Celty lost her patience first. She typed her honest emotions into the keyboard.
“…Ohh?”
“What does ‘ohh’ mean?”
“…”
“…”
The silence was back. Celty hurried to fill it with a question.
“Demon blade… You mean like a Muramasa Blade?”
“You really do like those Wizardry games, don’t you?”
“Stop spying on my chat logs.”
“I apologize for that—sorry. Matter settled! Now…don’t you remember that Kanra person in the chat talking about a demon blade? Anyway, that jogged my memory about some old books I read once, so I looked them up again, and…surprise! There was a demon blade named Saika in Shinjuku once!” he announced proudly. Annoyed, Celty typed in her response.
“Setting aside that the matter is most certainly not settled…I don’t know. I thought you were more of a realist, Shinra. There’s no such thing as a cursed demon blade. Look at reality.”
As she typed, Celty was keenly aware that she might as well be denying her own existence. She made a show of a laughing motion to get her point across. Shinra only shook his head—he knew Celty better than anyone else, including how to get under her skin.
“Well, well, well… Remind me, who was it that was trembling in fear at the image of grays that they showed in that UFO special? Who was it that saw the video of the cow being sucked up by the UFO and couldn’t stop talking about how scary it would be if that happened to her?”
“Sh—”
“Who got suckered in by that April Fool’s show and came to tell me all about the revelation that ‘the Apollo mission never actually landed on the moon’?”
“Shut up, shut up, shut uuup! It…it’s obvious! Aliens are much more likely to exist than cursed swords!” she snapped back lamely.
Shinra just shook his head, the picture of smugness. “What if the aliens made the cursed sword?”
“Wha—?”
“A katana created with secret space technology. Seems like it would have a mind of its own, right?”
“W-well, in that case…”
The conversation was clearly going in the wrong direction, but Celty couldn’t think of a good rebuttal. Or a reason for one, for that matter.
“…It seems…plausible…”
Begrudgingly convinced, Celty decided she ought to ask about the sword.
I have to admit, I’m curious about the fact that it’s using the same name, she told herself and listened closely to what Shinra had to say.
“Now, just after the war ended, this demon blade Saika rampaged through Shinjuku for blood.”
“I see.”
“And then, after an incredible, thrilling battle with a magical sword from the West…”
“Now wait a minute!” Celty grabbed Shinra by his lapel, feeling that she’d been tricked into buying his story. “What boys’ manga did you rip this story out of?”
“Settle down, Celty! Adolescents aren’t going to take to a manga without human characters. It would get canceled! In fact, it wouldn’t even make it through the editors’ meetings! Just hear me out until the end!”
“…I’m listening,” she prompted, her hand still clutching his collar.
“Their battle was brought to an end by the bamboo spear of intelligence, which was carved from a magic stalk of bamboo. After that, Saika was forced to flee Shinjuku for—”
“Forget I asked.”
She let go of Shinra’s coat and started walking for the front entrance of the apartment.
“But I was just getting to the good part.”
“I’ve heard enough. I’m going out for a bit. I’m not taking any jobs tonight,” she typed into her PDA and held backward for Shinra to read. He didn’t make any attempts to stop her and switched topics on a dime. This was virtually a daily occurrence in their lives.
“Where are you going?”
“To see Shizuo.”
“Wha…? A-are you cheating on me, Celty?! If you’re unhappy with me, can you say why?! No, wait, not directly; that’ll just crush my spirit. Say what’s wrong with me with three different kinds of misdirection! Seventy percent praise and thirty percent insults, if you can!”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got no complaints,” she replied innocently and stepped into the entryway. “It’s just that this Saika character’s been repeating Shizuo’s name over and over. If you’ve read my logs, you should know. If he’s really got something to do with the slasher, it’s worth finding him and hearing him out.”
krch
ripcrik
snp krack
Sound.
The sound of joints and muscles breaking down.
rip snap rip snap crakk
With every unpleasant crackle, terrible pain ran through this body.
The boy had no choice but to endure this endless hell.
He knew that it was nothing but a manifestation of his own rage.
Shizuo Heiwajima came to understand that he was different in third grade.
He had a fight with his little brother over something pointless. And when he snapped, he tried to throw the refrigerator, which was easily taller than he was.
At the time, he didn’t have the strength to lift it, of course—but as a result, he pulled muscles all over his body and dislocated numerous joints.
That was just the start of the abnormalities.
When he got into a fight with his friend in the classroom, the boy threw a pointed compass at Shizuo. That was bad enough, but what Shizuo did in response was far worse. It was enough to make the phrase self-defense pick up and scamper away.
He lifted an entire desk packed with textbooks with his skinny nine-year-old arms, did a half rotation, and hurled it with all of his strength.
The target of his anger was nothing short of dead lucky.
All of that weight passed to his side, just barely brushing his arm. The next instant, the wall behind him sounded like it was falling apart.
With trembling legs, the boy turned around to see the desk stuck halfway into the classroom wall.
There’s a phrase: brute strength.
When humans think they’re exhibiting all of their strength, they’re really not.
The muscles naturally limit themselves so that what we think of as “full strength” is actually far weaker than their maximum capability.
But when placed in a situation of extreme danger, such as a house fire, the brain unlocks that potential. Suddenly the body is strong enough to lift heavy furniture or other people from the site of a disaster or to leap over obstacles that should be too tall to scale.
Shizuo Heiwajima possessed one unique feature. He could call upon that brute strength at any moment, not just in emergencies.
This might have appeared to be a great benefit—but it wasn’t anything of the sort.
The reason the brain prevents the use of full strength is to protect the body’s joints and muscles. The body’s limits are limits for a reason; putting it under that much stress will only cause it to break down.
In exchange for the gift of incredible power, Shizuo lost the ability to control his strength.
In other words, if he attempted to put all of his strength into something, his muscles would faithfully tear themselves to shreds in the attempt.
That overflowing physical strength soon became an extension of his own rage.
Whenever he got angry, that uncontrollable muscular strength would jump into action on its own. When his brain was wielded by great strength, it demanded the body make use of it: Pick up the heaviest object here, destroy everything, destroy everyone.
As a result, young Shizuo heeded his instincts.
Destruction. He sought absolute destruction, and it was always his own body that collapsed first.
A collapsing body and uncontrollable strength.
Trapped between these two things, the boy’s mind began to fall apart bit by bit. At some point, he forgot the concept of controlling hi
s anger.
If I can’t hold back and I’m going to fall apart first anyway, I’ll feel so much better by just allowing my mind to be free!
He gave up on self-control.
He unleashed all of his instincts, ready to give up his own life.
As a result of that choice, he destroyed even more.
He wreaked an untold amount of violence…on his own body.
Day after day, he broke down.
When his body broke down, he flew into a rage and destroyed himself even more.
It was an unmanageable juggling act.
He gained nothing. Only the scars of destruction piled up behind him.
His muscles destroyed themselves repeatedly—and before they could rebuild stronger than before, they broke down again.
The boy was drowning in a hell of his own creation.
He struggled and strained and strove but could not escape himself…
And time passed.
“My dad and mom were always super nice about it,” Shizuo muttered, his eyes narrowed behind the sunglasses. “Even my little brother, whom I always fought with, screamed for an ambulance after I tried to lift the fridge and collapsed. He waited there with me until the paramedics arrived… I had a really nice family. They didn’t spoil me or anything, but I think I was raised in a happy home.”
Celty listened in silence as Shizuo spoke about his upbringing. The bartender’s outfit and riding suit were shoulder to shoulder on a bench as evening descended on South Ikebukuro Park. There were other people in the park, but the eeriness of the sight kept them all away.
“So…how did it turn out this way?” he muttered sadly into the air, a self-deprecating smile on his lips. “What was the catalyst for my change? I didn’t have any trouble at home. There was no childhood trauma, and I wasn’t obsessed with hyper-violent anime or manga. I barely even watched any movies. So was it me? Did the cause come from nothing but me myself?”
Celty maintained her silence. She wasn’t ignoring him but was attempting to absorb all of Shizuo’s confessions within her own shadow.
“I just want to be strong,” he admitted, but his voice was strong. “If I’m the cause of all this, then I hate myself most of all. I don’t care about the fighting. I just want the strength to control myself.”
It was an utterly honest confession. The only reason he could speak like this was because Celty didn’t waste his time with pointless rebuttals or jokes. Of course, it wasn’t only that—he’d been around her for a long time and had grown to trust her implicitly.
Shizuo knew that everyone in the neighborhood was afraid of him. Because of that, the fact that Celty would listen without fear made her a very precious thing to him.
If he was talking to someone who had no idea who he was, they would probably manage to drive him into a rage somehow, and just like all the others, they would find themselves terrified of him. Shizuo understood how the process happened.
But understanding its ways did not give him any better control over it.
After a long, long time, the number of people in his vicinity shrank down naturally.
There was his boss at work, who knew how to handle Shizuo. There was Simon, who was capable of defending himself against Shizuo’s extreme violence. There was Izaya Orihara, who stayed close because of his utter loathing. And there was the silent Headless Rider, who never made him mad.
He already knew that Celty was the Headless Rider. But he wasn’t particularly concerned with that. She’d always interacted with him while wearing the helmet, and knowing that she couldn’t actually speak meant that it made no difference to him.
Shizuo’s thought process was very simple, though it wasn’t the result of some kind of strong belief or ideal. He put everything in the world into two categories.
People who pissed him off and people who didn’t piss him off. Those were the only two choices.
“Sorry for griping at ya again,” he said with a slight smile. At this point, he didn’t look like anything but a mild-mannered young man. “So what do you want today? You came out here because you wanted me for something, right?”
“…”
Celty took out her PDA and conveyed the information in the fewest words possible.
The slashings taking place in town.
The person on the Net named Saika who was using his name.
That Saika might be connected to the attacks somehow.
That the journalist who’d been asking about Shizuo was one of the slasher’s victims.
And that Shizuo’s name had popped up in chat the night the writer was attacked.
Once he’d read all of this information, Shizuo raised an eyebrow.
“What the hell? Are you saying you suspect me?” he asked directly.
Celty shook her helmet side to side.
If Shizuo were responsible and swinging a katana around, there was no way the victims wouldn’t have died. There was no obvious reason for Shizuo to conduct the random attacks, and even if anyone made him mad enough to want to ambush someone under cover of night, he’d just twist the poor sap’s head around 180 degrees.
Shizuo claimed that he had no control over himself, but the fact that he wielded such strength and hadn’t committed homicide yet spoke to a nearly miraculous level of personal restraint.
Of course, it had occurred to Celty that he might have sent a number of people to an early grave after all, and she just didn’t know about it.
“A Dollars member has been attacked.”
“Yeah, I know. I got the message,” he replied shortly, pulling out his cell phone. “Honestly, I’d love to help out, but I only joined up because Simon asked me to. I’m not really that close to the Dollars to begin with… Of course, that shallow connection is what allows me to be a part of their group.”
He snorted wryly and looked up at the sunset. The sky was redder and more beautiful than it had any business being.
“Tsk. What the hell is the city sky doing looking like the countryside? What does it think it is?” he growled nonsensically as he got to his feet and started to leave. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t have any clues for ya. Besides…why are you so intent on making the Dollars your business? Just don’t get yourself hurt.”
It was rare for Shizuo to show consideration for anyone else. Celty quietly typed away.
“It’s not just for the Dollars. I’m also getting revenge for myself.”
“?”
“I was recently attacked by the slasher, too. Cut straight across the throat. If I wasn’t headless, I’d be dead.”
She typed this message in with a wry intention of her own, but the confession had huge, fateful consequences.
Not for Celty’s fate. For Shizuo’s and all of Ikebukuro.
“You asshole…”
“Huh?”
“Why didn’t you say that first?! You idiot! They say whoever calls someone an idiot is the real idiot, but I already know I am, so I’ll say it anyway! Say that first, you idiot! Why are we standing around with our thumbs up our asses?!”
It was exceedingly rare for Shizuo Heiwajima to be angry for the sake of another person.
He was angry about one of his companions being hurt, so in a broader sense he was angry for his own sake, but logical quibbling aside, Shizuo was full of pure rage.
“Someone’s gonna die. I’ll kill ’em. Butcher ’em. Murder ’em.”
“Hang on. Look, I’m the Headless Rider. I’m perfectly fine.”
“No, no, no. That’s not the point. Swinging a sword at you equals death. That’s all there is to it.”
But this was not his usual explosive rage, as the target of his anger was not present. Shizuo’s rage today was the kind that bubbled away and stored its energy up in his stomach.
“Celty, did you know there is power in words? So I’m trying to stifle my overwhelming urge to destroy everything by putting it into a single word.”
That was exactly what Celty was afraid of.
“Kill, kill, kil
l, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill…”
If this situation continued and the slasher happened by, she knew who was going to die.
The slasher.
He wouldn’t leave them a moment for repentance. If Shizuo punched a person with all of his force, they’d be lucky with just the skull caved in. If worst came to worst, he would snap the neck and tear all of that flesh so that the target of his rage was just as headless as she was.
The only difference was that humans died when they lost their heads.
Celty allowed herself a moment of sympathy for the attacker as she watched Shizuo hop onto the back of her motorcycle.
“What about work? Aren’t you on break?”
“Who cares anymore?”
“Hey! You’d better not get yourself fired on account of me. Plus, we still need time to collect information on the slasher. Just wait until your shift is over. I’ll go make preparations.”
“…”
Shizuo thought it over for a few moments, then grumbled, “All right…but make it quick,” squeezing the words out in between his chants of “kill, kill, kill…”
It made him look like an exorcist attempting to resist the control of the devil.
“All the emotion that’s building up inside of me is screaming to be unleashed…and if I don’t take care of it…”
“…It’s pretty likely that I’ll end up destroying myself.”
Thirty minutes later, Shinjuku
There was a very good reason that Celty decided to split off from Shizuo momentarily.
Naturally, she was concerned with the state of his employment, but there was a much bigger rationale behind her choice.
If she was with Shizuo, there was one person she could never meet, and she had to make contact with him for information now.
“Hey… I’m delighted you decided to come visit me.”
“I just met you last month for the job you had me do.”
“Oh, what’s the harm? We didn’t get to chat last time. So how are things? It’s been a year now since the Yagiri Pharmaceuticals incident. Have you found your head yet?”
Izaya Orihara offered Celty a cup of tea with a sardonic smile. His nasty personality hadn’t changed over time—he knew full well he was offering tea to someone without a mouth to drink it.
Durarara!!, Vol. 2 (novel) Page 8
