Durarara!!, Vol. 1 (novel) (14 page)

After that, their rivalry was set in stone, and trouble always followed whenever one visited the other’s neighborhood. “Trouble” meaning
simple fights, of course, but Izaya was clever enough to maneuver such that they never got the police or yakuza involved.

“Unlike Kadota or Yumasaki, when I get into trouble I’m always alone. I think the same goes for Izaya. He doesn’t have any friends or partners. Which isn’t to say that I don’t get lonely myself. I want to have connections to other people, even if it’s only going through the motions.”

Celty nodded to show the grumbling brawler she understood.

A bartender in sunglasses and a shadow wearing a helmet. It was a surreal pairing at a glance, but the people around them barely did more than look and showed no signs of interest.

Shizuo had clearly been drinking, probably at Simon’s sushi place. Celty felt it would be cruel to just leave him hanging, so she let him speak his mind for a bit, until…

“What I want to know is,
what’s Izaya doing back here
?”

Celty knew the answer to that question. Ikebukuro was simply the setting for Izaya’s latest twisted interest. But there was another detail weighing on her mind.

The strange thing is that he was here for two days in a row.

Izaya’s base for his information brokerage business was in Shinjuku. He wasn’t the kind of man with time on his hands every day. If he was hanging around, especially with Shizuo’s presence, he had to be doing so with a specific purpose in mind.

“Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I saw him speaking to some kid from Raira Academy…”

Shizuo stopped in the middle of his thought. He looked through the crowds.

“What’s that?”

Celty turned to view the surrounding area. Amid the mass of people coming and going, a number of them were watching a specific person. Right at the center of those gathered gazes was a single woman.

On the street behind them was a woman in pajamas, probably in her late teens, tottering through the sunset on uncertain legs. Perhaps she had been hurt, or perhaps she just escaped from the clutches of some of the city’s unsavory residents.

Celty had no desire to draw extra attention, but given that someone’s life might be hanging in the balance, she let herself focus on the woman anyway.

And froze on the spot.

It was her face as she remembered it from the water surface or the reflection of windows.

Hair as black as darkness, just tracing over her eyes, features that were carved into her heart long in the distant past—right atop the shoulders of the woman stumbling across the sidewalk in her pajamas!

Celty’s emotions exploded. She raced forward. Shizuo followed her over to the woman, curious. She grabbed the unsteady woman by the wrist and forcefully turned her for a better look. The woman swallowed in shock, then shrieked madly, trying to undo Celty’s grip.

“Ah…
Aaaah, noooo!
”

The crowd turned its attention on Celty, but she was too agitated to notice. She only wanted a better look at the woman’s face, but the situation was too chaotic to pull out her PDA for a message now.

“Uh, please calm down. We’re not here to hurt you,” Shizuo said helpfully as he approached. He put a hand on her shoulder, hoping to calm her down.

Thukk.

A shock ran through his side. Something felt very wrong around his thigh, just below the buttock, sending both cold and heat into his pants.

“Wha…?”

Shizuo swung around to see a young man wearing a school blazer, crouched down and stabbing something into Shizuo’s thigh.

It was an ordinary office-use ballpoint pen, the kind one would find anywhere. The boy’s bag was half-open—he must have pulled the pen out of that and stabbed it into Shizuo’s leg.

“What…?”

“Let go of her!” the boy shouted.

Celty turned to see what this new disturbance was, noticed the sudden bloodshed, and stopped in her tracks.

Sensing an opportunity, the girl in the pajamas tugged herself free of Celty’s grip and started running down the street. Celty moved to follow her but held up at the last moment, looking back. Shizuo was standing there with two pens jammed into his thigh, while the young man in the blazer was pulling out a third.

The crowd burst into worried murmurs, several of them falling back in panic. Some affected a mix of nonchalance and fear, trying
to skirt around the crowd as though nothing was happening, while others just walked straight through the scene in complete ignorance. Some even pulled out their phones to snap pictures. There were two police boxes in the vicinity, but the situation erupted directly between both of them, and it would take a three hundred–yard run to reach either one.

With a brief glance at the crowd, the young man in the blazer looked in the direction the girl in pajamas went, his third pen still in hand.

Then he muttered, “Thank goodness…”

Celty was going to demand what he meant by that, but Shizuo thrust out a hand first. His palm snapped to a halt right before the edge of her helmet, and he smiled as though nothing was wrong.

“I’m fine. Too drunk to feel much pain. You go after her. I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to follow her, don’t you?”

He folded up his sunglasses and tucked them into his shirt pocket, then smacked his own face.

“Ha-ha! Always wanted to say that one. ‘I’ll handle this. You go on ahead!’”

That line was usually reserved for when the enemy was unfathomably strong, and if anything it was the student boy whose life was now in danger—but Celty decided to indulge Shizuo rather than worry about the young man’s well-being. Besides, if she stuck around and they got caught by the police, she might be able to explain that Shizuo was the victim, but she wouldn’t be able to explain who she was.

Celty put her hands together in apology, then straddled her bike to chase after the girl. People in the crowd exclaimed in surprise at the Black Rider’s presence in their midst. Her trusty steed roared high, drowning out the onlookers as it echoed throughout the night city.

“Stop!” The boy in the blazer tried to chase after her.

“That’s what I’m saying.” Shizuo grabbed the boy by the back of his collar and dragged him backward. “Is that your girlfriend?”

“Yes! She’s my soulmate!” the boy—Seiji Yagiri—stated with absolute confidence, flailing wildly in an attempt to escape.

“Why is she like…that?” Shizuo asked, still entirely calm.

“I have no idea!”

“What’s her name?”

“How the hell should I know?!”

The crowd, watching at a distance, felt a sudden chill. The man in the bartender’s outfit, who had seemed relatively normal and nice, now had veins bulging on his face. The warmth drained out of the air.

All of that heat sucked out of the surrounding space was added to his rage—and Heiwajima exploded. “What the hell is that?!”

The young man flew.

“No way!” the crowd shrieked.

Without a shred of hesitation, Shizuo
tossed
Seiji’s body directly into the street. He slammed into the side of a delivery truck that was waiting at the light. If the light had been green, Seiji might easily be dead in seconds. Even more shocking was the sheer distance for one human being to throw another. Every person watching the scene sucked in a freezing breath.

“Isn’t it just a liiittle irresponsible, not even knowing your girl’s name? Huh?”

Seiji’s bounce off the truck landed him back on the sidewalk. Shizuo walked over and grabbed him by the collar again, pulling him up to chest level.

But even numbed by that powerful shock, Seiji met Shizuo’s monstrous glare with a powerful gaze of purpose.

“Names don’t matter…when you’re truly in love!”

“Huh?” Shizuo glared at him even harder, but Seiji did not falter in the least. “How do you know she’s your soul mate when you don’t even know her name yet?”

“Because I love her. I don’t need any other reason! Love cannot be measured by or put into words!”

Shizuo glared back at him, deep in thought. Seiji held his arm high, pen still in hand.

“Which is why I use actions! I’m here to protect her, and that’s all there is!”

He thrust the pen downward toward Shizuo’s face. The older man easily stopped the pen with his other hand. His eyes were red with rage, and a devilish smile split his face.

“I like you more than Izaya, at least.”

Shizuo ripped the pen away from Seiji’s hand and held the boy out at arm’s length.

“So I’ll let you off with this,” he said and yanked his arm in so that
his head smashed against Seiji’s forehead. With a pleasant little crack, Seiji fell to his knees.

Shizuo dropped his victim and made to leave the scene.

“Ugh, these are gonna bleed if I pull them out. Gotta buy some bandages before I extract them. Or maybe instant glue would be better…”

Muttering, Shizuo walked off the street down the alley. The crowd split into two around him, desperately trying to stay out of his path—and one by one, they returned to the mass of pedestrian traffic. Eventually, it was as if nothing had ever happened. Seiji unsteadily climbed to his feet, and the only people watching were doing so out of the corners of their eyes from the distant street corner.

“Damn…” Seiji quietly walked on, his head screaming in agony. “Gotta find her… Gotta help…”

Two police officers approached the stumbling boy.

“Are you all right?”

“Can you walk on your own?”

They had received reports of a fight and came to see, but only Seiji was left, and there were no other traces of the altercation. Shizuo never pulled the pens out of his leg, so whatever blood he lost was all on his pants.

“I’m all right. I just fell, that’s all.”

“Now, now. We just need you to come to the outpost with us.”

“We only want to talk. Besides, you shouldn’t be walking in that state.”

The policemen appeared to be genuinely concerned for him, but Seiji didn’t have time for any of this. He looked around for any signs of her—then heard the growl of that black motorcycle.

He shot around in the right direction, then saw the Black Rider racing for the entrance to the subway…chasing after the girl in pajamas.

“Yama, that’s the bike!”

“Forget it, that’s above our pay grade. Let Traffic handle it.”

Seiji heard none of that. He only had eyes for the girl.

She disappeared into the underground entrance, pulled by someone else. In fact, it looked like—

“Mikado…Ryuugamine,” Seiji muttered, recognizing his class rep. He started off for the station.

“Hey, wait!”

“You’re gonna hurt yourself!”

The police held him down, and Seiji struggled helplessly. At top condition, he might have been able to momentarily break free, but the damage caused by Shizuo prevented him from using his full strength.

“Let go! Let go of me! She’s there! Right there! Let go, let go, let go! Why, dammit, why?! Why is every damn person in the world trying to ruin my love life?! What did I do to deserve this?! What did she do to deserve this?! Let go, let go, let gooooo!”

“So your head was walking around, attached to a different body, and just when you thought you had her, a student interfered, and when you pursued the girl, a different student stepped in and took your head away—and you want me to believe that nonsense?”

Shinra spread his arms theatrically in the middle of his apartment, wearing his usual white lab coat. Celty paid his gestures no mind, her fingers limply sliding over the keyboard.

“I’m not demanding that you believe me.”

“Oh, but I do. You’ve never lied to me.”

Shinra put on a rousing speech from the other room, hoping to cheer Celty up.

“They say a man’s best friends are honesty, sincerity, and wisdom, but in my case, you’re the only one I need! Honest, sincere, and wise: I’m proud to have such a perfect life partner!”

“
Who said we were life partners?
” Celty typed back, but nothing in her reaction suggested disgust at Shinra.

“We could change those three qualities to effort, friendship, and victory instead. How about that?”

“Listen to me. No, not listen—I mean, read the words on the screen,”
she typed, exasperated. The doctor continued talking, paying her no attention.

“Then I must do my best to live up to them, sparing no effort or expense in traversing my game of fate with you to victory.”

“What about friendship?”

“You always have to start as friends, don’t you?”

Celty couldn’t be bothered to get seriously angry at Shinra’s nonsense. She shrugged and decided to take a look at tomorrow’s schedule.

“At any rate, I can’t sit around feeling sorry for myself. It’s possible
that I could finally retrieve my head. I’m pretty sure those uniforms were from Raira, so I’ll stake out the school’s front gate tomorrow and wait for that student.”

Shinra took a look at the unusually long message and cast her a mystified look.

“What comes after that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I’ll demand to know the location of my head.”

“And then? What will you do?”