Durarara!!, Vol. 4 (novel) (8 page)

Society seemed more interested in the identity of the Black Rider than this mystery killer, but given that Mikado actually
knew
who the Headless Rider was, the still-unmasked Hollywood held much more fascination for him.

On the other hand, it seemed like following up a meeting with Anri by watching depressing news pieces only left a bad aftertaste. So he picked up the remote and muttered, “Maybe I can find a happier news segment.”

As he surfed through the channels, he came across a report that
Yuuhei Hanejima’s photo book had sold twenty thousand copies in its first week. On the screen was a portrait of a young man with far better looks than Mikado’s.

“That’s incredible. Twenty thousand copies at three thousand yen apiece… Even if he only makes ten percent in royalties, that’s six million yen. And his movies are doing gangbusters. He’s really got it all going on…”

He was inferior in every single way to the perfect superhuman on the screen. Mikado sighed dejectedly.

You know…I feel like this Yuuhei guy reminds me of someone I know…

The thought had occurred to him every time he saw the star actor, but no answer was forthcoming. Mikado continued flipping through every channel that was currently playing the news. Around the point that they all started covering the weather forecast, he decided it was time to check the TV guide in the paper.

With the schedule transition that April usually brought, most stations would be airing their own special programs starting in the next time block.

One of them was titled
Ikebukuro’s 100-Day Front, Undercover! Shining a Light on the Hellhole That Is Ikebukuro, Live!

Hellhole…? That seems unnecessarily harsh.

But he would be lying if he said he wasn’t interested. In the end, Mikado decided to watch the show on the chance that he might see an acquaintance of his on live television.

Ultimately, his guess was correct.

But it was not the kind of acquaintance that he was expecting.

One hour later, he was watching a pitch-black shadow on the screen as it raced away from a motor officer.

“Celty…,” he mumbled. He would never mistake that shadow for anyone else. He left the TV on and turned to the window.

The place they were showing on the program was not anywhere close, so naturally he couldn’t see the events from his apartment. He tried to focus his ears to hear something, but that didn’t turn up anything, either.

Meanwhile, Celty grew giant black wings on the screen and flew through the sky, like some kind of phantom thief.

“I don’t know… That looks bad. Should I mobilize the Dollars…? I guess there’s no way to do that,” Mikado murmured, the very personification of the word
naive
. Back on the TV, they had returned to the news studio. He was worried for the sake of the inhuman dullahan that would normally have no connection to him whatsoever, but she was a member of the Dollars, after all.

“Well, I guess Celty can handle things for herself. Right?” he said and headed for the familiar chat room.

All the while, he was secretly harboring both excitement and anxiety over the Ikebukuro guided tour he would be leading the following evening.

Chat room

The next morning, in front of Animate, Ikebukuro

There is a short passage from the intersection to the west of the Sunshine building until you reach National Route 254. This stretch includes a number of shops that sell fan-made
doujinshi
and merchandise explicitly aimed at females, which earned it the name Otome (Maiden) Road.

On this sunny afternoon, two boys and a girl strolled down that very street. The girl was Karisawa, and one of the boys was Yumasaki.

The other male, who served as both guardian and brake system for the other two, was Kyouhei Kadota. He kept his knit cap pulled low and listened to the conversation of the pair walking behind him. Though to be honest, he was only concentrating on about half of it.

“That’s the thing. What I think is, you
should
argue about your opinions of an anime. If each side debates its side logically, it can only help the other. But the people who prop up their favorite anime by saying, ‘If you don’t get what makes this good, just watch your panty-shot anime instead’ are the worst, and they don’t realize that they’re indirectly insulting the very anime they claim to like so much.”

“Oh yeah. There were people saying that on the official forum for the
Gunjaws!
anime. I understand that you get mad when people make fun of you, but why bring another genre down to get back?”

“Exactly! I love hard-core series that have nothing but dudes in them, and I also love moe series full of panty shots and nip slips—
hbwah?!
”

“Yumacchi, you dummy!”

Karisawa abruptly slapped him on the cheek. He looked at her, stunned. “Wh-what was that for, Karisawa?”

“Claiming that moe anime means panty shots and nip slips is only going to cause misunderstandings! Moe is defined by the soul of the viewer! In that sense, it applies to every piece of animation in the entire world! Even the ancient animal illustrations of the
Choju-giga
are excellent moe scrolls, and you’re here limiting it to—”

“No, you don’t understand! When I’m speaking of panty shots being connected to moe, I’m only speaking of a particular method, while also encompassing all of the romance and fantasy of
”

“
at my stage, I can find every male character in
Gunjaws!
to be moe
”

“
Karisawa, I think you’ve got the wrong idea about
”

“
moe
moe
moe
moe-moe
”

“
moe
moe-moe?
moe
”