THE HERO DEMANDS A LITTLE TIME OFF
Time passed, calmly and breezily, just like it always did around the dinner table. All the usual sights were there—the freshly cooked rice, aromatic steam rising above it, and the miso soup with chopped carrots in it. Thanks to a fancy new microwave-safe cooking sheet, grilled fish had become a regular presence on the menu. The cold tofu that served as a side dish was festooned with shredded ginger, and at the center of the table, a bubbling bowl of shigiyaki (soup made from eggplant, miso sauce, and sesame seeds) grabbed the most attention.
The news program on the TV was covering some regional festival or another as its top story, indicating wordlessly that nothing disturbing or otherwise newsworthy had taken place today to disrupt the serenity. The window, open wide, let just the suggestion of a breeze through in the late afternoon, bringing hints of the city bustle surrounding the room inside.
To everyone in the tiny apartment in an even tinier corner of Tokyo, everything about this dinner suggested everything was truly well with the world. And all it took to destroy this atmosphere, this bubble of good cheer that surrounded Room 201 of the Villa Rosa Sasazuka apartment building in Shibuya ward, was a single sentence.
“I’m going back home for a little while.”
The words, by themselves, seemed innocent enough. But in the context of this apartment, they were a bomb disguised as a herald of peace. Everyone froze.
“Huh?”
“What?”
“Buh?”
“Wh-what on earth are you saying?!”
“Y-your home?!”
“I like tofu!”
Six different people gave six very different reactions to the girl who lit the fuse—Emi Yusa, better known as Emilia Justina, the Hero of her home world of Ente Isla. She blinked.
“Wh…what’s with that reaction?”
The Devil King of this castle—aka Sadao Maou—had been seated at the apartment’s computer desk, textbook in one hand. His face stiffened.
“I think we’re having a little trouble parsing what that’s supposed to mean,” he supplied.
“What?” Emi replied, puzzled.
“Emilia,” came a voice from inside the second level of the closet—from the person who usually would’ve been seated in front of the laptop. “You mind rephrasing that a little? ’Cause I think Chiho Sasaki’s going into a panic, imagining you, Maou, and Alas Ramus living in some white-picket-fence dream house…”
“Urushihara!!”
“Agh! Whoa, look out—”
Hanzou Urushihara, better known as the fallen angel Lucifer, grinned. He was the collective baggage of Devil’s Castle, and perhaps the second most appropriate thing in the world to store in a closet. Chiho Sasaki, the red-faced high school student he’d just namechecked, responded by pushing him fully back into the closet and slamming the door.
“Whoa! Dude!” came a muffled attempt at self-defense beyond the door. “What the hell, Chiho Sasaki!!”
“That’s your fault for saying all that weird stuff!” she replied as she strained to keep the door in place, face still red as she attempted to keep Urushihara where he belonged.
“Chi-Sis, you’re all red!” a deviously innocent voice said at her feet. Alas Ramus, the adoptive daughter of Maou and Emi (though, really, she had adopted them more than anything) had been playing with Chiho a moment ago. Now she was stamping on a big, plastic sheet meant for teaching the alphabet.
“Oh! Hey, Alas Ramus, it’s almost time for dinner, all right?” Chiho shouted in a failed attempt to change the subject. “It’s time to clean up!”
“Okeh! Time to kleenup!”
The sheet was one of the fancier ones at the shop, made of sturdy enough plastic that it wouldn’t tear no matter how badly it was wadded up.
“But…really, though, Yusa, what do you mean?”
Chiho dared the question as Maou watched Alas Ramus take the sheet he had spent a chunk of his earnings on and mangle it into a folded, spindled disaster.
“I, um, I meant pretty much what I said. I was just thinking I’d head back home pretty soon…”
“Wait, Emilia. What do you mean by ‘home,’ exactly?” came the pained question from a girl in Japanese dress, washing the utensils she had used to cook the upcoming meal.
“Well, you know… My home. On the Western Island. I grew up in a farming village called Sloane, on the far end of Saint Aile. It got razed by an army led by that freak in your closet.” Emi turned a sharp eye toward the closet door. “So I was hoping I could count on you to watch these guys for me while I’m gone, Bell…”
She was talking to Crestia Bell, a powerful Ente Isla cleric who went by the name Suzuno Kamazuki while in Japan.
“Can you provide more detail, please?” the cleric inquired, rinsing the dish detergent off her hands. “I fail to understand your intentions.”
“Y-yeah, Yusa! It can’t be that easy to go back home, can it?”
“Oh. Yeah, sorry if I was too point-blank with that,” Emi replied, chuckling at herself as she realized her mistake. “So it’s like—”
Then she stopped, noticing a man standing behind Chiho and Suzuno.
“I hardly care a bit where you decide to take yourself…but I refuse to let the miso soup I slaved over go cold for your sake.”
The voice boomed as the man held a large soup bowl in his hands. Shirou Ashiya, aka the Great Demon General Alciel, turned toward his master at the computer desk. “Your Demonic Highness, we are ready to eat. Please save your studies for later and take your seat.”
“Yeah, yeah. Emi just destroyed my focus anyway.”
“Hey! You mind not blaming other people for your stupidity?”
“Tofu! Al-cell! Tofu!”
Somewhere along the line, Alas Ramus had approached the legs of the miso-toting Ashiya.
“Now, now,” Suzuno said as he grabbed her away. “It’s dangerous to scare someone carrying a big bowl like that. Back to Mommy with you!”
Alas Ramus walked up to Emi, still not entirely convinced of the logic of this.
“Mommy! Tofu!”
“All right. Once we all sit down at the table, okay? Don’t put any ginger on my cold tofu, Alciel. I’m gonna give some of it to Alas Ramus.”
The family had made a regular habit out of giving a morsel of either Emi’s or Maou’s meal to Alas Ramus. But, after carefully studying Alas Ramus and Emi’s portion of tofu, Ashiya shook his head.
“I refuse. What will you do if Alas Ramus turns into a picky eater?”
It was such a strange conversation for a Hero to have with a Great Demon General that no one could even begin to figure out what went wrong between the two of them.
“Ooh,” interjected the only native Japanese citizen in the room. “Ashiya, I don’t think ginger is too good to feed to a baby…”
“It is vital that she get used to the taste of pungent vegetables,” Ashiya countered—a rarity, considering how weak he usually was to Chiho’s lectures. “The sooner she learns to enjoy this taste, the more exciting every meal will be for her…”
“Oh, but I get where she’s coming from. I kinda got issues with ginger, too—”
“And you call yourself a fallen angel, Lucifer?!” Ashiya fumed.
“Dude, what do you want from me? I lived all this time without ever having ginger before. Did, like, ginger ever show up in the mythology about me?”
He had a point. Neither in the lofty heavens, nor beneath the brightest flaming pyre of the demon realms, did there exist neat little squares of tofu with shredded ginger on top. That was enough for Urushihara’s argument to gain an ally for a change.
“I’m, uh, not too good with it, either…”
The pathetic-sounding statement, uttered as he settled down at the table, came from the great Devil King Satan himself, the monster that unified the demon realms and had been just a breath away from adding the human world of Ente Isla to his list of glorious conquests. And yet here, inside this tiny apartment, mankind finally discovered the one weak point of their future nemesis: The Devil King did not like ginger on top of chilled tofu.
“Maou…”
“My liege…”
“Devil King, of all the simpering things to say…”
Maou withered under the half-pained, half-pitying expressions that Chiho, Ashiya, and Suzuno put forth before him.
“L-look, I can eat it, okay? Have I ever not earned my clean-plate award?”
“Let’s just have Daddy eat Alas Ramus’s ginger then, okay?” said the Hero Emilia, unfailingly striking at the Devil King’s soft, unguarded underbelly. Soon, the operation was under way. As Chiho, Ashiya, and Suzuno looked on at the squirming Maou, Emi carefully used her chopsticks to transfer the ginger flakes over to the devil’s tofu.
“Agh! Emi!” he shouted at the sight of his tofu suffering under an avalanche of ginger. Emi ignored him.
“If you don’t like it,” she said, “bitch at Alciel. It’s not a matter of being finicky—if you feed ginger to someone Alas Ramus’s age, she’s gonna hate it forever. And why wouldn’t she, if even the Devil King aiming to take over the world doesn’t like it?”
“Oof…”
Maou couldn’t find anything to counter with. Ashiya looked equally pained. “Ngh,” he groaned. “Bell, surely you have something to say about this!”
“And surely, Alciel, you see how cruel ginger would be to a tender child such as this… Emilia, I have some low-salt soy sauce in my room. Let me go fetch it. It should be better for Alas Ramus.”
Suzuno padded off to Room 202 next door. Urushihara looked on as he extended his chopsticks over to the eggplant stew in the center of the table. “Man,” he muttered, “I worry about Alas Ramus’s future if everyone’s gonna spoil her like this…”
“Urushihara! We have to say thanks for the meal first! Alas Ramus is here and everything!”
“Eesh. I had no idea raising a kid was so hard. I wouldn’t want that to happen to her…”
“Dude, Maou, why’re you looking at me when you say that?”
“Why don’t you ask yourself that?” the merciless Chiho shot back. “Alas Ramus is a lot more sensible and well-mannered than you are.”
“Right. Here’s the soy sauce.”
Ashiya, his original topic of conversation now thoroughly in the past, resigned himself to surrender as Suzuno returned with her sauce bottle.
“…So be it. Let’s eat before the miso soup’s at room temperature.”
“Hey, lemme get some more rice, Ashiya.”
“Oh, wait! My mom gave me some boneless fried chicken to share,” the flustered Chiho said as she removed a plastic container from her bag. “Can I use the oven a sec, Ashiya?”
“Ah, thank you as always, Ms. Sasaki. You will need to turn the center knob to—”
“Oh, I know. Boy, I almost completely forgot, too…”
It was a surreal sight, no doubt—the Great Demon General and Church cleric standing in the Devil’s Castle kitchen, a teenage girl bringing them some chicken, the Hero and Devil King discussing modern parenting while keeping a watchful eye on the ill-mannered fallen angel—but the way it all worked, somehow, indicated to everyone that Room 201 in Villa Rosa Sasazuka was, as always, a paragon of peace. It’d take a lot more than some trip back home to rock this boat.
Whether that was a good thing or not, none of them could say quite yet.
Right around the end of summer, a shadow clearly began to cast itself over the constantly feuding, yet oddly peaceful relationship between the Devil King and the Hero.
In the other world, after Maou tasted defeat at the hands of Emi, the resulting power vacuum had been filled by the Malebranche tribe led by Barbariccia, aiming to build a new Devil King’s Army in order to stage another Ente Isla invasion. They were buoyed by Olba Meiyer, a powerful Church official and former ally of the Hero, now hell-bent on destroying both her and the Devil King. Olba sent Farfarello, one of the Malebranche’s top generals, to Earth in order to convince Maou and Ashiya to lead their so-called New Devil King’s Army. Both Emi and Suzuno feared the worst at this wicked invitation, but despite all the catastrophes they predicted, both Maou and Ashiya refused the offer.
They could have easily sent Farfarello back to the demon realms, as they did with Ciriatto back in Choshi, or have Emi shred him to bits for them. But the boy accompanying Farfarello made matters complicated. It was Erone, a child borne from the Sephirah known as Gevurah—one of the fruits of the tree of Sephirot, the fabled Tree of Life that grew in the minds of all Church followers in Ente Isla.
Erone was similar to Alas Ramus, who was born from the Yesod Sephirah and fused with Emi’s holy sword. This occasionally gave her powers that far outclassed even the Hero and Devil King.
It remained unclear why a Sephirah child was working for one of the leaders of the Malebranche—and while Farfarello was one thing, it would be rash to do anything ill-advised to this boy. It could create new enemies for Maou and the others not just among the Malebranche, but among the heavens as well.
And even worse, Farfarello and Erone—people who had to be dealt with delicately, if at all—found out that Chiho was someone important to both Maou and Emi. If this kept up, the Malebranche—once they realized that there was no cajoling Maou or Ashiya to join their horde—might decide to take her hostage to force their hand.
Chiho, of course, had just as much care in her heart for Emi and Suzuno. Enough so, in fact, that she convinced them to teach her the telepathy-like Idea Link magic, so that she could send them an SOS whenever danger approached. Maou, for his part, realized there were limits to his haphazard approach to ensuring Chiho’s safety. To put a final stop to the threat, he borrowed Emi’s and Suzuno’s powers to transform himself into the Devil King Satan—a process he made sure Farfarello bore full witness to. That was enough to indicate that all three girls played vital roles in his global conquest—and naming all of them as Great Demon Generals was enough to make Farfarello and Erone return to the demon realms without a fight. Being named as Demon Generals in front of the Malebranche enraged Emi and Suzuno, of course, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
This entire effort might have saved Chiho from any immediate threat from Farfarello or his tribe, but if time passed and things changed on the Ente Isla side, there was no telling what kind of presence this Chiho Sasaki, the new Satan-endorsed Great Demon General, would have in the minds of the people. It was certainly no permanent solution to Maou and Emi’s problems.
So there it was, all laid out: the Malebranche attempting to rebuild Maou’s army; the new child of a Sephirah; the continued mystery of what went on in the heavens. They could all feel the ill winds of another world brush against their faces—but, in the end, they had to work today if they wanted to eat tomorrow. That was how they all greeted September, a still-all-too-warm end to the summer.
Even with sunset coming just a smidge quicker than before, the sky was still ever-so-bright past seven PM, more than lively enough to light the way along the path to Sasazuka Station along the Keio Line. Emi was walking along that path with Suzuno, holding the full and satisfied Alas Ramus as she nodded off. Chiho and Maou were behind them.
Whenever Emi and Alas Ramus paid a custodial visit to Devil’s Castle, Maou made every possible effort to ensure Chiho joined in on dinner. Chiho gave the reason to everyone herself: “If I’m not here, you two will just start fighting, won’t you?”
With Farfarello’s chaos still fresh in their minds, Maou and Emi were now trying even harder to keep things harmonious with Chiho—even if it meant her pushing them around a little. Chiho might not have known about it, but they had inadvertently heard from Chiho herself what she thought about Maou and the gang. It was so pure, so straightforward, that there was no resisting it.
But even without such weighty issues forcing their hands, having Chiho for dinner made Alas Ramus happy and ensured everyone got something decent to eat. As if to repay her, an unspoken rule was established somewhere along the line that Maou and Suzuno would walk Chiho back home for her. It was the least they could do.
“So, Emilia,” Suzuno asked along the way, “what did you mean by ‘returning home’?”
That line of conversation had fallen by the wayside over dinner.
“Oh! Hey, yeah!” Chiho interjected as she chatted with Maou about their jobs. “What did you mean, Yusa?”
“Oh…”
Three women walking alongside each other down a narrow side road meant that Maou had no way of inserting himself into the conversation. He trudged along, gauging the three of them as they sauntered shoulder to shoulder.
Emi looked at both of the girls’ curious eyes and exhaled a little sigh.
“I’m just sick of waiting any longer.”
“How so?”
“…Ever since I found the Devil King here in Japan, I’ve had to deal with all this trouble I never expected. And I’ve made my way through it all, somehow, but…like, what’s my goal here, really?”
“Your goal, Yusa?” asked Chiho, eyebrows raised.
Emi shrugged, dejected. “You know, Chiho: I’m the Hero. I have the hopes of mankind on my shoulders. And, you know, the reason I came to Japan in the first place—”
“Currryyyy…mnngh…”
“Hee-hee! ……Sorry.”
Maou couldn’t help but laugh at the topic Alas Ramus chose to bring up as she talked in her sleep. It was like she chose it on purpose. A sharp glare from Emi, up in front, made his apology uncharacteristically meek.
“…The reason I came here was to slay the Devil King for trying to conquer Ente Isla. Or that’s what it was supposed to be, anyway.”
Her glinting eyes turned toward the withered Maou as she spoke.
“I am aware of that much,” Suzuno added, still puzzled, “but how is that connected with any desire to return home?”
“Well…” Emi began, turning back forward, since Maou wasn’t giving her any further reaction. Her eyes settled down on the baby in her arms, now in a deep and self-assured sleep. “Then Alas Ramus came along, so I couldn’t just go slashing at the Devil King any longer…and then all these angels and demons came raining down on us like hailstones. Trying to get all of us mixed up, you know?”
“True enough.”
“Kind of funny to think that us three’re the only humans in this whole mix, huh?”
Chiho’s observation was ignored.
“So all these outside forces that weren’t involved at all before I came here are sticking their noses in my business, and I’m getting sick of it. I just figured that…you know, maybe I should try going back to Ente Isla once. They can mess with me all they want to over there.”
“So you’ll come back and beat up all the bad guys?”
“Oh, how should I put it…?” Emi replied, dubious about how directly Chiho had decided to frame it. “I mean, it’s like all these different guys have been after my holy sword since right around when Bell showed up, right?”
“Indeed,” Suzuno interjected. “Lord Sariel was verily obsessed over it at first.”
“But that’s because it had to do with Alas Ramus, isn’t it?”
The archangels Sariel and Gabriel had both publicly proclaimed to Emi that they wanted to extract the Better Half from her—by force, if necessary. Ever since they’d learned that the sword had a Sephirah fragment at its core, heavenly forces had been trying hard to collect it as part of their quest for Yesod pieces—bits of which formed the very root of both the Better Half and Alas Ramus. Everyone here now knew that. But it didn’t mean they had to like it.
“Right, and the angels are one thing, but that demon Ciriatto was gunning for Yesod fragments in Choshi, too. It’s looking a hell of a lot like the Malebranche forces on the Eastern Island right now have a Yesod piece or two. And Erone’s another fruit of the Sephirah, and yet he’s tagging along with a demon.”
“I suppose the easiest way to explain it,” deadpanned Suzuno, “is that the heavens are connected to the demons somehow.”
“Wh-where’d that idea come from?”
The three girls turned around at once to find a peevish Maou squirming under their gazes as he strolled along.
“Yeah,” Emi said, “how are we gonna explain this guy, then?”
“True. The Devil King failed to even realize that Alas Ramus was born from the Yesod fragment he once possessed. And I fail to see any plausible motive for the heavens to side with the Malebranche forces that sprang up after the Devil King’s demise.”
“Look, I dunno what you’re talking about, but would you mind not killing me off, please? I’m just fine!”
“So I was thinking,” Emi said, ignoring Maou’s Devil King status report. “We have too little to go on with Erone—and Gevurah, too—where he fits in. On the other hand, we kinda know a lot about Yesod at this point. So why do you think Sariel and Gabriel are so hot after Yesod fragments?”
“Huh?”
Chiho arched an eyebrow, failing to see Emi’s point.
“Hey, uh, we’re about to reach the station, so…”
Maou, meanwhile, continued to be ignored.
“I mean, why is it only Yesod that’s been broken into fragments? They’re only collecting those fragments because someone broke it and spread the pieces all over the place.”
“Talk about a pain in the ass,” Maou threw in, knowing that nobody was listening. Spotting a soda can on the street, he picked it up to toss it in the garbage can next to a nearby vending machine, only to find it full. He opted to perch it on top of the can lid instead.
“Oh… Now I get it.”
“Huh?”
Suzuno nodded confidently to herself, much to Chiho’s confusion. Emi, meanwhile, used her free hand to point a finger at Chiho’s hand.
“…Oh!”
The hand had a ring on it that housed a single small, purple gemstone. It was a Yesod fragment, just like the one in Emi’s sword and on Alas Ramus’s forehead.
“I don’t know for sure who broke it, but if we’re talking about who scattered the pieces, I think that’s pretty clear right now. We’ve got this one right there, besides.”
During the whole rigmarole that led to Chiho obtaining this ring, she also had certain memories implanted into her mind. Memories of a faraway world that Chiho could never have comprehended. One from the past, perhaps. A small, wounded demon, and a man standing in a field of wheat.
“Your…mother, Yusa?”
“Yep. Pretty much.” Emi rolled her eyes as she took her hand away. “So I thought maybe I could track her footsteps on Ente Isla from back before I was born, or when I was still too young to remember anything. Like, maybe that’d help me find something, you know? I’m not expecting miracles, but if something pops up, then great.”
If Emi could turn back time, there was one regret she had wanted to right for a while. After Emeralda and Albert came to rescue her from Urushihara and Olba, she had a chance to revisit Ente Isla—a chance she wished she could’ve taken, even for a short time. Laila, Emi’s mother, had apparently lived with Emeralda for a short time.
But Emi didn’t take the chance. She had no allies on Earth at the time, and leaving the Devil King alone for a moment was unthinkable. Even if he didn’t do anything nefarious, if he decided to move addresses while she was gone, it’d be back to square one with her search. After having spent nearly a year living by herself in Japan, there was no way she’d toss all her progress down the toilet that way.
She absolutely couldn’t ask Emeralda and Albert to keep an eye on him, either. Emi was a simple farm girl at the core, but they both had high positions in government. Once peace returned to human society, they would have responsibilities to live up to. In a Devil King–free world where the old Church and nation rivalries were about to be rekindled anew, their talents were sorely needed back home, not on another world. Plus, by the time the demons were routed from Ente Isla, Emi’s strength was at a level such that it’d take Emeralda, Albert, and Olba taking her on together to have half a chance at defeating her. Lucifer—Urushihara—had survived the fight under the Shuto Expressway, but practically speaking, if it came down to a fight against three arch-demons, Emilia the Hero was the only one capable of dealing with that.
If only Chiho had been a more important presence in the demons’ lives earlier. If only Suzuno had arrived a little bit sooner. Emi knew it was pointless to wish for that, but she wished it anyway. Instead of that, Chiho had spent the past half year building a solid emotional relationship with Maou and his friends. For that matter, Suzuno wouldn’t be in the picture in the first place, if Urushihara and Olba hadn’t made that power grab. It was all this happenstance, all these little mistakes and mistimings, that kept things from going the way Emi needed them to go. Not that she could do anything about it.
Besides:
“Ngh…mmmhhh… We going home, Mommy?”
Somewhere along line, they had arrived at the Sasazuka Station turnstile. The noise from the PA system and the passing trains must have woken Alas Ramus up. She wrinkled her face as she took in the surroundings, her sleepy eyes turned upward.
“Oh, you up, Alas Ramus?” The sharp-eyed Maou, quickly noticing this, approached her to grab one of her hands. “Hey, come visit me again real soon, okay?”
Chiho and Suzuno waved behind Emi, flashing bright smiles.
“See you later, Alas Ramus!”
“Be a good girl on the way home, now.”
The situation made Emi think a bit. If everything had gone the way she wanted, there probably wouldn’t be any soft, gentle moments like these. Lately, she had started to think that maybe this wasn’t so bad after all.
“Sorry I didn’t get to play with you too much today, kiddo. I’ll make up for that next time, okay?”
“Okeh! Promise!” The now-wide awake Alas Ramus thrust her hand toward Maou. Sticking out a single index finger was still too fine a motor skill for her.
“Sure thing. Promise.”
“…What were you doing today, anyway? I almost never see you use that computer.”
It was a surprise for Emi, seeing something take priority over Alas Ramus for Maou during her visits. Maou would never forget to take time out for her normally, no matter what.
The answer wound up coming from an even more surprising source.
“Well,” Chiho stated, “Maou’s gonna need to get a license soon.”
“A what?” This was apparently news to Suzuno as well. She gave him a look. “You mean a…driver’s license?”
That was what the term usually meant. It was hard to imagine Maou gunning for, say, an airline pilot’s license at this point in his life. As far as Japanese law was concerned, he was an adult and therefore had every right to apply for one—but that wasn’t what concerned the girls.
“And Alciel gave you permission for this?”
“Color me…impressed.”
“Oh, that’s the part you don’t believe?” Maou’s face soured. “Who do you guys think he is to me, anyway?”
“Yeah, but getting a license costs money, doesn’t it? You have to go to driving school and all that, no? Do you have that kind of cash? Are you even planning to follow traffic laws in the first place? You are the Devil King, right?”
“Indeed,” Suzuno added. “You know those young men that hand out tissue packs advertising driving schools in front of the supermarket or whatnot. The programs for even the cheapest of them start at a hundred thousand yen or so, am I right? I sincerely doubt Alciel would allow such an outlay, and I even more sincerely doubt you have the patience to save up such an amount, either.”
“Why do I have to get all this abuse just because I said I’m getting a license, huh? What’s so bad about the Devil King being licensed?”
“The idea of the Devil King seeking permission from government authorities to do anything is laughable.”
“Oh, um, Yusa?” Chiho called out just as Emi was removing her rail-pass holder from her shoulder bag. “Would it be all right if I got to see you go? ’Cause I’m kind of worried…and besides, it’d be nice to say hello to Emeralda for the first time in a while, if she’s around.”
“I’m sorry, Chiho, but I promised Eme I’d go over on Monday afternoon, and you’re gonna have school, so…”
“…Oh.”
It was easy to forget at times, but apart from her skills at cross-planet, cross-species diplomacy, Chiho was just another urban teen. Emi gave the disappointed girl a pat on the shoulder, Alas Ramus joining her by batting her fat hand against her forehead.
“But don’t worry, all right? I’m the strongest Hero in human history, remember? And I’ll have Alas Ramus with me. I’m not planning on fighting or going anywhere dangerous. It’s just a quick trip to check up on the family home, pretty much.”
“Oh! Right!” Suddenly, Maou rushed right up to Emi. It seemed that only now did he remember that she and Alas Ramus were literally inseparable from each other. “I don’t want anything bad happening to Alas Ramus, got it? Just say hello to Emeralda, do lunch or whatever, and get her back here.”
Emi glared at him, deflecting his bravado back at him. “Where do you get off, telling me that? You’re the whole cause of this in the first place! And you better not try anything funny while I’m gone, either! Anything! Suzuno’s gonna have her eye on you the whole time, okay?!”
“Hah! Funny! You sure won’t be laughing by the time I get my license! I’ll have an entire new world to explore. Nobody can stop me now! You’ll be crying into your cereal by the time you get back!”
“I hope you forget to put the tax stamp on your application and they boot your ass out of the DMV!”
“Pfft! They sell those at the DMV, too! Try again, knucklehead!”
“Dahh!” Suzuno shouted as she forced her way into the inane argument. “Just go already, Emilia! You’re keeping Chiho and the Devil King here for too long! You have to stop before our holy scripture has to be rewritten to include the tale of how the Hero and the Devil battled over how to pay for a motor scooter license!”
Fifteen more minutes had passed since Emi last checked her watch. Between keeping Chiho out late and letting the baby stay awake, it wasn’t an ideal scenario for anyone.
“You have nothing to fear, Chiho,” Suzuno continued. “Perhaps it is not something to brag about, but I have little to occupy my time. I will be there with Emilia when she crosses over—I had wanted to speak with Emeralda myself. Is that quite all right, Devil King?”
The station’s PA system squawked to life, announcing the imminent arrival of the next train. Emi turned her head up. “All right,” she said, trying to hurry things along. “See you next week, Chiho. I’ll send you a text later, Bell.” And with that, she finally went through the turnstile.
“Bye-bye! Daddy, Chi-Sis, Suzu-Sis, bye-baah!”
As Alas Ramus waved with all her might from behind Emi’s shoulder, the three of them feel tremendously guilty.
“I wasn’t lying, though. They really do sell those tax stamps at the DMV.”
“It doesn’t… Ugh. I need to walk Chiho home. Are you all right time-wise, Chiho?” Suzuno asked.
“Oh, sure, no problem there…but…”
“Hmm?”
Chiho looked up at the sound of the train Emi and Alas Ramus presumably just clambered aboard, now leaving the station.
“Yusa’s kind of been a lot more…cheerful lately, hasn’t she?” she whispered.
“…Why’re you looking at me?” Maou protested, a little self-conscious.
“What, don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
Suzuno sighed as she pushed them both forward. “…We can walk and talk at the same time, you two.”
“I really do think she’s gotten more cheerful, though. Like, she’s just a ball of energy right now.”
“Ah, she’s always been that way. Just whine, bitch, and moan, day in, day out…”
“Oh, Maou, I don’t mean it that way! It’s just…I don’t know how to put it…”
“She said it herself,” Suzuno said as she looked back toward Sasazuka Station. “About how it was better to seize the initiative on matters instead of waiting for something to happen. It has changed her outlook in all manner of ways, no doubt.”
“Yeah, it’s sure different from when she was all hesitant and going nuts over what she should do…”
It seemed even to Maou that Emi’s happy, almost eerie sense of optimism—something she had back when they first met in Japan—had rekindled itself a little over the past few days.
“But it can’t be just that, though.”
“Oh?”
“What do you mean, Chi?”
“You really don’t know, guys…?” Chiho gave Maou, then Suzuno a look of astonishment. “You two have the most to do with it, too.”
All the two of them could do was exchange awkward glances. Apart from living in the same apartment building, Maou and Suzuno had nothing in common. That was especially true when it came to their involvement with Emi: Save for the fact they all lived in Japan, their relationships couldn’t have been more different.
“Well,” Chiho continued, “I’m not as involved as you are. And I wish I was. So I’m not gonna tell you!”
“Wh-what?”
“Um…?”
The two of them were forced to watch Chiho glare at them, looking a little triumphant as she did.
“All right, Chiho, I give in,” Suzuno breathed as she lifted her hands into the air. They were nearly at the girl’s house. “What have you discerned?”
Chiho turned her head back at her and smirked a little. “I don’t know how much Yusa herself is aware of it,” she said as she turned the rest of her body toward Suzuno. “But we’re talking about the Hero who came here to slay the Devil King going back home, right? Doesn’t that mean that she really trusts both of you?”
Maou and Suzuno both let out startled gasps.
“Yusa’s convinced there’s no way you’re gonna do anything mean in Japan just because she takes her eyes off you for a few days. Even if you did, she trusts you enough, Suzuno, that she figures you can handle it. I think this is her way of saying that to all of us. Don’t you think? Although I guess we’re talking about a different kind of trust and stuff, but…”
This struck the both of them dumb. They were unable to react.
“Well, thanks for taking me home!” Chiho smiled a little and waved as she walked up to her door. “Say hi to Emi for me when you see her off, okay, Suzuno?”
Maou and Suzuno kept standing there for a few moments. Their eyes met, and then they shrugged and turned their backs to each other.
“That’s not good, from the Devil King’s perspective.”
“…And let’s just leave it at that, shall we? …I’m going home. All this idle chatter has made it tremendously late. You would not want to stir Alciel’s ire, would you?”
They exchanged no further words as they walked back to the apartment and silently went to their respective rooms.
“Welcome back, Your Demonic Highness! Ah, what a breath of fresh air this is, not having Emilia breathing down our necks! Shall we kick back and pay a visit to that yakiniku place, perhaps?”
Ashiya was acting quite out of character. If his idea of something to do when the Hero was gone was sitting around a griddle and cooking up bits of beef and pork, Maou mused, it might already be too late for both of them.
“My liege?”
“Oh, hey, Maou, did you get my text? I asked you to grab some custard for me at the convenience store on your way back home.”
“…You did? Guess I didn’t notice.” Maou took out his cell phone, only to find a twelve-minute-old message waiting for him.
“Aw, duuude!” Urushihara grumbled. “Ashiya said it was okay for a change, too!”
“Damn it, guys…”
“My liege?”
“Hmm? Somethin’ up, Maou?”
The way Maou was still standing bolt upright at the door unnerved them both a little. Maou paused, then lifted his face up. It betrayed his anger, an uncommon emotion for him as of late.
“The Hero’s gone, and all you’re going on about is meat and custard? See, this is exactly why Emi’s put so much trust in us, guys! Where the hell is all of your Demon General pride, huh?”
The shouts from Maou, and the subsequent wailing and moaning from Ashiya and Urushihara, were clearly audible through the wall. Suzuno scowled to herself, hands over her ears, as she rode out the storm.
“As if he is in any position to talk…”
The Devil King next door, forced to chide his subordinates over yakiniku and cheap desserts, had clearly been poisoned by the everyday objects of Japanese society. And as Suzuno found herself forced to listen to an all-too-typical family argument from beyond the wall, she suddenly recalled a conversation she had with Emi a few days ago.
“The angels were human all along. In which case…”
What were demons, then? Especially the demon next door, currently studying the traffic laws of Japan in order to obtain a motor scooter license, and also a little frantic at the idea that the Hero and his unrequited crush trusted him.
Certainly, between Maou and Ashiya, demons certainly looked quite a bit more unhuman than angels. Unlike the denizens of heaven, who harnessed holy magic to materialize their wings, they were often of enormous size and sported things like pointy tails and horns that humans would never have. A few of them—such as Camio, the avian Devil’s Regent who showed up in Choshi—hardly resembled humans at all.
But Suzuno had seen the Devil King Satan, the Great Demon General Alciel—even Farfarello, top officer in the Malebranche—in forms that were no different from any man or woman on the street.
“Perhaps I could investigate what that…means, exactly.”
She sprang to action, grabbing her cell phone—but then stopped, shaking her head. It wasn’t that her trust in Emi was gone, but having her go off by herself to see how things were on Ente Isla painted too murky a picture for her to be comfortable with. Casting too wide of a net would make it easy to overlook matters—matters that might impact Japan, and Chiho, in unpredictable ways. Emi said she was looking for clues leading to her mother—so why not let her focus on that, and that alone? The other mysteries unfolding in Ente Isla could affect the entire world. There was no point in hurrying things along too quickly.
The real issue right now, after all, was…
“Ugh, enough of this bickering! Settle down before I file a noise complaint!”
…She needed to quell the chaos next door as soon as possible. The flustered, frustrated Maou; and the quivering Ashiya and Urushihara…it wasn’t a position she enjoyed. She knew that Emi entrusted her with watching over Devil’s Castle for any suspicious moves, but…
“Stop your ridiculous arguing, start studying, and then go to bed! Don’t you have work tomorrow?!”
…Intervening in a children’s quarrel like a day-care supervisor wasn’t meant to be part of the deal. She was starting to dread the next few days before Emi’s return.
Walking back into her room, Suzuno closed the door with a hand behind her and let out a heavy sigh.
“Still…this is a form of peace and serenity, I suppose…”
It was wrong, yes, but it wasn’t a bad thing. That was the simplest way of putting it.
Monday rolled along surprisingly quickly.
After turning down an invite from her friends and wrapping up lunch early, Chiho was standing near the so-called chamber of horrors—the old school building that students and teachers usually never went near at all. She was staring intently at something in her hands. It was her ring, the small, purple Yesod fragment shining on top of it. As an upstanding, sensible high school student, Chiho couldn’t bear having such a gaudy piece of jewelry on her finger during class.
Although no one had gotten around to explaining the process in detail, Chiho knew that “Gates” were a special sort of magic that let people traverse extremely long distances in an instant. Emi had gone through one to come here, and so had everyone else—Suzuno, Emeralda, Albert, Urushihara, Ashiya. Maou, too. And something told Chiho that when Emi and Alas Ramus went through their Gate this afternoon, this Yesod fragment would probably react to that in some manner or other.
She eyed the ring intently, making sure nobody else was around as she did. Then:
“…Ah!”
Suddenly, the fragment began to glow a dull purple. Then, for an instant, it sparkled brightly, like a camera flash, before fading and going back to a plain old gemstone. She had figured, with her magical training, that she’d feel some sort of force within her own body as well, but nothing special happened on that front.
There was, however, a new text on her phone. A simple notification from Suzuno: “Emilia has safely set off with Emeralda.”
Emi, one of her best friends, was officially no longer in Japan. Or Earth, for that matter. It felt so strange to Chiho, who had yet to see a Gate being used in person. It was like Emi Yusa—Emilia Justina—was now just this kind of vague concept, neither extant nor gone forever, and it made her chest tighten.
Still, she said she wouldn’t do anything dangerous, and Emi had Emeralda with her, besides. Any peril she might run into couldn’t possibly be enough to overwhelm her, whether Chiho worried about it or not.
Chiho grasped her cell phone and closed her eyes as she recalled Emi’s phone number in her mind. Her hand, her ring, and the phone began to glow a little.
“Here’s hoping the Ente Isla you return to is just a little bit more peaceful than it was before.”
Would her prayer be strong enough to traverse Gates and worlds and dimensions? There was no way this novice spellcaster could know.
Even now, she didn’t know.
Because after two weeks—after September 12 came and went—Emi still had not returned.
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