Hataraku Maou-sama! - Volume 15 - Chapter 2

THE DEVIL KING IS OUT OF THE OFFICE (2) 
The following evening after Ashiya’s boundlessly frustrating encounter with Sariel, a pair of young women stood in the middle of Shinjuku, surrounded by flashy Christmas signs but looking seriously miffed. 
“Haaaaaaaaah…” 
In the midst of this dazzling display of light and color, as Tokyo’s retailers fell over themselves to make Christmas a shopping extravaganza for young and old alike, this pair acted like the bright lights were just too much for them. 
“I feel so miiiserable…” 
“I-is there any need to feel quite so downtrodden about it?” 
They were grown women, actually, although they still looked youthful enough to be called young women. One wore a beret and drawled out her vowels; the other had her hair done up as tightly as her machinelike pronunciation. 
“This is hardly the last time you will be here. There will be another occasion…” 
“You know it won’t be that eeeasy. That’s what I’m so dowwwn about! Ugh…” 
Emeralda Etuva sullenly eyed a Christmas tree on the other side of a store window. In her hand was a gelato cone, something she waited in line for despite how cold it was outside. 
“Things are starting to look like so much fuuun, and now I have to go? I can’t belieeeve it…” 
Suzuno Kamazuki gave an awkward chuckle, one finger scratching at her cheek. 
Only two days ago Emeralda received a rather angrily worded summons to return to her post. It was, of course, from Albert, whom Emeralda had left Western Island matters with on Ente Isla. As he put it: “I can’t take any more of this. Get yourself back here already. Otherwise, we’ll be so broke, we’ll need a hundred times the budget for next year, and I’ll have Rumack redo the entire Institute in her image before you can do anything about it.” 
Emeralda was supposed to be here on Earth just long enough to inform Emi about the trial proceedings against Olba, the man who threw all of Ente Isla into chaos. But before she could return, Laila showed up, Erone and the other Sephirah started acting out, this and that happened, and before she knew it, Emeralda had spent over a month away from home. 
She had remained in constant contact with Albert, of course. He had taken pains to cover for Emeralda’s absence, out of an abundance of concern for Emi’s situation. But—perhaps noticing how Emeralda’s trip was now less business and more pleasure cruise, or perhaps Albert really couldn’t do the job of two people any longer—their Idea Links had grown testier as of late. Then, the day before yesterday, the gavel came down. 
“Ahhhh, I wish I could’ve had some Christmas caaake… Or some roast turrrkey, at least…” 
“Then why not enjoy that for lunch today? I am sure we can find a restaurant nearby offering that much right now.” 
But after getting so worked up about Christmas, New Year’s, and all the traditions associated with the holiday period in Japan, Emeralda was now pouting like a spoiled child. A job, however, was a job, and she owed both Albert and General Hazel Rumack for allowing her to be gone from Saint Aile for so long. Emi, alas, couldn’t get out of work today, so it was up to Suzuno to guide Emeralda around. 
“Oh, but that’s only good when you eat it the day you’re meeeant to. Cheating and having it earrrrly isn’t riiight.” 
“It isn’t?” 
Considering how unrecognizable and far removed Japan’s Christmas food offerings were from the original intent of the holiday, the date on the calendar didn’t seem to matter in Suzuno’s eyes. But Emeralda was adamant. “Thiiink about it,” she said, wagging her finger. “No matter how great it taaastes, you can’t have that…um, ozoni, you call it? The rice and vegetable soup thing. It’s toootally New Year’s food.” 
“Um. Well, if you say so, perhaps.” 
Emeralda was already thinking ahead to the next holiday. Suzuno was disinterested. She had yet to experience a Japan-style New Year herself, and it wasn’t like Emeralda would know more about one than her, so she fairly well doubted the validity of her protests. 
“Ohhh, but doesn’t ozoni make it sound like a French or Itaaalian dish? Like, ‘Oooh, waiter, I’ll have a piiizza margheriiita ozoooni, please’?” 
“Ah, I have actually heard about experiments along those lines—using French or Italian ingredients to make an ozoni-type soup. I will stick with tradition myself. Mochi rice balls, vegetables, clear soup stock, and all is well.” 
“…Waaaay to miss the joooke, Bell.” 
“Huh?!” 
Being criticized by Emeralda came as a bolt out of the blue to her. 
“But no point complaaaining about it, I suppose. Time to pick up some souvenirs and prepare for the jourrrney.” 
“Er, yes…” 
Suzuno still didn’t get the joke—if there ever was one—but regardless, their first stop was the main concourse of Shinjuku Station, where Emeralda quickly whipped out a handwritten shopping list and began marking out her stops. Suzuno took a peek at the memo, only to find something written in large text on the bottom. 
“Stockings? Um… Fifty of them? What will you do with fifty stockings?” 

 

“Huhhh? But stockings are must-have items for thiiis time of year.” 
“As souvenirs?” 
“Oh, yesss! Chriiistmas is a time when you give presents to someone you looove, and presents go inside stockings. That’s a ruuule!” 
“E-Emeralda, wait a minute! I think you are mixing up your facts!” 
“Hmmm?” 
Suzuno breathed a silent sigh of relief that she had noticed the mistake before any money had managed to exchange hands. 
“As the tradition holds, Emeralda, it is Santa Claus who puts gifts in stockings for good little children. Just him! And that only applies to children, I should add!” 
“Huhhhhhh?!” 
The gasp was loud enough to make passersby stop and gawk. 
“Besides, we are on our way to the UniClo by the Shinjuku Station west exit, are we not? I am not sure they sell the kind of stockings you can insert presents in. Er…probably.” 
She had not seen many of them herself, but Suzuno assumed that a discount clothing store would not be the right place to find the festive stockings Emeralda was likely imagining. 
“Oh, dear, have I been making a mistaaake?” 
“You have. Or not a mistake so much as mixing things up a bit. But yes, adults exchange presents with one another as well. Why not buy a few Japanese souvenirs for the trip back? You can have them gift wrapped for Christmas easily enough.” 
“Hmm…mmmm, I’m not suuure…” 
“About what?” 
“Here I thought that my presents needed to be these small oblong thiiings so they’d fit in the stockings. So I asked Emilia to buy some local wine for meee on the Net.” 
“…Oh.” 
As Emeralda quivered with concern, Suzuno racked her brain to recall what shopping on the Internet was like. 
“And they did not gift wrap it for you?” 
“I didn’t aaask. I thought you put it in the stooocking.” 
“And the Western Island’s current season… No, that will not work. The Nativity Festival is close at hand there as well. It is no time for a court sorcerer like yourself to go around with bottles of wine.” 
“Nooo, so I thought I would hide it in the stockings thiiis culture has…” 
“Enough about stockings. Nobody in the court knows about this world apart from Albert and General Rumack in the first place. How did you plan to explain the custom of putting wine bottles in stockings?” 
“Ah…” 
Emeralda’s face had an I didn’t think about that expression written all over it. 
“For now, perhaps we could buy some festive packaging? There may even be some wine gift packs you could purchase.” 
“A-all riiight…” 
As she looked at the utterly abashed Emeralda, Suzuno couldn’t shake the feeling that she saw someone make a similar mistake before. She searched her memory to figure out who it was as she walked around, looking for gift wrapping. Then, as they passed by a MgRonald, she realized something: Emeralda now was essentially Suzuno herself six months ago, performing the Obon festival in all the wrong ways and getting reamed by Maou for it. 
“Belll?” 
“Oh, no, er, I was just marveling at how far along I have come.” 
She wasn’t karate-chopping Emeralda the way Maou did to her, but she was confident that she had grown used to life in Japan far faster than Maou or Emi did. She received a great deal of support from them, of course, not to mention Ashiya and Urushihara and Emi and Chiho. But it had still been less than a year since Sariel and the Church duped her into fighting against Maou and Emi. 
“How many people do you plan to give gifts to, Emeralda?” 
“Umm, not thaaat many…” 
She counted on her fingers as they got on the elevator. It wasn’t too many after all; Emeralda was really mostly buying things for herself. Realizing that, Suzuno finally felt comfortable giving her some more casual advice. 
“Thank you so muuuch for your help! I thiiiink I can save face with theeese gifts…” 
They had gone on a little shopping spree in the end, bouncing from wrapping paper to this and that thing. It was morning when they began, but by now dusk was about to arrive. Their hands were full of shopping bags, and not even that was everything they had bought—a decent amount was on its way to Emi’s place. 
“Th-this is fine and all,” Suzuno said as a beaming Emeralda bowed at her, “but…are you sure this is all right? Providing these sorts of souvenirs to General Rumack?” 
Her main concern was the giant Relax-a-Bear doll they had won at a skill crane game at the arcade. 
“Oh, of courrrse! She may not look it, but she loooves cute stuff.” 
“Wh-what a surprise…” 
For Hazel Rumack, young commander in chief of the Saint Aile knights and key leader of the Federated Order of the Five Continents currently rebuilding the Central Continent, to like cute things was a shock. The fact that Emeralda had scored this enormous plushie after just three hundred yen’s worth of playing was another. 
“You have a thing for cute stuff, too, don’t youuu, Bell?” 
“Well, yes, but not quite like this, perhaps…” 
“And providing gifts like theeese to the right peeeople will help procure the buuudget we need for the neeext year.” 
Suzuno scowled at the idea of a bright, overstuffed bear serving as an advanced tool of political negotiation. Wouldn’t this technically count as bribery? Although she had once handled most of the Church’s dirty work, she would have preferred—she thought as she looked into Relax-a-Bear’s drooping eyes—that the “clean” members of the clergy kept themselves that way. 
“Hmm? What’s this?” 
Then Suzuno looked up, noticing a familiar building. 
“Ah, yes. Emeralda, this is the office that Emilia used to work in.” 
“Oh, reeeally?” 
She tilted her head upward, Relax-a-Bear still in hand, as she spotted the Dokodemo sign at the very top. 
“So is Rika here, too?” 
“I suppose she could be. Whether she is on duty today, I cannot say.” 
Suzuno did hear that Rika helped Ashiya procure a smartphone recently. This they did alone together, unlike the television purchase of a while back. She thought a bit about Rika’s behavior during that TV run but quickly shook her head. 
“…No. Impossible. Not Alciel and Rika, of all people.” 
No, Rika looked like too upright of a woman for that, and unlike back then, she was now fully aware of Ashiya’s true nature. That included the evil Ashiya had gotten up to on Ente Isla, of course, and Rika couldn’t have been the type of woman to remain true to him after that… 
“Ngh.” 
Then she recalled someone near and dear to them all, who remained true to the Devil King despite knowing everything about him and his past. She attempted to douse her imagination before the fire spread any further. 
“Belll?” 
“No, but Alciel did return home before too late on that day, and I do not believe Rika has been back to the apartment since…” 
“Um, Bell, are youuu…?” 
“H-however, the Devil King has appeared awfully busy as of late and the other demons have exhibited some strange behavior… Could it be…?” 
“Ohhh, Bell!” 
“Hmmm? What is it?” 
“There! Over therrre.” 
“Mm?” 
“It’s Rikaaa.” 
“What?!” 
Suzuno looked up to find Rika Suzuki waving her hand from across the street. She usually got out of work about now, so walking past her office at this time of day made this encounter less unlikely than one would expect. 
Rika gestured at them to wait there and walked to a nearby crosswalk. Only when she began to cross did Suzuno realize that someone else was behind her—someone unfamiliar. A coworker, perhaps? 
“Wow, Suzuno! What’s with all that stuff you and Emeralda are carrying? You must’ve shopped ’til you dropped today!” 
The Rika who arrived seemed just like the one both of them were familiar with. “Oh, where’s Emi? Not with you today?” 
“No… Unforrrtunately, I need to return home as soon as possible.” 
“Oh, really? Um… Back to your, uh, family’s place?” 
Rika spent a moment considering the figure following her before choosing that turn of phrase. It signaled to the Ente Islans that the woman behind her wasn’t aware of who they were. 
“Indeed, and I thought I would purchase some souveniiirs for the trip back, but Emiii said she couldn’t escape work duties todaaay, so…” 
Understanding Rika’s intention, Emeralda made a point to use the name Emilia went by in Japan. 
“Thus, I have Suuuzuno here showing me around instead.” 
“Oh, I see. Kinda sudden, though, isn’t it?” 
“No, not exaaactly. I really should have been home sooner than this aaactually.” 
“Yeah? But you’ll be back, right?” 
“Ohh, that depennnds…” 
Life as a court official usually meant Okay, the job’s done. I’m gonna take off for a month didn’t fly with the upper management. Plus, depending on Emi and Laila’s future relationship, Emeralda might be forced to shoulder the most difficult responsibility of any politician in Ente Isla. Japan tourism was pretty low on the priority list for the time being. 
“Y’know, I was actually back at my parents’ old place until the day before yesterday, too. I only got back to work yesterday. Good thing I got to say hello to you before you left!” 
“Your parents’ old place?” 
“Yeah, over in Kobe! I hadn’t been back in ’round two years. Time sure flies when you’re having fun and stuff… Oh, right!” 
Rika finally recalled the woman twiddling her thumbs behind her. 
“This is Maki Shimizu. She came on the job after me and Emi did. Maki, this is Emi’s friend Suzuno Kamazuki and, um…” 
She paused for a moment, unsure whether to introduce Emeralda as is. Emeralda picked up the sign. 
“My name is Emeralda Etuuuva. I knew Emi back when we were in class togetherrr.” 
“Oh, right,” the woman said, “Emi mentioned you were staying at her place for a little while. My name’s Maki Shimizu! It was great hanging out with Yusa and Sasaki earlier!” 
““Sasaki?”” 
Suzuno and Emeralda looked at each other, not expecting the name. 
“She means Chiho,” Rika explained. “Maki knows her, actually.” 
“Actually, it was you, Rika, who told Sasaki about me! That’s why she came over!” 
Maki seemed unnaturally excited about this, balling up her fists and everything. If she knew Emi and Rika, then maybe it wasn’t so odd that Chiho was part of their circle. But why was she acting so deferential to Sasaki despite clearly being older? 
“Oh, wait, were youuu the person Emi mentioned to meee?” 
“You guys know Sasaki as well?” 
“I do.” 
“Yesss!” 
“So how have Yusa and Sasaki been since?” 
“How?” Suzuno wondered, unsure what Maki meant. 
“I guess,” Rika explained, “Emi and Chiho went to Maki’s place and talked about career advancement for a while.” 
““Career advancement?”” 
“Uh-huh!” Maki agreed. “Yusa was staying over for a couple of nights, but I guess she had a few questions about going to college at that time, so I gave her all the advice I could about that. Sasaki joined us on the second day, and I guess she was worried about what to do after high school as well, so I worked with her through a few things, too!” 
“Emi did that…?” 
“Wow, college, huuuh? College in Japaaan?” 
“Yes! We were looking at a few different agricultural schools.” 
Suzuno and Emeralda were, by coincidence, both picturing the same thing: So she wasn’t accepting Laila’s request…? 
They couldn’t say how serious Emi was about university studies, but she had always talked about taking useful, advanced things from Earth and bringing them to Ente Isla. Her chance encounter with Nord on Earth also gave her a more concrete goal in life—to rebuild her home village. It was only natural for the daughter of a wheat-growing family to pursue higher education in agriculture, and if that was what she wanted, she was bound to learn far more in Japan than at a school back home. Japan’s universities generally ran for four years, too, so if this was the path she wanted to take, it meant she’d have to stay in this country for at least five more years. 
Emeralda appraised the news with a natural smile. “If thaaat’s what she waaants, then I would aaabsolutely support it, yes.” 
“Emeralda…?” 
“Perrrsonally, I would put Emi’s life ahead of pretty much aaanyone in the world…including her own faaamily.” 
She was expressing her own resolve there, in ways Rika and Maki wouldn’t have seen. At that MozzBurger in Nerima, she had learned the full nature and the cause of the threat facing Ente Isla from Gabriel. Even with that in mind, though, Emeralda wanted to put her full, unflagging support behind Emi pursuing her own happiness. 
“And if anyone gets in Emi’s waaay, I’ll gladly risk my liiife to take care of them. With all the hope you’ve showed her, Makiii, I think Emi needs to take advaaantage of that.” 
“Yes,” Suzuno agreed, “I am now fully aware of the strength of your drive, Emeralda. And I am sure going to school with Chiho would be even more attractive to her.” 
“Mmm, well, unless they pursue the same major, they’ll probably wind up in different schools, or departments, or whatever. Staying together can be a lot harder than it sounds.” Maki grinned a little. “Oh, but it seemed to me Sasaki was considering a third option besides school or work, and she seemed kind of motivated in that direction, too, if you know what I mean…” 
Suzuno and Emeralda didn’t. 
“Oh, quit being mean,” Rika replied with a grin. 
“Aw, but you knowww…” Maki’s eyes seemed to sparkle as she smiled. “Isn’t it fascinating to see? I mean, if you know these two girls, then of course you’re gonna be interested in the guy both of them have in their sights.” 
““…!!”” 
Suzuno and Emeralda tried their hardest not to gasp right there. She had to be talking about Maou, even if the women had him “in their sights” for very different reasons. What kind of advice had Emi and Chiho been asking Maki for anyway? 
“And that little girl Alas Ramus called him something different, but the way she saw him as his daddy tells me that he and Emi have a pretty close thing going!” 
Suzuno and Emeralda broke into a cold sweat. Maki was both wrong and dangerously not wrong at the same time. It wasn’t their position to butt in on his personal life, but there was no way letting yet more Earth natives in on the secret behind Maou and Emi would accomplish anything for anyone on either side. They’d prefer if Emi actively worked to avoid that, but she had a tendency to leave her sides open sometimes—a bit like her mother, actually. 
As they thought about this, Rika raised a hand. “Oh, that reminds me—if Emi’s working but you two are out on the town, then who’s watching Alas Ramus?” 
“Oh, right. She is with Ashiya, so I could guide Emeralda around.” 
“Ahh, I see. Well, she’ll be fine with him, huh? Is he getting along okay with his new phone?” 
“The one you helped him find?” 
“Yeah, kinda.” 
“Well, I do not interact with him very much, but he did say the phone makes it easier to reach people.” 
“Oh? That’s good.” Rika smiled a little and turned to Maki. “Okay, Maki, unless you wanna keep poking this horse until you get kicked, let’s leave it at that for now. I’m gonna hang out with you all day today, remember?” 
Maki greeted this with great reluctance. “Huh? I—I didn’t mean to poke anyone…” 
Rika’s breezy smile turned into a mask of terror. “Right! In that case, we’re gonna go all night! Tonight, Maki, I’m gonna be a horde of zombies, and you’re gonna be the hapless citizens caught in my swarm! You better be ready!” 
“Huh? Oh, uh… Umm? Wait! Hey, how about you two join us, huh?!” 
““What?”” 
Maki, realizing what she had just gotten herself into, turned to Suzuno and Emeralda for help. Rika stopped her. 
“No running away! Those two have their own business to attend to. I’m gonna teach you that loose lips sink ships tonight—the hard way, got it? So get on home for now, but don’t think that means I’m letting you go!” 
“Yeahhh…” 
“Okay, guys, sorry to hold you up. Lemme know if you find out what day you’re leaving, Emeralda. I’d like to see you off if I’m free.” 
“C-certainly.” 
“Yesss! I will!” 
Grabbing the mysterious thunderstorm that was Maki, Rika waved at the two and began to set off. She only made it a few steps before stopping. “Tell Emi,” she said without turning around, “that I think I can talk calmly about things when a little bit more time has passed, okay? For now, see you!” 
“Um, yeah, sorry! See you later sometime!” 
Without waiting for a response, she took the shouting Maki into the Shinjuku crowds, leaving the two of them thoroughly confused among the evening retail traffic. 
“What was thaaat all about?” 
“I cannot say. I cannot say, but…” 
But it couldn’t have been her imagination. The moment Ashiya’s name came up, there was something almost painfully sad to Rika’s smile. 
Suzuno had been aware of Rika’s feelings toward Ashiya well before now. The anxiety she had felt a moment ago wasn’t just her imagination; something truly dramatic must have happened between those two… 
“There is little point dwelling on the topic. But…but…” 
But Suzuno could also see how Chiho and Maou’s relationship could easily turn out like Rika and Ashiya’s. And right now, Laila and her pleas were a wedge dividing the humans and the demons. As of this minute, Suzuno doubted either Maou or Emi would accept Laila and Gabriel’s offer. Despite everything about the past they had revealed, they still shared similar opinions as Chiho and Urushihara—no matter how tragedy laden the past was and no matter how strongly it was impacting this world, none of it was related to Maou’s and Emi’s current lives. It was a simple matter of whether their interactions with Laila inspired them to adjust their schedules at all—and right now, both of those schedules were heavily aligned toward Japan. 
This did not mean Suzuno didn’t have her misgivings. Chiho—unable to fight, unable to decide her own path for herself—was troubled by Laila’s presence. It made her doubt her position with Maou, and she was seeking answers. If she decided to confront Maou and demand a yes-or-no decision, Suzuno couldn’t begin to guess which way Maou’s internal scales would tip. If it was Sadao Maou, he’d likely be of the same heart and willing to accept Chiho. If it was Satan the Devil King, he’d likely feel more responsibility for all the demons scattered by the failed attack on Ente Isla. 
Suzuno was with Maou the whole way during their Ente Islan rescue effort, and that was exactly why she found him impossible to read. In particular, her main concern was that accepting Chiho’s feelings may not necessarily mean wanting to live with Chiho. 
“He can be surprisingly elusive…” 
“Hmm? Who isss?” 
“Mm, um, no, nothing…” 
“Rika sure acted like something was up with herrr.” 
“Who can say? It did not seem like something to prod her about.” 
“Hmmmm…” 
“What?” 
Emeralda thought for a moment, staring at the crowds of people Rika and Maki had melted into. 
“Maaaybe I shouldn’t go home aaafter all.” 
“What?!” Suzuno blurted. This was sudden news. “Can—can you really do that? Simply say oh, never mind to it?” 
“Oh, I thiiink I can. I have a feeling going home would be a baaad idea right nowww, you know.” 
“A bad idea? I thought you had to go home!” 
“Aw, but it’d be such a waaasted opportunity if I left!” 
“Wasted…? You do understand Christmas will come again next year, yes?” 
“Assuming there is a next yeeear.” 
“Huh?!” The assertion Emeralda casually tossed out stopped Suzuno in her tracks. 
“Do you think there will be?” 
“No, I…I mean…” 
“If the Devil King and Emilia accept that offer, then Ms. Sasaki is right. There is no telling how much time it would take. Depending on what all three of them opt to do, we may never have a chance to celebrate Christmas in Japan again.” 
Suzuno had nothing to counter Emeralda’s words, delivered sternly but with the same cute little face as always. 
“That’s why I can’t afford to leave Japan yet. Emilia wants to remain here—listening to Rika and Maki affirmed that much to me. Emilia isn’t the type of girl to struggle against something she knows there is no hope of achieving. But there she apparently was, at Maki’s house, trying to examine her dreams without my knowledge. She wants to stay here, and if she does, I have to stand by her side and support her along the way…so I can enjoy Christmas here next year and the year after that.” 
She looked up at Suzuno, the smile returning to her face. 
“Sooo let’s have as muuuch fun as we can with Emiiilia this Christmaaas! Come on! Change of plaaans! Let’s buy presents to hand out to evvveryone!” 
“What?! W-wait a moment! But Albert in Saint Aile…” 
“That’s none of my busssiness. I’ll just send all our souvenirs through a Gaaate to apologize. Now, we need a gift for Alas Raaamus first. That girl still isn’t very uuused to me.” 
“Ah?! You intend to shop more?!” 
“Christmas presents are meant for chillldren first and foremost, right? I think you would know more about what she liiikes, Bell.” 
“N-no, wait, wait a moment! Are you quite sure about this?!” 
“Hee-hee-hee! Oh, I can’t wait to toast with champagne and wine, as we enjoy our roast turrrkey, and Scotch eggs, and tuna suuushi, and fried shrimp, and sweet potaaatoes, and fancy caaake!” 
“You are mixing in a few odd choices there, Emeralda! Wait a minute!” 
Suzuno was forced to give chase to Emeralda, already lost in her own little retail world. Round two of her shopping spree went on for two more hours, and by the time Suzuno made it back home, she barely had the energy to speak. 
“Wow, Bell, my dude, are you really a person with that little stamina?” 
“No, no, the issue has nothing to do with stamina…” 
“My liege tells me that you engaged in similar feats of shopping when you first arrived here. Is that right?” 
“No, it is nothing to do with that.” 
“Sleep well, Suzu-Sis!” 
Suzuno, fresh from being dragged around Shinjuku all day, was slumped against the table at Room 201. The thought of the day’s events, brought back to her memory even more vividly by Urushihara, Ashiya, and Alas Ramus’s questions respectively, only added to her weariness. 
“All the crowds drained me, you see. So much feverish enthusiasm…” 
Whether it was a weekday or not, attempting to hit the shops around Shinjuku after five PM, carrying massive bags and boxes around with you, took a certain amount of resolve. 
“So? Emeralda Etuva is back in Eifukucho, then? Emilia and His Demonic Highness are still at work, but why are you here?” 
“Ahh…” 
“Hm?” 
In response to Ashiya’s prodding, Suzuno turned an eye toward Alas Ramus, currently poised on top of Urushihara’s shoulders as he tapped away at the computer. 
“Call it a favor for Emeralda or an errand…” she said. 
“Pardon?” 
“Alas Ramus has never seemed very keen on her, you know…” 
“What are you trying to say?” Ashiya asked as he peeled a potato. 
“…My apologies. May I have a moment?” 
Suzuno realized she needed to be more specific, but this wasn’t something she wanted Alas Ramus eavesdropping on, so she reluctantly left the warm kotatsu table and called Ashiya to the walkway outside the apartment. 
“So what?” 
“Well… This is something I would normally need the Devil King and Emilia’s permission to discuss…” 
She revealed the whole story to Ashiya—that Emeralda wanted to buy a Christmas present for Alas Ramus so she’d like her more. 
“She was ready to purchase one today, but we had little idea what Alas Ramus might enjoy, and well, we wanted to make sure everyone around her was on board.” 
“Hmm.” 
“The Devil King and Emilia both work on the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth, correct?” 
Ashiya nodded. “Ahh, I see what you mean now.” 
To everyone who hung around the apartment besides Chiho, Christmas was just another event on the holiday calendar in this alien world of Japan. The end of the year was simply a time when their work shifts got all messed up. The idea of Emeralda giving Alas Ramus a present seemed nothing but strange. 
Still, teaching a child about traditional yearly events was an important thing. Showing them that certain days and seasons and city atmospheres were special helped establish them as customs in their minds, keeping the days special for their entire lives. But as mentioned, Christmas was a Japanese—okay, Earth—tradition, and nothing Suzuno or Ashiya deemed as particularly can’t-miss. Suzuno’s faith was for a different religion entirely, and a demon like Ashiya saw no reason to celebrate the birth of a holy figure in the first place. 
“To be honest,” admitted Suzuno, “I am unsure whether Christmas is a custom we should be teaching Alas Ramus.” 
“I understand that, but I see no reason to stop her. Do you?” 
“Oh?” 
“Emeralda Etuva giving Alas Ramus a present is nothing harmful, at least. If you think it is too early to delve into Christmas, we can just call it a present and leave it at that.” 
“You have a point, perhaps.” 
“On the other hand, if my liege or Emilia wish to teach Alas Ramus about Christmas, there is no reason to stop them, either. My liege and I went through the traditional custom of visiting a temple on New Year’s Day last year, after all, albeit for rather different motives from most. As long as she lives here, she does have the right and the need to learn at least a few social norms.” 
Ashiya was making perfect sense, but Suzuno had a reason to be wary. It all boiled down to that one statement from Emeralda. 
“But how long will she be living here?” 
“Hmm?” 
“Will there be a…next year, for example?” 
“…What are you hinting at?” Ashiya flatly stated, averting his eyes from Suzuno’s below. “You know our plans, and you know where my liege’s career at MgRonald is going right now. He finally has a foothold on the position he has long dreamed of for himself in Japan. Do you think he will fritter away that opportunity and go off somewhere?” 
“…Can I trust you on that?” 
Ashiya gave Suzuno’s brooding eyes a dubious look. “What? I assume you would prefer the two of them accept this request.” 
“Do not misjudge me,” she spat out. “I am not in the habit of sacrificing the life of my friend.” 
“Then stop overthinking matters like this. If you and Emeralda wish to give Alas Ramus a present, then bring up the issue with Emilia, her…mother, of sorts.” 
“…All right. I will.” 
“Good. Is that all? I have a dinner to prepare.” Ashiya turned around. 
“Alciel?” 
“Mm?” He winced as he was forced to turn back. 
“I ran into Rika today in Shinjuku. She was worried about how well you were using your new telephone.” 
“…She was?” 
Did she notice his expression changing just then? Whether she did or not, Suzuno could tell something substantial was taking place between the demon and the Earthling. 
“You could try to contact her, you know.” 
“Indeed.” 
And with that, Ashiya went back inside, closing the door behind him and leaving Suzuno in the hallway. 
“…What am I even doing?” she whispered to herself as she stood there, crestfallen. This whole business of fretting over whether to teach a baby about Christmas with a bunch of demons wasn’t a joke. But the fact she could look back on this and other incidents and laugh about how “normal” it was or not tormented Suzuno. Somehow, she knew that the weird sense of comfort this apartment offered—a comfort that seemed ready to last forever—was about to fall apart. It didn’t seem like Maou, Emi, and Laila had engaged in any secret negotiations since Nerima; they acted like there was nothing special about that day at all, in fact, apart from being toured around Laila’s place. 
“What…? What do I even want them to do?” 
All the confusing feelings she couldn’t put a name to were beginning to overwhelm her… 
“Hmm? Suzuno? What are you doing in the outside here? Looking all the confused?” 
Then she realized Acieth was right next to her, carrying with both hands a pair of corn dogs that she must’ve bought at some convenience store. 
“Ah… Acieth. Is the Devil King finished with work?” 
Suzuno looked around for Maou, the fatigue still written on her face, but he was nowhere to be found. He and Alas Ramus were connected, and like with Alas Ramus and Emi, they couldn’t venture physically far from each other. It was safe for Acieth to hang around Sasazuka while Maou worked at the MgRonald in Hatagaya, but Maou’s current full-time employee training would be taking place at assorted locations around Tokyo, none of them near here. Acieth would have to remain nearish, but Maou couldn’t take her along for training with Kisaki around, so she remained fused within his body during the actual training sessions. 
“No, not yet. But he is returned at MgRonald in Hatagaya. He took me out in dark spot, nobody can see, and I go home first. Ashiya, I imagine he is making the dinner now, yes?” 
Unlike her big sister Alas Ramus, Acieth had almost no sense of self-control. The way Maou put it, she was unwilling to remain fused with his body for a single second longer than necessary. Once he returned to Hatagaya, he probably couldn’t wait to get rid of her. 
“Yes, well, if you are here to enjoy dinner, why did you buy more food?” 
“Mikitty told me. She said, if you eat outside of my pop or Mikitty’s house, you go out and fill stomach a little first, before meal. Otherwise, much crying.” 
“Ah…” 
It made sense to Suzuno. She had seen Ashiya almost erupt into tears several times after Acieth bugged him into making something, only to have her all but empty the refrigerator. Acieth, picking up on Suzuno’s wonder, gave her a bit of a peeved look. 
“Look, do I eat too much? Really?” 
“Uh…” 
Despite standing stationary, Suzuno was seized by the sense that she had just tripped over something. It must have shown on her face, because Acieth’s changed to a look of resignation. 
“Ohhh. So I do, yes?” 
“A-Acieth?” 
“I had the premonition that, yes, it is so.” 
Suzuno wasn’t sure if Acieth really understood what premonition meant. In many ways, she didn’t know what to say to her. As far as she had seen, Acieth didn’t know what enough meant at the dining room table, either. It hadn’t affected her figure at all, but not even the greatest lawyer in the universe could beat the charge that Acieth was an excessively gluttonous woman. 
“Hmm… Perhaps we must talk with Maou about it?” 
“Talk? Talk about what?” 
“Things. Maybe, ah, Ashiya can buy more rice, or when fused together, he can eat twice as much, or he can buy me phone…” 
There was a lot Suzuno could say about this—she still hadn’t given up on the phone? Was this really a problem about portions? But she could tell that Maou wasn’t going to give an inch on any of it. 
“Mmm, yes, I think it will work. If I use my sister as shield, it is easy win against Maou!” 
“That may be a double-edged sword, Acieth. Use it too much, and you will make enemies out of Emilia and Alciel, too.” 
She was aware that Acieth tended to use Alas Ramus as a handy tool for pushing her will on people. But in terms of Alas Ramus’s future, nobody among their group could afford to cave in like that. 
“We can hear you!” came Ashiya’s voice from beyond the Room 201 door, making both Suzuno and Acieth draw back. 
“Ooh, big failure, big failure. The walls here, they are very thin, yes? I must adjust my plans, so they will not know.” 
“Acieth…” 
The sheer lack of remorse made even Suzuno wince. 
“Yes, I know I eat without work even more than Lucifer, but now is best time to ask for things, no? I will not give up!” 
“The best time? Hmm?” 
“Yes! Maou, he may play the dumb, but I know! In Christmas, we all eat big meal!” 
“Oh… Oh.” 
As she dodged a drop of ketchup that dripped off one of Acieth’s corn dogs, Suzuno thought she could detect every man inside Room 201 gasping in distress. She pretended to hear nothing. 
“W-wait a minute, Acieth! At least finish what you brought here first! A ketchup stain on this kimono would be an incredible pain to wash out! And do not discuss such things in front of Alas Ramus!” 
“What, corn dogs?” 
“Christmas!” 
Suzuno quickly lowered her voice, realizing it was growing louder than Acieth’s, and brought her lips to her ear. 
“Um… Alas Ramus knows nothing about Christmas. If we wish to do something for her, best to keep it a secret until just before, for the sake of the surprise.” 
“Oh! I see! Yes, a surprise!” 
She had just been talking about Christmas with Ashiya, but Suzuno knew the best way to convince Acieth to do something was to make it seem fun for her. If she thought Alas Ramus would like it more, this should make it easy to keep her from yapping about the holiday until the day actually came. 
“All right! Then I will do the talking with Maou about that, too. He seems stressed since he handles all the new things right now, so I need to wait until he is the serene again…” 
Acieth looked deadly serious. The upper half of her face did anyway, with the bottom busily devouring two corn dogs at once in an astonishing feat of flexibility. In a short time, all she had left were the sticks. 
“Anyway! We will surprise big sis! I hear you the loud and clear! So, Suzuno, what are you thinking?” 
“Huh?! Um, we—we were still planning matters, but Emeralda is quite enthused about it all…” 
She was too flustered by the sudden question not to mention Emeralda. It wasn’t a lie, but if Acieth came to know that other people were also planning for Christmas, it could prove even trickier to make her butt out. But there was no taking it back. Acieth’s eyes began to burn with raging flame, raising a corn dog stick high in the air like a Hero’s sword. 

“Hngh! I am the more excited than ever! And now I am the hungry!” 
“Wha—?!” 
“Bell! Damn you! I will make you pay for this!” 
“Ashiya! Maou will be the home soon! What’s for dinner?!” 
Once Ashiya began griping at them from the kitchen window, Acieth hurriedly stormed inside Room 201. 
“Such a fearsome storm this is…” 
The storm subsiding from Suzuno’s sight was now bearing down upon Room 201 itself. 
“…So be it. I do owe Alciel for this. If the Devil King is returning soon, I could at least offer a few things for the dinner table.” 
Whether it was thanks to Acieth or the fault of Acieth, Suzuno was finally able to switch mental gears. She hurried back to Room 202 before she had to endure the screams of Ashiya that would no doubt be coming along shortly. 
 
Several hours had passed since Acieth’s sudden attack on the Devil’s Castle dinner plans. It was late at night, Alas Ramus sleeping peacefully on the bed in Emi’s apartment in Eifukucho. 
Meanwhile, Emi was curled up on the floor nearby with her head in her hands, Emeralda kneeling down and trying to offer comfort. 
“Now, now, there is no need to feel so down about thiiis…” 
“How could I not be down about it?” 
“There’s no way around it. You’re going through a great deeeal, Emi, and this isn’t a custom that one sees in Ente Isla…” 
“That isn’t the problem.” Emi groaned, keeping her head down. “No matter how hard it is or isn’t for me, that doesn’t mean I’m safe to avoid thinking about Alas Ramus… She’s had it as hard as I have.” 
She put her head up, flattening out the shift schedule she had all but pulverized in her fist a moment ago. 
“Ohhh, what have I done?” 
How shallow she must have been a month ago! Both she and Maou were on duty for December 24 and December 25. 
“Ugghh…” 
She balled herself up again. 
“Maaaybe I shouldn’t have saaaid anything?” Emeralda said, a little unnerved at this dramatic reaction. 
Emi had returned to her apartment after picking up Alas Ramus from Devil’s Castle, and Emeralda had waited for Emi to put her to sleep before asking if she could give her a gift. It was a simple question—nothing meant behind it—but it made Emi freeze in place. 
“Christ…mas?” 
“Er, yes! Ummm, I heard it celebrates the birrrth of a holy figure here on Earrrth?” 
“Christ…mas?” 
“E-Emilia?” 
“When is Christmas?!” 
Then she let out a scream that, barring a miracle, absolutely had to have woken up Alas Ramus. She had run off to her calendar, checked her shift schedule—and it had been like this ever since. 
“It… It didn’t matter at all to me last year, so…!” 
“E-Emiliaaa? You can’t torrrture yourself like this…” 
“How did I not notice until today…? I could have picked up on it in a million different ways before now! When I made my shift requests, when she printed out the schedules, when Sariel started freaking out about Sentucky starting their Christmas reservations…” 
“Yesss, perhaps you should have noooticed at one point or the other…” 
Even Emeralda had to chuckle a little at Sariel’s name coming up. 
“I mean, this is supposed to be a religious holiday, right? I didn’t realize it’d be this huge party for everybody. I thought it was kind of weird last year, like…I bought a little cake and stuff, at the nearby convenience store since they had a deal going, but it didn’t feel like anything special…so…” 
“Well, you’ve been buuusy! Lately, you’ve just been cycling between your house, that aparrrtment building, and work, haven’t you? Maybe you didn’t see too many of the decoraaations in town.” 
“And everybody on crew has to wear Santa hats starting tomorrow… Ugh, geez!” 
Emi had not wholly forgotten about Christmas. It was just that last year’s experience had given her such a skewed idea of the holiday that she didn’t realize it was for celebrating and having fun with people. The main thing she remembered about it was how surprised she was that all the public décor switched from Christmas to New Year’s by the morning of December 26. 
“It’s all riiight! We could always hold the festivities on another daaay, can’t we? It’s not like we are involved with the religious aaaspect of it…” 
“We aren’t. No, you’re right. But… I wanted to tell Alas Ramus about all this fun stuff coming up for her, and right at the start, I’m screwing it up… Uggh…” 
“Ummm…” 
Emeralda looked a little surprised by this. “So you wanted to teach her about Chriiistmas?” 
“Yeah.” 
“Which meeeans that you intend to celebrate it again next yeeear?” 
“…Yeah.” 
“…………Which meeeeeeeeeans—” 
“There’s no deeper meaning to it.” With a sigh, Emi finally sat back up. “I have no idea where Alas Ramus and I are going to be by the time it’s December twenty-fifth again on Earth. Remember, this time last year, I was intent on slaying the Devil King and going back to Ente Isla. The year before that was bloody warfare. By this time next year, I know I’ll look back on agonizing about my Christmas shift schedule and just laugh about it.” 
“…But you’ll be together with her this time next yeeear, won’t you?” 
“…Yeah.” 
“And anybody eeelse?” 
“Everyone.” 
“Eeeveryone?” 
“Everyone. Everyone I hold dear to me at that time.” 
Emi stood up, fished her smartphone out of her bag, and placed a call. 
“Hello? Hey. You got a moment? I hear crying in the background… Oh, Acieth is there for dinner? Well, you have my condolences.” 
If Acieth’s name came up, Emeralda assumed she was talking to somebody living in Villa Rosa Sasazuka. 
“So I wanted to talk to you about Christmas… No, we got just barely enough people, so I can’t request a shift change now. Eme told me… Oh, you heard, too? Okay… Yeah, I feel the same way. But anyway, it all got started because Eme wanted to give a Christmas present to Alas Ramus… Right. Yeah. So we can’t do the day of, but if we could do it on the twenty-third or twenty-sixth, then at least one of us could be on hand for it, so I thought, like, maybe we could do something?” 
This astonished Emeralda a little. Emi was talking to Maou. The “us” in “at least one of us” had to include him. She watched as Emi listened silently for a bit. 
“Yeah. Yeah… Huh?! Uh, wait a minute, I didn’t say anything to Chiho. Huh? Why? …I mean, anything’s fine! We can work out things with her later but not right this minute! I can bring it up with her first, so please don’t say anything when you see her tomorrow, all right?” 
Maou must’ve suggested that they discuss matters with Chiho, a proposal that immediately set off alarm bells with Emi for reasons Emeralda couldn’t guess from her perspective. 
“Eme? Yeah, it’s sounding like she’s not leaving after all. I dunno why, but she says everything is all right, so… Okay. Right, I’ll talk to you later.” 
The several-minutes-long conversation came to a close, with neither side raising their voices. 
“Was that the Devil King?” 
“Yeah. He was kinda pissed since he was about to go to sleep.” 
Emeralda wondered why there’d be crying in the background while Maou was trying to sleep, but Emi didn’t explain why. Instead she turned toward Alas Ramus, sleeping in her bed with her arms outstretched. 
“I think he understood what I was getting at. But he’s a demon, you know? The thought of celebrating Christmas with Alas Ramus never even occurred to him, so he got kind of whiny about that.” 
“Whiiiny?” 
“Well, you know, whenever Alas Ramus is involved…” Emi connected her phone to its charger, placed it on the table, and heaved a dejected sigh. “The Devil King’s busy right now, so even though he saw Christmas on the calendar, I guess he didn’t realize how close it really was. He only really thought of it as a day when people ate lots of cake and cookies—that was his attempt at an excuse.” 
“I thought MgRonald only made cakes for birrrthdays.” 
“He wasn’t on shift that day last year, so apparently he and Alciel picked up a one-day job selling Christmas cakes at some convenience store.” Emi looked back at her wadded-up shift schedule. “Chiho is off on the twenty-fourth…but unlike our last birthday party, the Devil King doesn’t really know where his training is yet. It might not necessarily be at his home location.” 
“But if you and the Devil King are together with Alas Ramus and she calls you Mommy, that will cause quite the paaanic in the ressstaurant, no?” 
“Yeah. And some of the more senior crewmembers are on that day’s shift, so we can’t really pull the gray-area stuff we did with the birthday party. What should we do…?” 
Emi’s eyes turned toward a photo frame propped on top of her clothes dresser, one of the gifts she received during her and Chiho’s tandem birthday party in October. It held a photo of everyone at the party, except Maou, centered around the two birthday girls. Maou steadfastly refused to join the shot, so he took the picture instead. Ashiya offered to do it for him, but Maou had shot him down—he was on the clock and in uniform, so if the wrong person saw the photo, he could get in trouble. 
Emeralda followed Emi’s eyes toward the photo and to the smiling Chiho posed next to her in it. 
“So why can’t you discuss matters with Ms. Sasaaaki? I think it’d be better to ask herrr for advice, rather than flounder around with what little Christmas knowledge we haaave…” 
“Ahh………well…” 
Emi opened her mouth but had trouble piecing the words together. She was even starting to blush. 
“Um… Well, maybe I’m overthinking it, or being too self-conscious, or something like that…” 
“Oh?” 
“It’s like, lately things haven’t been going quite right between me and Chiho a little.” 
“Reeeally?! Did—did you and Ms. Sasaki have an arrrgument?!” 
This was honestly a shock to Emeralda. She didn’t know Chiho that well, but even then, it was impossible to imagine anything that would make them butt heads with each other. 
“No, not like that. We still talk all the time; there haven’t been any fights or anything. But, like, when the subject turns to Alas Ramus, she can’t talk about anything unless the Devil King’s involved. So asking Chiho from the very start about what we should do is, to me…you know…” 
“Ohhh? I’m not sure I know at all, no.” 
“Mmm, how should I put it? Ugh, and now I’m breaking out into this weird sweat.” 
“Emiliaaa? You’re acting weeeird.” 
“I know I’m acting weird. Like, more than you’d ever know! I just mean…” 
She was sweating despite the cold, fanning herself with one hand and using the other to grab the AC remote and look at the temperature. 
“…Back with all that stuff on the Eastern Island, you know, the Devil King helped out a ton, right?” 
“Truuue.” 
“So now I’m one of the new crewmembers at MgRonald, and he’s the one training me. He’s shift supervisor, so that’s pretty much a given.” 
“Uh-huhhh…” 
“So then Laila shows up, and then I’ve been doing all this irresponsible stuff, right?” 
“I cannot denyyy that, no.” 
“Right? So… Ugghhh…” Emi groaned—out of regret, or out of fatigue, or maybe to round up her disorganized feelings. “The Devil King’s been…so damn nice to me the whole time.” 
“………………………………Hmm?” Emeralda’s eyes shot open. 
“So… You know… Chiho’s gotten kind of…kind of jealous.” 
“Hmmmm?” 
“Before we went to Laila’s place, me and the Devil King… Some, um, stuff happened…” 
“Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm??” 
Whether she understood what this meant or not, Emeralda was now half off her seat, with Emi holding her head and trying her hardest to dodge her intent glare. 
“Emilia?” She brought herself toward Emi’s ear, her voice low. “What do you want to hear from me?” 
“…Um.” 
Emi clammed up for a good half minute. Then in a barely audible whisper: 
“…I don’t know.” 
“Then can I give you my honest feelings?” 
“…Okay.” 
“Depending on the circumstances, I may need to leave right now and go slay the Demon King.” 
Emeralda’s voice indicated how serious she was. 
“The way you’re acting right now is like nothing I’ve seen from you before, Emilia. Depending on what’s causing it, I believe I will need to contact several related parties.” 
“……Er.” 
“I am feeling very emotional right now. Beyond whatever we’ve discussed before, I need to know what happened. This…‘stuff’ between you and him.” 
“W-wait! Not—not that! Nothing weird or anything…!” 
The veiled accusation made Emi flash back to that night, the infamous evening her head kept spitting out system errors. It made her blush a shade redder than before, and Emeralda wasn’t blind to it. 
“There was some stuff, you say, involved, which made Chiho jealous enough that even you picked up on it. That alone is enough to summon a mighty tempest in my heart. I find it hard to remain calm.” 
“I-I’m serious! Nothing happened! It was a huge pile of nothing!” 
“Then please tell me. You can talk about it if it was nothing, can’t you? What did that crude and disgusting demon do to my beloved Emilia?” 
“I—I told you, nothing!” 
“You’re going to wake up Alas Ramus. Please be quiet.” 
“I—I can’t because you’re putting the screws on me, all right? I’ll tell you! Please step back a little!” 
Emeralda heeded the half-screamed order, kneeling on the ground just a short distance away and looking straight at Emi. 
“Now, listen, I swear to you nothing happened…” 
It was with an unsteady voice that Emi began to explain all the events of that night. Those eyes of hers were just too scary to deal with. But by the end of it: 
“Haaaaaaa… This is sooo ridiiiculous…” 
Emeralda was far looser now, the accusatory light in her eyes replaced with exasperation. By the end of it, she was lying on the ground and enjoying some crackers as she listened. 
“Did you knowww, Emilia? On Earth, they call that Stockholm syndrooome.” 
Meanwhile, Emi felt like her rising temperature mixed with the cold sweat was going to turn her into a puddle of goo. 
“And you knowww, no matter how casually friendly I’ve come to be with the Devil Kiiing, if something happened between you twooo, not that I really thought sooo, but if it diiid—and wow, as grown-up as Ms. Sasaki seems, she’s still just a kiiid, too, huh?” 
It was a funny thing to hear, given how much older Emeralda looked than even Chiho. 
“But I could perhaps understaaand that, given the Devil King’s personaaality, right? It’s all thiiings that would be good for Alas Ramus more than youuu, so what’s the big deeeal? Except for that paaart where you had to huuug him and stuuuff…” 
“Nnnnnnngh.” 
Emi wanted more than anything to melt, evaporate, and vanish for good from the world right now. 
“I don’t see aaanything for Ms. Sasaki to be jealous about, thooough.” 
“B-but that’s what Laila and the Devil King said.” 
“Well, you and the Devil King were pretty diiistant before now, so even if you act norrrmally with each other, it could looook like things have changed quite a biiit.” 
“Ugh… Well, maybe so…” 
“So ridiiiculous… Ridiiiculous…” 
“Can you stop calling it ridiculous over and over?! This is freaking me out, too!” 
“Ahh, I see Ente Isla committed a great criiime in stealing away your youuuth. You were out journeying so long, and the only maaale accompaniment was a burly giant and this ooold guy…” 
Now Emi could see it. Emeralda was exasperated with her in just the same way Laila was. But in her eyes, being told that over and over again wasn’t going to achieve much for her at this point. 
“But if thaaat’s how it is, I can see how it’d be difficult to sit down and taaalk over matters with Ms. Sasaki. You can’t just go up to her and say I’m busy with worrrk, so can you hold a Christmas party with the daaaughter of the guy you got the hots for, caaan you?” 
“Eme!!” 
Emeralda’s frankness led Emilia to shout the word in a mixture of anger and surprise. 
“Nmmghm…” 
“Ah…!” 
But Alas Ramus grimaced in her sleep and turned on her side, so Emi quickly shut her mouth. 
“All riiight… In thaaat case—well, I suggested this firrrst, so I’ll find a way to discuss this with Ms. Sasaki… Bell, too, of courrrse.” 
“Oh? You will?” 
“Ahhh… Perhaps we should contact Riiika as well? She would have quite a nummmber of ideas for a birthday party, I’m suuure…” 
“Um… Well, I mean, Rika…” 
“Mmm? Are things awwwkward with Rika, too?” 
“N-no, but…” 
“Because I saaaw her today, but she didn’t seem ooout of sorts at all.” 
“Oh, you saw Rika?” 
“Yesss, in front of her office. I think she was about to go out driiinking with her coworker… Maaaki, was it? She said she just returned from her faraway faaamily home.” 
“Maaaki” must have been Maki Shimizu. And that family home must have been her old place in Kobe. Emi had no idea—and while Rika had no obligation to submit a travel report to Emi, if she was off in Kobe the entire time their current radio silence was unfolding, that worried her. 
“Ohhh… Alllso, I’m not sure if I should tell you or not, but she had a message for youuu.” 
“She did?” 
“She told me to tell you, ‘I think I can talk calmly about things when a little bit more time has passed.’ I don’t know what that meeeans, but…” 
Emeralda might not have, but to Emi it could only mean one thing. 
“…All right.” 
“Does that have to do with why you don’t want to bring this up with herrr?” 
“I—I hardly know what anything’s got to do with anything any longer.” 
“Emiliaaa?” 
“By next year… Who am I even going to think is important to my life?” 
“Well, why worry about next yeeear already? Don’t fools rush in where deeemons fear to tread?” 
“Angels. Where angels fear to tread. Not that they’d be much of an improvement. But if the demons found out how I’m feeling right now…” 
Emi put her head down, arms around her knees. 
“I don’t know if I could ever recover.” 
“……” 
If she was this far gone, not even Emeralda had any advice for her. 
 
The day after she listened to Emi’s pure, simple, unadorned confession, Emeralda sent a tersely worded Idea Link to Albert explaining that she couldn’t return yet. Albert was at a total loss for words, of course, but even he understood that Emeralda wouldn’t take such a drastic step without a reason. “Hey,” he said before he shut off the Link, his voice resigned, “it’s your funeral”—and as glad as she was that he understood, that little closing remark meant Albert was now crossed off the list of friends to bring souvenirs home to. 
Now she was lying on the guest futon next to Emi’s bed, thinking over matters in her pajamas despite it being well into the afternoon. 
“Hmm… But could Ms. Sasaki really ever be jealous of Emiliaaa? …Ahh, I suppose just thiiinking about it won’t solve the problem…” 
She then napped for another hour or so before she finally forced herself up. 
“Why don’t I just go,” she said, “and see for myselllf?” 
Looking at the wadded and torn shift schedule stuck on the refrigerator, Emi, Chiho, and Maou were all on the evening shift. “A picture’s worth a thouuusand words,” she sang to herself as she got dressed, “so time to get a picture of my owwwn!” 
There was still time until Chiho’s shift began, however. Heading to MgRonald now would likely lead to awkward stares and perhaps a swift boot out the door from Emi. So… 
“Sooo I was wondering if I could iiinterview you for a little bit.” 
“I dunno about what but be my guest.” 
Half an hour later, she was in Room 101 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka, sharing a kotatsu table with Nord and Erone. Nord seemed pretty nonplussed by this sudden self-invite but allowed her in the room nonetheless. 
“Hello, Erone!” 
“…Hello.” 
Erone was reading a book—in Japanese. “Ah,” explained Nord, “he’s been borrowing them from Ms. Shiba or buying them from used bookstores, but these children seem to be picking up on this nation’s language without any particular instruction. Here you are.” 
He offered Emeralda a cup of tea to warm herself a little. 
“So what briiings me here today…” 
“Hmm?” 
“As Emilia’s faaather, what sort of…condiiitions are you looking for in her potential husband?” 
“………………………Hmm?” 
Nord froze, not following the gist of the question. 
“No, ah, I don’t meeean anything deep by it. I remain siiingle myself, but I figured, as her father, you would want her to be as haaappy as possible before anything else.” 
“Well, of course…” 
“So I was wonnndering what kind of life you’d like Emilia to leeead, going forward.” 
It was hard to grasp the intent behind that stony smile of hers, but Nord thought over the question, cup in hand. 
“…I can’t say I have any requests, no.” 
“Oh? You dooon’t?” 
“Nope.” He put his elbow on the table, hand supporting his head. “Laila and I have already failed to provide a happy life for her, after all. I’m not sure we’re too qualified to go up to Emilia’s partner and say you’d better make her happy.” 
“You’re worried you aren’t quaaalified? It seems like aaany parent would want that, I think.” 
“That’s nice of you to say, Emeralda, but living here, I can’t help but think sometimes. Looking at how Emilia ought to live, it sure seems to me that being here in Japan might actually be the best thing.” 
“And why is thaaat? Not to be too forrrward, but all during our journey, Emilia talked about wanting to work your fiiields with you again.” 
“Oh, I know. Emilia told me herself. But I’ve been in Japan for a while by now, and I think I know a thing or two about this nation.” He snickered. “Japan… Or this world, really… You won’t find any man on this planet stronger than Emilia, will you?” 
“……………Well…………” Nord’s point-blank response caught Emeralda more than a little off guard. “Perhaps not, no. In mooore ways than onnne.” 
“And if you think of it that way, I highly doubt Emilia will wind up unhappy, no matter who she marries. Don’t you think so?” 
“That sounds like quiiite a leap to meee…” 
“Her journey gave her a lot of mental toughness, I’d say, and the time she spent here alone must’ve added to that. I’m sure she would have preferred not to go through that, given the choice, but now that she has, I think she needs to make that a net positive in her life. Besides, Emilia is no fool. She’d never be attracted to some lazy bum without a decent head on his shoulders. So whoever she chooses, I’m not planning to complain about it at all.” 
“…I see.” 
“Just out of curiosity, do you think there’s someone like that in Emilia’s life?” 
“Nooo, not yet at least…but if there waaas, I wouldn’t be having this conversaaation with you in the first place.” 
“True enough,” Nord said with a hearty laugh. 
“So if I could ask you a somewhat more pooointed question…” 
“Go ahead. I’ll answer it if I can.” 
“All riiight…” She looked at Nord, expression unchanged. “Do you thiiink Emilia will celebrate Chriiistmas here next year?” 
“…” Nord fell silent. 
“Christmas?” chimed in Erone. “Acieth mentioned it to me. She made it sound like some kind of food festival?” 
Acieth was clearly a bad influence on him. If Amane or Ashiya were here, they’d both be shaking, no doubt. 
“Yes,” Emeralda replied, the lilt in her voice gone. “Next year, and the next one, and the next one. What do you think, sir?” 
“I—I…” 
“I’m sure you’re aware of what your wife expects of Emilia?” 
“…I am,” came the somewhat distressed-sounding reply. 
“As I’ve said to you before, I am on Emilia’s side. I will support her in any endeavor she desires, just as much as I’m sure Chiho Sasaki would. That is why I sincerely hope she doesn’t plunge herself into a battle she doesn’t want for herself…even if the rest of the world wants her to.” 
“……” 
For a while, the only sounds to be heard were Emeralda’s soft voice, Erone turning the pages in his book, and the light footsteps of someone in Room 201—probably Urushihara—plodding back and forth between the kitchen and the window. It took nearly five minutes for Nord to finally squeeze the words out. 
“Lately, you know, sometimes I’ve seen Laila and Emilia come home together.” He turned toward the thin door at the front of Room 101. “I…I don’t really hope for anything, because I’m sure I don’t know. I don’t know what those two women’s future should be like or what they want from it.” 
There was no way Nord wasn’t aware of the facts Gabriel presented to Emeralda at that MozzBurger in Nerima. Not someone who loved Laila as much as he did. And that knowledge—the fact that her daughter might be immortal, no matter what she thought about it—put him at a crossroads. 
“That day I went to my wife’s apartment… I hate to admit it, but all we really did was clean up her place. That night, we went out to eat at this diner in Nerima, but it wasn’t until I came back here when I realized it was the first time all three of us shared a meal together. I was so exhausted that I can barely remember what I even ordered.” 
Nord flashed an odd-looking smile, haunted by both happiness and loneliness. 
“But it was such an enjoyable time. I don’t know if they’d describe it as such, but…” 
“……” 
“And I think that’s what I want for them. That sort of constant, unchanging routine, the kind where they have trouble remembering what they had for dinner yesterday. I hope that’s what they want, too. But before too long, unless something changes, we’re going to lose one of the most important pieces for that happiness.” 
Would that be Emi? Or Laila? Or Nord? 
“Emilia already knows what Laila wants.” 
“?!” 
Emeralda gasped at this unimaginable statement. She knew they had grown at least a little closer, but that close? 
“Now, that’s a little different from accepting Laila’s request. But like I said, Emilia’s been coming home right alongside Laila as of late, when she’s done with work. It’s not exactly the approach she took with Maou, but in her own way, she’s trying to strike a fair stance with Laila. They’ve been talking to each other a lot the past little while, in this room.” 
“To each other,” he’d said. And not while Nord was gone. Just as Maou demanded Chiho accompany him, Emi and Laila were no doubt asking their father and husband to help arbitrate their discussions. 
“Of course, she may listen to all this discussion and flatly refuse her in the end, but…” 
Despite Emeralda’s initial surprise, this seemed possible to her. And what Nord had heard from those two largely matched up with what Gabriel told Emeralda at MozzBurger. 
“I married Laila fully aware she was an angel. I was the one who asked for her hand in marriage.” 
“Ahh…” 
Emeralda tensed up, worried that this would descend into a bunch of lovey-dovey nonsense again. 
“She told me she was immortal. That she already wasn’t a human being. She told me not to expect children or for her to age alongside me. She cried when she did. But I didn’t mind. I loved her from the heart, and she loved me. So if I could be part of her life for at least a little bit, nothing could have made me happier. So I asked her again.” 
Yep. Just as lovey-dovey as Emeralda thought. He was even holding his chin out a little. 
“But when Emilia was born…I’m sure Laila must’ve been terrified. She had managed to become an Ente Islan, but with her angelic blood, she was worried Emilia would be too different from humans. I didn’t hear about that until after the Devil King’s Army attacked and Emilia was separated from me. I think we talked about that when we all went to Chofu, a while back? It was just before I went to Japan.” 
You were all lovey-dovey about her then, too, Emeralda caught herself almost saying. Instead, she just nodded. 
“I don’t know if immortality is a good thing or not. If my wife and daughter stay young and beautiful long after I die, that might be a wonderful thing. But I’m sure it means they’ll have to keep saying good-bye to so many people they love. And being immortal, once they grow sick of living, what’s left at the end…?” 
Nord deliberately avoided going into detail on that. 
“So I just don’t know. As her father, I want her to live as long and happy a life as she can. There are so many wonderful things to see in this world, far too many to get to in one life. But the longer you live, the more pain and suffering you have to deal with. That’s why I want Emilia to round out her life as a human being—but to achieve that, she may need to wage a battle she has no interest in fighting. If she’s sent out there, she might die in combat. If she does, it’ll mean I’ve taken this girl who could’ve been young and beautiful for all eternity and sent her to her doom. I’d regret it my entire life. So what should I do? What will make Emilia and Laila happy? I just don’t know.” 
“Nord…” 
“If I could fight,” he continued, the cup almost at the breaking point in his iron grip, “I’d never let Emilia do it. I’d gladly step on the battlefield to protect the future of the world in her place. If I stumble across the secret to immortality along the way, then maybe I could support my wife’s and daughter’s decisions the way a real father and husband could. But I don’t have even a crumb of Emilia’s strength. I’m no help to either of them. All I can do is sit here and watch what they decide to do. It’s incredibly irritating.” 
“…I don’t know what happiness is, either…” 
Erone put his hand over Nord’s. 
“But what I do know is, both of them know how you feel about them. So stop beating yourself up. You aren’t just making Laila and Emilia happy. You’re making me happy and Acieth, too.” 
“Erone…” 
“We get to eat our fill every day besides.” 
“Ha… That is a verrry happy feeling, isn’t it? A nice meeeal when you need it.” 
Emeralda laughed a little at Erone’s stone-faced joke. 
“I can’t choose my way by myself, but I know I’ll never forget the happy times I spent with all of you in this city. No matter what Emilia and Laila decide to do, I know that’ll always be true. You’re not useless to us at all, Nord. You’d never be.” 
“………Yeah, I sure hope not.” 
Emeralda had no way to guess how Nord took Erone’s words. But using a hand to wipe the tears from his eyes, he turned back toward her. 
“If I can’t do anything but look on…I guess this is how I would answer it. The first question.” 
There was nothing contrived about his expression—almost like pure desperation, as if he had already gotten over everything. 
“If Emilia’s hope is to spend Christmas in Japan next year, I’ll do whatever she wants. Dress up as Santa, anything. And that’s what I really want—to join her along the way, as much as I can.” 
“…Thank you. I apologize for the rudeness of my questions.” 
She couldn’t help but say sorry for the way she had tested his heart like that. 
 
Room 101 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka. The mother and daughter still looked a bit awkward, facing each other like this, but in Nord’s eyes, their relations had dramatically warmed up since the day they had cleaned out her apartment. 
This was where Laila told Emi the story of Ignora discovering the key to immortality as a way to fend off the pandemic affecting her home planet. Emi listened silently, asking not a single question, and in the midst of it, Nord played with Alas Ramus. It was a happy if awkward little space. Laila’s story was largely the same as what Gabriel told Chiho and the rest of the gang, but Emi and Nord weren’t aware of that at the time. 
“The two of them came to that moon-side laboratory as additional staff at first. I was pretty shocked when I saw the photos on their lab IDs. I mean, they looked like children on their way home from school—and when I actually met them, that only cemented the image. It was Sariel who took them there; he was working for the lab’s legal department at the time, and the higher-ups supporting the lab trusted him to be their attendant.” 
“Hmmm…” 
These two young researchers were sent up there after the lab spent a year looking for a solution and finding nothing. Their names were Caiel and Sikeena. 
“The boy was Caiel, and the girl was Sikeena. And you know, Caiel had silver hair with just a lock of purple at the front.” 
“Silver and purple?” 
“Mm? What is it?” 
“What, Mommy?” 
Emilia’s surprised eyes were pointed at Alas Ramus, having a ball riding on Nord’s back. 
Laila nodded. “That’s right. Caiel was the personification of our planet’s Yesod, and Sikeena was the personification of its Malkuth. We didn’t know about any of that back then. The lab really looked at them through rose-colored glasses, this pair of fresh college grads sent over by the leaders of our planet. We had been spinning our wheels for a year, and we knew the government wanted results. Things were pretty strained.” 
But once they were brought on as Ignora’s assistants, things progressed quickly. 
“We finally found a gene that could resist the pandemic in our experiments with mice… Well, the equivalent lab animal in our world, but you get the idea. Once we did, Caiel and Sikeena began to be treated much, much differently. It was a breakthrough, and Ignora essentially gave them all the credit. That kind of thing usually sparks a lot of jealousy in the research world, but thanks to a certain someone watching over Ignora’s group and providing them support in this otherworldly enterprise, there wasn’t too much discord.” 
“A certain someone…” Emi looked up at the ceiling. He hadn’t appeared since way back at the start of the story, but by the way Laila phrased this… 
“Right. That was Satanael Noie, a talented scientist and Ignora’s partner of sorts. A strong sorcerer…and I’m sorry, dear, but a chief researcher I really looked up to at the time.” 
“Ahh,” an unoffended Nord replied as he continued with Alas Ramus’s piggyback ride, “I’m sure it happens if you live as long as you have.” 
Emi worried this could touch off some jealousy, as much as they both enjoyed rambling on without end about their love for each other. Both of them, reassuringly, were too mature for that. 
“Ignora was a scientific genius, and she knew it. Satanael, on the other hand, was more about hard work and undaunting effort. He knew full well he wasn’t as much of a natural talent as Ignora, and that’s why he loved her and her ability so much. He wasn’t the kind of person to let that turn into envy and hostility. That made him popular among everybody there, man and woman. I was the new girl in the medical department, so I’d be at Ignora’s place all the time delivering medicine and medical equipment, and I got to speak with him a lot. That’s a lot of why I felt so much for him.” 
“If I could just ask, what kind of person was he like?” 
“Father…” 
Emi shot a look at Nord, who, it turned out, was a lot more interested in bending the subject this way than she thought. Surprisingly, Laila accepted it. 
“Oh, that’s actually pretty important. He was a very fair person. A vastly talented sorcerer. He wasn’t completely separated from the real world the way theoretical researchers can often be—he was firmly rooted in reality. But that didn’t mean he was this gruff professor type, either. Sometimes, he’d be up all night drinking with friends and looking like a mess the next day at work. And he was strong, too! One time, he engaged in a little battle training with Gabriel in the lab’s recreation room. Gabriel was head of security, handpicked from the military ranks, and you wouldn’t believe how handily Satanael whipped him. They had ten matches, and Gabriel didn’t win one of them. He was livid about it, of course, but you know what Satanael said? He said, ‘All I can do is take care of myself, but you protect everyone here. You being here puts people’s minds at ease. Me showing that I’m stronger than you would just rock the boat.’ That’s the kind of person he was.” 
If Laila—a woman who normally made no effort at all to hide her love for Nord—painted him in such rosy terms, he must have been an incredibly charismatic person indeed. Nord still looked a little unconvinced, but for now he relented. 
“But you know, I couldn’t help but find it a little strange, too. By which I mean, a while after Caiel and Sikeena joined us, Satanael started arguing with Ignora a great deal more often. For the most part, it was about Caiel and Sikeena, and I think Satanael wanted to keep them away from Ignora. It was funny—he defended them so much at first, too. I asked why later on, and I guess the gene they discovered hadn’t been examined by anyone before. There wasn’t any literature on it at all. No nation in our world even had the tech to observe this gene before now, he said, and them of all people finding it was a bit…odd.” 
At the time, Laila assumed it was the result of Ignora’s talents combined with that duo’s strength. That assumption was shared by everyone else Satanael voiced his concerns with. 
“So it ended there, for the most part, and it was then that Ignora’s research really began to take off. It was hard even for Satanael to keep up, but Caiel and Sikeena were still right there, next to her. Now everyone was getting a little suspicious. Yes, maybe Ignora could spearhead research too advanced for anyone else to understand, but why were these kids out of college keeping pace with her? Satanael backed off on his complaints—given the urgency, the research always needed to take precedent—but he still had these vague concerns about their origins, their minds, you know. Then one day, he managed to convince Sariel to find out where they came from.” 
Pretending to take some time off, Satanael went back down to their home planet to learn about Caiel and Sikeena, only to find that their birth records had likely been forged. No accurate records of their origin existed, and every other document related to them—their parents, their dependents, anything that could be used for identification—was forged as well. According to Sariel’s investigation, the two of them all but popped into existence under the wing of the powerful government leader who sent them to the moon. 
“Can you trust Sariel on this?” 
“He may not act like it much, but he takes his work seriously. A pity his…other habits cost him so much.” 
By that, Emi felt it safe to assume the way Sariel acted around women wasn’t much different before reaching Earth. 
Regardless, Satanael, now fully suspicious of Caiel and Sikeena, returned to the moon lab—only to find something completely unexpected up there. 
“Apparently, even Ignora was starting to question the talents of her two assistants. So she gave them a full-body scan, pretending it was just a regular physical. I guess she tried to track the DNA records in their family register, and she discovered it contained genes normally never found in the human race. In fact, those genes included the ‘immortality’ gene, the one found in the mouse experiments that they assumed also existed in humans. I was a licensed doctor at the time, but I didn’t know much about genetic engineering, so the details were a bit over my head. But apparently, the genes in Caiel’s and Sikeena’s body cells that defined the limits of their metabolism simply didn’t function at all.” 
All living creatures had a given limit to how much their cells could metabolize in their lives, although this limit varied from individual to individual. Once reached, that’s the end of your natural life span. That wasn’t the only factor, of course, but metabolism is nonetheless considered a key part of one’s life span on Earth, with some theorizing that turning off this limit could stave off old age and death. 
“Plus, their genes held a strong immunity against all known disease. The biggest surprise for Ignora was that she couldn’t find a single potentially cancerous cell across either of their bodies.” 
“That’s not so uncommon, is it? They were young, you said.” 
“Well, based on our planet’s medical knowledge—we’re talking ten thousand years ago, keep in mind—the body, due to assorted reasons, always contains at least a few cells that are threatening to become cancerous. As long as your cancer resistance genes are working fine, your immune system will kill and restore those cells in the blink of an eye. If they stop working or some other unusual event happens that causes cancerous cells to spread, that’s what you and I mean when we say that someone has cancer.” 
Emi only became aware of cancer after coming to Japan. Her knowledge of the disease was vague at best. 
“Every day, constantly, your body is being damaged by lots of natural elements—ultraviolet rays, reactive oxygen, and so on. But your body’s constantly repairing itself, too. Sometimes, a few cells fall through the cracks and begin the preliminary cancer process, and that’s not at all unusual. But if the body isn’t seeing any cancerous cells at all, that’s normally unthinkable. It means every cell in your body is perfect, unblemished.” 
Laila paused. 
“Now, this is just how the people on my planet explained it. I can’t say if this applies to cancer in Ente Isla or Earth. As far as I know, it’s not that different. But anyway, once she discovered Caiel and Sikeena’s secret, Ignora carefully compared the differences between their genes and ours—and amazingly, in the course of a single month, she figured out what genetic adjustments were needed to make ours look more like theirs. That’s how things were by the time Satanael made it back from his holiday.” 
Then, for some reason, Ignora’s research began to get bogged down again. Why? Because Caiel and Sikeena suddenly disappeared. Everyone was incredibly suspicious, of course, but Ignora didn’t really need them any longer. With Satanael assisting, she took a genetic approach to the pandemic once more and reached a certain conclusion. 
“Caiel and Sikeena were like us but also not like us. In other words, they were kind of like aliens, with DNA that didn’t conform to any human being from our planet. But they were definitely there, posing as human. Ignora figured that tracing where they came from would help her dive deeper into her research. Satanael already knew their records had been forged, so the two worked together to investigate them. And then…they found it. On the moon. The thing you could call their parent.” 
It appeared, at first, to be a gigantic, withered old tree—one rooted on the surface of the moon, where nowhere near enough air existed. Nobody knew why, but even with all the space probes the planet had launched, this somehow managed to escape detection, despite being located toward the rear of the laboratory’s territory. No scans from orbit picked up on it or any other useful underground resources, so developers simply ignored the whole patch of moonscape. 
“Ignora only found that tree thanks to a holy energy scan. There was this one intense blip of energy in an otherwise barren space. That’s where the tree was, in one of several of these blips on the dark side of the moon. Wells of holy energy, if you will. You see what I’m getting at? That was the Tree of Sephirot for our world, the parent of the Sephirah and the ‘mother’ of Caiel and Sikeena.” 
Taking a sample from the tree, Ignora ran a DNA check and found it matched Caiel and Sikeena perfectly. They were gone, but the tree provided all the experimental samples they needed. It helped her and Satanael’s research advance by leaps and bounds every day. 
“Now, if I can change the subject for a moment… Satanael kind of had a thing for Ignora. He loved her talents, and he deeply loved her personality. I kept my own emotions in check really, because it was so obvious that he would get in the way of anything…further I’d have for her. But after Caiel and Sikeena disappeared, it took a mere five years for the immortality gene to be completed. They were close in their research the whole time, but they were close as people, too. And on the day they formally established the genetic process and ushered in an era of immortality, where nobody had to worry about disease again…they got married.” 
“Uh?” Even Emi had to give this a bewildered grunt. “B-but wait, if Ignora is Lucifer’s mother, then are you saying Satanael… The Devil Overlord Satan of old… Whaaa?!” 
Laila nodded at her daughter’s most dramatic reaction of the day. 
“That’s what I’m saying. Satanael Noie is Lucifer’s father.”