"So is there a penalty to losing?"
"As previously Kadota has to relinquish his beanie for good if he loses."
"And if I lose?"
"I get to wear your glasses and white coat."
"I'd be practically blind and naked then."
Izaya flashed Shinra a beautiful smile.
"That is the whole point."
"Always a troll."
"You should inform your dear Celty about that. I've caught her hovering about me in a motherly fashion that disturbed me so much I was entirely robbed of speech."
"It can't be helped, she has a soft spot for the wounded. Even when it's you we're talking about."
"Ah, to be pitied is such a painful experience."
As it so often happened, Izaya's face value display of emotion was merely that, face value.
"You'll have to learn how to live with it."
"You can at least tell her not to bombard me with what I believe is meant to be edible stuffs but comes across as Chernobyl refuse. I keep seeing these vaguely sandwich like item materialize whenever I wake up. It is quite disturbing."
As much as Celty despised Izaya and everything he stood for, she not help feeling sorry for him. Her better nature got the best out of her very reasoned apprehension. She had been there as Izaya struggled to grasp the tenuous thread of his life and before she knew it she was hoping against hope that he would pull through. Even though Celty had thought more than once that the world would be a better place if Izaya were to disappear, she found herself rooting for him with all her might.
Still, Celty could not quite bring herself to present her well-intentioned but flavorless culinary blunders in person. Since Izaya spent so much time sleeping she could easily glide into the room and silently deposit the product of many hours toiling in the kitchen on his bedside table.
"A decent person would be grateful someone's cooking for them and make sure to eat it all."
"You could be wrong in assuming that she is expressing kindness toward my person. Perhaps hers are food offerings to the dead, a way of saying that I should hurry and join the deceased."
Shinra sighed, adjusted his glasses and hunched over slightly.
"Don't assuming other people are nasty like you."
Izaya laughter caused Kadota to unglue his eyes from the board.
"This place is missing a window and some billowy curtains so I could look out most longingly at the sky and be ever so poetic in my contemplation of mortality and the worth of human life."
"Well, it's a basement so no window for you. How about I get you a skull? Meditate on that."
"'Alas poor Yorik'?"
Shinra had something to say but Kadota cut him off.
"The rest, 'fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy', is a bit like you."
"Except I am most unfunny. And take the following lines out of contest and you're in for a real treat. Isn't that so, Kadota?"
Shinra put down a piece with enough emphasis to make it clatter.
"Your loss, the beanie is coming off."
Too glad for the distraction to even mind it, Kadota made as if to hand over the beanie to Shinra but Izaya intercepted it.
"I'll keep it. You can always challenge the good doctor again for a grudge rematch. I am not giving up on Shinra's glasses and lab coat."
Shinra got up.
"It may come as a shock to you but I have other patients to attend to and can't spend all my time playing shogi for your amusement. Not to mention you just set this to be an end game of sorts, what's this talk of a rematch?"
"That's how games work. There is always an ultimate match just around the corner."
"Can't say I see the point."
"One plays for-"
Shinra cut him short by applying his lips to Izaya's forehead. Kadota blinked. To Izaya's credit he did not squirm away.
"No fever."
"Shinra-sensei, are you acquainted with this device that goes by the name of 'thermometer'? I believe it has been around for quite a while now."
"Thermometers go into all sorts all places, don't they."
"Ah, that was most definitely uncalled for."
Shinra glanced at his watch.
"Visiting hours are almost over."
It was Shinra's none too subtle hint for Kadota to leave. Shinra himself was gone almost immediately with a mere nod in Kadota's direction.
"I should be going now, is there anything you need?"
