Chapter 38

Chapter 38 is the thirty-eighth chapter of the Dead Mount Death Play manga.

Official Blurb
If you want to get ahead in life, you need to have connections. A good connection can even bail you out of a tight spot. But a bad one can be a smoking gun...

Summary
After a long day working the bar alone at Youtoukorou, the short-haired brunet bartender—Urai—slumps over the counter to moan about how his colleague Nishida left him in the lurch without so much as calling to explain why he missed work. Lisa Kuraki consolingly pats Urai and pours him a drink on the house, assuring him that she will give him bonus pay for his hard work. Then, she leaves for a room whose occupants are wreathed in shadow and asks for a group of two or three individuals to go check Nishida's apartment.

Under the light of a crescent moon, Momoya Agakura packs Nishida's corpse into a duffel bag while chatting to Kuon Higuro about how the world is ending and—between the police attempting to assassinate Solitaire and Momoya's client for his current job—he simply cannot trust the police anymore. He picks up the duffel bag as Higuro unlocks the door to the stairwell; Higuro explains that they cannot enter the building Phantom Solitaire visited the day before via the rooftops due to surveillance and drones keeping watch, so they will be entering via the basement instead—through a passageway he hopes is still intact after *five years*.

Higuro remarks to Momoya that Agakura has been "really helping" a "weakling" like himself out as they descend the stairs—and encounter three lowlifes loitering at one of the stairwell platforms. One of the men takes out a blade and suggests Higuro "donate money to [their] cause," and when Momoya jibes that Higuro must 'look weak' Higuro reaffirms that he *is* weak, after which one of the men grabs him by his shirt and punches him in his right cheek.

With an unwavering smile, Higuro asks the men if they have any 'pull': he believes connections are love, and so wants to know if the men have any powerful friends or family members—or if they at the very least have someone who loves them to the point that someone would risk their life for them. Confused, the men decide Higuro must be high on drugs; when Higuro asks to confirm one last time whether they have no such person in their lives, the man holding his shirt sneers that they do not and that he hopes Higuro has a friend in the funeral business.

Higuro answers that he does and shoots the man sideways through the mouth—and later in his back, after he falls to the ground—and shoots his two companions as well. Crouching down, Higuro explains to the men that he would not kill them if they only had contacts—dangerous contacts—and after looking down the staircase to ensure they are alone, shoot several more bullets into the men's bodies so that they die on the spot.

Momoya laughs that Higuro is simply wasting bullets, but Higuro says it is because he is weak that "overkill is just what [he needs]." As they resume their descent, he advises Momoya to try avoiding stepping in the blood and adds his 'undertaker' friend will clean up the passageway later. When he says he would just go into hiding 'again' should the men be sons of powerful politicians or somesuch authorities, Momoya smiles and observes that the fact a 'lowlife' like Higuro is "freely roaming the streets" must mean the world is ending after all.

Higuro is not offended; rather, he simply declares that their world is "on the brink of a new dawn." Momoya hums at that before changing the subject to Higuro's evident preoccupation with 'connections', and Higuro admits that some time ago, a person he meddled with had an "especially dangerous ally"—which led to the destruction of an entire organization.

As Ranmaru Yatsu and Kōzaburō Arase rejoin Tsubaki Iwanome at a table strewn with papers and books, Iwanome grumbles at his laptop over the sheer number of people on any given frame of Shinjuku's surveillance camera footage; Yatsu, as he heads to the laptop on Iwanome's right, adds that Solitaire's proficiency with disguises means identifying him in the crowds could be all the more impossible. This point is not what troubles Iwanome, who believes there is a high chance Solitaire will return to the building—what troubles him is why, and he privately notes he must visit 'Polka Shinoyama' at least one more time.

Yatsu makes an exclamatory sound, prompting Iwanome and Arase to come check his laptop monitor, but he explains he was simply surprised to "such a ridiculously tall guy" from this morning's footage. On the screen are Momoya and Higuro, walking through the crowd—and Arase yanks the laptop away for a better look at the image. After a moment, he returns the laptop to the table and points to Higuro, whom he remembers was affiliated with an organization he "took out a few years ago." Though the investigation was cancelled at the time, he still believes Higuro was the mastermind behind the organizational scenes.

Danjo Tozawa joins them to have his own gander, but he does not recognize Higuro's face as he was in a different department at the time of the investigation. Iwanome reminds Arase that they have no time for cases unrelated to Solitaire, to which Arase replies that Higuro is indirectly related to Polka Shinoyama—and with a start, Iwanome recalls what Arase mentioned before about one of Polka's friends: Takumi Kuruya.

After practicing smiles with Misaki Sakimiya in anticipation for Kochou Eightport's story, Corpse God reflects on how people have begun contacting him about the mark and how—despite this being some amount of progress—the story for now must come first. Miyabi Hosorogi reminds those present that they still do not know what Solitaire's aims are, and Takumi adds that Fire-breathing Bug's involvement is worse still. He asks if Hosorogi is feeling any more inclined to share his knowledge about the mark with the group; when Hosorogi shows no such inclination, Takumi turns to the moon outside the window and expresses his hope they will have no additional trouble on top of all the trouble they currently have.

To his three Comps-3 confreres, Arase states that Takumi is a former member of Sons of the Styx, a once active loosely-organized criminal gang—and that Higuro is the gang's former leader.