Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel)

by Ryohgo Narita

  “…”

  Kadota mulled over Masaomi’s words in his head and eventually took a brief sip of hot tea. “I see. Well, you’ve got a point there.”

  Next to Masaomi was Yumasaki and facing him next to Kadota was Karisawa, but the two were uncharacteristically quiet.

  A brief silence passed, then Kadota took another sip and murmured, “So what’s the motive?”

  “…”

  “Why would a group with no reason to make a name for itself and no monetary dealings decide to attack people indiscriminately and get rid of the Yellow Scarves?”

  “If I knew that, things would be a lot easier. It could be a personal grudge of some kind,” Masaomi muttered hesitantly, but that only brought Kadota after him harder.

  “Personal? I’ve never heard of any beef between the Yellow Scarves and Dollars.”

  “Not the Dollars.”

  “…”

  Kadota realized what Masaomi was insinuating. His face went hard and he clammed up.

  Masaomi spat the name out, clearly not wanting to even touch the subject. “The Blue Squares.”

  A furrow appeared between Kadota’s brows the instant he heard the title. “Kida…”

  “I haven’t forgotten what that team did to us. That drove me away from the gang, and things settled down eventually…but the hatred never left. That’s my suspicion.”

  “And so you’ve come to me.”

  Kadota held his silence for a while as he thought, but Masaomi didn’t wait for an answer. “You understand, don’t you, Kadota? Tell me who the Dollars’ boss is. And if possible…tell me which of your old friends from the Blue Squares are in the Dolla—”

  Crakk.

  A dry sound cut Masaomi off.

  He looked over to see Yumasaki, wearing his usual expression, pulling apart a pair of wooden chopsticks.

  “Come on, Kida,” he said, handling the sharp wooden implement. “You shouldn’t mix fantasy and reality.”

  In a way, it was almost the very last thing one would expect the half-Japanese otaku to say. Over time, the smile faded from his face.

  “The Blue Squares never existed. Isn’t that good enough?”

  Just as the sentence ended, Masaomi smacked his palm on the table. The cups of tea shifted, the liquid within them swaying.

  “But Saki—! You’re going to tell me that Saki was sent to the hospital by some people who don’t even exi—”

  Wham.

  Again, a sound cut Masaomi off.

  Between the gaps of his fingers, pressed against the table, the cleanly pointed ends of the chopsticks were bent.

  For an instant, Masaomi didn’t understand what had happened—until he realized that Yumasaki had slammed the points of the chopsticks in his hands into the table right between his fingers. He held his breath.

  For having just thrashed the tiny pieces of wood to pulp, Yumasaki’s expression, while not smiling, did not seem very angry, either.

  He was expressionless.

  The force was enough that if they’d landed on the back of his hand, they might have punctured all the way through his palm. Something cold ran down Masaomi’s back, but he did not pull his hand away.

  Karisawa spoke in Yumasaki’s place, her cheek resting on her hand in a pose of bored exasperation. “That’s right. Your ex got beat up by people who don’t exist. That’s good enough.”

  “You don’t wanna make me angry, Karisawa.”

  “You already are. Plus, Yumacchi got angry before you did. So that makes us even. You might be angry about what happened to your girlfriend, but others are going to be angry if you accuse Dotachin—in fact, the Dollars as a whole—of being the slasher. If you can’t accept us as being even in that regard, then you never should have brought it up in the first place.”

  She paused for a moment to sip her tea, fixing the younger boy with a sharp look.

  “While we didn’t carry out any of that, it’s true that we owe you a moral debt. But if you’re going to dredge up the past with Saki, when it was Dotachin who saved her while you ran away,” she said, staring at Masaomi with half-lidded eyes, “then maybe we need to force you to view that part of your past as a figment of your imagination.”

  The response to her statement came not from Masaomi but Yumasaki, still clutching the broken chopsticks in the same position. “You’re wrong, Karisawa.”

  “Huh? I am?”

  “Even if the Blue Squares did exist, when that part happened, it was the Blue Squares who got attacked first. And yet he’s claiming we were the bad guys the entire time. I gotta dispute that point!”

  “Oh, right. Man, I’m so embarrassed. I’m like in the super spiral of shame!”

  As they carried on in their normal manner, Masaomi realized that he had lost the outlet for his anger—and lost his cool as well.

  “…I’m sorry…about this,” he said, hesitantly hanging his head.

  Yumasaki switched to his familiar smile, grinning away. “No, no, it’s my fault. I mean…I feel really bad about what happened with Saki.”

  “No… I should be thanking you, not accusing you,” Masaomi said, his usually cool demeanor entirely gone.

  Kadota, who had been silent all this time, had an unusually gentle expression on his face. “Even if you do hate me, I’m not gonna quibble… We did more than enough to a mere middle school kid to deserve that kind of hate.”

  “But, Kadota, you didn’t—” Yumasaki started to protest, but Kadota cut him off with a glance.

  Their leader spoke quietly and simply, but with a strength behind his words. “No matter how hard you try to deny it, you can’t escape what you were involved with.”

  Masaomi’s face began to waver. Something Izaya Orihara had said to him once came back to his mind.

  “And with that in mind, let me say something… I don’t know nothing about the boss, nor do I plan to go looking. And I will repeat: The slasher and the Dollars are unrelated. We have no reason to bicker with the Yellow Scarves,” Kadota said, getting it all off his chest. Suddenly, he seemed to remember something. “Oh…actually, there is one person who knows the boss of the Dollars.”

  “Wh-who is that?!” Masaomi asked, leaning forward despite his best efforts to stay calm.

  “Hang on… My point is, why would you even ask that? Let’s say you get the boss’s name out of that person. What will you do? Invite him out for tea and have a nice little chitchat? Or use your Yellow Scarves and stage an abduction?”

  “I…I only want to track down the slasher. If the Dollars really are unrelated, I think it would be perfect just to talk it out.”

  “And is that the opinion of the Scarves as a whole?”

  “…” Masaomi looked away from the pointed question.

  “If it’s like the old days, and you’ve got a tight grip on all of your people, then I can help you. But they changed while you stepped away from the Yellow Scarves. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed,” Kadota said forcefully, brooking no argument.

  Masaomi listened with eyes shut tight and head down. He squeezed the words out of himself into groans. It was not the usual Masaomi with his self-absorbed, shallow gibberish, but a sympathetic, lonely boy pressured and at the end of his wits.

  “I…I still think of them, of the Yellow Scarves, as my friends. But…it’s true that I don’t really want…to go back there permanently.”

  “I can imagine,” Kadota said easily, draining the last of his tea. With the air in the room settled down a bit, he asked Masaomi, “You don’t know what you should be doing, do you? You’ve found a different way of life. You don’t know if anything you say will really reach them…and that’s a big concern to you, isn’t it?”

  “…”

  “Let’s just assume there really is a squabble with the Dollars. What does that even have to do with you? You left because you hated the idea of gang warfare…”

  “I ran away,” Masaomi said, cutting himself down to size before Kadota could reach his point. But hi
s eyes were slowly regaining the light, and the pathos that had racked him moments ago was easing.

  “But this time…it’s not just my fellow Yellow Scarves.”

  “Huh?”

  “A good friend of mine from school was attacked by the slasher—someone who has nothing to do with the Yellow Scarves or the past. I can’t get over that…so I’m only using the Yellow Scarves name as an excuse to solve a personal problem,” Masaomi said, his voice full of strong will and intent, as Kadota listened. “Still, I want to know who the slasher is. That’s all this comes down to.”

  “That’s all?”

  “…Yes.”

  “Then I’ll say no more on that. What I will say again, however…is that you won’t find the slasher in the Dollars,” Kadota repeated, another tiny sigh escaping his lips.

  “I don’t—no—we don’t agree with that.”

  “What?”

  “Last night, we witnessed something beyond belief.”

  Masaomi began to tell a story.

  A story of the grotesque, otherworldly event he saw in the rain the night before.

  And the undeniable truth that the “intruder” riding behind that creature carried a katana, and dozens of the Yellow Scarves witnessed the whole thing…

  “…I see.”

  Kadota held his cup, a look of troubled understanding on his face. When he realized the cup was empty, he grimaced and put it back down.

  “I’m aware of the rumors that the Black Rider’s participated in some Dollars meetups. The other Yellow Scarves know about it, too…”

  “And the fact that she helped the girl with the katana get away means that the slasher and the Black Rider must be working with the Dollars, you’re claiming?” Kadota said, sussing out Masaomi’s point.

  The other boy nodded gravely. “And a guy with us named Horada got attacked by the rider yesterday…”

  “Horada? Horada…”

  “?”

  Masaomi was confused by the way Kadota repeated the name, but he was quickly distracted by the whispering of Yumasaki and Karisawa, who had been silent for the last several minutes.

  “Hey, Yumacchi. Did you notice something strange about that story?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Black Rider finished off the slasher, remember?”

  “Well, it was mostly Shizuo. Plus Togusa running him over with the van.”

  They were speaking quietly enough to avoid being overheard on the street, but not inside while seated directly next to other people.

  “What was that?”

  “Huh? Uh…well, um, just…how to explain?” Yumasaki stammered.

  Kadota sighed and took it upon himself to do just that. “Are you aware that the slasher seems to be more than one person?”

  “Well, there were fifty incidents that happened in a single night. So, yeah, that seems clear.”

  Kadota seemed hesitant to say what was on his mind, but he quickly gave up. “Well…now that you’ve seen something beyond belief, you’ll be able to believe it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There won’t be any more slashings.” Kadota tapped the rim of his empty cup with a finger. When he spoke, it was slow, in rhythm with the beat. “From what I heard on the grapevine, the slasher chose to pick a fight with—of all people—that monster Shizuo Heiwajima… Do I need to explain what happened next?”

  Shizuo Heiwajima.

  The instant Masaomi heard the name, something crawled from his back over his face.

  Masaomi knew him well—he was a human bomb, someone people called the fighting puppet of Ikebukuro.

  The slasher’s mob versus one human being.

  It was an unthinkable matchup, but there was only a single person who could grant it immediate credibility, and that was Shizuo.

  “No…but… Who did it, then?” Masaomi asked in disbelief.

  Kadota shook his head as he scratched it. “Well…whatever. If you just want to know about the slasher, then there’s no use hiding what I know. As for the rest…ask the person who knows the boss. I’ll leave the decision up to the two of them.”

  “Uhm,” Masaomi mumbled, surprised that Kadota had broken so easily.

  But at the same time, Kadota’s eyes narrowed, and he delivered a warning. “However, if that goes awry and you have to declare the Dollars your enemy—”

  “If we do, then what?”

  “I’ll be ready for that fight.”

  The supposedly calmed air between them prickled once again.

  “…”

  “Is that all you have to say? You’re prepared for that outcome, too, aren’t you? When you fly the flag of vengeance, it becomes more than just the usual hell-raising kids your age like to get into. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I—”

  Once again, a sound stopped them at the height of the tension in the room.

  Thunk.

  With a pleasing sound, something embedded itself into the wall next to the table.

  The group recognized that something had passed between them and turned their heads slowly toward it, anticipating what they would find.

  What they saw sticking out of the wooden wall was a combination of silver and black.

  “Gonna scare the other customers… Take that talk outside,” said the Russian behind the counter in his brusque Japanese, working the sushi in front of him without looking at them.

  One of his sashimi knives was missing from its customary spot. It was now stuck into the wall between the four.

  “All ready. One Kremlin roll, two, three, four, just for you, boss,” came Simon’s cheery voice, breaking right through the chilly atmosphere in the room. “You hungry because you fight. Eat sushi, get full, full of dreams. Human stomach is dream factory. So you stop fighting, yes?”

  The waiter neatly carried over four dishes of the rolls they’d ordered, balancing the plates in both hands.

  “Uh…yeah. Thanks, Simon.”

  “I didn’t realize kitchen knives could sink so deeply into walls.”

  “Doesn’t this count as attempted murder?”

  “Th-thank you for this food.”

  The combination of the chef’s menace and Simon’s easygoing charm having drained the tension out of the group, the four silently ate their sushi. The food was adeptly made and quite delicious, but with the desire to finish their food and get down to business lodged in their brains, they weren’t able to fully appreciate it.

  “So long, Kida. Don’t get any half-cocked ideas.”

  Kadota’s group paid their tab and left the restaurant. Yumasaki and Karisawa launched back into their usual chatter, as though they’d completely forgotten everything discussed inside.

  As his old acquaintances drifted away into the distance, Masaomi sat alone in the little tatami enclosure, holding his head in his hands.

  “I’ll be damned…”

  Someone who had made contact with the boss of the Dollars. Someone whom Kadota had declined to name. But Masaomi recognized the number that Kadota left with him.

  “So…I’ve finally come back to him.”

  He sat in silence for long moments, lost in the past. Masaomi was a statue. Minutes passed by.

  “Ne rasstraivaysya.” (Cheer up, man.)

  The voice came from over his shoulder. Masaomi looked over to see Simon with a fresh plate in his hands. It bore a few pieces of sushi that were clearly a rank above what they’d ordered earlier.

  “Huh?”

  Before Masaomi could ask what this was about, the cranky chef from behind the counter answered it for him.

  “Gloomy faces drive business away. So eat up and leave with a smile on your face.”

  “Oh…thank you,” Masaomi said, inclining his head. When the chef didn’t respond, Simon butted in with a cheery grin.

  “You no fight. You already happy. Happy enough. So don’t steal happy of others. You share, everyone happy. I just learn saying: ‘White goose is loud, becomes round.’ What this mean, any
way? Why goose? You are goose, Kida?”

  “…It’s ‘What goes around comes around,’” muttered the chef. Simon looked quizzical, not understanding the difference.

  Masaomi popped the freshly served sushi into his mouth as he listened. It tasted like tuna collar dipped in soy sauce. When he bit into it, the fat practically melted on his tongue, mixing with the salty soy sauce in perfect harmony.

  He was so surprised by the taste, which was beyond what he normally paid for, that Masaomi couldn’t help but murmur, “Wow, this is good.”

  He thanked them for the food and was about to pay, but the chef told him, “They already paid for your share.” He’d gotten a free meal.

  Masaomi realized that despite his hostile attitude, everyone around him had noticed his obvious misery and had tried to cheer him up in their own ways. He couldn’t help but snort.

  Guess I’m still just a kid after all…

  With his mind now made up, Masaomi left Russia Sushi, spurring his naive self onward toward fulfilling his purpose.

  Outside of Tokyu Hands

  By the early afternoon, the rain had eased up just slightly, but the wind was blowing the droplets under their umbrellas.

  “Horada… Horada…”

  Kadota continued mulling over the name they’d heard earlier, as the group made its way toward the Ikebukuro location of the Animate chain store.

  “What’sat, Kadota? New kind of curse or something?”

  “It sounds like a spell if you put a rhythm to it, like ‘Ho-radaho-rada.’ A spell of binding? For a summoning maybe.”

  “Shut up and stop confusing me,” Kadota grumbled at the two muttering behind him. “Horada,” he repeated.

  “So what’s up, Dotachin? You’ve been mulling this over for a while.”

  “Remember how he said that the Black Rider took down a Yellow Scarf named Horada?” Kadota said, looking pensive. He revealed what was on his mind, trying to answer his own question. “It’s nothing serious, just… That’s an uncommon name. Maybe the kanji characters are different…but something about this is bugging me.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Well…I used to know a guy by that name.”

  Kadota decided that letting his mind run in circles would be a waste of time, so he changed the topic. “Was that chef hard-core or what? One step in the wrong direction and someone would be a goner.”