Prologue: Red Breath, Long Breath
Her love was so unbearably creaky,
so unsalvageably rusted,
and while so apparently deep in its fixation—
it was in fact ignorant, foolish, and shallow in the extreme.
I love people.
Whom do I love? No, not whom! I love all human beings!
What do I love about them? Don’t ask silly questions! Everything, I love everything!
I love the hot blood that goes from bright to filthy black as it races through their bodies!
I love their sinewy muscles, so tough yet soft, that tear right apart!
I love their bone, slender and frail yet sharp and rough!
I love their cartilage, trembling soft and clinging wetly and smoothly!
I love their throats, chirping and screaming sounds of love when I touch them!
I love their eyes, dripping tears in response to my love!
Most of all, when my love has peaked…and the cross section of split flesh appears.
I love anything and everything about them. You get it?
Yes, I love you, too, of course. But I cannot “love” you.
But you should love me.
Yes, it’s entirely one-sided.
In exchange for your love of me, I will love all other humans.
A rather twisted triangle.
Will you abandon me? Hate me? Use me ragged like an old cloth and throw me away?
But you can’t not love me, can you?
You can’t not love my power, can you?
It’s fine to love me. That’s up to you.
But I won’t love you. In fact, I can’t.
As long as you’re gripping me, I can only love those you wish to cut.
And don’t you dare think about seppuku.
It will be hard to search for another person to love me…
Her love was so unbearably straight,
so smooth and sharp,
reflecting the figures of those she loved within her body
and tearing everything apart.
>
Chat room
Demon blade?
«That’s right! Did you know about that, Tarou?»
How would I have known about that? Setton, isn’t that your forte?
[A demon blade… Like Muramasa, you mean?]
«No, Setton! That’s more of a cursed blade, the kind that brings you misfortune just for having it. This is a different thing! It’s more like something out of a manga, where it controls your mind and makes you slice people!»
[But…I thought most of those were just called Muramasa.]
Like a Muramasa Blade?
[“You decapitated your foe!”]
That’s from Wizardry, right? I didn’t realize you were a gamer, Setton.
« Hey, stop going off on tangents!»
[Oh, sorry.]
Sorry, Kanra.
«Well, listen up! Ikebukuro’s buzzing over this demon blade! There’s a mysterious murderer who appears in the back alleys late at night, swinging the deadly weapon! There are no fatalities yet, but whoever it is has been going hog wild with a katana on their victims!»
That kind of sounds like it should be fatal…
«Apparently they go just shallow enough not to kill! Some of the victims have had their arms cut and stuff!»
[It just sounds like your average crime spree to me.]
«No, you don’t get it! This is a katana we’re talking about! Whoever it is just slips in and slices the victim before they can escape, with these eerie inhuman moves! Whoever’s responsible must not be human!»
[But why does that make it a demon blade?]
«Heh-heh, well, just between us…one of the victims got a look at the face of whoever slashed them, and it was apparently totally wild.»
What do you mean, wild?
«Like, with glowing red eyes, as if they were under some kind of hypnosis. Like they’d been bitten by a vampire and put under his control!»
[Okay, so it’s a vampire, then. lol]
«No, Setton, that’s silly! There’s no such thing as vampires, obviously!»
[…]
«Oh, I’m only kidding! Don’t be mad, Setton!»
[But I’m not mad (grr!)]
Yes, you are, yes, you are! lol
But we already know there’s a headless rider, so there could be a demon blade, too.
[The headless rider… They were just doing a TV report on that one.]
Yes, along with a segment on a flying girl with green skin. One of those paranormal shows.
«And Setton always makes sure to watch any TV show about the headless rider!»
Are you a fan?
[No…I wouldn’t say that. But my partner, the man I live with, certainly is.]
Partner? Wait, Setton, are you married?
[No, not yet…]
«But you live together?! Eeek!»
[Why does being a partner make him my lover? And wait…do you know my gender?]
Um, you’re…a woman, right?
«It’s really obvious from the way you talk. It’s feminine, but not over the top enough to be a guy pretending to be one.»
Did you think we’d never noticed before this?
[Oh my, look at the time. I’ve got an early morning tomorrow, so good night.]
—SETTON HAS LEFT THE CHAT—
Oh, she ran away.
«She certainly did.»
«Eeeeek! Tarou’s harassing me with PMs!»
No, that’s not it! It’s not like that!
«Well, I should be logging off now. Careful not to get taken over by the demon blade! »
—KANRA HAS LEFT THE CHAT—
Okay, good night.
…And really, it wasn’t like that! There was no sexual harassment going on!
—TAROU TANAKA HAS LEFT THE CHAT—
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|person|
|love|
|not|
|weak|
|want|
<
br /> |love|
|want|
|want|
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.
Chapter 1: Demon Blade, Dog Meat
—On a news program:
“Today we pick up where we left off in the ongoing story of the serial attacks in Ikebukuro.
“As you see, the total number of victims has risen to fifteen as of now. As the attacks have all occurred at night, eyewitness details are scarce, and most of the victims’ reports are vague…
“Furthermore, a number of similar incidents happened five years ago, and as no culprit was ever identified, the police are investigating the possibility that the same person is responsible…
“There’s also the case of the so-called Headless Rider in Ikebukuro since last year, a figure running wild with a massive weapon, whom some citizens are saying could be involved.”
—On a different paranormal-related program:
“The Slit-Mouthed Woman, the Man-Faced Dog, the Woman in the Wall—Ikebukuro’s Headless Rider was nothing more than another of these fanciful urban legends. But ever since last spring, this legendary figure has begun to feel all too real!
“The first sighting was more than ten years ago. So how did some segments of the media finally start reporting this story? It all starts from this footage.
“In the middle of filming this station’s program Caught on Tape! 24 Hours in Ikebukuro, our staff member riding in a police vehicle incidentally captured this image…”
“Oh my God, what is that?”
“Huh? Wait, look at that black scythe… Is it getting bigger over the course of the shot?”
“The hell is this? That movement shouldn’t be physically possible.”
“But it’s rumored that black motorcycle is related to the recent attacks—”
(after commercial break)
“We apologize for some inappropriate statements made earlier on this program…”
—Headlines from a weekly magazine:
“Eerie News! The Creepy Relationship Between the Headless Rider and the Street Attacks”
“Is It the Same Culprit As Five Years Ago?”
“Why the Police Haven’t Caught the Serial Slasher”
“A Modern-Day Tsujigiri? The Madness of the Katana”
“Evil Spirit? Motorcycle Gangster? Performer? Examining the Headless Rider’s Identity”
Night, Ikebukuro, late February
Damn, the shadow thought quietly beneath the girder bridge a short distance away from Ikebukuro Station.
That wasn’t a figure of speech—she actually was a shadow.
Clad in a pitch-black riding suit, astride a motorcycle enveloped in darkness.
The headlight-less bike was completely black in every way, from its engine to its driveshaft to its license plate. The coloring made it look like someone had simply dumped black paint on a plastic model of a motorcycle. The black riding suit matched the color as well.
It was only the outline of the lights from the bridge overhead that cast her and her bike into profile and made them visible.
Damn, dammit.
The black rider, Celty Sturluson, was faced with a single street punk who trembled in terror.
The thug looked to be in his late thirties. But there was no hint of the dignity or presence that age should have given him. Celty had been in the presence of yakuza officers around the same age as this man, and it was a keen reminder that even after living the same number of years, individual human beings could be extremely different in nature.
Celty was a courier making her home in Ikebukuro.
She wasn’t able to advertise her services, given her lack of a license, but her skill and speed at handling illegal and/or dangerous payload, plus the benefit of leaving no traces on the off chance that she was actually caught—there was no official record of her presence in Japan—meant that she didn’t lack for clients. At times, she got benign, upstanding offers like delivering a manga artist’s finished draft to the printer, but given that her partner, Shinra Kishitani, was a black-market doctor, most of her jobs ended up being through his unsavory contacts.
She wasn’t strictly a courier, either; she took on requests to find runaway children and runaway debtors as well.
This particular case was another one of these “outside-the-bounds” jobs.
A thug terrified into paralysis. All she had to do was collect the money this poor slob ran off with. That was all she had to do, and it should have ended at that.
Damn, damn, damn, she groaned to herself.
The thug was already on the ground. All she had to do was pick up the bag containing the money and that was it.
She had a giant black scythe and the thug had completely lost all intent to fight, over nothing more than a tear in his clothes. She just had to get off the bike and pick up the bag. She’d received no orders about the man’s custody. She could take him back with her, but she didn’t want more trouble, and she also didn’t want the risk of a face-to-face confrontation with the client leading to a possible murder.
One of her ironclad tenets was not to take any jobs involving killing. Part of it was the emotional toll of knowing that someone had died on account of her, but on a more practical level, she was getting by fine without resorting to murder.
She didn’t have to worry about living costs to begin with, thanks to the wealth of her partner, Shinra, but Celty always paid him her share of the rent. She didn’t want to owe him for something like that.
On top of that, this job should have earned her enough for this month’s rent.
It’s a simple job, she’d thought.
But Celty was frozen still. She couldn’t get down off the motorcycle.
The reason was extremely simple.
A blade.
Without warning, a silver blade grew out of the arm that held her scythe.
At first there was just a physical shock. The pain followed.
For the first moment that she saw the gleam of steel protruding from her arm, Celty didn’t understand what happened—but her experience and instinct soon told her that someone had stabbed her from behind.
“A…aiiee!”
The thug seemed to have grasped the situation quicker than Celty did. He wailed pitifully as he stared over her shoulder.
Damn, dammit, damn.
Someone was behind her, piercing her arm all the way through with the blade.
Normally, she would spin around on instinct, but Celty’s sense of pain was much duller than most. More than the pain, it was the distraction of the katana erupting from her arm that kept her from turning around at once.
Surprisin
gly calm about the situation, Celty wasn’t sure whether or not to take her eyes off the thug before her, and that hesitation was what cost her.
Determining that the thug wasn’t capable of getting up and running off immediately, she spun the bike around. The moment she squeezed the handlebar, the motorcycle’s engine brayed like an organic creature, and it made a completely inorganic 180-degree turn in place without rolling its wheels.
The next instant, the vein of light flashed.
The katana’s long blade reflected the light from above with a beautiful arc, and the glowing circle passed right through Celty’s neck.
In total silence, Celty’s helmet flew through the air, leaving only unspeaking darkness swirling above the neck of her riding suit.
“Ahyaaaaaaa! Hya! Hyaiii!” screamed the seated, terrified man.
The rider of the black motorcycle who had been trying to kill him (at least, in his mind) was abruptly beheaded by a new figure that had appeared from behind.
Though he couldn’t see it from his vantage point, the new figure struck as quick as lightning. It pulled the blade out of the rider’s arm as the bike rotated and swung in the reverse direction to catch her on the way around.
Like interlocking gears, the two rotations met up again, and in the next instant, the rider’s head was off her shoulders.
The slasher of Ikebukuro.
Both Celty and the street tough remembered the tabloid-fodder story and turned to the new figure.
“Gweah!” came an unnatural squawk as Celty tried to tell who this new attacker was.
What was that?! she thought. Yet another—
But when she cast her “gaze” back toward the seated man, he was staring at her, goggle-eyed.
“S-st-still m-m-moving?!”
Oh.
“N-n-n-n-n-no h-hea—head.”
And then Celty remembered.
She was the Headless Rider.
Celty Sturluson was not human.
She was a type of fairy residing in Ireland called a dullahan, a spirit that visited the homes of those who were soon to die, to warn them of their impending demise.
A dullahan carried its own severed head under its arm and rode on a two-wheeled carriage called a Coiste Bodhar drawn by a headless horse. If anyone at the home of the soon to be dead was foolish enough to open their door to the dullahan, they would receive a basin full of blood splashed over them. Thus, the dullahan, like the banshee, made its name as a herald of ill fortune throughout European folklore.
Durarara!!, Vol. 2 (novel) Page 1