“Like I just said, if we’re only dancing on the palm of Izaya’s hand, then at least I’m with you, Celty.”
“Shinra…”
Warmth filled the space between them. Shinra could have stayed there for an eternity, but he had one thing he needed to set straight.
“Promise me, Celty. If you find out who the attacker was, don’t go charging in alone. You must return here at least once. Even if Izaya brings you a guy standing right there and says he’s the one.”
“And what will happen if I break this promise? Will you decide you hate me?” she asked, even though she had no intention of breaking it.
Shinra’s head shook left and right. “I would never hate you, would I?”
“What would you do, then?”
“If you break this promise…”
“Then what…?”
Shinra paused before describing her penalty.
“There will be…tears.”
“Huh?”
“Much wailing…and gnashing of teeth…by me.”
“By you?!” she quickly wrote, but he didn’t appear to be joking.
“Yes. If you betrayed me, I would be heartbroken! A man in his midtwenties would be wailing and blubbering! Sagamihara downstairs is going to come up and ask what all the fuss is about! Do you want to see a grown man acting this way?”
“Um, I’ll admit it. I don’t wish to see that…”
She leaned sideways, unsure of how to react. After Shinra’s next statement, her backbone turned to ice.
“Also, I can complain to your online game friends and make things very uncomfortable in your little guild.”
“Understood. I will keep my promise. Rest assured of that,” Celty replied at once. She briskly prepared to leave, then headed out of the apartment.
She had to admit that Shinra’s final penalty was very harsh indeed—but the fact that he knew her well enough that he could pinpoint such a precise issue made her glow on the inside.
Chat room
Kuru: We have waited for quite some time, but Kanra still shows no sign of appearing.
Mai: No-show.
Kuru: What a truly obnoxious boor, showing up and wreaking havoc when not expected and never being available when one has a need to talk. The utility of the Internet is that it fosters communication between distant people. Is it possible that Kanra has grown not just physically distant but emotionally as well? What a sad state of affairs.
Mai: Sad.
Kuru: Now we must record our frustrations with the world to improve our mood. For example, why is it that the convenience store carries so many cashews and almonds but hardly ever a hint of walnuts? Particularly when mixed-nut packages have the entire trio of cashews, almonds, and walnuts!
Mai: It doesn’t matter.
Mai: Eep.
Mai: That was naughty, Kuru.
Kuru: Oh, really? So merely a light pinch on the calf is enough for you to label me lascivious? I can see where your mind goes. One wonders what sort of places I could pinch that would elicit accusations of harlotry! Perhaps an experiment is in order.
Mai: Stop, stop, stop.
Sharo has entered the chat.
Sharo: Enough of that, you little sluts.
Sharo: Stop harassing each other online already.
Mai: Hello.
Kuru: Oh my, at last another person comes along, and it’s the one I don’t wish to see.
Sharo: Well, most humblest of humble apologies for not living up to your expectations, princess.
Sharo: Kakh! Ptu!
Kuru: Either your digital glob of spit marks you as an absolute lout or an online wizard capable of conjuring a wide and precise range of emotions… In either case, my disgust is a simple fact that cannot be avoided.
Mai: Spit is gross.
Kuru: How can this be? Sharo is sexually harassing me in private mode. The overwhelming shame and degradation has my brain in a heat expansion that threatens to rupture my skull from within. His words are a curse upon me… They are like claws that rip my clothes as I slumber peacefully in the virtual society that is the World Wide Web!
Mai: It’s awful.
Mai: I’m going to tell on you.
Mai: To your sister.
Sharo: Stop, stop, stop! Fine, I get it! My bad! I was just kidding around, geez. Guess it’s my fault for not doing a sexual harassment bit with someone who realizes when a joke is a joke. Clearly, I must be the bad guy here!
Sharo: You guys make a good pair.
Mai: We’re not a pair.
Kuru: We are essentially two halves of one person. It would be rude to any proper pair to compare us to them. So although there are none present, please apologize to them.
Sharo: Why would I do that?! Then again, it’s way easier to apologize when no one’s there.
Saika has entered the chat.
Saika: good evening
Sharo: Eek! Saika’s here?!
Saika: huh
Saika: i’m sorry, have i caused you trouble
Kuru: No, there’s nothing to be concerned about here. As you’ll see from the backlog, it is just Sharo acting in an embarrassing manner on his own.
Kuru: By the way, Saika, I wanted to ask you something.
Saika: what is it
Kuru: I haven’t seen Setton in here for about ten days. Do you know anything about that?
Saika: no
Saika: i don’t really know
Saika: probably busy
Kuru: I see. I was merely wondering, as many of the old-guard members have not been present lately.
Saika: that reminds me, is TarouTanaka doing well
Mai: Haven’t seen him.
Kuru: No, I haven’t seen him at all, either. I suppose his exceedingly boring name made me forget about him! It really does seem like this chat room is undergoing a generational shift. It would be a shame, when we just brought in new members to make the place livelier.
Kuru: Now it looks like the successors have simply pushed the original members out.
Mai: Let’s make it fun.
Mai: I’m sleepy.
Kuru: Oh my, look at the time. How did it get so late?
Kuru: We shall have to continue this tomorrow. Drugs and lack of sleep are the skin’s worst enemy.
Kuru: Speaking of which, I’ve heard of a group selling drugs in the city these days…
Saika: are they pharmacists
Sharo: Uh, we’re not talking about door-to-door salesmen here, lol.
Kuru: …We can explain it later. But if any of you are friends with Setton or TarouTanaka in real life, please do convince them to pop in here again!
Kuru: Online chat is only fun when you have plenty of people to bring together!
.
.
.
In a Dark Place 3
“Say, what’s the connection between Mikage Sharaku and you, info dealer?”
“…”
As before, the man with the burlap sack over his head and the woman who called herself Earthworm faced each other from their respective chairs.
The woman now had a cell phone in her hand, and she was checking some kind of information on it.
The man was different, too; the sack was drenched with water, expanding and contracting with each breath.
“I asked you a question. It’s not very nice to ignore me,” Earthworm said with a little laugh. She grabbed a bottle of mineral water from the table. “Or are you too thirsty to speak?”
She chuckled to herself and held the plastic bottle over the top of the sack, then tilted it without further ado. Water gushed out, falling onto the burlap sack in a little vertical torrent. It rolled down the already-wet surface of the fabric, but the room was so dark that there wasn’t even a reflection of light, just the splattering of drops on the ground that gave away the presence of liquid.
Then she stood up, leaned in close to the sack, and licked at the flowing water. The tip of her tongue pressed against the man’s cheek through the rough surface, and she could sense the softness of flesh in the way it gave.
“That’s nasty, Earthworm,” said one of the women behind her, laughing.
But Earthworm merely cackled back and ran a finger over her own tongue. “Like I give a shit about being nasty now. Oh, I just spilled some of our precious, precious water. Will you go buy some more?”
“How many?” the subordinate asked suspiciously. Earthworm leaned closer to the man’s ear and hissed in a loud stage whisper.
“Get me some two-liter bottles…about three dozen of them.”
Seventy-two liters in all.
Based on what just happened, the man trapped under the sack had to know how this water would be used. But just to drive the point home, Earthworm asked him, “And what do you suppose we’re going to do with all that?”
“…”
“Bzzt! Time’s up.”
She crossed her index fingers in an X shape, not even a second after asking the question. She then placed her hands right in front of his face so that her crossed fingers could squash and pinch his nose.
“The correct answer was we’re gonna keep pouring it on your head forever!” she announced, like a game-show host describing a prize. Then she narrowed her eyes, and without inflection, she continued, “As punishment for losing the game, we’ll make your sisters drink, too, when they get here.”
“…”
“But don’t worry, all right? It’s not going to be that bitter stuff they feed to people for laughs on TV. I’m not that mean-spirited. I wouldn’t give them something that hideous,” she assured him, waving her hand. Her face lit up. “We’re just going to feed them each just about ten liters of delicious mineral water.”
“…”
The man’s head rose; he had been still until that point.
“Oh, don’t worry, that wasn’t a euphemism for drowning them, okay? But given that you deal in information, you probably know there’s a lethal limit for water ingestion, right?”
“…”
“But I’m not the sciency type, so I don’t know how much you actually have to drink to die, ha-ha. Would ten liters work? What do you think?” she prodded, excitedly waiting for the water and sisters to arrive. “Whoa, wait, what? You don’t seem…that panicked yet?”
“…”
“That sucks. That really hurts. You don’t understand how important this is to me.” She was straddling her chair backward, rocking it back and forth. “Oh, wait. Say, are you assuming your sisters can’t be caught that easily?”
“……”
She caught a minute twitch of his head and leered. “I hear the younger of the twins is the star of the Rakuei Gym girls’ division. And the older one has a bunch of toys like stun guns and sprays. Against a few ordinary men, you might actually be right in that assumption.”
“…”
“So we decided to take some steps. First of all, what do you think about taking Kururi hostage while she’s alone? You’re super-super-close with your sisters, right? Like make-people-sick-just-watching-you level.”
Earthworm dangled the empty plastic bottle between her thumb and ring finger and lightly bopped it against the forehead under the sack. She punctuated the punchy rhythm by asking, “Are you wondering how I knew that?”
“…”
“Did you think you were the only info broker who was in the know?”
She knew that silence would be his only answer at this point. No point in allowing him a chance for rebuttal.
“You see, there are others like you out there…but you don’t know about them. Because unlike you, they’re too good to let their names and faces get out. Like I said earlier, you’re actually an amateur, aren’t you? What would you call it, a semipro? Ha-ha, that’s so funny!”
“…”
The man in the burlap sack shook slightly, not indicating any semblance of mirth. Earthworm ignored his reaction and pressed the bottle against his forehead.
“Now…this other info dealer… Uh, to avoid confusion, let’s say this is Informant B, okay? And you’re Informant A. Well, we managed to buy a whole lot of info about A from B! It was quite funny how much we learned!”
She got up from the chair, slowly walked around to the back of his, and gently rested her hands on his shoulders. Then she leaned over, pressing her chest into his shoulders, and spoke right into the back of his neck, where the burlap sack was tied just loose enough not to suffocate him.
“You’re an info broker, too, right? So you’ve got some killer stuff to tell us, I bet.”
“…”
The man writhed. Earthworm savored his reaction to the breath on his neck and did it again. “You have a job making money from things people don’t want others to know, their deepest, darkest secrets. Surely you could have seen this possibility at some point?”
“…”
“Not that being prepared for the consequences excuses your actions.” Earthworm snorted. She lifted her head to whisper into his ear, “Know anything about the group Heaven’s Slave?”
“…!”
She sensed his back tense, and her narrowed eyes went as wide as a snake’s.
“Aha, I saw it! You do know something, don’t you…?”
“…”
“You can’t go back to holding your silence. It won’t work! Oh…unless you’re saving it? Once the darling little sisters of Izaya Orihara arrive, we can all listen together.”
She was looking at the burlap sack the way a child would look at her birthday presents all wrapped up in paper.
“So back to the topic… What’s your connection to Mikage Sharaku?”
“…”
“She’s not just a coach at the gym your sisters visit…right? Informant B told us quite a lot about that. Remember?” she said, turning to her companions around her. They merely smiled in the gloom. She took that as confirmation and turned back to him, pleased.
“When Mikage was in high school, she was one of your little groupies, wasn’t she?”
“…”
“Quite amazing that you had such a flock of followers.
Are there any still involved with you to this day? Or did you make sure to settle your tabs with all of them?” She was taunting him, but something about this line of questioning gave her another thought.
“Huh…? Wait, if you were that popular, you’d be a big man around town. I hate to keep asking this, but why is it that you wanted to be an info broker when you’re so well-known already? It’s dangerous. I can’t believe you survived up to this point.”
“…”
Despite the taunts and insults, the man under the burlap sack still did not speak.
“Did you think having a yakuza sponsor meant no one would dare come after you? You thought wrong! We don’t want a fight with the senior Awakusu, to be sure, but we’re dangerous enough on our own to mess with the lower members. I think you’ve seen that for yourself.”
“…”
“Now, I’d be lying if I said I had no concerns…but we’re safe with our owner. If it comes to trouble, the owner will clear things up with the yakuza. I’m talking about a very scary man, all right? If you think I’m bad, you can’t even imagine what’s coming,” Earthworm said, half speaking to herself as she stared at the ceiling, then returned to her seat.
“Oh, right. This bit of info didn’t come from Informant B…but I suppose it went without saying, right? You’ve been famous around Ikebukuro since your high school days, Izaya Orihara?”
“…”
“There was some big fight, yes? I’m not familiar with the details because I don’t live here.”
She took out her phone to remind herself of the particulars.
“It says you fought with someone named Shizuo…Heiwajima?”
Time rewound once again.
Chapter 3: Fleabrain
Early August, night, Ikebukuro, in a park
“The…goddamn hell! Did that son of a bitch send you?!”
Along with this enraged statement, an illegally parked motorcycle was lifted high into the air.
There were no cranes or forklifts present, merely a man lifting over two hundred pounds of metal with absolute ease, using nothing other than his own muscles. Another young man fell to the ground in shock. The silhouette of the powerful man, backlit by the lights of the park, must have looked like a grim omen of death.
Durarara!!, Vol. 9 Page 5