Shit! Shit! Goddammit! Why?! Why did this have to happen?! I thought I had the power now! Why is this happening to me?!
Despite Nasujima’s being a teacher by profession, his mental dictionary was somehow missing the phrase you reap what you sow. He sped along the city streets, trying to put distance between himself and his pursuer.
He spotted a van driving in his direction and stepped out into the street, waving his hands. “Hey! Stop! Let me in!”
Whether it was an ordinary civilian or a gang member, he’d stab them and take them over as soon as they got out of the driver’s seat. All he had to do was stand in the road to make them stop…
✦ ✦ ✦
“Hey, someone just jumped into the middle of the street,” Togusa said, peering through the broken windshield as he drove. After the shadow descended on the city earlier, Izumii and his thugs wound up on the ground, tied up by the shadow ropes, but for some reason, Kadota’s group was left untouched, so they decided to drive off and get away from the scene.
They had made it a reasonable distance away and were about to call Anri when a man suddenly stood in the road to block their path. From the back seat, Karisawa cried out, “Oh! It’s him! The boss of the red-eyes! He said he was gonna do some stuff to Mikado!”
“Huh…?” Kadota grumbled. And then, “Hey…that’s the guy who made the slasher run me over.”
Something inside of Togusa snapped.
“Ah! Hey, wait, Togusa,” Kadota yelled, but it was too late. Togusa jammed his foot on the gas.
✦ ✦ ✦
There was a heavy thump—and Takashi Nasujima’s memory of the night stopped there.
✦ ✦ ✦
“That’s right… I got hit by that car…”
The return of that memory made Nasujima cognizant of another anomaly. His limbs were tied down to the corners of a bed with leather restraints.
“Wha…? Urgh…!”
The pain was horrendous all over. It must have been from the impact of the car.
“What’s going on…? What is this place?”
From a corner of the room, a voice said, “Oh…you’re awake, Takashi…”
“Huh…?”
“This is one of the little hideouts Izaya Orihara kept for himself. Don’t worry. No one is coming here, and no one will hear our lovemaking, no matter how loud it gets…”
“Hwa—?!”
He turned his head and saw Haruna gazing at him with a blissful look in her eyes.
“I wanted to slice up the person who ran you over…but I decided to forgive them. After all, it’s thanks to them that our bonds are about to become so, so much stronger…”
A knife shone in her hand.
“Aaaaah! Aaaaah!” screamed Nasujima, but Haruna just brushed his cheek with her fingers, taking it as a reaction to the agony of his injuries. Next to the bed, there was a locker which she opened up.
“Don’t worry, Takashi… I’ll heal you.”
There were multiple shelves in the locker containing a variety of supplies, from smaller tools such as a scalpel, scissors, and utility knife to larger ones like a saw, hatchet, and chain saw. The feature they all shared in common was that they were bladed.
Haruna turned back to Takashi, carrying a bundle of the tools. “I love you, Takashi,” she said.
“Ah…aaaah…”
“I’ll make you forget all your pain…with the pain of my own love.”
His screams echoed off the walls of the room—but this was only the beginning of a vivid and memorable period of time shared only by the two of them.
✦ ✦ ✦
Ikebukuro
✦ ✦ ✦
“Yes, so the head is in transporting by the recovery team to the airport. It is to be scheduled for shipping to the headquarters of Chicago as a specimen of a special human body,” said the voice over the phone in oddly structured Japanese.
Shingen replied to his wife, Emilia, with annoyance. “You called a recovery team? I don’t understand how you can be so bad at cooking but so good at performing your job.”
“I cannot be allowing for you to require extra workings, Shingen.”
“Your sentiment is appreciated. Just stop mixing gunpowder into your cooking experiments.”
Their strange form of flirting continued for a little while longer before Shingen finally ended the call and spoke to the woman in the room with him.
✦ ✦ ✦
“You heard that. What now, Namie?”
“…I don’t know what you mean.”
She could have strangled him to death right at that moment, but the Russian man with the watchful eyes behind her would have prevented any attempt. She’d been trying to recover the head before Seiji could, until Shingen caught her in the attempt and told her the spiteful news: “Nebula is in possession of the head now.”
Before her irritation could dissipate, Shingen said shamelessly, “Well, regardless of what you do, your uncle was shocked into a near-vegetative state, so we drew the message ‘I love severed heads’ with a heart symbol on his forehead in marker, which at this point has gone past being humorous into just plain sad. We have little interest left in punishing you, as it happens.”
“…And?”
“From Nebula’s perspective, in fact, you had a longer and deeper fixation on that head than anyone. Wouldn’t we want your expertise?”
“What? Is this supposed to be a job offer?”
“Really? With as direct as I am being with you, can’t you be certain that this is a recruitment pitch? Perhaps I was wrong, and you’re actually far stupider than you— Gu-gu-gu-gwaaah! Stop…stop pressing your thumb against my Adam’s apple! Don’t make me— Gu-gu-gu-guah…”
Namie continued to attack and harangue him until Egor finally stepped in to stop her—and by that time, the black shadow that covered the sky had vanished.
✦ ✦ ✦
From there, the days trickled past.
✦ ✦ ✦
Seiji’s apartment—several days later
✦ ✦ ✦
“Are you sure about this?”
“Of course!”
“You make it sound simple, but it’ll cost lots of money and time.”
“I’ll go anywhere that you’re going, Seiji!”
Seiji and Mika were not talking about where to go on their next date this time. They were discussing the idea of going to school in America.
First, his sister had said she was going over to the United States; then Mika had told him the head had apparently been taken to Chicago. Immediately, Seiji began to plan a way to get there using a study abroad program, and thus Mika had joined in the preparation as if she were obviously welcome.
“But…why did you tell me the head was in Chicago?”
“Huh?”
“I figure if you kept it a secret from me and went on your own, you’d have a better chance of destroying the head.”
“Because even then, I’d rather be with you!” she said, giving him an utterly transparent smile.
He muttered, “The thing is…I still love that head.”
“I know!”
It was a conversation they’d had a million times before, except that in this instance Seiji added, “But while I don’t think of you as a lover…you are kind of like family to me.”
Mika did not reply to this. Instead, she hugged him tight around the chest. Seiji didn’t seem bothered by it, either. Their oddball relationship had them pointed together in the direction of the head.
Both of them knew they were in parallel with each other.
But they continued onward anyway, enjoying the warmth of their mutual proximity.