THE DEVIL GOES ON A DATE IN SHINJUKU WITH THIS GIRL FROM WORK
By the time Maou and Ashiya woke up the next morning, Emi was already gone.
Her bath towel was neatly folded up and placed on top of the washer. The key to the front door was on the floor beneath a window, and next to the kitchen sink…
“What’s that?”
“Some kind of pickled dish?”
It was a small bowl of chopped-up konnyaku gel and cucumber, tossed with vinegar and miso paste. Ashiya had no memory of preparing it.
“Her way of repaying us for the lodging, perhaps? Here, allow me to test it for poison.”
Removing the plastic wrap over the bowl, Ashiya flicked a slice of cucumber into his mouth.
“Hmm… She is our foe, yes, but she’s also a gifted cook.”
“It’s good?”
“I do not find it wanting, my liege.”
“Huh. I don’t usually eat anything vinegary like that.” As he spoke, Maou tried a pinch for himself.
“I do wonder what the key is doing on the floor, however…”
“If I had to guess, she opened the window, locked the door, then tossed it back in through the window. The bars over the windows facing the corridor would’ve kept anyone from getting inside anyway.”
“Impressive. The Hero is a woman of high morals.” Ashiya sniffed derisively as he picked the key up off the floor.
“And what would you have done if you were her?”
“Simple. I would have locked the door and taken the key with me.”
“Devilish.”
“Your point being?”
Emi was safe in Room 501, the Urban Heights Eifukucho condominiums, seven minutes from Eifukucho station on the Keio Inokashira rail line. And Emi was still kicking herself over falling asleep before the trains began running again.
It may have been just a crummy apartment, “Villa Rosa” in name only, but it was still the Devil’s Castle, a dark domain of ultimate evil. She had been blatantly reckless in her behavior. What’s more, it was the Devil King’s own filthy lucre that paid for train fare. She gritted her teeth in frustration.
“I feel so unclean…”
But she needed the remaining cash for the fare to Shinjuku. Today was another workday.
She could withdraw money easily enough with her passbook and seal, but Emi’s bank didn’t have any manned branches near Eifukucho.
Hurriedly, she made a bum rush for the shower, eager to wash away the stink of the ancient tatami mats that lined Devil’s Castle.
She had ample time to take it easy this morning, but the thought of demonic corruption writhing its way through her pores made her blood freeze.
Savoring the hot, cleansing water, Emi suddenly put a hand to her head, right where Maou touched her as they were dodging magical blasts. She recalled, a shiver of disgust crossing her spine, how Maou had virtually palmed her head like a basketball.
Lucky thing she’d thought to purchase a new bottle of shampoo. Spending twice the usual time lathering up her hair, she ran the conditioner deep into her scalp, following it up with a thorough hair pack treatment.
Methodically, she rubbed a freshly purchased bar of medical moisturizing beauty soap repeatedly against each area where Maou’s fingers touched her, as if they were contaminated by some hideous disease. Soon, nearly half the bar was gone.
Walking from the shower to the living room as she wrung the excess water out of her hair with a towel, she picked up a remote control from a low table covered with a flower-print cloth and turned on the TV.
Japan, as a nation, was always overly sensitive to gun-related crimes, no matter how far out in the sticks they took place. Their “gunshots” were magical in nature, of course, but they had still made holes in the asphalt, broken a traffic signal, and ripped apart a protective shutter. If something like that took place in the middle of Tokyo, it was only natural that it was the top story once the morning news programs went live.
MHK was airing a traffic report for the train and highway systems. The JR and private train lines were all running on schedule, so Emi shouldn’t have much difficulty riding the Keio Inokashira line to work.
After a moment, the program shifted to the morning’s news. As expected, the shooting dominated. They began with a shot of the intersection at which Emi had spoken with Maou the night before, now lined with cameras and TV reporters.
The police had shut the intersection down, lining it with yellow DO NOT CROSS tape. Images of the innocent building shutter, now twisted into an unrecognizable shape, were inserted into the coverage here and there. The reporter used the term “shots fired,” but said that no further details were uncovered as of yet.
Switching through the channels, Emi found largely the same story elsewhere. Then:
“Whoa! It’s them!”
Maou and Ashiya were clearly visible among the crowd of onlookers in one of the camera shots.
Emi resisted the instinctive urge to shut off the TV. They were on-screen for only a moment, but it seemed like they were discussing something with each other, somber looks on their faces. Perhaps Maou was explaining the scene to Ashiya.
“…and a bicycle with two flat tires was abandoned in the middle of the intersection. Police detectives are in the midst of determining the bicycle’s owner, since they believe it may have something to do with the case.”
Emi’s eyes opened wide at the on-scene reporter’s script.
“You…idiot…”
That was why they looked so somber! Presumably they didn’t think anyone would care much about any of this. He must have thought it’d be fine and dandy to stroll on over early in the morning and pick up the bike then. And now look at him.
It wouldn’t be long before the police seized the bike and figured out who owned it. And from there, it wouldn’t be long before they rooted out Sadao Maou, lurking within Villa Rosa Sasazuka.
“…Well, not my problem.”
With that conclusion, she returned to the bathroom to dry her hair, leaving the TV on.
Maou was the victim here, after all. It didn’t bother Emi much if the police thought he was related to the shooting. In fact, him getting arrested would be nothing but good news for her.
After a few minutes, the news switched over to a report about a string of late-night convenience-store robberies and muggings of women and the elderly, apparently carried out by a crazed maniac wearing bizarre clothing. Listening to the lurid details was enough to darken Emi’s mood all over again.
Some days, it just felt like one depressing thing piling on top of another.
Emi was a part-time contractual employee for a call center.
Her office was in a branch of Dokodemo, a nationwide cell phone provider, located in a business district about ten minutes from Shinjuku station’s east exit. Her department chiefly handled complaint processing and customer service.
Very few people, even the kind of people who willingly worked at call centers, actively volunteered for the complaints department. That was why she landed that for her first job in the world, and why she still held it down now.
Being constantly short on staff, the department paid handsomely. Someone like Emi, with an attractive voice and a chip on her shoulder, was an invaluable resource.
What was more, Emi was gifted with the ability to grasp every language spoken in the world.
Even when greeted in a language she’d never heard before, her brain had a sort of telepathic ability to understand at least the general outline. All she had to do was reply with her own general emotions, and the caller understood. To an impartial observer, this would apparently be interpreted as her fluently speaking English, French, Korean, Chinese, anything.
Walking into the office locker room, Emi changed into her uniform: a gray vest, a tight skirt, a blouse, and a bow-tie-shaped ribbon. She then clocked herself into the company system and sat down at her assigned cube. Not being a full-time employee, she had yet to be granted her own exclusive desk, but given the department’s chronic staff shortage, she usually found herself among the same island of cubes.
“Morning, Emi!”
“Oh, hey, Rika.”
Rika Suzuki had called out from the adjacent seat. Her employee number was only one removed from Emi’s, so they would always find themselves seated next to each other when both were on duty. Her short brown hair was a smart match for the gray uniform.
“Hey, did you hear about that crazy shootout? That was right near you, wasn’t it?”
Emi’s heartbeat accelerated for a moment, but she was never the kind of girl to wear her emotions on her sleeve.
“Well, three train stops away, but…yeah.”
“Oh? Well, still, a gun battle right in the middle of Tokyo! Nuts, isn’t it? Japan’s gonna go down the tubes before too long if that keeps up.”
The morning news simply reported that shots were fired, but in Rika’s mind, it had already escalated into an action-film bloodbath.
“And, you know, there’s been all these earthquakes lately, there’s some weirdo robbing people on the street… It’s outrageous! The whole world’s going crazy, and it’s draggin’ all of us down with it. Oh! There’s a new curry place opening up today, did you hear about that?”
Emi was already used to the unexpected new directions in which the women of this world could suddenly take a conversation.
“No, I didn’t.”
“One of the big joints in Shimo-Kitazawa opened up a new location. Wanna join me there for lunch, maybe?”
“Ooh, but if it’s popular, won’t there be a line and stuff?”
“It’ll be worth it!”
Ever since she arrived in Japan, Emi had been repeatedly floored by the vast variety its kitchens offered. Curry, in particular, was a revolution for her senses and her taste buds when she first tried it, exceeding all expectations she ever had for a decent lunch. That astonishment remained today, long after she had grown accustomed to other aspects of the Japanese lifestyle. Rika’s invitation sorely tempted her, but for today, with painful reluctance, she found herself shaking her head.
“Well, sad to say, I don’t have time to stand in line today. I lost my purse.”
“Oh, no way! Really?!”
Rika’s reaction was so grandiose, Emi was concerned she would tip over her office chair.
“Yeah, and it had everything in it, too. Train ticket, bank card, credit card… So I have to go visit my bank to deal with all that and withdraw some money.”
“Ooh, yeah, no waiting around for lunch today, then.”
“Sorry about that!”
“Oh, no problem, no problem. So you wanna just hit up Maggie’s or whatever instead?”
“Ooh, anything but Maggie’s.”
To Emi, Rika was more than just a coworker—she was the first friend she’d found in this world. Her influence was part of the reason Emi had fallen into the habit of saying “Maggie’s” instead of “MgRonald,” for one.
Maou had picked on her for not having any friends, but the only thing she lacked for on Earth were friends from Ente Isla. A pity that no acquaintances lived nearby the Hatagaya neighborhood in Sasazuka. Then maybe she wouldn’t have gone through all that anguish overnight.
“You better cancel all those cards real soon, though, right?”
“I already put a temporary stop on them, yeah. That much you can do over the phone.”
“Oh, I see. Well, you just name the place, Emi! It’s on me today! Don’t want to leave you heartbroken, after all.”
“Ah, you don’t have to do that…”
They continued on in this fashion until the starting bell rang.
Emi checked the interoffice mail on her assigned PC, where the day’s special issues to watch out for would be waiting.
The first call signal had already sounded off from one cube or another.
Being a subsidiary of Dokodemo, the calls were naturally all about issues related to cell phones. The morning report mentioned that phone service had been knocked out for a period last night in part of the city’s center due to electrical issues.
If anyone was itching to complain today, that would be the main reason. Emi could hear Rika sigh in the next booth over. Plainly she thought the same thing.
Emi received her first call practically the moment she set her terminal to standby mode. An elderly woman, having trouble understanding the jargon in the instruction manual. After politely walking her through the problem, she received another call five minutes afterward. It was a transfer from another station with a “foreign language” code attached.
The department would be loath to admit it, but the staff relied almost wholly upon Emi for all non-Japanese support.
Apparently it was a Chinese man who couldn’t read the Japanese manual and decided to just try the phone number printed on the back.
And so the flow of inquiries continued, Emi handling each one efficiently and effectively. By the time she noticed the clock, it was already near her lunch break. The call load always tended to slow down a bit once the afternoon rolled around.
“Ugh! There’s just so many complaints today!”
Rika was groaning in the adjacent cube.
“Like, try to at least make an effort to figure it out yourself, Grandpa!”
Rika, after spending over an hour battling it out with a middle-aged man accusing the manual of excess crypticness, still had a tightly stretched smile on her face as she banged her fist against the desk several times.
“So are you going anywhere besides the bank today, Emi?”
“Umm…”
In recent days, she had been turning down lunch offers from her coworkers so she could spend time spying on Maou. The mere idea of continuing the surveillance filled her with indignant rage.
“Nope! Just the bank!”
“But Kakui, too, right? Since you need to cancel that card. So how ’bout we check out that new okonomiyaki place next to Kakui? The crowds there have probably thinned out a little bit by now.”
“Sounds good. Give me one sec, okay? I need to check where the nearest bank branch is… Hmm?”
Another foreign-language call transfer popped up on Emi’s terminal.
“Ooooh, you hate to see that before lunch!”
“Hey, it’s a living.”
The individual timing behind lunch breaks depended on how many people were on staff each day. A call-center staffer unlucky enough to field a particularly talkative customer could wind up seeing their break pushed to later in the afternoon.
Flashing a reassuring smile to the obviously peeved Rika, Emi adjusted her headset and prepared her standard English-language greeting.
“Thank you for your patience! This is Emi Yusa from the Dokodemo customer support team. How can I—”
“…Yusa?”
“Huh? Um, yes?”
The soft, muffled voice that recited Emi’s last name was plainly speaking native Japanese, something obvious enough even with two short syllables.
“Yes, this is Yusa. How can I help you?”
“Yusa…is it? You’re a full-fledged Japanese woman by now, aren’t you, Emilia the Hero?”
“Ah!”
Emi gasped. She tried to keep Rika in the adjacent booth from noticing her shock, but a shiver still ran down and across her throat.
“May I ask who’s calling, please?”
“Someone who knows of the Hero, and the Devil King. And someone who is driven to destroy the both of you.”
Emi had no recollection of this voice.
“So you were trying to utilize the network late last night?”
“It was unexpected to see the Hero and Devil King engaged in tandem operations.”
“Yes. It was a very regrettable situation for us as well.”
“Heh-heh-heh… I could imagine. You may consider me an assassin, one sent from Ente Isla. And you may consider our encounter last night as a method of introducing myself.”
“… …”
It was difficult to make any bold moves. She had no idea who the person on the other end of the line was. Then, he made an even more confounding statement:
“I am here to eliminate Satan, the Devil King, and Emilia the Hero, in the world they have traveled to. It is both my mission and the will of Ente Isla.”
“What?!”
Emi—Emilia—could no longer hide the shock.
Why would Ente Isla, the land returned to peace and stability by human hands, want her dead?
“I…I’m afraid that we will be unable to provide an answer to that without further consideration…”
“Heh-heh… Consideration, is it? I am keenly interested to see what the Hero and Devil King have left to consider, judging by the way they tucked their tails and fled from such a simple attack.”
The voice seemed to echo ominously, as if rattling up from the depths of darkness. Emi recognized that tone. It could only come from the demon world. Suddenly her mind was cool, serene, as she regained her Heroic composure.
“None of Satan’s generals survived apart from Alciel. What part of the demon realm are you from?”
“… …”
“You can try to shock me into submission with your lofty words about the ‘will of Ente Isla.’ But it will never faze me! I have no time for the prattlings of a monster.”
“I see. A pity you choose not to believe me. We will meet again, soon.”
The conversation ended earlier than she expected.
With a heavy sigh, Emi removed her headset.
Rika, in the adjacent seat, looked on incredulously, having little clue what Emi was talking about or what kind of conversation they were having. Emi turned back to her.
“It takes all kinds in this world, doesn’t it?”
“I…guess so.”
Rika still looked skeptical, but apparently decided the topic wasn’t worth dwelling upon.
Soon, their lunch break arrived. Rika smiled at Emi, her eyes still betraying her curiosity a bit.
“Hey, sorry. So what did you want to do? Wanna eat lunch first? The bank’s gonna be busy right now anyway.”
“Sure, Emi. If that works for you.”
Heading for the locker room, she placed her phone, passbook, and seal inside a small tote. Just as she was about to leave, her phone began to vibrate.
Her heart skipped a beat. She had put on a strong face, but that mystery call from earlier had unquestionably cast a pall upon her life in Japan.
“Is that your phone?”
“Yeah…”
Checking the screen, it was from an unknown fixed-line number within Tokyo.
“You gonna answer it?”
“I dunno… I got a bad feeling about it.”
The phone continued to ring. There was nothing else to do.
“…Hello?”
“Hello! Is this Emi Yusa’s cell phone?”
Emi’s nerves loosened themselves a bit. It was a different voice, a friendly-sounding middle-aged man.
“Yes! Can I ask who this is?”
The man had unexpected news for her.
“I apologize for bothering you. This is the Yoyogi Police Department calling.”
“Huh?”
Emi simmered silently inside the waiting room into which she had been led. Her eyebrows furrowed deeply into her forehead, as if chiseled on.
The ill temper so plain in Emi’s eyes was enough to make even the female officer manning the front desk of the Yoyogi Police Department choose to keep her distance.
“Sorry to keep you.”
Eventually, a uniformed officer entered the waiting room and greeted Emi, who lacked the psychological peace of mind to return the favor at the moment.
“I really appreciate you taking the time to come here. There’s a whole process we have to go through, you understand.”
“Yeah…”
“Um, first off, if I could check your ID… Thank you. Now, if you could just write your name and address on this paper and place your seal right here…”
She was starting to wonder why she bothered to bring her insurance card and seal with her today. They were supposed to help her obtain another bank card, but now here she was, waiting and waiting and waiting.
Emi signed the document, almost applying enough pressure to rip the paper apart, then smashed her seal into the inkpad before practically stamping it through the sheet and into the desk.
Slightly put off by this display, but not realizing what was causing it, the officer continued to smile as sincerely as he could at this law-abiding citizen.
“Right. That should take care of the transfer documentation. Mr. Maou and Mr. Ashiya are waiting in another room, so you can go ahead and leave together. We might need you back here later on if we find out anything, though.”
“I am not leaving with them!”
Emi snarled at the officer like a caged tiger.
“Yeahhh, sorry about that. We couldn’t think of anyone else, so…”
“We truly, truly wished to avoid relying upon you for this, but…”
Maou and Ashiya tried their best to keep it cool near the police station entrance.
“When that detective showed up at the door, man, we were freaking out. I had no idea they could track down our address from my bike! That’s some pretty killer police work.”
“And the Hero truly was faking her age, too.”
“Yeah, just like I said, right? You can’t do something like rent a condo if you’re underage—not unless you get some guarantors and your parents’ approval. I don’t know what kind of trick she pulled off, but I figured she had to be registered as an adult, at least twenty years of age. Funny, huh? Usually people round their age downward if they want to lie about it.”
“Indeed. Unless she wanted to buy some beer. Could that be the main motivation, perhaps?”
“It doesn’t matter!”
Emi’s sudden shrill scream made Maou and Ashiya cower before her, covering their ears.
“Why…? Why does it have to be me…?”
She was shaking with anger at this point.
“Why do I, the Hero of Ente Isla, have to serve as a personal ID reference for a bunch of demons?!”
“Sh-Shut up! You’re being too loud!”
Smiling distractingly at the people staring at them, Maou pushed Emi outside of the station.
“What do you want from us? I told you, we couldn’t think of anyone else!”
“I had thought about Ms. Kisaki at MgRonald…but even if my liege was the victim here, I feared she would fire him for his issues with the law.”
“Ahh, I doubt Kisaki’s that kind of manager…but, no, I don’t want to bother her, either.”
But Emi was singularly uninterested in their excuses. Besides, lending an ear to a demon’s malicious lies would make her a very unworthy Hero.
“What?! So it’s okay to bother me, then?!”
“Well, hey, it’s the Devil King’s job to bother the Hero, isn’t it?”
Emi ran a frustrated hand through her hair. He didn’t have to look so smug about it!
“How did you even get my phone number?! You didn’t go snooping through my phone last night, did you?”
“Of course not! You had to write it down when we got taken to the station last time, remember?”
“Okay, but…but why did you have to name me?!”
“There was nobody else! What do you want from us? We don’t have any friends, either! Besides, c’mon, we let you sleep over last night.”
“Nnnnnghhhh!!”
“Hey, is that your work uniform, by the way? The Hero’s a secretary or something? That’s pretty cool.”
“Who asked you?!”
Emi ripped the bow tie off her neck, then hung her head in abject shame.
“Look, calm yourself, Emilia. What kind of Hero acts like that?”
“I don’t need you lecturing me, Alciel! Look at you guys! It’s the start of the month, and your refrigerator’s absolutely barren! They called you the greatest strategist of the demon forces! Hah! Don’t you idiots have a budget or anything?!”
“Urrgh!”
Alciel fell to the ground, apparently suffering mortal injuries from this brutally accurate verbal strike, groaning something about it not being his fault as he did so.
“Will you people just take care of yourselves a little more, please?! I had someone making death threats to me over the phone today! And you’re being targeted, too, Devil King! Better be careful, you got that?!”
“What?”
Ignoring Maou’s question, Emi placed a hand on her hip, puffed up her chest, and pointed a finger straight at him.
“You got that?! I’m warning you, all right?! But don’t you forget this! I’m the Hero, and I’m going to slay the Devil King and guide Ente Isla into a bold era of peace! Okay?!”
“I appreciate your enthusiasm, but please, try not to forget we’re in public.”
Maou looked frantic. Ashiya was rolling around on the floor, crying. And Emi continued jabbing her finger at Maou, ranting on with the stentorian voice of a natural-born ranter.
Suddenly, Emi noticed the officers and visitors staring at her. In an instant, the entire region between her neck and the ends of her ears glowed bright red.
“I…I…uh… Look, just be careful, all right?! That’s all I want to say!”
“Thanks for the warning…”
Emi, ignoring Maou’s listless response, swung her small tote bag around and quickly strode off, making her escape.
“Me…and her. They’re after us both. And yet they called, huh?”
Maou took a moment to pick the fatally wounded Ashiya off the floor.
“Get a grip on yourself, Ashiya.”
“It…it wasn’t my fault… I kept a perfect accounting ledger…”
“Snap out of it! Look, let’s go home. I need to meet up with Chi later.”
“Dammit! Those cops made me waste so much of my off day.”
“But it worked out well in the end, did it not? They even fixed your flat tires for you.”
It wasn’t enough to keep Maou from groaning as he wheeled his returned bicycle back home.
He was questioned by the police, yes, but was treated strictly as the victim of a passing thief, not a shooting suspect.
The reason he gave for the abandoned bike in the intersection was not exactly his most eloquent moment as Devil King.
“I, uh, I was scared… I didn’t know what was going on, so I ditched it and ran.”
The officer questioning them accepted it without an ounce of suspicion. He even said he felt sorry for them. An utter humiliation.
Back in their apartment, the Devil King and his aide-de-camp discussed their current pressing issues.
The texts they received the previous night from Chiho and an unknown number both discussed earthquakes.
Maou had replied to both, but the mystery texter fell silent after that. Meanwhile, Chiho wrote:
I’m not playing around and it’s not a joke. I think an earthquake’s coming. —Chiho
It was a little difficult to decipher the meaning behind such a clipped response. For one, why did she sign her name at the end of every text? In emoji, no less?
After a few more texts, Chiho clarified that she believed an earthquake had a chance of occurring sometime soon. She went on to explain why, but Maou offered to meet her this evening anyway, since it seemed like direct conversation was the easiest way to get to the bottom of this.
“What did Sasaki tell you?”
“Something about hearing a voice.”
“Huh?”
“A man’s voice. She said it was giving her some kind of weird warning or something.”
“That doesn’t make sense. This isn’t a movie or an anime. You don’t see high school girls suddenly get telepathic messages out of nowhere.”
“Yeah, I thought she was just having weird teenage delusions, too. At first.”
Maou smiled grimly.
“The thing is, I figured she’d have a more grandiose story behind it, but apparently Chi started having strange experiences once she got hired at MgRonald.”
“Once she made contact with you, my liege? That’s when it began?”
“‘Made contact’ isn’t exactly the term I’d use, but you could say that, yeah. She started to have ringing in her ears, and whenever there was an earthquake, it’d be huge only in the area around Chi. You know, I may not look it, but I’m still king of the demon realm, right?”
“Absolutely. And you do not, my liege.”
“…Meaning, it wouldn’t be strange at all if even my mere presence was having an effect on the people and things around me. I am Devil King, after all.”
An unaware observer could be excused for thinking Maou was the one with weird teenage delusions at this point.
“But in that case, why aren’t you affecting anyone else on the MgRonald staff?”
“Who knows? Maybe they just haven’t noticed. Or, it’s entirely possible that Chi’s just imagining things. But we did just kinda get attacked with bolts of magic, and Emi got that death threat, too, right? I don’t know who we’re fighting, but it’s possible they figured out who we are so they could put more pressure on us. And in the worst case…”
“In the worst case, you think Chiho might be the enemy’s advance party?”
“I don’t want to think that, but…yeah. Anyway, we have to explore every possibility, no matter how remote.”
“I understand, Your Demonic Highness. But…in that case, I wish to accompany you. If whoever attacked you last night is involved in this, it would be best to have as many eyes out on the street as possible.”
“Ah, you just want to see Chi, don’t you?”
Maou needled Ashiya, a mischievous look on his face. Ashiya responded with a defiant sneer.
“If I may, Your Demonic Highness… If I were not holding watch over it, I have little doubt you’d forget about how your bank account is empty and treat Sasaki to all sorts of things in a crass attempt to show off. And if our enemy does appear, if we do not discover and dispatch him quickly, you will become the laughingstock of the demon realm. ‘Oh, look, there’s the Devil King flirting with a teenage girl!’”
Even the mighty Devil King fell to silence against such infallible logic.
“So where and when are you planning to meet her, and how long will you be out?”
“What are you, my mother?! She said she had some kind of club activity after school, so we’re meeting at the Shinjuku station east exit at five.”
“Ah, so we have time. Shall we go, Your Demonic Highness?”
“Huh?”
Maou watched, puzzled, as Ashiya began to leave anew, just a few minutes after they reached home.
“We must go shopping, and then to the barber shop. Surely, Your Demonic Highness, you did not intend to go out on a date with your messy hair and head-to-toe UniClo wardrobe?”
“Who cares about my clothes and stuff? We’re just gonna have some coffee, talk for a bit, and then sayonara! We don’t have to make it a—”
“If a young girl is facing trouble, she would never deign to discuss it with anyone but her closest of friends. Not even her parents. Surely, Your Demonic Highness, you understand the meaning behind confiding such close, intimate secrets to another person.”
Having it thrust upon him like this, he could see the logic.
“All…all right. Sure.”
“Wonderful. And I would hate to think that a human girl would think that my lofty master cares naught about how he looks on his day off. You must strike a lasting presence at all times! Clothes, my liege, make the man!”
Maou finally found something to fire back while Ashiya strode briskly out the door.
“I will make you rue the day you berated my clothing!… And berated UniClo, the fastest-growing apparel franchise in all of Japan!”
The Dokodemo call center was open for business until five p.m. on weekends and holidays. Emi herself left the office half an hour later.
Thanks to Maou and Ashiya wasting the entirety of her lunch break in extravagant fashion, her job performance through the afternoon severely lacked in enthusiasm. She had grown pale enough that Rika, in the adjacent cube, grew concerned for her health.
“Hey, why don’t you take off a little early today?”
“Yeah…I think I should.”
“I don’t know if something happened, but…try to feel better, okay?”
“Thanks…”
Emi smiled limply.
As Rika saw her off, Emi plunged into the hustle and bustle of Shinjuku, bobbing against the constant waves of people as she walked on.
What great crime had she committed, which she could only repay by serving as the personal reference for her sworn enemies? She had been floating helplessly amid the punishing currents of modern society, and the next thing she knew, there were now multiple official, signed government documents claiming she was a close relation to the Devil King.
It was the ultimate humiliation.
The Keio-line entrance Emi used was near the west exit of Shinjuku station. From the east exit, she preferred to use an underground corridor that kept her going forward without being cut off by traffic signals and excess crowds. Today, though, the steep stairway that led to the corridor seemed like nothing less than the descent into a pit of darkness.
“…I can’t stand it.”
That was why, as she descended the steps, she hoped to write off the figure she had noticed for just a moment, passing by her amid the shops and restaurants to one side, as a figment of her exhaustion. But she reconsidered, feeling that her pride as the Hero was now at stake. Drumming up all the courage that remained in her heart, she approached the figure from behind and pulled at his shoulder.
“What are you doing here, Ashiya?”
“Aghh!”
Seeing Ashiya in the city center like this, it was even clearer how much taller than average he was.
“E-E-Emili—”
“Emi. Emi Yusa. Don’t you think you should be more careful with calling people by their real names in front of everyone, Ashiya?”
“Ngh…hh…”
Ashiya groaned, a twisted look on his face.
“You’re acting weird right now. I can tell. I even thought you were stalking someone.”
“Gahh!”
Ashiya’s face grew even more contorted.
“Oh, bingo, huh? I’m impressed security hasn’t stopped to question you.”
Emi had noticed Ashiya because he was hiding behind a station support column, sticking his head out into the corridor like he was playing hide-and-seek with the rest of the world. Actually, forget that. Real hide-and-seek players would’ve been far less conspicuous than that.
“It…it’s nothing to do with you! Begone!”
Judging by that panicked response, she had caught him at a pretty bad time. Something in Emi’s mind kept her from dropping the subject.
“Oh, is that how you treat the woman who sprung you from custody, Ashiya?”
“Yooou! That was just a small favor! Don’t go bandying it about like some great, hallowed treasure!”
“You demons certainly are ungrateful, aren’t you? And besides, did you think a Hero would simply let you go unchecked after she discovered you?”
“I did not, but…please, just let it go for now!”
“I never let you go during your demon days. Why should I start now?”
Opting to ignore Ashiya for the moment, Emi scanned the area he was standing guard over.
“Ah! Wait! No!”
Pushing the flailing Ashiya back, Emi realized that the demon’s previous guard post was directly facing a small café. It was your typical chain café, like any of a million others, but over there, on one of the tables lining the front glass…
“Whoa…”
Emi gasped.
“Ahhhh! Forgive me, my liege…!”
Ashiya began to moan loudly behind her.
“Ow! Alci—Ashiya! What’s that all about?”
“I’ll never breathe a word! Figure it out yourself!”
“Figure it out? Figure it out how?!”
She had been greeted with a startling image.
It was Maou and that teen from MgRonald he called “Chi”—chatting with each other like best friends! No matter how one looked at it, they were a couple in the middle of a date. Maou had even transformed himself in the meantime, looking like he jumped right out of a “Modern Sassy Studs” feature in a fashion magazine. The before-and-after juxtaposition was more incredulous than weight-loss infomercials.
“You!”
“Wh-what?!”
The look of sheer spite on Emi’s face as she turned around made Ashiya instinctively take a step back.
“What are you two going to do to that girl, you bastard?!”
“Gah…!”
Ashiya stood motionless, stunned by the sudden, shocking accusation lodged by this woman—this Hero, no less.
“Here you are, you two demons—the Devil King parading this cute little high schooler around, and you watching in the shadow—you degenerates!”
“Degen…! E-Emi—no, Emi! Please, just listen to—”
“And I honestly thought you two were trying to live decent lives in Japan! Boy, was I wrong!”
“Y-you have it all wrong! I-I don’t know what you’re thinking of, but my liege has not a single perverse thought in his mind when he—”
“How could a Devil King not be perverse?!”
Emi’s logic was undeniably sound.
“Please, just listen to me!”
Driven halfway to tears, Ashiya tried his best to explain the story to the highly irritated Emi.
The girl was Chiho Sasaki, an employee at Maou’s workplace, and she was first to voice her desire to talk things over with him. Maou had agreed in hopes of gaining clues to restoring his magical force, and he would never, ever harm her in the process. Ashiya tried to seem as sincere as possible (by demon standards) as he told the tale.
Emi had no intention of taking Ashiya’s words at face value, but they were still enough to keep her from immediately rushing in to slay the Devil King where he sat.
“Do…do you see now?”
Gingerly, Ashiya asked for a response.
“I can see that my sworn enemy is looking absolutely ridiculous, yes.”
“Nnghh… I am sorry…”
“You should be. But why does he have to go on a date with her? Couldn’t they just call or text each other?”
“I thought so as well. But she wanted to meet him directly, so here we are. Judging by what I’ve seen, I think this girl Chiho has at least a passing interest in my master.”
“I can see that.”
“And that does not bother you at all?”
Ashiya, who had just made what (at the very least) his demon mind thought was an epoch-making revelation to Emi, was expecting far more of a reaction than that. Instead, Emi returned his glance, brows high and eyes full of doubt.
“What, are you disappointed I don’t care about him in particular?”
“N-no, I just… A simple human girl, having amorous feelings for the Devil King… I had considered it the pinnacle of folly, myself.”
“Me, I’m wondering what that girl sees in him. She could do a lot better.”
“How dare you insult His Demonic Highness!”
“I’m the Hero, remember? But, yeah, any girl can see that she’s into him. It’s hard to tell from this far, but that kind of dress is the ‘in’ style this summer. Her hair’s all done up, like she just went to the beauty salon, and those shoes are brand-new, too.”
“R-really? They are?”
Thirty minutes of tailing the couple, and Ashiya had been completely oblivious.
“Ah, most men probably wouldn’t even notice. She used her wardrobe to come up with a fresh, summery look, and she’s wearing a close-fitting outfit to emphasize her curves…”
Suddenly, Emi stopped. She strained at Chiho across the storefront glass, then muttered to herself.
“What is it, Yusa?”
“…Those are big.”
Without thinking, Emi brought a hand to her chest.
“What are?”
Ashiya’s quizzical voice made her snap out of it.
“Huh? N-no… Nothing! Being big doesn’t make you a better fighter!”
“Pardon?”
“Being smaller makes it cheaper to have your own custom breastplates made up. They don’t get in the way so much when you’re moving, either.”
“…What are you talking about?”
“Nothing! B-but, you know, the Devil King’s gotten a lot more, uh, presentable, too, hasn’t he? He’s actually got some decent clothes on, too. Not that UniClo junk!”
Emi forced the change of subject, in part to keep her own mind from dwelling upon certain hang-ups. Ashiya, meanwhile, looked on proudly. He was still having trouble deciphering Emi’s behavior, but hearing this sudden praise for his master provided an instant rush of self-satisfaction.
“I flipped through some magazines to come up with that outfit. It wouldn’t do for some human girl to think my master dressed like a slob, after all. I’ve been performing odd jobs here and there to save up for a time like this.”
Emi nearly lost hold of her bag as she pictured the concept.
“…So, what? What’re you expecting out of her?”
“How should I know? I was merely shadowing them to ensure no one suspicious approached.”
“You’re the most suspicious guy here right now, Ashiya. Can you hear what they’re saying with your demon hearing or anything?”
Alciel, despite his current deviant behavior, was still the Devil King’s right-hand man, his sole remaining Great Demon General. It was a natural question for Emi to ask, given what she knew of his true identity.
“Nonsense. We demons wield superpowers because of our magic! And now that my magic is gone, I could hardly pull superhearing out of my hat or whatnot.”
Emi was lost in thought, ignoring the majority of the oddly boastful explanation the Great Demon General had provided.
It would be bad, very bad, for her if the demons found a way to restore their magic. If they gained access to a massive store of power before she could recover her own holy force—it was difficult to picture Emi having a way to cope with that.
At the same time, even if she moved to dispatch Maou right now, she couldn’t tell if she would retain enough holy power to return to Ente Isla, to say nothing of dealing with the authorities afterward…
After all, unlike Ashiya, Emi could still detect magical force within Maou—enough to confirm his identity as Devil King. For all she knew, he could still be concealing the full extent of his remaining power.
In which case, there was only one option.
If the Devil King and his minion—the chief danger she faced right now—discovered a source of magic, she would have to destroy it before they could harness it. A stopgap measure, perhaps, but it beat sitting around and twiddling her thumbs.
“Ashiya?”
“Wh-what?”
“You know there’s no point standing here watching them. Follow me.”
“Follow you? Where?”
“Into that café, of course. If you aren’t sure you can trust that girl yet, then you have to get closer. Listen to her while you scope out the surroundings. Otherwise, how can you call that ‘shadowing’ them?”
“I-I wouldn’t dare! What would His Demonic Highness say if I performed such a bold—Ahh! Wait a minute!”
Her tenuous line of logic laid out, Emi grabbed the scruff of the reluctant Ashiya and dragged him straight into the café.
Half an hour before Emi spotted Ashiya, the great Devil King Satan met with Chiho Sasaki, new part-timer at his MgRonald location, in front of the Shinjuku Alita big-screen display.
“Oh! Hey, did you cut your hair, Chi?”
“Yes! I thought I’d take the plunge and go short for a while! Do you like it?”
It was a minute difference from before, one Maou could spot only because he spent hours by Chiho’s side during her training period, and it was difficult to tell how much of a “plunge” it honestly was. However, given that he normally saw her in either her school uniform or her MgRonald uniform, the untied, free-flowing hair and well-defined lines of her blouse seemed graciously fresh to him.
“Yeah. It suits you really well.”
“Aw, great!”
Chiho gleefully pumped her fist in the air at Maou’s honest response.
“I thought you were gonna show up in your school uniform, though. Didn’t you have some kind of after-school club or something?”
Maou had no particular motive behind the question, but it was enough to put Chiho straight off her I did it! gesture.
“Oh, I’d never show up in that! No way would I wear that lame outfit to the café with you, Maou! Besides, if you were walking around Shinjuku with a girl in a school uniform, people might start jumping to conclusions, you know?”
Chiho seemed oddly riled up as she defended her choice of clothing. He had seen Chiho in her school clothes before, whenever she came to work straight from class, but the uniform didn’t seem that bad on her. The response was a tad surprising.
“Oh, but look at you! I thought you never shopped anywhere except for UniClo, but you’re going upscale today, huh?”
She wasn’t trying to be mean, presumably, but Maou still had to chuckle at the meaning beneath the words.
“Yeah, my roomie said there was no way he’d let me out on a date in UniClo stuff.”
“Not that there’s anything bad about UniClo, but if you want to go head-to-toe with it, you gotta be careful how you coordinate it, or else it’ll turn out all weird. But, wow, you saw this as a date, huh? That’s awesome!”
What’s awesome? What’s so bad about UniClo? Is this really a date? Maou nodded vaguely, a thousand questions popping into his mind.
“You gotta get home before dinner, though, right?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
Chiho nodded sullenly. That much was unavoidable; she had family waiting. Maou knew by now that the sort of teenage girls who partied in Shibuya or Harajuku until the wee hours were only a tiny handful of the entire population.
“So what do you wanna do? We can’t just stand out here on the street. I don’t go out to eat much, so I can’t really think of any place to sit down and relax except Ronald’s.”
Chiho, apparently anticipating this, thought in silence for a moment.
“Why don’t we go to the Barluxe café? It’s cheap, and it’s usually pretty laid back.”
Maou knew about Barluxe. The name, at least.
“Oh, and don’t worry about paying! I can cover all of that, if you don’t mind listening to me.”
She must have said that out of concern for Maou, who emitted a palpable “working poor” aura at all hours of the day. But even Maou boasted the pride of a young adult male—to say nothing of the pride of a Devil King.
“Nah, nah. I’m the guy here. I can cover that much for the two of us.”
Ashiya’s prediction was spot-on. It figured.
“Ready to go?”
The nearest Barluxe was a short ways down Yasukuni street, at the near end of a food court within an underground commuter-rail corridor.
“Oh…uh, Maou?”
“Hmm?”
Chiho stopped Maou, just as he began to walk off.
“Um…”
“What? What is it?”
“Your, uh, hand?”
“Hand…?”
Chiho turned her eyes downward a bit, teeth clenched, her face a little red for some strange reason. Maou thought she was going to cry out for a moment, but what came out instead was even more surprising.
“Do you mind if we…uh, hold hands?”
She was a grinning ball of energy earlier, but all of a sudden her voice was as soft as a buzzing mosquito. Maou looked on, confused.
“Sure, whatever.”
He casually picked up Chiho’s right hand. Chiho, surprised, tensed her body for a moment.
“What?”
“Oh, uh…no! Awesome! Uh, it’s nothing! Thank you very—”
“Sure, sure. It’s a crowded street anyway. Wouldn’t want to get separated from you.”
“Ngh…!”
Chiho’s whirling carousel of mood changes made it difficult for Maou to figure out what she wanted. She seemed to flip between each one like a deck of cards, from surprise to happiness to blankness to some weird sense of capitulation.
“…You’re right, aren’t you? I kinda see that now.”
Maou took another close look at Chiho’s face. Chiho, eyes wide open, tried to maintain a certain distance from him in response. She was less than successful, given how they were holding hands, and thus simply twisted her body a little instead.
“You’re acting kinda weird today, Chi.”
“Oh? Oh. Well, I guess it’s probably because of all this stuff that’s been happening to me!” Averting her eyes in an odd fashion, Chiho started to walk, dragging Maou’s hand behind.
“Yeah… Guess so.”
Maou had little choice but to accept the excuse, but…
“Mmm…” He peered at Chiho, as she let out what sounded like a very torn sort of sigh.
At first glance, she appeared not to be manifesting any sort of magical phenomena. There were no unusual deviations from the typical human body, and even as they made contact with each other, she neither showed any noticeable changes nor demonstrated any reaction to the remnant magical power she might have absorbed from Maou.
The only notable deviation from the norm was that Chiho’s palm seemed warmer than his, her pulse oddly fast.
Which meant that Maou had to consider the idea of someone externally interfering with Chiho’s psyche. Perhaps the enemy that attacked Emi and him, or perhaps some unrelated magical force, was acting upon her at the moment.
And all of that assumed Chiho was telling the truth…
Regardless, there was nothing unusual about her right now. It was time to hear the full story.
The eastern exit from Shinjuku station was home to a large underground shopping mall built around the JR Shinjuku entrance. They walked down a nearby stairwell to find the food court largely uncrowded, it being the lull between early afternoon and evening.
Barluxe, luckily, was fairly empty as well. He chose a table next to the front window, figuring it’d be easier for Ashiya to see him there, but then realized it could be difficult for anyone to observe them undetected from outside a food-court café.
Taking a glance back, he spotted Ashiya hiding behind a pillar a distance away.
“So anyway, Chi, how about we start with you going over the whole story again for me?”
“Okay.”
Maou kicked things off, a regular-sized blended coffee in his hand, a seasonal frozen latte in hers.
“So I told you how my ears have started ringing a lot more since I started working at MgRonald, right? At first, I thought it was stress—like, trying new things I wasn’t comfortable with, and stuff. But you and Ms. Kisaki and everyone were so nice to me and we never have to deal with any weirdo customers or anything…and I don’t have any problems at school, either, so I thought maybe I just wasn’t feeling well.”
Maou nodded politely as she continued, taking equal care to keep a perceptive eye on both their surroundings and Chiho herself.
“So then there was that really big earthquake I told you about, right? The one that hit our house, and nobody else’s. I thought, wow, that was kind of weird, but last night, I was alone in my room, and all of a sudden I heard this voice talking into my ear.”
“Yeah, about that voice. What did it sound like? Different from you and me talking right now?”
Chiho placed an index finger on her chin, thinking for a moment.
“Mmm… Well, do you ever watch movies or anime or anything, Maou?”
“…Sometimes.”
Almost never, actually, considering the lack of a TV in his apartment. He glossed over that to keep the conversation going.
“Well, you know how they depict telepathy and stuff, right? Like, a really echo-y voice? It wasn’t like that at all.”
“No?”
Chiho’s pace accelerated, as if she just remembered something.
“It was, like, this very dignified male voice, and it sounded really frantic. I could hear it okay, but it kind of sounded like a radio that wasn’t tuned quite right.”
“Really?!”
“Y-yeah…”
Chiho nodded, a tad surprised at Maou’s sudden burst of life.
“And everything he said was, like, really basic. Things like ‘Uh, can you hear me?’ and so on.”
Hearing a strange man’s voice in your ear would be enough in itself to make anyone panic, but apparently Chiho sat quietly and listened.
“I ended up talking out loud to reply to him, but he just kept on saying ‘Can you hear me’ and stuff, so I guess he couldn’t hear anything from my end. So I sat around waiting for him to say something, and then I heard, like, ‘Ah, whatever. This is only comin’ out to a limited number of people, so I’m just gonna say it. Your world’s got all kinds of weird natural events happening right now. There’s gonna be a really big one before too long, so watch out. And we’ll be over there, too, once the time is right, so…’”
With that, Chiho fell silent and took a sip from her frozen latte.
“…That’s it?”
“That’s it. And I don’t know what that means at all, so I figured it was, like, a wrong number or something. It definitely wasn’t for me. So I tried saying and thinking, like, That’s not for me, you got the wrong girl, but then the tuning got worse and the voice went away. My ears haven’t rung at all since.”
“So you thought the ‘natural events’ he mentioned must have been the earthquakes you’ve been feeling.”
“It took a little bit to figure that out, but yeah. I was so surprised to hear that voice, I couldn’t think about anything for a while.”
Chiho laughed a little to herself and sipped at her latte, which was starting to melt a bit as she lost herself in telling the tale.
Maou, meanwhile, pondered over this, not overly concerned about his increasingly lukewarm coffee.
The voice Chiho heard was probably a type of mental maneuver known as an “idea link.” It involved synchronizing the internal psyches of two people from different worlds and with differing languages, converting (for example) the speaker’s Japanese into a concept the receiver could natively understand.
In a world advanced enough to develop Gates that opened to other planets, sonar technology had been well-established for ages. Launching this “sonar” triggered invisible explosions of magic, the shock waves from which could be analyzed to determine the state of things in a Gate’s destination. These magical explosions could take on different forms wherever they took place.
It was entirely likely that one of these sonar blasts was directed at Earth—at Japan, to be exact—and manifested as the “natural event” of an earthquake.
A cadre of assassins launched it, no doubt, to destroy the Devil King. The possibility of the sonar blast just happening to fall on Chiho’s home was dizzyingly low, but it wasn’t zero. That would explain why the quake was felt only in that immediate space and nowhere else.
They could have aimed that sonar blast at a fairly specific position as well, assuming they followed the tracks in Gate-space made by the Devil King, Alciel, and the Hero pursuing them.
And come to think of it, wasn’t there a little bit of shaking the night he and Emi were attacked? Maybe the attacker was hiding nearby, firing off a short-range sonar to gauge the Devil King’s potential magical response.
Something was going to happen, and much sooner than he expected.
Maou and Ashiya’s external appearance had assimilated fully to the Japanese norm, but in essence, they were still full-fledged demons. Demons who, just the previous night, had allowed an unseen foe to slink right up to them.
As Chiho put it, “There’s gonna be a really big one before too long”—which likely meant someone with a similar level of magical energy was about to take action.
The enemy was seated right next to him, waiting for the just right opportunity.
“Ahh… I’m really glad I could get this off my chest, Maou.”
“Huh?”
He snapped back to reality at the sound of Chiho’s voice.
“Thanks a lot. I knew you’d believe in me.”
“Oh, no, no, it was nothing…”
“No, it is! Most people wouldn’t give the time of day to a story like that. To be honest, I was a little scared to text you. I thought you’d just laugh at me.”
“You think so? Have you told your parents or your friends?”
“Oh, no way I could do that. I’m in my late teens. If I came out with a story like this, they wouldn’t just laugh—they’d be seriously worried about me. Like, why can’t this girl tell the difference between fantasy and reality?”
“Huh… Yeah, I guess so.”
Maou tried his best to reassure the downtrodden Chiho.
“Well, you know, if you ever need anyone to talk to, I can grnghghff!!”
“Uh, are you okay? What happened?!”
Chiho, concerned at Maou’s sudden and intense choking, offered him a glass of water. Gulping it down, his eyes tried to get a handle on his situation, but the image in the corner of his eye made it impossible to think rationally.
Why? Why are Emi and Ashiya entering the café together?!
“Maou?”
“Ahem! Sorry, I’m fine. Guess something went down the wrong pipe. I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Huh?”
“Forget it. It’s perfectly normal for someone to discuss matters with their coworker, and there’s nothing at all dark or sinister about it, so I am definitely not here for any malevolent reason.”
“Um, are you all right, Maou?”
“Mm? Oh, sorry, Chi. Don’t worry about it. Just had kind of a seizure there.”
“A…seizure?”
“Fossa Magna.”
“Maou?!”
“No, no, I’m sorry. I’m all right, so…”
His befuddled, unresponsive mind had taken seven trips around the globe at light speed in the course of a second. Realizing he had stopped himself on the other side of the world, he took one more semicircle around to reach the café.
“Uh…anyway! Putting everything you said together, I don’t think that voice or the ringing in your ears is any kind of direct problem for you. What really matters is whether anything really bad is going to happen, that ‘really big one’ you mentioned. Will it, or won’t it? That’s the key here!”
Chiho was wonder-struck at Maou’s extremely bizarre behavior over the past two minutes, but nodded nonetheless. He appeared to be treating her seriously, at least.
“Luckily, it doesn’t sound like that man had any kind of malicious intent when he reached out to you. If anything does come up, just let people around you know. That could make a big difference.”
“I…guess so, yeah.”
“That’s about all I can say for now. Sorry it’s not really any kind of real solution.”
Maou took another gulp of water, attempting to prop himself back on track.
Chiho, hands still clasped around her glass of now-completely-melted latte, thought over something for a moment before bringing her head back upward.
“Thank you very much, Maou. This really feels like a weight’s been lifted from my shoulders.”
“Oh? Well, great.”
Take that, Emi! Maybe it’s a far cry from a Devil King’s normal behavior, but I’ve done nothing weird with her at all! No matter how you look at it, I’m just another nice guy, helping out the new girl at work!
“By the way…what made you think to talk to me about this?” Internally, Maou felt he had every right to be proud, but some nagging doubt in his mind made him ask Chiho the question. He had been Chiho’s training supervisor at work, yes, but it was less than two months since their first encounter. He knew full well that “veteran burger flipper” was not a particularly coveted position in modern Japanese society.
“Um…”
Chiho’s eyes darted around the café. The question seemed to embarrass her.
“You know…I don’t know. I guess I just thought you’d believe me, Maou. You’ve always been real nice to me, and…I dunno, you’re kind of different from other people.”
Maou chewed this over. “Nice” was never a compliment a demon appreciated. He did accept, however, that he, as a Devil King, was a marked deviation from the norm.
“Yeah, I guess I’m a little weird, huh?”
“Oh, no! I mean, I didn’t mean that in a bad way or anything.”
Chiho seemed oddly frantic as she tried to explain herself. Maou had to smile at her predictability.
“I know, I know. Hey, try not to gesture all frantic like that. You’re gonna spill your drink.”
“Aw, you’re really mean sometimes, Maou!”
Chiho let out a cough, her expression somewhere between concern and anger.
“But, I don’t mind if you’re weird. It was fun getting to have some coffee and talk with you like this.”
“Mm?”
The words emerged from Chiho’s light smile. It was hard to say if she directed them to Maou or herself, but either way, there was some serious portent behind them. Even Maou could see that.
“So…uh, Maou?”
The voice Chiho drummed up was shaky and weak. She was looking right at Maou, eyes full of concern, cheeks blushing a healthy shade of red.
“I…I think I…”
“Stop right there!”
Chiho’s furtive opening was blocked by a loud voice from the side.
Maou froze. Chiho, unsure what was happening, turned and looked up quizzically at the defiant woman glaring down at them.
“Nothing good’s gonna happen if you hang out with this guy.”
“E-Emi! What’re—”
“I just want to give you some advice. This guy’s going to be away from Japan before too long. You better just keep things where they are now, or else it’s gonna hurt you later on.”
Surprised at Emi’s sudden intrusion, Maou found his brain shutting down on him once again. Ashiya, who was sitting with her, was half crouched behind, having failed to stop her in time.
Chiho, for her part, responded rapidly.
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