“…Yes, Mother.”
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It was the word that proved her free will had been eaten away by Saika.
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If it was love that helped spread Saika, then Nasujima was indeed a man overflowing with it.
His love was very close to Saika’s accursed love, a dedication to satisfying his own desires. It was a kind of twisted self-love that wasn’t quite narcissism, but you could certainly call it a type of love.
At this point in time, Nasujima had about 2,300 of Saika’s grandchildren under his control. There was no ideal, no vision behind this. The only thing they spread through the town was his own vulgar desire.
Without the restraint Kujiragi had, Nasujima’s rampage showed no signs of slowing down. It corroded the neighborhood of Ikebukuro in the most twisted possible form.
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Ruined building
✦ ✦ ✦
Something was happening in Ikebukuro.
Mikado felt that premonition so strongly that it might as well have been conviction.
✦ ✦ ✦
While the Blue Squares were napping in their cars or nearby twenty-four-hour manga cafés, Mikado remained inside the abandoned building. The ones who stayed up at night were down on the first floor, but Mikado still wasn’t in the mood to sleep.
There was the evening news story about the abandoned severed head. Then the report about a police vehicle being attacked in Ikebukuro. Lastly, the recent chat room incident.
On the backside of these events involving himself and the Dollars, something else was moving forward in Ikebukuro. And it was undoubtedly something with an occult, magical bent, like Celty.
Mikado was mildly surprised that he didn’t find himself elated by this situation. His old middle school self—or even his self at the first Dollars meetup—would have been thrilled at the idea of a new life just around the corner, and his heart would have been jumping out of his chest with joy.
So why was now different? If he placed his hand over his heart, he felt no quickening there, no stirring of the blood. If anything, his current mental state was closer to Who cares?
He was worried about Celty, his acquaintance. But it was a very commonplace and commonsense feeling, that mundane concern about someone he knew being a victim.
Mikado was at least a little alarmed and confused about the disappearance of the version of himself that longed for the abnormal.
It’s so strange. It feels like I’m turning into something other than myself.
On the day of the skirmish between the Dollars and Toramaru, from the very moment he’d driven that ballpoint pen through Aoba’s hand, he’d felt a kind of light dizziness at all times. It grew stronger by the day, until at last he was standing before scenery he’d never seen before.
Normally, he might panic. He might deny what was happening. Insist that this couldn’t be possible. That he hadn’t meant for it to be this way.
But Mikado Ryuugamine accepted it all.
He might end up killing a person.
He might get killed instead.
He might kill himself.
He accepted even this present situation, so steeped in predictions and premonitions, as a part of his ordinary daily life.
But I don’t want to die, and I definitely don’t want to be a murderer, he thought, a sign that even as he accepted the situation, his mind was still functioning properly. But since I’ve got this now, it would be a waste if I didn’t go ahead and use it.
It was through this imitation of typical everyday thought processes that Mikado found himself in possession of something that was absolutely abnormal and atypical for Japan.
Depending on where you lived, it could be a totally ordinary tool. And in fact, the man named Horada had possessed one when the Yellow Scarves and the Dollars were at war. But Mikado had just missed the chance to see it in action.
He sighed and gingerly picked up the object, which was wrapped in newspaper.
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“I bet…that when you’re not going to fire it, it’s a bad idea to put your finger on the trigger.”
✦ ✦ ✦
He was holding a gleaming black automatic pistol.
What Izumii had brought to him as a “present” was none other than a weapon that was a crime to even possess in Japan.
In a sense, it was small beans at this point. When Horada had shot Shizuo, he certainly hadn’t killed him. And Celty had defended herself against far more powerful rifle shots. Even tonight, Shizuo had stared down the barrel of Vorona’s gun.
But these incidents had all happened to Shizuo and Celty. And when the boy named Mikado Ryuugamine grabbed this gun, it indicated a major shift in the standing of the Dollars as a whole.
Obviously, with guns being illegal, it was not the sort of thing your average person could pick up and use. Trying to actually aim with it and hit a moving target? Nearly impossible.
But that was the sort of thing that could be improved upon, depending on the circumstances. If you knew how to hold it steady and pull the trigger, you could do the job even if you were an amateur, given a close enough proximity. At a slight distance, Horada had succeeded in hitting Shizuo Heiwajima’s side and leg.
If you had a sleeping target, you could kill them for sure. But only if you had the guts to go through with it.
And if you were going to stand next to someone and shoot them, it wouldn’t be that different from using a knife. Yet, there was no tool better for threatening than this.
Most likely, Aozaki had chosen to pass the weapon along through Izumii to see what Mikado Ryuugamine would do with this tool. Even by the Awakusu-kai’s standards, this was highly unorthodox.
And Mikado, having been given this gun for unorthodox reasons, now gazed upon it with very orthodox eyes. It was the same way one gazed at a newfangled remote from when TVs went digital and the number of buttons multiplied. There was no special excitement or fear in his eyes, just ordinary examination.
“Guns are scary. I can’t stop trembling,” he said, the kind of thing a normal boy might say. But on the inside, a different feeling was blooming.
What is this? I’m supposed to be afraid of it…but right now, I feel much more afraid of Mr. Akabayashi from yesterday, he thought, which was rather out of place. Then he murmured to himself, still very matter-of-fact:
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“I better look up the right way to shoot this thing online.”
✦ ✦ ✦
He didn’t need any guts for that.
He’d gotten all of that out of the way the moment he’d opened the door to the abnormal on the day of the Dollars’ first meeting.
Mikado Ryuugamine could fire that gun.
But who to point it at? Or what to use it for? That, he was still uncertain of.
Among the options he had for targets of this gun, he could see the vague image of his own face—but at this stage, Mikado could not choose anyone.
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He didn’t even know whether that was a good thing or a sign of his own weakness.
But knowing that having the gun was a form of proud, doomed resistance—Mikado Ryuugamine decided to make an enemy of his own weakness and everything caught in its vortex.
✦ ✦ ✦
And perhaps Ikebukuro itself.
✦ ✦ ✦
Morning arrived in Tokyo.
But whether the clock hand hit the sixth hour or the seventh, sunlight did not fall upon the neighborhood of Ikebukuro.
Pure black shadow enveloped the space over the top of the city, a cover that put the word cloudy to shame.
It was like the night still continued, and the alien, bewildering experience frightened residents and made major headlines.
✦ ✦ ✦
Morning never arrived for Ikebukuro on this day.
✦ ✦ ✦
It was explained for the mass audience as a “natural phenomenon caused by the effects of a special type of sandstorm” and would eventually be forgotten as another freak event. But it was, in fact, completely supernatural in nature.
✦ ✦ ✦
In a town where the sky was covered by a fairy’s shadow, a story of twisted love quietly came to a close.
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