Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) (5 page)

Oh, geez.

Celty pulled her PDA from her waist, hoping to find some way to explain the situation to the angry gang, except—

“What you doin’ with that? You think this is a joke? Huh?”

One of them smacked her hand, sending the not-inexpensive PDA clattering to the asphalt.

The next instant, the shadow seeping from Celty’s body instantly spread throughout the area, clinging to the boys’ feet.

“Whua?!”

“Wh-what is this shit?!”

“H-hyaa!”

The boys screamed, stumbled, and fell as their legs were caught by the sudden appearance of the black, ropy shadows, quick as snakes and sticky as leeches.

Meanwhile, Celty retrieved her PDA. Once she was sure the crystal screen still worked, she calmed down a bit.

Good, it’s not broken.

She clutched the PDA Shinra had given her as a present and turned
back, done playing around. She was about to grab Shingen’s hand and drag him away from the scene, when…

“Hey, you! Black Rider! What’s the big idea—?”

“Yah.”

“Guh?!”

—?!

Shingen, who was standing right behind the young man who’d boasted that he was over twenty, swung his briefcase down on the back of the punk’s head. It was a tremendous, centrifugal arc with arms at full extension.

The sound it made was much lighter than Celty expected, but the man crumpled to the ground anyway, eyes rolled back and blood trailing from his head.

While everyone else was stunned into silence, Shingen glared down at his fallen victim imposingly.

“See that…? That’s…how a grown man fights.”

What in the world are you doing, you clown?!

Celty could sense that they were attracting more attention from the surrounding area, so she grabbed Shingen’s hand and practically dragged him away toward her trusty black bike.

“Just a moment, Celty. There are three more of them left.”

“Shut up,”
she typed briefly into the PDA before tucking it back away.

The motorcycle silently ran up to the corner of the Metropolitan Theatre, but then she remembered that there was a police station on the other side and quickly wheeled into a U-turn.

The fear she felt earlier in the evening returned, shivering up her back.

“Oh…did you just shiver, Celty? Was it a shiver in response to a sensation of cold? A mental reaction? The workings of some sensory apparatus unfamiliar to humanity? How fascinating. You’ll have to allow me to dissect you agai—
Gwffh!!
”

She planted her knee in his back and hung her helmet.

He’s just like Shinra, but…I simply can’t find it in me to like him…

“You saved me, Celty. Not only that, you helped me teach the leaders of tomorrow a harsh lesson about life, at the mere price of screaming pain in my serratus posterior inferior and abdominal oblique.”

Shingen was rubbing his ribs with one hand while he clung to Celty’s back with the other.

The contrast of pure white and black atop the dark motorcycle was striking in the back alleys. They would stick out like nothing else on the main roads, and if they were caught, they’d likely be charged with excessive force in self-defense.

With her boyfriend’s father—the very man responsible for that excessive force—seated behind her, she could do nothing but pray that the squad of police motorcycles wouldn’t spot them.

Meanwhile, Shingen continued chattering away into his gas mask. “The thing about that attack is, it wouldn’t really work against a proper fighter—a boxer, say, with powerful abdominal muscles. Sadly, I do not have well-trained abs, so there will be a bruise for quite some time, if not actual interior damage.”

Hope it hurts like hell.

If Celty had actually had teeth to grind, they would have been audible right now. She tried to imagine herself with a head, but the realization that the number one suspect in its theft was sitting behind her just made her depressed.

She slowed her speed through the back alleys, trying to find something else to think about, settling on the earlier gang of boys.

Because there were so many members of the Yellow Scarves, they were a threat if they wanted to be. At worst, they might pinpoint the location of the apartment where she lived with Shinra.

She knew that she could get by without being trailed all the way back, but their numbers were concerning. Celty couldn’t say for certain that one of them who happened to live nearby might not catch sight of her returning home by coincidence.

It’s weird, though
, Celty thought, noticing something about the Yellow Scarves.
They just picked a fight with Shizuo not too long ago…

Shizuo was the name of the friend who had flattened the previous
group of boys a few weeks back. Celty consulted her memories of the more distant past.

The Yellow Scarves were not always such an aggressive bunch, she knew. They might squabble among other kids, but they didn’t seem to be the type to pick fights with older adults or go hunting for victims late at night.

Then again, the idiot in the gas mask is dressed like a perfect mark. Then again, I don’t have room to speak about unusual appearances, either. Huh? So does that mean a few weeks back…they were picking a fight with me, not Shizuo?

If that was the case, she owed Shizuo an apology for getting him involved. But there was something else eating away at her.

She was remembering what one of the members of that group had shouted:
“Listen up, I’m over twenty!”

Before, the Yellow Scarves were just middle schoolers… They should be in high school at the most by now. I didn’t think they would be pulling older people into their group…

While this did bother her, the apartment building was within sight, so her thought process hastily wrapped the issue up.

Then again, strange things happen with large enough gatherings. They’re not necessarily representative of the whole. Ha-ha! Just like us.

The organization that she herself was aligned with suddenly passed through her mind. She trembled slightly with a silent chuckle.

The Dollars aren’t much different.

The motorcycle bearing shadows white and black passed into the building’s underground parking lot unseen. The night moved onward in Ikebukuro.

Though she herself was an extremely abnormal being, her very normal life quietly vanished into the darkness.

But the disquiet of that question remained upon her heart.

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