THE DEVIL HANGS ON TO HIS DAILY ROUTINE
There’s always something about returning to an old, familiar home that fills a person with a warm sense of relief. No matter how luxuriant the inns one stayed at in the midst of traveling, going back to the cluttered, weather-beaten house always provides an odd peace of mind, intermixed with the loneliness of journey’s end.
It did not work that way with Hanzou Urushihara.
“Dude, what the hell is that?!”
“It is the demonic force collected by His Demonic Highness and myself. There was no place else to store it.”
“Huhh?! Your demonic force?! Are you crazy? You guys have got to be crazy!”
“And this is how you’re going to greet me the moment you return home from a long absence?”
“Well, yeah?! I can’t be the only one around here who’s got a problem with this!”
He had walked through the door to find that the cubbyhole he called home was now taken over by…something else.
Finally released from a long stint in the hospital, Urushihara opened the door to his closet in Room 201 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka only to find that the entire upper shelf—which usually housed his bed and computer—was occupied by a large, mysterious, semi-gelatinous mass wrapped in newspaper and vinyl tape. It almost made his eyes explode.
From his perspective, he had been forced into a hospital room with no real clue what had happened to him, guarded so he couldn’t leave on his own terms—and when he finally got out, he was effectively blockaded from his own room. Not only that, but the space was now filled with demonic force, the energy he and his roommates relied on for their very lives.
For Urushihara; for Ashiya, who was not only letting Urushihara’s griping go in one ear and out the other but was actually deflecting it back with his willpower; and of course, for Sadao Maou, their master and the main rent payer in the group, the lack of this evil power was the whole reason why life in Japan had been so much trouble for them. Right now, though, the closet was packed with so much demonic force, they guessed it was in line with the Devil King Satan’s during his boom years.
Urushihara understood that Maou and Ashiya had no intention, at this point, of using this to conquer Japan by force. The idea, however, that they’d just keep this resource idle in the closet and keep living their current lives made little sense to him.
“Dude, Ashiya, don’t you think we could use this for something?! Like, there’s no value to having money or power if you just let it sit! You gotta leverage it!”
“I see no reason why you are qualified to lecture me on the value of money. Consider it saving for the future.”
“Oh, so you’re just gonna wait ’til you’re old and live off that ’til you die?! That’s all the ambition you’ve got, Ashiya?! Don’t you think we could at least improve our living situation a little bit?!”
Ashiya gave a wholly unironic, puzzled look at Urushihara’s pleading. “Improve our living situation? How do you mean?”
“How do I mean…?” He paused for a moment, so thrown by this meek response that he lost his train of thought. “Well, no, I mean…” He looked around the room, still standing next to the giant block of energy in the closet. “Well, like, our food bill, dude! We can live off demonic energy, can’t we?! And if we got this much, we don’t need to eat at all any longer!”
He leaped toward the refrigerator and opened the door. It contained all the usual suspects: meat, vegetables, fish, milk, tofu, natto, spices, and everything else Urushihara knew his roommate stocked it with.
“Food lies at the very core of our lives,” Ashiya replied. “Thanks to His Demonic Highness’s hard work, we are able to put three square meals on the table per day. There is no need to wastefully consume our demonic force instead.”
“Ugh, I… I wish I had a word in my vocabulary to describe how crazy you’re acting!” Urushihara slammed the door. “What about, like, electricity and water and gas and stuff? We don’t need any of that, now!”
“Can you run a microwave oven on magic?”
“You can! You’re a frickin’ Great Demon General!”
“All right, so you want us to continually produce bolts of electricity in a way that they can run AC-ready appliances in Japan? On a far smaller scale than your typical lightning attack, I should add? It would be a very delicate spell, and rather difficult to sustain, I would imagine.”
“Ngh… But…” Urushihara fell silent again, before raising his eyebrows and spreading his arms out. “But look at this room, dude! Now that we got our force back, who says we gotta abide by human laws any longer?! I’m not saying we start wrecking stuff, but we can make humans do whatever we want now! So let’s get out of this crappy apartment and move someplace where we all have our own rooms, at least! And a bigger kitchen! And, like, bathrooms!”
“Indeed, my liege and I may have thought along similar lines a year ago.”
“…Uh, yeah, and that’s why I can’t believe how sad you’re acting now, General. I know how our thought processes match!”
One year ago, Shirou Ashiya had zero experience with human interaction of any sort. The idea of the Great Demon General Alciel, back when he had no empathy at all for Japan or the human race, considering a move to someplace with fancier appliances and a heated toilet did nothing to cheer Urushihara’s flagging outlook on life.
“But we have no pressing reason to leave this building, do we?”
“What?! You’re the one who’s always bitching about the equipment around here!”
Before he realized it, Urushihara’s case had shifted from using demonic force to mind control people around them, to using it to make the plumbing work better.
“Yes, certainly, I would like a large kitchen counter to work with. It is too low to the ground for my height, as well. Having a balcony would make drying clothes quite a bit easier. I feel it is not a noble thing to have undergarments hanging off indoor clotheslines in plain sight of Ms. Sasaki when she visits. But the kitchen issue is not a fatal one, and there are ways we can work around laundry embarrassments.”
“But, duuude…”
“And besides, exactly where do you plan to move to? Think about it. We have built a large number of local connections here in Sasazuka, and we have everything we need for our daily lives. And look at who surrounds us—Bell next door, Nord Justina below us. How many shared dwellings can you name where all the residents are so intimately familiar with one another? Plus, given that we are enemies as a rule, there is no reason to be particularly concerned about keeping up appearances, as it were. Meanwhile, the mere idea of trying to hide your presence from our new neighbors, wherever we move to, throws me into a great despair.”
“Hey! You owe unemployed bums like me an apology for that!”
“I see no need for that whatsoever,” Ashiya sniffed. “Plus, we would need to adjust our electricity, gas, and water plans, not to mention work out a TV license, and we would need to hire movers. Our residential certificates would need to change, as well as our bank and credit card contacts—”
“Daaaaahhh!” Urushihara began gesticulating at Ashiya’s long list. “That’s what I mean! One shot of demonic force, and it’s done, dude!”
“And why do you fail to understand,” the unwavering Ashiya insisted, “that there is no hindrance to our lives at this very moment that requires demonic force to handle?”
“Why are you working on this notion that we have to keep our current lives, man?!”
“What are you saying?” Ashiya languidly responded as he stuck a thumb toward the “spare room” that used to be the apartment’s closet. “Do you think that he would allow us to work outside the standard structures of Japan, or should I say this world, in the first place?”
As if on cue, Room 201’s front door opened, despite being locked.
“Well said, Mr. Ashiya! So glad to see you aware of your situation.”
“Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhhhhh?!”
At the doorway was a woman whose broad-rimmed, crimson-red hat was festooned with feathers from assorted birds of paradise, bright enough to make even the dim light illuminating the outside corridor seem to shine brilliantly. Her enamel stiletto heels were just as bright a shade of crimson, matching her flared skirt and a cardigan that was probably a lot cozier and fluffier a few years ago. For Miki Shiba, landlord of Villa Rosa Sasazuka, it was a bit more informal of an outfit than usual.
“I would not exactly call myself ‘aware’ of my place in human society, ma’am, but I do try to act as rationally I can.”
“A fine thing to pursue! And I’d advise you, Mr. Urushihara, to avoid such flights of fancy in the future.”
“Is, um, is wanting to move apartments that, uh, fanciful, ma’am?”
Urushihara edged toward the window, trying to keep as far away from Shiba as possible. It wasn’t enough to weaken the thrall she had upon him. The purple tint to his hair visibly lightened before the other two, segueing into a shade of light blue within seconds before settling into a striking silver.
“Dude, dude, dude, my hair’s doing that thing again! Stop it!”
“Oh, don’t be such a stick in the mud about it, mm-kay? It’s totally you. Like, a really bold makeover!”
“Shut up! Why are you goin’ around with the landlord like you two are friends?!”
It was, of course, neither Ashiya nor Shiba halfheartedly poking fun at Urushihara’s new hair color. It was the large, looming man, almost as tall as Ashiya, standing next to the landlord—his hair the same shade of bluish-tinted silver as Urushihara’s. He shrugged at the fallen angel, still preferring to wear his I Love LA T-shirt underneath his toga despite the late-fall weather.
“Hey, Mikitty’s been a big help. If she’s goin’ out for a while, I can at least carry her bags for her, hmm?”
“Uh, do you care about how the optics of all this looks, dude?!”
The old role of guarding the Sephirot now seemed well in the past for the archangel Gabriel. Now, he was just Shiba’s luggage boy, and he seemed to have no qualms with it.
“Oh, and we chatted with Crestia Bell just now, and she said that hunk of demonic force is just fine in the closet. It’ll help keep your noise from leakin’ into her place, she said.”
“All of you are just… Arrrrgghhhhh!”
Urushihara cupped his head in his hands, unable to figure out whom to lash out at first. Ashiya, ignoring him, turned to Gabriel.
“I knew our landlord was coming to see Bell, but I heard nothing about you. What would you need from her?”
“Mmmm, well, like I just toldja, I’m really just carrying Mikitty’s stuff for her.” In one of his large, bearlike hands was an alligator-skin handbag, once again a bright shade of crimson. “Though I did want to kinda hear more of the story from at least one of you guys. I figured having Mikitty with me would help grease the wheels a little, so I asked her to come along…”
He scratched his head and took a step away from the Room 201 doorway—which, between his height and Shiba’s ample girth, was completely blocked. Behind him, in the sliver of space visible next to the landlord, was a smaller woman.
“Not that it worked or anything,” Gabriel muttered, the smirk clear in his voice.
“Well, I can see why,” Ashiya remarked as he sized up the woman. “And Crestia Bell has no particular duty to listen to you, either.”
“Yeah, well, she’s a Church cleric so she kinda danced around that, but…mmm, that was pretty much what she said, yeah.”
“Look,” the woman accompanying Shiba and Gabriel pleaded to Ashiya, “I know I don’t exactly deserve a prize for the way I acted…but I mean, there was just nothing else I could do… So please, let me see Satan again. I want him to listen to me.”
“You may not. I have orders to chase you out if you come here.”
Ashiya’s frozen voice sliced neatly through the begging of the archangel Laila.
“My liege is a busy man. Emilia, in particular, has been an additional stress upon his mind, and he has just been through what I would certainly call a scarring experience. Given the new business he is about to tackle, I cannot allow any more burden upon his shoulders.”
Ashiya had been polite enough with the woman before. Now, he would give her no quarter.
“And I suppose this may go without saying, but if you decide to embark on anything as foolish as intruding in his workplace, I guarantee you will never be granted an audience with him for as long as you both live. If that is clear, I would appreciate if you made good your departure. No matter what you say, my master’s feelings are quite firm on the matter.”
“Oh, no…” Grief crossed the woman’s face.
“Perhaps,” Shiba offered, “it would be best to try again later. Attempting to force the issue may not produce much of a response at this point. I am willing to work as an intermediary, but I can’t demand they change their mind, after all.”
“Yeah,” Gabriel said with a sigh, “guess not. Sorry to waste your time, Mikitty.”
“Oh, not at all! It’s the duty of any landlord to see how their tenants are faring.”
“Hmm? Well, I’m glad to hear that. Hey, can I stay here a bit? I wanted to talk with these two.”
“Go right ahead. Come back in time for dinner, all right?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
It was hard for Ashiya to believe how friendly Gabriel acted around Shiba, as he offered the handbag back to her and waved vigorously as she and Laila left. Then he turned back toward Ashiya, grinning.
“You’re being a bit unkind, aren’tcha?”
“We are demons. I would imagine that is the normal reaction to an angel.”
“I suppose that’s so.”
The sheer sharpness of Ashiya’s voice suggested to Gabriel that it wasn’t worth wheedling him about it.
“Welp, I’ve been reeeeeeal patient with all this so far. On the order of crazy patient, you feel me? And I’m sure Laila knows there’s no point panicking right now. Not that she’s not, though, given…the, y’know, all this.”
Upon rescuing the captured Emi from Ente Isla, Maou and his expedition team came back to find Urushihara in the hospital and Miki Shiba, landlord of Villa Rosa Sasazuka, unveiling all kinds of truths about their universe.
As she had described it by Urushihara’s hospital bed, the worlds of Earth and Ente Isla, while two separate planets, were linked together in the same space. That fact didn’t seem to change very much at first, but it was more than enough to give everyone new insights on the people, and the events, transpiring between the two worlds. Traveling across them didn’t entail some unknown transdimensional contact—they both existed under the same laws of physics, and even if it wasn’t possible at the moment, the right kind of spaceship or whatever might be able to complete the journey without a Gate, sometime in the far future.
The same also applied to the “demon realm” that Maou ruled over. The land where demons roamed didn’t exist under the ground or in some ancient myth, but in a real-life planet in real-life space.
So what about “heaven,” then? Which world belonged to the angels, who never had a problem getting in the way of Maou and Emi and so on? That was a mystery to the denizens of Ente Isla—a mystery, that is, until a certain someone appeared in a human-, demon-, and angel-populated hospital room. That was Laila: a resident of the heavens, the woman who rescued a young Satan’s life, and the “mother” of the assorted girls born under the Sephirah known as Yesod. That and—more than anything else—the mother of Emilia Justina.
She had been doggedly elusive up to now, leaving only the faintest hints of her presence to Maou and his cohorts. But when she finally appeared before them, what she had to reveal wasn’t some grand new truth about the world, or some legendary talisman that would solve all their problems, or even the path to paradise. It was instead a vast, yawning gap between mother and daughter, one that seemed all but hopeless to fill in.
It taught Emi that all of the assorted strife and tragedy she had experienced in her life in Japan so far was, ultimately, her mother’s fault. But when faced with this, Emi didn’t feel any negative emotion—no rage or sadness against the absurdity of it all. Her mind was a blank, and it ordered her to eliminate this presence from her life.
To those around her, it may have just looked like a series of slaps to Laila’s face, delivered with a complete lack of expression. But that wasn’t Emi acting out her hatred or frustration at all. She just didn’t want to believe that she had inherited even a tiny flake of what this thing in front of her possessed. It may have seemed like she was looking at her mother, but to her, she wasn’t. Until Maou finally stopped her, even her vision was merely a pale shade of white.
By the time she came to, she saw “someone” sidling up to her father, then Maou stepping in between, as if to hide her father and that someone from her. She stared at the texture of the UniClo long-sleeved T-shirt she had on, before realizing that Emeralda was holding her arms back.
She knew they had stepped up to stop her. She didn’t know why. But even so, she understood that continuing to reject this person wasn’t something the rest of them would allow. So she left, taking Alas Ramus from Acieth’s hands, not saying another word or even acknowledging Laila’s presence as she put Urushihara’s hospital room behind her.
“You could’ve heard her out, at least.”
“Yeah, right. You know I’m not willing to put up with that crap… Ugh, thank God, my hair’s back to normal.”
With Laila and the landlord gone, only Gabriel was around to witness Urushihara run a hand through his unkempt hair to check what color it was.
“Well, like, if the Devil King and Emilia aren’t willing to talk, then you’re just about all they’ve got, yeah? You were kinda the only other person there at the time.”
“Like I care. Not like I got involved in all that ’cause I wanted to. And it’s not like I don’t appreciate getting the chance to duck out of that boring-ass world. But, like, it’s been so long ago that I’m pretty hazy on a lot of it. Plus, they’re the ones who booted me out without a second thought. Far as I’m concerned, we’re even now.”
“If I may ask,” Ashiya rumbled as he presented Gabriel with a cup of green tea, “why are you going into our apartment like you own the place?”
“Oh, I’m just wondering why you’re so hell-bent on not listening to her. And I just love how you’re offering me tea while staring daggers into me. You teach those kinda manners in the Devil King’s Army?”
“This is not for you. It is for the landlord’s assistant. If it wasn’t for her apparent protection, I would hardly allow you to enjoy the oxygen in this room, much less our tea.”
“Now that’s just mean. Though I guess it beats the Devil King kicking my ass the moment I came in. Thank youuuu!”
There was not a great deal of appreciation present in Gabriel’s voice as he took a mouthful of the near-boiling tea without hesitation.
“Well,” Urushihara noted, “Maou ain’t the type to drag a grudge along forever once things get worked out, you know?”
“I should certainly hope not. After all…” He chuckled. “Hell, I haven’t been in that much pain since who knows how long.”
Gabriel might have tried to laugh it off, but the blow Maou applied to him on the Eastern Island after gaining Acieth’s strength was enough to nearly kill him. He had been undergoing intensive treatment at Shiba’s house in Japan ever since. Exactly why he had become Shiba’s servant in the meantime, nobody could really say—or wanted to know, either.
“Being near the landlord doesn’t mess with your body at all, dude?”
“Mmm, not really, no. Mikitty’s been taking really good care of me, y’know? I’m tryin’ to hold back on my holy-energy consumption, what with my body and the kinda place we’re all in, but it’s not like I need to sling it around too much around here anyway, right? Not in this country. Most of the appliances and such run at the push of a button.”
“Oh, not you, too…” Urushihara sat down on the tatami-mat floor, clearly frustrated.
“But say, uh, Alciel, you said something about the Devil King being stressed out…?”
“…” The question made the muscles on Ashiya’s face tense up.
“I’m all but expectin’ this’ll piss you off if I ask, but did something come up? Probably Laila, huh?”
The revelations from Laila in the hospital room had an enormous impact upon Maou; of that there was little doubt. But it was hard for Gabriel to believe that Sadao Maou—so clearly made of tough stuff, body and soul—would be that fazed by it.
“Well…” Ashiya uncharacteristically mumbled.
“Hmm? That bad?”
“Bppph!”
It was Urushihara who very characteristically cracked up at Gabriel’s pressing for an answer.
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You’re probably talking about that, huh, Ashiya? It’s not like it hurt him that badly. It happens all the time, dude!”
“Silence, Urushihara! You have no idea of the pain my liege bears!”
“The pain? Pfft. Plus, he had it coming.”
“Um, what? It happens all the time?”
Gabriel grew confused at these diametrically opposed appraisals.
“Though,” Urushihara said with a grin, “I do feel kind of bad for him. He worked so hard, and look what happened in the end, huh? He finally got his license, you know.”
“A license?” Gabriel wasn’t expecting this. “You mean, like, a driver’s license?”
“I think he had to present it to his boss by today, so I’m sure Maou’s probably a total wreck at work right now.”
“…No dinner for you tonight, Urushihara.”
“Oh, come on! I’m tellin’ the truth, dude!”
“Hold your tongue! We are able to put food in our mouths thanks to His Demonic Highness’s labors. Even if it be the truth, such things must remain a secret!”
“And like I told you, we have enough demonic force now that we don’t have to worry about that dumb crap!”
“You need to better understand the value of an honest day’s work! The concept of labor is one of the core tenets of—”
“Work, labor; call it what you want, you’re never gonna make me do it!”
“Oh, now you’ve done it, Urushihara! Your insolence will not pass today!”
“Um…guys…”
Totally forgetting Gabriel’s presence, the two Great Demon Generals argued into the night, the time they wasted on it not only bearing zero fruit, but also actively stomping any seedlings into tiny bits.
It was nearing ten PM at the MgRonald in front of Hatagaya station, with Kisaki doing her rounds with the employees about to take off for the night. This included Chiho, manning the counter at the upstairs café space. Maou was with her, wiping down the tables in one corner.
“Y’know,” she whispered to Chiho, ensuring Maou was well behind her, “Marko’s been looking pretty gloomy today. You know something I don’t?”
“Oh? I, um, I…”
All the girl could do was attempt a dry chuckle at the question.
As the rightful Lord of All Demons, and as the occasional substitute manager at this MgRonald location, you could be sure that an effortless smile was never far away from Maou’s lips. But not today. During this shift, those working close to him could detect a dark shadow lurking behind the façade. A smile can only do so much and, considering the special attention she often paid to him, location manager Mayumi Kisaki immediately knew that something was off.
Chiho, who was just about to wrap up an after-school shift, knew the answer to her question. She knew it, but it absolutely wasn’t the kind of thing for anyone besides the actual man involved to blurt out.
“Well, um, I don’t really know the whole story myself, but…I think Mr. Maou messed up.”
“Messed up? What, you mean he failed his scooter license test again?”
“N-n-n-no, no, not that, he’s got that!”
There was no way the rather blunt question made it to Maou’s ears, but it still made Chiho fly into a panic.
“Well, great. We’re just about to kick off deliveries, so if the main force behind that keeps failing the exam, it’s gonna hurt morale around here sooner or later.”
“Ooh, yeah, totally…!”
It wasn’t his fault, technically, but Maou had failed his driver’s exam twice—the first time because he screwed up the written portion, the second time out of necessity. Both were understandable enough, but given the experiences before, during, and after this cavalcade, Maou had started to see the two-wheeled, motorized scooter license examination as his personal nemesis.
Still, his will remained strong. He overcame the chaos he encountered in Ente Isla, he recovered his old life in Japan, he dealt with his sworn enemy Emi joining MgRonald, and he even tracked down the archangel Laila, the root of all their troubles. Now, it was time for the next chapter in his life—or it should have been. At the very end, mere feet from the finish line, that tyrannical driver’s exam had one final, underhanded blade for him to dodge.
“Hmm. Well, I’ll try to pep ’im up a bit. Because he’s not setting a good example like that, and if something’s bothering him, we need to give ’im some support. He’s only human.”
“Oh, um, Ms. Kisaki…oh.”
She left before Chiho could finish, and whether Maou was human or not, this ideal boss—constantly concerned about the mental state of her employees—was about to ask him a question about which she had no idea the sheer cruelty.
“Hey, Marko, how’s it going today? It looks like you’re just kinda going through the motions this shift, but is there something on your mind?”
“Ah, n-no… Nothing like that…”
“Oh, yeah? Well, you know, you aren’t Superman or anything, so if something’s up, it’s not healthy to bottle it up all night.”
“Y-yeah, definitely…”
Listening from afar, Chiho breathed a sigh of relief that Kisaki didn’t press any further. Maybe it would work out after all.
“Oh, right, can you let me look at your license for a sec later? I need to make a copy for your records if you’re on the delivery crew.”
“Ah.”
He instantly froze, his grim expression stuck on his face.
Kisaki wasn’t the type of manager to needlessly snoop on her staff’s private lives, but business was business. As a supervisor, if someone was ferrying fast food around western Tokyo without a license, it would be her neck on the line. But that license was currently the bane of Maou’s existence.
“Do I…have to, ma’am?”
“Um, yeah? What do you mean, do you have to? The place is empty anyway, so why don’t we go down and get that taken care of? Chi’ll take care of anyone who shows up.”
“S-sure thing……………… Haah.”
With the look of a prisoner who’d just received the death penalty, he followed Kisaki down the stairs. Chiho could do nothing but meekly look on.
“Maou…”
She could do nothing because she knew what was causing his distress. In fact, she had a fairly similar issue herself—not that she’d told anyone yet. The thing was, even though their problems were similar, the paths toward solving them were like night and day between the two. There were no easy words of encouragement she could find to assuage him.
“Dang. Marko’s off his game, huh?”
The muttered observation came from Takafumi Kawata, a first-floor crewmember who watched Maou and his manager shuffle to the back office like a funeral procession. Emi, working the night shift with him, ignored their passage.
“I don’t think so,” she said, not lifting her head. It was just before ten—the end of her shift, just like Chiho—and she was too busy cleaning up to give it any further attention.
“Nah? ’Cause he’s kinda been shambling around the space all day.”
“Oh, he just got an upset stomach from some food he picked up off the sidewalk.”
“Off the sidewalk?” Kawata snickered. “Y’know, I couldn’t help but notice from the start, but you kinda have it in for Marko, don’t you, Yusa?”
“I never didn’t,” Emi sharply replied. Kawata snickered again—and that was the end of it, just as Chiho went downstairs. The clock had just ticked its way past ten, and Emi took the opportunity to lean over the counter toward the depressed high schooler.
“So what’s up?” she asked, trying her best to be gentle.
“It…” Chiho began, voice just as depressed as her look. “It’s the license.”
“The license?”
“The photo on the license.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ohhhh,” Kawata said, banging a fist against his hand. As a scooter license holder, he seemed to know what this meant. “Was something weird with his face in it?”
“Yeahhh…”
“Huhhh?”
Chiho nodded at the question. Emi could hardly believe it.
“I guess,” Chiho continued, “he doesn’t really like his license photo.”
“Is that what he’s so depressed about?”
“I don’t know. I guess? He had the guys at the licensing center take it. You have a bike license, right, Kawatchi? Is that just how license photos work out, always?”
“Yeah. They kind of bang them out one after the other at the center, so…”
“’Cause the way Maou put it, it was like they were aiming for that exact moment to take the shot.”
“Well, that’s just how it is, kinda. All my college buds with licenses are pretty embarrassed about theirs, too.”
Driver’s licenses, as everyone knows, can also serve as personal ID cards, and as a result, the photos on them must follow strict guidelines. No hidden eyebrows; no hairstyles, clothing, or backgrounds that conceal your face or appearance; nothing but a completely blank expression allowed—basically, nothing that would prevent a third party from identifying the guy or gal in the picture. You’re free to bring in your own license photo if it follows the regulations, but most license-seekers just have their picture taken at the nearby licensing center or police station.
Given the crowds that gather in Japan’s DMVs, the general rule is that if the picture they take follows the rules do-overs aren’t allowed. It was therefore often the case that the photo on the license you’re handed is absolutely nothing like you anticipated.
“On my student ID, too,” Chiho bashfully admitted, “my bangs were all messed up, and all my classmates showed me theirs just to cheer me up, I remember…but for him, I guess it’s the nose.”
““The nose?””
“Yeah, he said it was, like, the moment he had the nostrils flared wide open…”
The confession clearly left Chiho embarrassed, and given that Chiho made no secret of her infatuation with Maou, it really must have been that off-kilter of a shot. The guy at the DMV apparently liked it well enough, though, so to a stranger, the photo had to be within the realm of human decency.
It was thus unfortunate that Maou chose that timing to walk across the front counter, fresh from (likely) showing the results of that picture to Kisaki. He didn’t fail to notice the sly grins on all three employees’ faces as he did.
“Hey, show it to me, too.”
“Uh?”
“You had a funny license photo, right? Show it.”
Maou turned to Chiho, face stricken with world-ending heartbreak.
“Oh, way to stab me in the back, Chi!”
“Ah, I, um, that, I’m sorry!!”
The girl brought a hand to her visor, eyes darting to and fro, before she whirled around and made a dash for the break room.
“It’s not her fault,” Emi offered. “We forced the truth out of her. I don’t have a license, so I’m just curious. How’s it look?”
“You’ll never know! Aren’t you off duty? Get out of here!”
“Geez, it wouldn’t kill you to show me.”
“No, but it’d kill my self-respect, my life span, and my mental state! Go home! Get out of my sight! Or you go get a license and have them screw up your pic, too!”
“Boy, oh, boy…”
“Okay, quit the chatter, people! It’s still opening hours!”
The stern warning rose up from Kisaki, following behind Maou. Kawata resented this, given that “boy, oh, boy” was his only contribution to the ruckus. “And he never showed it,” he muttered. “What a rip-off.”
* * *
It was twelve thirty in the morning by the time Maou wrapped up closing duties and locked the automatic doors out front. Normally, he’d take the occasion to walk up to his trusty steed—the townie he still insisted on calling the Dullahan II—and stretch out in front of it, grateful for another day’s work. Today, though, didn’t give him much sense of achievement.
“Goddammit, Emi…”
She’d trampled all over that stupid license photo. It almost brought him to tears.
“You really hate it that much?” asked Kawata, who got off work with Maou and was already aboard his own motorbike.
“Ms. Kisaki laughed at it a little, too.”
“Ooh, rough. If it’s that bad,” he said as he put his helmet on, “I kinda wish I’d gotten to see it, too.”
“No, man! Ugh, I swear, things have been nothing but trouble for me ever since Emi showed up.”
“Aw, why let it bother you? She’s been in this huge funk, too, lately. It helped break the ice a little around the place.”
“Huh?” Maou blinked. “Who’s been in a funk?”
“Well, Yusa, I mean.”
“How so?”
“Oh, I dunno, just kinda felt that way to me.” Kawata looked up while adjusting his helmet strap, reaching into his memory. “Like, pretty much since right after she got hired? There was this one day when she was super down in the dumps the whole shift. Didn’t you notice? Ms. Kisaki was off, so you had to be there.”
“Oh.”
“This one day” rang a bell in Maou’s mind. He didn’t recall exactly how she’d acted, but he knew full well what had gotten her down that far.
“I think it was about three days later when I had a shift with her again, but she was back to my first impression of her by then. Like, kinda nervous about something, or…”
“You sure pay a lot of attention to her, Kawatchi.”
“Hey, not like that,” he protested, waving an arm in self-defense. “Yusa’s kind of the center of attention right now, you know? Ms. Kisaki’s been expecting a lot out of her, and you and Chi knew her from before, too, right? So I can’t help but check her out.”
“I’d advise against it. She’s a pain in the ass.”
“I told you, it’s not like that!”
Even in the dimly lit bike-parking area, the panic in Kawata’s voice was obvious.
“But anyway, Marko, she’s your trainee and stuff; why don’t you look after stuff like that a little more? She might put on a strong face, but maybe she’s a lot more fragile’n that inside.”
“……” Maou paused, taken aback. “You really have been paying attention.”
Kawata and Emi had spent no more than a few days together since MgRonald hired her, but in that short span, he had nurtured a scarily accurate picture of Emi’s psyche.
“Hey, stop picking on me!”
“No, I mean, it’s impressive. Maybe you should try becoming a therapist or something, Kawatchi.”
It was a fairly serious suggestion, but Kawata shook his head as he started the engine. “Oh, no way. I barely take responsibility for my own life; I don’t want to be on the hook for someone else’s. Never have, never will.”
“Yeah, I guess…”
“And yeah, people go up to me with their problems a lot, but, you know, they’re my friends and stuff, so I just say whatever comes to mind. There’s no guarantee I’m right or whatever. So don’t tell her I said that, okay?”
“Sure, sure. I’ll keep it in mind, though.”
“Thanks. See you later.”
Kawata gave Maou a suspicious look for a moment—but just for a moment, before he turned on his lights and roared off. Maou watched his taillight until it disappeared, then scowled.
“On the hook for someone else’s life, huh?”
Something about the offhand statement stuck in his mind, as he took the lock off the Dullahan II and muttered to himself.
“Yeah, he’s sure got that right.”
“P-pweefe… Pweefe, liffen to me…”
Back on that “one day,” Laila was lying on the floor, swollen cheeks jiggling as she mumbled in self-defense.
“There’s nothing you can say that I’ll listen to,” Emi coldly replied, staring astonished at her slightly reddened palms. “Get back here. I’ll take your head off.”
“Waaait! Calm dowwwn!”
“Emi, dude, chill! That’d be even worse for you than killing me!”
Despite Emeralda holding her arms back and Maou stepping in front of her, there was nothing that could stop Emi now.
“Move.”
Emeralda had walked the line between life and death with her—and Maou wagered his neck against hers several times—but neither had seen Emi exhibit such cold eyes before.
“Move. I’m angry.”
“I—I knowww that, but…”
Her voice sounded like it would freeze the air itself. This wasn’t a case of Emi being so racked with anger at Laila that she’d forgotten herself. No, she was seriously trying to hurt her.
“Eme… Devil King…and you, Father…” Emi sized up Emeralda, then Laila and Nord, both located behind Maou. “I’ve been used and abused by this woman for years, with no idea what was happening to me. I’ve been in mortal danger, and I’ve lost things that were so important to me. Not once or twice, but…lots of times. And you guys think I should just let bygones be bygones and forgive her for everything she’s done?”
“Well, buuut…”
“She’s treated you like a pile of crap, too, Eme, hasn’t she? Didn’t she mooch off you for who knows how long?”
“Umm, all right, yes, that diiid happen, but…”
Emeralda had mentioned, on her first visit to Japan, that Laila was shacking up in a room at the Holy Magic Administrative Institute in Ente Isla. She phrased it like a half-joking complaint at the time. Now, it repulsed Emi.
“But stillll…there’s no need to go to extreeemes like these…”
“What do you mean, ‘like these’? You aren’t defending her because she’s my mother, are you?”
“Not juuust that, no, but…we can’t let things stay like thiiis…”
“Yeah, I’m sure I’d kill her.”
“Emiliaaa,” Emeralda groaned. But there was no response or method she could find to stop her.
“Emi!” Maou had no insight into her mind, either, but he felt the need to say something, before she started swinging her Alas Ramus–fused sword around. “I know how you feel, but get ahold of yourself! You wanna have your say, and I get that, but does it have to be right now?!”
“I don’t need you telling me you know how I feel. You know as much as I do how elusive this woman’s been. If we let her go now, who’s to say when or if I’ll ever see her again? It could be centuries, or millennia. And if that’s how long it takes, are you willing to kill her for me?”
“Whoa, Emi…”
“……”
The two glared at each other in silence. The sight of the Devil King protecting an angel and a human being, and the Hero baring her fangs against them, made everyone in the room swallow nervously.
“…You know I’m joking about that.”
It was Emi who looked away first.
“I’m here to defeat you. No way I would ask you to do that for me.”
“Um…well, look, if you promise to just chill out for the time being…”
“Emiliaaa…”
They had given her far too much space to work with.
A flash of wind passed between Maou and Emeralda. It was all they could do to catch sight of her long hair as it whizzed by. The newly created dent on the linoleum floor where she once stood told the whole story behind her near-invisible speed. The fist raised into the air was laced with a concentration of holy energy that only Emi could conjure, on this or any planet. Maou could only keep up with it in his thoughts.
She was serious.
“Yeah well, take a time-out for a sec.”
But the flash of surging light that neither the Devil King nor a Church sorceress could contain was whisked away by a twirl of dark wind.
“You…certainly aren’t normal, are you?”
“H-hey, I’m not ‘that,’ Suzuno. Quit pointing at me!”
“The Devil King is the Devil King. The sworn enemy of all mankind. I expect he would be far more harmful to Earth than— Oww!”
“Hold it, Suzuno,” Maou said as he grabbed Suzuno’s bundled hair and pulled. “I ain’t gonna let that slide. I’m worse for Earth than the angels?”
“Wh-what are you…?!”
The normally meek cleric found herself pulled into the air, flailing her limbs like a crab at the fish market.
“That,” Shiba replied, “was why I paid personal attention to you and Ashiya when you arrived.”
“Huh?”
“What? Agh! Let me go, Devil King!!”
“I could tell immediately that you housed a tremendously dangerous force within yourselves. You may have lost your negative demonic force, but you still posed the threat of unspeakable brutality upon us all. So I watched you for a while, and if you made any untoward moves at all, I intended to wipe you off the planet.”
“Uh?”
Maou searched for Ashiya, before remembering he had fled the room earlier.
“But luckily for all of us, my concerns turned out to be over nothing!”
“S-so you are saying this Devil King was not a brutal threat to us at all? I said, let me go, you fiend…!”
“Well, goodness me, I never dreamed for a moment that their first priority would be to get their ID papers in order and search for an apartment! Not even Laila demonstrated such eagerness to join human society. And they never used that demonic force at all—not even when Mr. Maou went to the hospital with malnutrition after not eating for three days. Instead, he wrote up a résumé and started applying for work, right on the spot. Hardly dangerous behavior, I thought.”
Which all meant that, from the moment Maou reached Japan until he met Emi and defeated Urushihara, Shiba was always watching them.
“Malnutrition?”
“Sh-shut up!”
This was also the first time Suzuno heard anything about the demons’ lives on Earth before she showed up. She gave him a doubtful look. “Ugh,” she groaned as she attempted to fix her rumpled hair with her hands. “What are you going to do if this hair is permanently damaged, hmm?”
“Uh, don’t tell me the management company was all run by Sephirah dudes, too…?”
Maou recalled the property management company he and Ashiya called upon several times while Shiba was abroad. Shiba shook her head lightly in response.
“For that, I simply registered Villa Rosa Sasazuka with all the nearby rental management firms, once I could guess where you were settling down. It took quite a bit of money, mind you, given the suddenness of my requests, but…well, I have my hand in quite a number of businesses, so they all came to an agreement, of course.”
He didn’t want to know more about any of these businesses, but even by ex-Sephirah standards, all this discussion about Shiba’s financial and family situation indicated to Maou that her bank account was probably on a far higher plane of existence than his.
“I then turned my observations to your neighbors, everyone at MgRonald, Chiho Sasaki, Ms. Yusa, and so forth. Seeing you interact with them, I concluded that as long as you were in a stable living situation, you were not only perfectly harmless; you would even eliminate any other potential threats from other worlds! Having to repair the damage done to my apartment gave me quite a fright, I have to say to you, but thank heavens Ohguro-ya was willing to take you on.”
Maou’s face twisted in discomfort. He had been dancing in the palm of the Sephirah from the very beginning.
When Shiba sent that video referring the demons to the Ohguro-ya restaurant and sundry shop on the beaches of Chiba, Maou had left it unwatched for days, too afraid of what it may contain. But he should have realized it—when he finally called Amane, she gave no indication the place was hiring anyone besides Maou and his companions. It was the first warning sign for what wound up being an extremely abnormal few days.
“So that’s it, huh? I can’t say I like it much,” Maou said as he confronted his landlord. He had spent much of this year fighting off a number of otherworldly invaders, from Sariel onward, mainly to protect his own daily routine. If that was all Shiba had been doing from the start, it certainly felt like he was being taken advantage of.
“You’ve been using me this whole time, just so life would be easier for you guys?”
“By that,” Shiba replied coolly, “do you mean to say you didn’t choose to protect Japan and your current lifestyle of your own free will?”
“…No, not that, but…”
“Because I made the choice to trust in you and Ashiya as regular human beings. And you’ve always so wonderfully lived up to that trust!”
“Well, not that I need to hear that from you or anything, but I kinda like it here. Japan, and Earth. I can’t live like I am right now forever, but it’s a pretty chill place, I think. But that’s why…”
His gaze darted between Laila and Shiba as he collected his thoughts.
“Like, what are you people after? You wanna talk about that, right? And lemme just tell you guys, I’m not in a good mood about this right now.”
“Of—of course I do,” Laila said, looking up with pleading eyes. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long! Waiting for people as strong as you and Emilia to appear at the same time…”
There was no longer anything divine in those eyes, none of the soothing guidance she gave Maou once upon a time. The swollen cheeks made pulling off a “divine” expression a pretty tall order, but even beyond that, it was clear this was an angel at the end of her rope. Was it being so thoroughly rejected by her daughter that brought her there, or…?
“We…we need your powers…to save the world… To save Ente—”
It was a clumsy request. And ironically, it made Maou immediately lose interest in everything he wanted to know about Laila’s true intentions.
“Stop.”
Laila blinked at the sudden about-face in Maou’s request.
“Ms. Shiba?”
“Yes?”
“Urushihara’s healthy enough to leave, right? Is his hair ever gonna go back to normal?”
The color had left a lot more than just Urushihara’s hair, he could now see, as he breezily changed the subject.
“Um…wait… Satan?”
“Oh, definitely so, once he is away from my side.”
The logic of this didn’t quite make sense, but Maou accepted it.
“I’m heading out, too. And I’d appreciate it if you brought Urushihara home ASAP, too, you guys.”
“Wh-what? Sa-Satan?”
“Devil King… You…”
“Oh, oh? Is it over? If we are going home, maybe we eat the lunch? At the restaurant?”
“W-wait!!” Laila shouted over Suzuno and Acieth. She stood up, attempting to take Maou by the hand. He easily dodged it.
“Sa-Satan?”
“I’m not interested in listening anymore. This has been exhausting, so I’m going home. I’ve got work tomorrow.”
“Wait. Wait! What is the meaning of this?! This has everything to do with you demons, too!”
“Yeah, I’ll bet it does. But judging from everything you guys told me, it’s not a ‘world’ danger so much as a, like, danger to people on Ente Isla, yeah? Not really something we demons need to lose sleep over.”
“N-no, you’re wrong! You’re all just as…!”
“Don’t you get it?! I’m not interested!!”
The shout shook the walls of the room, sending Laila reeling back like someone had shot her.
“Satan… Why?”
Ignoring the saddened angel, Maou staggered toward the door, hints of that photo still lingering in his mind. Suzuno followed, bewildered, and so did Acieth, who didn’t look like she was thinking about much of anything.
“If I felt like it, I could beat the shit out of anything up to and including Gabriel right now, okay? Feel free to visit Nord all you want, but don’t you dare go up the stairs to my place.”
He placed a hand on the door handle, then turned to Laila.
“See you.”
The door creaked shut behind him.
“Wait! D-Devil King, wait! …Agh! Alciel! What happened?!”
Hurriedly following behind, Suzuno found herself yelping as she went through the doorway.
“Wowww,” the dubious Acieth added.
“Acieth!” came a voice from Nord, behind her.
“Oooh, um, sorry, Dad,” she muttered.
“I know. I know you aren’t here because you want to be.”
“No, I am, Dad,” she replied, cutting him off. “I, um, I really hated all the things, in beginning, but now, I like. And everybody, too, I like.”
She turned to the others. It was unclear whether “everybody” included Urushihara, now thoroughly withered after she played doctor with the machines next to him, but she still gave a sad shake of her head.
“I know what Maou says, what Chiho says, what Emi feels. Mom, I don’t hate, but, mmm, I think, maybe Mom could do something a little quicker, before now? It is complicated.”
“Acieth…”
“And sorry, Mom, but I want to go with Maou and rest. For the little while longer.”
“Acieth? But you’re…”
“I know. I know it. I will not do the stupid things. But…your side, Mom, I cannot be right now. You are…angel, too, Mom.”
“…!!”
Acieth turned to Shiba. “Mikitty?”
“Yes?”
“I—I am ‘single’ right now, yes? You did something, before?”
“…Yes. The ‘final measure.’” The landlord paused, a rarity for her. “I felt, over on Ente Isla, that the influence of Mr. Maou’s demonic force was starting to point you in the, shall we way, wrong direction.”
“You know, maybe I not think a lot first, but Maou is host I chose. Mikitty, you do not have the say in this.”
“…No, I suppose not. I apologize for my impertinence.”
“So you, Mikitty, take care of own Yesod. I…” She whirled around. “I going back to Maou.” Then she was off.
Each one of them, for reasons of their own, left Laila behind them, one by one. All that was left was Shiba, Amane, Nord, the increasingly leathery Urushihara, and Laila.
“Why…?”
The plaintive voice failed to reach Maou, who was too busy carrying Ashiya (whom they had found twitching in the hospital corridor) to notice as Acieth caught up to them all waiting for the elevator.
Maou didn’t hear much of anything about what Chiho and Emeralda did or talked about as they pursued Emi. On the surface, both Chiho and Emi seemed calm—or at least, willing to pretend that day in Urushihara’s hospital room hadn’t happened—as they went on with their lives, so it didn’t seem right to rehash the topic. As Ashiya put it, Nord and Laila apparently paid several visits to Eifukucho, but judging by the way Emi was acting, he doubted she gave them the time of day.
So, pedaling the Dullahan II, he made his way home as always and climbed up their creaky stairway as always. The light was on in Nord’s place downstairs, but he didn’t care to check whether anyone was inside.
Through the door, he was greeted by Ashiya’s dinner and Urushihara’s back. A normal day, in other words, in the tiny Devil’s Castle he had built for himself in Japan. For now, that was enough. But tonight, an extraneous element or two was in the mix.
“Why are you here so late?”
Suzuno was waiting for him.
“Laila visited today. With Ms. Shiba and Gabriel.”
“Oh? Huh,” he distractedly replied. “What’s for dinner tonight, Ashiya?”
“Some deep-fried tofu and miso soup for now, sir. I could prepare some tofu steaks from the freezer if you’d like something else.”
“Nah. I got all my break time in today, so I should keep it light.”
“Very well, my liege. I will reheat it in just a moment.”
“I imagined you had no interest in listening to them, so I tried to send them away, but…”
“So why are you here?”
“I…” Suzuno’s face reddened for a moment, for some inexplicable reason. Then, recalling her errand, she recomposed herself. “Listening to them…I am starting to feel they are winning me over.”
“Big whoop. You’re a Church cleric. She’s an angel, you know.”
“That… Well, yes, but… Listen. On the other hand, I mean…”
Her face reddened a tad once more. Then, finally summoning the willpower, she slapped a hand on the table in the center of room, just as Ashiya was laying out dinner.
“Why do you so steadfastly refuse to hear Laila out?!”
“Hey, think of the time. They’ll hear you downstairs.”
“Nh… What is with all this…?”
For all they knew, Laila might have been downstairs with Nord. Nobody was sure where Laila called home, exactly, but it was definitely somewhere around the greater Shinjuku area, and thus an easy train ride away. Maou clearly had a cruel streak toward her, but now here he was, looking out for his neighbors. She wanted to talk to him; he didn’t want to hear; but they were separated only by a tatami-mat floor, a baseboard, and the ceiling down below, and those were no obstacles by their standards.
“You make no sense,” she sighed, balling up her hands as she knelt.
“Look, what I said before is the whole thing. I really don’t care about her story. But can’t you kind of picture what’s at the end of it?”
“The end of it?”
“You know what she wants. She wants me, Emi—you too, of course, and Emeralda, and Ashiya and Urushihara, and maybe Amane and Albert in the mix, too—she wants us to all band together and save Ente Isla from some horrible threat looming over it. What kinda threat, I don’t know.”
“Mmm… Yes, certainly.”
“Whatever this threat is, it’s gonna involve Alas Ramus, Acieth, and Erone on a super-deep level, and we’re gonna have to do something about this planet’s Sephirah and stuff, yeah? And since me and Emi are ‘latent forces’—which I still wanna know what that means, by the way—we can’t stay uninvolved, either. So like, do I really need it spelled out for me any further?”
“…If you want a simple yes or no answer to that, then from my perspective, yes, we do.”
“And from my perspective,” Maou countered with a smile, “the answer’s never gonna be anything but a no.”
“…”
“Your dinner, my liege.”
Urushihara did not budge an inch from his computer.
“I mean, remember, if every man, woman, and child were wiped off the surface of Ente Isla, then everything’s comin’ up roses, as far as we’re concerned. If my landlord’s telling the truth, then all we gotta do is wait a few more centuries, right? Humans would be useful to me if I’m ruling over ’em, maybe, but it’s gonna be hard to fight any more over there than we have already, not to mention a royal pain in the ass to organize. If you asked me, I’d like to see Ente Isla destroyed more than not destroyed. Oh, thanks, Ashiya.”
Suzuno remained silent, watching Maou suspiciously as he tucked in. He didn’t seem to be putting on a show. On paper, it was an incredibly cruel thing to say, if regrettably expectable from the Devil King. But Suzuno already knew what he really was, inside. And that “real” person, the one not bound by names like Satan or Sadao Maou, didn’t mean any of it literally. There was some other intention behind those words.
She decided to wait for him to continue, staring intently as he sipped his soup, huffed in surprise at how hot the tofu was, and filled up his bowl of rice two more times.
“…You sure are stubborn, aren’t you?”
“It is a trait of mine.”
“You aren’t getting anything else.”
“You are not a liar, but you are not an honest man, either. I know that just as well as everyone else.”
“Yeah, thanks a lot. Can you just go? It’s gotta be a cardinal sin for a woman like you to stay in a house full of men this late.”
“I care not. A bit too late to change my ways now.”
“…I’d love to hear what Chiho Sasaki would say if she heard that,” Urushihara chimed in. “You don’t care about what, exactly?”
“Enough of that! You know how strange Bell has been acting lately.”
Maou sighed at the two men whispering behind him. “I don’t,” he finally said, borrowing a line from Kawata, “wanna be on the hook for someone else’s life.”
“You what?”
“Plus, whether I’ve got an obligation to save all the Ente Islans or listen to Laila or not—no matter what she tried to push on me back there, I still have no reason to take action.”
Suzuno remained silent once more, weighing each word carefully.
“You can stare at me all you want, Suzuno; that’s all I got for you. Like, seriously, that’s the only reason.”
“…I suppose it is.” She stared for a few moments more, then stood up, resigning herself to defeat. “Then I wonder why I am even here.”
“Not because anybody needs to see me, I’ll tell you that.”
“You saw how Emilia and Chiho were. They are my friends, and if this is how they and the angel I suppose I am bound to serve wish to act, then I want to conform to that. My skills are not particularly useful in any other field, after all. I would also like to keep my potential second career as a Great Demon General on the back burner, just in case.”
“Kind of a blasphemous thing for a cleric to say, isn’t it?”
“Thank you for your time.”
With an ironic smile, she put her sandals on, preparing to leave Room 201. But she was stopped by a totally unexpected question behind her:
“Suzuno, do you know anything about metallurgy?”
“Metal— What?” she said, raising an eyebrow. “You mean, blacksmithing and the like?”
“Yeah. I never even touched any iron weapons until just after the Devil King’s Army started up.”
“And?”
“Well, iron’s played a huge role in the history of civilization, right? Way stronger than stone or copper. Strong enough to turn ancient society on its side, and all that.”
“Yes…?”
Suzuno stood by the door, unsure where this was going. The major nations of Ente Isla got their start by mastering the art of forging iron, just as the Hittites did back in the fifteenth century BCE on Earth. But how did this connect to anything they were talking about?
“Thing is, though, the idea of preventative maintenance hadn’t really taken hold much in the demon realm. We wasted a lot of good iron weaponry, thanks to the way we abused them.”
“Yes, and what is the point of this?” Suzuno snapped back, annoyed at the mystery tangent.
“Oh, nothing. It just came to mind, is all. Sorry.”
“Ugh. You make no sense to me.”
“No, I just mean, y’know, maintenance is important. I’m gonna be driving a scooter around again, once delivery starts up, so I just thought about it. ’Course, what I did to that bike on Ente Isla goes a little beyond what a regular check-up can handle, but…”
The two Honta Gyro-Roof scooters Suzuno provided for their quest on Ente Isla, which played a major role in getting Emi back to Japan safely, still weren’t back here. They were pretty well wrecked in Heavensky, capital of the planet’s Eastern Island, after what Maou and Acieth did to them. Albert promised he’d recover all the parts that fell off and ferry them back safely, but that hadn’t happened yet. Given the wholly alien make of those bikes, Maou doubted whether Albert would know what a bike part looked like if he even saw one—but it’s not like he and Suzuno were any hurry to run an errand back to Heavensky for them.
“…Anyway, we’re gonna be pretty short-staffed on the delivery front. And if Laila’s here, there’s no need to run bodyguard duty for Nord any longer, yeah? So why don’t you apply to MgRonald, too?”
“I’ll pass, thank you. I am not in the habit of smiling at people for the sake of politeness. Scowling, on the other hand…”
“That’s just a waste of talent, dude,” Urushihara cut in.
“……………I would be rather happier if a human said that to me,” she sniped back.
“Ooh, you look pretty happy to hear it anyway, I’d say—”
“Enough!” Ashiya shouted.
“F-farewell to you!” Suzuno shouted at equal volume as she hurried herself out the door. Maou couldn’t help but chuckle as she left.
“You know,” he said as he turned toward his roommates, “we’ve got nothing urgent going on right now. I’d say our top priority should be to retain our current lifestyle in Japan and, you know, try to upgrade it a little. Right?”
“Absolutely, Your Demonic Highness.”
Ashiya nodded deeply, even though the proposal sounded a bit off to him. Urushihara, meanwhile, just sighed at what, to him, seemed like an unnatural affinity for stagnation on top of stagnation.
“It’s all just ‘don’t rock the boat, don’t rock the boat’ with you guys, huh? Well, if that’s what you want, take it, I guess…”
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