Karisawa Erika is a fascinating human. All humans are fascinating to Orihara Izaya, but they are not without distinctions. Karisawa uses his nicknames, like she's in on the joke, and he doesn't resent it at all. She's largely disconnected from the events of the city, from his machinations – not to the degree Shinra is, but much more so of her own volition. With her otaku obsession, she has consciously created a barrier between herself and reality, or perhaps she's eliminated one. Defining her own universe and eliminating the parts she doesn't care for reminds him of a sort of tempered form of his own aspirations to godhood. She is almost a person to him.

She has stumbled upon, quite by accident, an insight to his very private psyche, the privacy of which he maintains through sheer audacity. But, as with her borrowed nicknames, he finds he doesn't mind it in the least. She announces her perceived relationship between he and Shizu-chan without subtlety or sense, and the absurdity of it all is oddly appropriate. Another joke she's in on.

This one night he couldn't sleep he rarely does and so he wandered to the Russian sushi and she and her party were there, the men passed out on the floor drunk on vodka and companionship. Come to think of it, Dota-chin was probably awake and pretending. He examined the magazine pile in what he intended to be a surreptitious fashion, but she noticed and she tapped him on the shoulder and handed him the issue he'd been looking for she knew, a cover emblazoned with a no-doubt terrified reporter's picture of Shizu-chan front and center and wielding a street sign and absolutely furious. His own hair and coat peak out around the edge.

Shizu-chan is in the news a lot for the destruction he causes, a seven-wonder of Ikebukuro, while Izaya is a shadow lurking around the edges. It makes him furious with envy and something he doesn't quite have a name for, but sociopath that he is he feels disconnected from the emotion enough to find it fascinating like humans like he is trying to escape and like Karisawa Erika for that matter. She's still standing there holding the magazine for him and she is simultaneously amused and sympathetic in on the joke and she says this is what you're looking for right? It's okay, you know, if you love him.

And it's almost love but not quite and she almost comprehends that but not quite, not that he understands the emotion either the emotion that he doesn't quite feel and he takes the magazine and she puts a finger to her lips conspiractically like I won't tell although of course she shouts it to the high heavens every day, and somehow still doesn't and somehow it's a real promise still available to her to keep. He appreciates it, this funny gesture of kindness, a thing that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to give or receive for his sake like Shinra and the knife but he appreciates it nonetheless. She's a fascinating human.