Hataraku Maou-sama! - Volume 11 - Chapter 3

THE DEVIL AND THE HERO FULFILL A DELAYED PROMISE 
There is never any predicting what tomorrow may bring, Ashiya thought, deep inside his mind, as he sized Maou up. It was almost to the point in the morning where he’d be late for work if he didn’t leave now, but he absolutely refused to take a step away from the front door. 
“Your Demonic Highness,” he attempted, “you simply must go to work. Another moment, and you will miss the beginning of your shift.” 
“…” 
The plea did nothing to make Maou move a muscle. 
“Acting this way will do nothing to change the facts. I am afraid you must resign yourself to reality.” 
“…” 
“My liege, please, pull yourself together! If this is how you act on the first day, I cannot even fathom what the future holds.” 
“…Ashiyaaa.” 
“Yes, my liege?” 
“I…” Maou’s spine shuddered. “I’ve never felt this way beforrre…” 
“Yes?” 
He turned his ashen face toward Ashiya. 
“I don’t wanna go to worrrk!!” 

The next moment, Maou was summarily thrown out of his own apartment. 
“I want you to go straight to work, my liege!” Ashiya shouted from the stairway as Maou lazily, wobbily pedaled Dullahan II away from his apartment. He waved a limp arm behind him in response. 
This was the kind of demon who often babbled in his sleep about his job. But since last night, it was “I don’t wanna go to work” this, “I gotta get outta work” that, “I wanna take off tomorrow” the other thing. It made him sound uncannily like Urushihara. And normally Ashiya would take every measure to care for his superior after such a traumatic experience, but this time—given the circumstances that triggered it—he had little sympathy. He had to put his foot down—his master needed to get out there. 
“Is the Devil King gone?” 
“Yes,” Ashiya listlessly replied to Suzuno, who’d waited until Maou was fully out of sight. 
“I heard most of his carrying on, but do you believe he is truly that depressed about his job situation?” 
“Ah, I never wanted to see His Demonic Highness in such a state…” 
“I imagine not, no. There is not a single person in this world who wants to see the Devil King wheedle his way out of work, as if he were Lucifer or the like.” 
It was not exactly her problem, but even so, the sympathy was clear in her voice. 
“So today is Emilia’s first day?” 
“That it is, yes,” Ashiya sighed. “She volunteered for quite a packed shift schedule, she told me. Attempting to make up for the cut in pay, I would imagine. We are unlikely to see a day when her shift does not overlap with my liege’s. Which means…” 
“The Devil King is in charge of training her?” 
“As likely as not, as he put it. He is the only crewmember besides Ms. Kisaki who is capable of running the upstairs café space solo, so perhaps there is a decent chance that someone running the regular-menu counter will be responsible instead.” 
Such was Maou’s theory last night, one expressed with all the hope and expectation he could muster. 
“But why not Chiho, I wonder? She has the experience to train her, no?” 
“Ms. Sasaki is a capable worker, but she is still in high school. In fact, she has only been on the staff for half a year, still. A training role for her would still be a tad hasty, although it is Ms. Kisaki’s choice in the end.” 
Three days had passed since Emi’s shocker of a job interview at the MgRonald in Hatagaya. Her first stint on the clock would begin this evening. Maou had spent the interval probing for any excuse, any escape valve that would keep him from going to work, all of which had failed due to Ashiya playing interference. Ashiya was not at all interested in seeing Maou flee like a scurrying rat from Emi; in fact, the thought of the Devil King getting to treat the Hero as a lackey, a subordinate fit for nothing but insults and abuse, energized him. But something about the scenario terrorized Maou so much that he refused to listen to any of his Demon General’s advice. 
It was Maou leaving his phone in Ashiya’s possession that doomed him. In the end, their concerns about Urushihara using Maou’s credit card without permission proved unfounded. But Maou wanted to call MgRonald to schedule a different shift for himself—a disgraceful act, as far as Ashiya was concerned. So for now, the phone was still with him. 
In the end, finally painted into a corner, last night Maou started going on about using his demonic force to change the shift schedule, or faking an illness. That earned him one of the most blistering scoldings Ashiya had dished out in recent memory. The sorry sight of the Devil King wasting his energy on such pathetic measures—it was deplorable. 
And it all happened in those few minutes his eyes were off him, those few moments when he chased Emi out of Devil’s Castle and took a tumble down the stairs. Something happened, Maou refused to say what, and Chiho and Suzuno had no ideas, either. Suzuno seemed to indicate that she had an inkling, but offered little in the way of concrete conclusions to him. 
“I do hope this does not affect his work performance,” Ashiya gloomily muttered. 
“We will have to hope Chiho provides him with ample support. Ah, but if today is Emilia’s first day… Alciel, do you have a spare moment today? I would like to discuss something with you and Nord later.” 
“…Rather sudden. What is it?” 
It was rare for Suzuno to ask Ashiya for advice. But she almost seemed to be looking forward to it. “Nothing of great importance,” she said. “But if this is Emilia’s first day at work, I thought it might be time to act upon our plan, as late as it comes.” 
“Plan?” Ashiya asked, confused, as Suzuno took out her phone and began to call someone. 
“One moment. I’d like to speak to Rika, and Emeralda should still be here as well. I suppose it is best to wait until after school hours to contact Chiho.” 
Ashiya, oblivious to her intentions, could only stand there and give Suzuno a perplexed look. 
 
To Maou, the MgRonald by Hatagaya station was a place of solace, an oasis of calm in a way that Room 201 at Villa Rosa wasn’t. Or at least that’s how it had been. 
The brisk, controlled chaos inside reminded him of the great fields of battle he had presided over during his world-conquest years. The work gave him courage, helping him keep his mind focused on his foremost goals. 
And all it took to change everything was the appearance of a single person. He couldn’t relax—it felt like someone’s eyes were always on him. Someone calling for him sent a chill up and down his spine, freezing him on the spot. The poison-tipped stares from Kawata, not to mention the rest of the male crewmembers, stabbed into him. His most trusted work friends! And it was all thanks to her. 
“Hey, Mr. Maou, is this the right way to change out the orange juice concentrate?” 
“Y-yeah…” 
“Mr. Maou, we’re running short on take-out paper bags. Can I go get some more?” 
“S-sure…” 
“Um, Mr. Maou, these two dust cloths for the seats are pretty worn out. Is it okay to throw them out and bring out some new ones?” 
“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………’Kay.” 
Emi was standing next to him, her long hair tied back like Kisaki’s, and from day one, she was carrying out her work with the aura of a seasoned veteran. Kisaki knew they were already acquainted, and so of course she assigned him to train her—a cruel fate that proved just as unavoidable as he’d feared. 
Several crewmembers remembered her as well, Kawata included, and given how Emi generally fell into the “easy on the eyes” category, the cries of protest the other men gave upon hearing that Maou was training her were both impassioned and actually kind of serious. “I hope all that good luck kills you,” Kawata told him in the break room. Maou knew he was all but pleading for a wife, but still, that assessment wasn’t exactly welcome news for Maou. Kawata had another young woman to train, the second hire from Kisaki’s daylong interview session, but—just as he had lamented earlier—this girl was happily married. 
But even the Devil King, who yearned for Emi to leave his oasis, had to admit that the Hero was an extremely talented hire. Teach her something once, and she did it perfectly each time after that. From the sample dialogue in the manual to the names and locations of the tray papers, napkins, ketchup, mustard, syrup, and milk, as well as when they needed replenishing, it was all flawless. Given her experience dealing with faceless voices at the call center, she made a clear effort to act more cheerful and energetic around the customers she faced; Kisaki praised her vocal skills practically from day one. 
The questions Emi had been lobbing at Maou weren’t major ones; they all just came from her lack of experience with MgRonald’s standards and unwritten customs. Once she grasped all of them, she wouldn’t have to rely on anyone else for her work duties. That was how much her work ethic and memory skills stood out. 
“Marko?” Kisaki said, marveling at Emi’s effort. 
“…Yes?” 
“Could you tell Ms. Yusa that I’d like her to try everything on the menu as soon as she can?” 
Not even Kisaki was the kind of manager to give Emi her official nickname on the very first day, but she was still impressed enough that she apparently wanted her to master the food offerings in short order. 
“…I wish her training period would end already, dang.” Maou sighed as he fetched two new dust cloths from the stockroom. 
Emi whirled around. She must have felt his gaze on her. 
“Hmm? Sorry, was there a problem, Mr. Maou?” 
“Huh? Oh, uhh, no, nothing.” 
“Oh?” 
Being called out didn’t exactly fill Maou with shame. He had no reason to struggle for a response like that. But in the scant few hours that Emi had been on duty, Maou’s spirits were already flagging desperately. Here was this girl who called him everything up to “a blood-sucking monster lowlife cockroach,” and now she was using that same mouth to say “Mr. Maou.” 
It’d be too untoward, Maou claimed, for Emi to casually use Maou’s first name quite yet. It’d set a bad example for the rest of the crew. Thus, Maou pleaded with her to at least keep it to that, and not “Sadao” like she had threatened earlier. So “Maou” it was, with the “Mr.” part added so she didn’t seem too familiar with him in the rest of the staff’s eyes. It was strange—Chiho or anyone else calling him that was never a problem, but for some reason, Emi calling him by name made him shudder. 
Using the new cloth to wipe up the stack of used trays, Emi picked up the pile and ferried it over to the fresh stack by the counter. As she did, she passed by Maou’s side. “Devil King,” she whispered. 
“Um, what…?” 
“I know you’re not exactly thrilled to partner with me, but you’re really harshing people’s buzz around here right now. That’s not good for the place, is it?” 
“…!!” Hearing the advice, Maou opened his eyes wide…and began to laugh a tense, suppressed laugh. “Heh…heh-heh-heh-heh… Look at you! A total rookie, saying self-important things like that, huh? Well, all right…” 
Nearly wild-eyed, he flashed Emi the brightest, most businesslike smile he could muster. “Ms. Yusa.” 
“Y-yes?” Emi stammered, a little unnerved by his eerie behavior. Something about the tenor of “Ms. Yusa,” whenever Maou used it to refer to her at work, seemed tremendously off-putting. They never bothered with formalities like that in real life, so the simple addition of “Ms.” was enough to send an indescribable chill down her spine. 
“If that’s how you’re gonna act around here… Ms. Kisaki didn’t have any instructions for you, but for as long as time allows, I’m gonna jam you with as much work as I possibly can, got it?” 
“Um, sure? The more veteran instruction I can receive, the better.” 
“You’re on, Ms. Yusa!!” 
“Bring it, Mr. Maou!!” 
“Heh-heh-heh-heh…” they both laughed. 
“What is with them?” Kawata asked as he passed by, the very air surrounding Maou and Emi seeming to twist and swirl around them in his eyes. He felt obliged to squint for a moment, to make sure he wasn’t imagining it. 
“Right! You’re gonna get no mercy, you got that? Let’s start with using the soft-cream machine to make the dessert menu! You’ll be the new girl forever if you can’t do that!” 
“Ha! Give me everything you’ve got! I’ll make it all!” 
“I’m only gonna teach you once, so listen up! Before you touch the bar on the machine, always spray your hands with that disinfectant! Down to the wrists, you hear me?” 
“You don’t need to tell me twice!!” 
“Listen up! We’ll start with a cone! That’s part of the hundred-yen menu! You let the cream fall straight into the cone! When it reaches the upper lip, you spin the cone around for exactly two-and-a-half revolutions! You hearing me? There’s kind of a trick to crafting the little ‘swirly’ on the top! If you can’t pull that off, you aren’t worthy to even lick my boots!” 
“Pfft! I used to work in a real office, you know! A lot of quick-service joints have you operate the ice-cream machine by yourself these days, too! If you think I’m a total newbie to this, you’re gonna pay dearly for it!” 
“Hah! Don’t make me laugh! If you think the soft cream at the Mag is the same as that crap from the self-serve joints, you got another think coming! MgRonald’s ice cream is made with milk sourced one hundred percent from dairy farms in Hokkaido! It’s smooth, creamy, and heavier than most ice cream, so it ain’t gonna be that easy to stack those two-and-a-half twirls, girl!” 
“What is with them, seriously?” Kawata shrugged as he left the scene, unsure if this was a training seminar or a lovers’ spat. 
But unlike him, there was someone else watching who knew exactly what fueled this tension. It was Chiho, of course, peering at them intently from outside the glass door out front. “…Well, good,” she said. “Glad it’s going all right, more or less.” 
Once, not that long ago, it was Emi watching Maou and Chiho from her hiding place outside MgRonald. Now the tables were turned. She was coming home from school when she began worrying about them openly quarreling at work, so she stopped over to check despite not having a shift, just to make sure. 
Even from outside the dining-room space, she could tell that the tension inside was going in kind of an odd direction. But they weren’t coming to blows, at least, which came as a huge relief. 
She realized she was a bit hungry, even though dinner was coming up. I’m here and all, she thought. Maybe I ought to stop in as a customer while I’m at it, too. 

Before she could act on the impulse, the phone in her school-uniform jacket rang. She looked at the screen. 
“Huh? Maou?” 
It was from the number that belonged to Maou, who was clearly busy haranguing Emi at the moment. She answered it. 
“Hello, is this Ms. Sasaki? It is I, Ashiya.” 
“Oh, Ashiya! I was wondering why Maou would be calling me in the middle of his work shift.” 
“Ah, indeed. I had to borrow the Devil King’s cell phone for…reasons, earlier. Are you home from school?” 
“Oh, um, I’m actually in front of MgRonald because I was worried about how Maou and Emi were doing, but it seems from here that it’s not going so bad.” 
“Yes? Well, quite good, then. In that case, I apologize for asking this so abruptly…” 
“Yes?” 
“Do you know if Ms. Kisaki is at the restaurant today?” 
“Um, Ms. Kisaki?” Chiho repeated, surprised at the question. 
“Indeed. Because if she is, there is a favor I would like to ask of her. I could always try another day if not, however…” 
“Well, wait just one sec. I’ll check the shift schedule real quick.” Chiho took a notebook out of her bag and extracted the schedule she always had tucked inside it. 
“Umm… Oh, Kisaki’s got last shift today. She’ll be there for closing with Maou. Emi’s still in training, so she’ll probably get off around ten… Ooh, I didn’t realize it was just Maou and Kisaki from ten ’til closing. Maybe they’ll close the café counter early, then. When it’s slow at night, sometimes they keep the upstairs unmanned unless a customer requests it.” 
“I see. One moment, then… Bell, Ms. Sasaki says Ms. Kisaki is on duty.” 
Chiho could hear Ashiya exchange a few words with Suzuno, presumably in the room with him, along with someone else she couldn’t quite identify. 
“Right, my apologies about this, Ms. Sasaki.” 
“No prob.” 
“So if Bell came to pick up you around ten tonight, do you think you’d be able to go out with her?” 
“Huh?” Chiho blinked. 
“God…damn it…” 
Maou, drained by waves of fatigue, was on his knees. 
“Hmph.” 
Emi, meanwhile, puffed her chest out in supreme triumph, staring coldly downward at him. 
It was ten PM at the first-floor counter, with Emi almost free of duty, and she was just about to conduct a postmortem review of her training with Maou and Kisaki. 
“So how was your first day?” a smiling Kisaki asked Emi, even as she noticed Maou’s pathetic act off to the side. 
“Quite fulfilling, thanks. Mr. Maou sure taught me a lot.” 
“Ngh…” 
Maou had no words to counter with. 
Emi had conquered the soft-cream machine. Mastering every item on the dessert menu that relied on ice cream in a single day was abnormal in itself. It wasn’t a machine they were even supposed to cover on the first day. But she tackled it anyway, taking notes when needed and grasping Maou’s instructions almost perfectly. She even successfully took the machine apart for cleaning, with nothing but verbal instructions to rely on. 
“It’s still my first day, though,” she continued, “and there’s a lot to the menu I’m not fully versed in yet. I think I’ll have a lot to learn from Mr. Maou tomorrow, too.” 
“Mm-hmm. And how was it for you, Marko?” 
“Um…” He looked up blankly, eyes turning to Emi’s face for just a single instant. “I mean, frankly… She was perfect. She’s such a quick learner, and with her experience in phone service, she seemed to get along really well with the customers.” 
“True. That was my impression, too. You’re already an expert, kind of.” 
Emi nodded her appreciation. “Thank you very much! I’m glad to hear that.” 
“If you ask me, I think she’ll be ready to handle the register before too long.” 
It was half flattery, half the honest truth from Maou, who hoped to escape the training gauntlet with her as soon as he could. 
“Mmm,” Kisaki replied. “Well, no need to go diving in the deep end, either. I hope you’ll be working just as hard going forward as you did today…or harder, even. Not to gush too much in front of Marko, but you might just surpass his feat of legend someday.” 
“Oh, man…” Maou brought a hand to his head, unexpectedly pierced to the core by this unexpected arrow from his manager. She was playing him like a fiddle, and he knew it. 
The “feat of legend” she referred to was the way Maou got a 100-yen-an-hour pay raise a mere month after wrapping up his training. Having Emi beat that would be more than regrettable to him—it’d be a tragedy. As a MgRonald crewmember, and as Devil King. 
“Well,” Kisaki said, “glad to hear there weren’t any major hitches. Good work.” 
“Thank you very much,” Emi said, smiling as she bowed a bit and made for the break room. 
“Oh, by the way,” Kisaki called at her from behind. “I apologize, Ms. Yusa, but could I speak to you for a moment when you’re done changing?” 
“Sure. What about?” 
“Well, go get changed first. We can talk after that. I have a quick phone call to make, Marko.” 
“Oh…?” 
Maou and Emi exchanged looks with each other before Emi headed toward the staff room again. Kisaki, meanwhile, punched a number into the restaurant phone’s receiver. 
“Hello? Chi? It’s Kisaki. You free right now? Okay. I think we’ll be able to pull this off… Ten minutes? Got it. I’ll be here.” 
“…You were calling Chi? What’s happening in ten minutes?” 
“Oh, well, you’ll see. I know I don’t say this too often, but let’s just hope we don’t get an onrush of customers for a little while.” 
“All…right…?” 
The uncharacteristic statement gave Maou pause. Just long enough of a pause, it turned out, to let Emi return from the break room in her own clothing. 
Kisaki looked at her watch and nodded. “Right on time.” 
“What is?” Emi asked. 
Their manager simply motioned toward the front entrance. Maou and Emi followed her gaze. 
“…Huh?” 
“Uhh?” 
They were both awed by the group that suddenly walked through the automatic door. Chiho was in the lead, followed by Ashiya, Suzuno, Nord, Alas Ramus, Acieth, Emeralda, and Rika—the whole gang. 
“Good evening, Yusa! Hi, Maou!” 
“Pardon us, if you would.” 
“Excuse our rudeness.” 
“Hello…” 
“Magrobbld!” 
“Hi-hiiiii!” 
“Keep up the good worrrk, guys.” 
“Yo! Emi! You made it!” 
All the greetings and praise thrown toward them in unison threw Emi and Maou for a loop. They were even more surprised to see Kisaki walk up to Chiho, like nothing was abnormal about this, and point upstairs. 
“Well, lucky for you but not so lucky for us, there’s nobody on the second floor. I can’t have you hang around for too long, but feel free to take the two tables on the far end.” 
“Sure thing! Thanks for being such a good sport about this!” 
“Hey, you can just pay me back with your next shift, huh?” Kisaki adjusted her visor and turned to Maou and Emi. “…You two head on up too, all right? I can’t run the whole place by myself for too long. Take ’em to the tables on the far side. I’ll run things down here for the time being.” 
“Huh? Really? Eme, and Father, and Rika, even? Why are you…?” 
“Take them…? Ms. Kisaki, what’s going on here…?” 
“Come on, Maou, before anyone else shows up!” 
“You too, Emi! We can’t waste a bunch of your manager’s time.” 
Chiho grabbed the still-dumbfounded Maou’s arm, Rika doing the same with Emi, as they dragged them upstairs and to the two windowside tables at the otherwise-empty café space. 
“All right, Emi, you sit next to Chiho.” 
The two of them were the first to sit. They were both presented with a large, gift-wrapped box—and upon closer inspection, they realized the wrapping had a MgRonald-logo pattern on it. 
Maou spotted it right off. “Wait,” he yelped, “is this…? You guys actually roped Kisaki into doing it here…?” 
“Hey, it’s official MgRonald stuff, okay?” Rika explained. “That’s why the manager said yes to it. C’mon, we can’t waste any time! Ashiya, open it up!” 
“As you wish.” 
He neatly, nimbly undid the wrapping. Inside was a white cardboard box, a slightly sweet scent wafting out from it. Emi, still a little bewildered, watched as Rika grabbed it from the side. 
“Okay, you guys…” 
“Huh? Huh?” 
“Let’s do it!” Chiho gleefully shouted. 
With an equally cheerful squeal, Rika opened it up. 
“Happy birthday, guys!!” 
“…!!!!” Emi gasped, covering her mouth with both hands. 
From out of the box, a simple-looking shortcake appeared. What separated it from the usual grocery-store fare was the disc of white chocolate that topped it, the MgRonald logo and the words “Happy Birthday!” engraved upon it. 
“Chiho, this, this…” 
Emi’s voice was already as wavering as her own psyche at this point. 
“I know our plans kind of went awry,” Chiho said, “and it’s not exactly anyone’s birthday any longer…” She paused, hesitant, then nodded. “But today’s the start of a new journey for you, Yusa, so we all figured, if not now, when?” 
“G-guys…” 
Emi looked around her, not bothering to hide the moisture gathering in her eyes. 
“I mean, whew, when Suzuno called to invite me to this, I was all like, ‘Sure, let’s do it!’ But, like, that was earlier today! Kind of short notice to find a cake like this!” 
“W-wait,” Maou interjected. “Aren’t these only available at MgRonald locations that actually offer birthday parties? Don’t you have to reserve these way in advance?!” 
“Indeed,” Ashiya confirmed. “This is not, strictly speaking, an official MgRonald product. We had a local bakery modify a generic cake for us, and your manager was nice enough to bend the rules a little.” 
“That… You guys…” 
“She agreed to it as long as the cake was branded with the MgRonald logo…and as long as we did something else.” 
“Wh-what?” 
“She said we could borrow this space for half an hour,” Rika interjected again, “as long as each of us ordered a combo meal worth six hundred yen or more.” 
“Oh,” Maou said, still bewildered, as he recalled his training. “Right, everyone at an official birthday party needs to buy a combo, right…?” 
“That,” said Suzuno, “and after checking about the differences in calendars between our worlds with Emeralda, we’ve learned that Emilia’s birthday on Ente Isla occurs one week from today. October the twenty-fifth in this world.” 
“It…does, Bell?” 
“Yeah! And…” Rika lowered her voice a little, ensuring Kisaki couldn’t hear her downstairs. “I asked Emeralda, and she said you’re actually turning eighteen this year? ’Cause, boy, what a surprise! You’re so mature, I never woulda guessed you’re younger than me. But I’ll whack you one if you start actin’ all polite around me, okay?” 
“Rika… Um, thanks. Thank you…!” Tears were already starting to free themselves from Emi’s eyes. “Chiho… I…!” 
“Yusa?” 
Emi hugged the teenage girl next to her, not bothering to wipe the tears from her face. Chiho returned the gesture. “Welcome back home,” she whispered into her ear. “And happy birthday, too.” 
“Th… Thanks…! You too, Chiho!” 
She quietly shed her tears, Chiho’s following soon behind. Nord, looking on, felt his own emotions stir as well. 
“You have been blessed…with good friends, Emilia.” 
“She certainly has,” Emeralda affectionately added. 
“Right! We don’t have much time, so let’s keep it going! Time to give out the presents before the customers downstairs see us!” 
“Oh, um, s-sure, but I, I didn’t get anything for…” 
“Of course you didn’t get anything for Chiho, Emi! This was a surprise! You can worry about that later, okay? Let’s start with the rest of the gang. Suzuno?” 
“Yes. We all selected this today—Nord, Emeralda, Alciel, and myself.” 
“Huh? Ashiya, what are you—ow!” 
“Quit complaaaining,” Emeralda warned, fresh from kicking Maou in the shin, “or else I’ll wad you up and throw you in the garrrbage.” 
“Well, thank you. I wonder what it is… Wait.” Wiping her tears, Emi looked up at Suzuno, a look of realization dawning on her face. “Bell, what are you wearing?” 
“Oh, erm…” 
“Yeah, cute, huh? Me and Chiho chose it for her.” 
“I-I feel it does not look too strange on me, but what do you think?” 
Suzuno, Emi’s present in her arms, was not in her usual Japanese-style dress. Instead, she sported a navy-blue flared skirt, a pair of camel boots, and a navy striped blouse topped with a broad-collared, cream-white sweater. All Western wear. 
“Oh, it’s not strange at all! It’s really cute!” 
“Is… Is it? They told me we would stand out too much if I wore a kimono during this party, so…” She mumbled the words, her face a bit red. “Um, I decided to try this out for the first time… I find this frilly skirt may take some getting used to, but as long as it looks natural, very well… But, but enough of me!” she said, thrusting the box in her hands toward Emi and Chiho. “Here!” 
“Thanks. It really does look good on you.” 
“Enough of that!” 
Emi smiled at the unusually bashful Suzuno and opened the box. 
“Ooh, it’s a photo frame! I like the design on it!” 
In the box was a glass photo frame, blue with a few seagulls around it. It was a joy for Emi to discover. 
“We were unsure what to buy, but it was Alciel’s ingenious idea.” 
“Alciel?” 
“I told you it was better left unsaid,” Ashiya sulked, before realizing that Emi was looking right at him curiously. “…But you are with your father again,” he bluntly stated. “You will be making more memories with him, and I thought you might want something to display them with. That was all I said.” 
“Oh… Yeah. You’re right,” Emi said as she clutched the frame to her chest. 
“We have a matching one for you as well, Chiho. I hope you will enjoy it.” 
“Wow! A matching one?!” 
Chiho removed the wrapping from her own box, revealing a glass photo frame like Emi’s, except done up in pink. 
“Ooh, it really does match!” Emi observed. 
“This is so great! Thanks! I feel kind of bad now, though…” 
“Oh?” 
“I mean, I gotta hand it to Ashiya, I guess…or I guess we were both thinking the same thing.” Bashfully, Chiho presented Emi with her own wrapped package. “I, um, kinda got you a picture frame, too.” 
Her box was a level larger than the one Suzuno had brought. Emi opened it, revealing a metallic frame decorated with enamel and gem-like designs, with a few different compartments for displaying multiple photos. 
“I want you to have a lot of memories around,” Chiho explained, “so I chose that one. I feel bad that it’s the same as Ashiya’s idea, but…” 
“Oh, Chiho… That’s really sweet, though, that you thought of that by yourself. Thank you so much. I’ll keep this someplace special.” 
She placed Chiho’s frame on the table and hugged her once more. 
Next came the night’s star performer. 
“Hee-hee-heeeeee! I was actually thinking about a photo frame, too. Good thing I didn’t go through with it!” 
Rika took out a box, this one notably thicker than the ones before. 
“But when I thought about where’d we be, this popped right into my mind! Check it out, Emi! Here’s what I really feel about you!” 
“Thanks. Can I open it?” 
She accepted the slightly heavy package and opened the lid. Inside was what at first appeared to be a wooden box, with a brass windup knob on one side and a musical note engraved on the lid. 
“It’s a music box?” 
“Sure is! Open it, open it!” 
Popping it open, Emi found a glass sheet covering the inner side of the lid. 
“You can stick a photograph in that panel,” Rika said, leaning back in her chair. 
There was a pause. Then: 
“Uh, so it’s still a photo frame?” 
It was Maou who dared bring it up first. 
“Aw, c’mon! Like, if you think about where Emi is in her life, like, what else is gonna come to mind?” Rika smiled and tapped her head with a finger. “And thanks for the zinger, Maou. It’s still mostly a music box, all right? And check out the title.” 
She pointed at an engraving on the side of box. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, it read. 
“Rika, is that…?” 
“We’d probably get yelled at if we all sang it in here, but I thought it’d be nice if we could still express that in music. Play it once you get back home.” 
Emi found herself having to resist the urge to wind it up and listen to it right there—this piece of music so intertwined with Rika’s own feelings for her. 
“And I got this for Chiho. You won’t see a gift like this from anyone except for me, I guarantee it!” 
“Oh, you have one for me, too?” 
Chiho’s eyes goggled. She must not have expected anything from Rika. 
“Suzuno told me this would be a tandem party for you two, so… Open it up!” 
“O-okay. Thank you… Ah!” 
The box she handed her contained a small perfume bottle. It was engraved with the logo of a famous cosmetic brand, and the name of the scent was, following the night’s theme, “Happy Birthday.” 
“I dunno if you’ll like the scent or not,” Rika explained, sidling up to Chiho’s side, “but you can just treat it as a message of support from me, y’know?” 
“Umm…” a flustered Chiho began. 
“You’re gonna need at least one adult fragrance for your future. Take that perfume and polish up your womanly wiles for the guy of your dreams!” 
“M-Ms. Suzuki!!” 
Chiho fell into a panic, realizing that Rika’s eyes were tilted ever-so-slightly toward Maou. 
“Ooh, Grampa, Grampa! That thing!” 
“Oh, er, yes. Alas Ramus insisted, you see…” 
Now it was Nord and Alas Ramus’s turn. 
“Mommy, Chi-sis, happy birfday!” 
With the well-wishes came a slightly warped piece of drawing paper from Nord. Sizing it up, Emi and Chiho immediately flashed bright smiles. It was a portrait of the two of them, rendered lovingly by Alas Ramus using a wide variety of crayon colors. The two of them stood next to each other, standing atop a field of green in front of some kind of large, brown box—Villa Rosa Sasazuka, no doubt. It was clearly a labor of love, just the sort of thing Alas Ramus loved doing, and it was charming enough to steal the heart of any grown-up in attendance. 
“I suppose she’s a born artist,” Nord said with a laugh. “She drew the same piece several times before she had one she was satisfied with.” 
“Ooh, I want all of ’em.” 
“Me too. Otherwise, Chiho and I are probably gonna fight over this one.” 
Emi took another loving look at the work of art. 
“Guys… Thank you all so much. I’m never gonna forget this day, seriously…” 
“Ohhh, hang on,” interrupted Rika. “Save your thanks for later, Emi. I think someone else still needs to speak up?” 
Emi fell silent, surprised. A little ways from the table, Maou awkwardly stood, his ribs currently getting elbowed by Acieth. “Come on, Maou,” she pleaded. “The thing you chose, before, why not give now?” 
“…Uh-uh. I didn’t know this was gonna happen. I don’t even have it on—” 
“Is this what you are looking for?” Suzuno said, stopping him cold as she produced three small, oblong, gift-wrapped boxes. It instantly made Maou’s face tense. 
“Whoa, did, did you…?” 
“Acieth told me you had purchased something for Chiho and Emilia, Devil King. So I asked Alciel about it. He found these in your modular shelving.” 
“Gehh!” 
“She said you purchased these as souvenirs after Albert and I left you? To make up for matters?” 
“Aciethhhh?!” 
“Oh, come on, Maouuuu!” she shouted as Maou roughly shook her by the shoulders. “You say it yourself, there!” 
It took Suzuno to pull him away from her—by the head—and march him back in front of Emi and Chiho. She shoved the three boxes in his face, a look of supreme satisfaction on her own. “I appreciate the spirit behind the purchase,” she whispered to him, “and thus I will overlook the way you used my money for it.” 
“Ngh…” 
Maou accepted the boxes, and the intention behind her veiled threat. 
“But where did you get these boxed? They were loose when I got home, after we fell in that pond…” 
“Alciel is a skillful demon,” Suzuno replied. “I gave him some cardboard and wrapping paper, and he made these for you.” 
Maou glared at Ashiya. Ashiya took the opportunity to stare into space. 
The boxes, of course, contained a set of three carved wooden spoons, purchased in the outskirts of Heavensky with money borrowed from Suzuno. He had purchased a flower-pattern one for Chiho and a pair decorated with birds for Emi and Alas Ramus, but standing here and being asked to give the last present of the evening made it incredibly awkward for him. He had never imagined in a million years that Suzuno and his other acquaintances would organize such a dramatic event. Compared to the other presents, it felt like there was no real thought, or heartful emotion, to his. 
“…So, um…” 
But it was too late to excuse himself. Maou braced himself and presented the boxes to the two birthday girls. 
“I bought these just in case we ever did this, so… Hope you can use ’em. I got two for you, Emi, so Alas Ramus can have one. I think they’re supposed to bring good luck or something?” 
As a speech, it lacked much in the way of a coherent theme. Emi and Chiho accepted the bluntly offered gifts regardless. 
“Can I open this?” 
“…Uh, yeah? It’s a present,” came the blunt reply. They obeyed him. 
“…Ah…” 
Then, seeing the contents, they both gasped in unison. Rika and Emeralda curiously leaned in from the side. 
“What’s that? …Ooh, that’s nice!” 
“What waaas it? …Ahh. Very cuuute.” 
The onlookers sounded far more enthusiastic about the gifts, these spoons carved from a single piece of wood, than the actual recipients. Chiho was still silent, scrutinizing the pattern on hers—a flower in bloom, with five broad petals—until she sighed. “What a mysterious design… It’s so beautiful.” 
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Emi said, comparing the small differences between the bird patterns in her two spoons. “I don’t see any joints or anything. This was carved straight from one piece, wasn’t it? Did you find this in Efzahan?” 
“Um, yeah… I figured, you know, they’d be useful, so…” 
“They’re so pretty,” Chiho said, “I’d almost feel bad actually using them. Thank you so much, Maou. I’ll take good care of this one, though I might put it on the wall in my room instead.” 
“Sure, um, I’m glad you like it.” 
She flashed him a beaming smile, making him nod and nervously bring a hand to his visor. 
“She’s right,” Emi added, a tad emotional as she took up the two spoons. “I’d prefer to have these on display, too. Thank you. I appreciate it.” 
“…Yeah,” Maou just managed to coax out from his throat. He could feel the stares from Chiho, Suzuno, and Ashiya—each with their own feelings about his reaction, no doubt. 
“Well,” Rika said as she checked her watch, “I hate to rain on the parade, but we better wrap this up. We’re already five minutes over, so we ought to clean up and order our meals before the manager gets all snippy. We can do the whole cake-and-candles thing at home, but for dinner, it’s gonna be Maggie’s or nothing, guys! Oh, and have fun with the rest of your shift, Maou!” 
“Yeah, uh, don’t wait up for me.” 

For once, Maou appreciated Rika butting her nose in on matters. If Emi gave him any more of that heartfelt emotion, he wouldn’t have been able to take it. 
By the time they had the cake back in the box, figured out exactly how Emi and Chiho would carry their presents home, ordered their combo meals and left, it was already past eleven. Maou was the only crewmember on front-end duty, Kisaki handling closing procedures. 
“Um, thanks for being so generous with ’em,” he said, softly. 
“Mm,” Kisaki nodded, not bothering to turn around. “Well, anything to boost our sales during dead times like these. It helped both of us out. It’s not like they were eating outside food or anything.” 
“True, but…” 
“Oh, but there is something I should say.” 
“Yes?” 
Kisaki, despite her disaffectation for the party, turned around to face Maou. 
“I’m glad you have such a wide variety of friends of the opposite sex…” 
“Yes?” 
She sharpened her eyes, almost glaring at Maou. 
“But don’t do anything that’ll make Chi or Ms. Yusa stab you in the back, all right? Because you’re way too rough on the women around you…or should I say, it’s like you think you can get away with anything around them…” 
“Huh?!” 
“That’s all. Back to work.” 
“No, wait, um, Ms. Kisaki? I think there might be a pretty big misunderstanding here, but it’s really not like that, I promise!” 
“Enough. Looking at you, I’m starting to think Kawatchi has a point.” 
“What’d he say?!” 
“Ask him if you want. Something tells me you’re gonna be in the doghouse with the male crewmembers for a while.” 
“Oh, come onnnn!” 
“Hey, you reap what you sow.” 
“I didn’t sow anything!!” 
The devil’s scream roared from the Hatagaya MgRonald, lit by a dazzling full moon, before echoing into the city nightscape. 
He was a spent man as he pedaled Dullahan II across the Sasazuka neighborhood. 
“I’ve never had…a more tiring shift…” 
Simply being Emi’s trainer was enough of an emotional strain. Then it was capped off by that surprise birthday party. Sure, they had talked about a party for Chiho and Emi long ago, and Maou had certainly wanted to celebrate Chiho’s birthday and make Emi seethe over how much she owed him for the thought. But all that had assumed Maou would play an active part, not simply be a passive participant like this. It was extremely painful to deal with. 
And what’s more, it ended with: 
Thank you. I appreciate it. 
Before now, it would have been perfectly in-character for Emi to crush any gift from Maou in a clasped fist, smashing it to atoms. 
“What is she even trying to do?!” 
She swore she hadn’t forgiven him, but now she was obviously opening her heart to him. More than ever before. And Maou wasn’t sure how to approach that. Before now, he figured he could just handle her like always. But now, his thoughts turned elsewhere. 
“What does ‘like always’ even mean?” 
Looking back, Maou had never actively encouraged Emi to do much of anything. Emi kept entangling herself in his life—“you’re my enemy” this, “I have to monitor you” that—but Maou had never bothered trying to kick her out, or even figure out what she was doing. In fact, he didn’t even know where she lived. He knew it was an apartment in Eifukucho, but he didn’t know the address, and he never entertained the idea of finding out. 
He kept telling Emi to “go away” whenever she came to his apartment or workplace, but now it seemed like he accepted her presence in his life all too easily. She wasn’t any foe he could defeat in a clash of force, and besides, she never even posed any real threat to his life. And ever since Alas Ramus came along and deepened the links between them in their daily lives, Emi’s presence began to seem all the more natural. 
So for Maou and Emi’s relationship, what “like always” really meant was Maou accepting everything Emi said and did. 
“What is the deal with me? I gotta chill out.” 
“Why are you whining, there?” 
Maou was on the side of the road when he heard the voice from above. 
“…And what are you doing? That’s kind of dangerous,” he sniffed as he looked up. In the midst of all his musing, he must have finally reached his apartment. 
“No, not dangerous. Who you think I am? I could land on head, no injury.” 
There, on the roof of Villa Rosa Sasazuka, Acieth waved at Maou as she took in the night sky, the nearby light pollution making only the brightest of stars visible. 
“I don’t care if you’re a demon or the Hero. If someone’s up there, you warn them. That’s it.” Maou shrugged and looked at the building. “Wait, where’s Emi…?” 
“All went home. Chiho has school; Rika has work. Emi took my sister home, too.” 
That was a relief to Maou. He checked his watch—it was near one in the morning. Not even Chiho could get away with staying at Suzuno’s apartment on consecutive days. 
“So, what do you mutter and groan about?” 
“Shhh. Keep it down.” 
Acieth was shouting a little, from her perch up on the roof. Maou worried about her waking Suzuno and Nord, not to mention the rest of the neighborhood. 
“No. You just come up here. Hup!” 
“Huh? Wh-whoa!” 
The next moment, before he could even lower the kickstand on Dullahan II, Maou was being lifted into the air. 
“Over here. Hup!” 
Acieth expertly manipulated Maou in the air, not letting him resist for a moment as she plunked him down next to her, atop the rugged tiles. 
“Y-you scared me there…” 
“You are Devil King. Flying this much, it should not scare you.” 
“Anyone would be scared, getting dragged around like that!” 
He knew it wasn’t the kind of protest Acieth would bother acknowledging. 
“So, what do you groan about? Talk to me about anything.” 
“I’m not desperate enough to ask you of all people for advice.” 
“Mm? Are you making the fun of me?” 
“You know what I mean. So butt out. Sometimes, a man just wants to ponder over stuff by himself.” 
“Oh, how does saying go…? ‘Lame minds think alike’?” 
“Wow, way to change a single word to make it sting for me, huh?” Maou sighed and reclined backward. Or tried to. The unbending tiles on the steeply sloped roof convinced him otherwise. “It’s kind of…a social issue I’m grappling with.” 
“Mm? What? Finally decided you will marry Chiho?” 
Maou almost fell off the roof entirely. “Who’s been blowing that into your mind?!!” 
“Oh, when we ate, Rika said you were cruel, cruel man, so…” 
“Dude, you gotta take whatever that gossip tells you with a grain of salt, all right?!” 
“A grain? So, not marry, but she will be concubine to you, or—ow!” 
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. Where’d you even learn that word, anyway? That’s not funny!” 
“But that not mean you can punch me!” protested Acieth, rubbing the back of her head as Maou gritted his teeth at her. 
“I’m not talking to you about it, all right? If I do, you’re gonna twist the story around so much, people are gonna think the sun’s rising from the west starting tomorrow.” 
“Ohhh, I’m sorry. I can listen seriously, okaaaay?” 
“Your attitude isn’t exactly convincing me, y’know! And what about you? What’re you doing up here, late at night?” 
“Huh? Oh, yes, the moon is bright tonight, so I look at the sky.” 
“The sky?” 
“Yes. I like looking at the sky in night. But Mikitty’s house, the roof is hard to sit on. So, me, I pick here tonight.” 
“Oh. Great. Just please don’t fly over to anybody else’s roof, all right?” 
Maou winced at all the emergency calls Acieth would generate, wandering from rooftop to rooftop. 
“Ooh, I won’t! I am not stupid.” 
That was news to Maou, but following up on it would just rile her up more, so he filed it away in his mind. 
“Maou, you were thinking the… Something very rude. Yes?” 
“Man, you’ve got the instincts of a wild animal. But what about you?” 
“What?” 
“Why’d you pull me up here, anyway? You got something to talk about?” 
“Mmm… Talk, maybe, or I think I should tell you?” 
“Tell me?” 
“Yeah.” Acieth lowered her eyebrows a bit as she looked at the moon. “Gabriel, he woke up. Our ‘discussion’ tomorrow, I don’t think he can come, but…” 
“…Huh.” Maou casually nodded at her. “So he’s still alive?” 
“Ooh? Just…it normal thing to you?” 
“Well, ‘normal,’ I mean… I don’t have much of any other reaction.” 
Gabriel, guardian of the Yesod Sephirah that birthed Alas Ramus and Acieth, had been taken to Japan under Shiba’s orders. By the end of the battle in Efzahan and everything else that transpired, he had to be carried over unconscious—a state he had remained in for much longer than Nord, apparently. Maou couldn’t say for sure, since unlike Nord, he had holed up inside Shiba’s house the entire time; nobody in the apartment building had ever seen him. The demons had no idea how he was doing, and they didn’t particularly care to know. They just figured Shiba didn’t want to leave him for dead, and considering she had more power than even Maou and Emi could fathom, placing him under her care was about the safest solution they could think of for them all. 
“I wish I can send him six feet under again, one more time!” 
“Um, you’d have to do it for the first time before that, if you don’t mind my saying.” 
As always, Acieth was oddly hostile toward the angels. Maou was impressed Shiba could wrangle both her and Gabriel under the same roof. 
“Yeah,” she said, “Mikitty stopped me. Many times.” 
“She had to do something to stop you?” 
“You see! What he did to us. We…” Acieth scowled, then balled herself up a little on the roof. “Not just me and my sister. Erone, and Malkuth, and…everyone…” 
“Acieth…?” 
“Maou.” 
“Hmm?” 
“What you worry about, I do not know. But talk about it, while we can, still.” 
“Mm…” 
“Or else, maybe we go away from each other, like me and my sister. For ever, and ever, and evvvvvvver. So, while we can, still.” 
“…Yeah.” 
Tomorrow was the day Shiba would gather them all together and give them the whole truth. He had no idea why she wanted to do this around Urushihara’s hospital bed, but he assumed they’d know soon enough. And there was that other thought rolling around in his head—the thought that he’d have to reveal some of his own secrets. 
“You’ve…been getting to talk with Alas Ramus?” 
“…Yeah. Just chat. In Pop’s room.” 
“Oh.” 
Now Maou was gently patting Acieth, in the spot where he’d socked her before. 
“You know, if you’ve been separated for that long, I’m sure you’ve got a lot more to talk about than what you could cover in a week. So take your time with her, okay? Next time something happens to you guys, me and Emi’ll step up to protect you.” 
“Mm…” 
Acieth allowed this round of head-patting, but her eyes were sad as she turned toward him. 
“Before…” 
“Hm?” 
“Before, I think…somebody say same thing as you, Maou.” 
“The same thing?” 
“Yeah. It is very long time before, so I do not remember.” 
Acieth slowly pushed Maou’s hand away, stood up, and gently floated down to the apartment’s front yard. 
“I am glad that we speak. See you tomorrow.” 
“Uh, sure… Whoa! Wait a sec, Acieth!” 
As the girl waved softly at him and walked back to Shiba’s house, Maou fell into a sudden panic. Acieth paid it no attention as she walked off. Perhaps he was too far up to be heard. 
“Um, how am I supposed to get down…?” 
His demonic power was in a nice, neat cube in his closet, but activating it out of the blue might affect Suzuno and Nord in unpredictable ways. Even if it didn’t, the sheer force of it could wake them up, and he’d hear no end of it in the morning. 
“Geez, I hope I can do this…” 
Gingerly, he leaned over the edge of the roof, checking the range between him and the worryingly narrow landing in front of the stairway below. Ever so softly, he lowered himself down, attempting to land in the hallway corridor feet first. 
“What are you doing, my liege?” 
“Whoahh!!” 
Instead, a sudden query from below startled him. His foot slipped, and he just barely managed to grab on to the roof’s edge. 
“You were awake, Ashiya? Don’t scare me like that!” 
He looked to his side to find a sleepy-eyed Ashiya poking his head out the Room 201 window. 
“You are the one scaring me, if anything. I was wondering what that creaking from the roof was… I never expected Your Demonic Highness would do something as sentimental as climb up to look at the night sky, you see.” 
“That’s seriously not what this is, but could you lend me a hand, already?!” 
“Let go, my liege.” 
“Huhh?!” 
“You are just a few inches above the stairs.” 
“I-I am? You’re not lying to me? Well, here I go. If I hurt myself, it’s your fault, all right?” 
“…Yes, my liege.” 
“Oof… Oh! Wow, you scared me.” 
The feeling of terra firma made Maou breathe a sigh of relief. To Ashiya, however, the sight of his master and leader acting too nervous to make a drop of three or four inches without his encouragement made him sigh for different reasons. 
“What is the meaning of this? Has working with Emilia driven you to such deep depths of depression?” 
“Well, yeah! I am depressed! Like never before! I’ve never been at such an impasse, like… I don’t know what to do!” 
“Ah…” 
“I mean, if we’re gonna do it like this, you go apply to MgRonald, too! And we’ll get Suzuno and Nord and Acieth in there, and then it’ll be staffed by nothin’ but Ente Islans! Kisaki’s gonna be the next queen of our world!” 
“There is no need for such despair, my liege. What troubles you, exactly?” 
“Nothing! I’m just tired! And hungry! Feed me!” 
Maou made for the doorway, storming his way down the corridor. 
“Your Demonic Highness, please pick your bicycle up off the ground first.” 
Ashiya’s finger was pointed at Dullahan II, lying on the ground right where Acieth made Maou abandon it. He scowled as he went back downstairs. 
“I will heat up a teriyaki burger and some fries for you. We can discuss matters later.” 
“You bought a combo for me, too?! Don’t heat up the burger! It’ll make the lettuce all limp! I am the Devil King! Why does the Devil King have to hem and haw over stupid crap like this? Damn it!” 
Despite all his whining, Maou still carefully parked his bicycle upright before climbing the stairs. 
It figured—the night before their big “discussion,” and Maou was likely to be ranting well into the night. Ashiya sighed. 
 
Inside his white-walled hospital room, where the color of the sun and the ambient temperature suggested autumn’s arrival, Hanzou Urushihara was in his element, his face bathed in the pale blue light from his computer display—until he grimaced in pain. 
He recalled the evening that Maou, Suzuno, and Acieth traveled to Ente Isla from the National Museum of Western Art. He had noticed that Chiho was attempting to probe some of Earth and Ente Isla’s mysteries with Amane Ohguro, niece of their landlord Miki Shiba and proprietor of the Ohguro-ya snack shop on the Choshi beach. The snippets he could pick up at the time indicated that Chiho wanted him to eavesdrop from Room 201, so he’d thought he’d lend a hand for a change—and this was what he’d gotten for it. 
A shock like nothing he ever felt before had coursed across his body—not once, but twice. He remembered his state of semiconsciousness, someone barging into his room soon afterward. He still had the wits, apparently, to ask this figure to take his PC along with him. Perhaps he was instinctually bonded to the thing by now. 
“So what’s the big problem? This oughta be the ideal environment for someone like you, Urushihara.” 
“And how is that?” the fallen angel lashed out at Amane Ohguro, seated in a chair by his bed and watching a travel program she’d picked on the room’s TV. 
“Well, how do you think? It’s your own room. Nobody to bother you. No Maou and Ashiya telling you to get a job. Your meals are all taken care of. For an unemployed bum like you, what more could you ask for?” 
“Um, I’ve got you bothering me on a daily basis, the food’s all bland and boring, and the Net reception from here sucks, man! Also, I know you ain’t the only one, but you got the wrong idea about my Professional Bum lifestyle, too.” 
“Wrong how?” Amane asked, propping her chair back on two legs like a child as her eyes stayed on the TV. “You looking for some more luxury?” 
“No. The thing about bums like me, or your garden-variety shut-ins, is that they always have the right to go outside whenever they want, but they choose not to. They know in their minds that there’s always the choice to open that door.” 
“Ohh? So when you watch a travel program like this, do y’ever feel like going outside, or someplace far away?” 
“No, dudette. I never want to go out, but I don’t like being cooped up, either.” 
“Wow. And here I thought you were weird already. You have to be one of the most self-centered guys I’ve ever met! It’s honestly impressive.” 
“Hey, that’s who I am.” 
“Besides, I should be pretty offended, shouldn’t I? You’re making it sound like I’m holding you captive in your hospital bed.” 
Urushihara shut his computer down, the flagging Net connection too much to contend with any longer. “You pretty much are, aren’t you?!” he growled at the woman’s turned back. “I told you I wanna go home, dudette! But that’s fine! I don’t care if I can’t! I look like this now, and—all right, I guess me eavesdropping on you and Chiho Sasaki was bad, for some reason! But I’ve asked you a million times—who the hell are you guys?! What would’ve been so, like, catastrophic for me to listen in on?!” 
“Mmm, I already told you, didn’t I? I’m the daughter of Binah, and my aunt Mikitty is kind of the same thing as Alas Ramus. And, Urushihara, what you heard or didn’t hear doesn’t really matter, all right?” 
“I dunno about you, lady, but apart from looking more or less like human females, I really don’t think Alas Ramus and our landlord are the same at all!” 
“Hmmm? And what makes us so different, may I ask?” 
“Daaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?!!” 
The door opened right as Urushihara was harping on Amane, making him literally leap out of bed. 
“Um, are…are you all right, Urushihara?” 
He had fallen to the floor, fully clearing the bed’s side rails. Amane tried to prop him up, but he clung to her instead, his body erupting into spasms. 
“You, you, you didn’t say she’d show up today!!” 
“Oh, did I forget to mention it?” 
“Nobody told me, dude!!” 
“Er, Amane…” 
“No! No, I definitely told him! I’m pretty certain that I did! About three days ago!” 
The stentorian voice belonged to Miki Shiba. The tone of it put Amane into self-defense mode as she dragged Urushihara back into bed. 
“Ah. Well, perhaps you muttered it under your breath while discussing some other subject, and he missed it. How are you feeling, Urushihara?” 
“Um… Good? Until you showed up,” he managed to gather enough breath to reply. His eyes were unfocused, unable to look directly at Shiba. “Y’know, I used to think it was rude of ’em, but I think I know why Maou and Ashiya said they couldn’t look you in the eye. Like, I learned the hard way, dude.” 
“I will take that as a compliment of my womanly charms, thank you.” 
“Ooof…” 
Nothing ever seemed to faze Shiba. To Urushihara, it was no longer any joke. The first time he set eyes upon her photograph, he assumed his demon cohorts were just grossed out by their landlord, this corpulent woman with a penchant for wild clothing and wilder behavior. But when he laid eyes upon the real thing, “grossed out” didn’t begin to describe it. Actual changes occurred to his body. Dizziness, and palpitations—but something even beyond that. It felt like simply being in the same room with her was making his most vital strengths stream out of him. 
“Well, everyone should be here shortly, so I thought I should alert you first.” 
“Everyone…?” 
“Indeed. Maou, and everyone.” 
“Whoa! They’re back here?!” 
His eyes shot open. Then he sneered at Amane next to him. 
“Ummm…” 
Amane averted her own eyes, attempting to escape from Urushihara’s gaze. She seemed one step away from sticking her fingers in her ears and saying, “La-la-la, can’t hear you…” 
“Regardless,” Shiba continued, “once we are all together, I’ll have a few things to say to you all. About the Sephirah, and Sephirot, and also about your current state, Urushihara.” 
“My…” 
Urushihara shifted his gaze from Amane and climbed out of bed. He looked at the mirror above the washbasin in one corner of the room and winced. 
“Yeah, they’re probably gonna be pretty freaked out, fellas… Urp.” 
As he bemoaned his looks once more, a light wave of nausea crossed his stomach. 
 
Maou, Chiho, Emi, Alas Ramus, Ashiya, Suzuno, Emeralda, Acieth, and Nord all filed out of the three taxis Shiba had hailed for them. Chiho and Maou looked up at the appointed site. Then they turned to each other. 
“This is it?” 
“Yeah…” 
They seemed just as surprised as Emi, Ashiya, and Suzuno behind them. 
“Is this…a coincidence?” Emi asked. 
“I sincerely hope so.” 
“No, but is there any other explanation?” 
“What is the matterrrr, people?” 
“Is this big concern? Or?” 
“There something in this hospital?” 
Emeralda, Acieth and Nord looked on at the other five, heads cocked in surprise. It took Alas Ramus to finally come out with the truth. 
“I been here befo’!” 
The building loomed large even in her toddler memory. 
Shiba and Amane had taken Urushihara to the Seikai University Hospital in Tokyo, the very place Chiho was admitted after her case of demonic-force poisoning. Chiho, still a bit bewildered, took the lead as they entered this familiar site. Soon, they all stood in front of a certain numbered room. 
“Here he is.” 
“Oh, dear, what will we do if she bills us for this…?” 
It was a fairly long distance between the door Chiho pointed out and the adjacent sickroom. A very big room for housing a single patient. No matter how much Shiba assured them not to worry about it, the ominous possibilities made Ashiya sicker with every passing second. 
“I have heard,” he observed, “of hospital rooms where you have access to television, computers, cell phones, even personal showers.” 
“Damn. That’s better than our place.” 
Maou and Ashiya exchanged nervous looks before drumming up their resolve and knocking on the door. 
“Come in.” 
“Nhg…” 
They heard Shiba’s voice on the other side—and it only made them feel sicker. “Will you just open it?” Emi whined. They did, although they needed another deep breath first. 
The room was brightly lit by the outside sun. It contained a bed, larger than the one Chiho had been assigned, and the moment they saw the peeved-looking person sitting on it, everyone but Nord froze in place. 
“…Dude, what’s with that reaction?” Urushihara muttered, seeing the exact response he had expected from Maou and the others. 
“Oh, no, um…” Maou stammered, looking toward Ashiya for support. 
“What in the…?” Ashiya chimed in, similarly unable to offer a complete thought. 
“Is this a joke?” Suzuno turned to Emi. “Is Lucifer making light of us again?” 
Emi shook her head. “Kind of a long way to go for a joke, isn’t it?” 
“Indeed,” Emeralda added, hand against her chin, “this is not quiiite the Lucifer I am familiarrr with…” 
“Wuss’ wrong, Lushiferr?” Alas Ramus asked as Acieth gave a look of supreme discomfort to Urushihara. 
“Yes. Rough joke, yes.” 
Urushihara stared back at Acieth, just as frustrated about the rough treatment. 
“You think I’d come up with a joke like this by myself?” 
“So, what, then? Because this, it very poor taste!” 
“Ask our landlord, dude,” he replied, motioning toward the calm, composed Shiba by his bed. “It’s not like I asked for this!” 
“Um, no, but really, Urushihara, what happened?” 
Chiho raised a wary finger toward him. 
“The…color of your hair…?” 
The color of Urushihara’s hair had changed to something nobody was familiar with. Except—they were familiar with it, but Urushihara had never sported anything like it. 

“You think I’m taking this well either, guys? I didn’t even do anything, and now look!” 
It was a sheer, almost transparent shade of bluish silver. The exact shade Emilia the Hero sported when wielding her fully powered Better Half—a hue shared with the archangels Sariel or Gabriel. It was something close to that. 
“This…is the Great Demon General Lucifer?” 
Nord, not being familiar with Urushihara, was the only one who kept a cool head. 
“No,” Ashiya countered. “This is someone else.” 
“Dude, Ashiya! Get real, man! And who’s that other guy you’re with? And Emeralda Etuva, too… What’s going on?!” 
He had valid complaints, but now didn’t seem to be the right time for introductions. 
“I believe,” Shiba began, “the change in hair color was due to my influence upon him. The human side of his essence must have had a major reaction to my presence. Once he is no longer under my influence, he should return to normal over time.” 
Whether she meant it as a metaphor or not, Urushihara refused to admit that he and Miki Shiba had any sort of intimate connection that triggered this. Judging by the looks on their faces, Maou and Ashiya were thinking the same thing. 
“Regardless,” she continued, quieting the room down, “now that you’re all here, I think it’s time for all of us to really open up to each other. I should be able to explain the full reason behind the hair transformation along the way.” 
The appeal to calm made Chiho look all the more shocked. “Chiho?” Emi asked, noticing her. 
She shook her head in response. “I’m fine.” 
“You are? You don’t look too good…” 
“No, it’s not that,” Chiho said, her eyes brooding as she sized Emi up. “But… I believe in you, okay? And Maou, too.” 
“Oh? Yeah…” 
Emi fell silent, unsure what this meant. But with Chiho not offering anything further, she turned her eyes back to Shiba. 
“Now,” the landlord said, walking from the bed to the rest of the group, “as you all know, we have a large number of people here from, shall we say, other worlds.” 
Maou and Ashiya got out of her way, attempting to evade her. She ignored them, tracing a path straight toward Acieth and Emi instead. 
“…Yessss?” 
Or, to be exact, straight toward Alas Ramus. The child giggled a little, the sensation of Shiba’s pudgy fingers caressing her hair perhaps making her ticklish. But the landlord’s face in front of hers made Emi nervous—just like Chiho before. She looked at Chiho again, only to find her holding her breath, as if knowing what would come next. 
“If you turn your eyes to history, you will find that humans from different worlds interacting with each other is not a rare thing at all. Figuratively, at least, walking to a different nation, or sailing to a different continent, can safely fall under the same umbrella, you could say. What all of you have done is simply the same concept at a larger scale. As I have stated before, the presence of Maou and his friends here in Japan, or Chiho Sasaki in Maou’s home of Ente Isla for that matter, is not at all an issue.” 
But everyone in the room knew what came after that. The atmosphere, and her eyes, told the whole story. 
“However… In the case of these two, and these two alone, we must have them return as quickly as we possibly can.” 
“These two…?” Maou ventured, voice strained by the premonition in his mind. 
“Yes,” Shiba replied. “Alas Ramus and Acieth Alla. The presence of these two personifications of Yesod, the Sephirah of Ente Isla, poses an extreme danger to the humans that call Ente Isla home.” 
“Why is that?” a bewildered Suzuno asked. “It is said that Yesod is the jewel that forms the very core of its world, but these two have spent eons as disparate fragments, scattered across the realm, and Ente Isla has never suffered from it.” 
A while back, when Maou and the others were arguing over whether Alas Ramus should be returned to Yesod guardian Gabriel, Suzuno was the first one to question the authenticity of the Yesod legend. Even if a single precious jewel could form the foundation for an entire world, it had no power to take it away after the fact. If Yesod, which held governance over the moon, were to vanish, would that mean the moon goes, too? Would silver, its associated color, simply disappear? No; that was silly. That was Suzuno’s basic argument against returning the child. 
“It has never suffered, you say, Ms. Kamazuki?” 
“Um…” 
But the full bore of Shiba’s gaze upon her made Suzuno unable to plead her case further. 
“Then what of your powers?” 
“M-my powers?” Suzuno looked down at herself. 
“Amane and Chiho Sasaki told me themselves. You were gravely wounded after your battle against the demons of another world, and yet you were fully healed after just three days.” 
“Yes, because of the healing skills derived from my holy force…” 
“Then let me ask you, Ms. Kamazuki. Have you ever seen such powers in Japan, or anywhere else on Earth? The power to heal a gash that almost split your body in two…in seventy-two hours? If Chiho Sasaki here sustained a similar injury, I imagine she would require round-the-clock care for a month, just to keep her alive.” 
“And what of it?” 
“You fail to see my point?” Shiba turned back toward Suzuno. “The very ‘healing skills’ you speak of are part of the problem.” 
“…Pardon?” 
“I am not versed in the history of your world, this Ente Isla. But as far as I have heard from Chiho Sasaki and Nord, it is home to a fairly mature civilization and teems with a great number of people. And yet, powers like those you have are still considered a given in that world. If these children, these Sephirah, were operating correctly in Ente Isla, that could never be the case.” 
“Um, what do you meeean?” Emeralda nervously asked. “Because as far as I can tell, Lady Shibaaa, you are suggesting that ‘holy forrrce’ in itself is something that should never even exiiist.” 
Shiba gave her a casual nod. “And not only that,” she continued, sizing up everyone in the room. “The fact that ‘holy force’ and ‘demonic force’ are still such overpowering presences across your world hardly strikes me as something beneficial to the Ente Islans.” 
“What are you talking about?! Are you saying this jewel is balancing the world in some way? That it would fall apart if we lost it?” 
“Ms. Kamazuki, you have to listen to me. I do not remember saying that Ente Isla—the world itself—is in any danger.” 
“…What?” 
“The only danger that losing the Sephirah and allowing holy and demonic force to continue existing…applies to you. The human race.” 
“The human…?” 
Suzuno was still not fully aware of Shiba’s point. She turned to Emi, then Emeralda, then Nord, then to Ashiya and Urushihara and Maou and even Chiho for support. They all gave her confused looks and shakes of the head. 
“No matter what state its Sephirah is in, the seas, the skies, the lands, and all the plants and animals of Ente Isla will not be affected at all. Sephirot and the Sephirah only become involved when humans enter the picture. And if Alas Ramus and Acieth Alla do not return to their rightful places, it will spell the extinction of the human race from Ente Isla, in the not-too-distant future.” 
Considering the portent of her message, the way she put it so flatly, in her matter-of-fact way, made it a little hard to grasp for the Ente Islans in the room who’d be the most affected. 
“Of course, by the ‘future,’ I am not talking about tomorrow or the day after that. By the time all of you live out your natural lives, it may seem like the people of Ente Isla have not been affected by anything at all. But once one hundred years pass, or two hundred, I can no longer make any guarantees.” 
“O-one hundred years?!” 
It was such a long time for someone to live. So many changes could take place in that time. But from the perspective of civilized history, it was all too short. Especially among the demons in the room, whose lifespans were measured more in terms of millennia than centuries. 
“Um, Ms. Shiba,” Ashiya hesitantly replied, “it seems preposterous to me that every human on Ente Isla will perish in a mere century…” 
Shiba gave him a slight nod. “I imagine so, yes. But with the current state of things, it is an open question whether it could last five…more like three centuries, if that. If a giant meteor were to hit the planet, that would be another story, but even if there was no natural disaster like that…as long as people still use holy and demonic force like this, the humans of Ente Isla have no future. Slowly but surely, their numbers will dwindle, and then they will perish, unable to do anything to halt it.” 
“What do you mean by that?” Emi boldly asked, as the rest of them were left spellbound by Shiba’s doomsday scenario. “I’m not just going to smile and hand Alas Ramus back unless I know how her Sephirah and our people are actually connected. She and Acieth are…a treasure to me. To everyone in this room. To them, ‘where they were’ means the heavens above Ente Isla. The home of a pack of angels who think nothing of their fates, or the fates of anyone else on our planet. I can’t let these girls go back there.” 
“Ah, yes, about the angels. That man, Gabriel, woke up the other day.” 
“Gabriel did?” 
“Yes. And he had some rather distressing news.” Shiba breathed out a light sigh. “He attempted to flee back to heaven the moment he awoke. It happened so suddenly that I almost lost hold of him…but thanks to what, for him, was rather unhappy news, he failed to escape.” 
“Unhappy news?” 
Maou and Ashiya eyed each other. Neither could think of anything unhappier than being in Shiba’s house, under her personal care, although they both thought it best not to mention that. 
“He said that the ‘heaven’ of Ente Isla—the place that Alas Ramus and Acieth need to return to—has been closed off. It no longer accepts any outside contact, and no Gate can reach it at present. Perhaps they have given up on these children so much that they’ve cut them out of the picture.” 
“Closed off…? Come to think of it, something has been bothering me a little.” Emi turned toward Maou. “Devil King?” 
“Hmm?” 
“Where are the demon realms?” 
“…Uh?” he replied, as if being asked the stupidest question of his life. “Are you serious?” 
“What? Of course I am.” Emi sullenly glared at him. “Is it under Ente Isla, like how the typical heaven-and-hell diagram works? Or is it a different planet, like Earth…?” 
“Don’t be stupid. You really didn’t know?” 
Maou gave Ashiya and Urushihara a perplexed look. They both shrugged. 
“Well, admittedly, my liege, I do not believe we ever spelled out the location to anyone.” 
“Yeah, not like anyone asked!” 
“Huh. Guess not. Well, not that it matters, but…it’s the moon.” 
“What?” Emi gasped. Chiho, next to her, balled up her fists a little, without anyone noticing. 
“Whaddaya mean, what? I said, the moon. The red one you can see from Ente Isla? That’s where the demon realms are.” 
“The… The moon?!” Suzuno shouted. “Then…” 
“Yeah, heaven’s on the blue one,” Urushihara blurted out. 
“Another world, indeed!” Shiba remarked as she opened the curtains blocking the window. Light from outside filled the room, revealing a view of the tall buildings around Seikai University Hospital, thrusting into the skies around Yoyogi. 
“Neither the Earth, nor Ente Isla, nor the realm where one may find the tree of Sephirot, are located in any alternate dimension or timeline.” 
She spread an arm toward the sunny view, taking in the skies of Tokyo. 
“Earth and Ente Isla are simply two planets floating in space, connected by the skies between them, brimming with humanity.” 
“…They are…?” 
Emi sighed. It was a thought that had vaguely existed in her mind ever since she arrived in Japan. She hadn’t gone as far as Acieth did, visiting observatories and studying amateur astronomy and so on, but she had learned well enough that the Earth was just one of many planets spinning in space. The fact the Earth was round, along with things like the law of gravity, she naturally picked up on from TV, movies, and the Internet. 
But what about her own world? It had people who looked just the same as those here, a perfectly breathable atmosphere, and thousands of stars in the night sky. It didn’t take her long to conclude that Ente Isla was another round planet, just like Earth. 
Not even this, however, prepared her to think that heaven, and the demon realms, were on Ente Isla’s moons. The news didn’t particularly change things around her. It took the vague concept of “another world” and gave it a concrete definition, but it didn’t mean she’d be taking a train or plane between Earth and Ente Isla anytime soon. 
On the other hand, the news that not even a Gate could get one inside heaven almost seemed like good news to her, Gabriel’s perspective notwithstanding. The heavens had done nothing but consistently meddle with her and Alas Ramus, and now they had excused themselves from the party. But Shiba remained grim. 
“In order for the Sephirah to function properly, all of them must be together. By what Acieth tells me, Yesod, and Yesod alone, has been separated from the rest of the Sephirah for centuries. I could not say what kind of ill effect this has had on them.” 
“The other Sephirah…” 
Ashiya’s whisper reminded Maou of Erone, the personification of the Sephirah known as Gevurah. He was serving the heavens, it seemed, but between Acieth and the guardian angel Camael who was with him, this was no standard master-and-servant relationship. Ashiya was the only one to make contact with him during the battle in Efzahan, and now his arms were crossed before Shiba. 
“This ‘ill effect’ you speak of…?” 
“I cannot say. The effect of Yesod’s absence has already manifested itself in the form of ‘holy magic,’ but I cannot provide any more guidance than that unless I see for myself. What I can see, however, is that there is nothing we can do about it. I will be forced to leave it all up to you instead.” 
“You can’t do anything…?” 
Maou winced. All that exposition, and then Shiba just dropped everything into their own laps. 
“Well, whaddaya want?” Amane said, stepping in. “Aunt Mikitty is the Sephirah of Earth. She’s only supposed to be using her powers for people over here.” 
“The Sephirah…?” Maou said, voice betraying a twinge of disbelief. “Is it true, by the way? Like, you’re the same as Alas Ramus and Acieth?” 
Shiba casually nodded at him. “I am not part of Yesod myself, and there may be some slight differences in my role from other Sephirah, but…” 
“Then may I ask,” Suzuno said, “which Sephirah you are?” 
If she knew which of the ten Sephirah Shiba had been born from, there would be no easier way to verify this story. But Shiba’s reply was literally one step beyond what she anticipated. 
“I am the eleventh Sephirah.” 
“…Eleventh?” 
Suzuno blinked. This number wasn’t in her knowledge. As the scriptures put it, there were ten Sephirah forming the cores of worlds. 
“…I am not aware of an eleventh. That, if anything, could be the illest wind of all affecting Ente Isla. I believe Acieth was unaware of this, as well.” 
“I don’t know what is not there,” Acieth indifferently replied. 
But someone else in the room reacted to the number in quite a different way. 
“The eleventh Sephirah… Huh. I think someone told me about that…” 
“Urushihara?” 
“Oh, yeah, I remember,” he said, as if recalling what he had for dinner last night. “Satan told me.” 
“Huh? Me?” Maou stammered. “Did I ever talk to you about that? And not to Camio or someone?” 
The Devil King had himself only learned the Sephirah tale from Camio, his current Devil Regent, and he couldn’t remember how long ago it had happened. He was later able to supplant this information with Church scripture he seized during the Ente Isla invasion, but that was purely for his own curiosity; he didn’t recall using it for anything, or telling anyone else about it. 
That’s why it was no surprise when Urushihara shook his head and hands at once. 
“No, dude, I’m not talking about you. It was…” 
“““Satan, the ancient Devil Overlord.””” 
Three people said it in unison. One was Urushihara, of course. The other, oddly enough, was Acieth. And the third was the most unlikely of all. 
“Chiho?” 
Emi and the rest all looked at her, mouths agape. Even Urushihara and Acieth were caught off guard. 
“Wha—?” 
“Chiho?” 
“Wait, why do you know, Chiho Sasaki? Did you say something to her, Maou?” 
“No,” Maou said, shaking his head at his shocked audience. He, along with Shiba and Amane, closely studied Chiho, who was not caught up in the initial wave of surprise. 
“So why does Chiho Sasaki know that phrase? ‘Ancient Devil Overlord’ and all?” 
“I am more curious about Acieth myself,” Ashiya stated, “but Ms. Sasaki, where did you hear about such a person?” 
Chiho looked at Ashiya, serious-faced. 
“M-Ms. Sasaki?” 
Something looked strange about her to him. As a non–Ente Islan, Chiho hadn’t figured much in this conversation so far, simply listening intently to the proceedings. But now her actions seemed…out of place. Her face was serious, but also empty, like nothing was behind her eyes—and yet, she also had an odd air of self-assured composure. 
“I know all about him,” she replied, words almost disappearing into the air before reaching their ears. “Satan, the ancient Devil Overlord.” 
Amane’s entire body tensed up. 
“Aunt Mikitty, is that…?” 
“I would imagine so,” Shiba replied, wholly unaffected. 
“…Chi! What do you know?!” 
Maou’s shout attracted the eyes of everyone in the room. He raised a right hand to stop Shiba and the nervous Amane from interrupting further. 
“Keep quiet a sec. This has happened before,” he said, motioning at the rest of the room to stay where they were. “You… You’ve got something to tell us, don’t you?” 
“Yes,” came Chiho’s reply, her voice now unfathomable to him. 
“““…!””” Emi, Ashiya, and Suzuno visibly reared back, still just barely recovered from Maou’s outburst of a moment ago. 
“““…””” 
Then they noticed Maou’s left hand move a little. They each eyed the other, out of eyeshot of Chiho. 
“…Rrh?” 
“Pop? What is it?” the sharp-eyed Acieth asked, noticing Nord let a wincing groan out from his throat. 
“N-no, I… I just had a bit of a dizzy spell. I’m fine…” 
Maou gave him a quick glance before returning to the business at hand. “Tell me,” he asked. “What do you know?” 
Chiho, still not noticing Emi, Ashiya, or Suzuno, slowly opened her mouth. 
“The eleventh Sephirah was once known as the ‘Devil Overlord,’ the an—” 
“Get her!!” 
The warm, almost-lilting voice was cut short by Maou’s suddenly barked order. The trio he directed his orders to sprang into action. Immediately, Ashiya took position by the double doors in front of the closet, Suzuno by the sliding door to the unit bath, and Emi close to the other sliding door leading to the hospital hallway. All at once, they flung the doors wide open. 
““Agh!!”” 
There were two short screams on top of each other. Emi wound up being the lucky winner. Beyond her door, there stood a scared-looking nurse, perhaps startled by the hospital-room door being rattled open so quickly without warning. That was one scream. The other was from Chiho. 
“Grab her, Emi!!” 
“Ahh!!” 
“N… Huhh?” 
Emi had no need for Maou’s instructions. She grabbed the nurse by the collar and pulled her inside the room, almost quickly enough to give her whiplash. As Acieth and Nord watched from behind in disbelief, Chiho let out a confused groan, as if waking up from a dream. 
“Wh-wh-what are you doing?!” the nurse shrieked, half-panicking at these visitors’ bizarre behavior. Or so it must have looked to the other observers. But Emi refused to release the nurse’s collar, and Ashiya and Suzuno quickly stationed themselves by the door and window, sealing off all routes of escape. 
“What is the meaning of this? I’m calling for security!” 
“Go ahead,” Maou retorted, slowly walking up to her, “if you can.” 
Dressed in a sensible, clean-looking light blue gown, the nurse—probably in her late twenties—attempted to claw her way out of Emi’s grasp. 
“I’ve got a light smoke screen of demonic force covering the room,” Maou said—and with that, she stopped. “You see how that dude over there’s already reeling from it. No normal human being could come in here and not start to feel dizzy and faint. Guess you’re pretty strong against it, huh?” 
“…Ah.” 
“That wasn’t the same kind of canned message you gave us last time. Chi and I were having a real conversation just now. I knew you were pretty close by, but this is just ridiculous.” 
“…” 
The nurse, still detained by Emi’s iron grip, relented at Maou’s voice. Her eyes silently scanned the people assembled in the room. 
“…Whoa! Wait, what? Yusa, what’re you doing to her?!” 
Chiho’s obvious question interrupted the tension. As if on cue, it made the nurse relax her body, her head hung down in shame. 
“…Well,” she said, suddenly sounding very different, “I sure screwed this one up…” 
“I’m gonna punch you,” a clearly annoyed Maou said, raising a fist. 
“I don’t remember teaching you it was okay to hit a woman.” 
“You know I’m the Devil King now, don’t you? That’s what I do. Plus, hey, that’s why they call it ‘equal rights,’ okay?” 
“I don’t think this is what they meant…” 
“Your Demonic Highness, did this woman…possess Ms. Sasaki?” 
“Huh? Me?” 
Chiho blinked at Ashiya’s question as Maou nodded. 
“Who is this freak?” Emi asked, harried. “Because you’re acting like she was mind-controlling Chiho or something, and you even know who she is.” 
She gave the nurse in her arms another look. She was about as tall as her, wearing a green surgical mask, her hair tied back with a number of pins during her on-duty hours. At a glance, she looked like any other Japanese woman. Emi didn’t know her. 
But: 
“Emi?” 
“What?” 
“I know she’s acting like a total ass, but you probably better not call her ‘that freak.’” 
“Huh?” 
“Hey,” Maou called out next to the confused Emi, “you want me to tell her? ’Cause I will if you don’t say something.” 
“…Oh, well.” 
At that moment, the nurse’s voice made a complete transformation. It had the desired effect. 
“!!” 
Nord, still queasy at the light miasma of demonic force surrounding him, shot back to attention. 
“No…” 
The nurse looked toward him sadly… 
“Ah!” 
…and suddenly began to emit light from her entire body. 
“Emi, hang on to her! Ashiya, Suzuno, keep her in the room!” 
“Wh-wha—?! What’s…?!” 
“Yes, my—” 
“Nnh!” 
“I’m going nowhere,” came a voice from the light, cutting all three of them off. 
“—?!” Emi gasped. 
Nord managed another “What?!!” of shock. 
Emeralda pointed at her and went “Ahhh…!!” 
And in the midst of it all, Alas Ramus simply looked up and said, “That… Mommy…?” 
The flowing bluish-silver hair and crimson eyes were a match for Gabriel’s, an indicator she was an angel from heaven. But among this audience, that was just a minor detail. Everyone was more fixated on her other features. 
“…Sorry,” the beautiful angel said, smiling awkwardly while Emi still held her in the air by her collar. “Guess I could’ve handled that better.” 
Maou rolled his eyes. “Just the kind of pain in the ass we needed at a time like this,” he said, even as the sight brought back a few fond memories. “But I hope you’re ready for this. We’re not gonna feed you ’til you tell us everything you know. Because I think we’ve all had enough of you using and abusing us.” 
“Okay… I know—upph!” 
She answered Maou’s annoyed but still gentle voice with a muffled groan that made her seem not quite as divine as before. Emi used the hand that wasn’t holding her by the scruff to give her a slap on the cheek. 
“…” 
“Um…hey, Emi?” 
“E-Emilia! Wait! She’s…” 
Maou’s and Nord’s attempts to dissuade Emi were greeted with a sneer more sinister than any they had seen before. 
“…” 
““Eep!!”” It made both the leader of all demons and her own father visibly whimper. 
“Um, uh, uh, hey…” 
Meanwhile, the slappee looked blankly at Emi, unsure what had just happened. 
“Listen, Emi—bweh!” 
The attempt at conversation was interrupted with another slap. 
“Keep your mouth closed.” 
“Um, that, wait just a—pwff!!” 
“I’m not waiting any longer.” 
“P-please! I promise I’ll tell you everythnnh!” 
“Don’t expect to make me forgive you that easily.” 
“U-uh, um, please, listen to—fwwh!” 
“I’m listening. But once I’m done listening, it’s gonna be even worse for you. That’s about what you did to me, so…” 
“L-listen, I really feel bad about that! I do! You can do whatever you want to me afterward, so please, let me go! And stop slapping mehnnh!” 
The dry cracks that came every few words echoed across the room, as the angel’s teary-eyed pleading was greeted by a pair of eyes turned down to absolute zero. 
“Emi! Emi! That’s too much! That’s too much, okay? She won’t be able to talk! She’s looking like some kid in a cartoon with a toothache!” 
“Emiliaaa! Please, calm dowwwn!” 
“Yusa! Don’t do that! Don’t do any more of that!” 
“Keep eyes away from her, okay, big sis?” 
“What’re…? What’re my mommies doing…?” 
“E-Emilia, Emilia! Please, hold it back for now! Please! This is your father asking you to!” 
Nord was trying to get a grip on Emi’s arm as her friends rose to stop the onslaught and Acieth rose to shield Alas Ramus from the sordid display. 
“Owwwww…” 
By the time the violence ended, the face of the beautiful angel was looking like a mix between a Napoleon fish and a giant trevally. 
“…nh…!” 
The glassy-eyed Emi was still trying to swing her left hand around, stopped only by the combined efforts of Emeralda and Chiho. 
“Look,” Maou said, leaving the pair to their impromptu guard duty, “I’m not gonna do anything to you, so can you just tell us everything, from start to end, no excuses. ’Cause if you don’t, I’m not too sure we can protect you from that girl right now, okay? She might even kill you.” 
“All right…” 
The teary agreement, as she let Nord support her weight, was in a quiet voice that was far thinner, and more forlorn, than Maou remembered. He sighed and slumped his shoulders. 
“You’re just as indecipherable as you were then, you know that?” 
He recalled the vague memory he had of his young-demon days, somewhere in the back of his mind—a time when he all but gave up on life, never dreaming that he would someday rule over every demon that walked the realm. 
“It’s been a while, huh, Laila?” 
The little demon and beautiful angel who met atop that red moon in the sky were now united on a new, much bluer planet.