The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 6

by Satoshi Wagahara

  Maou swallowed nervously as he followed, holding on to the handrail as he followed the stairs—the same color as the floor—upward. There, at the top, he found…

  For Sadao Maou—aka the Devil King Satan, assuming human form in this alien world called Japan, as he worked an hourly job to keep the lights on—it had proven difficult to take much of any action during the first half of August.

  Once he and his cohorts returned from their stint at a beachside snack shop in Choshi, they were quickly greeted by the seeds of a new and sinister concern. The winds of war had begun to blow over in Ente Isla—and what was more, the powers that be over there had begun to extend their reach to Japan in a more physical manner than before.

  While the three demon cast-outs living in Japan—Sadao Maou, Shirou Ashiya, and Hanzou Urushihara—were away, a new would-be overlord attempted to seize power in their realm, rebelling against the system Satan created and attempting to form a New Devil King’s Army. It was enough to put any tyrant ruler on the defensive.

  Meanwhile, the human forces of Ente Isla that chased Maou and gang to Earth—Emilia the Hero, now known as Emi Yusa; and Church cleric Crestia Bell, doing human business as Suzuno Kamazuki—were still an ominous presence in his mind.

  While ostensibly tasked with the job of defeating the Devil King once and for all, due to the minor family drama of Alas Ramus treating Satan as her father and fusing herself with the Hero’s holy sword, these human Ente Islans were unable to act upon their mission with any great sense of urgency. At the moment, the two of them were more concerned that Maou and his generals would be kidnapped by this New Devil King’s Army, appointing Satan as its figurehead as it launched a brand-new demon assault on their homeland. Thus, they found themselves in the unenviable position of essentially running guard duty for the Devil King they swore to defeat, making sure he wasn’t whisked anywhere they didn’t want him to go.

  And just when it seemed like things couldn’t get more complicated between the Hero and Devil King, a bunch of angels stepped in from heaven to make everything thornier. Their plans, however, seemed to have less to do with Maou and Emi and more to do with Chiho Sasaki, mild-mannered high schooler and the only girl on Earth who knew about Ente Isla and the drama involved with it.

  It was enough to make Maou and Emi, enraged at how the angels put Chiho in the hospital with a serious case of dark-magic poisoning, voluntarily join forces for the first time in order to drive the angels away from Japan.

  But in the midst of that, they discovered that Emi’s father, thought to be dead at the hands of Maou’s old demon hordes, was alive after all. Not to mention some mystery person had lent a carload of holy force to Chiho so she could help dispatch the angel Raguel, making Maou and Emi realize that yet another faction was now trying to make its presence known.

  Chiho was right as rain now, though. And even though things were even more twisted and tangled than ever before, the entire gang still had the mental wherewithal to enjoy the ever-so-light, but still unmistakable, early suggestions of autumn in the late August air.

  And meanwhile, in the midst of all this devastating cross-world conflict, the MgRonald location Maou worked at in Hatagaya was due to open tomorrow.

  “I dunno, it’s like… It’s the Mag, but it’s not the Mag, too—but in a good way. It’s still friendly and approachable, but it’s all refined and stuff, too!”

  It wasn’t even noon, but Maou already had a towel around his head and gloves on his hands as he tried to resist the pressure of the unrelenting sun in his white T-shirt.

  “The second floor overlooks the street by the rail station, but you actually get a pretty good view of the whole area. They’ve got blinds on the windows so the sunlight doesn’t get too rough, but it’s like… Man, it’s gonna be really exciting working there!”

  “Aw, that’s no fair, Maou! You went all by yourself?!”

  The voice complaining about Maou’s passionate review belonged to Chiho Sasaki, decked out in a workout jacket and pants, an identical pair of cotton work gloves as he had, and a broad-brimmed hat.

  “Hey, you’ll be back in the shift rotation too pretty soon, Chi!”

  “Well, yeah, but it’s still not fair!”

  Chiho, who worked on the Hatagaya MgRonald’s part-time crew alongside Maou, must have had as healthy of a curiosity about the place as he did.

  “So it is called a…MagCafé, yes? How does it differ from a regular MgRonald?”

  Shirou Ashiya, aka Maou’s Great Demon General Alciel, interjected this question as he wiped at the sweat pouring down his face with the hem of his T-shirt. The towel-bandanna and gloves were a match for Maou’s.

  “Well, it’s a café and all, so there’s a buncha different kinds of coffee! Like, café au lait, caffe latte, espresso, you name it! It usedta be MgRonald Platinum Roast or nothing, but not anymore. We got more café-type things on the menu, too, like hot dogs and pancakes and stuff…!”

  Maou breathed deeply through his nose, clearly unable to wait another moment to man the counter.

  “Alciel, do not disrobe and reveal your chest in front of Chiho while she is trying to help us out! The very nerve! And you, Devil King—stop your jabbering and put in more of an actual work effort!”

  These orders came from Maou’s next-door neighbor, the cleric Crestia Bell, better known these days as Suzuno Kamazuki.

  She had a sash over the kimono she usually wore around the house, a washcloth wrapped tight around her forehead as, with engloved hands, she wielded a broom about the same height as herself.

  They were all sweating it out in the backyard of Villa Rosa Sasazuka, the apartment building that currently housed the multidimensional demon headquarters known as the Devil’s Castle.

  Whenever summer rolled around, the lone evergreen tree within the apartment grounds played host to several million cicadas and locusts of all kinds. The resulting din of scratchy insect cries made it difficult to make yourself heard without raising your voice.

  “Yeah, yeah…”

  “M-my apologies!”

  Ashiya hurriedly slipped his shirt back down as Maou returned to work.

  “No, um… I wasn’t offended or anything…” Chiho turned a little red with embarrassment herself before she put it behind her. “Hey! Hey, what’s the difference between a café au lait and a caffe latte?!”

  Maou sighed deeply.

  “…Um.”

  He stopped his work and looked up into the air, perhaps calling upon the blazing sun to jog his memory.

  “Like, a café au lait has milk in it, and a caffe latte has…um, milk in it? They both got milk in it, right, but it’s, like, bubbly and stuff in a latte…I think?”

  “Yes! Wonderful! Coffee with milk in it! Now, can you stop using your head and start using your hands a little?!”

  “Well, I mean, it’s not like the cartons of coffee milk they have in the coolers at supermarkets and bathhouses and stuff… Man, I could go for a bath.”

  The sweat that covered his body confirmed that much. Once he was done, the first thing he’d do was march straight over to the bathhouse, no matter how much Suzuno yelled at him about it.

  The two of them, alongside Ashiya and Chiho, were in the midst of cleaning up Villa Rosa’s yard. This wouldn’t be their job as tenants, normally—to say nothing of Chiho, who didn’t even live there. But if payment was involved, that was another story.

  This time, it all began with another letter from their landlord—one who, now that Maou was fresh off spending a couple days with a relative of hers, was even more of a mystery to him.

  Said landlord had forced them out of their homes a while back, thanks to the enormous, cartoonlike hole punched in the Devil’s Castle living room wall. It was only temporary while the repairs were made, and she promised to credit them for the time they were out of the place—or so she had informed them. But in the end, they were displaced for only a little more than four days.

  Which she could have compensated for
easily enough. But Miki Shiba, their landlord—despite her clearly nonhuman physical characteristics, her weird relatives, and the general air of creepiness that surrounded her—brandished an odd sense of duty at times like these.

  “I do terribly apologize for breaking my promise,” she wrote. “I asked you to travel to my niece to work, but I understand circumstances prevented that from lasting very long.”

  In other words, she was sorry the demons couldn’t work at Ohguro-ya, the seaside snack bar and souvenir shop Miki’s niece ran, for as long as they’d planned.

  To make up for it, she continued, she was willing to up the discount on their rent, and thus make up the difference from what she had promised, if they were willing to tackle some of the yard work Miki was ignoring so far this summer. To be exact, she offered a fifteen-thousand-yen discount on the rent for August if they cleaned the place up for her. It would bring the figure down to an eye-wateringly low thirty thousand.

  Maou and Ashiya had immediately leapt at the offer—as anyone in their position would. Not only was their Ohguro-ya paycheck a fair amount less than anticipated, they had only just purchased a television—an enormous investment by their standards. And while Maou had minimized that financial hit well enough already, there was no way they’d refuse a further discount.

  Suzuno, the apartment building’s only other resident, had a far less pressing need for such an offer. But she still willingly volunteered her help. “It is only natural,” she said, “that a domicile’s residents should keep their housing neat and tidy.”

  Since money was involved, Maou and Suzuno made sure to check in with the real-estate office before officially getting down to work. Today, the day before Maou’s job at MgRonald started up again, was the date they picked. Yet, oddly enough, one of the apartment’s permanent residents was nowhere to be seen on the big day. Instead there was Chiho, who didn’t even live here, pulling up weeds and picking up rocks and pebbles with all her might.

  Maou hardly noticed the backyard unless he was parking his bicycle there, but thanks to an extended period of neglect, the grass was up to his knees. As he tromped through it, he noticed that the edge of the yard facing the street was lined with empty cans and bottles, tossed by passersby over his concrete-block fence. Ashiya was just tying up a full garbage bag of the results when the conclusion to Maou’s previous explanation rang in from out of nowhere.

  “So café au lait is French and caffe latte comes from Italian, right? And both terms basically mean ‘milk coffee.’ Both of them are about half milk and half coffee, but with a latte, they generally use espresso as the coffee base!”

  Maou looked up from his toil.

  “If you’re gonna pretend you work at a café, you have to have that answer ready when you’re asked, at the very least!” the voice added.

  There, under the punishing sun, was the Hero Emilia, better known to most as Emi Yusa, her face squinting in the light as she watched the quartet at work. In her arms was a child, Alas Ramus, smiling broadly, unfazed by the heat that made the grown-ups around her struggle to stay upright.

  “Daddyyy!”

  “Ooh! Alas Ramus!”

  Maou approached Emi and the child, both poised under what shade the cicada-infested tree offered. Emi instinctively swung Alas Ramus away from him.

  “Whoa! Don’t get her clothes all dirty! I just bought these!”

  “Oh, sorry, sorry.” He fell back a little. Despite the sweat-soaked shirt and mud-stained gloves he’d just attempted to grab the child with, Maou cared deeply for the little girl.

  “Good afternoon, Yusa!”

  “I am sorry, Emilia. Is it time already?”

  Emi raised her hand in response. “No, I came here a little early…” She stopped and glared at the demons, finding herself having to shout to make herself heard over the cicadas. “Guys, why’re you having Chiho weed for you? I swear, you’re all really abusing her kindness these days, aren’t you? How come one of you is missing, anyway? He isn’t having Chiho help you so he can weasel out of this, is he?”

  The “one of you” Emi referred to was, of course, the third and final denizen of Devil’s Castle—the fallen angel Lucifer, although he wrote “Hanzou Urushihara” on any social networks that required him to give his real name. Given his dedication to laziness and complete disinterest in responsibility, Urushihara’s absence inherently meant to anyone with a brain that he was trying to avoid work again.

  Unexpectedly, it was Suzuno who stepped up to bat to defend Chiho, her voice grim. “From a purely impartial point of view, Lucifer is most certainly not weaseling his way out of anything. It was simply a matter of him not being up to the task.”

  “Huh?”

  Chiho giggled a bit at Suzuno’s wording. “Urushihara got heat exhaustion.”

  “Mm. Indeed,” Suzuno replied.

  “He fainted, eyes rolling into his head, not thirty minutes after we began,” Ashiya interjected, his voice as grim as Suzuno’s as he looked toward the upstairs Devil’s Castle. “It would hardly do to have him die on us, so he is resting inside, under the fan.”

  Emi followed his line of sight upward, exasperated at the thought of it all. The very idea of a fallen angel who tried to obliterate an entire continent letting the August sun get to him! One would think all the spiky leather armor they liked wearing would make a native demon stronger against the heat.

  “All right, but still, why are you having Chiho help you?”

  “Oh, this is fine.” Chiho fanned herself with a hand, the warm conditions reddening her cheeks a little. “I’m doing this because I want to. And besides”—a quick glance at Suzuno—“I owe her a lot more than just this.”

  “Owe her?” This seemed to be news to Maou. He looked quizzically at Emi. “Hey, though, why’re you and Chi here today, anyway? Like, I’m totally happy Chi came over to help and all, but…”

  Chiho had arrived at the apartment at almost the same time as Maou returned home. Judging by how she’d brought her own hat and gloves, Suzuno must have tipped her off about today in advance. But Emi, too…? Maou couldn’t hide his suspicion any longer.

  “……”

  Emi and Suzuno remained silent, faces hesitant. It was Chiho who piped up.

  “That’s…that’s still a secret!”

  “A seek-rit! Ssshh!”

  There was no saying whether Alas Ramus was in on it or not.

  “Right! Better get back to work! Don’t want to keep Yusa and Alas Ramus waiting for too long!”

  Chiho took another broom propped up against the wall and started evening out the bare earth she’d just finished weeding. Maou continued to look on, quizzically…

  “You! Devil King! Alciel!”

  …only to have Suzuno’s scolding snap him back to reality, forcing him and Alciel to join the cleanup job.

  Here, in this little backyard—just a speck in the boiling city, really—the Church cleric, the teenage girl, the Devil King, and the Great Demon General were making surprisingly quick work of the weeding job. Something about it struck Emi as she watched in the shade.

  “It’d be so easy…”

  “Mommy?”

  She whispered it to herself, so softly that not even the child in her arms could hear it among the cacophony from the cicadas above.

  “If I could just run him through right now from behind, it’d make everything so easy… Ugghh.”

  Her eyes were transfixed on the back of his cotton T-shirt, now stained with sweat halfway down his body.

  “Wow, there’s a public bathhouse here? I live right by here, and I had no idea.”

  Chiho looked impressed as she took in the front of the building.

  SASANOYU, read the sign on the door. It was the public bath of choice among the Devil’s Castle residents, located about ten minutes away on foot from Villa Rosa Sasazuka.

  It looked like just another dusty mixed-use office building from the front, but the inside retained the old-fashioned, homespun feel of a Japan-style co
mmunal bathhouse from decades ago, complete with the tile artwork of Mount Fuji on the wall.

  But this wasn’t a relic, either—the bath took pains to adapt its business model to attract modern customers. The selection of bath types available was more than ample, the ticket system offered great deals for regular customers, the mixed-gender rest area in front of the bath entrances had a machine vending cold milk (a staple among any Japanese bathhouse worth its salt), and they even sold soap and other in-house merchandise.

  “They’re open pretty long hours, too. They start in the early afternoon, and they keep going juuuust late enough that I can squeak in after the closing shift at MgRonald.”

  Maou stood next to Chiho, basket of bath accoutrements in hand. He had changed his T-shirt from his weeding session, but nothing else.

  “Sasanoyu offers a remarkable variety of bath types, you know.” There was a twinge of local pride in Suzuno’s voice. “There are even shower booths, allowing one to enjoy the assorted waters while standing up, and I imagine that would be the best for you today, Chiho. I will gladly pay your admission for helping us out, by the way.”

  Something sounded fishy about this to Maou. “The shower? Whaddaya mean, that’d be best for her?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Emi butted in from behind. “Let’s just get inside!”

  “Bath! Splish splish!”

  Maou didn’t appreciate how the Hero accompanied them as if it were her birthright—and, even worse, brought all her own bath stuff with her, like she had been anticipating this. In addition to her usual shoulder bag, she carried another plastic one with a towel and change of clothes for Alas Ramus—so presumably she was going in, too.

  It seemed like the women were all expecting each other from the get-go today. Maybe they were having a girls’ night out later on. Wondering about it only made the suspense worse.