THE DEVIL EXPERIENCES A LIFESTYLE CHANGE
It was the next afternoon, the day after the incident that turned Devil’s Castle upside down.
Chiho checked out the scene around the Villa Rosa Sasazuka apartments for just a moment before modestly tapping on the door to Room 201.
She heard someone fumbling around inside as he slowly approached the door.
“Ashiya?”
As she spoke up, the door unlocked and opened to reveal Ashiya’s gaunt face, crow’s-feet cascading below his eyes.
“…Hello, Ms. Sasaki…”
The fatigue was written all over his voice, now completely bereft of his usual haughty resolve.
“Is she okay right now?”
“…She finally fell asleep a moment ago. Come on inside.”
“All right. Thanks.”
They took care to keep their voices hushed as Ashiya closed the door behind them.
Removing her shoes, Chiho stepped inside, then crouched down to gently place the plastic bag she was carrying on the floor.
The rustling of the plastic seemed like an air horn in the silence. Ashiya leaned down on the other side, just as a motorcycle roared down the street outside.
Ashiya and Chiho held their breath for a moment as they turned toward Alas Ramus, napping beneath the shade provided by the bamboo blinds. She remained motionless, in a deep sleep.
The pair breathed a sigh of relief before their faces turned serious once more.
“Here… I bought pretty much whatever I could think of.”
Chiho fished her purchases out of the bag, again taking extreme care not to make any noise.
“Powdered milk… Sugar-free yogurt… And a few different brands of microwaveable baby formula to test out. What did you do for dinner last night?”
“…Crestia gave us some udon noodles yesterday. We minced them up and boiled them with an egg and some ground-up fish. That was soft enough for her to eat. She didn’t have any trouble chewing it, and she can drink water all right, so I think we are safe feeding her human food.”
Chiho nodded slightly as she continued emptying the bag.
“Here are some sterilized wet tissues for cleaning up any accidents. And here’s a children’s toothbrush. Don’t use any toothpaste, though; not until she’s able to spit it out by herself. I got a bottle of mineral water, too.”
“Toothbrush… Ah, yes, we didn’t brush her teeth last night. Why such a small bottle of water, though? How is it different from regular mineral water?”
“It’s a special oral rehydration formula for infants.”
Ashiya’s heavy eyelids blinked at the unfamiliar term.
“It’s hot out right now, right? If she gets dehydrated, you can have her drink this to maintain her salt and blood sugar levels. It’s kind of like a sports drink for little kids.”
“How is it different from the adult version?”
“It’s made so that children can easily digest it. You can make it from tap water, too, but you don’t have a water filter installed, do you?”
Chiho’s eyes turned toward the lone sink in the Devil’s Castle, its barren metal faucet wholly unadorned of any filtering device.
“Tokyo’s tap water is supposed to be a lot better than it was way back when, but that’s not much help if the pipes in your home are old and rusting. She started out as, like, an apple and stuff… I figured she’ll need to have the cleanest water we can give her, so. This is meant for emergencies, though, so we can’t just have her drink this.”
“…I see.”
Ashiya nodded in admiration.
“When you do give her something to drink, put it in this.”
The next item out of the bag was a plastic cup, a large plastic sipper straw sticking out the center of its lid.
“There’s a valve inside the straw that keeps the drink from spilling if you drop it. If she can talk that much, she probably won’t have any problem with this. …Though, do they even have straws in Ente Isla?”
“There were… I believe. It was a human thing; I paid it little attention. Emilia and Crestia would know…”
“Well, if Alas Ramus doesn’t know how to use a straw, try this instead.”
Moving on, Chiho took out a drink box labeled CHILDREN’S BARLEY TEA.
“Does it make any difference whether it is for children or adults?”
“Oh, a big difference. Whether it’s brewed hot or cold, the barley tea sold in stores can be too bitter for children a lot of the time if it isn’t made right. That, and more important, this drink box comes with a straw, so she can use it for practice if need be.”
“Practice?”
“Right. So what you want to do is squeeze the box in the middle so that just a little bit is pushed out the top. That way, the baby will realize that sucking at the straw will make the drink come out. Then she’ll get curious and figure it out for herself.”
“……”
By now, the look on Ashiya’s face was one of awe as he watched Chiho.
“And all the rest of this is diapers!”
Chiho pointed toward a pile of diapers of assorted shapes and sizes.
There was a pull-up type for older children, the traditional kind fastened together with tape, and then a dizzying array of other brands, each apparently boasting its own style and list of materials.
“So you can try these out, one after the other, and use whatever works the best for her.”
Ashiya, accepting the pile of diapers, turned his face away, emotionally overwhelmed.
“I… You… You have been such a tremendous help to us, Ms. Sasaki. I, Ashiya, have no way to express the gratitude I feel for your selfless support…”
“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic!”
“No, I…I mean it. In fact, if you will it, I would gladly recommend you for the position of Chief General of my liege’s regrouped demon forces once he regains his powers within Japan!”
“I’ll…pass on that, thanks.”
Chiho internally questioned what kind of recruitment standards Ashiya had if he was willing to appoint her to the top command in exchange for taking a walk down the baby aisle in the supermarket. It unsettled her slightly.
“Besides, all I did was use some of the money Maou gave me to shop for a few of the things you need. Oh, lemme give you the change and receipt. Could you give this to Maou for me?”
“…Yes. Yes, I most certainly shall. I, Ashiya, stake my very life upon it…!”
Chiho smiled a bit as Ashiya fulfilled his blood promise and accepted the change.
“It was kind of fun, too, so…”
She looked toward Alas Ramus, still sound asleep.
“My cousin on my dad’s side got married, and he’s already had a kid. Whenever I come to visit, I like helping out with him while we’re playing around together. His wife taught me a lot about this kind of thing while we chatted.”
“I…see! Is that how you learned…?”
“Yeah. That, and…um…”
Just as she concluded her trip down memory lane, Chiho suddenly grabbed her left hand, her cheeks glowing red as she hesitated to continue.
“And I… I thought…someday, with……Maou………I wouldn’t mind that…”
“Um, Ms. Sasaki?”
“Huh? Oh, uh, um, um, never mind never mind never…!”
She flailed her hands and shook her head, her face bright red. Luckily, she noticed something that gave her an opportunity to rapidly change the subject.
“Oh, but did Urushihara go somewhere?”
Urushihara, the consummate listless lout, the resident money drain in Devil’s Castle, the angel who fell both from the heavens and commonly accepted standards of cleanliness, was nowhere to be seen.
That, and the desk he was always found crouched over was gone, along with the laptop computer that rested on top of it.
“He didn’t…escape from you, did he?”
Anyone who knew Urushihara would never imagine the man finding a job, or going out shopping, or making any other positive move with his life. Besides, his criminal past meant he was still in no position to walk around his surroundings in broad daylight.
“Pfft… If he had the guts to attempt something like that, do you think I would be as exhausted as I am?”
Ashiya’s temple twitched in time with the edge of his lips. He let out a deep, pensive sigh.
“…As I am sure you could imagine, Ms. Sasaki, the volume and frequency of Alas Ramus’s crying overnight was beyond anything we could have imagined.”
With a newborn infant, being up and wailing half of the night was just part of the package. But for a child who could speak and understand her surroundings to some extent, outbursts like that represented a demand for some particular need.
Family needs forced Chiho to return home that evening. She had no idea what transpired after that.
Judging by the extent of Ashiya’s fatigue, it was hard for her to remain optimistic.
It gave Chiho a chance to recall everything she did witness before she had to leave.
For her (apparent) age, Alas Ramus was picking up on language remarkably rapidly.
That much was clear between “Daddy is Satan” and her fingering Emi as the other side of the couple.
But Emi, after regaining control of her rational thoughts, fervently attempted to prove her innocence, just as Maou had denied everything.
Despite the initial chaos, the other four people in the room never truly thought there was something going on between Maou and Emi. The Hero and the Devil King were like oil and water. Two identical poles on a pair of magnets. They couldn’t…interact, not in the least bit. Alas Ramus’s age level made that particularly and abundantly clear, and more to the point, neither party had any recollection of the events that would’ve been required. It would have led to utter chagrin if they did.
Still, it was only natural that after having been turned away by both of her certified parents, Alas Ramus plunged into a fiery, cacophonous crying fit.
Maou, still bewildered to the core, tried his best to keep the girl serene.
“Hey… Hey, calm down, Alas Ramus. Your mommy and daddy are right here, all right? Me, and that girl over there.”
“Erraaggghhhhh! Satan, Daddyyyyaaahhhh!!”
She was crying and screaming simultaneously out of her tiny mouth, creating a noise akin to the shrieking of hell.
“Oh, man… Hey, what’re we gonna do about this?”
“……”
“Hey, Emi…”
“……”
“…Hey!”
“Agh!!”
Maou clapped her hands in front of Emi’s confused, downtrodden face.
Surprised, she fell to the floor, almost into Suzuno’s hands.
“Mwaaaammmmiiiiieeeee!!”
Alas Ramus, face covered in tears and snot, chose this moment to fly into her arms, shouting.
It sounded like the guttural groan of some enraged beast, but she appeared to be saying “Mommy” as she clung to her.
With no escape in sight, Emi pulled the child upward.
“Weeaaaaannnnngggghhhh!!”
“Whoa, hey, uh…”
With a thunk, she thudded into Emi’s arms. She was heavier than she anticipated.
To a Hero, a crying child seeking companionship was someone who required protection at once.
But this girl? A girl saying Emi was her mother? Emi, elbows bent oddly as she attempted to wrangle the ball of forlorn rage in her arms, had no way to deal with this unimaginable situation.
“What am I supposed to do about this?! …Ah!”
Emi, at her wit’s end, turned her eyes upward.
“…Don’t just stare at me like that!”
There she found the rest of the group watching her with every fiber of their bodies, on the edge of their figurative seats, waiting to see what happened next.
“Uggghh… You people haven’t forgotten already, have you? This child stopped my holy sword without a scratch. She can’t be any regular kind of baby, all right?”
“Yes, Emilia, but stating the obvious will do nothing to improve our lot. Think of this child, this mere babe, seeking out the only mother she knows in life.”
“Bell! Quit lecturing me like an advice columnist! This is your problem, too!”
“Weeeaaaannnnhhh!!”
“You should be happy for this, Yusa! I almost wish I could take your place, even!”
“Yeah, I’m sure, Chiho! Probably for different reasons, too, am I right?!”
“Mrraaaammmmiiieeee!!”
“I told you, I’m not your mommy or anything… Please…”
Signs of resignation began to flash across Emi’s face as she slowly, gingerly, put her hands on Alas Ramus’s shoulders.
For now at least, just to calm her down, she tried lifting her into her arms…and found her much lighter than she imagined, this time.
“……”
It was honestly a shock, how heavy she felt when she jumped on her. And now this.
Her skin and body frame were soft, so soft that the slightest application of force seemed enough to snap her apart. The memory of Emi’s sword meeting its match flew away from her mind as she timidly lifted Alas Ramus. The child latched on to Emi’s chest and turned her face upward.
“……”
Emi looked downward, now fully defeated. A silvery bridge of snot arched between Alas Ramus’s nose and Emi’s shirt, glistening in the light.
“Ngh…snif… Mommeee!”
Even as she quivered and cried, her large eyes sought out Emi’s face, pleading in their young, immature, begging way for protection.
“O-okay, okay… Ugh, what am I gonna do with you…?”
Emi, thoroughly beaten down, gave Alas Ramus her first true full-body hug.
The girl placed her chin on Emi’s shoulder as she clung tightly to her neck and shoulders, the baby fat on her arms soft against her body.
“Ennghh… Mommy…uwahhh…”
The sobs wrung themselves out into Emi’s ear as serenity returned to her face.
It was cute. Less than welcome, but cute. But unwelcome. That was Emi’s honest take.
She rubbed Alas Ramus’s yellow dress calmingly as her eyes turned to Maou.
“So…what’re we gonna do now?”
“What? I dunno, what are we gonna do?”
“I asked first!”
“Not that it matters, but you sure give a mean hug, you know that?”
“…You realize that’s just tightening the noose around my neck, right?”
“Hey, uh, if I could ask a question, how come that girl knew Maou was Satan?”
Urushihara gauged Maou and Alas Ramus.
“I mean, I’m one thing, but Maou as a human looks pretty different from his demon days.”
“Don’t ask me. She smelled my hand just now, but maybe there’s something about that only she could tell, or something.”
“Dude, the only thing she could’ve smelled from your hand was MgRonald fry oil.”
“So what? That smells great!”
It was not exactly the retort Urushihara expected.
“…But, man, I guess we’re stuck with this, huh?”
As he spoke, looking at Alas Ramus, Maou’s face suddenly grew glum.
She was almost out of Emi’s arms before wriggling back into position, grabbing on to her neck. Emi offered Alas support from the bottom in response.
“I know!”
Chiho raised her hand.
“This must be like imprinting, right? She must think Maou and Yusa are her parents because those are the first people she saw.”
Maou shook his head in response.
“It looked kinda that way, yeah, but she wouldn’t have instinctively known my name, too. She said ‘Satan,’ and I know that apple wasn’t around to hear that. Or did she?”
“Oh…guess not.”
“I mean, Satan is a pretty common name to give a demon where I come from, but she just plopped right down here and called me Satan. I kinda doubt she’s referring to anyone else.”
“So…so do you have any recollection of Alas Ramus at all, then, Maou?!”
“Chi, Chi—this isn’t a custody battle.”
Chiho’s sudden obstinacy wore on Maou. Suzuno prompted him to continue.
“It strikes my curiosity to hear that Satan is a common name in the demon realms…but what are you trying to say?”
He nodded in response.
“Well, here’s the simplest theory. Somebody did up Alas Ramus into that protective apple thing and sent her over to me. And…”
“…And whether that somebody’s friend or foe, we should probably expect a visit soon. Right?”
Emi, still holding the toddler, gave Maou a suitably stern look.
“Yep. Pretty much. And I hate to say it, but you’re probably involved in this as much as I am, too. Yet again. No way that girl’s got any demon in her.”
“…Thanks for reminding me. I feel bad for Chiho alone, though…getting her involved in all of this.”
“Don’t say ‘alone.’ How ’bout expanding that to us, huh?”
“W-wait, what do you mean? I don’t get what you mean by ‘Yusa’s probably involved.’”
Emi, in response to the worried Chiho, looked at her right hand, which was currently embracing their tiny, otherworldly visitor.
“This kid stopped my sword. She reacted to me when I had my holy sword out. That much is all I need to know. You remember how Sariel wanted his hands on my sword, Chiho.”
It seemed hard to believe, but the archangel Sariel kidnapped both Chiho and Emi as part of his attack just a few days previous. He attempted to use his Evil Eye of the Fallen to all but rip the sword out of her body.
“Sariel never said why he wanted the holy sword so badly. And no way am I gonna let him have it—not as long as this penniless Devil King lives and breathes. And now, with all those questions still unanswered, we have this kid who could stop a holy sword. It’d be crazy to think that wasn’t related somehow.”
“Hey, stop weaving little slams against me into your long-winded diatribes, all right?”
Emi, ignoring Maou’s observation, turned to Chiho.
“Oh, speaking of which, how’s Sariel been the past few days?”
“He’s gaining a lot of weight.”
Her reply was to the point, certainly.
“Huh?”
“Well, I mean, he’s going to MgRonald multiple times a day so he can see Ms. Kisaki. And he orders a supersize combo every time! I can totally tell Ms. Kisaki’s just acting nice ’cause he’s helping her reach our sales targets. But anyway, you’d be amazed how much of a gut’s starting to show up after just a week.”
Sariel, his mission thwarted by the rebirth of the Devil King, had decided to take his cover story on Earth—as Mitsuki Sarue, head manager at the Sentucky Fried Chicken in front of the Hatagaya rail station—and make it his permanent gig.
Smitten at first sight with Mayumi Kisaki, manager at the nearby MgRonald and Maou’s direct boss, he had now completely forgotten about his mission, and the world of heaven itself. His new goal was to travel to MgRonald daily and make Kisaki his own.
Kisaki wasn’t there all the time, though, leading to some awkward encounters whenever Maou was supervising a shift. But Sariel was resolute. He was willing to take the fall from heaven, as he put it, to make his love for Kisaki a reality.
What was more, despite the rampage of just a week or so ago, Sariel was now almost eerily congenial toward Chiho and Maou. He must have surmised, and oh so correctly, too, that the entire crew was reporting every move to Kisaki.
“…Well. I don’t know if that slopeheaded angel is involved with this or not, but if we get any more trouble, the farther away he is from it, the better. That guy routinely gets in my way, after all.”
“I…I doubt that Sariel is directly related to Alas Ramus, regardless of his past behavior.”
It was Suzuno who interjected.
“He most certainly did not use up his holy magic powers in our previous battle. He remains here by his own free will. If he and Alas Ramus were aware of each other, he would have come to us at once.”
The observation struck a nerve. Unprompted, Urushihara turned on his surveillance webcam, Chiho peeked out the kitchen window to the outside hallway, and Ashiya shot a quick look out the front door.
“Besides, ‘Alas Ramus’ means nothing in the heavenly tongues. It is human—the very language spoken in Ente Isla.”
“Oh?”
“Alas means ‘wing.’ Ramus means ‘branch.’ Both are terms from Centurient, a language used only in Isla Centurum.”
Centurient, literally the “central trade” language, was an international auxiliary tongue created to encourage common standards and trade in Isla Centurum, the central city that linked trade routes from every direction of Ente Isla.
The language was spoken chiefly by politicians, high-level Church clerics, and merchants involved with international trade, but—in theory, at least—it was a common language that would make one understood across the entirety of the world.
“This tells me that there is a set of parents somewhere in Ente Isla, a mother and father who loved their child enough to give her such a deeply meaningful name. Whether they are human or angel, I cannot say. I sincerely doubt she is demonic in origin, but…”
But who named her that, and for what purpose? There was no way to tell. Maou looked on sternly.
“So how ’bout I summarize everything we know? We’ve got this kid, Alas Ramus, whom we know nothing about. And we’ve got no way to respond. We just have to wait for this friend, or foe, or whomever to show up.”
Emi and Suzuno listened on, a rarity when Maou was speaking. Urushihara picked up where he left off.
“Yeah, so basically, that brings us back to the first problem. Who’s gonna take care of the girl?”
For a moment, the thudding truth made all sound, even the whine of the cicadas outside, disappear from Devil’s Castle.
“Did she fall asleep? She’s been pretty quiet.”
Maou noticed Alas Ramus’s head, still resting on Emi’s shoulder.
“…I just hope this little girl isn’t wrapped up in some kind of weird conspiracy.”
With a sigh, Emi patted her back as she rested.
“Kinda too bad, though, huh? If it weren’t for that weird apple shell, she’d just be a normal baby. Wouldn’t you, huh?” Leaning down, Maou lightly pinched one of her cheeks.
Emi winced in dread.
“Don’t do that! We just got her asleep.”
He pulled his arm back as Chiho watched on. It dawned on her that this was looking awfully like the birth of a fully fledged family unit.
“Aww, you really got it good, Yusa…”
It was a pleasant image to behold, but the jealousy bubbling within her refused to stay bottled up. Her cheeks puffed up in possessive rage.
“Chiho, Chiho, your feelings are painted on your face!”
Suzuno managed to pull her from the brink just in time.
Emi, keeping her distance from Maou (who seemed to enjoy playing the weird uncle in this family all of a sudden), sighed again.
“Well, I can’t take her in. I’m a single woman with a job. I can’t watch over her all day.”
“Perhaps, but having another mouth to feed within Devil’s Castle will stretch our finances to bursting. Plus, as three men under one roof, I feel we are ill-suited for the business of child rearing.”
Ashiya fired back briskly. They were three men in a tiny AC-less room, one of whom did little besides eat them out of house and home. It couldn’t have been a less suitable place for an infant to live.
Chiho looked as apologetic as Emi.
“I’m sorry… I really want to help you out, but I don’t know how I could get my mom and dad on my side.”
“There is no need to feel tormented, Chiho. This, after all, is an Ente Isla matter.”
Suzuno placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“Seeing a young, abandoned child go from home to home through no fault of her own would be difficult indeed to stomach. I would certainly not mind taking her in. I am not particularly employed at the moment…and I have experience with great numbers of children from the past.”
Suzuno may have looked about as old as Chiho—younger, even—but considering her career and high post in the Church, she was likely the oldest of all the women.
The rest of the gang never pursued the question, out of an instinctual sense that doing so might threaten their very lives. But given Suzuno’s maturity and Church cleric position, she was clearly the best qualified for the job.
Besides, something clicked with the mental image of Suzuno beavering away at her housework, the trademark headcloth and the apron covering her kimono, Alas Ramus snug in a carrier slung over her back.
It brought expressions of relief to the faces of Emi, Ashiya, Chiho, even Urushihara, despite his total lack of interest in even pretending to care about the kid.
“……”
Only Maou’s face remained clouded.
Things seemed to be settled—a baby somehow linked to the Better Half holy sword, now in the able care of a top Church official—but Maou furtively shifted his gaze among Emi, Alas Ramus, and his own hand several times.
“…Um, Maou?”
Chiho, as could have been guessed, noticed first.
“Is there…something wrong?”
“Yeah, there’s one thing I’m not quite comfy with… Two, actually.”
He turned to Emi, not even giving Chiho a glance.
“Maybe I’m just overthinking things, but…”
Then he brought his hand to his own forehead. Chiho’s eyebrows arched down in confusion over what his aim was. He continued on, whispering as he collected his thoughts.
“…Why didn’t she say ‘Mommy is Emilia,’ too…?”
“Huh?”
Chiho’s eyes opened wide. This was rolling the conversation back quite a long distance. But more than that, it sent an indescribable pang of pain shooting across her heart.
She tried her best to send it packing. She knew “Emilia” was Emi’s real name. She also knew that, to Maou, Emi and Suzuno were enemies.
But a new doubt loomed large in her mind.
“I wonder if the day will come when I’m no longer ‘Chi’ to him…”
She was just a normal teenage girl. No special powers to speak of. The only thing that made her stand out was her knowledge of him and his little clique’s secret.
Ignoring the fact that he had yet to give a straight answer to her confessions of love, when Sariel kidnapped her, Maou referred to Chiho as a “valuable member of my staff.”
That was all it really was, at this point. Whether at work or in his private life, she was just this girl that Maou kept finding himself in the position of protecting.
Her logical self, telling her that she had to be more aware of her place, collided with her emotional self, yearning to be called by name. The two sides squeezed against her chest.
“Hm? What was that, Chi?”
“…Sorry. Nothing.”
Embarrassed at letting her own desires take priority, Chiho edged a step away from the ring surrounding Alas Ramus.
Maou never noticed a thing, of course, as he ruminated for a moment. Then, he unleashed another bombshell.
“Right. So it’s settled. We’ll keep Alas Ramus in Devil’s Castle.”
“…So where’s Urushihara, then?”
Chiho asked a second time as she pondered over yesterday’s events. The reply came from an unexpected angle.
“Ugh, dude, it’s so hot. You got that food ready yet, Ashiya?”
The closet door clattered open, revealing a sweat-soaked Urushihara.
“Oh, hey, you’re here, Chiho Sasaki?”
Chiho was rendered speechless at the suddenness of the scene.
Urushihara had brought his computer, a flashlight, and a small electric fan into the closet. Hopping off the middle tier, he trudged over to the fridge, took out a plastic bottle of barley tea, and returned to the closet.
“Well, uh, make yourself at home, I guess?”
With that, Urushihara—more useless than a Roomba on an ice rink—shut the door.
“…Ashiya…”
“I saw nothing.”
The response was instant, if nearly comatose.
“As long as he remains out of sight, everything is fine. My liege and I took turns attempting to assuage Alas Ramus last night, but her wailing never stopped. Hour after hour, it was ‘where’s Mommy, where’s Mommy’… Ever since last night, Lucifer has spent most of his time in the closet.”
“Well, we can only hope Urushihara dries up and turns into a prune, I suppose.”
Chiho sympathized with Ashiya from the bottom of her heart.
Suzuno was dead set against Maou taking on Alas Ramus at first. But the girl herself, upon awakening, said she wanted to be with Daddy—and with that, Suzuno stepped aside with surprising grace.
She didn’t forget to make one point clear to Maou, however:
“We must respect the desires of the child herself. However! If you do anything that has an ill effect on this infant’s education, I will seize her immediately.”
Suzuno had the strength to back up her threats, given that her holy power was stronger than all three of the demons combined at the moment. That, and she lived next door.
But the real problem here was the “Mommy” factor. Emi, unlike Suzuno, didn’t live within earshot.
Once Emi saw Alas Ramus’s contentment at staying with Maou, she proceeded on with her original plan of going out to shop with Suzuno, reasoning that the most pressing issue had been solved. Alas Ramus, however, quickly showed signs of unrest.
“Mommy, don’t go again!”
Emi was at a lost to respond to the tearful request.
“…?”
It threw Maou a bit as well, but he quickly took an admonishing tone.
“Hey, listen, Alas Ramus… Mommy’s just going out for a while, all right?”
“Going out?”
“Right. Yeah. She’ll be coming back, okay?”
“…Really?”
The child’s pleading gaze made Emi hesitate. Maou, watching from behind, attempted to telepathically communicate Lying or not, just SAY it! to her.
“R-really. I’ll be back soon, all right?”
“Okee. I’ll wait.”
Apart from Urushihara, the sight of Alas Ramus meekly nodding at Emi’s words was like a stake through the hearts of everyone in the room.
After all the hectic events of the day, it was almost evening by the time Emi and Suzuno finally left. Chiho had to leave soon after. That was the last she knew of the situation.
“So Yusa never came back?”
“No, she did, along with Crestia…but that only made things worse.”
“The child’s intention was to sleep together with Emilia.”
The Devil’s Castle door opened to reveal Suzuno, carrying yet another shopping bag.
“Oh, Suzuno!”
“I’ve brought the bento boxes and nutritional drinks you requested, Alciel.”
She curtly offered the bag to Ashiya, who sluggishly leaned over to take it.
“…Do not expect any thanks. How much was it?”
“One gingerspice pork bento from Orion. Five hundred yen. You can have the nutritional drinks. Those were part of my stockpile.”
“……”
Ashiya silently plucked a five-hundred-yen coin out of his pocket, handed it over, then stood up and removed the lid to his bento lunch.
“…I hope you don’t mind if I have some lunch, Ms. Sasaki.”
“Huh? Oh! No, not at all! Go ahead.”
“Hmm? Food?”
Urushihara, smelling out the ginger, opened the closet door just wide enough to stick his face out.
“Silence, wastrel.”
The look on Ashiya’s face, and the tone of his voice, truly befit the terrifying name of Alciel, the Great Demon General who had conquered all of Ente Isla’s Eastern Island in the space of a year. It was enough to strike Urushihara uncharacteristically dumb as he retreated behind the closet door.
“I have to admit, Ashiya, I’m surprised to see you actually shell out the money to get something from Orion Bento delivered.”
Chiho wiped away a tear. The thought of what kind of hell he must’ve gone through if he was too fatigued to even care about keeping frugal with his food budget made her shudder.
“The child’s crying fits last night were grueling to endure. Even with a wall between us, I was woken up multiple times.”
Taking a closer look, Chiho noticed that Suzuno had applied an atypically full array of makeup today.
That was rare. Extremely rare, in fact, given that she usually walked around in public with no makeup whatsoever; last night must have had a serious impact on her. The corners of her eyes sagged low with exhaustion.
“And her fury was even more unrestrained this morning. She made every effort to keep the Devil King from reporting to work. Emilia had left and never came back, so she must have assumed the Devil King would pull a similar escape.”
“Oh, no… But it’s not like Yusa can just stay over all the time either, huh?”
It was easy for Chiho to surmise that Emi would never stoop as low as sleeping on the floor of Devil’s Castle. That’d likely apply even if she wasn’t the Hero and everything.
Emi actually did stay over once, long ago, but what Chiho didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
There was always the option of sleeping in Suzuno’s room, but that presented its own difficulties.
Suzuno had no shower or anything, of course, and she retained only the barest minimum of toiletries in her room. Given the midsummer weather, a bath and a change of clothing would be a must.
But with Emi still making regular stops at her condo in the Eifukucho neighborhood of Tokyo, the public bath in Sasazuka would have been long closed by the time she returned. And there was no way Emi would report to work the next day without bathing.
“Emilia is not without concern for our plight, of course, but it seems that not even she can fend off the vagaries of reality.”
Suzuno produced a mobile phone from beneath her sleeve and showed the screen to Chiho.
It showed a text message from “Emilia” reading:
“I’m sorry, can you take care of her? I’ll show up tomorrow.”
Chiho was less interested in the message than the presence of the phone itself. She gave Suzuno a glance.
“You bought a cell phone, Suzuno?”
“Mm? Ah, yes, yesterday. Emilia taught me a great many things.”
“Oh, wow! Hey, let’s trade numbers while we’re thinking about it! You went with DokoDemo for your carrier, huh?”
Suzuno’s phone was the once-ubiquitous flip-open type, a fair bit behind the times by now.
“N-numbers? Hmm. How does one do that? I think there is some kind of infrared light-gun function that can transmit the number over…”
She tapped away intently at the phone for a few moments, as if controlling a giant robot by remote as it faced off against a city-destroying monster. Eventually, though, she resignedly handed it to Chiho.
“…I apologize, Chiho. I am all too unfamiliar with this. Please perform the required deed for me.”
“Okay, but are you sure you don’t mind me using it?”
“It is quite fine. I have only just made the purchase, and Emilia’s is the only name we added to the directory.”
Chiho, while no gadget genius, figured she had enough phone experience to figure out the basic functions with a little experimentation.
But, as she opened up Suzuno’s phone, she was greeted with a somewhat unfamiliar scene.
Emi used one of DokoDemo’s flip phone models herself, but compared to her model, the text printed on the phone buttons was quite a bit larger.
That, and there were three large, conspicuous buttons, labeled “1,” “2” and “3,” on the very top of the keypad, something Chiho had never seen on her phone, her family’s phones, or any of her friends’ phones.
The clincher, though, was the button on the lower-left labeled “Help.”
“Suzuno, is this…DokoDemo’s ‘Jitterphone 5’?”
Suzuno nodded, her face betraying her surprise. “Good heavens, Chiho! You could tell what model it was with a single glance?!”
“Well…this one, yeah.”
“I had no particular interest in this or that model. As long as I could make calls, I would be content with anything. That, and I have little confidence in my ability to operate machinery, so I requested a type as easy to use as possible. That is what they provided me.”
There was a misguided twinge of pride in Suzuno’s explanation. Chiho decided to put the whole thing behind her.
The TV ads mostly depicted elderly retirees smiling vacantly as they gushed about how easy it was now to nag their grandkids in the big city, yes. But it wasn’t like Japanese law defined a minimum age for Jitterphone owners.
Discovering the IR transmitter on Suzuno’s phone, Chiho lined it up with her own phone’s sensor. In half a second, they had traded contact information.
“And there we go! I sent my phone number to you, too, Suzuno.”
“My thanks to you. My knowledge of telephony before I came here was limited to large, black, rotary-dial models. The instruction manual was so full of unfamiliar terms, I simply wanted to throw my hands in the air!”
Suzuno sheepishly accepted the phone as she spoke.
“…Daddy!”
Everyone in Devil’s Castle shuddered and turned to the source of the interjection.
Alas Ramus, put to sleep just a moment ago, was now stirring, her sleepy eyes gauging her surroundings.
“Grkkk…”
Ashiya, caught off guard, let out a muffled groan as a piece of ginger-spice pork lodged itself in his throat.
“Where’s Daddy?”
Failing to find Maou or Emi among the grown-ups surrounding her, Alas Ramus’s face grew visibly redder as the group watched her erupt into large, globular tears.
“Daaaaaaaddyyyyyyyy!!!”
The explosion followed soon after. Forcing the pork down with a swig of barley tea, Ashiya hurriedly tried to assuage the girl’s fears, but was left to pat her head awkwardly as the firestorm of tears raged on.
“Here, let me look.”
Chiho, the only coolheaded person in the room, brushed the limp Ashiya away.
“…Lord Sariel, do you know at all where that child came from?”
With Alas Ramus clearly in front of them, Suzuno tried striking while the iron was hot.
“Ahh… Joyful indeed, would I be if it were mine…”
It may have been mere ravings from Sariel’s mouth as he collapsed to the ground and wept plaintively, but it told Suzuno all she needed to know. Alas Ramus and Sariel had no connection to each other.
“…Well, so be it. Come to me, my lord, and tell me of your sins.”
She decided to go through with it, in hopes she could extract some other crucial snippet of information in the process. But the dread over what would no doubt be ejaculated from his mouth was giving her a migraine already.
“…All right.”
The voice made Maou and Chiho twitch a bit as they stood side by side, the dread over the upcoming lecture forming knots in their stomachs.
“How old is she?”
But Kisaki’s first question was quite unexpected. Maou’s manager was cradling Alas Ramus, her experienced arms gently bouncing her up and down.
Maou and Chiho glanced at each other.
“I’m guessing about three… No, she’s smaller than that, actually. A little less than two, maybe. Hmm?”
“Um. Y-yes… I think so.”
“You think so? You didn’t ask her parents how old she is?”
He would have loved to if he could, but there was no way to ask, since her parents were incommunicado.
“…Well, I guess if you asked me how old my niece was, I wouldn’t be too sure about that, either. But it’s a lot easier to remember what grade in school they’re in for some reason, you know?”
But Kisaki dropped the line of questioning, using her own experiences to reach a conclusion instead.
“But anyway, relax. I’m not gonna yell at you guys or anything. Not in front of this girl.”
Anyone able to relax in that situation would be a rare talent indeed.
“Now, just so we’re on the same page here, this is definitely not your kid, right?”
“No! Not at all! …It’d be kinda nice if it was, but…”
Kisaki refused to let Chiho’s descent into reverie slide.
“You’re free to think whatever you want, Chi, but there’s a time and a place for everything, okay?”
The force behind her reproach, delivered as it was from a smiling Kisaki as she cradled the girl, was still enough to make even the Devil King whimper.
“So you two… You aren’t a romantic couple right now, correct?”
“C-correct.”
“I, uh, right.”
Chiho dared a peek at Maou, nodding only after he gave his instant agreement.
Kisaki smiled wryly at her young employees’ responses.
“Did you think I was going to punish you for bringing romance, or your family or whatever, into the workplace? I mean, really, if you guys were a couple, we wouldn’t need to have this little talk right now.”
“Um?”
Maou gurgled the barest of responses to this unexpected left turn.
“I don’t care if you asked Chi for help, Marko, or if Chi asked you first. But lemme ask you this. Have you ever thought about what it looks like to people, a girl who’s still in high school regularly visiting a man’s house to help care for an infant?”
Neither lecturee could hide their surprise at the way this talk was going.
“But…but Maou doesn’t have anyone else he can ask. He didn’t even really have any stuff…”
“Maybe you…don’t understand quite yet, Chi. People… They can be shallow, you know? They can jump to conclusions, and they can spread all kinds of things before you even know it. And, sadly, you can’t fight that. Because there’s nothing ‘there’ to fight.”
“……”
“!!”
Chiho was about to say something just as Kisaki’s eyes turned to Alas Ramus. Maou stopped her just in time.
Whether she noticed it out of the corner of her eye or not, Kisaki’s finger was lightly rubbing against Alas Ramus’s cheek. The girl laughed excitedly.
“You smell like Daddy!”
“Oh? I do, huh?”
Both manager and child warmly basked in the experience.
“Young people can be a shallow a lot of the times, too. They hear me talking, and they’d probably say something like ‘The world doesn’t understand us!’ But you guys didn’t, and I have to praise you for that.”
Placing Alas on one knee, Kisaki placed a bracing hand on her stomach, then gently spun around on her chair. The child gleamed once more.
Looking on, Maou took his hand away from Chiho and spoke solemnly.
“I…I don’t think I know enough about the world to be able to say that.”
With a squeak, the chair stopped cold. Kisaki lifted the smiling Alas Ramus into the air.
“Wheeee! Yaaaaa! Ha-ha-ha!”
The girl rollicked to and fro, clearly excited.
“Well, if you can say that, you’re at least half a grown man.”
Kisaki returned the toddler to Maou, looked at the break room clock, and shrugged.
“You can go ahead and take off, Marko. It’s still a little early, but if it’s gonna stay this empty, we’re not gonna miss one crewmember too much.”
“But… I really…”
“You’re this kid’s ‘daddy,’ aren’t you? Then quit worrying about another hour’s wages and start worrying about the time you spend with her. I’ll see what I can do about your request for more hours, too.”
With that, Kisaki readjusted her crew cap and strode out of the break room.
“…More hours, Maou?”
Chiho was in the dark.
“Hey, a man’s gotta work. I’ve got dependents now. If this keeps up, I might have to send her to school sooner or later.”
Maou lifted Alas Ramus as he spoke, his tone making it difficult to discern how serious he was being.
“So…you’re really going to take her in?”
“Well, not take her in, exactly.”
Maou gave Alas Ramus a poke or two on her forehead.
“I just figure I’ll watch her until I get some answers to my questions. If her parents ever show up, I’ll be first in line to hand her over.”
Come to think of it, Maou had seemed oddly fixated on the girl’s forehead while the gang was arguing over what to do with her.
“You know, Chi… You told me your mom and dad were cool with you coming over to my place, right?”
“…Yes.”
Chiho’s body tensed up.
She knew that Maou gave Kisaki a great deal of respect—as a manager, and as a full-fledged member of society. Ignoring the question of whether this was a sound decision for a Devil King to make, there was every chance that their boss’s advice could change the way he felt about Chiho.
“I want to keep what Ms. Kisaki said in mind from now on…and that’s why I need to ask. Would you mind if I…took advantage of that trust in me for a while longer?”
“N… What?”
Chiho, fully prepared to have Maou tell her to stop playing babysitter, stared upward, eyes agleam.
“Things are still relatively peaceful right now, but…you know, Emi and Suzuno are still technically against me, so… Right now, here in Japan, if you asked me who’s the guy I feel safest in fully relying upon for something… Well, you’re about it, Chi.”
“……”
“And I know it’s kinda unfair to say this without ever giving you an answer to that question, Chi, but…and I know it’s gonna be a pain in the ass sometimes…but if you can help me out, I’d really appreciate it.”
“……”
“…Chi?”
Chiho stood agape for several moments. Long moments.
“…Hey! Hey, why’re you crying?! Chi, I… Hey! Did I offend you or something?!”
A single tear streamed down her face.
Maou flailed in panic over how to respond. Chiho, perhaps only noticing the tear after Maou pointed it out, calmly took out a handkerchief and wiped it away.
“Oh…I’m sorry. I, I just… I’m kind of happy, so…”
“No, I’m sorry! My bad, okay? I’m older than you; I mean, I’m the Devil King, and I’m still relying on you for everything… Wait, what?”
“I’m happy to hear that. I’m happy to know that you’re relying on me, Maou.”
“Huh? Ah? Eh? Happy… What? So why’re you crying, then?”
The question mark on top of Maou’s head ballooned in size as he took in Chiho’s smile.
“Hee-hee… I apologize. This is just how human beings behave.”
“Well, it makes no sense at all to me. I mean…”
“I know that you can’t give me an instant response. I’m prepared to wait as long as you need, and I don’t care what you say to me in the end. So…”
Chiho took Alas Ramus’s hand, pushing back the tears that threatened to fall once more.
“Chi-Sis?”
“So I’ll do whatever I can to help, Maou.”
“R-really? Uh… Well, thanks. And sorry.”
“You got it!”
Now Chiho was flashing a smile, the best one she could muster. At a loss as to how to respond, Maou turned his crew cap downward to hide his face.
“Hey, Marko, could you open that drawer and get that—”
Kisaki chose that moment to suddenly burst back in the room.
“!!”
Her eyes arched upward as Maou and Chiho instantly froze into statues.
“…Ugh. Guess I better stop hiring women for a while.”
There was no way to hide from her. Equal opportunity employment laws did not apply under the Constitution of the United States of Kisaki. She stalked angrily toward the break room desk, removing an envelope from one of its drawers.
“I got these as a newspaper subscription freebie, but I don’t have any use for them, so I figured I’d give ’em to you instead.”
With a sigh, Kisaki sized up Maou and Chiho.
“You do understand what I just told you both, right?”
She perched the envelope on top of Maou’s head. Her work done, she left the room.
The pair sighed deeply once the door was closed. Chiho plucked the envelope off Maou’s head. The two of them watched intently as she opened it, revealing…
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