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

by Satoshi Wagahara

  “I…I’m not…afraid of change, exactly…but…”

  Kisaki nodded lightly as Chiho lost herself in thought.

  “If it doesn’t seem like stewing over it’s gonna produce an answer anytime soon, just concentrate on the work in front of you instead. Like, right now, during your shift, I think your first priority is MgRonald work, Chi.”

  “Oh! Yeah! Um…sorry I’m being all lazy.”

  A glance at the clock revealed that Chiho just spent the last ten minutes tormenting herself in the staff room. The sight of her galloping out the door made Kisaki decide to open a desk drawer and take out a stack of employee résumés.

  “Hmm…”

  Looking over Chiho’s application, Kisaki’s thoughts turned to Maou, currently brewing coffee straight above her.

  “Oh, Chi’s taking that, too?”

  After her break ended, Maou discovered Chiho’s interest in the MgRonald Barista course from Kisaki.

  “Yep. She’s scheduled for the same time you are, Marko. You oughta go together.”

  “Sure. I can do that.”

  Kisaki swiveled an eye downward at Maou.

  “Hey, by the way, Marko, do you know when Chi’s birthday is?”

  “Uh, no, I don’t,” Maou instantaneously replied, unsure where this was going—until he saw Kisaki’s expression. It was chiding, somehow.

  Was that the wrong answer?

  “Hmm. Hard to tell if you don’t care, or if she’s too reluctant to tell you.”

  “Hah?”

  Kisaki shook her head, exasperated, at her employee’s semicomedic yelp.

  “There’s a lot of privacy regulations I have to follow when it comes to this sort of thing, but…it’s coming up, lemme just say.”

  “Oh, is it?”

  Maou, ever the eager student of Japanese societal customs, knew that a birthday was something to be celebrated. But having it thrust before him like this made him realize that he’d never actually thought about someone else’s birthday before.

  “Yeah. And looking at you guys… I’m kinda getting the picture that Chi’s going through some stuff because of you, Marko. Why don’t you man up and show her what she means to you a little?”

  “Uhm…”

  “I mean, you’ve got something to do with that, right? The way Chi’s been acting all weird lately?”

  “!!”

  Maou stared at his manager. He doubted Chiho ever told her the real truth, but he also had the feeling that not even he, the Devil King himself, could hide anything from this woman.

  “I don’t exactly need it laid out for me in black and white, you know? Something happened between the two of you during the renovation…and now you’re both acting a lot different.”

  “Are…we?”

  “And that’s not a bad thing! Everybody’s going to feel a little lost every now and then as they age. But if somebody’s there next to you, that can really change the entire story.”

  Kisaki grinned and gave Maou a nudge with her elbow.

  “So why don’t you solve some of Chi’s problems for a change? You could score some major kudos!”

  “…You really act like my mom sometimes, Ms. Kisaki.”

  Kisaki pretended not to hear it.

  “It’s called the art of winning friends and influencing people, you know? Maybe I’m not a mom, but any successful mom’s got to have it. Otherwise, who knows how screwed up the kids are gonna be?”

  That was hard to counter.

  “Anyway. Once you guys get barista accreditation, I can start sending a lot more people upstairs. It’s really nothing that tricky, but make sure you get it down cold for me.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I wonder, though,” Kisaki continued, apparently reading Maou’s thoughts, “what would make a good present for her?”

  Even Maou could tell that Chiho was far more mature and disciplined than most her age. Something that screamed “girly” at one glance might not work too well with her.

  “In terms of something that’d be useful… I dunno. I can’t think of much except, like, a salad-oil set or an economy-sized bag of rice.”

  “She’s not a restaurant, Marko.” Kisaki rolled her eyes.

  “But it’s hard for me to figure out what kinda fashion accessories she might like,” Maou protested. “And I’m pretty sure she’d have whatever book’s hot right now… But I think flowers would be too…you know, meaningful?”

  “Yeah. Given that weird distance you’re keeping from each other, flowers could be tough.”

  It seemed that Kisaki was on their side. But she sure wasn’t interested in providing direct answers, Maou was noticing.

  “Well, at the heart of it, really… As long as it’s at ‘present’ level, anything’s fine. Nothing too complex, nothing that’d be too much of a burden on her. To use the cliché, it’s the thought that counts. So just pick whatever comes to mind.”

  A new customer climbed up the stairs, the air-conditioning unit blowing his hair to the side. There were no orders on-screen, so he must’ve been a MagCafé client. Looking closer, Maou recognized him as a local businessman, a regular from before the renovation, although they didn’t particularly know each other.

  Despite the August weather, he didn’t have a drop of sweat on him—and yet, whenever he asked for a Platinum Roast coffee, he’d always place an odd emphasis on the word “hot, please” in his order. Maou had already nicknamed him “Mr. Hotplease” in his mind.

  Now he and Kisaki barked out their “Welcome!” in unison to him.

  “Um, one medium cappuccino, hot, please.”

  Maou couldn’t keep a smirk from erupting across his lips. “Certainly,” he said as he tossed the order over to Kisaki. “Do you need anything else? …That’ll be three hundred yen, please. …Out of five thousand. Ah, can I get a check, please?”

  MgRonald policy stated that whenever a cashier received a large bill like this, another crewmember had to run up to double-check that the correct change was being given. The lack of a bill denomination between one thousand and five thousand yen led to a lot of easily confused paper getting shuffled around. Maou was expecting Kisaki to handle the job, but as he turned around, he spotted her running a finger against the bottom of each MagCafé mug in the stock shelf, one after the other.

  “All right,” she said as she counted out the bills in Maou’s hand. He turned to hand it back to the customer.

  “Feel free to have a seat. We’ll bring it right out to you in a moment.”

  The businessman took the number card and sat down on a new, pliable café seat. Confirming his location, Maou watched Kisaki spring to action, taking a mug from the middle of the shelf…and, for some reason, washing it with the hot-water line they used to prepare tea and other drinks.

  After thoroughly rinsing it in scalding water, she positioned it on the coffee server, loaded it with frothy milk, then crafted the cappuccino just as Maou learned how to in the manual.

  “Hm.”

  Kisaki nodded, satisfied at the job, then went into the café space and traded the mug for the number card. Maou focused his attention on Mr. Hotplease for a moment as he took out his phone, idly scrolling through something on it, eyes locked on the screen as he brought the mug to his lips and took a sip.

  “…?”

  The mug froze in place, midair, as he was about to place it on the table.

  His eyes left the phone screen. Then he brought the mug back up to his lips, taking a longer sip than before, savoring the taste more deeply before placing it back down. Maou had the dim impression that, yet again, this wasn’t the cappuccino he’d been serving up earlier tonight.

  “What’s so different about it…?”

  Maybe the MgRonald Barista workshop would help answer that question a bit. Hopefully. But Maou, watching Kisaki return to the counter with a triumphant look on her face, couldn’t dispel the anxiety from his mind.

  Ten PM arrived, and Maou—on duty since the store opened—began
preparing to leave alongside Chiho. They both couldn’t help but notice how much Kisaki seemed to be enjoying herself as they walked out of the restaurant.

  “Heading home?” Chiho asked.

  “Uh-huh!” Maou replied.

  They usually walked together for a bit on nights like these, their paths diverging midway.

  Chiho hadn’t known that Maou was free from closing duties today, however. Too bad, she thought. If I had known, I wouldn’t have had to wait for the day of that barista thing to talk to him.

  “……”

  Just as Maou was taking Dullahan II out from the bicycle lot, he saw something behind Chiho that made him cringe, as if he just took a sip of motor oil while thinking it was cola.

  “Ah! Are the two of you free from your work duties?”

  “…We weren’t waiting for you, so just get that idea out of your minds.”

  It was the completely at-ease Suzuno and Emi. No matter which way you sliced it, they had to have been waiting for Maou to leave. To Chiho, though, the fact they were still lurking around Hatagaya indicated Sariel wouldn’t be any kind of quick fix.

  In other words, they were standing guard—just in case Ente Isla decided to seize the initiative tonight.

  Maou, never greatly interested in Emi hanging around him for long periods of time, sighed.

  “What do you want?”

  “I told you, we weren’t waiting for you.”

  “…Yusa?”

  Chiho suddenly realized that something was different. Emi was being just as acerbic and harsh toward Maou as she always was. But there was something not quite her to it, now.

  “It is as Emilia says. We had an errand over at Sentucky Fried Chicken. We completed it long in the past, but we had another exciting round of girl talk in the meantime.”

  “You really like that phrase, don’t you?” Maou replied wearily, as he looked to Emi for confirmation.

  “You were thinking we needed something from you?” Emi asked.

  “Well…” the Devil King found himself replying, “you pretty much always do, yeah.”

  Maou expected Emi to tell him to take a hike or get screwed or whatever else she usually did at times like these. Instead, she just said, “…Oh,” and turned her back to him.

  “Uh?”

  “What do you think I want?”

  “Uhh?!”

  This was certainly a new attack strategy. It successfully floored Maou. Chiho, following his eyes, finally realized what threw him so badly: Tonight, Emi wasn’t looking Maou in the eye. Usually, she’d have both her eyes, every bit of her hostility, and usually an index finger, pointed squarely at Maou. Now, all of that was lowered—a physical sign of her emotional insecurity, perhaps.

  “I… Well…?” Maou said, scratching his head. “I dunno. You wanna follow us on the way home just in case I pick tonight to finally prey on her or something?”

  “Oh, like you could do that. Her mom would kill you, you know.”

  “…Okay. Maybe you think I’m scheming something up in MagCafé? What, are you scared ’cause you can’t spy on me in there from the bookstore?”

  “Not with that manager you adore so much breathing down your neck, you wouldn’t.”

  “Right. So, again: What are you doing here? Just felt like flirting me with a little tonight?”

  “Flirting?” Emi sighed and ruefully looked downward, unable to hide her frustration. “Why does the Hero need some kind of reason to go see the Devil King?”

  “I don’t think ‘no particular reason’ is gonna cut it with me, Emi.”

  “Well, what if that’s all it is? What if it’s more Sariel I’m worried about?”

  This was starting to frustrate Maou, too. “Uh, what’s with you?” he said, lowering his voice. “’Cause you’ve been acting all kinds of weird lately.”

  “…!”

  There was something to Emi’s eyes as she raised her head at his lecturing tone.

  “Yusa?”

  “Wh-what…?”

  “…”

  They had tears in them.

  How long had it been since the last time anyone saw Emi’s tears?

  Even Maou had at least an inkling of what Emi was getting emotional about. The truth Gabriel revealed, that her father was apparently alive, was enough to send the young Hero’s heart reeling. He knew the lust for revenge kindled by that supposed death was her main driving force in life. As a Hero, he was sure justice and fairness and all that were at least secondary missions for her, but avenging her father’s death—one side effect of the invasion he engineered—must have constantly loomed large in her mind.

  Then, thinking over that, something else occurred to him. A Hero’s tears, presented to the Devil King. When did he see that last? And what did she say back then?

  “Why are you kind to me, to other people, to the whole world?!”

  She was crying.

  “Why did you kill my father?!”

  The pained shouting, the deep hopelessness impossible to hide within it, played against the back of Maou’s mind.

  “Hey, Emi?” he said, almost surprising himself with how gentle the voice sounded.

  “…What?” she replied, her own voice clearly trying to hold something back.

  “Y’know, maybe trying to conquer the world is a better fit for me in the end.”

  “…Huh?”

  “Maou?”

  “Devil King…?”

  The air was disquieted—enough to agitate even the staid Chiho and Suzuno.

  “Maybe this whole human-world thing ain’t suited for me after all. I guess I got a lot of people waiting for me. If I felt like it, I bet I could make contact with Camio and have him cart me out of here right now.”

  “M-Maou?” Chiho said, standing next to the somber young man, her voice quivering.

  “You aren’t serious, are you?”

  “Chi, it’s just all been too weird anyway,” Maou replied, his voice unchanged. “I united over a hundred different demon tribes. I led a Devil King’s Army and sat at the forefront of a good half-million demon fighters. What am I even doing, trying to learn about the human world?”

  “……”

  A twinge of wary caution began to cross Suzuno’s eyes. Like Chiho, she had trouble figuring out Maou’s aims.

  “I mean, it’s not like the Devil King can ever reconcile with the Hero. So instead, I’m gonna go be as cruel and despotic as possible, all right? And once I try taking over the world, you better snap back to it and kill me. That’d be a lot more natural, wouldn’t it?”

  “Maou…”

  “Sorry, Chi.”

  He gave her a pat on the shoulder, then stepped in between the three women, wheeling Dullahan II along.

  “I bet Ashiya’s gonna lose his mind when he hears about this. If we can invade before they get done rebuilding, maybe it’ll be in the bag this time.”

  “…that.”

  “Better make sure Camio brings a pretty big posse with ’im when he shows up, though. It’ll be nice to give Japan an appetizer of what’s to come.”

  “…even do that.”

  Emi’s quiet voice began to make itself known above the rambling demon.

  “…Yusa?”

  “Emilia?”

  Emi raised her head, ignoring Chiho’s and Suzuno’s quizzical stares. She stared Maou down, eyes sharp, then screamed at the top of her lungs at the back of his UniClo T-shirt.

  “You can’t even do that!”

  “……”

  Maou stopped, turning only his eyes toward Emi.

  “You don’t even…want to do that…!”

  “Ms. Kisaki’s gonna fly out of the store screaming at us if you keep that up.”

  “Oh, you’re scared of your fast-food manager, but you’re gonna take over the world? Come on!”

  “Hey, some things you just can’t fight, y’know?”

  “What do you want to do, even?”

  “Conquer the world. I told you that.”

>   “No. I mean, what about after that?”

  “……”

  Emi’s question took Suzuno and Chiho aback.

  “As long as they have access to their dark force, the demons in your realm don’t even need to eat. No way are they gonna get used to life in the human world. And what meaning does the human world’s land and treasure have to you, anyway? You’re settling down in this world where the only attraction for you is killing humans. Once you wrap that up, what next?”

  It was just as she’d discussed with Suzuno: The demon realms, and Ente Isla, ran on a whole different set of values from this world.

  “Well, how ’bout I start by killing all the humans and plunging the world into despair?”

  “Just hearing that, I can tell you’re not being serious.”

  There was a searching tone to Emi’s voice.

  “The Southern Island that Malacoda invaded was cast into a maelstrom of death and suffering. Lucifer’s army ran roughshod all over the Western Island, too. But the Northern Island… Unlike his brethren, Adramelech didn’t even let his troops touch anyone besides the knights and other fighters who resisted him. And even though the Eastern Island was under your control the longest, the Azure Emperor still reigns over most of it now, just like he did before.”

  “…Yeah, you sure did travel the world, didn’t you? Glad to see you were paying attention.”

  Emi glared at the gloating Devil King, not bothering to hide the tears any longer.

  “If… If you were really the bloodthirsty, maniacal Devil King you claim to be, then I…I-I wouldn’t be having so much trouble with this!”

  “Yusa…”

  “I should have known something was off the moment you looked me in the face and said, ‘Ooh, lookit me, I’m gonna be a salaried employee with all the benefits!’ You don’t want to conquer the world at all! You just…”

  Emi turned toward Chiho for a single passing moment before she continued.

  “You just want someone to praise you for being a good little boy in Japan!”

  The effect was immediate:

  Maou’s sneer disappeared from his face.

  All three girls could tell that he was about to explode into a violent rage, something that went far beyond mere anger or shame. But when that moment came: