“So if you don’t want all the tabloids to find out that he’s got a thug of a brother like you, you’d better pay my—”
The only thing it clinched was his own downfall, however.
There was the hollow sound of some piece of a whole being removed, right at the same time that the man stopped talking. Shizuo had grabbed the man’s face with one hand and instantly separated his jaw.
“…What was that about money?”
He let go, and the indebted man’s jaw hung loose. The mouth was gaping wide enough to fit a fist inside. His jaw quivered in the air like a cat’s cradle; he reached up to touch it but seemed not to understand yet what had happened.
“Ah, agagagah, agah?”
“I’ve heard enough from you. Now shut your filthy mouth.”
“Ah, agaaa! Agagagagah!” the man stammered, unable to actually close his mouth. Shizuo took a step forward.
“…I said…shut it!”
* * *
Tom heard him from outside the apartment building. The next moment, there was a violent crash. He looked up to see a second-floor window smash.
The reason why soon became apparent.
The body of the man who owed them money flew through the shattering glass, smashed into a tree planted on the apartment lot, and then fell next to Tom, breaking a few branches along the way.
His clothes happened to catch on the branches, so he wound up hanging at eye level with Tom, who surveyed the debtor with pity.
“Hey, you lucked out.”
“H-h-hewp… I—I’ll tell the cops…I—I—I’ll sue…”
His jaw was miraculously fitted back into place, so perhaps Shizuo had given him an uppercut. Tom looked at the ghastly man with the trembling voice and calmly asked, “And what story are you going to give to the cops?”
“…Eh?”
“Perhaps you’ll tell them, ‘I got in trouble for borrowing pornos and making illegal copies to sell online, so I tried to blackmail the collector and got beat up’? I’d pay to see that trial. We could invite your dad and mom to come see you plead your case.”
“…!”
“But if you’re smart enough to decide that you don’t want to be famous for the wrong reasons, we’ll be nice enough to pay for your broken window,” Tom said, brushing his dreads off his ears and shrugging.
“It’s only getting tacked on to your late fees, though.”
Ten minutes later, Ikebukuro
“Dammit, just because you’re not killing them doesn’t make this right.”
“…Sorry, Tom.”
They were on their way back to Ikebukuro Station from the collection spot, and Tom had been lecturing Shizuo about what went wrong.
“You bend a five-hundred-yen coin in front of their eyes to intimidate them so that you don’t have to resort to violence! In fact, I bet you could tear one of those coins in two with your fingers, right?”
“Yeah…but I’m pretty sure I heard that it’s against the law to bend or stretch coins like that.”
“What…? Oh, true. Good point. Well, we can think of another method,” Tom admitted, bringing the conversation to an awkward, temporary truce. They walked through the crowd, thinking hard.
“Man, that guy really was an idiot, wasn’t he? He knew who you were, and he went ahead and threatened you… In fact, it was kinda like he didn’t know anything about you except that you’re Kasuka’s brother.”
“…I suppose you’re right.”
“The funny thing is, any street punk worth his salt would give up just by looking at you…but lately, you get the occasional normal person who has no idea about what you’re like and feels foolhardy…”
“…Sorry,” Shizuo muttered.
Tom turned to him in surprise. “Why are you apologizing?”
“Uh…I just figured, if I was keeping control of myself better…”
“Yeah, but that has nothing to do with the fact that there are total idiots like that guy. I know I gave you that lecture, but honestly, you did pretty good back there. In fact, it kind of makes me sorry for getting you involved in this dangerous line of work,” Tom said, facing forward again.
Shizuo watched his boss from behind and said, “Thank you,” but he didn’t seem to be quite convinced himself.
Tom sighed and then checked his watch. “It’s a bit early, but I suppose we could get something to eat.”
“Let’s hit up Russia Sushi and have ourselves a feast.”
Russia Sushi
She was in a very bad mood.
There was sadness, anger, and frustration mixed together and brought to a boil, then pushed down where it couldn’t get out—until nothing showed on her face but the faintest trace of sullenness.
But thanks to her already attractive features, the look could also be interpreted as mournful.
The white man behind the sushi counter stared back at that grimace and said, “Hey, Vorona. This is a service business. Stop sulking, or you’ll drive our customers off.”
“…Negative. My face is not crafted in melancholy. It is as normal,” said the woman named Vorona, albeit in rather odd Japanese.
A large black man cleaning tables smiled amiably and said, “Oh, that no good, Vorona. That face bad. Customer is God. God must be forgiving. If patient Buddha only forgives three times, then God must forgive hundred times. One hundred trips to pray to Ebisu, god of luck and good business. So smile wide like Ebisu.”
“Meaning unclear. Semyon’s Japanese is a bizarre fantasy.”
The man behind the counter mumbled, “Look who’s talking,” but Vorona ignored him and looked away, stone-faced.
“Besides…I have just abandoned my partner. Impossible to reach that circumstance.”
Vorona was a freelance jack-of-all-trades contractor.
Since coming to Japan, she’d worked for a variety of people and committed every sort of crime. Assassination, weapons smuggling, kidnapping—if the police ever caught her, she’d spend the rest of her life behind bars or be extradited back to Russia.
With her partner, Slon, she’d been working primarily in Ikebukuro, but after drawing the ire of a local yakuza group, the Awakusu-kai, Slon’s legs got shot up. They took him away, and Vorona determined that it was best not to hold out hope that he was alive.
As for her…
…
Rather suddenly, she realized that her unhappiness was not out of grief for Slon.
The owner of the shop sharpened his knife and said, “But you must have known that this would happen. From what I hear, you lost three other companions before making it to Japan. If you didn’t bother getting vengeance for them, why get all worked up about revenge for this particular partner?”
“…If the time exists to perish, I am first. That was my assurance. In my home country, one foolish enemy was sloppy for the reason that I am a woman. As a result, Slon and I live,” she mumbled, mostly to herself. Her head dipped. “This time is further worse. In the instant we should have died together, I was allowed to live through Father’s benevolence… It is humiliation.”
In fact, she was under a crippling amount of stress—but not because she’d lost her partner.
If she were the type to treasure the lives of others, she wouldn’t have gotten involved in this business in the first place.
It was simply that she wasn’t able to forgive herself.
I want to destroy everything. Including myself.
She’d been overcome by the urge right after she woke up, mere hours ago. That initial impulse would have been carried out violently if it weren’t for the two Russia Sushi employees who were there to hold her down.
“Calm down,” Denis had told her in Russian. “Go ahead and get your revenge on the Awakusu-kai if you must, but don’t wreck up our place.”
Strangely, that brief statement was all it took for her to wrestle her impulse under control.
“Am I…weak?” she asked.
Denis said, “You’re not stronger than Drakon,” and
Simon told her, “We’re not the ones to decide that.” Pondering the meaning of that helped to restore her sense of rationality.
She asked if it was possible to rescue Slon, knowing it wasn’t—and so the replies she got were unsatisfying. She understood why it was happening.
“Not having anything to do will fill your mind with pointless thoughts,” Denis and Simon said and told her to help out around the restaurant.
Vorona didn’t consider this to be a cold suggestion. When she worked for Colonel Lingerin, it was quite common for people to die during routine jobs, so even on the rare occasions one had time to mourn the dead, it was always while on the move.
She decided that letting her emotions rule her was pointless and unproductive and decided to follow their suggestion. However…
Me, a waitress? It’s ridiculous.
She surveyed the restaurant, wearing a feminine uniform. The interior should have been strongly reminiscent of home, but given that it was all in service of being a sushi place, there was no denying the alien feeling.
It was a wrong Russia, the kind of Russia you saw in a movie filmed for some far-off country.
President Lingerin would love it, but my father, Drakon, would be annoyed, she thought. Her eyes landed on the two Russians hard at work. And…why are they doing this in the first place? They must be crazy to set up a restaurant in a place like this.
All her memories of Denis and Simon were from the distant past. They each had their own history before coming to work for Lingerin’s arms company, and then a few years ago, they both abruptly moved here to Japan.
I’m certain that Denis made quite a lot of money working for President Lingerin…but setting up shop in this expensive place would have wiped out almost all his savings.
…Actually, I shouldn’t bother trying to figure this out.
After they held her down to calm her this morning, they hadn’t bothered to pry into Vorona’s business any further. If they weren’t going to be nosy, she should at least return the favor.
The problem was, once she drove those thoughts from her head, she had nothing left to do but reflect on the last few days’ memories.
What…am I doing?
All she wanted was to determine the strength of humanity. It was a question in her head since childhood that she could never learn from books alone.
And eventually, that question became her reason for living.
But the events of the recent past brought her to a sobering realization: that she might not have the strength needed to learn that truth.
I am weak.
The Black Rider was a true monster and didn’t count.
She’d assumed the man in the bartender’s suit represented the best possible value for her test. But then, up against the Awakusu-kai man, she’d been utterly helpless.
Then was everything I’ve done pointless…?
It felt like her pleasure, past, and hope for the future had all been negated, taken away from her. She was filled with anger at her mental vulnerability for feeling this way and her physical weakness at being unable to save one man.
These thoughts swirled through her head as she stood in place.
Denis told her to “watch them work and steal their ideas,” but she didn’t know where to start with that. For one thing, she had zero service industry experience. She had read about some of its secrets in books, but she had never seen a business that combined Russia with sushi, in real life or in any text.
On the other hand…
She’d been merely standing in place, observing everything that happened from the moment the restaurant opened—and realized that the guests seemed to be extraordinarily preoccupied with her.
Is it so strange for them to see a foreigner? But that applies to Denis and Simon, too.
It never even occurred to her that it had something to do with her looks and feminine gender. Any regular would be surprised at the sudden appearance of an unfamiliar waitress, while a new customer would find it hard not to look at the beautiful foreign woman brooding in the corner with her hands on her hips.
Simon turned to a young couple, barely older than children, and said, “Oh, young master Yagiri, you like her? Her name Vorona. You take her to go, A-OK. Then you have girlfriend and mistress, one in each hand. Best to eat with those you love, makes everything taste good. Plus ten orders of sushi.”
…I did not hear of taking to go. Is that part of the business plan here? I don’t mind doing the same job, assuming a customer respects my talents…but I’m certainly not going to sell my actual body, thought Vorona, who failed to take Simon’s comment in jest.
She scowled and said, “Negative. I am under no obligation to sell my own flesh for the profit of the company. I request a boycott. But if your words are meant in the spirit of contract job, I confirm.”
“Ohh, this is famous Japanese sexual harassment trial. Sexual harassment bad, no sekuhara. If you do sekuhara, then you do hara-kiri. And after cutting stomach, sushi all fall through hole. Our business go up in flames.” Simon laughed, but Vorona did not understand what he meant.
The customers who had just been subjected to two very different but equally baffling forms of Japanese reacted with either awkward amusement or total confusion but otherwise kept eating. Vorona sensed their reactions and was coming to the acceptance that she probably wasn’t meant for this line of work when Denis spoke to her.
“Hey, Vorona. Collector’s out back, so get the white envelope off the office desk and hand it over.”
“…”
“If you can’t serve customers, you can at least give them the money in the envelope, right?”
“…Affirmative,” she admitted, reluctantly passing through the kitchen toward the back.
Next to the back door was a small office. She took the thick envelope off the desk and opened the door.
“Whoa.”
There was a familiar man standing there.
“…!”
Instantly, Vorona crouched and swung her leg up to kick at his groin.
“Easy, easy.”
He caught the kick soaring upward between his legs with one hand and pushed it back, simultaneously sweeping her planted leg. Vorona quickly found herself sitting flat on her butt, though the man had eased the pressure on her leg so that there was no pain.
“…!”
If only I had a weapon…
It galled Vorona that at this moment, the only idea that came to her mind involved relying on gear. Still, she stared malevolently at the man in the patterned suit.
“Ooh, scary. I figured I’d check in on you when I came to collect the crab money, but I didn’t think you’d be the one handing it over. I thought you’d still be bedridden. Suppose I’ll have to save the caviar sushi for another time.”
“Akabayashi!”
“What, you remember my name? That’s so sweet. A guy feels good when a fetching young lady like you is familiar with him,” he said, smirking wryly as he reached out to take the envelope from Vorona. Then he turned his back on her, totally unafraid.
“Sorry to disappoint you. I’d give you a little more time, but I’ve got another young lady to escort at the moment. Maybe some other occasion.”
“I request orders! Has Slon already been being killed?”
“Whoa, whoa, slow down. What if someone hears you talking about killing and all that?” he said, looking around hastily before continuing. “Well, I suppose it’s up to him whether he gets spared or buried.”
“…?”
“At any rate, there’s certainly going to be a price paid. Mikiya and Aozaki are pragmatists at heart. They’re probably weighing the value of either finishing him off to make things right or keeping him around to use as a pawn.”
He tapped his own shoulders with the walking stick, then turned his back on Vorona once again. “Ultimately, it’s the chairman who will call the shots. But if your buddy spills the beans on your client, that fella named Yodogiri…well, maybe the scales will tip towa
rd a more amicable outcome.”
“…”
Should she rejoice in the possibility of Slon’s survival or find some new weapons and raid the Awakusu-kai to rescue him? Vorona couldn’t even be sure how she should react to Akabayashi’s statement.
Time simply passed. How long had it been?
She glared powerlessly in the direction that Akabayashi had gone, until a cheery voice said, “Oh, here you are. What wrong? Your tummy hurt?”
“…Denied. Woe is fruitless,” she replied, getting to her feet as if nothing was wrong.
Simon shrugged and asked, “Did you fight with Akabayashi? Fighting bad, you get hungry. And Akabayashi bring us cheap crabmeat. You make Akabayashi angry, crab get more expensive, us and customers go hungry.”
“Is that crab a smuggled good?”
“He said what he send us is national product. He don’t say what nation.”
“…”
While the conversation was not entirely satisfying, Simon’s voice did help her regain herself. She went back inside the building.
I suppose…it’s all over.
In that brief period, dark feelings swirled into her mind.
I abandoned plenty of companions on the way here…and I had to be saved by my father and President Lingerin, the men I betrayed and severed all connections to… How do they see me now? With disgust? Or pity?
Perhaps I have no reason to live anymore…
After her consecutive defeats and what Akabayashi just told her, even her motivation to avenge Slon was gone.
No, that was always an excuse. I wasn’t nearly as mad about Slon’s defeat as I was at my own uselessness. What should I do now…?
She made her way through the kitchen into the restaurant, pondering these heavy topics…
There were now two men sitting at the counter where the young couple had just been.
She recognized one of the men. Not by facial features, but by his distinctive dress.
Even Vorona, who found it quite difficult to distinguish the fine details between Japanese faces, could identify his features at a glance.
Durarara!!, Vol. 7 Page 13