Episode 23: TRIAL | DURRUN by Aito Kitazaki

Episode 23

Episode 23: “TRIAL” Picking up the instant Episode 22 left off, Yu-ri answers the toll demand by setting the trunk down and stating plainly that he is sober, sane, and perfectly calm about picking this fight. Abura reads him as nothing more than a lost drunk or a lunatic — never once as a yakuza — and after flattering the meddling Sasara into standing down, he shoulders his pipe and comes forward. Then the fight turns on a single detail: Yu-ri’s katana bursts into smoke and is gone. What lies at his feet is a dead frog, proof that the sword he has carried was never Ten at all but an object made by Ten’s Transmutation, the Fusebeast power that turns the corpses of living things into objects — the same power that once made a hot dog out of human bones. Yu-ri cannot say when the switch happened, only that the Ten he woke to after the shadow concealer’s spell may already have been a counterfeit. Without the blade he takes Abura’s full swing on his bare left arm, and the pain drags up a powerlessness he had kept buried for years. On the sidelines Soujun is handed a trial of his own when Sasara asks why his mouth moves for his partner but his fists never do. Every boast Yu-ri ever made comes back at him, and he understands at last that his confidence always had a name — and that the name is missing. Abura takes the trunk and offers him his life in exchange. Yu-ri stands up anyway.

DURRUN Episode 23, page 1: crows caw over the ruins of Tama Cemetery and black feathers drift as Yu-ri, trunk in hand, faces Abura and his crew and asks what happens if he has no intention of paying — Episode 23 title page
DURRUN Episode 23, page 2: Abura demands to know whether Yu-ri is sober, sneering that only a concussed drunk or a lunatic would come through the tunnel to pick a fight, while the man he dragged back from CHOFU lies bound nearby
DURRUN Episode 23, page 3: Abura laughs off the idea that Yu-ri is a CHOFU yakuza, insisting those cowards never start a war, and Yu-ri sets the trunk down to declare he is sober, sane and perfectly calm about picking this fight
DURRUN Episode 23, page 4: Sasara cracks his knuckles and steps up for the fight, and Abura snaps at him to stay back — the two ghosts of Tama Cemetery squabble over who gets to face Yu-ri
DURRUN Episode 23, page 5: Abura flatters Sasara into standing down by calling him the champion, then shoulders his pipe as Yu-ri asks whether beating him ends this, drawing a furious demand to know where all that confidence comes from
DURRUN Episode 23, page 6: Yu-ri tightens his grip on the hilt while Abura roars that a flashed katana will never scare him, and the exchange leaves a cloud of smoke hanging over the ruins
DURRUN Episode 23, page 7: Abura taunts Yu-ri to stop holding back and draw the sword, while Soujun watches from a distance and wonders why the blade that once pinned his durrun form stays sheathed — and where Ten has gone
DURRUN Episode 23, page 8: a dead frog lies sprawled before Yu-ri as a caption names Ten’s Transmutation — the Fusebeast power that turns the corpses of living things into objects, as with the hot dog once made from human bones
DURRUN Episode 23, page 9: shaken, Yu-ri demands to know since when the sword was a fake and where Ten is now, and only Soujun’s shout lets him twist clear of Abura’s pipe at the last instant
DURRUN Episode 23, page 10: the frog’s body drops onto the rubble of Tama Cemetery and a crow swoops for it until Abura’s bellow scatters the bird, and he snarls that he hates cowards who only run
DURRUN Episode 23, page 11: Yu-ri wonders whether the TOKYO Government took Ten, then recalls waking on the MACHIDA stones after the shadow concealer’s power — and blocks Abura’s full swing with his bare left arm
DURRUN Episode 23, page 12: the pipe slams down and Abura sneers at the small fry, while narration marks the first time since he gained the sword with a will of its own that Yu-ri has felt his own powerlessness alongside the pain
DURRUN Episode 23, page 13: Sasara asks Soujun whether the man is a magician, since the sword vanished the moment the smoke rose, Soujun grasps how dire this is, and Sasara asks if he would gladly step into the ring himself
DURRUN Episode 23, page 14: Sasara cuts Soujun down with a line about a man whose mouth moves but whose fists never do when his partner is in trouble, and the chapter title Episode 23: TRIAL drops over a sweating Yu-ri
DURRUN Episode 23, page 15: Yu-ri’s own past boasts come back at him — that groundless confidence transforms the biggest, and that the two of them would beat their enemy and climb higher — and he sees it was always this way
DURRUN Episode 23, page 16: Abura’s demand about his confidence echoes as Yu-ri admits he mistook Ten’s power for his own strength, and his open palm shows the proof he leaned on is no longer in his hand
DURRUN Episode 23, page 17: his vow to become the boss of TOKYO rings hollow as the words of Usuzumi, Kikyou and Sonny Griffin pile up, leaving Yu-ri powerless to fight and unchanged from the day he was thrown away
DURRUN Episode 23, page 18: Abura hefts the trunk, crows that it holds more than two million Lenny, and tells Yu-ri that tourists who set foot in Tama Cemetery become prey — this time the money buys his life
DURRUN Episode 23, page 19: crouched and stripped of everything he had counted on, Yu-ri growls that it is not over yet and drives a tackle straight into Abura

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