DURARARA!! Vol.6 INTERLUDE OR PROLOGUE D
INTERLUDE OR PROLOGUE D: KIDA MASAOMI
May 3rd, in a Shinkansen train
"Shinkansen is really something."
The girl with pupils the color of the night sea murmured as she watched the view from the window.
The view itself was moving at the speed of wind, occasionally interrupted by reflections of the interior of the train on the glass window.
The boy looked into the girl's eyes via the reflection in the window and asked with a tender smile:
"What about it?"
Usually he would have asked, knowing the answer: "You mean how fast it is?" or "You mean how such a ginormous steel box can move?", but the boy knew very well that the girl next to him was no longer at an innocent enough age to be able to marvel at such things.
The girl turned her head slowly to face the boy and answered with a soft smile:
"It goes so straight forward."
The boy could only smile bitterly at the bizarre answer and mutter the girl's name.
"Saki, you're as strange as ever."
"Maybe. But I think I'm not nearly as strange as you, Masaomi."
The girl called Saki smiled a Japanese doll's smile and tilted her head.
"What's so strange about me?"
"Yeah. For example, you hate Izaya-san's guts, yet you have no problem doing everything Izaya-san tells you to do. It's just so circuitous, like the underground map within Tokyo. But that's what I like about you."
Saki broke into a grin like a little boy who had just caught a beetle. There was uneasiness on the boy's face as he turned to look at the girl and said:
"Saki hasn't changed a bit. You just say things others wouldn't be able to say."
The boy - Kida Masaomi - was in the Shinkansen train to Tokyo with his girlfriend, Mikajima Saki.
He had dropped out of the school for certain reasons and begun to live with his girlfriend Saki. His parents never interfered in his life much and didn't seem to be against what their son was doing.
But to support themselves the two former high school students had to be prepared to do a lot of things - and the path Masaomi had chosen was to work for the exact man who had pushed him into this desperate situation.
Masaomi knew only too well.
The man had pushed him in the back once, and that had made him lose a lot of things.
But he understood, too, that the one who actually made the step forwards was no other than himself.
A medium-sized conflict had broken out between Dollars and the Yellow Turbans, two gangs in this city called Ikebukuro.
Fortunately, it was resolved before it could escalate into an all-out war. But an obvious divide had already appeared between Masaomi and his most important friends.
And the reason lay within himself.
His friends could step over that divide any time as long as they wished.
But Masaomi couldn't.
He was afraid to see his past self in the darkness of that bottomless crevice.
Masaomi ended up unable to step over the divide. Neither was he able to bring himself to leave it. So he simply found escape in remaining where he was.
He escaped far, far into his own heart, where his own empty shell wouldn't be able to catch him -
Taking the girl sitting by his side - who was already half-collapsed - with him.
Right now he was in a Shinkansen train to Tokyo.
Before that, he had been sent to a Northeastern city on Orihara Izaya's orders - though he had never expected that the trip would take as long as a week.
What was more, the very last days of the week were spent in a remote village in the mountains where even his cell phone got only intermittent signal. He was forced into a state of isolation from the world of information. Saki, who was not addicted to the Internet or cell phones, didn't feel anything; but Masaomi felt so lonely that he couldn't even find words for it.
Things were going on on the Internet in every second he was kept away from it.
Yet he was left out of the loop; it made him feel unspeakably anxious.
"You're way too enslaved by the Internet, Masaomi. Are you a masochist?"
Saki laughed after she said.
"What do you mean by 'masochist'? Everyone knows how convenient the Internet is."
"But there are people whom you can meet in person but only ever meet on the Internet nowadays."
"……It's not that I 'wouldn't' go meet them. I 'can't' go meet them."
"That's why I say you're a masochist. Go meet them and you'll instantly become happy."
Saki was right on the spot.
Masaomi laughed and denied it, but kept reflecting on himself.
He had thought that he was by no means addicted to the Internet, but this intense anxiety made him doubt it.
- Am I actually feeling homesick because I'm missing out on all that silly banter with those people?
- ……And now I can only talk to Mikado on the Internet.
He was reminded of his best friend's face on the other side of the divide and had to shake his head to rid himself of the melancholy.
He kept doing that, and was able to forget about his anxiety after a while.
That was why he didn't notice.
That in his anxiety over not being able to connect to the Internet -
There was actually an element of pure "bad premonition" that had been there since Izaya had sent him on this unplanned trip.
And that premonition proved right - except that he still didn't know.
♂♀
Morning of May 4th, somewhere in Tokyo
Masaomi and Saki returned to Tokyo on the night of the 3rd. After reporting to Izaya and taking care of everything that needed to be taken care of, the time was already past daybreak.
Masaomi turned on his computer as soon as he got home.
It had probably been in sleeping mode for the past week; the moment he turned it on it simply jumped to the desktop.
"What's up, Masaomi? Internet before sleep?"
"Yeah. It's been a week since I've been to that chatroom. I want to check what happened."
It was a certain chatroom Mikado went to. Izaya had been the one to tell him about that chatroom.
It was a useful place. Not only was he able to talk to his friend there - it had also proved a very good source of information on things taking place in Ikebukuro.
Masaomi opened the website and was about to check out the log for any change that had taken place in the city over the week, but the archive was completely blank; the page looked exactly the same as it did when he had just opened it.
"……Nothing in the past archive? Did someone hack the system?"
Sometimes that happens, thought Masaomi. So he didn't think further and typed his greetings into the dialogue box.
"Maybe everyone just disappeared."
"Don't scare me."
The boy chuckled as he replied to Saki's joke.
Seconds later, Masaomi felt a slight chill down his spine as he ruminated over Saki's words - and quickly told himself that it was just him.
He had been kept away from the Internet, so there was no way he could know.
Bakyura - the handle name he used in that certain chatroom -
Had been used by someone to impersonate him and deceive his best friend.
His best friend, meanwhile, was headed for the center of a giant vortex of disaster -
That's right - that's right. Eventually, he still failed to notice.
END OF INTERLUDE OR PROLOGUE D