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

by Satoshi Wagahara

  “Don’t ask!!” he shouted at Suzuno, who was standing by the front door. Then: “……………All right,” came a voice like a mosquito’s cry. “I’ll wash the dishes, okay? All of ’em except the pressure cooker…”

  “I must have missed something quite interesting indeed,” Suzuno said, growing curious about what could possibly make Urushihara volunteer for chores. “How frustrating. Could someone explain what happened?”

  “I said not to ask, dudette!!”

  Any more prodding was liable to make him lash out at just about anyone by now.

  “A child’s eyes are pretty crazy things, huh?” Maou asked.

  “They sure are,” Emi agreed, as she and the Devil King thought about the incredible wisdom hiding behind Alas Ramus’s gaze.

  “I’m done peeling the tomatoes, ha-h-ha…” Chiho had been smiling the whole time she’d been working, but not even she could keep a laugh from erupting out at the end.

  “Thank you, Ms. Sasaki. And don’t worry about washing, Urushihara,” Ashiya said. “But can you switch on the rice cooker for me? You can do that much, I imagine.”

  “Stop picking on me, dude! Seriously, you’re pissing me off!!”

  His shoulders were pinned back in anger as he meekly turned it on. It made a little beep as it began cooking the rice that both humans and demons would enjoy in this room shortly. The steam and aroma from both it and the pressure cooker soon filled the apartment as everyone hurried around to prepare the table and mark the end to just another day in Sasazuka.

  THE DEVIL SNAGS A NEW PHONE WITH THE HERO’S MONEY

  “Hello! How can I—”

  “Can you do anything with this?”

  “—help you today— Uhm?”

  Emi could see the salesman visibly tense up before he could finish his opening pitch with a smile. She couldn’t blame him. The pile of scrap metal and plastic Maou had just presented to him was just barely recognizable as a cell phone. But it was the salesman’s job to handle customers as they walked into the door of his AE shop, and as the public face of the store he did his level best to force the smile back on his face. A real pro, an astonished Emi thought.

  “Oh, um, I’m sorry, sir, were you…looking for some repair work…?”

  “Well, if you can. It still powers on, so I figured we could do something with it.”

  “…Yeah, right,” Emi whispered, softly enough so no one could hear.

  “Uhmm, well, I wouldn’t suggest you try turning that on right now. You might have the battery discharge and electrocute you, sir.”

  The salesman looked a little shocked himself.

  “B-but we’ll be happy to take a look at it, so, um, if you could just take a number and wait over there for a few moments…”

  “Oh, sure. Guess we’re out of luck, huh?”

  “I told you this was stupid.”

  “Huh? Uh…oh.”

  A final tug from Emi was all it took to dissuade Maou from hounding the salesman any further. Maou headed deeper into the shop, not even glancing at the state-of-the-art new models lining the shelves, and plopped himself down on a sofa.

  “Mommy! Mommy, it’s your job!”

  In Emi’s arms was Alas Ramus—the personification of the Yesod Sephirah and daughter of Emi and Maou—and she was pointing at the front counter with one arm and batting Emi’s shoulder with the other. Two AE employees were there, dressed in prim uniforms with large ribbons over the chest, and each of them was dealing with their own customer at the moment.

  “…Yeah.”

  Emi nodded back, even though it was a little bitter for her to accept. Up until fairly recently she had worked in the phone industry herself, albeit in a different company and position. Looking back at her career so far, the fact that the ex–call center receptionist Hero was in no position to criticize the Devil King about working at MgRonald would’ve made her giggle if it wasn’t so depressing.

  “Mommy, d’you work tomorrow?”

  The innocent question rubbed a bit more salt on Emi’s wounds. With Alas Ramus an inseparable part of the holy sword Emi wielded, the Hero had worked that whole time at Dokodemo with the child fused inside her heart. This gave Alas Ramus an insider’s view of Emi’s workplace.

  “…No, I’m going to be away from Dokodemo for a while.”

  It was a very motherly lie to tell one’s daughter. Emi had been fired from her previous place of employment—which was entirely due to her own behavior, so there was little complaining to be done about it. But losing the niche she had eked out for herself in Japan was still at least a somewhat scarring experience. Thinking back on it, it felt like she had come very far—both in terms of time and her situation—from the day she traveled to Japan to take the Devil King’s head.

  “You don’t have to stay with me here, Emi,” Maou said on the sofa, apparently noticing her eyes on him but not bothering to return the gaze.

  “…Huh?”

  “I mean, I’ll give you a copy of the receipt and everything, so, uh, if you just give me the money later…”

  He was being deliberately blunt with her, but Emi could easily figure out that he was trying to be considerate of her unemployment. It was excessive, unwelcomingly so. She already knew that she owed Maou, big-time.

  “…I can’t do that,” she said with a sniff, before sitting a prudent distance away from Maou on the same sofa. “I still haven’t gotten a new job yet. I could wind up at a call center or store run by AE, or SoftTank, or whatever. I need to scope out the other players in the field a little.”

  “Oh? Mm.”

  Maou awkwardly nodded, not taking the topic any further. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere except here, and the same could be said for his seating partner.

  “So which phone are you going for next?”

  “Um? Oh, uhh…”

  He looked down at the junked phone in his hand. Emi knew he was still clinging to that hope, for some reason.

  “I told you,” she said, “they’re never gonna offer repairs for that. It’s already a super-old model. I’m shocked you could still charge it. The shell’s in pieces.”

  “Aww…”

  He gave the pile of parts a forlorn look. The AE phone model in his possession was actually sold by Joose’d Mobile, before AE bought them out. That happened right when Maou and his friends first came to Japan, and it was something of a miracle that he managed to score that phone new just before Joose’d got phased out—not that it was a miracle particularly worth celebrating.

  Now, that miraculous stroke of luck was in pieces in his hands, torn apart during his so-called military expedition into Ente Isla earlier. He’d gone over on a mission to rescue Ashiya, Alas Ramus, and Emi, all being held in Ente Isla by assorted nefarious people. In the midst of it, he’d dropped the phone into water, exposed it to a volatile explosion, and sent it flying through the air following a traffic accident of sorts; it was also in his pocket the whole time during his climactic battle against the angels.

  The left side of the screen was now completely dark. The caps for the number keys were long gone, revealing the phone’s motherboard below, and the hinge that flipped the screen up and down was crushed, exposing open wiring and making the phone not so flippable any longer. Maou claimed he could still charge and make phone calls with it, but even daring to plug a half-ruined piece of electronics into an outlet like that could have led to explosions, electrocutions, horrifying death, or all of that combined.

  Emi was later “invoiced” for expenses incurred during her rescue, and the first thing on the list was that something had to be done about that phone. The Hero was no longer capable of slaying the Devil King without a second thought, and if Maou went and fried his brain because he was using a ticking hand grenade of a broken cell phone, that would now be a problem. Satan, the Devil King, continuing to use that phone and later dying in an apartment fire from it—while it’d barely get mentioned in the news these days—would mean everything to her.

  “B
-by the way…”

  Maou’s invoice was worryingly high to Emi, but she accepted it with only a few complaints. Ever since, he had been acting weirdly awkward around her. Maybe he was so surprised that his high-pressure approach won Emi over, he didn’t know what to do with himself.

  Emi hefted a deep sigh. “What?”

  “L-lemme just tell you, I’m gonna buy what I want.”

  “Go ahead. Why don’t you?”

  “Y-you sure about that? ’Cause you’re not gonna stop me, even if you try. You made a promise. We wrote it all out on the invoice—”

  “I know all that,” she flatly responded. “Just buy whatever you want. I don’t even care if you go with some fancy new smartphone. Just don’t try to repair that thing, all right?”

  “Y-yeah…um…”

  As if to further agitate her, Maou turned to the nearby shelf, fished out a pamphlet outlining all of AE’s new models, and began very deliberately reading through it.

  “…Mommy?”

  Alas Ramus, still in Emi’s arms, looked up at her as she continued to stare at Maou. “Mommy,” she quizzically asked, “are you kinda happy?”

  “Hmm? I don’t know,” Emi replied, not moving her head. She could see the sweat on Maou’s forehead, despite the air-conditioned store.

  “Hey.”

  “Hnh?!”

  He half-jumped up out of his seat. It wasn’t the kind of act she wanted him repeating in public again, if she could help it, so before he could say anything else, Emi pointed something out to him.

  “You sure you shouldn’t be stopping her?”

  “Huh? Stopping what?”

  “Acieth.”

  “Nnh?!”

  Maou stood up, eyes wide open. Emi’s finger was pointed at Acieth Alla, Alas Ramus’s “sister” and a woman currently pelting the AE shop salesman with questions.

  “Hey, Acieth!”

  In a panic, Maou hurried over to Acieth, whose eyes sparkled as she looked at a showcase with the latest models—all at eye-popping prices.

  “Ooh, Maou! Hey, hey, which one looks like the best to you?”

  “Which what?”

  “Which phone! You said, Maou, you will buy me the phone, too!”

  “I never said that! Um, I’m sorry, you can just ignore her, okay?”

  Apologizing to the salesman, Maou attempted to pull Acieth back to the sofa.

  “You did say it! You did! When, when we see Albert in Ente Isla!”

  She was talking about something that had happened during their journey in Ente Isla. She was the personification of a Sephirah herself, just like Alas Ramus, and much like how Alas Ramus was “paired” with Emi, Acieth was now one with Maou. While Emi and Alas Ramus had been imprisoned in their homeland, she had stepped up with Maou to save them—and just as Emi was reunited with her father, Nord, a man she thought dead, Acieth was able to see her “older sister” Alas Ramus once more.

  Right now, though, Maou was ruing her presence. He knew she’d cause nothing but trouble.

  “I didn’t say anything about buying you one! I just said that if I ever do, I’m getting you one for children!”

  “Objection! I have the objection to that! What you say, it is the same thing as you saying ‘I will buy it!’”

  “Overruled!!”

  Brushing away Acieth’s ranting, Maou sat her down next to Emi, glaring at her to make sure she didn’t give him any more back talk. As if on cue, Alas Ramus reached out from Emi’s arms and placed her palm against Acieth’s forehead.

  “Asseth, don’t be selfish!”

  “I am not selfish, big sis! I think you want the cell phone, too, no?”

  “Sell phone?”

  Emi shifted positions, looking a bit distressed as she tried to pull Alas Ramus away. “Would you stop giving Alas Ramus weird ideas, please…?”

  “Oh, it’ s A-OK! I am not asking you to pay, Emi! All I want, it is to make Maou keep his promises…”

  “It’s questionable whether we have a promise in the first place! Please, just sit down and be quiet! I took you out ’cause you said you wouldn’t cause any trouble!”

  “She certainly is a handful to you, huh…?”

  “Hey! Maou! Your words, they are hurting my reputation with Emi!”

  “You’re the one that’s hurting it!”

  Maou slumped into the sofa, dejected. He really didn’t want to take Acieth on his own—he didn’t need much imagination to picture Acieth causing a commotion. But the way that Emi and Alas Ramus could only remain a certain distance away from each other also applied to him and Acieth, it seemed. The two distances were about the same, and they were sadly shorter than the trip from Sasazuka to Shinjuku. As a result, whenever Maou visited downtown Tokyo, Acieth was forced to go along with him—but unlike her sister, Acieth had the maturity (and total lack of obedience) of a middle schooler by Japanese standards.

  Whenever they went out, the idea of Acieth staying inside Maou and being a good girl was a pipe dream. She’d always go out and start wheedling Maou immediately, and while he was used to it by now, it didn’t make things any less tiring for him. To Emi, meanwhile, Acieth was still tricky to deal with—they had only just met, and Acieth had been living with Emi’s long-lost father, Nord Justina, for what had to be a pretty decent stretch of time. The hang-ups were only on Emi’s side, though, and almost from the start, Acieth had been just as unreserved with her as she was with everyone.

  “Mmm…”

  Emi looked at the girl as she continued to beg Maou for a phone. It wasn’t envy, exactly. It was just that, well, having someone just as powerful as Alas Ramus around must’ve kept Nord’s life intact on more than one occasion. She hadn’t heard his whole story yet, but Emi knew her father had made multiple attempts to come back into contact with her. And yet, somehow, she still found herself oddly trying to hold back from Acieth.

  “Mm? What, Emi?”

  Suddenly, Acieth turned toward her, noticing her eyes. Between her large purple eyes, her silver hair with a single shock of violet, and most of all her facial structure, the more Emi looked at her, the more she resembled Alas Ramus.

  “Umm…”

  Emi, not looking at her for any pressing reason, grasped for a reply, when:

  “Customer number fifty-five, please!”

  “Oh, hello! …Hey! Acieth, I’m not buying anything for you today, all right? Sorry, Emi! You mind putting up with this idiot for a little bit?”

  “Huh? Ah, wait—”

  Maou didn’t bother hearing Emi’s reply before leaving Acieth behind and running up to the counter.

  “Who is the ‘idiot’ here, Maou?!” Acieth half-shouted as she stuck her tongue out at him, then quickly turned back toward Emi. “So, what?”

  “Huh? I, um…”

  “By the way, Emi…”

  “H-hmm?”

  “You are daughter of your father, yes?”

  “…Yes…?”

  Where did that come from? It put Emi off guard, but Acieth seemed perfectly casual as she continued—and landed a hard blow on Emi, deep inside her heart.

  “Well, sorry. Me, I was daughter of him for very long time.”

  “…Huh?”

  “And I suppose, maybe you don’t like that? Long-lost father, and this overfamiliar woman sticking to him, acting like daughter?”

  Her words were bright and indifferent as always, no ulterior motive lurking behind them, but they robbed Emi of her voice.

  “But there is this, that I want you to know. Before, when I first have memory of things, Dad… Nord was there, in the front of me. If we call us father and daughter, well, easier to live in Japan together, too. So…”

  She flashed Emi a wide smile as she patted her on the shoulder reassuringly.

  “Nord, he never forget about you, Emi. Not once. So if he call me daughter, you forgive it, okay?”

  “Acieth…”

  Then Emi realized it. That weird feeling she had whenever she was dealing with Acieth.<
br />
  “Me, I don’t like the, the being so distant. So don’t worry! Let’s just be friendly. Maou, right from beginning, he was always the friendly man.”

  “…Yeah.” Emi nodded. “Acieth, do you…like my father?”

  “Uh-huh,” came Acieth’s carefree reply.

  “And your sister…Alas Ramus?”

  “Ooh?”

  “Hmm?”

  Alas Ramus looked up at Emi’s sudden name check.

  “The Devil King and I… We aren’t connected by blood, but we really care a lot about this child. I’m proud of having her call me Mommy. I’m sure that applies to him, too.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And in the same way, I’m sure Father’s proud to have you call him ‘Dad,’ too. He’s my father, after all. Regardless of the circumstances, I know you’re just as important to him as I am.”

  “Mmm? Are you sure? Is that the…disappointing to you, Emi?”

  It was amazing, how Acieth could ask that without any apparent burden to her psyche. You needed such an utterly straightforward, meek, and gloom-free heart to act that way. That was the distance Emi felt from her—the worry she had for her. That was it.

  “It’d be much more ‘disappointing’ if you kept looking out for me, and it cost you your place in our lives. I guess you’re living in Devil’s Castle right now, Acieth, but there’s someone else living in that apartment, too. Why don’t you go back to him? There’s no way that other room can fit four people in it, anyway.”

  “You mean Urushihara… Lucifer? Mmm, that is the current problem of me, yes.”

  Watching Acieth cross her arms in apparent distress, Emi thought over the past few days. Freshly back from their Ente Isla expedition, Acieth didn’t come near Room 101 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka very much, the apartment where Emi was taking care of Nord. If she was doing that out of concern for Nord’s real daughter, it made Emi feel all the worse. Just like how Alas Ramus called her and Maou “Mommy and Daddy,” Acieth felt as strongly about her real dad, Nord—and it was Emi’s own mother who’d brought that about, no doubt.

  And before she realized it, the question came all too naturally out of her mouth: