Durarara!!, Vol. 1 (novel) (19 page)

Eventually, the police came to sweep 60-Kai Street, but Mikado in his school jacket hid in the shadows of an alleyway with Celty. If the police found him wearing proof that he was in school, he’d be punished for certain.

The passersby and karaoke bar solicitors unrelated to the Dollars no doubt witnessed the raucous scene from earlier, but no one spoke up to tell the police what happened. Either they decided that nothing so freaky was a good idea to get involved with, or they assumed they’d hallucinated the entire thing.

But for some reason, even after the police had left, the unease sat heavy in Mikado’s heart. He felt that he must be forgetting something important. Meanwhile, Celty, her helmet back on her shoulders, walked over to the van in which her head was sitting.

She no longer held any longing for her head, but it seemed appropriate that she say a final farewell of some kind. But as she approached the van—

Shudd.

A dull shock ran through her back as she reached for the car door. A moment later, the sensation repeated, slightly higher.

Huh? Isn’t this the same thing that happened to Shizuo yesterday…?

The shock instantly turned to pain, and Celty fell to her knees. She looked behind her to see a tall young man wearing a school jacket. There was a large scalpel in his hand, probably taken from a laboratory.

After a brief silence, enough time for the wounds to heal and the pain to fade, the boy mumbled, “Hmm, I guess that’s not enough to kill.”

Seiji Yagiri examined the blade, noting there was no blood on it, then hopped right into the van.

Wait, where are you going?

Celty instantly forgot about being stabbed in the back. She wasn’t sure how to handle this unexpected arrival. As far as she could remember, this was Yagiri, who’d been chasing her head—the younger brother of the woman from earlier. As with the time that he stabbed Shizuo, she was struck by how
normal
he was, and that made it all the harder to know how to respond.

Seiji Yagiri stepped into the van without hesitation and boldly carried his heroine out.

“Huh…?”

At a distance, Mikado had to squint to see what happened.

He thought he saw a man wearing a blazer get into the van, and then just moments later, he got right back out, pulling with him a girl with scars on her neck.

Seiji had a dazzling smile on his face as he pulled her by the hand. With a powerful look in his eye, he led her away from the van.

No one, not Karisawa in the car, or Celty nearby, tried to stop him. No one could.

His actions inside the van were too simple and too bold. At first, Karisawa took him for one of Mikado’s friends. He was wearing the same uniform, and there was no hesitation or doubt in his eyes.

And with that pure look of devotion on his face, he reached out a hand to the scarred girl.

“I’ve come for you. Let’s go.”

If that was all that happened, Karisawa or Celty could have stopped him. But the next moment took them completely by surprise.

“…Okay.”

The girl with the scarred neck took Seiji’s hand without a second thought. As though he completely expected this answer, he nodded and pulled her out of the vehicle. It happened so naturally, it was as though fate had ordained that moment from before they were ever born. The glowing night street was like their wedding aisle.

“Huh? What?”

Despite his bewilderment, Mikado couldn’t take his eyes off of the unnatural scene.

Kadota and Yumasaki, too, seemed to think that Seiji was Mikado’s friend, given the same school uniform, and they watched him go without much consternation. Izaya, on the other hand, did understand the meaning of the events, but he was content to watch the scene play out with a smile on his lips.

Eventually Seiji noticed Mikado on the street, and he approached with the girl in tow.

“Hey.”

The greeting was so ordinary—and therefore eerie, given the circumstances—that Mikado had no response. Seiji continued, not bothered in the least.

“I really owe a lot to both you and my sister. If it wasn’t for my sister, I’d never have found her. And if it wasn’t for you, she’d have been trapped in that lab forever.”

And with that, he walked right past Mikado. The boy watched them pass with shock, but then he noticed the expression on the face of the girl. She averted her eyes, but he thought he caught a hint of fear.

Mikado glared at Seiji and asked a very important question.

“I’d like you to answer something for me. I tried to get an answer out of your sister earlier…”

“Asking if I had killed someone? It might have happened.”

Mikado felt a slight chill run down his back. Seiji did not change his expression. He pointed the scalpel right at Mikado, who stood in his way.

“Now move it. If it’s gotten out that I killed that stalker chick, me and my lady here have to run for safety before the police show up to haul me in.”

Seiji’s eyes were not filled with madness, nor transported with the lust of violence.

“But that doesn’t mean—”

“What do you know? I’ve been watching her, gazing at her, ever since I was a little kid. I wanted to release her, free her from the prison of that cramped glass case. I wanted to live with her out in the free world. That’s all I ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever thought about.”

His eyes were never anything but normal and full of justified intent. This must have been the “ordinary life” that he chose for himself, but from the outside, it was impenetrable and terrifying.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

Izaya, Kadota, Yumasaki, and the others noticed the scene unfolding and gathered around them. Seiji simply stood his ground and shook his head.

“Oh, come on. The power of love cannot be stopped by anyone.” Even surrounded by menacing figures, his expression was absolutely
ordinary. He spun the scalpel and held it high, then turned to Mikado and shouted, “So what does that make you? Both then
and
now, you rely on simple numbers and make no extraordinary effort of your own. You’re like a third-rate villain. I bet you’ve never been in love.”

“And you can’t even be third-rate if you don’t understand the effort it takes to gather these numbers,” Mikado replied.

Seiji smirked and swung the scalpel down. At the same time, a black shadow raced up from behind and struck his body.

“—!”

Celty had been waiting for the right moment and smacked his hand with the butt of her scythe to knock the scalpel loose, but despite the incredible pain in his wrist, he did not drop it. Instead, he swung at Mikado again from his bent position.

“My love will not be broken by the likes of this,” he claimed, trying to pull the girl along despite the odds against him.

Seiji gripped the knife and swiped sideways in a huge arc, trying to force everyone in front of him to back away. Celty quickly struck him again, but—

“That won’t work on me.”

“Dude, is this guy
on
something?” Kadota wondered aloud. Seiji’s expression was as strong and forthright as ever, without an ounce of pain or hesitation.

“It won’t work! I feel pain—I just shake it off! Me and Celty don’t need pain in our life together! So anything you do to me, I refuse to feel as pain!”

“You’re acting crazy!” Mikado shouted. Celty raised her scythe and prepared to cut the tendons in Seiji’s arm.

What is wrong with him? He needs to be stopped. Is this…the form his love takes? What in the world are his values? Does this mean that my views and humans’ are entirely different? I have, I have my own, my own, my own—

She swung the scythe in a tight arc, as much to drive away her own thoughts as anything else. Somehow, the double-sided bluntness of the scythe had given way to a razor-sharp edge. Noting this, Mikado and the other human beings in the vicinity took a wide step backward.

Just as Celty’s scythe was about to descend upon Seiji’s arm…

“Stoooop!”

Everyone went still.

Except for two: Seiji and the girl.

The girl with the scars on her neck was standing boldly in the path of the scythe—and seeing this, Seiji tried to shove himself in front of her. The blade of the scythe stopped just before it touched his body, hurting no one.

Meanwhile, everyone stared at the girl in shock.

The “head girl,” who called herself Celty, had leaped in the path of harm to save Seiji. Her attitude had changed 180 degrees from her previously quiet and reserved self. She boldly spoke out in Seiji’s defense.

“Stop it! Seiji might be harsh and violent and a little different from other people, but he saved my life! He saved me and Anri, but even then, he’s already in love with someone else, you see, so…you can’t kill him…”

Her voice trembled and lost steam until she fell over onto Seiji in a tearful mess.

No way—no way, no way—

And the dullahan realized:

No…this girl is not my head.

At the exact same moment, Mikado realized who she was.

She’s not the dullahan’s head! Her name is—

“Mika…Harima?” he mumbled. She turned trembling eyes on him. “It’s true, isn’t it? You’re Mika Harima, who was supposedly killed by Seiji, aren’t you?”

“That’s a lie,” said Seiji. The instant he heard her voice and name, the memories had begun flooding back into his mind. The stalker who looked so much like his beloved. The girl he had killed by smashing her head into the wall… “It’s not true, is it?”

“… I’m sorry!I’m sorry, I…I’m sorry…”

“I actually…wasn’t completely dead! I clung to life…and your sister asked…if I wanted you to fall in love with me! And even though you almost killed me, I still loved you so much… And then a doctor showed up…and said with a bit of surgery and the right makeup…I could look just like that head…the head that Seiji loves so much!”

Celty’s body twitched.

“But then…the doctor said, ‘Your name is Celty. That’s the head’s name.’ And I decided to try to be Celty for Seiji’s sake…but Namie said it wasn’t working, that I wouldn’t be able to fool him… She was going to erase my memory with surgery or drugs! But…I didn’t want to forget my love for him… I just wanted to tell him how I felt…so I escaped the lab!”

Seiji’s sister must have wanted to combine the head with a living human being so she could try to pry him away from it. But only Namie truly knew if that was to make him a normal human being again or if it was out of jealousy toward the head.

Various pieces were connecting together in Celty’s mind to form a complete picture.

There were only so many people who knew her name. And out of them, the only one who knew she was a dullahan was—

Shinra Kishitani. Celty’s living partner, the underground doctor who knew her secret.

Thinking back further, Celty remembered when she had considered seeking hints on the head’s whereabouts through the research labs of medical manufacturers or universities. But Shinra himself volunteered for that job, saying, “I know people in Yagiri Pharmaceuticals, so I can check on my own. It would be silly to owe Orihara a favor for something like this.”

He came back saying that nothing seemed suspicious or out of place—but looking back on it now, he must have known that the head was at Yagiri Pharmaceuticals all along and volunteered for the fact-finding mission to hide that from her…

She clenched her fists, all interest lost in Mika or Seiji, and bowed briefly to Mikado before hopping on her bike. The roar of the engine burst through the black of night.

It was its fiercest screech all evening, signaling the conclusion of the night’s festivities.

“No way… This can’t… I…I never…noticed?”

An evil shadow loomed closer to plant the final blow on Seiji’s defenseless back.

“Well, well. Looks like you couldn’t even tell the difference between the real thing and a counterfeit. I mean, if we’re being honest, that just shows you how real your love for that head is. Nice work, pal,” Izaya crowed.

Seiji’s heart crumbled to pieces. He fell to his knees.

“Seiji!”

His classmate raced to his side, stitching scars around her neck—Mika Harima.

From Mikado’s perspective, it was all an absurd comedy of errors, but for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to laugh about it. He thought for a moment, then approached and shyly spoke to the two.

“Umm…maybe you didn’t realize that she was an impostor, but you still risked your life to save hers. I think that’s really incredible,” he said, trying to cheer up Seiji, then turned to Mika. “And after I heard your side of the story, I realized that I was wrong about you. True, you’ve got some…character flaws…but you’re not a stalker.”

When he spoke again, it was more to himself than anything. “Then again…it’s probably about as bad. I think it’s a possessive urge that drives stalking behavior. But she put her life on the line for Yagiri’s sake. I don’t think you could do something like that if it was solely out of a selfish desire. Plus, the fact that she still loves the guy who almost killed her is pretty astonishing…in a variety of ways.”

And with one last unnecessary comment, Mikado left to join the night.