Chapter Text
I’ve found myself living in a number of places over the years; I could count seven in the last year alone. Each and every apartment, rented room, borrowed sofa--they’ve left their own, unique impression on me. But nothing felt more like home than the little apartment I took in Shinjuku a couple years back. Oh, it was nothing special; a pale, almost powder blue-colored room with enough space to eat, sleep, and write with a single window overlooking the fire escape. The bathroom had abysmal water pressure, with a small, curtain-lined shower, and the kitchenette had something vaguely resembling a stove. It obviously wasn’t the apartment’s features that had me so interested.
You see, it was my first apartment. The first living space I could, without a shadow of a doubt, claim as my own . Until then I had been sharing a small house with my brother, and while I would have been more than willing to keep such an arrangement, it was time for us both to strike out on our own. Kasuka was thriving; he had his own life rapidly unfolding in front of him.
I was in the way.
Moving out of my family home was a big step for me, and not one I had been entirely ready to take. I grew up in Ikebukuro, and my intentions had been to stay in the city I knew and loved. But the four-apartment complex near Golden Gai in East Shinjuku had been so affordable that I couldn’t exactly say no. Besides, didn’t writers need a little worldly experience? It wasn’t far from home, but it was a step in the right direction. A step toward making my life my own.
And that’s where I met him .
I hadn’t considered writing about Izaya--at least not until Tom-san called me out of the blue one rainy afternoon in October. For some time I had tried to forget about that period of my life, as though I could scrub away all of the bad memories if I worked hard enough. But that single phone call brought everything bubbling back to the surface, and with it the need to put pen to paper--well, something like that, anyway.
Orihara Izaya had been a tenant on the second floor of the apartment building, and a complicated part of my past. As for Tanaka Tom, well--he ran a bar just around the corner from where we both had lived. Izaya would wander in from time-to-time, but I found myself spending good chunks of time there. Tom-san had a strange calming effect on me; whenever I would get riled up, it was as though he knew exactly what to say to keep my anger from overtaking me. It’s because of him that I feel as though I’ve managed any sort of success, so hearing from him unexpectedly was a comfort in itself.
When Izaya’s name came up, however, it felt as though the ground beneath my feet suddenly began to break away. My stomach leapt into my throat, and for a full second I couldn’t breath. I felt dizzy, like the room was spinning and there was nothing I could grab onto in order to steady myself. I felt as though I were falling from a great height--there was really no other explanation for it. I’m not really the best with words, even as a writer, but I do try. At any rate, it was safe to say that I was more than just shocked.
I was excited.
“Did you hear from him?” I asked. Izaya had left no address, and his phone number had been abandoned before he had even left, so to hear word of him would be nothing short of a miracle.
“I think you’d better come on by, Shizuo. Trust me on this.”
Without a second thought I hung up and hurried out into the pouring rain to hail a cab. The entire trip had me lost in my own memories, but I couldn’t focus on any single one. How could I? I was too worked up. Excited, anxious, maybe even hopeful --would there be news? Would he actually be there? My heart stuttered at the idea, and for several moments it felt as though I wouldn’t be able to catch my breath. I was working myself up into a frenzied mess, and I just needed to calm down.
When the cab finally arrived I quickly paid the driver (I didn’t even bother to count my money; I just handed him whatever I had in my pocket) and stopped just outside the front door. Despite my rush, it suddenly felt as though I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what I was about to find on the other side of that door, except a bar I had visited almost every damn day of my life. It was the middle of the day, and I fully expected it to be empty except for the sight of Tom-san’s familiar face.
But I sure could hope.
I waited. My nerves were a tangled mess, and I felt like they were about to fray if I did anything too hasty. So I lit a cigarette, took a long drag, and told myself on loop that Izaya definitely wasn’t inside. After all, it wasn’t like I was hard to find; I had moved back to Ikebukuro, but hardly in secret. No; if Izaya couldn’t bother to call me himself, he definitely wasn’t going to be sitting at the bar waiting for me.
Finally I found the strength to open the door, and in spite of everything I had told myself I couldn’t fight off my disappointment. The bar was empty, chairs still overturned and set on top of the tables from last night’s closing. Even the music was off, which I found odd. But I didn’t comment on it, and instead took one of the only available seats at the bar.
As I sat there and attempted to dislodge the sudden lump in my throat, Tom-san wandered over, fixing me with an almost pitying sort of look. From anyone else I might have taken offense, but somehow it felt familial, like a concerned father attempting to break bad news to his son. What could be so important that it had to be spoken in person? It was about Izaya; I could feel it in my bones.
So why all the drama?
“I thought it would be better to tell you this kinda stuff in person, Shizuo.”
Instantly my heart sank. Thousands of hazy questions popped into my head, but not even one of them managed to make it past its primary stage. Maybe I was afraid to ask; even now I don’t really know what it was I felt. Fear, anxiety--something like that, probably. Every dark thought that had occurred to me over the years was suddenly burrowing deep into my heart, and for a moment I thought my chest would actually explode. If the news was bad, worse than even I had expected, what would I do?
More importantly: what could I do?
After what felt like an eternity I managed to force out a somewhat coherent sentence, the words feeling clumsy and somehow wrong on my unusually thick tongue. I needed a drink, but alcohol wasn’t right for me, not in the middle of the day. Without even asking, Tom-san seemed to sense my dilemma and poured me a small glass of water, which curiously worked wonders. I could breathe again, and by extension speak.
“What happened? Izaya, did he...is he dead?”
To my surprise Tom-san gave a laugh and shook his head, and instantly a good deal of my concern melted away. I must have looked pretty pathetic worrying about a guy who wasn’t worrying about me in return, but I was hardly the only person in the world Orihara Izaya had touched. He might have been a major pain in the ass, and I’m sure plenty of people (besides myself) wanted to punch the shit out of him, but he had left an unerasable mark on us all. Tom-san included.
“Do you think I’d be this casual if he had? No, Shizuo; as far as I can tell, he’s still alive. But that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. Do you remember Yagiri Seiji-kun?”
“Yeah, sure. Remember his sister better, though. She never liked me.” Yagiri Namie and her younger brother Seiji had lived just upstairs, one floor above me and two above Izaya. Neither of them were very friendly people, and because of that we had largely ignored them. “You didn’t call me down here just to talk about him, did you?”
“Hold on, just let me get to it. Do you remember that he moved out around the same time you did? Well he’s back in Japan. He came in here last night, filled me in on everything that’s been going on in his life over the last couple of years.”
This kind of news was hardly anything surprising; that Seiji kid might have been quiet and a little weird, but Tom-san had a strange ability to get people to warm up to him. Everyone in the old apartment complex had known him, and had, on several occasions, found themselves involved in lengthy conversations with the man. He was a good guy, even if you were just looking for someone to vent to.
“So?”
“So,” Tom continued, “after saving up enough money, Seiji-kun moved to Ireland in search of that girl he’d been so crazy about. I think he said he spent about a year there...uh...well, that’s not what’s important. What is important is that he didn’t stay there. He went all around the UK, the States, and a few other pretty interesting places. And then he showed me this .”
Clearly he had been waiting for this moment, because when Tom-san set his phone down in front of me a picture was already enlarged, zoomed in just enough for me to see a small group of blurry figures lurking in the background. Most people would have found themselves squinting at it in confusion--and with good reason, given the terrible quality. But not me. I recognized the figure in the middle, would have been able to even without that stupid coat he’d been so fond of. Without a doubt, I was looking at a very recent photo of Izaya.
“Seiji-kun said he saw him in a small village in China. Said he was certain that it was Izaya, but by the time he made it to the bridge to cross over the river, he was gone. I guess he spent about an hour asking around, but the locals didn’t really take too kindly to someone who didn’t understand their dialect. One of the villagers managed to speak enough broken Mandarin to explain that the ‘foreigner’ was likely just passing through. But I mean...that’s him, isn’t it?”
Of course it was. There was no way it couldn’t be Izaya; that lean frame, the damned fur coat--even the way he held himself. All three of us had been able to recognize him from a distance, and yet I sat there, glaring down at the screen, determined not to accept what I was seeing. Why the hell would he be in China, anyway?
“No. No, I don’t think so.” And for a moment I really believed it. I’d lied to myself for so long already, trying to convince myself that Izaya was happy--that I was happy. It didn’t make any sense to me that Izaya would be in some small, remote village. But at the same time I could understand why he might actually find it interesting: I could see him there, removed from everything and finally just relaxing . Content. Not afraid in the slightest.
“You’re joking?” Tom-san’s voice was just as incredulous as his expression, and had I been in a better mood I might have actually laughed. But as it was, it took every ounce of my self-control not to hurl the damn phone across the room.
“It’s not like him. And even if it is him, it doesn’t matter, right? He doesn’t live there or anything; like they said, he’s just passing through. He’s gone. Just...just gone.”
Heavy silence fell over us, my anger quickly subsiding into something I had grown very familiar with. The hollow emptiness steadily crept through my body, weighing down my limbs until I felt paralyzed; frozen . Thin, icy fingers clutched insistently at my chest as though to steal away each and every breath, and I wished suddenly that I had just been left in the dark. What had I been expecting? I was an idiot to think there was a happy ending in this, that I would somehow walk away as the protagonist of some love story. I wasn’t that kind of writer, and incidentally I wasn’t that kind of person.
Never would be.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
With a heavy sigh I pushed away from the bar and stubbed out my cigarette in the sole ashtray Tom-san kept for me. Part of me felt as though I should be doing more about locating Izaya, but I knew that even with the right resources it would be a waste of time. I wasn’t wanted, that much had been made clear a long time ago. This was just something I was going to have to accept.
Eventually I knew I would be grateful for the information. Just knowing that Izaya was alive was enough to keep me going, and as I said my goodbyes I began to wonder if Izaya might actually be genuinely happy with a life of travel. He might have ended up rich, cheerfully jetting off to whatever country he felt like on a whim. If that were the case then I could accept it, and the longer I thought about it the better I felt. Gradually the weight on my chest lifted and the stinging cold that had invaded my bones slowly but surely faded away. Even the chilly afternoon drizzle didn’t seem to slow me down, and before I knew it I found that I had wandered all the way back to the same place I had lived in only two years prior.
Time had barely touched the neighborhood, although it looked somehow less colorful than it had in the past. When I first moved in everything had felt so vivid and bright; so full of hope for the future. Now, however, it seemed bleak and gray--an effect that even the shining sun wouldn’t have been able to fix. I felt uncomfortably out of place, as though I was no longer welcome there. Except for Namie-san (who apparently had no intention of ever moving out), the names on the mailboxes were all foreign to me, and I felt a strange pang of sadness at that fact.
It was because of those mailboxes that I had first become aware of Orihara Izaya.