“And,” Ashiya continued, “as long as Bell is cooking for you, there is no need for Chiho to suspect anything is amiss when she inevitably comes in to check on you. Two birds with one stone!”
Shrewd, Maou thought. The relationship between Chiho and Suzuno, if not outright hostile, certainly had a competitive aspect to it. Taking advantage of those feelings, while a little too calculating for Maou’s tastes, seemed like a valid approach.
“Huh,” he remarked. “You think?”
“Besides, Your Demonic Highness…without regular meals provided to the both of you, you will inevitably succumb to the temptations of outside junk food and waste even more of our money, will you not?”
“…Um.”
Maou, who had just inadvertently confessed to exactly that, fell silent.
“Urushihara, for his part, would no doubt use my absence to gorge himself on pizza delivery and other trash. Health and nutrition are second-class concerns to him. If I had to pick between frozen franchise food packed with preservatives and MSG or freshly prepared meals with just a tad of sanctification added to it, I think the choice is blindingly obvious!”
“It is summer, though,” Suzuno said, scratching one of her cheeks. “I’m afraid I have few raw ingredients left to work with.”
“Regardless!” Ashiya declared, again ignoring all asides. “I will not be gone for long! For just a few days, as long as Ms. Sasaki and Emilia don’t pick up on anything, you and Urushihara can keep things on the cheap. Soon, our ledger will return to the black and our Devil King’s Army will be rescued from ruin! I tell you, it will work out!”
“Great,” Suzuno and Maou agreed in tandem. Suzuno paused for a moment, nonplussed, then added:
“…All right, all right! You want my aid? You can have it! I felt just as poorly for Chiho as you did!”
“You are sounding awfully haughty, Crestia Bell…”
“…Ugh,” Suzuno said, blushing in the face of the much taller demon. “I will help you. Is that what you want to hear?”
“…You’re so loud, dudes. What’s up?” Urushihara, choosing this exact moment to shift from unconsciousness to mere sleeping, sat up and rubbed his eyes.
“Urushihara, listen,” Maou murmured.
“Huh?”
“Just watch your food, your cash, and your attitude, okay?”
“…Where’d that come from?”
Nobody answered the question.
The following morning:
“The spices are over there, got it? We don’t have very much rice left, but what we have is stored under the sink, inside that cabinet. Make sure you wash and dry the rice bin before pouring in more rice.”
“…Right.”
“The knives should be sharpened well enough, but the stone’s also under the sink, should you need it. If you use any of our washcloths, wash them and hang them on this mini rack up here to dry.”
“Very well…”
“And I must remind you, always make sure you thoroughly wash the rice cooker after each use. Lid and container, all right? Urushihara always leaves dried rice bits inside whenever he uses it. I’m talking both sides of the lid, too, do you understand?”
“All right! Just leave already!!”
Being lectured on kitchen etiquette was not Suzuno’s idea of an enjoyable start to the day. She was hardly a slob herself, although the idea of Ashiya running such a tight ship in his own domicile unnerved her a little.
Ashiya’s predeparture rundown continued on for several more minutes. At the end, they came to the agreement that Suzuno would provide all nonrice ingredients and cooking duties. It left her with mixed emotions; stuffing the demons full of Church-grade holy food usually filled her with glee—but the idea of them asking for it gave her pause. That, and something about using the Devil’s Castle kitchen eliminated the “I slaved over this back at my place, so you better appreciate it” sense of superiority she relished.
“Oh… Leaving already, Ashiya?”
Suzuno’s shouting was enough to wake up the yawning Maou, still half covered in the single sheet he slept under.
“Sure is cold this morning… Dang, 5:30 AM?! You’re leaving this early?”
“I was asked to arrive at the Barres building on Shinjuku’s west side by half past six. I figured the sooner I left, the better, just in case.”
“…Well, I dunno where you’re going, but good luck.”
“Absolutely.”
Maou had given Ashiya permission to take a few days off from his Devil’s Castle duties, but for some reason Ashiya was reluctant to reveal either his destination or the exact nature of his new work. He’d never quite managed to get it out of him. Ashiya stated that it was nothing illegal or physically dangerous, and that was good enough for Maou—although he couldn’t guess why he had to meet up with someone this early in Shinjuku on a Friday. He pushed his blanket aside, stood up, and shivered a bit in his short-sleeved shirt.
“…I have already made breakfast,” Suzuno flatly stated. “If you are that cold, warm up with some miso soup.”
Looking over toward the kitchen, Maou saw a wooden-handled saucepan resting on one of the gas burners, steam rising out from it in the chilly air. “Whoa, nice,” he said as he hurried up to it. Suzuno winced at the display, as Ashiya nodded approvingly at it.
“I am off, Your Demonic Highness. Please, whatever you do, keep an eye on Lucifer’s behavior.”
“Ahh, he’ll be fine. Emi nearly killed him yesterday. I doubt he’ll waste any more of our money… Not this month, anyway.”
“No. Not this month.”
Urushihara was cocooned in his own blanket like a baby moth, the picture of comfort as he softly snored.
“…Man, it really is cold.”
“Perhaps. Oddly so, for the summer. Maybe it will rain later.”
It had been an hour after they saw Ashiya off. The sun was now fully risen, but the temperature stubbornly refused to budge. Maou and Suzuno wouldn’t have had any way of knowing it—owning neither a TV, nor a radio, nor a cell phone capable of receiving news stories—but a low-pressure front from mainland Asia was pushing away the warmer air from the Pacific, keeping temperatures low across metro Tokyo. The high temperature was eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, but forecasters were calling for the mercury to stay in the sixties today. The cold still wasn’t enough to awaken Urushihara, currently rolled up in a ball.
“Maybe I better go with long sleeves today,” Maou murmured as he pulled out the plastic clothing bin that contained the demons’ winter gear. “No need to go crazy with a sweater, but…”
Maou and Ashiya survived their first winter in Japan with layers. Lots and lots of layers. He wistfully recalled how they shopped for the thickest, cheapest gear they could find in order to avoid freezing to death, given that Devil’s Castle lacked a suitable heater or even a futon to sleep on.
“Weird. I could’ve sworn I bought a Warm Tech shirt from UniClo last year.”
He and Ashiya both had a pair from UniClo’s line of heat-trapping undergarments. But, try as he might, he couldn’t find the shirt anywhere in the clothing bin.
“Are you that useless?” Suzuno asked with disapproving eyes. “Do you need Alciel to help you so much as find a single article of clothing?”
Maou averted his eyes.
“You are probably the type of person who forgets where you put your new socks after your old ones grow holes, aren’t you?”
“Don’t be stupid. We don’t have any new socks here in the first place. Ashiya sews up any holes that pop up.”
Urushihara turned over in his sleep behind them.
“…Is that how impoverished you are, Devil King?”
“Y’know,” a testy Maou replied, “as a high-level Church cleric, I figured you people would have a little more compassion for the poor. If you’re trying to save money, you have to get as much out of everything as you can.”
Maou fumbled around another bin in the closet before fishing out a li
ghtbulb encased in a cardboard sleeve labeled “20W.” He took it out and handed it to Suzuno.
“Here, try shaking it.”
“Huh…? It’s broken, is it not? Did you forget to put it in the garbage?”
“Of course not. If you put this inside a sock, that makes it a lot easier to sew up any holes in it. You should try it when you get a chance.”
Urushihara turned over on his side once again.
“I think it probably goes without saying that everything in Ashiya’s sewing kit came from the hundred-yen shop, too…”
“Enough already.” This was starting to sadden Suzuno. “Your shift begins in the afternoon, does it not? Do you require lunch?”
“If you could, thanks,” Maou said as he carefully pushed the bulb back into its sleeve.
“…Very well. I’ve already prepared all the ingredients, so just tell me whenever you feel hungry. And wake up Lucifer already, would you?”
“Yeah, sorry.”
Suzuno, having said everything she needed to, returned to her apartment. The moment the door closed behind her, she turned to the mirror stand facing her. She stared at her reflection, then fell to her knees, despondent.
“A Great Demon General, using a burned-out lightbulb to mend his socks…”
With Suzuno having mangled his bicycle a few days before, Maou was proceeding with his commute on foot for the time being. This meant he was starting to sweat a bit, even in the unseasonably cool weather, by the time he arrived at MgRonald. He guessed he’d be freezing again by the time night fell.
As evening approached, Chiho arrived for her own after-school shift, looking a little worried. “So,” she asked, “did Ashiya leave already, or…?”
“Um? Yeah.”
Maou had yet to explain to the girls what had gone on yesterday. But, mainly in order to keep Chiho from feeling guilty, the demons and Suzuno had a story concocted and ready for her.
“I wouldn’t worry about him, though. He found himself a nice-paying temp gig, is all.”
“A temp gig…?”
“Yeah. It’s just, you know, after all that stuff with Sariel and Suzuno, he was kind of worried about leaving the two of us to ourselves, is all.”
There was nothing false about that statement. He just omitted the fact that he was off to get Devil’s Castle out of the red, not further into the black.
“Oh… I get it. So he’ll be back in the evenings?”
“Uh, not quite. He’s staying over for a few days…I guess?”
“Oh? What kind of work would need that from him?”
“Good question…”
Maou’s vague response was not because he was hiding something. He honestly had no idea where Ashiya went. He knew that Ashiya worked short-term gigs like this now and then even after he’d gone full-time at MgRonald, but he didn’t have a grasp of every place he went.
“All he said was, it’s a job he never thought he’d take on as a Demon General.”
That was a quote from their conversation in the hallway.
“Wow, what would that be? Something dangerous?”
“Nothing too dangerous, I don’t think. Or illegal. Ashiya wouldn’t do something that’d get us in trouble, anyway.”
“True, yeah,” Chiho said, her expression a little clouded at Maou’s ambiguous answer. Maou decided to swiftly change the subject before she picked up on any other signals.
“Thing is, though, Urushihara is by himself in Devil’s Castle right now. I’m a lot more worried about that! Like, what if he wastes more of our money, or leaves the gas on all day…?”
“Yeah…”
His cheerfulness did little to change Chiho’s demeanor.
“But y’know,” Maou began, trying a sterner approach as he patted Chiho on her shoulder, “I really don’t think you need to worry much about us. If you’re that concerned about Ashiya, feed him some home-cooked food when he’s back, okay? He’ll probably tell you all about it then.”
“…Okay! I’ll try to make something good for him.”
The smile finally returned a little to Chiho’s face. A subsequent mini rush of evening customers brought them both back to the hustle and bustle of work. It kept going steadily until nine PM, the end of Chiho’s shift.
Maou wasn’t entirely sure he cleared Chiho’s mind of all doubt, but this would have to work for now. Even if she found out later, as long as Ashiya came back with forty thousand yen in hand, at least she wouldn’t feel obliged to contribute any more to them. Foisting the responsibility for this on the shoulders of a high-school student would be a stain on his good name as Devil King.
Right now, all he had to do was hold down the fort with Urushihara.
“…And that’s what I’m the most worried about,” he muttered to himself as he walked the dark path back home, another Friday night shift in the books. As he expected, the night was brisk, an autumnal chill against his skin. Suzuno mentioned there’d be udon noodles waiting for him for dinner; it wasn’t exactly a summer dish, but on a night like this, it’d actually kind of work. Maou found himself looking forward to it.
But what awaited him at home was the shock of his life.
“Um…what the hell is all this?”
The moment he stepped through the front door of his castle, his vision turned white. Greeting him was Suzuno, seated with a pained expression on her face, and Urushihara, racked with desperation. That, and—neatly arranged in front of them—an array of merchandise Maou had never seen before in his life: fresh fruit, what must have been several dozen bottles of kitchen cleaner, a newspaper dated today, and…
“…A brand-new fire extinguisher, five feather-bed futons, and a water filter in the sink.”
“Wha… Wha… Wha…?”
“All told, about forty-five thousand yen, it seems.”
Suzuno’s voice sounded like the tolling of Death itself from beyond the grave.
Chiho was seated on her bed, clutching a heart-shaped cushion as she made a call.
“…Oh, hey, this is Chiho. Sorry I’m calling you so late. Anyway, yeah, it sounds like he’s gone out on a temp job of some kind… Right. He said he was staying on-site for it or whatever, so he’s not gonna be back all that soon… Yeah, I know, right?”
Her expression was far from bright and cheerful as she spoke.
“Anyway, tomorrow’s Saturday, so I’ll make something up for them. It’s the least I can do and all, so… All right. Talk to you later.”
She ended the call, flung the phone down on the bed, then lay down and sighed.
“Maybe I was being mean to Urushihara after all.”
“Did… Did you buy all of that, Urushihara…?”
The fallen angel’s shopping habits up to this point mostly revolved around computer accessories, snacks, and anything with sugar in it. Maou feared that the obsession was now spiraling into a mania of purchasing random objects for giggles.
“Dude, no!” Urushihara countered in an uncharacteristic panic. “You think I’d actually buy all this useful household crap?!”
“Okay, so what’s going on, huh?! ’Cause none of this was here when I left this afternoon!”
“Calm down, Devil King.”
Suzuno rose from her seat on the floor and thrust something that looked like a receipt in front of Maou’s face.
“What’s that? …Wait, a purchase order? One external hard drive…two thousand yen?”
“…Look, I know why Ashiya had to go out and work, okay?” Urushihara muttered, head tilted downward. “I know I can’t pay it all back myself…but I figured I could pitch in a little, at least.”
“It would appear,” Suzuno interjected, “that Lucifer was a victim of acquisition fraud.”
“Acquisition…fraud?” Maou’s eyebrows arched at the unfamiliar term.
“Yes. When someone visits you, promising to purchase your precious items, then forces you to sell them at fraudulently low prices.”
“…Oh, yeah, I heard about that.”
; Maou had heard stories along those lines from the retirees he worked with during neighborhood volunteer cleanup duty. Mr. Watanabe, one of the regulars at his day job, mentioned some rumors about shady individuals going door-to-door with that scheme, mostly targeting older people and stay-at-home moms. The local neighborhood association had put a notice about it in their most recent newsletter.
“So you sold some kinda computer part to help pay back the forty thousand yen?”
“Yeah…but…”
“It would appear,” said Suzuno, eyes uncommonly sympathetic for Urushihara’s plight, “he came across a particularly cruel fraudster. It was a hard sell disguised as a purchasing service. By the time I realized something was amiss, it was already as you see here.”
“Yeah, but…a newspaper subscription? The fruit, even?! What kind of rip-off artist sells everything from fruit to fire extinguishers?”
“I’m sorry. The fruit and newspaper were from other guys. I couldn’t say no to ’em.”
“Oh, come on.” Maou fell to his knees. “What are you, stupid?! Just say you don’t need that crap!”
“But, dude, they said they wouldn’t leave unless I bought their stuff! Like, they said it was some kind of trial offer or something! They kept on jiggling the doorknob and stuff, and I didn’t want them to break it or else we’d owe even more money!”
“That’s exactly what they wanted you to think, man! They musta thought you were the most gullible person in the world!”
“Dude, I know, but they kept talking around me, no matter what I said. I couldn’t get them to leave! They were really, like, convincing and stuff…”
Maou had to wonder what kind of talent it took to so thoroughly fleece a fallen angel and an alleged demon. Having never encountered a pitch like this, it was tough for him to picture.
“Devil King,” Suzuno said, “there is no point berating Lucifer right now. No, not this supposed Great Demon General willing to fall for a newspaper-subscription pitch.”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 7 Page 2
