The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 7

by Satoshi Wagahara

  The conversation—a sort of mix of conference and idle chitchat—continued for a while longer before they heard the clatter of chairs against the floor. Chiho and Kaori sat straight back on their chairs, as if nothing was amiss.

  “Yoshiya, of all people,” Kaori whispered just before the Kohmuras left the room with Mr. Ando. It didn’t escape Chiho’s ears.

  “Thanks again, Mrs. Kohmura. Now, Sasaki… Hmm? Where did your mother go?”

  “Oh, she’s in the bathroom. She should be back in a sec…”

  “Sorry, sorry!” exclaimed Riho, trotting down the hallway on cue in her high heels.

  “No problem. Right in here, please.”

  The Sasakis passed by the Kohmuras as they went in. As they did, Chiho dared a question to Yoshiya.

  “Do you still wanna work?”

  Yoshiya didn’t seem to understand why Chiho asked that. He frowned and turned his back to her.

  “You guys won’t stop bitching at me to study,” he sheepishly said on the way out, “so I think I’ll stick to that for now.”

  Kaori, expressionless, watched him leave.

  Although Chiho didn’t want to pat herself on the back too much, there was no doubt in her mind. Yoshiya had changed, and it wasn’t entirely his doing, either. It was also thanks to Maou, and that Finnish art dealer, and probably what he saw of her at work, too.

  The only regret she had was that Yoshiya’s survey submission overlapped with hers. She had also listed English literature as one of her candidates, for most of the same reasons. That was what she wanted to build on, and right now, that was one of the things she knew she could build on.

  The world was a big place—far bigger than what students like herself could see, or even try to see. There was no guarantee that the world in front of her eyes right now would be the same as the one she saw next year. And if that was the case, she reasoned that her job was something to start with, so that she could grasp and earn the things she needed to plunge into that new world. That, she thought, was the path she had to take.

  Career guidance, after all, wasn’t a final goal. It was just another checkpoint along the way.

  Now Chiho very much was patting herself on the back. She realized it even as she was trying to figure out a way to explain the reasoning for her choice without duplicating Yoshiya’s approach too much. Even she had to admit it was awfully small-minded of her.

  “Well,” Mr. Ando began, “with your grades, Sasaki, I think you could be looking at a pretty decent choice of universities, liberal arts or not. You listed your first aspiration as English literature; could you explain to me why?”

  It wasn’t like she needed a single reason for it, one almighty motive for putting in the effort. She wasn’t Yoshiya, but the motive driving her forward was just as easy to follow as his. It was in that kai pose the kyudo club leader put on for her when she first joined this school. It lay in the work being done by all the grown-ups around her. And it was all linked together by that piece of paper in Mr. Ando’s hands right now.

  She wanted to be there. She wanted to see that same world.

  “I…I have people in my life that I respect. People whose paths I want to follow.”

  She wanted to be on an even keel with them. With him. To experience the same world as him.

  This was my story. From back when I was just a clueless high-school teen. The story of Chiho Sasaki, a girl prepared for a different tomorrow in her life—although maybe not one that would change the entire world at the end of it.

  Not even two weeks after that parent-teacher conference, I found out the truth. And once I did, my world unfolded in ways that it never had for me before. I was an everyday teen thrust into a life-or-death struggle, with the future of entire nations and countless lives in the balance.

  But just a few days before, it had all been different…

  THE AUTHOR, THE AFTERWORD, AND YOU!

  Caution: This afterword contains a few spoilers. If you’re the type of person who likes to flip to the back and check out the afterword first, consider yourself warned.

  It should be noted that I, Satoshi Wagahara, have never actually worked any of the jobs, part-time or not, that have been featured in Volumes 1 through 6 of The Devil Is a Part-Timer! The Devil might have, but I haven’t. Or didn’t. Because Volume 7 is actually different—the four stories in this volume all owe their genesis to my own past experiences.

  In each of these tales, I’ve introduced a new element—to be specific, a new character or two—to the usual gang that populates this series, from the Devil King and Hero on down. My hope is that each one brings a new element to this saga of everyday life and helps make it not so everyday after all.

  The Devil Pledges to Stay Legitimate:

  This story begins, oh, I’d say around thirty seconds after the end of Volume 2. The theme should be pretty obvious: If a challenge comes along, stay calm and talk it over with someone first.

  Scams like these have been fodder for hidden camera–type news shows for a while now. It seems like such a stupid trick, but damn if it doesn’t work often enough to be profitable.

  In my case, I was out in business attire one morning when a guy running a stand near my local rail station attempted to sell me a set of four Claude Blanchet pears. That was the inspiration for this story. I wasn’t going to an office job or anything, but I wonder what made the guy think a businessman would be hankering for an armful of semiripe fruit during the morning rush…

  The Devil Plucks a Cat off the Street:

  Just before my first novel made its debut, the parakeet I shared the previous sixteen years of my life with at my family home passed away from old age. It was something of a miracle it had toughed it out for that long (I’d say it was around 130 in people years), and between the cataracts and the two different strokes it’d had over the years, it was a fighter to the core.

  During that whole ordeal, though, we were lucky enough to work with an extremely kind veterinarian. It ultimately led to this story—one that I hope helps express my appreciation for him and my wish that all pets enjoy happy lives.

  By the way, the front yard of this house was also the location of not one, but four semi-abandoned kitten litters—four years in a row, all from the same mother. She was too cute to attempt to banish from the place for good, but every time she used my father’s shiitake-mushroom growing trees as scratching posts, his stance on the subject became sorely, sorely tested.

  The Devil and the Hero Go Futon Shopping:

  It was a real shock to me how much my cousin’s daughter (one of the inspirations for Alas Ramus) grew over the course of a single year. It was the same deal when I searched for a birthday present for one of my friend’s babies. All the advice the person at the store gave me was bewildering. I have no idea how anyone can keep up with how fast they grow—and all the stuff they have to buy along the way! The scale is staggering.

  If Maou and Emi keep on dragging their feet like this, the passage of time’s only gonna make things worse for them. Get moving, people!

  A Few Days Before: The Teenager Is a Part-Timer!:

  A prequel that tells the story of Chiho Sasaki and Sadao Maou, leading right up to the first Devil novel. This tale was originally written for that very book.

  I know Chiho’s starting to acquire some fairly superhuman traits over in the main plotline, but back around this time, she really was just an ordinary teen—as ordinary as teens ever really get, that is. Normally, she tends to act as polite as possible around the other characters, since she’s always the youngest out of all of them. When I started writing this, mainly I just wanted to depict her acting a lot more informal with her peers at school. Then the story took on a life of its own, you could say.

  They say there’s an old proverb from China or somewhere that says, “May you live in interesting times.” Interesting, of course, can mean so many things in so many situations. In my case, the amount of mental gymnastics I’ve engaged in to help me blow through deadline
s without any regrets certainly qualifies as “interesting,” I think, even though my editor has wanted to club me for it multiple times. Next time, I’ll try to be a little quicker with working casual high school conversations into an actual story.

  Anyway, this volume will be in readers’ hands no sooner than February 10, 2013. Two months after that, in April, the Devil Is a Part-Timer! anime will make its television debut. Volume 8 of the Devil novel series will hit stores on April 10 as well, just in time for my third year of devoting myself to this tale. This world keeps on growing and growing, and I hope you’ll enjoy the journey that lies ahead for it.

  No matter how far it expands, though, this is still just the story of a bunch of people enjoying three square meals a day, cherishing every moment of their lives as they find out where life takes them next. I’d love a chance to write more easygoing portraits of daily life like what this volume offers, but—just like them—I’ll have to see what the future brings.

  Until next time!