“I want…”
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Ikebukuro, atop a building under construction—present day
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Which of them was first to move?
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No one witnessed the moment happen.
Perhaps even they themselves were not aware of it.
Neither Shizuo Heiwajima, who had turned into a pure system designed to destroy the man before him, nor Izaya Orihara, who still retained his rational human mind.
They were atop a building under construction, shortly before dawn.
The battle to the death started without even a provocation to initiate it.
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To the two longtime foes, this fight was an undeniable turning point. But for such a momentous occasion, it certainly started in unmemorable fashion.
Then again, given that their mutual hatred essentially stemmed from the feeling of I just don’t like the guy, perhaps it was also fitting that it happened unceremoniously.
Their astonishing, overwhelming battles, going back to school days, made you doubt the accuracy of that old saying “The more you fight, the closer you really are.”
There was no high-minded chivalry in this duel, no respect for the other side whatsoever.
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And in the case of this stunning battle in the wee hours of the morning, there was once again not a shred of respect for the other combatant. Not once did either of them ever view the other with the positive aspects inherent in the word rival.
So when they met again on the upper portion of the construction site, there was not a single word of dialogue between them.
The only exchange of words was the phone call that Shizuo Heiwajima received from Izaya Orihara as he climbed up the stairs of the building.
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Less than a minute earlier, when Shizuo slowly opened the door to the top of the building, where construction was still ongoing, the first thing that stung his nose was the odor of evaporated gasoline.
Then he realized that it was coming from the liquid flowing along the ground at his feet.
But Shizuo didn’t show any signs of panic. Even when flames shot up around him the next moment, he barely blinked.
Not because he’d expected it, nor because he’d instantly thought of some means to counteract it. It was just that the fury compressed into his body dulled the ordinary human senses, leaving him incapable of typical reaction.
“…”
Ordinarily, that kind of lapse in focus would be fatal—but Shizuo grabbed the door in silence, wrenched it off its hinges, and stepped over it.
That was all he did.
But the abnormal physical strength with which he performed the feat flattened the flames spreading at his feet and caused a gust of air that pushed back the wind blowing in from outside. The flames practically danced in the resulting eddies of air.
Shizuo used the trampled door as a stepping-stone to leap forward, using the swirling force of the flames as momentum. Parts of his clothes were singed, but he was able to get clear before they actually caught fire.
Before the secondary effects of the heat and the lack of oxygen could inflict any damage on him, however, a steel beam hoisted on the crane swung at him like a pendulum.
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The beam was moving with enough force that it would easily go straight through a typical automobile—but once again, Shizuo barely batted an eye.
His right arm was still dangling at his side, ever since he’d deflected the forklift minutes earlier, but the anger in him dulled both his pain and his common sense.
He swung his good arm upward, delivering a solid uppercut to the oncoming beam. In the moment of impact, the steel crumpled, and the floor under construction made an unpleasant sound around Shizuo’s feet.
But despite being in the midst of the two expressions of force, Shizuo was unhurt.
The deflected beam slid loose of its supporting wires and plummeted back down onto the construction site.
He glanced toward where it fell, and he caught sight of a man. It was Izaya, who showed no sign of alarm or reaction of any kind when the giant piece of metal crashed right next to him.
The two men were united in their lack of surprise at dramatic changes in the situation, but unlike Shizuo’s, Izaya’s face was fixed into a cruel smile, and he at least displayed enough intelligence to calculate how to kill another person.
From Izaya’s perspective, however, he wasn’t killing a “person” at all.
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This was the beginning of Izaya’s quest to vanquish a monster.
In this case, the monster wasn’t evil, and Izaya wasn’t the hero.
The battle to the death wasn’t undertaken on any basis of good and evil at all. The two of them were both, in their own way, in a place far from any concept of righteousness and wickedness.
All the unconscious restraints were gone. All there was to do was face the other.
Nothing until now had risen to the level of a battle to the death. Those were like introductions.
The two men faced off, glaring each other down—until the urge to kill condensed into the space between them and exploded outward all at once.
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Which of them was first to move?
There was a moment in time containing the answer to that question, one that no one would ever be able to answer later.
The slaughter began without a clear point of initiation.
Just thick, boiling air seething with heat.
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Ikebukuro—Russia Sushi
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In the middle of Shizuo and Izaya’s battle to the death, there was activity happening elsewhere.
It was the time of sleep in the city, when several hours still remained until dawn.
The time that even the twenty-four-hour karaoke booths, the bars that stayed open until morning, and the seedy girlie clubs saw reduced foot traffic. And yet…
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“Well, dammit.”
Tom peered out through the barricade erected behind the window out of tables and other furniture. He was watching the steady gathering of people outside the building who sported bloodshot-red eyes.
They weren’t rioting, nor were they zombies in search of a meal.
They just stood out there, facing the restaurant, smiling silently.
But that was even worse than the alternative.
“Am I having a nightmare or what?” Tom lamented, squinting through the glass.
Next to him, a man with a shaved head doing the exact same thing muttered, “Saika possessed them.”
“Huh? You know something about this…uh, buddy?”
“It’s Kine.”
“…Oh, right. I’m Tanaka. So…you know what that means, Mr. Kine?”
Kine? As in…the former Awakusu-kai Kine?
Tom had cleaned up his tone of voice a bit, sensing that his conversation partner was a “professional” gentleman. The hairless man, Kine, furrowed his brow and said calmly, “Well, it’s probably a waste of time trying to convince you to believe me, so I’ll put it simply and say that it’s kind of like a hypnosis that makes people into slaves.”
“…Hypnosis?” Tom repeated. But based on the view of the outside, it did seem to make more sense than, say, a zombie invasion. “Well, whatever. If it’s hypnosis, that means someone did it to them, right?”
“You get right to the point.”
“I can’t do the job I’ve got now unless I can process new information quickly… So you got any thoughts about who the hypnotist is…?”
“I’ve got a few ideas, but I can’t imagine any of them would want to surround this place,” Kine replied.
Tom sighed and hissed back at the nearby employees of Russia Sushi, “Hey, what about you guys? Is there any kind of dangerous bullshit this place is getting sucked into?”
Denis shot Tom a nasty glare and said, “I don’t know. Why don’t you speak for yourself?”
“I don’t think I’ve done nothin’ to get a hypnotist pissed at me… Well, I guess there was that one person I saw outside. Who was that again…?”
“It doesn’t have to be you specifically. Could be folks who have a problem with Shizuo,” Denis pointed out.
Tom envisioned the boss of the company he worked for—and then his subordinates, Shizuo and Vorona.
“…Well…yeah, I guess you have a point there. But why me, then?”
“Probably means you’ve got more personal sway than you realize,” Denis offered as he continued calmly cleaning up the interior of the restaurant.
“I think you’ve overestimated me,” Tom said with a shrug.
Then Simon returned from the back, smiling. “Hey, we have sleepover here tonight. I have many fireworks ready, too.”
There was something that looked like a dirty sack in his hands. Apparently, he’d been digging it up from under the floor of the kitchen.
“Don’t bring all that dirt over into the restaurant,” Denis snapped, but Simon just grinned and pulled something out of the sack. When Tom saw what it was, his cheeks twitched, and even Kine’s expression darkened.
It was clear from the look of the object, which resembled a black spray can of hair mousse with a handle and pin attached to it, that it did not belong in a sushi restaurant or in any Japanese city to begin with.
Simon gestured with the black tube—a military flash grenade—and spoke in his typical tone of voice, as if nothing about the scene was any different than usual.