THE DEVIL AND THE HERO GO FUTON SHOPPING
“Hey, Bell, I’m sorry, but could you watch Alas Ramus for me?”
“Ah, Emilia. What brings you here?”
It was evening, the summer sun just beginning to release its grasp on the world, and Emi—presumably fresh from a visit next door—had just interrupted Suzuno’s important business of leafing through a kimono catalog.
“Suzu-Sis!” the child exclaimed as she allowed herself to be transferred from one pair of arms to the other.
“I’ll be right back, okay?” Emi said before hurrying off, not bothering to give the suspicious woman the reason for the favor.
“Suzu-Sis, that a picture book?”
“…Hmm?” replied Suzuno. “Ah, yes. Well, it is a book, yes; one with all kinds of pictures of Japanese clothing, and—”
“I refuse!!” came the thundering interruption through the wafer-thin wall.
“Hmm?” replied Suzuno as she came to her feet, Alas Ramus eyeing her curiously. This was followed by what sounded like an enormous mouse scurrying about on the other side, where the neighbor’s closet would be, and then silence.
“…Alas Ramus?”
“Yes, Suzu-Sis!” the girl politely replied, hand in the air.
That shout undoubtedly came from Emi. Emi, who was in the room next to Suzuno’s—Devil’s Castle, conveniently located in Room 201 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka, which was a cramped, creaky apartment building smack-dab in Tokyo’s Shibuya ward. And if Emi Yusa (aka the Hero Emilia Justina over on another world) was shouting inside there:
“Alas Ramus, are…Mommy and Daddy fighting again?” Suzuno asked.
That was the only logical explanation. Sadao Maou, the Devil King Satan on the same other world, was the “Daddy” in that observation, and he must’ve done something yet again to attract “Mommy’s” ire. But, to Suzuno’s surprise, Alas Ramus shook her head.
“Uh-uh! Today, I said, I said I wanna sleepy in Daddy’s house, but Mommy said go play with you, so…”
“…Oh.”
Suzuno’s shoulders fell at the news, expressed with the best vocabulary skills Alas Ramus could muster.
“…Hopefully there won’t be a storm at the end of this.”
“You—you don’t have to be so loud all of a sudden!”
Sadao Maou, the chief breadwinner at Devil’s Castle, tried to calm his racing heartbeat as he protested.
“It’s not ‘all of a sudden,’” Emi said as she stared Maou down with her cruel, heroic eyes in the middle of the sunbaked room. “You should have realized the moment I put Alas Ramus in Suzuno’s room that I wasn’t about to go along with that. I’m letting you see her once every few days because she demands it of me, all right? But that’s as far as I’m willing to go! You will not let her stay overnight!”
“Such narrow-mindedness for a Hero,” exclaimed the other, taller resident next to Maou—Shirou Ashiya, the Great Demon General, strategic genius, and professional househusband.
“You have no right to complain, Alciel!”
“I have heard it all before by now, Emilia. You believe demons such as ourselves will be detrimental to Alas Ramus’s education, yes? And for that shallow, baseless reason, you refuse to let the child stay over?”
The history between the trio said as much. They once formed the two sides of a battle for the very fate of the world of Ente Isla—the King of All Demons and his faithful assistant in one corner, the Hero with the holy sword in the other. Emi, with her unique perspective on the demons and how they behaved, had hardly exercised restraint in giving them her unfettered opinions on their good names before.
“And you still call yourself a decent mother?” Ashiya continued. “What kind of Hero—no, what kind of sensible living creature of any kind—would so cruelly deny a mere child the right to be together with her own father? Regarding Alas Ramus, at the very least, is this really the time to let our past conflicts bubble to the surface?”
This was all complicated by the fact that Alas Ramus—currently under the care of Suzuno Kamazuki, better known in Ente Isla as Church cleric and would-be reformer Crestia Bell—was no ordinary toddler. She was the personification of a Yesod fragment, a seed from the Tree of Sephirot that formed the embryos for worlds themselves in their native dimension. She believed Emi to be her “mommy” and Maou her “daddy,” and when she first arrived out of the blue in Japan, she resided in Devil’s Castle. Following a couple of battles against Ente Isla’s angels for control over both her and Emi’s Better Half holy sword, Alas Ramus had fused herself into the sword and, by extension, into Emi’s psyche, requiring an unplanned move into the young woman’s apartment.
All of this drama resulted in the extremely precarious situation of Emi having to team up with her old nemesis for the sake of this child’s future in Japan. It was a sort of silent agreement between the two—for her, at least—to try not to dredge up the past too much in public.
That was the point Ashiya was trying to bring up. Emi snorted at him.
“Our past ‘conflicts’? Alciel, is that seriously why you think I’m refusing this? I mean, it’s not not the case, but—”
“Yeah, no duh.”
Emi ignored Maou’s jab.
“—but even if I didn’t see you guys as horrible demons, there’s no possible way I would ever allow Alas Ramus to sleep in here!”
To prove her point, she marched up to the closet, put her fingertips to the sliding door, and flung it open.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” came the surprised, sniveling response from the second tier of shelving as a small man tumbled out from it. Emi’s initial ranting made him retreat inside, and he had had a literal ear to the door ever since. That was the way Urushihara rolled—Hanzou Urushihara, also known as Lucifer, another former Demon General.
“Geez!” he protested, his hands breaking his fall just in time to keep from going headfirst into the tatami-mat floor. “Give me some warning next time, dudette!”
Emi, ignoring his plight, pointed right at the tier he used to be lying on.
“You see what should be here? Futons! Bedding! Something! If you want Alas Ramus to stay here, at least get some of that!”
The three demons fell silent. There wasn’t much countering that.
Emi, for her part, wasn’t deliberately trying to be the bad guy in this argument. Within reason, she wanted to satisfy Alas Ramus’s wishes, too. For the first week of her life on Earth, after all, this cramped single room (a studio apartment, if you were willing to be extremely charitable) was the only home the child knew. It might still be now if it weren’t for that whole sword-fusion thing, in fact.
But what happened, happened—and the changes to Alas Ramus’s living situation had been pretty drastic. Emi’s apartment had air-conditioning, for example. For a child not all that far removed from weaning age (or whatever they had up there on that tree she came from), that was key. It didn’t seem like Tokyo would end its habit of setting new heat records anytime soon, and while Villa Rosa Sasazuka had been built in another time and offered fairly decent ventilation as a result, simply standing here and staring at her sworn enemy was making beads of sweat run down Emi’s forehead.
The second reason: the futon she was just yelling about. For a woman who hadn’t grown up in an environment where sleeping on the floor was a norm, Emi still preferred a full-on bed for her own apartment. Even now, she couldn’t forget the first time Alas Ramus slept at her place. “Fluffy! Fluffy!” she kept crying out in joy as she slapped at the mattress. Before then, apparently, it was either the tatami-mat floor, or a bath towel placed on top of said floor. Even in Ente Isla, whose culture and economy weren’t even a shadow of Japan’s, everyone who wasn’t dirt-poor had beds of their own. It was impossible for Emi to figure out why Maou, who clearly managed to keep his head above water despite Japan’s high prices on everything, couldn’t buy a single futon for his only child, or pseudochild, as the case may be.
“I’m not asking for memory foam or a hundred percent goose down or anything, but having a girl her age sleep on the bare floor is just ridiculous, you know that? Her bones are still forming and everything. If you make her sleep like that, it’s gonna stunt her growth!”
The mere idea of three demons lined up in a row, sleeping on tatami in this deadly summer weather, was enough to make Emi burst out laughing. They kept themselves and their domain relatively clean, at least, but there weren’t exactly any bottles of disinfectant spray lying around, and this tatami-mat floor couldn’t have been that clean.
Maou and Ashiya failed to respond to Emi’s completely valid complaint. Urushihara was attempting to nonchalantly climb back into the closet before Emi’s gaze stopped him, sending him running toward the window.
“…And, you know, I’ve been wondering this, but why don’t you ever buy futons in the first place? It’s not like you’re that poor, are you?”
As long as they weren’t too picky about the store they got them from, they could at least assemble a couple full single-size sets for cheap. Around fifteen thousand yen could get them a setup they could easily use for any season.
Emi looked at the empty space in the closet and sighed.
“I have given up on it,” Ashiya growled. “As far as I am concerned, that is merely Lucifer’s storage space now.”
“Dude, I’m not luggage,” Urushihara protested. But the words rang true enough to Emi’s ears.
“Okay, so the top tier’s out,” Emi said. “But you could make some space on the bottom, couldn’t you? I don’t think there’s all that much stuff inside those cardboard boxes.”
“Emilia, I don’t spend all day in there…”
“I don’t really wanna say this,” a despondent Maou interrupted as he spread his legs out on the floor, “but before I answer that, lemme ask you this, Emi. All the bedding and appliances and other crap you’ve bought here—what’re you gonna do with it if you go back to Ente Isla?”
“Appliances? You mean the ones I use?” Emi turned an eye to the refrigerator and microwave in the Devil’s Castle kitchen.
Maou nodded at her.
“Well, I was thinking maybe I could take them back with me. Like, convert their power source to holy magic or something.”
“Seriously? It’s okay for you to bring advanced stuff like that into another world? Don’t you think they’d burn you at the stake for witchcraft or something?”
Emi knew what he was getting at, but shrugged anyway. “Look, I’ve traveled across every inch of Ente Isla. I’ve even followed you here to slay you. I don’t think anyone’s gonna complain if I want a few amenities in my life after that.”
“…Quite the lofty aspirations,” whispered Ashiya under his breath. All that work on Emi’s part, and the consumer products birthed by Earth’s scientists were good enough for her the whole time. Crossing entire dimensions just for a chance at a microwave, a fridge? The second-tier prizes you get for guessing the price of a car wrong in a game show? Talk about a cheap date.
“Yeah, I guess I’m not all that different,” Maou said. “I’d love to have that microwave back home, too—hell, maybe two or three more fridges, even. Still…” He glanced at the closet looming behind Emi. “Futons…don’t exactly work that way. Think about it. We’re demons.”
“So?”
“Like, Urushihara’s one thing—he didn’t change much in the transformation. But even now, a blanket’s startin’ to not be enough for Ashiya, you know? Or for me, for that matter.”
Now Emi understood. These demons were in human form—for now. But their actual forms were large, demonic, and all-powerful. Maou and Ashiya in particular, back at home, were far larger than any human being could ever be. Which meant…
“Pfft!”
Emi chuckled to herself, trying to picture the cloven-hoofed demons trying to fit in a futon. Maou, guessing this would happen, winced.
“Well, that’s…ffppfftt! That’s fine, isn’t it?” Emi asked. “You’d be a Devil King of the people! Your own futon and everything! Maybe you oughta go for memory foam so that horn I cut off doesn’t bother you at night! Bah-ha-ha-ha!”
“Enough laughing!” exclaimed Ashiya, face reddened. “Enough imagining His Demonic Highness in a human futon already!”
“Ashiya, do you have to spell it out like that? You imagined it, too. That hurts my feelings a little.”
“Gah!”
“…Anyway. Even if we buy futons, we can’t use ’em back there. Besides…” Maou crossed his arms and sat back, looking up at Emi. “If we did buy that stuff, that’s pretty much declaring to the world that we’re just fine shackin’ up in this world for good. I just didn’t want to buy ’em, okay? Japan, to me at least, is just a rest stop.”
“Ahhh…ha-ha-ha-ha…” Emi, finally composing herself again, brought a hand to her hip. “The King of All Demons, playing mind games with himself like that? Puh-leeze. And you better not give that reasoning to Chiho, either.”
“…”
Emi bringing up the name of a certain girl absent from the room drove her point home even harder. Chiho Sasaki, high-school teen and the only girl in Japan who knew the whole truth behind Ente Isla and everyone currently in the room, still had feelings for Maou anyway. If she heard him proclaim to the world that he was just doing the equivalent of couch-surfing in this world, it would dishearten her, to say the least. She was a good friend to Emi, for that matter.
“…Well,” Maou deflected the subject, “besides, buying a set of three futons is gonna set us back a pretty decent amount, isn’t it? We ain’t that well off yet, so I figure—hey, if we made it this far without ’em, might as well go all the way.”
“All right…” Emi wasn’t willing to delve into Maou’s finances, but something still made no sense to her. “But you’ve been here in Japan for over a year by now, haven’t you? What’d you all do last winter?”
A little urban camping wouldn’t hurt them much in the summer, but going without a futon in midwinter Tokyo seemed like suicide to her.
“Oh, that?” Maou pointed at the low table in the center of the room. “When I bought that, it came with this wimpy little kotatsu heater inside it. After that, we just put on a bunch of layers, and I had Ashiya sleep opposite to me and we stuck our legs under there.”
“Oh my God…”
Maou proudly placed his palm on the dining table/writing desk/etc. in front of him. Urushihara, still inexperienced with Japanese winters, groaned.
“…Well, I’m not gonna complain if you all freeze to death this winter,” Emi said. It really seemed that way to her. These demons were gonna get themselves killed even if she didn’t bother slaying them. But that still didn’t solve the problem at hand. “So be it. Like you said, Alciel, I care for that girl, so… I’ll pay for it.”
“Really?!”
“What?!”
“Dudette!!”
Emi glared at the wide-eyed demons, doubting their gratitude. “ Alas Ramus’s, all right? Why do I have to pay for yours? Also, you’re her ‘daddy,’ remember? We’re going Dutch on this or nothin’.”
The wave of depression this statement generated was as palpable as it was dramatic. Emi wished she had it on video.
“Ugh,” groaned Emi to herself on the commuter train the next morning. “Why did I have to go that far?”
She knew it wouldn’t be fair to Alas Ramus to shut off visitation rights entirely—that much, she was willing to accept. The problem was the holy-sword connection between “mother” and daughter. It prevented the two of them from being physically separated beyond a certain distance. Which meant, naturally, that Emi would need to be near Devil’s Castle if Alas Ramus wanted to sleep in peace in there.
A night in Suzuno’s place next door would suffice, although it’d be imposing terribly on her friend. But would Alas Ramus be willing to accept that?
On the night before their first battle with the angel Gabriel and his minions, Emi, Maou, and Alas Ramus spent a single “family” night together at his place. If the child still had vivid memories of that stayover, she’d all but demand a repeat—all three of them together again. Nobody had any futons at the time, so it wasn’t like Emi was “sleeping with” Maou (in so many words).
But Emi had even more serious, nonimaginary reasons to be concerned.
“It’s not like I could kick out Alciel and Lucifer, either…”
From a purely physical perspective, there was no sleeping space left in Devil’s Castle for Emi. Things were different from the last time she stayed over. As small as Urushihara was, three men lying in that tatami-mat space would immediately fill it up. There would be only the barest of gaps for Alas Ramus, just like how it was last time. If Emi was going to somehow snake her way between the computer desk and table to stay near Alas Ramus, that would put her dangerously close to the other demons as she attempted to sleep.
Even if it was for Alas Ramus’s sake, certain things were simply off the table for her—as a Hero, and also as a woman.
“Could we store Lucifer in the closet? …Hmm, maybe not.”
Seeing him emerge from the closet, like some kind of ghost possessing the apartment building, would undoubtedly make Alas Ramus burst into tears. Urushihara and Ashiya stayed at Suzuno’s place during the last “family” meetup, but that was under extremely exceptional conditions.
“I guess,” Emi said in a depressed whisper, “I’ll just have to make Alas Ramus deal with it.” She wondered why she had to worry about any of this, like a divorced parent wrangling over visitation rights. “I have no idea what makes for a good child futon, either… I should’ve kept my mouth shut.”
She turned on her smartphone to find out. The last time she’d purchased any bedding, it was at a local shop—one that didn’t deal in children’s stuff at all. (She had double-checked on the way home the previous night.) And it wasn’t like online shopping would be ideal, either. This was going to be Alas Ramus’s futon. Emi would prefer to buy something the child liked, but since she was going in half with Maou, she’d have to consider the Devil King’s financial sensibilities or risk getting chewed out endlessly later on.
What would work?
Emi, by now, had fallen into the habit of asking the people around her if something about Japan was confusing her. So, earlier in the day, she had gone up to Rika Suzuki, a coworker and friend at the Dokodemo call center they both worked at.
“Hey, do you know where you can buy a futon sized for children?”
“Huhh?!”
Rika went wide-eyed. She placed her fork down and left her lunchtime pasta bowl be for the time being. The dramatic response put Emi off guard for a moment.
“Like, where’d that come from? That’s about the last question I would’ve expected from you, Emi.”
“Yeah, well…um, I told you about the kid Maou had at his place, right?”
It wasn’t the first time Emi had discussed Alas Ramus with her. But this time, she had brought up the topic a little too naturally for her own sake.
“Right…?”
“Well, right now she’s…………”
At that moment, Emi froze. She had totally screwed this up, but she couldn’t take the words back now.
“Right now she’s what?” Rika asked. “This is the girl who thought you were her mom, right?”
“Y-yeah, but…so, like, that girl, um…”
…is living at my place. Emi rued not thinking about Rika’s reaction to that bombshell a little before speaking up. She was a good friend to her, but unlike Chiho Sasaki, she didn’t know who Emi and Maou really were. She knew about Alas Ramus, but not what she was, exactly—just a relative of Maou’s, is how Emi put it.
“She’s come to visit now and then…and, like, she’s been staying over sometimes…”
Emi knew the words out of her mouth were terribly strained. But there was no changing the subject now. She had to fess up.
“Come to visit? Like, your place? What’s up with that? Are you taking care of that Atlas girl or whatever her name was?”
“Alas Ramus,” corrected Emi, even though she knew that wasn’t Rika’s main issue with this revelation.
“She’s related to Maou, isn’t she? Why are you looking after her? ’Cause that’s kind of weird, isn’t it?”
Well, yeah. Even Emi knew it was weird. Until just a few days ago, really, there wasn’t any connection between her and Alas Ramus—nothing besides the child’s completely wrongheaded ideas about her.
“Wait… So I’m not saying this is true or anything, but is this Maou guy taking advantage of that girl’s fondness for you and making you look after her?”
Emi paused.
“No, no, nothing like that! He’s not pushing me into it or anything…”
“So what, then?! ’Cause depending on what this is, I won’t be afraid to give Maou a piece of my mind for you, okay? Like, I could probably hook you up with a lawyer from my dad’s company, too!”
This was how Rika always ticked. She was always ready to turn any grievance into a civil lawsuit.
“Hey, hey, calm down, okay? I don’t need a lawyer from Kobe quite yet. He’s not a deadbeat dad.”
Emi had to assuage Rika before she started beating down Maou’s door. If she did, after all, it’d be just as much trouble for Emi as it would be for him. Regardless of what Maou thought about it, Emi and Alas Ramus were indivisible at this point.
“So,” she began, “you know how it is at that age—it’s like they miss their mother a lot and stuff, y’know? And Maou’s got nothing but guys living with him, and I guess Suzuno living next door isn’t good enough for her, so… And Maou’s one thing, but I kinda like the girl, so…you know, she’s been welcome at my place at times when we really need to do it. It’s all clear with his relatives, too, so…”
“Hmm… Well, weird, is all I can say. But if you’re cool with it, then fine, I guess.”
“Yeah. She’s a big fan of Chiho, too, but we can’t really leave her in the hands of a minor, right?”
“Well,” said Rika, still sounding unconvinced, “leaving her in the hands of someone who’s not even his girlfriend isn’t exactly normal, either. But that’s what you want a child futon for, huh? You aren’t gonna pay for it, are you?”
“Nah, Maou’s covering all that.”
Covering half of it. But saying that would accomplish nothing for her.
Rika pondered over this, fork halfway in her mouth. “So, like, a bedding shop or something? I usually go to Torikawa Sleep Center, but that might be kinda out of his price range, by the looks of things.”
“…Torikawa, huh?”
It was one of Japan’s oldest continually operating retailers, in business for more than four hundred years. As a brand name in bedding, it was well-nigh unstoppable.
“Yeah,” Rika hedged, “that might be going overboard, ’specially considering she’s gonna outgrow it pretty quick anyway. Though maybe you could just get him to buy a size too big for her instead, huh? I mean, Alas…Ramus, right? She must be gettin’ pretty big by now.”
Emi’s eyes turned skyward. She didn’t recall Rika ever meeting the girl before.
“…Oh, I mean, just based on what you’ve told me about her, that is!”
It might have been Emi’s imagination, but she could have sworn Rika gasped for just a moment before speaking up again.
“But anyway! I know going full brand ain’t cheap, but you could probably find a Torikawa futon at a discount kids’ place like Hishimatsu for a little less. You gotta go online to get the real deals, but I guess you’d want to be sure the kid likes the thing first, huh?”
“Hishimatsu?”
“You never heard of it? They sell kids’ clothing and accessories and stuff.”
Emi took out her phone to search for it.
“Oh, I’ve never seen them in the city itself, though,” Rika continued, enjoying the iced coffee that came with her meal. “They’re mostly out in the suburbs and bedroom communities… Oh! Hey! Maou lives right near the Keio rail line, right?”
“Huh? Yeah,” Emi replied, almost dropping her phone at Rika’s suddenly loud voice.
“In that case, why don’t you try visiting stops like Seiseki-Sakuragaoka and Minami-Osawa?”
“Why’s that?”
Emi knew the names, at least, having idly stared at the Keio rail map during more than one boring train wait. Seiseki-Sakuragaoka was a stop on the special-express line, while she was pretty sure Minami-Osawa was one of the stops on the branch line she had never been anywhere near before. Eifukucho, the main station she used, was on the Keio line—but she took the Inokashira line to work instead, switching at the Meidaimae station three stops from Shinjuku, so she knew little about what lay beyond.
“There’s a big outlet mall off Minami-Osawa. They sell all kinds of cheap brand-name stuff there, though I dunno what the scene is as far as futons go. Seiseki has a bunch of Keio-run shops right off the station that’re pretty cheap. Fun to browse through, too!”
“Hmm. The suburbs then, maybe?”
Emi began searching the station names on her phone.
“Whoa, Alas Ramus. Take your shoes off first.”
“No!”
“No pouting. You’re gonna get the seats all dirty.”
“Awww…”
Emi grabbed the legs of Alas Ramus, eagerly trying to grab a view out the train window, and attempted to wrest the sandals off her feet. It was proving a difficult task.
“Come on, Alas Ramus,” admonished Maou across the aisle. “Listen to your mommy.”
“…Aww, okeh.” With a nod, the girl let Emi do her work, then kneeled on the seat as she took in the outside scene.
“Ugh, she always listens to you,” Emi said as she followed her gaze out the window.
“Yeah, because I’m more of an authority figure to her.”
“Oh, sure, in your T-shirt, shorts, and sandals, right? That just exudes authority.”
“Hey, it’s hot today. This is what dads wear on their days off, okay?”
Maou took a look around the train car. Emi joined him.
“Whether they do or not,” Emi said, “they don’t do it if they’re as young as you are.”
There was no point bickering about this any further. Emi sighed just as the PA system announced their upcoming arrival at Chofu station. It was a Sunday train run on the Keio special-express line bound for Hachiouji, and given the early-afternoon time frame, it was fairly crowded. The three of them had managed to find seating close to each other nonetheless.
Emi had informed him earlier in the weekend that they’d be traveling to some station called Seiseki-Sakuragaoka in order to purchase Alas Ramus’s futon. They’d have to switch trains at Meidaimae to catch the express one. Maou was dead set against it at first. Looking at the map, it seemed like it was on the other side of the country to him, and Emi’s lecturing about prices and selection all flew over his head.
Then Emi put Alas Ramus on the phone.
“I wanna go out with you, Daddy!”
And before he knew what he was doing, he agreed to it.
But if Alas Ramus was going out, that naturally meant Emi would be joining her. He didn’t think about that until after he hung up.
“What’s that note you got?” Emi asked. Apart from his wallet and phone, it was all Maou had with him.
“Oh. A shopping list. Ashiya told me to buy this stuff if I found it for cheap.”
He extended his arm over Alas Ramus. Emi picked up the note, despite herself, and gave it a quick once-over.
“One bag of onions, some natto, dishwasher liquid fillers… Is this really stuff you’d go on a train ride to get at a discount?”
“Yeah, I dunno what he’s thinking, either.”
Maou grabbed the note off Emi’s out-thrust hand, jammed it back in his pocket, then suddenly turned toward Alas Ramus.
“Hey, what’re you seeing out there, little girl?”
“Mmm, airplane!”
“Oh? Ooooh, you’re right. Wow, it sure is high up, huh?”
“And Magrobad.”
“Huh?”
“Magrobad!!”
“What’s that?”
Alas Ramus was staring right at him, hopping up and down and pointing.
“Uhh…”
“She’s pointing at a MgRonald sign,” an exasperated Emi explained.
“Oh, really?”
She had spotted a MgRonald facing the roundabout in front of a passing station.
“Daddy! Magrobad!” she shouted, as if she just discovered a new species of fish or bird.
“Ooh, yeah, you’re right.”
“She’s been wanting to eat there all the time lately,” Emi flatly stated, keeping Alas Ramus from spotting her pained look. “I keep telling her she’s too much of a baby for it still.”
“She has?”
“Yeah. She says it ‘smells like Daddy.’”
“…Aw, what a good girl you are, Alas Ramus!”
Maou reached out to rub the girl on the head, quite the opposite reaction to Emi’s wincing. But then:
“Oww!”
Alas Ramus, forehead plastered to the window, hit her head against it as a passing train whizzed by at full speed, making the glass rattle. The resulting surprise led to predictable results.
“Nn…nhh…waaaaaaaaahh!”
“Ooooh, uh… Yeah, I bet that hurt a little, huh? You okay, Alas Ramus?”
Maou picked her up with the hand he was going to pat her with, trying to ease her out of her crying jag.
“S-sorry, sorry,” Emi whispered to the passengers surrounding her. Then:
“Oh, come on!”
She groaned as Maou took the seat directly adjacent to her, Alas Ramus on his lap and the annoyed stares of the general public surrounding them.
“…Whew.”
Emi and Maou stepped on to the curved platform of Seiseki-Sakuragaoka station, gave each other a look, and sighed.
“Look, Emi, she waged this epic battle against an archangel without breaking a sweat. Why does hitting her head a little against a glass window make her cry?”
“That…that’s what I want to know.”
Alas Ramus, upon crying herself out, promptly fell asleep in Maou’s arms. Even in the humid air that surrounded them, she showed no signs of waking up.
“Raising a kid’s just an endless spring of surprises, isn’t it?”
“At least I don’t have to worry about losing her in a crowd… Hmm?”
As they spoke to each other, a young couple passed by their side, pushing a stroller that contained a child maybe a little younger than Alas Ramus.
“…You could always do that,” Maou suggested.
“Ah, there’s too many curbs and stairways I have to traverse in my neighborhood. It’d be too much of a pain, and Alas Ramus would outgrow something that size pretty quick anyway.”
“Well, hell, I dunno, we sometimes get customers with kids in strollers that look like they oughta be in kindergarten. Oof!”
Maou adjusted his body to get a better grip on Alas Ramus, who was just about to fall out of his arms.
“Yeah, you do, don’t you? But for a child this size, I bet they’re gonna be pretty…expensive…?”
Out of nowhere, Emi pictured herself right now. Standing right next to Maou, peering at Alas Ramus’s face as she slept, having the most normal of conversations with him. Then she recalled their exchanges on the train itself.
“…Um, hello?”
“…Nnngh!”
She immediately sat herself down on a nearby bench.
“What, you gettin’ too hot or something?”
The worst part of it was that Maou looked genuinely concerned. She sized him up with her eyes, bottom to top.
“This is like…like we’re a real married couple or something…”
The resentment in her voice sounded like it was bubbling up from the underworld.
“…Uh?” Maou arched an eyebrow, feeling a tad insecure. “Look…”
“What?”
“When a girl says something like that, they’re supposed to act all awkward and flirty and stuff.”
Emi began to feel like the heat really would claim her before long.
“Is that how you want me to react?”
“Hell no.”
“…I swear I’ll kill you…ugghh.” She stood up, face still pale against the sun. “Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again, all right? Let’s just finish this shopping trip and go home. This is driving me totally bonkers.”
“As if it’s not for me.”
But despite all that, Emi and Maou still walked down the rail station stairs together. Alas Ramus was there, after all.
“…If Chiho saw us right now, it’d be a disaster, wouldn’t it?”
“How?”
“…Never mind,” Emi said.
“Oh, what a cute little girl! How old is she, ma’am?”
“…”
“…Uhh, she just turned two a bit ago! Ha-ha-ha…”
They were in the baby department of the Seiseki-Sakuragaoka Shopping Center, just a few steps away from the station turnstile. The question from the well-meaning saleswoman immediately froze Emi on the spot, forcing Maou to provide backup with the most strained smile of his life.
“Will you get it together, please?” he snarled as he grabbed the spaced-out Emi by the shoulder. Alas Ramus was still napping in his other arm.
“Agh!” Emi yelped.
“So how can I help you today?”
“Oh,” Maou blurted in place of the still-bleary Emi, “we thought you might have a futon big enough for her to use, so…”
“Ah, perfect! Were you using a crib or baby bed up to now, sir?”
“Oh, she was with her mother,” Maou replied, too scared to reveal to a stranger that she was sleeping on bare floors.
“…!”
Emi froze yet again.
“Emi, will you please stop spacing out the moment anyone treats us like a family?!”
“Umm,” said the saleswoman.
“Oh, sorry, it’s no big deal. She was sleeping in the same futon as her mom, I mean.”
“Ah, right…with her mother. So she doesn’t fuss very much at night, then?”
“…No, not really. She’s pretty quiet, I think.” Judging by his limited experience with Alas Ramus, Maou didn’t imagine she rolled around too much once she was asleep. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, well, young infants can often act pretty different once they’re taken out of their familiar crib or whatnot. I hear from a lot of young mothers who take the step up from cribs to futons, and they’re just amazed at how much they start fidgeting all night!”
“I see…”
“Of course, a lot of families don’t use cribs at all, so it all comes down to what works best for you! But if she doesn’t move around much when she’s sleeping, I think it’d be a good idea to provide her with the best futon you can. I have a few different ones I can show you, if you’ll come this way…”
“Sure thing. Hey! Emi!”
“…Oh. Yeah.”
Maou had to pull Emi’s collar to bring her back to reality.
The shelves they were taken to were lined with large, square plastic bags, each one packed with futon sets whose fabric patterns clearly indicated that children were the intended audience.
“Wow,” Maou marveled, “some of these come with teddy bears and stuff?”
“Ah, yes,” the saleswoman said, nodding, “we find that the transition’s easier for a lot of little ones if they have something firm, something reassuring they can clutch to while they’re lying down.” She pointed at one particular shrink-wrapped bag. “Now, this is one set from our 29,800-yen series…”
“Twenty-nine…!”
Now it was Maou’s turn to freeze in place.
“It includes the futon mattress, a comforter that you can adjust for the different seasons, a pillow, some fitted sheets for everything, a hypoallergenic blanket, and this stuffed animal over here. Everything’s included in the set. Over in this other shelf, we have sets with summer and winter comforters, along with different covers for each one, and those go for 35,800 yen.”
“Thir-r-r-r…”
“Are the covers machine washable?” asked Emi, regaining consciousness just in the nick of time. Or perhaps Emi’s subconscious instinctively kicked her brain back into high gear once it spotted Maou’s mouth puckering rhythmically, like a goldfish gasping for air.
“Oh, of course!” the saleswoman eagerly nodded as she looked at Alas Ramus in Maou’s arms. “Now, based on what the lucky father said…”
Emi tried her best to hang on to her rapidly fading marbles.
“…your daughter doesn’t fidget too much when she sleeps, is that correct?”
“Um, I think she’s on the more well-behaved side, yes.”
“Indeed, indeed. You’ll want to watch to make sure she isn’t too well-behaved, though. With growing bodies like hers, staying in the same position for too long could increase the burden on her bones and muscles. Sleeping in the same position all night can make even grown-ups feel a little sore in the morning, but with young children, it can affect their growth if it’s kept unchecked for too long. That’s why, if she’s pretty well behaved in bed, I’d recommend materials that are as nonresilient as possible.”
“Her growth, huh…?”
“Whew,” Maou breathed as he stretched out atop the Sasazuka station platform. “What a marathon this wound up being!”
“…”
Even at six in the evening, the summer sun was bright as always. Yet Alas Ramus was fast asleep in Emi’s arms. They had spent the rest of the afternoon watching the magical girl run herself ragged around the playground, completely forgetting about their original objective. She had fallen into a deep sleep on the train ride back.
A fairly constant breeze ran along the riverbanks, but the heat had still all but exhausted Maou and Emi. They were so spent, in fact, that they boarded the local train back to Sasazuka so they’d be guaranteed a seat.
“Well, Emi, you mind taking the pamphlets with you back home? I gotta explain everything to Ashiya, so…”
“…”
It would have been easier for Emi to leave the local train and switch out at Meidaimae station. She stayed on until Sasazuka entirely because Maou asked her to.
After a day spent fruitlessly casing the Seiseki shops, the two of them had begun talking about purchasing that first (quite expensive) set they looked at. But as long as they were both pitching in for this—as Maou put it—he had to run it by Ashiya first, or else there’d be hell to pay.
Emi was exasperated at the idea that the Devil King couldn’t buy a single thing without his lackey’s permission, but not even she was expecting an immediate purchase. They both needed some time to consider this.
What chagrined her about all this was the fact that, thoroughly exhausted, Maou fell asleep on the way home. And ever since he woke up at Sasazuka, Maou was concerned about how angry Emi seemed about something. She was offering no response to anything he said.
Then he noticed in the white evening sunlight that there was a sheen of light red over Emi’s face. It was pretty sunny by the river, he supposed.
“Hey, did you forget to put some suntan lotion on? Your face is all red.”
“…Look,” she rumbled, her voice like an icicle chilled to absolute zero running through his heart. “I can’t believe… I can’t believe…”
“Um?”
And now she was shaking. Why? The anger much have been what made her eyes twinkle at that moment, as she brought her head close to his and opened her mouth, ready to spew fire with it.
“I can’t believe you leaned on me that whole time!! You bastard!!”
“Huhh? Oh. Did I?”
This was news to Maou, having conked out almost immediately upon sitting down. But it must have been true. Emi wasn’t one to lie without reason.
“Don’t ‘did I?’ me! Can you believe how humiliating it was when this old lady got on the train at Sakurajosui station and started going on like ‘Oh, what a fine couple you folks are!’?”
“Oh? Well…huh.”
Now Emi’s face was a brighter red. But she still had the discretion to keep her voice down, keeping Alas Ramus asleep and content. If her hands were free at all, she likely would’ve started choking Maou on the spot.
“I-I tried pushing you away with my shoulder, but every damn time the train stopped, you’d lean back on me again! I thought I was gonna die of embarrassment!”
“Um. Well. Sorry?”
“I was all set to abandon you at Meidaimae, too, you know! But you were asleep, and Alas Ramus was, too, and I didn’t know what to… Agggggh! I hate you!”
“People’re looking, people’re looking,” Maou hissed through his teeth, feeling the heat emanating from Emi’s face during her ever-louder diatribe. “You’re gonna wake up Alas Ramus, so…just calm down a sec, okay? Take a deep breath. I’ll hold her for you.”
“I…I am calm,” Emi protested as she handed Alas Ramus to the man. She turned her back to him, stretching out to loosen up her body after her extended session on the train being a prop for him. As she did:
“Ah!”
“Ooh?”
“…Oh.”
She made eye contact with someone. Both of them, along with Maou, froze.
“Wow, Maou, Yusa, and Alas Ramus?”
It was Chiho Sasaki, in her school uniform and giving the three of them a look that resembled a pigeon who had just been shot with a BB gun.
“Um, Chi?”
“H-hello there, Chiho…”
Neither of them ever imagined they would run into Chiho now, of all times.
“What are you guys doing here?” Chiho asked as calmly as possible.
“Oh, um, we were…just doing some shopping.”
“Shopping?”
“Y-yeah,” Emi stammered. “I needed to get something for Alas Ramus, but I…I couldn’t decide by myself, so…”
“Oh? Yeah, I’ll bet. It must be quite an adjustment to make, her moving to your place.”
Chiho knew all about Alas Ramus, of course, so it wasn’t exactly devastating news to see Maou and Emi in the same place together. But:
“…fffhhh…ngh.”
Alas Ramus chose that moment to wake up in Maou’s arms, her sleepy eyes taking in all of Chiho before her. Her parents, sensing her stirring a few moments before it actually happened, felt chills down their spines.
“Oh, hello there, Alas Ramus! Did you have a good time out today?”
“Yeah!” the girl cheerfully replied. “I went on a picnic with Mommy and Daddy!”
“Oh, a pic…nic…huh?” Chiho turned toward the couple.
“Yawwwn… I played a whole lot. And I’m gonna sleep with Mommy ’n’ Daddy…tonight…mmm.”
It was as if the still-not-quite-awake Alas Ramus was picking the exact words out of her quiver to make Chiho freeze in place.
“Wow, um…you, and Maou, and Yusa…?”
“Wait! No! It’s not like that, Chiho!”
“Calm down, Chi! You know there’s no way we could sleep together!”
But, judging by Chiho’s complete lack of a reaction, their protests seemed to be falling on deaf ears.
“We…” Alas Ramus began. “We bought a futon…mmph…”
“A…futon…?”
“Chiho! Chiho, snap out of it!”
“Y-Yusa, are you and…and Maou making a real…a real fam—”
“Of course not, Chi! Why would I ever want a woman like this in my family?!”
“Yeah! The same goes for me, too!”
“Huhh? Mommy? Daddy?”
“A-Alas Ramus? No, um, Mommy and Daddy aren’t arguing or anything, so…”
“So the three of you were out shopping for futons? Yusa, you aren’t actually moving into his apartment, are you? You’re gonna be a real family now?!”
“Chiho! Get ahold of yourself! We can explain everything!”
“Mommy, Daddy, stop fight…fight…waaaaahhh!!”
This exercise in torture for the Hero and Devil King continued for ten or so minutes afterward.
“Oh… So it’s just a futon for Alas Ramus to sleep on during her stay?”
It ended only with the intervention of an exasperated Ashiya, who happened into the station just a moment too late to avoid the entire headache. His explanation of Maou’s activities for the day as they walked to Devil’s Castle was finally enough to put Chiho’s mind at ease. Maou and Emi staggered along behind the two of them, still exhausted, with Alas Ramus taking up the child seat on Dullahan II as Ashiya wheeled it forward.
“Boy, that sure was a surprise, though,” Chiho continued. “I mean, you guys really did look like a family back at the station…”
“Don’t say it.”
“Oh, don’t say it…”
“…Wow, that was almost in stereo,” Chiho chuckled as she heard the mutterings from behind her.
“Well, Your Demonic Highness? How did the shopping journey go?”
“Yeah, about that… I wanted to discuss things with you a little, so that’s why I’ve got Emi along with me.”
Ashiya’s eyebrows shot downward. “…Cost-related things, I would imagine?”
“I think it’d be best to buy her something decent,” interjected Chiho. “I heard that the way babies sleep can affect their bone structure and stuff.”
“Yeah,” Maou added, “so I figured we could talk about that and other things once we get home. By the way, Ashiya, who were you talking to just now?”
It was no mere coincidence that Ashiya had come across the group at the station. He was there because he was using one of the public phone booths out front.
“Oh, no one important. I merely needed to confirm an appointment with an acquaintance of mine.” Ashiya turned the corner to Villa Rosa Sasazuka, one of its windows illuminated. “Bell was quite concerned over whether the two of them could manage a shopping trip without it devolving into an argument.”
“No fighting, Mommy ’n’ Daddy!” declared Alas Ramus from her bicycle throne, a stern look on her face as she turned around at her parents. Mommy and Daddy each let out defeated sighs in response.
“She has a point,” Chiho commented. “It’d be best for everyone if we can keep on getting along for good, you know?”
“I am not sure I can entirely agree with that, Ms. Sasaki,” the Great Demon General in attendance dutifully replied.
“I so don’t wanna go to work,” Emi uncharacteristically grumbled as she battled the waves of morning commuters around Shinjuku station.
The entire group wound up having dinner at Suzuno’s place the previous night, Emi staving off Alas Ramus’s repeated demands to stay at Devil’s Castle long enough to get her back to her apartment. Ashiya was more than a little disapproving of the futon’s price, but—thanks in no small part to Chiho’s convincing—it looked like the demons were ready to commit to a Torikawa purchase.
Emi figured she would have to report all this to Rika in order to avoid any more prying questions, even though she knew Rika would pepper her with them no matter what she tried. The thought didn’t fill her with cheer.
She was still trying to figure out some way to dodge the topic by the time she reached her assigned office cube.
“…Rika?”
Rika was adjacent to her, staring into space. It was very unusual behavior for her, slack-jawed and unfocused, given how much of a morning person she usually was.
“Rika? You there?”
“…………………………Oh! Hey, Emi.”
Her reaction time was suffering.
What happened to her? She’s a completely different person from yesterday.
“Hey, uh, remember the futon thing I told you about, Rika?”
“Futon……? What about it?”
It was a terminal case. She pounced upon the topic like a hyena yesterday, and now she couldn’t be more disinterested. Emi began to feel concerned—this airheaded act was nothing like her usual ebullient personality.
“Hey, uh, are you feeling all right?”
“I…I don’t think I, like, even know anymore.”
“Huh?”
“Um, Emi?” Her whisper was almost lost in the morning bell.
“Wh-what?”
“Do you think it was always like this back before cell phones? Always so, like, frustrating?”
“I…I don’t really know…”
“Ahh, I’m sorry. It’s no big deal. Better get to work, huh?”
Rika slipped on her headphone mike, the listlessness still clear in her voice.
“I know things are pretty complicated for you, too, Emi…”
“Y-yeah?”
“But it’s pretty important that you have someone to talk to, you know? Like, when you’re trying to make up your mind about something.”
There was no doubt in Emi’s mind that whatever troubled Rika was intertwined in that remark. She didn’t have time to inquire further. The first call of the day was already on her computer.
“…Thank you for calling the Dokodemo customer support center. This is Yusa speaking. How can I help you?”
The awkwardness that began the day was beaten down by both of their workaday responsibilities, and it quickly fell out of sight.
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