THE DEVIL STRONGLY DEMANDS TV PRIVILEGES
People called the structure “the Manor of Roses.”
Since time immemorial, the rose has signified beauty, its proud petals garnering it the love of each era’s powerbrokers, its place in the annals of time and song firmly ensconced.
Under the name of this queen of flora, the manor, along with its equally elegant and beautiful, benevolent overlord, has quietly woven a tapestry of history over the long years, evolving into a place of solace—one worthy for the great leader they called King to come and rest his weary bones inside.
With its sanctified master and royal guest, the manor’s past was just as refined and everlasting as that of the red rose itself. Perhaps it was only natural that the angels themselves, the subject of worship and adulation from all mankind, occasionally deigned it with their presence.
But, despite it all, the Manor of Roses was still an earthly structure. As a reception hall for the divine and heavenly, its confines occasionally proved a mite cramped.
In fact, when last greeted by the awesome light of an angel, the rosy paradise within its walls was marred slightly by an enormous hole gouged into one wall, marking a potentially final twilight to the King’s solace.
The King looked up at that wall, the one so helplessly disfigured not long ago. “Feels like we’ve been out here a lot longer than we actually were.”
The King’s servant, standing faithfully next to him, was equally transfixed by the sight. “It was not long at all, my liege. We barely worked half the time we planned for.”
The cadger that the King reluctantly allowed room and board also chimed in, listlessly: “No complaints from me, dude. Now I don’t have to deal with the outside world ever again!”
The cleric, inhabiting the room adjacent to the King’s, expressed a profound solemnness instead: “Wherever you hang your hat is home, as they say…and this is starting to look rather homey again, indeed.”
The King’s able work assistant regarded the manor with admiring eyes: “I’m pretty amazed they patched the whole thing up in four days, though.”
The King’s enemy ruefully observed the proceedings: “This is crazy. That hole was enormous, and in the space of four days, it’s gone without a trace?”
The child who mistook the King and his foe for its parents asked the King a question: “Home all bedduh?”
“…Well, look—I know we all got our own personal takes on this, but there’s one thing I seriously wanna ask my landlord.”
The Manor of Roses, aka Villa Rosa Sasazuka.
Beholding their two-floor, sixty-year-old wooden apartment in the Sasazuka neighborhood of Tokyo’s Shibuya ward, Satan, the Devil King who once plotted the wholesale subjugation of the faraway world of Ente Isla—currently doing business as Sadao Maou to you and I—could barely hide his anger.
“Why’d she make us cart all our crap out of there, anyway? ’Cause everything’s the exact same as before!”
“There” referred to Room 201 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka, the “Devil’s Castle,” which was recently ventilated in unplanned fashion by a death beam from the archangel Gabriel.
In the space of just a few days, the cramped, one-room Devil’s Castle looked exactly as it once did—another dilapidated apartment in a lonely corner of Sasazuka watching time pass inexorably around it.
Sephirot is the tree of life. The Sephirah, the treasured jewels it bears, each contain one aspect of the world’s core composition. Yesod was one of them.
Alas Ramus, the personification of one of Yesod’s fragments that fused herself with the Hero Emilia’s holy sword Better Half, became the subject of a pitched battle against the archangel Gabriel the other day. The end result was a hole in the wall that brought the structural integrity of Villa Rosa Sasazuka into serious question, although it was an open question as to whether or not any of the neighbors could tell the difference. The residents were forced to leave temporarily while repairs were completed.
Crestia Bell—the cleric who occupied the room next to Devil’s Castle and called herself Suzuno Kamazuki in this world—had some crash space in the apartment of one Emi Yusa, the name the Hero Emilia took on for her new life in Japan. But Maou, temporarily out of a job already due to workplace renovations, was also out of his home.
Thanks to the machinations of his landlord, Miki Shiba, however, he managed to snag a seasonal position at a beachside snack bar and souvenir shop run by Miki’s niece. Accompanied by Shirou Ashiya (aka the Great Demon General Alciel) and Hanzou Urushihara (aka the not-at-all-great fallen angel Lucifer), Maou trundled himself off to the coast of Chiba prefecture.
Following soon behind him, as if magnetically attracted in some cosmic fashion, were Emi, Suzuno, and Chiho Sasaki—mild-mannered teen and the only person in Japan who knew Maou’s and Emi’s true identities and the world they both came from.
The summer job, to put it mildly, did not go as expected. Following the arrival of the Demon Regent Camio—whose wings Maou had entrusted the demon realms to in his absence—the group learned of monumental events unfolding both in Ente Isla and in Maou’s former domain, as well as some of the darker secrets that lurked around the lesser-explored reaches of Earth itself.
And—the most important thing to Maou at the moment—the beach house he was expecting to work at for two or so weeks went out of business, and also out of existence, in the space of just over four days.
Between Maou, Ashiya, and Urushihara, the household managed to scrounge up enough pay to more than cover what Maou himself had expected to earn in half a month. But the sudden reintroduction to unemployment was nonetheless difficult to bear.
The partitioning of the demon realms that Camio came to warn him about, and the battle between Ente Isla’s peoples over Emi’s Better Half sword, weighed heavily on the hearts of both Hero and Devil alike.
It was starting to become clear that Olba Meiyer—Emi’s former traveling companion, Suzuno’s boss, and top-level cleric in the Church headquartered on Ente Isla’s Western Island—was starting to take action behind the scenes.
If anything else negative happened to Maou and his cohorts in Japan at this point, he wasn’t sure how he’d put food on the table next month.
That was how things stood in this, the first week of August—a day Maou had expected to spend in Ohguro-ya, serving ramen and yelling at kids to stop tracking beach sand into the shop.
“’Kay, let’s do it, Ashiya.”
“Yes, Your Demonic Highness. Do not misguide us, Urushihara.”
“Dude, all right! Just watch your step, okay?”
A fairly humble set of boxes and kitchen appliances were lined up in Villa Rosa Sasazuka’s front yard.
They needed to bring them back into their room, but once he realized the moving company charged an extra fee for lugging large furniture upstairs, he refused to allow the mere thought of it.
So here they were, Maou tugging at the refrigerator from above, Ashiya pushing up from below, and Urushihara providing verbal guidance from the ground.
Considering the number of times the bearer of the Holy Sword had plunged down these stairs, attempting to cart heavy machinery up them required more heroism than even a Hero could likely muster at this point.
But, to a man, the King of All Demons and his faithful Great Demon General agreed that, if they were to someday enslave the entire world and all who lived and breathed within it, they were gonna have to get that goddamn fridge up there sooner or later.
Chiho craned her head out of the Devil’s Castle’s second-floor door, located at the top of the stairs.
“I’ve gotten the apartment pretty much tidied up…but be careful, okay, guys?”
The lighter things—the clothing, the modular shelving, the dishes and such—were already inside and mostly in place, thanks to Chiho’s volunteer work. But she wasn’t expecting Maou and his friend to actually attempt the heavy stuff themselves. The worry was written across her face as her eyes wavered at them.
“Will you be quick with it? You are blocking my right of way.”
Suzuno, meanwhile, turned her irritated eyes upward, offering the demons nothing in the way of pity.
Unlike Maou, her room was laden with furniture and appliances, from the stately wooden chest that held her Japanese-style wardrobe, to the family-sized fridge that was clearly overkill for a woman living alone, to the expertly crafted mirror stand with the cherry-blossom motif. If any of them broke, the mental anguish would almost certainly be far beyond anything Maou could ever drum up for his own junk.
But she, too, breezily refused the movers’ offer to carry it all upstairs.
“The men here will help me,” she said as she shooed them off. The men would have to bring it all up, starting with the much smaller fridge in Maou’s room.
“Goooo, Daddy!”
A little ways away, Emi watched the scene with Alas Ramus in her arms, looking more bored than enthralled.
This was, in all likelihood, a job too delicate to ask Emi to lend a little holy power to.
And—more to the point—common sense dictated that there was no way these two women could have hefted up all of Suzuno’s possessions by themselves.
Was this their way of making Maou pay for them saving his hide back at Ohguro-ya?
The mere thought of what would happen if he let any of this premium-looking furniture slip and break in his hands made a chill wind blow across Maou’s heart.
“My liege! Why are you just standing there?!”
Realizing Maou was off in his own little world, Ashiya angrily stirred him to action.
“Oh! Sorry. I got it, I got it. Keep it up on your end… Hooph!”
Climbing a few steps, Maou lifted the fridge a few inches off the stairway on his end.
“Here we go… Hnnngh!!”
Grabbing the handles on either side, Ashiya devoted every fiber of his being to pushing the heavy box upward a single step.
“Put the right side up a little, Ashiya. You’re gonna scrape the corner. Okay, good!”
As Urushihara scurried around below the stairwell, directing the action from multiple angles, Maou and Ashiya cagily changed position just enough to finally achieve the Herculean task of climbing one step.
They were already covered in sweat.
“Whew! All right! We went up!”
“Y-you sure did! Just keep that pace up for twelve more steps!”
“All right! I’m going up another one! One, two, and…!”
“Harrnnghhh!!”
“Maou, it’s gonna hit the wall!”
Screek, whack, thump.
Step by laborious step, the Devil King and Great Demon General pooled their powers together as the refrigerator gradually ascended to Devil’s Castle.
“Hang in there, Maou!”
Chiho cheered on from above.
“Dude, three thousand yen more and we wouldn’t be going through any of this…” Urushihara groaned down below.
“For once, I actually agree with Lucifer.”
Emi sighed as she watched her two archnemeses attempt to will the weight upward by sheer mental force, the refrigerator bobbing precariously in their hands. She turned to Suzuno’s furniture.
“You aren’t seriously gonna make those guys help you, are you, Bell?”
Suzuno shook her head.
“I very much doubt that, no. If Chiho would be kind enough to spot for me, I can handle this much by myself.”
If two grown men were being creamed by a fridge nobody could ever describe as particularly large, how could a spindly-armed, small-sized woman handle an industrial-sized model alone?
“Yeah, true.”
But Emi didn’t betray a sliver of doubt.
After an extended battle, though, Maou and Ashiya finally managed to ferry their refrigerator up to the second floor walkway without dropping it once.
In the early August heat, this attained for them the appearance of two lemons with the juice squeezed out of them.
“Duuuudes? We still got the washer to do, remember? No resting yet.”
Urushihara’s voice from below was ominous.
“Almost there, Maou! You hang in there too, Ashiya!”
As always, Chiho remained the pair’s sole ally in the affair.
“Hey, Chi, can you bring some flattened boxes over?”
She came back with two broken-down boxes, borrowed from a nearby supermarket by Ashiya to pack their clothes in.
“Ashiya, bring it up a little bit… Okay. Put this back there.”
The feet of the refrigerator dug into the cardboard on the walkway.
“Okay, I’m pulling it in. One, two…”
With that, he began dragging it up to the front door, using the cardboard like a sled to avoid damaging the bottom panel and/or his floor.
After a few moments, the two of them were in front of Room 201 once more, summoning whatever fumes of strength remained to lift the fridge over the door frame and place it in position.
The moment they plugged it back in, it began whirring happily, defiantly generating cold air in the face of the sweltering malaise around it.
“Whew. Well, we didn’t break it…”
Maou gave the door a tender caress and turned toward his sweltering shell of a companion.
“C’mon. We got the washer next. Emi and the rest’re gonna yell at us if we stop.”
“Y-yes, my…my arms are shaking…”
Ashiya wiped the sweat from his brow as he turned to leave the room. He didn’t get far.
“Agh! S-Suzuno?!”
He heard Chiho shouting from the walkway, accompanied by the sound of something heavy thudding against the wooden floor.
“What’s up, Ch…i?”
Maou refused to believe what he saw.
The Devil’s Castle washer, until just a moment ago, was sitting on the front yard downstairs.
Now it was poised next to the drain outlet along the outer wall.
Next to it stood an utterly astonished-looking Chiho, along with Suzuno, her face cool as she held her hands outward.
“At your pace, the sun will set before we are done.”
Her voice was cheerful, her eyebrows low against her slightly damp forehead.
Maou and Ashiya, faces peering out the doorway, looked at the washer, then Suzuno, then back at the washer.
“Y-you did that…by yourself?”
“Yes. What of it?”
“‘What of’… I mean…”
Maou’s mouth hung open, unable to string any more words together. Ashiya instinctively hid his quivering arms behind him.
Neither of them could imagine Suzuno, the gangly-armed, flappy-kimono-clad little woman in front of them, lifting up a washing machine by herself and tugging it up the Villa Rosa Sasazuka stairway.
“S-Suzuno just… It was just, like…zoop! Just, ‘up we go’!’”
Chiho, in a rarity for her, had trouble finding her words as well.
“There is nothing that surprising about it, Chiho. To Emilia and me, the feat is hardly of special note.”
Walking past the dumbfounded masses, Suzuno went back downstairs, her wooden sandals clacking the whole way.
Urushihara was there, eyes just as saucerlike as the others’, and as he watched on, Suzuno approached her own refrigerator…
“…Oof!”
And hefted it up like a piece of packing foam.
“Devil King! Alciel! Bell can’t walk down the hall if you keep standing there! Get outta the way!”
The two dumbfounded demons obediently shuffled back into their room at Emi’s guidance.
Chiho edged back, little by little, at the refrigerator bobbing its way upstairs.
“Excuse me, Chiho. Would you be able to open my door?”
“Um…okay…”
The refrigerator gave a polite bow as it entered Room 202, a small woman in a kimono following behind.
“Hey, you know…”
Maou muttered to himself as he watched on.
“When she first came here, she was carrying that huge box of udon noodles around like that, too, wasn’t she?”
“Perhaps she is rather more…MMA material than she looks, my liege.”
“I can hear you! Such insensitive demons!”
Suzuno popped out of Room 202, her embittered face stopping the hushed conversation in its tracks.
“It is a simple application of holy magic to my muscular structure. Surely you were not unaware of such power.”
“N-no, but…”
Holy doping, in other words. Though not as blatant as Emi’s Heavenly Fleet Feet magic, perhaps, given how that let her freakin’ fly.
It was originally casted by Church-affiliated doctors and the like, harnessing it to boost patients’ strength during treatment and ensure their safety during intricate operations.
This wasn’t a case of “if a little is good, a lot is better,” though. Attempting to infuse more holy energy than a subject was capable of retaining was a waste of strength, and a single misstep in the related incantations could have adverse side effects as well. You couldn’t use it to, say, turn a common foot soldier into a musclebound behemoth.
It would take someone like Suzuno, a high-level cleric and wielder of the Light of Iron warhammer, to toss holy energy around like that.
Taking this power, one revered as a miraculous blessing from up high in Church culture across the Western Island, and using it to move household appliances upstairs made Maou wonder a bit about where this cleric’s priorities were these days.
“Wait, can’t you do that, too, Maou? With your demon hocus-pocus and stuff?”
“Not anymore, he can’t. If he could, he wouldn’t have nearly drowned in the sea back in Choshi.”
Emi sneered upward, her right hand holding Alas Ramus and her left easily holding up Suzuno’s microwave.
Maou sneered at her, but:
“Daddy looks all mean!”
Alas Ramus’s guileless observation made him drop the retort and heave a sigh instead.
“Alas Ramus is so gonna resemble her mother someday…”
“What’s that mean? What’s wrong with that?” Emi didn’t let Maou’s lifeless parting shot go unnoticed while Urushihara sidled upstairs and walked toward Devil’s Castle.
“Means what it sounds like. None of us live in that big a place, shouldn’t you keep her from listening to all that trash talk?”
Emi wanted to bite back at Urushihara, but he had a point. She sheathed her verbal sword, choosing to seethe at the demons upstairs instead.
Alas Ramus was about the only subject Urushihara treated with any level of seriousness. Both Emi and the rest of the gang found that offputting.
“W-well, okay, but that just means Maou used up all his power to keep Japan safe! You know?”
Ashiya nodded sagely. “Well put, Ms. Sasaki. So very understanding!”
“And you said it yourself, right? You said you were partly responsible for the whole Malebranche thing.”
“Ngh…” Emi fell silent at Maou’s point.
“So it’s partly your fault, too, that we had to spend all afternoon lugging our crap up here!”
“Are you crazy?! That’s something totally different!”
“No, it’s not! Besides, you guys have, like, some kind of ‘infinite holy power’ cheat going on all of a sudden! Which strategy guide did you pick that trick up from? When we use our force, we tend to go through a lot of it fast, all right? Think about that a little!”
The Devil’s Castle denizens were still unaware of the existence of 5-Holy Energy ?, the heaven-blessed energy shots Emeralda Etuva—Emi and Suzuno’s friend on Ente Isla—was sending them a steady supply of.
“So? Wouldn’t that make you feel sad at all? Using your demonic force on something like this?”
“Oh, what, Suzuno can but I can’t? Besides…”
“Anyway!!”
Just as Maou and Emi were about to embark on another of their pointless verbal tirades against each other, a paulownia-wood dresser stepped in between them.
“You are both in the way.”
“Oh, whoops.”
“S-sorry.”
“And not to parrot Lucifer, but it is said that a child exposed to its parents’ verbal sparring faces developmental issues later on in life.”
The oddly talkative dresser floated between the stunned Emi and Maou, lightly whizzing its way into Room 202.
“R-right! So let’s just get along, okay?”
Picking up on the thread Suzuno left behind, Chiho spoke up, either failing to correctly read the atmosphere or reading it all too well.
“……”
Maou and Emi gave each other an awkward stare and turned their backs, attempting to end it there.
“Mommy, Daddy, no fighting!”
But in the end, it was Alas Ramus’s completely carefree intervention that marked the real finale to the great Devil’s Castle / Suzuno Move-In, despite how uncomfortable everyone felt about it afterward.
Maou surveyed the room once more.
“…Man, though. It’s all exactly the same.”
Sitting around the low table in the middle were Maou, Ashiya, and Chiho. Urushihara had taken position in front of the windowside computer, hydrating with a glass of cold barley tea.
Emi, Suzuno, and Alas Ramus were having tea of their own in Room 202. The idea of everyone stopping in Suzuno’s place for dinner self-imploded sometime during the afternoon.
With all the people walking in and out on a regular basis these days, four people in Devil’s Castle almost made the place seem empty.
“Not exactly, Your Demonic Highness.” Ashiya pointed out the kitchen sink. “They fixed the leaky kitchen tap. No matter how tightly I closed it, there would still be a drip. It was driving me up the wall, so I am enormously grateful for it.”
“…Oh.”
That was the only answer Maou had. It was hard to tell how serious Ashiya was being.
“Don’t you think they repainted the walls, too? They probably had to, with the hole and everything,” Urushihara added.
“Hmm? Really?”
“Rilly rilly. I think it was a lighter shade of green before, but now it’s more lime colored, you know? They must’ve repainted it to match the new wall.”
“Huh… I didn’t notice.”
Chiho was right. It seemed like the indoor walls were a little more brightly colored than before.
“Well, the rent ain’t going up, so it’s not like I was expecting too much.”
“Oh, absolutely! I want you guys to stay nearby for a while to come, so I wouldn’t like to see your finances suffer, either.”
Chiho phrased her reply to sound like a perfectly natural rejoinder to Maou’s statement. Still, it jarred him.
“Why’s that, Chi?”
“Huh? Well, I mean, if you had to go someplace farther out instead, I wouldn’t want that, you know? In fact, I thought that was what’d happen just a few days ago. I was kinda scared!”
“Well, I’m not going anywhere. Not like we got anyplace to move to. Or the money for it.”
Ashiya nodded his agreement to Maou’s humdrum reply.
“…Well, good.”
The “That’s not what I meant” was loaded up in Chiho’s mouth, ready for deployment. But she never quite pulled the trigger.
“…It’s always the main dude involved who notices last, huh?”
Urushihara, ever attentive to the conversation (although he rarely betrayed it), nobly sat up and checked the battery level on his laptop.
It must have been time for a recharge. He plucked the charger cable out of a nearby box and connected both ends to the computer and the wall.
Then he noticed something unfamiliar.
“Huh?”
Every room in Villa Rosa Sasazuka had five electrical outlets—two in the kitchen for the fridge and microwave and so on, one on the outside for the washer, and two general-purpose plugs on the wall facing the backyard.
Urushihara normally reserved one of the general-use ones for his PC stuff, but in addition to the usual two sockets on the wall panel, there was another connector.
Before its recent renovation, this outlet had been blocked by a pair of tiny screws, preventing its use. No one gave it much notice, since no appliance in the Devil’s Castle needed it. But now, before Urushihara’s eyes, the connector had transformed, a wholly different beast from back in the pre–Ohguro-ya days.
“Hey, is this…”
It was a round connector.
The screws were gone. In its place, a round, white protrusion with a few pinholes bored in it.
The next moment, something went off in Urushihara’s mind.
“Dude, no way!”
The sudden exclamation made Maou, Ashiya, and Chiho turn toward him, eyes wide.
Urushihara ignored them as he practically flew out the door.
His voluntarily leaving the room was akin to Jabba the Hutt leaving his crime lair and becoming a triathlete, but before Maou had time to comprehend what was going on, Urushihara was down the stairs and looking up at the apartment’s roof.
What he saw convinced him for good.
“There it is…!”
When he returned, his face was so stern that the other three, still clueless, all thought it best to wait for Urushihara to open his mouth and explain.
It wasn’t long before the purple-eyed fallen angel stirred.
“Maou, this is nuts.”
Maou gulped unconsciously.
Then, giving them a look sincerer and more diligent than anything they had seen, Urushihara proceeded to floor the Devil King and his faithful general with one stroke.
“Villa Rosa Sasazuka’s…got an HD hookup!”
A beat. Chiho failed to see why Urushihara found this so urgent.
It was not the case for the other two.
“Uh?”
“Wha…?”
Then, in unison:
“Whaaaaaaaat?!”
“Agh! Ow, guys!”
“What is all that racket?! Do you want to wake Alas Ramus?!”
“What’s going on? Someone attacking us?!”
The demons’ harmonic scream was loud enough to make Emi and Suzuno leap out of their own room…and seriously weird Chiho out.
From the fridge to the washer, from the computer to the bicycle, the Devil’s Castle crew had made more than a few infrastructure investments over the past year and change. But they still had no television set, for several reasons.
They could never find enough free funds, for one. That, and when Maou and Ashiya first fell into Japan, they didn’t even understand the concept of “watching TV” in the first place.
By the time they understood its use as a news source, weather forecaster, and font of colorfully inane advertising, they already had many other ways to gain that information.
Most of all, however, the greatest source of hesitance for the Devil’s Castle was the fact that Japan switched over to full digital broadcasting a while ago.
The antenna connectors in Villa Rosa Sasazuka were all from the analog era. There was nothing in the rental contract about providing for HD broadcasts, either.
They examined their options a bit, only to find that (a) signing on for an individual plan could put them on the hook for antenna construction costs, and (b) putting up an antenna by themselves could send the MHK man their way, demanding a television license fee and spelling yet more doom for their monthly budget.
So, to the demons, purchasing a single TV required the bravery and resolve of an Acapulco cliff diver. But they were too afraid to discuss it with the landlord. She could always seize upon the topic to put up an antenna herself and jack up the rent on them.
Besides, Japan was bubbling with other information sources. Compared to the fridge and washer—two essentials for keeping the demons clean and fed—a TV was far from first priority.
“Oh, well, you can get news and weather from the Net and your phone and stuff these days, so…”
“Something about you telling me that really pisses me off.”
Something about the smug way Emi, fellow newcomer to Earth, put it rankled Maou.
“Indeed. I, myself, have only just begun to comprehend how to obtain information on my cellular phone via the Internet.” Suzuno took out her Jitterphone 5, a basic Dokodemo model meant for the elderly and other Net newbies, to strike home the point.
“Yeah. If you really want to, you can watch TV on your phone, besides. It kind of kills the battery, so I usually don’t, but…” Chiba’s flip phone, meanwhile, had a screen you could flip around so the main screen was facing outside instead of in when folded.
Emi sighed. “We’ve gotten a lot of inquiries lately about batteries, actually. It depends on how you use your phone, of course, but…yeah, I wish they lasted longer, too. If you’re using a smartphone, I tell people they pretty much gotta have a portable charger with ’em at all times.”
Emi worked full-time as a customer service agent for cell phone giant Dokodemo’s main call center. Since her bosses began introducing thinner and more lightweight smartphones, there was a clear uptick in complaints about batteries and why the hell they didn’t last so long.
In practice more a portable computer than telephone, these devices’ battery lives varied wildly depending on how much users took advantage of their data packages and fancier features. But compared to Suzuno’s and Chiho’s older models, they almost always went dead more quickly.
Maou glumly interrupted the three women’s cell phone confab.
“Uh, girls, you think I’m living so high on the hog here that I can afford a phone to watch TV on?”
“Wait’ll you get a load of this… The King of All Demons has a phone with an extendible antenna.”
“Huh?!”
“Wha?”
“Pardon?”
Urushihara’s poetic turn of phrase made Chiho gasp, Emi gape, and Suzuno tilt her head in confusion.
“Yeah, well, I only have to recharge it every other day.”
“Whaa?!”
“Every other day?!”
“Is that long? Short? What are you trying to say?”
That was enough to even surprise Emi. Suzuno remained confused.
“Right after I showed up here, I just asked for whatever cost the least money, and I got this.”
Maou removed his phone from his pocket as he spoke.
It sported a few scratches, but looked fairly well taken care of. But even compared to Chiho’s and Suzuno’s models, it was clearly from another era.
“Ooh. My dad used to have one of those.”
For someone like Chiho, growing up in the digital age, a cell phone was a device whose constant presence around her was a given. Even she could tell with a single glance that Maou’s device was a modern relic.
“…Who made that?”
The carrier name on the back of the phone was something Emi, who worked for a phone company and had at least a passing knowledge of the competition, had never seen before.
“Your mail address is from AE, right, Maou?”
Maou nodded.
“Yeah, my phone bill comes from AE. But when I bought this, they kept yappin’ at me about base costs and data plans and stuff. I kept telling them that all I cared about was talk and text, and they gave me this.”
“Just talk and text… Wait, is that a Joose’d Mobile phone?!”
Joose’d Mobile had its heyday a while back, selling cheap prepaid plans and no-money-down phones to millennials with flashy in-your-face advertising. The original service died long ago, merging with AE—one of the Big Three in Japan’s carrier scene—a few years back.
“Yeah. The phone was free, it’s easy to use, and I figure I’m not paying more than what I use it for, y’know?”
Maou’s reply was indifferent. But in this era where even the so-called next generation of cellular devices were now old hat in the wake of all-purpose smartphones, sporting a Joose’d phone—one that ran on a network that didn’t even exist any longer—wasn’t exactly common.
The fact that Joose’d devices could even run on a modern carrier infrastructure was a miracle in itself. And as their old TV slogan “All Talk. All Text. No BS” hinted at, there was no web surfing going on with Maou’s handset.
“S-so…like, Maou, how do you know what the weather’s gonna be like, even?!”
“Huh? 177.”
The reply offered little explanation to Chiho’s disbelieving ears.
“’Course, I still wind up calling the voice-time number by accident every fifth time or so…”
“Emilia, what does ‘177’ mean?”
“You call that and a computer voice gives you the weather. You get the time by dialing 117, by the way. I think you need to dial some kinda special prefix if you’re calling from a cell. During training, they just kinda touched on it as something I’d never, ever use, so I forgot about it.”
Emi’s response belied her customer-service experience. Quick and to the point.
“I had no idea anyone used it, though. I mean, a lot of people have the weather on their lock screen these days. …And if you misdial it all the time, why don’t you stick the number in your directory?”
“Yeah, well, that ain’t the first time he’s tried to palm off crappy tech on us.” Urushihara dejectedly shook his head, eyes fixed upon his computer screen.
“Wh-what about the news, then?” By Chiho’s judgment, Maou never seemed too far behind at work when it came to current trends and topics. He seemed to have a working knowledge of politics, the latest scandals, sports standings, that sort of thing.
“Well, we have a PC here ever since Urushihara showed up, so… Plus, they have those video screens at the rail stations with news and stuff, right? I like to hang out at the bookstore magazine rack, too, so keeping up ain’t too hard.”
“……”
Chiho, a child of the information age, couldn’t make head or tail of it.
“Besides, what’s it matter what kinda phone I have? It’s not like I’m missing out on anything, and I’m not planning to upgrade anytime soon, either. But…hmm. We got an HD antenna now, huh?”
Maou gave a thoughtful look to the antenna hookup, then to the outlet occupied by Urushihara’s computer. He scowled.
“Hey, Ashiya.”
“Yes, my liege?”
“Wanna buy a TV?”
It almost sounded like Maou was talking to himself.
“Hahhh?!”
“Why that reaction?” Maou started quizzically at Ashiya, who sounded like someone had run a cheese grater over his throat.
“I simply reasoned from your conversation, Your Demonic Highness, that you didn’t see the need for one… You stated a moment ago that you needed no television to know the ways of the world. We already have a computer! And the Internet!” Ashiya frantically pointed a finger at Urushihara.
“Dude, could you stop pointing at me like my computer’s the only reason I deserve to live?”
“Hmph. I will admit, you are at least capable now of serving food to people. A living, breathing vending machine.”
“Yeah, see? I had dudes lining up for me. Beat that.”
The conversation between the two was not quite Great Demon General material.
“I think Alciel has a point, though. I’ve had a TV in my apartment for a while now, but it’s pretty much always off. I watch a few minutes of the morning news, maybe a drama or samurai show at night, then the weather, and that’s about it. I don’t see any major pressing need of one for you guys, just because your landlord installed an antenna.”
“You aren’t showing Alas Ramus any educational TV or anything?”
Maou turned to face Emi. She glared back. Alas Ramus, who spent the late afternoon napping in Room 202, was currently fused within her.
“Oh, what, you forgot already? The show at Tokyo Big-Egg Town? Shows like Sunflower Street and cartoons pretty much bombard kids with colors all the time. I don’t want her having another episode, so I’m trying to keep her away from TV as much as possible.”
“Huh. Gotcha.”
The live-action ninja-ranger show the three of them watched at Tokyo Big-Egg Town a while back was filled with color-coded warriors of justice bounding around the stage. The experience caused Alas Ramus to have something resembling an epileptic seizure.
She always had a pretty deep relationship with colorful things. The ninjas, and the enormous tree they somersaulted around, must have reminded her of the great life-giving tree Sephirot and the multihued Sephirah it bore, each governing over a different color and a different aspect of the world.
As of right now, nobody in the room knew anything about the Sephirot apart from what they heard elsewhere.
None of them could say for sure that the sacred tree had any lasting effect on Alas Ramus. But after that harrowing incident, Emi tried her best to avoid reminding the child of anything resembling Sephirot as much as possible.
“Thing is, though…there’s been one time before when I kinda wished I had a TV in here.” Maou’s voice took on a bitter tone as he thumbed through his memory banks. “It was before Chi joined me at the Mag. You know our Jolly Meals? The ones that come with toys and stuff?”
“Um, yeah, sure.”
“Well, the toys are always either really hot, or really cold, in terms of popularity. This one time, we were doing these Pocket Creatures—y’know, Pokétures—toys, and this kid who couldn’t have been much older than eight or so comes up and orders a Jolly Meal. So I asked him which toy he wanted, and he was like…”
Maou bunched up his eyebrows.
It was a look of anguish, one not even Ashiya had seen in several months.
“Gimme the one that goes ‘croak-a-loak’!”
The sudden scowl, followed by the otherworldly cry, bewildered the rest of the room.
“Yeah! You see? I felt, like, exactly what you must be feeling right now. What the hell’s this kid mean, the one who goes ‘croak-a-loak’? I didn’t even know that every monster in the game had their own unique cry like that, so I was totally clueless. And of course we had, like, ten different toys to choose from, so I couldn’t really spend the time guessing.”
The others, unsure what the point was to this ripping yarn, could do nothing but sit tight and listen. Surprisingly, it was Urushihara who broke the silence.
“I tried searching for it. Turns out it was from one of the movies, Decahelios and the Path to the Sky King. Decahelios is the mythical Pokéture in that one, and his basic chibi form is Dekalo, and that’s who makes it. He’s this little frog guy who lives in a bog somewhere, and eventually he evolves into a dragon.”
“You are speaking in tongues, Lucifer.”
To Suzuno, not very versed in modern Japanese subculture, Urushihara’s speech must have sounded like a runic inscription on the tomb of a long-forgotten ruler.
“But, my liege, if his cry was ‘croak-a-loak,’ that would imply to me that the correct creature would at least look somewhat frog-like…”
“Yeah, Ashiya, but you say that because you’ve been here on Earth for over a year now. Do the chickens say ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’ back in the demon realms?”
Every language on Earth had its own unique ways of rendering animal cries and other bits of nonlanguage. The only person who had the right to take someone not native to Japan (or this world) to task for not knowing that croak was shorthand for “frog” was Mayumi Kisaki, Maou’s manager at MgRonald and a woman oblivious to his past.
“So anyway, these Pokétures were mostly movie tie-ins who first got introduced in the plot, so at the time, all you knew about ’em came from the maybe five seconds they showed up in the trailer. The kid didn’t remember the name of that Dekalo guy or what he looked like. So I had no idea, and his mom was like ‘Oh, Shocksqueak is fiiine, son…’”
Shocksqueak was the most well-known of Pokétures, a constant presence across the entire series and its merchandise.
“The problem, though, was that Shocksqueak was the most popular toy and we had already run out of it. So his mom wound up leaving with this freaky toy that looked like a jellyfish with a bunch of magnets stuck to it.”
“Jellyfish with a bunch of magnets stuck to it” provided little in the way of new insight to Maou’s audience of Pokéture neophytes.
“…Okay,” Emi impatiently spoke up. “So what’s the point of this story?”
“The point is, if I had a TV—if I saw some of the preview ads and knew at least a little bit about what we were selling to kids—I could’ve given that li’l guy what he wanted. It’s not my fault we were out of Shocksqueak, but we had all the other ones.”
“…Took you long enough.” Urushihara eloquently summed up what everyone else was thinking.
“But how does that connect with purchasing a TV?” Chiho asked. “Not to take Ashiya’s side, but you could still look that stuff up on the Internet if you wanted to.”
Maou nodded at her.
“Yeah, but I’d never see that kinda stuff unless I actively searched for it. I mean, failure breeds success and all that, but if I’m failing to avoid mistakes I could’ve easily avoided if I cared a little, that’s not a mistake so much as sheer laziness, right?”
“And that, my liege, is precisely why the Internet is there! That is as wide a net as anyone needs to cast. The news is no different between the Net and television, is it?”
Maou grinned bitterly at Ashiya, whose fervent desire not to blow their budget on a TV purchase was oozing out of every pore in his body.
“Lemme put it in a way you’d understand. Let’s say you heard ground beef was cheap at the supermarket, so you go out expecting to make some burgers for dinner, but when you show up, you notice that the sliced salmon is actually a lot cheaper. So you decide to change the menu to buttered salmon and use the extra change to buy some bean sprouts to flesh out dinner a little. You ever have that kind of thing happen?”
“Um? …Well, certainly, yes. If you put it that way.” The sudden topic shift to household errands perplexed Ashiya.
“So instead of buying buns or ketchup for the burgers, you buy some butter for the salmon. And from that point forward, you know how to whip up a meal of buttered salmon and bean sprouts for really cheap. That kinda thing.”
“Yes… Indeed.” Suzuno, who cooked for herself just as often as Ashiya, could empathize.
“But that’s the thing about the Net. You can’t learn stuff like that online. If you search for burgers, you get hits about Worcestershire sauce and barbecue grills and upscale burger chains and Wagyu beef and maybe Hamburg, Germany, too, I dunno. But you aren’t gonna get anything about buttered salmon with bean sprouts. You don’t get that kind of happenstance going on.”
“Happenstance, huh…?”
Urushihara sat up a bit, uncharacteristically attentive.
“Of course, things spread in all kinds of ways, so you can’t say that about everything. But with the Internet, once something loses your interest, you don’t go back again, right? You don’t need to.”
“Yeah. I suppose you wouldn’t. But TV’s the same way, isn’t it? You don’t like it, you turn it off.”
Maou shook his head at Emi, the only extraterrestrial with a television.
“But with TV, there are things you don’t care about now, but might care about later. It’s not just an on-or-off thing. With the Net, meanwhile, all you see are the things you want to see. And you need a guide for that sort of thing, right? For things you don’t actively want right now, but might come in handy later.”
“…Your Demonic Highness, how did you come to know so much about television in the first place?”
“Oh, that was back when we just arrived here. I had this temp job where we all congregated at a soba noodle place for lunch, and they had a TV in there. It was playing the news, and they were advertising this piece about how the temp agency I was working for was under investigation for something or other. So I waited around for the piece, but then another customer changed it to some stupid variety show. Man, that pissed me off.”
“I know now’s a different story but, Maou, you are another world’s Devil King, right?”
“Enough of that topic, Chiho. All it would do is serve to depress me even further,” Suzuno interjected. “The Devil King, going on about noodles and tuna and hamburgers… It disgusts me.”
In many ways, Maou’s enemies seemed far more concerned for his future than he was.
“Anyway. I just figured it’d be nice to have some play, you know? Some more exposure to unintended discoveries like that. I know the Net’s easier and you can look up anything you want and stuff, but in terms of creating chances to take an interest in something new, I think TV’s still a lot more vital. Then, if I want to examine a topic more in-depth, I can hit up the Net for that.”
“Yeah, true,” Urushihara admitted. “A lot of people brag about never watching TV, but if you look at search term rankings and trends and stuff, TV still affects them a lot.”
Maou, uncharacteristically, nodded his approval at Urushihara’s point. “I don’t need a 3D set or a blue-whatever player or anything fancy like that. I’m just saying, if we can have this media device that plays a major role in human society, I think that’ll help us later on. Help teach us about the human world, and help us once we’re ready to conquer it.”
“Hmmm…” Ashiya grunted as he weighed Maou’s thought in his mind.
“And…” Now Maou turned to Emi. “TV gives you live reports on accidents and disasters and stuff, right? Like, flood warnings and so on.”
“Yeah. So?”
“If something happens, that could help me take action faster.”
Maou used the index and middle fingers of both hands to form makeshift claws in the air.
“…!”
Emi knew what he meant. The Malebranche, the demons they fought over in Choshi.
“That’s kind of a secondary reason, but still, if some kind of major incident happens that makes no sense by human standards, we could at least check it out to see if someone from the other side’s messing with us again.”
That was a concern on everyone’s mind. Downtown Tokyo had been the site of several angel/demon duels by now. They barely fended off a full-scale demon invasion off the Choshi coast a few days ago, too.
They had managed to keep casualties to a minimum so far, if only by the skin of their teeth. But there was no guarantee their luck would continue.
Where they stood in Japan, forced to deal with crises as they reared themselves, having as many information sources as possible—the way Maou framed it—seemed to make sense.
“Yes…but…”
Ashiya was in a deep mental conflict with himself.
Part of him agreed to his master’s proposal. He wanted to give his assent, if he could. But their budget, and the presence of several alternative tools, dragged at his mind.
Urushihara put Ashiya’s anguish into words for him: “We’ll have to pay the license fee to MHK, too…”
“…All right. Let me propose you this, my liege.” Ashiya lifted his pained countenance upward. “I am in complete agreement with your feelings, but our budget presents us with certain very real obstacles. So perhaps we could begin by conducting a marketplace investigation.”
“Investigation?”
“First, we should visit the real estate agent to see how the new antenna affects whatever sort of license fee we would have to pay. If it falls upon us as tenants to pay the fee to MHK, I fear this simply will not work.”
“Everything except the utilities are included in my place, but…”
“Do not interject with your babbling, Emilia! I truly do not want to buy this, deep down!”
“That’s kind of mean of you, isn’t it, Ashiya?”
Maou and Urushihara just nodded, well used to Ashiya’s occasional outbursts whenever money was the topic.
“But if we are lucky enough to have the MHK fee included, and if our rent does not increase as a result, we can then visit an electronics store to examine prices and features. I understand that flat-screen digital televisions are notably more expensive than their analog counterparts. If the baseline prices are too high for us, then once again, I fear it will not work out.”
“Jeez, that’s rough…”
“Of course it is! All three of us were supposed to be working at that snack bar for half of August! And, yes, we were remunerated well—more than half a month of your MgRonald wages—but we are not flush enough that we can lavish money on expensive home appliances on a mere whim!”
Ashiya had his reasons for playing the spoiler so much: With their jobs at Ohguro-ya gone, Maou was de facto jobless until the remodeling work at the Hatagaya-station MgRonald was complete.
The three great demons were safe from the specter of homelessness, but considering what they could expect in wages next month, Ashiya was hell-bent on surviving the rest of August with the 150,000 yen the three of them had earned for their time at Ohguro-ya.
Maou’s wages for July would be deposited in their checking account on the twenty-fifth, of course, but it was not the kind of payday that easily allowed for purchasing a TV all by itself.
“Yeah, but I think the smaller ones go for pretty cheap these days, no? If you don’t care about the brand, I don’t think you’ll have to pay too much.”
“Ms. Sasaki… Please…”
Ashiya, capable of hurling a constant stream of hatred at Emi, was far weaker against Chiho.
“…?”
Emi, meanwhile, looked disbelievingly at Chiho, wondering why she said that all of a sudden.
Just a moment ago, Ashiya shot down her attempt to advocate for the TV purchase. She didn’t expect Chiho to take up the banner again.
“Well, judging by Emi and Chiho, I think we have a pretty decent chance of buying one. So, Ashiya, assuming we clear the MHK and rent hurdles, how much you think we can afford?”
Ashiya needed little time to respond.
“Considering what we made at Ohguro-ya, I can take ten thousand yen from each of our wages. So, thirty thousand yen. Maybe thirty-five thousand. No more than that.”
“Whoa, dude! That’s my money you’re taking!”
Urushihara blurted out his honest surprise at the demon’s calculation. Ashiya fired back, his face like the mask of some mythical monster.
“I have every right to garnish your entire paycheck to make good for all the wasteful spending you’ve done, you!”
“Heh-heh-heh! Thirty-five thousand! You said thirty-five thousand, didn’t you?”
Maou, meanwhile, had a cheese-eating grin on his face.
“Ashiyaaaaa, don’t you think you’re forgetting something?”
“Mm? What?”
Ashiya involuntarily shuddered at Maou’s smile, now beyond cheese-eating and venturing into the realm of demented.
Maou shot a finger toward the refrigerator, grin still plastered on his face.
“Where’d we buy that fridge? Where’d we buy the washer outside?”
“The fridge…?”
The two most expensive items in Devil’s Castle. Maou had blown through nearly all of his savings to buy them earlier in the year.
Both quite a bit more budget friendly than what Suzuno had in her own room. But still.
Besides, the other islands hardly functioned as a cohesive unit. Any one of the Northern, Western, or Southern Islands could betray their allies and side with the East. If Emi whipped out her holy sword and joined the fray then, she’d be branded a traitor. The Hero Emilia, drawing her bow against her fellow humans! It would fatally damage her legitimacy as a savior of mankind.
“All right. I get it. But you be careful, all right, Eme? Heaven and Ente Isla and the demon realms… They’re all getting crazily intertwined with each other. It’s hard to see who’s friend and who’s foe any longer.”
“Oh, I’ll be fiiiine! No matter what happens, I’ll always be there for you and Albert, okaaay?”
Walking—more like casually strolling—to the beat of her own drum, as always. It always distressed Emi a bit, somehow.
“…Hee-hee. You’re right. I’ll bet.”
“But you neeeever know when you might need the tools in your disposal, riiiight? I may want to borrow you sooner or later, Emiiiilia. For now, thoooough…just keep fighting as ‘Eeeemi Yusa.’”
“Sure. Thanks.”
“Oh, you’re welllllcome! I need to thank you for that vaaaaluable information, too. Say hello to your darling husband and child for meeee!”
“…Emer.”
“Ah-ha-ha! That was on purrrrpose.”
Unfazed by Emi’s voice, low enough to flash-freeze lava, Emeralda laughed as she hung up.
Soon, Emi relayed the entire phone call over to Suzuno.
Word of Efzahan’s menacing moves, and the possible presence of Olba among them, made it hard for Suzuno to hide the shock, despite her previous conference with Camio. But the conclusion she came to was the same as Emeralda’s:
For now, Emilia must avoid a hasty return to Ente Isla.
Turning away from the box she was currently packing, Suzuno turned to Emi, her bunched eyebrows belying the clear danger she felt they were in.
“Do you think, Emilia, that…that we face a danger unlike any before? That fate will ask us to do something completely the opposite of our appointed mission? That…we may have to protect the Devil King, with our own hands?”
“Huh? Where’d that come from?”
Emi’s eyes opened wide at the absurdity of the idea. But Suzuno was deadly serious.
“Think about it—the events in Choshi revealed to all the world’s demons that their lord is alive and well. And Olba is aware of the Devil King’s presence in Japan, is he not? Even as he serves to tie the demon realms together with the Eastern Island, for all we know?”
“Yeah…”
“One wrong move, and the Devil King could be whisked away, back to his realm!”
“Whaaat?!”
“Bmhh!”
Emi’s shout at the sheer ridiculousness of it all made Alas Ramus murmur her approval in her sleep. The Hero put a panicked hand to her mouth as the child turned over and began lightly snoring again. When she spoke next, she took pains to keep her voice down as much as possible. “…What do you mean, whisked away?”
“Remember what Camio taught us. Why did the demon realms face such a monumental rift after its armies were destroyed? Camio, who trusted in his master’s survival, strove to lay low and preserve his nation’s strength. But Barbariccia and Ciriatto attempted to take up the Devil King’s flag and conquer Ente Isla anew. What would happen if the Devil King suddenly stepped into that chaos?”
“What would happen…?”
“Camio returned home because he was convinced the Devil King’s rightful place for the moment is Japan, did he not? Which suits our purposes fine. But Barbariccia is different. If he knows the Devil King is alive, plainly he will try to bring him back in order to prop up and rebuild their forces. Their main force has merely detached itself from the local rule, following a political struggle. Their loyalty for the Devil King has never flagged.”
Emi nodded.
“If you put everything Camio said together, then I suppose, sure.”
“Now think about Efzahan’s rampage. Efzahan has never truly believed in diplomacy as a solution to anything. The situation at its borders has never been anything less than volatile. The Azure Emperor is rumored to be a tyrannical despot, one who uses brutal oppression to keep any insurgencies from boiling over. But we should not let this cloud our judgment. It may sound like a ready-made excuse if they are ever defeated, but perhaps the Azure Emperor truly has fallen to the demon forces led by Olba and Barbariccia. Perhaps they are manipulating his mind after all.”
“M-maybe…”
The idea seemed plausible to Emi. But given how she all but assumed the Azure Emperor was engaged in a simple, brazen power grab for the Central Continent, she was still loath to agree.
That was the difference between Emi, the consummate frontline soldier, and Suzuno, the politician in the smoke-filled room.
Regardless of his methods, I will gladly praise the Azure Emperor for his political acumen. No regular man could govern a land as wide, and wild, as the Eastern Island without at least a modicum of talent. He has ruled for over twenty years, and I understand he is busy grooming his successor at the moment.”
“…You do that much research for your missionary work?”
“Of course I do. When one sets off for a foreign land to proselytize, one needs to know what local policymakers will think of your religious efforts. I can say with full confidence that there is not a single inch of Ente Isla whose political situation the Church is not intimately familiar with.”
Suzuno’s face indicated she felt this was as much common sense as knowing how to cross the street.
“But that is the reason I feel the Azure Emperor might actually be under the demons’ spell. That lengthy reign of his.”
“Oh?”
“Back when the Devil King’s army was in full force, which general was it who conquered the Eastern Island?”
“Oh.”
Even Emi could pick up on it by now.
“Yes! He may be a shadow of his former himself, little more than a bickering househusband, but he was the only Great Demon General that there is no record of the Hero Emilia having ever defeated in combat. Alciel took over the Eastern Island not long after the Devil King’s army made its first appearance. If the Azure Emperor still has dark memories of those dreadful days, there is every chance he would kneel before them once more to protect his nation, his life. And that’s not all. If Barbariccia can successfully bring back not just the Devil King, but Alciel as well—a demon well versed in governing the entirety of the Eastern Continent—that could easily gain him a beachhead from which he could invade Ente Isla once more.”
“……”
The more she thought about it, the more ominous things seemed to her.
“But…I don’t…I mean, I don’t want to sound like I’m complimenting the Devil King or anything…but if Barbariccia did that, don’t you think it’d piss him off?”
Suzuno briskly nodded.
“He would be angry, yes. The fact that we are fighting together with him in this world—on the surface, at least—is in no small part thanks to his astonishingly generous, easygoing ways. I do not wish to admit it, but I must.”
“……True.”
Emi didn’t want to admit it, either. But the events of the past few months flew in the face of her gut feelings.
“If Barbariccia were to make any such bold moves, it would enrage the Devil King. He would want to punish him, no doubt. He is still King, a fact he proved well enough in Choshi,” Suzuno added.
“King?”
“If he was pressed hard enough to make a decision, he would never abandon his people, his former close officials. And then…he would never return to Japan again.”
“…!”
Emi gasped. The idea was starting to seem entirely likely now.
Maou acted like he was whiling away his youth, going through the motions as he tried futilely to keep his family in the black. But the way his mind worked never changed. Multiple times before, he proclaimed to Emi’s face that he’d return to Ente Isla.
And all the countless demons who longed for their one true king… Could he ever just set them adrift like that?
What other reason would he have for forgiving Ciriatto, the demon who turned away from Camio and attempted to carve out his own Devil Kingdom in Maou’s name?
That, and:
“…Ohh.”
The groan from Emi’s lips echoed quietly.
Maou, returning to his world, as Devil King.
Emi was shocked. Shocked that, in response to that mental picture, the first thing that came to mind was, That’d sure make Alas Ramus sad.
“What? N-no! I don’t…”
And it’d be even harder on Chiho.
“N-no! That’s… I mean, it’s not not true, but it…”
After everything everyone’s done for him, he’ll just run off without repaying that?!
“That’s not the issue here!”
“Nnuhh… Fff…iihh…”
Emi’s verbal sparring with herself made Alas Ramus quiver as her eyes opened. A rude awakening for her, it seemed. Her face began to contort itself.
“Ah, uh, s-sorry, Alas Ramus, I didn’t mean to scare you…”
“Hie-yaaaaahhhhh-aahhh!”
She started crying anyway. Emi picked her up, trying frantically to calm her, but her mind was too frazzled to form a coherent strategy.
That came across loud and clear to Alas Ramus, who showed no sign of stopping her bawl-fest.
Until the child finally grew bored of the tirade and went back to sleep, Emi could do nothing but cradle her as reassuringly as she could.
Eventually, dabbing her tear- and snot-stained face with a wet tissue, Emi softly laid her back down on her bed.
“…Ughh…”
The fatigue came like an avalanche. She put her face down on the bed, next to the child.
Then her mind returned to the issues at hand.
“I refuse to let the Devil King reform his army. He…he is the murderer of my father, the enemy of my people…”
“Are you reading that from a script?”
Emi could feel Suzuno snickering behind her.
“Shut up a second. …I’m still kind of in a state of shock, okay? You don’t have to butt in.”
I am the Hero, and he is the boss of the demons. Peace for the world and her fellow humans was on her mind, of course, but more than anything, she couldn’t forgive how his armies shattered the tranquil, quiet life she had had with her father.
There was no way she ever could.
And yet…
It took a disturbingly long time for her to recall that, nowadays.
I haven’t worked through my feelings or something, have I?
There’s no way I ever could.
“There’s no…way I ever could…”
Emi whispered it to herself weakly.
Then, while there was no way she meant it on purpose, Alas Ramus turned over and placed a soft hand on Emi’s head.
Almost like she was trying to comfort her.
“…Oooooogh.”
Emi felt the sadness take over, her lips tight as her head flopped onto the bed again.
“If Alas Ramus never sees the Devil King again…it would make her terribly sad.” Suzuno’s words hung quietly in the air. “And it would make Chiho sad, as well. I doubt it would ever be the same between her and us, either.”
“……”
“That, and the denizens of Devil’s Castle owe us a great debt. Until we collect on it, it would annoy me greatly to see them fly off somewhere.”
“You’re reading my thoughts, aren’t you? That’s cheating.”
Now Emi was lashing out at anyone, anything, she could.
“Not at all. I just think we are of similar minds here. But what follows after that…is something that is not Emilia. As a cleric, I am bound never to allow a child to kill her own parent for reasons beyond her own control. No matter what. Even if that parent is the Devil King. Thus…”
The sound of fabric against fabric told Emi that Suzuno was standing up.
“For now, to prevent the worst from happening, we must protect the Devil King from the demons of his own realm.”
“This is just…so hard. I can’t take any more of it.”
“I am not asking you to handle it all, Emilia. I am still his neighbor, after all, and nothing would make me happier than to set the table for the Hero to slay the Devil King. That, at least, I will take responsibility for. As long as another archangel or Malebranche chieftain does not rear its ugly head, I can handle things well enough by myself.”
“…One word of warning: Staking them out is the most boring thing in the universe.” Emi didn’t bother lifting her head as she spoke, evoking a very un-Hero-like sense of lethargy.
“Alciel runs the place like a military school to keep them under budget. Lucifer just taps, taps, taps away at his computer day and night. The Devil King works, eats, and sleeps. That’s it. Smile on his face the whole damn time. Keeping a constant vigil over them made me feel like some kind of creepy celebrity stalker.”
“Yes, but MgRonald is closed for the moment, is it not? We should remain cautious, at least for now. Once the restaurant reopens, Sariel will be running interference for us as well. The demons will be loath to take major action.”
Across the street from Maou’s workplace off Hatagaya station, there was a Sentucky Fried Chicken franchise managed by the archangel Sariel.
Thanks to his falling head over heels in love with MgRonald manager Mayumi Kisaki, Sariel had been kissing up to Maou to an almost embarrassing extent.
The two of them were on rather poor terms, it was true. But Barbariccia would hardly be foolish enough to attempt to kidnap the Devil King while he was literally under the nose of an archangel.
“…Huh. Suppose so.”
Emi could barely summon a whisper in response.
“…Listen, Bell. You know why I like samurai dramas so much? And not the ones about wandering ronin or peasants rising up to fight injustice. I’m talking Vice-Shogun Mito or Maniac Shogun or… Well, I’ve taken a liking to Samurai Inspector Hyouzo lately, too, but…”
“Um? No…”
Suzuno blinked, having trouble surmising Emi’s intent.
After a moment, Emi finally lifted her head off the bed.
“Because they’re about people in high positions fighting for truth and justice and all that. If there’s a villain who won’t listen to reason, he’ll beat them up until they see the error of their ways. Everything works out; everyone’s happy. Even if it’s all made up, I like seeing good win out so…completely like that. Clean and simple.”
“I see. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, one could say.”
“What?”
“Something I read in a book recently.”
“Oh.”
With a groan, Emi stood up. Suzuno pretended not to notice the slight red twinge in her eyes.
She sniffled and shook her head.
“…If only…”
“Hmm?”
“If only they had AC in that apartment…”
“The savior of our world has has grown soft indeed.”
It was uncharacteristic sarcasm, coming from Suzuno as she caressed Alas Ramus’s hair.
Emi bunched up her face and looked down upon her.
“How much is the rent over there?”
“Forty-five thousand yen, if I recall.”
“’Cause this place has more than a few problems, but I got it for fifty thousand.”
The price quote drove Suzuno to take another look around Emi’s room.
“Could that be the case…? Truly?”
A large closet. Two rooms, each about 150 square feet. With air-conditioning, a bathroom, a fully electric range, and an autolock down in the lobby.
“No. This cannot possibly be fifty thousand yen per month.”
“Well, I mean, there’s a lot of backstory to that, so… Ah, well. I guess there’s a lot of empty space over there, still. I’ll have to make up my mind someday.”
Where was “over there”? When was “someday”? Suzuno decided not to ask.
“Oooogh…Mommy…”
Just then, a pudgy hand placed itself on top of Suzuno’s as Alas Ramus babbled in her sleep.
Patting her soft, adorable skin, the cleric found herself smiling.
“I do not so terribly mind, shall we say, the lukewarm bath I find myself in.”
“Huh?”
“How else could I describe our current situation? As long as the Devil King remains in Japan, he will be the perfect picture of hard work and diligence. We sit here, living in the most glorious civilization we have ever known, surrounded by caring friends and confidants, allowing the days to leisurely tick away. But how much…”
Suzuno gently picked up Alas Ramus’s hand, running a towel up to the shoulder socket.
“How much longer can we live like this?”
It was question neither Suzuno, nor Emi, nor the Devil King could ever know the answer to.
“Mommy, when will we go splish-splash next?”
By the time Emi returned to her condo in Eifukucho, Alas Ramus was wide awake.
“I wonder,” Emi replied vaguely. “If you’re a good girl, Alas Ramus…if everything stays as it is, I bet we can go real soon.”
“Let’s go! Splish-splash peep peep!”
Whether she was aware of Emi’s feelings or not, Alas Ramus picked up on “go real soon” and nothing else, eyes shining with glee.
Recalling her conversation with Suzuno last night, Emi found it suddenly difficult to look Alas Ramus in the eye.
“…All right, Alas Ramus. You’ve been sweating a lot today, haven’t you? Let’s go take a bath together.”
“Bath! Splish-splash!”
One never had to drag Alas Ramus into the tub.
The outings to the public bathhouse with Maou, back when she lived with him, apparently left a positive imprint on her mind. Whenever the subject of a bath came up, Alas Ramus would faithfully spring into action.
It took until now for Emi to realize that it probably had little to do with her genesis. This was just a little girl who loved playing in the water, was all.
A lukewarm bath might be just the thing for tonight. Too hot wouldn’t be good for her. And in this summer heat, it’d make for a delightful soak.
“Okay, I need to get a few things ready. Can you be a good girl?”
“Okey!”
Alas Ramus raised her hand in the air, trotted to the living room, took off the hat she was wearing, placed it on the table, and sat down on a chair. She picked up the papercraft birdcage on the table and began spinning it around, keeping a careful eye on Emi.
It was her way of saying I’m being a good girl!
Emi nodded, face considerably lightened, and tossed her shoulder bag toward a corner of the kitchen before heading to the bathroom. Draining the water she used for laundry purposes in the morning, she took up a sponge to give the tub a quick scouring as she reached for the shower valve.
“Mommy! Whirr whirr whirr!”
Then she spotted Alas Ramus at the bathroom door, not being a good girl at all, the smartphone from her shoulder bag in her hand.
In fact, judging by the screen, she had already answered the incoming call, hadn’t she…
Must’ve brushed a finger the wrong way when she took it out of the bag.
Emi was crestfallen as she took the phone away. Whoever called must have heard the child shouting across the room at her.
“Um, hello? Hello? Emi?”
The voice from the speaker, along with the name screen, filled Emi with a profound sense of relief.
“Well, thank you, Alas Ramus. But don’t touch Mommy’s cell phone without permission, okay?”
“Don’t?”
“Emi? Helloooo?”
“Oh, but thanks for bringing it to me, though.”
“Ee-hee! Okeh!”
Emi patted her on the head. The little girl gave a ticklish grin in response and trotted back to the living room.
“Emi, are you there?”
“Hello? Sorry, Rika. Alas Ramus picked up my phone for me.”
It was Rika Suzuki, Emi’s friend and cube mate at her workplace.
She didn’t know about Ente Isla and everything surrounding that world, but she knew Maou, Chiho, and Suzuno well enough. She also knew Emi was watching a toddler named Alas Ramus.
“Whoa, that was close. If you weren’t there, she might’ve decided to call up Saudi Arabia and give you a massive phone bill!”
“Yeah, sorry, I’ll be more careful with it. What’s up?”
“Oh, um…”
Rika uncharacteristically clammed up.
“Hmm?”
“Hey, where are you, Emi? Your voice is kinda echo-y.”
“Huh? I’m in the bathroom. I was just about to scrub the bathtub a little.”
“Ohhhh. Okay. Well, if you’re busy, it doesn’t have to be right now or—”
“What? Wow, what’s up with you today, Rika? Is this gonna go for a while, or…?”
Rika couldn’t have sounded more reluctant. Compared to her usual sunny self, it was hard to imagine.
“No, no, nothing that long, but… Oooh, how should I put it? Maybe it kinda will, actually.”
“Rika…? What’s up? Something going on?”
Emi stiffened her voice a little. Something troubling her, maybe?
Depending on how you gauged it, this might be Rika acting agitated over something. Whatever it was had to be serious.
Emi sat down on the edge of the tub, preparing for an extended chat.
“If something’s on your mind, just say it, okay? You called because you wanted to talk to me, right?”
She could feel Rika agonizing over something across the line.
“…Well, don’t laugh, okay?”
That relieved Emi a little. If Rika was afraid it’d make her laugh, it couldn’t have been too much of a doggie downer.
“I won’t, I won’t. So what’s up?”
“Um… So, like, I know it’s really weird to ask somebody this…”
“Yeah?”
“But I don’t have anyone else I can ask, so…you mind if I bend your ear for a little bit?”
“Sure, go ahead. What’s on your mind?”
Emi tried her best to squeeze it out of her. If her friend was in trouble, she wanted to help if she could. She’d done so countless times in the past, and Rika also helped her out of a pinch more than once.
If she was pussyfooting around the issue this much, it must have been tormenting her pretty badly.
“Okay, so…”
Rika, her voice more resolute now, took a deep breath.
“Um, what kinda clothes do you think Ashiya likes?!”
“……………………………………………………………………”
Emi, seated on the bathtub, mobile phone firmly planted against one ear, froze.
“…Emi?”
Rika took Emi’s lack of immediate response with a hefty dose of suspicion.
It wasn’t enough to release Emi from her shackles.
Whenever someone runs into a completely unexpected set of circumstances, they try to harness their past experiences, tossing all of them into the wind in a mad attempt at a solution. Much of the time, though, all those past experiences offer little more than a lot of wishful thinking.
There was no better way to describe Emi at that moment. Which was why the answer that finally dribbled out in the end was:
“Something…cheap, maybe?”
“Cheap? So, like, no fancy brands or anything?”
“Y-yeeeaaahhh.”
Emi was still frozen, her voice bereft of emotion.
“I’ve never seen him wear anything besides stuff from UniClo. There’s no way he’d be wearing those cheapo shoes because he likes them…”
“Huh? Whoa, whoa, Emi, that’s not what I mean. I’m not talking about what kinda stuff he likes to buy for himself.”
“…What do you mean?”
Emi’s face began to twitch a little again.
A dark foreboding spread across her mind. She could literally feel her organs squirm uneasily in her chest.
“I mean… Oh, you know what I mean, Emi! I’m talking about what kinda outfit you think he’d find cute on a woman!!”
It must have taken a lot of courage for Rika to ask the question.
Of course she couldn’t have brought it up with anyone else.
The only women who knew Ashiya before Rika were Emi, Chiho, and Suzuno. But as far as Emi knew, Rika wasn’t chummy enough with the other two to ask them questions like this.
She and Chiho had gotten closer, certainly, thanks to the whole Alas Ramus thing. But this was a more intimate issue. Really, asking someone what to do in order to make a man pay more attention to you was the same thing, 99 percent of the time, as confessing you have a thing for him.
“Can…can I ask you a question before I answer that, Rika?”
“Wh-what?!”
Emi, for her part, was shocked to the point where she thought her heart would stop and she would remain a statuesque figure on the bathtub forever. But across the phone line, it was clear that this coming-out party was sending Rika’s internal temperature off the charts.
“Is there something with you and Alc…and Ashiya?”
If there wasn’t something, Rika wouldn’t be asking any of this.
She did notice, when they had both run into Ashiya in front of the Hatagaya Sentucky Fried Chicken, that Rika acted a bit odd around him. Not quite herself, somehow. Did they have a chance to interact with each other after that?
“N-no! Nothing! Nothing, I swear! But, it’s just that…um…”
Emi could picture Rika flailing her hands in the air.
But her voice trailed off as it continued on, down to a barely audible whisper as it proceeded to bring Emi’s body down to absolute zero.
“Ashiya…invited me…to go shopping with him…”
Emi’s vision went black.
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