"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
It's as a rather precocious 10 year old, that Orihara Izaya remembers first stumbling upon the infamous quote. The memory is exceedingly vivid – what type of day it had been (sunny and warm, not quite the humid weather of summer yet but a nice, spring day), how the pages of the book had smelled when he opened it up and creased its spine, smoothing out the pages lovingly (musty, with a hint of that old book smell), and how the laughter of children playing echoed from the open windows of the library.
For as long as he'd been in school, he'd always been placed in the gifted classes.
Although he came from a rather average family, Izaya was exceedingly intelligent, learning to read hundreds of kanji years before his classmates. He absorbed the readings like a sponge, memorizing the characters easily with a system of mnemonic techniques devised with the help of his nanny. As his parents were rarely home due to their jobs overseas, they opted to leave him with a kind, elderly lady.
To this day, he cannot recall her true name because he had always referred to her simply as Obaa-chan.
Often she read to him, sitting him on her lap as he stared wide eyed at the illustrations in the various picture books she would bring. He remembers he loved the old folk tales best.
When he had been old enough to speak well, she brought him many dated books to try to read on his own. Most of his days were spent sitting beside her reading on the floor as she knit, enka playing softly on the radio as he curled up in the sunlit spot by the window. Whenever he came across a character he did not know, she would explain in detail the meanings, and tell him all types of little stories about each of the radicals so that he would remember. In a flash, he'd grab his notebook where he would practice writing it, tiny hands still struggling with the fine motor skills to be able to make a clear stroke order. She'd beam down at him, ruffling his hair as she encouraged him with praises, even if they were indecipherable scribbles. Sometimes when he went to bed, he would imagine his parents' faces in place of hers, telling him how smart and handsome he was growing up to be.
At the turn of his tenth birthday, he'd known enough to read at a proficient college level.
By this time, he had long since stopped imagining his parents telling him anything. They were home so rarely, he could barely remember how their faces looked combined with their voices. All he had were still photographs, phone calls, and an empty house (and a clock, ticking drowning out any thoughts of loneliness by reminding him of just how boring it all was). The nanny had passed away a few years back, and he saw many others come and go.
At school, he was a solitary child. Well, he had always been one, really. It wasn't as if he didn't have good social skills – he just preferred to be alone, or to sit back on the sidelines and simply observe the other kids. This led many of his peers to see him as aloof, a bit of a showoff in class, and a little too odd for their liking. Over the years, the children approached him less and less, eventually deciding altogether that he wasn't worth their time. Despite all this, Izaya considered himself to be a very happy and well-adjusted child.
Though the reading assignments from his literature class were rigorous, Nietzsche had not been on his list (his teachers probably considering it a bit too much for a person so young). But as the library was one of his favorite spots, he often spent many of his lunch breaks browsing through the titles that interested him most, running his thin fingers along the smooth spines as he walked by.
He's always liked the old books best, admiring their odd grooves, bent and missing pages, and worn down spines with a melancholic smile. They had a history. Their own story within a story.
There was a game he liked to play back then. He liked to wonder what sorts of people picked up each book, and what kind of person they had been.
Were they still alive? How old were they when they first read it? Did they have a large family or were they an only child like him? Did they choose the book, or was it something that had been assigned? Perhaps a friend, lover, or partner had recommended it?
He spent many hours thinking up imaginary people and scenarios. There was a lot one could learn about people simply based on the books they read. These endless thoughts made him dizzy with happiness.
As such, he'd grown a strong interest towards the philosophy section in particular.
There was something about the title Beyond Good and Evil that instantly captivated his attention. That day, as he browsed the words, something in him had changed.
Evolved, even.
The abyss. The single passage that had caught his eye had left an aching feeling in his heart and a dropping sensation in the pit of his stomach. Although his childish mind often told himself there was nothing he was afraid of, the simple sentence left the hairs standing on the back of his neck. The idea of this abyss, this nothingness – it plagued his thoughts for days (weeks months years). He instantly checked out Nietzsche's complete works, and spent the rest of the day pouring over them, trying to make sense of it all. Izaya may have been smart, but he was still only a boy - even he had to admit that some concepts had been hard to grasp at first.
Despite his logical mind, he still had a colorful imagination from his long forgotten days, warmed from the sunlight dancing across him as envisioned himself as the protagonist in the old folk tales– there was a part of him that may have written off a belief in things such as a god, but what of monsters? Magic? Mythology? Did all supernatural things stem from god, or was god its own separate image? And if god indeed came from men, then perhaps the supernatural was its own element?
It was that night that he'd first had the dream.
It always began with running.
Chest heaving, legs burning, lungs close to bursting, he was running, running for his life from – someone?
No.
Something maybe. It never had a true form. It was always dark, dark, a far away outline that was always closing in and yet somehow far away. Getting close over the years but never succeeding in catching him until the last minute. He'd turn his head to look behind him to see if it would be gone as his body hit overdrive in its exhaustion, but it was always there. It never faltered, and it seemed the more he looked back, the bigger and darker it became.
Finally, it would become so big, it engulfed him.
The shadow began to eat at his flesh, his nerves alive with pain, his screams magnified as he was torn apart, blood streaming in rivulets to gather into dark puddles beneath him -
and then he'd wake up, sheets drenched, heart caught in his throat as it thrummed wildly in his chest.
the abyss
There was no amount of scrubbing in the shower after those nights that could rid him of the sinking fear that came with being reminded of his own mortality.
Besides the unsettling feeling the nightmare left him with nearly every morning (at least for those first few years until puberty), his life continued rather normally for a while.
One day, near his eleventh birthday, his parents returned from a trip and stayed the entire week – the longest they ever had in his short life. They came bearing news at the end – he'd be getting a sibling soon. Later, it was revealed there would actually be two, two girls. Maybe if the news had come a few years back he'd have been ecstatic – he'd always wondered what it'd be like to come home to someone actually related to him. He often overheard his classmates talking about fighting with their siblings, or having fun playing with them, and other normal family things. A small wave of jealousy had run through him during these times.
Normal. What even was normal?
Instead, he found himself feeling rather indifferent. His parents' presence annoyed him now, and he was not keen on having to adjust to being around them more, let alone two screaming babies.
But when the twins had been born, he'd found them fascinating. He began to wonder a lot about infants then – how did they think if they didn't know language? What kind of people would they grow up to be? He spent a lot of time just staring at them between the bars of their crib as they cooed softly, reaching up their pudgy little arms in recognition at his face. Still, he didn't enjoy holding them when his parents insisted it was a good way for them to bond.
He wanted to watch, not be a part of their growth - getting involved would break the boundaries between the concept of nature vs nurture - psychology and sociology were steadily growing up there with his interest in philosophy (he laughs as he remembers this naive view of the world he once thought to be true). Izaya had always been more interested in seeing the inherent nature of people. Sure, people could be a product of their environment, but as far as he was concerned, infants had a generally clean slate.
He was there to see them struggle to pull their heads up for the first time (he had laughed, they had done it simultaneously, as if they were one being instead of two separate people), he had been there when Mairu first army crawled towards him one day, and when Kururi finally managed to pull herself up to balance triumphantly on the couch (only to fall onto Mairu a second later). It wasn't long before they were fumbling around on their chunky legs, giggling as they followed him around the house, often steadying themselves by gripping on the end of his shirt when they caught up to him.
The first year after Mairu and Kururi's birth, he was beginning to get used to being with his parents again – they talked at dinner (eating together had been a rare occasion usually only reserved for his birthdays), asked him about school as if they cared, even let him watch tv late at night with them (which his previous caretakers never did).
He didn't feel close to them – but he hadn't felt bothered by them either. He thought that with time he'd grow to love them the way he had always read that families were supposed to.
The abyss seemed but a distant memory during this time, one that only left him with a vague existential dread some unfortunate mornings.
But as a purveyor of philosophy, he knew that the impermanence of all things, good and bad, was still a very great reality.
His parents returned to their overseas trips again, and the only real difference during this time was that all three of them had been alone together.
The nannies were there, of course, but Izaya was still expected to be the big brother he never wanted to be. There were many days he spent helping out changing diapers, feeding them, and watching cartoons with them whenever he came home from school. Sometimes he even put them down for naps, reveling in the fact that he could simply observe the two as they slept, their tiny chests moving up and down in a blissfully unaware sleep. During those times he felt an odd warming sensation in his heart that he'd never had before, and he thought perhaps this was the closest to familial love he'd ever experience.
Change. This was the only constant, dependable thing in his life.
The year he started middle school, he already had a reputation. After all, he had been the vice president of the elementary student council and was the admired leader at sports meetings. Independent research awards, essay contests, and straight A's portrayed him outwardly as the perfect model student. He was on the cusp of puberty now, body growing a bit lankier and voice deepening ever so slightly. His chiseled face and charming demeanor instantly attracted the attention of many young girls, girls who'd giggle and blush around him,whispering secrets and sharing pointed looks his way; girls who left little notes in his locker with a sickening amount of pink hearts.
He ignored them all, desiring nothing more but to keep observing from afar. The thought of intimacy repulsed him – he didn't have the time to walk around like an idiot, succumbing to the compulsions of the raging hormones everyone around him seemed to have. There was information he still needed to know, things he needed to get done. Izaya had no trouble seeing himself as above his classmates – he had something they all lacked – control.
Physical connections weren't necessary for him to feel connected. Sometimes, his heart still panged with longing to be a part of such things as tedious as friendship and love and family and he'd instantly feel the bile rising in his throat; with a shake of his head he'd try to rid himself of the thoughts as they came (late at night, intrusively while he sat shut in his room, door locked to keep wandering toddlers from slipping in to disturb him when they woke up from bad dreams, crying out for parents that weren't ever there).
Still, people intrigued him, and his curiosity to dissect the inner workings of the human mind only grew stronger the more and more he learned, the more he observed from the sidelines. He was far from disconnected – he was just connected in a deep and meaningful way that others his age just couldn't possibly comprehend or appreciate.
His fixation with analyzing people was teetering on the border of becoming less of a hobby and more of an obsession.
The library at his middle school was much larger than the one in his elementary school, and he had begun to exchange his beloved books to spend time on the row of new computers they'd just got in. At the touch of a button, and he had access to endless information at his fingertips! He spent hours researching articles about human behavior, sociology abnormal psychology social deviance moral philosophy religion the list was endless but he just had to know more, more more.
Izaya wanted to know what made humans tick. Why they acted the way they did. He'd looked up information about cults one day, and thought for hours about how easily people could be convinced and swayed with such simple things as the power of charisma and a pretty face. There was indeed much to love about the power of persuasion.
For his twelfth birthday, his parents phoned that they could not make it, and to make up for it they sent him a brand new, top of the line PC straight from America. Nights were when he'd feel the loneliness running through him, coursing darkness through his veins, squeezing his heart and constricting his lungs painfully. The computer filled the void he wished he didn't need, connecting him to the newly formed IRC chat rooms he finds access to with ease. In this setting, he discovered it was easy for him to talk, to chat with these anonymous people – they don't have faces he can imagine looking at him with judgment and disdain, they don't have voices to spout nonsense, and they don't have bodies to sway their hips with and bat their eyes sweetly at him.
The early morning sun would filter in and he'd blink back the feeling that heartbreaking dreams something was missing.
That was the year he made his first and last friend, the human named Kishitani Shinra.
And now, for something completely different. This is like the polar opposite of my other story, haha. I was inspired by a lot of Tool and Deftones while writing this, so the chapters are actually named after songs. Originally I named this Undertow, but I felt like Forty Six & 2 was more appropriate lyric wise. Check out the wiki about the interpretation of the song at : wiki/Forty_Six_%26_2 as it has an interesting importance to this story.
Even though Izaya says he had a normal childhood, I can't help feeling a bit bad for him. He's always been kind of alone. I think that has greatly hindered his ability to love, and why he chooses to blanketly 'love all humanity' as a means to avoid all that, because he is scared of what he's never felt. Since Narita hasn't given us much in the way of what his childhood really was like (besides that he was normal until he met Shinra), I got a little carried away thinking about it.
When I started reading Durarara, Izaya instantly reminded me of Nietzsche's writing, especially with the quote about the abyss. He definitely seems like someone who was influenced by that sort of nihilistic philosophy, considering his beliefs and his fear of the nothingness of death to the point where he hopes for an afterlife, despite his lack of belief in a god or an afterlife.
I wasn't sure about the exact age gap between Izaya and his sisters, but according to the novel ages I'd say it's probably about 10 years or so (he's 25 at the start so they'd be like 13? Since they don't enter until later in the series). Although, they'd be closer in age in the anime, but for this story it fit better to be the larger gap. It was kind of harder to write, because novel Izaya's birthday is in 1979. So he would have had his teenage years in the '90s. However, he did have an iphone in 2004, years before news of its existence was even released, let alone even on the market. So I imagined he had some really good connections through his parents.