Durarara!!, Vol. 2 (novel)
Page 4
[I see… Uh, sorry, I’ve got to drop out for a bit.]
«Eww! Setton, are you going to find the spot and gawk?]
[No, nothing like that.]
[See you later.]
—SETTON HAS LEFT THE CHAT—
«Argh, no fun!»
Sorry, I’ve got to head out, too.
«Oh? Were you able to reach her phone?»
She’s with the police now or something… Apparently she saw it happen…
So I’m going over there.
«Really?!»
—TAROU TANAKA HAS LEFT THE CHAT—
«Then, I suppose we can’t meet up today.»
«Oops, already gone.»
«Guess I’ll pop out, too, then.»
—SAIKA HAS ENTERED THE CHAT—
|kut|
«Oh?»
|today|
|cutt|
«Ugh, it’s that troll that was here yesterday! Don’t you make trouble again! Harrumph!»
|cutted|
|cit|
|cut|
«How did you even find the address for this chat room anyway?»
|rong|
|wr|
|weak, wrong, cannot, rule|
|not, enough, love|
«You’ve been trolling other Ikebukuro-related chat boards, haven’t you?»
|want, love, human|
|cut, but, wrong, not, enough|
«Take that!»
«There, I banned ’em. Tee-hee. »
«Well, that’s a relief. So long!»
—KANRA HAS LEFT THE CHAT—
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—SAIKA HAS ENTERED THE CHAT—
|more|
|more, strong|
|strong, love, wish|
|wish, is, want|
|more, strong, love, want|
|want, love|
|want to, love|
|want to love, strong, human|
|human, strong, who, ask|
|ask, who, strong|
|ikebukuro|
|wish, me, mother, mother|
|mothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermother
mothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermother
mothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermother
mothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermother
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mothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermother|
—SAIKA HAS LEFT THE CHAT—
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Chapter 3: Ikebukuro’s Most Dangerous
I just wanted to know.
Not as a writer for a third-rate gossip-slinging tabloid, but purely out of personal curiosity.
Curiosity.
Funny to think that a man in his thirties still possessed that artifact of boyhood. Even the panic over the Headless Rider incident back in the spring didn’t inspire this kind of fervor in me. I figured that story was best left to the occult rags or the motorcycle gang specialists, not me. My paper handled that sort of stuff, too, of course, but we couldn’t match the experts at their game.
I just wrote up whatever happened here in this place called Tokyo and made it sound interesting. That’s all I wanted to write, and the readers seemed to be happy enough with it.
It was the keyword the editor in chief gave me as the theme for this in-depth Ikebukuro scoop that inspired this youthful energy in me.
Strongest.
That’s right…strongest.
Nothing more than that one word.
Taken literally, I had to assume he wanted to know who was the strongest in the city.
A stale, clichéd, but powerful word.
But as a matter of fact, maybe it was the fact that it was such a cliché that made it resonate with me. Just like love and freedom.
So who’s the strongest in Ikebukuro?
When I asked the citizens of Ikebukuro this question, I got a lot of answers.
“Oh, I know! It’s the guy on that black motorcycle!”
“Dunno…probably some local yakuza.”
“No way, it’s gotta be Simon.”
“Hmm… An amateur wouldn’t know about him, but there’s a guy named Izaya Orihara who left for Shinjuku…”
“Nope, the strongest now is whoever started the Dollars.”
“You seen the guys wearing these yellow bandannas, right?”
“Has to be an official. The cops, I mean. There’s this officer at the station on the corner named Kuzuhara. He’s unbelievable—whole family’s police. Even his three sons all say they want to be cops when they grow up.”
The most fascinating part was that essentially no one said they didn’t know.
All of the local citizens and self-proclaimed “well-informed” folks I asked this question, whether their answer was vague or specific, all had their own predecided mental image of who the “strongest” in Ikebukuro was.
That’s what made it so fascinating.
In that case, what would all of these people already identified by someone or other as the strongest in town think? I approached these folks as best I could manage in order to find out the answer.
Testimony of Mr. Shiki, Awakusu-kai lieutenant, Medei-gumi Syndicate
“The strongest in a fight… Hmm. You know it’s not really like that anymore, right? On the other hand, sure, you can’t let anyone disrespect you, so when it comes time to kill, we’ll still go at it until we win. If you come after us, we don’t care if you’re an amateur. We’ll bring the numbers, the knives, the guns, we’ll go after your family…anything to crush our opponent. But that hardly ever happens nowadays. Leaves a bad aftertaste for us, too.
“…So who’s the strongest? Well…like I said, in our line of work, it’s not really about who’s the toughest in a fight anymore. Huh? Including amateurs, you said?
“…
“…Hmm.
“Don’t put what I’m about to say in your article.
“I’m just saying, officially, we don’t mess with civilians. But like I just told you, all bets are off if they’re attacking us. But…I will say, there’s an amateur out there I wouldn’t want to mess with, personally.
“Yeah, if we get a bunch of men and weapons together, we’d win. But in a brawl, like one-on-one, I don’t know if I could beat this guy even if I had a machine gun.
“Huh? Simon? Oh, the sushi guy. He’s easy to get along with, so I can’t imagine fighting with him. I bet he would be real tough though. They say he can pick up a motorcycle like he’s lifting barbells. But I don’t see myself losing to him.
“Your guess isn’t far off though. It’s a guy who associates with Simon a lot…
“Shizuo Heiwajima.
“We tell the new kids, don’
t mess with him.
“I mean, if you’ve seen Shizuo fight at all, you’d understand… He just exudes cool. It’s not elegant in the least. He’s a real wild man…like Godzilla… When you watch him fight, he looks cool the way that Godzilla looks cool to the kid watching it. I guess that sums it up. At any rate, he’s one crazy bastard.
“The thing about those cool guys is, you can’t really pick a fight with ’em. It’s a lot more fun to stand aside and watch ’em work from a distance. That way, they’re not in your business, either.
“Gotta admit, I’ve got some admiration for him. Wish I could tear things up the way he does…
“But I need you to keep that part close to your chest.
“…
“So, Mr. Reporter, I hear your daughter’s in high school. Raira Academy, was it?
“When you called about setting up this interview, we did some background checks on you.
“Now, now, no need to stare holes through me. We have our own source of information.
“Don’t worry, we’re not low enough that we’d threaten an amateur.
“But…only if you don’t pick a fight with us first.
“So please keep that information out of your article, pal.”
Ultimately, most of what I had on that tape was unusable.
He said that I could go with what was in the first half…but in any case, the stuff about Shizuo Heiwajima was off the table for me. I didn’t hear anything concrete about the guy, for one thing.
But if anyone else brought up his name, then I’d be onto something.
At this point, I decided to get in touch with the black man named Simon who people in town mentioned.
“Hey, you. Sushi, good for you.”
“Uh, er, actually, I was hoping to speak with you personally…”
“One for dinner, boss.”
I tried to decline his offer, but I eventually gave in to his force and found myself seated at the sushi counter.
The interior was made out to look like that of the Russian Winter Palace, with a traditional sushi counter slapped right in the middle. The seats there were fine, but the booth seating was tatami under marble walls, an extreme imbalance of design if I’d ever seen it. It was impossible to guess at the price of the sushi based on this, but there was a hanging curtain on the ceiling that promised “Hassle-Free Pricing! All Items Market Value!”
Despite the simplicity of that promise, it left me feeling more uncertain than ever.
It was already a low-expense project, and I had a feeling I’d need to pay for this one out of pocket.
True to expectations, the Russian who ran Russia Sushi recommended all of the most expensive items. I tried to maintain a pleasant face to keep him in a talking mood. I soon found out that the manager and Simon knew each other from the same city in Russia.
I didn’t know why a black man like Simon would have been in Russia, but it had nothing to do with my research, so I left that detail for another time.
After sampling a few sushi (it wasn’t bad at all), Simon had come back inside from his duties advertising to pedestrians outside, and I asked him about the man named Shizuo Heiwajima.
“Oh, Shizuo. My best pal.”
So they did know each other. After what the yakuza had said, I half assumed he would be a legendary figure, a tall tale I’d been fed, but this looked to be solid info.
I put aside the topic of Heiwajima and asked Simon about fighting in town, but I didn’t get far.
“Oh, fighting, very bad. Get very hungry, need food coupons. You eat sushi, good for you,” Simon told me and started ordering me fresh urchin and salmon roe sushi.
That was the last straw. Before long I’d have no choice but to run before the bill arrived.
As I checked the contents of my wallet, the Russian chef took note of what I was after and spoke to me in fluent Japanese.
“Sir…Simon’s a pacifist, so you won’t get anything worthwhile about fighting out of him.”
“N-no, I’m just asking who’s the strongest fighter around here…”
“You talking about Master Heiwajima? You just brought him up yourself.”
“Uh—”
It all snapped into place. The chef gave me an extra piece of info on the house.
“You won’t get anything out of Simon about Heiwajima. He’ll just tell you he’s a good guy. If you truly wanna know about the real Heiwajima…”
“Who told you about me?” the man demanded with expressionless eyes, rolling a shogi piece in his fingers. “If they even knew my address, it must be a pretty close client of mine…”
He was much younger than I expected. Very young to have a suite in a high-class apartment building in Shinjuku and unnaturally young to be such a well-connected information dealer. He didn’t look much older than twenty.
His name was Izaya Orihara. I heard about him from the chef at the sushi place, but his name also turned up several times during my first round of surveys on the street from the more knowledgeable types.
“My source is confidential,” I said, covering for the sushi chef. The slender young man put on an inscrutable smile, leaning back against the sofa.
There was a shogi board on the table between the two of us. Interestingly enough, there were three kings on the board.
“Claiming confidentiality to an information dealer… Fine, that’s your prerogative.”
I began to describe the course my research had taken me, leaving out the sushi place. But to my surprise, he had apparently been reading my articles.
“You write ‘Tokyo Disaster,’ don’t you? The column about odd events and the various groups active around Tokyo… If I recall correctly, the next issue will be having a big Ikebukuro special.”
“Oh, you read us? That should make this easy,” I said, somewhat relieved that things would proceed smoothly.
I was wrong.
“Is your high schooler well?”
“Wha…?”
“Wasn’t Mr. Shiki from the Awakusu-kai considerate?”
“…”
Then I understood everything.
The source of information the yakuza lieutenant had mentioned was none other than Izaya Orihara. And like a poor ignorant sap, I’d come right to the guy who sold them their information.
Anger, frustration, and a hint of fear.
The three emotions interlocked within me. I wasn’t sure what kind of expression to wear anymore. But the information agent across from me continued talking, completely unconcerned with my struggle.
“But…enough about that. The strongest in Ikebukuro, huh? Well, there are plenty of tough people around this neighborhood…but if I had to narrow it down to one… In a fistfight, it’s Simon. But if anything goes…that’s probably going to be Shizu.”
“Shizu…?”
“Shizuo Heiwajima. I don’t know what kind of job he has now. I don’t even want to know.”
There was that name again.
I never brought him up, but even Izaya Orihara was giving me the name Shizuo Heiwajima. And yet again, I still hadn’t the least idea what kind of person he was.
“Um…so who is this Shizuo guy?”
“I don’t even want to talk about him. I know him, and that’s enough. No one else should.”
“You can’t toss me a bone?”
“I try to find out more about him because he gives me so much trouble, but even that’s unpleasant enough…”
It didn’t seem like I was going to get anywhere with him, but after pushing a little bit more, Orihara put on a creepy smile.
“All right. I’m a busy guy, so I can tell you about someone who knows him well. If you want more, this is your source.”
Good grief. Once again, I might as well have learned nothing. The trip to Shinjuku, all for nothing. Perhaps I should have bugged him a bit longer, but he knew my address and about my daughter. No use making enemies with someone like that.
At this point, my only hope was placed in this acquaintance of th
e young man’s.
…I just had to hope it wasn’t going to end up being Simon again.
“Hello, I’m Celty the courier.”
…
No idea how to respond to this one.
The being in front of me was showing off a PDA with a message typed out on the screen.
When I showed up at the park at our meeting time, I was met by a very strange person wearing an all-black riding suit and an oddly shaped helmet.
The courier showed up on a motorcycle without a headlight, with everything from engine to driveshaft to tire rims in pitch-black. There was no way to see inside the helmet, and to be honest, I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. The moment I saw it, I thought it was a man, but the slender form told me that it might be a woman.
But this couldn’t be right…
I never counted on meeting the Black Rider urban legend in a place like this.
I was more curious about what I was seeing here than in the topic of Ikebukuro’s strongest. No, I didn’t believe in occult rumors of ghosts or spirits. And it was still the middle of the day. But from the moment I saw him (her?) I could tell that he was something different.
I’d assumed that whoever was riding the black bike had to be doing a street performance or making some kind of antisocial statement. But the person I was seeing here was far too natural and comfortable in this setting, as if to say that he was the one who truly belonged here in this world. And the name Celty—that wasn’t Japanese, was it? I had more questions than answers now, but I suppose that was what made it a “real urban legend.”
I knew more journalists and writers than I could count who would leap at the chance to talk with the mysterious rider. Was it right for me to make contact regarding something completely unrelated?
It only took moments for me to get over my doubt. Nothing good happened in this business if one got too curious.
“Umm…it’s nice to meet you. Mr. Orihara told me that you knew Shizuo,” I said for starters.
Celty hammered away at the PDA keyboard with frightful speed. For an instant, it looked like a shadowy digit was extending from those fingers and tapping along on the keys next to them—but that had to be my imagination. Don’t get curious. Focus on today’s job, me.