Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) (11 page)

The accursed words echoed.

They screeched and cried within her head at all times, like the sound of cicadas.

And just like cicadas, as if trying to compress a lifetime of love into the single week they actually lived…

I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—I love humanity—I love you. I love you. I love you.—I love all of the human race!—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—I have the confidence to love every human being equally—I love you. I love you.—You don’t have the confidence to do that, do you?—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—And I want to love you, too—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—But no, I can’t—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—Because you are my host—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—So I will love—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—I will love humanity for you—I love you. I love you. I love you.—So love me—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—You can’t live without me anymore, can you?—I love you. I love you.—So love me. It’s the only option—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—I know that this is selfish—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—But there’s no
way to stop it—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—I shall teach you—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—About this emotion—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—About this passion—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—About this exultation—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—Oh, oh!—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—Since you cannot love humans, I shall teach you—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.—About the great wonder and beauty of humanity—I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love I love I love I love I love I love I love love love love love love love love love love lovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovevelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovevelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelove

The only thing that made these voices different from cicadas was that rather than a single week or a single summer, they continued on endlessly, never to cease.

On this day, like any other, the voices sounded in Anri Sonohara’s head.

But she was not particularly insane. At least, not that she was aware.

Perhaps she had already gone mad, but they said that often people who are insane don’t realize that they are insane, so her ultimate decision was not to pay any mind to the thought of whether she was insane at all.

The words of insanity chanted from the vicinity of her right arm.

If anyone heard those words, they would assume right from the start that something was wrong—but the voices did not actually stem from her mind, her brain.

They were an abnormal thing, neither physical nor mental.

“Saika.”

Known to the rest of the world as a “cursed blade,” it was in fact the thing that plagued the body of Anri Sonohara—and formed the central role of the recent serial slashings.

However, that did not mean that Anri was responsible for the slashings—if anything, she was purely a victim.

Saika desired “children” that would prove the love between her and humanity. Those children were created by implanting Saika’s consciousness into her victims by the act of cutting them. In that sense, it truly was a curse.

Before Anri was chosen to be the host, she was just another girl who had been slashed. The child Saika implanted into her sought twisted love for humanity, just as its mother had. An uncontrollable episode after that resulted in the incident in question.

The incident was brought to an end when Anri managed to control all of the “children.” The slashings stopped, and the minds that Saika
had taken over were returned to their hosts—except for when they needed to fabricate details about the slashings themselves, to make sure all of the ends met properly.

In other words, everyone who had been attacked claimed that they “couldn’t remember the face” of whoever attacked them.

After that, nothing ought to have changed.

As usual, the accursed voices spoke inside of Anri, echoing through her heart without end.

But she did not consider that to be a big problem.

She just observed both the world she saw through her eyes, and even her own mental state, from outside the picture frame.

Objectively. As if it was not her own concern.

If anything bad happened, she would be feeling it from a removed position where it didn’t hurt as much.

Every tragedy was as distant as a painting of a massacre in an art gallery.

That was the only part of this that made her think that perhaps she was insane.

Perhaps it was why she was able to put up with the screams of love without going mad herself.

The slashing incidents should have been buried in the darkness of mystery so that she could return to her normal life.

But since it all happened, something had indeed changed in her life.

At first she couldn’t tell what it was—this vague feeling that plagued her with anxiety.

Normally she could ignore such a nagging feeling as something within the picture frame, but she just couldn’t brush it aside this time.

After a long period of searching, she realized the answer.

The source of her trouble was actually outside of the frame.

Masaomi’s…different somehow.

Two boys had emerged from the painting within the frame, reached out, and touched her heart.

Mikado Ryuugamine and Masaomi Kida.

After suffering an injury with one of her “children” and spending several days in the hospital, Masaomi had changed gradually.

It wasn’t a clear and obvious change.

Even his best friend, Mikado Ryuugamine, hadn’t noticed anything was wrong.

But as she was accustomed to viewing the world from outside of the painting, Anri was always aware of the subtle change that was blooming within Masaomi.

After several days of this evolution, she came across an unpleasant topic in the chat room.

There were two groups of youths called color gangs, and each of them believed that the other side was responsible for the serial slashing attacks.

When she became aware of this, Anri was plagued with guilt.

She did not cause the attacks, but she had been relieved under the assumption that the incident was over. This leftover resentment suggested otherwise.

Something had to be done.

She summoned the “children” that her “children” created—in other words, from Saika’s perspective as the progenitor, the grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

She did not want to use Saika’s power to control anyone’s mind, but she told herself that the use of force was necessary to stop pointless conflict.

She paid the price for this soon after.

She reached out to some of the boys known as Yellow Scarves among the slashing victims, hoping to use Saika’s power to learn more detailed information.

What she heard from one of them shocked her.

“Our boss is Masaomi Kida. I’ve seen him together with Mom before.”

She was stunned into silence.

“Um, he said he would avenge the girl with glasses, living vessel of Mom.”

The children all thought of the original Saika within Anri as their “mother.” While it was Anri who wielded control, they clearly only saw her as the host for their mother.

For a moment, she didn’t even process what the child had said.

Several minutes later, when Masaomi’s face finally flashed through
her mind, she realized that a tremendous amount of cold sweat was trickling down her skin.

“It…can’t be…”

It was a lie. It had to be a mistake.

But Saika would not lie to the original, the mother.

Which meant the child had to be mistaken.

It was obviously just a boy with the same name who happened to also look like Masaomi.

It wasn’t possible for bright, cheery Masaomi, who claimed that he loved her, to stand at the head of a dangerous gang. She didn’t want to believe it.

Especially not that he had returned to the group in order to take revenge on her.

That was why she came.

To the ruined factory that was the gang’s hideout.

When Masaomi received the call, she decided to sneak after him, just in case.

After saying good-bye to Mikado, she went home and changed into her normal clothes before leaving again.

She already had two of the Yellow Scarves who were her children volunteer to guard the entrance so that she could sneak onto the grounds undiscovered.

In the end, she saw the last thing she wanted to see.

She saw Masaomi…but a different Masaomi than the one she knew.

His actions and attitude were the same, but the air surrounding him couldn’t have been more different.

And then, Anri realized.

That alien feeling she’d sensed since she wound up in the hospital was pouring out of Masaomi right before her, and she’d only picked up hints of it leaking out into his ordinary behavior.

And now that she knew everything, she was hiding in a crevice of the factory’s scrap material, drenched by the rain in the darkness.

How had it come to this?

Her emotions roiled in confusion.

The rain beating her body grew harder and colder over time, churning her confusion into something greater.

Kida…