Durarara!!, Vol. 4 (novel) (23 page)

“…Oh! He picked up! Hello, Iza? Listen, I have a question for you!
Hey, do you recognize the name Celty Sturluson?” she excitedly asked, reading the name off of the thick envelope. But she didn’t get the answer she wanted.

“…Huh? What do you mean, none of our business? So you
do
know something about this person, Iza! I knew it! Holy crap! No fair, no fair! No! Fair! Huh…?”

Mairu looked down at her phone in disbelief and began to stomp on the floor in frustration.

“…What happened?”

“I can’t believe it! Iza just hung up on me! Um, well…I guess I have no choice… Here goes…”

She quietly sulked down at her phone, looked up a different contact from the last one, and grinned to herself as she hit the send button.

At present, outside Ikebukuro Station

“Aww, man, where did Mr. Ryuugamine and Ms. Sonohara go?”

Immediately after they were let out of the van, Mikado had said, “Take care of Sonohara and the girls,” and raced off. The next thing Aoba knew, Anri had also vanished.

“…I guess Mr. Ryuugamine really is…oh, never mind,” Aoba muttered as he looked around. Meanwhile, Mairu and Kururi stood holding hands.

“…What should…we do?”

“Hmm, I guess we can just watch for now? I don’t know what will happen, but I sure didn’t expect to see her up so close!”

“…”

Kururi looked down the street that headed to the tunnel with a serious look in her eyes. Meanwhile, Mairu cackled to herself. Amid the cool breeziness of her laugh was a note of poisonous malice.

“So…I wonder if we’ll be able to
introduce ourselves to Celty
properly.”

Half a day earlier, inside Russia Sushi

“Nngh…”

The man in the tatami booth opened his eyes and stared vaguely at his surroundings.

“Oh, he’s awake.”

The man glanced at the first figure to enter his view and, through the fog in his head, said the name, “Shingen?”

“Huh?”

Shinra was momentarily taken aback by his father’s name. He examined the man’s face—not that he could see much, covered in bandages as it was.

“…Oh, pardon me. I seem to have confused you for someone else…”

“…”

Shinra leaned over the prone man, thinking hard for several seconds. Eventually, he bolted upright, took out his phone, and walked toward the seats at the front counter. Two girls trotted over to take his place and stepped into the tatami booth.

“…Are you…all right?”

“Yoo-hoo! Feeling better? Good for you, buddy! It’s all okay! Reconstructive surgery can work miracles these days! You even look cool in those bandages, if you don’t mind me saying so!”

“Ahh… I have not thanked you two yet. Thank you for saving me.”

Egor’s eyes were sharp as they gazed through the bandages, but he maintained a gentlemanly demeanor. Relieved that their acquaintance would recover, Simon and the manager kicked up a conversation in Russian with Egor.

“XXXX” “XX”

“XXXXX” “XX!”

As the conversation went on, the manager’s face grew more and more gloomy.

“What’s up?” Mairu asked.

The manager responded, “Well…it sounds like he doesn’t have a coin to his name.”

“…Forgive me. I just failed the job I was pursuing… Now I wish that I had gotten some money up front.”

“So what’s your plan? If we just hand over two hundred thousand
yen now, we can’t stock the fish for tomorrow… I suppose we could just close the restaurant tomorrow, but then…”

“Oh, close store, very good. Tomorrow we celebrate Sushi Extermination Day, eat ramen, eat mochi.”

“Get outta here with that bullshit,” the manager grumbled. Meanwhile, Mairu squatted down on the tatami in the booth.

“Hey, you.” She pulled on Egor’s sleeve. He looked puzzled.

“…What?” he asked suspiciously. Mairu gave him an angelic smile.

“Shall we front you the money?”

At present, tunnel, Ikebukuro Station

Celty was in a panic.

The cargo she was ferrying suddenly woke up and began neutralizing the oncoming bikers with his bare hands.

Even the term
smooth
failed to describe his movements. He was smoke in human form, riding the breeze and flowing between the attacking men.

When they passed by one another, his target would already be fallen. It was as though he were teaching dozens of monkeys how to dance.

Totally unsure of what was real anymore, Celty turned back toward the van. She was concerned about the safety of Kadota’s team—but she found a fresh concern when she did so.

Halfway down the slope leading to the tunnel was a figure sprinting toward them at full speed.

Mikado?!

She tried to send body and hand signals to the boy to warn him to turn back, but not only did she have bigger fish to fry, it would be counterproductive if the enemy noticed Mikado because of her signals.

And behind him, on the other side of the road, she saw a busty girl with glasses.

Anri!

She knew Anri was powerful. If she used the power of the cursed blade Saika to its full extent, the girl could be even more dangerous than Celty.

But that’s exactly what you shouldn’t do!

Anri was keeping the fact that she was Saika a secret from everyone. If she utilized that power right here in the open—possibly with TV cameras pointed at her—it would ruin everything for her.

This was already a bewildering and frightening turn of events for Celty.

Then, Ikebukuro’s holiday made it worse.

A fierce impact echoed through the tunnel, drawing the attention of everyone present. It happened on the other side of Celty’s net, where the motorcycle gang members were trying to break through with dozens of bikes left behind.

The source of the sound was a motorcycle, flying as though it had been struck by a large car. And waving around a motorcycle engine in one hand—

A knight in medieval armor,
with no head
.

Huh?

Confusion reigned.

Confusion reigned.

Another one…of me…?

At first, Celty thought that perhaps another of her kind had just appeared in Ikebukuro. She did remember that back in Ireland, she sensed the presence of a number of other dullahans lurking somewhere out there.

But why here and now?

A fresh wave of doubt and confusion rolled over her—but paradoxically, the increasingly confusing images only cooled her head down.

No, this presence…doesn’t belong to “us”…

But…there’s something among all the humans…

It was at that point that Celty quietly recalled when she had felt that presence.

Just a few hours ago, when she’d run a job during the morning.

This aura…

It’s who I transported this morning!

Several hours earlier, warehouse, Ikebukuro

There was a warehouse sector quite a ways removed from the metropolitan center of Ikebukuro. One of the buildings, which was currently empty, served as the meeting place of Celty and her client.

The client was a stranger to her and had been introduced through Shizuo Heiwajima.

It’s quite rare for Shizuo to send someone my way.

The client was a woman hiding her face with a muffler, hat, and sunglasses, and the job required Celty to take her to the designated location.

Although she did not provide a more detailed reason, the woman was apparently wanted by the mob, and it was possible that they would have a makeshift checkpoint set up along the way to detain her.

At first Celty wasn’t so sure about her, but once she picked up the woman’s “presence,” she couldn’t help but ask:

“Do you happen to have a bit of a special power?”

“…Huh?”

The woman hiding her face—Ruri Hijiribe—was taken aback. She stared down the Black Rider before her.

Ruri had decided that in order to give her time to think about her future, she ought to return home. But given that she was a very recognizable figure, she couldn’t afford to cause a stir around town.

That white man might be lurking around somewhere.

It was a single phone call the previous night that had lured her out as Hollywood.

“I know your secret. Let’s go watch a movie together. A monster movie from Hollywood,” his message went, along with the location of that park and a time. That was where she met that hit man—and a true monster.

None of it mattered to her now—but according to Yuuhei, there was a good chance that monster was a relative of his.

Perhaps that was why he helped her: a feeling of guilt and responsibility. Meanwhile, Yuuhei introduced this person to her.

He said, “My brother knows a courier who he tells me about all the time. I’ll ask him if he can put you in touch.” And here she was now, meeting the Black Rider.

The rider was an abnormal being in each and every way—but most surprising to Ruri was the way the rider was able to pinpoint that one feature about her.

That her body might not be entirely human in nature.

Late last night, Russia Sushi

A black-market doctor spoke over the phone with his father.

“So will you explain what’s going on here, Dad?”

“…Sometimes coincidence can be detestable. I think I understand how Izaya feels.”