The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 3

by Satoshi Wagahara

  Thanks to her awareness of the truth behind Maou and his cohorts, she had few good words for Urushihara, who had still been Maou’s enemy when she first met him.

  Even now, with him more or less back in Maou’s demonic army, he rarely moved an inch from his computer, day after day, not even bothering to help with housework. The classic unemployed freeloader lifestyle, in other words, and Chiho was less than warm to it.

  Maou smiled bitterly to himself and gave Chiho a light pat on the shoulder, diverting her attention.

  “Yeah… Well, anyway, thanks. Really.”

  “…! Um…uh, yeah. Yeah. You’re welcome.”

  The redness to Chiho’s cheeks at that moment had nothing to do with the heat.

  She had already publicly acknowledged her feelings for Maou. But since she didn’t frame them in a way that demanded a response, the true nature of their relationship remained unclear, dangling in the air like flypaper.

  This was something Chiho had made peace with. She understood, after all, that Maou wasn’t the sort of man to give a response without applying serious thought to it first.

  Little moves like these on Maou’s part, however, were still enough to throw her off guard, sending her pulse skyrocketing at unpredictable times.

  “Um… Oh! Oh! Suzuno, we should let Suzuno have some… Huh?”

  Chiho attempted to call the presumably present Suzuno in order to cover up her blushing. But, even after sticking her head out the door and scoping out the hallway, she was nowhere to be found.

  “You looking for her? She went right back out once we got here.”

  “Oh… Really?”

  “Wow, strawberry, green tea, mint… Daaaaang, dude, is this pumpkin? Whoa!”

  “Whoa whoa whoa! Save some for Suzuno, Urushihara!”

  Chiho had to hurriedly rush back inside to keep Urushihara from claiming the goods for himself.

  “Aww! Who cares about Bell, dude? Finders keepers, losers weepers!”

  Urushihara was clearly peeved. Chiho puffed up her cheeks in anger as she plucked one of the several half-pint tubs of ice cream nestled in his arms.

  “Either she gets some, or you don’t get any! How many of these were you planning to eat, anyway? You’re gonna get brain freeze!”

  “Dude, I’m not a child, okay?! I’m, like, several million years older than you!”

  “Years don’t matter with you, Urushihara! You’re still a child! Even a grade-schooler would be a lot nicer than you!”

  “Guys, can you keep it down? It’s too hot to be yapping at each other.” Maou gently stepped in, picking up the cooler and handing it to Ashiya. “Let’s just take one each and leave the rest for later, okay? Nobody’s gonna mind if we give the vanilla to Suzuno, right?”

  “Absolutely, Your Demonic Highness.” Ashiya deferentially accepted the cooler, giving Chiho another respectful bow as he methodically stacked the cups in the freezer compartment.

  “Oh, come onnnn. Just one?”

  Urushihara pitifully mewled in protest, strawberry half pint still in hand.

  “Why do we hafta leave any for Suzuno? She’s our mortal enemy and stuff.”

  “U. Ru. Shi. Haaaa. Ra?!”

  “Wh-what, Chiho Sasaki?! She’s kinda your rival, too, dude! In a lot of different ways!”

  The mostly dissipated warmth resurrected itself within Chiho’s cheeks.

  “Well…yes! She, she is! She’s my rival, and my friend!”

  She put as much firmness as she could into it.

  “Huhh? What’s that s’posed to mean?”

  “I mean the rival thing’s one thing, but the ice cream’s another! That’s why you’re a child, Urushihara! You don’t even understand that!”

  “Oh, yeah, yeah, I’m the child and that’s why it’s all my fault, huh? No way I’d ever understand some crazy girl acting all jealous of—oww!”

  Urushihara groaned at the sudden impact thudding upon his temple as he attempted to give Chiho his most finely honed, well-polished sass.

  “That’s enough, Urushihara! If you dare to pelt our kind and generous guest with any more verbal abuse, I’m confiscating that strawberry cup and canceling our Internet!”

  Urushihara, teary-eyed, looked up at the goblin face of Ashiya from below.

  “A demon like you, eating all our food, wasting all our money, not lifting a finger to help out around the Castle…I would put Crestia and the Church-anointed food she’s poisoning us with over you any day of the week! And now you berate Ms. Sasaki, a walking saint who’s provided nothing but support to His Demonic Highness and sincerely cares about the state of our Castle! The gods above may forgive you, but never shall I!”

  The chief househusband of Devil’s Castle kept Chiho behind her as he rained lightning downward.

  Ashiya had been less than welcoming of Chiho’s advances toward his demonic superior at first, but his suspicions had been thoroughly quelled by the cooking Chiho and her mother provided. Now he saw the Sasaki family as nothing less than the savior of their monthly budget.

  Urushihara’s face twitched beneath Ashiya’s withering rage. He took a step backward.

  “A-all right, all right… Man, that teenage girl’s got you whipped. Maou, too.”

  One hand was to his head, the other still gently cradling the strawberry ice cream cup as he retreated back to his default position in front of the computer.

  “Now then, Ms. Sasaki… Please, come over here. There’s a bit more of a breeze closer in. I have some barley tea to drink.”

  Sitting Chiho down on the low table at the center of the room, Ashiya presented a Haggen-Boss cup and a glass of tea, adjusting the fan behind him to provide more relief.

  The Villa Rosa Sasazuka apartments the Devil’s Castle was currently situated within did not offer air-conditioning as a standard option.

  It was possible for tenants to obtain permission from Miki Shiba, the building’s landlord, to install a unit. Theoretically possible, at least. But Shiba was still out in the tropics somewhere, declining to offer any kind of return date.

  Maou was motivated enough to investigate, given how (unlike last summer) he had a regular income to fund some AC with. He contacted the property management firm Shiba had left contact information for, but apparently she had never contracted this outfit for matters related to individual building maintenance.

  In other words, the so-called property management guys could change the fluorescent lights that lined the hallway, but anything involving private tenant spaces had to go through the landlord first.

  She had done so in the past. Take two months ago, when Shiba herself stopped by to discuss the earthquake-proofing work she had scheduled.

  However, installing AC in Devil’s Castle involved cutting a hole in the wall to connect the outdoor condenser with the indoor fan. That counted as making “major adjustments” to the building, apparently.

  It was especially galling because, while Shiba was overseas somewhere, she was hardly in hiding. On regular occasions, she sent Maou letters describing where she was and what she was up to.

  Said letters, though, were usually dated several weeks prior to when they finally reached Maou’s mailbox. By the time a dispatch from one tropical paradise or the other arrived, she would already have moved on to her next idyllic retreat. Making contact was all but impossible.

  And more to the point, neither Maou, nor Ashiya, nor Urushihara were willing to open her mail in the first place. They gathered dust deep inside the Devil’s Castle’s prefab shelving. The scars from the “landlord cheesecake pin-up massacre” that befell the trio not long after Urushihara arrived still remained embedded in their hearts.

  Thus, the ex-demons had diligently ignored every piece of mail from Shiba until Suzuno moved in next door. Their new neighbor had given them a mouthful about this habit, bringing up the specter of Shiba sending them some sort of important notice and them remaining blissfully unaware. So, not too long ago, the gang decided to open up the most recent letter.


  It was the same envelope as always, the gold-lined border giving it the air of contrived luxury. The address was written in an elegant hand using some sort of fountain or quill pen—a sight they were used to by now.

  This time around, Maou’s landlord was over in Indonesia. The cheesecake pin-up massacre had taken place in Hawaii, but she wasn’t soaking up the rays on Bali or anything—instead, for motives and purposes that only Shiba could ever truly understand, she had traveled to the island of Borneo to join some spiritual ceremony held by the local indigenous people.

  Swallowing nervously, Maou dared a peek at the photograph included. There was his landlord, wearing a highly conspicuous gold-and-silver-spangled dress and a broad-rimmed hat with several dozen colorful feathers jabbed into it like a mutant peacock’s rear end. The inch-thick makeup, meanwhile, was a much more familiar sight.

  At that moment, Maou instinctively knew there was no point trying to make contact with her. What happens, happens.

  They survived the summer heat last year AC free, after all. Besides, they now had Urushihara, a walking, talking package of bad debt, pushing upon their budget.

  Maou decided this was God’s way of telling him that just because they had some monetary wiggle room didn’t mean they could bust out the caviar. He did not ask himself why the revelations of an Earth-based deity should take precedence over the Devil King of a wholly unrelated planet.

  “You know, I thought it would be hotter in here, but this apartment gets a pretty good breeze, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess that kind of saves all our hides, huh? We got the corner room, so there’s a few more windows than normal.”

  To keep the sun from directly beating down on their room, he had placed bamboo blinds (purchased at the Donkey Hottie shop in Hounancho, the birthplace of Dullahan I). All the windows were wide open, the fan deftly positioned to encourage proper airflow. This rewarded them with a draft, albeit a dank and muggy one. The fact that Villa Rosa Sasazuka wasn’t adjacent to any nearby buildings, but was separated from them by a tiny, bare-earth front yard, no doubt helped.

  “Maouuuu, are we really not gonna buy an AC unit this year?”

  Urushihara, in contrast to Chiho as she enjoyed the summer breeze, had fallen into the depths of hell.

  “I told you, man. We can’t contact the landlord, and we can’t afford to install it anyway. Besides, if we bought some cheapo AC, the electric bill next month would kill me.”

  “Barrrrfffff…”

  “I’m not really a fan of air-conditioning myself.”

  Chiho chimed in as she methodically pecked at her rum-raisin.

  “They have AC in the classrooms at school, but whenever we’re done with gym class or whatever, someone always turns it, like, all the way down. It’s freezing!”

  “Indeed, the greatest achievements of civilization wield the power to destroy all of us. The mere thought of the electricity bill is enough in and of itself to send shivers up my spine!”

  Ashiya voiced his agreement in a way only he could as he enjoyed his green tea ice cream.

  “Yeah, I can totally picture the guy, too. Probably never shuts up, I bet, huh? Then, if you turn up the thermostat at all, he’s probably like ‘Ohhh, it’s so hot, it’s so hot!’ and turns it back down the moment no one’s paying attention.”

  Maou grimaced as he stabbed away at his Cookie Crunch.

  “Yes! Exactly!”

  Chiho nodded eagerly.

  “I’m pretty familiar with guys like that. It’s like their mind’s always short-circuiting on them. They just want to satisfy their urges right now without thinking of the consequences. And they’re always the biggest loudmouths, too.”

  “Right, right! Wait…”

  “Hmm?”

  Chiho suddenly realized something as she smiled in agreement.

  “How do you know all that, Maou? You didn’t actually go to school in Japan or anything, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “It always seems like we’ve had a lot of the same experiences, but…you know, that’s kinda strange when you think about it, right?”

  “Yeah… I guess, so, maybe.”

  Maou scarfed down the last mouthful of Cookie Crunch. Standing up, he tossed the plastic lid and clear vinyl cover into the bin for burnable garbage, washed out the paper cup, flung it into the bag for recyclable papers, leaned against the sink, and sighed.

  “I guess you could say demons have more…forceful ways of solving their problems. But stuff like that… I guess it’s not much different between humans and us.”

  “……”

  Ashiya listened on silently as Maou spoke.

  “…Ugghh, one of those little cups isn’t enough…”

  Urushihara, oblivious to the conversation, placed his strawberry cup on the computer desk, his eyes greedily swiveling toward the refrigerator.

  Just then, Maou’s eyes pricked up.

  “Oh? Hey, Suzuno, where’d you go? Chi wanted you to have some ice cream, too.”

  Maou spied Suzuno passing by the open kitchen window, carrying a set of large objects in front of her.

  “Ah, my thanks to you. I will gladly partake of it once I am finished with this task.”

  They spoke between the iron bars that covered the window. Suzuno appeared to have something resembling a set of small, square logs in hand.

  “…Hey, what’s that?”

  “Hmm? Logs. Why do you ask?”

  “I can see that. I was asking what you’re gonna do with it.”

  The reason why Maou was so insistently asking about his neighbor’s possessions was that, in her opposite hand, she held far more ogara sticks than she had any business needing.

  “As a member of the Church’s Missionary Office, I have an interest in this Obon holiday. I decided it would be best to experience it for myself.”

  “…And?”

  “And to begin with, I have to light the mukaebi, yes? And then the smoke from this fire will attract the spirits of one’s ancestors back down to earth?”

  Maou hung his head, his suspicions proven correct, before beckoning Suzuno inside through the bars.

  Suzuno, brows knitted, nonetheless opened the door to the Devil’s Castle.

  “What? They say it is best to do the task while the sun is in the air, so I wanted to handle it as soon as—ow!”

  Maou cut off Suzuno with a karate chop to her head.

  “Wh-what are you doing?!”

  “Are you trying to burn this apartment down?! ’Cause you’ve got way too much fuel for the job!”

  Suzuno’s eyes welled up as she fought back verbally, attempting to invent new and colorful words to criticize him with.

  “I was hardly going to burn all of this! The logs are so that I can build a fire pit in the back garden! I am only going to burn this set of ogara, and… Ow! H-how dare you strike me while my hands are full!”

  Maou unleashed his second karate chop.

  “That’s even worse! You saw Chi buy just one little bundle of them! And now you’re building a fire pit in our yard?! How many ancestors’re you trying to get over here?! You’re not making a campfire!”

  The parcel of land occupied by Villa Rosa Sasazuka was surrounded by a concrete-block wall. The yard, if it was large enough to call it that, was little more than a bare strip of earth.

  Only a single hardwood tree dared to set root inside. Every year, an entire metropolis of cicadas set up shop amid its leaves, seeking refuge from the city’s asphalt jungle and reciting their incomprehensible, screeching cacophony summer after summer.

  “Hey, let’s just calm down a sec, okay? I’ve got some vanilla ice cream for you, Suzuno.”

  “It shall be mine!”

  If the Devil’s Castle lacked AC, it was a given that Suzuno’s room was no less scorching. That might at least partially explain why Suzuno leaped at the ice cream offered to her, topping it with some kuromitsu syrup and roasted soy flower from her room. She spent a moment to sav
or it before attempting to defend herself again.

  “Well, how are you supposed to light a mukaebi, then?! As far as I saw in my research, there are monks that build these enormous fires! Vast pyres of flame, set ablaze in pits lined with straw from the makomo rice plant!”

  There was no way to tell what kind of research Suzuno could have done in the short time after she returned from purchasing the bike. But, as always, it was off-kilter. She was describing far more elaborate Obon ceremonies, the type carried out at Buddhist temples and large-scale festivals.

  “Ashiya.”

  “Yes! Right here.”

  With the snap of Maou’s fingers, Ashiya went into motion, bringing out a clay dish, a lighter, and some twisted bits of newspaper.

  “You can buy all this stuff at the hundred-yen store, by the way. They throw in the newspaper for free to pack the dish in. This is a horoku, by the way, a clay pan you roast tea in.”

  Maou took a single bundle out of the pile Suzuno brought in and stepped outside the room.

  “And the ogara here is ninety yen a bundle at the place Chi bought it from. So we’re talking no more than two hundred yen for the whole thing.”

  Chiho and the crestfallen Suzuno followed Maou outside as he climbed down the outdoor stairway and placed the clay dish on the ground, near the front gate that faced the road.

  Then, removing the bit of plastic that kept the bundle of ogara sticks together, he broke the longer sticks into smaller, more manageable sizes.

  It took around two-thirds of the bundle to fill up the dish. Maou passed the rest to Suzuno, then lit a twisted bit of newspaper with the lighter.

  Pointing it down toward the bottom, with several other paper bits nestled in to serve as kindling, he instantly set the ogara ablaze. Smoke lazily wafted above.

  “…Ta-dah! That’s the easiest way to light a mukaebi.”

  “…What?”

  “By the way, if you live in a housing complex like this, make sure you do it outside, all right? Otherwise it might set off the smoke detector. Any questions?”

  Suzuno’s stare flip-flopped between Maou and the small fire on the dish, her eyes dubious.

  “…Simply ridiculous. The mukaebi is a cherished family ceremony, meant to attract the souls of one’s revered ancestors. You dare to call this simple, plain affair a ceremony?”