The source of the nervousness that currently filled the office came from a corner of the building. Specifically, a pair of men seated in the reception room.
“What does this mean, Mr. Shiki?” asked a man with sharp reptilian eyes—Kazamoto, one of the Awakusu-kai’s senior members.
The other man, Shiki, whose eyes were sharp in the manner of a different species, was of similar rank within the organization. He replied, “It doesn’t mean anything, Mr. Kazamoto. There’s simply no need to pursue the Yodogiri matter further.”
“I’d sure like to hear a convincing reason as to why.”
If Kazamoto was a snake or a crocodile, then Shiki was more of a hawk or a wolf, the lower-level members liked to whisper among themselves. None would dare say such a thing right now, though. Even knowing that the two men wouldn’t overhear, the members felt the very act of putting voice to those words was a waste of life.
It was amid this kind of nervous silence that the two men conversed.
“I assume you’re familiar with the name Giichirou Shijima.”
“Of course. He’s a relative of that stupid kid who was playing doctor on our turf. I hear we’re looking into making inroads with the Shijima Group on account of that kid.”
“That’s right. However, it’s no longer necessary.”
Despite being of identical rank within the Awakusu-kai, the men spoke politely to each other, maintaining their distance—and thus their secrets.
Kazamoto made most of his earnings through insider trading. The bulk of Shiki’s work came from barely legal multilevel marketing (pyramid) schemes and gambling books. While their operations didn’t overlap, they occupied equal shares of the power balance within the group, which made them wary of each other.
“No longer necessary?”
“Yes, as it happens…Shijima himself reached out to us, regarding the issue with Jinnai Yodogiri. He wanted to make a deal, including the matter with his son.”
“And that meant dropping the Yodogiri case?”
“Yes. He offered three hundred million yen.”
That number caused Kazamoto’s brow to furrow. “And that’s supposed to close the deal?”
“Mr. Akabayashi made it out all right, but do you really think the company president’s going to accept a sum like that after one of his own was nearly killed? So naturally, we made it clear that this was just the start of a very long working relationship. We did take the three hundred million and credited it toward the Yodogiri issue, however.”
“…And Shijima went along with everything?”
“Yes, he accepted all our conditions. It was almost suspicious. It looks like we’re going to have a nice long relationship with the Shijima clan,” Shiki said, striking the armrest of the sofa with his index finger. “However…while he claimed that Yodogiri was just a benefactor in the investment field, it’s obvious that isn’t the real story.”
“So he’s not just some wily old badger after all.” Kazamoto’s already sharp eyes narrowed.
Shiki grinned. “In any case, out of respect for Shijima, we called off the hunt and considered the matter settled…but given the stench of Yodogiri over all this, the president decided we’ll keep our antennae listening for different reasons.”
“Meaning that role is being transferred from me to you, Mr. Shiki?” Kazamoto asked, his voice icy.
Shiki smirked and reassured him, “Don’t worry, I don’t plan to swoop in and take all the credit. If I find something that seems like an opportunity for business, the president and director will decide how it gets divided. Though to be honest, I’m not hoping for business as much as I’m wishing we don’t get any more bullshit from Yodogiri.”
“You mean like with Yumeji Kuzuhara?” Kazamoto beamed, hunching his shoulders. That wiped the expression off Shiki’s face.
“You should know that Kuzuhara’s name is no laughing matter around here, Mr. Kazamoto.”
“It was his fault that Kine got kicked out of this company.”
At that moment, Ikebukuro
While that conversation happened inside the Awakusu-kai office, elsewhere and within the public side of Tokyo, the name Kuzuhara arose in totally different circumstances.
“Please, Miss Kuzuhara, isn’t there a lead you can give me?”
“I swear, if you don’t behave, I’m going to haul you in for interfering with a law officer, you got that?”
“C’mon! You don’t have to go throwing around those big scary legal terms.”
“You think I’m bluffing? You wanna find out how serious I am about giving you the third degree?”
In a residential area off the center of Ikebukuro, a police officer writing up parking tickets was dealing with a middle-aged man who didn’t want to give up.
“Listen, listen, I’m not trying to interfere with your job! I just thought that maybe Maju Kuzuhara, youngest and brightest of the famed Kuzuhara police family, might help out a troubled citizen and impart what she knows about the group called the Dollars, that’s all,” pleaded the grinning fellow, who had a jacket under his arm and an aged flat cap on his head.
But the young policewoman, pen in one hand and pad in the other, finished writing the parking ticket, sighed, and said, “I merely have many relatives in the force. You can’t butter me up that way.”
“But several of them are in the top brass, right? And I hear that Souta in Raira Academy High School and little Souji in middle school are well on their way to being officers, too. It’s an elite family, you can admit it. I’m jealous.”
“…And why do you know about my underage cousins? If you want me to put you on the stalker watch list, just come out and say it, Mr. Niekawa,” she snapped, expression growing colder by the moment.
The man named Niekawa hastily waved his pen-holding hand back and forth.
“Oh, geez, I’m sorry! That wasn’t what I meant to imply! No, I was just interviewing a kid from Raira Academy and happened to overhear their names, that’s all! You see, I was looking for information on the Dollars from the young folks…”
“If you stick your nose where it doesn’t belong, you’re going to wind up in deep shit again.”
“Oh…gosh…yes, that was bad…”
Shuuji Niekawa was a writer for a periodical in Tokyo. He’d been left outside of a hospital with terrible injuries once, which, combined with the eyewitness reports of him carrying around a knife, earned him suspicions of being involved with the infamous “street slasher” incident. But because no hard evidence had turned up, and because he was hospitalized during the Night of the Ripper, when multiple slashings happened simultaneously, he was never charged with anything. Now he was healed up and back on the job.
“I’m aware of the caliber of magazine you write for, Mr. Niekawa, but don’t you think accosting a police officer on the job for tips is crossing a line, even for you? And no special report on the Dollars is going to outdo the volume of information you can find online.”
The young woman was not at all forthcoming to Niekawa, who had a history of bugging officers for information under the guise of reporting. Her cold attitude might have been typical for the police department as a whole, in fact.
Yet, the man was nothing if not persistent. He had a very good reason for being so.
“No, you don’t understand. I’m not asking around about the Dollars for my magazine, not at all! It’s an entirely personal matter!”
“What does that mean?” Maju said, stopping in the process of returning to her vehicle.
Niekawa’s gaze wandered a bit, and he put on a self-effacing smile. “Well, it’s…it’s my daughter. She’s run away from home…”
“A runaway? How old is she?”
“She’ll be eighteen this year…”
“Did you submit a missing person’s report?”
It was the most obvious of questions, but Niekawa avoided her gaze for some reason. “Er…she sends me the occasional text saying, ‘I’m just going from friend’s place to friend’s plac
e’… I just don’t know exactly where they are, that’s all…”
“Then I think you’ll have more luck if you submit a missing person’s report. And what does that have to do with the Dollars?” she asked.
“Well, um, I’ve never heard of her having friends before this,” he mumbled, “and I’ll admit—I’m not proud of this—that I went into her room and booted up her computer. I only thought I might find a clue if I checked her e-mail…”
Niekawa pleaded with the much younger woman, hoping for some kind of salvation. It was less guilt that he was dealing with than a powerful unease about the truth that he learned from his snooping. Or at least, that was what she could glean from his expression.
“Erm, okay. I’ll be honest. The truth is, there was a…high school teacher she became enamored with a while back, and it had…repercussions. I was worried she might still be involved with him. And then…I learned she’s interacting with some folks from a street gang called the Dollars…”
“…”
“You hardly ever see those gangs with their color themes anymore, but they say the Yellow Scarves just had a resurgence around the new year. I don’t know much more than that because I was in the hospital,” he muttered, staring at the ground. “I haven’t done much good for my daughter, so maybe my father’s intuition isn’t trustworthy, but I still want to find out as much as I can about this situation…”
Ikebukuro
“Some weirdo’s sniffing around after the Dollars?” Aoba Kuronuma asked.
On the other end of the call, the boy nicknamed Neko replied, “Yeah, apparently on his business card it says he’s a writer for a mag called Tokyo Warrior.”
The asphalt soaked up the sunlight of the late afternoon, baking Ikebukuro with temperatures in the high eighties despite the hour. Aoba walked alone through the commercial center of the neighborhood, seeking out the shade as he went.
“…It was about a year ago that the Dollars became a story. I’d have figured the fad was over by now…but I guess I’ll keep this in mind. It would be one thing if it were a huge magazine like Tokyo Walker, but this is Tokyo Warrior we’re talking about. Not really a big concern.”
After a few more comments, Aoba hung up on the call, right as he reached the crosswalk to the entrance of Sunshine 60 Street. He stopped next to the Lotteria and blended into the crowd as he waited for the signal to change. Through the people, he surveyed the throng waiting on the other side of the light.
Wonder how many of them are Dollars, too.
He chuckled to himself. He currently led a team of former Blue Squares within the Dollars under Mikado Ryuugamine’s orders, but very few people were actually aware of this.
From his position blended into the mass of humanity, he observed each and every figure across the way. Aoba’s style wasn’t to control people from the shadows of the city—he controlled the situation from the shadows of the crowd.
Even I don’t have a perfect grasp of the full breadth of the Dollars. In fact, if you include the people who never even registered online, there isn’t a single person who knows everyone involved. Even Izaya Orihara.
But now it’s time that I had Mikado Ryuugamine perform…
“…?”
As he ruminated, waiting for the light, his gaze stopped cold at a particular point.
Unlike Aoba, who was totally swallowed by the crowd, the person he spotted on the other side stuck out like a sore thumb—and it was someone Aoba knew very well.
“Bro…,” he murmured, squinting.
His hairstyle wasn’t the same as it used to be, and he was skinnier now, but that was undoubtedly Aoba’s older brother across the street—Ran Izumii.
Contrary to the peaceful sound of his name (“Orchid Spring”), he had the bearing of a mad dog, and the others waiting at the light nearby subconsciously looked away and distanced themselves.
Then Aoba noticed that the brother he hadn’t seen in several years was staring straight at him, his mouth twisted into a savage grin.
The light turned green, and the flock of people strode into the street. Aoba narrowed his eyes, blending into the wave of pedestrians, melting into the very atmosphere of the city as he stepped into the crosswalk.
But Izumii stayed right where he was, splitting the flow of foot traffic around him like a sandbar in the middle of a river.
Seems like he wants me for something. I don’t think even he’s stupid enough to stab me in the middle of the street like this, though.
Still, caution was necessary, Aoba decided. He squeezed the stun gun in his pocket and proceeded toward his brother, step-by-step, his face a blank canvas.
The moment they were close enough to speak, it was Izumii who moved first. He spread his arms and cackled, mouth open in a wide, toothy grin.
“Yo, Aoba. Been a while.”
“…Bro.”
Izumii reached out a hand and smacked the top of his brother’s head. “You ain’t grown a bit. Look exactly the same. Like a li’l preteen still! You eatin’ right, kid?” he asked, a surprisingly brotherly sentiment.
Aoba frowned. “And you seem to have changed quite a lot. You’re thinner now, and your hair’s pitch-black.”
“Well, they shave you when they lock you up. So I changed my look a bit. I almost got shaved again just before I got out, actually.”
Before his arrest, he’d had bleached blond hair styled in a pompadour, an obvious signifier that he was a street thug, but now it was a bit longish and slicked back. He was more like a fancy host club employee trying to accentuate his wild side, as far as his hair was concerned—but no one who saw his face would think he worked that job. If it wasn’t the scars and burn marks on his face, the dangerous malice that lurked in his eyes and the curve of his mouth was enough to drive off any woman—or person in general.
Maybe it was the juvie…but he just seems different, period. He didn’t feel this dangerous before.
“Your scars aren’t as bad as I’d heard.”
“Is that what you think?”
“I heard you got hit by a Molotov while fighting with the Yellow Scarves. I was worried,” Aoba lied. He intended that to be more of a manipulation than a hostile challenge, but Izumii just chuckled and grinned.
“Worried? You? About my burn scars? This coming from the guy who burned my room down.”
Aoba didn’t show any reaction to that, but inside his mouth, his jaws were grinding. This was not the same as the brother he once knew.
Years ago, after Ran Izumii took out his misplaced frustrations on his brother in a show of excessive violence, a fire had started in his room while he was gone, believed to be caused by a cigarette butt.
“I’m so glad you didn’t get hurt,” Aoba had said, with the innocent smile of the child he was.
This smile was so intimidating to Ran Izumii that he never followed up on the incident, and in fact, he never discussed the matter with his brother again. Aoba never mentioned it, either, and continued playing the role of an obedient younger brother. A role they both knew full well was a farce and yet which he maintained anyway, to send a message.
Now Ran was breaking that unspoken agreement between them by mentioning it in the open. He knew Aoba was the one who’d lit up his bedroom.
In the past, the elder brother of this pair was the one labeled “useless,” but he was a totally different person now.
“You know Dad broke my nose after that, right? You owe me for that one, Aoba, don’t ya?”
Aoba didn’t panic. He acted the same way he always had. “Oh, please, Bro. Do you really think I caused that fire?” he said, the wolf boy in little lamb’s clothing.
Meanwhile, the villager opposite him, fangs bared, leered. “Actually, it doesn’t really matter now whether you’re tellin’ the truth or lying.”
“…”
“And the idea that you left the Blue Squares under my control because you couldn’t handle ’em anymore? Doesn’t matter if that’s true or a lie, either.”
He sucked the air through his teeth, a nasty scraping sound. Then he reached out to Aoba’s face and squeezed the younger boy’s nose in his fingers.
“In any case, once I kill Kadota, Yumasaki, and Kida from the Yellow Scarves, you’ll be next. If you wanna hold that to just half-dead, you’d better start thinkin’ of a good plea for your life now, while you got the chance.”
“…Kadota?”
Kadota was one of the principal public members of the Dollars, though he denied he was that important. He seemed to be locked in an eternal struggle with Ran and Aoba.
Though Ran had no personal contact with Aoba, he’d made a name for himself with Aoba’s Blue Squares, and his eventual betrayal and exit from the group ended up being a major factor in the downfall of the gang.
During the battle against the Yellow Scarves, the very cause of that betrayal, Aoba hadn’t lifted a finger to help his brother. When the Yellow Scarves had messed with Aoba’s group before—the ones with the shark-themed beanies—they’d fought back. That earned his ilk the wrath of the Yellow Scarves as a whole, but it didn’t turn into a full-scale war, and the elder brother didn’t ask for the younger’s help then, either.
“So what’s your plan? You don’t have the Blue Squares anymore, Bro,” Aoba said, maintaining his submissive mask underneath his taunts. “Didn’t you know that Horada’s bunch got arrested for something else after they avoided juvie the first time?”
“Yeah…I hear Horada was talking all kinds of shit on the inside. I went to pay him a visit recently and put the screws on him. He had a lot to fill me in on!” Izumii chuckled, twisting his brother’s nose. “What’s the Dollars’ boss’s name…? Mikado Ryuugamine?”
“!”
“Even the guy’s name is full of itself. I couldn’t believe what I learned—he’s old friends with that brown-haired kid in the Yellow Scarves, and what’s this I hear about you being all buddy-buddy with him, Aoba? One way or another, I’m gonna hafta go introduce myself soon.”
Durarara!!, Vol. 10 Page 2
