Durarara!! - Volume 12 - Chapter 9

Chapter Nine: No Love Lost

“In an update to the years-long court case between the politician Takeru Otonobe and several major publishers and newspaper companies, a press conference was held today in which lawyers for both sides unveiled an official settlement. The case had been noted for…”

On the TV, the newscaster read from his script like always. Otherwise, Shinra’s apartment was a bit draftier than before, owing to the broken glass on the balcony. The group had picked up the pieces of glass, so over half the physical evidence of destruction was now gone.

Togusa sat on the couch, watching the news, feeling the lukewarm breeze of the summer night on his skin.

The police did not show up. They didn’t seem to be aware of the disturbance at the top of the building. But Togusa wasn’t in the mood to relax, so he kept his phone open in one hand as he checked the reports on the TV news broadcasts.

Normally, it would be faster to check on the computer, but now that neither Celty nor Shinra were home, he didn’t think it was right to use it without their permission. Yet, when Namie Yagiri woke up and learned the situation, she opened Celty’s laptop at once and began typing away.

He was going to ask her what she thought she was doing, but the ferocity in Namie’s manner intimidated him, so he decided to search for information from the living room instead.

“…to which Otonobe said, ‘The life that I and my family lost will never return, but at least we can now look forward.’ Next in the news…”

“No reports about monsters rampaging in town…,” Togusa muttered, feeling relieved.

“This is a special report. We are receiving word that a police vehicle has been attacked on a street in West Ikebukuro, Toshima Ward, Tokyo.”

Togusa’s hand froze in the process of hitting buttons on his cell phone. “Whaaa…?”

Did Celty attack a police car in her monstrous form? Fright zipped through Togusa at first, but it turned out that the attack had been with an explosive of some kind. The police on board were unharmed, but a piece of evidence they’d been carrying had been stolen.

From browsing news sites on the phone, he could see that something had stirred the people of Ikebukuro a while ago. It was probably from people located near the police-vehicle attack who had uploaded the details en masse. Now the people who had just found out on the news were joining the conversation, producing a large volume of chaotic commentary.

What stuck out amid the noise was someone’s guess: “Was it the head from earlier that got stolen?” Then came a few posts from people alleging to be witnesses, and within the span of a few minutes, it had turned into a full-on uproar with tinges of the occult: a mysterious head that seemed to be alive, stolen by a mystery attacker.

Because there had already been people wondering whether it was the Headless Rider’s head, some of them began to suspect that the rider had come back to retrieve its own head.

“…What the hell is going on here?”

At some point, Yumasaki had sneaked up behind Togusa. He clenched a fist and jabbered, “Ikebukuro’s finally about to become the ‘demon-world city of Ikebukuro’ instead! The seven days of fate are nigh! I just need to download a demon-summoning program onto my phone or game console, and then the exhilarating survival game will begin…! Gotta make it to the end!”

Togusa assumed this was all related to some anime or manga again. He left Yumasaki to his excitement and looked to Seiji Yagiri and Mika out on the veranda. They were still watching the city outside of the building, and the image without context would look like two lovers gazing out at the skyline.

Namie mostly kept her eyes on the laptop screen, but every now and then she glanced over her shoulder at the two figures on the balcony with distaste. When she looked at Mika, her eyes clouded with hatred. And when she looked at Seiji, they drowned in love.

The way her expression changed so rapidly and completely convinced Togusa that he was much better off not getting involved with Namie.

For her part, Emilia stayed calm and smiled reassuringly, but that only made Togusa worry that she was actually completely oblivious to what was going on.

Egor the Russian, who had seemed to be the most competent person there, left to go searching for Shingen Kishitani, he said.

“Does this mean the most rational person here is…me?” The two owners of the apartment were gone, so this was definitely unfamiliar territory for him. Togusa sighed. “You gotta be kidding me…”

Well, at least it sounds like Kadota’s opened his eyes again. All we gotta do is smash whoever ran him over. So…where do we start, and how far do we drag him behind the van?

Even Togusa’s thoughts were far from healthy. Just then, his phone automatically switched to the screen for an incoming call. The name listed was a familiar one.

Togusa hit the answer button and heard the raucous voice before he could even get the phone up to his ear.

“Hello?! Togucchan?! It’s me! It’s me!”

Just as the screen had threatened, it was Karisawa trying to rupture his eardrums. But something seemed strange about her. When she had called earlier, she had screamed out of joy that Kadota had woken up, but this time she was more panicked than anything.

“Whoa, what happened?! Calm down!”

“Dotachin… It’s Dotachin…”

“…What about Kadota?!” he demanded, worry creeping into his voice. Had his condition suddenly worsened again?

“…Whassup?” asked Yumasaki, who had stopped his creepy dance in the corner of the room and was approaching Togusa now, concerned.

“I just got a call from Dotachin’s father,” Karisawa said. She paused, and then her voice grew even louder through the phone speaker. “He said Dotachin left a letter and vanished from the hospital…even though they said he couldn’t walk!

“What should we do?! I’m sure Dotachin went to get even with the guy who ran him over!”

Ikebukuro

Somewhat earlier in the day…

Black and white flashes and blurs contrasted wildly from street to street.

Above them, golden hair rose and shone, bright against the dark of night.

A bicycle colored a perfect black seemed to absorb all light that hit it, and riding atop it was a man wearing a bartender’s vest—Shizuo Heiwajima.

He clung to Shooter the shadow bicycle with sheer arm strength alone, withstanding a bucking, rodeo-like series of jolts and abnormal positions. The vehicle was in bicycle form for the first time ever, and it didn’t seem to be getting the hang of the idea; it hurtled along in a violent and awkward manner.

But at this point, they were working in perfect harmony, as if one single creature. With each ferocious push of the pedals, Shizuo caused black shadow to spill from Shooter’s gears, filling in the fine cracks and holes in the road to keep them moving smoothly.

Shooter raced through the night city, turning left and right, and occasionally even grabbing the sides of buildings with its shadow to run along their surface.

After about ten minutes of riding, Shizuo heard an odd sound like metal scraping.

“…Huh?”

Shooter’s shadow rustled more fiercely than usual when the sound happened.

“What’s that sound?”

He wanted to keep pushing onward, but the sight of something troublesome in the street ahead caused Shizuo to stop pushing the pedals. “Hang on. Come to a stop.”

Once he could tell that Shooter was slowing down, Shizuo looked to the other end of the street again. There was a roadwork sign ahead, and there were cones at the entrance to a narrow alley. Standing before them was a group of men in work uniforms.

But there was something wrong with them.

They weren’t getting to work at all. They were just standing at the entrance of the work zone.

“That seems weird.”

The metal scraping sound was definitely coming from down that side street. Yet, there didn’t seem to be any construction work happening.

Shizuo reacted to the abnormal scene by tapping Shooter’s handlebars with a finger. “Let’s just go around the back way.”

Shooter rang its bell in a rhythmic whinny and took off through the darkness.

They made their way around the other side of the district, appearing only to the untrained eye to leave the work zone behind. But at every other road that led into the same area, they saw the same signs and groups of stationary workers.

It was a district of office buildings, and after work hours, the people completely cleared out. He saw a few luxury cars along the curb that looked out of place, but since nobody was inside, he let his attention move past them.

“…You want to go on ahead, yeah? If so, ring the bell once for me,” Shizuo said when they were within sight of the street. Shooter’s bell rang a single time; Shizuo inhaled and exhaled briefly and rolled his head to crack his neck.

“Guess that’s that, then. We gotta climb the side of a building,” he announced, a preposterous solution—if not for the fact that Shizuo on his own could probably climb the side of one of these structures. And so could Shooter, who was able to ride along the wall to an extent now. Even without his actual owner and rider, Celty, the vehicle could probably manage to get up, with a little help.

Shizuo began glancing around the buildings in the vicinity, looking for one that was unlikely to attract attention. Just then, one of the men in the work outfits noticed Shizuo. A moment later, all of them were looking straight at him.

“Oh, shit.”

Shizuo considered going somewhere else to avoid scrutiny, but he came to a stop when he saw the workers’ eyes.

At first he thought it was the effect of the warning lights next to the roadwork sign, but even the parts lit by the nearby streetlights were obviously abnormal.

The whites of every last worker’s eyes were red.

Shizuo had seen those eyes many times: in the park on the evening known as the Night of the Ripper, and just a few hours ago, inside the police station where he was briefly held.

“Okay…I get it. So these guys did something to Celty,” he said, putting it together. A few seconds later, he told the horse, “Too bad. Celty’s my good friend.”

Deep down in his voice, there was a core of rage, hot like liquid magma. Shooter shrank away from it—and so did the road workers who were approaching now.

“C’mon… Don’t hold back… Let’s blast straight through ’em!” Shizuo put his weight into the pedals of the bicycle, then thrust with his feet as if he were trying to kick the very earth with the bicycle.

Shooter channeled Shizuo’s anger, letting all that energy course into the ground.

Instantly, like a fighter jet being catapulted off the deck of an aircraft carrier, Shizuo and Shooter shot forward toward the little alley.

They did not turn back to see the poor men under Saika’s control floating through the air unconscious like so many sheets of paper.

Back alley

In the center of a street complex sealed off at all ends, there was a tiny intersection among a series of buildings, where a number of alleys overlapped. There was no traffic light; one of the alleys was barely wide enough for a motorcycle to ride down. The other road had space for a small car to fit, but it was off-limits to cars in the first place. It was the kind of route that only those who knew the area well would take, on foot or on bicycle.

It was a quiet place to begin with, sparsely visited, and a number of the buildings nearby were currently under construction or renovation. One of them had a construction crane attached.

All of this was why Kujiragi chose this place for her hunting ground.

And thanks to those she had controlled with Saika, she was able to close off the entire area along the bigger roads under the guise of “construction.” If the police noticed the abnormality and investigated, the ruse would be up very easily, but thanks to her Saika within the police force, she was able to get it officially acknowledged as a night roadwork site.

That meant the intersection here in this block was out of direct view from the surrounding areas, a little space entirely segregated from the rest of the city around it.

But of course, all you had to do was look into the sky over the intersection to believe you were in some alternate dimension isolated from the rest of the world entirely. It was certainly the case for Seitarou Yagiri, who stood in the alley and gazed upward.

“My goodness…”

There was ample, varied emotion in his voice, and he could offer no further comment. Instead, he turned to Kujiragi, cold sweat shining on his cheeks.

“Just to be clear, this is the Headless Rider…the dullahan’s body?”

“That is correct. The shadow has gone berserk without a rational mind governing it, but when it calms down, it should return to a fleshy body just like a human’s again.”

“I see… This is quite a change,” Seitarou said, looking upward again.

Normally, dark night sky would be visible between the buildings. But at the moment, there was an eerie, totally black cloud that seemed to be stretched between the structures. It was almost as if a black aircraft of some kind had crashed and gotten stuck between them.

Saika, in silver wire form, was tangled around the black shadow in endless ribbons, the tiny metal ropes creaking and screeching eerily as they ground against the shadowy thing.

“So you have total control over Saika, eh? And you can just…let it go from your body like that?”

“My control will work for a while, even after it has detached from my hand. But if I go too far away, it will likely revert to its katana form.”

“And I’m supposed to just pick that thing up and take it home?”

“If you have the means to contain the body once it has been freed from its current constraints, be my guest,” Kujiragi said flatly. It wasn’t sarcasm, just a statement of fact.

Seitarou held up a flashlight without a word. He saw spears of shadow occasionally escaping through the wire mesh and scrabbling at the sides of the buildings. He winced and said, “I’ll pass. The kick that Shingen’s goon gave me still aches.”

“A wise choice,” Kujiragi replied before turning to the subject of her plans. “A courier is bringing the head this way now.”

“Oh?”

“I believe that if the head is returned to the captive body, it will regain its rational mind. If I then use Saika to again sever the head and body, it should be possible to take the body.”

“…And will the body actually sit still if that happens?” Seitarou wondered skeptically.

“To a dullahan, the head is its memory storage,” Kujiragi explained. “When the memories of the past return, it should automatically revert to its original personality.”

“And in that case, what will happen to its memories in Ikebukuro, as the Headless Rider?”

“I do not know that. There is little precedent for this.”

Seitarou found it odd that she said there was little precedent, rather than none at all, but he decided it was better not to inquire further. “I see… Well, if the memories are erased, it will make the process of training and brainwashing simpler,” he said without emotion.

Kujiragi’s eyes traveled downward. “If her memories were to vanish, that would make me happier,” she mumbled, to Seitarou’s surprise.

“Why do you feel that way, too? Because if she escapes from my watch, you will not have to worry about her vengeance?” he asked, as if it was pointless to worry about.

But Kujiragi just said, honestly and without expression, “Because it suits me better to have a romantic rival’s memory wiped.”

“???”

This was very curious to Seitarou, but he didn’t have the chance to ask about it, because—

“Mr. P-President!”

—an employee he’d left behind along the alleyway rushed up, out of breath.

The men he’d brought with him here today were old companions who were aware of the shady side of the business—people from before Yagiri Pharmaceuticals got bought out by Nebula.

In other words, they were stout fellows who knew what they could handle. And yet, the look on this man’s face was practically of sheer terror.

“What is it? Is the head here?” Seitarou asked. It didn’t seem likely that he would be this afraid of a severed head, and he couldn’t imagine that Kujiragi’s hired courier would be stupid enough to just walk around holding the head in the open.

So he tried to calm the employee down, assuming it was something else—but even this wasn’t enough to stop the man from trembling in terror.

“There’s some weird guy, Mr. President… He just started rushing down the road at us, and…!”

It was then that Seitarou, his employee, and Kujiragi all heard the whinny.

A whinny that was strangely cute. Almost like a bicycle bell.

“Lrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ”

“Is that…?”

The Coiste Bodhar? Did it follow its owner?

Kujiragi immediately looked upward. The massive black shadow was still writhing up there, but the movement was noticeably duller, less crazed.

Is it regaining its reason? she worried, but there was no other sign of change yet.

“…”

She couldn’t risk any trouble, though. The Coiste Bodhar, like the head, was one of the major aspects that made the dullahan what it was. It didn’t seem capable of doing anything on its own, but she had to be cautious.

Should she return a part of the wire-form Saika to her palm? She considered it for less than a second before putting a stop to the idea—one of Seitarou’s men, holding a stun rod, shot around the corner of the alley ahead and slammed into the side of a building. He lost consciousness and slid to the ground.

“Huh…?” Seitarou gaped, too stunned to react more capably than that.

“Eeeep! I-it’s coming!” one of his men screamed and took off running past Seitarou and Kujiragi.

“Hey! Wait! What’s coming?!” Seitarou demanded, but the man kept going down the other side of the alley and vanished around the corner. “Worthless buffoon,” he swore and turned to examine his fallen employee, a cold sweat now running down his back.

What in the world was it around the corner that had shot him like a human cannonball? Despite the huge, freakish thing hanging just above them now, it was the unknown intruder that filled Seitarou with boundless fear.

And in the next moment, it came into view:

A man in a bartending outfit riding a bicycle, slowly turning down the alley.

“…Guh?” He gawked.

So much for a company president being able to maintain his own dignity. He simply couldn’t put two and two together. “Hey, Kujiragi…what is that?”

Kujiragi didn’t miss a beat or bat an eye. “Which are you referring to? The bicycle? Or the man seated upon it?”

“Both, obviously!”

“…The bicycle is, I suspect, the Coiste Bodhar. The rider is Shizuo Heiwajima.”

“?”

Seitarou was confused. An individual’s name wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. So Kujiragi elaborated as succinctly as she possibly could.

“He is the human being with the least human attributes, as far as I am aware.”

Shizuo squinted ahead, slowly pedaling on Shooter. He could see a middle-aged man holding a flashlight and a woman with glasses who resembled a secretary.

“…Hey. Are you people with those clowns who tried to attack me?” Shizuo demanded, temples slightly pulsing. Then Shooter moved of its own accord, pulling back into a little wheelie. “Whoa, whoa, what’s up…?”

And then Shizuo saw it.

The huge black something trussed up between the buildings over the narrow little alley intersection. It was hard to tell, but it was definitely darker than the night sky and the urban illumination reflecting off the ground, like a black hole swallowing all light.

He couldn’t tell what was going on at first, but when he saw the occasional spear of shadow emerging from the mass, Shizuo recognized a similarity to something he was quite familiar with.

“Is that…Celty?” he muttered. Shooter rang the bell once in affirmation. “Hey…! Celty! Can you hear me?!” he called out, with no response.

Shizuo clenched his teeth and turned to the middle-aged man. “What the hell did you do to her?”

He got off Shooter and put his hands on the walls of the narrow alleyway, blocking the other man’s path. The man took a step back, properly intimidated.

However, the secretary-like woman stepped forward and replied, “I will answer that.”

“…What?”

“Yes, what is above our heads now is what you once called Celty Sturluson. But at this moment, it is nothing but a monster without reason and rationale.”

“…”

The woman spoke in an utterly matter-of-fact way, despite the feral-tiger menace that Shizuo posed. She was neither helpful nor malicious but simply stated the facts mechanically.

“What are you people after?”

“She… Pardon me, what used to be ‘she,’ is now nothing more than a product for a transaction,” the woman revealed, to her companion’s shock.

“Um, Kujiragi—?”

“There is no point in hiding the facts,” the woman named Kujiragi stated crisply before turning back to Shizuo. “She is not a human, nor a pet, nor an endangered animal. She is just a freak. I am engaging in the business of hunting her and selling her to a wealthy buyer—that is all. You have no good reason to interfere.”

Scrunch.

Something crumbled. The sound came from the vicinity of Shizuo’s right hand, which rested against the building wall.

In fact, his fist was about half-buried in the concrete surface. He had simply grasped it with the power of his fingers, like squeezing through wet tofu.

“…”

The middle-aged man froze, but Kujiragi did not react in any way. He seemed to find her lack of reaction reassuring, as he said, “She’s right. We’re not engaging in some wicked crime. It’s just business. It doesn’t violate any law. After all, there’s no legal recognition of monsters, is there? All I want to do is pay money for something that should not exist in the first place. I would appreciate if you stayed out of this.”

Shizuo clenched his teeth and sucked in a deep breath.

“…I see your argument. You seem to have your reasons,” he said, surprisingly calm by his standards. He looked at them and then up at Celty. “I don’t complain when the motorcycle cops chase Celty around. She bears fault for what she does. It all makes sense. And maybe you folks have a reason that makes as much sense as the cops riding those bikes.”

“Thank you for understanding.”

“But—” Shizuo took a step forward. That was all it took to immediately compress the atmosphere into something more oppressive. “—I don’t give a shit about what the law says. Celty’s a very good friend of mine.”

The middle-aged man felt as though a lion that had been sitting calmly inside a small cage with him had suddenly stood up. Anger even infused Shizuo’s breathing. He walked slowly forward as he talked.

“And now you’re going…to treat her like a thing…to sell her off…” He leaped forward into a run with all the velocity of a cannonball. “And you expect me…to stand there and watch?!”

Rubber smoked on the surface of the asphalt where it had been rubbed off the soles of his shoes. The businessman was helpless in the face of this superhuman advance. He couldn’t move fast enough to avoid Shizuo’s oncoming arm, which was more like some heavy industrial machine arm than mere bear or tiger fangs as it closed in on his throat.

But when he was just inches away, the distance between the two men suddenly grew.

“Gblerk!”

Kujiragi grabbed the man’s collar and hurled him violently backward. He flew about ten yards and landed flat on his back. In other words, she had thrown a full-grown man, one-handed, at a speed faster than Shizuo was charging. While she wasn’t as powerful as Shizuo, it was still baffling strength for a thin woman like her.

“K-Kujiragi, why did you…?” The man gurgled, feeling as if a roller coaster had just deposited him onto the ground.

Without turning back to look, Kujiragi told the man, “Please keep your distance.”

Her attention returned to the obstacle before her: Shizuo Heiwajima.

The moment she faced him, the Saika binding the shadow cloud overhead began to rustle. The wire-form blade screeched exuberantly, scraping against its own length.

“…I did not want to draw your presence here.”

To Saika, Shizuo Heiwajima was just another target of her affections, but an extremely desirable one. The various “children” of Haruna Niekawa’s Saika had been terrified of Shizuo ever since the Night of the Ripper—but Anri’s and Kujiragi’s Saikas considered him to be a very special human.

Wary of her precision control over Saika going awry, Kujiragi had tried to use a “child” within the police department to hold Shizuo off, but it seemed as though there had been trouble with Izaya Orihara that had caused that to go awry.

“What? Whaddaya mean?” Shizuo demanded, frowning.

Kujiragi stood in his path, her face flat. “I am only speaking to myself.” She gave a little wave of her head and stared Shizuo right in the eyes. “You said that Celty is your friend.”

“Yeah, so what?”

“Can you still call Celty Sturluson a friend in that state?”

Is Celty a friend or not?

With that simple question, Kujiragi raised her eyes to the sky. Shizuo followed her gaze to glance at the wriggling thing up there—indeed, it wasn’t a human or any other existing animal.

It created endless little spears of shadow through openings in the wires, ceaselessly scrabbling against the walls of the nearby buildings. It was a pure monster, one that exuded no higher intelligence beyond instinct.

That was Celty now.

But Shizuo wasted no time in saying, “Of course I can. What’s the problem?”

He gave her a look like Why would you even ask that question?

Kujiragi’s eyes widened just the tiniest bit. She asked, “How can you say that a monster that has abandoned its intelligence and human form is a friend?”

“Is this really the situation for a question like that?” he shot back. It was hard to tell whether Kujiragi really meant him harm, and he found he was rapidly losing a target for his anger. “Listen, all this stuff about monsters? I’ve been called that and worse since I was a kid. I’ve snapped and lost sight of everything around me and given Celty headaches on more than one or two occasions.”

He squeezed the wall he was holding as he thought about his past experiences. The concrete crumbled through his fingers into mere dust. “But even then, she would hear me out afterward. She didn’t write me off.”

He looked up and repeated, “She would hear me out.”

His eyes left Kujiragi to find an emergency stairwell on a building just ahead. It was fixed to the outside of the second floor, the kind that had a ladder that could be lowered to the ground in case of emergency. “So now it’s my turn to hear her out.”

Shizuo headed past Kujiragi toward the emergency stairs. He didn’t know what was going on with Celty now, but he might as well start by breaking those wires holding her in place.

Suddenly, Kujiragi’s hand was around his wrist.

“Hey, stop it. I’m not one to hit a…”

He stopped partway when it occurred to him. The slender woman was holding him back with a strength that was unthinkable given her size.

And yet, he couldn’t see her expression from here.

“…I feel…jealous.”

Shizuo detected the tiniest bit of emotion in her voice, something that had not existed before this point.

“Of you…and of Celty Sturluson.”

It might have been jealousy, as she said, but it sounded more like mourning.

“I never had anyone to hear me out.”

While her strength defied her appearance, it was far from Shizuo’s. He could brush her off if he wanted, but Shizuo wasn’t sure whether he should.

Then he heard Shooter’s bell ringing over his shoulder. As if it were trying to rush him along.

“Oh…sorry, I’ll go help Celty now,” he said briefly, realizing that Celty should be his priority at the moment, and tried to work himself free. “Look, I don’t care about your problems…but if you want, I can listen to ’em later.”

He put his other hand on her shoulder to pry her grip off.

“Requesting cease of activity,” said a familiar voice behind his back.

Shizuo stopped yet again and turned around slowly.

It was indeed a familiar woman standing there. She was holding up a gun with a silencer as if out of some movie, in the kind of pose that those movie stars assumed.

She wasn’t like Horada, who had once shot him. This was the stance of a professional.

Shizuo sighed and said, “Vorona…”

The woman whose name he called felt her mouth dry, and she glared at him.

“I desire for you to be pacified, with absence of resistance…Sir Shizuo.”

Alleyway

Neither Seitarou nor Kujiragi knew that Shizuo and his new steed, Shooter, were not the only ones who had broken through the blockade around the alleyway.

When Seitarou’s employee ran down the other end of the path, he noticed that the men in roadwork outfits under Saika’s control were no longer there. But he wasn’t going to be bothered with a detail like that. He needed to get away and call for help as soon as possible.

As he ran, he took out his phone so that he could get in touch with the others in Seitarou’s stable—until a jolt hit his jaw like an electric current, and he blacked out.

As she dragged the man into a trash-collection area in the alleyway, Mikage Sharaku thought, Not only was he no sweat, he didn’t even notice I was there. What an amateur. And those slaves of Saika were no big deal, either.

There were a number of men in work uniforms there, just as unconscious as Seitarou’s henchman. They’d all taken fierce blows to the jaw or temple, and they wouldn’t recover for quite some time.

I was hoping I’d come across someone with at least a little backbone.

She thought of the people at Rakuei Gym, the business her family owned. Even beyond the circle of her own relatives, the tougher members of the dojo were not easy to conquer, even for Mikage. There was one young man, named Kisa, who was attracting attention for the speed at which he picked up techniques.

I haven’t sparred with that big lug yet, though…

He was a promising newcomer who boasted the greatest height in the dojo, but she just wasn’t that interested.

It’s more fun to fight against the guys who really wanna kill you, Mikage reflected. She sighed and tossed Seitarou’s follower into the trash.

“I gotta say,” she murmured, looking up at the crane hanging over the construction site, “he really does love his heights…”

Construction site, upper area

Perched on the edge of the building frame, next to the construction crane, was Izaya Orihara.

The beams were still exposed at this unfinished stage. Around the platform was a heavy vinyl curtain meant to keep the work tools, materials, and people from falling off the side. Izaya stood where there was no scaffolding or vinyl for protection, surveying the area below.

One good gust of wind could have pushed him off the edge, but Izaya happily stood as far out as he could go to watch the proceedings below.

“I guess this was the right building. That’s a good sign.”

Even a building under construction would, of course, have security guards. But said guards were currently unconscious.

A few of the Dragon Zombie motorcycle gang’s members stood behind Izaya, but Kine was not one of them. He had said “being an accessory to murder isn’t my job” and left earlier.

“That sounds just like Mr. Kine. He pretends that his old self never existed,” Izaya muttered, watching the area at the foot of the building. “It’s like they’re setting it all up for me. All the annoying monsters gathered up in one place.”

It would be perfect if Anri Sonohara were there, too…but I suppose that would be too much to ask.

When he’d gotten word of the abnormal roadwork going on, he’d had the Dragon Zombies check it out and learned that the workers were likely under Saika’s control. Assuming that something was going on, he took those followers of his and sent them into a building under construction. The results he got back were greater than he had ever imagined.

That enormous black mass stuck between the buildings had to be Celty. He didn’t know what had happened, but it seemed clear that it was the work of Kasane Kujiragi, who was down on the ground below. The president of Yagiri Pharmaceuticals appeared as well, giving him an idea as to the connections at play.

If Yagiri Pharmaceuticals takes control of the Headless Rider’s body, that removes one element of uncertainty. Then I just have to figure out how to eliminate Kasane Kujiragi.

For the last few minutes, he’d been calculating his plans to this end—until the sight of the man who showed up after Seitarou completely obliterated those thoughts.

Shizuo Heiwajima.

His absolute archrival, the man he’d just sworn to eliminate for good. Why was he here? Izaya could only wonder at the sequence of events that had brought him there, but such questions were ultimately useless.

Izaya Orihara thanked humanity, rather than God. Through whatever means, fate had brought Shizuo Heiwajima there at this moment.

But Izaya’s pure joy that welled up in his breast at the incredible coincidence turned into irritation and hatred upon recognizing Shizuo.

He considered, once again, that he and Shizuo Heiwajima were never meant to mix. Just the knowledge that he was living somewhere in the world was enough to spoil the innocent joy within Izaya.

Why did he hate that man so much?

Perhaps this question came to him out of a premonition that it would likely be the last time he ever needed to ask it.

What a funny thing. I think that no matter how we met, I would always have wanted to kill Shizuo Heiwajima.

He had once been told—he forgot by whom—that his hatred of Shizuo might have stemmed from some kind of complex. Did he despise Shizuo because he felt the other man had something he lacked?

That was probably part of it. But that was only one reason, and he knew it wasn’t enough to explain the entire magnificent structure of his hatred.

A variety of reasons came to mind. He had dozens—perhaps even hundreds—all of which were true, but none of which felt like more than just a small part of the puzzle.

In the end, there was really just one reason that he hated Shizuo. It was likely something he shared with the other man. And the fact that they had even this one thing in common made him sick to his stomach.

The reason was simple.

He just really pisses me off.

All of it, the grudge and the hatred, began with that very first impression.

And so Izaya had to accept that he really could kill a person for a reason that simple.

He let his eyes close, then opened them slowly.

It was the same little smile Izaya always wore.

With his everyday expression on again, he thanked coincidence for bringing him to this moment and looked to the foot of the building once more.

Shizuo and Kujiragi were grabbing each other, and someone had a gun trained on them both.

I guess that must be Vorona.

With the creaking of monstrous Celty and the wires around her as background material, an enraptured Izaya murmured, “Ahhh…this is a very good position…”

“If they just separate a bit more…I might not have to use the crane…”

Alleyway

They had no idea they were being watched from above.

And if Shizuo looked up, his attention would be drawn to Celty anyway.

Not that he had the wherewithal to look upward at the moment.

“What are you holding there, Vorona…? That’s not a toy, is it?” Shizuo asked her.

“This is not a demonstration,” she said. “I am sincerely holding this firearm.”

She was wearing a very eye-catching riding suit. A large messenger bag was on the ground a short distance behind her. It hadn’t been there before, so she must have brought it with her.

“What are you doing here?”

“I am in the midst of a different manner of commerce than the duties I perform with you. It is impossible to shut my eyes to violence against my client.”

“Listen, we don’t have a rule against doing side jobs, but at least be smart about what you pick, yeah?” Shizuo drawled.

“…Your reason for being composed is indecipherable. Do you have some matter with which to question me?” she lobbed back.

Shizuo considered what to do. In the corner of his vision, he could see Shooter’s shadow wavering with seeming indecision.

Recognizing the situation, Kujiragi let go carefully, so as not to agitate Shizuo. Her face was as emotionless as before. He still wasn’t quite able to decipher exactly what kind of expression she’d been making earlier—but now wasn’t the time for that.

Shizuo lowered his hands and said, “Question you? Well, I dunno if she’s your client or what, but you’re pointing the gun to protect this chick, right? I let go, so you can put that away now.”

“…”

Vorona looked as if she was going to lower the gun but was undecided about something. “There is a matter of which I must apprise you, Sir Shizuo.”

“What is it?”

“Within the first fortnight of May, inside a schooling facility of Toshima Ward, you should have experienced being stabbed with a Spetsnaz knife by a woman wearing a helmet.”

“Oh yeah. That happened.” He sighed deeply. “That was you, right?”

“…”

“Look, I’m not an idiot. It was obvious from the riding suit,” he said, which was perfectly true. But he seemed to feel bad about saying it. “Plus, even beyond that…I just kinda had a suspicion about it…”

“I cannot consent to the answer that you were cognizant. It is a house built on sand. If you testify that you are aware of all of creation, then why did you not shatter my vertebrae with your strength?!”

Even in these moments of psychological vulnerability, Vorona’s verbiage was nearly baffling. The more serious she felt about something, the more extreme her use of the Japanese language became. It seemed she felt that the more overwrought and obscure the choice of words, the more polite it was. But to everyone else, it just made her harder to understand.

“…I’m used to the way you talk by now,” Shizuo remarked. “And I’m not gonna do anything to someone I worked with long enough to get used to.”

“It differs from your personality. It is indecipherable,” Vorona protested, lowering her gun just a bit.

“Look…what makes me snap is when things ain’t right,” he said, eyeing the gun. “If you’ve got a proper reason for shooting me that’s fair, then shoot me or stab me or what have you; I won’t get mad. The only exception is if some guy I’ve never seen before shoots me. Whether he’s got a good reason or not, that’ll piss me off.”

In fact, Shizuo did have a wide range of fury. When Seiji Yagiri stabbed him with a pen and gave a preposterous answer as to why, he had thrown the young man quite hard. But once he understood that those actions were done out of honest love, he let him off with a restrained head-butt. When Chikage Rokujou challenged him to a direct fight, the emotion he used as fuel was something other than anger.

The downside of this was that when faced with something unfair or dishonest, he would flip out over even the smallest of slights; it was his biggest flaw.

“…”

Vorona silently looked on.

“C’mon, Vorona. What is it you actually want to do? Just tell me that first,” he said, an honest question addressed to the first junior work associate he’d ever known. “I’m your senior, so the least you can do is look to me for help, yeah?”

What…?

Her heart began to waver at this question. Or perhaps it had already been unsteady, and this was just the first time she actually noticed it.

What am I…doing? I want to destroy Sir Shizuo. To understand and confirm the strength of humanity.

It was a desire she’d always held about those who were considered powerful, going back to her days in Russia. It was one of Vorona’s purest desires, as twisted as it was.

But now that she had experienced ordinary life here with Shizuo and Tom, there was another emotion budding within her, beyond the simple urge for destruction.

No… I am…not allowed to have an ordinary life. Why did I choose to betray Father and President Lingerin…?

She shook off her moment of weakness and tried to view Shizuo as an enemy again. But even then, she couldn’t keep her heart steady.

No, not like this. Sir Shizuo and I must crush each other with everything on the line…or all of this is meaningless… It cannot happen in this way, as a kind of afterthought…

Vorona was shocked to realize her mind was finding excuse after excuse not to shoot Shizuo at this moment. Now there was no way she could argue against Slon’s assessment that she had grown tepid and soft.

What…?

What do I want to do?

Flying by the seat of his pants, Seitarou suddenly yelled at Vorona, “H-hey! What are you doing? Shoot him dead right now!”

“…Hey, old man.” Shizuo’s voice caused all the air around them to freeze. “That don’t sound like it’s exactly right, now does it…?”

There was a clear note of irritation in his statement. He turned around slowly and met Seitarou’s gaze. The look caused the other man to tremble. It froze Seitarou in place, causing the muscles in his hips and back to dislocate slightly, paralyzing him with pain.

“…!”

“When you kill a person…you gotta be prepared for them to kill you first… So if you’re gonna order Vorona to kill me, that means you’re tellin’ her to accept dyin’ in retaliation, right? So you’re sayin’…you want my precious coworker to perform a job that you know might kill her…? Is that it?”

“W-wait! I… I’m…!”

Seitarou tried to scrabble backward, hands and feet flailing, like an insect. The man who had barely batted an eye at the various freakish things he’d seen today now felt his heart leaping into his throat with terror at the slowly approaching man in the bartender’s vest.

The distance between them closed without mercy before Seitarou could so much as regret his decision.

“…”

Vorona hadn’t recovered from her confusion in any way. She tried to point the gun at Shizuo as he closed in on Seitarou. But Kujiragi placed a hand over her arm and motioned her to lower the weapon.

“You were not hired personally by President Yagiri. You do not have an obligation to obey his orders.”

“…”

“Both you and I are being misled by personal feelings. My rule from experience is that bringing personal sentiments into work will lead to bad results. It should be reflected upon and learned from.”

In Kujiragi’s head was the image of Ruri Hijiribe, whom she had once treated as a transactional product.

If only she hadn’t let personal sentiment move her. Or perhaps if she had let it motivate her to save the girl, it might have resulted in a different outcome. She shook her head—it was pointless to wonder now.

“Let us pull back now, to sever this vicious cycle.”

“Wh-what?! Kujiragi! What are you doing?! You have to save me!”

Seitarou couldn’t hear the women’s voices, but he could tell from their actions that something bad was happening.

Kujiragi then cruelly informed him in a businesslike manner, “My duties for the day do not include your personal protection, President Yagiri.”

“Wha…?”

She held out her palm to indicate the large bag Vorona had brought, and she gave him a deep, formal bow. “As we agreed, I have brought you one of the products. I shall deliver to you the dullahan body and Saika at a later date.”

“W-wait! Isn’t that the dullahan’s body? That thing atop the buildings?! What are you thinking?”

“That it will be difficult to recover it at this moment.”

If they used the contents of Vorona’s bag, it should be possible to get it from its current state back to the original humanoid form. But she wasn’t anywhere near confident that she could keep a newly cognizant dullahan trapped with Saika and deal with Shizuo Heiwajima. And with the way the cursed sword was aflutter at Shizuo’s presence, she wasn’t sure it would even be successful at keeping the dullahan trapped for long.

So she concluded, with that robotic flatness of affect, a most human of rationales.

“I do value my life, after all.”

As she listened to Kujiragi speak and Seitarou wail, Vorona lowered her gun.

I can’t. No matter what I do in this situation, I cannot fulfill my desire. To destroy Sir Shizuo will require…more resolution than I am able to summon at this moment.

This side job was, in fact, intended to give her that resolution, but she wasn’t prepared to run across Shizuo right in the middle of it like this. Like Kujiragi had said, it was probably best to withdraw now.

Vorona steadied her breathing, trying to control herself, and looked up at the night sky. She saw the shadow mass again and squinted.

But at the same time, she noticed something wrong. It was something she noticed only because her past work history had required her to be very observant of details.

Do they engage in construction at such a late hour in Japan?

The black creature was tangled up in wires just about in the center of the space between buildings.

But above it, near the top of the building currently under construction, there were bright lights shining. Not the red warning lights for the benefit of airplanes, but something brighter, like halogen lamps.

If this was true, then the workers up there could easily witness what was going on below. Curious, she moved a few steps to get a better view of the top of the building.

The results were still suspicious. She could see a forklift perched right near the edge of the structure. It had to be very close to the edge indeed if she could see it from the street. She squinted, finding that rather dangerous, and noticed something else.

The payload end of the forklift was actually extending over the edge—and it was loaded up with building materials of some kind.

Right next to it, there was a small human figure…

…!

And then Vorona realized what it was the person on the roof was about to do.

“Sir Shizuo!”

She was running before she knew it—right for Shizuo, who was still approaching Seitarou Yagiri with laser focus.

Just scant seconds later, she slammed hard into Shizuo’s back.

“?!”

He lost his balance and stumbled several steps forward. “Hey, what the hell was that for, Vor—?” he shouted, turning back to protest.

And he witnessed a cavalcade of steel beams and rebar crashing down onto the spot where he’d stood just seconds before.

“Wh… Wh-wha…?”

Seitarou was now well and truly stunned at what was happening around him. He couldn’t be blamed for his abject terror, given that he, too, had just been in that spot moments before. If he hadn’t been backing away, he would be dead right now.

One of the bars bounced and landed right next to him, but Seitarou was unable to budge even the tiniest bit.

Kujiragi’s eyes were bulging; she had no idea what had just happened. Apparently, this was not part of her plans.

But at this point, Seitarou didn’t care anymore; he just cursed fate and prayed that the employee of his who ran away would come back with reinforcements to save him—the employee who, unbeknownst to him, was currently unconscious in a trash-pickup area.

Shizuo was just as immobile as the rest of them.

He was so unable to process what had just happened that he even forgot to breathe. All he could see was an endless pile of steel beams sprayed around a tiny, cramped alley.

And before him, trapped under one of the beams—Vorona.

“…Vorona!”

He snapped out of it, racing to her side and hauling the beam off her with one hand.

Her body was still visibly intact, so it hadn’t been a direct hit straight off the drop. But the metal materials had clearly struck her on the bounce, as her suit was ripped in several places, the skin beneath bloodied here and there.

“Hey, are you all right? Vorona! Hey!”

“…Sir…Shizuo.”

“Oh, good! You’re alive! You’ll be okay!”

“Worry is…unnecessary. I had an evasive calculation, but I was unable to avoid the jumping building materials.”

Her speech was much more understandable than usual, which was probably a good sign. It was hard to tell whether the force of the steel beams was affected by the bounce off the pavement or whether it was just thanks to her excellent physical fitness, but she didn’t seem to be in mortal danger.

“You idiot… Don’t risk your life for my sake…”

Indeed, Shizuo might have taken the hit directly and lived. But in the moment, Vorona had feared for his life and pushed him out of the path of the debris. Now Shizuo was full of regret and shame that she had been injured in his place.

He wanted to say something to her—but the situation would not allow him to.

“Sir Shizuo!”

Vorona, lying flat on her back, gaped at what she witnessed. Shizuo put two and two together and looked upward.

What he saw was quite abnormal, indeed.

Falling from the roof of the office building under construction was the entire forklift.

First it tilted like a seesaw, until the entire body began to flip over—and it fell right toward them, like a scene in a movie.

Time flowed very slowly for Shizuo as it happened before his eyes.

Just before the forklift fell.

Standing to its side.

Looking down at them.

A man, his face unclear.

Just for an instant—even the color of his clothes was warped by the halogen lights.

But with a foreboding that was close to certainty, Shizuo spoke the name that came to his mind.

“…Izaya?”

And then the forklift was plummeting toward Shizuo and Vorona.

Seitarou wailed, and Shizuo secretly hoped it would simply flatten him. It never even occurred to Shizuo that any of the debris might strike and kill him in the process.

But no one could believe what happened next.

Shizuo leaped to his feet and rushed at the falling forklift to give it an extremely simple and powerful shoulder tackle.

In sumo terms, this would be known as a buchikamashi, a violent shoulder strike.

Shizuo, of course, had no experience in actual combat disciplines. He was just following an instinct that told him to give the falling object a body blow. But the impact of such a blow at zero range would be devastating.

The vending machines Shizuo typically threw weighed around six hundred pounds. Depending on the contents, they might get up over a thousand.

But the forklift falling down on them easily cleared a ton. And it was falling from the top of the building—even if it wasn’t the final height of the finished project.

It was a weight that spelled certain death—but Shizuo literally knocked it away. The moment he made contact, the forklift’s trajectory changed dramatically, accompanied by a tremendous crash as the vehicle bounced off at an angle and slammed into the partially built structure, breaking through the concrete wall and tumbling inside it.

Following the racket of the wall’s destruction, silence reigned over the alley. No one was in any position to speak.

Unavoidable death for any other human being had been no match for the pure physical strength and hardy body of Shizuo Heiwajima.

Even Vorona, whose life had just been saved by this, was unable to believe what had just transpired.

She’d seen Shizuo kick cars like soccer balls. She knew that knives couldn’t stab through his skin.

But she had never been cognizant that he was allowed to be this ridiculous. Would bullets even pass through his body? She was in the presence of a superhero out of an American comic book. Vorona’s definition of human was crumbling before her eyes.

“…You okay?” Shizuo asked, breaking the silence he had created. He smiled with relief when he saw that Vorona wasn’t freshly injured. “Yeah, you seem okay to me.”

Then he tilted his neck to crack it and turned his back to her, rotating his left shoulder. “Sorry…Vorona.”

“…?”

“I’m about to do somethin’ that ain’t right. I can’t complain if you shoot or stab me for this one.” Then he turned toward Shooter, which was farther down the alley, and bowed. “And you… You looked to me for help outta this situation… I’m sorry. When Celty’s back to normal, you can kick me all you want.”

If you judged him on words alone, he might seem even calmer than usual.

But everyone in his physical presence could tell—even Seitarou, who didn’t know Shizuo at all—that something else was behind his words.

Anger.

Pure, simple, endless emotion.

Shizuo was a fiery mentality compressed to its most potent state, walking in human form.

The words he’d just emitted to Vorona and Shooter were probably the last impurities of other emotions before he burned them all away.

Vorona, Seitarou, and even Kujiragi could all imagine what would happen once he had finished expelling everything that held him back—and they felt an itch from deep in their bowels that urged them to run.

When Shizuo had seen Vorona outside the police station, he’d felt the greatest rage he’d ever felt well up inside him. But within hours of that, he’d been acting normally. After that, he’d tossed a teen into the air and had a talk with Shooter, which even Shizuo had thought was a sign that his anger had fully subsided.

But he’d been wrong.

He’d thought that pushing his emotions underneath the surface meant his anger had calmed. But all it meant was that the actual thing lurking at the pit of his emotional center had not allowed that anger to be expressed.

He instinctually knew that this tremendous rage, fiery enough to evaporate boiling magma, could be reserved for only one man.

And there he was.

Having just maliciously injured Shizuo’s coworker Vorona.

Shizuo strode forward, directly into the construction site, through the hole the forklift had blasted in the building’s wall.

As he did so, Vorona noticed that Shizuo’s right arm was dangling limp from the shoulder and seemingly immobile.

“…Sir Shizuo.”

But she couldn’t stop him.

It felt as if stopping him now would be akin to defiling something sacred. Perhaps it was some cheap illusive form of religion in her heart, born of her admiration for human strength.

In any case, there was no one present who could stop Shizuo now.

Shizuo entered the building and began to slowly climb the stairs.

His phone received an incoming call signal. Without taking his eyes off the stairs ahead, Shizuo accepted the call and put the phone to his ear.

“Hey, Shizu.”

It was the voice of the man who had just tried to kill him—and Vorona.

“So that didn’t kill you, huh? You really are quite a spectacular monster. But the concept of you protecting a human being is nothing short of farcical.”

“…”

“Maybe I brought this up before. Do you think saving people is going to make them like you? Oh, but maybe you feel something special for that Vorona girl, perhaps? I had you pegged for the pedo type, the way you were looking at the Awakusu-kai mistress. But I guess a literal monster being a figurative monster is just a bridge too far, eh?”

“…”

“By the way, are you sure you ought to be abandoning Celty? Do I need to point out what an absolutely evil person that Kujiragi woman you let escape is?” he mocked, both insult and warning in one, as he so often did.

Shizuo said nothing. He just kept climbing the stairs. Only when he was about halfway up the building did he finally speak.

“Izaya.” His voice was calm, betraying not a shred of anger.

“…What is it?” Izaya replied.

Shizuo’s voice was still calm.

“…So long.”

It was the last remaining shred of Shizuo’s sense of reason.

“…”

Once Izaya had confirmed that there would be no follow-up, he gave his own parting words before hanging up.

“Yeah, good-bye.”

His voice, too, was calmer than it had ever been before.

One wouldn’t suspect that they were about to engage in a brutal fight to the death.

A bit later, Vorona and Kujiragi ventured into the building.

“Do you really intend to follow him?”

“…I deliberated the necessity to see it through. Stopping me is meaningless.”

“You might suffer directly.”

“Your assistance is not required,” said Vorona, who wobbled toward the stairs despite the wounds all over her body.

Kujiragi, who was unharmed, just shook her head. “I suspect that attack was the work of Izaya Orihara. He is the savior who gave me my freedom but is also a clear and dangerous enemy. I will need to ascertain the outcome.”

“…” Vorona continued in silence.

Kujiragi followed behind her. Inside this building, she could still maintain her link to Saika. If Izaya and Shizuo were to take each other out, she could then collect the dullahan’s body and safely perform the final transaction.

But while this calculation was for the benefit of her business, the truth was that she also wanted to see the conclusion of Shizuo and Izaya’s clash.

Surprised that she had this looky-loo sentiment within herself, Kujiragi walked steadily behind Vorona. But right when they were about to reach the stairs, a voice stopped them.

“All right, ladies, that’s far enough.”

They turned back to see a young woman. She looked like a fighter of some kind, based on the toughness and litheness of her physique.

“Sorry. But Izaya told me not to let anyone else inside,” she said with a shrug.

“When we announce a refusal, what is the state of the outcome?” Verona asked.

“…You must be Slon’s partner, huh?”

“!”

Vorona’s eyes widened at the mention of her partner’s name.

“And you must know about Slon, too,” the woman said to Kujiragi, but she gave no reaction, either affirmative or negative.

Mikage Sharaku twisted and waved her body left and right.

“It’s no fun fighting against someone injured…but if you really insist, I can play with you for a while,” she said, sounding bored about it. She glanced at the ceiling. “What’s happening up there is probably the world’s stupidest and most meaningless fight to the death.”

She shook out her limbs and put on a rare smile.

“But for whatever reason, I just don’t feel like letting anyone interrupt it.”

Alleyway

“Th-the head… Must at least recover the head,” Seitarou muttered to himself, writhing along the ground like an insect. He made his way through the mess of steel beams and rebar, fighting against the pain in his back.

But just when he was one pace away from reaching the bag Vorona had left on the ground in the alley, a pale shadow swooped in out of nowhere and snatched it up.

“!”

When Seitarou looked up, he was aghast.

Standing there in a white gas mask was the Nebula scientist Shingen Kishitani.

“Shingen…!”

“Fwa-ha-ha-ha, look at you now, Seitarou. It reminds me of when you would beg me on hands and knees as students.”

“Shut your lying mouth! I never begged you for anything! Why are you here?!”

“Hmph. I thought it would be a good opportunity to falsify some old tales of school, but it seems to have failed right out of the gate,” Shingen said, his shoulders drooping theatrically. He took a few steps away from Seitarou and made a show of opening the bag. “I’ve been watching this all from the shadows. I have to say, that Shizuo really is something. I nearly unleashed my bladder when he struck that forklift. Did your drawers stay as dry as mine, I wonder?”

“Answer my question!”

“I heard that Miss Kasane had kidnapped my son. I figured that following you would lead me to the right place, and sure enough…”

“Your son…? What do you mean?” wondered Seitarou, who knew nothing about Shinra’s abduction. When Shingen pulled the head out of the bag, Seitarou’s voice went ragged. “Oh! Ohhh…what a sight for sore eyes… Such beauty! That belongs to me! Give it here!”

“But of course. I am a gentleman. When I find something that belongs to someone else, I turn it in to the police…or to the owner directly.”

Owner. The choice of words caused the breath to catch in Seitarou’s throat.

“You… You don’t mean…”

“Well, how fortunate that the owner happens to be so close by! A sure sign of my own good virtue!” Shingen exclaimed. He looked up—at where the cloud of shadow was still held prisoner by Saika’s wire cage.

“W-wait, Shingen! Your son is the one I’m thinking of, right? He’s in love with the dullahan’s body, yes?!”

“I will not deny it. Oh, my son and his troublesome interests. How can he consort with a woman who won’t even call me Papa or Father?” Shingen joked.

“Wait!” Seitarou shouted. “Don’t give her back the head! According to Kujiragi, it might completely erase all of her memory of life in Ikebukuro!”

He wasn’t worried for Shinra’s sake, of course. It was just more likely that if the dullahan was restored to normal, Shingen would snatch away everything he’d been working toward—and his warning was an attempt to prevent that.

Shingen just laughed and shrugged. “I suppose that is quite possible. As a researcher for Nebula, if I were on the clock, my first priority would have to be bringing back the head…but while on vacation, I cannot help but want to run an experiment to see if putting the head back on the body will really erase its memories or not!”

“You would ruin your own son’s life?!”

“Oh, he’ll be fine. Shinra’s a tough kid. If Celty loses all her memories, he’ll just start the whole twenty years over again!”

“You… You knave!” Seitarou roared.

Shingen ignored him and grandiosely announced, “Life is an endless process of trial and error! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! And away we go!”

With that, he hurled the head straight upward.

It went only a few dozen feet and bounced harmlessly off the wall of the second floor.

“…”

“…”

The beautiful woman’s head hit the ground and rolled.

In the embarrassing silence that followed, Shingen crossed his arms and proudly declared, “It is said that the human head weighs between six and eighteen pounds. Celty’s head was on the lighter side; I’d wager closer to nine. Can you hurl a nine-pound dumbbell up to the top of a building? I certainly cannot!”

Seitarou stared at him, aghast, but Shingen merely hid behind his white gas mask and excuses. “What did I just tell you? Life is a process of trial and error.”

And then a man appeared from behind Shingen and scooped up the head. “Are you certain you’re using that phrase correctly?”

Shingen glanced at him and pointed forcefully to the sky. “Aha! The experiment resumes! Your turn now, Egor!”

Egor smirked uncomfortably at the obnoxiousness of Shingen’s command but proceeded to take off his jacket to use it as a sort of primitive sling into which he placed the head. The next moment, he rotated rapidly and hurled the head high into the air.

“Nooooooo! That belongs to meeeeee!” Seitarou cried, the sound echoing off the walls of the alley like a movie effect.

The head shot upward like a cannonball until it reached the shadow cloud trapped inside the wires.

And Shooter, which had been watching this unfold in bicycle form, instantly transformed into a horse.

Building under construction, first floor

“…”

The women inside the building faced off in silent tension, until Kujiragi suddenly looked up into the corner—in the direction of her wire-form Saika.

“What’s up?” wondered Mikage, without losing any of her battle preparedness. Kujiragi did not answer immediately.

Eventually, she sighed without adjusting her features and said, “I suppose it’s true… Shizuo really is the wild card.”

“?” “?”

Mikage and Vorona merely glanced at her, punctuation marks over their heads. She elaborated sadly, “The final transaction was a failure.

“With Saika distracted, I was unable to keep her under control.”

Building under construction, top floor

Izaya Orihara sat on the lip of the building, watching the scene unfolding below as he waited for the arrival of his archenemy.

He’d already evacuated the Dragon Zombies from the rooftop. He knew that the average motorcycle-gang member would do little more than briefly delay Shizuo Heiwajima. He might pass them on the way up and beat them to a pulp, but that wasn’t Izaya’s concern.

There was one odd thing happening under his duly watchful eye. Saika’s wires snapped and broke, falling down to the center of the alley intersection below.

Then the huge mass of shadow contracted all at once and took the form of a human figure. The figure cast out little shadow tendrils like a spiderweb to stand upon, making it look as if it was floating in place.

But that part was not particularly surprising to Izaya.

At first, he believed that Celty had regained her intelligence—but something was wrong.

The figure that emerged from this transformation was not in a motorcycle riding suit, but in heavy, medieval armor. It wasn’t reflecting the light, so it had to be made of that same shadow material.

And this time, most uncharacteristic of all, Celty carried a human woman’s head under her arm.

He recognized the head, of course.

The shadow-born thing looked smoothly all around and detected Izaya’s presence. It then created a set of shadow stairs, still cradling the head, and began to walk toward Izaya.

Once it was within earshot, Izaya called out, “Hi there, Celty. How does it feel to have your head back?”

But there was no response.

After a short pause, the head under the figure’s arm slowly opened its mouth. The voice that emerged spoke to him in an eerie tenor that seemed to register in his eardrums and his mind at the same time.

“[Who are you?]”

It was a statement that would cause certain people to despair upon hearing it.

“Oh, I see. So you’re not the Celty I know any longer.”

Izaya smiled thinly to himself. But he did not ask the questions about the human soul and the afterlife that he’d been so eager to learn. Instead, he pushed her away.

“But the thing is, I don’t have time to mess with the likes of you right now anyway.”

“[…]”

“If you don’t know who I am, get lost.”

The head was silent for a time, until it spoke again in the same manner.

“[Forget that you saw me, human.]”

He watched the dullahan descend toward the foot of the building and exhaled a deep breath. Then Izaya looked up to the sky and chuckled to himself, “Oh, it’s just so laughable. There has to be a limit to stupidity.”

There was no one around to ask the meaning of this statement, just the expansive darkness of night.

However, at that moment, he was aware that the shining stars that had been overhead just moments ago had vanished. The sky was entirely black, without even the reflection of the neon lights of Tokyo. As if a giant lid had just been placed over the sky.

But even that, in this moment, meant nothing to him.

Izaya Orihara waited and waited.

For this moment when he would close the book on the grudge that had been abandoned for long years.

Grudge? That gives him too much credit. Does one call the instinct to smash a hateful cockroach a grudge?

He considered his “grudge” with Shizuo Heiwajima beneath the starless sky.

Shizuo would be coming to kill him very soon. He had attempted that any number of times before, of course, but this time was clearly different. What he had heard from Shizuo’s voice over the phone had not been annoyance or irritated anger, but pure, undiluted murder.

Sure, Izaya might have dropped a little forklift off a building, but he hadn’t been trying to kill Shizuo. He just didn’t mind if the guy died as a result.

And yet, Shizuo was coming to kill him. Perhaps if Vorona hadn’t gotten hurt, Shizuo wouldn’t feel such bloodlust at the moment, but if that was the case, it seemed laughable that he was ready to murder for the sake of a human being.

At the same time, Izaya felt annoyed. He couldn’t accept that this preposterous monster should be able to use his boundless violence to extinguish the fates of human lives.

There was a parade happening around Mikado Ryuugamine, a procession that drew many others into its gravity.

Izaya Orihara found himself surprisingly excited about the whole thing, thinking he might catch a glimpse of a side of human nature he had never seen before.

He loved all of humanity’s actions. He wasn’t going to complain about the outcome of the festival, no matter what it ended up being. If Mikado had an abrupt change of heart and made up with Masaomi Kida without any more trouble, Izaya would respect that conclusion.

Because that would be the life Mikado Ryuugamine chose.

Life.

To live as a human.

That was all Izaya really wanted from others, at the root of it all.

When he made himself a pest, interfering in the way of life that others chose, it was just because he wanted to see their human reactions. If it resulted in their downfall or even the end of their lives, well, seeing the end points of their human lives would also be entertaining to him.

But monsters could overturn the fate of a human being. With their magical powers or supernatural strength.

And Izaya couldn’t have that.

Humans had to determine the outcome of human lives.

The forces of nature were unavoidable, but it wouldn’t be right if a being with the strength of a full typhoon were to have a human personality, act like a human, and manipulate human lives.

Izaya briefly recalled something a friend had said in the past.

“If Shizuo’s a monster, what does that make you? You’ve got differences in strength and intelligence, but you can hold your own against him, so how do you view yourself? Do you want to be the hero who defeats the monster? Or do you treat this as a territorial squabble between monsters, where you’re staking your claim to those humans?”

Izaya wondered why he would have remembered such a quote at this moment, but he was grinning before he realized what he was doing.

“You’ve got it all wrong, Shinra,” he murmured to no one in the dark. “I never held my own against him.”

Within his narrowed eyes there was a kind of resolution that hadn’t been there before.

“What I’m about to do now is a good old-fashioned monster hunt,” Izaya said, using the excuse that he had arrived at after considering dozens. “Maybe if I beat him, I’ll finally feel like I’m a human being.”

The word grudge also included the insinuation of mudslinging.

Ah yes. I suppose other people might think what I’m saying isn’t entirely fair. At this point, Izaya realized he was actually feeling rather refreshed. I’m going to erase Shizuo Heiwajima from the earth over mere dirty accusations and slander.

Was the fact that he felt better knowing this actually just a sign that he was incredibly human already? If so, he didn’t care.

As long as Shizuo Heiwajima vanished, he would be free of this shackle.

Did Izaya like humans because he was a human being himself? Or did he enjoy observing their foibles from on high, like some god? Izaya was fine with either case being the answer, but there was one thing he didn’t like.

Shizuo Heiwajima was a monster who transcended the limits of humanity. By eliminating Shizuo, Izaya might be able to see himself as a human being. All the exaggerations he had ever made might become truths.

When Namie or Shinra got snarky with him, he might be able to sincerely reply, “Of course I love myself. I am a human being, after all.” It felt strange, but he even considered it worth risking his life for the sake of that one stupid phrase.

He stood there on the silent, empty roof, wearing a vaguely human smile, thinking of the world that existed beyond his release from this accursed relationship—and came to a conclusion that would hold true, no matter what that world was.

“Yeah…I love humanity.”

The words melted into the starless black sky, like his last will and testament.