Naturally, a lot had to do with the absence of Anri, a model student. Perhaps the wounds she’d suffered from the slasher began paining her again. Maybe she’d even run across the slasher a second time. The troubling possibilities raced through his mind.
After school, he heard another piece of information that worried him even more.
Masaomi wasn’t at school, either.
Hospital room, Raira University Hospital, Ikebukuro
“What’s up, Masaomi? You seem down today,” the girl in the bed noted to Masaomi as he stared out the window.
Masaomi thought he was keeping up his normal act, but the girl saw right through him with a gentle smile.
“How can you tell? I thought I was acting normally… I guess you really must be psychic.”
Were his emotions really showing on his face? Masaomi spun back with a false grin on his lips. The girl’s smile had not changed.
“Because you hardly ever skip school to come see me.”
“Oh…yeah.”
He had ditched school to come visit her bedside. The receptionist hadn’t bothered him much about his visit, probably assuming that he was a younger college student—Masaomi was in his regular street clothes.
Just as Saki had pointed out, Masaomi recognized that his emotions were in an unstable state. After what happened the previous day, he was unsure if he could maintain his usual frame of mind. Not to suggest that the way he acted around Mikado and Anri was a pretense—but that he was afraid that if they saw him now, it might only cause them to worry. That possibility frightened him.
But at this moment, only the girl in this hospital room knew the side of him that Mikado and Anri did not. She knew the Masaomi who grew up in Ikebukuro.
To Masaomi, who lived apart from his parents, Saki was an outsider, another person that he could return to and feel like himself—despite the fact that she was part of the past he wanted to forget.
In analyzing his own emotions, Masaomi grew uncomfortable. So for the first time in ages, he asked the girl a question he had asked her countless times.
“Hey, Saki.”
“What?”
“Are you sure…you don’t…bear a grudge against me?”
Saki’s eyes went wide, but once again, her smile returned.
“You’re so dumb. I can’t believe how dumb you are, Masaomi.”
“I’m dumb?”
“Yes. Even if I did hate you, you’d still come back, wouldn’t you?” she said, confidently striding directly into the heart of his emotional turmoil. She repeated the phrase that had tormented him for so long: “You’ll never, ever be able to escape your past.”
“Never?”
“Never. That’s why you come back to me, isn’t it?”
“You just think that because it’s what Izaya told you,” he said sardonically. Masaomi knew that she worshipped Izaya Orihara. He’d known it since the day he met her.
But he still fell in love with her.
By this point, it should all have been in the past—but the past would not let him go. It was just as Izaya had once told him.
Saki looked slightly troubled by his sarcasm. “We’ll see about that. But I think it’s a good thing that Izaya told me that, you know? After all…I really love you now.”
“If Izaya had told you to hate me, you would have come to stab me in an instant, wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe I would have…but you’d still love me, Masaomi.”
“But that’s over now. Kaput. The end,” he said in jest, but Saki only repeated herself.
“You can’t escape your past, Masaomi. Your current troubles are based in your past, aren’t they?”
“…”
“If you can’t escape it, you should face it and beat it in a fight.”
“Well, if it was possible to clean my slate with you by simply fighting that part of my past head-on, I’d do it.”
For the first time today, Masaomi smiled at the bedridden girl.
She saw his expression and put on her happiest smile yet. “Why don’t you?”
“I can’t fight you, Saki.”
With a self-deprecating grin, Masaomi left the room. As he left, he closed the door to cut off her happy gaze.
“That’s why…all I can do is run.”
The group wasn’t formed for fighting. I just wanted a place to hang out.
He borrowed things from his new city, pretending they were his own, in order to tell his childhood friend about his new home. Masaomi always felt conflicted about this.
It was why he wanted companions here. To find his own place in the city.
But the group was not truly a place he was meant to return.
He knew that now.
Among the Yellow Scarves…the only “place” for him was in Saki Mikajima.
Now he was working for the sake of his friend, his new place in the world.
But as he was still stuck with the Yellow Scarves, he found himself back in that hospital room.
Whom did he really love?
Masaomi stared at the ceiling of the hospital hallway, wondering what the answer was.
He did not find it.
A doctor on break spoke to Masaomi as he waited for the elevator.
“Oh, Masaomi. No school today?”
“I left early just so I could see your face, Doctor. No, really.”
“Well, at least you’re in a good mood. I hope you can share that energy of yours with Saki.”
“Yeah… How is she doing?” he asked politely. The doctor, who was in her thirties, kept a cool expression on her face.
“As I told you before, her nerves are all connected, so if she undergoes rehabilitation, she should be able to walk. It seems to be the mental shock that is afflicting her more. Oh, and she hardly ever talks, except when you and another fellow who looks a bit like a club host come by—then she’s a real chatterbox.”
After having just finished a conversation with her, it was hard to believe that Saki did not normally speak. But the doctor wasn’t lying to him. He knew that before she was hospitalized, she wasn’t the type to initiate a conversation with others.
Except for one man, the so-called “fellow who looks a bit like a club host”: Izaya Orihara.
Masaomi hid his emotions from his face.
The doctor continued, “She ought to be recovering at home by now. But she has no relatives, so… Anyway, the hospital funds are coming from somewhere, so we’re happy to keep tending to her. Make sure you keep coming so she doesn’t get lonely. She’s really been much happier lately, now that you’re visiting again.”
“I’ll do my best.” He smiled weakly.
The chatty doctor narrowed her eyes and leaned closer. “Feel like coming over tonight? I’m on the early shift, and tomorrow’s my day off,” she propositioned.
Masaomi easily deflected her advance. “Sorry, I’ve got a prior engagement.”
“Everybody always wants a piece of you. If I were your legitimate girlfriend, I’d have stabbed you by now.”
“And then helped me heal, right? The healing power of your love would work like gangbusters on me.”
“It’s both incredible and frustrating how blithe you are about everything…”
Masaomi summoned a smile with all of his heart for her and left the hospital without another word. He stared up at the sky again, unable to put a name to the emotion he was feeling now.
Every single day he talked to women, murmuring words of love to them, as regularly as breathing. It wasn’t, as Saki claimed, because he was actually trying to reaffirm his love for her. Masaomi loved all women equally, at all times.
But is what I feel…actually love?
The dark sky returned nothing but raindrops. Masaomi headed into Ikebukuro, growing damper by the minute.
Sixtieth Floor Street, Ikebukuro
“See, that’s what I’m saying—we’ve been using the word tsundere for years and years. And now that it’s grown into this mainstream thing on TV shows and
everything, it makes me feel empty in the same way that you feel when a band you’ve always liked just blows up and gets huge.”
“You just want to hog your favorite things to yourself. But I don’t mind, because I’m honest about liking things that are cool.”
“Hmph! It’s not like I actually care about the word tsundere or anything!”
“Ha-ha, Yumacchi just turned into a tsundere.”
The two chattered away about the usage of the term, referring to those who pretended to dislike things they secretly loved, as they slowly made their way to Sunshine City. The rain was still falling, but they were all smiles under their umbrellas without a care for the weather in the three-dimensional world.
On the other hand, the man who walked ahead of the pair just shook his head in disgust. “I keep telling you two not to talk about that stuff in town.”
“Actually, we’re really holding back today, Kadota.”
“That’s right, Yumacchi’s doing his best to keep it light. He hasn’t quoted any lines from a manga or said the name of a single two-dimensional character!”
“Shut up.”
The grunt was muffled by the sound of the rain, but the glint in his eyes as he glared over his shoulder was enough to silence the two.
As Yumasaki and Karisawa sulked like scolded children, their overseer and guardian Kadota let out a long sigh.
They were a pair of otaku chatting about their obscure interests and a man who exuded the atmosphere of a loitering delinquent. The combination looked unthinkable at a glance, but as a matter of fact, they were always together.
Yumasaki and Karisawa looked normal, but on the inside they were irredeemable connoisseurs of the two-dimensional arts. Since the summer, Yumasaki had repeated a constant muttered refrain about a “dream demon maid,” which set Kadota on edge for no good reason.
For his own part, Kadota was a voracious reader, but he only loved books as a fiction separate from reality. To him, any book (even nonfiction) was a means to visit a world of dreams.
But Yumasaki and Karisawa, whom he’d known for years, had traveled to the world of fiction so heavily that they no longer could be trusted to discern the difference between fiction and reality, and Kadota had no way to wake them up.
“Ugh…so where should we go next?”
“I was thinking we could swing by Animate for the latest merch. But we took the train today, so space is limited. If we had the van, we could buy all kinds of stuff and stash it there,” Karisawa noted, laughing dryly.
Kadota sighed for at least the hundredth time that day. “You better pick up something for Togusa by way of apology. He was super-pissed.”
“It makes no sense. I was sure he’d be over the moon about it.”
Normally this trio traveled around in a van driven by their companion named Togusa, but when the door was recently damaged, Yumasaki had a new door installed—complete with a decal of a sparkling anime girl. Togusa nearly exploded just from seeing that, but Yumasaki made matters worse by proudly displaying a picture on his home page. Togusa tried to run his friend over with the van for that one.
“I even placed a mosaic to blur out his license plate number and everything,” Yumasaki noted with absolute bafflement. Kadota’s resulting sigh was getting to be a bit much.
“You should have placed another mosaic on him driving the thing.”
Kadota asked himself for the umpteenth time why he was hanging out with these people. He cast his gaze forward to Sixtieth Floor Street.
There were young folks with bits of yellow on here and there, but Kadota did not feel any menace from them. He knew they were on the verge of beefing with the Dollars, but very few of them would recognize him, he decided.
Kadota and the two with him were members of the Dollars. The Dollars repped no color. The group was open to any and all, so while Kadota certainly fit the bill of a street gangster, Yumasaki and Karisawa completely destroyed that image.
Unlike the Yellow Scarves, they had no distinguishing features that identified their allegiance, so they had no fear of being attacked. Thus, they felt free to stroll openly through the town. However—
“Kadota,” someone called out to the group. “It’s been a while.”
“Huh? Oh…Kida,” Kadota said, recognizing the familiar face.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Kida.”
“Why aren’t you with the usual four-eyed girl and baby-faced kid today?”
Yumasaki and Karisawa’s tone was friendly, but Kadota gave the boy a stern glance, sensing something slightly more dangerous in Masaomi’s smile.
Then, noticing the yellow cloth wrapped around the boy’s knuckles, Kadota picked up on the situation. It was the darkest he felt all day, but this time he did not sigh.
“…Are you back?” he asked, his face hard.
Masaomi nodded after a brief pause. “Yes.”
“…I see,” Kadota noted simply.
Masaomi quietly got to the point. “No use standing out in the rain… Want to go somewhere, if you’ve got time to kill?”
Yumasaki and Karisawa shared a look, recognizing that this was not his usual flippant chattiness. Kadota glanced at the loitering boys with their yellow scraps. They hadn’t noticed Masaomi’s presence, but if they kept standing around here that would eventually change.
On the other hand, if they just walked into any old store…they might find themselves surrounded by yellow in a heartbeat, depending on what Masaomi wanted to talk about.
“Sure, if we go to Simon’s place,” Kadota said, jutting his chin toward the corner of a road that led off of Sixtieth Floor Street. It was a cramped alley full of bars and restaurants.
Masaomi looked a bit unhappy at hearing the foreign name—but he summoned up his resolve and took the lead in marching toward the alley.
Russia Sushi
“Hey, Kida, Kadota. Well-cahm.”
A warm voice with a thick accent greeted them as they pushed through the colorful hanging curtain at the door. The interior of the business was an incongruous combination of Russian imperial palace and Japanese sushi counter.
While the counter was the same as any other sushi restaurant, the tatami mats of the floor were matched with marble walls in a truly clashing way. That, combined with the hanging sign promising HASSLE-FREE PRICING! ALL ITEMS MARKET VALUE! put any visitor into a skeptical state of mind.
That was the first impression every visitor to Russia Sushi received upon walking inside. The skepticism was only increased by the sight of the massive employee who stood nearly seven feet tall. He was Simon, a black Russian who spoke oddly accented Japanese.
The concept of a black Russian was unfamiliar to most Japanese, which got him plenty of funny looks, but everyone was convinced once they heard him chatting in fluent Russian with the white chef behind the counter.
His presence was the reason Kadota chose this place to talk.
Simon was the only person who could stop Shizuo Heiwajima, widely regarded as the most dangerous man in Ikebukuro—and a frequent visitor to Russia Sushi himself. Starting a fight here meant causing trouble with two of the most violent men in town. By passing through the doorway of this restaurant, Kadota figured no Yellow Scarves would want to get involved.
For his part, Masaomi was on good terms with the group, so they didn’t distrust him too much—but there was no guarantee that the other Yellow Scarves didn’t have their own ideas.
Kadota felt that it was worth having a good talk with Masaomi, so he chose the safest location he could think of nearby.
“Yo, odd combination of faces,” said the white man behind the counter, who was cutting up the pieces of fish for delivery orders with an assortment of knives. Unlike Simon, he was fluent in Japanese, but after his greeting he resumed his work in silence.
“Cheap sushi, very good. I give you good deal, Boss Kadota.”
“Boss of who? Four of your cheapest nigiri combinations. We’ll sit in the back.”
“Right away,” si
gnaled the white chef, and Simon beamed as he guided the four to the back compartment.
“So what do you want with us? Bein’ the head of the Yellow Scarves…whether former or not, I don’t know or care,” Kadota started up immediately, as soon as Simon had dropped the napkins and left to get their tea. “It’s about the Dollars, I assume. I know what’s going on with both sides at this point in time, and me and Yumasaki’s names are listed on the Dollars’ website.”
“I appreciate you getting right to the point. Then, I suppose you know what I want to ask.”
“Let me be clear: We dunno all the details about the whole organization. Some of our people got done by the slasher, too. I dunno how much power you have now, Kida, but it’d be real helpful if you could clear that up on your side.”
“Well…”
Before Masaomi could continue, Simon came by with four teacups. They were relatively large cups, but they looked small when carried by the enormous man. He picked up the steaming hot cups with his entire palm and rhythmically presented them to the group.
“You drink tea, get your catechins,” Simon said with a thumbs-up.
Kadota smirked and reached for a cup. “Yeow!” he shrieked, dropping the cup back on the table.
Simon quickly offered him a napkin and apologized. “Oh, I sorry. Don’t worry, Boss Kadota. You meditate and clear mind, fire become cold. No get angry, you get hot.”
“I think you actually know a lot more Japanese than you let on… I’m amazed you can hold these cups without getting burned.”
“?”
Simon responded to Kadota’s admiration with a confused, uncomprehending smile. Masaomi looked at his thick, scarred palms and swallowed hard.
“Enjoy, ya?” Simon said, still smiling as he left.
Masaomi finally continued what he had been about to say. “…Well…it might only be your personal group that thinks there’s no connection to the slasher.”
“Huh?”
“The Dollars are a team of equals without any hierarchy, right? So it’s quite possible that there’s a faction that was responsible for the slashings outside of your knowledge. Plus, if they made sure to include a few Dollars in the attacks, that would move suspicion away from the Dollars.”
Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) Page 11
