Durarara!!, Vol. 2 (novel) Read Online Free PDF

not with the power of love. But in fact, I’ll just be doing that to get rid of you so Anri can be my girlfriend. Is that cool?”
    Anri smiled and nodded, glad to see Masaomi back to his usual goofy self.
    “Yes… Thanks, both of you.”
    Anri tried to get her emotions in order as she walked the lonely route home.
    She liked Mikado Ryuugamine.
    She understood this fact.
    But she also liked Masaomi Kida, and she even still liked Mika Harima.
    It’s the same. My love for Ryuugamine is the same as for Kida and Mika.
    Which told her that it probably wasn’t a romantic feeling. It must be still in the realm of a love for a friend.
    If Mikado told her that he loved her in a romantic way, she probably wouldn’t be able to accept or reciprocate that. She could tell that somewhere in her heart, she would feel that she was cheating on him with Masaomi, and the guilt of that knowledge would be too much to bear.
    It would be so much easier if she could just love either Mikado or Masaomi.
    But she couldn’t really tell the difference between friendship and romance, and even if she had the option of choosing to love them, that was different from being able to
choose
one of them.
    It felt like choosing one of them would mean destroying what they had going now.
    Even here, in this happy place, she was unable to find her proper standing.
    As if to underscore this, she remembered the upperclassman Masaomi had mentioned just minutes earlier.
    Haruna Niekawa.
    While she knew the girl had ended up transferring, what was the truth behind that decision?
    Was she able to find her place in the world?
    Even if it ended up in disaster, had she felt true love for Nasujima at the time? Or had their entire relationship been the product of coercion?
    No amount of imagination would provide an answer. Anri stopped at the side of the road and heaved a sigh.
    The next instant, a light shock ran through her back, and Anri lost her balance, falling to the ground.
    She turned around, baffled at what had happened to her, only to see a familiar face.
    “
Haw-haw!
She fell on her face.”
    “It was just a little love tap, and she fell right on her face.”
    “You really are a sick little worm.”
    Three girls wearing the Raira Academy uniform stood in the glow of the streetlight. It was the trio that had it out for her, the ones Mikado called the “old-fashioned manga bullies.”
    “…”
    Anri stared up at them, but there was no fear or anger in her eyes. She was simply watching them emotionlessly, waiting to see how they would act next.
    The trio did not appreciate this. One of them put a foot on Anri’s shoulder as she rose, knocking her over backward.
    “First, you suck up to Mika, then Ryuugamine and Kida, and now you’re cozying up to Nasujima?”
    “When are you going to stop selling your body to get ahead, you dirty slut?”
    “It’s like you can’t survive unless you’re leeching off of someone else.”
    Despite the cascade of insults, it was all Anri could do just to stare back at the girls. She understood their meaning.
    It was true that she’d been dependent on Mika Harima before this, and she had no means or intention of arguing that point. Perhaps itseemed like the same thing with Mikado and Masaomi, and even in that case she was still searching for where she belonged.
    The case of Nasujima was where they were completely wrong, but nothing she could say to the girls in this situation would convince them. In fact, whether or not they were convinced by her answer was beside the point to them.
    As they barraged her with jeers, Anri felt an illusion that she was actually something from another world, watching all of this happen to her from afar. Perhaps it was a kind of self-defense.
    “What are you spacing out for?”
    “You live around here, don’t you? Show us the way.”
    “It’s time for a little home inspection.”
    Anri viewed the world from her eyes as events happening within a picture frame. The girls’ voices seemed to