“Edo is famous for fires and fighting. But fighting no fun, makes your face flush. Replace fires with fireworks, and everyone friends, no fighting.”
Ikebukuro
“Are you all right, Sonohara?”
“…Yes, sorry to worry you.”
“You shouldn’t push yourself if you can’t do it. Want to rest somewhere?” asked Saki Mikajima, who had noticed that Anri Sonohara was looking pale and uncomfortable.
“I’m fine…”
Anri’s voice was clearly unsteady, but Saki seemed to conclude that she wasn’t going to get the answer she was looking for and didn’t press the issue any further.
The girls were making their way to a specific destination.
They considered taking a taxi, but since the place was close, they leaned toward walking the distance instead—and right around the point that they passed by Ikebukuro Station, Anri suddenly found herself racked with a powerful anxiety.
On the inside, something much more reliable than simple animal intuition was giving her unmistakable signals: The Saika slumbering within her was stirring.
What…is this…?
Even during the Night of the Ripper, when Haruna Niekawa brought forth a great new influx of Saikas, she had never felt a stirring of this scale.
Part of that was the fact that she hadn’t fully accepted Saika yet at the time, but she could tell that the trembling from the cursed blade within her was abnormal beyond whatever difference that would make.
It felt like the Saikas were resonating. Like she was on the inside of a gigantic bell, and the roar from the outside was reverberating directly into her body.
This mental resonance blasted Anri’s mind. It made her see spots.
But she couldn’t stop now.
After talking with Saki, Anri decided that whatever trouble was happening at the moment in Ikebukuro, she ought to involve herself in it.
Izaya Orihara had hinted to her that Mikado Ryuugamine and Masaomi Kida were in the path of some terrible oncoming disaster. He was not the kind of man whom she trusted at all, but there was something in his vague, suggestive words that she found highly believable.
And both Anri and Saki shared that view.
I wonder if Saika’s surge…has something to do with them…
What if someone aside from her caused Mikado and Masaomi to be made part of Saika? The thought sent a terrible shiver down Anri’s back.
Fortunately, her fears were unfounded.
But as it happened, Mikado and Masaomi were indeed caught in the midst of a terrible ordeal.
It just didn’t have anything to do with Saika.
Abandoned factory—late night
“Now, let’s see… Which one of these numbers belongs to Mikado Ryuu-ga-mi-ne…?”
The cheery voice was quite at odds with the oppressive setting of an abandoned factory in the middle of the night.
“Aha, there it is! Wow, when you see it with the kanji and everything, ‘Mikado Ryuugamine’ sure looks imposing,” Chikage Rokujou chattered happily as he fiddled with the cell phone. “Emperor of Dragon Peak—hah!”
The phone’s owner, Masaomi Kida, sighed and said, “I told you, he’s not going to answer a call from some number he doesn’t recognize. The guy’s really shy and suspicious like that…”
It wasn’t clear whether Chikage was actually listening to him, because he went ahead and read the number off Masaomi’s phone, inputting it into his own smartphone. “But that was the old Mikado Ryuugamine, right?”
“…”
“If the guy’s cracked as much as you say he has, he’ll pick up. Trust me,” said Chikage, smiling confidently. He pushed the call button on the screen.
But many rings later, there was no indication that the call was going to be answered.
“…”
“…”
“Wanna pretend that conversation never happened?”
“…Sure, sounds good.”
To break the awkward silence between the two, Chikage launched into conversation again, as if nothing had ever happened.
“Doesn’t he have a social media account somewhere? Like on Mix-E or Twittia? Something he would definitely look at, rather than ignoring by default.”
“You really are exhausting all your options, huh…?” Masaomi said, abandoning any pretense of respect for his elder. Then he sighed again and thought it over. “Someplace he would look… Maybe a Dollars-related web forum…”
“Don’t really want a lot of people seeing this.”
“Hmm… Social media, huh…? But whatever he might potentially be doing, I’m not linked to him, so… Oh!”
Masaomi snatched the phone out of Chikage’s hand, remembering something out of the blue. He connected to the Internet in a hurry.
“Maybe he’s still checking that one chat site every day…”
A dozen or so seconds later, when the chat room filled the screen, Masaomi’s eyes bulged.
TarouTanaka: I don’t understand what you mean. Who is Kujiragi? What are you after?
NamieYagiri: You’re the one who’s after something. What do you think you’re doing?
NamieYagiri: Why don’t you look around yourself?
NamieYagiri: I just want to bring an end to what’s going on. So help me.
NamieYagiri: You have no idea about anything, and yet you’re connected to everything.
NamieYagiri: Wake the hell up. You’re the key.
“What is this?”
Chikage peered over Masaomi’s shoulder and said, “Whoa, this chat looks pretty gnarly. What’s up with that?”
“It’s not usually like this…”
On the screen, a woman named NamieYagiri was taking TarouTanaka—the handle name of Mikado Ryuugamine—to task with blistering force. It was all just on a screen, of course, but her posting was powerful enough that it practically grabbed the collar of the reader.
“Yagiri…? Does that person have something to do with Seiji?” Masaomi wondered, thinking of the boy he’d known from school. Confused, he continued reading.
And after a while, he froze up again.
It wasn’t only Mikado.
There was another familiar name in the chat room.
NamieYagiri: Same question about your girlfriend, Anri Sonohara.
NamieYagiri: You know that she’s a monster, too.
NamieYagiri: You must have seen her with a katana at some point.
NamieYagiri: Want me to tell you what she did during that incident with the street slasher?
Abandoned factory
“…”
Masaomi was frozen, unable to continue scrolling down, so Chikage picked up the slack.
“Oh, Anri? Yeah, she had a katana.”
“No…wait. Hang on. There’s just too much…I can’t wrap my head around…”
“See? You think you know your friends, but you know them a lot less than you realize, huh?” Chikage sagely mocked. It was easy for him to say, since none of this had to do with him. He snatched the phone away and checked the web address, typing it into his own smartphone.
Then, eyes sparkling like a child who’d thought up a good prank, Chikage began typing his own text into the chat room.
Tokyo—abandoned building
“Mr. Mikado! Mr. Mikado!”
Despite it being late in the middle of the night, Mikado Ryuugamine showed no signs of sleep. He heard the sound of his underclassman from school and the very reason he’d been dragged down into this position—Aoba Kuronuma.
Mikado put the object he was holding into a box and turned to face Aoba, who came up the stairs a few moments later.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, like it was any old interaction.
Aoba waved his phone and said, “You saw how some weirdo was jacking up the chat just now, right?”
“Yeah, but that’s not an issue anymore. I’ll have Kanra, the administrator, delete all of it tomorrow.”
“No, I’m not talking specifically about the troll�
�� I got curious, so I was watching the chat after that,” Aoba said, showing him the screen of his phone, “and some other weirdo showed up going on about Masaomi Kida…”
“…”
Mikado’s brow furrowed the tiniest bit. He grabbed his laptop in silence and used it to connect to the wireless hot spot they were using for Internet. When he logged in to the chat room, he found a very one-sided message waiting for him there.
Chat room
Rocchi has entered the chat.
Rocchi: Pardon me for interrupting the bloodbath in here.
Rocchi: Uh, can everyone see these posts?
Rocchi: Man, it’s been so long since I was in a chat room. Everyone’s moved on to social media now, y’know?
NamieYagiri: Who are you?
NamieYagiri: You have nothing to do with this. Butt out.
Rocchi: Based on your name, I’m guessing you’re a woman? It’s a cute name.
Rocchi: It’d be nice to have a proper chat in person sometime, so I’m sorry, but I’m gonna have to butt in for just a moment. I really am sorry.
Rocchi: For one thing, it’s not exactly true that I have “nothing” to do with this.
Rocchi: Mikado Ryuugamine, right?
Rocchi: You got that call earlier.
Rocchi: You really shouldn’t ignore a call like that.
Rocchi: What, you can’t pick up a call from an unfamiliar number? Well, now we know each other, right?
Rocchi: Though the truth is, we did meet before this.
Rocchi: Anyway, my point is, you should answer your phone.
Rocchi: Once you see this message, go and dial back the number that called you about five minutes before this post.
Rocchi: Otherwise, who knows what might happen to your buddy Masaomi Kida, huh?
Rocchi: You don’t want your friend getting hurt any worse, do ya?
NamieYagiri: Shut up, nobody cares about any of this.
NamieYagiri: Save it for later.
NamieYagiri: Ryuugamine, you have a duty to uphold first.
Rocchi: And how’s Seiji doing, Sis?
NamieYagiri: What?
Rocchi: Oh, come now, you don’t want Seiji seeing you rampaging like this, do you?
NamieYagiri: How dare you threatenlkbe kujehbb ubakjbkm
Kuru: Oh my, what a strange turn of events.
Mai: It’s exciting.
Abandoned factory
“Hey, you can’t just go typing whatever the hell you want. On the other hand…what the hell is happening in this chat room?”
Masaomi hadn’t been in the chat for almost half a year, but it was still an important place to him. He felt disturbed at the way it seemed to be careening toward collapse.
Before he could say anything else, however, the sound of a ringtone echoed off the walls of the abandoned factory building. Chikage saw that the number on his screen was the same one he’d typed in minutes ago, and he grinned.
“Hey, it’s from your pal.”
“…!”
Masaomi couldn’t hide his surprise. That had worked out better than he’d expected. He reached out for the phone without thinking.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on. I’m the one who has to answer it.”
“No, I’m the one who has business with…”
“Once he finds out you’re safe, he’s gonna hang up. I’ll answer.”
Chikage stretched his finger toward the answer button, glanced at Masaomi, and added, “Oh, and…before I go through with this, sorry.”
“?” Masaomi frowned at that. Chikage put the phone to his ear.
“Yo.”
“…Are you Rocchi, then?”
“Yeah. I’m glad you checked my messages so promptly. The truth is, we’ve met before.”
“…”
“Do you recognize my voice?” Chikage asked. His tone was light, while the voice on the other side of the phone was flat and unemotional.
“You’re…Chikage Rokujou, aren’t you?”
“Wow, nice one. Round of applause for this guy. Listen, I’m sorry about what happened back there. I should’ve believed it when you said you were the boss of the Dollars.”
“…”
Sensing that Mikado wasn’t going to give him a response, Chikage continued, “I’ll be straight with you. Your friends, these…Dollars? Have been messing with us again. And I’m here to square up that account.”
Masaomi’s mouth fell open, but Chikage held up a hand to silence him. He must’ve been formulating an idea, so Masaomi chose to stay quiet and listen for now.
But then Chikage closed his hand into a fist and used it to rap against Masaomi’s cast.
“…?! Urgh?! Ah…aaah!”
Waves of pain enveloped his broken bone. Masaomi involuntarily yelped with pain.
Then Chikage pulled the phone back away from Masaomi and snarled quietly into the phone, “You heard him. If you can’t meet me man-to-man, your friend here’s goin’ somewhere very far away.”
A few minutes later, the phone call over, Chikage cackled and smacked Masaomi’s head.
“There we go. Now we’ve got a destination. You’re my hostage, and I’m gonna hand you over in public. That seems like a fair compromise to me.”
“…Since when did I become a hostage? Dammit, that really hurt, you know!” Masaomi protested, but Chikage just shrugged.
“Hey, I did apologize before I did it, didn’t I?”
“You don’t think I could have played along without having to inflict actual pain?”
“Actually, a good spontaneous scream’s a lot harder to pull off than you think.” Chikage hummed.
Masaomi exhaled and shook his head in disgust. “Fine, fine, whatever. So where are you handing me over to Mikado?”
“Oh yeah. It’s a place that even I’m familiar with. I remember it well.”
Chikage swung his arms in big circles, like he was warming up for some kind of athletic performance.
“There’s an all-girls school right nearby.”
Abandoned building
“You’re not going to go there alone, are you?”
Aoba looked over at Mikado, who was staring without emotion at the phone he’d just finished talking into.
“Huh? I mean… Oh yeah, I guess he didn’t specify any details about the number of people.”
“Rokujou is the name of the guy who we messed with first. You don’t need to go for yourself. We can go and get Mr. Kida back,” Aoba suggested casually.
Mikado thought it over. “That reminds me, how exactly do you guys see Kida anyway?”
“How…? He’s your friend, right?”
“But he was your enemy and the leader of the Yellow Scarves, wasn’t he?”
“Maybe to my brother, but it wasn’t like we were fighting directly against him,” Aoba replied, shrugging. “To be honest, I don’t have any hatred for Mr. Kida, but neither do I have any fondness. If you said that we should go and rescue him, we’d follow your orders.”
“Okay, that’s good to hear. But Masaomi might not think very highly of you guys. He might look like a frivolous guy, but he’s always been very serious at his core.”
“…”
As they talked, Aoba sensed a change in Mikado.
Can’t help but notice that the way he refers to him keeps changing, between Masaomi and Kida…
Maybe it was nothing, but he couldn’t help but feel that it was actually very important.
Perhaps Mikado himself didn’t even realize what he was doing. Maybe he wasn’t fully conscious of what kind of connection he had to Masaomi Kida personally—or to all the people he knew, including Anri Sonohara—or what he wanted that connection to be.
At least, that was how it seemed to Aoba. He watched, silent.
And then, when Mikado wasn’t looking, he let the corners of his mouth tuck into a sneer.
Yeah, he’s just so fascinating. He’s the best.
Then, watching the back of the broken boy standing before him, Aoba let
the smile vanish and asked, “By the way, why did you designate that particular location?”
The place Mikado mentioned during the phone call for the exchange to go down was a location Aoba knew well. While it was the middle of the night, it was also a fairly noticeable locale.
“…”
It was certainly a reasonable question to ask, but Mikado merely went silent. He pondered it heavily, like a computer asked to do something beyond its processing capacity, and when he spoke, it was slow and halting, trying to convince himself of the words as he said them.
“It’s…an important…place.”
“An important place?”
“As I think you know already…it’s the place where it all began, for me and for the Dollars,” Mikado said, nostalgia and fondness wreathing the name of the gang. He smiled boyishly. “But Sonohara and Kida weren’t there at the time.”
He wasn’t even talking to Aoba anymore. In fact, it seemed that he was thinking of his reasoning for that choice after the fact, bit by bit. That was how it seemed to the younger boy.
But it was true: The place was very special to Mikado Ryuugamine.
It was where the Mikado of now got his start, when the ordinary and extraordinary completely switched places.
The intersection in front of Tokyu Hands.
It was the start of the major road that passed by the Sunshine building—or, alternately, the end of it.
It was an answer that came to Mikado naturally. And in his case, inevitably.
He made the decision as the Dollars’ founder and as a member—in order to welcome Masaomi Kida, who wasn’t there on that day.
If possible, he hoped Anri would be there, too.
But despite his desire, Mikado had to keep his hopes under control, knowing he couldn’t be that selfish.
That was because he knew that after this, something bloody and ugly was likely to happen there.
A part of him was aware that Anri’s secret was far more gruesome than a typical youth rivalry, but he still refused to intentionally get her involved.
Durarara!!, Vol. 13 Page 2
