DURARARA!! Vol.9 Chapter 4, Part I
CHAPTER 4
THE VICE PRESIDENT
Night, somewhere on Kawagoe Highway, Shinra’s apartment
[Speaking of which…this scar is still there.]
Celty muttered as she wiped Shinra’s body with a wet towel as she changed his bandages for him.
After taking off Shinra’s pajama shirt, Celty stared intently at his body.
Until yesterday she had been too distracted by the new wounds to notice, but on Shinra’s side there indeed was a scar that looked as if he had been stabbed with something.
“Ahh! Celty staring at my old scar makes me kind of embarrassed, but at the same time I’m feeling such a surge of happiness as well! What should I do, what should I do? What on earth should I do!? Hey, Celty, what on earth should I do!?”
[Just stay still.]
Pushing a PDA screen with these words on it in Shinra’s face, Celty continued to change his bandages and wipe away his sweat in silence.
She ended up taking Izaya’s offer and returning home after being told to wait until further notice.
After she told him about it Shinra had said “He’s definitely up to something.” and sighed. “Anyway, be careful.” He added words to that effect over and over again.
Celty knew that the offer was obviously a suspicious one, but she couldn’t turn it down. With lingering doubts on her mind, she decided to concentrate on taking care of Shinra first, but -
It turned out that she ended up getting curious about Shinra’s scar.
After Celty had finished changing the bandages and putting clean pajamas on Shinra, she asked about the scar again.
[It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? About ten years?]
“Yeah, I guess so. It feels like yesterday, though. At this rate I’m probably going to outlive the average life expectancy and die an old man in another instant.”
[What are you talking about? You haven’t even lived past the mid-point yet… But my, how these scars remain…]
Celty was a dullahan with a body that resembled a human’s. But dullahan bodies were different, after all.
She was slightly harder to kill, for one. Knives and scalpels could cut her open, but no scars would remain thanks to her extraordinary regenerating abilities.
For Celty, that was the reason the old scar on Shinra’s body felt like a wall that stood between them. It frustrated her somehow.
“Well, that one’s probably going to be a scar for life.”
Shinra looked like he was reading Celty’s thoughts. He patted his side as if to say scars were no big deal.
“Urgh…”
Though he ended up groaning under renewed pain from his recent injuries the moment he did so.
[Are you alright?]
“Ah, I’m alright. As long as Celty is by my side I feel like the injuries are healing themselves.”
[Yeah, if only that worked also for your old scars.]
Knowing that Shinra was worried about her, Celty typed these words jokingly in return.
As she remembered what got her curious a moment ago, she tried asking Shinra again.
[How did you manage to get yourself injured like that, anyway? I remember you said it had something to do with getting caught up in a fight between your classmates…]
“Ah, someone kind of ran a knife into me.”
[A knife!?]
Celty looked shaken as she typed in response to the simple answer Shinra gave.
[A knife? How can you talk about it as if it were no big deal?! When you said you got caught up in a fight I was so sure it was going to be like being pushed down the stairs or something…!]
“Back then there was still this wall between you and me, Celty.”
Celty and Shinra had only been lovers for a year and several months.
They had been living under the same roof for more than 20 years, though.
Though Celty was curious back when she heard that the son of her roommate, both belonging to this species called “humans” that resembled herself but not quite. However, she did not feel the need to inquire further, and even thought that it was not something she should dig deeper into.
“But I loved you all the same, Celty, including your wall!”
[Well, I should blame you for making me embarrassed, but in fact you made me happy so…anyway, we’re off-topic. You said it was a knife, it sounded far beyond middle-school-fight level - what happened?!]
“Ahh…yeah. Now that I think of it, I haven’t told you everything that happened back then yet, Celty.”
[Now that you mention it…I think you’re right.]
- In retrospect it was somewhat strange indeed.
- Shinra would always come to me to talk about all sorts of things when he was growing up.
- He did the same even when he was recovering from that injury. Curiously, however, he never told me the reason he got injured.
Feeling like she was venturing into uncharted territory of the human being named Shinra, Celty wondered if she should just pop the obvious question -
“But for me there are too many complicated feelings associated with this scar…I’m sorry, Celty.”
Shinra lowered his eyes apologetically in his supine position.
Seeing the way her roommate acted, Celty decided to drop the inquiry.
- He’s right.
- It’s true that I’m curious, but there’s no way I’m putting more burden on Shinra’s body and mind.
- And everyone has one or two things they never want to talk to others about…
Ignoring the conversation going on in Celty’s mind, Shinra kept his eyes lowered as he said suddenly:
“Let me see, where should I start…yeah, it was back when I first became a middle schooler…”
[What? So you were planning to tell me after all!?]
♂♀
12 years ago, Raijin Middle School, Class 1-3
“Hey, want to join the biology club? Actually, want to co-found one?”
“Sorry, not interested.”
The other boy answered curtly as the bespectacled boy asked him.
It was the first verbal exchange between Kishitani Shinra and Orihara Izaya.
They were still in the classroom after the school’s opening ceremony and the first homeroom in which the students did their self-introductions.
After the homeroom was dismissed, students who graduated from the same elementary school flocked together to talk about their hopes and anxieties about the new life in middle school. In such an atmosphere Shinra and Izaya were the only ones that somehow did not fit in.
There were several graduates from Raijin Elementary School in the class, but no one looked inclined to come to Orihara Izaya to strike up a conversation.
It didn’t make Izaya feel left out, however. He just thought it was natural.
Sure, he was a top student.
But that was all to it: he was not a model student in any way.
He seemed nice, and he and was popular with girls - but he remained decidedly detached in all dealings in his school life.
His classmates in elementary school were later to describe him as “Kind of like an alien. But he was a nice fellow.” with a chuckle. Indeed, it was the way most people viewed him, and they too would agree that he was “a nice fellow.” So it was probably not terribly wrong to say that he was more or less your average good student.
He was not particularly hated. Nor was he particularly loved, either.
When everyone else chatted in the classroom or went out for a game of kickball during lunch breaks, Izaya would always remain in the library room. For that reason he even came off as aloof and kind of a lone wolf to some.
When the classes had to be reshuffled for field trips, he would almost always end up being the only one left without a class - but as soon as people realized it, every class would go “Eh, Izaya, you alone!? Then come to our class!” “No, come to ours!” and it would invariably have to be settled with several rounds of rock-paper-scissors. It was strange, but that was the kind of child Orihara Izaya had always been back in elementary school.
Izaya himself enjoyed being somewhat detached from everything around him.
He knew that he was seen as a top student.
But he never made fun of others, nor did he see them as inferior.
He liked this placed called “school” where lives were spent in groups.
Some of his classmates would chat and laugh in a friendly way, some would fight, some would talk in secret about being bullied, and still others would weep when they were the targets of such bullying - he liked to observe all of the above.
The more he had to do with them, however, the less there was to see.
When he had to choose in the cinema between sitting at the back to enjoy the view of the entire screen and even the other moviegoers, and sitting in the front row to immerse himself in movie scenes too oppressively close to his nose for his own comfort, Izaya the elementary school kid would choose the former without hesitation.
Being left out like this, therefore, was actually right up Izaya’s alley. Cheerfully, he watched the groups form themselves inside the classroom, wondering how they were going to evolve, until -
The smiling, innocent-looking boy in glasses interrupted the fun he was having.
It was the boy who had just introduced himself as Kishitani Shinra during the self-introductions.
He recalled that the boy had said: “Mother divorced Father because she didn’t love him any more, so it’s just we three living under the same roof now.” Though his family sounded like it should be a heavy subject for him, the boy’s voice was lighthearted.
- Parents divorced, but he said there are still three. Guess he has a brother or something.
With such thoughts on his mind Izaya was ready to turn his attention back to observing the whole class -
“It’s OK if you’re not interested. Just found it with me anyway. The biology club, I mean.”
“……”
The boy continued to talk like he was not discouraged in the slightest. Izaya felt slightly annoyed.
But upon realizing how rare it was for him to be feeling this way about another person, his interest in this Kishitani Shinra boy grew despite himself.
“You’re Kishitani-kun, right?”
“Just call me Shinra. …Uh, sorry, your name is?”
“…Orihara Izaya.”
“Ah, that’s right! Orihara-kun! I’ll call you Orihara-kun, but you can just call me Shinra, it’s alright!”
Shinra had already begun to push the conversation in strange directions. Izaya, on the other hand, was still surprised as he said:
“Why did you ask me to found the biology club with you when you didn’t even know my name?”
“Because that’s what the teacher just said. At this school you can found any club as long as you have at least two people.”
“No, that’s not what I…I mean, why me?”
He probably asked me simply because he saw me looking left out in the classroom.
But there was no way he would just say that out aloud.
Curious about what kind of answer he was going to get, Izaya, already knowing the answer, popped the question anyway -
But the answer Izaya did get exceeded his wildest imaginations.
“You like observing living things, don’t you? So you’ll fit right in.”
“Huh?”
He didn’t recall saying such a thing in his self-introduction earlier.
For a second he thought the boy had mistaken him for someone else. But as far as he knew no other student had said anything like “I like living things” in their self-introductions, either.
Izaya frowned. Shinra, on the other hand, pressed further.
“Hm? Didn’t you say it yourself during self-introduction?”
“Say what?”
“Come on, you said: ‘I like watching people of all occupations.’”
“…”
He liked observing people.
Although he had realized that it had become an obsession, he thought it would be less than tactful to say “My hobby is human observation.” in a self-introduction. But he had no real hobbies other than that, either. That was why he decided to say it in that particular way - but he never thought anyone would try to persuade him to join the biology club because of it.
“How does that have anything to do with a biology club?”
“People are living things, too.”
“…”
Izaya felt renewed interest in this boy who just had asserted, with almost brutal simplicity, that humans were “living things too.” True, “Humans are but one of the species on Earth” was not exactly an unheard-of sentence in this time of eco-movements. He was pretty sure that there were other classmates who also loved this slogan.
But to say it and mean “That’s why humans are a biology club’s subjects too!” obviously suggested that something about the speaker was not right.
After hesitating for a while, Izaya shook his head at the boy.
“I’m sorry, but I still don’t think I’d be interested in a biology club.”
“I see. Guess that can’t be helped.”
The other boy announced retreat so fast that Izaya couldn’t help but feel a little let down.
“I’m going to ask you again tomorrow. Looks like there’s no deadline for submitting applications for founding clubs.”
“Wait a second. Don’t you think you’re just going to get the same reply tomorrow?”
He even bothered stopping Shinra to ask the question, so it was clearly not just a knee-jerk reaction to the absurd statement.
Apart from curiosity, he was driven by a feeling that something was “not right.”
Izaya asked the question in order to find out what was making him feel this way. At that time, however, he failed to realize exactly what the feeling was.
“What about the day after tomorrow?”
“Same thing.”
“Pretty please? You can be the President.”
“Why are you already trying to put me in troublesome positions?”
Izaya shot back in a calm tone. It was something a person wouldn’t usually say to someone they’d only met for the first time, but for Izaya such dialogues themselves were rare in the first place.
“Couldn’t you just have asked someone else? Like your friends from elementary school or something.”
Shinra’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Do I look like I have friends?”
“…My bad. You don’t look like you have friends at all.”
“Unfortunately you’re wrong! I actually have one!”
“Hm. Can I punch you now?”
Ignoring Izaya’s words as the latter narrowed his eyes, Shinra continued calmly:
“But that friend is going to a different school, so either way I ended up with no friends at this school.”
“I don’t think you’re going to succeed in making any, either. My condolences. But you kind of deserve it, no?”
Izaya was slightly taken aback by his own words as they escaped his mouth.
Little did he expect that his stance in elementary school to keep others “neither too close nor too distant” would have collapsed this easily.
Are students from other elementary schools all like this? His heart sank at the thought, but he tried to convince himself that this Kishitani boy in front of him was probably just an exception.
“Well, if you’re looking for people interested in biology, I’m sure you’ll find someone in this class.”
“Yeah. But there’s also this other reason I approached you in particular. Were I to get someone who actually likes biology to join, they’d work too hard, which would also bother me. If possible I’d like to limit the club activity to a bare minimum, like keeping Sea-Monkeys or something.”
”? What’s that? I thought you liked biology.”
Club activities were by no means mandatory at this school. If he didn’t want to be in any clubs he could have just gone home after school like others. Why exactly did he insist on being in one?
The natural questions appeared in his head, but they were answered by Shinra before he could ask them.
“Well, to be frank with you, I didn’t want to be in any clubs at all… But my loved one said to me, ‘Shinra, I’ve always felt that you have too few friends ever since you were in elementary school. Maybe you should try joining a club?’…My feelings are still not requited, so I kind of, well, don’t want her to hate me…”
“…What actually surprises me is that there’s another human being who’d worry about you in that way. More than the fact that your feelings aren’t requited, anyway.”
“You are being a bit too honest with me for a first meeting. Also there’s a little correction to be made with the ‘another human being who’d worry about you’ part, but that can wait till later. Anyway, I felt like I could count on you to not be too enthusiastic about the biology club activities even if you join. Please join! Together we can try to find the Tsuchinoko*.”
* Tsuchinoko: a legendary snake with a central girth wider than its head or tail.
“How’s that even a biology club activity?”
Just like that, Izaya turned down the offer on the first day of school -
However, intrigued by the feeling that something was not right about the human being named Kishitani Shinra, he began to concentrate his ‘observation’ efforts on him from the next day.
Naturally, he ended up talking to students who were in the same elementary school as Shinra to find out more about Shinra as a person.
“Ah, I’ve heard of that school…hey, were you in the same school as Kishitani-kun?”
“Yeah, I was. Ah, Orihara-kun, are you in the same class as Kishitani?”
“Well, yes.”
“That one’s weird, isn’t he? I don’t get what he’s thinking at all.”
So far he had heard nothing he hadn’t expected people to say about Shinra, but Izaya continued anyway:
“I don’t really want to say this since it would sound disparaging…but he doesn’t look like he had a lot of friends.”
“I’d say he had none…ah, actually, there was Shizu-chan.”
“Shizu-chan?”
It sounded like a girl’s name*. Maybe that was the person who worried about Shinra he had just heard about a couple of days earlier, thought Izaya.
* The suffix “-chan” is used more often with girls’ names than with boys’ for endearment. As children grow up the gender gap in honorific suffixes also becomes more pronounced: an older person can refer to a teenage girl as ‘-chan’, but with a teenage boy the standard suffix is ‘-kun’ (when they are referred to as ‘-chan’ it’s almost always by those closest to them, like mothers or girlfriends.) Apart from the ‘-chan’ suffix, the diminutive ‘Shizu’ is also a popular one among Japanese girls (usually short for Shizuka or Shizune).
But as soon as the boy said his next words Izaya was able to rule out that possibility.
“There was this scary guy called Shizuo… He could beat anybody in a fight, and he got mad so easily that everyone kept their distances from him. Only Kishitani would approach him like it was nothing and say things like ‘For once, just let me cut you open!’ I don’t get that guy at all.”
“I see. Weird indeed.”
“But then that scary guy would at least talk to Shinra normally…but he was really scary. He used to throw a teacher’s desk at people!”
- Throw a teacher’s desk?
- Ah, he must have meant “turn upside down”. He probably just said that to make it sound more impressive.
“I see. Thank you. That guy sounds dangerous. I hope they’re going to arrest him soon enough.”
Izaya thanked the boy cursorily and left the hallway.
Never in his dreams did he expect that he would later be fighting that very “scary guy” time and time again.
After that he went on with life as he did in elementary school, his gaze focused on the human being called Kishitani Shinra -
But realization dawned upon him one day.
Nothing triggered it in particular.
It came like a sudden flash of light just like how you’d realize that an item was missing.
He realized that Kishitani Shinra was the opposite of him.
Shinra did not bother looking at the vast majority of human beings.
To put it more bluntly, it was almost as if Kishitani Shinra had no interest in human beings themselves.
Just like how he loved to watch all sorts of humans -
Shinra was not interested in humans at all.
- What is it, then?
- What is he watching in his life?
It was the first time he found something “different” in a human being in all these times he had observed them.
As soon as Izaya realized this, a new question was etched into his brain -
More than a month after the school’s opening, he said to Kishitani Shinra:
“About the biology club, I think I can do it if you’re OK with me being the Vice President.”
He wanted to know why Kishitani Shinra was not interested in human beings.
With such twisted passions concealed in the heart -
Raijin Middle School finally saw the birth of its first biology club ever.
(TO BE CONTINUED IN PART II)