Durarara!!, Vol. 8

by Ryohgo Narita

He’s like the Beast, showing mercy at Beauty’s request, Celty thought, but she didn’t dare mention it. Instead, she typed, “It’s your fault for saying that. Take a hint,” and showed the message to Shinra.

  However, she couldn’t deny that when he brought the topic up, the first face she thought of was Izaya’s. Then she remembered that not only had she not seen him recently, she hadn’t heard a word, either.

  Oh, right, he got stabbed and hospitalized. No contact since then.

  In fact, Daioh TV had run a single news report about a stabbed hospital patient going missing, but Celty didn’t catch that one, so the most she thought about Izaya at the moment was that he hadn’t been giving her work for a while. Now that they actually needed his help for something, she realized the strangeness of his recent absence.

  He’s trouble when he’s around and an inconvenience when he isn’t…though I guess that might be a bit mean to say.

  She began to consider the situation anew but was abruptly distracted by a tiny “Mewww” from Dokusonmaru, who was now perched on Anri’s shoulder.

  It was as if he was trying to dispel the gloomy atmosphere descending upon his keepers with his little voice.

  Apartment, Shinjuku

  Masaomi Kida paused his examination of the last several days of chat log and turned to his partner, Saki Mikajima.

  “Hey, Saki.”

  “What is it, Masaomi?” she replied, but before he could begin to explain, she followed up with, “Are you going to Ikebukuro?”

  “…What are you, psychic? Well…I’m not going right this second. It’ll be tomorrow.”

  “You’ve been worried about the Dollars since that one chat room session. When you learned about the Blue Squares being in the Dollars.”

  “Well, if you’re just going to say all my thoughts out loud, it kind of defeats the purpose of me pulling myself together enough to make this statement in the first place.”

  The Blue Squares was a street gang that once repped Ikebukuro and often squabbled with the Yellow Scarves, which Masaomi had created for fun with his fighting buddies in middle school.

  He had no good memories associated with the name, but it had to be even worse for Saki, since they were the ones who broke her leg.

  But Saki merely smiled and, in a voice like a comforting blanket, said, “I barely remember it. Everything that happened back then is like a really hazy dream.”

  Masaomi looked at the way she was staring at the floor and suspected that she was lying. The sound of her screaming coming through the phone speaker when they snapped her leg still echoed inside of his skull. But he chose not to press her on it.

  “Well, ya can’t do much with a dream.” He sighed. “Pretty soon you’ll be forgetting your memories of me, too.”

  “That’s fine. We’re making new memories right now.”

  “Wow, you move on quick.” Masaomi smirked, shaking his head. “The person named Kid in the chat room mentioned guys wearing shark-teeth ski masks. Those guys were in the Blue Squares. I hardly ever saw them… But if they’re trying to take over the Dollars like they did the Yellow Scarves…I can’t just sit back and let that happen.”

  “Why do you have to go, Masaomi? For your friend?”

  “That, too…but the main thing is…I want to settle my own score with those Blue Squares. Sure, maybe I’ll just forget all about them as an adult…but at this moment in time, I can’t imagine myself getting over it,” he said, looking sadly at Saki.

  She gave him a smile that spoke of absolute forgiveness. “I’m not going to stop you. I know I can’t. I wish I could convince you that it’s dangerous, though.”

  “Hey, no fair saying that out loud. It’s supposed to be internal monologue.”

  “I don’t need to play fair. All I’m doing is waiting here.”

  “For me to return?” he asked. “Don’t bother.”

  But Saki shook her head. “For you to crack jokes and laugh the way you used to.”

  “…You really don’t play fair, Saki.” He leaned over and bumped his forehead against hers. “Don’t worry. Once I find a place I can actually return to, I’ll come and bring you along.”

  “You claim you need to find one, as if you haven’t already picked it out.”

  “…Yeah…I’m going back to ’Bukuro. There are lots of folks I’d like to introduce you to and folks I’d like to meet you,” he said, thinking of his childhood friend and the girl with the glasses.

  Saki turned her face away and looked sideways at him. “Your father and mother?”

  “Wha…?! C-come on, it’s a bit early for that! I mean, yeah, we’re not students anymore, but w-we’re still young…”

  “I’m kidding. You mean your old friend and my rival, don’t you?” She grinned, all-knowing.

  Masaomi’s mouth hung open for several seconds, until he smiled in resignation and exhaled a long, long breath.

  “You just don’t play fair, Saki.”

  Ikebukuro

  “Hey, it’s Ryuugamine.”

  “Ah…”

  On his way home, Mikado was flagged down by Kadota, who was wearing a different outfit from his typical gear.

  It was a work uniform with chalky-white spots scattered on it, probably from stucco. There was a sack in his hand that looked like it was carrying work tools.

  “Oh, hi, Kadota. Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “Yo. Whatcha doing out here at night?”

  “Just on my way home from a friend’s. Do you work this late?”

  “Yeah, I’m on break from my night shift. Just ate dinner, heading back now.”

  Aside from the Blue Squares members, Kadota was the one guy in the Dollars who Mikado encountered more than any other. It felt strange and novel to see him without Yumasaki and the others, but Kadota didn’t act any differently toward Mikado.

  “So, you still doing the whole Dollars thing?”

  “Huh? Why wouldn’t I be?” Mikado asked as he walked.

  Kadota seemed strangely confused by this. “Huh? Oh, okay. Well, it’s just that there are some weird folks doing bad stuff with the Dollars’ name. And they fought with Toramaru back in May.”

  “Oh, please, don’t be silly. I wouldn’t quit the Dollars over something like that. Plus, I know about the folks using the Dollars’ name to get away with bad stuff… I just don’t accept them as part of the group,” he said firmly.

  “Yeah, but the whole thing about the Dollars is that you can do whatever you want…”

  “Yes, you can do whatever you want. That includes criticizing the people doing bad things.”

  “…Well, sure, I guess so,” said Kadota, who clearly felt something was off about the other boy but couldn’t tell what it was. He decided to change the subject. “Have you been in touch with Kida lately?”

  “…Not in person. Online…now and then,” Mikado answered, looking away.

  “Gotcha,” Kadota replied. “Well, I don’t know why he up and left Ikebukuro, but as long as he’s doing well, online or otherwise, that’s good.”

  Kadota wasn’t aware that Mikado was the founder of the Dollars. He knew about his friendship with Masaomi Kida and his acquaintance with Celty, but he’d never really asked about the reasons or anything. But Kadota did hear the rumors about Masaomi quitting school and felt a certain kind of loneliness at him no longer rushing around town trying to pick up girls.

  “I bet he has his own reasons, though,” he said, not caring to delve too deeply—when Mikado, face forward, delivered a headstrong response.

  “It’s all right. As long as people like you guys are around, it’ll all work out!”

  “What?”

  “You’re like the perfect example for the Dollars,” Mikado said without a hint of shame.

  “…Come on, don’t give me that.” Kadota groaned. “People were talking before like I was some kind of influential member of the Dollars. It’s all crap. Besides, anyone can join and do whatever they want, so there’s no example or model to
copy in the first place.”

  “Still, I feel like the Dollars could be at peace if there were more people like you and Celty around. If only all the people doing bad stuff in our name were gone, and it was an actual beneficial group of people helping one another.”

  Yeah, that sounds nice to say, but in reality, it would be kinda creepy and way over-formal, Kadota thought, but he couldn’t just say that right to Mikado’s face. He had to express his doubts in a less direct fashion.

  “But that’s just your ideal situation, right? That doesn’t mean your ideal matches everyone else’s.”

  “Yes, it’s the ideal,” Mikado admitted. “But being in the Dollars also gives me the right to want to approach that ideal…”

  He glanced in the opposite direction from Kadota and fell silent. The other man opened his mouth to say something, but Mikado pushed onward with his usual gentle smile.

  “Well, my house is this way. So long.”

  “…Yeah. Later.”

  They parted ways at an intersection and headed down different streets, one an alumnus of Raira Academy and one a current student.

  Kadota was never able to shake his feeling of strangeness about Mikado’s attitude. He continued thinking about what the cause could be—until he landed on the mental image of one man’s face.

  Kinda seemed like Ryuugamine knows Izaya… Let’s just hope he’s not like the old Kida and is going off into a weird direction because that guy’s filling him with hot air. But I bet Izaya’s too busy to waste time playing around with a kid.

  He thought about his old classmate as he headed back to work. Mikado only seemed like he was below Izaya’s interest because Kadota didn’t realize who he really was.

  Y’know, I haven’t heard a single rumor about him lately. Hopefully he didn’t piss off the Awakusu-kai and get his ass buried in the mountains somewhere…though that would probably be a satisfying end by his standards.

  It was a violent thought but an appropriate one for Izaya. Meanwhile, a motorcycle drove past.

  “…”

  Kadota noticed the jacket the biker was wearing and raised an eyebrow. “That’s weird. Haven’t seen one of those since that crazy biker cop came to town,” he murmured to himself, watching the bike drive off.

  “That was a Dragon Zombies jacket.”

  Outside Russia Sushi, Ikebukuro

  “Heyyy, customer, you come tomorrow, day after, and forever after. I send you to eternal sleep,” Simon said, ushering out the final customer of the day.

  They’d already closed the hanging shutter, so all that was left was to clean up the interior. The only people around were the occasional passing drunk, a stunning contrast to how crowded the restaurant was during the day. But something out there seemed to wriggle and writhe in his peripheral vision, so he quickly focused on it.

  It was the sight of someone turning around the corner at that precise moment, the black outfit simply vanishing from view around the bend.

  “…?”

  Simon continued to stare in that direction, sensing that it had not been yet another drunk or youngsters out carousing at night.

  “What are you doing, Semyon? Get in here and start cleaning,” came a voice from inside the shop, so he shrugged and went back through the door.

  Watching from one of the alleys across the street was a man, leering happily to himself.

  “Looks like they managed not to get into any trouble with the Awakusu-kai. Wonder how that got resolved,” he said to no one in particular, putting his hands into his thin summer coat. “And to think that Russian girl would end up working for Shizu of all people.”

  He slowly left the scene, letting just a hint of frustration tinge his actions.

  “This is what makes people so fascinating,” he said, grinning fiercely and springing down the center of the empty street.

  Springing, springing.

  Like a child headed to the bus for a field trip.

  Chat room

  Kuru: I think that I might know who Sharo is.

  Mai: Really?

  Sharo: You serious? Aw, damn.

  Kuru: You must be the actress Sharon Stone.

  Sharo: You just took that from my username!

  Mai: Bzzzt.

  Sharo: It would be hilarious if Sharon Stone was just hanging around this site, speaking Japanese, and pretending to be a man.

  Kuru: Perhaps you are Charon Walken the stuntman? How wonderful! I’ve seen all your movies!

  Sharo: Who is that?!

  Mai: A foreigner.

  Sharo: Clearly! That’s obvious! But who are they?!

  Kuru: Google it.

  Sharo: Ugh!

  Kuru: You truly are worth teasing, Sharo. As a matter of fact, I really do know your identity, but I prefer to leave it ambiguous to the rest of the group. I would think you’d be grateful for that. Consider my blunt rudeness toward you on our first online meeting to be evidence of my knowledge.

  Mai: You did it.

  Sharo: Not in the least!

  Saki: Charon Walken is a famous stuntman in America. He’s the younger brother of the actress Gloria Walken. He doesn’t get publicized much since he’s just a stuntman…but he’s actually rather similar to the actor Yuuhei Hanejima.

  Sharo: Thank you for the detailed answer. So he’s famous, huh?

  Kuru: What’s this? You were suddenly much more polite there than with us. Those who change their attitudes depending on the person are destined to end their lives alone and mistrusted. Just kidding. I hope that you take my words seriously, consider the measly nature of your own life and the greatness of ours, and treat us with the respect we deserve.

  Mai: Yay!

  Sharo: Screw you guys.

  Saika: fighting is bad

  Kid has entered the chat.

  Kid: Good evening.

  Kuru: What a lovely encounter, Kid.

  Mai: Good evening.

  Sharo: ’Sup.

  Kid: Saika is correct.

  Saika: good evening

  Kid: That sounded like the sort of thing that people who know each other off-line would say to each other, but we are all very recent acquaintances. (lol)

  Kid: You’re going to make us think that you’re really fighting. (lol)

  Sharo: Whoopsie.

  Mai: Sorry.

  Kuru: Why, it appears that I became too self-absorbed in teasing Sharo and breached accepted online manners. I am very truly ashamed…

  Saika: sorry

  Kid: Why are you apologizing, Saika? (lol)

  Saika: thank you

  Kid: No, please don’t worry about it.

  Sharo: Speaking of Yuuhei Hanejima, that reminds me.

  Sharo: Seems like his girlfriend, Ruri Hijiribe, really does have a stalker.

  Kid: She does?

  Kid: Was there news about that?

  Sharo: No, I just overheard everyone talking today, and they said she’s had a stalker for ages.

  Sharo: It’s even a big rumor online.

  Kuru: Ah yes…I am aware of that rumor, too.

  Saika: i’m sorry

  Saika: i have to get up early so i’m leaving now

  Sharo: So long.

  Mai: Good night.

  Saika: sorry kid

  Saika: i hate to leave just when you showed up

  Kid: Please don’t worry about it. (lol)

  Kid: Sleep is the best choice when you’re tired. As long as it’s not eternal.

  Kuru: Oh dear. What a shame, just when the night is beginning. But we shan’t hold you back. The greatest bliss in life is the moment of drifting under a warm blanket when one is tired. In that sense, a wounded person on the brink of death who claims to be getting sleepy might just be under the effect of the brain sensing its doom and attempting to ease the suffering through bliss.

  Kuru: …Kid seems to have summed up my thoughts more succinctly while I was typing that very long message.

  Mai: That’s funny.

  Mai: Ah.

  Mai: Kuru�
��s really bummed out next to

  Mai: Ouch.

  Mai: I got pinched.

  Saika: good night everyone

  Saika has left the chat.

  Kid: Good night.

  Sharo: Oh, speaking of Ruri Hijiribe, do you know anything, Kuru?

  Kuru: Pardon me. I was chastising Mai for telling silly lies. What I know is that the media caught wind of her relationship and snapped a roll of photographs of a passionate kiss…and in fact, there are some mysterious men in the middle of the pictures, who are not reporters and not in any way related to Ruri Hijiribe and Yuuhei Hanejima.

  Kuru: If you click this link you may view the photos.

  Kid: Hmm, let’s take a look.

  Sharo: Ah yeah, that’s the story I heard, too.

  Kuru: I suppose the stalker could be harassing Yuuhei Hanejima instead, but those were clearly men in the photo…and I would prefer not to imagine gay stalkers.

  Sharo: But what’s stalking Ruri Hijiribe gonna get you? She’s already smooching Yuuhei Hanejima, right? Kissy-kissy-poo-pooh. You’d think they’d give up at that point.

  Kuru: Perhaps the fact that they cannot abandon their obsession is what defines them as stalkers? Ultimately, loving is an act that fulfills oneself. By freely serving the object of one’s love, one receives the happy, loving smiles that warm the heart. The actions of a stalker are merely a negative of that service of another.

  Kuru: There are numerous kinds of stalker. Some truly believe that they are doing it for the sake of their target. Others just want unthinking control. Some know it is for their own sake but do it in the belief that love is holy. And lastly, there are those who seek the destruction or displeasure of their target in order to fulfill their twisted desires.

  Kid: That last one isn’t love, it’s just plain lust.

  Kid: Though it’s true that there are plenty of people like that out in the world.

  Sharo: Well, if it’s someone who wants her all to himself, wouldn’t he try to kill Yuuhei Hanejima, too? Scary, huh?

  Mai: I don’t want that.

  Mai: Won’t let him kill Yuuhei.

  Kuru: Settle down, Mai. Yuuhei is not the sort of gentleman who would perish from the likes of a miserable stalker. He will use his considerable financial, spiritual, influential, and humanistic power to protect himself and his loved one. The stalker is in checkmate. Very soon his despicable corpse will be crucified atop Tokyo Tower for all to see.