Durarara!! - Volume 2 - Chapter Ep

Epilogue & Next Prologue: The Blue Sky Is Already…Dead?

A van drove the streets of Ikebukuro.

For some reason, the side door was brand-new while the rest was old, and it stood out like a sore thumb due to some kind of anime illustration on the side.

“…Well, we definitely can’t get up to trouble in this van anymore…”

Yumasaki handled the door repair, as he knew someone who worked with sheet metal. The result was that their van looked incredibly nerdy now.

“Shit, I should have known this would happen if I asked Yumasaki for help,” Kadota grumbled. Meanwhile, Togusa gripped the steering wheel in silence. The otaku had already burned one of his cars to the ground, and he was obviously furious with them.

The guilty party, meanwhile, was busy with the usual chitchat in the backseat.

“Oh, right. We gotta pick up the Dengeki Bunko releases for May.”

“Yeah, the fifth volume of Dokuro-chan is out.”

“It’s an odd-numbered volume, so it must have another final chapter in it.”

“Can’t wait to hear about Allison’s kids.”

Kadota leaned over to see that Yumasaki and Karisawa were sprawled out in the back of the van, rear seat removed, reading through a pile of books and manga.

Can’t believe they don’t get carsick, he thought with wry admiration. The nerd talk continued.

“I’m already looking forward to next month’s releases.”

“Yeah, it’s the last volume of Lunatic Moon. Gotta love Tomaz and what a little cutie he is.”

“Even in two dimensions, I’m not interested in guys.”

“Aww, you’re no fun, Yumacchi.”

Kadota could tell that Togusa’s driving was getting more and more violent as their nonsensical chatter continued. He turned to face forward and held his head in his hands. Yes, they were irritating Togusa. The problem was, they had no idea that they were.

But what’s done is done. No use raising a fuss about it now.

They had bigger problems than infighting right now.

The events of that prior day had been nicknamed the “Night of the Ripper.”

The authorities hadn’t made any headway into solving the incident that produced more than fifty victims in a single night.

But public opinion held that the events of that night were something different from the string of ongoing street slashings. The primary reason for this was that all of the victims were young men wearing yellow bandannas.

At the same time, there had been a huge brawl in South Ikebukuro Park, so the residents of the town assumed it was some motorcycle gang squabble. There was just one teenage girl included in the victims, but she was explained away as one of the usual slasher victims.

The case was classified as a color gang’s internal conflict, but this only meant that the heightened tension in the town reached even greater levels.

What worried Kadota most was that the Dollars were listed as a potential culprit for the attack.

When Celty and Shizuo captured the slasher, they found he had alibis for some of the other crimes and figured that it would be pointless to give him to the police, so they left him outside of a hospital instead. He really was being controlled by something and had no memories of anything.

They’d had him blindfolded while questioning him, so he couldn’t possibly bring charges against them…but just in case, Celty arranged for some support money through Shinra. While they felt guilty about hitting him with the car, they were essentially even, as far as they cared.

But this meant that no slasher had been caught.

Celty sent a message saying not to worry about that anymore, and nothing like it had occurred since the Night of the Ripper—but the fact that the police hadn’t caught anyone meant that society at large was still nervous.

As long as that fear doesn’t get turned against the Dollars, Kadota hoped, looking outside the window.

The town was full of people in yellow bandannas. At least half of the crowd was wearing them. They weren’t really doing anything, but their eyes were all full of hostility toward something. That hostility colored the entire neighborhood of Ikebukuro yellow.

The Yellow Sky will soon rise…

Kadota recalled the line that launched the Yellow Scarves Rebellion from the very start of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel and the irony of the Yellow Scarves gang that colored the streets.

The kids were young—many were in middle school, and some even looked like elementary age.

Kadota looked up at the blue sky above with irritation and repeated a line he’d said once before, but with more disgust this time.

“…The town is starting to fall apart.”

Shit, shit! I’m so tired of everyone treating me like a fool! I’m a teacher! And a far more talented and intelligent teacher than the others! How can this be happening to me?!

Just you wait, Anri Sonohara.

I’ll ruin your life at the faculty meeting! I’ll tell them you attacked me with a katana! If I tell them you were working with Niekawa, the other teachers will take my side.

And screw that stupid Niekawa! I fool around with her once, and she becomes a damn stalker!

Ooh, what if I use that as a threat against Anri? Could I leech some money out of her?

I’ve got the Awakusu-kai backing me, I’ll say. That’ll freak her out.

…She will freak out, right?

Guns are stronger than swords, after all.

Yeah, that’s a plan.

Sonohara, Niekawa, Kida: No one messes with me and gets away with it…

At the same moment—

“What’s up, Shizuo? Why the good mood?”

Shizuo was on his way to collect some debts for the hookup website, dragged out by his boss, Tom. He was normally sluggish and reluctant to work, but he was being rather proactive today.

“Nothin’ much. Just cleared my head a bit yesterday.”

Even the way he spoke to his boss seemed a bit more natural and polite than normal. Tom couldn’t help but be curious, but business called.

“Today’s target is a real piece of work. He borrows five hundred thou, then tries to weasel out of it by saying, ‘I’ve got yakuza friends!’ Well, I laughed my ass off when I looked into it. Not only does he not have any yakuza connections, all he did was borrow money from a back-alley loan shark working for the Awakusu-kai. And somehow he thinks that gives him any kind of leg to stand on?”

“So we’re going to find him and break that leg for him?”

“That’s basically it… Man, you really are excited today, aren’t you?”

“Actually, I think I’ve finally figured out how to control my strength. I’m just dying to test it out,” Shizuo remarked, his eyes flashing with childish exuberance behind his sunglasses.

In the end, Shizuo’s strength turned into violence.

But as for whether the liberation of his power turned his life in a more positive direction—that would depend on how he used it in the future.

It would be up to the man Shizuo was about to pound to decide what the answer was.

“Funny thing is, it turns out this guy is a teacher. From Raira Academy.”

“Well, that makes it even worse. It’ll feel good to sock him one.”

“Just don’t go overboard and kill him. Let’s see, Nasujima, Nasujima…ah, here’s the place.” Tom spotted the apartment nameplate. They took positions on either side of the door and rang the buzzer.

Who is it at this time of night…?

I-is it him? That informant?

Has he come to make me disappear?

Or is it Anri?! Or Niekawa?! The Black Rider?!

Shit! Shit! Not now! I was almost ready!

You won’t get me without a fight.

I dare you to open that door. I’ll crush your skull with this extinguisher.

“…No answer. His electric meter’s been reading steadily, so I’m pretty sure he’s still here.”

“Let’s open this up.”

Shizuo squeezed the doorknob. It cracked and broke out of the door, lock and all. He swung the door open forcefully.

A fire extinguisher appeared from within and struck him soundly on the head.

Silence.

After a brief hush, Shizuo grabbed the extinguisher, which was still pressed to his forehead, and crumpled it with his fingers alone.

A blast of exhaust and white powder buffeted Nasujima in his hiding spot.

“Gaah!”

As Nasujima coughed, Shizuo slowly lowered the fire extinguisher. His boss had already sprinted off for safety, which left only Shizuo and Nasujima in the apartment hallway.

From behind the extinguisher appeared the face of some vengeful god, veins bulging on every surface.

“That…hurt, dammit!”

He threw a punch using the twisted remains of the extinguisher like brass knuckles, catching Nasujima smack in the middle of the face and sending him into dreamland.

Shizuo’s boss watched the explosion from a safe distance away and remarked in relief, “Good, that’s the Shizuo I like to see.”

And thus began a day in the life of Shizuo Heiwajima, just like any other.

Just as his name suggested, a day of peace and quiet, if only for himself.

The next time Nasujima opened his eyes, it was already April, he had been fired from his job due to complaints about sexual harassment from students, and there was a gang of young toughs from the Awakusu-kai at his bedside.

But that’s a story for another time.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Sonohara?”

Mikado Ryuugamine was watching Anri in her hospital bed with concern.

“Damn that slasher! So sorry, Anri. If only I’d been at your side twenty-four hours a day, this never would have happened,” Masaomi Kida joked, though there was a surprisingly serious, angry look in his eyes.

They’d skipped school and raced to the hospital the moment they heard Anri was a slashing victim.

She was sure they’d said a lot of stuff to her, but she couldn’t remember what it was. Anri only remembered that she was happy about it.

Later that night, she didn’t have the usual dream.

And yet, when she woke up in the morning, she wasn’t plunged into despair.

Mikado and Masaomi visited again the next day.

Masaomi was attempting to seduce the nurse when his phone suddenly went off.

“Masaomi! Turn your phone off in the hospital!”

“Sorry, sorry, gotta be careful about that. Looks like I got called out. Gotta leave for today.”

“Huh? Really?”

“Well, I’ll be back tomorrow, Anri. And remember: All men are wolves, so keep the nurse call button close in case Mikado tries anything funny,” Masaomi warned as he left the room. Based on that, he didn’t seem likely to return today.

Given the criminal angle of her injuries, Anri was in a private room so the police could question her. The nurse had just come by for her check, so no one would be coming for a while.

That meant that Anri and Mikado were completely alone in the room.

It was his chance.

Though he felt that being thankful was inappropriate, Mikado couldn’t help but be grateful to God. Normally Masaomi would be running interference, but now they could finally speak alone.

It was nearly a year since he first met Anri.

Time for him to move on from just being her class representative partner.

Mikado Ryuugamine steadied his breathing and did his very best to act normal.

“Um, hey, Sonohara.”

“What is it, Ryuugamine?”

“I w-was just wondering if there was anyone you had…on your mind?”

He knew that it was totally impossible, but he couldn’t help but hope against hope that she might say, “Actually, you…”

Mikado waited for Anri’s response, praying to God for a positive response.

“Hmm… Well, there are some people I look up to.”

“…?! O-oh. You don’t say. Who would that be?” he tried to reply as nonchalantly as possible, ringing bells of doom in his ears.

“Well…I didn’t say this to the police, but…I was attacked by the slasher a few hours before I actually got hurt…and some people were there to save me. In particular, there was a guy wearing bartender clothes, and the other person there was supercool…”

“Bartender clothes?”

That’s not Shizuo, is it?

Mikado shook that horrifying image out of his head and waited for her to continue.

But I think he’s like me… Someone who can’t actually love other people, Anri thought to herself. But by not saying it aloud, she kept Mikado in prickly suspense.

“And the other person was…well, don’t be too shocked.”

“Who?”

“It was the Black Rider, believe it or not!”

Gong! The bell rang again. Mikado felt his heart being ripped out of his chest, but he did his best to keep the smile up for Anri’s sake.

“We talked a bit after that…and I could feel such a radiation of purpose and affection… It seems like the Black Rider has everything I don’t… Ha-ha, I suppose you wouldn’t believe that, would you?”

As a matter of fact, Mikado knew Celty well. And based on the combination with the bartender outfit, it was most certainly Celty and Shizuo.

Huh…but…what? I mean, Celty’s a woman, so…huh?

Mikado was completely baffled until he remembered that from a distance Celty’s gender was essentially indistinguishable. But if he was going to explain that to Anri, he’d have to reveal that he knew Celty. And in order to explain that, he might be forced to talk about the Dollars.

No, I can’t do that. I don’t want to get her involved in our side of things.

He thought it over rapidly and decided to try to push her away from them.

“Oh, but that Black Rider and the other folks…they’re so far outside of what we experience in our normal lives, you know?”

Says the guy who was obsessed with the abnormal, he thought wryly. But Anri cut him down with a faint smile.

“Ryuugamine… In the world we live in, what do you think is truly abnormal?”

“Uh…well… Using mental powers, crazy events popping off, stuff like that?” he replied, confused. She shook her head, still smiling.

“It’s when nothing happens. When the same exact things happen day after day without even the slightest variation. From the moment you wake to the moment you fall asleep, the same boring repetition. That is the most unlikely event of all.”

“Oh…good point.”

“Breaking the peace or having your peace broken, yearning for boredom or change deep within your heart—I think that is humanity’s true nature.”

Mikado wasn’t sure what Anri meant or how to respond. She gave him a sad smile and wrapped up her point.

“So I think…I’ve finally gotten back to normal.”

“Huh?”

I’ve been escaping into the abnormal world of my dreams ever since Mom and Dad died, and now I’m finally back on this side, she thought, smiling at the confused Mikado.

After meeting hours were over and she was alone in the hospital room, Anri stared up at the ceiling.

In the end, she didn’t tell Mikado or Masaomi the truth: that she was Saika. They probably wouldn’t believe her if she had. Of course, it was easy for her to assume that, given that she didn’t know the truth about Mikado, either.

This is for the best.

Ryuugamine and Masaomi are good friends of mine.

I can’t get them involved. I can’t draw them into the underworld.

I won’t cause any more slashings. I won’t let that happen.

That means that neither of them will need to worry about anything…

She imagined their faces and then something else entirely.

The one really pulling the strings.

As she was the one controlling all of Saika’s children, Anri understood virtually everything that had caused events to take the path they did. From the various slashers—and Haruna Niekawa—she had learned of the presence of this mastermind.

She didn’t know what he looked like or his goal, but…if that mastermind thought he could use them to destroy the town again—if he tried to destroy Mikado’s and Masaomi’s peace…

She felt her fists clench atop the blanket.

Racked by unease and determination, Anri thought of the mastermind’s name.

Which was…

“Izaya Orihara is a very strange name, when you think about it…”

“Hmm… It might just be coincidence that I turned out the way I did, but I think it actually suits me perfectly.”

In an apartment in Shinjuku, Izaya Orihara was playing a curious customized game of shogi by himself. A secretary was making rounds between mountains of documents and a computer behind him.

Izaya didn’t bother to help her with the avalanche of processing ahead of her. Instead he asked, “Namie, how much do you believe in coincidence?”

“…What do you mean?”

The board was triangular with triangular spaces, and normal shogi pieces were arranged neatly into three different formations.

“They’re probably thinking that all of the stuff that just happened was mere happenstance. When Haruna Niekawa was in Anri Sonohara’s apartment, they think Nasujima showing up was a coincidence. Nasujima was pressured into being there at that point in time. He was flattered into it. He had to be given Anri Sonohara’s precise address. That was all me. Funny thing is, for a teacher, he was a real idiot. He could’ve just looked up her address by peeking into the other class’s student register. Maybe he just didn’t want them to spread rumors about him. The guy who hit on every girl in the school!”

Izaya chuckled as he recalled the entire string of events.

“Another funny thing is when you research fairies and possessed swords and all that stuff under the assumption that they’re real, you actually come up with quite a lot of results.”

Izaya was positively tickled by the existence of all that information he hadn’t known, and remembering the conclusion of Saika’s incident sent him trembling with excitement.

“The only true coincidence this time was that when Nasujima took my money, the real Saika showed up.”

Nasujima led an unstable life to begin with. He had borrowed money from one of the Awakusu-kai’s loan sharks, and his back was against the wall. So he came up with a plan. Haruna Niekawa had once threatened him with a knife. What if he blackmailed her parents over that and squeezed some money out of them?

The Awakusu-kai put him through to an information dealer named Izaya Orihara. When he visited the man’s office and Izaya said he needed to leave for a while and just walked out, there was a black bag on the table with multiple stacks of bills poking out. Just as Izaya expected, Nasujima ran off with the money. He probably expected to pay off the loan shark and then hightail it for safety. Perhaps he figured that given Izaya’s line of work, he wouldn’t be reporting that stolen cash to the police.

All that was left was to hire Celty to capture Nasujima.

Izaya threatened to tell the Awakusu-kai about the stolen money and thus had himself a faithful little pawn.

That was his angle to using Haruna Niekawa, the true Saika.

“But then, out of the blue comes the owner of the real Saika, not a simple copy like Niekawa. That made things much more interesting… Personally, it would have been perfect if Shizu had died in the fray, but I can’t ask for too much, I suppose.”

“How were things made ‘interesting’?” Namie asked the elated Izaya, her own face an emotionless mask. To her, the only thing that mattered in the world was her brother’s happiness, and everything else was immaterial—including herself.

Izaya knew her bizarre proclivities, but he was like a child bursting with a secret inside, his eyes sparkling.

“Now the city is split in three, between the Dollars, the Yellow Scarves, and Anri Sonohara’s demonic army… And the demon blade has infiltrated the ranks of both the others.”

“Hmm. And that’s interesting to you?”

“The shit won’t hit the fan right away… But for now, a few sparks will do fine. In a few months, those sparks will smoke and smolder, and…oh, I just can’t wait anymore!”

He laughed and rolled back onto the sofa, as giddy as a boy waiting for the release of a new video game. Meanwhile, Namie was still expressionless and flat.

She asked, “The Yellow Scarves might have the numbers, but weren’t they just created by some stupid kid three years ago? Doesn’t speak well to their balance, does it?”

“Actually, no… Think about it. It means that ‘stupid kid’ is able to handle an organization of that many people. The threat is real!” he proclaimed, then muttered mostly to himself.

“Of course, it’s not like the shogun of the Yellow Scarves is a total stranger to me, either…”

“…Don’t try to drag me back into this.”

It was an abandoned husk of a factory somewhere in the city, a distance away from Ikebukuro. Within that desolate, empty space—almost unthinkable for such an urban location—squirmed hundreds of shadows.

The owners of those shadows were all young—boys and girls from elementary to high school ages. Even more striking was their clothing: While all of their outfits were different, every single person inside the factory building wore a yellow bandanna somewhere.

“I don’t want any part of it. You got that?” a languid and tired voice rang out, at odds with the stifling nature of the place. “Normally, I’d claim that you would never understand how I feel, but if you were psychics who could actually read my mind, I’d feel pretty stupid, wouldn’t I? So I won’t say that.”

No one else spoke. The lazy voice continued to bounce off the walls.

“At any rate, once I got involved with Izaya, I decided that I was never going to come back here,” the man said in the midst of the yellow vortex, his face deadly serious.

Despite his complete denial of the group, one of the Yellow Scarves nearby spoke up without a hint of respect. “C’mon…we ain’t got nothin’ goin’ on without you, bud. The yakuza are too scary to mess with, and we can’t run a business with nothing but numbers on our side.”

The next moment, a much larger boy next to him kicked him in the face.

“His title is Shogun.”

The original boy waved off the angry one with an idle hand. “Nah, nah, it’s cool! I’m not cut out to be a fancy shogun at this point. Just a simple commoner. Commoner? Hell, I’m just a student.”

And the man they called Shogun, creator of the Yellow Scarves, got to his feet.

“Seriously, though, when did this turn into such a massive operation? We could give the Dollars a run for their money, yeah? All that yellow is almost kinda creepy though.”

It was an Ikebukuro color gang, the kind that had been featured in a famous TV drama. The boy had chosen yellow for their color because it looked so cool on the gang in the show. The odd thing was—

“Actually, it’s not yellow in the original books. I was real shocked when I borrowed it from the library!” he cackled, but no one else joined in.

“That doesn’t matter, Shogun. The thing is…we have suspicions about the Dollars’ involvement.”

“…”

“We know you’re one of the Dollars, Shogun. There are several others of us who are double affiliated. But the Dollars is a gang that otherwise has very few connections to other groups. I suspect that several of the Dollars attacked us on the day of the incident…and it’s not just me. Plenty of us feel the same way, Shogun.”

Even after that plaintive speech, the “Shogun” didn’t lose the nonchalant smirk.

“I’m saying I ain’t doing anything for your sakes. I got my peace and tranquillity, which is what I wanted: surrounded by good friends, living a life of just the right amount of danger.”

In the next instant, his carefree expression tightened up. “But that serial slasher destroyed my tranquillity.”

His reptilian eyes were sharp and cold enough to freeze everyone there. The entire gathering shivered with the power of that shift.

“Society calls it gang warfare, but that’s wrong. It’s something else, something weirder…but that doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t. I’m gonna destroy this slasher. And if there’s more than one, then multiple destructions are in order,” he said with quiet determination, looking out upon the crowd.

“I care about my people, of course…but it’s Anri getting hurt that I really can’t handle.”

The crowd didn’t recognize the name, but no one was going to speak up and interrupt.

“No matter how many people are involved, we’re going to annihilate this goddamn slasher. And if the Dollars are behind this—well, I’m one of them…”

The Shogun paused, then spoke as if all the air had been wrung out of his lungs.

“But I’m prepared to bring them down from the inside.”

In the empty factory, the Yellow Scarves’ shogun, Masaomi Kida, sat alone in a pipe-frame chair, dazed.

“Shit…how dare you…pull me back…,” he lamented to the ceiling, cursing the unseen slasher. The only things in his mind were retribution against whomever destroyed his peace of mind—and the smiling faces of Anri, Mikado, his classmates, and his friends.

This drove his irritation into hatred—for the “Saika” that the Internet rumored was the culprit.

“Dammit… How dare you pull me back in… How dare you…dammit!”

“The fun thing about staring down at the board from above is the illusion that you are God.”

Izaya poked and prodded at the triangular shogi board, smirking like a child.

“God attacks! Hi-yah!” he chirped, pouring the oil from a lighter onto the board. The smell spread throughout the room, but he paid it no mind, pushing the splattered pieces around so that the three kings were gathered in the center.

“A three-way battle’s a wonderful thing. Especially when the leaders are so closely aligned,” he gloated, his innocent smile now full of malice as he lit a match. “The sweeter the honeymoon, the greater the despair as it burns ever higher.”

Izaya tossed the match onto the board.

Flame.

Transparent blue flame, almost cold in its appearance, enveloped the shogi board. It burned quickly, crackling and charring the pieces as the oil evaporated. The wooden pieces burned up one after the other on the glass table.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha! Look, the pieces burn like trash!” he gloated, a parody of some stereotypical mad villain. It was Namie, who wasn’t even watching the exhibition, who doused his excitement with a freezing comment.

“Well, anything will become trash if you burn it. Now clean all of that up.”

“Tsk. You’re no fun, you know that?” he griped, shaking his head in disappointment. But he was back to his good mood in moments. He picked up a pair of cards from the table nearby. “The real question is, how do the other cards who aren’t my pawns move now? Yumasaki’s group, Shinra Kishitani, Simon, Shiki from the Awakusu-kai…the cops… But I suppose Shizu’s got to be the king.”

He flipped the king card right into the flames. “And Celty’s the joker…no, the queen. Then the joker is…Shinra’s dad with Nebula…? Know what, I don’t really care.”

Izaya tossed all of the cards in the fire, bored. As he watched the pile flame away, he turned to the object resting next to him.

“It’s actually getting interesting now…don’t you agree?”

The eyes of the beautiful severed head resting next to Izaya just barely seemed to twitch.

“Ahh…it’s so peaceful…”

On the terrace of the luxury apartment building, Celty lay sprawled out on the deck, soaking in the sun. She made a point of typing how comfortable she was into the PDA to show it to Shinra.

He responded by claiming that she’d get sunburned and helped her put on sunscreen and set up an umbrella before getting down next to her.

“By the way, about Saika’s katana—it pretty much turned out the way you said it would. Thank you.”

“Ha-ha-ha, anything for you, Celty. But I wish you’d whisper your thanks into my ear while we’re in bed. In fact, who needs a bed when we can do it right h— Wugh!”

She thumped him in the stomach with a backhand punch to shut him up before putting her own doubt into words.

“But you were so precisely correct, it creeped me out a little. I was going to look into it myself, but when I looked on the Net and in the texts, I couldn’t find a single reference to a cursed sword named Saika. And your input on the matter was way more detailed than Izaya’s. How did you find this stuff out?”

“Oh, that. I found my dad’s diary.”

“?” Celty typed into the PDA, prompting Shinra for a less vague answer.

“Well, turns out my dad was researching Saika. He was really fascinated with this story of a sword that could ‘slice souls in two.’ He actually owned it until a few years ago, when he sold it to an antiques trader he knows. I believe the trader’s name was Sonohara, but I haven’t heard much about the place lately…”

“What?!”

Shinra’s father was the very man who smuggled Celty into Japan, as well as the man she suspected of stealing her head in the first place. Even Shinra didn’t know where he was or what he was doing now. What would he be doing studying Saika?

“When you say slice souls, that doesn’t mean…it could have been used to split the soul between my body and head so that my head could be stolen, does it?”

“Celty…you’re bang on. I’ve been thinking that very thing.”

“…No. Never mind. No use getting angry at you.”

The Headless Rider gave up and turned over to bask in the warm sunlight again.

“If you’re going to sunbathe, it’d be a lot more effective if you took your clothes of—Fwrgh!”

She punched Shinra again and looked up at the sky.

It was so very vast and blue. She took a tangible feeling of peace from it.

The town below might be gripped with chaos and confusion, but the blue sky never changed.

For a moment, she disconnected herself from the city and looked up at the blue to ponder Anri and Shizuo.

They were both awkward people who had trouble loving others. But for some reason, these two people, flawed at being human, struck Celty as being incredibly human because of that.

What about me? I love Shinra…I think. But is my loving providing Shinra with anything? Is it making Shinra happy? she wondered idly as she stared up at the sky. Then she considered Mikado and the brown-haired boy, the ones who hung around with Anri.

When I listen to Anri and Mikado, it sounds like each of the trio is living off the others, finding things they lack themselves.

It seemed like that in itself was a form of love to Celty, as she slowly drifted off into sleep.

But she didn’t realize what a very cruel thing her last waking thought was.

She let sleep steal over her body, quietly, so quietly.

Letting her shadow feel just a moment’s peace.