More than when Celty took him to the old factory, and he saw Masaomi bruised and scarred.
More than when they escaped from the motorcycle gang in Kadota’s van.
More than when Aoba and his friends exposed his secret identity.
More than when he was attacked by Ruri Hijiribe’s stalker, that being of pure violence.
The terror he felt in this moment far surpassed anything that had come before it.
An unfamiliar man coming out of nowhere called his name. That was all. That was what caused Mikado’s body to scream danger alarms of a kind he’d never heard before.
Because the man’s voice was like countless serpents, tearing at the skin of his body and wriggling through his veins to strangle his entire physical form.
I’m going to die. This is bad. What is? I don’t know. But I’ll die.
Why? No. I don’t want to die. This is bad.
Who is he? It’s dangerous. I’ll die. Gotta run.
Who? Oh God. He’ll kill me. I don’t want to die.
There are still things for me to do. Oh no.
I don’t wanna die oh no oh no oh no oh no I don’t want to die here I want to live I want to run away I want to escape I need to get away but I can’t but I have to stay here but I can’t afford to die I have to do something do something do something something something something—
He didn’t even know why he sensed death or why he felt so afraid. All he knew was that his instincts were screaming at him.
“…! …Ah…”
But the extreme tension sucked all the moisture out of Mikado’s mouth, leaving him unable to speak properly. Instead, sweat oozed out of every pore, and his jaw flapped uselessly—until the man rapped his cane against the asphalt.
The crisp sound struck Mikado’s eardrums, and the mysterious man gave him a lilting grin. Unlike just a moment ago, there was no feeling of suffocation in the air.
“…? Oh, uh…”
Realizing he was free from his bondage, Mikado examined the other fellow again. The man in sunglasses snatched up the cane and tapped it over his own shoulder. “Well, I’m relieved.”
“?”
“At least you’re able to freak out when the right signals are sent.” He chuckled and took a step closer. “If you were the kind of crazy asshole who looks unaffected when shit gets real, I’d be forced to do something about it.”
This threat finally seemed to put things into a perspective the Blue Squares could understand. They sauntered forward.
“Hey, what was that, old man?”
“Don’t you know we rented out the place?”
Several of them converged on him, and one even reached out to grab his shirt.
“Make them stop, right this instant,” Celty typed into her PDA and showed it to Mikado.
“Huh?” he grunted—right as the boys surrounding the man began to fly into the air, one after the other. Of course, they weren’t doing this of their own accord.
“?!”
Neither the baffled boys nor the people who’d been watching from a safe position understood what had just happened. All they knew was that they landed on their backs, hard, and were too stunned to get up again.
“Was that some psychic power?” Mikado wondered out loud. Normally, no one would ever assume such a thing could be true, but it helped when you were in the presence of Celty, who was also a being that couldn’t be true.
The man burst into laughter. “No, no, stop that. It’s just a technique. If I could use superpowers, I’d already be a…be a…ya know? What should I be, courier?”
Celty wasn’t expecting to be put on the spot like this. “Don’t ask me,” she typed. “It depends on the power, I suppose.”
“I suppose that’s true. Guess I oughta keep thinking about that one.”
Mikado couldn’t see the PDA screen from his position, but it was clear from the way they were acting that it was like idle banter. “Um, Celty, who is this gentleman?” he asked, awkwardly formal.
Celty thought it over and asked Akabayashi, “Should I tell him?”
“I don’t mind. If I wanted to hide, I wouldn’t have shown up here.”
With his permission, Celty turned to Mikado and Aoba and revealed, “This man is Mr. Akabayashi. He’s an officer with the Awakusu-kai.”
“The Awakusu-kai? You mean…”
“Yes, he’s one of…those people.”
Mikado’s spine trembled at each word.
When compared to the name of their parent syndicate, the Medei-gumi, the Awakusu-kai was a much more obscure one—but in all his travels over the Internet looking for information about Ikebukuro, Mikado couldn’t help but spot it here and there.
He was well aware of what the Awakusu-kai did for a living. He thought he was prepared for the consequences. And he also hoped that this moment would never come.
But the appearance of Akabayashi was like a fairy come to warn him of his own death. The Dollars were digging into the seedy underbelly of the city, trudging too deep into its darkness.
Aoba gave Akabayashi a fierce stare, too, but his hand darted up in a signal to his companions not to do anything more.
The man at the center of all this tension and nervousness merely smirked and rested against a pile of construction materials next to Mikado. “This is quite a coincidence. I happen to be familiar with this place. Perhaps you learned about it after the big brouhaha that happened here a while back?”
“?”
Mikado didn’t know what he was talking about, but Aoba did. He looked away self-consciously. Akabayashi spotted the change in his attitude, but he didn’t comment on it.
“Well, we can set that aside for the moment. Mikado Ryuugamine, do you wonder how it is that I know your name?”
“…No. It’s because you’re, uh…”
“Listen, it’s fine. You can come out and call me a yakuza, all right? It’s just that the term doesn’t come from good origins. There are others in my line of work who would be angry if you called them that to their faces. Be careful.”
“…Thank you for the warning. So…well, I assumed that being a…yakuza, it would be easy for you to find out who I am…”
Mikado understood how much power organized criminals had as a whole, if not the Awakusu-kai specifically. Just their ability to track down people who vanished from loan sharks alone was enough to tell Mikado that they had investigative capabilities that he could only dream of.
In this case, however, the Awakusu-kai’s organizational ability had nothing to do with it—Akabayashi had bought the information off Izaya Orihara, that was all. But Mikado couldn’t have known that.
“I see. It’s good we’re on the same page. Basically, some friends of mine by the name of Jan-Jaka-Jan trailed you kids here, which is how I found you. Even I’ve gotten a surprise with it all—I never suspected you’d be friends with this courier here,” he intoned sagely, glancing at Celty. “But I digress. Surely you know what it means that a guy like me is here, right? You do?”
Mikado swallowed hard. “Are the Dollars…causing you trouble…?” he croaked.
I’m scared. I don’t want to consider the worst-case scenario…but these people aren’t like Yagiri Pharmaceuticals at all.
He stifled his trembling and clenched his fists, determined to face the truth. Ever since he first saw the power of the Dollars at that IRL meeting, he’d had a feeling that those people who made their living on the underbelly of society would eventually come after them.
But Mikado chose to cling to a faint, optimistic hope that things would work out in that regard. After that initial crowd scene, he couldn’t help but feel that the Dollars were invincible and omnipotent.
The attack by Toramaru in the spring put cracks in that illusion, and the appearance of this man now completely shattered it. He’d heard that mobsters these days were getting more into white-collar crime, and fewer of them were identifiable on sight.
If you ignored the facial scars and clothes, this man wouldn’t seem a
ll that dangerous or violent. He definitely didn’t come across as an office worker, but he could probably pass as a music producer, for example.
Even still, the moment he said the name Mikado Ryuugamine, the boy felt an undeniable omen of his impending death.
I have to do something… Will he demand some kind of tribute payment? Or will he just try to crush me? I have to avoid either of them at all costs…
He considered having Celty stand between them, but he didn’t know what kind of relationship she had with the Awakusu-kai and couldn’t force her to do something she didn’t want to.
Meanwhile, Akabayashi continued in his lilting way, “Well…I don’t know if I’d call it trouble. I can’t speak for my coworkers, but on a personal level, I don’t wanna do anything to normal civilians.”
“…Okay.”
“I guess it’s like…how do they say it in manga or news programs? The light side and the dark side of the city? My job is to watch over the boundary between the two.”
“…Okay,” Mikado repeated. He couldn’t say anything else.
“So mostly what I do is, when someone starts wandering over onto our side of things, we give ’em a little kick to send them back where they belong. But if they still insist on coming this way, we either bring them into the fold on our team, or we crush them.”
Akabayashi rapped his cane again, staring Mikado right in the eyes through his sunglasses. “So which is it going to be? You can get flattened under our heel, or you can join us.”
“…”
Silence covered the building for a long moment. What felt like much more than just a few dozen seconds passed, until Mikado slowly and firmly said, “Couldn’t there be a third way?”
“You don’t like either option? That’s your right. Let’s hear your idea,” Akabayashi said. He essentially had Mikado pinned now that he’d expressed his resistance to the suggestions offered.
“The Dollars will walk along the borderline. We’ll get into little fights and have some meetings in town, but we won’t, under any circumstances, cause trouble for the Awakusu-kai… Would that be possible?”
“That’s a real fine line you’re talking about. Trouble comes in many forms.”
“In that case, could you explain in more detail? We have no intention of getting in your way. We just…want a place for ourselves.”
“A place, huh?”
Tak.
Another rap of the cane. He was testing Mikado.
“You’ve got plenty of places for yourself on the light side of town, don’t you? I see that determination in your eyes, Mikado, but it doesn’t make you as cool as you think. That’s the same look gamblers have when they’re in too deep and refuse to see it. All you have to do is stop making bets, but then you start saying that being in the midst of the thrill is where you belong, and they all drown in the end.”
“…”
Even Mikado couldn’t tell himself that Akabayashi’s examination was wrong. He understood that it was a dangerous path he was walking at this point in life. But there was still something he wanted to keep safe: that illusory, idealized version of the Dollars that he witnessed on the night of their first meeting.
He knew it was just a fantasy, but he couldn’t stop the rush of emotion that churned within him. He was trying to make that fantasy a reality—walking a boundary line in a different sense from the one Akabayashi described.
“Then I want your advice on how not to lose my bet.”
“You don’t bet. That’s it,” Akabayashi said crisply. “You don’t look like the kind of guy who’s clever enough to walk that tightrope. But I’ll oblige you. I know a bit about the Dollars now. I can see that if I take you out of the picture, it’s not as though the Dollars are going to stop whatever they’re doing. So I’ll just have to go after the ones that stand out to me.”
He got up from the scrap pile, and Mikado opened his mouth to hold him back. It wasn’t that the fear had left his system—if anything, the thought of leaving without another word frightened him even more.
“Um, sir!”
“What?”
“L-let’s say…that people from the Awakusu-kai tried to kill some of our friends, for no good reason. Would trying to save them count as causing trouble? If you were selling drugs, would warning our friends not to buy them count as causing trouble?”
For just a moment, the leer vanished from Akabayashi’s face. “You think our guys would just beat the shit out of an ordinary civilian for no good reason?” he asked, eyes narrowed.
Mikado clenched his fist harder and said, “But…you’re yakuza, aren’t you?”
“Mikado!” Celty typed into her PDA, but he didn’t notice. His eyes were fixed to Akabayashi’s.
The two men glared at each other for a moment.
The threatening energy coming from Akabayashi was far beyond what he had exhibited at his entrance, but Mikado didn’t look away. Then Akabayashi’s face crinkled up again, and that simpering leer returned.
“Ha-ha. You’ve got a point. And I did say you were allowed to call me that. I guess you’ve got one on me there. Fine, fine, we’re yakuza,” he said and tapped his forehead with the cane. “And if you see your guys getting the shit beat outta them, you go ahead and report it to the cops. You don’t even have to get yourself hurt.”
“Huh? Uh, a-all right.”
“And rest easy. We’re not a drug outfit, and if anyone out there is trying to deal bad stuff on the street…I’ll be the first one to get rid of them,” he said with a chuckle, but Mikado didn’t miss the flare of fury behind it—even if he didn’t understand what it meant.
Akabayashi glanced between Aoba, who had been silent the whole time, and Mikado. Lastly, he flipped a glance at Celty. “Well, today was more of a warning than anything. I’m not here to get in your ear about this and that. Just sending a message to let you know that folks like me are watching with interest now.”
“…I see. Thank you for being considerate.”
“There you go. Humility is a good thing. Honestly, if you just stepped away from the Dollars, everyone would be much happier. Your parents would be very sad if they found out you were a big shot in this gang…and there’s that girl you’re good friends with, right? What was her name? The one with the glasses…”
“Sonohara has nothing to do with this!” he shouted, not realizing how much force he was putting into it. Instantly, his expression changed from desperation to aghast disappointment.
“Just goes to show how important she is to you, eh? You should learn to mask your expressions. Not going to be so easy to walk that tightrope, is it?”
Naturally, Mikado had no idea that Anri and Akabayashi went way back. The fact that he’d given up her name (Sonohara) and his affection for her to a member of a mob organization was the worst disaster of the day so far.
Akabayashi continued, “Did you even know I’ve been a member of the Dollars for months?”
“?!”
“How is a guy who doesn’t even have a grasp on what’s happening in his own organization going to tell how he is or isn’t causing trouble for us, huh? So young, so naive.” Akabayashi chuckled and headed for the stairs. “Tell you what, Headless Rider, I’ll ask you for more details at a later time.”
“Very well. But Mikado isn’t stupid enough to pick a fight with you guys.”
“Let’s hope not.”
“I believe in him.”
Akabayashi read her reply, nodded, and stopped just before he descended the stairs.
“I want to ask something of you—speaking as a member of the Dollars,” he said.
“?”
“A friend of mine’s having some trouble related to the group.”
He turned toward the stairs and shouted down to the first floor.
“Hey, Niekawa! You can come up now!”
Niekawa?
It was Celty who recognized the name. In fact, she knew of two people whom it fit, and it was not a common name by any means.
That was why it was no surprise when, as another figure hurriedly climbed the stairs seconds later, she recognized him.
“Th-this innocent-looking kid? Really?” the man said when he saw Mikado.
“Yeah. At the very least, he’s the closest to a leader within the Dollars right now,” Akabayashi explained.
Celty hastily typed up a message. “Mr. Niekawa! You’re the Niekawa from Tokyo Warrior, right? What are you doing here?!”
“Uh…wh-whoa! Th-the H-Headless Rider!”
“I already told you my real name earlier! It’s Celty Sturluson!” she snapped, which was neither here nor there at this point. “Why are you here?! Do you know Mr. Akabayashi?! If you’re going to run a story on what Mikado’s doing, don’t expose him please! It would really hurt some people!”
“N-no, no, I’m not following a story…,” Niekawa stammered. Neither one seemed to understand where the other was coming from, which only made Mikado even more confused.
“Do you know him, too, Celty?” he asked.
“Well, I talked to him once for a story involving Shizuo,” she explained.
Niekawa brushed the PDA out of the way and bowed to the boy who could have been his son in terms of age. “If you know more about the Dollars than anyone else, then please help me find my daughter who’s run away from home… Haruna is supposed to be in the Dollars!”
Celty felt like her senses were drifting away from her.
Haruna was the one who was really tied to Saika. And now she’s…with the Dollars?
Each new face and name in this conversation was a further pillar of her past that she tried to process, but all she really wanted right now was to get away from this place, to go back home and see Shinra again.
Help me, Shinra. Help me. I think…I might be stuck in something really bad right now, Celty thought rather belatedly.
Thus, the Headless Rider and prominent member of the Dollars could only lament her situation.
Late night, Tokyo
Yumasaki finally noticed the person trailing him when he was getting close to home and the presence of people around him was thin.
His apartment was quite a ways from the center of the city. When he had work, he walked to the train station, and on days that he hung around with Kadota’s group, Togusa would usually pick him up in the van—so it was rare that he was walking home alone late at night on a day he wasn’t working.
Durarara!!, Vol. 10 Page 12