Durarara!!, Vol. 2 (novel) (14 page)

“
Oh, you’re back
,” Celty typed lifelessly into the computer screen without turning around.

“It’s always darkest before the dawn. Just do what you can—put your human affairs in order and let fate do the rest. Then again, you’re not human, so…put your dullahan affairs in order and let fate do the rest? Hmm. Given that a dullahan’s fate is to tell others of their death, it sounds like a pretty dark story in the making.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.”

Shinra had no hesitations about treating Celty as something inhuman, but this actually made her happy. Nothing was more reassuring
than knowing that someone accepted and loved her for what she really was.

If Shinra had originally professed his love for Celty by offering to think of a way to make her human or claiming that his love would make her human, she’d probably have left him behind.

Instead, Shinra Kishitani loved Celty just as she was, without her head. That might have been the only way that she could face her own feelings for him.

“So anyway, do you have a plan? You can’t just go out patrolling the town every night, can you?”

“Maybe not. At the very least, I’m suspected of having a connection to the slasher. If I wander around too much at night, I might as well be claiming that I’m the attacker myself.”

“The slasher? Reminds me of that killer from five years ago,” Shinra murmured ominously. Celty thought back to the incident that had unsettled the neighborhood several years earlier.

The Ikebukuro
tsujigiri
incident

It was named after the old practice of “testing out” a new katana by attacking random passersby, because as with this ongoing incident, the victims claimed they’d been attacked with a traditional Japanese katana. But a clear portrait of the attacker was never established, and the book on the case stayed open.

Centuries in the past, Ikebukuro had been a place of many
tsujigiri
incidents, so some caused a stir by suggesting a curse was in effect. But once the attacks suddenly stopped, it passed completely out of the public interest in just the span of a year.

“Wasn’t that only two or three attacks though?”

“The main difference is that five years ago, people actually died. In the last incident, the killer barged into a house and cut down two people. The other victims got away with minor injuries, fortunately…”

“But they never caught whoever was responsible.”

Celty shrugged in resignation.

Suddenly, Shinra muttered to himself. “…Saika.”

“Psyche?”

“No, Saika. Written with the characters for ‘song of sin,’ pronounced Saika.”

Song of sin.

Celty typed the characters into the computer, then turned to Shinra in shock.

Saika. The mysterious troll who’d been messing up all the Ikebukuro-related chat rooms and message boards, including the one she’d been frequenting lately.

“Do you know this person? It hasn’t been you this whole time, has it?”

“No, no, I wouldn’t do that. If I wanted to troll people, I’d just get my super-hacker friend to take the boards down entirely.”

“Does this super hacker really exist? And what makes him super? Is that a joke? …Whatever. What about Saika?”
Celty prompted, not in the mood to play along with Shinra’s jokes at the moment.

“Well, there’s been all that trolling about cutting stuff.”

“Yeah, the weird lists of words. But it also talks a lot about loving, so I’m not sure if there’s a connection or not…”

“Hmm… You’ve always been in Ikebukuro, so maybe you don’t know about it…”

“?”

Shinra looked at the question mark she typed onto the screen, then waited a long dramatic moment to build the tension.

“Saika
seems to have happened
a long time ago in Shinjuku.”

“???”

She added a few more question marks to show that she wasn’t following his meaning. Shinra found that to be unbearably adorable, and his face crinkled into a childlike grin.

“Well, the confusing part is that you could say Saika ‘happened’ or that Saika ‘was around’…”

“Stop beating around the bush and explain.”

“Fine, fine. Don’t get angry and fidgety at the same time,” he said, accurately reading her emotions despite the lack of a face to scrutinize.

“Saika was a real, actual, authentic demon blade that existed in Shinjuku years ago.”

“…”

Celty actually went to the trouble of typing in her silence.

“……”

The silence continued. She was apparently waiting for Shinra’s reaction.

“…”

But Shinra was waiting for Celty’s reaction as well. An awkward silence fell upon the room.

Celty lost her patience first. She typed her honest emotions into the keyboard.

“…Ohh?”

“What does ‘ohh’ mean?”

“…”

“…”

The silence was back. Celty hurried to fill it with a question.

“Demon blade… You mean like a Muramasa Blade?”

“You really do like those
Wizardry
games, don’t you?”

“Stop spying on my chat logs.”

“I apologize for that—sorry. Matter settled! Now…don’t you remember that Kanra person in the chat talking about a demon blade? Anyway, that jogged my memory about some old books I read once, so I looked them up again, and…surprise! There was a demon blade named Saika in Shinjuku once!” he announced proudly. Annoyed, Celty typed in her response.

“Setting aside that the matter is most certainly not settled…I don’t know. I thought you were more of a realist, Shinra. There’s no such thing as a cursed demon blade. Look at reality.”

As she typed, Celty was keenly aware that she might as well be denying her own existence. She made a show of a laughing motion to get her point across. Shinra only shook his head—he knew Celty better than anyone else, including how to get under her skin.

“Well, well, well… Remind me, who was it that was trembling in fear at the image of grays that they showed in that UFO special? Who was it that saw the video of the cow being sucked up by the UFO and couldn’t stop talking about how scary it would be if that happened to her?”

“Sh—”

“Who got suckered in by that April Fool’s show and came to tell me
all about the revelation that ‘the Apollo mission never actually landed on the moon’?”

“Shut up, shut up, shut uuup! It…it’s obvious! Aliens are much more likely to exist than cursed swords!”
she snapped back lamely.

Shinra just shook his head, the picture of smugness. “What if the aliens made the cursed sword?”

“Wha—?”

“A katana created with secret space technology. Seems like it would have a mind of its own, right?”

“W-well, in that case…”

The conversation was clearly going in the wrong direction, but Celty couldn’t think of a good rebuttal. Or a reason for one, for that matter.

“…It seems…plausible…”

Begrudgingly convinced, Celty decided she ought to ask about the sword.

I have to admit, I’m curious about the fact that it’s using the same name,
she told herself and listened closely to what Shinra had to say.

“Now, just after the war ended, this demon blade Saika rampaged through Shinjuku for blood.”

“I see.”

“And then, after an incredible, thrilling battle with a magical sword from the West…”

“Now wait a minute!”
Celty grabbed Shinra by his lapel, feeling that she’d been tricked into buying his story.
“What boys’ manga did you rip this story out of?”

“Settle down, Celty! Adolescents aren’t going to take to a manga without human characters. It would get canceled! In fact, it wouldn’t even make it through the editors’ meetings! Just hear me out until the end!”

“
…I’m listening,
” she prompted, her hand still clutching his collar.

“Their battle was brought to an end by the bamboo spear of intelligence, which was carved from a magic stalk of bamboo. After that, Saika was forced to flee Shinjuku for—”

“Forget I asked.”

She let go of Shinra’s coat and started walking for the front entrance of the apartment.

“But I was just getting to the good part.”

“I’ve heard enough. I’m going out for a bit. I’m not taking any jobs tonight,”
she typed into her PDA and held backward for Shinra to read. He didn’t make any attempts to stop her and switched topics on a dime. This was virtually a daily occurrence in their lives.

“Where are you going?”

“To see Shizuo.”

“Wha…? A-are you cheating on me, Celty?! If you’re unhappy with me, can you say why?! No, wait, not directly; that’ll just crush my spirit. Say what’s wrong with me with three different kinds of misdirection! Seventy percent praise and thirty percent insults, if you can!”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got no complaints,”
she replied innocently and stepped into the entryway.
“It’s just that this Saika character’s been repeating Shizuo’s name over and over. If you’ve read my logs, you should know. If he’s really got something to do with the slasher, it’s worth finding him and hearing him out.”

krch

ripcrik

snp krack

Sound.

The sound of joints and muscles breaking down.

rip snap rip snap crakk

With every unpleasant crackle, terrible pain ran through this body.

The boy had no choice but to endure this endless hell.

He knew that it was nothing but a manifestation of his own rage.

Shizuo Heiwajima came to understand that he was different in third grade.

He had a fight with his little brother over something pointless. And when he snapped, he tried to throw the refrigerator, which was easily taller than he was.

At the time, he didn’t have the strength to lift it, of course—but as a result, he pulled muscles all over his body and dislocated numerous joints.

That was just the start of the abnormalities.

When he got into a fight with his friend in the classroom, the boy threw a pointed compass at Shizuo. That was bad enough, but what Shizuo did in response was far worse. It was enough to make the phrase
self-defense
pick up and scamper away.

He lifted an entire desk packed with textbooks with his skinny nine-year-old arms, did a half rotation, and hurled it with all of his strength.

The target of his anger was nothing short of dead lucky.

All of that weight passed to his side, just barely brushing his arm. The next instant, the wall behind him sounded like it was falling apart.

With trembling legs, the boy turned around to see the desk stuck halfway into the classroom wall.

There’s a phrase:
brute strength
.

When humans think they’re exhibiting all of their strength, they’re really not.

The muscles naturally limit themselves so that what we think of as “full strength” is actually far weaker than their maximum capability.

But when placed in a situation of extreme danger, such as a house fire, the brain unlocks that potential. Suddenly the body is strong enough to lift heavy furniture or other people from the site of a disaster or to leap over obstacles that should be too tall to scale.

Shizuo Heiwajima possessed one unique feature. He could call upon that brute strength at any moment, not just in emergencies.

This might have appeared to be a great benefit—but it wasn’t anything of the sort.

The reason the brain prevents the use of full strength is to protect the body’s joints and muscles. The body’s limits are limits for a reason; putting it under that much stress will only cause it to break down.

In exchange for the gift of incredible power, Shizuo lost the ability to control his strength.

In other words, if he attempted to put all of his strength into something, his muscles would faithfully tear themselves to shreds in the attempt.

That overflowing physical strength soon became an extension of his own rage.

Whenever he got angry, that uncontrollable muscular strength would jump into action on its own. When his brain was wielded by great
strength, it demanded the body make use of it:
Pick up the heaviest object here, destroy everything, destroy everyone.

As a result, young Shizuo heeded his instincts.

Destruction. He sought absolute destruction, and it was always his own body that collapsed first.

A collapsing body and uncontrollable strength.

Trapped between these two things, the boy’s mind began to fall apart bit by bit. At some point, he forgot the concept of controlling his anger.

If I can’t hold back and I’m going to fall apart first anyway, I’ll feel so much better by just allowing my mind to be free!

He gave up on self-control.

He unleashed all of his instincts, ready to give up his own life.

As a result of that choice, he destroyed even more.

He wreaked an untold amount of violence…on his own body.

Day after day, he broke down.

When his body broke down, he flew into a rage and destroyed himself even more.

It was an unmanageable juggling act.

He gained nothing. Only the scars of destruction piled up behind him.

His muscles destroyed themselves repeatedly—and before they could rebuild stronger than before, they broke down again.

The boy was drowning in a hell of his own creation.

He struggled and strained and strove but could not escape himself…

And time passed.

“My dad and mom were always super nice about it,” Shizuo muttered, his eyes narrowed behind the sunglasses. “Even my little brother, whom I always fought with, screamed for an ambulance after I tried to lift the fridge and collapsed. He waited there with me until the paramedics arrived… I had a really nice family. They didn’t spoil me or anything, but I think I was raised in a happy home.”

Celty listened in silence as Shizuo spoke about his upbringing. The bartender’s outfit and riding suit were shoulder to shoulder on a bench as evening descended on South Ikebukuro Park. There were other people in the park, but the eeriness of the sight kept them all away.

“So…how did it turn out this way?” he muttered sadly into the air, a self-deprecating smile on his lips. “What was the catalyst for my change? I didn’t have any trouble at home. There was no childhood trauma, and I wasn’t obsessed with hyper-violent anime or manga. I barely even watched any movies. So was it me? Did the cause come from nothing but me myself?”

Celty maintained her silence. She wasn’t ignoring him but was attempting to absorb all of Shizuo’s confessions within her own shadow.

“I just want to be strong,” he admitted, but his voice
was
strong. “If I’m the cause of all this, then I hate myself most of all. I don’t care about the fighting. I just want the strength to control myself.”

It was an utterly honest confession. The only reason he could speak like this was because Celty didn’t waste his time with pointless rebuttals or jokes. Of course, it wasn’t only that—he’d been around her for a long time and had grown to trust her implicitly.

Shizuo knew that everyone in the neighborhood was afraid of him. Because of that, the fact that Celty would listen without fear made her a very precious thing to him.

If he was talking to someone who had no idea who he was, they would probably manage to drive him into a rage somehow, and just like all the others, they would find themselves terrified of him. Shizuo understood how the process happened.

But understanding its ways did not give him any better control over it.

After a long, long time, the number of people in his vicinity shrank down naturally.

There was his boss at work, who knew how to handle Shizuo. There was Simon, who was capable of defending himself against Shizuo’s extreme violence. There was Izaya Orihara, who stayed close because of his utter loathing. And there was the silent Headless Rider, who never made him mad.

He already knew that Celty was the Headless Rider. But he wasn’t particularly concerned with that. She’d always interacted with him while wearing the helmet, and knowing that she couldn’t actually speak meant that it made no difference to him.

Shizuo’s thought process was very simple, though it wasn’t the result of some kind of strong belief or ideal. He put everything in the world into two categories.

People who pissed him off and people who didn’t piss him off. Those were the only two choices.

“Sorry for griping at ya again,” he said with a slight smile. At this point, he didn’t look like anything but a mild-mannered young man. “So what do you want today? You came out here because you wanted me for something, right?”

“…”

Celty took out her PDA and conveyed the information in the fewest words possible.

The slashings taking place in town.

The person on the Net named Saika who was using his name.

That Saika might be connected to the attacks somehow.

That the journalist who’d been asking about Shizuo was one of the slasher’s victims.

And that Shizuo’s name had popped up in chat the night the writer was attacked.

Once he’d read all of this information, Shizuo raised an eyebrow.

“What the hell? Are you saying you suspect me?” he asked directly.

Celty shook her helmet side to side.

If Shizuo were responsible and swinging a katana around, there was no way the victims wouldn’t have died. There was no obvious reason for Shizuo to conduct the random attacks, and even if anyone made him mad enough to want to ambush someone under cover of night, he’d just twist the poor sap’s head around 180 degrees.