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

by Satoshi Wagahara

  The product-management staffer hosting the seminar politely guided the attendees through the preliminary paperwork.

  “Now, to start out, we’re going to watch a twenty-minute DVD that goes over what the MagCafé concept is all about. We’ll get hands-on with the workshop after that.”

  The room lights dimmed as the video sprang to life on the large screen against another wall. Maou had seen more than a few training videos like this one. He always liked how detached from reality they always seemed, edited in such a different way from the corporate TV ad campaigns.

  “…What’s that?” came a voice from the side. Maou, distracted from his notetaking, looked in its direction—only to realize that he was now the only person in the conference room.

  Chiho, seated a bit away from him thanks to drawing a later number, was gone. Next to him now, in the adjacent seat, was Erone in his samurai armor.

  “…Farfarello is not here,” he said calmly to assuage the agitated Maou. “He is monitoring me from a nearby building, but I am the only one in here.”

  “Were…were you sneaking around here under this barrier?”

  “I was told to search for an opening we could use to kidnap you. But I can’t. You’re surrounded by too many people.”

  The reply was as unaffected as it was disturbing. The training DVD kept playing on-screen. The surrealness of the scene forced Maou to laugh a little.

  “Farfarello told me to find out for sure what you’re doing in order to conquer the world. What kind of…image is this we’re seeing? Do you need it to conquer the world?”

  The screen depicted a MgRonald crewmember from the United States or somewhere constructing a MagCafé menu in a location far larger than the Hatagaya one Maou darted around in. The MagCafé format was originally conceived in Australia, apparently, before being exported back to the American HQ and expanding out to Japan. Then it showed a brawny Anglo-Saxon man, one Maou had trouble picturing as an actual MgRonald part-timer, using latte bubbles to draw hearts and leaf designs on cups of cappuccino. Comical, but impressive.

  “I totally do. In fact, everything I’m doing here right now…it’s all completely required if I’m gonna take over this world.”

  “Huh. That’s neat,” Erone remarked, watching the screen.

  “…Y’know, you’re a lot friendlier than I thought,” Maou replied. Erone’s admiration was throwing him off his game.

  “Farfarello and the others said the only right way to conquer the world is through power and fear. Is that man creating a potion to boost your powers?”

  A lot chattier than he thought, too. Maou took that as a sign that Farfarello really wasn’t nearby after all.

  “Yeahhh…I guess that’s what it is, if you get down to it. Um, do you know what ‘industry’ is? Industry is all about taking a whole bunch of different things and putting them together so they all work in unison. Making good coffee contributes to people’s productivity, boosts their morale, and…um, creates higher-quality weapons for people to use, more or less.”

  “Industry…?” Erone raised an eyebrow. “I don’t get it.”

  “Well, neither do I, really. That’s why I’m here to study it.”

  “Study?” This seemed to confuse him even more. Understanding the concept of world domination but failing to know what studying was concerned Maou a little.

  “Hummm…I don’t know how to explain it. It’s, like, too simple a concept.”

  Fishing for words, Maou watched the screen as it depicted a coffee field somewhere in South America.

  “Uh, how about this? When you’re studying, you’re doing something in order to know something you didn’t know before.”

  “So you study this…industry?” Erone said, piecing the unfamiliar words together like Alas Ramus. “And that lets you conquer the world?”

  “Yeah. See, that’s the thing about those of us in the Devil King’s Army. We have no idea what it means for a country to rule over its people. So that’s why I’m here in this country. I’m preparing myself to conquer the world, and this is part of that. The—”

  The screen flashed over to a map depicting MgRonald’s plans for MagCafé expansion in Japan.

  “—the next step of my dream…to conquer the world in a whole new way.”

  “A new…dream?” Erone repeated the words slowly, sloshing them around in his mind. “Looks like fun.” And with that, he disappeared, and a conference room full of focused screen viewers replaced him. Judging by Chiho’s body language, she hadn’t noticed any of it, and Maou certainly hadn’t seen her inside the barrier.

  “Um, hey…”

  “Hmm? What is it?”

  Maou turned around to look at the person who just tapped his shoulder. It was a crewmember from a different location, the pallor to his face clear even in the darkness.

  “Were…were you always there, or…?”

  Ah. Right. Chiho hadn’t noticed, but to someone seated directly behind him, Erone’s visit must have looked like Maou disappearing and reappearing like a ghost. Maou thought for a moment and whispered back.

  “Uh, I dropped my pen and I was having trouble finding it…”

  “…Oh. Yeah. All right. Sorry I’m acting all weird.” The man settled back down, his face still more than a bit dubious.

  “Yeah, not like I got a lot of say in it,” Maou said to himself as he focused on the video.

  “Oh! That must be them.”

  “Oof. Finally over. I was about to die of boredom.”

  “Uggh, we have to go outside again…?”

  The Hero, the Church cleric, and the archangel were approaching hour four of their awkward kaffeeklatsch at a Moonbucks near MgRonald’s Tokyo headquarters when they noticed a large crowd of people exiting the building. Given that most were in street clothes, it seemed safe to assume they were from the workshop.

  “Where are Chiho and the Devil King?”

  “Can’t really tell from here…”

  They were too far away to spot the pair out of the hundred-odd people streaming out, splitting into smaller groups and going each of their own ways.

  “Is that him?” Sariel pointed out a lone figure by the front door—Maou, apparently. They could see him nervously eye his surroundings and bring his cell phone to his ear. The sight made Emi’s and Suzuno’s blood run cold. This wasn’t just the face of someone wondering where his friend wandered off to.

  “Devil King!!”

  Emi, letting her worst fears dominate her mind, flew out and ran over to the dismayed-looking Maou.

  “Oh! Um, Emi!”

  He looked surprised at Emi’s sudden appearance, but not enough to ask what she was doing there.

  “Have you seen Chi at all?!”

  She knew it. Emi gnashed her teeth internally.

  “Chiho is gone?!”

  “What on earth were you even doing in there?”

  “Oh, all of you all with her, too?!”

  “When did you get separated from her?!”

  “It hasn’t even been ten minutes. She was right next to me when we left the conference room!”

  “And you are sure she’s not in the bathroom or the like?”

  “Ahhh, damn it! I wasn’t paying attention! This is totally my fault! I should’ve pressed that bastard for more info when I had the chance…”

  Maou looked honestly pained, but there would be time to assign blame later.

  “Now is no time for that! If neither of us spotted her, then chances are she was taken in by Erone’s barrier. And if she didn’t send an Idea Link to either of us, they might have knocked her unconscious.”

  Maou started to panic. Emi’s analysis seemed grimly accurate.

  “Crap… What’re we supposed to do now?!”

  “Calm down!” Emi grabbed Maou by the shoulders. “If you start cracking on us, we aren’t gonna accomplish anything!”

  It didn’t work at all. Maou was still in a panic.

  What could have possibly happened in that conference
room? If Maou hadn’t been paying attention, did that mean he hadn’t even noticed Erone approaching them?

  “He was talking to me…”

  “What?!” Emi’s eyes burst open. She wasn’t expecting that close of a contact. “What is your problem, Devil King?! That’s totally not like you! He’s our enemy, for God’s sake!”

  Maou covered his face with his hands. “…He was so like her. He made me put my guard down. We talked, he disappeared, and then…”

  “So like whom?”

  Maou, face contorted in pain, looked Emi in the eye. “Like…Alas Ramus. He wanted to know more about the world. That’s what his face told me. …He doesn’t deserve to be used by people like us.”

  The sight of Erone smiling, saying Looks like fun, was the exact, same smile Alas Ramus displayed whenever a new surprise caught her eye. Maou had no basis for this, but seeing that smile convinced him that Erone was every bit the spawn of Sephirah Alas Ramus was. The moment he looked at his face, that was what he was instantly reminded of.

  “Well, like or not, he’s being used by those demons! It’s your fault that you forgot about that, but whether you’re right or not kind of depends on what we do next, okay?!”

  “Emi…”

  Her eyes were looking straight up at Maou. The straightforward encouragement, like nothing she ever gave to him before, helped calm his heart a little.

  “Yeah… You’re right.” His shallow breathing returned to normal as he analyzed the situation. “The workshop ended nine minutes ago. Assuming they didn’t run through a Gate, they’ve got to be somewhere in west Shinjuku, even if he was carrying her out.”

  “All right. Let me help you, then.”

  Sariel, of all people, nodded at Maou’s analysis.

  “Chiho Sasaki has a Yesod-fragment ring on her left hand, yes? Unless they’ve gone a fairly long distance away, I should be able to track that down.”

  “How?”

  “Did you forget, Emilia?” Sariel smirked at her. “How did you think I managed to track you down in the first place? I had some intel from Olba, but as long as holy force or Sephirah fragments are involved, I can track ’em down faster than a GPS app.”

  Sariel squinted at the midafternoon sun, looking for something in the sky.

  “Got it.”

  The rest of the group followed his gaze, using their hands to shade their eyes. There, amid the blue, they noticed something white and round floating in the air. It was the moon, just fading into sight in the late-summer afternoon.

  “…Huh. Using an amplifier at long range isn’t something your garden-variety spellcaster could ever do. With the right training, Chiho Sasaki could be one hell of a practitioner.”

  Sariel kept his eyes on the daylight moon in the sky.

  “Not as good as me, though.”

  Then, at that instant, a ray of purple light shot out of his eyes. The next moment, the moon Maou and the rest had their eyes on turned the same color as Sariel’s purple eyes and began to glow, eerily so.

  “Wh-whoa, what’re you doing?! People are gonna notice…”

  It wasn’t just a matter of Shinjuku. A purple moon was an event of international proportions. Emi couldn’t be blamed for worrying about this ridiculously brash move, but Sariel merely brushed her away.

  “The moon didn’t really change color. It’ll just look that way around Shinjuku for a bit.”

  “Oh,” said Emi. “Well, that’s fine, then—”

  “No, it’s not!!!”

  Maou was forced to snap her back to reality. A midday moon wasn’t something most people paid very close attention to, but in a district as densely populated as Shinjuku, someone had to spot it sooner or later. If that someone shot a pic and uploaded it to the Net, Maou couldn’t imagine what kind of furor it’d cause.

  “Ah, it won’t make for anything more than a couple of viral videos,” Sariel told the group. “Everybody knows there’s no way the moon can turn purple in the middle of the day. No one’s going to care that much about it. Now shut up for a second while I search around.”

  After completely failing to reassure his compatriots, Sariel raised a hand toward the moon and began to focus. Chiho’s whereabouts were on everyone’s mind, but the potential fallout they imagined if someone happened to pass by weighed even more heavily on them. Whether you knew what was going on or not, the sight of someone bringing a hand to the air and shooting light beams out of his eyes could easily earn them a free trip in the back of a cop car. Sariel, perhaps realizing this, took care to keep his voice down as he intoned a spell.

  “Moon Mirror.”

  The spell remained in effect for just two or three seconds before he shut it down.

  “Oh. Well, that was easy. They’re right near us.”

  “R-really?!”

  Sariel nodded at the frantic Maou and pointed up at a nearby building.

  “Ironically enough, there’s a barrier on that rooftop up there.”

  “Up…there?!”

  Suzuno gasped.

  “This is so annoying. I really wish they wouldn’t steal my repertoire.”

  It was, of course, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, a place all four of them were intimately familiar with.

  “Well, what do you think? Because I think our demon friend’s up there, too. If we storm the roof, it’ll probably turn into a fight. A dimensional-phase barrier can keep people outside of it safe, but I can’t speak for the building itself. I’m willing to bet all four of us could handle that Erone kid well enough, but we’ll probably cause a hell of a lot of damage along the way.”

  “I don’t care. If that’s where Chi and Farfarello are, I’m on my way.”

  “What are you gonna do?” Emi asked, concerned that Maou was planning another haphazard, strategy-free assault.

  The response went far beyond what she expected.

  “Emi…Suzuno…sorry to put this on you, but I’m gonna need your help.”

  “Uh?”

  “Wh-what?”

  Both were taken aback by the request—really more of a plea, actually.

  “Ashiya was right. Unless we can convince Farfarello to go back on his own volition, Chi’s just gonna get taken again and again. I need your help to keep that from happening.”

  Then Maou did something even more out of character.

  “Please.”

  He bowed his head to them. The king of all demons, bowing his head to the Hero and a Church cleric in order to protect a single human girl.

  “…I swear…” Emi sighed as he glared at the whorl of hair on the top of Maou’s head. “You don’t care at all about us or what we feel, do you?” The words were harsh, but her tone was surprisingly gentle.

  “Yeah, well, I’m the Devil King, remember. When it comes to not caring about what other people think, I’m pretty much world champion.”

  “Do not brag about it.”

  Suzuno found herself laughing at the way he put it.

  “So, how do you like your chances? Do you think you can pull that off?”

  “Yep,” Maou replied, head still down. “But like I said, I’m gonna need both of you to help me.”

  Emi and Suzuno looked at each other.

  “Don’t have much time to mull over it, huh?”

  “We have little choice. Chiho’s life may be at stake.”

  “I really appreciate this,” Maou said, raising his head and turning toward Sariel. “Can you put up another barrier on top of Erone’s, like you did last time?”

  “I could, but what are you trying to accomplish?”

  “Great. Make it as huge as you can, all right? I’ll take care of things after that.”

  With that, Maou took a jet-black ball out from his tote bag, gripping it tightly.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Farfarello asked the girl in front of him.

  The girl, who introduced herself as Chiho Sasaki, was proving suspiciously cooperative, not showing any resistance to Erone’s invitation. The boy managed
to pull it off without attracting the Devil King’s attention chiefly because his intended victim was being so agreeable with him.

  “Well, I didn’t want you beating me up or putting me to sleep if I resisted.”

  “I see. You’re more collected than I thought you’d be.”

  “Oh, this isn’t my first rodeo, if you know what I mean!”

  The way Chiho chuckled to herself at this indicated exactly how collected she was. She would have to be, if she could take being carried by Erone’s sticklike arms from the ground floor of the MgRonald building to the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building in a single leap without losing her mind or her lunch along the way.

  “All right. How about this, then?”

  Farfarello, still in his retro salaryman outfit, tapped a finger against Erone’s armor. The moment he did, the armor disappeared into a black mist that descended upon him.

  “Agh!”

  Chiho unconsciously covered her eyes. In a single moment, the scrawny businessman transformed into an ominous, hideous demon. He had batlike wings and a single, gigantic talon curving out from each of his arms and legs, but his face remained unexpectedly humanlike.

  She couldn’t help but sneak a peek or two between her fingers. “…Oh,” she said, relieved at the sight of the rough, hemp-fabric underwear Erone had on as she removed her hands. “You had clothes on the whole time?”

  “…That was your concern? This demonic body of mine didn’t terrify you?”

  Having Chiho show more concern over his servant’s modesty than his own ghastly, foreboding form made Farfarello feel like he was being toyed with. As a human, she should have been on her knees, begging for her life by this point. This reaction wasn’t something they taught him in demon-chieftain college.

  “Um…I’m sorry. I just thought you were gonna transform into something kind of…crazier than that?”

  “……”

  Now Chiho began to feel somewhat endangered. Farfarello clearly didn’t enjoy that response.

  “…Um, I didn’t… I mean, it’s not like I don’t think you’re scary or anything! You look really mean and intimidating and stuff! It’s just that, like, I’ve already seen what Ma—um, what Satan and Alciel look like, so I think I’m just too accustomed to it.”