Shinra Kishitani.
He was back.
He returned home while Kadota and the others ventured out. His stepmother tried to stop him, but he barreled over her with a stream of excuses and within minutes was poking his head into the entrance of his apartment again.
He was wearing his usual white coat now, not the pajamas. He had wrapped bandages all over his body and was carrying a crutch made out of a mop wrapped in aluminum foil.
“Hey, you look the part.”
“Oh! You’re still here?” he said to Manami Mamiya, whom he’d met only moments ago.
“I was going to ask you more about Izaya.”
“That’s very dedicated of you.” He chuckled, plopping down the crutch and hobbling around with it. In fact, it looked exactly like a proper injured person’s movement—except that both then and now, his eyes were dyed dark red.
“What…are you?”
“I’m merely a doctor.”
“I’ve seen several people Niekawa sliced whose eyes went red like that, but you’re the first one I’ve seen acting normally afterward.”
It was the kind of question that only someone who’d seen the Saika-possessed would ask. Shinra thought it over and said, “Ah…yes. I suppose I must have reached the same side Niekawa did. It’s kind of like hypnosis, except that I forcefully undid the hypnosis and learned how to use it myself…I guess.”
“You also sound livelier than you did before.”
“I gave myself a painkiller.”
But even Manami, who was not a professional doctor by any means, could tell that Shinra’s skin tone was not good. He looked as if he ought to be in a hospital bed.
Thinking about hospital beds reminded her of the time she tried and failed to stab Izaya while he was hospitalized. She chided herself at that bitter memory and tried to get past the topic by asking, “Where are you going that you’re forcing yourself to move around like this?”
“That’s a good question. Where should I go?”
“What?” She drew her eyebrows together.
“Celty Sturluson,” Shinra said.
“Huh?”
“That’s the name of the woman I love. I want to go see her, but I’m wondering where I should go to do that,” he explained, looking up at the sky.
“That’s the name of the Headless Rider, right?” Manami asked.
“She’s a dullahan. I don’t know exactly everything that’s happening…but I have a feeling that she might have recovered her head.”
“…”
Manami’s dull, cynical eyes darted away. She was the one responsible for taking the head from where it had been safe.
“She’s probably back home by now, right? Izaya told everyone that the Headless Rider had the memories of home in her head, and her role, and all that old information.”
“If that’s true, then I’d make preparations right now to leave for Ireland.” Shinra tottered along, gazing up at the sky, bliss making his features slack. “But Celty is still in this city. I can tell.”
“How?”
“The sky…it’s the same color as Celty.”
“Huh?”
Manami looked up with him.
There was nothing there.
No starlight.
No moon.
Not even the atmosphere reflecting back the dull glow of the surface lights, that feature unique to large cities.
Manami was used to that light, so the abnormal darkness of the sky was eerie to her.
Shinra looked up at it with eyes like a boy talking about his dreams for the future. “Just knowing that Celty’s somewhere up in that sky means that I have no reason to stay locked up in my house.”
“…”
“I don’t even care if she never comes home. I’ll go to her instead.”
It was the kind of thing that a stalker might say, but Shinra’s red eyes sparkled crisp and clear as he said it. Manami found herself ever so slightly jealous.
“…I envy you a bit.”
“?”
“I don’t have any forward-looking dreams like that. I only want to torment Izaya Orihara,” she said, admitting her hesitation for the first time.
But to her surprise, Shinra said, “Really? That sounds like a wonderful dream.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, of all things, ‘tormenting Izaya’ is a huge dream. It’s quite forward-looking. In fact, making him absolutely regret doing something might be a more difficult dream than getting elected to the Diet.”
She didn’t know how seriously to take the man’s statement. “Aren’t you normally supposed to stop someone when they say something like that?” she asked him.
“Did you want the normal answer? For one thing, whatever humanity does to Izaya, he’s earned every last bit of it. I guess Celty might say something like ‘It’s a waste to become a murderer for someone like him. Just half kill him instead.’”
Shinra was so smitten, he could inject Celty into his answer to a completely unrelated question from a stranger. He gazed up at the starless sky like an innocent child.
“My dream is very simple. I want to continue to love the person I love forever. I want to be with her forever. That’s all. I’d like for my beloved to be happy forever, too, of course, but that will always be second place for me.”
“…Sounds obsessive, like something a stalker or abuser would say.”
“I agree. But if anything, I’m the recipient of domestic violence in this relationship,” Shinra said, his cheeks dimpling as he thought back fondly on the times that she’d hit him. “But what I’m about to do might be far worse than any punching or kicking you could imagine. Still, I have to do it. Otherwise everything I’ve said to Celty up to this point will be a lie.”
He looked mournful about this but turned it around into a smile again as he looked up once more at the sky.