Free Durarara!!, Vol. 1 (novel) by Ryohgo Narita Page A

way.
    Izaya had been through this situation many times, and the reactions to his admission were, like the suicidal motives, wildly varied. Some people started swinging without warning, and some left without another word. But he didn’t remember a single person who stayed entirely calm. Anyone who would respond to that admission with an easy “Oh, I see” wouldn’t have sought suicide partners in the first place. Izaya didn’t know every single human being, and the model of psychology didn’t fit every person in the world, so he wouldn’t state for certain—but he had a theory. If someone could remain perfectly calm through this, they were either cruising for kicks, or secretly wanted someone else to stop them, or were hoping to convince others not to commit suicide—or were
people like him
.
    “What a pig! What’s your problem? How can you do something so messed up?”
    “Huh? Why?”
    Izaya’s face had the innocent wonder of an uncomprehending child. He looked back and forth between the two, then shut his eyes.
    When he opened them again several seconds later, his delighted expression was gone, and a different kind of smile played across his lips.
    “Aah…!”
    The woman who claimed to believe in the afterlife sucked in a shrieking breath.
    It was indeed a smile on Izaya’s face. But this was an entirely different kind of smile. The two women, for the first time, learned that there were different types of smiles.
    Izaya wore a smile as expressionless as a mask, and there was a coldness to it. It was the kind of smile that caused terrible fear in any whosaw it,
because
it was a smile. In most cases the women would be hurling vile insults at him, but neither of them spoke now. They were grappling with the illusion that the other person in the room with them was not a human being at all.
    Izaya repeated his question, not letting the smile fade from his face. “Why? What’s so awful about it? I don’t understand.”
    “Why? Because—”
    “You girls,” Izaya interrupted, his words harder than before, “have already decided to die. Why do you care what anyone says to you? The lies and insults are going to be gone forever in just a few moments. If it’s torturous for you knowing that I tricked you, bite your tongue off. If you do that, it’s not the blood loss that kills you. The shock causes the remainder of your tongue to compress your throat and suffocate you. Then all the bad stuff disappears. You will cease to exist. I think it’s rather messed up of you to claim that I’m messed up.”
    “I know that! But…”
    “No, you don’t,” he said to the woman who claimed there was no afterlife. His voice was even more forceful than before.
    Still with a smile.
    “You don’t get it. You don’t get it at all. You said there was nothing in the afterlife. But that’s where you’re wrong. Maybe you meant it in the sense that you won’t have to suffer anymore—but death means to become nothing. It’s not the pain that disappears, it’s your existence.”
    The women did not argue back. They were paralyzed by the pressure of his smile. It grew more and more twisted, but the women still did not get a sense of the heart behind his words.
    “The state of nothingness is not ‘nothing.’ Nothing is not always in contrast to ‘something.’ The nothing you speak of is eternal darkness, a blank slate. But that is as
perceived by you being aware of that darkness
. That’s not nothing at all. If you’re dying to be released from suffering, doesn’t that require a form of you afterward that recognizes you’ve been released from suffering? You can’t imagine that you’re not even aware that you’re not even aware that you’re not thinking about this in the least. Fundamentally, there is no difference between the way both of you think. Even a grade school child who doesn’t believe in life after death understands this and has feared and grappled with it.”
    In fact, Izaya’s argument had plenty of