“Oh, uh, hello. Sorry if I’m calling you late.”
“No, no.”
“Umm, so, Ms. Shiba told me about some possible work available at your beachside restaurant, so I thought I would call you about it, sooo…”
“Shiba… Ahhhh!”
Maou’s voice tapered off just in time for his eardrum to be blasted by the girl’s bellow.
“Are you the guy living in that apartment building my aunt Mikitty runs in Tokyo?!”
“Mikitty… Oh! Y-Yes, I am. My name is Maou.”
He recalled the landlord all but demanding that Emi call her “Mikitty” in the past.
“Oh, yes yes yes yes! She told me all about you! I almost gave up, you know! We’re almost at the end of July, but you hadn’t called yet, so…”
The woman on the other end of the line couldn’t have sounded brighter and bubblier.
Her manner of speech indicated she was likely to be slightly older than Emi or Suzuno, but he couldn’t pick up any of the eerie, inscrutable, enigmatic presence Shiba always infused into her speech.
“Yeah, sorry about that. She and I kind of got our wires crossed.”
There was no way Maou could confess to being so frightened by the video that he encased it in an entire roll of duct tape.
“Oh, yeah, I know how my aunt likes to go hopping around the world all the time. I usually get a New Year’s greeting card from her around February or so, if you know what I mean.”
“Hohh. Really?”
If that’s how she treated her own kin, it was almost a miracle that she sent word to Maou and Suzuno so promptly.
As he mulled over this, the woman suddenly shifted gears.
“So…Maou, right? You comin’, or…?”
Obviously the type of woman who didn’t waste time with formalities. Maou had to stop himself from reflexively agreeing.
To Maou, a beachside snack bar and supply shop run by a lone woman was uncharted territory.
They had yet to discuss the nature of his job, for one. For that matter, the presumptive niece of Maou’s landlord had yet to give her name.
There was a phrase Maou learned early on in life: Know thy enemy, know thyself, and thou shalt not fear a hundred battles. It was his credo ever since he began his struggle to unite the demon realms, so long ago. He chose his words carefully, seeking to extract the information he needed.
“Um, well, I haven’t really heard anything about the job, except that it’s at your restaurant in Chiba…”
His conversational partner chimed in on cue.
“Oh, no? Yeah, Aunt Mikitty’s never too fussy about details like that, I guess.”
Her voice indicated she had nothing to hide.
“But anyway, we’re pretty much on the edge of Chiba, in the town of Choshi. Do you know where Kimigahama is, maybe?”
“No…”
From the side, Riho handed Maou a pen and paper. Maou nodded at her as he accepted them.
Hurriedly, he wrote “Choshi” on the paper, hearing a slight, surprised gasp from Chiho behind him.
“Yeah, you probably wouldn’t. I guess Inuboh or Toyama would be more recognizable place names up here, huh? Unless you’re on an island or a mountain or something, you can see the morning sunrise on the Kimigahama shoreline before anyone else in the Kanto region can.”
“Um…”
None of what the woman said sounded familiar. She must have picked up on it.
“Well, just picture the easternmost edge of Chiba, and that’s close enough. Just a liiiittle bit removed from downtown Tokyo, you know?”
And with that offhand remark, Shiba’s niece wrapped up her description of the place.
There was no point whining about it, though. Maou wrote down the unfamiliar names on the paper and pressed onward.
“Oh, and sorry to cut to the chase, but I can’t really pay you a fortune or anything, either. I’m thinking a thousand yen an hour per person, but how ’bout it?”
“A th-thousand yen?!”
The figure took Maou aback. It was far from what he anticipated. But what did “per person” mean? Did she want him to bring a busload of friends along?
If Ashiya joined Maou up there, simple math indicated the Devil’s Castle would be raking in 2,000 yen an hour.
“Yeah, well, my dad ran this place, like, half as a hobby. Pretty much clueless about how to make money off it, you know? But we still wind up busy during the season, so we’re hurting for some help right now. Oh, you can stay here for free, too. And I’ll feed you. And at no extra charge, you’ll get to swim in the ocean after work all you want ’til it gets dark!”
Free food, free board, a thousand yen an hour. The swimming thing was unimportant—Maou couldn’t have asked for a more ideal work situation.
“So…are you looking for multiple people?”
This question was a gamble in some ways. Three people called Devil’s Castle home, after all, not two, and the third was the utterly work ethic–less Urushihara.
Judging by Shiba’s invite and the way her niece sounded, it seemed to Maou that Ashiya’s ticket was already punched. The three of them, though? If her father was that “clueless,” the labor costs involved could make it out of the question.
That, and even if Maou asked nicely, there was no guarantee that Person No. 3 would so much as pour a soda for anybody.
But the woman’s response surpassed all expectations.
“Oh, what, you got a gang you wanna bring along?”
“Um. Well, with me and my roommates, it’d be three people.”
“Huh? Three?”
“Huh? Three?”
It came from Chiba and Emi simultaneously. Maou paid them no mind.
“Well, sure! Bring ’em on over! We’re never gonna have too much help here, trust me on that one. It’s pretty hard work, apparently, so even if it isn’t full-time, you guys could probably take shifts or something if you like.”
It was almost like she knew Maou personally.
He still didn’t know what kind of work it was, but they could always leave the easy stuff to Urushihara for whatever fifteen minutes of the day he felt like working. Then Maou and Ashiya could pull full-time shifts—and if Urushihara picked up even a gnat’s crotch hair worth of inspiration along the way, it’d be an unexpected bounty for all three of them.
“…Would it be okay if the three of us came over, then?”
The woman laughed out loud. Chiho winced across the table.
“Well, sure! When can you show up?”
“Well, we need to get some things sorted out tomorrow, so if it’s all right with you, we could make it the next day, August 1.”
“Whoa! Better get you guys’ room ready quick, huh? Thanks a lot, though. The faster the better! The way my dad puts it, we’ll pretty much be slammed starting in August, so it’ll be suuuuper appreciated.”
Something that bothered Maou was how this woman was learning all this information from someone else. The work’s “apparently” pretty hard. “Her dad said” it’d be crowded. Maou dared to ask about it.
“Oh, that? Well, I dunno if Aunt Mikitty told you or anything, but my dad runs this place. I help him out usually, but just when we started to gear up for the season, he went on vacation and palmed the whole place off on me. Which, I dunno, I don’t mind taking over for him sooner or later, but I kinda have my own job myself, you know? And a girl can’t really run this joint alone. And I’m just as clueless on how to keep the lights on as my dad is. And, you know, I’m kind of about to hit the prime of my life soon, you know what I mean? So this is kind of dangerous for me!”
Exactly what “the prime of my life” meant, and how running a beach stand would be “dangerous” for it, made Maou seriously wonder if this restaurant had any future. The question made it all the way to his lips before he stopped himself.
“But, yeah, if my aunt knows you, then you’re all invited. Thanks!”
“Oh, uh, no, thank you… But where should we go, exact
ly?”
“Oh! Yeah, guess I have to give you that little nugget of knowledge sooner or later, huh? Do you have a car, or are you taking the train? Flying, maybe?”
“F-Flying? No, it’d be the train.”
No matter where they went, Maou and his cohorts were restricted to public transportation.
“Well, it’s gonna be a pretty long trip. From downtown, you’ll take the Sobu line to the end in Chiba, then transfer to the JR Sobu Main Line to that end station, which is Choshi. From there, there’s something called the Choshi Electric Railway. You’ll get on that and take it to Inuboh, which is one station away from the end. There’s a station called Kimigahara just before that, but Inuboh’s actually closer to where we’re at. That’s gonna be about a three-hour trip overall, but—hey—it’ll be like a vacation, right?”
Three of those rail lines, and two of those endpoints, were wholly unfamiliar to Maou. This was farther away than he thought.
Ever since Maou and Ashiya found themselves marooned in Japan, their financial situation all but precluded them from venturing beyond the twenty-three wards of central Tokyo. This would be their first trip to another prefecture, and just as she put it, it sounded like quite the little journey.
Even to a Devil King who’d waged a bloody war of conquest across hundreds of miles of barren wasteland, three hours on a train was three hours on a train.
“I can pick you guys up from Inuboh station, so give me a ring once you arrive, okay?”
“Sure thing. Before you hang up, though, can you tell me what the place is called, and…um…what you’re called?”
An odd question to ask after making all these arrangements, but one that remained unresolved. The woman burst out in laughter again, loud enough to make Maou almost take his ear off the phone.
“Ahh-hah-hah-hah! Oh, I’m sorry! Jeez, what am I doing, not even giving you my name or anything?”
Maou honestly wanted to ask her.
“Well, my name is Amane Ohguro. I’m Mikitty’s niece, and I run this tiny little place we like to call Ohguro-ya.”
“Ohguro… Well, great. What time should we be there, two days from now?”
Another classic part-time job interviewee question. The answer Amane Ohguro gave was a world first for him.
“Oh, uh, anytime’s fine, really.”
“Uhm?”
“Just show up when you can! I’ll pick up you whenever.”
“R-Really…? Um, do I need to bring anything for the job, or…?”
“Some muscle?”
An extremely brief answer, and one that missed the point of Maou’s query.
“Well, as long as you bring some clothes and a toothbrush and stuff, that’s about all, I think. You can pick up anything you need here, so…”
Didn’t he need any other tools for the job? This wasn’t some summer trip to Grandma’s house.
“…Oh! But definitely bring a beach towel, okay? The kind where you can close the corners with Velcro instead of just wrapping it around you. Otherwise you might trip on the sand or fling one of your sandals into the sea or something. You definitely don’t wanna work barefoot, ’cuz you might cut yourself on a can or pebble or shell or something in the sand.”
“Beach sandals. All right. I’ll find some that fit me.”
Now this was the kind of info he needed. But the rundown of work duties ended almost as it began.
“Well, don’t stop at the sandals, you know? You’re gonna be by the beach! Get some goggles and swim trunks, too. And if you wanna light some fireworks, we got a whole shelf full over here! We’re not allowed to have any that shoot into the air or anything, but if you light one of those Sudden Death sparklers—man! The sea breeze makes that thing burn like TNT!”
It was probably best not to approach this job like urban fast-food work after all. There was no telling what direction Amane would zoom off to next with this conversation. Was this how everyone on the beach acted, or was Ohguro-ya an outlier in more than just location?
“Oh! But there is one thing I better warn you about.”
“What’s that?”
Amane never sounded more serious than during this one moment. Maou’s face grew stern as he awaited the next sentence.
“This place, you know, it’s really nothing fancy or anything. We get customers and all, but they’re all pretty chill. It’s not really a party beach, I guess you could say.”
“Sure.”
“We do get pretty busy sometimes, too. I know I said you can swim all you want, but you’re probably gonna have to keep it to the evenings and early mornings. So…”
A pause, and then she continued, her voice heavy with concern.
“Don’t go in expecting to pick up bikini chicks all day, all right? You might get in trouble if you start propositioning girls like that.”
“That’s what you were leading up to?!”
“Huh? Well, what else would it be? I mean, that kinda thing’s important if you’re a guy, right?”
“No! I mean, um, we are gonna be working there, right?!”
Maou was quickly reverting back to his previous “hidden-camera prank TV show” theory.
“Oooh, I see! You already got someone special in your life, huh, Maou?”
“No, I don’t!!!”
Out the corner of his eye, he noticed Chiho, Emi, and Riho rear back in surprise as he almost shouted into the phone.
All of his job-application phone calls before now were a lot more…businesslike. Tense. He wanted more from a job than a paycheck and a pat on the head, of course, but this complete lack of tension seemed an issue in itself.
Thanks to Kisaki’s positive attitude, life at the MgRonald in front of Hatagaya station never felt stiff or rigid. But working for a large corporation still meant a lot of operational manuals, workplace manners, and unwritten social rules.
For someone like Maou, who found solace in such bureaucracy, Ohguro-ya now felt like a complete unknown.
He let out a raspy sigh as Amane paused, as if in thought.
“Okay, well, that’s totally cool, too, if you’re really that uninterested or whatever. It’s just kind of unexpected, you know? The way Aunt Mikitty described you, I thought you were kinda more of a wild man.”
What kind of description of Maou and Ashiya had Shiba given Amane down at Ohguro-ya? And what kind of mental image did Amane construct from it?
All this time, Maou prided himself on the fact that no demon in all of history was as diligent, as faithful, as scrupulous, in carrying out his by-the-hour quick-service career / global conquest.
Once he arrived, he would take action. All these false preconceptions making themselves known over the phone couldn’t be allowed to last.
“Okay, well, anyway, I’ll get there the day after tomorrow as soon as I can!”
“Great! I’ll be expecting you.”
Despite the anticlimactic end to the call, Maou found himself oddly exhausted.
“What were you guys talking about?”
Emi was the first to ask. From their incomplete perspective, it sounded very little like a job interview.
“I’m not too sure myself.”
It was an unknown job, with an unknown woman, in an unknown place. There was no other way to put it.
“But how’d it go? Do you think you can do it?”
The ice in Riho’s tea clinked as she spoke. Maou put away his cell phone and bowed deeply.
“Ms. Sasaki, I really need to thank you for letting me use your VCR. It looks like I’ve got someplace to go after all. In two days we’re all headed off to Chiba to work by the beach.”
“Oh, wonderful!”
Riho nodded and smiled.
The nervousness seemed to loosen from Chiho’s face as well, before a sudden thought came to her.
“When you said ‘three people,’ did you mean Urushihara, too? Are you sure about that? Can he even go outside or anything? Can he have a normal conversation?”
She must have had the sa
me thought as Maou. She seemed anxious, all but assuming that the ex-archangel was sure to screw everything up.
“Mm? What do you mean? Is this Urushihara one of those ADHD cases?”
Riho seemed to read her mind, although her terminology was a tad misguided.
“Something like that, I guess…but me and our other roommate are gonna cover for him as much as we can.”
“Hmmm…”
This time, Riho’s nod was a distracted one as she shot a look askance. Her daughter, processing things in her mind, had her eyes on Maou instead.
“Oh, thanks for the pen and paper.”
Emi peeked at the jotted place names as he handed the paper back.
“Now will you promise me you’ll actually open whatever your landlord sends you next time?” she demanded.
“Oof…” Maou complained. “I, uh, I’ll try.”
Of course Emi could say that—she hadn’t see That Photo. But Miki Shiba had just rescued them from the brink of poverty. She deserved some thanks.
Then Maou realized the tape was still running. He turned toward the screen to stop it…and then it appeared.
“By the way, did you know that they offer free belly dancing classes to the tourists in Egypt?”
His landlord had been rambling on about her trip this whole time in the background.
Somewhere along the line, the pyramid background transformed into a large, open space inside an ornate palace.
“There’s a tribe here in the desert that devotes itself to music and dance, and they said I was a first-class student! I’m going to be in a dance competition here in a few days. Care for a sneak preview? Here we go!”
“Oh, my, what a lovely outfit.”
The landlord flashed a sidelong glance at the camera. Her new outfit daringly revealed her full shoulders, the top covering that inscrutable boundary between her hips and stomach decked in a dazzling array of jewels and silver pieces. A sheer veil and crimson-red satin skirt completed the picture, turning Shiba into something resembling a huge, man-eating Venus flytrap monster.
Maou moved like lightning.
This video couldn’t be allowed to continue. If it did, these innocent bystanders would be traumatized for life!
But before Maou’s finger could reach the STOP button, some kind of Oriental instrument began to play, and Shiba began to mercilessly jiggle her arms, stomach, neck, and every other part of her ample frame. Then, in what could be called an insult to the mystical dance that so captivated the cultural tastemakers of nineteenth-century Europe, her belly began to gyrate.
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 4 Page 5
