Now that they were both at the agreed-upon location, Namie Yagiri asked the boy, “You’re Mikado? You’re so mature—not at all the child I was expecting. Or is it the polite ones who are most dangerous these days?”
Her voice was soft but rimmed with infinite frost.
They did not leave for another location to talk, but stayed in place right outside the building. The chilly, overbearing air she wielded kept all of the karaoke and host clubs’ solicitors away, as well as any overeager men looking for companionship.
Meanwhile, Mikado wore his Raira Academy blazer, but no attitude that made him anything but a normal student. The solicitors weren’t going to bother upselling a lone teenager like him. In fact, it was more likely that if he hung around in his current outfit, he’d draw the attention of the police for being where he shouldn’t.
They were two souls who didn’t fit in the scene for opposite reasons. A quiet tension fomented between them.
“So…what is your proposition?” Namie asked.
He’d managed to get her to negotiate in person; he probably knew just about everything. The girl must have told him all that she knew over the course of the evening.
“It’s simple. As I told you over the phone, I have the person you’re looking for.”
This did not unnerve Namie. If he was proposing this deal in possession of all of the facts, he really had to be a child. It was the height of folly.
He must have designated this location right in the middle of 60-Kai Street thinking that such a public location meant they couldn’t play rough with him. But of course, she had not come alone. The company’s security team, normally in charge of guarding the research lab, was disguised in the crowd as ordinary salarymen. Nearly a dozen loyal employees were on standby with stun batons. Just in case they were necessary, vans parked along 60-Kai Street and in side alleys contained more underlings and other hired muscle types, about twenty in total.
It wasn’t just the one boy, of course. He wouldn’t be trying to strike such a deal without others on his side. Hence the necessity of such a large force behind her.
In addition, Namie had brought a reasonable amount of cash to help strike a deal, in recognition of his admirable pluck. As long as she got the girl back, they could crush the boy in an instant if he thought he could open his mouth.
“How much do you want?” she asked directly. No need for theatrics in such a silly transaction. There was no telling where he might have hidden a recorder, if she was careless and gave away some kind of personal secret.
But his answer caught her by surprise.
“It’s not money, actually.”
“What are you dealing for, then?”
“Don’t you know? The truth.”
What does he mean? she wondered, baffled.
Mikado laid out his conclusion. “Let’s start with an admission of what your brother—Seiji Yagiri—is responsible for doing.”
“!”
The warm spring air instantly turned to midwinter chill. After a long silence, Namie fixed him with a stare that froze anyone who looked at it and spoke in a voice that demolished any who heard it.
“What…did you…just say?”
“Confess what your brother did to Mika Harima—and what you did to her body after that. Unfortunately, since there’s only circumstantial evidence, I’ll need you to turn yourselves in.”
Despite the easiness of his speech, sweat flooded Mikado’s palms. Black rage was exploding off of her. If he let his guard down just the tiniest bit, he might burst into tears.
“I think that course of action would do the least damage to your company.”
“Oh, dear… Yes, I see… You don’t want money at all. You just want our lab to be shut down for good…”
“In order to guarantee her freedom—not to mention my safety, since she ended up at my home—that seems to be the only option. If you simply bow out, I don’t see why that should lead to the downfall of the company.”
As he spoke, Mikado noticed that her reaction had started to go strange.
“Oh…oh…such a shame… You see, the company means absolutely nothing to me.”
She pierced Mikado with a look that he couldn’t distinguish between laughing or crying. He grappled with this new revelation, waiting for her next line. All of Mikado’s hair stood on end as he fought against the pressure of receiving his death sentence.
She didn’t even seem to be the same coolheaded woman who arrived in front of the department store building—but her voice was still soft and calm.
“You can crush my company, bomb it to hell, burn it to the ground, and I wouldn’t care a whit. But…the one thing I won’t stand for…is someone who tries to stand between my brother and what he wants.”
Her answer was simple. So simple, in fact, that Mikado’s eyes narrowed in a kind of relief.
Oh, I get it. She’s one of those people. No wonder she’s been doing things that go above and beyond her company’s bottom line.
At the same moment that her fists clenched, Mikado tightened his own grip on the cell phone in his pocket, pressing the button to send an e-mail.
This would explain it.
He was nearly bowled over backward by her incredible fixation on her brother but held his ground and glared back at her.
One person’s already been killed, the body was used to create a totally new person, and now she’s trying to have me killed, too. I think the last part is what makes me angriest. I care about myself most of all. I would do anything for my own sake. That’s what makes people like her, who replace the “my” in “my sake” with another person, so aggravating. And someone who would use that excuse to ruin the lives of others is especially, especially, especially unforgivable!
Anger began to bubble up within Mikado. He was obsessed with all things extraordinary and abnormal but being the victim of irrational, unfair circumstances was something else entirely. He launched into Namie.
“I’ve never heard such an awful thing. You’re going to make Yagiri miserable for your own twisted, selfish reasons.”
“What do you mean? If you’re going to brave the depths of the underworld at your age, and all you can come up with is that clichéd garbage…then shut that impertinent mouth of yours right now!” she roared like some kind of witch’s curse, closing a step toward Mikado.
But he did not pull back.
“You’re right, I only know how to speak in clichés. But what’s wrong with that? And which one of us is incapable of comprehending the obvious fact that there’s a price to be paid for taking a human life?”
Mikado took a step of his own, returning her glare.
“You’ve watched too much TV. The old-fashioned kind with a moral at the end of the story! Do you know where we are?! This is the real world! You’re not on TV, you’re not in a magazine, and you’re not a hero. Learn your place, boy!”
They each approached another step. Namie’s voice was overflowing with cold fury, but those words on their own were not enough to stop him. He’d suffered the nonsense of Masaomi Kida’s conversations every day. Compared to them, her arguments were at least logical, and thus easy to rebut.
“That’s right. I want to see what’s clean and unsoiled. I want things to act in harmony. All those clichés and predictable outcomes are familiar and beloved to me. But what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with wishing for that to happen in real life? It’s because of the nature of reality that we desire them! I’m not going to claim it’s for the sake of others; I want them because I enjoy seeing that! Yes, it’s a common cliché. And the fact that it’s such a cliché just shows you how much everyone thinks about it!”
He tried to overwhelm her with statements and questions, some of which he didn’t even believe in himself. But he wasn’t just trying to provoke her out of desperation—he was trying to keep her attention focused on himself for as long as he could.
When he felt the moment was right, Mikado tensed the finger waiting on his phone button.
Once I press this button, there’s no going back. I’ll be entering a place one should never go. I wanted to avoid this if possible, but based on her reaction, I don’t have another choice. I don’t have the strength or intelligence to challenge someone who doesn’t respond to logic. And I don’t have the time to try, because I’ve got to find a way to survive this situation first.
Mikado sucked in a deep breath of determination and pushed the switch as he let it out.
So my only choice—is to rely on numbers!
“This is ridiculous. Enough discussion,” Namie said, then slowly raised her hand. “I don’t care how many friends you have. We can come up with plenty of truth serum.”
Her face glowed with a radiant smile as her hand stretched overhead. She never realized that there could be such pleasure in eliminating her brother’s enemies.
Some of Namie’s subordinates saw her hand rise.
“That’s the signal. Just grab the kid.”
“Hey…hang on, what if he’s working with the cops? We could be screwing ourselves…”
“At this point, who cares? She certainly ain’t seein’ the big picture. Bring on the cops—once the dust has settled, the broad will handle everything.”
The more gung ho of the men ignored his hesitant partner, dropped his drunken salaryman act, and did a brief scan of the area.
“Huh…?”
He noticed something and checked with his partner. “It’s like…eleven o’clock, right?”
“Yeah.”
He felt a subtle chill creep over him.
“Then…where’d all these people come from?”
Just as the first man burst out of the crowd and smoothly, naturally made his way closer to Mikado—
Beebeebeep, beebeebeep.
It was the sound of a cell phone receiving a text.
At first, the man thought it was his own, but then he realized he didn’t have his phone on him. It was just someone else’s message tone coming from very close by.
But when he turned in the direction of the sound, he saw a very large black man, towering well over six feet tall. It was the giant well known along this street—Simon. The man averted his gaze and kept walking so as not to make more eye contact.
Then the bleeping beeps were followed by a little song.
He turned in the direction of that sound and saw a bartender wearing sunglasses—Shizuo Heiwajima, the so-called brawling puppet of Ikebukuro. What was he doing there?
He turned in yet another direction and saw several people of an entirely different type, each one busy reading an e-mail off of their phone.
“…?!”
That’s when they noticed something. As several different chimes played on, more songs started up, forming an ugly, clashing harmony.
Beebeebeebeep, beebeebeebeep.
More text notifications, at least a dozen from every direction.
“?!”
At last, Namie and her men realized that something strange was happening.
The mixed crowd of countless milling figures had grown into what would more accurately be termed a mob. Even those whose phones hadn’t gone off were pulling them out of pockets, drawn by the vibration setting. But the vast majority were beeping and ringing incessantly.
And then…
Too late to do anything about it, the little group was drowned in waves of ringtones.
Tone, tone, tone. Melody tone ringtone, ringtone, harmonic tone, harmony.
tonetonetonetonetonemelodymelodymelodyringringringringtonetoneharmonicnicnicnicharmony
harmonyharmonyharmonytonetonemelotonedytonemelotonetonetonemelotoneringtoneringtoneingtonetonehartoneringmeltoneingnictonehartoneritoneingharmingtonemelotoningringmeloharmo
tonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetonetone
tone, tonetonetonetone, tonetonetonetonetonetone, tonetonetonetonetone, tonetonetone tonetone
tonetonetone, tonetonetonetone, tonetone, tonetone, tonetonetone, tone, tonetone tonetonetone, tone
tonetone, tone, tonetonetoneto, tonetonetonetonetonetone, tonetonetonetone, tonetonetone, tone
tone, tonetone, tone, tone, tonetonetone, tone, tonetonetone, tonetone, tonetone, tonetone, tone, tone
And as the ringtones gradually calmed and faded out, Namie’s group found they were the center of attention.
Gazes. They were singled out from the crowd by a sea of gazes.
Dozens, if not hundreds, of people in the surrounding crowd were all turned in their direction, staring—sometimes speaking with the person beside them—casting them into sharp relief, as though they were the players of some kind of theater, performing in a special space cut out of the surroundings…
“What…what is this…? What’s happening…? Who the hell are these people?!” Namie screamed. The scene had overturned not just her expectations, but everything she thought was normal.
But the stares did not stop. It was as though they had made enemies out of the entire world.
Lost in the terrible shock of the moment was the fact that the boy she’d been negotiating with had slipped into the crowd, disappearing into the sea of gazes.
The founder of the Dollars turned into one of the mob, unbeknownst to anyone.
“Whoa, can you believe that? Izaya and Shizuo on the same street, and they’re not fighting or anything!” Karisawa bubbled. She was sitting in a van parked on the side of the street.
“That’s just because Shizuo hasn’t noticed him. Still, this is wild. Is it me, or are there even some students in the mix? Not that hardly any of them are wearing their uniforms at this time of day.”
One of the cars parked on 60-Kai Street was the van that Kadota, Yumasaki, and the others drove. Inside, Kadota’s friends—and a new girl they just picked up this morning—watched the scene outside with trepidation.
The girl was one they’d kidnapped before she could be kidnapped, from a rickety, old apartment building near Ikebukuro Station. By torturing those thugs, the group learned that a Yagiri Pharmaceuticals research lab was behind the event. Just as they were about to finish up with their victims, the leader of the thugs got a text message that appeared to be a code.
After forcing him to decode the message, they learned that it contained an address, with a note that there was a “girl with a scar on her neck” there, and a simple text drawing of a door. There was also an image attached to the e-mail—creepily enough, it was a picture of the girl’s severed head. In the image, it almost looked like it was alive, but the file labeled it a “re-creation.”
Kadota asked the thugs what the door was supposed to mean. They said it was a corruption of D.O.A.—dead or alive. With that in mind, the group decided to swing by the apartment before anyone else arrived, pick the lock, and take the girl to safety.
All the other kidnappers who got the same message must have been stationed outside of Toshima Ward, because Kadota’s group was first on the scene in Ikebukuro and succeeded in their mission.
They didn’t know who the girl shivering in the back of the van was yet, but Kadota made sure to report it through the form on the Dollars’ website. It was designed to reduce conflict between the various members of the Dollars, but it was almost unheard of for members to run into each other on the street.
Even if they did, it was typically no more than the friendly relationship that developed between Karisawa’s team and Kaztano, the illegal immigrant. Until this moment, none of them knew that Simon and Shizuo were also members.
The idea of illegal immigrants being on the Net was strange, but it turned out that they were recruited through old-fashioned word of mouth in real life. The Dollars were apparently growing through more mediums than just the Internet.
And that led to today—the group’s first-ever meetup.
“Sheesh, how many peo
ple is that? Y’know, it looks less like a gang meetup than some kind of flash mob from a major forum or something.”
“Well, the Dollars aren’t exactly your typical color gang. Hell, the team color is camouflage.”
“By the way, what’s the leader like?”
“No idea…”
As Yumasaki and Karisawa chattered happily away, Kadota groaned in the driver’s seat. “Geez… Is this what the Dollars really are? Damn… What’s going on…?”
He was conflicted with equal parts bewilderment at having been part of such an inexplicable group and astonishment at the sheer power of the sight. It was far beyond the scale of any color gang.
At a glance, it didn’t look like a meetup at all. Each person wore their own outfit and stood where they were without order or reason. They were simply there as they were—on their own or in small groups of like-minded friends.
Some were office workers, some were teenage girls in their high school uniforms, some were exceedingly plain college students, some were foreigners, some fit the image of a color gang perfectly, some were housewives— Some were— Some were— Some were—
That was the group collected in this scene. Many of them were on the younger side, to be certain, but from a distance it looked like nothing more extraordinary than a larger than usual crowd for this time of night.
Even the police could easily be fooled if called. That was exactly the point of the group, and thus it melted into the town without suspicion.
Until a single e-mail reached the entire group.
Mikado waited for the right moment and sent a preprepared message to essentially every member of the group with a mail address on their cell phone, all at once.
“Right now anyone not looking at messages on their phones is an enemy. Do not attack, just stare silently.”
Namie and her goons were instantly singled out in the crowd, overwhelmingly outnumbered.
A single dullahan observed the scene from far above. She had to determine who was an enemy and who was a friend.
The ones who still brandished weapons in the midst of the stares, taking positions to protect Namie. They were the enemy to her and to the Dollars.
Durarara!!, Vol. 1 (novel) Page 15