She had first expressly confessed her love to Maou on that first day she brought meals over. It seemed like quite a while ago, but it hadn’t even been half a year. The sweltering heat and the cicadas all seemed to melt away from that sweet moment in time, the way Chiho sensed it. It wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment impulse or someone egging her on—it was her firm, indomitable belief.
As she thought, there was no better time to spring the news. Unlike earlier, when she was just beginning to foster feelings for him, she now knew quite a bit of his backstory. She knew it, and it didn’t change her emotions at all. So she went out with it—out to the first man she ever loved in her life.
“Wow! Pretty scintillating!”
“…Don’t pick on me. It’s so embarrassing I could die.”
Chiho had censored out everything involving Ente Isla, but the rest of her story was the truth. It made Kaori break out into an exaggerated whoop of delight. Despite the cold, her face felt warm to the tips of her ears.
“You know,” Kaori said, “when I was in middle school, I just kind of assumed that everybody in high school is busy dealing with their boyfriends or girlfriends all day. But it really doesn’t feel that way to me, you know? Or to a lot of people around us. It is with some people, but you know. So having a friend of mine lay it all bare to a guy like that… I don’t think I’ve heard a story like that before.”
“Ooh…”
“Aww, you’re so cuuuuute, Sasachi! So what’d he say?”
After a love confession like that, anyone would be curious about the reply. But it only made Chiho’s face darken.
“Well, that’s one reason why I kinda lost my temper… I haven’t gotten an answer yet, really.”
“Whaa?!”
That reaction was no exaggeration.
“You told him during summer break, didn’t you? Huh? It’s December right now!”
“Yeah.”
“So… You’re still working at that MgRonald together and stuff?”
“…Yeah.” Chiho nodded. They were together in quite a few other places as well, but she glossed over that. “I told him that I didn’t want a response immediately, but…”
“Ohhh. Well, huh! Even so…you know? Ah, well. So that’s one reason. Is there anything else?”
“Yeah, um…”
If Chiho wanted to go into any further depth, the topic of Alas Ramus would have to come up. She did her best to summarize the situation, taking care to avoid any Ente Isla–centric keywords. As she put it, Maou had kind of a drifter relative who left him with a child, an infant really, to take care of. As a high school student, Chiho couldn’t offer much help to a single father trying to raise a kid.
“Well, yeah. If you do that and the teachers found out, you’d have to deal with a lot more than just the guidance counselor.”
“Yeah. Our boss at MgRonald yelled at him over it, too, the whole ‘Think about what society might think of you guys’ and stuff.”
Despite that, at Maou’s fervent request, Chiho decided to do whatever she could reasonably offer to help out. However, the care of this child was eventually left to another woman.
“Ooh, here comes your rival, huh?!”
“Kao, stop acting like this is so much fun for you.”
“What do you want? How could I be anything besides excited when this new cast member comes up?”
“Maybe, but…she’s not really a rival exactly.”
That would be Emi Yusa, an old acquaintance of Maou’s and a single woman who wouldn’t have any social stigma preventing her from helping out at his place. It was debatable how much enthusiasm she had for coming over, but in the end, the child wound up bringing Emi and Maou closer together (at least proximity-wise). It was Emi, as well, who had told Chiho all about Maou down to the slightest detail, in the end.
“She’s a really strong, really pretty woman. Kind of a reliable big-sister type. We really like each other.”
“…I can tell you feel that way, Sasachi, but this sounds like a huge drama pit.”
They were old acquaintances, but Emi and Maou also had a great deal of trouble getting along. If it wasn’t for the child, there were times when they wouldn’t even want to talk to each other.
“So why is she so set on taking care of this child she isn’t related to?”
“It’s a long story, but let’s just say she’s got her motivations. For one, the girl really loves her.”
“Ohh.”
So the two didn’t get along well with each other, but as their mutual friend, Chiho had always hoped they would find a way to make up sooner or later. Eventually, Emi lost her job following some personal issues, but thanks to her skills and proactive attitude, it wasn’t long before she found her next one.
“Wait, don’t tell me…?”
“Yeah. At the MgRonald me and Maou work at.”
“Whoooaa. You’re puttin’ yourself through hell, girl!”
“It’s not hell, really. I told him I loved him, but we’re not exactly a couple yet. Me and Yusa get along pretty well, too, and really I’m glad she’s on the team. We had kind of a staff shortage at the time, so I was the one who suggested to Maou that we should hire her on.”
“Wow, again? Why?”
“Well, I figured maybe they’d mend things up a little if they worked together.”
“Why are you creating this personal hellscape for yourself, Sasachi…?!”
“I told you, it’s not hell! I’m not having a huge argument with Maou or Yusa or anything!”
“But what, then? If you’re sure it’s not a hellscape for you, then it’s all working out just the way you hoped it would, isn’t it? You’re working with friends and people you like, and you aren’t in a hurry for a response, although I really think you should press him a little, girl. You’ve factored everything in, yeah?”
“Yeah…pretty much, but…” Chiho looked down at the ground. “One of the veteran crewmembers is leaving the MgRonald. He’s looking for a career job somewhere, but it made me think…like, everyone in our class better start thinking about entrance exams, too, huh?”
“Oh, yeah. A lot more classmates are going to after-school prep centers these days.”
“But that guy leaving makes everything a little different from how it was before. You notice that his name isn’t on the shift schedule anymore; you start getting assigned to different work stations in your own shifts… I started noticing those little changes, and I was like oh, craaaaaap! Like, it made me realize that I can’t keep things like this forever.”
“What do you mean, ‘like this’?”
Chiho noted Kaori’s quizzical look as she attempted to piece together all the thoughts she had gone over in her mind today.
“It’s my next-to-last year in high school. I’ve grown up comfortably with parents who love me. I haven’t had any big exam or other life-altering event. I go to school, hanging out with you and Kohmura and everyone, taking notes and eating lunch and practicing kyudo. When I go to my job, I can hang out with Maou and Yusa and Ms. Kisaki, and over at his apartment building, there’s Suzuno, and Maou’s friend Ashiya, and this guy Urushihara… And it all seemed like a given to me, but the other day, I realized, it’s all a temporary thing. That finally struck home, I think.”
“Right.”
“So then I realized, I’ll be like Kota someday, too. This day will come when I’ll just disappear from someone’s life. And when I think about that, these things I never cared at all about before get so important to me that I don’t even know what to do.”
“Kota’s the guy leaving MgRonald?”
“Yeah. Um…Kotaro Nakayama is his full name. We use nicknames a lot around the kitchen, so I needed a moment to remember his real one.”
“I hear you there.”
“So then, after that, I started thinking about all kinds of stupid stuff at once…”
This nickname system was a deeply embedded part of the culture at the Hatagaya MgRonald. It wasn’t anything forced;
more of a case-by-case deal, with some going by their real names and others not. Chiho was Chi to everybody on the payroll except for Emi.
“But you know, among his circle of friends, I’m the only one Maou calls by a nickname. He calls Yusa ‘Emi,’ and his neighbor is just ‘Suzuno,’ but I’m still ‘Chi’ to him.”
“Hmm.”
A nickname isn’t necessarily a sign of looking down on the person in question. Maou adopted the habit long before they had any deep relationship. But Kaori simply nodded at it without further comment.
“And I told you they don’t get along, but really, he’s way nicer to Yusa than he used to be. Like, he acts all curt and mean around her, but it’s really just so Yusa can keep her pride intact more than anything.”
“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.”
“But I’m the only member of this circle who’s a student living at home, and I’ll have college exams next year. I won’t be able to see them nearly as often then…and…”
“And?”
“…And another acquaintance of Maou and Yusa’s showed up recently…and she’s offering a really huge job to both of them.”
This “huge job” was, of course, the rescue of all Ente Isla’s humanity at Laila’s request, a detail Chiho thoughtfully omitted.
“Mmm, all right.”
“We had all been together up to now, and I sort of assumed that could keep on going indefinitely. But it’s not, and in fact, what I assumed was normal life for me actually isn’t gonna last very long at all. And it kinda made me panic.”
“Right, right.”
Kaori nodded, crouching down next to Chiho and patting her on the back.
“Like, maybe Maou and everyone else are gonna be off somewhere before long. But I can’t join them. I have to stay here, because he and I come from different worlds anyway. So I just… I wanted an answer, ASAP.”
“Yeah.”
“I wanted Maou and Yusa to get along all this time, but now it’s, like, seeing Maou meddle with Yusa’s affairs is so hard for me to watch. No matter what I do, by next year I can’t be together with Maou and them all like I am now. And I know I’ll only be busy with exams for a year. It’ll be as short as this moment maybe. But if they decide to go and take on this big job…I don’t really know how it’ll turn out. I may not see them again for years. I’m so jealous of the people who get to stay with him. It drives me nuts.”
“Yeah.”
“But…I really love Yusa, too. But I’m getting all jealous over this stupid, pointless thing I can’t do anything about, and it’s, like, what am I even doing? This is exactly what I wanted for them, but no matter what I do…”
“Yeah!”
Kaori wrapped her arms around Chiho’s shoulders. They didn’t look at each other’s faces. That was the rule.
“So I wonder, what even am I…to Maou?”
That was the small, ever so tiny, thornlike concern that had been jabbing away somewhere in her mind all this time.
“He’s always looking out for my safety, I’m always dragging him down… I might be a major pain in the ass, for all I know, but maybe he’s too kind to come out and say that. My thoughts go into this huge negative spiral, and I can’t climb out of it.”
She had confessed her feelings to Maou but not in the standard Would you like to be a couple? kind of way. All she did was say, in a person-to-person kind of way, that she loved him. That was why, even if she wanted a response, she wasn’t even sure what kind she wanted.
“Not that I’d really know…but it sounds like you really enjoy these people, Sasachi. Maybe I’m a little jealous even.”
“Oh, um, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like…”
“No, I get it. They’re them, and I’m me. I know a lot about you, Sasachi, that I bet they don’t know about. So basically, you hate yourself for being jealous, but you still can’t get your own emotions together, so you’re freaking out. Is that right?”
“Yeah…”
“Your face looks awful. You got a handkerchief?”
“…No.”
“Here’s some tissues.”
“Thanks…”
The tears had started rolling out again, along with some embarrassing nasal discharge.
“…And the worst thing is, I vented my anger at Suzuno.”
“Ooh, that sounds bad. That was Maou’s neighbor?”
“Right. I ran into her in town, and I was kind of falling apart back there, too, and before I knew it, we were at the Tacoma’s Best in the station and she was trying to console me. Looking back, I really put her in this horrible place, but she heard me out all the way.”
But as much as she understood Chiho’s anguish, Suzuno had no answer for her. She went into several rants about how thoughtless Maou was, how much he was letting Chiho spoil him, but when it came to how their paths might diverge before long, she didn’t have much to offer.
“Mmm. I see. Your lover isn’t giving you an answer, you’re getting all jealous of your best friend, and you complained all about it to this other friend of yours? No wonder you’re kicking yourself over it.”
“…Yeah. So that’s why I’m like this today.”
“All right. Well, I think I understand. Definitely goes beyond anything curry and udon could handle.”
Kaori briskly nodded.
“So now what? Should I tell you what I’m thinking?”
“…If you have anything, I’m all ears.”
Between Suzuno and now Kaori, Chiho hated how pathetic she must’ve looked, clinging to her friends like this. She had no idea where her own feelings lay any longer.
“All right. If you ask me, I think you should be a little more selfish.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly that. Just grab Maou by the collar and demand an answer! Tell him you don’t like how nice he’s being to Yusa! What could go wrong?”
The suggestion was so provocative that it almost horrified Chiho.
“Wh-wha—? How am I supposed to do that?”
“Why not?”
“Why not? I…”
Yeah, why not? Why couldn’t she do that? Was she forbidden to? Why?
“You never have before, huh?”
“I have, kind of, but…”
“I’m not saying you should deliberately start drama between you and Yusa, but if you’re that buddy-buddy, I really think you’re safe in telling her exactly how you feel. Say you want to date him, and like, you’re gonna have this to deal with next year, but you wanna all be together for as long as you can. Because I don’t really think there’s any other way to solve this.”
“Mmmmmmaybe.”
“That’s my main takeaway from all this. Also, I don’t know how important Yusa really is to you, but if a guy you like is acting all nice toward someone else, of course that’s gonna be frustrating to you. That’s normal. And if you’re getting all depressed because of this jealousy that Yusa herself isn’t even aware of, that’s just lame, girl.”
“Oww…”
Provocative and merciless. Chiho had her suspicions about it, but having it stabbed into her like this completely sunk her battleship.
“It’s lame because it makes you look like you’re trying to be the only good guy in all this. People get jealous all the time, but a friend’s always gonna be a friend. So what’s the big deal? If it hurts your friendship, then…well, that was probably bound to happen anyway.”
Suzuno hadn’t offered her anything like this. It was merciless, but with Kaori saying it, Chiho had nothing to counter with. Coming from the same generation as her, it was the most bleedingly obvious thing.
“You’ve already confronted him once. Why’s it gotta be so scary to do it one more time for keeps? And if Suzuno was that worked up about it, then you definitely gotta use her as your ally. I mean, procrastinating on a reply for four months is far too long.”
“Y-yeah…”
“So I know that’s all easy for me to say, not being involved. You’re the one who makes the
final call, Sasachi.”
“…Right. Thank you. Sorry I’m being so incoherent.”
“It’d be worse if you were coherent. I’ve got no love experience, so if you said something like your boyfriend’s cheating on you, I would’ve fled hours ago. Oh, and I don’t need regular updates, but once it’s all settled, make sure to report back to me, okay?”
“All right…”
Sensing how serious-minded Kaori was about this, Chiho resolved to reveal one more shameful aspect of herself while she had her ear.
“Also…”
Kaori patted down her skirt as she stood, looking toward the school building. Following her gaze, Chiho saw the clock above the front door.
“Ah!!”
Now she understood Kaori’s concern. The clock was cruelly, ruthlessly showing five minutes until the end of lunch break.
“We can talk about missing out on lunch later.”
“Um, maybe when I have my wallet again…”
Chiho instantly felt hungry again, now that her feelings were all out in the open, but it was too late. She was forced to tackle the subsequent fifth and sixth periods on an empty stomach.
“Ahhh… I’m hungry…”
Upon returning home, Chiho collapsed into bed.
She did manage to borrow some money from Kaori so she could buy a roll from the nearby convenience store between sixth period and her kyudo practice, but for someone with an appetite like hers, a single roll would never fill her stomach. Having Kaori light a fire under her made practice just as chaotic for her, ruining her stance and breaking her arrows. Her stomach growled so loudly that the first-year students could hear it.
It was awful, given how she usually took a bold, measured stance at the archery range, but there was no way she could admit to skipping lunch after whining about her love life all day. Kaori, at least, played defense for her against Yoshiya and the rest. Between that and the roll she paid for, she’d be owing her for a while to come.
“Oh, right, my phone.”
The phone, still plugged into its charger by the bed, reported a few missed calls and text messages.
“Huh? Mom?”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 13 Page 12
