Philosophy and Sushi

by Somebodee

Izaya Orihara meets a peculiar model at a sushi restaurant. He takes an interest in her.

7. Desk Chair Justice

Hold on to your butts, people, 'cause Junko Enoshima's about to make her perfect entrance in Ikebukuro!

---

Previously on Junko's totally-normal adventure: onii-chan's odor is unmistakable…

A mysterious, beautiful, young girl enters Russia Sushi for a quick snack. Little did she know, a tall young man with better fashion sense than four-fifths of the town will take an interest in her…

(*"I take it; you have strong opinions when it comes to fashion sense. What can you say about his?"*

*"Hmmm, realtalk," She whispered. "He has much class as a country bumpkin swimming in cow shit for weeks. The most well-dressed he'll ever be is on a funeral home."*)

The young girl blesses her taste buds with the best sushi in all of Earth, and salvages what would've been a monotonous day…

"Junko?" (*"Best sushi I've had in years!" Junko beamed, halfway on her second. "Too bad I'll get bored of it eventually."*)

As the B-plot, the smelly Despair Sister bravely rummages a store to grab a picture frame of ambiguous value…

(*"Junko, where did you put my other wallet?" She thought she must have found it outside their bathroom or dining room.

"You're ruining my conversation! Gah!" Junko sneered from the other end. "I wanted to get my sushi fix, so I borrowed it for a while. Besides, you've got your other wallet!"*)

---

"Junko? Are you there? It's four in the morning."

If there was someone who sat on the top bed and wrote down notes early in the morning, it was Junko.

Her height gave her a view of the entire bedroom, and the nearby street looking from her window. The desk lamp's brightness at her table hit the right balance between too dark to write anything and too bright to interfere with her sleep. There was no other perfect place to write down her observations.

Too bad Mukuro's presence overpowered the strawberry-scented air freshener in the bathroom and made its way outside. She didn't want to do her monologue again; it was around 4:00 a.m. and she felt the strong urge to hit the sack.

"I know you're busy with your notes and stuff, but you have a photoshoot tomorrow!" She heard the tap water splash into the sink for nearly an hour.

"Way to ruin my narration!" Junko yawned, then sprayed some cold water in her eyes to keep her awake. "Tell them I felt sick and stayed home for a while." She'll have to understand."

"Alright, little sis." The water kept running until Mukuro came out with a bath towel on her head and another wrapping her entire body and went to her room. With someone like her in the house, the water bill would be out of this world.

Now she was out of the way, Junko had fewer distractions. Note-taking was a habit she had as long as she can remember. From the tics and personalities of the people she met to what architectural design the last mall she went to had, everything she saw urged her to jot them down in paper for analysis.

"Russia Sushi - sushi restaurant. Known for unorthodox recipes at affordable prices. Frequently patronized by gangsters. Siberian sushi - 9.25/10. The rest - meh, not worth trying (subject to change). Despair tactic - spike their sushi batches with fly agaric or something. "

"Shion Yamamura - GyaruChan's head honcho. In charge of a dying magazine. Self-presumed social operator but possesses juvenile manipulation tactics. Still a useful front reason for staying in Ikebukuro. Despair tactic - covertly leak her embarrassing secrets through burner account. "

"Izaya Orihara. His fur jacket needs to be more popular. Possesses keen insight into psychology. Out of everyone else in Russia Sushi, singled me out for some reason. Romantic prospects? Doubt it. Still, a very interesting person; needs more interaction. Despair tactic - ? "

"Dollars."

Now that was a name Junko's heard very little about. Going by first impressions, the group was nothing more than wannabe gangsters who got their kicks from harassing young women. By that definition, the number of creeps she met in her career would increase the Dollars' numbers by a thousandfold.

Strangely enough, Google revealed very little concrete information. Most search results were tweets and forum posts that discussed rumors about the group, but nothing about its members or activities.

"Rumors, eh? Gotta see what they're all about." In Junko's industry, gossip was like explosives: thrown at your lawn, they ought to be fireworks that made you look good, thrown at a rival's lawn, grenades that destroyed their reputation. So far, skimming through social media made it seem no one had anything bad to say about the Dollars. They raised funds for the cancer ward at a city hospital and even got together to clean up Minami-Ikebukuro Park.

Most rumors shared a single thread: the Dollars' website locked with a strong password to keep out intruders.

"Sis, can I sleep at the bottom bed?" Her big sister came in, carrying a pistol and sleeping goggles. A bulletproof vest hid her sleeping shirt.

"You're a big girl, Muku-chan. You can protect yourself just fine." Junko shrugged, glaring at her. She didn't want her sister's snoring to ruin her beauty sleep!

"I know, sis, but there's a monster out there, and it might hurt us both." Mukuro was shivering. A fearsome killer was shivering in front of her.

"What do you mean? There's a terrorist in your closet?" Junko chided. "Just blow its head off."

"T… I don't think i-it has one."

Puzzle pieces began to reassemble themselves in her head. The all-black rider prowling Ikebukuro's streets. Shadows melding together within its body to form various objects.

"That might be a dullahan, dear dingus." As she remembered, dullahans were headless riders of Celtic myth, riding to the houses of those about to die. They would utter that person's name, and take their soul to God knows where. "Leave some gold by the door tomorrow. They hate those."

Junko began to drool over the possibilities. A being associated with death roaming around this city? She now had a front-row ticket to the best despair festival she'll ever have! So many innocents dying for no reason at all!

A part of her wondered what the hell a dullahan was doing in Japan, but that was irrelevant.

"Muku-chan… I've got something new in mind." Her heart running, ideas began to storm her mind. "Something wonderful for this town!"

"You can tell me here. J-just let me sleep under you." Mukuro begged. "I'll d-die for you without a doubt!"

"Alright." Junko sighed; it felt nice to throw her a bone every once in a while. "In Ireland, those things chase and kill people by saying their names. Way more efficient than you are."

"Can you please stop there?" Mukuro gulped, then yawned after calming down. "I want my mind to be at its peak for tomorrow."

"Your mind's already in its peak, though." Junko's retorts remained sharp even at early hours. Mukuro headed straight for the lower bed and closed her eyes, ignoring her insult.

She took note of Mukuro's warm smile and rosy red cheeks while on her way to Dreamland. They must've been from her wildest fantasies, ones that involve her other half for some reason. A common one was a Despair Sister placing an empty soda can on the other's head, and trying to shoot it off with a silenced pistol. Both got their rocks off of it; for Mukuro, it was the feeling of taking the ultimate sacrifice for her sister's happiness, while for Junko, it was the despair from the fact that it would be her dear sister that would take her life.

Come to think of it, Mukuro's snores sounded like a pig moaning as its legs hung from a hook, its carotid artery bleeding drip by drip. Knowing her, she would've demanded Junko to shove her cleaver deep into her orifices.

There was a phase of her plan she hid from Mukuro, however. As per her final bedroom ritual, she grabbed her phone and headed straight to Twitter. Phase 0 in the plan to bring despair to the city was first on her agenda the coming morning.

---

Some Idiots Tried to Rob JUNKO FREAKING ENOSHIMA!

1. Name: Bakeneko321: 2016-07-12 07:35 ID:11+Fj3kI (Image: look )

GUYS

WE LITERALLY DISCUSSED THIS A LONG-ASS TIME AGO

NO CRIMINAL ACTIONS, NONE

ESPECIALLY AGAINST SOMEONE FAMOUS LIKE JUNKO

DON'T EVEN LITTER

WE DON'T NEED TO TARNISH OUR REP FURTHER, DAMMIT!

2. Name: Alan Woka: 2016-07-12 07:38 ID:B3+Wc0p5

Poor Junko-chan… (╥﹏╥)

3. Name: T anakaTaro: 2016-07-12 07:43 ID:I2v-40eH

This is so messed up in many ways.

How can we recover from this? Dollars can't just deny this happened.

4. Name: hirothezero: 2016-07-12 07:46 ID:n90/1yJ8

calm down. she's prolly fishing for attention

---

"Ever heard the name Junko Enoshima? I can't read a magazine without an ad that has her in it." Mikado typed in his rugged Toshiba laptop. "Think of it this way, imagine if someone were to rob Nana Komatsu at gunpoint, and she tweeted what group those thugs were with."

He had yet to go to school, but he felt like this day was already ruined in advance. The following weeks, too. This goes on for too long, the Japanese police's Cybercrime Division will be involved, sending agents to monitor the Dollars BBS and its chat rooms. Rival gangs or inside traitors might rat each other out to the authorities for cash or a reduced sentence. Once he or anyone else's name is in the open, reporters will follow them everywhere they go, and their rivals will ambush them while they walk through their daily lives.

He grabbed the stress ball neatly placed at his desk and clenched it to vent, calming himself to retain the topics he studied for later's Trigonometry quiz. Interacting with his fellow Dollars as Tarou Tanaka was fun and all, but alas, he was still Mikado Ryugamine, a high school student who had school life and a real-life circle of friends to juggle.

"Even if it's just a publicity stunt, Junko's fans will lap it up." Mikado wrote, facing away from the laptop to eat a rice ball. Wiping sticky rice off of electronics was a lot of work when there were tons of assignments. "I suggest we prepare a statement about what happened."

When Mikado first came to Ikebukuro, inconspicuousness was his main criterion for an apartment room. He decorated his room similarly to his old one in the Saitama countryside, average in aesthetics but with considerable space for whatever he felt buying, like posters or programming books. The other was good Wi-Fi; he had to be in the Dollars BBS or a chatroom for most of the day or surfing the net for interesting things he could find.

"should we? it's out of character for dollars," came hirothezero's reply.

"Not really," the young man thought to himself. Hiro's account on the BBS was a month old, so he wasn't around for much of Dollars' history. Even then, today was one of the few times he was online, where his irony-soaked posts either made another user like him or hate him. Every five posts he would post an anecdote about his life or the latest girl who gave him a hard time. He wasn't without his hidden depths; five days ago, Hiro

"Not if we're extra sincere about it!" Alan Woka responded. "I'm positively sure she'll give us another chance! a(っ´ω`)ﾉ(╥ω╥)"

Alan Woka, compared to hirothezero, spent almost his entire day in the chatrooms. With his partner-in-crime, Kahlua Milk, they would RP as their favorite characters; Lelouch vi Britannia and C.C. from Code Geass were their most common muses. Other times he started debates over which JoJo's Bizarre Adventure protagonist is the best, which he began by explaining what the manga is to a user that muted him right after. Once Mikado got done with his homework, he might finally start that Titan anime the two loved to blather about.

Such were the characters that made up the Dollars. A bitter young man taking out his anger at the female gender. Two weeaboos living vicariously through their favorite anime. The "assassin" who loved to make up stories about their lethal activities. The middle-aged man who lived his public life in a rabbit costume.

One could not find a more rambunctious circle of friends. Though Masaomi and Anri were close to his heart, Dollars was where he truly was himself as Tarou Tanaka.

"You really have no idea who and which fandom we just pissed off, do you?" Bakeneko321 replied. In his mind, Mikado heard him slam his keys as he typed his response. "This is gonna sink our rep forever!"

Despite him being relatively new to the forum, he trusted Bakeneko321 the most. He loved talking about his clutter of cats, his most precious being Chibi, his Kurilian bobtail. He also was the voice of reason who reined in the wackier Dollars to prevent further controversy. When Mikado was busy in class or doing assignments, he looked after the chatroom and the BBS to bust troll raids or other suspicious lurkers.

For now, he watched how Bakeneko321 played the cards he was dealt with as he tried to etch the trigonometric formulas in his brain.

---

5. Name: Setton: 2016-07-12 07:56 ID:M2-o0Vb9

Junko Enoshima? Who is she? Also, who is Nana Komatsu?

6. Name: hirothezero: 2016-07-12 08:01 ID:n90/1yJ8

a bunch of girls that inexplicably got popular because they're cute

thats all they are, attention-starved hominids who feed off their kind

7. Name: Setton: 2016-07-12 08:05 ID:M2-o0Vb9

That's some mean words about women, hiro

Those two still doesn't deserve to be robbed

Someone had to step into the fray

8. Name: hirothezero: 2016-07-12 08:09 ID:n90/1yJ8

whatever, i suggest we let this slide

people will forget about it after a week

9. Name: TanakaTaro: 2016-07-12 08:16 ID:I2v-40eH

With that being said, I thought I was clear when I suggested doing good deeds.

Look for missing pets, spare some cash for poor people, those activities.

How are those so hard to do?

I need to go though; teacher's coming.

10. Name: Bakeneko321: 2016-07-12 08:24 ID:11+Fj3kI

Exactly

I joined because Dollars seemed like a fun, chill place at first

You can talk about the latest scoop in the city, your hopes and dreams, even what brand of hentai you're into

11. Name: Alan Woka: 2016-07-12 08:29 ID:B3+Wc0p5

Femdom is my thing! ( ω *) Siblings aren't bad, if both are above the age limit!

12. Name: TanakaTaro: 2016-07-12 08:32 ID:I2v-40eH

...Woka.

Nobody asked.

13. Name: Alan Woka: 2016-07-12 08:36 ID:B3+Wc0p5

I'm so, so sorry! ｍ(｡≧Д≦｡)ｍ

Perhaps we could say we'll undertake a journey to regain our honor like Zuko from Avatar (m;_ _)m

14. Name: Setton: 2016-07-12 08:38 ID:M2-o0Vb9

Zuko from Avatar?

15. Name: Alan Woka: 2016-07-12 08:42 ID:B3+Wc0p5

Whoa… you haven't watched A:TLA yet Setton? (o_O) You're missing out so much in life! The show is an amazing journey everyone needs to take! (￣▽￣)

16. Name: hirothezero: 2016-07-12 08:45 ID:n90/1yJ8

sounds like some mediocre kids fare show

17. Name: Alan Woka: 2016-07-12 08:48 ID:B3+Wc0p5

How could you say that about that masterpiece?! Take it back right now! ((╬◣﹏◢))

18. Name: hirothezero: 2016-07-12 08:54 ID:n90/1yJ8

okay.

it's a mediocre show for all ages

targeted to kids, yet teens and older people love it

feel better?

---

Takashi Nasujima-san was the weirdest social studies teacher Mikado had in his whole academic life.

"...the Americans believe that the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were given by God himself." Nasujima lectured. "Surely, it should then follow that indulging our pleasures is a divine command in itself. It makes no sense to vilify Don Juan, King Solomon, and Hikaru Genji when they derive the same value from their activities as we do when we buy our favorite clothes..."

The boys were the only people who tuned in to him relate different cultures' attitudes towards sex to his personal life. Girls buried their noses in books, especially when Nasujima stared at one for too long. He was glad that Chabashira took a different class; she would've been long expelled had she listened to him talk.

Strangely enough, Nasujima's bizarre approach to history pushed the whole Enoshima incident out of Mikado's mind. He thanked his teacher silently for freeing up his memory for the quiz later that day. There was still free time to think about the Dollars' response after the test.

"Guys, haven't you heard?!" Once Nasujima left the door, more than half of his class huddled together for Rina Ikema's daily gossip hour. Anri focused on her Trigonometry book while peeping at the group from time to time. "Enoshima-chan got mugged yesterday!"

"Oh my, that's horrible…" Minato Yoshino remarked, fear filling his eyes. The rest responded with gasps and curses. "Do you know who could've done such a thing?"

"She mentioned something about the 'Dollars'." Dai Shusaku answered. "They've got serious cojones to pull off something like that. Gotta respect that!"

"What the hell's wrong with you?!" Akari Ejiri slapped him in the shoulder. "There's nothing respectable about mugging someone!"

"I never endorsed that, Akari!" Shusaku's hand motioned to slap her back but was parried in mid-air by Anri, of all classmates. "I just said those Dollars guys had a lot of balls to rob a goddamn worldwide fashion icon!"

"A-Anri…?" Mikado's response was shared by the rest of the class, who stared in utter surprise. "Where did you learn that?"

"What?" Anri noticed what caught their eyes: her palm blocking Shusaku's hand, and quickly withdrew her arm. "Oh, sorry, Dai-san! I didn't want a fight to start and Mikado to be hurt..."

"Thanks for getting in my way, miss yamato nadeshiko." Shusaku sighed and cleaned his sleeves. "To further give us a reason never to go outside again, there's a slasher going around this city. Sent one of my buddies to the ER yesterday."

The whole room fell silent. Anri covered her mouth in shock, and Mikado tapped his chest to take in the news easier. First, there were kidnappers, then the muggers who targeted Enoshima and her sister, now a serial slasher?

Ikebukuro just got more dangerous… and fun. In his other private chat room, Masaomi only talked about Ikebukuro's many malls (including the huge Pokémon store he always wanted to visit) and the many types of girls he could date there but was quiet about its shady elements. Then again, his best friend never struck him as the type who'd willingly be involved in crime.

"Iinchou-san, what came of the emergency network I suggested?" Taro asked. "Is it nearly finished?"

"Have you two came to a decision?" Yoshino added. "This city's starting to scare us."

"Uh, I think I've got a prototype almost done, but Anri and I have to double-check it within this week.'

Translation: he was too absorbed in talking to the Dollars to draw any diagram. Out of the 24 students making up his class, he only had Anri's and his number listed down.

"I don't think a network's gonna help us, iinchou-san, when there are bandits out there who act like they own this city." Kento raised his stubby arm. "The Yellow Scarves, the Blue Squares, the Red Shorts... crazy things are gonna happen to Ikebukuro."

"He's got a point! There are probably members of Dollars in our class right now!" Yoshino suggested.

The entire class glared at the person next to them, silently accusing them of being an undercover Dollar. Akari fidgeted with her pen, Rina opened her mouth in shock, and Dai remained unfazed. Anri and Mikado glanced at each other briefly, trying to minimize suspicion on themselves.

While his class was busy pointing fingers at each other, Mikado formulated a quick plan for damage control.

"Whoa, whoa, we can't just throw accusations out of nowhere." He held out his palms and smiled. "We don't even know if those muggers were really Dollars in the first place!"

Plan A: deflection. He figured most of his class didn't spend all their free time online, so they couldn't have known what the Dollars was until yesterday. The trick was to steer the conversation in a way that makes them doubt the gang mugged Junko and her sister.

"Hello, everyone! What did I miss?" Tenko Chabashira flung the door open to join his class in learning English. Ms. Yukizome politely chastised her for it. As soon as she appeared, the boys went silent except for Shusaku who smirked.

"Nothing!" Mikado knew not to rile her up at all. "We were just discussing what Shakespearan play to perform for Ms. Yukizome's English project!"

"Can I be Rosalind from As You Like It?" Her eyes shining with excitement, Tenko stood up straight. She then switched to English with an RP accent. "And why, I pray you? Who might be your mother, that you insult-"

"She'd be a good Cleopatra, and I think Goichi here would be a great Mark Antony. You know why?" Shusaku paused.

Tenko glared at him, anticipating what he'll say next won't be good.

"Because she gets to kiss a snake at the end of the play!" The boys and a few girls laughed. Mikado held back a chuckle, for fear of being slammed into the whiteboard. As expected, Tenko's face turned red, and laughter died down and transformed into gasps.

Before she could react, Anri rushed to her front, stretching out her arms to prevent a fight from breaking out.

"You think I'll be a butt of your jokes just because I'm a girl, right?! Especially after Junko-chan got attacked in this city?!" Tenko's arms went into her combat stance. "To the Dollars in this room, confess right now and you might receive half of my neo-Aikido's fury!"

"The w-way you phrase that, nobody's gonna admit that t-they're a Dollar, Tenko." Mikado bit his lip and steeled himself. He had no way of matching Tenko physically after seeing how she took down that thug a few days ago.

"As I said earlier, how do we know it was the Dollars? Many other gangs in this city fit her description. Dragon Zombie, the Crazy Diamonds, and much more!"

"Oh, so you think Junko's story is irrelevant, huh?" Tenko hissed. "How dare you try to shut her experience down!"

"Not once did I try to undermine her claim. All I'm saying is, would a group that cleans up parks do such a thing?"

"Yeah, what iinchou-san said." To his surprise, Shusaku took his side. "What did she ever do to you guys that you defend her like she's your mom or something?"

"She kept me sane when your types bullied me, asshole!" Akari snarled. "She taught me to value myself for who I am!"

"By letting your body be Photoshopped for cash?" Shikari countered.

"I wish the slasher got you, you prick!" Akari jumped up from her chair, ready for a tussle.

"Be careful of what you say, it just might return to you threefold." Remaining unfazed, he continued mocking her.

"I might have to do it myself, then!" Furious, Akari snatched a pen and pointed it at the boy's chest. The other girls (except Tenko for obvious reasons) called for her to stand down, with Rina rushing towards her and grabbing her from behind to stop a fight.

"Guys, stop it! Let's not throw more fuel into the fire here." Mikado slammed his desk, displaying his full authority as class president. "The Dollars have raised thousands of yen to build a pet shelter in this city. They adopt stray animals from the streets. Are these what thugs do?"

"The Yakuza do that all the time," Kento argued. "Anyone can do a PR stunt nowadays."

"I'm not a Dollar; I've never talked to them at all, nor would I want to." "But I don't think we're in the right place to judge what's on people's hearts."

"You might not be a Dollar, but your aura reeks of one!" Tenko yelled, fury filling her eyes. "That alone makes me want to purge the degeneracy out of you!"

"Somebody' out there's stabbing people, iinchou-san!" Xuân Dục, the Vietnamese exchange student, raised his voice. "And the emergency system isn't finished yet!"

"So a diagram is more important than human lives." Shusaku interrupted.

"Shusaku, shut up! No one here finds your jokes witty!"

"W-we're so sorry about that!" Anri purred, then faced her fellow co-president. "Mikado-kun, l-let's do it tonight at your place."

"You're right, the system needs more work, you and I will do it later." He then faced his class. "For now, it's best to lock your windows and not to go outside unless you've got."

"Iinchou-san, you seem to be more concerned about the Dollars' rep than our safety. Do you think mugging innocent people is public service?" Mochizuki stood up, his eyes narrowed. "You're showing an embassy's worth of red flags right now, Mr. President."

"How dare you place your fellow men's feelings above a woman's pain!" Tenko scolded. "It… it's so typical of your kind!"

"Think, Mikado, think!" Plan A was about to fail. No matter how he tried to reason with his classmates, they were fully convinced Dollars was behind the mugging. Worse, he's given off so many hints, he's sure one or two have put two and two together and concluded he's with the Dollars!

"Mikado, p-please! You n-need to calm them down!" Anri whispered, her eyes closed to block out the crowd forming in front of her. Rin, Taro, Rina, Tenko, Akari, Minato, Xuân Dục, and the rest were pitchforks and torches short of an angry mob. "T-they look like they'll lynch us!"

Surrounded by hostile eyes and unable to escape his own classmates, he took a deep breath and mustered all his available courage. His next speech was a make-or-break one; either he got him and the Dollars off the hook or dug a grave deep enough for all of them.

"Look, I know some of you think I'm with the gang," Mikado said, choosing his words carefully. "You're free to t-think that. All I ask is, can I at least say something in my defense?"

"Way to prove me right, you Dollar!" Tenko's arms slid into her combat stance, and the class president gulped. "Time to pay for your crimes!"

"Tenko, as much I want to slap him so hard his cheeks fall off..." A tinge of anger remained in Akari's softened words. "Let him talk first."

This was it. The moment of truth… the one he'd have them believe.

"My f-fellow classmates, I understand that recent events have put you all on edge." Fixing his posture, he slowed his speaking but articulated his choice words. "Junko Enoshima and her sister have been m-mugged in the city, and there's a mysterious slasher attacking civilians. It's okay to freak out a little."

"Does it mean that I think the Dollars were r-responsible for both? What I said was we should wait for official confirmation and not let our prejudice control us. I don't think that makes me a Dollar in and of itself."

Many times Mikado felt the urge to stutter and gave in a couple of times. This was his first time giving an impromptu speech in front of a flesh-and-bone crowd. All eyes were on him, watching what words they can use to hang him with.

"Let's just say, hypothetically, that I am one." As he spoke those words, Tenko scowled at him. "If any Dollar were to attack innocent women or put any of you in danger, I would be the v-very first person to call the cops; they could kick me out for all I care. I'd do anything to keep the Dollars from hurting anybody."

Nevertheless, he pressed on, kept a straight posture, and poured his heart out. For his and their safety, he left out his Dollar membership. Right now, he was doing it.

He turned to Taro. "Mochizuki, you're right. It's our duty as class presidents to attend to your safety and well-being, and I should not have let my feelings towards Ikebukuro's gangs cloud my objective."

Mochizuki nodded along, his suspicion replaced with a smile. It's working.

He turned to the girls. "And it was never my intention to downplay what happened to Junko and her sister. I understand she's an inspiration to some of you, and I humbly apologize for sounding insensitive. I'm truly sorry, Akari, Rina, and to all of her fans here."

He noticed the girls he referred to paid close attention to his speech. They weren't as angry as earlier, but they didn't seem to buy it completely.

"I will work to regain your trust as president, classmate, and acquaintance. For this, I only ask one thing." Mikado pulled out a pen and a piece of paper. "I need your numbers in the diagram so we can know who to call when trouble arrives. As these are vital information, I'll do my best to keep them all safe and secure."

"Excuse me, why would I give a shady male like you my number?!" As expected, Tenko interrupted. "Don't you dare creep on me!"

"Anri will have your number, not me. Is that alright?" Mikado anticipated Tenko's next move and parried it.

"Now that's better! You're learning, Mikado." Tenko replied, writing down her phone number and giving it to an unnerved Anri.

"We can get through this together, so please, don't let fear and suspicion rule us."

By this point, the stage fright Mikado had at first was gone. His posture was upright, his hand gestures helped drive his message home; he was the most presidential he's ever been in that room. "Now more than ever, we need to cooperate to survive and stay safe. You may still think I'm a Dollar, but if wanting everyone to be safe and secure makes me a Dollar, so be it."

The whole class fell silent. Mochizuki applauded, the only one in the class to do it. Xuân Dục lowered his eyebrows after raising them for what seemed like hours. Tenko, Akari, and Rina were whispering among each other. Anri smiled faintly, which Mikado recognized was her way of encouraging him.

"Iinchou-san, judging from what you said… you're right," Shusaku commented, breaking the silence. "There's no way you can be a Dollar."

"Thanks, I guess... Shusaku?" Mikado knew he had a witty insult coming up, but he let him talk regardless. "Why is that?"

"Does he look like he'll survive a day in the Dollars? He should form the Pennies instead!"

The classroom filled with laughter; even Anri giggled at Shusaku's joke which he hasn't seen before.

"Wow, that's really funny, Shusaku. Really funny." Mikado had to admit that joke was well-thought-out and straight to the point.

"Seriously, iinchou-san, you didn't need to make a grand speech to tell us that you're not a Dollar." Mochizuki said while writing down his contact numbers on Mikado's sheet then passing it to Xuân Dục.

"You better not be fucking with us." Xuân Dục hesitated before eventually writing down his number, then passing it around.

"Rest assured I'm not." Mikado smiled. For now, Taro Tanaka was safe; while there were people mistrustful of him, he hoped the whole affair would be nothing more than rumors.

He had rumors planned for those circles. Rumors that would increase the Dollars' legend in the city.

How did Mukuro put up with her twin sister for so long?

Simple answer: trading favors. The concept was simple; one Despair Sister helps the other out on something, and vice versa.

"Here's the deal, I'm gonna spend the first half of the day looking for your stupid picture frame." Junko never forgot to look her best in anything she did. Her red cashmere hoodie with a rabbit logo and ripped-up jeans came in handy; it was a startling combo of middle-class chic and anti-consumerist sentiment. She loosened her hair and wore cosmetic glasses to hide from the spotlight. "Come afternoon? We proceed with Phase 1. Comprendre ?"

"Comprendre..." Mukuro's shopping dress was more muted: a gray sweatshirt and matching gray, three-lined sweatpants. Hidden in her secret back pocket was a pair of scissors (bringing knives inside a mall was illegal) for cutting wrapping paper and the throats of those who crossed the two sisters. Her Adidas running shoes' soles began to wear out after jogging around Ikebukuro every day.

The sisters already felt lost in the humongous crowd as they entered To-Mart Ikebukuro. It wasn't the biggest one in Japan; To-Mart Osaka and To-Mart Harajuku were far larger. An average To-Mart had every single thing consumers would want; from alarm clocks to Zambonis and zen gardens to ant farm starter packs. The ground floor felt like its own continent; the food court and bookstores were kilometers away from where they stood.

Mukuro felt like a poor child entering Tokyo Disneyland for the very first time. Israel's Ramat Aviv Mall was nothing compared to this! The lights in the ceiling shone as if somehow the Togamis have pulled stars out of the sky to hang them there.

"Muku-chan, you're good with the terrain, etch the map in your brain!" Junko twisted her body to weave with the crowd, ducking and weaving through bodies of rushing customers to not get crushed. Mukuro smiled because she taught her how to escape hordes of fans.

"Alright, sis." A To-Mart felt like its own contained ecosystem; a sprawling urban forest where its inhabitants fought over resources through money and not their claws. The producers in the chain were cooks and underpaid factory workers, the consumers were customers, and the decomposers were janitors.

"For an animal to survive, it must know where the food sources are." She entered the elevator and pressed the button indicating the third floor. A brief break from tiring her legs was more than welcome.

Kamiso was Daiso but with higher-quality items. Shiny tumblers and canteens were neatly stacked on the shelf to her left, and to her right was a shelf for art materials such as adhesives and felt tip pens. The air inside smelled of fresh roses, calming her nerves and the speakers played cheery J-pop music that's sure to cling to her head after leaving.

"Good morning, miss! Welcome to the Kamiso store!" A young man in the entrance greeted Mukuro. His black slacks, orange polo shirt with the Kamiso logo and name plate showed he was an employee. "What item or items are you looking for?"

"Hello. Where are the picture frames?" Mukuro asked, her voice monotone.

"They're on Aisle 17, miss." The most noticeable figure the worker had was the spiky strand of hair in his head. "I'll guide you there in a sec."

"Thanks a lot." The young man accompanied her while she took mental notes of the store for future reference. Aisle 3 was for bags and purses, Aisle 4 was for My Hero Academia -themed merchandise, and Aisle 5 was for bathroom cleaning equipment. Gardening tools were on Aisle 15, clocks and watches on Aisle 16, and they reached Aisle 17.

Rows of picture frames stood across the whole aisle. Standard frames and decorative ones, tabletop or hanging frames, there was a picture frame that accommodated each preferred design. Mukuro wasted no time picking and choosing the best out of all of them.

"Miss, I'm curious. What do you look for in a picture frame?" The young man asked as the former soldier rummaged through the shelf's fifth section.

"My sister only wants the best of everything," she replied, putting aside frame after frame. "And I don't want to cheapen her."

"I see. Mine, on the other hand, can do with any frame, actually. All the frame does is to protect the photo which truly matters."

A store employee continuing her conversation? Relating to her about dealing with sisters? This was unexpected, in a city full of plot twists and turns. Apart from that one employee in Things and Stuff, he was the second stranger to talk to her and not feel unnerved.

"You have a sister, too?" Mukuro asked. What was his sister like? Did she love to call him funny names? Did she have a thing for stabbersnotch? She had to know.

"She's at home, binge-watching that Korean show about a pilot who lost hearing in one ear. What about you?"

"Junko-chan's splurging around here and meeting with fans, I guess." She stood up thirty minutes into the search, not finding a suitable picture frame. There were about three or four stores in To-Mart dedicated to them; perhaps they had the perfect one for her beloved sister.

"Your sister's the Junko Enoshima?!" The young employee gasped. "Whoa, I d-don't know what to say… you got really lucky."

"Oh, absolutely." Mukuro blushed, and her voice turned soft as wool. "She's beautiful and smart, everything that I'm not."

"Don't be too hard on yourself! You're pretty in your own way." Makoto tried to cheer her up.

"Junko has an eye for fashion." By instinct, Mukuro knew whether someone was acting too nice towards her. As her sister always said, they only wanted to get something out of her when they did that. "She never lies when it comes to it!"

"Maybe she's too harsh of a critic… She's a fashion icon, after all." The young man flinched, flashing a worried smile. "But how was she like, as a sister? How did she treat you?"

Mukuro didn't want to admit it, but his compliment disarmed her a little. The young Kamiso employee seemed genuine in everything he said. Surely, he had room for her to open up about her past.

"When we were five, we played hide-and-seek and she was 'it'. I hid inside a hay bale in the abandoned barn, knowing she's too scared to go inside. I was right, she never caught me. An hour passed, her voice and footsteps were gone. I tried to open the door only to find it locked from the outside."

Back in Fenrir, talking with strangers outside of interrogation or intelligence-gathering was a no-no. The other person might be a disguised enemy spy or had a voice recorder on. She lost a few comrades to a Boko Haram ambush in an expedition to Kano, Nigeria when a local shepherd was forced at gunpoint to give out the Fenrir camp's location.

"On the small window near the roof, the moon was up. I heard bats fluttering up above, and wild boars grunting that sounded like they surrounded me. For the first time in my whole life, I was truly alone. The only company I had was the flies surrounding a dead, decaying cow."

But the more she told of her story, the more she felt like she was able to lift a heavy burden off the ground. It refreshed her to relate a story from her childhood to someone else who wasn't Junko, someone who also had a younger sister to take care of.

"That was terrible… I can't imagine being trapped for that long." "How did you get out?"

"Mom, Dad, and Sis unlocked the door and brought me home." Her eyes practically gleamed as she continued. "My parents spent the night cleaning me, and Sis spent her night calling me stinkypants which was a kinda cute name. Still, she figured out where I was and told Dad where to find me. Isn't she the smartest?"

"Wait… did you mention how the barn door got locked?" Makoto said, looking worried. The young man placed his hand on his chin, deep in thought.

"Oh! It was a windy day when we played hide and seek. Must've slammed the door shut by accident!" She blushed at the memory of seeing her twin sister again. That was all that mattered.

"I…. I don't know... " The young man shrugged, wondering how to phrase what he'll say next. "It must've been more than that. Kids get really scary with their pranks at that age, sometimes."

"Are you telling me Junko-chan was a terrible sister?" Her eyes sharpened, her fingers curling into a ball by themselves. "You… you don't understand her. That's all."

"No!" Sensing her sudden sign of hostility, the employee backed down, holding his hair while breathing hard. "That… that was scary."

"I get that from most people." Judging by how the young man reacted, he wasn't a threat to her, nor Junko, nor anyone. She felt that she went too hard on him, and probably will give him nightmares tonight. "I apologize."

"I- I- It's okay!" Counting one to ten under his breath to calm himself down, the young man regained his composure. "That reminded me of the time when Komaru-chan spilled lemon juice on my blanket and made it look like I peed at the bed. Dad didn't believe me at first, though."

Komaru and he must've really loved each other as brother and sister, perhaps much more than that. The blood ties between siblings, especially twins, should be both strong and inseparable.

"Junko-chan does that a lot. That's literally all she does-" In a split second, her hands reflexively covered her mouth.

"Hey, can you say that again?" The young man caught on. Oh no.
"Sis, uh… she teases me a lot!" It was her turn to carefully phrase what she'll say next; her sister might've been at earshot. "Calls me all sorts of weird, funny names, but that's just her style of humor."

"It all sounds mean-spirited to me… I hope she's grown out of that phase." Makoto said, looking worried. Why, though? All siblings make fun of each other.

"Don't… don't insult her again." The soldier crossed her arms, setting her boundary. "You'll never fully understand the bond we sisters share." No one in the world will.

"Yeah, yeah, o- o- of course." The young man stuttered, putting his hands in the air to de-escalate. "I'm… I'm sorry if I came across as rude."

"You didn't." On the contrary, he showed Mukuro a lot of respect. "So, uh, you look really comfy today. Stylish, too. Junko did rub off on you!"

"I need to look my best when Sis is around… but I'm not into fashion at all." "My job was far uglier."

"What was it?" The employee inquired. "Did you work as a plumber?"

"I… I have to go to Seibu. There might be better frames there."

"He would've understood where you came from, Mukuro." The better part of her screamed in her head as she walked towards the exit. "He'll never judge." Looking back, he looked a bit downcast at how their conversation ended.

She didn't know that. Here she was, talking about her past and sister to someone she barely knew. A man as kind and empathic as he was had to have his limits like any other person.

What if her past actions as a soldier crossed his line? Would he even look at her when he finds out her operations in Ramallah? She doubted it. The nicest thing for the both of them was to keep him in the dark, his mind pure and innocent.

"It was nice to talk with you, though. What's your name?" Mukuro stopped in her tracks and went back. Junko-chan would understand her short delay, maybe laugh at her attempt to get to know a guy. At the very least, he deserved to know her name.

"Oh, we got so deep in our conversation I forgot to introduce myself." The young man smiled awkwardly. "My name's Makoto Naegi."

"I'm Mukuro Ikusaba," Naegi's smile was so infectious, she gave one back. "Nice to meet you. I'd love to talk more, but I have to go."

"Before you go, sis wants this signed." Naegi pulled out a Vogue Japan magazine which issues Mukuro quickly recognized. June 2015, the one with Junko on the cover with her leopard-print coat sitting on a red chair. "I know I'm asking too much, but can you do me a favor? I want to surprise her."

"I'll give you a hint." Mukuro whispered. "Tell Komaru to bring it to her public events. She won't say no to autographs."

Knowing Junko's mood, she might've torn up the magazine for no reason at all.

"Thanks a lot, Mukuro!"

"Before I go..." She turned back for the last time. "I might look into the plumbing business."

That was the most awkward she's ever been in a conversation. Apart from Junko, she was never open to anyone else; the only times she talked with her Fenrir comrades were to repeat orders from their CO. She had that to blame for her social skills atrophying.

But Naegi, without a doubt, treated her like a normal person the most. Most normal people wouldn't look her way, or greet her. A Kamiso employee allowed her to express what she wanted to say, but couldn't because she didn't care.

Slowly, he opened Mukuro's eyes to something new, something she still didn't understand: a friend besides Junko. When they met each other again, there was only one thing she needed to ask him.

Would she approve of someone like Naegi?

---

"What's taking Muku-chan so long?" Fresh from buying a stack of designer clothes, Junko carried her bags into Nanaya, a popular ice cream restaurant. A warm day required something cold to escape all that heat, and it was just on the floor above her.

She nearly tripped as two people rushed near her carrying EMF sensors. Looking around, there were dozens of people roaming around the mall with similar equipment. A middle-aged man in Catholic vestment sprayed the floors with holy water while his two assistants held up cameras. A group of teens laid their hands on a glass jar while it moved around a ouija board. Three masked men in black jackets stormed the place with seax knives.

"Was this To-Mart built on top of a World War 2 POW camp?" Junko wondered. It was two in the afternoon, not the best time for the supernatural. To her surprise, the mall guards did little to deter the participants; they stood aside and watched the show as it went on.

"Well, well, well, look who decided to stroll down the runway." A familiar man with a familiar leather coat dropped in behind her, his feet clacking on the tiles. "Going for the

Halloween photoshoot, Junko-chan?"

"By then I'd be in a sexy witch costume. Or a sexy Sailor Scout uniform." Personally, she wished this year's theme was Lewis Carroll so she'd go as the Queen of Hearts. "What is this, a Ghostbusters convention?"

"Way better than that." Izaya approached her and whispered. "What you're seeing is a scavenger hunt I organized in secret. There's a jötunn's head hidden in this very mall! The person who gets to find it within this day gets a special reward!"

"A frost giant?!"

"Millions of years ago, the gods and the Frost Giants did battle on the rocks that laid on the Earth's surface." His tone reminded her of the Ancient Aliens guy she used to watch for shits and giggles, but with a more academic delivery. "After they vanquished the jötnar, they buried them on the same rocks that we now call Japan. It's said that possessing a frost giant's head brings innumerable power to its holder."

"Muku-chan and I got up close and personal with a headless Irish fucking reaper."

Junko sighed, feeling let down by the hunt's premise. "That sounds lame by comparison."

"Met up with Celty once, huh? How about this: I pay her to buy sushi and pizza for me as take-out."

"Wow." The fashionista frowned. "Talk about lack of imagination. You have a sinister fairy under your command, and you use it as delivery? L-A-M-E."

Junko didn't have to say what she'd make that dullahan do. There were things better left to the imagination.

"It's her choice to work as my messenger." Izaya's familiar smile remained on his face. "In return, I help pay her bills."

"Pay the bills? Doesn't she live in the hills or something?" Scratching her chin, Junko's mind began processing what possible scenarios led to a dullahan arriving at Japan's shores. A part-time worker at McDonald's, perhaps a vicious hitman LARPing as an Irish demon for reasons they only know.

"Your prejudices got the better of you, huh. Despite her otherworldly nature, I can assure you she's just as human as you and I."

This perked up her curiosity that can fill a graveyard of cats.

"What does a dullahan do in this city, anyway?" Junko asked. She had to know this dullahan! She could care less if it killed her; it'd be her perfect death as her interest in the unknown ended up taking up her life!

"Ikebukuro has a city's worth of secrets, Miss Enoshima." Izaya pulled out his phone and flicked his finger over what looked like tens of notes. "My job is to peer through its collective unconscious and retrieve hidden knowledge, for a fee of course."

Secrets. Everyone had a few, some so egregious they'd die rather than admit them. Junko's seen many careers disintegrate over exposés and receipts, and many more of the rich and famous kept in line by the threat of having them revealed.

No wonder why he read her like an open diary back in Russia Sushi! Surely he had dirt on her, someone whose private life is a closely guarded secret from the media.

"You're the face of Teen Vogue, and have cameoed in a few Hollywood movies." His eyes scanned her as if she was under his microscope. "What I can offer you are keys to any role or gig you could ever dream of."

"I can get them all by myself with a body like mine." "What I haven't gotten yet is any info on the Dollars. Would you be kind to provide some?"

"The Dollars?" As soon as she mentioned them, Izaya looked up from his phone and gave her a slight grin. "Oh, they're the local anime club, NEETs who do nothing but reenact their favorite anime moments on chat rooms."

"Yeah, that sounds like credible information." Junko snapped back. "Totally not throwing a can of bullshit at me."

"There is an otaku group in the Dollars...so what I said was technically correct." Izaya's grin never left. Junko wondered: did he have a deformity where his teeth were stuck on that position? "But the Dollars are much, much more than that."

The Dollars were both petty thieves and anime fans, but were much more than that.

"I'd like to use your services." Junko whipped out her purse and rummaged through it for yen, only to find a few bills left. "Too bad I spent most of it today buying Balenciaga."

"That's on you, Junko-chan." The info broker smirked. "You're still in luck, though. Bring me the jötunn's head, and I'll tell you something about the Dollars for free."

"Sure, why not." Posing prettily in front of a camera was starting to bore her. A scavenger hunt inside a To-Mart was just the right form of escapism.

While the two were talking, a man whose hair looked like a toilet brush from far away bumped into them. He held up his Y-shaped twig high while chanting Latin phrases which, from her limited knowledge, were about the occult.

Yaushiro Hagakure's face was so familiar, Junko usually saw his face on TV. Nothing more than a cold reader who advertised worthless trinkets to his gullible audience.

"Izaya, my man! Good to see you!" He rolled his free hand to a fist in front of Izaya.

"Yasu-kun, I knew you would participate." The info broker returned the favor with a fist bump. "You've been here all day!"

"Izaya, I never thought you'd be close with that…" Junko faked her cough. "'Fortune-teller'."

"My powers of divination have turned skeptics to believers." Unfazed, Yasuhiro flashed his pocket tarot deck in front of the model. "Fate tells me you will come to me for advice someday, Miss Enoshima."

"I'd be glad to stick it to fate, then." Junko laughed his prediction off. "What's with that twig? Do you shove it up someone's ass to get their fortune too?"

"It's much better. Did you know this dowsing rod was used to find the Shroud of Turin?" Izaya scanned the twig in Yasuhiro's hand, looking unimpressed. "Yet it can't find a frost giant's head for no damn reason. Can you help a friend out with some clues?"

"The rules say you'll only have your equipment and your intuition." "Perhaps your spiritual level is too low for this hunt.

"Dude, the Kuzuryuus will literally have my ass if I don't pay them back before 2016 ends! A little tip would be nice!" The fortune-teller clasped his hands and begged. "To-Mart is as huge as Agartha, man! I got lost earlier!"

"Word of advice: pick less risky marks next time." Izaya chortled. "Try going for elderly ladies - just not some Yakuza boss' aging mother."

"What a fucking moron," Junko thought as soon as Hagakure stomped out.

She knew as a celebrity to leave her true thoughts about other people in her mind. "Piss off the Yakuza without contingencies? He'll be dead by tomorrow."

He got one thing right, though. To-Mart is vast . The head could be anywhere inside a store, the toilet, or its many employee-only rooms. To make matters worse, she only had until later to grab that head. Mukuro had a bloodhound's nose and was a good tracker, but she knew it'll take a week at least to find it.

What she lacked in EMF scanners or dowsing rods, her gift more than made up for it. It was her secret to success, both in the fashion industry and in social interaction. She grabbed her shades from the bag and put them on to not look weird in public.

Hidden by her sunglasses, Junko's eyes began to drift apart and into different locations. Within seconds, they captured everything around her: Izaya, tiles, stores, the nearby stairway, the ceiling, mall goers, and what they carried and saved all of that to her mind. The new information surged across her senses all at once; raw visual data transformed into stimuli her senses of taste, hearing, smell, and touch can process.

Analysis.

For normal people, it was thinking about what an author meant when they wrote a sentence or determining a patient's blood type and other medical statistics. Junko was no normal person. A description of it she liked was a "small hurricane taking place inside my skull, bits, and pieces of data rampaging through my senses."

While hurricanes normally brought about death and destruction (things closest to her heart, of course), her form of analysis brought about clarity and new knowledge.

Her gift laid bare the fears, wants, and needs of those customers! She felt her head throb due to the barrage of information crashing through her brain proved too taxing. Information irrelevant to Izaya and the Dollars.

Speaking of the information broker, she couldn't analyze him at all! She saw a murky outline in Izaya's place and heard static instead of his mental framework. They can talk to each other just fine and can eat and smell food back in that sushi diner, but for some reason was imperceptible to her gift.

What was perceptible, though, was the tile Izaya was on. She knew it was hollow from the clacks his feet produced while walking on it. The hole the tile covered could've been deep enough to hide a Frost Giant head. This also saved her having to roam around the entire To-Mart for hours on end.

By what little information Junko gauged from the info broker's psyche, he was the type of person to hide the jotunn head in a spot most people would never think of.

If so, all the fun and thrill of the scavenger hunt were out the window. How boring.

"Izaya!" Junko had to know more about this man, whatever the cost may be. "Mind if you step aside?"

"Alright, no problem." Izaya jumped backward while filing his nails. His little smile meant her analysis was completely correct.

The model sighed and stooped down to reach the tile, her hands barely missing Hagakure being chased by a woman with a tiki mask. She knocked thrice and, true enough, it turned out the tile was hollow. Sigh. It all went despairingly according to her analysis, as always.

She removed the tile to see what's inside and laughed in pure euphoria. If this was Izaya's sense of humor, he officially was her #1 funniest comedian in Japan. In place of the severed head of an ugly frost giant was a watermelon painted in blue with facial features scribbled on with a pen and a mop head serving as its beard. Of all 3,500,000 possibilities, this never came up in her analysis.

"Holy shit." Junko raised the watermelon above her head. "Hey guys, this is the jotunn head you've spent hours looking for!"

The other contestants stopped what they were doing when they saw the "head." Some leaned closer to see it; the priest adjusted his glasses to check it for himself.

"That… is the frost giant head Kanra talked about?" The teenager with an EVP complained. "I blew a whole month's savings for a goddamn prank?!"

"Damn! This is a Loki-level trick!" Yasuhiro snapped, his face red with anger. "Izaya, you said this contest was legit! What the hell?"

The model relished the grumbling coming from the crowd. This was perfect! This was exactly what she came for! Her grin hid her malice at seeing their hopes and expectations crushed into the ground, to be replaced by doubt and despair.

Some stomped their feet and left To-Mart, while a group formed chanting "Kanra's head!" as the guards tried to disperse them.

"Congratulations! The winner of the scavenger hunt is Miss Enoshima!" Izaya clapped, the space between his claps showing sarcasm. "Your otherworldly intuition helped you."

"The next time you organize hunts like this, make it more challenging, please." Junko crossed her arms while twirling her hair. "My schedule's really tight, y'know?"

"Advice taken. As a reward, I'll let you in on one secret as I promised." Izaya showed him a picture of a bunch of teenagers on his phone. "The Dollars is a large color gang in Ikebukuro. Unlike normal color gangs such as the Yellow Scarves or the Red Shorts, though, the Dollars have no color."

No wonder why Junko couldn't find any concrete information about the gang. Her fellow models could be Dollars. A taxi driver she hailed might be a disguised Dollar. Hell, Mukuro could be a Dollar behind her back and she wouldn't know!

"Interesting."

"I'll be extra kind because you spent the least amount of money looking for a painted-over watermelon," Izaya added, browsing through his notes. "The Dollars' HQ isn't on a flat, or an open court. It's on their website. Two websites, actually; one's a forum and another's a chatroom."

Nothing her analysis wouldn't figure out in a matter of seconds. She figured it'd be harder to code "Hello world!" in Python than to decipher their passwords.

"Who… is the leader of the Dollars?" Junko asked as Yasuhiro sulked behind her, chanting in an unknown language. "Surely you must know that."

"That's for 10,000,000 yen - and that's my minimum price for such sensitive information." The information broker winked.

10,000,000 yen. Enough money to buy Uniqlo's entire stockpile of clothes, and Izaya wanted it in exchange for a name. A name that he might have made up on the spot.

"No, thanks. I'll meet up with my sister in the food court." Junko walked away thrilled at her new playmate, so full of mystery he defied all her analysis. Will they become and stay friends, or eventually end up as enemies? Will they fall in love with each other, and if so, who will betray the other?

Ikebukuro was bustling with possibilities, and Izaya seemed to possess the dice to make anything happen. He literally had hope and despair in his hands; such a linchpin should never be wasted!

---

►► Setton has logged in.

►► Woka has logged in.

►► TaroTanaka has logged in.

►► Bakeneko has logged in.

►► Kanra has logged in.

►► Kama has logged in.

►► MONTA has logged in.

►► Kahlua Milk has logged in.

Bakeneko: there's eight of us here rn. Good enough to start?

Kama: aye

TaroTanaka: Yes

Woka: Sure! d(･∀･○)

Kahlua Milk: Sure! (○･∀･)b

Kanra: i suggest we wait till there's 10 of us.

Setton: these days sure are rough. Is everyone safe?

Kama: yeah

Kama: i have a dozen of knives in the closet

Kanra: if you need that many, your skills need work. Ngl.

Kama: i don't need to boast my skills to anyone

Woka: Red Carpet-san's van is like Howl's moving castle, but faster and with less witches involved! ヽ(ΦωΦヽ)

Kahlua Milk: It's more like a low-tech Bebop, but don't tell Red Carpet that!

MONTA: We're safe man, don't worry about us

MONTA: Our van is a moving fortress

TaroTanaka: Close call in class earlier.

Kanra: What did you do? Have the Dollars logo as the laptop wallpaper?

TaroTanaka: Enoshima's mugging came up in the class conversation, earlier, and I figured I could to get some heat off us.

Bakeneko: did you convince them?

TaroTanaka: I did my best.

Kanra: that's internet speak for "nearly blew my cover, half-assed an excuse to drop the conversation and ended up looking suspicious to everybody" btw

Bakeneko: taro i get you're trying to do damage control for the Dollars.

Bakeneko: but rule 1 clearly states you DO NOT talk about the Dollars.

Woka: I bet rule 2 is also that! (smile emoji)

Bakeneko: we don't have rule 2. We do have a rule 1.5 tho

Bakeneko: DO NOT talk about anime if you're Woka

Woka: You just shattered my heart to a million pieces. (sad emoji)

Bakeneko: nah jk

TaroTanaka: People really love Junko Enoshima; how can we recover from this?

Kanra: I'm not one to divulge sensitive info

Kanra: but as a woman, i don't want a community rife with weirdos

Kanra: it's my responsibility to watch over you guys like Guan Yin

Bakeneko: let me get down to brass tacks right now

Bakeneko: I have the incident on video

Bakeneko: i was there in the flesh, a witness to the whole thing

Alan Woka: WTF?! (surprise emoji)

Kanra: can confirm; I'm making a new thread w/ all the receipts Neko has

Kanra: will post link when finished

Setton: did you hurt her?

Bakeneko: i would never hurt a woman

Bakeneko: as soon as shit hit the fan, I ran as far as I could

Bakeneko: Kanra I'll send it to you in a DM

Kahlua Milk: These people are Shou Tucker-level scumbags! (angry emoji)

Setton: who's Shou Tucker?

Kahlua Milk: He's a mad scientist who forcefully combined his own daughter and pet dog into a monster! (angry emoji)

Setton: oh god…

Kama: his street address. NOW.

Setton: Lemme get him.

Setton: I'll try to stop him; I'm afraid I might do something I'll regret.

Alan Woka: I appreciate your sense of justice, but he's just an anime character. (sad emoji)

Alan Woka: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is God's gift anime, though; please, take some moment of your life to watch it! (happy emoji)

Kama: I see

Kama: I know another way to kill Shou Tucker off

Kama: who made FMA:B?

Alan Woka: I order you to stop this instant! Hiromu Arakawa is a legend and I will not let you touch her! (angry emoji)

Kahlua Milk: You mentioned her name… you've just doomed her! (shocked emoji)

Kama: thanks for the tip

Bakeneko: i hope this is a shitpost because i'll ask Kanra or the other mods to permaban you. got that?

Kanra: I'll consider it

Bakeneko: Let's get back to the original topic

Bakeneko: Alan, Kahlua, please stop derailing the discussion. go to 2chan instead

Bakeneko: BadBoy44 バイソン Shogun show yourselves right now

►► BadBoy44 has logged in.

BadBoy44: let me guess what's this about

BadBoy44: oh me and my buddies mugged a vain, brainless model

BadBoy44: and nothing of value was lost

Bakeneko: nothing except respect from any non-Dollar, you fuckwit!

►► バイソンhas logged in.

バイソン: Who cares?

バイソン: We don't need no respect, they need to fear us

BadBoy44: since when did we become the fuckin' Care Bears?

Kahlua Milk: I always wanted to do the Care Bear Stare as a kid.

Alan Woka: We should try that sometime! (excited emoji)

バイソン: THAT'S NOT A COMPLIMENT, YOU MANCHILDREN!

TaroTanaka: I thought all the Dollars agreed to give back to society.

TaroTanaka: What possessed you to mug Enoshima-chan?

BadBoy44: look, let me explain

BadBoy44: I want to ask Aimi out to be my girlfriend, but my job sucks and I don't have enough cash

BadBoy44: somebody texted me and a couple of my friends that Junko Enoshima would arrive here and walk to a Korean resto

Kanra: wait, who texted you?

BadBoy44: unregistered phone number

Kanra: that must be a new trend in telemarketing

Kanra: i need to check that out

Setton: this is literally what Snowden warned us about.

Setton: it's just as I feared:

Setton: the government and social media websites stealing your info and monitoring your every move

Setton: everyone, please tape your cameras shut

Bakeneko: no need to go that far

Bakeneko: what makes me wonder though, why was your first reaction to receiving her exact location

Bakeneko: WAS TO FUCKING ROB HER?!

►► Shogun has logged in.

Shogun: why are the Dollars a bunch of pussies now?

Shogun: the Red Shirts and the Crazy Diamonds laugh at us behind our goddamn backs

Shogun: we wipe oba-chan's ass while they're kicking asses and taking names

TaroTanaka: Because it's not the right thing to do.

BadBoy44: LMAO

バイソン: Whoa whoa

バイソン: Slow down, Buddha

TaroTanaka: BadBoy, Bison, Shogun, not only have you soiled our reputation in public, but you have also committed a felony.

TaroTanaka: Don't be selfish to think you three are the only ones who'll take the fall on this.

BadBoy44: you can't punish us lmao just bcoz you feel like playing desk chair justice

BadBoy44: that makes you the leaders when Dollars is supposed to be leaderless

バイソン: just let this slide once and we'll behave like a bunch of school kids, sensei

Bakeneko: taro, they're right. i don't wanna do this, but…

Bakeneko: you people have left me no choice.

Bakeneko: everyone You're reading this right?

Bakeneko: BadBoy44/Hotaka Ishikawa/901 Cosmo Higashi, 2-57-2 Higashi-Ikebukuro, Toshima City, Tokyo 171-0014/hotakabadboy44 /(090)-221-3628

Bakeneko: バイソン/Daiji Miyashita/340-0021 Saitama, Sōka, Teshiro-cho, 1-chome-3５-806/asuna_best_girl32 /()

Bakeneko: Shogun/Chikao Sakurai/7 Chome-13-2 Roppongi, Minato City, Tokyo 106-0032/

Bakeneko: I posted the PDF on the BBS too

Bakeneko: get fucked

Setton: neko, what have you done?

Bakeneko: the nuclear option

Shogun: what the fuck dude?

BadBoy44: you were in our GC and with us in person, Sadao while that happened

BadBoy44: been a fucking snitch this entire time, eh?

Bakeneko: you said it yourself, dickbag

Shogun: do you know you just did?. every single gangster in this city looks for Dollar scalps they can get

Shogun: this group is fubar

Bakeneko: also, the video is on YouTube now

Bakeneko: prepare to be viral

Kahlua Milk: I hate to admit it, but he's right! (angry emoji)

Alan Woka: Doxxing people is bad! It makes you no better than these hooligans! (angry emoji)

バイソン: to be a dollar is to be a hooligan

バイソン: this group's devolution began when you joined, Taro

バイソン: you and Bakeneko will be the downfall of dollars

---

"GO FUCK YOURSELF, BAKENEKO! AND YOUR GANG OF WEIRDOS WHO TALK ABOUT STEALING ANIME GIRLS' PANTIES BUT CAN'T TAKE CANDY FROM A BABY!"

This was the last message Hotaka typed before he threw his phone to the ground, smashing it to a hundred pieces. He let out a harsh yell that disturbed nobody else in his apartment as most people were at work. There was his elderly landlord, Kane-sama, who would kick him out, but he didn't care; he'd have to go anyway because he won't be able to pay the rent for next month.

Not that any apartment in the city would want Hotaka fuckin' Ishikawa as their tenant. Barely two days after the incident, his girlfriend dumped him, blocked his number, and screamed at him to go away when he met her. Hate mail flooded his DM's and e-mails, with a few threats of graphic torture and murder here and there. Fearing for his life, he triple-checked his windows and doors every night and never went outside until the heat died down.

"First thing in mind:" He crashed into his small bed to give himself some room to think. "How to rebuild my life after all this shit."

He turned upward to see Sayaka and her fellow Crane Generation idols glare at him from the wall. It was a jury of posters, twelve eyes leering at a man they deemed guilty.

"Sayaka… at least you'd understand why I did that, right?" Their judging gaze made Hotaka's skin crawl, his hands grasping the center poster as if he touched Maizono's shoulders herself.

Sayaka would understand. Sayaka would want him to smile.

But Aimi didn't understand, and now Aimi wanted him out of her life.

"She chose Junko over me, Sayaka." He soaked that poster with his tears. "That… is unforgivable!"

On his door was a picture of him and Aimi when they were children, playing on a sandbox. What was once an innocent memory was now tainted by the stain of betrayal! Without a second thought, Hotaka tore down that picture and ripped it up, venting his anger one shred at a time.

"Who needs her?" Hotaka scattered the shreds to his entire room, falling on his bed, table, and two chairs. Tenants were supposed to clean their rooms weekly on Thursdays, but he couldn't care less today. Kane-sama should've come in and swept the floor for him as a favor.

As he sulked, Hotaka heard footsteps coming up the stairs fast. He knew exactly where they belonged: a thug sent to cripple him and claim the bounty for it. According to TaroTanaka, the zeroth law of self-defense was to avoid a fight if possible- nah, fuck that. He'd go down fighting, or his name wasn't Hotaka fucking Ishikawa!

Grabbing a flashlight from his drawer, he hid behind his door and waited for the bastard to come in. What many didn't know was flashlights can be used as improvised billy clubs. One can shine a light on the attacker's eyes to blind them for a while, before striking their face with the bezel as hard as they can.

Hotaka had a pistol in his secret drawer, but that'll draw too much noise. He also didn't want to go through the hassle of cleaning the blood off the floor.

"Hotaka?" Somebody knocked on the door. "Are you there, Hotaka?" Unlocking the door, he waited for the bastard to come in.

The door slowly opened, and he was ready to break that bastard's skull. As the thug entered, he charged and let out a battle cry and-

"What the fuck?! It's me, Chikao!"

The deep, gruffed voice caused Hotaka to stumble into a table, dropping the vase on it to the floor. In front of him was a beefy young man with a yellow bandana covering his mouth. He wore a blue tank top, proudly showing his dollar tattoos on his shoulders.

"Chikao?! God d-damn, I was about to bash your head in, dude!" Hotaka got up and dusted himself. "You should've called me first!"

"Dude, check your inbox. I've been texting you all day." Pulling out his phone, Chikao showed his sent folder; it contained 10+ messages all saying "u there hotaka?".

"Oh." Hotaka pointed at the scrap of silicon and electronics that was his phone on the floor. "I had a bad day, bro. Sorry."

"Man, we all did." Chikao tapped his wingman's shoulder and sat down. "Just got fired from Sugary Paradise earlier."

"What did you do there?" Hotaka asked, sitting next to his best friend in the Dollars. Hanging out with a friend he previously talked to online helped subside his anger. With the world against right now, it was nice to have someone with him by his side.

"I tasted Ruruka's candy."

"Wow, dude! You gotta give me tips!" Hotaka grinned. He's seen Ruruka Andou on the Internet a couple of times; she looked so cute in her pink beanie and dress. Apart from Sayaka Maizono, she made second place for Hotaka's list of girls she wanted to date the most. Chikao was a lucky bastard to score a self-made entrepreneur like her.

"It's not what you think, Hotaka! It's not what you think!" Chikao shook his head. "I meant I tasted prototype candy before it's on the shelves!"

"Really?! Girls swoon over that fine, chiseled body of yours." Hotaka said, surprised his best friend was still single. At first, he said he had other priorities, an excuse he kept making. "You can win her over."

"She's taken, Hotaka." Chikao replied, looking green with envy. "At work, the blonde guy with the red trench coat watching over us, that's her boyfriend. God, he's got daggers for eyes, and much more under that coat; can't look at Ruruka without him knowing."

"You could beat him one-on-one, buddy. You're the strongest guy I've known besides Shizuo." Hotaka returned the favor after his best friend cheered him up.

"Shizuo could throw me around like a ragdoll, Hotaka." Chikao gulped. Anyone who was in the city and sane would've done the same. "Enough with the fighting stuff; what do you plan to do after all this?"

"That's been on my mind since morning." Hotaka juggled a lot of ideas on how to start over again and hasn't picked one. "Honestly, I haven't thought about it that much. Step number one: I could get my name changed."

"I plan to take a train to Shibuya and lay low until the heat is gone. Then-"

Chikao froze up, finding it hard to keep his eyes open. "I… I… k- know a… contact from t-the Kuzuryuu-gumi..." He never got to complete his sentence as his body dropped to the ground.

"Chikao? Chikao?!" Hotaka shook his body, then slapped his face to no response. There was a dart lodged in his elbow. "Who's there?! Show yourself right now, you pussies!" He roared, grabbing his flashlight and flailing it at the unseen intruders.

He looked back and saw two men come in the front door. Contrary to what he expected, the two thugs wore all-black vests and pants instead of a yellow scarf or a red short. One of them carried a silenced Glock 19 and aimed it at his face.

"What the fuck did you with Chikao?" Hotaka swung his flashlight in the air, intending to bash them with it. "Are you bastards here to avenge Junko Enoshima's honor?!" All she did was stand around and pose for cameras; any woman can do that. Sayaka's voice saved people like him from despair and made them feel like she was their friend.

"Your friend's got a rough day, he needs some rest." A female voice behind the mask said. "We need to talk, Hotaka-kun ."

Militant fangirls. Goddamn it! He knew Sayakers can be nasty at times, sending death threats and bullying people who made fun of Maizono. But breaking into someone's apartment and threatening to kill them was another level entirely.

"What if I don't want to, huh?!" Hotaka laughed them off. These were just two teenage girls playing the role of thugs for Instagram likes. The gun was a prop they bought at an anime store, the sleeping dart at a shady vendor in the alley near Hanamura's. In his most energized, he could take on both of them with his thumb.

"You will, Hotaka-kun~!" The thug took off her mask, revealing long, strawberry-blonde hair and blue eyes-

No. No. NO!

Standing in front of him was Junko Enoshima looking smug with her arms on her waist as if she was in front of a camera!

"JUN-"

"You scream, and that'll be the last time you say anything." The other thug said with a gruff voice, her mask remaining on. Hotaka deduced this must be that bitch's sister! The same cunt that nearly killed them back then!

"Fine… fine." He nodded despite wanting to bludgeon them with his flashlight. He won't be able to do it as a dead body.

"Sis, only fire when I say so!" She slapped her sister's shoulder. "Don't get your trigger finger get in the way again."

"Okay, sis!"

"You should know by now why we came for a visit, Hotaka-kun!" Junko blushed as her eyes grew big. "The four of us have some unfinished business, and we can't just leave you hanging!"

Hotaka felt his hairs stand on their end, beckoning him to jump out the window. His first impression of Junko was a hapless young woman, low risk and high reward. Now he knew better, she was anything but, and he dreaded what the two had planned for him.

"Question #1..." Junko sat on the chair Chikao was on, leaning forward and giving Hotaka a close-up of her fair face. "Why did you Dollar punks decide to mug us out of nowhere?"

"The gun in the drawer! The gun in the drawer!" His instincts shrieked. Get to his drawer without them getting suspicious, grab his gun, and waste them quickly before any of them react.

Only one problem, though. Hotaka never left her sister's sights as her gun remained focused on his head. All it took for her to fire was one wrong move on his part. Make a step towards his drawer, intentionally drag his words to distract them, none of them would matter.

With few choices left, he swallowed all his fear and did the only one he can think of.

"Fine, I'll tell you e-everything. I... needed money to ask my girlfriend out, but I was broke as fuck. One day, someone messaged the four of us your coordinates, and we figured, we could… we could take your money just this once."

Staring down the barrel of a gun was a good enough reason to tell the truth. Another was Junko's eyes moving… bizarrely, to say the least. Her eyes appeared cross, moving from one direction to the other while they scanned him. Adding the grin on her face while she did that, Hotaka wondered whether she was even human. To think this was Japan's most popular fashionista.

"You're not lying." Her eyes went back to normal, causing him to flinch. Her blank stare was somehow more unnatural than when her eyes were moving around, like an alien pretending to be human. "Somebody messaged you where we were? Who was it?"

An idea came to Hotaka's head.

"It was an unlisted number, could be anyone in this city. I've got something better, though." Loosening up his shoulders, he looked the accursed model in the eye and asked, "Do you remember… the guy filming the whole thing while we beat the shit out of each other?"

"It's hard for me to forget things." Junko curtly replied.

"Before I tell you who he is, I have a deal." Hotaka treated the Glock pointed at him like it's invisible. "I'll tell you who the Dollars are, as long as you promise not to touch my friends Chikao," He pointed to his unconscious friend. "...and Daichi."

"Depends on your answer." Junko signaled her sister to lower her gun, to which she did. "Bonus points if you name some other Dollars. You make a mistake, well, I have your address in my memory for a long time."

"We use usernames instead of names." Back in the Dollars, it was an unwritten rule for members not to divulge their names, address, or other sensitive information. Publicly, at least. The Direct Message function came after as a response to complaints about some members getting attacked and receiving no backup. There, users can share their location to people they can trust in a private chat room which contents only they saw.

"I have a juicy name, though. It's Sadao Kikuchi." He smiled, knowing just the right person to throw under the steamroller. "One of the more well-known guys in the group, the chat room's mod. His username is Bakeneko321 or something. Address is 4-9-6 Ikebukurohoncho."

Perfect! Junko and her sister would do whatever they wanted to that snitch. Kill him, torture him, the only thing Hotaka would ask them to do is to film it. After the whole incident blew over, he, Chikao, and Daiji would watch and laugh watching that son of bitch get what he deserved.

"Sadao put up our addresses online, then got us kicked out of the group for our adventure." Mentioning that name made him want to punch a wall. "If you want, I can show you their leaders. The whole damn organization chart, as long as you never bother me or my friends ever again."

"Wow… I'm kinda surprised, actually." Wrinkles appeared above Junko's raised eyes. "I predicted that you'd at least put up a fight, or be like 'I won't give up on my friends'."

"Apart from those two, I wasn't close with anyone else." Hotaka stood up from his seat. "My pen is in that drawer, can I get it?"

"No one's stopping you."

The two were talking about some topic as he headed to his table. Perfect. Time for Phase 2!

"Now, where did I put my pen…" Hotaka said, opening his drawer and feeling around for it. He was careful not to move his eyes to where his next trick was to not give it away, letting his fingers do the searching. Once they touched cold metal, he seized his pistol from the secret drawer inside and aimed at Junko!

"TIME TO SETTLE MY UNFINISHED BUSINESS, YOU CRAZY BITCH!" Hotaka shrieked from the top of his lungs, his eyes blazing with hate.

Junko. That name has brought nothing but misery to him. Aimi spoke more fondly about her than him during their relationship. Sayaka kept losing to her in many popularity polls. This was all before the events of July 11th!

"Oh? Oh?" Putting her hands on her face like a cat, Junko put out a grating, high-pitched voice. "What are you gonna do when you pull that trigger, Hotaka-kun?" Her long, red nails nearly cut Hotaka when she scratched the air with her left hand.

"I'm gonna shoot your deranged sister, that goddamn snitch Sadao and that bastard who sent me your address!" Hotaka barked, tightening his pistol's grip. "You all ruined my life!"

"She's gonna kill you, sis!" The other thug tugged on her sister's shoulders. "I'll open fire!"

"Then what?" Junko asked.

"I'm gonna… I- I- I'll…" His hands began shaking, throwing off his aim from Junko to her sister and the wall behind them.

His answer was at the tip of his tongue. Not stopping with the four, vow to hunt down all the Dollars he could find and everyone else who was in the way. Once his bloodlust was satisfied, rest and lay low, then apply as a dishwasher for that sushi restaurant Sayaka loved…

"She's right, you know."

Lowering his gun, Hotaka saw himself from a distance: a lowly gangster aiming his gun at a fashionista and her sister. Trying (and failing) to rob them has utterly destroyed his future prospects and alienated him from his gang and loved ones.

"And killing the two isn't gonna bring my life back on track…" Hotaka realized. It'll avenge his ruined prospects and satisfy him for a while, true. Afterward, he'll have to spend the rest of his life in jail or running from it. That, if the Junkommittee didn't crucify him or worse.

His Crane Generation posters agreed with him. Sayaka held that microphone like an angel, in stark contrast to what he will become. Her music inspired people like him to be the best version of themselves in everything they do. Would she approve of murdering people, though justified in his eyes?

Feeling like he deserved being called "Hot Garbage Hotaka" made his eyes tear up.

"Here you are, acting like murdering me is going to solve all your problems." Junko's words poured salt into Hotaka's wound-riddled body. "Spoiler alert: what my fans will do to you if you win, you'd wish my sister shot you in the head instead. You let me live, and you'll never, ever, clean yourself of that stain. No company will hire you, and none of your family will claim you as theirs. Either way, you're fucked."

There was something to her words; they sounded normal, but to Hotaka, he felt them shred his hopes and dreams like a cheese grater. Gone was Junko's taunting, sing-songy anime girl voice, and in place was a cruel, barbed tongue spewing poison down her ears.

"Whatever happens to you, I'll come back to my fans' cheering and clapping." "Can you say the same, Hotaka-kun?"

"FUUUUUUUCK!" Hotaka cried, sobbing as he threw his gun to the ground, contemplating what he'll do next.

As he heard a bang go off, Hotaka realized too late that his pistol fell to the ground, it faced him and hasn't maintained it for years now.

---

"Damn it, sis, you should've killed him." Junko giggled. "What a disappointment." Hotaka Ishikawa lived as he died: shakily holding a gun and throwing away his shot.

"Who's the disappointment, me or him?" Mukuro said as she spotted a camera above Hotaka's bed. Disabling it with a well-placed shot, she dropped the pistol on a still-unconscious Chikao's hand.

"Take a guess." The two walked outside to the fire exit, confident that no one else but them was in the apartment. "Also, your scissors would have made an abstract painting with his blood."

---

Earlier, Mikado anticipated that this particular day was bound for ruin. Hotaka and his fellow imbeciles disgraced the Dollars, his classmates almost figured out he was involved with the gang, and to add insult to injury, his Trigonometry test score was mediocre. He got so caught up with defending his gang, he forgot what the formulas were.

Thank God for Masaomi and Anri, who single-handedly improved this day for him. Though the former was in a different class from the two, the fact they can only meet on weeknights and weekends made him cherish these few-and-far-between moments.

It was Tuesday night; the trio was lucky that day tended not to have too many customers. Russia Sushi's best spot was waiting for them, a four-seater table near the sculpture of a bear devouring a bowl of sushi. Mikado's fun way to pass the time while waiting for his order was to ponder what was the epic story behind the statue.

"Добрый вечер, Товарищ Брежнев! " Eager to impress Simon, Mikado spoke what he spent a week practicing for. "На сегодня я хотел бы заказать это для нас троих. Шесть рулонов, пожалуйста. " Mikado pointed at the prosciutto sushi, a specialty Russian Sushi was famous for: rice slathered with tomato sauce, cured ham bits, and Bibb lettuce strips.

"Good evening, Mikado! I see your Russian is getting better. Your pronunciation of some consonants needs more work, however." Simon complimented as he wrote down his customer's order.

"Большое спасибо! " His Rosetta Stone subscription was a great investment. Ikebukuro was a true melting pot; Bossa Nova music played inside a huge Chinese restaurant adjacent to a Filipino-owned indoor basketball court. He needed to learn more than one language to move around the city district.

"Yo, Mikado! What's with the gloomy face? The gang's all here in the best sushi restaurant in all of Japan, dude." Masaomi tapped his shoulder.

"This day's got nothing but bad news, Masaomi." He confessed. "I barely passed that Trigonometry test, and there's a slasher going around attacking people."

"There's a slasher in Ikebukuro!?" Masaomi gave off an exaggerated gasp. "Does the slasher like… slash fics?"

Cricket sounds filled the air as Anri stared at the crew cutting salmon in the kitchen. For some reason, she seemed too interested in their knives. Mikado held back his face muscles to not wince at his 'joke', offending him.

"Too soon, man. Too soon." His best friend was not the best comedian he's ever known, but in moments like these, Mikado couldn't help but smile at Masaomi's effort to cheer them up. "Why bring up slash fics in a time like this, though?"

"You see, this girl I'm chatting with is into yaoi anime - male-to-male romance, and I wanna watch it to get to know her better." How many girls he hit on before her, Mikado wondered. "Any good ones, pal?"

"That's not my genre." Mikado was more into shonen - he recently finished Tokyo Ghoul - but at times he enjoyed a great psychological thriller like Serial Experiments Lain. "There are anime communities online where you can ask."

"Well, someone told me that Boku no Pico was the greatest yaoi anime of all time." Mikado chuckled under his breath. His friend was the type who would say that like he finished Hunter x Hunter. "That's a good start, no?"

"That's your yaoi anime, pal." Knowing Masaomi, he might actually watch it in the middle of the night and swear off anime forever when he's done. Time to teach him a quick lesson about subtle humor. "I'd recommend that to anybody."

"I meant yaoi anime that won't make me want to gouge my eyes out. There's got to be one out there, dude!"

"I was kidding, Kida." Masaomi knew what he needed to take with a grain of salt. He was the most street-smart of the trio; Anri was the most book-smart - earning a perfect score in the Trigonometry quiz earlier - and he was somewhere in the middle.

Mikado mistook Masaomi for a local when they met again after a few years, owing to how well he adapted himself to Ikebukuro. He initially thought his best friend didn't know much about the city's color gangs and their lively fights; now he was almost certain he knew how and when to stay out of trouble.

"For a second, I thought you're serious. Sarcasm just isn't my kind of humor!" Masaomi laughed at himself. "Anyway, I've seen this yaoi anime about two gangsters from rival clans falling in love with each other. I forgot the name, but the premise is interesting so far!"

"I hope they both survive in the end." Gangsters from rival clans falling in love. Mikado wanted to believe it was possible, but as Shakespeare's most popular play has shown, it never did. He's watched the movies before (in Japanese subs), from the 1968 film, the one with Leonardo diCaprio and Claire Danes to the recent film with Douglas Booth and Hailee Steinfeld to know how it ended.

"Speaking of gangs, people in my class think I'm one of those Dollars." Mikado confided. He left out certain details as he didn't trust Kida not to freak out and call him a thug after the Junko incident.

Before Masaomi could reply, Simon waltzed into their table carrying their order: six prosciutto sushi rolls. The tomato sauce's pungent aroma was enough for Mikado to tip him 300 yen (Russia Sushi was one of the few restaurants in Japan that encouraged tipping).

"I've known you since kindergarten, dude!" Masaomi scarfed on an entire roll, taking his time to chew every morsel. "You're not the type who would join those bullies!"

That upset Mikado on the inside. Setton, Alan, Kanra, even hiro were far from bullies. A part of him wanted to tell him what's really going on and that they're the friendliest bunch around. Maybe even invite him into their little club.

"Sure, but I'm sure rumors about me are spreading in class." He sighed, hoping to pick up Masaomi's empathy. "I'm gonna be the talk of the school at this rate."

"Let them be, dude. That's my problem with gangs and cliques; it's always us vs. them." His best friend quashed Mikado's thoughts of letting him in on his secret. "Your shirt doesn't have the same color as theirs, they'll bully you, harass you over it."

"Masaomi, that's deep of you to say!" Mikado said, wiping his mouth after he's finished. "This city's changed you, didn't it?"

"Ikebukuro changes all of us." He replied, tossing a half-eaten roll into his mouth. "Word of advice: stay away from gangs. Nothing good ever comes of them."

He never said it out loud, but he deemed Masaomi as the silly person of the trio: jolly, loved girls a lot, and bad jokes more so. Mature advice was the last thing he expected from him, and hearing that nearly made him spit his sushi.

"In a city filled with muggers, gangsters, and slashers, I'm thankful I've got you guys by my side." Anri, for a moment, looked away from her phone, having finished her sushi earlier than the two of them.

"Kida… it's nice to see you," she said. "We both owe Mikado for helping us meet each other."

"Anri, you're there! I swear I thought you were a ghost; a sushi-eating ghost…"

Mikado's phone buzzed in his pocket while the two talked. Pulling it out quickly, the notification was from the Dollars app (still in beta).

"Guys, I gotta go… man, spicy foods make me sit for a long time." Making an excuse under his breath, he headed to the restroom, covering his phone all the way.

Inside, Mikado tapped the app and saw a message from Bakeneko. "YOU GOTTA SEE THIS!"

What he saw next made him upchuck his sushi.

It was a picture of Daiji Miyashita, lying on the floor in a pool of his blood inside a circle made of fashion magazines with Junko on the cover. Large cuts were on his neck and wrists, a large bloodstain covering his right eye.

The caption was simply "EVERY DOLLAR HAS A PRICE. -S". Below it, "愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛".

---

Another chapter fresh from the writing mill!

I wanted to focus on the Dollars' in-group dynamics, how a horizontal leaderless group would deal with its own bad apples as I said back in Chapter 2. Who would've thought that robbing the most famous Japanese teenage girl had its own social consequences?

I always saw Mikado as someone who the Dollars changed as much as vice versa; it's given him boldness in leading his class and trying to deflect blame from the gang. Dealing with the fallout over the attack on Junko is the least of the troubles the Dollars had and will have, now that Ikebukuro's other players started to make moves.

What was so frustrating about Despair Arc was it nerfed Junko's charisma; she was a world-famous fashion model (and is so popular with cosplayers in real life she appeared in a Guinness book for it), but apparently it took brainwashing anime to drive people into despair. Her telling Hotaka that he's worthless makes her more like the Regina George-esque alpha bitch I always saw her as, but far more evil.

Mukuro also got the short end of the stick when it comes to characterization: her modes were either "fawn over Junko" and "kill or torture a cinnamon roll". Granted, it was a prequel, but calling Naegi a loser was way too much for me. This is my way to correct that mistake; giving her a chance to start a friendship with somebody who isn't named 'Junko.' Can this be the beginning of a beautiful friendship? Only time (and future chapters) will tell!

Thank you for reading all this if you get these far, and please leave feedback or Kudos if you liked it or otherwise.

P.S. Between looking for work, catching up on shows/movies I missed, or dealing with my recent high uric acid diagnosis (thank God it didn't reach gout levels), I know my update schedule hasn't been the best at all. Make no mistake, however, I plan to continue PaS until its conclusion to the best of my ability.