Chapter 46

NEXT PROLOGUE Raira Academy—cafeteria After the string of incidents, the developers of the OPD media franchise, WWW, made the following statement: “We have no comment about the group of Dark Owls who appeared at the train station. But there is one thing we can say. Did someone cause this due to the influence of the Dark Owl? That might be possible. The Owl and the Dark Owl exist in every person’s heart. They represent our good and wicked consciences, the angel and devil on each shoulder. But if someone gives in to the devil’s temptation and kills another person, who says, ‘We must crack down on the Bible’? OPD is not the Bible, just a simple work of entertainment. Please don’t forget that.” Mairu Orihara read the comment on her smartphone, then said to Aoba with exasperation, “What you did ended up getting used as promotion for OPD after all, Aobacchi.” “Hmm…? Oh… Yeah, first the Underars claimed it was one of their art projects, so it was like the company swooped in from the top to scoop up the clout… And who told you about that?!” Aoba replied absentmindedly. His lunch partners, Mairu and Kururi, rounded on him with complaints. “Oh, come on! We heard it from Kuocchi! Look, all this stupid street attacker stuff means that people like us in the Always Walking Around in Animal-Themed Clothes Alliance get saddled with a bad reputation! And it turns out the group that was helping spread that stereotype is the Blue Squares? What gives?!” “…Trouble…” [It’s a pain.] “S-sorry, sorry. Listen, I’ll try to make it up to you by orchestrating something that will improve the image of those animal clothes you love so much,” Aoba insisted. But on the inside, his mind was occupied with a different trouble. He was thinking of a call he had with Yoshikiri the night in question. “Hey, Yoshikiri. Nice job. Now I know just how strong Yahiro is.” “Huh?” “I’ll be honest—I didn’t know you were that nimble. You might’ve been focused on avoiding getting hurt, but you managed to get real far against him. In fact, I’d say you could do pretty well against Shizuo Heiwajima, too, eh?” “What are you talking about?” “Uh…I’m saying…you were dressed as the street attacker so that you could ambush Yahiro, and I was filming it from afar. Then you ran up the roof and got away, right?” “Huh? Didn’t you get my text?” “?” “I totally sent you a message! I got lost, so I went back home and went to bed!” After that, Aoba had gone back to his distant footage of the fight and examined it again. Indeed, the attacker fighting Yahiro seemed to be moving much too fast to be Yoshikiri. In fact, if Aoba were to be completely objective in appraising Yahiro’s skill, his only conclusion was that Yoshikiri wouldn’t stand a chance against him. I was really hoping to have a video I could title “Snake Hands defeats the street attacker!” It was only supposed to be a quick little cash grab for some spending money, but it left Aoba with a powerful disquiet in his chest. As well as a keen, curious thrill. So who the hell was that in the Dark Owl outfit? Rental office in Tokyo In a small rental office within a commercial building, Shijima sat in the chair in the center of the room, his head still bandaged up. But this time, it was not Earthworm standing at his side; it was a young man dressed in Dark Owl pajamas, the hood ripped near his mouth. “So how was this Snake Hands fellow?” Shijima asked. The man grinned. “Great, Mr. Shijima. He’s tough, really tough!” “I see. That was an expected benefit to monitoring the street attackers, then.” He made it sound like he’d been watching all the attackers from the very start somehow. “I wanted to observe what would happen to people who already had an extremist profile if I gave them a little chemical encouragement,” Shijima continued. “But then things went the way they did before I could even use the drugs. How mysterious that people who were polar opposites ended up traveling the same path…” The other fellow was tall but young enough that some might have still called him a boy. “They weren’t opposites. They were all pieces of shit.” He cackled. “Yes…that’s true,” Shijima said. “Everyone’s a piece of shit, including you and me.” “Right?” he said gleefully. Shijima glanced down at his hands. He was holding a smartphone that was playing the video of the Dark Owl and Snake Hands fighting, but from a different angle than the video Aoba took. “Say,” he said, watching the Dark Owl on the video, “are you really human?” “What does that mean? You ask like you know people who aren’t human.” “That’s because I do know a few. I’ve suffered on account of it. So what are you, Jami?” “I’unno. Couldn’t tell you myself. But…” The boy named Jami grinned, his eyes glinting with a bestial ferocity. He thought back on the urban legend dressed in shadow and the brief instant of pure murder that man had exhibited and flashed a youthful, wicked smile. “I think maybe he could tell me the answer.”