Hataraku Maou-sama! - Volume 15 - Chapter Pr

PROLOGUE: THE TEEN AND THE CALL-CENTER LADY RING IN THE NEW YEAR 
It was a quiet morning, the early sunlight giving form to the assorted things that keep the world going in the dark. These could be people; these could be buildings; these could be roads; these could be towns—and this was the light of life for it all, which drove them forward and all but dared them to shine the night away. This light and sound were the breath of existence for them, and any place without them was an inscrutable, fluid object, like a flatly colored shadow. An oven without any gas, a dried-up well—or a building with no one in it. 
“You have to be kidding me,” said the shaky voice of a woman, making the morning light almost quiver with her heavy breath. “This has to be a joke.” 
“It doesn’t appear to be,” another voice replied, also a little unsure of itself as its owner solemnly surveyed what lay ahead of her—a sight that would even make the morning sunrise freeze in place. “There’s nobody in the whole apartment.” 
“This is kind of a mean prank…” 
The two women, in their own individual ways, were appraising the scene inside the building they stood before—Villa Rosa Sasazuka, a postwar-era wooden apartment building in the Sasazuka neighborhood of Tokyo’s Shibuya district. The time was about to pass eight in the morning, but there was not a single sign of life inside. 
“So did they all…uh, leave?” 
“Yeah.” 
“What about Emi’s father? He’s on the first floor, right?” 
“Gone.” 
“Suzuno?” 
“Gone.” 
“What about Maou? And Urushihara?” 
“…Both gone.” 
“And…Ashiya?” 
“Rika.” Chiho Sasaki sternly put an end to Rika Suzuki’s broken-record act. “Please understand. For the moment the apartment complex is…completely empty.” 
“Why…? But why?!!” Rika shook her head, trying to stave off the unbelievable truth. “That can’t…be? I mean, all this time, nobody…nobody said…anything…?” 
She looked up at the deserted Villa Rosa Sasazuka, her voice trailing off. Then she turned her eyes back toward Chiho. 
“Wh-what about Emi? Emi’s got to be here, right?! In Eifukucho! She wouldn’t be here anyway—” 
“Yusa is gone, too.” 
“No way!” 
Rika’s shriek did nothing to break the look on Chiho’s face. 
“Alas Ramus and Acieth can’t leave Yusa and Maou’s side, either,” she said before driving the final nail into the coffin. “They all went back…to Ente Isla.” 
“Oh, no…” 
Ente Isla. The homeland of Chiho Sasaki and Rika Suzuki’s most cherished of friends, a world far away from Sasazuka or Tokyo or Japan—or Earth, for that matter. And now Chiho was telling her these friends had all ventured off to the other end of the galaxy, a place normal, unassuming human beings like them could never reach. 
“So… That’s it? They’re gone?” 
“Yeah.” 
“But… Like, what about Maou’s and Emi’s jobs…?” 

Rika sounded ready to burst into tears as Chiho shook her head. “Did you think they’d just go without telling anyone? It’s already all been worked out.” 
Leaving the side of her confused companion, Chiho breathed a sigh, breath visible in the air, and stepped onto the apartment’s front lawn. Frost from the morning was still visible in the shaded areas of the lot, leaving clear footprints wherever Chiho’s sneakers landed. 
“And it’s not just them, either,” she said, after closing her eyes for a moment at the stairway landing. “Emeralda, Laila, Gabriel… All of them. You won’t find any of them in Japan.” 
There was a rasp to her voice, as if she had yet to fully accept this truth herself. 
“And Erone, and Amane, and the landlord… They’re all in Ente Isla, too.” 
“But… Amane doesn’t even have anything to do with that planet! Aren’t the angels supposed to be gunning for Maou’s and Emi’s lives?!” 
“Well, if you’re someone from the Ente Isla side, then the lives of the Sephirah—of Alas Ramus, and Acieth, and Erone, and everyone else—they take precedent above all that.” 
Chiho took a leather key holder out from her coat pocket. Three dials were poised on one side of it, each labeled with a little sticker reading “101,” “201,” and “202,” in Chiho’s handwriting. 
“Is that…?” 
“The keys to their rooms,” Chiho agreed as she began to climb the stairs, a flustered Rika following her. She stopped upon reaching Room 201 and took out the key to the apartment, not even bothering to ring the bell or shout hello to anyone. 
“I— Oh no…” 
The sight on the other side of the door made Rika fall to her knees. Room 201 was barren. It wasn’t just a case of the residents being out on an errand—there was nothing. Not a single pot or ladle sat in the kitchen that used to be Ashiya’s command center, and both Urushihara’s desk and the computer that sat on it were gone. The hastily assembled low table, where Chiho sat together with Maou and all her many other friends so often, was nowhere to be found. Now there was just a hundred or so square feet of empty space, no evidence of life or humanity. It was bleak inside, the stains on the ceiling, marks on the walls, and faded tatami-mat floor making it seem even bleaker. 
“We’re just normal people. We’re not able to fight like they can. And you know all Maou and Yusa want is to keep us from getting hurt. So…” 
So there was no way to join the fight in Ente Isla—a battle that featured an entire world waging war against its own deities. 
“But…but this is what they do with us?” 
A single tear fell from the corner of Rika’s eye. She wasn’t strong enough to take the suddenness and unfairness of it. Knowing the truth about Maou and everyone else and loving them for it anyway made it impossible. 
“You’re…fine with this, Chiho?” 
“…” 
“This is really okay with you?” 
Rika’s voice was chiding, as well it should be. Chiho had known them all for much longer; they had valued her as a person, no matter what world or race she had come from. It was only natural, Chiho supposed, that Rika would expect her to do something about this. 
“How?” she replied in a low voice. “How could this ever be…okay with me…?” 
“…!” 
Then, for the first time, Rika spotted the quivering of Chiho’s lips, the shaking in her balled-up fists. No, it could never be okay. But she accepted these facts anyway. And Rika needed to understand how much resolve and courage and grief it took for her to accept these apartment keys instead. 
“…I’m sorry. I…” 
“It’d never be okay with me…” Chiho repeated, her voice blankly echoing against the snuffed-out shell of Room 201. 
The planet was no longer playing home to visitors from another world. They were back where they belonged—away from Earth, and Japan, and Chiho’s and Rika’s lives. But the typical, familiar rhythm of their lives before they discovered the truth was something neither of them were prepared to slip back into again. 
Why did this have to happen? It was January 3, a time when Japan was still filled with traditional New Year’s decorations and traditions. The curtain was rising on a brand-new year, but for Chiho and Rika, the way ahead seemed cloaked in despair. 
And as Chiho looked down at the slumped-over Rika and reflected on the path Maou and his friends took to this war between gods, angels, and devils, all she could think was Why did this have to happen?