Durarara!! Light Novel Volume 09/Chapter 04

"Just watch out for revolutions. You're the kind of guy who gets sloppy and winds up guillotined by the common folk."

- Shinra Kishitani

Vice President is the fourth chapter of the ninth Durarara!! light novel.

Synopsis
Shinra Kishitani tells Celty Sturluson about his and Izaya Orihara's middle school days and how he convinced Izaya to start a biology club with him. Izaya, for his part, agreed simply out of his own interest in Shinra.

Aoba Kuronuma is invited to hang out with Mairu and Kururi Orihara at their school pool, where he asks the girls about their brother, hoping to gather some information on Izaya's latest activities in Ikebukuro. As he spends time with them and finds himself opening up, he hopes his internal rage does not begin to evaporate due to the girls' influence. At the same time, he worries that without his connections to the people around him, he might end up like Izaya. After their afternoon together, Aoba calls his friends Gin and Yoshikiri, who are in the middle of a Dollars purge with Mikado Ryuugamine passed out in the car nearby, and tells them to keep a watch on Heaven's Slave's nightclub base.

While Akane Awakusu reflects on meeting Izaya the day before and asks Mairu during training at Rakuei Gym about her brother, Haruya Shiki has a suspicion that there is a connection between Izaya and Akane running away from home the previous spring. Shiki muses to his driver that were it not for Izaya's connections to the Medei-gumi group the Awakusu-kai is affiliated with and that his complicated, slippery information network disappears without his constant presence, Shiki might have disposed of the difficult info broker already.

Izaya meets with Celty to hand off a laptop bag, and the Heaven's Slave members tailing him update Hiroto Shijima. In is search for information on Amphisbaena, Shijima's priorities are to gather whatever information Izaya has already uncovered on the organization and to eliminate him before he can take his information to the Awakusu, as the Awakusu's desire to stop Amphisbaena's operations would cause trouble for their future relationship with Heaven's Slave.

Chat Room
TarouTanaka logs into the chat room for the first time in months and apologizes for his absence. Bacura private messages him, but TarouTanaka ignores it and private messages Kanra before logging off.

In a Dark Place 5
Earthworm, full of anticipation for the moment the Orihara twins arrive and she can torture the siblings together and finally see the expression on Izaya's face, douses the sack covering his head in kerosene. Just as her subordinates are supposed to arrive with the twins, Shijima and ten of his men enter Amphisbaena's bar.

Quotes
Shinra: "Do I look like I have friends?"

Izaya: "What's his deal, then? What does he watch that gives him life?"

Izaya: "What a weird guy. I'll have to keep observing him. But it's dangerous to get too close. Gotta be cautious."

Izaya: "You're the one who drove him crazy. You might not have intended for it to happen, but Shinra Kishitani was nevertheless bewitched by a dullahan - an otherworldly being. It might be his own belief that you are greater than human, but once that idea took root, it only makes sense that he'd consider humanity to be of lower importance."

Mikado (as TarouTanaka): "I wasn't able to evolve. I wanted to cling to my ordinary life. I want to have the same life with Sonohara and Masaomi that I had before. I want to take it back. I want those Dollars. From that night. I'm not looking for the extraordinary anymore. I just want those days to come back to me."