“Kaahhh… Bright and early in the morning, you girls are going on about killing and maiming and gouging people’s eyes out. What happened to the pretty li’l pearls of Japan that showed up a couple days ago?” Amane commented to no one in particular as she filled the cash register with change.
“So…that light was from the lighthouse, right? And you were controlling the fog and everything, Amane? What was that, anyway? And that first cyclopean and the beast demonoid… What about them? Are they dead?”
Amane didn’t shift an inch at Urushihara’s barrage of questions. She paused and sipped from a 5-Honest Energy.
“The children of the Tree of Life belong to the land of Sephirot.”
“Huh?”
The word Sephirot being tossed around without warning brought everybody to attention.
“They simply returned to the place they needed to be. The light merely showed them the way. …Well, showed them to the cliff and kind of pushed them off, but you know what I mean. People like those are bad news, you know. We don’t need them getting in the way of our business.”
After giving that inscrutable answer, Amane looked at Maou.
“You’ve met my Aunt Mikitty before, right, Maou?”
“Uh, yeah, of course…”
“Did she tell you at all about us?”
“About you… ‘Us’? You mean besides how you’re relatives?”
“…Aww. Well, never mind. Can’t say any more out of my mouth.” Amane closed the register and wryly shook her head.
“What do you mean, though? That you are more than merely human?”
Amane shook her head again at Ashiya as he wrapped up the day’s vegetables and took his knife to the whetstone.
“Welllll… If you want to say we aren’t human, then I suppose you could do that, but… Y’know, though, I go in for my physical every year, and nothing ever comes up in the tests. The picture of health!”
“No, er, that wasn’t quite what I was asking…”
“Well, it’s fine, isn’t it? We’re all alive, so.” With that, Amane strode up to Emi.
“…Um?”
“Aw, look at her sleep.”
She brought a hand to Emi’s forehead, eyes focused upon hers.
Emi stared right back at her. There was no “sleep” involved.
Maybe Amane knew about Alas Ramus inside of her after all.
“Make sure you don’t let that kid down, okay? She deserves that. In fact, she might just be a really, really distant relative of mine.”
“Uh?”
Before Emi could parse what that meant, Amane removed her hand and turned back around.
“Okay! Are we about ready to open?”
She was speaking to the demons.
“Ooh, guess I came in just at the right time.”
Chiho let herself in from the back, Emi’s wardrobe in tow.
“It’s going to be another hot one today. I only had these hanging out for a little bit, but they’re already dry. Here you are, Yusa.”
“Oh, thanks, Chiho.”
Emi accepted the laundry from Chiho, never taking her eyes off Amane as she did.
“Ah, perfect timing! Right, then.”
Then Amane clapped twice to gather everyone’s attention.
“I know it’s only been a couple days, and I’d like to thank you all very much, but I’m afraid I can’t have you work here any longer.”
“…Uhm?”
“Uhmm?!!”
None of the demons could manage more than a pained whimper in response.
“I’ll figure out how to manage this place well enough, so don’t worry about that. Oh, and—hey, Maou and Kamazuki? Aunt Mikitty got the repairs finished in record time, apparently, so your apartment’s all ready to go.”
“Uh, what are you talking about? I don’t get where this is all coming from.”
Finally swallowing Amane’s out-of-left-field announcement, Maou felt his face turn white as the morning sun hit it.
“Did I tell you about the moren-yassa? I forget.”
“Moren-yassa?”
He did vaguely remember something about that during that beachside evening with the fireworks.
The moren-yassa, the seafaring ghosts that stalked the Choshi seas.
“Well, that story’s true, you know. The details are kind of off a little, but…”
“Er?”
“But, yeahhh, I figured there had to be something up with you guys since Aunt Mikitty recommended you and everything. But, Lordy, you guys are just too much for my customers! Especially you, Maou and Ashiya. Why, you could mess up the entire energy balance on this beach, you know?”
“…Uh, umm, Amane, I’m sorry to interrupt you and all, but…”
Chiho, her face just as white as Maou’s for some reason, stepped up to the plate. She pointed a shaky finger at a corner of the shop opposite from Emi’s seat.
“Is…is that a child’s shadow over there?”
“…Whoopsie.”
Amane took a look, then turned her face toward the ceiling.
None of the demons, nor Emi or Suzuno, had noticed any kind of shadow over there.
The shadow suddenly turned upward, as if realizing it was now the center of attention.
“…!!!!”
Emi let out a silent shriek and leaped out of her chair.
The shadow had no face. Or, to be exact, it really was nothing more than a dark shade against the wall.
It looked like the matte-black silhouette of a child, and as everyone stared at it, frozen in fear, it dashed off toward the beach.
“M-M-M-My, my, my l-lieeeege…”
They all had the shock of their lives yet again as Ashiya pointed outside.
The sea, and the beach itself, was teeming.
Not with beachgoers.
With what seemed like hundreds and hundreds of shadows, just like the one that darted out of the shop.
Kimigahama, bright and sunny in the late-summer morning, was now playing host to a large conference of black silhouettes.
Every one of them was person shaped. Some even had inner tubes and beach balls in hand, all just as jet-black as themselves. There were even a few enjoying what looked like an early lunch.
But it was all shadows. Just a massive crowd of shadows.
“A-Ama, ma, ma, ma, Amane, what’s that?!”
The vision came on so suddenly, so without warning, that everyone fell into a panic, not knowing how to cope.
What were these silhouettes? They didn’t seem hostile, but they were definitely not the crowd they had been selling soft drinks and curry to yesterday.
“Well, it’s partly you guys’ fault, is what it is.”
Amane, completely unfazed, waved a hand at the crowd of shades, as if greeting her neighbors down the street.
“Wh-Wh-Wh-What do you mean?!”
Maou, keeping the dazed Chiho protected, all but shouted at Amane.
“Well, think about it. Demonic force, and holy energy. Have you ever considered what those are, really?”
“Wh-What are you…?”
“They say there’s something special to a beautiful sunrise, right? A kind of energy you can’t find anywhere else. There are moren-yassa, all right, but they aren’t the spirits of the drowned or anything. This is a holy sanctuary, one of the few on Earth where a soul can go to cleanse itself. The season only runs from mid-July to mid-August, pretty much, but this is where they kick back and take a load off. And me and my dad… We hold the fort, so to speak. We fight to protect the souls of the dead that show up here. But, y’know…”
Amane gave Maou an uncharacteristically disapproving frown.
“Your demonic and holy forces could only exist in a world that was on the brink of collapse anyway. And yesterday, when you shot all that energy over kingdom come… It threw off the all-but-perfect balance we had going in this sanctuary. They have the chance to take on human form while they’re here, but now they’ve just about lost it. So that’s why
I’m afraid I can’t keep you on any longer.”
“On the brink of collapse? Wh-What do you mean?”
Amane flashed a suggestive smile at Suzuno’s question.
“Here on planet Earth, you know… There’re a lot of forces, and mysteries, you’d never be aware of. From long, looooooong ago. Long before there were gods, even.”
She showed a politician’s knack for vagueness in the reply, but Amane gave them no chance to fire back.
“So! Now that we’re clear on that… Again, sorry about this, folks. You definitely filled the place up, so I’ll be giving you all a bonus for that. My dad always taught me that I need to reward people when they go the extra mile, so don’t worry about that.”
Amane raised an arm and snapped her fingers.
Buooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnn…
Buooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnn…
Buoooooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn…
The foghorn went off.
Along with it, the fog rolled back on to the beach from some unknown spot, like a ninja firing off the all-time mother of smoke bombs.
Between the ocean gales and flying sand, Maou could barely keep his eyes open as he heard Amane speak.
“Call me the ‘Binah’ of Earth.”
She was standing right in front of them a moment ago, but with her voice muffled and thrown by the wind and fog, it was hard to tell where she was any longer.
“Search for the Da’at of your world, and bring the world back to what it should be. I’m sure that’s what my Aunt Mikitty’s waiting for.”
And that was the end.
The moment after the foghorn fell silent, the fog was driven away by an explosive blast.
Then, when they opened their eyes, Kimigahama, the strange shades frolicking in it, and the Ohguro-ya sundry shop were all gone.
In place of the bright, wide beach, there was a path lining a concrete levee, anti-erosion tetrapods piled up on the shoreline. It was the same sight Chiho saw among the waves the first day in Choshi, on the van to Ohguro-ya. The water was shallow, lined with reefs, and wholly unsuitable for wading.
Maou, Ashiya, and Urushihara; Emi, Chiho, and Suzuno; and all of their luggage were lined up neatly on the weed-lined walkway.
“Wha…wha…wha…”
Maou’s voice trembled.
“Where the hell are we?!!”
His scream charged deep into the sea before dissipating out on the horizon.
It couldn’t have been in response to that, but it was then that he noticed something fluttering in the air: what looked like red pieces of paper. They could easily be counted, because each settled to the ground at a corresponding person’s feet.
“M-Maou, is that…?”
Chiho showed one of the envelopes to him.
“Our…bonus?”
Even with all the travel and prep costs, a 50,000-yen bonus per demon for about two and a half days of work wasn’t too shabby at all.
Counting the 10,000 yen Emi and Chiho received, and the 20,000 Suzuno earned for her sand-castle mastery, Amane blew most of yesterday’s profit on these envelopes.
Even after all the bizarre events of the past forty-eight hours or so, the King of All Demons still had serious concern over whether Ohguro-ya could remain going.
“I…assume this is not counterfeit? It will not dissolve in water, or the like?”
After that gathering of shades enjoying the beach, no one could blame Suzuno for her suspicions.
Like an evil cartoon magnate, each one of them carefully observed every millimeter of the bills. Then:
“…Let’s just go home.”
No one offered any dissent.
There was nothing along the walkway to hide behind, forcing Emi to put her dry clothes back on over her swimsuit.
The Inuboh-saki Inn and lighthouse in the distance looked the same as it always did these past two days. But if you asked any of the passersby about a public beach around here, there was no doubt they’d all shake their heads.
Maou’s landlord vanished from Tokyo after taking a similarly suggestive attitude with them, leaving a boundless number of doubts up in the air. And, much in the same way, if they tried looking for any trace of Ohguro-ya and Amane right now, they’d almost certainly come up empty.
They tried calling Amane’s cell phone, just in case—more out of curiosity than anything—but it always came up as not available or outside of service range.
“Your Demonic Highness. I found this among our luggage.”
Maou ran his eyes down the large piece of paper Ashiya handed him.
“…Man. This is too much. Does she take anything seriously, or what?”
It was a handwritten guide to Choshi’s best tourist sites.
The ocean spread out 330 degrees around them. The altitude gave them the ability to view all of Choshi in one glance.
“Dude, big whoop. We were flying higher than this just a—ow!”
Maou, shutting Urushihara down before he could ruin the mood further, climbed the stairs to a viewing platform in the middle of the observation deck.
“…Damn. This is huge.”
His vantage point gave him a 360-degree panoramic view of Choshi and the ocean surrounding it, inspiring him to stretch his body out and take in the heady wind.
The deck had the somewhat unwieldy name of “The Observatory That Makes the Earth Look Round.”
It was really more the roof of a building than an observatory, but the site, atop one of the taller hills near Inuboh rail station, was one of the most well-known sightseeing spots in all of Choshi.
The gang’s intention was to clamber into the Choshi Electric Railway car and get the hell out of there, but they were cursed by bad timing—the train pulled out of the station just as they arrived.
The next one wasn’t due for over half an hour, so they climbed up here rather than spend the time staring into space on the platform. They were rewarded with a view that outclassed all expectations.
The sun was beating down hard on them, but the cloudless sky allowed them to examine Choshi unobstructed, from edge to edge.
Inuboh-saki Lighthouse seemed pretty big from nearby, but up here, it looked about as tall as a stoplight.
“If I may, Your Demonic Highness, this is nothing. A mere speck. Hardly anything worthy of your praise. You are destined to seize Ente Isla one day. Do not fool Emilia into believing this view is enough to satisfy you.”
“Yeah, Ashiya. Someday. Right now, though, we had to rely on a bunch of other people just to keep Choshi safe.”
“That is…perhaps the case, yes.”
“Plus, if I didn’t have you, and Urushihara, and Malacoda and Adramelech, and Camio for that matter, I wouldn’t even be ruling the demon realms. You all used to be enemies to me once upon a time, remember? And then you joined me to support my cause.”
Maou put a hand on Ashiya’s shoulder.
“That’s how humans work, too, don’t you think?”
“…Indeed. Perhaps you are correct.”
“Eesh. I thought that keen observation would amaze you a little more than that.”
“I am quite used to your fanciful turns of speech at this point, my liege.”
Something about Ashiya’s finely honed rejoinder irked Maou.
“Well, I mean, look at all this. Doesn’t it make you wonder what the hell we were wasting our time with, sometimes? I mean, they make electricity with those things.”
He pointed at the wind turbines looming over Byoubugaura.
“There’s zero magic power on Earth, and they still built that Skytree-type thing over there. That’s taller than my old Devil’s Castle!”
“It is called Choshi Port Tower, Your Demonic Highness, according to the map. The Devil’s Castle was quite a bit taller.”
“And despite that, they have crap like the Choshi Electric Railway. Taking all those clunky old locomotives and building something new out of them. A new culture. There’s no way I could ever annihi
late this species. Don’t you just want to gather them all up and rule over them instead?”
“It is a nice thought, my liege, but first we must find a way to give you consistent access to your demonic force.”
Ashiya grinned helplessly at Maou, his eyes shimmering with childlike ambition. Emi chose the moment to speak up.
“Say, how’d you find enough power to return to demon form anyway?”
This wasn’t like the previous times. Choshi wasn’t blighted by some disaster that filled the locals with enough negative energy to power the transformation.
“Oh, that? Well, you remember the sword Camio brought along, right? Turns out it’s made from that horn of mine you lopped off.”
“…Huh?”
Emi let her jaw hang open.
“Hey, don’t blame me. Blame Olba. He collected all the horn fragments and had a sword forged from ’em, but there was so much demonic force in it, they couldn’t find anyone to wield the thing. I guess he brought it to Camio as kind of a bargaining chip. But that’s not the problem right now. This is.”
Maou took something out of his shorts pocket and tossed it at Emi.
It was small, the size of a marble, and it glistened a purple shade in the sun.
“Is this…?!”
“I found it with all the other bling engraved on the scabbard. Remember what Camio said? The clue Olba relied on to track down the holy sword? That’s probably it.”
“Who…made that sword set, though?”
“Well, I doubt Olba carried that sword around without the scabbard. I didn’t hear anything about it, but I’m pretty sure he had the blade and scabbard as a set, so… Kinda makes it easier to picture what kind of bastards are backing him up, huh?”
“Ah…yes. My internal investigations did reveal a supply of your horn’s fragments in Olba’s private office… But how could one forge those into a blade?”
“Hell if I know.”
It was nothing Suzuno could ignore. The whole reason she found Japan was because she had tracked the path Olba took after examining the horn fragments.
And even now, Olba’s name wielded considerable power among Church officials on Ente Isla’s Western Island.
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 4 Page 24
