>
* * *
Tom heard him from outside the apartment building. The next moment, there was a violent crash. He looked up to see a second-floor window smash.
The reason why soon became apparent.
The body of the man who owed them money flew through the shattering glass, smashed into a tree planted on the apartment lot, and then fell next to Tom, breaking a few branches along the way.
His clothes happened to catch on the branches, so he wound up hanging at eye level with Tom, who surveyed the debtor with pity.
“Hey, you lucked out.”
“H-h-hewp… I—I’ll tell the cops…I—I—I’ll sue…”
His jaw was miraculously fitted back into place, so perhaps Shizuo had given him an uppercut. Tom looked at the ghastly man with the trembling voice and calmly asked, “And what story are you going to give to the cops?”
“…Eh?”
“Perhaps you’ll tell them, ‘I got in trouble for borrowing pornos and making illegal copies to sell online, so I tried to blackmail the collector and got beat up’? I’d pay to see that trial. We could invite your dad and mom to come see you plead your case.”
“…!”
“But if you’re smart enough to decide that you don’t want to be famous for the wrong reasons, we’ll be nice enough to pay for your broken window,” Tom said, brushing his dreads off his ears and shrugging.
“It’s only getting tacked on to your late fees, though.”
Ten minutes later, Ikebukuro
“Dammit, just because you’re not killing them doesn’t make this right.”
“…Sorry, Tom.”
They were on their way back to Ikebukuro Station from the collection spot, and Tom had been lecturing Shizuo about what went wrong.
“You bend a five-hundred-yen coin in front of their eyes to intimidate them so that you don’t have to resort to violence! In fact, I bet you could tear one of those coins in two with your fingers, right?”
“Yeah…but I’m pretty sure I heard that it’s against the law to bend or stretch coins like that.”
“What…? Oh, true. Good point. Well, we can think of another method,” Tom admitted, bringing the conversation to an awkward, temporary truce. They walked through the crowd, thinking hard.
“Man, that guy really was an idiot, wasn’t he? He knew who you were, and he went ahead and threatened you… In fact, it was kinda like he didn’t know anything about you except that you’re Kasuka’s brother.”
“…I suppose you’re right.”
“The funny thing is, any street punk worth his salt would give up just by looking at you…but lately, you get the occasional normal person who has no idea about what you’re like and feels foolhardy…”
“…Sorry,” Shizuo muttered.
Tom turned to him in surprise. “Why are you apologizing?”
“Uh…I just figured, if I was keeping control of myself better…”
“Yeah, but that has nothing to do with the fact that there are total idiots like that guy. I know I gave you that lecture, but honestly, you did pretty good back there. In fact, it kind of makes me sorry for getting you involved in this dangerous line of work,” Tom said, facing forward again.
Shizuo watched his boss from behind and said, “Thank you,” but he didn’t seem to be quite convinced himself.
Tom sighed and then checked his watch. “It’s a bit early, but I suppose we could get something to eat.”
“Let’s hit up Russia Sushi and have ourselves a feast.”
Russia Sushi
She was in a very bad mood.
There was sadness, anger, and frustration mixed together and brought to a boil, then pushed down where it couldn’t get out—until nothing showed on her face but the faintest trace of sullenness.
But thanks to her already attractive features, the look could also be interpreted as mournful.
The white man behind the sushi counter stared back at that grimace and said, “Hey, Vorona. This is a service business. Stop sulking, or you’ll drive our customers off.”
“…Negative. My face is not crafted in melancholy. It is as normal,” said the woman named Vorona, albeit in rather odd Japanese.
A large black man cleaning tables smiled amiably and said, “Oh, that no good, Vorona. That face bad. Customer is God. God must be forgiving. If patient Buddha only forgives three times, then God must forgive hundred times. One hundred trips to pray to Ebisu, god of luck and good business. So smile wide like Ebisu.”
“Meaning unclear. Semyon’s Japanese is a bizarre fantasy.”
The man behind the counter mumbled, “Look who’s talking,” but Vorona ignored him and looked away, stone-faced.
“Besides…I have just abandoned my partner. Impossible to reach that circumstance.”
Vorona was a freelance jack-of-all-trades contractor.
Since coming to Japan, she’d worked for a variety of people and committed every sort of crime. Assassination, weapons smuggling, kidnapping—if the police ever caught her, she’d spend the rest of her life behind bars or be extradited back to Russia.
With her partner, Slon, she’d been working primarily in Ikebukuro, but after drawing the ire of a local yakuza group, the Awakusu-kai, Slon’s legs got shot up. They took him away, and Vorona determined that it was best not to hold out hope that he was alive.
As for her…
…
Rather suddenly, she realized that her unhappiness was not out of grief for Slon.
The owner of the shop sharpened his knife and said, “But you must have known that this would happen. From what I hear, you lost three other companions before making it to Japan. If you didn’t bother getting vengeance for them, why get all worked up about revenge for this particular partner?”
“…If the time exists to perish, I am first. That was my assurance. In my home country, one foolish enemy was sloppy for the reason that I am a woman. As a result, Slon and I live,” she mumbled, mostly to herself. Her head dipped. “This time is further worse. In the instant we should have died together, I was allowed to live through Father’s benevolence… It is humiliation.”
In fact, she was under a crippling amount of stress—but not because she’d lost her partner.
If she were the type to treasure the lives of others, she wouldn’t have gotten involved in this business in the first place.
It was simply that she wasn’t able to forgive herself.
I want to destroy everything. Including myself.
She’d been overcome by the urge right after she woke up, mere hours ago. That initial impulse would have been carried out violently if it weren’t for the two Russia Sushi employees who were there to hold her down.
“Calm down,” Denis had told her in Russian. “Go ahead and get your revenge on the Awakusu-kai if you must, but don’t wreck up our place.”
Strangely, that brief statement was all it took for her to wrestle her impulse under control.
“Am I…weak?” she asked.
Denis said, “You’re not stronger than Drakon,” and Simon told her, “We’re not the ones to decide that.” Pondering the meaning of that helped to restore her sense of rationality.
She asked if it was possible to rescue Slon, knowing it wasn’t—and so the replies she got were unsatisfying. She understood why it was happening.
“Not having anything to do will fill your mind with pointless thoughts,” Denis and Simon said and told her to help out around the restaurant.
Vorona didn’t consider this to be a cold suggestion. When she worked for Colonel Lingerin, it was quite common for people to die during routine jobs, so even on the rare occasions one had time to mourn the dead, it was always while on the move.
She decided that letting her emotions rule her was pointless and unproductive and decided to follow their suggestion. However…
Me, a waitress? It’s ridiculous.
She surveyed the restaurant, wearing a feminine uniform. The interior should have been strongly reminiscent of home, but given that it was all in service of being a sushi place, there was no denying the alien feeling.
It was a wrong Russia, the kind of Russia you saw in a movie filmed for some far-off country.
President Lingerin would love it, but my father, Drakon, would be annoyed, she thought. Her eyes landed on the two Russians hard at work. And…why are they doing this in the first place? They must be crazy to set up a restaurant in a place like this.
All her memories of Denis and Simon were from the distant past. They each had their own history before coming to work for Lingerin’s arms company, and then a few years ago, they both abruptly moved here to Japan.
I’m certain that Denis made quite a lot of money working for President Lingerin…but setting up shop in this expensive place would have wiped out almost all his savings.
…Actually, I shouldn’t bother trying to figure this out.
After they held her down to calm her this morning, they hadn’t bothered to pry into Vorona’s business any further. If they weren’t going to be nosy, she should at least return the favor.
The problem was, once she drove those thoughts from her head, she had nothing left to do but reflect on the last few days’ memories.
What…am I doing?
All she wanted was to determine the strength of humanity. It was a question in her head since childhood that she could never learn from books alone.
And eventually, that question became her reason for living.
But the events of the recent past brought her to a sobering realization: that she might not have the strength needed to learn that truth.
I am weak.
The Black Rider was a true monster and didn’t count.
She’d assumed the man in the bartender’s suit represented the best possible value for her test. But then, up against the Awakusu-kai man, she’d been utterly helpless.
Then was everything I’ve done pointless…?
It felt like her pleasure, past, and hope for the future had all been negated, taken away from her. She was filled with anger at her mental vulnerability for feeling this way and her physical weakness at being unable to save one man.
These thoughts swirled through her head as she stood in place.
Denis told her to “watch them work and steal their ideas,” but she didn’t know where to start with that. For one thing, she had zero service industry experience. She had read about some of its secrets in books, but she had never seen a business that combined Russia with sushi, in real life or in any text.
On the other hand…
She’d been merely standing in place, observing everything that happened from the moment the restaurant opened—and realized that the guests seemed to be extraordinarily preoccupied with her.
Is it so strange for them to see a foreigner? But that applies to Denis and Simon, too.
It never even occurred to her that it had something to do with her looks and feminine gender. Any regular would be surprised at the sudden appearance of an unfamiliar waitress, while a new customer would find it hard not to look at the beautiful foreign woman brooding in the corner with her hands on her hips.
Simon turned to a young couple, barely older than children, and said, “Oh, young master Yagiri, you like her? Her name Vorona. You take her to go, A-OK. Then you have girlfriend and mistress, one in each hand. Best to eat with those you love, makes everything taste good. Plus ten orders of sushi.”
…I did not hear of taking to go. Is that part of the business plan here? I don’t mind doing the same job, assuming a customer respects my talents…but I’m certainly not going to sell my actual body, thought Vorona, who failed to take Simon’s comment in jest.
She scowled and said, “Negative. I am under no obligation to sell my own flesh for the profit of the company. I request a boycott. But if your words are meant in the spirit of contract job, I confirm.”
“Ohh, this is famous Japanese sexual harassment trial. Sexual harassment bad, no sekuhara. If you do sekuhara, then you do hara-kiri. And after cutting stomach, sushi all fall through hole. Our business go up in flames.” Simon laughed, but Vorona did not understand what he meant.
The customers who had just been subjected to two very different but equally baffling forms of Japanese reacted with either awkward amusement or total confusion but otherwise kept eating. Vorona sensed their reactions and was coming to the acceptance that she probably wasn’t meant for this line of work when Denis spoke to her.
“Hey, Vorona. Collector’s out back, so get the white envelope off the office desk and hand it over.”
“…”
“If you can’t serve customers, you can at least give them the money in the envelope, right?”
“…Affirmative,” she admitted, reluctantly passing through the kitchen toward the back.
Next to the back door was a small office. She took the thick envelope off the desk and opened the door.
“Whoa.”
There was a familiar man standing there.
“…!”
Instantly, Vorona crouched and swung her leg up to kick at his groin.
“Easy, easy.”
He caught the kick soaring upward between his legs with one hand and pushed it back, simultaneously sweeping her planted leg. Vorona quickly found herself sitting flat on her butt, though the man had eased the pressure on her leg so that there was no pain.
“…!”
If only I had a weapon…
It galled Vorona that at this moment, the only idea that came to her mind involved relying on gear. Still, she stared malevolently at the man in the patterned suit.
“Ooh, scary. I figured I’d check in on you when I came to collect the crab money, but I didn’t think you’d be the one handing it over. I thought you’d still be bedridden. Suppose I’ll have to save the caviar sushi for another time.”
“Akabayashi!”
“What, you remember my name? That’s so sweet. A guy feels good when a fetching young lady like you is familiar with him,” he said, smirking wryly as he reached out to take the envelope from Vorona. Then he turned his back on her, totally unafraid.
“Sorry to disappoint you. I’d give you a little more time, but I’ve got another young lady to escort at the moment. Maybe some other occasion.”
“I request orders! Has Slon already been being killed?”
“Whoa, whoa, slow down. What if someone hears you talking about killing and all that?” he said, looking around hastily before continuing. “Well, I suppose it’s up to him whether he gets spared or buried.”
“…?”
“At any rate, there’s certainly going to be a price paid. Mikiya and Aozaki are pragmatists at heart. They’re probably weighing the value of either finishing him off to make things right or keeping him around to use as a pawn.”
He tapped his own shoulders with the walking stick, then turned his back on Vorona once again. “Ultimately, it’s the chairman who will call the shots. But if your buddy spills the beans on your client, that fella named Yodogiri…well, maybe the scales will tip toward a more amicable outcome.”
“…”
Should she rejoice in the possibility of Slon’s survival or find some new weapons and raid the Awakusu-kai to rescue him? Vorona couldn’t even be sure how she should react to Akabayashi’s statement.
Time simply passed. How long had it been?
She glared powerlessly in the direction that Akabayashi had gone, until a cheery voice said, “Oh, here you are. What wrong? Your tummy hurt?”
“…Denied. Woe is fruitless,” she replied, getting to her feet as if nothing was wrong.
Simon shrugged and asked, “Did you fight with Akabayashi? Fighting bad, you get hungry. And Akabayashi bring us cheap crabmeat. You make Akabayashi angry, crab get more expensive, us and customers go hungry.”
“Is that crab a smuggled good?”
“He said what he send us is national product. He don’t say what nation.”
“…”
While the conversation was not entirely satisfying, Simon’s voice did help her regain herself. She went back inside the building.
I suppose…it’s all over.
In that brief period, dark feelings swirled into her mind.
I abandoned plenty of companions on the way here…and I had to be saved by my father and President Lingerin, the men I betrayed and severed all connections to… How do they see me now? With disgust? Or pity?
Perhaps I have no reason to live anymore…
After her consecutive defeats and what Akabayashi just told her, even her motivation to avenge Slon was gone.
No, that was always an excuse. I wasn’t nearly as mad about Slon’s defeat as I was at my own uselessness. What should I do now…?
She made her way through the kitchen into the restaurant, pondering these heavy topics…
There were now two men sitting at the counter where the young couple had just been.
She recognized one of the men. Not by facial features, but by his distinctive dress.
Even Vorona, who found it quite difficult to distinguish the fine details between Japanese faces, could identify his features at a glance.
He had blond hair and wore sunglasses to go with a bartender’s uniform.
“Well, when both you and Kasuka get so famous, you can’t prevent guys like that from coming around. I think you ought to get used to this.”
“…Okay.”
“I know it wasn’t your idea to be famous. But I think if you keep that fact in mind, it’ll actually make a big difference in your life.”
“I guess so…”
Tom and Shizuo had picked up their conversation from earlier as they waited for their sashimi tray.
“By the way, did you thank that doctor from yesterday?” Tom asked.
“…Oh, actually, not yet.”
“Well, that won’t do. He helped you out in a pinch—I don’t care if you guys go way back, he deserves a proper thanks.”
“Yeah, you’re right. It slipped my mind with all the other stuff going on,” Shizuo explained. He took out his phone and called up the black market doctor. “Hey…Shinra? Sorry about yesterday. I wanted to thank you for your help… What? Oh…yeah. I’ll call you later, then.”
He was going to walk outside to continue the call but never got further than a hovering position above the chair.
“What’s up?” Tom asked.
“I guess he’s busy. He said to call back tomorrow. In fact…it sounded like he was gonna cry.”
“Oh yeah? Well, no rush, I guess. You can do it any…oh?” Tom paused when he saw a woman appear from the kitchen. “Who’s the babe? She’s staring holes in us.”
“…You’re right,” Shizuo added. “In fact, I don’t think she’s ever done a shift here before.”
Tom glanced at the woman staring at them while her mouth worked silently, then leaned over the counter to ask the chef, “Hey, boss, when’d you pick up that fetching lady? Is she Russian, too?”
“Correct. She’s in training—doesn’t even know how to carry out a fresh towel. Think of her as a Russian decoration for now,” he answered brusquely.
Tom grinned and asked, “How do you say ‘You’re adorable’ in Russian?”
“Вы очаровательны.”
“Vee, ocheravatenen,” Tom mimicked. Then he turned to the woman. “Hey, vee ocheravatenen.”
The white woman looked back at Tom with suspicion and then turned to the chef behind the counter. “What is he saying? It is unclear. Suspicion that words are not Japanese.”
The chef smirked and shook his head. “Вы очаровательны.”
“…Provide a clear reason that you would engage in such social pleasantries.”
“That’s just what that fella there said to you.”
“In the language of what country?”
Confused and surprised, Tom leaned over to Shizuo and whispered, “Was my pronunciation that bad?”
“I wouldn’t know the difference, but I guess a native speaker would.”
“Wow, I guess I embarrassed myself,” Tom said, trying to hide the redness behind his cup of tea. Just then, the platter of sashimi came across the counter to them.
Tom reached out with his chopsticks, glanced at the woman again, and wondered, “Is she glaring at us or something?”
He almost stopped himself from bringing it up, but he knew that Shizuo wasn’t stupid enough to accost a woman for staring at him and so it was safe to proceed.
“Really? Whoa, that’s harsh,” Shizuo said, his eyes tearing up. He had just eaten a bracing sushi roll stuffed with wasabi. His vision was so blurry that he didn’t even bother to look in her direction. “Probably because you did such a bad job hitting on her.”
“You think so? Well, yeah…I guess you’re right.” Tom sighed, grabbing a slice of yellowtail.
The chef leaned forward and said, “By the way…you two said you were short on help recently, didn’t cha?”
“Huh? Oh yeah. There’s been an uptick in folks trying to welch on their fees, so it’s getting hard for me and Shizuo to cover everything on our own.” Tom grimaced.
The chef nodded—then glanced over at the woman.
“Feel like taking that decoration off my hands?”
Ikebukuro, in front of a dojo
In a mixed zoning area near Zoshigaya Cemetery bustling with apartments, small homes, and industrial factories, two oddly clashing people spoke in front of a particular building.
“And don’t worry—you’re just stopping by to introduce yourself today. If you decide you don’t like it, you can tell me.”
“O-okay.”
The tall man was Akabayashi, and the nervous-looking girl standing next to him was Akane Awakusu.
Akane wanted to be stronger.
For the last few days, she’d been through experiences that few grade-schoolers—few adults, in fact—had ever faced. And in this case, she was not the helpless victim, but the agent causing the chaos.
Right after her return a few days ago, she received a tearful embrace from her mother and then got a lecture. But even in the middle of the scolding, she heard the phrase so glad you’re all right many times, so Akane felt less like she was in trouble and more that she was guilty of inflicting pain.
Yet there was a conflicted feeling inside of her still: Shizuo Heiwajima.
She was attempting to kill a grown man, and yet he had also saved her life. Even she was having difficulty deciphering exactly how she felt about him. While he may have saved her, Akane didn’t yet have an answer as to whether she should kill him or not.
It seemed that even this most obvious of questions was beyond her ability to answer.
The world she had known had turned out to be a facade, constructed by fear of the name Awakusu. This was all unbeknownst to her, and when she learned the truth, that facade had crumbled into dust.
The wedge placed there was preventing her from re-creating her world, leaving it—and her—broken. And like a bad drama, that was when she had gotten kidnapped.
On top of that, she had met the impossible Headless Rider on her headless horse, things that shouldn’t and couldn’t exist in the real world. All these details were enough to melt the pieces of her broken worldview into a sludge.
Things had settled down now, but Akane was still in pieces.
That morning, when Akabayashi visited at her request, the first thing she had said was “How can I get good at killing people?”
The man, an employee of her father’s, looked startled at first and then hid his surprise behind a tight smile. “What’s this all about? You got it in for somebody?”
“No. It’s not that…but I have to kill him.”
“…Sounds scary. Who are you talking about?”
“I can’t tell you,” Akane said, shaking her head.
Akabayashi didn’t get angry, nor did he get upset; he just smiled. “Why not?”
“If I say, you guys will go after him, won’t you?”
“Is that a bad thing?” he asked matter-of-factly.
Akane nodded. “He’s a good person. But I have to kill him.”
It wasn’t an answer that made a lot of sense, so Akabayashi kept trying to get to the bottom of her reasoning. “Do you want him to die?”
“No. I don’t want to kill him.”
“…Then why?”
“If I don’t kill him, he might kill people I care about…”
“Who told you that?”
“…I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes sorrowful. Akabayashi recognized that she wasn’t going to be able to tell him the answer, so he approached from a different direction.
“But what if that person is lying to you?”
“…I can’t tell.”
“But just a moment ago, you said this person you have to kill is good… Are you sure of that?”
“…I can’t tell,” she repeated. She shook her head, but it wasn’t a means of shying away from the question. “I can’t tell right now. Everyone, even my friends…my friend’s mother…the teacher…Father…everyone was lying to me. I don’t even know if I can trust you or not…”
“…”
“So I believe that he’s good, but now I can’t believe myself…so…umm…”
It was clear that the girl did not have it all straight in her heart. She looked down at the ground, as if ready to burst into tears, but the only things that emerged next were words. “But I can’t. I have to be stronger.”
“Why is that?”
“If it turns out he’s bad…and I’m weak, then that’s the end of me. I can’t just worry about what I should do if he’s bad… But I can’t talk to Father, either. Because they’re all yakuza, right? So he might die before I can even figure out if he’s good or bad…”
“This is quite a surprise. Does everyone your age nowadays think about grown-up concepts like this?” Akabayashi asked, impressed. He pondered for a bit, then grinned and said, “Well, I get your point. If you find out he’s a bad guy, and you’re going to stop him or protect yourself, you’ve gotta be stronger than him. And at your age… Well, I’d like to believe that us grown-ups aren’t impatient enough to kill a guy before figuring out if he deserves it or not…”
He shrugged and suggested, “Here’s an idea: Just because you might be up against a killer doesn’t mean you have to be stronger than them at killing.”
“Huh?”
“There’s a thing called self-defense. Rather than killing bad guys, it helps you get stronger so that you can protect yourself and the people you care about.”
Several hours later, Akane was here in front of this building, with Akabayashi as her escort.
The building had a sign on the front that read TRAUGOTT GEISSENDORFER’S RAKUEI GYM, and there was a poster of a tough-looking foreign man hung next to the entrance.
“It makes it sound like he owns or is affiliated with this place, but that Traugott guy actually dabbles in a lot of different fighting styles. What they teach here just so happens to be one of them, so they use that connection as a marketing gimmick. I guess he doesn’t mind them using the name, either.”
“Ohhh?” Akane replied. She didn’t seem to be entirely present. It was less that she failed to understand Akabayashi’s explanation and more that she was preoccupied with a great feeling of uneasiness.
An unfamiliar place full of unfamiliar people—these are certainly things that elicit anxiety. But to Akane in particular, there was a fear that even in this new place, she would encounter the same false smiles and words she’d been around all her life. Would they, too, be afraid of the shadow cast by the Awakusu-kai? Would they secretly hate her because of it?
Akane’s childhood mind grappled with this very adult apprehension. Her body trembled, and she was about to consider giving up and backing out when she heard an excited girl’s voice nearby.
“Ahhh! That Awakusu-kai mobster is abducting a little girl!”
“?!”
The mention of the name Awakusu caused Akane to start. But at the same time, she noticed something odd: The girl’s tone of voice was far too cheery for someone bringing up the feared Awakusu name.
She timidly turned around right as Akabayashi said, “Oh really, Mairu? Do I look like that bad of a guy?”
“How can you blame me for thinking that, Mr. Akabayashi? You couldn’t look any fishier if you tried!”
“Well, damn.” He smirked. The girl cackled.
She had to be about five or six years older than Akane, with braided hair and glasses. While those things might normally suggest a gloomy, withdrawn personality, this girl was lively and bracing. There was a bundle, probably a martial arts outfit, slung over her back, as if she were coming back from a workout.
“As a matter of fact, this girl’s name is Akane. She’s our chairman’s granddaughter.”
“Oh! Does that mean she’s gonna grow up to be the yakuza lady bossing the guys around?!”
“…! …!”
Akane was stunned. She assumed she would have to hide her background at the gym, but Akabayashi told the truth to the very first person there. Her mouth trembled in shock, and without a better idea of what to do, she began bopping Akabayashi on the back.
The girl named Mairu took a step closer and helpfully suggested, “Ha-ha! Best plan here would be a sudden attack to the privates!” She unleashed a quick, sharp kick at Akabayashi’s groin.
“Yikes!” he mocked, dodging at the last possible moment with a smile. “Man, I’ve never had two girls try to kick me in the balls in the same day before.”
“What? Twice? That must mean you made another girl cry this morning. You are a bad guy!” Mairu teased with a huge grin. She turned back to Akane and said, “Well, whatever. So you’re going to be my junior here! If you pay attention and obey my orders, I’ll make you my special henchman and even teach you my signature secret attack, the Thumbtack Special!”
“Cheap barrier of entry for a cheap attack.”
“Shut up, Mr. Akabayashi!” she shot back. Mairu was doing all the talking, and Akane hadn’t said a word yet. The existence of a person who knew her as the “granddaughter of the Awakusu-kai chairman” and still acted this way was extremely new and surprising to her.
“Well, in any case, you’ll be my little-sister fellow pupil, so if there’s any problem at all, you come and tell Sis! Here, come with me and I’ll introduce you to Master!”
“Great. I’ve already spoken with the manager, so you can take her through the rest of it. Personally, my recommendation is pole fighting, but I think the fundamentals should come first. Give Akane’s dad a call when you’re done, and he should send a car to come get her.”
“Um, wait, what?”
Akane was unable to wrap her head around how fast things were moving. Akabayashi waved and left, and Akane just watched him go as Mairu dragged her inside the building.
On the inside, a little flame kindled at the excitement of things taking an unexpected course.
Ikebukuro, apartment building
“…Can’t imagine what the boss is thinking, agreeing to this,” Tom grumbled as he climbed the rickety, old apartment stairs.
As usual, the person they were about to meet on the fourth floor of this particular building had abandoned his tab, and they were heading to collect from him—but unlike normal, there was another assistant in addition to Shizuo.
“I submit a doubt. I have not heard the contents of the job our group is performing,” said the white woman named Vorona, in her usual strange Japanese.
The chef at Russia Sushi had said she was too unfriendly to work in the service industry and asked them to take her for their job, as long as he called their boss. So here she was.
I figured he meant that she would go and do office work for him… Instead, she’s collecting with us?!
The only way Tom could imagine a woman collecting debt was if she was a landlord or the manager of a bar—the thought of traveling around with a woman as a coworker was one he had never entertained.
Vorona had changed from her uniform into plainclothes, and he had to admit that her figure had been accentuated by the change in a most bewitching way.
Damn… Yeah, it sounds nice working with a hot chick, until you actually have to do it…
In this case, the woman was supremely standoffish and seemed acutely disinterested in men. Tom answered her question by saying, “We’re collecting money from bad people who owe it and aren’t paying up. Got that?”
He tried to make it as simple as possible, since her Japanese was questionable at best. Vorona nodded to indicate understanding and said, “Collection of protection money. Roger.”
“No, no, it’s not protection money… You know what, never mind.”
Seriously, I’m not sure about this.
Would they fail to be taken seriously if there was a woman with them? Tom wondered. It wasn’t his intention to belittle women, but there was no guarantee that the targets they were going to collect from would feel the same way.
Actually, they could belittle all they wanted, but if that disrespect extended to Shizuo, and he got carried away and killed someone—well, that was the worst possible outcome.
Also, I feel like this babe keeps staring him down. Is that just my imagination?
As for Shizuo, he’d been traveling along in silence with his arms folded, apparently deep in thought. Perhaps he himself was trying to figure out what he might have done to deserve all the staring.
Just then, Tom reached the target’s apartment. He tried ringing the bell for starters and immediately heard the lock opening from within.
When the door opened, it revealed a man with an old-fashioned “punch perm” of the kind tough guys wore in the ’80s.
“…Who the hell are you?”
“I’m guessing you’ll understand if we say we’re here on behalf of the dating site Arachne?” Tom said by way of introduction. The permed man’s face froze for a moment.
“…! No idea what you mean.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure. But your phone number has already used one hundred seventy thousand yen worth of services. It’s all in the contract, so the normal legal channel would involve having the lawyer collect, but neither of us wants to get the court involved, do we?”
“Shuddup! Quit talkin’ yer mumbo jumbo, or I’ll kill you!”
“If you found that explanation to be ‘mumbo jumbo,’ then we might need to bring in an interpreter,” Tom suggested, annoyed. The permed man found this amusing; he wore a crude smile.
“Sure thing…I got an interpreter.”
“What?”
“C’mon, boys!” the man shouted toward the interior of the apartment.
A number of men marched up to the doorway. They all had the appearance of tried-and-true low-class thugs, and they filed out to face Tom’s group in the hallway of the building. Years of experience and intuition told Tom that they were just ruffians, not professional criminals.
Triumphantly, the man with the perm returned to Tom and gloated, “What did you want interpreted? Were you gonna hand over that chick to us, maybe?”
Good grief, Tom thought. Normally, Shizuo would just snap and be done with it, but since we have Vorona with us today, I guess we should back down.
He turned toward the young woman. And if they won’t let us walk away, we’ll at least have to make sure she gets a…way…? Huh?
Vorona had been standing right behind Shizuo just a moment ago, but now she was gone.
“Huh? Whaddaya want, ba…buh?!”
He suddenly screamed.
Huh? Tom spun around to face forward again, and in the process, he noticed that Shizuo’s eyes were bulging. When his spin finished, Tom’s eyes bulged, too.
“Wha—?!” “Hey…you…ah!” “Hrg?!” “Whoa?!”
He saw the men groaning and collapsing, as Vorona spun and moved between all of them. It was like an action scene in a movie.
Vorona’s moves were just as flashy and brilliant as her appearance. She flowed from target to target, striking the men in the chins and throats with her elbows and toes, knocking them unconscious one after the other.
Once they were down and immobile, she started going through their pockets. Soon she was handing Tom a small pile of wallets. Sadly, the Japanese language of her statement was a far cry from the smooth, practiced action moves.
“Please teach the precise amount of money to be deducted. If it is lacking, shall we conduct a home search?”
Even then, at the very moment that Tom and Shizuo shared a glance…
…the rumors raced through the town.
“Hey, you see that?”
“Shizuo.”“That was Shizuo Heiwajima.”“With a woman.”
“Was that injury story made up?”“No idea.”
“There was definitely a woman.”“Maybe she’s with the dreads guy?”
“Nah, I saw them in town.”“She was hot.”
“And the whole time they were walking…she was staring at Shizuo.”
Several hours later, Ikebukuro, Kishimojin Temple
“I can’t believe I wasn’t expecting something like that, knowing that she was connected to Simon and that sushi chef,” Tom lamented.
They had visited a number of other targets after that, and every one of them had either tried to hit on Vorona or threatened the group—with the result that Vorona knocked them out so quickly and handily that Shizuo didn’t even have time to get angry once.
“Try to spare a thought for the guys who have to mop all this up…”
“Mop up? Do you mean to dispose of the dead bodies? I have heard the standard method of Japan is sinking into Tokyo Bay.”
“No, there’s no standard of the sort. Can you try to explain this to her, Shizuo?”
“…I’m not really in a position to say, actually,” he replied.
They came to a temple for revering Kishimojin, a Buddhist goddess of protection. It was on the route from a Toden trolley stop toward Ikebukuro Station. Their next job was close by, but they decided to stop here at the Kishimojin Temple and take a breather.
It was a quiet location in the middle of a residential area, with countless trees in the expansive temple grounds, their leaves catching and splitting the reddening light of the sun—an oasis of tranquillity in the midst of the vast, bustling metropolis.
The trio, however, was in a very strange mood when it decided to stop for a break. For his part, Tom was silent as he tried to think of how he should broach the topic at hand—but to his surprise, it was Shizuo who broke the ice with Vorona.
“You seem like you’re pretty tough. You practice some kind of fighting?”
“…”
She stared at him, clearly conflicted. Whatever emotional knot was behind the look on her face was completely beyond Tom’s understanding.
After a long silence, Vorona sighed heavily and said, “I have learned only the first of first steps in many things. In youth period, through texts. In puberty, through battle. Denis and Semyon…the one you call Simon, taught me self-defense.”
“Ahh, those guys… So if you started in childhood, does that mean your dad was a fighter, too?”
“My father was expert in a fighting style called Systema. Systema was the only style I did not learn. It is…similar to rebellion against Father. I would appreciate if you do not pry.”
“I won’t ask, then. In any case, you’re pretty incredible.”
“…It sounds like farcical jest coming from you,” Vorona insisted.
Tom jumped in. “Huh…? Wait, do you know about Shizuo?”
“In Ikebukuro, it is impossible not to hear rumors,” she lied. She had only learned of Shizuo’s prowess once she saw him in action the day before. But because she’d been wearing a helmet and they hardly spoke, Shizuo did not realize it was her yet.
Perhaps Vorona had heard a rumor or two about a man wearing a bartender’s outfit. But she would have laughed off stories about throwing vending machines one-handed as a joke.
After yesterday, she had experienced his strength firsthand.
Perhaps this man, she contemplated, recalling that moment and the sight of him kicking a car like a ball and overturning everything she thought she knew. Perhaps this man could prove it to me, I hoped. Perhaps he could give me the answer to the question of humanity’s frailty.
But the excitement of that moment had totally fizzled into nothing overnight.
It was me who was unfit all along. I am…weak. What is the point of striking a block of clay to determine how strong steel is? All this means is that the people I destroyed to get here…were weaker than clay.
This was total nonsense, of course, but Vorona had settled into another glare at Shizuo. She didn’t hate him. The fierceness in her eyes was actually directed at herself.
For his part, Shizuo didn’t realize he was being stared at. He gazed up at the sky over the temple and murmured, “I dunno what rumors you heard about me, but I think you’re more incredible than I am.”
“…It is unclear what you are saying.”
“I just happen to have physical strength. That has nothing to do with whether a person is really strong or weak. If anything, the folks like you, who worked and worked to train themselves, are way stronger people than I am. That’s worthy of respect.”
“…”
I am more incredible than him? What is he saying? Maybe I just misheard him, Vorona thought.
Tom spoke up to fill the silence. “That reminds me—you said there was some fighter you respected. What was the name again…?”
“Traugott Geissendorfer. He’s unbelievable.”
“See, that’s crazy to me. From my perspective, you’re the most ridiculous of all, Shizuo. If you wanted to, you could easily bulk up and win gold medals. And once you get a bunch of them… Wait, are the medals pure gold?” Tom wondered.
“Gold medals used in Olympics are not all pure gold. Consideration for host countries with poor economy. Over ninety-two-point-five percent pure silver with six-gram coating of gold. Only pure gold medals are Nobel Prize until 1980. Even modern Nobel medal is seventy-five percent gold with pure gold coat,” Vorona answered.
She’d meant it to distract from the previous topic, and it succeeded in surprising Tom. “Wow…I feel like I just saw another incredible side of you.”
“How come they stopped using all gold for the Nobel Prize? They didn’t have the money?” Shizuo asked. His curiosity reminded Vorona of Slon and briefly rattled her heart, but her instincts took over and produced the answer from memory.
“Nobel award has cash prize. But medal of pure gold is too soft. A simple bite leaves a mark. Even little accidents cause string of marks, distortions. Alloys prevent disfiguration.”
“Oooh, I didn’t know that…”
“Tough, smart, and beautiful. You’ve got everything,” Tom remarked, but it did not please Vorona.
“…Denied. I am not beautiful, smart, and certainly not—” she started to say, words intended to convince herself, but she paused partway. There was a girl near the entrance of the temple grounds, shouting with innocent excitement.
“Ohhh! Shiii-zuuu-ooo! How are youuu?”
The trio turned and saw a girl with braided hair and glasses, a rolled-up dojo gi slung over her back. Behind her was another girl who looked identical to her except for a gloomy expression, and then a little girl who was clearly several years younger than them.
Shizuo recognized them all. “Is that Mairu and Kururi…and Akane?!”
The little elementary-age girl hiding behind the twins saw Shizuo and trotted forward at a run.
“Big Brother Shizuo!”