Durarara!! - Volume SS01 - Chapter 2

SIDE STORY 2

 DUFUFUFU!!

On a certain month and date, midday, Ikebukuro

“This is the era of the impostor, Kadota!”

The beady-eyed half-Japanese young man, Yumasaki, suddenly spoke up while the van was headed down the national route.

“…So you finally say something that isn’t about manga or anime, and that’s what you choose to start with?” sighed Kadota, the man in the passenger seat.

The woman in the back, Karisawa, replied, “They’re doing this impostor exhibition for a summer event right now! It’s where they display robots that have very similar names to super-famous robot anime, or rip-offs of famous art!”

“That sounds…pretty dodgy, in a variety of ways.”

“And here’s the thing, Kadota! There was a rip-off of the Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax fighting game called Dengeki Bungo Writing Syntax, and the staff of the original are going to redo the opening animation and exhibit it for a crowd. Even the voice actors will be there! Tonight!”

“And not only that! Every person who shows up gets a random bonus poster!”

“So it is about some manga or anime,” Kadota groaned.

Yumasaki waggled a finger and clicked his tongue. “Tsk, tsk! It is not! It’s a video game!”

“I don’t care!”

So it was the usual nonsense from the group—until it was interrupted by an incoming call on Kadota’s phone.

“Hmm? Yo…it’s me. What’s up?” he asked, his voice lower and more serious, so Yumasaki and Karisawa began to whisper to each other instead.

“Speaking of voice actor impostors, Kadota has a really cool voice, so I bet he could do some mean impressions if he wanted to.”

“Ohh! I totally agree! He could totally do the male version of Kugen from Our Home’s Fox Deity, or Kyosuke from Oreimo!”

“Ooh, and I’d love to see him put his hand on a pretty woman’s shoulder and say, ‘Well done, Miyuki’!”

“Yeah! The Irregular at Magic High School!”

They continued getting carried away and talking about irregular students and weeds, which got Kadota to wondering, Why are they suddenly calling me a plant? But then he realized that it was probably just another anime he didn’t know about, and that it was best to ignore them and assume they were chanting Buddhist mantras or something instead.

The excitable pair continued to chatter on about the voices of people they knew.

“Speaking of similar voices, when Shizuo’s in his calmer mood, he reminds me of—” Yumasaki started to say, just as he looked out the window at the sidewalk. “Oh, speak of the devil. There’s Shizuo.”

“What, really?”

The van was at a red light, giving them a chance to check out the people walking past. One of them was a tall man in a bartender’s vest. Karisawa grinned and was going to join in on the fun when she realized something.

“…Huh? Wait, that’s not Shizu-Shizu!”

“Wha?” Yumasaki took another look out the window. “W-wait, really? You’re right. He’s even got the bleached blond hair, too.”

“Shizu-Shizu doesn’t have that super-jacked pro-wrestler build. So what’s that guy doing? Shizu-Shizu cosplay?”

“…Well, Shizuo is pretty superhuman in certain ways. Maybe some anime company heard the stories about him and started up their own animated version…but if it’s far enough along that people would be cosplaying him, there’s no way you or I wouldn’t know about it…u-unless we’ve time traveled into the future!”

“A future where Shizu-Shizu is an anime character?! That rules! Have we finally awakened?!”

Meanwhile, Kadota’s call had wrapped up. “Yeah,” he said, “I wish you would wake up.”

And Togusa, who had been driving in silence the whole time, added, “Just use your heads. He’s clearly just a bartender who walked outside on his break.”

The light turned green, and Togusa drove the van away from the man in the bartender’s vest.

Yumasaki watched the wrestler-sized bartender go and said sadly, “Alas, the entrance to the abnormal grows distant…”

“Entrance to the abnormal, my ass. You’ve eaten dinner in the apartment of the Headless Rider. You’re already in the realm of the abnormal,” Kadota snapped.

This reminded Yumasaki of something, and he smacked a fist into his palm. “Yeah, that was crazy. I can’t believe that the Headless Rider’s roommate was the black-market doctor who went to the same school as you!”

“Yeah, yeah! It almost made me wonder if it was even the real Headless Rider at first!”

“And there was that period where a Celty impostor was riding around…ohhh!” Yumasaki exclaimed, coming to a realization. “Th-then maybe that person a moment ago was a Shizuo impostor! As evidence, his hair was a golden blond!”

“…Shizuo’s hair is also golden blond,” Kadota snapped, before he could stop himself.

“Yes, if he had a yellow scarf, then it would have been perfect,” nodded Karisawa. “But there’s no way that it would be a Shizu-Shizu impersonator.”

“You don’t know that,” argued Kadota, to their surprise. He was fiddling with his phone. “That call I got earlier… What do you suppose it was about?”

“I dunno, what?”

“Some people were pretending to be that motorcycle gang, Jan-Jaka-Jan, out around Shinjuku. But then the real gang showed up and destroyed ’em.”

Jan-Jaka-Jan was the name of a gang that roamed around a piece of Tokyo. Many of the members wore black suits like hosts from a host club, which made them fairly easy to imitate, if that’s what you wanted to do.

The crucial point, however, was that you would have to be truly foolhardy to do that, because it was commonly known that this gang happened to have the backing of a group of grown-up hooligans known as the Awakusu-kai.

“Bunch of idiots. You should know that stealing their name and stirring up trouble is going to go right into the ear of the real thing in this day and age,” Kadota grumbled, messing with his phone. Then he looked up and said, “But anyway, they definitely wouldn’t do that with Shizuo.”

Yumasaki and Karisawa glanced at one another and chuckled.

“Of course not.”

“I mean, they’d have to have a death wish to do something like that.”

But the world is always bigger than people think.

The man in the bartender’s outfit walking through Ikebukuro was, in fact, an impostor passing himself off as Shizuo Heiwajima.

“It can’t be this easy.” The fake Shizuo smirked as he strolled down the sidewalk.

His name was Shizuo Nobusuma.

He was your average young ruffian, lazily and unseriously working a bartending gig and following his sly and crafty whims. In short, rather typical.

This was just your average hooligan from the neighborhood of Numabukuro in Nakano Ward, but to explain why he was passing himself off as Shizuo Heiwajima, that will require going back several days.

He had just finished up a shift of bartending, and he was going with his coworkers to take the trash out before he changed out of his work duds. At that moment, there just so happened to be a fight between thugs in the back alley. He watched them, wondering if he might be able to steal the wallet of whoever got knocked out, when…

“Hey! What do you bitches think you’re lookin’ at?! You want some of this?!” shouted the man who had just won the fight, pulling out a knife and waving it meaningfully.

“C-c-c’mon, Shizuo, let’s go,” said one of his coworkers, who had already changed into his street clothes.

“Sh-Shizuo?! Shizuo Heiwajima?!”

Even the guy who had lost jumped to his feet, wide-eyed, and exclaimed, “I thought Shizuo Heiwajima was in Ikebukuro…”

“Dammit! So he’s from Numabukuro, not Ikebukuro?!”

They wailed about how sorry they were for bothering him and ran for their lives.

Shizuo, completely baffled, tried to find out what it was that they were talking about. He learned that over in Ikebukuro, there was some blond guy named Shizuo Heiwajima who was famous for fighting, and he had become kind of an urban legend.

The stories about throwing vending machines and kicking cars over were obviously just stories that had grown in the telling, but it was definitely true that everyone was afraid of the guy.

Nobusuma wasn’t able to find any photos, but the stories said that Heiwajima had blond hair, sunglasses, and a bartender’s getup. Suddenly, he realized how the misunderstanding had happened, and an idea occurred to him.

Y’know, one of my old bros over in Shinjuku said he’s been livin’ the high life by passing himself off as a part of this Jan-Jaka-Jan gang. Maybe I could get in on this game on my own!

And without thinking much of it, he bleached his hair blond and headed over to Ikebukuro.

“Damn, the stories really are gettin’ around, huh?”

Shizuo had stolen an outfit from work, put on a pair of shades, and walked around a bit to see what would happen.

“Eeek!!”

“Whoa…”

Simply walking around earned him frightened glances from locals, who hurriedly backed away from him. Not all of them, of course, but every kid who looked a little on the rough side was staring at him in terror.

This is wild. Damn, the stories of this Shizuo Heiwajima guy must be everywhere around here. I figured that people would know his face better, but he’s more of an urban legend. All they know are the broad rumors.

Or maybe the resemblance is even stronger than I thought.

He was already the size of a professional wrestler, and if he dressed a little on the tough side, people would naturally make way for him, but he had never experienced such raw fear directed at him before.

And if the real thing shows up, I ain’t scared.

He’d been known as a fearless fighter, so if the real Shizuo Heiwajima made an appearance, he knew he could take the guy out.

I’m just gonna steal this Shizuo guy’s infamy for myself. It’s too sweet to pass up. This is the shit!

Shizuo Nobusuma felt like he had turned into some kind of dictator overnight, and soon worked up the boldness to try messing with someone on the street.

Which random sucker will it be…?

Hey, what’s with that pitch-black bike?

He had spotted a motorcyclist stopped on the side of the road, wearing a black jacket and checking something on a PDA.

The outfit was as black as shadow, and so was the ride itself. The bike didn’t even have a license plate on it. Shizuo decided that the owner was probably just an idiot who wanted to be special.

And he had no idea that this person—the Headless Rider—was an Ikebukuro urban legend even more famous than Shizuo Heiwajima.

Even Shizuo had heard the stories about the Headless Rider, but because he didn’t watch TV, he had never learned what the rider actually looked like. He also wasn’t imaginitive enough to envision that he’d run across a paranormal entity smack in the middle of the day.

“Hey, pal. Real fucked-up ride you got there.”

“……”

The rider just stared at him.

They seemed surprised, but they didn’t say anything. The helmet tilted up and down, as if the person was trying to gauge him.

“Huh? The hell you starin’ at, huh? Who said you could come here on my turf and show off? You know there’s a price to be paid to the great Shizuo Heiwajima before you can ride around here, yeah? Huh?”

They were good old-fashioned fightin’ words, which the biker in black accepted in silence. Then they pulled a wallet out of somewhere, removed a ten-thousand-yen bill, and held it out to Shizuo.

“…?! O-oh, cool. Yeah, that’ll do,” he said, not expecting it to actually work. He took the money rather anticlimactically.

Then the bike took off without a sound. He didn’t notice that a motorcycle without an engine sound was completely out of the ordinary; he was too absorbed in the sizable amount of money in his hand.

Holy shit, no way! Is it really this easy?! Damn, I mean—really?! Goddamn! I shoulda asked him for more!

He headed into central Ikebukuro with a smile plastered across his face and not a thought in his mind about the overall eeriness of the situation.

He had failed to notice something important.

That all of the locals who had cried out in alarm and backed away—had then cast pitying glances at him as he walked away.

Along Kawagoe Highway, Shinra’s apartment

“A fake Shizuo?” asked the man in the white doctor’s coat, Shinra Kishitani.

The Headless Rider, Celty Sturluson, typed into her PDA, “Yeah, I actually just gave him some money.”

“Why?! He’s a fake! I don’t think you’d even give the real one money! I know business has been good lately, but throwing money away like that isn’t even benefiting society!”

“Yeah, but…” She paused, shook her head, and then typed with great pity, “I just feel so sorry for that guy, knowing that Shizuo’s going to beat him into the ground soon… It was like an offering, or incense money for his funeral…”

“…Why wouldn’t you just tell him to stop doing this before he gets killed?” Shinra asked her, quite reasonably.

Celty typed back, “Why do I have to be nice to someone trying to shake me down for money?”

“…Ah. Good point,” Shinra said, satisfied. He sighed.

“First he’s hated, then he’s pitied. This impostor really gets around.”

Back alley, Ikebukuro

“Hey. Move it, you slugs,” Shizuo said, threatening a group of young men who were chatting and loitering outside of a store.

“The fuck?”

They glared at him as they turned—and promptly changed their tune the moment they saw how he was dressed. They were immediately apologetic and submissive.

“Sorry! So sorry! Greetings, Mr. Shizuo! Here, have a drink on me!”

One of the thuggish young men offered him an unopened plastic bottle. He took it and grunted, “Cool,” then left, without thinking twice about the interaction.

After he left, the young men turned back to one another.

“Is that the guy they mentioned in the Dollars newsletter? The Shizuo Heiwajima impostor?”

“I can’t believe someone would actually do something this stupid.”

“What was that, though? ‘Have a drink on me!’” laughed one of the guys.

The one who had handed the fake Shizuo the bottle replied in a very similar way to the Headless Rider’s typed response.

“I mean, the guy’s gonna die any moment now… I just feel so bad for him… The least thing I can do is give him one last fond memory before it happens.”

Similar scenes continued to play out after this, until Shizuo was completely beside himself with delight.

“Dufufufu… What the hell is going on? This is amazing,” he muttered, smiling creepily. He prowled the area, looking for more ways to take advantage of his good fortune—but he wasn’t watching where he was going and bumped right into a very tall, large back.

At first he thought it was a wall, but then it became apparent that it was indeed a person.

“Watch out, idiot! I’m Shizuo Heiwajima!” he snapped, sounding rather foolish himself. But he had left his common sense behind some time ago now and shouted without any thought that it might backfire on him.

As it turned out, the man he was accosting was larger than he was, Black, and dressed in a sushi chef’s apron.

“Shizuo? Hmm…? Boss, you really Shizuo Heiwajima? Your face look different.”

Holy crap! Who is this guy? Does he know the real Shizuo Heiwajima? N-no, wait. To a foreigner, all Japanese people look the same.

Completely unaware that the sushi restaurant worker, Simon Brezhnev, had known Shizuo Heiwajima for years, this Shizuo decided to continue his winning streak.

“Y-yeah, I put on a little weight.”

“Ohh, I see. Weight is good. Big body, need lots of calories. You eat Shizuo’s favorite sushi, good for you.”

“Huh?”

“Tuna, abalone, sea urchin roe, caviar sushi, we bring you true flavor,” the man said, a sales pitch that some might take as sarcastic, and clapped his hands on Shizuo’s shoulders. He guided him into the nearby restaurant with unstoppable force.

Frightened by the man’s strength, Shizuo decided that he didn’t want to be outed as an impostor—ironic at this point—and allowed himself to be pushed into the sushi place.

Thirty minutes later

“…My money…”

“Shizuo’s favorite is expensive sushi,” the man had said, then brought out a procession of only the priciest items on the menu, one after the other, until Shizuo’s wallet was significantly lighter.

Shizuo tried to slip out without paying, but the knife-wielding cook was intimidating enough that Shizuo had no choice but to do as he said and pay the bill.

“I mean, it tasted good, but…it’s not supposed to go like this,” he grumbled, checking the damage to his wallet. Shizuo decided to move further away from the busy shopping area in search of someone he could take out his frustrations on.

It was then that he saw a rather curious sight further down the alley: a man on hands and knees handing over money, and another man with dreadlocks sullenly taking it from him. And behind them, with slender limbs and shockingly alluring curves, was a young white woman.

“That’s half of the day’s collection done,” said Tom Tanaka, Shizuo Heiwajima’s boss.

As he stretched, his subordinate, Vorona, was grumbling. “It is tedious. There was an absence of violence.”

“Tedious? You should be grateful that the world is at peace. Shizuo’s taking PTO for his grandma’s funeral, so I specifically chose collection jobs that wouldn’t have any of that nonsense…”

“Such a problem is absent when I am present. Against an amateur target without firearms, pacification is possible. Killing is unnecessary,” Vorona said. Her violent thoughts were delivered in precise Japanese syntax, but odd vocabulary.

Tom sighed and prepared to say something in response—but he was cut off by a bold, brash voice from across the alley.

“Well, well, well! Look who’s rakin’ in the dough over here, eh?”

“What?”

Tom spun around and saw a bartender’s vest, blond hair, and sunglasses—a very familiar combination on a completely unfamiliar man.

“…Who the hell are you?” Tom asked, baffled.

The man grinned and replied, “You think you can shake people down for cash around here, and you don’t even recognize me? You got another thing comin’, pal.”

“Shaking people down…?”

They were only collecting unpaid debts from a phone sex service, but Tom instantly judged that it would be pointless to explain this. He gave the man a once-over.

Why is this guy doing Shizuo cosplay? he wondered.

Vorona tugged on Tom’s sleeve and asked quietly, “Has this fashion mode conquered Tokyo in recent years?”

“If you’re asking if that outfit is popular these days, the answer is no,” Tom muttered back.

The fake Shizuo, annoyed that Tom and Vorona were conversing among themselves, roared, “What the hell are you talkin’ about over there? Stop ignoring me! Nobody ignores the great Shizuo Heiwajima!”

Shizuo Heiwajima.

Now that he had used that particular name, Tom and Vorona couldn’t help but share a look.

“Now you’re gonna give me that money you just got. Also, that chick over there’s gonna come with me to a hotel roo-hoobf!”

He couldn’t even get the word out of his mouth before Vorona’s toe hit him in the throat, instantly knocking the fake Shizuo unconscious.

The man flopped onto the ground, eyes rolled back into his head. Vorona stood over him, her features betraying just the tiniest bit of irritation.

“It is displeasing that you claim to be Sir Shizuo with so little strength,” she spat.

Tom sighed and said, “Didn’t you just say you were bored and fed up because Shizuo wasn’t here?”

“Whatever you are saying is difficult to understand. I request you present a basis for your ramblings.”

Aside from the absense of Shizuo, it was just like any other conversation they ever had. Tom and Vorona walked away.

They had already forgotten about the man knocked the hell out right in the middle of the street.

Less than an hour later

“Owww… Why was I sleeping in the middle of the street…? My throat hurts, too…”

The shock of the blow had knocked the memory clean out of Shizuo’s head, apparently. He did not remember the conversation with the man and woman trying to extort their victim.

Shizuo continued to wander the area, curious about the strange pain in his throat.

It’s all about money, though. I need money. Gotta find some random punks to beat up for money. And better yet, the blame all lands on this Shizuo Heiwajima sap, he thought. It was the kind of simple plan that a grade-schooler would come up with.

It was at this moment that he heard a mellifluous voice behind him.

“Oooh, are you Shizuo Heiwajima?”

He spun around and saw a man who appeared to be in his early twenties. The man wore casual, comfortable clothing and grinned happily.

“I knew it! You’re Shizuo! I’ve always been obsessed with you! This is amazing; you’re just the way I imagined you! My name is Tsukumoya!”

“Uh, cool,” Shizuo said, but he didn’t know what the man was after, and that unsettled him.

Oh, crap, does he know a lot about me? Well, even if he figures it out, I can deal with this soft-looking guy…

Once he was sure that the man had no companions hanging around nearby, he came on strong. “So what the hell do you think you’re doing, talkin’ to me? Huh?”

“Oh, gosh. I’m hiring you for a job, of course!”

“…Job?”

“Huh? I mean, everyone knows you do jobs as hired muscle! You beat up whoever we don’t like for a hundred thousand yen a head!”

Shizuo almost choked.

A hundred thousand, just for beatin’ a guy up?! That’s a hell of a job—he must be rolling in it! Damn, no wonder he’s a legend.

This was, of course, nonsense, but Shizuo didn’t know any better. He stayed cool and made sure not to miss this golden opportunity.

“Yeah, it’s true that I do that…but I don’t just take any old job from any old person, you understand?”

“Yes, of course. And naturally, you’re wary of someone you’ve never met before… But to demonstrate my goodwill, I’ve brought you half of the amount up front. This fifty thousand is for you!”

“…!”

He handed Shizuo an envelope with something inside. He checked and found five bills, each plastered with the lucky face of Yukichi Fukuzawa.

And I’ll have ten of them, just for beating a guy up…

“W-well, if you say so. I guess I could hear you out…”

The young man beamed, said, “Thank you, Shizuo!” and bowed.

Once he was facing the ground, his smile turned much more cruel.

Evening, Tokyo

“That’s him. That’s my girlfriend’s dad… He pushed his daughter into being a sex worker, extorts money from me—he’s a real piece of shit. And even though he’s not even yakuza, he carries a freakin’ knife around on him!”

They peered around the corner, where the young man pointed out a middle-aged man with a thuggish “punch perm” hairstyle.

“A knife…? Does he still have it on him…?”

“Don’t worry, Shizuo! I’ll blind him with this spray first. Then you can rush in and wail on him!”

“Y-yeah.”

This guy seems well-prepared. It all feels a little too convenient to me…but once this all gets blamed on this Shizuo guy, I’m in the clear.

He joined Tsukumoya, feeling relatively relaxed about the whole matter, as they walked up toward the man with the perm. He seemed to be waiting for someone else to arrive, so Tsukumoya snuck up with practiced ease from his blind spot. Right as the man turned toward him, Tsukumoya gave him a healthy dose of pepper spray.

Minutes later, Shizuo had easily beaten the blinded man and spat on his head as his victim groaned on the ground.

“Your luck ran out the moment you got in trouble with the great Shizuo Heiwajima,” he said, making sure that the blame for his crime would be placed on someone else. He stomped on the man’s head for good measure.

“Rrg…aah…Shizuo…Heiwajima…? W-why the hell would you…”

The man with the hair recognized Shizuo’s name, at least, and slowly lifted his head until his blurred vision could just make out a figure in bartender’s clothes.

Shizuo almost stomped on the man’s head a second time—but stopped when he heard the next words out of the older fellow’s mouth.

“You think…you can make an enemy out of us…and live to tell the tale…?”

“…?”

The mention of “us,” when he was the only person present, nagged at the back of Shizuo’s mind. He turned to Tsukumoya and asked, “Hey, you said this guy wasn’t a yakuza…right…? Uh…”

But the moment he turned around, Tsukumoya was already gone.

“S-son of a bitch! Where’s my hundred thou—?” he grumbled, looking around for his recent acquaintance.

“B-Boss!”

“What the fuck?! Hey, you!”

Distant shouts drew his attention. He could now see, running towards him from a distance, a number of men whose line of work was clearly not a part of polite society. That was when the truth finally settled in.

The man named Tsukumoya had screwed him over.

Shizuo just barely managed to escape the men who were almost certainly mobsters. He shook his head, panting hard.

“D-damn, man… If I see that Tsukumoya guy again, I’m gonna kill him!”

He’d been tricked into waging war on the mob for a paltry fifty thousand yen. It was time to get out of this area and undo his Shizuo Heiwajima disguise.

That’s what I’ll do. I’ll just foist all of the blame onto this Shizuo putz. But first, I need a little more money… I’ll just find someone who looks reasonably well-off, beat him up, and take his cash.

The fear and other circumstances had Shizuo on a very one-track thought process. He wasn’t just acting like a hooligan now; he had downgraded to “mugger.”

He looked around the area and saw a sports car parking a short distance away, with a blond man in a black suit just stepping out of it now.

Holy shit, that’s a top-of-the-line luxury car. Is that guy a host at a club or something? I’ll take it from him…and get the hell outta this place!

“Thanks a lot for coming out all this way, Kasuka.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Shizuo Heiwajima stepped out of his brother’s car. Their grandmother’s funeral was over.

Being a formal occasion, he was wearing black mourning clothes and no sunglasses. Even the people who regularly spotted Shizuo around the area might not have recognized him right away.

“At least Dad and Mom seem well. Are you gonna be able to visit home for New Year’s?”

“…Depends on my work.”

They stood by the car for a moment, engaging in brotherly dialogue, but did not get far before they were interrupted.

“Hey, assholes! Who said you could park your car there?! Huh?!” roared a furious voice.

Shizuo spun around, displeased. “What…”

For one thing, they hadn’t stopped in a no-parking zone. And for another, that was definitely not the phrasing of a policeman or patrol officer.

And when he saw the man, and the clothes that looked so familiar to his own usual outfit, he couldn’t help but gape.

“…?!”

Excellent. He’s freaked.

Mistaking shock for fear, Shizuo rushed up and grabbed the man in the black suit by the shirt, lifting him up.

“Do you have any idea what happens if you fuck with Shizuo Heiwajima?! Do you?!” he roared. He delivered a hard kick to the door of the car in an effort to intimidate his prey.

Shizuo Nobusuma was a very lucky man.

If not for the fact that Shizuo Heiwajima was coming home from his grandmother’s funeral, trying to stay calm out of respect for her memory—and if not for the fact that Kasuka had told him just then that he didn’t care about any damage to the car—the other Shizuo might have actually died.

Instead, he was merely tossed high into the air, only to wake up in a hospital bed.

Tokyo

“Go figure that as soon as I come back to Ikebukuro, there’s a Shizu impostor on the streets! It was hilarious! You just never know what’s gonna happen next in life!”

“So you called yourself Tsukumoya and screwed over the impostor, huh?” Namie sighed, watching the Tsukumoya impostor—Izaya Orihara—cackle to himself.

“Yeah. The guys he beat up had been kicked out of the Awakusu-kai, but they were still using the name to do business. Since I haven’t been keeping up with Mr. Shiki for a while, I thought taking them out would be a nice make-up present.”

“You mean having them taken out by Shizuo. It wasn’t your doing,” Namie noted dryly.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Izaya said. “The impostor Tsukumoya set the impostor Shizu on the impostor Awakusu-kai, so if the impostor Awakusu-kai go after the real Shizu…see where I’m going with this? It would be perfect if they took each other out. Oh, and I heard that the real Shizu took out the impostor Shizu.”

“This is too complicated. Was there any reason to pass yourself off as an impostor of this Tsukumoya person?”

“No. Just a little prank on a business competitor,” he admitted.

Namie wore a rare smile and asked, “Then should I assume the person signing up to this crossdressing contest under the name Izaya Orihara was Tsukumoya’s idea of payback?”

“Huh?”

She glanced at the laptop—which was displaying a video of Izaya in women’s clothing, walking through a park.

“What is this…? I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“It’s a composite, I’m sure. But it is very convincing, I’ll admit,” she smirked.

Izaya sighed, shook his head, and said something shockingly un-self-aware.

“I can’t believe he’d go this far, just for using his name a little bit… Tsukumoya’s surprisingly petty.”

Several weeks later, Ikebukuro

“Oh, that reminds me, I heard that the Awakusu-kai impostors attacked Shizuo and got destroyed in the process.”

“Why the hell would they pick a fight with Shizuo?”

“No idea.”

“By the way, Kadota. Some folks have been raising a fuss lately on the message boards, saying you mugged them. Not that anyone actually believes them.”

“…? I did? Who?”

Behind Kadota and Togusa, Yumasaki and Karisawa were busy chatting about the latest manga releases. They had just walked down a side street heading for the parking lot when someone grabbed Yumasaki’s collar from behind.

“Whoa! What’s this?!”

The others turned around and saw a man built like a professional wrestler.

“You stupid otaku are fillin’ my ears with nerd crap. You owe me money for that,” the man said, for some reason.

“……”

The four of them looked at each other. Shizuo Nobusuma was wearing a beanie like Kadota. “I’m Kyouhei Kadota,” he grunted. “One of the senior members of the Dollars. Either you pay me for my trouble, or I’ll call down a million Dollars on your ass. What’s it gonna be?”

Seconds later, Yumasaki and Karisawa exploded into raucous laughter. Shizuo demanded to know what was so funny and tried to attack—but a red-faced Kadota pounded him flat with a devastating punch.

“Ung, I’ng soggy. I gign’t gnow you were ghe real guy.”

“Sorry, what was that? We were too busy filling our ears with nerd crap to hear you!”

“Hey, I gotta give this guy props for his boldness, though,” cackled Yumasaki and Karisawa as they dragged the tearful Shizuo into their van.

“Look, don’t worry, you’ll wanna hide your face with a yellow scarf after all is said and done.”

“Ahhh, it’s been so long since we tortured someone, hasn’t it?”

“Ung, gwat? Egsguse me? Torgture?” Shizuo stammered, his face going pale.

“Just don’t overdo it,” Togusa warned, and posted a message on the Dollars board: Got the Kadota impostor. Handing him over to police. Then he wondered, “You know, when he said ‘a million Dollars’…is that what people who don’t know Kadota think he’s like?”

“Don’t even start!” shouted the red-faced Kadota. In the backseat, Shizuo began to scream.

Once again, the city of Ikebukuro buzzed with activity—genuine and impostor alike.

Fin