Sakura trees were blooming again. It brought back memories as Izaya moved through the city, its unfamiliarity setting him on edge even after half a year.
He had already been back to Tokyo because the business there had been too enticing to pass up but still retreated back here after it'd been done.
It was easier to forget here but the cherry blossom trees weren't helping in that regard. If he inadvertently remembered anything, he consciously chose to concentrate on memories of Mikado. With time, their encounters in the afterlife took on an ethereal quality in his mind as if they hadn't actually happened at all and as if the Mikado he'd met there had been just a figment of his own imagination.
He might have believed that to have been the case, too, except Celty had met him as well. Either way, Mikado was dead, and hopefully satisfied with where he'd ended up on the other side.
Izaya doubted they were going to meet ever again not only because it was sappy nonsense he was not prone to believe in but also because the Dullahan had told him there had been only one possible place for him to go if he'd killed someone and the memory of the dark bottomless pit was still strangely clear in his mind. Apparently that was exactly where he was headed when he died after having killed Kururi.
If he was able to die irrevocably at all.
It seemed the curse should have been over with Mikado being gone now but that was not a given and there was only one surefire way to find out and that was to actually get killed, just like Celty had told him. In this way he was back to the uncertainty about what happened after death that was the default human condition and he was glad for that, even though there had been a time when mortality had seemed to him to be a problem to be solved. Messing around with these matters was at the root of his ensuing misery and he regretted it now. Humanity, including his own, was to be cherished or else one ended up a monster like Shizuo.
The name itself made him wince.
The memories that were dragged out of him throughout the ordeal half a year ago were something he didn't need at all.
He could now remember how he'd found out about Shizuo's crush from Shinra back in high school and how he'd thought it had been funny but he could have been up for some fooling around. Shizuo had got it all wrong though.
To think that experience that he had assumed to have shaken off had wiped out junks of his memory and hurt him right through the center of his being. If only he remembered it as it had been, he might have never instigated the relationship with Shizuo again. Whom was he kidding though when he thought he'd had any control over it all happening. He had just been used in his lowest moment and even running away was just admitting another defeat.
But so be it, Shizuo was not worthy of him plotting some grand revenge, making a fool of himself like the kids who were pursuing him. If he ever got bothersome, Izaya had had the presence of mind to collect some evidence against him back then that could be used at any moment. And for now the rumors had to suffice. Shizuo must have certainly not been happy with the word on the streets being that he had beaten up dozens of Blue Squares members doing Izaya's bidding.
He headed back because his thoughts were going in the wrong direction anyway.
"Orihara-kun, where have you been?" The man smoking a cigarette in his bed asked when Izaya entered the bedroom, having removed his coat but not his gloves.
"Taking a walk."
"Isn't walking painful for you, though? Why would you do it for no reason?"
"Because I enjoy it, I guess."
"Are you a masochist? You should have let me know." The predatory smile on the yakuza's face sent a shiver down Izaya's spine.
"I'll think about that, Shiki-san."
"Think about moving back." Shiki suggested, getting out of bed and starting to get dressed, putting the dress shirt on over the tattoos. "Because travelling that far for you gets old fast."
"I thought I made it worth your while." Izaya smiled.
"Well, Orihara-kun, you've grown on me over the years but you're certainly not irreplaceable. Not as a plaything and not even as an informant. You can have your moment of weakness after your sisters died but one day we will run out of patience."
"I understand."
"But you're still hiding here." Shiki pointed out.
"I can't fight anymore and I have enemies back there."
"I know. But I can take care of that."
"Didn't you once imagine this day differently, Anri-senpai?" Aoba asked Anri on the way home on the day of her high school graduation. "How you were going to graduate with Mikado-senpai and Kida-senpai…"
"Yes." She admitted.
"And then the day comes and they're both gone and even you graduating on time is unusual after you've spent so much of the school year in a coma. Well, nothing worked out like it should but at least I'm still around." He pointed out with a smile.
Anri accepted him talking to her at school and walking her home on most days but contrary to what the rumors said they were not a couple, though not for lack of trying on his part.
"Will you continue to hang out with me now that you've graduated, outside of school, Anri-senpai?" Aoba asked. "That would be like a date and I could start calling you Anri-chan."
There was a bond of sorts between them ever since she'd cut him and then visited him at the hospital for weeks while he'd been unconscious but she didn't trust him and she would have never considered him her friend. She still remembered Mikado's warning and her insight into his mind likewise left her unimpressed.
"I'm not sure if we're going to be seeing each other again, Aoba-kun." She answered politely.
"That's cruel." He sighed.
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
"I have somewhere to be." He said after checking it. "If you ever change your mind, Anri-senpai, you know how to find me."
His eyes shone red for the briefest of moments. Then he left her side.
"It would have been our graduation now too, right, Saki-chan?" Kida mused, noting all the senior students in formal clothes out on the streets.
"Does that make you upset?" She asked softly, squeezing his hand while they walked.
"Well, it would have been nice to stay in school up to this point and have nothing else to worry about." He shrugged. "Other than that I don't care. Mikado's dead, Anri- chan doesn't want to see me, so even if I graduated now, there would have been no one to share it with. Besides you, of course."
Saki was used to being an afterthought. Even though after all this time she really shouldn't have been.
"We should make this day special even though we're not graduating today, Masaomi." She said. "Make it the beginning of a new stage in our lives all the same."
"What do you mean?" Kida asked, growing pensive. He already suspected what she meant because she had been pestering him about it for a long time already.
"You could promise me today that you wouldn't try to go after Izaya again." She stopped walking and said solemnly.
"I already made a promise, Saki-chan. To Mikado, right before his death, that I would kill him."
"And you already tried to do that. You cut his hand. You took his knife. You know that it was important to him. He'll never forget that. You don't have to try to kill him anymore."
"Saki-chan, are you saying this for my sake or for his?"
"You know I'm not like that anymore." She sounded offended.
"Sometimes, I have my doubts."
"You've already lost Anri-chan over this stupid revenge, Masaomi. Do you want to lose me, too?" She was now growing angry. That rarely happened and he didn't like where it was going. "And what are your chances? The rumor is he may be back again, if it's even true, but he's protected by the yakuza now. And Heiwajima Shizuo wrecked Blue Squares when they targeted him last year. Not to mention he chased you away. Izaya may be weak now but I'm afraid he has friends in all the right places."
"Quit with the admiration. You could have stayed his pawn if that was what you wanted." Kida blurted out without thinking. "Maybe now that you're older you could have even become something more than that."
"I'm just pointing out the facts, Masaomi." She said calmly. "There's no need to say all these hurtful things. I only want you to promise me you won't do anything stupid again."
"The only thing I can promise you is that it won't be stupid this time around. And it will work."