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

In a city where even the night is brimming with light, there is a monster.

(Yes, a monster that was indeed a monster.)

Another member of the city wandered in the darkness tonight, soon to be gripped by the fear of that creature.

Ikebukuro

As she straddled the headlightless motorcycle, she was certain that she was being followed.

Her bike’s engine made no sound.

And yet, she was easily traveling over thirty-five miles an hour. That alone made her an eerie sight, but even through her helmet, she could sense the shadow closing in on her.

She didn’t have to look into her side mirror. She could
sense
her surroundings through her back.

It’s the police.

Her grip on the handlebars relaxed as the shadow wafted within her helmet.

There was no need for undue fear as long as she understood what she was facing, that it wasn’t some unexplained menace. Of course, to people unfamiliar with the process, being pursued by the police
was
an inexplicable and menacing experience—but to Celty Sturluson, it was an encounter with which she was somewhat familiar.

She took care to follow traffic safety laws in all cases outside of an emergency, but there was no hiding the lack of a license plate and lights. She couldn’t possibly pay a ticket if she got pulled over. Celty didn’t even have a driver’s license, so getting arrested would lead to a chain reaction of ugly consequences.

A self-deprecating smile flitted across Celty’s mind.

Breaking the law or not, if I get caught, I’ve got bigger problems.

She silently focused her consciousness on the multiple squad bikes approaching her from the rear.

It’s not like the law of Japan can do anything with me once they’ve got me.

Oblivious to Celty’s confidence, the police motorcycles picked up speed bit by bit, approaching her rear quietly but surely.

Then, I guess I need to give them a show.

She sped up, daring them to react, pulling the black bike into a wide parking lot on the side of the road.

To convince them that this is pointless.

The cops closed in, four in all. It was a bit much just to stop one motorcycle, but apparently even that wasn’t enough—one of the officers was using his radio to call for more backup.

You need to learn that the very idea of catching me is futile.

At her back was the wall of a building and a fence of inorganic color.

At her feet, cracked asphalt and white lines demarcating parking spaces.

Overhead, the faded, blurred moonlight dimmed by the surrounding neon.

With the surroundings just right, Celty was now ready to reveal her true nature.

She took off her helmet to show them.

The motorcycle officers had been following commonsense procedures according to what they knew was normal. But now they recognized an abnormality.

There was no head where there should have been beneath the helmet. From the cross section of her neck, black smoke spilled like some kind of out-of-control humidifier.

That in this world, there are monsters that surpass all human understanding.

To impress her nature upon them, the being atop the black motorcycle reached out—and controlled the night lights with her own shadow.

The seeping shadow instantly spread, forming a mist that clouded the officers’ vision. This mist only existed for a span of several seconds until the particles of shadow contracted, materializing into a weapon in Celty’s hands.

But it was far too ugly and warped to be called a weapon. It had a handle about ten feet long, twice Celty’s height, ending in a pitch-black scythe just as long. It was the kind of object found on the Death tarot card, lit by a powerful light to project a large shadow against a wall, then cut out and turned into a real object. Endless, spotless, black, black, black.

More shadow exuded from Celty’s back, erupting upward into wings just as black as the scythe that enveloped her body.

At the same time, the previously silent bike’s engine roared into life.

As it brayed with the sound of a great beast’s dying roar, Celty swung her enormous scythe, completing the image of her true self—a creature not of this world. A headless dullahan.

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 stay 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.

Instantly dragged against their wills into a display of the abnormal, the motorcycle cops panicked, which gave Celty an easy window of escape. Naturally, none of them would dare to follow her—or so she assumed.

Sadly, reality was not so kind.

Even to a monster to whom reality had only a tenuous connection, reality was cruel to all.

“It’s always been on my mind,” muttered one of the motorcycle cops to himself, seemingly the central figure of the four men, his face shadowed by his helmet.

—?

This was not the reaction she expected.

Celty concentrated on the officer’s long soliloquy, feeling that something was definitely wrong.

“Always, always. When things like you show up in manga and movies, we’re always the
punching bags
. By the time the hero with his superpowers
shows up, we’re always lying in a pool of our own blood, just to show off how tough your kind is.”

This didn’t seem to have anything to do with his actual job, but none of the other officers showed any disagreement with the sentiment. Celty began to feel unsettled that the men were not panicking at her scythe or lack of head.

“But that’s all right. Because on the flip side, they only depict us that way because we’re considered real tough in real life. It’s a necessary evil when telling a story. Yep, absolutely true. But there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to say to any true monster or evil psychic or cyborg or ninja.”

…What in the world is he babbling about?

Celty watched the muttering cop with suspicion and spread her shadow again.

It just wasn’t enough. She hadn’t used enough yet.

None of this meant anything if it wasn’t threatening her opponent. She was producing this shadow specifically for its mental effect. But after a reaction like this, she wasn’t sure what to do anymore.

Undaunted by any of this, the man murmured, “Just one thing. Just one thing I want to say. And that is…”

He squeezed the accelerator sleeve on his right handlebar.

“Don’t fuck with traffic cops, monster.”

The engine roared, 180 degrees the opposite of the sound the black motorcycle made, and the other bikes joined in, gunning their throttles. Meanwhile, she could hear the backup motorcycles and squad cars approaching in the distance.

The traffic officer directly in front of Celty suddenly looked up. His face was pleasant. But his eyes glimmered dangerously.

“I’ll say it again.”

His gaze, brighter than any headlight, cut mercilessly through Celty’s hesitation.

“Learn your lesson, monster.
Don’t fuck with traffic cops.
”

Near Kawagoe Highway, top floor of apartment building

The sound of a door slamming open.

The owner of the apartment, Shinra Kishitani, spun around to see the figure of his beloved cotenant, her shoulders trembling. She was holding her helmet in her hand for some reason, making no effort to hide her lack of head.

“Welcome home, Cel…whuh?!”

Before Shinra could finish his greeting, Celty leaped into her partner’s arms. In the midst of his powerful embrace, her body shook and quaked.

“Huh? Wha…what’s up?! This kind of physical intimacy is the greatest of honors, my lady. Er, wait, there’s a better way to say that… Uh, hang on. Are you trembling?! No, really, what’s wrong?! Celty? Celtyyy?!”

Several minutes later, once Celty had finally calmed down, she typed her thoughts into the laptop set up on the dinner table.

Shadows split and split again from her fingertips, enabling her to type much faster than any human could. As a sign of her panic, she was even typing in such a way that entirely mimicked human conversation.

“I was s-s-so s-s-scared, so scared, Shinra! P-p-police these days are monsters!”

“Police…?”

“Yes, a monster, that was indeed a monster! There were nearly a dozen motorcycles and patrol cars chasing me around like a beast with one mind… I swung my scythe around with abandon, but rather than scattering them, that just made them chase me harder! They evaded with perfect precision and maintained the pressure! Each and every bike was like a missile coming after me!”

Her fear was so great that Celty jumped from time to time just by looking at the string of text she was typing. Shinra had his arm around her back, gently enveloping the Black Rider suit in an attempt to calm her nerves.