Durarara!! - Volume 7 - Chapter Ep

Epilogue & Next Prologue: Ordinary Fugue

Ikebukuro, in a car

“See, that doesn’t just apply to series; it also holds true for voice actors. The act of putting down other actors just to prop up the actors you like isn’t despicable for a voice actor fan—it’s despicable for a human being.”

“You can’t avoid that. Those kids are too dumb to know how to applaud their favorite actors, so they have no choice but to put down others. You have to ignore them and give them pitying glances.”

“I don’t know, Karisawa. That sounded unnecessarily harsh to me…”

“The real question is, should it be Fan x Hater? Or Hater x Fan?”

“Oh, you’re shipping them now? Wait, is this between two boys or two girls? The distinction is crucial.”

Like any other day, Yumasaki and Karisawa were carrying on with their nerdy arguments as the van rolled on.

“It was so peaceful today,” Kadota said, reclining in the front passenger seat, which was lowered all the way back. Sitting next to him, hands on the wheel, was Togusa.

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Well, after all the crazy stuff that went on yesterday, I figured we were due for a follow-up…”

“But it’s more usual for nothing to happen.”

“Yeah, I get that…but think about the last year. We’ve seen a bunch of shit: Headless Rider, cursed swords…” Kadota grimaced. Togusa smiled, too.

“That’ll change your outlook on life, for sure. I could believe in ghosts or aliens right now. Those are the second most-unbelievable experiences of my life after sitting first row at a Ruri Hijiribe concert.”

“…Really? That was your number one? I wonder where Kaztano got those tickets,” Kadota said, stretching and looking out the window at the town rolling past. “See, the thing about the world is it always finds a balance. While we’re here relaxing and doing nothing—I’m not gonna bring up that hackneyed bit about orphans in some war-torn country across the globe—there’s probably some other spot in Japan where things are all wild and out of control.”

“What’s your point?”

“We’re involved in this Black Rider and Dollars stuff now.” Kadota smirked, pulling his beanie on and adjusting the seat back to its upright position. “We just gotta be prepared for all that trouble to come find us.”

Tohoku region, hospital

“…Who are you?”

It was deep into the night, and the hospital was silent.

A woman with murder in her eyes was now at Izaya Orihara’s bedside.

Clearly, she was not here to wish him well. In fact, the knife in her hand said she was more likely coming to finish him off.

There was just one problem: Izaya could not, for the life of him, recall who she was.

“Who…? Who am I…? Oh…of course. I suppose that I was never even worth remembering to you…”

“It must be true since I honestly can’t remember you,” he said. It sounded like a sardonic rebuttal, but it was a simple fact.

She didn’t get angry. In fact, there was even a little smile on her lips when she leaped into action.

“And now, this person not worth remembering will be the very one who kills you.”

She hurtled up onto the bed, landing with both knees.

“Gah!” Izaya gasped, the impact shuddering through his body and wrenching at his wound.

“Ha-ha… Serves you right. Now the tables are turned… You’re the one who’s immobile. I’m the one who lives.”

“…?”

Now the tables are turned? What…what is she referring to…?

Something beyond the door of his memory was pulling at him, hard.

But he couldn’t recall what it was.

As he scrabbled at his memories, the woman held her knife right to his throat. “I won’t make it simple… You don’t believe there’s an afterlife, so you don’t think there’s any suffering afterward, do you? That means we have to get all your suffering in while you’re alive, don’t we?” She grinned, seeking agreement.

An ordinary man would tremble at her obvious madness. But Izaya was less afraid than he was stunned by what she had just said. The impact rippled the sea of memories, bringing fragments of the past up between the waves.

Why would she be mentioning the afterlife…?

 No, wait…I remember talking about that.

Yes, I did…

That’s right! It was a year ago…

The night I first met Mikado Ryuugamine!

“Are you going to try screaming for help? That would be great… I’ll take you hostage—you’ll look really pathetic on tomorrow’s news. The man who fancies himself an information broker in Shinjuku, brought nearly to death by a mere woman—come see the emperor’s new clothes! I’m sure that bartender you hate would be delighted to hear about it,” she gloated.

Izaya buckled down, forgot the pain, and gave her a dazzling smile. “Actually, Shizu never even checks the news. He doesn’t want to get annoyed by a stupid story and then destroy his TV.”

Ignoring the screaming agony of his wound, he bolted upright, rolling off the hospital bed with the woman. His IV needle popped out, sending clear liquid flying through the darkness.

“Ah!” she gasped, trying to regain her position, but the gap in fighting experience was devastatingly clear. Izaya might have been the analytical type, but he’d been in plenty of deadly brawls with Shizuo Heiwajima and other ruffians.

Instantly, he was on top of the woman, wresting the knife away from her. He tossed it back and forth, playing with it, and grinned. “Seems like you took some lessons…but not enough of them, I’m afraid.”

“…Kill me. Then you’ll be a murderer. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife, but at the very least, I can spend my final moments imagining your miserable state as the police chase you down.”

“Kill? Kill you? That’s silly!” he mocked, shouting loud enough that his voice might have reached the next room over. “I would never bother to do that! I’m not charitable enough to kill a suicidal person for them!”

“…So you do remember.”

Izaya Orihara had not actually recalled the woman’s face or name. But he could remember exactly what she was.

Last spring, he had been dabbling with a particular type of game. He went online under the alias Nakura, luring people from pro-suicide websites into real-life meetings, then taking everything from them but their lives and observing the results—an extremely cruel, tasteless game.

This woman was one of the two suicidal victims whom he last met, on the night he finally got tired of the game. What did those women look like? How were they dressed? Were they beautiful or ugly, stylish or unfashionable? What did their voices sound like; why did they want to die; did they even want to die at all?

Izaya thought he had forgotten all of it. But what memories he did have were enough to tell him that she was one of those two women.

She was not worth remembering in the least.

But now she was here as an entirely different person.

And that knowledge, that truth, lit a fire to explosives that had been dormant deep in his heart.

“Ha-ha… Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

He laughed, easily loud enough to be overheard. He laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

“Yes. Ahh, yes, yes! Insignificant, unmemorable you! But now, the half-hearted wannabe suicidal has embraced hatred of me, nurturing it over an entire year, found my location in less than a day based on the news, and came to find me!”

“…?”

She stared at him in suspicion, completely baffled.

“That’s right! You came here! You came here! I don’t know how you tracked me down, but could there be anything better?! You betrayed my expectations of you!”

Izaya got to his feet, dragging the woman up with him by the arm—and then embraced her, squeezing tight like reuniting with a lover after years of absence.

“Thanks to that…Thanks to that, I remembered! I’ve been able to return to my roots.”

Yes, that’s right. That’s right. Perhaps, after obtaining that head…I was underestimating humanity. I assumed that there was something greater than humanity.

“But how about this? Look, me! Take notes, me! Humanity is brilliant!”

“…”

Had there ever been a lottery winner who celebrated this much? The woman felt a thrill of horror at this level of excitement from him—but her hatred was so strong that it won out.

“I don’t know what you mean, but I can say one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re a disgusting excuse for a human being.”

“That’s fine,” Izaya said, grinning from ear to ear like a child who’d just gotten the toy he always wanted. “No matter how much you hate me…”

“I love, love, love you—to an almost irrational extent.”

Several minutes later, a nurse reported to Izaya’s room after receiving word that there was noise going on in the middle of the night.

She found nothing there—no Izaya, no woman, no changes of clothes or belongings.

Where did Izaya Orihara go?

Those who knew Izaya would find out—but not for a little while yet.

Near Kawagoe Highway, apartment building

“Boy, that was wild.”

“I never would have expected that.”

An exchange of text and words was happening inside an old elevator.

“Just when I thought we’d actually found an extinct Japanese wolf, it turned out to be a werewolf? It was just crazy. And those priestesses at the shrine were weird. They seemed kind of vampiric.”

“It’s the first time I’ve seen one of those aside from you and Saika, but you’re still the best of them all!” Shinra raved.

They were reminiscing happily about the adventures of their vacation, exhausted. Once they’d started riding on Shooter—as a two-seat motorcycle again—they hadn’t been able to talk, so now was the time they could finally discuss all the wild events of the day.

The elevator stopped rising, then opened. Celty put a cap on the discussion by saying, “Let’s start by taking a shower.”

“How about together for once?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

She knuckled Shinra’s head and started walking down the hallway, her mood buoyant.

The usual schedule would return tomorrow. Today’s memories would be the fuel that carried her through the day’s courier work.

But before she could reflect any further than that, she heard a very unexpected voice.

“Good evening.”

It came from up ahead.

From the mouth of a boy sitting in front of Shinra and Celty’s apartment door.

“I thought you might not be back tonight. Another ten minutes, and I would’ve left.”

The boy looked even younger than Mikado Ryuugamine. Celty recognized him at once.

It’s him!

The boy who had offered Mikado a deal in that abandoned factory, just one day ago.

“Mikado wouldn’t tell me anything about the Black Rider, so I had to get here on my own.”

“Who are you?” Shinra asked.

The boy smiled softly and said, “Aoba Kuronuma. I’ve met the Black Rider on a few occasions.”

“And I’ve come here…to be friends with you two.”

…

Celty had years of experience observing humans.

The only people who spoke about becoming friends on a first meeting were either the blindingly innocent or the devious. The boy named Aoba Kuronuma was undoubtedly the latter.

The red color seeping into the bandage on his hand only made Celty feel more nervous. What if that “normal schedule” did not return to their lives after all?

Aoba mocked her anxiety, waving the bloodied hand in the wind.

It waved and wavered, blown by the clammy breeze…

Quietly matching the anxiety and uncertainty saturating the city.

Wave, wave, waver, wave.

A holiday does not exist to rest the body.

It is not for resting the mind.

It’s not the body or the mind that relaxes…but the entire “state” of everyday repetition.

That is what I wrote at the beginning.

But there is something you must not forget.

On the morning that you tell yourself to drink deeply of the extraordinary on your holiday, so that you might return to the ordinary in a refreshed state—do not forget that the usual repetition may not return.

What did I tell you? The city does not distinguish between ordinary and extraordinary, work and rest.

It always comes down to people to see and judge these things.

Human beings.

So there’s no guarantee that the new day the city provides for you after a holiday will be the same as what you had before.

There is always change and evolution within the typical day—but I do not speak of such small matters.

This would be akin to eating healthy every day, then enjoying the occasional steak on the weekend. Except that rather than returning to healthy food, you are suddenly served a full-course poison mushroom meal.

If you do not receive the ordinary life you expected and instead must swallow a bizarre set of circumstances you never wanted…

I suggest you pray.

And trust that your stomachs are at least as strong as the city’s.

—Excerpt from the afterword of Shinichi Tsukumoya, author of Media Wax’s Ikebukuro travel guide, Ikebukuro Strikes Back 3