Mikado waited for Anri’s response, praying to God for a positive response.
“Hmm… Well, there are some people I look up to.”
“…?! O-oh. You don’t say. Who would that be?” he tried to reply as nonchalantly as possible, ringing bells of doom in his ears.
“Well…I didn’t say this to the police, but…I was attacked by the slasher a few hours before I actually got hurt…and some people were there to save me. In particular, there was a guy wearing bartender clothes, and the other person there was supercool…”
“Bartender clothes?”
That’s not Shizuo, is it?
Mikado shook that horrifying image out of his head and waited for her to continue.
But I think he’s like me… Someone who can’t actually love other people, Anri thought to herself. But by not saying it aloud, she kept Mikado in prickly suspense.
“And the other person was…well, don’t be too shocked.”
“Who?”
“It was the Black Rider, believe it or not!”
Gong! The bell rang again. Mikado felt his heart being ripped out of his chest, but he did his best to keep the smile up for Anri’s sake.
“We talked a bit after that…and I could feel such a radiation of purpose and affection… It seems like the Black Rider has everything I don’t… Ha-ha, I suppose you wouldn’t believe that, would you?”
As a matter of fact, Mikado knew Celty well. And based on the combination with the bartender outfit, it was most certainly Celty and Shizuo.
Huh…but…what? I mean, Celty’s a woman, so…huh?
Mikado was completely baffled until he remembered that from a distance Celty’s gender was essentially indistinguishable. But if he was going to explain that to Anri, he’d have to reveal that he knew Celty. And in order to explain that, he might be forced to talk about the Dollars.
No, I can’t do that. I don’t want to get her involved in our side of things.
He thought it over rapidly and decided to try to push her away from them.
“Oh, but that Black Rider and the other folks…they’re so far outside of what we experience in our normal lives, you know?”
Says the guy who was obsessed with the abnormal, he thought wryly. But Anri cut him down with a faint smile.
“Ryuugamine… In the world we live in, what do you think is truly abnormal?”
“Uh…well… Using mental powers, crazy events popping off, stuff like that?” he replied, confused. She shook her head, still smiling.
“It’s when nothing happens. When the same exact things happen day after day without even the slightest variation. From the moment you wake to the moment you fall asleep, the same boring repetition. That is the most unlikely event of all.”
“Oh…good point.”
“Breaking the peace or having your peace broken, yearning for boredom or change deep within your heart—I think that is humanity’s true nature.”
Mikado wasn’t sure what Anri meant or how to respond. She gave him a sad smile and wrapped up her point.
“So I think…I’ve finally gotten back to normal.”
“Huh?”
I’ve been escaping into the abnormal world of my dreams ever since Mom and Dad died, and now I’m finally back on this side, she thought, smiling at the confused Mikado.
After meeting hours were over and she was alone in the hospital room, Anri stared up at the ceiling.
In the end, she didn’t tell Mikado or Masaomi the truth: that she was Saika. They probably wouldn’t believe her if she had. Of course, it was easy for her to assume that, given that she didn’t know the truth about Mikado, either.
This is for the best.
Ryuugamine and Masaomi are good friends of mine.
I can’t get them involved. I can’t draw them into the underworld.
I won’t cause any more slashings. I won’t let that happen.
That means that neither of them will need to worry about anything…
She imagined their faces and then something else entirely.
The one really pulling the strings.
As she was the one controlling all of Saika’s children, Anri understood virtually everything that had caused events to take the path they did. From the various slashers—and Haruna Niekawa—she had learned of the presence of this mastermind.
She didn’t know what he looked like or his goal, but…if that mastermind thought he could use them to destroy the town again—if he tried to destroy Mikado’s and Masaomi’s peace…
She felt her fists clench atop the blanket.
Racked by unease and determination, Anri thought of the mastermind’s name.
Which was…
“Izaya Orihara is a very strange name, when you think about it…”
“Hmm… It might just be coincidence that I turned out the way I did, but I think it actually suits me perfectly.”
In an apartment in Shinjuku, Izaya Orihara was playing a curious customized game of shogi by himself. A secretary was making rounds between mountains of documents and a computer behind him.
Izaya didn’t bother to help her with the avalanche of processing ahead of her. Instead he asked, “Namie, how much do you believe in coincidence?”
“…What do you mean?”
The board was triangular with triangular spaces, and normal shogi pieces were arranged neatly into three different formations.
“They’re probably thinking that all of the stuff that just happened was mere happenstance. When Haruna Niekawa was in Anri Sonohara’s apartment, they think Nasujima showing up was a coincidence. Nasujima was pressured into being there at that point in time. He was flattered into it. He had to be given Anri Sonohara’s precise address. That was all me. Funny thing is, for a teacher, he was a real idiot. He could’ve just looked up her address by peeking into the other class’s student register. Maybe he just didn’t want them to spread rumors about him. The guy who hit on every girl in the school!”
Izaya chuckled as he recalled the entire string of events.
“Another funny thing is when you research fairies and possessed swords and all that stuff under the assumption that they’re real, you actually come up with quite a lot of results.”
Izaya was positively tickled by the existence of all that information he hadn’t known, and remembering the conclusion of Saika’s incident sent him trembling with excitement.
“The only true coincidence this time was that when Nasujima took my money, the real Saika showed up.”
Nasujima led an unstable life to begin with. He had borrowed money from one of the Awakusu-kai’s loan sharks, and his back was against the wall. So he came up with a plan. Haruna Niekawa had once threatened him with a knife. What if he blackmailed her parents over that and squeezed some money out of them?
The Awakusu-kai put him through to an information dealer named Izaya Orihara. When he visited the man’s office and Izaya said he needed to leave for a while and just walked out, there was a black bag on the table with multiple stacks of bills poking out. Just as Izaya expected, Nasujima ran off with the money. He probably expected to pay off the loan shark and then hightail it for safety. Perhaps he figured that given Izaya’s line of work, he wouldn’t be reporting that stolen cash to the police.
All that was left was to hire Celty to capture Nasujima.
Izaya threatened to tell the Awakusu-kai about the stolen money and thus had himself a faithful little pawn.
That was his angle to using Haruna Niekawa, the true Saika.
“But then, out of the blue comes the owner of the real Saika, not a simple copy like Niekawa. That made things much more interesting… Personally, it would have been perfect if Shizu had died in the fray, but I can’t ask for too much, I suppose.”
“How were things made ‘interesting’?” Namie asked the elated Izaya, her own face an emotionless mask. To her, the only thing that mattered in the world was her brother’s happiness, and everything else was immaterial—including herself.
> Izaya knew her bizarre proclivities, but he was like a child bursting with a secret inside, his eyes sparkling.
“Now the city is split in three, between the Dollars, the Yellow Scarves, and Anri Sonohara’s demonic army… And the demon blade has infiltrated the ranks of both the others.”
“Hmm. And that’s interesting to you?”
“The shit won’t hit the fan right away… But for now, a few sparks will do fine. In a few months, those sparks will smoke and smolder, and…oh, I just can’t wait anymore!”
He laughed and rolled back onto the sofa, as giddy as a boy waiting for the release of a new video game. Meanwhile, Namie was still expressionless and flat.
She asked, “The Yellow Scarves might have the numbers, but weren’t they just created by some stupid kid three years ago? Doesn’t speak well to their balance, does it?”
“Actually, no… Think about it. It means that ‘stupid kid’ is able to handle an organization of that many people. The threat is real!” he proclaimed, then muttered mostly to himself.
“Of course, it’s not like the shogun of the Yellow Scarves is a total stranger to me, either…”
“…Don’t try to drag me back into this.”
It was an abandoned husk of a factory somewhere in the city, a distance away from Ikebukuro. Within that desolate, empty space—almost unthinkable for such an urban location—squirmed hundreds of shadows.
The owners of those shadows were all young—boys and girls from elementary to high school ages. Even more striking was their clothing: While all of their outfits were different, every single person inside the factory building wore a yellow bandanna somewhere.
“I don’t want any part of it. You got that?” a languid and tired voice rang out, at odds with the stifling nature of the place. “Normally, I’d claim that you would never understand how I feel, but if you were psychics who could actually read my mind, I’d feel pretty stupid, wouldn’t I? So I won’t say that.”
No one else spoke. The lazy voice continued to bounce off the walls.
“At any rate, once I got involved with Izaya, I decided that I was never going to come back here,” the man said in the midst of the yellow vortex, his face deadly serious.
Despite his complete denial of the group, one of the Yellow Scarves nearby spoke up without a hint of respect. “C’mon…we ain’t got nothin’ goin’ on without you, bud. The yakuza are too scary to mess with, and we can’t run a business with nothing but numbers on our side.”
The next moment, a much larger boy next to him kicked him in the face.
“His title is Shogun.”
The original boy waved off the angry one with an idle hand. “Nah, nah, it’s cool! I’m not cut out to be a fancy shogun at this point. Just a simple commoner. Commoner? Hell, I’m just a student.”
And the man they called Shogun, creator of the Yellow Scarves, got to his feet.
“Seriously, though, when did this turn into such a massive operation? We could give the Dollars a run for their money, yeah? All that yellow is almost kinda creepy though.”
It was an Ikebukuro color gang, the kind that had been featured in a famous TV drama. The boy had chosen yellow for their color because it looked so cool on the gang in the show. The odd thing was—
“Actually, it’s not yellow in the original books. I was real shocked when I borrowed it from the library!” he cackled, but no one else joined in.
“That doesn’t matter, Shogun. The thing is…we have suspicions about the Dollars’ involvement.”
“…”
“We know you’re one of the Dollars, Shogun. There are several others of us who are double affiliated. But the Dollars is a gang that otherwise has very few connections to other groups. I suspect that several of the Dollars attacked us on the day of the incident…and it’s not just me. Plenty of us feel the same way, Shogun.”
Even after that plaintive speech, the “Shogun” didn’t lose the nonchalant smirk.
“I’m saying I ain’t doing anything for your sakes. I got my peace and tranquillity, which is what I wanted: surrounded by good friends, living a life of just the right amount of danger.”
In the next instant, his carefree expression tightened up. “But that serial slasher destroyed my tranquillity.”
His reptilian eyes were sharp and cold enough to freeze everyone there. The entire gathering shivered with the power of that shift.
“Society calls it gang warfare, but that’s wrong. It’s something else, something weirder…but that doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t. I’m gonna destroy this slasher. And if there’s more than one, then multiple destructions are in order,” he said with quiet determination, looking out upon the crowd.
“I care about my people, of course…but it’s Anri getting hurt that I really can’t handle.”
The crowd didn’t recognize the name, but no one was going to speak up and interrupt.
“No matter how many people are involved, we’re going to annihilate this goddamn slasher. And if the Dollars are behind this—well, I’m one of them…”
The Shogun paused, then spoke as if all the air had been wrung out of his lungs.
“But I’m prepared to bring them down from the inside.”
In the empty factory, the Yellow Scarves’ shogun, Masaomi Kida, sat alone in a pipe-frame chair, dazed.
“Shit…how dare you…pull me back…,” he lamented to the ceiling, cursing the unseen slasher. The only things in his mind were retribution against whomever destroyed his peace of mind—and the smiling faces of Anri, Mikado, his classmates, and his friends.
This drove his irritation into hatred—for the “Saika” that the Internet rumored was the culprit.
“Dammit… How dare you pull me back in… How dare you…dammit!”
“The fun thing about staring down at the board from above is the illusion that you are God.”
Izaya poked and prodded at the triangular shogi board, smirking like a child.
“God attacks! Hi-yah!” he chirped, pouring the oil from a lighter onto the board. The smell spread throughout the room, but he paid it no mind, pushing the splattered pieces around so that the three kings were gathered in the center.
“A three-way battle’s a wonderful thing. Especially when the leaders are so closely aligned,” he gloated, his innocent smile now full of malice as he lit a match. “The sweeter the honeymoon, the greater the despair as it burns ever higher.”
Izaya tossed the match onto the board.
Flame.
Transparent blue flame, almost cold in its appearance, enveloped the shogi board. It burned quickly, crackling and charring the pieces as the oil evaporated. The wooden pieces burned up one after the other on the glass table.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha! Look, the pieces burn like trash!” he gloated, a parody of some stereotypical mad villain. It was Namie, who wasn’t even watching the exhibition, who doused his excitement with a freezing comment.
“Well, anything will become trash if you burn it. Now clean all of that up.”
“Tsk. You’re no fun, you know that?” he griped, shaking his head in disappointment. But he was back to his good mood in moments. He picked up a pair of cards from the table nearby. “The real question is, how do the other cards who aren’t my pawns move now? Yumasaki’s group, Shinra Kishitani, Simon, Shiki from the Awakusu-kai…the cops… But I suppose Shizu’s got to be the king.”
He flipped the king card right into the flames. “And Celty’s the joker…no, the queen. Then the joker is…Shinra’s dad with Nebula…? Know what, I don’t really care.”
Izaya tossed all of the cards in the fire, bored. As he watched the pile flame away, he turned to the object resting next to him.
“It’s actually getting interesting now…don’t you agree?”
The eyes of the beautiful severed head resting next to Izaya just barely seemed to twitch.
“Ahh…it’s so peaceful…”
On the terrace of the luxury apartment building, Celty lay spr
awled out on the deck, soaking in the sun. She made a point of typing how comfortable she was into the PDA to show it to Shinra.
He responded by claiming that she’d get sunburned and helped her put on sunscreen and set up an umbrella before getting down next to her.
“By the way, about Saika’s katana—it pretty much turned out the way you said it would. Thank you.”
“Ha-ha-ha, anything for you, Celty. But I wish you’d whisper your thanks into my ear while we’re in bed. In fact, who needs a bed when we can do it right h— Wugh!”
She thumped him in the stomach with a backhand punch to shut him up before putting her own doubt into words.
“But you were so precisely correct, it creeped me out a little. I was going to look into it myself, but when I looked on the Net and in the texts, I couldn’t find a single reference to a cursed sword named Saika. And your input on the matter was way more detailed than Izaya’s. How did you find this stuff out?”
“Oh, that. I found my dad’s diary.”
“?” Celty typed into the PDA, prompting Shinra for a less vague answer.
“Well, turns out my dad was researching Saika. He was really fascinated with this story of a sword that could ‘slice souls in two.’ He actually owned it until a few years ago, when he sold it to an antiques trader he knows. I believe the trader’s name was Sonohara, but I haven’t heard much about the place lately…”
“What?!”
Shinra’s father was the very man who smuggled Celty into Japan, as well as the man she suspected of stealing her head in the first place. Even Shinra didn’t know where he was or what he was doing now. What would he be doing studying Saika?
“When you say slice souls, that doesn’t mean…it could have been used to split the soul between my body and head so that my head could be stolen, does it?”
“Celty…you’re bang on. I’ve been thinking that very thing.”
“…No. Never mind. No use getting angry at you.”
The Headless Rider gave up and turned over to bask in the warm sunlight again.
Durarara!!, Vol. 2 (novel) Page 18