Durarara!!, Vol. 1 (novel) (9 page)

Ikebukuro after midnight. A van was parked on the side of a road just outside the pleasure district. The rear windows were mirror tinted, with no way to tell what was inside.

In the midst of this zone of mystery, there was the sound of a hard impact and the pitiful shriek of a young man.

“I told you, I don’t know! C’mon…please, give me a break!” the thug whined in an uncharacteristically polite tone, his face swollen and bruised.

This was the man who hit Celty with his car about twenty-four hours earlier and who had received a face full of scythe handle for his trouble. When he came to, he was inside the back of this unfamiliar van, arms and legs tied up. There were no seats in the back of the van, just gray carpet. There was another man there with him, who had been asking the same question since he came to his senses.

“Like I asked, who’s giving you the orders?”

Three seconds of silence would earn him a punch. Claiming ignorance would earn him a punch. There would be a brief recess, then the process repeated. This had been going on for three hours.

Even in the midst of this beating, the thug was able to calmly and rationally analyze his situation.

I don’t know who this guy is, but at least I know that shadow isn’t here.
On the other hand, I don’t even know if these people and the shadow are connected in some way.

The only people in the van with him were the large man who was beating him and another man in a hat, chewing gum in the driver’s seat. The van’s stereo was playing classical music at medium volume, loud enough to keep most wails from attracting notice outside.

If that shadow was here, I’d be screwed. I might have panicked and told it everything. At least this guy’s a human being, not a monster like last night. In fact, it would be way scarier to have someone higher up in the organization kill me than these guys. I’m just lucky I didn’t get caught by the cops. Whoever these people are, I’ll be fine if I just don’t tell them who hired me. As long as I can keep taking these punches, they’ll eventually figure I really don’t know anything. I mean, they’re not crazy enough to kill me.

The man in front of the thug sighed.

“C’mon, just spit it out already. Look, we’ve got bosses, just like you do. I don’t need to tell you what I mean, do I? And they’re real concerned because you guys have been pulling this stuff without telling them about it.”

Great, so there are mobsters behind this guy. Dammit, I thought we cleared things up with whatever yakuza owned that territory!

“But since you’re not giving up a name at this point, you’re not yakuza. If you were, you’d be contacting whatever yakuza you work for to settle the situation. People above our pay grade on both sides would hash the issue out. But since you’re not doing that, it’s something else that’s backing you, isn’t it?” he chided, lifting the thug’s chin with a finger, as though he were scolding a naughty child.

Essentially, if the thug they held in this van was a member of some backing organization like an organized crime syndicate, they couldn’t get rid of him themselves. But the fact that he wasn’t identifying himself meant that either he was afraid of being held responsible for this failure by his bosses—or whoever he was affiliated with wasn’t a yakuza or foreign mafia.

“Look, I’m saying this out of consideration for your situation. If you know what’s best for you, you’ll speak up and—”

The van’s side door slammed open.

“Well, well, was today a scorcher or what?”

“Thanks for waiting! Well, how’d it go, Shimada? Did he talk?”

A man and woman climbed into the rear of the van without asking. The woman was dressed in brand-name fashion, and the man was well dressed, too, though for some reason he was carrying a bulging backpack.

The man named Shimada looked over at them and sighed sadly.

“Nope, outta time. You get the consolation prize. I feel sorry for this schlub, but he’s yours now, Yumasaki.”

He gave one last pitying glance to the thug, then left the van. The new man and woman closed the door after Shimada left, then turned excitedly to the thug.

“Boy, you really screwed up big time, pal. You just had to be the one who kidnapped poor Kaztano,” the woman said, patting him on the shoulder.

Kaztano? Who? That sounds familiar,
the thug thought. As a matter of fact, it was the illegal immigrant he’d kidnapped yesterday.
Of course, these must be his people. But wait, they’re Japanese. How are they related? Surely they’re not in some kind of teatime club.

The sharp-eyed man lowered his backpack and unzipped it before the confused thug’s eyes.

“Well, well, well. We hear you haven’t spilled your secrets yet, so we’re gonna need to use some special tools.”

He pulled several books out of the bag.

“It’s the eleventh anniversary of Dengeki Bunko. You know the motto: Feel the lightning! So pick a book, any book. We’ll torture you in some way related to that book. Normally we give a choice of super-robot anime, but since we picked up a whole bunch of Dengeki Bunko novels today, this is your selection. Ha-ha-ha!”

“Eh?”

It was less his intentions that the thug found confusing than the words he was speaking. The man spread out a number of novels plastered with colorful illustrations. Then again, given that the thug never read any book that wasn’t manga, he mistakenly assumed that they must be comic books.

What the hell is this? Torture? What do you mean, pick a book? Is that a joke? What do you think this is, the school bus?

“No, no, no. You have to choose…or I’ll just kill you.”

The man’s eyes were bright and smiling, but there was no deception in them. Bolstering the threat was the presence of a silver hammer that had somehow appeared in his hands.

The thug immediately decided that his best course of action was to choose a book that seemed the least painful.

Dammit! How can this be happening to me? What about Gassan and the others? Argh, just gotta pick one… Well, I know I definitely don’t want to pick this
Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan.
It’s got a pretty girl on the cover, but I can guess what that involves based on the title. What about
…Double Brid…V?
Wait, that kid on the cover has a bandage on his head. More bludgeoning? Damn, aren’t any of these normal…?

“Personally, I’d recommend this one:
Inukami!
” the girl piped up, and the guy agreed.

“Ooh, good choice! But which one,
dai-jaen
?
Shukichi?
”

“
Shukichi
’s better for midday. I dunno, should we just go with
Dokuro-chan
?”

“Nahh, it’s too big of a pain to recreate Excalibolg…”

??? What are they saying? Are these gang names?!

The thug was completely at a loss. The man and woman were muttering unfamiliar words like strange curses. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one left out of the loop. The man in the driver’s seat with the sharp assassin’s eyes chewed his gum loudly, clearly irritated.

“Yumasaki, Karisawa. Listen up—I ain’t much for reading, so I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but I have one suggestion,” he said, as though coming to a sudden realization. “Go ahead and have your fun, just don’t use gasoline inside the van like last time.”

“Aww, you’re no fun, Togusa,” grumbled the man, picking up several of the books.

Gaso—?!

Things were clearly worse than the scenarios he’d been imagining. The thug was losing his grip on the situation. Now there was no way to tell which of the books remaining promised the least painful torture. Upon further thought, no matter what the content of the books were, these people were clearly crazy enough to make up something gruesome.

“C…can I ask you just one thing?”

“Mmm? What is it? And no asking what the torture will be—I have a no-spoilers policy!”

“If…if you had a book of Cinderella and I picked that one, what would you do to me?”

The man stopped to think, then patted a fist into his palm.

“I’d grind down your feet with a file until they could fit into glass slippers.”

I knew it! They’ll find a way to make anything awful!

The thug closed his eyes and grabbed a book at random. It had an English title, with the Japanese reading in small letters next to it, and was adorned by a delicate illustration.

“And the choice is made!”

“Wow, you’ve got some stones, pal. Quite a gutsy choice!”

The man and woman showed an unnerving ease with their preparations. She took a hand mirror out of her bag and handed it to him. He immediately cracked the mirror with the hammer and placed a few of the shards in his palm.

“I wonder how many pieces of mirror we need to be able to see things that should be invisible? Time to test it out!”

Meanwhile, the woman held the thug’s head still and forced his left eyelid open. Suddenly he understood exactly what was going to happen to him.

“W-w-wait! You’re kidding! You can’t do this to me! Stop…stop!”

“Kids, don’t try this at home. But who would ever try this anyway?” Yumasaki warned, his face growing more serious by the moment.

Karisawa cheerily injected, “Is this one of those moral panic things about people killing because of the influence of manga?”

“No, no, no. Let’s make this clear for the benefit of our delinquent friend here—there’s nothing wrong with manga or novels. They cannot speak for themselves, and the blame for a crime always falls upon the silent, you know?”

The thug begged and pleaded for mercy with tears in his eyes as the two prattled on with their inane references. The man ignored the cries and slowly but surely brought the pointed shard of mirror glass closer to the thug’s exposed eyeball.

“Manga and novels and movies and video games and our parents
and our school have nothing to do with this. If there’s any reason we do this, it’s because we’re just plain crazy. If there were no manga or novels, we’d base this on a historical play, and if not for that, we’d use some classic old Natsume Soseki novel or something else approved by the Ministry of Education. And what would the politicians say about us then?”

“Nnnooooo-aaaaahhh!”

“Besides, anyone who says they did it because of the influence of manga wasn’t a true fan to begin with.”

Just as the pointed tip of the shard was about to sink into his eyeball, the thug’s spirit of salvation appeared.

“Knock it off.”

The rear door of the van suddenly opened and a heavy, brusque voice filled the interior.

“Dotachin!”

“K-Kadota!”

The man and woman both straightened up, their eyes wide. This new person was clearly a superior rank. The man named Kadota glared at the thug up and down, then looked at the would-be torturers.

“That’s not how you torture someone. Also, don’t get blood on the books, you clown.”

“S-sorry.”

Kadota grabbed the thug’s collar in one hand and lifted him up. The thug’s breathing was an irregular mix of heaves and sobs, his eyes, nose, and mouth glistening with a mix of tears, snot, and drool as he desperately attempted to calm himself down and regain control.

Kadota simply said, “Your pal talked.”

“Uh…wha…whuh?!”

At first, he didn’t understand what Kadota meant, but as it gradually sank in, the thug’s face cycled rapidly through a stream of emotions.

I’ve been sold out?! Who did it?! Gassan? No—but who—damn—what’s going on—we’re completely ruined! What’s happening out there?!

“We’ve only got part of the story so far, but in time, we’ll know the entire truth. Which means we don’t actually need you anymore.”

If they didn’t need him, they might let him walk. That was perfect. If he was just going to be erased by the people from his
own company
, at least this way he had the option of disappearing on his own and laying
low. Despite the confusion, the thug finally began to feel a faint hint of hope. Then, Kadota put that hope to rest for good.