Durarara!!, Vol. 4 (novel) (17 page)

And then, her eyes opened.

“Oh, she’s awake. Not only is there no danger to her life, she may be able to walk again in minutes.”

“Thank you very much.”

“Hey, I can’t turn down a request from Shizuo’s little brother. I don’t want him coming to blast me all the way to Mars.”

Her wits still weren’t in focus. Her hazy vision was able to process a milky-white ceiling.

There was some kind of conversation happening around her, but it all felt like it was happening in some distant country. But she’d have to be watching the TV to see something from a far-off land, so it gave her the illusion of receiving telepathic signals instead. Eventually, the information began to get clearer.

One of the voices was devoid of emotion, while the other was cynical and playful.

“Sorry about my brother…”

“Ha-ha, actually, I should thank you, since he’s been a big help to Celty somehow. But I don’t want her falling in love with Shizuo, so could you tell him not to act
too
cool if he can help it? He’ll punch me if I say so. Oh, and I’m a bit thirsty, so can I have a glass of water?”

“I’ll bring you one.”

“Oh, thanks. And one for her…if she can drink. Well, get one anyway.”

The closer man’s face loomed toward her. He was a smart-looking young man with glasses. Based on his white lab coat, he appeared to be a doctor.

But the background surrounding him did not look like a hospital. Bookshelves lined the wall, and there were decorative plants of the kind found at an upscale, ultramodern restaurant.

The room was certainly stylish, but that sleek look was ruined by the hangers of drying clothes hanging in the entrance doorway. There was also a tropical fish tank, its air pump bubbling away, yet she also heard a cat meowing somewhere else in the room. The whole place had an odd combination of luxury and homey comfort.

Where am I?

She blinked her cloudy eyes, trying to bring the scene into focus.

The next moment, she noticed the dull pain coming from every inch of her body.

…!

It wasn’t enough to make her scream, but she did wonder how it had
taken her this long to notice such pain. She clenched her eyes against it, which the doctor-like man noticed.

“Oh, I wouldn’t move around yet if I were you. I gave you a painkiller, and you seem to heal fast—but you took injuries that would normally have you passed out from the pain,” he said flippantly.

She quietly tried to keep her breathing under control. If this was a hospital, there was something very important she’d need to face—but with the circumstances so uncertain, she needed to understand her situation first.

“…”

“Are you all right? Aside from the dull impact, do you have any sharp, stabbing pains?”

“…”

She shook her head. The man in the coat smiled with relief. At the very least, the doctor here did not seem to intend her any harm. She swallowed and managed to emit a voice that was weak and pained, yet driven by strong will.

“Um…where…am I…?”

It was a delicate and beautiful voice for a girl who had been wearing a horrifying zombie mask just minutes earlier, but Shinra Kishitani, the man in white, simply shook his head in ecstatic wonder.

“Ahhh, it’s
just like
your voice on TV.”

“Umm…”

“Oh, pardon me. But hang on a second. Before I answer your question…please just let me enjoy the bliss of meeting someone I’ve always wanted to meet. Not in a romantic way. Just a few seconds, if you don’t mind.”

“Uh, okay…,” the girl on the bed said, keeping her voice low so as not to set off the throbbing in her head.

Shinra looked relieved and theatrically thrust his arms wide before his injured patient, his voice positively brimming with bliss.

“It’s a cold, cruel world out there, but I’m glad to be alive!
This
is true enchantment! Oh, once you’re able to move again, may I have your autograph? Two, if possible! I know I’m a shameless fanboy, but my roommate is also a huge fan of yours!”

It was hardly the most gentlemanly thing in the world, devolving
into fawning excitement in the presence of an injured patient, but the black-market doctor couldn’t help but bow to his personal hero.

But this wasn’t limited to just him; many men would do the same in this situation. Others might be so nervous that they could barely speak.

“Who would have ever thought that I could have this job skulking in the darkness…”

Shinra spread his arms even wider and identified his patient.

“…and eventually get the chance to treat everyone’s favorite idol singer,
Ruri Hijiribe
!”

From the Internet encyclopedia
Fuguruma Youki

An excerpt from the “Ruri Hijiribe” article

A Japanese actress, celebrity, and model. Affiliated with the Yodogiri Shining Corporation talent agency.

Her birth name is the same as her stage name.

Date of birth August 8, year unknown.

She was originally an apprentice of the special-effects makeup artist Tenjin Zakuroya, then made her modeling debut after she was scouted by Yodogiri Shining Corporation.

Before her debut, she handled special-effects makeup for several domestic films, with her work on
Vampire Ninja Carmilla Saizou
being especially lauded. The World Film Village Federation listed her along with her master in their list of “100 Juiciest SFX Makeup Artists.”

After that, she made her magazine debut as a model and appeared in her first minor role in a TV drama six months later, winning passionate fans with her unique nature.

Her acting is not expert level; her fans are drawn to her nature underneath. Her pale skin and delicate, melancholy features give her an unearthly beauty, which has landed her a number of roles playing gloomy, weak-willed characters.

She is rumored to be the rare “straight beauty” without the need
of cosmetics, but the truth of this is unknown. It’s also said that she maintains the same quiet, graceful nature when the cameras aren’t rolling. In interviews, she has claimed that she’s poor at interacting and has no friends or boyfriend.

Although she is supposedly sold on her looks alone, her rare qualities among celebrities means that she has no competitive rival. Her ghostly nature makes her popular with men and women alike.

She is poor at physical activity and has never appeared on televised athletic segments, such as swimming races. However, because her dark characteristics make her easy to play off of during variety programs, she is often featured on talk shows. Because she speaks so seldomly, most of her character is constructed via comments and jokes from the hosts and other comedian guests. She has mentioned her lack of physical coordination on such shows.

However, due to reports that she placed highly in track-and-field events in elementary school, it’s possible that her weak and nonathletic character might be a ruse. [citation needed]

Thanks to her eerie qualities and exaggerated characteristics, she is commonly voted one of the top celebrities whom manga and anime fans would like to see wear cosplay.

It was none other than the famous idol actress Ruri Hijiribe in the room with Shinra.

She was an unearthly presence there and not just for the reason that she had been wearing bizarre zombie makeup.

Naturally, her face had no cosmetics on it. Yet her skin was as smooth as silk, and her features were as beautiful as a portrait.

You know, if Yuuhei came right out of a girls’ manga, she must be an angel from a classic painting by one of the Western masters
, Shinra thought, then regretted the fact that he hadn’t brought an autograph board for her to sign.
It was too sudden, I guess.

Normally, Shinra would be cleaning the apartment while waiting for Celty to come home. Instead, his phone rang with a familiar number on the display.

The brother of an old classmate claimed he had a patient he couldn’t bring to a normal doctor, so he paid that acquaintance a visit. As a result, Shinra was grateful that he made the choice to be a black-market doctor.

As Ruri Hijiribe watched the man in the white coat frolic, she wondered,
Who is this man, anyway? And this looks…just like a normal room…but it’s so big.

Based on the furnishings, it looked more like an apartment than a house. The problem was, it was much too big for that to be the case.

Oh, right. What happened to me…? That man in the bartender’s outfit hit me with a bench…and then…

Her memory ended there. After that, someone brought her to this place and had this doctor-looking man care for her—at least, based on what she could tell from the way the man was excitedly blathering on.

“…”

Ruri kept her silence, putting her circumstances together in her head.

I wonder if he knows…who I am.

Clearly, he knew that she was Ruri Hijiribe. But more importantly, did he know that she was the serial killer Hollywood?

First of all, it made no sense that she wasn’t taken to a hospital in an ambulance. True, it would have been a bad thing for her to be taken to a hospital and identified, but she was already in a life-or-death situation when she was found.

As her body throbbed in pain, a cat suddenly climbed up onto her stomach.

“Urgh…”

The pressure of the cat’s paws made the pain much worse. Ruri tried to push it off of the blanket resting on her stomach, but when she got a good look at it, she couldn’t do it.

The cat was an adorable Scottish fold with tiny flopped ears and still not fully grown. It was like a ball of fluff that was given life. The creature looked at Ruri curiously and mewed.

It was so cute that the serial killer nearly forgot her pain and all her troubles for an instant.

But another man, who had entered the room in the meantime, reached out from beside the doctor and picked up the cat.

“Stop that, Dokusonmaru. You shouldn’t climb on an injured person.”

“Dokusonmaru?” the man in the white coat asked.

The younger man said flatly, “His full name is Yuigadokusonmaru. It means ‘Mr. Egocentric.’ Isn’t he cute?”

The man held out the cat, but the doctor pulled back awkwardly. “Please, smile when you do that next time. It’s scary.”

“But I am smiling.”

“If Dad saw you, he’d try to dissect you,” the black-market doctor said in resignation as he tried to read the expression of the utterly expressionless man.

Listening to the two men talk, Ruri suddenly realized that the man with the discount T-shirt and the expensive name-brand belt was a very familiar face.

“Are you…Yuuhei…Hanejima?” she mumbled. Yuuhei turned to her without a reaction and set the cat down on the floor.

“Oh, good. You’re doing better than I thought,” he said without moving a single muscle aside from his lips, which made it difficult to tell if he was actually relieved at all. But given that the man shared her line of work, she knew that he was simply the type of person who never displayed his true emotions.

They had actually met on a number of occasions, but they were not friends.

In fact, when Yuuhei was shooting his debut film,
Vampire Ninja Carmilla Saizou
, it was none other than Ruri who did his prosthetic makeup.

After she began acting, they appeared together just once in a two-hour TV drama. It was a serialized police procedural, with Yuuhei playing the lead detective role, while Ruri was a simple guest as the victim’s daughter. That was the closest connection they shared.

Why?

She was initially more confused than surprised by their reunion.

Why was there a coworker of sorts here in the room?

He couldn’t have been sent…by
him
…

But she dismissed the thought.

He
doesn’t have any connection to Yuuhei Hanejima.

So why? The question floated over the actress’s pretty face as Yuuhei
quietly asked, “Can you drink some water?” He held out a cup, his face like a robot’s.

It was the perfect setup for her to be poisoned, but Ruri took it and imbibed the water without question. A dull pain ran through her body when she sat up, but it wasn’t enough to prevent her from drinking.