Some danced to the beat of the music, some watched the dancers, some savored their drinks and the tunes, and some let their excitement move them to call out to members of the opposite sex.
All these activities and more were captured in vivid detail by the pulsing, strobing light system. But in addition to all the above, there were some people in this particular club who carried out their own activities, unaffected by the overwhelming stimuli.
Inside the men’s bathroom, the club’s sound system was muffled.
“Hey…you’re holding, right?”
“I brought the money for it. Okay? Okay?”
Young women in heavy makeup hissed impatiently. They felt no hesitation or anxiety about being in the men’s room.
Facing them were three tough-looking men. Striking tattoos were visible around their collars, and while they weren’t any older than their early twenties, they surrounded the younger girls with an eerie, menacing vibe.
The slimmest of the three men leaned in with a wide smile. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry. We’ve got the stuff.”
Relief flooded over the girls’ faces. But there was little color in their skin, which was slick with a sheen of messy sweat.
“The problem is, you know how hot this stuff is right now. It’s hard to come by on the street. You know how it goes, right? So I’m gonna keep the price the same, but this is all you get,” he said, producing a ziplock plastic bag and dangling it in front of the girls. There were white pills inside.
One of the girls reacted with despair. “But…that’s only half the usual amount…”
“Actually, to tell the truth, I was saving this for a VIP customer, but you girls look really desperate, right? And we hate to sit back and do nothing for cute girls who really need help.”
“…Fine. Then…I’ll pay double…just gimme the normal bag,” she gasped, not even able to complete a full sentence in one breath. She was swallowing quite often, as if desperately thirsty.
One of the men rubbed each of the girls’ cheeks in turn and laughed. “Don’t worry—we’ll help you find some work to pay it off. Don’t look so gloomy, sweet cheeks.”
The man with the bag waved it in front of their faces—like dangling a carrot in front of a horse.
But this carrot was snatched up by a sudden cross breeze.
The sound of flushing water came from one of the stalls.
“?”
The men glanced over at it, annoyed.
It was the stall closest to the door, but it had been empty when they first came into the bathroom—or so they thought. And unbeknownst to the girls, the men had two friends on guard outside the bathroom to tell anyone who wasn’t a client or a friend that the janitor was working inside.
“…”
Perhaps it was one of those guards who used the stall, but they hadn’t noticed anything before this point. Not even the sound of the door closing.
“C-come on, gimme…,” said one of the girls.
“Shut up,” one of the men commanded, watching the door cautiously.
The next few seconds felt many times longer. Whoever it was, he was probably police.
If it was just an ordinary visitor to the club who managed to wander in while the guards weren’t paying attention, he would be easy to threaten or drive off. But they hadn’t even heard any toilet sounds, nor the unrolling of paper. Whoever was in there simply flushed the toilet, nothing more.
When the door began to open, that confirmed that whoever was in there wasn’t flushing to mask the sound of his business. In other words, he had gone into the stall, went completely silent, then flushed—but why?
They weren’t inclined to think that he merely spat into the bowl. And the very presence of an unannounced visitor was quite far from the expected for them. This was their turf, the place they used to peddle an illegal drug—and their experiences had taught them to be wary of what just happened.
“Hey. Who’s there, huh?” one of the thugs threatened, inching closer to the open stall door.
It opened silently, and a man emerged.
Contrary to what they had been afraid of, he was not an investigator.
But neither was he just a normal person who had wandered into trouble.
“Hey.”
He was rather odd.
“Look at you young fellas. All worked up, doing your thing.”
A tall man dressed in a flashy suit. Somewhere in his thirties, they gauged. Not young, but not yet middle-aged, either. He was slender and wiry with a scar on his face—not a pushover by any means. There were expensive tinted glasses on his nose and an ornately designed walking stick in his hand; he was like a memorable character from an old movie, decked out in props.
Despite the walking stick, he had no trouble moving around. He smirked at them as he made his way lazily out of the stall. The tattooed youngsters glanced at one another.
“Come on, old man.”
“Listen, we’re doin’ business, so would you kindly fuck off?”
“…”
The last of the trio said nothing. He merely stared at the man’s face, as if reminded of something.
Meanwhile, the girls were desperate to get the plastic bag they’d been promised. The one dealer pushed them back, while the other two approached the man without fear.
“This bathroom’s out of order. Go somewhere else.”
“My, my, kids these days are so hot-blooded! Uh-oh, am I gonna get my front teeth yanked out for saying that? Actually, you’re probably too young to get that reference, aren’t you?”
“The hell you talkin’ about, old man?”
“Oh, it’s fine if you don’t know. Read more manga! You could use some bizarre adventures. Young folks like you shouldn’t be old and cynical like me—you gotta get your fix of hard work, friendship, and victory!” the man cackled. He cracked his neck and held out his free hand.
“…?”
The others paused. Held between his fingers was the same little plastic bag the tattooed men had been taunting the girls with earlier—only this one was totally empty.
They stared at the man in the tinted glasses, expressions frozen. He smiled and continued, “Sorry to interrupt your deal. The fellas at the door had some pretty nasty stuff in here, so I was just flushing it away. You know how it goes with toxic material—either sterilize it or flush it down the drain. I don’t think it’ll clog any pipes; I’m assuming it dissolves in water.”
“…You asshole!”
The dealer grabbed the older man’s collar with a powerful hand. He didn’t even spare a thought for what might have become of those guards at the door.
“Oh, come on now, guys.” There was a brragk sound, like a wet stick snapping. “You don’t grab the collars of your superiors.”
He moved slowly, smoothly—and somehow, the body of the youngster was now spinning through the air in a gorgeous arc. The only part of him that clashed with that pristine curve were the fingers that had been grabbing the collar, now broken and twisted.
Yet the spinning man didn’t even scream. His body hurtled over and over until he landed flat on his back.
“?! Ghgh-kh-kh-gk!—?!—?—!”
It was worse than having the breath knocked out of his lungs. He felt like all the oxygen and carbon dioxide in his blood vessels was being squeezed out as well.
A sensation that was impossible to distinguish between pain or numbness stole upon him, starting with the fingertips—and then he felt a shock run through his Adam’s apple.
The man’s walking stick was pressed against his throat. The hapless youngster passed out from the pain.
“You’re lucky I’m not trained in martial arts, fella. I’d have broken more than your fingers,” the older man said. The other two dealers froze in place. Time seemed to stop still.
“H-hey, what are you doing? Sell us the stuff!” the girls clamored, breaking the silence. “We have nothing to do with this dumb fight!”
One of the tattooed men bellowed, “Sh
ut up!”
“Aaah!”
He elbowed one of the girls in the face as she tried to snatch the bag over his shoulder and then turned back to their foe.
“Now that’s no good.” Suddenly, the strange man was right in his face. He saw his own features, agape with shock, in the reflection from the tinted glasses.
“Wh-whoa—?!”
He tried to swing out on impulse, but there was no technique to the punch, just arm strength, and his fist hit nothing.
“Your elbows aren’t meant to hit girls. You gotta be gentle with ’em.”
Suddenly, the tattooed man felt a clamp on his ear, pulling him downward. “Aah…hey…you’re gonna rip…”
The threat of a lost ear jolted his body’s instincts, and he automatically lowered himself to keep that from happening. The man in the tinted glasses easily flipped the bruiser’s feet out from under him, forcing him into a painful kiss with the bathroom floor.
“Bwuh…fuck! Blrgh?!”
Furious, he tried to stand, but to no avail. A foot stomped on the back of his head, breaking his nose and front teeth and sending him into the land of unconscious dreams.
His two partners’ fate was sealed in stone now. The final drug dealer had terror imprinted on his features.
Now I remember.
But his fear was not caused by the violence wrought by the interloper.
Guy with a walking stick, flashy suit, tinted glasses.
He had recalled who this man was and what group he was affiliated with.
That’s him…Akabayashi from the Awakusu-kai!
“W-wait, sir! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry about this!” he wailed, getting down on hands and knees to beg on the bathroom floor.
“Hey, c’mon, kid. That’s nasty. Don’t put your hands on the bathroom floor,” Akabayashi said with a chuckle—a strange admonishment from a guy pressing a man’s face into said floor. “And let me give you a piece of advice: A man shouldn’t prostrate himself of his own accord. And I ain’t of a mind to accept an apology that cheap. You got me?”
The prostrate young man felt the sweat on his body go cold. Through trembling lips, he mumbled, “I’m…I’m s-so sorry! I…I didn’t realize you were Awakusu at first! I never would have challenged you like that…”
“Listen, you don’t gotta apologize like that. If anything, I was the one who picked this fight with you.” Akabayashi smirked. Then, for the first time, the permanent smile weakened a bit. He crouched and muttered, “If you’re gonna apologize, I’m the wrong person. Right?”
“Huh…?”
Akabayashi picked up the little baggie of drugs and held it in front of the dealer’s face. “This club has a number of business ties to our operation, you see. I hate to sound like a stereotype, but I’m obliged to ask: Who said you could deal this shit on our turf? Hmm? Tell the nice man.”
“Er…well, I…”
“Mmm?” Akabayashi tilted his head curiously, his eyes never leaving the young man’s face.
“I wasn’t…umm…!”
When he caught sight of Akabayashi’s eyes through the tinted lenses, he felt every muscle in his body tense up. “I—I—I d-didn’t know this was Awakusu-kai territory! I s-swear, we’ll pay your share f-from now on…!”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha,” Akabayashi laughed mirthlessly. “Oh dear. You really don’t know anything, do you?”
“H…huh…?”
“Don’t you know the law, kid? Here in Japan, pills like these are illegal. But as far as I knew, you could be selling little hard candies, so I made sure to have a friend of mine examine them before I came here.”
He shook his head theatrically and leaned closer to the young man. “And the thing about the places we run, like right here? We don’t write the laws any different when it comes to dealin’ this stuff. Got that?”
“Wha…?”
Are you kidding me? Why did I never hear about that?! the young man thought, stunned.
Akabayashi waggled a finger in his face and tsked. “But even if we did play that way, you don’t really think we’re the kind of easygoing folk who will accept an answer like, ‘I’ll pay your percentage off the top, sorry about that,’ do you?”
“Uh…I…”
“So it’s time to choose.”
“Ch…choose?” the young man rasped. He realized that his breathing had been gradually getting faster and heavier. It was hard to tell what this man was saying. All he knew was that his fear of the Awakusu-kai was quickly being rivaled by that of the man before him.
He recalled the knife he had in his pocket. Should he use it or not?
Will it even work? He’s a yakuza. No, I can’t.
It’s not like anyone knows who I am. If I kill him, I can get away.
I can’t. I can’t escape from the yakuza. But what if they don’t find out?
Dammit, why is this happening to me? It’s not supposed to be like this!
Will my knife even work on this guy, anyway?
He probably has a bigger one. Or a gun. I can’t. I can’t.
I can’t. I can’t, I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t…
A cavalcade of thoughts rushed through his brain, but not a single one was hopeful.
“The thing is, I’m what you’d call a hypocrite. See, since I am in this line of work, I do plenty of bad stuff—running gambling, setting odds, brokering sales of crabmeat of suspect origin. But personally, I just can’t stand the drugs. That’s right—it all comes down to personal likes and dislikes. So feel free to call me a hypocrite.”
Akabayashi took off the glasses and leaned closer to the young man, who looked back into those eyes and realized something was wrong.
One of his eyes looks weird… Is it a prosthetic?
It was an odd thing to be preoccupied with at the moment. The information was meaningless to him.
“Years ago, I was in love with a lady whose old man did her wrong on account of these drugs. Ever since then, I’ve really, really hated ’em. And the reason I’m with the Awakusu-kai now is because my likes and dislikes can actually mean something.”
Akabayashi chuckled dryly—and then abruptly stopped. His smile waned. “Ah…right. You were going to choose… Which option do you prefer?”
“Um…option?”
“For the Awakusu-kai to tie a bow on you fellas and hand you over to the cops? Or to simply have both your arms broken?”
! ! !
The youngster’s breathing went so ragged it simply caught in his throat for several seconds.
The man was going to use him as bait to strike a deal with the police. And if he said no, his arms would be broken. Given what had just happened to his partners, he knew better than to assume it was a bluff.
“N-no…no…stop, p-please…I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he blubbered and rubbed his forehead against the bathroom floor again.
Akabayashi grimaced and shook his head. “For God’s sake, how does a guy with the guts to get a tattoo whimper and whine like this? You’re a disgrace to your artist.”
“Th-these are just decals! W-we’re not that tough, sir! I—I play it straight most of the time! It’s just a little m-money on the side, they said! It wasn’t my idea! I just did what they said! Please let me go! Please, please!”
“Ha-ha. In that case, you’re a disgrace to whoever made that tattoo sticker… Well, damn.” Akabayashi chuckled, got up, and snapped his fingers.
Suddenly, some young men in suits entered the bathroom.
“Huh? Wha—?” the dealer babbled.
“If someone’s calling the shots for you, then we need to hear some more details,” Akabayashi said, waving to the suits. “Take him away. Let Kazamoto handle the rest.”
“Yessir.” “Right away, Mr. Akabayashi.”
The men in black bowed and got to work. Akabayashi rapped the floor with his stick and, in rhythm with the beat, said, “The thing is, I’m a bit squeamish when it comes to interrogation methods.”
All th
e frightening vocabulary words had an effect. The young man finally stopped groveling and got to his feet.
I gotta run.
Even a small-time dealer wearing fake tattoos to look tough knew what would happen if he got taken to the yakuza office. He pulled out his knife and made a beeline, swinging it around threateningly.
“Hey, shithead!” “Knock it off!” Akabayashi’s subordinates yelled, but the fleeing man wasn’t listening. The glint of light off the silver blade as it swung about wildly elicited screams from the girls hiding in the corner of the bathroom.
“Outta my way! You wanna get stabbed?!” Fake Tat screamed, which was funny, because if he was going to hit anyone swinging the knife around like that, it was going to be a slash instead.
Akabayashi exhaled.
Not a sigh. Just a brief collecting of breath.
The young man raced straight toward him in the center of the bathroom.
“Outta—”
—my…way?
Something lightly struck the hand swinging the knife around. An object, something cylindrical, had stretched out from his blind spot and knocked the blade out of his hand.
The walking stick?
By the time he realized it, the tip of Akabayashi’s cane was already out of sight again. The man’s body rolled across the floor, and the end of the stick appeared from a different direction this time.
Although he held the stick like a spear with both hands, there was hardly any of its length above the left hand, so the young man’s instincts told him that it wouldn’t reach him. That wasn’t true, of course, but the visual information his brain received resulted in that fateful illusion.
Akabayashi pushed the other end of the stick with his right hand—a very simple action—but to his victim’s eyes, it looked like the point of the walking stick stretched from out of nothing.
“Whua-ffh!”
A scream of surprise and a grunt of shock both issued from his mouth simultaneously.
The tip of the cane pushed into his throat, crushing the Adam’s apple. He didn’t feel pain or numbness. The only thing his nerves and brain registered was something bursting.
His eyeballs instantaneously shuddered into the back of his head, and he collapsed to the floor like a rag doll.
Durarara!!, Vol. 7 Page 7
