Cherry trees were in full bloom. It brought back a distant memory but it was buried so deep he couldn't quite comprehend what it had been about.
The pain was gone when he hauled himself up from the ground. A bloody imprint was left behind on the grass. Falling cherry petals floated on the surface of puddles of blood.
He was pretty certain he was no longer alive, not after having heard the sound of his own neck snapping. Whatever was beyond death, that was it.
A long black shadow stretched at his feet.
"So, you're actually here."
He looked up.
The Dullahan stood by his side, wrapped in her shadows, with her head under her arm.
"Does it mean…?" He started asking but was interrupted by the sound of steps at his other side.
"Have you died too, Orihara-san?" Mikado asked, his hand touching the side of his head tentatively.
"Shizuo killed him." The Dullahan's head spoke up.
"Is this what's after?" Mikado's hand dropped to his side. He could still hear the final shot echoing in his ears. "Why is Orihara-san here with me?"
"In this place, nothing happens without a reason." The Dullahan's head said. "We're here because it's our fault things played out the way they had. All three of us."
"Are you dead too, then?" Mikado asked her.
"She is not dead." Izaya spoke up. "Look there." He pointed towards the horizon but Mikado could not see anything there. "That is Valhalla, just the way I imagined it."
"Only you can see it, though." The Dullahan pointed out. "If you think you can go there, that is not what's going to happen either." An endlessly deep gorge opened at their feet without a single sound. "If you think you can become an Einherjar by committing all these unhonourable acts, you are sorely mistaken. You might have died in battle but you're not a warrior. While we're here, I know everything about what you did, Izaya."
Izaya shrugged.
"Too bad. At least I gave it a try. And Shizu-chan still ended up murdering me in front of all these people. So it's over for him, too. He's nothing but a blood-thirsty monster now."
"That is not true." The Dullahan said calmly. "And you know that well enough yourself. You forced his hand."
"What did you do, Orihara-san?" Mikado asked.
"I crossed the line, I guess." Izaya's answer startled Mikado. "I killed someone with my own hands for the first time."
"I crossed a line, too, I guess." Mikado spoke softly. "I shot my best friend. I shot Masaomi. And then I killed myself."
"What happens now?" Izaya addressed the Dullahan.
"Nothing happens now. It's over when you die." She answered.
"What do you mean? Over?" Mikado asked uncertainly, looking around at the cherry trees in full bloom, stretching endlessly all around them.
"This is your punishment, Mikado. It hits precisely where it hurts the most. Nothing will ever happen again." The head explained in an emotionless voice. "You hurt Masaomi and Anri and your parents terribly in your search for excitement. So this is how it ends for you."
"Anri?" Mikado sounded alarmed. "What happened to her?"
"She was hurt by someone you could have stopped if you were still alive." The Dullahan said. "For now, Izaya will stay here with you. But he will leave. Sooner or later, like all the people whom he helped to make the decision to end their lives, he will jump." She motioned her gloved hand towards the gorge at their feet. "You should be able to imagine what is down below. That is the punishment for trying to trick one's way into the Valhalla. The Valhalla will call him but there will be no bridge to cross over the pits of Hell for the likes of him."
"Great, so I'm the villain here." Izaya sounded quite proud. "Mikado-kun's just stuck in purgatory. But the remaining question is: what happens to you, Dullahan?"
"If I haven't lost my head and met you all in Tokyo, none of this would have happened." The head answered. "My former life with all of you is lost. Unless..." Her voice drifted off.
"Unless?" Izaya pressed.
"Unless you try again and the outcome is different." She spoke at last. "This is not a chance that everyone gets. But I can give it to you because of my influence having changed the outcome you might have otherwise had."
"A chance?" Mikado asked uncertainly.
"I can send you back to the moment before your death." The head stated. "But if you fail to stop yourself from dying, you will die again. Every consecutive death is worse than the previous one. More painful and more frightening. The memory of the pain, with time, will make you unwilling to go back anymore. But if you manage to turn things around, you get to go on living." She explained.
"Since I killed myself, I can just not do it the next time around…" Mikado mused.
"No, it's not that simple. But you can try."
"I will try." Mikado decided.
His body flickered and a moment later he was back, on his knees, gasping for breath.
"You brought me back…" He whispered. "...to the moment after I had already pulled the trigger..."
A bloody mist hovered in the air next to his head before falling to the ground along with the falling petals.
"You could have still been saved." The Dullahan said. "If Izaya wasn't killed and Shizuo wasn't stopped, he would have helped Shinra restore me to my previous state and I could have stopped that bullet. But the turn of events that starts with Izaya dying always ends with you two here."
"What's the point, Dullahan?" Izaya asked. "Why would you save someone who has already pulled the trigger and chose to die?"
"Because him choosing to die was my fault." The head said.
"So…" Izaya mused. "The two of us are apparently the only ones whose death you're blaming yourself for. That may mean I didn't actually kill Vorona."
"If you have actually succeeded at killing someone, you would have already been down below. And there would have been nothing I could have done about that."
"Does that mean Shizuo goes to Hell for killing me, too?" Izaya asked, smirking.
"I don't know that." The head said. "And you will never know that, either."
"Either way, I'm fine with what happened." Izaya smiled. "Sorry, Mikado. You will have to cope with just being dead. And I'm not really sorry, of course."
"That is not true." The Dullahan spoke up. "Even for you and Shizuo, that was not the only possible ending."
"Obviously. But I wanted him to kill me. And I succeeded." Izaya said.
"Because you thought if you died in battle in the presence of a Valkyrie, you could go to Valhalla and continue toying with people's lives for eternity in there." She pointed out. "But that is not how it works. And you didn't even believe it could have actually been true yourself."
"Of course." Izaya shrugged. "But it was a good story to leave behind. In fact, I thought I'd just disappear when I die. This here is bullshit. Especially him being here." He pointed to Mikado. "He killed himself. But I'm afraid it was just to escape an unfortunate moment if he's ready to go back already. Frankly, I'm disappointed in you, Mikado-kun."
"I am just ready to take whatever it takes over nothing ever happening to me again." Mikado replied seriously.
"But that was a distinct possibility when you pulled the trigger. Did you just assume what was on the other side was full of excitement?" Izaya mocked him. "And no, you cannot force me to help you. Not when we're both already dead and I'm going to Hell anyway. This is it for you, Mikado-kun. And whatever happens to your Anri-chan, you should have thought about that before you killed yourself."
"Send me back again." Mikado demanded of the Dullahan.
"There is no point, Mikado." She opposed. "Unless you both go. There's nothing else that can save you at this point."
"So that is the actual reason why we're here together." Izaya observed. "You're trying to redeem yourself, Dullahan. What made you think I will help you two? Is this display here to scare me?" He pointed to the gorge. "Do you honestly think I can't face up to being a bad person?"
"It's just that you're here for a reason." The head said. "You know what this place is, don't you, Izaya?"
"It's just a random place. Someone's idea of an afterlife." Izaya shrugged.
"I know everything." She reminded.
"Then you should know I forgot all about it." He said. "If you send me back, will it be to the moment right before my death? After I already tried to kill Vorona?"
"Yes." The head confirmed.
"You do realize that is the point of no return. Shizuo will kill me anyway."
"I won't force you to go back there." She said.
"But I will do it once, just to get to know how it feels to come back to life."
And just like that, he was back. Back to the taste of blood in his mouth, his ragged breath, body hurting all over, ruined arms and the sting of the knife buried deep in his side.
The knife that he had thrown at Vorona had just hit the side of her neck, blood spraying from the wound. She shot him but missed his vital organs. The bullet ripped through his shoulder instead.
Shizuo hauled the vending machine up but then he put it back down, took the few steps that separated them, his eyes no longer human. He wrapped his hand around Izaya's neck and yanked him up off the ground. Then he squeezed.
Izaya's neck snapped like a twig with a sickening sound echoing through the very center of his being.
Then it was all over again.
And he was back. In a puddle of blood on the ground under the blooming sakura trees.
He started laughing as soon as he sat up.
"Like I told you: there's nothing I can do, Mikado-kun." He spoke at last, the memory of his second death settling inside him like a dark weight. "Shizuo's so far gone by that point that he's really no longer human."
The spray of blood in the air reminded him of Mikado's plight of being connected to him now. The boy was on the ground, clutching his head and moaning in pain.
"I am not doing this again." Izaya said seriously. "I savoured the moment enough for my liking." He touched his neck tentatively. "I appreciate it he didn't actually crush me with a vending machine though."
After a long while of silence, Mikado straightened up and spoke.
"Do you know what this place is, Orihara-san?" He asked. "And what happened here?"
"It's just a random place, Mikado-kun. A place I forgot about because it's nothing special. It's here only so you can spend the rest of eternity dealing with it." Izaya answered coldly.
"Sakura trees aren't in bloom everyday." Mikado pointed out. "If you went to see that, why would you forget about it?"
"Just because, Mikado-kun. Dullahan, will you stay here with us, too?"
"I will leave." She answered. "When you abandon hope."
"Then you being here means we still have it?" Izaya asked. "Get over with it already, Mikado-kun."
"Can Orihara-san really change what happened?" Mikado demanded.
"Possibly." The head answered.
"It's nice you think so highly of my skill, Dullahan, but Shizu-chan won't be sparing my life no matter what I tell him. Not after I've hurt someone like that right in front of him." Izaya said. "Even if he were not close with her, which he was. And anyway, I did what I did for a reason, unlike Mikado-kun here who just randomly took his life and now wants it back."
"I did not do it randomly, Orihara-san." Mikado responded calmly. "I wanted to see what was on the other side. Now that I know…"
"I don't think you would have been allowed to keep that memory." Izaya pointed out.
"I would have stuck to it with all my might and believed that I could." Mikado said with a smile. "Before I did it, Masaomi-kun said you were surely behind what I was doing, Orihara-san. Turns out he was actually right. You do have influence over my death now."
"Too bad, right? Because I won't change what happened. And you will be stuck here regardless of what you may want."
"But, that may actually be preferable to going to Hell." Mikado pointed out. "Have you been there?" He asked the Dullahan.
"I can't answer that question." The head said.
"I'm a bad person though, Mikado-kun." Izaya sighed. "I will end up down there anyway. And I don't need that show the two of you are putting on."
He walked to the edge of the gorge. The abyss down below which he suspected of being just nothingness turned out to be dark and threatening when he got closer to it, full of voices and full of pain. When he looked up he could still see the Valhalla hovering on the horizon.
"There is always hope as long as you're not down there." The Dullahan spoke up. "Though if you don't deserve hope, you will jump. Because you will know that."
Izaya turned around from the edge.
"I'll tell you what this place is first, Mikado-kun." He said. "So you'll have something to ponder for the rest of your stay here. You are stuck in a place where I made a big mistake when I was your age or about that. That might be a bit much for your little boy's mind to handle but once, and I mean just once, me and Shizu-chan actually got quite friendly with each other. If you know what I mean. I was sleeping with a guy from the yakuza at the time to use his influence for my own end goals. And I was just a confused brat back then, just like you are now, just smarter. Obviously. And I let Shizu-chan fuck me. I'm glad he didn't rip me to shreds while at it. And the next day we were back to hating each other's guts. That is all there is to it. He would kill me faster than I can blink if I tried to remind him he ever did that to me. If that is what you think I should do by having this place appear here, you're just wrong. And that's it. Goodbye."
Mikado's grip stalled his free fall backwards.
The darkness from down below reached up for him hungrily.
"In the real world, there is no way I would have been able to catch you." Mikado pointed out, holding onto his hand. "You know what that means, Orihara-san. You don't really want to go yet."
Izaya grimaced.
"So you and Heiwajima-san didn't always hate each other so badly…"
"I don't care what you think." Izaya hissed through clenched teeth. "A brat like you will never understand it. I will go back one more time. Just so you don't get the wrong idea."
Mikado smiled looking down at him.
And just like that, he was back. Back to the taste of blood in his mouth, his ragged breath, body hurting all over, ruined arms and the sting of the knife buried deep in his side.
The knife that he had thrown at Vorona had just hit the side of her neck, blood spraying from the wound. She shot him but missed his vital organs. The bullet ripped through his shoulder instead.
Shizuo hauled the vending machine up but then he put it back down, took the few steps that separated them, his eyes no longer human.
"Shizu-chan…" Izaya whispered, blood trickling down from his mouth. The Dullahan was right, the pain was worse every consecutive time he did that. "It hurts."
His whisper, barely louder than his breath, nonetheless reached Shizuo's ears.
But Shizuo had no interest in Izaya's whining. He needed to get to Vorona. But not before he got rid of Izaya once and for all.
He wrapped his hand around Izaya's neck and yanked him up from the ground.
Izaya braced himself for the pain of having his neck broken but instead he felt his body being dropped to the ground as if it burned Shizuo's hand.
Another stun grenade exploded nearby, blinding everyone around.
A single pale pink petal landed in a puddle of blood right in front of his eyes. For a moment he thought he was already on the other side. But the pain not ending reminded him that he was actually still alive.
The Dullahan made a fool out of him.
He tried to clench his fist but that was the extent of what he could do. Then he blacked out.