Durarara!!, Vol. 4 (novel)

by Ryohgo Narita

  “Ahhh, it’s just like your voice on TV.”

  “Umm…”

  “Oh, pardon me. But hang on a second. Before I answer your question…please just let me enjoy the bliss of meeting someone I’ve always wanted to meet. Not in a romantic way. Just a few seconds, if you don’t mind.”

  “Uh, okay…,” the girl on the bed said, keeping her voice low so as not to set off the throbbing in her head.

  Shinra looked relieved and theatrically thrust his arms wide before his injured patient, his voice positively brimming with bliss.

  “It’s a cold, cruel world out there, but I’m glad to be alive! This is true enchantment! Oh, once you’re able to move again, may I have your autograph? Two, if possible! I know I’m a shameless fanboy, but my roommate is also a huge fan of yours!”

  It was hardly the most gentlemanly thing in the world, devolving into fawning excitement in the presence of an injured patient, but the black-market doctor couldn’t help but bow to his personal hero.

  But this wasn’t limited to just him; many men would do the same in this situation. Others might be so nervous that they could barely speak.

  “Who would have ever thought that I could have this job skulking in the darkness…”

  Shinra spread his arms even wider and identified his patient.

  “…and eventually get the chance to treat everyone’s favorite idol singer, Ruri Hijiribe!”

  From the Internet encyclopedia Fuguruma Youki

  An excerpt from the “Ruri Hijiribe” article

  A Japanese actress, celebrity, and model. Affiliated with the Yodogiri Shining Corporation talent agency.

  Her birth name is the same as her stage name.

  Date of birth August 8, year unknown.

  She was originally an apprentice of the special-effects makeup artist Tenjin Zakuroya, then made her modeling debut after she was scouted by Yodogiri Shining Corporation.

  Before her debut, she handled special-effects makeup for several domestic films, with her work on Vampire Ninja Carmilla Saizou being especially lauded. The World Film Village Federation listed her along with her master in their list of “100 Juiciest SFX Makeup Artists.”

  After that, she made her magazine debut as a model and appeared in her first minor role in a TV drama six months later, winning passionate fans with her unique nature.

  Her acting is not expert level; her fans are drawn to her nature underneath. Her pale skin and delicate, melancholy features give her an unearthly beauty, which has landed her a number of roles playing gloomy, weak-willed characters.

  She is rumored to be the rare “straight beauty” without the need of cosmetics, but the truth of this is unknown. It’s also said that she maintains the same quiet, graceful nature when the cameras aren’t rolling. In interviews, she has claimed that she’s poor at interacting and has no friends or boyfriend.

  Although she is supposedly sold on her looks alone, her rare qualities among celebrities means that she has no competitive rival. Her ghostly nature makes her popular with men and women alike.

  She is poor at physical activity and has never appeared on televised athletic segments, such as swimming races. However, because her dark characteristics make her easy to play off of during variety programs, she is often featured on talk shows. Because she speaks so seldomly, most of her character is constructed via comments and jokes from the hosts and other comedian guests. She has mentioned her lack of physical coordination on such shows.

  However, due to reports that she placed highly in track-and-field events in elementary school, it’s possible that her weak and nonathletic character might be a ruse. [citation needed]

  Thanks to her eerie qualities and exaggerated characteristics, she is commonly voted one of the top celebrities whom manga and anime fans would like to see wear cosplay.

  It was none other than the famous idol actress Ruri Hijiribe in the room with Shinra.

  She was an unearthly presence there and not just for the reason that she had been wearing bizarre zombie makeup.

  Naturally, her face had no cosmetics on it. Yet her skin was as smooth as silk, and her features were as beautiful as a portrait.

  You know, if Yuuhei came right out of a girls’ manga, she must be an angel from a classic painting by one of the Western masters, Shinra thought, then regretted the fact that he hadn’t brought an autograph board for her to sign. It was too sudden, I guess.

  Normally, Shinra would be cleaning the apartment while waiting for Celty to come home. Instead, his phone rang with a familiar number on the display.

  The brother of an old classmate claimed he had a patient he couldn’t bring to a normal doctor, so he paid that acquaintance a visit. As a result, Shinra was grateful that he made the choice to be a black-market doctor.

  As Ruri Hijiribe watched the man in the white coat frolic, she wondered, Who is this man, anyway? And this looks…just like a normal room…but it’s so big.

  Based on the furnishings, it looked more like an apartment than a house. The problem was, it was much too big for that to be the case.

  Oh, right. What happened to me…? That man in the bartender’s outfit hit me with a bench…and then…

  Her memory ended there. After that, someone brought her to this place and had this doctor-looking man care for her—at least, based on what she could tell from the way the man was excitedly blathering on.

  “…”

  Ruri kept her silence, putting her circumstances together in her head.

  I wonder if he knows…who I am.

  Clearly, he knew that she was Ruri Hijiribe. But more importantly, did he know that she was the serial killer Hollywood?

  First of all, it made no sense that she wasn’t taken to a hospital in an ambulance. True, it would have been a bad thing for her to be taken to a hospital and identified, but she was already in a life-or-death situation when she was found.

  As her body throbbed in pain, a cat suddenly climbed up onto her stomach.

  “Urgh…”

  The pressure of the cat’s paws made the pain much worse. Ruri tried to push it off of the blanket resting on her stomach, but when she got a good look at it, she couldn’t do it.

  The cat was an adorable Scottish fold with tiny flopped ears and still not fully grown. It was like a ball of fluff that was given life. The creature looked at Ruri curiously and mewed.

  It was so cute that the serial killer nearly forgot her pain and all her troubles for an instant.

  But another man, who had entered the room in the meantime, reached out from beside the doctor and picked up the cat.

  “Stop that, Dokusonmaru. You shouldn’t climb on an injured person.”

  “Dokusonmaru?” the man in the white coat asked.

  The younger man said flatly, “His full name is Yuigadokusonmaru. It means ‘Mr. Egocentric.’ Isn’t he cute?”

  The man held out the cat, but the doctor pulled back awkwardly. “Please, smile when you do that next time. It’s scary.”

  “But I am smiling.”

  “If Dad saw you, he’d try to dissect you,” the black-market doctor said in resignation as he tried to read the expression of the utterly expressionless man.

  Listening to the two men talk, Ruri suddenly realized that the man with the discount T-shirt and the expensive name-brand belt was a very familiar face.

  “Are you…Yuuhei…Hanejima?” she mumbled. Yuuhei turned to her without a reaction and set the cat down on the floor.

  “Oh, good. You’re doing better than I thought,” he said without moving a single muscle aside from his lips, which made it difficult to tell if he was actually relieved at all. But given that the man shared her line of work, she knew that he was simply the type of person who never displayed his true emotions.

  They had actually met on a number of occasions, but they were not friends.

  In fact, when Yuuhei was shooting his debut film, Vampire Ninja Carmilla Saizou, it was none other than Ruri who did his prosthetic makeup.

>   After she began acting, they appeared together just once in a two-hour TV drama. It was a serialized police procedural, with Yuuhei playing the lead detective role, while Ruri was a simple guest as the victim’s daughter. That was the closest connection they shared.

  Why?

  She was initially more confused than surprised by their reunion.

  Why was there a coworker of sorts here in the room?

  He couldn’t have been sent…by him…

  But she dismissed the thought.

  He doesn’t have any connection to Yuuhei Hanejima.

  So why? The question floated over the actress’s pretty face as Yuuhei quietly asked, “Can you drink some water?” He held out a cup, his face like a robot’s.

  It was the perfect setup for her to be poisoned, but Ruri took it and imbibed the water without question. A dull pain ran through her body when she sat up, but it wasn’t enough to prevent her from drinking.

  The doctor noted, “Her muscles were torn to shreds, but it looks like her internal organs are fine. Just in case, once she’s on her feet again, she should get X-rays or an MRI. Some kinds of brain hemorrhage don’t show up until later. If only I had access to Nebula’s research center, I could have done those for you. Sorry.”

  “No, you came out in the middle of the night with no notice. Thank you so much.”

  “Actually, I came out way ahead in the deal—I got to look at an idol way up close. Oh, and don’t tell Celty I said any of this. She’s a big fan of this girl, too, so she’ll be jealous, just not in the usual way,” the doctor said, chuckling to himself.

  Suddenly, the buzzing of a cell phone emanated from his pocket, and he snuck off to the corner of the room to quietly take the call.

  The two actors didn’t have much to say, so the room was suddenly plunged into silence. Eventually, Ruri couldn’t stand it any longer and broke the quiet by softly asking, “Why am I here?”

  “I was on my way home when you fell in front of my car. I know you didn’t ask for it, but I took you home and called a doctor I know to come look at you.”

  “Why here, instead of a hospital?”

  “Well, there are a number of reasons…”

  He paused briefly and took a breath before continuing, “I thought…you might not want a hospital.”

  “…”

  “I apologize if my decision wasn’t the correct one. I can even take you to a hospital now, if you want.”

  “…No, it’s fine.”

  Yuuhei was still totally flat in his affect, while Ruri remained suspicious. Their conversation was distant and polite, but it gave way to more silence.

  At that point, the doctor returned, shaking his head.

  “Sorry, got another emergency patient! Two in one night—who would have thought? Damn, just when I had a chance to get to know Ruri Hijiribe,” he complained. As he prepared to leave, he leaned over to Yuuhei’s ear to whisper, “Think you could get me an autograph from her? One for Celty, too. Much appreciated!”

  “I’ll ask.”

  “Thanks! As a sign of my appreciation, today’s visit is free of charge!”

  “No, I can’t…”

  “I insist! I’ll just charge my next patient out the wazoo for the crime of cutting my time here short! Say hi to Shizuo for me!”

  Still smiling, the man in the white doctor’s coat left the room.

  The cat followed the other man out of the room, as if seeing him to the door, leaving only two megastars behind.

  But here there were no adoring fans, only silence and the fruitless passage of time.

  This time, it was Yuuhei, sitting in the chair at the side of the bed, who broke the silence.

  “May I ask something?”

  “…What is it?” Ruri replied, turning to him from her sitting position. Her eyes bulged.

  In his hand was the zombie skin that she had been wearing until just minutes ago. She tensed up nervously, and Yuuhei said what she was afraid of hearing.

  “Ruri, are you the serial killer Hollywood?”

  His words were fairly certain, so she cast around for some kind of denial, but—

  “That doctor informed me that your body is abnormal.”

  So…he does know.

  Denying it or playing coy would not get her anywhere. Ruri looked down to avoid the iron mask of his face, and neither confirmed nor denied it.

  “If that’s what you thought…why didn’t you hand me over to the police?”

  “Did you want me to? If that’s the case, I recommend turning yourself in.”

  “…No, that’s not what I mean…”

  “Then why are you upset about it?” Yuuhei said in his usual monotone, getting to his feet. Whatever conclusion about Hollywood he took from Ruri’s question, he silently reached out to take the empty water cup from her hand.

  “…I see,” Ruri said quietly.

  Her arm instantly shot out and grabbed Yuuhei by the neck. She threw him onto the bed, ignoring the scream of all her body’s muscles, and spun so that she was sitting on top of him.

  With an extended finger pointed right at Yuuhei’s throat, she asked, in a quiet voice thick with pressure, “Then…you couldn’t have foreseen this possibility?”

  “…”

  Yuuhei remained expressionless. Ruri’s voice grew more irritated.

  “I’m going to be honest with you, Yuuhei. I know that this attitude you display is not just another act…but it’s abnormal.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Yes. You must be crazy, letting a mass murderer into your own home.”

  He looked at her curiously as she sat on top of him. Ruri quietly raised her hand to strike and asked a question.

  “Did you never even think it was remotely possible…that you would be killed?”

  Two hours later, Sunshine, Sixtieth Floor Street, Ikebukuro

  “Good grief. This is what you get for being too good at your job. Two cases in one night!” Shinra lamented as he walked through Ikebukuro at night, the money he earned safely stashed in his doctor’s briefcase. It was a line that a real doctor would rightfully punch him for saying.

  “I’ve still got time, so maybe I should stop back in at Yuuhei’s place and get those autographs,” he decided, strolling through the commercial district that was markedly quieter after hours.

  “Hey, is that him?”

  “Yeah, it is!”

  “No doubt about it!”

  “Cameraman!”

  “?”

  Shinra noticed a sudden swell of conversation approaching and looked up to see a sudden blinding camera flash.

  “Aaah!!”

  “Um, excuse me! You just left an apartment owned by Yuuhei Hanejima about two hours ago, didn’t you?”

  “…?!”

  It wasn’t until the fifth camera flash that Shinra realized these men were what the world called “paparazzi.”

  “Do you have a moment? We understand that Yuuhei Hanejima owns all of the apartments in that building. Are you an acquaintance of his?!”

  Gwuh?! No way! He’s that rich?!

  Shinra knew the story of how he made nearly 1.2 billion yen for his nest egg, but it was almost impossible to believe that he had enough money to buy an entire building full of the already-expensive luxury apartments that he and Celty lived in. But there was no time to dwell on that.

  “About an hour ago, Hanejima and the actress Ruri Hijiribe were seen kissing out in front of the building. What do you know about their relationship?”

  “What sort of medical needs were you attending to in the middle of the night?”

  “What is your area of medical expertise?”

  “Are you an obstetrician?!”

  Reporters for a number of different sources deluged him in a waterfall of voices, voices, voices.

  “H-hey! Hey, wait!”

  What?! What? What happened between those two?! A kiss, just like that?

  What about our autographs?!

  A number of
suspicions arose in Shinra’s panicked mind, but he could tell that the onslaught of questions and camera flashes was robbing him of his ability to think straight.

  “All right… In that case, I’ll be answering all of your questions after these quick messages from our sponsors…via airmail!” Shinra said and raced off in a full sprint.

  “Hey, he’s getting away!”

  “Wait, please!”

  “Just one comment!”

  And as he glanced back at the pursuing reporters and cameramen over his shoulder, Shinra Kishitani experienced his first serious physical exertion in several years.

  Without realizing that on the very same night, Celty was also being hounded by TV cameras.

  Twelve hours later, near Kawagoe Highway, apartment building

  “Even thinking about it now, yesterday gives me the willies.”

  Shinra was still swaddled in black thread, wriggling around on the floor as he waited for Celty to return home.

  “Honestly, I wonder what happened there… Once I get free of this, I’m going to watch the news. I was shouting about how I’d sue them for violating my likeness rights, so I doubt they used any photos of me,” he muttered, a giant black silkworm flopping around on the floor seeking the TV remote before the variety shows began.

  But just as he had found the remote, the doorbell rang.

  Oh, damn. I can’t answer the door. Wait…maybe this thread can be removed with the strength of two people?

  He began to wonder what sort of story he could tell this visitor to convince them to help. But before he could call out that he was there, he heard the sound of the door unlocking.

  “Oh, is that Celty?! Thank goodness! Your little abandonment fetish thing was quite exciting for a while, but I think it’s finally—” he started, a look of bliss on his face as he greeted…

  A number of menacing-looking men led by a gaunt-faced fellow.

  It was clear from a glance that they were not in an upstanding line of work, but the thin man at the center of the group, at least, seemed like any other person in his manner.

  He strode right into Shinra’s home and coldly noted, “I really don’t get that abandonment kink shit.”