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The strongest man in Ikebukuro.
The strongest man in Ikebukuro—
The strongest man in Ikebukuro was suddenly the hottest piece of tail in all of Japan.
Maybe even the world.
---
They said revenge was a dish best served cold. Izaya preferred to say that revenge was a dish best served where he had a front row seat. From his perch high on a nearby apartment building, he could just see Shizuo's bleached head swiveling furiously from side to side, trying to see where he'd gone. After a few moments of this, Shizuo tossed aside the stop sign in his hands and raked his sopping wet hair out of his face, brushing pieces of glass to the ground. After another glance around and up and down, he stomped off in the opposite direction of where Izaya was watching.
Izaya smirked to himself as he turned to make his way back to Shinjuku. He might not have otherwise ever known what it felt like to fly, but he prided himself on knowing more than anyone else and nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody—least of all Shizu-chan—would ever get away with putting him in a position where he didn't know what the hell was going on. He could still feel Shizuo kissing him. He could still feel himself kissing back. Just the thought of thinking about the memory was enough to make Izaya feel nauseous.
"Well then, everyone," he murmured, leaping between rooftops, "be sure to put on a good show for me tomorrow, ne?"
---
Shizuo was—to put in mildly—in a really fucking bad mood. Izaya's appearance made any day and automatically shitty one and to top it all off, Izaya had apparently decided to pull some weird shit in retaliation for Shizuo's ill-thought-out stunt last month. Man, was he starting to regret whatever surge of neural impulses have given him that bright idea—surely even the satisfaction of seeing Izaya stupefied couldn't possibly make up for the horror of having to actually kiss the damn flea. Shizuo was still going through mouthwash like some people went through underwear.
He stomped his way down the street, through the lobby, and into the elevator. He couldn't stomp in an elevator so he just stood there as it ferried him up to Shinra's apartment, glaring impotently at the smoke detector in the corner. Shizuo needed a smoke—scratch that, he needed about fifty smokes, concurrent or consecutive, he wasn't picky. Shinra opened the front door just as the elevator opened up. "Ah, Shizu-chan!" he said brightly. "To what do we—"
Shizuo ignored him, brushing past him to stomp into Shinra's living room and drop himself onto his sofa, already reaching for his cigarettes. Celty, sitting on the other end of the sofa, switch off the documentary she'd been watching and pulled out her PDA. "Are you okay?" she tapped out.
"Just fine," Shizuo growled, puffing away.
"Don't be ridiculous," Celty tapped out. "Did you see Izaya today?"
"Ah, yeah," Shizuo admitted, leaning back. "That damn flea—all he did was smash a bottle over my head and then run away back to Shinjuku, the bastard."
"A bottle?" Celty tapped out. Her entire body telegraphed alarm, black smoke swirling agitatedly from her neck as she draped an arm over the back of the sofa. Tendrils of shadow snaked out through the apartment, reaching into Shinra's study.
"You rang?" he sing-songed, letting himself be dragged out by the lab coat.
Celty tapped out a message and thrust her PDA into Shinra's face.
"A bottle? Oh my!" Shinra immediately began bustling around, looking for his medical kit. "You weren't cut, were you, Shizu-chan? Was it a glass bottle?"
"I'm fine," Shizuo repeated, louder. He tapped out ash into the tray Celty had summoned for him. "Whatever was in it smells kind of funny, though. Can you check if it's poison?"
Shinra paused in the middle of pulling out bandages and needles from his medical kit. "Poison?" he asked wonderingly. "Well, if it hasn't killed you by now, I can't imagine that it was."
Celty held out her PDA. "Unless Izaya's got something planned," they read. "Maybe it just takes a while."
"I wouldn't put it past him," Shizuo muttered. "I went to his office earlier but only his secretary was there. He's hiding. I'm going to kill that bastard once and for all tomorrow, I swear." He stabbed out his cigarette and lit up a new one.
"Can't you do anything?" Celty asked. She added another sentence to her PDA, showing it to Shinra. "Like on TV. Just to check!"
Shinra shrugged. "What do you think I am? CSI?" He sighed and adjusted his glasses. "Well, I guess I can take a couple hairs and run some tests tomorrow. Anything for you, Celty!"
The next puff of smoke that emerged from Celty's neck looked suspiciously heart-shaped. Feeling like a third wheel, Shizuo abruptly stood up and yanked out a few hairs, dropping them on the table by Shinra's hand. "I'll come back tomorrow afternoon," he said, and left.
---
Shizuo woke up the next day, so he had to admit that whatever Izaya had smashed into his hair—if it was still there after three rounds of shampoo-rinse-and-repeat—was probably not meant to kill him dead after all. Which begged the question of what, exactly, it was meant to do instead. Shizuo spent an embarrassing amount of time examining his reflection in his mirror, looking for the slightest trace of ill effect—his bleach job turning a horrifying shade of pink, for example, or maybe some kind of awful skin condition creeping its way across his face. But as far as he could see, aside from needing a shave, he looked pretty much as he had the day before. What was that damn flea up to?
"I'll find out," he promised himself, and got dressed. As soon as Tom was done with him, he was going to straight to Shinjuku to kill Izaya dead once and for all. He was so intent on imagining the feel of Izaya's neck in his hands as he wrung it that Shizuo ran straight into someone, a rotund foreigner wearing a sign draped over his shoulders.
"Sorry," he muttered, reaching down to help the other guy up.
"Thank you, thank y—" the other guy began as he heaved himself upright, but stopped dead as soon as he saw Shizuo's face.
Feeling vaguely uncomfortable, Shizuo said "No problem" and tried to let go of the guy's hand. This failed, largely due to the fact that the other guy's fingers were still clamped tight around his hand. Shizuo irritably tugged harder, trying to get his hand back, and the other guy finally took the hint and let go, mouth still slack as he stared at Shizuo. Before Shizuo could ask if he'd hit his head or something, the other slipped his hand beneath his sign. It emerged clutching a thick wad of narrow little papers, which he pressed into Shizuo's hand before blushing and hightailing it out of the scene as fast as he fat little legs could carry him.
"Weird," Shizuo muttered, shaking his head. He resumed walking, flicking through the papers in his hand. It turned out they were tickets to a hodge-podge of events, including a meet-and-greet with some idol he'd never heard of called Hijiribe Ruri (personally, Shizuo felt that his brother had a much better stage name), to be held in Ikebukuro that very day. He snorted and flicked past those; they were worthless to him and pretty much everyone he knew. At the end of the stack, though, Shizuo found a few tickets to an upcoming baseball game. He knew that using them himself was a bad idea, no matter how much he wanted to, but at least Shizuo also knew a few guys who'd pay good money to see the Giants and Tigers go toe to toe, live and in person. Feeling pleased, Shizuo pocketed the tickets and tossed the rest in the closest trash can.
He met Tom for lunch at the usual place, this little ramen shop that Tom frequently swore by as serving the best ramen in all of Ikebukuro. Shizuo personally felt that he could make better in his own kitchen, but free food was free food and part of his deal as Tom's bodyguard was that all meals on the job were on Tom's bill.
"Hey, man," Tom greeted him as Shizuo sat down. Their food arrived a second later (the down side to eating on Tom's bill: he took it as permission to order whatever the hell he wanted for the both of them). "You look good."
Shizuo paused in the middle of snapping his chopsticks. "Uh…thanks."
"No, really." Tom leaned closer over the table. "Have you done something with your hair?"
"Uh, no," Shizuo said, wondering where in hell the conversation was going. This wasn't just some idle chit-chat between friends. "…You saw me just yesterday."
"Yeah, but you might have done something between then and now," Tom said dismissively. "Your clothes, maybe? Black and white look really good on you."
Okay, now something weird was definitely going on. Shizuo looked down at himself, just in case he'd accidentally spilled something on himself and this was Tom's weird-ass way of letting him know. "I'm wearing the same thing I wear every day, man."
"Yeah, but—" Tom leaned even closer. His dreads were in imminent danger of joining his noodles. "I dunno, man. You just look—different. Like, really different."
"If you say so," Shizuo muttered, already setting Tom's newfound weirdness aside. He finished scraping splinters off his chopsticks and applied himself to his food. Get through lunch, get through all of Tom's clients, get through Izaya's security and beat his fucking face in with a lamppost. Yeah, that sounded like a good plan for the day.
"Is everything alright here?" a perky voice broke in. Shizuo looked up to see one of the waitresses standing by the table, while the rest huddled around the cashier's counter and glared in her general direction.
"Uh, yeah," Shizuo said cautiously, wondering if he was about to be pre-emptively thrown out of a restaurant for the first time in his life.
"Yeah, so fuck off," Tom added, so viciously that Shizuo looked at him in surprise. Tom caught his eye and shrugged. "What?"
"Well, I wasn't talking to you, was I, you three-inch otaku," the waitress replied, with equal viciousness. She immediately turned to Shizuo, all sugar and smiles, leaning towards him so that Shizuo belatedly realized that wow, her top had been unbuttoned pretty far down. He'd seen his fair share of cleavage and associated lingerie, but this was a pretty blatant display for a public establishment where getting laid wasn't the chief goal of everybody present. "Are you sure you don't need anything?" she purred, laying a hand on his arm. "Anything at all?"
Shizuo found himself unconsciously leaning away from her, which was just unfair considering she did have a pretty nice rack. "Yeah, I'm sure," he said. The waitress' hand was creeping up his arm; he shook it off impatiently. "Really, really sure."
"Check please!" Tom said loudly, slamming a hand onto the table. The waitress abruptly jumped away from Shizuo, looking around wildly. The rest of the waitresses immediately surged out from behind the cashier's counter, dropping the check on the table as they bodily tore the waitress away from the table.
Shizuo turned back to Tom intending to demand they at least stay while he finished his ramen, but instead he found Tom glaring after the gaggle of waitresses with the kind of vicious intent usually reserved for the very tardiest of the debtors he sicced Shizuo on. "God, what a skank," he snarled, throwing some yen onto the table and standing in one angry motion. "Come on, let's get out of here."
"Now just hold on a minute—" Shizuo began, but was interrupted by Tom—Tom, who was usually the most laidback of guys—bodily hauling him out of his chair and marching him out of the restaurant. "I wasn't done!"
"Forget that, I'll buy you lunch someplace else," Tom said dismissively, still not releasing Shizuo's arm. "Hell, I'll make it for you myself."
There was no possible way Shizuo could respond to that without making an ass out of himself in public, so he was almost relieved to hear a feminine voice shout from behind them, "B-Bartender-san!"
Few bartenders went around in uniform and in broad daylight, so Shizuo promptly turned around and found another one of the waitresses from the ramen place running towards them. "Yeah, what is it?" he asked, as she came to a stop. Apparently the ramen place was planning to use cleavage as the main attraction to make up for their mediocre product; this chick also had her shirt unbuttoned to about there, though since she also looked to be about high school age Shizuo kept his gaze firmly pinned to her pigtailed face. It was also safer than contemplating just how short those short shorts of hers were.
"You forgot something," she panted, standing up straight. A blush came over her face as she took a step closer, hands clasped shyly behind her back.
"What was it?" Shizuo asked.
The waitress stepped a bit closer and straightened her arms behind her so as to force her underage breasts forward. "My virginity," she giggled.
"You stay away from him!" Tom yelled, yanking Shizuo behind him. "He's my kouhai, I get first taste!"
"Now just hold on a moment—" Shizuo began hotly because while he was many things, a twenty-something virgin was definitely not one of them, but he was interrupted by a van screeching onto the people-filled plaza. He just had time to register the pink moe door (and he really should pay Togusa back for that some day, huh) before it snapped open, and four pairs of hands reach out to haul him in before Shizuo could so much as reach for the nearest lamppost.
---
From his vantage point around a corner, Izaya had to stifle his laughter when he saw Shizuo caught between Rie and Tom, glancing frantically back and forth between the two. When Kadota's van came screeching onto the scene to kidnap him right out from under their noses, Izaya gave up any pretense at being an innocent bystander and just started laughing out right. Who knew that a simple little love potion he'd bought over the internet would turn out to be so powerful after all?
---
"Ne, ne, Shizuo-san," one of Kadota's otaku friends said brightly—the chick in black, what was her name, Karisawa or something. She leaned closer to him, stars in her eyes. "Will you be the butler to my bocchan?"
"Hey, no!" The other otaku in Kadota's gang shoved her aside, practically falling into Shizuo's lap. "Shizuo-san, let me be the light to your darkness! The sugar to your spice! The living to your dead! The deep blue to your gold! Just say that you'll be mine!"
Karisawa glared across Shizuo at her fellow otaku, shoving him out of the way. "Stop stealing my references, Yumacchi! So unoriginal!"
"Hey, hey, who're you calling unoriginal!" the other otaku said, shoving her back. Considering that his eyes remained closed the entire time, Shizuo felt that the deathglare he was aiming at Karisawa was more than a little impressive.
"Oy, Kadota!" Shizuo surged past the two of them, latching onto the passenger seat at the front of the van. "Tell your friends to get their hands off me."
"Erika, Walker," Kadota said calmly, "if you keep pawing my Shizuo I'll cut your hands off myself."
"Your Shizuo?" Togusa said, sounding outraged. The van veered from side to side before straightening, to the chorus of frantic car horns. "I thought you said we were going to share!"
"Share—" Shizuo sputtered.
"I just said that to get you guys to help me kidnap him," Kadota said. "Once this van stops I'm going to take him and keep him to myself."
"Ehhhhh, Dotachin?" the otaku cried in unison. As one, they threw themselves over Shizuo and hauled him off Kadota's seat. "Not if we take him first!"
Now Kadota turned around in his seat, glaring at them. "I knew him first! Shizuo is mine!"
Togusa put pedal to metal, throwing everyone backwards as the van suddenly picked up a terrifying amount of speed. "Hah!" Togusa cried triumphantly. "None of you can have him as long as this van keeps moving! Shizuo will be stuck in here with me forever!"
"Fuck this shit!" Shizuo roared, and kicked the stupid pink moe door off its rails, diving out of the speeding van after it. He rolled to a stop in the middle of the road and just barely managed to avoid being hit by a truck—only to be hit by a speeding sedan. He rolled over, groaning, trying to simultaneously ascertain whether or not his back was broken (verdict: probably not) and whether or not Kadota's van had turned around (verdict: hard to tell when lying facedown on the asphalt).
"Shizuo!" someone called out. There was the slamming of a car door, and then someone was gripping him firmly by the arms, helping him sit up. Shizuo looked up into the haggard face of a middle-aged man who looked vaguely familiar.
"You're that…reporter…" he muttered in a daze.
"You remember me!" the man said, with a delighted tone better suited to lovelorn teenagers than a full-grown adult. "The strongest man in Ikebukuro remembers who I am!"
"Yeah, but I still don't know your name," Shizuo pointed out, shaking the man off. He climbed to his feet, shaking out his arms and legs. Good, no broken bones.
"You have such a strong body," the man said breathlessly, latching onto Shizuo's arm. "Such a young, strong, virile body. Heiwajima Shizuo, will you ma—"
He didn't get any farther, mostly because at this point Shizuo had freaked out and flung him well over a hundred feet in the air, before promptly staggering off the road. He didn't get very far before someone else threw themselves at him—another high school kid, with long hair and wearing an unfamiliar uniform that featured a red jacket. She threw her arms around Shizuo's neck before he could protest. "Forget my father," she said, eyes shining feverishly. "What you want is a young girl, right? Right? Shizuo-san, let me lo—"
"No!" Shizuo frantically shoved her away, gratified to see that he hadn't sent her flying like her dad, and immediately turned tail and ran. As he did, he tried to put some thoughts in order about the bizarre turn his day was taking. One thing was for sure, something fucked up was happening to him—three guesses whose fault it was, and the first two didn't count. "Izaya," he growled under his breath. A nearby stand of three gyarus swooned against each other.
Every instinct Shizuo had cried out for him to march over to Shinjuku and kill Izaya dead right then and there, but one glance in a glass storefront was enough to persuade him out of that for now. His little roll through the street had torn up his waistcoat and shirtsleeves something fierce, and that just wouldn't do, not with one of the suits Kasuka had bought him. His sunglasses were long gone. Shizuo stopped in a shady corner to light up a cigarette and consider his course of action. First: change of clothes. Second: visit Shinra and find out what the fuck it was that Izaya had splashed on him and, more importantly, how the fuck to get it off. Third: go to Shinjuku and kill that damn flea dead, repeatedly if necessary. Or even if not necessary. Shizuo took a deep drag of his cigarette as he considered the third item on his list. Yeah, that sounded good. Really good. It was decided, then: clothes, Shinra's, Izaya.
He stubbed out his cigarette in the nearest trash can and just missed the horde of people who immediately rushed forward to pluck it out, starting a street-wide brawl in the process.
---
Watching the early afternoon crowd fall over themselves to gain possession of one of Shizuo's cigarette butts was probably the most entertaining thing Izaya had seen all day, and it'd barely gotten started. Ah, humanity. Sometimes, it did pretty much as he expected, and for once not being able to anticipate Shizuo's reactions was turning out to be entertaining rather than egregiously annoying.
The only dark spot in Izaya's day was the fact that his cellphone kept ringing, not least because Namie kept forwarding calls from his office to it. Before following Shizuo down the street, Izaya firmly turned it off. Didn't Ikebukuro know he had more important things to do than tell them where to find Heiwajima Shizuo?
---
It was a weekday, so the residential districts of Ikebukuro were mercifully empty. Nonetheless, Shizuo found himself skulking from corner to corner, keeping an eagle eye out for even the slightest hint of movement. Being cat-called by housewives once was more than enough for him, thank you very much. He just managed to duck around a corner in time to avoid that American woman with the sign and the notebook around her neck—she had a new one today, one covered in so many hearts that they nearly obscured the characters. Looking for Heiwajima Shizuo, it read, with (back off, he's mine!!!) and a cleaver-wielding stick figure squeezed in underneath.
As soon as she was gone, Shizuo darted out of his hiding place and down the street. It was with a great sigh of relief that he reached his building and jogged up the steps to his apartment. Glancing around suspiciously, he fished his keys out of his pocket and opened the door. Everything was dark inside, just as he'd left the place earlier that morning. Good. Relaxing, Shizuo shed his waistcoat and shirt on the way to the bedroom and was in the process of rooting through his closet for a new set when he heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps.
Shizuo froze, still only halfway into his shirt. Slowly, he turned around, just as someone flicked on the lights. Standing in the doorway of his bedroom was another teenage girl—what was this, some kind of pervert's wet dream?—wearing a pink hat that matched the exact shade of her shirt. She looked kind of foreign, like she was maybe an exchange student or something, but when she opened her mouth what came out was unaccented Japanese.
"Shizuo-san," she said breathlessly. Her eyes darted down to his half-buttoned shirt and for a moment Shizuo felt immensely self-conscious. "Your door was locked and I thought that maybe you were sick so I hope you don't mind that I just picked the lock—"
"Picked the—"
"Yes!" the girl held up the suitcase-like thing in her hand, popping it open to reveal a lockpicking set that would have given any number of thieves Shizuo knew boners or the equivalent thereof right then and there. "I was afraid that you'd hurt yourself and I wanted to welcome you back home and, and, and I love you, Shizuo-san!" Shizuo found himself automatically backing away from the crazy in her eyes. "I'll do anything for you! It doesn't matter if you don't love me back! Just let me be with you forever!"
Before he knew what he was doing, Shizuo had darted forward and slammed the bedroom door closed in her face, locking it. That made three pieces of jailbait that had hit on him within the span of, what, two hours. He was pretty sure he'd seen a porno like this once. The thought didn't make him feel any better.
"Oh no!" the girl cried from the other side of his bedroom door. "You're locked in without me! Don't worry, Shizuo-san—" there was the click of her lockpicker getting to work. Shizuo glanced around wildly, then grabbed the rest of his clothes, as well as one from his stockpile of sunglasses, and jumped out the bedroom window. It was only a three-story drop, but there was no telling how long it would take that crazy chick and her lockpicks to get through his door. In fact—
"Shizuo-san? Shizuo-san? Where did you go? Are you in the closet? Under the bed?" a voice called from the window up above.
Shizuo shuddered and finished doing up his shirt and waistcoat. He would have tucked the shirt in, but the idea of undoing his pants so he could do so seemed like a really bad one right now. Shizuo tipped the fresh pair of sunglasses out into his hand, discarding the box and sliding them on as he emerged from the bushes, looking around. All clear.
Next stop, Shinra's. Shizuo squinted up—he could see Shinra's apartment building shining off in the distance. With any luck Shinra would know how to get rid of whatever was making all these people chase after him. Not that he was a prude or anything, but a general rule Shizuo preferred to get laid with people who weren't bugfuck crazy.
He'd barely gotten down two streets when he heard someone running after him. Shizuo glanced over his shoulder, just in case it that was crazy stalker chick, but it was that kid Celty liked, what was his name, sounded kind of like a manga character—Mikado, that was it. Ryuugamine Mikado.
The boy stopped short in front of him, panting. "Shizuo-san," he panted, straightening.
"Shouldn't you be in school?" Shizuo asked, noticing that he was still in uniform.
"Uh—yeah, but—" the kid looked up at him, and promptly blushed, which made him look even younger than before. "S-Shizuo-san, I just wanted to say that I, uh, that I—"
But Shizuo was already gone, walking down the deserted street as fast as possible. Seriously, he was totally in a pervert's wet dream.
"Shizuo-san!" another voice called from in front of him. Another high school kid in Raira uniform leaped out at him from behind a bush. The bleach job looked kind of familiar, but before Shizuo could place his face any more concretely, the kid leaned forward, grinned in a way that he probably thought was charming, and continued, "I just wanted to say that I find you so sexually attra—"
He was cut off by the first kid firmly roundhouse kicking him in the back.
Shizuo took advantage of the commotion to leave, running now. Who knew what other teenagers lurked in these quiet streets? He darted between back streets, sticking to the most deserted roads that he knew. It'd take him a lot longer to get to Shinra's, but if the payoff was avoiding any other living soul, he'd take it. However, whatever progress he might've made was halted by a short-haired girl who standing right in his path.
"Anri!" Shizuo burst out, frantically trying to halt himself. He just about managed to do so without faceplanting into the road, but it was a near thing.
"Shizuo-san," Anri said, adjusting her glasses. Shizuo had to strain to hear her quiet voice over the sound of his own labored breathing. "I can't love anyone, but I do like you." He barely had time to wonder what kind of bizarre world he'd been tipped into where he, Heiwajima Shizuo, was considered a candidate for heartfelt confession by teenage girls, when Anri lifted an arm and slowly pulled a katana out from under her sleeve. "So please, let Saika love you for me."
"Saika—"
Anri's blade snapped downward, aimed directly at his belly. Now that he looked closer, he could see that her eyes were glowing bright red behind her glasses. "Let Saika love you," she repeated.
"Sorry," Shizuo said, reaching into his back pocket for gloves Celty had made him. The shadow-cloth rustled comfortingly as he pulled it over his fingers. "Not happening. You're way too young."
Anri regarded him quietly. Without any warning, a red-eyed horde boiled out of the streets all around them, blocking off any exit he might otherwise have had and trapping him in a ring of human bodies with Anri, who took a battle stance. "Saika will love you for me," Anri said earnestly, and charged.
"Shit!" Shizuo dodged and barreled straight into the crowd arrayed behind her. The poor bastards probably didn't even know what they were doing, but that didn't change the fact that they were trying to trap him between themselves, hands clawing at his clothes and limbs and moaning his name over and over until the sound layered into something that didn't sound like anything at all.
He gave up on subtlety and began pounding his way through them, clearing the bodies who got in his way and shoving aside the rest. At one point they—or maybe it was Anri—got it into their heads to just dogpile him, to try and bury him beneath their weight. Well, that hadn't worked last time, and it didn't work now—desperation was his fuel, and with a mighty heave he sent the entire crowd flying, leaving the path clear. He dashed down the road before the bodies could land around him, taking random turns, and finally found himself back out on one of the main streets. Fuck going the back way, man. It made it way too easy to trap him, and running around like a headless chicken meant he was barely any closer to Shinra's.
Shizuo slowed down, glaring around himself at the afternoon crowd as he dug out his smokes. He lit up a cigarette and took a deep, calming drag, trying to slow down his pounding heart. Fuck, what a shambles. As he hurried down the street, a familiar figure came into view.
"Russia Sushi!" Simon called, holding out flyers. "Very good, very nice! Russia Sushi!"
To Shizuo's relief, Simon seemed to be immune to whatever it was that had infected the rest of the city—no confessions of undying love, no draping himself all over Shizuo like a damn coat. He just waved as Shizuo came into view, beaming. "Ah, Shizuo-san!"
"Simon," he acknowledged.
"How has your day been?" Simon asked, touting momentarily forgotten.
"Tch." Shizuo dropped the end of his cigarette and ground it out on the pavement, before reaching for a new one. "It's been weird, man."
Simon shook his head in sympathy. "I know what will make your day better," he said, holding out a flyer. "Russia Sushi!"
With a snap and hiss from his lighter, Shizuo lit up a fresh cigarette. "No thanks, not right now," he said, exhaling smoke. "I have to get to Shinra's—"
"For free!" Simon added, with a lovesick look on his face. He edged closer, clutching his flyers to his chest. "For you, always free, Shizuo-san!"
Shizuo dropped his cigarette in horror. Simon smiled hopefully down at him and said something in Russian that Shizuo fervently hoped wasn't something along the lines of "You are my one true love!"
"Maybe later!" he burst out, and dashed away.
---
Izaya watched Simon watch Shizuo run away with a forlorn look on his face, before leaning down to furtively pick up the crushed cigarette butt he had left behind. With a sigh, Simon pressed it to his lips and dropped it into his pants pocket, before resuming his usual spiel.
Lowering his binoculars, Izaya proceeded to laugh himself sick, but for some reason he couldn't quite name, a nagging sense of unease and dissatisfaction was starting to make itself known. Before Izaya could examine the sensation any further, he became aware of someone trying (unsuccessfully, obviously) to sneak up on him.
It was Namie's little brother. The scalpel in his hand wavered menacingly, sunlight glinting off its tip. Izaya tucked away his binoculars.
"Where is Shizuo?" Seiji demanded.
Izaya shrugged and spread his hands, feeling an itch of irritation start between his shoulder blades for no reason in particular. "If you want information, you'll have to pay," he said sweetly.
"Tell me where Shizuo is!" Seiji howled and darted forward, arm raised to stab. Izaya neatly sidestepped, grabbing his outstretched arm and wrenching it behind his back. All the breath rushed out of Seiji as Izaya slammed him into the chainlink fence he'd been using to spy on Shizuo. The sense of irritation was getting stronger now; who knew what other humiliating delights Shizu-chan was experiencing even now, as Izaya was busy dealing with this obsessive little brat?
"I told you," Izaya said, as Seiji struggled in his hold, "that if you want that information, you'll have to pay."
"Shizuo is my soulmate!" Seiji panted. "Our hearts are bound as one! Our love transcends all barriers! You can't keep us apart! Now tell me, where is—"
His voice abruptly cut itself off as soon as the hilt of Izaya's knife made swift contact with his temple. "Pathetic," he said coldly, watching Seiji crumple to the ground. "If you can't find Shizu-chan without my help, you don't deserve to have him."
---
Shizuo leaned against the elevator in Shinra's building, breathing hard. The elevator doors snapped open and he stepped out of it to pound on Shinra's door. Celty opened it for him on the second knock.
"Celty," he said with relief. "It's been a weird day."
Rather than tap out a reply on her PDA, Celty just stepped aside, patting him on the shoulder as he staggered through the doorway. Shizuo flopped on the couch as Celty tapped out, "Do you want anything to drink?"
"That sounds good," Shizuo nodded. "Whatever you got."
Celty gave him a thumbs up and went over to the kitchen. Maybe it was just his imagination, but her usual leather suit seemed different today. Shinier. Tighter. And the sashay in her hips. Maybe she'd been waiting for Shinra or something? Or maybe—Shizuo felt his throat dry, just as Celty returned. For a brief moment, her black suit exploded into a wreath of black smoke, and then resolved back into a slinky black nightie. Celty proceeded to sway towards him seductively, a tray bearing two glasses and a bottle of wine in her hands. Shadows raced out from around her, drawing the blinds and turning down the lights. The stereo flicked on, and soft jazz filled the room. It would have been romantic and it definitely would have been pretty hot, were it not for the fact that she didn't have a head, which despite himself—and Shizuo was happy for Celty and Shinra, he really was, but—leant the whole scene a rather macabre air.
Shizuo swallowed. "Is Shinra in," he asked hoarsely. "I need to ask him about—"
Celty set down the tray on the coffee table and sat down on the couch next to him, pressing herself right up against him. Shizuo could have gone the entire rest of his life without knowing that his best friend's girlfriend, who also happened to be his good friend, had a body as warm as any human woman's. She held out her PDA. "I'm so glad we finally have a chance to be alone, Shizuo," he read, heart sinking, just as shadows began to wrap tendrils around his legs. Oh, he was so fucking doomed.
Fortunately, Shinra chose precisely that moment to return. "I'm home!" he caterwauled, slamming open the door. Celty's shadows retracted automatically in shock, and Shizuo took that as his cue to leap out of the sofa.
"Shinra!" he gasped. "Did you find out anything?"
"Yep, I totally did!" Shinra said cheerfully. "Come on!" He grabbed Shizuo's arm and hauled him out of the apartment, slamming the door shut as Celty's shadows raced towards them. The garage door burst open before they could take a further step, though, and Shizuo found Celty's motorcycle barring his access to the elevator, wheels churning fretfully. With a loud whinny, it wheeled around to face him and reared, slamming its front wheel down where Shinra would have been if Shizuo hadn't shoved him out of the way. Its handlebars veered sharply to face Shinra and the bike squealed threateningly, before turning the other way to nudge at Shizuo's leg with its front wheel.
"You're just a machine!" Shinra shouted at it, shaking his fist in the air. "You don't even have a pulse!"
"Shinra, what are you doing," Shizuo hissed. He darted forward and hit the elevator button. The elevator snapped open and he grabbed Shinra, throwing him inr before dashing in with him. The bike squealed again in distress, but there wasn't enough space for it to maneuver around before the elevator doors closed.
"So, whatever was in that bottle Izaya broke over your head is deadly dangerous," Shinra said cheerfully.
"What?" Shizuo narrowed his gaze. "Why didn't you call me earlier, then?"
"You need to be examined immediately," Shinra continued. Before Shizuo could so much as react, he'd reached forward and began tugging at Shizuo's buttons, faster than Shizuo could fend off his hands. "That's what you need, a physical examination. Right now. A nice, long, hands-on, physical examination—"
Fortunately, this was the moment when the elevator opened, and Shizuo gratefully stumbled out of it, clutching his clothes shut. "That shit in the bottle wasn't dangerous at all, was it," he ground out between his teeth.
"Nope!" Shinra said cheerfully, as the elevator doors closed. "I just said that to get you in bed!"
"Tch." Shizuo hastily did up his buttons, heading for the door out onto the street. Forget this, he was going to beat the answer out of Izaya even if it killed him. He was so intent on this course of action that he nearly ran straight into an older man who'd been about to walk into the building.
"Sorry," he said automatically, reaching down to help the guy up. He was dressed strangely, and the combination of lab coat and gas mask struck a chord in Shizuo's memory. "Wait a minute, are you—"
"Have I ever mentioned, Shizuo-kun," Shinra's dad said earnestly, "that you're very clean? I'd take off my mask for you." Shizuo couldn't see the guy's face, but nonetheless he got the horrible feeling that there'd definitely been a wink behind it. It was a thought too horrible to properly contemplate. He pushed past the older Kishitani, taking off for the train station.
---
Izaya watched as Shizuo straightened his clothes with vicious tugs of his hands. Izaya found himself wondering vaguely if Shizuo was going to lose his temper and yank them right off, and then wondered where the hell a thought like that had come from.
Shizuo paused to light up a cigarette, and Izaya zoomed in his binoculars to read Shizuo's lips. I'm coming for you, Izaya, they promised. Izaya felt his heart pound. You damn flea, I'm coming for you.
Well, then. If Shizuo was going to Shinjuku to find him, Izaya had better be there waiting for him, shouldn't he?
---
As it turned out, it took Shizuo longer than he'd expected to make it to Shinjuku, not least because everywhere he went, various personages tried to either confess their undying love to him, proposition him in increasingly bizarre ways, or to kidnap him. Seriously, what the fuck was wrong with this city when at least a fifth of it seemed to think that abduction was the way to someone's heart? After shaking off a pair of thieves dressed in costumes that made him wonder if they'd gotten lost on their way to Harujuku, he managed to stagger his way into the train station. A conductor slapped him on the ass on his way through, and paid for it by flying straight through the roof along with the entire row of turnstiles.
While he was standing on the platform, a man with feathery brown hair sidled up to him and draped an arm across Shizuo's shoulders, just as he was nervously puffing his way through another cigarette. "You know," the man said casually, "usually I go for teenage schoolgirls, but—" The cigarette snapped in Shizuo's fingers, and the creep joined the conductor in the sky.
Since it was the middle of the day, the train was relatively empty when it arrived. Shizuo spend the entire ride slouched his seat muttered "gonna kill him, gonna kill him, gonna kill him" over and over to himself, uncomfortably aware of the way the rest of the passengers fucking him with their eyeballs, including several people old enough to be his grandparents. Maybe even great-grandparents.
It was with great relief that he dashed out of train and the station. Izaya's office wasn't far from Shinjuku station, he knew, and that was where Shizuo turned his toes. He managed to make it to Izaya's building without incident, striding across the lobby with great purpose and jabbing the elevator button. "I…za…ya…kun…" he sing-songed in anticipation as the numbers ticked down.
When the elevator was halfway down, he was surprised to find a pair of arms draping themselves lightly around his shoulder. In the polished metal of the elevator door, he could just about see the top of a dark-haired head peeping over his shoulder.
"What's wrong?" a woman's voice said softly from behind him. The arms tightened around him. "Don't worry, I'll take care of you—just let me take care of everything, ne? Just leave everything to your sister…"
"I don't have a sister," Shizuo said, dumbfounded.
One hand began drifting down his chest. "That's all right," the woman behind him breathed. "Let me be your sister. Let me take care of you, Shizuo-san. Let me—"
With a mechanical chime, the elevator snapped open, and Izaya stepped out of it, flick-blade flashing through the air. Shizuo stepped back just in time to avoid it, sending the woman behind him stumbling. As she straightened, he saw that it was Izaya's new secretary. She glared at Izaya, hands fisted at her sides. Izaya pushed past Shizuo, pressing the tip of his blade to her throat.
"Shizu-chan has business with me," he said, with a vicious smile. "You should check on your brother, Namie-chan. I hear he's in the hospital with a head wound. You should tell him not to play with sharp objects so often, he might get hurt for real one day."
The woman, Namie, didn't move, but Shizuo felt every inch of her glare as Izaya pulled him into the elevator, knife still extended towards her. As soon as the elevator closed on her gaze, Izaya pocketed his blade.
"So, Shizu-chan," he said casually. "You're probably wondering what I did to you yesterday, eh?"
"So this was all your fault," Shizuo growled, grabbing the front of his shirt. "Damn it, do you even know what kind of day I've had? Do you?"
"I know," Izaya said smugly as the elevator opened into his office. "I've been watching, after all."
Shizuo shook him furiously. "You've been watching?" he roared. "I swear to god, Izaya, I'm going to—"
"But you want the antidote, don't you?" Izaya said teasingly. Shizuo couldn't deny that, so he forced himself to set Izaya down—there'd always be time to kill him dead after he knew what the antidote was, after all—and followed him out into his office.
"Tell me what it is," Shizuo demanded.
"Perhaps," Izaya said lazily, pouring himself some coffee from the pot sitting on a counter off to the side. "But all my information comes at a price, as you well know."
"And what makes you think I'll pay you to fix whatever it is you fucked up in the first place?" Shizuo snorted.
"Oh, don't worry," Izaya said smilingly. "It's not much. All you have to do is suck my cock."
"Suck your—"
Only the fact that Izaya looked about as horrified as Shizuo felt gave the incident any saving grace. His cup fell to the ground and spilled all over the carpet, unnoticed by either of them.
"I mean," he said quickly, "all you have to do is let me bend you over my desk and—" Izaya stopped dead, hand clapped over his mouth. His eyes looked as round as dinner plates.
"If this is some kind of joke—" Shizuo ground out, stalking closer.
"Oh, it's no joke, I assure you." Izaya backed away. "I've wanted to feel your strong, firm body writhing under me for shit, shit, shit this wasn't supposed to happen!"
"Izaya," Shizuo roared, grabbing him by the jacket, "what did you do!?"
Izaya shook his head frantically as if trying to shake something out of it. His grip on Shizuo's wrists slackened for a moment, and just as Shizuo was going to see if he'd fallen asleep or something, Izaya's fingers tensed and tightened, his head rising. As Shizuo met his eyes, he involuntarily let go and stumbled backwards, feeling like his clothes were being flayed off his body. The kiss, okay, the kiss had been one thing, but there was no way in hell he was dropping trou for fucking Izaya, even to find out how to get this stupid whatever-it-was off of him.
"What will you give me if I tell you?" Izaya said smoothly, eyes burning with terrifying intensity as he followed Shizuo around his desk.
He'd pulled out his flick-blade at some point, and now he used it to back Shizuo right up against the glass of his office's floor-to-ceiling windows. Shizuo had to actually tilt his head to get it away from the blade.
"Fuck you," he spat.
"That sounds good," Izaya purred. He leaned in closer, forcing Shizuo up onto his toes. "What else?"
At that moment, Shizuo felt something buzz in his pocket. As one, he and Izaya reached for their phones. The front of his phone said that it was a message from the DOLLARS admin. With a sense of foreboding, Shizuo flipped it open to check what the message was. Looking for any information on the location of Heiwajima Shizuo, he read.
Izaya scowled and shoved his phone back into his pocket. "Better luck next time, Tanaka Taro," he sniped and, before Shizuo could ask what in hell he was talking about, turned his attention back to Shizuo. "Now then, Shizu-chan—"
Another terrible idea hit Shizuo at this point. Though, considering he was in his right mind—well, mostly his right mind—he was actually able to deem it secretly brilliant. He thumbed his way through the menus on his phone and hit the record function on his phone.
"What are you doing?" Izaya demanded. "Eh, Shizu-chan?"
"Recording this conversation," Shizuo said. "Uh—so I can preserve your words near my heart?"
Izaya relaxed. "That's good," he said. "I wouldn't want you to forget me, Shizu-chan. Not when you're going to be my only beloved human forever and ever and ever and ever."
"Yeah, kind of hard to see how I'd forget that," Shizuo said, glad to be able to once again stand without straining anything. "Now tell me what the fuck it was that you smashed over my head."
"But you haven't paid yet," Izaya said slyly, and Shizuo yelped when he felt Izaya's fingers hook in his belt buckle. He was going to kill his brain for coming up with that plan last month, right after he killed Izaya. Right after he found out how to make this surreal nightmare his life had become stop.
Think fast, think fast. For once, Shizuo actually found himself wishing that violence really was the answer. He was never going to be able to look at Izaya again without thinking of Izaya's fucked up idea of seduction and being on the receiving end thereof ever again.
"Right, but—if you don't tell me, then—fuck!" He shoved Izaya's hand away from his pants, skin crawling. "If you don't tell me how to get this shit off of me you'll have to deal with the rest of the world as competition!"
Izaya frowned. "I can't have that," he said. "You belong to me."
"Yeah," Shizuo nodded encouragingly. "You. So, if you don't mind…?"
Izaya stepped back a bit. "Milk," he said. "Milk will neutralize the love potion. It's the only thing that can."
So that was why the three rounds of shampoo hadn't scrubbed that shit out of his hair. "Great!" Shizuo said enthusiastically. "Now, uh, sweetheart—" and he could feel a bit of his soul dying even as he said it, though the pet name did make Izaya relax even more "—let me go buy some milk, and then we can—"
"What?" Izaya smirked. He shoved Shizuo onto the floor, straddling him and dropping down onto his lap even as Shizuo tried to scramble out of the way. "Let you go? But you still haven't paid me, Shizu-chan." His blade neatly flicked through all of the buttons holding Shizuo's clothes shut, and Izaya slipped his hand in through the gap and up under Shizuo's undershirt, fingers hot against Shizuo's stomach except for the thin strip of cold where his ring was. He leaned down, so that his face was inches away from Shizuo, close enough for him to see every inch of that evil smirk on his face. He opened his mouth to say something, but Shizuo never heard what, because he took the opportunity to headbutt Izaya and then throw him clear across the room, before exiting via the window.
Glass showered down around him as he landed on the ground below, but Shizuo was already up and running. Finally, he knew how to get rid of the love potion—seriously, a fucking love potion, what the hell was wrong with that damn flea—
"You can't run, Shizu-chan!" Izaya shouted after him. "You can't hide from me!"
---
Shizuo managed to duck into a shopping center and find a men's room so he could fix his clothes. There was no getting back the buttons, but at least he could tuck in the tails of his shirt, and if he crossed them over hopefully that'd be able to do. He double-checked his phone, making sure that the recording had gone off alright, and couldn't help smirking himself. Well, at least there was one bright spot in this whole debacle.
He straightened and peered out of his bathroom stall. Now, then. There had to be at least one person in this entire prefecture that he could count on to not try and tear off his clothes the moment they laid eyes on his face.
---
By the time Shizuo fetched up back in Ikebukuro, it was getting towards the end of the afternoon. As he scanned the area around the station for Kasuka's hotel, he heard a cry of "There he is!" rise up from behind him, just as another voice shouted "General! We've found him!"
Looking around in horror, Shizuo saw what looked like the entire contents of Ikebukuro stampeding towards him from all directions. Among the front runners he spotted a petit girl with dark hair cropped short except for where it flopped in her face, as well as a surprisingly large contingent of Yellow Scarves. Fortunately, he spotted Kasuka's hotel right then and just about managed to make it through the revolving doors just before his horde of admirers slammed into the hotel lobby's glass front. He didn't pause, just sprinted across for the elevators. "Tenth floor," he panted, as the doors slid shut.
"Sure, hot stuff," the woman by the buttons giggled. When the elevator reached Kasuka's floor, she goosed him on the way out. Before Shizuo could retaliate, the elevator was gone. He settled for ripping a door of its rails and hurling it out the nearest window.
Kasuka's room was easy to find, not least because area where he was staying was barred off by a pair of black-suited bodyguards.
"Let me through," Shizuo glowered. "I'm Hei—Hanejima Yuuhei's brother."
The guard to his left leered at Shizuo. "Sorry, no can do, sweetchee—"
Two seconds later, he had joined the elevator door on the pavement below, and the other guard was on his way down as well.
"What's all this noise about?" someone demanded up further in the hotel floor. A few people had emerged from their rooms to see what the fuss was about, including a girl in the most abbreviated gothloli outfit Shizuo had ever seen, with half her hair done up in ribbons. She stopped dead at the sight of him and giggled, blushing deep red.
"Shizuo?" A familiar dark head peered out from a doorway further down the hall.
"Kasuka!" Shizuo said in relief, heading deeper into the hotel. "Listen, I need to talk to you—"
"Does it have to do with them?" Kasuka asked, nodding over Shizuo's shoulder. Shizuo glanced over his shoulder to find that the entire hallway was filled with people whose gazes were fixed with unwavering focus on his back—or maybe his ass.
Shizuo shuddered and shoved Kasuka into his room, following him in and locking the door firmly behind him. "Yeah," he said, fumbling for his cigarettes.
"No smoking," Kasuka said. By the looks of things, he'd been in the middle of watching a movie when Shizuo had arrived, but he picked up the remote and turned off the TV before seating himself on the bed. "Now, can you explain to me what that was all about?"
Shizuo rummaged through the mini-fridge and grabbed a can of beer. "Yesterday Izaya threw a love potion on me and now all of Ikebukuro wants my ass." God, did it sound weird when he put it like that.
"I see," Kasuka nodded. "And you came here because…?"
"Because you're my brother and you're not going to want to fuck me," he said, cracking open the can. Shizuo peered at the bed suspiciously. "Do you?"
"My refusal to commit incest is fighting my urge to jump your bones and winning. Knowing that it's a love potion helps, too," Kasuka replied. "Speaking of which, now that you know the cause of everything, how do we get it to stop?"
"Izaya said that milk would neutralize it," Shizuo said gloomily. "I tried to get some from a convenience store, but the clerk tried to lock me in the store room the moment I walked through the door."
"Ah-ha." Kasuka unfolded his legs and got up, walking to the door. He opened it but kept the chain in place. "Yuzuki," he called, motioning for another one of the ubiquitous bodyguards. She kept trying to peer deeper into the room. Shizuo hid in the closet.
"Not fair keeping him all to yourself, boss," Yuzuki pouted.
"It's only for now," Kasuka said, perfectly calm. "And anyway, if you bring me three cartons of milk I'll let you in to have your wicked way with him."
Yuzuki brightened. "Really, boss?"
"Of course," Kasuka said.
"I'll be right back, boss!" Yuzuki called over her shoulder. "Be right back, lover-boy!"
Kasuka shut the door and opened the closet, stepping aside for Shizuo to emerge. "Now we just have wait."
"Great." Shizuo rolled his neck, vertebrae crackling. He sat down on the edge of the bed, while Kasuka closed the curtains and took one of the seats arranged by the windows. An awkward silence descended between them. Kasuka seemed to be concentrating on everything except Shizuo, mouth pressed into a thin, tight line, and he tried not to be offended—given that it was a choice between awkward silence or being hit on by his baby brother, he'd take the awkward silence, thanks.
It seemed like forever before there came a knock on the door. Kasuka got up and hurried over to open it, but stopped dead as it swung open to reveal—Izaya.
"How did I know you'd be here, Shizu-chan," he sing-songed, stepping into the room. As he did, Shizuo saw that he had his flick-blade held against Kasuka's throat. His brother didn't look particularly scared, but Shizuo felt every muscle in his body tense, too scared to give into the impulse to rip off Izaya's head because what if Izaya was faster? "The only person in Ikebukuro not likely to try and tear off your clothes the moment they laid eyes on your face."
"If you kill Kasuka," Shizuo said quickly, "I'll—I'll never have sex with you. Ever." God, he sounded like a housewife in a K-drama.
"Hmph." Izaya steered Kasuka out the open door, shoving him out and locking the door behind him. "Now then, Shizu-chan, where were we?"
For one wild moment, Shizuo actually contemplated jumping out the window. However, while he was durable at the best of times, this really, really, didn't seem to be the time to test whether or not that durability extended to ten-story drops. Unfortunately, the only alternative was being confined in a small space with a horny, knife-wielding Izaya. It was probably too much to hope that Izaya couldn't survive a ten-story drop, considering he'd survived going through a thirtieth story window.
Izaya edged closer, flick-blade glinting. "And there's a bed here and everything," he said. "I'd hate for our first time to lack romance."
Shizuo really, really wished his phone was still recording.
"There's not going to be a first time," he growled, circling around Izaya. Just as the tension ratcheted up another gear, the hotel room door burst open in a shower of splinters.
"I brought the milk!" Yuzuki crowed. "I hope you weren't too lonely without me, lover-b—who the hell is this freak?"
"Milk!" Shizuo yelled in relief. He grabbed the bag out of the bodyguard's hands and kicked her back out of the room, leaning on the door to keep it closed—she'd nearly kicked the lock clean off the door, damn. As Izaya approached him, he fumbled in the bag for the first carton, tore it open, and upended its contents over his head.
Izaya stopped dead, blinking as if confused. The hand holding his knife wavered for a moment. Shizuo grabbed the second and did the same. Now Izaya lost his prowling stance, looking like someone had hit him over the head with a vending machine. Shizuo grabbed the third, but didn't open it yet.
"Do you still want to fuck me?" he asked cautiously.
Izaya blinked, and then sneered, "Why would I want to do something like that, Shizu-chan?"
"Good," Shizuo said, and punched him right out the window.
---
One week later, it was business as usual—Izaya edging into Ikebukuro to keep his ear to the ground and for the simple pleasure of seeing Shizuo go off like a firecracker with a fuse of Izaya's devising, and then returning Shinjuku for business. The memories of the time he'd spent under the potion's influence were slightly fuzzy, but he couldn't help but be very, very, very, very grateful that he hadn't actually ended up following through his intent to screw Shizuo through whatever vertical and-or horizontal surface happened to be handy at the time.
He stopped for a breather and scanned the rooftops behind him. They were empty—apparently Shizuo had given up the chase rather earlier than usual. Interesting, if annoying. Izaya's cellphone went off just then, and he pulled it out to see a voice mail from an unfamiliar number. He frowned at it, but clients who wished to remain anonymous and had secrets worth prying out of them came along frequently enough that Izaya pressed play anyway.
---
"It's just so embarrassing!" Celty tapped out on her PDA. The smoke curling from her neck wavered agitatedly.
"Don't worry, Celty!" Shinra said earnestly from where he was patching up Shizuo's arm. "I forgive you for almost committing adultery!"
"Me!?" Celty's PDA read, cursor blinking as if with the force of her anger. She added, "What about you!? Physical examination!!!????"
Shinra put a hand to his chest. His face acquired a noble cast as he said, "I was simply carrying out my duty as Shizu-chan's official physic—ow! Celty! Ow! Ow!"
Celty finally gave up poking Shinra in the ribs and sat back on the couch, arms crossed. The shadows coming out of her neck corkscrewed as she fumed.
"Stop lying, you're crap at it," Shizuo growled around his cigarette, as Shinra lay whimpering on the ground. He flexed his arm, feeling the bandages pull against his skin. Izaya had gotten him pretty good with his knife this time, but—well. "And anyway, I didn't even get the part with that damn flea—"
---
The sound quality was shaky, but what was unmistakably Izaya's own voice came out of his phone's tinny little speakers. "I wouldn't want you to forget me, Shizu-chan. Not when you're going to be my only beloved human forever and ever and—"
Izaya hurled his phone off the roof.
When he got back to Shinjuku, Namie didn't even bother looking up from the papers in her lap as she said, "You have fifty-three voice mails waiting. All of them are from an unknown number."
Somewhere, Izaya knew, Shizuo was going to be laughing for a long, long, long, long time.