Hataraku Maou-sama! - Volume 5 - Chapter Ep

EPILOGUE 
“Um… Hello, Maou.” 
It was not the most enthusiastic of greetings from Chiho, as her cheeks glowed red and she attempted to hide her face underneath her hospital-bed comforter. 
“Hey. Uh, your mom said you were gonna be discharged tomorrow, so…where is she, anyway? She gave me a call.” 
It was a bit awkward for Maou, being alone here without Riho present. He looked around the room. 
“I-I think she’ll be back in a minute. She said she had some shopping to do…” 
“Oh? Well, all right. Here, um, I got you some flowers.” 
“Oh! Thank you very much.” 
Chiho shyly brought her hands forward. 
“So, um…” 
“…Yes?” 
Chiho and Maou sized each up for a moment, trying to read each other’s minds. The silence got to Maou first. 
“Do you…remember last night at all?” 
Chiho lightly, but clearly, nodded. Slowly, she began to recap the events of the previous night. 
“After I helped you with the move, I went home and watched TV. Then the screen lit up all white…and then I don’t remember anything. Not until I woke up in here. Then, yesterday… Well, my phone should’ve been totally out of power, but it rang anyway, and this ring on my finger lit up…and I guess I figured out I could do all that stuff after that. But that was really all me, pretty much. I just, you know, I was hearing all these things on the phone, and I felt like I had to do something.” 
Maou moved on to the question he wanted an answer to the most. 
“Who was on the line?” 
“Um…well, it was definitely a woman, and I think she was from your world…” 
Anxiety and hopefulness coursed across Maou’s mind for a moment. But Chiho shook her head. 
“But she didn’t give me her name. She said to just brush it off if anyone asked me. That was apparently her condition for lending me all that power…” 
“…Man. So you believed her after she gave you that story? You practically surrendered your whole body to her.” 
It was Maou’s honest appraisal. The idea made him break into a cold sweat. 
“Well… I dunno,” Chiho replied sheepishly. “I just figured she wouldn’t be talking to me if you or Yusa were her enemy. I mean, look at all the power she had. She could’ve taken me hostage or controlled me like a robot if she wanted to, but she didn’t. So I figured she wasn’t a bad guy, anyway.” 
“…Y’know, I’ve been thinking this for a while, but wow, Chiho, you’ve really got a thick skin for this kinda thing.” 
“Well, that’s thanks to all my new friends keeping things exciting all the time.” Chiho let out an easy laugh. “Besides, when Gabriel first showed up…that really frustrated me.” 
“Oh?” 
“Remember how you told me that I shouldn’t go near your apartment until everything was worked out with Alas Ramus? I mean, I was glad to see you worry about me, and I know I’d just get in the way during a fight, but it was…you know, just a little frustrating, still. I wished that I had enough strength to fight like you guys. To protect everybody I knew. And then…” 
Chiho picked up her phone, then looked up at Maou, an apologetic look on her face. 
“The woman on the phone offered you her powers?” 
It certainly wasn’t a good example of thinking ahead—giving your physical body over to a total stranger over the phone. Very un-Chiho-like. But Chiho shook her head briskly at Maou’s stern tone. 
“Oh, it wasn’t that simple. She heard me talking in my sleep, so she gave me this lecture about how I shouldn’t be such a picky eater. Then she talked about why I fainted at home, and how you and everyone else came to visit me in the hospital, and how you and Yusa might be fighting over in Tokyo Tower or the Skytree right this moment, and how it’d be against Gabriel and this other angel I didn’t know, and how Sariel wasn’t involved at all, and how a lot of other people with vast holy powers were joining in as well, and how despite knowing all of that, she wasn’t in a position to go out in public and handle it herself, and stuff.” 
“……” 
Maou fell silent at Chiho’s astonishing verbal checklist. 
“So once she told me all of that, she got really serious with me, like, ‘I’ll protect you if it gets dangerous at all and I’ll repay you afterward, so please, help me protect the people I hold so dear for me’ and so on. That’s what made me think, ‘Okay, I guess I can trust her.’ Like, if I could pitch in and help you and Yusa when you’re really, really in trouble…” 
Chiho looked up again, gauging Maou’s countenance. 
“…The idea made me kind of happy, to be honest. And it felt great, too. Flying in the air and all. Pretty cold, but great.” 
Nobody on Earth was more aware than Chiho of her relationship with Maou and the other Ente Islans, and where exactly she stood with all of them. She would never be one to let her emotions carry her to the battlefield uninvited. That would just make Maou and Emi’s job more difficult. 
That was why she was so willing to endure the pain of feeling helpless around them. It wasn’t hard to picture that. She was, after all, still just another teenage girl. 
“Well, if that ever happens again and you think the lady’s willing to listen, don’t sell yourself out so easy, okay? You know, talk to me or Emi first. No guarantee it’ll work out so well next time, besides.” 
Chiho nodded sincerely—enough so for Maou to accept it. He relaxed his face a little. 
“So does your body feel different at all?” 
Chiho found it difficult to answer. 
“…In a way, yes. But in a way, no, too. I mean, I feel like everything’s back to normal, and I’m not in pain at all. But…I’ve got memories, now, that I know don’t belong to me.” 
“Don’t belong to you?” 
“I don’t know if I should call them memories or just…really strong emotions, or something? Like, at first, I thought I saw it in a movie or something and my brain decided to stick it into my dreams one night. But…but I really think they belong to you. Or, I mean, they belong to Satan.” 
“…Me?” 
“I see this really tiny demon.” 
Maou gulped nervously. 
“He’s crying his eyes out, and he’s covered in cuts and bruises… He looks like he might die unless someone helps him out. So then I came in and nursed him back to health, and I talked about all these different things while I did. And, soon, you and I were friends. I don’t know, it’s like I really wanted to help you out, or…” 
“Chi?” 
The pronoun shift threw Maou for a loop. 
“But I was so busy trying to save you from the brink of death that I didn’t tell you about the most important thing of all. I kept wanting to apologize to you about it.” 
Chiho’s eyes were squarely upon Maou. 
“…Who are you? What did you do to Chi’s body?” 
Now he knew. He sat forward in his chair, his voice stern and low. 
“I suppose I was pretty immature back then, too. I was so lost in my ideals that I wasn’t able to see the big picture. That’s why I guess I made you go wrong in the end. But…what I’m doing now, it’s to the point where I can’t go back to you any longer. I’m truly sorry about that.” 
The voice, and the body, was Chiho’s. But the atmosphere, the way she spoke, wasn’t. 
“You haven’t forgotten about me…have you, Satan Jacob?” 
That, finally, was enough to make Maou leap backward out of his chair. 
“Listen to me for a moment. I promise it won’t be long.” 
“What… You… How are you…!” 
“I apologize for getting this child involved in this, but I had no other choice.” 
Chiho’s possessor, ignoring Maou’s shaky voice, continued unabated. 
“My mission is to bring Ente Isla back…to bring heaven, and the demon realms, back to what they need to be. If I wanted to do that, I needed a vast amount of support. And I have to admit it—in a way, I rescued you then because I thought it would help me out later on. I thought you’d grasp the truth I was trying to reach.” 
“Chiho” turned her gaze toward the window. 
“You, being here in this world right now…that’s no coincidence,” she said. 
“What?” 
“This is the closest Land of Sephirot to Ente Isla. You, and that child… It was rather like you simply moved a few doors down, in the grand scheme of things. It makes it easier to bring people and things back and forth…and more than anything, this Land of Sephirot is full. Complete. Its seed shall be carried on to the next generation. Neither tilted toward the holy nor the demonic…and yet, it holds both elements within it. Truly, a miraculous world…” 
The unspoken but was clear in her voice. 
“Now, our actions have dragged down the ‘inheritance’ process. If this continues, Ente Isla will face a disaster on the same level as the Demon Overlord Satan’s rise once again. I…I simply wanted to stop that…but I couldn’t. That’s the kind of people they are. All they care about is what’s in it for them. That’s why I took action.” 
“I don’t understand what you’re saying! Just get to the point!!” 
“That child holds one of the keys…as does its father.” 
Maou deliberately avoided pondering over which “child” she meant. He was talking to her. He needed to focus on that. 
“Where are you right now?” 
“My memories being copied into this child’s mind was a total coincidence. I never took her over, or possessed her. Not for a moment. Her brain will do away with them soon enough—they’re too much of a mismatch with the rest of her experiences. I wish I could have given her the power to protect herself, but…alas. However, I did give her one piece of information she needs to know for my goals. I hope you will forgive me for that.” 
“Chiho” softly extended a hand to Maou. 
“So please… You must find the Da’at of Ente Isla… That key will bring both father and child…to…ing the…en…” 
“Whoa! Whoa, what’s up?!” 
The voice grew scratchy, like noise in a radio transmission, gradually clouding up her speech. 
“…the same…an…somehow…is all…” 
A pained expression on her face, “Chiho” still mustered a smile. 
“Bring the world back to what it needs to be. I wish you the best of luck, Devil King Satan!” 
And, the next instant, Chiho was back. 
“…Yeah, it’s like I’m remembering this stuff from back when you were a little kid, Maou, so I didn’t know what I should… Um, Maou?” 
“…Oh. Sorry.” 
Maou gave Chiho a light shake of his head, put his chair back in place, and sat down. 
The purple stone on Chiho’s ring remained there as always. 
“Eesh. Here I am in modern-day Japan, and I still don’t have anything to record audio with…” 
“Huh?” 
“Never mind.” 
Maou smirked, mostly to himself, and shook his head again. 
“So did whoever owns that ring tell you anything about what’s going to happen? It’s not like you can handle that Yesod fragment by yourself, right?” 
Chiho took a glance at the ring on her left hand, her face perplexed. 
“I think she did…or maybe she didn’t? I’m pretty sure that there’s something or other that I need to tell Yusa, though.” 
“…Oh?” 
The girl herself seemed fine with it, but Maou fretted nonetheless about what, if any, effect these otherworldly forces would have on her long-term health. 
“Well, the way Suzuno put it, I don’t think you’d be able to store all that much holy force in your body anyway, Chi. It’s probably better that you don’t think about trying to harness it too much. It’ll make your mom get all worried.” 
“Yeah. I know. An amateur like me, learning a little about these supernatural forces… That’s still not enough to let me fight by myself, huh?” 
Maou nodded, satisfied. 
“That’s what I figure. Our enemies aren’t gonna dial it down for us. If anything, they’ll dial it up.” 
“Should I maybe let you or Yusa have this?” 
Chiho’s eyes were still on the ring. Maou fell silent for a moment, unable to reach a conclusion. Then: 
“Nah, you can keep it, Chi. A kind of lucky charm, you know?” 
None of the archangels—Gabriel, Raguel, definitely not Sariel—demonstrated much of an appetite for Yesod-fragment collecting at the moment. That ring no doubt triggered Chiho’s performance last night, and whoever owned it had already guaranteed Chiho’s safety going forward. Having her take it would provide at least a bit of extra insurance, anyway. 
That was how much of an indispensable presence Chiho had grown to become, to both demon and Hero. Anything that kept her safe was welcome. 
“But… Oh! Maou!” 
“Hmm?” 
“You’ve already got an enemy like that, Maou! Someone who dials it up for you!” 
“Huh?” 
“Yusa, I mean! The Hero! That’s how she and the Devil King work, right?” 
“I don’t think she’s really doing that just for me, Chi…” 
“Maybe I’ll keep some some power after all! I’ll fight like her!” 
“Wh-where did that come from?” 
“What? I want to, that’s all! I can’t lose out to Yusa!” 
“This isn’t about winning or losing, Chi…and, jeez, stop flailing around! You’re still technically in recovery, you know!” 
The argument over Chiho’s potential battle prowess continued unabated, until Riho finally returned from the grocery store. 
 
The Hero of the holy sword, meanwhile, was at her cube. 
“Yes. I very much apologize for that, sir. We’ll be happy to apply a credit to your bill for the period of downtime you experienced…” 
“You can expect an apology to be sent to each of your customers in text and written form within the day…” 
“Texting, Internet, and voice… Yes, sir. Absolutely. I deeply apologize for the inconvenience…” 
The three women, sitting adjacent to each other, ended their calls and together let out a remarkably well-synchronized sigh. 
“I-I was expecting this the moment I heard the news this morning, but…” 

Maki Shimizu, the college student part-timer, looked ready to burst into tears. 
“Yeah… Man, this is one serious workout.” 
Rika Suzuki was uncharacteristically lifeless and pale herself. 
“………………” 
And Emi Yusa, for her part, remained doggedly silent. 
The phone network at the Dokodemo Customer Support Center was breathing its last. 
That was the sort of thing that happened when every Dokodemo phone within the twenty-three central boroughs of Tokyo lost all functionality for seventy-five or so minutes in the middle of the evening. 
The complaints started streaming in the moment the morning shift began. The customers asking to be refunded for the outage were, if anything, among the kinder, more accommodating ones. Businesses and civic departments calling to demand reparations for the outage, on the other hand, were beyond anything Emi and her coworkers had the power to handle. 
The cause of the outage, reported as the lead story of every early-morning TV news show, was undoubtedly the twin sonar blasts Suzuno and Chiho bounced off the Dokodemo Tower antenna during their little skirmish the previous night. 
She couldn’t berate the idea, at least—fighting TV signals via a high-energy transmission sent through cell phone bandwidth. 
But, due to some miscalculation on Urushihara’s part or Suzuno firing a stronger pulse than she intended—or maybe just the general interference dominating the skies over Tokyo that evening—the blasts took over Dokodemo’s entire mobile spectrum for what seemed like an eternity. 
That made it impossible to connect to certain Dokodemo phones, and the resulting cascade of failures led to the quagmire Emi faced today. 
Every chair in the room had a call handler sitting on it. From early morning, the team leader had been texting out desperate pleas to unscheduled staff to sign on for an extra shift or two over the next couple of days. 
So Emi was back at work the day after. Her conscience wouldn’t allow anything else. This time, at least, there was no shunting the blame over to the demons. 
And she needed a distraction anyway. She still hadn’t sifted through everything she’d experienced the night before. 
The shocking truth Gabriel revealed to her was more than enough to send mighty waves of stress crashing over her heart. 
Her father was alive. 
Thinking about what that meant, and what effect it would have, filled Emi with a tormenting fear that made her feet stop in their tracks. 
So this was good for her, dealing with irate customers, not given so much as a millisecond to dwell on her own thoughts. As she told herself, she needed to focus on handling customer issues as quickly and efficiently as possible. Her issues could wait. 
“Think we’ll get a lunch break today…?” 
Rika’s exasperated complaint, voiced between the endless barrage of calls, made the blood drain from Maki’s face. 
“Uggghhh… I stayed up late watching TV last night and felt kinda sick this morning, so I haven’t eaten yet today…” 
“TV…?” 
Emi, remembering something, addressed her coworkers on both sides. 
“Hey, guys, um…” 
“Mm?” 
“Yes?” 
“Did you guys see anything weird when watching TV last night? Like…any kind of flashing, like everyone’s talking about?” 
Rika nodded. It sounded familiar to her. 
“Oh, yeah, it affected more than mobile video this time, didn’t it? I wasn’t really in any shape to watch TV last night so I wouldn’t know, but…” 
“Me, I haven’t bought an HDTV yet. I’m still on analog, but I didn’t see anything.” 
“Oh…” 
Rika and Maki didn’t run into any trouble. It was a relief to Emi. 
“What were you doing, though, Ms. Suzuki?” Maki asked Rika. “Wasn’t one of your favorite dramas on last night?” 
“Aaaahh!!” Her observation sent Rika into a panic. “I tooootally forgot…” 
“…Do you maybe have a guy now or something?” 
Straight down the middle. 
“Oh, c-come on, Maki! He’s not my ‘guy’ or anything yet…” 
“……!” 
Emi grabbed her head. 
Maki’s face brightened at Rika, who was rapidly digging her own grave right under her own feet. 
“Not yet? You said not yet, didn’t you?!” 
“Uh, ah, n-no, I, ughhh! Maki! Take a call already! We’re at work!” 
“Well, I’m expecting a full report later!” Maki shot back. “Thank you for your patience. This is the…” 
Rika turned her exasperated face toward Emi for emotional support. 
“Sorry. Can’t help you this time.” 
“Aw, that’s mean, Emi!” 
Emi returned to her calls. She had a headache of her own to deal with. 
Not even the fact that Rika clearly had feelings for Ashiya was enough to make Emi’s mind budge from the subject it was currently obsessing over. 
Thinking over why she went through all that effort to demolish the Devil King’s Army… If she trusted what Gabriel said, it could make her doubt everything she lived for, in the end. 
But something still tugged at her. 
“Can’t turn back time now, I guess…” 
Whether she doubted herself or not, as long as she was alive, she had to keep moving forward. 
In fact, maybe she should be happy. She finally had a goal in life aside from slaying the Devil King. 
“No point beating myself up pondering over it. That’d just be spinning my wheels by now.” 
She could start by doing what she could, right this moment, fully gauging what life had in store for her. 
Just as she felt her resolve start to firm up, a voice in the back of her mind addressed her. 
“Mommy, Chi-sis’s lucky charm going boom-boom?” 
She must have woken up. 
It was highly questionable how much Emi could focus on her work while trying to keep Alas Ramus entertained. She had to smile at the absurdity of her situation. 
Once she escaped work today, she was due to visit Chiho at the hospital, giving her a chance to both listen to her side of the story and teach Alas Ramus how to say Get well soon to people. She began to write a mental list of sweet shops on the way home that she figured Chiho might like. Alas Ramus caught on to it. 
“Senbei! Senbei! Wice crackuhs!” 
She was always ready to pitch in her two cents. 
 
“Welcome back, Your Demonic Highness. How is Ms. Sasaki faring?” 
Suzuno, for some reason, was waiting alongside Ashiya when Maou made his return. 
“Ah, you’ve returned? Anything happen to you?” 
“Nah, Chi’s just fine. Couldn’t be healthier, in fact. And no, nothing happened to me; what’s that question supposed to mean?” 
Even if the threat wasn’t explicitly targeted at Maou and Ashiya this time, Suzuno still hesitated to see Maou venture outside alone. But today presented a vastly different picture from yesterday. Nothing about Tokyo seemed unsafe at all. 
Having Suzuno accompany Maou without Ashiya tagging along would create its own raftload of misunderstandings, so Suzuno instead fretted by herself at Villa Rosa Sasazuka, awaiting his return. 
“N-nothing, but…” 
She stopped. This sounded suspiciously like she was worrying about him. She raised her voice. Enough of that. 
“Enough of that, Devil King! The television! We have the television on!” 
“Hah, really? Welcome to the fifties, I guess.” 
“…Yes. Thank you…” 
Something about Maou’s sarcasm embarrassed Suzuno a little. 
“Thought you’d be more excited than that, dude. You’re the one who wanted it,” Urushihara added in. 
Maou shrugged at his griping. 
“Yeah, dealing with those two bastards kinda cooled me to the whole thing, I guess. I’m glad we got another tool to let us know if something’s going haywire, but it’s not like they’re dumb enough to try the same trick on us twice, so…” 
By modern standards, the TV screen was miniscule. But within the current Devil’s Castle, it was more than enough. 
“Oh. Hey, Ashiya, I got this.” 
Maou tossed a wad of paper out from his pocket. 
“Hmm? What is it?” 
It was a receipt from their bank. 
Ashiya carefully unwadded it. Then his eyes expanded into saucers. Deposit: 50,000, it read. 
“Y-your Demonic Highness?! What on earth is this deposit?!” 
“Well, after we screwed up Ohguro-ya, I’ve been outta work, right?” 
Maou opened the refrigerator door and chugged what remained of their barley tea supply straight from the bottle. 
“…Pahh. I still got a little bit before MgRonald starts back up, but with Ciriatto back in the demon realm, they might decide to send a Barbariccia squadron or two back over here. We could be in serious danger, for all I know. I figure it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to go off somewhere far away for day-labor crap. We probably better stick together more.” 
Suzuno stole a glance at the receipt from the side, her own eyes popping out of their sockets at this highly irregular deposit. 
“There were more jewels embedded on the scabbard of Camio’s magic sword than just the Yesod fragment, y’know. So I plucked one of ’em out—nothing too big, you’d never notice it if you didn’t know what to look for—and I pawned it over at the Mugi-hyo in Shinjuku. That way, we can budget the TV for next month and you can actually buy a decent phone with what’s left, okay?” 
“My liege…” 
Ashiya’s reaction went beyond astonishment and entered the realm of blissful ecstasy. 
“Why just one, dude? Might as well just cash ’em all in, no?” 
Maou scoffed at Urushihara’s sensible suggestion. 
“Oh, yeah, a guy in his early twenties dressed head to toe in closeout UniClo gear carrying a box full of precious jewels with him? You think I’m in that big a hurry to arouse suspicion? That’s more than enough right there. We’d get taxed out the ass if I sold it for too much, besides.” 
Maou rinsed out the bottle, refilled it with water, stuck a barley-tea packet inside, and placed it back in the fridge. 
“Once work starts back up, I’ll have to deal with Sariel across the street again. If everything goes to hell, I suppose I can try using him to save my own ass…but until then I figure, hey, why not enjoy some time off for the first time in a couple centuries? All work and no play, and all that.” 
With that, he picked up the TV remote and instruction manual on the table, referring to one as he tapped away at the other. 
Watching him as he crouched over his new toy made Suzuno whisper: 
“…So. He is thinking about matters, yes?” 
Ashiya didn’t acknowledge it. He was too busy admiring every digit, every contour of the words Deposit: 50,000 in front of him. 
 
Gabriel, sitting in the CyberSafe Net café he was currently using as his main base of operations on Earth, spotted a familiar face. 
“Satou! Hey, someone’s lookin’ chipper today, huh? You find some decent work for a change?” 
Satou, ever-present glass of oolong tea in hand, waved as he took a sip. 
“Hey, Greek! You been hearin’ about all the trouble they’ve been having with TVs and cell phones and whatnot?” 
“Oh? Uhm, yeahhhh. Yeah. Sorta.” 
Gabriel, the chief cause of said trouble, found it difficult to reply coherently. Satou, beaming, paid it no mind. 
“Well, the phone companies are all staging top-to-bottom maintenance inspections of all their equipment! You wouldn’t believe how many traffic guides and security guards they’re hirin’ for the thing! I’m gonna be up to my eyeballs in work for at least the next two weeks!” 
“Oh? Oh. Ohhhh. Well, good?” 
“My heart goes out to all the phone companies ’n’ all, but I tell you, this is really gonna put me back on track to my dreams, y’know? It’s like God’s rewarding me for all my hard work or somethin’.” 
“Oh, you…think?” 
The archangel had little to add on that front. 
“But, hey, you’re lookin’ pretty happy, too. Find yourself a decent paycheck?” 
Satou was fully convinced Gabriel was in the same financial boat he found himself in. There was no need to correct him, but on the other hand, Satou seemed to have a natural-born gift for reading people’s minds at times. 
“Mmm, I dunno if it’ll wind up working out or not, really…” 
The burly denizen of heaven filled up his own glass of oolong tea and smiled. 
“But I think we miiiight just see someone step up to save the world, if you know what I mean.” 
“Huh?” 
Satou paused a moment to think. 
“You working for one of those goofball stunt shows down at the amusement park or somethin’?” 
Gabriel’s scarlet eyes, studying Satou closely, sparkled with the shine of a child basking in the glow of his own epic prank.