This was a place where taxis often stopped to wait for riders, but for some reason, there was not a single one here today—but Chikage, not being very familiar with Ikebukuro, didn’t pick up on the distinction.
Instead, his attention was drawn by the vehicles stopped at the entrance to Sixtieth Floor Street. At the spot where the expressway had been previously blocking their view, there were many more cars than he’d initially imagined. Some of the stopped cars might have belonged to ordinary drivers, but given the number of youths in blue beanies and ski masks loitering nearby, it seemed clear that nearly all of them belonged to the Blue Squares.
“Well, well! For a group started by middle and high schoolers, they got better cars than Toramaru!”
Chikage had heard that they had a number of legal adults in their gang, too. He waited at the light for the crossing signal to turn green, feeling excited.
This is nice. They’re ready to rock, even though it’s the middle of the city. The only problem is…
He was looking forward to the simple pleasure of a good fight with the Blue Squares, but it was the ordinary citizens wandering around that spooked Chikage.
You’d think that with a bunch of guys repping colors around, they’d be more nervous or would try to clear out. But they’re just standing, wandering around, doin’ nothing.
He felt an eerie kind of danger from all the people walking around without any apparent purpose.
Then again, I did tell him I’d handle this.
But when the light turned green, he stepped out into the crosswalk with a grin.
“Yo!”
When he got to the other side, he clapped a hand on the shoulder of the nearest boy with a blue beanie.
“…Huh? The hell you want?” the boy asked suspiciously.
“If I said I was a friend from Saitama whose motorcycle you guys burned up, would that ring a bell?” Chikage asked.
The boy’s face paled immediately. He looked over Chikage’s shoulder.
“…? Wait, are you alone?”
“Dude, I got lots of girlfriends. I’m not lonely. Now, you look single to me, but don’t give up, buddy. You enjoying your youth?”
“…I see,” said the boy with a grin and beads of sweat on his cheeks, ignoring Chikage’s taunt.
“You know, being single’s not all that bad.”
The next moment, two more thugs approaching behind Chikage swung wooden bats at his head in succession.
There was a loud, crisp smack, and one of the two bats snapped.
“Ha! But you’re gonna be all alone in your coffin, old man!” the boys laughed.
They all imagined what would happen in the next moment, when their accoster crumpled to the ground. And yet…
“…See, something’s not right.”
Chikage grinned at them, blood streaming from his head.
“?!”
They flinched and took a step away from him. Chikage motioned with his chin toward the “normal” people walking around Sixtieth Floor Street. “You gotta be crazy to hit a guy in the head with a bat in the middle of a crowded place like this…but it doesn’t make sense, right? Nobody’s watching; nobody’s calling the cops… This ain’t the usual bit about city folk not carin’ what happens to your neighbor. There aren’t even any looky-loos whipping their phones out to take video.”
“…”
The boys exchanged a glance. It must have occurred to them, too.
Chikage took a step closer to them, smiling.
“But all that aside…”
“?”
“That kinda hurt, you sons of bitches!”
He swung a majestic hook punch at the boy holding the still-unbroken bat.
“Gbya—?!” the boy shrieked and spun himself sideways. He was about Chikage’s size, but the difference in strength between them was vast.
On that signal, a number of other youths wearing blue who hadn’t noticed Chikage up to this point suddenly grasped the situation. On top of that, even more boys emerged from the vans parked in the street—and some adults, too. And still, the ordinary people on Sixtieth Floor Street did no more than occasionally glance over and resume their wandering.
Yeah, something about that is creepy, Chikage thought, a shiver running down his back. He cracked his neck to warm up and focused on the approaching opponents instead. Whatever. I can whup all these fools before I worry about them.
“Hang on—do any of you even care what happens to Masaomi Kida?!” he shouted in the midst of countering a kid who came swinging at him.
Another kid in a ski mask answered, “Yeah, it doesn’t matter what happens to Mr. Kida.”
“Wha…?”
Aoba Kuronuma pulled off his mask, smirking and cackling with glee.
“I already know everything.”
The rooftop of a mixed-use building—a few minutes earlier
“Damn, you really can’t see anything from here…”
Masaomi was still on the roof, watching, as Chikage instructed him to do. His cell ringtone went off loud and clear from his pocket.
“Whoa!”
He’d been so focused on lying low that the sound made him panic before he realized that it was probably inaudible from the ground, and he took out his phone with relief.
But at the same time, he got an odd feeling of wrongness.
As if he’d sensed some other sound, not the ringtone, echoing behind him.
“…”
A clammy sweat broke out all over Masaomi’s body. He turned on the spot, slowly.
Slowly, slowly, so slowly…
He didn’t know why he felt this way, but he had a strong premonition that he shouldn’t turn around. That he might lose something precious to him.
A variety of worries racked Masaomi within the span of just a second or two. He almost felt as if the moment he spun around, he would witness some horrid, unrecognizable monster that would twist his head right off his shoulders.
But once he started, he couldn’t stop. He had to turn the whole way.
There ended up not being a monster, so Masaomi’s fears were unfounded.
He was not, however, relieved by what he saw.
Because the other sound he heard was most definitely the ringtone of a cell phone that didn’t belong to him—and he understood what it was that had caused the anxiety within him to explode.
He recognized that ringtone.
“…”
At first, he thought that he was completely alone on the rooftop. But eventually he saw, within the darkness, a little light flash on behind the large external air-conditioning unit.
“…Who’s there?”
Masaomi’s phone continued to go off. The screen said “Saki Mikajima” on it, but he didn’t have the frame of mind to even look at it.
Across the roof, the person staring into the little light of the other phone read out the name of the person listed for that incoming call.
“It’s from Sonohara.”
It was a familiar voice.
But even though he was looking right at his ringing phone, he did not answer it.
“I wonder why she’s calling now. It’s nearly morning.”
It was a voice Masaomi didn’t want to hear out of nowhere like this. He was here specifically to hear that voice, but this was a sneak attack. It felt as if he were climbing the stairs to a bungee-jumping platform only to lose his footing and fall all on his own.
The boy stood there, wearing a smile.
A rather troubled smile on his childish features.
It was so typical. The very face that Masaomi remembered when he thought of him.
“Hi, Masaomi.”
“Mikado…?”
“It feels like it’s been forever.”
Now that he was faced by Mikado Ryuugamine wearing that same old smile, Masaomi found that he couldn’t say anything.
The ringtones of the two phones mingled, turning into one mangled sound, echoing across the darkened rooftop.
&nbs
p; The sky was devoid of even the stars.
Only the writhing shadow above them watched the two.
Silently, secretly.
Enveloping all below it.
Chat room
Kuru: It would seem this place is coming to an end.
Mai: It’s sad.
Kuru: Well, perhaps it is just the changing of the times. Even if this had not happened, the very concept of the chat room itself might be fated to die out. New tools for communication evolve out of the online ether by the day, such as Mix-E and Twittia and Bodybook and FINE. It is only natural that people would trickle from chat rooms onward to new places.
Kuru: Of course, the truly good things will last beyond the ages. This chat room might be a closed place, but it was not a place everyone would call home. That is the extent of it.
Mai: I wonder.
Kuru: But the world changes with the times. Perhaps someday there will be an age when this chat room is necessary. Whether that will be in three days, or three years, or only in the moments before our death, when we reflect upon the past. Let us hope that the program still exists on the server at that point.
Mai: Let it happen.
Kuru: That is not how it works. And if it worked, it wouldn’t actually revert our minds back to this state.
Kuru: Well, any more of this pontification will only muddy the waters. Rather than needlessly draw out the ending, perhaps we should simply take our leave.
Mai: You’re showing off.
Mai: Ouch.
Mai: I got pinched.
Kuru: And now, my best to all of you.
Kuru: Despite the ending, it was not displeasing. In fact, I’m even grateful that I was able to see an entertaining show to round it out. I wish I could have spoken with others like Kid and Saki more, but I will have to look forward to our next meeting under different circumstances.
Kuru: One of the best parts of being online is the countless paths one can choose to form connections.
Mai: You can do that off-line, too.
Kuru: And now everyone, a very good sign-off to you.
Mai: Bye-bye.
Mai: It was fun.
Kuru has left the chat.
Mai has left the chat.
The chat room is currently empty.
The chat room is currently empty.
The chat room is currently empty.
.
.
.
Chapter 12: Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way
Shinra’s apartment—several months earlier
“By the way, Celty, did those three ever make up?”
“Make up? Who are you talking about?”
Celty was watching a comedy show on TV when Shinra brought up this bit of idle chat.
“You know, the ones from Raira.”
“Oh, you mean Mikado and his friends.”
“Well, I only know Anri and Ryuugamine. Was just wondering if anything new had happened with them.”
“I don’t know… That’s their problem to deal with. It’s not up to us to solve it for them.”
Shinra read the words off her PDA screen and shrugged. “Well, I suppose you’re right about that.”
“It’s strange for you, of all people, to be worried about others.”
“From all you’ve told me about them, I’ve started to think of my own high school days,” Shinra remarked wistfully.
Annoyed, she typed out, “Stop that. They’re not as perverted as you.”
“Perverted? What a blunt assessment. It’s not an issue of sexual proclivities but of human relationships. Since Anri is the girl of the bunch, I guess that she would be in your position, Celty. With Orihara and Shizuo being Mikado and, uh, Masaomi, is it? If they were us.”
But Celty wasn’t quite buying his comparison yet.
“Who are you?”
“The Saika possessing Anri, I suppose.”
“Don’t try to stretch your analogy too hard.”
Undaunted by her snark, Shinra happily continued comparing his high school experience to the current-day teens.
“I think our relationship is exactly the opposite of Mikado and his friends’.”
“The opposite?”
“Yeah. They’ve all got secrets they’re keeping from one another. But they managed to make that work, and they all wanted to keep things friendly, I think.”
“You could be right about that,” Celty typed, shrugging. It was the closest she could get to a nodding gesture.
“But in comparison,” Shinra continued, “Orihara and Shizuo never bothered with any secrets. Well, Orihara actually had plenty of secrets, but he never tried to hide what kind of a person he was. And the result was a relationship that was the exact opposite of Mikado and Masaomi’s. And unlike Anri, you were basically an observer, if anything, at that point, Celty.”
“Well…at the time, I didn’t really want anything to do with humanity.”
“I think that’s fine. But while it might have been fun, when I consider the potential future we could have had with you making four of us, all getting along, I hope that Mikado and his friends can figure this out.”
“Are you jealous of them?” Celty teased.
Shinra shook his head. “Not at all. I mean, I’m perfectly happy with you, and I can’t imagine a life surpassing this so much that I would be ‘jealous’ of it.”
“…You say the most embarrassing things with the straightest face.”
It should have been a dash of cold water on Shinra, but his sappy reflections didn’t stop there.
“You know, I guess you could say that I’m completely the opposite of Saika, too.”
“How so?”
“If Saika is a girl pining with love for all of humanity, then I’m a man who’s only ever cared for something that isn’t human…and only one in particular: you.”
Celty’s chest rose and fell as though she were inhaling and exhaling a sigh. Then she typed, “And that’s all you really wanted to say.”
“Yep. That’s all I wanted to say,” Shinra admitted.
Shadows stretched out from Celty’s body. The solidified darkness became a black cocoon, enveloping Shinra’s body within its shadow.
“Stop being so embarrassing,” Celty wrote on the PDA, then realized she couldn’t show it to him this way. Then she noticed that the cocoon was strangely quiet.
…? That’s strange. He’s not carrying on like he normally does.
By way of answering her question, Shinra’s voice came out of the cocoon.
“Lately, I find that the dark makes me feel relaxed.”
“…”
“I think that this shadow is a part of you, Celty. It’s the color that belongs only to you in the entire world, a black that absorbs all light. As far as I know, at least.”
She could sense him smiling in the darkness.
As a matter of fact, he was. “Maybe the reason that I wasn’t scared of the dark, even as a child, was because I felt your presence within it. So while I can’t see a thing in here, there is one thing I can say with pride.
“You are truly beautiful, Celty.”
~~~!
Celty’s limbs and shadow quaked, undoing the cocoon. She promptly used that shadow to hold down Shinra’s hands and feet.
“I told you! Stop saying things that embarrass me! Geez!”
To hide her embarrassment, she rolled Shinra out into the hallway, then went back to focusing on her comedy show.
It was a little act of domestic happiness that happened often in Shinra’s apartment.
But it was the accumulation of such trivial scenes that made Shinra Kishitani who he was.
His daily life, filled with bliss as it was, did indeed create something within Shinra.
And while Celty did not know what this was, it was something that Shinra treasured and kept safe.
Even if others would laugh at him for it or shun and fear him for being “abnormal.”
Kawagoe Highway, outside Shinra’s apartment—
present day
“Ah, what a beautiful sky,” said a man in a white lab coat, staring up at an abnormally dark sky above his apartment building. “That’s my favorite color.”
Shinra Kishitani.
He was back.
He returned home while Kadota and the others ventured out. His stepmother tried to stop him, but he barreled over her with a stream of excuses and within minutes was poking his head into the entrance of his apartment again.
He was wearing his usual white coat now, not the pajamas. He had wrapped bandages all over his body and was carrying a crutch made out of a mop wrapped in aluminum foil.
“Hey, you look the part.”
“Oh! You’re still here?” he said to Manami Mamiya, whom he’d met only moments ago.
“I was going to ask you more about Izaya.”
“That’s very dedicated of you.” He chuckled, plopping down the crutch and hobbling around with it. In fact, it looked exactly like a proper injured person’s movement—except that both then and now, his eyes were dyed dark red.
“What…are you?”
“I’m merely a doctor.”
“I’ve seen several people Niekawa sliced whose eyes went red like that, but you’re the first one I’ve seen acting normally afterward.”
It was the kind of question that only someone who’d seen the Saika-possessed would ask. Shinra thought it over and said, “Ah…yes. I suppose I must have reached the same side Niekawa did. It’s kind of like hypnosis, except that I forcefully undid the hypnosis and learned how to use it myself…I guess.”
“You also sound livelier than you did before.”
“I gave myself a painkiller.”
But even Manami, who was not a professional doctor by any means, could tell that Shinra’s skin tone was not good. He looked as if he ought to be in a hospital bed.
Thinking about hospital beds reminded her of the time she tried and failed to stab Izaya while he was hospitalized. She chided herself at that bitter memory and tried to get past the topic by asking, “Where are you going that you’re forcing yourself to move around like this?”
“That’s a good question. Where should I go?”
Durarara!!, Vol. 13 Page 10
