His already squinty eyes narrowed further as he considered who might be following him.
(1) A hot vampire girl?
(2) A mysterious monster? (Then I get saved by a flame-haired, burning-eyed beauty.)
(3) A girl from another world who looks to me for help?
Under normal circumstances, these were the only three options he would consider. But in the present situation, he was mulling over two different possibilities that would otherwise never occur to him.
(4) Did the Yellow Scarves follow me home from the karaoke place?
(5) Is the person who ran over Kadota following me next?
He surreptitiously changed his route, taking him past a twenty-four-hour parking garage, which he headed directly into. It was an unmanned garage—any vehicles still here were going to be there until the morning, and there was no booth guard handling tickets.
The choice of a location with security cameras was to get a possible look at whoever was trailing him, of course—and also to lower the chances of any crazy business happening to him. On the other hand, if it really was option five, he would be the one attempting the crazy stuff.
“…”
Yumasaki stood in the middle of the second floor and waited. All was quiet for a while, and he was beginning to think that maybe he’d been mistaken.
But a few seconds later, there was a dry, clattering, scraping sound in earshot. It was metal scraping against asphalt, coming up from the first floor of the garage, steadily approaching, until a man appeared around the top of the ramp.
“…?”
This only made Yumasaki more confused. First off, he didn’t look like one of the Yellow Scarves. If it was someone he’d never seen before, that put option five in the realm of possibility—but Yumasaki thought he recognized this man somehow.
He also learned the source of the scraping sound: The man had a long-handled construction hammer in his hand, and he was dragging the head along the asphalt like a child scraping the tip of his umbrella on the ground.
A mysterious man lugging a hammer around. But as soon as he spotted Yumasaki and spoke, the mystery all but vanished.
“It’s been a while…a real long while, hasn’t it? You punk-ass otaku bitch…,” he said, delight and hatred present in equal measure.
“…! Are you…Mr. Izumii?!”
“…Mr. Izumii. Mr. Izumii, huh? Mr. Izumii, Mr. Izumii, Mr. Izumii…”
Izumii repeated his name incessantly, the ends of his mouth curling into a smile.
“The asshole who burned my face and arm still has the gall to call me ‘Mister,’ huh? Gosh, the respect just fills me with such joy…bitch.” Despite the smile, his voice was full of rage and loathing.
Yumasaki gave him a long, hard stare and said, “Just one thing. I want to ask something first.”
“What?”
“Were you the one who ran over Kadota?”
“…Ahh, I see what you mean. Yeah, that traitor got run over and sent to the hospital, huh?” Izumii laughed with pure delight.
Yumasaki’s expression did not change. “You have one big car, don’t you, Mr. Izumii? Did you use that to hit him?” he demanded, really more of an accusation.
Izumii had a strong grudge against Kadota, who once betrayed the Blue Squares and led to their downfall. If Kadota’s hit-and-run was intentional and not just a spontaneous accident, Izumii was the natural first suspect.
But Izumii reacted by wiping the smile off his face and snarling, “My car…?” His temples pulsed, and he abruptly lifted the hammer. “You ruined that car when you burned it out with that goddamn Molotov!”
All his pent-up rage exploded in that moment, and he hurled the hammer right at Yumasaki with a bellow. Yumasaki yelped and jumped to the side of the weapon, which hurtled past him like a boomerang. It missed (barely), but the force was enough for Yumasaki to lose his balance and topple to the ground.
“Hah! Moron!”
Izumii lunged forward to close the gap between them. Somehow, he had another smaller hammer now, one made of vulcanized rubber. He made to immobilize Yumasaki by swinging a kick at the younger man’s head.
Yumasaki curled up on the ground just in the nick of time, causing Izumii’s toe to catch him on the shoulder instead. “Urgh!”
It was only the shoulder but a full-force toe kick. He was lucky it didn’t dislocate the joint entirely. Yumasaki struggled to get up, withstanding the shock that rolled through his body—but Izumii placed his foot on Yumasaki’s side and pressed down.
He leered down sadistically at his helpless opponent. Then he recalled what had happened just before Yumasaki and Kadota betrayed him the first time and uttered a callback line much like what he’d said then.
“So here’s your question. After I kill you, whose head am I gonna go smash like an egg…?” He bent over while maintaining the pressure on Yumasaki’s side and then lifted his hammer. “Here’s a very generous hint… It’s someone who’s currently…in the hospital!”
Before Yumasaki could even hypothetically ask what the answer was, Izumii swung the hammer down toward his head…
…except that a fireball consumed his upper half.
“Eeeh…eeyaaaa!!”
Izumii buckled and fell off Yumasaki, reliving the trauma of his past experience with a terror. He leaped away to a safe distance, making sure no part of himself had caught on fire, and screamed, “You…you’ve got another one of those tricks up your sleeve again!”
Yumasaki slowly got to his feet and smiled the way he always did. “Aww, geez, I’m really sorry about this, Mr. Izumii. I’m a flame type, despite not wearing red.” In his right hand was a specially modified lighter. This was his own homemade flamethrower, which could shoot a jet a bit shorter than a baseball bat in length, though only a few times—making it better for sneak attacks than anything else. Still, it was effective enough to get Izumii away from him and on the defensive.
“Yumasakiii…”
“Now that I think about it, if you had run Kadota over, you would’ve gone back and stuck him in the van rather than leaving him behind.”
“Obviously…I’d drive him straight out to the mountains to bury him!” Izumii swore.
Yumasaki shook his head and said, “Well, I apologize. I shouldn’t have suspected you, but on the other hand, if you’re going to attack the hospital next after me, I guess I can’t afford to roll over and let you win.” His eyes went wider than usual, as he toyed with the weaponized lighter in his hands.
“Sounds like fun… So after I kill you, I’ll use that toy to burn your body instead…,” Izumii growled, his eyes brimming with murder. Yumasaki promptly reached for the backpack he’d left on the ground, pulled something out of it, and took a step farther away.
“Huh? What is that, another Molotov? C’mon, bring it on. You really think that’s gonna take me out, huh?”
“I would’ve preferred if you’d transitioned over to me by saying, ‘First, I’ll destroy that illusion,’” Yumasaki said cryptically.
“Wha—?” Izumii glowered. Then his ringtone went off.
“?”
But it was Yumasaki who was startled by it.
Izumii’s fury instantly disappeared from his eyes. He put another step between himself and Yumasaki and answered the phone.
“…I see. Yes, thank you. Okay… Okay.”
Just seconds ago, it would’ve been unthinkable to see Izumii acting this deferential. Yumasaki was so confused that he was trapped in place for the moment, question mark over his head.
“…I understand, sir. I’ll be right there, sir.”
Sir?!
Yumasaki’s mouth fell open. He couldn’t imagine a more unlikely word for Izumii to say. Meanwhile, the other man hung up his call and spat.
“You’re lucky, otaku. You get to live a few more days. You and Kadota,” he said, back to his usual snarl. He turned his back on Yumasaki. “There are plenty of former Blue Squares who got a bone to pick with you and Kadota. Just b
e careful not to let anyone else kill you before I can.”
Then he clicked his tongue and left the parking garage. Yumasaki picked up the long-handled ball peen hammer that Izumii had thrown and grunted “Don’t get killed by anyone other than me? Mr. Izumii, you’re even more of a 2-D character than I gave you credit for. It’s too bad that such good lines are wasted on such a low-rent person, though. Maybe I need to rethink my assessment of him.”
Yumasaki then realized that his back-and-forth with Izumii had actually cooled his head down quite a bit. “Speaking of rethinking things, I really said some awful things to Kida and his friends. I’ll have to go apologize to them, after I burn the real culprit.”
Obviously, he wasn’t going to forgive whoever ran over Kadota.
“…But it’s a bit inefficient just walking around, and someone might come after me like this again…
“Guess I need a place to hide for the time being… Yes, exactly! I need a hideout!”
At that moment, Anri’s house
Unable to get to sleep, Anri decided to mess around with her cell phone instead. The usual chat room she hung out in appeared to be dead at the moment.
I just get a really bad feeling about this… What is it? Whatever it is, it’s awful…
She couldn’t shake that feeling, so she typed in the address of the Dollars’ message board, hoping to at least get some up-to-date information on the city. It was a social forum that Celty showed her, where she could get hard-core, real street-level info on what was happening.
She was hoping to find some kind of clue about the hit-and-run on Kadota, but nothing jumped out at her. Disappointed, she scrolled through the entire board for anything interesting at all.
At the top of a subgroup titled “Latest Updates,” there was a thread titled “Top Priority: Searching for Runaway Daughter.” Apparently, helping people find runaways also fell under the Dollars’ stated activities.
It didn’t seem to have anything to do with Kadota’s incident, but Anri opened it up anyway, wondering if it was something she could help with.
“…Huh?” she gasped aloud.
There was a name and picture attached to the post. The moment she saw them, both the unknown anxiety plaguing her and the voices of Saika that sought human love pulsed much stronger.
The connection between the two was clear.
It was the girl who once fought Anri and ultimately was re-enslaved by her Saika.
Haruna Niekawa.
A girl with beautiful, long black hair and a pleasant, gentle face.
The instant it registered on Anri that this girl was now missing, her world lurched and rotated. She felt disoriented, practically dizzy, and racked with fear.
It felt like she was being sucked into something very big and very frightening.
And she was worried she would cause the same thing to happen to people she cared very much about.
The next day, noon, ruined building in the burbs
“What did you want to talk about alone like this?”
Celty was back in the same torn-up building, this time summoned by Mikado. Unlike yesterday, Aoba and his cohorts were nowhere to be seen—it was just the two of them.
“I wanted you to know a bit about what’s going on with me… Remember, we were in the middle of something important yesterday when all those people showed up and made things complicated.”
“I see.”
Celty had wanted to speak to him as soon as possible, too, so she had no reason not to take up his offer. In the daytime, the building was so different than it was at night that she almost wondered if she was in the wrong place. The battery-powered lights the boys had brought were gone, and the interior was a dim mixture of sunlight and shadow.
But Mikado’s expression was exactly the same as the night before. He’d probably turned this way for quite a while now. There were a few scratches on him now, but that childish, slightly weak-willed look of his hadn’t suddenly transformed into an adult one over such a short period of time.
It feels like something’s different about him, though, she thought. Something’s different about his personality or his mannerisms. Or…in fact, he might be reminding me of the Mikado who used the Dollars to set that trap for Namie Yagiri. That had been over a year ago now.
Celty decided to start with some small talk. “How long has it been since the two of us had a chat like this?”
“I’ll admit, it feels strange when I have a conversation with you, Celty. It’s like being in a dream. Or like I’ve just become the hero in a movie or something.”
“You aren’t losing track of the difference between reality and fiction, are you?”
“…What are you trying to say?” He chuckled, looking a bit worried.
“Anri was telling me about you the last time we met,” she typed.
“Sonohara was?”
“She was saying you’d gotten very cheerful recently. Mysteriously so,” Celty said, consciously omitting the fact that Anri was quite worried about him.
Mikado muttered a doubtful reply under his breath, but after another pause, he smiled. “I see… Yeah, maybe she’s right.”
“Did something good happen to you?”
“I don’t know if it’s good or not… I don’t know. Life is fun right now, I guess.”
“Fun? In what way, exactly?” she asked, her helmet tilting out of curiosity.
“I have a goal, a purpose. I’ve found what I want to do, I guess…but in the past, I was just going with the flow around me. Then I realized I can’t just do that…”
“I see.”
Based on that statement alone, it was easy to understand this as a withdrawn boy who found a dream and learned how to be proactive—but Celty had seen many people in her life, and this also struck her as the sort of thing that people stuck in shady multilevel marketing scams said as well.
“And the goal you’ve found to dedicate yourself toward is an internal purge of the Dollars?”
“…How much do you know about that? Oh, geez, Celty. Yesterday, you said you wanted to hear it from my own lips, and today you go and say it before I can,” he said, turning to the window with a sad little smile. “That’s right. But it’s not anything as drastic as a purge. I want to return the Dollars to how they used to be. That’s all it is.”
He placed his hands on the frame of the window, which had no pane or even a sash—just a hole in the wall—and stared out at the distant sky as he waited for Celty’s answer. She stood next to him, soaking in the sun, and held out her PDA.
“All I know is what the rumors on the town say. I suppose the fact that everyone was talking about it was why Mr. Akabayashi showed up.”
“The real gangsters…are scary guys.”
“Just so you know what you’re getting into, he’s actually the most reasonable of the Awakusu-kai members. If it were Aozaki, he could’ve had everyone there beaten to a pulp. If things had gone even worse, you all might be in a far-off blast furnace once owned by a now-bankrupt company, mixed in with the melted slag.”
“D-do they dispose of bodies that way now…? I guess it would be a good way to hide them,” Mikado said, his lips twitching at the thought.
“Apparently, if the police conduct an investigation, they can find foreign substances left within the iron.”
“Please don’t talk about that right now. It’s hitting a little too close for comfort,” he said.
Looking at him now, Celty couldn’t see anything other than a teenage boy in his features. She wanted to believe in the expression he was giving her, but now that Akabayashi was involved, there was no room for just skating along and hoping it all worked out. Perhaps there was a way to distance the young man from the group.
“Calm down and think about it,” she typed. “I’m not trying to scare you straight. I’m saying you’re in a position that could very well cause that to happen to you, Mikado.”
“…I know.”
“Do you, though? You would risk those conseque
nces to turn the Dollars back to what they used to be? I know they’ve changed recently, but there have always been members who have messed around with mugging and so on. You make it sound lofty, but you really just want to reform the gang so it’s more convenient for your ends, don’t you?”
“If the Dollars becoming peaceful is what’s convenient for me…then I guess you’re right,” he said. The firmness of his manner threw Celty for a loop.
“Mikado, what will you gain by kicking out the headaches with violence? They’ll just leave the Dollars and start doing the same thing again in secret. Violence doesn’t solve anything.”
“…I’d say Shizuo solved a lot of things with violence.”
“If you ever said that to his face, he’d kill you.”
“But it’s true, isn’t it?” he persisted. Celty felt a shiver run through her. “Listen, Celty. I don’t think what I’m doing is perfectly right and just… I mean, just creating the Dollars in the first place wasn’t the right thing to do, according to society, you know?”
“Well, the police have it out for me, so I have no room to judge,” Celty said, thinking of the motorcycle cop and shivering. Then she scolded herself for getting frightened and continued typing. “If I were a human being leading an upright life, with nothing to hide from society, I’d probably knock you out to force you to quit the Dollars. But I live in a much deeper, darker part of town, and I’m not even human.”
“…”
“But I still like to dream about a happy life with Shinra. It’s my own selfish desire. So I don’t have the right to stop you from doing what you want. But as someone who’s lived a bit longer than you, I want to give you a warning.”
She slumped her shoulders a bit mournfully, turned her attention to Mikado’s face, and typed some more. “Where did you get those cuts on your face? I bet you kicked out some Dollars, and they got back at you. You know it’s going to get worse than just facial bruises pretty soon, right?”
Durarara!!, Vol. 10 Page 13
