“I’ll give you my best if I accept, but you’d better not renege on your end of the deal by claiming it wasn’t up to your expectations.”
“I understand. You’ll have the information you want, so long as you don’t completely betray me or shirk your duties. Besides, what I want you to do really isn’t very far from your ordinary courier work. In a sense, I would want a courier to do it.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, annoyed at the vagueness.
Izaya grinned like some mischievous scamp, patted Celty on the shoulder, then hopped up on top of the rooftop fence and sat on it.
Once she might have been horrified at the possibility that he could fall, but Celty chose not to coax him down. She simply waited for him to speak.
He looked down at her from his vantage point and clapped his hands.
“You see, the item I want you to ferry for me…
“…is information.”
One hour later, Tokyo, nightclub
It was your stereotypical nightclub, the kind you’d see in any Hollywood movie with a nightlife scene. The dark dance hall pulsed with sensual music, and an array of dazzling colored lights tore through the gloom. Up on the third floor, isolated from the pounding music and lights, was a private room—where a number of college students who seemed totally out of place were lounging.
The walls were a shade of blue that brought the city’s night sky to mind. In the middle was a white marble table, surrounded by soft black leather couches. The interior screamed VIP.
“Nice space, huh?” said a man, a dart in his hand.
On the wall was a well-used dartboard and not the digital kind. It provided the room with a kind of analog, old-fashioned class.
“Until the end of last year, the second floor of this place was a hangout spot for people in our business. Apparently, it got shut down around that point because the Awakusu-kai and the cops got wind of it.”
“Uh, doesn’t that make this a bad place to hang out?”
“No, look on the other side. They already took all the bad luck with them. Besides, my dad owns this club, so I can do what I want here. I told him I need a study room, and he said I can use it whenever I want, as long as no one’s reserved it.”
The young man, who looked like the sort of honor student who would never waste his time at a nightclub, hurled the dart at its board.
It stuck with a crisp thock, the only sound in the room for several seconds.
The bull’s-eye prompted no reaction from the young man. Perhaps he played some kind of sport, for despite his studious look, he was not wispy but actually somewhat muscular. He was the classic rich kid blessed with strength, looks, and attitude—the perfect owner for the picturesque room.
The silence was broken at last by the very young man who threw the dart.
“…And did Shizuo Heiwajima actually believe that made-up story about my girlfriend being toyed with?”
Another young man standing near the door—the very same one who had spoken to Shizuo in the park—put on an ingratiating simper and scratched the back of his head.
“Oh yeah, he bought it. He was every bit the monster that people say he is, but I guess he ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed! Plus, I did actually bring back some information about that Izaya Orihara guy! And honestly, while he might be an info broker, I don’t think he’s worth worrying yourself over, Mr. Shijima.”
“It was about the girl who appeared to be his sister…right?”
“That’s right! The kid with the glasses said ‘Brother Iza,’ loud and clear! And the other girl with her looked pretty similar, so maybe they’re all siblings.”
“Ahh, interesting. Sisters. That could certainly be fodder for a deal,” said the man named Shijima. He took a fresh dart and assumed the tossing position. “So where does she live?”
“Huh?”
The low-level member froze. It was a perfectly natural follow-up question, yet he had no answers to give to his boss.
“If those girls are not here now, then it must be because you trailed them and discovered where they live, at least. Correct?”
“Uh, well…this Shizuo guy was about ready to rage, so I kinda had to just bug outta there…”
“I see. That’s too bad. Well, I guess we can look into that tomorrow,” Shijima said, smiling. The other young man chuckled a bit to hide his shame.
Then Shijima looked closer at the other fellow and said, “Hmm…? Is there something stuck on your eyes?”
“What?”
“There’s a mark or something, right around your eyelids. Close your eyes for a second.”
“Uh, yes, sir.”
Obediently, he closed his eyes.
Less than a second later, something struck his nose.
“Dzuh?! Ah…aaagh!”
He opened his eyes, taken aback. Right in the middle of his viewpoint, stuck between the right and left eyes, was the blurred outline of two sticks. Actually, it was just the one but so close that he couldn’t focus it into a single image.
His initial impression was that he’d been attacked by some tiny lizard or perhaps a bee. He swung his hand at his nose to brush it away. But the instant he swiped the object sideways, gouging pain exploded in the middle of his face.
“Yiaah!”
Whatever it was that stuck in his nose fell out with the impact. The young man held his bleeding nose and looked down at the object on the ground.
“Wha…?”
Is that…a…dart…?
Understanding arrived at the same moment as a dark, looming figure.
“Sh…Shi…Shiji…ma? Aaaah! Nnnnng!”
Suddenly, Shijima, who’d been standing in the center of the room, was now right in front of him, jabbing a dart into the youth’s shoulder. The pain in both wounds resonated with each other, churning the insides of his brain. Pain throttled his body, preventing any kind of understanding from taking root.
“Wh-what?! What d-did! I—?!” he stammered, clutching his shoulder and backing away to huddle against the wall in the corner of the room. The reaction of the others was mixed, from fraught apprehension to cackling laughter.
“Are you trying to say, ‘What did I do?’” Shijima suggested, then answered the question himself. “It was what you didn’t do, obviously.”
He leaned down to pick up the dart on the floor, then promptly hurled it at the cowering man in the corner.
“Hyeeaugh?!” he shrieked, terror segueing into pain.
Shijima strode over, lifted his foot high, then drove it down hard, directly onto the dart sticking out of the man’s thigh.
“Gaaaah!! Rghrlrrzlkggg!”
The guttural shriek filled the room. But just as the soundproof walls prevented the music from the dance club from getting in there, so, too, did they keep his screams from getting out.
Tears were streaming down his face, racked with confusion and terror, while agony gripped his spine. Shijima smiled benignly down at him, still pressing on the dart with his foot, and said, “Shizuo Heiwajima, not the sharpest tool in the shed…? Are you sure you’re not thinking of yourself? I haven’t got a second to waste here. Not a second to waste. Not—a—sec—ond—to—waste!”
With each syllable, he pressed his weight down through his foot, eliciting moans from his victim like some kind of depraved, broken wind instrument.
“You ought to be thanking me. If I hadn’t warned you to close your eyes, you might’ve tried to dodge and ended up losing some of your eyesight.”
At last, Shijima removed his foot and turned away from the agonized man. The rich boy was done with his failure of a follower now and spoke to the rest of his flunkies instead.
“I can’t have you treating this like some kind of informal college club… Actually, I don’t mind that. But I’m not the problem here. The problem is that I’m the one who takes the brunt of Kumoi’s anger.”
Kumoi.
The name turned the room to ice.
Even when the dart of punishment had s
tuck in the young man’s nose, it hadn’t been this silent. But the sound of the name Kumoi hitting their eardrums quieted even the laughter of those who had enjoyed seeing all the blood.
The sound of the hapless youth groaning in the corner might have still been there, but the information didn’t reach their brains—such was the focus inspired by the name Kumoi.
“H-hey, Shijima, did you hear from Kumoi recently?” asked one of his friends, sitting on the leather sofa.
“Obviously,” Shijima said, his pleasant smile back. “After all, not only did we fail to get rid of the Awakusu-kai’s Akabayashi, we also fought some totally unrelated mobsters and made it into the paper. Take a guess…do you think Kumoi’s just going to let something like that slide?”
Although the benign expression never left Shijima’s face, a single drop of sweat ran down his cheek.
“We’ve brought shame upon Heaven’s Slave,” he said, undoing the shirt button on his right cuff. He tugged the sleeve up to his elbow.
“…”
The entire room was silent again. Some averted their eyes from the sight, while others looked closer, unable to believe what they were seeing.
There was a very long, strange red mark on his right arm.
From just below the wrist up to his shoulder ran a series of long parallel lines.
Almost like musical notation, thought one of the men, then realized, No, not almost.
It was musical notation, the five-line staff to hang notes upon.
Sure enough, here and there on the lines was an ugly red dot, some of which even contained the fine stem that marked them as eighth notes.
“Th-those cuts… How? Why?”
“Hmm? Oh, Kumoi made them himself.”
“With…a knife?”
The man probably had to ask, lest he be consumed by the surrealism of the scene. The word knife had popped up as his rational mind tried to latch on to something that would make sense of it all.
That’s right. It must be a knife wound. Yeah, like the kind of thing stupid punks do now and then. A sort of dare, like stubbing out a cigarette on your arm.
Yeah. Nothing else to it. I’ve seen worse on TV shows and in manga. And it beats getting your pinkie finger chopped down to size, right?
Rationalizations came and went through his mind. But the fresh wounds staring him in the face spoke much more eloquently of pain than his imagination could.
Better than actually losing an arm or a finger? Perhaps, but these were not just scratches. They were deep enough to reach muscle.
Even then, their brains worked hard to rationalize this, their imaginations telling them that “this punishment wasn’t that bad.”
Shijima simply shook his head, cutting off the blissful escape route of ignorance.
“This might be healing faster if that was the case,” he said and approached the dartboard with an easy nonchalance that no one else in the room shared at that moment. He pulled out three of the darts stuck there and rolled them around in his palm.
“He gouged out each line, one by one, with these darts.”
“…”
Both chills and sweat ran down their backs.
An act of composition, performed through the destruction of flesh, with a tool not designed for cutting. Just the thought of this brought a cold, hard lump to their bellies.
“Oh, but it was still way better than the time he drilled my teeth without anesthesia. Although, he did say I had to scream to the tune that he was carving on me. I tell you, Kumoi’s got a brilliant sense of humor,” Shijima said, laughing.
No one replied. The man named Kumoi was apparently their leader, but nearly all the punishment he meted out for failure fell upon his right-hand man, Shijima.
“You know what he said? We’re the shadow of the Dollars,” Shijima said, his words the only heat in the frozen scene. He turned to the dartboard again. “He said we’re fine being second place. All we have to be is a little shadow, hiding behind the mass of the Dollars… We just lack the next bit of strength we need to solidify ourselves for good.”
Thock. A dart landed cleanly on the bull’s-eye again.
“We steal Amphisbaena’s system entirely for Heaven’s Slave’s use.”
Thock. Another one struck the target. His eyes narrowed fanatically.
“That’s what Kumoi wants.”
Thock. The final dart hit home.
Shijima’s words were the only sound in the room after that. The sound of despair.
If only he didn’t look so incredibly happy as he said them.
“We no longer have an out.”
Chat room
.
.
.
The chat room is currently empty.
The chat room is currently empty.
The chat room is currently empty.
Saika has entered the chat.
Saika: good evening
Saika: it’s nice to be here
CallowCadet has entered the chat.
CallowCadet: Greetings, my name is CallowCadet!
CallowCadet: Erm, this is my debut in this chat room.
CallowCadet: I found out about this place from Setton! It’s nice to meet you all!
Saika: nice to meet you
Saika: my name is saika
Saika: it’s a pleasure
Saika: so are you a friend of setton’s
CallowCadet: Yeah, that about sums it up! I’m glad to be here!
&nb
sp;
Durarara!!, Vol. 9 Page 7