The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 16
Page 19
She took Camio from Chiho’s hands as she explained.
“Wash your hands, okay? This is blood from someone bearing demonic force; it might affect your body in bad ways. You should probably have one of those energy shots, just in case.”
“Um, okay.”
Without another word, Amane trundled Camio upstairs. Chiho stared blankly at her for a moment but quickly snapped out of it, ran to the bathroom, and got the red blood off her hands.
“…She’s sleeping.”
Her mother was on the living-room sofa, sleeping in front of the blaring TV like her father tended to do after work. Chiho brought her ear close to her mother’s face, anxious for a moment, but soon confirmed she was resting soundly. So off she went into the bathroom again, fetching some towels, and then to the kitchen to put a kettle on the stove. And as she was nervously waiting for the water to boil:
“Agh?!”
From upstairs, she heard the ominously loud sound of something falling to the floor. It made her jump into the air. Not even a toppled chest of drawers would produce that much of a shuddering impact. Forgetting about the kettle, she jogged upstairs.
“A-Amane…huh?”
At the door to her room, she froze, transfixed by the scene greeting her. Amane had used her hand to stop the tip of…something coming in from the open window. It was a three-pronged spear. Blood was pouring from her hand as she sneered at whatever was on the other side of it.
“Don’t worry. He’s already fled.”
“Gnhh…chirrrr…”
Camio was hanging from her other hand, meaning both of her arms were covered in blood like a scene from a horror film.
“Uh, all right… Is your hand okay?”
“If you could get some bandages later…”
The job looked far too big for bandages to handle, but Amane’s attention was already focused on the weapon, blood dripping from it.
“Well, this ain’t good. If they come for us this way, I’ll never make it in time, no matter what. I think they were targeting this chicken, Chiho, and not you, but we’re gonna have to reconsider our security measures around here.”
Amane tried pulling the trident inside but gave up once it became clear it was longer than the diagonal length of the room.
“Hmm. Pretty old-fashioned weapon to break out. Probably something from the heavens. Look familiar to you?”
“Yes,” Chiho said, solemnly nodding. A giant, three-pronged spear, with images of flames ensconced on it. It belonged to Camael, the Sephirah guardian angel, who used it in his attack on Sasahata North High School.
“But I thought Maou and Acieth broke this spear in Ente Isla.”
“You already know the guy’s just a normal dude like the rest of us. They go on about these ‘sacred relics’ or whatever, but if they have the original maker or his plans, plus some materials and instructions and tools, they can fix it or make a new one any time… Hey, what’s that sound?”
“Oh, noooo, I left the kettle on the stove!”
Chiho spun around at the high-pitched whistle and bounded back down the stairs.
“That’s what panics her…?”
Amane chuckled at the sight of a teen casually examining a massive weapon coming through her window, then freaking out at the sound of a kettle. Then, she looked at the two things in her hands and scowled.
“Something tells me there’s some stuff goin’ down in the demon realm.”
Amane already knew that this black chicken was a major authority figure in demondom. If someone like that showed up in Japan looking like this, it was natural to assume an urgent emergency.
“Ugh, I hate this! It’s driving me nuts! This has nothing to do with me! Go somewhere else! Stay away from here!”
In one hand, a bloodied chicken-demon. In the other, a gigantic weapon of murder. And Camio, tasked with finding the Astral Gem and completing the Noah Gear search, was the only one around to listen to the Sephirah descendant’s whining.
“…My liege… I am sorry…peep…”
THE AUTHOR, THE AFTERWORD, AND YOU!
I once heard that the person we all should thank the most on Valentine’s Day is the guy who invented the concept of giving out chocolate for politeness’s sake.
It can be hard to drum up the courage to give chocolate to the one you truly love, but if you’re handing out little treats to the people you deal with on a daily basis, most people are like Fair enough to that or use it as an excuse to go all out. The end result is more people purchasing chocolate, and it means that a good fifth of all the chocolate sold in Japan each year is consumed on February 14.
You don’t see this custom quite as much as you used to in Japanese workplaces, as part of an effort to get rid of useless formalities and encourage nonhostile work environments. In the future, then, Valentine’s Day is going back to its original function—women relating their feelings to the one they truly love, or people giving out sweet treats for fun.
Looking back on the history of Valentine’s, I have to say they dropped the ball right at the end with White Day, a tradition that was invented and propagated by Japan. The origins of Valentine’s Day itself can be traced back years and years, perhaps all the way back to the Roman Empire; White Day, meanwhile, was declared to be March 14 by Japan’s National Confectionery Industry Association in 1980. Nobody’s quite sure who first sold sweets as a way to “answer” Valentine’s gifts, but White Day was entirely an invention by the candy industry to get men to “repay” women for their thoughts.
In Japan, it’s traditionally considered rude to accept a gift without offering something in return, maybe half or a third of the value, as compensation of a sort. That explains how White Day got its start, but somewhere along the line, it turned into this “Pay her back three times over for Valentine’s!” thing, and people started giving accessories and other regular presents instead of chocolate. The Japan National Confectionery Industry Association was, of course, trying to get men to buy candy to “answer” women’s Valentine’s overtures, but I’ve never read anything that indicated candy sales going through the roof on March 14 or anything. I’m not sure it really fulfilled what the co-op was trying to do with it.
Some people like to warp this around, saying Valentine’s Day is all just a conspiracy by the sweets industry—but with White Day, that really is the case. A tradition is something started by people reacting to the times, the weather, their homeland, or the local natural features, eventually taking root and evolving over time before acquiring its current form. Those same things are still gradually changing our traditions today, perhaps turning them into completely different things in the future—or maybe even causing them to die out.
The Devil Is a Part-Timer! Volume 16 is all about how even the smallest passing thoughts or actions have the potential to affect how we live and which customs we observe. You don’t need to use fancy terms like “the butterfly effect” to see how you, being alive, have a small yet noticeable effect, direct or indirect, on the world around you. It’s not easy to change customs once they take hold, but the world is changing, little by little, right this instant, whether you want it to or not.
Hopefully, you enjoyed this story of people struggling in this whirlpool of changes, trying to find a path for themselves. See you in the next volume!
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