“I’m not as tough as you, after all.”
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Building under construction—present day
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The flame of the match acted as a trigger, sending up a huge amount of heat and light from the flammable gas filling the area and causing dull sounds of destruction.
Izaya stood atop the beams, but he’d moved to a safer location away from the searing waves of heat after he dropped the match. But even then, the gusts of wind from the gas explosion sent jets of raging heat right past him.
He had to hold tight to the steel pillar to protect himself and ensure the gust didn’t knock him off. That was enough to pull his eyes off Shizuo for the moment.
There was always the possibility that Shizuo could be entirely burned to a crisp, without oxygen in his lungs, and still come after him. At the very least, Izaya expected, he wouldn’t be able to escape with his legs paralyzed like that…
But then he noticed something off.
The darkness around them had somehow gotten thicker.
“…?”
This wasn’t typical night darkness. The light of the flames was being sucked up directly into the sky—such was the abnormal dark around the building.
It was often said that the stars were invisible in the city because of the illumination around you, but in this case, it was as if the sky had snuffed out all the light on the surface of the planet.
And not just the light. The wind, heated and fueled by the fire—even the flames themselves—vanished into the darkness. A shadow reaching down from the sky was grabbing the fire and devouring it.
Izaya recognized this shadow.
“…”
And realizing that he knew what this mysterious shadow was, he narrowed his eyes and muttered, “I thought it had no memory… What does that monster think it’s doing?”
For just a moment, he gazed up at the sky. There were no stars above, nothing at all but unnatural darkness.
But he couldn’t afford to pay much attention to it now. He was in the midst of a battle for his life.
Out of the suspicion that the shadow might seek to interrupt or interfere with their battle, Izaya gave it a bare minimum of caution as he searched for Shizuo Heiwajima below.
The flame had not spread far but was collected into a small area, probably due to the effect of the shadow. Yet he did not see a human figure amid the fire.
Where is he?
Izaya squinted, looking for the figure of a man charred to a crisp. Then he felt a dull shaking at his feet and grabbed the steel beam for support.
An earthquake?
It was fierce and yet muffled, like the earth itself was rumbling and rocking.
No, that’s not it.
An ordinary person would chalk it up to a quake. But Izaya knew.
There was no coincidental tremor right at this exact moment. There was one possible source that was far more likely, given the circumstances.
Izaya gripped the corner of the pillar and gazed into the center of the shrinking, focusing flames.
And then he saw it. Right in the center of the fire.
There was a large shadow, right around the spot where Shizuo had been kneeling earlier. But it was not in the form of a human figure consumed by the fire.
It was a massive hole in the floor with cracks spreading away from it like the web of a spider. A shiver ran down Izaya’s back.
That monster. Did he punch through the floor with his upper-half strength alone?
Moments ago, Shizuo had been paralyzed on the floor due to lack of air. He was able to move his torso but hadn’t recovered enough oxygen to use his legs to stand.
So he had used whatever muscles he could to inflict enough damage to break through the floor. Perhaps it had been with his fists or elbows or forehead; Izaya couldn’t tell.
All he knew was that the smashing sound he had heard earlier along with the burst of heat and light hadn’t been from the explosion but had been the sound of the floor crumbling with the force of Shizuo’s blow.
Did he fall through a hole to escape?! Or maybe…
There were two possibilities.
One was that he had punched a hole in the floor and escaped the flames by falling through it.
The other was that, like a grasshopper slamming its legs against the ground for greater recoil, the sheer force of hitting the floor had buffeted the rest of his body clear out of the center of the flames.
In either case, there was just one conclusion to be drawn.
Izaya leaned forward atop the steel beam, looking down the length of the pillar beneath him to its base. And there he saw…
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“…”
✦ ✦ ✦
…the figure of Shizuo Heiwajima—clothes, skin, and hair singed here and there—grabbing the base of the steel beam with a look of absolute fury.
Uh-oh!
Izaya tried to leap away to safety, but a larger shaking threw off his momentum. The beams around him bent and twisted as the very foundation of the wall of the building began to crumble.
Shizuo pried the beam he was holding out of the frame of the building and held it the way he normally held streetlights and electric poles when he removed them and swung them around.
As Izaya fell, off-balance, from his previous foothold, he saw the metal beam swinging straight at him.
“Guh…”
Out of either calculation or pure instinct, Izaya instantly twisted, swinging his shoe out to catch the beam.
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The next moment, the sole of his shoe made contact with metal—and Izaya’s body was struck toward the starless mound of the sky, a baseball diamond without pitcher or fielders.
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Ikebukuro
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“…Kinda weird, huh?”
Chikage was on the way toward their transaction point, with Masaomi walking next to him.
“Yeah, sure are a lot of people out and about.”
“Exactly… Doesn’t feel like the hours before dawn.”
They were going to get to the trade-off spot ahead of time and scout it out, to see whether they could learn how many people Mikado intended to bring. Perhaps there was an emergency staircase at a nearby restaurant or other late-night establishment that they could use as a vantage point.
But on the way there, the two noticed that something felt off. Not only did Masaomi, as a resident of Ikebukuro, sense it, but even Chikage, from distant Saitama, could tell that something was wrong.
“I’m getting a bad feeling about it. This crawling on my back? It’s like when the yakuza would get involved with my gang.”
“Don’t scare me like that…,” Masaomi said, cheek twitching, but he didn’t seem particularly afraid. There was one concern on his mind, though: “I just hope that Izumii asshole doesn’t interfere…”
Chikage had put the hurt on them at the parking garage, but they weren’t the type of folks who gave up easily.
“Can’t believe they’re bringing in guys like that…”
“Hey, anyone can join the Dollars, right? I heard there are little grade school kids, too.”
“But even still…”
Masaomi thought back to how Izumii and his gang had nearly brought down the Yellow Scarves from within. It was a galling memory.
“Anyway, better to steer clear of that guy in the shades,” Chikage said cheerily as he glanced around them. “That’s the kind of guy who’ll hurl Molotov cocktails at anyone he decides is an enemy, even in the middle of broad daylight.”
They were still keeping their distance from the shopping district and not approaching the crowds directly. During the day, they might have slipped in among the throng, but they weren’t careless enough to wander over into an abnormal situation.
“Got any ideas as to what this is about? I mean, I’d believe it if you told me there was a World Cup match today or somethin’.”
“I dunno… Do they look weird to you, too? It’s like they’re just wandering back and forth…”
A cold sweat began to trickle down Masaomi’s back. The eeriness of the sight was starting to surpass curiosity into the realm of horror.
Don’t tell me this has the Dollars’ fingerprints on it, too…
I guess all those people there…could be Dollars, perhaps…
But then again…
Masaomi had heard the legend of the Dollars’ first meetup, but this seemed strange even for that.
“Fine, fine. Let’s get inside somewhere, just in case,” Chikage suggested and headed for a nearby door. “As long as we can get onto the roof.”
“We gotta plan it a bit more than that,” Masaomi said, chagrined. He glanced at a different nearby building. “Let’s go to that one. The rooftop has a good view, and it’s easy to get up to.”
“You’ve been on the roof there?”
“I was going all over the place back in the days when we fought with the Blue Squares. My worst adviser, Orihara, seemed to be oddly well-informed about them,” Masaomi said, his face twisting at the bitter memories of the wars in the old days.
Chikage cackled and clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, listen to you, juvenile delinquent. I guess I can turn a blind eye to your past exploits in this case, then.”
“…Like you aren’t about to engage in trespassing yourself.”