THE HERO REVEALS DEEP ANXIETIES ABOUT THE FUTURE
The morning after an enormous cryptid haunted Yoyogi Park, Room 201 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka enjoyed its largest audience in quite some time. The whole gang was there—Maou, Ashiya, Emi, Chiho, Suzuno, Amane, Laila, and even Villa Rosa landlord Miki Shiba. Alas Ramus, Acieth, and Erone were down in Room 101 watching TV with Nord, just in case their presence set off the lizard. Urushihara, meanwhile, was holed up inside the closet, given the changes to his hair color (and everything else) whenever Shiba came near him.
Maou, having gotten used to enjoying this room all by himself, frowned a bit at the sight. But that didn’t matter right now. Instead, all eyes were focused on a single point in the room.
“Mr. Maou?”
It was Shiba who spoke first, looking uncharacteristically concerned.
“You do know that your lease forbids pets, don’t you?”
“They’re not pets. Technically. Cut me some slack.”
That’s what you bring up first? thought everyone else, although they were too cowed to say it.
“I am sorry,” the crestfallen Camio said in his box. “If only I weren’t in this sad state of affairs…”
“No, no, my liege,” Ashiya said, giving the chicken a reassuring pat on the back. “If anything, Lord Camio, your normal form would present more problems for us here in Japan than this one.”
But everyone else was focused on the cage on the table, a cage crafted from holy energy that currently had a sleeping lizard curled up inside—a mere echo of the crocodilian monster of Yoyogi Park that Maou and Amane had seen last night.
Once the lizard demon pulled that shrinking act at the park, Amane and Maou remained up in the air, trying to figure out how to take him home with them without attracting attention. They ultimately decided to use Maou’s force to magically lift the inert, unresponsive creature up to them.
“My liege, you mustn’t!”
Camio’s pleading made Maou stop, but a little demonic force still launched itself off from his fingers. The effect was stark: In an instant, the lizard blew up to the size of a juvenile alligator. It didn’t wake it up, but the experiment proved that the monster had an uncanny ability to soak in demonic force.
“Maybe I can step in?”
Amane curled a finger upward. This time, the alligator’s body floated up without further incident.
“I can’t wait to see the tweets about this tomorrow. A cryptid appears in Yoyogi Park, only to die and ascend to heaven! And oh, all the witnesses!”
She seemed to be almost looking forward to it. Maou wasn’t. And the world didn’t even wait until tomorrow—by the time they got back home, Urushihara had tabs open of videos of the alligator lumbering around, the moment of the explosion, even the little guy bobbing around in the air before Amane hefted him into the air.
“I went through all the media I could find, but I didn’t see any that showed us, at least, so don’t worry about that. You can see a couple of vaguely human silhouettes in one or two of them, though. I guess that guy must’ve absorbed the demon-energy barrier you put up.”
“And you want me to ‘not worry’ about that? It sounds like I should worry about it a lot , actually!”
A tired-looking Maou placed a call to Emi. “We took care of everything, but now we got some other crap to deal with. You mind coming here to the apartment ASAP?” he asked.
“Sure, but what happened?”
“I know this isn’t really your wheelhouse, but I got no one else to turn to. Suzuno and Emeralda are in Ente Isla, and I dunno if I can wait forty minutes for them to get back here.”
“What about Chiho? Should I take her along?”
“No, that might make things worse. I’m here now with Urushihara, actually, but our hands are kind of tied at the moment. I’m being forced to ask Amane to take care of things.”
“Okay. I’ll be right there. All right, Chiho, I need to—”
Maou could hear her say something to Chiho before cutting the call off. He flipped his phone shut, then stared at it for a moment. “You know,” he muttered to himself, “Emi really isn’t that much of an obstacle these days, is she…?”
“So?”
It was Suzuno who spoke next, looking and sounding very peeved.
“Are you saying this reptile destroyed the backyard?”
“Um, pretty much.”
“What happened? Because depending on the answer to that, I will exact penance from you.”
Suzuno could likely be forgiven for her bad mood. The situation out back behind the Villa Rosa Sasazuka building wasn’t as bad as what they saw in Yoyogi Pak earlier, but there was still a deep gouge in the ground, and the concrete-block wall surrounding it was nearly collapsing in places. There used to be a nice little vegetable garden back there, the product of careful work on Suzuno’s part, but now it was just a big clump of distressed-looking soil.
“We can’t afford to let this guy taste any demonic energy at all,” Urushihara explained. “We didn’t know that at first, so when he woke up in here, he started freaking out. Sorry about that.”
“Yeah, I don’t even want to think about what’d happen if I still had that demonic force stored in my closet. We didn’t think the little guy would be such a menace, so… My bad.”
There was enough force in the closet to refill Maou’s demonic force to maximum, even in his full demon form. If a lizard that hungry for it chanced upon that stash and absorbed it, they’d have a lot more than a ruined vegetable garden on their hands. Urushihara’s banishing of the demon outside to secure more closet space for himself wound up saving them all by the narrowest of margins. For now, that force was being kept under careful guard at Shiba’s house.
“This was kind of my fault, too,” Amane added, looking a lot more despondent than usual. “It was totally out of control, and after we saw what he did in Yoyogi Park, I threw him out to the backyard before he could knock the whole apartment building down. I didn’t know you had a garden back there… Sorry.”
“Well…in that case…”
She sounded so apologetic—not at all her usual freewheeling self—that Suzuno couldn’t chide her that much. Besides, while she did set up the garden herself, she left the upkeep to Urushihara the majority of the time, and it was still new. Apart from the monetary loss, there wasn’t much real damage done.
“So what is this guy, then? If that stone on his neck is the Astral Gem, does that make this demon a relic of the Devil Overlord’s?”
Under bright light like this, it was clear that the stone buried in his throat was an integral part of its body, easily mistakable as a cousin of the horns, fangs, and claws that’d naturally grow on it.
“I really wish this demon wasn’t alive like this, but maybe you’re right. Look.” Laila pointed at the lizard’s neck.
His body was covered in dark reddish-brown scales, but his neck, and the area around the stone, exhibited a dazzling array of colors, sparkling in the natural sunlight like a rainbow necklace. It almost seemed too elegant of a touch for the rugged lizard trying to sleep.
“I thought,” Urushihara said from behind the closet door, “the Astral Gem was supposed to be on the Lenbrellebelve’s collar. That kind of looks like a collar, doesn’t it?”
“I wish it wasn’t,” Emi retorted, “in a lot of ways. Did Satanael do this?”
“I’m sorry,” said Laila, “I don’t know. I didn’t hear any details about the relics.”
Laila, Emi’s mother and someone around back when Satanael was still alive, was just as confused as the rest of them as she watched the lizard.
“So if this stone’s the Astral Gem,” a still-huffy Suzuno said, “what now? Are we going to rip it out of his throat? I imagine that would kill him.”
“Assuming that is even possible,” Ashiya reminded her. “Because if you put what Amane and Lord Camio said together, this is no regular demon. In case you forgot, Lord Camio is an arch-demon so powerful that Barbariccia and other Malebranche chieftains recognize him as my liege’s representative in the demon realms. Having a demon strong enough to give both him and an angel an even fight at the same time, running free in the demon realms like it apparently was… It is certainly a shock.”
It turned out that the great majority of Camio’s injuries were caused by this lizard—or to be exact, the Lenbrellebelve chief, Kinanna. In fact, it was likely Kinanna who threw Camael’s spear into Chiho’s room, after misidentifying Camio as his foe. If both he and Camio came to Japan at the same time, it was a miracle that Kinanna had remained undetected for as long as he had.
“As you saw,” Camio explained, “this Kinanna knows the name of Camuinica, my father. When I approached him to discuss the possible handover of the Astral Gem, he accused me of being Camuinica—and right then, that angel leaped toward Kinanna, trying to kill him for the same purpose. So he fought both of us back.”
“There’s nothing good about Camael, is there?” Laila muttered. Emi internally agreed with her.
“And as for why he grew so big in the park… Devil King, Alciel, that was likely your fault.”
“Huh?” “What?”
“That’s about where you guys first fell into Japan at, isn’t it?” Emi accused. “The demonic force that leaked out of your bodies here, after your final battle with me… It’s still lurking around, and now it’s causing us some serious trouble.”
“Wh-what do you mean?” Maou protested. Instead of answering him, Emi turned to Kinanna.
“Bell does have a point,” the Hero went on. “If we try to take the stone out of that thing when it’s so clearly a part of his body, no way he’s going to survive that. Are you okay with that? Because…I kind of had a traumatic moment like that once, and I really don’t want to kill the lizard if I can avoid it.”
“Ah, yes,” Suzuno whispered to herself. “There was that…”
“Well, yeah,” Maou added, “I don’t wanna kill him, either. That’s just wrong.”
Tiny lizard or not, this was a full-fledged demon. The Astral Gem was a must if Maou wanted to reach his goals and Ente Isla wanted lasting peace. But was it worth taking the life of this demon? Nobody was expecting to be asked to weigh the value of someone’s life like this. It made the air heavy around the apartment. Was it right to sacrifice a single life for the sake of many? It was a common question, but one that nobody could ever really answer, and now the strongest of humans and demons were seated together in silence, pondering it.
“Um, I have a question.”
It was Chiho who broke that silence, sitting toward the rear of the room and keeping quiet until now.
“Is that stone in his throat really the Astral Gem?”
““““Huh?””””
Everyone stared at her like she had gone mad. She realized her point was being misunderstood.
“Um, you’re all saying that the stone in, uh, ‘Kinanna’? His neck? …is the Astral Gem, but are you sure about that?”
“Sure…um, aren’t we?” Maou was about to brush the thought away, only to realize he couldn’t, exactly. He took another glance at Kinanna’s throat. “I mean, it looks that way. Like, the colors and the shape and its appearance.”
“But doesn’t the stone go up and down in size with Kinanna? Because if that’s the Astral Gem, then it’s really small.”
“Oh…”
Maou thoughtfully nodded. She had a point.
“I mean, I’ve only seen one other relic, but this just seems way too small compared to the Spear. I’m sure it’s super-powerful no matter what size it is, but I just think, you know, we should stop talking about killing him or pulling it out of him until we’re really sure that’s the Astral Gem.”
The room fell silent again, this time for different reasons.
“…What do you think of that, Camio? Because you were pretty confident it was the Astral Gem last night.”
“The legends speak of Kinanna…or peep , or the Lenbrellebelve serving as guardians of the Gem. And we have found nothing else that could possibly peep the Gem besides this.”
Camio seemed to be losing his confidence as well.
“Right,” Amane said. “We’ll have to wait for him to wake up…but depending on how that goes, we might have more than a ruined garden to think about. Can we do something about that hunk of demonic force you’re storing, Maou? Because if he sucks all that up, he’s gonna turn into the kind of lizard that smashes up Tokyo Tower and stomps all over government buildings.”
The tiny bit of telekinetic magic Maou tapped to lift his body up was enough to turn Kinanna into a large, vicious, garden-destroying monster. If that demon swallowed up a crystal of magic powerful enough to fully recharge Maou or Ashiya, it was hard to imagine what the results could be.
“Uh, Ashiya, you think you could maybe ferry that back to Ente Isla? Like, right now?”
“Yes, my liege. I have my concerns about leaving such a large store of energy over there as well, but we have little choice. I have to say, I was not expecting an obstacle like this right at the end of our search. I will tell the other leaders there about this, but I imagine we will need to regroup and reposition our strategy. My liege, what is your work schedule looking like?”
“I start in the afternoon today, so I still got some time. Tomorrow I’m there pretty much all day, so I can’t help you then.”
Amane rolled her eyes at Maou. “You’re going to work right now? Can’t you take time off? This is kind of urgent.”
The statement made nearly everyone there—Maou, Emi, Chiho, Ashiya, Urushihara, and Suzuno—realize they all assumed they’d have to figure something out with Camio and Kinanna while Maou was at work.
“His Demonic Highness is at a crucial point in his career, Amane.”
That was why Ashiya, who didn’t know better, was the first to reply to Amane, trying to offer an excuse to her.
“My liege is in the middle of managerial training. I believe his final interview and approval is coming up soon, but if he takes time off suddenly at such a vital moment, there is no telling how that may affect his evaluation.”
“…!”
“…Oh.”
“…”
Ashiya was so busy addressing Amane that he didn’t see the reactions from Maou, Urushihara, or Emi. Chiho and Suzuno noticed them instead. It made their eyebrows dart up a little.
“Regardless, Urushihara, I want you to guard Room 201 like before,” Ashiya said. “If something happens, take care of it. We will talk about tomorrow onward later on. Do you work today, too, Emilia?”
“…No. Chiho has today off, so I do, too.”
“Ah. In that case, you may help keep Ms. Sasaki safe should worse come to worst. And you, Bell…?”
“…I have to return to Ente Isla today as well, but I have some time to work with. I need to reinforce the cage we have Kinanna in. You can return ahead of me.”
The lizard’s cage naturally couldn’t be made of demonic energy, so Emi cast a couple of unfamiliar-to-her spells to construct it. But she was no expert, so it was left to Suzuno to complete the job.
“Very well. For now, it is crucial that we leave no demonic force around for Kinanna to absorb. Lucifer, my liege, do you have enough reserve left in you?”
“…Sure.”
“Yeah, dude, it’s not like that guy can suck it out of our bodies.”
“Then I will leave at once. Ms. Shiba, I apologize for always causing you trouble, but I promise we will make up for it at a later date. For now, I hope you will be lenient with Kinanna here.”
“No, no,” the landlord cheerfully replied, “no need to hurry.”
With their farewells taken care of, Ashiya joined Shiba to pick up the magic crystal at her house, Laila standing up to join them.
“I better go back, too. I need to check with Gabriel about how heaven’s reacting to the relics. Take care of your father for me, Emilia.”
“Yeah. All right.”
Mother and daughter waved at each other, the wall separating them quite a bit lower than it used to be.
Ten or so minutes later, the room was a little emptier than before, occupied by Maou, Chiho, Emi, Suzuno, Urushihara (now freed from his closet exile), Camio, and Kinanna.
“Uh, why’re you looking at me?” Maou asked, unable to hold eye contract with the female members of the audience. “Because I think Urushihara and I can handle things for today, but…”
Chiho, Emi, and Suzuno didn’t move a muscle. Seeing this, Maou sighed.
“All right. I give up. I told Urushihara last night, but—I got rejected for a managerial position.”
“What…?”
“Ah, was that what happened?”
“I kind of had a suspicion, yeah.”
“Wait. Chi and Suzuno didn’t know?”
Chiho looked honestly surprised, at a loss for words, and it seemed to be news to Suzuno as well. It wasn’t at all what Maou expected.
“I mean,” Chiho nervously ventured, “you’ve been acting a little different since yesterday…”
Suzuno averted her eyes. “It did seem like you were trying to hide something from Alciel, yes… But you have yet to break the news to him?”
“I can’t bring myself to…or maybe I feel sorry for him…or I just feel pathetic about it. Lots of stuff.”
He had always been a faithful Great Demon General, but ever since they came to Japan, Ashiya had been an anchor for everything Maou did, willing to sacrifice almost everything for the sake of his lord’s dreams. And now there was no reward Maou could offer him.
In a way, Ashiya was taking command in Ente Isla like he had in years past, overseeing field operations in a position roughly similar to Camio’s—all because Maou had his own “work” to attend to. But when it came time to storm heaven, he would doubtlessly leave the captain’s chair to Maou.
“I know he’s gonna find out anyway,” he explained. “I just thought, maybe, instead of telling him when all this crazy stuff is going on, I could apologize about it once things settle down.”
“Once things settle down when ?” Emi groused.
Maou gave her a vague smile. “…Good question.”
He knew what the woman meant. Chiho, Suzuno, and Urushihara all knew what impact Maou’s failing to get salaried at MgRonald would have on his relationship with her.
“Your Demonic Highness,” Camio calmly stated, “things rarely work out exactly as one plans them. We, too, faced many trials and tribulations of our own, on our mission to conquer and unite the demon realms. Your actions in battle were so brazen, so unheard-of, that I cannot count the number of times I expected death to take me, churrr .”
He probably had no idea what MgRonald was, much less what being a manager of one entailed. But this old fighter understood well enough that his general had faced a punishing trial and was found wanting.
“ Ba-kluk. But the Devil King I know would never give up after such a setback. You did not flee to this world following Emilia the Hero’s victory simply because you valued your own life too much to lose it, peep .”
“Can you not say that when the Hero’s right here, please?”
Emi couldn’t help but chuckle. Camio was starting to sound like an old man admonishing his grandson. But the sight of her loosening up helped ease the stress in the minds of Chiho, Suzuno, and Urushihara as well.
“Well, I don’t even know about that. When Emi and I were duking it out, it was intense. Even more than it was against Ashiya. I had my hands totally full.”
“…” “!”
Urushihara and Chiho knew what he meant by that. Emi and Suzuno let it slide.
“ Ba-kluk. But even if the damage to your side grew over time, the Devil King I know always found ingenious measures to turn the tables and secure victory. So take heart. To you, my liege, the human race barely even registers as an enemy, peep .”
Nobody could say Camio was wrong. Not too long ago, Emi and Suzuno would’ve reflexively self-identified as his enemy. Now they stayed silent.
“For now, carry on with your regular efforts. Lucifer and I are keeping watch over Kinanna. And Emilia the Hero, Chiho Sasaki, and Crestia Bell… One moment— Peep?! ”
“C-Camio?!”
He had tried to get out of the box by himself, only to lose his balance on the lip and crash to the floor. Chiho helped him up, and once he was back on his feet, he opened a wing and bowed deeply to the three women, just as he did at Ohguro-ya back in the summer.
“I am sure all of you have your grudges. Someday, we demons may clash swords with you humans yet again. But for now, for the sake of all who live and breathe on Ente Isla, I want everyone to help my lord through his hardships. This, I humbly ask of you… churrr .”
“C-Camio!” a flustered Chiho replied. “Lift your head back up! I’ve always been on Maou’s side!”
The thoroughly chastened Maou didn’t speak. Not even Camio’s interspersed peeping could provide relief from the hard truth. Maou’s representative from the demon realms, someone with no great attachment to Japan, had just bowed his head to humans. All he knew was that his lord, Satan, the Devil King, was faced with adversity, and that drove him to bow to his previous enemies.
“Lift your face, good Sir Camio.”
Suzuno took his wing. It seemed so natural of her that neither Maou, nor Emi, nor Chiho, nor Urushihara realized the historical importance of the moment. For the first time, Suzuno had addressed a demon with heartfelt respect.
“Humans and demons are enemies. But on the surface at least, Satan, the Devil King, is my military superior, and beyond that, my neighbor. On Earth, we say that a friend in need is a friend indeed. I cannot say what will happen after our conquest of heaven, but for now, Camio, I want to respect your innermost feelings.”
“I most peep ly thank you,” the emotionally overcome Camio said.
Urushihara, gauging this, turned toward the others. “…Well?”
“I’m not getting caught up in this,” Emi stated.
“No?” He grinned. “And here I thought you would.”
“I am the Devil King’s enemy. Through and through.”
“Huh. Neat.”
“I wasn’t expecting any of that from you anyway. If you started sympathizing with me , I’d get utterly depressed.”
Urushihara and Maou had both nodded at her cold reaction. It was, if nothing else, in character.
Emi responded by lifting her eyebrows a little. “Right? This makes things easier for you, too, doesn’t it? So I’m fine with it.”
““…””
The two men gave her deer-in-headlights looks, while Chiho gave her a half-exasperated, half-impressed grin, and Suzuno just shrugged her disapproval. And Camio, watching it, lifted up the edges of his beak in a smile that none of the humans could have detected. Adramelech and Malacoda were gone, but now, Satan was gifted with close companions who were every bit their equals. Nothing could have made Camio more elated to see.
“But still,” Maou said, voice a little shaky as he attempted to refocus the conversation, “either way, we got a mountain of problems to deal with. In Ente Isla and in Japan. My managerial bid came and went, and there’s no point worrying about it now. But you two…”
“What?”
“Yes?”
“Emi, Chiho, I think I’m gonna have a lot of crap to deal with, as soon as today. I would’ve preferred if Kisaki could’ve told you herself, but you two are kind of special exceptions to me, so I’ll tell you while I still can.”
The revelation he had for them made Emi and Chiho tense up, for two different reasons. It even made Suzuno stare blankly at him.
“Ms. Kisaki’s going to be transferred at the start of the fiscal year. She’s gonna be leaving Hatagaya Station.”
“Is it me, or are things a lot quieter across the street?”
Maou couldn’t help but notice the lack of activity at the Sentucky Fried Chicken facing MgRonald as he parked Dullahan II at the bike rack.
What would its manager, Mitsuki Sarue—Sariel the archangel—do once he found out Kisaki would be moving on? Most likely, Maou reasoned, he would follow her. His passion and his knack for turning it into unwanted action were both intense. If the heavens were as dull and listless as Gabriel described them, it was a miracle he had retained such a stultifying and pushy attitude for so many eons. But Kisaki would have an HQ office job. If Sariel wanted to remain near her, he’d have to find a way to get into MgRonald, just as he did with Sentucky in the past.
The morning crew at MgRonald must have heard the news by now. I’ll need to share some info with them , Maou thought as he went through the employee entrance, and we’ll need to form a strategy to deal with Sarue’s inevitable storming of the dining room .
When he went in, he felt it.
“What’s this…feeling in the air…?”
It was like a heavy weight suddenly pressed upon his shoulders. He looked around, surprised. Akiko Ohki, noticing him, ran up.
“Ah! Maou! Over there!”
“What?”
Akiko pointed at what appeared, at first, to be a whirling coil of darkness. Maou focused on it. It revealed a single customer, seated at the far end of the table space. Just a single customer, but…
“Why is he here? And so worked up already?!”
It was indeed Mitsuki Sarue, and he was gaunt, haggard—a completely different person from the last time they’d spoken. His face resembled a weathered sheet of paper, liable to break apart into little pieces at the slightest prodding. If you let your eyes off of him for a moment, he looked ready to sink through the floor and into the underworld, perhaps taking an unlucky soul or two with him.
“So you knew about Ms. Kisaki getting transferred, Maou?”
That had to be it. Akiko and the crew would know, of course, but how had Sariel sniffed it out so quickly? Did he really know? But if not, what else would make him so depressed?
“Is Ms. Kisaki in here?”
“She came in to tell everyone but then went to the home office for a managerial meeting. She said she’d be back around three or so. But um, about Mr. Sarue…”
What Maou heard next made him doubt his ears.
“She told him?!”
“Rrwwww!”
A groan like the wailing of the dead welled up from the darkness in the corner. Maou and Akiko ignored it.
“I was so surprised, too! But I guess she had a reason to… Like, she said she wanted to do it herself, but she told one of the Sentucky crewmembers instead of telling him directly. She did it that way because there’s this part-timer who apparently knows how to handle Sarue really well, so that’s probably how he found out.”
Someone knows how to handle Sarue? They must have a heart of iron. Maou never heard of the person before, but if they had an employee who could navigate Sariel and live to tell the tale, he really wanted to chat sometime.
“Ms. Kisaki said it’s better to just lay down the law with him early on instead of having him explode afterward, but…”
“‘Laying down the law’ could kill him. If anything goes wrong with this…”
“Yeah. She gave the crew permission to keep their phones on them at all times for today. The office phone is kind of far away, you know, if…stuff happens.”
It was martial law at MgRonald. Nobody could predict what kind of bizarre, perhaps criminal behavior Sarue would engage in once he learned the truth. But in a way, Maou was surprised. If Kisaki was really leaving, he assumed Sarue would be constantly nagging everyone related to her, hoping for some kind of an in. But if he was acting all shocked like this, it at least meant he was in the process of parsing his new normal—a reality where he’d have to be away from Kisaki. (Not that they were “close,” exactly, but still.)
For the time being, it was safe for the crew to assume that the chair in the corner would not be available to other customers the rest of the day. Even if Sarue left, the residual accursed miasma surrounding him might put a hex on whoever sat there next.
“Um, okay. Let me clock in first, and then we’ll talk.”
“Oh, sorry. But yeah, he’s been in here for almost two hours without even lifting a finger, so I think we’re good, but…”
He’s already been like that for two hours ? The sheer devotion struck Maou as simply ridiculous. So he changed the subject, his voice casual.
“By the way, Aki, they turned me down for a manager job.”
Akiko’s eyes widened in surprise. “What? They did?! If they turned you down, who would they possibly say yes to?!”
“I dunno. Nobody else I interacted with during the testing got accepted.”
Come to think of it, Ms. Kusuda, the woman who’d met Maou during the seminar and given him chocolate for Valentine’s Day, had been crossed off at the third round of testing. Nitta, the guy who’d tried to get a party going for the whole crew, was rejected in the final interview, along with Maou. He had chatted with a number of other applicants during the process, but he wasn’t friendly enough with any of them to ask how things had turned out for them afterward.
“Wow… I mean, really…? Now I’m starting to worry.”
“What for?”
“I’m gonna graduate from college next year, so I need to start looking for a full-time job, like Kota. But really, I thought the restaurant business was gonna be easier than this. I figured it’d be a breeze as long as I wasn’t too picky…but if you think about it, there’s no way I could perform like Ms. Kisaki. I feel kind of stupid now, you know? But…wow, they’d reject someone as top-performing as you ?”
“I guess. They didn’t tell me why or anything. So I’m gonna be working here like normal past March, after all.”
“Oh. Well, if you aren’t leaving, then no offense, but that’s great for us, so…” Akiko sighed. “When I didn’t get into college the first time around and took a year off to study, my parents got insanely strict with me. And I know it was my fault and stuff, but… Man, if I have to repeat a year or can’t find a job, my mother’s totally gonna kill me. How can I be more like Kisaki, I wonder…?”
“Nobody can be totally like her. Hey, I gotta change real quick, okay?”
“Ahh, sorry. I’ll leave you alone. But don’t feel too down, okay? The seniors in my classes told me to expect an avalanche of rejection letters, so…”
Akiko, who had unconsciously followed Maou into the staff room, excused herself.
“Finding steady work’s hard for everyone, I guess. I wonder if Kota’s having a hard time…?”
Maou recalled Kotaro Nakayama, another MgRonald long-termer who’d quit a short while ago. College students in Japan generally joined the work-recruitment process at the end of their junior year, in the winter and spring, and Kotaro left MgRonald so he could focus on it. Maou knew it was an arduous process, one in which a student may file applications with dozens, even hundreds of firms.
“I’m sure Kota would laugh at me if he saw me all depressed about this. That or yell at me.”
Maou had been rejected by exactly one company. Why was he so confident, so self-assured, that he’d get his shot with the exact job he wanted and nail it on the first try? Up until now, that kind of luck almost never happened to him. Being rejected wasn’t exactly fun, but the shock had subsided quite a bit. There was no rule prohibiting him from applying again, and there were a million companies besides MgRonald out there.
Compared to Akiko’s or Kawata’s or Kotaro’s, Maou’s résumé—consisting of no college education and a long stream of part-time jobs—didn’t do him many favors. But Maou almost never started something with a decisive advantage. He usually faced adversity the whole way; none of it could be described as smooth sailing, at least not until he had almost finished conquering the demon realms.
“I’ve really gotten soft, haven’t I? If I can’t power my way through something, it really beats on me mentally.”
Whether conquering the demon realms or invading Ente Isla, in the end, it mostly came down to forcing his will on others with his powers. Applying for a managerial post was another story. It involved trying to win someone’s trust through nothing but words and actions.
“I hope I can be patient with this.”
Only with that pep talk did Maou find it in him to assume the guise of Sadao Maou, A-class MgRonald crewmember.
No matter what Urushihara said, Maou felt—for wholly different reasons from before—that working his way up in human society would play a vital role in his future as the Devil King. He could only reveal why to a select few people, but not long from now, he was positive the effort would pay off. He had talked about it with Ashiya many times before; he’d never mentioned it to Urushihara, since he was so chatty and inconsiderate that there was no telling when he’d blab about it. Emi, Suzuno, and Emeralda in particular couldn’t be let in on it until there was no turning back.
That was why, for now, he had to give everything he could to his work.
“Right. First, let’s deal with Sariel. Next I gotta reinspect all the spots I didn’t get around to yesterday, and then…”
He pulled his visor down a little and opened the staff room door. Sariel—the first thing to “deal with”—was still in the corner, wavering in the air like a ghoul from some occult hot spot. Striking up a conversation would be ill-advised; until he did something on his own volition, it was better to let sleeping dogs lie.
Things proceeded smoothly all morning, until the AM crew left after the lunch rush. Everyone was thoroughly ignoring the ghoul in the corner; the regulars took one look at him and assumed he did something to piss off Kisaki yet again. But then, around two PM , when Maou happened to be running downstairs from the café space:
“Are you still feeling sorry for yourself in here?! Hurry up and get back to work already! Do you want me to tell Ms. Tanaka about this?! Ms. Kisaki’s never gonna talk to you again!”
It was a loud, confident-looking woman in a Sentucky uniform. Maou stared wide-eyed at her; she gave him a nod, stepped up to the ghoul, and pulled him away from the darkness.
“And can you please stop using that chair long after you’re done eating? You’re embarrassing me!”
The wraith let the young woman drag him by the collar, along the floor and toward Maou.
“Are you Mr. Maou, the shift supervisor?”
“Yes ma’am…”
“I apologize that Sarue’s being such an annoyance to you. My name’s Kanako Furuya, and I’m a shift supervisor at Sentucky across the street.”
Her eyes, framed by her neatly cut short hair, left an immediate impression. She was clearly strong-willed—and she had to be, or else she wouldn’t be manhandling the worn-out husk of Sariel with a single hand. In terms of her purification skills, and in terms of being broad-hearted enough to accept someone with Sariel’s personality in her life, she had a bright future ahead as a cleric in Ente Isla’s Church bureaucracy.
“Ms. Kisaki told me about her transfer, and I tried to give him the news as easy as I could, but I guess it was just too much of a shock for the man… I apologize for having him occupy your dining space for so long.”
“N-no, um, Mr. Sarue is a valued customer of ours…”
“Well, I appreciate you saying that. We all do.”
Furuya looked exasperated but not at all exhausted. A very strong woman, no doubt. Otherwise, she’d never be able to work under such a moody manager.
“Whew! Finally, Kana to the rescue!”
Akiko, running up to Maou, breathed a sigh of relief.
“Oh, hello, Ms. Ohki. I’m sorry I have to keep fetching my good-for-nothing manager.”
“It’s all right. We’re all used to it by now!”
Akiko and Furuya must have known each other. They said their good-byes, Akiko giving her a flurry of polite bows as she dragged her boss off.
“Well,” Akiko said when Maou asked about their connection, “Kawacchi and I were run pretty ragged during Valentine’s Day, and she was kind of like our war buddy in the trenches.”
On Valentine’s, Maou had been out in managerial training, and Chiho had been too preoccupied with the zirga over on Ente Isla to pay much attention to her work. Sariel was undoubtedly acting like a maniac on that day, fully expecting Kisaki to give him chocolate.
“You know, I actually didn’t hear much about how that day turned out. Anything rough?”
“I was expecting the worst, kinda, but Kisaki did her duty and gave Sarue a little bit of chocolate out of duty’s sake, so it was all good.”
“Kisaki gave Sariel chocolate?!”
It surprised Maou so much that he accidentally used Sarue’s real name, but he spoke it so fast that Akiko failed to notice.
“Ha-ha-ha! Chiho had the same reaction. I could hardly believe it myself!” Akiko looked toward the entrance Kanako just dragged Sariel through and snickered. “I have no idea what kind of unlucky star Sarue was born under, you know? Just a bit ago, he was going around like a Buddhist priest who found enlightenment or something, and now it’s like he’s a vengeful spirit from hell.”
Maou could imagine how the sugary gift would be like achieving nirvana for Sariel. But an angel going from nirvana to the deepest pits of hell was quite a transformation. Which hell that would be—Earth’s or somewhere else’s—was a topic up for debate, however.
“What a pain,” he blurted out.
“Yeah, but at least Kana came to pick him up. Let me cleanse the evil spirits real quick.”
Akiko took up a duster and some alcohol to clean Sariel’s table. Right when she was about wrapped up, Kisaki emerged from the staff room, warily eyeing the dining space.
“Did he show up? Or is he gone already?”
“Good afternoon, Ms. Kisaki!”
“Hey there, Marko. Anything happen here?”
Maou didn’t know if Kisaki could sense the undead or not, but she must have had an inkling, at least. She gave Sariel’s seat a perplexed look, then turned back to him.
“All clear, then?”
“…Yes.”
He didn’t need to have Kisaki spell out her intent. If anything, he felt a little awkward about replying. It implied that she knew a lot more about Kisaki than he intended to let on.
“Well, good job, Marko. I was expecting it to take longer, but you put your foot down, huh?”
“We have to, or else we’ll never get anywhere with him.”
“No, you sure won’t. You’re right.” Kisaki cracked her neck, looking fatigued as she surveyed the space. “With most things in this world, if you keep sweating the small stuff, you’ll never get anywhere… Sorry to ask you again, but you wanna hang out for a quick dinner again after work today?”
“Sure, I’d be—”
He’d be happy to, but then his memory reminded him of something. He had some serious issues left unresolved at home. If anything, he really needed to get over there early this evening.
“…Oh, um, I’m sorry, but I need to be home ASAP tonight.”
“Oh? Sure, that’s fine. It’s nothing urgent anyway. Next time! But if Sarue was in here, how’re our afternoon sales?”
Kisaki sprang right back into business mode—but Maou couldn’t begin to guess why Kisaki was inviting him out after work two days in a row. His mind pondered it for a while after, distracting him from work. After all, the next time he could accept that invite—or any invite, really—depended on the lizard in his apartment.
“Kind of dark out, huh?”
The sky, as seen out the front windows from inside the shuttered dining space, did indeed look unusually dark. It couldn’t have been Sariel turning Sentucky across the street into an undead house of horrors, but when Maou went outside, he found the night sky starless and the temperature unseasonably cold.
“I guess we’ll still see some cold nights for a while, huh? Better head right home after I wrap— Aaaahhhhhh?! ”
As he shut off the automatic doors and stepped out to take all the outdoor displays in, Maou was spooked by a dark presence crouching in the shadows.
“What is it, Marko?!” Kisaki shouted from inside.
“Um, n-nothing! I just tripped on something!”
“Oh! Well, be careful!”
“Okay! …What are you doing down there?”
Maou was still in a cold sweat as he bent down and spoke to the presence.
“…I’m cold.”
“Yeah, I bet. You still need a coat if you go out in Tokyo in March. How long have you been there?”
It was Sariel, of course, in his street clothes and on his knees in front of a row of plants by the MgRonald entrance.
“I finished closing just now, and um, the moment I left Sentucky, my legs gave out on me.”
At least he kept up with his work duties, Maou thought.
“Wow. I guess you’ll just have to freeze to death within the hour, then.” His gaze narrowed pointedly. “You weren’t planning to ambush Ms. Kisaki, were you?”
“Of course not. If I wanted to ambush her, I’d stake out the staff entrance.”
He may have been rotten to the core, but he was still coolheaded enough to just barely avoid committing any crimes. Maou wondered how he did it.
“I finished the workday in utter despair. When I left, the lights of MgRonald looked so warm and inviting. The happy times I’ve spent here floated to my mind before disappearing, so fleeting…and then they would come back, again and again. And as I marveled at this, I found myself unable to move an inch.”
“Can you just go home, please? I know you live close to here. If you freeze to death in front of our entrance, that goes way past just annoying all of us, y’know.”
Sariel was starting to sound like the fairy-tale Little Match Girl. Giving him attention would delay his store-closing duties. Thus, Maou paid him no further mind, making sure to lock the automatic doors once he was back outside.
“Ahh… God…heaven…Earth mother… Whatever should I do…?”
Maou put his hands to his ears, shutting out the weak whisper leaking through just before the doors shut for good.
“…Was that Sarue out there?” Kisaki asked with a grin.
“Yeah. He was going on like the Little Match Girl.”
“Oh. Well, if he’s gonna freeze to death, can you tell him to do it somewhere else?”
Hans Christian Andersen would likely be aghast, but the two of them continued their work without further comment on Sariel. When they left through the back door, all that greeted them were the sights of the city at night. The presence was gone from the front as well; he must have left in the last ten or fifteen minutes.
Once she was sure Sarue was gone, Kisaki gave Maou a malcontented sniff.
“Hmph. You know, I always thought he was a weak man.”
“Pardon?”
“Ah, never mind. Good work today. See you later.”
“Um, sure. You too.”
So Kisaki headed home, not looking particularly scared of Sarue or even particularly tired after a full day of work. Maou watched her for a moment…and then it struck him. As long as he didn’t get violent, Sariel really didn’t matter. He really did need to get home fast, or else he’d put unneeded stress on Urushihara and Camio—and most importantly of all, perhaps even anger their landlord.
Hopping on Dullahan II, Maou pedaled as fast as he could back to the apartment. But when he raced up the stairs and opened the door to Room 201, he just stood there blankly.
“What in the…hell…?”
It was no longer the room he had left that morning.
The morning sun that came a scant few hours later literally exposed the travesty of it all in broad daylight.
The sliding screens were a twisted mess, the paper completely torn off the smashed-up frames. The tatami-mat floor was scratched and mangled beyond repair. More claw and teeth marks were on the wood supports. The curtains were ripped off the wall and pulverized. It was no longer the Room 201 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka Emi and Chiho knew.
“What…happened here?”
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