But his train of thought was interrupted by an explosion and gunshots from inside the mall. “What was that?!” Kuzuhara barked a few commands to his officers and rushed toward the noisy shopping mall. He was, of course, still riding on his trusty vehicle—but no one was going to warn him that it was dangerous. With this, various paths would finally cross. Inside the mall How did it come to this? Gunshots echoed back and forth. Explosions rolled and roiled. The sky over Saitama was rife with destruction and clamor. It was the arrival of Shooter, bursting through the door from the outside, that broke the settling stalemate. The headless horse reached Celty’s side despite being hit by many bullets and whinnied loudly, ignoring its wounds and nuzzling its master with its neck. Indeed, the bullets had done very little to it. The wounds healed themselves right away, and when Shooter turned back into a bike, dented bullets scattered across the floor. …I think Shooter might actually be tougher than I am, Celty thought, distracted. A moment later, a grenade flew into the shoe store, and she had no choice but to rush out into the mall, into combat with enemies who would have to be subdued. Celty ran through the gunfight, her mind a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts. But no weapon could successfully stop her or Shooter. She watched the lead bullets tinkle to the ground from the shadow that swallowed them, thinking wryly, Uh-huh. I guess there’s no wonder that humans call me a monster. There was a note of resignation in her heart now. It’s not that I fell out of sync with humanity—we were never aligned to begin with. Oh, well. All I need is Shinra. I suppose it was arrogant of me to assume a monster could live among humans and pretend to be one of them. She was exhausted by how much this world fought her. She considered giving it all up and leaving for unknown destinations with Shinra. Oh, Shinra, I’m sorry. I might end up indulging in your kindness. If I can’t be human…and if, say, I give in to anger and become a killer, slaughtering all these men…even then, there’s a part of me that knows you’ll still forgive me, Celty thought, preparing herself for the moment she became an enemy to all humanity. Regardless, she endeavored to overcome the situation as best she could. The main thing is this isn’t going to resolve itself. Can I hold them all down with shadow? But if someone’s hiding somewhere around here, they might get away… Probably better to look for whoever might be a leader and pin them down… Pin them… Pin… P-p-p-p-pin… Pin…? And in the next moment, she remembered that it wasn’t just herself who demanded that she not fall out of sync with society. It was Ikebukuro that demanded none of its residents fall out from its own flow. The city’s anger showed up to greet her in a new form—a form that laughed off any meager, measly sensation of disconnect. It reached out for her, as if to say, Just because you feel asynchronous doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. Celty Sturluson’s greatest fear had come for her in person, ready to drag her back into the flow of the world. Wh…wha…? Huh? Why?! Why are you here?!! This is Saitama!! “Looks like you’re really makin’ a mess of things…you monster.” The motorcycle officer Kinnosuke Kuzuhara surveyed the furor and billowing flames inside the mall, his eyes sharp and glinting behind his sunglasses. “So how much of this mess is your doing?” “Shit! The police are already here?! It’s too soon!” swore the leader of the team of company agents. “Was it a trap?!” “It’s just one person! Don’t let them call for help!” The men, unaware that multiple traffic officers had been drawn to the scene by Togusa’s rampage, began to fire in a wild, hasty panic. While the men were merely pawns of a large conglomerate, Celty worried a single officer would not stand a chance against so many guns all at once. She extended an umbrella of shadow in a frightened panic, trying to protect Kuzuhara. “Get out of my way,” he barked. Huh? Kuzuhara raced out from under the umbrella, weaving behind the mall’s pillars and nimbly avoiding the hail of bullets flying in his direction. What? What?! What?!? Celty gaped. A grenade, pin removed, hurtled toward Kuzuhara’s location, but he used the slope of the mall’s fountain to launch himself high into the air. “Did you think a bike cop would be helpless indoors…?” He nimbly flicked the motorcycle’s wheel, deflecting the grenade in midair. N-no way…! “N…no way…!” Miraculously, Celty’s thoughts and the grenade thrower’s voice were in perfect sync—and then the projectile exploded in midair, showering the men, who were dressed only in suits and not military gear, with fierce shrapnel. “There’s just one thing I have to say.” Kuzuhara used every tool available to him in the hellscape that was the mall interior, even Celty’s paths of shadow, to easily avoid every bullet and knock down every attacker as he roared past them. “Don’t fuck with traffic cops, you criminals,” he said, a line strikingly similar to something he’d said to Celty once. His destructive sense of justice reigned supreme and terrible. “You lowlifes won’t ever fuck with traffic cops again.” Hours later, Shinra’s apartment “Waaaaaah! Shinra, Shinra, Shinra, Shinraaaa!” As soon as she was inside the door, Celty was clinging to her partner, shivering. “Well, well! Did you get chased by Officer Kuzuhara again? How many times has this happened by now?” said Shinra with practiced ease, hugging her back to help calm her down. “N-no, it was different this time. It was different, but the traffic cops are monsters these days! I mean, he’s the monster…or more than that…a god…?” “It’s all right, Celty. You’re the only god to me.” “O-oh…thank you, Shinra…,” she said, taking Shinra’s absurd statement as a comforting compliment. She must have been really terrified. “It was so horrifying… He was avoiding submachine gun and assault rifle fire with only his bike. That’s inhuman! He even used my shadow to launch himself off the shopping mall rooftop to land on the bad guys’ car as they drove off, then bounced onto another one and wrecked them both! And Kuzuhara himself didn’t take a scratch! Was that all a nightmare?” “Compared to such a terrifying man, you’re just an adorable little sweetheart, Celty, hee-hee-hee.” “Th-thanks… Wait, that’s not what I want to hear!” snapped Celty, regaining a bit of her usual rapport with Shinra. “Phew… I think I’ve settled down a little.” Her shoulders rose and fell in the manner of exhaling a deep breath. But as her anxiety subsided, doubts arose. “Anyway, what’s even happening with all this madness…? If it wasn’t Shijima who had me shot, then who were those guys talking about being rich and covering things up…?” At that very moment, the e-mail notification went off on Celty’s phone. Oh, it’s Mr. Akabayashi. She’d been wondering what happened with Anri. Celty opened the message to see what it was. Sender: Akabayashi Re: The time has come to pay back that favor And when she saw the body of the message, Celty was so baffled and rattled that she ended up clinging to Shinra again. An hour earlier, near Sonohara-dou Yukihiko Natsugawara raced through the city, quieter now that it was after midnight. He clenched the bizarre hammer in his hand. His destination was not the storehouse of Sonohara-dou, which he’d broken into previously, but the residential part of the shop itself. There wasn’t a moment to waste. He would literally beat the store owner awake with his hammer, presuming she was already asleep, and take her hostage to recover the SD card from that student. In all honesty, he more or less knew what was contained in that data, but what it could actually do, what it had achieved, and what effect it would have on the rest of the world—these things he could not possibly know or even imagine. All he knew was that the data could be sold to another company for money, and he wanted to use that to set up the rest of his life. It was crucial that he did not lose the data. Out of rebound from the terror of Snake Hands, his current mood was more attributable to sheer desperation than to any great courage. He raced toward his destination with madness in his step. When he reached Sonohara-dou, imagining the violence that was soon to ensue, a sadistic smile crossed his lips. Yukihiko swung the hammer through the lock on the door, grinning crudely. Any practical thoughts of the sound summoning the police or leading to his arrest were long forgotten. He was going to prove that he was special, that he could do anything and get away with it. He lifted his hammer high above his head to swing it at the door—but the weapon never came down. “That’s far enough.” Something grabbed his raised arm from behind. Yukihiko spun around to see a man with tinted glasses and a walking stick. The streetlight gleamed coldly in his eyes. “…Who the hell are you?!” “That’s what I was going to ask you.” “Who do you think you are…? Get lost! You want money—I’ll give you money!” the boy blustered, pulling a fat wallet out of his pocket and hurling it at the man in the tinted glasses. But the man just shrugged, as if to resign himself, then swept Yukihiko’s legs out from under him, slamming his head against the ground. “You don’t need your money? Then I’ll be sure to put it all in the donation box at the convenience store later.” “Ah, gah, agh,” Yukihiko uttered as the tip of the walking stick pressed against his throat. He trembled. The man in the glasses, Akabayashi, pulled an insurance card out of the wallet and spotted the name Yukihiko Natsugawara on it. “Hmm…? Natsugawara…?” His mind worked for a bit, delivering him eventually to a realization. “Ah, all those folks we caught earlier, to a man, said, ‘Mr. Natsugawara told us to kidnap the owner’… I thought the name was familiar. So you’re from that huge company… Meaning the one who was using his family’s power to hush things up was you, not Shijima.” Akabayashi thought some more, then relaxed the force behind his cane just a little. “Is it possible that you’re the one the Headless Rider’s been searching for?” Message: I have Yukihiko Natsugawara in my possession. When I’m done with him, I’ll hand him over to you alive. Don’t worry. Celty read and reread the message several times, but it did not fail to confuse her on each reading. Why is Mr. Akabayashi telling me the same thing Shijima did…? And why does Mr. Akabayashi have Yukihiko…? What is going on here…? It was a long and agonizing night for Celty, who did not realize that the first part was a simple coincidence. She felt disgusted with herself for succeeding at her courier job because of someone else’s help and without interacting with Yukihiko Natsugawara himself in any way. “Say, Shinra…do you think I’m not suited to be a courier…?” she grumbled. Shinra gave her a beaming smile and said, “The one thing you’re best suited to being is my wife, Celty…would be my dream answer. But in fact, you’re best suited to just being Celty. Whether it’s as a courier, or a dullahan, or a hero, or a villain, you should do whatever you want.” “Shinra…” “You might fall out of step with society at times, but eventually the city will understand you, too. Just like how I understand you. You just have to have faith that sometimes the city will slow down to match your gait.” “…You’re right. I’d like to believe that,” Celty typed, deciding to be true to herself. But Shinra wasted no time in working himself up in his usual way. “Oh, but speaking of being a wife, I would be happy to take your name, too! Shinra Sturluson. That’s great! It feels like we’re one and the same. I feel closer to you than ever before! Besides, calling you Celty Kishitani would make it sound like Dad took you in as a foster child. So what do you say? We could go and have another wedd-ded-ded-ded-ded—” She used her shadow to hold Shinra at bay as he tried to leap on her and answered him with a wry “Good grief. I’m remembering now that you were the one who threw me off my game to get me here in the first place. Originally, we should have been living in completely separate worlds.” “Celty…” He looked anguished, as though she was about to say she was leaving again. But she was going to do no such thing. “Thank you, Shinra. At this point…I’m incredibly grateful that you dragged me off the proper path.”
Chapter 60
11 min read