Chapter 29

CHAPTER 7 A The Heir (1) Yahiro’s apartment—night When Yahiro Mizuchi returned home, the younger brother of his landlord, Saburo Togusa, was working on his van, like always. “Hey, you’re late.” “Sorry about that.” “Don’t apologize. I wasn’t criticizing. It’s not like you have a curfew.” Togusa grinned. Yahiro bowed again. He hesitated briefly, then asked, “Do you know the Headless Rider, Saburo?” “Huh? Yeah, uh, a bit.” “What’s she like?” “Uh, you mean like her personality…? I mean, I’m not sure she’s really a ‘person.’ But that’s not important.” Saburo thought it over for a bit and chose his words very carefully. “I guess I’d say she’s…really nice.” “Nice?” “Well, the traffic violations notwithstanding—she has no license and drives around without headlights or plates, after all—she’s nicer than anyone else. If she saw someone in trouble, she’d help them without a second thought.” He continued waxing the van, clearly enjoying this topic. “As the guy who has to give other people rides, I thought she was a pain in the ass at first…and I still do sometimes, when she pulls up next to me on the street without warning. But once you understand the reasons why…” “Reasons?” “Er…I mean. You know, everyone’s got their stuff,” Togusa said quickly, trying to move past that. “Anyway, there are lots of folks around here who are scared of the Headless Rider, and she’s hurt a couple of thugs, but there are also at least as many folks she’s helped out and who feel grateful to her.” “Grateful…” “You’ll understand, if you ever meet her,” Saburo said wistfully. “Oh, I did meet her,” Yahiro admitted. “Yesterday.” “You did?!” “She gave me her e-mail address, too.” “Wow, she’s so friendly with you!” Saburo exclaimed, wobbling a little bit. The extra pressure on his wiping hand caused the cloth to squeak. “And what kind of stuff are you getting up to as a high schooler…? Getting beat up by Shizuo Heiwajima, becoming friends with Celty…” “Oh, so you know Celty’s name,” Yahiro noted. “Yeah, I do. I’m sure if you mention Saburo Togusa, she’ll remember me.” Then he gasped in sudden realization and suggested, “Oh, I know! If you’re friends with Celty now, use that to your advantage! She’s good friends with Shizuo, so have her patch you guys up.” “She is?” “Yeah. I mean, if I’m being honest, of all the people I know, she’s probably the closest to Shizuo. If you ask her sincerely, I’m sure she’ll try to help you out.” “I guess so… I’ll ask her about it. Thank you!” Yahiro said, bowing again. With the wisdom of age and experience, Togusa advised, “Listen, there are lots of weird rumors that get out there on the streets and online. In the end, the only thing you can do is judge what you see with your own eyes. And if you fail, you fail.” “Right.” “The same goes for you, got that? Take good care of your friends. Some people are going to get funny ideas about you based on the rumors, but plenty more will look you in the face and judge you based on the real thing.” Yahiro thought that one over for a bit, perhaps because it was hitting home for him. He bowed even deeper. “…Thank you,” he said, a slight smile on his lips. “You must have many wonderful friends, Saburo.” “Ha-ha. Only because I got into too many fights. The truth is, I don’t have that many.” Saburo smirked, feeling a little embarrassed. He swept his cloth quickly over the van. “Anyway, there are all kinds out there. Like old-fashioned guys who act like the true honorable arbiters of justice or old scalpers who are about as shady as can be… Also…” His voice trailed away as he saw an anime sticker someone had put on one of the van’s rear windows. He envisioned the boy and girl who were certainly the culprits and growled. “Anyway…take care of your friends. Just be careful about who you pick to be a friend in the first place. Okay?” Yahiro’s room Back in his room, Yahiro lay down on the floor and thought over what Saburo had just told him. “The only thing you can do is judge what you see with your own eyes.” How did Yahiro appear in the eyes of Himeka, Kuon, and the Headless Rider? He thought back on older times. Up through middle school, many of the people who attacked him had only heard rumors. After he fought them off, they called him a monster and looked at him with eyes full of fear. People heard the rumors about him and decided I’m going to beat him up. Then, after he beat them, they looked at him in terror. How big was the gap between the rumors and reality for him? The Headless Rider was much more human than he was led to believe, based on the rumors. Shizuo Heiwajima was much stronger than he even imagined, and yet he, too, was also much more human than expected. Shizuo was angry at them because they were insulting the Headless Rider, calling her a kidnapper and making her out to be a freak show. He was angry because his friend was insulted. The reaction was practically noble to Yahiro. A big part of that was Yahiro’s complete lack of friends. His only understanding of friendship came from manga and movies and such. What would I do? If Kuon or Tatsugami was insulted…would I be as angry as he was? Maybe not, since I’ve only known them for a few days. But does the length of time really matter? If it does, then maybe I can become friends with them in the days ahead…and even more people than them. Friends as close as Shizuo Heiwajima and Celty the Headless Rider are. He hadn’t actually seen Celty and Shizuo hanging out together, but at this point, Yahiro had no reason to doubt their friendship. They were two people he’d thought were true monsters—and they were monstrous beyond his imagining—but also much more human than he was. Maybe the rumors were true. But the rumors only told a small part of the story. “Lots of weird rumors that get out there on the streets and online,” he said… It’s true that information can be scary. Remembering Saburo’s advice reminded Yahiro of what happened earlier in the day. Specifically, what Nozomi Kotonami told him about Kuon. A few hours earlier—Kuon Kotonami’s room “Do you know about Izaya Orihara?” Nozomi was still talking to them over the phone from her bedroom. “…No, I’m not familiar,” replied Yahiro. He glanced at Himeka, who also shook her head. “Oh, okay. That makes sense; I’m not surprised you don’t know him. Anyway, he’s an info broker who’s fairly famous around Ikebukuro. He was pretty incredible at it, in fact.” “Uh-huh.” Yahiro was a bit startled by the use of the term info broker, but he did feel like the name rang a bell, perhaps. What is it? I feel like I heard that name recently… Oh. It was yesterday, when Mr. Ying was talking with the Headless Rider. Someone said it… But he couldn’t be sure if the name he heard was actually Izaya Orihara, so he decided to continue listening and playing the part of the ignorant outsider. Yahiro and Himeka waited curiously to find out what this info broker had to do with Kuon. The answer stunned them. “You see, I was a slave of Izaya Orihara.” “Oh…uh…what?” Yahiro gasped. He had initially let the comment pass, until the meaning of the word actually sank in. “I mean, I can understand now that I was a slave, but at the time, I didn’t think it was bad at all. Maybe it was more like I was his true believer.” “True believer…?” “Me and Kuon grew up without a father and mother. We got abused a lot at the house that took us in. For about half a year, we didn’t get any food that wasn’t school lunches. Our clothes were used as rags, and then they’d force us to wear them again. And that was the good part. They’d strip us naked together and force us to do things I couldn’t repeat here. Not that any of this is especially rare.” “…” Yahiro was speechless. She was talking about these horrible things as though they were ordinary. She didn’t seem to recognize how much she was freaking him out. Nozomi continued excitedly, “Anyway, I don’t know how he heard about us, but that’s when Izaya rescued us.” “Rescued you?” “That’s right. I was on my way home from school when he called out to me,” she said. It sounded like she was about to explain the whole story, but in the very next sentence, she was already at the result. “Then Izaya completely messed up our house. All the people who had tormented us either killed themselves, got arrested, or were abducted and taken somewhere else.” “…” “We were left behind, and Izaya taught us how to live. Kuon never met him in person, but every single day, I told him how amazing Izaya was. How incredible and wonderful Izaya was. How it was only because of Izaya that we were still alive. That I would do anything for Izaya! That I would happily give my life for Izaya!” Nozomi was laughing with great elation as she spoke, although neither Yahiro nor Himeka had any idea what was so funny about any of this. They could only stand there and listen. “Ha-ha-ha-ha! You get it, right? Poor Kuon, he got so jealous of Izaya, even though he never met him. He was so worried about his worthless big sister! You should have seen when I got a boyfriend! He was going on and on about how he was going to kill Izaya.” “A boyfriend…meaning Izaya?” “No, no! Ah-ha-ha-ha, nooo, I could never be Izaya’s girlfriend!” Nozomi denied vehemently. She explained, “You see, there was this street gang called the Yellow Scarves. About four years ago, I talked to some of the senior members of the gang and got to be friends with them. Then we became boyfriend and girlfriend.” But what she said next left both Yahiro and Himeka frowning in consternation. “Because Izaya told me to.” “…Huh?” “Saki got to be the girlfriend of the leader of the group, and I got to be the girlfriend of Yatabe, the second-in-command. But actually, he said I could ‘do as I liked,’ so I went out with the boy for a little while before he dumped me.” “Did you really go out with him, just because this Izaya Orihara person told you to?” Himeka asked. Nozomi didn’t even stop to think. “Yes, I did. I mean, it was only natural. That’s how it worked back then.” Back then? Past tense, Yahiro noted. She laughed again. “After a while, as I did things for Izaya, you can guess what happened with Kuon, right? I was his only family, and he cared so much for me. He was so sweet. He was like, ‘No matter what happens, I’ll always protect my sister!’” She giggled and cackled, but Yahiro felt like there was just the slightest tremble to her laughter. “The thing is, I didn’t understand.” “Uh…” “I just didn’t understand, you know?” she repeated, her voice sinking deeper. Yahiro asked, “But…it’s different now?” “…” Nozomi paused, then gave her answer. “About a year and a half ago, Izaya vanished.” “He vanished?” “Yes. He just vanished from Ikebukuro, like a puff of smoke. People said all kinds of things. That Shizuo Heiwajima killed him or that a Russian mercenary stabbed him.” The mention of Shizuo Heiwajima sent a jolt through Yahiro, but he figured that it was just one of many rumors and decided not to interject. “After that,” she continued, “I just stayed inside all the time. It’s funny, but ever since Izaya disappeared, I just don’t know what to do. I don’t even know how to talk to people anymore. That’s why I can only do it over the phone like this.” It was hard to imagine, based on the gregarious way she was talking now, that she’d been acting the way she was earlier when they were in the same room. But now that he thought back on that, Yahiro felt like he understood her a bit better. “I feel like I was just in the corner of my room saying, ‘Izaya, Izaya, Izaya,’” she murmured uncertainly. Perhaps her memory was hazy. But then she calmed herself a little bit and continued, “That’s when Kuon said, ‘I’ll be Izaya Orihara.’” “Kuon said that…?” “Yes. He said, ‘I’ll take Izaya’s place and help you learn how to live.’” Nozomi sounded happy but also just a little sad. “So in the last year and a half, my brother has been trying to turn into Izaya Orihara. No…scratch that. Maybe he’s trying to be something even more than Izaya. “Whether that’s for my sake or his, I don’t think either of us knows anymore.” Yahiro’s room—present moment He looked up at the ceiling and exhaled. “The world is full of so many things I don’t understand…” It wasn’t even that he was being manipulated by information. It was like he knew barely anything about the world itself. Yahiro lifted his hand toward the ceiling and made a fist. He stared at it, thinking back on who he’d been until last year. This is just what the world is like is how he used to think. He had no hope, no despair. He just lived on inertia. He felt sick of himself. He was sick of being called a monster regardless of how he struggled against it; he hadn’t been able to escape that curse. But listening to the story of Kuon and his sister today, they seemed to have it far, far worse than he did. All I did was hurt people, and I blamed it all on others. Was I just sulking? Kuon was hurt over and over and over, and he held it all in and never gave up. Before, his only mental image of Kuon was of a rather lackadaisical class clown with a bit of a darker secret, but now Yahiro felt actual respect for his classmate. I’m not saying I think that what he’s doing is right…but I’ll admit…he is pretty incredible. He allowed his thoughts to wander as his eyes drifted across the ceiling and around the room, until they landed on the wood-frame radio next to his bed. Tatsugami seems to have some complicated family circumstances, too. It’s possible she’s suffered things much worse than my experiences. All I did was get scared of things, while my family was kind and understanding… Maybe I’m just pining for something I don’t have. He started to feel a bit of self-loathing, and stared at one of the newer cuts on his fist. But even still… The excitement, the elation he felt while fighting with Shizuo Heiwajima—the feeling that for the first time in his life, the world was fun—still trembled within his fist. “I’m glad I came to this city,” he mumbled out loud, then got to his feet with determination. With the smartphone he was still learning to use, Yahiro checked the Internet for information. He searched for the disappearances in Ikebukuro, and the first thing that popped up was a news blog called IkeNew! The site that turned the photo of Kuon and Celty into news. The site run by Kuon’s sister. Kuon’s room—a few hours earlier “Well, I managed to get back on my feet. Now I’m running that IkeNew! site I mentioned, along with Kuon. It’s managed to bring us an income, enough that we can actually pay rent reliably.” “?” Yahiro didn’t understand the connection between the words running a site and income. Despite not being able to see him, Nozomi must have sensed he wouldn’t understand, because she began to explain how the site worked. “So you know how there are banner ads on websites? We get money from the ads.” “Yeah, I guess I do remember a bunch of ads…” “There are ads that get you paid just from people clicking them and ads that only get you paid when people buy the products there. Also, there are sponsorships and direct partnerships with companies.” “Ohhh.” He’d wondered why there were so many ads on the site, but this cleared it up in quite a neat and tidy answer. “Normally, it’s just like a little allowance. You’d be lucky to get ten thousand yen in a month. But in my case, the recent average is more like two-point-eight million yen per month.” “Million…?!” “That’s a crazy amount for a site of our size. Especially since it’s limited to Ikebukuro news… Oh, and that’s the total of all my enterprises. That’s not the only website I run.” “You…you can make that much money online?!” “It varies, see? There are places that make twice as much money as me doing legitimate business, and there are places that act corrupt and get shut down for their trouble. Everything varies,” Nozomi said. “What do you mean by corrupt?” Yahiro asked. Something in her voice got ever so slightly more excited. “The affiliate blogs can be a real nest of vipers! Lots of them are perfectly legit, but plenty will do anything right up to violating the law. Some blogs even engage in a kind of corporate blackmail.” “Corporate blackmail?” That was another term that didn’t seem like it had anything to do with online news. Nozomi cleared it up for him with an example. “See, first they’ll go after a company and demand, ‘Sponsor my blog,’ or ‘Give me priority on your information.’ And once the company refuses, they’ll report a bunch of news that makes the company look bad, to put pressure on them, like, ‘See, you don’t want this to happen, do you?’ But they can’t just say, ‘Give me money or information if you want me to stop,’ so they have to be coy about the extortion.” “That’s horrible.” “The thing is, it’s easy to write malicious articles that don’t count as defamation. For example, let’s say a magazine puts out a digital version of their product, but the price is more expensive than the print copy. So a website writes an article that says, ‘This is messed up! How can the digital version that doesn’t require paper cost more?!’” “?” Based on that alone, Yahiro didn’t understand why that was malicious; it didn’t make sense that a digital magazine would cost more than the same thing printed and sold on physical paper. Nozomi explained, “But the digital version was a special edition. It came with all kinds of bonus materials that weren’t in the print edition—nearly twice as many pages. So it only made sense that this version would cost a bit more than the other.” “Oh…” “Of course, the website knew that when the writer made the article and chose not to explain the context. Even though it was a better deal, they created the impression that the digital version was a rip-off. After the article got passed around, people found out the truth and got angry. They went to the website to write comments saying, ‘Don’t spread fake news!’ but that just drove up the website hits and comments. Those raw numbers make it much easier to attract good sponsors.” Yahiro was shocked. There were people who did that sort of thing? Nozomi just laughed. “And if they threaten to sue at any point, you just apologize, say you didn’t realize your mistake, and delete the article. You just have to gauge your timing right, because if you screw that up, they might actually take you to court, and then you’re screwed.” “Wow…but you don’t do anything like that, do you, Nozomi?” “Oh, we’re way worse than that.” “Worse?!” Yahiro stared at the phone in disbelief. “Yes,” Nozomi admitted. “What we do is sell article ideas to other sites, so that they can be the first to report them. But how do you get the news before anyone else?” Himeka gasped and said, “You cause the news…on your own?” “Biiingo!” “That’s crazy…,” Yahiro breathed. But beyond the sound of Nozomi’s excitable voice, he noticed something was wrong. “…?” “…” Is Tatsugami…trembling? The perpetually calm and composed girl seemed to be rattled by the answer she’d just spoken out loud. It was strange to Yahiro, but Nozomi kept talking. “Anyway, when I mean news, I don’t mean like causing crimes, okay? At least, I think! It’ll be, like, mysterious flyers dropped all over Ikebukuro or a drone that looks like a UFO flying over the city. We go out and take the pictures, then post them on a bunch of random Twittia accounts! The creepier it is, the more viral it goes.” Immediately, Yahiro and Himeka recalled Kuon’s photo in the article. “So that article about Kuon this morning was all a setup,” Himeka accused. “Yep, yep! It sure was!” Nozomi said happily. “In our case, about 30 percent of our content is stuff we do ourselves. Although the articles about twits of celebrities living in Ikebukuro aren’t fake. In any case, you should never take our articles seriously! Most of them are fake or misleading.” “Why do you write them, then?” Yahiro asked. He’d scrolled through the articles on the site during lunch period, and lots of the news about Celty was extremely negative. First, they treated her like a certified criminal, then flipped around to the opposite viewpoint just as quickly. It was like the site itself didn’t have its own consistent voice. “Because we don’t deal in honest, serious articles. Our style is to use catchy headlines and suspicious stories to manipulate people and companies and society into doing whatever we want!” “But why would you…?” “Well, partially it’s because that makes the most money, but…” She paused, then brought up that name again. “If Izaya ran his own site, I’m sure it would be something like this.” “?” “I use a name online, Rira Tailtooth Zaiya, right? Well, tail is o in Japanese, and tooth is ‘ha.’ So if you rearrange all those syllables, you get…I-za-ya O-ri-ha-ra.” “Uh-huh…” So what? She claimed that she’d gotten over him, but it was clear that her lingering attachment to Izaya was stronger. Yahiro tilted his head in confusion once again; it was becoming quite a habit since he came to Ikebukuro. But a few seconds later, he regretted his spotty judgment. “There are lots of others like me.” “…Lots?” “Izaya created many other girls in the same position that I was… Plenty of them are out there in despair over his absence. I know at least one who was hospitalized for attempted suicide… But those girls figured it out right away. They found the existence of my site and the anagram puzzle I just explained to you.” “Oh…” So what? he’d thought earlier. Well, this was the truth. Yahiro felt ashamed of himself. “See, the moment they figured it out, they felt relieved. ‘Oh, good, Izaya isn’t gone after all. He’s still alive; he’s just posting online.’ Sometimes that’s all it takes for a person to decide to live. We’re fascinating that way.” In other words, for the sake of her fellow true believers, Nozomi was playing the role of their religious leader, Izaya Orihara. Considering the meaning of this, Himeka asked the next obvious question: “But doesn’t that mean…you’ve just been…lying to them all this time? And you’ll keep doing it from this point on.” “Hmm… If they want to be lied to, they’ll let it keep happening,” Nozomi said sadly. “But if they can accept the fact that I’m not Izaya—if they can accept that Izaya’s actually gone—they don’t need him anymore, do they? I suppose thinking that way makes me feel a bit less guilty.” Based on her tone of voice, Yahiro got the impression that she was shrugging her shoulders on the other end of the line. “Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m just a big fat fraud. “I mean, this site is built on fraudulent stories! If they’re fooled, it’s their fault!” Yahiro’s room—present moment “Ah!” Looking back through the archive of IkeNew! articles, he found some written about himself. They made me into an article. Naturally, it was describing his fight with Shizuo Heiwajima. Apparently, people found him interesting because he could potentially beat Shizuo. They’ve got the wrong idea—that’s for sure! In the end, I was totally helpless… There was a video taken of him, too, but the resolution on the camera was low, and he couldn’t even recognize his own face in the clip. But Kuon would know who this “mystery combatant” was, obviously. Did he keep the knowledge a secret from his sister? No. Nozomi knew about me. Would he really hide things like that from her? Oh, geez. We didn’t say a single word about that back at his place… Yahiro exhaled, feeling conflicted. Should he be grateful they hadn’t revealed his name online? He should have been furious that they were using him to make money, but that wasn’t enough reason for him to blow up at them. Nobody’s going to find out based on this video, at least. And I lost in the end, so I’m sure they’ll realize I was just an idiot who overstepped his bounds, and forget about me. He didn’t realize that hitting Shizuo at all made him completely abnormal in the eyes of the locals. So the most he thought about Nozomi’s article was that it “seemed really exaggerated.” If anything, he was more worried about Kuon, since that green hair showed up much clearer in the video. Was he all right? Yahiro recalled what Nozomi said. “Kuon said he didn’t have an exact ID on the culprit, but he knew that if they wanted to make the Headless Rider out to be some vicious kidnapper, they wouldn’t let him walk free after that. I just didn’t expect he would get abducted hours after I put up the article. “He’ll be fine. He set this up knowing how he’d get out of it… “If you want to be like Izaya, you have to put your life on the line. That goes for me and Kuon. “I’m sure you have your own thoughts about this, but if you haven’t met Izaya yourself, I’m not interested in any lectures. “I guess I’m fully aware that I’m a terrible person who could easily get stabbed at any moment.” There was nothing he could say at the time, but now Yahiro felt a little indignant about it. Did she care nothing for her own life? She also said something directly meant for Yahiro. “You don’t need to feel responsible for any of this, Yahiro. He only thinks of you as a pawn meant to be used.” That didn’t matter to Yahiro. “I’m going to find him, and I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.” He chuckled to himself and clenched his fists. And right on cue, his phone began to ring. “?” He picked up the call and heard a familiar voice. “Hey, it’s me. Aoba Kuronuma.” “Oh…how can I help you?” Yahiro replied, remembering that they’d exchanged numbers after school. “Can you leave the house right now?” “It’s the middle of the night. What happened?” he asked skeptically. Aoba wasted no time in getting to the point. “Your friend…Tatsugami? She’s been kidnapped.” “Huh…?” He felt a horrible shiver run up his spine. Ugly sweat began to seep from his pores. Before he could reply, to suggest that it had to be a joke, Aoba continued, “I don’t know the culprit, but I know where she was taken.” “?!” “So what’ll it be? Shall we go and save her?”