Chapter 42

CHAPTER 3 Protect Our Ikebukuro Why doesn’t anyone understand? I’ve caused so much harm, and yet there are still fools out there who coddle that stupid, vulgar manga. The mass media roll over on their bellies like weaklings. It’s the movie. This all started because there’s a movie. They’ll willingly bash a manga or an anime, but when there’s a live-action movie involved, you’ve got high-profile actors and their powerful talent agencies, don’t you? Or maybe it’s because the TV networks and major ad agencies are in on the business. The problem is, this is exactly the moment to stop letting those worldly concerns control us. Don’t they get it? I haven’t done enough yet. How much more must I do to make them understand? When will they realize how dangerous that awful devil is? But I can’t stop now. I can’t. I sold my soul to the devil for this. I sold my soul to the devil to warn them about the devil. I sold out. Shinra’s apartment “Oooh, owww. This was hell, man.” Sighing, Tom Tanaka rubbed softly at the bandages wrapped around his head. “Just to be on the safe side, I’d recommend going to a hospital in the morning for an X-ray and a CT scan,” Shinra advised. Tom bobbed his head as he put his glasses on. “You’ve done me a real solid, doc. Sorry for barging in on you in the middle of the night like this.” “You feelin’ okay, Tom?” asked Shizuo, eyeing the bandages. Tom waved his hand. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. It was a close call, though.” From what he said, Tom was attacked on the street not far away during the night. He’d been collecting on people’s debts for his job—the usual—and after successfully collecting from a target who’d returned home at a late hour, he was attacked. Shizuo was inside the convenience store, trying to choose between cartons of caramel- or vanilla-flavored café au lait. Tom, who’d already finished his purchase, was drinking a can of coffee in the parking lot next to the building when the assailant struck. In fact, Tom noticed the attacker in the nick of time and just barely dodged the hammer’s blow, but the reaction caused him to lose his balance. He toppled over a bicycle and against a public phone, banging his forehead on the hard corner of the attached phone book. That’s how he started bleeding. Shizuo went outside to find out what was going on. Tom watched the attacker in black pajamas leap over the wall behind the store. Shizuo rushed over to help Tom immediately, and that was how the attacker managed to get away. “I saw them running away, too…but Tom’s head was bleeding, and I was worried. That was enough time for them to escape… I figured you were closer than the hospital, so that’s why I called. Sorry for the disturbance,” said Shizuo, looking solemn. Celty typed, “When you said he’d been attacked, I just assumed he got hit with a hammer.” “Nah, if he took a shot like that, he might’ve even died. It was wrapped up in bandages or something like that, but I’m pretty sure it was a hammer.” “That would certainly point to the ever-popular street attacker,” Shinra noted, showing them a picture from the Internet. It was a still of the Dark Owl character from the Owl of the Peeping Dead anime. “Is this the one who attacked you?” “Y-yeah,” Tom said, sounding a bit uncomfortable. He glanced back at Shizuo. Behind his shades, Shizuo’s brows were clearly knitted. “What do you mean, street attacker?” he asked Shinra. Celty tilted her helmet. Huh? Does Shizuo…not know about the street attacker? I know he’s not the type to dig into TV or online news, but I would have figured that his coworker Tom here would’ve mentioned it in passing, at least. And for some reason, based on Shizuo’s reaction, Shinra made a face like he was thinking, Oh, crap. While Celty waited in confusion, Shinra let a few seconds of awkward silence pass before he began to describe the string of incidents in a very roundabout way. “Okay… I see what’s going on,” Shizuo muttered to himself several minutes later, once Shinra’s story was done. Then he said, “Well, you’ve been a huge help, Shinra. Thanks a lot.” “Uh, sure. Don’t worry about it. I know I owe you a few favors, at the very least.” Shinra’s forehead was sweaty. He looked and sounded awkward. Shizuo turned on his heel. “I should be off now. Take care of Tom for me.” “Huh? Go where?” Shinra asked. “Hmph. Where else?” He chuckled to himself, then looked dead serious. “I’m gonna find the attacker who hurt Tom, and I’m gonna pound them into dust.” Into dust?! A nasty shiver ran down both Shinra and Celty’s spines. Shizuo’s voice was strangely calm, but that was just a sign he was holding it in. Holding in his rage. It was a kind of calmness he demonstrated when there was no present target for his fury. In the past, in this very room, just after learning that he’d been taken advantage of by Izaya Orihara, he gave Akane Awakusu a shockingly plucky smile. This situation felt very similar. “Uh, Shinra, do you think Shizuo’s this mad because his coworker was attacked?” Celty typed, discreetly showing him her smartphone screen. Shinra whispered back, “Yes, that’s half of it.” “? What’s the other half?” “Umm…well…I guess you didn’t know, then…” Shinra looked away, then shrugged and said, “So you know that Dark Owl?” “The character?” “He’s played by Yuuhei in the movie.” “…Huh?” Celty’s mind went completely blank. “During our hot spring vacation, we didn’t go see any movies, and you don’t look at movie websites or Yuuhei’s fan sites, do you? He appeared as a kind of surprise guest, without any publicity ahead of time. His face doesn’t show up in the movie, and it’s a surprise, so his name value doesn’t add anything, but their agency president thought it was funny, so he signed off on it.” “Yuuhei, like…Yuuhei Hanejima?” “Yes, exactly. Shizuo’s younger brother.” Yuuhei Hanejima. Real name, Kasuka Heiwajima. He was Shizuo Heiwajima’s brother and one of the hottest young actors in the business. That explained the earlier concern. Tom was careful not to talk about the street attacker around Shizuo. Given that his brother, Yuuhei, was in the movie and playing the very character whom the attacker was cosplaying as, it was obvious what would result if he found out. Out of an abundance of caution, Tom made sure never to let Shizuo come into contact with that information. Unfortunately, that concern was well-founded, especially when Tom’s victimization only made the overall payoff more serious. The total mass of Shizuo’s pure, violent rage toward the attacker was all the greater. Oh no, someone’s going to die. The attacker’s earned it, but he really is going to pound them into dust! Celty panicked. Shinra said, “Uh, hold on, Shizuo. How are you going to search for this attacker?” “Huh…? I just look for someone wearing those clothes, then grind them to a pulp on the asphalt, obviously…” “I wasn’t asking how you were going to turn them into dust! Plus, what you’re describing is mincemeat, not dust!” Shinra insisted, arguing a pointless distinction. From behind him, Tom called out, “Hey, Shizuo. It won’t work. There are a bunch of people wearing those pajamas.” “…? What do you mean?” Shizuo asked. “Oh, right, right,” interjected Shinra. “Ever since the attacks started, people have been buying tons of those onesies for fun. I’m not sure if they’re just trying to mess with the police, but the fact is, there are a fair number of folks walking around in them. Right, Celty?” “Yeah…I wouldn’t say you see them all over…but they’re around here and there.” “…Now that you mention it, I guess I probably have seen them, too…,” Shizuo muttered as he placed his hand against the wall. “But…on the other hand, whether they think it’s a fun game or what, walking around town with misleading clothes on like that is kind of a threat to other folks, isn’t it? Someone might even get startled and die from a heart attack, you know? And that means those folks should be prepared to get pounded into dust, yeah…?” “Hold on, hold on! Relax, Shizuo!” Celty typed frantically, trying to calm Shizuo before his mind started going down that dark path. What a disaster. He was finally starting to chill out! And that stupid street attacker! They just had to go and do this… It almost made her wonder if the culprit had a death wish. She continued typing. “The police are out there searching all over for this guy and so am I. So can you let us do our job?” Ultimately, after a long, desperate attempt by Celty, Tom, and Shinra to talk Shizuo down, the clincher was Tom saying, “Look, I don’t wanna be the cause of you raising hell around the hood, and I bet your brother doesn’t, either.” That was just enough to get Shizuo to stifle his rage. “…All right. I guess I’ll stay put for today, for you and Celty…” “Huh? What about me? Urmmmg…” Shinra was in the process of inserting himself unnecessarily when Celty stuffed his mouth with shadow. “I’m glad to hear it. For now, just focus on getting Tom home safely.” “That’s a good idea. Thanks, Celty,” Shizuo said. He gave her a piercing stare, then came out with a request of his own. “But if you do find that guy, you’ll let me know before anyone else…right?” “Huh?” “You said you’re lookin’ for the attacker, right?” Oh, shoot. “Uh, yeah.” “So if you find him before the cops do, I just wanna talk with him.” “That might be, uh…” “Don’t worry—I just want to talk to him. I’m sure he’s got some real good reasons for what he’s done…” His rage was smoldering deep in his chest, but not on the surface—yet. “Uh, I’ll see what I can do,” Celty replied noncommittally, hearing the endless, murderous fury in Shizuo’s voice. She walked him and Tom to the door. As they left, Tom whispered to her, “Sorry about this. I’ll calm him down over time.” That was a relief, and once they were gone, Celty wilted and sat down in the middle of the hallway. “Are you all right, Celty?” “Yeah…thanks, Shinra. I’m fine,” she wrote, but deeper down, she was a mess of panic and confusion. “If he finds out that I let Yumasaki’s group meet the attacker before him, I feel like we’re going to suffer because of it. “What am I going to do if I actually catch the attacker…?” Raira Academy library—next morning The weeklong holiday headed into its second half, and Yahiro found himself at school on the weekend, volunteering to help organize the shelves at the library. About a third of the library committee were there, perhaps because they didn’t have anything else to do. They hustled back and forth between the librarians’ room and the shelves. There was less to do than anticipated, and they might actually finish up before noon. Yahiro came to a stop and took a break, using the time to speak to the library chairman. “Ummm, excuse me…” “Hi there, Mizuchi. What’s up?” “Um…are you familiar with the street slasher incident?” “…Why, yes. It happened after I started at this school,” the chairman replied, smiling amiably. “Well, there’s this street attacker now, you know?” Yahiro continued. “I’m just wondering…do you think the same person is behind the attacks?” “Hmm. Why do you say that?” “I think it would be frightening to get attacked like that, so I was thinking it over…,” Yahiro said. He hesitated, then continued clearly, “I get the feeling…that there’s not just one attacker.” “Why do you say that?” “…Maybe this doesn’t make any sense, but I’ve been thinking about my plan if the attacker comes after me, and I was looking up information from other incidents…and I can’t narrow it down to one plan. There’s always some weird disconnect there in the fine details…” Despite the lack of confidence in Yahiro’s description, the older boy seemed to find it interesting. He opened the window and asked, “When you say plan…do you mean what you’ll do if you get attacked?” “Uh, yes. Maybe that’s a strange thing to do.” “Not at all. It’s never a bad thing to prepare. But I think the best plan of all is not walking around after dark.” That was such an obvious and effective piece of advice that Yahiro could say nothing. In fact, it made him feel just a bit guilty, because he was actually trying to get closer to the attacker. “And what connection do you suspect this has to the slasher?” the chairman asked. “Oh, right. Apparently, there are rumors out there that the slasher was actually a group of people…and there are some who theorize that it was part of some kind of gang war. Between groups called the Dollars and Yellow Scarves… Do you know much about that?” “A little,” the chairman said with a smile. Yahiro hypothesized, “What if there’s some group that’s not all on the same page, like the Dollars, and they’re working in separate groups toward some goal? In that case, it would make sense that their methods aren’t all in alignment…” “Maybe they’re not working toward the same goal.” “Huh?” Yahiro yelped, taken aback by this suggestion. The library chairman dusted off the stack of books on the desk by the window. “What if there were multiple street attackers with completely different intentions? Forget about which one came first and which was the copycat. If they keep working toward their separate intentions, it makes sense that you wouldn’t be able to narrow it down to the work of one distinct person.” “Uh-huh… That’s a good point.” “I’m pretty sure the police have been on to that idea for a while, though. For one thing, the victims are heavily weighted toward street hooligans.” “Oh, my friend said that, too,” Yahiro said, recalling his conversation with Himeka. He could feel his thoughts getting clearer. “Right. The attacker going after those hooligans and the attacker going after everyone else can be pretty easily separated into two, I think. So what would happen to the confusion in your mind if you made distinct plans for those two sides?” “……” Yahiro looked at his smartphone to confirm the information he’d saved there, then began to simulate what he would do if he was attacked on the street again. As a result—at least, as far as the delinquent-attacking group was concerned—the actions of the attacker lined up, giving him a path to a counterplan that he found satisfactory. “…Thank you. I’ll think more about this.” “Thinking things over is all well and good, but don’t go getting yourself into danger, okay?” the chairman said with a smile, closing the window. He seemed to be able to see right through Yahiro. The younger boy bowed in thanks, right as the bell rang to indicate that break time was over. “Oh, there it goes. It’s weird to hear the school bell on a day without class, isn’t it?” the older student said. As Yahiro headed back to work, he called out, “There’s one thing you don’t need to worry about, though: This doesn’t have anything to do with the slasher.” “Huh? Okay.” Yahiro wasn’t exactly sure how that was supposed to make him worry less, but then he decided that the fact that this one didn’t have a blade was something to be relieved about. As he rushed off, drawing his own conclusions, the chairman grimaced and added, “At least, that’s the hunch I get.” After Yahiro left, the library chairman turned back to the window and sighed. Through his uniform, Mikado Ryuugamine rubbed at the stab wound scars on his stomach and murmured to himself, “I hardly ever hear the voice anymore…but it does still have an effect on my eyes.” He looked into the reflection of his eyes on the window glass and grinned. It started off as more of a pained grimace, but in time, it turned into an expression of honest relief. By taking on the curse of Saika, he was able to detect how active the presence of that curse was within the city. The stabbing came at the hands of a man possessed by Saika, and it caused the curse to flow into him. It was barely a glimmer of what it once was, but he could still use it to sense others like him. And when the presence in the city dimmed and he was able to confirm that the people he cared about weren’t involved in these street attacks, he felt a great amount of relief. It seemed to tell him that as long as he knew that much, he wouldn’t need to venture into the underworld of the city again. As Yahiro returned to the library shelves, he thought about the chairman. I kind of feel like Ryuugamine’s eyes were really bloodshot just now… I wonder if he was hard at work before we showed up. I should help out more… He headed back to his work—both the duties of his library committee and the Snake Hands work after that. He’d been very close to the lingering echo of the abnormal, but he had no idea it was even there. Raira General Hospital, private room “Are you all right, Mr. Horada?” asked Aoba, grinning widely. Horada’s cheek twitched. “Y-yeah. Doin’ just grand.” “I’m shocked, though. Where’s this ‘find the attacker’ stuff coming from? You just finished getting questioned by the police, so I assumed you were going to leave it up to them.” Horada found the younger member of the Blue Squares oddly intimidating, but he decided that it had to be an illusion of Izumii, the boy’s older brother. He shook his head to clear the fear away. “Yeow!” The shaking caused the pain to double back on him. He slumped back onto the bed. “What’s the matter?” “N-nothin’,” he said, and to hide his pain, he answered Aoba’s earlier question with more force than was needed. “Listen, I used to be the face of the Blue Squares! If I pull back now, that’s my name as a man that gets tarnished! Am I wrong?” “Well, you might have a point…” “Don’t worry. I got some deets I didn’t tell the cops.” “Really?!” Aoba exclaimed. Horada beamed with satisfaction at that, feeling some measure of superiority through the younger boy’s shock. The information he did not share with the police was that there were two attackers. He’d told them it was one person who did this to him. None of the eyewitness information mentioned two attackers, and if some discrepancy turned up, he could always say his memory was shaky on account of being hit. Izumii told him to finish it up before the cops did, so he figured lying to them would help throw them off the proper trail. Uh…but…what do I say? Sayin’ only two of them ganged up on me kinda makes me sound like a bitch… After a bit of thought, Horada’s innate smallness of character shone through, and he ended up embellishing the story by quite a lot. “So, uh…I knocked out the first two or three, like you know I’d do…” “Huh?” “But when there’s more than five, even I can’t last forever, so…” “…” Aoba considered this revelation gravely. Upon seeing the reaction, Horada inwardly cursed himself. Aw, shit. Did I go too far?! Should have kept it to three… What kinda street attacker has over five people? That’s just a buncha violent thugs ambushing innocent people! It was remarkable how much that image exactly matched Horada and his underlings and what they were used to doing, but he was incapable of being self-aware. Instead, he waited nervously to see how Aoba would react. Once he was sure that Aoba had seen right through him, he was stunned to hear the boy say, “So you mean…it was a group of them?” “Huh? Uh, y-yeah. That’s what I’m sayin’, see? There’s no way I’d get decked by some random asshole on the street! And I didn’t even tell the cops that…so be careful you don’t spread that, yeah?” “Got it. I’ll make sure the police don’t hear about it.” “Uh…cool.” Aoba took the news so smoothly that it creeped Horada out a little, until he reconsidered. There we go. Good little boy believes what he hears. Real easy to fool. Guess it’s just a sign of how well I’m respected. Rather optimistically, he assumed that it was due to his natural charisma. But he had no idea what kind of ideas were floating through Aoba’s mind. A few minutes later, outside the hospital “Yo, Aoba. How’s our big buddy doing?” asked one of his friends, who’d been waiting outside the building. “Hmm…things are trickier than I thought,” he replied gravely. “What do you mean?” “I had a feeling that there was more than one attacker…but I didn’t think they would actually team up on a single target.” “Huh?” Aoba proceeded to tell them what he’d heard from Horada. “…And that’s what he said.” “Is that for real? He wasn’t just talkin’ bullshit? He looks like he would.” His friends were skeptical. Aoba’s response was measured. “If he wanted the attackers caught for his own sake, he wouldn’t have needed to make up a bunch of nonsense. And he seems terrified of my brother, so I can’t see him trying to make use of us just to protect his own image.” But Aoba didn’t know that his very brother, Ran Izumii, had given Horada his orders already. He was having difficulty pinning down Horada’s personal nature. “He’s a weird guy, I guess. Like, it’s clear that he’s chickenshit, but some of the things he does go way beyond my expectations. I can’t even guess how he found the hideout of that faked mass kidnapping…” Unfortunately, for Aoba, the truth was frustratingly out of his grasp—that it was sheer coincidence. And that lack of clarity made Horada’s full portrait more eerie and mysterious by the day. Based on his appearance and words, he was just a small-time coward who tried to play a big man. In fact, during the takeover of the Yellow Scarves a few years ago, he was nothing more than another face in the Blue Squares lineup who was more than happy to dance in the palm of Aoba’s hand, but… Did something happen while he was in prison? Maybe something’s going on behind my back. Perhaps because he had such a two-sided personality, Aoba suspected that Horada might be a kindred spirit in that regard. He was plagued by illusions that there must be some reason or some mysterious happenings going on in the dark. “It’s like his natural cowardice is camouflage. It might be his true weapon, in fact.” “What’s ‘camouflage’?” “Look it up.” Aoba walked off toward the exit of the hospital grounds, considering the latest developments. He had a fairly good idea of who was responsible, but the fact that multiple people had attacked Horada added a different meaning to the mix. If there were multiple attackers with separate goals, did that mean—at worst—that there was a group of people with the same goal in mind? Perhaps a cruel-intentioned group of thugs were the copycat, eliminating their rivals by ganging up on them, one at a time. “Well, damn. This isn’t quite what I expected it to be.” He pulled out his phone and began to write a text message. “Who you texting, man?” one of his friends asked. “The Headless Rider.” “What?” His friend’s eyebrows shot up, much to Aoba’s delight. “Gotta call in that favor for sending her a photo of Himeka Tatsugami, after all,” he said and hit the send button. The message itself was quite simple—but embellished here and there, intended to worry its recipient. Hi, Celty. This is Aoba. Sorry this is coming out of nowhere, but could you help with finding this attacker who’s got Ikebukuro on edge? If you find them, we’d really appreciate you bringing them to us. I’m thinking it’s possible that there are actually dozens of people conducting these attacks. It might turn out to be a return of the Night of the Ripper. Shinra’s apartment “What the heck is this?!” Celty showed her complaint to Shinra and flopped dramatically onto the couch. “What’s that? Can you show me the message?” Shinra asked, taking her phone and checking the most recent message she’d received. Before he even saw the text, the sight of the name Aoba Kuronuma put a very displeased look on his face. “Oh…” “Even Aoba’s talking about the attacker, and he says it might turn out like the Night of the Ripper! What am I supposed to do about that? What does he mean, there might be dozens of them?!” “You don’t think there’s something at play like that cursed sword, do you…?” “What do you mean? First a cursed sword, now a cursed hammer?!” Celty’s frustration came in loud and clear even over text. “I’ve heard of such a thing,” Shinra said gravely. “A wicked, cursed hammer by the name of Bannanjin that possesses people and causes their desires to accelerate out of control. Perhaps that’s what we’re dealing with…” “No! Stop! Don’t make this any worse!” “Well, setting that aside, you should see this as a good thing, Celty. If there are multiple attackers, you can give one to Shizuo and the rest to Yumasaki and Karisawa. Or save the leftovers for Aoba.” “We’re not talking about vacation souvenirs here!” Celty snapped, but her annoyance helped center her, and she sat up on the sofa. “What does it mean if there really are more than one? Do you think some motorcycle gang is involved?” “I’m not sure. Maybe after all the fuss the media’s making about it, someone’s getting influenced and playing along.” “Like a copycat, you mean…?” That made a certain kind of sense to Celty, and she tried to imagine who would commit a copycat attack. Someone who saw the attacker story on the news and decided they wanted to be part of it. In any case, it’s not someone with a good head on their shoulders…and it might not even be a grown-up. “Well, I bet it’s just some young airheaded clique or a delinquent student…” Youko Shirobishi was the street attacker. She was fully aware of this. She understood that what she was doing was evil, but she believed that it was for the purpose of doing good. So she was certain that her actions were forgivable and that someone else ought to bear the punishment. And therefore, she continued to beat strangers on the street. Youko was a thirty-seven-year-old self-described essayist who uploaded her writings to the Internet, but the income her site made through ad banners was just a few thousand yen per year. She survived by eating through the inheritance her parents left her. There were no offerings to them on the Buddhist altar in her home. In fact, they seemed to stare balefully out at the room from their framed photograph there, gathering dust. She did not care about any of that in the slightest. She believed that she was living for a much higher, nobler cause. Harmony. World harmony. Temporal harmony. Her life was spent in pursuit of a beautiful world where all things existed in perfect accord. That meant she could not let herself be occupied with personal concerns like cleaning up the altar for her late parents. This was her actual thought process, and she saw everything, from honoring her parents to cleaning her room, as the kind of worldly concern to be ignored. Instead, she fought against an illogical world with her words as weapons. Even the few thousand yen in ad banner revenue was mostly due to her site going viral—in a bad way. When she attacked something that disrupted harmony, she tended to attract the attention of those who were drawn to the corruption of nature and the world—she wrote on her website. But put more simply, she was merely picking fights with everyone she could. And when curious onlookers came by to check out the fuss, a small number of them clicked on her ad banners, making her a pittance. Anything she described as “disrupting harmony” was, in short, something that disrupted people’s tranquility. That disruption could be agitation, fear, anger, laziness, desire—anything that caused the emotional needle to swing back and forth. Manga with intense sexual depictions qualified, of course, as did horror movies with extreme violence, police dramas with gunfights, even works of fine art that featured the nude form. All these things were her enemies. An especially rich example of her controversies was when she attempted to get pictures of the Venus de Milo banned from textbooks for being “violently sexist art spreading the ideology that a woman is more beautiful when her arms are ripped off.” Different theories exist about whether the statue originally had arms that crumbled off or if it had been made without arms to begin with, but to Youko, this distinction did not matter in the least. The fact that it existed as a piece of art to be appreciated disgusted her. She considered it an act of blasphemy against society. If that was her attitude toward ancient works of art, it was no surprise that she was brutally aggressive toward modern TV shows, comics, and movies. And foremost among her targets was a media franchise by the name of Owl of the Peeping Dead. It was a story in which zombies take over Ikebukuro and the living have to find a way to survive—but Youko’s reaction toward the premise went past disgust and into a kind of primordial terror. For one thing, she was completely incapable of understanding the concept of zombies that come back to life and attack people. If a child watches this, who is going to teach them that people don’t actually keep moving after you kill them? she wondered, aghast. She’d been a member of a civil group that attempted to purge all zombie movies out of concern, but her methods were so vociferous and extreme that the group kicked her out. And in this series’ case, those zombies were choking the streets of Ikebukuro. The very city is being defiled. To Youko, the animated series and live-action movie being shown to the nation was equivalent to dumping gasoline and toxic sludge all over Ikebukuro. The fact that there were residents who welcomed this horrible defilement was a sign that the world of harmony she sought was permanently shattered. It should be noted that she did not know any of the finer points of the Owl of the Peeping Dead story. She had neither watched the anime nor read the manga, and she hadn’t seen the movie. All she needed for her judgment was a simple synopsis and the promotional visuals that showed up when you searched for it online. The setting: Ikebukuro overrun with zombies. A movie poster with spilled blood as the center of its design. These two things were all she needed to feel disgusted. She couldn’t handle violent content being brought into a real city. “How do you know what it’s about if you haven’t seen it?” people would ask her. To them, Youko would confidently say, “I don’t need to see it to know. The support from people like you, who would viciously attack my reputation, is the greatest possible proof that this franchise is utterly malicious and devoid of virtue.” Of course, people raided the message board and social media accounts of her website. Some people tried to argue in good faith and make her see sense, while others just piled on and left abusive, anonymous comments. She picked up only the insults, published them on her site, and announced, “These disgusting people are the ones who support that awful, awful movie.” She ignored the good faith comments—not because she couldn’t argue against them but because she pitied them. She thought, They might seem calm, but the fact that they can rationally support this film is merely proof of how brainwashed they are. Nothing I can say to them will get through, the poor souls. The world that Youko envisioned was right and just, and anyone who believed in anything aside from that was either evil or a poor, pitiable victim of brainwashing. Most frightening of all was that a number of people actually agreed with her and backed her up. In most cases, they were people who signed on due to her outward concern of “preserving a pristine future for our children” and got steadily infected by her way of thinking. In a sense, perhaps her unwavering certainty gave her a kind of charisma to others. In addition, the groups that sought stricter restrictions on content in movies, shows, manga, and video games found Youko’s activism to be a convenient tool. They understood that she was an extremist, of course, but the furious and offensive reactions she elicited, which included death threats, were a useful thing to have as evidence. When someone made a death threat toward Youko, they could publicize it greatly, influencing public opinion by telling the world, “This is what people who read violent, extreme manga do.” Of course, if the rest of society knew how crazy Youko was, it would be less convincing, so they made certain to minimize Youko’s profile as a victim. As for her, Youko continued her activities all the while, heedless of the many different people taking advantage of the situation for their own reasons. With her sympathetic followers, she created the group People for the Calm Treatment of Ikebukuro, which she used to launch an all-out attack on Owl of the Peeping Dead. It was a war that had lasted for years. Despite her activities, the anime and movie were big hits, and the zombie story was a major part of pop culture around the city. Last Halloween, the OPD production company and publisher started a promotion to get people dressed up as zombies to celebrate. The group came together to prevent this from happening and wound up getting arrested for interfering. “But we were just trying to purify the evil vibes this horrible zombie-style event was creating,” they protested, showing no understanding of where they had gone wrong. But they couldn’t deny that the runaway freight train momentum of OPD was leaving them exhausted and dejected. And that was when a miracle occurred. To her, it was truly a message from the heavens. Some person dressed as a character in OPD ambushed and attacked someone on the street. Based on information they gleaned from the Net, they learned before the media did that the attacker was dressed up as the character known as the Dark Owl. It’s all over now. We’ve won the war. At last, the world will see and understand just how violent and evil and depraved these lost souls are. The victims of the attacker were a sacrifice for the sake of harmony. She and the rest of the group mourned the attack and its violence, and they rejoiced in it. However, the media did not publicize the information about the Dark Owl. If anything, their reporting slowed to a trickle after the first day. What could this mean? Was OPD paying the media off to cover it up? The group’s hope quickly turned to despair. Society did not seek harmony, they realized. The unwelcome arrival of this truth drove Youko into a desperate frenzy. Her life’s goal had been denied. She destroyed all manner of things around her home, and tears of furious frustration blotted her pillow, many, many times… And then she had an idea. What if it just wasn’t enough? Did the noble goal of harmony require more hallowed sacrifices? Upon this realization, she consulted with her trusted followers. These were not the influential people in the political groups that used her for their own purposes but the handful of people who truly believed in her ideals. After a long period of persuasion, Youko and a number of her “agents of harmony” reached a conclusion. In order to kill the devil, they had to sell their souls to it. “We have to do this! We’re sorry—we’re so sorry!” they wailed as they bludgeoned their victims. And with each groan of pain and each splash of blood, they could feel it happening. They were surrounding themselves with an impurity that could never be wiped clean. The Dark Owl was a shell of pure corruption around them. Even so, it was a step toward harmony in Ikebukuro. They believed that when all of Ikebukuro was eventually purified that shell would break, and they would be reborn in a true sense—and so they continued to commit evil as the Dark Owl. They would continue for as long as it took until people recognized the wickedness of the Dark Owl and the story that contained it. Although they came to a realization one day: Someone else—probably the true, original attacker—had begun to hunt the city’s unsavory scum. “It’s come at last…,” she murmured. Youko didn’t know if this attacker was the same as the very first attacker, but she was absolutely certain that it was caused by the same wicked will of OPD that prevented their harmony from being realized. By purging the city of its delinquents and creating a false sense of harmony, the other attacker was attempting to depict OPD as something harmless to society, even beneficial. “More… We need to dedicate more sacrifices…” There was only one way to fight back, to purify Ikebukuro: They had to shed more blood. A fierce battle remained ahead of them, but there was no hesitation in Youko’s eyes. All their efforts were for the future of Ikebukuro. This was the ideal they held in their hearts as they searched for their latest sacrifice. It was for Ikebukuro. To protect Ikebukuro from the hands of wicked pillagers. Youko gripped the symbol of evil in her hand, the bandaged hammer. It should also be noted that she was a resident of Saitama Prefecture; she did not live in Ikebukuro.