The Happiest of Man

Chapter 2

“Were you always this clumsy?” The woman on the floor had asked, irritation in her tone as the papers she had held in her arms were now scattered across the ground; unorganized. A gentle laugh escaped the man’s lips as he sat there, scanning the room. Did he collide into her that badly? 

“What a question to ask. After working for me for a good year, you should know the answer to that by now, no?”

Knowing that Namie can be just as petty, he decided to help her gather the files. Although he had always allowed her to get away with the shenanigans she had pulled against him, Izaya was aware that she is the only person he had at the moment, the only accomplice who was willing to work with him in a sense. Maybe if she didn’t possess Celty’s head, their arrangement would have been a bit different, but regardless of the events they had endured together, it was something he didn’t mind. In a way, the strings she had pulled on her own had benefited him one way or the other whether he realized it or not.

“Someone like you is also capable of making mistakes.” 

Izaya stood up, holding a neat pile of paperwork in his hand as he held it out to her, smile out and ready, unwilling to fall apart in front of her. Namie helped herself up, dusting her skirt off of nonexistent particles as she grabbed it from him and added it to the stack in her arm.

“Perhaps that is a reassuring thought considering who you really are.” Her words were cold and unsettling although he didn’t expect any more than that from her. Watching her walk away, sitting herself down on the desk she did most of her work on, he reflected on what had caused such a collision to occur.

Izaya was merely walking down the stairs, speaking to her while doing so as per usual, then suddenly, he just lost his balance and began to stumble down the stairs. For a man who had exceptional skills when it came to parkour, falling down the stairs like that and having a woman to break his fall should have been unlike him. Actually, it is unlike him. Normally, he would have found a way to keep himself from falling like that, but it was almost as if landing harshly onto the floor was what his body wanted to do. 

He had a rather confused expression upon his face, however he shook off his irrational worries. People stumble every now and then. Someone like him was just as human as the next person although there was a point in time where he had lost his own humanity and couldn’t see himself as part of the majority. That’s what he tried to convince himself of. It sort of worked.

“Oh? Does this imply that you once thought highly of me as a person, Namie?”

And their routine continued with that one question. Just like that.

- -

The beginning of last year, it would have been abnormal for an informant like Izaya to frequently visit Ikebukuro, but it wasn’t odd anymore considering how he has been in and out of that city one too many times now. However, just because he had business there doesn’t mean he kept the focus of his attention there when he had the free time to spare. 

Meeting up with other informants was something he did on the side. There were other things that he would much rather do, but it never hurt to keep up to date or to see who had the most information and whether he was losing his touch. In the end, he was the one who sold information to those who were below him and it was truly fun to see what these types of people would do with the information they had obtained. Izaya wouldn’t know. He wasn’t going to be around to watch things unfold in their stories. If it was something he wasn’t too interested in, then obviously, he wouldn’t care for it much. Just sell the information and forget about them.

That’s all he has ever been good at lately.