Durarara!! - Volume 11 - Chapter 6.5

Intermediate Chapter: Trapped Like a Rat

After this day, a subset of residents of the city found themselves rolling down a hill toward chaos, unable to know where they were headed.

An incident that began with stare downs between the Dollars and Yellow Scarves, that should have ended in mutual confusion between teenagers, suddenly cast the profiles of a completely different group against its shadow. Thanks to Izaya Orihara’s little spark, they were all exposed to the darkness.

That wasn’t all.

As though whipped up by some unsettling wind through the city, others aside from Izaya cast their own sparks into the fray, steadily increasing the power of the open flames.

But the biggest spark of all, which Izaya had tucked away and Kujiragi had nearly extinguished altogether, still smoldered to itself, lighting nothing around it.

Practically waiting for someone to pour the gas over it.

Holding cells, police station—night

Shizuo Heiwajima lay on the floor of the cell, still dressed in his bartender outfit.

He’d been held at the Ikebukuro Police Station next to the train station many times as a student, but the interior before him now was completely different from back then.

Apparently, this wasn’t the Ikebukuro Police Station he’d met in his errant youth but a different branch nearby. Shizuo didn’t particularly care which station he was in, however.

He just needed to stay calm and maintain his composure until they let him out. So he decided he should just sleep the whole time, in order to avoid seeing or hearing anything that might set him off.

“Hey, I’ve seen you before, man! You’re the guy who was swingin’ the electric pole around, yeah?”

“…”

But there was a man in the adjacent cell. A thuggish fellow who’d been put in there not long ago.

“Hey, you know what? I bet you could totally break these bars, huh?!”

“…Got the wrong guy,” Shizuo claimed, trying to keep the man off his back.

“Don’t lie! I’d never forget a blond guy in a bartender’s vest!”

Shizuo was still wearing the work outfit he’d had on when they’d arrested him. Only the bow tie was confiscated, because anything with a string or cord might be used to commit suicide. The rest was still there.

“But actually, now that I think about it, today’s not a good day for it. Media’s goin’ freakin’ crazy outside this station right now.”

“Did something happen?”

“You bet. They found a woman’s head outside of the train station or something. They’re saying the rest of the body’s being brought here from the Ikebukuro headquarters.”

Shizuo grimaced at this grisly news. But something stuck out to him.

“…? What are they doing with the body? Whether they do an autopsy or not, doesn’t that get handled at the hospital?”

“That’s why the media’s all here. There’s a whole lot of strange stuff going on with this one. Like, when it originally got announced, it was ‘the head of what seems to be a dead woman.’ But by the evening, they were calling it ‘what seems like a woman’s head.’ Don’t that seem weird to you? The pictures people put online make it super-obvious that it’s a head.”

“Pictures of a body? Those people have no class,” Shizuo murmured, furrowing his brow. But he decided not to think too deeply into it.

He knew that if he thought about it, his rage would only intensify. Instead, he steadied his breathing and stared at the ceiling.

The man in the other cell kept babbling. “Of course, some reporter asked them about that. All they said was, ‘I can’t answer that question right now,’ so the press started getting the inkling that something was wrong here. Then some weird anonymous information leaked online from the Raira University Medical Hospital that did the legal autopsy.”

“Weird information?”

“The head is alive, they said.”

“…”

He couldn’t laugh it off as a stupid story or even get irritated.

A living head.

And Shizuo knew what might fit that description.

“Online, people are sayin’ it might be the Headless Rider’s head. From what I hear, they’re keeping it in this station right now. Wonder if they’re having a meeting about it. ‘Can we even declare a criminal case if the head’s still living?’ or something.”

“I see…” Shizuo considered this for a moment, then asked, “So are you under the control of that monster sword, too? Or is this something else?”

“…What do you mean? You’re not makin’ sense.” The man chuckled.

Shizuo’s temple visibly twitched. “Don’t play dumb with me. You really think I’m stupid enough not to think somethin’s up when a guy with all the info wanders into the clink and starts blabbing every last detail to me, knowing who I am? Do you?”

He got to his feet and took a step toward the man. There were steel bars between them, of course, but they might as well have been twigs to Shizuo.

Well aware of that fact, the man held up his hands and pleaded—his eyes eerily bloodshot.

“Sorry, sorry. My bad. You’re right. Mother told me to come here.”

“…So assuming you’re not trying to piss me off, why would you tell me this story about the head?”

“You’re smarter than I thought, so you probably know already, huh? You know what that head really is.”

“…”

The man didn’t wait for Shizuo to answer. “Celty Sturluson. The head that’s got the whole city buzzing today is a part of your friend that she’s been looking for, for years and years.”

“…Okay. And?”

“It’s simple. This is a deal. Next time they take you away for questioning, you just have to rage a little. Sure, it’ll add a few charges to your sheet, but as long as you don’t hurt anybody, you might just get parole or even put on bail. While that’s happening, I’ll sneak out with the head.”

“…I don’t see the point. Are you guys on Celty’s side? Or are you just trying to use her?” Shizuo demanded, his voice quiet but pregnant with the peril of imminent explosion.

“Neither, actually… But I bet we agree with this Celty person about not wanting the head to be turned into a public spectacle. Anyway, if you get good and rough, they’ll probably lock you up for that instead, and we can make sure the charges of beating a woman go away. It looks better for you that they questioned you for something you didn’t do, and then you snapped on them, rather than coming out with a proper record of having crushed a woman’s hand, right?”

“Why can’t you just use those hypnosis powers or whatever they are to steal the head? Should be easy.”

“…Mother doesn’t want us to create too many new children. Plus, if there isn’t at least a good distraction that would explain how the head got stolen, it’ll only look more suspicious.”

Shizuo considered this suggestion. Normally, he would have already snapped by now, but he was just barely succeeding at keeping his cool by envisioning his brother’s face and Celty’s helmet.

But there was no guarantee that this man would keep his word. And before Shizuo could come to a decision about what to do, his train of thought was derailed by an officer showing up.

Based on the way the man in the other cell immediately clammed up, he could guess that this officer wasn’t under the demon sword’s control.

“Shizuo Heiwajima? You’re being released.”

“What?!” screamed the man in the other cell.

“Shut it, you!”

“Oh, er…”

The other man began to sweat, clearly in a panic. He returned to the corner of the cell, muttering under his breath, “What does this mean…? Did Izaya Orihara do something to…?”

Izaya Orihara.

Shizuo had made it safely through questioning while resisting the urge to explode. The instant he heard that name was the biggest test of his self-control all day.

One hour later—Tokyo

“What the hell’s going on…?”

Shizuo left the back door of the police station, his outgoing procedures finished.

Apparently, the victimized girl claimed that she was “mistaken” and that it wasn’t Shizuo. Assault wasn’t a crime that required a complaint from a victim to prosecute, so just retracting the claim didn’t make his charges disappear, but since the victim said he didn’t do it, and there was no clear evidence that Shizuo had ever used violence against the woman, they dropped the charges and released him.

Under normal circumstances, Shizuo would be unable to contain his fury, but right now he was simply happy that he’d protected his brother’s reputation.

But…Celty’s head, huh? Is that fleabrain up to something again? In any case, I’d better report back to the boss…

He pulled out the cigarettes they’d given back to him. As he walked, he glanced around for a good spot to smoke.

Some kind of police van passed him, heading down the road in a quieter direction. Shizuo watched it go as he checked his lighter for remaining oil. He hit the striker of the Zippo.

It produced a spark.

And a roaring explosion went off, right next to the police vehicle.

“?!”

Shizuo’s eyes bulged. The van that had just passed him rolled onto its side in the street, and a motorcycle raced up toward it.

When an officer opened the rear door of the van, the motorcyclist knocked him out with practiced ease, then stole a large box case right from the back of the vehicle.

Then the figure hopped back on the bike and took off in Shizuo’s direction. When the rider saw him, the bike came to an exaggerated, panicked stop, then went into a U-turn.

A full helmet and a clearly feminine figure. But unlike Celty, this rider wore a white-based suit that looked familiar to him.

“Hey, is that…Vorona?”

Vorona.

As soon as he said the name of his new coworker, the rider blasted the acceleration—as though trying to drown out the sound of his voice.

This, of course, was all the confirmation Shizuo needed. The rider turned down a side street and vanished into the night within moments.

He wasn’t sure what that was all about, but he was sure of one thing—the box she’d just stolen from the police vehicle contained the head in question.

He didn’t know why Vorona would be stealing something like that, but the incident succeeded in finally flipping a switch in Shizuo that had been off this whole time.

Considering the situation, he arrived at one other certainty.

“Izaya… Is that you?”

After what the man under the sword’s control muttered earlier, and other circumstances leading up to this, he had enough of a reason to suspect, even if it was largely a hunch.

“You’re up to some bullshit again. Aren’t you, Izaya…?

“And you’ve got Kasuka…and Celty…and even my new coworker involved…?”

Anger.

Anyone looking at Shizuo at this moment might have hallucinated that the very air around him was warping.

Sheer rage powerful enough to control the air around him was being compressed within his being. Shizuo clenched his fists. He even held his voice inside.

All his anger concentrated in those fists, so that he could use them to smash the source of all the irritation he’d been feeling for days.

Anyone who knew Shizuo well would arrive at the same thought upon witnessing him now.

Whether it was Izaya or someone else pulling the strings behind this—the source of evil would undoubtedly be obliterated off the face of the earth.

And so, with the greatest rage he’d ever felt compressed within his being, the beast quietly ventured forth into Ikebukuro.

The fires across the city formed a chain.

All connected, as though arranged ahead of time; all violent at once.

Like a bundle of firecrackers bursting together.

Tokyo—night

“Haruna!”

She was just leaving to get some dinner from the convenience store and turned around at the sound of her name. A very familiar face awaited her.

“…Oh, Dad. You seem well.”

“You know that’s not what I want to hear… What have you been doing all this time?!”

“I’m surprised you knew where to find me. Or was it a coincidence?” asked the runaway daughter, without a trace of shame or hostility.

Her father, Shuuji Niekawa, sighed. “The Dollars. They had an eyewitness report that you were at the Raira Hospital café. And they followed you the whole way after that. So I’ve been staking out this apartment the entire time since.”

“Oh, I didn’t know I had a stalker. If you’re relying on a street gang like the Dollars, you’ve really fallen a long way, Dad.”

“Don’t be frivolous! Do you have any idea how worried I was when I heard that you’d joined the Dollars…?”

For the moment, he was showing more relief than anger—and Haruna just sighed and turned her eyes Saika red.

“…Be quiet, Dad.”

It was a statement of power, infused with Saika’s curse.

Shuuji had been pierced by her blade before. He was already Saika’s puppet.

Without a second thought, Haruna used her own father as her child—Saika’s grandchild.

By her measuring stick, anyone outside of Nasujima, even her own family, might as well have been a stranger.

“Ah yeah, I get it.” Shuuji nodded, his eyes red, too.

In the past, when Saika’s will took control, he had spoken more effeminately, but now that he was taking orders from Haruna’s will, he was more like a pure automaton puppet.

A smile plastered itself on Haruna’s face. She felt not the slightest bit of guilt about controlling her father. “The Dollars’ information network is impressive. I wonder if I could use that to find Takashi. Anyway, you can go home for today.”

“…”

Her father said nothing. So she chatted to him all on her own. “Oh, that reminds me, Dad. I made my very first friend ever today! Her name is Anri! I’ll introduce her to you sometime. Maybe when it’s not so busy.”

And then, her quota of family time fulfilled, she walked right past her stock-still father toward the store…

Until something pricked the back of her neck.

“Huh…?”

She felt more surprise than pain and craned her neck to the side.

There was her father, eyes still bloodshot—holding a syringe.

“D…ad…?”

A million questions burst into her head, then vanished into darkness.

“Well done. I mean it, very nice work.”

A man emerged from the shadows, clapping his hands. He wore a beanie and sunglasses, a combination that screamed “disguise.”

As he peeled off his fake beard, he rolled the unconscious Haruna over. When she was facing upward, he gave her “sleeping” face a very close inspection.

“Oh! Your daughter’s still very pretty, as long as her mouth is shut.”

“…”

Shuuji did not answer the man. He appeared to be in a daze, not entirely present.

The man ignored him and focused on his daughter, gloating over the comatose young woman.

“When two of Saika’s children cut each other’s children—in other words, the grandchildren of the original—control doesn’t pass based on level of strength, or seniority, or dumb luck. Whoever does it latest overwrites the control, that’s all. You didn’t know that, did you? You probably thought you were the only one who ever overcame the original Saika and became an independent child,” he mocked, trying to lift her skirt with his shoe. “But what happens if a child slashes another child? I haven’t tested that out yet.”

He tried a number of times without success and eventually withdrew his foot out of boredom, pressing it lightly against Haruna’s stomach instead.

“If I could use you however I wanted with Saika… Well, you don’t have to worry. I’ve got plenty of love for you, Haruna,” the man gloated with a disgusting leer. He took off his hat and sunglasses.

“Oh yes. I will love you…I will love your body,” he murmured, licking his lips.

Shuuji Niekawa could do nothing as the man beside him fantasized about defiling his daughter. The curse of Saika filled his brain, and he had no functional thinking power.

All he could do was stand there.

Haruna’s onetime homeroom teacher, Takashi Nasujima, plotted and cackled over her body.

And all her father could do was stand there.

At that moment—Ikebukuro

When Anri finally headed home, she was still feeling depressed.

A number of pathways had been indicated to her over the course of the day.

In a way, they were each potential futures being displayed for her through the picture frame. She just didn’t have the bravery to choose which picture to paint.

I’m the same.

Nothing about me has changed since before I met Ryuugamine and Kida…and even Mika.

It was this mood of self-loathing that consumed her when she reached her apartment. Then she saw a feminine figure leaning against her door.

Who is that…? Is it…Niekawa?

She tensed up until she approached close enough to clearly make out the figure—at which point she realized it was a girl she’d never seen before.

“Hello. It’s nice to meet you for the first time. Right?”

Her smile was gentle but strong at the core, the exact opposite of how Anri felt at the moment. She gave Anri a piercing look, then held out her hand for a shake, and introduced herself in a firm voice.

“I’m Saki Mikajima. Hi!”

In the darkness, a voice called for her.

It was strongly familiar, but for some reason, she couldn’t place who it belonged to.

She was drawn forward, walking through the dark, until she sensed something hitting her chest.

“…am Celty.”

When she realized the thing, which was smaller than a soccer ball, was what had called her name, Celty remembered that the voice of the head in her hands was none other than her own.

Then the head that was supposed to belong to her repeated what it had been muttering, louder and clearer this time.

“I am Celty.”

No, no, no, no, no! Wait! I mean, yes, it’s true, but hang on a second!

“…ty! Celtyyy!”

She burst up with a start, stammering to herself, and found that she was in her usual bedroom, right next to Shinra in his wheelchair, who was looking at her with great concern.

“Are you all right? You were really moaning to yourself.”

Celty hurriedly cast her vision around the area and snatched up the PDA resting next to her bed.

“Th-the head! What happened to my head?!”

“Don’t worry. The police report was a little fishy. The rumors on the Net are saying that the head might’ve been a fake. The rumors that me and Yumasaki started, I mean.”

“…Oh. But we’ve got to do something! If that gets cremated, I’ll…I’ll…!”

“Calm down. I’ll do something about that head.”

Shinra leaned over in his chair and held her until she finally felt herself calming down.

“…Thank you. I’m better now. Sorry for getting out of hand like that.”

“I’m glad. If anything, it was Seiji who was even more worked up. He said he was going to charge the police station, so I knocked him out with a tranquilizer for the night… Then Namie got mad at me for giving Seiji a tranquilizer. So I had to knock her out, too. Compared to them, Mika was very relaxed. And when Namie lost her cool, Dad ran off somewhere,” he explained, as if it was all some funny story.

Just then, the doorbell rang over by the entrance.

“Hmm, I wonder who that is. Did Dad come back?”

Several moments later, the sliding door of the bedroom opened, and Emilia popped her head inside.

“Shinra, a glasses girl child has arrived for judgment of a visit?”

“Glasses? Oh, would that be Anri? Please send her in.”

“Anri…I wonder if we should tell her about Mikado,” Celty showed Shinra on her PDA, but she figured there wouldn’t be time for that sort of conversation. Then the door to the bedroom slid open again, and a woman wearing glasses entered.

“…Umm…? I’m sorry, you are?”

Huh? Who’s this?

Neither Shinra nor Celty could hide their surprise. The woman walked up to Shinra and took his hand without expression, staring into his face.

As he waited, baffled, she said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Kasane Kujiragi.”

But a second before they could decipher the meaning of that name, Kujiragi drew closer to Shinra’s face and whispered, “I have an interest in you.”

Instantly, without batting an eye, the woman placed her lips over Shinra’s—and extended steel nails from her fingers, sinking them into his shoulder.

For a brief moment, everything in the room, time included, seemed to freeze solid.

When blood seeped from Shinra’s shoulder and his eyes began turning bloodshot like Saika’s, it was not Celty’s consciousness that abandoned her this time but her sense of reason.

Then chaotic shadows ravaged the room.

It tumbled.

And tumbled.

After this day, a subset of residents of the city found themselves plunging into chaos, without knowing where they were headed.

There was no one mastermind behind it, no one single cause—just different people tangling up one another’s feet, falling and falling…

Into the deep darkness that existed on the underside of the city, where those like the Awakusu-kai lived and breathed.

Inside the sack that was the city, both wide and cramped at once, the rodents struggled and struggled.

Would they fight back like cornered rats? Or simply drown in the sack?

Nobody could guess at this point in time.

Only one thing was certain.

As long as they continued to plunge within the city of Ikebukuro, they would ultimately be headed to the same place, the deepest place of all.

As such, fate worked its ways as they fell.

Without a hint at even the nature of its eventual product, whether rope leading up to safety or shackles dragging to the bottom of the earth…

The city offered a glimpse into its impenetrable darkness, to saints and villains alike.

There was no way to tell if hope awaited at the bottom of that obsidian dark.

And yet, without stopping a single one of them, the city swallowed all within itself—and began to tumble.