Durarara!!, Vol. 10

by Ryohgo Narita

  “Huh?”

  The rest of them followed his lead and sniffed the air.

  “Wh-whoa…is that…gasoline?”

  “Probably kerosene. Whatever it is, it smells like something that’ll burn quickly, doesn’t it?”

  The Yellow Scarves all noted the stink in the air, the acrid tang of paint thinner.

  “He had that stuffed in his pockets or his backpack. And if we had run over Kadota, and he figured that out by visiting us, this whole room would be…”

  “Oh yeah! I forgot one thing!”

  The door of the room bolted open, cutting Masaomi off.

  “Whoa!” “Eeep!”

  The sudden appearance of Yumasaki’s face in the doorway elicited cries of surprise from the nervous crowd.

  “What? Why are you all so startled? Wait, is there the ghost of a beautiful girl right behind me…?”

  Clearly, Yumasaki was back to his normal self. But the smell of kerosene was indeed wafting off him in a haze, particularly from his backpack. The boys in the room felt sweat run down their spines.

  “No, there are no ghosts there. What is it, Mr. Yumasaki?”

  “Oh yeah, I meant to ask: Did you hear the big news? You didn’t have anything to do with it…right?”

  “What news?” Masaomi asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Yumasaki nodded to himself and continued, “Well, I was just checking the Dollars’ message board for myself, and…well, I don’t know if it’s as much of a surprise as it is a long-awaited moment of reckoning.”

  “What are you talking about?” Masaomi asked again. The other young man’s eyes widened slightly with agitation.

  “Apparently, Shizuo Heiwajima finally got arrested by the cops.”

  Ruined building, second floor, Tokyo suburbs

  “Shizuo, getting arrested…? You think it’s true?”

  The interior of the torn-out building rang with the background noise of pounding rain.

  When he first saw the message on the Dollars’ board, Mikado wasn’t sure if he should believe it or not.

  “Shizuo Heiwajima arrested!”

  He could see the newspaper headline in his mind.

  Of course, there wouldn’t be any such article, but to Mikado, it might as well be as shocking and disruptive as a news story about a famous celebrity getting arrested for drug possession.

  On the other hand, he was certainly guilty of numerous counts of destruction of property, and in fact, it was a very curious thing that he hadn’t been taken in before this point. But the fact that he’d been chilling out recently just made this sudden detainment all the more unexpected to Mikado.

  “It’s still just a message board post, so we can’t say for sure. Maybe he hasn’t actually been arrested. The police might have taken him to the station for a simple questioning. Or maybe he just visited the station for some reason or another, and whoever saw it is blowing it out of proportion,” Aoba suggested.

  “Good point,” Mikado noted. “There have been rumors like that before…but the person who wrote this post has been one of the more reliable and believable sources of intel before.”

  “…Are you saying you remember each username and the things they post?”

  “Not all of them. Just the ones that stand out.” Mikado grinned, but he looked worried. In this moment, he was a normal teenager concerned about someone he knew. If you tried to tell anyone that this boy was one of the founders of the Dollars, they’d laugh it off.

  That wouldn’t last long once they heard what he said next.

  “But…I’m glad.”

  “What?” Aoba said, curious as to what could be good about this.

  Mikado smiled warmly and explained, “I’m glad that if Shizuo really got arrested, at least it was after he quit the Dollars.”

  “…”

  Aoba didn’t know anything more about Shizuo Heiwajima than the rumors said. But if he were here and heard that statement—even if he was a chill person—wouldn’t he accost and punch Mikado for those words? It certainly seemed that way to Aoba and suggested that this was exactly the spot inside of Mikado Ryuugamine that was so spectacularly broken.

  Did it break because Aoba and his friends had shown up? Or had it always been broken and only became obvious now? There was no way to know. But Aoba understood that this damaged part of Mikado was exactly the kind of place where people like him could take root and thrive.

  Perhaps it was for this reason that Aoba found himself showing Mikado true deference and (partial) honesty. He was someone Aoba could use, as well as an object of fear.

  Mikado Ryuugamine was truly unlike anyone Aoba had ever met.

  Yeah, I can see why that fan of humanity would be pleased, Aoba thought, not daring to say the words aloud. “But what are you going to do now, Mr. Mikado?”

  “Do?”

  “Kadota’s in the hospital, and Shizuo Heiwajima got arrested. If the Dollars are a hunk of raw meat, then Kadota’s the preservative, and Heiwajima’s the fire that surrounds it to keep it safe from harm, right? Kadota’s sharp gaze kept it from going bad, and Shizuo’s scary enough to keep all the hungry hyenas from the outside at bay. All you needed to do was carve up the meat and serve it however you wanted.”

  “That’s…quite a vivid analogy.” Mikado grimaced.

  Aoba traced scorch marks on the concrete wall with his fingertips. “But at this rate, the meat’s going to spoil before you even finish cooking it.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Until now, my way has been to put the meat in a cold, dark place where the animals can’t see it, and it won’t go bad—in other words, go underground and hide. But that’s not what you want for the Dollars, is it?”

  “Hmmm. Yeah, I’d say that’s accurate,” Mikado agreed, after a pause to think it over.

  Aoba turned his back on him and spread his hands. “The Dollars are a group where anyone can help anyone else, regardless of standing. While there are limits to what they can do, it’s still a fascinating thing that you can share information online without knowing who anyone else is. I find that quite attractive.”

  “?”

  “So when I heard about Kadota’s accident and realized this might spell major consequences for the Dollars…I started thinking. I decided to ask for the help of someone who could take over for Kadota or Shizuo, someone who could be the new face of the Dollars, their symbol…”

  “The symbol of the Dollars?” Mikado repeated, propping his face on his hand to think.

  “Someone not in a position to be in the public eye but with little to lose as a result. Someone who can move about freely,” Aoba hinted. He paced around the ruined building. Meanwhile, his Blue Squares friends leaned back against the walls, grinning as though they already knew the answer.

  “Someone everybody knows but nobody knows well,” he continued. “And yet, someone well-known to be a member of the Dollars. There’s still one left.”

  “…You don’t mean—”

  Mikado gaped as a face popped into his mind. Technically, it wasn’t a face at all but a body with a helmet.

  “The person I’m thinking of would probably be happy to help cleanse the Dollars. Someone normal people would view with envy and curiosity and whom the enemies who are eating the Dollars from the inside out would see as a freakish terror.”

  “Isn’t that right, Headless Rider?”

  At the top of the stairs leading from the first floor of the abandoned building up to the second, a shadow appeared. A literal shadow, the entire body aside from its helmet covered in a riding suit made of shadow itself.

  It had been quite some time since Mikado had been in the presence of the urban legend in the flesh.

  “Celty?! What are you doing here?!” yelped Mikado, utterly shocked.

  Ummm, she thought, I wish I knew the answer.

  Aoba had told her to come up when he called for her, so she’d been waiting on the first floor. But she had no idea he was planning for it to be such a dra
matic entrance. This made it look like she and Aoba were thick as thieves, aligned with the same goals and dreams, a thought that did not put Celty at ease.

  Determined to explain to Mikado in detail exactly how it was that she came here, she thought back on the details.

  A few hours earlier…

  “I want you to help me…no, me and Mikado.”

  Celty had answered Aoba’s summons to the quiet basement parking garage. She figured he would bring a bunch of his cronies, but to her surprise, he was alone.

  Very bold, I’ll give him that. Or is he trying to keep me from seeing his friends’ faces?

  She kept her senses on alert for anyone hiding nearby as she typed into her PDA.

  “Help you?”

  “Yes. You heard about Kadota’s accident, right?”

  “Yeah. I found out just before you contacted me.”

  “This is a major problem for the Dollars. It means the Dollars are losing one of their principal public faces. I’m hearing that some people are already using this opportunity to get into trouble they couldn’t otherwise,” Aoba said, in the tone of a middle manager lamenting the future. “Now that Shizuo Heiwajima’s quit the gang, we really need a new symbol, I believe.”

  “And you want me to be that symbol? No thanks.”

  “You didn’t consider that very long.”

  “The best part about the Dollars is that we don’t have recognizable symbols.”

  That’s right, she told herself. There’s no way Mikado would want this.

  But the forcefulness of her reply did not stop Aoba in his tracks. “It won’t be forever. If someone disgraces the name of the gang, you show up and make them behave with a show of force. You’ll be helping the normal Dollars who aren’t doing anything wrong. It only has to last until the people who are harmful to the group stop messing around—out of their fear of you.”

  “From my perspective, the most harmful person to the Dollars is you.”

  “You might be right about that. But I’m behaving now, aren’t I?” he said, without a hint of shame.

  Celty rolled her nonexistent eyes and changed her tack.

  “What are you after?”

  She had witnessed the moment Aoba made his move on Mikado. But she hadn’t seen the point where Mikado actually made his decision. Was he really on the same team as Mikado now? If so, how had he convinced Mikado? Celty was significantly wary of Aoba Kuronuma—far more than his age would suggest was necessary.

  He really is just like Izaya, she felt, though she’d never tell him that.

  Aoba thought over her question for several seconds, then grinned. “A place to swim…”

  “What?”

  “I want a place to swim. That’s all. That’s a metaphor, of course.”

  “Just tell me clearly what you want.”

  She thought she had an idea of what he meant but felt it would be dangerous to play along and decided she should force him to clarify.

  “It’s hard to put into words,” Aoba prefaced, searching for the right way to explain himself. “I’ve got emotions that probably won’t exist in another five years, the kind only a twisted person in his rebellious phase feels. I guess I’m testing to see how high I can ride that feeling before it just vanishes entirely…”

  It was almost like he was just talking to himself. Annoyed, Celty typed, “What do you mean, hard to put into words? You just want to break things.”

  “If that was true, I’d be working out and challenging Shizuo Heiwajima to a fight. And if we wanted to pick on the weak, we wouldn’t have joined the Dollars. We can do that on our own.”

  “So what is it?”

  “Like I said…the phrase that best describes it to me is ‘I want to swim.’”

  This wasn’t getting them anywhere, so Celty decided to drop that particular detail. Instead, she asked, “Are you sure about this? Even if I agree to your offer, I have no intention of following your orders. I might determine that you pose the most danger of all and hunt the Blue Squares right away.”

  “That’s fair. But I think you’ll find that means you’re taking down Mikado, too.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Mikado’s not like you.”

  “…How much do you actually know about Mikado, Headless Rider?”

  …Huh? Uh, I guess that’s a good question.

  “Well, I would say he’s like an ordinary friend to me…,” she typed to save face. Then it occurred to her that she only knew Mikado Ryuugamine’s hidden title and a part of his personality. Just that he was the Dollars’ founder and a bit of what he was like in person. There were times, as with Anri Sonohara’s Saika, when she was more aware of what was going on around him than he was, but she couldn’t say she actually knew Mikado Ryuugamine.

  And when Anri told her something was wrong with Mikado, that was like a thorn tearing away at the image of Mikado in her mind.

  “All right, I’ll admit, maybe I don’t know him super-well…”

  “Then wouldn’t it be a bad idea for you to state a bunch of very forceful ideas without knowing where Mikado is mentally?”

  That one stung. Celty had to stop and think.

  Eventually, she bobbed her shoulders and typed a suggestion to Aoba on her PDA.

  “Then let me talk to Mikado first. We can have this discussion after that.”

  And back to the present.

  Yeah, that’s right. I came up with the idea on the spot, because I felt like he was going to talk me into a corner…

  “Huh? Wait, huh? What does this mean?! I know you two met once outside of the factory before…but when did you become acquaintances?!” Mikado yelped, looking back and forth between Aoba and Celty like a pathetic puppy. “Okay, technically, I guess you were acquainted at the point you met, but you seem like you’re…friendly? Is that it? What’s going on, Celty?!”

  …Yes, this is the usual Mikado.

  She had been prepared to see Mikado done up with a Mohawk and a studded leather jacket, but this was the same old baby-faced pushover she knew. He stumbled over to her, so she typed, “It’s been a while, Mikado.”

  “Yes, it has. But why are you really here?”

  Before she could type the answer to that question, Aoba interjected, “I spotted her at random, so I chased her down to apologize about what happened during Golden Week. Then we exchanged e-mail addresses, and we’ve been keeping in touch every now and then.”

  He really has no shame, does he?

  In fact, he had barged into her apartment building and caused a scene with Shinra, but he lied like a true natural.

  I did tell him to keep that night’s events a secret from Mikado, admittedly… Guess I’ll play along. But you’d better watch out, kid…

  Celty erased the message she’d started writing and replaced it with “Yeah, that’s about right.”

  Mikado looked satisfied and relieved by her message. He told Aoba, “I had no idea that ever happened. You could have told me.”

  “Sorry. I thought it would make for a fun surprise.”

  “Well, it sure was a surprise! I never expected to see Celty in a place like this… Oh!” Mikado seemed to remember something. He mumbled to Celty, “Can I ask you a favor…?”

  “What is it?”

  “Can you keep me being here a secret from Sonohara? I actually told her I was visiting my parents back in Saitama, so…”

  “You did? Why did you lie to her?” she asked.

  He wore a sad, lonely smile. “I don’t want her to worry, and I don’t want her to know what I’m doing now.”

  “…I see,” she replied and mulled this over.

  It is odd, to be sure…but what is he doing here with the Blue Squares in the first place? Is it something he can’t admit to Anri? In fact, I hadn’t noticed until just now…is Mikado injured?

  There were fairly fresh marks on his face and skin. Out of concern, Celty typed, “You look beat up. Who did this to you?”

  Was it Aoba’s gang? Did they beat you up and f
orce you to do what they said? If so, I could just truss them all up here and take Mikado home safe and sound, and that would solve the whole matter.

  It was the quickest and simplest answer to this whole problem, and a part of Celty wished it were true. But Mikado’s answer was completely different.

  “Oh. It was some bad guys.”

  “Huh?”

  “I need to be working harder than anyone, but I’m so weak at fighting that I just get knocked around instead. It’s so pathetic and frustrating,” he said, distraught. Something about this struck Celty as off. But she found it very hard to pin down exactly what it was that bothered her. All she knew for certain was that something was strange.

  When Aoba mentioned things like “cleansing the Dollars” and “trying to make the group healthy,” I figured he was talking about getting rid of the people who were doing muggings… They aren’t saying that Mikado’s going around trying to fight them himself, are they?

  She had no idea that this unfathomable idea of hers was actually correct.

  So did he use Aoba’s group to put a stop to the muggers in the gang, and one of them happened to find out about Mikado and got back at him in revenge? And he doesn’t want me to let Anri know, to keep her from worrying…

  That seemed like it made sense to her. She continued, In that case, I suppose I could put a stop to those hooligans, but at any rate, it doesn’t change that Mikado’s getting himself into dangerous stuff here.

  No…wait. If I can talk Mikado down here, that might remove the cause of Anri’s worries. That’d be two birds with one stone! I figured I could use my Dollars connections to get info on this Jinnai Yodogiri, but it might be easier just to solve the problem here first.

  She was still furious about Shinra being attacked. If she happened to see Adabashi, the actual attacker, or this Yodogiri man, all that pent-up anger was likely to explode, and she didn’t know what she would do then.

  But Celty wasn’t the kind of person who let anger cloud her judgment such that nothing else entered into her mind. Like Kadota, she had a tendency to help others in need, and in this case, she was indebted to Mikado Ryuugamine for something in the past.