THE DEVIL SNAGS A NEW PHONE WITH THE HERO’S MONEY
“Hello! How can I—”
“Can you do anything with this?”
“—help you today— Uhm?”
Emi could see the salesman visibly tense up before he could finish his opening pitch with a smile. She couldn’t blame him. The pile of scrap metal and plastic Maou had just presented to him was just barely recognizable as a cell phone. But it was the salesman’s job to handle customers as they walked into the door of his AE shop, and as the public face of the store he did his level best to force the smile back on his face. A real pro, an astonished Emi thought.
“Oh, um, I’m sorry, sir, were you…looking for some repair work…?”
“Well, if you can. It still powers on, so I figured we could do something with it.”
“…Yeah, right,” Emi whispered, softly enough so no one could hear.
“Uhmm, well, I wouldn’t suggest you try turning that on right now. You might have the battery discharge and electrocute you, sir.”
The salesman looked a little shocked himself.
“B-but we’ll be happy to take a look at it, so, um, if you could just take a number and wait over there for a few moments…”
“Oh, sure. Guess we’re out of luck, huh?”
“I told you this was stupid.”
“Huh? Uh…oh.”
A final tug from Emi was all it took to dissuade Maou from hounding the salesman any further. Maou headed deeper into the shop, not even glancing at the state-of-the-art new models lining the shelves, and plopped himself down on a sofa.
“Mommy! Mommy, it’s your job!”
In Emi’s arms was Alas Ramus—the personification of the Yesod Sephirah and daughter of Emi and Maou—and she was pointing at the front counter with one arm and batting Emi’s shoulder with the other. Two AE employees were there, dressed in prim uniforms with large ribbons over the chest, and each of them was dealing with their own customer at the moment.
“…Yeah.”
Emi nodded back, even though it was a little bitter for her to accept. Up until fairly recently she had worked in the phone industry herself, albeit in a different company and position. Looking back at her career so far, the fact that the ex–call center receptionist Hero was in no position to criticize the Devil King about working at MgRonald would’ve made her giggle if it wasn’t so depressing.
“Mommy, d’you work tomorrow?”
The innocent question rubbed a bit more salt on Emi’s wounds. With Alas Ramus an inseparable part of the holy sword Emi wielded, the Hero had worked that whole time at Dokodemo with the child fused inside her heart. This gave Alas Ramus an insider’s view of Emi’s workplace.
“…No, I’m going to be away from Dokodemo for a while.”
It was a very motherly lie to tell one’s daughter. Emi had been fired from her previous place of employment—which was entirely due to her own behavior, so there was little complaining to be done about it. But losing the niche she had eked out for herself in Japan was still at least a somewhat scarring experience. Thinking back on it, it felt like she had come very far—both in terms of time and her situation—from the day she traveled to Japan to take the Devil King’s head.
“You don’t have to stay with me here, Emi,” Maou said on the sofa, apparently noticing her eyes on him but not bothering to return the gaze.
“…Huh?”
“I mean, I’ll give you a copy of the receipt and everything, so, uh, if you just give me the money later…”
He was being deliberately blunt with her, but Emi could easily figure out that he was trying to be considerate of her unemployment. It was excessive, unwelcomingly so. She already knew that she owed Maou, big-time.
“…I can’t do that,” she said with a sniff, before sitting a prudent distance away from Maou on the same sofa. “I still haven’t gotten a new job yet. I could wind up at a call center or store run by AE, or SoftTank, or whatever. I need to scope out the other players in the field a little.”
“Oh? Mm.”
Maou awkwardly nodded, not taking the topic any further. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere except here, and the same could be said for his seating partner.
“So which phone are you going for next?”
“Um? Oh, uhh…”
He looked down at the junked phone in his hand. Emi knew he was still clinging to that hope, for some reason.
“I told you,” she said, “they’re never gonna offer repairs for that. It’s already a super-old model. I’m shocked you could still charge it. The shell’s in pieces.”
“Aww…”
He gave the pile of parts a forlorn look. The AE phone model in his possession was actually sold by Joose’d Mobile, before AE bought them out. That happened right when Maou and his friends first came to Japan, and it was something of a miracle that he managed to score that phone new just before Joose’d got phased out—not that it was a miracle particularly worth celebrating.
Now, that miraculous stroke of luck was in pieces in his hands, torn apart during his so-called military expedition into Ente Isla earlier. He’d gone over on a mission to rescue Ashiya, Alas Ramus, and Emi, all being held in Ente Isla by assorted nefarious people. In the midst of it, he’d dropped the phone into water, exposed it to a volatile explosion, and sent it flying through the air following a traffic accident of sorts; it was also in his pocket the whole time during his climactic battle against the angels.
The left side of the screen was now completely dark. The caps for the number keys were long gone, revealing the phone’s motherboard below, and the hinge that flipped the screen up and down was crushed, exposing open wiring and making the phone not so flippable any longer. Maou claimed he could still charge and make phone calls with it, but even daring to plug a half-ruined piece of electronics into an outlet like that could have led to explosions, electrocutions, horrifying death, or all of that combined.
Emi was later “invoiced” for expenses incurred during her rescue, and the first thing on the list was that something had to be done about that phone. The Hero was no longer capable of slaying the Devil King without a second thought, and if Maou went and fried his brain because he was using a ticking hand grenade of a broken cell phone, that would now be a problem. Satan, the Devil King, continuing to use that phone and later dying in an apartment fire from it—while it’d barely get mentioned in the news these days—would mean everything to her.
“B-by the way…”
Maou’s invoice was worryingly high to Emi, but she accepted it with only a few complaints. Ever since, he had been acting weirdly awkward around her. Maybe he was so surprised that his high-pressure approach won Emi over, he didn’t know what to do with himself.
Emi hefted a deep sigh. “What?”
“L-lemme just tell you, I’m gonna buy what I want.”
“Go ahead. Why don’t you?”
“Y-you sure about that? ’Cause you’re not gonna stop me, even if you try. You made a promise. We wrote it all out on the invoice—”
“I know all that,” she flatly responded. “Just buy whatever you want. I don’t even care if you go with some fancy new smartphone. Just don’t try to repair that thing, all right?”
“Y-yeah…um…”
As if to further agitate her, Maou turned to the nearby shelf, fished out a pamphlet outlining all of AE’s new models, and began very deliberately reading through it.
“…Mommy?”
Alas Ramus, still in Emi’s arms, looked up at her as she continued to stare at Maou. “Mommy,” she quizzically asked, “are you kinda happy?”
“Hmm? I don’t know,” Emi replied, not moving her head. She could see the sweat on Maou’s forehead, despite the air-conditioned store.
“Hey.”
“Hnh?!”
He half-jumped up out of his seat. It wasn’t the kind of act she wanted him repeating in public again, if she could help it, so before he could say anything else, Emi pointed something out to him.
“You sure you shouldn’t be stopping her?”
“Huh? Stopping what?”
“Acieth.”
“Nnh?!”
Maou stood up, eyes wide open. Emi’s finger was pointed at Acieth Alla, Alas Ramus’s “sister” and a woman currently pelting the AE shop salesman with questions.
“Hey, Acieth!”
In a panic, Maou hurried over to Acieth, whose eyes sparkled as she looked at a showcase with the latest models—all at eye-popping prices.
“Ooh, Maou! Hey, hey, which one looks like the best to you?”
“Which what?”
“Which phone! You said, Maou, you will buy me the phone, too!”
“I never said that! Um, I’m sorry, you can just ignore her, okay?”
Apologizing to the salesman, Maou attempted to pull Acieth back to the sofa.
“You did say it! You did! When, when we see Albert in Ente Isla!”
She was talking about something that had happened during their journey in Ente Isla. She was the personification of a Sephirah herself, just like Alas Ramus, and much like how Alas Ramus was “paired” with Emi, Acieth was now one with Maou. While Emi and Alas Ramus had been imprisoned in their homeland, she had stepped up with Maou to save them—and just as Emi was reunited with her father, Nord, a man she thought dead, Acieth was able to see her “older sister” Alas Ramus once more.
Right now, though, Maou was ruing her presence. He knew she’d cause nothing but trouble.
“I didn’t say anything about buying you one! I just said that if I ever do, I’m getting you one for children!”
“Objection! I have the objection to that! What you say, it is the same thing as you saying ‘I will buy it!’”
“Overruled!!”
Brushing away Acieth’s ranting, Maou sat her down next to Emi, glaring at her to make sure she didn’t give him any more back talk. As if on cue, Alas Ramus reached out from Emi’s arms and placed her palm against Acieth’s forehead.
“Asseth, don’t be selfish!”
“I am not selfish, big sis! I think you want the cell phone, too, no?”
“Sell phone?”
Emi shifted positions, looking a bit distressed as she tried to pull Alas Ramus away. “Would you stop giving Alas Ramus weird ideas, please…?”
“Oh, it’ s A-OK! I am not asking you to pay, Emi! All I want, it is to make Maou keep his promises…”
“It’s questionable whether we have a promise in the first place! Please, just sit down and be quiet! I took you out ’cause you said you wouldn’t cause any trouble!”
“She certainly is a handful to you, huh…?”
“Hey! Maou! Your words, they are hurting my reputation with Emi!”
“You’re the one that’s hurting it!”
Maou slumped into the sofa, dejected. He really didn’t want to take Acieth on his own—he didn’t need much imagination to picture Acieth causing a commotion. But the way that Emi and Alas Ramus could only remain a certain distance away from each other also applied to him and Acieth, it seemed. The two distances were about the same, and they were sadly shorter than the trip from Sasazuka to Shinjuku. As a result, whenever Maou visited downtown Tokyo, Acieth was forced to go along with him—but unlike her sister, Acieth had the maturity (and total lack of obedience) of a middle schooler by Japanese standards.
Whenever they went out, the idea of Acieth staying inside Maou and being a good girl was a pipe dream. She’d always go out and start wheedling Maou immediately, and while he was used to it by now, it didn’t make things any less tiring for him. To Emi, meanwhile, Acieth was still tricky to deal with—they had only just met, and Acieth had been living with Emi’s long-lost father, Nord Justina, for what had to be a pretty decent stretch of time. The hang-ups were only on Emi’s side, though, and almost from the start, Acieth had been just as unreserved with her as she was with everyone.
“Mmm…”
Emi looked at the girl as she continued to beg Maou for a phone. It wasn’t envy, exactly. It was just that, well, having someone just as powerful as Alas Ramus around must’ve kept Nord’s life intact on more than one occasion. She hadn’t heard his whole story yet, but Emi knew her father had made multiple attempts to come back into contact with her. And yet, somehow, she still found herself oddly trying to hold back from Acieth.
“Mm? What, Emi?”
Suddenly, Acieth turned toward her, noticing her eyes. Between her large purple eyes, her silver hair with a single shock of violet, and most of all her facial structure, the more Emi looked at her, the more she resembled Alas Ramus.
“Umm…”
Emi, not looking at her for any pressing reason, grasped for a reply, when:
“Customer number fifty-five, please!”
“Oh, hello! …Hey! Acieth, I’m not buying anything for you today, all right? Sorry, Emi! You mind putting up with this idiot for a little bit?”
“Huh? Ah, wait—”
Maou didn’t bother hearing Emi’s reply before leaving Acieth behind and running up to the counter.
“Who is the ‘idiot’ here, Maou?!” Acieth half-shouted as she stuck her tongue out at him, then quickly turned back toward Emi. “So, what?”
“Huh? I, um…”
“By the way, Emi…”
“H-hmm?”
“You are daughter of your father, yes?”
“…Yes…?”
Where did that come from? It put Emi off guard, but Acieth seemed perfectly casual as she continued—and landed a hard blow on Emi, deep inside her heart.
“Ooh?”
“Hmm?”
Alas Ramus looked up at Emi’s sudden name check.
“The Devil King and I… We aren’t connected by blood, but we really care a lot about this child. I’m proud of having her call me Mommy. I’m sure that applies to him, too.”
“Yeah.”
“And in the same way, I’m sure Father’s proud to have you call him ‘Dad,’ too. He’s my father, after all. Regardless of the circumstances, I know you’re just as important to him as I am.”
“Mmm? Are you sure? Is that the…disappointing to you, Emi?”
It was amazing, how Acieth could ask that without any apparent burden to her psyche. You needed such an utterly straightforward, meek, and gloom-free heart to act that way. That was the distance Emi felt from her—the worry she had for her. That was it.
“It’d be much more ‘disappointing’ if you kept looking out for me, and it cost you your place in our lives. I guess you’re living in Devil’s Castle right now, Acieth, but there’s someone else living in that apartment, too. Why don’t you go back to him? There’s no way that other room can fit four people in it, anyway.”
“You mean Urushihara… Lucifer? Mmm, that is the current problem of me, yes.”
Watching Acieth cross her arms in apparent distress, Emi thought over the past few days. Freshly back from their Ente Isla expedition, Acieth didn’t come near Room 101 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka very much, the apartment where Emi was taking care of Nord. If she was doing that out of concern for Nord’s real daughter, it made Emi feel all the worse. Just like how Alas Ramus called her and Maou “Mommy and Daddy,” Acieth felt as strongly about her real dad, Nord—and it was Emi’s own mother who’d brought that about, no doubt.
And before she realized it, the question came all too naturally out of her mouth:
“Would you both like to live with me?”
“Huh?” Acieth flashed back a look of surprise.
“…I know we’ve all got stuff to deal with, but considering our ‘parents,’ you’re kind of like my little sister. If we’ve both got the same father anyway, don’t you think we might as well just all live together?”
“Ohh…” The offer seemed to move Acieth from the heart. “Such the, the generosity…”
“Y-you think? Thanks…”
“But I think, it is not so doable right now. I cannot go away from Maou.”
“Oh, right.” Emi instantly looked at Maou, who was seated over at the counter. He was still badgering the salesperson there with questions about his pile of scrap. Why doesn’t he just give up already? It baffled her.
“You and Maou, you not living together, too. I ask Suzuno, and she says you will not move to Sasazuka, yes?”
“…Yes.”
Emi and Alas Ramus were living in Eifukucho, three rail stops away from Sasazuka and well beyond the range of Maou and Acieth’s bond.
“Then I cannot go to your home, Emi, and also…”
Acieth took another look behind Emi, then focused squarely upon Alas Ramus in her hands before looking back at Emi.
“You think of me as the younger sister, Emi, but our family situation, it is really very complicated, no?”
“…That might be true, yeah.”
Emi grinned, understanding what Acieth was getting at. Her daughter, Alas Ramus, was Acieth’s elder sister. Acieth was also Emi’s younger sister, as they were both daughters to Nord, and Acieth’s elder sister was Emi and Maou’s daughter—but, wait, Alas Ramus and Acieth’s real “mother” was Laila, Nord’s wife.
“Just thinking about it makes me dizzy. If this was some other situation, we’d probably be fighting over control of the family for generations to come.”
“Yeah.”
Emi and Acieth both had a laugh at that. The “one hell of a family discussion” Maou promised Emi in the air above Heavensky was something she couldn’t even imagine.
“But, you know, maybe it is the complicated, but…happily for me, and my big sis, everyone… They are important to everyone else. So maybe we do the fighting, but I think it is fine. Maou, too.”
“You…think so?”
In the midst of their talk, Maou had changed roles from the relentless complaining customer to the one being lectured by the clerk instead. Probably related to him continuing to plug that pile of wiring into a charger, no doubt. It made Emi visibly frown.
“Yeah! Maou, he is the liar and very dishonest with the feelings, so hard to understand…” Acieth gave another carefree smile. “But when we ride bikes across Heavensky, he called for you, too, Emi. You are both the enemy to each other before now; that I don’t know. But Maou, he thinks lots about you. I am sure.”
The Emi of the past would’ve denied that appraisal out of hand. Now, however, there wasn’t even a shade of Emilia the Hero left in Emi’s heart.
“Asseth, Daddy isn’t a liar!”
Emilia Justina gave just a tiny amount of attention to the two Yesod sisters’ trivial argument as she digested Acieth’s comment. “…I know,” she said, with some trepidation.
“Mmm? What? That Maou is bad?”
Emi shook her head, her face tensed up. “And I know you meant what you said before, too. But…I’m not in a position to accept that.”
“Hmm?”
Whether she was looking out for her or simply wasn’t interested, Acieth didn’t try to ask what Emi meant by that. Probably a little bit of both, Emi thought. Just then, she noticed Maou standing up from his seat, marking the end of his conversation.
“Guess he will not buy for me, hmm?”
“Maybe not,” chuckled Emi. In fact, Maou looked all but defeated as he walked back. A repair was probably not in the offing for him.
“…They said I gotta buy a new one.”
“Oh? Then go pick it out.”
“Ughh…”
Despite having the freedom to switch to a new phone model with someone else’s money, Maou’s expression was glum.
“What? Emi, she will buy the new one for you!”
“He must have an attachment to the old one,” Emi observed. “He doesn’t want to let it go.”
“Oh? That is the thought of him?”
“Well, it’s the first one he ever bought. He’s been through thick and thin with it.”
Her guess wasn’t wrong. They had spent enough time together by now that she could easily picture what ran through his mind—including all the reluctance at purchasing a new phone.
“Daddy looks sad,” a worried Alas Ramus said as she looked at his back, Emi sighing in agreement.
“Oh, Emi?”
Then she stood up and headed for the counter that Maou was seated at a moment ago. “Would you be able,” she asked the clerk, “to back up his data, at least?”
“Mmm, it might be hazardous, but since it still connects to a charger, it should be able to read off data as well. It’s plugged in right now.”
The clerk gave Emi a dubious look, unsure how she was related to Maou. Maybe, carrying the baby and all, she thought Emi and him were family, at least—but if so, Acieth must’ve looked pretty weird with them. But that didn’t matter to Emi right now.
“His phone’s pretty old. I don’t think it even accepts any external media—but AE has a service that backs up your texts and photos and phone book and stuff, right? I’ll have him sign a data-loss waiver if it doesn’t work, so would you be able to try it?”
“…One moment, please.”
The clerk stood up and walked off, looking downright flustered and no doubt seeking a manager for assistance. Really, Emi was being unreasonable—it would be dangerous to plug anything into the data port of a phone this damaged. But Emi also knew that this level of “unreasonable” was generally allowed from the customer side. To their owners, phones these days contained features and memories that went far beyond just another gadget. The photos and videos they stored often held much more sentimental importance than anything shot with a “real” camera.
“Emi…?”
She could hear the surprise in his voice, but she didn’t turn around. If she did, she feared she’d blurt out something weird again.
Luckily, the clerk returned before Maou could ask any questions.
“Thanks for waiting. We can’t guarantee that we can make a complete copy of your data, but we’d be happy to attempt to extract it for you. If that’s all right with you…”
“All right. That’s fine. Hey, Maou?” she called back.
“Uh, yeah…”
“They said they’ll extract the data from this junk for you. If it works out okay, you can carry that data over to your new phone. It probably can’t be a smartphone then, but still…”
The advent of smartphones meant that the same phone models were now on offer from multiple carriers, but since Maou’s old phone was likely using some ancient and proprietary OS available nowhere else, its data might not be easily carried over to a modern smartphone. As a result, it was best for him to move over to another feature phone that was (hopefully) compatible with that proprietary software.
“C’mere a sec. They won’t do it unless you sign a waiver in case they lose your data.”
“Oh…”
Maou returned to the counter, beckoned by Emi, and signed the document presented to him. With a light bow, the clerk took his phone to the back room of the store. Maou watched her go, as if bewitched.
“What’s with that face?”
“N-no, um… Why did you…?”
Why, his eyes were telling her, did you do this without me even prompting you?
“You put a reflector on your current bicycle in a really weird place, didn’t you?”
“Huh?”
She was referring to Dullahan II, Maou’s favorite vehicle. The basket on the front of it had the reflector from the original Dullahan (destroyed by Suzuno a while back) glued to it, but he didn’t think he had ever mentioned that to Emi. Just as he started to ask why she’d brought it up, Emi took the wind from his sails yet again:
“What, you didn’t think I’d carefully examine anything you let Alas Ramus ride on?”
“Uh, n-no…”
She was able to accurately guess at nearly every thought in Maou’s mind—and Emi had yet to realize that this actually didn’t feel all that bad to her.
“Your phone book and past texts,” she continued without picking up Maou’s feelings, “are like the soul of your phone, you know? Having those carried over ought to make you feel a lot better about it. I dealt with a lot of customers like that, and…” Then she stopped, edging away from Maou a bit, fearing she had talked for too long. “…I don’t want you,” she continued, her voice deliberately cold, “to be unhappy with this phone I’m buying you and punish me with a higher invoice.”
She knew, of course, that Maou would never do that. But she said it anyway—for Maou’s sake, and for her own.
“So which one do you want? It’s almost naptime for Alas Ramus, so try to hurry up.”
“Um, yeah…”
Maou walked back to the showcase, pulled over there by Emi’s stern words, and grabbed a showfloor model of the closest silver-shelled phone.
Acieth, watching them carry on, sank into the sofa with a wry smile.
“It seems like such the pain,” she stated bluntly, her low whisper indicating she also kind of enjoyed it. “That family discussion, it will be quite the pain in the butt, no?”
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