Free Durarara!!, Vol. 4 (novel) by Ryohgo Narita

underground tunnel, Anri turned back one last time.
    The white man was still watching her.
    She felt that twitching at her back and committed his face to memory one last time, just to be sure.
    But ultimately, it was the last time she ever saw that face.
    Because several hours later, Shizuo would hit him in the face with a bench, which meant that if he ever faced off with Anri again, he would look like a totally different person.

    Night, apartment, Ikebukuro
    “The serial killer Hollywood…and they still haven’t caught him? That’s scary,” said a boy to the TV inside his cheap apartment close to the train station.
    Without anything better to do, Mikado decided that he would flip through the news on TV all day. The recent topic of interest to the media was the mysterious serial killer.
    While the news itself did not report on the nickname, anyone who browsed the Internet or tabloid magazines was fully aware of the “Hollywood” moniker.
    The first time he saw it covered on the news, it seemed like the events of some distant country, even though the incidents were taking place right there in the city. But through the Internet-enabled Hollywood nickname, the idle chats with friends, and the sites that popped up attempting to track down Hollywood’s identity, he couldn’t help but feel not just the fear of that eerie killer, but the tasteless, guilty allure of curiosity. Just who
was
Hollywood?
    Society seemed more interested in the identity of the Black Rider than this mystery killer, but given that Mikado actually
knew
who the Headless Rider was, the still-unmasked Hollywood held much more fascination for him.
    On the other hand, it seemed like following up a meeting with Anri by watching depressing news pieces only left a bad aftertaste. So he picked up the remote and muttered, “Maybe I can find a happier news segment.”
    As he surfed through the channels, he came across a report thatYuuhei Hanejima’s photo book had sold twenty thousand copies in its first week. On the screen was a portrait of a young man with far better looks than Mikado’s.
    “That’s incredible. Twenty thousand copies at three thousand yen apiece… Even if he only makes ten percent in royalties, that’s six million yen. And his movies are doing gangbusters. He’s really got it all going on…”
    He was inferior in every single way to the perfect superhuman on the screen. Mikado sighed dejectedly.
    You know…I feel like this Yuuhei guy reminds me of someone I know…
    The thought had occurred to him every time he saw the star actor, but no answer was forthcoming. Mikado continued flipping through every channel that was currently playing the news. Around the point that they all started covering the weather forecast, he decided it was time to check the TV guide in the paper.
    With the schedule transition that April usually brought, most stations would be airing their own special programs starting in the next time block.
    One of them was titled
Ikebukuro’s 100-Day Front, Undercover! Shining a Light on the Hellhole That Is Ikebukuro, Live!
    Hellhole…? That seems unnecessarily harsh.
    But he would be lying if he said he wasn’t interested. In the end, Mikado decided to watch the show on the chance that he might see an acquaintance of his on live television.
    Ultimately, his guess was correct.
    But it was not the kind of acquaintance that he was expecting.
    One hour later, he was watching a pitch-black shadow on the screen as it raced away from a motor officer.
    “Celty…,” he mumbled. He would never mistake that shadow for anyone else. He left the TV on and turned to the window.
    The place they were showing on the program was not anywhere close, so naturally he couldn’t see the events from his apartment. He tried to focus his ears to hear something, but that didn’t turn up anything, either.
    Meanwhile, Celty grew giant black wings on the screen and flew through the sky, like some kind of phantom thief.
    “I don’t know…