“I think…simple pain, heat, agony… He hates those things.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Ikebukuro—inside an office building
✦ ✦ ✦
“Kahk…”
Breath returned to Izaya in the form of a cough.
The air he expelled contained flecks of blood.
His attempt to seize understanding was besieged by ferocious pain.
“…!”
For an instant, he forgot who he was and why he was here.
The awful pain was inseparable from heat in his mind, creating the brief illusion that his entire body was on fire. Agony tore through his being, preventing him from even passing out.
I’m still alive.
Izaya was not the type of person to argue about guts and willpower overcoming flesh. But he didn’t rule it out, either.
He summoned all his mental strength, forcing the pain aside so his brain could work unimpeded.
What happened? I was atop the beams, and…I fell…
The shock was so strong that even memories ten seconds old felt vague. He reached back what felt like ten years to arrive at last at an answer.
That’s right. He hit me. The monster used a metal beam like a bat and hit me like a ball.
“…Monster,” he spat.
If his opponent had been a human, Izaya would have praised the strength of the man who hit him, near-lethal blow or not. But Izaya no longer recognized Shizuo Heiwajima as human.
All he felt was horrible, detestable pain, his entire body being devoured by seething agony.
Apparently, he was inside a building. After being struck, there had been a shock against his back and a sound like glass breaking, as he recalled it.
“…”
He looked around, his back against the ground, and saw a number of office desks. So he was inside of an office of some kind.
I was lucky.
After Shizuo struck him, he’d flown into the building across the street and crashed through a window. Perhaps the glass of the window had cushioned him, because aside from a number of lacerations on his clothes from shards of glass, his arteries were miraculously intact.
Instead, the blood oozed from a myriad of smaller cuts all over him. Izaya looked to the broken window.
He couldn’t tell what was happening outside. There was only one thing he could say for certain.
He’s going to come here to finish the job.
But the death sentence that was the truth also sent Izaya’s heart trembling.
That means it’s not over yet.
And when he’d reached that point, there was a sound of breaking glass up above. It could mean only one thing.
Shizuo Heiwajima had jumped here from the building across the way.
With legs powerful enough to kick a car like a soccer ball, a narrow alley was an easy gap to cross in a single leap. But few people, even if they had the same leg strength, would jump from such a tall building to another, knowing that a fall would be fatal.
If only he’d fallen, Izaya thought briefly, but then he remembered how Shizuo had kicked aside the forklift that had fallen from that height. No…maybe a fall of that distance wouldn’t kill him. And why would I hope that he went to his own demise? The entire point is that I’ve got to purge the monster from existence.
He chided himself for indulging in such a naive thought and smirked.
“Yes, that’s right.”
He clenched his fists, telling himself that at least the nerves there still worked. And then, withstanding withering pain all over, he got steadily to his feet.
“I’m here to vanquish a monster.”
Perhaps it was his one-sided, selfish love for humanity that brought his willpower back to him. And yet, not a single “beloved” human face came into his mind’s eye.
Not the parents who raised him.
Not the sisters who looked up to him.
Not the brother-loving woman who made for such a capable, unquestioning secretary.
Not the crazy friend who was the first to see his true nature.
Not the many unfortunate, despairing people he’d sent into ruin.
Not the naive fools who thanked him for sparing them on an idle whim.
Not even the boys on the border between normalcy and ruin.
Not a single face came to mind.
But still, he loved humanity.
Izaya Orihara, possessing a view of humanity that was as blank as the void, got to his feet.
“It’s not to run away.”