Durarara!! - Volume SS01 - Chapter 1

SIDE STORY 1

 HOT LIKE THE POT OF MY SOUL

Apartment building, near Kawagoe Highway, mid-April

The word for “chaos” in Japanese is konton, which, if repeated often and fast enough, sounds like the bubbling of a merry hot pot. Which is why it’s best when your hot pot is chaotic.

Who had said that, again? Somebody on a TV show.

Mikado Ryuugamine tried desperately to recall the person, but his mind wasn’t sharp today.

Ummm… What’s going on here, exactly?

The absolute strangeness of the scene surrounding him made his cheek twitch with alarm—but it couldn’t stop his hand from picking up another piece of meat with his chopsticks and shoving it into his mouth.

Meat meat veggies meat veggies

Meat meat veggies meat veggies

Tofu in a sesame glaze veggies in a ponzu sauce

Meat can go all on its own if it’s nice and fatty

This little quatrain popped into Mikado’s head as he surveyed the scene around him.

He was surrounded by people, all focused on the hot pot in the center. And they were going to town on it.

It was the top-floor penthouse of a luxury apartment building by the Kawagoe Highway. The spacious dining room, which was the size of some apartments all on its own, was full of a hustle and bustle that made it seem positively cramped.

About ten people were gathered around the large table which featured two gas burners, each holding a large pot equal in size to the other.

The window nearby offered a view of Tokyo’s night sky, but the steam from the pots was completely blotting it out, leaving only the conversation and chaos within the grasp of Mikado’s senses.

“Ummm…”

He swallowed the piece of meat in his mouth and considered, once again, why he was present in such a place.

In the few days since starting his second year at Raira Academy, he had experienced the nasty feeling of nervous sweat dripping down his back too many times to count already, thanks to a variety of troubles—but when the woman at the center of that trouble had invited him to come over for a hot pot, he had found that he could not resist taking her up on the offer.

That context alone might make it sound like a romantic invitation or otherwise suspenseful event—but the woman who had invited him was currently sitting on the sofa that bordered the dining room, shoulder to shoulder with a man in a white lab coat, chatting happily.

Or at least, it looked like she was chatting.

In fact, the man in the white coat was talking endlessly at her. She was not saying a single word in response, because she did not even have a mouth to do so.

Mikado watched the man in the lab coat, Shinra Kishitani, talk to the headless woman, Celty Sturluson, and felt just a little bit envious.

Celty Sturluson was not human.

She was a type of fairy commonly known as a dullahan, found from Scotland to Ireland—a being that visits the homes of those close to death to inform them of their impending end.

The dullahan carried its own severed head under its arm, rode on a two-wheeled carriage called a Cóiste Bodhar pulled by a headless horse, and approached the homes of the soon-to-die. Anyone foolish enough to open the door was drenched with a basin full of blood. Thus the dullahan, like the banshee, made its name as a herald of ill fortune in European folklore.

One theory claimed that the dullahan bore a strong resemblance to the Norse Valkyrie, but Celty had no way of knowing if this was true.

It wasn’t that she didn’t know. More accurately, she just couldn’t remember.

When someone back in her homeland stole her head, she lost her memories of what she was. It was the search for the faint trail of her head that had brought her here to Ikebukuro.

Now with a motorcycle instead of a headless horse and a riding suit instead of armor, she had wandered the streets of this neighborhood for decades.

But ultimately, she had not succeeded at retrieving her head, and her memories were still lost.

And she was fine with that.

As long as she could live with the human beings she loved and who accepted her, she could happily live the way she was now.

She was a headless woman who let her actions speak for her missing face, and held this strong, secret desire within her heart.

That was Celty Sturluson in a nutshell.

Mikado had come to know the abnormal woman on a personal basis, which was why he was currently at this hot pot party—but he wasn’t unique in that sense.

Quite a few other people were gathered at the apartment, which made it seem like he had been invited only because he’d happened to appear in the host’s list of contacts. But the others were almost all familiar to him, so he didn’t feel like the odd one out.

There was just one thing that left him lonely—another old friend who should have been here for this was not.

“……”

“Um…may I sit next to you?” said a girl’s faint voice, right by his ear.

“Huh?! Oh, sure, sure! Sorry for taking this seat without asking,” he replied. Most people were standing with their dishes because it was so cramped. Mikado scooted over to make room for his classmate, Anri Sonohara. “I didn’t realize you were actually friends with Celty.”

He knew they’d met before, but he couldn’t contain his surprise when he actually saw Anri at the party.

“Karisawa and Yumasaki I understand, but even Miss Harima and Yagiri are here,” he said, eyeing the couple happily poking at the pot. It made him think of another boy who wasn’t here. “If only Masaomi were around…”

“Yes, I know,” she replied, startling Mikado, who thought he was only talking to himself.

“Oh, s-sorry! That wasn’t meant for you. I was just…,” he stammered awkwardly, trying to come up with an excuse—but ultimately gave up and smiled sadly. “Anyway…it’s true, I really wish Masaomi could be here,” he murmured wistfully over the chatter of the room as a whole. “The only reason I know you—and everyone else in this room—is because Masaomi convinced me to move to Ikebukuro.”

“……”

Masaomi Kida.

He was Mikado’s childhood friend, and the very person who had invited him to Tokyo.

The three of them—Mikado, Masaomi, and Anri—were a well-known trio at Raira Academy, fast friends who were always seen together around the school.

Until an event caused Masaomi to drift away from them.

It had been over a month since then, but Mikado and Anri still hadn’t gotten over it. They felt like if they looked up, they would see Masaomi tussling with someone else at the hot pot over a particularly juicy piece of meat.

But of course, there was no sign of him here.

“I’m so grateful to Masaomi. I didn’t hate my hometown, but thanks to him, I’ve been able to step out of my comfort zone into an entirely new world. If anyone else had tried to convince me to move cities, I might not have accepted. Of course, it’s a bit of an exaggeration to act like I moved across the country to get here. It was only Saitama, just up the road, but still…”

He scratched at his hair shyly. Anri smiled at him and said, “You were really good friends, weren’t you?”

“Just between you and me, when I heard that Masaomi was transferring to Tokyo, I cried. I couldn’t say this to him in person, but the truth is, he saved my butt so many times…

“I always wished I could have Masaomi’s energy. When he wanted to do something, he’d just do it. When we were in elementary school, there was this one time when…”

Five years ago, summer, Saitama Prefecture

“Mikado! Let’s go catch rhinoceros beetles!” said a black-haired boy with great delight, calling to an upstairs window of a two-story home.

The other boy popped his head out, dressed in his pajamas, and spoke just loud enough not to disturb the houses around them. “I wondered why a rock was hitting the window… Masaomi, do you have any idea what time it is?!”

“Two in the morning! It’s the witching hour! We did it!”

“We didn’t do anything! Hang on, I’ll come down…”

Without changing out of his pajamas, Mikado Ryuugamine trotted down the stairs and opened the front door, sighing.

“Why rhinoceros beetles?” he asked, eyeing the other boy suspiciously.

Masaomi Kida was equipped with his bug-catching net and chuckling happily to himself. “I ran out of things to write about in my summer homework journal!”

“…Just write that nothing happened. That counts.”

“That’s boring! Who’s gonna want to read that?!”

“Nobody. Only the teacher is going to read it—it’s just a summer vacation homework assignment. We don’t have to draw pictures anymore either, so it’s not like you have to come up with something creative.”

“I want to enjoy it. I wanna read it again when I’m older,” Masaomi said, which was simply crazy.

Mikado sighed. “For one thing, my mom and dad are gonna be furious if they catch me walking around outside in the middle of the night.”

“Huh? But aren’t they all the way up in Aomori for a funeral?”

“…Oh, yeah. They did say something about that yesterday…”

“Anyway, it’s not even the middle of the night. It’s early morning. Even the trees and plants are asleep at this hour! And human beings don’t have to run on a plant’s schedule! C’mon, let’s go and find our beetle paradise!”

Hours later, in the forest, Saitama Prefecture

“…Let me guess: You wanted to do this because rhinoceros beetles sell for a lot of money?”

The boys still waited until around four o’clock to go into the nearby woods. Masaomi was nothing if not an active boy, and his sheer go-getter enthusiasm was not very childlike, for better or for worse—but his motivations themselves were still rather childish.

People in Masaomi’s vicinity often found themselves subject to his whims; Mikado, who was particularly prone to passivity, was the most frequent victim of Masaomi’s “adventures” and “ideas” and “play pretend.”

Mikado did not dislike this, however. He felt something akin to admiration for the boy who got up and did things that he himself would never have tried. They were together so often that Mikado usually had a pretty good idea of whatever was driving Masaomi’s latest plan.

“Hey, you figured it out. We can get some good allowance out of this.”

“That’s so selfish…”

But despite his misgivings, Mikado was along for the journey.

What did Masaomi’s parents think of all this, anyway? He claimed that they didn’t care much about the little things, but it seemed kind of weird that they would ignore the fact that their son was going out at two in the morning.

They made their way through the dark forest, Mikado jumping with fright even as he worried for his friend’s home life.

“Last night, I soaked a cloth in a special kind of nectar and wrapped it around a tree. It’ll be covered in beetles now, so we can take our pick. Just be careful not to step on any of ’em, got it?”

“G-got it,” Mikado said, pointing his flashlight down at the space in front of his feet. The thought of accidentally squishing a bug sent a horrified shiver down his spine.

Masaomi, meanwhile, strode forth without concern. But then he saw something.

“Huh?”

Deeper into the woods, there were a number of other lights, waving and flickering.

“Th-there, see? You didn’t ask if you could put that cloth up, so the adults got mad and came to take it down!”

“In the middle of the night?” Masaomi said, pointing his flashlight down and carefully following the beam.

Mikado continued following behind, despite the fear that made his knees quake.

What they found, instead, was a couple of boys who were several years older than them.

“Huh? What are you doing here?” said one of the boys, who had noticed their flashlights.

They were carrying an insect cage, too, and had come in search of rhinoceros beetles, just like Masaomi. They seemed a little too old to enjoy making them fight, so they were probably intending to sell them.

There were gobs of beetles already in their cage, and presumably they had already cleaned out the cloth of all the bugs it had attracted.

“Uh-oh, I think they’re middle schoolers,” Mikado whispered fearfully, pulling on Masaomi’s sleeve. But his friend just spoke to the older boys like it was a totally normal situation.

“Umm, we’re here to catch some rhinoceros beetles.”

The middle schoolers looked at each other, then laughed and told Masaomi and Mikado, “This is where we’re catching them. Go somewhere else, you babies.”

Masaomi just sighed and turned on his heel to leave. Surprisingly, it was Mikado who jumped out from behind his friend and accosted the older boys, despite his nerves.

“B-but it was Kida who put up that cloth and the nectar!”

“Huh? What, you got a problem?”

“Oh yeah? Can you prove it?”

They shone their lights in his face and stepped forward menacingly. Mikado twitched and froze, but Masaomi grabbed his arm and pulled him away, shaking his head.

“Nope, we can’t. We’ll be going now.”

“Yeah, you better,” they laughed, waving their arms at him like they were shooing away a dog. Mikado looked upset, but Masaomi just took him by the hand and pulled him further into the woods.

“Listen, Mikado, you don’t know the first thing about fighting, so you can’t go around challenging people like that.”

“B-but…you were the one…who lured all those beetles in…,” Mikado grumbled, still not over it.

Masaomi patted him on the head and took something out of his fanny pack. “Listen, it’s okay. I found lots of cool stuff in the woods here around sunset.”

“Cool stuff? Like what?”

“Anyway, you’re kind of a wimp, so don’t go doing anything dangerous.” And with a smirk, he turned to Mikado and added, “Why don’t you wait here for a bit?”

“?”

“Leave the dangerous stuff like fighting up to me.”

“Damn, I bet we can get tons of money with these.”

“We’d probably get even more selling them to people ourselves instead of through a store, huh?”

“Don’t be stupid. It’s parents who buy them; nobody’s gonna buy them from us. The best way to do it is sell them to the guy who runs the pet shop nearby.”

The middle schoolers gazed greedily at the beetles in their cage, laughing over their find—until something splattered all over them.

“?!”

It was a sticky liquid that smelled rather sweet.

They cast their flashlights around, searching for the source—and saw a young boy standing alone in the darkness, holding a stick in one hand and a plastic bottle in the other.

“Hiya. Thought you might wanna take the rest of the nectar with you,” he said with a mocking laugh, then turned and ran off into the night.

The older boys stood there a moment, taken aback. When they realized what had been done to them, they chased after him, roaring with fury.

“Get back here, bitch!”

“I’m gonna kick your little ass!”

They ran and ran through the darkness, issuing very immature threats to a boy who was clearly much younger than them, but just when they were getting close to catching him, the boy suddenly slowed down and swatted something hanging from a tree with the stick in his hand.

“Huh…?”

They eyed him with suspicion and shone their flashlights on the object, just as the younger boy clicked his off.

And from the object emerged the sound of many large, angry, buzzing…

“W-w-wasps!”

A great cloud of insects swarmed from the hive and found the source of their anger: a group of boys doused in nectar and waving bright lights around.

While the middle schoolers screamed and fled, Masaomi went back to the previous spot, picked up the bug cage, saved the biggest beetle, and let the others back into the forest.

Then he returned to Mikado, as though nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, and reassured his worried friend that everything was just fine.

“Sorry, I only caught this one. Do you mind if I keep it?”

Five years later, hot pot party

“…And when I heard those older boys screaming, I knew something was up. Masaomi always hated to lose…so he would go at it with middle schoolers without thinking anything of it.”

“That sounds like him,” Anri chuckled. Mikado smiled back shyly.

“Yeah…but if that were all there was to him, I don’t think we would have been so close. I don’t like fighting, either.”

Five years earlier

Two days after the beetle incident, Mikado was walking through the neighborhood when he ran into Masaomi.

“Hey, Mikado. Check it out.”

“?”

Masaomi handed him a piece of hard candy, so all he could do was say curiously, “Thank you?”

The other boy laughed at his friend’s reaction and explained, “Remember how I got you up so early the other day? Well, I sold that beetle at a premium. Thought I’d share the wealth.”

“So you did sell it after all,” Mikado remarked, putting the candy in his pocket.

After that, they chatted a little more, and went their separate ways back home, just like any other day—if all had been normal.

But on the way back, while he was sucking on the candy Masaomi had given him, Mikado spotted some of the local kids having fun and showing off their rhinoceros beetles to each other.

He reminisced fondly about the early morning incident two days ago, but soon one of the children noticed him and waved.

“Hey, it’s Mikado! What are you doing?!”

“I’m just walking home… Did you catch those beetles on your own?” he asked.

One of the kids gave him a cheeky smile and said, “No! Masaomi gave it to me!”

“…Huh?”

Mikado was startled to hear the name of the friend he’d just talked to, and he looked at the little boy more closely; he was another student at the same elementary school. The beetle in that boy’s hand was clearly bigger than the others. In fact, it seemed to be exactly the same size as the one Masaomi had taken home the other morning.

“About three days ago, Yocchan was bragging about the beetle he got from the store, and everyone was really mad about it, so Masaomi said, ‘I’ll get you an even bigger one’!

“Then he brought me this huge beetle yesterday and traded it to me for three candies!”

Five years later, hot pot party

“Masaomi’s kind of dumb like that, isn’t he? He’ll just do things that won’t get him anything, every now and then.”

“I think that’s wonderful,” Anri said, beaming.

Mikado found a smile creeping across his lips as well. “Yeah, I agree. I think that part of Masaomi is dumb, but also really awesome. Even if he tries to act a little too cool about it.”

He turned to the pot to hide the embarrassment that suddenly rose within him, but he was disappointed to find that the meat was all gone, forcing him to settle for some Chinese cabbage instead.

Suddenly, Mika Harima showed up in an adorable apron and set a large plate piled high with meat down on the table.

“Don’t worry everyone, there’s plenty of meat to go around. You don’t have to rush!” she said with a radiant smile. Mikado couldn’t help but notice how very attractive she was. Then he remembered that Anri was right behind him.

No, no, no! I’m supposed to be all-in on Sonohara, he admonished himself.

Mika Harima was Anri Sonohara’s best friend.

But not knowing Mika all that well, Mikado couldn’t tell if that was a real friendship or not. She had supposedly dragged Anri around with her to be the plain girl that made Mika look better, but Mikado thought that Anri was far more appealing. But maybe that impression was because he had heard about Mika through Anri first and knew that she had Seiji for a boyfriend.

She’s definitely the polar opposite of Sonohara, that’s for sure. Maybe both of them are using the other as a foil.

Anri was more reserved and gloomy, while Mika was so bright and cheerful she seemed to have no worries at all. They were good contrasts for each other and seemed to accentuate each other’s best qualities.

In that sense, it would explain why Mika Harima’s cheeriness would attract guys.

On the other hand…she’s a stalker.

Mikado was aware of various aspects of Mika’s personality, which truthfully made it very hard to be enticed by her good looks. And besides, he had already decided that Anri Sonohara was the only girl for him.

He stuck the piece of cabbage into his mouth, focusing on the texture to take his mind off of physical desires, and returned to Anri.

“Mglp…” He swallowed down the cabbage with some difficulty and asked her, “By the way, when did you first get to know Harima?”

He thought it was a natural follow-up to his earlier story about him and Masaomi when they were younger—but the answer he got was darker than he expected.

“I was…longtime friends with Mika, but we weren’t really that close at the start… I was being picked on in elementary school by one of the girls in class…and it was Mika who saved me.”

“……”

“After that, we started doing different things together, and the rest is what I told you earlier.”

“Uh, yeah… Sorry if I dredged up anything unpleasant there,” he said, bowing an awkward apology.

Anri quickly shook her head. “No, no, not at all. Sorry for bringing us down…”

Just then, the devil in question, Mika Harima, popped into the conversation. “What’s going on here?” she teased. “Having a little domestic tiff?”

“M-Mika!”

“Mikado, don’t go giving Anri a hard time, now! She tends to internalize things and agonize over them.”

“S-sorry,” he said, for some reason. Anri reached out toward him, desperate to clear up what he’d just heard.

But the combination of Mika’s voice and Mikado’s words brought back a very specific memory to her mind.

It was from when the two of them first met.

Six years ago, Tokyo, elementary school

A wet rag smacked against Anri’s little face.

“How’d you get a perfect score on that test? What did you do to cheat?”

“……”

She was surrounded by girls at the washing faucet behind the school building. It was after school; there were few people left around and no teachers walking nearby.

“Everyone knows you were cheating,” said one of the girls, pulling the rag off of Anri’s face and hurling it at the gentle swell of her chest. It made a nasty splat, leaving a wet mark that spread across her shirt.

Although Anri did not deserve it, they were apparently angry that she, one of the plainer girls in the class, had gotten better grades than them. Lacking evidence, they had simply skipped over any investigation to declare her guilty of cheating.

“But I didn’t…,” she tried to claim, but the leader of the pack of girls grabbed her shoulder and pushed her back against the wall of the washing area.

“I didn’t ask for your life story.”

She opened the faucet, then scooped some water into her hand and threw it against Anri’s face several times.

“Everyone hates you, you know. Don’t you get that?”

“Yeah. All the boys said you’re gross.”

As a matter of fact, the boys probably liked Anri more than they liked the girls who were picking on her, but to bring up that fact would only hurt their fragile pride even more. The realization that the “inferior” girl had beaten them badly on the test was more humiliation than they could stand, given the status they’d built within the class.

But being children, they would probably say that she just made them mad.

One of the girls filled a bucket and pulled back to hurl the water at the unresisting Anri.

But in the next moment, a hand reached out and grabbed the girl’s wrist, causing her to lose her balance and spill the water on herself instead.

“Aaaaah!” she screamed, drawing the attention of Anri and the bullies. Mika was standing behind them with her backpack on, ready to walk home, along with other girls who seemed to be her friends.

Mika ripped the bucket away from the drenched girl and spun it around on her finger, smiling very wickedly to herself.

“What’re you losers even doing?” she cackled, much to the distress of the bullies.

“I-it’s none of your business, Harima,” they said, clearly intimidated. Mika was the central figure of the class at this point in time, and the bullies’ group was an inferior rung on the hierarchy of popularity.

In fact, they were where they were because they hadn’t been deemed good enough for Mika’s popular group, which was why they had turned to establish their own superiority over Anri. The fact that Mika had spotted them made this a rather awkward encounter.

“Uh-oh. I wonder what the teachers would say if they heard about this. They might have to call your mommies and daddies.” Mika snickered.

The bullies stammered, “D-don’t get the wrong idea! We were just teasing her a little… A-anyway, let’s go.”

They scampered off, pale-faced. Mika laughed as they went, then turned to Anri. “You okay?”

“Um…thank you…”

“Wipe your face,” she said, offering Anri a handkerchief. “Come on, Sonohara. You should at least fight back a little. Otherwise they’re just going to take it further and further.”

“I’m sorry…but…I’m all right… I’m used to it back home…”

“?”

At the time, Mika didn’t understand what Anri meant by that. But it made her curious.

So she said, “We’re about to go hang out. Wanna come with us?”

For the next few years, Anri was a part of Mika’s posse and often spent time with them. She wasn’t really an enthusiastic member of the group, more like a bystander who’d been roped into it by Mika specifically.

Anri could tell that, to Mika, she was like a completely contrasting life-form that served to make herself look better. Being in elementary school, she was still too young to put it in those words, but she could still sense the social undercurrents at play.

But she also didn’t mind it at all. Perhaps it was because, being a passive person herself, she felt a kind of allure in the way that Mika could be so proactive about everything.

Strangely enough, it was the same way that Mikado Ryuugamine felt about Masaomi Kida.

But in the spring of their second year of middle school, things changed.

“Aaah!”

The one getting kicked against the wall of the girls’ bathroom was Mika Harima this time.

Surrounding her and blocking her exit were the same girls who had been the outcast group in elementary school, and behind them were the girls who had been Mika’s followers back then.

“How long do you think you can play princess, huh?”

“Nobody’s gonna sit around and kiss your ass anymore.”

It had all started changing when one of the girls from the outcast group had started dating a boy from the gang of tough guys who ruled the school. Over time, she started testing her limits, seeing what sort of influence she could wield, and once she was satisfied, she began to take down Mika’s group as revenge for her elementary school years.

Afraid of becoming targets, Mika’s followers guiltily chose to change sides, one by one, until Mika was socially isolated and alone.

“Look, I brought her.”

A new figure arrived at the girl’s bathroom, which was tense and fraught with anger. It was Anri Sonohara, whom one of the other girls had dragged in.

“Harima…?”

Anri had been uninterested in the social competition between groups in the first place, so the change in the situation was a mystery to her.

The leader of the group jutted her chin toward Mika, handed Anri a bucket, and said, “Fill this up with water and dump it on her, Sonohara.” Anri took it, but she looked back and forth between Mika and the other girls with obvious confusion.

“You didn’t like being used to make her look better, right?”

“I don’t mind…”

“I said, right? Or do you want to be picked on again? Huh? Is that right? You wanna join Mika in here and get water dumped on you every single day? Do you?”

The girls who had been Mika’s friends left her because they were afraid of being the outcasts this time. And Anri had originally been the target for their bullying anyway, so the boss of their group simply assumed that she would give in out of fear of being bullied again. But…

“I won’t do that.”

“…What?”

They were stunned by the matter-of-fact way Anri spoke for herself.

“What would I gain?” she said.

It was such a simple question.

She wasn’t speaking from a position of righteousness.

She wasn’t acting out of sympathy or gratitude toward Mika.

Anri was just asking a question.

What did she stand to gain by joining them?

Maybe Anri would have made a different decision if she had faced this dilemma in elementary school. But now, having already lost her parents to a slasher’s home invasion, she had built a painting frame inside of her mind that allowed her to observe her own life with an abnormal degree of objectivity.

“What’s the point of associating with people like you to bully Mika?”

“You bitch…”

The others had no idea how Anri’s mind worked, though, and assumed that she was mocking them. One of them pushed Anri on the chest toward one of the stall doors.

“Oh, you think you’re tough, huh? Then we’ll just strip you and Mika naked and take photos of you.”

They were intending to take nude pictures of Mika to use as blackmail to ensure that she wouldn’t tattle to the teachers about what they were doing to her. Doing the same to another person wouldn’t be that big of a deal. They pinned down Mika and Anri, intending to go through with their plan.

“Oh, geez. Anri, you should know better.”

From the back of the room, Mika chuckled to herself. She was holding the handle of a cleaning mop that she’d pulled out of the supply locker at the back of the bathroom. The light of the late afternoon coming through the window lit her from behind, giving her an eerie silhouette.

“Huh? What, are you trying to fight back or something?”

The girls took a step back, expecting her to start swinging at them with the mop, but they weren’t intimidated.

Mika wasn’t bothered by their advantage of numbers, either. “Hey, Kushigawa. The older boy you’re going out with—that’s Shirota, right?”

The other girl grunted. “…Yeah, that’s right! So if anything happens to me, Shiro’s gonna have something to say about—”

“Then the boy from the biker gang you were going out with,” Mika interrupted. “Haganeda, right? You already broke up with him?”

“…?! Wha… How did you know that name…?!”

The mention of her ex-boyfriend—actually her current boyfriend whom she was two-timing—caught the leader of the girls by surprise, and she looked considerably less confident than before.

“You told Shirota that he was your first boyfriend, didn’t you? I bet something really fun will happen if I talk to both of them about you, huh…?”

“H-h-how the hell did you find out about…”

“Oh, you don’t know?” Mika said, eyeing the girl’s cohorts, who had previously been a part of her own social circle. “Do you really think all of them have switched sides to join you? Because all I have to do is chat with them, and they’ll tell me all sorts of interesting little rumors about you.”

“Huh…?” The girls who had betrayed Mika gasped. They had no idea about any of this, and they had never even heard the name Haganeda before this moment. Now the girls who had always been on the new leader’s side were glaring at them furiously.

“You little bitches…”

“N-no, we didn’t…!”

In fact, Mika hadn’t found out about Haganeda from the girls who betrayed her. She had anticipated something like this and done her own research into the group of rival girls.

It was the perfect way to make them suspicious of each other and break them apart from within—but that wasn’t Mika’s real intention at all.

All she needed was a few seconds. A few seconds to draw their eyes away from her.

That would be enough time for a girl with skinny arms, who hadn’t dabbled in learning any kind of self-defense…

…to bring the metal part of the mop down onto the head of the girl closest to her.

There was an odd, grisly sound, and one of the girls in the rival group suddenly fell to the floor, bleeding from the head.

“Hey…!”

A different girl noticed what had happened, only a split second before the end of the mop jabbed her hard in the throat.

Stunned, the others could only watch as Mika turned to Anri and continued what she’d been saying earlier.

“Oh, geez. Anri, you really shouldn’t do this.”

“Huh?”

“If you start acting like such a good girl…”

The leader of the group dropped the bucket, her fingers trembling. Her followers looked ready to burst into tears. And Anri just sat there vacantly, watching the whole thing play out.

Mika gave her the most dazzling smile she possibly could, lifting the mop high overhead.

“It means that I have to be a very, very bad girl to play off of you.”

Present day, hot pot party

Anri smiled, reminiscing on the events of the past.

In the end, the school categorized the incident as self-defense on Mika’s part.

Anri testified that the girls were going to strip them and take pictures as blackmail. Later, it was discovered that a number of other girls had already been victimized this way.

Mika and Anri continued to hang out together after that point. It might have been the first time Anri became aware of the abnormal part of Mika Harima’s personality.

But Anri wasn’t afraid of her. She continued to be a very good friend—or at least foil.

She was fully aware that she, too, was an abnormal person, even if you ignored the whispering voices that echoed throughout her body.

While Anri reminisced about the past, Mika continued to tease Mikado, until Seiji eventually joined in. Mikado had no choice but to look around desperately for help. Unfortunately for him, the only ones who noticed were Karisawa and Yumasaki, who joined in on the fun.

“Aww, what’s wrong, Mikapon? Are you discovering the pleasures of being told off by women?”

“Don’t worry. We’re both hooked on two dimensions, so we’ll accept you for just about any kinks you pick up.”

“What are you talking about?!” Mikado exclaimed.

Seiji seemed stunned by the accusation. “Is that true, Ryuugamine? Are you into Mika, too…?”

“No, no! Don’t worry! She and you are completely in love! There’s no room for me anywhere in there! Does that satisfy you?!”

“Look, don’t get it mixed up. I don’t love Mika—I love Mika’s face.”

“Whaaaat?!”

“Aww, Seiji…you’re so sweet.  ”

“Whaaaaaaaaaat?!”

Mikado was so busy screaming that he was missing out on chances to grab more pieces of meat from the pot. In the meantime, two figures were busy poking at the best morsels.

One was Kadota, sans his usual beanie but otherwise the same as ever, and Shizuo Heiwajima, who was dressed the same way anyone had ever seen him.

Kadota examined the bizarre combination of prim bartender’s vest and hot pot before him and set down his chopsticks. “Do you get along with Mr. Tanaka, Shizuo?”

“Huh…? Oh, you mean Tom?”

These two had been classmates once, but they didn’t interact much at the time. Oddly enough, they’d been around each other more often after graduating from school.

Shizuo didn’t really have anyone to talk to at this party aside from Kadota and Shinra, and Shinra had been talking nonstop with Celty, so naturally that meant the two former classmates were sitting together.

“I mean, Tom’s a good guy. I owe the boss a whole lot too. I think I’m stickin’ around at this job for a while. And I mean…if I don’t, I can’t pay back what I owe.”

“Oh, yeah…all those signposts and shit that you busted up, your boss paid to replace, huh?”

“Yeah, and he pays me a salary on top of that, so I gotta admit I’m extremely grateful to him.”

“Did you know Mr. Tanaka before that?” Kadota asked. He seemed oddly interested in Shizuo’s bosses, although maybe it was just a topic at hand to chat about while he digested. He had a certain kind of admiration for Tom Tanaka and his ability to work with Shizuo for so long.

“Hmm? Ah, yeah, I guess so.”

“I mean, the whole reason I bleached my hair is because Tom told me to.”

Ten years ago, Raijin North Middle School, Ikebukuro

“I told you…I hate violence!” insisted Shizuo, then a middle school student, in the throes of a particularly extreme bout of violence on his surroundings.

Young Shizuo swung a twisted street sign, smashing it through the upperclassmen of his new school, one after the other.

It was hard to believe that such strength belonged to a boy who had been in elementary school just a month ago. Now he was clobbering much older kids, knocking them off their feet.

The gust of violence passed very quickly, though, leaving a silence to fill the void. Between ten and twenty upperclassmen lay prone on the ground, completely unconscious.

Some minutes after that, Shizuo’s anger had finally calmed, and he was ready to go home—when a man made his presence known.

“Well? Feeling any better now?”

Based on his clothes, he was a student at the same school. Based on his looks and demeanor, he was probably an upperclassman. Shizuo lifted the street sign again, prepared to continue fighting.

“Whoa, whoa, hold on. I’m not tryin’ to fight you,” the older boy said.

With some consternation, Shizuo decided to put the sign down. “What, you aren’t here to get revenge for them?”

“I work smarter, not harder,” said the older boy, who wore glasses and seemed quite grown-up compared to the childish Shizuo. “Plus…they talked a bunch of shit to you, started a fight, and got their asses beat, right? Makes no sense to take revenge for something they earned.”

“……”

“I don’t wanna get hurt, either,” he also admitted, smirking. The older boy examined the fallen students, noted a couple that had particularly heavy injuries, and picked one up to carry on his shoulder. “Hey, would you mind helping me take them to the hospital?”

“…Why me?”

But rather than accusing Shizuo of being excessive, the older boy was practical about it. He thought for a moment, then came up with a suggestion that Shizuo had no choice but to accept.

“C’mon, I’ll buy you some food.”

One hour later, cheap diner, Ikebukuro

“Sorry for making you help me.”

“…It’s cool.”

“I don’t think they’ll be messing with you anytime soon. So cut ’em a break, okay?”

“It’s fine. I don’t care,” Shizuo said, fixing the other guy with a look while he stuffed himself with milk and miso-glazed mackerel.

The other guy was named Tanaka, and he had already finished his chicken and egg oyakodon bowl. He was observing Shizuo’s eating habits with some distaste.

“Damn, you drink a lot of milk… It’s kind of weird that this place serves it by the bottle, too, though,” he said, eyeing the half a dozen empty bottles on the table. “So you don’t like fighting, huh?”

“…How did you know that?”

“…Dude, you were screaming about how much you hate violence.”

“Oh, right…” Shizuo stirred up the rest of his food with embarrassment, then chugged the rest of the milk bottle in one go. He set it down on the table and said sadly, “I don’t want to fight. But when I get mad, I just can’t control myself anymore…and the next thing I know, I’m like…that.”

“…Huh. In that case, you might as well just get it out of your system.”

“Huh?”

“Let them talk about how nobody should ever mess with you, and people will stop doing it. Sure, you might get some idiots with a death wish. And if you don’t want the bad reputation, getting it out of your system’s not an option anyway. If you went around starting fights with everyone, you’d probably end up getting killed by yakuza eventually, but you don’t seem like the type.”

Tanaka took a sip from his water and glanced at Shizuo’s hair.

“Maybe you should try dyeing your hair. You seem like a really normal guy as it is, so maybe that makes you an easier target. Plus, you need some easily identifiable traits. If the rumors get around about you, some folks could still try picking on you without knowing. Once people are talking about how you should never mess with the blond guy in the Raijin North Middle School uniform, your life’ll be a whole lot better.”

“…Man, I don’t wanna go through the hassle. Plus, I got this hair from my mom and dad. I can’t go bleaching all the color out of it,” Shizuo said, averting his eyes.

Tanaka smirked and said, “You’re surprisingly old-fashioned, huh? A real serious guy. Hey, nothing wrong with honoring the body your parents gave you. I’m not sayin’ you gotta do anything. Hey, is there something that would especially piss you off if people started talkin’ about it?”

“?”

Shizuo wasn’t sure what he meant by that, and frowned. Tanaka chuckled awkwardly and explained, “I’m gonna be your senpai for the next year until I graduate. I just wanna know what I should avoid so I don’t get my ass kicked by an underclassman.” Despite witnessing the godlike violence earlier, Tanaka was willing to sum up Shizuo as simply an underclassman. “I told you, I work smarter. I don’t learn as well the hard way.

“Also, you should at least watch your mouth and be polite around older students. I don’t mind, personally, but it’ll help cut down on a lot of unnecessary fights.”

One month later, Raijin North Middle School, rooftop

“Hey, Tom, how the hell did you tame that rabid dog, anyway?”

“What?”

After school on a bright and sunny day, Shizuo was napping next to the water fountain around the back when he heard some upperclassmen talking by the entrance to the roof.

When he realized that Tanaka’s voice was among them, his ears perked up.

“You really had it all figured out, Tom.”

“You bet. All I had to do was watch you get your asses kicked and do nothing about it.”

“Hey, I’m willing to let that be water under the bridge, since you got that monster under our thumb. Now the whole neighborhood is ours. If it all works out, we got nothing to fear from high schoolers, even. All we hafta do is manage that Heiwajima kid, and the world is our oyster.”

Rage started boiling up inside of Shizuo at the things they were saying about him.

But then Tanaka—whom they called “Tom”—just sighed and verbally dumped a glass of cold water on both Shizuo and the upperclassmen.

“Are you sure you’re not gettin’ the wrong idea?”

“What?”

“Tame him? He’s not a dog. And if you actually talked to him, you’d realize he’s way more normal than you think.”

“Like I give a shit. All I know is, he seems to listen to you. If you told him to, I bet he’d wreck a whole damn high school,” said the other guy, who sounded like the boss of the young delinquents.

Tom just sighed even more heavily and said, “Listen…he said he hates violence. So first of all, it don’t make any sense to sacrifice an underclassman to win your battles and act like you did anything… Plus it makes you look damn pathetic.”

He shook his head and made to leave the rooftop. The other delinquents spat as he left and muttered under their breaths.

“Who the hell does he think he is?”

“Hey, why don’t we just take out Shizuo himself? Tom’s right; we ain’t shit if we let a first-year have the last laugh on us.”

“And how do you expect to beat him…?”

“It’s easy. Just tie up Mr. Cool Guy who just left. He’s the only guy that kid likes, so if we use him as a hostage, it should be easy to sneak up and whack him on the back of the head with a bat.”

It was rather chilling to hear the third-years of Raijin North Middle School talk that way about the guy they’d just been talking with minutes earlier—but nowhere near as chilling as the sensation they received when they heard a cracking noise from the water fixture on the roof behind them.

And the moment they looked up, their disquieting premonition became a reality.

“Sh-Sh-Shizuo…?!”

“Who were you going to take hostage…and who were you going to hit on the head with a bat…? Huh?!”

Then he kicked one of the water tanks, breaking it loose—and the upperclassmen had to be hospitalized for the second time this school year.

Months later

And after plenty of that, eventually there was an incident.

Someone who picked a fight with Shizuo decided to get revenge after losing by targeting not Shizuo, but Tanaka.

From what Shizuo found out after the fact, the delinquents had told Tanaka they’d let him go if he just called Shizuo over. Tanaka sighed and replied, “Well, he’s technically my junior at school…so if he’s done something wrong, I’ll try to convince him to apologize. But let me guess: you guys messed with him first, right? I can’t sell out a kid who didn’t do anything wrong.”

After that, it turned into a fight. By the time Shizuo got there, a number of the punks were on the ground, but Tanaka wasn’t doing too hot, either, and he could barely stand on his own.

Once he’d thrashed the other dozen or so thugs to his personal satisfaction, Shizuo made his way over to Tanaka, who had lay down just far enough away to avoid the chaos. “Aren’t you supposed to be bad at fighting?” he asked. “It’s like the other guys said, you should just use me to stay out of trouble. Why didn’t you do that?”

Tom Tanaka just smiled and replied, “I’m bad at fighting. That’s all there is to say.”

He put on the bravest face he possibly could, playing the role of the cool and collected senior, and shrugged.

“Besides, you’re not just uncomfortable around violence, are you? You hate it. So it’s better if you don’t do it.”

Present day, hot pot party

“After that, I bleached my hair blond, like Tom told me to… Once the stories about me started getting around, most guys stopped picking fights with me. Things got fairly quiet for a while,” Shizuo said wistfully.

Kadota nodded and murmured, “Sounds like a good mentor to have around.”

“Yeah, I guess…but then we ended up in separate high schools. Once I met that fleabrain, things all went to shit again…”

Kadota noted the darkening anger spreading across Shizuo’s face at the mental image of his archenemy, and quickly spoke up to divert the conversation.

“Look, take it easy. He’s somewhere all by his lonesome because nobody wanted to invite him to an occasion like this. You don’t have to waste your mental energy on such a loser.”

“…Let’s hope he takes the hint and never comes around again,” Shizuo said. His rage gradually subsided as he envisioned his hated rival, Izaya Orihara, looking sad and lonely around a hot pot with no friends.

“Speaking of weird folks, how’d you get in with that bunch, Kadota? Where’d you meet them?” he continued, looking in the direction of Yumasaki and Karisawa, who were messing with the high schoolers. (Meanwhile, in the corner of the room, Togusa gaped at a brand-new picture frame and shrieked, “I-is this a Ruri Hijiribe autograph?! What is this doing here?!”)

“Ah, yeah…them…”

Kadota lowered his gaze, thinking fondly on the past.

“I’m pretty sure the first time I met them was…”

They would never forget that winter four years ago.

Kyouhei Kadota and Walker Yumasaki were students and apprentice butlers.

They were in the service school at Hakureiryou Academy High School, the bright and prospective gentlemen-in-waiting, competing to see who would serve a more elegant master.

And that was when they came across the Black Rose Queen, dressed all in black—the esteemed daughter of the Karisawa Group, Erika Beatrice Karisawa!

Kadota fell in love at first sight… Yes, he had not yet entered the service of his master, but was already a slave—nay, a butler to love!

“…Excuse me?”

But one day, Kadota realized something. The person he was today wasn’t the real him. The emotion he was feeling for the young lady was not love, but respect and admiration!

And then Kadewta made the most profound realization of all. His erstwhile rival, Walker, was in fact the one in whom he could seek the greatest solace…

“…Hello?”

Wait, Karisawa, stop it! You do realize that indulging in BL fantasies about me and Kadota right in front of us is only feeding the stereotypes that people have about otaku, don’t you?! I think it’s clear that in this situation, I would be Kadota’s avatar and romantically conquer the many girls who approach me. The situation calls for romance! In fact, forget Kadota—it’s just me, and when I’m surrounded by my harem of adoring babes, my bandaged right hand itches with the power of the ancient Epimptians, and sends them into a tizzy.…

“…You can stop now.”

What? You were the one who started it off by claiming me and Dotachin were lady and servant, Yumacchi. What about this, then? Through some kind of mix-up, Dotachin wakes up as a girl one day and attends an all-girls dorm school…

“That’s enough outta you two!”

Right as Kadota was about to tell his story, Yumasaki and Karisawa stepped in and began to describe their obnoxious fantasies instead. He grabbed them both by the scruff of the neck to shut them up. (Meanwhile, Togusa was pestering Celty for answers: “Wh-where did you get this autograph?!”)

Shizuo watched them, scratching his cheek awkwardly. He put some meat in the pot and murmured to himself.

“…Well, as long as he’s enjoying himself, I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, what’s all this? All you young folks talking about old memories, like you’ve been living that long in the first place?” teased Shinra happily, observing the guests of their hot pot party. “Of course, as one familiar with the vicissitudes of life, I know it’s not a bad thing to revisit memories. I may not have robbed the cradle, so to speak, but I think that it might be fun to share about an event between Celty and me that helped define our love ten years ago—that old kidnapping incident! You don’t mind, do you, Celty?”

The sudden mention of a kidnapping drew the fascinated gazes of the room onto Celty…

“I told you, it just appeared in the mail for Shinra. I don’t know why we have a Ruri Hijiribe autograph, either,” she was explaining to Togusa, and thus hadn’t heard what Shinra was saying.

But she could tell that the room had gone silent, and realized she was the center of attention, so she turned to Shinra and typed into her PDA: “Um…what?”

“I’m talking about the kidnapping ten years ago, where we first realized our love for each other!”

“…What the hell are you talking about?!”

“Whaaat?! Y-you know! It was a huge event at the time, involving politicians’ schemes over the rights of the Etsusa Bridge construction! Remember that bigtime Diet member, Mr. Naramori? And you and I were both dragged into it?!” Shinra explained desperately.

This only confused Celty more. But then she said, “Ohhh, that did happen…didn’t it?”

“That’s all you remember about it?!”

Shinra reeled at the revelation.

Kadota patted him on the shoulder. “…Look, I don’t know what happened, but not everyone feels the same way about these things. Sometimes the results can be one-sided. Especially in your case. Don’t worry about it.”

“N-no, you don’t understand! At the time, we… Oh, I know! Izaya…Izaya Orihara would know! I’ll go and call him right now, and he’ll back me up on this mattergherghergherghergh—”

Kadota put a hand over Shinra’s mouth to keep him from mentioning the name of the absent any longer. He whispered into Shinra’s ear, “Do you want Shizuo to tear down your apartment building?”

“Mrrgh…”

Shinra recalled that the demon in bartender’s clothes was still present, and sadly gave up on his idea.

Celty walked out onto the veranda alone. She watched the streets and buildings below, feeling irritation crawling up her shoulders.

He knows every idiom and fancy saying in the book…but has he never heard of “To keep your own secrets is wisdom”? This is embarrassing for you, Shinra.

She looked up into the night sky next, wistfully recalling the past, and the distant incident that occurred there.

But that is a story for another time.

One hour later

“I’m really amazed that so many people showed up today… Um, I’m very thankful for the invitation,” said Mikado to Shinra, feeling completely stuffed. Anri had just gone to the kitchen to help peel the apples for dessert.

“Well, there are people we just met and got to know today, so I suppose we can always use today’s events as future memories,” said Shinra, the rare piece of advice he could offer to a student from his old school.

“But it’s not like anything particularly memorable happened today…”

“We had hot pot and made friends. Isn’t that enough? The soft and friendly meetings are important to remember too, you know,” said Shinra. He chuckled to himself, thinking of someone else, though it wasn’t clear whom.

“There are people out there in the world who know nothing of such pleasant events. Solo hot pot is the best for them.”

Elsewhere at that very moment, in a Shinjuku apartment, a little sneeze echoed off the walls.

“…Maybe I caught a cold,” grumbled the information broker, grabbing a tissue.

But he would not understand the full ramifications of what he had caused the other day—or the wonderful, pleasant hot pot party he had been completely shut out of—until later.

Just half a day in the future, however…

“Let’s see…what shall I do next…?”

Even that gloating, villanous line felt strangely empty and lonely today, for some reason. Nevertheless, the information broker forged ahead on his keyboard.

The man with no human connections he could truly trust sat alone, typing away.

Tappa-tappa tappa-tappa tappa-tappa click

Fin