Durarara!!, Vol. 4 (novel) (3 page)

With an absolutely outrageous week’s pay in hand, the headless woman, Celty Sturluson, trotted gleefully out of the lab.

When she reached the underground garage, Celty turned to the motorcycle parked in the corner. It was totally hidden by a rain cover,
but oddly enough, the material was not the usual silver, but the same featureless black that covered Celty’s body.

She put a hand to the cover, and it dissipated instantly, the tiny black particles melting into thin air. The action looked like some kind of sorcery, but Celty sat on the bike without a second thought and put the helmet hanging on the handlebars onto her neck.

A Headless Rider in the dark of night, riding a black bike without lights or license plate.

Without the slightest shred of understanding of the effect this combination had on the rest of society, or of the mystery her own existence posed, Celty gunned the engine with a sound like a horse whinnying and rode out into Ikebukuro.

Celty Sturluson was not human.

She was a type of fairy commonly known as a dullahan, found from Scotland to Ireland—a being that visits the homes of those close to death to inform them of their impending mortality.

The dullahan carried its own severed head under its arm, rode on a two-wheeled carriage called a Coiste Bodhar pulled by a headless horse, and approached the homes of the soon to die. Anyone foolish enough to open the door was drenched with a basin full of blood. Thus the dullahan, like the banshee, made its name as a herald of ill fortune throughout European folklore.

One theory claimed that the dullahan bore a strong resemblance to the Norse Valkyrie, but Celty had no way of knowing if this was true.

It wasn’t that she
didn’t
know. More accurately, she just couldn’t remember.

When someone back in her homeland stole her head, she lost her memories of what she was. It was the search for the faint trail of her head that had brought her here to Ikebukuro.

Now with a motorcycle instead of a headless horse and a riding suit instead of armor, she had wandered the streets of this neighborhood for decades.

But ultimately, she had not succeeded at retrieving her head, and her memories were still lost. And she was fine with that.

As long as she could live with those human beings she loved and who accepted her, she could live the way she was now.

She was a headless woman who let her actions speak for her missing face and held this strong, secret desire within her heart.

That was Celty Sturluson in a nutshell.

Highway, Ikebukuro

As she raced toward the center of the city, Celty eagerly contemplated the near future.

Wow, who’d have thought I’d make a million yen in short-term income in just a week? I should use this to buy Shinra some new glasses.

Shinra was the black-market doctor who was Celty’s romantic partner and roommate. He was an odd fellow who loved her for both her mind
and
her appearance, and she loved him back with all of her heart.

The image of her beloved eccentric lighting up with joy made Celty even more excited. She considered other ways to spend the remainder.

I could use a new mini laptop… Oh, right, and I really need a new helmet.

The job she just left was a sudden, unexpected source of income, which made this windfall a bit of a personal bonus unrelated to savings.

She normally made her money as a courier, but nearly all of the proceeds from that business went to savings for the future.

This new venture started about a month ago, when she first met Emilia, who came to Ikebukuro following Shinra’s father. Emilia worked for a major pharmaceutical company overseas and boldly demanded to play with Celty’s body.

Naturally, Celty refused at first, only accepting with reluctance once she had been assured there would be only a minimum of open surgery or cell sampling and the only contact would come from female researchers.

But mostly, it was the amount of pay that Emilia mentioned that sealed the deal.

In the past, I would have no choice but to leave all of the money with
Shinra. But now you can buy pretty much anything with anonymity online. Long live modern civilization.

It was not a typical line of thought for an inhuman spook, but Celty was too busy indulging in crass materialism to care.

In my case, it’s helpful that I don’t need to spend money on my bike. All I need to buy are brushes to keep Shooter’s mane in line. He even hates the idea of stickers on his body.

That had to be the nickname of her Coiste Bodhar. She patted the bike, which also happened to be her trusty headless steed. The normally silent motorcycle engine whinnied in apparent delight, startling nearby pedestrians.

Hee-hee, you adorable scamp
, she thought, already looking forward to spending her million yen, the way a child looks forward to buying candy the day before a field trip.

I’ll still have seven hundred thousand yen left over. Maybe I’ll buy that DVD recorder I’ve been wanting. The kind that dubs straight from a video deck. Then, I’ll have a more compact storage solution for all the episodes of
Gatten, Mysterious Discoveries, TV Investigations,
Monday nine
PM
dramas,
Partner, Antique Appraisers,
and all the other shows I’ve been taping.

Also, let’s see… Right, I can buy some gourmet food for Shinra to eat. He did say he wanted to try
sagohachi
-style pickled sandfish sometime. Is this even the right season for sandfish?

In mid-April, sandfish season was long over. The bigger problem for Celty was how to cook the dish. Having no head naturally meant having no tongue. The shadow that her body produced functioned somewhat like a radar, giving her sight, hearing, and even smell through some means unknown.

But there was a problem: Because she didn’t need to eat for whatever reason, she had no sense of taste and no way of knowing if the scents she was picking up were the same things Shinra smelled.

So if she followed a recipe when cooking, it might
look
right, but there was no way for her to check the actual flavor.

With long years of training, she had gradually learned how to cook certain egg-based dishes to Shinra’s liking, such as crab omelets or scrambled eggs. But for other food, she could only make it by following the recipe to the letter, and given that she couldn’t detect when
she’d accidentally used sugar instead of salt, it was always a surprise until Shinra finally tasted it.

I ought to find a good cook and take serious lessons from them. I wonder…if Anri or Karisawa are any good at cooking?
she wondered, thinking of her closest female acquaintances, but neither of them seemed to have that cooking air about them. Emilia wouldn’t know the first thing about Japanese food, and the other women she knew were all the eccentric type.

I have a newfound respect for the housewife
, the monster thought in admiration. She looked up at the night sky and shrugged. The stars were nearly invisible behind the light of the city. The only object that made its presence known was the moon.

I suppose being able to think about this topic is a sign that my life is good. Not that I was confident of that last month, after Emilia showed up…

By all accounts, Emilia was freeloading in their apartment, but she spent most of the week staying over at the lab, which meant she was almost never home.

Instead, the abnormality of that visit turned into everyday experiments, but that ended up with a minimum of suffering and more than enough reward to make up for it.

The light turned red and she came to a stop, reflecting on the sheer humanity of her life with relief.

This is it. This is what I wanted.

Peaceful days with the one she loved.

As an abnormal, headless knight, she understood just what a rare bliss that was and was acutely aware of the warmth enveloping her emotions.

In fact, I might just call Emilia “Mother” after all. I wonder how Shinra would react.

She felt a peaceful feeling come over her as she imagined her lover’s flustered face and waited for the light to change.

But…

Humanity did not know or care of the goings-on in Celty’s daily life.

It wanted nothing more than to plunge her into hell as the symbol of the abnormal.

“Excuse me, may I have a word?”

Hmm?

Celty made a show of swiveling her helmet around as her otherworldly senses focused on the surroundings. A portly man was holding out what looked like a mic toward her as she waited for the light.

Me? What does he want? Why is he holding a mic out into the middle of the street?

The man was standing on the other side of the guardrail, holding his mic over it into the road where she waited, a deadly serious look on his face.

“I’m Fukumi, a reporter for Daioh TV. I’d like to ask you some questions.”

Oh no.

Celty noticed another man with a TV camera standing a slight distance away and even more men in plainclothes standing around beyond him. She understood Fukumi’s intentions at once.

“We’re currently filming for a news special here in Ikebukuro… I’ve noticed that your motorcycle has no headlight or license plate. This is clearly illegal, is it not?” the reporter asked, which was a perfectly correct observation. Unfortunately, the light was not going to turn green anytime soon.

Damn, I forgot that this is a long light.

In a way, it was rather silly that a motorcycle rider without a headlight or license plate was obeying a traffic light, but the reporter did not crack a smile. “May we assume that the Black Rider witnessed over the years is you? What is your purpose in engaging in such dangerous traffic activities?”

For an instant, the bike growled. It was a low, menacing
grrrl
, like an animal sending a warning signal. The reporter flinched momentarily, disturbed by the motorcycle’s lack of an ordinary engine rumble, but he regained his cool immediately.

“Please tell us something. Are you aware that you’re committing a crime?”

Oh… What do I do now? If I clam up, it’ll only make me look worse to the rest of society.

It’s not a huge deal to me, but I don’t like the idea of those I associate with being treated like criminals, too… Then again, I can’t possibly get licensed, and Shooter doesn’t like wearing a headlight…

Celty was no closer to finding a solution to her quandary. As a courier, she had naturally been involved in ferrying items that ran afoul of the law. There was no denying that her vehicle broke a number of traffic regulations.

But that didn’t mean she could turn around and say,
“Don’t mind me, I’m just a monster anyway.”

…Hmm? Actually, I guess I could say that. If I give that news program some impossible footage, they won’t be able to use the film, and if they did run it, the viewers would assume it was fake CG. And they’ve already filmed me once.

She decided to take out her PDA and type a message, showing it to the reporter.

“…? What is this? Um…what do you mean by this?”

Startled by her sudden response, the reporter look back and forth between the PDA screen and her helmet.

He couldn’t be blamed. The message on the screen said:

“This is a horse, so it doesn’t need a headlight or license plate.”

“Is that supposed to be a jo…
Whaa—?!
” the reporter yelped, freezing up with shock.

The black motorcycle’s silhouette writhed and morphed, growing to twice its previous size. It transformed from a mechanical shape to a biological one in a way that was clearly violating the laws of physics—and in a few seconds, it looked like a pitch-black horse.

But there was something wrong with this horse.

“A-aah…,” the reporter cried again, not at the transformation, but the finished product. He couldn’t be blamed for this.

The Headless Rider’s beloved headlightless bike had faithfully carried over that particular detail.

The horse had no head.

Hee-hee! I haven’t turned him into a horse since that time we went driving in the forests around Fuji
, Celty thought proudly, as she stroked
the abbreviated neck and looked back at the reporter. He was frozen in place, visibly trembling, but she didn’t react any differently, leisurely typing a fresh message into the PDA.