Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) (2 page)

Two years ago, Raira University Hospital, Ikebukuro

The boy’s eyes were focused on a single mass of white.

A scene like snow beyond the glass window.

Sheets behind the window.

Sheets on the bed.

A pipe frame supporting that bed.

The ceiling and walls surrounding it all.

Even the numerous devices filling the room.

Each and every one, white.

Even the skin tone and the black floating amid the white were connected with white tubes.

That point of color was like one giant eye, which the boy felt was looking out at him.

With a pale gaze.

It was an illusion, of course; the point floating in the white was the face of a girl about his age, her eyes closed and face pointed toward the ceiling.

It was the boy himself who was creating the illusion.

The guilt that gripped him so terribly made him
wish
that she would blame him for his transgression.

He wanted to run, but he had nowhere to go. He was afraid of the
guilt that would remain after he did, so he hoped that if she blamed him, at least that guilt would disappear—a shameful, cowardly hope.

But the bedridden girl was almost cruelly silent.

In fact, she could neither hear anything nor open her eyes to see anything.

Unable to even speak to her, the boy could only tremble in fear.

“Hey, isn’t that great?”

The voice was completely at odds with the gravity of the situation.

The boy didn’t bother to turn around toward it. He ground his teeth audibly.

But the owner of the voice didn’t seem to be affected in the least by the boy’s bare hostility. He continued, “So she didn’t die, huh? Lady Luck’s on your side. As long as she’s alive, you can find a way to work things out.”

“Iza…ya…,” the boy replied, the anger palpable now. The only reason he didn’t turn around and pummel Izaya Orihara was because he knew the true target of his anger was his own self.

The black-clad Izaya, who stood out in stark relief against the white hospital hallway, gave the boy a knowing smile. “You’re smart—that’s why I like you. You understand that what happened to her was because of you. It is to your great credit that you didn’t let your emotions goad you into attacking me. I’m certain that she’s grateful for that too. Can’t wait until she wakes up truly.”

At the very moment Izaya’s speech finished, the boy leaped onto him. He knew they were in a hospital, but he could find no good reason to stop himself this time.

Yet Izaya easily evaded the boy’s desperate punch by a hair’s breadth, extending a leg to knock him off-balance. He grabbed the boy’s unsteady arm and spun him down to the floor. There was no sound or impact, just the soft landing of leaves onto the ground.

Stunned that he was now sitting on the hallway tile, the boy could only stare up at the man. From below, Izaya’s smile took on a hint of shadow.

“Correct.”

“…”

“You were right to turn your anger on me there. I taunted you with clear and present malice,” Izaya cackled with no hint of remorse. He brought a finger up to his lips. “But this is a hospital. Gotta keep it quiet in here,” he taunted, turning his gaze to the girl in the room.

“In a coma, huh? I really hope she wakes up. On the other hand, perhaps you would prefer that she never opens her eyes again?”

“What does…that mean…?” the boy gasped haltingly. The anger had faded a bit, leaving only the rasp of fear.

Izaya looked down on the desperate boy. “What does it mean? You know exactly what I mean. By even asking that question, aren’t you just attempting to delude yourself into thinking you don’t know what’s going on? You’re afraid, aren’t you? If she wakes up, you might be blamed for your part in this for the rest of your life.”

“…”

“But what would happen if she dies without ever waking up? Wouldn’t that be a lifetime of guilt for you? I suppose it would be, knowing you. So whether she lives or dies, you’re left with the guilt on your conscience.”

“…”

The boy fell silent. Izaya turned to him and gently spoke words of comfort. It was as if he was doling out the forgiveness in the girl’s stead. But the actual content of those words was anything but warm.

“You can’t escape it, no matter how you struggle. No matter where you go, the past will follow you. No matter how hard you try to forget, no matter if you die and let it all disappear, the past will always be right behind you, chasing you down. Chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing… Do you know why?”

Izaya shrugged his shoulders, gesturing that even he could do nothing about this. “Because it’s lonely. The past, memories, and outcomes are all very lonely things. They want a companion.”

He stopped momentarily, leaned back against the wall, and gazed into the distance. When he spoke again, it was practically a monologue.

“I don’t believe in God. Because its existence is anything but certain.”

“…”

“In a world where even the future is uncertain, the past is a great and
mighty thing—because it surely existed,” he said, the grand concepts belied by the matter-of-fact tone of his voice. “Sometimes, I even think that the accumulation of the past itself should be ‘God’ to mankind.”

Simple, so simple.

“Even if the past is colored by mistakes and illusions that make it differ from reality…as long as the person involved believes it, that past becomes the truth to them.”

He could have been speaking to anyone, or perhaps even himself. But it almost seemed like he was talking to the silent girl on the other side of the glass.

“And if you use that past as the basis for your actions and your way of life, wouldn’t that make it a type of god?”

“I have no idea…what you’re trying to say,” the boy grunted, shaking his head in dead seriousness.

Izaya sighed with the trace of a bitter smile. “You know perfectly well,” the information agent said, his mouth twisted with pleasure, as he stared down at the trembling boy. His answer couldn’t have been more simple and direct. “You cannot escape her anymore. Your guilt toward her will become your past, which means that, in a way, she has become your god.”

The boy was silent. He had no choice but to feel the impact of Izaya’s words.

“She is absolute. But that’s not so bad, is it? After all…you love her, don’t you?”

Even as the boy accepted that truth, he wanted nothing more than to expel it from his being.

It was two days later that she regained consciousness.

When the girl, who had no family, opened her eyes at last, the boy was not there.

Masaomi Kida had fled from her.

Even though he knew, as Izaya said, he could never escape her.

He couldn’t find an answer other than to run. That was his only reason.

Time passed.

The girl became Masaomi’s past, and thus she gripped his heart.

Even as she lived, she became the past.

Present day, Raira University Hospital, Ikebukuro

In the quiet of the hospital, slightly removed from the bustle of the train station, the boy stared out at the sky through the window.

He thought on the serial slashings that had gripped the city just a few weeks earlier.

On the night that fifty people were attacked by the slasher, Ikebukuro went into a minor panic. It made front-page headlines in the papers the next day, turning the “slasher” incident into national news.

But meanwhile, on that same night, a number of different events converged, sending certain official institutions—particularly the police and hospitals—into even greater confusion than the media had reported.

Immediately after the slashing happened, a large-scale brawl broke out nearby, which caused the hospital to be flooded with nearly a hundred emergency patients. At least, that’s what the boy heard.

The boy, Masaomi Kida, had no direct connection to this brawl, but he knew several people who’d fallen victim to the various incidents, and he was paying hospital visits nearly every day.

Those friends were all out now, which meant that Masaomi had no need to come back to the hospital, but here he was.

He was standing at the open window of the private room, schoolbag slung over his shoulder, enjoying the breeze.

“It’s cold, Masaomi.”

He shut the window without turning around to face the speaker. “Oh, sorry.”

There was a wry grimace on his face, but his eyes were looking at his own smile in the reflection of the glass. He was checking to see that his expression was properly formed.

“You won’t…look at me.”

“…”

A silence fell onto the room. Eventually, the girl spoke up in a gentle voice that echoed off the walls.

“So your friend is in the hospital now?”

“…Who told you that?”

He hadn’t spoken a word about Anri and his other friends to the owner of the voice. Masaomi turned around, his eyes full of conflicting emotion, to look at the girl sitting up in the hospital bed. She ignored his question and said, “I saw you from the window. You came every day. Was it a girl?”

“Yeah. Glasses, nice body… Just a perfect example of a teenage girl whose imbalance makes her attractive,” Masaomi joked rather than deny it.

The girl was not shaken by his answer. She only smiled as she got further to the point. “You like her?”

“Yeah… She goes to my school. I’m in a love triangle with my good friend,” Masaomi noted, only adding fuel to the fire. But the girl—Saki Mikajima—seemed delighted.

“Oh? You must be serious if you’re throwing yourself into a three-way romance like that. I can barely remember you getting involved with a girl for anything other than a fling,” Saki giggled.

Masaomi silently turned back to the window. The entrance to the hospital was clearly visible from the fifth-floor room. If you were good at picking apart faces and clothes with sharp vision, and you had all the time in the world to gaze out the window, you might be able to pick out who was coming, Masaomi noticed.

Meanwhile, Saki’s smile never left her face. “But I need to correct you first.”

She tilted her pale neck, the short hair that framed her face bobbing slightly.

“If you include me, it’s a romantic square.”

“Stop right there, Saki. Just stop. Close your mouth, breathe through your nose, and listen,” Masaomi interjected, cutting short what could have been taken as either serious or a joke. He looked straight into his own eyes in the window’s reflection. “What we had—it’s over now. Finished. Closing time. Past expiration date. Got that?”

“If we’re over, why do you keep showing up?”

“…”

Masaomi looked to be formulating an answer, but Saki continued before he could speak.

“In fact…you’ve started visiting a lot more recently. Did something happen?” she asked briskly. He held his silence.

In the reflection of the window, the girl’s face held a gentle smile, but nothing moved aside from her lips. Perhaps she had grown too used to holding that expression.

“Could it be…that you want to go back to the old days again?”

“…Sorry. Gonna go home for today.”

It was a weak attempt to change the topic. Masaomi lifted his hand in a brief wave to Saki, then stepped out of the room. As he left, her voice held just a touch more emotion than before.

“You’ll be back, Masaomi.”

He put a hand on the door, trying to block her voice out. He’d heard what she would say next over and over and over. He focused only on leaving, not on the content of the words.

“After all, it’s already decided. Which is why I don’t mind at all if you fall in love with other girls. Because in the very, very end, you’ll still love me more than them.”

Saki knew full well that Masaomi wasn’t listening. She spoke the words to the empty room.

They were meant for herself more than him.

“So until that moment arrives, you need to love many, many girls, Masaomi.”

So many words, right into the wheelchair at the side of her bed.

“So many, you might forget about me. I don’t want you to keep yourself from being happy, just because you’re worried about me. Instead, I want you to go out with all kinds of girls, have many romances, learn to love and be loved, until you forget all about me.”

So many, many words.

“Since in the end, you’ll still come back to me, you know. And for all the mountains of love you built with other people over the years, your love for me will stand even higher, higher, higher. It will happen—it will happen without a doubt. After all…”

Saki’s paradoxical words spilled into the void.

Her smile stayed in place, reaching nothing but the empty room.

Without end.

“That’s what Izaya said.”

She smiled and smiled.

Without end.