Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) Page 3

  With one fist wedged firmly into Shinra’s stomach, Celty typed away with her free hand.

  “Don’t get embarrassing on me now. At any rate… I bet I could win a fight against a ghost, but I have no idea what sort of super-science an alien might use. Who knows, those patrol officers could just be grays wearing human bodies.”

  “Wow, you must have really been frightened… Well, I hate to bring this up after you were so scared out there,” Shinra said apologetically, slowly recovering from the damage of the body blow, “but would you mind going back out to Ikebukuro Station?”

  A long silence.

  Celty’s shoulders rose up and down as if taking deep breaths. She put on her trusty helmet and slowly typed out, “Honestly? I don’t want to. I can probably avoid being spotted by the police, but…is it a sudden job?”

  “I just need you to pick someone up.”

  “Who?”

  Shinra was uncharacteristically hesitant in answering his beloved’s question. “Someone who just came back from America. And…he’s going to live right next to this apartment.”

  He took a deep breath, then finally gave her the answer.

  “So, yeah… My dad’s back.”

  Ikebukuro Station, west exit, outside the Metropolitan Theatre

  Celty met Shinra Kishitani, her lover and roommate, shortly after losing her head.

  It all started when young Shinra found her hiding spot on the ship out of Ireland where she was stowing away, following the trail of her head. After that, she got a place to stay in Japan, owing to the help of Shinra’s father—but thanks to his so-called “research” vivisection, using anesthetics that didn’t even work on her, she did not have a fondness for the man.

  In fact, at present Celty suspected that it was Shinra’s father himself who had actually stolen her head. She couldn’t corner him until she had proper proof of it, but she was always wary of him.

  She wanted to tell him that he could get a taxi himself, but he had used the proper channels to call upon her services as a courier.

  He’s always tried to needle me like that. Some things never change…

  Celty made her way to West Gate Park, evading the watchful eye of the police. Once there, she cast her senses around the area.

  Though it was nearly eleven o’clock, there was still a surprising number of people about. Those who noticed the now-infamous Black Rider stopped momentarily, but a quick turn of Celty’s helmet in their direction caused their gazes to dart away.

  It was under these circumstances that Celty waited for her client.

  “You’ll recognize him right away. He’s wearing his usual outfit.”

  Shinra’s words as she left the apartment repeated in her head.

  I always thought his outfit was pretty silly…but I guess I have no room to speak, Celty thought, recalling the sight of Shinra’s father before he left for America. She made a head-holding gesture and shook the helmet left and right.

  At the same time, she noticed one point of interest in her surroundings. There was a group of people with yellow heads visible through the darkness on the road bordering the far end of the park.

  The yellow wasn’t bleached hair, but bandannas that the group of boys all wore tied around their foreheads.

  Yellow Scarves.

  They were a color gang that was growing rapidly in influence, based around a Romance of the Three Kingdoms motif. Celty could recall seeing them here and there in Ikebukuro and Shinjuku over the last few years, until the whole color gang fad seemed to vanish recently.

  And now they’re growing again… What are they doing over there? Celty wondered, focusing on the group.

  A white shadow stood in the midst of the yellow.

  Ugh.

  Celty recognized the identity of that white shadow. Inside her mind, she heaved a sigh, then rode her Coiste Bodhar silently toward the gathering.

  Trembling at the possibility of police surveillance all the while.

  “Hey, pal. Real cool look you’ve got going on.”

  “Real wicked. Or is that wacky?”

  The young men wearing yellow bandannas surrounded a single, seemingly middle-aged man. They hobbled awkwardly due to their baggy pants.

  “Blurp, blub!”

  One of them even took a swig of juice and spat it out onto the ground next to him in an odd attempt at intimidation.

  Meanwhile, the seemingly middle-aged man surveyed the youths around him with stoic placidity. He was “seemingly” middle-aged because the boy could not accurately guess at the man’s age.

  They had picked their target and surrounded a man in white—a single man clad in white, like a polar opposite of Celty’s black.

  Not every inch of him was white. Over his funereal black suit, he wore a white lab coat that was slightly too large for his height. In one hand he held a pure white briefcase.

  Standing along the road outside the train station in a lab coat was strange enough on its own, but what truly set him apart and concealed his age from observers was the gas mask covering his face.

  Again, pure white.

  Even the filter affixed over the mouthpiece of the mask and the bands that strapped the mask to the head were all white. With his face hidden from view, the only detail the boys used to conjecture that he was middle-aged was the graying of about half his hair.

  Both his transitioning hair color and the skin color peeking out here and there were overshadowed by the pure snow-whiteness of the gas mask.

  Even the eyes of the mask were made of white glass, like negatives of sunglasses. It made him look like some sort of bizarre silkworm.

  Within the setting of urban Ikebukuro, he looked nothing short of insane.

  If you’re going to dress like that, at least save it for Harajuku or Akihabara…

  Celty recognized the man from afar. It was clear that based on the manga, novels, and dubious tabloids she read, Celty thought of Harajuku and Akihabara as mystical places where anything goes.

  And sure enough, he’s gotten himself into trouble…

  There was no doubting it now.

  Celty was sure it was him.

  If anything, she simply wanted to believe that there were not multiple people who would dress like that.

  So if her hopes were true, that meant the man in white was Shingen Kishitani—Shinra’s father.

  The boys crowded around the bizarre, almost exhibitionistic man like he was some kind of creature in a zoo, totally unaware of Celty’s steady approach.

  “Listen, pal, we’re in a bad mood ’cause we’ve been on the lookout for a slasher who’s in hiding. I mean, we’re crazy pissed. And you’re crazy suspicious.”

  “So is it all right if we do a little inspection?”

  “Yeah, you wouldn’t—blorp—mind if we examine your wallet. Blorp, blup.”

  One of the men approached him, spilling carbonated soda from his mouth. Shingen took a step away from him and spoke at last.

  “The air in Tokyo is so dirty. Don’t you agree?”

  “Huhh?” one of the boys growled.

  Meanwhile, Shingen only shook his head in lamentation and mumbled through the gas mask. “Of course, those filthy faces of yours seem uniquely adapted to the wretched air. A form of camouflage, if you will. And not just that—the stain extends to your eyes. You do not even see the extent to which the filth penetrates you.”

  “I dunno, I think this dude might be leakin’ something, if you catch my drift.”

  The boys reacted to the man’s obvious insult not with anger, but suspicion and confusion.

  “Yeah…no worries, though,” one of them said and poured the remains of his beverage onto Shingen’s head. Large stains grew on the pristine lab coat, and a sweet smell wafted through the air.

  Shingen remained silent for a moment, then shook his head again and lamented, “Ahem. Well, it seems the time has come for you to understand what a grown man can do… You may think that being minors under the protection of juvenile law render
s you immune from harm if you choose to kill another person—well, think harder! When you attempt to kill a man, you have to be fully aware of the possibility that he might kill you first!”

  The instant he finished this imperious speech, the member of the group most difficult to label a “boy” grabbed Shingen roughly by the collar.

  “Ah! Ow!”

  “Yeah, I think this dude really is leaking brains.”

  He stood on Shingen’s shoe and began jabbing his thumb into the man’s ribs.

  “Listen up, I’m over twenty!”

  “Agh! Ah! W-wait a minute. Ouch, that really hurts! I can’t get away because you’re stepping—ow!—on my shoe! Your thumb is—ow!—stabbing me really hard! Ow, ow, ow!”

  “Huh?! I can’t hear you. Huh?!”

  With every “Huh?!” the young man drove his extended thumb between the ribs. While unthreatening, the powerful and speedy attack caused Shingen to yelp in surprise.

  “What are you doing just standing there, Celty? Hurry up and come to my aid!” he shouted over the boys’ heads, which caused them all to turn around.

  They saw a black shadow.

  Do I have to…?

  Celty seriously considered responding to the cry for help by pretending she had seen nothing and going back home. All the while, Shingen continued yelping.

  “Didn’t you put it together that the reason I spoke down to them like this was because I saw you standing behind them and knew I was safe?! I know you’re not the kind of person who would betray my trust!”

  I really don’t want to do this…

  Celty was truly about to turn on her heel when she was stopped by a sudden shout from one of the boys.

  “Hey! That’s the Black Rider!”

  “That’s the one, Mr. Horada! It was the dude dressed like a bartender with the Black Rider who did us in!”

  “You got a lot to answer for, punk. Yeah?!”

  “How you gonna pay for what that bartender did to us?”

  Are these the guys who…?

  And then Celty remembered.

  Several weeks earlier, on the evening of the great mass slashing called the “Night of the Ripper,” the friend she’d been escorting on her motorcycle had flattened a group of the Yellow Scarves who had dared to stare him down.

  She didn’t recall the faces of the people he punched, but based on the way they were screaming, these had to be the same boys.

  Oh, geez.

  Celty pulled her PDA from her waist, hoping to find some way to explain the situation to the angry gang, except—

  “What you doin’ with that? You think this is a joke? Huh?”

  One of them smacked her hand, sending the not-inexpensive PDA clattering to the asphalt.

  The next instant, the shadow seeping from Celty’s body instantly spread throughout the area, clinging to the boys’ feet.

  “Whua?!”

  “Wh-what is this shit?!”

  “H-hyaa!”

  The boys screamed, stumbled, and fell as their legs were caught by the sudden appearance of the black, ropy shadows, quick as snakes and sticky as leeches.

  Meanwhile, Celty retrieved her PDA. Once she was sure the crystal screen still worked, she calmed down a bit.

  Good, it’s not broken.

  She clutched the PDA Shinra had given her as a present and turned back, done playing around. She was about to grab Shingen’s hand and drag him away from the scene, when…

  “Hey, you! Black Rider! What’s the big idea—?”

  “Yah.”

  “Guh?!”

  —?!

  Shingen, who was standing right behind the young man who’d boasted that he was over twenty, swung his briefcase down on the back of the punk’s head. It was a tremendous, centrifugal arc with arms at full extension.

  The sound it made was much lighter than Celty expected, but the man crumpled to the ground anyway, eyes rolled back and blood trailing from his head.

  While everyone else was stunned into silence, Shingen glared down at his fallen victim imposingly.

  “See that…? That’s…how a grown man fights.”

  What in the world are you doing, you clown?!

  Celty could sense that they were attracting more attention from the surrounding area, so she grabbed Shingen’s hand and practically dragged him away toward her trusty black bike.

  “Just a moment, Celty. There are three more of them left.”

  “Shut up,” she typed briefly into the PDA before tucking it back away.

  The motorcycle silently ran up to the corner of the Metropolitan Theatre, but then she remembered that there was a police station on the other side and quickly wheeled into a U-turn.

  The fear she felt earlier in the evening returned, shivering up her back.

  “Oh…did you just shiver, Celty? Was it a shiver in response to a sensation of cold? A mental reaction? The workings of some sensory apparatus unfamiliar to humanity? How fascinating. You’ll have to allow me to dissect you agai— Gwffh!!”

  She planted her knee in his back and hung her helmet.

  He’s just like Shinra, but…I simply can’t find it in me to like him…

  “You saved me, Celty. Not only that, you helped me teach the leaders of tomorrow a harsh lesson about life, at the mere price of screaming pain in my serratus posterior inferior and abdominal oblique.”

  Shingen was rubbing his ribs with one hand while he clung to Celty’s back with the other.

  The contrast of pure white and black atop the dark motorcycle was striking in the back alleys. They would stick out like nothing else on the main roads, and if they were caught, they’d likely be charged with excessive force in self-defense.

  With her boyfriend’s father—the very man responsible for that excessive force—seated behind her, she could do nothing but pray that the squad of police motorcycles wouldn’t spot them.

  Meanwhile, Shingen continued chattering away into his gas mask. “The thing about that attack is, it wouldn’t really work against a proper fighter—a boxer, say, with powerful abdominal muscles. Sadly, I do not have well-trained abs, so there will be a bruise for quite some time, if not actual interior damage.”

  Hope it hurts like hell.

  If Celty had actually had teeth to grind, they would have been audible right now. She tried to imagine herself with a head, but the realization that the number one suspect in its theft was sitting behind her just made her depressed.

  She slowed her speed through the back alleys, trying to find something else to think about, settling on the earlier gang of boys.

  Because there were so many members of the Yellow Scarves, they were a threat if they wanted to be. At worst, they might pinpoint the location of the apartment where she lived with Shinra.

  She knew that she could get by without being trailed all the way back, but their numbers were concerning. Celty couldn’t say for certain that one of them who happened to live nearby might not catch sight of her returning home by coincidence.

  It’s weird, though, Celty thought, noticing something about the Yellow Scarves. They just picked a fight with Shizuo not too long ago…

  Shizuo was the name of the friend who had flattened the previous group of boys a few weeks back. Celty consulted her memories of the more distant past.

  The Yellow Scarves were not always such an aggressive bunch, she knew. They might squabble among other kids, but they didn’t seem to be the type to pick fights with older adults or go hunting for victims late at night.

  Then again, the idiot in the gas mask is dressed like a perfect mark. Then again, I don’t have room to speak about unusual appearances, either. Huh? So does that mean a few weeks back…they were picking a fight with me, not Shizuo?

  If that was the case, she owed Shizuo an apology for getting him involved. But there was something else eating away at her.

  She was remembering what one of the members of that group had shouted: “Listen up, I’m over twenty!”

  Before, the Yellow S
carves were just middle schoolers… They should be in high school at the most by now. I didn’t think they would be pulling older people into their group…

  While this did bother her, the apartment building was within sight, so her thought process hastily wrapped the issue up.

  Then again, strange things happen with large enough gatherings. They’re not necessarily representative of the whole. Ha-ha! Just like us.

  The organization that she herself was aligned with suddenly passed through her mind. She trembled slightly with a silent chuckle.

  The Dollars aren’t much different.

  The motorcycle bearing shadows white and black passed into the building’s underground parking lot unseen. The night moved onward in Ikebukuro.

  Though she herself was an extremely abnormal being, her very normal life quietly vanished into the darkness.

  But the disquiet of that question remained upon her heart.

  Chat room

  {I’m seeing more people in yellow around town these days.}

  [Yellow?]

 

  [Oh, you mean the Yellow Scarves?]

  [They do seem to be on the rise.]

 

  [Yes, well…they’ve been around for years.]

  [But…I don’t know, something’s changed with them recently.]

  {Changed?}

  [I don’t know how to describe it. They’re not like the old Yellow Scarves… They seem to be going in a different direction.]

  [It feels like they’re more violent than they used to be.]

  {You seem to know your stuff, Setton.}

 

  {Do you happen to know someone in the group?}

  [Oh no, that’s not the case.]

  —SAIKA HAS ENTERED THE CHAT—

  {Oh! Good evening, Saika.}