Durarara!!, Vol. 2 (novel) by Ryohgo Narita Page A

an interviewer to take the subject’s statements and expose their contradictions. Also, I wasn’t stupid enough to tick off a person I’d never spoken with before. When Izaya Orihara got angry, that was because of his antagonism toward Shizuo Heiwajima. It wasn’t my fault.
    But I chose to be patient and not raise any of these issues to Tom. Speaking of which, he looked like a pretty decent fighter himself. I definitely didn’t want to cause any trouble here…
    Tom disappeared back into the building as I mulled it over.
    It was showtime.
    The man I was about to meet was the toughest fighter in Ikebukuro. That was the only title he had to his name. There was no public record for this, and he wasn’t making any money off of it.
    In modern Japan, there was nothing to gain from a full-grown man boasting about his fighting skills. If he really felt confident in his ability, he could go into professional fighting—if his skills matched his boasts, he could find money and fame that way. But Shizuo Heiwajima was just a collector for a pay website. In society’s view, it was hardly a position that anyone cared about or lauded.
    But the curious boy inside of me had been up late with excitement for three straight nights. I could tell that my instincts had my heart hammering away in my chest.
    The real question: Was it excitement or fear?
    “Um.”
    It would all be clear once I met him.
    “Hi…I’m Heiwajima.”
    Hmm?
    I was so busy trying to calm my own excitement that I completely failed to realize that someone was already standing in front of me.
    The young man wore luxury-brand sunglasses on his slender, gentle-looking face. And as I stood there dumbfounded, he had introduced himself as Heiwajima—
    Hmm?
    Heiwajima?
    “Shizuo…Heiwajima?” I asked, confused. He nodded flatly.
    Uh…
    For an instant, I was unable to believe the situation.
    That’s him?
    That’s the…strongest man in Ikebukuro? The most fearful man in town?
    Shameful as it is to admit, I had built up my own mental image of the monster named Shizuo Heiwajima. His body was covered in steel muscles as thick and huge as tires, with the icy expression of a movie assassin, not to mention scars. On top of that, a full-body tattoo of a dragon…
    About the only part of my image that matched was the height. The sunglasses that hid his gentle eyes didn’t match the man’s atmosphere at all. They looked like a sad attempt to add cool character to his look.
    I was prepared for something a bit different than I imagined, but this was such a huge shift that it suddenly cast all of the stories I’d heard into doubt.
    This was not the kind of man that yakuza would avoid, and he certainly couldn’t pick up and throw a vending machine.
    I knew that appearances could be deceiving, but there had to be a limit to that cliché.
    Had I been set up? Did that yakuza Shiki or someone else get the sushi place and the information agent and the police connection all to match their stories and fool me…?
    No. The color gangsters I had chosen at random. They couldn’t possibly have coordinated to arrange that somehow.
    So was this a different man with the exact same name?
    No, this office was the very place the Black Rider told me.
    So what was different, then?
    What was it…? Where did I go wrong?
    Is this guy just hiding his true nature at the moment?
    …No, that wasn’t it. I’d seen a lot of people in my life, and I could tell right away when someone was lying or hiding his true ability from me. But the man here seemed to be gentle and well-behaved to his core. He wasn’t lying or on guard around me in the least.
    What did it mean?
    What was this all about?
    Was it some kind of martial arts? Did he have really good special attacks?
    What if that slender build disguised the fact that he was actually an aikido master…
Nahh.
    A person might be able to throw another using the target’s own strength, but that wouldn’t be enough to throw a vending machine.
    This was a