (Simon) and Denis who quit years ago? Or Comrade Igor who's still taking a break?"

"Nah. Those guys were pretty capable as well. But I'm talking about the special ones who would know to attack even without being ordered to in such situations."

Like a child talking about his favorite hero, the forty-something man was apparently mesmerized by the mere thought.

Had he already drunk an entire bottle of vodka this morning?

"I gave Igor his break just so that he could look for those two."

Looking at the other man's fascinated expression, Drakon showed some emotion on his face for the first time.

"Vorona and......Slon."

Slight disgust. That was the only emotion shown on Drakon's face.

"It's true that they're perfect for such jobs. However, considering that Slon's head is even more..... ‘that’ than Comrade Lingerin's......"

"His head is more what than mine? ......More awesome?"

"I take that back. Comrade Lingerin's head wouldn't lose to his in any aspect."

Drakon's face was back to expressionless as he went on to talk about another human being.

"Vorona......has more loveliness, more intellect, and more knowledge at her disposal than anyone else in this place......at the same time, though, she's also an unstoppable and incorrigible fighting addict."

He stopped talking here as he removed his glasses.

Lingerin grinned at Drakon and spoke in a cool voice.

"You know that sounded like you were just showing off your own daughter, don't you, Drakon? If that's what you were doing, at least call her by her real name, not that nickname 'Vorona'."

Even though they had this conversation as if they didn't have a tough battle to fight ahead - Drakon wiped all emotions off his face as he spoke to his employer.

"She's no longer my daughter."


"How could she be......when she and Slon just took our weapons and escaped to Japan?"



♂♀



May 3rd, Sunshine 60 Street, Ikebukuro


Just as the shoplifter was charging forward like a bull, knocking people out of his way -

"Что случилось? (What happened?)"

The one who muttered to himself was a Caucasian male somehow even more attention-drawing than the shoplifter.

There were quite a number of black men working as hawkers in Ikebukuro, so the presence of foreigners was not a novelty in itself. But -

In addition to being over 2 meters tall, the man had limbs as thick as logs and protruding muscles that made him look like a professional wrestler. The luggage he carried on his back was the size of sandbags; overall, he resembled some sort of martial artist on a self-improvement tour.

But more than all of those combined, however, he drew attention because he contrasted so forcefully with the person right next to him.

"Нет проблем. (No problem.)"

The one who answered in Russian was a Caucasian female around 20 who held a large paper bag in her hands.

Her features were somewhat childlike; it was probably more adequate to call her a girl than a woman. But her body was already no different from an adult female's. On her lean arms streamlined muscles were vaguely visible.

Her short hair was a shining platinum blond. At the centers of her sky-blue eyes there was a pair of tiny pupils deep as ice caves.

Her expression was somewhat cold, and the skin on her body slightly mutilated here and there with marks that looked like scars. The color of her casual attire was prevalently black, adding to the dark aura she seemed to emanate.

Yet that aura became the best possible backdrop and brought out her elegant looks in an incredible way.

The breathtaking beauty and the masculine beast.

They turned quite a number of heads with their appearance; however, the same heads quickly turned away and focused instead on the commotion the shoplifter was causing.

The Caucasian girl didn't seem to take notice of the reaction of the crowd. She simply said to the huge guy next to her with a face devoid of expression:

"Slon. I negate. ……Speak Japanese when in Japan. The policy we decided on long ago. When in Rome, do as Romans do. The basics of concealing identity. I too without thinking gave response in Russian. I will watch out. We do the same."

"Sorry, Vorona. My bad."

"You are attention-drawing. We are entering the karaoke, the destination. Please affirm."

The Caucasian female's intonation was perfect, yet her choice of words remained somewhat awkward.

Vorona - since that appeared to be her name - walked towards the destination with Slon at her heel.

She didn't seem interested in either the shoplifter commotion or what happened afterwards.

Having walked away from the swarming crowd, she said in a small voice as if to herself:


"A greenhouse-bred country, too used to peace. Half disappointment. Half jealousy."



♂♀



Several minutes later, in a karaoke box


"I can't. I can't move. I'm so wound up over this that I can't even make one step forward!"

They had entered the karaoke box as indicated and were waiting for the “client” to appear. The huge guy, Slon, cupped his head with his hands as he squatted down.

Vorona, on the other hand, took out a book from her paper bag and began to turn the pages as she replied matter-of-factly.

"You're sitting. I deny the necessity for you to walk."

"I can't help being all wound up over this......we just passed some sukiyaki and shabu-shabu restaurants on the way here. I can't help getting all wound up over beef......"

Slon looked as if his world were about to end. Vorona, however, did not even cast a glance in his direction as she continued to leaf through the pages.

"How......how do cows grow to such immense sizes when all they ever chew on is grass! It's simply weird that they can get so big just by eating grass......if this mystery is not solved, I don't even see any point in living, let alone go to work!"

Tears trickled down the huge guy's face as he shouted what was practically nonsense. Vorona did not look up as she continued to turn the pages; however, her lips began to form words as if they had a life of their own.

"......The stomach of a cow hosts special microorganisms, the microorganisms react with grass and the cow's saliva. Produce amino acids, the cow absorbs them, wherewith the cow grows. No problem."

"......"

Slon's question was answered perfectly.

Looking satisfied with Vorona's answer, Slon began to bubble with joy.

"So that's how! You are something indeed, Vorona! That's how! Now I can eat my beef steak in peace! After all this answer is just perfect!"

But -

"I can now drink cow milk in peace too! Though it's still slightly weird, the idea of humans drinking......cow milk......ehhh......speaking of which......"

As if something had just occurred to him, he cupped his head with his hands again and fell onto the table with karaoke menus on it.

"I can't move! ......I'm so wound up over it that I can't even bring myself to look at the menu......when I was thinking about cow milk, my thoughts somehow wandered to the fact that men have nipples.....what good does that do exactly to reproduction......? I'm not moving an inch until I've solved the mystery of the male nipples! This is my war!"

"......When a fetus, there is a period during which a human being is neither male or female. Gender is decided after the nipples part has been formed. Just vestigial."

"Oh......oooooh.......perfect, Vorona, you're just perfect!"

While Vorona's expression remained virtually unchanged, Slon asked the next question.

"But......! I now have a new question.......if that is not answered, I don't think I can live anymore......! Why, why isn't Vorona looking embarrassed in the slightest!? I mean, I'm talking to you about teasing stuff like nipples and reproduction, in this karaoke box where there's only a man and a woman!"

While Slon was speaking the ultimate nonsense, Vorona simply continued to turn the pages.

Turned the pages.

Turned the pages.

Turned the pages.

Turned the pages

Turned the pages, then turned some more, and then some more -

" - Am I being......ignored!?"

Vorona was just finishing the first book when Slon could no longer stand it and yelled.

Then, she took out a second book and parted her lips as if about to say something en passant - but the door of the karaoke box was opened the exact second before she could actually say anything and a man entered the box.


"Yah, good day, good day. I'm really sorry I'm late."


It was a Japanese man with an extremely good-natured face who looked about 40.

"Good day, good day. I'm really sorry. Good day to you."

The man who kept saying "good day" smiled kindly and sat down on the chair.

"Please forgive me for getting straight to business. I really don't have much time……so I'll explain the 'job' to you right now."

The man finished the sentence smiling and produced two photos from his chest pocket before the duo could even answer.

"Actually, I'm hoping that you can kidnap a little kid for me."

"……….."

The first photo was the photo of a girl with a somewhat cloudy expression.

She looked like she hadn't even finished elementary school. Slon accepted the photo with a frown while Vorona just kept turning the pages of her book despite the fact that the client was explaining the details of the job to them.

The middle-aged man did not seem to mind, however, seeing as he continued his explanation in a nonchalant tone.

"This city has many yakuza……or Japanese mafia. Haha. She's the granddaughter of the head of one of those groups……I'm hoping that you can kidnap her and try not to kill her in the process. Hahaha, I'm really sorry this is not an assassination request but a strange kidnapping job. Good day to you."

"Even though you're technically our employer in this country, I still have to say that we'll decide whether to take the job or not depending on the amount you offer. We can conceal our faces, but even so we demand being paid adequately for risking open war with yakuza."

Slon said in flawless Japanese. The man laughed affably and replied:

"Ahh, actually, the situation's become even more cumbersome than that. The yakuza group in question seemed to have hired a bodyguard……I could hardly believe it myself, but if what I heard is true, that bodyguard is a fearsome character."

Bodyguard.

Vorona's hands stopped turning the pages upon hearing that word.

"Guard, very impregnable? Affirmative or negative, I hope for your quick answer."

The man kept his good-natured smile even after he heard Vorona's words and said with a somewhat troubled face:

"How should I put it……it's probably not even a matter of strength……that bodyguard is kind of like a magician."

"?"

"There are video clips floating around on the Internet, so I downloaded some just in time for our meeting……"

At that, the man took out a portable video player and displayed one image on its screen.

It was a screensnap from a TV news program.

In that image what appeared to be a group of criminals were fleeing from patrol cars -

And running into someone on a black motorbike wielding a giant scythe.

"This is the so-called Black Motorbike, kind of an urban legend of our time……I have no idea how he did that, though. Anyhow, he's not going to leave you alone if you try to do anything to the girl in the photo."

The man lowered his head as if troubled - but under that facade, he was actually snickering.

"Confirm, one thing."

Blood rushed to Vorona's face as her expression relaxed slightly in what appeared to be joy -

She did nothing to conceal the excitement bubbling in her heart as she asked a simple question:


"If I kill the person on this motorbike, will you not blame me?"


That was a meaningless question.

Slon did not think he fell under the smart category, but he had been working with his female partner long enough to know.

Vorona was a born fighting addict.

There was no way she was going to turn down this job now that the prospect of fighting an unknown opponent was dangling before her eyes like a carrot.

He was also sure of something else.

No matter what Yadogiri Jinnai - their employer for this job - said, Vorona was going to kill the rider on the motorbike for sure.


Having made that assessment, Slon thought quietly to himself:

- Well, I don't really know. I don't care either way.


And just like that, the Russians, who had yet to show Ikebukuro what they were capable of, stepped into the world of non-daily life out of their own conscious will.

Of course, this volatile state of things -

Was probably the more familiar, "dailier" form of life for them after all.









END OF INTERLUDE OR PROLOGUE B

"Regarding the investigation that was requested by Sakazaki-sama, I will give a report of what I have found up until now.

Orihara Izaya, 24 years old. In the event that he uses another name, there is a possibility that he will make the false claim of being 21 years old. His family members are his grandparents Orihara Torakichi and Natsu, his parents Orihara Shirou and Kyouko, and a pair of twin sisters named Kururi and Mairu.

Both parents worked in a trading company, and appeared to be posted overseas frequently for long periods of time. The family was rarely together. His parents didn't have a problem with the company, and their work was not a factor that contributed to the formation of the twisted human known as Orihara Izaya. Although there is the possibility that the lack of contact with his parents that might have been one of the main causes.

Even though it's a regret of mine to have to use the subjective word "twisted" to describe him, I've known a number of people who give me a similar impression, and it's probably possible to objectively judge a person to be twisted."

(some content omitted)

"There are no records of him undergoing corrective guidance during the time he was in high school, but he created a lot of trouble in middle school. The corrective guidance was in relation to the injury of a fellow schoolmate called Kishitani Shinra. I don't know what happened between them, but because Kishitani Shinra did not submit a damage report, the matter was settled with mild punishment.

As of now, he is an information broker with many ties with different organizations. On the surface he appears to be a financial planner, but the probability that he does that sort of work is low. Normally, an information broker obtains information from customers and women in the night entertainment business and gives the information to the police and crime syndicates, mostly, and as some work on the sidelines, but in his case, he laid down a private network within such information brokers, in the middle of which he stands. While he appears to have dealings with the Awakusu Company, I do not have any idea what the content is about in general. From here on, the investigation would have to proceed into dangerous territory, and as such there is a problem with continuing-----"

"......that's what it was kind of like. Although he went on for longer afterwards and attached these materials and phone numbers."

"You've worked hard, Sakazaki-san♪"

"Please stop calling me by that fake name already."

"Ohh, scary."

Izaya, turning his eyes to the "report" handed to him by Namie, smiled and shook his head.

"Well well, even though it was fine to have you pretend to be Sakazaki in order to test the investigation skill of the private eye who opened business the other day......I'm a bit disappointed. That he was only able to pull up this much. I thought he'd be able find more things like something new I don't already know, and my past."

"Perhaps you don't have that deep a past?"

"Whoa, that bites. So, shall I show this self-proclaimed detective that there are people who top the top, by making more requests to real detectives?"

In front of them, Izaya's phone rang with its mail tone.

"It was a good thing that it wasn't outed that you don't only have connections with the Awakusu Company, but also with the Asuki Group, huh?"

"......what's up with this guy?"

Looking at the mail he received from a man called Tsukumoya Shinichi, Izaya shrugged cheerfully.

"Well, in this world, there are people who top the top. That, and I never gave this guy the mail address for my phone. I don't even know what he looks like."

In front of Namie, who was glaring at the screen in surprise, Izaya smiled most happily for the day.

"Really, life won't let me feel bored. So......I really, really enjoy living."

---

Notes:
1. My interest in Tsukumoya Shinichi has just increased 2039481203948092384-fold.
2. I can't find a suitable word for corrective guidance (does that term even exist?). It's something like guidance, while not to the extent of rehabilitation or...yeah...it's just some kind of corrective activity that you'd dish out to troublesome students.
Thoughts re: lack of correction in high school - either he directed all his attention to Shizuo who never got sufficiently injured/smart enough to complain, and/or he managed to hide everything.
3. "top the top" - sorry, I couldn't help it. Even though I think it sounds very stupid when I read it now. It vaguely reminds me of a Chinese phrase, "天外有天", that has pretty much the same meaning- there's always someone better. Someone better than the best, but using the word "best" here is way too extreme.
4. (some content omitted) is really in the original as (中&#30053, so nothing is missing here.
5. Different brackets were used for the report section and Shinichi's mail, so to make the distinction between those and the conversation parts, I used italics.



デュラララ!!ノ全テ
P152

"I-ZA-YA-KUU-N. I-'M GO-NNA- CRU-SH YOUUUU-!"
That low voice echoed throughout the park, and in the next instant - a vending maching flew into the air, tracing a parabola directly towards a man in a black coat.
The vending machine, which in a way was a symbol of good governance, turned into a chunk of violence and attacked a man - Orihara Izaya.

From one end of the park, Kadota, watching the scene from afar, shook his head and said, "It's started again, huh?"
It seemed that Izaya and Shizuo had been waiting for different people - by some chance, they found themselves in the same place, noticed each other at practically the same time, and turned the Ikebukuro park into a battleground without any warning.
Next to him, Yumasaki, who had been watching, smiled as he spoke.
"Kadota-san, you were in the same school as those two, right?"
"......Yeah."
"Karisawa-san isn't here to force her BL fantasies, so, was there never an occasion where those two helped each other as rivals to stand up against a great evil?"
"No there wasn't."
He answered in less than a second, and sighing deeply, continued.
"I can't even say they were rivals. From the day of the entrance ceremony, they'd been trying to kill each other. It seemed a student had seen Shizuo get hit by a truck, and because he still appeared at school the next day, the word that Shizuo was a monster spread. ......I thought at first that Izaya, who had caused a truck to hit someone, should be feared more, but that information didn't spread."
"A typical black curtain type, huh?"
"He's good at not making enemies. Even though he sometimes is on the receiving end of grudges, he carefully avoids anything that will direct hostility to himself. ......See, just like that-"
"Eh?"
Following Kadota's line of vision, Yumasaki saw Masaomi watching with a complicated expression Izaya and Shizuo's battle at the park entrance.
"Oh, isn't that Kida-kun?"
"With regards to that incident, it's not strange to think Kida would stab Izaya. But it didn't turn out that way. ......The anger directed towards Izaya, was directed towards himself. Izaya had controlled the direction of his anger."
"! That is, Accelerator's Vector Change! Izaya is a Psychic, right!"
"Shut up."

As he watched the fighting in the park, Kida Masaomi thought of his past.
Under the wildly blooming sakura, Shizuo's angry yelling reached his ears.
-- If I had as much strength as Heiwajima Shizuo...... . Maybe I could have done something differently then.
He'd realized that when he couldn't save someone precious to him, Izaya had been doing something in the background.
But in the end, the one who couldn't save her was himself. An anger comparable to the hate he felt towards the human called Orihara Izaya rose in him, directed at himself.
-- Heiwajima Shizuo's really amazing.
Feeling envious of Shizuo, who was able to direct his animosity at Orihara Izaya without hesitation, Masaomi left the area.
While he held an uncertainty that he might be able to make the first step one day.

"Well, the two of them would start fighting when they met, practically every day then...... . Even though there were people like Shishizaki-sempai who could stop their fights, I guess there wasn't a reason for them to be able to get along......Once, a barrel filled with gasoline and chemical fuels was found in the school you know, and the students who had good sense realised that it must have been something Izaya brought in to blow Shizuo away."
"He's a dangerous person, huh."
"In between the two of them, there was that guy Shinra. In a way, that guy was pretty amazing, so they said. Because he could stand between Shizuo and Izaya and laugh, and say random things. Even the seniors had to take their hats off to him......"

"I'm sorry, Celty. It looks like Shizuo and Izaya are brawling in Ikebukuro, could you go stop them for me?"
"Why me?"
"Er, that guy Izaya, it seems he was there waiting for people from the Awakusu-kai, and if I'm a friend of those two I should do something. I have work to do now, so please, Celty. Although you can forget about it if you really don't want to."
"Really...... . You're in quite a spot of trouble. Isn't it a problem if anything happens to you, while you're being a friend of those two?"
At Celty, who shrugged and showed him the words on her PDA, Shinra smiled and shook his head.
"That's not true. It's not actually a huge problem to stand in between the two of them. See, isn't it safe in the eye of a typhoon? And also......"
"And also?"
"I didn't have many friends. The only ones I can call my lifelong friends are only those two. I'm actually a little happy to think of myself as one of them. Though of course, I'm happiest to be close to you, Celty."

Thinking of that conversation, Celty, who had reached the park and was now in front of the ruin Shizuo and Izaya's fighting had caused, sighed deeply in her heart.
-- Just what is the eye of the typhoon. ......isn't it a tornado.
Thinking of this, Celty imagined Shinra exclaiming "Wow, I'm flying!" while laughing, swept up by a tornado - and with a Shinra-like calmness, stepped in to mediate.

However, in the end, Celty alone could not stop them, and it becoming a riot that dragged in Simon and the observers Kadota and company-
That, is another story altogether.

---

Notes
1. "Accelerator's Vector Change" "Psychic" - a reference to Toaru Majutsu no Index/A Certain Magical Index. ...which I don't watch or read, I just had to look the term up because it was so suspicious coming from Yumasaki...
2. Shishizaki-sempai...I think he was mentioned in Shizuo Gaiden. Not much info, but if anyone can stop Izaya and Shizuo's fights...
3. "friend of those two" "one of them" "close to you" - these are all different translations of "miuchi", which is like a close circle of people around you, relatives, friends, gang members- that sort of thing.



デュラララ!!ノ全テ
P156-157

CHAPTER 3
THEIR YOUTH, IT SPARKLES AND FALLS




Somewhere in Russia


"So, where were we?"

Lingerin banged the jars on his hands repeatedly against each other and inquired nonchalantly.

Despite his light-hearted tone, however, the bloody backdrop against which he said these words was the furthest from light-hearted.

The air was literally heavy with the smell of blood.

Worse than that, however, was the more pungent smell of explosives floating in the air. The denseness of the smoke made even the river of blood on the floor seem pale.

Legions of bodies lay at Lingerin's feet.

These had probably belonged to the group of illegal immigrants they had been talking about. They were all foreign-looking men bleeding terribly from their heads and torsos and slowly turning into smelly, lifeless lumps of flesh on the ground.

The faces of the men still standing didn't even change.

Next to Lingerin Drakon was carefully rubbing dust off his glasses. Around them the men dressed in special force-like attire remained silent and vigilant.

"We were talking about Vorona and Slon, Comrade Lingerin."

"Ahaha, that's right. These folks came and interrupted us when we were only halfway through that story. How inconsiderate of them. That's why they lost their lives."

Lingerin sighed heavily and muttered.

Raising his hands, which were still stuck in the jars, he said in a grand voice:

"That's right. It's very important that one be considerate. On some level, Denis and Samia are what I would call considerate people - since they escaped to Japan when we were about to enter a a life-and-death situation here."

"When you launched a preemptive attack as a warning on the armed force our rival had hired, you mean."

"I was so sure that I was gonna die. Good lord, I was actually the inconsiderate one back then. I'd never thought there would be so many former special forces soldiers among them. None of our shots were lethal since we only meant them to serve as a warning, but theirs, alas, they really wanted us dead."

Drakon, too, pushed up his glasses in a pretentious way and deadpanned in a cold voice to his cackling employer:

"Many former special force members lost their jobs during democratization and disarmament. When looking for alternative employment, a considerable number began working under private armed forces and mafia so we would have to watch out……I've already told you that 23 times since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but apparently Comrade Lingerin had ears that did not hear."

"Well, you can't blame me, every member I knew simply became mercenaries……speaking of which, it's not exactly the time to call me on this, don't you think? I didn't expect you to be so inconsiderate, Drakon."

"If you were trying to be considerate you would have first done something about your hands, Comrade Lingerin."

There was no contempt, scorn or displeasure on Drakon's face even at the sight of his employer's hands stuck in honey jars like a bear's paws. He simply stated the fact in a monotonous voice.

Lingerin averted his gaze and laughed as if to conceal his embarrassment:

"I didn't mean for them to……"

The next instant - one of the jars exploded with a huge noise.

A polished black pistol appeared from what remained of the jar on Lingerin's right hand.

The mouth of the pistol was still smoking while the shards rained down on the bodies on the floor.

The next second, something fell to the floor with a clang.

Drakon turned to find an illegal immigrant who had apparently only been pretending to be dead. A stream of blood trickled down the corner of his mouth as his pistol, which he had been aiming at Lingerin, fell from his now-lifeless hand.

"……Very well-played. That's all I'm saying for now."

Lingerin didn't seem to take notice of Drakon, who shrugged as he said this, and instead broke into a light-hearted smile.

"I see……all I had to do was pull the trigger! It was a pity that I had to break the jar, but the jar was cheaper than the pistol anyway……probably!"

"I would question first the necessity for you to put the pistol into the jar in the first place. Secondly, why didn't you let go of the pistol, retract your hand and take the pistol out afterwards? Thirdly, wouldn't it have been faster to just break the jar on the wall than to blast it open with a bullet?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Speak Russian."

"Did what I said just now sound like English or Japanese to you? I see. If this is a result of a dysfunctional Wernicke's area*, it has to be either yours or mine. Let's go to the hospital together and see who gets sent to the infirmary."

* Wernicke's area: the part of the cerebral cortex involved in the understanding of written and spoken language.

Lumps of dry ice were coming out of his mouth as he spoke -

Lingerin averted his gaze right away as this illusion almost took shape in front of his eyes. Instead, he steered the topic back.

"Yeah, we were talking about Little Miss Vorona, weren't we? She's twenty now, but mentally she's still a kid. She's damn capable, but compared to Samia and Denis she's not nearly as considerate."

"It's not a problem of whether she's considerate or not. They violated our unwritten laws, which simply were not to be violated. I will literally beat their brains out if I get the chance."

"God, you're scary. This is not something you say about your own daughter. I've decided to not be mad at them, I have. Let's just shut them up in the storage room and leave it at that."

"The storage, huh……well, I suppose starving them to death will make them more miserable than feeding them bullets."

Drakon said with a serious face. Lingerin broke out in sonorous laughter and chimed in as if amused:

"Oi oi, why are you assuming that we're executing them? Let it go. We're neither a mafia group or the military. Just live and let live. Plus it sounds sort of barbarian when you talk about killing people as if it's part of your routine."

Lingerin lectured on unashamedly while leisurely finding himself a place to sit amid the legions of slaughtered bodies.

"First off……I don't think that you, with your skills, can manage to shoot Vorona."

"Affirmative. I regret to say that I can't do the job. But that was why we sent Igor to Japan, wasn't it? We also told him he could seek Denis and Samia's assistance if necessary……but then, I heard Igor was seriously injured by a local just a couple of days ago."

"Looks like Japan is a tough country after all. I heard our Mr. President* is a master of the Japanese martial art called judo. Could it be that a judo master licked him? Ah, guess I might as well also break the other jar."

* At the time Durarara!!x5 was released the president of Russia was still Putin.

Lingerin said as he aimed the pistol in his right hand at the jar in his left hand. Drakon didn't turn to look at him; instead he put his hand on Lingerin's shoulder and said in a flat tone:

"I'll spare you the detailed lecture, but you'll wound your left hand if you do this. It's better to just crack it open with the grip. Japan is indeed tough, though. If Vorona hears that Igor's been licked by a local, she's going to be sure to do something about it."

"That's true. Little Miss Vorona has feelings, unlike you - you're just a robot. She always acts on her instinct and impulses and kills people easily. She kills for things other than food or self-defense, which is what makes humans different from beasts."

Lingerin slammed the pistol grip against the jar, which broke into pieces upon the contact and fell to the floor.

That revealed his other hand holding a slice of beef jerky marinated in honey. Lingerin put it in his mouth and said:

"Well, she's still a weirdo among humans, of course."

"It's probably not the most adequate thing to say in front of Comrade Lingerin, but Vorona is far from grown-up as a human being. She lost her mother when she was still a kid, and all I had given her was books. I've been leaving her to her own devices, and this is the only way it could turn out. She is extremely knowledgeable, but mentally she's still a child."

Drakon recounted calmly in a mildly self-reproachful voice. Lingerin, on the other hand, waved his hand and said light-heartedly:

"Isn't that good, though? She's young and blooming. Getting some exercise abroad will do her good. Japan's warmer in the springtime than Russia, isn't it? Just let her enjoy it."


"Though she did take with her too many toys not suited for underage kids."



♂♀



May 3rd, a certain road in Ikebukuro


Vorona, the woman in the rider suit, rode on as she watched from afar the figure rolling onto the floor.

"……"

At the same time there was a sound of friction, and a faintly glittering thread slid swiftly back into her belt.

But no one around her took notice of the faint glitter; every passer-by in the street was too busy looking at the overturned motorbike and the rider, who was thrown from his seat.

The vehicles following the motorbike had no choice but to stop or make a detour to avoid getting themselves into trouble.

Vorona disguised herself as one of "spectators" and steered her motorbike into a road that lay before her.

She looked into the rear mirror. Seeing that the commotion had officially started, she rode away into the night without casting the street a backward glance.

She knew very well why there was going to be a commotion.

She had seen it with her own eyes -

The moment when the helmet of the rider on the Black Motorbike was sent flying into mid-air and the now-headless body crashing onto the asphalt.

"……"

Vorona remained wordless inside her helmet and pondered things over as she kept riding on the night road - it didn't take her long to arrive at the destination.

Parked there on the road with very sparse traffic was a truck.

It was her private truck complete with the logo of a sham company.

Slon was already waiting for her in the driver's seat. As she approached the truck, its hazard lamps flashed briefly.

Vorona walked towards the truck in silence and made her way to its back.

The rear door opened on its own as she approached it and put down a steel slope like a plane's ramp.

Vorona stepped onto it effortlessly and walked straight onto the bed of the truck.

The rear half of the bed resembled a storage room; miscellaneous items were piled one upon another including a stand for the motorbike. The front half, on the other hand, was furnished like a camping car with its set of sofas and closets cushioned with soft white fur.

Vorona stood before the closet and took off her helmet as well as her rider suit. She only wore a thin T-shirt and a pair of leggings underneath, which allowed her well-proportioned figure to show under the fluorescent light.

This place had electricity supply just like a real camping car. Other than the fluorescent light, one could find a number of power sockets at the front.

Slon's voice came through via the transceiver on the table as she took off her T-shirt, leaving only her brassiere.

"Hard day, huh?"

The voice of the male was talking to her from the driver's seat. It inquired leisurely:

"Are you changing right now?"

"I affirm."

"Really. It's a pity that I can't watch."

"I don't find it a pity."

Vorona answered in a flat tone. She did not seem to find it embarrassing or annoying, for she simply changed into a new T-shirt without further ado.

Slon was at a loss as to what to say at her lack of reaction, so he chose to jump to a completely irrelevant topic.

"Speaking of which, I saw a car with a number plate that said 1313 driving past when I was waiting for you. And the question suddenly struck me……why is 13 regarded as an unlucky number? I'm so wound up over this that I feel like I could die. Is that a curse of the number 13 as well?"

"Many explanations exist. Famous one is at Last Supper, Judas was No.13 on the table. But origin is not limited to Christianity. Nordic Pantheon, harmony achieved by 12 gods. Loki appearing as the 13th broke the harmony. Ancient times, countries that used the duodecimal system, 13 broke the harmony of 12. The taboo number. Pity."

"I see. So it's still unclear. Also……could you just speak Russian with me? I was trained quite thoroughly before, so my Japanese is more or less OK……but yours is sort of awkward. Or simply weird. People may despise us if that gets in the way of mutual understanding."

"I negate. Communication is possible on matters of work, no problem. Being despised, no problem."

Vorona answered curtly. The man in the driver's seat replied with the same curtness:

"I don't quite get it, but since you say there's no problem, whatever."

Slon didn't dwell further on this subject and instead booted the accelerator to start the truck.

Vorona, who had by now changed into casual clothes, listened to the sound of the engine and muttered to herself on the sofa:

"Overly simple. Disappoint. Black Motorbike, was too weak."

"You said something?"

"Slon, no relevance."

"Not my business? Then whatever."

Having made sure that Slon's flirtatious voice had stopped bothering her, she began to ruminate on the matter.

- So disappointing.

- I had thought that the monster-like human being on the picture would have been able to satisfy me.

- His guard was way too loose. Like any other delinquent out there.

- He didn't even notice that the specially made steel thread on his neck was connected to a transceiver.

- Hunger.


- ……Hunger.



♂♀



If "youth" stood for "the spring of life", then the twenty-year-old woman's spring was still not in sight.

The woman named Vorona had never loved a single human being.

She had probably never even loved herself.

She could grasp the concept of love the same way she could other knowledge.

But she had no way to tell whether it was necessary for her life.

Because other than the second-hand knowledge from the books, she had never experienced actual love.

She grew up watching her father's back.

But it was not because she had harbored admiration for him.

Her father, code-named "Drakon", never turned his face to her. He kept giving her books to preoccupy herself with, kept his back turned towards her, kept his attention focused somewhere other than on her.

[It's his way of expressing love. He keeps his back turned to you, Little Miss, because he wanted to protect you from any harm in the world. Drakon is an awkward and stubborn guy, though, so he's never going to let it show on his face.]

Lingerin, her father's employer, had once said to the little girl.

It did little more than to perplex her: she didn't understand what love meant, so Lingerin's words went over her head.

But she did not feel lonely, either.

Her father kept a large amount of books at home, and she had full access to his collection.

Any book she wanted her father would also purchase for her without hesitation.

Lingerin also liked to bring her strange books from foreign countries since he found it intriguing that she could read several times faster than an average person.

Surrounded by her pile of books, she took in every necessary and unnecessary bit of knowledge and stored them in her brain.

The little girl was not loved by her father; neither had she loved anyone. But there wasn't discontent in her heart for her life.

She wasn't friends with any of the kids at her school. The kids around her had isolated her since they had all been warned by their parents not to "get too close to her" (they knew her father did something very dangerous for a living.) She had therefore spent her childhood in solitude.

But she did not mind. All she needed to be satisfied with life was books.

She had never felt hunger.

Until a certain moment came to pass.

The first time she felt hungry was when she first killed a human being.

With the knowledge she had acquired from books, she killed a robber who had broken into their house on a certain night.

Half of it was sheer luck; but on any account, she had managed to kill a grown man.

- Had managed it although she was a girl who had just turned ten and didn't even know how to pull a trigger.


The man stiffened instantly - it took far less time than what she had expected from reading the descriptions in the books.

An unfamiliar breeze began to blow through her heart at the sight.

It took her many years to put a pin on just what the strange feeling engulfing her heart had been - "hunger".

Her father returned home as soon as he could after she contacted him; the moment he saw the stiffened body of the robber - he locked his daughter in a silent embrace.

All along he had acted like a robot. Yet the warmth from this expressionless man's tight embrace remained unmistakable in her memory even after all these years.

The little girl had thought:

I don't know what happened, but Father has turned his face to me now.

And acted like he cherished his tie with me.

Why?

- Because I took down the bad guy?

- Because I killed someone stronger than I was?

- Because I am strong?

These were but childish and ridiculous theories.

In her little heart she had probably sensed vaguely - no, clearly, that "These are all wrong."

But she did not understand what love was.

That was why she never could understood why her father had hugged her.

She had hung on to the false reasons because she could not understand the real reason.

Or simply pretended to hang on to them.

After that, she began to learn things she could not learn from the books from Denis and Samia, her father's subordinates.

Denis and Samia were relatively young members of the group, yet nobody knew what they had previously done for a living. Lingerin, the head of the weapon company, did not care about such things. All her careful research had yielded was a trivial clue that said "Denis was in the army."

But this simple piece of information was more than enough for her.

After that, she asked the duo to teach her how to use various kinds of weapons as well as how to fight. Denis refused, saying it was "not the sort of thing to be taught to a girl". Samia was only willing to teach her how to work out her body.

Eventually, however, they began to teach her how to use weapons after she had proven herself capable of assisting her father in his job. The amount they had taught her was only meant to make her able to defend herself - yet the girl put these skills to use in a far more aggressive way.

She started out fighting the delinquents on the streets.

Moved on to armed drug dealers.

Moved on to former mafia members who had been in the army.

Began to fight two such opponents at once.

Three.

Four - five - six -

She kept upping the level of her opponents and reflecting on her own strength every time she survived from those fights.

One day, she caught wind that her father and Lingerin were planning to destroy this rival organization - she immediately set out to its lair and single-handedly killed its every member.

Lingerin, who got the report, arrived at the scene with his subordinates - and found the girl leafing through the dead's gossip magazines with gusto in a room filled with the smell of blood and explosives.

She was miraculously unhurt; yet her father, instead of pulling her into his arms, slapped her hard on the face.

At that moment - she at last realized.

That she was not shocked at all about the fact that she was slapped.

Rather, she felt from the bottom of her heart that it was only reasonable.

She had felt this way since a long, long time ago.

Perhaps from the second she had killed that robber.

At the same time, another realization hit her.

Why do I keep doing this even though I know Father will not praise me?

Not because I want to be loved.

It's very simple.

The happiness.

The delight.

The pleasure.

The bliss.

The ecstasy.


In short, she had been telling herself that she just wanted her father to pay attention to her and using it as an excuse to indulge herself in the joy of killing.

Ironically, she came to realize this when her father slapped her because he was worried about her. But it no longer mattered to her whether her father was willing to turn his face to her or not.

After the harness on her heart had been removed, her abilities as a fighter skyrocketed, but her mentality became increasingly twisted.

Lingerin, who noticed the change in her, had commented that she was "like a crow - smart, but for some reason just loves rotten meat." Laughingly, he gave her the code name "Vorona"* and made her a formal member of his company.

* Vorona: Russian for "crow".

She kept eliminating their rivals on Lingerin's orders.

Yet her hunger was far from satisfied.

Because her father did not hug her like he did the first time?

No.

She had already realized that this was not the reason.

So was she a blood-thirsty homicide manic?

To be exact, that was not it either.

What she enjoyed was not taking people down.

Nor killing them.

What she enjoyed was attacking the impregnable - and blowing it apart.

Tearing down multiple layers of defense and dicing the muscles toughened from years of exercise underneath.

Aiming at the weaker joints of the modern heavy-armed men, firing fuel-air explosives or bullets into their shield and seeing with her mind's eye the tender flesh inside the hard shell being torn apart.

Confirm.

All she wanted to do was confirm.

It was perhaps just another form of her desire for knowledge.

Fragile.

For her - humans were way too fragile.

But were they really?

The first robber she had killed was far more fragile than what she had pictured from reading descriptions in books.

That was the reason of her hunger.

She was slightly traumatized by the fact that she had already killed someone at such a young age.

But there were people in the world who would keep touching the old scars - even tearing them open when they were about to heal - and she was one of those.

Was it really a human being that she had killed back then?

Were human beings really that fragile?

Were they really that fragile, herself included?

No matter what kind of training they had gone through, no matter what heavy armor they put on, no matter how much fighting experience they had -

Were those so-called human beings in essence nothing more than lumps of flesh like water balloons supported by skeletons with the same hardness as quartz?

For some reason she did not know, she would feel restless unless she kept trying to confirm it.

She had no idea why.

She kept looking for new opponents with that thought on her mind -


And now, even though it was not entirely her intention, she was working as an individual "freelancer" to earn her living in this metropolis of a country far removed from war.



♂♀




< Alrighty! Let's start now with the greeting from me, everyone's idol - Takemoo Eiji! We'll be taking you as usual to the "Thundering Russian Paradise" today! Allow me to introduce my partner whom you may already know very well, the babe bilingual in Russian and Japanese!>

< &#1057;&#1077;&#1075;&#1086;&#1076;&#1085;&#1103; &#1090;&#1072;&#1082;&#1078;&#1077; &#1088;&#1072;&#1076;&#1099; &#1091;&#1076;&#1086;&#1074;&#1083;&#1077;&#1090;&#1074;&#1086;&#1088;&#1080;&#1090;&#1100; &#1074;&#1089;&#1077;&#1093;! (Today is also happy to meet all!) I'm Murada Kiely! What was with the "babe"? That was completely out of the blue! >

< Oi oi oi, that's not right! "Out of the blue" is not a very befitting phrase for a Russian speaker! I think Kiely should do away with that strange choice of words reminiscent of Carlyle's era and go for a uniquely Russian brand of sexiness instead! Such as wearing something that's uniquely Northern! Like a single layer of lingerie under a thick fur coat! >

< &#1047;&#1072;&#1084;&#1086;&#1083;&#1095;&#1081; &#1058;&#1088;&#1080;&#1083;&#1086;&#1073;&#1080;&#1090;&#1099;! >

< Eh!? Hang on! What did you just say? Oi, what did you just say in Russian!? >


Vorona slowly opened her eyes as a wave of noise reached her ears from the radio.

- She had been napping for a while.

It looked like Slon had been listening to the radio for the heck of it while driving.

She looked at the watch. It hadn't been for very long.

The sound of the radio continued; at the same time, a familiar voice howled with laughter through the transceiver.

"Hahahahahahahah! Vorona, you heard? The woman on the radio just said 'Shut up, Trilobite'! When do we ever call someone a Trilobite? Hahahahahahah!"

"I affirm. But I don't think it's worth releasing such a huge amount of laughter over. Also, Slon's language ability is capable of translating '&#1058;&#1088;&#1080;&#1083;&#1086;&#1073;&#1080;&#1090;&#1099;' into perfect Japanese, I am mildly shocked."

"That's because your father put me through a hellish amount of training. I can't remember how many Japanese newspapers and novels I was forced to read."

"I, fled. Parental ties, already severed. Next meeting, one of us will die. Pity, pity."

Vorona remained deadpan as ever as the topic suddenly ventured from everyday chatter into bloodier territory.

"Bodyguard on Black Motorbike, I murdered him just now."

"That's good."

"The whereabouts of the kid, the client will contact us once he knows. Before that, there's a necessity that we go do the next job."

"Ahhh&#8230;&#8230;speaking of which, we did take another job. But is it really OK? You're pretty reluctant to do that one as well, I think?"

Vorona picked up a book from the shelf as she heard Slon say. Opening it to find the page where her bookmark was, she answered nonchalantly:

"Not any problem at all. We do it tonight."

And she took out the bookmark - which was in fact a photo she had stuck in there between the pages.

- This is the target.

- It's true that I don't want to do it.

- I don't want to hurt this completely ordinary-looking girl who doesn't look like she's been trained in anything.

- Even I won't be able help feeling guilty. And more importantly, bored.

- The client might have had his reasons, or just did this out of irrational hate&#8230;&#8230;but it's not like I can do anything about it.

Vorona made herself come to terms with the fact and instead focused on memorizing the face on the photo.

It was the face of a girl in round glasses looking docile and reticent.


Sonohara Anri.


The name on her profile rang no bell for Vorona.

Vorona was fairly new to the city called Ikebukuro.

And not exactly that interested in it.

Of course, even among the residents of Ikebukuro, only a very select few knew what that girl was capable of.

As for what it would mean to step into the circle of these select few - Vorona could never have known.



- Speaking of which, I was so very let down by that Black Motorbike.

- &#8230;&#8230;But still, I don't feel like I was going fast enough to sever his head.

- He's already dead, though, so there's no point in ruminating.

- Magicians or not, humans are fragile.

Yadogiri had only shown her a very small part of the video clips being circulated on the Internet.

That was why she had no idea -

How Celty Sturluson, or the "Black Motorbike", was referred to and hyped in the Japanese media.


The Headless Rider.


Not even the most skillful of fighters could slice off Celty's nonexistent head.

But that kind of knowledge wasn't in any of the books she had read.


That was why she did not notice.

Of course, there was no way that she could have taken supernatural phenomena into consideration and watched out.

It would have been like holding on to a talisman while working to avoid being cursed to death by the opponent's ghost.

Unfortunately, Celty Sturluson simply happened to belong to that supernatural category.


In addition, Vorona failed to notice something unusual about her own motorbike.

A black thread that was thinner than a hair had already been attached to the back of her motorbike.

The black thread extended out of the bed of the truck and far, far into the night.


Of course, she failed to notice too that from the other end of the black thread - the origin of the "abnormality" was about to come for her.








(TO BE CONTINUED IN PART II)

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Q1. What do you think of him?

ORIHARA IZAYA
Ahh~~? I have nothing whatsoever to say about Shizu-chan, since I hate him and all. But I looove humans. Why do I hate him, you ask? &#8230;&#8230;Because he's unreasonable. In short, he's a protozoic creature. Despite that, though, he's got his sharp moments so he reeeeeally gives me a pain. Can't he just hurry up and die already~?

HEIWAJIMA SHIZUO
First of all, call him a flea and then we can talk. Second of all, I don't even know enough about him to be able to talk about him and I DON'T WANT TO KNOW EITHER SO DON'T FUCKING MAKE ME!!! &#8230;&#8230;I could explode just thinking about him. Listen, you. I fucking HATE him.


Q2. If you had to pick something you like about him, what would that be?

ORIHARA IZAYA
If I had to pick something I like&#8230;? Haven't I made it painfully clear already that I hate him? If I had to? If I had to, huh&#8230;&#8230;(sighs). Occasionally - like, oc-ca-sion-allyyy - he could bring me some entertainment. Aha, I'm not saying it's his intention or anything. He's fun to poke fun at - I have to keep in mind that it may cost me my life, of course. Even though Shizu-chan doesn't love me - in fact, I'd have politely refused to be loved by him since it would have been a hell of trouble - but I wouldn't mind being loved more by the chain of serendipity Shizu-chan is sometimes good at jingling.

HEIWAJIMA SHIZUO
Something I like!? Were you listening to me or have your ears grown deaf!? If that flea had 1% of trustworthiness in him things wouldn't have turned out like this between him and me in the first place! Argh? If I had to? "If you had to, if you had to" - you're fucking annoying. I TOLD YOU THERE ARE NONE! He's always alone without friends, so he entertains himself by involving others in his plans. THAT GETS ON MY FUCKING NERVES. I have no idea what he has on his mind. Though I don't even want to know.


Q3. Since when were you on such bad terms with each other?

ORIHARA IZAYA
Since when were we on such bad terms? Nah, it's not like it was part of my plan to get on his bad side or anything. When you say "since when were you~" you're basically implying that I was on good terms with him once, aren't you? The only thing we did together was having attended the same school. We never discussed manga together or had a heated battle on one of those game center machines. Between him and me it was always knives and fists and tricks and traps&#8230;.huh? Sounds like we were friends? Oops, you've got one huge positive filter on your ears, Writer-san. Better not say that when you're interviewing Shizu-chan, you know what I mean? If you want to see his reaction, though, I won't go as far as to stop you. Yeah&#8230;Shizu-chan is probably one of the toys I found in a million. One of those I want to break but at the same time want to play with for longer.

HEIWAJIMA SHIZUO
Since when were we on such bad terms? Che&#8230;&#8230;are you thinking I've ever been on good terms with him? I haven't got the kind of big heart you need to be able to smile at and befriend someone who cuts me with a fucking knife upon the first meeting!! He doesn't give a damn that I want nothing more than to live a peaceful life. He always involves me in situations furthest from peaceful and watches with that annoying smile of his from a high place. Oh. I forgot to mention&#8230;I hate violence. Make FUCKING sure you include that in the report. Punching and kicking and throwing things around&#8230;&#8230;AAARGH!? I TOLD YOU ALREADY! I HATE VIOLENCE!! And I FUCKING HATE that flea bastard who makes me use it!!


Q4. People say you're on "dog and monkey*" terms with each other. Do you consider yourself the dog or the monkey?
* "Dog and monkey" refers to people who are at loggerheads with each other.

ORIHARA IZAYA
If it's between a dog and a monkey&#8230;&#8230;I prefer the dog. Shizu-chan's kind of like a monkey, carrying and throwing things around like that.

HEIWAJIMA SHIZUO
Dog and monkey&#8230;I'll go with the monkey. I don't enjoy making annoying sounds.


Q5. Who would win in a serious fight between you two?

ORIHARA IZAYA
Who would win in a serious fight between us? That question is a little rude, don't you think? Makes it sound like we're always letting each other off the hook or something. Anyway&#8230;I'm always serious, you know? As for Shizu-chan&#8230;it's hard to imagine how someone as protozoic as he is would intentionally let me off the hook or save the most fatal blow for the last. So I guess he's serious too. But still, wouldn't it be kind of a shame to end this so quickly? So I'm taking my time with him. Not to say that there aren't intense moments&#8230;

HEIWAJIMA SHIZUO
Who would win in a serious fight between us, you ask? It's not like I'm hitting him all these times just to see how good I am at it. Speaking of which, it's not even about winning to fucking begin with. I have my reasons to not forgive him, and he has his reasons to be beaten up by me, that's it. That's why I'll never just let him pass if he dares step into Ikebukuro again. I'm nothing short of a fucking genius when it comes to seeking him out. &#8230;&#8230;Heh&#8230;not that I'm proud of it or anything.


Q6. Will you attack him when he's sleeping?

ORIHARA IZAYA
I? Attack Shizu-chan? When he's sleeping? Hahaha&#8230;probably! But he's a wild animal, so chances are that he's pretty sharp when it comes to this kind of thing. I've seen his sleeping face, though. It was kind of cute. Until veins began to pop out on it 0.5 second later, that is. Ah, it might have been my fault. You're right, though - I could try to do things to him when he's sleeping and see how he reacts&#8230;such as letting him wake up and find himself almost naked in the middle of 60-Story Street or a killing scene with a knife still in his hand. Ahh~speaking of which, there was this one I did enjoy&#8230;

HEIWAJIMA SHIZUO
I? Attack that flea? When he's sleeping? Ahhh&#8230;I do know where his apartment is. Since it's him I probably will&#8230;still not be able to do it. If he had that one ounce of humanness in him to let down his defenses even occasionally, things wouldn't have turned out this way between him and me. - !!? He&#8230;saw my sleeping face!? (Grinds teeth) THAT FLEA BASTARD!! WHEN, WHERE, AT WHAT FUCKING POINT DID HE SEE IT!! Geh&#8230;&#8230;speaking of which, it's just so fucking him to be watching people with that fucking sense of superiority from where they can't see him and giggle in the dark. How many fucking times has he been at it? Tehh&#8230;&#8230;that's why I said he had reasons to be beaten up by me, and I would never forgive him.


Q7. Anything else to add?

ORIHARA IZAYA
Anything else, huh. Sure, sure. Heyyyy~Shizu-chan? How's it going? &#8230;&#8230;Pretty good, I'd figure, since you just threw a trashcan at me a couple of hours ago. I can't tell you how much I want you to just die already, but in case you're planning to live longer, I'd suggest that you try to live more like a human. How's that sound? If Shizu-chan becomes more like a human, there's a chance that I might even like you a little bit better&#8230;&#8230;see? Eheheh&#8230;hahahaha&#8230;HAHAHAHAHAH!!

HEIWAJIMA SHIZUO
Anything to add? &#8230;How bothersome. &#8230;IIIIZAAAAYAAA-KUUUN~? Next time you step into Ikebukuro I'll FUCKING KILL YOU - !! - I've been telling you that over and over for ages&#8230;&#8230;But I ain't mad. I just kind of wanna beat you up. Save your fucking annoying speech for yourself, just FUCKING LET ME BEAT YOU UP AND GO TO HELL FOR ME!!!

Shizuo looks cute when sleeping.

[ Wasn't Celty, to me, a substitute for a mother? As a mother and not a lover, she has been with me for 20 years, am I still not sick of it?
......Even though Dad says it that way, I think it's different.
It's true that from the time I was aware of myself, my mother was no longer around. Even though that father obviously tried his best to love me, it'd be a lie to say I wasn't lonely.
However, I think what I wanted from Celty was not a maternal figure. I wonder what I thought when I saw Celty's head for the first time, when I was 4. My memories of that time are now faint, so half of it is my imagination...... . I think at first, it had a great impact on me. Because a headless woman was walking. I hadn't been used to the dissection images that were related to Dad's work yet, so I probably cried out and ran away. I'll admit that.
However, when I realised I could communicate with her, the original impact on me became a great uplifting force. Me, who could come into contact with such an amazing being, can't be anything other than special......uplifting, like in a candy commercial.
Yes, Celty was special. She was gentle and filled with human kindness - and yet, she made a wall between herself and humans. That was was probably the reason I couldn't consider Celty a maternal figure. But it couldn't be helped that I wanted to break down this wall.
To me, Celty was a princess shut in a tower. I guess I had the childish thought that I was the knight who would save her. Nah, there wasn't any reason for me to think that way, but it was something like that. It was kind of a lofty ambition, but my youth, to me, consisted of me trying to reach her.
But, when I reach the top of the tower, I have the feeling I can......touch Celty, without a wall in between. So, we've only recently gone steady. Aah, from here on, what sort of love will continue, what sort of love will be formed, I feel like I'm drowning in a sea of infinite possibilities. We'll probably keep on changing even from now on. But, If there's one thought that hasn't changed since the time I was a kid --- ]

"What are you writing? Shinra."
"Hey Celty, it's my secret diary!"
"......The one in which you think of what to make me cosplay?"
"Ah, that's good too! What costume would be nice, next! How about you be a maid and I be a butler!"
"......Normally, at this time, one would be thinking of who's the master......"

As he continued the conversation as such, Shinra, in order to not let Celty see, stealthily added the final line to the entry.

[ It's that I am happy today too. ]

---

Notes:
1. "aware of myself" - I always have problems translating this without making it sound weird. It refers to the time when you're conscious of...well...being you. The transition between being a helpless baby and a not-so-helpless little kid.
2. "lofty ambition" - 青雲之志. Shinra's known for using well-known sayings/phrases hahah.
3. Shinra's not my favourite character, but if I were to choose one DRRR!! character to take the place of, it'd be him. It's probably not much of a stretch to consider him one of the most, if not the happiest character in the series.

Raira Academy - after school

After the end of lessons, Kida Masaomi's voice rang out in the classroom. "Really, when it comes to Mikado, he's really a pouty pure-hearted lecher. I'm contradicting myself but don't worry about it......yeahhh!"
As he spoke, he used a red chalk to draw a large heart around the words on the blackboard "Class representative Ryuugamine Mikado" and "Sonohara Anri".
"Hey! Stop! Masaomi! Why do you think our names were written on the board in the first place!"
"It's a good luck charm, a good luck charm! If you leave it like this till tomorrow morning, you'll become popular, you know? You become an official pair with Anri, and then I'll have a reason to take her from you. Walking into a church bearing a cross, putting that cross on you and then taking Anri away......how's that? Like in the climax of a movie, Anri will fall in love with me too!"
"I've said it a lot of times before, but I think you should stop talking based on your spinal reflexes."
"Men should have spines! Mikado!"
"I don't get it! Isn't it going to cause trouble for Sonohara-san as well!"
To these two who were talking as usual-- "Did someone call me?"
Mikado, panicking, turned towards the voice that came from the window.
Anri, who was cleaning a blackboard, turned off the switch on the cleaning machine, and saw Mikado turn around.
"! I- it's nothing! It's just Masaomi writing strange things on the board again!"
As he said so, he started to use his sleeve to wipe the board.
The heart still remained, but he successfully managed to make his and Anri's names unreadable just in time.
"Is that so......"
Anri said, and turned back to the cleaning machine, and started cleaning the second blackboard.
After confirming that the sucking sound around Anri had started again, Mikado glared at Masaomi.
"What are you going to do about this. My uniform's covered in chalk."
"That's because you rejected my good intentions, Mikado. Have you forgotten about what happened in elementary school? Someone spread rumours about you and a female childhood friend, and you cried out of embarrassment, right?"
"The one who spread the rumours was you, wasn't it?"
At Mikado, who was staring unimpressedly at him, Masaomi laughed and continued to speak.
"I did it for your sake, you know. You were interested in her, weren't you?"
"I wasn't."
"You were."
"I said I wasn't!"
It seemed like this conversation that was typical of elementary schoolchildren would continue, but Masaomi turned his line of vision to Anri, smiling evilly.
"......but, you're interested in Anri, aren't you?"
"......!"
Masaomi smiled boldly at Mikado, who had tensed up once again, and kept talking.
"From here, if you got married to Anri and I stole her from you, it'd be the most moe development!"
"Er, married......"
"The already-married Anri......the love between two people of different status - I as a prefect, she as a class rep......and the fact that class A is enemies with class B!"
"They're enemies?"
Ignoring Mikado's riposte, Masaomi continued talking with greater passion.
"Just like Romeo and Juliet! At the end, Anri and I tragically drink the poison called love and gain eternal happiness in heaven! The end!"
"Ehh!? Hey, not only is it a self-declared a lovers' suicide pact, but it's also no longer a tragedy, what's this supposed to mean!?"
"If you don't like it, you can live with Anri and be happy!"
"This and that are different things---"
"---"
"---"
"---"

♂♀

A number of months later - Anri's apartment

While she lay sideways on her bed, Sonohara Anri thought about this memory.
In truth, she'd heard Mikado and Masaomi's conversation - all of it.
However, she didn't know how to react - she only pretended to not hear and continue cleaning the blackboard.
Even now, she didn't know how she could have reacted.
Thinking that she was both low and a coward, in the end, she could only keep thinking, and couldn't make the first step.
Her eyes fell on the romance novel lying open on her bed, and she thought of the characters in it.
To her, reality was like a picture in a frame, something like the events in a book.
However, right now, as she thought about the past - one of those "pictures in a frame" had disappeared.
Kida Masaomi dropping out of school of his own will.
In the face of this fact, the feelings of loss and helplessness ate at Anri. There was one thing that she realised, and it made her sad.
It was - how precious Kida Masaomi and Ryuugamine Mikado were to her.
What could she have done?
She understood that there wouldn't be an answer, and even if there was, she couldn't do anything now, but-
Even so, she kept thinking.
While, in the expanding reality within the picture frame, she held a "dream" similar to the fiction known as a romance novel.
Today, she continued to watch reality as well.
She decided that when Masaomi returned, she would speak all of her heart.
While she remained unaware that that was one "answer" - Anri quietly closed her eyes, breathing softly as she fell asleep.
While she dreamed of a someday, where the three of them would laugh together again.

---

Notes:
1. The verb in the title is written as 再開えたら, which, as far as I know, is not a valid word- but 再開 means something like "to start again", and read with the furigana, it says あえたら, which should mean "if (we) meet again".
2. Masaomi's lines were pretty hard to translate. He says a lot of strange things. "帝人と来たら本当にむっつりスケベな純情野郎だぜ" for example. I...tried. (although with a bit of a mess in order of adjectives.)
3. "both low and a coward" - two words were used to describe herself here, 卑怯 and 臆病 - both of which can mean "coward", but the first seems to be more negative, something like a person who hits below the belt to prevent himself from getting hurt. (I believe Simon used this to describe Izaya in episode 24 shortly after hitting him.)



デュラララ!!ノ全テ
P154-155

Night of May 3rd, a net cafe in Ikebukuro


"OK……"

It was a very refreshing voice.

To put it in a cliché way, it was a voice that would make people think that the blue sky was talking to them. Without doubt, it was an extremely clear and invigorating voice.

"I see it's finally getting more interesting."

The owner of the voice muttered to himself as he focused on the words displayed on the screen.

The dainty-looking young man with a refreshing face was half lying and half sitting in a net cafe swivel chair, totally relaxed.

At first sight he looked like a gentle-natured man of slender build; but his features had a relative sharpness in them, making him the perfect exemplification of the word "handsome". He was smiling as if willing to accept anything in the world as part of him; yet at the same time his eyes shone without mercy as if he held contempt for everything except himself. The way he was dressed was idiosyncratic, but it was hard to point at why. Overall, he gave an elusive and mercurial vibe.

Right in front of him there was a net cafe computer with Internet connection, yet Orihara Izaya - the young man - kept playing with his cell phone.

He silently processed the world of information steadily flowing out of the little outlet in his hand as he muttered in a low voice:

"Now that gets me all nostalgic. Reminds me of my high school years."

He seemed to be spilling his heart out, but no one - as only to be expected - was there to respond in this isolated space.

The cubicles around his were all rented by the month by homeless youths as their "living quarters". Those temporary owners were all out at work at this hour.

After some negotiation with the manager of the cafe, Izaya was able to rent this cubicle by the year.

It was unclear what kind of negotiation went on between them, but it seemed that Izaya succeeded in convincing the manager that he was an exception.

He summarized the situation in his head from the information currently available - and slowly got up from the chair.

- Really, it's getting me all nostalgic.

- Though my high school years were a complete mess, many thanks to Shizu-chan.

- If only he hadn't existed, I would have been able to carry out my plans so much better.

- Now that I think of it, half of my high school life felt like it was spent on trying to wipe him off the face of the earth.

He waved light-heartedly to the clerk as he passed the counter and left the net cafe.

Rather than taking the elevator, he chose to walk down the stairs in sprightly steps, heading for the street under the curtain of night.

He was almost at the exit when he felt the uniquely warm spring air beginning to surround him, and the hubbub from the crowded downtown streets reaching his ears. The young man let himself be submerged; as if no longer able to suppress his heartfelt happiness, his lips curled into a grin.

- God, I feel so entertained already just thinking about it.

- No matter how the situation develops from this point onwards -

- I alone will be "out of the mosquito curtain".



One month ago -

Orihara Izaya had been completely excluded from the commotion following a certain incident in Ikebukuro.

It would have been a lie if one were to say that he did not feel the slightest grudge.

- Because he did have the feeling that he was left out by everyone else.

Orihara Izaya loved humans.

But that was not to say that he loved any particular individual.

He was a human himself, yet he loved the beings called "humans".

One could interpret it as a grandiose case of narcissism, but he never included himself in the "humans" he loved.

To put it in more exact words, he was deeply in love with "others".

He had wasted an ideal opportunity to observe the humans he loved. He was trapped in passivity when the reward money was placed on Celty's headless body.

It would have sounded harsh if one were to say that he did it to vent his anger.

Yet it was harsh but true: a desire to vent his anger was part of what prompted his actions.

It was like kicking bicycles out of his way because he felt like no one wanted to play with him……at least, that was the sort of pettiness in his heart when he start to carry out his plan - but the hardest part to deal with about Orihara Izaya was that he knew himself, his pettiness included, like the back of his hand.

Taking into account with full objectiveness every single detail he knew about the situation and about his own impulses - he would deliberately choose the worst possible route for the "others" he loved.

Orihara Izaya was not an "otherworldly" being like Celty nor an ultra-mighty warrior like Heiwajima Shizuo; he was but an ordinary human.

He was not completely rational and calm like a robot or a cold-blooded creature that didn't feel a thing about killing.

He was a human through and through.

Harboring desires ordinary humans too would harbor, crossing lines ordinary humans too would cross on sudden impulses -

He just happened to possess these two traits at once.

He had not the charisma to lead an evil force; he was but a creature that couldn't seem to have enough of what intrigued him.

Kishitani Shinra had made the following comment about Izaya when they were both in high school:

[I'll tell you what you are. You're kind of on the bad side, but you are not completely evil. Yet there's not a single ounce of goodness in you, either. Hmm, how should I put it…if I were to try to sum you up in one sentence - it would be something like "You make me want to throw up." - And that was a compliment, you know.]

Izaya had merely laughed when his almost-only friend said this. But in fact, he too thought it was right on the spot.

He made his targets throw up last night's dinner along with their various "real selves" and observed them from where their puke could not reach him.

That was how he kept observing the real nature of humans.

Be their puke high virtues or lowly venom worthy of nothing but contempt, Izaya would cherish them and caress them with the same affection.

And today, just like any other day for him -

He began his "game" in order to make humans throw up their real nature.

The players have all shown up.

The board was set.

All he had to do now was to roll the dice.

"All right. Shall I send a little present to all my lovely lovely Raira kouhais?"


" - Namely, a crisis just the right size to be a necessity if they want to grow up."


Orihara Izaya fell into deep thought.

- Outside of the mosquito curtain. Isn't that just an ideal place to be.

- Mosquitoes outside the curtain cannot sting the humans sleeping inside it.

- All I will do is make some annoying sounds when I flutter my wings.

- Slowly, but persistently, until I drive the humans inside the curtain crazy.

"After all, what is youth supposed to be about if you don't add a little spice to it?"

Izaya continued to play with his cell phone as he walked on.

Heiwajima Shizuo, Simon, and his twin sisters who were born troublemakers.

For him, there were countless natural enemies in Ikebukuro.

Yet he strolled the streets of this city, completely relaxed.

Blending himself into the city, insidiously, insidiously -

The winged insect outside the mosquito curtain was spreading its toxins on the night street.

And -

As a first flutter of his wings, he dialed a certain boy's cell phone number.

Soon a somewhat sheepish voice sounded from the other end.

"……Yo, long time no see, Ryuugamine-kun. Or should I call you Tanaka Taro-kun?"

Izaya greeted him in a half-joking voice before switching to a more serious tone and bringing up a certain topic.

"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."



♂♀



Night of May 3rd, Sonohara Anri's apartment


Sonohara Anri's apartment was plain and undecorated.

Everything was arranged in order unlike what you would expect froom a high school girl's home.

Disciplined girls tended to clean their rooms regularly, but her room was overly clean.

There was nothing in her apartment apart from the absolute necessary daily items - not even a leisure book.

There was a TV set and a radio, but they looked like they had hardly been turned on. On the desk there was a pile of textbooks she used at school.

It was obviously that the room was lived in, but there was nothing one could infer about the owner based on the items present in the room.

Such was the living space Sonohara Anri had created for herself.


The girl in pajamas stared at her cell phone in silence in the room without a computer.

Displayed on its screen was the interface of an online chatroom she had been going to quite regularly recently.

It was a chatroom Setton had invited her to join some time ago. It was administered by a female (?) screen-named Kanra.

In fact, she had never been told unequivocally by anyone that Kanra was female. But for Anri, who was clueless when it came to the Internet and its interpersonal roles, it was only natural that the concept of "online genderswapping" had never occurred to her.

- Celty-san……is not here today.

- So nervous……

Anri exhaled deeply as she thought about the Headless Rider who appeared as Setton in the chatroom.

Did anyone else in the chatroom know that Setton = Celty?

The question kept popping up in her head, yet she couldn't keep pursuing it.

It made her happy to just watch others talk in the chatroom.

But she was more nervous than she usually would be since Celty, the only one she was acquainted with in real life, was absent.

Anri had always logged on to the chatroom from net cafes until Celty taught her recently to access it from her cell phone. Right now, she was typing rather awkwardly on the cell phone.

Since she only had a few friends, this chatroom was one of the few places in which she could socialize with other people.

She had had her doubts about this method of communication since it was drastically different from talking to classmates at school. Regardless of that, though, she kept stepping further and further into this world.

Recognizing yet again the fact that she was an easily wavered human being through and through, Anri closed the display with a small sigh and placed the cell phone on the charger.

It was time to go to bed again.

Just as she thought and prepared to switch off the light -


The doorbell chimed from the doorway and rang throughout the entire room.


A strange chill ran down Anri's spine.

It was 11 o'clock in the evening.

There were probably people who wouldn't feel surprised.

But Anri simply couldn't figure out who among her friends would come to her apartment at such a late hour.

Of course, she couldn't ignore the doorbell either; despite the heavy doubts swirling in her heart, she put her face to the door.

Her eyes sought for a standing figure through the peephole but found none.

"……?"

And then - she did something she "shouldn't have done".

Feeling that the door chain would keep her safe, she slowly turned the lock.

Just as she was about to try to see what was going on outside the door -

A huge pair of garden scissors was thrusted into the gap and cut the chain in half in a matter of seconds.

It was already too late when she heard the loud "clang".

The door was pushed open, and the one who stood outside it - was a woman.


- Eh?


For a second Anri was at a loss as to what had happened.

The only clear object in her bespectacled vision was the figure of a woman.

The curves more accentuated than concealed by the thin layer of clothing had immediately convinced Anri that the other person was female.

But it was impossible for Anri to make out her face.

In addition to a mask with eye holes she had worn a pair of snow goggles, which concealed her face completely from view.

"Uh…………."

Anri was about to let out a scream - but the garden scissors were already pointing at her throat.

"Quiet. Will not kill you. Rest unperturbed."

The voice sounding through the mask was speaking perfectly unaccented Japanese, yet somehow it still felt weird.

"You, several days, will not be able to move. Possibility of several months, exist."

The woman said in a voice devoid of emotion.

"But, no necessity to die."

"Eh……"

"Will avoid the fatal spot. And call you an ambulance."

"E - Excuse me……"


"You, are lucky."


Upon that word, the woman drew her garden scissors back like a bolt of lightning -

And drove them into the softness of Anri's abdomen.



♂♀



Several seconds ago, in the truck's driver's seat


- Really, why did he have to ask us to hurt such a little girl? He could have just paid any delinquent on the street to do it. Why us?

Slon sat in the driver's seat of the truck and looked at the photo of their target in resignation.

- But then again, an average delinquent could easily overdo it and kill her. Or hurt her in certain important parts if it's a male……so it might have been the right choice after all to ask Vorona to do it.

Slon lazily juggled such thoughts on his mind as he tried to kill some time on the truck whose engine he had kept running.


That was when his ears caught a strange sound blending into the sound of the truck's engine.


"……? I think I heard something."

At first he didn't pay a lot of attention to that sound, which seemed to be coming from afar.

But it bugged him.

Because the sound was one seldom heard in the city called Tokyo.

- That was……

And the same sound reached his ears again.

- I was right.

A bigger question mark popped up in Slon's head as he became convinced that his ears were not tricking him.

- Why do I hear a horse's neigh in such a big city?

What he had heard was an awe-inspiring yet strange neigh of a horse.

- Are there horse racing grounds or stalls nearby?

He attempted to explain it away in his head, but the fact that the sound was heard in the center of a metropolis still bugged him to a certain degree.

If he were in New York or the US in general, it could have been the neigh of a police horse. But such things were unheard of in Ikebukuro, Tokyo.

More importantly - it was the most bizarre, the most "emotionally charged" neigh from a horse Slon had ever heard.

- What the…?

- Was that really a horse?

He noticed something as his doubts were slowly becoming uneasiness.

The source of that sound seemed to be coming closer.

- …?

Cold sweat began to trickle down his spine.

Sirens rang throughout his brain.

Had it been any other day he would probably have told himself "Whatever, I don't care either way" and given up on thinking.

But his instinct sharpened through his life-and-death experiences under Lingerin the weapon dealer kept warning him.

- What is the……? What's coming for me?

Slon couldn't help but gasp; nervously, he looked into the rear mirror.

And what he saw in it was -


A pitch-black motorbike, too black to be missed even under the curtain of night.

And - an otherworldly figure riding astride on the motorbike with a giant black scythe in its hands.



♂♀



Same time, the doorway to Anri's apartment


The neigh of a horse was heard closer and closer to where they were.

Vorona, too, had found it strange - but she was quickly distracted by another sound.


A metallic one.


She should have been able to drive the garden scissors deep enough into the girl's abdomen to make it necessary for her to be hospitalized -

Yet what Vorona's hands felt via the garden scissors was not the girl's soft flesh -

But something as hard as metal. There was a screeching metallic noise as if what she had just tried to cut had been a steel pipe.

"……Что (What)?"

An exclamation in Russian slipped from her tongue as her mouth hung open.

She directed her gaze at the source of the sound - and there, she saw that the blades of her scissors were stopped just as they were about to cut into the girl's abdomen - by the blade of something else.

Японский меч (Katana)?

It was an elongated and streamlined blade.

The slightly bending curve was almost reminiscent of the shape of water drops in nature.

- What…..is this?

The girl had a katana hidden on her, so she used it to stop her first attack.

It was a conclusion from a bizarre premise, but it was the only one she could arrive at.

Yet Vorona was about to witness something still more bizarre.

"Um……excuse me, but…"

The girl named Anri - her target - had a katana coming straight out of her arm as she asked, sounding perplexed:


"I don't think I know you……are you sure you're not looking for someone else……?"

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

CONNECTING CHAPTER



Morning of May 4th, an apartment building in Shinjuku


"......"

Heiwajima Shizuo stood before one certain door, clenching his fists in fury.

Blood was dripping from his tight fists. One could only guess the magnitude of the force with which he clenched them.

"......Stupid flea......! Going around wasting my time......!"

Veins protruded from his face as the muttering came from the depths of his lungs.

If anyone happened to have been next to him and heard him say it, they'd probably think his lungs were directly fueled by the fires of Hell.

What aggravated him was a sheet of paper pasted to the door.


[We've Moved! Find us at ------------- ]


No human presence could be felt at the place where Izaya had both worked and dwelled.

Seeing as how the notice was still on the door, this place probably had yet to attract new tenants. While Shizuo had every impulse to just kick down the door and destroy everything he could find inside, he fought desperately to swallow the thought since that would only hurt the actual owner of this apartment.

"......He wasted my time twice......I'M GONNA KILL HIM OVER AND OVER......!"

As Shizuo, whose veins were still visible on his face, thought of the face of his mortal enemy, he turned his back to the apartment door and began to walk back.


Less than a minute later -

A woman tore off the sheet of paper at the same time Shizuo stormed out of the apartment building.

"......How protozoic does that Shizuo's brain have to be for such a crude trick to work so well on him?"

The woman - Yagiri Namie - was looking down from the open corridor.

Her gaze fell on the figure of the man in the bartender suit who was walking in huge strides away from the scene.

"Why does he have to use such roundabout means when he can easily get to that guy?"

Namie watched Shizuo leave without much concern and muttered coldly.


"If knives don't do the trick, he could have just poisoned him."



♂♀



Why did Heiwajima Shizuo come to Izaya's apartment looking for him?

It all went back to the morning of May 4th.


"Ah, she's awake!"

It was about 6 a.m. in Shinra's apartment.

The one who made that sound wasn't Shinra, Tom or Shizuo - but a high school girl wearing glasses.

Shizuo and Tom were there when Celty had brought her in and said "She's been attacked by some violent guys, let her stay for the night.”

Though Shinra had told her she didn't have to do anything, Anri had replied that she couldn't stand doing nothing and took it upon herself to take care of the little girl anyway.

Shinra rose from his computer desk upon hearing Anri's call.

"I'll be there right away."

He washed his hands under running water and made for the bedroom with a sterile medical scope and other equipment in his hands.

"Speaking of which......I forgot to tell Celty about this kid."

- Whatever. She looked dead busy anyway so I guess that could wait till later.....

The half-asleep underground doctor dimly entertained such thoughts in his head as he went into the bedroom where the girl had been sleeping.

As the door opened before him, however, it turned out what he saw was a little different from what he had expected.

The girl, who should have been sound asleep just a minute ago, had moved from her bed to the corner of the room and was shaking all over.

It didn't look like she was trembling from her fever, though.

The girl's eyes were fixed on Shizuo, who had entered the room before Shinra did.

Shizuo, as he looked at the girl who was obviously afraid of him for some reason, just stood there in a confused but nonetheless intimidating manner.

"......Is it better for me not to say anything?"

"Anything you say would just give her unnecessary shock, so yeah, it's better if you kept quiet."

Shinra said as he offered the little girl his hand.

"Are you alright? You're looking better, but let's take your temperature anyway."

However, the girl continued to stare at Shizuo with mortified eyes as she asked -

"Am I...going to be killed, too?"

"......'Too'? What does that 'too' mean?"

Shinra shook his head as Shizuo asked with a frown.

"So I was right, you really did kill someone pretty important to this kid without knowing it......"

"......How about I make you the first kill on my record?"

Veins began to protrude from Shizuo's face again; Tom was trying desperately to pacify him by saying "Hold that back, we have a kid here.”

Shinra tested the girl's temperature with his hand and muttered, "Good, the fever’s going down," as his expression became relaxed. Of course, he had much more accurate clinical thermometers on him, but to avoid scaring the girl further Shinra simply touched her forehead with his hand.

If any of Shinra's acquaintances saw him like this, they would have taken him for another person altogether.

If Celty had been there to see him act like this, she would probably have screamed "Even I haven't seen you smile like an ordinary nice guy like this......wahhhh, Shinra, you lolicon!" and stormed out of the apartment. That was how calm and honest his smile looked at this moment.

"......Onii-chan, who are you? Heiwajima Shizuo's friend?"

"Nah, he's just a bad acquaintance that I'm stuck with. Don't worry, I won't let him lay his hands on you. But for me to do that you have to tell me something first."

Shizuo felt goose-bumps on his back as he listened to Shinra talking ever-so-softly like a gentle doctor of the town.

But if anybody had a shot at coaxing the girl into telling the truth, it would be Shinra.

So he fought down the urge to throw up and kept listening from a distance to what the girl proceeded to say.

Shinra squatted down until his gaze was at the same height as the girl's, and talked to her as if she were his own child.

"Could you tell me your name?"

"......Akane."

"So it's Akane-chan. And your family name?"

"......"

Akane fell silent as soon as she was asked her surname.

Shinra, deciding that she probably did not want to talk about that particular detail, did not press her and instead asked the next question.

"Are you feeling uncomfortable? Does your throat hurt? Does your belly ache? Feeling alright?"

Akane nodded.

"Really......that's good. So do you want to tell me about yesterday then?"

The girl seemed to be pondering this for a moment, but ended up neither nodding nor shaking her head.

Her fearful eyes turned towards Shizuo. Once Shizuo's gaze met hers from behind those sunglasses, she began to tremble again.

"It's alright, he won't do anything to you. He might be a little violent but he's really a good guy. If he really wants to hurt you, you would have been beaten up by now, wouldn't you?"

"......"

"Or had he already done something to you? Is that why you wanted to attack him?"

"......No..."

The girl shook her head as she muttered.

Shinra tilted his head and asked the central question.

"Then why did you want that onii-chan in sunglasses dead?"

"......"

There was a moment of silence after this. Shinra kept smiling, and at last - the girl moved her lips.

"......Because he's an assassin."

"Eh?"

"Someone told me this assassin named Shizuo was going to kill my dad and grandpa......but I couldn't get back to where my dad and grandpa were, so I really didn't know what to do......"

He had a bad feeling about this.

Why didn't you go back home? - Before he could ask that question, Shinra found himself shaking all over with that bad feeling.

The man in the bartender suit who stood behind him must have felt the same.

A noise sounding suspiciously like bones being ground against each other was coming from Shizuo's direction, to which Shinra dared not turn.

"I was told that, if I had this, I'd be able to attack him......and I got this."

"Who told you that?"

"The person who taught me a lot of things when I ran away from home."

Shinra's premonition was beginning to take the definite shape of the face of a certain human being.

"So that person told you Shizuo was an assassin, and gave you that stun gun?"

The girl nodded. Shinra, feeling his nerves on the edge of cracking, asked the most important question.

"......What's that person's name?"

The girl hesitated for a moment before she answered the decisive question. Then, as if she had decided that Shinra was to be trusted, she said the name timidly.


"......Izaya onii-chan."


A chill ran down Shinra's spine.

For a moment he could feel that right behind his back the new Apocalypse had just been born in the form of a man - trying to wipe away the cold sweat, he turned in that general direction.

And there -

Shizuo was smiling a very soft smile.

- Ehhhhh!?

Shinra found himself drowning in even deeper despair at the sight of the never-seen-before smile on Shizuo's face.

- Sorry Celty, but it may turn out that I have to die before you. Here. Now.



As such thoughts occupied his mind, a still smiling Shizuo spoke to Akane.

"Hahah. That was a misunderstanding, Akane-chan."

"Eh......"

"Izaya-kun must have gotten something wrong about me. I'm not an assassin."

"......Really?"

"Of course! Izaya-kun and I are friends. We just had a little fight."

Shizuo shook his head slowly and turned his back on Shinra and the girl.

"You just wait here, I'll be off to make up with him right away."

Winking harmlessly at Akane, Shizuo whistled lightly as he exited the room.

Shinra, realizing that he was already covered in torrents of cold sweat, kept his muttering to himself in order to not scare Akane further.

- Izaya......have you decided that you're fed up with your life......or what?




As he was closing the door behind him, Tom spoke to Shizuo after they were both out of the doorway.

"......Very well played. I think you deserve a People's Honor Award for that."

"......Thank you, Tom-san."

Shizuo did not turn to face his superior when he said this.

"If it's OK, I have one favor to ask."

"What is it?"

"If I get arrested for murder today, tell Mr. Manager to just go about things as if I were fired yesterday."

"......"

Though he had a thousand things to say, Tom simply watched Shizuo descend the stairs without a word.


Then Tom, after producing his cigarettes from his pocket, turned his gaze to the view from the open corridor of the apartment building.

Inhaling deeply the scent of his favorite cigarettes, Tom said to himself as he watched the smoke rise.

"I'll have to tell the manager Shizuo's taking a day off today......"



♂♀



Morning of May 4th, a gallery in Ikebukuro


Framed paintings filled the beautifully papered walls in this meticulously arranged space.

A voice that was on some level furthest from art was saying:

"……Consider this. You'll just have to pay as much as you do for your everyday coffee, but you're going to own this famous painting - or even your life's happiness. To me that sounds like the first step to winning at life."

The young man with bandages over his face grinned as he heard the female clerk say with a professional smile on her face. He replied:

"Hmm~but I don't know what my girlfriend's gonna say if I spend so much money on this."

"If she sees the painting hanging in your room, your girlfriend's going be head over heels exclaiming how great it looks! A rendezvous with the painting is actually exactly like a rendezvous with your girl! Even if it's just a lithograph, it's very rare that you'd find Karnard Straussburg's* paintings on the market at all!"

* Karnard Straussburg: a fictional painter from Vamp!, another of Narita Ryohgo's series.

It looked like she had spent the past hour facing the frame now sitting next to the table and trying to sell a painting to the young man, a potential buyer.

But instead of scrutinizing the painting, the young man's gaze had been focused instead on the female clerk's face.

"To me, though, you're more charming than the painting, my lady."

"Oops~I think I would find any man who can buy me this painting extremely attractive."

"Really?"

"Of course! It takes a man with a lot of character to be able to pay real money for his dreams!"

It was true that the painting was by a famous painter - but it was silkscreen-printed. In other words, it was a cheap printed copy.

But she insisted that it was a "lithograph", a rare painting with a serial number.

It was in fact worth no more than 30,000 yen, but the female clerk was asking for 1,280,000.

With that kind of money one could have bought a real lithograph by Karnard Straussburg instead of a cheap silkscreen-printed copy. The clerk, however, insisted that the printed copy is the real thing.

- Looks like we almost have him.

The adult male who looked like the manager of the place watched the pair from afar and felt like the young man was about to buy the painting.

If he tried to back out, they'd threaten him into buying it anyway saying "You've already wasted us hours so you have to take on the responsibility and sign." In fact, that had always been the way things worked in this tourist trap of a gallery.

But the young man's reactions were so peculiar that they couldn't even follow their manual of hard-selling.


The bandaged young man saw the manager and beckoned him over.

The manager saw the smile on the young man's face and thought he was finally going to pay for the painting. He kept bowing as he walked over to the young man and said:

"Anything I can help you with, Sir?"

"Well, I don't have that kind of money on me, but this lady here looks like she'll be very upset if I don't buy this painting. So I came up with this way to make her happy."

"Ah, sure, thank you for your business!"

The manager, thinking that the young man was planning to pay for the painting in installments, smiled instantly. The young man, too, smiled from underneath his eye mask and said:

"So, give me."

"Eh?"

The young man showed the manager his palm as if asking for something. The manager froze.

The ballpoint pen had been prepared for him on the table.

What else did he need?

Just as the manager thought that maybe he needed to see a business card - the young man said something even more astounding.

"She said 1,280,000. If you don't have cash, I think a credit card is fine too."

"……Ah?"

The young man continued in a nonchalant voice as the manager seemed unable to comprehend.

"That's how it is. The lady says she'll be upset, but I don't have money on me. We're both men, so there's no way we're allowed to just watch when women are going to be upset, is there? That's why the job is on you to make her happy since you look like you've got the money. You're the owner of this gallery, right? If these are the paintings you bought, you must be pretty rich."

"U - Um……"

"Money is meant to be spent for women. If you are a man, buy it for this lady here. If you give me that 1,280,000 I'll take care of the rest."

"Please stop kidding, Sir."

The manager's face fell instantly - and had to stiffen the very next second.

"……Argh? ……Kidding?"

The young man stared up at him in such a sharp and cold way that the general impression of cruelty was almost thrown in his face.

The manager realized instantly upon seeing how fierce the young man's features had turned now that he was no longer talking to the woman -

- This is bad. This guy is not normal.

"Since when have I been kidding? Since when have I tried to make you laugh? Argh?"

The young man stood up slowly and put his face close to the tip of the manager's nose.

The female clerk had at last realized there was something wrong with this situation and said to the young man with a pale face:

"S - Sorry, Sir?"

The young man broke once more into a kind smile upon hearing her voice and raised his thumbs at her:

"No problem, my lady. He's gonna buy it for you. Just like you said, my lady, any man with money would buy it if this painting brings them so much happiness and make them popular with the ladies!"

The man who looked like the manager of the place stared at the woman as if to say "Why did you bring him in?".

The female clerk looked as if she was about to cry. She wanted to respond with a look that said "I didn't! He began to talk to me and followed me inside!", but there unfortunately was only so much meaning a mere look could convey.

But the manager was not the only person who saw her almost-crying face.

Of course, the other person who saw it was the young man with the eye mask.

"Oi, old man."

"Y - Yes!?"

"You……just stared at her, didn't you?"

The young man was practically fuming; the manager, who was usually the one in charge of scaring potential clients into buying, had to step back a few paces in fear.

"Ah……what……?"

"I don't give a damn if you're her boss or anything. The lady works so hard to do her job even when she's facing a rude dude like me. Yet you gave her that look - what did you think you were doing?"

"W - Wait……this, this is completely within our own company, you have nothing to do with it, Sir……"

"Since I have nothing to do with it, it should be my freedom to beat you up or do anything I like about it, right?"

The young man flexed his neck audibly and stepped forward.

"W - Wait a second, I'm calling the police - "

As he said this, the manager couldn't help but think "Eh? Or am I gonna die before the police could come?"

He had always considered himself a hardened player when it came to dealing with weird guests. But this young man was weird on a totally different level from any guest he had had to deal with before.

Just as the young man bent down as if about to do something -

His cell phone rang from his chest pocket.

"……"

The young man had to stop whatever he was doing, take his cell phone out of his pocket and press it against his ear:

"It's me. ……I see. Where is he now? Ah? ……No kidding. That's like right in front of this building. No, tell everyone to come in. There's this bastard here who needs to be taught how to be good to a woman……arch? ……Che……I see. I'll be there in a minute."

After hanging up the phone the young man with bandages and an eye mask over his face stared once more at the manager and added:


"I'm going to come back and make sure you've bought the painting for her. You watch yourself……"



♂♀



In front of a gallery building in Ikebukuro


"You were saying you found a Dollars member?"

Rokujou Chikage - the young man who had just walked out of the gallery - asked one of his fellow "Toramaru" members.

The man in the leather jacket mumbled affirmatively and told Chikage what he had heard.

"Looks like it was a pretty famous Dollars member, a guy with some foreign blood called Yumasaki Walker."

"That's a weird name indeed. Where is he now?"

"Um……"

The man in the leather jacket paused hesitatingly and raised his chain slightly to point towards the gallery right in front of them.

"Before you came out, Chikage-san, he was talked into going in by some woman."



♂♀



Inside the gallery


- That was so close……

The manager sighed in relief as he saw the young man walk out of the gallery. At the same time, however, another voice reached his ears.

It did not sound like the usual kind of conversation for this gallery; in fact, it too sounded like an argument.

- What now?

A young man's voice rang full of enthusiasm in front of a painting by the famous illustrator Suzie Yasuda.

"But this is just a silkscreen printed copy. Judging by the size the total cost shouldn't exceed 24,000 even if you have it framed, right? I have a lot of respect for this illustrator, and I wouldn't have even minded if I had to pay her a million for a painting! But you'll have to show me the proof that at least 80% of that money is going straight into the hands of the illustrator!"

"Ah, eh, um……"

"Speaking of which, the original of this painting is not even meant for silkscreen printing to begin with! Yet you're giving a serial number to it, which makes it sound like it had been meant for printing. That actually detracts from the true value of the painting! Did Suzie-sensei really give you permission to do this? This kind of thing? Also the way you explained her paintings was simply butchering her art! You didn't even manage to bring out 1% of Suzie-sensei's unique charm! Completely broke Suzie-sensei's trance and fantasy! What kind of Level 0 are you? Listen, Suzie-sensei's art originated……"

"M - Manager~!"

The manager rushed over immediately as the clerk gave him a look of plea.

He cupped his head with his hands the moment he saw the young man with slanting eyes who looked like he was of mixed japanese and western parentage, and yelled:

"Sir, not YOU again! Please leave!"


After they had coaxed the young man into leaving the gallery, the manager began to warn the female clerk in charge of touting in a serious tone:

"You're new here so you probably don't know, but never try to talk to that mixed-blood guy again, he's high on our blacklist! I know he looks like he's easy to fool, but watch out!"

"Y - Yes."

The manager of this fishy gallery couldn't help but mutter to himself looking exhausted after the string of troublesome incidents:

"Guess it's better to just……close this business down altogether……"


"This guy in a bartender suit basically destroyed the gallery back when I've only just opened it……and then those Awakusu-kai people came and asked me to just give them the originals for free……"



♂♀



Just as the manager was submerged in his woes, Rokujou Chikage began tailing Yumasaki, who had just walked out of the building.

"……Him? He doesn't look like it."

"That's just how Dollars is. You can't judge them by their looks……I heard he was always with this guy named Kadota, who was the one who licked several of our members when they came to Ikebukuro to ask for trouble last month. That Kadota sounded like a fairly big figure in Dollars."

"Hoh……"

Chikage said as he observed the man closely.

That was when a woman in black began to talk to the Yumasaki guy.

Another man with sharp features was in a knit cap and talking to Yumasaki like close friends as well.

"Ah, that's him! That's Kadota in that knit cap."

"……They're with a woman. Don't move now, just keep your watch on them."

"Yes."


The trio who looked like they were Dollars members walked along Sunshine Street for a while - until Kadota said something to Yumasaki and the woman when they reached Tokyu Hands and parted ways with them. He kept walking on his own.

Yumasaki and the woman turned in the direction of Sunshine City after they walked past the crossing while Kadota kept walking south on the main street under the Metropolitan Expressway.

"I can do it on my own. You go meet the others."

"But - "

"It's gonna be fine. Go."

"Yes."

Chikage stayed on Kadota's tail after he told his fellow members to leave.

But he was distracted soon enough by the sight of a certain building on the side of the road.

At that moment, Chikage had stopped in his tracks and forgotten completely that he was supposed to be following Kadota.

"……Why……why is there a girls' school in the center of Ikebukuro……!?"

It was the school building of a girls' academy next to Raira. The Captain of Toramaru stood rooted to the spot for a good minute.

It was the Golden Week so he couldn't seem to find any high school girls around or in it.

- Still, that got my hopes up……

- But hey, it's not the time for this.

Just as he seemed to come to himself and turned his gaze back forwards -

"……Are you looking for us for anything in particular?"

A flat voice sounded from behind his back.

"……"

Chikage turned and found no other than the very man in the knit cap, whom he was supposed to be tailing, standing there in front of his eyes.

"Hmm, so you noticed that I was following you?"

"Yeah……thought my intuition's gone blunt when I saw you stop in front of the girls' school."

Kadota flexed his neck and looked at Chikage, half-sighing as he asked:

"So you are? I don't think we've met before, but I was relieved that you weren't the sort of scum who would attack people when they are with women."

"My name is Rokujou Chikage……I have a feeling that we would hit it off."

The corners of Chikage's lips curled into a grin before he shook his head somewhat forlornly:

"But……you're in Dollars, aren't you?"

"……Yeah, that's about right."

"Too bad. I just heard Heiwajima Shizuo is also in Dollars. Is that true?"

Kadota gave a straightforward answer anyway to the confirmative question.

"……In name, yes. But he's not a gang animal to begin with."

"Ahh, nope, he's not that type indeed……I see. So I take it that you're not a monolithic kind of organization."

"?"

"……But either way we won't care."

Kadota's cell phone rang at this exact moment as if everything had been calculated.

"Go ahead and pick it up. I'll wait for you."

"It's a text message."

Kadota said and looked at the message displayed on his cell phone while keeping an eye on Chikage.

Judging by the ringtone it was a text message from Dollars. Kadota had clicked it open instantly thinking that it could have something to do with the man right in front of him.

"……"

Kadota frowned as he read it and gave Chikage a fierce stare.

"What's up?"

"……You bastard."

The message on his cell phone -

It was an emergency notice telling him that Dollars members were being attacked all throughout Ikebukuro.

"No……you bastards, what have you come here for?"

Kadota looked both alarmed and angry as he fixed the man in front of him with a sharp look.

Chikage took in his stare unapologetically, shrugging as he muttered as if to himself:

"Nothing. Just thought we should pay you back for the fights you hard-sold us."


"I don't need your change. Just take whatever I give you!"



♂♀



Same time, inside the abandoned factory


Mikado was about to search his brain for information on Blue Square after he heard Aoba's shocking confession -

But his cell phone, too, rang as a new text message was sent to it.

At almost the exact same time, every cell phone around him began to rang and vibrate as well.

- !

The ringtone from his own cell phone had been the one he had set for Dollars text messages. Something had just been confirmed for Mikado.

- Just like they said……

- These guys are in Dollars as well……

A group of people gathered in a place. Cell phones ringing at the same time.

The size of the meeting was completely different, but it still added to the disturbance in Mikado's heart as it reminded him of a similar scene one year ago.

Yet, as if trying to send him into even deeper despair -

The shocking contents of the text message informed him of the attacks on Dollars members.


"Looks like it's started."

Aoba checked the same text message on his own cell phone and said with a smile as refreshing as ever.

"Started……? What is……?"

"The Saitama folks……Toramaru are having their revenge."

Mikado felt everything his vision twist and blur as Aoba told him nonchalantly.

- This……is the reality?

This boy in front of his eyes, was he the same boy who smiled that innocent smile at him at school?

But Aoba was smiling just as innocently now.

Yet his words were impossible to associate with the "reality" Mikado had always known.

"Why……why did you attack those people in Saitama……why did you do it……"

"They ruined my Ikebukuro trip with Mikado-sempai and Anri-sempai. I was just venting my anger……or is that not good enough an explanation?"

"……"

Mikado was rendered wordless. He could simply swallow.

There was probably no way the other person was going to tell him the truth about that.

Mikado, after making that judgment, kept the fingers of his left hand clasped tight around his cell phone and tried to continue "talking" to Aoba.

"Blue Square……I've heard of it……I think it was some……Color Gang in this area……that got partially absorbed into the Yellow Turbans after they clashed with them……that's what I heard."

Several boys around them whistled in surprise after Mikado had finished. Even Aoba's eyes widened as he looked somewhat shocked:

"……You know even more than I thought you did. You're something indeed, sempai!"

"Why are you telling me……someone like me……things like these?"

"Because I trust you, sempai. Or is that not good enough an explanation for you?"

"It's not an explanation to begin with……what do you want me to do?"

Mikado was even more confused now. He couldn't figure out what the other person was after.

"Yeah. I think it would be better to postpone that explanation till after you've known more about us……but first of all, I have a favor to ask you, sempai."

Aoba looked up at Mikado silently from the steel skeletons he was sitting on, his eyes gleaming as he said in a low voice:

"Leader……"

"Eh……?"

"I won't ask you to become the leader of Dollars. That would be against the very principles Dollars was founded upon."

Heheheheh. They laughed.

Heheheheh. They snickered.

Mikado had no idea what they found so funny, but every boy around them began to laugh after they had heard Aoba. Their laughter ricocheted throughout the factory with a certain rhythm.

As if savoring a poem to that rhythm on his lips, Aoba continued in a voice that blended in perfectly with the atmosphere in the factory and kept pounding at Mikado's heart.

"…….Which is why I'm hoping that you can become the leader of us Blue Square."

"Eh……"

"We'll basically just obey your orders."

That was way too out of the blue.

That was all Mikado was able to feel.

It was as if someone had all of a sudden asked him to become the King of Saudi Arabia. Yumasaki and Karisawa would probably ask him what manga he was in if they were to hear about it.

That was how out of the blue Aoba's suggestion had sounded to Mikado.

"Why……are you asking me……"

"Yeah, there are a lot of reasons. But most importantly it's because sempai occupies a special position in Dollars."

"Special position……?"

Mikado parroted in confusion. Aoba immediately gave a curt answer.

"In short, it's because sempai is the founder of Dollars."

"……!!"

"Are you surprised? We have a pretty decent information network too."

Aoba didn't show the slightest sign of fear or contempt in front of the wordless founder. He simply voiced his thoughts in a casual tone:

"You can use us in any way you want, sempai. ……If you decide to end this conflict right away, have us kneel down in front of Toramaru and let them beat us up……then so be it. We'll do as we're told. And after we get out of the hospital, you'll be our leader. ……If, however, you're to tell us to "Protect our fellow Dollars members and go crush those Toramaru scums', then we're going to crush them no matter what that takes."

"I - I'll never……I'll never tell you to do either of those things!"

Mikado shook his head violently and said to Aoba in an emotionally-charged tone:

"What made you think I would accept it……? If you want to avoid conflict, just don't say you're in Dollars and you'll be fine! That's the type of person I am. I'm not the type who can stand above you!"

It was from the bottom of his heart.

At least that was what Mikado had meant for it to come from.

But Aoba, after hearing what Mikado had yelled - got up slowly and put his face close to Mikado's.

And then he whispered, in a tone only Mikado could hear:

"……That is a lie."

He sounded happy, very happy -

"Because, sempai……"

"Eh……?"

"Mikado-sempai, aren't you……


------------------------------ smiling?"



♂♀



Same time, the grounds outside the abandoned factory


It was a talk in a confined space between only parties directly involved.

Whatever the choice Mikado was about to make, it was not meant to be known to anyone else.

But - they were already overheard real-time by a third party.

Although she did count as a "party involved" in the broader sense of the word.


- Hmmm.

Celty Sturluson thought silently as she hid herself in the shadow next to the window outside the abandoned factory.

- ……What's with this situation?

Celty's hearing was good enough to catch everything that was being said inside the factory.

At first it sounded like a typical aggressive conversation between delinquents; but the the center of the conversation was the boy she knew.

- Did I just witness an important crossing point in Mikado-kun's life?

She had, in fact, not followed Mikado and the others here.


Celty had returned to Shinra's upscale apartment last night, but only for a few minutes.

She was surprised to find Shizuo and his boss there, but she explained the necessity for Anri to stay at theirs over the night and turned on her heels to leave as soon as possible.

The reason was simple.

She had to find the girl in the photo - the granddaughter of the head of Awakusu-kai.

According to Shiki, the girl seemed to be spending her days at 24-hour manga cafes and family restaurants.

How could a girl stay at a family restaurant so late in the night and not get reported to the police? Celty had wondered about this, but concluded that she must be aware of ways to live in a family restaurant that Celty wasn't.

She had wondered too where the girl took her showers and changed her clothes, but after checking out the interior of an actual manga cafe (her full-face helmet did draw weird looks from other customers), she was surprised to find that they had a shower and other utilities.

She had also heard that the girl would sometimes stay at her schoolmates' or her online friends' for the nights, so it was hard even for Shiki and his intelligence network to track her down.

Shiki had told her that they would contact her once they found the girl, but it only got her more anxious now that she knew those folks with their horrid weapons were out and about in Ikebukuro even though she had never even met the girl in person.

So she looked all night for her on the Ikebukuro streets.

Not knowing that the girl was in fact in Celty's very own apartment.


She ended up not finding the girl after she hovered around the family restaurants in the neighborhood till the next morning. So she decided to try to track down the assailants first and followed her black thread to this abandoned factory.

- Speaking of which……I didn't know my shadow could extend for so many miles without breaking……

Celty was honestly surprised at the capability of her own shadow when she found that the black thread had not broken off at all. The thin, slithering shadow acted just like real shadow once it fell to the ground; it never wrapped itself around anything nor tripped anyone.

In addition, since it was capable of moving in the form of a liquid or a gas at Celty's will, she could summon it back into her hands within mere seconds even if she had made it go 100 loops around the base of a building.

- I feel like that robotic cat from the future*. Whatever, I'll think about that later.

* Robotic cat: Celty's referring to Doraemon, the titular character from Fujiko F. Fujio's vastly popular manga series Doraemon.

She stopped thinking about her shadows with their almost-cheating level of usefulness and focused instead on what was going on in front of her eyes.

- Speaking of which, this abandoned factory seems to have a weird way of coming back into my life.

Celty considered this vaguely as she tried to think of what to do next.

She was curious about what Mikado would decide to do; but was it really OK for her to stay here and eavesdrop?

A strong sense of guilt pounded in her heart, but Celty couldn't bring herself to leave. She kept listening.

But she, too, was being watched by someone else.



♂♀



Same time, inside Russian Sushi


"So, what is it?"

"Just thought I should let you know that I found evidence that the duo's been to Ikebukuro."

It was a conversation in Russian.

The face of the Chief Chef of the sushi restaurant stiffened as he heard the guest - Igor, an old acquaintance of his:

"……I think you said we didn't know them."

"I did."

"It's true that we don't know that guy called Slon. But that Vorona, isn't she Sir Drakon's Little Miss?"

"I wasn't wrong when I said you didn't know them……she's no longer the little girl you know, Denis-san."

Simon was already out touting customers. Only Igor and the Chief Chef were in the restaurant, which had just began its day's business.

"No matter how she changes, the Little Miss is the Little Miss. Colonel Lingerin would have said the same thing."

"Well, sure……if you go by Lingerin-san's personality and standards……"

Igor said half-sighing as he noticed the Chief Chef's lack of concern.

"Did you hear anything last night?"

"……From afar, I heard a shot that sounded like it was from an anti-material rifle."

"Me too. It was probably Vorona and Slon. And it was not something that 'sounded like' it. That was an actual anti-material rifle they took from our company."

"……"

Igor stroked the bandages on his own face as he voiced one conclusion to the Chief Chef, who was now sharpening his cleaver without a word.


"If we don't try to stop her soon, it's not going to do good to anybody. Not to Vorona, not to Drakon-san, not to the city Tokyo itself. Of course……not to you, who loves this city from the bottom of your heart, either."



♂♀



Same time, rooftop of a tall building close to the abandoned factory


"Abandoned factory no one uses. This information, is an error. That place, a gathering spot for delinquents."

"Looks like that Black Motorbike's hiding himself from the kids……should we snipe at him?"

Vorona shook her head silently as Slon asked, focusing on Celty through the telescope on his rifle.

"Survived yesterday's sniping. Bona fide monster. Ill-advised sniping will reveal our whereabouts. Fatal."

Vorona and Slon were waiting for their chance on the rooftop situated a distance from the factory.

They chose a spot from which they could see most of the factory's grounds and kept their watch on Celty, who had found this place with her black thread.

If they just wanted to find the other person, they could have traced the black thread back to its origin - but since they were at war with the Black Rider, it would have been very unwise to risk running into him when they were looking for him using the black thread.

So they had decided to park the motorbike in the middle of the abandoned factory and lure the mysterious rider here -

But right after the rider appeared, a gang of strange boys arrived at the factory as well and the Black Motorbike had to hide himself outside the window so that the boys couldn't see him.

From where Vorona and Slon were, though, the hiding spot was clearly visible.

Vorona inhaled deeply after she had observed him for a while and said in a low voice with a face devoid of expression:

"I will follow the monster. The target little kid, may exist right there."

Slon sighed after he had heard Vorona.

"You look like you're enjoying it, Vorona."

"I affirm. This is starting to be enjoyable."

There was an almost unnoticeable change on Vorona's expressionless face - which took after her father's - as she uttered her twisted words of love:

"Ikebukuro, I like. Half disappointment, half jealousy. A shred of hope. That, is precisely love."


"I decided on loving Ikebukuro. I affirm."



♂♀



Same time, an office building in Ikebukuro


"That bastard......I told him not to come to Ikebukuro again......!"

Climbing the stairs of an office building far away from the crowded streets, Shizuo spat.

"Making his nest here as if he heard nothing I had said......!"

Arriving at the third floor, he stared at the office door in front of him.

This had to be Izaya's new office according to the address on that sheet of paper. Though there wasn't a sign over the door or anything, there wasn't anything else of the sort installed anywhere in this office building either.

- Anyway. I'll just knock on the door pretending to be a client and see how that goes.

And he knocked.

"......"

There was no answer.

He saw a doorbell on the side; he rang it, but still, no reply.

Maybe Izaya was away? But as he listened more intently, he ears caught the sound of a radio or TV coming from within.

- H e ' s p r e t e n d i n g t o b e a w a y t h i n k i n g I w o n ' t n o t i c e t h a t l i t t l e s c u m .

Shizuo let his fury take over and grabbed the doorknob fiercely to break in -

- Huh?

The door wasn't locked - it opened readily without the slightest resistance.

- What the hell, it was open all along.

Shizuo let go of the doorknob, which had by now taken a new shape from the pressure of his palm - and stormed into the office.

He had entered what looked like a multi-part office complex; the walls of the first room were lined with shelves, on which a staggering amount of files seemed to be on display.

- ......So this is what the office of an information broker is like?

Though he still had a tinge of doubt, Shizuo proceeded to look for his enemy as he walked into the next room.


And what he saw there turned out to be -



"......"


".................."



"...............................Argh?"



He lost track of how many seconds had lapsed since "those" came into his sight.

At first Shizuo had not the faintest idea what the scene right in front of his eyes meant.

Not that it was in any way hard to make sense of; in fact, anyone except him would have understood instantly what it meant as soon as they lay their eyes upon it -

But for him - the party actually concerned - it was simply beyond comprehension.


What just appeared in front of him appeared to be three piles of human flesh dressed in suits.

One of them lay in front of the TV, which had been left on.

One looked as if it were leaning into the chair.

One sunk into the thin walls that separated the rooms from each other.


The sight of whichever one of them would have been enough to make one realize that they were "finished".

The one in front of the TV set had a half-mashed face.

The one leaning into the chair had his neck twisted 180 degrees.

The one in the wall had his spine and torso bent in naturally implausible directions.

But they had one thing in common.

It seemed like they were killed by bare hands - or something that could mimic the effect.


"......"

It had been a long time since he last saw dead bodies.

Shizuo had yet to kill anyone, but due to the various troubles he had been embroiled in since high school he had on more than one occasion seen dead bodies.

If Shizuo hadn't been through those, he would probably have thrown up at the sight - hat was how gruesome the killing scene looked like.

He was not aware of how long he had remained in the middle of this killing scene.

- What the hell. Quit messing around with me, will you?

- Why are there dead bodies in Izaya's office?

The disbelief had turned into an urge of inquiry inside Shizuo's mind. And questions led to more questions.

- Speaking of which......is this really Izaya's office to begin with......?

His thoughts were interrupted by an angry shout coming from behind his back.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING HERE BREAKING IN......EH......?"

Shizuo turned around to find a young skinhead standing there.

He looked reasonably intimidating himself, but as soon as he set his eyes on Shizuo - whom he probably had some prior knowledge of - fear infiltrated his expression.

The skinhead looked from Shizuo to the dead bodies littering the place -

Eyes popping wide, his jaw dropped like a goldfish gasping for breath.

"Y - y - you - you ba - bas - bastar...d....you bastard......!"

Fumbling around for the wall behind him, he ran back into the room closer to the entrance.

Shizuo didn't have the time to say anything.

He merely put his hand to his chin and pondered things over for a second -

And concluded that he had been indeed entrapped by a trick so simple and straightforward that even he had to appreciate the irony.


More than ten seconds later - the skinhead returned with a pistol in his hand, looking around for Shizuo with eyes full of fear.

But Shizuo was no longer anywhere to be found; the only sound in the office was from the wind blowing into the third-story window.


Another couple of seconds later -

The skinhead began yelling into the phone in the room:

"Shizuo……Heiwajima Shizuo! There's no mistaking it! Contact Sir Shiki right away!"


"That bastard……killed three of our people in the office……!"


And with that, Heiwajima Shizuo's "daily life", along with his "hope" for a peaceful life -

Were put to an end today, in this very second.



♂♀



Noon of May 4th, East Gate of Ikebukuro Station, in front of the stone owl


"There's no need to be scared. The people who are coming to meet us are very nice people."

Akane looked up at Anri and nodded as she told her in a soft voice.

Her fever was already completely gone. Nobody knew where Shizuo went, so the source of her mental pressure seemed removed as well.

Shinra had declared her "pretty much OK to go", and Anri had brought her outside for a walk thinking that would cheer her up.

She had worried that the girl would run away, but the girl had said "……Um, when that man called Shizuo comes back, I will talk to him." so Anri had decided to believe her.

In addition - the mention of the name Orihara Izaya had made Anri very concerned about this whole thing.

Anri had faced Izaya off once. Or rather - Izaya was without doubt an enemy for "Saika".

On top of that, she had been attacked yesterday, and what the girl had said about her father and grandfather's lives being after also concerned Anri.

"Hmm - won't it still be kind of dangerous outside?" - Shinra had wondered, but Anri had convinced herself that those people wouldn't attack them in broad daylight and Ikebukuro's crowded streets.

Shinra had said after Anri had told him that she was meeting Mikado and Aoba today -

"OK, I'll call Celty afterwards. As long as her time opens up I'll tell her to go meet you. If Shizuo were still here I would have asked him to be your bodyguard, haha."

He said half-jokingly as he agreed to let them leave the apartment.

But now that she thought about it, it was still too reckless a decision to have come here.

If the rascals from yesterday would not be afraid to attack her again even in broad daylight, she would risk getting Akane hurt in this as well.

Anri waited and waited with such worries on her mind.

Waited for Mikado and Aoba, who would at least bring her some assurance of the dailiness of her life, to come to this place.


She still didn't know.

The daily life in Ikebukuro - especially the part she and the people she knew were familiar with - had already collapsed.


What was more, they were now about to step into the collapsed city as well -

Sonohara Anri had still yet to notice.



♂♀



Somewhere dark in Ikebukuro


Orihara Izaya, too, got the text message informing him of the attacks on Dollars members.

But he got more than that.

The multiple "information sources" he nurtured in the city had also sent him messages with the same content. Some came in reports on completely irrelevant matters.

Izaya paid equal attention to everything as he checked the messages and muttered to himself in the dark:

"The little rascals in Blue Square, are they after the same thing as I am till the middle of our respective plans?"

Izaya looked half expectant and half upset as he thought of the face of a certain boy.

"That's fine. Now that I think about it, Kuronuma Aoba is also one of my lovely Raira kouhais. This challenge……I'll accept it."

He pressed the keys on his cell phone as he kept on talking, to the darkness around him - or to himself.

"From now on it's going to be a real open game, in which foxes outwit one another and players move in for mutual kill."

After he had sent text messages to multiple recipients, Izaya pressed his hand on the doorknob in the dark.

"Well. Since we're both black sheep in the sea called Dollars……"

As soon as the door was opened, the blinding sunlight at noon shone down on his eyelids.

He looked up at the sky grudgingly as if the excessive brightness offended him -


"Why not dine together in peace?"


Orihara Izaya was smiling.

No one could know just how much he knew about Kuronuma Aoba and his gang.

Did he have a way to crush them, or did he secretly wish to be defeated at their hands?

Izaya's smile was pure human. But that only made him look unnatural as a human being.


With his laughter -

Another twisted story was about to commence.











END OF THE CONNECTING CHAPTER AND VOLUME 5

May 3rd, in a Shinkansen train


"Shinkansen is really something."

The girl with pupils the color of the night sea murmured as she watched the view from the window.

The view itself was moving at the speed of wind, occasionally interrupted by reflections of the interior of the train on the glass window.

The boy looked into the girl's eyes via the reflection in the window and asked with a tender smile:

"What about it?"

Usually he would have asked, knowing the answer: "You mean how fast it is?" or "You mean how such a ginormous steel box can move?", but the boy knew very well that the girl next to him was no longer at an innocent enough age to be able to marvel at such things.

The girl turned her head slowly to face the boy and answered with a soft smile:

"It goes so straight forward."

The boy could only smile bitterly at the bizarre answer and mutter the girl's name.

"Saki, you're as strange as ever."

"Maybe. But I think I'm not nearly as strange as you, Masaomi."

The girl called Saki smiled a Japanese doll's smile and tilted her head.

"What's so strange about me?"

"Yeah. For example, you hate Izaya-san's guts, yet you have no problem doing everything Izaya-san tells you to do. It's just so circuitous, like the underground map within Tokyo. But that's what I like about you."

Saki broke into a grin like a little boy who had just caught a beetle. There was uneasiness on the boy's face as he turned to look at the girl and said:

"Saki hasn't changed a bit. You just say things others wouldn't be able to say."


The boy - Kida Masaomi - was in the Shinkansen train to Tokyo with his girlfriend, Mikajima Saki.

He had dropped out of the school for certain reasons and begun to live with his girlfriend Saki. His parents never interfered in his life much and didn't seem to be against what their son was doing.

But to support themselves the two former high school students had to be prepared to do a lot of things - and the path Masaomi had chosen was to work for the exact man who had pushed him into this desperate situation.

Masaomi knew only too well.

The man had pushed him in the back once, and that had made him lose a lot of things.

But he understood, too, that the one who actually made the step forwards was no other than himself.

A medium-sized conflict had broken out between Dollars and the Yellow Turbans, two gangs in this city called Ikebukuro.

Fortunately, it was resolved before it could escalate into an all-out war. But an obvious divide had already appeared between Masaomi and his most important friends.

And the reason lay within himself.

His friends could step over that divide any time as long as they wished.

But Masaomi couldn't.

He was afraid to see his past self in the darkness of that bottomless crevice.


Masaomi ended up unable to step over the divide. Neither was he able to bring himself to leave it. So he simply found escape in remaining where he was.

He escaped far, far into his own heart, where his own empty shell wouldn't be able to catch him -

Taking the girl sitting by his side - who was already half-collapsed - with him.




Right now he was in a Shinkansen train to Tokyo.

Before that, he had been sent to a Northeastern city on Orihara Izaya's orders - though he had never expected that the trip would take as long as a week.

What was more, the very last days of the week were spent in a remote village in the mountains where even his cell phone got only intermittent signal. He was forced into a state of isolation from the world of information. Saki, who was not addicted to the Internet or cell phones, didn't feel anything; but Masaomi felt so lonely that he couldn't even find words for it.

Things were going on on the Internet in every second he was kept away from it.

Yet he was left out of the loop; it made him feel unspeakably anxious.

"You're way too enslaved by the Internet, Masaomi. Are you a masochist?"

Saki laughed after she said.

"What do you mean by 'masochist'? Everyone knows how convenient the Internet is."

"But there are people whom you can meet in person but only ever meet on the Internet nowadays."

"……It's not that I 'wouldn't' go meet them. I 'can't' go meet them."

"That's why I say you're a masochist. Go meet them and you'll instantly become happy."

Saki was right on the spot.

Masaomi laughed and denied it, but kept reflecting on himself.

He had thought that he was by no means addicted to the Internet, but this intense anxiety made him doubt it.

- Am I actually feeling homesick because I'm missing out on all that silly banter with those people?

- ……And now I can only talk to Mikado on the Internet.

He was reminded of his best friend's face on the other side of the divide and had to shake his head to rid himself of the melancholy.

He kept doing that, and was able to forget about his anxiety after a while.


That was why he didn't notice.

That in his anxiety over not being able to connect to the Internet -

There was actually an element of pure "bad premonition" that had been there since Izaya had sent him on this unplanned trip.

And that premonition proved right - except that he still didn't know.



♂♀



Morning of May 4th, somewhere in Tokyo


Masaomi and Saki returned to Tokyo on the night of the 3rd. After reporting to Izaya and taking care of everything that needed to be taken care of, the time was already past daybreak.

Masaomi turned on his computer as soon as he got home.

It had probably been in sleeping mode for the past week; the moment he turned it on it simply jumped to the desktop.

"What's up, Masaomi? Internet before sleep?"

"Yeah. It's been a week since I've been to that chatroom. I want to check what happened."

It was a certain chatroom Mikado went to. Izaya had been the one to tell him about that chatroom.

It was a useful place. Not only was he able to talk to his friend there - it had also proved a very good source of information on things taking place in Ikebukuro.

Masaomi opened the website and was about to check out the log for any change that had taken place in the city over the week, but the archive was completely blank; the page looked exactly the same as it did when he had just opened it.

"……Nothing in the past archive? Did someone hack the system?"

Sometimes that happens, thought Masaomi. So he didn't think further and typed his greetings into the dialogue box.

"Maybe everyone just disappeared."

"Don't scare me."

The boy chuckled as he replied to Saki's joke.

Seconds later, Masaomi felt a slight chill down his spine as he ruminated over Saki's words - and quickly told himself that it was just him.

He had been kept away from the Internet, so there was no way he could know.

Bakyura - the handle name he used in that certain chatroom -

Had been used by someone to impersonate him and deceive his best friend.

His best friend, meanwhile, was headed for the center of a giant vortex of disaster -

That's right - that's right. Eventually, he still failed to notice.








END OF INTERLUDE OR PROLOGUE D

LOVEY-DOVEY PRATTLES OF AN UNDERGROUND DOCTOR, IV

Excerpt from Kishitani Shinra's diary



April 30th


Celty is as cute as ever today. But that goes without saying.

We're already one month into the spring of the new year, and Celty's cuteness hasn't changed a bit.

I know Celty will be just as cute till the very end of the world, when I will have already died and become ashes. That's what you call the unchanging fact, I suppose.

I've been keeping this diary for about half a year. Now that I've reread it, I realized that this is already my 20th entry on the same theme.

But that's just how cute Celty is.

Awesome.

That alone will be reason enough for me to write: "It's been a good day."


Speaking of which, when did I fall in love with Celty?

I came to understand that what I felt was love sometime during middle school or high school.

If youth is the name of the time when one is in love, then my youth will always be "now", this very moment.


Right, I wonder how the kids nowadays spend the time of their youth.

I miss my days at Raira Academy*. Alas, those were definitely not the most peaceful days ever. The ones I used to hang out with fought each other all the time.

* Raira Academy: when Shinra attended the school it should have been called Raijin High School; it's unclear whether this is a typo on Narita's part or intentional.

I wasn't good at fighting so I never participated. Not that my participation was in any way necessary, though.

Celty knows some Raira kids.

They've been to our home a few times. I've been talking with them, and for better or worse they were not like the average kind of children nowadays. More suited for the future in some aspects, I'd say.

But then they're not ordinary kids to begin with if they're still willing to be Celty's friends even when they know what she really is.

Of course, I can stay by Celty's side forever because I know best of all people just how cute she is.

The world should be more willing to look at her adorable side.

That way it will fall in love with her.

Dullahans are not monsters. They're fairies.

And Celty is an especially cute fairy, too. How awesome is that?

Even though personally I would be dying to tell everyone in the world just how attractive Celty is, I know I'd better not tell them everything.

If everyone sees Celty's feminine charm, I'll have to deal with tens of thousands of love rivals.


Speaking of which, I wonder how things are between Mikado-kun and Anri-chan, who have both been to our home.

I thought they were boyfriends and girlfriends, but they were kind of lukewarm towards each other - or at least far from lovey-dovey.

I feel like they're something more than friends, but not yet lovers.

There's too much formality between them for them to have been childhood friends. But it doesn't look like they're just friends either.

I think one is about to confess to another.

As long as they do what they like, it's fine.

Their lifestyle is way healthier than ours when we were in high school.

But they seem to have their own problems as well. Not that it's a bad thing.

There's no law that says lovers cannot fight.

Self-restraint and patience are necessary, but too much aloofness just isn't normal.

All that trouble with Dollars and Yellow Turbans - but that's probably just what youth is about.

But there are things that one had better not confuse with others.

They say being young is a mistake in itself, but that doesn't mean young people don't have to take on responsibility.

Some salarymen like to tell people in bars how "I was a gangster when I was young!" and brag about all the bad things they did. But how very wrong they are.

If they think the bad things they did in their youth are boasting material, then they are not just former thugs; they "still are" mere thugs.

They say a leopard never changes its spots; these people haven't changed or paid back for their sins.

Maybe some of them have been to juvenile correctional institutions and paid back for part of their sins. But if they grow up and start bragging about it - that means they haven't really paid back for anything at all.

Kids do stupid things. I do admit that.

But I also admit that they will have to pay for the things they've done.

And that includes myself. Every single bad thing I've done will come back to me some day.

But when they do - I hope they're at least not going to make Celty sad.

It's the only compensation I can make to Celty for not telling her where her head was.

Or am I being too unilateral in this?

Why am I writing about such unreadable things?

For the next part, I'm going to write about what I write about every day: "Clothes I want Celty to wear".

I won't be able to sleep until I've written it down.

Picturing Celty in the clothes I mentioned in these diaries makes me insomniac in another sense, but that's OK.


# Celty the lady gunslinger. She'll be as wild and fatally erotic as Sharon Stone in The Quick and the Dead. Celty won't die even if she is shot, so she's more or less an unbeatable gunslinger. But one day she fell in love with me, a wanted criminal. Wait, maybe a better idea is for me to be the gunslinger and Celty the wanted criminal. Celty doesn't have a head anyway, so we can just find her a head, fake a hanging and set her free. Yeah, that sounds perfect.

# Celty the schoolgirl in a swimming suit. Could be very cute if the name tag on her chest says "Seruti" in hiragana. I don't have a thing for young girls or older women, but if it's Celty, I believe I'll fall in love with her no matter what age she looks.

# Celty the stripper. Her job is to expose her body, but in front of me she's embarrassed to show her charm. In fact, I pay to watch Celty's show every night. ← (X because that makes me sound like a freak. Celty would probably hate me for it.)

# Celty in a sailor's uniform. I've already written about this a couple of times, but let's try a black one for a change. The scene is the library after school. I, the librarian, went back to the library late at night to get something I forgot. And what I see there is Celty, a bookworm girl who was too absorbed in the book to hear the school bell. Her headless body is trembling slightly in the dark…… ← (O I may be on to something good here. I'm going to ask Celty to try this.)


I always end up almost getting a nosebleed writing this.

They say that even if a doctor knows about every disease in the world he would still not be able to cure the disease called love. But my illness is even more serious than that.

The only one who can cure me is Celty.

Right behind me Celty is watching "Discovering World's Wonders", which she had recorded from last week's TV.

She'll never guess that right now I'm immersed in the bliss of picturing her in different costumes. Celty is simply too perfect when she's innocent and clueless like that.


Geez, Celty is trying to look at this entry.


I was fighting to hide it away from her while scribbling on it - what will she do if she finds out about all the fantasies I've written in this diary ahhhh this is the end of me there's shadow on my foot~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - ~ -


(The paper was stained by several drops of blood.)

(In-between the red spots, a message was written in a different handwriting.)


Don't keep this all to yourself. Tell me. And sorry for getting your diary all dirty. Although it was from your nosebleed.

Also that sailor's uniform fantasy looks nothing like a romantic story. More like a school ghost tale.

Don't write about things like that, you fool. You're making me blush when I read it.

But as long as it's nothing too abnormal I might consider putting those clothes on for you.

When I'm in the mood, that is.

(MIKADO AND AOBA PANEL)
IZAYA: Mikado-kun is the common-sense guy through and through. That's why he makes the best of tricksters.
(ANRI PANEL)
IZAYA: She's a monstrosity. I don't classify her as human. No idea as to whether other human beings view her as vermin or not, though.
(MASAOMI AND SAKI PANEL)
IZAYA: He's the escapist. He's afraid to face his friends, so he chooses to seek shelter in the center of the hurly-burly.


IZAYA: About Shizu-chan I have nothing to say. Except that I wonder when he's gonna die - hopefully sooner. Well, on second thought, giving him living hell wouldn't be half bad either.

http://mimiko-kupo.livejournal.com/16497.html
http://chan-chanz.livejournal.com/2829.html