Ordinary B: Outcast Concerto

Six years ago, Ikebukuro

What is this?

What am I looking at?

He was a tremendous fighter.

Even among the mobsters that the government euphemistically termed “violence groups,” he wielded a violence that was second to none.

The rest of society knew him as a strongman, and he believed in that strength.

He had thrived in the shadows of modern society on his might alone; he had made a living just by being good at fighting. He could be proud of that life.

New-school “intellectual” yakuza, the Anti-Organized Crime Law… These changes were the wind; they meant nothing to him.

It was important to adapt with the times, but the law of the street still reigned supreme: If you didn’t command respect and fear, you were done.

All he could do was handle things the way he knew best.

A few years ago, some men who worked for a fellow in his line of work—a rival of his, some said—were beaten up by a kid in a bakery. He felt pity, mirth, and anger all at once. It had to be a joke. He didn’t believe the story.

Later, that very kid would don a bartender’s uniform and become a kind of urban legend—but the man couldn’t have known this at the time.

So he decided to keep fighting, to show his companions how a real man fought.

Fight, fight, fight.

He sought to gain everything he could see through sheer violence alone.

He knew it was impossible. But he didn’t stop.

He couldn’t stop.

No stopping the endless impulse from within.

The intoxication of violence.

There was no way not to test the technique honed by true experience, the muscle built and forged.

No way not to display it.

Even if nothing but ruin lay ahead, he was determined to use his strength exactly as he desired.

Then, one day…

He met a monster.

What the hell is this?

It was not the oft-rumored Headless Rider on a silent motorcycle—but the more recent phenomenon of a slasher with a katana.

What am I looking at?

No one knew about it at the time.

They couldn’t have known.

Even now, only a scant few aside from him actually knew the truth.

Is this…real life?

This slasher was a shape-shifting monster in the truest sense of the word.

A red-eyed monster sprouting katana blades from all over its body, leaping and darting like no human being could.

He didn’t know the monster’s name.

“Damn you…”

He didn’t know the name of Saika, the cursed blade that loved humanity.

“What the hell are you, dammit?!”

He received no answer.

The tip of the monster held in that red-eyed human’s hands cut through a part of his body.

And then time passed…

May 4, late night, Tokyo, club

A club pulsing with lascivious sound and light.

It was classified as a “café” for the purposes of the Adult Entertainment Business Act, but in reality, it was closer to a nightclub or a disco of the previous era. The proprietors rented out the space every night to a different production company, hosting events of all kinds.

Tonight, young men and women danced and writhed on the dark floor, indulging in a variety of pleasures, their bodies and minds stimulated by the insistent pounding of the bass subwoofer.

Some danced to the beat of the music, some watched the dancers, some savored their drinks and the tunes, and some let their excitement move them to call out to members of the opposite sex.

All these activities and more were captured in vivid detail by the pulsing, strobing light system. But in addition to all the above, there were some people in this particular club who carried out their own activities, unaffected by the overwhelming stimuli.

Inside the men’s bathroom, the club’s sound system was muffled.

“Hey…you’re holding, right?”

“I brought the money for it. Okay? Okay?”

Young women in heavy makeup hissed impatiently. They felt no hesitation or anxiety about being in the men’s room.

Facing them were three tough-looking men. Striking tattoos were visible around their collars, and while they weren’t any older than their early twenties, they surrounded the younger girls with an eerie, menacing vibe.

The slimmest of the three men leaned in with a wide smile. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry. We’ve got the stuff.”

Relief flooded over the girls’ faces. But there was little color in their skin, which was slick with a sheen of messy sweat.

“The problem is, you know how hot this stuff is right now. It’s hard to come by on the street. You know how it goes, right? So I’m gonna keep the price the same, but this is all you get,” he said, producing a ziplock plastic bag and dangling it in front of the girls. There were white pills inside.

One of the girls reacted with despair. “But…that’s only half the usual amount…”

“Actually, to tell the truth, I was saving this for a VIP customer, but you girls look really desperate, right? And we hate to sit back and do nothing for cute girls who really need help.”

“…Fine. Then…I’ll pay double…just gimme the normal bag,” she gasped, not even able to complete a full sentence in one breath. She was swallowing quite often, as if desperately thirsty.

One of the men rubbed each of the girls’ cheeks in turn and laughed. “Don’t worry—we’ll help you find some work to pay it off. Don’t look so gloomy, sweet cheeks.”

The man with the bag waved it in front of their faces—like dangling a carrot in front of a horse.

But this carrot was snatched up by a sudden cross breeze.

The sound of flushing water came from one of the stalls.

“?”

The men glanced over at it, annoyed.

It was the stall closest to the door, but it had been empty when they first came into the bathroom—or so they thought. And unbeknownst to the girls, the men had two friends on guard outside the bathroom to tell anyone who wasn’t a client or a friend that the janitor was working inside.

“…”

Perhaps it was one of those guards who used the stall, but they hadn’t noticed anything before this point. Not even the sound of the door closing.

“C-come on, gimme…,” said one of the girls.

“Shut up,” one of the men commanded, watching the door cautiously.

The next few seconds felt many times longer. Whoever it was, he was probably police.

If it was just an ordinary visitor to the club who managed to wander in while the guards weren’t paying attention, he would be easy to threaten or drive off. But they hadn’t even heard any toilet sounds, nor the unrolling of paper. Whoever was in there simply flushed the toilet, nothing more.

When the door began to open, that confirmed that whoever was in there wasn’t flushing to mask the sound of his business. In other words, he had gone into the stall, went completely silent, then flushed—but why?

They weren’t inclined to think that he merely spat into the bowl. And the very presence of an unannounced visitor was quite far from the expected for them. This was their turf, the place they used to peddle an illegal drug—and their experiences had taught them to be wary of what just happened.

“Hey. Who’s there, huh?” one of the thugs threatened, inching closer to the open stall door.

It opened silently, and a man emerged.

Contrary to what they had been afraid of, he was not an investigator.

But neither was he just a normal person who had wandered into trouble.

“Hey.”

He was rather odd.

“Look at you young fellas. All worked up, doing your thing.”

A tall man dressed in a flashy suit. Somewhere in his thirties, they gauged. Not young, but not yet middle-aged, either. He was slender and wiry with a scar on his face—not a pushover by any means. There were expensive tinted glasses on his nose and an ornately designed walking stick in his hand; he was like a memorable character from an old movie, decked out in props.

Despite the walking stick, he had no trouble moving around. He smirked at them as he made his way lazily out of the stall. The tattooed youngsters glanced at one another.

“Come on, old man.”

“Listen, we’re doin’ business, so would you kindly fuck off?”

“…”

The last of the trio said nothing. He merely stared at the man’s face, as if reminded of something.

Meanwhile, the girls were desperate to get the plastic bag they’d been promised. The one dealer pushed them back, while the other two approached the man without fear.

“This bathroom’s out of order. Go somewhere else.”

“My, my, kids these days are so hot-blooded! Uh-oh, am I gonna get my front teeth yanked out for saying that? Actually, you’re probably too young to get that reference, aren’t you?”

“The hell you talkin’ about, old man?”

“Oh, it’s fine if you don’t know. Read more manga! You could use some bizarre adventures. Young folks like you shouldn’t be old and cynical like me—you gotta get your fix of hard work, friendship, and victory!” the man cackled. He cracked his neck and held out his free hand.

“…?”

The others paused. Held between his fingers was the same little plastic bag the tattooed men had been taunting the girls with earlier—only this one was totally empty.

They stared at the man in the tinted glasses, expressions frozen. He smiled and continued, “Sorry to interrupt your deal. The fellas at the door had some pretty nasty stuff in here, so I was just flushing it away. You know how it goes with toxic material—either sterilize it or flush it down the drain. I don’t think it’ll clog any pipes; I’m assuming it dissolves in water.”

“…You asshole!”

The dealer grabbed the older man’s collar with a powerful hand. He didn’t even spare a thought for what might have become of those guards at the door.

“Oh, come on now, guys.” There was a brragk sound, like a wet stick snapping. “You don’t grab the collars of your superiors.”

He moved slowly, smoothly—and somehow, the body of the youngster was now spinning through the air in a gorgeous arc. The only part of him that clashed with that pristine curve were the fingers that had been grabbing the collar, now broken and twisted.

Yet the spinning man didn’t even scream. His body hurtled over and over until he landed flat on his back.

“?! Ghgh-kh-kh-gk!—?!—?—!”

It was worse than having the breath knocked out of his lungs. He felt like all the oxygen and carbon dioxide in his blood vessels was being squeezed out as well.

A sensation that was impossible to distinguish between pain or numbness stole upon him, starting with the fingertips—and then he felt a shock run through his Adam’s apple.

The man’s walking stick was pressed against his throat. The hapless youngster passed out from the pain.

“You’re lucky I’m not trained in martial arts, fella. I’d have broken more than your fingers,” the older man said. The other two dealers froze in place. Time seemed to stop still.

“H-hey, what are you doing? Sell us the stuff!” the girls clamored, breaking the silence. “We have nothing to do with this dumb fight!”

One of the tattooed men bellowed, “Shut up!”

“Aaah!”

He elbowed one of the girls in the face as she tried to snatch the bag over his shoulder and then turned back to their foe.

“Now that’s no good.” Suddenly, the strange man was right in his face. He saw his own features, agape with shock, in the reflection from the tinted glasses.

“Wh-whoa—?!”

He tried to swing out on impulse, but there was no technique to the punch, just arm strength, and his fist hit nothing.

“Your elbows aren’t meant to hit girls. You gotta be gentle with ’em.”

Suddenly, the tattooed man felt a clamp on his ear, pulling him downward. “Aah…hey…you’re gonna rip…”

The threat of a lost ear jolted his body’s instincts, and he automatically lowered himself to keep that from happening. The man in the tinted glasses easily flipped the bruiser’s feet out from under him, forcing him into a painful kiss with the bathroom floor.

“Bwuh…fuck! Blrgh?!”

Furious, he tried to stand, but to no avail. A foot stomped on the back of his head, breaking his nose and front teeth and sending him into the land of unconscious dreams.

His two partners’ fate was sealed in stone now. The final drug dealer had terror imprinted on his features.

Now I remember.

But his fear was not caused by the violence wrought by the interloper.

Guy with a walking stick, flashy suit, tinted glasses.

He had recalled who this man was and what group he was affiliated with.

That’s him…Akabayashi from the Awakusu-kai!

“W-wait, sir! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry about this!” he wailed, getting down on hands and knees to beg on the bathroom floor.

“Hey, c’mon, kid. That’s nasty. Don’t put your hands on the bathroom floor,” Akabayashi said with a chuckle—a strange admonishment from a guy pressing a man’s face into said floor. “And let me give you a piece of advice: A man shouldn’t prostrate himself of his own accord. And I ain’t of a mind to accept an apology that cheap. You got me?”

The prostrate young man felt the sweat on his body go cold. Through trembling lips, he mumbled, “I’m…I’m s-so sorry! I…I didn’t realize you were Awakusu at first! I never would have challenged you like that…”

“Listen, you don’t gotta apologize like that. If anything, I was the one who picked this fight with you.” Akabayashi smirked. Then, for the first time, the permanent smile weakened a bit. He crouched and muttered, “If you’re gonna apologize, I’m the wrong person. Right?”

“Huh…?”

Akabayashi picked up the little baggie of drugs and held it in front of the dealer’s face. “This club has a number of business ties to our operation, you see. I hate to sound like a stereotype, but I’m obliged to ask: Who said you could deal this shit on our turf? Hmm? Tell the nice man.”

“Er…well, I…”

“Mmm?” Akabayashi tilted his head curiously, his eyes never leaving the young man’s face.

“I wasn’t…umm…!”

When he caught sight of Akabayashi’s eyes through the tinted lenses, he felt every muscle in his body tense up. “I—I—I d-didn’t know this was Awakusu-kai territory! I s-swear, we’ll pay your share f-from now on…!”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha,” Akabayashi laughed mirthlessly. “Oh dear. You really don’t know anything, do you?”

“H…huh…?”

“Don’t you know the law, kid? Here in Japan, pills like these are illegal. But as far as I knew, you could be selling little hard candies, so I made sure to have a friend of mine examine them before I came here.”

He shook his head theatrically and leaned closer to the young man. “And the thing about the places we run, like right here? We don’t write the laws any different when it comes to dealin’ this stuff. Got that?”

“Wha…?”

Are you kidding me? Why did I never hear about that?! the young man thought, stunned.

Akabayashi waggled a finger in his face and tsked. “But even if we did play that way, you don’t really think we’re the kind of easygoing folk who will accept an answer like, ‘I’ll pay your percentage off the top, sorry about that,’ do you?”

“Uh…I…”

“So it’s time to choose.”

“Ch…choose?” the young man rasped. He realized that his breathing had been gradually getting faster and heavier. It was hard to tell what this man was saying. All he knew was that his fear of the Awakusu-kai was quickly being rivaled by that of the man before him.

He recalled the knife he had in his pocket. Should he use it or not?

Will it even work? He’s a yakuza. No, I can’t.

 It’s not like anyone knows who I am. If I kill him, I can get away.

I can’t. I can’t escape from the yakuza. But what if they don’t find out?

 Dammit, why is this happening to me? It’s not supposed to be like this!

Will my knife even work on this guy, anyway?

 He probably has a bigger one. Or a gun. I can’t. I can’t.

I can’t. I can’t, I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t…

A cavalcade of thoughts rushed through his brain, but not a single one was hopeful.

“The thing is, I’m what you’d call a hypocrite. See, since I am in this line of work, I do plenty of bad stuff—running gambling, setting odds, brokering sales of crabmeat of suspect origin. But personally, I just can’t stand the drugs. That’s right—it all comes down to personal likes and dislikes. So feel free to call me a hypocrite.”

Akabayashi took off the glasses and leaned closer to the young man, who looked back into those eyes and realized something was wrong.

One of his eyes looks weird… Is it a prosthetic?

It was an odd thing to be preoccupied with at the moment. The information was meaningless to him.

“Years ago, I was in love with a lady whose old man did her wrong on account of these drugs. Ever since then, I’ve really, really hated ’em. And the reason I’m with the Awakusu-kai now is because my likes and dislikes can actually mean something.”

Akabayashi chuckled dryly—and then abruptly stopped. His smile waned. “Ah…right. You were going to choose… Which option do you prefer?”

“Um…option?”

“For the Awakusu-kai to tie a bow on you fellas and hand you over to the cops? Or to simply have both your arms broken?”

! ! !

The youngster’s breathing went so ragged it simply caught in his throat for several seconds.

The man was going to use him as bait to strike a deal with the police. And if he said no, his arms would be broken. Given what had just happened to his partners, he knew better than to assume it was a bluff.

“N-no…no…stop, p-please…I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he blubbered and rubbed his forehead against the bathroom floor again.

Akabayashi grimaced and shook his head. “For God’s sake, how does a guy with the guts to get a tattoo whimper and whine like this? You’re a disgrace to your artist.”

“Th-these are just decals! W-we’re not that tough, sir! I—I play it straight most of the time! It’s just a little m-money on the side, they said! It wasn’t my idea! I just did what they said! Please let me go! Please, please!”

“Ha-ha. In that case, you’re a disgrace to whoever made that tattoo sticker… Well, damn.” Akabayashi chuckled, got up, and snapped his fingers.

Suddenly, some young men in suits entered the bathroom.

“Huh? Wha—?” the dealer babbled.

“If someone’s calling the shots for you, then we need to hear some more details,” Akabayashi said, waving to the suits. “Take him away. Let Kazamoto handle the rest.”

“Yessir.” “Right away, Mr. Akabayashi.”

The men in black bowed and got to work. Akabayashi rapped the floor with his stick and, in rhythm with the beat, said, “The thing is, I’m a bit squeamish when it comes to interrogation methods.”

All the frightening vocabulary words had an effect. The young man finally stopped groveling and got to his feet.

I gotta run.

Even a small-time dealer wearing fake tattoos to look tough knew what would happen if he got taken to the yakuza office. He pulled out his knife and made a beeline, swinging it around threateningly.

“Hey, shithead!” “Knock it off!” Akabayashi’s subordinates yelled, but the fleeing man wasn’t listening. The glint of light off the silver blade as it swung about wildly elicited screams from the girls hiding in the corner of the bathroom.

“Outta my way! You wanna get stabbed?!” Fake Tat screamed, which was funny, because if he was going to hit anyone swinging the knife around like that, it was going to be a slash instead.

Akabayashi exhaled.

Not a sigh. Just a brief collecting of breath.

The young man raced straight toward him in the center of the bathroom.

“Outta—”

—my…way?

Something lightly struck the hand swinging the knife around. An object, something cylindrical, had stretched out from his blind spot and knocked the blade out of his hand.

The walking stick?

By the time he realized it, the tip of Akabayashi’s cane was already out of sight again. The man’s body rolled across the floor, and the end of the stick appeared from a different direction this time.

Although he held the stick like a spear with both hands, there was hardly any of its length above the left hand, so the young man’s instincts told him that it wouldn’t reach him. That wasn’t true, of course, but the visual information his brain received resulted in that fateful illusion.

Akabayashi pushed the other end of the stick with his right hand—a very simple action—but to his victim’s eyes, it looked like the point of the walking stick stretched from out of nothing.

“Whua-ffh!”

A scream of surprise and a grunt of shock both issued from his mouth simultaneously.

The tip of the cane pushed into his throat, crushing the Adam’s apple. He didn’t feel pain or numbness. The only thing his nerves and brain registered was something bursting.

His eyeballs instantaneously shuddered into the back of his head, and he collapsed to the floor like a rag doll.

“Okay, get him outta here,” Akabayashi directed the men in suits, still smiling easily.

Once they had carried the unconscious dealer out of the bathroom, Akabayashi turned toward the end of the stalls. “Now, about you girls…”

“Eeek!”

“P-please don’t…”

Until just recently, the girls had been desperate for the drugs, but the brief scene of violence and resulting conversation had made it quite clear whose presence they were in. Fear won out over desire, and they were now huddling in the corner, trembling.

“Listen, don’t shiver and shake like that. Y’see, just an hour or so ago, I had to make a very pretty Russian lady sad. I’m feelin’ down about upsetting the female kind right now.” He chuckled, pulling out a pocket handkerchief and offering it to one of the girls. “Look at that nosebleed. Was that from the elbow? You all right? You oughta see a doctor.”

“Er, uh…thank you, sir.”

“You really should be quick about it. Need an escort? I mean, you’re lookin’ pretty pale.”

“Er, uh…n-no, I’ll be…fine.”

The girls were shivering, trying to avoid looking into his eyes. They didn’t understand what he wanted.

“P-please, help, I’ll…I’ll do anything…anything!” one of them pleaded, ready to cry.

“Aww. Oh dear. Do I really look that scary?” Akabayashi asked self-deprecatingly. He rapped the floor with the stick. “Don’t you realize how lucky you are? If I were someone else, you might’ve been sent to an establishment for grown-up ladies, or perhaps a home-visit service, or a DVD filming studio.”

This only made the girls shiver harder.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to claim you owe me a favor. You heard me earlier—I’m a hypocrite, right? I’m not going to hurt you. In fact, I’m going to go the extra mile for you.”

In a way, it was an even worse punishment he was proposing.

“I’m going to send you girls back home and take it upon myself to explain to your fathers and mothers exactly what kind of medication you’ve been taking.”

“…!”

“And the rest is up to you and your families. See? You’ll be in a hospital no matter what.”

“Oh, and…depending on circumstances, there might be some business between your families and us.”

Several minutes later, in a taxi

Akabayashi gave his subordinates their orders and left the club alone. Then he got into a cab, muttering to himself.

“Always leaves a bad aftertaste when you make a girl cry.”

The driver overheard this and decided to meddle. “What’s that? Have a fight with your lady?”

“Let’s call it that. No punches or anything, but she was quite sad about the whole thing,” Akabayashi said, shaking his head.

The elderly driver laughed and scolded, “Shouldn’t do that. You gotta be gentle with women.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying.”

A few minutes later, Akabayashi’s cell phone rang. It played the latest hit from the singer Ruri Hijiribe.

“Oh, sir! What do you know, it’s your lady friend!”

“Ha-ha-ha…if only,” Akabayashi replied, indulging the driver.

He hit the accept button. “Hello? It’s your buddy.”

“Don’t answer the phone like a creep. It’s me,” said the caller—Akabayashi’s fellow Awakusu-kai lieutenant, Aozaki.

He’d been involved with the Russian trouble just a few hours ago, so Akabayashi assumed the call was related. “What is it, Aozaki? Something happen with our Russian guest?”

“No, it’s not that. You hear about the young miss?”

“You mean how Heiwajima and the Black Rider helped her? I’m guessin’ that Mikiya’s probably giving her a scolding for running away from home and feelin’ relieved on the inside.”

The “young miss” was Akane Awakusu, the daughter of Mikiya Awakusu, underboss of the Awakusu-kai, and furthermore, she was granddaughter of Dougen Awakusu, the head of the organization. She’d run away from home for the past few days and wound up in quite a bit of trouble, including being kidnapped by the Russians in question. It was only this evening that they got word she was safe again.

“No…not quite. Apparently, she’s been acting odd,” Aozaki answered.

“Odd?”

“Well…this is all secondhand, so I don’t know for sure, and it ain’t really my business to care. But you’ve known her pretty well since she was a little girl, yeah?”

“I suppose. I’ll ask Mikiya about it tomorrow… Funny that you should be concerned, though. I thought you hated Mikiya,” Akabayashi teased.

“Don’t give me that shit,” Aozaki growled through the speaker. “Yeah, I’m not fully on board with Mikiya, but Miss Akane is the old man’s granddaughter. If anything happens to her, we go to war. Of course I’m concerned.”

“But isn’t that what you want, Aozaki?”

“…I said, don’t give me that shit, you bungling clown,” Aozaki snorted, clicking his tongue, and hung up.

Akabayashi looked down at his phone, shaking his head.

At that moment, the driver asked, “Is this a good spot for you, sir?”

“Uh, sure. Just up at that corner.”

“You got it.”

Compared with earlier, the driver’s smile was forced and unnatural. He’d heard enough from that call to recognize Akabayashi’s occupation.

“Sorry I couldn’t give you a longer trip fare. Here, keep the change for your trouble.”

“Oh! Oh no, sir! I couldn’t take this whole bill!”

“Trust me, it’s fine,” Akabayashi insisted, shoving the ten-thousand-yen bill into the driver’s hand. He exited the taxi, cracked his neck, and looked up at the neon-lit night sky of the big city.

“…Things’ve been strange lately.”

The Black Rider.

The return of the slasher.

The rise of the Dollars.

Trouble with Ruri Hijiribe.

Jinnai Yodogiri.

And now this incident with the Russians and Akane.

“Well, there’s always been troubles in any city,” he muttered to himself, then headed for the apartment where he spent his nights.

But even still, things’ve been strange. It’s like the light and the dark side of town are bleeding together. Maybe those folks on the bright side are having trouble keeping to their own.

He looked back up at the sky, realizing that it was pointless to wonder. The light of the town and the dark of the night mingled, hiding the stars behind the muddled haze.

Akabayashi gazed at the ambiguity and mumbled, “I don’t like that sky.”

“Bright or dark—make up your damn mind.”

Six years ago

The man who had dyed himself with the color of violence would hurt others again today.

He felt a glow of ecstasy every time he saw the scars he inflicted on someone else.

That scar is me.

The blood they shed, the red of their exposed flesh, the sound of their bones breaking—these are the things that make me as a person.

It was less a statement of pride or ideals than a shallow fantasy, a daydream.

He would fall apart unless he hurt someone.

This self-created illusion acted as a wicked mold of his instincts.

In this city, the scars he left on others were his footprints.

With each act of violence, his glory grew and so did his intoxication.

With no fatigue and no reflection upon the past, as if it were his reason for living.

Change came to him at last when he took on a certain job.

The owner of a certain business owed a debt, and the man’s organization took it on.

It wasn’t quite in the midst of the busy shopping district, but it was still land in the capital.

So the job was quite simple: Seize the land as collateral for the debt.

But things went awry. Somehow, the owner got the money and paid back what he owed.

A simple story of bad luck, if it had ended right there.

But the business owner, seemingly mad, demanded money from the organization.

He tried to blackmail them, to threaten them with legal trouble for an illegal collection scheme.

The owner’s mind was probably not on sound footing at that point.

They decided that he could not be reasoned with and gave the man a new job.

Put the hurt on him.

Nice and clean. Nice and simple.

The owner had a family, too, so if necessary, the man was allowed to involve them.

Of course, it couldn’t look like the work of the man’s organization, so he had to make it appear as a robbery and rough them up in a nonfatal way.

On the night of the new moon, the man put on a ski mask and headed for the business in question.

It was an antique shop in Ikebukuro.

The name: Sonohara-dou.

May 5, morning, home of Mikiya Awakusu

The residence of Mikiya Awakusu, waka-gashira underboss of the Awakusu-kai, was virtually indistinguishable from any of the other homes in the distant suburbs of Ikebukuro and gave no indication that its occupants were anything but normal.

On the contrary, it was the kind of house so pristine that the cynical might be prompted to claim, “The only people who would live in a house so nice are the ones who do dirty deeds for dirty money.” In short, it was just a very fancy house.

Once inside the home, the tottering steps of a young girl rushed to greet him.

“Mr. Akabayashi!”

“Ahh, young miss. It’s nice to see you again.”

In fact, it had been years since he’d popped his head in. In the past, he’d often come by to visit and spend time with the girl, but now that Akane was getting on with school, he had bowed out and kept his distance, respecting Mikiya’s wish to keep the family business a secret from her.

Ultimately, that concerted effort had fallen through, and she had learned the truth of what her father did for a living. From what Akabayashi heard, it was the reason she ran away from home, but thankfully, she was back safe and sound now.

“…I heard you wanted to see me, miss?”

“Yeah!” she said, nodding vigorously. She seemed to be bursting with lively cheer, but that seemed unnatural for one who had been kidnapped just a day ago.

Normally, he would have gotten the details of the incident from Mikiya at the office. Instead, it was Mikiya who had approached him.

“My daughter wants to talk to you. Will you come to the house with me?”

“Me? What for?”

“I wish I knew, but she won’t tell me.”

Acting odd indeed, he’d thought, recalling the phone conversation with Aozaki the night before. Still, Akabayashi wrapped up his afternoon business early and headed off to see Akane.

Once the little girl saw him in person, she reached over to tug his sleeve, eyes sparkling. “I have something I want to talk about in private, Mr. Akabayashi. Can you come to my room?”

“Now, Akane,” Mikiya warned, but the man waved him off.

“Oh, it’s fine, Director. I don’t mind.”

He started off to follow the girl, but this time it was Mikiya who pulled on his sleeve.

“I trust I don’t need to warn you not to fill her head with nonsense?”

“I know, sir.”

“And keep your hands to yourself.”

“…Mikiya, do you actually know how old your daughter is?” Akabayashi snorted, shaking his head.

“Ah. Y-yes, of course, sorry. I thought maybe you had intentions of…”

“No, I didn’t. Not in the least, Mikiya.”

“You’re right… I’m sorry. It’s just, I remember when you were looking after some girl somewhere a few years back. I thought maybe your tastes ran… No, never mind. Ignore me. You weren’t messing around with that kid, either.”

“No, it’s fine. I get it—I don’t have a wife or even a woman. Some folks whisper that I’m not a ladies’ man in the first place. Ha-ha,” Akabayashi chuckled easily and headed for Akane’s room without sign of offense.

When he walked through her door, Akane greeted him with a serious expression on her face. “Listen…I want you to keep this a secret from my parents.”

“Of course, I get it,” he said with a smile, crouching down to put her at ease.

She started off innocently enough. “Umm, so…uhh…”

But then it got much worse.

“How can I…get good at killing people?”

Her eyes were innocent, pure, and so serious.

Well, I’ll be damned, Akabayashi thought, feeling a rare cold sweat break out on his skin.

He sighed—but never let that easy, lazy grin leave his lips.

This is a hell of a lot more than “acting odd.”