Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) (24 page)

She deleted the message promptly so that Anri couldn’t see, then tucked her trusty PDA into her shadow and rushed out of the apartment door. Anri watched her sudden exit, sitting in place with a confused look on her face.

The man left behind in the apartment with her was wearing a white lab coat at home, for some reason. It reminded her of the man with the white gas mask she’d met two days earlier.

“Um…I really appreciate this… You even gave me a bed and everything…”

“Huh? Oh, it’s quite all right. Celty’s friends are my best friends. What would you say to being our foster daughter? Celty doesn’t even exist on paper, so she can’t be your official mother, but still,” Shinra said easily without much thought. Anri was relieved that she wasn’t being a pain, but something in what he said struck her as odd. She stared at him.

When he noticed the girl’s mystified stare, Shinra returned it, taken aback. Her reaction was curious to him. Eventually, he understood her unspoken question and clapped his fist into his palm.

“Ohhh. I don’t think you understand, so I’ll just tell you straight…”

He laid out the truth, flat and simple, without embellishment or artifice.

“Celty’s a girl, okay?”

South Ikebukuro Park

“Hello?”

“Wha—? Yo. You the shogun? Kida? Masaomi Kida?”

The voice coming from the other end of the call was that of a throaty man, crude and vulgar. He sounded older than their generation. Just like Izumii of the Blue Squares did.

“May I ask who’s speaking?”

“C’mon, don’t be like that. I’m a pal. We’re friends.”

“Huh? No idea what you’re talking about.”

“Fine, whatever. Listen, we’re at that old factory right now. Everyone’s already here, in fact.”

A chill trickled through Masaomi’s spine. The factory he was referring to had to be the abandoned lot the Yellow Scarves used as a hideout. So was he one of them? But he’d never heard this voice before…

“Listen, I’m Horada. You know me?”

“…Oh.”

The unique sound of the name brought Masaomi back to several nights ago, when he heard it first mentioned. “The one who got his head split by the Black Rider’s pal…”

“The hell? Is that all I am to you? The guy who got his ass kicked?”

“Uh…I didn’t mean it that way…”

Why would a man he’d never met before call him out of the blue? And at this precise moment, of all moments? The questions floated through Masaomi’s mind, but his silence worked to his advantage, as it prompted Horada to proclaim one relevant bit of information.

“Umm, so anyways, listen. You don’t gotta come no more.”

“Huh?”

“I’m sayin’, you’re fired. No more shogun. Beheaded. No more head.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Masaomi demanded, the overly familiar tone of the other man grating on his nerves. But the next moment, he heard something that made him completely forget about his anger at his phone partner.

“Is it Mikado Ryuugamine? The name of your little friend.”

“Wha…?”

The instant Horada said Mikado’s name, Masaomi’s entire body froze solid.

Why would Mikado’s name come up at this exact moment?

“What a shocker, huh? We’re all shocked over here. The boss of the Dollars, friends with our boss?”

“Wait a second… Where’d you hear that from?”

“Does it really matter? I can’t believe you were lying to us this whole time, yeah?”

“Wait… I only just learned that yest…,” Masaomi started to say, then swallowed his tongue. Who in the world would possibly believe that he’d only just learned the truth himself?

He got the exact kind of answer over the phone that he expected to hear.

“Yesterday? You’re not gonna tell me you just found out yesterday. You were best buds and classmates with this guy for over a year, and then you act like you didn’t know he was Dollars? You know that ain’t gonna fly, right? You little traitor.”

“I didn’t…”

“You should see everyone’s shocked faces over here. Well, I got chosen to be the new leader; I’m the oldest, after all. I’ll put out a death sentence on you, too. Don’t got time for it today, but you ain’t gonna be strollin’ around Ikebukuro starting tomorrow.”

“I said wait! I want to talk with… What about today?” Masaomi asked.

Horada snorted and challenged his former leader. “Now that we know who the boss of the Dollars is, we gotta spend today finding and crushing him, obviously.”

A cold sweat broke out on Masaomi’s skin, combining with the
humidity of the rainy air into an unpleasant dampness. “Wait, the Dollars aren’t…Mikado, at least, has nothing to do with the slasher, I think…”

Masaomi wasn’t trying to clear up his own innocence—he was vouching for Mikado’s.

But Horada’s ugly, crude voice cut him off. “But that don’t matter no more. The slasher’s just an opportunity, ya know? Either way, the Dollars and Yellow Scarves want the other side out of their way. So it works out fine.”

“Doesn’t matter…? What do you think you’re doing? Getting revenge for your head getting busted?”

“I don’t care about that, either. It gave me an excuse, and someday I’ll kill that guy in the gas mask, but the important thing is…we can’t turn back now.”

“Can’t turn back…?” Masaomi caught a clear note of malice in the other man’s words, and he turned on Horada, his pulse racing. “Why…? What did you do?”

“I’ll let you in on one last little secret. The Dollars are done for. And I’ve already finished off Shizuo Heiwajima.”

“Huh…? Finished? What did you do to Shizuo…to that monster?”

“It ain’t your business no more. You just better pray the police believe your side of the story—assuming the police find you before we do. Hah!”

And with that final snort, the other man hung up the phone.

Masaomi hastily tried to call his other longtime companions in the Yellow Scarves, but no one answered. The high school closing ceremony should be long over, and few of them would be diligent enough to attend a school ceremony in the first place.

But every single number that Masaomi dialed was not in use. Either they were powered off, they rang incessantly without answer, or they went to voice mail after the very first ring. The responses were varied, but the uniform
absence
of anyone to answer was cruel in its unanimity.

Masaomi clutched his useless phone and thought back to two years earlier.

The present situation was very similar to when Saki was abducted.

This wasn’t his girlfriend being kidnapped. But the same kind of
guilt racked him, tied his body down to the spot before anything actually happened.

It would be a lie to say that he had no fondness for the Yellow Scarves. But at this point, that meant nothing. If Mikado wound up targeted by the Yellow Scarves, the way he was targeted by the Blue Squares two years ago, and if Anri was taken hostage as a tool to draw Mikado, just like Saki had been…

He would end up losing two of his dearest friends, his “home to return to.”

“The past is lonely. You can’t escape it.”

Izaya’s quote from the past lay heavy on Masaomi’s heart. If the past was going to come back to haunt him like this, maybe he shouldn’t have been running around to start with.

Everything matched up with his situation two years back.

The only difference from back then was that this time Masaomi raced out into the unknown without any hesitation.

Run.

Run, run, run.

Just run.

His goal was clear: He had to settle with the past that had caught up to him.

He urged his nearly cramping legs onward, onward.

The boy only wanted to know what he could do, if he could overcome his past.

He ran to find that out.

On his way toward the ruined factory, Masaomi plunged into a crowd. It was the shopping area known as Sixtieth Floor Street, on the way from Ikebukuro Station to Sunshine City.

Masaomi came to a stop there, standing in the middle of the road to survey the area. It was the place where he had spent the most time hanging out with Mikado and Anri. The same went for Saki and the members of the Yellow Scarves when he was active.

He remembered how he’d showed Mikado around the area the first time his friend had visited Ikebukuro. He looked around to burn the image into his eyes one last time.

With a kind of determination in his heart, he headed for the Yellow Scarves’ hideout, swearing that he would never stop again.

But he was almost immediately stopped by a familiar voice.

“Hey, Kidaaa. What wrong? Your face, very depressing. You hungry again?”

He looked overhead at the source of the voice and saw a black man standing nearly seven feet tall. He was ushering in customers from the crowd with an old-fashioned oilpaper umbrella overhead and his usual smile, but he approached Masaomi in a different way from normal when he noticed the boy’s demeanor.

“Kida no happy. Very strange lately. Say crazy things, like before. Your head sick? I buy you cucumber roll, cheer you up. Kida now, you look like with Izaya.”

Masaomi wanted to brush him off and continue with his pressing business, but then he remembered the previous day’s events and stopped to face Simon.

“Listen, Simon… Thanks for the sushi yesterday. It was crazy good! Five stars? If I had the right, I’d give it all fifty stars and stripes! You can have the entirety of America from me, Simon. That’s how good yesterday’s sushi was—but not just that time. Russia Sushi is awesome every time I eat there.”

Considering what was about to happen, Masaomi might never be able to visit the place again. That meant he would never be able to repay what he owed them for their generosity yesterday. He decided he could at least give them his thanks.

“Give my compliments to the chef. His knife work was incredi…”

“Oh, Kida. You go fight now? You kill someone, get killed? Izaya put you up to something again?” Simon interrupted, as if he read Masaomi’s mind.

“Wh-why would you say that? What are you, a psychic?” Masaomi laughed to hide his surprise, but he did not deny either Izaya’s involvement or the possibility of a fight.

With his usual expression but a more serious tone than before, Simon said, “I hear from Tom. Shizuo shot yesterday. Bang, bang from gun.”

“Huh…?”

“Kill and be killed, very bad. Where I was, when people fight, someone always die. Masaomi, you look like person ready to die. No good. This Ikebukuro. Not my hometown. Much warmer, people give food even to homeless. Not everyone die when sleep in street without vodka. Kids like Masaomi, no need to kill.”

“Simon…”

There was a serious look in Simon’s eyes that Masaomi had never seen before. He realized that he knew nothing about the man’s past. Rumors in town were colorful—they said he was a former Russian mobster or a mercenary. Masaomi had never asked him directly.

But he didn’t think Simon was lying. He must have been through serious troubles before he came to Japan. If he took that story at its word, then Simon had experienced things that no one living in Ikebukuro would ever know for themselves.

And that was exactly why he was giving Masaomi this precise, serious lecture.

But Masaomi still couldn’t stop.

“Sorry… I’m sorry, Simon. I’ve got to go…”

He felt that standing around and listening to Simon would only make his mission harder, so he bowed and raced off.

Simon didn’t chase after the boy. He only watched him go, a complicated, conflicted look on his face. Even after Masaomi had vanished into the crowd, Simon stood in that spot for a while. Eventually, he closed his eyes and shook his head, then resumed soliciting for customers.

He still turned in the direction Masaomi left from time to time, however.

The town just showed him its usual, ordinary nature.

With one minor difference, perhaps.

There was absolutely no sight to be seen of any youngsters wearing yellow scraps.