THE DEVIL KING GOES OUT TO DINNER WITH HIS BOSS
The air in Room 201 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka was still penetratingly cold when Maou stepped inside, careful not to make any noise. Turning on the fluorescent light in the kitchen, he looked around his one-room apartment, which was a bit dim and yellowed thanks to the old light cover. They hadn’t really acquired a lot of things since they first came to Japan, but now, in the corner farthest away from the light, there was a large box on the floor.
Maou peeked inside, then let out a small, relieved sigh.
“…You’re alive, huh?”
Inside was a very large and plump-looking chicken…or to be more exact, Camio, the arch-demon and de facto father figure to Maou.
“Peep…chrr…peep…chrr…”
He listened to Camio sleep a bit, taking shallow but rhythmic breaths, as he sat in front of the box. Then, recalling the crumpled-up MgRonald notice he tossed in the nearby wastebasket, he sighed.
“Ugh… How did I mess it up with them?”
He wasn’t being conceited. He honestly didn’t suspect for a single moment that he’d be turned down. It was smooth sailing through every screening. His rivals were shot down, one by one, and he made it all the way to the final selection process. For applicants from the shift-employee ranks at MgRonald (as opposed to new hires from college), this meant an interview with a company executive—and he was confident about his interview skills, as well as the assorted roles he played in the group discussions. He had tirelessly researched the industry as well.
Only about a quarter of the applicants made it as far as the executive interview. Maou was among them, and by that point, he was sure he hadn’t made a single misstep. But they turned him down. They didn’t reveal their screening standards, of course, and they didn’t explain why they gave him a pass.
“Where did I go wrong…?”
Maou kept his moaning to a quiet murmur, so as not to wake up Camio. Griping wouldn’t accomplish anything. It wouldn’t change reality. But the experience of being rejected with a single thin sheet of paper hurt nonetheless.
“It’s been like this with everything lately.”
Things were not going the way he wanted.
That didn’t bother him if everything worked out successfully in the end, as it did with the Spear of Adramelechinus. But failing to earn a career-track job at MgRonald was a failure like none before.
“…I’ll need a bath before tomorrow’s shift.”
Having a dream he’d held close to his heart ever since his first shift at MgRonald crushed like this weighed heavily on the Devil King of another world. He lifted that heavy heart upward, coming to his feet. It was time to prepare for bed…but as he got up, he noticed that his futon was still laid out on the floor, instead of folded up and in the closet.
“Oh. I didn’t put it away this morning?”
He tried to remember, but the shock of receiving that rejection notice in the morning blurred his memory. Based on how unfolded and messy the comforter was, he must’ve left it that way.
“Ashiya would ream me for being so messy if he were here. I should get some sleep for now… Hmm?”
Then he noticed. There were no pillows.
“Hmmmm? Where are they? And my pajamas… Huh?”
If he’d woken up and left the room unattended this morning, both of those things should have been right in front of him. But they weren’t.
“Did I only put those away? Would I even do that?”
Maou frowned as he opened one of the closet doors.
“Oh, hey, you’re back.”
“Aaaah?!”
Hanzou Urushihara, Master of the Closet, was lying down in front of him. “Dude, what?” he spat, lowering his headphones as he eyed Maou, who had fallen on the floor in shock. “I’m not that surprising.”
“Yes, you are! If you’re home, say something! I thought you were a burglar!”
“Why would the Devil King be afraid of a burglar? And for the record, I didn’t notice you were home at all, either, and you don’t see me screaming.”
“Yeah, I kept quiet because I don’t want to wake up Camio! Besides, you didn’t hear anything because you had those headphones on… Wait, where’d you get those headphones?”
At the moment, Urushihara’s unannounced return to his closet when he shouldn’t be in Japan at all wasn’t as important as the wireless headphones he had on. His laptop was bathing the closet space in a pale-blue light.
“Oh, these? I got here this afternoon, so I ordered them same-day delivery from Jungle. They’re pretty good.”
“Wow, impulse shopping online? Just like the good old days! What the hell are you back here for anyway? Without even warning me!”
“What’s the big deal, dude? Things are pretty chill over there, now that we got the Spear. We rounded up most of the surviving demons on the Central Continent, and the Malebranche are keepin’ them all disciplined and stuff, so I thought I’d take a break and screw around over here for a bit.”
“I can’t believe you… Wait, what happened to the demonic force I stored in the closet?”
“Oh, yeah, it was takin’ up too much space, so I moved it out to the far end of the hallway. That’s why all the futon crap is out on the floor, by the way.”
“Do you have any goddamn common sense whatsoever?!”
Not only had he palmed off all of his Ente Isla responsibility on other people, but Urushihara had also committed the cardinal sin of using Maou’s credit card. But the rage bubbling within Maou was almost a welcome feeling for him. Nostalgia, perhaps, reminding him of who he truly was.
“…Chweep…ngh…”
And with all the shouting, nobody noticed that Camio had repositioned himself in his box a little. Still, he remained asleep.
Their united mission was to storm the blue moon orbiting Ente Isla and attack the angels that controlled the planet’s history from behind the scenes. Maou and company had signed up for this god-slaying struggle, which involved restoring Devil’s Castle on Ente Isla and launching it like a spaceship toward heaven. To do that, they needed four sacred relics—the Nothung, the Sorcery of the False Gold, the Spear of Adramelechinus, and the Astral Gem.
The Spear was their most recent find, discovered on Ente Isla’s Northern Island, where it served as a monument commemorating victory over the Devil King’s Army. Satan, the Devil King, and Emilia the Hero were leading this struggle, accompanied by a large group of allied humans and demons, but this alliance wasn’t the sort of thing that could be publicized to the world. If they seized the Spear by force, then whether they succeeded or not, they ran the risk of sowing the seeds for future wars.
Maou and Emi were the flag bearers for this effort, but there was nothing among the preparations they could contribute to, so they kept up with their jobs in Sasazuka. On the other hand, Suzuno Kamazuki, Laila, Albert, and Saint Aile’s General Rumack were all involved in the negotiations with Dhin Dhem Wurs, chief herder of the Northern Island and bearer of a Yesod fragment. A longtime acquaintance of Laila’s, Wurs understood the importance of this heavenly struggle and promised her cooperation in supplying the Spear to them. This was done in the midst of a zirga, a part-ceremony, part–sporting event to decide the next chief herder, and Chiho Sasaki posed as Wurs’s granddaughter to participate.
The (literally) trans-dimensional archery skills she showed off at the event’s climax, the Bowman’s Offering, astounded the crowd. Her arrow, supported by the lingering magic from the long-gone Adramelech, had summoned a spear of ice up from the ground. As it did, Suzuno and Laila had transported the real Spear of Adramelechinus away, while Malebranche chieftain Libicocco had used his illusionary skills to summon a living image of its namesake. The way average Northern Islanders heard it in the rumors, Adramelech had come back from the dead to fetch the spear he left behind.
Maou played no part of any of this, which irked him, but as far as he was concerned, all’s well that ends well. That just left the Astral Gem to track down.
Chiho, back in Japan after her now-legendary actions in Ente Isla, later discovered a seriously wounded Camio in her front yard, bereft of his magic force and back in chicken mode. The guardian angel Camael was hot on his heels, wielding his three-pronged spear and ready to tear down the Sasaki family house with it, but the day was saved by Amane Ohguro, part of the Sephirot on Earth. Everyone was safe, but the ordeal put a pall on the whole relic search that still hadn’t cleared out.
It certainly made for an exciting start to March, as winter slowly slipped away from the Tokyo landscape.
“So what, dude? I know you look pretty down and all, but did that one-page rejection letter really depress you that much?”
Maou was seated on the floor, listening to Urushihara’s quiet lecturing from the closet.
“I almost wish that was the case, but that’s not the only thing I got going on tonight…”
“What, there’s more? Something else that could make the Devil King mope like a baby?”
“Shut up. It’s been like a one-two punch for me, okay?”
“Huhhh?”
Urushihara naturally knew about the career aspirations Maou had since he came to Japan. He could understand that kind of rejection taking the wind out of his sails. But he couldn’t think of anything else that could bring him down so hard.
“Look, don’t tell anyone yet, okay? Not that you have anyone you could tell, except Emi and Chi, but…”
Maou heaved a sigh. “Kisaki’s getting transferred.”
“Ohhh.”
“…‘Ohhh’? That’s all you’ve got to say??”
In a way, the news that Hatagaya Station MgRonald manager Mayumi Kisaki had received a transfer order sucker-punched Maou even more than his rejection had. It was akin to removing the very backbone of that MgRonald location. That was why Urushihara’s reaction—going beyond indifference and well into the realm of spite—sincerely annoyed Maou.
“That sort of thing happens all the time, dude,” he offered nonchalantly. “Staff get moved around in chain restaurants a ton, don’t they? Plus, I dunno Kisaki, but she’s supposed to be really talented, right? If she’s worked there long enough, maybe at this point she’s gonna get automatically promoted.”
Maou watched, mouth agape, as the still-disinterested Urushihara snorted at him.
“Why’re you looking at me like that, man?”
“Uh, no,” replied Maou, “I’m just surprised at how right you are, even though you almost never do any work.”
“I’ll be expecting an apology, dude, once you see how hard I’m workin’ in Ente Isla. I think a ten-thousand-yen Jungle gift card’ll help me forgive you.”
The fallen angel’s consumer-minded bribery aside, Kisaki’s situation was a common one. She’d said so herself; if anything, it was odd that she hadn’t been moved from the Hatagaya Station outlet until now. Their MgRonald was once on the smaller side, compared to the average location, and its revenues were commensurate with that when Kisaki joined. But with her at the helm, sales had continually risen year after year—and they had even expanded into the second floor of the building they rented. That was why their location was almost always picked for pilot projects like the café and the delivery system—because Kisaki and the crew she trained always gave the company solid results.
“I must’ve done too well. The higher-ups had their eye on me…in a good and a bad way.”
Kisaki swirled the ice in her glass of oolong tea around and snickered.
“Had their eye on you…?”
Kisaki would transfer out at the end of the fiscal year—by April 1. Maou was too shocked to offer much besides that instinctual reaction.
“In a good way, because it meant a big promotion to me. Do you remember my old friend who tried to start stuff with me at our location?”
If it was a “big promotion,” Kisaki didn’t seem so happy about it.
“Yeah, Tanaka from Sentucky. How could I forget?”
Himeko Tanaka was both an area manager for Sentucky Fried Chicken and Kisaki’s childhood friend. That made her the boss of Mitsuki Sarue, aka Sariel the archangel—a business rival of Maou’s in two separate ways.
“In terms of job ranking, this is gonna leapfrog me right past her. Not that it means much more of a paycheck in this industry, but it’s gonna change the job title on my business card to something fancy-sounding.”
Himeko and Kisaki were dyed-in-the-wool rivals for all time. They had known each other since they were children, but neither would dare use the term friend to refer to their current relationship. If they were in the same room, the slightest provocation could result in a knock-down-drag-out between the two of them. But again, if Kisaki was now ahead of her on the career track, she didn’t look at all excited about it.
“So what about in a bad way?”
“I’ll stop being involved with day-to-day restaurant operations. I’m not going to some other location or area. I’m joining the Consumer Insight Team.”
“The Consumer Insight Team?!”
The term was invented for the advertising industry toward the end of the twentieth century. Now, it was an indispensable concept when building diverse relationships with businesses and consumers, in every aspect of corporate management.
While marketing and planning work would sometimes get mixed in with consumer insight at a company, the essence of the term actually referred to something earlier on in the business process: Basically, in the real world, sometimes a good product doesn’t sell well, while the most popular products aren’t always the best ones. You might find true gems among unpopular products, or you might find that products that were no good to start out with later had improved in quality.
There were exceptions, of course, but in the long run, it was a given in any industry that if a product was vastly superior to the competition, it’d likely gain massive support in the market. But that didn’t mean all the companies in the world should just develop one excellent product and sell that for all time. In a capitalist society, a company was obligated to pursue profits—but outside of that ironclad rule, the fundamentals of business management were rapidly changing.
Toward that end, the job of a consumer insight department was to research the hooks that connected a company to a customer in an age when mass marketing was gradually waning as a force in advertising, then feed those hooks back into every aspect of the company and indirectly contribute to its bottom line. Such hooks could be more than just things like product quality and price; for example, a company being mired in scandal could affect consumers’ purchasing decisions. If the firm took it seriously and held a press conference to apologize, consumers might become anxious and stop buying the product, which hurt profits. On the other hand, if PR execs running official social media accounts picked humorous fights with rival companies online, it could spread like wildfire and often improve the company’s brand image. A good consumer insight team analyzed these trends and fed their findings into the company’s operations across the board.
Their actual work wasn’t that simple, of course, but basically, Kisaki’s new department continually researched which products, ads, behaviors, aspects, attitudes, or strategies either attracted consumer eyeballs or made them turn away.
As someone who underwent managerial training, Maou naturally had the MgRonald organizational chart memorized. Thanks to that knowledge, he knew that a promotion from a store manager to the Consumer Insight Team was all but unimaginable. That was why he was so shocked.
“We’ve done a lot at our location, you know?”
“Yeah. The café and deliveries, one after the other.”
“So I guess they liked what they saw. Plus, I bet they want to get some on-the-field data from me. The sites I’ve run are near the top of the company in both sales and crew retention. Hatagaya Station, in particular, is just off the charts. Our new features were hitting their sales goals in half the time we were projected to.”
Maou knew that. It came up in their business meetings.
“The Consumer Insight Team is still kind of in the experimental phase. It’s pretty new, and most of the staff are on the younger side. It’s led by a woman in her forties, and they’re trying to get as many people as they can. Normally, I’d be promoted to an area manager, but that team plucked me up instead… Hey, eat up, okay? I’m gonna be pretty much bragging for the next little while. It’s gonna get uncomfortable fast if you don’t eat on my dime.”
“Oh, sorry. Thanks. Um, oolong tea… No, I mean jasmine tea.”
Maou was so caught up in the conversation that he barely even noticed the assorted fried appetizers on the table. Realizing his nerves were making him thirsty, he ordered a refill on his tea.
“I guess you don’t drink, either, huh, Marko? I remember someone telling me that.”
“Either?”
“Aki and Kawacchi don’t drink, usually. Not that they can’t, but they choose not to.”
“Well, maybe there’s just nothing they want to drink that bad when they’re going out. Like, the stuff they like is expensive or whatever.”
“That was kind of how Kawacchi put it, yeah. Of course, he’s got that motorcycle, so I’m sure that’s where he puts a lot of his money.”
“But you don’t drink that much, either, do you, Ms. Kisaki?”
“Mm… Well, like Himeko said that one time, it makes my face all red almost immediately. Plus, if I drink tonight, I have a feeling I’m gonna spend all night bitching about my life.”
She did describe this as a “whining” session earlier. For the time being, it still sounded like her bragging about a big promotion. She worked hard, delivered results, and got picked for a strategic-planning position from the front lines. And while she downplayed how much more her paycheck would be, there had to be some kind of raise. But she still seemed reluctant about it.
“So,” Kisaki said suddenly as Maou thought that over, “what do you think of consumer insight?”
“I don’t think it fits you.”
This brutally honest appraisal made Kisaki do something she never, ever did on the clock—laugh uproariously.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Right? You’re totally right! This doesn’t fit me at all. I mean, it’s not like the team is ‘Ohh, consumer insight, consumer insight’ all day. They do some on-the-ground stuff, too. But like…”
“You don’t like not seeing your customers’ faces.”
“Right! Exactly!”
She might not have been drinking, but Kisaki was still acting pretty intense.
Maou never asked her directly, but Kisaki was twenty-seven or twenty-eight this year. In Japan’s business culture, that was still considered young. And given how aloof and detached she acted at his workplace, Maou felt like he was getting a taste of Kisaki actually acting her age.
“When I first heard about this, I didn’t think I was suited for it. Like, HR must think I am or else none of this would be happening, so I’m not gonna say ‘No way,’ but…”
Thinking you’re unsuited for something was much different from actually being unsuited for it. Kisaki understood that. That must have been why she had that ambiguous expression.
“And I knew this was coming, but now that I’m actually going to be in that position, of course that’s gonna make me start to think about it again.”
“Think about what?”
“You know. I told you about my dream, didn’t I?”
She hadn’t been secretive about it. She had told Maou, Chiba, Emi, and even Sarue about her dream of running her own place—a café and bar, in the Italian tradition.
“I like being on the floor…but as much as I wanted to deny it, that’s just not enough. I think this is a necessary step on the way to that dream.”
“A necessary step?”
He never thought he’d see that emotion from Kisaki. But it was clear as day on her face—her anxiety for the future.
“ Ugghh! Why can’t we just have a world where you make nice things, and people buy lots of them, and that’s it , Marko?”
“Huh? Um…”
“Marko! Which do you like more on your yakitori? Sauce or salt?”
“Uh? S-sauce, I guess, if it’s one of the two.”
“I like salt!”
“Oh? Don’t you wind up tasting the salt a lot more than the chicken?”
“But that yakitori sauce is just a big sweetness bomb. Bad sauce can ruin chicken in a way bad salt never does.”
In the end, Kisaki used her powers as Maou’s boss to order…chicken wings, for some reason, in a sweet-and-salty sauce.
“See? It’s something so simple, and we can’t even agree on that! What does being ‘good’ even mean? What does ‘selling’ something even mean?!”
“…Well, I just hope these chicken wings turn out well. I’ve never had them prepared like this before.”
“Right! Right there! Encouraging consumers to challenge themselves with new things! With Japan in a deflationary period, what’s it take to sell stuff when people are so tight with their wallets? I think about it and think about it, and I come up with a solution and throw it out as all wrong three hours later. Can I ever go independent like this?”
They later engaged in a fiery debate over the chicken wings, but given the late hour, they didn’t speak in-depth about much else before going their separate ways.
“See you later, okay? I know I don’t have much time left here, but keep up the good work.”
Right up to the end, Kisaki didn’t even come close to mentioning Maou’s application results. But the way she chose to say good-bye still felt like an arrow through the heart.
“Oh, man, don’t talk to me about yakitori and chicken wings in the middle of the night. You’re making me hungry.”
“ That’s the part you care about?”
“What else could I care about? It’s not like I’m emotionally attached to Kisaki or anything, my dude.”
This attachment, or lack thereof, was the classic reason why workplace complaints tended to fall on deaf ears at home.
“What?” Urushihara protested. “What do you want me to say, man?”
“At least prove to me you’re worth the headphones you got on. I dunno how much they cost, but if you can actually give me a little help, I can let it slide.”
“Oh? Wow. That’s a good deal. Ashiya would’ve whined about these to me for the next ten days.”
Maou’s face was turned away, but he could tell Urushihara was smiling.
“But you know, things never change. You should know most of all, Maou, that things don’t go the way they should in an ideal world. They sure haven’t for me .”
“Yeah, because you just mooch off everyone else.”
“Hey, being an unemployed bum doesn’t mean you’re happy about your life. If I had a situation where I could use my abilities, I’d quit this life in a flash. But that sort of thing just doesn’t come walkin’ along, and I don’t really feel like trying to make it come along. I don’t think I like it or anything, but that’s how I’m living.”
“You can at least try to act apologetic about it. If you don’t like it, act that way. You’re not convincing me at all.”
“If I acted all mopey, it’d just bring the energy down more. Don’t you see I’m doing this for you?”
“You really know how to drive me insane, you know that?”
“Sure. And actually, I was thinking I better say this to you sooner or later…”
Maou could sense Urushihara dangling his legs down from his perch in the closet.
“Maou, don’t you think you oughta quit with this Japan stuff soon? Is right now the time to be talking about Kisaki, or your ‘career’ or whatever you call it here?”
His voice was dead serious.
“I’m not criticizing His Honor, the Devil King, for this little side diversion he fell into after all the torment he went through, all right? But that’s all it really is. A diversion. A hobby. Do you really need a career-track job for your life to be complete, Maou?”
“…”
“And you know, living in Japan is fun. I wouldn’t mind keeping this apartment if it was a second home. And Chiho Sasaki and Rika Suzuki are…you know, I don’t mind talking with them. But c’mon, do you absolutely need any of it? It’s not gonna hurt anyone if you make Japan just someplace you send a New Year’s card to every year. So if you want me to advise you or whatever, I’d say it’s about time you went back to Ente Isla and started packing up your life here a little.”
“…”
“And that’s even more true if the reason you wanna stay involved with Japan is Chiho Sasaki or your boss or whatever. Because there’s at least a few other people you should probably focus more of your attention on right now, you know? Oh, but…”
Urushihara clapped his hands.
“You know, if you really don’t give a damn about Ente Isla any longer… Like, if you decided this is your main thing from now on, then fine. But you do give a damn, right?”
“…You really know how to twist the knife, don’t you?”
“You told me to.” Urushihara hopped out of the closet and crouched in front of the box Camio slept in. “’Cause beyond that, the only real obstacle is Emilia, isn’t it?”
“Don’t call her an obstacle. She’ll kill you.”
“Well, she is; let’s not lie to ourselves. We’re demons from the demon realms. Meanwhile, she’s still got Emeralda, and Rumack, and Albert, and Bell. In the end, do you think you’re gonna come to any kind of real understanding with them? You won’t. And in the not too distant future—like, within a year—this holding pattern you’re in is gonna come to a shuddering halt. That’s what you and Emilia decided on, isn’t it? That’s what killing Ignora’s gonna accomplish.”
Once they lost their common goal, and their common enemy, their split would come soon after. They never got along very well to start with. If their paths started to diverge, it wouldn’t take that much time for them to be at each other’s throats once more.
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