The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 5

by Satoshi Wagahara

  “Yeeeaaaggghhhh!!”

  A scream rang out from the floor above them. Ashiya and Rika, Maou and Suzuno—they froze.

  The rest of the customers looked similarly confused, looking around to figure out where the scream came from.

  “Hey, what was that?”

  “Let’s go look.”

  An employee and his supervisor ran up the stairs.

  Maou watched them go past his bench, but, suddenly realizing something, he headed toward Ashiya and stated his thoughts. By the looks of it, Ashiya was thinking along similar lines.

  “Could you wait here just a moment, Ms. Suzuki?”

  “Huh?”

  “Hey, did you notice that, Suzuno?”

  Maou looked deadly serious as he spoke. Suzuno reluctantly nodded.

  “…You watch Rika for me. Ashiya and I will be right back.”

  Not bothering to hear Suzuno’s response, he made a bull rush upstairs, Ashiya following behind.

  “Hey! Hey, uh, guys, shouldn’t we leave that to someone else?”

  Rika, sensing at least a smidgen of the tension in the air, had no one left to address as Suzuno looked up the stairwell warily.

  The second floor was where Ashiya and Suzuno had made their TV purchase.

  It couldn’t have been more perfectly normal back then, but in tandem with the scream, the air now seemed infected by a nebulous miasma.

  “…You had best wait outside, Rika. I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “Um? Uh, okay, but what about them…?”

  “They will be fine. They have survived quite a lot, despite all indications.”

  “Wh-what do you mean…? Oh! Wait a sec, Suzuno, he forgot his TV!”

  After a moment, Rika finally succeeded in having Suzuno give her the pair of TV boxes and help her jog for the exit.

  Outside, Shinjuku was the same as usual. The scream didn’t make it beyond Socket City’s walls, the passersby betraying no sign of being disturbed by anything.

  Maou and Ashiya, meanwhile, realized something was wrong the moment they made it upstairs.

  All the TVs lined up on the shelves, the same ones they so intently studied a few moments ago, were shattered down to the last screen.

  The floor was littered with pieces of LCD panel. The customers and staff were stuck dumb, unable to parse the events around them.

  The supervisor who climbed the stairs ahead of Maou grabbed a nearby employee—by coincidence, the same one who waited on Ashiya and Suzuno.

  “Wh-what happened?!”

  “Um, uh, the screens… The floor-model screens all flashed white at the same time…”

  “All of them?!”

  “Yeah, it was like a camera flash or something. I shielded my eyes for a moment, and then…”

  Another employee ran up to them to finish the sentence.

  “…the next thing we knew, they were all in pieces.”

  “Th-that’s absolutely crazy! That’s… All right, we better get everyone outta here, now! Someone call the cops and the fire department…”

  The supervisor, despite his difficulties assessing the situation, still managed to consider customer safety first. Must be a talented boss, Maou mused.

  It wasn’t long before the staff rounded up Maou and Ashiya as well, escorting them downstairs. Taking a final, concerned glance at the TV section, Maou descended the staircase and exited the store.

  “Well? What was it?!”

  “Are you okay, Ashiya?!”

  Suzuno pounced on Maou, as if he had caused the whole thing. Rika was more preoccupied with Ashiya. It wasn’t exactly the warmest of welcomes for Maou, but he righted himself toward Ashiya.

  “Hey, Ashiya, you should take Rika home just in case.”

  “Huhhh?!”

  “Yes. By my very life, she will be safe.”

  Rika let out a crazed whimper. Ashiya merely accepted his orders.

  “Um… Allow me to see you home, Ms. Sasaki. You mentioned you lived in Takadanobaba, yes?”

  “Ummmmm, I, w-wait, I think this is a little fast, I haven’t prepared and my room’s all messy and— Hey!”

  Watching Ashiya head for the station, the hand of the suddenly panic-stricken Rika in his own, Maou gestured toward Suzuno.

  “I’ll explain this on the way home. We better regroup with Urushihara for now. You get Emi over there, too. Ooh, and I better call Chi and warn her to stay away. It’s gonna be pretty rough around my apartment for a bit again.”

  “Let me confirm one thing first.” Suzuno’s voice was far more acerbic than before. “That was demonic force, yes? Barbariccian in nature?”

  “Dunno. But…and I know this ain’t gonna matter to you…this ain’t us.”

  The miasma-like air on the second floor was unmistakably demonic energy.

  Nothing of Maou’s or Ashiya’s doing, of course. And Maou had no idea why the mere presence of demonic force would be enough to destroy several dozen TVs.

  The only thing certain: This was no natural occurrence.

  “I know that.”

  Suzuno pouted as she accelerated her walking pace. She and Maou were carrying their TVs while walking as quickly as they could, causing beads of sweat to appear on each of their foreheads.

  “You and I were engaged in that pointless argument. I don’t need further pointless excuses to see it wasn’t you. For a king, you act remarkably timid.”

  “Eating dinner with an assassin sent by your sworn enemy would put anybody on edge, most nights.”

  The breezy smile was back on Maou’s face.

  “…Say what you will. We must hurry.”

  Suzuno, no longer possessing the mental capacity to deal with it, turned her face away and walked on ahead.

  By the time they half-ran back to Villa Rosa Sasazuka, Emi and Urushihara were there—the former looking even more peeved than usual, the latter far more serious.

  “The Devil King was with you the whole time, Bell?”

  “Y-yes…as was Alciel, until a moment ago.”

  Emi looked relieved to hear that for a moment, but quickly scowled back at Maou.

  “Where’s Alciel? What happened to you?”

  Something wasn’t right with Emi. Even Maou could tell.

  Her eyes were quivering with anxiety, something he’d never seen before.

  Even in the past, when the two of them were slashing away at each other, her eyes constantly burned with a strong, powerful will. Now, they were filled with a dull, unguided glow. No one else in the room had seen that before.

  “Part of me wishes this was your fault…but part of me’s glad that it’s not. I want to be sure on this. You were together with Bell all day today? You didn’t go out again after visiting the real estate office yesterday? Do I have that right?”

  Maou and Suzuno nodded in unison.

  “Chiho’s been poisoned by a concentrated dose of demonic force. She’s unconscious in the hospital right now. Her mom told me she was already acting weird last night.”

  THE DEVIL AND THE HERO DECIDE TO FOCUS ON MORE IMPORTANT MATTERS

  To Maou and Ashiya, who’d been on everything from a Ferris wheel to an ambulance at this point, there was one method of transportation they had yet to try out.

  The humble taxi.

  A very convenient way of navigating the city, getting you where you wanted to go with pinpoint accuracy (assuming the driver cared enough), its convenience came at a cost. It was the most expensive ride Maou had ever been on.

  The base cost alone of catching a taxi within the city center was equivalent to boarding the Keio Line in Shinjuku, taking forty miles or so to the last stop at Mount Takao, then doubling back and going almost all the way back down the line before getting off at Kami-kitazawa.

  Besides, Maou had never been in a position where a taxi was a necessary choice. He and his demon cohorts were the kind of Tokyoites willing to walk anywhere within three station stops of their current location, if it meant saving on train fare.

&n
bsp; And yet, when Ashiya arrived back home, Maou and crew wasted no time calling for two taxis to their apartment—the Devil King’s army in one, the Hero and her servant in the other—and heading straight for Yoyogi.

  The scene inside was grim. No one said a word.

  Maou, in the front passenger seat, wistfully watched the cab ahead with Emi in it, grabbing the strap above the window with undue force.

  Ashiya looked equally pensive. Even Urushihara, ever ready to ruin the atmosphere with one inappropriate quip or another, simply stared out his window.

  Before the meter had much chance to tick above the base rate, the two taxis entered the roundabout in front of the Tokyo Hospital, run by the Seikai University Department of Medicine.

  Once they stopped, Maou asked Ashiya to handle the fare and flew out of the cab without so much as a “thanks” to the driver.

  Emi was already out of her own taxi, Suzuno apparently volunteering to pay.

  “This way.” Emi motioned toward Maou, then headed on toward the hospital’s front desk. “We’re here to visit Ms. Sasaki in Room 305…”

  “Certainly. If you could just fill out these cards and take them to reception on the third floor…”

  The time it took to jot down everything the visitor cards demanded from them seemed a colossal waste.

  “I know you want to, but we can’t run inside the hospital. Just calm down. Her life isn’t in danger right now.”

  “…Yeah.”

  Maou took a deep breath to ready himself, face still knotted with concern. Emi, watching on, picked up a visitor card for him.

  “Don’t lose this. They won’t let you see her if you don’t give it to ’em.”

  “Jeez, I’m not a child. Just take us up there.”

  “Right. This way.”

  For now at least, Emi didn’t bother taking the bait as she took the lead and briskly set off.

  Riding the large elevator to the third floor, they each presented their visitor cards to the nurse station.

  “All right. You can see her now. It’s a shared room, though, so try to be quiet if you could, please.”

  The staffer, clad in white, pointed out the door to them.

  Emi and Maou nodded their thanks to her and headed for Room 305. The door was already ajar.

  Inside were four beds, separated by privacy curtains. The plethora of strange and ominous machines installed near one made Maou’s blood freeze. Emi picked up on it at once.

  “Not that one. This one.”

  She grabbed his sleeve and pointed out the much less cluttered bed in front of them, a nameplate reading SASAKI poised on the edge of the curtain railing.

  “…Sorry to bother you again. It’s Yusa.”

  Emi’s reserved voice was enough to summon another familiar one from inside.

  “Sure, come on in.”

  “Thanks.”

  It was Riho, Chiho’s mother, seated in a chair next to the bed. Maou tried to greet her, but something else caught his eye first.

  “……”

  In the hospital bed, Chiho was asleep. She looked healthy enough, breathing on her own and all. But the fact she was sleeping in a hospital bed at all made Maou lose his voice.

  Riho, noticing him, stood up and bowed lightly.

  “Oh, hello, Maou! How nice of you to stop by.”

  Her smile was warm and unpretentious, but it failed to hide a tint of fatigue around the edges.

  Maou finally managed to gurgle up a question.

  “What…what happened to Chi, ma’am?”

  Riho bent her neck downward, troubled.

  “Well, if only we knew…”

  Her tired smile warped with anxiety.

  “She was sleeping on the sofa when I came home around dinnertime last night. I told her to get some rice cooking for me, but I thought she was just having a nap or something instead…”

  Riho tried her best to retain her serenity. It wasn’t working.

  “But… It was the strangest thing. She just wouldn’t wake up. I called for her, I shook her… Nothing. It was so weird. I tried slapping her, even though I knew she’d be angry at me…but she didn’t respond to that, either.”

  Realizing this was no ordinary nap, she had immediately called for an ambulance. They had brought her here, to Seikai University Hospital.

  Neither the first responders nor the doctor who admitted her could diagnose why Chiho was in such a deep sleep.

  Her breathing and brain waves were normal and she had no external injuries, so the hospital decided her life was not in danger and admitted her for observation. That, as Riho put it, was the story.

  “And, you know, there wasn’t a gas leak or anything. She didn’t hit her head. There’s just no telling what happened to her…”

  Riho turned her eyes toward Chiho, clothed in flower-patterned pink pajamas as she lay there. Emi and Maou found their gazes similarly fixed.

  The girl seemed perfectly tranquil. No suffering at all.

  But if Emi was so sure this was demonic force poisoning, something grave must have happened.

  Suzuno entered, dragging Ashiya and Urushihara behind her.

  “Chiho.”

  “Ms. Sasaki!”

  “Dude, you’re too loud, Ashiya.”

  “Oh! I’m so glad to see all of you. I’m sorry it had to be in these circumstances… Um, you’re Suzuno Kamazuki and Hanzou Urushihara?”

  Riho bowed deeply to these unfamiliar faces.

  “I hate to bring this up now, but I do appreciate you watching out for Chiho over in Choshi. She didn’t bother you too much, did she?”

  Maou stepped up to respond. “Oh, absolutely not. We—Chi’s always been a huge help to us. Without Chi…and you…we probably couldn’t have the life we have right now.”

  “Well, make sure you tell her that first thing once she wakes up. I don’t think there’s much that makes her happier than a compliment from you.”

  “……”

  Riho’s casual observation robbed Maou of words all over again.

  “So…there’s no telling what this is or how long it’ll last, so I haven’t gotten around to contacting her friends or school yet… Honestly, I’m not sure what to do.”

  In Riho’s hand was Chiho’s cell phone, a familiar sight to Maou.

  Riho was, by nature, a cheerful woman. That must have been why she tried to hide it. But the fear and anxiety of seeing her daughter stricken by some mysterious…event, or whatever it was, was clear as day, all over her.

  But there was no way Maou, or Ashiya or Emi or Suzuno, and especially Urushihara, could find any words to cheer her up.

  “Chiho…”

  Suzuno’s voice was shaky as she took a step forward, grasping the right hand that stuck out from under Chiho’s blanket.

  “……”

  Emi looked on sternly.

  “Oh! Actually, Maou…” Chiho’s mother began.

  “Yes?”

  Cheerfully, if a little shakily, Riho placed both her hands on Maou’s shoulders.

  “Was that…you, perhaps?”

  “That…? What’s that?”

  “Oh, don’t be silly! You know I’m not angry or anything. Although I will admit that from a woman’s perspective, I’m not sure it suited Chiho very well.”

  What was she talking about? Riho pointed to Chiho’s left hand, opposite to the one Suzuno held.

  Not even that was enough to make Maou understand. He looked doubtfully toward Riho.

  “You’re sure it wasn’t you? I wouldn’t think she’d go around in public wearing that if you didn’t give it to her, but…”

  Riho went around the bed and picked up Chiho’s hand.

  What she revealed made everyone except Emi gasp.

  On her left index finger was a ring. If it was any normal ring, one could explain it away as a teenage girl’s experiment with accessorizing.

  But the stone in that ring sparkled as it reflected the sunlight from outside, transfixing everyone who look
ed at it.

  At that moment, Maou finally realized why Emi knew where Chiho was first.

  They had exchanged a few words before she traveled to Choshi, but it seemed hard to believe Riho would contact Emi before even Chiho’s school.

  Emi was after that ring. And it just happened to bring her here.

  There, inside the Seikai University Hospital southwest of Muddraker’s in Yoyogi, was the polished Yesod fragment Emi had been guided to.

  Each floor of the hospital had a public space, giving visitors a place to rest and the more ambulatory patients a chance to take in some TV.

  Urushihara was the one staring glassily at the TV. Maou, Ashiya, and Emi, meanwhile, sat silently in chairs, their faces tormented.

  Suzuno, by herself, was using Emi’s Relax-a-Bear notebook, and a pen with Relax-a-Bear’s friend Yellow Bird perched on top of it, to jot out a long set of what looked like mathematical equations.

  To the uninformed observer, a quick peek at her writing would have produced more questions than answers. It would have looked like nothing but a bizarre, seemingly random string of patterns.

  She was writing in Holy Vezian, one of the common languages shared across Ente Isla’s Western Island.

  Holy Vezian saw use chiefly on the continent’s western side, where the Church’s influence was particularly pervasive. On the eastern side, nearer to the Central Continent, there was a dialect known as Common Vezian. The common tongue saw more widespread use as a spoken language, thanks to the influence it had on Ente Isla’s universally taught language of Centurient, but Holy Vezian was the working language of higher education across the island.

  This was the language that saw the most use in specialized pursuits, from politics and government to law, medicine, and the arts. If you wanted to participate in any of these fields, a working knowledge of Holy Vezian was a must.

  The Western Island was the only one of Ente Isla’s major landmasses that the Devil King had failed to conquer. Maou, Ashiya, and Urushihara could understand Common Vezian to some extent, but—from the written language onward—they were wholly unversed in the Holy variant.

  Maou tried asking Emi what she was scribbling away at when Suzuno began, but Emi shrugged it off, telling him to “shut up and wait.”

  Over an hour passed after they’d left Chiho’s hospital bed. It was still bright out, but darkness would no doubt be spreading across the horizon soon.