Hataraku Maou-sama! - Volume 17 - Chapter Pr

OPENING 
There exists a guardian spirit by the name of Asura. A benevolent god from ancient India, he was, through the winding path of history, adopted by Buddhism. In Japan, he was best known in his three-faced, six-armed sanmen-roppi form, as seen in a statue at the Kofuku-ji temple in Nara, which Japan’s government certified as a National Treasure. By extension, sanmen-roppi had become an expression in the Japanese language meaning “someone who does the work of many.” 
And right now, at a MgRonald in the Sasazuka neighborhood of Tokyo’s Shibuya ward, a man was acting as the true embodiment of that term. 
“W-wow… The fries are glowing …” 
They were. Fresh out of the deep fryer, they sparkled like gold ingots, thanks to his handiwork. 
“We didn’t replace the griddle tops, did we…?” 
He had cleaned the clamshell grills that cooked the burgers, polishing them to a like-new shine. 
“This one customer walked in so exhausted, but he was practically skipping out the door when he was done… We didn’t put any ‘special sauce’ on our food today or anything, right?” 
All the customers who’d eaten a certain someone’s value meals left energized, ready to face the day. 
When the staff began tracing the cause of each phenomenon, all fingers pointed toward Sadao Maou, an A-level MgRonald crewmember if ever there was one. 
“Freaky.” 
Everyone who had ever worked a shift at the MgRonald near Hatagaya Station knew that Sadao Maou was dedicated to his job. Today, however, his work ethic was simply off the charts. One moment, you’d see him manning the front counter; the next, he was cooking burgers on the griddle; and by the time they were done, he had the drinks for five different value sets ready. Then, whoosh , he’s got his helmet on as he sprints out for an order delivery—and then he’s upstairs, whipping out his crowd-pleasing coffee in the café space. 
“Is—is my eyesight failing me?” asked veteran crewmember Akiko Ohki, rubbing her eyes. “Because it looks like there are three or four Maous in the kitchen today.” 
“Marko’s using bike number three for deliveries today,” a visibly pale Takefumi Kawata added, “but his gas tank’s still full. He couldn’t have had the free time to fill up…” 
“Yusa, could this be…?” 
And of course, nobody was more concerned about Maou in the kitchen than Chiho Sasaki. Maou, in her eyes, was clearly acting strange. These things went beyond extraordinary and into the realm of supernatural, and they were all happening at once. It made her worry that Maou was tapping into his “real” powers to improve his performance. 
She turned to Emi Yusa—her trusted friend and mentor (even though Chiho had worked there longer), and the only other person at the MgRonald to know Maou’s “secret”—but Emi pensively shook her head. 
“I don’t sense any demonic force at all, no,” she whispered back. 
“It’s not the other thing, is it?” 
“What do you mean, ‘the other thing’?” 
Like a prophet from a biblical tract, Maou was performing miracles. Everywhere he went, there was clean equipment, purified griddles, and customers energized by greasy fast food as if they were eating something trendy from an upscale supermarket. If Maou wasn’t harnessing his demonic force, the only thing Chiho could surmise was that Emi was using her holy magic to engineer this performance for some reason. 
“Look, either way, demonic force is harmful to people. This is all just his ‘human’ self at work.” 
“The human body’s got so much latent potential…” 
“That’s not exactly how I’d describe this.” 
Emi didn’t think it was appropriate to liken Maou’s potential, as a demon from another world, to a human’s. And as Asura-like as his job performance today was, this wasn’t any noble tale of someone gaining superhuman strength in the face of severe adversity. 
Then their boss passed by with a confused expression. 
“Oh, hello, Ms. Kisaki.” 
Mayumi Kisaki, manager of the Hatagaya Station MgRonald, turned her attractive face toward her possessed employee. She frowned. 
“He’s still at it, huh?” 
“Still?” 
“It’d be a miracle to stay that active for even half a day. Look.” 
Her eyes motioned toward the batch of fries Maou had just finished up. Chiho and Emi followed her gaze. 
““Ah…”” 
The basket was glowing a golden yellow a moment ago—but now they were the same old MgRonald fries as always. And the griddles weren’t forged from platinum or anything—they were the well-worn grayish color of stainless steel, like always. The customers were back to normal, distractedly shuffling off after finishing their meals. 
“Wait… What?” 
Then they noticed Maou himself. He looked, to be frank, dulled. Not sick or anything, but dulled. The three-faced Asura was back to the single-faced Sadao Maou—the same as he always was, but compared to his Asura fugue state, it seemed so lackluster. 
And by the time Chiho and Emi’s shift wrapped up at ten that evening: 
“Whoa! Maou? Are you okay?!” 
“You overdid it this afternoon, didn’t you?” Emi scolded, rolling her eyes as Chiho panicked. Their alarm was understandable; Maou barely had a presence in the room. It even seemed like his bright-red MgRonald uniform had faded to a duller color. 
“Oh, hey, Chi. Good job today. I’m fine. Got two more hours.” 
Chiho’s voice restored a little color to his face, but he was still in the danger zone. If he lost his focus, he would deflate like a leaking balloon. 
“Careful on the way home, okay?” he said. “Keep a close eye on her, Emi.” 
“S-sure…” Chiho offered. 
“She’s a lot more capable of defending herself right now than you are,” Emi spat back. 
Maou staggered back to work, not reacting to (perhaps not even hearing) Emi’s sass. 
“What happened to Maou…?” 
“If I had to guess…” 
Emi already had an idea to answer to Chiho’s nervous question. But before she stated it, Kisaki put her hands on both of their shoulders. 
“I’ll watch him, okay? It’s a manager’s job to care for her staff’s work-related stress.” 
She put extra emphasis on the word care as her eyes met Emi’s. 
“…All right. Thanks.” 
“Um, thanks,” Chiho said, raising an eyebrow as Emi turned away. 
“Sure. Take care on the way home.” 
Kisaki followed Maou upstairs. Emi and Chiho watched her go for a moment. 
“Well, shall we?” 
They went out into Sasazuka, the winter air finally beginning to break a bit. The night wind blew against their fatigued faces, making Chiho shiver and Emi sigh. 
“Do you think Maou is worried about Camio?” Chiho asked, looking back toward the MgRonald as she walked. “I sure hope he goes back to normal soon.” 
“Yeah,” Emi replied. There wasn’t much feeling to her voice. Chiho had little to worry about, probably, but in Emi’s mind, the situation was serious for completely different reasons. Serious for Maou, likely serious for Emi, but definitely serious for anyone in Ente Isla at the moment. 
“Man oh man…” 

Up until now, things had been going fairly well for Emi, in a way. This time, though, one false move and she might have a situation there’d be no taking back. 
“If this winds up dictating the trend for our world, that’s gonna drive me crazy.” 
“Marko?” 
Most people are gifted with an instinct that tells them what topic people are about to discuss, based on the timing and tone of their voice. For what was likely the first time since he came to Japan, Maou could sense that this topic was one he wanted to run away from as quickly as possible. He tried his best to form a reply, feeling like a prisoner in front of the gallows. 
“Uh.” 
“I wanted to talk to you about something. Do you have a little time after work?” 
The words sent out from Kisaki’s well-formed lips were nothing like what he expected. 
“………What?” 
“Just an hour-ish is fine. At this time of night… Why don’t we hit that izakaya nearby again? I promise we won’t run into any nosy friends of mine this time.” 
“Umm…” 
Maou was still less than interested, but at least Kisaki had kept it under her hat. She had waited until after Chiho and Emi had left to bring this up; apparently she didn’t want Kawata and Akiko downstairs listening in, either. Still, Kisaki wasn’t done yet. 
“It’s really just this personal thing, you know. Nothing to get worked up about. I just want you to let me buy you dinner and listen to me whine for a while… I’m not making this sound appealing, am I?” 
“Oh, no, um…” It was like she was reading Maou’s mind. “I’m not in early tomorrow, so… Plus, I would have needed to make something for dinner tonight, so I’d actually appreciate that.” 
He meant it, too. 
“Great. After we close, okay?” With a satisfied nod, she quietly retired to the staff room. 
“It’s about that , isn’t it?” he whispered to himself. 
She had called it whining, but that was likely just an excuse to get him to play along. It was very likely about that , actually. But would Kisaki play roundabout games with him concerning it? 
“…Well, if it saves me from having to cook tonight, I’ll play along.” 
No point stewing over it. He had to keep himself together right now, or else he’d be totally incapable of putting in his regular work effort. 
“ …Man , today’s rough.” 
“Hey, Chiho, did you get all nervous when you were taking your high school entrance exams?” 
“Where’d that come from?” 
“Oh, I just mean… You know how the Devil King was acting weird today, right?” 
“Right.” 
“I just thought he’d be on edge since he’s gonna hear if he got picked up for the managerial track pretty soon. I’ve never really been in a situation where I had to wait on a job evaluation, so I was just wondering what it’s like.” 
“Ah… Yeah, it did make me pretty nervous. Based on my practice exams, I knew I had a good shot at getting into Sasahata North. But it wasn’t a slam dunk, either, so I took an exam for another private place, too, as my safety school.” 
“Your what now?” 
Chiho gave Emi a surprised look, before realizing she probably didn’t know the expression. “Oh, um, like a backup choice. A lot of people take entrance exams for two or three schools, just in case they don’t get into their first choice.” 
Emi felt a little embarrassed that she didn’t know the term. It seemed common enough, looking back, although she had never heard of it. 
“Oh. A safe school… It’d be nice to always have a backup like that, huh?” 
“Yusa?” 
Emi seemed a little down to Chiho. Realizing this, Emi tried to sound more cheerful. 
“I mean, like, here I am in this struggle to defeat the kinda-sorta god of an entire planet, but for now I’ve got a lot of time on my hands, you know? So I was starting to think I could start studying a little bit, too, but now the Devil King’s acting funny. And it made me think exams must be really tough, huh?” 
She knew her act wasn’t very convincing, but Chiho seemed to buy it. Her eyes started to sparkle. 
“Wait, you mean you’re gonna go to school in Japan?!” 
Chiho recalled when Emi, a little torn about her future, visited the home of her ex-coworker Maki Shimizu to talk about Japanese universities. 
“Oh, it’s nothing set in stone yet. But once I’m done with all this, I’ll need to start thinking about afterward, you know?” 
Emi’s pace of speech was a little faster than usual. She didn’t know if Chiho noticed. But then Chiho took Emi’s arm and brought it to her face, in a sort of caress. 
“Hey, what’re you doing?” 
“Hee-hee! Oh, I’m just happy for you, Yusa. It’s like you’re starting to move in the right direction.” 
“Oh? What’s that mean? Let me remind you, I haven’t totally divorced myself from my mission to slay the Devil King yet.” 
“Right, right, I knooooow. I think I heard you say you weren’t gonna fight anymore, but…” 
Emi knew she wasn’t convincing Chiho at all. But she said it anyway. Otherwise, it’d feel like Chiho had her wrapped around her little finger, and that peeved her. Nonetheless, Emi didn’t pull her arm away, staying close to her as they walked down the Koshu-Kaido sidewalk. 
“But I also think…” 
That must have been why Chiho’s voice was so clear and crisp in her ears, looming over the sounds of background traffic. 
“…you might be drifting kind of far away.” 
Chiho was perceptive. Behind that simple sentence were layers of consideration. Emi couldn’t be sure of it, but she had the impression Chiho knew exactly why Kisaki had acted the way she had today, as well as why Emi had asked the question she just did. 
She thought she knew…and that was why she pretended not to. 
“Did he do something mean to you again, Chiho?” 
“Nothing more than usual. I’m used to it.” 
Chiho half meant it. Emi laughed in response, making Chiho give her a resentful smile—and so, implicitly, they moved away from the essence of their issues. 
It had all begun yesterday, when a single envelope in the mailbox for Room 201 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka—the postwar-era wooden apartment building in a corner of Shibuya ward—was on the verge of making all the building’s inhabitants wail in unison. 
The envelope was from the Human Resources Department at the Tokyo headquarters of the MgRonald Corporation in Japan. It was addressed to Sadao Maou, and it felt thick and solid to the touch, but inside was nothing but a standard sheet of paper. 
Dear Sadao Maou, 
Thank you for applying for the managerial assignment program at MgRonald. After careful deliberation, we regret to announce that we are not accepting your application at this time. 
Our program accepts only a small number of people from a wealth of applications, and we regret that we could not add you to the program. Nonetheless, we thank you for your application, and we hope that you will continue your outstanding service as a crewmember for a long time to come. 
Sincerely, 
Satoru Kojima 
Employment Agent