Did he represent one of the opportunities Shinra was hoping for?
At this point in time, that was a question nobody could answer.
Evening, second floor of an abandoned building, Tokyo
Completely unaware that Chikage Rokujou—a man whose fate was closely entwined with his own—was back in town, Mikado greeted the return of Aoba’s injured friends with his usual worried expression.
“Are you sure you’re all right? Maybe we should take you to the hospital…”
“It’s fine. This is nothing to these guys—they’re too dense to even notice it,” Aoba said, laughing it off. The ones who were actually injured didn’t find this funny at all.
“What gives you the right to speak for us?!”
“You didn’t do jack shit, Aoba!”
“What? What do you think would’ve happened if I hadn’t woken Houjou up?!”
Houjou had done most of the heavy lifting, and he was now fast asleep in the car. The other members didn’t take kindly to Aoba attempting to claim Houjou’s credit for his own.
“Stop fighting!” clamored a panicked Mikado.
But the boy suffering the complaints of his comrades only laughed. “It’s just fine; we’re only playing around. This doesn’t count as fighting.”
“Are you sure? It definitely looked like they were hurling real hate at you.” Mikado murmured, suspicious, but he recovered quickly and said, “So who is it who wants to see me?”
“He’s just downstairs.”
Apparently, some member of the Dollars had heard the rumors about an internal purge and had come offering the use of his own community to further that goal. A young man who could have easily predicted that this was a location used for violence—and yet strode in anyway.
Aoba and his friends had checked with Mikado first, and he said it was worth hearing him out, which was why they were meeting here today.
“Hey! Can you come up here now?” Aoba called out. A young man ascended the staircase. Aside from the fact that he was wearing long sleeves in the summer, he seemed perfectly normal.
Mikado greeted him with a bit of nerves and wondered, rather ironically, if this guy was even capable of fighting. “Um, hello. My name is Ryuugamine.”
The young man looked at the obviously younger boy across from him and responded to Mikado’s bow by holding out his hand with a nice smile. “I’m Shijima. Nice to meet you.”
“Oh, uh, right. It’s nice to meet you, too.” Mikado hastily took his hand and shook it.
Mikado Ryuugamine had no way of knowing that just days ago, this young man had accepted that he was a loser and given up hope on everything.
And that now, deep in his heart, he was thinking, I’ll be damned if I’m the only loser around here. I’m going to take down as many with me as I can.
Mikado didn’t know what the young man was plotting, and naturally, the young man didn’t know what Mikado was plotting, either. But the large, swirling flow that enveloped the Dollars got another twisted kink when they met.
And thus, without a clear answer yet as to who had run over Kadota, the countless spinning wheels surrounding the city began to turn, all at once, with no single initiator.
Not even the city knew what the thread being spun would ultimately form.
The breeze that blew through Ikebukuro simply spun the clattering wheels.
Without pause and without mercy.
AFTERWORD
Hello, I’m Ryohgo Narita.
The following piece of text is the same thing I wrote in the afterword of Baccano! 1932 Summer, which came out in June, but given that not all my readers follow both series, I decided to reprint it here. Please forgive the redundancy.
I don’t know when you might be reading this. At the time that I’m writing this, Japan is on the road to recovery. Fortunately, the area where I live was unhurt by the earthquake, but at a time when so many relatives, acquaintances, and readers are suffering, it’s hard for me to even know how to offer condolences to my own extended family. Everyone says, “They don’t want to hear your empty encouragement,” while on the other hand, I’ve also heard directly from those affected, saying, “I just want a word of comfort.” So I spend these days thinking long and hard about what words I can prepare for others.
But if you’re reading this afterword, then I choose to believe you’ve regained enough of an ordinary life that you’re able to read a book, at least. I hope this volume will help lead you to the next thing in that process. When I write books, I hope they’ll be idle entertainment, something you can read while eating popcorn or hold with sweaty palms. Times might be hard right now, but I’ll keep writing in the hopes that what I create is worth your idle entertainment time once you’ve got enough normalcy left to sit around, reading books and eating popcorn.
So, here we are at the very special tenth volume of Durarara!! at last.
After I brought out Celty’s head in the last one, I thought, Whew, this was the biggest story leap since Volume 2! But then I heard a lot of people saying, “We want to see more about the main trio’s story!” That was a bit sad for me, given that I consider Celty the main character, but I did choose to push forward the story surrounding Mikado quite a bit this time. Since I write Durarara!! in alternation with other stories, I was planning to focus each individual book on a particular character, but at that pace, I’d be on call for another ten books at least. (And in fact, I did have plans to write books about Togusa, Vorona, and the main Awakusu-kai cast.) I didn’t want it to get long in the tooth, so I decided to rush forward with the Dollars story line so that I could finish it up.
My plan is to wrap up the Dollars/Saika/Yellow Scarves story line in Durarara!!, Volume 12, with whatever comes afterward to depend on Celty’s status at the end of Volume 12. I haven’t thought that far ahead, so whether there is a Volume 13, or I change the title and start a new series, or just end the whole thing is still up in the air.
I hate to be so amateurish that I intentionally push the story forward a whole bunch and yet throw you into a cliff-hanger ending, but if you don’t mind, you could check out one of my other series while you wait for Volume 11… (Baccano! is up next, but there are a number of other possibilities I’m considering after that.)
It’s been about half a year since the last DVD of the anime series came out, but Mr. Yasuda still has a Durarara!! art book coming out (along with another art book from Kodansha, both of which are great!), and the manga version of the Saika arc is about to start in G Fantasy magazine. On top of that, there’s an augmented version of the PSP game with more content on sale, too. The Durarara!! world is ever expanding, so I hope you enjoy all the places it goes!
*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 his art book in June and Devil Survivor 2 and Yozakura Quartet manga serials to provide his wonderful illustrations.
And to all the readers who checked out this book.
To all the above, the greatest of appreciation!
July 2011—Ryohgo Narita
Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Yen On.
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Durarara!!, Vol. 10 Page 17