“…Is that even possible? Can you…take Saika out of my body…?”
“If you want to let go of it…if you really want to be rid of it, you could just throw it away somewhere. But if you do give it to me, I am prepared to offer you some amount of money as part of the deal. Please consider the offer.”
She made it sound so easy. Anri had to think.
Give up Saika.
She’d never considered the idea. Could she even live without Saika at this point? Kujiragi’s offer filled her with anxiety and uncertainty.
Then Haruna stepped in. “If you’re going to sell it to this woman, give it to me. I could find a better use for it. And I’ll also cut Ryuugamine and Kida with it and make them fall in love with you.”
“Stop that!” Anri pleaded, not a shout but forceful all the same. “I still think it’s just…wrong to use Saika that way.”
“Oh? How is it wrong?”
“Once you’ve cut a person with Saika…they’re not the same as before. Once Saika’s power has made them a slave, they’re not the person you like anymore, they’re something else…in my opinion.”
“So it’s a difference of values,” Haruna said, neither agreeing or disagreeing. Then she turned her darkening, murderous smile to Kujiragi. “And what’s your opinion, Miss Kujiragi?”
Kujiragi sipped her cooling coffee and spoke honestly. “It’s case by case. Saika’s control allows for the user to manipulate the subject. For example…if you cut someone and made them do something, then never activated that control again, that victim would most likely live out the entire rest of their life without ever realizing that Saika’s curse was within them. It might be an extreme step to label such a person as someone else entirely.”
“But—” Anri protested.
Kujiragi cut her off with an explanation that was much more fluid than the previous. “If you want something to happen, consider that using Saika’s power is one available method. The same way that men and women utilize looks, finances, intelligence, and courage in matters of romance. You ought to view Saika as one of your valuable assets.”
“My…assets?”
“If you think it’s unfair to use something others don’t have, that would mean that anyone who has used considerable good looks, smarts, or winning personality as a means to capture the affection of another is also cheating. I think you should view Saika’s power in that light. It may be trite to say, but it is up to the wielder of a power to decide how they should use it,” Kujiragi finished, her affect completely flat the whole time.
Anri considered this for a time, then shook her head. “But…I still think…Saika’s power is not the same as a human one. It’s not the kind of thing you can achieve by working for it…”
“Because it’s not a human power, it shouldn’t be used for love?”
“…Someone recently told me that I wasn’t human. And I’ve been uncertain since then. Maybe I’m really not human anymore. And if so, maybe I don’t have the right to fall in love like a normal person and enjoy normal happiness…,” Anri murmured ruefully.
She knew the Headless Rider, who was very much not human and yet loved a human man. But she also knew that Celty, while inhuman, had the most human heart she’d ever seen. By comparison, Anri looked human, but her heart only got further and further from the mark. This was the rationale behind her statement.
“Does that also apply to me?” Kujiragi asked, without emotion.
“Huh…? Oh!” Anri gasped.
As she’d just explained, Kujiragi owned a Saika, and everything Anri said about herself could be construed as referring to her, too.
“I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that…,” she stammered, bowing.
Kujiragi’s eyes briefly dipped toward the floor. “Miss Sonohara, even if you are not human, as you claim, the simple act of giving up Saika would make your body human again. I’m not certain what standard you are using to judge a ‘proper’ human heart, but at the very least, Saika would no longer complicate your thoughts.”
“I—I see.”
Anri felt very awkward. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t.
Huh? That’s strange…
This whole time, I thought she never showed any emotion…
Yes, her face hadn’t changed in the least.
But something deeper than the surface—in her glances, actions, breathing—gave Anri just the slightest hint of some mental shifting.
For a moment, Anri wondered if it was anger at being treated like a monster—but while it was indistinct, it struck her as something more like sadness.
“You can go back to being human just by giving up Saika. But…”
At that moment, time stopped for Anri and Haruna.
An abnormal aura was exuding from the woman sitting across the table from them.
“You cannot give up your flesh and blood.”
“…!” “?!”
The two girls froze, trying to ascertain the source of the feeling.
There was no change in any of the other people in the room.
Why was it just them?
The reason became imminently clear.
The words of Saika’s curse had stopped inside of them—and then the rustling began.
Haruna’s roiling curses, as the child, were nowhere near as intense as Anri’s. But even still, she trembled at how the quiet curse began to wail in disgust.
What is this…?
Anri’s inner voice was dozens of times more intense than Haruna’s. It made her a bit dizzy.
Not only did Saika’s curse spill into her eyes and turn them a vivid red, it even began to add a pinkish film to her vision. Against that filter of red light, the woman across from her appeared as a black shadow—from which she could see countless tiny black wings extending and writhing.
“…Could you see anything?” Kujiragi asked, and the palpitations of Saika that had racked the girls vanished entirely.
Their vision, the room, and Kujiragi across from them were all completely normal, as though nothing had just happened.
Anri and Haruna each glanced toward the other, just far enough to notice the sweat dripping from their faces.
Kujiragi ignored their reaction and continued, “Are you saying that, regardless of Saika, someone born as not exactly human does not have even the right to live like a human, to love like a human, to enjoy life like a human? Is that your point?”
“What…what are you…?” Anri gulped.
The answer was, as usual, emotionless. “I cannot answer that question, biologically speaking. But from a social standpoint, I can give you a very precise response.”
“…?”
“I’m what is commonly known as a villain.”
It was so abrupt, so simple, so forceful.
An objective answer, delivered with no guilt or mocking delight, just fact.
“Human or monster, if my past actions were ever revealed to the world in full detail, a good eighty percent of Japan would find me to be a sinner deserving of judgment.”
“…Where did you get that number?” Haruna snarked, but Kujiragi gave her a serious answer.
“From intuition based on experience. But whether it is a hundred percent or ten does not matter to me. I’ve broken a number of laws, and if it is proven and I am arrested, I will break out of captivity. If that does not define me as a villain, this country would have long ago become either a lawless land or the Garden of Eden.”
“Break out…?”
“Even without Saika, I have enough innate strength that I could reliably escape on my own. I will not tell you more concrete details than that, but suffice it to say that I am that sort of person,” Kujiragi said, as dispassionately as though reading a form letter aloud. “One day, my life will likely come to a miserable and hideous end at the hands of some entity proclaiming itself an arbiter of justice, or a person seeking vengeance for my past deeds. I deserve to be harmed, defiled, and tortured with my pleas unheard. I am prepared to suffer this, but
I do my utmost to delay that eventual day as long as I can and, ignoring the feelings of any of my victims, to enjoy the present.”
With her black coffee half-gone, Kujiragi added milk and sugar. She stirred it with her teaspoon, the lukewarm liquid not dissolving the grains of sugar entirely. All the while, she kept her eyes directly on Anri.
“Miss Sonohara, you might not be an arbiter of justice, but at the very least, you have a sense of kindness toward others. That makes you different from me. You ought to be in the sunlight at all times, not staying here and speaking with villains like me. As for Miss Niekawa, I suppose it would depend on the outcome of the love you speak of,” she murmured, completing the report of her observations.
Stunned, Anri tried to protest. “I…I’m not that special. I can’t live on my own…so I have no choice but to leech off others and Saika… I’m just a parasite. If I seem like I’m considerate of others…it’s only because I’m ultimately concerned about myself and how I might be affected.”
“That is fine. The majority of humanity is a parasite that feeds off something else. And if someone is allowing you to live off them for a long period of time, it likely means that they are receiving something from you in return,” Kujiragi said, which was certainly one way to respond to a girl resignedly calling herself a parasite. “That is no longer parasitism. It is symbiosis. There is no need for you to feel guilty about this.”
They were kind words meant to make Anri feel better, but she said them in the monotone of someone reading another person’s words out of a book.
“No matter how pure Saika’s love for humanity is, it is still a sword that corrupts the world of man. That is a fact, and I do not intend to deny it.”
“…”
“In the same way, by your ethical standards, I would undoubtedly fall under the category of evil.”
Anri wondered what she was trying to say.
The answer: “Gentle souls like yours are not meant to possess Saika. In conclusion, I feel that it would be in the best interest of both sides for you to transfer the sword to me.”
“!”
“There are two ways to handle Saika in a form other than a katana. Either control it entirely, like me, and use it as a slave, or do the opposite and open your entirety to Saika. In the former case, you can reshape the blade into any shape, but Saika will no longer tell you how to fight. In the latter case, you can transform, but your fighting style will be entirely determined by Saika.”
It seemed as though she might continue at greater and greater length explaining the finer details of Saika. Instead, she gazed at Anri and described the girl’s inner nature as she saw it.
“You are not capable of either, I suspect. You are kind. And because you are kind, you hold Saika in, so as not to hurt others. Meanwhile, you are also kind to Saika. So you cannot master it completely and use it as a slave. You are indeed traveling the path of symbiosis.”
“…”
“Ultimately, this will put you in a corner. You will have all this power and continually sacrifice yourself not to use it.”
She closed her mouth for just a moment, giving Anri a piercing gaze.
“Saints like you are not meant to have Saika.”
Anri clenched her fists, preparing to say something in return.
But Haruna suddenly chuckled.
“…Haruna?”
The other girl smiled with great delight. “She’s stupid, isn’t she, Sonohara?”
“Huh?”
Haruna favored Anri and Kujiragi with a nasty, sticky smile.
“You’re going to be killed by someone out for revenge? If that’s any moment, don’t you think it would be now?”
“…”
Kujiragi was silent. She understood what Haruna meant.
Anri did not, however, and was going to ask—when the other girl went on.
“Miss Kujiragi…don’t you know that the Saika you sold is the reason that Anri’s parents are dead?”
For a brief moment, Anri felt that her personal sense of time had stopped.
Then, after several seconds, she detected that her knees had begun trembling.
But that did not matter to her now.
She was under a vast shock and incapable of processing such phenomena further.
One of the people responsible for her parents’ death was right before her.
If Kujiragi had never unleashed Saika upon the world, she might be leading a very different life right now.
But that was not what shocked her. It was that, until Haruna pointed it out, the issue of her parents had never even occurred to her.
Were they nothing but a relic of the past in her mind by now?
And in the process of trying to reclaim and reshape her stunned psyche, Anri came to a conclusion. But the past that it caused her to remember made her eyes brim with even greater sadness.
“No…”
“Huh?”
“You’re wrong, Haruna. I think…it’s thanks to Saika that I’m here right now.”
“…What…are you saying?” Haruna asked, smiling and perplexed.
“If there had been no Saika…my father would have killed me.”
She had dredged up her awful memories of what happened five years ago.
The sensation of her own father strangling her, as fresh as if it happened yesterday. If her mother hadn’t cut off his head with Saika…
She shook her head to dispel the horrid recollection and said to Kujiragi, “I’m sorry…I still can’t let Saika go yet.”
“…I see.”
“I still…haven’t made it up to Saika in any way… So I can’t just run away from it all on my own,” Anri said, piecing together the strength of her will as she spoke. In some way, putting the idea into words was helping her reach this determination.
“Plus…I have a promise to fulfill, to tell some people I care for very much about Saika. So until then, I want to remain who I was last year.”
Kujiragi took this in impassively, staring into Anri’s face, then exhaled. “Very well. Please contact me if you change your mind.”
Then she took a blank business card and a pen from her shirt pocket, wrote down a phone number, and gave it to Anri.
“What, you’re not going to give me your card?”
“I have no reason to do business with you at the moment, Miss Niekawa,” she declared.
Haruna cackled to herself, getting to her feet. “I might not be able to do business with you, but I can rob you. Wouldn’t it be fun if I ripped that Saika you’ve got right out of you?”
“Do you wish to be electrocuted again?”
“If you think that’s going to work on me twice, you’re much less capable than you seem.”
An ugly, sludgy haze hung in the air between Haruna and Kujiragi. Since Kujiragi never showed any emotion of any kind, that meant it was entirely coming from Haruna.
“P-please stop this, Haruna…,” Anri protested, but the other girl’s eyes were already filling with blood.
People at other tables noticed something was happening and started glancing over at the trio. Neither Haruna nor Kujiragi paid them any mind.
Kujiragi finished her coffee and quietly set the cup down.
“I’m ready whenever you are.”
Without changing her expression, the aura around her started getting darker, denser. And then—
“Oh, there she is. Anri! Anri! Big, big news!”
A voice tore through the café and the unfolding scene within.
“Karisawa?”
“Hey, I saw your message. Sold out, huh? Too bad.”
Before she came here, Anri had texted Karisawa to tell her the cat-ear headbands were sold out and that she would be meeting with some people here for a bit before she returned to the others.
“So these are your friends, huh? Wait. Huh? I thought you said it was sold out?”
She was reaching for the bag from the cosplay store. Since the furry cat-themed paraphernalia was slightly visible t
hrough the familiar bag, Karisawa assumed it was Anri’s and reached for it.
Another hand shot in and stopped her. “I’m sorry. That belongs to me.”
“Huh? Oh! I’m so sorry!” Karisawa said, blushing. But when she saw Kujiragi’s face, she exclaimed, “Wow! You’re so beautiful! Er, sorry to shout. Do you mind if I ask…do you cosplay?”
Karisawa had a way with asking extremely forward questions to complete strangers. Surely, when she saw the pretty woman with flawless skin in possession of a cat-ear headband, she must have assumed Kujiragi was a kindred spirit.
“…Cosplay? I am interested, but I have no experience,” Kujiragi admitted. With the way she never showed any emotion, it came off as a polite but firm rejection, but the only words Karisawa registered were I am interested.
“If you’re interested, why don’t you join our club? We’d be happy to welcome any friends of Anri’s!”
“No, I…”
“We’ve got about 270 highly customizable costumes, and we can size them for you, too! We can get you everything from miko priestesses to slutty fallen angel maids!”
With no one around to put the brakes on her, Karisawa’s excited pitch went on and on. “Oooh! And she looks like she could do a mean cosplay, too! Geez, Anri, you should have introduced me to these cuties earlier! I could totally see you in a themed trio with them!”
She was agitated enough that if Yumasaki were there, he’d say, “Karisawa, if they’re normies, you’re going to make them give poor Anri the most exasperated reaction!” The other customers around them figured it was just a conversation about manga or something, put the incident with the original trio out of their minds, and returned to their food and chat.
Haruna had been taken aback by the sudden entrance at first, then turned back to the table, ready to ignore the rest of it and attack Kujiragi. But…
“Do you have Gothic Lolita outfits, too?”
“Of course! We can get you over a dozen adult Goth outfits to try on!”
“And idol costumes?”
“I’ve got a number of handmade pieces based on Ruri Hijiribe outfits!” Karisawa reassured her, with a hearty thumbs-up.
“…Here is my contact information. Please tell me the number for your club. I will contact you within the next few days.”
Durarara!!, Vol. 11 Page 16