Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) (12 page)

I have to escape…

Why is Kida…doing this…?

Who knows what’ll happen…if they catch me…

She was full of fear and questions at the sight of her friend in a state she’d never seen before.

Meanwhile, she was being hunted by an unfamiliar army of yellow.

What would Masaomi say if they caught her?

Would he free her?

Or would he stay the unfamiliar Masaomi, the stranger?

Even if he spared her, what would he tell his companions?

And more importantly, if he learned the reason that she’d come, would it only cause him to change further?

Was she actually causing him great anguish by doing this?

What would happen with the Dollars group?

What was Masaomi planning to do?

Countless questions popped into her head and vanished.

The only thing that stayed behind was anxiety. She listened intently to her surroundings.

Most sound was swallowed by the rain, but she could hear a few people running around.

When she sensed the running sounds getting closer, Anri slid farther back into a tighter gap in the mountain of scrap metal.

The rain was perhaps both a help and a hindrance to her attempt to hide, but she didn’t have the wherewithal to determine which it was. The only sound was the words of love.

The accursed voices knew the present situation.

Anri immediately pushed the voices and their deal with the devil alike deep into the picture frame.

Everyone cut by Saika was implanted with Saika’s voice somewhere in their minds. For that reason, while they retained their own wits, they were all under a form of brainwashing in which they couldn’t disobey the mother’s orders.

Yes, using that ability might easily allow her to break out of her predicament by force.

But then…Kida…

Hurting Masaomi was out of the question, and Anri did not want to unnecessarily hurt anyone, period, including his friends. Normally those who hosted Saika were forced into slashing strangers, but Anri kept her mental control by forcing the voices inside the frame.

That was how she was able to completely ignore Saika’s bargain, but that might not last forever in the current situation.

Even with Saika’s children on her side, there was no telling what might happen to those boys after this was over, and taking them
all
over was out of the question. She would be no better than the slasher in that case.

Plus, if she did choose to force her way out…

Kida will recognize me.

It was an obvious and predictable outcome, but it was the worst kind of despair to Anri at this moment.

She didn’t want to ruin the place she’d found for herself.

That was why she was here. But if Masaomi learned that she was not an ordinary person—if he learned that she was Saika…

Perhaps she ought to present herself and apologize. But she would still have to explain the situation—and that meant explaining about those who had let her into the factory grounds.

She could just say that she snuck in, but Masaomi would come to the conclusion that she couldn’t have climbed over the walls on her own.
As a matter of fact, she could do it with the extra help of Saika, but again, that would reveal her abnormality to him.

Why…why did it come to this?

She just didn’t want things to be ruined.

If Masaomi learned about the secret of Saika, he might tell Mikado, too.

Perhaps he would listen to her if she begged him not to tell anyone, but she wasn’t in any position to make such a demand.

Please let the night pass without anyone spotting me
, she wished to no one but the rain. No sooner had the wish come to her than a voice from nearby crushed it without remorse.

“Hey! Don’t you think someone could hide in here?”

They had found the crack in the piled-up junk that she used to slip back to her spot. She was hidden farther back, but if they started looking into the crevice, they would find her momentarily.

“Shit! It’s too narrow for me to fit!” growled a deep voice.

A different voice hit Anri’s eardrums, cutting him off.

“I’ll go.”

!

Even in the rain, there was no mistaking it.

That was Masaomi’s voice.

Masaomi circled around the factory from the opposite side to narrow down the search, but no intruder appeared.

He searched through the scrapped material and vehicles one by one, assuming that she had to be hiding somewhere. Eventually he reached the largest pile of scrap, which a number of boys were gathered before.

It was a mountain of rust and rubble, junked cars and metal, so large that it made him wonder if the factory was treating industrial waste. Or maybe this had served as shelter for some homeless for a while, and they’d added to the pile.

Being somewhat smaller than average, Masaomi offered to lead. He moved to squeeze into the narrow crevice. There were plenty of members skinnier than him, but he didn’t want them thrashing the pile and potentially endangering the life of the woman hiding inside.

If he was going to settle this peacefully, he needed to go in himself and make it clear that he meant her no harm.

But only if she doesn’t mean harm herself.

“Sh-Shogun!” yelped a frightened voice, stopping him in the process of squeezing into the crack.

“Told you to call me Masaomi. What is it?”

“Uh, over there…”

Masaomi spotted a shadow in the direction they were looking.

Something even darker than the rain-soaked darkness.

So dark that it seemed to absorb that very rain…

A figure of pure, deep black.

Amid the tense silence, the cell phone clutched in Anri’s hand vibrated and glowed.

“!”

When she saw the message on the screen, she immediately began to type a response.

Her fingers were clumsy, unfamiliar with the buttons.

The message to her was short and simple.

“I’m at the factory. Where are you?”

There was only one thing Anri could do, trapped as she was.

She asked for help through the cell phone she’d just recently purchased.

From another person who wasn’t supposed to exist, either in public or in secret…

“The Black…Rider…?”

Masaomi’s eyes went wide. It was the very person they’d just been talking about moments ago, an urban legend often seen around the neighborhood.

Anyone who lived in Ikebukuro long enough was familiar with the
rider, but when facing the legendary figure with potential
personal business
on top of that, it was a much more imposing presence.

The other boys began to murmur among themselves.

“Uh…are you saying…
that
was the intruder?”

“N-no way! I’d have recognized that freak right away!” shrieked one of the boys, clearly terrified of their dark visitor. Masaomi turned around and saw that someone must have alerted the others, as the rest of the boys from inside the factory were now on their way, walking toward them as a crowd. Some of them were even running, and the tension was thick among the rain.

“It’s the Black Rider!”

“The real thing?”

“Oh crap!”

“You serious?”

“Let’s rumble!”

One boy spoke up and compressed all of these emotions further. “I-I saw the rider pop over the wall… Like, just leaped over it, bike and all.”

They were the words of someone in a state of deluded confusion, but Masaomi had heard enough rumors about the Black Rider to know that this was expected.
It’s what the Black Rider can do,
he thought. There was a more pressing concern at the moment.

What is the rider…doing here
now
?

The timing was perfect—almost expectant.

The rider was stopped about sixty feet away, apparently pulling out a cell phone in the middle of the rain.

He could see the faint glow of the screen in the darkness, but there was obviously no way to make out the contents from this distance.

Suddenly, the light vanished.

Here he comes
, Masaomi guessed right as the motorcycle began to silently ride forward. It sped up slinkingly, like a predator with prey in its range, spraying the falling rain as it raced toward the group.

At first it seemed to be coming right for them, but the course veered just slightly—and the bike crashed directly into the pile of vehicles.

“Whoa!” the boys exclaimed. The motorcycle chugged its way over the mountain of wreckage like an off-road bike conquering a rocky path, only to vanish into the little valley between the piles, the very crack that Masaomi was facing.

The image burned itself into his eyes.

Countless shadows extended from the bike, tangling and gripping onto the scrap to pull the vehicle over the hump.

He had heard the rumors.

It seemed like too impressive a gimmick to be relegated to the level of “urban legend”—but there was no doubt that he had just witnessed something eerie, something
unexplained
, amid the pouring rain.

Confusion reigned over every inch of Masaomi.

Just as it did for the intruder shivering behind the rubble.