Shizuo grinned and put the gloves on. Celty scattered the paused slashers as she drove the bike out of the park and out of sight.
“All right, then.”
Now Shizuo was truly alone.
All alone against a hundred attackers.
But he had no thought of defeat.
Meanwhile, the Saikas surrounding him shared the same thought: that they didn’t have the confidence to love Shizuo enough.
What’s going on? What’s going on?
Our opponent is hardly unharmed.
Countless scratches and cuts cover Shizuo’s body. But he shows no signs of accepting our love. The fear and pain of one simple cut is supposed to be enough to force him to accept our thoughts.
If there’s any explanation…it’s that Shizuo’s not human…or…
Oh…how can this be?
The creature known as Shizuo Heiwajima does not feel the slightest ounce of fear.
Not just about himself being wounded.
Shizuo doesn’t have an ounce of fear that he might hurt others, either.
He joyfully throws his full will into our destruction.
All because he accepted our words of love.
…Is this fear?
Is it fear?
We feel fear from a human that we love.
What irony.
We are afraid of a human who accepted our love.
We are afraid.
Afraid. Afraid.
Afraid…
The one who accepted our words of love does not fear us.
Therefore, we cannot pour the “reign” of love into him.
We cannot love him.
Does she know? Has our mother realized this truth yet?
Our mother, and the one who begat her, the great progenitor… Does she realize?
That our existence is so full of contradictions.
That from the perspective of a human being, the love of a demon sword is nothing more than an illusion…
As the Saikas continued to close in, regardless of the challenge, Shizuo found a smile creeping over his features.
Don’t get the wrong idea, you idiots.
No one will love me because they’re all scared? Don’t make me laugh.
I’m the one who’s scared.
It’s me.
I’m the world’s biggest coward.
Because I’m scared of what I should trust the most—myself.
But so what?
Me being a coward and destroying you assholes have nothing to do with each other!
Besides.
I can’t afford to get knocked on my ass in front of someone who actually loves me, can I?
Maybe that was the moment that it started.
When even if I liked someone—I was afraid to love them.
Anri still had the dream.
The dream of her family in happy times. The dream where they all laughed together.
But it was nothing but a lie.
Not because it was a dream, but because Anri Sonohara was never that happy in the past.
Anri was abused by her father from a young age.
Upon nearly every encounter with him, she had to suffer insults and injury. It was a daily occurrence.
Her mother would attempt to step in and help, but he would just beat her instead.
The process escalated over the years, so that by the time she was eleven years old, there were always fresh marks on her body.
Not because he was a drunk. That was not the case.
He never hit Anri’s face, and he made sure not to leave marks when she had swimming lessons and people might have seen them. It was calculated. He performed just the right amount of violence to keep her from being able to report it to the school or police.
In time, she closed her heart off and lived in a deep depression with no escape.
That was about the time that the slashing attacks started happening around town.
“No…that katana…Saika!” Haruna stammered in shock. “That’s it…that’s the sword that attacked me five years ago!”
Just as Anri imagined.
Haruna was a victim of Anri’s Saika, and the seed within her that had been growing all along found quick purchase within the imbalance from her love of Nasujima, she suspected.
Meanwhile, Haruna sneered, “Y-you…you killed them! Your own parents! With that katana…”
“That’s right. I might as well have killed them, I suppose,” Anri replied, neither an affirmation nor denial. She raised the katana.
That was all she did—pull it upward—but the back of the sword hit Haruna’s arm in a sensitive spot, causing her to drop the knife.
“Ah…”
Haruna panicked and crouched to pick up the knife—an amateur’s mistake. In the next instant, the long blade of the katana slid against her neck, freezing her instantly.
“…!”
“That child of Saika won’t tell you how to fight, will it? Which means…it might inherit the will and aims of Saika but not the experience and memory,” Anri conjectured. “Please…I have a request. Tell the other Saikas to stop this… As the parent, your orders should reach the children. Of course, if you’re under Saika’s control, my Saika can order you to stop, as your parent…”
“No…this can’t be!”
Despite Anri’s request that she not hurt anyone, those very words did indeed hurt Haruna’s pride deeply.
“Saika tried! It rushed up and tried to take me over, day after day…but I survived it! I held it down with the power of my love! And yet, you don’t know the first thing about love…so how can I lose to you…?”
She glared up at Anri, the picture of frustration.
In contrast, Anri’s voice held nothing but sadness. “Miss Niekawa…I’ll let you hear just a little bit.”
“Huh…?”
“Of the words of Saika’s love, the thing that constantly echoes within me…”
Anri moved the katana away from Haruna’s neck and stuck it, just a fraction of an inch, into the girl’s arm.
She felt a small prick of pain on her arm, then—
The words of love came right into her heart and
and
and
love
love
was all
ve, love, love, lo
ause of love.” “So mu
ust love people.” “Don’t be ridicu
“Don’t talk about who you love, that just
o, no, no! I love all, all, all of humanity equally
What do I love? Don’t be ridiculous! It’s everything
love blood splatter.” “I love hard bone.” “It’s love.” “Nice
so I forgive you.” “So you can forgive me too, okay” “I won’t
all of this.” “Ah!” “The slice of meat during the moment of ecstasy
I just love the soft and yet hard muscle that rips right apart!” “And there’s that hard bone, so smooth and supple, weak yet sharp, tough and cracking!” “Love trembling and soft and silky and squishy sticking and sticking and sticking tight together as voices echo with cries of love, yes? I’m so jealous I wish I had words of love to speak but I don’t so I want you to love me instead I want to be filled but yes oh yes but oh yes I’m so jealous even dying can be a form of love lust is a powerful form of love but no you can’t try to narrow love to a definition that’s blasphemy against the heart there is no definition of love all that you need are those simple words I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you
I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you—
Just at the moment Haruna’s mind threatened to explode, Anri pulled the sword away.
“Did you hear Saika’s words?”
She heard them. To be more precise, she couldn’t shut them out.
It was nothing at all like the words that Haruna had heard within herself.
This was not love.
Taken one by one, the words might have included love, but boiled and bubbled into one solid mass of “words of love,” it was nothing but a thick stew of voices of loathing to anyone who heard it.
“H-how…? How can you possibly stand…those haunting curses?”
“I am lacking in many ways,” Anri explained, forcing a smile onto her face despite the sadness in her eyes. She examined her own Saika. “So I must fill the gaps of what I’m missing… I’m a parasite. I live off of all kinds of things.”
She continued in a tiny voice, as if speaking just to herself, “I know that I lack the heart to love others…and that’s why I’ve been able to listen to the voice, over and over…with total objectivity…”
From outside the picture frame.
Anri looked down as she envisioned the familiar image, and Haruna took it as her chance to strike. She picked up the knife from her feet and swung it at Anri with everything she had.
Once, twice, thrice—the knife flashed at the limit of speed for a human being, carving fresh slices into Anri’s body. Though she didn’t hit any fatal spots, there were heavy wounds on her arms and legs.
“Ha-ha…ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! I did it! Yes, you could never stop me…”
Her gale of laughter was short-lived.
Anri withstood the assault with utter calm, and now the point of that katana was pressed to the other girl’s throat.
“Ah!” Haruna shrieked with fear.
Anri asked curiously, “Why are you so afraid of being cut? Isn’t that just a result of being loved?”
It wasn’t sarcasm, but an honest question. Haruna gritted her teeth and put on her bravest face, throwing the question back at Anri.
“Wh-why did you just let me cut you…?”
Haruna was no fool. She was rational enough to understand that Anri chose not to dodge attacks that she could have avoided. Anri responded to the question by allowing her expressionless eyes to flash red.
“If you won’t stop the other slashers now, I’ll have to do something awful to you. This means we’ll be even,” she announced.
“Huh…?”
It was an absurd thing to say, when she was the one who’d just taken several deep slashes, Haruna thought. But while her rational mind was confident, her subconscious heart was trembling in fear at what might happen to her.
Just as her heart feared, Anri pressed the tip of the sword against her throat.
“I’m letting Saika take over just a bit of your heart. You’ll be fine—I highly doubt it’s fatal…”
“Ah…aaaah…”
“I won’t apologize. If I apologize to you now, I’ll be denying my very way of life. Yes, I think I’m a coward. I’m trying to protect my own peace of mind by doing something awful to you…but I can’t help it.”
The bespectacled girl smiled ruefully.
That was the last image Haruna saw before her mind was occupied.
“After all, I’m a parasite.”
The tip of the sword broke the skin of her throat, just the smallest of margins—and the words of love flowed into her.
She remembered that it was the voice that entered her for only an instant when she was just barely grazed by the slasher five years ago.
The last thing Haruna heard was Anri’s voice atop a tremendous flood of loving curses.
“You see, Saika gets very lonely. So it hurts to hear you claim that you ‘suppressed’ her or ‘used’ her. From our human perspective, she might be doing it wrong…but it’s true that Saika does love all of humanity…
“So please…love her back.
“Miss Niekawa, I want you…to love Saika.
“You, at least, can love others…unlike me…”
At the same moment—
Shizuo noticed that one of the slashers coming after him suddenly lost the will to fight, and he gave his body an order with all of his mind and spirit.
Just one word: Stop.
That had never worked before. The cells, ruled by his anger, always continued their destruction until everything was finished.
But this was different.
Shizuo was not ruled by anger now.
It was joy. He was using his strength of his own will, out of nothing but joy.
Stop…stop…stop, damn you!
Finally, his anger appeared, its momentum focused at all of his own cells. The fist that threatened to crush the face of the oncoming but nonhostile slasher, now just an ordinary, harmless person…
Stopped right before making contact with the nose and went still.
“…Ha-ha.”
Shizuo looked at the halted fist and realized he was laughing.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…”
It was the laughter of an innocent child and the laughter of an insane killer.
What the hell?
About time you finally started listening to me.
Behind him was the by-product of that personal victory.
An entire field of Saikas, beaten until they couldn’t move again, and a pile of broken blades in all shapes and sizes, snapped in half by Shizuo’s shadow-gloved hands.
But none of them was dead.
He swung his fists with a different emotion than anger. It was pleasure—still a twisted emotion to utilize for fighting—but the result was that he’d been able to hold back for once.
It was the moment that violence turned to strength for Shizuo Heiwajima.
One night, five years ago
Anri’s father was trying to kill her.
Not out of anger. He stared at her with calm, blank eyes as he put his weight into strangling her around the neck.
Daddy.
Daddy.
It hurts.
It hurts.
Don’t.
Why are you strangling me?
Why is Mommy lying on the ground?
I don’t want you to fight with her.
I don’t want to fight with you, either, Daddy.
I won’t cry when you hit me anymore. I’ll hold it in.
Just don’t kill me. Please, help me, Daddy…
As her wits began to fade, the girl saw her mother standing over her father’s back. He continued to choke Anri, unaware.
She didn’t know what had happened between her father and mother or why he was trying to kill her.
All she knew was that her mother said, “I love you, d
ear,” and lopped his head off with a swing from a katana that she’d produced from somewhere. At the end of the swing, she turned the blade around and stabbed it into her own stomach.
As the katana fell from her mother’s hands, it clattered to the ground at Anri’s feet and filled her heart with the accursed words of love.
But they didn’t reach her.
For the first time, Anri was seeing the world and herself from outside of the picture frame—and even Saika’s cursed words couldn’t reach her mind.
The words poured right off of her. She picked up Saika, her mind blank—and learned of Saika’s past, her intentions, and the fact that her own mother had been the source of the slashings.
Anri’s body absorbed the sword. The police never found the slasher’s weapon.
“A-Anri. Is that you…Anri?”
She came back to her senses at the sound of Nasujima’s voice.
In front of her was an unconscious Haruna and Nasujima, who looked down at the girl’s body as though she were something creepy and disgusting.
“I-I don’t know what you did…but she tried to attack me in the faculty room once. The school helped me hush the matter up and transfer her out, but… Shit! I guess she never gave up, the freaky stalker!” he ranted, all image of an educator lost.
Suddenly, he shrieked and backed away from Anri. Was he startled by the katana in her hands? But that wasn’t the case.
Anri turned around to see that a motorcycle had appeared without producing any engine noise. It was Celty.
But why now…?
Anri shook her head in resignation and turned toward Celty. Just as she was about to say something, Nasujima grabbed her shoulder from behind.
“C’mon, Sonohara, run away with me. Okay? Okay?”
His ulterior motives were obvious even in this extreme situation. Anri just shook his hand away.
“Wh…why are you turning me down? D-don’t you remember how I saved you from those bullies, Sonohara? Before? Y’know?”
“I already returned that favor.”
“Wh-what, you mean just now? W-we’ve got bigger fish to fry!”
“No…I did this for myself…”
She turned her back on the confused Nasujima and delivered a statement meant for both him and Celty.
Durarara!!, Vol. 2 (novel) Page 16