CHAPTER 2 Let’s Live on the Straight and Narrow Something is wrong. Why did this happen? I eliminated the scum. I did something good. Why is the Dark Owl still the villain? Why are all the scum treated as the victims? Early evening—Raira General Hospital, private room Horada woke up to the pain of everything in his body creaking. Several days had passed since he was brought to the hospital after the attack. He’d suffered a skull fracture, but miraculously there was no damage to the brain underneath. Worse actually were the numerous kicks he’d suffered after blacking out. He had broken ribs and his collarbone, and he recalled being told that recovery would take months. “Aaaugh… That hurts… Shit. Are these painkillers even working?” He knew the police would be by for questioning once they heard he was conscious again, but Horada was keeping them at bay by claiming he was still feeling groggy. That was actually true. In this state, he might actually follow their lead and say something he really didn’t want to say to the cops. The police hadn’t left a guard for his room. They didn’t seem to be worried about the attacker going after one specific person. If there had been one, Horada would have requested they leave anyway, claiming it would be a distraction. But what do I tell the cops? If I say I got done in by two people and admit I fought back and hit one, that’s bad for me, right? Gotta think of how to explain this so it’s a hundred percent self-defense… Actually, it looks bad for me if I got knocked out by the street attacker, too. Maybe I should claim there were, like, ten of ’em… He wasn’t thinking about the possibilities of being caught in a lie through eyewitness testimony or charged with disrupting an investigation; Horada was solely occupied by the thought of his reputation. “I swear, the next time I see those freaks, I’m gonna kill ’em… Owww!” He grumbled as his entire body creaked and cracked. He was going to lie back down and think hard about what to do next—when he noticed something moving in the corner of his vision. “Wh-who’s there?” Probably a nurse, he assumed, gingerly craning his painful neck. What he saw instead was a man with very distinctive sunglasses and facial burns, sitting in the round guest chair in the corner of the room. “What’s this?” The man grinned and closed the magazine of adult photography he was perusing. He got to his feet. “I heard you were still in and out of it, so I figured this was a waste…but you seem full of pep to me.” “…!” Horada’s entire body shivered, regardless of the creaking, and his teeth chattered. “I…Iii…Izumii…” Ran Izumii—the man who had led the Blue Squares when Horada was a member. Izumii had been in prison for a while, but he got out around the time Horada went in. Word on the street was that he was currently a junior member of the Awakusu-kai. “You’ve been through the wringer, man. I heard the story…and came to pay you a visit.” “Y-y-you did! Thank you!” Horada said, automatically adjusting his tone to come off as nonthreatening. Just once, Izumii came to visit the prison where Horada had served his sentence. They did see each other—but Horada would have been happy never seeing the man again. Izumii would freely do insane things like breaking the legs of an abducted girl with a hammer. Then a fellow member he betrayed hit him with a Molotov cocktail. Ever since his stint in the slammer, it was like he’d lost a few extra screws in addition to the ones he was already missing. “U-uh, wow, Izumii, you’ve lost a lot of weight! I barely recognize you!” Horada blabbered, alarmed by the sudden turn of events and trying to get on Izumii’s good side. Each word he spoke made his whole body hurt, but that was a minor issue compared to his fear of the other man. Painfully, he tried to put on a friendly smile. “Oh, did I? If you want to slim down, I got a great suggestion,” Izumii said, shrugging and pulling something out of his jacket. It was a small hammer made of hardened rubber. He continued, “If I break your jaw, you can’t eat and gain any more weight, eh?” “…!” Izumii smacked the hammer into his palm playfully. Horada’s mind was trapped between two parallel terrors: Izumii himself and the weapon that put him in the hospital days ago. If that hammer had a cloth bandage wrapped around it, he might have screamed. “Th-that’s not funny, Izumii,” he said, attempting a pleasant smile. Izumii smirked back at him and changed the subject. “You know, this is the hospital where they took that chick whose legs I broke. You remember that? The girlfriend of that guy Kida from the Yellow Scarves. The one you nabbed.” “Huh? Oh yeah, right.” “Maybe she was even in this very room. I bet she left, like, a ghostly imprint here, a living curse. That would explain it if your legs suddenly turned up broken for no clear reason.” “……” Fwap! Ba-dump! Fwap! Ba-dump! Horada’s racing heart matched the rhythm of the hammer striking Izumii’s palm. Horada had no idea what Izumii intended to do—which was exactly what made it easy for him to imagine that hammer hurtling down onto him. Horada swallowed hard. “So here’s the thing,” Izumii started. “Y-yesh?!” Horada wheezed, the air shooting out of his lungs as Izumii leaned in. “You know this can’t end here, right?” “H-heh?” “See, this hammer is kinda my thing, ya know? All the other guys in my line of business are talkin’ about how I went outta my way to punish you for bein’ a fuckup. Normally, I wouldn’t care what people say, but what if Mr. Aozaki or Mr. Akabayashi hear about it? I can’t have that.” He clenched the hammer and pressed the tip hard against Horada’s nose. “Hrrng.” Horada withstood the pain, feeling a cold sweat break out. Izumii continued, “Of course, if a story gets around sayin’ I needed to go to the trouble of puttin’ on a costume and ambushing you in order to punish you, that looks bad for me, right? You get what I’m saying, Horada.” “Y-yesh!” “You used to roam around the city with your boys, right? Use them; do whatever you gotta. Just find this damn street attacker before the cops do and bring them to me. Got that?” “…!” He knew it was an absurd order, but there was no way he could defy the other man. Despite the fog of his recent sleep, Horada’s mind raced through how he might carry out the command. Before the cops?! Does that mean I shouldn’t mention that there were actually two of them? And how will I get the people… The people—oh! An idea occurred to him. He hesitantly offered it to Izumii. “Uh, w-well, do…do you think I could use…the current Blue Squares?” “Huh? Do it yourself,” said Izumii, who seemed to be just now remembering that they existed, too. Horada continued, “W-w-well, you know, y-your brother’s with them, so I thought maybe I shouldn’t let him get hur—ghrblhflgh?!” The instant he mentioned Izumii’s brother, the hammer pressed down harder. “Why would I worry about that piece of shit Aoba? Huh? What, do I hafta worry about his calories and nutrients every time he eats a meal? I gotta cook him a balanced breakfast each morning, do I?” “F-fhorry!” Horada apologized, despite the unfairness of Izumii’s anger. All he could do was plead for forgiveness from the man’s murderous rage. “As long as you learn. You’re a former big shot with the Blue Squares, and Aoba’s a current member who came after you. That’s all there is between you, right?” Izumii said, craning his neck so hard to look at Horada that it cracked. “If he breaks down, well—that’s just what’s gotta happen. Use him and abuse him.” It was as though Izumii hoped to see his own brother fall to pieces. The next day—a bowling alley in Ikebukuro “So my question is, do you feel like helping look for the attacker?” Aoba Kuronuma asked. Yahiro considered this, still holding the ball. “What’s wrong?” Aoba asked. “Oh…just…thinking how coincidences do happen.” It was in the middle of Golden Week, the week of holidays. Aoba invited Yahiro out to bowl. When he got to the alley, he found Aoba and a number of nasty-looking companions. They were all wearing their regular clothes, not school uniforms. Yahiro was wearing an outfit he’d just bought days earlier. At first, they were having fun doing regular bowling, but around the third game, Aoba brought up something while they bowled at the same lane. He said that a former member of his group named Horada had been attacked on the street, and the man had ordered Aoba to search for the attacker to enact revenge. According to Aoba, Horada was still in the hospital, but his injuries weren’t life-threatening. Aoba had no idea that Yahiro was already searching for the attacker, albeit for a different reason. “You know we’re not just a group of friends, right…? After the last thing, especially,” Aoba explained. “Yes. A couple people have told me about the Blue Squares,” Yahiro replied. “Oh yeah? What did they say?” “You don’t have a good reputation.” Aoba burst into laughter. “There is such a thing as being too honest, Yahiro.” “I’m just scared that if I lie, someone will find out later,” he replied seriously. Aoba just giggled. “Yeah, not a good reputation. But an older guy from the group with an even worse reputation is someone I have to respect. Sticking up for him is sticking up for the gang,” he explained. He didn’t look anything like the honor student he played at school. “So the more people we have, the better. I was hoping you could help out.” “That’s fine.” “…You replied awfully quick. I assumed you would say no.” “Why?” “I reached out to Kuon, too, but he says he’s busy with a new business venture. I just assumed you were doing that, too.” “Well, yes. I am.” “You admit it?!” Apparently, Aoba had been trying to trick him into saying it, but that wasn’t necessary. “Don’t you get that you should keep that sort of stuff a secret from me?” “No, really?” “Yes, really,” Aoba said, lightly mocking him. Since he had so much success eliciting information about Kuon just a moment earlier, Aoba followed up with another question. “So what kind of business is it?” “Oh, that part is a secret.” “…” “Sorry, it’s nothing personal to you. We’re not supposed to tell other people in general about what we do. If you really want to know, I would suggest asking Kuon yourself.” It was a frank dismissal of the question but not one made out of any malice toward Aoba. If anything, there was always some level of caution, but that was just Yahiro’s cowardly nature. It was akin to a caution born of paranoia, like he was always wondering, What if all these people are under some kind of hypnosis and they suddenly pull out metal bats and beat on me? How should I get away? That was normal for Yahiro, and Aoba understood that. That was why Aoba decided that he wasn’t going to get an answer under any circumstances. He got back to the topic at hand. “Well, that’s fine. I’ll ask Kuon if there’s any way I can get a piece of his business.” “Thank you.” “So about this street attacker… The truth is, you owe Mr. Horada a debt, too, so you really ought to help avenge him.” “Uh…I do?” “Yep. Remember that faked kidnapping?” “Yeah.” “The person who helped us look for your friend, uh…Miss Tatsugami? That was Mr. Horada.” “!” Yahiro’s eyes widened. The thought had slipped to the wayside in the chaos, but he did recall that Aoba knew where to find them and said he heard it from someone else. If that person was this Horada guy, then it was true that Yahiro did owe him a debt. “Oh, I see… Well, then I really do have to help.” “Yep. So if we find the attacker, we wanna nab ’em first before we hand them over to the cops.” “…” Nab ’em. That choice of words put a thought into Yahiro’s mind. “Uh, not that we’re talking about killing them or anything,” Aoba quickly added. “Either way, holding someone against their will is a crime.” “True, I suppose. But if you wanna get technical, what you did at that mansion was a crime, too. There’s such a thing as excessive self-defense.” At that point, the bowling order had come around to Aoba. “Oh, it’s my turn to bowl,” he said. While he went up there to roll, Yahiro considered what he’d said. Hmm. What should I do? I definitely don’t think we should beat up that person. But it’s true that giving back what you’ve been given is how I’ve always done this kind of thing. I can’t claim that it’s completely unacceptable… The real question is, if I find the person and catch them, who do I take them to first? Karisawa’s group or this Horada person? Karisawa and Yumasaki said they just wanted to talk…so maybe I could go to them first, then Horada, and if it starts to get out of hand, I’ll stop them and go to the police. It’s just really important that we don’t gang rush this person. I just don’t have the right to stop them… Aoba rolled a spare, earning him cheers and jeers from his friends on the adjacent lanes. He came back to the seats, and Yahiro stood up to take his turn. As they passed, Yahiro said, “I really don’t think you should look for vengeance.” “Oh yeah? Why not?” Aoba asked. Yahiro went into his delivery rather than answer the question. He hurled the ball, then turned back to Aoba without watching the result. In his mind, he envisioned the past—of his hands covered with blood and the broken bodies of his attackers, a sight that repeated itself many times back home. “Giving back everything they give you…is pretty painful, you know?” The monitor over their lane lit up, playing the sound that indicated a strike. “Oh…I got a strike?” He’d just tossed it off without a second thought and assumed it would be a gutterball. He stood at the ball return with mild surprise; he’d been expecting to take his second roll in just a moment. Aoba patted the younger boy on the shoulder and beamed. “You don’t need to tell me that.” It was a thin smile, a look that Yahiro never saw from him. “But the thing is, Yahiro…I happen to like that kind of pain.” Ikebukuro West Gate Park—evening “And that’s the story. What do you think I should do?” It was the hour when the sun hid behind the buildings. Yahiro sat on a metal tube bench, talking to Himeka. “Well, if you’re unsure enough that you’d come right to me for advice, I don’t think there’s anything I could tell you…,” she said with exasperation, though her expression was the same as ever. After his time with Aoba and his friends, Yahiro called up Himeka to consult with her. She just happened to be near Ikebukuro Station, so they met up at the park. Himeka was technically another member of Snake Hands, so Yahiro did not hesitate to tell her about the job request to help find the recent attacker. To his surprise, however, Himeka already knew about that. According to her, she told Kuon that if it was something she could help with, she would. A few days later, Nozomi gave her a call about it. That was when she heard all about the attacks. “…So you accepted the job, too?” “Yes, I suppose so.” “Chasing down this attacker seems like a pretty dangerous thing to do…,” Yahiro said, which was perfectly accurate. Himeka replied, “I’m surprised to hear you say that, given that you went searching for the Headless Rider when she was rumored to be kidnapping people.” “That’s a good point.” She exhaled. “Well, I’m not intending to get into any danger. But I feel like not doing anything is going to end up with Kuon and Nozomi doing something reckless, so I can’t sit by and do nothing…” “Yeah, that’s a good point,” Yahiro said, realizing that Himeka was thinking along the same lines as he was. “In any case, it can only be a good thing if the street attacks stop. But I’ve got two groups of people asking to see the attacker before we hand them over to the police. If I happen to stumble across the attacker knocked out on the street and I’m lucky enough to capture them right there, which one do you think I should take them to first?” “That’s a difficult question. Can I say something first?” “What?” “What do you mean by if they’re ‘knocked out on the street’?” she asked. “Let’s say,” Yahiro replied, “they tried to attack Shizuo Heiwajima, and he knocked them out…” “…Well, that would certainly be a good reason for them to be knocked out,” Himeka said without expression. She twisted at the waist, staring Yahiro right in the face. “Couldn’t you beat the attacker if you ran into them?” “I’m too scared to fight the street attacker.” “I can’t believe I’m hearing that from someone who was beating up motorcycle gangs and mobsters…” “I was really scared then, too. But I was more afraid of not doing anything then. That’s all it was,” Yahiro said, a note of unease in his eyes. “I’ve been fighting all the time, so I’m not so good with human relationships and mind games and all that stuff… I don’t know what the right answer is.” “It’s all right if you’re wrong. In fact, you’ll learn faster that way.” “I’m scared.” “I’m telling you, it’s really strange to hear you say the word scared, each and every time,” Himeka said, as expressionless as ever. “You had a reason for using your strength the way you did. So why does the street attacker do what they’re doing?” “That’s a good question.” Yahiro had completely overlooked the matter of the attacker’s motive. In his mind, the street attacker was like a psychotic murderer from a movie—or a part of the stage backdrop that would attack without reason. However—as much as he didn’t like to think of it, because it sounded like an excuse—he himself was called a monster, and he certainly had his reasons for using violence. Yahiro didn’t want to imagine people walking around town, deciding to kill others for no less arbitrary a reason than that the sky was blue. But he was just as afraid of casting aside the possibility that the attacker was simply born to commit violence. He had to keep both reasons in mind. “So…why do they attack people? Why hit them?” Yahiro wondered aloud. “I’ve been struck from behind by a hammer many times before…and usually those people were saying, ‘I’ll kill you.’ What were they planning to do once they’d killed me…?” By this point, Himeka was used to Yahiro talking about extremely disturbing experiences. She suggested, “As an amateur, the first thing I think is maybe they have some kind of weird sexual thing where hitting and hurting people makes them feel good. Or they’re under some kind of delusion that if they don’t attack people, they’ll die… Or maybe they’re not actually attacking people randomly.” “It’s not random?” “I’m saying maybe the victims have something in common. It might look like they’re indiscriminate attacks, but perhaps they’re choosing their victims based on clear criteria that only the attacker understands. In that case, the motive would be very important.” “Something in common… I never thought of that.” Yahiro had heard the outline of the incident on the radio and such, but all he knew was that the victims were varied in age and background, and the first victims were a couple, as far as he remembered. Did that couple have anything in common with this Horada guy? When he realized that he didn’t know enough about either Horada or the couple to even guess, Yahiro sighed. “In any case, I don’t think I’m going to figure out what the culprit is thinking. Do you have any guesses, Himeka?” “Hmm…well, I can tell you something I heard from a journalist my sister knows… The street attacker’s been hitting a lot of delinquents.” “Delinquents?” “Yes. Nearly half of the victims are members of motorcycle gangs and other people like that. So more and more folks are starting to suspect it has something to do with the street slasher from a few years back.” The street slasher. That term had popped up in the restaurant just a day or so ago. Yahiro latched on to it. “The slasher… Do you know much about that case, Himeka?” “I was in middle school at the time, and I hardly ever went out at night…but at school, everybody was being very cautious. From what I’ve heard, an older girl at our high school was one of the victims…” “Oh, right. And they never caught who did it…” Whether it had anything to do with this incident or not, Yahiro figured he might as well learn about that first. Himeka added, “I think they were called the Dollars… There were some who suspected them of being responsible for the slashings… That’s probably an area that Kuronuma and his friends would know more about.” Ikebukuro Shouya Ajimura was the street attacker. But he had no idea. By day, the twenty-eight-year-old worked small jobs. By night, he was an active fan of Owl of the Peeping Dead. But in this case, his fan works did not mean putting out derivative creative works. He was an admin of a passionate online community of the most dedicated of OPD believers. He performed a variety of actions around the insular community, agitating the fanatics to keep them united and working in the same direction. In their minds, their motives were entirely benevolent. But at times, their activities crossed a line and bled over into causing trouble for others. For example, one daily routine for them had been to pave the way for OPD’s live-action movie to find greater success through review bombing its rivals during the release window. They also repeatedly told the creative team that “the latest developments lower the quality of OPD” and that they were sending “our latest story ideas,” which would be “available for use, free of charge.” When there were more new female characters, they wrote in with complaints like, “Stop pandering to gross moe otaku,” and when there were more new male characters, the complaints said “Stop pandering to gross fujoshi” instead. When they didn’t like the casting for the movie, they decided that “they’ll have to switch to a new cast if everyone they signed quits acting.” So they sent all kinds of anonymous harassing letters to the actors’ agencies by the thousands and spread unsavory rumors all over the Net. They would describe their offline activities as “playing zombies in the OPD Mecca,” rampaging around the town like zombies and insulting any normal fans who tried to stop them by saying, “You can’t commit to being zombies because you don’t really love the series.” That had been happening for so long that the fan site had a rock-bottom reputation, even among OPD fans. Ajimura was the administrator of the site, and he did not care at all about its bad reputation. Those who spoke ill were clearly jealous of the community’s size or were haters pretending to be OPD fans. Many of the extreme fans like him prioritized their own love of OPD over the material itself. “Killing your god for the sake of your religion,” others said to describe the insular community. Ajimura practically encapsulated this entire statement on his own. OPD is written about me. The Owl is my good conscience, and the Dark Owl is my negative side. The zombie apocalypse mirrors my own circumstances. It’s brimming with despair. Maybe they modeled the story after someone just like me. Maybe they modeled the story after me. Through this powerful attachment, which quickly crossed into delusion, he began to take mental ownership over the entertainment franchise. In a way, his “fan activities” were perhaps an attempt to control and rule the world of OPD. In his grand delusion, he believed that ruling the fictional world would therefore extend that control over his own real life. He was already incorrectly assuming the story was based on that line of thinking. A part of those “fan activities” included cosplaying as the Dark Owl and attacking people on the street. But he was not the first to do so. When he initially saw the first person on the news, he did not realize the attacker was supposed to resemble the Dark Owl. It was the online rumors, before the TV and papers caught on, that first spread the information that the attacker was apparently dressed up as the Dark Owl. When Ajimura noticed, he was shocked. The Dark Owl was him, had to be him—which was how he knew it was wrong. That one was a fake. Ajimura was furious when he saw the headlines on the tabloids and online articles reading: Acts of a criminal who cannot tell fact from fiction! He thought, You’re wrong. You’re wrong, wrong, wrong! It’s not fiction. OPD is real! It doesn’t belong to anyone else. It’s a reality I create for myself alone. The Dark Owl, a part of that reality, could not be some cheap imitation of a human, who couldn’t tell the difference between fact and fiction. The two things must not be conflated. “A crime committed under the influence of the story,” said a talking head on TV. Ajimura shouted, “Wrong! You’re wrong!” OPD is my life. I’m not that cheap and pathetic. No one influenced by me would do something so wretched. That Dark Owl is wrong. That’s not how he’s supposed to be depicted! He shouted more and more for so long that his neighbor started to complain about the noise. Hours later, he had his face buried into his blanket, thinking furiously. If the current pattern held true, the public was going to think the Dark Owl was just some irredeemable villain. Owl of the Peeping Dead was going to be treated like some bible of evil. His own life was going to be defiled in the court of public opinion. All those ignorant, arrogant journalists were going to defame him to the world. So he thought hard and came to a conclusion: That’s it. I have to show them a proper example. I need to teach these ignorant morons what the proper Dark Owl is all about. He didn’t know what he should do. But if he showed it off to the world, the world’s opinion of the Dark Owl would be corrected. It had to be. The next thing he knew, he was shouting something, positively bellowing. The neighbor was yelling about the noise again. But this time, Ajimura ignored him, and he yelled and yelled and yelled. “Goddammit, I told you to shut the hell up! These walls are paper-thin! Your yelling is keepin’ me up!” The next morning, he left his apartment and ran into his neighbor, who grabbed his shirt and voiced his displeasure face-to-face. Ajimura stood there, his expression lifeless, and thought, What’s his problem? The man had dyed hair fashioned into a stylish pompadour. It was very easy to identify him as a delinquent type. I work hard at a real job. What did I do to deserve being yelled at? Normally, he might have been terrified into timid obedience, but at this moment, he was at the limit of his frustration, which overwrote his typical reaction with a different one. “Next time you pull some crap like that, I’m gonna get the landlord to kick you out! Asshole!” The man left without hitting Ajimura, which was about as peaceful a resolution as could be hoped—except that the insults actually demonstrated to Ajimura a way to justify his Dark Owl. That’s it. It doesn’t have to be street attacks. We can say that the Dark Owl was inflicting street justice on the scum of society. He didn’t know who the victims were so far, and he had no interest in them. But Ajimura knew what should come next. He knew what he, as the model for the Dark Owl, needed to do. One night several days later, Ajimura looked at his neighbor, who was lying on the street in the moonless dark evening, bleeding from his head. And Ajimura thought, Here we go. No turning back now. What arose in his heart was not fear but elation. At this moment, he was finally one and the same with the Dark Owl. However… The problem was that in the actual story, the Dark Owl was not some crusader of justice who only hunted the wicked. It was the kind of misconception that would earn you scorn from ordinary fans like Yumasaki and Karisawa. “You’re not a real fan!” they would shout. In fact, Ajimura’s site was known to them as the kind of place fans weren’t meant to go—it was even nastier and more toxic than a hotbed of haters. But at this point, the difference between Ajimura’s conception of the character and its actual depiction in OPD was immaterial. OPD was his life, and it was the series that would be corrected to match him, he believed. The truth was, while he worked up the crowd on the fan site, he had only ever skimmed the OPD anime. He’d never even bought the DVDs or manga volumes. It was his life, after all, so why did he need to wholly consume it? And after attacking his neighbor, there was truly nothing holding his mind in place anymore. He observed the local thugs, anticipated their behavioral patterns, and attacked them late at night when no one was watching. But although he was only selecting people that society termed scum for elimination, the TV was still calling his actions “random street attacks.” “It’s not enough. I haven’t gotten enough of them; that’s why they don’t understand yet,” Ajimura muttered to himself in the convenience store where he worked, eyeing the group of street toughs hanging out in the parking lot outside. “The guy named Horada was just a nobody… They’re not even raising a fuss about this online… I need to do more. Need to hunt worse scumbags. Time to wipe out all the trolls…” He needed to find famous scumbugs. The kind of people that he would be a hero for eliminating. On his break, Ajimura searched for fresh information on his smartphone. He ran a search on the keywords Tokyo delinquent famous. One name popped up above all. It was a name he recognized. If you were a young person and you lived in the vicinity of Ikebukuro, you probably knew that name. After all, alongside the Headless Rider, he was one of the most famous legends of Ikebukuro. Drops of cold sweat beaded on Ajimura’s forehead, and his eyes were brimming with intention. “Shizuo…Heiwajima…” Shinra’s apartment “Look for the attacker? You?” Shinra squawked. By his nature, Shinra did not inquire into the contents of Celty’s job, but when she asked him, “Have you heard any new stories about the street attacker?” it became clear to him what she’d been working on for the last few days. “Yeah, there’s a new odd jobs place called Snake Hands, and I’m looking for information on the street attacker for them.” “That’s dangerous, Celty! What if you get hurt by this attacker?” “You used to say the same thing when I started working as a courier…” “Well, I’ve managed to accept the courier job as something you wanted to do for yourself, but I really worry that this suspicious Snake Hands group is just using you for their own benefit. Are those kids treating you like some kind of convenient weapon or armor? It’s just like Aoba,” Shinra said with great concern. Celty tilted her helmet in a nod. “It’s fine. I treat it like a business, and I’m not doing anything unless it’s for the right price. Besides, getting smacked with a hammer isn’t going to do anything to me…” “Well, if you say so…,” he said, seemingly satisfied. After all the wild events of the past, Shinra largely stayed out of Celty’s business when she was getting herself into danger. It was in cases like this, where she got involved on someone else’s request, that he got worried. Most likely, he was less worried about her getting hurt and more worried about her being manipulated into some situation that she didn’t want to be in. Celty understood that, too, which is why she added some information meant to put Shinra at ease. “Plus, my clients in this case are Yumasaki and Karisawa. In a way, that makes me feel reassured about the job.” “Those two? Why them?” he asked, confused once again, so Celty told him about what she’d heard from Kuon. “Uh-huh… Well, that clears it up… I had no idea that was going on with the street attacks. I never knew because I haven’t been following the news these days.” “You only pay attention to articles about me.” “Of course, Celty! Even setting aside that horrible fake news about you having a damned boyfriend, people everywhere are getting worked up about you coming back to town! I feel proud—it’s like a member of the family turning into a celebrity.” “Uh…it’s more like becoming famous for being a criminal. That’s not something to be proud of.” Naturally, Celty was working as a courier, which meant she was riding around without headlights or a license plate. She felt guilty whenever someone praised her for her job activities. Shinra noticed that she was feeling self-conscious, so he changed the topic. “Anyway…people getting attacked on the street? It reminds me of all that stuff around Anri.” “Yes, I suppose that’s right. That was a street slasher. This one’s more of a bludgeoner. It feels rather strange.” “Speaking of Anri, how is Sonohara-dou doing these days?” he asked. That put Celty in a good mood. “Business is brisk, it seems. Masaomi and Saki have been going all over Japan and acquiring things to sell there. Their selection is much richer than you’d imagine.” Celty thought of Anri like a little sister, and her mind drifted to her from time to time ever since the girl had graduated from Raira Academy. Celty kept up an e-mail correspondence with her, as she did with Mikado, although she met Anri in person much less often, to keep her out of the turbulent and dangerous underworld. When Anri found herself in possession of some strange or suspicious artifact, Celty was available to offer her thoughts on it. “Apparently, that Kujiragi woman brings her stuff from time to time, too… She might have a real talent for assembling a bizarre inventory.” “Ah, yes… Kujiragi seems like the type to bring in weird stuff to sell. Speaking of which, wasn’t she on the run from the police?” “Your dad’s a regular customer, too. He pops his head in every time he comes back to Japan.” “Ah…well, hopefully he’s not interfering with her business…” Shinra traced his cheek as he envisioned a man with a creepy white gas mask visiting an antiques seller. “Well…I suppose it’s possible that the street attacks are coming from a curse like Saika…” Saika was the name of Anri’s cursed katana. At one time, the curse had plunged Ikebukuro into fear of mysterious, indiscriminate slashings, but that was now a chapter of the past. “Speaking of which, aren’t you holding on to Saika for Kujiragi? What happened with that?” “Oh, I’ve still got it. I agreed to give it back the next time we meet; it just hasn’t happened yet.” “…Does it feel to you like she’s going to leave it with you forever…?” “You think so? Speaking of which, I haven’t checked up on it since we came back from our trip,” Shinra said, getting to his feet and opening up the cabinet that contained his medical tools. Inside was a long, thin item wrapped in cloth, which he brought out in view of Celty. “You just had it hanging out in there?!” He undid the cloth to reveal a blade transformed into a scalpel. When he picked it up, his eyes glowed red. Saika. A cursed sword with a will of its own that had been handed down in Edo through the ages. In modern Japan, there were several confirmed Saikas, in fact. The blade apparently held a woman’s personality within it and possessed the strange aspect of a desire to “love” all of humanity. When the sword cut a person, its “words of love” would invade the victim’s body through the wound, eating away at their mind, until they had become a “child” of Saika, a puppet for the blade’s user to control. That wielder, too, unless they possessed an exceptionally strong will, would be taken over by Saika and existed as a manifestation of her love, attacking other people to spread it further. Whoever possessed Saika had glowing red eyes while using it, and the wounded children had bloodshot eyes as well. Whatever bladed object they held was used to cut more people, creating grandchildren. This was the danger that Saika posed to humanity. In the past, Shinra had been turned into a child of Saika and ultimately conquered his curse. Now he owned one of the parent Saikas. And at the moment, his eyes were gleaming like red LEDs, demonstrating his ownership. “See? Real, right?” “H-hey, are you sure about this?! What if the accursed voice gets…?” “Yeah, it’s real annoying while I’m holding it, but as long as I’m looking at your face, I don’t mind it,” Shinra said with a grin. He started wrapping up the scalpel again. Once she saw his eyes returning to their normal color, Celty felt relieved. “You were really taking your life into your own hands back then…” “Hey, it worked out, didn’t it? And you be careful, all right? If anything happens to you, I’ll have no choice but to make the lives of all the people who did it to you into a living hell. Heh-heh-heh-heh.” “Don’t be ominous,” she warned; it was exactly the sort of thing she thought he would do. If something did happen to her, it was likely to involve Shinra, too, by the sheer nature of things. For one thing, Shinra was the type of person who liked taking walks at night, so there was no guarantee he couldn’t be one of the attacker’s victims. She wanted to catch the attacker no matter what to keep Shinra safe—but out of shyness or some other reason, she hadn’t told him that directly. Shinra’s phone lit up with an incoming call. “Hmm, I wonder who this could be so late at night… Ah, it’s Shizuo,” he said and quickly pressed the button to accept the call. “Hello? What do you want at this hour?” “Did something happen, I wonder?” Celty wrote to Shinra as he waited for the answer. She listened closely for the voice on the other end. Although she couldn’t make out the words, the sound of Shizuo’s voice told her that he was in a rather agitated state. “All right. We’ll leave the door unlocked. Come right up the elevator,” Shinra said. The tension was heightened in his voice, too. That told Celty that it was something big. “What’s up?” she asked him once he’d ended the call. Shinra returned the scalpel-type Saika to the cabinet and began to pull out disinfectants and other chemicals instead. “Go and unlock the door, Celty. Shizuo’s going to bring a patient up here.” “Someone’s hurt?!” “Yes. I think you know him, too. His coworker, Tanaka? The man with the dreads and glasses,” Shinra said. “It seems Tanaka got attacked on the street, and they banged his head pretty bad…”
Chapter 40
34 min read