Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) (28 page)

“You’re right… This is a horrible sight…,” Mikado mumbled when he saw Masaomi.

Why was Masaomi being ganged up on by the Yellow Scarves? Why was Anri here, and why did she have a katana with her? There were plenty of questions.

And the other two must have had questions of their own.

Yellow Scarves, Dollars, slasher.

Three symbols floated into three heads—but it all went out the window the moment they saw one another’s faces.

All the information each one had gained…

All the doubts they’d felt about the others…

All of it confirmed as
trivial
with all their hearts.

In the moment, they each thought and acted with no concern except one another’s safety.

The confusion held true for Horada as much as it did for the trio.

“There you are, Black Rider… Crap… Whatever’s happening here, go, guys! Pound ’em all into dust! And take the empty-handed kid hostage!” he shouted, just before a voice piped up from the crowd.

“Now! Turn traitor!”

“…Huh?”

Horada looked around, unclear what the shout was supposed to mean.

He saw something he could not believe.

Hey… What’s going on…?

What the hell is happening here?!

Horada’s parched throat swallowed dry spittle. They were supposed to take the boys captive to immobilize the Black Rider and the katana chick, then surround them and wipe them out. That was the image he had in his head.

But he never could have imagined what he was actually seeing.

The Yellow Scarves were attacking
one another
. The ones going after the intruders were hit by other members from the side, and those who went after those attackers suffered jump kicks themselves.

Everywhere he looked in the factory, similar events were playing out. More and more Yellow Scarves were hitting the ground.

In particular, one man was laying Yellow Scarves flat at a frightful pace, a man with black hair and a yellow scarf. When he met eyes with the dumbfounded Horada, he pulled the scarf off to reveal—

“Yo.”

“K…K…Kadota! You…you son of a bitch!”

“I figured it was you. When Izumii and them got hauled in, you were the only one who got away, and you also didn’t get stuck with any charges… And here you are, acting like quite the big man. I’m surprised. Y’know, if it’s this easy to infiltrate with just a scrap of cloth for disguise, maybe it ain’t the best thing in the world to grow your numbers, is it?” Kadota muttered with a smirk. He turned to Masaomi.

“That was scary, wasn’t it? We thought you were gonna get shot…but I guess the slasher saved your ass, for whatever reason… Sorry, man. We couldn’t act until we knew that gun was out of the picture.”

Still unclear on what was happening, Masaomi used the crowbar as a crutch to get to his feet. He asked the older man, “Kado…ta? Wh-what is this…?”

“When you said the name Horada, I knew it sounded familiar… So I looked into it and found out what was going on. We got about thirty of the Dollars together with some random scraps of yellow and snuck in. I left Yumasaki and Karisawa behind, since they’d stand out.”

Kadota paused to knock out another “enemy” Yellow Scarf. He made it sound easy, but scraping together thirty people to infiltrate the midst of the enemy was no easy feat. Masaomi watched the man who had once saved Saki—a man with a universal, undeniable charisma, unlike him and Horada. The only things he could register in the moment were shock and gratitude.

The group Kadota pulled together all recognized one another. But from Horada’s Yellow Scarves’ side, they didn’t know who was friend and who was foe, particularly in the midst of such chaotic battle.

“D-damn…wh-what’s going on here?! My gun…where’s my piece?!”
Horada shrieked, looking for the weapon that had been knocked out of his hands earlier—defeat was almost certain now, and his top priority was survival.

But there was no black hunk of metal to be found on the ground.

“Hey,” came a voice over his back. “Years ago…was that you…with Izumii?”

He felt his heart being crushed. Horada’s body and breath went entirely still. The only thing moving was the flow of cold sweat.

“Who broke Saki’s leg? Was it you?”

“N-no, I didn’t…,” Horada stammered, teeth chattering, as he imagined the figure of the boy standing behind him.

The smaller boy, raising the metal crowbar, bloodied to hell and without mercy.

“Who made Saki cry? Was it you?”

“…Dammiiiiit!”

Horada pulled a small knife from his pocket and spun around, thrusting it with all his might. But Masaomi’s fist, wrapped in a yellow bandanna, slammed into his face instead.

“In reality…I should have split your skull with that crowbar,” Masaomi murmured, as he gazed down at the writhing Horada. He could sense two figures watching him nervously from behind. “But Mikado and Anri don’t belong to this world.”

Masaomi kept his face hidden from them. He mumbled, “They don’t need to see a dead body. So I changed my mind.”

But from deep down, he was suddenly possessed by an urge to see their faces.

It could just be chat—no need to talk about the Dollars or Yellow Scarves. He just wanted to speak with them…

That was when he saw some of Horada’s juniors dragging him away from harm.

“No, wait…”

He took a step forward to go after them. But with all of the tension and nerves gone, Masaomi’s body had reached its limit, and he collapsed to the ground.

“Masaomi! Masaomi! Hang in there, Masaomi!”

“Kida!”

The sounds were amplified several times, slamming into his brain.

Through the haze, Masaomi could see a teary-eyed Mikado rocking him and Anri leaning over with a similar look of concern.

The sight of their faces next to each other drove all thought of the Dollars or the slasher from Masaomi’s mind. All he could think was how alike their expressions were.

Damn. Why do they look like such a good couple?

Masaomi put on a wry, brave grin as he gritted his teeth against the terrible pain overwhelming his body.

So who suits me, then…? I guess that’s obvious. Whether we fit each other or not doesn’t matter.

“If you’re gonna take me to a hospital…can I ask you for a favor?” he asked in his tattered state. Mikado and Anri looked overjoyed just to know that he was still alive.

They’re as happy as if it was them pulling through, not me.

“Make it Raira General Hospital.”

I guess I was the only one mistrusting the other two.

“There’s a girl waiting for me there. Please.”

He was barely able to keep his thoughts and words aligned anymore, but he could hear Kadota mutter exasperatedly, “Sheesh. I toldja not to run, but I didn’t mean it
that
seriously. Gotta know when to balance it out, man.” His tone was gruff, but there was respect for Masaomi in his eyes.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you to Raira Hospital soon,” Kadota said firmly, the last sound Masaomi heard before he lost consciousness.

Outside the abandoned factory

Horada loaded into an older car with his posse, slammed the door, and jammed on the pedal. The tires squealed a bit, but within a few seconds, the passenger vehicle was racing along.

“Ah! Wait, Horada, I don’t see Higa!”

“Screw him!”

Horada peeled the car out, not caring that his companion had
been left behind in the factory. He could see the abandoned building shrinking in the rearview mirror. But when a black motorcycle emerged from the grounds, the car erupted into panic.

“Oh sh-sh-shit! The B-Black Rider’s comin’ after us!”

“Just shut up!” Horada screeched, slamming the gas pedal as deep as it would go. “Go, dammit… Go, go, go! What the fuck is happening?!”

“What are we gonna do, Horada?!”

“Just run for it! The cops ain’t comin’ yet! As long as we get away until things cool down, and Izumii gets out of juvie, we can still turn things around!”

The factory’s street was an empty straight shot, and luckily for them, there were no oncoming vehicles. That meant they could use the space to speed up and put distance between them and the Black Rider.

“Ah! H-Horada, up front!” cried the man in the passenger seat.

“What?!” He looked forward.

A familiar man was standing ahead, leaning against a road sign and glaring at them.

“It’s him! The bartender outfit… Shizuo! Shizuo Heiwajima!”

“What?! He’s still alive?!”

Shizuo was not dead.

When that fact sank into Horada’s consciousness, he felt not relief that he was not a murderer after all—but the instantaneous and absolute fear that loomed directly ahead.

And he had no gun now. Even if he had it, there was little belief within him that he could win.

“Huh? Wait, why’s there a signpost there?” the man in the passenger seat wondered.

At that very moment, just ahead and on the side of the road, Shizuo lifted up the signpost that he had
actually been holding all along
.

“Huh?” all the riders in the car said in perfect harmony. Shizuo recognized the man inside the car with the bandages on his head. A vein bulged on his face, and a violent grin appeared on his lips.

The next instant, they were greeted by the sight of a street sign being swung horizontally toward them like a baseball bat.

An indescribable shattering sound echoed through the lonely residential street.

“Ugwooaaaahh?!”

Everyone in the car screamed and shrank back, but they didn’t suffer anything more than the impact against the car and the sprinkling of broken glass on top of their heads.

?!

Horada looked up, unsure what had just happened. All he saw was the rest of the road stretching ahead of them, the same as a second earlier.

Where’s Shiz…huh?!

They looked for the rearview mirror to catch sight of him, and it was only then that they realized what had happened to the car.

The surprisingly fresh breeze. The absence of the rearview mirror.

These things made perfect sense now. After all, the roof of the car was entirely
gone
.

There were just a few scraps of the window frames left and the bottom half of all the glass windows.

Now that they were riding in the world’s ugliest convertible, all the boys realized that their heads could easily have flown off in the impact—and they quaked in delayed terror.

They had made an enemy of Shizuo Heiwajima.

And
this
past, a past that Horada had initiated just one day earlier…

…was not going to let them escape.

“Not…so…faaaaast!” came a roar from far behind them.

A violent impact shook the chassis of the car at the same time the group heard the bellow.

The nature of the impact from behind was actually quite simple. Between the driver and passenger seats, a
NO TRESPASSING
signpost stuck into the floor of the car.

From that point on, their memories became temporarily fuzzy.

The next thing he knew, Horada was racing through waves of cars at blinding speed, screaming all the while.

“Aaaaaaaaahhh! Aaaaaa— Aa— Aaaa— Aah! Aaaaahh!”