Durarara!!, Vol. 2 (novel) (7 page)

I just wanted to know.

Not as a writer for a third-rate gossip-slinging tabloid, but purely out of personal curiosity.

Curiosity.

Funny to think that a man in his thirties still possessed that artifact of boyhood. Even the panic over the Headless Rider incident back in the spring didn’t inspire this kind of fervor in me. I figured that story was best left to the occult rags or the motorcycle gang specialists, not me. My paper handled that sort of stuff, too, of course, but we couldn’t match the experts at their game.

I just wrote up whatever happened here in this place called Tokyo and made it sound interesting. That’s all I wanted to write, and the readers seemed to be happy enough with it.

It was the keyword the editor in chief gave me as the theme for this in-depth Ikebukuro scoop that inspired this youthful energy in me.

Strongest.

That’s right…strongest.

Nothing more than that one word.

Taken literally, I had to assume he wanted to know who was the strongest in the city.

A stale, clichéd, but powerful word.

But as a matter of fact, maybe it was the fact that it was such a cliché that made it resonate with me. Just like
love
and
freedom
.

So who’s the strongest in Ikebukuro?

When I asked the citizens of Ikebukuro this question, I got a lot of answers.

“Oh, I know! It’s the guy on that black motorcycle!”

“Dunno…probably some local yakuza.”

“No way, it’s gotta be Simon.”

“Hmm… An amateur wouldn’t know about him, but there’s a guy named Izaya Orihara who left for Shinjuku…”

“Nope, the strongest now is whoever started the Dollars.”

“You seen the guys wearing these yellow bandannas, right?”

“Has to be an official. The cops, I mean. There’s this officer at the station on the corner named Kuzuhara. He’s unbelievable—whole family’s police. Even his three sons all say they want to be cops when they grow up.”

The most fascinating part was that essentially no one said they didn’t know.

All of the local citizens and self-proclaimed “well-informed” folks I asked this question, whether their answer was vague or specific, all had their own predecided mental image of who the “strongest” in Ikebukuro was.

That’s what made it so fascinating.

In that case, what would all of these people already identified by someone or other as the strongest in town think? I approached these folks as best I could manage in order to find out the answer.

Testimony of Mr. Shiki, Awakusu-kai lieutenant, Medei-gumi Syndicate

“The strongest in a fight… Hmm. You know it’s not really like that anymore, right? On the other hand, sure, you can’t let anyone disrespect you, so when it comes time to kill, we’ll still go at it until we win. If you come after us, we don’t care if you’re an amateur. We’ll bring the numbers, the knives, the guns, we’ll go after your family…anything to
crush our opponent. But that hardly ever happens nowadays. Leaves a bad aftertaste for us, too.

“…So who’s the strongest? Well…like I said, in our line of work, it’s not really about who’s the toughest in a fight anymore. Huh? Including amateurs, you said?

“…

“…Hmm.

“Don’t put what I’m about to say in your article.

“I’m just saying, officially, we don’t mess with civilians. But like I just told you, all bets are off if they’re attacking
us
. But…I will say, there’s an amateur out there I wouldn’t want to mess with, personally.

“Yeah, if we get a bunch of men and weapons together, we’d win. But in a brawl, like one-on-one, I don’t know if I could beat this guy even if I had a machine gun.

“Huh? Simon? Oh, the sushi guy. He’s easy to get along with, so I can’t imagine fighting with him. I bet he would be real tough though. They say he can pick up a motorcycle like he’s lifting barbells. But I don’t see myself losing to him.

“Your guess isn’t far off though. It’s a guy who associates with Simon a lot…

“Shizuo Heiwajima.

“We tell the new kids, don’t mess with him.

“I mean, if you’ve seen Shizuo fight at all, you’d understand… He just exudes cool. It’s not elegant in the least. He’s a real wild man…like Godzilla… When you watch him fight, he looks cool the way that Godzilla looks cool to the kid watching it. I guess that sums it up. At any rate, he’s one crazy bastard.

“The thing about those cool guys is, you can’t really pick a fight with ’em. It’s a lot more fun to stand aside and watch ’em work from a distance. That way, they’re not in your business, either.

“Gotta admit, I’ve got some admiration for him. Wish I could tear things up the way he does…

“But I need you to keep that part close to your chest.

“…

“So, Mr. Reporter, I hear your daughter’s in high school. Raira Academy, was it?

“When you called about setting up this interview, we did some background checks on you.

“Now, now, no need to stare holes through me. We have our own source of information.

“Don’t worry, we’re not low enough that we’d threaten an amateur.

“But…only if you don’t pick a fight with us first.

“So please keep that information out of your article, pal.”

Ultimately, most of what I had on that tape was unusable.

He said that I could go with what was in the first half…but in any case, the stuff about Shizuo Heiwajima was off the table for me. I didn’t hear anything concrete about the guy, for one thing.

But if anyone else brought up his name, then I’d be onto something.

At this point, I decided to get in touch with the black man named Simon who people in town mentioned.

“Hey, you. Sushi, good for you.”

“Uh, er, actually, I was hoping to speak with you personally…”

“One for dinner, boss.”

I tried to decline his offer, but I eventually gave in to his force and found myself seated at the sushi counter.

The interior was made out to look like that of the Russian Winter Palace, with a traditional sushi counter slapped right in the middle. The seats there were fine, but the booth seating was tatami under marble walls, an extreme imbalance of design if I’d ever seen it. It was impossible to guess at the price of the sushi based on this, but there was a hanging curtain on the ceiling that promised “Hassle-Free Pricing! All Items Market Value!”

Despite the simplicity of that promise, it left me feeling more uncertain than ever.

It was already a low-expense project, and I had a feeling I’d need to pay for this one out of pocket.

True to expectations, the Russian who ran Russia Sushi recommended all of the most expensive items. I tried to maintain a pleasant
face to keep him in a talking mood. I soon found out that the manager and Simon knew each other from the same city in Russia.

I didn’t know why a black man like Simon would have been in Russia, but it had nothing to do with my research, so I left that detail for another time.

After sampling a few sushi (it wasn’t bad at all), Simon had come back inside from his duties advertising to pedestrians outside, and I asked him about the man named Shizuo Heiwajima.

“Oh, Shizuo. My best pal.”

So they did know each other. After what the yakuza had said, I half assumed he would be a legendary figure, a tall tale I’d been fed, but this looked to be solid info.

I put aside the topic of Heiwajima and asked Simon about fighting in town, but I didn’t get far.

“Oh, fighting, very bad. Get very hungry, need food coupons. You eat sushi, good for you,” Simon told me and started ordering me fresh urchin and salmon roe sushi.

That was the last straw. Before long I’d have no choice but to run before the bill arrived.

As I checked the contents of my wallet, the Russian chef took note of what I was after and spoke to me in fluent Japanese.

“Sir…Simon’s a pacifist, so you won’t get anything worthwhile about fighting out of him.”

“N-no, I’m just asking who’s the strongest fighter around here…”

“You talking about Master Heiwajima? You just brought him up yourself.”

“Uh—”

It all snapped into place. The chef gave me an extra piece of info on the house.

“You won’t get anything out of Simon about Heiwajima. He’ll just tell you he’s a good guy. If you truly wanna know about the real Heiwajima…”

“Who told you about me?” the man demanded with expressionless eyes, rolling a shogi piece in his fingers. “If they even knew my address, it must be a pretty close client of mine…”