The only person she could see doing so was an office lady perusing a magazine on a bench under a tree, farther away from the fountain.
“…Shall we sit here?” Haruna asked and lowered herself onto a stone bench at the fountain. Anri was cautious, unsure if she should take a seat with some distance between them.
“Oh, don’t be so timid,” the other girl said, smiling softly despite the overt hostility. “Given the power of your Saika, it doesn’t matter how far apart we sit, does it?”
Anri found the offer creepy but sat down next to her anyway. Right before them was a beautiful water fountain, the liquid cascading down stone steps, but Anri was not in any state to relax and enjoy it.
“Umm…Miss Niekawa…” She was still the first to speak, bobbing her head and avoiding looking at the other girl. “I saw on the Dollars’ website…that your father is looking for you…”
“My dad is? Oh, I see. It’s been awhile since I left home.”
“I think it would be best if you went back to him,” Anri suggested.
“No,” Haruna replied flatly. “I’m grateful to him for raising me, but I don’t revere him as a person. It’s more important to me that I look for Takashi than help my dad feel better.”
Takashi.
Anri recalled the teacher: Takashi Nasujima. He worked at Raira Academy, then disappeared after the street slasher incident. Rumors said that he was kidnapped by some fellows he owed money—but Anri’s memory of him was completely isolated from the rumors and his image as a teacher.
He had singled her out right at the start of school and would do her favors so that he could then take advantage of her in various harassing and inappropriate ways. He had also had a relationship with Haruna Niekawa, and it was at her fanatical, besotted hand that he’d been slashed.
Anri had no interest in him. In fact, despite her lack of negative feelings toward others in general, she had a rare distaste for him personally.
But no matter what he was like, Haruna was madly in love with him. In fact, she started the slashing incident and tried to kill Anri, just so she could monopolize his affections. For his part, Nasujima was terrified of Haruna.
Anri recalled the events of half a year ago and hesitantly asked, “Are you…going to do all that again?”
“‘Again’? You mean my love for Takashi? What a strange thing to say, Sonohara.” Haruna slowly panned over to look at her, still smiling. “Love might begin at one point, but it does not resume. If love ever ends, even temporarily, then it was never love to begin with.”
She then put a finger to her cheek in contemplation and continued, “But I’m not selfish enough to claim that a married couple who divorces and gets back together ‘wasn’t actually in love.’ That wasn’t love coming to an end. They just changed the way they love each other.”
“O…kay…”
“Being together forever is love. Putting distance between you is also love. Even hating is love. There are countless ways to love, and all of them are valid. That’s what I’ve come to believe. And it’s because you stabbed me, and I’ve grown more deeply intertwined with Saika.”
Words of gratitude. Yet, Anri could keenly sense that none of the hatred and hostility in the other girl had dimmed. She stayed on guard, prepared to launch Saika from anywhere in her body in case a blade came hurtling toward her.
The idea filled her with self-loathing: She was ready to utilize Saika without a second thought.
No ordinary person would simply play along with Niekawa’s invitation. Izaya’s words earlier today had jammed themselves deep into her heart. She had completely accepted that she was not human.
…I thought I gave up already.
After leaving the hospital, she tried to call Mikado many times and only reached his voice mail. She didn’t have any better luck getting in touch with Celty.
Izaya had warned her that her friends might be in trouble, and yet here she was, calmly spending time with Haruna Niekawa. She really wasn’t human, she told herself. And despite her self-loathing, she never even considered letting go of Saika, the root of her contradiction.
“So…did you come here to kill me?” she asked.
A woman sat on a bench in the shade of a tree, reading a magazine.
Kasane Kujiragi could sense the presence of other Saikas in the park aside from her own.
Two of them.
Based on the auras, she suspected that one of them was a Saika she branched off twenty years ago, and the other had been an offshoot of that one.
She had assumed at first that they’d tamed Saika’s voices enough to sense her presence here and were coming to her for some reason—but when she glanced over at them, she saw that they were sitting on a distant bench instead, having a conversation. They didn’t seem to sense her.
Anri Sonohara.
Kasane knew that much. The sight of the girl with the glasses gave her pause. Apparently, it was a simple coincidence that brought them to this park with her.
So what now?
A magazine full of information and mother-and-daughter Saikas.
Which would be easier, defeating them both and presenting them to Seitarou Yagiri or handing over her own Saika (or a newly branched one)? The latter would be far easier.
So Kujiragi turned the pages of her magazine, pretending not to notice anything.
…Except for the occasional cries of stray cats, which prompted her to glance around dispassionately.
“Did you come here to kill me?” Anri asked.
Haruna never lost her smile as she answered, “Yes, I did…or I wish I did. But no. I forgive you.”
“…?”
“The old me would never have forgiven you—or any woman that Takashi loved. But after you controlled me, I matured a little. So as the older, more worldly woman, I can make a special exception for you.”
Anri wasn’t sure what to make of this. There shouldn’t have been any question of forgiveness—Anri had never done anything to Haruna—but even setting that aside, there was something wrong with what she was saying.
For one thing, none of the hostility emanating toward Anri had abated in the least. It made no sense that she was talking about forgiving, when the fires in her eyes suggested murder.
It wasn’t even a matter of holding back anger. She didn’t look like she was doing her best to stifle hatred. She was simply smiling.
Unsure of how to process all this, Anri waited for her to continue.
“I still hate you. Enough to torture you to death if I had the chance. You stole Takashi’s heart from me and left. And you had the gall to reject him. I swore…what you did was unforgivable…”
She glanced away, seemingly out of shame. “But then I was exposed to Saika’s voice…the real voice you’ve been hearing all this time, and you conquered me…”
“Uh-huh…”
“I’m all screwed up now. I just wanted to slice Takashi, have him slice me, and mix us together in one sticky mess. I wanted us to be one in our endless love…but your mind defiled my body first. It ran rampant over me. But then I remembered: No matter how dirty I might be, no matter how much Takashi despises me, my love for him will never change. I can even turn my hatred for you into love.”
“? ??”
Umm…what exactly is she saying?
Anri wasn’t following. The more she talked, the more the confusion mounted.
It would’ve been easier if she’d just decided that it was pointless trying to understand someone with a few screws loose, but Anri considered Haruna Niekawa to be firmly within the range of “normal human beings.” In fact, she even respected her for her proactivity when it came to romance.
But respect and understanding were completely distinct concepts, so ultimately Anri was at a loss for how to respond to any of this.
“I overcame the power of your Saika all on my own, Anri Sonohara. But I only overpowered it. I might be maintaining my human self by a thread, but your Saika is still within me. It should have been sep
arate from my Saika, but they’ve begun mixing within me.”
“Th-they have?”
Anri was the host of Saika, but she had never been sliced and turned into a “child.” It was possible to imprint one’s will and orders on any child of Saika’s blade edge, but the child’s thoughts did not get back to her unless by the child’s own mouth.
“Why are you acting like this is someone else’s problem? I want you to take responsibility. And then I can take responsibility for being stabbed by you.”
“…Huh?”
“I’m saying, let’s work together.”
Anri was not expecting this suggestion at all. She still had no idea how to process any of this.
“Mikado Ryuugamine and Masaomi Kida,” Haruna continued. “You’re interested in both of them, but you’re not cheating on one with the other.”
“…!”
The mention of her friends’ names brought a flash of color to Anri’s eyes. Not figuratively—literally. Her eyes flashed red.
“Don’t…don’t you dare mess with them!” she snapped.
Haruna chuckled mockingly. “Oh, I’m not going to do anything. Because the people important to you are also important to me.”
“What…do you mean by that?”
“I’m not like the people who got cut when Saika ran berserk. You cut me of your own conscious will, with the intent of controlling me.” Haruna leaned over, drawing her shoulder close to Anri’s, close enough to breathe on her, hot and trickling against the back of her neck, the voice almost sensual next to her ear. “Did you think…that it was only Saika’s voice that came flooding into me?”
“?!”
“I didn’t realize it at first, either. Not until I could overpower Saika’s voice. But…once I was able to regain control, I noticed that there was another emotion inside of me. For Mikado Ryuugamine and Masaomi Kida. Two boys I’ve barely even met, much less talked to.”
“No!” Anri turned to face Haruna directly at last.
The other girl’s face, nearly close enough for their noses to touch, was brimming with madness, but curiously, this imbued her with a kind of beauty. “It’s a good thing you felt hesitation about it. And it’s a very good thing your feelings for either of them hadn’t reached the level of love. There is no definition of love, but at the very least, I was relieved that your emotion was a far cry from what I felt for Takashi. If you had feelings for them that were the same as my love for Takashi, I might have had to split my body into three parts.”
“My…feelings?”
“Yes. It might not have been love or romance, but I could tell that you cared about them. Now those emotions have permeated me, along with Saika’s power. All I want is for you to take responsibility for doing that.”
Haruna took Anri’s hand and ran her fingers over the back of it. In her own way, she seemed to be testing Anri, using whatever methods came to her.
“I was forced to peer into your heart, you see. While it may have been inevitable, my attempt to kill you was the start of all of it, so I will take a step back from there.”
“But…how do you want me to do that?”
“What have I been saying this whole time? I’m a part of you now, and you’re a part of me.”
“!”
Something in those words brought back Saika’s voice to Anri’s mind.
“I’ve become just a little bit you, and you’re just a little bit me.”
Had she and Haruna Niekawa become connected at some point in their hearts, the way she and Saika had? As a test, she thought about Nasujima, but no affection of any kind surfaced.
Secretly relieved about that, she said, “I don’t think that’s true…”
“Regardless of what you think, that’s just how important human emotions are to me. So while I really, really loathe you, I’m willing to classify that as self-loathing instead.”
Haruna squeezed Anri’s hand, and pressed her forehead with her own. It was the act of two close friends, but that hatred never disappeared from the act.
“So I want your help in making my love for Takashi bloom.”
“Ohhh… Wait, what?!” Anri yelped.
“And in exchange, I’ll help you with your own romance,” Haruna continued, watching Anri’s expression for any changes as she trod further and further into the other girl’s heart. “How much do you know about what’s happening with Ryuugamine right now?”
“…!”
That question was a terrible blow to Anri’s mind, coming so soon after Izaya’s unsettling metaphor earlier in the day.
“Do you…know something about that?”
“Why, yes, of course. When you work running errands for Izaya, you hear those two names so often it gets obnoxious.”
“For Izaya Orihara?!”
“Ooh, I felt the anger there. Did something happen between you and him? And yet you were still polite enough to refer to him by his full name. I guess that does seem like you. Oh…I guess I’ve just been calling you Anri this whole time. Is that all right, just calling you by your first name? I mean, we’re friends already.”
It was a brazen thing to drop the term friends when she wasn’t even bothering to hide the murder in her voice. “If we get closer than we are now, I might even come up with a nickname for you. Oh, and you can call me Haruna, too. I know you’re younger than I am, but since we’re such good friends…”
“Haruna, please just tell me about Ryuugamine! What is Izaya Orihara going to do to him?! What’s he going to do to Ryuugamine and Kida?!” Anri demanded. It was telling of her personality that despite her panic, she immediately followed the other girl’s suggestion about her name.
Haruna’s eyes crinkled with delight at the mention of her name, but this did nothing to her malice. “How should I know what that sadist plans to do? It’s bound to be whatever the other person wants least at the moment he does it. And if you want to know what those boys are doing…it’s probably better to use Saika’s power and hear it from them yourself, rather than asking me.”
“But…”
“I still have plenty of children from Saika around the city. Some clever control of them should help you find who you’re looking for very quickly.”
“…”
Despite the concrete suggestion, Anri was unable to reply. It wasn’t that she’d never considered the idea. But even she couldn’t tell anymore if her hesitation was because she didn’t want to use Saika’s powers, or if she just didn’t want to intrude on the problem between Mikado and Masaomi.
This was why Haruna’s incredible ability to act and think positively made her so envious.
Haruna watched the other girl hang her head and said, “You know…you’ve changed a bit.”
“Huh…?”
“When you cut me, you said, ‘Saika gets lonely, so please love her back. It hurts to hear you talk about suppressing her or using her.’ And yet, I’ve just been talking about overpowering and using Saika, and you haven’t called me out for it… In fact, it’s just like you’ve been trying to hold back Saika.”
“…!”
She was right.
Anri always told herself that she was a parasite. That depending on Saika, depending on the rest of the world, was just how she survived and made her way through life.
But since the slasher incident, she’d had more and more interaction with Mikado, Masaomi, Celty, Shinra, even Aoba, and all of this had effected a clear change in her surroundings.
The influence of that created instability in her heart. Anri was aware of the change, but she had gone out of her way not to acknowledge it, afraid that the moment she did so, she would lose everything that made her who she was.
“…Hmm. You seem serious. That’s ironic. The moment I suggest that we should leech off each other, now you’re the one who’s trying to control and use Saika. Maybe I rubbed off on you…? No, that’s not true. Even as friends, that would never happen.”
It was strange that Haruna was harping on the word friends
so often, but Anri was in such an extreme mental state she didn’t notice.
Haruna sighed and continued, “Well…how about this? How about I take your Saika for you?”
“M…my Saika?” Anri replied. For an instant, she wondered if that was even possible, then shut the idea completely out of her mind.
At the current moment, the only way she could help the boys was to use Saika, regardless of how she felt about that. And if the conversation with Izaya had taught her anything, it was that this was not the moment for her to lessen her options for action.
And a more fundamental question would be why she should ever hand over her original Saika to the woman who willfully engaged in a campaign of indiscriminate violence.
“…I don’t think I will.” Anri squeezed her fist, eyes gleaming.
“You won’t? I thought it was a good offer,” Haruna replied, playing the part of an innocent schoolgirl. She smoothly got to her feet, took a few steps toward the fountain, then turned back around.
Anri’s level of caution instantly shot up to maximum.
“!”
Haruna was merely smiling with her eyes closed—but suddenly there was a large knife in her hands.
“At the very least, I’m sure I could use it better than you can now,” she said, still smiling, eyes wide open. “Thank you for turning me down. Now I have a reason to fight you.”
Her eyes were bloodred and shining. She brandished her blade at Anri without a second thought.
“Even between friends, you sometimes have a fight to the death… It just happens!”
Seconds earlier
“…Meow,” Kujiragi murmured, her expression blank.
Her eyes were focused on a cat that had wandered up to her bench. Now others were poking their heads out of the nearby bushes in interest.
Durarara!!, Vol. 11 Page 13
