Durarara!!, Vol. 2 (novel) (15 page)

Shizuo claimed that he had no control over himself, but the fact that he wielded such strength and hadn’t committed homicide yet spoke to a nearly miraculous level of personal restraint.

Of course, it had occurred to Celty that he might have sent a number of people to an early grave after all, and she just didn’t know about it.

“A Dollars member has been attacked.”

“Yeah, I know. I got the message,” he replied shortly, pulling out his cell phone. “Honestly, I’d love to help out, but I only joined up because Simon asked me to. I’m not really that close to the Dollars to begin with… Of course, that shallow connection is what allows me to be a part of their group.”

He snorted wryly and looked up at the sunset. The sky was redder and more beautiful than it had any business being.

“
Tsk.
What the hell is the city sky doing looking like the countryside? What does it think it is?” he growled nonsensically as he got to his feet and started to leave. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t have any clues for ya. Besides…why are you so intent on making the Dollars your business? Just don’t get yourself hurt.”

It was rare for Shizuo to show consideration for anyone else. Celty quietly typed away.

“It’s not just for the Dollars. I’m also getting revenge for myself.”

“?”

“I was recently attacked by the slasher, too. Cut straight across the throat. If I wasn’t headless, I’d be dead.”

She typed this message in with a wry intention of her own, but the confession had huge, fateful consequences.

Not for Celty’s fate. For Shizuo’s and all of Ikebukuro.

“You asshole…”

“Huh?”

“Why didn’t you say that first?! You idiot! They say whoever calls someone an idiot is the real idiot, but I already know I am, so I’ll say it anyway! Say that first, you idiot! Why are we standing around with our thumbs up our asses?!”

It was exceedingly rare for Shizuo Heiwajima to be angry for the sake of another person.

He was angry about one of his companions being hurt, so in a broader sense he
was
angry for his own sake, but logical quibbling aside, Shizuo was full of pure rage.

“Someone’s gonna die. I’ll kill ’em. Butcher ’em. Murder ’em.”

“Hang on. Look, I’m the Headless Rider. I’m perfectly fine.”

“No, no, no. That’s not the point. Swinging a sword at you equals death. That’s all there is to it.”

But this was not his usual explosive rage, as the target of his anger was not present. Shizuo’s rage today was the kind that bubbled away and stored its energy up in his stomach.

“Celty, did you know there is power in words? So I’m trying to stifle my overwhelming urge to destroy everything by putting it into a single word.”

That was exactly what Celty was afraid of.

“Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill…”

If this situation continued and the slasher happened by, she knew who was going to die.

The slasher.

He wouldn’t leave them a moment for repentance. If Shizuo punched a person with all of his force, they’d be lucky with just the skull caved in. If worst came to worst, he would snap the neck and tear all of that flesh so that the target of his rage was just as headless as she was.

The only difference was that humans died when they lost their heads.

Celty allowed herself a moment of sympathy for the attacker as she watched Shizuo hop onto the back of her motorcycle.

“What about work? Aren’t you on break?”

“Who cares anymore?”

“Hey! You’d better not get yourself fired on account of me. Plus, we still need time to collect information on the slasher. Just wait until your shift is over. I’ll go make preparations.”

“…”

Shizuo thought it over for a few moments, then grumbled, “All right…but make it quick,” squeezing the words out in between his chants of “kill, kill, kill…”

It made him look like an exorcist attempting to resist the control of the devil.

“All the emotion that’s building up inside of me is screaming to be unleashed…and if I don’t take care of it…”

“…It’s pretty likely that I’ll end up destroying myself.”

Thirty minutes later, Shinjuku

There was a very good reason that Celty decided to split off from Shizuo momentarily.

Naturally, she was concerned with the state of his employment, but there was a much bigger rationale behind her choice.

If she was with Shizuo, there was one person she could never meet, and she had to make contact with him for information now.

“Hey… I’m delighted you decided to come visit me.”

“I just met you last month for the job you had me do.”

“Oh, what’s the harm? We didn’t get to chat last time. So how are things? It’s been a year now since the Yagiri Pharmaceuticals incident. Have you found your head yet?”

Izaya Orihara offered Celty a cup of tea with a sardonic smile. His nasty personality hadn’t changed over time—he knew full well he was offering tea to someone without a mouth to drink it.

“My issues aren’t important… I’ll be direct. Any suspicions as to the slasher?”

“It’ll cost you three bills,” he stated.

Celty pulled a wallet made of solid shadow from her riding suit of the same material. The bills inside were real, of course. She removed three ten thousand–yen bills and handed them to Izaya.

“So not only is your scythe made of shadow, so are your wallet and clothes. If I shined a bright enough light on you, would the shadow dissipate and show me your naked body?”

“You want to see?”

Izaya responded to Celty’s challenge by squirming backward and smirking.

“Not really. I’m not a pervert like that student or that unlicensed doctor. I don’t get all hot and heavy over a severed head or its headless body.”

The moment he tossed that insult back to her, a black scythe entwined its way around Izaya’s neck.

The end of the scythe was curled up like a spring, forming a twisted circle around Izaya’s neck, with the tip at the center. She had thrust the weapon up against his neck and morphed it into that bizarre shape in the blink of an eye.

Izaya’s smile faded just the tiniest bit, and he raised his hands in a sign of surrender.

“Insulting me is one thing. But if you slander Shinra again, you will pay dearly. Let’s say…with injuries that will take three days to recover from.”

“…Thanks for the detail. You’re calm enough to tell me that this isn’t a bluff.”

“Yes, Shinra might be abnormal. But if he’s weird, then he’s only weird to me and no one else. You have no right to judge him.”

“You sound like quite the couple,” Izaya noted coolly. Celty retracted her scythe in resignation.

Unsatisfied with just being released, the information agent had more sarcasm for the headless woman. “But what if your biggest fan just happens to have a thing for headless women? What if another dullahan comes along and seduces him? He might just fall head over heels for her instead.”

“Somehow I doubt that…but I wouldn’t mind. All I’d do—”

“Is kill Shinra and commit suicide?”

“No, I’d just make certain that no other headless women get near him. It’s not just that he loves me. Now I love him, too…”

The first instant that Izaya saw the confident text on the PDA, the smile vanished—only to be replaced by a great guffaw.

“…Kah-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! I didn’t expect this! Since that last incident, you’re more human than ever! But be careful. The closer you get to being human, the larger the gap might be when you finally do get your head and memories back!”

“I can worry about that once I have my head. Actually, to be honest, I’m starting to think I don’t really need my head after all… But enough about that. Give me information on the slasher. You’re not going to take my money and tell me nothing, are you?”

With the topic back on business, Izaya shook his head and began to tell her the “product” she’d bought.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got some juicy intel I haven’t sold to the police or media or put on the Internet. I won’t lie—I was waiting for you to come to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this case is a lot like you—it’s straight out of the world of ghosts and goblins,” he teased. When he spoke next, it was in the hushed tones of one beginning a scary story.

“…Have you ever heard of the sword called Saika?”

“Huh?”

“You might not believe me, but once, here in Shinjuku, there was a
demon blade
…”

Thirty minutes later, near Kawagoe Highway, top floor of apartment building

“Shinra! Shinra, Shinra, Shinraaa!”

“Whoaaa, don’t just barge in here with your PDA thrust out like that! I’d like it more if you showed this kind of initiative in bed—
ghrf!
”

Celty gave Shinra a light knee in the stomach and rapidly typed out her next message.

“Hey! That demon blade story! Was that all true?!”

“Nngh… I have gone on a journey of despair now that I know you doubted my ironclad word. I’m done for—the only thing that can save me is your love. I need about level thirty-seven love. In the ABCs of love, a B should do…”

“Stop joking around! Listen!”

She yanked Shinra up to his feet and began to type out what she’d just heard from Izaya.

—That Izaya was also concerned with the connection between the online troll Saika and the slasher and was investigating on his own.

—That there was a legend of a demon blade named Saika with a mind of its own that could possess other people.

—That when the victims’ testimony was combined, no one had seen the attacker directly, but as they all passed out, they remembered red eyes.

—That each day the Saika username appeared online was the same day in which a new slashing victim appeared later that night.

Once she finished showing him these details, Shinra sadly rolled around on the carpet in his white coat.

“Ahh, how can this be? When I said it, you chuckled through the nose—no, wait, you don’t have a nose. You chuckled through your breast at me, but sure, you’ll take
Izaya’s
word for it! …Aaah!”

“What is it?!”

“I like that phrase, ‘chuckled through your breast.’ Sounds kinda sexy, if you ask—
gffh!
”

She caught him in the temple with a low kick, sprawling him out on
the floor. Somehow, Shinra kept his wits about him and turned back to Celty with a deadly serious look on his face.

“So what’s the plan?”

“Well…if it was a spirit or fairy of some kind, I would have sensed its presence…but I didn’t feel a thing when I was attacked.”

“Well, of course. A katana might have a mind, but it doesn’t have a presence. As far as I know, the demon blade Saika possessed the mind of its wielder and controlled his body. If that was a strictly human body, then there would be no otherworldly presence or aura for you to sense. Plus, we don’t know that all spirits or fairies possess this ‘presence’ you’re talking about.”

“So there’s no way I can search for it, then.”

Celty clenched her fist in frustration at Shinra’s calm conjecture. But he only grinned at her and extended one last lottery ticket to his lover.

“Actually, there is, my dear.”

“Huh?”

“Let me start off by apologizing: sorry. I took another look at the chat room you hang out in… Have you seen this? It’s quite interesting. I’ve heard that Saika was a female blade, and based on this, it seems to be true.”

“What…?”

“Check out the past logs. Good thing this chat is the kind that saves a long backlog.”

Celty booted up her computer as he suggested.

And then she saw it.

She saw how much the thing named Saika had evolved in the time she’d been away from the chat…

Chat room