Standing there was the boy he’d met just yesterday and was scheduled to meet again in only a few hours.
“Good morning, sir!”
“A…Aoba?”
It was Aoba Kuronuma, the underclassman at school whom he promised to take on a tour around Ikebukuro today.
“What’s up? We’re not supposed to meet for another two hours.”
Huh? Something tickled at the back of Mikado’s head. Did I ever tell Aoba where I live?
“Well, actually, I needed to ask you about something before we met up with Ms. Anri…”
“You could have just called,” Mikado said kindly. “And, uh, who told you my—?”
“It’s about the Dollars,” Aoba interrupted, smiling.
A nasty chill crawled across Mikado’s spine. His face froze. Aoba leaned in closer, beaming angelically.
“It’s a little awkward to just stand around here, so shall we go somewhere else?”
At that point, Mikado realized something was wrong.
Someone was holding the door open. Not Aoba, who was standing in the entryway, and not himself, of course.
A mystery set of fingers was holding the edge of the faded door, visible against the sunlight.
Aoba filled the silence with an eerie suggestion.
“It’s okay if you need time to change. The group can wait.”
Twenty minutes later, abandoned factory, Ikebukuro
In a district at a slight distance from Ikebukuro, where the streets were much lonelier than the shopping area, there was a spot among a line of factories that was particularly vacant.
It was the site of what had once most likely been an ironworks. The gray metal walls were stained with rust in spots, the sign of several years’ passage since the property had been abandoned. There were piles of reddened scrap metal here and there, the machinery that would have processed them entirely dismantled.
For some reason, there was a nearly new motorcycle left in the factory, but its presence was less of an off-putting anomaly than a counterpoint that accented the rusted scenery.
It was a truly desolate locale, empty despite the clutter.
The inside of the dilapidated building rang with the excited chatter of youth.
“Whoa, what’s with the ride?” Aoba wondered. “This wasn’t here yesterday.”
A hefty youth standing next to him muttered, “Maybe someone’s hiding a stolen vehicle?”
The other boy was about as tall as Shizuo. He had tanned skin and tight muscles, the skin of his arms and neck that was visible under the tank top ribboned with tribal tattoos.
He wore a mustache over his menacing features—and certainly didn’t look like a student—but Aoba introduced him to Mikado as a “classmate from middle school.”
There were a large number of people surrounding Mikado now, in fact, and they jeered raucously at Aoba.
“Gross, there’s gonna be roaches and centipedes all over this place. Let’s go find some luxury hotel to use as our hangout spot.”
“You gonna pay for it?”
“Shut up and eat your roaches.”
“You eat roaches?!”
“Hee-hee!”
“How much will you pay me to do it?” “Three hundred yen.” “That’s it?!” “I’m in!” “Really?!”
“All right, let’s go find a cockroach! Get some oil to fry it up!” “You won’t eat it raw?”
“Euurgh!” “Don’t puke!” “But…I just imagined eating a cockroach…”
“Hey, Aoba, can I sock the shit outta these obnoxious clowns?” “Nope.” “Hee-hee!”
They had to be about the same age as Mikado. The assortment of youths in all stripes and shapes crowded around him, walking him toward the back of the factory. But other members of the group, present earlier but now absent, were clearly over twenty years old. They had driven the group to this place in their cars.
Why did I follow them here?
None of it made any sense. It was obvious that he shouldn’t have gone along with it, but it didn’t seem possible to refuse or run away.
At the same time, Mikado felt something eerie about this particular factory.
Wait…I recognize this place, he realized with a start. Oh! I was here…a few months ago…
But before he could travel any further down that line of thought, Aoba seated himself on a nearby pile of metal and looked up at Mikado.
“Last night, you were asking around on the Dollars’ member website about the fight that happened with the people from Saitama, right?”
The fact that Aoba was the only one smiling in his incessantly pleasant way was creeping Mikado out.
If Mikado had rather youthful looks, Aoba was practically a baby face. He didn’t look anything like a high school–age teen, and yet here he was, smiling innocently in the midst of a group of hardened ruffians. Mikado couldn’t help but get goose bumps.
“Y-yeah, I was. I had some concerns…”
“I know what happened. I wanted to explain it to you.”
“Really?!”
For a moment, Mikado forgot the eeriness of the situation, and life returned to his features. Ordinarily, the suggestion that he “knew what happened,” delivered in these circumstances, meant only one thing. But Mikado completely failed to anticipate that inevitability.
To Mikado, Aoba Kuronuma’s appearance, attitude, and position were about the furthest thing from that possibility. So even when it was stated aloud, he was initially unable to understand what the boy was saying.
“That was us.”
“…Huh?”
“We did that,” Aoba admitted, never breaking his smile. “Me and everyone else here… We attacked the people in Saitama, as members of the Dollars.”
“…Huh? What?” Mikado’s lips formed a vacant smile. He wanted to take it for a joke.
But Aoba’s childish, innocent expression delivered only the truth. “Look, you know that gang called Toramaru. The people who were chasing Mr. Kadota’s van and the Black Rider last month.”
“Uh, what? Ah, r-right.”
“We burned a couple of their bikes and hospitalized a good twenty or so of them.”
The menacing tattooed youth added, “To be accurate, you threw Molotovs right into the parking lot where they hung out, Aoba.”
Only when the statement came from someone who actually looked like they could do such things did Mikado finally put everything together.
“…Wha…? But…”
But his sense of reason refused to accept it. He could only flap his lips uselessly and stare at Aoba.
Aoba went on, watching Mikado’s eyes closely, soaking in the older boy’s reaction.
“We are in the Dollars…but we’ve also got another name.”
“…Another…name?”
“Have you ever heard of the Blue Squares?”
May 4, morning, chat room
Bacura has entered the chat.
Bacura: Good morning.
Bacura: Yeah!
Bacura: Wait,
Bacura: Nobody’s here.
Bacura: That figures, it’s morning.
Bacura: Well,
Bacura: It’s been about,
Bacura: A week since the last time I was here.
Bacura: Really sorry that I haven’t been able to pop in and chat more often.
Bacura: I was working,
Bacura: And hanging out all the way up in Tohoku on a love rendezvous with my girl.
Bacura: How’s everyone been?
Bacura: Guess I’ll go look at the backlog to see what everyone’s doing during their vacation time. Yeaaah!
Bacura: Huh,
Bacura: Looks like the log prior to yesterday is just gone.
Bacura: Was there some sort of technical trouble?
Bacura: Anyway,
Bacura: See ya later.
Bacura has left the chat.
The chat room is currently empty.
The chat room is currently empty.
The chat room is curr
ently empty.
.
.
.
Interlude or Prologue C, Aoba Kuronuma
Three years ago, apartment building rooftop, Ikebukuro suburbs
“…The hell do you want? I got my own shit to do, you know?”
The irritated young man glared down at the even younger boy.
The scenery visible from the rooftop was corroded red with sunset, and the man was shielding his eyes from the sunlight coming from behind the boy. The boy’s expression was hidden in shadow, but the hint of a smile could be made out around his mouth.
The young man, Ran Izumii, did not like his little brother, Aoba Izumii.
When he saw the way his brother could be obliging and considerate of others, he couldn’t help but feel an odd sense of irritation inside.
His brother hadn’t done anything to him, and he wasn’t held to be inferior to his brother, but it just seemed like the younger boy was the only one who ever received the affection of those around them.
Parental love, teachers’ marks, even childhood friends—in every respect, his younger brother grew up with more love than he did.
He didn’t particularly desire such a thing now, but he couldn’t avoid feeling irritated whenever he was reminded that Aoba had more than him.
Occasionally, he beat up his brother to show him who was boss, and the younger boy never resisted very hard.
But one night, after he felt he might have gone too far, a fire broke out in Ran’s room. It started up while he was hanging out with friends, and when he came back home, his father broke his nose for it.
It was supposedly caused by a smoldering cigarette.
Fortunately, it didn’t turn into anything worse than a scare—but he didn’t remember smoking before he left for the night.
“I’m really glad you didn’t get hurt,” Aoba said happily, still in elementary school at the time.
Izumii was so overwhelmed by that smile, he wasn’t able to question his brother about what happened.
After that, he distanced himself from his little brother, and after their parents divorced, they moved to separate places. He heard that his brother filed to have his last name changed to their mother’s maiden name, but Ran didn’t really care.
All he cared about was staying away from his obnoxious, irritating brother.
Ran was a well-known street thug in the neighborhood; if the situation was going to creep him out that much, he figured he was best off avoiding it.
But now, that brother was coming to him with a serious discussion, saying, “I want some advice.”
Up on the rooftop, Izumii was scornful of his younger brother but also slightly apprehensive.
He was a fairly practiced fighter. He hadn’t hit Aoba in years, but if this scrawny kid here tried to attack, he knew he could wipe the floor with him. With that reassurance in mind, Izumii grew more confident, relaxed.
Aoba smiled and said, “Actually, I want to ask you a favor.”
“What? I got no money to lend you.”
“No, it’s not that… See, you’re famous at schools around the area, right?”
“Huh? The hell you talkin’ about?” the older brother asked.
The younger explained, “Well, I made a silly little gang with some friends of mine…”
“A gang? Like what? A little study group?”
“At first, it wasn’t meant to be much more than that… But then weirder people started making their way into the group… Older ones. Even some adults, by this point.”
Ran was getting irritated that his brother was not getting to the point. But what Aoba said next changed his expression immediately.
“Do you know a Horada and Higa from No. 3 Public Middle School?”
“Wha…?”
He knew those names. They were famous troublemakers in his social circles. Horada had been kicked out of high school, he’d heard, so he never expected to hear the name come from his goody-two-shoes brother’s mouth.
“I’ve never actually met them myself…but they’re members of the gang, too.”
“…Huh?”
Perhaps he should have laughed it off as a stupid joke. But he couldn’t. It made no sense for Aoba to bring up Horada if he wanted it to be funny.
“Things are getting out of hand… I’m worried that if Horada and these adults find out that I’m actually the central figure of the gang, they might do something to mess with me… I’m scared.”
He’s lying, Ran decided immediately.
Aoba was lying. They were distant, but they were still brothers. He could tell things like that. But he wasn’t able to criticize his brother for it.
The story about the gang wasn’t a lie.
The story about Horada’s kind wasn’t a lie.
It was the part about things being “out of hand” that Aoba was lying about.
So Ran lied, too. He boasted to his brother. He uttered empty words meant to convince himself of his own strength on parched breath.
“Man, you’re pathetic. So…what do you want me to do? Huh?”
“I’m too scared to run the gang anymore. I don’t care about it…so I want you to be the leader of my gang now.”
“…”
It felt like he might end up being used. But there was no turning back now. If he backed down, he would never again stand above his brother in the pecking order.
With this realization swirling inside of him, he decided that he had to find a way to use his brother instead.
“…Does this gang have a name?”
Aoba flashed an innocent smile and happily, so happily answered.
“Yeah, the name came from my friend.”
“We’re called the Blue Squares.”
A year later
Even as they battled with another gang called the Yellow Scarves, Aoba was quiet.
Likewise, his closest companions stayed put, and out of the pride of being the older brother, Ran never asked Aoba for help.
Even when he learned that the police arrested his brother, Aoba said nothing.
And when the Blue Squares fought with the Awakusu-kai and Shizuo Heiwajima, pushing their continued existence to the brink of peril, the young teen merely looked on coldly and said one word.
“…Useless.”
Several years later, late April, Saitama
“You sure you want this to be the Dollars, Aoba?” asked a boy with a spray can standing in front of a burning motorcycle.
“Yeah. Do it quick before anyone comes,” Aoba said. He wore a distant, cold look that he never showed people like Mikado.
They were in a parking garage, late at night. There were no businesses open at this hour and no people passing by at all.
The boy’s appearance did not fit the scene surrounding him. There were several motorcycles on fire; their owners sprawled unconscious on the asphalt.
On a nearby wall illuminated by the light of the fires, there was a logo of a sexy woman riding on a tiger that read TORAMARU. The piece would have been an excellent work of art if painted on a proper canvas, but the boy with the can was mercilessly spraying over it with black paint.
Aoba glanced at his work and then spoke to the crowd of youths around him.
“I have no intention of playing up the Blue Squares’ name.”
“After you gave ’em to your big brother and turned him loose?” a companion jeered.
Aoba smirked. “The name Blue Squares came from a guy named Yatsufusa, anyway.”
“Oh yeah, what was that supposed to mean, anyway?” “Hee-hee!”
“Yatsufusa said that we were like a bunch of sharks stranded in the shallows. Each of us was like a little shark stuck in a tiny blue square of territory, desperately protecting it from the others. That’s where the name came from,” Aoba said. Some of his companions nodded, others looked around in confusion, and some just laughed.
“What does that mean…?” “Hit the books!”
“Are you sure he wasn’t actually making fun
of us, Aoba?”
“Hee-hee!” “Stupid Yacchi.” “Yeah, that is clearly an insult.”
“You might be right. But I kind of like it,” Aoba said, his smile warm amid the cold laughter of his friends—but lit by the fires of burning motorcycles, that only made him look creepy.
One of the boys, who were entirely unaffected by the sight, looked around and said, “Speaking of which, where did our name provider go?”
“Yatsufusa’s out sick. Like always, remember?”
“Yeah, he’s got terrible health.”
“Hang on! Mitsukuri’s tag is spelled ‘Dalars’ instead.”
“Someone stop him.” “Aw, who cares.” “Hee-hee!”
“So what do we do about the Dollars, anyway, Aoba?”
Aoba answered the raucous crowd. “The biggest sharks get stuck in the shallows and can’t swim out. They drown.”
From the perspective of his companions, he turned into a shadow against the backdrop of flame. But even without seeing his face, they all knew that he wore a true, giddy smile.
“In order to fully enjoy our youth, we need the great open sea that is the Dollars.”
“And why go all the way to Saitama to pick a fight?”
“…The Dollars are wide but shallow. The distance they span might be impressive…”
“But the deeper the water, the easier it is for a shark to swim. Isn’t that right?”
Intermediate Chapter
May 4, morning, apartment in Shinjuku
“…”
Shizuo Heiwajima stood in front of a door, clenching a fist in irritation.
Blood dripped from between his fingers. The pressure being squeezed into them was unimaginable.
“Son of a…! What a waste of my time!” he fumed, veins popping out on his forehead. If anyone had heard him, they would surely come to the conclusion that his lungs were connected directly to hell, such was the volcanic fury of his tirade.
It was directed at a piece of paper taped to the door.
WE’VE MOVED OFFICES! OUR NEW ADDRESS IS…
The place where Izaya’s home/office had been was now completely empty.
The sign would not still be up if a new tenant had moved into the place already. Shizuo was possessed with the urge to kick down the door and destroy everything inside, but the realization that this would only hurt the owner of the property was just barely enough to stifle the rage in his throat.
Durarara!!, Vol. 5 Page 13
