Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) (8 page)

Masaomi was fully comfortable with his life in the big city right around the time that the Yellow Scarves numbered about thirty in total. As their numbers grew, Masaomi got tired of the fighting, and the Yellow Scarves as a whole turned easygoing and relaxed. There were very few squabbles with other gangs at that point.

He tried picking up girls when he was on his own, but he rarely succeeded, and even when he did, the relationship was lazy and brief. That’s how he had always related to women, even before coming to Ikebukuro.

Mikado always marveled at these exploits, claiming that he was “still just in middle school!” But Masaomi had been going out with girls since his elementary years, so he usually turned the tables and teased Mikado for being too shy instead.

So when this moment came, Masaomi didn’t give it any more thought
than
Hey, I got hit on by some girls, and they’re pretty hot, too. Lucky me, I’m not doing anything right now.

“You’re called the Yellow Scarves. Isn’t that right?” one of the girls asked boldly. Masaomi felt his excitement cool off.

Oh. She’s not interested in me personally, just the group. Then again, we must be getting famous if even normal girls like her are aware of us.

He was ready to put on a different face, to express more acutely his individual nature as Masaomi Kida, but one of the girls preempted him with a gentle smile.

“You’re way cooler in person than the rumors suggest, Masaomi Kida.”

“Huh?” he gaped stupidly.

How did she know his name? It was the girl in the center of the opposing group. She had a bright smile and lightly dyed a lock of her boyish short hair, a look that made her rather visually similar to him. He blinked in surprise.

“What? How do you know my name? Are you psychic? Like Psychic Itou? If you keep reading people’s minds, I’m gonna have to stuff you into a bag and take you home with me!” he teased, referencing a popular TV comedian to hide his consternation about being recognized.

Masaomi’s fellow Yellow Scarves looked among themselves, unsure of how they should react, while the girls giggled at Masaomi’s joke. The one in the center gleefully responded, “Oh my God, you’re being so weird! You’re so funny, Kida!”

After a bout of laughter, she gently shook her head. “But I’m not a psychic. The real psychic is someone else.”

“Oh? Who’s that? Does one of these girls around here speak to ghosts?” Masaomi asked, looking at the others with a gentle smile of his own. Some of the girls were already speaking to other members of the Yellow Scarves, and only the three clustered around the short-haired girl were facing him directly.

“Let me guess, she asked the ghosts of my ancestors just what a cool guy I am, right? Or is it one of the sort that hangs out behind my back? Or a paralysis ghost, or a floating ghost, or what have you. Whatever kind of ghost it is, I’m sure it’ll be reborn under the most awesome conditions in the future. Maybe as the child of you and me?” he joked bawdily, testing her reaction. Though her hair was dyed, she and the
other girls seemed fairly straightforward, not trashy. He was testing their reactions to see if they would get along with his style.

“Now you’re just being silly. Let me guess, do you already have a name picked out?”

“Well, we’d need to take a look at the characters in the parents’ names, right? So what’s your name?”

The girl played along well, not missing a beat.

“Saki Mikajima. Mikajima is spelled with
three
, a small
ke
, and
island
. And Saki is a shortened form of the Stewartia tree.”

“Stewartia? So in flower language, your name means like, ‘Seize your chance before it wilts away’?”

“Oh, wow! You know what it is? I figured you would ask, ‘What’s that?’” she said, surprised.

Masaomi grinned, feeling his engine kicking in. “Sure, I know everything. I just ask the ghost hanging out over my back.” He wasn’t sure if that one was a little too corny.

Saki said, “Exactly.”

“Huh?”

“The person standing behind you is kind of psychic, in a way. He’s very special. He knows everything.”

“Huh?”

Before Masaomi could turn around in shock, a hand fell on his shoulder.

“Whah?”

Masaomi spun on his heels and saw an unfamiliar man standing there.

“Hi, nice to meet you. It’s, um…Masaomi Kida, right?” the man said, smiling amiably.

When he looked at the man’s face, a single emotion rose in Masaomi’s chest: vague anxiety. The same sensation he’d felt when people started to rally around him.

Masaomi felt his entire body wrapped in an odd prickling alienation that he couldn’t quite describe.

“…And you are?” he asked suspiciously.

The older man held out his hand and beamed. “I’m Izaya Orihara. Information is my business.”

“Nice to meet you.”

The boy recalled the impishly innocent yet cunning and crafty smile of Izaya and clicked his tongue in irritation. “There, see? I just remembered some shit I didn’t want to think about. Enough of the depressing talk!”

He crossed his legs in front of him and changed the topic. “Oh, right, this is depressing, too. So what was the deal? Who beat up this Horada guy last night?”

“I told you… Um, the Black Rider. I mean, technically it was the guy the rider was with who did Mr. Horada.”

“…Wasn’t Higa telling me the exact same story a while back? Right around the time I returned… It was Shizuo, wasn’t it? They didn’t go back for a rematch with him, did they? If so, I don’t have a lot of sympathy. In fact, if that was the case, I’d tell them to get the hell away.”

His tone was light and jokey, but there was a sheen of sweat on his expression. It was the face of someone who knew the terror that this man named Shizuo commanded.

One of the boy’s companions mumbled, “Er, well… Higa’s group is in a panic, too. They got whacked by some freak wearing a white gas mask. Said their limbs got tied down by…shadows or some weird shit like that.”

“…What is that, some ninjutsu arts or something?”

“I have no idea. Anyway, the Black Rider gave the gas mask dude a ride, and they just took off…”

With that rather unhelpful report, Masaomi was back to a serious expression again. “I wonder what’s up with that Black Rider.”

Anyone who lived in Ikebukuro knew the urban legend of the Black Rider. When his old friend moved to Tokyo, Masaomi had bragged about the rider—but in truth, he didn’t know the identity or intentions of the strange being.

“All I’ve heard is that he’s supposed to be a member of the Dollars.”

Dollars.

The expressions on those in yellow around him slowly began to evolve.

Many of them believed that the slashing incidents were the work of
the Dollars, and an equal number of them found the concept of a color gang without a color to be eerie and unsettling.

But for whatever reason, all of the Yellow Scarves who were actually hurt in the attacks only claimed that they “didn’t remember” what happened. For the Yellow Scarves, the police, and the media, the full picture of the slasher was still unclear.

Now that the slasher was in hiding, the news had moved on to newer topics, and the incident was beginning to fade from the public’s mind. But for those who had felt the madness of that incident at close range, those who knew some of the victims, the truth of the matter was carved into them just as deeply as those wounds the victims had suffered.

“I have no intention of forgiving whoever cut down my people,” Masaomi announced, his foot perched boldly up on top of a drum canister. He got down and strode through the meaningful glances of the crowd toward the exit, mumbling to himself.

It was a sentiment he had uttered over and over to himself since he had first returned to this place several days ago. As though he was trying to convince himself of something.

“Shit… How dare you suck me back in…”

“Who’s there?!” echoed a sudden shout of anger off the factory walls.

It could have been the bellow of the landowner come to see what was happening—but the shout came from the members of the group standing watch outside.

“What’s up?” Masaomi asked promptly and received an answer from one of the guards just as promptly.

“They said some girl was trying to spy on us… They’re chasing her now.”

“Girl?”

It was probably just some bystander passing by who peered in out of curiosity from all the commotion inside, Masaomi thought. But then he remembered that several members were guarding each entrance to the property, so that seemed unlikely.

“I want to talk to her. Catch her, make it quiet.”

The factory was not particularly large, but there was scrap material
and junked vehicles piled up outside the structure, which might make catching her difficult if she hid among the piles.

Masaomi headed outside to assist in the search, heard the bustle of his fellow members following behind him, and held up a hand. “We don’t need a big group. Just ten will do.”

If the entire gang ran around the property, they would surely draw notice. The last thing a big group like theirs needed was the loss of one of the few places they could meet in private because someone reported them to the police.

Masaomi knew that the authorities had stepped up their crackdown on the color gangs in recent years. He wanted to protect their space at all costs. They had been hanging here since the days when he was their full-time leader. Something about the space, something distinct from say, a nightclub, reminded him of the vibes of his hometown. He didn’t want to lose the space if he could help it.

Not that it’s up to me. I don’t own the building
, Masaomi thought wryly to himself.
It’s funny…after I already gave up the place once.

The sun was already down, and without many streetlights in the vicinity, the factory grounds were surprisingly dark. It seemed to Masaomi that she could easily get away under these circumstances. He tried to imagine the intruder.

They said it was a woman—probably a curious tabloid writer. If she was an official of some kind, she would have just marched right through the entrance.

It could be someone from an opposing color gang, but there were few of those around these days, and Masaomi’s team did not beef with any of them.

Except for the Dollars.

The Dollars were a unique organization that expanded its reach through the Internet. Masaomi himself had registered on their site for kicks ages ago.

About a year ago, he heard that they were having their first real-life meeting. Masaomi did not attend. He assumed that by gathering as a group and using that power, they would be no different from the Yellow Scarves.

Then again, if I had really dug deep into the Dollars and become an officer…maybe I could have prevented this from happening.

It was with that thought in mind that Masaomi started walking the opposite direction as the one the lookouts had run. The lot was small enough that it would be faster to circle around from the other side.

Suddenly, he got a subtle sensation of something moving. Masaomi was once again plunged into a vague sense of unease.

No, not quite.

The unease…has always been there.

Masaomi quickened his pace, trying to process the swirling, bubbling emotions within him.

The first time I felt it was when people started to gather around me, when all I did was fight.

He took step after step through the darkness, classifying the emotion that had plagued him from past to present. The usual smirking grin on Masaomi’s face was completely gone. Only the unease grew.

The vague unease I’d forgotten came back to my mind when I first met Saki.

The gloom of the sky covered his heart like a suffocating blanket, fanning the flames of his smoldering concerns.

And when I met Izaya after that, the vagueness of that unease turned into rock-hard anxiety.

The farther he got from the entrance to the building, the thicker the darkness became, until he could no longer see his feet.

But Saki…helped me forget that dread.

As his pace increased, Masaomi’s state of mind gradually shook more and more violently.

And when the accident happened…I broke away from Saki…and left the Yellow Scarves…

The past flashed before his eyes. His pulse quickened by the moment.

That should have been the end of the dread.

Thump, thump.
His heart thudded.

I can’t forgive…whoever attacked Anri and the guys who used to be my friends…

His feet hit the ground faster and faster, matching that rhythm.

That’s why I came back. It’s the only reason.

He suddenly realized that large raindrops were falling.

So…why is it happening now?

As the rhythm of the rain picked up to join him, it churned up Masaomi’s unease into a thicker froth.

Why is the anxiety rushing back stronger than it ever did before?

He felt as though he was in reach of the nature of that unease.

Masaomi realized that he was in a full sprint around the back of the factory.