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

by Satoshi Wagahara

  “Great. Let’s say one to four PM tomorrow, then. Is that all—”

  Is that all right with everyone was what the suddenly bossy Sariel probably intended to say. Instead, something in the evening sky, the stars just beginning to twinkle above the setting sun, made him freeze in place.

  “Hm?” Maou followed his gaze. “Hey, what’s up, Sarie—uh?”

  “Uhh?!”

  Chiho and Emi were soon gasping themselves at the figure standing above them.

  “Oh, it’s you guys? What’re you all doing here?”

  She had a business outfit and a shoulder bag filled to bursting with files and work tools. Her heels were high enough that even Maou had to turn his head upward to look at her. Mayumi Kisaki, head manager at the MgRonald in front of Hatagaya station, exuded beauty in the dim light, her long hair shining in otherworldly colors. And now she was looking at them in abject surprise.

  “What, what about you, Ms. Kisaki…?”

  Maou and Chiho couldn’t hide their alarm at seeing Kisaki here, of all places. Meanwhile, Emi and Suzuno gave each other a quick glance. Their previous sighting was no fluke after all.

  “I’m not sure I’ve met all of you before,” Kisaki said as she sized up Ashiya and Urushihara. “Friends, maybe?” Urushihara rarely bothered going outside at all, and Ashiya had only visited MgRonald a couple of times since Maou began working there. He couldn’t blame Kisaki for not recognizing him. But the moment her eyes settled upon the man between him and Urushihara, her kindly expression turned into one of spiteful scorn.

  “…Why are you here, Mitsuki Sarue?”

  Chiho and Maou attempted to explain, but found themselves wagging their tongues fruitlessly. “This…um, this is just a…” “I… Oooh, I was…um…”

  “You aren’t messing around with MgRonald customers and crew again, are you…?”

  Kisaki pushed the women in the group out of the way to give herself a better position to interrogate Sariel from. Neither Maou nor Chiho could think of any way to stop her. They were both eyewitnesses to the moment Kisaki banned the guy, besides.

  Not only would this certainly not mend the fences between them—it’d only put more suspicion on Sariel’s shoulders, solidifying Kisaki’s decision even more. Clearly, it was up to Sariel to step up and do something.

  “Um,” he began shakily, “ummmm, I actually live in this condo building, so—”

  “…What? Here?”

  “Y-yes, erm…”

  The overbearing high-school coach act Sariel put on back at the gym was a faint memory now. Sariel was weak at the knees, a wholly unbelievable sight given the daily rose bouquets and burger feasts he was known for. Then Kisaki brought the conversation in an abrupt new direction.

  “Since when?”

  Sariel, caught off guard, gave the honest answer. “Since they built the Sentucky I manage in Hatagaya, but—”

  “You lived in this fancy-pants condo the entire time, you freak?” Maou’s grim and resentful aside went unheard.

  “Mitsuki Sarue.”

  “Y-yes?!”

  Being called by name like a drill sergeant made Sariel’s voice quiver.

  “Lemme ask you something. Was that storefront empty when you moved in?”

  “Huh?”

  Another abrupt zigzag. Sariel had trouble sizing this one up.

  “Well?”

  The repeated question shot him back to attention.

  “Um, I think it was a restaurant when I first showed up. It didn’t look that old to me, but it closed less than a month after I moved in…”

  Kisaki’s eyebrows twitched thoughtfully once or twice. Then:

  “Ugghh…”

  She sighed. Not out of rage or exasperation, but out of resignation.

  “I guess I was figuring as much.”

  “Um… How do you mean, exactly?” Maou couldn’t resist joining the conversation. “I mean, ever since the MagCafé opened up, you’ve been acting kind of different from before. Like, it feels like you’re stretching yourself a lot thinner than usual…”

  Kisaki had never betrayed a single millisecond of exhaustion to Maou before. Now she was talking about how “seriously rough” work was and going off manual for the coffee she made Mr. Hotplease.

  That’s what I want to be someday. A true barman.—She had said that, hadn’t she? A barman, someone she described as a true service professional. And now she was examining a storefront that used to be a restaurant. It wasn’t hard to draw a conclusion from that.

  “You were talking about how difficult it was to become a barman back at MgRonald, right?”

  “…Yeah.”

  Maou looked up to Kisaki as an example of what climbing the MgRonald corporate ladder could accomplish for someone with enough ambition. Now she was acting almost…vulnerable. He decided to push the topic.

  “Ms. Kisaki, are you…are you actually gonna quit MgRongah!!”

  The sentence Maou conceived in his mind was cut off by one of Kisaki’s files batting him on the head.

  “Don’t jump to conclusions, you idiot.”

  “The-the corners on those files hurt, you know…”

  The Devil King who laughed at the face of the Hero’s holy sword was nearly brought to tears by something from the stationery aisle. Kisaki sighed, finding herself at an impasse.

  “…You know, I do feel bad for not being my normal self around the crew lately. It’s just, with all the new stuff we do at MgRonald now, one of my old dreams is starting to make its way back into my head.”

  “Your old dreams?” Maou looked up at Kisaki as he cradled his head.

  “Right. I should probably let Chiho know most of all, shouldn’t I? Even grown-ups are allowed to dream about the future, after all.”

  She smiled.

  “I’ve always posted up better numbers than anyone else hired with me in Tokyo.”

  Maou knew this well enough by now, but those were the words that suddenly came from her mouth as she lovingly stared not at Sariel, not at Maou, but at the lonely FOR RENT sign on the window.

  “But lately, I’ve started to think…like, maybe I want to see how far I can go by myself.”

  “So you’re thinking about going solo sometime in the future?” Emi gingerly asked. “Not necessarily right now?”

  “Pretty much, I suppose,” Kisaki quickly replied—so quickly, in fact, that it caught Maou unprepared. “I mean, it’s all just kind of a ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ thing in my mind right now. I’m not taking any concrete steps toward it.”

  “Uh, I’d think that scoping out real estate is a pretty concrete step…”

  “Oh, this? This is just playing at it, really. It’s like seeing a help-wanted ad on the Net and immediately fantasizing about what you’ll do with the first paycheck.”

  “Ooh.”

  “Mm…”

  “Uhhh…”

  Maou, Emi, and Chiho all groaned uncomfortably. They’d all had experience with that. Kisaki smiled at the display.

  “Hey, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. That’s what motivated you to get working.”

  She approached the empty storefront window, peering into an interior lit only by the dwindling western sun.

  “All my fellow managers keep heaping praise on me for the numbers I put up. But I don’t really feel like I’m doing anything much different from any of them. The fact that the Hatagaya MgRonald keeps beating its previous sales figures year over year isn’t just because of me or anything.”

  “Oh, of course it is!” Chiho breathlessly replied. “I hear all these stories about evil managers and lazy part-timers, but it feels like our MgRonald’s on a totally other level from that. We pretty much never have angry customers, and I think a lot of that comes down to you, Ms. Kisaki!”

  Kisaki shook her head, still facing the window. “I’m glad to hear that, but it’s really nothing I could do alone. I’ve only been at that location for a year and a half—that’s actually pretty damn long for a manager to stay
at one place, but even before I showed up, there was already something there that set up the framework I worked under.”

  She turned her eyes toward Sariel’s reflection.

  “What do you think that is?”

  “…The previous manager?”

  Kisaki bunched her eyebrows at Sariel’s reply.

  “Wow. Considering how you go around embarrassing yourself, calling me a goddess and just barely skirting Japan’s stalker laws, you really know nothing about me, do you?”

  Sariel visibly shrank.

  “You probably know the answer by this point, Marko. What is it?”

  “The MgRonald Corporation. The brand.”

  Kisaki nodded her approval at the confident reply.

  “I am a single MgRonald employee. I take pride in that, and I couldn’t even tell you how much I’ve learned from them. Even if I make it all the way up the ladder, I’d still just be walking a path trodden by so many people before me. The assorted things I’ve been doing at that location all came about as part of the MgRonald system that already existed.”

  “Is that…how it is, then?” Emi asked softly.

  Kisaki neither nodded nor shook her head as her smile broadened. “You are… Ms. Yusa, right? Do you use a lint roller to get the junk off the shoulders of your work clothing when you get home?”

  “Huh?” Emi instantly turned her head toward one of her shoulders. “N-no, nothing quite like that—”

  “When you wash your hands, do you lather up all the way to your elbows and use a brush to polish up and disinfect your nails?”

  “Well, I use soap, but—”

  “Right, you see? A quick soap and rinse is just fine. There’s some great soap out there in Japan.”

  Then Kisaki took her hands, refined and beautiful enough to feature in a cell phone ad, and thrust them into the evening air.

  “Those are two examples of the kinds of things MgRonald’s spent years hammering into its store locations. That kind of hygiene isn’t something a place besides MgRonald can encourage through just a little education alone. That’s what I mean when I say there’s nothing about that location I’ve built up by myself.”

  She turned around to face the group.

  “And, of course, there’s still a lot I want to do. A lot of things I could only do in MgRonald. I kind of went off script a bit ago, actually. I know what some of my regular customers like in their coffee, and I tried to adjust my procedure for them…but man, it’s been hard. And now I guess I’m checking out a storefront that’s doomed to fail, huh? I’ve still got a lot to learn. It’ll probably be a while before I start talking about any dreams again.”

  “W-was that what you did?!”

  It was the day Kisaki had begun whining at Maou. He couldn’t believe that was what she was doing up there. It wasn’t too long after their grand reopening, either; they had to be fairly crowded. Their regulars numbered in the dozens, if not the hundreds. Remembering all of their preferences and crafting the perfect cup of coffee for them…?

  “So the coffee you had us drink, Ms. Kisaki…”

  “Yeah. Sorry about that.” Kisaki winked and gave them a mischievous chuckle. “That was kind of unfair, I know. I just figured it’d be nice to remind everybody who’s boss. But I didn’t treat you to ‘today’s special’ just for fun, either. You like your coffee bitter and not too hot, right, Marko? And Chi likes hers with no sugar and tons of milk.”

  Kisaki made a regular habit of treating the crew on duty to free Platinum Roast coffees whenever they exceeded their revenue goal for the day. What this meant was that through the days and weeks, Kisaki grasped how everybody on payroll liked their coffee—their MgRonald coffee, something specifically engineered not to be all that customizable.

  “……”

  Maou and Chiho were shocked.

  “But don’t let that make you think the MgRonald Barista workshop is a waste of time,” Kisaki said. “Having a broader knowledge of the stuff you’re working with creates the foundation for a whole new world of skills and technique. Every dream is just the culmination of a lot of tiny steps, after all.”

  She seemed to chew on her words a moment.

  “Right now, MgRonald’s giving me a pretty stable life. I’ve got talented people like you under me, and I’m notching some serious career achievements. Maybe a promotion’s in my future. Who knows? But…” Her hand gripped the shoulder bag at her side. “There’s always going to be this dream alive in a corner of my mind. This idea that I can build my own history as an individual person. That I can take that step.”

  Her eyes seemed to twinkle like a little girl’s as she revealed her heart. Not even people Chiho’s age talked so frankly about their dreams like that too often, but here was their boss, a fast-track manager going everywhere in life, laying it all bare for them. She wanted to be a barman, an expert in every aspect of service. That was her dream, and the unexpected installation of a café in her Hatagaya location had helped kindle the flame a little. She had that dream because she knew her talents made her dissatisfied with the status quo. Her efforts in life granted her the right to dream.

  “We might all dream in different ways, but depending on how we live and what we strive after, we can always have a new dream to pursue. Whether you make it happen or not is another matter, though.”

  Kisaki shrugged and pointed at the empty storefront in Sariel’s condo.

  “This place looked pretty fancy when it was open, didn’t it?”

  “I…think so, yes,” Sariel said, trying to recall.

  Kisaki nodded. “I thought it was a little cheap for what it offered,” she sniffed. “Must be something else going on with it.”

  Something about the way she put it suggested that she was more than window shopping. She must’ve discussed the space with a real estate agent, at least.

  “But why, though?” Maou asked. “I’d figure the condo residents would eat here, and I don’t think there’re many other restaurants around to provide competition. If the décor suited the location, you’d think it would attract a customer base…”

  “One way of putting it, yes,” Ashiya retorted. “But if you think about it another way, those could all be negatives as well.”

  “What makes you say that, sir?” Kisaki addressed the stranger politely.

  Ashiya responded by timidly looking up at Sariel’s building. “From what I can tell, this building is not that fully occupied. It might be nearby, yes, but no resident is going to stop here for lunch on a daily basis. The moment it grows old in their minds, they will stop coming. And being located in Hatagaya, I imagine the rent cannot be all that reasonable. A restauranteur would have to factor that into their prices. Perhaps you would have to charge 500 yen for a cup of coffee—but if you went that high, it would be difficult to ask that of customers without some sort of added value that goes beyond the quality of the drink.”

  He took a look around the street.

  “However, have you noticed? We have been loitering here for quite some time now, but we have yet to see anyone so much as brush past us. On a straight two-lane road without any stoplights, cars are going to pass by without even a second glance, so despite the amount of traffic, there likely would not be too many drop-in customers. Those cars have a municipal road lined with stores and restaurants just a little way ahead as well.”

  Then he turned toward the condo’s residential floors.

  “We are far away from both the rail station and the local shopping district, and there are no other shops near us. You could frame that as having little competition to deal with, but having no stores here means there is nothing else to drive people into the neighborhood. That was likely why few people visited this café. Even if they were counting on work-commuter traffic, this area is wholly residential, and one would have to live here to even realize there was a café at all. They simply had a very limited audience to work with. And, I imagine, the killer blow was the convenience store right next door.”

  Kis
aki listened on, impressed at this impromptu economics lesson.

  “I have the impression that there are relatively few families around this neighborhood. Most of the apartments seem to be meant for singles, and you have to travel a fair distance before you begin to see any stand-alone housing. If you live by yourself, I think the choice between a café and a convenience store is fairly obvious. With most convenience stores, it’s almost a given these days that you will find drinks from Moonbucks or Dully’s Coffee on offer. Most single condo dwellers have visitors only on rare occasions, and even then, they would be unlikely to entertain them somewhere outside of the home. Along those lines, as well, a convenience store offers everything they need. …Those are my impressions, at least,” he added to Kisaki, beginning to regret going on for so long.

  Kisaki, who had been listening with eyes closed and a finger on her chin, turned to Maou.

  “You’ve got a good brain on your side.”

  “Um, thank you.”

  Ashiya bowed at the indirect compliment.

  “I completely agree with that. The only good things about this location are the exterior and the equipment. Beyond that, it doesn’t offer any of the elements a restaurant needs. In terms of the locale, I’d guess it’s better suited for a barber shop or beauty salon or something. I’m glad I figured that out, at least.”

  Kisaki nodded to herself with a smile.

  “Well, sorry I stopped all you guys. I’m heading to MgRonald, but are you all going home?”

  “Um, yeah, for today, anyway,” Maou nodded.

  Kisaki gave him a smile. “All right. Thanks for putting up with my rambling about my dreams. Next time you all show up at my store, I’ll treat you all to a café au lait from upstairs, so stop on by when you’re close.”

  Just as she was about to briskly saunter away, a tiny, withdrawn voice behind her back stopped her.

  “……ah……”

  It was soft enough that even the tapping of her heels could’ve concealed it, but Kisaki’s ears noticed it nonetheless.

  “I’m guessing the reason you’re looking like that,” she said, back still turned, “isn’t because Sentucky’s sales are hurting, is it?”