Durarara!!, Vol. 11

by Ryohgo Narita

  A full helmet and a clearly feminine figure. But unlike Celty, this rider wore a white-based suit that looked familiar to him.

  “Hey, is that…Vorona?”

  Vorona.

  As soon as he said the name of his new coworker, the rider blasted the acceleration—as though trying to drown out the sound of his voice.

  This, of course, was all the confirmation Shizuo needed. The rider turned down a side street and vanished into the night within moments.

  He wasn’t sure what that was all about, but he was sure of one thing—the box she’d just stolen from the police vehicle contained the head in question.

  He didn’t know why Vorona would be stealing something like that, but the incident succeeded in finally flipping a switch in Shizuo that had been off this whole time.

  Considering the situation, he arrived at one other certainty.

  “Izaya… Is that you?”

  After what the man under the sword’s control muttered earlier, and other circumstances leading up to this, he had enough of a reason to suspect, even if it was largely a hunch.

  “You’re up to some bullshit again. Aren’t you, Izaya…?

  “And you’ve got Kasuka…and Celty…and even my new coworker involved…?”

  Anger.

  Anyone looking at Shizuo at this moment might have hallucinated that the very air around him was warping.

  Sheer rage powerful enough to control the air around him was being compressed within his being. Shizuo clenched his fists. He even held his voice inside.

  All his anger concentrated in those fists, so that he could use them to smash the source of all the irritation he’d been feeling for days.

  Anyone who knew Shizuo well would arrive at the same thought upon witnessing him now.

  Whether it was Izaya or someone else pulling the strings behind this—the source of evil would undoubtedly be obliterated off the face of the earth.

  And so, with the greatest rage he’d ever felt compressed within his being, the beast quietly ventured forth into Ikebukuro.

  The fires across the city formed a chain.

  All connected, as though arranged ahead of time; all violent at once.

  Like a bundle of firecrackers bursting together.

  Tokyo—night

  “Haruna!”

  She was just leaving to get some dinner from the convenience store and turned around at the sound of her name. A very familiar face awaited her.

  “…Oh, Dad. You seem well.”

  “You know that’s not what I want to hear… What have you been doing all this time?!”

  “I’m surprised you knew where to find me. Or was it a coincidence?” asked the runaway daughter, without a trace of shame or hostility.

  Her father, Shuuji Niekawa, sighed. “The Dollars. They had an eyewitness report that you were at the Raira Hospital café. And they followed you the whole way after that. So I’ve been staking out this apartment the entire time since.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know I had a stalker. If you’re relying on a street gang like the Dollars, you’ve really fallen a long way, Dad.”

  “Don’t be frivolous! Do you have any idea how worried I was when I heard that you’d joined the Dollars…?”

  For the moment, he was showing more relief than anger—and Haruna just sighed and turned her eyes Saika red.

  “…Be quiet, Dad.”

  It was a statement of power, infused with Saika’s curse.

  Shuuji had been pierced by her blade before. He was already Saika’s puppet.

  Without a second thought, Haruna used her own father as her child—Saika’s grandchild.

  By her measuring stick, anyone outside of Nasujima, even her own family, might as well have been a stranger.

  “Ah yeah, I get it.” Shuuji nodded, his eyes red, too.

  In the past, when Saika’s will took control, he had spoken more effeminately, but now that he was taking orders from Haruna’s will, he was more like a pure automaton puppet.

  A smile plastered itself on Haruna’s face. She felt not the slightest bit of guilt about controlling her father. “The Dollars’ information network is impressive. I wonder if I could use that to find Takashi. Anyway, you can go home for today.”

  “…”

  Her father said nothing. So she chatted to him all on her own. “Oh, that reminds me, Dad. I made my very first friend ever today! Her name is Anri! I’ll introduce her to you sometime. Maybe when it’s not so busy.”

  And then, her quota of family time fulfilled, she walked right past her stock-still father toward the store…

  Until something pricked the back of her neck.

  “Huh…?”

  She felt more surprise than pain and craned her neck to the side.

  There was her father, eyes still bloodshot—holding a syringe.

  “D…ad…?”

  A million questions burst into her head, then vanished into darkness.

  “Well done. I mean it, very nice work.”

  A man emerged from the shadows, clapping his hands. He wore a beanie and sunglasses, a combination that screamed “disguise.”

  As he peeled off his fake beard, he rolled the unconscious Haruna over. When she was facing upward, he gave her “sleeping” face a very close inspection.

  “Oh! Your daughter’s still very pretty, as long as her mouth is shut.”

  “…”

  Shuuji did not answer the man. He appeared to be in a daze, not entirely present.

  The man ignored him and focused on his daughter, gloating over the comatose young woman.

  “When two of Saika’s children cut each other’s children—in other words, the grandchildren of the original—control doesn’t pass based on level of strength, or seniority, or dumb luck. Whoever does it latest overwrites the control, that’s all. You didn’t know that, did you? You probably thought you were the only one who ever overcame the original Saika and became an independent child,” he mocked, trying to lift her skirt with his shoe. “But what happens if a child slashes another child? I haven’t tested that out yet.”

  He tried a number of times without success and eventually withdrew his foot out of boredom, pressing it lightly against Haruna’s stomach instead.

  “If I could use you however I wanted with Saika… Well, you don’t have to worry. I’ve got plenty of love for you, Haruna,” the man gloated with a disgusting leer. He took off his hat and sunglasses.

  “Oh yes. I will love you…I will love your body,” he murmured, licking his lips.

  Shuuji Niekawa could do nothing as the man beside him fantasized about defiling his daughter. The curse of Saika filled his brain, and he had no functional thinking power.

  All he could do was stand there.

  Haruna’s onetime homeroom teacher, Takashi Nasujima, plotted and cackled over her body.

  And all her father could do was stand there.

  At that moment—Ikebukuro

  When Anri finally headed home, she was still feeling depressed.

  A number of pathways had been indicated to her over the course of the day.

  In a way, they were each potential futures being displayed for her through the picture frame. She just didn’t have the bravery to choose which picture to paint.

  I’m the same.

  Nothing about me has changed since before I met Ryuugamine and Kida…and even Mika.

  It was this mood of self-loathing that consumed her when she reached her apartment. Then she saw a feminine figure leaning against her door.

  Who is that…? Is it…Niekawa?

  She tensed up until she approached close enough to clearly make out the figure—at which point she realized it was a girl she’d never seen before.

  “Hello. It’s nice to meet you for the first time. Right?”

  Her smile was gentle but strong at the core, the exact opposite of how Anri felt at the moment. She gave Anri a piercing look, then held out her hand for a shake, and introduced herself in a firm voice.

&
nbsp; “I’m Saki Mikajima. Hi!”

  In the darkness, a voice called for her.

  It was strongly familiar, but for some reason, she couldn’t place who it belonged to.

  She was drawn forward, walking through the dark, until she sensed something hitting her chest.

  “…am Celty.”

  When she realized the thing, which was smaller than a soccer ball, was what had called her name, Celty remembered that the voice of the head in her hands was none other than her own.

  Then the head that was supposed to belong to her repeated what it had been muttering, louder and clearer this time.

  “I am Celty.”

  No, no, no, no, no! Wait! I mean, yes, it’s true, but hang on a second!

  “…ty! Celtyyy!”

  She burst up with a start, stammering to herself, and found that she was in her usual bedroom, right next to Shinra in his wheelchair, who was looking at her with great concern.

  “Are you all right? You were really moaning to yourself.”

  Celty hurriedly cast her vision around the area and snatched up the PDA resting next to her bed.

  “Th-the head! What happened to my head?!”

  “Don’t worry. The police report was a little fishy. The rumors on the Net are saying that the head might’ve been a fake. The rumors that me and Yumasaki started, I mean.”

  “…Oh. But we’ve got to do something! If that gets cremated, I’ll…I’ll…!”

  “Calm down. I’ll do something about that head.”

  Shinra leaned over in his chair and held her until she finally felt herself calming down.

  “…Thank you. I’m better now. Sorry for getting out of hand like that.”

  “I’m glad. If anything, it was Seiji who was even more worked up. He said he was going to charge the police station, so I knocked him out with a tranquilizer for the night… Then Namie got mad at me for giving Seiji a tranquilizer. So I had to knock her out, too. Compared to them, Mika was very relaxed. And when Namie lost her cool, Dad ran off somewhere,” he explained, as if it was all some funny story.

  Just then, the doorbell rang over by the entrance.

  “Hmm, I wonder who that is. Did Dad come back?”

  Several moments later, the sliding door of the bedroom opened, and Emilia popped her head inside.

  “Shinra, a glasses girl child has arrived for judgment of a visit?”

  “Glasses? Oh, would that be Anri? Please send her in.”

  “Anri…I wonder if we should tell her about Mikado,” Celty showed Shinra on her PDA, but she figured there wouldn’t be time for that sort of conversation. Then the door to the bedroom slid open again, and a woman wearing glasses entered.

  “…Umm…? I’m sorry, you are?”

  Huh? Who’s this?

  Neither Shinra nor Celty could hide their surprise. The woman walked up to Shinra and took his hand without expression, staring into his face.

  As he waited, baffled, she said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Kasane Kujiragi.”

  But a second before they could decipher the meaning of that name, Kujiragi drew closer to Shinra’s face and whispered, “I have an interest in you.”

  Instantly, without batting an eye, the woman placed her lips over Shinra’s—and extended steel nails from her fingers, sinking them into his shoulder.

  For a brief moment, everything in the room, time included, seemed to freeze solid.

  When blood seeped from Shinra’s shoulder and his eyes began turning bloodshot like Saika’s, it was not Celty’s consciousness that abandoned her this time but her sense of reason.

  Then chaotic shadows ravaged the room.

  It tumbled.

  And tumbled.

  After this day, a subset of residents of the city found themselves plunging into chaos, without knowing where they were headed.

  There was no one mastermind behind it, no one single cause—just different people tangling up one another’s feet, falling and falling…

  Into the deep darkness that existed on the underside of the city, where those like the Awakusu-kai lived and breathed.

  Inside the sack that was the city, both wide and cramped at once, the rodents struggled and struggled.

  Would they fight back like cornered rats? Or simply drown in the sack?

  Nobody could guess at this point in time.

  Only one thing was certain.

  As long as they continued to plunge within the city of Ikebukuro, they would ultimately be headed to the same place, the deepest place of all.

  As such, fate worked its ways as they fell.

  Without a hint at even the nature of its eventual product, whether rope leading up to safety or shackles dragging to the bottom of the earth…

  The city offered a glimpse into its impenetrable darkness, to saints and villains alike.

  There was no way to tell if hope awaited at the bottom of that obsidian dark.

  And yet, without stopping a single one of them, the city swallowed all within itself—and began to tumble.

  AFTERWORD

  Hello, I’m Ryohgo Narita.

  Well, Durarara!! has passed the ten-volume mark and reached number eleven safely. You might find a few scattered references throughout this book that will make you grin if you’ve read Volumes 4–5 of my Vamp! series of novels… (Blatant cross-marketing.)

  I pushed the story forward quite a bit in the latter half of this book and ended it with a number of lit fuses all over the place. I’m expecting that the next book will start with a number of consecutive explosions, so please whittle away the time as you wait, imagining that you’re just staring at those fuses…

  So, as I had announced before, I was planning to cap the story in a way at Volume 12…but considering what it would take to wrap up some of the stories of the Awakusu-kai characters who didn’t appear in this book at all, I’m currently stuck between extending it to a thirteenth volume or making the next one very, very long. I’m still not sure what my final decision will be at this point, but I’m hoping to deliver the news through the usual marketing avenues.

  My hope is that once I’m done with this story movement, I’ll move it to a fresh series set a year or two later, focusing more on new characters, Aoba and Kuru-Mai and the adults.

  Now, if I were to rebrand the title like Mr. Kamachi’s A Certain Magical Index: New Testament, I could go with…New Durarara!! Or…True Durarara!! Or…Durararara!! Or…Durarara!!! New World Arc, or…Durarara!! Turbo Edition, or…Durarara: Sunshine City at Dawn, or…Durarara: The Gunman of Ikebukuro, or…Durarara Ultimate Battle, Darkness Demon Izaya vs. Ultra-Mecha Shizuo… The possibilities are just beginning! And now they have ended.

  But whatever form it takes, I think that this story set in Ikebukuro will continue for some time longer. I hope you look forward to more!

  And now some announcements.

  Just as I was praying that there would be more things I could tell you about Durarara!!, they have arrived. First of all, the Durarara!! Blu-ray box set comes out on the twenty-third of this month!

  In addition to all twenty-six episodes of the series, you’ll get the Dengeki Bunko Akifuyu no Jin de Durarara Lovers in Nakano special event footage. Not only does it include three original audio drama CDs, you get the deluxe box art drawn by Suzuhito Yasuda himself, so if you’re interested in that or the Durarara Rapping!! character song collection CD that comes out on the same day, I highly recommend looking into buying them!

  As for items that are available already for purchase, there’s the new edition of the PSP game called Durarara!! 3way Standoff—Alley—, which you can check out with its own original opening theme by the band ROOKiEZ is PUNK’D!

  On top of that, Ms. Satorigi’s manga adaptation is heading into the Saika arc with a volume out already! I’m betting that the combination of the manga format and her fantastic artwork and arrangement will make this even more enjoyable than the original novel!

  And now, though it pains me to advertise for a diff
erent company than the one printing this book for me…

  I have been given the opportunity to write a novel for Tite Kubo’s manga series Bleach, which is running in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine. If all goes to plan, it should be hitting stores within a month or two of the book you hold in your hands!

  When I saw my name in the pages of Shonen Jump (even if just for publicity purposes), which I’ve been reading since I was a boy, I got unstoppable chills of joy.

  I’m turning that excitement into energy, trying to synergize both fan bases so that readers of Durarara!! might find an interest in Bleach, and vice versa. I’m doing my best to make everyone happy, so I hope you will check that out!

  I’ve also had more chances to do work in various other fields and places this year, such as participating in the Red Dragon role-playing-game fiction series from Seikaisha, and there are others that have yet to be announced coming up.

  Of course, the reason I’ve had all of these opportunities at all is because of the Dengeki Bunko series of Baccano! and Durarara!!, and the incredible bedrock of support that you readers give me. I will continue to give my all to the series that got me here, to ensure that your support doesn’t go to waste!

  *The following is the usual list of acknowledgments.

  To my editor, Mr. Papio, and the rest of the editorial office. To the proofreaders, whom I give a hard time by being so late with submissions. To all the folks at ASCII Media Works.

  To my family, who do so much for me in so many ways, my friends, fellow authors, and illustrators.

  To Director Omori, Akiyo Satorigi, and everyone else involved in the various media projects, including anime, manga, and video games.

  To Suzuhito Yasuda, who took time out of his busy schedule with Yozakura Quartet and his video game character designs to provide his wonderful illustrations and even some live streams of the process.

  And to all the readers who checked out this book.

  To all of the above, the greatest of appreciation!