THE HERO STARTS LOOKING FOR A NEW PATH
On her way home from school after wrapping up her extracurricular activities, Chiho was greeted with an unfamiliar phone number on her screen. She waited for it to vibrate a few times before picking it up.
“Hello…?”
“Oh, hellooo, is this Sasakiii?”
“Oh, Emeralda! Wow! What’s up?”
She had no idea Emeralda had her own phone. Better save the number, she thought before her friend continued.
“Listen, sorry for calling so suuuddenly, but I wanted to aaask you something.”
“Sure.”
“Do you knowww where Emilia is right nowww?”
“…Emilia?”
Chiho stopped walking.
“She hasn’t been back hooome, not since two days after we all met Lailaaa at the hospital.”
“She hasn’t? Huh?” She was having trouble parsing this. “She’s left the place empty?”
“She hasn’t been baaack, no. She said she was going to work, but now it’s been three whole daaays…”
“Wait a second! Yusa’s been working shifts at MgRonald the past three days in a row, you know!”
“Oh?”
A light gasp made its way through the phone line.
“Yeah, we’ve been talking like normal and everything…and we’ve been walking to Sasazuka station together after our shifts. She’s taking the train somewhere.”
“R-reeeeally? Oh, oh my gosssh…!”
This was apparently not the response Emeralda was expecting.
“I heard that Nord and Suzuno tried visiting Yusa’s place earlier, with Laila in tow. Was she gone then, too?”
“Oh, that would’ve been when she left work in the eeevening, or was meant to. But she never went hooome…”
“So even at that point…” Chiho recalled that day just before Urushihara left the hospital, when she brought some food over to Villa Rosa Sasazuka only to find no one there. “Have you tried calling her? This is your phone you’re using, right?”
“Yes, Emilia made Al and me purchase these when we first visited Japaaan. I did try calling, but she never annnswered… Is she scheduled for work todaaay?”
“Um, give me just a moment.”
Still unsure what was going on, Chiho took out a notebook with the next two weeks’ worth of shifts on it and gave it a quick scan.
“Oh, she’s off today.”
“Ohhh,” Emeralda groaned, at a total loss. There was no way to track her movements today.
What’s gotten into her? Leaving her home in Eifukucho empty, without even contacting the friend she trusts the most?
If Emeralda was telling the truth, this bizarre behavior must have been related to Laila somehow—but if so, there was no reason to leave without a word. If Emi didn’t want to see her mother, there were a thousand more natural ways to go about it, given her personality—shut the door on her, tell Emeralda to shoo her away, whatever.
It made Chiho recall what happened when she followed her out of the hospital room.
“I—I don’t see herrr. Where did she gooo…?”
“Over here!”
Once they were outside the hospital, Emeralda swiveled her head around in search of Emi, as Chiho followed her phone down the path to Yoyogi Park.
“H-how do you know she’s there? Do you think she’s going to board one of those traaains?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure she’s headed toward the station… Ah?!”
She let out a little shout just as she finished running up the path leading to JR Yoyogi station.
“It’s going faster… Maybe she got in a taxi.”
Emeralda gave her a surprised stare. Chiho didn’t acknowledge it, too busy staring into the distance as she clutched her phone.
“From the intersection in front of the station… She’s probably going that way,” she said, pointing down a street neatly running between two lines of tall buildings. “But where’s she going? Back to Eifukucho? Is that the right direction?”
She was tracking Emi’s movements, somehow—it seemed like magic to Emeralda—but still didn’t know where she was headed.
“Oh, no, she’s too far. It’s going all over the place.” Heaving a great sigh, she stopped, putting her phone away. “…I think Yusa’s taking a taxi back home, Emeralda. You’re staying with her, right?”
“Y-yesss… But how did you do that, Ms. Sasakiii? Did you have a gut feeeeling about her?”
Chiho showed Emeralda her pink mobile phone, flashing an embarrassed little smile. “I have an Idea Link running through this. I’m only supposed to use it for emergencies, but…”
“An Idea Link?!”
The news almost made Emeralda leap into the air.
“I was beaming a signal to Yusa’s phone as I was running, but she’s too far away for me to track at this point…”
“M-Ms. Sasakiii, when did you learn how to use an Idea Link?! And how?! You’re from Japaaan, aren’t you?!”
The extent of her shock was clear in her speech.
“Well, Yusa and Suzuno, and Sariel, too…they taught me a bunch of stuff and I learned how to do it.”
“Sariel?! Sariel the archangel?! The one who took a job nearby Emilia and the Devil King and tried to capture her?! What has been happening over here?!”
She had reason to be alarmed. First, Chiho, a girl with no latent holy force, had mastered a magic that ran on just that type of force. Second, it was impossible for her to imagine a situation where Emi and Suzuno would team up with Sariel, of all people, to make that so.
“Well,” Chiho bashfully explained, “a lot of stuff happened before Yusa was captured in Ente Isla. The angels and demons kinda came to realize that I’m the weak link when it comes to Maou and Yusa, so I asked them to teach me, just in case there was some urgent danger and I needed to call them.”
“Ohhh,” Emeralda said, finally recovering from the initial shock. “But my, how amaaazing. Amazing resolve, and amazing abilllity, too. An Idea Link is high-level maaagic! One would normally spend a year at the academy mastering it.”
Chiho gave a polite, bashful smile at the outspoken praise. “Enough about me, though,” she said, darkening once more. “We need to think about Yusa. I think she’s back home by now. Let’s hurry.”
“B-buuut what should we say to herrr…?”
“Let’s worry about that once we find her!”
She grabbed Emeralda’s hand and made a beeline for the station. Calling a taxi was something neither the teenage girl nor the Ente Islan sorceress had ever done before, so she decided to play it safe with the train.
“M-Ms. Sasakiii, have you chaaanged a little since last we met?”
Emeralda couldn’t help but smile, somehow, as she was dragged along. She recalled her first visit to Japan, when Chiho was caught up in all the Ente Isla chaos—such an innocent young girl, troubled over how much distance she should take from her crush. Now, the girl dragging her ahead had no doubts plaguing her mind.
“I have to keep strong inside, at least,” she said between breaths, “or else I’ll never keep up with Maou and Yusa!”
And she was. Emeralda could feel the strength, the hope within her. It made her think aloud:
“…I am so happy you’ve become friends with Emeralda…”
“What?”
“Oh, nothiiing. Can we duck into that alleyway, Ms. Sasakiii?”
“Huh? That one?”
“Yesss, I just remembered a shorrrtcut…”
This shortcut was news to the confused Chiho, but she still turned them into a side street, too narrow for more than one car to pass at once. And just as they disappeared from the main boulevard they were on:
“Hyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh…”
The surprised scream from Chiho echoed its way upward, far past the tall buildings of Yoyogi.
Emi had, as Chiho surmised, returned to Eifukucho. She was still in a state of shock about her and Laila—but not enough so to keep her from lecturing Emeralda about literally flying into her apartment from the sky with Chiho.
This was part of the reason, by the way, why Chiho didn’t realize until she was on her way home that it was her first visit to Emi’s place. She had always wanted to see how Emi lived, what kind of setup she had here—but Emi acted so eerily normal, so perfectly like herself, that this fact didn’t occur to her until long after. Just because everything was hunky-dory on the outside didn’t mean she was okay on the inside, of course. But really, it was the same-old, same-old with her, even at work the next day. That made Chiho put her guard down, and now they had no idea where she was. Great.
Given Emi’s personality and her current situation, Chiho doubted she was staying at some cheap hotel or camping out at an Internet café. That left only a few possibilities. She studied the shift schedule for a few moments, then nodded.
“…There’s a potential lead I want to check out. Can you give me a little while?”
“All riiight,” the depressed Emeralda replied to close out the call. “Thank youuu!”
Then, without giving it much further deep thought, Chiho looked up a phone number from her list and called it.
“Oh, hello, this is Sasaki. Um, so I guess Yusa hasn’t been—”
“Gehhh!!”
Even before she could state her business, the voice on the other end let out a surprised squeal of terror. Chiho had inadvertently painted her right into a corner.
“…Well, judging by that, Ms. Suzuki, it sounds like you know where she is?”
She could almost hear Rika Suzuki hesitating on the other end of the line.
As her former coworker, Rika was now caught up in Ente Isla events in much the same vein as Chiho, having a fairly firm grasp about who Maou and Emi really were. She gave Emi a lot of mental support, and if Emi was anywhere, Chiho reasoned, it was almost certainly her place.
“Yeah, I guess I do, Chiho,” she admitted. “But could you, like, wait ’til tomorrow for me, maybe?”
This struck Chiho as odd. It suggested maybe Emi wasn’t with Rika after all.
“…Well, that’s okay by me, but it’s not good for her to do that without saying anything to Emeralda. Maybe they’re such close friends that it’s hard for her to talk about it ’n’ stuff, but… Like, you know how it feels weird to open up your friend’s refrigerator for something, even if they say it’s okay? It’s like that.”
“Ha-ha-ha!”
The laugh sounded a bit strained to Chiho.
“Yeah, I guess it’s been pretty rough for Emeralda. Emi’s been telling me a lot… I guess she’s been through some bad stuff again, huh? They finally found her mom, too.”
“Or whatever you wanna call it, yeah,” she replied, fully expecting that Emi had provided Rika most of the details.
“So I figure I know most of the story now, but, y’know, if I can be honest with ya, we can’t dance around it like this forever, I don’t think. We’re gonna have to all face up to it and really do something, at some point.”
Chiho knew that as well. Laila certainly made a dramatic entrance, but not one that necessarily foretold major changes in Emi’s and Maou’s lives. Maybe she’d reveal why she was skulking around for so long and put out those smoldering doubts in their minds, but that was about it. And she knew it probably involved Laila having some major mission under way, one she wanted Emi’s and Maou’s strength on her side for.
It’s just…
“But I mean, it’s not like Emi’s in any big rush right now, yeah?”
Rika had it right on the nose.
Emi’s ultimate mission was to slay Maou, Ashiya, and Urushihara, but—thankfully for Chiho—it was becoming more and more unclear just how serious she was about that. She had recovered her long-lost father, and she returned the favor she owed Maou for saving her from Olba’s clutches. The Malebranche forces that rose up after Satan’s defeat on the Eastern Island were loyal to him once more, and both Shiba and Gabriel claimed that the heavens, after an extended period of meddling, no longer wanted anything to do with planet Earth.
Now, Sariel was interested in nothing but his rose-tinged future with Mayumi Kisaki, and Gabriel was thoroughly cowed by the powers of Shiba, Amane, and Maou surrounding him. Emi even had a new job to sustain her, here in Japan.
To Emi, the big mission right now, if there was one, was to have fun and make something out of the days she spent on this planet. The lack of any clear and present enemy didn’t mean she was out of the forest, going forward, but she did have a network of friends to rely on, a veritable lineup of powerful fighters to swiftly step up should things go awry. If anything, she was safe to retire from battle for good and go back to wheat farming with her father, although Maou’s presence was the main reason why she hadn’t. Maou demonstrated zero interest in leaving Japan, and thus Emi’s hands were tied.
“…Hmm.”
“Whatcha thinking, Chiho?”
“Oh, um, nothing, exactly…”
Going over Emi’s situation in her mind, Chiho discovered something that confused her. Emi’s old mission, to slay the Devil King, was just a shell of what it once was—but it had never wholly disappeared. That was because the Devil King’s Army that Maou had led had caused so much pain not just to her, but to countless Ente Islans, and Emi still felt he had to be judged for that. But Emi’s hostility toward Maou had absolutely mellowed compared to before. In fact, it almost seemed like things were drifting toward exactly what Chiho wanted—all her friends, living together, being happy.
After distilling all this down, however, only one simple conclusion was left: Emi was stuck in Japan because of Maou. The thought severely unnerved Chiho.
“Yeah, I’m sure you’ve got mixed feelings about all this, too, huh, Chiho? I mean, she hasn’t come out and said it, but I’m getting little hints that Emi doesn’t really hate Maou the way she used to.”
“Th-that’s fine! I mean, I like it that way!”
She blushed, even though nobody was there to see it. She had forgotten about Rika’s incredible intuition, as well as her deep interest in friendship drama. If she knew that much, Emi must have been pretty frank with her feelings when they spoke.
“Hee-hee! Well, when it comes to that sorta thing, I think you oughtta just follow your heart, y’know?”
“What do you mean, ‘that sort of thing’?”
If Rika was here right now, she thought, she’d probably be laughing at how mad I look.
“Aww, you knowww! So basically, Emi’s pretty much filed away any desire to whip Maou’s ass for now, right? Or rather, it feels like that goal of hers has gotten a lot more vague.”
“Y-yeah, more or less.”
“And having this hell-raiser of a mom pop in just when things are chilling out a little? Yeah, I’d be mad, too. Even though none of it is Emi’s responsibility, it’s like this mom she’s never even met just returns all of a sudden from some place after piling up debt then putting Emi on the hook for it, y’know? She doesn’t have to put up with that.”
It was kind of a blunt analogy, but it made a lot of sense.
“So, you know, I’m trying to be a good friend for her to vent at ’n’ all, but since I know all about what’s going on with these guys, I can’t help but see things Emeralda’s way a little more. I mean, she’s super-strong in a lot of ways, I know, so I guess part of me thinks that she could really pitch in with this.”
“Oh, yeah, um… I guess so.”
“And I talked about getting put on the hook just now, but Emi’s mom isn’t, like, totally evil, right? Not like Olba or those angels. I bet she’s just like, ‘come on, you’re the Hero, we need your strength to save the world and stuff.’”
“I think you’re exactly right.” Chiho nodded, recalling what Shiba had told her.
“But the thing is, Emi’s in no shape to take that up right now, and she doesn’t have any duty to, either.”
“Yeah.”
“So that’s why I think, like, not in terms of work or whatever, but I think Emi should try keeping herself busy with something that’s really important to her life.”
“Keep herself busy?”
It was a little too roundabout for Chiho to follow. But Rika laughed it off, expecting it.
“Hey, do you have some free time right now, Chiho?”
“Huh? Oh, um, yeah, I don’t have work today, so…”
“Okay, well, I’ll text Emi once I’m off the line with you, so why don’t you try runnin’ over to her? I think it’d be the perfect time for you to catch up, where she is, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun.”
“Umm, sure, but the perfect time how? And over where?”
“Yeah, you’ll see what I mean. You’re, um, seventeen, right?”
“Uh-huh…”
What’s my age got to do with it?
“Emi ain’t going anywhere, so you can take your time headin’ over. Just wait, like, half a day before telling Emeralda, okay? Like, contact her after you see Emi. Sound good? I’ll go text her now.”
“Um, sure, thanks a…”
Rika hung up before Chiho could finish. Thirty seconds later, she texted her.
“That was fast!”
Must’ve had one composed in advance for when I called her, she thought. But the message only perplexed her further.
“…Where’s that?”
It looked like a residential address. Sticking it into her map application, Chiho saw it was a fourth-floor apartment nearby Zoshigaya Station, in the Toshima ward of north-central Tokyo. From Sasazuka, it’d involve taking the Toei-Shinjuku Line to Shinjuku-sanchome Station, then changing to the Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin subway line—about a forty-five-minute journey in all.
The name that accompanied Rika’s text, though, was unfamiliar to Chiho.
“Maki Shimizu…?”
“Is this it?”
It was just before six PM, and given the date on the calendar, the sun was already most of the way down by the time Chiho stopped by a small concrete building nestled between Zoshigaya Station and the tram stop serving the nearby Kishiboshin Temple.
“Comfort Building, Room 401. Guess so.”
She nervously checked the address against the building’s name multiple times before pushing the button by the autolock doors. None of the residential mailboxes had names on them to refer to.
“Hello!” came the crackly, unfamiliar voice of a woman.
“Um, is this the Shimizu residence?”
“That’s right. Who’s this?”
The voice sounded a tad suspicious—Chiho knew she didn’t sound too confident.
“Umm, my name’s Sasaki. Rika Suzuki told me that Emi Yusa might be—”
“Oh! Ohhhhh.”
Rika’s name unlocked the padlock in the woman’s mind. Her voice ratcheted up.
“Right, right, right, right, right, I heard about you! Hey, boss! I’ll buzz you in now! Hey, Yusa, Sasaki’s here to see you!”
Click.
“Ah…”
She seemed awfully worked up about something before hanging up, but the doors whirred open anyway.
“‘Boss’?”
This was increasingly not what she was expecting. It bewildered her. Emi was definitely there, but she still had no idea who this Shimizu girl was. She took the elevator to the fourth floor; the door she wanted was waiting just beyond. There wasn’t any name card anywhere—maybe to prevent crime, or something.
Taking another deep breath, Chiho pushed the doorbell button. “Welcome, welcome!” came the immediate response, as if they were waiting to ambush her. The door opened, revealing a woman slightly older than Chiho beaming from ear to ear.
“Yow! Hey, boss! Aww, you’re just cute as a button, aren’t ya? Just like Rika said!”
“Oh, um, hi. My name’s Chiho Sasaki.”
“Great to meet you! C’mon in. Hey, Yusa! Your cute li’l gal’s here!”
“Um, ummmmm,” Chiho murmured as she was sucked into the room, as if the tenant had just turned on a huge vacuum cleaner. Then:
“Oh!”
“Hey. Sorry I made you worry.”
“Hi, Chi-Sis!”
In the room immediately past the door, Chiho’s eyes turned to Emi, looking at her a bit awkwardly from the sofa, and Alas Ramus, chilling out next to her and playing with a teddy bear.
“Yusa!” Chiho shouted, keeping up her brisk jog into the room. “You really scared me! Emeralda said you’ve been gone for a while! I didn’t notice anything different at work, so…”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I guess I kind of lost my head.”
It was a very non-Emi-like excuse, but given how she stuck to her work schedule, she must have made the decision with a rational mind. Exactly why she felt it necessary to worry Emeralda so much was still an enigma, but Chiho breathed a sigh of relief anyway.
“Whew… I mean, me and Maou weren’t too worried, but you should really say something to Emeralda, at least. It’s not like she doesn’t know what you’re going through.”
“Yeah. I do feel bad about that,” she meekly admitted, her face turned down. “I’ll apologize to her when I get home.”
It was a relief to Chiho just to know that Emi wasn’t in serious trouble. But why was she here? And who’s this Maki Shimizu? The questions piled up. Spotting the concern on her face, Emi pointed behind the girl.
“Oh, um, Maki Shimizu over there’s an old coworker from my Dokodemo days.”
“Hi!” Maki chirped.
“Hi!” Alas Ramus shouted out in glee alongside her.
“Yusa helped me out all the time at work! She really did!”
“Did she…?” Chiho asked, practically overwhelmed by her bright, vigorous energy. Rika was pretty cheery herself, but Maki was like turning the volume up to ear-splitting levels.
“Yeah! She was telling me about you. My name’s Maki Shimizu! I’m glad we got to meet up here!”
“Y-yeah, me too, thanks,” she said as Maki half forced her into a handshake. “But um, I’m sorry, but why are you calling me ‘boss’?”
“Ahh, that’s just a bad habit of Maki’s.”
“It’s not a bad habit!” Maki half chortled before turning back toward Chiho, hand still locked with hers. “Lemme tell you, Yusa and Rika are huge to me. Like, way more than just having a nice friend at work ’n’ stuff. They told me to stop calling ’em ‘boss,’ but that’s sorta what you are to Yusa at work, right? So let’s go with that!”
“Huh?! Um, geez, I—I really can’t!”
What is this girl going on about? It’s like talking to a space alien.
“See, I told you it’s a bad habit. Calling people younger than you ‘boss’ is just weird.”
“Aw, come on!” Maki protested, still smiling. “If you heaped that much praise upon her, then whether she’s still in high school or not, she’s gotta be someone incredible!”
“Well, maybe, but that doesn’t mean you can call her whatever you want, Maki.”
“What did you say to her, Yusa?” the slightly embarrassed Chiho asked.
“Oh, nothing out of the ordinary,” Emi half apologized, “but Maki can get kinda impulsive sometimes, so…”
“Right, but I remember that Rika talks about her sometimes, too! Like, about this crazy awesome high schooler who’s in one of her friend circles. That’s you, right, boss?”
“Oh, I—I wouldn’t say crazy awesome…”
“And if both Yusa and Rika have that to say about ya, then what kinda girl would I be if I didn’t show you a little respect, huh?!”
“Yeah…”
The kind of girl, it seemed, who naturally put an exclamation point after nearly every thought she had.
“So anyway, is that okay if I call you that?”
“I—I really wish you wouldn’t try to act all weirdly polite with someone younger than you, I mean…!”
“Okay, then as your elder, I’m reserving the right to call you ‘boss,’ then!”
“I’m sorry, Chiho. Maki’s just been kinda wired these past two or three days.”
Nothing seemed to discourage Maki. It was enough to annoy even Chiho.
“Well, what’d you expect?! Here you are, Emi Yusa, looking to me for help! What kind of woman wouldn’t step up at a time like that?! I’m just keeping on my toes, is all!”
“She-she’s just here to hang out a bit and chat,” Yusa said. “If you keep that up, you’re seriously gonna scare her, so could you turn it down a bit, Maki?”
“Okay!” She sat down, meekly obeying Emi’s instructions. Once everyone else in the room was sufficiently chill, Emi started talking.
“Anyway, this is Maki Shimizu. She joined Rika and me at Dokodemo after we got hired. You’re a…sophomore, right? At Waseta University?”
“W-Waseta?!”
Chiho’s eyes shot open at the mention of one of Japan’s most prestigious colleges.
“Oh, it’s nothing that big. I just applied because that’s what my parents told me to do. I really wanted to go to a music academy.”
“Well, yeah, but it’s not like Waseta just lets anyone in for a reason like that…”
The revelation honestly flustered Chiho. It was said you needed a college education to do pretty much anything these days, but that didn’t mean all universities were the same. Some were known for being tough, for taking a real effort to get into. Waseta, nestled in the Tokyo neighborhood of Takadanobaba, was on the upper end of “tough.” It took work to make it there, Chiho thought.
“True, but you know, I worked hard! I always work hard at school ’n’ stuff. You know, I used to run track in high school, and that discipline kinda stuck with me. Ooh, I’m really trying to hold back right now, guys!”
“Oh…”
Being a college sophomore meant Maki was at least three years older than Chiho, but all this “boss” stuff and her general peppiness were really beginning to rub her the wrong way.
“Yeah,” Emi mumbled, “she acted that way around Alas Ramus at first, too.”
“Well, if you’re bringing your relatives in to see me, Yusa, I gotta treat them the same way I treat you!”
So that’s how she explained the child, Chiho thought. Maki didn’t know who either of them truly were, and Rika probably didn’t blab about it, either.
“Plus, she’s cute!”
“Ah, don’t take Relax-a-Bear, Maki-Sis!”
Said Relax-a-Bear plush must’ve belonged to Maki. It was roughly the same height as Alas Ramus, and she did not like the idea of Maki picking it up.
“See? So cute!”
“Y-yeah…”
She was cute, Chiho agreed. But there was something about the way that absolutely no rebuke worked against Maki. Something about it reminded her of Sariel, and the unique talent he had for driving Kisaki insane. But she thought, maybe that was part of the reason Emi was crashing at her place.
“So,” Emi blurted out, watching her from the side, “you know, I came here because I wanted to talk to her about college, and admissions, and stuff.”
“Oh?!” In a word, it shocked Chiho. “You’re gonna go to a Japanese university?!”
Oops.
Chiho, immediately regretting her phrasing, shot a look toward Maki.
“Well,” she calmly replied, “she might want to consider going overseas, too. Especially if she’s graduated from a missionary school. It’d be a waste not to consider that!”
That seemed to explain Emi’s backstory for Maki well enough. On the floor at MgRonald, she had pretended to be back in Japan from an extended period overseas—a tale she probably made up from the moment she applied to Dokodemo.
“Yeah, so among my friends, Maki’s about the only one I can talk about college stuff with, so…”
Maki’s eyes literally sparkled. “Ooh, what an honor!”
“So between that and the other stuff I’ve been dealing with, I’ve been chilling out here after work for the past little while, going out to eat and hanging out and stuff. Maki gave me a tour of her university today, too.”
“They let nonstudents inside?”
“Oh, sure!”
Grade schools were quite a different story, but unless they were really small or really secretive, most universities in Japan allowed anyone to stroll around the premises, as well as access some of their academic facilities.
“It depends on the faculty, but you can even attend some classes on an audit basis without being admitted! Yusa didn’t do that, but we did have lunch at the cafeteria!”
“Really?!”
This was a fresh surprise for Chiho. She knew from the placement program at her school that some private universities held welcome events for prospective students, but she had no idea campuses were so freewheeling with whom they let go inside. The idea of someone besides students and faculty milling around a high school was at best weird, at worst criminal.
“Yeah.” Maki nodded wistfully. “I didn’t know about that until the open-campus events I attended my last year in high school, too. But as long as you qualify, you can go to college no matter how old you are. They have cultural classes that are open to the general public, and you see businesspeople, researchers, and folks from other colleges on campus all the time. It’s not like there are uniforms like in high school, and outside of, like, the research labs and libraries, you’re free to go wherever you want, really. Probably a different story with some of the fancier private girls’ schools, but…”
“Neat…”
“It was a lot of fun,” Emi chimed in. “Like, everything seemed so new and fresh to me. And the cafeteria was really great for the price! Lots of different places to choose from.”
“You can choose?”
“Well, there’s the cafeteria run by the college,” Maki explained, “but then there’s the local food co-op, and there are a couple fancier places for the faculty, if you’re willing to pay a bit more. You get a pretty wide selection!”
“Oh…”
There was, of course, only one cafeteria at Sasahata North High School, a place that—by and large—sold out of food before lunch break even ended. For Chiho, who had only a vague idea what “college life” was, most of what Maki described was beyond her imagination.
“I mean, the only thing I’d worry about is…” Maki brought a hand to her chin and gave an off-putting grin. “You know, Yusa, you’re really beautiful, so I wonder if some of the seedier guys in your college would start targeting you. But hey, you’ll have Alas Ramus running interference for you, huh?”
“You—you mean they’d hit on her?” Chiho asked, having only heard about this in the media so far in her life.
“Pretty much, yeah. I mean, you hear about how men don’t really give a damn about romance these days, but you still get some pretty active dudes in college!”
“Wow…”
Another new thing for Chiho to learn, although she wasn’t sure she agreed with Maki on that count.
“But you know, boss, I bet you’ll have to deal with some tough things in college. At the start of the year, all the clubs open up to new members, and lemme tell you, at the events and stuff, all the clubs just descend on cute girls like you. They’re like buzzards!”
She wasn’t quite sure what Maki was talking about, but all this new information about what to expect in a couple years was starting to make Chiho’s head swim.
“By the way, boss, you’re in your second year of high school, right? So one more year before college? You’re probably getting a lot of unsolicited advice about where to go, huh?”
“Uh…”
Chiho’s head was no longer swimming.
It was the first time anyone had brought the topic up with her in a while. But it was true. High school lasted three years in Japan; she was now over halfway through her second, and at least a few of the students around her were starting to sweat their college admission exams.
“I mean, I’m not one to talk since it’s not like I went to my first choice, and I probably sound like I’m just lecturing you from my high horse or whatever, but… You know, it’s important that you have some kind of goal in mind, or else it’ll be really hard to find motivation for college—like, before and after admission, I mean. So right now would be a great time for you to start thinking a little along those lines, like making a list of the kinds of things you wanna do. Nothing too fancy, but just to get the ball rolling.”
“What I want to do, huh?”
Now Chiho was flustered for quite different reasons from when Maki first accosted her at the door. To her, the only thing that really mattered was her hope that she could keep her life with Maou, and Ashiya and Urushihara, and Emi and Suzuno and Alas Ramus, in peace. But ahead of that, she was also a high school student in Japan, and at this point in her life, she had things to do. And as long as she kept doing them, she’d be at her third and final year in high school in the blink of an eye.
“College…”
Year three would force her to start thinking about higher education, whether she wanted to or not. The question bothered her a little when she was hired at the MgRonald by Hatagaya station, but now her life was much, much different. She always knew, in a vague way, that college was a choice available to her. But it would take hard work and time. There were several people on the staff who planned to leave MgRonald because they were about to graduate from college and needed to hit the business-recruitment circuit—find a “real” job. Someday, before long, she’d have to devote a lot of her time to the college-admissions treadmill, too.
If Chiho just wanted to go to any college, her current grades would be zero hindrance to that. But—not that Maki mentioned it—just moving on to university, without really thinking about what she was doing, would undoubtedly lead to regrets later. She couldn’t make her parents pay for four years in college that had no substance to it—and most of all, if she decided to take the easy way and make no effort of her own, she’d lose the right to be alongside Maou and Emi.
She thought through all of that in a single instant. It didn’t result in any conclusion, however.
“College, huh? I feel like the more I think about it, the less I know. But are you gonna go to Waseta, Yusa?”
Emi smiled at the muddled question, but shook her head at it. “Oh, no way. I don’t have the prerequisites, and I looked at some of Maki’s college study guides, but I could barely even decipher the sample exams.”
“The past exams? Um, could I take a look, maybe?”
“Go right ahead. I brought ’em in from my parents’ place because Yusa said she was thinking about it. Um, which was it… Red spine, red spine…”
Maki slowly got up and took a book off the shelf—WASETA UNIVERSITY PAST EXAM QUESTIONS, the cover read. Chiho thumbed through it for a little while. Smoke shot out of her ears.
“This is…just…”
It wasn’t totally incomprehensible. Just generally so. It was hard to decipher what was even being asked at times.
“Yeah, and I haven’t studied in years, so there’s no way I could pass an exam like that in one shot. And it’s not like I’m fully committed to studying for this, either. It was just, like, I kinda wondered what being a college student was like, so…”
“Well, you speak all kinds of English, Yusa, so you got a head start! Do a little work, and I think it’s totally possible!”
Maki stood back up, grabbed a compact notebook PC from the corner, and brought it back to the sofa. It was a super-slim model, far superior in every way to the ancient type Urushihara had, and when it booted up, Maki showed the screen to Emi.
“Also, Yusa, if you’re looking for universities around Tokyo with a good agriculture program, here’s a few of them.”
“Agriculture… Oh!”
The keyword made Chiho’s eyes burst open.
“Along those lines, the Tokyo University of Agriculture springs to mind first, but Meiji and its Ikuta campus have programs, too, and—you know, it’s really hard to find a place that doesn’t have one. Fusou, for example. And even then, there are all kinds of specialties you can pursue, like animal husbandry or life science or horticulture or urban planning. Kitazato University has a lot of neat faculties like that, along with a bunch of the public schools out in the country a little.”
“Ooh, can I look at this for a bit?”
“Sure! All these names link to their webpages.”
Emi began to tap at Maki’s computer, her attitude 20 percent curious, 80 percent serious.
“What about you, boss? Anything you got your heart set on yet?”
“Me?”
The sudden question almost made Chiho drop the study guide in her hands.
“Well, um, not really, except I wanna go somewhere strong in English…”
That was what she wrote in the college-placement Q&A sheet they had her fill out back in spring. There wasn’t much thought behind it, but she wasn’t as set upon it as Emi apparently was with agriculture. English had even more subdivisions and specialties than farming, she knew—really, no matter what she majored in, English would be involved somehow.
“Oh, you thinking about studying abroad?”
“Abroad?! Ooh, I—I haven’t thought that far! I haven’t, but…”
But then why study English?
For now, all she could think of was how nice it’d be to chat more with the non-Japanese customers at MgRonald.
“Sounds like maybe you don’t really know what you wanna do yet?”
“…Pretty much. I thought I had gotten over that before, but…”
“Mmm, makes sense.” Maki nodded, shot a look at Emi to make sure she was still distracted by her college search, then sidled up to Chiho. “You know,” she half whispered, “this is just some advice I got from other people…”
“Y-yeah?”
There wasn’t much point to the act. There wasn’t anyone else in the room, and Emi was stealing glances at them anyway, which made Chiho feel more than a little awkward.
“But if you don’t know what to do now, I’d recommend going someplace where you have a lot of choice. That way, when you do find that something important to you, you’ll be all set for it.”
“Someplace with a lot of choice…?”
“Right. You don’t strike me, boss, as the kinda gal who’s counting on marrying some dude with a high-paying job and riding that out your whole life. So if you can’t think of anything you want to do, then… You know, for now, just keep studying, and go for a nice, all-round kind of package until the application deadline.”
“What do you mean?”
The first sentence of Maki’s advice didn’t seem to dovetail too well with the second in Chiho’s mind.
“Well, like, yeah, Waseta’s a really well-known, big-name university, but there’s a lot of relatively no-name colleges that have, like, really great programs that let you do super high-level research. If you got something driving you, then by all means, don’t just look at rankings or brand value; check out the research-driven places, too. You’ll run into some great friends that way, too. Of course, if we’re talkin’ Tokyo or Kyoto University–level, that’s a different story, but… You get me so far?”
“Yeah, I think I do. I’m definitely not thinking of those two.”
Chiho was confident that she was a pretty good student, but in her mind, Tokyo University might as well be located beyond Ente Isla.
“All right. So if you aren’t sure what to aim for, just try to score the best college you can, so when you do find that thing, you can switch right to that. It’s kind of taking the long way compared to having a clear goal at the start, but it beats having nothing to aim for at all, don’t you think?”
“Sure…”
She didn’t know if this advice was based on Maki’s own experience, but something about her motivational speaker–like approach struck her.
“I have this friend—she’s graduated now—and she got a job offer for this really huge bank conglomerate, but she just said ‘no’ right out to it. I’m talking, like, the kind of bank where you can spit and hit one of their ATMs. It would’ve been a huge salary to start with out of college! You just know she would’ve made her whole extended family proud if she took it. She could’ve impressed all her friends, and she could’ve worked internationally, too. But she turned it down and joined another company she ran into while she was job hunting. And what kind of company do you think it was?”
Chiho made a suggestion. Maki immediately shook her head.
“She went to a company that makes ship propellers. She’s busy polishing these huge propellers at a factory somewhere in Hiroshima. So, shipbuilding, basically.”
Like I could’ve guessed that, Chiho thought. But she understood Maki’s point.
“She told me her entire family screamed at her for turning down that mega-bank. The job placement center at college pleaded with her to reconsider! But she stood firm. She was all like, ‘I want to support Japan’s shipbuilding industry,’ and off she went. She was texting me the other day to brag about how they shipped this propeller that’s, like, three stories tall to some joint in Australia. And maybe people look at that and are like, ‘Here’s this girl who could’ve been set for life, but she settled for a ton less money to pursue her dreams.’ But she loves ships, and she loves being in an environment where she’s working with them every day. That’s pretty hard to achieve, when you think about it, huh? And sure, she’s not making huge sums of money, but it’s not bad, either.”
Maki didn’t mean to say there were no dreams, no great mission to undertake, working for a large firm. She simply brought up an example of someone who worked hard to make as many choices available to herself as possible.
“So like, you have all these universities and trade schools and companies, and they all offer different kinds of choices to you. What you should do, boss, is find the place that lets you spread your choices out as much as possible, is what I say. I know I’m a whopping three years older than you, but that’s what I can tell you from my experience.”
“Oh, no, it’s good stuff…”
“Of course, if you got a lead on something that’ll, um, keep you set for life, that’s easy street, pretty much. But that’s a thing of the past these days.”
“For life… Oh!”
Chiho took the hint. She meant the idea of getting married after graduation. The smoke shooting out of her ears turned to steam, her face turning red as if something just exploded inside her. Her imagination tended to run wild with subjects like these, and she never resented herself more for it.
It was too easy a reaction for Maki to read. She grinned and brought her face closer to her.
“Oooh, boss, do I detect…?”
“No, no, no, no! No! I’m not thinking anything!!”
“Wow! So you got a little Cupid plucking at your cute li’l heartstrings, huh?”
“Ahhhhhhhhhh…”
“Stop picking on Chiho, Maki!”
“Okaaay,” Maki sighed, leaning back at Emi’s admonishment. Chiho took that moment to gather her breath and take as much distance from Maki as the tiny room allowed her. This girl’s dangerous. She goes in for the kill even faster than Rika.
“Well, enough joking—”
“How much of that was a joke?!” Chiho sternly protested.
Maki bowed her head, not looking too regretful about it. “Sorry, sorry. But you know, things have been really high-tension around here. I was just having a little fun!”
It didn’t console Chiho much. Being toyed with like that would annoy anyone.
“But I’m kind of being serious, too! I mean, just thinking what you can do right now to keep from losing out later. I think that’ll help you find a lot of direction, and stuff.”
Maki gave a glance behind her.
“You know, Yusa told me something a little while ago—and ever since then, college has been a lot more fun for me.”
“Wh-whoa, Maki?! What are you…?”
Emi’s face reddened at becoming the center of conversation.
“Oh, I remember, girl! I know I’m a wimp with alcohol and people say I act all mean when I’m drunk, but I never black out! I still treasure that advice, y’know!”
“Stop!!” Emi, faced with this unexpected knockout blow, looked ready to faint. “I—I told you, it’s not like I’ve done anything myself yet! That was just a bunch of haughty BS I told you! Just forget about it!”
“Nuh-uh! I mean, it literally changed the trajectory of my student life. You never know when you’ll run into a turning point like that, huh?”
“Quit being so stupid! Ugh…!”
It seemed to Chiho she wasn’t the only one Maki was leading around by the ear.
“Maki-Sis, Maki-Sis!”
“Hmm? What’s up, Alas Ramus?!”
The child toddled up to her, dragging the Relax-a-Bear behind her.
“Daddy!”
“Daddy?”
“Mmm.”
“Whoa, what do you mean, Alas Ramus?”
“Alas Ramus?!”
Emi and Chiho both expressed intense alarm at the innocent girl’s behavior. But the bombshell was unleashed without a moment’s thought for them:
“Daddy. Mommy ’n’ Chi-Sis like Daddy a lot!”
“……Alas Ramus?”
“Oo?”
“If you tell me about ‘Daddy,’ I’ll give you that Relax-a-Bear.”
“Maki!!”
“Ms. Shimizu!!”
They both stepped up to stop the malevolent Maki from snaring this tender waif with bribery. But there was no taking back what was said. Alas Ramus immediately understood the offer. Her eyes shone as her small lips parted.
“Daddy, um, Daddy is Maou!”
“Maou? That’s his name?”
“Ms. Shimizu, please stop! You should be ashamed of yourself, bribing little children like that!”
“You’re making me angry, Maki!”
All three ventured on, paying no mind to the neighbors downstairs. But Alas Ramus’s one-girl play continued anon.
“Maou… Name. Mmm, yeh, Daddy, Maou.”
“Maou, huh! Well, that’s a funny name!”
They couldn’t physically close the child’s mouth, so Emi and Chiho attempted to close Maki’s instead.
“Daddy, um… He loves money. But he’s poor. And, uhhh…foo-gal?”
“Um, Alas Ramus, I think that’s enough…”
Chiho didn’t want Maki to know about Maou, of course, and having this sweet little child refer to her own father as “poor” almost made her cry on the spot. But just before she could put a finger to her lips and shush her:
“And, and, Daddy is reawwy…lonewy.”
“Oh?”
“…Alas Ramus?” asked Emi, frozen to the spot even as she had Maki in a wrestling-style headlock.
“Maou’s lonely?” Chiho exclaimed.
“Daddy reawwy likes his friends. He wants ’em to…stay. Not go.”
“Y-Y-Yusa, I—I can’t breathe…”
“Daddy likes his money, and, and he likes his fwiends, and he likes work. And dat’s why Mommy ’n’ Chi-Sis ’n’ Suzu-Sis like Daddy!”
“I—I never said that…”
She knew it was pointless to deny it in front of her, but something about her “daughter” claiming that Emi loved Daddy was highly disturbing.
“And, and Daddy likes his friends, so…that’s why he was mean to Mommy.”
“…Alas Ramus? Do you mean…?”
Chiho took her arms off Maki and turned toward the child. She had the feeling Alas Ramus was trying to discuss something very important. Emi must have picked up on it as well, because she removed her arms from her groaning friend Maki and turned to the toddler.
“Alas Ramus,” Emi asked, “when you said ‘Mommy’…are you talking about Laila?”
She nodded.
“Daddy likes work, he likes fwiends…but Mommy tried to make ’im work. For her… Reawwy mean!”
Laila had tried to make Maou work for her. Emi and Chiho couldn’t say what that meant—but somehow, it made a lot of sense to them. Everyone in their circle figured that Laila was trying to take a thorny situation, one involving all of Ente Isla, and place it in their laps. But both Emi and Maou had turned her down. They hadn’t even listened to her. Why couldn’t they inspire themselves to do even that? Something told them the answer lay somewhere within Alas Ramus’s words.
“Tried to make him work, huh…?”
Alas Ramus, taken out of the hospital with Emi, wasn’t there to hear the full story. There was no way she had a full grasp of Laila’s intentions. But seeing Laila closer to her than ever before, and neither Maou nor Emi deigning to interact with her, must have seemed strange to the child’s mind. She must have been looking for an answer.
“Alas Ramus?”
“Hi, Mommy!”
“That Relax-a-Bear belongs to Maki. I’ll buy a new one for you when we get home, all right?”
“Reawwy?!” Her face shone, the meekness of a moment ago quite gone.
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