Mai: Yay!
Sharo: Damn, that’s one hell of an obstruction of business for Tokyo Tower!
Sharo: But some folks are saying the stalker is one of the Dollars, right?
Sharo: Wouldn’t the Dollars stick up for that stalker, knowing he’s one of their own?
Kid: I can’t imagine that. The Dollars are not as cohesive and structured as an actual gang.
Kid: The stalker coincidentally having a relative in the Dollars, maybe. But the Dollars as a whole would never rise up to protect him. They say there are middle schoolers, housewives, and active police officers among the ranks, after all.
Sharo: Man, the Dollars sure are a weird group, aren’t they?
Sharo: I hear rumors about a leader, though.
Kid: Oh? I thought there wasn’t supposed to be a leader.
Kuru: I also was under the impression that there is no vertical hierarchy in the Dollars…
Mai: Are you a liar?
Sharo: I’m not lying! It’s a story this guy named Horada was spreading in prison.
Sharo: Oh, crap.
Sharo: I didn’t mean to share anyone’s real name. Can I delete that?
Sharo: Oh, whatever. He’s in prison, anyway.
Kid: Please tell us more.
Sharo: Okay, so this…Mr. H., shall we call him?
Sharo: I happen to know many ruffians and thugs, which is how I heard this story…but this fellow whose name begins with H and ends with -rada was boasting in prison that he knew who runs the Dollars. He just won’t say any actual names.
Sharo: In fact, he said that if he ever got out, he’d use that info to blackmail the leader. Of course, you wouldn’t expect anyone to believe such a rumor if they knew it came from a guy fresh outta the slammer.
Kuru: You seem to know many menacing types.
Sharo: It’s funny, because I myself am utterly impeccable of character.
Kuru: You’re a liar.
Sharo: Hey!
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Chapter 3: Daydreams & Extremes @ Past & Present
Once, she had a dream.
A dream of giving shape to fantasy with her own hands.
Ruri Hijiribe was born in a small town in the mountains of the Kanto region of Japan.
It was a town full of old families hailing from the Meiji era, and her house was bigger than most.
But her father and grandfather’s business failed, and the house burned down for unknown reasons. Then her mother went missing. To this day, the only thing standing where her home had once been was charred wooden remains.
She had lost a place to come home to.
But she still had a dream.
Those terrifyingly powerful monsters of the silver screen that overwhelmed humanity.
She’d always been drawn to these freakish abnormalities from a very young age.
But thinking back on it now, perhaps she’d felt the same admiration for her grandmother.
“Say, Ruri. What brought you down this path?” asked her teacher, Tenjin Zakuroya, after she had started her career as a makeup artist. When he had first hired her, Tenjin was lax enough to claim that it was because she was cute—but she proved her skill at the job, and despite the many inappropriate statements he made about her, he had never, ever crossed the line into action.
This question came during the first time she created a monster mask with her own hands. It was a total creation of her imagination, and something about it must have struck him. Tenjin had stared at the freakish mask before turning to her to ask that question.
“Well,” she began, but she stopped to think about it because she’d never been asked that before. She decided to be open and honest.
She spoke of the heavy atmosphere that pervaded her famous home, the thirst for pure destruction as a result of that oppression, and the admiration for those monsters who symbolized that urge.
She felt blessed by her ability to create monsters on her own. And lastly, she felt hope that the monsters would be able to do what she could not.
Ruri thought that was all there was to it but found that her heart still wanted to spill forth.
“…Plus, my grandmother might be part of it.”
The very first time she told another person what was truly in her heart was also the first time she admitted a feeling she’d never been able to put into words before.
The Hijiribe household crumbled into dust after the business failure of her grandfather and father—but both of them were from outside the family, men who married Hijiribe women and were brought inside.
Her grandfather regretted destroying their fortune, but afterward, he seemed to have a terrible weight off his shoulders and was actually kind to Ruri for once. Before then, he’d been yet another person putting silent pressure on her, but once the family’s fortunes were laid low, he started telling her about her grandmother.
“You look a lot like your grandma.”
From that point, he talked about how much he loved his wife, where they traveled, what they talked about, what they dreamed about, and so on.
Thinking back on this now, Ruri thought there were a number of odd aspects to his stories.
For all the lovey-dovey talk, he never once spoke of how they actually met and fell in love.
For some reason, the other people in the town seemed afraid of her.
And most importantly, Ruri did not know what her grandmother actually looked like.
There were plenty of photos of him around the house. But there wasn’t a single bit of physical evidence of her grandmother, and she heard nothing about a divorce or even her death in the past.
And she was never seen around the house in any form.
Her father said, “She probably got tired of Father and left him.”
Her mother just smiled and said, “If you’re a good girl, maybe you’ll meet her someday.”
And then, one day, the kids in town told her, “I know your secret! Your grandma’s a monster!”
The woman in her grandfather’s stories seemed like the furthest thing from the word monster. For all that Ruri knew, her grandmother was a human being in the warmest sense—someone who was kind to all, never lost her smile, and gently cared for her thoughtless husband.
But the children chanted that she was a monster and that as her grandchild, Ruri had to be a monster, too.
And this accusation—coming completely out of the blue—delighted her.
She had no idea what kind of monster she was supposed to be.
She had no idea why they said her grandmother was a monster.
But while she made a show of being upset, she was pleased on the inside.
She even felt a sense of security, like being enveloped in a warm blanket.
Those incarnations of destruction she saw on the TV screen, those freakish monsters who wielded the freedom of obliteration—now she was closer to them than before, kindling a special kind of deep-down admiration for her missing grandmother.
The woman her grandfather loved for her endless kindness was reviled and feared by the townsfolk as a monster.
It was a contrast of two very opposing images, neither of which had any physical form.
So Ruri felt a kind of reverence for this grandmother without a photograph.
She was the bridge between Ruri and the incarnations of destruction and freedom, the monsters Ruri could never be—the link between fantasy and reality.
“I see, I see, that makes sense,” her teacher said, nodding as he reached out to touch her mask creation. “So that’s why it seems so warm and inviting for being a monster. It all adds up. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll be able to create your grandmother’s face, the one you’ve never seen.”
It was a rather abstract expression to use, she thought. Tenjin Zakuroya continued, “I’m going to be doing some work on a movie with a rather interesting title: Carmilla Saizou. The kid playing the lead is an interesting guy, too. Very col
d, and yet he burns, the son of a bitch.”
Again, it was strangely abstract and hard to grasp what he meant. Then he turned to Ruri and said, “You do the kid’s makeup. Make him a warm, inviting vampire.”
Ultimately, Ruri’s work on Vampire Ninja Carmilla Saizou was recognized by the world at large. The World Film Village Federation listed her among the list of “100 Juiciest SF Makeup Artists,” and her fame began to grow along with her master’s.
This event changed her fate again.
“It’s nice to meet you. I am Kujiragi from Yodogiri Shining Corporation.”
It was soon afterward that the businesswoman with the sharp suit and expensive glasses showed up.
The woman named Kujiragi took Ruri to a very fancy black limousine, inside of which an elderly gentleman waited.
“It’s a pleasure. My name is Jinnai Yodogiri.”
When the elderly man was done with the introductions and formalities, he presented Ruri with a new path in life.
“One of my talent scouts came to me, breathless, carrying your photo. It was from an article in a film magazine about upcoming special effects makeup artists. I had a glint of intuition.”
Ruri, whose own intuition did not tell her why she was in this limousine, waited for the explanation with curiosity.
Would you believe it? After seeing her photo, Yodogiri and his company wanted her to be a model.
At first, she refused—her intuition couldn’t grasp the point. She wasn’t meant to be a model, of course.
But he found the chink in her mental armor and drove one specific word into it.
“The monsters you create are truly special.
“How would you like to be a monster of an idol and take flight to challenge the whole world?”
“…!”
She squeaked a silent breath and felt her entire body twitch.
“……?”
Then she realized that she had fallen asleep in her seat and drifted into a dream.
“Are you all right?” asked Yuuhei, who was watching her closely from the seat next to hers.
Suddenly, she noticed Shinra, Shizuo, Celty, and Anri all staring at her with concern.
“…Oh…um…I’m so sorry… Here I am, imposing on you all, and I can’t even get through this important conversation without…”
“No one’s blaming you,” Yuuhei said. “You haven’t had a good night’s sleep in days.”
Shinra grinned. “In fact, it wasn’t an important conversation at all. When you started nodding off, I was just launching into a lecture about the lexicological roots of a number of idiomatic phrases. Of course you got sleepy! Oh—speaking of lexicology, perhaps you were engaging in a bit of hypnopedia: That would be sleep- learning!”
“Was that supposed to be clever?”
“Oh, please, Celty. Don’t hold back—give it a good chuckle like you know you want to.”
“You get your sense of humor from your dad, Shinra. And it’s just as funny as if it came through a gas mask,” Celty announced, annoyed.
Shinra acted devastated by this statement, falling over the table and muttering curses at his father under his breath.
Ruri watched this pleasant picture unfold and recalled the next part of the scene she’d been dreaming.
At Yodogiri’s insistence, she started a side job as a model.
Her dream had taken a twist.
It was twisted for her.
But her dream was still her dream.
She’d gone into the business of creating monsters when she realized that being one was impossible—but then she began to think that being a “monster” as an idol, a person who exerted incredible influence on her surroundings, might bring her closer to her grandmother anyway.
If she’d known just a bit more about the world, she might have realized that show business wasn’t quite as simple as that.
But although she’d been naive, Ruri did not take show business for granted. It was Yodogiri’s clever words that rattled her and shifted her position.
At first, she felt like she was doing a good job.
In the shift from a model to an idol singer, she became popular enough to easily sell out a concert hall for her events.
There were so many people who cheered her on that she nearly forgot her dream for a time.
She felt like she’d gained some kind of powerful force at her disposal, without having to become a monster. While she was closer to her grandmother, who was both feared and beloved, the monsters of her dreams steadily began to fade, replaced by gratitude to Yodogiri for bringing her to this place in life.
But Yodogiri himself did not forget about the monster that slumbered within her.
For Yodogiri himself knew that Ruri Hijiribe truly had the blood of a monster in her veins.
“By the way, have you had any contact from your relatives?”
“? No…”
Her father and grandfather had been against her show business career, so they never sent outward displays of support. Yodogiri knew that, too, so why would he ask?
Sensing her suspicion, Ruri Hijiribe’s employer smiled gently and explained, “No, I’m aware of your father. I’m speaking of your mother or grandmother.”
“Uh…no…”
“Please, don’t be upset. I’m just saying, your mother or grandmother could be watching you sing on TV. And if so, they might attempt to reach out to you, that’s all. Things like that have happened with our company’s talent before, so I thought I’d ask.”
“Oh, I see…,” she replied, then considered the matter.
Yes, she’d told Yodogiri that her mother had left. But she’d never once mentioned her grandmother to him.
Maybe Master Zakuroya told him, she decided, not sensing anything deeper to Yodogiri’s question at the time.
But that conclusion was very quickly dispelled.
As she envisioned the face of her special effects teacher for the first time in ages, Yodogiri smiled and asked, “Oh, there are some people I want you to meet in a little while—is that all right?”
“Huh?”
“We have a friendly get-together with a number of business folks who frequently sponsor TV dramas, including the president of Adabashi Life Insurance. Kujiragi can fill you in on the finer details.”
“Okay…,” Ruri replied, a bit taken aback by the suddenness of it.
But when the boss of her company was bowing to her and saying, “I’m sorry to throw this at you when times are so busy. Feel free to back out if you really can’t make it,” she felt completely obliged to accept the plans.
Without knowing what would happen at the “friendly get-together.”
Without knowing that the day’s events would cause her monster blood to awaken…
“Mewww.”
An adorable little sound from Ruri’s feet roused her from those despicable memories.
She came to her senses and looked into the face of the kitten, which had climbed down from Anri’s chest and wandered to Ruri’s side.
“Mewww?” it wondered, head tilted as if to ask why she wouldn’t play with it. Ruri disengaged her mind from the distant past and gave the creature a friendly smile.
Yuuhei Hanejima’s pet cat was named Yuigadokusonmaru, or “Mr. Egocentric.” Yet, at odds with the ridiculous name, the kitten was essentially the very personification of cuteness.
Dokusonmaru and Yuuhei had done a lot of heavy lifting in easing the pain of the scars in Ruri’s mind. It seemed strange that a girl who dreamed of being a monster would find solace in a kitten, she thought, and then turned to the topic of her current problems, not her past ones.
…I can handle my own problems if it’s just me. I can take care of a simple stalker on my own…and if I can’t—well, then it’s just me who suffers.
In fact, given the strength of the serial killer Hollywood who dwelled within her, she could dispatch a single stalker without breaking a sweat.
But she couldn’t take solace in that. She wasn’t a
lone anymore—she had other things to protect.
If trouble ever came to Yuuhei and Dokusonmaru…
She harbored an inhuman power within herself. A monster known as Hollywood who had claimed several victims already.
Even knowing it was hypocritical of her, she set aside the matter of her own monster crimes to pray that no one she cared about would become a victim of this stalker.
If anyone was going to be a victim, let it be her alone.
All the kindhearted monster could do was pray—but to what God, she did not know.
And yet…
The stalker had his own twisted love for Ruri Hijiribe.
For in his love, he knew that she possessed a kind and caring heart.
And thus, he also knew just the right way to break it…
A few hours later, Kawagoe Highway, Ikebukuro
Adabashi walked through the night.
Slowly but surely along a path next to the national route.
But he was not walking to his destination. He had already arrived there.
On the rooftop of the building across the street from Shinra’s apartment, Adabashi continued a long, solitary walk. He paced back and forth endlessly along a stretch of about three hundred feet.
“…”
With each step, he snapped his teeth together.
Click, click, as if counting up some significant activity.
He had been doing this for hours, walking back and forth near the lip of the rooftop, watching the building across the street, the entrance of Shinra and Celty’s apartment, all the while, as relentless and mechanical as a windup toy.
At times he pulled out a cell phone and engaged in communications with it, but he never stopped walking or clicking his teeth, no matter what.
Just when the sky to the east was starting to get lighter, a man and woman left Shinra’s apartment, followed moments later by a man in a bartender’s outfit.
Durarara!!, Vol. 8 Page 9
