Durarara!!, Vol. 1 (novel) (21 page)

South Ikebukuro Park, early morning

This is a twisted story.

“I do not love you.”

A man and woman were leaning against each other on a park bench under the brightening sky.

“But as long as you’re around, I won’t forget my love and dedication for her. Therefore, I accept your love. At least, until the day I get her back,” Seiji said in an empty voice as he softly embraced Mika’s body.

Mika smiled to herself. There was a quiet conviction in that smile.

I have to be that head for Seiji to truly love me. Therefore, I will sacrifice everything I have to love him. I’ll do anything I can to help him find that head. And when we do, I’ll grind it to a pulp right in front of him, pour the remains into my mouth, and make it part of my flesh and blood. It’s all for his sake, for his sake, for his sake…

A love between them that would last until the moment their true love came true.

A love that was so straightforward and so terribly twisted.

The sight of them was so delicate and precious—and so horribly, horribly wrong.

Like a grade-schooler on the day after watching the latest episode of the hottest anime, Masaomi’s face was plastered with an enormous grin.

“Mikado, you won’t believe what I saw on the Net… Get this, there was a Dollars meetup yesterday! Turns out Simon and Shizuo are both in the Dollars! And the Black Rider showed up totally headless and swinging a scythe and went like
vwoww!
right down the wall!”

“I don’t understand a word of what you just said.”

School hadn’t vanished off the map, even following a night like the one before. The clock on the wall ticked away the seconds as though nothing had ever happened, and a perfectly boring, normal day passed by.

When the lunch period began, Mikado headed for the roof of the main school building. Nearly everyone else went to the school cafeteria, which was as large and deluxe as those on a university campus—or else they ventured out into the nearby neighborhood to order a quick lunch. Only a few weird students who brought home-cooked lunches bothered to eat up on the roof.

Mikado stared up at the sky, the same sight as it was anywhere else in town, and had the utterly ordinary epiphany that this was the exact same sky he saw back in his hometown. It was strange to think that
after such an abnormal experience, he could find such a sense of relief and peace in his heart. It was the peace that came the day after a long-awaited field trip.

The day after the incident, Mikado came to school rubbing sleepy eyes to find Seiji Yagiri sitting in his seat, perfectly matter-of-fact. He did not look at Mikado during class, but when their first break started, he turned and briefly said, “Sorry for everything,” before returning to his seat.

More surprising was Mika Harima’s sudden attendance. Anri was surprised at the slight changes to her face, but since most of the students had never seen her until this day, she didn’t strike them as strange in the least, if you ignored the bandage around her neck.

Mika gave Mikado a brief word of thanks from the seat next to him. When the break started, she immediately started clinging to Seiji.

“Damn, so
that’s
Seiji’s girlfriend? No way! No wonder he lives in love, then!” Masaomi remarked. Mikado put on an uncomfortable smile—he knew more of the truth than his friend did—and muttered an affirmative.

But it seemed that after the latest turn of events, Mika no longer hung out with Anri. Each time they had a break between periods, Anri sat alone in the corner of the classroom. Mikado watched her, feeling conflicted.

Whether or not this was a good thing for her was something that only she knew. But…was that really true? Was there no way for him to understand? Perhaps no one really understood the heart of another.

“You’ll simply need to keep evolving,”
echoed Izaya’s words in his head.

Fine, then, I will evolve. I’ll find out just how much I can evolve within the ordinary world I’ve been given—and then I’ll show it to him.

At this point, he had no idea if it was up or down that he’d been looking all this time. As a matter of fact, whatever the answer, he was still looking that way now. The only difference is that he’d made a little wiggle room for himself, front and back.

Mikado stared out the classroom window at the sixty-story building overhead and reflected on his own feelings.

After his experience with the absolutely unreal and extraordinary, he was left with an odd mixture of fulfillment and emptiness.

I bet now I can stare reality right in the face. I can accept it.

And once he decided that he was ready to be honest with himself, he knew what he needed to do.

Mikado was on the roof. From what he heard, she ate lunch here every day.

After such a bold maneuver, he thought that he was capable of anything. He thought nothing could scare him anymore.

He didn’t expect to get tripped up over something like this.

It was so easy to reach out and talk to people on the Internet…

He never in his wildest dreams expected that it would be so hard to achieve his desires in ordinary, real life.

Who knew that it took so much courage just to ask a girl in your class to hang out?

The boy will find Anri in thirty seconds.

The boy will spot Masaomi attempting to woo Anri in thirty-five seconds.

The boy will kick Masaomi to the ground in forty-five seconds.

The boy will suffer Masaomi’s rolling sobat kick in fifty seconds.

The boy will ask Anri to a café in seventy-three seconds.

The boy will be rejected by Anri in seventy-four seconds.

The boy will be invited to eat lunch on the roof by Anri in seventy-eight seconds.

The boy will fall in love with Anri in—

The boy will profess his love for Anri in—

Chat room

At the end of the day, Mikado turned on his computer. He was curious how the Internet was reacting to the previous night’s events, but it didn’t seem to be spreading much. A few people had posted about the dullahan, but no one was taking them seriously.

Figures
, Mikado snorted to himself, then took a look in the chat room he visited just about every day—the chat room that Izaya had invited him to, using the nickname Kanra. The only other person in the room was his friend under the name of Setton.

Another person invited to the chat room by Kanra. I wonder if Setton has some secret identity, too…

“Sorry to interrupt your fun,” said the man in the white coat, smiling apologetically.

“
No big deal
,” she typed on the keyboard. Celty popped up out of the chair.

“Just be careful—tonight’s job could be pretty dicey. Here’s the deal…”

She listened to the description of her mission and left the apartment without a sound.

It was the start of another day for Celty.

A black shadow raced down National Route 254.

It was a pitch-black motorcycle without a headlight. Far, far ahead, a number of police cars carved away at the darkness with their red lights.

Ahead of even those patrol cars came the occasional dry blast of an explosion.

When that sound reached the bike, its silent engine roared to life in the night.

“Hey, it’s the dullahan.”

“It’s cool and all, but I’m telling you, it’s all CG.”

Karisawa and Yumasaki chattered happily regarding the rider as she overtook them. They’d seen her true powers at close range, but they didn’t seem to appreciate the weight of it all. And it wasn’t just them—a startling number of those who witnessed Celty’s fight took her completely at face value. Either the sheer force of her presence was so overwhelming that it lost all reality and became a dream to them, or she was simply accepted as a part of the city now.

Some of the witnesses did write about their experiences on the Net, but they were all roundly laughed off as nonsense. Thanks to that
response, opinion started to shift to explain that night’s meeting itself as just a tall tale, and so the Dollars’ profile didn’t just explode like it might have. That was probably for the best, seeing as the extra attention would also be coming from the police and yakuza.

However, the events of that night most certainly registered deeply into everyone who was present.

“Why do you suppose he showed up there?” Kadota asked from the front passenger seat without turning around.

“Did you know the Black Rider’s actually a member of the Dollars?”

“What? You serious?!”

“I never heard that! So that’s why he showed up and went so crazy!”

“Awesome! The Dollars must be, like, invincible by now!”

Kadota closed his eyes as the two in the back chattered away. He thought back to what Izaya had said as he left the scene.

“Dotachin, I just met the boss of the Dollars. Do you know what the team name came from?”

“Like, give us dollars or something?”

“Nope. Basically, the group doesn’t do anything. And yet, you continue to sell the name. Nothing more. It’s named the Dollars after the adjective
dara-dara
, meaning ‘lazy’ or ‘pointless.’ That’s all there is to it.”

There was no actual structure to the group. The Dollars organization was nothing more than a castle wall—it was the people within that built the kingdom on their own. The rest came down to how big of a facade they could hang outside those walls.

The outside left a name on its own, whether there was anything inside or not. Just like a human being.

Kadota looked at the show playing out ahead of them and grinned wryly to himself.

Just like the Black Rider.

The black motorcycle evaded the police by riding on the side of a truck as though it were the street. As the policemen’s eyes went wide, a man
with a TV camera jabbered away excitedly. He was clearly airing live footage of the chase in progress.

Celty noticed he was there but showed no hesitation in producing a blade from her shadow. It was the largest of any she’d created so far, a giant sickle nearly ten feet across. She swung it back—and howled into the night.

Film me if you want. Expose me if you want. Burn the image of this monster into your minds. But what does it really amount to?

This is my life. The path I’ve been on for a long time. I have nothing to be ashamed of.

She did not hold her breath in the darkness, but let it shine, exhibiting herself unbound by good or evil.

The ordinary days were devoid of extreme hope or despair. Nothing changing. But overflowing with satisfaction and fulfillment.

As she swung the giant scythe at the black bulletproof vehicle, Celty realized something.

Since the night that she exposed all that she was, everything about the city seemed so much more beloved to her.

Perhaps even more than her missing head…

One of the windows rolled down, and a man inside the car shot at Celty.

The bullet split the helmet and passed inside of it.

In the midst of that empty space—the shadow smiled.