“…the gun that shot up the old man’s house and the police station was a smaller caliber than the ones I use.”
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The rooftop of a mixed-use building
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“Wha…? Gaaaaah!”
At first, Masaomi thought that he’d been stabbed in the thigh with a knife or an awl. But then he sensed something wrong with his ears and realized the truth.
When the shock ran through his leg, he’d also heard a gunshot that was notably quieter than the one he’d heard earlier. He looked down and saw a small hole in the thigh of his pants, which was turning red with blood. Within that hole, heat was spreading and raging through his thigh with a mind of its own.
“Aagh…hngg…”
The smell of blood—and more powerful, of fresh gunpowder—assaulted Masaomi’s nostrils. He could feel heavy sweat exuding all over his body as he tried to press down on the spot that was bleeding. Mikado chose that moment to twist loose, causing Masaomi to lose his balance and topple sideways.
“Mika…do…,” he groaned, looking up at the standing boy.
Through the haze of smoke, he saw a strange object clutched in Mikado’s right hand. At first glance, it looked something like brass knuckles.
“A terrorist in America used this once years ago. But…I can’t remember what it was called…”
A small but eerily shaped device was fit snugly into the palm of Mikado’s hand. In the sense that it fit within a hand and fired bullets, you could literally classify it as a handgun.
“It’s called an HFM. A hand…something or other,” Mikado said. His right eye was so swollen already that he could barely see through it.
“When I said I fired two shots, I was talking about this one,” he continued, smiling. “I wanted to test it out on the way here.”
And clutching that second gun—something Masaomi could never have predicted—he smiled down sadly at his friend, speaking as casually as if merely making small talk.
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“I mean, there was no advice online for how to aim it.”
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Outside of Russia Sushi
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Shijima flinched when he heard the distant gunshot.
It was actually much quieter than the one just before it, but Shijima wasn’t able to tell the difference. He was in too much shock to use his mind that rationally.
That crazy Ryuugamine kid… Is he actually shooting it…?
Nasujima had given him orders to hand Mikado a gun. Technically, a “gun-like” object.
“I borrowed it from Kujiragi’s storage space,” he had said.
“I’m good at ‘borrowing’ things from the office.”
“It’s one of the concealed-type guns that you can fit in your hand. And this one’s an augmented model of one that an American terrorist once used. You can fire it normally with both hands, or you can just squeeze it in one and punch the target, which will fire the bullet.”
It was a firearm out of some spy movie. That alone didn’t exactly shock Shijima, who knew that there were all kinds of “hidden” guns people had invented—inside of lemons, cigarette boxes, cell phones, and so on.
But when he delivered it to Mikado and said, “I bought this for self-defense, but I’m too scared to keep it around, so I want you to hold on to it. Take it as a sign of trust,” he wasn’t expecting the boy to accept it with a smile.
It was clear from his mannerisms that he wasn’t misunderstanding, thinking it was a toy. That was the point at which Shijima recognized that Mikado Ryuugamine was a special kind of person.
Geez, man. If he actually shoots someone, then the Dollars really are in deep shit.
Nasujima said he had a few red-eyes among the police and could have them arrest someone at random to fan the flames of the Dollars’ reign of terror, but it wasn’t clear that he really had everything under control.
“Mr. Nasujima, I think Ryuugamine fired the…,” he started to say as he turned in Nasujima’s direction, but he stopped mid-sentence. Nasujima was trembling, staring down Sixtieth Floor Street, his face pale.
“…Mr. Nasujima?”
But he ignored Shijima and stuck a thumbnail into his mouth to bite as sweat beaded on his forehead and cheeks. “N-n-no, no… N-no, th-that c-can’t be… I…I th-thought h-he was in p-p-pri-pri-prison!” he stammered, the jittering extending even to his lips.
In the direction he was looking was a man with dyed blond hair. When Shijima heard the crashing earlier and saw the motorcycle skittering along the ground, he first thought some idiot of a biker had merely flipped his ride.