Durarara!! SH - Volume 4 - Chapter Ep

EPILOGUE

Sir, You’re Not Allowed Here Anymore

Several days later, Sonohara-dou

“Oooh, I didn’t realize you were close friends with Celty,” Himeka remarked, much to Anri’s embarrassed delight.

It had been several days since the big night, and everything seemed to have settled down again.

The trio of teenagers visited Sonohara-dou just at the right time to witness Celty and Anri having a discussion. The group ended up having quite a good time talking about Celty.

“It sounds like Saburo is going to get off without losing his license, because they admitted that he was in a state of panic after being shot at.”

“You think so? He might not go to prison, but I imagine his license will be suspended for a while…”

“In a sense, they’re not wrong. Togusa literally does go crazy over Ruri Hijiribe.”

The chat was helping Celty organize everything into one coherent story in her mind. Of course, they didn’t mention Saika in front of the younger kids, but because she and Anri were talking about the sword’s part in the recent incident, it had been hard not to accidentally bring it up.

Kuon glanced toward the back of the store, where a woman was currently working.

“Huh? Is that a new employee?”

“Yes, she just started yesterday,” explained Anri.

The white woman with blond hair noticed them and bowed. “My name is Orca. I’m an exchange student. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Wow, your Japanese is really good.”

“Thank you. I was wandering without a place in the world when the owner took me in, and now I work at her store to repay her kindness.”

“You were without a place in the world…as an exchange student…?”

It was an odd story, but they decided that she probably just wasn’t explaining it right because her Japanese was still imperfect, so they all ignored the implications of it.

Celty, however, knew the truth. The woman was one of the culprits of the recent incident and had been forced to admit her fault through Saika’s power.

And because of that, Anri was able to help Celty understand the full extent of what had happened.

After Shijima’s departure, when Heaven’s Slave divided and reformed in many splinter groups, they fell under the attention of the same mysterious group that Celty once fought when recovering the Natsugawara family’s pet snake.

At first they seemed like an international smuggling ring, but in fact, they were more like hired agents for a rival company looking to steal the Natsugawara Group’s research secrets. They were keeping tabs on Heaven’s Slave, because the eldest Natsugawara child was involved with the group, and they succeeded in manipulating some of the multiple groups as pawns.

Then, out of the blue, Yukihiko Natsugawara took over one of the many Heaven’s Slaves and ordered them to abduct Anri.

So he wasn’t actually breaking in to steal anything but to leave behind something he’d taken out of the Natsugawara mansion… And those two items just had to wind up in the hands of Yahiro and Kuon…

Yukihiko also wound up in possession of Bannanjin. All this is Kujiragi’s fault. And Shijima ended up not having any connection to this incident…

She felt kind of bad about that, but his corrupting acts had been the start of all of this, and he ended up using her for his own ends, so Celty decided it wasn’t really necessary to apologize to him after all.

It seemed like a sardonic twist of fate: Celty had coincidentally gotten dragged into a sequence of events all from coincidence after coincidence. All she could do for now was be relieved that peace had returned to Sonohara-dou.

All those company agents got arrested, aside from the Orca girl here. So that’s a relief, too, I guess. All is well…except for those guys who are still in the hospital after receiving a beating from Shizuo.

She wondered if Mikado Ryuugamine was aware of any of this.

Yahiro and Kuon shared a knowing look before turning a laptop around to show it to Celty.

“What is this?”

“Er…well, you see…there were data cards inside the items we got from here…and mine only had porn on it. Thousands of pictures of it.”

Yeah, I know. That’s the shame of the Natsugawara Group’s patriarch, Celty thought, weighing whether or not to tell them the truth.

Yahiro, however, said, “But that’s not all of it.”

“What?”

“There was a strange program on my SD card that I didn’t recognize,” Yahiro continued. “Kuon’s sister analyzed it and said it was special combination software…”

Combination software—in other words, a program meant to take multiple files split in a particular way and recombine them to form the original data, presumably.

What would something like that be doing there? she wondered.

Kuon explained, “So you see, the thousands of porn photos were…just a false front.”

“What?”

“We put the combination program into the photo folder, then extracted the code embedded into the image files…and the file that it recreated is this one.”

Celty took a look at the data file—and felt her skin crawl.

“It’s really creepy…but I was hoping you might take a look, since you might know more about this,” Kuon said.

She considered it for a few moments, then banished whatever she was feeling and typed cheerily, “All right, I’ll take a copy of it! Someone I know might have a better idea what this is, so I’ll ask some questions.”

Night, Natsugawara mansion

“Can you tell me what this means?” demanded Celty, striding right into the office.

Byakuyamaru Natsugawara gave her a confident smile. “Well, well…I believe I paid your fee already, madam. My butler and maids and bodyguards should have stopped you on the way. What happened to them?”

“…I told them that I came to deliver the porn you were looking for, and everyone let me pass.”

“No way…”

The blood suddenly drained from Byakuyamaru’s face, his confident smile only a memory. Celty thrust the laptop screen and smartphone into his face.

“I’m not lying. I found the twenty thousand porn images you hid inside the parquet puzzle box.”

“Oh, I see. Well, actually, I do appreciate that. Give them to me, please.”

“I also found the combination program you hid inside the megalodon tooth fossil.”

“…” Byakuyamaru hid his consternation and let the smile return. “Ahhh…so that means you are aware of our research, then.”

“Yes. And I can see how this would lead to a long vacation in a dark cell. You might not go to prison for simple possession of vulgar images…but human experiments on children that have no medical treatment basis cannot be defined as anything but torture and abuse.”

Contained in the data Yahiro and Kuon found was the record of a child with particular circumstances, who had undergone rounds of genetic manipulation and special drug treatments in an attempt to intentionally increase human capabilities.

In other words, it was an attempt to tinker with a child’s body to turn it into a superhuman.

There were other examples of these tests elsewhere in the world, but the number and manner of experiments laid out in the data was clearly beyond anything allowed by law.

Yahiro and Kuon had no idea that the data had leaked from the Natsugawara family.

But Celty did.

Driven by righteous anger, she had stormed into the Natsugawara mansion to speak her mind. Yet faced with the evidence, Byakuyamaru just grinned, owning his villainous role.

“Heh-heh-heh… And what will you do about it? There is no identification or evidence of any kind that connects that data to us. I could claim that it was all a well-constructed April Fool’s joke, and no one could prove otherwise.”

“What will I do? I’ll do this.”

Two loud, crisp smacks filled the office.

“Ouch! That hurts—a lot!”

The massive shadow hands that slapped Byakuyamaru left him with tears in his eyes. His villain’s confidence was completely shattered.

“That was so mean…! It’s not like I was going to use that technology to create a killing machine that would slaughter an entire village as a test of its abilities or anything…”

“Just because you’re not planning a massacre doesn’t make it right! Turning a child into a toy like this… Where is your respect for human dignity?! You said your company existed to make children’s dreams come true!”

“…Yes, I did say that. And it was not untrue.”

“Excuse me…?” Celty replied, taken aback by the earnestness in his expression. With taut nerves, she awaited his explanation.

“…Is it not the dream of boys everywhere to be given special abilities through augmentation surgery?”

“You really are one of Shingen’s friends!” she typed, wringing his neck just lightly enough not to choke him out.

Byakuyamaru tapped her arm and gurgled, “W-wait please. You must understand, the subject in the file isn’t dead. There was no life being toyed with and discarded; please believe me, baby; trust me; love me tender; killing me softlyyyy…”

She let him go with disgust, unable to tell if he was going through the throes of some demented agony or just messing with her. “So the child is all right? If they’re all right, show me where…”

“Where? Why…there! Did you just hear the door down below?”

At that moment, there was the sound of feet coming up the stairs.

Oh no…Awayuki?!

Celty spun around as the door to the office flew open, and…

Several hours earlier—rental office, Saitama Prefecture

“Well, I’m certainly glad that all those obnoxious folks are gone, just like that. The odd confusion was cleared up, and I’ve sold out the remnants of Heaven’s Slave to the Awakusu-kai,” crowed Shijima.

Jami sounded apologetic. “I guess I shouldn’t have suspected you of kidnapping girls, huh?”

“I’m not mad. I would do it if I needed to, after all.”

“Wow, you really are the worst!” Jami exclaimed. He was fiddling with a set of puzzle rings. “Ugh, I can’t get them to open.”

“What’s wrong? I thought you were good at those.”

“No, I’m not! I’m only good in classes when I can memorize stuff and calculate things…,” Jami said, deflated.

Shijima found this curious. “But you solved that puzzle box the Blue Squares had right away.”

“Huh? That’s because I’ve opened it tons of times.”

“?”

“It was the same as one I have back home. And I’ve opened that one millions of times, so I remember the steps. But I was really surprised when it even had the same data card on the inside. I wonder if everyone puts those in their parquet boxes…”

At present, office, Natsugawara mansion

“I’m home, Dad! Oh…! The Headless Rider?!”

The sight of a brown-skinned boy, who sounded rather childlike despite his height, confused Celty.

“Uh, er…nice to meet you?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen you around before! Also, I saw you get back my little sister’s snake from the garden! I’m really happy to get the chance to say hello!” the boy raved, his eyes sparkling.

Celty looked to Natsugawara for help. Byakuyamaru simply said, “This is my foster son, Jami.”

“I’m Jami Natsugawara! It’s nice to meet you!”

“Uh, hello…”

She accepted the handshake Jami offered, at which point Byakuyamaru casually admitted, “This is the experiment subject we were just talking about.”

“What?! Right in front of him…?!”

“Huh? You talked to her about that, Dad? Wasn’t it supposed to be a company secret?”

“And he knows about it already?!” Celty was reeling from a series of shocks.

“Of course,” said Byakuyamaru. “I found a child overseas with great aptitude, and his poor, impoverished parents begged me to use him as a subject… So after trying out all our projects in development on him, they were all successful! We created a boy so hale and hearty that it’s almost too much to handle. His grades are good, his athletic ability is Olympic level, and he’s stoked jealousy in his brother Yukihiko…”

He went on to explain how he’d taken the boy in as a foster child and the various things that had happened since bringing him to Japan, but Celty was so mentally exhausted that she barely listened.

Byakuyamaru noticed her haggard demeanor, however, and gloated, “Ohhh? What’s this? Should I call you Miss Jumper? You know, because of all the conclusions you’ve been jumping to—ow, ow, ow, ow!”

“Don’t forget that you are in total violation of the law.”

A few hours earlier—rental office, Saitama Prefecture

“I’m sorry about my big brother making things all complicated and weird, though,” Jami said.

“You’re not kidding. Ahhh, hang on—that puzzle you mentioned… For whatever reason, the guy from the Blue Squares bought that from Sonohara-dou,” Shijima said.

Kuon had actually gotten it for free, but Shijima couldn’t have known that.

“So what’s your brother doing, then?”

“Hmmm. It sounds like he went through something really scary, and he’s been hiding in his room ever since. Sometimes I hear him whimpering things like, ‘I am a miserable, tiny person; I am worth nothing; I am trash; I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ but my sister and mom were really happy that at least he came back home alive.”

“…I think there’s something wrong with your family. But…I did use you as a decoy. I bet they’d completely flip out if they found out about me.”

In order to lure out all the rival company agents, he had sent Jami to the shopping mall where Celty had been summoned, giving the observers a look at his face. All to make them think the Natsugawaras’ second son was making contact with the Headless Rider.

“Well, I think it’s crazy that you made people have a gunfight in a place your family is building, Mr. Shijima.”

“I’m not crazy. I’m just a piece of shit.”

“You’re weird… Oh, but I don’t think Dad will be angry.”

“Why’s that?” asked Shijima, curious. Jami gave him a glowing, childlike smile.

“Dad was always planning to destroy those people. This just sped up his plans a bit!”

At present, Natsugawara mansion

“There’s one other thing I want to say to you,” Celty declared with an accusatory finger once Jami had returned to his bedroom. “You told those company agents that my shadow was some new secret tech of the Natsugawara Group’s, didn’t you?”

This information came from Orca, who was under Saika’s spell, so she must have believed it to be true.

Byakuyamaru assumed another insolent smile and leaned back in his office chair, which creaked under the pressure.

“Well, well. If you’ve gotten that far, then I must admit that I might have underestimated you.”

“So having me search for your son was just a cover. In fact, you wanted to use me to wipe out all those men.”

“And thanks to that, I’ve succeeded at cleaning out all the lingering hostile forces surrounding my family. The fact that you were their foe previously made you an ideal lure to pull them in, courier. Although I will admit that it wasn’t my desire to go so far as to have an outlandish gunfight in the shopping mall. Now the Shijima Group also suspects me of orchestrating the event,” Byakuyamaru gloated, despite the note of regret toward the end. “Heh-heh-heh… So tell me, how does it feel to have been used like a tool by a man who would credulously believe anything Shingen says?”

“Well…I do have to wonder why you would admit all that to me. You could have simply insisted that a third party leaked all that false information, and you had nothing to do with it. I wouldn’t have any way to know.”

“Actually, I thought that if I didn’t reveal the cleverness of my plot, you would think me a simple idiot, and that seemed worse to me. In fact, I’d say that it was shockingly easy to take advantage of you—the legendary Headless Rider, indeed.”

She took a silent step closer to him.

“I see. Now, just because I’m curious, what else did Shingen say about me?”

“Ah, let’s see… He said, ‘She’s terrifying if you make her mad,’ and…oh! That’s strange. I fancy that I can see something like a dark and horrible statue of a demon floating behind your back. How odd—ha-ha-ha-ha.”

“Yes. I’m making that out of shadow.” She turned the shadow statue into countless black appendages that crept closer to Byakuyamaru. “You ought to have credulously believed that warning, too.”

Faced with the encroaching menace, the man started to scream in earnest, but he was interrupted by the door of the office bursting open. Celty instantly caused the statue to vanish and spun around to see Awayuki in the doorway, breathless.

“Miss Courier! Brother Jami told me that you were here…! I just wanted to offer my sincerest thanks for rescuing Yukihiko!”

“Uh, yeah. It’s fine. Technically, I wasn’t even the one who saved him, but you know,” Celty said, feeling awkward at the profuse bowing exhibition Awayuki was giving.

Byakuyamaru seized on the opportunity his daughter presented. “Oh, Awayuki! Perfect timing. To celebrate Yukihiko’s safe return, why don’t we have an all-night pajama party! Or however long it takes for the courier here to get bored and leave.”

“A pajama party? What will we be doing, Father?”

Celty held up her smartphone at an angle that ensured only Awayuki could see it. “He’s going to show you all kinds of scary monster and ghost videos that are only suitable for adults, he said.”

“Eeek…! I-I’m feeling sleepy, so I’ll go to bed now! Good night, Miss Courier! Good night, Father!” the girl stammered, remembering the threat her father made the other day. She bowed once more to Celty and rushed out of the office and down the hall toward her room.

“Nwaaa! What did you tell my daughter?! Did you terrify that little child? Is that what a responsible adult would— Durgh-hurgle-burburbur!”

“You don’t get to say that!” Celty snapped, dangling Byakuyamaru from the ceiling and using a shadow spear to poke at him threateningly from below. “Do you have any last words?”

“Wait, please! M-money… I’ll pay you plenty of extra money for the trouble!”

“…How much?”

She pulled the spear back. Byakuyamaru lifted the index finger of his right hand, which was not tied up. “Well, let’s see…including the money to buy your silence on Jami’s research data, about this much.”

I take that to mean one hundred thousand yen.

In combination with the base pay for the job, it wasn’t a bad number, but considering that they could have bugged her and traced her address, causing potential harm to Shinra, Celty couldn’t help but feel a kernel of irritation bloom inside of her.

“No. This would be more appropriate.”

She held up three fingers instead. Byakuyamaru grumbled but eventually gave up, hanging his head.

“Very well…you drive a very hard bargain, courier.”

The next day—Shinra’s apartment

“And that’s what happened last night.”

Shinra sounded impressed by Celty’s recounting of the tale, and he navigated to the online portal of his bank.

“I see. Well, I don’t know what silence he’s buying, and I won’t ask, but it feels pretty good to know you got one over on one of the richest men in Japan.”

“Well…it was more like I threatened him, so ‘feeling good’ isn’t entirely appropriate…,” Celty said, worrying that both she and Shinra might have darker personalities than she wanted to admit.

I suppose society would consider the both of us to be real villains, she thought sadly.

But she was starting to think that even the path of wickedness would be all right, as long as she and Shinra were going in the same direction. They could drift away from the morals of society, as long as they were drifting together.

Hopefully, however, they would be able to live their lives without making things worse for others, she decided. It made her mind travel to the trio of high schoolers.

If those kids start on their way down this path, I’m going to be the one who pushes them back into the right place. The same way that Mr. Akabayashi did for Mikado.

The topic of the children reminded her of their discussion about the things they’d received while cleaning out the storeroom. Curious, she decided to send a message to Anri: “Was there some trick embedded inside the fountain pen Himeka chose, too?”

Anri’s reply was simply “No, that was something I stocked myself.”

Oh, all right, Celty thought with relief. So it wasn’t just some weird coincidence. Then she noticed there was more to Anri’s reply.

“Ms. Kujiragi sold me that fountain pen, and as a bonus, she hid a map to some buried treasure on an island somewhere inside the pen,” came Anri’s next message.

Wait a second!! What is that?! And why would you just give something like that away, Anri?!

Maybe every adult around her was crazy in some way or another. Anri had turned into quite a grown-up herself, Celty noted. She turned to Shinra, but he was frozen in front of his computer screen.

“What’s wrong, Shinra?”

“Hey, Celty? There’s a deposit from Mr. Natsugawara’s dummy company…but the number doesn’t make sense.”

“What?”

Don’t tell me he tried to do some punch line like “three fingers meant three hundred yen”!

If that was the case, she’d have to ride back out to Saitama at this very hour to beat the man up. She approached and peered over Shinra’s shoulder at the account screen.

It said the following: Deposit: ¥30,000,000.

“What do you mean? It’s right there, all thirty mimimimilmilmilfjljhkjlkjln,” she typed, her fingers spasming partway through the sentence when she processed the number of digits.

“There’s…thirty million yen in here, Celty… What exactly did you do to him?”

After that, the notifications on Celty’s smartphone just kept going off.

Kuon sent a message that said, “It’s crazy! This treasure map thing came out of Himeka’s fountain pen! It’s out at sea off the coast of Enoshima. We gotta go check it out!”

Celty got the sudden feeling that she was simply fated to always remain in the clutches of a slightly abnormal life.

She would use the large new sum of money in her possession to buy a boat and take a summer vacation to the waters near Enoshima with Yahiro, Shizuo, and the others—but that is a story for another time.

Celty didn’t need to head out to sea, of course—she had plenty of slightly off-kilter adventures waiting for her closer to home in Ikebukuro.

A whole collection of stories with Shinra, the man who turned her world upside down, and the greatest partner she could have ever asked for.