That was just it. This man had a tendency to act like the able leader in any group he was in, even though his skills were decidedly on the average side. People were already starting to shun him a little for that, and even Maou had to admit he wasn’t too good with that type of person. But he wasn’t incompetent. As Maou’s beloved boss, Mayumi Kisaki, put it, “A salaried employee is asked for more than merely their strengths on the front lines.” Here he was, after all, trying to break the ice and help all these trainees from different regions and professions to work together. The larger the firm you worked for, the more vital those kinds of skills became.
“So what is big problem with it? You understand his reasons, yes?”
“Sure. Assuming breaking the ice really is his sole motivation.”
“Huh?”
“There’s someone else in our group. A sort of young girl. You’ve seen her a few times…”
“Whaaa?! You found another of the sacrifice for you, Maou?!”
“…”
“…Oh, don’t be mean,” Acieth sulked. “I know. It was Kusunoki, or Masashige, or something close.”
“Kusuda. Her name’s Kusuda.”
Being fused with Maou during training, Acieth was at least casually familiar with everyone Maou met there.
“It’s totally obvious this guy, our team leader, wants to get closer to Kusuda. Like, when we’re working in a group and stuff, he’s practically stuck to her like glue.”
“Oh, so that man organizing party, he likes this Kusuda? Who was he? Ashikaga, or Godaigo, or something?”
“…Nitta. His name’s Nitta. If you don’t know someone’s name, don’t go spitting out anything that comes to mind.”
Acieth’s suggestions sounded a lot like the names of famous old samurai. Maou began to wonder what kind of media she consumed at Shiba’s place all day.
“Well, Nitta, he is poor judge of women! I can tell, that Kusuda, she plays poor, innocent little girl type! You first look at her, she is kind of mature, like Chiho, but she is just good at the buttering-up of you! You know, I saw Kusuda in training center bathroom, and she was giving someone the bad mouth in there! Chiho, she never does that!”
“You saw her where?” Maou was taken aback. Several major revelations were packed into that statement.
“You know, the second class! You say ‘Oh, I cannot concentrate when you do this carrying on,’ so we separate. Then, you give me money to go eat. So I walked around training center a little…”
“Why did you do that…?”
He did vaguely remember something like that. They were holding staff interviews that day, way up in the same building Maou took his MgRonald Barista training in. It was the kind of place filled with nothing but salarymen in business suits, so a silver-haired, violet-eyed preteen was going to stand out a bit.
“Right, well, between this, that, and the other thing, I’m not too enthusiastic about the meetup, no. I feel like it’s all just a pretext, you know?”
“But you say it is vital, no? Because you do not want to be the bad side with them, and all?”
“…Kinda.” Maou shrugged at having his words bounced back at him.
“But you know what it is, Maou?”
“What?”
“If you are the talking to me about all of it, it must bother you great deal, huh?”
“…!”
Maou stopped. He was at the west exit of JR Shinjuku Station in the afternoon, a fairly crowded place to stand motionless. Several passersby gave him dirty looks as they shoved their way around his side.
“Emi and Chiho, they don’t come to apartment too much lately, and Ashiya and Lucifer and Suzuno, they don’t come back much, either. You are that lonely?”
Had he weakened to the point that even Acieth was pointing it out to him? Was it that bleedingly obvious? Or could you describe this as being “weakened” at all?
To be sure, Maou’s life had changed a lot, starting around the new year. People and things he normally took for granted were gone from sight. But as Acieth just hinted at, they hadn’t completely vanished. He saw Emi and Chiho all the time at work, Urushihara and Suzuno came home on regular occasions, and he maintained close contact with Ashiya. Sometimes, Maou went over to Ente Isla himself, even. Things had only been like this for about a month—but did Acieth really feel that compelled to speak up after looking at his work and his personal feelings? It seemed impossible to imagine.
“…Well…”
“Mm?”
“To be honest, I’m getting pretty sick of takeout.”
“Oh, be more honest!”
Acieth seemed to almost enjoy the desperately bold front Maou attempted to put up. These changes were, frankly, tiny in the great scheme of things. Compared to the first few days after losing to Emi and getting thrown into Japan, they were nothing. But it was only human to feel stressed out over sudden environmental changes.
Maou had put a firm deadline of “Alas Ramus’s birthday” on their god-slaying battle. It was already early February. If things went the way Maou pictured them, it’d all be settled in less than five months. Of course, that was a lofty goal; they hadn’t found any Devil Overlord relics yet, and once they reached heaven, there was a long hit list of targets up there. Nobody had any idea what kind of battle awaited. But Maou had promised his “daughter” that the Christmas present he couldn’t obtain would be her birthday present instead.
So with all that fighting to do and promises to keep, why was he letting this run him down?
“You are no good as Devil King.”
“Stop talking to me like you’re reading my mind,” Maou said as he began to walk again. “But I guess I am overreacting a little. Sorry.”
“Well, I feel fine, and Mikitty, she lets me eat lots of the delicious things, so I never get sick of takeout. But…”
“Mm?”
“Don’t you think your guard, it is being let down too much?”
“My guard?”
“Yes! I know that everyone, they work at Ente Isla, and you and Emi are on standby here, but the angels, none of them said Oh, we will be doing the nothing, yes?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“Mikitty and Amane, they are strong, so maybe the angels do something under the covers, hiding from them? You know, those little stinkers!”
After learning the whole story behind them, Maou knew full well that Acieth’s negative assessment of the angels was absolutely right. It chagrined him a little.
“And you know, Suzuno, she is not home very often. Are you thinking about safety of Chiho? You cannot trust words of Gabriel, ever!”
“We’re all good there. I had him tell me about the security net built around Chi’s place. If she’s around there or in Sasahata North High School, and a non-Earth-based source of holy or demonic force appears, the net sends out a distress sonar that covers a radius of over a mile. Me, Emi, and Amane have worked things out so at least one of us is always in the area. If something goes awry, we can respond in a flash.”
“A sonar with a radius of over a mile? Won’t that annoy neighbors?”
“Nah, it’s not at a frequency that normal people can hear. It’s basically a big barrier—a simple reactionary sonar, so even if it goes off, it’ll be kind of like a buzzing sound to Chi. And if she’s out of range, I told her to let me, Emi, Suzuno, or Amane know first.”
“…Hmm.”
“What? You got a problem with that?”
“No,” a dubious Acieth replied, looking more dissatisfied every second. “If you and Chi are okay, then hunky-dory, but…” She began to choose her words more carefully. “But I wonder, is Chi really okay with it?”
“She said it’d put her mind at ease.”
“Oh, no, no good.”
“What do you mean by that?!”
“I mean just what I say. We are close to destination, yes? I am full for today, so I will nap and be quiet, okay? See ya!”
“Wh-whoa! Acieth! What are you talking about
…? Hey, are you really asleep?”
Maou could sense Acieth’s presence vanish, like a snap of one’s fingers. He flipped shut his phone, which had never been on a call anyway, and sighed.
“…Come on.”
He didn’t need it spelled out for him. He knew full well: Laila said it, Ashiya said it, and Suzuno thrust it in front of his face. Plus, Chiho herself said it to him again. But he didn’t know how to give an answer, and that made everything he did with her seem vague, and not quite fully there. Or was it? He didn’t know.
Going back to the previous example, there really weren’t many methods Maou had at hand to guarantee Chiho’s safety at the moment. The best he could do was have a system where he’d receive instant alerts if something came up, but he knew that wasn’t what Acieth meant—and having Acieth doubt him only made him angrier.
“You say that, but…what am I supposed to do…?”
The moment Chiho first admitted her love for him, Maou managed to keep his cool under the hot summer sun. Internally, he was torn, but Chiho had nothing but love to offer him, nevertheless.
And as he stewed over this, a man and a woman passed him by, holding hands. Lovers, no doubt, in the midst of a relationship. He had thought, at one point, that going around together like that was what Chiho pictured for the two of them. The past few months, however, had dissuaded him of that. Simply building a close kinship with Maou was not enough to satisfy Chiho. It wasn’t that she didn’t want such a thing, but if that’s really all there was to it…
“…I could’ve had an answer for her more quickly,” he whispered to himself as he walked through the doorway of his destination.
“Oh, Maouuu!”
He heard his name called, with a tempo and intention that seemed to at least imitate Chiho’s, and looked up.
“Good morning, Kusuda.”
Kusuda jogged up to him. Maou didn’t recall her first name.
“Did you think of any place good for the meetup Nitta mentioned?”
“…Nah, not really. We’d all be coming from different places, so I know it’s pretty obvious, but somewhere around Shinjuku’s probably best.”
“You’re right. We don’t have the contact info for all the trainees yet, either…”
This training session was populated by a motley crew of students from assorted fields, but between the shifts they all had to work at their respective MgRonalds, it wasn’t like every student attended the same classes. Since the teachers hadn’t said just how many students were in this session, this meetup was de facto limited to the people that Nitta, as organizer, had met enough times.
“If you ask me,” Kusuda continued, “I think it’s still kind of early to hold an after-hours meetup like this, huh?”
“Oh, maybe, but if the opportunity comes up, I don’t think it’s a bad thing, per se.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right, but I think we’d get to know each other well enough while we work and train together, like we’re doing now. I gotta admit, I feel like Nitta’s treating this like a college frat welcome party, like Let’s get together and all be friends! He’s, like, all over me, you know?”
She sees right through you, Nitta, Maou said in silent prayer. He wasn’t sure if Nitta was scheduled for today’s session or not, though.
“Oh! By the way, Maou, while I’ve got you, I’d like you to have this.”
“Huh?”
Maou looked at the thing Kusuda offered him and raised an eyebrow. It was a small box with cute wrapping paper and a ribbon on top.
“What’s that?”
“Aww, can’t you tell? It’s some chocolate!”
“Huh? Chocolate? Oh, for Valentine’s?”
Only then did Maou realize what Kusuda meant. Today was February 7—a bit early for Valentine’s Day activities, but if you weren’t sure whether you’d see your target on the big day or not, the timing wasn’t too unnatural. Besides, in Japan, women often gave little Valentine’s gifts like this to men in their lives out of politeness more than anything else. Nothing really deep was meant by it.
“Wow, are you sure?”
“Yeah! Go ahead! Oh, but I don’t have any for Nitta, so don’t tell anyone, okay?”
Maou began to honestly pity Nitta.
“Well, thank you. I’ll be sure to enjoy it.”
This sort of polite gift played much the same role as this upcoming meetup. They were both tools meant to smooth personal relationships. Maou didn’t take this to imply that Kusuda had any feelings for him at all, but if someone like his coworker Kawata found out about it, he was sure the man would be telling him to go die in a fire or get stabbed in a back alley. The tradition in Japan was for women to give men gifts on Valentine’s, then for men to reciprocate on White Day a month later; he didn’t know if they’d have training on March 14 or not, so he thought it best not to discuss that yet.
“If I see you in March, I’ll be hoping for something back, okay?”
With that knowing sort of prompt, Maou gladly accepted the chocolate. The ritual was complete.
“What do you think we’ll be doing today?” she asked.
“I dunno. It said something about a preplanning meeting.”
Before long, they were bantering about today’s schedule, Maou shaking the cobwebs from his conversation with Acieth and switching into business mode. But Maou had forgotten something—because he had avoided seeing her in person lately, as Shiba and Amane had been watching the girl. He forgot that when it came to the topic of food—especially certain sweets, such as chocolate—Acieth could be downright diabolical.
The next day, Acieth was crouched down next to Suzuno, who was in the middle of weeding the vegetable garden Shiba let her build in Villa Rosa Sasazuka’s backyard.
“Hey, Suzuno! When do I get chocolate from someone?”
“That is rather out of the blue.”
“They have the thing, it is called Valentine’s, yes?”
She had only just fallen asleep inside Maou’s body, but then, her sensitive nose picked up the aroma of chocolate—chocolate that should’ve still been inside its wrapped box—and it promptly woke her up. Hoping to know why Kusuda was giving Maou sweets like that, she explained everything she saw to Suzuno, who was back on Earth to work on the garden.
“Oh, Valentine’s Day?”
Suzuno had no idea what kind of sleeping beast she was prodding. The issue was twofold—Maou was working over at Hatagaya Station that day, and Suzuno didn’t think to ask why Acieth would take such a sudden interest in Valentine’s Day. She had been in Ente Isla until that morning, holding Mass for the knights of Saint Aile stationed near Devil’s Castle, so it’d be asking too much of her to consider that.
“Well, my apologies, Acieth, but as a woman, you will not be receiving any of that.”
“Wha—whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!”
Suzuno’s statement resulted in an apocalyptic scream.
“How—how can world be so much of the cruel…?”
“That is simply how it is. That is how Valentine’s Day works.” Suzuno, kneeling by the garden, looked up at the aghast girl and chuckled. “There are several theories behind how the tradition began, but the day was christened to commemorate a saint, and now, in many nations, it is a day where women give sweets to men. The exact kind of treat is up to the gift-giver, but in Japan, chocolate has been the historical favorite.”
“Chocolate… My chocolate…”
Acieth still hadn’t recovered from the shock. Exactly who she thought she was getting chocolate from remained a mystery.
“But why can’t the woman receive it…? Can—can I become the man from now on?”
“You intend to change your gender just for the free chocolate?” Suzuno snickered further at the deadly serious girl. “Well, as I said, nothing can be done. The whole day is a way for women to express the love they have for the men in their lives.”
“Huh?”
Acieth blinked.
“But there is no need to worry. He
re in Japan, there is another custom known as White Day. On March 14, a month after Valentine’s, men give women chocolate as a way to return the favor.”
“Really?!!” Acieth, spirits fully recovered, clapped her hands, her mind made up. “Kusuda, she said she ‘hope for something back’ in March from Maou! She means that, yes?”
“Kusuda? Maou? Um, Acieth, where did you hear about Valentine’s Day in the first place…?”
Hearing an unfamiliar name next to Maou’s made Suzuno’s heart freeze. But Acieth wasn’t even paying attention, fist raised high in the air as flames danced in her eyes.
“So… Wait! Kusuda, is she gunning for Maou?!”
“Acieth? I hesitate to ask, but this Kusuda person…”
“Yes! Kusuda! The girl who give Maou chocolate at training! She makes it all seem, ‘Oh, this just my obligation,’ but I think she means it for real! If no, then why care about March?”
“What?! A-Acieth?!” Suzuno, fearing she’d said something she could never take back, ratcheted up her voice a little. It scared her to see how Acieth went from knowing nothing about Valentine’s Day to spouting off all the intricacies of the holiday and how it figured in Japanese life.
“Well! No time to waste! Maou is the poor man! I cannot have Kusuda take my chocolate from him on the White Day!”
“Calm down, Acieth! We need to talk this out! In the workplace, women give chocolate to men all the time on that day. It is just a harmless little social custom; there is nothing special about—”
“Oh, I must tell Chiho! Chiho, she can teach me how to make chocolate treat, and I give to Maou and get big brownie points! My big sis, she gets all attention lately, so now is the big chance!”
“Wait…!”
Her fears were realized. Suzuno had no idea what had transpired between Maou and this Kusuda person, but if it was Acieth telling the story, she’d no doubt take a packet of cheap candy and turn it into a triple-layer chocolate cake. And with Chiho so concerned lately about what distance to take with Maou, if she heard about him getting intimate with another woman on Valentine’s Day, Suzuno could only imagine her sobbing, head in hands, all over again. But it was too late.
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 16 Page 3
