Durarara!!, Vol. 1 (novel) (7 page)

Mikado didn’t want to be a hero. He just wanted to feel a different kind of breeze through his hair. He didn’t realize it himself, but amid that terrible anxiety deep in his gut on that first visit to Ikebukuro was a powerful elation and excitement that fought for control with his unease.

And right next to him was someone who had mastered the fresh breeze of his new home, harnessed that excitement for himself. Even at age sixteen, Masaomi had completely blended into this place and made himself a part of it.

Mikado realized that his friend represented everything that he wanted, and the warring anxiety and excitement lulled as he felt more in control of his surroundings—or at least, they should have.

But in the next moment, all of that was destroyed as a fresh new maelstrom of anxiety and excitement burst into life.

“Hey.”

It was a very pleasant voice, crisp and clear and vibrant, as though being hailed by the pure blue sky itself.

And yet, the instant he heard that voice, Masaomi grimaced as though he’d been shot in the back with arrows. He slowly turned in the direction of the voice, an instant sweat congealing on his face.

Mikado turned the same way and saw a young man with an equally pleasant face. He looked soft and gentle, but with a bold, intrepid edge—a perfect materialization of some ideal of handsomeness. His eyes were warm and all-accepting but glinted with a hard scorn of anything that wasn’t himself. His outfit, while possessing its own personality, did not show off any obvious features or characteristics. All in all, he was very difficult to grasp or classify.

Even his age was indistinct based on appearance alone. He had to be more than twenty at least, but there was no way to tell anything beyond that.

“Nice to see you again, Masaomi Kida.”

Masaomi responded to the use of his full name with an expression Mikado had never seen before and swallowed.

“Ah… H…hi,” he responded awkwardly.

Mikado’s state of mind erupted into chaos.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Kida look like this…

Fear and disgust mingled in Masaomi’s eyes, but the muscles in his face were tense, trying to bottle up that emotion.

“Is that a Raira Academy uniform? So you got in. First day of school? Congrats.”

His congratulations were brief and clipped, but not devoid of feeling. He only used the barest minimum of emotion necessary in his voice, however.

“Y-yes, thanks to you,” Masaomi said, a common pleasantry.

“I didn’t do a thing.”

“It’s strange to see you out in Ikebukuro…”

“I’m just meeting some friends. And who’s that?”

The man looked at Mikado, and for an instant, their eyes met. Normally, Mikado would look away shyly, but this time he couldn’t tear his eyes away. He felt as though if he broke that contact, his entire existence would be denied, negated. Mikado didn’t know why he felt this way—the man’s gaze simply held him in place with its breathtaking sharpness.

“Er, he’s just a friend,” Masaomi blurted. Normally he would have said Mikado’s name, but he seemed to be intentionally avoiding that. The man did not seem perturbed by this omission in any way. He turned to Mikado.

“I’m Izaya Orihara. Nice to meet you.”

Everything clicked into place for Mikado. The man not to get involved with. The man not to make an enemy out of. But the fellow standing before him didn’t seem all that dangerous. Aside from his sharp gaze and handsome features, he seemed like any other young man. Even his plain, glossy black hair stood out amid all the bleached and dyed hair around him. He looked like the kind of sharp young man that would be teaching at a cram school out in the country somewhere.

He’s more normal than I expected
, Mikado thought, and decided to introduce himself.

“Sounds like an air conditioner,” came Izaya’s response, without mirth or surprise. He seemed to be referring to the Kirigamine appliance brand. Mikado opened his mouth, unsure of whether or not he should say something to continue the conversation, when Izaya raised a hand.

“Well, it’s time for my meeting. Gotta go.”

And with that, he left. Masaomi stretched and inhaled a deep breath, watching Izaya’s retreating back.

“C’mon, let’s go. Uh, where were we off to?”

“Is he really that scary?”

“Scary might not be the right word… See, I got into my share of trouble in middle school…and I ran into him once, and it really scared me. It’s not like a yakuza thing—he’s just
unstable
. He’s unpredictable. His motives and beliefs change every five seconds. The fear he inspires isn’t one of danger…it’s more like he makes me sick. One of those creepy-crawly feelings that sneaks up on you. I’m never going to the
other side
again. If you ever wanna smoke ganja or whatever, don’t look to me for help.”

Ganja. Mikado shook his head abruptly. He’d never seen it in person, but he’d been on the Internet long enough to know exactly what that was.

“I’m just kidding, man. You’re the kind of guy who won’t drink or smoke until the legal age at twenty. Just stay away from him and Shizuo Heiwajima. That’s rule number one.”

Masaomi clearly didn’t want to say another word about Izaya, so they kept walking in silence for a while. Mikado had never seen Masaomi like this before. More than Izaya, it was Masaomi’s attitude that had piqued his curiosity.

Maybe there’s no limit to the kind of extraordinary things I can experience here
, Mikado thought. It was a stretch from what prompted the notion, but he could feel his excitement and expectation growing from within.

It had only been a few days since Mikado came to Ikebukuro. But already, the phrase
return home
had disappeared from his dictionary.

Those crowds of people, which had seemed so artificial and inorganic, now looked like processions of saints bringing life and prosperity to the town.

Something fascinating is going to happen. I can feel it. The adventure I wanted is just around the corner. This is a place where those TV shows and comic books come to life.

His eyes sparkling with this misguided thought, Mikado found hope and excitement in his life ahead.

“So anyway, is there anything in particular you’d like to do before you die?”

It was a rather frightening question for Izaya Orihara to ask in a karaoke room. He spoke calmly, drink in his hand, not bothering to choose a song.

But the two women he was asking just shook their heads without a word.

“I see. Are you sure you want to do this with me? There aren’t better men you’d rather commit suicide with?”

“No. That’s why we want to die.”

“Good point,” Izaya noted, his face still placid. He examined the two women. They didn’t seem particularly gloomy. If a total stranger looked at them, they’d never suspect that these two harbored suicidal thoughts.

They had chosen to participate in a thread Izaya posted to a pro-suicide message board titled “Let’s go through with it together!”

Izaya’s message was extremely upbeat and positive, and for good reason: He’d taken a spam message from a dating site and tweaked the language a tiny bit, nothing more. But surprisingly enough, a quick perusal of the various posts on that board showed that many of them were optimistic in style. The text was crisp and practical, discussions of methods and motives for suicide, without any of the attitude one would expect a person preparing to die must exhibit. Some posts
were as thorough as planning documents for a major business. Izaya enjoyed seeing the great variety of “invitations” on the site.

Of the two women here who had chosen death, one was having trouble finding a job. The other was in despair because she couldn’t get over a broken heart.

Neither seemed to be a satisfactory reason to kill oneself, but such motives were proliferating since the beginning of the recession, and an aggregation of suicides grouped by career showed that the unemployed were easily the largest group. When grouped by age, suicides by those under the age of twenty were also far lower than any other age group. Because the media widely reported on those cases stemming from bullying or other youthful causes, there was a perception that many suicide victims were young, but the vast majority of them were actually adults. The two women with Izaya appeared to be in their midtwenties.

This was around the twentieth time that Izaya had met in person with the suicidal, and he was struck by how little he noticed in common among them. Everyone had their own way of approaching death—some couldn’t stop themselves from laughing, and others couldn’t stop themselves from setting up the DVR of their favorite show before they left to kill themselves.

However, none of the people that Izaya had met had ever actually committed suicide. And that was
very disappointing
to him.

The news ran reports on suicides. In recent years, the media picked up on cases where people had met online to commit suicide together. Because of that, the total suicide number was more than thirty thousand a year ever since.

What drove them to kill themselves? Did they have no other options? Were they prepared to die for the sake of others? How deep was the despair that surrounded them when they went?

Izaya Orihara loved people. Hence, he wanted to know them.

However, he wasn’t meeting with these women in order to convince them not to die. The reason none of the people Izaya met had killed themselves wasn’t because they were insincere looky-loos or were too afraid to die.

Beneath his calm exterior, Izaya’s true nature flicked its tongue.

Izaya let them talk for a while, explaining their motives for suicide, but eventually he changed the topic with a bright question.

“So, what are you two planning to do
after you die
?”

Both women were momentarily stunned by this question.

“Huh…? You mean, like, heaven?”

They think they’re going to commit suicide and get to heaven! How impertinent. This is what makes people so fascinating.

“Do you believe in the afterlife, Mr. Nakura?” the other woman asked Izaya. The name Nakura was just an alias he made up.

Izaya chuckled at their responses and shook his head, then turned the question back on them. “What about you? Do you believe?”

“I believe. Maybe there’s no afterlife, but some people stay behind as ghosts to wander around,” one of the women said, trailing off.

“I don’t. There’s nothing after you die, just darkness—but at least it’s better than this,” said the other. A giant red
X
popped into Izaya’s head.

Ugh, what a letdown. What a terrible, terrible letdown. I’ve just wasted my time. What are they, middle schoolers? At least the last group were all atheists. They were fun. These ones are just drunk on themselves.

Izaya decided that these two were not taking the idea of death seriously. Or perhaps they were, but only in a way that suited themselves. His eyes narrowed, and he smiled with a hint of derision.

“Oh, come on. Why do you care what goes on after life if you’re going to kill yourselves?”

“Huh…?”

The two women looked at Izaya in bewilderment. He continued softly.

“Believing in a world after death is a right reserved for the living. Either that, or you have to have done some major philosophizing about death. If that’s the case, I’ve got nothing to say. Or perhaps if you’re truly driven to the depths of despair or being hounded by unscrupulous loan sharks.”

His calm, benevolent smile never wavered.

“In your case, that pressure is coming from the inside, isn’t it? You can’t just choose death because you’re hoping the world after death is better.”

At this point, the women realized that they’d spoken at length about their motives for dying, but the man with them had not spoken a word about his own situation.

“Um, Mr. Nakura…are you actually planning to die?” one of them asked, straight to the point.

Izaya didn’t bat an eye. “Nope.”

For a brief moment, the only sound in the room was the muffled bleed through from adjacent karaoke booths. Abruptly, one of the two women erupted, like a dam breaking.

“I don’t believe this! You lied to us?!”

“Of all the… What a horrible thing to do!” the other added reprimandingly.

Izaya’s expression did not budge.
I had a feeling they’d react this way.

Izaya had been through this situation many times, and the reactions to his admission were, like the suicidal motives, wildly varied. Some people started swinging without warning, and some left without another word. But he didn’t remember a single person who stayed entirely calm. Anyone who would respond to that admission with an easy “Oh, I see” wouldn’t have sought suicide partners in the first place. Izaya didn’t know every single human being, and the model of psychology didn’t fit every person in the world, so he wouldn’t state for certain—but he had a theory. If someone could remain perfectly calm through this, they were either cruising for kicks, or secretly wanted someone else to stop them, or were hoping to convince others not to commit suicide—or were
people like him
.

“What a pig! What’s your problem? How can you do something so messed up?”

“Huh? Why?”

Izaya’s face had the innocent wonder of an uncomprehending child. He looked back and forth between the two, then shut his eyes.

When he opened them again several seconds later, his delighted expression was gone, and a different kind of smile played across his lips.

“Aah…!”

The woman who claimed to believe in the afterlife sucked in a shrieking breath.

It was indeed a smile on Izaya’s face. But this was an entirely different kind of smile. The two women, for the first time, learned that there were different types of smiles.

Izaya wore a smile as expressionless as a mask, and there was a coldness to it. It was the kind of smile that caused terrible fear in any who
saw it,
because
it was a smile. In most cases the women would be hurling vile insults at him, but neither of them spoke now. They were grappling with the illusion that the other person in the room with them was not a human being at all.

Izaya repeated his question, not letting the smile fade from his face. “Why? What’s so awful about it? I don’t understand.”

“Why? Because—”

“You girls,” Izaya interrupted, his words harder than before, “have already decided to die. Why do you care what anyone says to you? The lies and insults are going to be gone forever in just a few moments. If it’s torturous for you knowing that I tricked you, bite your tongue off. If you do that, it’s not the blood loss that kills you. The shock causes the remainder of your tongue to compress your throat and suffocate you. Then all the bad stuff disappears. You will cease to exist. I think it’s rather messed up of you to claim that I’m messed up.”

“I know that! But…”

“No, you don’t,” he said to the woman who claimed there was no afterlife. His voice was even more forceful than before.

Still with a smile.

“You don’t get it. You don’t get it at all. You said there was nothing in the afterlife. But that’s where you’re wrong. Maybe you meant it in the sense that you won’t have to suffer anymore—but death means to become nothing. It’s not the pain that disappears, it’s your existence.”

The women did not argue back. They were paralyzed by the pressure of his smile. It grew more and more twisted, but the women still did not get a sense of the heart behind his words.

“The state of nothingness is not ‘nothing.’ Nothing is not always in contrast to ‘something.’ The nothing you speak of is eternal darkness, a blank slate. But that is as
perceived by you being aware of that darkness
. That’s not nothing at all. If you’re dying to be released from suffering, doesn’t that require a form of you afterward that recognizes you’ve been released from suffering? You can’t imagine that you’re not even aware that you’re not even aware that you’re not thinking about this in the least. Fundamentally, there is no difference between the way both of you think. Even a grade school child who doesn’t believe in life after death understands this and has feared and grappled with it.”

In fact, Izaya’s argument had plenty of holes in it, and the women
knew they could argue back if they wanted. But their minds were ruled not by suspicion, but by terror—that no matter how they argued back, words would have no effect on this creature with them.

“But…that’s…that’s just what you think!” one of them boldly exclaimed, but Izaya’s smile only devoured her words.

“Exactly. I don’t know for sure. I just think that there’s no afterlife. If it turns out that there is, hey, lucky me. That’s as much as I care about this.”

He laughed mechanically and continued, his voice even brighter than before.

“But you two are different. You only half believe in an afterlife. Does your religious sect promote the act of suicide and tell you that dying is a good response to career or romantic
failure
? If that’s the case, I’m fine with it—I might even admit it’s admirable of you. But if not, you should shut your damn mouths.”

He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head as if seeking agreement, then leisurely uttered the finishing blow.

“You shouldn’t speak of the afterlife when you only half believe in it. That’s slander to the afterlife. It’s an insult to those people who were driven to death by the evil intent of others when they didn’t really want to die.”

It was only a few seconds. But to the two women, it felt much longer.

In that brief, eternal moment, Izaya shut his eyes again—and when they opened, he was back to that original reassuring grin.

The air surrounding him completely different from just moments ago, Izaya changed the topic to something else, to the surprise of the paralyzed women.

“Ha-ha-ha, so anyway… When I was asking about your plans after death, I was referring to your money.”

“…What?”

“I do hate for things to go to waste. Now, they’re pretty strict about insurance claims these days, so that’s ruled out, but you could go and borrow all the money you can, then give it to me before you die, right? Your deaths might be in vain, but at least your money won’t be. Plus, there’s a lot of value in your bodies and identities. I know where to go to make deals like that.”

Unlike his terrifying smile from earlier, Izaya’s current smile was warm and human. The things he was saying were faithfully, recognizably
human in their greed. The women were about to speak, but once again, he cut them off.

“Question one: Why am I sitting in the spot closest to the door?”

Izaya was practically blocking the door in his current seat. The women were suddenly filled with a completely different kind of fear. If his previous smile was that of a devil, this one was concentrated human malice…

“Question two: What are these wheeled suitcases under the table for?”

The women had not noticed, until he pointed it out, that on the other side of the table from them were two large suitcases. They looked like the kind one would pack before a long overseas trip.

“Hint one: The suitcases are empty.”

Both women were struck by an awful foreboding. They had never met before this event, but the similarity of their reactions to Izaya made them kindred spirits.

“Hint two: the suitcases are
just your size
.”

An unbearable nausea swept over them. It stemmed from disgust at the man with them, but the unexpected onset of dizziness was not related.

“?!”

“What…the…?”

By the time they noticed something was wrong with them, it was too late to even stand.

“Question three: If the two of you work together, you should be able to get past me to safety, so why can’t you? Hint: I handed you your cups.”

The world spun, spun, spun. Izaya’s voice seized what remained of their fading wits. His soft, gentle coos and chirps ushered them into darkness like a lullaby to a baby.

“It’s love. I don’t feel any love in your deaths. And that’s wrong. You must love death. You don’t have enough respect for nothingness. And I’m not going to die with you after a sorry answer like that.”

One of the women summoned the last of her strength to glare at Izaya.