Shiki paused for a breath, then met Izaya’s eyes through the rearview mirror. “Our style is more to demand tribute from unaffiliated gambling operations happening within our turf, especially when they’re engaged in the more illegal stuff. And the problem is, we can’t figure out where these people are working from.”
“You can’t?”
“We’ve heard rumors for a while about a secret members-only casino. At first, most of us ignored it as an idle rumor. But after a while, we started losing more and more customers from both the tribute-paying operations and our own direct gambling rings, so…”
“I see… I’m willing to hear more about this.”
According to Shiki’s explanation, the recent influx of believability in the Amphisbaena rumor came from an accidental leak of information from a frequent customer at one of the shady loan offices that the Awakusu-kai propped up. They put the screws on the guy and forced him to show them where the place was—only to find that it was merely a party space for rent. At the time they showed up, the place was holding an event hosted by a wedding planner.
They tried threatening the customer again, but he seemed baffled by the whole thing. The location where the casino set up had its own members mailing list, but the only things it mentioned were party events and nothing that identified the place as a gambling establishment.
Ordinarily, the building’s owners would never allow a client such rental space for gambling, but according to the man, this exclusive club didn’t allow you to cash your chips or even buy them with money in the first place.
“Ahh. So the money exchange happens somewhere else. Sounds just like one of the prize exchange businesses that pachinko parlors use to complete the loop,” Izaya said, a thin smile on his lips.
Shiki remained stone-faced. “There’s no exchange of chips at all, apparently. Everything is managed through smart cards. To the manager of the party space, it looks like they’re just playing some kind of tabletop video game event without any money involved.”
“Indeed.”
“If the police were handling this, they could just follow the message trail from the members, but for us to attempt the same thing, it’d be much trickier. They use some foreign servers in the process, and this isn’t a big enough deal for us to make contact with the local folks in our line of work overseas to handle,” Shiki explained with a little shrug, though his voice was still as sharp and hard as ever.
Izaya was not one to be cowed by intimidation, however. “Based on what you’re saying, it sounds like a pretty bold operation or at least a reckless one. Gambling electronically without physical chips? Anyone could raise a fuss any time they lose, claiming that the numbers were manipulated. ‘I don’t owe you this much,’ and so on.”
“Precisely. But I suppose they’ve got some system to manage that… Amphisbaena’s methods are extremely risky in every facet of their operation. They’re not interested in mitigating their risks walking the tightrope; if anything, it appears as though they’re not even aware how far there is to fall.”
“And you want to smack them down to earth,” Izaya said, with his biggest smile yet.
Shiki ignored him. “The guy we got this initial info from hasn’t received any contact from their mailing list since. I find that strange, as if they somehow knew we were aware of them and just up and vanished. So now we’ve got to switch tactics.”
“And so you turned to an outside freelancer like me. Very convenient, if you need to cut me loose.”
“If this was just an issue within our own turf, we wouldn’t need to go to such lengths. But when the rumors get around to the backyards of other Medei-gumi groups, the situation changes somewhat. At the very least, we’ve got to figure out if some other operation is backing these guys. Otherwise, all the local groups will fall into suspicion and backbiting.”
He paused, then exhaled.
“In other words, I want you to get the scoop on these guys.”
A few minutes earlier, Tokyo, on the street
“Hang on. Let’s talk this over.”
The message hovered in the palm of a figure wearing an all-black riding suit. Technically, on the screen of a PDA in said palm.
The rider sat atop a motorcycle with no headlight, no plates, and a thick black coloring that, like the rider’s suit, practically absorbed the light. Even the frame and wheels were entirely black, making the whole thing look like the shadow of a bike that somehow turned three-dimensional.
But in contrast to the abnormal, almost mystical appearance of this motorcycle, the people standing before it couldn’t have been more of a slap in the face from reality.
“Ah. You want to give up and call a lawyer now?”
Standing at the head of the group of motorcycle cops was a man who grinned down at the rider with predatory satisfaction. The rider in black shivered and typed another message into the PDA.
“F-from what I learned, within Tokyo limits, even when horses are treated as light vehicles, they’re not obligated to have lights on. And under the law entry for headlights, it says, ‘Horses and cows are excepted.’”
“Damn…you got me.”
“I got you…? You…you dirty cop! This is tyranny! False charges! You’re a disgrace to your profession!” accused the rider, suddenly all indignant fury.
The leader of the police group, Kinnosuke Kuzuhara, sneered. “Oh, so you’re going to keep claiming that thing’s a horse?”
“I’m glad you see things my way.”
Maybe this would actually work out, the rider thought with relief.
Kuzuhara gripped the handlebars of his vehicle and said, “And you’ve been riding this ‘horse,’ which we’ll classify as a light vehicle for the purposes of this argument, the same way that you would in traffic as a motorcycle?”
“Uh.”
“How many of the differences in traffic rules for light vehicles and two-wheeled vehicles can you name for me?”
“Umm…well………”
More and more ellipses filled the rider’s PDA display, a sure indication of hesitation.
“Can you at least see that sign there?” Kuzuhara asked, pointing at a traffic sign with a 20 on it, indicating the speed limit in miles per hour. “Did you know that even a bicycle is required to follow the posted speed limit? And did you know that you were well over the limit when you were trying to get away from us just now?”
“…?!”
“You’ve got a lotta nerve, ignoring my commands to stop for a full five minutes. So let’s see some identifi— Ah! Hey!”
Without so much as a rumble of engine noise, the black motorcycle and its rider shot forward and peeled away.
Despite the eeriness of its totally silent progress, the traffic cops raced after it without hesitation, protecting the public streets of the nation’s capital with aplomb.
Even if their target was an inhuman monster.
Celty Sturluson was not human.
She was a type of fairy commonly known as a dullahan, found from Scotland to Ireland: a being who visits the homes of those close to death to inform them of their impending passing.
The dullahan carried its own severed head under its arm, rode on a two-wheeled carriage called a Coiste Bodhar that was pulled by a headless horse, and approached the homes of the soon to die. Anyone foolish enough to open the door was drenched with a basin full of blood. Thus the dullahan, like the banshee, made its name as a herald of ill fortune throughout European folklore.
One theory claimed that the dullahan bore a strong resemblance to the Norse Valkyrie, but Celty had no way of knowing if this was true.
It wasn’t that she didn’t know. More accurately, she just couldn’t remember.
Someone back in her homeland had stolen her head, and she’d lost the memories of what she was. It was by following the faint trail of her head that she had come here to Ikebukuro.
Now with a motorcycle instead of a headless horse and a riding suit instead of armor, Celty had wandered the streets
of this neighborhood for decades.
But ultimately, she had not succeeded at retrieving her head, and her memories were still lost.
However, Celty now knew who had stolen her head.
She even knew who was preventing her from finding it.
But that also meant she didn’t know where it was.
And she was fine with that.
So long as she could live with those human beings whom she loved and those who accepted her, she could happily go on the way she was now.
She was a headless woman who let her actions speak for her missing face, someone who held this strong, secret conviction for happiness within her heart.
That was Celty Sturluson in a nutshell.
Tokyo, luxury sedan interior
This amalgamation of the abnormal, the Black Rider, shot past the car in which Izaya and Shiki sat.
Izaya watched the pack of biker cops race after her and grinned happily. “Look how hard the police’re working to protect us all. I feel safe in Tokyo today.”
It almost sounded like a taunt in the direction of Shiki, who was a yakuza lieutenant, but he didn’t appear bothered by it. Though he didn’t go out of his way to agree with it, either.
“Ever since that particular officer showed up, it’s been much more difficult to hire that courier.”
“Kinnosuke Kuzuhara. I would assume that the name Kuzuhara is familiar to you folks.”
“…”
“Who was it in the police’s anti-yakuza task force? Yumeji Kuzuhara? I believe it was because of him that Mr. Kine ended up kicked out of the Awakusu-kai—”
Shiki cut him off midsentence. “Curiosity killed the snake, informant.”
For the first time, Shiki spoke not with detached civility but with the direct bluntness of one at least a dozen years older than the listener. But there was no anger in his voice—if anything, Shiki was smiling. Still, his words were heavy, sharp—dangerous.
Izaya remained as aloof and natural as ever in the face of the thick, overbearing menace across from him. “Oh, I think you mean cat, Mr. Shiki,” he prodded.
“In the West, they say a cat has nine lives…but the snake is a symbol of immortality and eternal rebirth, isn’t it? Seems fitting for you, the way you can get beaten and stabbed and just shrug off a layer of skin before coming back.”
“…You’re better read than I would have expected, Mr. Shiki,” Izaya sniped. “Do you enjoy manga?”
Shiki ignored him. “I don’t care about your philosophies. The only thing we need to know is whether you ingest the lesson or if you keep it on your tongue until you spit it out. That’s all.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Curiosity might kill the cat after nine tries, but unnecessary curiosity will require a slightly more elaborate punishment, informant.”
“…”
A brief instant of silence.
“Now let’s return to the topic of the job,” Shiki said mechanically, as if his brief foray into poetics had never happened. “There is one piece of information we have gleaned about Amphisbaena already.”
“Which is?”
“Are you familiar with our guy Akabayashi?” Shiki asked. Akabayashi was a particularly combat-minded lieutenant in the Awakusu-kai.
“Yes, he’s the one who sponsors Jan-Jaka-Jan, isn’t he? From what I hear, for being such a hard-liner, he’s really softened his tune lately.”
“You never know; he could just be hiding his claws. And surely a man who makes his living collecting information wouldn’t be naive enough to expect that softness equates to safety.”
“Good point. So…what is it about Mr. Akabayashi?” Izaya wondered, his eyes glinting with the exact type of unnecessary curiosity that Shiki had just warned him about.
“While you were out of the picture following your stabbing, he had a bit of a tussle with the younger folk. Some stupid college kids cooking up their own homemade drugs and selling them. Akabayashi managed to stomp them flat, but we still haven’t caught whoever was putting them up to this in the first place.”
“And you think it was Amphisbaena who was supplying them?” Izaya asked, putting two and two together. But Shiki’s answer was not what he expected.
“No…but it’s possible that whoever it is, they’re beefing with Amphisbaena.”
“Oh?”
“We caught one of the low-level dealers. He claimed he was told to search for Amphisbaena by the guys in charge. Though we have no idea how much they actually know about the little snakes, either.”
“I see. And is researching this dealing operation part of the job?” Izaya asked.
It was a perfectly reasonable question, but Shiki just shook his head and handed Izaya an envelope. The younger man took it, looked inside to confirm the presence of multiple Yukichi Fukuzawas looking back at him from their ten thousand–yen bills, then stuffed it into his summer coat pocket.
Once Shiki was satisfied that the other man had accepted the money, he answered the question.
“We are looking into the drug operation through a different avenue, so it’s not necessary to focus on them. However, if it gets out that we’re feeling for Amphisbaena, that might cause this other group to fall under scrutiny, too. Please be careful about that possibility.”
Izaya looked away, a sign that he wasn’t interested in any further talk—until another question occurred to him.
“And what’s that other avenue, by the way?”
The only response he got was Shiki’s sharp, heavy grin. “What did I just tell you about unnecessary curiosity?”
“Point taken. I won’t ask you about it, and if I decide I want to know, I’ll do that on my own.”
“…”
“I’d rather not be turned into grilled snake just yet, after all.”
A few minutes later, the car arrived at its destination in Ikebukuro. Izaya stuck his right hand into his coat pocket and reached for the door handle with his left.
“Normally, you drop me off at the same spot where you pick me up, but not this time,” the young man said boldly.
The Awakusu-kai lieutenant didn’t bat an eye. “Oh, the reason for that is simple. I’m only dropping you off here since I have an errand to run.”
“?”
Izaya opened the door and got out, wondering what he meant by that.
There was a girl standing there.
“…”
She was at least a dozen years younger than him.
Taking a moment, Izaya noticed where the car had stopped.
There was a large sign reading RAKUEI GYM, and the building under it was bustling with the sounds of chants and slapping sandbags.
Over his shoulder, Izaya heard Shiki say, “I’m just picking up the boss’s daughter while I’m here.”
He looked down at the girl before him, who had her dogi uniform rolled up and slung over her back. He recognized her.
Akane Awakusu.
The girl who once attempted to kill Shizuo Heiwajima, due to Izaya’s own plotting.
Shiki glared back and forth between Akane’s stunned features and Izaya’s back. The Awakusu yakuza squeezed the steering wheel and swallowed.
But the only recognition that passed between the two of them fell on Izaya’s side.
“Hi there, nice to meet you! You must be Akane Awakusu, huh?” he said, as if it were perfectly ordinary for someone to be on a first-name basis with the daughter of a yakuza boss.
“Huh? Er, um…yes!” the girl said, initially startled, then suspicious. But as soon as she noticed Shiki in the car behind Izaya, relief came over her features.
Shiki asked the girl, “Is this the first time you’ve met him, miss?”
“Yes. Um, I’m Akane Awakusu. Nice to meet you!” she said, a bit nervous but without any hint of deception. It was the kind of nerves some people would have upon meeting a stranger, nothing else.
Shiki examined her expression closely, then told Izaya, “Well, remember our work arrangement.”
“Indeed. I should get on that now.”
As Izaya left, he brushed Akane’s head. She looked at the stranger’s face, all curious confusion, then promptly forgot about him as she headed into the car.
Got to be careful around Shiki. He’s too sharp, thought Izaya once the car had rolled away. It’s a damn good thing I never messed with Akane in person.
He thought of how he had manipulated Akane to make her want to kill Shizuo, and he grinned to himself. Then there was that poor sap who had used the name Izaya to make contact with Akane on his orders. His grin grew into a beaming smile.
The same way a cat person might beam at the sight of kittens playing.
Chat room
.
.
.
The chat room is currently empty.
The chat room is currently empty.
The chat room is currently empty.
100% Pure Water has entered the chat.
100% Pure Water: Yep, nobody’s around during the day!
100% Pure Water: I suppose everyone must be busy!
100% Pure Water: I feel kind of lonely…
100% Pure Water: Actually, which members are the originals? Kanra, Setton, TarouTanaka, Bacura, Saika, Kuru, and Mai?
100% Pure Water: How is it that all of you came to know each other?
100% Pure Water: Are you friends in real life or just online acquaintances? I’m curious.
100% Pure Water: I came on Kuru’s invitation, so I’m kind of like IRL friends with Kuru and Mai, but even they won’t tell me who everyone is. Maybe they don’t actually know anyone here.
Bacura has entered the chat.
Bacura: The call went out, and here I am.
100% Pure Water: Whoa! Wild, were you spying on the place?
Bacura: Where there are girls,
Bacura: There are guys checking them out. Such is the privilege of Team Boys!
100% Pure Water: Oh, geez, are you sure I’m a girl? I could just be playing one online!
Bacura: Actually,
Durarara!!, Vol. 9 Page 2
