Stop me if you’ve heard this one.
Like us, the city wants to take a holiday sometimes.
Just like an office worker pulling overtime shifts or a student studying hard on a Sunday night instead of kicking back and watching Sazae-san before school resumes the next morning.
But, of course, as long as there are people, a city doesn’t have time to sleep.
Still, there are times the city gets to relax.
But every day off isn’t just about lying in bed past noon, is it?
The city likes to watch the people walking its streets and toys with them.
That’s how the city enjoys its days off.
Let’s take Ikebukuro, for instance. If you get wrapped up in something odd…
Just assume that the city is toying with you.
And if you can do that…
Try to play along.
—Excerpt from the afterword of Shinichi Tsukumoya, author of Media Wax’s Ikebukuro travel guide, Ikebukuro Strikes Back
*Sazae-san holds the Guinness World Record as Japan’s longest-running anime. It aired Sunday nights between six thirty and seven.
Prologue: Rumor
“The murder-machine philosopher.”
Those were the words the man used to describe him.
“I happen to think epithets like that are rather trite, but if you had to put a giant title on him, like the tabloid rags at the supermarket, that’s what you’d expect to see. He’s a hit man who carries out his work like a machine, but there’s an odd aesthetic he follows.”
This machinelike hit man, said to be the seventh-most-feared professional killer in Russia, was indeed inhuman in his manner.
Reputedly, his victims numbered over eighty, and his hits all shared a certain unique feature: He did not prepare any murder weapon beforehand but used whatever was on hand at the scene of the killing.
If his target had a gun, he would twist their arm until they shot themselves in the forehead.
If it was in a kitchen, he could use a knife or even a rolling pin or the ice in the freezer as a weapon.
The ex-military hooligan murdered in a bank had his throat slit by a fresh stack of bills.
He was a hit man of considerable legend—but no one knew his name.
Nor did they know where to find him or how to make reliable contact.
His appearance was unknown. The only way they knew he had killed was by his method.
“Isn’t it fascinating? If anyone in Russia is looking for a hit man, they just cast out for one and hire him. So this guy goes looking for ‘people looking for a hit man.’ He hears about them and takes it upon himself to contact his prospective client.”
The hit man would take a job, complete it in short order, then leave and change his name, never to meet his client again.
In other words, he became famous without a name, only the vague profile that appeared to fit a single person based on the similarity of the methods of murder.
“Well, it seems this hit man…has come to our country now. Apparently, they finally uncovered his identity back home, and now the associates of his victims are after him. His job while he’s here is to eliminate two men who stole a huge secret from a Russian group a few years back,” the information agent chattered happily.
The dead-eyed woman he was talking to was busy filing papers and showed no interest in the topic of hired killers.
“From what some people say, he could take down a special forces agent or two without a sneak attack—in fact, they could try to sneak up on him and he’d still win… Are you listening?”
“Dunno.”
Whether she thought the story too unrealistic or accepted it as fact but just didn’t care, the woman had offered no responses to his story other than tepid ahhs and uh-huhs. The information dealer shook his head in pity and said, “You really are a tremendously boring woman, Namie. Your brother’s never going to take an interest in you at this rate.”
“I don’t need him to. I’m satisfied just watching Seiji from behind.”
“Well, isn’t that creepy.”
“I find it quite pleasant. It makes me happy just to think of Seiji’s face and know that I’m breathing the air on the same planet as him. But not satisfied,” she said, a look of sheer bliss on her face. It was definitely creepy.
The woman named Namie returned to her usual stone-faced expression and asked her employer, “And what do you expect to do, talking about some hit man who might as well have popped out of a comic book? Has all this Headless Rider and demon blade nonsense turned your brain into manga, too?”
“I won’t deny it,” he said, smiling smoothly and reaching for a can of beer on the table. “It turns out those two on the run he’s looking for are a black man and a white man.”
“…”
“They run a sushi restaurant in Ikebukuro now. But I’m not sure if the hit man is aware of that or not.”
Whether by coincidence or intention, on the very day that this conversation happened, the “murder-machine philosopher” arrived in Ikebukuro.
Just at the time the Russian murder-machine came to Japan, the country was swarming with its own shadows.
Only it was happening before the eyes of the entire nation on TV—hardly what one expects when it comes to shadows.
“This is the hotel where the latest incident occurred,” the reporter was saying, motioning gravely to the building behind him. It was very obviously a love hotel—the kind you reserve by the hour. He continued to report the details with the utmost gravity. “The attack happened before dawn this morning. When screams issued from a second-floor room, employees rushed to the scene to find an unconscious woman spattered with blood and a deceased man whose body had been grievously injured.”
The killer Hollywood.
That was the Internet-given nickname of the suspect in the serial killings. In fact, there were no true suspects in a concrete sense.
A witness to the first of the string of murders described the attacker as “a person wearing a lifelike wolf mask.” There were no direct witnesses of the next killing, but someone did spot a “half-fish man, like you’d see in the movies,” jumping from the third floor of the hotel where the murder happened, then scampering away.
On the news segment covering the latest killing, the woman who witnessed the entire attack said that “a monster with a dinosaur face scooped out the victim’s heart with its bare hands.” Sure enough, the hotel’s security cameras showed a figure with a dinosaur face running off like some wild beast.
When one of the investigators watched the footage, he remarked, “It reminds me of one of those South American chupacabra videos,” an observation that was so accurate, it earned a round of tasteless snorts and chuckles.
That was a sign of how fake and yet realistic the video was.
The common feature of all the killer’s victims was the remarkable destruction they suffered, without losing any limbs. One victim’s flesh was stripped from all over his body; one man’s genitals, tongue, and partial spine were cut out; and one victim’s face was crushed.
The killer was nicknamed Hollywood after the various movie-monster forms taken for each different appearance. The media avoided picking up that moniker, out of fears of complaints from the movie and tourism industries, but on the Net, the legend spread far and wide.
There was once an American couple who performed a series of stickups in various costumes, but the culprit in this case was much, much more than just a costume.
After all, Hollywood had the viciousness, the ferocity, and the sheer wall- and door-destroying bare-handed power of an actual monster.
Without any leads on a suspect or hints at a motive, the only option was to recoil in fear of the
killer’s potential appearance. Many of those a safe distance from the scenes of rampage found a kind of perverse entertainment from the show that was Hollywood’s trail of destruction.
So it was that the serial killings, all happening around the capital, were the biggest source of gossip of the day. Hollywood’s presence—if not identity—was made known around the nation.
And tonight, the killer prowled the streets of Ikebukuro.
Two shadows arrived in Ikebukuro, ironically on the very same day.
Through fate or coincidence, they crossed paths on the night streets.
Whatever happened between them is unknown.
The only certainty is that they each held hostility toward the other.
Two of the worst people on the planet met, found murderous intent, and set about to end the other.
Ikebukuro was flooded in callous, unthinking malice, and a bloodbath to eclipse the infamous Night of the Ripper two months earlier began to swallow the city into its grotesque maw…
Well, it should have.
The shining neon lights of the commercial district set the night scene in Ikebukuro.
In a park, slightly off the center of town, there was a plock sound, like a giant wooden fish drum from a Buddhist temple being slammed by a train.
Right after the hit man and the killer first faced off, the hit man picked up the nearest object he could use as a murder weapon, like he always did.
On a bench nearby sat some rather unsavory-looking young men.
They looked like your typical street toughs, eating their rice ball dinner from a plastic convenience store bag. For some reason, there was an out-of-place briefcase sitting next to them, and the hit man grabbed it without hesitation.
It was instantaneous.
So fast that it was beyond the processing power of the typical human being, with flowing precision and maximum efficiency.
The murder-machine hit man grabbed the briefcase like a gust of wind—and, with perfect timing, perfect angle, and perfect velocity, swung it toward Hollywood’s chin.
But just before the briefcase intersected with the killer, Hollywood’s manual chop entered from an unnatural angle and tore through the briefcase as if it were soft tofu.
Papers, bills, a broken pen, and the drops of ink from within it sprayed outward.
With honed reflexes, each combatant caught sight of the phenomenon in slow motion. They each had a perfect view of the other.
Next to them sat the dumbfounded hooligans. Determining that they posed no threat, the two killers instead focused entirely on the other.
They had to be evenly matched. Even if they weren’t, it was the kind of fight in which victory or defeat could be determined by any number of variables. Their brains subconsciously worked away at the calculations, but their conscious minds stayed perfectly focused.
The two killers, alike in many ways, launched themselves into an orgy of slaughter.
Launched themselves entirely and unfortunately.
They threw their concentration, their caution, their everything into that moment.
Which is why the two murderers failed to notice that of the two owners of the briefcase sitting dumbfounded on the bench, one was wearing a bartender’s outfit, despite not working at a bar.
As they were outsiders to Ikebukuro, they also did not realize that there were people in Ikebukuro one must never pick a fight with.
People whom no one should ever, ever, ever challenge to a fight, no matter if they were a hit man, or a serial killer, or a president, or an alien, or a vampire, or a headless monster.
Hence, the advent of the wooden plock.
Right before the sound, the two noticed something.
Just as they were about to make contact, out of the corner of their eyes, they caught the unnatural silhouette of the bartender, his mouth twitching, lifting the park bench in one hand.
Having pulled the bolted-down bench straight out of the ground, the man in the bartender outfit bellowed, “Why, you…little sneak thieves!”
He swung the bench at them.
It was a swing worthy of a baseball slugger, if you ignored that he did it with only one hand.
The weapon with size and speed that transcended common sense caught the murder-machine on his nose as he tried to evade, destroying part of his face and delivering a shock to his brain and spine.
The park bench hurtled through the air toward Hollywood in an instant. The killer tensed instinctively in defense but was literally tossed into the air, flying completely out of the park and out of sight.
In American cartoons, characters were often knocked clean out of a scene by a hammer, and that was how Hollywood departed this one. The murder-machine’s wits were similarly knocked right out of his skull.
As he picked up the bills and notes that spilled out of the broken briefcase, the dreadlocked man who didn’t take part in the fight noted, “You won’t need to go for a second shot, Shizuo.”
The man with the park bench raised for the finishing blow, Shizuo Heiwajima, looked down at the immobile Caucasian and begrudgingly returned the bench to its former position.
“Dammit. What do these sneak thieves expect me to do, carry this cash around in my hands all night?”
“Um…do you really think they were sneak thieves?” the dreadlocked man wondered, but Shizuo was already walking toward the exit of the park.
“I’m going to go see if the Don Quixote has any briefcases,” he said calmly and abruptly, referring to a nearby discount store. Shizuo raced off to the park exit.
As he watched his money-counting partner trot away, the man shook his dreads and wondered, “Who would challenge Shizuo to a fight in this neighborhood? They must be from out of town.”
He looked down at the white man with half pity and half dismay. “Remember this: A bartender’s outfit in this town is a bigger warning signal than a red light. Too late to put that knowledge to use, though,” he said to the likely unconscious man, then turned on his heel. “By way of apology for the overboard treatment, I won’t tell the cops about you. So don’t hold a grudge against me, got it? And if you want to live, don’t hold a grudge against the bartender guy, either.”
The man briefly wondered about the red-eyed zombie that Shizuo knocked out with the bench, then waved his hand and said to the both of them, “Well, anyway. That’s what kind of city this is. Enjoy your stay.”
“Welcome to Ikebukuro. You both looked pretty impressive. You just had bad luck.”
A hit man and a killer appeared in the city.
But that was all.
Two sources of violence were instantly crushed by an even greater violence.
The chance meeting of those murderous figures should have been a big deal, but it was merely toyed with.
Ikebukuro slowly enjoyed its holiday.
It watched the various organisms contained within itself and their activities…
And the city stretched out to relax.
Chapter 1: Daioh TV, Special Program Ikebukuro’s 100-Day Front
“The city of Ikebukuro knows no rest,” said the ominous narration on the TV, displaying the night city as filmed from inside a moving police car. “Since the serial assaults known as the Night of the Ripper two months ago, the populace has lived in fear. Yet Ikebukuro’s night continues to writhe with life.”
It was the kind of special program often shown at the end of the year, where film crews accompanied a police patrol to catch the decisive moment in an exciting case to show to the viewers in their peaceful homes.
In most cases, these weren’t shocking, nation-crumbling incidents, but simple local brawls, unlicensed or drunken driving, stolen vehicle crackdowns, and other everyday events that wouldn’t even get listed in a newspaper’s local safety section.
But because of the special immediacy of video footage, the programs succeeded in implanting a specific idea into the heads of its peaceful viewers: “Crime is nearby, and the city at night is dangerous.”
There was just one difference from the usual pattern in Daioh TV’s special program.
“On these streets, the very veins of our city, an eerie shadow dances in the darkness…”
The picture cut to the start of a now-famous video clip.
“A motorcycle entirely in black, with no headlight or license plate. This alone qualifies it as a public danger on the street.”
As usual, the place was Ikebukuro at night. But there was something different to the footage this time, something off.
In the center of the screen was a black motorcycle, racing down the street after a car. As the narrator said, it had no headlight or plate, making the vehicle look like a 3-D representation of a solid black silhouette.
There was the sound of gunfire, and the helmet of the bike’s rider shot backward, raising off its shoulders for just an instant. But it returned to its original position just as quickly.
It was creepy enough, the way it seemed to snap back into place with black rubber bands—but the real problem was what that momentary dislocation revealed.
The instant the helmet rose upward…there was nothing beneath it.
It wasn’t a trick of the eye, or camouflage from black hair, or anything of that sort.
The camera caught a clear glimpse of the shooter’s car in the space between the helmet and the rider’s neck.
The sight could be succinctly described thusly: “The rider on the pitch-black bike has no head above the neck.”
A black shadow that extended from the empty cross section of neck grabbed the base of the helmet and pulled it back into place.
It was already suspicious footage to start with, but the very cheap suspicion of it all, when combined with the straight-faced genre of news reporting, gave the scene an eerie reality.
There was one other unsettling feature about the rider. A tool, pure black with no highlight, as thick and pure as a midsummer shadow, that swung around just before the man shot at the rider.
It was too twisted and hideous to call a “weapon.”
The pole, a good ten feet long at least—twice the height of the rider—was connected to a sickle blade just as long.
Durarara!!, Vol. 4 (novel) Page 1