THE DEVIL AND THE HERO ARE GIVEN A PROPOSITION
“Ladies and gentlemen! The day is here!”
At Mayumi Kisaki’s order, her staff stiffened their posture.
“It hasn’t been easy going, but as of today, the Hatagaya station MgRonald is officially part of our company’s delivery program!”
The gauntlet was thrown. Beginning ten AM today, deliveries from Hatagaya station were all systems go. The franchise had been allotted three Gyro-Roofs, the three-wheeled motorcycles commonly used for small-scale local deliveries. Their bodies shone a bright shade of red, the MgRonald logo brilliantly emblazoned upon them.
“It’s a great honor to have you guys on our first-ever delivery shift. Remember what you learned in training and give this job everything you’ve got.”
““Yes, ma’am!”” the entire morning crew shouted in unison.
Maou and Kawata had been selected as delivery drivers for the first day. Emi would mainly handle order-taking duties on the phone, while Kisaki was the utility person, ready to tackle whatever was needed—for example, hopping on a scooter to cover for orders that came when Maou and Kawata were busy with previous ones. All this, of course, done alongside their usual duties when no delivery orders were waiting.
This being the first day, Maou and Kawata were understandably nervous. The Hatagaya station location wasn’t just handling standard MgRonald deliveries; it was part of an experimental test program, and thus they were expecting more delivery orders than other locations.
No one had noticed since Kisaki had Emi set up to be the phone operator from the very beginning, but other MgRonalds usually didn’t take phone orders. Instead, customers used their computers or smartphones to look up local restaurants and make their orders online. Kisaki, however, didn’t feel that was enough. Her take on it, as loudly given to the area manager: Given her store’s location in the middle of a busy neighborhood and shopping area, it would be silly for them not to take direct phone orders. No matter how common smartphones had become, some people would always prefer to do things the old-fashioned way, and restricting deliveries to Internet orders only, in Kisaki’s mind, would be needlessly driving away potential business.
“Noodle places, Chinese restaurants, pizza joints, and sushi restaurants have been offering phone delivery for decades,” she explained. “With the Net, you have to sign up for an account and every site has a different system. Compared to that, calling in orders is stupid easy. Just say what you want, and bam. This idea that young people will use nothing but the Internet for everything is a fantasy peddled by people who don’t use their brains. Customers, young or old, will use whatever’s easiest for them at that moment. Especially in the next few decades, when Japan’s population will get older and older, it’ll be key to target exactly the kind of group who’s not used to doing things online. Everything’s gonna be on the Net sooner or later, but we need to keep a focus on people who are fine with the old system, or else we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.”
This was all very familiar to Emi. During her stint as a call-center operator for Dokodemo, she noticed that questions from middle-aged and elderly customers took up a significant chunk of her workload. Having a chance to bring those skills to MgRonald—especially considering she thought the audience for fast-food burgers would skew younger than that—would be a plus for her, experience-wise.
“Don’t forget, of course, that your nondelivery duties remain as important as ever. I’ll be expecting all of you to maintain the same high level of performance you’ve shown me before. Dismissed!”
With their marching papers handed to them, the crew set out to prepare for morning traffic.
“Talk about déjà vu, huh?”
As she put on her headset and adjusted the mic position to her liking, Emi couldn’t help but feel a bit excited. Starting today, everyone on the staff—whether working the café, kitchen, or dining hall—would be wearing these headsets for a time. With a larger head count and much more varied array of operations to deal with, Kisaki brought them in to help streamline things and keep everyone on the same page. Whenever the mic entered her view, Emi felt more sharply than ever that she was working just that much harder.
Her role was unique in that it could accept phone calls. Customer information like addresses and phone numbers needed to be typed into a computer for deliveries, and Kisaki figured that doing this while trying to cradle a phone receiver between your head and shoulder was inefficient and detrimental to good customer service. The headset would also be indispensable for communicating with drivers—the bikes didn’t have GPS devices, and not everyone on staff necessarily had the local roads memorized, so Emi would need to provide directions in case drivers got lost. (They could use the GPS on their phones, of course, but not everybody had a smartphone.)
There was talk of hiring on a permanent employee or two to exclusively handle deliveries, depending on how busy they found themselves. However, given that everyone on staff needed at least a passing familiarity with how MgRonald worked and Kisaki wanted to retain a small group of experts who could handle any on-site duty needed, it was likely the entire crew would eventually get rotated in and out of delivery work.
“Saemi, can you hear me?”
“…Um, yes!” came the slightly delayed response from Emi. She wasn’t quite used to Kisaki calling her that yet.
“Given your performance during training, I’m positive you’re the right staffer for this position. You’re gonna be our eyes in the delivery control tower from the first day. Do your best.”
“Got it. I’ll try to live up to expectations.”
“Thanks.”
Emi smiled at Kisaki, who was at the other end of the kitchen. The manager smiled back and gave her a thumbs-up.
Whenever a staff member wrapped up their probationary period, there was a little ceremony that the crew came to call The Holy Christening. It was the moment when Kisaki began calling you by her personally selected nickname, and for Emi, the day came immediately after that fateful late night she spent exposing her anxieties to Maou. She had no regrets about it, oddly enough—when morning came, she felt supremely refreshed.
Strolling in for her shift just before lunch, she breezed past the grimacing Maou and changed into her MgRonald uniform, which she was finally starting to get used to. The moment she went back into the dining hall:
“Morning, Saemi!”
“Um, good…morning…”
It came so suddenly, Kisaki just cutting across her path and whizzing on by, that Emi’s expression was classic deer-in-the-headlights.
“Oh, are you out of training, Yusa?”
“Huh?”
The question was lobbed by Akiko Ohki (or “Aki-chan” around the kitchen), a veteran crewmember with a history as long as Maou’s and Kawata’s.
“Ms. Kisaki just called you by a nickname, didn’t she?”
“Oh, was that a, uh, nickname?”
“Mm-hmm,” Akiko said with a bemused grin. “Everybody makes that face the first time they hear it. It always comes out of nowhere, so I was pretty surprised with mine, too.”
“Ah…ha…” Emi replied, still unsure what all this meant as Kawata approached them.
“At this MgRonald,” he explained, “it’s kind of an unwritten rule that if Ms. Kisaki starts using a nickname, you’re officially a full-fledged part of the team. What’d she call you?”
“Uhmm…” It came so suddenly that she couldn’t immediately recall. “I think it was ‘Saemi’…”
“Oooh!” Akiko beamed. “That’s not a common pattern.”
“Yeah, but your full name’s only four syllables, Yusa, so that probably felt more natural to her then trying to add extra sounds to it.”
The sight of these coworkers getting excited about dumb nicknames perplexed Emi. Then she noticed another, much larger, change:
“Hey, Saemi, we’re short on oolong-tea concentrate today, so make sure that doesn’t get red-lighted during the peak, okay?”
“Saemi, do a cleaning run on number ten for me.”
“Oh, Saemi, you put the tray paper on upside down a couple times today. It’s an easy mistake to make when you’re busy, so keep an eye out for that.”
Kisaki was speaking completely differently to her. She went out of her way to call her things like “Ms. Yusa” before, always couching her requests and orders in polite terms. Now she barked at her just as she did with Maou or Chiho. It didn’t mean Kisaki was refusing to help or turning up the pressure on her, but it was subtly different.
“Well,” Akiko said when Emi asked about it, “this is just a guess, but there are a lot of crappy jobs in the restaurant business, you know? And people sometimes quit during their training period, so maybe she’s politer then so she doesn’t leave a bad impression if they do. If it doesn’t work out, she wouldn’t want it to be because she acted like a slave driver, you know?”
Kawata nodded his approval. “Yeah, come to think of it, that’s how she was with me at first, too.”
Akiko gave this a cheerful laugh. “Either way,” she reflected, “I think that’s the fastest hiring-to-nickname time since Chi. You’re probably gonna see a pretty big bump in your hourly wage, too. Hee-hee! Guess I got some competition now.”
This mainly served to make Emi awkwardly stiffen her posture.
Between that day and today, about half of the employees had taken to calling Emilia “Saemi.” Chiho and Kawata stuck with “Yusa,” since they were used to it by now.
Maou, meanwhile, stuck with just “Emi.”
“Hey, can someone go downstairs and check to see if we’ve got extra maintenance brushes? The one up here’s getting too threadbare to use.”
“I’ll go look now. If I find one, I’ll bring it up.”
“Oh, um, thanks, Emi.”
Emi reflexively smiled at the mixed feelings she heard through the headset.
His attitude toward Emi on the job was no longer very different from what it was off duty. Emi, meanwhile, was making a concerted effort to continue treating him as the veteran employee he was. He had the most experience out of anyone on the team, and she was still the new girl. Giving Maou her usual amount of lip would no doubt raise eyebrows—and while Maou didn’t bring it up, perhaps understanding what her thoughts were, something still seemed to bother him about it.
It was odd, though. When she first signed on, playing the “student” role to Maou’s “teacher” took a somewhat concerted acting effort much of the time. It also made Maou act all high and mighty around her, which was even more irritating. Since that night, though, she felt interacting with him came far more naturally now. She didn’t need to constantly think about her position in the MgRonald hierarchy any longer.
“Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee…”
“Wh-what’s so funny, Aki-chan?”
The evil cackling from Akiko as she watched Emi scurry down to the basement surprised Kawata a little.
“Oh, it’s just… You know, Saemi’s gotten used to things pretty well now, huh? And meanwhile, Maou’s acting so awkward around her. I thought it was kinda funny.”
“Ahh… Yeah, I don’t get those two sometimes. It does feel like Yusa’s been loosening up lately, but…”
In Kawata’s mind, Emi had been shouldering some heavy burden until a few days ago. That atmosphere was now a thing of the past.
“But they were all friends, right? Maou and Chi and Saemi? Oh, and have you looked at Chi lately, Kawatchi? She’s hilarious.”
“You’re thinking something highly nefarious, aren’t you, Aki-chan?”
“No pulling the wool over your eyes, huh? Well, whenever Maou and Saemi are talking lately, Chi makes this incredibly goofy face.”
“Goofy? Goofy how?”
“I mean, it starts with this really warm smile, like a mom looking at her kids. Then her eyebrows go down, like she’s a scientist working through a tough question or something. And then all the color drains from her face, like she’s seen a ghost.”
“Ahh…” Kawata gave a broad nod to this as he stared off into the distance. “One day, on a moonless night, someone needs to stab Maou in the back.”
“Oh, yeah, totally! You know what I’m talking about?”
“Aki-chan, Kawatchi, what’s going on? You aren’t working.”
Kisaki’s headset interruption quickly spurred them back into action, although Kawata’s analysis filled Akiko with utter glee.
Even before the official start at ten AM, the MgRonald received four early calls, making the atmosphere tense around the kitchen. Emi’s first job as call handler was thus to apologize to them, since their computer system wouldn’t accept any orders before that time.
The first time she said “We have a web order in” over the headset, everyone on staff whose hands were free gave a round of applause to celebrate. In a few moments, Kawata was off with his heat-insulated delivery bag, specially developed for MgRonald’s new program. Putting on his elbow and knee protectors, keeping his scooter key (with plastic tag and anti-loss code) on his belt, he flew out the door for his first delivery.
Five minutes later, another online order showed up. Immediately after that:
“Thanks for calling MgRonald at Hatagaya station. This is Yusa speaking. How can I help you?”
The first phone order was in.
“If I could have your address and phone number, please… All right. So to confirm your order, I have a Double Full-Moon Burger Set with… Okay. At the current time, we’re looking at…”
Typing in the information with practiced hands, Emi checked the order’s delivery address and switched to in-house headset mode.
“Same direction, toward Sasahata District five. Less than five minutes apart.”
“Can you take ’em both, Marko?” Kisaki broke in.
“Roger that,” said Maou as he inserted the two complete orders into his own bag.
“Do you know the way?”
“Yeah, I think I know the roads over there. This is the phone number?”
He gave another look at the receipt Emi handed him, then checked the map of their delivery area hanging on the nearby wall.
“Here, huh? If it’s district five, then order number eleven should be near the bottom of that steep hill. Number twenty-one… Okay, I got it. I’ll let you know if something comes up.”
“All right. See you later.”
“………Yeah.”
The sight of Emi giving him a perfectly normal smile as she waved him off was almost surreal. But he had a job to do, so Maou filed the thought away, put on his helmet, and set off. He could feel Akiko’s dubious gaze out the corner of his eye; this, too, he ignored as he hopped aboard the brand-new Honta Gyro-Roof out front. Turning the key, he was rewarded with an engine roar that immediately conjured memories of his most recent time in Ente Isla.
“We are off! Onward, Red Dullahan I!!”
Having already prenamed the restaurant bikes Red Dullahan I, II, and III in his mind, Maou gave this new steed a heroic bit of encouragement as he set off into the mean streets of Sasazuka and Hatagaya.
“Not as many as anticipated, huh?”
“No. Considering the number of early birds, I was hoping for a few more, but… Ah, well.”
Emi and Kisaki were manning the front counter, devoting themselves to their usual duties. The lunch rush was over, but they were still hovering at a total of just ten delivery orders so far. They were prepared for the worst, the entire staff ready and willing to tackle whatever came their way, but the numbers were something of an anticlimax.
“Well,” Kisaki said, “we wouldn’t want the system blowing up on the first day anyway. Let’s call today a break-in day. Plus, it’s nice out. It’s good to have easy weather on the first day, but we’ll tend to get more orders when it’s bad outside. If we get rain during a short-staffed period, that’s when we’ll really prove our worth.”
It was a tad ironic, the way they were too prepared to kick this thing off, but there wasn’t much to be done about it. Maou had just returned from dropping off order number ten, ahead of Kawata, who was still busy ferrying the ninth one over.
“Welcome back, Marko.”
“Anything to note out there?” Emi asked.
“It was some kind of student gathering,” commented Maou. “I couldn’t tell who owned the place, so I can’t say too much about the customers. It’s a pretty narrow road leading up to the apartment building, but there was a ton of traffic on it, so maybe make a note of that. Instead of parking right at the building, it’d be safer to park a bit early and walk the rest of the way.”
“All right. I’ll type that in.”
The computer system let users type in notes about customers and deliveries to help teams keep track of and share information. Emi had almost finished typing “Heavy traffic in area, be careful when parking” when the phone rang. The three of them exchanged glances before Emi turned back to her computer.
“Thanks for calling MgRonald at Hatagaya station. This is Yusa speaking. How can I help you?”
“Hey, Kawatchi isn’t back yet?”
“He got sent to the far end of our delivery radius,” Kisaki said as she watched Emi. “That’ll be a lot of narrow roads and one-way streets to navigate…”
Then she stopped…
“…!”
…because Emi herself had frozen solid at her station, letting out a light gasp. She made a habit of smiling when dealing with customers over the phone, but now her face was taut with concern.
“…Maybe a prank?” Maou asked Kisaki.
“I dunno…”
They hadn’t received any prank calls or deliveries to nonexistent locations yet. This might be the first one, Maou thought.
“…All right. So that’ll be two Big Mag meals…”
Maou raised an eyebrow as Emi fell back into the usual phone procedure. That was weird. With all her call-center experience, a regular old prank call shouldn’t faze her as much as this one obviously did. He had no idea why she reacted like that, out of the blue. But she completed the order anyway, printing out a receipt for a fairly hefty order totaling nearly five thousand yen.
“You okay, Saemi? Something startle you?”
Kisaki, for her part, was more concerned than chiding about Emi’s transformation. But she just shook her head. “No, it’s nothing. This one’s headed for Sasazuka, Maou.”
“Oh, okay.”
If it was nothing, that didn’t explain the stiffness in her voice. Did the guy on the other end of the line say something creepy to her?
Emi took a deep breath. “It’s really nothing,” she whispered, so only Maou could hear. “I’m fine.”
“Emi…”
“Ms. Kisaki’s recognized me as part of the team. I gotta at least handle something like this with a smile. I’m sorry, I guess I need some more experience.”
“Oh, no, it’s fine, but… Hmm?”
Emi handed Maou the receipt. He reflexively checked the address and phone number on it. It almost made his eyes pop out. Now he knew what was up.
“Uh, this…”
Emi shook her head at the slightly agitated Maou. “It’s just our job.”
“All set, Marko,” came Kisaki’s voice. “Head on out.”
“Oh, uh, sure thing.”
“Be careful.”
Maou wasn’t too sure what, exactly, Emi wanted him to be careful about. But he still scowled at himself as he adjusted his helmet strap before starting up Red Dullahan I. Order number eleven for the day, it turned out, was headed for Villa Rosa Sasazuka, Room 101, and not even Maou could drum up a polite smile for that destination.
“Who the hell even called that in?”
He couldn’t guess from Emi’s gasp, but unless this was some trick, it had to be Nord Justina, Room 101’s only official resident. But that shouldn’t elicit such a negative reaction from her.
“It’s gotta be Laila, huh? She is such a goddamn prick.”
No, this wasn’t Laila beating a path down to his front door, or to their workplace. Instead, it’d be her forcing them to her doorstep. Maou and Emi were employees of the MgRonald Corporation, and if a customer called in an order, they had to deliver it. Villa Rosa Sasazuka was firmly within delivery range. No way to avoid it.
“Oops. This is a one-way street?”
The path he navigated countless times on foot or bicycle now looked very different to him on a scooter. The route to his “delivery destination” was just a bit more circuitous than what he’d usually take. When he arrived, it almost felt like someone else’s building.
“My liege? Why are you here?” Ashiya was just coming down the stairs when he marveled at the sight of Maou on his scooter. “Did you forget something?”
“This is for work, man,” he said as he removed his helmet and pointed at the container on his back. “I’m delivering to ‘Mr. Sato’ in Room 101.”
“You…?”
Ashiya immediately picked up on the intention behind the order.
“That accursed angel! The sheer arrogance of summoning the Devil King himself with a single telephone call!”
“Well, when you put it that way… But if I’ve got this uniform on, I’ve got a job to do—and I can’t bad-mouth my customers behind their backs. So let it slide, okay?”
“But perhaps, if I could join you…?”
“I don’t need backup to deliver some burgers, man. I’ve already done this a bunch of times today. I’ll hand the food over, they’ll give me the money, and I’ll leave. That’s all. Just do whatever you were planning to do. I left the MgRonald almost ten minutes ago; I gotta get this food to ’em hot.”
“Your Demonic Highness…ngh… I feel it is a mistake, letting angels and humans comingle so closely with us… But please, do be careful! I cannot say what nefarious scheme they may hatch upon you!”
“Dude, for the twentieth time, it’s just burgers! Go worry somewhere else. I’ll be fine. Ah-hem!”
Clearing his throat as he left the agitated Ashiya, Maou marched over to Room 101 and pressed the doorbell button, demonstrating not a hint of hesitation. “Hello!” he shouted out, all business. “MgRonald delivery with your order!”
“Ah, thank you.”
What he didn’t expect was Nord Justina answering the door. He was sure it’d be Laila, or Gabriel, at least. It was almost a disappointment.
“Right, thank you for waiting. Let me give you your drinks first…and here is your Big Mag and medium fry sets. Be careful; it’s hot.”
“…I thought you would refuse the order. Or send someone else, at least.”
“I would never refuse a valid order, sir.”
Exchanging a few pleasantries with customers at the delivery site was another part of the job. When Maou first saw Nord, his Japanese language ability was at about on par with Acieth’s, but now he was showing quite a bit more fluency. Perhaps being reunited with Emi gave him more contact with the language; maybe Laila sprinkled some pixie dust or whatever to bring him up to native level. Maou pondered this as he peered over Nord’s shoulder, hoping to see if anyone else was inside—but Room 101 was too dimly lit to discern very much.
“…All right. Does everything in the order look correct?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Your total today comes to 4,530 yen.”
The five-thousand-yen note Nord handed him seemed normal enough. Maou took some change from his waist pouch, counted it out, and gave it to him with his receipt.
“Thank you very much for your order! We look forward to serving you again.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Everything was just like all the other orders so far. He began to zip his insulated bag back up.
“Oh, one more thing… Maou?”
“…………Yes?” he replied, turning his head back around. It was still the same old Nord there, face serene.
“I wanted to ask you something about this flier.”
“…What’s that?”
Maou noticed Ashiya looking from afar, almost dying from the suspense of what might happen to his master. He ignored him, devoting his attention to his customer.
“It says here that you’re hiring, but are you still looking for people?”
“…?”
Maou’s eyebrows drilled downward. What? He can’t possibly want to apply for a part-time job at MgRonald?
“I’ve been delivering newspapers for a long time. I think I have a good knowledge of the city streets, and I’ll be earning my own scooter license soon. What do you think?”
That was the whole reason they found each other in the first place, wasn’t it? On that bus headed for the license test center.
“I think,” Maou said, choosing his words carefully, “we are still looking for employees, but it might be better to ask directly at the location. I’m sure Ms. Kisaki, the manager, would be glad to talk to you.”
“I see. All right. Sorry to delay you.”
“Not at all. Thank you very much.”
With a light nod, Nord ended the conversation and shut the door.
Even in the middle of his work, Maou had set all five of his senses (plus magic) to work. They told him that Laila wasn’t around. Neither was Gabriel, nor Shiba or Amane.
“M-my liege?” Ashiya asked, immediately sprinting over.
“Talk about having the rug pulled out from under you. Nothing happened.”
“It did not? But he appeared keen on applying for a job, there in the end.”
“If he decides to, then yeah, that’s gonna suck…but that’s up to Ms. Kisaki to decide, and it’s not really anything I can comment on. I mean, maybe he was targeting me during work so I wouldn’t lie to him, but what’s the point of summoning me here to ask such a basic question?”
If Nord applied for work at the Hatagaya station MgRonald, Maou’s first concern would be how he’d interact with Emi. But regardless of how badly Laila was screwing things up, Emi undoubtedly loved Nord as a father. It might even be a good way to get them talking to each other again.
Either way, though, it had nothing to do with Maou, and if Nord didn’t have his license yet, he might not even score the job in the first place.
“…Ah, well. Back to work.”
“My liege, perhaps I could corner him and attempt to extract the truth from—”
“No. If the tenants here start fighting each other, you know our landlord’s gonna swoop right in.”
“Dehh…!”
Ashiya gnashed his teeth, mortified. Maou, despite his rebuke, didn’t like it, either. It felt weird, like a sesame seed stuck between his teeth. “I feel,” he reflected, “like a puzzle piece getting jammed into a puzzle I don’t fit.”
“But my liege, would it not be best to simply continue with our current approach, to ignore whatever tricks they throw upon us? There is no need for us to so much as lift a finger to help them.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Maou nodded at him before returning to Red Dullahan I and putting his helmet back on. “Hey, do you wanna make an order? I could use my phone to get it sent out here.”
“I apologize, Your Demonic Highness, but I have already prepared our meals up to tomorrow’s lunch.”
“Okay. Just don’t let Emi sneak into our kitchen again, like that one night. I almost had a heart attack.”
His eyes grew hazy as he recalled the events.
“I apologize, my liege. I never expected she would commit such a brazen act while we slept. Having Emilia lay her hands upon our store of rice is the greatest embarrassment of my life…”
“Brazen…? Well, yeah, they were shaped a little weird, but they tasted fine. They weren’t laced with poison or anything.”
“Indeed, my liege, and that makes it even more terrifying. Why would Emilia Justina go out of her way to prepare rice balls for the Devil King? I cannot imagine what her motivation could possibly be.”
“Her brain probably fried or something.”
He hadn’t told anyone what had happened that night. He doubted Emi had.
“But hey, no trouble since then, right? And hell, maybe Nord just got a hankering for some fast food. You never know. But I better get going.”
“Ah, yes, my liege. My apologies. Please drive safely.”
With the respectfully bowing Ashiya behind him, Maou took his leave of Villa Rosa Sasazuka. He spent the trip back to MgRonald thinking about the past week. He was right—since the subway attack on Emi and Chiho, nothing particularly bad had happened to anyone. Emi’s “brain crash” was a deadly serious accident in Maou’s eyes, but fortunately, it didn’t seem like Alas Ramus or Acieth got wind of those events at all. Emeralda was still with Emi in Eifukucho, and Amane and Shiba didn’t seem up to much of anything. The subway attack must’ve knocked the wind out of Laila’s sails, too; the last time Maou saw her was when she paid a single visit to the apartment, two days after Emi’s brain crash. Her hair was still purple, but Maou didn’t care to find out why, or even where she was living.
“Nothing better than the same ol’, same ol’, huh?” he muttered amid the whine of the engine.
Back at the restaurant, Maou was greeted by the concerned Emi and Chiho, who had just arrived for her shift.
“Maou?” Chiho said as she ran up to him. “Are you okay? Emi told me you went to Room 101 for a delivery…”
“What did my father want from you?” Emi asked, her face ashen.
“Well, about that…”
He gave them a quick recap.
“So really, except for Nord asking me about a job, there was nothing unusual about it. I was all but expecting Laila and Gabriel to surround me and lock me up in there, but no. It was Nord who called you, wasn’t it, Emi?”
“…Yeah.”
“Because you looked really pained about it. Like, you made this really freaky face. That’s why I was so concerned.”
“Freaky? Freaky how?” Emi scowled, then thoughtfully tilted her head. “It felt like the order was too much for just one person, so I thought Laila was bound to be behind him. That’s why I was so tensed up…”
“Yeah, it was a lot.”
Four thousand five hundred and thirty yen was far above the average bill for a trip to MgRonald. Even Sariel, back when he was eating three meals a day there in a vain effort to win Kisaki’s heart, only rarely made an order that surpassed three thousand.
“Even if it was all meal sets, that’d still be, like, food for seven people, right?”
Delivery orders had an extra fee tacked on to them, so Nord’s actual food order cost around 4,200 yen.
“You think he actually ate all that himself? He’s not Acieth.”
“Perhaps she was there to eat it with him,” Chiho suggested.
“Maybe. I can’t say if she’s spending a ton of time in the same room that angel might show up in, though.”
“She’s living with Gabriel in Shiba’s house, isn’t she?”
“Yeah. My landlord’s a saint for doing that. That’s some serious labor, I tell you… Oh, speaking of which, Acieth made Rika Suzuki pay for this really huge dinner at MgRonald, but did she mention that to you?”
“What? No!” Emi’s face tensed up again.
“She ordered forty burgers and four drinks, and Rika paid for it all.”
The number made Chiho and Emi stare at him, astonished.
“I’m gonna have to apologize to her later… I really didn’t want Rika to get any more involved in this stuff…”
“Well, too late now. Guess you could say those forty burgers are just collateral damage from the war on Ente Isla.”
“Ha-ha-ha… But wow, Acieth really ate that? Forty burgers… I can’t even imagine.”
The topic of Acieth lightened the mood among all of them.
“But anyway, nothing set off any alarms with me. Let’s get back to work.”
“Okay!”
“True… Oop.”
Just as she said it, Emi was greeted by a phone call in her headset. She jogged over to the delivery computer.
“Thanks for calling MgRonald at Hataga— Agh!”
Something on the line surprised Emi enough to stop her midsentence.
“…”
She looked at Maou and Chiho, face scrunched up like she’d just bit into the sourest thing in the universe, before reluctantly returning her attention to the call.
“Right, right… No, thank you for all your support. All right…”
“Your ‘support’?” Chiho looked up at Maou, unsure who this could be.
“Certainly, yes…but if I may be honest, it’s such a short distance away that I think you could save some money by coming here to pick it up—oh, you don’t mind? All right… Um, what? Er, I apologize, we do not currently accept requests for particular delivery staff, so if you could just give me one moment to check on that? Thank you.”
She grimaced for all the world to see as she put the call on hold and set the handset to in-store mode.
“Ms. Kisaki, we have a call from Mr. Sarue from Sentucky across the street.”
““Uhh?”” Maou and Chiho groaned in tandem at the mention of the name. Speak of the devil, indeed. Or the angel.
“…Sarue? What’s he want?”
Kisaki, upstairs covering the café while Maou was gone, was not pleased.
“He, erm, wanted to make a delivery order.”
“Is he insane?”
Everybody on the crew, from Maou and Chiho on down, was in firm agreement. But the rival fast-food franchise was a whopping ten seconds’ walk across the street. It was, technically, within delivery range.
“So what? If he’s willing to pay the delivery fee for taking it across the street, then fine, but if you’re bringing this up with me, Saemi, does that mean he wants me to deliver it?”
“…Yes.”
“…………………Uggggghhhhhh.”
The entire staff swallowed nervously at the exaggerated sigh.
“All riiiiiight. I’ll just think of it as a business visit to advertise our new program. If they’re in the same shopping arcade that we are, we gotta treat ’em like customers… It’d be ridiculous usually, but…”
It certainly would be.
“Tell Sarue…er, tell the customer that I’ll be there. Is Marko back?”
“Um, yes!” he called up the stairs at the sudden mention.
“Okay. You take the café with Chi for me.”
“““Understood!””” the three employees chimed.
“Thank you for waiting. Ms. Kisaki will be handling the delivery, so I’m ready to take your order at……………… Um, I apologize, sir, but if you could keep your order to a size Ms. Kisaki can carry by herself…”
Sariel was probably wallowing in ecstasy. Emi tapped away at the keyboard, nodding at the voice on the line, as the receipt grew longer and longer. The final invoice made Kisaki visibly cringe when she went downstairs.
“My God, is he trying to break my back with all these burgers?”
The order almost made it up to ten thousand yen, forcing the delivery estimate to be twenty minutes despite the minuscule distance involved.
“…Well, there are people out there who can actually eat that much. Nothing weird about it.”
“I hope Sariel doesn’t start gaining weight again. Can one person really tackle this?”
“He can’t be forcing the Sentucky employees to eat them. That’d be one crazy power trip.”
Realizing that Sariel was, well, his usual self was, in some small way, reassuring to Maou. Especially at a time like this.
It was fair to say that the first day of MgRonald’s delivery service was smooth sailing. They handled a total of thirty deliveries, twelve of which (including Nord’s and Sariel’s) were phoned in, proving Kisaki’s theory correct. Scooter round trips tended to average around twenty minutes, and they’d likely be building their future operations on these first-day stats. For now, the next major obstacles to tackle would be (a) days with inclement weather, and (b) days without Maou, Kawata, or Emi, the main trio behind Day One’s stellar performance.
“Ahhhh, it sure tired me out,” Maou commented to Emi, stretching in the middle of the quiet shopping street afterward. “Having all that stuff I’m not used to yet happen at once, y’know?”
“True. I hadn’t done call-center stuff in a while, so I got so nervous, my shoulders are sore.”
“It’s been a while since we had so much staff on hand, too. Man, we’re seriously gonna miss Kota, though.”
“Kota? You mean Nakayama? Is he quitting?”
Chiho, still a high schooler, could only work until ten PM. On this first day though, Kisaki, Maou, Kawata, Akiko, and Emi were all on shift until eleven thirty, when the MgRonald stopped taking orders. They were joined by Kotaro Nakayama, who would be leaving shortly to seek a full-time job.
“Yeah, he’s job hunting postcollege. A guy with prospects like him, you can’t make him work part-time forever. He’s been here the whole time I have, though, so it’s been nice to have someone to rely on when he’s in my shift. I think the whole team’s gonna miss him.”
“Is Kawata going, too? He’s the same year as Kota, I think.”
“Huh?”
“Laila’s just agreed that, if she talks to me, she’s gonna do it in Room 201 with me and either Ashiya, Urushihara, Chi, or Acieth.”
“Y-yes…”
“Wh-what? It didn’t sound unreasonable to me.”
“And you can’t tell me anything about your story outside of those conditions. If you do, it’s all off the table. Got all that?”
“Of—of course. That’s nothing.”
Seeing Laila nod to her side, Emi turned to see an evil grin erupt upon Maou’s face. Then he said something truly unimaginable.
“Y’know what, Emi? I think I’ll take you up on that invite again.”
““…Huh?”” Emi and her mother said.
“Let’s go home together every day from now on.”
For several moments, the only sound in Room 101 was Erone’s slightly strained breathing as he slept.
““““Huuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?!””””
Four screams sounded off at once, Emi’s included.
“M-my liege! What has happened?!”
“D-Devil King?! What’s going on?! Are you mad?! Have you caught a fever?!”
“Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Maou going, going home with Yu-Yu-Yusaaaa…”
Ashiya, Suzuno, and Chiho leaped for the door, all but ready to break it down.
“Guys, we got a kid recuperating in here… Plus, it’s Nord’s room…”
“That does not matter, Your Demonic Highness! My liege’s mental health is a far more important issue than Nord Justina’s front door!”
“Ashiya, our landlord’s literally right there…”
“Yes,” said Suzuno, “I may have told you to lend a sympathetic hand to Emilia, but what has happened to you both in the past few days?! You all but kicked Rika and myself out of the restaurant not long ago. What is the meaning behind this vast change of heart?!”
“You’re digging your own grave, Suzuno. And that topic of conversation pains me, too, so could you drop it?”
“I-I-I-I’m glad you and Yusa are getting along and—and—and stuff,” Chiho managed, “but, um, um, I wasn’t expecting you to get this close. Like, maybe I was arrogant, but it’s just so ridiculous, but—but Yusa’s a good friend of mine, too, so if that’s what you want, Maou, I…”
“Chi, Chi, calm down. Your face is going crazy.”
“……What………did you say…?”
Among her three panicked acquaintances, Emi was the most lost at sea, her face bright red itself.
It was, perhaps, for the better that Urushihara hadn’t inserted himself into this scene of mass panic, but he was likely the only one who understood Maou’s intention behind this. Or perhaps not, on second thought. Regardless, Maou patted Chiho’s shoulder, lest she break something with all the facial contortions she was making, and whispered into her ear:
“The shift schedule.”
“I…I… Huh?”
“Remember the shift schedule.”
“The shift…schedule…?”
“The shifts… Ah?!”
Before Chiho could retrieve the Hatagaya station MgRonald schedule from her memory, Ashiya somehow came to the conclusion first.
“You and Emilia are always working the same shifts, my liege?”
“Huh?! …Ah!”
Before they could ask why Ashiya was so intimately familiar with not only Maou’s schedule but that of every other employee at MgRonald, Chiho finally caught up with the gist.
“We come in at different times, but—yeah, we usually both get off at the same time, and we get the same breaks ’n’ stuff. The older ladies fill in a lot of the gaps on the weekends, so… For this month, at least, me and Emi are almost always there together, until everyone gets in the groove with the delivery service.”
Leaving the still-dazed Chiho behind for a moment, he turned to Laila.
“And like I said, if I hear anything about this outside of the conditions I gave you, I’m out. No help from me at all. You agreed to that, so don’t try to weasel your way out of it.”
Laila replayed the conversation in her mind.
“Ah, wait…”
The full brunt of the truth hit her.
“W-wait, wait a second! In that case, where am I supposed to talk to you?!”
“Hey, I got a few days off, too. I’ll tell you when those are, so come on up when it’s convenient for you. Ashiya and Chi have their own errands to run, but I guarantee that Urushihara’s always gonna be at home, and Acieth’s probably bored all day with my landlord, too. If you come here when I have off, you’ll get my ear then, I all but guarantee it.”
“N-no, no, it’s not about that, or you; it’s…” Laila’s face reddened. Her breezy confidence was waning. “If—if I try to live up to those conditions…”
“Let me remind you, I can’t sit around at work and listen to your long-winded nonsense. And Emi wasn’t on my list of approved people to sit in with me. Neither is Suzuno or Alas Ramus.”
“Wait, wait, wait, but that means…you know…”
“Devil King, you didn’t…?”
Maou sized up the agitated Laila and Emi. He wasn’t willing to listen alongside Emi—but for the foreseeable future, he’d be spending a fairly hefty chunk of every day with Emi. The chances of all Maou’s conditions being met were slim to none—and as long as he and Emi were together, Laila couldn’t make contact with Emi. And if she couldn’t, how was Laila ever going to negotiate with her? She couldn’t. Not without going over to Urban Heights Eifukucho herself.
“Wait… Wait! Devil King, I… This is all so sudden…”
“What, Emi? Are you saying you can’t even have an argument with your own mother without me chaperoning? Some Hero you are.”
“It-it-it’s not that! What makes you think I can’t talk to Laila if you’re not around?! You—you know that’s just stupid!”
“So it’s fine, then.”
“It’s not fine, it’s…! …Huh?”
“You can talk or fight or whatever all you want to when I’m not there. You’re family, right?”
Emi stared, slack jawed, at Maou’s face. She had just been blocked from bringing Maou into her negotiations. And not only was it blocked—the whole fact she had subconsciously included that possibility in her own choices jolted her.
“…All right. I’ll do that.”
“Emilia?!”
Maou gave her a taunting grin. “Can you?”
Cheeks now the color of cherries, Emi pointed a finger straight at Maou. “I am the Hero!” she declared. “I don’t need any help from you, and I can negotiate this job all by myself! So don’t treat me like some huge wimp!”
She had not loosened on her opinion of Laila, but falling straight into Maou’s trap had riled her so much that she just had to say her piece. Nothing about it was rational thought. It was a reflexive reaction—but, looking at the outburst, Maou gave a satisfied nod.
“There’s the Emi I know. What a relief.”
Then, leaving the confused group behind, he stepped out of Room 101. The first person he addressed outside was Shiba.
“Hey, you sure that kid’s gonna be okay in that room?”
“Laila said she would take responsibility for him. I’ll do my best to check on him as well.”
“Thanks.” Then he turned to Emeralda. “I’m no longer involved with what went on over there, so just do whatever you want, all right?”
“Heh-heh-heh! Cerrrtainly.” She bowed, beaming all the way. “I’ll do whatever I can to help supporrrt Emilia.”
“I just said, lady, whatever you want.” Next was Acieth, holding Alas Ramus. “You come over to visit ’im sometimes, too. I know you got a lot of free time on your hands. Emi’s keeping Alas Ramus here in this apartment, too.”
Acieth nodded, giving him a stern look.
“Daddy…”
“Hey, it’s all right. Once Erone wakes up, you make him apologize, all right?”
“Okeh!”
Finally, Maou called up to Urushihara, still hanging around the stairwell.
“Hey! What was for dinner tonight?”
“I ’unno. Ask Ashiya.”
“You can’t even remember that? Is that pork miso soup I’m smelling?”
“Dude, why’d you ask me if you knew all along? You act like I’ve got all the time in the world for you…”
“You mean you don’t?”
Maou gave Urushihara a bop on the forehead for that one.
“Ugh, this month is gonna suuuuck, isn’t it?”
“Guess so,” Maou observed as Urushihara followed him upstairs.
“But hey, do you think that’s gonna keep Laila ’n’ Emilia in their place, though? You think this is just gonna make all those problems go away?”
“What do you mean?” Maou asked, whirling around to give him a tired look. Urushihara, hands clasped behind his head, just sighed.
“If I wind up comin’ out of this looking like a prick, dude, it’s your fault.”
“Huhh?”
Amane yawned as she watched them disappear down the walkway. “Well,” she offered, “Aunt Mikitty didn’t say anything, so I guess she’s gonna renew their lease.”
“Oooh, he sure did it,” Gabriel half growled, looking honestly peeved for a change. “He sure did it now, huh? Sure wasn’t expecting that approach, hoo boy…”
Nord just looked on, perplexed, as he heard the door to Room 201 close.
“A mysterious man, indeed…”
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