The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 8

by Satoshi Wagahara

  Squinting out the window, they could see that, not a terrible distance away, a virtual cascade of rain was even now advancing upon Villa Rosa Sasazuka.

  “I don’t think a travel umbrella’s gonna help much against that, y’know?”

  Before Ashiya could nod his agreement, they heard thunder from outside, the sky suddenly darkening with it.

  Suzuno chose that moment, with a couple of clangs and thumps, to rush in from the adjacent room. Her phone was in her hand, the screen lit up. She had apparently received a message.

  “This is an emergency!”

  “Wh-what?” Rika’s stared wide-eyed at the near-frantic Suzuno. She didn’t answer her, instead giving Ashiya and Urushihara glances.

  “Lucifer!”

  Right after calling him that in front of Rika, she tossed something at Urushihara with her free hand.

  “…Dude, is this one of those bottles?”

  It was a bottle of 5-Holy Energy β—an energy drink that also served as Emi and Suzuno’s lifeline on Earth, the only way they had to recharge their holy force.

  “We just received an SOS from Chiho!”

  “Huh?”

  “From Ms. Sasaki?”

  “Chiho? Y’mean that Chiho?”

  Not willing to spare a single moment, Suzuno thrust the phone’s screen at Ashiya and Urushihara. “Unlisted,” it said. The two demons looked at each other. This was no normal SOS. It was a true emergency, transmitted via Idea Link.

  “Lucifer, you are the only one right now. We must fly off immediately. It was from Chiho’s school!”

  “Chiho Sasaki’s school…? Uh, Sasahata North High?”

  Suzuno, in so many words, was recruiting Urushihara to join her as backup if it was needed. Normally, whether Chiho was involved or not, Urushihara would reply to this with an “ugggh” and a quick trip to his closet. Now, though, his face was oddly resolute. He stood up—and that, more than anything else, shocked Ashiya. He was going out? To help Chiho? At his enemy’s request? In the rain?!

  “H-hold on!” Ashiya bellowed, trying to make Suzuno remember Rika was here. “Kamazuki, what is going on? Calm yourself!”

  “We haven’t a moment to lose. If Chiho is telling the truth, there is a chance she, the school, and the entire neighborhood are in mortal danger. I apologize, Rika, but I must explain this later.”

  She and Urushihara exchanged a nod before they each chugged their respective 5-Holy Energy βs, as if starring in the latest TV ad campaign.

  “Hey, what the hell?”

  Maou winced at the window. It wasn’t looking too nice outside.

  According to his watch, it was just past eleven in the morning. He heard rain was in the cards for today, but nothing like this giant storm cloud—and not this early, either.

  “Probably shoulda known I couldn’t count on the forecasters when rain gets involved…”

  Whining at Japan’s meteorologists about forces of nature wasn’t too constructive, he knew—but to a Devil King that, at his peak, could conjure and manipulate the very atmosphere around him, he really wished the perky weather girl on the local morning news would work a little less on her makeup and more on actual science.

  “…Wish time would go a little faster,” he mumbled as he watched raindrops beat against the window.

  Despite the difficulties he had concentrating earlier, he was absolutely sure he was comfortably within passing range this time around. Once the list of passing applicants showed up on the electronic board in the waiting room, he was expecting to hit the track outside for the on-the-road exam. But:

  “This ain’t gonna happen, is it?”

  The rain outside was accompanied by what seemed like typhoon-class winds. He had hoped for a little rain, actually, polishing his dedication to safety in adverse conditions. He’d need those skills for the job. But would the DMV officials let him out there in weather like this? Nobody had announced anything yet, and it would still take an hour or so for them to grade the tests and announce the results. It was hard to say whether the rain would be gone by then, but considering the guerrilla rainstorms that petered out within an hour in mid-August, maybe he had a chance after all.

  Either way, it meant that all he could do now was sit around the waiting room and watch the rain fall. He had a lot of company among the other applicants, at least, each one taking their positions on the bare seats and reading books or playing with their phones as they awaited the fateful moment.

  Maou was among them, sitting on the far end of a long bench, but his phone was a Stone Age relic capable of voice, texting, and nothing else. He never adopted the now-common habit of staring at his phone when there was nothing else to do, and he had never purchased anything as lavish as a paperback book before in his life. Most of what Devil’s Castle retained were either borrowings from the library or cookbooks Ashiya picked up from the used-book shop.

  “Maybe we’re stayin’ healthy,” Maou mused to himself, “but culturally, we’re almost totally shut off from society, huh?”

  Most of his time in Japan so far had been spent working. It might be about time for him to try to gain a broader perspective of what Japan was all about. This driving test, along with the MgRonald Barista seminar he attended a while ago, was providing him with some sorely needed inspiration. In Japan, there wasn’t a single thing he couldn’t study if he wanted to. Taking a systematic approach at some institution of higher learning would be a fair ways off, but considering how his company was covering some of the testing costs for him now, he already knew there were ways even a low-class wage slave like him could gain some support for it.

  Even more, it was starting to seem fun.

  “…Maybe I oughta hit a bookstore on the way home. I’ve got some spending money.”

  Whenever he didn’t use the three hundred yen Ashiya gave him daily for “food costs,” he always kept it in his private stash. He had some free cash to work with out of his own paychecks, too, but Maou considered that more of an emergency fund for unforeseen disasters.

  More to the point, if he had a license to drive, that would make so much more of Japan suddenly available to him. The idea of having room to roam, without being reliant on public transportation, seemed revolutionary. He would have to actually obtain his own cut-rate scooter first, but as long as he wasn’t picky, Maou figured he wouldn’t have to wait too long.

  “Lot more to dream of, I guess.”

  The smile on his face was quite unsuited for the outdoor weather as he pondered over the possibilities. But then, a dark shadow crossed it.

  “Heeeeyy! Maou!”

  “……Yeah?”

  It was Tsubasa Sato. He didn’t need to raise his head to make sure. Of course they’d met again—they were all trundled to the same waiting room after the exams. And when he did look up, he saw the girl in the newsboy cap again, fluorescent lights illuminating her from behind. Hiroshi Sato, her father, was standing a little bit away.

  “…How’d the test go?”

  He didn’t know whether Tsubasa took a test at all, but he asked anyway.

  Hiroshi heaved a sigh befitting of his stature and general atmosphere.

  “I think I maybe failed it.”

  “Nooo! Don’t say that!”

  “Half the problems…I could not read.”

  “Um…” Maou felt obliged to comment on this little dialogue. “Look, don’t you think you should give it a rest for a little while? You’re wasting a lot of money on testing fees.”

  Assuming Tsubasa wasn’t just feeding Maou a line—Maou wasn’t too sure—this was the tenth straight exam, which meant he had paid out for it ten times. A scooter license was one thing, but for a full-on automobile license, the costs must have been insane.

  “Do you have a license from your home nation, Mr. Sato? Maybe you could just get an international driver’s license or something.”

  “No.”

  “…Oh.”

  He would’ve appreciated a little more effort to keep the conversa
tion going.

  “Where Pop is from, there are no cars at all!”

  “Huh?” Maou asked.

  “Tsubasa!”

  “Oh, sorry, sorreeee!”

  Maou cocked an eyebrow for a moment as Hiroshi admonished his daughter for some unseen affront or other, while Tsubasa showed zero remorse at all. He didn’t bother dwelling on it for long.

  “But, ah, you are right,” she continued. “It is waste of money.”

  “Well, I don’t want to pick on Mr. Sato or anything, but—”

  “I said I can read problems for him, too…”

  Maou chuckled. “I don’t know why you can read Japanese when your father can’t, but you have to take the test yourself, all right? It’d be cheating if you read the questions for him. You might even get arrested.”

  “Cheating? You mean, something…sinister?”

  “I’m impressed you know that word, but…yeah.”

  “Oh, why bother with the license, Pop?”

  It sounded a little impertinent of her, but even Maou had to agree. It beat flushing money down the toilet like this. “Yeah,” he said, “I know it’d be useful to have, but there’re probably a lot of better ways to use that money.”

  “Yeah, Pop! Forget about license. Just drive wherever you want to any—mmph!”

  Maou didn’t know how serious she was, but he covered her mouth with a hand anyway. Making bold declarations like these inside the local licensing agency was far too dangerous. Luckily, there was a wall on one side and a man listening to loud music from his headphones on the other.

  “Mmph?”

  “Look, you realize we’re in a government office, right?”

  “…”

  Maou removed his hand. “You can’t have someone read the problems for you, and if you start staying crazy stuff like that, they might ban you from having a license in the first place. Be a little more careful, all right?”

  “Ohhh. But what is problem if nobody catches us—mmmph!”

  “I told you, you can’t say stuff like that!”

  “…I think he is right, Tsubasa.”

  “Could you try and make her put a lid on it more often, sir?” said Maou, fed up at the spring of tepid reactions from the man.

  “Mpph mph!”

  Tsubasa, whether she was listening to Maou or not, started waving her arms around. Maou removed his hand again. Her rapid-fire bombshells and overly friendly demeanor made him do it, although he now realized that he kind of overdid it with a strange girl he had only just met. Good thing Chiho and Emi aren’t here, he thought to himself. The thought came up pretty often in his life.

  “…”

  Just as he was about to sit down on the bench, mind still in a muddle:

  “…Hey.”

  Tsubasa grabbed the wrist of the hand Maou had covered her mouth with, stopping him just as he was about to reach the seat.

  “Snif snif…”

  Yet again. Why was she so obsessed with his hand?

  “Yeah… Something behind the potatoes…snif.”

  “Look, what are you—?”

  “…lick.”

  “Agghh?!”

  Now even the guy in the headphones was staring at Maou. With the noise he just made, it’d be odder if he didn’t. She had just licked the palm of his hand.

  “Wh-what the hell’re you doing?!”

  This was the most bizarre ethical dilemma Maou had ever encountered during his time in Japan. It made him glow red with shame.

  “Did you…just now…?”

  Maou made the pointless gesture of holding his battered, moistened hand behind him as he babbled at her. Tsubasa paid him no mind, newsboy cap still covering most of her head as she pondered over something.

  “Hmmm…”

  Then she nodded, apparently reaching her conclusion.

  “Pop, I think this man is it.”

  “Hmm?” Hiroshi said, surprised at this new conversational path.

  “Can I take off hat, Pop?”

  “…Do not do the standing out too much.”

  They were already standing out far too much for Maou’s tastes. But after receiving Hiroshi’s permission, Tsubasa nodded to herself, deftly took a hand up to the brim of her cap, and:

  “…!!”

  The face revealed under it made Maou forget to breathe for a moment. Not just the face, either. The hair under the cap, and the lazy-looking eyes staring up at him, both threw him for a total loop. Her face was attractive and well proportioned, but it had a languid expression on it, like her mind was occupied with nothing at all. She was probably a little younger than Chiho.

  But that wasn’t the problem. The real issue was her purple eyes. And her hair was silver, long at the sides and cut short behind them. Even under the dim fluorescent lighting, it still shone a bright, eye-opening color.

  And beyond all that…

  “…Wait, are you…? That hair…?”

  “Hmm…”

  Tsubasa twirled her side hair around a finger. There was a whorl of purple to it. It nailed Maou to the spot, reducing him to broken sentences.

  For her part, Tsubasa blithely nodded.

  “I thought…from smell, maybe it was you?”

  “The smell…?”

  Maou recalled the handful of times she had gotten a whiff of his hand.

  “I don’t know you, but my nose is right.” She rubbed her nose proudly with a single finger, smiled, and laid another salvo upon the foundering Demon King. “You know my sister Alas Ramus, yes, Maou?”

  “………………………………………………………………………………Huh?”

  This had already been flustering enough for Maou, but what Tsubasa just said sounded even stranger to him.

  “Sister?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Um…?”

  “Sister. Alas Ramus, I mean.”

  “…Huuuh?”

  There were a few things Maou needed to tell this pair. He knew there had to be. What’s with the hair? Are you two really father and daughter? You aren’t from Earth, much less Japan, are you? If you look like that and know Alas Ramus’s name, you must be born from a Sephirah, right? What have I got to do with you? And while he had them here, he needed to interrogate them about their lives in Japan and get their names, addresses, phone numbers, and maybe their IDs, too.

  But beyond all those practicalities, there was something Maou absolutely had to get straight first.

  “You mean…sisters by blood?”

  “Uh-huh. If it is same Alas Ramus, Maou, she’s my elder sister.”

  There couldn’t have possibly been many more children out there with the singularly inconvenient name Alas Ramus. If Tsubasa already knew it, there was no point dwelling on the question. But something else bothered him even more.

  “If you’re saying she’s your elder sister, does that mean…you have that kind of close familial relation going on?”

  “Close familial…what?”

  “…Wait.”

  Suddenly, Hiroshi—or whatever his real name was…the person provisionally being called Hiroshi—laid a heavy hand on Maou’s shoulder.

  “I think…what you think, it is probably correct.”

  “Could you explain a little more what you’re so positive about, please?”

  All Maou was trying to do was figure out what sister meant here. To him, the question drove at the very creation myths that described how Earth and Ente Isla began. It made his head swim.

  “Um… Her sister?”

  “Agh, you guys are a pain to talk to!” Maou was about ready to pitch a fit. “Okay, let’s try it another way! Sir, I want you to be quiet for a moment or two, all right? Now, Tsubasa.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Are you saying,” Maou said, choosing his words carefully, “you’re Alas Ramus’s younger sister?”

  “Uh-huh!” She brightly nodded.

  “…Why?”

  Tsubasa’s bodily structure, the silver hair with th
e purple whorl, was exactly the same as Alas Ramus—the telltale sign of a Sephirah-spawned creation. It couldn’t have been some fashion thing; not if she knew the term “Alas Ramus.”

  Still…

  “Hey! Don’t look! I know I am pretty!”

  Tsubasa smiled as she chided Maou. He was currently scoping her out from head to toe.

  “…I so want to hit you.”

  Even in this era of equal rights between genders, Maou thought he was justified. He still somehow managed to bottle up his anger in the end.

  As Maou reckoned earlier, Tsubasa was a bit younger—and certainly more childlike—than Chiho. But to put it another way, she looked like she was in middle school. Why would she call a toddler like Alas Ramus her elder sister? There was no way of telling how they grew and matured, certainly, considering their otherworldly origins. One grew more rapidly than the other, for reasons Maou couldn’t fathom—but this rapidly?

  There was no doubting now, at least, that they were involved with Ente Isla.

  Maou took a look around, then whispered into Hiroshi’s ear.

  “You’re both from Ente Isla, aren’t you?”

  Hiroshi’s eyes opened wide in surprise, unexpectedly. “How… Who are you…?!”

  “You got a girl like this with you and you think nobody would notice?!”

  Dealing with Hiroshi was starting to tire Maou out. He stood back up from the bench and motioned for the two of them to follow along. It wasn’t anything he didn’t want others to hear, but he didn’t want to be considered a weirdo, either (although it might’ve been too late for that).

  They took position toward the service windows at the front of the building, shuttered now that testing was done for the day. A number of people walked to and fro through it, but none of them were interested in stopping to eavesdrop on random strangers. The only open window was on the other side, for people looking to renew their license.

  “Right. First off, can I have your real names? Both of you.”

  Tsubasa and Hiroshi exchanged glances with each other. Must be having trouble figuring out who I am, he thought.

  Then Hiroshi’s accent started sounding greatly different. Or, to be more exact, his choice of language.

  <“It might be strange to ask for confirmation at this point, but we have no indication that you are not our enemy yet. You know that we have come from Ente Isla, a world completely different from this one. Who are you?”>