Hataraku Maou-sama! - Volume 14 - Chapter 5

THE DEVIL LEARNS ABOUT HIS BOSS’S PAST 
The five-day weather forecast’s expected highs were starting to form a downward line on the TV news, but the buzz of an air conditioner was still a welcome sound for most people in the city. The same applied to Maou as he headed for his post at the MgRonald by Hatagaya Station, where he found Kisaki at the counter, scowling at a small notebook. 
“Good morning, Ms. Kisaki. Is something up?” 
“Mm? Oh, hey, Marko. Yeah, kind of…” 
She looked at him just long enough to say hello, then focused right back on her book. Taking a peek from the side, he saw it consisted of a sheaf of handwritten receipts. 
“Why’re you looking at old receipts?” 
“Oh, no major reason, but…have you seen Sarue around here lately, Marko?” 
“Huh?” 
Maou opened his eyes wide at the question. Mitsuki Sarue, manager at the competing Sentucky Fried Chicken across the street from MgRonald, was not actually from Japan—or Earth for that matter. He was the archangel Sariel back in the heavens that loomed above Ente Isla, and once upon a time, he had been out to capture both Maou and the Hero Emilia—Emi Yusa—back when she was still more openly hostile around him. After the intense battle that resulted and assorted subsequent events, Sariel one-sidedly fell in love with Mayumi Kisaki, manager at the MgRonald, and promptly lost all desire to carry out his heavenly duties. That was in his past now, and presently his days were occupied by (repeated, fairly off-kilter) attempts to win over Kisaki’s heart. 
“Mr. Sarue, the manager? No, I haven’t, actually.” 
Maou normally just called him “Sariel,” but with Kisaki unaware of any of their shared past, he had to treat him as simply a rival business employee from down the street. As far as he could remember, Mitsuki Sarue hadn’t paid a visit to the restaurant lately. 
“Ah. I thought maybe he was showing up when I was off duty, but I guess not. He always leaves a handwritten receipt for me when I’m gone, doesn’t he?” 
Aha. So that was why Kisaki was thumbing through her old receipts. 
Sarue’s approach toward her, if one was aware of the outright violent methods he used against Emi and Chiho, was a little hard to believe—but it wasn’t anything illegal. Not that anything was fair game as long as he didn’t break the law, but if you were really lenient with him, you would just barely be able to laugh off his behavior as a bunch of silliness. His activities were limited only to when both places were open, and he never attempted to pry into Kisaki’s private life. 
No, his attempts at wooing her generally involved bringing huge, oversized gifts, serenading her loudly with enigmatic poems of his own creation, ordering vast amounts of food to go, and usually spending no longer than around half an hour there, start to finish. This would happen three times a day—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—but, heck, as long as he wasn’t bothering other customers, he was just kind of an eccentric regular, nothing else. 
He had been banned from the premises once, following an assortment of misunderstandings, but no longer. He was reinstated now, and these days it was common to see him make his boisterous entrance, order a much saner amount of fast food than before, and head right out in a regular cycle. 
“It’s odd, though, Ms. Kisaki. Seeing you, um, wonder about Mr. Sarue like this…” 
“Why wouldn’t I? Don’t you?” 
“Huh? Um…?” 
Maou had no idea how to answer. Sarue’s hyperaggressive love for Kisaki was public knowledge to the woman herself, along with all of MgRonald’s employees and regulars, as well as most people staffing the neighboring shops and restaurants. Was there some ever-so-slight twinging in Kisaki’s heart after all, now that he hadn’t visited lately? No. There couldn’t be. 
“After all that passion, he just disappears. It makes me worry that he’s devoting his energy to some other target. You can tell he likes flirting with women a lot, y’know?” 
“Yeah, um, probably…but why ‘worry,’ as you put it?” 
“Well, not to put myself up on a pedestal or anything, but it takes a woman like me to dodge that crazy full-court press of his, I think. What if he’s pulling that nonsense with some other woman he sees? If he picks the wrong gal, he’ll have the cops called on the very first try.” 
Maou blinked helplessly as his deadly serious manager gazed at him. 
“You and I know what he’s like, but he’s still part of this shopping area. If one of us commits a crime, that’ll be terrible PR for the entire shopping arcade.” 
“Ah… So that’s why you’re worried…” 
Now it made sense. For a moment, Maou had fretted that Sarue’s approach was actually starting to make something come to life in Kisaki’s heart—but she was concerned about a far more likely catastrophe. 
“But he’s really stopped showing up, huh?” Kisaki sighed and placed the book of receipts on a shelf below the counter. “Maybe I should stop by for an info-gathering session of my own. Then I can chat up the employees. If he’s been keeping a weird work schedule, I can bring it up with the local business association…” 
“I, um, I think you’re kind of jumping to conclusions there!” 
In Kisaki’s mind, Sarue was already either a felon or about to become one. 
“I mean, maybe they’re busy over there with trying to boost sales for the month or whatever. I think Mr. Sarue’s pretty aware of how we do business in here, so perhaps he’s just devoting himself more to his job?” 
Maou had to ask himself why he was defending his enemy so passionately. But it beat things going awry and Sariel being forced to do something truly desperate. 
“Hmm… Maybe so.” Kisaki nodded, appeased. “Well, if something comes up, we’ll think about it. For now, I’ll just make sure everyone on staff knows the number of the local police department.” 
There would be no overturning Kisaki’s view of Sarue as a troublemaker. Not today, anyway. 
“Oh! And one more thing, Marko.” 
“Yes?” 
“Don’t get the wrong idea here—I’m not waiting with bated breath for him to come back. He’s a great customer in terms of sales, but sometimes a location’s got to look at more than money when it evaluates its business.” 
“I can see that.” 
When it came to Kisaki, at least, nothing about Sarue’s approach would ever move her heart. Besides, it was extremely rare for her to express any personal feelings at all toward the people around her, good or bad. She was human, of course; she had placed some people ahead of others, but Maou had never seen her talk about someone outside of a work context… 
“Well, not so fast.” 
Actually, she had…once. It was about someone who Maou didn’t know, someone Kisaki called her “eternal nemesis.” For just a moment, the competitive drive she displayed while discussing her was ferocious. What’s more, this other woman was working for none other than Sentucky Fried Chicken. That was likely much of the reason why Sentucky’s opening across the street peeved her so much, and why she was always competing against Sentucky in her mind, in sales and otherwise. 
What kind of person was this “eternal nemesis”? Whoever she was, the woman was originally assigned to manage the Hatagaya Sentucky, but apparently things hadn’t worked out that way. 
“Huh?” 
But then Maou noticed something funny about it all. How had Kisaki known that her “nemesis” was slated to run the Sentucky nearby? Even if they were part of the same shopping center, nobody from Sentucky had stopped by to say hello before they opened for business, and a MgRonald employee like Kisaki knowing about HR moves inside Sentucky would just be weird. 
“Um, Ms. Kisaki?” 
“Oh? What’s up, Chi?” 
Chiho, wiping down tables in the dining space, chose that moment to step up to the registers, looking a tad distressed. 
“We have a customer, um… It’s Mr. Sarue from across the street.” 
Kisaki instantly grinned at Maou. “Well, speak of the devil!” 
“Yeah…” 
“So what’s wrong with that? Just lead him to the counter.” 
“Um, yes, but there’s a customer accompanying him today, and…” 
She paused, still distressed, then motioned toward the entrance. 
“She told me to bring the manager, Mayumi Kisaki, over to her…” 
““Huh?”” 
Kisaki and Maou both furrowed their brows. Something about how the message was worded seemed foreboding. Besides, if Sarue was in the restaurant, there was no way it should be this quiet. Every day, he had a new declaration of his love to unfurl upon Kisaki, in tones bellowing enough that the other regulars at the Hatagaya location had taken to calling him the One-Man Flash Mob. 
“Who’s with Sarue?” the doubtful Kisaki asked. If she was being called by name, it was her job to step up. Maou found himself following behind as she left her spot at the registers, with Chiho leading the procession. 
It was definitely Sariel there—Mitsuki Sarue, Sentucky manager, right at the front door. But he looked oddly stiff as he stood there, not at all like normal. No, all the energy in the room belonged to the small woman accompanying him, her face too blocked out by the external glare for Maou to make out. 
“…Hmm?” 
But then, much to his surprise, Kisaki suddenly stopped walking. 
“M-Ms. Kisaki?” Maou yelped. 
Not only stopped, but began to practically exude an aura of furious rage around her. To Maou, a demon well versed in the art of converting people’s negative feelings into demonic energy, it was a shiver-inducing experience. He had seen Kisaki’s anger manifest itself in assorted ways before now, but this was sheer hostility—massive, sharpened, and like nothing else seen before. 
It’d be unthinkable to see that from Kisaki normally, but that was exactly what she was unmistakably jabbing at her visitor with. It was hard to imagine this from Kisaki, the woman who once joked that she’d never call the cops on Sarue unless he visited the MgRonald nude. This was a manager who could calmly deal with even the most unreasonable of customers, whenever they made their rare appearances. What’d happened to her? 
Chiho, ahead of her, must have picked up on this murderous rage even more keenly than Maou had. He spotted the look of abject horror on her face when she turned around toward Kisaki, no doubt wondering where that sense of doom was coming from. 
“…What are you here for?” 
Maou began to wonder if the earth was going to explode tomorrow. Of all the things to spit out at a paying customer! The unexpected turn of events made him and Chiho freeze on the spot, capable of nothing but watching it all unfold. Sarue’s continued silence made it all the more bizarre—he’d normally be half-dancing his way through the dining space by now, but now he looked so, so small, like a lamb among wolves. 
Everyone held their breath for a single instant before the cogs began to whirr. 
“That’s cold, isn’t it? How long has it been since we last met?” 
The words were not uttered by Kisaki, nor Chiho, nor Sarue, nor Maou (of course). 
It was the other “customer.” 
“I’m not here for anything. Just saying hello, is all.” 
Now Maou could fully see the woman, her voice sharpened to a fine point. Her shoulder-length hair was tied back, a leather messenger bag draped under her shoulder, and she was dressed in a pantsuit that’d look at home in public and at the workplace. She looked about the same age as Kisaki. To put it in a nice way, her spirit was unyielding, but no matter how sweet and charming her smile seemed to be, there was also a seemingly bottomless ire, and it was aimed right at Kisaki. 
“Saying hello?” 
The bullet-like impact of Kisaki’s voice made Maou and Chiho tremble anew. 
“Yes, I thought it best to say hello to other firms operating in my region.” 
Kisaki’s horrid mask of resentment spread deeper across her face. “Your region?” 
“Yes! There was a sudden personnel change just before I was to be appointed manager of my own location. Now I’m the regional manager of the western Shibuya area.” 
“You, a regional manager? If that’s a joke, it’s not funny.” 
“It’s not meant to be. I’m not as pigheaded as some people around here, so I’ve been working my way up the ladder far more quickly.” 
“……!!” 
“““Eep!””” 
The squeaks of terror erupted from Maou, Chiho, and Sarue simultaneously. Kisaki was a beauty, mistakable for a model at a distance—Sarue was far from her only admirer around the neighborhood—but when she twisted that beauty to demonstrate her anger to someone, the force behind the horror that resulted was difficult to put into words. 
“You know, Sarue here…” 
The mystery woman gave Sarue, next to her, a palpably forceful shove with her bag. 
“Oorf!” 
It must’ve hit home. Hard enough for Sarue to make that kind of noise, at least. 
“He just goes on and on and on about you. Oh, you’re so talented; oh, you’re so beautiful. Like a parrot with a one-track mind. So I thought I’d pay you a visit for old times’ sake. Started kind of missing the days when we competed with each other, you know? Like, the last time we were in direct competition was during that event in college, wasn’t it?” 
“Well, that’s a surprise. That stupid little show has stuck around this long in your mind?” 
Maou and Chiho were both thinking the same thing: This mystery event these women shared meant nothing to them; they just wanted out of this living hell as soon as possible. Maou now understood what it was like for a human being to be exposed to an onrush of demonic force—being next to Kisaki when she was unable to hide her wrath was enough to make the sweat flow, the breath quicken. 
“I should say so. It was a good college memory for me—’cause unlike you, I’m not so contrarian all the time that I can’t take a compliment.” 
“…!!” 
“M-Maou!!” 
Chiho, looking ready to bawl, finally sought refuge with her coworker. Unlike him and Sarue, she was just a normal person. Even the Lord of All Demons and an archangel from heaven had a tough time being here; the air was dripping with so much vitriol, it was a wonder a normal high school teen could even remain conscious. 
They couldn’t keep talking like this in here. There was bound to be hell to pay for it. So Maou spoke up, in part to drum up his own bravery. 
“Excuse me… We’d be getting in the way of other customers right here, so if you could, perhaps we could retire to the staff room…” 
Despite the herculean resolve it took, the words he uttered seemed distastefully weak to him. It took the better part of his courage and experience to muster even that. But the mystery woman brushed it away without even looking at him. 
“Oh, I’m fine here! I won’t take that much time, and it doesn’t look like you have that many customers anyway.” 
““Gehh?!”” 
“Waaahhhh!!” 
Maou and Sarue both groaned. Chiho, able to handle it no longer, ran off in tears. This anonymous woman had just said the one thing a person must never say in front of Kisaki. 
Maybe not “anonymous,” exactly. They could tell by now that she worked for Sentucky and supervised Sarue, but she was just standing there, in the lobby, trying to goad Kisaki as much as possible. The rage was building up atop Kisaki’s shoulders, like a balloon about to explode. 
“And come to think of it, a little bird told me that you’ve been implementing a cavalcade of new services here, one after the other? Even though your average customer counts are below ours?” 
“Aaaaahhh?!” 
“M-Miss Manager! Please, that’s— Ooph!” 
Maou, fully aware of Kisaki’s disposition, fell into panic. Even Sarue couldn’t hide his concern any longer—but the woman simply whacked him again. She was on a roll now. 
“And despite that, you’ve always got that ‘Help Wanted’ sign out front, don’t you? You’re probably being all choosy with your new hires out of some misguided perfectionism on your part, huh?” 
““Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah…”” 
“Considering the size of your space, your sales don’t seem baaaad per se, but you’re gonna be a grunt in the trenches your entire career if you keep that up. You sure liked talking about your big dreams back at college, but you know, if you’re willing to allow the corporation to bury you here for good—” 
And this must have been exactly what the doomed residents of the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah saw with their last breaths. The light of despair, and the explosive blast. 
“Get out!!!” 
The screamed order traveled across the entire space, nearly shattering every window, Maou and Sarue having to run away at a low crouch to avoid getting hit by the shrapnel. 
The demon/human dinner mixer at Room 201 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka that night (an increasingly common occurrence as of late) was surrounded by a somber pall. 
“Egh…nnh…” 
“You all right, Chiho?” 
“Y-yeah…nnnnnnh…” 
Emi did her best to comfort Chiho, face down and tears falling on her knees, as she glared at Maou. 
“You’re sure you didn’t do anything?” 
“More like I couldn’t do anything…” 
Chiho shook her head, the tears hitting the tatami-mat floor around her. 
“It’s not Maou’s fault…but whenever I think about that moment again, I, I just get so scared, and…wehhhhh…” 
She had been caught up in a battle that took down a high-speed expressway overpass. She had directly pitted her wits against an archangel. Even when kidnapped by a demon, she always kept her dignity and courage intact. But this scared her senseless. Maou, watching from the side, was heartbroken for her. 
“It must have been so hard, Chiho. You’re crying so much.” 
“Chi-Sis, don’t cry! See? Owie all gone!” 
“The more I hear,” Suzuno pondered as Alas Ramus tried to assuage Chiho, “the less believable it is. Kisaki, of all people…” 
To her and Emi, who knew Kisaki’s personality well enough, the sight of Chiho crying her way into this apartment because of her was nothing short of shocking. Kisaki had lashed out at a customer out of nowhere and even forcibly removed her from the dining hall—that was the gist of it, from the outside. Then, not hiding any of it, she reported everything she did to her boss, the manager covering the region that included the Hatagaya MgRonald. That manager knew Kisaki too well for it to be believable at first—even Kisaki’s own crew doubted what they’d seen with their own eyes. But she reported it all, and asked the company to punish her as they saw fit. 
“I really had no idea what was going on between them,” Maou pleaded. 
“She filed that report,” Ashiya asked as he slaved away at the kitchen counter, “and received no punishment for it?” 
“About that…” 
Maou glumly shook his head. 
It amounted to a ten-percent salary cut for one month and a three-day suspension—such was the scandalousness of mouthing off to a competing regional manager like that. It was, to be honest, a pretty hefty price to pay. As Kisaki’s boss put it to Maou over the phone, the home office was willing to let her go with a verbal reprimand, but Kisaki refused to accept it. 
“So who was she, then? That Sentucky regional manager?” 
Maou shook her head again at Suzuno. “I guess she was supposed to be manager at the place across the street if that idiot Sariel hadn’t shown up. But beyond that…” 
“Wait a minute,” Emi said. “Why do you guys know about who works at Sentucky?” 
“Well, Ms. Kisaki said so first.” 
“I don’t mean that…” 
“You mean it’s weird that Ms. Kisaki would know about who works at Sentucky? Yeah, that’s what I’d like to know.” 
There was too little information to work with. What had possessed Kisaki to do that? Would it be proper to ask her what was up once her suspension expired? As he pondered this, Maou could be sure about only one thing: That Sentucky superboss had to be the “eternal nemesis” Kisaki had mentioned. 
“Hey, you think it’s this lady?” Urushihara called out from behind him. 
“Huh?” 
“This is Sentucky’s employee list. I toldja about it before, remember?” 
“Ohh, yeah, you did.” 
Back before Sarue’s cover was blown, Urushihara illegally accessed Sentucky’s HR database to point out how baffling a person he was. According to the logs he had uncovered, the manager over at Hatagaya wasn’t Sarue at all, but a woman named… 
“Waaaaahhhh!!” 
“M-Ms. Sasaki?! Please, get a hold of yourself!” 
The moment the photograph appeared on Urushihara’s display, Chiho was stricken with fear all over again, an unfamiliar sight Ashiya struggled to deal with. 
“That, that’s her! It’s that woman!” Maou stared at the display. “Himeko Tanaka, huh…?” 
The determination in her spirit was visible even in the ID photo. It was definitely the lady Kisaki had almost come to blows with. 
“Hey, I just remembered… Didn’t the ‘Mitsuki Sarue’ entry in that database describe someone totally different? Do we know what happened to that guy?” 
“Oh, yeah, you’re right. Umm, hang on…” 
Urushihara tapped away at the keys for a while. 
“Yeah, he’s still there. Sariel didn’t have him fired or anything. He’s out of the store-management business entirely, but…” 
“Oh…” 
Maou had no idea who the “Mitsuki Sarue” was whose identity Sariel had taken over, but the archangel potentially doing harm upon that innocent man was a concern for him. 
“But if you think about it, we know that Sariel didn’t become a Sentucky manager any normal way. If you got your demonic force back, couldn’t you just appoint yourself manager, too, Maou?” 
“Uh, I’m not just looking for money and power, I want to learn the work. It’s not about getting a full-time stint just so I can have a fancy title.” 
“You think that excuse is gonna work with me, dude?” 
“Hey, c’mon. I always trust the people under me. Why can’t I get that back from you?” 
“’Cause it’s a waste of time?” 
“Urushiharaaaaa!! How dare you treat His Demonic Highness’s feelings like that!” 
Urushihara was just being honest, at least, no matter how much it enraged Ashiya. 
“What? I’m just saying it’s a waste of time!” 
“You good-for-nothing parasite! The real waste of time is having my liege spend his valuable money supporting you!” 
Letting the two of them continue their fruitless yapping to their heart’s content, Maou sat down by the computer. “Himeko Tanaka… Her history looks pretty normal to me. Y’know, Chi?” 
“Y-yeah…” 
“Do you know how old Ms. Kisaki is?” 
“Huh? I think she mentioned it once… Like, she said she was ten years older than me, maybe?” 
“So twenty-six or -seven? That would make Tanaka as old as her. They seemed to know each other pretty well… Maybe something happened between them. Something to make that ‘nemesis’ talk not seem like much of a joke.” 
“Nemesis? What kind of talk?” 
“Oh, there was this one time when Ms. Kisaki referred to this Tanaka as her ‘eternal nemesis.’ It sounded like she was exaggerating to me, but…” 
“Wow… I’m sorry for Ms. Tanaka, but just looking at that ID photo is giving me flashbacks…” 
It was strange, seeing Chiho keep her face away from the computer screen like a vampire shunning the sunlight, but this was no laughing matter for Maou. 
“What’re we gonna do if this lady’s at the Sentucky down the street for a while to come, I wonder?” 
He’d never managed to get a word in with this Himeko Tanaka before she left. Kisaki was shoving her out of there before he could, Sarue following along with her. He still had no idea why she’d visited in the first place. A regional manager was someone a kitchen employee might almost never see, but when they showed up, they started showing up a lot. There was every chance Tanaka might stop in quite a bit while Kisaki was gone. 
Maou sighed as he propped his head up with an arm. “If she comes in again, I guess I’ll just have to treat her normally, like nothing happened.” 
“That sounds pretty passive of you,” Emi said as she continued to care for Chiho. “You see how scared Chiho is. Why don’t you scout out enemy territory and figure out a more active defense for yourselves?” 
“Enemy territory? You mean the Sentucky?” 
In the end, Maou pondered the question for quite some time. 
The next day, during his lunch break, Maou stood in front of Sentucky. He peered inside through the door, but didn’t see that regional manager anywhere. 
“Guess Sariel’s around.” 
Steeling his resolve, he opened the door, only to quickly realize something. Despite being a rival in two different ways—a competing fast-food chain, run by an archangel who had it out for him—he had never set foot inside this place before. It had a relaxed, chic atmosphere, maybe a touch more upscale than MgRonald’s, and that went a long way toward explaining the higher prices on the à la carte menu. 
He had aimed for a slower stint of the afternoon, so it was quickly his turn at the counter—and just as he hoped for, Sarue was manning the register in front of him. 
“Hello! How can I…? Oh. You.” 
The salesman’s smile disappeared the moment he recognized Maou, but his eyes were turned down, as if a bit fatigued. 
“What do you want? Because I don’t have the energy to talk to you right now.” 
“Because your boss pissed off Ms. Kisaki?” 
“Ugh…” Sarue groaned at this unwelcome call out, only to then hedge. “Um…how was Ms. Kisaki afterward?” 
“Well, thanks to her violently kicking you guys out, the company’s punishing her a couple different ways.” 
“P-punishing?! Ah, ahhh, what terrible news! And I was there the whole time…” 
He began to shake, as if he’d crumple to the floor right there. 
“You were there, but you didn’t help any of us out at all, did you?” 
“I—I don’t need you reminding me! As if you could’ve stepped in between Manager Tanaka and Ms. Kisaki back there!” 
Remaining totally statue-like instead of attempting to stop an argument between two fast-food employees was a pretty pathetic performance for both of them, frankly. But: 
“What, you have trouble dealing with her?” 
“I am weak against the beautiful, as a rule.” 
“I wasn’t asking that, dumbass.” 
Maou banged a fist against the counter, before he realized what he was doing. He didn’t know much about Sarue’s personal preferences, but if Kisaki was a beauty like ice, or night, or the moon, Himeko Tanaka was more like the sun or the prairie in summertime. Flashier. Whether he wanted to get closer to her was another matter, but she was definitely pretty—pretty enough to earn praise from Sarue, despite his infatuation with Kisaki. 
“Well, in so many words…Manager Tanaka is…an old classmate of Ms. Kisaki’s.” 
“Ah, so that’s it. They seemed acquainted.” 
He surmised that much from the HR database, not that he was going to tell Sarue about that. 
Sarue continued, “I mentioned to her that I’ve spoken with Ms. Kisaki in the past, and she latched on to that in the strangest way. I was hoping to learn more about Ms. Kisaki myself, so we talked about what we knew with each other. Then, out of nowhere, she shows up yesterday and says she’s gonna say hello to her…” 
“Mm-hmm?” 
He made it sound like Himeko Tanaka wanted to see Kisaki more than anything in her restaurant. 
“But didn’t you just tell me that you had trouble dealing with that manager?” 
“Like I said, I am weak against beautiful women.” 
“Are you being serious with me, or what?” 
“I could ask the same of you—couldn’t I, Devil King? If you aren’t buying anything, I’ll have to ask you to leave. Just thinking about how your company has punished Ms. Kisaki makes my heart feel ready to burst!” 
Maou would have loved to see him explode into tiny pieces right now. He would have to be disappointed. 
“Oh, uh, I’ll take three pieces of Original Chicken to go.” 
“…All right.” 
Anyone with money in hand’s a customer. Sarue silently handled the order from Maou, a flip-flop from how their interactions usually worked. 
“So what kind of info did you share with each other?” 
“You’re going back to that?” Sarue couldn’t have looked more annoyed, but he fielded the question anyway. “It was nothing important. Like, that Manager Tanaka and Ms. Kisaki knew each other for a long time, that I was passionately in love with Ms. Kisaki, that sort of thing.” 
“You said that? I have to admit, I gotta respect that.” 
“Also about that thing from before.” 
“What thing?” 
“We ran into Ms. Kisaki outside of the restaurant once, remember? After Chiho’s Idea Link training.” 
“…Oh.” 
Chiho had trained at one point to learn a holy magic known as Idea Link, so she could make fast contact with Maou and the rest in case of emergency. They had enlisted Sariel’s help for it, and on the way back from the session, they had bumped into Kisaki. 
“Wait, did you tell her about Ms. Kisaki’s…?” 
“Do I look like that much of a fiend? I’m not thoughtless enough to reveal someone else’s dreams that easily. I did phrase it in a way that indicated she might be interested in going independent, though, sometime in the future.” 
That still seemed like a lot to reveal, but Maou let it slide. It didn’t venture beyond the range of topics a person might bring up when discussing a mutual acquaintance. 
“Here you go.” 
Just then, Maou’s chicken order was wrapped up and sent to the register. Sarue carefully placed it in a bag and handed it over. 
“And either way, Manager Tanaka isn’t going to come around again for a while. You don’t need to worry yourself sick about anything. But when I think about Ms. Kisaki at home right now, all gloomy over what happened at work… Ahhhh!” 
“Thanks.” 
Maou, certain that continuing this talk would just set Sarue out of control and annoy his coworkers, took his cue to leave. He had gotten some info out of him, at least. 
“H-how was it?” Chiho asked when he came back. 
Maou just glumly shook his head. “Useful, but not too useful, I guess.” 
He went over the basics with her: Himeko Tanaka was an old acquaintance of Kisaki’s, she still had an interest in her, and Sarue had been keeping her abreast of Kisaki-related happenings. None of it adequately explained Kisaki’s outburst. 
“Well, just because you’ve known someone for a while doesn’t mean you like them. Kind of like frenemies, maybe, or people doomed to fight with each other.” 
“Frenemies…?” 
That evaluation sounded right to Maou. But Chiho saw the term another way. 
“Why’re you laughing, Chi?” 
“Oh, that just reminded me of a couple people in my life.” 
“Mm?” 
“Ah, nothing. So what’s Ms. Tanaka doing now?” 
“Well, according to that idiot Sariel, we won’t be seeing her again for a while.” 
“Really?” Chiho breathed a visible sigh of relief. “Because if she comes back once Ms. Kisaki is back on duty, I’m not sure I’m going to survive.” 
“Yeah, if she’s able to confront Ms. Kisaki when she’s fully raging like that, I don’t think anyone could beat that manager.” 
It was the honest truth, straight from the Lord of All Demons’ heart. 
But in the end, they didn’t have to wait long for another outbreak. 
 
“Goddammit, Sariel…” 
“Huh? What was that?” 
“N-nothing…” 
Maou instantly swore in his mind to take revenge against the archangel when Himeko Tanaka, the manager Sariel swore wouldn’t be around again, had marched right into MgRonald that same evening. Chiho, and the rest of the crew familiar with her, swallowed nervously as they watched Maou engage her. 
“Let’s see…I’ll have a teriyaki burger combo with fries and orange juice. Also, one regular hamburger by itself. Regular-size juice, no ice.” 
She didn’t look much different from before as she strode up to the register, lassoing Maou before he could run off in a panic and ordering like a regular customer for a change. 
“All right. That’ll be six hundred and fifty yen, please.” 
“Here. Sorry for all the change.” 
She tossed a small collection of coins on the change tray. Maou mentally counted them up. 
“Er, I apologize, but this coin here…” 
There were four 100-yen coins, four fifty-yen coins…and then, among the five copper coins on the tray, there was one that didn’t look like the standard ten-yen piece at all. 
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Tanaka chirped, not sounding at all apologetic as she replaced it with another coin. “I must’ve forgotten to take this out of my purse after I got back from England.” 
It was a two-pence coin, the same copper color as the ten-yen piece but a completely different size. Mixed in with a bunch of other spare change, it could’ve easily been overlooked. 
“…You were traveling there?” 
Tanaka gave him a natural nod. “Yeah, sort of.” 
In the midst of this, the completed order was sent to the counter on a tray. 
“Here you go. Enjoy!” 
“Thank you.” 
Then she took the tray and sat down by the front window, a bit out of sight from the registers. Maou watched her go from the corner of his eye. 
“Wow, Marko.” 
Behind him was Takefumi Kawata, a seasoned coworker of Maou’s, better known by Kisaki and the rest of the crew as Kawacchi. 
“Me and Chi were freaking out back here, but— Huh?” 
He realized that Maou had his right hand out toward him, palm up, from an angle that customers couldn’t see in the dining space. A “stop” signal. Once Maou was sure Kawata got the message, he approached him as casually as possible, then quickly whispered into his ear as he passed by: 
“Wait until she leaves.” 
And with that, Kawata went back to his own work, as if nothing had happened. Maou gave the same warning to Chiho before doing the same. 
After a good hour or so, Himeko Tanaka finally got up, cleaned off her tray at the trash bin, gave a light wave of the hand to Maou, and left. Even when she was no longer visible from the inside, Maou stayed on guard for a while to come—half an hour, in fact, until he finally felt it safe to breathe normally again. Chiho and Kawata immediately ran up to him. 
“What was that all about, Maou?” 
“I think we were probably being tested.” 
“Oh?” 
“What do you mean?” 
“The teriyaki burger she ordered is easily affected by the condition of the plates. It’s a pain in the ass to assemble, too.” 
The “plates” referred to the metal plates on both sides of the clamshell grill used to cook MgRonald burger patties. A teriyaki burger required the cook to put a unique sauce on the patty while cooking, which made it hard to prepare alongside strings of other burgers. Plates in poor condition affected the taste of both the patty and the sauce, easily resulting in an inferior sandwich. What’s more, when assembling the burger, smearing on the patty’s sauce and the mayonnaise incorrectly would guarantee soggy buns and wrappers when served, making for a messy eating experience. Among the burger menu items, it required the most attention to get right. 
Alongside that, Tanaka had ordered a regular, plain old burger, which couldn’t be made on the same plates as the teriyaki one. The MgCafé expansion included a new grill with more plates, allowing them to cook teriyaki and other burgers in parallel—maybe that was her way of deducing this location’s kitchen setup. 
“And I wonder why she ordered an orange juice. That, and why she sat where she did.” 
The beverages at MgRonald, except for coffee and hot tea, were served out of a dedicated drink server that mixed concentrated syrup with water or carbonated water as needed. However, the syrup for fizzy dinks needed to be handled quite differently from the concentrate for orange juice and cold oolong tea. 
“Was she checking to see how the machines were maintained?” 
“Yeah. Making a point of going with no ice, too.” 
The syrup and carbonated water for sodas and drinks flowed out of tanks kept separate from the server, but orange juice and oolong tea were kept in special bags on their own. What’s more, between the fructose in orange juice and its relative unpopularity compared to sodas, lazy maintenance led to residue buildup in the tubes and dispenser much more quickly than with other drinks. 
“That, and she went all the way to the other end of the dining space so she could scope out how clean the place was, I think. I can’t be sure, but…” Maou frowned. “Mr. Sarue told me that his manager, Tanaka, knew Ms. Kisaki from a while back. I don’t know what’s happened between them, but we’re all a part of Ms. Kisaki’s team. I didn’t think we could afford to show any weakness around her.” 
“Kawacchi made those burgers, so I think we’re fine there,” Chiho said. 
“Yeah, I’m definitely not gonna disappoint ya on that!” 
“And I cleaned the dining area after lunch down to the last detail, so that shouldn’t be a problem, either!” 
She and Kawata, at least, were supremely confident. Maou nodded broadly. He trusted them on that score. 
“Yeah. And I just inspected the drink server yesterday. As long as we’re around, nobody’s gonna write this location up about anything.” 
Even as he spoke, Maou couldn’t wipe away his concerns about Tanaka’s behavior. But neither she nor Kisaki were that old, as it went. Maybe they always liked competing with each other, and it just happened that one was now ahead of the other. 
“Well, either way,” he said as he looked at the shift schedule on the wall, “we’ll just have to keep this place safe until Ms. Kisaki comes back.” 
Around half an hour before closing time, Maou placed a call to the regional manager (MgRonald’s, that is) and reported that the closing procedure was under way without a hitch. Maou would be locking up the place tonight, and his regional boss would be opening the next morning—a rare event. 
So he made his rounds, ensuring most of the procedure was wrapped up. It was eleven thirty in the evening, and while customers weren’t uncommon up to ten or so, it was well past that now. The dining area gradually emptied out, marking the end of another day of the MgRonald grind…and then the automatic doors sprang open. 
“Welcome! …Um.” 
He made a point of turning up the enthusiasm for the late-night customers who’d appreciate it the most, but this customer was wholly unexpected—in a non–Tanaka kind of way. 
“Huh?” he instinctively said. 
“Hey. Nice to see you’re still at it.” 
She was about the same height as Maou, a calm, refined woman with a clean-looking bob cut. Her soft voice and gentle face often made it hard to believe what a hard, diligent worker she was. It was the first time Maou had seen her out of uniform. 
“Oh… Is that you, Ms. Mizushima?!” 
“Hello! Sorry I’m coming in so late,” she said, smiling as she walked to the register. 
Yuki Mizushima had been hired full-time at MgRonald at the same time Kisaki was to manage the location inside the Fushima-en theme park. That was in a different region from the west-Shibuya ward Hatagaya was in, but the two locations would frequently share employees to fill holes in their respective shifts. Maou himself had spent more than a few hours over at Fushima-en. This, however, was the first time Mizushima had ever showed up here. 
“Um… I apologize, Ms. Mizushima, but Ms. Kisaki isn’t in today…” 
Judging by her clothing, she wasn’t coming back from work. The only reason Maou could think of for her being here was to see Kisaki. 
“I know,” she replied, stopping him. “She’s on self-suspension today, right?” 
“Self…? Well, I mean, it’s kind of official from the company, I think, but…” 

“Pretty obstinate of her, don’t you think? I don’t think her bosses had any intention of punishing her.” 
“I heard about that. But I know how Ms. Kisaki feels, too. Forcibly removing a customer from the premises, in front of all of us…” 
Kisaki always believed in treating all customers equally, a drive she made sure was deeply instilled in her entire crew. That was the golden rule and she broke it, so Maou was sure she probably felt like burying herself in the sand at the moment. 
As he thought about that, Mizushima leaned over the counter, a knowing smile on her face. “By the way…” 
“Yes?” 
“Do you have some time after work, Maou?” 
“…Yes?” 
That coaxing voice was hard for Maou to deal with. 
“How about we get some dinner together, hmm?” 
“What?!” 
“Um, so, where’re we going…?” 
“Oh, don’t worry. Just follow me.” 
Mizushima paid no mind to the timid Maou as she immediately started walking forward, out of the bike lot behind the building. He followed behind, pushing his bicycle, but Mizushima stopped before long. 
“Huh? Oh, um, yeah… Huh?” 
Maou couldn’t be blamed for his surprise. They were stopped in front of a building with a franchise izakaya chain inside, in the same shopping center, no more than 150 feet from where they began. She immediately began climbing the stairs to the place, opening the door. 
Being a Sunday night, there was plenty of seating available—but instead of saying anything to the staff, Mizushima kept on walking, right into the dining space, an increasingly confused Maou following her. 
“Hey!” 
When he saw the person seated where Mizushima stopped, Maou almost jumped out of his skin. 
“M-Ms. Kisaki…?!” 
There, sourly crossing her arms inside the booth, sat Kisaki in street clothes. 
“Hey…Marko. Thanks for covering today. Sorry to call you over right after.” 
“I watched him close up for you, Kiki. Everything’s good.” 
“K-Kiki?” 
It must’ve been Kisaki’s nickname, judging by things. But having a woman powerful enough to make Devil Kings and archangels bend to her will be called “Kiki” left Maou at a loss for words. 
Kisaki must’ve realized. “Stop calling me that around people, Yuki,” she said, looking even more peeved. “I’m not a kid anymore.” 
“You’re not being too convincing, Kiki, given how you immediately got worked up the moment you saw Hime in there. You haven’t changed at all from the past! Right, Maou?” 
“Eee?! Huh?! Ah?! N-no, um, uhh?! Wh-what, whatever do you mean ‘the past’?” 
His stuttered, heart-pumping reaction was mainly the result of Mizushima suddenly putting an arm over his shoulder. What’s with her, too? She’s a completely different woman out of the workplace! 
“Yuki! Let go of the poor man; you’re embarrassing him… Here, why don’t you sit down, Marko?” 
“Okaaaay!” Mizushima said. 
“Um, sure, uh, excuse me…,” Maou acquiesced. 
Mizushima sat down beside Kisaki, and Maou took an aisle seat. As he looked at Mizushima across from him, as she was peering at the menu, he couldn’t help wondering what the hell was about to happen. 
“I’ll pay for you guys tonight, so have at it! Do you drink, Maou?” she asked. 
Legally, and age-wise, Maou was fully cleared to drink alcohol in Japan. But thanks to reflexes honed by the frugal lifestyle he’d “enjoyed” for so long, along with the two women staring him down right now, he just couldn’t. 
“N-no, um, I gotta get up early tomorrow, so I’ll just take oolong tea.” 
“Pretty sober-minded, huh? Or nervous? Or holding back?” 
Maou was beginning to surmise that Mizushima had enjoyed one or two herself before visiting MgRonald. 
“If we’re talking about Marko, I’d say all of the above.” 
“Ms. Kisaki…” 
He had to object to that, but Kisaki ignored it as she, out of nowhere, turned to Maou and bowed her head. 
“I’m sorry. I lost my temper, and I made you go through all of that.” 
“Oh, um, no…” 
“Kiki isn’t letting herself drink during her suspension, so don’t worry about that. But how about it? You have to be hungry after work. We already ordered a bunch of stuff.” 
“…Are you drinking, Ms. Mizushima?” 
“Well, I’m not on suspension,” she brazenly declared as a glass of sweet-potato shochu liquor on the rocks was placed on the table. “So. The reason I dragged you in here was because I wanted you to listen to an old story of ours.” 
“An old story?” a confused Maou asked. 
“About Himeko Tanaka, that girl Sarue brought in.” 
“Oh, Mr. Sarue actually told me a little about her. He said you’ve known each other a while?” 
“Yeah, it’s been a while, all right…” Mizushima smiled as she played with the ice in her drink. “I mean, since kindergarten, essentially.” 
“Huh?” 
The bombshell made Maou gasp a little. This wasn’t just the realm of “acquaintances” any longer. This was a lifelong thing. And it led him to another conclusion: 
“Wait… You too, Ms. Mizushima?” 
“No, I first met her in grade school. We were in kindergarten together, but different classes.” 
“That’s not much of a difference!” 
Mizushima gave Maou a quiet laugh. “Oh, the bad blood between them’s been legendary since elementary school.” 
“Oh…” 
“And if you ask our mutual friends, they were even having it out with each other back in kindergarten.” 
The “frenemies” tag seemed pretty well set in stone now. 
“So why are you still associating with each other?” 
“Not associating,” Kisaki grumped. “It’s all Yuki’s fault that I can’t separate myself from her.” 
“Oh, that’s not very nice!” Mizushima gave her companion a bop on the upper arm. “But anyway, Kiki and Hime have always been so competitive—to the point of, like, why take it to that level, y’know? Plus, they were stuck in the same class for nine straight years, from first grade ’til the end of middle school. That’s another reason.” 
“W-wow. That’s amazing.” 
Even Maou, who’d never had the pleasure of experiencing the Japanese education system, knew that schools generally shuffled class assignments from year to year. Having a common classmate for the first nine grades of compulsory education took nearly miraculous odds. 
“As far as I remember, Kiki’s always been good at art and calligraphy and stuff, so she always won a prize for that every year in school. And every time, Hime would turn red in the face. Hime’s what I guess her guidance counselor would’ve called the ‘noncreative’ type.” 
“Oh?” 
“Yeah, she’s got absolutely zero artistic ability whatsoever. Her handwriting was terrible, and if you asked Himeko to draw a dog, a bird, and a fish, you wouldn’t be able to tell which one was which.” 
“That’s…impressive…” 
“Yeah, and meanwhile, the pictures I’d draw in art class would keep getting picked for showings at the local ward office.” 
Kisaki seemed at least a bit proud of that—something Mizushima was quick to gleefully shoot down. 
“But the thing is, Kiki could never beat her in sports.” 
“Say what?!” 
“Ngh…!” 
It was hard to believe, given how little the two of them differed in body structure now, but judging by Kisaki’s reaction, it was the truth. 
“Kiki wasn’t a total disaster in phys ed, but Hime was really good at it. Whenever there was a long-distance race or a fitness test, she’d always place in the top. And meanwhile, Kiki would cry her eyes out every time she lost a race, like ‘Ooh, next year I’ll get her!’” 
“Ugh, that made me so mad! I was bigger and stronger than her, too! But I didn’t lose to her all the time, Marko! I beat her once in the second year of middle school! You know, during a practice marathon run in gym!” 
“O-oh…” 
That was about the best Maou could do. It was hard to imagine Kisaki crying, even as a child. Maou had no idea how to react to Kisaki expressing honest emotion over something besides daily fast-food sales. 
“Yeah,” Mizushima protested, “but Hime was running a fever that day. She was sick, but she was all like ‘I don’t wanna sit out, I don’t wanna run away from a competition with Kiki!’ So she forced herself up there, and then she wound up being absent for a whole week afterward, remember that?” 
“You gotta keep yourself conditioned for big races like that, all right?!” 
“…” 
It wasn’t the conversation that left Maou at a loss for words, it was getting a chance to see Kisaki and Mizushima as they really were, outside the workplace. Perhaps noticing this, Mizushima let out a polite cough. 
“You know,” she said, “it’s not like I’ve tried to sell my soul to my job or anything. If I’m with friends, I’ll carry on like an idiot, just like anyone else. I’m afraid to lay out my emotions sometimes.” 
“R-right.” 
She was right, but the gap between this and Kisaki’s above-it-all attitude on the job would be enough to throw anyone. 
“B-but how did you guys get so antagonistic in the first place…? I mean, from kindergarten? Really?” 
“I don’t remember myself,” Kisaki replied, “but according to my parents…” 
“Your parents accepted it?” Maou asked, baffled. 
“…During kindergarten, there was this one male teacher all the girls liked a lot. Me and her fought over who’d invite him to play house with us, and that’s apparently how it got started.” 
“Just because of that?” 
She made it sound like a very wholesome kind of younger-years argument, but did things like that really trigger an age-old, never-ending clash of wills? 
“Well, how did you get involved, Ms. Mizushima?” 
“I was kind of like the cushion between Kiki and Hime. If Kiki was crying ’cause she lost to Hime, I’d console her. If Hime was all angry ’cause Kiki beat her, I’d help her work some of the stress out.” 
Maou was about to ask why she’d take on such a difficult, thankless job, but stopped himself. It must’ve shown on his face, though. 
“You know, whatever they thought about it, I was never bored around those two. And they’d cause a lot of trouble if you left them alone, but if you could point them in the right direction, that made a lot of things go better in class. I was class president a few times, so…” 
“I see…” 
In a way, Mizushima was the puppet master, pulling the strings of Kisaki and Himeko. Maou was starting to sense that she wasn’t anyone to trifle with, either. 
“And, you know, they always put a lot of effort into their studies, so they were near the top of the class in test scores and stuff. They always put up the names of the top twenty scorers in the final exams, and it always made me sick to my stomach, because whether it was Kiki over Hime or the other way around, they’d always fight over it.” 
“That just sounds like sarcasm coming from you, Yuki,” Kisaki muttered sullenly. “I don’t think me and Himeko ever beat you in those rankings.” 
“Hey,” the breezy Mizushima replied, “if I wanted to keep hanging with you guys, I needed to work for it. But whichever way it turned out, I think we were pretty good friends, you know? All three of us. Maybe not BFFs or whatever, but not like…you know, ‘hey, wanna hang in the bathroom with me,’ right? Like what you saw with a lot of girls.” 
“That’s a lame joke. She was never a friend to me once. We just stayed together because you said so, Yuki.” 
It made Maou realize it all over again. Mizushima: the one woman capable of bringing Kisaki and Himeko Tanaka together, despite everything. Scary. 
After graduating middle school, they went on to separate high schools, which theoretically would’ve brought an end to this epic battle. But then, three years later, they all ran into each other at the same university. 
“Wow,” Maou said, getting used to the atmosphere, “it’s like destiny or something.” 
“Yeah, well, we all lived near each other, so… But by the time you’re college age, you’d assume that we’d be kinder and more mature with each other, right? Wrong.” 
Instead, Kisaki and Tanaka, both studying business administration at Meiji University, picked up right where they’d left off, albeit on a new level. 
“While we were in school, the economy was down the toilet and grads were having the worst time finding decent jobs. We all knew that, so we worked as hard as we could in all our classes…and that kind of kicked things off again.” 
“Even now, I question the sanity of the professor who gave Himeko’s report on educational management theory an A. Proposing this systematic approach without keeping employee personalities or any other unexpected elements in mind. I mean, who is she kidding?” 
“…Yeah. So that’s where the battle started up again.” 
“I see.” 
All he could do was grin. Now Kisaki and Tanaka weren’t fighting about results—they were arguing about theories and processes, too. It just threw their competition into further confusion. 
“But the real clincher was that ‘Miss Meiji’ contest, wasn’t it?” 
“Miss Meiji? You mean like those beauty pageants you see on TV?” 
“Yeah. Our school just had a small campus festival each year, so we’re talking basically a glorified dress-up show. It’s not like winning would get you scouted for TV gigs. But anyway, they held a Miss Meiji pageant, and the friends we had in our study groups persuaded all three of us to try out.” 
“Ah…” 
Maou recalled the words Kisaki and Himeko had exchanged: “Well, that’s a surprise. That stupid little show has stuck around this long in your mind?” “I should say so. It was a good college memory for me—’cause unlike you, I’m not so contrarian all the time that I can’t take a compliment.” 
“So, um, did Ms. Tanaka beat you, perhaps?” 
“Who cares if she beat me in some stupid party game like that?!” 
The reaction, all too easy to read, told Maou everything he needed to know. Regardless of its size, it was a beauty competition between the two women, and Kisaki ate Himeko’s dust. If Himeko was still bringing it up to this day, it must’ve wounded Kisaki terribly—but if Maou tried to console her about that, he’d have nothing but an infinitely expanding hell waiting for him. 
“I mean, isn’t it just pathetic? Her, thinking she’s all that because she’s some C-grade beauty queen! What difference does second or third place even make if you aren’t number one, anyway?!” 
Kisaki gulped down the rest of her oolong tea like it was stiff liquor and slammed the glass against the table. Presumably, Maou thought, this meant Tanaka took second place and Kisaki placed third. That had to be it. 
“Oh, I was first, by the way.” 
“Please, Ms. Mizushima, don’t give me more information than I need right now…” 
He had anticipated this twist at the end of the tale. But getting an earful of his boss’s past life was enough to deal with in one night. He couldn’t deal with any more of their wheedling inside jokes. 
“Well, anyway, now you know what Kiki and Hime were like.” 
“I’d say so, yeah. More than I ever needed to.” 
Once they reached their junior year, the battle encompassed both their pecking order and the validity of their pet theories, with a new and emphasized focus on their visions for future employment. Their friends used to compare them to a bride bickering with her new mother-in-law, and they were only half-joking. 
“With their job hunt, Kiki was, like, super gung-ho. If you aren’t the lead dog, the view never changes; that kinda thing. Meanwhile, Hime was more about hiding behind that lead dog and jumping over him to the finish line when it counts, kind of thing.” 
Mizushima managed to wrangle them well enough during school, but once they graduated the two of them were guaranteed to take different paths. And, indeed, the paths they took through MgRonald and Sentucky—two similar, but very different companies—couldn’t have looked less alike. With Kisaki, the conventional wisdom was that her care for each individual employee often led to clashes with management around her, slowing her career path despite her exceptional performance and popularity. Tanaka, on the other hand, didn’t focus as much on her staff, but she carried out her assigned work perfectly enough at each location to put up real results that landed that promotion. 
They hadn’t told each other that, of course. That all went through Mizushima. If Mizushima and Kisaki met up, she’d talk all about it with Himeko, leaving out anything truly damaging. If she and Himeko met up, she’d talk all about that with Kisaki, keeping it safely in the realm of chitchat. It was a weird sort of love triangle, one Mizushima had been cultivating since their early years. 
“So that’s why you knew about people working at Sentucky, Ms. Kisaki?” 
Himeko Tanaka had probably talked about her assignment with Mizushima, and from Mizushima, it went right over to Kisaki. Thanks to that, Maou now knew about the discord between those two, and the reason why Kisaki acted out like she had. 
“Really, nothing’s changed with our relationship, but after everything that’s piled up, when I saw her for the first time in a while, it just made my blood boil, and… Then you had to see that. I’m sorry.” 
Kisaki bowed her head to Maou again. 
“Oh, not at all…but why are you telling me all this? None of us thought you were attacking her at random. We just figured it was something kind of hard to talk about.” 
“Well, to be honest, I didn’t think Yuki was gonna be this forthcoming with you, either. I just wanted to explain things to you and apologize, Marko, since you took the brunt of it. I’m planning to apologize to Chi and the rest along the same lines. I want to put this behind me.” 
“You never stopped me, Kiki.” Mizushima plinked the ice around her otherwise-empty glass before bringing a hand to her chin. “But you’re right. Maybe I said too much. But I had a good reason why I figured it was okay for Maou to hear it.” 
She flashed a conflicted grin, then looked at Maou, eyes squinting. 
“It seems like Kiki really trusts you. That’s rare for her.” 
“Trust?” 
From Maou’s viewpoint, there wasn’t an employee on the team Kisaki didn’t trust. That didn’t seem to be what Mizushima meant. 
“The only people who knew about Kiki’s dreams until now were me and Hime. When she said she told you, that really surprised me.” 
Her dream: to be the Italian ideal of a barista, an expert in every aspect of restaurant service. She wanted to test herself out, to see how far her skills could take her in Japan’s hospitality industry. She said so herself, to Maou and Chiho. 
“…Well, it’s not because I think you alone are that special, Marko. We just had the opportunity to talk about it, that’s all.” 
Kisaki was trying to defend herself, but it sounded needlessly evasive to Maou. She was hiding the real truth of it, and Mizushima felt it, too. 
“Really?” 
She looked up from the probing gaze she was giving Kisaki. 
“But I’ve never heard you tell anyone besides us before now. Isn’t that right, Hime?” 
““Huh?!”” 
Gasps of surprise leaped out of Maou’s and Kisaki’s mouth. 
On the other side of the partition behind Maou’s back, a woman’s voice rang out. 
“…You’re right. I haven’t, either.” 
Nobody needed to ask who it was. Himeko Tanaka was even wearing the same pantsuit from this afternoon. 
“Yuki… You tricked me!” 
The fires of Kisaki’s rage burned anew. 
“You yelled at me all high-and-mighty about apologizing to Marko, and you had Himeko listen in the whole time?!” 
“I had to, or else you’d never agree to see her.” 
“Well, yeah,” Himeko Tanaka said as she helped herself to the empty chair next to Maou. “If I was drinking face-to-face with Mayumi, I’d probably get sick to my stomach. I don’t like that sweet-potato shochu; that’s an old-people drink. Give me Kahlúa and milk any day.” 
“Oh, you love that sweet stuff, huh? You have the taste buds of an eight-year-old.” 
“As if I need someone who turns bright red after one beer telling me that.” 
“That’s just my face, okay?! I don’t actually get drunk off it!” 
“All right, enough, guys. You’re weirding out Maou. Let’s eat this stuff while it’s hot, all right?” 
“Oh…uh, sorry.” 
“Pfft.” 
Kisaki and Himeko both glared at Maou, nailing him to his seat before he could make his escape. The table was now full of all the classic tasty, calorie-filled izakaya favorites, from teppanyaki meat to fried rice, and Mizushima briskly divided it up into portions for everyone. 
“I stopped by your restaurant again this evening,” Himeko said as she sipped her Kahlúa and milk. 
“You what?” 
“And I’m impressed. There isn’t a location in my region as well put together as that one. Everyone’s lively and energetic. There’s no pointless chitchat, but they all communicate perfectly with each other. The meal they brought out was a top performer, and I didn’t see a speck of dust in the place.” 
“Being complimented by you does nothing to please me, but they are my crew. Of course I’d expect them to do that much.” 
“‘My crew,’ huh…?” Himeko sniffed at her—and just like that, the praise ended. “Mayumi, are you all right with that? Sitting there at that MgRonald location the rest of your life, with that smug little sense of pride?” 
She paused just long enough to give her a sarcastic smile. 
“You know, I always thought it was strange that you joined a company as big as MgRonald. A huge corporation like that, I really don’t think there’s a lot of skills or ideas you can leverage in a start-up shop like what you’re picturing. Why don’t you try to go independent now, instead of later?” 
“What?” 
“But you wanna do more than run a café right now, don’t you? If that’s all you want, you should just quit, find an empty restaurant space, and open up your own place. If you work a little at it, you’ll do just fine! So why don’t you do that? It’s not like you don’t have leads when it comes to investors and guarantors and stuff, is it? Acting like you’re king of the hill at the bottom rung of a corporation accomplishes nothing for you. Even with all the performance you’ve put in, if you aren’t getting promoted as fast as I am, what’s the point?” 
“Himeko,” Kisaki hissed quietly, “are you making fun of me for working at MgRonald?” 
“No. I’m making fun of you because you’re just sitting there, locked in your tiny restaurant, griping at everyone instead of using your talents to get promoted.” Himeko gave her glass an irritated rattle. “Is it really worth the passion you put into your work, staying in that one location the whole time, when you could be running one or two regions, or even cutting them apart and making your own region? Or did something happen to you that made you switch gears?” 
“…” 
Kisaki answered the shower of questions with silence. It indicated to the table that she had, at least, accepted what Himeko said. 
“If you run after two different things, you aren’t gonna catch either of them, Mayumi. As long as you’re working for a big firm, I know you aren’t childish enough to fail to understand that sometimes, you gotta ignore the moment-to-moment stuff and look at the big picture.” 
“That…” 
“Come on. What are you thinking? Lemme hear it.” 
Kisaki, almost rendered helpless for a moment, glared right back at Himeko. 
“I’m free to do whatever I want to. I don’t need to tell you.” 
Maou was afraid they’d come to blows all over again. But instead, Tanaka gave her an unexpected smile. 
“All right. I’m not trying to ask for your life plan or anything. If you wanna stay in that restaurant and pretend you have a big happy family down there forever, that’s no problem, either, all right? I’ll just keep getting promoted so I can laugh at you from up on high, then.” 
“You never did have any respect for the people you work with.” 
“In that most people around me aren’t worthy of it, yes. That’s why you need to treat everyone like they’re on the same playing field. That’s one of the many truths Japanese business has cultivated over the years.” 
Tanaka turned to Maou. 
“And I don’t know if, for example, this bleary-eyed kid over here’s worth respecting or not, but if you wanna get the better of me someday, then let me make it perfectly clear: You’re never gonna do it, the way you are now.” 
“‘Bleary-eyed’…?” 
The sudden jab annoyed Maou, but the two corporations involved made it hard for him to rebuke her too strongly. They were in the same industry, but socially speaking, Himeko was far above him. 
The sight just made Himeko laugh again. “You know, at a time like this, if you can do something besides jump out at me or slink back to your cubbyhole, that’s gonna be an asset for you later on.” 
“…Yeah.” 
“Just remember this: In any organization, you’re going to have lots of enemies—on the inside and the outside. You have competing companies, taking advantage of any crack in your armor to trip you up. You have malicious, talentless bosses, coworkers, and subordinates, all dragging you down. You’ll find people like them all over the place. If you wanna find a way to deal with people like that, then you’re never going to find it working under Mayumi and her lust to keep everybody happy.” 
Maou flashed the quickest of glances at Kisaki. The sight of her nemesis almost made her explode before, but now she was listening intently. 
“I’m sure Mayumi’s a comfortable person to work for if you want to remain a frontline foot soldier your whole life. But if you’re aiming higher than that, then I have to say I really feel sorry for you right now. You won’t gain any experience fighting your enemies that way.” 
“Oh, but if you’re working under Kiki, you’re getting to work with much better people than elsewhere. That can boost some of your skills, can’t it?” 
“You and I view it differently. The friends you make as you’re slogging through that enemy-infested battlefield, all hurt and wounded, are the ones you’ll boost your abilities with.” 
Tanaka was right—and so was Mizushima. And Kisaki’s approach, one Maou believed was correct up to now, was still the right one. But as much as they seemed to go together, none of them seemed to ever line up. 
“Well,” Maou replied, untroubled, “if there’s anything on the table right now that I can’t do, then I can just build my chair from the ground up and make it big enough that I can do it, right?” 
“!” 
“Ooh!” 
“Hmph.” 
Kisaki looked up at him as an impressed Mizushima put her hands together. Tanaka gave the statement a sniffle, but not quite as derisive as before. 
“Yeah, it’s your dream, not Mayumi’s. You think you wanna start a business? That’s just the kind of reckless thinking I like—it sure beats people who spend all day worrying and whining about how everything’s so unfair, even though they can’t do anything themselves. But that’s a lot easier said than done, you realize.” 
“I know. If I had money, or people, or an education, I couldn’t ask for much more, but for now all I’ve got is my mouth and my body.” 
Himeko Tanaka blinked at him for a moment, then nodded, for reasons known only to her. 
“…True. Mayumi?” 
“…What?” 
“I think I see why you value this guy.” 
“Right?” interjected Mizushima. “He’s really going places, isn’t he?” 
“Huh…?” 
Maou gave the two of them blank stares. 
“…Marko?” 
“Y-yeah?” 
“Are you all right on time? Your friend’s probably going to be worried if you don’t go home soon.” 
“Oh? Ah! Whoa, it’s already one thirty?!” 
Maou jumped out of his seat the moment he saw his watch. Come to think of it, he hadn’t contacted anyone to say he’d be late. 
“Aw, going home already? This was just getting interesting.” 
“Oh, Maou, we can’t eat all this by ourselves. You mind finishing some of this off for me?” 
“Um, y-yeah, sure.” 
As instructed, Maou began working on the food in front of him. 
“Are you living with your girlfriend? That’s pretty bold at your age.” 
“It’s just a roommate, Himeko. He lives with another man.” 
“Oh? Is that your kind of thing?” 
“Whoa! Is that true, Maou?!” 
“I’m not gonna ask what you mean by ‘that kind of thing,’ but no.” 
Maou knew that the inebriated Mizushima and Himeko would just rib him no matter what he said. He decided to focus on his late dinner. 
Mizushima and Himeko said their good-byes to Maou and Kisaki outside. 
“He ‘couldn’t ask for much more,’ huh?” 
“Hime?” 
“‘If I had money, or people, or an education, I couldn’t ask for much more.’ But that’s not impossible at all. If you understand that, that’ll make you strong. And once you’re strong, you can do all kinds of stuff—but if you screw up or it blows up on you, that causes a lot of damage around you.” 
“True. But…” Mizushima smiled as she watched Maou and Kisaki fade in the distance. “Sometimes, one person can be dangerous, but two can be a powerhouse.” 
“Oh? What do you mean?” 
“Mmm…” She smiled at Himeko’s puzzled question. “I meant exactly what it sounded like. This is Kiki we’re talking about.” 
 
“Sorry about that. I guess Yuki got you caught up in my business all over again.” 
On the way back from the izakaya, Kisaki apologized to Maou once again as they walked down the Koshu-Kaido sidewalk. 
“No, it’s all right. It was kind of like being invited to a managerial get-together.” 
“A get-together, huh? You know, now that I think about it, that’s the first time all three of us were together since we graduated.” 
Kisaki sighed, as if longing for the past. 
“Ms. Kisaki?” 
“…Marko, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea when I say this. Just think of it as some drunken ramblings.” 
Neither of them had drunk that evening, but Maou nodded anyway. 
“If you’re going to work for a company, then Himeko’s far more correct than I am. But for now, though, I can’t run away from my ideals. I can’t, because I ran into someone like you.” 
“…Huh?” 
“If you hadn’t shown up, maybe I would’ve taken real steps toward running my own place faster, like Himeko said. But when you started working at my location, something changed my thinking.” 
“Um…?” 
“You said you wanted a full-time position sometime, right? Do you still feel that way?” 
“I…well…” 
The situation around Maou had changed greatly in the past year. His prospects for returning to the demon realms were brighter, and he had had to deal with one disaster after the other. But the one constant that remained within him was a desire to learn more about the human world. 
“I still do, yeah. I can’t get around that, if I want to reach my goals.” 
“Mmm. I’ve never doubted your work ethic, or your philosophy. I don’t know many people so involved with my work and private life like this. That’s why I didn’t know what to do. I wanted you to…” 
“Hmm?” 
Maou was surprised at what almost sounded like a confession of her love to him. But her words went far beyond any such imaginings. 
“I honestly don’t know whether I should make you my right-hand man and climb up to the peak of MgRonald management, or take you on as my partner in a new restaurant.” 
“……Huh?” 
“If I want to change the world, or create a new one, I need friends I can trust from the heart more than anything else.” 
That was something Maou knew internally long before Kisaki told him. After all, when he’d set off to unify the demon realms, all he had was the knowledge that angel imparted on him. 
“And among all the people on the crew, the only one with a future free enough to keep working with me long-term is you.” 
After saying all that, she paused for a moment. 
“…Well, like I said, just drunken ramblings. You don’t have any duty to put up with my dreams, and I don’t intend to tie down your future. We’re just a bunch of drunken would-be managers in passing, trying to get our hands on promising young people to work with. Forget about it for now.” 
Maou blankly stared at Kisaki as she walked away—this woman in street clothes he mainly knew in the armor of her work outfit; this woman who lived for her work. 
“But…” 
She turned around, looking refreshed as always. 
“I don’t make a habit of telling jokes that aren’t funny. You get me? Anyway, I’m going a different way from here. Take care of the restaurant for me for the next couple days.” 
Then she waved and gallantly ventured forth, across the intersection and into the sleeping city. Maou watched her until she disappeared, then scratched his head as he looked up at the heavens. 
“Oh, brother…” 
 
“Daaamn youuu, Maaaaaaaaaaaaou!!” 
At their regular Devil’s Castle dinner meet-up the next day, Maou was brutally attacked by an archangel. 
“Damn you to hell, Devil King! You were prancing around town all last night, along with my…my…my goddess! What could you possibly have been doing?! Depending on the answer, I could cut you down right here!” 
“Bffhh!!” 
It was enough to make Chiho spit out the wheat tea she was sipping. Maou had no idea how they’d found out; someone must have seen him leaving the izakaya with Kisaki. 
“M-M-Maou?! Alone with Ms. Kisaki in the middle of the night… What were you doing with her?!” 
“N-nothing! We just drank for a little while at an izakaya…” 
“Y-you drank?! You and Ms. Kisaki, alone at night, drinking?! Did you do any other grown-up stuff?!” 
Whatever Chiho was imagining had already made her face turn red. 
“You said an izakaya, my liege?” 
“A-Ashiya? Is that really the word that should be grabbing your attention?” 
“How much did you spend? Honestly, arriving home late at night, wasting our money again…” 
Maou fled to the opposite wall, retreating from the gravelly voice of his most trusted servant. 
“N-no, they paid, they paid! I didn’t spend anything. And I said we drank, but I just mean it was part of the meal; I wasn’t actually—” 
“My goddess paid for you…and shared drinks face-to-face?! I’ll kill you! I swear I’ll kill you today!!” 
The interrogating Sariel grabbed Maou by the collar. Maou violently ripped his arm away. 
“It wasn’t one-on-one! We were with your boss and the manager from the Fushima-en location…” 
“That manager? The one with the reputation for beauty? M-Maou… You were with three hot women, they paid for you, and you drank into the night… Ohhh…” 
Maou’s excuses did nothing. Chiho looked about ready to faint. Emi nimbly provided some side support. 
“Ch-Chiho! Stay with us!” 
“Manager Tanaka, my goddess, and a third woman?! Damn you, Devil King! What sort of evil machinations did you carry out to do something I’m so…so, so envious of?! Tell me! What do you have to do to make that happen?! Say it! Saaaaaaaay it!!” 
Sariel grabbed him again, shedding tears as he threatened (or maybe pleaded with) Maou. 
“I told you guys, nothing happened… All we did was talk about work…” 
He wasn’t lying. But there was no denying that the topics ventured beyond the day-to-day routine quite a bit. Stating that would only add to the chaos, he knew, so he didn’t—but everyone in the room seemed to pick up on that nuance anyway, so this all-out assault on Maou showed no signs of ending anytime soon. 
“Devil King! Drinking late into the night… Could you stop setting a bad example for Alas Ramus, please?!” 
“I can believe you, right, Maou?! You were only talking about work?!” 
“This is not a matter of having them pay for you! If your superior gives you something, it is your duty to pay that back! Do you understand that, Your Demonic Highness?!” 
“Saaaaaaaay iiiiiiiiiiiit, Devil King! What happened between you twooooooo?!” 
“Nothing happened! I sweeeaaaaarrrr!!” 
Unable to take the shouted accusations thrown around the tiny apartment any longer, Suzuno snapped. 
“Quiet down now, everyone! We are supposed to be eating!!” 
“Suzu-Sis, you’re scaaarrry!!” 
Now Alas Ramus started to cry. And in the middle of the pandemonium, only Urushihara was calm enough to keep eating. 
“…Shut up, dudes.”