“Oh, I see. You could have just called,” Shinra said, pulling his cell phone out of the pocket of his coat. “Huh? Got a bunch of Dollars messages… Well, whatever.”
He closed the inbox, opened his address book, and smiled at Shiki. “Tell you what, I’ll call him and find out where he is now. Yes, he snaps pretty easily, but not without reason, so go easy on him, okay? Oh—did this happen today?”
“Yes, today,” Shiki replied.
Shinra sighed and pressed the button that would dial Shizuo’s number. He put the phone up to his cheek and noted, “I guess I’m not surprised. He was angrier today than I think I’ve ever seen him.”
“…Oh?” It was a very interesting detail, but Shiki kept that from showing. He waited for more details.
“Where do I start? He just showed up here out of the blue last night…and who do you suppose he had with him?”
“I don’t know, his brother? He’s supposed to be a celebrity, right?”
Shiki had some idea. But he decided to offer up that curveball instead, as a means to gauge Shinra’s reaction.
Shinra’s smile never vanished as he chattered happily, “No, not even! You won’t believe this—he brought this little ten-year-old girl with him!”
“…!”
“Huh? He’s not picking up… Hmm, I guess that means…”
He did not finish that statement.
When Shinra looked up from his phone at Shiki, he noticed the other man was wearing a fiercer glare than usual—and his subordinates were fanning out around Shinra with menacing purpose.
“H-huh? Did I…say something bad?”
It was at that moment, at last, that Shinra recognized the grave nature of the situation.
Just to add one last layer of pressure on him, Shiki’s heavy, sharp voice thrust itself into Shinra’s eardrums.
“And…where is this girl now?”
Mikado Ryuugamine was aware.
He knew what he had created.
The Dollars had started off as nothing more than a joke.
Mikado had suggested that they invent a fictional organization, and a number of his online friends happily assisted him in creating a gang that did not actually exist.
“No requirements to join. No rules.”
And somehow, that odd little joke had taken on a life and form of its own within Ikebukuro.
Ikebukuro.
It wasn’t even a place that Mikado had visited before that point.
Just a thing beyond a conceptual wall in his mind, a location that existed only in the news, the magazines, the TV shows.
None of Mikado’s friends who were cofounders hung around him anymore.
They didn’t even know about the name Mikado Ryuugamine, and neither did he know the ages or appearances of those Internet figures. People who don’t go online might mock those relationships as utterly shallow, but they were still his companions in founding and building the Dollars.
They had cut off their online ties with Mikado.
And now their work had given birth to an eerie thing in real life.
The gang that they invented, mostly in jest, was active under that name, carrying out actions that were, at times, illegal—and earning itself proper recognition from society as a street gang.
The founders all fled the scene.
They changed their online handles and never spoke of the Dollars again.
That’s all it took.
The only step required to escape responsibility.
It had started off as a silly game that couldn’t possibly be real.
If a fantasy image of a monster started to attack people, was that actually the fault of the one who envisioned it?
It’s not a question with an easy answer, but one can certainly presume that most people would try to evade responsibility for such a thing, if they were in that position.
So with that in mind, all those people whose faces Mikado did not know vanished from the Dollars, one after the other.
But Mikado was different.
He accepted the Dollars as they existed in reality.
As if it was what he wanted all along.
Someone has to manage them. It’s the duty of the one who created them.
That was what he told himself, to hide the elation he felt.
But at that point, how much did Mikado Ryuugamine truly understand?
Did he realize exactly what he had created?
Did he grasp what it meant to be the founder of the Dollars and a leader to all the people who were affiliated with the name?
Whether he understood that perfectly or not at all, everything associated with the Dollars did its best to mercilessly thrust the reality of the situation onto him.
Mikado Ryuugamine understood what it was that he had created.
But he did not yet know what he himself was.
Mikado Ryuugamine was unable to find the answer yet.
Abandoned factory, Tokyo
The time: nearly an hour before Shiki would arrive at Shinra’s apartment.
“So, Mr. Mikado, have you made up your mind?”
Aoba Kuronuma’s youthful face took on a dazzling smile that was totally at odds with the menace of his words.
Before him was another boy who looked just as young, despite being a year older than him—Mikado Ryuugamine.
Two students in different years at Raira Academy, upperclassman and underclassman.
As well as companions within the very loose boundaries of the Dollars.
Those were the only two connections when they first met—but only from Mikado’s perspective.
For his part, Aoba knew everything from the start.
That Mikado was the founder of the Dollars. The war with the Yellow Scarves. The connection to Masaomi Kida. Perhaps even a part of Mikado’s personality that the boy himself was not aware of.
But Mikado didn’t know anything about Aoba.
He was just an ordinary boy who looked up to the other Dollars.
But he had no proof that Aoba was really “ordinary.”
Mikado didn’t even know enough to be aware of when the adjective ordinary was accurately applicable to a person. He might as well have described him as “someone I don’t really know.”
And that schoolmate he “didn’t really know” was now leveraging incredible pressure on him.
He had suddenly revealed that he was none other than the founder of the Blue Squares.
Also, that his group was responsible for attacking Toramaru in Saitama.
These alone, coming in such quick succession, were more than enough to drive Mikado into a state of confusion.
But the real kicker was his request at the end.
A request without rhythm, reason, or reality.
“Be the leader of the Blue Squares for us.”
He wanted to deny everything.
He assumed that he must be dreaming.
I’m jealous of Aoba for swooping in and getting along with Sonohara, so I’m dreaming all of this as a way to tarnish his name. I’m such a creep.
He tried to wake up from the dream.
He tried to escape reality.
But Aoba’s words tied him down to the ground.
“At this very moment…
…you’re smiling, aren’t you?”
That’s a lie! That can’t be true!
He wanted to scream it.
He wanted to bellow with all the air in his lungs.
But before he could actually do that, Mikado realized something.
He understood why he was so furious at this accusation.
A normal person might have gone ahead and yelled anyway before even thinking.
But the recognition of his own impulse was a total shock to Mikado.
It was such an abnormal occurrence that it paradoxically yanked him right out of that impulse.
After all, it was nearly the very first time in his entire life that Mikado had been furious about something.
Not when the Dollars fir
st met in real life, and he argued with Seiji Yagiri’s sister.
Not when he learned the Dollars were under attack by the slasher.
Not even when he first came across Masaomi’s terrible injury.
He had never felt the urge to rage and shout, even if he had been angry.
So…why? Why do I feel such burning in the pit of my stomach?
What eventually rose to his throat was not a scream of denial, but fierce nausea.
He had just realized that the reason he was about to scream…
…was because he pointed out the truth, didn’t he?
Uh…wha…?
Mikado touched his own face without thinking.
His hands sought to ascertain his expression.
But what he found, now that he was aware of it, was that he wasn’t smiling in the least.
What about a moment ago—when Aoba had actually pointed that out?
What…was I…?
What was he thinking just then?
He couldn’t even recall his own emotion of a few seconds earlier. Cold sweat seeped.
“Are you all right?”
His eyes focused, recognized Aoba’s face right in front of him.
“Wh-wha—?!”
His schoolmate was suddenly something unknown, alien. That innocent smile was still there, but Mikado could no longer trust in its harmless benevolence.
“Well, that’s not very nice, screaming at the face of your sweet little underclassman. I’ve given you about ten minutes now… Have you come to an answer?”
“T…ten minutes…?”
Mikado looked down at his cell phone, stunned that so much time could have passed without realizing it. On the waiting screen was a line that said, “23 unread messages.” They were probably about the Dollars being attacked.
“That long…”
Mikado sensed that his pulse had skyrocketed.
He got the feeling that a wave of static was rushing in his ears.
Confusion.
He was in a state of confusion.
That was all he could tell.
He didn’t even know what his mind should focus on first.
The Dollars being under attack?
Aoba’s confession that he was the founder of the Blue Squares?
The fact that they were the ones who attacked the motorcycle gang from Saitama?
The fact that they knew he was the founder of the Dollars?
Their request that he be the leader of the Blue Squares?
And most of all—was he really smiling amid this chaos?
They were all separate issues, and yet there was no denying that they were connected.
But Mikado was so discombobulated that he didn’t even know where to start untangling the knot.
“Wait. Hang on,” he said without thinking. Those words did not solve anything.
Aoba kept that innocent smile on his face as he cruelly pointed out, “Haven’t we all been waiting?”
“…”
Aoba and Mikado weren’t the only ones in the factory, of course.
Other youths who must’ve been the Blue Squares that Aoba mentioned were spread about the interior of the building, each one doing his own thing. Some fiddled with their phones, like Mikado was doing; some yawned and leaned against empty barrels—they were not unified in their purpose.
And of course, unbeknownst to anyone inside, Celty was watching the entire scene through the window.
“Well, there’s no rush. You’ve got a lot of e-mail backed up on that phone, don’t you? Maybe you should look through that real quick,” Aoba taunted and glanced at his own screen. “But it only looks like they’re talking about another attack—nothing too big yet. I don’t hear any cop cars, and this factory was the Yellow Scarves’ hangout, so I doubt anyone would charge in here expecting to find any Dollars.”
Mikado’s spine trembled at this self-assured statement. Aoba was daring him to calm down and react to the situation.
“Do you think I could go back home to think it over?”
“I’m afraid I can’t be that patient,” Aoba replied, shaking his head. Two large delinquents headed for the front gate of the factory and slid the doors closed.
The rattling was a dirge of despair that froze Mikado on the spot.
“B-but, you know, I have to go meet up with Sonohara…”
“Wow, right in the middle of this situation, and you’d rather think about Anri? How much do you love her, huh?” he teased.
Normally, Mikado would blush and retort, “It’s n-not like that!” but under the circumstances, he couldn’t possibly send that much blood to his face.
Instead, Aoba delivered the kicker that would ensure Mikado’s cheeks went even paler.
“Either way, you probably shouldn’t meet with her today at all, should you?”
“Huh…?”
“You’re just going to drag her into this.”
“…!”
Anri had nothing to do with this sort of thing.
Mikado could sense that she was harboring some kind of secret, it was true.
She had a katana when they went to rescue Masaomi from the Yellow Scarves. She was clearly familiar with Celty. These things were enough to suggest that she was hiding something personal.
But secretive or not, Anri was still his friend, as well as his crush. He had to be certain that she wouldn’t get drawn into this issue of his. He’d made up his mind on that.
Then, he remembered something.
A phone call with Izaya, where the older man said, “If you don’t want to get dragged in, just don’t identify yourself with the Dollars.”
And just before that, Masaomi had given him a similar warning in the chat room. Don’t act as one of the Dollars for a while.
Perhaps Masaomi had known that this was going to happen.
Even in his confusion, Mikado was nearly certain that this was true.
Masaomi had his own different information network. Perhaps he’d found something about Aoba’s group.
Would that mean that if he gave them an answer as a Dollar, he would be spurning Masaomi’s considerate advice? But wouldn’t that also mean using his friend as an excuse to escape this chaos?
Despite his indecision, Mikado did manage to give the waiting boy an answer to his most recent question—but it was partially following the advice of his friend.
“Well, if I don’t claim to be with the Dollars…then she won’t get dragged in. Simple, right?”
Aoba might be disappointed by such a weak answer, but Mikado didn’t care. He decided that getting beat up by these young hooligans was acceptable if it got him out of the present situation.
That was how pressured he was feeling.
But the boy with the angelic smile would not allow his beloved upperclassman to escape.
“You can’t do that, can you?”
“…Huh?”
“I know you’re not perfect, but you wouldn’t abandon your besieged comrades and pretend to be an ordinary person, would you?”
“…!”
The whisper of the devil, as pure as silk.
“It’s easy to solve the problem. Hand us over to Toramaru as sacrifices. Order us to crush them instead. No need to torture yourself over it.”
He made it sound reassuring, but the suggestion was more of a challenge.
Normally, Mikado would claim that he could never do such a thing and start giving orders to the other Dollars in a way that would ensure no one got hurt.
But in his current state of mind, he hit the brakes before he could get to that idea.
Part of it was the warning from Izaya, whom he trusted. And during that phone call, he had suggested that perhaps Mikado’s true fear was of the Dollars leaving him behind.
Now Mikado suspected that if he exhibited his duty to the group and offered them information and plans, he would only be providing evidence to prove Izaya’s point.
He also worried that acting as one of the Dollars would be a betra
yal of Masaomi’s warning and the sentimental consideration that led him to deliver it.
And most of all, he feared that by admitting that he was inextricably part of the Dollars’ structure and getting involved in this battle, he would most certainly drag Anri and Masaomi into a repeat of what happened with the Yellow Scarves.
Still, if he was going to be pressured into doing something just because he was afraid of Aoba and his gang, he’d prefer to make the decision on his own.
Mikado Ryuugamine was easily swayed by others. But when it came to the team of his own making, even he didn’t understand his own actions sometimes.
Even now, some kind of emotion was swirling deep in his gut.
The same sensation he felt when they faced off against Yagiri Pharmaceuticals was bursting up from inside of him now.
He just didn’t know exactly what that emotion was. And as a result, his confusion continued unabated, plunging him deeper into his quagmire.
“But…even still…”
This is weird. He’s not acting like the normal Mikado, thought Aoba. The first to notice the change in the other boy was the one who caused his confusion in the first place.
The Mikado he knew, once challenged like this, would either refuse their suggestion entirely or deliver some kind of verdict on the matter.
But some odd sense of hesitation within him was holding him back, shackling his feet, and preventing him from making that decision.
Did…someone get to him first?
He didn’t know that Mikado had received a warning from Masaomi Kida, his closest friend and confidant, not to act as one of the Dollars.
He didn’t know that this was not actually Masaomi, either, but someone else using Masaomi’s online handle as a means of manipulating Mikado.
But Aoba could tell.
Izaya Orihara…?
He could sense the presence of the man who used a tiny key to lock Mikado’s mind away.
There was no evidence to support this, only Mikado Ryuugamine’s odd reaction. Of course, human behavior is not perfectly predictable. But Aoba could feel that something was off, not in the sense that it “wasn’t like Mikado,” but more that it “wasn’t like the founder of the Dollars.”
Durarara!!, Vol. 6 Page 4
