“No way.”
It was Earth, a giant blue planet before her eyes—and now that Rika discovered she was floating in space, she realized it was rapidly shrinking. The Earth, the moon, the light of the sun all faded, giving way to an undulating tunnel of pure light around her.
“Over here. Follow me.”
“Ch-Chiho!”
Chiho had touched her from behind, both bags still on her. Beckoning to Rika, she started traveling down the tunnel of light. From Rika’s vantage point, it almost looked like she was flying. She wasn’t moving her arms or legs at all; instead, she simply focused on the direction she needed to go. Realizing she was going farther and farther away, Rika tried her best to catch up—and just thinking of it gave her the sensation that she was going forward herself.
She wondered if it was a dream, if everything she saw here was a figment of her imagination and she’d be back in the Sasazuka she knew, with Emi and Ashiya.
“If anything happens, use this, okay?”
But the feel of the barf bag and bottle of liquid antinausea medication Chiho gave her, as they flew side by side with each other, seemed too real to be a dream. There was certainly nothing dreamy about them anyway.
“Chiho! What—what’s all this…?!”
Rika finally managed to get the question out. Chiho’s reply failed to clear up much of anything.
“We’re inside the Gate. Right now, we’re flying down the path the Gate opened for us.”
“F-flying?!”
“It’s gonna take a little time. I got kind of sick my first time, so let me know if that happens to you.”
“Time? Huh? What was all that just now?! This is a Gate? Like, through space?!”
“It’s a spell that connects between worlds. We just jumped out of Earth, on our way to our destination.”
“Our… Where?!”
“Where do you think?”
Chiho’s cheerful smile seemed downright terrifying to Rika right now.
“The world our lovers are on.”
Rika woke up to a scent she was familiar with—the smell of tatami mats.
“Huh…? I…”
Slowly, her eyes opened, rewarding her with the sight of a tatami-mat floor.
“…It was a dream?”
It was a pretty crazy one—her and Chiho, flying through space. There was this secret door to another world under the tatami-mat floor of Room 201 at Villa Rosa Sasazuka, and they jumped right through it and outside of Earth.
“Nnnnh… Huh?”
Then Rika noticed the unnatural amount she was sweating. It was really hot inside this room.
“Wait… Did Maou’s room have a heater…?”
Her eyes gradually came into focus.
“………?!”
Then she could feel the blood drain from her head. She was right—she was on a tatami-mat floor. But this wasn’t the one in Room 201.
“Uh… Whaaaaaa?!”
If Rika was familiar with the term redoubt, she would have used it here. It was a hard floor she found herself on, one that seemed to go on forever in all directions. Looking up, she found a ceiling that seemed cloaked in darkness. Large pillars, like the trunks of some primeval forest, were lined up in neat rows, and next to her, an altar the size of a small mountain.
It was a vast, unnerving space, one whose stone, or brick, or earthen surfaces seemed to echo Rika’s screams forever, and in some areas, it seemed oddly dilapidated. Looking closely at the floor, she could spot holes all over the place, and some of the columns were falling apart. It could only be described as an ancient temple or ruin of some sort, and she had no idea at all why she woke up atop a floor of six tatami mats neatly arranged in the middle of it.
“Huh? Is this…?”
Still recovering from the shock, Rika looked around her surroundings, only to find something else lying on the mats.
“Oh, this is Maou’s…”
It was something she was as familiar with as the mats themselves—a cheap kotatsu table that had been used and abused for far too long.
Then, in this space that barely seemed real, someone else’s voice rang out.
“What…? What is this for…?”
“Ah?!”
The room was too large to make it clear where the voice came from. Her head swiveled around again. Then she heard it—a rhythmic thudding, as if a couple of heavy objects were being struck against each other. The sound soon took on a more familiar shape.
“Oh, good, Rika, you’re awake.”
“Emi…?”
It was Emi Yusa, Rika’s best friend. She was dressed in some kind of ethnic clothing unfamiliar to Rika, but her face, her hair, her eyes, and her voice were unmistakable.
“Emi, where are we…?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything!”
“Agh?!”
Without answering the question, Emi hugged Rika, her voice ringing out almost in alarm.
“I was in such a rush, there wasn’t time to talk. I thought about going back to talk things over with you, but then all this stuff piled up over here, so I kept getting delayed… I guess it’s the New Year now, huh? I’m so sorry!”
“Ahh… Yeah, uh, um…”
Rika noticed the smell of Emi’s preferred brand of shampoo on her, along with other pointless things, as her slow voice plodded along.
“Um, where are we? What are the tatami mats from Maou’s place doing in this weird chamber?”
“…Oh, right. Wow, Rika, you don’t know anything yet!” Emi hurriedly undid herself from their embrace and clapped her hands. “But aren’t you hot? Take off your coat first. It’s winter here, too, but we’re so close to the equator that it’s always pretty warm.”
“Huh? Um, okay.”
Rika followed her instructions. Freeing herself of the cocoon of heat inside the coat made it quickly feel cooler.
“Can you stand up? Oh, put these on. These floors are pretty cold.”
Emi pointed to a pair of what looked like leather slippers next to the mats.
“Um, Emi? I think I jumped in through the floor at Maou’s place.”
“Yeah, Chiho told me. She pretty much forced you along without explaining anything, huh?”
“Uh, yeah. Like, I’m really not dreaming, am I?”
“Who knows? It’s like a dream to me.”
Emi did appear to be in high spirits, grabbing Rika’s hand as they navigated the gigantic space.
“I always wanted to show you my homeland, after all.”
“Your…homeland?”
After a while, they finally reached the edge of the space. There was a window here, looking like it was gouged into the wall, and Rika sleepily surmised that the blue on the other side was the sky.
“Some people might get angry at me for saying it…but I think the view from here is probably the best.”
“Oh…”
Following Emi’s lead, Rika put her hand on the window frame and looked outside.
“Rika, welcome to Ente Isla, Land of the Holy Cross.”
The window, it turned out, was pretty high up. The perfectly flat blue sky extended all the way to the horizon, the prairie way down below spreading out far and wide into forests, roads, marshes, and lakes as far as the eye could see. A flock of birds of prey flitted across the air, a species like none Rika recognized from Japan.
“…Ah,” she said as she took it all in. It was just so expansive, like nothing she could see from Kobe Port Tower or Kyoto Tower, and she could tell that people were teeming down below. She could see that, and while she wasn’t sure if it was her eyes playing tricks on her from this high up, she felt like she saw some other creatures, things that definitely seemed alive but moved and acted like nothing she could even imagine.
“Um……Emi, what did you just say?”
“Hmm?”
“Where are we again?”
“Ente Isla.”
“Huh?”
“You’re in the main city on Ente Isla’s C
entral Continent. The ruins of what used to be called Isla Centurum.”
“Huh? Um, huh?”
“Kinda hard to swallow?” Emi asked, curious about Rika’s muted reaction.
Rika nodded deeply, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“Well, wanna go down to the surface? It would take a whole day to walk down there, so apologies in advance, but we’ll take the quick way.”
“Huh? From here? Where to?”
“To the ground level. I bet this’ll feel a lot more real to you once you say hello to everyone down there. Pardon me one sec.”
“Ah… Ah!”
The next moment, Rika was scooped up in Emi’s wispy arms. They both had identical body types, but the sight of Emi picking up a grown woman like she was made of papier-mâché reminded her all over again that this girl wasn’t from Earth at all.
But that wasn’t the problem. The last time Rika found herself carried like this, it led to assorted terrifying events right afterward, didn’t it?
“I won’t drop you, but hang on tight for me, okay?”
“Huh? Wait… Emi?”
“Here we go.”
Rika in her hands, Emi planted a foot on the window frame they looked out from just a moment ago.
“No, wait a…………………………………………………………”
Her voice was lost in the air. She couldn’t even scream any longer. Out of nowhere, Rika was flying through a sky she had never seen before.
In front of her wide-open eyes, the ground began to loom closer. But they weren’t going fast enough to be in free fall. And when she realized Emi was actually floating down, a lot more slowly than some of the more extreme roller coasters you see in amusement parks, Rika spotted them all—the masses of people on the ground.
“Wha…?”
It was a huge crowd, all dressed in assorted types of clothing and armor. She could spot multiple ethnicities among them. From Rika’s perspective, many of them were clearly human. Everyone else, though? Completely different.
“Wha—wha—wha—wha…?”
There were beasts walking on two legs. There were giants literally the size of a house. It wasn’t birds flying through the air—it was people shaped like birds. Some of the crowd didn’t make it up to the height of a human being’s waist. There were walking skeletons, straight from the campfire horror stories of Rika’s childhood.
And there, in the middle of this massive throng, was a girl wearing a bandanna and an apron, standing atop a stepladder and using a large mixer to stir the cauldron in front of her. It was Chiho.
“This is Devil’s Castle. The real one Maou and the other demon officers used to storm Ente Isla.”
“Are you kidding meeeeeeeeeeee?!”
The scream made Emi wince, as much as she seemed to revel in the reaction.
Several of the people (creatures?) in the crowd picked up on Rika’s shouting, Chiho among them.
“Ooh! Rika!”
She bounded off the stepladder and ran up to their landing point.
“Wha—wha—whawhawha—!”
“Rika! You’re awake! Listen, I’m really sorry! I forgot to explain to you how to land!”
“Seriously, Chiho…” Emi lectured. “I know you were in a hurry, but try to be more careful from now on, okay? If Bell didn’t happen to be free just then, we would’ve had to delay treatment for a while.”
“All right! I apologize!” Chiho meekly bowed her head.
“Whawhawhawhawhawha—?”
“Rika? Are you good? Can I put you down now?”
Emi did just that, but it didn’t help Rika recognize the sights and sounds around her any. She only managed two or three steps forward before falling to her knees.
“Rika! Are you okay?!”
“Does it still hurt?!”
“The reality,” she woozily replied.
“Rika?”
“The reality of it hurts. I mean, you told me all about this, but this is a whole different thing. Forgive me if it’s kind of freaking me out. Ahh, Ente Isla. This is really it, huh? Ahh…”
Her eyes focused far away.
“Yeah, you sure got me.”
“Lady Rika Suzuki, I understand that you have provided both public and private support to the Hero Emilia during her journey in the alien world of Japan. My name is General Hazel Rumack, leader of the Federated Order of the Five Continents. It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“S-sure…”
“I am sure some of our customs might seem strange from your perspective, but a friend to the Hero Emilia is a friend to all Ente Isla. If you lack for anything during your stay here, do not hesitate to bring it up with any of us in the Order. We will make sure your needs are promptly attended to.”
“S-sure…”
Chiho was followed soon after by another of the Hero Emilia’s friends. Rika was quickly hustled over to a rather ornate tent—that belonging to Hazel Rumack, commander of the human forces in the area. To Rika, however, the sight of this clearly executive-looking woman in impossibly ornate-looking armor bowing her head and speaking fluent, polite Japanese to her as she sat upon a fluffy, expensive-looking chair and served tea in a cup so intricately decorated that Rika was afraid to even touch it was a tad difficult to comprehend.
“Hmph. So it’s you, eh? The friend of Great Demon General Chiho, the ‘MgRonald Barista’?”
Only slightly less difficult to grasp was the creature that now entered the tent behind Chiho, looking a bit like a gigantic praying mantis.
“I am Farfarello! General of the Devil King’s Army! And I have come to prepare for the upcoming battle alongside the humans!”
“S-s-sure…”
The demon, whose name would require several repetitions before Rika could get it down, took a glance at Chiho. “Any friend to Her Excellency Chiho is a friend of mine. We demons may not have the consideration for their fellow man the way a human might, but please make yourself at home.”
“Th-thanks…”
She couldn’t help but notice that one swipe of his serrated forearm could probably lop off both her and Rika’s heads, but the demon with the tricky name seemed to be treating Chiho like someone in a higher class than himself.
“Um, Chiho, sorry to bother you…”
“Hmm?”
“Why did he call you a MgRonald Barista?”
Chiho glanced at Rika, then Farfarello. “Um, it’s kind of my nickname in the demon realms.”
“Uhh…”
No explanation would do much to quell the maelstrom inside Rika’s mind right now.
“Chiho, did he just call you ‘Her Excellency’? Are you sure you’re not secretly a fancy wizard or something?”
Rika, face tensed up, looked at Chiho and Emi.
“I mean, where do I even begin with this?”
She looked around the camp. Even after Farfarello left, countless humans and demons were walking to and fro through it on their business. She brought a hand to her stomach.
“Wait. So that guy with the name that sounds like a fabric softener brand—that’s a demon?”
“Oh, you mean Farlo?”
“I thought it was longer than that?”
“That’s his nickname. Farfarello’s too long, so…”
“You give nicknames to demons. Great. But if he’s a demon, why am I all right?”
As she now realized, she was feeling none of the pain the full brunt of the Great Demon General Alciel had brought upon her. And considering all the demons milling about, there had to be a ton of dark force in the air.
“I guess you could call it a lucky break,” Chiho offered apologetically. “The moment we left the Gate, I forgot to tell you how to land and you kind of hit your head and got knocked out. Suzuno volunteered to treat you, and she cast some holy defense on you so you’d be okay around demonic force to some extent.”
Suzuno was, to say the least, livid at Chiho, but that was another story.
“Like, a barrier o
r something?”
“No, it’s activated the holy force in your body to resist demonic energy. Ente Isla is full of holy energy, so it’s a lot easier to apply it than in Japan.”
“…Ugh, this is making no sense at all to me. It’s like you’re trying to describe a game to me on a system I don’t even own.”
“Well, regardless, as long as someone as strong as Maou doesn’t go full demon in front of you, you’ll be fine around—”
“Oh! Right! Maou!”
The moment she heard the name, Rika shot to her feet, almost knocking that expensive-looking teacup off the side table. She had to lunge at it to avoid disaster.
“Where’s Maou?! What’s going on?! Tell me what’s going on! None of this is making too much sense yet, but I need to know what’s up! I know we’re on Ente Isla, but why are you acting so naturally around here, Chiho? Tell me! What’s up with all the dudes from that apartment in Sasazuka?”
“Um…”
“Where should we start…?”
“Hey, I heard Rika Suzuki was here?”
Chiho and Emi were just giving each other an awkward glance when a face popped up at the tent entrance—a human-looking man who Rika knew well. It was one of the three demons that once, not too long ago, wrecked Emi’s world.
“Maou…”
“Hey.”
Sadao Maou was dressed in the same jeans and UniClo shirt Rika remembered him in—the kind of thing you’d see on almost any young adult in Japan.
“Oh, uh, happy New Year, Chi.”
“Happy New Year to you, too, Maou. I purchased some of the simmered kelp Ashiya asked for, so I’ll serve it at the next meal, okay?”
“Emi…is this reality?”
It didn’t seem that way to Rika, but the incredibly humdrum conversation Chiho was having with Maou in this fantasy landscape made it all seem like nothing but a dream.
“It sure is,” her best friend told her with a content smile. “I’m not sure I really believe it, either, but this is exactly the reality I’m looking for.”
“It’s all Emeralda’s fault, y’know, for suggesting that stupid Christmas party in the first place.”
Sadao Maou was seated at the kotatsu sitting on top of the tatami-mat floor laid out in the throne room, enjoying the kombu kelp Chiho bought for him. It was a scene straight out of Room 201 in Sasazuka.
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 15 Page 16
