But Chiho’s concern was elsewhere.
“Um…Maou?”
“Hmm?”
“Are, are you going home like that?”
“Yeah…?”
The curt reply left Chiho speechless. It was spring, but the nights still dipped into near-freezing—and his thin, long-sleeved shirt and hoodie weren’t near enough protection against the cold.
“Aren’t you, um, cold at all?”
“Well, yeah, but I couldn’t get any of my laundry dry this morning, y’know?”
She was rendered speechless again.
“All the Laundromats around here raised their prices a bit ago, so I’ve tried doing the laundry by hand lately…but you know how winter clothes are, right? I didn’t think it’d take that long for them to dry.”
It was the first time Maou spoke of his private life to Chiho. It offered perhaps too candid a look for her tastes, but over the past few days, she had gotten used to Maou giving her little glimpses of his life like this.
“I figure it’s gonna take two days to get everything dry,” he continued, “so…you know, gotta wear something, right?”
Chiho didn’t think drying times were the issue here, but she didn’t want to add further insult to Maou’s laundry-related injury. “Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “I guess you could probably deal with it better than I could for a day or two. It’s about to get warmer anyway.”
She removed her hat, preparing to change out of her uniform.
“Oh, is it gonna get warmer?”
Then she turned back around.
“Um… Well, yeah, it’s April, so…pretty much right at the middle of spring.”
“Ohhh. Okay. That’s how it works, huh? First winter, then spring. Right. Guess that’s not any different.”
“Um, Maou?”
Chiho stared at him, this grown man marveling at what seemed to be a great, reassuring discovery to him. Maou couldn’t help but notice.
“……I knew that.”
“……Right.”
With an awkward good-bye, Maou stepped out of the staff room. But after she finished changing and said her good-byes to the remaining crew on duty, she discovered Maou outside the restaurant, standing in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Maou? Were you waiting for something?”
“Dahh…”
“Oh! It’s raining…”
The reason for Maou’s distress was fairly obvious. Chiho doubted he had an umbrella with him.
“That’s always how it is, too, isn’t it?” Maou lamented. “The one day you need an umbrella, and you never have one on hand…”
“Oh, um,” Chiho said, taking a compact umbrella from her bag. “The weather report this morning said it was gonna rain all night, though…”
“Oh, I don’t have a TV.”
Another rather surprising revelation. Today was proving to be full of them.
“You don’t…?”
“Well, guess I’ll have to run all the way home. Hope my laundry’s all dry by now…” Maou lifted up the hood on his sweatshirt and took a deep breath. “Be careful on your way home, Sasa—”
“…Um!” Chiho found herself proclaiming as she searched her mind for a way to keep Maou from jogging off. “Where do you live, Maou?!”
“Where? Uh, more toward Sasazuka station…”
“I’m going that way, too! You wanna share an umbrella with me?!”
“Hey, thanks a lot for doing this.”
“Oh, not at all, um… You’re welcome,” Chiho whispered in response to Maou’s carefree gratitude. The offer had come all too casually, but it was actually the first time she had shared an umbrella with a man in her life. The only silver lining was that the umbrella she carried in her kyudo bag was larger than usual for the fold-up variety, so she didn’t need to make that much physical contact with him.
“Oh, but your shoulder…”
However, it was the taller Maou who wound up carrying it. He held it at an angle the whole time to keep Chiho dry, resulting in most of his opposite shoulder getting soaked along the way.
“Ah, it’s fine,” Maou chirped in reply. “It beats getting all-the-way wet, at least. But, hey, is it gonna be raining a lot like this from now on?”
“Huh? Um, it’s hard to say… Probably, though.”
“Really? Hmm… That’s sure a drag. Now it’ll be even harder to keep the laundry dry, huh?”
“Well, it’ll be warmer soon, though. You could probably buy a washing machine for pretty cheap, too.”
“A what?” The surprise was written across Maou’s face. “Oh, no way. I don’t have near enough room for two of those huge things. Plus, they gotta cost, like, a ton, right?”
“Um? Yeah, uh…I guess?”
Chiho hesitated for a moment, worried that she made too many assumptions about Maou’s financial situation. Then another question popped up in her head.
Two of them?
“I mean,” he continued, “maybe they don’t look that big in the Laundromat, but even if I could get a washer and dryer unit up there, they’d wind up blocking the corridor in my apartment anyway.”
“Uhm…uh, Maou, I’m not talking about some big commercial thing. I mean a regular home washer.”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
“…A home washer?”
“Yeah…”
Did Maou think the only washing machines in the world were the giant cubes at the Laundromat?
“I mean, at the store and so on, they sell washers that aren’t too much bigger than the trash containers at MgRonald. They’re fully automatic and everything, and if you’re on a tight budget, you could get a dual-compartment one for pretty cheap…”
“…Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Chiho, indeed, was starting to wonder if Maou was being serious. Maou acted like all of this was a complete shock to him.
“If you’re in an apartment building, there’s probably a water linkup somewhere in the hallway. I think you could install the machine next to that…”
“Oh! Yeah!” Maou beamed with delight. “There is! That was for a washing machine?! ’Cause I was using it to fill a bucket with water and do the laundry in that!”
“…Well, at least you were using it for laundry.”
“But…wow.” Maou repeatedly nodded to himself. “You could buy your own washers… I thought it was a monopoly run by a launderers’ guild or something.”
This was thoroughly confusing Chiho. He was a completely different person from the MgRonald crewmember she thought she knew. But watching him, eyes a-twinkle as he legitimately appeared to be making a new discovery in life, was almost cute, in a way.
“Hey, can I ask one more question?”
“Um, sure, what is it?”
“So it’s gonna get warmer and rainier, right? That’s probably gonna make my vegetables rot even if I keep ’em in the shade, won’t it? How do you handle that, Sasaki?”
Chiho’s eyes virtually unscrewed themselves from their sockets. This was even crazier.
“The shade?!” she exclaimed. “Just put them in the refrigerator, and…” She didn’t bother finishing the sentence. She knew what Maou was going to say in two seconds’ time anyway.
“I don’t have one of those.”
“Oh, you should really buy one! I mean, maybe you can handle the laundry yourself, but you’re gonna be in big trouble if you don’t even have a fridge! If your food keeps going bad on you, you’re gonna get really sick!”
“…Oh. You think so?”
“You know how in the past few years, it’s been a pretty mild spring and then it goes right into this superhot summer, right? Veggies and stuff start going off on you practically the moment you buy them!”
“Wow, really? Go off on you? What, do they grow legs or something?”
“It’s just an expression! And what do you mean, ‘Wow, really’? It was the same thing last year and the year before! If you leave raw food out in the summ
ertime, it’ll go bad!”
“O-okay! Okay! I was thinking that I wanted a fridge, too, actually, so I’ll buy it, okay? …Oh, and…”
“And?”
“…Where do you think I could buy a washer and refrigerator for cheap?”
“…”
This didn’t appear to be an act. From the changes in seasons to the existence of discount appliance stores, Maou really did seem to lack any semblance of common sense. And he was such a star at work, too… Chiho wasn’t sure whether discovering this gap in his personality was something to be delighted or annoyed about.
“Listen, Maou, were you, like, raised somewhere outside Japan or something? You speak English really well and stuff, so… Did you come home from a stint overseas?”
The idea made sense to her. All that fluency, combined with all that bemused befuddlement about modern Japanese life, suggested that he was living somewhere overseas until fairly recently. But:
“No, not exactly like that. Not ‘coming home,’ per se. That, and I learned English ’cause I thought it’d be useful for my work.”
He makes “learning” it sound so easy, Chiho thought. She decided to steer the conversation back to its original purpose. Prying too much ran the risk of offending Maou, and something told her that too much prying would lead to even more questions anyway.
“Well, if you need appliances, I think the Socket City by Shinjuku’s west exit has a lot of cheap stuff. You could also look at the Donkey OK Discount Store in Hounancho… That’s the place with all the bicycles on sale in front.”
Maou nodded at her, eyes open wide. “Oh, I know those! I just thought all the big stores would have nothing but really fancy expensive stuff.”
“Oh, well, Donkey OK’s actually more about really cheap stuff, you know? Like, if you aren’t too picky, you could get a bike there for a few thousand yen.”
“Whoa! A few thousand? You sure know a lot about this stuff, Sasaki…”
It was as if Chiho had just revealed the meaning of life to Maou. He was mesmerized. Chiho was about to comment on this before Maou stopped her.
“No wonder Ms. Kisaki’s given you that nickname so quickly!”
“Huh?”
“She started calling you ‘Chi,’ you know?”
Chiho’s heart skipped a beat. “Y-yes, I do…?”
“I heard about that, too. Everybody did. I’m willing to bet you’ll be Chi to the whole crew starting tomorrow. That’s the way Ms. Kisaki works—once she gives you a nickname, that pretty much means you’ve graduated from training. Like, you aren’t officially done until you’re on the crew for a month, but if you got a nickname this fast, you’ll probably get that bump in your hourly wage a little earlier than what she originally told you.”
“What? R-really?” Chiho blinked in surprise, unsure how nicknames were connected to her salary.
“Uh-huh. None of us really know why, but there’s kind of this unwritten rule that once Ms. Kisaki starts calling a new hire by some nickname or another, that means he or she’s a full-fledged part of the crew now.”
Kaori’s past experiences flashed across Chiho’s mind again. Was the whole “training period” thing just a façade, then? Would people start yelling at her if she couldn’t do all the work by herself?
“Oh,” continued Maou, probably not aware of her concerns, “but it’s not like you’re going to be fed to the sharks or anything, so don’t worry about that. I’m still gonna be with you until you can be fully independent.”
“Oh! Thank you.”
She appreciated the reassurance, even if the way he promised he was “still gonna be with” her made her a little embarrassed.
“Either way, though, Ms. Kisaki’s definitely indicating to us that you deserve to be treated like the rest of us on the job, Sasaki. Keep up the good work, okay? No need to feel like you’re under pressure or whatever.”
“Um, okay…!”
The two fell silent for a moment or two, Chiho having trouble looking Maou in the face.
“My place is over this way. What about you, Sasaki?”
“Oh, I’m across the street…but I can accompany you if you want!”
Abandoning Maou at this point would soak him before he reached his front door.
“No, no, that’s okay,” he replied. “I wouldn’t want you getting in trouble on the way back or anything.”
“But…”
Chiho tried to resist, but Maou just smiled and turned toward a nearby mailbox. “You see that?” he said, beaming. “I got an umbrella of my own now. Thanks a lot for taking me all the way here, though. I appreciate it.”
In his hand was a shoddy plastic umbrella, the tip rusted and the ribs already bent out of shape before he even opened it up. Someone must have hung it on the mailbox and promptly forgotten about it. It had been abandoned for a while, and a fairly decent amount of rainwater had accumulated inside it. But Maou cheerfully handed Chiho her own umbrella back and opened up his new find.
“Perfect,” he said, nodding his satisfaction. “Thanks again! Take care on the way home. Oh, and…”
“Hmm?”
“I hope this doesn’t sound weird or anything…”
“Umm, what?”
Maou hesitated for a bit, letting out a self-conscious cough.
“Keep up the good work tomorrow, Chi.”
“…?!”
“Anyway, see you at the next shift.”
“Um, y-yeah. Of course. Sleep well.”
It was a completely unexpected attack.
Chiho watched as he waved and went on his way, then brought a hand to her cheek. She couldn’t have guessed the last time a man called her by a cutesy nickname. In fact, before Kisaki came out with it, she had completely forgot that “Chi” was what people called her as a young child. And now people much more talented than her, much more grown-up than her, were using it…
“…!”
She gasped a little. The shoulder she was rubbing against Maou under the umbrella a few moments ago seemed warm to the touch.
Her cousin, the one she’d looked up to as a grade schooler, was now a husband and a father. For as long as she could remember, he always seemed so incredibly mature in her eyes. He taught her all about things she’d never known before, much like Maou was now. And now, for some reason, the two of them were overlapping with each other in her imagination.
Someone who’s reliable, who knows a lot of mysterious things, who’s really grown-up…but who’s also got a screw or two loose…
“Huh? I… Huh?”
Now Chiho’s face was getting warm. She had difficulty turning away from the path Maou walked down for a little while.
“Wow, they don’t look alike at all…”
Unable to help herself, Chiho broke out the photo album from her cousin’s wedding once she was back home. He looked absolutely nothing like Maou. Maybe this was a little rude to her cousin, but Maou was way, way cooler than…
“Ugh, what am I thinking?! …Ow!”
She tried snapping the book shut so quickly that one of her fingers got caught between the pages. It ached for the rest of the night. She returned the album to her puzzled mother and glared at her black-and-blue fingertip as she went to her room.
Flinging herself lifelessly into bed, she lay facedown, buried her head in a pillow, and sighed, legs flailing in the air.
“…What is with me?”
She began pumping her legs more and more rapidly. The bedsprings began to creak.
“Oww!!”
The pumping motion caused her body to drift across the bed, causing her to inadvertently smash the toes of one foot against the wall. She shot back up, grabbing her foot as she teared up a little.
“What am I even doing… Huh?”
Just as she was regretting her bizarre behavior, she heard her phone vibrate. It was a new text. She tried to keep her weight off her sore toenails as she picked it up off her desk.
“Oh, Kohmura?”
The text was
short and to the point:
“Noooo…”
Without a moment’s hesitation, she replied. “‘Don’t, I’m not ready yet’… There.”
Kisaki and Maou were impressed with her, apparently, but to be honest, she had no idea what they saw in her. She knew her friends or family would stop by sooner or later, but tomorrow? That was just the worst timing. She knew she’d get so worked up over it that she’d immediately screw something up. Something big.
As she fretted over that, another text appeared.
“Huh? From Kao?”
She read it aloud: “
Chiho cursed her careless mistake. Tomorrow would be the first Sunday shift she ever had. Before now, she had never been in MgRonald for more than four hours at once. There was no way to avoid an encounter, no matter how much she begged him to stay home.
“Oh, man… What’ll I do when they show up…?”
They were her friends, of course, but among the rest of the crew and the other customers, she knew she’d have to treat them like anyone else. But she had seen this kind of scene in dramas before: someone’s friend shows up, and the hapless victim’s coworkers reveal all these hidden secrets to them like it was their God-given right…
“Ahh,” she said to herself, “that only happens in, like, bars or other family places. That couldn’t happen someplace like MgRonald, could it?”
If her mother or father stopped by, that was another thing. A tad embarrassing, maybe, but her mother had every right to check up on her daughter via Kisaki and her other coworkers. But her school friends were different. Try as she did, she just couldn’t imagine how the situation would turn out.
Then she had an idea.
“Hey! Maybe I could ask Maou…”
She reached out for her phone, but:
“…Oh, I don’t have his number…”
Maou was practically her shadow for the entirety of the training period, but they had never exchanged addresses or phone numbers. She had no way of contacting him, and besides:
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 7 Page 17
