The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 4

by Satoshi Wagahara

  Then, after a few more pleasantries, Maou and Chiho walked out of the MgRonald together.

  “…”

  They stood there, demonstrating exactly what it meant to be lobotomized to passersby on the street, until Sariel ran right into them on his way to delivering the day’s rose bouquet.

  “Oh, Sariel…”

  Chiho had only just recently begun to shed herself of her physiological hatred of Sariel. He stopped at her voice and lunged toward the pair, his heaven-gifted Evil Eye of the Fallen wide open and sparkling.

  “Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaoooooooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!”

  “Gahh!!”

  The small-statured Sariel grabbed Maou forcefully by the collar, almost sending him toppling to the ground.

  “What is the meaning of this what sort of evil scheme do you have afoot why is the restaurant of my eternal goddess shutting down spit it out you conniving monster and tell me where you hid my goddess or else I will incinerate you with the sheer pathos streaming out every pore of my body!!”

  Sariel, in his own way, was proving just as unobservant as Maou was. He must have missed the notice on the window Kisaki claimed she posted up.

  “Ow-ow-ow! Get those roses off! The thorns…!”

  The rose bouquet raked across the bridge of Maou’s nose.

  “Have you forgotten the noble act of selflessness I committed when I refused to cooperate with Gabriel you putrid demon and if you were shutting this down then why didn’t anyone say anything to me if only I knew then I could have pooled my courage and my finances together to make the most momentous confession of my entire liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiife!!!”

  Maou was ready to poke Sariel about what his finances would accomplish, or how effective he thought any kind of confession would be, but the thorns were going to penetrate skin shortly. Chiho was kind enough to react first.

  “S-Sariel, wait a second! What do you mean, cooperate with Gabriel?!”

  “Oh?”

  Chiho put a hand around one of the arms Sariel had on Maou’s collar. Instantly:

  “Pfft! I never refuse the invitation of a beautiful woman. How would you like to join me inside Sentucky to enjoy our brand-new Tandoori Chicken Twister over some iced tea?”

  Now it was Chiho’s hand in his grasp, as Sariel knelt down to kiss it. It was not quite the reaction she intended. But she had been through hell with him before. Her very life was threatened. And precious little of it made any sense to her. This relatively benign level of sexual harassment wasn’t going to faze her anymore.

  “I’ll tell on you to Ms. Kisaki.”

  It came out even colder than intended, the disappointment of not being able to join Maou in Chiba squeaking out with it.

  Sariel, in response, flashed an expression that deftly combined hope and despair on one face.

  “Mhh… I, I hope you wouldn’t do anything so drastic… But is my goddess still inside?!”

  You didn’t need a knife to kill Sariel. All you needed was the word Kisaki.

  “If you want to know, then tell me. What did you mean when you said you refused to cooperate with Gabriel?”

  “Ermm, that was, I…”

  Sariel couldn’t formulate a response. The words had apparently slipped out of him, and he clearly regretted it.

  Maou watched on with more than a bit of awe as Chiho expertly wrapped him around her finger.

  “You’ve gotten a lot stronger, Chi…”

  It was a deeply moving sight. Maou had profoundly altered the life of somebody close to him, in assorted ways.

  “Tell me that, and I’ll tell you about MgRonald. But if you don’t, I’m gonna call Ms. Kisaki and tell her that Mr. Sarue tried to assault me.”

  “Well, Gabriel paid a visit to Sentucky the other day. He wanted me to help him retrieve Emilia’s holy sword and the Yesod fragment, so we spoke for a while.”

  A word or two from Chiho was all it took for Sariel to spill everything he was so hesitant about a moment ago. Not a moment of hesitation.

  “And you’re good with that?”

  Maou changed this angel’s life, too, now that he thought about it. Not that he cared two seconds later.

  Up to now, Sariel was still on one knee, Chiho’s hand in his. The stares of passing customers bothered him not a bit. He was likely fated to this sort of life, no matter where he wound up.

  “The reason I came down in the first place to fetch Emilia’s sword is because Gabriel failed at the job. But I didn’t know Yesod was broken into that many tiny fragments, or that one of them took the shape of that young child. And I didn’t care, either. My goddess is all that occupies my mind these days. What does some sword have to do with me? He hasn’t been back since.”

  The term goddess was starting to grate on Maou’s mind, but to sum up, Sariel was so smitten with Kisaki by this point that he no longer cared about his heavenly duties. It brought his qualifications as an archangel into serious question.

  He expected nothing else from Sariel, in a way, but Maou still found the story a tad strange.

  “Hang on a sec. ‘That many tiny fragments’? So you knew Yesod was broken up, at least?”

  “…enhh.”

  Sariel growled. Another slip of the tongue. He dared a glance at Chiho.

  “You knew that, didn’t you?”

  “…Yes, I did.”

  Chiho offered him no room for negotiations. Sariel hung his head in disappointment.

  “I was given the duty of retrieving Emilia’s holy sword because it was one of the fragments we absolutely knew the location of.”

  Despite having met her at least once, Sariel did not initially notice that Alas Ramus was herself a Yesod fragment.

  He had a suspicion that her armor, the Cloth of the Dispeller—freshly evolved after its fusion with Alas Ramus—had something to do with the Yesod, but apparently not even the heavens had a full grasp of how the fragments were evolving, and transforming.

  “I guess Gabriel didn’t get his hands on the sword either, did he? That’s why he approached me and asked for my help with the Yesod fragment. I told him, ‘No, I’m busy.’ You guys owe me one now, don’t you? I saved you from having another heavenly menace in your way.”

  Sariel managed to patronize Maou even as he spilled the beans.

  But he revealed a lot. Not only did Gabriel not cry all the way back home to heaven—he wasn’t giving up on Alas Ramus.

  Defeating Sariel and Gabriel in succession, as far as Heaven was concerned, changed nothing. It just meant they didn’t have as much muscle to enforce their will with.

  And that meant Maou still remained on the defensive. There was no telling when, where, or how his opponent would strike, and that worried him.

  “…?”

  “Wh-Why are you looking at me like that, Chiho Sasaki? I’ve given you the full and honest truth.”

  “Oh. Well, great, then.”

  Chiho returned Sariel’s glance. Like Maou, something on her face suggested that something didn’t quite sit with her, either.

  “Sariel, how are you so sure you ‘absolutely knew’ the location of—”

  Chiho was stopped by a voice from behind her.

  “Jeez, guys, you’re still out here talking to each…other…?”

  In an instant, Sariel’s face shone like a thousand-watt bulb.

  But Maou and Chiho, frozen in place by the ominous way the voice trailed off, turned around in abject horror.

  There they saw Kisaki—not in her normal uniform, but in a bright gray pantsuit, hair undone and a large business bag draped over her shoulder.

  And she wasn’t looking at Maou, or Chiho, but Sariel, still kneeling, hand still clasped around hers. Her eyes were filled with enough rage to even stop a Devil King in mid-hoofbeat.

  “…What are you doing to my crewmember, Mitsuki Sarue?”

  Sariel somehow kept up a timid smile in the face of this withering gaze.

  There’s an old Scandinavian f
airy tale about an evil mirror, shattered into splinters that penetrated the hearts and eyes of people, making them susceptible to the sweet words of the Snow Queen.

  The main difference between little Sariel and the boy in that tale was whether his Snow Queen of choice had even a shred of love for him.

  “N-No, I, this was a kind of negotiation, you see. I was forced into this in a feeble attempt to determine my goddess’s location…”

  “I’ve been willing to put up with you as long as you’re a paying customer. But someone rotten enough to lay his hands willy-nilly on an underage coworker is no customer of mine! From now on, you’re banned from the property until further notice!”

  “Rrgghh?!?!”

  The archangel Sariel, powerful enough to annul the almighty force of Emilia’s holy sword, was frozen by a single word from a single woman. He shattered to pieces and helplessly clinked to the ground.

  “Get on going, you two. Marko, you were with Chi the whole time! Why didn’t you do something about him?”

  “Oh, um, sorry.”

  Maou apologized as Chiho flailed her hands around, staring at the shiny chunks of ice that used to be Sariel as they melted in the summer heat and flowed toward the curbside gutter.

  “L-Let’s go, Chi.”

  “Go? Oh. Sure, um… Okay. Thanks again, Ms. Kisaki.”

  Maou and Chiho hurriedly trotted away, down the Koshu-Kaido road, still looking terribly confused about it all.

  “I, I think maybe we were meaner to Sariel than we should’ve been…”

  “Hey, think of it as payback for having Suzuno kidnap you, huh? He kinda had it coming. I’m amazed Ms. Kisaki would even deal with that hard sell until now.”

  Their appraisal was as cruel as it was justified.

  “But you know, Maou…”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  There was no point trying to extract anything else from Sariel. But Chiho didn’t have to say it. It stuck out in Maou’s mind, too.

  He said that Emilia’s Yesod piece “was one of the fragments we absolutely knew the location of.”

  The heavens let Emi run around unfettered in Japan with her holy sword for over a year. How did they ever get a bead on the sword’s location, and hers?

  “…Well, it doesn’t really matter. If they weren’t after me, then it’s Emi’s problem, not mine.”

  In terms of cold logic, this was a dispute between Emi and heaven. Outside of that first attack from Urushihara, Maou had almost zero stake in it. So there was nothing left to think about—

  “Don’t you care about what happens to Alas Ramus?”

  Chiho squinted as she asked it, expertly cutting off his thought before it could advance any further.

  “I mean, Yusa’s sword is pretty much Alas Ramus herself now, isn’t it?”

  “It… But I can’t fight at all in Japan anymore. Emi’s a ton stronger than me, so why do I even have to do anything…?”

  “That’s not the problem. What kind of dad doesn’t try to protect his little girl? You’re gonna make her cry, you know.”

  “Jeez, Chiho, whose side are you on?”

  The question wasn’t sarcastic. Maou was inexorably conflicted.

  “I just want everyone I like to play nice with each other. I kinda want us to be together. For the long term.”

  There was a twinge of sadness to the reply.

  “…What? Is there something up?”

  This was the Chiho who once burned in flaming jealousy after mistaking Emi for Maou’s evil ex-girlfriend. Lately, though, she was acting…mature beyond her years, perhaps. Or maybe preoccupied about where Maou, Emi, and Alas Ramus were going with their lives.

  “Mmm, I guess I can talk about it if you want…but are you ready to listen? ’Cause it’s kind of heavy.”

  “Huh? Uh, sure.”

  “Well, you told me a bit ago that you believed in me, right? That you relied on me and stuff. But…I can’t keep this going as it is right now.”

  “K-Keep what going?”

  “I mean, I can’t fight the way Yusa and Suzuno can, and it’s not like I’ve known you forever the way Ashiya has. I just happened to be near you, and then I found out the truth. And even if I get all worried about Urushihara being all lazy and screwing it up for you, it’s not like we could go to Chiba together.”

  Even under the whining cicadas overrunning the trees lining the sidewalk, Chiho’s voice had the strange power of ringing loud and clear in Maou’s head.

  “So I want to study more, and learn about the world around me. And when I’m all grown up, I want to be able to help you when you need it. You said you relied on me, so I want to answer that, you know?”

  “…Yeah.”

  “And I haven’t gotten an answer from you yet, either. But if I’m going to get one, I want it to be a good one. So I really want to try harder from here on in. That way, someday…”

  Without warning, Chiho fell silent and crossed her arms, chin and chest held high in the air as she let out as low and foreboding a laugh as her voice could manage.

  “I can become a Great Demon General in your reformed army and duel against Yusa for the right to have you!”

  “Bfft!”

  Maou performed an unrehearsed spit-take.

  “Wh-What part of our conversation made you my Great Demon General?!”

  “Ashiya promised that he’d recommend me a while ago. I said no at the time, but if that’s how it is, maybe I should apply after all, huh?”

  Chiho was acting like she’d just volunteered to run for student council.

  “Which, maybe that’s just a joke and everything, but if I’m going to win against Yusa, I need to be more grown up. I need some weapons to fight her that she can’t use against me. I want to go to college, broaden my horizons, and become the sort of woman you can rely on. Here, and on Ente Isla.”

  The sheer passion behind her wish surprised Maou. The August heat must have been making her feverish.

  “College, huh…? But…Chi, you’ve been a huge help to all of us already, you know?”

  Chiho frowned in dissatisfaction as her eyes met Maou’s.

  “Maybe ‘Maou’ relies on me. But ‘Devil King Satan’? All I do with him is sit around and wait for him to save my life.”

  Maou stared at her agape.

  “I want to be someone you can put your trust in with anything. Anytime. Whenever.”

  Maou hadn’t noticed it at the time, but what he told Chiho after being lectured by Kisaki the other day must have emboldened her like a bolt of magic.

  “I…”

  Seeing such dedicated feelings from a human being made it hard for Maou to figure out a response. He trolled around for an answer, but hemmed and hawed in awkwardness instead.

  “Oh, it’s Ashiya!”

  Chiho, ever thoughtful, turned her attention somewhere else.

  Ashiya had just stepped away from the Sasazuka rail station building, trundling a wheeled suitcase along with him. Maou knew they’d be using that on the trip, although he couldn’t guess why he’d taken it on the train with him to…wherever he’d gone.

  Attracted by Chiho’s voice, he approached them with a breezy wave.

  “Good afternoon to you, my liege. I see Ms. Sasaki is joining you?”

  “…Yeah.”

  Chiho’s eyes were on the suitcase Ashiya pulled behind him.

  “We ran into each other at MgRonald. Are you taking that to Choshi? That’s a pretty nice-looking bag.”

  “Yes. We’ll need to bring along what we need over there, so I had some trouble deciding on which to choose…”

  Ashiya still looked hesitant as he placed a hand on the oversized, caster-equipped travel suitcase, offering more than enough space for the clothes, underwear, towels, and any other essentials three demons would need on the beach.

  “We aren’t allowed to leave anything in the apartment, so we need space to bring our bank records and other valuable documents. And there is no telling what the security
situation might be like, so I thought something sturdy and lockable would work best for us.”

  “Oh. Yeah, that might be a good idea.”

  “Did you take the train someplace to buy it?”

  “Yes, Your Demonic Highness. There was more of a selection downtown, and considering our long journey tomorrow, I decided to take the train instead of walk to conserve my energy. That, and I wanted to use the public phone in the station.”

  Ashiya was so cheap that he’d cheerfully walk the half hour or so to Shinjuku, Tokyo’s central hub, on a regular basis instead of paying the 120-yen train fare. But under this muggy summer sun, wheeling a heavy suitcase halfway across Tokyo would wipe the smile off anyone’s face.

  Plus, with all the sandals and extra clothing Ashiya had to buy for the trip, Maou wasn’t about to criticize him for hopping on a train for a quick round-trip jaunt.

  Maou was still curious about who Ashiya wanted to reach out to along the way, but not even the Devil King felt he had the right to invade his subordinate’s privacy.

  Ashiya was generally not the sort of demon to hide things from people. He must have had a good reason to do so this time, but the phone call couldn’t have been anything with major repercussions for anyone else.

  After neatly wrapping up that question in his mind, Maou examined his suitcase. It was brand-new, tag still attached, explaining how the bag allowed airport security to unlock and inspect it without damaging anything.

  “That really is a fancy bag you got, huh?”

  “The time may come, my liege, when we must travel overseas in order to restore your demonic powers. I considered it a smart investment for that day.”

  “Ooooh! So you can conquer the world, right?”

  There were few people on Earth who could so freely toss around terms like “conquer the world” in front of an arch-demon who really did conquer the world. That is, another world. Nearly.

  “Precisely, Ms. Sasaki. Oh, and by the way, we will be sure to buy a souvenir or two for you over there. The least we can do, after all, to repay you. Choshi, I hear, is one of the most well-known fishing harbors in Japan.”

  Judging by Ashiya’s unfazed response to the high schooler’s observation, the concept of “conquering the world” held about as much weight with them as a helium balloon.