Durarara!! - Volume 7 - Chapter 5

Ordinary D: Lovey-Dovey Chaka-Poko

Chaka-poko, chaka-poko.

The carriage trundled along behind the horse.

The silhouette suggested a relaxed, regal air as it glided through the light and shade of the trees, as elegant as a leaf drifting through the vast expanse of time.

All except for one detail…

The silhouette of the carriage was indeed nothing but a silhouette.

It was black without reflection, the very absence of light. A carriage somehow expanded from a two-dimensional plane of shadow into a three-dimensional object.

It was the kind of carriage that nobles would have traveled in not too long ago, but in this situation, it was like an illustration taken from a children’s book—a pop-up shadow-play children’s book, perhaps.

If anything added to the strangely alien nature of the sight, it was the horse pulling it, which wore a Western-style horse helmet that, like the rest of the carriage, was pitch-black and nonreflective.

Seen through the window of this shadow-play carriage come to life were two figures that couldn’t have been more different.

One was a young man wearing a white coat that stood in stark contrast to the carriage. The other was dressed in a manner befitting the vehicle’s owner—black clothes that seemed to be made of shadow itself.

The woman in black took out a PDA and showed it to the man.

“It’s the first time I’ve tried making a roofed carriage. I guess I can do it, after all,” the screen read.

The man in white beamed immensely. “Of course. Nothing is impossible for you, Celty.”

“It’s hard to take that as a compliment, because you say that sort of thing to me all the time.”

“Unfair! Fine, Celty—I shall challenge the limits of human possibility if that’s what will serve as proof of your hard work. Just give the order: What must I do? I could write a thousand pages of poems about your beloved Ikebukuro and print more copies of them worldwide than the Bible!” he babbled. The woman in black just typed into the PDA in silence.

“Shinra.”

“Mhm?!”

“Shut up for a bit.”

“…Mm.”

The man named Shinra sulked like a scolded child. The woman named Celty shrugged and jabbed at him with an elbow.

“Don’t get so depressed. All the highs and lows are too much to deal with.”

“…But you can’t blame me for being excited!” Shinra said, his eyes sparkling again. “We haven’t gone on a vacation together since I was a kid and you let me ride on the back of the motorcycle!”

“Does that count as a vacation?”

“Well, if you don’t think of that as a vacation, that makes this our very first! It’s incredible—what a historic day! Should I think of this as a honeymoon?!”

“Be careful to behave—unless you want one of those posthoneymoon ‘Oops, I’ve made a mistake’ divorces.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Shinra grumbled, all good behavior. His shoulders slumped, and he looked down—then leaped up off his seat, looking as if a lightning bolt struck his mind, shouting, “Y-you didn’t deny that this was our honeym— Gahk!”

The carriage jolted, and he slammed his head on the interior ceiling.

“A-are you all right?!”

“Owww… I’m fine… Just saw stars for a moment…”

“Are you sure you’re all right? Sorry, maybe I set the ceiling a bit low. I’m not wearing my helmet, so my sense of height is a bit off,” Celty typed into her PDA. She rubbed his head tenderly.

“No, it’s fine. It’s just the right height. It was my fault for jumping up like that.”

“No, I mean, are you sure you’re all right? I don’t really have a good gauge on how much it hurts to hit your head…”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. You’re better off not knowing. Also, that was the third time you asked me if I was all right. Your kindness is the most effective ice pack of all, Celty.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she typed and then turned toward the window.

Oh, Celty, Shinra thought. She must have red cheeks right about now. What a sweetheart.

As a matter of fact, he had no way of knowing if her cheeks were really blushing.

She didn’t have cheeks to flush in the first place.

Celty Sturluson was not human.

She was a type of fairy commonly known as a dullahan, found from Scotland to Ireland—a being that visits the homes of those close to death to inform them of their impending mortality.

The dullahan carried its own severed head under its arm, rode on a two-wheeled carriage called a Coiste Bodhar pulled by a headless horse, and approached the homes of the soon to die. Anyone foolish enough to open the door was drenched with a basin full of blood. Thus the dullahan, like the banshee, made its name as a herald of ill fortune throughout European folklore.

One theory claimed that the dullahan bore a strong resemblance to the Norse Valkyrie, but Celty had no way of knowing if this was true.

It wasn’t that she didn’t know; more accurately, she just couldn’t remember.

When someone back in her homeland had stolen her head, she had lost all her memories of what she was. It was the search for the faint trail of her head that had brought her here to Ikebukuro.

Now with a motorcycle instead of a headless horse and a riding suit instead of armor, she had wandered the streets of this neighborhood for decades.

But ultimately, she had not succeeded at retrieving her head, and her memories were still lost.

Celty, however, knew who had stolen her head originally.

She also knew who was preventing her from finding it.

But ultimately, that meant she didn’t know where it was.

And she was fine with that.

As long as she could be with those human beings she loved and who accepted her, she could happily live the way she was now.

She was a headless woman who let her actions speak for her missing face, who held the strong, secret desire to live within her heart.

That was Celty Sturluson in a nutshell.

But even for the very embodiment of the unusual and extraordinary, Celty had her own flavor of ordinary life.

She was a courier in Ikebukuro, taking various kinds of cargo to designated locations for money. Some people treated her like an odd-jobs guy who could do anything you needed, but she considered all of it to be a part-time job. She was not a professional.

Until about a year ago, she figured that if she did this job and traveled all over every inch of Ikebukuro, she might increase her chances of finding her head—but at this point, her dedication to the job was more rooted in just feeling guilty about the people who wouldn’t receive their important items otherwise.

In the past, she took on jobs that might have skirted the law, but now she did her best to avoid things of that nature. It was one thing if she got chased by the police or criminal organizations, but now she had people to care for—people she didn’t want harmed by this trouble.

On the other hand, Shinra Kishitani—the person she cared for first and foremost—was a black market doctor, an occupation designed to attract trouble.

Celty was essentially honest and caring by nature. She took her job seriously and even went out of her way to help people on her days off. She kept herself busy. On the days when she really was at leisure, she played games with Shinra and relaxed around the house—essentially the same things she did after she got home, anyway.

So in that sense, today’s vacation was an actual holiday for her, a real break from tradition.

They were in the mountains, far from the city.

Just a carriage trundling along on a path with a view of a lake.

It was isolated by design; they had picked out the location for this very reason. In the summers, people used the area for haunted house challenges—there were some ruined buildings around that were rumored to contain ghosts.

In that sense, a headless woman riding a carriage made of physical shadow was certainly appropriate, but in fact, even that was out of place: Japanese ghost stories rarely had European-style carriages.

Celty and Shinra were worried about this at first, but they ultimately went with the location and embarked on a day-trip vacation.

The idea had been Celty’s at first, to give Shinra a chance at some leisure time. He did so much for her on a regular basis that a vacation seemed like a good plan.

She fashioned herself a gothic black dress to match the carriage. In place of the helmet she normally wore, she had a ladies’ hat with a matching cape. If they were pure white, it might have looked like an ornate wedding dress, but being made of shadow, they were more like mourning clothes.

But despite Celty’s widow outfit, Shinra was perpetually hyped. At his request, she’d been “trying on” various shadow clothes all day, rather than just her typical riding suit. Given his utter devotion to her, no one could blame Shinra for being excited.

For his part, he wasn’t wearing the usual doctor’s coat, either. It was a special outfit he put together for the trip, albeit just as white-centric as ever.

His eyes sparkled brighter than ever before, and with every new outfit Celty changed into, he raised a cheer of delight.

In this case, “changing into” was more literal than usual: She was merely reshaping the shadow that covered her body.

May 5, midday

“Say, Celty. About the changing, I have a request. If possible, I’d really like to see you remove your clothes each time so I can watch you wriggle your bare arms into the slee— Buh!”

She answered his request with an elbow. “Pervert. What if someone saw me changing inside the carriage?”

“Hey, if you’ve got the goods, show ’em off-aff-ahf-aaah!”

He did his best to smile through the pain of a twisted cheek. “Sorry, I was lying. I don’t want anyone else to see you. Your changing scenes belong to no one but me-hee-haaa!”

The flick to his temple did far more damage than he was anticipating. Meanwhile, Celty had rearranged the shadow she was wearing into a new outfit.

“I’m all done.”

Shinra read the words off the PDA being held in front of his face, then glanced over the device at Celty.

There she sat, looking somehow shy and embarrassed, in a girl’s school uniform of all black.

“I brought the red scarf from home and tried wearing it, but it just made me look like a girl at one of those brothels, I think…”

The fact that she had no head made her more like the victim of a freakish school murder mystery than a prostitute, but Shinra did not mention this. He assumed a very serious look and folded his legs atop the carriage seat.

“What’s wrong? Is it weird after all?” she asked, uncertain what this reaction meant. She was about to reform the shadow clothes to the usual riding suit when Shinra suddenly bowed his head, tearing up.

“I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you. Will you go out with me?”

“That’s really creepy, Shinra. What’s gotten into you?”

Maybe that blow to the head earlier really did a number on him, she wondered, suddenly worried. Perhaps she ought to turn the carriage around and rush him to a hospital.

Shinra wiped his tears and grabbed her arm. “No, no, I’m sorry. See, I always wanted to make one of those high school declarations. I used to dream of how I would ask you out if we went to the same school…”

Celty shrugged and typed, “You’re a lot of trouble, you know that?”

“Even when other girls asked me out, I had to tell them, ‘You’re nice and all, but you still have a head on your shoulders’…”

“Go track down those girls and beg forgiveness, right now. Also, is the insinuation here that you would take any woman without a head?” she shot back.

Shinra shook his head violently. “No, not at all! I would love you without reservation, Celty, whether you had a human head, or a cardboard head, or some amalgamation of slugs and earthworms!”

“That’s disgusting!”

Actually, I’m kind of amazed that there were girls who liked this freak, Celty reflected. You’ve gotta be a real eccentric…

“But once the rumors got around, the girls got creeped out and stopped approaching me. In fact, Shizuo once unfairly complained to me that the girls were avoiding him, too, all because of me.”

“That’s not unfair at all.”

“It isn’t? Well…I guess you’re right. Of course you are,” Shinra said and laughed like a child.

Eccentric? she thought. Well, I guess that does describe me. The eccentric who loves a woman without a head, and the eccentric who fell in love with him.

Smirking inwardly, Celty typed away on the PDA’s keyboard.

“Why are you so focused on clothes, anyway? Something tells me this is more of a male thing than you specifically.”

“I don’t know about other guys. All I know is my own reason. To me, you are unlimited possibilities. If I’d been born in a different time or place, I know we would have met all the same, just under different circumstances. And I want to experience all those possibilities!”

“I didn’t realize it was such a grand vision.”

“Oh, that’s just my excuse. The truth is, I just want to see you in all different outfits so I can get all horn…,” he said, stopping in the middle of his sentence and bracing himself.

“What happened? Can’t you go on?”

“Oh, I j-just figured I’d get another elbow… Wait, I seem to recall another instance of this, a few months ago…”

Celty tried to remember. That’s right. Things were happening just like this, and then…I think that was when Emilia rang the doorbell and interrupted us. She just grabbed Shinra and hugged him. I could barely believe it.

She could laugh it off now, but at the time, Celty had been on the verge of jealousy. She felt both ashamed of that behavior and secretly pleased at the reminder of how much she loved him.

Honestly, I wonder…why did I fall in love with him?

In her past, somewhere among the memories locked in her head, had she experienced a life like this one, as a proper fairy back in Ireland?

On a vacation with her lover: a very picturesque moment of bliss, according to a human being. Had she ever experienced bliss like this in her old life? What was her life like back then?

She couldn’t deny being curious. But…

“What’s wrong, Celty? Are you feeling bad?!”

“No…,” she replied, looking at Shinra’s face.

At this point in time, her present life was far more important than whatever was in her past. She decided to enter a teasing message into the PDA and placed it on Shinra’s knees.

“And what were you going to do…after you got all horny?”

“Huh…? …!”

“If you get all horny here in this carriage, what’s going to happen to me?”

“…”

Huh? He’s not saying anything, she realized. Normally, he would act surprised at first, then burst into excitement. Instead, he merely stared down at the PDA in silence, his face neutral, if not downright serious.

Uh-oh… Did I tease him so much that he got mad?

She was going to snatch back the PDA to type out an apology when Shinra clutched her hand.

“Celty…”

He looked deadly serious, which was not his normal way. But the redness in his cheeks was kind of creepy.

“I, erm… Thanks.”

Oh…

“Thank you…Celty.”

He’s thanking me?!

“I’ll try my best!”

Your best at what?!

She really wanted to type these quick-fire responses out, but she still hadn’t retrieved her PDA yet. If she was thinking calmly, she could have just stretched out her shadow to get it back, but Celty was nowhere near calm at the moment.

Every last facet of her being was radiating a general state of fluster.

He reached toward her shoulder, his eyes dazzling and sparkling.

No, w-wait…

When Shinra was fooling around like usual, she always socked him to get him to stop, but when he looked this serious, Celty was suddenly unsure of what she wanted to do.

At least let me cover the carriage windows! she pleaded silently, when—

A ringtone went off in Shinra’s pocket. It was the new song from Ruri Hijiribe, a singer whom both Celty and Shinra greatly admired.

Celty took advantage of the situation to snatch Shinra’s phone and press it against his face.

“Mrrlb!” he protested, the cell phone jammed into his mouth. Celty finally got back her PDA and sent out a multitude of tiny finger shadows to type for her.

“You’ve got a call, Shinra.”

“Forget about it. Now’s not the time.”

“Don’t forget, you’re a doctor. Legitimate or not, there are people’s lives in the balance waiting for you.”

“Well, if you insist…,” he said, dejected, and answered the phone.

“Hello?”

Meanwhile, Celty took the opportunity to think.

Wow, that was a shocker. It’s not like we’ve never done anything like that…but I wouldn’t have expected it here. Plus, I feel a bit embarrassed knowing that Shooter’s just nearby…

“Oh? Ohh, ohh! It has been a while! You’re still alive—should I be congratulating you on that?”

Still alive…? He must be speaking to the Awakusu-kai, or someone along those lines.

“Goodness me, has someone shot you? You certainly sound well enough over the phone.”

Yeah. I knew it.

“Uhh…I’m not going to ask about the circumstances. Is tomorrow night all right?”

Tomorrow night. So it’s work—I guess we won’t be spending the night around here.

“I’m afraid I’m off duty today. I’m not in Tokyo at the moment.”

Well, that’s all right. We’ll plan out another occasion, maybe rent a cabin in the mountains.

“…She was?”

Wait…he’s looking a bit paler now. What are they talking about?

“And I suppose the humane thing for me to do is stop you?”

No, really, what are they talking about?! Is it Mr. Shiki claiming he’s going to bury a body or something?! Why confer with Shinra, then?!

“Well, in this case, that girl happens to be Celty’s cooking teacher.”

Why did my name come up?! Teacher? Cooking teacher?! Oh, d-does he mean…?

“Huh? They hung up.”

“What was that, Shinra?! Who was calling?! When you said ‘teacher,’ did you mean Mika?”

Shinra registered Celty’s apparent consternation and thought hard.

What should I do? If I tell her what the call was about, I’m certain that Celty will immediately rush off to help her. That much is a guarantee. That’s what makes her Celty. And I sure do love Celty!

While Shinra might have been satisfied with the bedrock status of his love, he was hesitant to be truthful here. The woman he had just talked to was the very person who ran off with Celty’s actual head. It was quite possible that things might go strangely and end up putting the head back into Celty’s hands.

And Yagiri did clearly say that her intent wasn’t to kill.

So given all the factors at play, he made a quick decision and gave her a huge, guilt-free smile—and a total lie.

“It was Seiji Yagiri. He just got into a little fight of some kind. Nothing to worry about.”

“Oh. I see.”

“…”

“…”

Yes, Celty literally typed out the ellipses to emphasize her silence.

“………………………”

The headless woman in the schoolgirl uniform held up her screen to his face, using her shadow tendrils to continue typing. Each additional ellipsis put more pressure on Shinra’s conscience.

“…Ha-ha! Oh, Celty,” he pleaded awkwardly, but she sent forth more shadows to hold him down.

“Don’t lie to me! It’s her! That had to be Namie Yagiri!”

“Ohhhh! You’ve learned to detect when I’m lying, just by looking into my eyes! I love that—it’s like our hearts are more connected than ever!”

“You wouldn’t say ‘Has someone shot you?’ or ‘You’re still alive’ to Seiji Yagiri!”

“What a detective you are, Celty! Fine…I’ll fess up,” Shinra said, sighing. “Namie is planning to revert Mika’s face to its original state. But Mika really enjoys that face, you know? So she wanted to know if I could do some surgery on her tomorrow, while she’s sleeping. So the question was, is it humane?”

“I see.”

“And I wouldn’t want to get in trouble for something like that, would I? I mean, she’s your cooking teacher. So when I brought that up, she got mad and hung up. The reason I lied is because I was afraid that if I brought up Namie’s name, you might go after her to chase down your head…”

Celty withdrew the shadows that were holding Shinra’s body down. “You’re such a fool, Shinra. How often do I remind you that I don’t care about the head anymore?”

“I know you say that, but I’m still scared. Maybe the head will manage to suck you toward it instead.”

“You’re overthinking this. Anyway, what is that woman up to? Does she finally feel guilty about messing with that girl’s face? It’s ironic that Mika herself doesn’t want her old face back.”

As he read Celty’s message, Shinra thought to himself, I’m sorry, Celty. She just doesn’t understand the dangers that Namie Yagiri poses… The call was actually way more menacing than I made it sound. I still just don’t want you anywhere near Namie…and that head.

By baldly lying at first, and then fessing up by telling what was almost the entire truth, Shinra ultimately succeeded at throwing Celty off the trail. It was less that he tricked her than that he simply omitted some crucial details, but at any rate, it successfully kept Celty away from Namie.

Well, after that…I guess we can’t just pick back up where we left off…plus it feels like I just abandoned poor Mika. But hey, she said she wasn’t going to kill her…

He glared down at his phone, blaming it for dousing the steamy situation with a bucket of cold water, and was about to turn it off when Celty showed him a new message.

“How about I change the mood by switching into my next outfit?”

Instantly, all thought of Mika Harima and Namie Yagiri was gone from his head.

“What? Already?!”

Of course, given that he had originally performed surgery on the girl’s face in order to fool Celty, it was hard to see how abandoning Mika was any worse than what he’d already done.

“No, Celty, wait! I want to savor feeling like a student a little while longer! I want to look up to you as my upperclassman…but then, I also want to be the older student treated with reverence…,” Shinra babbled.

Celty suddenly stopped, then used her shadows to hold down Shinra once again.

“Aaah! What’s this?!”

“Sorry—hang on a bit.”

She sent a message to her headless horse, Shooter, and brought the carriage to a stop at the side of the road. As Shinra watched with bewilderment, she exited the booth.

“Wait…where are you going, Celty?! Hang on! Don’t abandon me! If I did something wrong, I’ll fix it! If it’s about last week’s episode of Mysterious Discoveries of the World getting erased, I apologize!”

His plaintive cry vanished into the woods, which Celty walked through, still dressed in a school uniform.

Ten minutes later

After what felt like an eternity in the carriage alone, Shinra was overjoyed to see Celty return, as if nothing out of place had happened.

“Celty! You came back!”

“You always overexaggerate.”

“But…but…I was really starting to think that you’d abandoned me once and for all.”

“Don’t be silly. I would never leave Shooter behind,” she typed curtly, while undoing Shinra’s shadow bonds. “Actually, I felt something for the first time in a while, perhaps a fairy presence? So I went to give my acknowledgments.”

“Fairy?”

“In Japan, I guess you’d call it a yokai, or a god of the mountain, or something. Anyway, there’s lots of stuff out in the forests here. It reminds me of the woods back home,” she noted wistfully, but given that she had lost her head and most of her memories, that particular detail had to be very vague indeed.

Shinra chose to avoid poking that topic. Instead, he smiled and asked, “So, did you get to say hello?”

“Yes…well… There wasn’t any outright hostility or anything. It just said, ‘Welcome to Japan’…and then…”

She typed out her hesitation into the message, her shoulders hunching in apparent embarrassment. “It said it hadn’t seen one together with a human in quite some time, and…it wished me luck.”

“Well, we’ll do it proud! What a nice spirit! But wait…does that mean it was watching us?”

“It said…the man was making so much noise, it couldn’t not hear us…”

“…”

If she had a human face, it would be beet red. Combined with the school uniform, he thought, the restless fidgeting made Celty look just like a youthful student.

“Ha-ha-ha, in that case, let’s show off and— Gwufh! Wh…why?!”

He had put his hand on her shoulder, earning him a jab to the throat.

“More importantly, Shinra…what was that about last week’s show…?”

“Eep!” Shinra was tied down with shadow for a third time before he could make any excuses.

“I was saving that for later… I was hoping that we could try to guess who would win the top prize on the show!”

“Aaaaah! S-sorry, Celty, sorry! I’ll make it up to you with something worth a gold prize from the show—no, crystal prize! It’ll be worth it!”

“Dum-dummm! (foghorn sound) Instead, you get tickles!”

“N-no! Not when I’m tied down and helpless! I’m sorry, Celty! It’s too much for me, but on the other hand, being tickled by you is a heavenly thought, but on the first hand, please no, please no, please yes!”

Ten fingers of shadow stretched forth, about to descend upon Shinra’s helpless flank—when his phone abruptly rang again.

“…”

“You can answer it,” she offered, picking up the phone with her shadow fingers and holding it to Shinra’s ear. His expression was a mixture of relief and disappointment as he spoke.

“Hello…? Oh, hi, Shizuo.”

Shizuo, huh? He had a rough time of it yesterday, too, Celty thought, recalling how her friend had thrown motorcycles, kicked cars like balls, and saved little girls. She chuckled secretly, a bit of mirth that tamped down the burst of annoyance she was feeling.

“No, no need to thank me. Actually, I’ve got my hands full at the moment—or should I say, I’ve got them tied down… Yeah. Yeah, no problem. We can do that tomorrow.”

That was apparently the end of the call. Shinra sighed heavily and said, “I’m sorry, Celty… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize now,” she replied, all snarkiness gone. She freed Shinra and looked out the window of the carriage.

The lake in the middle of the forest reflected the sunlight, a brilliant gleam flickering through the trees. The presence she felt earlier had waned. There were no figures around them anymore, not even any animals.

The moment was beautiful, and the timing was right.

Then Shinra said, “I kind of wish you’d punished me a little,” and she decided that she would tease him for his perversion.

“If that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get,” she typed into the PDA and covered the carriage windows with shadow.

“Whoa, it’s pitch-black!”

Heh-heh-heh, he’s panicking.

“What’s going to happen?! What will become of poor little me?!”

Now I’m going to sit back, do nothing, and watch him writhe.

“Actually, sitting in the dark with a girl wearing a black school uniform kinda gets me all warm and tingly inside!”

That’s a good reminder that I was going to change outfits.

With the cover of total darkness, Celty felt at ease enough to undo her shadow outfit. It had taken considerable care to do it earlier without showing off too much skin, but in the darkness, she could afford to be more daring…

Just at the moment that her skin was most exposed, Shinra’s cell phone went off, sitting on the front-side seat.

The phone screen lit up the interior of the closed space, pulling back the darkness—and giving Shinra a glimpse of the soft curves of Celty’s body.

“Wha…?!”

Hyaaaa!

…

Hyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?!

She panicked, instinctually covering Shinra’s eyes, then her own body, with a layer of shadow. Shinra felt around blindly for his phone, picked it up, and then answered in a daze.

“Hello… Hello…? Ahh…it’s you… Yeah, I know… Probably at Yagiri Pharmaceuticals, Warehouse Three… Your sister was saying something about luring her there or whatever… Yeah. So long,” he said, his voice bleary and absent. Celty hadn’t been taking the words in, though.

She was in a mild panic, far too preoccupied to pay attention. Once she had replaced her shadow clothes and desperately regained control, she finally opened the carriage windows to the world again.

When the soft light of the forest caught her properly, they showed that she was so hasty in dressing that she was now clad in pitch-black armor of the type she wore back in Ireland. It was very strange to see her with that look, holding a modern PDA—but Shinra did not even register the armor.

“D-did you see that, Shinra?”

“…Huh?”

“I—I know you’ve seen that back home, but I’m not as comfortable with being seen in a place like this. Plus, as I said, Shooter’s right there…I’m quite shy about it,” she typed in little fits and bursts. Shinra merely smiled with beatific serenity.

“It’s all right, Celty.”

“What’s all right?”

“You’re so cute, Celty. Hee-hee.”

“Gross!”

I broke him! I broke Shinra! she realized, as he laughed eerily to himself. She tried slapping him to bring him back to his senses.

“Get a grip! You hear me? Get a grip!”

“Bwuh! Bwap! …Oh. Oh, Celty. Why are you wearing armor?”

“Huh? Uh, er…because…”

“Armor… I see. It’s the dullahan’s basic cultural garb. I had never considered this! It might downplay your femininity, but I can sense your cuteness oozing out of it!” raved the man. Celty had pulled him out of the realm of fantasy only for him to travel to yet another dimension.

But for her part, she didn’t seem to mind the compliments. Given that it was her basic outfit in the distant past, this seemed to be an affirmation of what she’d always been. In fact, she was so embarrassed with delight that she started to change yet again.

“No! Wait, Celty! Let me take a picture!” Shinra pleaded, holding up his phone as her shadows began to writhe. At the instant that she changed into new clothes, with part of her arms and legs exposed—though not as badly as the previous instance—Shinra pushed the photo button with perfect timing.

Except that another call arrived at the same time, switching the phone out of camera mode.

“Aaaaaaaah!” Shinra shrieked in rage, nearly screaming. “Wh-who did that?!”

“Well, that’s one of the more bracing ways I’ve ever heard a person say hello over the phone.”

“Oh, it’s Izaya. Good-bye.”

“Hey, don’t hang up. Listen, I’m bored, and I can’t move right now. I finally got the chance to borrow the hospital phone.”

“Hospital? You’re in the hospital?”

“You didn’t watch Daioh TV this morning, then. I got shanked yesterday.”

“Oh, cool. Good-bye.” Shinra abruptly hung up.

“…Who was that from?”

He blithely answered, “Izaya. Says he got stabbed and is in the hospital now.”

“What? Is he all right?” she typed, alarmed—then reconsidered and replaced that message with: “Well…whatever the details are, he probably earned it, right?”

“Of course he did.”

“And if he called you, he must be doing just fine.”

“You bet. He sure sounded fine over the phone.”

Realizing that neither she nor Shinra were at all concerned for him, Celty considered the topic of Izaya. I guess he’s just the type of person you don’t worry about when he gets hurt…like Shizuo, but for a different reason…

“Still, I think you might have been treating him a bit coldly right there.”

“It’s fine. Izaya’s the kind of masochist who loves people even when they’re mean to him.”

“Oh, look who’s talking. Still, you have to watch out for infections and blood clots with stab wounds. You should probably apologize later. I mean, Shizuo and Izaya are the only friends you have…”

“Yeah…I should. If you say I should.”

Yet again, Shinra’s cell phone went off.

“See? Speak of the devil. Izaya’s probably feeling lonely and worried, after being stabbed like that.”

“Fine… Hello?” he said into the phone. Celty watched him, smiling inwardly.

“Yes… Yes… Huh…? No, I’m a friend of Izaya’s… Sorry, I’m on a vacation right now… Reason he would be hated? Geez…there are so many, I couldn’t begin to narrow it down. He’s been getting himself into trouble ever since high school. Me? No, I’m clean as a whistle.”

Whatever conversation he was having, it was a little strange. He didn’t seem to be talking to Izaya. And the phrase clean as a whistle gave Celty a little start.

Now that I think of it, I’ve hardly heard any idiomatic expressions or extravagant vocabulary words from him today. Usually, he likes to throw them around to display his intellect. Maybe…he’s feeling nervous or forgetting to do it because he’s enjoying the trip… I really hope it’s the latter.

Just then, the call ended.

“Who was that?”

“…The police.”

“Huh?”

“They wanted to know if I knew anything about Izaya getting stabbed. They probably just redialed the number from the hospital phone. Phew! I was terrified that they found out I was a black market doctor! Felt like I was dragged from my vacation dream right back into real life.”

Shinra slumped his shoulders, and the phone went off yet again.

His cheek twitching, he answered the call—and heard Izaya’s voice through the speaker.

“Yo. Did you just get a call from the cops?”

“Yeah, thanks a lot.”

“I see. Well, it’s been so boring here. You were bragging about being on holiday, so I got a little mad. Thought it would be funny if the cops called a black market doctor. How was it? Exciting? Did the extra thrills just rekindle things with Celty? I’m assuming she’s there with you.”

“Ha-ha-ha! I wish you’d rekindle your body and burn to death.”

Shinra hung up and went back to being dejected.

Once again, the phone rang.

“If you don’t knock it off, I’m going to tell everyone about that thing from middle school, Izaya!” Shinra snapped in a rare display of anger—but there was no response.

“…?”

He thought this was strange, until he realized that next to him, Celty was holding her own phone up to around where her head would be. He checked his screen.

Above the number was the contact name—CELTY, MY HONEY.

He looked from the phone to Celty, back to the phone, and then figured it out.

“Ha-ha!” he giggled, and then his face softened to a grin.

“Thank you, Celty. I really do love you.”

The words she’d heard hundreds, thousands of times…

They came both from Shinra’s mouth and from her phone.

Sandwiched between both sources of sound, she came to a sudden realization.

Oh. I get it.

This is happiness.

She took her hands away from the PDA keyboard and sat back to listen to Shinra talk. She allowed his voice into her mind, and he read her emotions to produce words. Sometimes, they just stared at each other.

It might have looked like Shinra was holding an entire conversation on his own, but in truth, he was deftly reading her emotions, giving the impression that they were having a two-way discussion.

Eventually, he closed his mouth, and they sat shoulder to shoulder for a while.

Oh. I see, Celty thought idly.

It was something so ordinary, so matter-of-fact, she hadn’t felt it necessary to even think about before.

But, to Celty, just the recognition of this fact made the entire holiday meaningful.

I really do…love Shinra.

After this, they would run across an attempted murder in the mountains, get attacked by a bear that escaped from the zoo, and wind up in the crosshairs between two groups attempting to win a prize by finding the supposedly extinct Japanese wolf, among other events with a higher level of “extraordinary” than usual—but those are stories for another time.

For now, unaware of these future events, Celty and Shinra were enveloped in love.

The black carriage trundled along with its pair of lovebirds aboard—chaka-poko, chaka-poko.

And right on the beat in between those sounds, Shooter the shadow horse issued heavy snorts through the cracks of the helmet that was supposed to represent its head.

As though they were heavy sighs of exasperation over the two lovey-dovey dopes in the back.

Chaka-poko, chaka-poko, shuffa-huff, chaka-poko.