Without waiting for a reply, Emi began walking home. Laila froze for a second but snapped out of it and began to give chase, walking side by side a slight distance away. Emi, sensing that Laila was trying to find something to say and failing, finally spoke up.
“So what? You didn’t get your apartment all messy again, did you?”
“Huh?! N-no, no, it’s totally clean! Um, still!”
“Oh, come on.”
Emi smiled a little, then went back to her usual scowl. She couldn’t give Laila an honest smile yet.
Previously, when she visited Laila’s apartment to find out what kind of life she was living in Japan, she found the place so astoundingly cluttered and unkempt that a robot vacuum would take one look and trundle right out the door and off the walkway to its death. Emi had dived in first to start cleaning it up, and really just the cleanup took the entire day. The only talking the whole time was done by Laila and Nord. Emi and Laila, with no idea what to talk about, said almost nothing apart from when they bickered over what pile of strewn clutter should go where. Even this, however, was clear progress from how things were before—and now the gap was narrow enough that they were actually walking down the street together.
“Is work keeping you busy?”
“Well, every company’s short-staffed during the holiday season. But unlike you, I’m not working against the clock to save millions or anything, so it’s all good.”
“Um… Oh. Well, good.”
Emi didn’t know what was “good” about that—it wasn’t like she had said she wasn’t busy—but this, at least, was an actual conversation. It continued along in fits and starts as they walked. When they reached Sasazuka Station, Emi suddenly stopped, looking at the intersection ahead and the Shuto Expressway overpass that hung above it.
“Emilia?”
She could recall Urushihara attacking this overpass, Chiho almost getting crushed under it, Maou and Ashiya transforming into demons, her fighting against her supposed friend Olba, and then Chiho’s face at the end, still smiling despite knowing everything that had just happened.
“No, um, just a…”
I wasn’t expecting any of this.
How many times in the past year-ish had she had that thought? If only she or Maou had just got on with it and erased Chiho’s memory, neither of them would be standing here right now. But after defeating Urushihara, Maou had showed no sign of doing it. So Emi, recalling this as she stood there with Laila, decided to bet on a possibility that nobody who knew the Devil King Satan would dare imagine. It wasn’t a bet she had ever discussed with Emeralda or Albert. Really, it was just something she had half-jokingly suggested to Maou before even making friends with Chiho. She didn’t expect him to say yes, and he didn’t, of course, but now Maou had everything he needed to make it happen. That’s just how it seemed to her.
If Ashiya said no, what about Maou?
“Hey, Laila?”
“Yeees?”
“Why did you get married to Father?”
“Huhh?!” Laila practically jumped off the ground. “Wh-why? Where did that come from?! I just… I mean, if you love someone, you marry them, don’t you?”
“…”
Something Emi had thought back when she asked her father how they came to know each other was that the way a husband or wife describes their partner had a far deeper, more profound impact on their children than either could ever imagine. Now that feeling was coming back.
“I’m not asking about that. You’re a millennia-old angel, and my father’s a human who won’t even make it to a hundred. What made you want to get together with him?”
“Um…?”
“Because to you, the time you spend with him is nothing but a blip, isn’t it?”
“…Oh, that’s what this is about?”
“Sooner or later, you’re going to be separated, and you’re the one who’s gonna have to see him go. So why…?”
“I wouldn’t have joined him if I wasn’t prepared for that.”
Her voice was gentle as always but strong as well. It was rare, coming from her.
“And no, the time I spent with him in Sloane wasn’t that long a part of my life, but it was one of the most fun, precious, and wonderful times I ever had.”
“…So what made you choose Father?”
“Choose him?”
“He’s a normal human being. He’s not nobility, not the descendant of some great Hero. He couldn’t contribute anything to the type of battles you’re fighting. So why?”
This, in a way, was the biggest question Emi had about Nord and Laila’s relationship. However, Laila’s response to it was as simple as it was aggravating:
“Emilia, don’t tell me you’ve never been in love before?”
“Whaaaaaat?!”
Not only was it not an answer at all, but it sounded like nothing less than taunting. It made Emi’s face turn bright red, but her flying into a rage was nothing Laila hadn’t seen before. Instead, she gave her daughter a worried look.
“E-Emilia, you’re not the kind of woman who asks a man what his salary is before anything else, are you? Like, figuring out his job and promotion prospects so you can hit the jackpot when you get married? You’re more about money and stability than feelings?”
“What—what—what’re you talking about?! You’re not making any sense!”
“What are you talking about? Because that’s the only conclusion you’re giving me. You know that isn’t any good. Sure, it’s one thing if the man you choose is violent or a gambling addict or something, but before anything else, love is about whether he makes your heart skip a beat or not!”
“Wait a minute! This isn’t what we were discussing! I…!”
“You asked me why I married your father, didn’t you? It’s because I fell in love with him, of course. What more reason do I need?”
“That… What—what do you mean by love?! I’m not asking about that—”
“If you’re asking about his bloodlines, or the Sephirah, or whether he can fight or not, I never thought about any of that. I just fell in love with Nord Justina. If you’re looking for a reason, that’s about all I’ve got.”
“That’s all…?”
“And I’m sure your father would say the same thing.”
“He…”
She couldn’t deny it. She had heard all the sweet words Nord had for her, alongside Emeralda and Suzuno. The fact her friends eavesdropped on their conversation made it all the more embarrassing.
“Of course, it was pretty tough at first when we decided to get married. To all the people in Sloane, I was just this strange girl who wandered in out of nowhere. Some of them accused me of being a swindler, trying to trick that man out of his house and fields after both his parents died. So I worked. I worked hard, and I learned about agriculture and animal husbandry and so on. I knew a thing or two about medicine, too, so I did things like help the village’s midwife. So little by little, I worked myself into life in the village. And maybe we couldn’t live like upper-class nobles, but working with him, traveling with him to the little cabin we had in the mountain, stargazing with him, playing in the river, reading the books his father left behind… We had all kinds of fun things to do.”
To Laila, all this may have been just the other day. But as she focused on her nostalgia, it began to sound more and more like ancient history.
“Your father knew I was an angel from the start, thanks to the way we met each other. He knew he was going to die before me, but he stayed with me anyway. We talked things over, we argued, but we still stayed together. That’s really all I can say about it.”
“But…”
“And yes, it is sad,” she said, verbalizing what Emi couldn’t. “Your father’s going to be an old man someday, and I’ll see him off not looking much different from when I met him. I knew all that, but I couldn’t help but fall in love with him. I told you, you need that heart-skipping moment!”
“Heart skipping… I mean…”
<
br /> “It’s hard to learn how to be kind or sincere. But he had that from the very start. That alone was more than enough to make me love him. I wanted our hearts to be together, no matter what it took. Is that enough of an answer?”
Was it? Emi could tell that a super-long-lived angel approached marriage with roughly the same mentality as any human being. But could that lead to happiness? She couldn’t tell.
“Look, Emilia,” Laila continued, reading her mind once more. “Maybe you won’t like to hear it but let me just tell you this.”
“Wh-what?”
“You can never tell if one moment or another’s going to be truly happy for you until long after it’s passed. Happy memories from the past can torture you in the present, if things aren’t going so well any longer. But if you’re so afraid of being hurt that you can’t act any longer, you’re never going to find happiness. If you don’t make any moves, you’ll keep sliding down the hill of unhappiness without realizing it, and little by little, it’s going to cut you apart.”
“…”
“Of course, sometimes action leads to unhappiness. Even injury. That’s about all I can say about it, and I’ve lived for thousands of years. Would you call me unhappy?”
“That’s not for me to decide,” Emi replied.
“No. I’m the only one who can. Luckily, I find being married to your father to be a glorious thing, and I don’t regret any of it. And I trust that he thinks so, too.”
“Yeah, that much I can guarantee.”
“Oh?”
“Nothing… I’m sorry if it sounded like a weird question.”
“It’s fine. Ask me more! Ask me anything.”
“Don’t get carried away. Father’s waiting for us. Let’s go back to the apartment.”
Emi pushed her frustrated mother forward. It did nothing to dampen her drive.
“If you treat it as ‘going back’ to the apartment, why don’t you just move in?”
“Eventually.”
Emi stepped forward. She had talked too much, she thought, and now was the time to end the conversation. As far as she was concerned, she didn’t have a care in the world for Laila and Gabriel’s plans, and she could never let on otherwise. That was Emi’s problem, well outside whatever distance she took with Laila.
“Oh, Emilia?”
“What?”
“I know I told you about my heart skipping a beat and everything, but don’t let that happen to you over someone like that, all right?”
“Someone like who?”
She looked where Laila was pointing, then froze. The guy turned away from them… Was that Urushihara?
“I mean, it’s partly my fault that Lucifer turned out like…that. But from what Satan, Alciel, and Chiho told me about his life in Japan, just… Not him.”
“That’s not funny…in ways you’d never even know. Seriously. And this isn’t funny, either. Why’s he going around with nobody guarding him?!”
“Ah, Emilia!”
The sight of Urushihara alone in public was enough to fill Emi with an indescribable urgency. She hurried after him, Laila trotting behind.
“Dude! First Bell, then Chiho Sasaki, and now you guys?! How many times longer you think I’ve even been living than you?! I’m seriously starting to get mad, yo!”
And all the way back to the apartment, the pair had to listen to him.
It was a few hours after Emi and Laila returned to Villa Rosa Sasazuka, withstanding Urushihara’s whining the whole way. The moment the dinner rush at the MgRonald by Hatagaya station subsided, a new kind of chaos burst onto the scene.
“The banquet has begun!”
This, it went without saying, was the archangel Sariel—aka Mitsuki Sarue, general manager at the Sentucky Fried Chicken in Hatagaya—and he was back to contribute to the bottom line of Kisaki’s restaurant.
“Tonight, once more, the beating of my heart echoes higher than the bells tolling the holy night, feeding the flames of my love! Yes, tonight I, Mitsuki………………… Oh, she’s not here again?”
““Good evening, sir!””
Lately, Sariel had developed some kind of extrasensory organ that told him within seconds whether Kisaki was at work or not. Before, whenever Sariel paid a visit, most of the crew would put on the most strained smiles possible and push Maou in his direction. Now that this charade had been going on for a good six months, they were mostly used to it, treating him like a regular customer with only a small amount of bewilderment.
The other customers, however, weren’t having it. The so-called “one-man flash mob” was found at MgRonald for only around half an hour, always after the breakfast, lunch, and dinner peak times, so even a lot of the regulars didn’t know him. To someone just passing through, the sight of him at full tilt could make them spill their drink all over their shoes.
And today, in fact, the tirade had just made someone drop their smartphone on the floor.
“O-oh, no…”
The hapless victim picked the phone up, checking it for any obvious damage. His voice and his behavior were familiar to Sariel.
“Hmm? Well, well! Here’s a sight for sore eyes.”
“…”
Recognizing him as the Great Demon General, Sariel crept up to him, a shocked look on his face. “You, eating alone at a time like this? To what do I owe this extraordinary sight, Al…um, no, uh, Ashiya, right?”
Not interacting with Maou and the gang on a regular basis, it took a moment for him to recall Ashiya’s Japanese name.
“You really do carry on like that?” an exasperated Ashiya asked. “My liege had told me as much, but…”
“Carry on like what?”
“That… Well, the shouting about Ms. Kisaki all the time. And the love letters you read out loud.”
“Love letters? How rude of you. I am simply giving vocal form to the surging passions that spill out from my heart in real time. If I prepared my statements in advance, they would lose their rawness, the strength to strike at your very heart.”
It was hard to tell how serious he was being. If he meant every word of it, Ashiya certainly had to appreciate the vast vocabulary Sariel described his passions with.
“Regardless, neither Ms. Kisaki nor Maou is present today.”
“I know. The sights, the sounds, the very scent in the air changes with her presence… Wait. Did I hear you right? Neither of them are working?”
“No.”
“What is the meaning of that? Why are both of them gone? Isn’t Maou a shift supervisor? Why is MgRonald running without a manager or a shift supervisor? Do they have someone regional on hand?”
“They do not. Maou and Ms. Kisaki are away from this location today so that Maou can begin his full-time employee training.”
Ashiya, not having to face up to Sariel’s bizarre behavior on a daily basis, had no idea how careless a statement this was. Sariel’s face seemed to literally waste away, a deathly rage building within his eyes.
“Maou and Ms. Kisaki are…together?”
“W-wait a moment. What are you thinking? It is only for work purposes.”
“Full-time employee training? And my goddess is accompanying the Devil King?”
“N-no… I am not sure you could call it ‘accompanying,’ no…”
“…Nnnnngh…”
A groan like the wail of a goblin from hell erupted from the bottom of Sariel’s throat. He turned toward the front counter and marched up to it. It made Kawata visibly rear back as he tried his best to follow the book script.
“Um, welcome to Mg—”
“I must work here, too!!”
“—Ronal— Whaaat?!”
He couldn’t help but stammer out his surprise.
“You’re still hiring part-time, are you not? I want to apply. Sign me up for an interview. I’ll have a résumé for you at once!”
“Ummmm, Mr. Sarue?! What are you, um, talking about?!”
“Kawata, are you really such a thickheaded moron that you fail
to understand such a simple request?”
Being the world’s most frequent visitor to the Hatagaya station MgRonald, of course Sariel knew the names of everybody on staff.
“All you have to do is tell your manager, Ms. Kisaki, that I, Sarue, applied for a part-time job at MgRonald. She will gladly contact me later for an interview.”
“Uh, ummm, I, er, sorry? I mean, uh…”
Not even Kawata could react coherently to this. But asking him not to be flustered at the sight of the manager of a rival franchise applying for shift work would be too much for anyone.
“P-please, Mr. Sarue, calm down for a moment! I’ll be sure to tell Ms. Kisaki that you stopped by!”
“You always tell her that I stopped by! Today I want you to tell her I’m applying for… Hngh?!”
“What is the meaning of this nonsense, you?”
Ashiya, no longer able to stomach the sight, stepped in to stop him.
“What are you…? Let go! I am deadly serious!”
“This goes beyond all common sense! Um, I will take care of this man for you. I apologize; would you be able to clean my table for me?”
“Oh, um, certainly, sir.”
“Thank you. Come on.”
“Let me go! Hands off me! What are you doing?! This has nothing to do with you!”
“I would be unable to face my liege if I told him I saw this and did nothing. This is exactly why I stayed on hand!”
Kawata just stood there, watching blankly as the notably tall man dragged out Sarue (no taller than Chiho) in a full nelson. Akiko Ohki, watching all this unfold from behind Kawata, gave him a compassionate pat on the black.
“Good job.”
“Aki… What was that all about?”
“I dunno, but I guess this MgRonald’s pretty screwed as long as Ms. Kisaki isn’t around, huh? There’s no telling what kind of people you run into in this world.”
“Man. Maybe I shouldn’t take over my family’s restaurant after all. If I have to deal with this every night…”
“I don’t think you’ll see anyone quite like this, no…”
“Wow, though… Are December sales at the Sentucky in the tank or something?”
“Yeah, working full-time in this biz seems pretty stressful. Sometimes I wonder if I’m really up for it.”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 15 Page 4
