With her mind empty, Earthworm reached over to the burlap sack and placed her hand on the knotted drawstring. It was still tied tight.
“…I’m going to take this off. I mean it,” she muttered; it was unclear whether this was to the man underneath or herself. She made to simply rip the bag right off his head with the knot still tied tight. She stuck her fingers under the opening around his neck and yanked the fabric upward.
In the space she opened, the hair hanging down the back of the man’s neck was black.
Ikebukuro, office
“Hey. Sorry I’m late,” said Shizuo as he came through the door.
Tom exhaled and grumbled, “What happened, man? You’re never late like this.”
“Sorry. I had to help the boss with something.”
“Oh, I gotcha. Say no more.”
“What is the conduct of a duty contracted from the president?” wondered Vorona.
Tom exhaled harder this time. “It’s basically bodyguard work. Our boss has a number of enemies, see…but I can explain that all some other time.”
Relieved that Shizuo’s absence hadn’t been due to some unexpected trouble, Tom took his phone and headed for the door.
I’ll take peace and quiet over unpredictable excitement any day of the week, he thought, as he headed out to his notably violent job of collecting unpaid debts from deadbeats.
“Let’s just head out there and do a normal day’s work.”
“Gotcha.”
“I am understanding.”
…With two subordinates who were even more violent and dangerous than the job required in tow.
At that moment, Rakuei Gym
“Hey, where’s Eijirou?” asked a man with a squat silhouette, like a giant tree stump. But being squat did not mean he was actually short; in fact, he was reasonably tall, but that paled in comparison to his bulging armor of muscles like melded tires.
“Sir! Eijirou hasn’t been seen all afternoon!” said an apprentice.
“So he’s gone and run off again. The little bastard…,” said the muscled man, Eiichirou Sharaku—Eijirou’s brother. He exhaled a breath as massive as he was.
“And it’s one thing if he’s just ditching work… I just hope he’s not getting into some fight on the street again.”
In a dark place
Like Earthworm, Shijima was in a mild panic.
That isn’t Izaya Orihara?
As the woman desperately tried to rip the burlap sack off the seated man’s head, Shijima focused on the voice coming from the phone.
“So you’re Shijima, huh? It would’ve been more interesting if that Kumoi person had come.”
“…You know about Mr. Kumoi?”
“No, not really. Listen, I would’ve been happy not picking on you, but not only did you make an open attempt on my life, you also thought you could get my sisters involved. And that’s a problem for me.”
Shijima ground his teeth together.
How much does he know? And…more importantly, what should I do? Get away from here for now? Does he have his own cat’s paws in the room with us? If anything, I can’t even trust my own people anymore! Who’s the guy tied down? Is he with Izaya, too?!
If the man who was tied down started to struggle, would it be dangerous if they were here?
What if he was a police officer or Awakusu-kai yakuza? What if he saw their faces?
Out of these two possibilities, Shijima’s concerns about the former gradually faded. The man sitting in the chair, judging by the state of his body, had little physical training. In fact, he seemed to have no connection at all to brute strength or martial arts.
At that moment, Tokyo, back alley
“…Man, this is the biggest pain in the ass I ever had. Look at this. Look at y’all. Buncha morons with no value but in numbers,” slurred Eijirou Sharaku, who stood in the midst of a crowd of about ten men, all knocked out.
At odds with the violent machismo of the scene, a bright and cheerful girl’s voice said, “Are you okay, Master? Are you hurt?”
“Course I ain’t. And shouldn’t that be my question to you?” he griped to Mairu, who giggled.
“But if it were just me, it really woulda been bad. These guys were super-tough!”
“You’re damn lucky I happened to be skippin’ work to wander around town and just happened to spot you and those morons followin’ you around.”
“Yeah, right. I bet you were keeping tabs on me. This morning, I talked about how some weird guys’ve been stalking me for days! And you’re just shy and humble enough not to admit what you were doing! Thanks for lookin’ out for me, Master! You sure you aren’t into little girls?!”
“Hey, where’d that last part come from?! That had nothing to do with your thanks!”
From a distance, another man watched the pair talk. He was of a different affiliation than the people who actually attempted to attack her—he was from the group selling Heaven’s Slave.
There was a bowgun in his hands, which he had trained right on Eijirou’s body.
You gotta be kidding me. I was gonna shoot her in the leg to make it easy to carry her away, and then this happens… Oh well, at least they’re alone now. I’ll get rid of the guy first.
He had no thought of giving up on the plan— in his mind, the best idea was to take the girl and blame it on the strange group that attacked them. The bowgun was modified such that it was easily lethal if it struck the wrong spot. After witnessing the man’s power in combat, the watcher pulled the trigger without a second thought.
But…
“Besides, Mairu… Whoa!” Eijirou yelped, twisting backward.
Something collided into the alley, the sound ringing out.
His right foot was extended high over his head. A second later, some kind of long object fell from above, rotating wildly. He snatched it out of the air and saw that it was a bowgun dart.
“…”
Without speaking, Eijirou picked up a stone from the ground at his feet, then hurled it at the bushes of the park just beyond the alleyway. The rock shot like a bullet right into the leaves.
“Buh—,” came a brief shout, then the sound of something collapsing.
Satisfied that he’d hit his target, Eijirou rolled and cracked his neck. “If you’re gonna try to sneak attack, you either gotta snipe from farther away or light my house on fire while I’m asleep. Am I right?”
“Y’know, you threw that rock really hard. If you hit him in the wrong spot, he might even be dead,” noted Mairu, looking at the bush.
“I’ve been thinking,” Eijirou said. “A martial artist needs to be ready at all times for all possibilities, so a sneak attack ain’t exactly unfair…but if you flip that around, then anyone who tries to ambush a martial artist in public can’t complain if they wind up dead, y’know? This ain’t regulation competition.”
“Hopefully, the police agree with you.” Mairu grinned. Eijirou headed for the bushes, grumbling. While he went, Mairu’s smile vanished, and she took out her phone.
She’d been on the way to see her sister, and this abrupt encounter made her worry that Kururi was under attack, too. Fortunately, she answered the phone immediately. Mairu warned her that it was dangerous and that she should wait in a crowded place.
Kururi’s answer surprised her.
“Safe…already…done…” [It’s all right, everything’s done here.]
“Huh? What do you mean, it’s done?”
“…Spooky… Saved… Me…” [The Headless Rider protected me.]
“…Thank… Thank…” [Thank you very much.]
Kururi bowed to the being standing across from her right after she hung up on Mairu. Her voice was tiny, barely audible.
Celty kindly typed, “If you want to thank anyone, thank your brother.”
“…Brother…?” [My brother?]
“He asked me to watch over you while your sister was safe at the dojo,” said Celty, who was standing in the midst of a group of unconscious men. They we
re all wearing protective goggles and masks, like survivalists—but only on their faces.
Most likely, they’d had advance warning that she carried a defensive spray with her. The strange thing was that a different group of men had attacked in the middle of the first one. They were smart enough to run right away.
Relieved that the girl was safe for now, Celty couldn’t help but wonder one thing.
Where is Izaya himself, and what is he doing now?
In a dark place
“Oh, this is quite enjoyable. I love hearing panic over the phone,” said the man on the call.
Shijima ground his teeth together even harder, and in as calm a voice as he could manage, he asked, “What do you want?”
“What do I want? Let’s see…is that Earthworm over there? Anyway, the Amphisbaena girl seems to have set down her phone, so could you make sure she’s holding it? We can’t continue without that.”
Shijima might as well have tsked his tongue in irritation. He approached the woman, who was still trying to rip off the burlap. “He wants you to get on the phone.”
“What…? What do I have to say to…? Ugh, forget this!”
She was clearly battling her own confusion. She kept tugging on the knot of the sack with her left hand and reached down to pick up the phone with her right.
“Hello, are you back on the call now? I can hear you breathing.”
“…I just…want to know…who this guy is!” Earthworm screamed, all her confidence and cockiness replaced with panic.
The delighted man on the other end of the call announced, “It’s time for a quiz!”
“Huh?”
“Is this a joke?”
“Question one. What do Lizard, the owner of Amphisbaena, and Kumoi from Heaven’s Slave have in common?”
Both Earthworm’s and Shijima’s hearts skipped a beat. It must have felt like they’d both been drenched in ice water, such was the chill the question caused to run over their skin.
“How do you know…the owner’s nickname is Lizard…?”
The quiz show MC on the phone ignored Earthworm. “Bzzt! Out of time. The correct answer is they both have symmetrical moles under each eye! On to question two!”
“How…how do you know…what the owner looks like?!”
“…”
While Earthworm stammered and failed, Shijima was pale and silent. No one else in the room understood what they were talking about; both Earthworm’s and Shijima’s subordinates were looking around in confusion.
“This question is about the man in the burlap sack. Do you suppose that under the sack, he’s got…moles on his face?”
“Huh…?”
“…!”
“And lastly, question three! What I want to know is, Who will we find under that sack—Lizard…or Kumoi…?”
Their brains shut off for just a single moment.
Earthworm didn’t want to know what the caller meant. But Shijima’s mind was consumed with a different kind of fear.
You’re kidding, right…? C-could Izaya Orihara really have taken Kumoi…? But if true, then that’s very bad news.
He recovered from his mental paralysis and instantly found his mind flooded by a number of different thoughts that pushed him into immediate action.
“That’s a lie…a dirty lie! The owner… It can’t be the owner!” Earthworm wailed, clutching her head and crouching as she remembered all the things she’d done to the man before her.
Shijima stepped between them, and feigning internal calm, he said, “This is pointless. I’ll cut the knot open.”
He removed a small knife and slowly, slowly brought it toward the man’s neck. But then…
…the arm with which he held the knife suddenly stopped moving—as it was held in the grip of the man in the burlap sack.
“Huh…?”
“Wha…?”
His hands should’ve been tied behind his back, but now they were free. And not only was his left hand firmly on Shijima’s arm but the right was holding his own knife, out of nowhere.
“What were you going to try just now…?” the man taunted, holding up the knife to his own neck and carefully inserting it into the gap between his skin and the fabric.
With a few popping and ripping noises, the knot flew open, along with a corner of the sack mouth. He then folded his knife and slowly pulled off the kerosene-soaked fabric.
What emerged was a smile.
It was not a smile of derision, or of loving friendship, or of delight; nor was it creepy or pleasant. It almost seemed intended to be impossible to interpret.
“Hi,” said the smile.
But Earthworm and Shijima knew that this was no true smile; it had another proper name. But their knowledge surpassed the chaos and confusion in their minds and dragged them down into total darkness.
“Or should I say, it’s nice to meet you?”
“Izaya…” “Orihara…?” they said one after the other.
It was none other than the same Izaya Orihara they’d seen in so many photos.
So who was on the phone, then?
And why was he here?
And why was he laughing?
Mysteries, mysteries, mysteries.
A cavalcade of inexplicable phenomena assaulted Shijima, who’d only just recently arrived. But Earthworm had been here with him all along, and now she looked ready to cry. “Owner…help me?” she whined.
“Now, I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting to have kerosene dumped on me. Oh, and since you asked, unlike paint thinner, you can’t get high off this stuff.”
“Huh?”
“Ah yes, I suppose I have some questions to answer. As for whether people are essentially self-interested or put priority on others…the clichéd answer is ‘It depends on the person.’ And that’s the fun part, that every case is different. Is human nature good or evil? Will reason or desire triumph? Will hope or despair win out in the end? The thing that makes humanity fun is that there’s no single answer.”
That was Izaya Orihara’s answer, inexplicable smile on his lips, to the quiet questions Earthworm had asked him minutes earlier.
“Oh, and as for the lethal level of water, it’s somewhere between ten and thirty liters. It depends on the person’s weight, so for Kururi and Mairu, even less than ten liters could be pretty dangerous.”
“…”
“As for the connection between Mikage Sharaku and me, I guess I would call her one of my old groupies. You’d have to ask Mikage what it all meant to her. I got her involved in a bit of an incident back then, which ended up with her leaving high school…so I suppose she might still hate my guts.”
“…”
From the moment he removed the hood, Izaya’s and Earthworm’s positions had completely switched. Now it was the man doing all the talking and the woman unable to speak. The fact that he was responding to everything that had happened in the room today was sure proof that he was the very man who’d been wearing the sack the entire time.
“…H-huh? The…info dealer…?”
“Oh, you can speak again? I’ll admit, your idea of torture was quite entertaining. I was expecting you to pull all my fingernails out, but you really didn’t want to physically hurt me.”
“…Uh…ah.”
“How was it? I know I didn’t scream at all for you. Is my voice the way you imagined it? You were enjoying imagining my face underneath that sack, but I don’t need imagination. I’m enjoying the reality of the situation, the outcome… I love that stupid look on your face, for example. Oh, but when I say love, I don’t mean I actually love you personally. Just to make that clear.”
Then Earthworm recognized at last that the voice she heard over the phone and the voice of the man speaking to her in person were completely different.
“Oh…uh…then…who’s on the phone…?” she mumbled, looking back and forth between the phone in her hand and Izaya. The voice on the other end of the line broke into a crude laugh that was nothing like the way it had been spea
king before this.
“Ha-ha…! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Hey, did you give away the game already, you piece of shit?! Fine, whatever! Here’s question four! Who…am…I?”
At that moment, the door to the bar opened to reveal a man with a phone pressed to his ear. The right half of his face had a horrible burn scar, and the eyes behind his sunglasses glinted with malice.
A number of men appeared behind him, wearing riding jackets with bone patterns on them, making the reasonably spacious bar feel even more crowded. The last of them was a muscular woman with spiked hair, but by this point, Earthworm had lost all interest.
“What…the hell…? Who are these people…?”
Shijima’s companions were overwhelmed, too, huddled in a corner of the bar, so that there was a tense three-way standoff developing. But a proper standoff would be better balanced between the factions. Izaya and his third party had the reins; both Amphisbaena and Heaven’s Slave were clearly intimidated.
What orders to give? Unlike Shijima and Earthworm, who were feverishly thinking about their next step, Izaya seemed unconcerned with any change in the situation.
“Let’s see, what else did you ask me?” he wondered. “Oh yes! As far as my weight and height go, you don’t think insurance company info is that easy to get your hands on, do you? You’re not Tsukumoya here. And even if you tried to hire him, I doubt he’d accept your offer.”
“…”
“And those numbers? I simply gave you my own height and weight. I take care of my health, you see. I always weigh myself after a shower.”
“…Wha—?”
Just stop it, Earthworm wanted to shriek, but her brain was in such chaos that she could barely even breathe, much less work her tongue.
“You…gave me…your…what? Huh?” she mumbled, practically sleep-talking.
Izaya chuckled and asked her, “Did that Informant B you hired, the one whose name or look you didn’t reveal…happen to go by the username Chrome?”
“How. Did. You…?”
“Listen, that was me.”
Durarara!!, Vol. 9 Page 14