Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) (13 page)

“Ce…Celty.”

Anri’s eyes were full of surprise, gratitude, and her ongoing confusion as the huge black thing descended from overhead.

“You okay? How did this happen?”

Celty produced her PDA for Anri to see, fashioning a tiny shadow umbrella to keep it out of the rain.

“S-sorry…”

“You can explain later. Let’s scram. Get on the back.”

“Um, o-okay…”

Anri tried to quickly get onto the motorcycle, but it being her first time, she had trouble straddling it. Celty helped her up and placed a hand on her face.

“Uh…”

Black shadow began to spread over Anri’s features, until just a few seconds later, she was wearing a helmet very similar to the one Celty wore herself. Only the shape was the same, however; Anri’s was pitch-black.

There was a small viewport so that Anri could see, and the little glowing PDA screen shone through.

“Better to keep your face hidden while we escape, I’m guessing.”

“Th…thank you!”

It would have been bad for Masaomi to catch sight of her face, though Celty wouldn’t have known that fact. Anri was filled with gratitude.

“Hang on to me tight,”
Celty typed, then stashed the PDA away and cranked the throttle.

A sound like a horse whinnying erupted from the engine of the bike, and Anri experienced a forward lurch in gravity, like the instant a roller coaster begins to dip.

The boys bore witness.

A black shadow leaped from the small hill of scrap as the motorcycle engine screeched.

The only difference was that now a girl wearing a black helmet was seated behind the rider.

When Celty and Anri emerged from the piles of junk, they saw several dozen young men waiting for them. Among the crowd were a few girls, too, but they stared at the two just like the boys.

They were surrounded by a wall of humanity on all sides. Such a wall would be easy to break, but it would only guarantee that some of the Yellow Scarves were injured in the incident.

Are they even aware…that I’m a member of the Dollars?

If that was the case, any act of open hostility here was a bad idea. The leader of the Dollars was an acquaintance of sorts, and she was a properly registered member of the Dollars—but taking an antagonistic attitude here would cause trouble for a great many people beyond just herself.

It would be fantastic if the situation were resolvable through dialogue, but that didn’t seem like an option at this point.

“Who are you, huh? I’ve seen you around for ages. Sorry, it’s just that I’m a fan, see? Can I have an autograph?” came a flirtatious, out-of-place question.

Celty focused in the direction of the voice and saw a single boy approach the bike.

“First of all, do you understand Japanese? Let’s start with that. Do you know the word for love? It’s
ai
. That refers to me:
Ai
am in love with the girl sitting behind you. And I don’t appreciate you swooping in and taking her away from me.”

Huh? Isn’t that…the one who’s always hanging out with Mikado and Anri…?

“No response, huh? Well, maybe you really are foreign. Actually, if it turns out you are a woman after all, I think that’d be perfect. Love isn’t me—love is you. How about that? I always thought the contours of that riding suit were too slender to be male. I wouldn’t care about you if you’re a guy, but I could love you based on the riding suit alone if you’re female. Love a nun, love the habit. What do you say? I’d be perfectly content to love you and your passenger at the same time, if you want.”

He’s sharp…and oddly pervertical.

Wait, was
pervertical
even a word? Celty was momentarily distracted by her own thought process as the boy strode over to her, step by step.

That’s when she realized something.

As Masaomi approached, the arm Anri had clinging to Celty’s waist trembled slightly. She pressed her upper half into the small of Celty’s back, trying to hide her helmet-concealed face even farther.

I see now…

Anri didn’t want him to recognize her.

Celty decided that now was not the moment to ponder why the boy Anri associated with was among the Yellow Scarves. All that mattered right now was to get the girl away from this place. She abandoned the PDA method and decided to go straight for the urban legend angle.

If she tried to reason with them, they would demand that Anri show her face to them.

Of course, I’m sure Shinra or Izaya would be able to talk their way out of this.

But sadly, Celty did not have the power to extract them from this situation through dialogue alone.

Well, if he wants a foreigner, he’ll get one. And hey, he’s not wrong—I just happen to understand the language,
she noted ironically. Celty ignored whatever Masaomi was saying and slowly expanded her shadow in a vortex of black.

Ugh. This feels exactly like what happened last night…

Celty was momentarily gripped with fear as she remembered her run-in with the police. But the trembling of the girl clinging to her brought Celty’s sense of reason back. Under the cover of the rain, she materialized her shadow into a different shape this time.

But I bear some of the blame for yesterday. Then again, even if I hadn’t, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome.

The shadow extended from Celty’s feet, writhing like a snake as it gradually condensed to take on solid thickness.

At least I can say…I feel no shame in rescuing her now.

The shadow grew larger and faster over time, channeling the waves of menace she exuded. The majority of that menace and anger was actually directed toward herself, but she pretended not to notice this.

“Whoa… Wh-what is that thing?”

“No…way…”

At first, the boys assumed that it was just the rain spraying off of the ground, but they gradually murmured louder as they noticed the abnormal activity of the shadow.

And if I am at fault, this doesn’t count, because I’m not realizing it.

For an instant, the entire ruined factory was dominated and subsumed by a single noise.

БoOoovvoovvvWVVWWwwwwvvvvooooooЯяяяooo

It was less the sound of an engine than the cry of some creature.

They could tell it was an animal.

But the boys couldn’t even begin to imagine
what
kind of animal it was.

The fierce, eerie shriek of some
thing
that did not actually exist in this world.

The black motorcycle’s engine roared a sound that came directly from the depths of hell itself.

The sound resonated with the shadow creeping across the ground, each amplifying the other as it sped up toward the wall of youth.

In the past, Celty had tested herself to see how far the shadow could go. She stood on the Yamanote Line and extended it all the way to the
next train station over, but she was unable to tell what was beyond that and had to prematurely end the experiment.

She had always tried to limit the use of any mammoth shadows to cut down on the image of herself as a monster, but that hesitation had disappeared since the Dollars’ meeting a year ago.

Ultimately, that lack of caution had come back to bite her with that scare the previous evening.

But it wasn’t because I knew I had a get-out-of-jail-free card…

The shadow erupted upward and took a form that resembled a gigantic horse.

It only
resembled
a horse because in the spot where its head should have been, there was nothing.

The headless horse leaped upward with another braying from the engine and charged straight at the boys. The ones directly in its path screamed and leaped to the sides for safety.

The horse plunged straight through the resulting empty space, then melted back into the earth, leaving only a long path of shadowy ground behind.

And most importantly…there are no police here!
Celty laughed selfishly. She took her partner’s engine into a high-pitched shriek. The headless horse roared, planting seeds of terror into the ears of all who heard it.

It was as if she wanted to force the others to feel the same fear that she had experienced the day before.

“This is bad.”

“Huh?” said one of the nearby Yellow Scarves, turning to look at his leader.

“H-hey, Masaomi… What…is that…thing?” asked a different boy, his throat tight with fear.

Masaomi shook his head. “What makes you think I’d know that?”

He was unable to process what he was seeing as an illusion, but he didn’t want to accept it as reality, either. He found himself taking a step backward.

“All I know is that thing is dangerous. It’s not like us… It came from
somewhere else
.”

Masaomi felt a cold sweat trickling down his back. He stared at the back of the Black Rider.

“Okay, but…what about the chick riding on the back of that ‘dangerous thing’? What’s up with that?”

“D-don’t let ’em get away!” one of the terrified Yellow Scarves shouted.

“Wait! Don’t just attack them!” Masaomi commanded, trying to control his partners, but the shock wave spread through the other boys. None of them was reckless enough to stand directly in front of the bike, but several were ready to swing pipes and two-by-fours from the sides.

The result of this action took them even further into shock.