Durarara!!, Vol. 12
Alleyway
Neither Seitarou nor Kujiragi knew that Shizuo and his new steed, Shooter, were not the only ones who had broken through the blockade around the alleyway.
When Seitarou’s employee ran down the other end of the path, he noticed that the men in roadwork outfits under Saika’s control were no longer there. But he wasn’t going to be bothered with a detail like that. He needed to get away and call for help as soon as possible.
As he ran, he took out his phone so that he could get in touch with the others in Seitarou’s stable—until a jolt hit his jaw like an electric current, and he blacked out.
As she dragged the man into a trash-collection area in the alleyway, Mikage Sharaku thought, Not only was he no sweat, he didn’t even notice I was there. What an amateur. And those slaves of Saika were no big deal, either.
There were a number of men in work uniforms there, just as unconscious as Seitarou’s henchman. They’d all taken fierce blows to the jaw or temple, and they wouldn’t recover for quite some time.
I was hoping I’d come across someone with at least a little backbone.
She thought of the people at Rakuei Gym, the business her family owned. Even beyond the circle of her own relatives, the tougher members of the dojo were not easy to conquer, even for Mikage. There was one young man, named Kisa, who was attracting attention for the speed at which he picked up techniques.
I haven’t sparred with that big lug yet, though…
He was a promising newcomer who boasted the greatest height in the dojo, but she just wasn’t that interested.
It’s more fun to fight against the guys who really wanna kill you, Mikage reflected. She sighed and tossed Seitarou’s follower into the trash.
“I gotta say,” she murmured, looking up at the crane hanging over the construction site, “he really does love his heights…”
Construction site, upper area
Perched on the edge of the building frame, next to the construction crane, was Izaya Orihara.
The beams were still exposed at this unfinished stage. Around the platform was a heavy vinyl curtain meant to keep the work tools, materials, and people from falling off the side. Izaya stood where there was no scaffolding or vinyl for protection, surveying the area below.
One good gust of wind could have pushed him off the edge, but Izaya happily stood as far out as he could go to watch the proceedings below.
“I guess this was the right building. That’s a good sign.”
Even a building under construction would, of course, have security guards. But said guards were currently unconscious.
A few of the Dragon Zombie motorcycle gang’s members stood behind Izaya, but Kine was not one of them. He had said “being an accessory to murder isn’t my job” and left earlier.
“That sounds just like Mr. Kine. He pretends that his old self never existed,” Izaya muttered, watching the area at the foot of the building. “It’s like they’re setting it all up for me. All the annoying monsters gathered up in one place.”
It would be perfect if Anri Sonohara were there, too…but I suppose that would be too much to ask.
When he’d gotten word of the abnormal roadwork going on, he’d had the Dragon Zombies check it out and learned that the workers were likely under Saika’s control. Assuming that something was going on, he took those followers of his and sent them into a building under construction. The results he got back were greater than he had ever imagined.
That enormous black mass stuck between the buildings had to be Celty. He didn’t know what had happened, but it seemed clear that it was the work of Kasane Kujiragi, who was down on the ground below. The president of Yagiri Pharmaceuticals appeared as well, giving him an idea as to the connections at play.
If Yagiri Pharmaceuticals takes control of the Headless Rider’s body, that removes one element of uncertainty. Then I just have to figure out how to eliminate Kasane Kujiragi.
For the last few minutes, he’d been calculating his plans to this end—until the sight of the man who showed up after Seitarou completely obliterated those thoughts.
Shizuo Heiwajima.
His absolute archrival, the man he’d just sworn to eliminate for good. Why was he here? Izaya could only wonder at the sequence of events that had brought him there, but such questions were ultimately useless.
Izaya Orihara thanked humanity, rather than God. Through whatever means, fate had brought Shizuo Heiwajima there at this moment.
But Izaya’s pure joy that welled up in his breast at the incredible coincidence turned into irritation and hatred upon recognizing Shizuo.
He considered, once again, that he and Shizuo Heiwajima were never meant to mix. Just the knowledge that he was living somewhere in the world was enough to spoil the innocent joy within Izaya.
Why did he hate that man so much?
Perhaps this question came to him out of a premonition that it would likely be the last time he ever needed to ask it.
What a funny thing. I think that no matter how we met, I would always have wanted to kill Shizuo Heiwajima.
He had once been told—he forgot by whom—that his hatred of Shizuo might have stemmed from some kind of complex. Did he despise Shizuo because he felt the other man had something he lacked?
That was probably part of it. But that was only one reason, and he knew it wasn’t enough to explain the entire magnificent structure of his hatred.
A variety of reasons came to mind. He had dozens—perhaps even hundreds—all of which were true, but none of which felt like more than just a small part of the puzzle.
In the end, there was really just one reason that he hated Shizuo. It was likely something he shared with the other man. And the fact that they had even this one thing in common made him sick to his stomach.
The reason was simple.
He just really pisses me off.
All of it, the grudge and the hatred, began with that very first impression.
And so Izaya had to accept that he really could kill a person for a reason that simple.
He let his eyes close, then opened them slowly.
It was the same little smile Izaya always wore.
With his everyday expression on again, he thanked coincidence for bringing him to this moment and looked to the foot of the building once more.
Shizuo and Kujiragi were grabbing each other, and someone had a gun trained on them both.
I guess that must be Vorona.
With the creaking of monstrous Celty and the wires around her as background material, an enraptured Izaya murmured, “Ahhh…this is a very good position…”
“If they just separate a bit more…I might not have to use the crane…”
Alleyway
They had no idea they were being watched from above.
And if Shizuo looked up, his attention would be drawn to Celty anyway.
Not that he had the wherewithal to look upward at the moment.
“What are you holding there, Vorona…? That’s not a toy, is it?” Shizuo asked her.
“This is not a demonstration,” she said. “I am sincerely holding this firearm.”
She was wearing a very eye-catching riding suit. A large messenger bag was on the ground a short distance behind her. It hadn’t been there before, so she must have brought it with her.
“What are you doing here?”
“I am in the midst of a different manner of commerce than the duties I perform with you. It is impossible to shut my eyes to violence against my client.”
“Listen, we don’t have a rule against doing side jobs, but at least be smart about what you pick, yeah?” Shizuo drawled.
“…Your reason for being composed is indecipherable. Do you have some matter with which to question me?” she lobbed back.
Shizuo considered what to do. In the corner of his vision, he could see Shooter’s shadow wavering with seeming indecision.
Recognizing the situation, Kujiragi let go carefully, so as not to agitate Shizuo. Her face was as emotionless as before. He still wasn’t quite able to decipher exactly what kind of expression she’d been making earlier—but now wasn’t the time for that.
Shizuo lowered his hands and said, “Question you? Well, I dunno if she’s your client or what, but you’re pointing the gun to protect this chick, right? I let go, so you can put that away now.”
“…”
Vorona looked as if she was going to lower the gun but was undecided about something. “There is a matter of which I must apprise you, Sir Shizuo.”
“What is it?”
“Within the first fortnight of May, inside a schooling facility of Toshima Ward, you should have experienced being stabbed with a Spetsnaz knife by a woman wearing a helmet.”
“Oh yeah. That happened.” He sighed deeply. “That was you, right?”
“…”
“Look, I’m not an idiot. It was obvious from the riding suit,” he said, which was perfectly true. But he seemed to feel bad about saying it. “Plus, even beyond that…I just kinda had a suspicion about it…”
“I cannot consent to the answer that you were cognizant. It is a house built on sand. If you testify that you are aware of all of creation, then why did you not shatter my vertebrae with your strength?!”
Even in these moments of psychological vulnerability, Vorona’s verbiage was nearly baffling. The more serious she felt about something, the more extreme her use of the Japanese language became. It seemed she felt that the more overwrought and obscure the choice of words, the more polite it was. But to everyone else, it just made her harder to understand.
“…I’m used to the way you talk by now,” Shizuo remarked. “And I’m not gonna do anything to someone I worked with long enough to get used to.”
“It differs from your personality. It is indecipherable,” Vorona protested, lowering her gun just a bit.
“Look…what makes me snap is when things ain’t right,” he said, eyeing the gun. “If you’ve got a proper reason for shooting me that’s fair, then shoot me or stab me or what have you; I won’t get mad. The only exception is if some guy I’ve never seen before shoots me. Whether he’s got a good reason or not, that’ll piss me off.”
In fact, Shizuo did have a wide range of fury. When Seiji Yagiri stabbed him with a pen and gave a preposterous answer as to why, he had thrown the young man quite hard. But once he understood that those actions were done out of honest love, he let him off with a restrained head-butt. When Chikage Rokujou challenged him to a direct fight, the emotion he used as fuel was something other than anger.
The downside of this was that when faced with something unfair or dishonest, he would flip out over even the smallest of slights; it was his biggest flaw.
“…”
Vorona silently looked on.
“C’mon, Vorona. What is it you actually want to do? Just tell me that first,” he said, an honest question addressed to the first junior work associate he’d ever known. “I’m your senior, so the least you can do is look to me for help, yeah?”
What…?
Her heart began to waver at this question. Or perhaps it had already been unsteady, and this was just the first time she actually noticed it.
What am I…doing? I want to destroy Sir Shizuo. To understand and confirm the strength of humanity.
It was a desire she’d always held about those who were considered powerful, going back to her days in Russia. It was one of Vorona’s purest desires, as twisted as it was.
But now that she had experienced ordinary life here with Shizuo and Tom, there was another emotion budding within her, beyond the simple urge for destruction.
No… I am…not allowed to have an ordinary life. Why did I choose to betray Father and President Lingerin…?
She shook off her moment of weakness and tried to view Shizuo as an enemy again. But even then, she couldn’t keep her heart steady.
No, not like this. Sir Shizuo and I must crush each other with everything on the line…or all of this is meaningless… It cannot happen in this way, as a kind of afterthought…
Vorona was shocked to realize her mind was finding excuse after excuse not to shoot Shizuo at this moment. Now there was no way she could argue against Slon’s assessment that she had grown tepid and soft.
What…?
What do I want to do?
Flying by the seat of his pants, Seitarou suddenly yelled at Vorona, “H-hey! What are you doing? Shoot him dead right now!”
“…Hey, old man.” Shizuo’s voice caused all the air around them to freeze. “That don’t sound like it’s exactly right, now does it…?”
There was a clear note of irritation in his statement. He turned around slowly and met Seitarou’s gaze. The look caused the other man to tremble. It froze Seitarou in place, causing the muscles in his hips and back to dislocate slightly, paralyzing him with pain.
“…!”
“When you kill a person…you gotta be prepared for them to kill you first… So if you’re gonna order Vorona to kill me, that means you’re tellin’ her to accept dyin’ in retaliation, right? So you’re sayin’…you want my precious coworker to perform a job that you know might kill her…? Is that it?”
“W-wait! I… I’m…!”
Seitarou tried to scrabble backward, hands and feet flailing, like an insect. The man who had barely batted an eye at the various freakish things he’d seen today now felt his heart leaping into his throat with terror at the slowly approaching man in the bartender’s vest.
The distance between them closed without mercy before Seitarou could so much as regret his decision.
“…”
Vorona hadn’t recovered from her confusion in any way. She tried to point the gun at Shizuo as he closed in on Seitarou. But Kujiragi placed a hand over her arm and motioned her to lower the weapon.
“You were not hired personally by President Yagiri. You do not have an obligation to obey his orders.”
“…”
“Both you and I are being misled by personal feelings. My rule from experience is that bringing personal sentiments into work will lead to bad results. It should be reflected upon and learned from.”
In Kujiragi’s head was the image of Ruri Hijiribe, whom she had once treated as a transactional product.
If only she hadn’t let personal sentiment move her. Or perhaps if she had let it motivate her to save the girl, it might have resulted in a different outcome. She shook her head—it was pointless to wonder now.
“Let us pull back now, to sever this vicious cycle.”
“Wh-what?! Kujiragi! What are you doing?! You have to save me!”
Seitarou couldn’t hear the women’s voices, but he could tell from their actions that something bad was happening.
Kujiragi then cruelly informed him in a businesslike manner, “My duties for the day do not include your personal protection, President Yagiri.”
“Wha…?”
She held out her palm to indicate the large bag Vorona had brought, and she gave him a deep, formal bow. “As we agreed, I have brought you one of the products. I shall deliver to you the dullahan body and Saika at a later date.”
“W-wait! Isn’t that the dullahan’s body? That thing atop the buildings?! What are you thinking?”
“That it will be difficult to recover it at this moment.”
If they used the contents of Vorona’s bag, it should be possible to get it from its current state back to the original humanoid form. But she wasn’t anywhere near confident that she could keep a newly cognizant dullahan trapped with Saika and deal with Shizuo Heiwajima. And with the way the cursed sword was aflutter at Shizuo’s presence, she wasn’t sure it would even be successful at keeping the dullahan trapped for long.
So she concluded, with that robotic flatness of affect, a most human of rationales.
“I do value my life, after all.”
As she listened to Kujiragi speak and Seitarou wail, Vorona lowered her gun.
I can’t. No matter what I do in this situation, I cannot fulfill my desire. To destroy Sir Shizuo will require…more resolution than I am able to summon at this moment.
This side job was, in fact, intended to give her that resolution, but she wasn’t prepared to run across Shizuo right in the middle of it like this. Like Kujiragi had said, it was probably best to withdraw now.
Vorona steadied her breathing, trying to control herself, and looked up at the night sky. She saw the shadow mass again and squinted.
But at the same time, she noticed something wrong. It was something she noticed only because her past work history had required her to be very observant of details.
Do they engage in construction at such a late hour in Japan?
The black creature was tangled up in wires just about in the center of the space between buildings.
But above it, near the top of the building currently under construction, there were bright lights shining. Not the red warning lights for the benefit of airplanes, but something brighter, like halogen lamps.
If this was true, then the workers up there could easily witness what was going on below. Curious, she moved a few steps to get a better view of the top of the building.
The results were still suspicious. She could see a forklift perched right near the edge of the structure. It had to be very close to the edge indeed if she could see it from the street. She squinted, finding that rather dangerous, and noticed something else.
The payload end of the forklift was actually extending over the edge—and it was loaded up with building materials of some kind.
Right next to it, there was a small human figure…
…!
And then Vorona realized what it was the person on the roof was about to do.
“Sir Shizuo!”
She was running before she knew it—right for Shizuo, who was still approaching Seitarou Yagiri with laser focus.
Just scant seconds later, she slammed hard into Shizuo’s back.
“?!”
He lost his balance and stumbled several steps forward. “Hey, what the hell was that for, Vor—?” he shouted, turning back to protest.
And he witnessed a cavalcade of steel beams and rebar crashing down onto the spot where he’d stood just seconds before.
“Wh… Wh-wha…?”
Seitarou was now well and truly stunned at what was happening around him. He couldn’t be blamed for his abject terror, given that he, too, had just been in that spot moments before. If he hadn’t been backing away, he would be dead right now.
One of the bars bounced and landed right next to him, but Seitarou was unable to budge even the tiniest bit.
Kujiragi’s eyes were bulging; she had no idea what had just happened. Apparently, this was not part of her plans.
But at this point, Seitarou didn’t care anymore; he just cursed fate and prayed that the employee of his who ran away would come back with reinforcements to save him—the employee who, unbeknownst to him, was currently unconscious in a trash-pickup area.
Shizuo was just as immobile as the rest of them.
He was so unable to process what had just happened that he even forgot to breathe. All he could see was an endless pile of steel beams sprayed around a tiny, cramped alley.
And before him, trapped under one of the beams—Vorona.
“…Vorona!”
He snapped out of it, racing to her side and hauling the beam off her with one hand.
Her body was still visibly intact, so it hadn’t been a direct hit straight off the drop. But the metal materials had clearly struck her on the bounce, as her suit was ripped in several places, the skin beneath bloodied here and there.
“Hey, are you all right? Vorona! Hey!”
“…Sir…Shizuo.”
“Oh, good! You’re alive! You’ll be okay!”
“Worry is…unnecessary. I had an evasive calculation, but I was unable to avoid the jumping building materials.”
Her speech was much more understandable than usual, which was probably a good sign. It was hard to tell whether the force of the steel beams was affected by the bounce off the pavement or whether it was just thanks to her excellent physical fitness, but she didn’t seem to be in mortal danger.
“You idiot… Don’t risk your life for my sake…”
Indeed, Shizuo might have taken the hit directly and lived. But in the moment, Vorona had feared for his life and pushed him out of the path of the debris. Now Shizuo was full of regret and shame that she had been injured in his place.
He wanted to say something to her—but the situation would not allow him to.
“Sir Shizuo!”
Vorona, lying flat on her back, gaped at what she witnessed. Shizuo put two and two together and looked upward.
What he saw was quite abnormal, indeed.
Falling from the roof of the office building under construction was the entire forklift.
First it tilted like a seesaw, until the entire body began to flip over—and it fell right toward them, like a scene in a movie.
Time flowed very slowly for Shizuo as it happened before his eyes.
Just before the forklift fell.
Standing to its side.
Looking down at them.
A man, his face unclear.
Just for an instant—even the color of his clothes was warped by the halogen lights.
But with a foreboding that was close to certainty, Shizuo spoke the name that came to his mind.
“…Izaya?”
And then the forklift was plummeting toward Shizuo and Vorona.
Seitarou wailed, and Shizuo secretly hoped it would simply flatten him. It never even occurred to Shizuo that any of the debris might strike and kill him in the process.
But no one could believe what happened next.
Shizuo leaped to his feet and rushed at the falling forklift to give it an extremely simple and powerful shoulder tackle.
In sumo terms, this would be known as a buchikamashi, a violent shoulder strike.
Shizuo, of course, had no experience in actual combat disciplines. He was just following an instinct that told him to give the falling object a body blow. But the impact of such a blow at zero range would be devastating.
The vending machines Shizuo typically threw weighed around six hundred pounds. Depending on the contents, they might get up over a thousand.
But the forklift falling down on them easily cleared a ton. And it was falling from the top of the building—even if it wasn’t the final height of the finished project.
It was a weight that spelled certain death—but Shizuo literally knocked it away. The moment he made contact, the forklift’s trajectory changed dramatically, accompanied by a tremendous crash as the vehicle bounced off at an angle and slammed into the partially built structure, breaking through the concrete wall and tumbling inside it.
Following the racket of the wall’s destruction, silence reigned over the alley. No one was in any position to speak.
Unavoidable death for any other human being had been no match for the pure physical strength and hardy body of Shizuo Heiwajima.
Even Vorona, whose life had just been saved by this, was unable to believe what had just transpired.
She’d seen Shizuo kick cars like soccer balls. She knew that knives couldn’t stab through his skin.
But she had never been cognizant that he was allowed to be this ridiculous. Would bullets even pass through his body? She was in the presence of a superhero out of an American comic book. Vorona’s definition of human was crumbling before her eyes.
“…You okay?” Shizuo asked, breaking the silence he had created. He smiled with relief when he saw that Vorona wasn’t freshly injured. “Yeah, you seem okay to me.”
Then he tilted his neck to crack it and turned his back to her, rotating his left shoulder. “Sorry…Vorona.”
“…?”
“I’m about to do somethin’ that ain’t right. I can’t complain if you shoot or stab me for this one.” Then he turned toward Shooter, which was farther down the alley, and bowed. “And you… You looked to me for help outta this situation… I’m sorry. When Celty’s back to normal, you can kick me all you want.”
If you judged him on words alone, he might seem even calmer than usual.
But everyone in his physical presence could tell—even Seitarou, who didn’t know Shizuo at all—that something else was behind his words.
Anger.
Pure, simple, endless emotion.
Shizuo was a fiery mentality compressed to its most potent state, walking in human form.
The words he’d just emitted to Vorona and Shooter were probably the last impurities of other emotions before he burned them all away.
Vorona, Seitarou, and even Kujiragi could all imagine what would happen once he had finished expelling everything that held him back—and they felt an itch from deep in their bowels that urged them to run.
When Shizuo had seen Vorona outside the police station, he’d felt the greatest rage he’d ever felt well up inside him. But within hours of that, he’d been acting normally. After that, he’d tossed a teen into the air and had a talk with Shooter, which even Shizuo had thought was a sign that his anger had fully subsided.
But he’d been wrong.
He’d thought that pushing his emotions underneath the surface meant his anger had calmed. But all it meant was that the actual thing lurking at the pit of his emotional center had not allowed that anger to be expressed.
He instinctually knew that this tremendous rage, fiery enough to evaporate boiling magma, could be reserved for only one man.
And there he was.
Having just maliciously injured Shizuo’s coworker Vorona.
Shizuo strode forward, directly into the construction site, through the hole the forklift had blasted in the building’s wall.
As he did so, Vorona noticed that Shizuo’s right arm was dangling limp from the shoulder and seemingly immobile.
“…Sir Shizuo.”
But she couldn’t stop him.
It felt as if stopping him now would be akin to defiling something sacred. Perhaps it was some cheap illusive form of religion in her heart, born of her admiration for human strength.
In any case, there was no one present who could stop Shizuo now.
Shizuo entered the building and began to slowly climb the stairs.
His phone received an incoming call signal. Without taking his eyes off the stairs ahead, Shizuo accepted the call and put the phone to his ear.
“Hey, Shizu.”
It was the voice of the man who had just tried to kill him—and Vorona.
“So that didn’t kill you, huh? You really are quite a spectacular monster. But the concept of you protecting a human being is nothing short of farcical.”
“…”
“Maybe I brought this up before. Do you think saving people is going to make them like you? Oh, but maybe you feel something special for that Vorona girl, perhaps? I had you pegged for the pedo type, the way you were looking at the Awakusu-kai mistress. But I guess a literal monster being a figurative monster is just a bridge too far, eh?”
“…”
“By the way, are you sure you ought to be abandoning Celty? Do I need to point out what an absolutely evil person that Kujiragi woman you let escape is?” he mocked, both insult and warning in one, as he so often did.
Shizuo said nothing. He just kept climbing the stairs. Only when he was about halfway up the building did he finally speak.