DURARARA!! Vol.9 In a Dark Place 3
In a Dark Place 3
"Hey, this Sharaku Mikage, what is her relationship to you exactly, Mr. Information Broker?"
"…"
The man under the linen bag and the young woman who introduced herself as "Earthworm" sat facing each other like before.
The woman was holding a cell phone in her hand. She looked as if she was looking up some information on the phone.
The man under the linen bag, on the other hand, appeared somewhat different now.
The linen bag was thoroughly soaked with water, and his breath seemed to be inflating and deflating the linen bag rhythmically.
"I'm asking you what her relationship to you is. It's so cold of you to ignore me like that."
Said Earthworm as she laughed and reached for the plastic bottle of mineral water on the table.
"Or are you just too thirsty to talk?"
Giggling hysterically, she took the bottle and without hesitation poured its contents onto the head under the linen bag.
Water flowed out of the plastic container and hit the linen bag in a small waterfall.
The stream seemed to glide off the already soaked linen bag, but in the dimly-lit room it hardly even glimmered before dripping onto the floor with a faint sound.
The woman stood up, brought her face close to the linen bag and began to lick the water dripping off of it.
She reached the tip of her tongue out to the man's face underneath and felt the soft flesh under the soaked linen bag.
"That's dirty, Earthworm-san."
One of the women behind her laughed and said.
But Earthworm only chuckled in return as she stroked her own tongue with her finger and replied:
"I don't care any more about whether it's dirty or not. Hey, I just spilled our precious, precious water, so would you go buy some?"
"How many bottles?"
Her subordinate asked a strange question. Earthworm brought her lips close to the man's face under the linen bag and whispered in a loud voice into his ears:
"Yeah, let me think…get me 3 dozen bottles, 2 liters each, I guess?"
That was 72 liters in total.
The man under the linen bag should have understood by now what I'm planning to do with that much water.
Thought Earthworm as she asked the man just in case.
"Question. What am I going to do with the water I asked them to buy?"
"…"
"Bing! Your time's up."
Earthworm made a "✕" mark with her index fingers and declared the answer to be false instantly.
She brought her crossed fingers close to the man's face, gently pinched his nose and wiggled it back and forth.
"Listen! The correct answer should be 'I'm going to pour it all on your head'."
Earthworm revealed her intention nonchalantly in a bright voice.
"As your punishment for getting it wrong, we're going to make your sisters drink water once they get here."
"…"
"Ah, don't worry. It's not the kind of bitter juice you've seen them feed people on the television. We're not that bad, so we're not going to make them drink something that sounds so dangerous."
Earthworm waved her hand hurriedly. Breaking into a twisted smile, she continued:
"All we're going to do is to make them drink about 10 liters of this delicious mineral water."
"…"
The man under the linen bag, who had so far responded to none of her taunts, raised his face slowly.
"Ah, not that we're going to drown them or anything. That would be too boring. …Did you know, Mr. Information Broker, that there's such a thing as a lethal dose of water?"
"…"
"But I don't really know how much water a person has to drink for it to kill him. I'm not a science person, unfortunately. Ahaha. What about 10 liters? What do you think?"
Earthworm waited excited for the water and the sisters to arrive as she continued:
"Whoops, …how come you're still not looking worried?"
"…"
"How heartless. I'm hurt. I'm seriously trying to make you worried, but you just don't seem to get it."
Earthworm turned her chair around and sat astride it as she would a horse. She rocked back and forth.
"Ah, I see. Hey, are you thinking that there's no way we can kidnap your sisters so easily…?"
"… …"
The woman's grin widened as, for a second, the man's head seemed to move suddenly.
"I heard that the younger one of the twins is the ace in the Women's Division at Rakuei Gym. The older one carries toys like stun guns and pepper spray on her. …I guess there is a chance that we wouldn't be able to kidnap them so easily with only a few ordinary young men."
"…"
"That's why we did a little strategic planning on our part. We're planning to hold Kururi-chan hostage once she's on her own. What do you think? Your two sisters are so close that it's kind of disgusting to watch, aren't they, Mr. Information Broker?"
Earthworm lifted the empty bottle between her thumb and ring finger and tapped the forehead under the linen bag rhythmically with it. She continued:
"Are you thinking 'How come she knows all that'?"
"…"
"Do you really think that you're the only all-knowing information broker in this world?"
She probably knew by now that silence was the only response she could get from the man.
"There are others like you out there, you see…? But of course you don't know. When you were busy making yourself as conspicuous as possible, that information broker just does his job splendidly without letting people know his name or his face. I said this before, but Orihara Izaya-san, you're just an amateur in this business, aren't you? Or at best semi-professional? Goodness, how funny!"
"…"
The man under the linen bag shook his head slightly as if to say there was nothing funny about it.
Earthworm, on the other hand, ignored the man's reaction as she pressed the bottle against the man's forehead.
"…That Mr. Information Broker…ah, um. It's kind of confusing so I'm going to call him Information Broker B, OK? You'll be Information Broker A. Let's see…we bought a lot of information about you, Mr. A, from that Mr. B! We got to know so much about you that it's funny to think about it!"
She rose from the chair again.
After making her way around the man's chair to stand behind the man's back, she put her hands on the man's shoulders.
As if about to press her chest against the man's back, she began to talk to the nape of his neck, which was now the dividing line between the linen bag - tied in such a way as to not asphyxiate him - and his skin.
"Hey, you're an information broker too, aren't you? If so, you should know stuff, right?"
"…"
The man under the linen bag turned his body as her breath fell on his neck.
Earthworm enjoyed his reaction so much that she kept breathing onto the nape of the man's neck.
"You do your money transactions in all the shadiest and dirtiest of places for a living, yet you never expected yourself to end up like this? …Of course you did, didn't you?"
"…"
"Well, not that anything's going to change just because you've been mentally ready for this."
Having mocked the man enough, Earthworm breathed one question into the man's ear:
"…Do you know anything about the 'Heaven Slave' people?"
"…!"
As she felt the man stiffen, Earthworm's narrowed eyes widened again like a snake's.
"Ah, that reaction! You know something, don't you…?"
"…"
"Too late, silence is not going to help you now, no no! …Ah, but you don't have to talk about it just yet. I want to hear you tell me all about it slowly when we're having fun with your sisters after they get here, Orihara Izaya-san."
Earthworm examined the linen bag like a child checking out the wrappings of his birthday present.
"For now…yeah, I want to tell more of your story, Orihara Izaya-san."
Smiling slightly, she muttered as if the thought had only just come to her mind:
"So, where were we? …Yeah, we were talking about what relationship you had with Sharaku Mikage-san."
"…"
"She's a coach at the gym your sister goes to…but that's not all, is it? Information Broker B told us a lot more, didn't he?"
She asked her companions sitting scattered throughout this place. In the dimly-lit room, they only looked at each other and smiled.
As if considering that their silent approval, Earthworm nodded in satisfaction as she said:
"Mikage-chan was one of your followers when she was in high school, wasn't she?"
"…"
"It's amazing how you had so many followers. Are you still in contact with any of them? Or have you cut your ties beautifully with all of them already?"
Earthworm's talk was about to slip into the realm of gossip. As if a question mark had suddenly formed in her head, however, she asked about something else:
"Eh…? If you were indeed so popular, you should have been famous ages ago. Speaking of which - I'm going to repeat myself again because this never gets old - why did you want to become an information broker if you were so famous? Isn't that dangerous? I'm actually surprised that you're still alive."
"…"
Though she continued to shower him with provocative insults, the man under the linen bag remained silent.
"Were you thinking that no one would dare to touch you because you had yakuza backing? Too bad for you, then. It's true that we don't want a fight with all those old men from Awakusu-kai, but we're still hardcore enough to not bat an eyelash about kidnapping a lowly lackey like you."
"…"
"To tell you that we're not nervous would be lying…but it's going to be fine as long as 'Owner' is on our side. If anything happens he's going to talk to the yakuza people for us…you should be afraid of 'Owner', you see? He's much more dangerous than I am. But I doubt you can even fathom that, Orihara Izaya-san."
After she muttered these words as if to herself while looking up at the ceiling, Earthworm returned to her chair.
"Oh yeah, this is something Information Broker B didn't tell us…or did he just assume that everyone already knew? You were famous since the time you were in high school, weren't you, Orihara Izaya-san?"
"…"
"I heard that you were in some pretty big fights…I don't know the details since I've never lived in Ikebukuro, but…"
She flipped her cell phone open and double-checked the information before saying:
"Um…Heiwajima Shizuo-san? You got into fights with someone named that, didn't you?"
And with that, we'll be going back in time again.