Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) (23 page)

“Hey, so you’re finally awake.”

“Ah…s-sorry to intrude like this!” she yelped timidly, as Celty hastily removed her grip on Shinra’s cheek. The dullahan typed a large-font message into her laptop so Anri could see.

“Oh good. I was almost afraid you might have fallen into an eternal sleep.”

“Th-thank you… I’m afraid I’ve been a huge burden…”

“Not at all. We were going to wake you up, but you really seemed exhausted, so we waited… We were just saying this morning that if you didn’t wake up by this afternoon, we ought to take you to a proper hospital.”

“I guess that means that playing games and watching daytime TV instead of caring for her makes us pretty wretched people,” Shinra laughed ironically.

Anri had one question based on what they’d just told her. “Um…the hospital? How long have I been sleeping?”

“Over an entire day… About thirty hours, I’d say. Oh, you did wake up once to use the bathroom, but it was pretty much sleepwalking. You collapsed right back into bed after that.”

“Don’t talk to a girl about using the bathroom, or we’ll sue you for harassment.”

“Why, Celty, you’re as punitive as a certain litigation-happy world superpower.”

Shinra and Celty were their usual glib selves, but Anri’s mind had gone completely blank. Part of it was shock that she had missed two whole school days, including the end-of-year ceremonies. But what would Masaomi think of it, too?

After what had happened at the factory, did her absence cause him to suspect that she might be the intruder after all?

Celty noticed the fear on Anri’s face and approached the girl to gently embrace her shoulder and display her laptop screen.

“It’s all right, I’m on your side. And this suspicious fellow in the white lab coat can be trus… Well, he’s with us.”

“Why did you start writing that I could be trusted, then change your mind?”

Hearing that the headless being was on her side brought a bit of calm to Anri’s mind. A normal person might have found that alarming, but given that Anri had just considered herself a monster, it was reassuring simply to have company.

Celty seemed to be even more human than human, and despite the lack of a face to see, Anri sensed that the rider was quite happy, which made her jealous.

So hearing Celty proclaim that she was “on her side” filled Anri’s heart with a warmth that she hadn’t felt in a long time. It was the kind of warmth she felt the first time she met Mikado and Masaomi. Anri decided she wanted to seize what was in her dreams and bring them back to reality.

Her parents were already dead, but Masaomi and Mikado were alive in the real world.

Anri made her up mind and stared at Celty, ready to speak.

About the various events around her over the last several days…

South Ikebukuro Park

A boy walked through the rain alone.

Beneath the hammering of the rain against his black umbrella, he clenched his fist wrapped in a yellow cloth.

The school ceremony had to be over by now. He hoped that Anri had noticed his absence from school and was at least concerned for him. And what was Mikado thinking?

Masaomi peered up at the rainy sky from beneath the lip of his umbrella, envisioning his childhood friend’s face. Drops hit his face between the spokes of the umbrella, but he didn’t even feel the chill of the water.

“The boss of the Dollars is Mikado Ryuugamine.”

The instant the truth he wanted to know came into his grasp, it sank to being the truth he
didn’t
want to know.

“Why…?”

He wanted to believe it was a lie, but Izaya never lied to his clients about what they paid for. Masaomi knew that through personal experience.

Even still, it was hard to swallow.

“Why did Mikado’s name pop up there?”

Izaya explained everything in detail, including the fact that the Headless Rider was one of the Dollars as well. But hardly any of that reached Masaomi. He barely even remembered leaving Izaya’s apartment and wandering around the town.

“What have I been doing all this time?”

The longer he looked up at the sky, the more something soft and airy began to wriggle inside his head. It felt like reality and dreams were mixing together into a complex cocktail.

If he reached out, he might be able to grab the sky—anything he wanted might appear before his eyes if he wished for it. Either he was low on sleep or the stress was having a toxic effect on his mind.

Now that he had the information from Izaya, there was one thing Masaomi needed to do: talk to Mikado. All rational thought told him that it was the shortest path to a resolution, even if it didn’t get there on its own.

But Masaomi never doubted Mikado during the whole slasher
incident. He’d known Mikado since they were kids. He wasn’t the type of person who harmed others, and his affection for Anri seemed real. Which meant that if the Dollars were involved, it had to be in some way that Mikado didn’t know about.

What if Mikado had a secret side to his personality and actually hated Masaomi and hurt Anri because he wanted her all to himself? What if he was putting all this pressure on Masaomi, knowing that he was the leader of the Yellow Scarves? The thought crossed his mind for an instant, but oddly enough, he didn’t give it much serious thought.

“If it’s really that untenable a situation, then nothing I do can resolve it. I’ll have to give up.”

It would mean that he’d been fooled by Mikado’s smile for the entire year, but on the other hand, he’d been fooling Mikado since middle school and encouraged him to come to Ikebukuro for entirely selfish reasons. He’d have to suck it up and assume they were even—whether he got crushed by his old friend or decided to fight.

But Masaomi had a firm confidence that Mikado was not the one responsible for this. If he had wanted to do it, he could have destroyed the Yellow Scarves in a much simpler way. If he knew that Masaomi was the leader of the Yellow Scarves and had a grudge against him for that, there were ways for him to deal with the situation. He would have made use of Izaya, another member of the Dollars.

If there was any other reason that he did not suspect Mikado, it was simply the vague and baseless faith that Mikado wasn’t that sort of guy.

If there was any reason that he might be irritated with Mikado, it was that he had never once told him the secret of the Dollars.

But that goes for me, too.

He recalled that he had never once told Mikado about anything to do with the Yellow Scarves, and his irritation turned inward upon himself.

With that irritation at its peak and turning to desperation, Masaomi found himself agonizing over a question: Whom did he want to see most?

Once the chaos had calmed down, where would he go back to?

He wanted to speak with Mikado and get things cleared up.

Or perhaps he could go after the slasher again, for Anri’s sake.

It wouldn’t be bad to hang around with Kadota, Yumasaki, and Karisawa, either.

And then…there was Saki.

Why do I bring up the name of a girl I broke up with?

He shook his head self-deprecatingly to clear the name.

The closing ceremonies had to be over by now. The options for what Masaomi could do next swirled through his head as he wandered around the park.

Suddenly, his cell phone rang.

He’d gotten a call from Mikado the night before, but he wasn’t ready to talk at the time.

That’s right, I can’t keep running.

Masaomi thought of what Kadota had told him two years earlier and made up his mind to answer the phone. But the number on the display was an unregistered one and totally unfamiliar to him.

Based on the number itself, it looked like a cell phone. An ugly sensation came back to Masaomi’s mind.

That vague unease that plagued him when he formed the Yellow Scarves.

That fear that shocked him when the Blue Squares’ boss called him to taunt him with Saki.

The mix of these two emotions filled him with a sudden, intense resistance to answering the call. But without a concrete reason not to pick up, Masaomi had no choice but to hit the button and bring the receiver to his ear.

And the voice he heard was…

Apartment building, near Kawagoe Highway, Ikebukuro

“Ah…I see how it is, then,”
Celty typed into the laptop on the table once she had finished listening to Anri’s story.
“So neither of those two you’re always with—Mikado or that Masaomi boy—know what you really are.”

Anri read the flowing text and quietly nodded. It felt like she was having a conversation with a computer screen, but since she didn’t
know sign language, there was no other way for her to communicate. Plus, she had met Celty a number of times since that first incident for lessons in using a computer, so she was getting used to the idea.

“Let’s see, we’ll need to think of a way to stop the warfare. Don’t worry—a plan started forming in my mind even while you were describing the situation,”
Celty typed confidently. Anri felt a note of relief creep into her mind. It was the first time she could truly reveal everything about herself to another person—and not in the mind-control way—and she’d never considered that it could be such a powerful buoy to her spirit.

Maybe it would work out after all. With that spark of hope inside her, Anri began to consider her options.

But there was one thing that weighed on her. Celty had referred to Masaomi as “that Masaomi boy,” while Mikado was just plain “Mikado.”

It was a very minor distinction, but Anri decided that it wasn’t wise to leave the issue unresolved to nag at her mind, so she asked Celty directly, “Um…do you know…Ryuugamine?”

“Uh. Ohhhh… Um, let me just ask you this: How much do you know about Mikado Ryuugamine?”

“Huh…?”

Anri wasn’t expecting the question to be thrown back her, and she panicked slightly. Why were they talking about Mikado now? She didn’t know why, but she trusted Celty implicitly, so she answered the question despite her hesitation.

“Um, he’s a very good friend of mine… He’s as important to me as Kida, and we both serve as our class representatives. It’s been a long time since I just had normal friends like them…and…”

“Okay, Celty? She has no idea,” Shinra said, cutting Anri off before she spent any more time searching for words to answer the question. “It’s very strange how despite spending every day around someone—or perhaps because of that—you’re so close that the most important things actually stay hidden… But that’s only natural. I hid things from Celty for years. But I don’t hide anything anymore.”

“I know that.”

“Um, did I say something careless?” Anri asked worriedly, but Celty shook her hand back and forth to indicate that it was okay.

“No, it’s just fine. You’ll learn everything before very long.”

“Um, oh.”

Anri had no idea what she meant, but she trusted in Celty’s confidence and didn’t inquire further. Celty, meanwhile, picked up the helmet off the corner of the table and stuck it onto her neck the way one would attach a robot part.

She was clearly getting ready to go somewhere, so she pointed the helmet at Anri and typed out a message meant to put the girl at ease.

“Don’t worry about it. If all goes well, this will be entirely wrapped up by the end of today. I’m going to go bring an acquaintance along. Just wait here for now.”

“Um, okay… I’m sorry to be a burden on you for two days running…”

“Don’t let it bother you. This apartment is pointlessly huge, anyway.”

She turned to Shinra this time and sent him a message very different from what she’d been telling Anri.
“Don’t put any weird ideas in her head before I get back. This kind of thing is meaningless unless it comes straight from the horse’s mouth. And don’t interrogate her or try any weird experiments.”

“I know. Trust me!” Shinra replied, grinning painfully. Celty looked into his eyes and tapped out a quick message.

“Trust placed. I’m going to go get Mikado. At this point, his school either gets out before noon, or he’s on vacation, right?”