THE DEVIL AND THE HERO GET ALL HUNG UP ON THEIR RELATIVE POSITIONS
Early the next morning, Ashiya was roused out of his apartment and into the outside hallway by the sound of an engine. There was a midsize truck parked out front. Its container, bearing the logo of a moving company that advertised on TV all the time, was open, a pair of movers already removing boxes from it.
Suzuno and Nord were there, in the front yard, discussing matters with the moving staff, but Ashiya’s focus lay elsewhere—upon the person standing next to them. He was watching Miki Shiba, owner of Villa Rosa Sasazuka and a woman whose body was akin to a giant, walking, metal-plated saké barrel.
“All right, Nord, this is the new key to Room 101. If you have any issues, feel free to contact Mr. Maou or Mr. Ashiya upstairs, or myself next door if they are indisposed.”
“I do not remember taking on administrative duties, madam!!” Ashiya somehow found the courage to shout from above.
The three of them looked back up. Feeling Shiba’s eyes upon him sent a chill up his spine, making him weak at the knees, like it always did. But they needed to settle things today, no matter what.
“Ah, hello there, Mr. Ashiya! Nord will be officially moving into Room 101 today, so I was just offering him the lay of the land.”
“That’s fine, madam, but I am neither the manager nor maintenance man for this building! If some kind of trouble occurs, I do not want it waiting on my doorstep!”
Ashiya could already feel his confidence wavering. But he felt his point was valid. Shiba had given that same line to Suzuno when she moved in, too. And while Shiba had been quite helpful with her arrangements back when Maou and Ashiya were new to Earth, Ashiya felt no obligation to assume further duties in return.
“Oh, no need to be such a fuddy-duddy,” Shiba chirped. “In fact, I believe the management company told me that whenever something happened here, Mr. Maou always took the initiative to take feedback from the tenants and go through all the proper procedures?”
“Feedback?” Ashiya countered as he walked downstairs. “Ma’am, it was just us and Crestia Bell!”
“Well, perfect, then, isn’t it? Always good to know your neighbors so intimately. And all of you share common roots in your homeland of Ente Isla, no less, am I right?”
“I would not describe our roots as ‘common,’ no! We are demons! Our upbringing and our lives are completely different!”
“Mm-hmm. And now you find yourselves all living under a common roof. Don’t you think you’re being rather unkind?”
Parrying Ashiya’s complaints like an expert fencer, Shiba capped off her impromptu lecture with a wink. That was all it took for Ashiya’s pulse to quicken. He felt faint.
“Gnnhh!”
“Um, is he all right?” a surprised Nord asked.
“They’re always like this in front of the landlord,” Suzuno explained as Ashiya clutched at his chest, breaking into a cold sweat. After taking a few deep breaths, he brought a hand to his brow and shook his head.
“My. Such inner strength!”
“Wh-what are you…talking about…? Well, enough about that for now. But, madam, would you please tell me already?”
“Tell you what?” Shiba replied, smiling as elegantly as ever. Ashiya lunged at the chance.
“Tell me where Urushihara’s been admitted to!”
Not even this half-shouted order could dispel Shiba’s gentle ease. “I told you,” she said, “he is at the hospital owned by a friend of mine. If you are concerned about the cost, you really shouldn’t be. Amane and I were the cause of this—”
“That is not what I am worried about!” Ashiya interrupted. “His computer is gone from our apartment!”
“His computer?” Shiba asked. “I apologize, were you the victim of a burglary recently?”
“?”
“Ahh,” Suzuno said, picking up on the gambit even as it confused Nord.
“I only wish it were a burglar!!” Ashiya clenched his fists tightly. “Urushihara didn’t take the computer with him to this hospital, did he?!”
Hearing the half-shouted question, Shiba elegantly brought a hand to her not-so elegant chin (or some layer of fat around it), as if recalling something. “Ah, yes,” she began, “he was muttering something in his delirium about ‘just the computer, just the computer,’ so I do believe Amane took it with her, yes.”
“H-how can this be?!!”
Ashiya looked and sounded like this meant the apocalypse was nigh. His knees shook, almost ready to collapse.
“Wait a moment, Alciel,” Suzuno said, finally taking pity on him. “Most hospitals in Japan forbid you from using cell phones and electronic equipment, right? I highly doubt Lucifer is buying things off the Net with your card right now.”
“N-no…? No. Indeed, you are correct, Bell. Perhaps I was overthinking this—”
“Mr. Urushihara was admitted into a special ward, so he can use all the computers and cell phones he wants. He can even keep watching TV after lights-out time.”
“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaattttt?!!”
“Whoa!”
The final condemnation from Shiba’s lips made Suzuno’s attempts at assuaging the demon useless. The ensuing wail of despair made Nord take a step back.
“Our card! I must cancel His Demonic Highness’s credit card immediately! Bell! Lend me your phone! Our future is riding upon this! After all the danger we have overcome, the Devil King’s Army is in mortal peril of collapse before it has even been restored!”
“Calm down, Alciel! Whether you live with him or not, you can’t cancel the Devil King’s credit card if he’s not around!”
“Oh, the inhumanity! My liege has only just begun his shift, too… Noooooooooooooooo…”
“Well, regardless, Nord, I am sure they will be enormously helpful neighbors to you!”
“Y-yes,” Nord said, not exactly taking Shiba’s reassurances at face value.
“W-wait… If I can get the paperwork together and bring it to his workplace… There’s not a second to spare… I have to keep Urushihara’s meddling hands away from my liege’s bank account…”
Ashiya staggered his way back upstairs, like a translucent ghost, and returned to Room 201. He was out again quickly, almost breaking through the door as he tore downstairs and flew down the street. “My liiiiiiiiiiiiege!!” he shouted as he went off, awing both Nord and the moving crew.
“Mr. Ashiya has certainly been through a lot, hasn’t he?” the utterly disinterested Shiba observed. To Suzuno, who had an insider’s view of life inside this ersatz Devil’s Castle, she almost couldn’t blame Ashiya for that reaction.
“So… Ms. Shiba?” she asked the hulking landlord once the screams faded from earshot.
“Yes?”
“The location where we’ll be discussing matters…”
“Mmm?”
“Is there a reason why it’s the hospital Lucifer was admitted to?”
The sharply pointed question did nothing to faze Shiba, as much as Suzuno wanted it to.
Ever since they all returned from Ente Isla, Shiba had offered them chances to discuss assorted matters with both herself and Amane. She set up specific times and places for these talks, but there were more than a few strange things about them. One, she wanted to hold the next one at Urushihara’s hospital—whose location she was still keeping a secret. Two, whenever these discussions came up in conversation, Chiho seemed to clam up, a dark cloud descending upon her countenance. Suzuno thought she had just imagined it at first, but upon closer observation, she realized she was right—Chiho was concerned over something, although she never said what. It seemed likely Shiba and Amane told her about a few choice matters while everyone else was on Ente Isla.
“Oh,” Shiba replied, “no great reason, no. I just thought it would reduce the burden on Mr. Urushihara, is all.”
“If anything, some more burden to his life would do wonders, I think…”
Suzuno shrugged. It would take more than this attack for Shiba to leak out anything else to her.
“Hey!” a voice rang out from across the front road. “Pop! Suzuno! Hmm? That was Ashiya? Why he so in the hurry?”
“Mm…”
“Ah, Acieth.”
They turned to find Acieth heading their way—Alas Ramus’s “little” sister, a fellow Yesod-fragment personification, and the core of a second Better Half.
“I thought maybe the boxes are here, so I come to see.”
“Thanks.” Nord nodded, bowing his head to Shiba. “You’ve been helpful to her, too, Ms. Shiba.”
“Oh, not a problem at all! We happened to have the free space, and Acieth has been such a wonderful conversational partner to me.”
With everyone safely in Japan and Emi reunited with Nord, Acieth was, in a way, without anything to do. She had been living as Nord’s daughter under the name Tsubasa, but with Nord’s real daughter now in the picture, she had to step away from the limelight a little bit. Simply dismissing her would be heartless, but given her incredibly flighty personality, the idea of letting her live alone generated all kinds of concern.
The obvious suggestion was to have her live with Maou, who was still fused with her, but that presented its own glaring problems. Unlike Alas Ramus, Acieth projected herself as a grown woman—having her live in the same apartment with a bunch of men would mean assorted inconveniences for everyone involved. Assuming Urushihara would be back sooner or later, the sheer headcount made Acieth’s moving in an unrealistic idea. Suzuno had volunteered to serve as her guardian, but given that she was already Nord’s personal bodyguard, they couldn’t place too much burden solely upon her shoulders. The debate got a little chaotic, with Maou suggesting she go live with Emi (conveniently forgetting that Acieth couldn’t go more than a given distance away from him).
Surprisingly, it was Shiba who provided the breakthrough—by opening her own house up to Acieth. Almost forcing her to come in, more like. “It would only be temporary,” she explained, “and besides, I think I’d like to live with her for a while.”
That was a week ago, and even by the second day, Acieth was so used to this living situation that she didn’t hesitate to call Shiba “Mikitty.” It seemed to be going well, in other words.
“Bell packed up your belongings well enough,” Nord told her as they filed into Room 101, “but check to make sure everything’s here, if you could.”
Despite nobody having any idea Nord and Acieth were in Japan, they had actually found a decent place for themselves. Another one-room apartment like what Villa Rosa sported, with pretty much nothing inside except for furniture, appliances, and clothing, so packing up wasn’t exactly an ordeal. Suzuno had done up all of Acieth’s belongings, since her fusion with Maou meant the apartment was now out of range.
But—
“Mm?” Suzuno mused, spotting a pained-looking Acieth exiting the apartment with a cardboard box. “What is it?”
“Um,” came the reply as Acieth turned upstairs. “Maou, today is the work for him, too, yes?”
“It should be, yes. Are you missing something?”
Acieth took another look through the box—not a particularly large one—and joined hands with Suzuno, giving her an apologetic look. “Yeah, um, sorry. Maybe, I should have told you, Suzuno. Pop, I’m sorry, but can Suzuno pick up something else?”
“Oh, no, I should apologize for overlooking it. What kind of thing?”
“Well, I think Acieth should go herself, shouldn’t she?” Shiba gently suggested. “It wouldn’t do to have another mistake, after all.”
“Well, yes, Ms. Shiba, but she…”
She can’t venture too far away from Maou, is what Suzuno meant to say. She was stopped with a light shake of Shiba’s head.
“It shouldn’t be a problem. Alas Ramus is still a baby, so I brought her back to where she was, but Acieth shouldn’t have any latent force attached to her right now.”
“Latent force?” This was a new phrase for Suzuno. “How do you mean?”
“And even if she did, I could always… Oh?”
Shiba looked up, realizing something. Acieth and Suzuno followed her eyes, only to find Emi (carrying Alas Ramus) and a petite woman wearing a beret looking at them.
“Emilia…and Lady Emeralda?!”
Suzuno ran up to the surprise guest, all smiles.
“Hellooo. Sorry it’s been so looong.” Emeralda removed her beret and nodded her greeting to everyone.
“What a shock. When did you come to Japan?”
“Yesterdaaay. Emi has been kiiind enough to let me take up space in her resssidence.”
“I see. But what brings you here so early in the day?”
“I had a little business I needed to take care of this evening,” Emi explained. “But this is lucky! I came early because I was hoping to see Ms. Shiba.”
She nodded at the landlord as they approached.
“Good morning, Ms. Shiba,” Emeralda began. “I have a request for you.”
“Oh, no need to be so formal,” Shiba said as she patted down her dress, keeping it from sparkling too much in the sun. “Another visitor from Ente Isla, then? I have a feeling this is not our first meeting, either.”
Emeralda bowed deeply at Shiba, beret held to her chest. “My name is Emeralda Etuva. I am indeed from Ente Isla, as you guessed, and I caught sight of you during the furor over on my world, albeit only from afar.”
She brought her head back up, eyes sharpened. Her usual easy-breezy atmosphere was a thing of the past as she returned Shiba’s withering gaze.
“You appear to be a very strong person indeed,” Shiba replied, her voice lowering—perhaps sensing something from her. “As strong as Ms. Kamazuki…or stronger, perhaps. So, what sort of request is this?”
“I came here because I wanted to request an invitation to the ‘discussion’ to be held three days from now.”
“Ummhh…”
Alas Ramus squirmed in Emi’s arms a bit. Emeralda looked down at her. “I had heard from Emilia,” she continued. “You offered to discuss the ‘composition of the world’ with her—the Sephirah, and Sephirot, and other things only described in legend within our scripture. I was hoping I could be part of that discussion.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, what for?”
There was a shade of caution to Shiba’s voice. There was not a hint of wavering to Emeralda’s.
“So we can bear it together.”
She looked at Alas Ramus and Emi, then Suzuno, before turning back toward Shiba.
“I want to know the same things that Emilia and Bell know, so I can shoulder the weight of our world’s upcoming destiny from the start with them.” She gave another look toward Alas Ramus. “Once upon a time, Ente Isla took a weight the whole world should have borne and placed it upon Emilia’s shoulders alone. Then, without removing it, they tried to simply throw her away. I cannot allow that to happen again. She is journeying once more to discover the truth behind the world, and I am here today because I want to support her—for real, this time. Perhaps I may not look it, but I am among the highest ranks of society in Ente Isla. If the truth Emilia learns is something the entire world must bear, I am in a position to make that known to the people. A position where I can have our populace think about the consequences. So…”
It was an impassioned argument, one few on the scene knew Emeralda was capable of. Shiba nodded on regular occasions as she took it in.
“I understand how you feel,” she said, smiling and letting her guard down with a nod. “I suppose Ms. Yusa and Ms. Kamazuki are also from your world. You being with us as well would pose no issue at all. I can tell you are not the type of person to use our discussion for nefarious means. You are free to join Ms. Yusa if your time allows it.”
“…My thanks to you,” Emeralda replied with another deep bow.
“Uh, so happily ever after?” Acieth interrupted, knowing the conversation was over but having no idea what it meant. The timing made everyone laugh.
“Quite a crowd here!”
“Oh, good morning, Father.”
“Morning, Emilia. Who’s that?” Nord asked.
“Oh, I haven’t introduced you yet?”
“Well, he was unconscious last time, sooo…”
The tension now a thing of the past and her accent back to normal, Emeralda turned to Nord and gave another bow.
Emi took another look around Room 101 of Villa Rosa.
It was naturally similar in design to Room 201 above, but it was funny how the view out the window could change the entire feel of an apartment. There wasn’t much to move, so most of the boxes had already been emptied, the place already looking like it had been lived in for several days.
“I’m sorry to put you through all this for my father’s sake,” Emi said as she bowed apologetically to Suzuno. “I should really be doing some of this myself.”
Suzuno shook her head in reply. “I have a great deal of free time on my hands. Do not worry about it.”
“A planetarium?”
Emi and Suzuno looked up at Nord’s exclamation.
“Oh, yes, I did buy something like that, didn’t I? Did we put it in a box somewhere?”
“Mm, it was treasure to me, so I hid in place where it is hard to find, yes? I think that is reason why Pop and Suzuno did not see it.”
“Can you really hide a planetarium?” Emi said, miming one with her hands. “I mean, they’re pretty big, aren’t they?”
“What is this planetarrrrium?” Emeralda asked, curious.
“It’s this thing that lets you see the stars. Well, not exactly, but… Mmm, how should I explain it?”
“See the starrrs? So like a telescooope?”
“No, not directly looking at the stars, but…like…how to put it…?”
“Perhaps the term ‘celestial theater’ would be more familiar for you?” Suzuno offered. “I am fairly sure someone in your position would have used one before.”
“Ohhhh, I seeee. A tool that lets you plot the paths of the starrrs?”
“That sounds like an even more complex way of putting it,” Emi commented.
Suzuno ignored her. “The general purpose of it is the same, but in Japan, a ‘planetarium’ generally refers to a place where virtual stars are optically projected against the walls or roof of a room, allowing people to enjoy viewing them.”
“You make it sound so technical…”
“Picture a domed chamber with a black sphere in the center which houses a strong source of light. If you extinguish all light in the chamber and cut a small hole into the sphere, a point of light will project itself against the ceiling of the dome, looking very similar to a star.”
“Ooh, I see. Verrry interesting! But is something like that small enough to be eeeasily missed? It sounds like a very larrrge facility.”
“No! It super-thin!”
“Super-thin?”
“Perhaps,” Suzuno suggested, “she means the type you assemble yourself?”
Nord nodded, finally recalling the exact object. “Yes, she made the planetarium out of thick sheets of paper that she had to fold and assemble in a certain order. I think it was called ‘paper’…um…”
“Papercraft?”
“Yes, that. It was included as a bonus with some magazine and Acieth kept bugging me for it, so I wound up purchasing several issues in a row. The first issue came with a pedestal about this size…” He traced a square in the air, around four inches to a side. “And later issues came with new sheets of papercraft and a guide to viewing the stars for this or that season of the year.”
“Oh, yeah,” Emi said, “you see ads for that on TV every now and then. Or, like, for a series of magazines that come with individual sets of parts, and if you put them all together, you can build a model sports car or whatever.”
Acieth eagerly nodded. “But,” she added, “there are lots and lots of sheets, so if you leave unassembled, the dust covers all of it, and very dirty. So I take apart the ones I like, I put them in folder, and I hide them under the baseboard in closet. So I open the box, I see only pedestal, and I think ‘Oh no, I forget!’”
“Under the baseboard, eh?” Nord brought a hand to his forehead. “Yeah, I didn’t check it that carefully. That piece belongs to the apartment anyway.”
“I put it under newspaper in there, too. For extra safe!”
Whether it was a proper place to keep those paper sheets safe or not, it indicated that Acieth treated them as rather precious.
“So Acieth can’t travel a certain distance away from him?” Nord said, slowly standing up. “Ah, well. I suppose I’ll go, then. I’m sorry, Bell, but would you mind joining me?”
“These traaains go so faaast! Woooo!”
“Eme, try not to scream and carry on in the train, too, all right?”
“I’m nooot! Wooo!”
Emeralda smiled a little at the caution, even as she kept kneeling on her train seat, face plastered against the window as she stared at the scenery rolling by.
“Can you blame her?” Suzuno wistfully said. “When I first traveled by train, I was just as surprised by the speed, among other things.”
“Sorry to make you all do this for Acieth’s sake,” Nord said from his seat next to Suzuno.
To reach Nord and Acieth’s old residence, they had to travel around twenty minutes from Sasazuka, get off at Chofu Station, then take a bus another twenty minutes to a stop near Tokyo’s main astronomical observatory. It took an hour or so, if they were lucky with the bus transfer, and ever since returning from Ente Isla, Nord had had Suzuno with him for each trip. The chances of any real danger were slim, but they could never be too careful.
With Emeralda paying a rare visit to Japan and Emi expressing a desire to retrace her father’s steps around the greater Tokyo area one more time, they had decided to fetch Acieth’s forgotten belongings as a rather large group.
“Ooh,” Emeralda said, still glued to the window, “but why did you decide to liiive where we are going, Norrrd? You had come to Japan a lot earrrlier than Emilia did, riiight?”
“Oh, you haven’t heard about that yet, Emeralda?” Suzuno said, turning toward her.
“No. I was hoping for the chaaance to ask Emilia yesterdaaay…but do you think you could tell meee?”
“You could’ve asked anytime. I don’t mind. It just makes me think, though—maybe my father and I walked right past each other sometime, in Tokyo, and we never even noticed.”
Emi looked at Nord. He winced, as if an old war injury was acting up again.
“Indeed,” he said, “and it makes me wonder why Satan and all these top-level demons decided to set up in Sasazuka, too. But it also has a little bit to do with the reason why Emilia isn’t letting me help her repay her debt to the Devil King.”
Emi scowled at the observation as Nord focused his eyes a little and began to tell the tale.
—I actually first came to Japan not terribly long ago. No more than several months apart from when Emilia and the Devil King arrived, I think.
Since giving up young Emilia to that squadron of Church bishops, I attempted to fight alongside our royal forces and the other villagers to keep our home safe from Lucifer’s army. My wife had already left me a Yesod fragment by that time, and while I wasn’t perfect at it, I learned how to manifest it into a sword. I was a simple farmer, without any formal magic training, so I was hardly able to extract much force from it. But it still gave me the resolve I needed to risk life and limb to keep my village, my fields, away from harm. I had promised Emilia and my wife that we would all live together again.
But as you now know, such a hastily prepared holy sword was no match for any demon in the Devil King’s Army. I was routed from the village, along with many of my fellow villagers. And I hate to admit it, but I doubt there were even ten demons among the force Lucifer sent to conquer us.
I spent the next two years wandering the land as a war refugee. I imagine you know this, Emeralda, but communications across most of the continent had all but crumbled. My understanding was that there was little point sending a message to Saint Aile or the Church, since it was guaranteed never to reach them.
After being routed from our village, I often lacked even the money for some paper and a pen. I wasn’t even able to inform Emilia, whom I assumed was in Sankt Ignoreido, that I was safe. Whenever I did send a letter, once every few months, it never amounted to anything—either it was lost on the way, or the Church was deliberately hiding them from her. It makes sense. If she ever did receive one, she would have known I was alive long ago.
So time passed, and soon Lucifer’s forces advanced into the imperial capital of Saint Aile. I lived for two years under his army’s rule—in other words, for as long as that city was under demon subjugation, I was living in this or that odd corner, eking out a meager existence. Things only changed after Lucifer fell and Saint Aile was freed once more, but even then, it took a long while for Emilia’s name to be known among the refugees and common people. Around the time Castle Ereniem was recaptured, the word on the street was that a Church archbishop and one of his elite knights had defeated Lucifer—the name Emilia didn’t begin to spread around until several months later, when the Northern Island was freed.
The news shook me to the heart, the fact that Emilia had grown to be a splendid warrior—the kind of evil-dispelling force my wife had told me she would become. But as just another war refugee, I had no way to reach Emilia as she stormed across the continents, decimating the Devil King’s Army. I tried contacting her through the Church several times, but you must keep in mind, she was the hope of an entire people. The hopes and aspirations placed upon the Hero and her team must have been dozens, hundreds of times what, say, the average Japanese person would feel for a sports star or pop diva.
Millions of people, worldwide, were targeting their prayers toward that one small group of warriors. No doubt there were many who pretended to be Emilia’s friends or relatives. They treated me as just another one of those swindlers. Bringing up our home village of Sloane had no effect. But even if they recognized me as her true father, at the rate Emilia was bulldozing her way across the land, getting a letter to her would be a fool’s errand.
So as I whiled away the time in Saint Aile, word came that Malacoda of the Southern Island had been defeated. Things really began to move around that time, I would say. The local governments removed a lot of the restrictions on travel and commerce that were in place at the time. You started to see major efforts across the continent to rebuild the world economy and strike back against the Devil King’s Army. You started to see compensation be paid for war refugees.
And it all made me think: If I can’t pursue Emilia, why not just wait at a location I was sure Emilia would be soon?
Luckily, after receiving my compensation, I obtained permission to return to Sloane, and my homestead. The village was in shambles, but the foundations of all the homes were still largely intact, and there was enough remaining that I thought we had a shot at reviving the village once we worked the fields a little.
Did anyone else join me? Sadly, no. I was the only one. There honestly weren’t many survivors, and after all the time we spent as refugees, most of us had already built new lives elsewhere. Some refused to go home at all; some lost their lives under Lucifer’s rule. Many different stories. And even if others had the will to return home, most of them were forced to rebuild their lives in the nearby walled city of Cassius first.
Looking back, I suppose it was part of Archbishop Olba’s plan to bring as many people into Cassius as possible. But by that point, I was fairly well convinced that Emilia would have the Devil King on his knees before long. Once she did, I imagined, she would be bound to return to the village.
But the person who did arrive at Sloane after a few days was completely beyond my expectations. In a way, it was an even greater shock than if Emilia had returned. Instead of her…it was Laila, the woman who gave a young Emilia to me and simply disappeared one day, without a trace.
The four of them filed out of the train after it arrived at the platform in Chofu. Taking the long escalator to ground level, they found a large bus depot on the right.
“When I first came here,” Nord commented, “the main Chofu station building was still aboveground. It’s changed quite a bit in such a short time. Ah, it’ll be that one,” he added, taking the lead and lining up at a certain bus stop. The map on the pole, marked BU- 91, showed OBSERVATORY as one of the stops.
“This is the bus you want for reaching the observatory station, but on the way back, it’s sometimes faster to disboard at Chofu-Ginza, one stop ahead, and walk from there. The intersection on the other end can get jammed pretty easily.”
It was rather odd to have a visitor from another planet give a guided tour of the western Tokyo suburb of Chofu—ironic, in fact, given how nobody in the group was native to this particular world.
“When I first came to Japan, I lived in Shinjuku for a short while.”
“You were that close to us…?”
Suzuno had already heard this, but even now, it made her groan a little. Nord and Emi had been living a little over twenty minutes away from each other by train, totally oblivious to the other’s presence, as they lived solitary lives in Tokyo for nearly a year.
“Indeed. And after a while, Acieth sort of manifested herself. She was never a baby like Alas Ramus; she looked like she does now from the very beginning. She kept whining about how she wanted to live someplace where she could see the stars. So I asked the man who helped us get on our feet in Japan, and he suggested this town, with the observatory.”
As he put it, the man’s name was Sato, a family name that Nord himself borrowed and used as necessary. But that raised the question of what he did before this Sato gentleman showed up. Emi, along with Maou and Ashiya, had to work hard to assimilate to this new world, but being able to use their demonic or holy energy to overcome the language barrier was a huge help. Meanwhile Nord, a common farmer, had to climb that barrier and build a livelihood for himself alone. How?
“Oh that? That was simple,” he said as he boarded the arriving bus, picked up a transfer slip, and headed for the rear seats. “My wife had taught me the basics of Japanese.”
—As I toiled in the fields, chopping down the overgrowth in an attempt to revive our ruined village, Laila came down to visit me. And before I even had a moment to doubt my eyes, she spoke to me. She said, “I had no intention of inviting all this upon you.”
I had no idea what she meant, but before I could ask, she continued. “We must make your holy sword grow, become more mature, just in case. We must hurry to the land of our memories.” By “holy sword,” she meant Acieth as you see her now, but at the time it was merely this rather odd sort of sword I happened to possess.
There, underneath the setting sun, I followed Laila’s directions to manifest the sword and asked her what this was all about. Even as we spoke, Emilia was still fighting the Devil King’s Army. I asked if I could use this force to help her, somehow, or if Laila could use her angelic strength to lend the Hero a hand.
Laila’s reply was just as unexpected as always. “I don’t know why any of this has happened,” she said. “Satan was a gentle child. He knew what it meant to bear pain in one’s heart.” It made no sense to me. Satan was the name of the very Devil King trying to conquer Ente Isla, and now Laila was speaking as if she knew him personally.
“I apologize for putting all this burden upon you,” she told me, though. “I will tell you everything I can right now, so please, let us go to the place of our memories.”
So, still not knowing anything, I was taken by the hand as Laila flew us to a mountain east of Sloane. It was normally half a day’s journey from the village; it is a hunting ground now, but when we lived there, it was just a regular mountain, mostly untouched by human hands. About halfway up the southern side, we came across an outcropping of flat terrain, like a terrace. Laila and I enjoyed spending time there, when we were young, and I had built a small cabin up there for us to enjoy when there was no field work to be done. To tell you the truth, it was like our secret chalet, just for the two of us. And it was there, in that place from our memories, that Laila invited me.
…Emilia, why do you always act so peeved whenever I bring up this mountain? We liked to call it the “Terrace of the Stars.” …Why all the alarm, Emeralda? Is it that strange of a name?
When we arrived, Laila separated my body from my Yesod fragment. It was a small fragment, easily fitting in the palm of her hand, and she buried it in the terrace grounds, in a corner that received the first of the morning sun each day. I still don’t know what she did that for—or should I say, she told me, but I couldn’t fully understand it.
Once she was done, Laila and I talked about all kinds of things. The meaning of the Yesod fragments granted to myself and the newborn Emilia. The truth behind the angels, the Sephirah, and the tree of Sephirot sung about in our scriptures. The story behind Satan, the leader of the Devil King’s Army threatening all of Ente Isla. The legend of the great disaster engineered by the other Satan, the Devil Overlord—a topic even now deemed taboo among the heavenly realms. It was nothing I had any chance of understanding all at once.
Laila herself was almost in a panic. I believed in her, but before I could fully digest everything she told me, she said that she had a language she wanted to teach me—Japanese.
…That’s right, Emeralda. It means that Laila was already fully aware of this world by that point. I suppose that, from a fairly early time, Laila was planning to evacuate us from any heavenly threat…or evacuate our Yesod fragments, I suppose. It was a plan she had been carrying out over a long period of time.
At the time, I was far more concerned about what would happen to Emilia, fighting for Ente Isla, than the goings-on of some world I had never heard of before. But Laila said she would stake her very life on keeping Emilia safe, and I believed her. So I followed her instructions.
Hmm? Why was I so willing to believe in her? Well, how can I put it? It’s not easy to explain. Thanks in part to the way we met, I knew from the start that Laila was an angel. Emilia was born after that, and before she left me, well, we had assorted things happen to us.
For example, I knew that Laila bore untold amounts of strength as an angel, but I don’t think I ever saw her use any of it, no matter what. We had an extremely cold summer one year, to the point that we knew our harvest would be ruined. So I asked her: Could she use her powers to save the village’s wheat crop? And she told me: “If I twisted the path nature takes this year, it is bound to bite back at us later. Do you want to make me into a real angel?” That wasn’t the only time, either. The way Laila acted often made me wonder if she detested the very fact of who she was.
After that, I resolved in my heart to never rely upon Laila’s hidden abilities. Not even a little bit. And it was fine. She always smiled at the used clothing I would pick up from passing merchants. She loved dyeing them in colors provided by the other farmers’ wives. Her beautiful skin would crack at the cold of winter, become bruised in the farmwork, get dirtied as she handled the manure. Yet she never hesitated once at any of it.
It wasn’t always fun. More than once, we had the kind of arguments that would’ve led most couples to break up. But never in my life did I ever doubt what lay in her heart. I didn’t need to. There wasn’t any logic to it. I just believed in her.
Let me talk about the day Emilia was born. It was an incredibly difficult birth. I had no idea that Laila had the ability to let forth such piercing screams from her slight frame. Anything I could do meant nothing more than a stalk of wheat to her.
She’ll probably get angry if she finds out I told you this, and she swears she never said it, but both the midwife and I heard it ourselves. Laila, in the throes of labor, shouting out of nowhere: “I hate those sea birds so much, I could die! Flying around in the air, not a care in the world!” It makes no sense, does it? I had never been to the sea in my whole life. There wasn’t much I could say in response to that. But it made me laugh nonetheless, and Laila promptly kicked me out of the room.
After a while, I finally heard the cries of our newborn. I ran back inside, and by the time I did, Laila already had Emilia cradled in her arms. I wasn’t sure what to say—my voice was just as sobbing as Emilia’s own. But Laila turned to me, with her own tearful face. She said, “Thank you.” That “I’ve finally become a human in this world.”
It was only until that night at the Terrace of the Stars, fifteen years later, that I finally began to understand what she meant. Fifteen years later, the first time we had met since then, and she spoke to me there. She said that she and the rest of heaven’s residents were none of the angels sung about in scripture. We call them “angels” for convenience’s sake, she said, but to her, the angels were a pack of thieves, attempting to snatch away the god that should have been born from the rest of us. A criminal gang, robbing Ente Islans of their future, and their god, for their own benefit.
She believed that her being an angel, and her kindred carrying out these kinds of atrocities, was something that deserved nothing less than scorn, not worship. She believed life was truly lived only when rooted on the ground, fully lived within the time allotted to you. But if the angels continued to exist, something would happen, sooner or later, that would spell great suffering for mankind. And as she put it, she had to do whatever it took to prevent that.
But those who wanted to keep Laila muzzled had already taken her away from Emilia and me in the past. It happened on the first autumn after Emilia’s birth. That night, Laila was in her angelic form—the same form she took when we’d first met. She had always avoided looking that way around me, but I had no time to ask what she was doing. Instead, she gave Emilia and me two fragments from a purple crystal—Yesod fragments.
“You treated me like a person of this world,” she said, “and I want you to have these.” I asked what she meant, but she only shook her head. “That child and I,” she said, “have the power to repel the ‘evil’ that will envelop this world someday. Right now, we have to make sure this power remains safe.”
Looking back, the “evil” she talked about likely wasn’t the Devil King’s Army at all. It might have been something far greater, and far more evil.
Then she said, “I can’t afford to be captured yet—for your sake, and for the sake of Emilia’s future. So, please, let me go for now.”
I didn’t want her to go, of course. But if Laila had a compelling enough reason to drive her away, I had to let her pursue that. I said that I wanted her back someday, that I’d always be waiting for her. She lowered her head to me, and then she embedded the two crystal fragments into each of our bodies.
“I have asked the fragments to protect you,” she told me. “I’m sorry I’m doing all these selfish things, but I promise I will return.” And then she left. All I could do was watch as she took flight into the air.
By the time the light she radiated disappeared into the eastern sky, I spotted another beam of light like Laila’s from the west, shooting past me, as if pursuing her. Then, something very strange happened: Once the light zoomed its way to the east, that holy sword appeared in my hand, without any warning. It didn’t look like anything I could rely on too much, but I immediately knew it was the power of the crystal Laila left me. It was vibrating, as if warning me about the belt of light in the sky.
After the lights disappeared, I returned home to find something floating above Emilia’s little hands. It was a cross in the air, like a talisman you were meant to pray to. I suppose it was the original, primitive form that her Better Half took at first. After a few moments, the cross, along with my sword, dissipated into a swarm of light particles and disappeared into our bodies.
I did not feel as if I was entrusted with some great, ponderous mission. I just knew that I had to protect my daughter. I had to keep our home safe, so we could pick up where we left off once Laila finished whatever battle she was fighting and came back. This I swore in my heart.
Laila never did return before the Devil King’s Army attacked, but never once did Emilia cry for her missing mother. I think it was because she could feel the power of her crystal within her, covering her heart.
“Oop, there’s the observatory.”
Spotting the next destination on the digital board at the front of the bus, Nord casually pressed the stop button. Then he turned to Suzuno, sitting next to him.
“Mm? What is it?”
“N-nothing,” she replied, clamming up as she stared into space.
“Ugh,” Emi added, her face similarly tense and blushing as she turned her head downward.
Emeralda, for her part, was turned around in her front seat, almost grinning as she put both hands to her cheeks. “Nowww,” she said, “I know this was a very seeerious story you told us, but…um…I dunnooo…”
She was interrupted by the bus coming to a halt. Nord gave them all a puzzled look as he stood up, tossing the transfer slip and a few coins into the pay box. Suzuno and Emeralda followed, looking awkwardly at each other as Emi tried desperately not to lock eyes with either of them.
“That was really a lot to digessst, mmm.”
“Hmm?” Nord said as he got off, unsure what Emeralda meant.
The other three all knew they had to hear that story if they wanted a full understanding of the situation they faced. But the glimpses into the passionate early years of Nord and Laila’s relationship he wove into the narrative almost overshadowed the whole thing in their minds.
“Whew,” Suzuno sighed, taking a deep breath as she brought a palm to her face. “They certainly had the heater turned up high in there.”
“Sooo, what brought you two from the Terrace of the Staaars to Mitakaaa?”
“I had no idea you called it that,” Emi muttered, still blushing as Emeralda ventured the question.
Nord nodded at her. “Perhaps we could talk about that during the walk over there? Bell and Emilia have been here several times already, but… This way,” he motioned.
—When we met there, for the first time in fifteen years, the first thing Laila wanted to do was hide me, and my crystal, as quickly as possible. Her location of choice was not Ente Isla, but Earth.
She gave me instruction on the language I would need to learn, but we didn’t use any textbooks or vocabulary drills. Most of my knowledge was instilled in me by Laila’s Idea Link, and after that, I practiced for just a few days. I am still not completely fluent in my choice of words when I speak Japanese exclusively, but I have never had an issue bringing my point across.
Laila explained the big hurry by telling me about Emilia’s actions as the Hero, as well as the advance of the Devil King’s Army. Her holy sword and Cloth of the Dispeller were born from the same type of Yesod fragment as the one that powered my own sword, and as she put it, the angelic race had picked up on their presence.
She had been depositing fragments to all manner of people across the world up to then, and every time the heavens approached one of their locations, she would use her own fragments to guide the pursuers away from them. This had apparently been going on for centuries, long before I was born, which was quite astounding for me to learn. This time, however, Emilia’s power was too strong—too much for her to fully conceal. Thus, as a sort of insurance for when someone smelled out Emilia’s holy sword, she wanted me to flee to another world. I think that was the way she put it.
I asked her, of course, what would happen if those pursuers caught her. She simply replied that she would stake her life to protect our daughter.
To me, Laila and Emilia are both irreplaceable pieces of my life. I didn’t want her to sacrifice herself like that, but if that was the way she wanted to use her massive stores of power, I was in no position to question her. Besides, I believed in her. I wanted to respect her decision, so I followed it.
It certainly wasn’t easy. I had a lot more to learn than merely language skills. Money came before everything, actually. Until I saw an ATM for the first time, I had no idea there was this system where you could access your money anywhere in the world, without having to go through anyone else. The whole idea of paper currency, even, was alien to me—these sorts of promissory notes, no gold or silver or bronze in them, and yet they held more value than any gold coin from my realm. It was a difficult concept to wrap one’s head around.
She had already arranged a Japanese passport to prove my identity, as well as a pre-opened bank account. That, really, was the first time I began to feel nervous at all. What have I gotten myself into? I thought. She was throwing me into this unknown world far too quickly, and we wound up having our first argument in fifteen years over it. It didn’t last for long, of course—in a way, us bickering at each other was such a nostalgic memory that we couldn’t really keep it up. Why are you looking at me like that, Emilia? …Ah, right.
So after a few days, Laila dug up the crystal she had buried in the Terrace and infused it into my body once again. This was on the day that Alciel lost to Emilia and retreated from the Eastern Island, or at least that’s what Laila told me. She took my hands into hers, and she said, “I wish I had more time to let it be born here.” She said, “I’m sorry for doing all of this, but please, I need you to believe in me.” I told her that I never mistrusted her for a day in my life.
She smiled that pretty smile of hers—that hadn’t changed in fifteen years, either—and looked up at the sky. I looked up as well, and was surprised to find an angel up there—a small man carrying a gigantic scythe. For all I know, he was that streak of light I saw pursuing Laila fifteen years before. He bore the same white wings and hair color as the angel I knew, but his eyes were cold as steel.
And that was the last thing I remember. I lost consciousness immediately afterward. And when I woke up, I was on the floor in an apartment in Shinjuku…more toward the Yoyogi neighborhood, actually, but anyway, I was in Tokyo.
I flew into a panic. Laila had told me what to expect, but the moment I looked outside, I was exposed to all these unfamiliar sights and sounds and smells, attacking me all at once. She had also instructed me on what to do once I arrived, but really, it took me three full days to leave my home. This new world scared me—all these unfamiliar people and so on.
So once my food ran out and I was forced outside, I went into a convenience store and did my first shopping ever on Earth. The kind of bread I could buy there with a 100-yen coin was more delicious than any of the wild-oat loaves I had ever eaten in Ente Isla. I still vividly remember the moment I first sank my teeth into it. What a world I’ve been thrown into, I thought.
I spent the next week exploring the neighborhood around my apartment, learning the day-to-day skills I needed. Once I did, I followed through on what Laila instructed me to do. I went on a walk.
Yoyogi Park was within walking distance of me. She had told me to go walking there every day, smelling the trees and lying down on the ground. That, she said, would help raise and nurture the fragment within me. I only found out what she meant after two months of this, when, one morning, the sword suddenly manifested itself and took the form of a person. And that was the birth of Acieth.
It came as a great surprise to me, of course. Freshly born, and already a teenager, essentially. And what’s more, she already had somewhat of a grasp of the Japanese language. She knew I was connected to Laila, so we immediately understood each other.
The thing I remember the most about those days was her appetite. We started going through the money Laila had left for us at double the rate from before she was born. We had a fair amount to work with, but given that I had no idea how long this arrangement would continue, I couldn’t afford to waste it all the time. It’d be too late if I waited until my account hit zero.
So I decided to look for work. Thanks to my time spent as a refugee in Saint Aile, I was confident I could cut it in pretty much any job out there. So I began to take on day-labor work, and after a while, I came across this man named Sato. It was Sato who helped me learn that the stamp in my passport was actually a work visa, meaning that if I wanted to, I could take on almost any job in Japan I wanted.
Sato was just a regular Japanese man, but he had a pretty unique personal history that granted him vast knowledge. I learned a great deal about Japan from him.
You’re probably wondering why I took his name. That was just so it wouldn’t look strange, me living with Acieth and treating her as my daughter. I didn’t give a fake name to my work contacts, of course, and my bank account was still under my real one. I just told people to call me that as a sort of nickname. I wasn’t a great fan of this, but given the circumstances under which Laila threw me into this world, I felt it safer to avoid bandying around the name Justina as much as possible.
That, and there was also the fact that, between Sato’s past and my refugee years, we had a lot in common.
Regardless, Sato and I worked together for a while, and one day I asked if there was somewhere nearby where we could have a good view of the stars. He suggested Mitaka, where the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan is located. It’s pretty much the nerve center for Japan’s astronomy scene, and they hold events every few months that anyone could participate in if they registered. Sato also gave me a work lead in Mitaka—a place he used to work, that came with a cheap dormitory I could live in. I could even take in the night sky while I worked, he said.
I told Acieth, and she was immediately eager to move. I wasn’t sure it was such a great idea to leave the apartment Laila set up for us, but I figured that if she needed to find us, she could follow whatever aura Acieth radiated to track us down.
—So here’s where we wound up.
Emeralda looked up at the sign in front of the small building before her, one lined with motorbikes parked in neat rows. It read SESAMI SHIMBUN NEWSPAPER—SALES OFFICE, as Suzuno had to explain to her.
“Wait here one moment,” Nord said as he casually opened the sliding door and stepped inside. “I’ll have the chief open the door for me.”
“So that’s what he needed a motorcycle license for,” Emi observed. She knew that Maou first spotted Nord and Acieth inside the bus on the way to the driver’s license center, and she had been wondering what Nord needed a license for in the first place. The lines of Honta Super Fawn motorbikes in front of the newspaper distribution office told the story for her. There were a few bicycles as well, but motorized transport probably made the delivery work a lot easier—and given how Nord would be zipping around on one of those in the early-morning hours, he certainly would be able to take in the night sky as he worked.
Emi hadn’t met one herself, but she knew that some college students were lucky enough to score work scholarships, where newspapers would offer housing and a regular stipend in exchange for delivery duties for the morning and evening editions. Being a paperboy wasn’t exactly an easy job, but with the body he built on the farm and the indomitable spirit he honed as a war refugee, it would’ve been a cinch for Nord.
Although TV and the Internet had dulled their position somewhat, newspapers were still a huge part of Japan’s media landscape, and working for one would also give him a deeper grasp of what was going on in the world. Perhaps it gave Nord more of an insight on Earth than what Maou and Ashiya had, given how the library had been their only avenue for information access until Urushihara came along.
After a few moments, they saw Nord step out with a middle-aged man and walk behind the building. This was the head of the office; Emi had said hello to him before. The rear was populated with a number of small apartment buildings, similar to the ones in Villa Rosa Sasazuka, and Sesami Shimbun was using one of them as an employee dorm.
“By the waaay, Emilia,” Emilia said, curiously taking in the sight of these identical buildings next to each other.
“Mm? What, Eme?”
“I know Nord told us that whole stooory, but it still didn’t explain why you aren’t asking him for helllp in repaying your debt to the Devil Kiiing.”
“Oh, yeah.” Emi grinned a little and looked up at the sign in front of the newspaper building. “Well, I didn’t really need it. I had a little bit of money to work with in my account, and… Well, call me stubborn, but it’s kind of my mother’s fault, too.”
“Lailaaa’s fault?”
“Mm-hmm.” Emi sighed and shook her head. “I don’t think she’s a bad person, but at the very least, she’s most of the reason why I, my father, and the Devil King are where we are right now. She’s the one who gave Father most of the money he has, you know? And I didn’t want to rely on that money. And even beyond that, it’s not really right to hit up your parents to repay the debts you racked up, is it?”
“Ahh…”
The explanation made sense to Emeralda. But given the urgency of the situation, it still seemed to her that Emi was being needlessly obstinate.
“Nothing can be done about it, Lady Emeralda. There is never any changing of Emilia’s mind when it comes to these matters. You could say that she prefers to clean up her own messes.”
“I suppose sooo,” Emeralda replied, grinning at Suzuno. “Thaaat certainly hasn’t changed at all.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” countered Emi.
Ten or so minutes later, Nord returned carrying a single file folder with the Sesami Shimbun logo on it. It was stuffed full of papercraft sheets.
“She built up quite a hoard, it seems!”
“Why is Acieth so enthralled with stars in the first place?”
“Well, if I had to guess…” Nord gauged the folder as she turned to Suzuno. “Even before Acieth was born, whenever Laila talked about the Yesod fragments, she had a habit of always connecting them to the sky, in one way or the other. Her instructions to go walking in Yoyogi Park, for example, and the way she buried the fragment in the Terrace of the Stars so it’d be exposed to light first thing in the morning. To them, the sky—at night in particular—must have some particularly important meaning. And I think…”
He took a thin sheet of paper out from the folder. This wasn’t a papercraft starfield, but rather a round piece of clear cellophane placed over a flat sheet of cardboard.
“I think we received this when we went to a moon-viewing event at the observatory. If you place this between you and the moon, it’ll project a map of the moon’s surface on the wall behind you. Acieth really liked this piece. A lot of her collection is related to the moon in one way or the other.”
“The moon…?”
In the holy scriptures of the Church, the moon was a celestial body controlled by the Yesod, the jewel of the world tree. It gave Suzuno something to think about as she observed the folder.
“Good thing you found her collectionnn, though.”
“Indeed,” Nord said with a nod, “but it certainly didn’t take much work. I’d like to discuss a few more things with you all, but there are some issues I have yet to talk to Emilia about. If possible, I’d like to have everyone together so I can fully go through everything.”
“Fair enough,” Emi said. “I hate to admit it, but we’ll want the demons to be present for some of this, too… How about we just bring that back to Acieth? By the time we get back to Sasazuka, it’ll be about time for my evening errand, too.”
“Oh, speaking of which, Emilia…”
Emi, already walking toward the bus stop, halted at Suzuno’s call.
“What is that errand you speak of, anyway?”
“Well…” She grinned a bit, embarrassed, as she turned around. “It’s a job interview.”
The moment Chiho caught sight of Maou in the break room at the MgRonald near Hatagaya station, she marched right up to him in a huff.
“Maou! I heard the news from Suzuno!”
“Mm? Wh-what?”
The act from this teenager was enough to make Satan, king of demons, his full powers restored to him, edge backward until his rear end was touching the wall.
“I mean, I know you and Yusa are still enemies and everything! But could you at least try to empathize with her a little?”
“Oh, um, Chi, that’s, uh…”
“I know you’ve been through a whole lot, and I know that money issues matter a lot to you guys! But I really don’t think you should’ve done that kind of thing! In front of Yusa’s father and everything!”
She seemed honestly angry to Maou. “That kind of thing,” he assumed, referred to his demand for repayment. He cursed Suzuno in his mind for blabbing to Chiho as he searched for a way to soothe her.
“Well, Chi, I mean… I can explain—”
“Did it ever occur to you that you could’ve done that someplace where her father wasn’t around, at least? Like, your place, or Suzuno’s place, or the MgRonald, even?!”
“Please, Chi, let me talk! I had a really good reason for this!” Maou placed his hands on Chiho’s shoulders, just in case she decided to grab him by the collar and perform a judo throw. “I don’t know what Suzuno told you, but I knew what I was doing, all right?”
“Well, what were you doing, then? Because I heard you made things really awkward between Yusa and her dad afterward!”
That much, Maou didn’t need Suzuno or Chiho to tell him. After all, in Nord’s eyes, his own daughter was in debt to the nemesis of the entire human race. He didn’t seem to see the demon races as pure evil—thanks to his long-term involvement with the Yesod fragments, probably—but even he could tell this wasn’t a good position for Emi to be in. And she wanted to repay him all by herself, too. Even with how much higher her take-home pay was than Maou’s, paying such a princely sum all at once would likely put a pretty big dent in her savings.
“I… You know, I thought she’d fight back more, is all.”
“Fight back?” Chiho raised an eyebrow at Maou’s suddenly subdued voice.
“We’re talking three hundred and fifty thousand yen, you know? Even for someone working on salary, that’s not the kind of money you’d plunk down on a moment’s notice, right? Plus, she’s unemployed.”
“Well, yeah! So, again, why’d you bring that up in front of Nord?!”
“So, like, I figured she’d say no, and then I could suggest her paying me back with her body instead of with money, and… Um, Chi? Chi?”
As he spoke, Maou could literally see the flames burning in Chiho’s eyes, her brows arched upward in rage. It was only then that he realized his choice of words was somewhat ill-advised.
“With, with, with, with her body…?! Maou! What are you even saying?! That’s disgusting! I am so disappointed in you!”
“Chi, Chi, Chi!” Maou flailed his hands in the air. “Please, calm down! I didn’t mean it like that, I didn’t mean it like that! I meant this!” In a panic, he rushed to his storage locker and took out a thin magazine. “I mean, c’mon, this is Emi we’re talking about! Her owing me probably pissed her off enough already—if I asked for that much money from her, I figured she’d blow her top, y’know? So I was gonna take this out and suggest it to her instead!”
Chiho, face reddened with anger, took a look at the cover of the magazine, along with the sticky note attached to it. Now she began to understand.
“Maou, you weren’t really…”
“I figured she’d be like ‘I’m never gonna pay that to you! I know I owe you, but that’s just way too much!’ So if she said that… I mean, I knew she was gonna say it, but if she said that, I figured she could pay me back another way.”
Maou sheepishly handed her the magazine.
“Like, ‘Hey, I know you’re jobless right now, so…’”
Chiho accepted it, not sure which way to react. The cover read CITY WORKING—FREE HELP-WANTED MAGAZINE—FOR SHINJUKU, KEIO, AND ODAKYU RAIL LINE NEIGHBORHOODS, a little cartoon pig carrying a sign reading SPECIAL RESTAURANT EDITION! in the middle.
These magazines came with a sticky bookmark attached to an inside page. Opening to it, Chiho found pretty much what she expected.
MGRONALD HATAGAYA STATION IS EXPANDING! NEW CREWMEMBERS WANTED! NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED!
She looked at the page, then at Maou, in a daze.
“M-Maou…”
“Like, if you can’t pay me back in money, then work for it a little, is what I thought I’d say. But…um, I guess I misread her?”
“…”
He shrugged as Chiho wordlessly handed the magazine back to him.
“Maou?”
“Mm?”
“That’s just mean!”
The blunt review of his approach stabbed its way into Maou’s heart.
“Well, I mean—”
“You mean what?! What were you even thinking?! You could have just said that at the start, if that’s what you wanted! Why’d you have to go all roundabout with it?!”
“Well, like, we both have our own viewpoints on each other, so—”
“Can you keep yourself fed on viewpoints? Can you find decent work with a viewpoint?!”
“I mean… No, but… C’mon, this is Emi we’re talking about—”
“If you can’t be half-serious for a moment and just come out with it, then she’s not gonna listen to what you really mean!”
The sheer force of Chiho’s tirade had beaten down Maou to the point that he was now seated on a folding chair, facing up to the torrent.
“Who do you think you are, anyway? You aren’t some eight-year-old child! If you want to show a woman some kindness, then why were you so mean to her? Who cares if you thought it’d make you look uncool or whatever? For a Devil King, that’s just shameful, don’t you think?”
“H-hang on, Chi. I thought this out, I swear. We really do need more staff around here, and I guess she’s pretty nice to people if they’re not demons. With her call-center experience, I figured she’d get used to taking delivery orders super quick. That’s all! I wasn’t trying to be nice to her or…um…”
It was an escape valve, Maou knew, and it proved worthless.
“It’s the same thing! Why didn’t you just tell her that at the start?! Why couldn’t you just give it to her straight that we need crewmembers and you thought she’d be a good fit or whatever?!”
“Well, like… Why? …Um…”
Maou thought he had it worked out. Chiho was rapidly teaching him otherwise.
“Oh, it doesn’t even matter anyway! If you thought it’d be all awkward to show a single decent thought for Yusa, you could’ve at least phrased it as being concerned for Alas Ramus or whatever! Why’d you have to paint yourself as the bad guy from the start instead?”
“You… You know… I’m the Devil King, she’s the Hero…”
“Whenever you two get all snippy with each other, has it ever resulted in anything good?!”
It was the biggest lightning bolt of the day, and it landed squarely upon Maou’s head. He cowered in his folding chair, gingerly looking up at Chiho. Her eyes danced with enough seething anger to give even Emi at her maddest a run for her money.
“This isn’t the time to be dwelling on stuff like that! All you guys fought against the angels together in Ente Isla—you, and Yusa, and Acieth and Ashiya, too! Were you thinking about Devil King and Hero crap back there, too?!”
“N-no, I… Nothing like that, no. Suzuno was kinda going on about it a little, but…”
The whole lot of them had already given Chiho a rundown of the events that occurred in, around, and above Efzahan’s capital of Heavensky. Hearing about Emi’s incarceration in Ente Isla made her infuriated at Olba and the heavens; hearing about Maou’s chance encounter with Albert surprised her; the letter Ashiya sent Emi made her laugh; Suzuno’s rescue of Emeralda filled her with admiration; and the retelling of Emi’s first encounter with Nord filled her eyes with tears all over again. It was a real roller coaster of emotion, and after all that:
“I thought you and Yusa were finally getting along a little more now, too…”
“Chi…?”
Maou was flustered at the sudden twinge of sadness to her voice.
“Maou?”
“Y-yeah?”
“If Yusa really pays that money back to you, and then she starts seriously thinking about fighting you again, what’ll you do then?”
“Huh? I really don’t think that’ll happen, Chi. Not with Alas Ramus and all.”
The thought had crossed Maou’s mind. Once this was wrapped up and Emi no longer owed anything to Maou, that brought them back to square one. Maou had still not given up on his tyrant-like aspirations, and those aspirations had put Emi and Nord through hell in the past. They were together now, but considering everything Emi had lost, she had every right to demand repayment from Maou, not the other way around.
“I mean…what, is she gonna demand my money or my life? Like, reparations?”
“Ughh!!”
Chiho turned her back to him, repulsed by his obsession with money.
“Look, Chi, I’m sorry! I guess I wasn’t really thinking—”
“What does apologizing to me accomplish?”
“Ngh…”
Chiho sighed. “You know, sometimes I just don’t understand.”
“About what?”
“Yusa used to go on about how you were the villain, the enemy, and she had to kill you and everything.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“What about you?”
“Hmm?”
“Like, really, Maou, what do you think of her?”
“What do I think? Um…”
This sent Maou reeling. It was odd, but he felt like he had been in this position just a bit ago, albeit with someone else.
“Do you still want to kill her, in the end? Because she’s your enemy?”
“Well, no, I’m not going that far, but…”
The sudden leap in Chiho’s questioning threw Maou yet again. He knew his answer wasn’t much of an answer.
“So you don’t? She’s a Demon General in the New Devil King’s Army, remember.”
“Y-yeah…”
Between Chiho and Suzuno, a lot of people in Maou’s life were using their Great Demon General titles to lay it on him lately. “Just desserts” didn’t even begin to describe it. He had nothing to counter with.
“So stop being so mean and act like the king you are. Show Yusa a new world for a change. Something she hasn’t seen yet. Because otherwise…”
Maou sat silently before Chiho’s sad voice.
“…I just feel so bad for Alas Ramus.”
All he could do was watch as she left for the front counter.
“Marko?”
“Y-yes! I apologize! I put my foot in my mouth in front of Chi again!”
The moment he stepped into the restaurant space, Mayumi Kisaki, manager at the Hatagaya MgRonald and a woman even the King of All Demons had to bow his head to, approached him in even more of a huff than Chiho a moment ago.
“Oh?”
“…Yeah…”
“Marko, I know I don’t need to tell you this, but we’re not really in a position to be picky with our part-time job applicants. Do you understand me?”
“I…do, yes,” he stammered out, breaking into a cold sweat.
“We need to get people in here, and we need them trained before we go all-in on the delivery service. And if I have veterans like you bringing everyone down in the crew, that’s gonna affect that process. Right?”
“Rrrr…right, yes.”
Every enunciated syllable of Kisaki’s speech seemed imbued with ghastly amounts of demonic force. It made Maou’s heart shrink inside his rib cage.
As the calendar shifted deeper into fall, the shifts at the Hatagaya MgRonald had begun to come a bit apart at the seams. They had more people on the floor, given that the MgCafé space required more specialization than the rest of the crew positions, but being unexpectedly chosen for the company’s pilot delivery program made it likely their current staff wouldn’t be enough to keep the place running.
Autumn also meant they couldn’t rely on college students to beef up their ranks. Juniors would need to start the job-recruitment process, and that meant they wouldn’t be regulars on the shift schedule any longer. With summer vacation wrapped up, the freshmen and sophomores would be busy with new classes. Housewives and the like formed their most stable employee pool, but while they could keep regular schedules, they were often rather inflexible with taking other shifts—and high schoolers like Chiho would have exams to worry about shortly.
This meant that young-adult part-timers like Maou would form MgRonald’s vanguard force, but compared to the armies of students, there just weren’t that many of them. They needed time, and staff, to keep the place running while they brought on and trained new hires. Otherwise they’d have trouble keeping the current restaurant running, much less all the new delivery business. In any normal time period, Kisaki could use her keen management, her astonishing personal connections, and her own physical strength to handle temporary staff shortages, but this sudden decision from the top brass was a bit too much a load for even her to handle.
“As I’m sure you know, we’re trying to field as many new, young, female crewmembers as we can. There’s going to be a lot of new people around here shortly. So if I catch you having so much as a teeny little spat with Chi and making things awkward around here…”
For the second time since coming to Japan, Maou saw his life passing before his eyes.
“…I’ll be sure you see hell for it.”
“…!!!!”
There was nothing more to be said. Maou saluted her, back arched straight up.
“Good grief,” Kisaki replied, sizing up his unspoken oath of allegiance. “Now, about these new people…”
“Y-yes?”
“I already have three interviews to handle today. They’re all scheduled to show up while you’re on duty. You’re up at the café all day today, Marko, so keep in mind you might be in sight of us. I have one in the AM and two in the PM hours.”
“Got it!”
Maou had been regularly handling the MgCafé space on the second floor in recent days. His accreditation as a MgRonald Barista had a lot to do with that, but Chiho, despite having the same title, more often found herself manning the front counter on the first floor instead. There were several reasons for this. In terms of sheer ability, unless things were particularly crowded, Maou could easily run the café space by himself. As a high schooler, Chiho couldn’t handle café-counter shifts that ran near the ten-PM closing time upstairs. Plus, as the theory went, it was always better to have young women manning the front counter than men, since it attracted more foot traffic from the rail station.
“Hang on. We don’t have any cheesecake in stock?”
“Didn’t you see the news? During that time off you took, the factory overseas where they made the cheese for it had some kind of bacterial infection, so we won’t get any in for a while.”
“Ohhh, I see… I didn’t have much time to check the TV around then, so… Wow, no cheesecake, though, huh?”
“No. Bad news for us, since it was so popular, but not much we can do about it. We’ll have to make up for it with our other items. Think of it as a chance to sell customers on the rest of the menu.”
The weeklong gap had proven to be much larger than Maou expected. Simply by missing out on seven days’ worth of shifts, Maou was absent for a change in the sauces applied to certain burgers, and several names unfamiliar to him were now written on the shift board. He was back in the groove now, a few days’ worth of shifts under his belt, but failing to be around for the delivery training session was a grave concern to him. He wasn’t the only one who skipped that class, of course, but the more prep he could do for the launch, the better.
“When it comes to navigating Gyro-Roofs on poor roads,” he said to himself by the upstairs café counter, “or climbing stairs with them, or throwing Molotov cocktails from the driver’s seat, I’m your man, but…”
Not many customers were in the space. There was little to do, and that made him dwell on his situation.
“What next, I wonder…?”
He checked the expiration dates on the food in the freezer and wiped the condensation off the appliances surrounding him. But Kisaki already managed this place with aplomb. After thirty minutes, he was back at the counter, idly waiting for customers to show up.
Suddenly, his mind recalled his conversation with Suzuno at their camp in Efzahan. “I think you should tell Emilia. When you are prepared to.”
“Whenever you two get all snippy with each other, has it ever resulted in anything good?!”
It hadn’t. He didn’t need Chiho to remind him. There was no doubt about that. It wasn’t that he regretted being hostile with Emi sometimes, but still, she was absolutely right.
Then there was what Emi told him in Heavensky, as the sun rose: “I’m sorry to put all this on you.” And Maou wasn’t blind enough not to realize that she meant it. It came straight from the heart. She was thanking him, honestly and faithfully, for the past month.
But even with all that:
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