Durarara!! - Volume 12 - Chapter 9.5

Intermediate Chapter: Proud, Doomed Resistance

Shinra’s apartment

“Man, this ain’t funny, Kadota!”

“Let’s hurry. At this rate, Kadota’s death flag is going to get triggered.”

“I have no idea what that means, but you better not mention the word death again, dammit!”

Togusa and Yumasaki were rushing to leave the apartment and look for Kadota after getting the update from Karisawa on the phone. When they were at the entryway, the intercom buzzer went off.

“Dammit, not now!”

It was probably Shingen Kishitani or Egor. Emilia was still here, so they could open the door and switch places with the visitor, Togusa decided. He promptly turned the handle—and in the next moment, opened his eyes wider than they’d ever been in his life.

Even Yumasaki’s eyes, which were famously tiny, were agape such that the white could be seen entirely around his irises.

“…Yo,” said the grinning visitor, sweat damp on his face. “I thought I was coming to Kishitani’s house… What are you guys doing here?”

“Ka… K-K-Ka— Ka…”

Togusa’s blood pressure rose at the suddenness of it all, and he found himself unable to speak properly. Instead, it was Yumasaki who shouted a greeting to their unannounced visitor.

“K…Kadota! You’re all right?!”

“…So that’s what happened, huh?” Kadota said, sitting on the sofa, after his full update from Togusa and Yumasaki. Emilia had examined him and prescribed him a painkiller cocktail. He had at least changed from his hospital gown to the set of his own clothes that had been left in his hospital room, but his father hadn’t brought the signature beanie with them, so he seemed different from usual.

With all of that out of the way, Togusa asked, “But why are you here?”

“…Oh, I just figured I’d be able to get some pretty strong drugs here. My hunch was dead-on.”

“Stay in the hospital, man! Why did you slip out in the first place?!”

It was a perfectly reasonable question, and Kadota looked guilty answering it. “Well…I’ll admit, I did the hospital wrong. I’ll go back to apologize properly later.”

“I wasn’t asking for you to show off! I’m saying they weren’t sure if you’d even be able to walk properly or not!” Togusa pointed out.

Even Yumasaki joined in with a rare rebuke of Kadota. “That’s right! Me and Karisawa are one thing, but what would Azusa think if she heard that?! I know you’re aware of how she feels about you! You’ve got a 3-D route open to you, and you’re just going to break that flag?!”

“…Sorry. I just couldn’t lie in bed any longer.”

“Well, you’re supposed to! You were rushing off to settle things with whoever hit you and ran, right?! Don’t be crazy! Lean on us once in a while! Just tell me what they look like, and I’ll tie ’em up in chains and drag ’em behind the van!”

“That’s, uh…concerning. Besides, that’s not the situation now. Where’s Karisawa?”

“She’s out looking for you right now! We’d better call her, or…”

“Tell her to come to this apartment right away. Either that or to go straight home and stay there. And…could you text the same thing to Azusa, too?” asked Kadota. His dad had his phone at the moment, so he had no means of contacting them himself.

Yumasaki started to get in touch with Karisawa, driven by the panicked look on Kadota’s face.

“Damn, man, what’s going on, then?” Togusa muttered.

The look on Kadota’s face grew even darker. “The other reason I came here…is because there’s something I need to talk to Celty about.”

“The Headless Rider?”

“Yeah… The thing is, I’m pretty sure I know who’s calling the shots for the guys who ran me over.” Kadota grunted, gripping the bridge of his nose. “I saw a couple of ’em, just from taking a taxi…”

“…You saw what?” Togusa asked, but Kadota bypassed the question.

“The whole damn neighborhood…is in a real bad state right now.”

Russia Sushi, interior, late night

“Shizuo’s one thing, but Vorona skipping her shift without permission, too? Sure was a lonely round today,” griped Shizuo and Vorona’s direct superior at work, Tom Tanaka, as he sipped hot green tea at a marble counter.

The restaurant was about to close, and the only customers left were Tom and a man with no hair sitting farther down the counter.

“Thanks to that attack, the cop cars are flyin’ left and right down the streets. It’s a dangerous world out there these days.” He grunted. He didn’t know yet that Shizuo had already been released from police custody. Normally, Tom would be the second person he’d contact after his brother, but with the confusion over Vorona, he apparently hadn’t reached out yet.

So Tom, who still believed Shizuo was in jail, sat all alone at the counter of Russia Sushi, nursing a late dinner. When Denis, the head chef, learned that Vorona had skipped work without warning, he bowed to Tom. “Sorry about her. We’ll give her a good scolding the next time she shows her face in here.”

“No, it’s fine. This is our company’s issue anyway. Plus, I bet Vorona’s shocked about what happened with Shizuo, too.”

Simon returned from cleaning up the private booths now that the restaurant had cleared out. He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Oh, Shizuo, he good guy. He get vindication. What means vindication? Same as vacation? Or vegetation? You want vegetable roll? Today you can pay in Japanese yendication.”

“Wait, are there days you don’t accept yen? And I appreciate the offer, but I can’t spend any more money…”

“You don’t worry about it! I put it on tab! You need desperate measures in time of desperation!”

“I swear, you’re a whole lot better at Japanese than you let on…”

At the end of this rather typical chat, Tom paid his bill and got up to leave. When he opened the door, he looked outside first.

“…Hmm?” He stopped in his tracks.

It wasn’t that anything had crossed his field of view. But when he scanned the scenery of the city, he received an overwhelming impression of something being off.

Huh? The hell? Something’s…weird.

He slowly examined the area but couldn’t identify the source of the feeling. It seemed less like the scenery itself, though, and more like the people in it.

Huh? Then he picked up on it. Is it just me, or is it…crowded? Huh? I mean, this place is closing up for the night, so…

He pulled out his phone and checked the time. It was already after midnight. But there was an unsettling amount of foot traffic for this hour. Even during summer vacation, when young adults were sure to be out for the nightlife, why would it be so bustling, especially when the cops were racing around?

It almost felt like a nine o’clock crowd to Tom. Then he noticed that one distant man was watching him.

“Hmm?”

He didn’t recognize the man. And yet, there was something about him. It was one man in a group of men and women standing at the corner of a parking garage behind the locksmith.

Tom readjusted his glasses and took a few steps for a closer look.

Oh…I know I’ve seen him before. Probably from one of our debt-collection headshots… But I don’t think he had that hotshot host-club haircut before…

Suddenly, there was a different man within his view. A pedestrian dressed like a salaryman who had noticed Tom and was approaching with a smile.

“Huh?”

At first he thought the man was heading for the restaurant right behind him, but it was past last call, and they’d taken down the welcoming curtain over the doorway. And the salaryman wasn’t looking at the building; he was looking directly at Tom.

What’s up? Is this guy drunk? he wondered, staring closely at the man.

His face was indeed a red color. But it wasn’t actually his skin that was red.

It was the whites of his eyes, bloodshot to an extreme shade of red.

“?!”

Something was wrong. Tom took a step back, wanting to return inside.

But the salaryman began to run now, sprinting at him. He wasn’t carrying anything. But there was something dangerous and aggressive in his movements—and then his hand darted out to reveal nails sharpened to sawtooth points, either bitten or clipped into shape, that hunted for Tom’s soft skin.

“Whoa!!” Tom yelped. But the man’s body stopped short just before the nails would have made contact.

“…?”

Simon’s large hand had closed around the man’s arm.

“Oh, sir, you no fight here. Eat sushi is better, but we closed now. You come back tomorrow, have good time. We make market price special just for you,” Simon said. He let go and pushed the man’s chest.

The salaryman lost his balance and stumbled backward several steps. Then Simon grabbed Tom’s arm instead and pulled him back into the building.

“Huh? Wait!”

The door closed, and Simon turned the lock.

“…What’s going on?”

The last customer in the place, the man with the shaved head, looked at Shizuo and Tom curiously.

Simon spoke a few words of Russian to Denis. Rather uncharacteristically, there was no smile on Simon’s face; Denis scowled, too, when he heard the message, and he looked through the windows to see what was happening outside.

Then, in his capacity as business manager, Denis warned the bald man and Tom, “Sirs, you’re better off not going out.”

“What does that mean?” asked the other man. The chef gestured with his eyes to the window. Tom and the man turned to look.

“…”

“Whoa, what the hell is that?” Tom exclaimed, while the bald man went silent.

The view outside the building was the same as it ever was.

Except for one thing…

Slow-moving crowds of people, all with bloodshot eyes, and all staring right at them.

Automated parking garage, Ikebukuro

“Tch…screwed that one up,” cursed Takashi Nasujima, who made a big show of being disappointed. “But he definitely reacted like he recognized my face. It was a good thing I checked before I run across Shizuo Heiwajima. Guess I should keep the disguise on.”

Nasujima put a face mask and sunglasses on to hide his features. “Can’t let it get out that I’m around town. I’ve got to slip Saika into that guy with the dreadlocks. He might come in handy as an ace up my sleeve against Shizuo,” he chuckled.

Next to him, Shijima shivered violently. “What the hell is this…? They’re all like them…”

He was thinking of how the members of Amphisbaena had looked when Izaya Orihara’s subordinate had sliced them up. Earthworm and the rest of them had had glowing red eyes, as though their bodies had been taken over by aliens, and they’d followed the orders of the one who had cut them.

“You don’t have to worry about it. I’ve instructed them not to cut you. For now.”

“Er, uh, okay…”

Nasujima didn’t explain anything about Saika to Shijima. Of course, a blanket reassurance only made him more anxious. Nasujima then put even more pressure on Shijima by asking, “By the way, have you fully infiltrated the Dollars by now? Did the plan go well?”

“Huh? Oh…yes. I think.”

“I wasn’t asking you to think.”

“S-sorry, sir!” Shijima said on instinct, eliciting a laugh from Nasujima.

“Look, don’t get so formal with me. For one thing, Saika is extremely inflexible; when you’re being controlled, the red eyes are obvious and unavoidable. It’s valuable having people like you, Shijima, who can help us out while in a normal state.”

“O-okay…”

“I honestly didn’t expect to grow so many ‘grandchildren’ at this rate, however. It was worth doing those experiments to find out that nails and teeth could be treated like Saika, too. All you really need is a bit of pain and fear. We won’t need to take Kujiragi’s route—we can even feast on the Awakusu-kai’s turf.”

“Ummm…if you’ve got all this power, why bother with the Awakusu-kai, when you can just take over the world…?”

Nasujima shook his head from side to side. “No, no, no, Shijima. It’s not good to set your sights too high. Yes, it would be lovely to control the entire world. But you see, I’m not looking to be a king. I just want a lot of money that can buy me a lot of comfort, and the ability to have my way with a well-endowed woman whenever I want. That’s all.”

Shijima felt a bit gloomy; the absence of the phrase woman I love in that statement felt like a revelation of Nasujima’s true nature. But it was true that the man had great power at his command.

If the street slashings started again, they would cause a big commotion, but he never hesitated. In a place without security cameras, he surrounded his targets with “grandchildren,” and as soon as they panicked, he had them pierced with Saika blades—from small knives to claws and teeth, even little safety pins hidden in the palm. Anything would do.

It was as simple as that.

The reason the last time had become so public was that the targets had been cut so badly, they’d needed to go to the hospital to recuperate. Nasujima had realized that and done his best to experiment with methods to quickly but surreptitiously grow more grandchildren, until he had constructed this simple method.

In this one area, at least, Nasujima lived up to his credentials as a former teacher. He told the woman who was once his pupil, “I got this power all because of you. I’m grateful, Haruna.”

He was speaking to Haruna Niekawa, who stood across from Shijima. He had once been a shining star to Haruna, and until yesterday, she might have passed out with excitement if she had heard him say those words.

But now she just smiled dully and didn’t even turn to look at Nasujima. “…Right.”

Shijima eyed her out of the corner of his vision and wondered, This chick…used to work with Izaya Orihara, right? Awww, man, this is all crazy. I don’t even know what’s goin’ on anymore. He plunged into terrified, ignorant chaos, his face pale and sunken.

Meanwhile, Nasujima’s barely exposed skin was bright and shiny. “It’s gonna happen tomorrow. No, I guess it’s technically today now… We’re going to settle everything today, Haruna.”

“…Right.”

“I can’t wait for that all to be done. Then I’ll be able to give you allll the attention again, Haruna…,” he said with a leer, licking his lips. His eyes traveled from Niekawa’s face to her chest, and then lower.

Despite the gaze of pure lust sliding all over her skin, Haruna Niekawa merely stared into nothingness with bloodshot eyes and spoke in a voice with no affect.

“…Yes, Mother.”

It was the word that proved her free will had been eaten away by Saika.

If it was love that helped spread Saika, then Nasujima was indeed a man overflowing with it.

His love was very close to Saika’s accursed love, a dedication to satisfying his own desires. It was a kind of twisted self-love that wasn’t quite narcissism, but you could certainly call it a type of love.

At this point in time, Nasujima had about 2,300 of Saika’s grandchildren under his control. There was no ideal, no vision behind this. The only thing they spread through the town was his own vulgar desire.

Without the restraint Kujiragi had, Nasujima’s rampage showed no signs of slowing down. It corroded the neighborhood of Ikebukuro in the most twisted possible form.

Ruined building

Something was happening in Ikebukuro.

Mikado felt that premonition so strongly that it might as well have been conviction.

While the Blue Squares were napping in their cars or nearby twenty-four-hour manga cafés, Mikado remained inside the abandoned building. The ones who stayed up at night were down on the first floor, but Mikado still wasn’t in the mood to sleep.

There was the evening news story about the abandoned severed head. Then the report about a police vehicle being attacked in Ikebukuro. Lastly, the recent chat room incident.

On the backside of these events involving himself and the Dollars, something else was moving forward in Ikebukuro. And it was undoubtedly something with an occult, magical bent, like Celty.

Mikado was mildly surprised that he didn’t find himself elated by this situation. His old middle school self—or even his self at the first Dollars meetup—would have been thrilled at the idea of a new life just around the corner, and his heart would have been jumping out of his chest with joy.

So why was now different? If he placed his hand over his heart, he felt no quickening there, no stirring of the blood. If anything, his current mental state was closer to Who cares?

He was worried about Celty, his acquaintance. But it was a very commonplace and commonsense feeling, that mundane concern about someone he knew being a victim.

Mikado was at least a little alarmed and confused about the disappearance of the version of himself that longed for the abnormal.

It’s so strange. It feels like I’m turning into something other than myself.

On the day of the skirmish between the Dollars and Toramaru, from the very moment he’d driven that ballpoint pen through Aoba’s hand, he’d felt a kind of light dizziness at all times. It grew stronger by the day, until at last he was standing before scenery he’d never seen before.

Normally, he might panic. He might deny what was happening. Insist that this couldn’t be possible. That he hadn’t meant for it to be this way.

But Mikado Ryuugamine accepted it all.

He might end up killing a person.

He might get killed instead.

He might kill himself.

He accepted even this present situation, so steeped in predictions and premonitions, as a part of his ordinary daily life.

But I don’t want to die, and I definitely don’t want to be a murderer, he thought, a sign that even as he accepted the situation, his mind was still functioning properly. But since I’ve got this now, it would be a waste if I didn’t go ahead and use it.

It was through this imitation of typical everyday thought processes that Mikado found himself in possession of something that was absolutely abnormal and atypical for Japan.

Depending on where you lived, it could be a totally ordinary tool. And in fact, the man named Horada had possessed one when the Yellow Scarves and the Dollars were at war. But Mikado had just missed the chance to see it in action.

He sighed and gingerly picked up the object, which was wrapped in newspaper.

“I bet…that when you’re not going to fire it, it’s a bad idea to put your finger on the trigger.”

He was holding a gleaming black automatic pistol.

What Izumii had brought to him as a “present” was none other than a weapon that was a crime to even possess in Japan.

In a sense, it was small beans at this point. When Horada had shot Shizuo, he certainly hadn’t killed him. And Celty had defended herself against far more powerful rifle shots. Even tonight, Shizuo had stared down the barrel of Vorona’s gun.

But these incidents had all happened to Shizuo and Celty. And when the boy named Mikado Ryuugamine grabbed this gun, it indicated a major shift in the standing of the Dollars as a whole.

Obviously, with guns being illegal, it was not the sort of thing your average person could pick up and use. Trying to actually aim with it and hit a moving target? Nearly impossible.

But that was the sort of thing that could be improved upon, depending on the circumstances. If you knew how to hold it steady and pull the trigger, you could do the job even if you were an amateur, given a close enough proximity. At a slight distance, Horada had succeeded in hitting Shizuo Heiwajima’s side and leg.

If you had a sleeping target, you could kill them for sure. But only if you had the guts to go through with it.

And if you were going to stand next to someone and shoot them, it wouldn’t be that different from using a knife. Yet, there was no tool better for threatening than this.

Most likely, Aozaki had chosen to pass the weapon along through Izumii to see what Mikado Ryuugamine would do with this tool. Even by the Awakusu-kai’s standards, this was highly unorthodox.

And Mikado, having been given this gun for unorthodox reasons, now gazed upon it with very orthodox eyes. It was the same way one gazed at a newfangled remote from when TVs went digital and the number of buttons multiplied. There was no special excitement or fear in his eyes, just ordinary examination.

“Guns are scary. I can’t stop trembling,” he said, the kind of thing a normal boy might say. But on the inside, a different feeling was blooming.

What is this? I’m supposed to be afraid of it…but right now, I feel much more afraid of Mr. Akabayashi from yesterday, he thought, which was rather out of place. Then he murmured to himself, still very matter-of-fact:

“I better look up the right way to shoot this thing online.”

He didn’t need any guts for that.

He’d gotten all of that out of the way the moment he’d opened the door to the abnormal on the day of the Dollars’ first meeting.

Mikado Ryuugamine could fire that gun.

But who to point it at? Or what to use it for? That, he was still uncertain of.

Among the options he had for targets of this gun, he could see the vague image of his own face—but at this stage, Mikado could not choose anyone.

He didn’t even know whether that was a good thing or a sign of his own weakness.

But knowing that having the gun was a form of proud, doomed resistance—Mikado Ryuugamine decided to make an enemy of his own weakness and everything caught in its vortex.

And perhaps Ikebukuro itself.

Morning arrived in Tokyo.

But whether the clock hand hit the sixth hour or the seventh, sunlight did not fall upon the neighborhood of Ikebukuro.

Pure black shadow enveloped the space over the top of the city, a cover that put the word cloudy to shame.

It was like the night still continued, and the alien, bewildering experience frightened residents and made major headlines.

Morning never arrived for Ikebukuro on this day.

It was explained for the mass audience as a “natural phenomenon caused by the effects of a special type of sandstorm” and would eventually be forgotten as another freak event. But it was, in fact, completely supernatural in nature.

In a town where the sky was covered by a fairy’s shadow, a story of twisted love quietly came to a close.