DURARARA!! Vol.6 CHAPTER 5, PART I
CHAPTER 5
EVERYTHING IS SOLVED AND DETONATED
General translator's note: from this chapter on I will be adding italics where Narita has put accentuation marks in the Japanese original. They will sometimes look weird and out of place, and I will leave it to my beta to decide on a proper final form when we make the pdf version. For now they'll be here to give you a taste of Narita's writing quirks. Enjoy.
Orihara Izaya was walking in a street in Northern Kantou.
He was on his way to another train station on another line. Around him countless families were swarming the streets; it was Golden Week.
His gaze was fixed on his cell phone.
It looked like he had to keep an eye on something on the screen. However, he was able to walk without bumping into anyone despite how crowded these streets were.
The display on the screen appeared to be a certain chatroom.
"Bakyura", "Kyo" and "Mai" were leaving the chat one after another. Izaya, who watched this with the corner of his mouth curled into a twisted smile, said quietly to himself:
" - About time."
He pressed the power button on the cell phone and shut down the internet mode.
Instead the cell phone started to ring, signaling a call from someone.
The name displayed was "Kida Masaomi".
- BINGO ☆
Flicking his finger quickly at the screen, Izaya went on to extend his finger towards the TALK button.
"Hello."
"......Hello."
"Yah, it's you. What's up? Dialing me up all of a sudden. I thought we were already done talking this morning? Or are you slowly falling in love with my voice? If that's indeed the reason your love would be a tad too heavy on my shoulder. Quite frankly, I don't have the time to provide you with comfort either. How about you go to Saki-chan instead? I'm sure she'll drown you in the comfort you need."
"I don't have time to listen to your unimaginative jokes."
"What happened? Why are you sounding so angry?"
Izaya's provocative chattering tone was met with a furious voice coming from the other end of the line.
"What did you say to Mikado......?"
"What are you talking about?"
"You were the one who used my handle to fool everyone in the chatroom, weren't you?"
"You got proof?"
"The only one who would do something like that is you."
"Could be one of Kyo-san and Mai-san's little conspiracies. And you never really know if there's a dark side to Setton-san or not. As for Saika-san, she has her record of spamming the chatroom too."
"Say whatever you want to say. It's definite proof in itself already that you're trying to distract me with these speculations instead of just saying 'No'."
"I don't think the jury would buy that, though? But never mind, I'm going to let you pass for this time. So yes, it was me who used your handle to trick everyone else. Really, it took a hell lot of effort trying to imitate the way you usually behaved in front of people."
"......What did you say......to Mikado?"
"Why are you so sure that I must have said something to Mikado-kun? I saw you talking to Kyo-san and Mai-san just now. They never mentioned anything about Tanaka Taro-kun talking to 'you', did they?"
"I can't imagine that the human being named Orihara Izaya would impersonate me online for any other purpose. If you were trying to set me up, you would have had many offline courses of action to choose from."
"Well, that is true. So what are you planning to do about it?"
"Answer my question......"
"I wish we had the time for that. Don't you have any clue what's going on in Ikebukuro right now?"
"......Huh?"
"Ahh, I see. Since you had that trouble with Dollars you just shut down all channels of information. Well, I guess you'll just have to deal with it."
"What are you talking about.....? What's going on in Ikebukuro right now?"
"If you really want to know, why not just call Mikado-kun and ask him?"
"......Izaya-san, you..."
"It isn't hard, is it? You and Mikado-kun are best friends. Just call him and say everything you need to say over the phone. Orihara Izaya is a complete bastard. The one in the chatroom last night was not me, it was him, that impostor. Forget whatever he said to you......stuff like that. Though I'm guessing it's already a little bit late. But anyway, just let him hear your voice. It would be good enough. Even if it's only the sake of the precious friendship that still connects you."
"......Please cut it out."
"Mikado-kun seems like he's still trying to figure out what you would think about him. Really, he cares too much about others at times that it's sort of an incorrigible disease. But then that's what makes him worthy of respect. Just like sheep for the sacrifice."
"I TOLD YOU TO CUT IT OUT - "
Izaya ended the call unilaterally the moment he heard Masaomi yelling from the other end of the line.
"I don't like being yelled at. Plus I'm almost at the train station..."
Izaya, upon arriving at the station at which he was going to board his connecting train, took the extra trouble to buy a ticket despite the fact that he had a rechargeable card on him. He headed for the platform.
After looking up at the estimated time of arrival for the next train, Izaya went back to playing with his cell phone, checking his text messages one by one.
"Let's see. It's going to be no fun if Dollars's not fighting back even a teeny little bit."
Muttering these words to himself, Izaya took a second cell phone out of his breast pocket.
He began to press its keys -
With fingertips filled to the brim with malicious intent and twisted love towards humans.
♂♀
One hour ago, in front of a girls' school
Under an overpass that was part of the Metropolitan Expressway, a major road cut across the space between the Ikebukuro Train Station and Sunshine City.
On its one side stood a girls' school. In front of the school gate two men confronted each other.
One of them was a young man wearing a thin knit cap looking severe. The other was a young man in a straw hat with his face and one arm wrapped in bandages.
The two young men stood facing each other. However, Rokujou Chikage - the injured one - was grinning rather fearlessly while Kadota Kyohei - the one in the knit cap - looked sullen as he stared at his opponent.
"…You bastard."
A message had just reached Kadota via his cell phone.
On its display screen he saw -
An emergency notice telling him that Dollars members were being attacked throughout Ikebukuro.
"No…you bastards, what have you come here for?"
"Nothing. Just thought we should pay you back for the fights you hard-sold us."*
* Hard-sold: the Japanese expression for "picking a fight" translates literally into "selling a fight" - thus Chikage's wordplay here.
Chikage laughed and answered as Kadota fixed him with a sharp glare.
"I don't need your change. Just take whatever I give you, would ya?"
"You mean you came here to avenge the folks Shizuo and I beat up recently in this city? If that's the reason, then you've got it all wrong. I didn't do it on Dollars's behalf. It was a completely personal act, I did it because I wanted to."
Kadota kept his stare fixed on his opponent while watching out for unusual sounds in his surroundings as well as the way his opponent's gaze moved. The man in front of him could be nothing more than a decoy; he had to be careful in case there were people waiting to ambush him from behind or the sides.
But so far he had seen only ordinary passers-by.
Some of them turned to look curiously at the two men standing opposite each other and talking in the middle of the sidewalk. As soon as they realized that these two were gangsters of some sort, however, they backed off immediately as if burned.
Chikage rested his back against the wall outside the girls' school, his eyes narrowing to a smile in-between bandages.
"About that - we were the ones at fault, so we don't hold any grudge against you. I do think that Heiwajima Shizuo kind of overdid it, though, so I went to him to protest personally."
"…Ah. So the injury on your face…that was Shizuo?"
"Beat me out of shape, that one. What exactly is he? The Archdevil or something?"
Laughing hollowly and sighing, Chikage asked Kadota while playing with the brim of his straw hat.
"Anyway. That matter's already finished. But do you know what you Dollars bastards did back in Saitama?"
"?"
"…Ah, looks like you don't."
As Kadota frowned, Chikage retracted his smile slightly and began to talk in an emotionless voice.
"What a bunch of fortunate folks you are - not even knowing what the rest of your gang is doing!"
"…"
"Had they only targeted the people in my gang, I would still have let them off the hook since we kind of overdid it in Ikebukuro a while back and all…but guess what? One of my people had a younger brother who just happened to be with them, and your people didn't even leave that kid alone. How am I supposed to sit around not doing anything about that?"
Chikage flexed his neck audibly and said in an assertive voice as he lifted his back off the wall.
"It doesn't end here. Our motorbikes got burned. Even our team logo got vandalized. I mean, 'DARAAZU' in hiragana? You could have just sprayed the words 'we want a fight' outright instead. How long do you think it took us to paint that logo? We did it in that obscure little place because we didn't want it to get erased, man. Thank you very much for taking the trouble to seek it out."
"Even if you tell me all this, it's not like there's anything I can do about it. Also technically speaking you were the ones who vandalized that place first, you know."
"…Ah, well. That's true. Our bad."
Chikage broke into an involuntary smile as Kadota pointed out the contradiction in his talk.
"I never expected to get lectured on moral matters by a Dollars member. You, Sir, are a pleasure."
"So? What exactly brings you to me? Aren't you Toramaru's head?"
His cell phone rang again indicating a new message.
Kadota kept his glare on the man right in front of him, never moving a muscle on his face.
"If it's not for revenge for what I did in Ikebukuro, then why did you come to meet me?"
"Aren't you like one of Dollars's bosses or something?"
"What?"
- Give me a break. Since when did people start circulating such nonsense?
Kadota stood there unable to think of anything to say. Chikage, on the other hand, did no more beating around the bush as he asked:
"Who is Dollars's boss, and where is he?"
"…"
- Well, that wasn't a surprise question.
Kadota sighed slightly as he began to realize that the situation he found himself in was far more troublesome than what he had expected - not only because he had an opponent right in front of his eyes, but also because of what it meant for Dollars as a whole.
"If you can talk directly to that guy, get him here fast, would ya?"
"I have no idea."
"Come on. There's no need to be so cold, is there?"
"It's nothing like that…I told you I got no idea who Dollars's boss is."
Chikage was the one to freeze this time upon hearing Kadota's curt reply.
- What?
- Seriously, there's no way he could be telling the truth when he said he didn't know who his boss was.
- But then, when I searched the Internet nothing seemed to come up either…
"Don't try to mess around with me. That just can't be true."
"You, are you familiar with locusts?"
"Are you messing around with me again?"
"Just listen. Locusts sometimes move in swarms, don't they? Tens, hundreds of thousands would fly together eating up everything in every rice or wheat field in their path. Well, we're talking about locusts, so it could be even tens or hundreds of millions. Who knows."
Kadota turned his shoulders and put one hand on the wall outside of the girls' school as he spoke. Both of them were on the edge of the sidewalk now, making it easier for other people to walk by. In this way they almost became part of the natural pedestrian traffic. The passers-by no longer paid attention to what they were saying to each other.
"Say, would the locusts know which one of them is the leader? I don't even know if there's a leader like an ant queen or bee queen in each swarm to begin with. There kind of is a leader in Dollars, but I don't know his name. Neither have I ever received his orders."
"…"
"Which means Dollars is not like a hive of bees of ants. We're more like a swarm of locusts or a school of fish in the sea. To put it more straightforwardly…Ah, I may be stretching the concept a little bit, but you can think of us as a country or an ethnicity of people. Which makes what you're doing right now kind of like an air raid or a terrorist attack…since you don't bother to discriminate between ordinary citizens and the culprits."
Kadota finished his introduction to the nature of Dollars with a sarcastic remark and waited for his opponent's reaction, yet -
"I'm not so sure about that."
The corners of Chikage's mouth relaxed somewhat as he objected.
"Aren't most people in Dollars because they wanted to be? If anything, you guys are more like a circle or club of some sort."
"…Maybe."
"When someone in a sports club gets himself into a scandal, others may get involved as well, and eventually the whole team has to be placed on suspension…these things happen a lot, don't they? Whether they should place entire teams on suspension for that is another story. My point is, you guys would be total dickheads if you tell people you're Dollars members and don't expect something like that to happen to you one day."
In reciprocating sarcasm, Chikage provoked his opponent back.
Kadota, however, broke into a smile for the first time upon hearing him. In a soft voice, he muttered:
"Yeah, you're right."
"What?"
"Being part of a gang, basking in its power, and then just going 'I have no idea what's happening. That's all. Goodbye.' when something like this is happening to your gang? Nah, I don't think so either. Well, at least I am prepared to deal with whatever comes my way…I can't just laugh and think they deserve it when other members in my gang are being attacked without realizing what on earth they did to merit something like this."
Kadota sighed in some sort of resignation as he continued to mutter as if to himself.
Chikage, realizing that Kadota was starting to give off a different vibe, turned his body to face his opponent and asked in a serious voice:
"…What are you talking about?"
Kadota, on the other hand, was wearing a small grin as he said emphatically:
"I'm saying: challenge accepted."
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART II