Durarara!!, Vol. 6

by Ryohgo Narita

  “Wh-who the fuck are you people?!”

  “Hey, what’s going on here?!”

  Three other street gangsters standing nearby seemed to have finally processed the situation before them.

  A man wearing an ostentatious motorcycle gang uniform had just asked the four if they were Dollars. With the scorn reserved for the kind of guy who’d wear a biker gang outfit in broad daylight, one member had answered, “What if we are? You gonna offer us a donation, Captain Handlebars?” Then, the uniformed man punched him.

  “You think this is a joke?! What gang you with?!” they shouted, tensing in anticipation of the answer.

  If the biker was with Jan-Jaka-Jan, a street arm of the Awakusu-kai, then one wrong move could quickly send this situation spiraling out of control.

  But if they gave up and backed down, while it might not do much to the Dollars’ name, it would certainly lower their standing.

  They gave him a piercing examination from head to toe and noticed a piece of decorative stitching on the sleeve of his uniform reading TORAMARU.

  “…Ahhh?” one of the gangsters mocked, the relief palpable in his expression. “What’s this? You’re with Toramaru from Saitama?!”

  “…What if I am?”

  “You guys just came here and got your asses whupped the other day!”

  “Don’t you know that your people got absolutely wrecked?”

  “Maybe they don’t get a network signal over in Saitama.”

  Spurred on by having lost the physical initiative, they taunted and mocked him to show the superiority of their mental position.

  It would have been more efficient to hit him instead, but they weren’t used to fighting, and one of their companions had just been felled in two blows, so none of them was able to take the leap from words into action.

  “Besides, do you really think you can take all of us on your own? Huh?” one of them shouted.

  The biker merely sighed. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I attacked you?”

  “Shuddup! You think we care?!”

  “Yeah! Stop actin’ like you’re in control here!” one said, nearly about to set upon him.

  The man in the biker uniform calmly continued, “I’m pretty sure that I’m good enough to take on scrubs like you alone…”

  The next moment, the gangsters’ spines froze.

  “But I don’t wanna get tired out on chumps like you. It’s gonna be a long, long day.”

  Behind his back, at the entrance to the alley, a crowd of nearly a dozen appeared, all wearing the same uniform.

  “…!”

  They turned in the other direction and saw that more Toramaru members were advancing from the other side.

  “Wh-why…? Who are you guys?!” the gangsters pleaded, practically crying.

  The man cracked his neck. “You said the answer yourself. Why would you ask me again?

  “…We’re Toramaru. The same team you Dollars beat the shit out of…”

  A few minutes later

  In a parking garage not far from the alley, the gangsters were sitting formally on the ground, their faces swollen and their voices weak.

  “N-no, you got it wrong—we ain’t really Dollars! I—I mean, we aren’t Dollars, sir. We just signed up online. We don’t even know what their leader looks like,” they pleaded pathetically, as the man in the uniform stood over them, wooden sword in hand.

  “Hmm, well, the thing is, I don’t really care about that.”

  “…”

  “Using a name means assuming some level of risk, see? In this case, you were using the Dollars name to act big around here—it’s a very simple example.”

  “Sowwy, we won’ do ih angymow,” the young men apologized in unison, their enunciation getting worse with the soft tissue swelling.

  The man from Toramaru took a phone out of his chest pocket and tossed it at their knees. “Call them.”

  “Wh-whuh?”

  “You do stuff through texts, right? Call as many of them as you can. Message every person you know in the Dollars.

  “You have no other option.”

  Twenty minutes later

  “Hey, this ain’t a sideshow! Get lost!”

  Toramaru members were chasing off a small group of boys who were watching the events of the parking lot at its entrance. They ran off, screaming. In their hands were cell phones.

  “…Hey, are those kids Dollars, too?”

  “I—I don’ know. I juft added aw da namef on da maiwing wift…”

  “There was that teenage girl and those salarymen who peered in, too.”

  “We’ve probably been reported by now. Let’s move,” one member advised.

  Their erstwhile leader sighed in annoyance. “Tsk! So I guess literally anyone could be with the Dollars.”

  He imagined even the little boys from a moment ago descending on them with fists balled, and he scowled sourly.

  “Whoever came up with your gang is smart but a real son of a bitch.”

  Awakusu-kai office, Tokyo

  The headquarters of the Medei-gumi Syndicate’s Awakusu-kai organization, one of several groups with territory in Ikebukuro—

  At first glance, it was the kind of office building a large company would use, except that there was no sign at the entrance, and while it was open now, there were heavy shutters on all the entryways. Anyone perceptive enough to notice that something was odd with the building naturally found a way to avoid looking too closely.

  The Awakusu-kai office was situated on the building’s middle floors.

  Depending on the room, sometimes you could see the expected trimmings like expensive desks, picture frames, and black leather sofas, like the decorations seen in TV shows. Other rooms were absolutely the real deal, with pictures of the Medei-gumi boss (the kumicho) and the head of the Awakusu-kai, a traditional Shinto shrine, and hanging paper lanterns. But most of it looked just like any other office building.

  In a meeting room tucked away in a corner of the building, a number of men huddled together.

  Half of the men were clearly not in the “upstanding citizen” mold, just based on their appearance. The other half of them looked just like normal businessmen—if it weren’t for the fierce respect they commanded amid the tension.

  One of them, a young man with a reptilian look to his sharp eyes, said, “And…did you get Shizuo Heiwajima?”

  He was Kazamoto, an Awakusu lieutenant. Sitting across from him was an imposing-looking man smoking a cigarette.

  “Who the fuck said you were in charge, Kazamoto?”

  Kazamoto responded to this challenge without looking at the other man. “Please, Mr. Aozaki, don’t do this to me. I only asked a question. I wasn’t trying to take charge.”

  “I’m not so sure of that.”

  Unlike Kazamoto, who was calm and collected, the man named Aozaki openly stared down his fellow yakuza. He was over six feet tall and very broad. There was a good mix of muscle and fat on his large frame, and his poorly fitted suit seemed likely to rip at any moment. His predatory attitude only increased the menace in the room.

  Then another man’s voice cut the tension.

  “Knock it off, Aozaki.”

  The meeting room fell silent.

  “Director,” muttered one or more of them unconsciously, and as if on cue, they all turned to look at Mikiya Awakusu, the “business director” and young leader of the Awakusu-kai.

  He was the son of Dougen Awakusu, the “company president,” and was considered to be the most likely candidate to take over the organization next.

  In recent years, it was growing less and less likely for groups such as theirs to pass down control to the leader’s own son, but as Mikiya fully intended to follow in his father’s footsteps, he was content to be the waka-gashira, the underboss who oversaw operations.

  He was Dougen’s second son. The firstborn was not a yakuza but lived on the straight-and-narrow path, which was a sign that Mikiya’s presence among them was completely vol
untary.

  Some in the group assumed that he had only achieved his position through nepotism, and because he had no real history or infamy, other yakuza groups in their vicinity thought of him as the weak link of the Awakusu-kai; he was under pressure from both inside and outside the organization.

  In fact, most of the other members of the organization were still reserving their judgment on him, waiting to see if he had what it took to inherit the operation and lead them all.

  He narrowed his eyes and lobbed a question to prompt more discussion.

  “I don’t know this Heiwajima kid…but is he really the kind of guy who can kill three of ours in a basic fistfight?”

  This simple question seemed to chill the room even further.

  About thirty minutes earlier, the bodies of three Awakusu-kai members had been discovered. This simple, clear fact cast a complex pall over the entire organization.

  It happened on the morning of May 4, just as the rest of society was enjoying the climax of the Golden Week extended holiday.

  Mikiya had direct control over a subsidiary group of the Awakusu-kai called the Mahoutou Company. Although it labeled itself a “company,” it was, of course, a front for their activities.

  For all outward appearances, it was a gallery for art sales, with the Awakusu officer Shiki acting as company director, but in fact, Mikiya was the one in charge. A portion of the money they made went to Awakusu headquarters, while another portion went further up the chain to the Medei-gumi.

  And at one of the three offices the Mahoutou Company owned in Ikebukuro, in the area of the building where they did their real business away from the public’s eyes—

  An incident occurred.

  There were four men on duty at the office. Technically, only three of the four were present.

  When the fourth, a younger member, came back to the office after a several-hour work shift, he found a man in a bartender outfit, along with the pulverized remains of his coworkers. By the time he returned to the room with a weapon, the man was gone.

  That was what the young man told his boss, Shiki. He swore up and down that it was Shizuo Heiwajima, without a doubt, and now Shiki had his men looking everywhere for Shizuo.

  The guy was apparently collecting outstanding debt from the members of a hookup hotline, but he was still a non-yakuza. Was it really possible that he could kill three fully fledged members of the underworld?

  It was this doubt that led Mikiya to ask about Shizuo.

  His answer came from a man wearing a loud-patterned shirt. This one was about as tall as Aozaki but much more trim and slender. He wore expensive-looking sunglasses, and there was a Western-style walking stick sitting next to his chair, although he didn’t seem to have a limp.

  “It’s not always with his fists. Depending on how he feels, he’ll use anything nearby.”

  Despite the murder of his fellow Awakusu-kai members, this man had a cocky, lazy smile on his lips. But his eyes were sharp behind the tinted brand-name glasses, and the scar on his face and reactions from the others present made it clear that he was on the combative side.

  “You know him, Akabayashi?”

  The man named Akabayashi leaned over, creaking his chair, to respond to Mikiya. “You’ve been coming and going overseas so much and spending so little time in Ikebukuro, I don’t blame you for not knowing. I’ve seen him fight at a distance before… He will use weapons, but he doesn’t carry any around. He just uses whatever’s there.”

  “Well, sure. Even a kid who’s been in his share of fights knows you can pick up a sign, or a rock, or…”

  “No, I’m not talking about that. I mean vending machines and guardrails.”

  “…? Yeah, that’s normal. Like smacking people’s heads into them, right?” Mikiya said, confused at Akabayashi’s vague answers.

  “No, no, I mean he throws them.”

  The furrow in Mikiya’s brow deepened. “What?”

  “He’ll throw a vending machine and pull a guardrail right outta the ground. He even yanked a streetlight outta the sidewalk once, I hear.” Akabayashi chuckled. Mikiya was ready to admonish him for joking around in a crisis, until he recognized that something was amiss.

  About half of the people in the room were staying conspicuously quiet, their eyes wandering. If Akabayashi was joking, then Kazamoto or someone else would have scolded him by now. But Kazamoto was looking down without a word, and Aozaki was scowling bitterly.

  Then, Mikiya noticed that behind Akabayashi’s tinted sunglasses, his eyes contained no hint of mirth. That told him that the things Akabayashi was describing were not at all a joke.

  He didn’t quite believe it yet, but there was no denying that many of the people in the room were very tense at just the mention of the name Shizuo Heiwajima.

  “…Anyway, our reconciliation with the Asuki-gumi is coming soon. It’s not in our best interest to have any failure on our part coming to light. So, as quietly as you possibly can…

  “…find this Heiwajima guy and bring him to me before we expose any of this calamity to others.”

  Building, 3F, somewhere in Tokyo

  It was an Awakusu office, the one attacked by some unknown assailant.

  The bodies were discovered not half an hour ago, but a conversation was taking place in the room that bore little resemblance to the grisly scene.

  “Thank you for coming, as always.”

  “Oh, it happens all the time.”

  “When I was a youngster, I owed a lot to th’ late Master Awakusu.”

  “It’s a privilege to serve again.” “Lookit how big young Mikiya’s grown.” “Hasn’t he?”

  Shiki, officer of the Awakusu-kai, was greeting a number of ancient old women bent over at the waist. They were dressed like a cleaning staff, but the trim of their uniform was so sharp that if they added the proper helmets, they might look like a germ warfare unit or perhaps wasp exterminators.

  There were quite a few old women around the room, busy pushing mops and spraying cleaning solutions even as they exchanged pleasantries.

  “…”

  Shiki stood in the corner, silently watching their process.

  “Well, it’s a good thing they didn’t bleed too much. If they ran a lumino-whatsit-called test, it’d pick up a dang nosebleed. You could change out th’ whole wallpaper, and it’d still pick up the blood.”

  “The police don’t trust us enough to take our word for an excuse like that. But they’re not going to get a forensics team in here. We’re cleaning it up to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

  “Well, o’ course.”

  “Ha-ha,” Shiki laughed politely to the cleaning women, then turned to the man next to him. His face was covered in bandages—the young member of the Awakusu-kai who screamed when Celty took her helmet off and was punished for his transgression.

  “Have you got custody of Shizuo Heiwajima yet?”

  “Er, not yet… We’ve found him, but…”

  “It’s all right. I realize that kid’s not exactly easy to haul in. And I’m telling you, no weapons yet. So…how many of ours went down?”

  “Actually…,” the subordinate said hesitantly.

  Shiki’s gaze drifted a bit. He asked coldly, “What’s the matter?”

  “He’s only been running… He hasn’t struck back at us at all.”

  Near Toshima Ward office, Ikebukuro

  “You must be Shizuo Heiwajima.”

  Shizuo was walking down a street a short ways away from Ikebukuro’s shopping district when the voice hailed him.

  “…”

  The wanted suspect, dressed in his signature bartender outfit, silently turned toward the voice.

  He saw a number of men walking down the sidewalk, spread out to block his path. They were all well-built and carried the air of people who did not work under the light of the sun.

  He spun around and saw that, sure enough, similar-looking men were on the other side, glaring at him in the same fashion and blocking his way.


  A black van pulled over to stop at the curb, completely blocking him in.

  “…What do you want?” he asked, exasperated.

  One of the men said roughly, “Don’t play dumb. You know what you did.”

  “It wasn’t me who did that, but I don’t suppose you’d believe me,” Shizuo said flatly, neither claiming ignorance nor affirming the man’s accusation. The group of men took a step closer.

  “It ain’t up to us whether to believe you or not. Get in the car.”

  “I refuse. I’m on the way to sock the crap out of Izaya, since he’s the one who framed me. Please don’t try to stop me.”

  Shizuo’s tone of voice was still calm. In fact, given the polite way he was speaking to the older men, he even seemed in a better mood than usual—if you just paid attention to the words he was saying.

  But the men who were actually present thought differently.

  They could see that while his words were directed toward them, his eyes were looking elsewhere.

  Instead, they burned with rage at some unseen target.

  Naturally, the men were members of the Awakusu-kai organization, and some of them were the same age as Shizuo.

  Anyone who’d been in high school in Ikebukuro at the same time as Shizuo had heard the legend of the “fighting puppet,” and many of them had seen his ferocity for themselves.

  The sight of a human being flying through the air often leaves a deeper mental impact than one would imagine. And the younger crowd in the Awakusu-kai witnessed it.

  Shizuo Heiwajima.

  In Japanese, this name was peaceful, even pastoral, but the sound of it in their ears brought only cold, bitter sweat.

  Several of these young professionals in the art of violence felt overwhelmed, threatened, by his presence.

  Just as they steeled themselves to wield that violence and subdue Shizuo’s unfathomable strength—something unexpected happened.

  The youngster in the bartender outfit, seething and nearly ready to explode, simply turned his back to them and began to flee in an open direction.