Durarara!!, Vol. 12

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Shizuo straddled Shooter and grabbed the handlebars—and with impossible acceleration for a bicycle, the mount bolted forward.

“This is just like a motorcycle or something,” muttered Shizuo, who didn’t need to turn the handlebars, as Shooter was turning on its own, so he held them only to keep his body propped up straight.

It could turn without losing any speed whatsoever, so if not for Shizuo’s remarkable physical capabilities, he would have been thrown off already. Naturally, he couldn’t understand Shooter’s vocal messages. But through the fierce vibration of the mount, he could sense its panic, and given the circumstances, this led him to one conclusion.

“…So something happened to Celty?”

The bicycle’s bell rang once, a convenient affirmative signal. Shizuo narrowed his eyes, feeling the summer night breeze, and squeezed the handlebars harder.

“All right. Let’s hurry,” he said.

Something’s wrong. It’s not just coincidental timing. Not when everything’s piling up like this. I bet you’re in on this, too, huh?

He could sense the shadow of his archnemesis lurking behind everything that was happening around him.

Apartment building, Ikebukuro, at that moment

Izaya Orihara was in as good a mood as he ever had been.

“What’s up with the frolicking?” said Mikage Sharaku.

He turned to her, beaming. “Is that what it looks like to you? Even now, I consider myself to be staying very calm.”

“Calm, huh?”

Izaya had been trotting around rhythmically and humming, occasionally using shogi and chess pieces to start odd little territorial games. Most recently, he’d used his tarot deck to build a house of cards. After an hour-plus of this behavior, Mikage was thoroughly sick of him.

“You’re like a child on the day before a field trip. It irritates me.”

“What? You’re not going to say it puts a parental smile on your face?”

“If you’re supposed to be a guy who inspires smiles, then every other person on the planet might as well be Charlie Chaplin,” she shot back lazily. It merely earned her a shrug from Izaya.

“My goodness,” he said, “if normal people are on the level of Chaplin, then what would that make the man himself? Is there a term for someone who is even more lovable than the great king of cinematic comedy?”

Mikage clicked her tongue in irritation. From the corner of the room, Kine said, “When you tease other people for a slip of the tongue, that’s when you’re in a frolicking mood.”

“Oh, please, Mr. Kine. If you’re going to criticize me for that, it makes it that much more difficult for me to tease others in the future.”

“You know that’s not true…,” Mikage grumbled and observed him in a fresh light.

It was clear that his mood was more elated than usual all day. Because Kasane Kujiragi never showed up in her hideout, they withdrew and returned to an apartment Izaya was renting. Slon, whom they suspected of being under Kujiragi’s control, was still trussed up and locked in the same room as Adabashi.

But that alone did not seem to be enough material to inspire this level of frolicking. So Mikage thought she’d throw out some facts, just to see if she could hit on the real reason.

“Fewer people in here than there used to be.”

Only Mikage, Izaya, Kine, and a few members of Dragon Zombie were present. That was indeed a significant drop in attendance from the original size of the group a few days ago.

Manami Mamiya had stolen Celty’s head, tossed it out into public view, and vanished.

Haruna Niekawa, who was supposed to be guarding it, had not returned to base.

Slon was tied up.

Ran Izumii had suffered some kind of injury during the day and claimed he needed to recover for a while.

It was one thing to lose some members, but the lack of Haruna Niekawa’s Saika power at their disposal was a big loss. And the brainwashing they’d done on the woman named Earthworm to make her accuse Shizuo Heiwajima of assault had worn off, and so she had retracted her claim.

Beyond all of that, the loss of Saika and its ability to multiply their power infinitely had to be a bad situation for Izaya—yet after receiving the news from Mikage and Kine, he remained in a good mood.

“What about this is so much fun for you?” Mikage asked. She was just going to ignore him, but he finally wore her down enough that she had to ask.

“What’s so fun? Well, there are several answers…but the biggest thing is that I’m just delighted that a person I know very well vastly exceeded what I expected of them!”

“?”

“I told you about Mikado Ryuugamine, right? The boss of the Dollars.”

“…Oh yeah. That name pops up a lot.”

He was clearly a favorite subject of observation for Izaya, because whenever he talked about the other boy, Izaya was generally in a good mood.

“You said that everyone aside from you just sees him as a normal high school kid,” Mikage said, trying to get past this to the next topic, but Izaya was obviously going to bite.

“Yes, but he only looks like a normal boy. In fact, he turned out to be far more dangerous than I expected. Since I figured that out, I’ve been thinking about how to bring that danger to the surface, but it turned out to be a total waste of time!”

“A waste of time?”

“Yes, exactly! Because I didn’t need to do anything to make Mikado break down in a fashion far more fascinating than anything I could have imagined! Doesn’t that just make you want to giggle and frolic? Doesn’t it?”

Mikage’s brow furrowed. His answer was more nauseating than anything she needed to hear right now.

“…You know, I’m not really sure how to say this, but…I feel like it would kind of be improving the world as a whole if I just killed you right now.”

“Oh, I won’t argue with you there. The thing is, I love people, but I don’t love the world and the society we people live in. So I’m not really in favor of dying for the sake of the world, see,” he said, without a trace of irony.

Kine pushed the conversation with a prompt: “So what is it you intend to do with this teenage boy?”

“Do? That’s a cruel thing to say, Mr. Kine. It’s like you’re insinuating that I’m going to ruin his life somehow.”

“…”

Kine merely stared at Izaya with ice in his gaze.

“…Fine, fine. I will give you a serious answer. I’m going…to let Mikado do as he will. For the first time, I think I’m going to make for a proper observer.”

“Observer?”

“Yes. My intent was to just stir up some trouble around the neighborhood,” Izaya admitted, utterly without shame, “starting with little stuff between delinquents, then turf warfare between street gangs. Then I was going to get the yakuza and police involved…to find out how far I needed to push things to cause an undeniable reaction in the head.”

“The creepy severed head?”

“Yes. It wasn’t all completely baseless, as a matter of fact. But I don’t suppose you’d have any interest in connections between Norse mythology and Celtic fairies, or the evidence of such, would you?”

Mikage stared up at the ceiling for a bit, then back down at Izaya. “What’s…Celtic?”

“Exactly. That’s the best you can do, so thank you for proving my point. It would be a waste of time.”

“You want me to kill you?”

“Not particularly. Do you find it enjoyable to ask questions with really obvious answers?” Izaya mocked, ignoring the homicidal look on Mikage’s face. He continued, “So if it’s not an issue of scale, what exactly would cause the head to react? A battle to the death, with life and pride on the line? The souls of martyrs perishing in a holy war? Fighting against something nonhuman? Perhaps it could be something as innocent as babies fighting over a pacifier that sets her off.”

He picked up a chess piece, turning it over in his fingers. “I considered all this infighting in the Dollars and friction with the Yellow Scarves to be part of that experiment. I tried giving anxious young men a life without security or peace of mind and threw all sorts of things into the pot: squabbles and hatreds of every stripe, warfare that transcends pure hatred, and everything in between. A real mystery stew.”

He stopped twirling the chess piece over his digits and palm and suddenly threw it at the precariously balanced house of tarot cards.

“But Mikado Ryuugamine, just another one of those pieces, far eclipsed my imagination of what he could be.”

The tower of paper instantly collapsed, scattering its cards all over the table.

“He’s not physically strong. Compared with other boys his age, he’s as frail as paper.”

Izaya scooped up one of the cards that made up the tower with one hand, then tossed the little chess piece into the air with the other.

“The thing is—”

The next moment, the card he still held made a quick yet light snapping sound above the table.

“—he’s kind of scary right now.”

When the chess piece landed on the table again, it was split in two. Izaya waved and flapped the flimsy card in his hand.

At last, Kine spoke up again. “Do not destroy things without good reason.”

“Really? That’s what you’re going with?”

“…Treat your pieces with respect,” Kine said, his words heavy.

Izaya grimaced. “Oh, geez. I care quite a lot about both you and Mikage, I’ll have you know.”

“You are the kind of man who destroys everything without hesitation, even things you care about. Including that Ryuugamine boy.”

“No, he’s not my chess piece anymore. If anything, I’m more likely to be his, and I don’t think I’d mind. He’s so dangerous right now, I can’t keep myself from laughing at the sight of him. And the Dollars organization is the powder magazine for Ikebukuro itself.”

“Gee, I wonder whose fault that is,” Mikage jeered.

Izaya spread his hands and shook his head. “It’s no one’s fault. A confluence of factors combined and produced that result.”

“…So you’re saying there’s no puppet master pulling strings?” Mikage asked.

“Yes, that’s right,” Izaya reiterated. “No one’s at fault. If I had to list a cause, I’d say a number of people around him turned out to be bad for him. Including himself.”

This was Izaya’s honest opinion. You might say the thing that broke Mikado Ryuugamine was his own twisted love for “the Dollars of the past,” and therefore that everyone in his vicinity was responsible for causing this.

Masaomi Kida, who was afraid to be an open, honest friend to him.

Anri Sonohara, who tried to remain a third party.

Shizuo Heiwajima, who haplessly gave a naive boy a fascination with raw power.

The Headless Rider, who made the boundary between reality and fantasy too vague.

Aoba Kuronuma, who approached the Dollars leader to use and manipulate him.

Chikage Rokujou, who did not inflict punishment on him for creating the Dollars and thus robbed him of the chance to atone.

And Izaya Orihara, who gave him that little push on the back at the start.

Each one on their own might not have made Mikado fall to the level of sin. But the accumulation of all that weight ate away at him and pushed him down to his current depth.

Izaya considered, reflected on, and sympathized with Mikado’s plight—and smiled with unbridled glee.

“But I can forgive him. I will forgive everything! They say God’s love is boundless, but so is human love! No matter who else refuses to forgive Mikado for what he’s done, I still will! I forgive every other person as well! They made me the audience of such a fun stage show, it’s the least I can do in return!”

The way he was carrying on by himself creeped Mikage out. She sighed heavily. “Uh, all I was doing was sarcastically pointing out that you’re the puppet master.”

“Oh. You’re not very good at sarcasm, Mikage.”

“Yeah, I’m better at pounding a man’s face in,” she growled, starting to get up.

“Whoa, stop, stop.” Izaya held out a hand to stay her. “There are some other folks you can use that aggression on for better purposes.”

“Other folks?”

“The way we originally planned. I think it’s time to kick out the nonhuman folks. This whole show is meant to make Mikado the star. It’s a human drama, and the nonhumans shouldn’t be messing with it.”

“Does that include Haruna?”

“Oh, no. She’s human. She’s an incredible human, in fact; she beat the curse of the blade,” Izaya declared. Mikage and Kine noticed that although his smile remained, Izaya’s eyes were no longer full of mirth.

“Anri Sonohara, Kasane Kujiragi, and the Headless Rider will all need to stay quiet for a bit.”

He picked up the Star, Moon, and Death cards from the table and tossed them into an ashtray that was merely a piece of interior decor and contained no butts at all.

“The problem is Shizu, I suppose. I know Mimizu withdrew her charges…but I just can’t buy that he was released because he managed to get through police questioning without losing his mind.”

Lastly, Izaya removed the Strength card and used a lighter from his pocket to set it on fire.

“You know how Shizu is. He’s probably coming to destroy me now, and he’ll destroy anything he needs to along the way. Including the entire stage I’ve set up just for Mikado.”

Kine and Mikage knew the man he called “Shizu” quite well. Very few people who’d been living here for years were unaware of him.

The game of tag that had been Shizuo Heiwajima’s and Izaya Orihara’s attempts to kill each other had been one of the defining features of Ikebukuro for the past seven years.

But Kine and Mikage also knew that it was not a game of tag like a murder competition. It was an actual, honest competition to kill each other, and the fact that neither had died yet was something of a miracle already.

“It’s one thing to do it to me. But to destroy the state this city is in…to commit heresy against humanity, I just cannot accept it.”

He dropped the burning Strength card into the ashtray, and it promptly lit the other cards. Izaya beamed with delight at the vision. “Ah yes, I think it’s time I finally take this seriously.”

The next moment, the smile completely vanished from Izaya Orihara’s face. The look in his eyes was enough to freeze with terror the hearts of any who witnessed it.

“It’s time to make Shizuo Heiwajima go away for good.”