THE HERO AND HIGH SCHOOLER BECOME FRIENDS
Chiho Sasaki’s shift at the mostly empty MgRonald restaurant in front of Hatagaya station was almost entirely spent with a frown on her face. Her manager, Mayumi Kisaki, didn’t lecture her about it because she was frowning even harder. The floor was practically dead—and since Kisaki wasn’t aware of what had happened just a few minutes’ walk away from the place, she had no idea why.
“Hey, uh, Chi?”
The sound of her shift mate Sadao Maou’s voice behind her made Chiho shiver a little, panicking for a moment that he had read her mind. Gingerly, she turned her face toward his, only to find Maou looking even more reluctant than she, apparently unaware of anything.
“You know, with my power, I could erase all the bad memories…you…”
Just that was enough to make the blood rush into Chiho’s head. She could feel her head and ears rise in temperature as the emotions flooded in. It must’ve been written all over her face, because it made Maou’s voice taper off midway.
“…uh, have…”
Chiho couldn’t keep her lips from trembling. With the rather unique day she had just experienced, her mind was still too jumbled up to do anything else.
Maou, what do you mean when you say “bad memories”? Do you have the wrong idea about me and you, or me and that other girl? Or is this about how you and Ashiya are actually these crazy monsters…?
“No thanks.”
“Huh?”
The denial just fell right out of her mouth.
Realistically speaking, there were a million “bad memories” she could’ve had. She had gone through a really scary, fairly painful experience—a massive succession of unthinkable events. She had so many things she wanted to ask and learn about. But despite that:
“You’re so stupid, Maou!”
She instead opted for the kind of scolding she had delivered maybe just a couple of times in her life.
“Huhhhhh?”
Maou seemed genuinely hurt by that. It only added to Chiho’s rapidly accelerating frustration with him.
Somewhere, in the part of her logical mind she could still keep intact, she could tell Maou was just looking out for her, aware of the mental and emotional shock caused by the events he had gotten her involved in. He had exposed her to all this stuff about magic, and killing, and demons, and so on, and he was trying to rid her of all those painful memories. But there was really only one open question lurking in her heart, and Maou demonstrated no recognition of that at all.
They exchanged no further words until the end of the shift, and even then it was only a robotic “Thanks. See you next shift.” She didn’t wait for Maou to respond before walking out the door, him looking totally bewildered the whole time. She thought about that as she walked alone under the streetlights lining the Koshu-Kaido road.
“He’s such a…dummy…”
He had no idea why she was angry.
“Even… Even though I just wanted to say it myself…”
She took long, wide steps down the sidewalk, her face reddened by her anger—along with certain other emotions. Maybe it was misguided to blame Maou alone for all of this. He had never brought the topic up himself—it was those other two people, the non-demons, from the other world who first mentioned it. But, at this point, she hoped he would at least offer some kind of reaction.
“I narrowed down the people receivin’ it to ‘human beings who think about nothing but the Devil King all day.’”
“Oh, myyyy! Quite the player, aren’t you, Devil King?”
The words echoed back into Chiho’s mind. And out of all the events that had completely changed her view on life since the start of this week, there was just one fact she actually wouldn’t mind erasing from reality.
“I just…wish I could’ve said to his face that no matter what happens, I love him…”
She had thought that a world full of people flying through the air and tossing swords and magic blasts around was strictly in the realm of fairy tales. But in the space of a few seconds, the humdrum life of Chiho Sasaki—going to school, working part-time, developing a little bit of a crush on her coworker—had been stomped flat.
The object of her affections, a guy living in an ancient, cramped, wooden apartment building in the Sasazuka neighborhood with his friend, was a demon from another world. They both were, actually. And the call-center lady she was acquainted with was a “Hero” from that world, capable of conjuring up a sword out of nothing. And it’d be one thing if they fought each other to the death, but instead they worked together to fight off this other scary guy, and now it was all over and they were back at MgRonald and the call center like nothing was amiss. They were interacting with her exactly like they always did.
She didn’t feel bad about it. Yes, she had been a little scared while the fight was unfolding. All the facts she had learned afterward had excited her. But right now, she…didn’t really know what to feel. Somehow, everyone around her was acting like none of it had ever happened, but they indeed knew the truth, and she couldn’t just make that go away. She didn’t know how to approach those men. The amiable relationship they had before didn’t seem right any longer. And it made the distance between them grow wider.
They were edging away from her, and that felt the worst of all.
“…I can’t do this.”
She couldn’t count how many times she had turned back today, right in front of this place. She was about to spin around on her heels and try to go back the way she had come—away from Villa Rosa Sasazuka, the wooden apartment building that was a five-minute walk away from Keio Sasazuka Station. She managed to make it one step before stopping and heaving a deep sigh. No matter what she did, she couldn’t drum up the courage to climb those stairs.
“Maou has the day off anyway. I’d just stress him out if I dropped in.”
Since the day of that battle, the number of times she and Maou had looked each other in the eyes had plummeted. They didn’t share a shift most days this week, it was true, but that was only half of it. The other half lay in how she was actively avoiding him.
The shift schedule she had submitted for the second half of the month gave her an entire week off from work. She explained it as needing time to prepare for midterms and wrangle the new recruits in her club sports, but really, she wasn’t hurting for time. The remaining shifts were all things like Saturdays, which Maou rarely signed on for, and seven to ten PM on days when Maou opened and stayed at work till eight in the evening. She was actively searching for ways to avoid making eye contact with him.
Kisaki had accepted the “busy at school” excuse, but Chiho knew she had a sharp mind. It was already apparent she’d noticed that Chiho was trying to evade Maou. “I don’t know if something’s up,” the manager had once said right to her face, “but if you’re having trouble handling stuff, don’t be afraid to talk to me about it.” And, yes, she was having trouble—but unlike before, this wasn’t the kind of concern she could solve by talking to someone.
“Uuugh…”
With a groan, Chiho started walking back toward the apartment—but once she spotted its roof, off in the distance, her pace visibly slowed. “What am I doing?” she asked herself. She had intended to apologize for acting so immature around him and then talk to him about her true feelings.
“I…I really like him…”
But once she saw the apartment’s stairwell in front of her, Chiho realized something: Who was “Sadao Maou,” really? If everything she’d seen actually happened, the real Sadao Maou was that gigantic, monstrous, nonhuman figure that had loomed above her. So was that helpful, reliable coworker at MgRonald she loved just a big front? If the real Maou was the demon who kept the Shuto Expressway from collapsing on her, then how should she deal with the “Sadao Maou” inside this apartment?
The thought made Chiho step away from the building, another lap on the little back-and-forth circuit she was now well familiar with.
After that battle under the expressway, her heart had frozen to the point that she was willing to accept pretty much anything. Still, the more time passed, the less she understood how she should act around Maou. She wanted to believe the one she loved; she wanted to tell him herself that she loved him. What if the person she fell in love with turned out to be nothing like she thought?
Is the man living in that apartment truly the man I love?
Chiho sprinted through the city, approaching the spot by Sasazuka Station that no longer showed any sign of the explosive battle that took place just a few days ago, and—
“Ah, s-sorry…”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
—bumped into someone again. That was what had happened last time, too, wasn’t it? She had gotten into a huge tizzy over something, ran away at top speed, and ran into that terrible person who thrust her into that battle. That memory flashed across her mind for a moment, but it was a woman she had run into this time—a woman she had only recently met…
“Ah.”
“Oh, it’s you…”
The other recognized Chiho at once. Chiho wasn’t sure how to address her, this woman with beautiful long hair and a strong, willful pair of eyes.
“Ms.…Yusa?”
“It’s been a while, Chiho…or maybe not, huh?”
Emi Yusa, the “Hero” who came to this world from somewhere else. Just like Maou. Her, and:
“And Albert, and Emeralda…”
Albert was standing behind Emi Yusa, looking like a star athlete visiting Japan from overseas. Emeralda was the tiny woman next to him, even smaller than Chiho. They accompanied Emi on her “quest,” apparently, and while Albert looked just like he did when she had first met him, Emeralda—who had looked like a sorceress straight out of a fantasy world at first—no longer seemed out of place in Japan with her modern clothing. Presumably, they had tried and failed to find something that fit Albert, what with that Olympic hammer-thrower physique he had.
“Are you going to Maou’s place?” Chiho found herself asking. Emi and her two friends were on a quest to defeat Maou back in their old world—they weren’t preparing to settle the score right now, were they? Despite having just run away from his building, too confused to know how to deal with him, she was still wary of anyone who might do harm to him.
But the three of them simply exchanged confused stares with each other.
“You remember us, young lady?”
“Huh?”
The hulking Albert’s question both surprised and slightly irritated Chiho. She couldn’t have forgotten them all if she tried. The offhand remark seriously disquieted her.
“Thiiis is kind of a shooock,” the similarly surprised-looking Emeralda drawled.
It had been just a week since the battle that blew up Sasazuka Station and brought down the Shuto Expressway. That, if anything, could never be forgotten. But despite the reactions of her companions, Emi gave them a nod of conviction.
“Didn’t I tell you? Of course she’d remember us.”
“Um, what’re you talking about, Ms. Yusa?”
It was Emi herself who had told Chiho all about Ente Isla and the demons, wasn’t it? As if to answer the question, Emi looked Chiho in the eye.
“I’m sorry we’re sounding all weird. But you’re right. We came to check out how Maou is doing…or, really, I hope you don’t mind if I keep calling him ‘Devil King.’ But then we were planning to visit the MgRonald at Hatagaya, so we could…you know, see how you were doing, Chiho.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” Albert said. “Just to see if…um, you remember us, an’ that day, and to make sure the Devil King hasn’t been doin’ anything weird to you.”
“I thought he would have made you forget about iiit.”
Something stirred in Chiho’s heart. “You mean,” she quietly asked, “like, how nobody else in town seems to remember it happened?”
“…You noticed?” Emi humbly replied.
“I mean, it’d be a little hard not to! Nobody else is talking about it apart from Maou, and there’s been nothing on TV, or in the news, or on the Internet. It just made me kind of think that you or he did some kind of…magic thing, or something. Plus…”
“Ch-Chiho?”
“Um, miss?”
“Ummm…”
The three of them were all flustered in their own way.
“M-Maou asked if I, I wanted my m-memory erased, and, and, I mean, it’s not bad or, or anything…”
Chiho’s lips quivered. Her temples felt like they were going to spontaneously combust. She couldn’t keep her eyes from tearing up. It made Emi want to roll her eyes.
“That stupid…”
“I—I don’t know anything about, um, demons, or other worlds, or, or whatever, but…! But, I—I still feel like Maou’s… Oh, but what should I even do…?! I don’t even… Agh!”
She let the tears flow freely, stammering enough that passersby started to notice. It took a firm hug from Emi to make her stop.
“I’m sorry we put you through all this chaos.”
“…”
“If you’d like to talk to us, we’ll tell you about anything you might like to know, so… Sorry.”
“M…Ms. Yusa…wehhhhh…”
She sobbed into Emi’s chest, as if letting out all the confusion and unease she had kept locked up in her heart until today.
“Yeah,” said Albert as he watched from behind, “um, what’re we gonna do about this, eh? She’s talkin’ about the Devil King, right? So she’s…”
“I don’t thiiink,” the half-squinting Emeralda coldly replied to him, “someone who’d say something as indelicate as thaaat right in front of the man himself would understand toooo much.”
She was referring to the bombshell Albert had unleashed in the tiny, cramped Devil’s Castle earlier. He and Emeralda had first traveled to Japan to search for the missing Emi, using a telepathic technique known as an Idea Link to make contact with people who thought about nothing but the Devil King all day. The signal wound up being received more keenly by the Maou-stricken Chiho than by Emi, something that Albert had inadvertently revealed right in front of Maou. Having a stranger disclose all her most personal feelings like that was, to Chiho, devastating.
“Hey, don’t get all testy with me… You were into it as much as I was, weren’tcha?”
Albert, to his credit, appeared to be at least somewhat aware of his misdeeds, although he was less than happy about receiving all the blame.
“It’s okay if I am. I’m a girrrl.”
“So, so it’s indelicate for me and not for you? And don’tcha think yer too old to go around callin’ yourself a ‘girl’ by now?!”
The resulting toe kick from Emeralda penetrated through Albert’s thick leather pants, landing squarely on his shin and making him groan in pain. She followed this up with a chop to his throat as he crumpled to the ground, then began to conjure up a glowing orb in her hand that she kept from public view. Her eyes, illuminated by this light—quite unlike her cheerful voice—weren’t laughing at all.
“Ready to dieee?”
“W-wait! Wait, all right? I’m sorry!”
“What’re you two doing…?”
Emi, still holding on to Chiho, had finally turned around to see this comedy sketch being played out behind her.
“We were going to eat lunch first anyway. Why don’t we take Chiho somewhere quiet so we can chat?”
“…Chat about whaaat?” a quizzical Emeralda asked, noting the way Chiho was still openly weeping. Albert, meanwhile, was still weeping on the ground for his own reasons as he rubbed his shin.
“I mean, everything,” Emi gravely replied. “About us, the Devil King, and Ente Isla.”
“You’re just, um, joking with me, right, Ms. Yusa? About being from another world and stuff?”
Emi raised an eyebrow. “What’s with that all of a sudden?”
“I mean…”
Chiho kept following behind Emi, a mixture of expectation and anxiety in her mind. They would talk about that other world, about Emi, about Albert and Emeralda, about the two people who had kidnapped her, about Ashiya—and about Maou. All would be revealed, she knew, and so it was with a notably nervous expression that she was guided by Emi straight into…
“Why are we in a conveyor-belt sushi joint?”
The question came after they were all seated in a booth, Chiho still wiping her eyes as the aroma of vinegared rice and seafood penetrated her nostrils.
“You don’t like sushi?”
“No, I do, but…”
It wasn’t a matter of food preference, no.
“Okay, two clam miso soups for number five!”
“Check for seventeen, please!”
“Thank you very muuuch! Uhh, that’s nineteen color plates, three gold plates…”
The restaurant was apparently doing well. Most of the seats were occupied, with parties circulating in and out of the tables on a regular basis. And with all the loud chatter among the staff, it wasn’t the kind of “quiet” place Chiho had been picturing for their conversation. The simple fact that a “Hero” from another world chose a sushi restaurant for their confidential chat left Chiho struggling to figure out how to respond.
“Oh, don’t worry. It’s my treat today.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about! And I can totally cover for myself, thanks!”
“Huuuh?” For some reason, this took Emeralda by total surprise. “R-reeeally?”
“Really what?”
This threw Chiho. The woman wasn’t poking fun at her; she honestly seemed shocked by her offer to pay her own way.
“This ‘sushi’ is raw fish, riiight?”
“Y-yes…” Chiho blinked. Thinking of sushi as merely “raw fish” was new to her.
“Well, that’s verrry fancy cuisine, isn’t it? I can understand if you’re still waaary of us, but I think you should let Emiiilia pay for you.”
“Um, it’s a hundred yen per plate…?”
Chiho instinctively turned her eyes toward the menus on the table. The Gyo-Gyo-En chain was a midsize presence in the industry, with nearly everything on the menu priced at a hundred yen per dish (plus tax). This didn’t apply to things like seasonal items, fancier fish, miso soup, à la carte requests, and so on, but even if Chiho tried to really pig out, she may or may not be looking at a thousand-yen tab at the end, at most.
“Calm down, Eme. All four of us can have our fill here and maybe we’d have to pay the equivalent of one Airenia silver coin.”
“Whoa! For real?!”
Albert looked ready to jump for joy.
“Whaaa?! That’s craaazy! I’ve been able to enjoy raw fish maaaybe a couple of times in alllll my travels, and I live in a palace, I’ll remind you!”
“All right, how about we all just sit down for now, okay? You too, Chiho. Here’s some tea.”
With a learnéd hand, Emi poured packets of powdered green tea into a series of three cups, filled them from a nearby hot-water dispenser, and passed them around.
“Fresh water and tea, at no charge,” marveled Albert as he carefully brought the cup to his mouth. “Wonders never cease!”
Seeing this display only served to further confuse Chiho. She still had no idea why they had gone to a conveyor-belt sushi place to discuss fantastic tales of faraway worlds, and now she felt like she’d been immersed headfirst into a TV documentary about foreign visitors being wowed by Japanese culture.
“So, right, why I brought us here,” Emi finally began once she had passed out tea, moist towelettes, chopsticks, and soy-sauce dishes to the whole crowd. “This is actually a pretty good place to talk in privacy. You have these big booths, pretty spread out from one another. It’s loud inside, and the other customers are too busy scoping out what to try next to care about other people’s conversations. At the same time, though, we’ve got a good view of the entire place, so if someone’s trying to listen in on us, they’ll be easy to spot.”
“…Oh. That kind of thing?”
Chiho gave the restaurant a look around. She hadn’t noticed it until now, but unless they were seated on barstools, there was simply no way to decipher all the chattering around them, no matter how much they strained their ears. Everyone’s attention was focused either on the sushi trundling by or on their nearby ordering touchscreens. Nobody cared about much of anything a foot or two past their own seat. They were near a business district as well, which meant that a small handful of non-Japanese people were also among the customers, making Albert and Emeralda not stand out quite so much.
“Right. So how about we put something in our stomachs first? We can get serious about talking once the blood starts flowing into our heads more.”
Chiho hadn’t fully accepted this yet, but she was at least willing to play along. Emi, realizing this, clapped her hands and promptly took a plate off the belt. This was sayori, the Japanese halfbeak, a pretty hard-core sushi choice for one’s first selection.
“So you take whatever you want to eat off of this conveyor belt, and then you stack up your empty plates to the side. Then they bill you based on the number and types of plates you took.”
That, of course, was meant for Emeralda and Albert. The two Ente Islan women were both next to the conveyor belt as it passed by the booth, with Albert and Chiho facing each other on the aisle side.
Emeralda watched the sushi whiz by, a look of bemused astonishment on her face. “I’m not sure I’m too famillliar with this smell yet,” she said, “buuut is this really fiiish?”
“Yep. They cut raw fish into those shapes and put it on top of rice prepared with vinegar and shaped into those little ovals like that.”
“What’s that thing that looks like a li’l cut-up black log?” Albert asked as a kappamaki cucumber sushi roll came down the pike.
“That’s called norimaki sushi. The black part is called nori, and…um, it’s kind of a processed seaweed, I guess you could say? It’s all edible, though.”
“Ooh, ooh, ooh! There’s that thing of noriii, and, and, it’s got fish eggs on top of iiit?!”
“Yeah, they call that gunkan maki, or ‘battleship roll.’ And you’re right—that’s ikura on top—salmon eggs. It’s really good.”
“‘Battleship’?”
“Yeah. It kind of looks like a boat from the side, doesn’t it? That’s why they call it that.”
“Oooh! That’s so cuuute! And if you think of it thaaat way, that green melon-like thing looks like a ship’s saaail!”
The sight of the slice of cucumber carefully balanced on top of the ikura made Emeralda’s eyes sparkle. How were they ever going to have a serious conversation in here? Chiho flashed an unamused look at the other three people in the booth, carrying on about their meal and all but leaving her in the dust. Do Albert and Emeralda even know how to use chopsticks? And raw fish is one thing, but are they okay with wasabi? Any Japanese people watching a foreigner eat sushi for the first time would think the same things.
“Well,” Albert said as he pointed at the conveyor, “let’s give it a go. Emilia, can you choose some fer me? ’Cause none of this looks at all like fish to me. Like, if you told me that red guy over there was meat, I’d believe ya.”
“Oh, the chutoro? That’s medium-fatty tuna. Wanna try it?” Emilia answered as he pointed directly at a piece.
Most offerings at this place came as two pieces per plate, but the more expensive selections, such as chutoro and snow crab, gave you just one piece for the same hundred-yen price. And watching that pass by, the sweet-looking white bands of fat passing over the red flesh in beautiful fashion, it really could pass for the meat of some land animal.
Emi casually took it off the belt and placed it in front of Albert, Emeralda steadily watching every motion along the way.
“Mmmmh…”
The sight of this monolith of a man carefully eyeing the little piece of tuna presented before him was pretty humorous.
“Just looks like a hunk of raw meat, if y’ask me… You’re sure I should just eat this as is?”
“It’s fine! And here, you take this soy sauce—it’s a Japanese specialty—and dip it in there before you eat it. It’s okay to just use your hands, too.”
“Okay…”
Guess he can’t use chopsticks after all, Chiho thought, not that it particularly mattered. Albert, meanwhile, gave the tuna a deadly serious look as he grabbed it with two fingers, his reluctance abundantly clear as he gave it just a light dab in the soy sauce. Chiho heard somewhere once that it was more proper to put the sauce on the fish, not the rice, but bringing that up would just confuse him even further.
Slowly, Albert brought the chutoro up to his lips, then—abandoning all reserve—tossed the whole thing into his mouth. Deliberately, he began to chew, eyebrows arching upward at the unfamiliar texture. The reaction from that point forward was dramatic. His eyes shot open, as if he’d just been exposed to some vital truth. Chiho spotted Emeralda visibly quiver as she leaned up and out of her seat. They were treating this single piece of sushi with far too much trepidation.
Albert sped up his chewing, his eyes staring into space. Then he winced, putting a hand over his nose.
“Ooh!!”
Chiho and Emi immediately knew what happened. Emeralda was somewhat less familiar with the inner workings of sushi. “Is…is there something wronnng?” she worriedly asked. But the wincing was gone in another moment. He started chewing again, his face serene, and then swallowed.
“……Hahhh.”
Albert brought a hand back to his tensed-up face, eyes still wide open. A couple nervous beads of sweat were even visible on his forehead.
“Are… Are you all riiight?”
Instead of answering, Albert looked straight at Chiho in front of him.
“…Little lady?” he intoned.
“Y-yes?”
“Is… Is this really fish?”
“Huh?”
The experience had made Albert shudder.
“It’s raw, but it doesn’t taste raw at all… It’s…sweet, even.”
“Sweet?!”
“Y-yeah, but not sweet like sugar, y’know? I dunno how to put this. The sweetness of meat, maybe? And it mixes together with that sauce and the grain to create this kinda…texture. Yeah. Texture. I think she said it’s called umami.”
It wasn’t exactly the kind of terminology sushi restaurants would use (and turned sort of rambling at the end), but Chiho could tell that Albert really enjoyed the chutoro.
“Wh-what does all of that meeean?”
“And you can enjoy a slice for five Vesian coppers apiiiiece? I find that faaar too difficult to believe. If you searched for a cake like this in Saint Aire, where would you even gooo; how much would they even aaask for it…?”
Emeralda was heaping it with praise, but to Chiho a hundred-yen cake was, well, a hundred-yen cake. She recalled a pastry shop near her house that was both better than this and still reasonably priced. It made her wonder what Emeralda would do if she ever took her there.
“Did you have enough, Chiho?” Emi asked.
“…I dunno, just looking at your two friends kind of filled me up.”
Chiho wasn’t a particularly light eater, but even making allowances for that, the sight of Emeralda and Albert’s eating spree was enough to overwhelm her.
“I hear you,” Emi said. She looked at them, took another sip of tea, then sat back up in her seat. “By the way, sorry if this is too sudden, but does it seem like there’s something…different about us from you? Like, from your perspective? I mean, besides the capacities of their stomachs, I guess.”
“…Huh?”
Chiho blinked. It was too sudden.
“I haven’t forgotten that we had stuff to talk about, so… I know we kind of ate a lot first, but…”
“Ha-ha! Sorry ’bout that.”
“It was so goooooood…”
Neither of them seemed too apologetic, as Chiho finally recalled what brought them all to this restaurant.
“Well, me, and Eme and Al as well… We’re all people, just like you. I mean, I guess I’m half-angel, but given how much these two can apparently eat, they’re a lot closer to monster-class than I am.”
“Y-yeah…”
Realizing Emi was trying to steer their talk in a constructive direction, Chiho sat up as well, sipping her tea. Albert and Emeralda were still sprawled out across their seats.
“The reason,” Emi began, “why they were so suspicious about sushi is because in our world, working-class people would never see raw fish on the dinner table. There isn’t the distribution network or freezer technology you see in Japan, so instead, fish gets smoked or salted, then cooked like that. And even that’s considered a high-ticket meal where I’m from. Maybe you’d get to enjoy it once a year.”
Chiho recalled visiting the house where her father grew up, out in the mountains. Every time she stopped by for New Year’s or other events, there’d always be a feast waiting, topped off by an entire yellowtail right in the middle. A tradition dating back to when saltwater fish were a rare luxury, apparently.
“But, you know, that’s the kind of nation we grew up in. So maybe it’d be easier to understand if you thought about it this way, Chiho: All of us, we came from a nation you’ve never heard of before. One that’s got no relation at all to Japan; one where the technology is seriously lagging behind.”
Considering there was “no relation,” their Japanese language ability was astonishingly fluent. But now was no time to point that out.
“And the name of that nation…or that world…”
“Right. Ente Isla, the Land of the Holy Cross. We were pursuing the Devil King, this tyrant laying waste to Ente Isla, and that’s what brought us here. And that Devil King is the Sadao Maou you know.”
Chiho immediately felt something heavy in the pit of her stomach. It wasn’t because she had scarfed down two enormous seafood-salad gunkan rolls, egged on by Albert’s virtuoso eating performance. It was that Maou’s name sounded like some far-off echo in her mind.
“Ms. Yusa… Oh, and your name, actually, Emi Yusa…”
Just as she tried to ask, Chiho remembered that it wasn’t her real name at all. It stopped her in her tracks.
“You can still call me that. I’m intending to stay here in Japan for a while to come, and it’ll be weird for me if you call me Emilia in public.” Emi shrugged. “Chiho, I…I think I understand what’s troubling you right now, to some extent. But from my standpoint, I can’t really decide whether I should help you solve it or not.”
Her voice turned a measure harsher.
“We’re here in Sasazuka right now for the demons, partly, but more than that, because we wanted to see you and find something out for sure, Chiho.”
“Find something out?”
“Yeah. You know who we really are, along with Sadao Maou. And the Devil King’s left only your memories intact, out of everybody in this entire world.”
Chiho swallowed nervously. That was one concern she hadn’t been able to wipe away from her heart. Why was Maou handling her memories, and only her memories, with such special care?
“So I want you to think about what that means while we explain to you how the Devil King and I wound up in Japan. Some of it might be hard for you to deal with. If you don’t want to hear it, that’s fine.”
Emi flashed looks at Emeralda and Albert. They were still rubbing their bellies, but their eyes remained scarily serious.
“What do you think? Will you listen to the story about our battle against Maou—the Devil King—and how he appeared in our world, and I rose up against him as the Hero, and that’s all still going on up to today? I don’t want to repeat myself, but it’s definitely not light subject matter. If you don’t want to hear it, then—”
“Please. Let’s do it.”
Chiho didn’t let her finish.
“…Are you sure?”
“I really want to know. I want to know whether the Sadao Maou I know is real…or not.”
The moment she said it, Emeralda and Albert exchanged glances.
“Like, where did he come from, what did he do… What kind of person he really is.”
“Well, seein’ the Devil King Satan getting bossed around in some low-end restaurant, I sure hope that ain’t the real thing.”
“Now’s not the time for jokes, Al.”
The sight of Albert all too easily stating the facts Emi chose not to voice stiffened Chiho’s expression.
“All right. So let’s start at the beginning. And, again, if you’re having second thoughts about it, we can stop at any time. That’s how hard some of this might be.”
Chiho gave her a resolute nod.
“Okay.”
“Right. So…”
Sensing the resolve Chiho put on the table, Emi began to speak clearly to her.
“It was about seven years ago that the Devil King led a gigantic army of demons into Ente Isla. I was ten at the time.”
“Huh? Wait, you’re only one year older than I am?!”
She interrupted almost immediately, unable to hide her surprise at the answer simple math gave her. Emi tried to keep going, but after a couple of false starts, she brought a hand to her forehead.
“…I’ll refrain from asking what you were so surprised about. I’ll talk about my age and how it relates to my work later, so if you could just listen for a bit…”
“Oh, um, sorry.”
Chiho recognized that her astonished response had signaled that Emi looked far older than her chronological age.
“Anyway,” Emi said with a cough, “the entire world fought against the Devil King’s Army. They lost, and all the nations fell under the demons’ rule. And on the day the army led by Lucifer—the little guy who kidnapped you—reached my village, I was named the Hero destined to defeat the Devil King. Me, this farm girl who knew nothing about the world.”
The greatest surprise for Chiho, after she heard it all, was how little it affected her heart in the end. Emi was giving a recital of sorts, deliberately (to Chiho’s ears) keeping her own emotions away from it. Apart from the day when the Devil King’s Army took her father’s life, Emi worked hard to describe her journey as just a chronological list of events. The battle between humans and demons on Ente Isla. The four Great Demon Generals (Ashiya included) who invaded human lands. The Devil King Satan leading them. The tragic aftereffects they saw throughout their travels. The human world rallying back to the attack. The final battle between the Hero’s team and Satan, accompanied by his general Alciel, in the Devil’s Castle. Emi’s unexpected, accidental (or so it seemed) journey to Japan. She and the Devil King reuniting in Sasazuka.
“Thiiinking about it,” an apologetic-looking Emeralda chimed in from the side, “maybe this wasn’t the kind of talk we should’ve had after a meeeal.”
She and Albert had spent the entire conversation trying to read what was written on Chiho’s face, no doubt worried that it was all too sensational for her to swallow without feeling sick to her stomach. Chiho was amazed, but only at how much less of a shock it was than she’d imagined.
“You all right?” Albert gently asked. “You don’t feel bad or anything?”
Chiho shook her head in a natural motion. “I’m fine, thank you.” A deep breath. “But can I ask a question?”
“Sure.”
“So the first time you all met the Devil King Satan was at that duel in the Devil’s Castle?”
“““…?”””
No answer. For a moment, Emi, Albert, and Emeralda all exchanged questioning looks. They weren’t expecting this one.
“No,” Emi finally replied, “that was when we liberated Ente Isla’s Eastern Island, when he came to approve the retreat of Alciel’s forces. I think that was the first time.”
“So the Devil’s Castle was the second time?”
“…Yeah.”
Chiho nodded, seemingly convinced of something, as the other three silently puzzled over her. They had no idea what she found so reassuring about that reply.
“Well,” she continued, unaware of this, “thank you for going over all of that for me. To be honest, it all hardly seems real to me, but given what I saw back at the station, I know you guys can’t be lying.”
It took courage to say that. But with this trio, there was no need to hold back now. Chiho took another breath to quiet her heartbeat.
“Can I ask one more question, though?”
She eyed all three of them in order.
“Is it all right if…I still love Maou?”
“Hwaaaahhh!”
Emeralda’s eyes sparkled like a young child’s as she audibly gawked at the glass showcase. Inside were lines of colorful cakes, the kind that Chiho’s family thought of when the word “cake” came to mind. This is what Patisserie Tiron sold, and they had a great rep for them across the neighborhood.
“They’re sooooooooooooooo cuuuuuuuuuuuute!!”
They were the traditional chocolate, strawberry, and Mont Blanc cakes, along with a decent variety of daily specials you wouldn’t expect to see in a non-chain neighborhood bakery. Space was limited, so the selection couldn’t live up to the big guys’, but today the focus was on the fruit tart and chocolate cake family.
“E-E-Emilia, how many can I buuuuuuy?!”
“You ain’t a child, y’know,” Albert retorted.
He may have been turned off by Emeralda’s regression into childhood begging, but Emeralda couldn’t have cared less.
“Hey, did you hear that? That big buffooon over there doesn’t waaant any. Can I buy more if he iiisn’t?”
“Buffoon…?”
“Eme, calm down. You can’t buy all of them. Do you have any recommendations, Chiho?”
Before Chiho could reply to Emi’s motherly bout of common sense, Emeralda’s smile promptly turned into a frown.
“Awwwwwww! C’mon, let’s buy them allllll!”
“I don’t have infinite money to work with!”
“I tollld you, when I go back home, I’ll send all kinds of stuff over for youuu!”
“Oh, sure. Money I can’t use in Japan, jewelry that’d look weird on a call-center lady… I really don’t need it, thanks.”
Despite how it looked, Emeralda was much older than Emi. But an impartial observer would be pardoned for thinking that Emi was her older sister or something.
“Well,” Chiho said as she started pointing things out, “in terms of what I like, you can’t go wrong with the Swiss rolls, but they have a lot of different types of cream puffs, too. Also, that raccoon-dog cake is pretty neat…”
“Raccoon dog? Are these saaavory cakes?!”
“No, they sculpt it with chocolate and marzipan to make it look kind of like a raccoon dog. There, on the far end—”
“Aaaaaaahhh! So cuuuuuuuute! Emiliaaaaaaa!!”
“…All right, that’ll be one. Now, one more. You sure you’re fine, Al?”
“Yeah. Go ahead ’n’ let that kid down there have another.”
Albert was still smarting from the “buffoon” remark earlier. Emeralda was unfazed as she stared intently at the showcase.
“Mmmm, one mooore…hmmm…”
It was evening by now, there at the 100 Trees Shopping Arcade, and Chiho had suggested buying a small cake or two as souvenirs. Not to badmouth that sushi place, but she couldn’t allow Emeralda to labor under the misconception that that was the standard for cake in Japan. Now Emeralda was adrift in a world of colorful icing, savoring the reverie.
“Kind of surprising, though,” observed Emi from behind.
“What’s that?”
“I didn’t think you’d ask me that.” She smiled. “I mean, once I gave you the whole truth, I didn’t think you’d want to be involved with any of us, much less take Eme to a cake shop afterward.”
“Well,” came the clearly spoken reply, “if you didn’t all give me that answer, I probably wouldn’t be here right now.”
It made Emi give her a wide-eyed look.
“Um…maybe, but what else could I have said?”
“Exactly,” said Chiho, full of enthusiasm. “And that’s why I thought I needed to show this place off to you!”
“Is it all right if…I still love Maou?”
Emi silently pondered the question for a few moments, then gave her this reply:
“None of us can take those feelings away from you.”
“Y’know,” Albert interjected, “when Emilia said she wasn’t goin’ home and she wasn’t gonna kill the Devil King, I was pretty damn gutted. But y’know, lady, at this point, things’re calmed down enough that I can see it ain’t fair we got ya involved in all our stuff. Bein’ honest with ya for a minute, if you did forget everything for us, nobody’d miss the Devil King if we pulverized ’im. He’d be dead, we’d all live happily ever after, there ya go.”
“You’re going too far agaaain.” Albert, all too eager to tell the truth, received this rebuke from Emeralda. “Of course,” she went on to Chiho, “we caaan’t support you, not really, and if the Devil King tries anything daaangerous, then the lives and safety of the people around him will take precedence over your feeelings, Chiho.”
“Right,” agreed Emi as she neatly divided the sushi plates into stacks of ten for easier counting. “Me, Eme, Al… We’re not in the business of making our friends cry. It’s our fault we let the Devil King escape from us and into this world; you had nothing to do with that. So if, after you heard all of that, you still think you love him… Well, there’s no need to worry about us. It’s your feelings—you should decide them for yourself.”
“Okay, so we’re going back to Ente Isla tomorrowww…”
“Yeah, keep an eye on Emilia for us, won’tcha?”
They were at the turnstile in front of Sasazuka station, Emeralda beaming because she was carrying a box full of the numerous cakes she had managed to wheedle out of Emilia. Albert looked down at her, a defeated smile on his face, as they said their good-byes to Chiho.
“This is a really nice country, y’know? Good food, lots of money, all that kinda thing. And good people, too—like you, little lady. Emilia oughta relax here a while, I’d say. Take a load off.”
Albert stole a glance at Emi, currently staring at the ticket board to figure out how much to spend on train fare for Emeralda and Albert.
“You’re the first real friend she’s made apart from us. I’m very happy to see that.”
“Oh?”
The lack of Emeralda’s trademark drawl drew Chiho’s attention.
“I hate to just leave the Devil King unchecked,” Albert continued, “but… I dunno. Him leaving yer memories alone really says a lot to me, somehow.”
“Emilia’s face has gotten briiighter than I’ve ever seen it, and I’m suuure it’s because she ran into you and the Devil King here, in Japaaan. I know we said a lot of mean thiiings to you, but be a good friend to her, all riiight?”
And now she was back to normal.
Chiho had no way of reading what was behind her words. Emi was posing as a twenty-year-old in Japan so she’d qualify as an adult for job purposes, but in reality, she was seventeen, a mere year older than Chiho. A seventeen-year-old girl with the fate of an entire world on her shoulders, crossing barriers between entire planets, all because of this battle thrust upon her. It’d be impossible to make Chiho fully understand the sheer fecklessness of the people on Ente Isla, forcing her to handle this fate all by herself. Emeralda knew all that talk hadn’t fazed her much, so she refrained from saying anything further and dropped the serious look.
“Besiiides,” she said, drawing close to her, “I really don’t thiiink you have much to worry abouuut.”
“Emeralda?”
“I think the Devil Kiiing wanted you to remember him, too, Chihooo. So don’t let it get to you muuuch. Just give it tiiime, little by little, and you’ll figure it ouuut.”
“You, you, you think so?”
“Ahh, don’t pay too much attention to Eme. Ya really don’t wanna rely on her promises in a— Nngh!”
The silent toe kick put Albert in a world of pain, enough so to make even Chiho cower in fear as Emi returned with two tickets.
“All right. I don’t have enough money left on my card to cover all of you, so I had to buy separate tickets. What were you talking about, though?”
“N-nothing…ugghh…”
“Oh, I just told her to take good care of you, Emiiiilia.”
“Yeah? Well, we better get going. Sorry to take up so much of your time today, Chiho.”
“Oh, not at all.” Chiho shook her head—then, for some reason, her eyes met Emeralda’s as she was headed for the turnstile with Emi. “…Oh! Right! Wait, Ms. Yusa!”
“Mm? What’s up?”
She didn’t understand what Emeralda’s advice just now meant. But somehow, she felt now was the time to conduct that one true ceremony of friendship—one that came far more naturally to her than it would to Emi on her world.
“Your phone number…”
She took out her flip phone.
“Oh, that’s a Dokodemo PN-04iS, Flower Pink version, right?”
A glance at the rear panel was enough for Emi, call-center employee for a national phone provider, to guess Chiho’s model. All that talk about her being the Hero of another world still didn’t seem very convincing to her. It made Chiho laugh a bit as she took a breath and looked Emi in the eye.
“Do you wanna trade phone numbers, or e-mails, or something?”
“…Huh?”
“I…I still don’t know if I can figure any of this out yet. I think it’s gonna take some time for me to deal with all my concerns. And I know I might be a pain, but…I want to know more. I want to hear about all kinds of other stuff. I want to talk with you about Ente Isla, about Maou, and…about you. About Emilia Justina.”
“Chiho…”
The unexpected offer made Emi stop in her tracks.
“I mean…if you don’t mind…”
This was Emilia Justina—fearing for demons by night, thirsting for revenge by day, polishing her blade across multiple worlds, even hiding her true self in pursuit of her goals.
“…would you like to be friends?”
And this was Chiho Sasaki—raised in a sheltered world, about to take a step toward another one that nobody else on Earth was even faintly aware of.
“I’d love to.”
Two girls from very different worlds gripped each other’s hands firmly.
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