“Hey, we’re here, Urushihara. Move it. You are being such a pain today…”
“Ugh… Dude, I’m still dizzy.”
Urushihara staggered in from behind. The worst of the heatstroke was behind him, but he still had to rely on Ashiya for support. He might not have contributed much to any of the demons’ lives in a positive manner, but the gang leaving the apartment for a bath and returning to find his desiccated corpse on the floor would’ve really bummed out the rest of the evening. Stuffing some water into him and tossing him into a cold bath would help him perk up.
Maou fished a bath ticket out of his basket.
“Well, whatever you guys’re up to, keep it legal, okay?”
“Heh. You’ve got it easy,” Emi muttered. Maou turned around in response, but she wasn’t even looking at him, apparently figuring he didn’t hear her. Instead, behind Emi’s shoulder, Alas Ramus was staring daggers at him.
“Daddy’s not coming?”
“Hmm?”
“Huh?”
Emi and Maou spoke in unison.
“Mommy ’n’ Daddy go to different baths?”
“Uh.”
It was a simple, innocent question, but it made everyone freeze in place. Maou managed to recover first, trying to muster the most authentic-looking smile he could.
“Um, so listen, Alas Ramus, you’ll be heading in with Mommy and the other girls…”
“Yeh! You too, Daddy!”
She refused to budge. Emi, still frozen, was offering no further help, so Chiho decided to try her luck.
“Well, no, Alas Ramus… You see, your mommy and daddy aren’t allowed to go in the same bath.”
“But I-I went with Daddy! Al-shell ’n’ Lush-ferr, too.”
She remained steadfast. Suzuno was up next.
“Alas Ramus, grown-ups need to go into either the men’s bath or the women’s bath. You needn’t be so difficult.”
“But…with Daddy…”
The child’s lips formed a disapproving pout. She looked downward, seemingly ready to burst into tears at any moment, as Emi finally found it in her to speak up.
“…You’ve brought Alas Ramus here before?”
“Well, sure, when she was staying with us. They got a bath here they keep at midlevel heat for the kiddos, so…”
Before her unexpected fusion with Emi’s holy sword, Alas Ramus had spent a short time in Devil’s Castle, relying on trips to Sasanoyu with the rest of the gang to keep clean. Sometimes Maou brought her along; when he was busy with work, Ashiya took over. Even Suzuno lent a hand sometimes, which meant Alas Ramus should have had some recollection of how the gender system worked.
But she was still pouting, her eyes moister than before, so Chiho said, “It’s just that you haven’t had a bath with Maou for a while, isn’t it, little Alas Ramas?”
“Really?” Now Emi was pouting, too.
Alas Ramus wiped her eyes and nodded. “…Oon.”
“Listen, Alas Ramus…”
“Yehh, Daddy?”
Maou’s calm, collected voice kept a tear from popping out at the last moment.
“Do you take baths with Mommy most of the time?”
“…Yeh.”
“Really? Great. So how ’bout we take a break from that, just for tonight, and you can go take a bath with me?”
“Wif you?”
“……”
Emi focused silently on the top of Maou’s head. He was bent over slightly, on eye level with Alas Ramus.
“Do you know how to get clean all by yourself yet, over at Mommy’s house?”
“Snif… Yeh. All by myself!”
“Oh, that’s great to hear! Your hair, too?”
“Nuh-uh.”
Well, it was honest of her, at least. Although given the length of her hair, it was going to be a while before she could wrangle all of that alone. Maou gave it a pat or two anyway.
“Well, if we practice, I’m sure Mommy will be really surprised when you get back!”
Snatched back from the brink of tears, Alas Ramus turned her head toward Emi, who was a tad despondent.
“Yeah! Let’s practice!”
Emi wore a tight-lipped frown.
“Oh, don’t look at us like that,” Maou shot back. “Trust me. We’ve done this a few times before, you know. It beats dealing with a crying child. You girls’re all doing something later tonight anyway, right? I could babysit for you all if you want.”
“……”
Emi’s eyes darted between Maou and the child, as Chiho and Suzuno looked on with bated breath from behind her.
“It’s not that I have a…trust problem with it…”
“Mm?”
Maou had trouble making her out. The words seemed to tumble around behind her teeth, an indecipherable muddle. She grimaced as Maou extended a hand to her.
“Can I, Mommy?”
The three words made her give up all hope.
“Don’t look at me like that. Ugh…”
She couldn’t say no. She just wasn’t in the habit of disappointing her girl.
“…All right. I’d appreciate it if you could do that for me.”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
Everyone simultaneously grunted their shock, all but demanding confirmation from her. Not even Maou was expecting this.
The reaction made Emi instinctively add to the chorus:
“…Huh? What’s with you people…?”
Despite her doubts, she handed Alas Ramus to the frozen, outstretched arms of Maou.
“Yay! Bath with Daddy!”
“……”
“Daddy?”
“Like…Emi…?”
“What?”
Jostling Alas Ramus into place with an arm, he brought his other hand to Emi’s forehead and touched his palm to it.
“Whoa!”
“Ah!” Chiho joined Emi in abject surprise.
“You’ll ‘appreciate’ it? You’re acting way too cooperative today. You got a fever or something?”
“What? Of course not! Don’t touch me!”
Judging by the way she ruthlessly slapped Maou’s hand away, it looked like the same old Emi in front of them. But:
“S-S-S-Suzuno, did…did, did you see that?”
“I did. There is no doubting it.”
Chiho and Suzuno huddled together behind her. Even Ashiya and Urushihara were dubious.
“Curse you, Emilia… You had best not be planning some nefarious deed!”
“……”
This exaggerated reaction was doubtlessly justified. Even a few moments ago, it would be impossible to even imagine Emi allowing Maou to touch her. Sure, they weren’t seeking to kill each other every waking moment—the fact they were now sharing a public bathhouse was proof enough of that—but Emi had never “appreciated” anything Maou did before, and she certainly didn’t allow any touchy-feely stuff.
Even Maou noticed how awkward this was. He recalled how, not all that long ago, she had steadfastly refused to let him even help patch up her scrapes after falling down the stairs leading up to his place.
“Wh-what’s the big deal, everyone? Am I…am I acting weird, or what?”
“Or what” wasn’t the half of it. And Chiho noticed something else unnerving about this defense. The “everyone.” Emi had shown a willingness to work with the demons in the past, when they all had a common goal to work for. But in terms of personal relationships, she never considered Maou, Ashiya, or Urushihara part of her own social circle—in other words, someone to address as part of the “everyone” she’d just pleaded to. It was always “us”—Suzuno, Chiho, and the other Ente Islans—and “them”—the demons and angels she was pitted against.
“Not at all, no,” Chiho lied through her teeth as she attempted a soft smile.
“Chiho?” Suzuno saw through it.
“I’m sorry, Maou. Actually, Yusa and I have a li
ttle something we have to do, so could you take care of Alas Ramus in the meantime?”
“S-sure… You, um, got it?” Maou couldn’t help but phrase it as a question.
“All right. See you later, Alas Ramus!”
“Byeee!” The girl batted a tiny hand at the waving Chiho. Maou joined in out of habit as he watched the highly suspect group file into the women’s bath. Once the door shut behind them, he turned to his Demon General confidant.
“What was that about?”
“Perhaps…the sun has gotten to more than one of us?”
“I dunno about that, but…maybe. I was pretty damn sure she had a fever or something, too.”
“…You think she’s still got some baggage from before?” Urushihara butted in. He was still pale, but well enough to return to his usual flippant self. It didn’t cheer Maou’s mood.
“Before” referred to early August, when two angels from Ente Isla’s take on heaven had hijacked TV signals across Tokyo for assorted devious purposes. Ashiya, an active participant against them, was aware of that. And he was also aware that along the way, the archangel Gabriel had revealed something to Emi that made her question her entire identity as Hero.
Emi’s father, thought to be killed at the hands of the advancing Devil King’s Army, was alive. To Emi—who had shouted in Maou’s face that she’d avenge her father with Maou’s head—that revelation made things suddenly very complex.
Maou felt no subsequent obligation to worry himself much about Emi. But he couldn’t help but wonder if she was aware of another fact, this one obtained by Chiho. A message for Maou and Emi, to be exact, one obtained alongside a vast store of power donated by a new, and heretofore unseen, third party. Chiho never mentioned whether she relayed the message to Emi, and Maou sure wasn’t going to tell her, so he wouldn’t be asking.
But it still might explain the not-so-subtle changes in Emi’s attitude.
“Even if she did, I highly doubt it would cause her to soften her stance against us.”
“…Well, if she keeps acting weird like this, I guess I could ask Chi later.”
Maou provided a ticket for himself and the money for Alas Ramus to Toyo Murata, the Sasanoyu bath attendant and a woman well north of eighty, and proceeded to the men’s changing room.
“Maou?”
“Hmm? What’s up, Toyo?”
Toyo rarely spoke much, especially if it meant stopping a paying customer in his tracks.
“’Zat yer wife, there?”
She nodded toward the women’s side of the house. Maou snickered to himself and shook his head.
“Nah, nah. Just the mom.”
“…Mm. Well, keep the child happy, an’ I won’t complain.” Then Toyo fell silent, returning to her corner of the front room and closing her eyes as she listened to the radio. This was usually how Maou’s conversations went with her. It was never easy to tell what she thought of him. He brushed it off, adjusting Alas Ramus’s position in his arms.
“Okay, Alas Ramus! Ready to hop in the bath?”
“Yehhh!”
“Dude, quit shouting. I still got a headache.”
“Yeah, don’t wade into the hot bath, okay, Urushihara? We’re not gonna drag you back home, too.”
The seemingly worry-free father, daughter, and minions entered the men’s bath.
“Wow! Are we the first ones here?”
Chiho’s surprise was evident as they filed into the deserted changing room, quite a bit larger than it looked from the outside.
With practiced hands, Suzuno grabbed a clothes basket from the stack and took position in front of the lockers.
“Indeed. Though I imagine not too many people would seek a bath in the middle of the afternoon like this. A stroke of luck!”
“Which is great and all, but what about the men’s side?” Emi pointed at the tall partition separating them from the men’s section.
“Oh, I imagine we have little to worry about. While it might depend on Chiho to some extent, we can adjust our strategy when the times call for it. Besides”—Suzuno giggled at Chiho a bit—“it is Chiho of whom we speak. We cannot hide it from the Devil King and his cohorts forever. It is always far easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission, as they say. Those demons are hardly fools. They can listen to reason.”
She began to remove her kimono, Emi’s concern obviously not bothering her much. Chiho, meanwhile, seemed far more pensive.
“Um…Suzuno? And Yusa, too…thanks again for all your help, okay?”
Considering the day of work was behind them, this uncharacteristic formality seemed very out of place. Eyes deadly serious, Chiho nodded at her companions as she stood next to Suzuno and began disrobing. Emi began to regret bringing it up. If this was how self-conscious she was already, there was no need to make it worse.
“Listen to reason, huh…?”
Now Emi’s eyes were on her right arm, the one that held Alas Ramus not long ago.
“I’m really starting to feel like an idiot…”
“…Um, Yusa?” Chiho paused midway through removing her shirt, eyeing Emi with concern. “You think maybe we…shouldn’t, after all?”
Oh. Was that her question? Emi immediately shook her head, the gloom quickly draining away. “Sorry! No, it’s not that. Just something else I was thinking about. If I wasn’t up for this, I wouldn’t be here. And I wouldn’t have brought this, either.”
She took pains to sound more cheerful as she took something out of her shoulder bag. At first glance, it looked like the kind of energy shot sold at almost every retail location in the universe. Inside, though, was something that, theoretically, should never have existed on Earth.
“All right, Chiho…this is the source of our powers here on Earth. It’s called 5-Holy Energy β.”
Chiho grasped the tiny bottle firmly and gave a stout nod.
“Bell and I are gonna be right here the whole time for you, all right? …Are you ready?”
“Ready!” The affirmation practically burst out of her.
“I still don’t know what Bell’s gonna do in the bath, but let’s get started. Chiho, welcome to Holy Magic 101.”
It all began the day after they had defeated Gabriel and Raguel. Coincidentally, it was also the day before Chiho had been discharged from the hospital:
After wrapping up work for the day, Emi had paid a visit to Chiho’s hospital room. All the medical tests confirmed that Chiho was a perfectly healthy teenager, but it didn’t make the situation any less serious. Not too long before, Chiho had been placed in a coma by a magical force beyond all Japanese medical comprehension. Now, she was champing at the bit to leave.
“This is really erring too much on the side of caution, don’t you think, Yusa?”
“That’s what every patient in the world thinks, Chiho. Plus, you’ve put your body through a lot. You need to rest more.”
Chiho’s powers, which she’d generously showed off at no less than three venues—the Dokodemo Tower, Tokyo Skytree, and Tokyo Tower landmarks—couldn’t have been anything that had just appeared within her overnight.
There was a great number of things Emi wanted to ask about these newfound abilities, but from Chiho’s perspective, there wasn’t much she could say that she hadn’t already told Maou—how she had obtained these untold powers, what kind of exchange she’d had with her benefactor, and what Chiho had been up to before Emi saw her. And as for this mystery patron:
“I’m sorry, but I really just don’t know, in the end…” Chiho looked up apologetically from her bed.
Emi shook her head in reply. “No. it’s okay. Thanks. You’ve been a big help to me.”
“Um, have I? Oh, but there was one thing I needed to relay…I mean, to talk to you about, Yusa. I think, anyway.”
“Why’re you so vague about it? You ‘think’ you need to tell me?”
“Um…well, I had another message for Maou, too, but…”
Then she explained to her what she had told Maou—that sh
e had memories of the Devil King’s younger days, something she couldn’t possibly have experienced herself.
“I just feel like…I dunno, like it’s important you knew about that, so…”
And there was something else.
“I saw this big, muscular man. He had a beard, and his hair wasn’t that long but he still had it in a ponytail down the back of his neck. He was dressed kind of like a medieval farmer from Europe or something. He seemed nice. Where was he…? I saw something that looked like a really big rice field, except the stalks were all gold, lit up by the sunset…”
“!!”
Emi’s heart skipped a beat.
“…Do you think that was actually wheat, maybe?” Emi asked. “Rice plants droop down when they’re ready for harvest, but wheat stalks would still be standing straight up.”
“Yeah, that might be the case, then. But I couldn’t really make out what was in the background. The guy was holding a sword, and he was looking at me…or, I guess, he was looking toward my viewpoint, anyway.”
“A sword?” Emi’s pulse shifted from a quick staccato to an oppressive drone of thumping. “For real?”
“Yeah, but…” Chiho paused a moment, unsure of what attracted Emi’s attention. “But that’s really it, though. That’s all the memory that I have. That, and…”
Chiho found herself pausing again, gauging Emi’s clear disappointment.
“Assieth-arra.”
“…What?”
“Assieth-arra. That’s what that man said.”
“Assieth-arra…? Acieth… Maybe it’s something in the Centurient language.” Emi filed the unfamiliar term into her memory. “I’ll ask Bell about it later.”
“I just felt like I had to tell you that for some reason, Yusa…but I don’t really know what any of it means myself.”
Chiho’s anxious expression didn’t escape Emi’s notice as she pondered over this. Not having met the woman in white at Tokyo Big-Egg Town, Chiho had no way of knowing what her memories meant. But to Emi, that all but confirmed her long-held suspicions. She had no idea what was driving her to hide her true identity like this, but only one person in the universe would have a reason to give Chiho a Yesod fragment, toss vast amounts of holy energy around, completely ignore Urushihara, fight against Gabriel and Raguel, and plant memories of a man in a wheat field into Chiho.
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 6 Page 3
