Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) (30 page)

Fifteen minutes later, Shinjuku

As he walked the path from the park to his apartment, he heard a voice behind his back.

“Hey.”

Izaya turned around at the familiar voice and saw a six-foot-plus giant with skin dark enough to melt into the night.

“Simon?” he asked. Simon gave his usual cheery grin.

What’s Simon doing here?

For once in his life, Izaya’s mind was occupied with doubt. He was normally the one causing others to feel doubt and grow confused, but now he was in their position.

It only lasted for an instant, but an instant was all Simon needed.

The moment that Izaya started to speak, the giant’s scarred fist plunged into his face.

Thirty minutes later, apartment building, Shinjuku

“That took you long enough. Did you get the… What happened? You look dreadful,” Namie exclaimed, taken aback by Izaya’s brilliantly blue and puffy eye.

His eyelid was swollen like a boxer’s after a bout with a particularly hard puncher, and the bruise around it was vivid and dark.

“…I took a pretty good punch, though it didn’t knock me out. As I was working my way up to being able to stand again, I got a lecture in Russian. ‘I don’t want to lecture you,’ indeed… It was one for the ages.”

“What? Russian? What do you mean…? I thought you’d never taken a bruise like that, even when fighting with that Shizuo guy.”

Izaya grimaced at the mention of his archenemy’s name. He analyzed the punch he’d just taken, comparing it to that of the loathsome one.

“Shizu’s stronger, of course…but this was the punch of someone who does some kind of hand-to-hand combat training. I was able to react, but not to dodge… Heh. Guess those rumors about him being a Russian mobster or mercenary have something to them.”

“Are you all right? You don’t have a hemorrhage, do you?”

It was rare for Namie to show him any kind of concern, but Izaya wasn’t listening.

“Damn… Just when I’d gotten the best of Saika and thought I was something special, this happens to me.”

But through the first taste of direct physical pain in ages, Izaya couldn’t help but enjoy himself.

He looked at his pupils in the mirror and ran through the basic brain hemorrhage tests, grinning all the while. He turned to Namie.

“Hey…can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Were you the one who leaked Mikado’s information to Horada?”

“I wonder. And if I did, you would have seen it coming, wouldn’t you?” she replied without batting an eye. Izaya grimaced and looked up excitedly at the ceiling.

“Heh! Honestly, some people I can read like a book, such as
you…and others completely defy my predictions, like Simon and Shizu. This is why I just can’t stop loving humanity… That’s right. That must be why I can keep doing this shitty, shitty job… It’s so much fun, it makes me sick.”

Somewhere there, in the midst of his words, was the tiniest bit of truth.

But Namie listened to his confession, straight-faced, and cut him down in her usual cold manner.

“I’ve said this over and over, but…I think humanity hates you in return.”

Thirty minutes earlier in the street

Izaya felt his body float into the air as pain exploded on his face.

The floating sensation ended abruptly when his back slammed hard against the wall of an apartment building several yards away. The shock jolted his back, waist, and limbs, the blood vessels in his extremities nearly bursting with pain and numbness.

His mind was woozy, but the internal pain and nausea from the shock forced his brain into action. The voice of the black man squatting over him reached his ears.

“Hey. You mind listening to something you don’t want to hear?”

These friendly words were the start of a much, much longer monologue.

“You know, it’s laughable what a cowardly creep you are. Ha-ha…ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”

The Russian mockery washed over Izaya. He glared up at the big man and slowly replied, “Actually…I have to agree.”

His reply was in Russian as well—creating the rather surreal sight of an Asian and a black man speaking Russian on the asphalt.

“The thing is, Simon, I happen to like that side of my personality,” he said, leaning back against the wall, his face still brimming with confidence. “I know you care about this neighborhood…but why are you showing up now? What does any of this have to do with you?”

“Oh, that? It’s quite simple.”

It was a rare, honest question from Izaya, and Simon returned it with simple honesty of his own.

“You remember Masaomi’s girlfriend?”

“…Yeah.”

“She told my restaurant partner a lot of things. About you and what’s going on now.”

The face of Saki Mikajima came to Izaya’s mind. He had told her part of his current plan—he’d been using her as a tool to manipulate Masaomi Kida and bring him back when needed.

Oh, now I see. Saki really was in love with him.

Saki had betrayed him. This fact did not particularly surprise him.

In that case, I can give them my blessing.

It was, in fact, within his range of expectations—but there was one thing he didn’t understand.

“Why would she contact you guys rather than tell Kida himself?”

“Hah! Kida wouldn’t have stopped, even if she’d told him. Plus…she probably didn’t have anyone else to call on the phone. I doubt she knew the phone numbers of anyone in Kadota’s little group.”

“Again, why you?” Izaya started to ask, then figured it out.

Why Simon? Saki wasn’t particularly close with him. It was a common sushi destination, but certainly not the kind of place where one would trade numbers with the employees.

Huh? Numbers…?

That was where he understood. Yes, Saki didn’t know any number that she could reach out to for help. Which was exactly why—in the absence of anyone else she could ask—she got the contact information of Simon or the white sushi chef he worked with.

Meaning…

“Our sushi shop gets a lot of business.”

The conclusion he arrived at was so silly, he didn’t comment.

Simon laughed and said it anyway. “Whether it’s a hospital or wherever…we can deliver to anyone with a phone book.”

A phone book.

Such a simple and basic answer.

When the chef picked up the phone and said, “Russia Sushi, how can I help you?” did she take him literally?

Izaya couldn’t stop the smile from touching his lips. Simon looked
down on Izaya’s mirth with a cold grin of his own. “I didn’t make it in time earlier today, but here I am now to put a nail in you.”

“…”

“You shouldn’t be stirrin’ up the town like this, Izaya.”

“Y’know, Simon,” Izaya muttered in Japanese, staring at the man through his rapidly swelling eye.

“You come across completely different speaking Russian than when you speak Japanese…”

“You know…it’s really quite stunning what an underhanded creep you are,” Shingen said flatly as he put his shoes on. “I’ve looked into your past… You were pulling the strings all along in that turf war two years ago, weren’t you?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Those two groups of youngsters… They were Japanese versions of street gangs, right? You manipulated both teams, kept your hands clean, and made off with the juiciest morsels of information to sell.”

“…”

Shingen turned back to look at the confidently grinning Izaya and smirked inside of his gas mask.

“You sent that girl who worships you to those boys. From what I heard, it was her injury that ended up resolving the entire matter…”

He paused, then offered a conjecture dripping with irony. “I suspect that even that was on your orders. Perhaps you gave her all of the instructions, up to the point of her kidnapping…though I don’t know if there are actually any girls willing to follow orders up to the point of serious bodily harm.”

A moment’s silence.

Izaya did not answer the question directly. He wore a wry grin as he said, “Saki and those other girls…were so unfortunate. That’s what made them so adorable.”

“Puppets of an unfortunate man like you. I understand you’ve been doing this sort of thing since high school. Shinra used to tell me that you ‘didn’t understand a thing about love.’”

“That’s rich, coming from a pervert with a fetish for decapitated women… But at any rate… All of those girls, including Saki, were being terribly abused by their families and lovers, worse than you can possibly imagine…”

As he spoke, Izaya’s face took on a complex mixture of pity and ecstasy. “But unable to hate their abusers, they were trapped where they were. That’s the kind of people they were, and that’s exactly what made them so easy to manipulate. They were possessed by more than just the love of their partner, but a kind of worship. And I shifted that worship onto me instead—that’s all. If I did wish for death, they would hesitate, but still join me in the end…”

“Hmph. You treat this so lightly. It almost makes me think it would be very easy to switch one’s doctrine on a dime,” Shingen noted with equal parts admiration and exasperation. He recognized that the young man standing there was truly a monster. How many lives had the mind behind that smile destroyed?

Izaya suddenly changed the topic. “Does the term
leanan sídhe
mean anything to you?”

Shingen’s eyes widened in surprise.

“…”

“?”

“Er, nothing. It’s a type of fairy in Irish and Scottish folklore, isn’t it? The kind that kills the man she falls in love with.”

“Yes. She seduces a man, and if he accepts her love, she gives him talent in exchange for his life. If he resists her love, she becomes a willing slave to him until he gives in… That’s what Saki’s kind are.”

Shingen saw Izaya’s point. Falling in love with the kind of girls Izaya described would—if not provide magical powers—certainly seem more likely to end in tragedy.

“But now…Saki’s fallen to being Kida’s slave. Which means that, like the poet in the legend, Kida’s life will be drained away. As it was, so it shall be,” Izaya said in mourning for the teenager.

Shingen considered this, then thought about his own son and his pairing with a monster…and decided to argue back.

“But…can you truly say that the poet’s shortened life is a tragedy?”

Izaya smiled in a way that suggested he didn’t care in the least.
He sighed, “Well, if he truly loves the fairy, then maybe he’s happy anyway.”

“If he knows full well that he’ll be misfortunate, and he loves her anyway…doesn’t that make him happy in the end?”