Prologue
This is a twisted story.
“Hey! Hey! Hey! I know you’re in there, Seiji! I’m here again today! Oh no, you forgot to unlock the door! How am I supposed to get inside?”
Warning, warning. My house is under siege by a stalker. She’s been pounding on my door for minutes. Why hasn’t she thought to try the intercom?
“The door is locked! Are you asleep? Omigosh! How cheeky am I? Sneaking in on a man while he’s in bed!”
Alert, alert. Alert to myself last week. Some girls that just moved to the big city were being harassed by a thug, and I saved them from trouble. It turned out they were about to start at the same high school as me tomorrow. And somehow it turned into this. The other girl was so polite and normal, too.
“Hey, I want to tell you something… I just wanted to say, I’ve been in love with you for a long time! Do you remember me?! I was the girl sitting right next to you during our exams! The boy on my right had this crazy name like Ryuugamine, so I started wondering what the boy on my left was named. And when I turned, it was love at first sight! So I made sure to learn and memorize your name! But I didn’t have the guts to speak to you…and then you saved me, and I thought—oh! This must be fate at work! It gave me so much courage! Please, just show me your beautiful face, let me see you looking bright and healthy, please, please, please!”
Caution, caution. She freakin’ followed me home. Ever since then, this has happened every day. She doesn’t listen when I order her to leave. I’ve heard these same lines two thousand times.
“Are you not feeling well?! So that’s why you’re not answering the door! Oh no! You need to open up right away! I’ve done lots of research since the exam day! I know your birthday, your family members, your—”
Police, police. I’m going to call the cops. Only that threat was enough to finally chase her away.
Three hours after the assault, I felt safe in assuming that she’d finally gone, and I left to pick up some things from the convenience store below my apartment building. Even as I selected my toothpaste and magazines, that stalker chick’s face was floating through my brain.
My first impression was that she was gorgeous. There was an adult air to her—she seemed to be a perfect example of a lovely young lady. But personal experience soon taught me exactly how a girl like her could be single.
No amount of good looks made a crazy chick like her palatable. Maybe it was different if you were looking for that—but I wasn’t. I already had a girlfriend.
So, what to do about the first day of school tomorrow, I wondered as I climbed the stairs to my floor and headed down the narrow hallway.
If I have to meet her there every day, it’s better not to go at all. I mean, I’ve already got a girlfriend. A quiet and graceful one, not like her. As long as I’ve got my girl, I don’t need to bother with high school at all. I could get a part-time job at my sister’s company instead.
Oh, now I remember. I was wondering why I even saved that chick in the first place. It’s because, at a glance, she looked like my girlfriend—until she opened her mouth. That’s why I saved her. It was a stupid decision. I saved her because they looked alike, but she couldn’t have been more different on the inside.
I put the key in the lock of my apartment door.
Huh? Weird.
It’s already unlocked.
Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. My danger sense is on full alert.
Alarm, alarm, beepedy-beep. Inside the door, a pair of women’s shoes.
“S-Seiji…”
Farther into my apartment, the stalker was standing stock-still.
I realized that I was taking the presence of this trespassing intruder with remarkable calm. I’d spotted the look on her face.
When I spoke, even I was surprised by the coldness of my voice.
“You saw?”
“I, um, er…”
There was terror and unease on her face, nothing like her typical expression.
…Well, well, you’re capable of looking like this after all.
That’s when I knew she had seen something she shouldn’t have.
“Uh—um, Seiji, I…I won’t tell anyone! This doesn’t change how I feel about you. It’s okay, I don’t care about what you’re secretly into. I can change myself to match your interests, just, um…”
The tables have turned. Now I’m the one putting pressure on her.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, Seiji!” Her voice filled with hope.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Sei…ji?”
She noticed the chill in my eyes, and the hope instantly turned to fear.
I had to take it one step further into absolute despair. I repeated myself.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Seiji!”
When my sister burst into the room with two of her employees, I was seated in the living room, eating a cup of instant ramen. The employees quickly and expertly packed the stalker into a body bag and removed her from the room. My sister made a brief inspection of the place, noted the blood spatter on the wall, then hugged me from behind.
“It’ll be all right. You’ll be fine.”
Her comforting warmth enveloped me. All I thought was that this made it hard to eat.
“There’s nothing to worry about, Seiji. Just leave this all to me. Okay?”
“Sis, as for her—not the girl, I mean…”
“You were the one who took her out, weren’t you? Don’t worry, leave all that to me. Understand? As long as I’m here, nothing bad will happen to you… Especially not the police—they won’t get you. They’ll never get you, so don’t worry about that.”
And with that, she gave her employees more orders and left.
Maybe it’s not the best idea to get a job with her company. She knows a lot of people working in unsavory occupations, people the office doesn’t know about. Those men that came in with her took a dead body and did their jobs without a word. They couldn’t have been ordinary, law-abiding folks.
I’d rather not work with evil people. They’d turn me evil, too.
If I turned bad and got caught by the police, my girlfriend would be so sad. That’s the last thing I want.
I watched the workers calmly scrub the blood off the wall and shoveled more cold, stale ramen into my gullet.
God, this ramen is terrible.
This is a twisted, twisted tale.
A tale of twisted love.
Chapter 1: Shadow
Chat room (weekend, evening)
[The Dollars are that team people are talking about these days? I’ve never seen them.]
{Oh, really? Sounds like you know a lot about Ikebukuro, Kanra.}
{Black Rider?}
[Ahh.]
Location in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo (weekday, late night)
“Muh…muh…monsterrrrr!”
The man screamed in rage, lifted his metal pipe—and ran for his life.
The man dashed through the late-night parking garage. In his right hand, the pipe was not cold, but skin temperature. Even that sensation became indistinct and uncertain as sweat flooded his palm.
There were no people around, only cars waiting patiently for their owners.
All sound had vanished from around him, leaving only the pounding of his footsteps, his ragged breath, and t
he steadily rising drumbeat of his heart.
As he tore past the ugly concrete pillars, the thug practically shouted under his breath, “Sh-sh-sh-shit! Shit! Shit! S-s-s-s-screw this, man!”
The light in his eyes took on a glint of anger, but the only breath that escaped his mouth was the panting of sheer terror.
He’d gotten that neck tattoo to inspire fear in others. Now that tattoo was distorted with the tension of his own fear. Soon the purplish pattern, devoid of any kind of belief or meaning, was covered by a pitch-black boot.
[Oh yeah, I’ve heard about that. Actually, it’s not even an urban legend, but a regular old motorcycle gangster. Just not the kind that rides in an actual gang.]
{I’m afraid I don’t see your meaning.}
With an eerie crikkle sound, the thug’s body flew through the air at an odd angle, half rotating.
Slammed hard sideways, he desperately scrabbled with what remained of his wits. The air was freezing, but the numbness throughout his body shut out the chill of the concrete. Trapped in a nightmare, he turned back to the approaching source of his terror.
The shadow of a figure stood over him. Not metaphorically, either—it was a shadow.
The figure was dressed in a black full-body riding suit without a single pattern or logo on it, making it look as though the black material had been dipped into even darker ink. Only the reflection of the parking garage lights signified that there was even something physical there at all.
From the neck upward was even stranger. An oddly designed helmet sat atop the figure’s neck. In comparison to the uniform blackness of the body, the shape and patterning of the helmet seemed somehow artistic. It didn’t clash with the overall dark look, however.
The faceplate of the helmet was like the dark mirrored glass of a luxury car. It showed nothing of what lay behind the glass, only the distorted reflection of the lights overhead.
“…”
The shadow was completely silent. It exuded no signs of life whatsoever. The man’s face twisted with fear and hatred.
“I-I-I didn’t do nothin’ to deserve gettin’ chased by a T-t-t-terminator!”
It might have passed as a one-liner, but there was no humor in his expression.
“Wh-wh-why don’t you say something? What’s your problem? What the hell are you?!”
From his perspective, the figure was incomprehensible. They were supposed to meet up in the underground parking garage like usual, do an easy job, then leave. Deliver the product to the client and load up on a new product. That was it. Nothing different from the usual. Where did they screw up? What had they done to call such a monster down upon themselves?
The man and his “colleagues” were supposed to do their ordinary job tonight.
But that ordinary plan had crumbled into dust without warning.
They were standing at the entrance to the garage, waiting for one late straggler, when the thing appeared out of nowhere. A single motorcycle passed by the entrance without a sound, stopping a few dozen feet ahead.
The man and his companions noticed a number of anomalies with this scene.
First, the absolutely silent entrance. Perhaps there had been some slight screeching of the tires on the ground, but the engine itself did not make a sound. Maybe it had been turned off so the motorcycle could coast in silence, but they would have heard the approach of the engine before that, and no one noticed a thing prior to its appearance.
Second, the bike was completely pitch-black, including its rider. That included the engine, driveshaft, and the wheels inside the tires. It had no headlight, and even the place where a license plate would go was just a flat black surface. It was only the reflections of the streetlights and moonlight that helped them recognize it as a motorcycle at all.
But creepiest of all was the large object dangling from the rider’s obsidian hand. It was nearly the size of the rider itself, and an opaque liquid dripped from its narrowed end onto the asphalt.
“Koji…?”
One of the man’s coworkers recognized what the ragged object was. At the same time, the riding suit astride the bike dropped it—no, him—onto the ground.
It was another of their colleagues, the one who’d been late to show up. His face was puffy and beaten, and blood poured from his nose and mouth.
“Are you serious?”
“What the hell?”
The scene was eerie, but none of them felt fear at this point. Neither did they feel any anger about the beating of their companion, Koji. Nothing more than work circumstances united the men, and none of them felt a particular kinship for the others.
“What, huh? Whatchu want?”
A man in a parka, the stupidest of the group, took a step toward the motorcycle. One of them, five of us. The superiority of numbers inflated his attitude a level or two. But the closer he got to the bike, the more his advantage evaporated from five on one to one-on-one. Only the black shadow atop the bike noticed this.
“…”
Jrshk.
A nasty sound. A very, very nasty sound. It transcended simple displeasure and signaled danger to the animal instincts at a fundamental level.
The man in the parka slumped to his knees, then landed on the asphalt face-first.
“Wha…?”
Now the men were unnerved, and their tension spread outward, as it usually did when they were in the middle of their work. All that they were able to ascertain was the presence of the bike before them—there were no other figures nearby. And the shadow atop the vehicle was now stepping down off the bike, its thick black boot hitting the ground.
They saw it being lowered. But the fact that it was lowered meant the foot had been raised in the air before that action. And those with better eyesight noticed something else at the same time.
Tangled into the underside of the descending boot was a pair of glasses belonging to the man in the parka.
This information instantly identified the situation to them.
The man in the parka had been dropped instantaneously with a single kick, delivered while the figure still sat on the bike.
If they’d seen his face, they would see that his nose was twisted and broken. The shadow on the motorcycle had kicked out at a range just long enough not to knock the man backward, catching and breaking his nose in the indentations on the sole of the boot.
But the men watching had no way of realizing this. Half of them wondered how a man kicked in the face ended up falling forward, while the other half ignored it and pulled out police batons or stun guns from their belts.
“Wait…how did that work? Huh? I mean…how…?”
Two colleagues raced past the confused man, roaring with anger as they charged the rider.
“Uh, hey—” he tried to call out as the shadow silently stepped off the bike. It strode over without a change in expression or sound, aside from the crunching of the glasses beneath the boot. The movement was smooth and elegant, as though a shadow had actually been fleshed out into human form.
What happened next was etched into the man’s memory in slow motion—either because the events were simply too bizarre not to leave an impression or because the danger of the situation had sped up his concentration so that everything seemed slower.
One of his colleagues pressed his Taser against the shadow.
Wait, does a leather jacket conduct electricity or not? he wondered. The entire shadow twitched and convulsed. Apparently it did. The ordeal was over.
His colleague pressed the stun gun in farther, but in the next moment, his relief evaporated.
Even as the shadow convulsed with electricity, it r
eached out to the man with the police club and grabbed his arm.
“Wabya—!”
The man with the club, standing on the opposite side of the crackling shadow, grunted and shook violently, then fell to the ground in shock.
“Oh, you’re gonna get—”
The man with the Taser noticed the shadow’s hand reaching for him now, and he hastily switched off the power. This did not improve his situation—the shadow’s powerful wrist seized his neck.
He flailed his limbs desperately, but the shadow’s grip remained firm. His feet kicked out at the shins and crotch of his assailant, but the helmet produced nothing but silence and darkness.
“Kah…kuah…”
Strangled until his eyes rolled back into his head, the man with the Taser fell to the ground, joining the one with the police baton.
Shit. Whatever the hell is happening, it ain’t good. I haven’t done a thing, and now four of the six of us are down, including Koji. Fear began to paint the thug’s mind, the indescribable thing overriding any thoughts of his own helplessness.
“You pullin’ some kinda MMA crap?”
The other man on the right was calm and cool.
“Gassan!” the thug called out, desperate for any source of strength he could find. The man named Gassan, leader of the coworkers, stoically watched the shadow. There was no terror in his eyes, but neither was there any confidence.
Gassan pulled a large knife out of his jacket and lazily approached the shadow. Careful to watch for any movement, he tried lobbing an insult.
“I dunno where you learned what you’re doin’…but you’ll still die if I stab you.”
He spun the knife in his hand. It wasn’t as small as a fruit knife, but it also wasn’t the kind of short sword you’d see in a comic book. The handle was just long enough to fit in a palm, and the blade itself was about the same length, sharp edge gleaming.
“And just because you know some martial arts don’t mean you can ice me with your bare han— Aaah!”
The shadow abruptly interrupted his challenge. It leaned forward slightly, picking up two objects lying on the ground—the police baton and stun gun his colleagues had been using.
Durarara!!, Vol. 1 (novel) Page 1
