THE DEVIL EXPLAINS HUMAN RELATIONS
“Dude, I should’ve known you were still in Japan. What’re you here for? If it’s Maou, he’s out right now.”
Urushihara didn’t bother removing his eyes from the PC screen.
The floor that Chiho took the time to clean up for him was already littered with empty plastic bottles and snack wrappers, forming a kind of magical barrier that seemed to naturally spring from the ground wherever Urushihara decided to lurk.
The summer sky was blue as blue could be, the sun’s rays pounding mercilessly upon the town of Sasazuka as Urushihara took a sip of barley tea from a nearby cup.
“Oh, I know. I was watching. I’m here ’cause I wanted to talk to you! The Devil King’s confidant and his next-door neighbor were nice enough to go away for me, too, so…now or never, y’see?”
“For what.”
Urushihara kept his back to the voice.
“My word, though, this room is hot! How can your computer operate, or you move around? As I recall, it’s bad for computers to run in such heat.”
“Not really. It’s not like I’m overclocking it or anything.”
“Oh no? Well, that explains why your desk is right by the window, I s’pose. Guess you got the barest excuse for a breeze that way, mmmm?”
“Dude…”
“In any event, it sure is hot. This chocolate mint from Len and Mary’s is deee-lish!”
This, finally, was enough to make Urushihara stir. He turned around, the annoyance writ clear on his face.
“Can you just say what you want? Otherwise, I’m gonna call Maou on SkyPhone and tell him you stormed in, raided the fridge, and ran off, Gabriel.”
Facing him was a large angel who was, as he spoke, about to bite into an ice cream bar he had just casually helped himself to from the Devil’s Castle refrigerator.
“Ooh. Sheesh. He’s got you that tight on a budget, mmm?”
“Dude, just stop it. I’m the one he’s gonna get pissed off at.”
“Oh, don’t be such a grouch! What’s so bad about a loaf of ice cream, a jug of barley tea, and moi?”
“Nobody asked for you, dude. Just tell me what you want and get outta here. Don’t blame me if they burst in and whine at you to pay for the wall you knocked down.”
“Hey! That’s not exactly how I remember it. It wasn’t me who knocked it down, exactly. It was that Alas Ramus girl who punched me through it, remember?”
“Yeah, and who made her do that?”
Urushihara was impervious to this game.
Gabriel couldn’t have known that their landlord covered the entire wall repair, but he did appear to feel at least slightly at fault for the unplanned Devil’s Castle home renovation.
“Wow, though… You’re the one he’s gonna get ‘pissed off at’? Reeeeeally?”
Gabriel grinned a smarmy grin as he greedily licked at the bare wooden stick that once held his purloined ice cream bar, tossing it into a side wastebasket.
“That box is for plastic. The regular trash can’s next to the fridge.”
“Oh, who are you, the Grand Pooh-Bah himself? Come onnn…”
“No! No ‘come onnnnn’! I’m the one he’s gonna yell at, all right? Just go away! You’re driving me crazy! Why are you even here?”
Even Urushihara was nearing his limit now, no longer bothering to hide his irritation.
“Y’knowww…”
“What?!”
“You were the golden child. The archangel closest to Mr. Big himself. And now you’re griping and moaning about some bozo getting angry at you? Now that’s rich. And you actually care about separating the garbage. This’s too surreal. I can’t even find it in me to laugh.”
Gabriel knew exactly what he was going to do with this topic.
But Urushihara betrayed no sign that it riled him any more than he already was. “Yeah, sorry. That was then, this is now. ’Sides, you were the one who talked about how important image is to us. If you’re gonna call yourself an angel, you could at least try to recycle.”
Urushihara sniffed derisively and focused his attention back on his screen.
Gabriel paid it no mind.
“Why’re you even with that young demon wannabe anyway? I mean, I know everybody’s saying how much of a wimp you are right now compared to your glory days, but I kinda wasn’t around for those, you know? So I’m just wondering, what were you thinking? Like, sue me for asking, but what drove you to shack up with the demons over in their world…?”
“It’s ’cause I was bored.”
“Bored?”
There was a chuckle lodged in the response.
“Yeah. And it’s fun here.”
“Fun? Sitting in this sweat lodge, watching Web videos, cowering in fear that your new lord’s gonna chew you out for tossing a bottle in the wrong bin? Not to rub it in, bro, but I’d take the Internet café I’m staying in any day over this pigsty.”
“It’s fun. And at least it’s not—”
“Whoa there, tiger! No making fun of Internet cafés.”
Urushihara’s purple eyes made their way through the overgrown hair covering his forehead on their way to staring Gabriel down.
“At least it beats staying up there. Staring into space for hours on end until it finally drives you insane.”
“Yeaaah, and your little escape’s kiiiind of becoming a huge pain in the neck for me.”
“Helps pass the time, right?”
Gabriel declined to answer. A huddled mass of cicadas swarmed around the trees in the backyard, making the heat and humidity feel even worse with their incessant cries.
“I hung out with Satan ’cause I had nothing to do, dude. I was so devoid of anything to occupy me that it was freaking me out. No other reason besides that. So, we done here? If that’s all you needed, the door’s that-a-way.”
“Ah, there he is!”
“Uh?”
Just as he was about to shoo him outside, Gabriel stopped him cold.
“I slogged my sorry hide all the way down to beautiful sun-soaked Sasazuka because I wanted to ask about that Satan guy.”
“So? Ask him about himself. It’s not like Maou’s out on a trip or anything. He’s somewhere in Shinjuku.”
“Ahh, but he’s not gonna tell me anything now, is he? Plus, he’s still pretty young, yeah? Not like you. I just thought asking the likes of you would save us all a lot of headache.”
This manner of coercion was familiar to Urushihara. He had heard enough of it up in heaven.
“Plus, the way I see it, instead of asking someone with nothing but secondhand knowledge, asking someone who knows the guy directly would give me much more accurate intel to work with, am I right?”
“Huh?”
This made little sense. Sadao Maou was the Devil King Satan himself. There was nothing secondhand about him.
Gabriel wagged a chiding finger at Urushihara.
“What I’m trying to tell you, Lucifer, is I’m talking about someone else. The ‘Satan’ that you were playing around with. Not the greasy-haired social dropout you’re bumming crash space from.”
Urushihara’s eyes immediately stiffened into a sneer. Gabriel gave an equally jeering smirk in response.
“I’m talking about the Devil Overlord Satan. You know him.”
“Oh. Is that it? Dude, you made me sneer at you for nothing.”
He sighed, as if disappointed at the revelation, and turned back toward the computer screen.
“Heyyy! What d’you mean ‘is that it’?! If you didn’t notice, I was trying to make this into a serious conversation! Was that not clear enough to you?”
“I’d be a second-class bum if I cared.”
“Oh, what, do you have any perks for being a first-class bum?!”
“No. No perks, but nothing really bad, either.”
“Well, maybe that’s how you think about it. ’Cause if I had to give it to you straight, I’d say you’re wasting your life away, aren’t you?”
“If I cared about what other people thought about me, I’d stop being a bum right there. That’s total bush-league bum-ness.”
“If you’re planning to be that much of a bum, aren’t they gonna kick you out before too long?”
“Dude, getting kicked out is, like, less than third-class bum. A first-class bum has to toe the line. You can’t make an effort to suck up to whoever it is you’re leeching off of, but you have to make sure you don’t drive him to do anything rash, either. It’s kind of like a sport.”
“That’s one sport I really don’t want to visit the Hall of Fame for, I reckon. Where is it, the bathroom at the thrift store? Also, how is that not caring about other people?”
“It’s totally not. I’m just gauging how much my opponent can stand and working within those rules. That’s different from caring. Sometimes the rules get rewritten and I have less space to work with, but that’s gonna be the same in any world, isn’t it?”
“……”
“A true bum isn’t afraid of death. He needs the resolve, the bravery to continue with his social-dropout lifestyle every waking moment of his life. If I broke a rule and he kicked me out, I wouldn’t be bumming anymore. I’d just be homeless.”
The way Urushihara framed himself as a sort of religious practitioner, despite constantly snapping whenever his roommates mocked him for his bum-ness, gave an insight into exactly the sort of mental gymnastics he tackled every day.
There were few less appropriate times to be busting out poetic epithets like “not afraid of death” or “with resolve, bravery.”
Even an archangel from another world could agree with the rest of Japanese society on that front. His face was blank, confusion giving way to grim resignation.
“Whatever it is you’re trying to convince me of, it’s not working, do you hear me? It wouldn’t convince anybody of anything.”
This was just the sort of response Urushihara relished the most.
“You don’t have to be so pedantic, Gabriel.”
“Huh?”
“If it wasn’t for what happened, you, me, everyone else…we all woulda been bums. Up there.”
“…!”
Gabriel gasped a little, not expecting this.
The grin on Urushihara’s face grew a shade darker.
“See? You do care. Second class, second class.”
“…Listen.”
Realizing he was being taken on an all-too-familiar ride, Gabriel lightly shook his head, attempting to regain control.
“We’re departing from the subject. I wanted to ask you.”
“After all that high-and-mighty crap you gave me? Good luck.”
The full bore of the archangel’s eyes was upon Urushihara.
“If you know anything about the Devil Overlord Satan’s lost treasure, I want you to tell me.”
“What’s that? ’Zit worth anything? ’Cause I want the money. I’d probably have the all-time mother of inheritance taxes to pay, but…”
“That isn’t what I asked you. It…it’s not that kind of thing anyway!”
“So what is it?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking!”
“If you don’t know, how do you know it’s not worth anything?”
“Do the demon realms even have a currency system?!”
“No.”
“Do you want to make me angry?!”
“Ughh… This is such a pain in the ass…”
Urushihara stood up from his seat, stretching out his cramped legs.
Then he took out a memo pad and a pen from the prefab bookshelves and started to scribble something.
“Okay, here it is. The treasure of the demon world, as much as I can remember. Enough to make people up there’s eyes explode.”
“You call this handwriting?” Gabriel blurted out without thinking. He could be forgiven: It was the scrawl of a five-year-old, and in capital letters to boot.
“NORTHUNG…Nothung? The sword of Gram, hmm? That’s not it. What’s this? Ader… No. What’s ADERAMEKINPEAR mean? Is this all one word?”
“That’s ‘spear.’ The spear that was with Adramelech’s tribe back in the Age of Myths.”
“The magical spear Adramelechinus! Can you at least learn how to write lowercase letters for me? And they invented spelling for a reason too, you know.”
“Screw that. Too much to remember.”
“Feh…FALSGOLD…? Oh. Alchemy. The story of how they created brass in an attempt to create false gold, hmm? ESTRLJEM, parenthesis, LEMBRENBE… The heck…?”
“Lhemberel Levherbé. A magical beast the Demon Overlord kept. Rumor says it’s still alive somewhere in the demon realms, wearing a collar with an astral gem—an arcane jewel crafted by the Overlord himself. Hey, maybe it’s one of your Yesod fragments, huh?”
“…You really want me angry, don’t you?”
The look on Gabriel’s face was severely embittered. The look on Urushihara’s was hurt surprise.
“What? I’m trying to be pretty serious here!”
“Even back then, people named Satan tended to be pretty poor, all right? He was the Demon Overlord, and he was still cheap enough to try tricking people with fool’s gold! I don’t remember him leaving any weapons or technology worth a rat’s ass when he died, and I wrote down pretty much everything right there, okay?!”
“Pfft… And who knows how much I can trust this, even…”
Gabriel wadded up the piece of memo paper and threw it into a trash bin.
“But I don’t have any way of making you talk. So whatever. I’m outie.”
“I told you, that’s the recycle bin…”
“Don’t forget, though, I’m practically doing you a favor right now.”
“Huh? Favor how?”
Gabriel turned unexpectedly stern as he looked upon Urushihara, currently pouting to himself as he fished out the paper wad and ice cream stick from the bin.
“The Observer is coming. And depending on what he decides, it might not be ‘doves’ like me paying house calls any longer.”
That marked the first time today that Urushihara showed any major change in expression.
“The Observer?!”
“Why’re you acting all shocked? Sariel, the Evil Eye of the Fallen, was teamed up with him, and now he’s outta the picture. You had to know he was gonna show up sometime?”
“How could we know that, dude? And why’re you expending all this effort on us now, after millennia of bumming around? Oh, and don’t give me that ‘dove’ crap, either. You’re like a shoebill or something. I have no idea what you’re thinking.”
“Yeah, thanks for that compliment. What’s a shoebill, anyway?”
As he spoke, Gabriel took a piece of paper out from his robe.
“Anyway. If you remember anything else, call me on this number. Not that I’d expect you to.”
“Like I ever would.”
There was a cell phone number on the business-card-sized paper Gabriel flung onto the floor before turning around to put his sandals back on.
“By the way, though…”
“What?”
“If you’re trying to find Satan’s old crap, then what happened to your search for Yesod fragments? ’Cause Emilia just got a new one.”
It was the one crudely embedded into the hilt of the jeweled sword Camio brought over for them. But not even Urushihara knew what Emi had done with it afterward.
Fusing with Alas Ramus was enough to power up her sword and Cloth of the Dispeller to the point where Gabriel was helpless against her.
Bringing another Yesod piece into that picture could help make more of her Cloth materialize. Or not. But if it did, that created issues for both the Devil King’s army and Gabriel.
That was the intent behind Urushihara’s question, but Gabriel reacted with no measurable surprise.
“Those? Yeah, that’s kinda on the back burner for now. I mean, the Observer is coming, so try to read between the lines a little, okay? I got taken off the front lines after the assorted managerial screwups we’ve had, so if that fragment is with Emilia, then fine by me for now.”
“Hmm? Well, okay, but…”
“Thanks again for the info! If you see Emilia, tell her I’m not gonna lay a finger on ’em for the time being, you hear me? So take care of that baby.”
With a lazy wave, Gabriel stepped out of the door.
Once his footsteps faded way, and the aura of his holy energy had finally disappeared from the Villa Rosa Sasazuka environs, Urushihara returned to his computer.
He began typing away, the cicadas providing him with a little seasonal background music.
Then, in a rare display of emotion, Urushihara began humming to himself as he browsed through his preferred video site.
“Amaaaaazing graaaaace…how sweeeeeet the sooooound… Hell yeah.”
The call center for the Dokodemo cell phone provider was shrouded in a strange sort of tension.
There was always something of an unnatural aura surrounding Emi Yusa, the cheerful yet thick-skinned customer service representative whose skill in foreign languages made her one of the phone bay’s star players.
She was there, just as always, handling the callers other agents were too helpless to handle.
If you went up and spoke to her, she was the same old Emi Yusa.
But.
When she wasn’t speaking with anyone. While she was waiting for a call to come in. In other words, whenever she was alone—
—her face was scary. At least, she looked scary. Anxiety and anger over something that couldn’t quite be put into words were etched across her features.
She was clearly worried about something, and clearly, it was distracting her.
It had no effect on her work duties, but today in particular, Emi was hard to approach.
“Um, Ms. Yusa, I…”
“…Yes?”
“Uhm. Oh. Um. Never mind. I’m sorry.”
The woman seated next to Emi excused herself, picking up on her state of intense concentration.
Emi brought a hand to her forehead, wondering if she really looked that fearsome.
Rika didn’t have a shift with her that day. Instead, on the opposite side of where she usually sat, there was Maki Shimizu, a college student who had joined Dokodemo after her two cube mates.
She acted fairly reserved most of the time, but in a call-center job that required dealing with irate old men and whiny complainers on a daily basis, she had a remarkable resilience for her age. She was a fairly valued member of the force, in other words.
“…No, it’s okay, Maki. What’s up?”
Maki was in her second year of college, which meant that Emi was, by Earth standards, actually younger than she was.
But the accumulated history they had both experienced, coupled with the aura the two of them generally emitted, made Emi seem far older.
This gave Emi some level of respect among other people in the office, who treated her like a multiyear veteran of the call-center trenches.
“Um, you…you’re looking scary.”
The straight appraisal made Emi even more self-conscious.
It must have been the face of a tormented monster. And as Emi thought about it, the sight of this hardy customer-representative soldier—never daring to flee at the sound of yet another irate pensioner who couldn’t read the manual—having difficulty facing up to her proved that the problem was fully on her own end.
“Um, I’m sorry if this is a weird question, but…”
“No, no, what is it?”
Maki’s voice, while hesitant, was perfectly clear.
“Did you have an argument with Rika or something?”
“Huh?!”
Emi was shocked. This was not at all what she expected, and so clearly, from her mouth.
“Wh-why did you think that?”
“Oh, it’s not…? Well, that’s good, anyway.”
“I’m not arguing with Rika about anything. What gave you that idea?”
Mika softened a little, the look of sheer surprise on Emi’s face calming her.
“Well, I got to work the same time as Rika yesterday. I took my lunch break later than usual, but just when I went out to get something, someone called Rika on her cell phone.”
Emi could feel her stomach churn a little. She knew what that phone call was.
“After that, Rika was acting weird the entire afternoon, so…I think she called you once she got off duty, so I just thought maybe something was going on.”
“Ohhh… And since I was looking all angry, you probably thought we were fighting, huh?”
Emi expelled a deep sigh.
The call Maki mentioned was probably the one Emi had picked up in her bathroom the previous day. As for that other one…
“Though looking back…I guess she was kinda all over the place. I’d spot her grinning to herself, then she’d start looking all troubled. It’s like her mind wasn’t on her work at all.”
Maki grinned a bit herself as she sought Emi’s appraisal.
“Do you think Rika found a new guy or something?”
“Gnnh!”
The groan was perhaps louder than Emi meant.
“M-Ms. Yusa?”
“Oh, um… It’s noth—”
At that moment, the scene in front of Sentucky Fried Chicken played back in her mind.
“No! Stop stop stop stop! Cut me a break!”
“Ms. Yusa?!”
Ignoring Maki’s surprised yelp, Emi placed her head on the desk.
Chiho, she couldn’t do much about. She had already been intimately familiar with the demons by the time they met. But Rika joining the fray would make Emi’s stress levels accelerate to the stratosphere.
“Why’s it always on a day like this…?”
“Oop. …Thank you for calling the Dokodemo Customer Support Team! This is Shimizu. How can I help you today…?”
“Yes, hello, thanks for calling the Dokodemo Customer Support Team…”
“Thank you for your phone call today! Are you there, sir…?”
“Why do I have to be so busy?!”
Emi felt like she wanted to cry.
The calls came without a break from the moment her day started.
The morning roundup e-mail mentioned that all feature phones and smartphones equipped with digital HDTV support were facing issues with signal reception today.
“Ugh, this is the TV company, people! It’s not our fault!”
“Ms. Yusa…?”
Maki covered the mike on her headset and frowned.
That must have been loud enough to be audible. Emi winced and brought her hands together in apology. Another call came onscreen.
“…Hello, and thank you for calling the Dokodemo Customer Support Team. This is Yusa…”
Another complaint about TV reception.
The common thread among the complaints was that the screen flashed white whenever users launched the TV app.
That, and this flashing ate up the phone’s battery like wildfire.
It didn’t happen wherever there was a weak cell signal.
The phenomenon tended to happen to everyone at generally the same time.
And, while it didn’t particularly matter, a strangely large number of people reported it happening when they used the TV app inside their own homes.
“If you’re at home,” Emi muttered to herself, “just watch your own TV, you freaks.”
Dokodemo HQ’s operational team had yet to give the call center any guidance about the cause, so all Emi and the rest of the staff had to offer customers were their profuse and heartfelt apologies.
It could have been a lot worse, at least. Anything involving people’s voice, text, or Net connections would have been murder. Most users, by comparison, didn’t bother with TV on their phones that often—not when even the biggest screens didn’t offer more than a small, occasionally choppy image. In an era where people could record multiple HD broadcasts at the same time, mobile-phone TV was mostly a toy unless you absolutely had to have the current live broadcast on your phone.
It was to the point where the TV-reception hardware was gradually being phased out of phones in Japan to make room for improved voice, Net, and app performance.
In other words, even though Dokodemo still offered a full line of phones with TV reception, the number of complaints for the current outage was still slow enough that Emi had time to trouble herself over Rika.
When the company had a Net outage a while back that made texting unavailable for a mere thirty minutes, that was enough to knock out the phone systems of every call center nationwide, a disaster epic enough in scale to make the national news.
“TV, though, huh…?”
Emi’s talk with Rika the day before made her mind blank out for a moment, but as the conversation went on, she learned that Ashiya apparently had asked Rika for advice on purchasing appliances.
She had no idea why Ashiya had Rika’s contact info, but apparently Rika promised to give Ashiya some advice on buying a cell phone not long ago.
That ongoing issue fell by the wayside with Maou’s Choshi trip, only to be rushed back to the forefront by Rika’s somewhat hushed voice over the phone.
Emi wavered, unable to dissuade Rika from avoiding Ashiya for reasons she couldn’t reveal. Instead, she advised Rika to just “be herself”—about the most slapdash, generic advice one could give at a time like this—and hung up the phone.
Then she immediately placed a call to Suzuno, who reported that—as expected—Maou had come storming back from the real estate agent, supreme victory written on his face, with Ashiya behind him looking like the sky was falling directly on his bank account.
The rent remained the same, they owed nothing for the home repairs, and since the MHK television fee was paid by the landlord on a collective-housing contract, it was already factored into the rent.
“And as I discussed last night, I intend to join them on the hunt. I thought this might perhaps be a fine opportunity to purchase a television of my own.”
That report lightened Emi’s heart a little. Just a little. A wiped-down kitchen counter in the frat house party of her life.
Rika wasn’t going alone with Ashiya. Suzuno and Maou would be with them.
“…But is that gonna be all right?”
“M-Ms. Yusa?”
Stress and talking to herself went hand in hand with Emi, who was too lost in thought to acknowledge Maki’s concern.
Rika sees Ashiya as a regular young man. There was no point trying to pretend otherwise.
With every ounce of willpower she could muster, Emi attempted the grueling act of picturing Ashiya for who he was. Shirou Ashiya: Well-built, muscular, and tall. Hair that just barely escaped taglines like shaggy or unkempt. And a face taut and wizened by ages of dealing with poverty. To an impartial observer, he probably looked like a forlorn liberal-arts major with a background in the—
“Rghh.”
It made Emi sick thinking about it, but that was the conclusion a lot of people would make.
And beyond that, he was polite and amenable around others, never came off as arrogant or cocky, but was still strict enough to upbraid his master Maou for his mistakes and spew venom at Urushihara all day for…being Urushihara.
His main minus was his near-total lack of income, but that was chiefly by his own design. If he completed the steps necessary to find a job, he would no doubt excel at whatever he tried his hand at. As a demon, he was just as much an expert with languages as Emi was.
And since his dirt-poor lifestyle left him with next to no money for entertainment, you never had to worry about excessive drinking or smoking.
And he could cook, clean, and do laundry. Perfectly.
Chiho Sasaki, by modern teenage standards, was so exceptional that she ought to be classified as a national monument and preserved for generations to marvel at. But looking at it this way, Emi had to admit—as a man, Ashiya was pretty prime pickings, too.
Maybe Rika fell in love at first sight. She couldn’t do much about that.
“Does Rika know…Bell and the Devil King are coming along?”
Now a different sort of frustration began to make itself known—not from the Hero Emilia, but as Emi Yusa, Rika Suzuki’s friend.
Over the phone last night, Rika sounded like she was trying (and failing) with all her heart to hide her embarrassment…and her excitement.
She never used the word date, but Rika must have known that Ashiya recognized her as a special woman in his life.
But…
“Is that registering with any of them…?”
This shopping trip involved buying a TV for Devil’s Castle. Rika, Ashiya, Maou, and Suzuno coming together seemed natural enough.
Given how fiendishly well organized Ashiya always was, he might have let Rika know about that by now.
But Rika must have had some kind of faint…expectation in mind, at least. Nothing strong enough to call hope, but it was there.
The expectation that she’d be alone, out together with Ashiya.
And Rika knew, in her own way, that Maou and Suzuno would be there, but she still saw that as a disappointment…
“…No! That’s wrong!” Emi shouted.
“Wh-what’s wrong?!” Maki, awaiting a call in her booth, shivered in surprise.
But Emi had no time to worry about her.
Where did Emi go wrong?
Ashiya is a demon. He just looked human right now because he was drained of his malevolent force. There was no way Emi could allow a demon like him to ever be alone with a valued friend of hers.
Ever since the previous day, her mind had been going off in all kinds of odd directions.
There was an uneasy truce between her and the demons, but it was one they were both forced into. From head to cloven hoof, they were the enemies of all mankind.
And with Suzuno around, she could protect Rika if anything happened. And Ashiya. And Maou.
“…I don’t care about the Devil King and Alciel!!” Emi pronounced aloud.
“Eep!”
Maki, next door, sounded close to tears.
Then a large shadow appeared behind Emi as she rubbed her head and squirmed in disgust at herself. Emi didn’t notice, but Maki looked on like a woman saved from the gallows at the last minute.
“……”
Fifteen minutes later:
Emi was plucked out of the office by the floor leader managing the call-center crew.
She was normally a hard worker, one who had pretty good relationships with everyone on the staff, so she avoided a serious reprimand. But:
“Are you tired or something? You can just head home today. Having you around is messing up the workplace atmosphere.”
It hit hard. Enough so to darken Emi’s face considerably. But it was true. She was preoccupied with so much today, it was getting hard to function like a normal human being.
And she was rough on Maki for no good reason. She’d need to apologize later.
Emi looked at her watch.
It was three in the afternoon. She was being sent home a good two hours earlier than usual.
She might as well use that time for her own needs, then.
Judging by what Maou and Ashiya had said the previous day, the four them were somewhere in Shinjuku right now.
She turned on her cell phone to contact Suzuno or Rika…but stopped herself. It took all her remaining strength.
“…It’d be too weird.”
Rika had approached her with this news just yesterday. If Emi showed up while she and Ashiya and the others were out shopping, that would put Rika in an incredibly awkward position.
Tailing the four of them unnoticed wasn’t an option, either. Emi’s past few months of experience told her that Ashiya would never be anything but a perfect gentleman toward Rika. And if Maou noticed Emi following after them, he’d never let her hear the end of it for the rest of her mortal life.
Given the current situation, trying to follow them and getting spotted could even potentially cause cracks to form in her and Rika’s friendship. The idea offered no benefit to Emi.
“In which case,” Emi whispered to herself, “maybe I should work toward my own goals every now and then…”
She could no longer simply walk up to Maou and slay him. Not with Alas Ramus fused into her holy sword.
Even if Suzuno’s hunch was right and someone decided to kidnap the Devil King and his general, that didn’t mean Emi was obligated to stick by them at all times. Until something actually happened, it’d be unwise to approach Rika, either.
Which opened up other opportunities.
Emi unfastened a pocket in her shoulder bag, inserted a finger, and plucked out a small, stone-like object.
It was a Yesod fragment, misshapen and smaller than a marble.
It had been embedded in the sword held by the Devil Regent Camio. Maou had tossed it over to her on the way back from Choshi, claiming he didn’t need it.
Remarkably enough, Alas Ramus didn’t offer much interest when shown it.
This was the first time Emi had obtained a fragment by itself, but considering Alas Ramus’s behavior and past, she assumed the child would extract whatever power the stone had and merge it with her own, or something. Just as Emi’s Better Half inadvertently led her toward Alas Ramus in the Devil’s Castle on Ente Isla. Just as the fragment on the other side of Ciriatto’s Link Crystal led his horde to the holy sword.
And…
Emi was trying to hunt down another Yesod fragment she was pretty sure existed in Japan right now.
At the time, she hadn’t noticed it as such, but later Maou had named it a Yesod fragment.
The jewel with the power to return Alas Ramus to normal. Carried by a woman who knew Alas Ramus’s name. A woman in white who approached her at Tokyo Big-Egg Town back on that day, wearing a ring festooned with a purple jewel.
Could she be…?
“…I better just leave it at that in my mind for now…” Emi shook her head, chiding herself.
This was a person who shouldn’t have been here at all. A person she knew only through what other people told her. Someone who crashed with friends for days at a time, but never showed her face to Emi. It might have been her.
“I can’t go breaking out my holy sword in public, either…”
Ever since she obtained the fragment in Choshi, Emi had been putting together a way to make use of it.
Yesod fragments were naturally attracted to each other.
But the only ones Emi had so far were the Better Half, Alas Ramus, and her Cloth of the Dispeller.
No matter how much she toned down her holy force, the sword would never shrink down beyond the size of a knife. Once her energy fell below a certain level, it would disappear entirely.
She considered using the fragment in the sword’s scabbard, but that would require her to materialize the Better Half anyway. If the woman in white was in an urban area somewhere, Emi and her unsheathed weapon would be reported to the police in an instant.
With Alas Ramus, though, the Yesod fragment that formed her core essence was apparently the crescent-moon design that occasionally appeared on her forehead.
If she used that fragment to attract other Yesod fragments to her, that’d require her to carry a baby around with a light-up forehead that looked as if it should be firing death lasers at giant movie monsters. It wouldn’t be very inconspicuous.
The Cloth of the Dispeller wouldn’t work, either. She didn’t know where the core of it was in the first place.
Given the alternatives, taking a fragment the size of a pebble on the street and walking around with it in her bag was not a problem at all. She could camouflage it in any number of ways, too.
There are tons of light-up key chains and other dinky little accessories these days, besides.
The only concern that remained was the potential for this Yesod fragment to bring Gabriel and his heavenly cohorts upon her if she used it. But the chances of that seemed slim.
Emi had unleashed the full force of her Cloth and Better Half over in Choshi. But despite the fact that Gabriel picked up on the woman in white and Alas Ramus immediately, there was no sign whatsoever of him showing up this time.
The fact there was one cheerfully hewn into the jeweled sword that Olba gave to Camio was odd, too.
She didn’t know who was on the other end of Ciriatto’s Link Crystal, but neither this mystery person nor the Yesod fragment that person presumably had showed any sign of drawing near her, either.
They might just be stringing her along, waiting for the right moment to strike. But even if they did, Emi was fresh from defeating Gabriel. She liked her chances against well near anyone right now.
“…I wanted to do this smarter. I wanted some peace in my life.”
As she left the building that housed her workplace, Emi regretted speaking to her coworkers like a bratty teenage bully as she headed for Shinjuku station.
There would normally be a stairway directly in front of the building that led to the subway. However, Olba and Urushihara had collapsed the tunnel through some method or another, and it still wasn’t back open yet.
It annoyed her for several reasons, not the least of which was because heading down there would bring her back to air-conditioning sooner. She stewed over that as she avoided the nearby eastern entrance to the rail station and headed for the New South exit, home to Shinjuku’s long-distance bus ticket counter.
Proceeding under the pedestrian bridge and passing by the eternally-under-construction southern exit, she passed by the stairs to the New South exit and walked on through the automatic doors of Takashima-daya, the high-end department store.
She breathed a sigh to herself as the cool air caressed her skin, ignoring the brand-name handbags, shoes, and other accessories lined up on the shelves as she dove deeper inside.
Then, before her unfolded a space quite different from the previous oasis of luxury—one done up in a deep green, with a great variety of merchandise crammed into a large number of aisles.
This new space was separated from Takashima-daya by the escalators, and while it was still in the same building, it was completely its own beast.
It was the Shinjuku branch of Tokyu Hand, a do-it-yourself store the size of a small city. When it came to anything you could call a tool or an accessory, there was practically nothing it didn’t have.
The selection began with wood and machine tools before moving on to construction equipment, clocks, leather goods, stuff for the outdoors, metals, project kits, party goods, character merchandise, and almost anything else they could get their hands on.
Emi rode up the escalator, heading for the floor where they sold a variety of crystals, minerals, and fossils. It wasn’t long before she found what she was looking for: a small bottle with a cork, meant for exhibiting crystals with. She also stopped by the accessory-kit section for a ball chain and a few other metal bits and bobs.
From there, she proceeded a very short distance to the Yoyogi Dokodemo Building. Evocative of the Art Deco skyscrapers that dominated the US cityscapes way back when, it housed the Yoyogi office’s primary business departments and communications hardware.
There was a Muddraker’s burger place on the first floor, which Emi swung into for some tea and a chance to lay out her goods on the table.
“…There we go.”
A Yesod fragment inside a corked bottle with a chain attached looked like nothing but a somewhat quirky key holder. She didn’t need to have it lit up 24/7, so as long as she could make up a quick story about it when anyone asked, it was all good.
It definitely beat carrying her unsheathed holy sword around, or showing Alas Ramus’s glowing forehead to the entire world.
The restaurant was largely deserted. Lunch was over, and it was still a tad early for the dinner rush.
Emi put her completed key chain back in her bag, then, taking a moment to ensure nobody was looking, infused the fragment with just a bit of her holy energy.
The Better Half, the Cloth of the Dispeller, and Alas Ramus all acted in concert with this infusion, making the fragment grow in strength.
She took pains to regulate the flow, remembering the dazzling glow her sword had emitted when she had set foot within Ente Isla’s Devil’s Castle.
Then she gave a light pump of her fist with her free arm.
“…Yes!”
The Yesod fragment inside the bottle began to glow a faint shade of violet, just like her sword and Alas Ramus’s head. Then, after realigning itself within the bottle, it shot a straight beam of light in a certain direction.
The beam was cut off by the inside of Emi’s bag, of course. But all she needed was the directional guidance.
The light was pointed southwest of Yoyogi.
One potential location immediately sprung to mind.
“…Ugh, Sasazuka?”
It was pointed right at the zone of Tokyo where Emi and Maou spent most of their lives.
“But…hang on a sec. It might not be there at all. Maybe it’s past there, even. …Might as well take this as far as it goes, though.”
Sasazuka would need to be on her list, of course, but all she had to go on right now was a general southwestern bearing. There was no guarantee this light wouldn’t guide her all the way down to Okinawa.
One thing was already for sure, though. The fragment in Emi’s bag, the Better Half, the Cloth of the Dispeller, Alas Ramus—and something else: There was another Yesod fragment in this world. Emi stepped out of Muddraker’s, a new sense of confidence fresh in her mind.
“…Which way would this thing turn if it’s reacting to something on the opposite side of the world, though?”
She knew the whole time.
That was what he had told her, after all. Having this be anything else would certainly not be her preference.
The other end of the relationship didn’t seem too conscious of its existence. And, looking back, she clearly acted out of sorts whenever they were together.
But…
“I was just thinking, you know…what if, am I right?”
“Pardon me?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
Rika grinned to herself, remembering that Ashiya was standing right next to her.
After agonizing over how dressy she should be for the big day, she opted for a tunic-style top, some short pants, and a well-worn pair of mules. Nothing too fancy, just your basic going-out gear. It proved to be the right answer.
Ashiya was standing next to her, yes. But in front of them was this guy, Sadao Maou—Rika still wasn’t quite sure if he was Ashiya’s friend, or ex-boss, or what—and Suzuno Kamazuki, Emi’s pal.
Maou and Ashiya were decked out in UniClo from top to bottom, not much different from before. They were reasonably coordinated, at least. Suzuno, meanwhile, was in a kimono as always.
Going full volume with her fashion choices today would’ve made the men in the group stand out like a pair of sore thumbs. Rika’s wardrobe was just barely casual enough to make the entire team look remarkably well balanced.
Upon meeting up at the western turnstile at JR Shinjuku station, the four of them took an underground tunnel to the Socket City in front of the station’s main bus terminal.
Rika had brought along nothing but a purse just large enough to fit her phone, her wallet, and a few cosmetics. Now, though, she was carrying a large, solid-looking plastic bag with one hand.
It was a set of tsukudani simmered fish from Choshi. A souvenir from Ashiya, who told Rika by phone about their trip beforehand.
Offering a selection of saury, mackerel, and European pilchard, it was nothing more, and nothing less, than a souvenir. The sort of thing you purchased robotically at the gift shop when you remembered you needed to bring something home.
“…Well, it works for me.” Rika grinned to herself, feeling a tad warmer for reasons besides the summer heat.
It was a very Ashiya-like present, to say the least.
And for someone living alone like she did, Rika would never turn down something to fancy up dinner a little.
She wasn’t a child any longer, besides. She was mature, and her emotions matured with the rest of her. In a distressing way, she was all grown up.
Rika turned toward Maou and Suzuno to shake off the bad vibes.
“So, what are all of you lookin’ to buy today, anyway?”
“I am merely here to purchase a television set. These other two, I cannot say.”
“Uh, hello? I need a TV, too?”
Maou shot it back at Suzuno. Rika looked up at Ashiya, who clearly wanted to voice his dissent.
“What about a phone?”
“…Perhaps, once we gauge the TV prices…”
“A phone? What’s that about?”
Maou turned around, picking up on their conversation.
“Well, I told you, I promised I’d help Ashiya find a cell phone for himself. It’s the twenty-first century, and he told me he didn’t have one.”
“When did you get to talking about that?”
Maou never knew—was never made aware—that Ashiya, Rika, and Chiho had been tailing him at Tokyo Big-Egg Town. That was why, just like with Emi, he had no clue why Ashiya and Rika were so suddenly friendly with each other.
“I dunno how much I can help you with buying a TV, though. I got an HD screen at home, but it’s not like I know a whole lot about them or anything.”
“Oh, not at all, Ms. Suzuki. The fact you own a television at all is vital to us. You made the purchase yourself, right?”
Rika’s apartment in the Takadanobaba neighborhood contained a flat-screen LCD set. It was the first major purchase she made with the money she saved up from working in Tokyo.
“Yeah, it’s from Toshina. It was pretty much one of the first HD-compatible models, so it’s kind of old, but it’s a twenty-sixer and it has all the component video and HDMI connectors and stuff. I just added a DVR and Blu-ray player to it not long ago.”
Rika found herself stared at by three pairs of eyes, all telling her that they had no idea what she was talking about.
“Um…?”
Suzuno cleared her throat. “I…imagine this may be difficult for you to believe, Rika…but our knowledge of home electronics begins and, sad to say, ends in the era of rabbit ears.”
“For you, maybe.”
Suzuno let Maou’s jab go unanswered.
“It was kinda the same thing when I bought a phone,” Maou continued, “but you’re talking as if we’ve got all the basics down pat already. It doesn’t really mean much to me if this or that’s installed on it if we don’t know what ‘this or that’ even is.”
“Yes,” Ashiya agreed. “And, Ms. Suzuki, I was hoping you might be able to teach us about all of this.”
“Ohhhh…kay?”
“So, this Toshina. Are they a well-known electronics manufacturer?”
“We’re starting from there?”
Ashiya’s question all but floored Rika. She stopped walking.
“Okay. Let’s rewind a bit. I think going to the electronics store right now might be just a little dangerous.”
Rika paused for a moment to think.
“Uhmmm, have, have you guys eaten yet? ’Cause how about we all have some lunch and I can at least tell you the bare minimum you all need to know?”
Maou nodded as he wiped the sweat from his brow. “Oh…yeah, it’s about time, huh? It’s been so hot lately, I haven’t had much of an appetite at all.”
“I have not eaten either…” Suzuno grinned and raised an eyebrow at Ashiya. “But the real issue is whether this compulsive miser here would allow a trip to a restaurant.”
Ashiya protested hautily. “Suzuno Kamazuki…you see me as nothing more than a close-fisted skinflint, do you?”
Then he turned to Rika: “As long as we can restrict it to three hundred yen or below per meal, I am prepared to make the outlay.”
“……”
Maou and Suzuno found themselves unable to respond.
Five hundred yen would be understandable enough, but at the three-hundred level, the pickings started to get slim. That would be just enough, maybe, to eat something off the main menu at MgRonald or a beef-bowl chain joint.
But Rika looked unfazed as she began walking forward.
“Okay, let’s do it. Mind if we go someplace I know about? It’s right near here.”
“Um, you know someplace we can eat at for three hundred yen?”
“Yeah, well, I kinda predicted he’d say that. I dunno if it’d be enough to fill up a full-sized man, but we’ll see.”
She brimmed with confidence as she climbed back up to the surface streets, guiding the other three to the front of a mixed-used office building.
Suzuno was the first to spot the sign.
“‘Manmaru Udon’… What? Udon noodles?!”
Manmaru Udon was an udon chain that got its start in Kagawa prefecture, the birthplace of the thick sanuki udon noodles that dominated much of Japan these days. They were known for their self-service bar of side dishes and toppings, and—more relevant to today’s proceedings—they offered high-quality noodle dishes that started at 105 yen.
“U…udon for a hundred five yen?” Ashiya, predictably, demonstrated the most shock.
He wasn’t deliberately trying to be difficult, but not even he expected a restaurant to offer anything below his quoted number.
“Huh… I heard about this, actually. This is Manmaru, eh?”
Maou, being a fast-food employee, at least knew the name, although this was his first actual visit to one.
“The small-size plain noodle bowl goes for a hundred five yen, and if you add a couple of toppings to that, you can keep it under three hundred and still fill up a little,” Rika added.
“Do… Are you a frequent visitor, Ms. Suzuki?” Ashiya inquired.
“No, just sometimes. The broth that udon gets served in around Tokyo is too thick and spiced up for me, but it’s a lot plainer here, so I like it more. Kinda easy on the wallet, too, huh?”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
“So anyway, we can eat here and I can clue you in about TVs a little before we hit the store. I’m not a huge expert or anything, but seriously, you’d be asking for trouble if you walked in there right now.”
Rika stood in the front of the line, showing the rest how to order. Behind her were Ashiya, Maou (still pondering over Ashiya and Rika’s apparent chumminess), and Suzuno, each wrapping up their order in sequence.
“You’re going with plain udon, Suzuno?”
Rika couldn’t help but ask. Even Ashiya and Maou topped their 105-yen bowl with some sweet-potato tempura and fried fish sticks, but Suzuno, surprisingly, went with plain old noodles and broth.
“I need to test this first. One small udon, as is, will suffice.”
As is, in this case, referred to the not-too-cold, certainly-not-too-warm temperature Manmaru typically sold their noodles at.
The chain’s 105-yen price point was more than just cheap for cheapness’s sake—it was devised to encourage more people to give sanuki udon a try. A sign of the franchise’s confidence in their goods, in other words.
“I never shy away from a fair challenge.”
“…A fair what?”
The four of them sat at a table and took out their chopsticks, Suzuno sizing up her bowl as intently as a samurai preparing to strike with his sword.
“’Kay, well…dig in, everyone.” Sounding the bell like a cafeteria lunch lady, Rika watched as Ashiya and Maou dipped their chopsticks into the broth, both thinking over their own private matters.
“…Let us begin.”
Suzuno shot her eyes open and brought a load of noodles to her lips.
“!!”
One bite was enough to make her face change color.
“This…is…!”
“Uh, hey, Suzuno?”
Maou’s voice clearly did not register with Suzuno as she quickly went in for more noodles. As the other three watched, she finished up the entire small bowl of plain udon in under a minute. The sheer zeal she brought into her eating performance mesmerized the group. She gave a light exhale as she wrapped up the final mouthful, but after a few seconds, her shoulders began to visibly shake.
“Why…why…?”
“Wh-what’s up, Suzuno? Didn’t like them too much?”
The bizarreness of Suzuno’s reaction gave Rika genuine cause for worry. But Suzuno responded with a gruff stare, her voice low.
“Why…is such splendid udon a mere hundred and five yen?”
“Huh?”
“The thickness, the body, the mouth feel, the salt level, the finish…all absolutely beyond reproach.”
“Yeah…? Well, great, but…”
Her eyes remained stiff and resentful, but Suzuno now looked more like a gourmet restaurant critic as she stood back up, bowl in hand.
“…Another order!”
“Yeaaah, have fun,” Maou muttered into his noodles as Suzuno stormed back to the counter. “I know they’re good and all, but that good?”
Ashiya looked up for a moment from his bowl. “Yes, well, Ms. Kamazuki is something of an udon aficionado, I believe. Perhaps something in it struck a chord with her.”
For some reason, the observation caused anxiety to shake itself into existence within Rika’s heart. Why would Ashiya know about Suzuno’s favorite foods? She knew they were next-door apartment neighbors, but were they friendly enough to know about each other’s eating habits?
“…Aha…”
Rika shook her head rather than take the thought any further. There was nothing strange about it at all. Even Rika had at least a vague idea of what people around her ate on a regular basis. And Suzuno became acquainted with Ashiya long before Rika entered the picture. If they lived that close to each other, he was bound to find out somehow.
As if to quell the anxiety once and for all, Rika opened wide and took a large, crunchy bite out of the kaki-age tempura fritter over her noodles.
“So getting back to the TV for a moment… Did you have an idea of what kind you wanted to buy or anything?” she asked.
“If I can watch TV with it, I’m good to go,” Maou replied.
“Well, yeah, but—”
“You said earlier that you owned a Toshina something-or-other that was ‘a twenty-sixer,’” Ashiya began. “Is that the model number or some such part?”
Maou’s phoned-in preferences were as unexpected as Ashiya’s earnest question.
“N-no, no, it’s twenty-six inches. That’s the size of the screen…or of the TV itself, maybe. One of the two?”
Rika had trouble remembering which was correct, but reasoned that it didn’t enormously matter either way.
But this was far more than simply not keeping up with the latest models.
Rika was no gadget guru, but televisions and video recording already existed by the time she was born. Her DVR wasn’t any thornier to use than any video device that came before it.
“Huh. So if twenty-six is normal, then I guess we’re maxing out at twenty-nine, maybe?”
“What?”
Rika’s eyebrows bunched together at Maou’s continued nonsense.
“I’d like to keep it on the bigger side, though. Like, twenty-seven or so. Twenty-four would be too small, so I’d want to go for twenty-six or twenty-seven…or twenty-eight if I can.”
She kind of understood what Maou was getting at as he rattled the numbers off. They indicated that this wasn’t going to be easy for her.
“It doesn’t work like bicycle tires or anything…”
“No?”
“I mean, the newer ones, if they’re meant for the family room, they come in thirty-two inches even at the low end. If money was no object, you could even pick up a fifty- or sixty-inch screen right now—like, about the size of a tatami mat if you laid it on the floor.”
“What the heck would you watch with something that big?!”
Maou—on this issue, at least—had a point.
“Mmm, movies and stuff, I guess? Some people are really picky about video and audio quality with that sort of thing, so…”
“Would regular programs show up that large as well?”
Ashiya’s trembling question created a mental image in Rika’s mind.
“You know, maybe that wouldn’t be so nice, huh?” she admitted.
Movies and nature documentaries would be one thing. But watching a normal news broadcast, the national legislature in session, or some inane comedy show in massive, high-resolution perfection seemed pointless. Rika chuckled at the idea of the top half of a newscaster’s body projected across her entire living-room wall.
“But that’s gonna be way out of your budget anyway. My twenty-six-incher’s probably about…this big, I guess?”
She drew a rectangle in the air in front of her to illustrate.
“They’re all gonna be flat-screen models these days, so you just have to worry about the width when you’re deciding where to put it. How much money do you have to work with?”
“Forty-one thousand, two hundred thirty-nine yen.”
Maou’s response was instantaneous.
“Why so exact?”
“He’s never not exact with our budget.” He motioned to Ashiya.
“No, I am not. So, do you think we’ll be able to purchase a television with…41,239 yen?” The nervous tension was clear in Ashiya’s voice.
“I performed some preliminary investigation over the Internet earlier, but all I could find on the low end was used goods, shady-looking store sites, and things like discount offers if I signed up for a new broadband provider. I’m afraid I failed to get a clear picture of what a TV would cost by itself.”
“Well, if you’re buying a home appliance like this, it’s probably better to get hands-on with it first anyway…”
Rika nodded slightly.
“But if you don’t mind going down to twenty inches or so, you could probably squeak under the forty thousand mark, I think.”
“Hell yeah!”
“Wha…!”
Maou’s fist pump was accompanied by the blood draining from Ashiya’s face.
Suzuno chose that moment to return, fresh bowl of noodles in hand.
“Upsized a bit, huh?”
It was another plain udon order, this one in a bowl easily twice the size of the first.
“Even their largest size is only four hundred yen. How could they possibly earn a profit at these prices…? The state of Japan’s food security never fails to mystify me. Have we returned to the subject of television yet?”
She was already slurping away as she spoke, her face softer now. Apparently she calmed down enough that she could think about other things besides noodles again.
“I could provide a budget of up to seventy thousand yen if needed. Would that enable me to make a purchase?”
“Oh, you could get a pretty good one with that budget, I’d imagine. We’ve got less than a year before Japan switches over to all-HD broadcasting, so some of the older models are starting to get really cheap these days.”
“Is that the state of things…? Curse you, HD broadcasting… A thorn in my side to the very end…” It was unclear where Ashiya was targeting his grudge, but his chopsticks were about to snap in his hand.
“Beyond that…if you hit up the thrift shops, you could get an old picture-tube TV for less than ten thousand if you wanted, but there wouldn’t be much point to that once they stop broadcasting in analog.”
“So why’re they even selling those?”
“Well, apart from changing your antenna, you can get HD broadcasts from a cable company, too. Then you’d have to rent a tuner, but that would let you watch digital TV on an analog set. There’s a lot of people who don’t want to throw out a perfectly good TV, you know?”
“Hm,” Suzuno muttered. “Would that grant me access to a vacuum-tube and transistor-model television?”
Rika shook her head at Suzuno’s oddly impassioned query.
“I…dunno about that. I mean, I’ve heard of transistor radios, but…”
“Ah. I merely thought that, considering how quickly things evolve in Japan, people would be all too ready to sweep away with the old to bring in the new. But hearing of this technique to connect yourself to the past… It gladdens me, a little.”
“Hey, um, I’ve kinda been wondering about this, Suzuno, but did you maybe grow up in a foreign country like Emi or something?”
“Hmm?”
“I dunno, you just like saying stuff like ‘In Japan it’s like this,’ ‘In Japan you do that,’ that kind of thing.”
“…Ah. Yes. Um, yes. I come from a religious family, and we were stationed overseas…”
The unexpected question threw Suzuno uncharacteristically off balance.
“You’re lettin’ the udon get to your head.”
“That low, huh?”
“But neither Alciel nor Rika would have even that luxury granted to them! Even if you, Alciel, and Lucifer all decided to live out your mortal lives in Japan, it could never happen.”
“Wh-why not? I mean, not that I necessarily want to do that, but…”
“How long have you been in human form? Who on this planet could guarantee that all of you will see out your golden years if you stay on Earth?”
“I…”
“Even if your strength is that of an average human—even if you require human medical treatment for your injuries—you are a demon all the same, once you gather enough demonic force. And once you do, even if you have a change of heart and elect to side with the humans, unhappiness will be sure to greet whoever decides to become close to you. As long as your body remains young, that is all but inevitable.”
“Huh. Kinda surprised, though—you think we’re gonna pal up with humans that much?”
“Oh, now you say that?” Suzuno huffed, the question clearly settled to her. “The truth can never be born from bias. If I were to comprehensively evaluate your personal qualities as I’ve directly interacted with them in this world, ‘palling up’ is a fair enough inference to make—Ah!”
She stopped midway, glaring at him as if he had killed her family.
“But do not take that to mean I have a positive impression of any of you! That is strictly an objective analysis!”
“A-all right, all right. Stop standing so close to me. I got it.” Maou attempted a smile to stave off the Church cleric who just physically assaulted him in a public place.
Suzuno, eyes still dead upon him, looked over at Ashiya and Rika, who were still near the display of phones. “Even if Rika continued with this affair, the day will come when she has to grieve over her lost love or see him off as he returns to another world. Do you think myself or Emilia will allow that?”
“……” Fixing his shirt collar, Maou picked up his bottle and tried to return Suzuno’s glare.
“You know what I am trying to tell you. If possible, I want you and Alciel to cut off ties with Rika today. That would keep the wounds to her psyche at a bare—”
“All right, so why haven’t you erased Chi’s memories yet?”
“—minimum… What?”
“The only difference between her and Rika Suzuki is that one knows the truth about me and one doesn’t. Shouldn’t you just erase Chi’s memories right now? Isn’t she gonna be unhappy, too, otherwise?”
Suzuno’s eyes widened, like a deer on the highway.
“I mean, what kinda line are you drawing between Chi and Rika anyway? If you’re respecting Chi’s wishes as a friend or whatever, then why aren’t Rika’s wishes worth considering?”
“Th-that is not my intention! I simply mean that—”
“That what?”
“……”
The one-two punch from Maou cowed Suzuno into silence.
“Or how ’bout I give you this One Weird Tip that’ll keep Rika from having some huge love tragedy? Church clerics hate it!”
Now Maou was in his element. The confidence was written across his face.
“Here it is: We just explain to Rika that we’re demons from another world, in a way that she can believe. If that freaks her out enough that she stays away from us, that’s perfect for you guys, right? And if Rika still wants to hang out around Ashiya, she’ll at least be informed and prepared for whatever happens. She won’t be the only one being all sad that way.”
“Are you insane?! If you do that—”
“If I do that, what?”
“Then…then you will get Rika involved in all of this.”
Suzuno was quickly losing steam.
“Well, wouldn’t it be nice if our enemy cared about that?”
Maou didn’t need to emphasize the our to get his point across.
“’Cause Olba didn’t hesitate for a minute to get Chi involved in our little spat. Did you think Ciriatto and all those dudes he brought along cared about all those helpless Japanese people back in town?”
Maou’s voice was quiet, but there was a sharp, supreme confidence to it.
“From the moment Emi and I came down here to Tokyo—the central core of human society in Japan—it didn’t matter how much we cared about getting humans involved in this. So what’s it matter, trying to hide our true identities when push comes to shove? Or, what, does Rika strike you as the type of girl who’d let a little something like demonic wars stop her?”
“You… Enough! Enough of your faulty logic! Human relationships aren’t as simple as that!”
“Yeah? Well, how ’bout human-demon relationships? Wouldn’t those be even less simple? ’Cause Chi seems like she’s getting along okay with me, isn’t she? Besides, Rika’s been ‘involved’ ever since Emi decided to make friends with her. The only difference is that she’s not in clear and present danger yet.”
“……”
“I dunno how this is gonna turn out, and I’m not saying we should all try to expand our friend base or anything. But I’m already interacting with all kinds of people in my job. And…”
Slowly, Maou stood up, swaying back and forth to stretch out his back.
“I know I don’t need to tell you this, but it’s boring, living alone. You’ll wanna have some friends sooner or later.”
Suzuno, the loser of the debate, averted her eyes and put her hands to her knees, shoulders shivering.
She had no logical argument to retaliate with, but it was clear she was in agony, unable to accept it on an emotional level.
Seeing this out the corner of his eye, Maou let out a deep breath from his nose, the day’s heavy lifting done.
“You gotta stop thinking in black and white so much. Emi never thinks that much about whatever she does. It’s worked fine for her so far.”
He put a hand on Suzuno’s head, watching the hairpin quivering on top of it.
“D-don’t touch me!”
The edges of her eyes reddened a bit as she brushed his hand away.
“You and Emilia… Both of you just smash headlong into everything you encounter! What is so wrong about at least one of us carefully considering things first?!”
“Nothing. But if your thoughts keep dwelling on bad outcomes or keeping the status quo, that doesn’t accomplish anything. As long as we’re dealing with other people in this world, it’d be a lot more fun to focus on the good stuff that comes out of it. Plus, I’m a King. I have a duty to live that way for my followers.”
“King…”
Suzuno tossed the word around in her mind.
“But…”
“Mmm?”
“If you keep such a rosy view of the world, just doing whatever you think is right even when it fails…what then?”
“Simple.”
Suzuno intended the question to bite at Maou, pulling the rug out from under him. But Maou had a ready answer.
“Someone else shows up who thinks he can bring everyone in a better direction. He knocks me out. Then he takes the lead.”
“Hey, um, Ashiya?”
“Yes?”
“Do Maou and Suzuno get along much?”
“Hmm?”
Rika pointed toward a bench next to the stairwell. Maou and Suzuno were there, yelling and scuffling with each other. From a certain angle, one could conclude they were just having a playful shove or two. Either way, Ashiya doubted they were having an exchange of any major note.
“Normally, it should not be that way at all.”
“It shouldn’t…? Huh?”
“But…”
Ashiya’s face was twisted in pain. His words were the polar opposite.
“Lately, that has not been the case.”
“…Oh. Kinda complicated?”
“Yes. Very complicated indeed. I think…”
Ashiya, relaxing his tormented expression a bit, turned his eyes to Rika.
That alone was enough to press the FAST-FORWARD button on Rika’s heart.
“The time may come when I will explain why to you, too.”
His eyes, the apex of sincerity, were like arrows stunning Rika into silence.
“…Mmm.”
All she could do was nod.
Ashiya had some kind of dark shadow, one Rika couldn’t begin to fathom. She felt that from the first time they met.
Something about his relationship with Maou indicated they were more than simply boss and subordinate. And even though they acted excessively hostile around Emi, it kind of seemed like they didn’t hate her that much.
Plus, how did these people run a company if they were so out of touch with things like how to work a TV set? It was all so strange.
She put it aside at first—they were just passing acquaintances back then—but maybe “the Maou Group,” the company he told Rika about, was actually a feint to hide some kind of bigger past.
Or maybe it was just her imagination. This was only her third encounter with Ashiya. They were only slightly familiar with each other. If someone asked whether they were friends, she couldn’t honestly say they were at that point. She was in no position to pry into his past.
That, and Ashiya was yet again being the perfect picture of politeness.
Each of the men of Rika’s age she’d interacted with up to this point would drop the effort within a day’s time and act like he’d known her for years. If they made it to a third date, the guy usually took that as a cue that it was okay to unrepentantly fart in her presence. But the wall between Ashiya and her showed no signs of even cracking, much less crumbling down.
I’d love to break it down.
I want to know more about Ashiya, beyond the wall.
That sort of natural desire was starting to sprout within Rika.
Maou and Suzuno, with all the hate supposedly between them, seemed perfectly comfortable with each other. No restraint whatsoever.
It wasn’t exactly the ideal relationship, no. But, still, Rika wanted to know more. More about what Ashiya was thinking as he went through his daily routine.
Suddenly, it came to her.
She gave an extra little clench to the bag in her hand, still holding the simmered fish he had gifted her.
“Say, Ashiya?”
I.
“How ’bout we just pick up some spec sheets and think it over for now? It’s not like we gotta buy you a cell phone today, right?”
“That is true enough, yes…”
Have fallen.
“I sure don’t get a commission if you buy a Dokodemo phone, so don’t worry about humoring me there. A little time to talk it over with Maou wouldn’t hurt, either, I don’t think. But if anything jumps out at you after that…”
In love with this weirdo.
“…lemme know and I’ll help you shop some more, okay?”
Ninety percent of that invite was rational. The rest was ulterior:
Ashiya, on cloud nine after the deal he earned on the TV, was having trouble making rational buying decisions at this point.
Rika hadn’t checked on what kind of phone plan Maou used. If they could have Ashiya join on his contract, or switch over to some kind of friends-and-family deal, he could get the functions he wanted for a cheaper price. She truly felt she didn’t have the info she needed. That much was true.
The other 10 percent was telling her that, as long as she framed it like this, she could easily get another chance to see Ashiya. Thus, the ulterior motive.
She had trouble expressing why explaining her outing with Ashiya to Emi over the phone—to anyone, really—made her so tense. But now that she knew where her heart was, it made perfect sense.
“…Would that be all right with you, Rika?”
It was no wonder that establishing a “next time” made her so happy.
“Oh, totally! They call me the Queen of Connectivity around the office, y’know. You wanna find the best cell phone for your needs, you just come to me! I ain’t gonna steer you wrong!”
“I look forward to it.”
She hardly knew him, but seeing him smile made her so, so happy.
Ahhhh, this isn’t like me at all.
“Allow me to collect a few more of these pamphlets for now, then. I will need to check Maou’s work schedule to be sure, but I should be able to contact you again before long.”
“Sure. I’ve got work, of course, so we can talk about it then. So how ’bout we get those two over there to stop bickering and call it a—”
It was as she was speaking that it happened.
“Yeeeaaaggghhhh!!”
A scream rang out from the floor above them. Ashiya and Rika, Maou and Suzuno—they froze.
The rest of the customers looked similarly confused, looking around to figure out where the scream came from.
“Hey, what was that?”
“Let’s go look.”
An employee and his supervisor ran up the stairs.
Maou watched them go past his bench, but, suddenly realizing something, he headed toward Ashiya and stated his thoughts. By the looks of it, Ashiya was thinking along similar lines.
“Could you wait here just a moment, Ms. Suzuki?”
“Huh?”
“Hey, did you notice that, Suzuno?”
Maou looked deadly serious as he spoke. Suzuno reluctantly nodded.
“…You watch Rika for me. Ashiya and I will be right back.”
Not bothering to hear Suzuno’s response, he made a bull rush upstairs, Ashiya following behind.
“Hey! Hey, uh, guys, shouldn’t we leave that to someone else?”
Rika, sensing at least a smidgen of the tension in the air, had no one left to address as Suzuno looked up the stairwell warily.
The second floor was where Ashiya and Suzuno had made their TV purchase.
It couldn’t have been more perfectly normal back then, but in tandem with the scream, the air now seemed infected by a nebulous miasma.
“…You had best wait outside, Rika. I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Um? Uh, okay, but what about them…?”
“They will be fine. They have survived quite a lot, despite all indications.”
“Wh-what do you mean…? Oh! Wait a sec, Suzuno, he forgot his TV!”
After a moment, Rika finally succeeded in having Suzuno give her the pair of TV boxes and help her jog for the exit.
Outside, Shinjuku was the same as usual. The scream didn’t make it beyond Socket City’s walls, the passersby betraying no sign of being disturbed by anything.
Maou and Ashiya, meanwhile, realized something was wrong the moment they made it upstairs.
All the TVs lined up on the shelves, the same ones they so intently studied a few moments ago, were shattered down to the last screen.
The floor was littered with pieces of LCD panel. The customers and staff were stuck dumb, unable to parse the events around them.
The supervisor who climbed the stairs ahead of Maou grabbed a nearby employee—by coincidence, the same one who waited on Ashiya and Suzuno.
“Wh-what happened?!”
“Um, uh, the screens… The floor-model screens all flashed white at the same time…”
“All of them?!”
“Yeah, it was like a camera flash or something. I shielded my eyes for a moment, and then…”
Another employee ran up to them to finish the sentence.
“…the next thing we knew, they were all in pieces.”
“Th-that’s absolutely crazy! That’s… All right, we better get everyone outta here, now! Someone call the cops and the fire department…”
The supervisor, despite his difficulties assessing the situation, still managed to consider customer safety first. Must be a talented boss, Maou mused.
It wasn’t long before the staff rounded up Maou and Ashiya as well, escorting them downstairs. Taking a final, concerned glance at the TV section, Maou descended the staircase and exited the store.
“Well? What was it?!”
“Are you okay, Ashiya?!”
Suzuno pounced on Maou, as if he had caused the whole thing. Rika was more preoccupied with Ashiya. It wasn’t exactly the warmest of welcomes for Maou, but he righted himself toward Ashiya.
“Hey, Ashiya, you should take Rika home just in case.”
“Huhhh?!”
“Yes. By my very life, she will be safe.”
Rika let out a crazed whimper. Ashiya merely accepted his orders.
“Um… Allow me to see you home, Ms. Sasaki. You mentioned you lived in Takadanobaba, yes?”
“Ummmmm, I, w-wait, I think this is a little fast, I haven’t prepared and my room’s all messy and— Hey!”
Watching Ashiya head for the station, the hand of the suddenly panic-stricken Rika in his own, Maou gestured toward Suzuno.
“I’ll explain this on the way home. We better regroup with Urushihara for now. You get Emi over there, too. Ooh, and I better call Chi and warn her to stay away. It’s gonna be pretty rough around my apartment for a bit again.”
“Let me confirm one thing first.” Suzuno’s voice was far more acerbic than before. “That was demonic force, yes? Barbariccian in nature?”
“Dunno. But…and I know this ain’t gonna matter to you…this ain’t us.”
The miasma-like air on the second floor was unmistakably demonic energy.
Nothing of Maou’s or Ashiya’s doing, of course. And Maou had no idea why the mere presence of demonic force would be enough to destroy several dozen TVs.
The only thing certain: This was no natural occurrence.
“I know that.”
Suzuno pouted as she accelerated her walking pace. She and Maou were carrying their TVs while walking as quickly as they could, causing beads of sweat to appear on each of their foreheads.
“You and I were engaged in that pointless argument. I don’t need further pointless excuses to see it wasn’t you. For a king, you act remarkably timid.”
“Eating dinner with an assassin sent by your sworn enemy would put anybody on edge, most nights.”
The breezy smile was back on Maou’s face.
“…Say what you will. We must hurry.”
Suzuno, no longer possessing the mental capacity to deal with it, turned her face away and walked on ahead.
By the time they half-ran back to Villa Rosa Sasazuka, Emi and Urushihara were there—the former looking even more peeved than usual, the latter far more serious.
“The Devil King was with you the whole time, Bell?”
“Y-yes…as was Alciel, until a moment ago.”
Emi looked relieved to hear that for a moment, but quickly scowled back at Maou.
“Where’s Alciel? What happened to you?”
Something wasn’t right with Emi. Even Maou could tell.
Her eyes were quivering with anxiety, something he’d never seen before.
Even in the past, when the two of them were slashing away at each other, her eyes constantly burned with a strong, powerful will. Now, they were filled with a dull, unguided glow. No one else in the room had seen that before.
“Part of me wishes this was your fault…but part of me’s glad that it’s not. I want to be sure on this. You were together with Bell all day today? You didn’t go out again after visiting the real estate office yesterday? Do I have that right?”
Maou and Suzuno nodded in unison.
“Chiho’s been poisoned by a concentrated dose of demonic force. She’s unconscious in the hospital right now. Her mom told me she was already acting weird last night.”
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