The boy, Masaomi Kida, had no direct connection to this brawl, but he knew several people who’d fallen victim to the various incidents, and he was paying hospital visits nearly every day.
Those friends were all out now, which meant that Masaomi had no need to come back to the hospital, but here he was.
He was standing at the open window of the private room, schoolbag slung over his shoulder, enjoying the breeze.
“It’s cold, Masaomi.”
He shut the window without turning around to face the speaker. “Oh, sorry.”
There was a wry grimace on his face, but his eyes were looking at his own smile in the reflection of the glass. He was checking to see that his expression was properly formed.
“You won’t…look at me.”
“…”
A silence fell onto the room. Eventually, the girl spoke up in a gentle voice that echoed off the walls.
“So your friend is in the hospital now?”
“…Who told you that?”
He hadn’t spoken a word about Anri and his other friends to the owner of the voice. Masaomi turned around, his eyes full of conflicting emotion, to look at the girl sitting up in the hospital bed. She ignored his question and said, “I saw you from the window. You came every day. Was it a girl?”
“Yeah. Glasses, nice body… Just a perfect example of a teenage girl whose imbalance makes her attractive,” Masaomi joked rather than deny it.
The girl was not shaken by his answer. She only smiled as she got further to the point. “You like her?”
“Yeah… She goes to my school. I’m in a love triangle with my good friend,” Masaomi noted, only adding fuel to the fire. But the girl—Saki Mikajima—seemed delighted.
“Oh? You must be serious if you’re throwing yourself into a three-way romance like that. I can barely remember you getting involved with a girl for anything other than a fling,” Saki giggled.
Masaomi silently turned back to the window. The entrance to the hospital was clearly visible from the fifth-floor room. If you were good at picking apart faces and clothes with sharp vision, and you had all the time in the world to gaze out the window, you might be able to pick out who was coming, Masaomi noticed.
Meanwhile, Saki’s smile never left her face. “But I need to correct you first.”
She tilted her pale neck, the short hair that framed her face bobbing slightly.
“If you include me, it’s a romantic square.”
“Stop right there, Saki. Just stop. Close your mouth, breathe through your nose, and listen,” Masaomi interjected, cutting short what could have been taken as either serious or a joke. He looked straight into his own eyes in the window’s reflection. “What we had—it’s over now. Finished. Closing time. Past expiration date. Got that?”
“If we’re over, why do you keep showing up?”
“…”
Masaomi looked to be formulating an answer, but Saki continued before he could speak.
“In fact…you’ve started visiting a lot more recently. Did something happen?” she asked briskly. He held his silence.
In the reflection of the window, the girl’s face held a gentle smile, but nothing moved aside from her lips. Perhaps she had grown too used to holding that expression.
“Could it be…that you want to go back to the old days again?”
“…Sorry. Gonna go home for today.”
It was a weak attempt to change the topic. Masaomi lifted his hand in a brief wave to Saki, then stepped out of the room. As he left, her voice held just a touch more emotion than before.
“You’ll be back, Masaomi.”
He put a hand on the door, trying to block her voice out. He’d heard what she would say next over and over and over. He focused only on leaving, not on the content of the words.
“After all, it’s already decided. Which is why I don’t mind at all if you fall in love with other girls. Because in the very, very end, you’ll still love me more than them.”
Saki knew full well that Masaomi wasn’t listening. She spoke the words to the empty room.
They were meant for herself more than him.
“So until that moment arrives, you need to love many, many girls, Masaomi.”
So many words, right into the wheelchair at the side of her bed.
“So many, you might forget about me. I don’t want you to keep yourself from being happy, just because you’re worried about me. Instead, I want you to go out with all kinds of girls, have many romances, learn to love and be loved, until you forget all about me.”
So many, many words.
“Since in the end, you’ll still come back to me, you know. And for all the mountains of love you built with other people over the years, your love for me will stand even higher, higher, higher. It will happen—it will happen without a doubt. After all…”
Saki’s paradoxical words spilled into the void.
Her smile stayed in place, reaching nothing but the empty room.
Without end.
“That’s what Izaya said.”
She smiled and smiled.
Without end.
Chapter 2: That Was Indeed a Monster.
In a city where even the night is brimming with light, there is a monster.
(Yes, a monster that was indeed a monster.)
Another member of the city wandered in the darkness tonight, soon to be gripped by the fear of that creature.
Ikebukuro
As she straddled the headlightless motorcycle, she was certain that she was being followed.
Her bike’s engine made no sound.
And yet, she was easily traveling over thirty-five miles an hour. That alone made her an eerie sight, but even through her helmet, she could sense the shadow closing in on her.
She didn’t have to look into her side mirror. She could sense her surroundings through her back.
It’s the police.
Her grip on the handlebars relaxed as the shadow wafted within her helmet.
There was no need for undue fear as long as she understood what she was facing, that it wasn’t some unexplained menace. Of course, to people unfamiliar with the process, being pursued by the police was an inexplicable and menacing experience—but to Celty Sturluson, it was an encounter with which she was somewhat familiar.
She took care to follow traffic safety laws in all cases outside of an emergency, but there was no hiding the lack of a license plate and lights. She couldn’t possibly pay a ticket if she got pulled over. Celty didn’t even have a driver’s license, so getting arrested would lead to a chain reaction of ugly consequences.
A self-deprecating smile flitted across Celty’s mind.
Breaking the law or not, if I get caught, I’ve got bigger problems.
She silently focused her consciousness on the multiple squad bikes approaching her from the rear.
It’s not like the law of Japan can do anything with me once they’ve got me.
Oblivious to Celty’s confidence, the police motorcycles picked up speed bit by bit, approaching her rear quietly but surely.
Then, I guess I need to give them a show.
She sped up, daring them to react, pulling the black bike into a wide parking lot on the side of the road.
To convince them that this is pointless.
The cops closed in, four in all. It was a bit much just to stop one motorcycle, but apparently even that wasn’t enough—one of the officers was using his radio to call for more backup.
You need to learn that the very idea of catching me is futile.
At her back was the wall of a building and a fence of inorganic color.
At her feet, cracked asphalt and white lines demarcating parking spaces.
Overhead, the faded, blurred moonlight dimmed by the surrounding neon.
With the surroundings just right, Celty was now ready to reveal her true nature.
She took off her helmet to show them.
The motorcycle officers had been following commonsense p
rocedures according to what they knew was normal. But now they recognized an abnormality.
There was no head where there should have been beneath the helmet. From the cross section of her neck, black smoke spilled like some kind of out-of-control humidifier.
That in this world, there are monsters that surpass all human understanding.
To impress her nature upon them, the being atop the black motorcycle reached out—and controlled the night lights with her own shadow.
The seeping shadow instantly spread, forming a mist that clouded the officers’ vision. This mist only existed for a span of several seconds until the particles of shadow contracted, materializing into a weapon in Celty’s hands.
But it was far too ugly and warped to be called a weapon. It had a handle about ten feet long, twice Celty’s height, ending in a pitch-black scythe just as long. It was the kind of object found on the Death tarot card, lit by a powerful light to project a large shadow against a wall, then cut out and turned into a real object. Endless, spotless, black, black, black.
More shadow exuded from Celty’s back, erupting upward into wings just as black as the scythe that enveloped her body.
At the same time, the previously silent bike’s engine roared into life.
As it brayed with the sound of a great beast’s dying roar, Celty swung her enormous scythe, completing the image of her true self—a creature not of this world. A headless dullahan.
Celty Sturluson was not human.
She was a type of fairy commonly known as a dullahan, found from Scotland to Ireland—a being that visits the homes of those close to death to inform them of their impending mortality.
The dullahan carried its own severed head under its arm, rode on a two-wheeled carriage called a Coiste Bodhar pulled by a headless horse, and approached the homes of the soon to die. Anyone foolish enough to open the door was drenched with a basin full of blood. Thus the dullahan, like the banshee, made its name as a herald of ill fortune throughout European folklore.
One theory claimed that the dullahan bore a strong resemblance to the Norse Valkyrie, but Celty had no way of knowing if this was true.
It wasn’t that she didn’t know. More accurately, she just couldn’t remember.
When someone back in her homeland stole her head, she lost her memories of what she was. It was the search for the faint trail of her head that had brought her here to Ikebukuro.
Now with a motorcycle instead of a headless horse and a riding suit instead of armor, she had wandered the streets of this neighborhood for decades.
But ultimately, she had not succeeded at retrieving her head, and her memories were still lost. And she was fine with that.
As long as she could stay with those human beings she loved and who accepted her, she could live the way she was now.
She was a headless woman who let her actions speak for her missing face and held this strong, secret desire within her heart.
That was Celty Sturluson in a nutshell.
Instantly dragged against their wills into a display of the abnormal, the motorcycle cops panicked, which gave Celty an easy window of escape. Naturally, none of them would dare to follow her—or so she assumed.
Sadly, reality was not so kind.
Even to a monster to whom reality had only a tenuous connection, reality was cruel to all.
“It’s always been on my mind,” muttered one of the motorcycle cops to himself, seemingly the central figure of the four men, his face shadowed by his helmet.
—?
This was not the reaction she expected.
Celty concentrated on the officer’s long soliloquy, feeling that something was definitely wrong.
“Always, always. When things like you show up in manga and movies, we’re always the punching bags. By the time the hero with his superpowers shows up, we’re always lying in a pool of our own blood, just to show off how tough your kind is.”
This didn’t seem to have anything to do with his actual job, but none of the other officers showed any disagreement with the sentiment. Celty began to feel unsettled that the men were not panicking at her scythe or lack of head.
“But that’s all right. Because on the flip side, they only depict us that way because we’re considered real tough in real life. It’s a necessary evil when telling a story. Yep, absolutely true. But there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to say to any true monster or evil psychic or cyborg or ninja.”
…What in the world is he babbling about?
Celty watched the muttering cop with suspicion and spread her shadow again.
It just wasn’t enough. She hadn’t used enough yet.
None of this meant anything if it wasn’t threatening her opponent. She was producing this shadow specifically for its mental effect. But after a reaction like this, she wasn’t sure what to do anymore.
Undaunted by any of this, the man murmured, “Just one thing. Just one thing I want to say. And that is…”
He squeezed the accelerator sleeve on his right handlebar.
“Don’t fuck with traffic cops, monster.”
The engine roared, 180 degrees the opposite of the sound the black motorcycle made, and the other bikes joined in, gunning their throttles. Meanwhile, she could hear the backup motorcycles and squad cars approaching in the distance.
The traffic officer directly in front of Celty suddenly looked up. His face was pleasant. But his eyes glimmered dangerously.
“I’ll say it again.”
His gaze, brighter than any headlight, cut mercilessly through Celty’s hesitation.
“Learn your lesson, monster. Don’t fuck with traffic cops.”
Near Kawagoe Highway, top floor of apartment building
The sound of a door slamming open.
The owner of the apartment, Shinra Kishitani, spun around to see the figure of his beloved cotenant, her shoulders trembling. She was holding her helmet in her hand for some reason, making no effort to hide her lack of head.
“Welcome home, Cel…whuh?!”
Before Shinra could finish his greeting, Celty leaped into her partner’s arms. In the midst of his powerful embrace, her body shook and quaked.
“Huh? Wha…what’s up?! This kind of physical intimacy is the greatest of honors, my lady. Er, wait, there’s a better way to say that… Uh, hang on. Are you trembling?! No, really, what’s wrong?! Celty? Celtyyy?!”
Several minutes later, once Celty had finally calmed down, she typed her thoughts into the laptop set up on the dinner table.
Shadows split and split again from her fingertips, enabling her to type much faster than any human could. As a sign of her panic, she was even typing in such a way that entirely mimicked human conversation.
“I was s-s-so s-s-scared, so scared, Shinra! P-p-police these days are monsters!”
“Police…?”
“Yes, a monster, that was indeed a monster! There were nearly a dozen motorcycles and patrol cars chasing me around like a beast with one mind… I swung my scythe around with abandon, but rather than scattering them, that just made them chase me harder! They evaded with perfect precision and maintained the pressure! Each and every bike was like a missile coming after me!”
Her fear was so great that Celty jumped from time to time just by looking at the string of text she was typing. Shinra had his arm around her back, gently enveloping the Black Rider suit in an attempt to calm her nerves.
“I figured that a little menace from my end would frighten them off, and that was always good enough before this, but today, the traffic cops chased me around like one single creature. Even when I brought out a scythe that was like thirty feet long, they didn’t budge. They just kept coming after me!”
“Calm down, Celty. You’re just repeating yourself.”
“I-I rode onto the highway, but the highway patrol already had an ambush waiting for me! I only got away by fleeing onto the Raira Academy campus…”
“Yeah… Speaking of the traffic patrol of the Metropolitan Police Departm
ent Fifth District…you were doing such a good job of zipping around evading them that they called in some real crack troops from elsewhere,” Shinra explained calmly, hoping to soothe her agitated nerves. “There’s the Kuzuharas at the police box just outside the station; almost the whole family are police. Well, one of them is named Kinnosuke Kuzuhara, and he’s a problem officer who often pressures his targets so much in traffic that they cause accidents. If you think of him as a new officer called here to be a rival to you, it makes you feel like your life has meaning now, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t need a rival to chase me around like Freddy Krueger to make things exciting!” Celty typed, then calmed down at last and continued at a more even pace. “It was scary. So scary. I got overconfident. Very overconfident. I promise I will live my life with humility and modesty. Please forgive me—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“Who are you apologizing to?” Shinra wondered with a smirk, peering at Celty. “For being a headless fairy, you sure are a scaredy-cat.”
“Shut up… I’m not scared of ghosts or vampires,” she rebutted unconvincingly.
Shinra cackled. “Is that so? You were afraid of aliens the other day, and I remember the way you were terrified out of your wits after reading that collection of horror manga short stories.”
“I can’t help it! Just think of that kind of horror happening in reality… Think of your own face flying through the sky and strangling you or slugs dripping out of your mouth! That’s scary!”
The thought of the manga made Celty’s body tense again. Meanwhile, Shinra stared at her with the care of one watching an adorable pet and sighed.
“It just sounds like a joke, coming from you. It’s strange, though… Maybe being such an abnormal thing causes you to mix up reality and fiction much easier than the rest of us.”
Celty sulked into her laptop.
“Aliens aren’t fiction! There are plenty of mysteries out there in the universe!”
“Well, you can stop trembling over harmless mysteries… Especially when you just laugh off the ghosts and goblins. That cowardly nature isn’t the Celty I know. The only time you need to show off your vulnerable side is in bed with m— Hurgh!! Y-yeah…that’s more like it…”
Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) Page 2