Durarara!!, Vol. 4 (novel) (27 page)

The shadow shrugged slightly and typed out,
“Don’t mind me. Thanks, though.”

The young man looked at the text and smiled shyly. Over the raucous sounds of the nearby shabu-shabu party, he said, “These last few days have been very wild.”

“I guess.”

“Let’s see… Should I start with the kinky abandonment I suffered…?”

“Don’t call it kinky abandonment!”

By putting her hands around his neck, Celty inadvertently returned the apartment to its most customary state. But suddenly, she stopped, acting seriously, and asked,
“What do you suppose I should have done?”

“About what?”

“Everything ended without any real answers. I just…don’t know if I should continue with my courier work or not…”

“What’s this all about?”

“If I take on some dangerous job, it could mean bad news for you, even if I’m not—”
she began to write, when Shinra reached out and closed the PDA screen.

“Like I said earlier, we’re a family now, so a bit of trouble means nothing to me… And as long as I’m scaling that wall with you, no difficulty is a bad thing to me.”

“…”

“Don’t you realize I’ve already scaled the highest wall there is—getting you to love me?” the doctor stated boldly and shamelessly. Celty smiled inwardly, picked up the nearby helmet, and bumped its visor against his forehead.

And so the doting lovers, as well as all the people sitting around the table, heartily savored their happiness in whatever form it took.

As members of one giant family within the context of a city, they found the places they could call their own within their daily lives.

It was as though the city, after enjoying its holiday, decided to give a little something back.

“Man, I really made a lot of money that day. Not much of it made sense, but I got eight hundred thousand yen up front. The funny thing is, the
cargo ended up moving on his own. Should I assume that I actually did the job they paid me for?”

“As long as there are no complaints, right? I went through a lot of trouble that night, but I made two hundred thousand yen on my own.”

“Ooh! That makes a million yen…the exact amount that I lost! We made it back!”

“Way to go, Celty! It is a triumph of the power of our love!”

As a matter of fact, that money was the very same stack of bills that Celty had lost to begin with, which meant that she and Shinra had essentially done a very busy day’s work for free.

But whether they ever realized that or not is a story for another time.

Chat room

Izaya’s apartment, Shinjuku

“Hey, Namie.”

“What?”

Izaya stopped staring at his desktop and turned with a smile to Namie, who was busy completing work tasks on her laptop.

“Feel like having a hot pot? Shabu-shabu, crab stew—anything you want.”

“Would you mind not using me to fulfill your empty sense of vanity, just because your chat room friends are all having hot pots?” Namie responded.

Izaya’s cheek twitched, and he shook his head. “…Did you see that?”

“The whole thing.”

“I see… You were the one who told my sisters about Celty, weren’t you?”

“That’s a good question. Oh, look…your weird girlie talk online is even creepier than before,” Namie said with an evil grin and derisive glance toward Izaya, as she monitored the chat room on her laptop in between tasks. “Also, I’m surprised… It turns out you have a human side after all. Perhaps that’s the eternal twenty-one-year-old in you?”

“You are developing into quite a handful… Shit, I should have made it invisible to anyone outside of the participants, the way Tsukumoya’s is set up,” he grumbled. The so-called puppet master, who had been outside of the loop this entire time, looked out of the window.

Izaya gazed upon the profile of Shinjuku and thought to himself.

He had abandoned any pretense at a normalized life that brought stability and relief.

He did not find it necessary for himself, but he understood that people did need such a thing.

He envied the members of the chat who fondly spoke of their lives, looked out the window at the sky, and envied Ikebukuro itself.

The city swallowed that one man’s envy and sang the glories of its holiday once again.

Once he had thoroughly envied Ikebukuro’s holiday, Izaya shut his eyes and smiled.

“Yes…I suppose I should enjoy my holiday now.”

The man who had been left out of all the fun this time smiled with vengeance.

“There are plenty of sparks…that might be put to use.”

The night of the incident

When she was under the blanket, Anri quietly thought to herself. She thought of the bandaged man who had helped Celty earlier in the day.

His face was covered by those bandages…but I’m sure of it. That was him.

The white man who had been talking to the man in the gas mask while they were returning from karaoke the night before.

The memory of that sighting caused Anri to pull the blanket up over her head so she could face the curse echoing throughout her body.

When he had been talking to the man in the gas mask, she felt a hand on her shoulder from behind—and in that moment, a nasty sense of pressure engulfed her entire body.

A cold sharpness ran through her shoulder, and for a moment, time froze within her.

It felt like her freedom of movement had been stolen, like her body was being manhandled all over.

Zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig-zig—

The march of the ugly creaking reached its peak, and every cell in her body screamed.

Warning her of the danger of the man behind her.

That he was far, far more dangerous than she could imagine.

Which was why she needed to love him that very instant.

In that moment, it was not the man’s presence that was handling her.

The creaking, the
zig-zig-zigging
inside her body was Saika itself.

The moment the hand landed on Anri’s shoulder, only she was aware of what happened.

Every cell in her body screamed out, and Saika’s true body emerged, just the tip, from her shoulder, slicing the palm of the hand that had been placed there.

As a result, the man became a child of Saika’s and not by Anri’s choice.

Even knowing that it would not affect his daily life, even knowing that he was not working in an honest trade, Anri could not ignore the shock of having inflicted that curse upon him.

What if…

What if, just like today…Saika activates and does the same thing to Ryuugamine or Kida…?

The realization that the curse she had come to accept was far more dangerous than she was giving it credit for plunged Anri into a state of fear.

Not fear that she would be taken over by Saika—but fear that she might use Saika to control those she loved. And in the background, she heard the quiet voices cursing.

Cursing her with their love, over and over and over.

A conversation between three Russians in their mother tongue, Russia Sushi

“All right, Egor. You’re Colonel Lingerin’s right-hand man…so if you’re here, what happened?”

“We’ve got two men AWOL from the organization.”

“Ha-ha! You mean us? You’re coming to finish us off, after all this time?”

“No… Colonel Lingerin has no desire to deal with you at this point. The escapees are two others that you wouldn’t know…”

“They’re apparently hiding out in Tokyo, so I thought I would let you two know. And now thanks to my desire to engage in a little side business, I’ve had to get plastic surgery.”

A conversation between officers of the Awakusu-kai

“So…we still can’t find Yodogiri?”

“…The other families seem to think that we took him out.”

“To think that old badger was in bed with multiple yakuza groups… We took him for granted.”

“You can’t be too careful. He’s more than just the president of a talent agency… There’s too much there that doesn’t add up.”

“…So the fact that he put us head-to-head with Hollywood means we were nothing but sacrificial pawns to him?”

“The bastard.”

“Spare no expense on intel. I want that fraud to sleep with the fishes.”

A conversation between boys, Ikebukuro

“Mr. Ryuugamine’s really fascinating. Yeah, he’s so interesting. He might even be more interesting as a friend than Mr. Kida.”

“On what basis?” “Great, there goes your sickness again.” “Hee-hee!”

“I told you about how we got attacked by the motorcycle gangs while riding in a van, right?”

“Weren’t you the one who called in one of those gangs, Izumii?”

“Don’t call me by my old name. It makes me think of my brother.”

“Must be weird for brothers to have different last names. But I bet you’re happy not to share a name with a brother stuck in juvie, huh?”

“You know what my older brother did? He took the Blue Squares I went to all the trouble of creating and ruined them. Useless idiot.”

“So what’s this Mr. Ryuugamine like? You make it sound like he’ll be real useful.”

“…Oh, right. Yeah… Anyway, we were stuck in this obviously crazy situation, where anyone would break down in tears… But Mr. Ryuugamine…he was
smiling
about it.”

“Seriously?” “He a masochist?” “Hee-hee!”

“That’s what I mean—He’s real fascinating. I think he loves it.”

“Loves what?”

“He’s one of those people… He just loves stuff that’s estranged from reality, like it came straight out of a manga—even if it’s deadly dangerous. That’s why…I think Mr. Ryuugamine created the Dollars.”

“I don’t get it.” “What does estranged mean?” “Dude, you are so dumb.”

“I’ll knock you out!” “Hee-hee!”

“Quit fighting… Anyway, the fight between the Yellow Scarves and the Dollars was just getting good—and then it ended without much of a fuss. That’s no fun, right?”

“So you’re gonna start a new spark of conflict, Aoba?”

“Yeah, except…someone’s trying to scoop it up from the side and use it for himself. Who we ought to be dealing with first is that hyena…Izaya Orihara.”

“Any means necessary?”

“Just one thing: Don’t mess with his two sisters. I like them. Remember what I said about those girls who just kissed me out of nowhere?”

“…I’ll kill you!”

“Ow-ow-ow-ow, knock it off, asshole! You know the reason you don’t get any girls is because you take stuff like that seriously… Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow! Stop! Something just snapped! I heard something snap inside of me—ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!”

“Hey, watch out, Kuronuma’s gonna die.” “C’mon, let’s just kill him now.” “Hee-hee!”

“There are always sparks, everywhere.”

Izaya smiled to himself and began to monologue in front of Namie.

“What I do is pinch a few of them—then release them all in one place.”

A look of bliss came over the info agent’s features as he imagined the sparks igniting a real fire.

“And then I’ll tell this
city
something it needs to hear.”

With great pleasure, and just a touch of hatred, drunk on himself and with a note of self-reassurance, Izaya said:

“Holiday’s over, motherfucker.”