The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 14

by Satoshi Wagahara

  Copyright

  THE DEVIL IS A PART-TIMER!, Volume 14

  SATOSHI WAGAHARA, ILLUSTRATION BY 029 (ONIKU)

  Translation by Kevin Gifford

  Cover art by 029 (oniku)

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  HATARAKU MAOUSAMA!, Volume 14

  © SATOSHI WAGAHARA 2015

  First published in Japan in 2015 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.

  English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo, through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.

  English translation © 2019 by Yen Press, LLC

  Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Wagahara, Satoshi. | 029 (Light novel illustrator) illustrator. | Gifford, Kevin, translator. | Steinbach, Kevin, translator.

  Title: The devil is a part-timer! / Satoshi Wagahara ; illustration by 029 (oniku) ; translation by Kevin Gifford; translation by Kevin Steinbach.

  Other titles: Hataraku Maousama!. English

  Description: First Yen On edition. | New York, NY : Yen On, 2015–

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015028390 | ISBN 9780316383127 (v. 1 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316385015 (v. 2 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316385022 (v. 3 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316385039 (v. 4 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316385046 (v. 5 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316385060 (v. 6 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316469364 (v. 7 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316473910 (v. 8 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316474184 (v. 9 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316474207 (v. 10 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316474238 (v. 11 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316474252 (v. 12 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975302658 (v. 13 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975302672 (v. 14 : pbk.)

  Subjects: CYAC: Fantasy.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.W34 Ha 2015 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015028390

  ISBNs: 978-1-9753-0267-2 (paperback)

  978-1-9753-0268-9 (ebook)

  E3-20190803-JV-NF-ORI

  THE HERO AND HIGH SCHOOLER BECOME FRIENDS

  Chiho Sasaki’s shift at the mostly empty MgRonald restaurant in front of Hatagaya station was almost entirely spent with a frown on her face. Her manager, Mayumi Kisaki, didn’t lecture her about it because she was frowning even harder. The floor was practically dead—and since Kisaki wasn’t aware of what had happened just a few minutes’ walk away from the place, she had no idea why.

  “Hey, uh, Chi?”

  The sound of her shift mate Sadao Maou’s voice behind her made Chiho shiver a little, panicking for a moment that he had read her mind. Gingerly, she turned her face toward his, only to find Maou looking even more reluctant than she, apparently unaware of anything.

  “You know, with my power, I could erase all the bad memories…you…”

  Just that was enough to make the blood rush into Chiho’s head. She could feel her head and ears rise in temperature as the emotions flooded in. It must’ve been written all over her face, because it made Maou’s voice taper off midway.

  “…uh, have…”

  Chiho couldn’t keep her lips from trembling. With the rather unique day she had just experienced, her mind was still too jumbled up to do anything else.

  Maou, what do you mean when you say “bad memories”? Do you have the wrong idea about me and you, or me and that other girl? Or is this about how you and Ashiya are actually these crazy monsters…?

  “No thanks.”

  “Huh?”

  The denial just fell right out of her mouth.

  Realistically speaking, there were a million “bad memories” she could’ve had. She had gone through a really scary, fairly painful experience—a massive succession of unthinkable events. She had so many things she wanted to ask and learn about. But despite that:

  “You’re so stupid, Maou!”

  She instead opted for the kind of scolding she had delivered maybe just a couple of times in her life.

  “Huhhhhh?”

  Maou seemed genuinely hurt by that. It only added to Chiho’s rapidly accelerating frustration with him.

  Somewhere, in the part of her logical mind she could still keep intact, she could tell Maou was just looking out for her, aware of the mental and emotional shock caused by the events he had gotten her involved in. He had exposed her to all this stuff about magic, and killing, and demons, and so on, and he was trying to rid her of all those painful memories. But there was really only one open question lurking in her heart, and Maou demonstrated no recognition of that at all.

  They exchanged no further words until the end of the shift, and even then it was only a robotic “Thanks. See you next shift.” She didn’t wait for Maou to respond before walking out the door, him looking totally bewildered the whole time. She thought about that as she walked alone under the streetlights lining the Koshu-Kaido road.

  “He’s such a…dummy…”

  He had no idea why she was angry.

  “Even… Even though I just wanted to say it myself…”

  She took long, wide steps down the sidewalk, her face reddened by her anger—along with certain other emotions. Maybe it was misguided to blame Maou alone for all of this. He had never brought the topic up himself—it was those other two people, the non-demons, from the other world who first mentioned it. But, at this point, she hoped he would at least offer some kind of reaction.

  “I narrowed down the people receivin’ it to ‘human beings who think about nothing but the Devil King all day.’”

  “Oh, myyyy! Quite the player, aren’t you, Devil King?”

  The words echoed back into Chiho’s mind. And out of all the events that had completely changed her view on life since the start of this week, there was just one fact she actually wouldn’t mind erasing from reality.

  “I just…wish I could’ve said to his face that no matter what happens, I love him…”

  She had thought that a world full of people flying through the air and tossing swords and magic blasts around was strictly in the realm of fairy tales. But in the space of a few seconds, the humdrum life of Chiho Sasaki—going to school, working part-time, developing a little bit of a crush on her coworker—had been stomped flat.

  The object of her affections, a guy living in an ancient, cramped, wooden apartment building in the Sasazuka neighborhood with his friend, was a demon from another world. They both were, actually. And the call-center lady she was acquainted with was a “Hero” from that world, capable of conjuring up a sword out of nothing. And it’d be one thing if they fought each other to the death, but instead they worked together to fight off this other scary guy, and now it was a
ll over and they were back at MgRonald and the call center like nothing was amiss. They were interacting with her exactly like they always did.

  She didn’t feel bad about it. Yes, she had been a little scared while the fight was unfolding. All the facts she had learned afterward had excited her. But right now, she…didn’t really know what to feel. Somehow, everyone around her was acting like none of it had ever happened, but they indeed knew the truth, and she couldn’t just make that go away. She didn’t know how to approach those men. The amiable relationship they had before didn’t seem right any longer. And it made the distance between them grow wider.

  They were edging away from her, and that felt the worst of all.

  “…I can’t do this.”

  She couldn’t count how many times she had turned back today, right in front of this place. She was about to spin around on her heels and try to go back the way she had come—away from Villa Rosa Sasazuka, the wooden apartment building that was a five-minute walk away from Keio Sasazuka Station. She managed to make it one step before stopping and heaving a deep sigh. No matter what she did, she couldn’t drum up the courage to climb those stairs.

  “Maou has the day off anyway. I’d just stress him out if I dropped in.”

  Since the day of that battle, the number of times she and Maou had looked each other in the eyes had plummeted. They didn’t share a shift most days this week, it was true, but that was only half of it. The other half lay in how she was actively avoiding him.

  The shift schedule she had submitted for the second half of the month gave her an entire week off from work. She explained it as needing time to prepare for midterms and wrangle the new recruits in her club sports, but really, she wasn’t hurting for time. The remaining shifts were all things like Saturdays, which Maou rarely signed on for, and seven to ten PM on days when Maou opened and stayed at work till eight in the evening. She was actively searching for ways to avoid making eye contact with him.

  Kisaki had accepted the “busy at school” excuse, but Chiho knew she had a sharp mind. It was already apparent she’d noticed that Chiho was trying to evade Maou. “I don’t know if something’s up,” the manager had once said right to her face, “but if you’re having trouble handling stuff, don’t be afraid to talk to me about it.” And, yes, she was having trouble—but unlike before, this wasn’t the kind of concern she could solve by talking to someone.

  “Uuugh…”

  With a groan, Chiho started walking back toward the apartment—but once she spotted its roof, off in the distance, her pace visibly slowed. “What am I doing?” she asked herself. She had intended to apologize for acting so immature around him and then talk to him about her true feelings.

  “I…I really like him…”

  But once she saw the apartment’s stairwell in front of her, Chiho realized something: Who was “Sadao Maou,” really? If everything she’d seen actually happened, the real Sadao Maou was that gigantic, monstrous, nonhuman figure that had loomed above her. So was that helpful, reliable coworker at MgRonald she loved just a big front? If the real Maou was the demon who kept the Shuto Expressway from collapsing on her, then how should she deal with the “Sadao Maou” inside this apartment?

  The thought made Chiho step away from the building, another lap on the little back-and-forth circuit she was now well familiar with.

  After that battle under the expressway, her heart had frozen to the point that she was willing to accept pretty much anything. Still, the more time passed, the less she understood how she should act around Maou. She wanted to believe the one she loved; she wanted to tell him herself that she loved him. What if the person she fell in love with turned out to be nothing like she thought?

  Is the man living in that apartment truly the man I love?

  Chiho sprinted through the city, approaching the spot by Sasazuka Station that no longer showed any sign of the explosive battle that took place just a few days ago, and—

  “Ah, s-sorry…”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  —bumped into someone again. That was what had happened last time, too, wasn’t it? She had gotten into a huge tizzy over something, ran away at top speed, and ran into that terrible person who thrust her into that battle. That memory flashed across her mind for a moment, but it was a woman she had run into this time—a woman she had only recently met…

  “Ah.”

  “Oh, it’s you…”

  The other recognized Chiho at once. Chiho wasn’t sure how to address her, this woman with beautiful long hair and a strong, willful pair of eyes.

  “Ms.…Yusa?”

  “It’s been a while, Chiho…or maybe not, huh?”

  Emi Yusa, the “Hero” who came to this world from somewhere else. Just like Maou. Her, and:

  “And Albert, and Emeralda…”

  Albert was standing behind Emi Yusa, looking like a star athlete visiting Japan from overseas. Emeralda was the tiny woman next to him, even smaller than Chiho. They accompanied Emi on her “quest,” apparently, and while Albert looked just like he did when she had first met him, Emeralda—who had looked like a sorceress straight out of a fantasy world at first—no longer seemed out of place in Japan with her modern clothing. Presumably, they had tried and failed to find something that fit Albert, what with that Olympic hammer-thrower physique he had.

  “Are you going to Maou’s place?” Chiho found herself asking. Emi and her two friends were on a quest to defeat Maou back in their old world—they weren’t preparing to settle the score right now, were they? Despite having just run away from his building, too confused to know how to deal with him, she was still wary of anyone who might do harm to him.

  But the three of them simply exchanged confused stares with each other.

  “You remember us, young lady?”

  “Huh?”

  The hulking Albert’s question both surprised and slightly irritated Chiho. She couldn’t have forgotten them all if she tried. The offhand remark seriously disquieted her.

  “Thiiis is kind of a shooock,” the similarly surprised-looking Emeralda drawled.

  It had been just a week since the battle that blew up Sasazuka Station and brought down the Shuto Expressway. That, if anything, could never be forgotten. But despite the reactions of her companions, Emi gave them a nod of conviction.

  “Didn’t I tell you? Of course she’d remember us.”

  “Um, what’re you talking about, Ms. Yusa?”

  It was Emi herself who had told Chiho all about Ente Isla and the demons, wasn’t it? As if to answer the question, Emi looked Chiho in the eye.

  “I’m sorry we’re sounding all weird. But you’re right. We came to check out how Maou is doing…or, really, I hope you don’t mind if I keep calling him ‘Devil King.’ But then we were planning to visit the MgRonald at Hatagaya, so we could…you know, see how you were doing, Chiho.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” Albert said. “Just to see if…um, you remember us, an’ that day, and to make sure the Devil King hasn’t been doin’ anything weird to you.”

  “I thought he would have made you forget about iiit.”

  Something stirred in Chiho’s heart. “You mean,” she quietly asked, “like, how nobody else in town seems to remember it happened?”

  “…You noticed?” Emi humbly replied.

  “I mean, it’d be a little hard not to! Nobody else is talking about it apart from Maou, and there’s been nothing on TV, or in the news, or on the Internet. It just made me kind of think that you or he did some kind of…magic thing, or something. Plus…”

  “Ch-Chiho?”

  “Um, miss?”

  “Ummm…”

  The three of them were all flustered in their own way.

  “M-Maou asked if I, I wanted my m-memory erased, and, and, I mean, it’s not bad or, or anything…”

  Chiho’s lips quivered. Her temples felt like they were going to spontaneously combust. She couldn’t keep her eyes from tearing up. It made Emi want to roll
her eyes.

  “That stupid…”

  “I—I don’t know anything about, um, demons, or other worlds, or, or whatever, but…! But, I—I still feel like Maou’s… Oh, but what should I even do…?! I don’t even… Agh!”

  She let the tears flow freely, stammering enough that passersby started to notice. It took a firm hug from Emi to make her stop.

  “I’m sorry we put you through all this chaos.”

  “…”

  “If you’d like to talk to us, we’ll tell you about anything you might like to know, so… Sorry.”

  “M…Ms. Yusa…wehhhhh…”

  She sobbed into Emi’s chest, as if letting out all the confusion and unease she had kept locked up in her heart until today.

  “Yeah,” said Albert as he watched from behind, “um, what’re we gonna do about this, eh? She’s talkin’ about the Devil King, right? So she’s…”

  “I don’t thiiink,” the half-squinting Emeralda coldly replied to him, “someone who’d say something as indelicate as thaaat right in front of the man himself would understand toooo much.”

  She was referring to the bombshell Albert had unleashed in the tiny, cramped Devil’s Castle earlier. He and Emeralda had first traveled to Japan to search for the missing Emi, using a telepathic technique known as an Idea Link to make contact with people who thought about nothing but the Devil King all day. The signal wound up being received more keenly by the Maou-stricken Chiho than by Emi, something that Albert had inadvertently revealed right in front of Maou. Having a stranger disclose all her most personal feelings like that was, to Chiho, devastating.

  “Hey, don’t get all testy with me… You were into it as much as I was, weren’tcha?”

  Albert, to his credit, appeared to be at least somewhat aware of his misdeeds, although he was less than happy about receiving all the blame.

  “It’s okay if I am. I’m a girrrl.”

  “So, so it’s indelicate for me and not for you? And don’tcha think yer too old to go around callin’ yourself a ‘girl’ by now?!”

  The resulting toe kick from Emeralda penetrated through Albert’s thick leather pants, landing squarely on his shin and making him groan in pain. She followed this up with a chop to his throat as he crumpled to the ground, then began to conjure up a glowing orb in her hand that she kept from public view. Her eyes, illuminated by this light—quite unlike her cheerful voice—weren’t laughing at all.