The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 1 (17 page)

Ashiya was just as lost himself, forgetting to close the door as he witnessed the scene.

Chiho, in her scarlet-tinged school outfit, was holding a paper bag printed with the logo of a Japan-style sweet shop located inside a Shinjuku department store.

“Uh, I…I ran into Miss Sasaki there, and she stated she wanted to meet with you, and so…”

Ashiya stammered out his explanation, pharmacy bag still in hand. After a moment standing there in shock, Chiho dropped the bag she was holding. Judging by the heavy clank, one could figure the bag contained a can of
senbei
rice crackers, not that it mattered right now.

Maou could guess what was running through Chiho’s mind.

Probably, she still felt bad about last night. Not only did she get Maou caught up in a disaster, but her selfish request had also led to repercussions in his personal life.

So to make up for it, she dressed up in her finest outfit and decided to stop by with something to snack on as a gift. By modern teenager standards, it was a tremendously polite gesture.

And then she ran into Ashiya, his roommate, near his apartment. Chiho hadn’t exactly had a deep conversation with Ashiya yesterday, but he knew who she was, and she knew he was at the disaster site. And Ashiya, ever the gentleman, must have kindly escorted her up the stairs.

As attentive to detail as Ashiya always was, he had doubtlessly told her of Emi’s morning visit. Chiho must have accepted the news well enough, given that she was here now.

So he came in expecting an injured Emi. Not a sobbing, red-faced Emi, along with a panicked-looking Maou trying his hardest to make excuses. It was simple to picture how she would gauge
that
situation. What’s more, thanks to her trip down the stairs, Emi’s suit was more than a little ripped and damaged. All of this raced across Maou’s mind in the course of a single second.

The nervous step backward Chiho gingerly took turned all of this guesswork into confirmed belief.

“Uh… Ha-ha! M-maybe, uh, this isn’t the best time…” she stammered.

“Ch-Chiho…”

Emi, no doubt reaching the same conclusion as Maou, rose up in a panic, realizing that Chiho was misunderstanding the scene in dramatic fashion.

“I guess it’s true…that…Maou and…Yusa… They really are.…”

Chiho’s knees were shaking. Her eyes were emotionless, but the smile on her face was taut and fraying at the edges.

This was turning into a serious misunderstanding.

“N-no, Chiho, that’s not it at all! This is…”

“Chi, listen, just calm down for a…”

“I-I’m sorry!”

Not willing to lend an ear to Emi’s and Maou’s wholly ungrounded excuses, Chiho spun herself around and galloped out. Her school-uniform loafers kept her safe as her footsteps clanged their way downstairs. The three of them listened on, still frozen.

“That was…bad, wasn’t it?”

Emi muttered the words flatly, the soul removed from her body. Maou turned his face upward, a hand covering his eyes.

“P-perhaps we should pursue her and get this straightened out?”

Ashiya took a look around the area beneath the stairwell. There was already no sign of Chiho.

Snatching the pharmacy bag from the nervous, twitching Ashiya, Maou threw it at Emi. She caught it instinctively.

“Look, just go home, okay? Nothing good ever happens when you’re near me!”

There was no responding to his verbal and physical abuse.

The unexpected Chiho factor had drained all the tenseness from the apartment.

“Oh, dear, Mr. Maou, that wasn’t very mature.”

That was why even Ashiya, still frozen near the open door, didn’t notice at first.

“Picking on a woman like that! This isn’t grade-school recess, you know.”

“Aaaghh!!”

He had failed to realize until that instant that a pillar of gold was standing behind him.

“M-Ms. Shiba!”

Her long, medieval-styled, marigold-print dress shone in the morning light. A peacock feather, painted a bright golden color, stuck out of her wide-brimmed hat, the same color as the dress. Her golden hair, reminiscent of French nobility, reflected the sun’s rays atop her body. She carried a bright yellow handbag with elegant handles that resembled strings of pearls, and she completed the package with a shawl replete with lime-green lamé strands, white enamel heels, and false eyelashes that resembled a field of grass growing on the seabed, so long that even the most egregious shojo manga artist would run for the hills if asked to draw them that length. She was Miki Shiba, the owner of the apartment, and she had appeared without a sound.

It was Ashiya’s outcry that finally made Maou and Emi notice the corn-on-the-cob-shaped landlord behind him. The golden light around her seemed to form an enormous yellow halo as they basked in her presence.

“This your girlfriend I assume, Mr. Maou?”

The gravelly voice seemed to belong to a woman fairly on in years, but Shiba’s wine-barrel-sized frame readily foiled any attempts to guess her true age.

“My name is Miki Shiba, and I’m the landlord here at Villa Rosa Sasazuka. It’s good to meet you!”

Emi squinted, as if trying to see through the glorious sunlight in front of her. Nodding back was the best she could manage.

“Feel free to call me Mikitty, by the way.”

“Uh, sure…”

There was no other response to give.

“I had come to visit, Mr. Maou, Mr. Ashiya, in order to inform my tenants of certain upcoming matters…but I see you are both rather occupied at the moment?”

With these overly prying words, she handed a piece of paper
over to Ashiya, offering a whiff of her elegant perfume as her arm extended forward.

“But regardless. We have had quite a spate of earthquakes as of late, no? I’ve felt it necessary to perform seismic reinforcement on this residence, so I came to inform you of some construction work in the future.”

While this had been the case since they first met, for some reason, Maou had trouble dealing with his landlord. He didn’t mind the sassy, cheesy extravagance at all, but for some reason, his internal demonic sixth sense always told him that Shiba was a lady not to be defied at any cost.

The piece of paper contained a schedule for the reinforcement work, a notice that residents would need to vacate the property for a one-day period, and another notice that this would not change their monthly rent. The landlord’s seal was on the bottom, alongside a glossy, golden kiss mark. Maou made a conscious effort not to let his reaction to this show.

“But, there has certainly been quite a few earthquakes, hmm? Especially
lately
.”

Shiba made the casual observation as she sidled up to Maou.

“Y-yeah…”

“In fact, I wonder if we’ll have another one today, even.”

“I…I couldn’t say.”

“And speaking of that, on my way here, I happened across a charming young woman running down the road. Crying the whole way, I may add!”

She smiled as she leered at all three of the apartment’s residents simultaneously. It was a fairly impressive physical feat. “I believe she was heading for Sasazuka station as well…”

It was that instant.

“Did it…shake just now?”

Only the ever-elegant Miki Shiba chose not to nod her head in response.

“Mr. Maou?”

“Uh.”

“If you’ve involved her in this, I would
hope
a young man would see matters through to the end, hmm?”

“Wh-what do you…”

Maou was thrown into confusion, unable to comprehend his landlord. But as he stood there, the shaking grew stronger and stronger.

“Y-Your Demonic Highness! Th-this shaking!”

Ashiya was shouting.

“Chiho!”

“Did you honestly think that charming young woman receiving an idea link and being subject to that sonar strike was a complete coincidence, then?”

A single sentence was all it took from the landlord to turn the others into stone.

“I would think that
you
, of all people, would understand the power behind people’s thoughts and wills. Perhaps you had best hurry, before it is too late?”

There was something lurking underneath that thick makeup. But what?

“See? You can hear it, no?”

A loud rumble coursed across town.

“Argh, I feel
horrible
! I think I’m gonna get Gate-sick!”

“Please try not to vomit if you caaaaan…”

“No guarantees, man! Erp…”

“Hang in there, pleeease! I doubt we’ll have time to relax once we reach the other side.”

“Uh? You catchin’ something over there? Grhh…”

“A man-made magical reaction, picked up by our sonar readings. It’s far too large to be purely the latent magic of ‘Japan.’”

“So Emilia’s in trouble?”

“Possss-ible! We may need to prepare for battle!”

“Right! Let’s hurry! I can take this!”

“Yes, sir! On our waaaaaay!”

“Oooogh! Stop making it shake so much!”

Chiho sprinted at full speed, crying. Whatever Maou and Emi had to say, that was
not
the kind of situation she had the wherewithal to calmly pick her way through.

I really
do
like Maou.

But I’m just a new girl on the job, someone he’s only just met. I can’t do anything about the history Maou and Emi Yusa have between them.

It had to have been my first love. With Maou, I was full of spirit; I had a drive, a goal I could push to achieve with him. The high school boys, all mooching off their parents and partying all night; they’re
nothing
compared to him.

He wasn’t particularly tall or handsome, but Chiho had still fallen in love with him.

Now that was gone, her heart ripped into a million pieces, and she had no idea what to do. So she ran as hard as she could, plunging into the crowd around Sasazuka station, running into an electric pole, tripping over a parked bicycle, colliding head-on with a pedestrian.

“S-sorry!”

She apologized, too ashamed to bring her head upward.

“Oooh,
this
looks like a good one.”

The voice, coming from a head or so taller than Chiho, was ringed with a bitter coldness wholly unfamiliar to Chiho’s ears.

“I had been following you since that last mistake, but I didn’t think you would be caught up in despair for them so easily.”

It was a young man, on the small side. He looked normal enough—long, flowing hair, T-shirt, and jeans. He couldn’t have been much older than Chiho, either.

But what about those eyes? Those purple eyes, with pupils that
seemed to shine a rainbow of ominous colors that Chiho had never seen before?

“Chiho Sasaki. Allow me to take that hatred and despair the Devil King and the Hero brought to you, and make it a reality!”

They were in the middle of the midmorning Sasazuka bustle. Two people stopped in the middle of it caused a traffic situation in and of itself.

“Hey, get outta the way!”

A young, fashionably dressed man drowsily warned the stranger, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“…!”

Suddenly, the T-shirt ripped itself apart in the area the hand touched him. The young man was blown away by the thing that popped out of his shoulder, plowing into a line of parked bikes.

“Ahh…!”

Chiho let out a scream, deep within her throat. Other passersby stared at the man, unable to fathom what had just happened.

It was a wing. A set of large, jet-black wings, jutting out from this person’s back.

“The hunt has begun. Today, I will surpass the Devil King for good.”

At that moment, an elevated Keio rail line collapsed, the victim of a mysterious explosion.

Maou and Emi ran, Ashiya a small distance behind them.

The rumbling they heard right after the explosion couldn’t have been caused by anything other than the influence of something magical.

Judging by the landlord’s warning, it was clear she was, to say the least, no ordinary person. But there was no time to get to the bottom of that.

“Hang in there, Chi!”

Maou kept running.

“Look!” Emi pointed ahead.

“…What in the world?!” Ashiya groaned to himself.

The rail line had fallen. The elevation bridge had collapsed to the ground, crushing the shopping mall adjacent to Sasazuka station. They could detect residual magic in the area, but this was nothing like the barriers Maou had impulsively built to rescue people.

Beyond the mess, on the Koshu-Kaido road, Maou could see two figures in the air, the Shuto Expressway spanning across the sky above.

The enemy no longer had any reason to hide themselves. The bystanders that had escaped harm stood off in the distance, staring at the rubble and the figures in the air.

“Them…!”

“Who…are they? How could they have…”

“How do you
think
?!”

Maou began to climb up the rubble, dodging the broken power lines and making his way past a mountain of detritus that was liable to collapse again at any moment. Emi and Ashiya followed behind.

There were two of them: a man flapping his giant wings as he carried something at his side; and another, this one floating in the air, the hood on his ghostlike robe covering his face.

As they surmounted the rubble, Maou detected something. Something returning to him once again. Why? He should have been overjoyed, but instead he found it disturbing. It wasn’t something he planned to regain
this
way.

A nagging thought like that never would have occurred to him during his demon-realm days. But now—

“Good to see you, Lucifer! Brought a new playmate with you?”

The winged figure in the air replied with a spate of dark laughter. “Well, well! The Devil King Satan! Or should I be referring to you as Sadao Maou instead? And how nice to see Alciel safe and sound!”

“Lucifer…? It couldn’t be…”

“N-no… Why are you here
now
…?”

Emi was at a total loss for words. Ashiya shook his head, unable to believe the sight before him.

Only Maou remained strong, his stern expression unchanged as he glared at the two floating figures.

Lucifer was the Great Demon General whom Emilia the Hero had slain first. The fallen angel who arose a demon. The general who governed the invasion and capture of Ente Isla’s Western Continent.

“How long has it been, Emilia the Hero…that is, Emi Yusa!”

“No… No way…”

“Oh, yes! Your sword may have pierced through my body, and yet I am here now, before you!”

The Great Demon General Lucifer sneered, the ominous black wings befitting his fallen-angel title. At his side, like a mother carrying around its kitten, he held an unconscious Chiho.

She did not appear to be injured. But why did he decide to capture
her
?

“All thanks to your new friend, isn’t it?” Maou nodded toward the hooded figure as he spoke. “When I retreated and sent a squadron over to the Western Continent to investigate, I still had no faith that you were dead. I never imagined in a thousand years the humans could defeat a Great Demon General, so the investigation was likely less thorough than it should have been…”

“And thanks to that, I survived.”

“Yeah. You weren’t a
pure
demon. Not like Alciel, Malacoda, and Adramelech. But with your heaven-born blood, I figured that capturing the Western Continent would have been a cinch, even if it
was
a Church stronghold. Too bad I was wrong.”

“Too bad indeed! I devoted my all to eradicating the humans on the island, to fulfill the mission granted to me. But…”

Lucifer turned his glare toward Emi. “But the Hero’s armies overwhelmed me. That much, you already know.”

“Would your friend mind telling me the rest?” Maou asked.

“Well?” Lucifer turned toward the floating robed figure next to him.

He laughed, as he seemed to give his partner a nod. “Certainly. I am—”

“—Olba Meiyer, one of the six archbishops of the Church?”

The man stopped cold at Maou’s prompt guess.

“…!” Emi’s mind was in utter disarray. The name was too familiar to her. “Olba? That’s a lie! Olba is my—”

“—your companion, who sent you to this world, then tried to eradicate both you and me. Right?”

“…You knew of that?”

The figure interjected, a tad crestfallen that the thunder was stolen from him as he raised his hood. It revealed a calm, benign-looking man, aged fifty or so. His tonsured head, the symbol of a high-level Church bishop, shone in the morning sun.

His pure white archbishop’s robe, embroidered with blue and silver thread, flapped in the strong wind blowing between the nearby buildings.

“Us demons, we practically invented evil, you know. I can always tell what a villain is thinking, start to finish. You’re the guy who was behind Emi when she entered the Gate, right? Once I heard that, I pretty much guessed the rest. No one else had the chance to take a shot at me and Emi.”

“No… No! Olba, why are you with Lucifer? You didn’t—”

“Everything began after Lucifer lost to you, Emilia.”

The archbishop Olba cracked a thin smile, his voice rising to crescendo as he prepared the epic tale he was about to spin.

“After you destroyed the demon forces, you didn’t want the Hero lording it over you, so you tossed her into another world and consulted with Lucifer while she was still powerless to do anything about it. Then you secretly wiped out the rest of the Hero’s crew in order to protect the vested interests of the Church. The end. Any corrections I need to make?”

Once again, Maou stole the limelight.

What’s more, judging by the way Olba’s mouth opened and closed in stunned silence, he had it right. Maou laughed a hideously mocking laugh.

“That scenario’s been done a thousand times before, baldy! You think this girl was gonna try becoming goddess of the universe or
something? Even a low-budget B movie would come up with a better script than that.”