“Okay, get him outta here,” Akabayashi directed the men in suits, still smiling easily.
Once they had carried the unconscious dealer out of the bathroom, Akabayashi turned toward the end of the stalls. “Now, about you girls…”
“Eeek!”
“P-please don’t…”
Until just recently, the girls had been desperate for the drugs, but the brief scene of violence and resulting conversation had made it quite clear whose presence they were in. Fear won out over desire, and they were now huddling in the corner, trembling.
“Listen, don’t shiver and shake like that. Y’see, just an hour or so ago, I had to make a very pretty Russian lady sad. I’m feelin’ down about upsetting the female kind right now.” He chuckled, pulling out a pocket handkerchief and offering it to one of the girls. “Look at that nosebleed. Was that from the elbow? You all right? You oughta see a doctor.”
“Er, uh…thank you, sir.”
“You really should be quick about it. Need an escort? I mean, you’re lookin’ pretty pale.”
“Er, uh…n-no, I’ll be…fine.”
The girls were shivering, trying to avoid looking into his eyes. They didn’t understand what he wanted.
“P-please, help, I’ll…I’ll do anything…anything!” one of them pleaded, ready to cry.
“Aww. Oh dear. Do I really look that scary?” Akabayashi asked self-deprecatingly. He rapped the floor with the stick. “Don’t you realize how lucky you are? If I were someone else, you might’ve been sent to an establishment for grown-up ladies, or perhaps a home-visit service, or a DVD filming studio.”
This only made the girls shiver harder.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to claim you owe me a favor. You heard me earlier—I’m a hypocrite, right? I’m not going to hurt you. In fact, I’m going to go the extra mile for you.”
In a way, it was an even worse punishment he was proposing.
“I’m going to send you girls back home and take it upon myself to explain to your fathers and mothers exactly what kind of medication you’ve been taking.”
“…!”
“And the rest is up to you and your families. See? You’ll be in a hospital no matter what.”
“Oh, and…depending on circumstances, there might be some business between your families and us.”
Several minutes later, in a taxi
Akabayashi gave his subordinates their orders and left the club alone. Then he got into a cab, muttering to himself.
“Always leaves a bad aftertaste when you make a girl cry.”
The driver overheard this and decided to meddle. “What’s that? Have a fight with your lady?”
“Let’s call it that. No punches or anything, but she was quite sad about the whole thing,” Akabayashi said, shaking his head.
The elderly driver laughed and scolded, “Shouldn’t do that. You gotta be gentle with women.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying.”
A few minutes later, Akabayashi’s cell phone rang. It played the latest hit from the singer Ruri Hijiribe.
“Oh, sir! What do you know, it’s your lady friend!”
“Ha-ha-ha…if only,” Akabayashi replied, indulging the driver.
He hit the accept button. “Hello? It’s your buddy.”
“Don’t answer the phone like a creep. It’s me,” said the caller—Akabayashi’s fellow Awakusu-kai lieutenant, Aozaki.
He’d been involved with the Russian trouble just a few hours ago, so Akabayashi assumed the call was related. “What is it, Aozaki? Something happen with our Russian guest?”
“No, it’s not that. You hear about the young miss?”
“You mean how Heiwajima and the Black Rider helped her? I’m guessin’ that Mikiya’s probably giving her a scolding for running away from home and feelin’ relieved on the inside.”
The “young miss” was Akane Awakusu, the daughter of Mikiya Awakusu, underboss of the Awakusu-kai, and furthermore, she was granddaughter of Dougen Awakusu, the head of the organization. She’d run away from home for the past few days and wound up in quite a bit of trouble, including being kidnapped by the Russians in question. It was only this evening that they got word she was safe again.
“No…not quite. Apparently, she’s been acting odd,” Aozaki answered.
“Odd?”
“Well…this is all secondhand, so I don’t know for sure, and it ain’t really my business to care. But you’ve known her pretty well since she was a little girl, yeah?”
“I suppose. I’ll ask Mikiya about it tomorrow… Funny that you should be concerned, though. I thought you hated Mikiya,” Akabayashi teased.
“Don’t give me that shit,” Aozaki growled through the speaker. “Yeah, I’m not fully on board with Mikiya, but Miss Akane is the old man’s granddaughter. If anything happens to her, we go to war. Of course I’m concerned.”
“But isn’t that what you want, Aozaki?”
“…I said, don’t give me that shit, you bungling clown,” Aozaki snorted, clicking his tongue, and hung up.
Akabayashi looked down at his phone, shaking his head.
At that moment, the driver asked, “Is this a good spot for you, sir?”
“Uh, sure. Just up at that corner.”
“You got it.”
Compared with earlier, the driver’s smile was forced and unnatural. He’d heard enough from that call to recognize Akabayashi’s occupation.
“Sorry I couldn’t give you a longer trip fare. Here, keep the change for your trouble.”
“Oh! Oh no, sir! I couldn’t take this whole bill!”
“Trust me, it’s fine,” Akabayashi insisted, shoving the ten-thousand-yen bill into the driver’s hand. He exited the taxi, cracked his neck, and looked up at the neon-lit night sky of the big city.
“…Things’ve been strange lately.”
The Black Rider.
The return of the slasher.
The rise of the Dollars.
Trouble with Ruri Hijiribe.
Jinnai Yodogiri.
And now this incident with the Russians and Akane.
“Well, there’s always been troubles in any city,” he muttered to himself, then headed for the apartment where he spent his nights.
But even still, things’ve been strange. It’s like the light and the dark side of town are bleeding together. Maybe those folks on the bright side are having trouble keeping to their own.
He looked back up at the sky, realizing that it was pointless to wonder. The light of the town and the dark of the night mingled, hiding the stars behind the muddled haze.
Akabayashi gazed at the ambiguity and mumbled, “I don’t like that sky.”
“Bright or dark—make up your damn mind.”
Six years ago
The man who had dyed himself with the color of violence would hurt others again today.
He felt a glow of ecstasy every time he saw the scars he inflicted on someone else.
That scar is me.
The blood they shed, the red of their exposed flesh, the sound of their bones breaking—these are the things that make me as a person.
It was less a statement of pride or ideals than a shallow fantasy, a daydream.
He would fall apart unless he hurt someone.
This self-created illusion acted as a wicked mold of his instincts.
In this city, the scars he left on others were his footprints.
With each act of violence, his glory grew and so did his intoxication.
With no fatigue and no reflection upon the past, as if it were his reason for living.
Change came to him at last when he took on a certain job.
The owner of a certain business owed a debt, and the man’s organization took it on.
It wasn’t quite in the midst of the busy shopping district, but it was still land in the capital.
So the job was quite simple: Seize the land as collateral for the debt.
But things went awry. S
omehow, the owner got the money and paid back what he owed.
A simple story of bad luck, if it had ended right there.
But the business owner, seemingly mad, demanded money from the organization.
He tried to blackmail them, to threaten them with legal trouble for an illegal collection scheme.
The owner’s mind was probably not on sound footing at that point.
They decided that he could not be reasoned with and gave the man a new job.
Put the hurt on him.
Nice and clean. Nice and simple.
The owner had a family, too, so if necessary, the man was allowed to involve them.
Of course, it couldn’t look like the work of the man’s organization, so he had to make it appear as a robbery and rough them up in a nonfatal way.
On the night of the new moon, the man put on a ski mask and headed for the business in question.
It was an antique shop in Ikebukuro.
The name: Sonohara-dou.
May 5, morning, home of Mikiya Awakusu
The residence of Mikiya Awakusu, waka-gashira underboss of the Awakusu-kai, was virtually indistinguishable from any of the other homes in the distant suburbs of Ikebukuro and gave no indication that its occupants were anything but normal.
On the contrary, it was the kind of house so pristine that the cynical might be prompted to claim, “The only people who would live in a house so nice are the ones who do dirty deeds for dirty money.” In short, it was just a very fancy house.
Once inside the home, the tottering steps of a young girl rushed to greet him.
“Mr. Akabayashi!”
“Ahh, young miss. It’s nice to see you again.”
In fact, it had been years since he’d popped his head in. In the past, he’d often come by to visit and spend time with the girl, but now that Akane was getting on with school, he had bowed out and kept his distance, respecting Mikiya’s wish to keep the family business a secret from her.
Ultimately, that concerted effort had fallen through, and she had learned the truth of what her father did for a living. From what Akabayashi heard, it was the reason she ran away from home, but thankfully, she was back safe and sound now.
“…I heard you wanted to see me, miss?”
“Yeah!” she said, nodding vigorously. She seemed to be bursting with lively cheer, but that seemed unnatural for one who had been kidnapped just a day ago.
Normally, he would have gotten the details of the incident from Mikiya at the office. Instead, it was Mikiya who had approached him.
“My daughter wants to talk to you. Will you come to the house with me?”
“Me? What for?”
“I wish I knew, but she won’t tell me.”
Acting odd indeed, he’d thought, recalling the phone conversation with Aozaki the night before. Still, Akabayashi wrapped up his afternoon business early and headed off to see Akane.
Once the little girl saw him in person, she reached over to tug his sleeve, eyes sparkling. “I have something I want to talk about in private, Mr. Akabayashi. Can you come to my room?”
“Now, Akane,” Mikiya warned, but the man waved him off.
“Oh, it’s fine, Director. I don’t mind.”
He started off to follow the girl, but this time it was Mikiya who pulled on his sleeve.
“I trust I don’t need to warn you not to fill her head with nonsense?”
“I know, sir.”
“And keep your hands to yourself.”
“…Mikiya, do you actually know how old your daughter is?” Akabayashi snorted, shaking his head.
“Ah. Y-yes, of course, sorry. I thought maybe you had intentions of…”
“No, I didn’t. Not in the least, Mikiya.”
“You’re right… I’m sorry. It’s just, I remember when you were looking after some girl somewhere a few years back. I thought maybe your tastes ran… No, never mind. Ignore me. You weren’t messing around with that kid, either.”
“No, it’s fine. I get it—I don’t have a wife or even a woman. Some folks whisper that I’m not a ladies’ man in the first place. Ha-ha,” Akabayashi chuckled easily and headed for Akane’s room without sign of offense.
When he walked through her door, Akane greeted him with a serious expression on her face. “Listen…I want you to keep this a secret from my parents.”
“Of course, I get it,” he said with a smile, crouching down to put her at ease.
She started off innocently enough. “Umm, so…uhh…”
But then it got much worse.
“How can I…get good at killing people?”
Her eyes were innocent, pure, and so serious.
Well, I’ll be damned, Akabayashi thought, feeling a rare cold sweat break out on his skin.
He sighed—but never let that easy, lazy grin leave his lips.
This is a hell of a lot more than “acting odd.”
Thirty minutes later, in a car
“…So what was it that Akane asked about? She said ‘talk to you later,’ right at the end. Are you going to see her again today?”
“Oh, it was just a bit of small talk. And a secret, too.”
They were in the backseat of a luxury car on the way to the Awakusu-kai office. Akabayashi smirked carelessly as usual from the seat next to Mikiya’s.
“…Akabayashi.”
“Really, it was nothing major. Maybe what happened yesterday gave her some ideas? She said she wants to get stronger. I happen to know someone who runs a dojo—more like a sports gym—that teaches women and children self-defense in addition to the usual stuff. I said I’d take her there this afternoon.”
“Oh…I see. Why would she ask you, though?”
“Ha-ha, well, that’s the funny part.” Akabayashi chuckled, pulling out his cell phone.
“What are you doing…?”
“Do you know how the young miss learned about our work?”
“…No.”
“This thing here.” He showed Mikiya his phone screen, which was displaying a webpage.
“Ahh…I recognize that.”
It was an Internet encyclopedia—Fuguruma Youki.
The site was a freely editable online encyclopedia in the mold of Wikipedia, where users congregated to add their own information and build a massive database. While much of the information was faulty or based on rumors and lies, these things could be corrected by other users or even the people featured in the articles themselves.
“I had the younger guys correct a lot of the particularly sensitive bits.”
The site’s article on the Awakusu-kai had all kinds of detailed information on their operation—even down to the names of principal members—right there in the open for anyone to read. Mikiya saw his name on the phone screen and scowled.
“So she could have seen it on her phone? Convenience is making our job harder now.”
“This is what happens when you give a kid an online-accessible phone without thinking. But the cat’s out of the bag now, and that ain’t my problem.” Akabayashi chuckled.
Mikiya glared at him, then down at the phone again, where he saw his underling’s name on the article as well. It featured simple profiles of the group members, and his read, “A capable fighter with many legends under his belt. Along with Aozaki, they are known as the Red Ogre and Blue Ogre of the Awakusu-kai, respectively.”
“Look at how they puff us up. Basically, the young miss read this nonsense, and since she knew me from her childhood, she decided to ask me for self-defense help.”
If Akabayashi wore a permanent, lopsided grin, Mikiya’s face was equally frozen in a frightening scowl. “Well…better you than Aozaki. But I would have hoped that Akane would talk to me or her mother first.”
“Ha-ha, she probably just doesn’t want to make you folks worry more than she already has. She’s a good daughter.”
“My daughter trying to keep me from worrying is the most concerning thing I can fret over. So…I assume this dojo or sports gym or wha
tever is a trustworthy place?”
“Oh yes. It’s a regular old place, no yakuza operation. It’s the one over near Zoshigaya Cemetery. You know that German fighter, Traugott Geissendorfer? It’s kind of a worldwide chain that teaches his dojo style…”
The conversation continued on in this manner.
At this point, Akabayashi was not outright lying, but he also wasn’t telling the entire story. And for his part, he knew that Akane hadn’t told him everything, either. He chose not to pry into it—but the girl had clearly been partially broken by someone.
Resigned, Akabayashi decided that what Akane needed right now was to interact with more people, those who wouldn’t treat her like something exotic and special. The best option for that was the dojo.
There will be plenty of other girls there, too.
He mulled over the benefits of asking Akane for more information later in the afternoon versus keeping his distance and observing her more.
Next to him, stone-faced, Mikiya decided to broach a completely different topic. “You cracked down on some kids pushing last night, didn’t you?”
“Ah, that? I put Kazamoto in charge of it.”
“…Well, it’s turned into a bit of a thing.”
“Pardon?”
Despite all the ups and downs of what happened with his daughter, Mikiya’s frank, flat delivery betrayed no emotion. “I assumed they had to be working under some group or other…but nothing. They say it’s just a regular college club.”
“Club?”
“They’re students at Raira College… Just normal students by most accounts, but those ones you pulverized all had the same stickers on their necks, right? The fake tattoos.”
“That’s right, they did,” Akabayashi said, recalling the young men from the previous night. He’d nearly forgotten the details already.
They had flashy tattoos visible around their throats and collarbones, but even they admitted that the marks were just removable decals.
“Raira College is actually a fairly prestigious school. Just goes to show, there are idiots to be found anywhere.”
Durarara!!, Vol. 7 Page 8