Durarara!!, Vol. 1 (novel) Read Online Free

been filled with a kind of primal fear at the presence of the shadow, but there was an entirely different kind of fear welling up in him now.
    Aaaah, aaah, aaah! Wait, wait, waitwaitwait! You can’t look in that van—we’ll be
done for!
Shit, man, what do I do? What do I do? Shitshitshitshitshit—what is that? What is that thing?!
    Two opposing fears wrestled for space in his conscious mind—the terror of the unreal sight and a much more grounded, realistic kind of fear.
    If someone sees into that car, forget the police. I’ll get
buried
!
    His legs trembled even harder at the thought of his murdered corpse being disposed of in the forests at the foot of Mount Fuji.
    There’s gotta be something. Something I can use to murder that Kamen Rider freak…
    The thug desperately searched for a way out of his situation now that he had ironically conquered his momentary fear of the shadow. What caught his eye was what he’d driven to the garage to report for work—his convertible.
    Ten yards away from the van, the shadow stopped in silence.
    From behind it came the faint sound of a car door opening and closing. As it turned around to see, the garage echoed with the blast of an engine revving.
    “…”
    At the end of its turn, the shadow caught sight of a bright red convertible speeding toward it. The car accelerated with surprising speed, and the shadow had no time to dart behind a pillar for safety.
    After a moment of hesitation, it decided to run in the opposite direction of the approaching car. It was hoping to draw the car along and leap to the side at the last moment, but the terrified thug was using every ounce of his concentration and did not fall for it. The instant the shadow’s foot turned to push it sideways, he yanked the wheel.
    The sound of collision.
    The shadow flew hideously through the air.
    And crashed in a heap atop the concrete.
    “Yeaaaaah! In your face! Ha-ha-haaa! In your ugly face, dammit!” the thug crowed, savoring the sensation of the shock that shuddered through the vehicle. He quickly braked and leaped out of the driver’s seat before the car had even come to a stop, then raced for his victim, metal pipe in hand, when—
    “?!”
    He noticed a black blob rolling on the ground, much closer than the prone figure of the shadow.
    There was no mistaking that distinct design—it was the full-faced helmet the shadow had been wearing just moments ago. But what shocked him was not the helmet…but the body of the shadow upon which it had been resting.
    “The…the head…”
    There was nothing atop the body where the shadow’s head should be.
    Did it come off in the crash?! No way can’t be murder I didn’t self-defense
    but no why hang on wait hang on
    It was the latest shock in a long series. His brain was at a critical mass of confusion.
    And because of that, he failed to notice that the body, now headless, had not shed a single drop of blood.

    

    The thug hesitantly approached the headless body…
    When without warning, the shadow leaped to its feet, still without a head.

    
    
    —KANRA HAS LEFT THE CHAT—

    “Aaaahhh!!”
    This sudden horrifying sight did not inflict fear on the thug as much as simple shock.
    A trick? A suit? A robot?
    A costume party? A hologram?
    A dream? An illusion? A hallucination? A fake?
    Various words floated through his mind, popping like bubbles before his brain could grasp them.
    The true shock was that it had been hit by a car yet was standing without any sign of harm whatsoever—but there was not enough conscious wit left in the thug’s mind to dedicate to this fact.
    As it had before, the black mist began to seep out of the shadow’s back, taking shape as that gigantic scythe.
    His shock shifting once again into fear, the thug began to let out a scream of terror and desperation. At the very moment his throat let the first bit of breath through,