Durarara!!, Vol. 2 (novel) (5 page)

After school, Raira Academy, Ikebukuro

What is it that I’m missing?
Anri Sonohara wondered as she walked down the long hallway, lit by the western sun.

It was nearly a year since she had come to Raira Academy.

She became the student representative of Class 1-A and made friends with the male representative, Mikado Ryuugamine, and Masaomi Kida from the adjacent class.

It was the first time she’d been friends with boys, and it felt a little awkward figuring out how to act around them, but everything was going essentially fine.

Yet she still found that she couldn’t find her “standing” within the school.

In middle school, she had a clearly defined standing: Mika Harima’s foil.

Her slightly odd, but pretty and smart childhood friend kept the plain, unremarkable Anri around to make her look better. It was a classic lopsided, parasitic friendship.

Anri didn’t particularly object to this relationship. In fact, she found it comfortable.

Regardless of the form it took, someone needed her. Knowing that meant she didn’t have to worry about finding a meaning in her life.

Just as she was thinking about her past, Mika herself walked by.

But it was not Anri at her side this time. She was practically glued to the side of tall Seiji Yagiri, the boy she’d been going out with since the start of school—in fact, they were firmly pressed together as they walked. They were making sure the nature of their relationship was seen and understood by everyone around them.

Mika noticed Anri watching and gave a little smile and a wave.

“Hey, Anri. See you tomorrow.”

“Y-yeah…”

An empty exchange. To Mika, that was all Anri was anymore. She had no need for a foil. Mika had found her own place in the world within Seiji Yagiri. Therefore, there was no more reason for her and Anri to prop each other up.

This was because Seiji deeply loved Mika, regardless of if she had someone to make her look better. Even Anri, who knew nothing about romance, could tell that they were bound by deep love. It felt as though there was a sheen of insincerity around it, but Anri dismissed that as an illusion created by her own jealousy.

At the moment, Anri was
just sort of
living her life.

She was letting the days pass by, maintaining a distance from her few friends that wasn’t too close, wasn’t too far. And a part of her felt that the other part of her that was satisfied with that was wrong.

But she didn’t even let those two conflicting thoughts fight in her mind. It felt like allowing her consciousness to grapple over different ideas might destroy the peaceful life she had going now.

Mika, Seiji, Mikado, and Masaomi all seemed to be leading fulfilling lives. If they were missing anything, they knew what it was and displayed a hunger leading them in the proper direction.

So what am I missing?

The organized tests at the end of the year were coming, and barely anyone could be seen in the building after school, carrying out their class duties. As she walked the empty halls, Anri was suddenly taken with a feeling of incredible loss.

She was trapped in her own naive thoughts about her existence.

At the start of her adolescence, the usual time for this soul-searching, Mika’s presence had meant she didn’t need to worry about this.

I don’t understand.

Perhaps she was actually completely fulfilled at this moment, and the anxiety was nothing but an illusion. But there was no way for her to be sure of this.

I don’t even know what I should want…

“What’s up, Sonohara? You haven’t left yet?”

The voice caught her off guard as she wandered along the hall. Anri tensed.

“Ah…”

“Why are you so surprised?”

She turned around and saw an imposing-looking teacher in a suit. She remembered that he was the teacher for Class 1-C, but his name didn’t pop into her head immediately. Yet that wasn’t for the lack of an impression.

“What’s wrong? Hmm? Not feeling well? Need me to escort you to the nurse’s office?”

His greedy gaze locked onto Anri’s body. That unpleasant stare was extremely familiar to her. Perhaps that was why her mind actively resisted remembering his name.

“N-no, I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

At first, she had thought it was just her usual persecution complex speaking.

“Need me to escort you home?”

“Ha…ha-ha…”

“I’m only kidding, of course…ha-ha.”

She tried to brush his comment past with a vague smile and laugh, but Anri knew that the teacher wasn’t joking around—he was 80 percent serious about that. At this point in time, Anri was perfectly aware of the meaning of the gazes he was giving her.

“He’s been with several female students and tries to use that fact to keep them close after graduation.”

“He harasses them, then threatens them to keep them quiet.”

“I heard he uses their grades to pressure them into sleeping with him.”

The rumors were fairly typical, but they swirled around him, and his atypical looks (for a teacher) helped burn the image into her head.

She started hearing the stories soon after she joined the school, and
they said that multiple girls had suffered nearly indecent behavior at his hands. For that reason, most of the female students kept an eye out for him around the school.

But Anri did not treat this teacher any different from the others. She’d never met any girls who had been his victims. To her, it seemed like a different kind of predictable behavior: the teacher with the distinct looks who served as a convenient scapegoat for school frustrations, a “sacrifice” who would bear the unfair brunt of the girls’ unhappiness.

So Anri neither avoided his presence nor sought to get in his good graces. She simply treated him as any other teacher while in the process of carrying out her class representative duties.

But toward the end of the second semester, the girls around her—more than strangers, less than friends—began to butt into Anri’s business with warnings.

“I think he’s got his eye on you, Sonohara.”

“Be careful. If you keep sucking up to him, he’ll get the wrong idea.”

Not that I was sucking up to him…

“I’m saying that the fact you’re not ignoring him completely means he interprets that as sucking up! See how all of the girls ignore him? You’re the only one who talks to him normally, so he sees that as his opening.”

“The way he looks at you, it’s just wrong.”

But still, she thought that was just everyone else getting the wrong idea. One day, even the increasingly distant Mika said,
“Anri, you should be careful around him. The way he looks at you, it’s not love, it’s more like overflowing lust.”

At that point, Anri finally understood the gravity of her situation. Mika’s words carried far more weight than those of a hundred acquaintances, and that trust was still strong, even now that they had drifted apart.

All I want is to live peacefully and not rock the boat,
she thought and began to ignore the teacher along with the other girls…

“Say, Sonohara. Are you getting along with the other girls these days?”

“Well enough.”

“Really? Are you sure? Nothing more like what happened that other time?”

“…Yes. I’m fine.”

She shrugged off his probing questions with noncommittal answers. The events of a month earlier came back to her mind.

Since bad timing always had to happen in coincidence, Anri found herself the target of some girls she didn’t get along with, right at the moment she began ignoring the teacher. She’d been around the girls since middle school, and they didn’t like that she had been a barnacle stuck to Mika’s side.

They’d tried messing with her just at the start of the school year, but a fortunate passing encounter with Mikado and an odd man wearing black had scared them into leaving her alone since then.

Coincidentally, she wound up meeting them after school while doing her duties, where they proceeded to bother her again—until this heavy-faced teacher happened by.

Thanks to his presence, she escaped trouble, but since then it became clear that he thought she owed him something.

What if he’d been watching her from the very start, just waiting for the right moment to step in and help her? Could he actually have planned this out with those girls so that the situation happened just as he wanted?

Anri thought that was getting paranoid, but she couldn’t discount the possibility entirely. Ever since then, he used every opportunity he could to bring it up.

“Listen, Sonohara. If there’s ever any trouble, I want you to come and talk to me. I can
help you
again, just like the other day.”

You mean the “other day” well over a month ago?
she thought bitterly but didn’t say aloud.

“Ahh…”

“Look, I’m a teacher. I want to help my students. But if that’s going to happen, you need to trust me first.”

Usually, it goes the other way around,
she thought to herself again. Anri didn’t want to make waves; her ideal outcome was to sit still and wait for him to get bored of her. She didn’t want to set him off and make him even more persistent.

“I’ve seen a lot of students here at this school, but you make me worried for you, Sonohara… You know?”

The teacher, Takashi Nasujima, placed a hand forcefully on her shoulder, gazing into her face with a look of concern. But only he thought it was a “look of concern.”

“You’re always looking downcast. As a teacher, it worries me. I know how your homeroom teacher, Mr. Kitagoma, can be tough on you, and Satou in Class B prefers not to get involved with the students’ affairs, not to mention Class D…”

—?

Anri finally realized what was bothering her.

As he spoke faster and faster, a clammy sensation spread along her back.

Nasujima was bringing up all of the other teachers in turn, putting them down to show her how trustworthy he was in comparison. It was like he was trying to corner her—there was a note of haste in his eyes now.

There was no sign of anyone else around. That was no doubt increasing his boldness.

Or else…

Just as Anri began to explore other possibilities for his actions—

“What’s up, Mr. Nasujima? You harassin’ her or something?”

The cheerful voice echoed down the hallway, and Nasujima went violently still.

“Ah…”

Anri couldn’t stifle the gasp when the hand clutching her shoulder squeezed forcefully.

“Wow, even forcing the poor bespectacled class rep to speak, huh? Sounds like you’re crossing into full-on sexual harassment. Sexual? Harassment? What do those English words mean anyway? Why don’t we just call it
sexual khorosho
and bridge the Cold War gap by combining English with Russian?”

“K-Kida, that’s not funny!”

Nasujima hastily let go of Anri and turned around to scold the
speaker. Anri turned as well to see one of those few friends of hers, Masaomi Kida from Class 1-B, standing in the hallway.

She hadn’t sensed anyone around. Yet there was Masaomi right there.

Only the top half of him, though. His legs were still in the classroom as he leaned out into the corridor.

It was the carefree pose of a grade-schooler, which helped defuse the antagonism slightly, but things definitely felt weirder now. How much Masaomi had seen or heard would affect their reactions greatly.

Since there was no one in the hallway, he must have heard them from inside the classroom. In any case, he clearly saw that Nasujima had his hand on Anri’s shoulder.

But even then, Nasujima had an excuse. He could just say he was being friendly, making human contact. Nasujima planned to go with that, but before he could speak, Masaomi’s eyes narrowed and he chuckled.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, not so fast, Mr. Nasujima. It’s one thing to talk smack about Kitchy in Class A, but bringing our Master Satochy into this? Not cool.”

“…!”

Realizing that the boy had overheard everything, Nasujima was left without an excuse, his mouth flapping soundlessly. He seemed to recognize that the conversation ought to end there, so he put on a broad, deliberate smile and turned back to Anri.

“Kidding…I’m just kidding, Sonohara. Don’t get the wrong idea and spread any weird stories about me. Okay?”

In contrast to his forced laughter, the teacher’s eyes were filled with twice the desperation as before. Anri wasn’t sure how to respond to this, so Masaomi filled the gap, still leaning out of the doorway.

“Ha-ha-ha, c’mon, Teach! Does Anri really look like the shallow, gossiping type?”

“N-no…of course not.”

“Exactly. So don’t worry—
I’ll
spread all the nasty rumors for her!”

“Wha—?”

It sounded like a joke, but the threat was no laughing matter to Nasujima. He tried to gather up a weak excuse for dignity and scolded the boy.

“Kida! Quit wasting your time with this nonsense and—”

“Study? Heh, it’s true that studying is very important. But of course! We’re right in the middle of the age where you want to say, ‘I’ll never use physics or algebra in my future!’ But depending on your future, you probably
will
have to use physics and math, so it’s best to learn as much as possible while our futures are still in flux… Isn’t that right, sir? But the thing is, I’ve decided I’ll be a pimp in the future, so I pray to some statue of a goddess from some religion or another, and I won’t need to know anything about physics or algebra. If anything, I should study Japanese and English, so I can be a world-class gigolo!”

Masaomi’s machine-gun jabbering was so fast that Nasujima couldn’t form any thoughts about the boy’s intentions other than the simplest of reactions.

“But…your Japanese grades must be terrible.”

“Heh-heh…sorry to say, I’ve actually got full marks. But even a teacher should know that your scores on test questions and essays don’t have much bearing on your normal conversations, do they?”

“What? Is that how you speak to a teacher?” Nasujima demanded, trying to derail the conversation, but Masaomi held out his hand, undeterred. There was a white cell phone in it, and he spoke in a low, threatening voice.