DURARARA!! Vol.9 Chapter 4, Part II
♂♀
12 years later, Ikebukuro, next to the pool at Raira Academy
” - So as I was telling you, it looks like Iza-nii…our brother is up to something again.”
“…Shock (I’m so tired of it)…”
Raira Academy’s pool was open to students during summer vacation.
Two girls muttered as they sat by the poolside making ripples in the shining water with their feet.
The one they were talking to - a boy leaning against a wall behind the girls - looked from their backs to other places and back again as he sighed and asked:
“…Why are you telling me this?”
Kuronuma Aoba, the boy who was talking in a more frank tone than the one he usually used with Mikado and the others, continued with a confused look.
“Why did you tell me to come here anyway?”
He looked like he wasn’t planning on swimming. Instead of changing into swimwear he still wore a summer coat over a black Kartah shirt that opened at the front and chose to stand where he wouldn’t be splashed.
Orihara Mairu, however, threw a handful of water at his feet.
She had a sports swimsuit on her appropriately worked out body. Next to her Kururi was wearing a bikini with spiderweb print.
Neither of them was wearing the school’s designated swimwear, but since it was not during the semester, there were no rules saying that they couldn’t.
Raira Academy had an eight-story building that kind of looked like a university’s. Strangely enough, the pool was located on the sixth floor. The glass ceiling allowed swimming lessons to continue uninterrupted even on rainy days, and the windows on the walls looked over Ikebukuro.
During the summer the pool was open to all students who had a student ID when the Swimming Club was not using it for practice.
It looked like the Swimming Club was not using the pool today. Students were spread out in both the lanes reserved for tournaments and the regular space for free swimming, taking advantage of the pool in different ways.
Kururi and Mairu were of course sitting and splashing water about in the free swimming area. Beside them boys either whistled as they saw the two in swimwear or stole quick glances and immediately turned their eyes away.
Aoba belonged more to the latter category, but compared to the other boys at the pool he enjoyed the advantage of being told to come by the girls themselves.
But he still did not know what their intention was. All he could do was wait for their response with feigned composure, his classmates’ figures in swimwear making the wait all the more miserable.
Mairu, meanwhile, was smiling as she splashed even more water at Aoba.
“Come on, Kuronuma-kun, aren’t you curious what our weirdo of a brother is up to?”
“…”
Aoba smiled slightly at the girl’s words.
“What I’ll say to you is this: I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
For Kuronuma Aoba, the girls’ brother - Orihara Izaya - was one of his enemies whom he despised.
He had confronted Izaya indirectly on several occasions in the past. The enmity had been brought into the open ever since a certain incident took place.
He had told neither Kururi nor Mairu about this, but it seemed that they already knew something.
Aoba was surprised by but not really scared of that fact.
It had only been four months since he first spoke to these twins. But he had made a point to find out what they were.
Compared to your average family there was next to no communication between the Orihara twins and their brother. However, it seemed that they had their own information network and were surprisingly knowledgeable about the “underside of the city” that Aoba was dabbling in.
“There’s no need to hide things from us. It’s totally fine. We’ll never tell Iza-nii.”
“You can tell him if you want. I'd expect him to know what I’m up to, too.”
After that, looking around to make sure that no one was within earshot except the twin girls, he muttered:
“Though I think in any normal family you’d have been warned to ‘stay away from Kuronuma Aoba’ if your family knew what kind of person I am, Kururi-chan, Mairu-chan.”
“When you put it like that it really sounds like you’re obsessed with yourself, you know.”
“You (Aoba-kun)…expect (you’re so interesting)…”
Aoba sighed again at the twin’s relaxed responses and smiled hollowly.
“Sorry, I let me carry myself away.”
“Well, we wanted to see a little bit of your real colors, but we are not going to hate you for it or anything. Not after you helped us out such a tremendous lot, Aoba-kun.”
“You guys are giving me too much credit.”
“Earlier there was this girl who was drawing up a plan to bully us on Raira Academy’s secret posting board, but all of a sudden she disappeared from the Internet, didn’t she?”
Mairu and Kururi glanced upwards at Aoba, who darted his eyes away and tried to change the topic.
“I see I’m no match for you. …So what exactly is your perverted big brother involved in this time?”
“Yeah, this person called Tom-san told us about it…I don’t know if it was a Color Gang or bousouzoku, but he got the girlfriend of one of those groups’ leaders involved. Iza-nii has always walked around with lots of girls. Is he a play boy?”
“Lewd (He’s a libertine)…”
Aoba paused to think after he had heard more from the girls.
- It has to do with women.
- Would that Orihara Izaya really invite enmity so openly?
- …But then I don’t really have a good idea what people would or would not do for women.
- Still, he’s certainly not the type to be too infatuated with a woman to properly strategize.
As he was busy being bothered by these thoughts the attractive twin girls continued their frolicking in the water.
“Kuru-nee, did your breasts get even bigger? At this rate you’ll soon be like Sonohara-sempai, President Kine of the Art Club, or the Vice President Yumikawa-sempai!”
“No (Stop that).”
“You keep saying that, yet you still wear a bikini to the pool, Kuru-nee. You’re so sulky and erotical at the same time! I love you!”
“…Public (There are other people around).”
The jolly banter continued between the girls as the groping went on in the water. Aoba kept his poker face intact, but darted his eyes away with a slight blush.
“…I’m so at a loss as to where to look at.”
His attitude was still kind of childlike just as his face was. Aoba brushed away the pink haze that threatened to take over in his chest and went back to analyzing the doubts he had about Orihara Izaya.
- So.
- I know that he’s back in Ikebukuro.
- If I told Heiwajima Shizuo where his apartment is, maybe I’d at least succeed in harassing him, but…
- He’d probably just flee and change his address.
- I’d rather stay in the know about his whereabouts than make him disappear again for no good reason.
- It’s probably safe to assume that he too is aware that I know where he lives.
Aoba believed that having faith in his opponent’s competence was the best kind of vigilance.
- Should I try looking into this matter?
- It would be better to keep Mikado-sempai out of it at this point…
Someone showered water as forcefully as they could on his body as he thought.
“That was cold-! “
Even his Kartah shirt under the summer coat was soaked. The momentary coldness of the water soon began to turn lukewarm.
As he turned to look wondering what had happened, he saw Mairu slashing the water with horizontally outstretched arms like an elementary school kid. That was how she was able to attack Aoba with a wall of water.
“You’re like an elementary school kid!”
No whistles were blowed. She must have done it when the lifeguard wasn’t looking.
“Ahahah! Sorry about that! You were making such a scary face by the poolside, I couldn’t resist!”
“Don’t give me that ‘Sorry’. Now my clothes are all wet. What am I supposed to do about that? Honestly.”
Did I really let so much of that show on my face? Thought Aoba as he complained about his wet clothes and took a step towards Mairu -
But something soft was already touching him from behind.
“Game (We were just kidding)…”
“Heh?”
It was a quiet, seductive girl’s voice that had just whispered into his ear.
As soon as he realized that it was Kururi’s voice, he also realized that he was being hugged by the girl.
- Eh!? What? - Kururi-chan? When did she!?
- Wait, this soft feeling on my back…don’t tell me that is…!? - Am I in some sort of adult game?
- Wait, is she pressing herself against me? - Eh, calm down…
Excitement and shock complicated his expression as Aoba turned around while falling into the pool -
He saw Kururi standing there with a deflated beach ball in her hands.
- Ah.
- A beach ball!?
- So it was not Kururi-chan’s chest after all.
- I don’t know whether to feel disappointed or grateful for that but calm down arghhh -
Aoba ended up landing in the pool next to Mairu without finishing his thoughts.
As he hastened to get back on his feet in the water, the bespectacled girl giggled and Kururi’s voice was asking “Health (Are you alright)…?”
“Oi, you over there, stop fooling around!”
The lifeguard must have seen them this time. The voice of warning rang throughout the pool.
“We’re sorry-!”
“…Regret (Sorry about that)…”
“Ah, sorry…but there’s nothing I should be sorry for, really…”
After the trio had apologized in three different ways, Aoba took off his completely soaked shirt and left it by the poolside. Through half-closed eyes he kept watching Kururi and Mairu.
“Honestly, I didn’t expect Kururi-chan to be the type to do something like that.”
“When we pull pranks on people, we’re the same person!”
“Same (Yeah)…”
“Kururi-chan, don’t tell me you got all excited because it’s summer and we’re at the pool?”
Instead of answering Aoba’s question Kururi got into the water herself and, together with her sister, trapped Aoba in his swimwear in the middle.
“Wait, I’m out of here, I’m out of here.”
No longer able to stand being sandwiched between two girls, Aoba tried to clamber up the stairs to the poolside. His arms, however, were seized from both sides and he was pulled back into the water.
“You’re actually enjoying it, aren’t you? Kuronuma-kun, you always put on such a sulky face just to look cool!”
“…Like (That’s cute).”
Aoba’s male classmates passing by the poolside began to talk in a jealous tone as they saw the weakling of a boy being bullied by two girls.
“Oi oi, Aoba, what’s up with that? Are you really going out with those two?”
“Looks like he’s just being toyed around to me.”
“There’s no way Kuronuma would have the guts to go out with women.”
To hide their jealousy and bitterness the boys managed to remain calm by making fun of Aoba. They were of course without girlfriends.
But Aoba had no retort since what they said was the truth.
Our villain who created the gang called “Blue Square”, who ingratiated himself with Mikado and who was currently plotting something using Dollars’s power had almost zero experience in dealing with the opposite sex even if it was just as friends. Right now he was completely at a loss as to what to do about the twins in front of him.
To his classmates who knew nothing about the real Aoba, however, it just reinforced the image that he was the lucky guy hitting it off with pretty twin girls despite being as useless as he was.
His classmates continued to chitchat as Aoba remained unable to say anything in return.
“But then I’m seriously jealous of that little bastard.”
“Should we go pick up girls later?”
“Speaking of which, I heard that last year there was this Raira sempai going around the city trying to pick up girls until he dropped.”
“Ah, I saw him a lot when I was in middle school. But I also heard that he dropped out of school.”
“For real?”
“Yeah, he eloped with this girl or something.”
“I heard he found a job to save money for getting married.”
“Either way that makes me jealous as hell. He has a girl!”
“…You’re making me sad.”
They were no longer paying attention to Aoba as they walked with lowered heads to the locker room.
Having watched them leave, Aoba plunged his face into the water and sighed heavily underwater as he waited for both his head and his heart to cool.
Had he not done this in time the girls next to him would have made even the evil residing in him melt away.
♂♀
Somewhere in Tokyo
“…So as I was telling you, that really bothered me. Both of them were so cute. I was this close to just burying myself in Kururi-chan’s chest and letting everything else go screw itself.”
“…I’m going to kill you!”
As he heard Aoba’s voice on the other end of phone the tall boy ground his teeth loudly and yelled.
But Aoba’s voice remained as calm as ever on the phone.
“I’ve heard you say that line too many times already, Yoshikiri. But the guy those two really have the hots for is Hanejima Yuuhei. They’re not just fans, mind you - they really are after him. I can’t blame them for thinking that they actually have a chance, though, since they know his brother and everything.”
“Aoba, you bastard…did you have to mention the name of that idol who’s like the representative of all popular guys in the world? You did that just to annoy me, right? Right?”
“You may want to reserve your rage towards popular guys for when we’ve finally crushed Orihara Izaya.”
“That Orihara Izaya, is he really that popular?”
“Ever since high school he’s had this following of girls who kind of worship him or something. What is more, Kururi-chan and Mairu-chan call him ‘onii-chan’ or ‘Iza-nii’. What else do you want?”
“…Great, I see. Since you were giggling when those twins splashed water on you at the pool I’m going to kill you too.”
“Looks like I’m getting killed either way.”
Aoba’s chuckle on the other end of the phone infuriated the boy named Yoshikiri further.
“So are you trying to get me mad on purpose because you have a death wish? Is that why you called me? It is, isn’t it?”
“It’s not like that. After I had supper with Kururi-chan and Mairu-chan I looked a bit into that thing Izaya is involved in right now.”
“Supper!? With two girls!?”
“That was not my point at all. Just listen. There’s this strange group called ‘Heaven Slave’ dealing in drugs in Tokyo. They got into trouble with Awakusu-kai.”
“…Never heard of that. So where did you eat?”
“Russian Sushi. …Heaven Slave isn’t really active in Ikebukuro, so I didn’t expect you to have heard of it. Ikebukuro is a relatively safe area in itself, and the one in charge of the places such groups would usually go happens to be Awakusu-kai’s Akabayashi, who’s kind of famous for hating drugs.”
“I see. So basically you’re on a drug-free high from treating two girls to a meal, right? Lucky bastard.”
“No, I was the one treated to a meal. Those two have a lot of money on their hands for some reason.”
“‘I was the one treated to a meal’! Hehhhhhh! If you split the bill it would have been another story, but you let two girls treat you to sushi? You gigolo bastard!! ‘I was the one treated to a meal’! And you had the guts to say that to my face! Hehhhhhhhhhhhhh! I’m going to kill you! Die!”
“I know, I know. So this ‘Heaven Slave’ is both the name of their drug and their branch that sells the drug. That is but my own speculation, though. Anyway, it seems that those people are looking for information on Orihara Izaya for some reason.”
“…How did you know such stuff?”
“An old acquaintance of mine works at the nightclub they’re now using as their headquarters… I was asking around about Izaya and he just happened to know. He said those guys were staying in a certain room in the club and coming out to the hall to sniff around for information on Orihara Izaya.”
“Wait a second. If even Aoba knows where to find them, the yakuza at Awakusu must have been aware of them since long ago. Why have they not crushed them yet? Are they backed by some other yakuza group?”
“I don’t know if there are other yakuza groups involved, but Awakusu-kai probably just thinks now is not the best time. There’s this guy called Shijima among the members…he’s a college student, but it looks like he comes from a rich and powerful family of pretty high status. There seemed to be no way to get information on the group’s leader even if I tried. Awakusu-kai could just have got hold of one of his underlings and made him tell everything. They’re probably waiting for the best time to act to make the job cleaner.”
“I see. So are we going to do anything about them?”
“Just keep an eye on them. I don’t know if and how Orihara Izaya is involved, but it’s better to consolidate our own territory first for now. Of course we can’t risk letting their moves go unnoticed either, so make absolutely sure that we have our eyes on them at all times.”
“I see. Die.”
“I see you don’t even know what you’re saying any more when you say ‘Die’, Yoshikiri… But that’s fine. Anyway, it’s true that certain groups are acting weird recently. I heard that the remnants of Yellow Turbans are acting kind of weird too.”
“Is that your brother’s doing?”
“No…I wasn’t talking about the Blue Square people who infiltrated them before…I was talking about the same group of people who first confronted us.”
“Huh. Those guys. That was back in our first or second year in middle school, right?”
“Back then you were already fighting high school students, Yoshikiri. You hardly ever lost.”
“It made no sense at all. They were older than me, yet they were weaker. Is seniority just an urban legend now?”
“That’s not how you use the word ‘seniority’. Speaking of which, I’m surprised you even know that word, Yoshikiri. Whom did you hear it from? Your grandma?”
“…I’m going to kill you!”
“Your death threats carry less and less weight now, Yoshikiri. I’ve gotten so used to them, they don’t scare me at all… Seriously, is that all you’ve got in your vocabulary, Yoshikiri? Do you know any Japanese besides ‘I’m going to kill you’ and ‘seniority’?”
“…~~~~~!”
The cell phone was squeezed so hard that it began to make cracking sounds as Yoshikiri yelled something that didn’t sound like words.
As soon as he did so, a boy called his name from afar.
“Oooi, Yoshikiri-, pass me the phone.”
“…”
“I’m finished. All that’s left is him.”
As he heard him Yoshikiri ground his teeth and tossed the cell phone to the boy who just spoke -
And immediately stopped the metal bat being swung at his side with his other hand.
“Hello? It’s me, it’s me. Send some money my way.”
Aoba answered in an even tone to the teasing male voice:
“Ah, Gin. Where’s Yoshikiri off to?”
“To finish the last one of them off.”
The boy called Gin was looking at Yoshikiri as the latter kicked a delinquent in the front teeth with the heel of his shoe.
“That guy’s really something. How on earth does he manage to fight while speaking on the phone?”
As Gin looked again he saw that several more men had already fallen at Yoshikiri’s feet, either unconscious or groaning in pain. It looked like all the while he had been on the phone with Aoba he had been fighting multiple men using just one hand, both feet and a forehead.
“Seriously, I was having a hard time dealing with just three. Anyway, neither Yoshikiri nor I made it to the fight with the stalker earlier*. That stalker kicked several of our Blue Square men’s asses. The shame, man, the burning shame.”
* Stalker: Here referring to Adabashi Kisuke in Vol.8.
“Don’t say it like that. That stalker was far stronger than we expected. I’m actually more interested in the Yellow Turbans guy who beat two of our people.”
“Well, that is quite embarrassing too since we lost two to one. Shame on our members is shame on us, isn’t it? I’m so embarrassed I gave it my fullest today. Yoshikiri feels the same way. I thought it would be piece o’ cake today since we called all our best men to come, but the Nitari* brothers said there was this anime they wanted to watch so they passed, Neko’s with his girlfriend, Houjou’s sleeping, so we ended up having to beat these guys flat on our own anyway, you know that?”
* Nitari, Neko: Nitari (“fox shark”) and Neko (“cat”) are most likely nicknames.
Several men were sprawled out on the ground at Gin’s feet. His head was injured. Blood trailed down his face from his temple.
From the phone dirtied by Gin’s blood Aoba’s voice continued regardless.
“Well, Yoshikiri’s good at fighting, not at thinking. All he said to me on the phone was pretty much just ‘I’m going to kill you’.”
“What? Was it something you said, Aoba?”
“I told him that I went to the pool with Kururi-chan and Mairu-chan.”
“Die, you. Just die. Why aren’t you here, anyway?”
Aoba laughed as Gin gave a straightforward reply.
“I will die. I’m human after all. I’d like to live till 80 if possible, though.”
“We’ll see if you’ll still be alive after 80 seconds. Shut your mouth.”
“Why is it that everyone in Blue Square has such a nasty tongue?”
“Be grateful that at least we are there to hang out with you. If not for us a bastard like you would have ended up nothing more than a lonely petty criminal for life.”
As he heard the vicious remark Aoba answered as if to get Gin mad on purpose:
“I put on a good show at school, so I actually have quite a lot of friends.”
“Is that so? I get it now. Die. Or, in English, S, H, I, N, E*!”
* “Die” is pronounced “shine” in Japanese.
“That’s still Japanese. SHINE is English for ‘emitting light’.”
“I was telling you to trigger a nuclear fusion inside you, emit as much light as you want and die. Just explode already, you fool.”
As Gin kept behaving like an elementary school kid Aoba switched back to the topic in all seriousness - probably because he knew it would be futile to stop him.
“…So, how is it going? Is Mikado-sempai alright?”
“Yeah, he’s alive. But honestly, that one’s not carved out for fighting at all. He fell unconscious halfway so I took him back to the van to let him sleep. He’s almost as bad as you and Yatsufusa. I don’t even know why he insists on coming to our ‘cleansings’ of Dollars himself. Since he’s basically the god on the portable shrine he should just stay behind and smile upon us.”
“No, actually…I don’t think I could have won against him in a fight, either.”
Aoba laughed pleasantly and muttered as if to himself:
“Because I have no idea how Mikado-sempai is going to turn out, really.”
♂♀
After hanging up the phone, Aoba looked at the scar on his left palm and muttered:
“I can’t wait to see how this is going to turn out, Mikado-sempai.”
At the same time he was reminded of what Gin had just said.
“…What if there were no one willing to hang out with me? I don’t even want to think about it.”
In his mind’s eye he saw the brother of the twins he rather liked - the man toward whom he could feel nothing but animosity.
“Because the last thing I want is to turn out like that shitty bastard.”
Narrowing his eyes as he closed his cell phone, Aoba paused to think.
- Speaking of ones to hang out with, what exactly is the relationship like between that underground doctor and Izaya?
The man in the white coat had held a scalpel to Aoba’s neck when he went to talk to the Headless Rider. He had felt dangerous to him back then.
- “You are exactly like Izaya.”
Aoba was reminded of that man’s face when saying these words. He continued to mull things over.
- …
- Just friends? …No way.
He had looked into this since he was curious.
What he found, however -
Was the record of Orihara Izaya having stabbed Kishitani Shinra - the underground doctor - in the side, resulting in major injuries, back when the two were in middle school.
- Anyone would have thought that he must have hated him or seen him as an enemy…
- But rumor also has it that they went to the same high school as well…
- What exactly is their relationship like?
(TO BE CONTINUED IN PART III)