Episode 19: THE CITY OF ART | DURRUN by Aito Kitazaki

Episode 19

It opens on a memory soaked in red: a boy, a woman, and a knife still dripping. A hulking man then drives himself through the night mountains until he stands beneath the TOKYO west gate and swears to smash every last thing the scum of this city have built. The group, meanwhile, reaches Zone 3, and Utaki is off the tram before it stops. Alice sprints after her, sworn never to lose her little sister again, and arrives with a bloody nose to deliver the tour anyway: CHOFU, the City of Art, where buildings curl like enormous plants. Every one of them is the work of the architect Osami Chan and registered as TOKYO Heritage, though the rumours about where his talent came from have never gone away. Yu-ri has other plans. Time Child, the shadow concealer they owe a visit, waits beyond a tunnel in a derelict district said to be full of ghosts, which is enough to send Soujun begging to join the sightseeing instead. They split up, kept in touch by the nose-hair phones Ojiki handed out, and Utaki promises to summon them by leopard-print speaker whenever someone needs hitting. She also asks whether Yu-ri’s sword is a tanuki — which tells him she has seen Ten. In East CHOFU the mood is colder. The GEJI-GUMI have been sighted, and Gejirow walks into Mamushi-gumi turf demanding to see Nishiki. Southern takes his head in one hand: there is no profit in fighting him, and none in joining him. Inside, the young-head is angrier that his zarzuela went cold.