DURARARA!! Vol.9 In a Dark Place 1
In a Dark Place 1
"How are you feeling now, Mr. Information Broker?"
At first sight this place looked like a bar that had yet to open for the day.
On its shelves, however, there were no alcohol bottles as there should be. The wallpaper was tearing off in places and the place did not look like it was still functioning.
"Or would you prefer me to call you by your full name, Orihara Izaya?"
A young woman's voice was heard in this dark, dysfunctional bar.
The woman was dressed like a clerk for a designer boutique and probably in the middle of her twenties. She was wearing light makeup. Her hair was short and slightly curled.
Her tone sounded somewhat too young for her looks. No reply was heard in the dark bar, however.
Around her there were several figures sitting on the bar's rusty chairs.
Most of them were women, but there were several tough-looking men as well. Had the lighting in the bar been better, they would have looked like nightclub hostesses and waiters with their bodyguards.
But at the center of the bar sat a figure that indicated the exact opposite.
It was a man in black sitting on a stylish steel frame chair.
For this man, however, the quality of the lighting in the bar did not even matter.
His head and neck were completely concealed under a linen bag that looked like the kind used for transporting coffee beans. It was impossible to tell what his face - and, in fact, even his hairstyle - looked like.
He was definitely breathing, but he did not utter a word in reply to the woman.
The man's hands were tied together on his back. Since he could not see, it seemed quite impossible for him to make any reckless move.
"Aha, I see. You can't say anything. I should have known. They beat you up pretty good before they brought you here, didn't they? Ah, don't tell me you guys broke every single one of his teeth already?"
The short-haired woman turned in her chair, which looked the same as the man's, and asked the figures behind her back.
One of the women sitting behind her replied in an apathetic voice:
"No, we didn't break him. He's at least good-looking. It would have been such a waste."
"I see. Well done. That way I can have more fun with him."
Her voice sounded like a teenage girl's. But in the dim light it was hard to tell her exact age.
No one told the man under the linen bag a word about who and what they were. The short-haired woman continued to act as if she were the master of the place.
"So, Mr. Information Broker, do you know why you're looking the way you're looking right now?"
She asked the man under the linen bag again. There was still no reply, however.
The slightly rough sound of breathing was heard from behind the linen, but it was difficult to tell whether the man was conscious or not.
"I'll give you a hint. My nickname is…Earthworm. Do you get it now?"
Earthworm. It sounded more like an insult than a nickname. As soon as the man heard it, he slowly began to raise his linen-covered head.
"Aha! He heard me, he heard me! What's that, he looks like a doll! How funny!"
Earthworm chuckled mockingly. Pressing the tip of her index finger to the forehead of the man under the linen bag, she said in a tone that sounded like an eccentric high school girl talking to her male kouhai.
"I'll teach you something nice, Orihara Izaya-san."
"…"
The woman continued as the information broker remained silent.
"I don't know if it's because you're an information broker or anything, but boy, aren't you a little too conspicuous for your own good?"
"…"
"We heard that someone was curious enough about us to be looking for our information, so we did a bit of our own research. And guess what we found? Boy, aren't you just interesting? Almost as interesting as playing old maid with 52 old maid cards, you know."
Earthworm's simile was hard to understand. The man under the linen bag, however, made no sound other than breathing.
"Aren't information brokers supposed to be, you know, like nightclub hostesses, cops, lackeys working under really dangerous people or pimps…? They sell what they know to other people and make some pocket money from it, right?"
"…"
"But not only did you make it your main occupation - you even call yourself an 'information broker', and you're famous as well! Isn't that just pure blasphemy for an information broker? See, if the bosses of those cops and lackeys knew that they were in fact information brokers, wouldn't that be the end of them? They'd get arrested, or their fingertips would get cut off. Ah, or they'd simply be fed to the fish in Tokyo Bay, am I right?"
The woman kept on giggling as she said these dangerous words.
She sounded as if she were telling a fairy tale to a child.
"The 'nice' thing I'm going to teach you is that…conspicuous people like you are the least suited for a life as an information broker. Do you feel like you just got wiser?"
"…"
"Hey, are you listening? It's not so much a hint as it is the answer…but those scary old men at Awakusu-kai asked you to look for any information on us you could find, right?"
Earthworm kept her fingertip pressed against the non-responsive man's forehead and began to trace circles with it. The man was probably exhausted seeing as how he simply let his head be moved around in accordance with the prodding of her finger.
"But then, even though I taught you such 'nice' things you probably won't have a chance to use the knowledge."
"…"
"Because it's not like you're ever going back to that job again, is it?"
The woman in her twenties said these ruthless words with the expression of an innocent girl.
Who were those people, and what were they?
What exactly was happening inside this dysfunctional bar?
We'll be going back several days in time to the hour when the information broker named Orihara Izaya received a request from Awakusu-kai.