The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 1 (24 page)

“Get outta my way. These guys’re heavy.”

Maou dragged his companions inside, throwing them down on the tatami floor. Chiho gasped lightly as she realized Ashiya was apparently unconscious.

“Ah…uh…what happened to Ashiya?”

“Oh, nothing much. I squeezed all the magic out of him, he almost died, that sort of thing.”

With a great sigh, Maou sat down and looked at Albert and Emeralda.

“So. Guess we all know each other now. Why are
you
people here? Judging by the looks of things, you’re not here to kill me, at least.”

“Nope. Not really. Fact is, we had no inclination to even run into you. We just came to help out Emilia.”

Albert shrugged, his eyes turned toward Emi.

“Olba wasn’t the only one. The whole Churrrch was in on it.” Emeralda was stern as she spoke, face scrunched, both hands balled into fists.

“What?!”

“The Church bishops all but bullied us into joinin’ their side. They had us captured, their spies watchin’ us day and night. Took a lot of work to escape, lemme tell you.”

“They guaranteed our securrrrity as long as we didn’t do anything against them. They wanted me to retire out of court life in the Emmmmpire. That’s how scared they were, apparently, of their Hero and savior seizing political power.”

The sad story was high entertainment to Maou’s ears.

“Yeah, that’s what you get from people who don’t lift a finger to actually
do
anything. The demon world’s got you beat there. Total merit-based system, all the way down. You guys wanna be my new minions?”

Emeralda, her face still pained, stuck out her tongue at this maybe-joking, maybe-real attempt at scouting new talent.

“
Thpbbt!
I’d never be the minion to someone
thiiiis
broke.”

Albert, meanwhile, sized up Maou from head to toe.

“You ain’t got enough muscle on you, boy. Anyone who wants to boss me around, well, he better be a damn level bigger than I am.”

He flexed his biceps to the audience in a pointless bit of bravado, demonstrating the brawn that usually backed up his words. He followed it up with several more poses, to the appreciative admiration of Chiho.

“So that’s all you two care about? Muscles and money?”

Emi’s plaintive question went unanswered.

“Okay, enough screwin’ around. So anyway, Emilia, we wanted to letcha know that danger was about to be on its way. We traced you and the Devil King’s path down to Japan pretty quick, too.”

“The problem, though, was that if we could find you, Olba and the Church could, too. It was a race to see who could reach you firrrrst.”

Emeralda and Albert stared off into space, recalling the trials they went through to reach their Hero.

“We both fired out a whole mess of sonar bolts. Pretty well caused a bunch of havoc in this world, too, I reckon. Did you have a lot of earthquakes and stuff?”

Everything so far was exactly as Maou had guessed.

“In that case, Albert, why did I hear your message?”

Albert replied nonchalantly to Chiho’s query. “Well, the idea link works by linkin’ up between people’s consciousnesses, so the sender can narrow down the range of folks he sends messages to. So when I sent out that message, I narrowed down the people receivin’ it to ‘human beings who think about nothing but the Devil King all day.’”

Both Emi and Chiho required some time before they fully understood what the apparently straightforward reply meant.

Emi would naturally fall into that group, having traveled to Japan to slay the Devil King. She just happened to be out of range at the time the communication made its way to Japan.

But Chiho?

“Wha…! That…I, uh…”

Her face grew redder with every moment as she stammered. Of
course
she was thinking about him. All day, to boot.

She didn’t need to explain why. Everyone understood that much. The problem was that someone revealed that before she could. That, and Maou was in the room.

“Oh, myyyy! Quite the player, aren’t you, Devil King?”

Emeralda’s choosing to take the innuendo to the next level made the emotion-o-meter attached to Chiho’s brain go off the charts, blinking and blowing off steam.

“Ahh…”

With a groan, Chiho fainted in embarrassment, falling to the ground in a neat row alongside Ashiya and Lucifer.

“…Okay! So! What are you guys gonna do now?”

Maou, unable to decide how to react, turned toward the Hero’s party, each one reacting in wildly divergent ways. If he let
his
true colors come to the surface as well, that would truly be an embarrassment for all time.

“Don’t ask me. We just came ’cause we thought Olba and Lucifer were gonna do somethin’ to Emilia. We weren’t countin’ on the Devil King to be here, too.”

“Our general idea was to take Emilia back home and help Ente Isla realize who should
reeeeally
be leading the recovery effort… but…”

Albert and Emeralda exchanged glances.

“…but the Church’s probably got us all on their wanted list by now.”

“Indeed, indeed.”

“So, what, you’re screwed anyway?”

“No, not necessarily. Remember, we still got part of the realm of heaven on our side.”

“Very much so! And this let us travel through the Gate without expending any hooooly power.” Emeralda took a feather pen out of her robe.

Maou’s eyes widened a stretch. “Huh. Look at that. That’s the pen angels use when drawing rainbow bridges to other worlds, isn’t it?”

“H-hey! You can’t just show that to the Devil King!”

Maou shook his head at Emi’s frantic warning. “Demon-realmers can’t use it. Quit worrying so much. That’s a gadget from heaven; only angels and people recognized by the angels can wield it.”

“Oh… But, wait, why do you even
know
about that?”

“I heard about it a while ago. So whose feather did you use for that pen? No, wait, let me guess. Laila, right?”

“Ooh, well done.”

“Don’t expect any priiiizes!”

Albert and Emeralda freely copped to it.

“Hah! That tomboy get away with something like that again?”

Maou smiled to himself as he recalled the distant past.

“She’s walkin’ on some danged thin ice up in heaven, I’d guess. Not that I know the details.”

“But honestly, who wouldn’t want to take action if they knew their daughter was in daaaanger?”

Emi was the only one to blink at Emeralda’s words.

“Their…daughter?”

“Oh? Wait, you didn’t know, Emilia?”

“Yeah, she told us she was your mom.”

Emi’s mind went blank in an instant.

“I… Wow. For real?”

“
That’s
how you react, Emi?”

Emi’s eyes were still unfocused, not quite able to take in the reality yet.

“Well, anyway, this’s all yours now. Any way you wanna use it, it’s up to you.”

The feather pen loomed large, its feather a pure shade of white. A dim light seemed to encircle it, a smaller dot of luminescence centered upon its tip. It emitted an odd warmth when held in the hand, the same feeling Emi experienced in Rika’s shower.

Her father had said she would learn of her mother someday. That was repeated to her countless times during her Church Guard days. She knew she was half angel, and if her father was human, the conclusion to make was obivous. But she never expected to not only learn the truth like this, but even grasp a physical piece of her so quickly.

“Oh, yeah, I got a message from her, too.”

“From my mother…?”

Emi’s heart skipped a beat. The blood collected around her face.

“She said ‘Your father was a good man.’”

Both Emi and Maou rolled their eyes.

“She…she didn’t have to tell me that
now
…”

“
That’s
what you tell your daughter?”

“So there you have it. The message, and the feather pen. So…”

Sitting back down, Albert confronted Emi.

“When are you going back?”

“…What?”

“I ain’t askin’ for today or anythin’. I imagine you got assorted things to settle over here. But if you stick around here too long, the Church’s gonna have their say over the whole bit. Sooner you can get home, the better, I’d reckon.”

Emi found herself unable to respond.

“I…”

“You knoooow, I’m not sure this is a conversation we should have in the Devil’s Castle…”

Realizing that her mind was currently a whirlpool of extraneous thoughts, Emi turned toward Maou, unable to calm herself.

“When…when’re
you
going back?”

“Uh?”

Maou blew his nose, tossing the used tissue at the wastebasket. He missed.

“What’re you talking about? I’m not going anywhere.”

This made the eyes of all three members of the room who remained conscious grow as big as saucers.

“…Huh?”

“Like, even if I did, I can’t now.”

“???”

Noticing the enormous question marks perched atop the heads of everyone else, Maou chuckled to himself.

“How much magic power did you think it took to bring that disaster area back to how it was before? You knew I built the whole Devil’s Castle on Ente Isla by myself, right?”

Emi, Emeralda, and Albert gaped at the wide arc of the Shuto Expressway above them. The Koshu-Kaido road and Sasazuka rail station were completely back to normal, the lack of traffic whizzing to and fro the only thing missing. No battle damage remained on any nearby building.

Dozens upon dozens of emergency vehicles were stopped, but the
paramedics and police officers themselves seemed to have no idea why they were deployed to the area.

There were a few civilians here and there, no doubt caught up in the previous fight, but there were no deaths, no injuries—neither in the area beneath the formerly collapsed rail bridge, nor within the buildings blown apart by errant attacks.

In other words, everything was as it was, before the battle. The only difference were the people nearby with no memory of the past several hours, as if someone had anesthetized them without warning.

“Uh… This what I think it is, Emilia?”

“Probably.”

“Is this man
reeeeally
the Devil King?”

“He
should
be.”

The shopping mall that faced Sasazuka station was already returning to its typical hustle and bustle. All of the nearby pedestrians had quizzical looks on their faces, as if using their tongues to coax an obstinate bit of food out from between their teeth.

“So if we wanted to, we coulda…?”

“Could
you
have done it?”

Albert responded with silence.

“When someone’s known for being evil all the time, you know… When he starts doing good things, it’s like the slate’s totally wiped clean.”

“Yes…”

“So I figured there was no way those guys would attack me.”

“Yes…”

“Whadaya think? I had it all worked out, huh?”

“So, can we ever get back?”

“Well, off to work! I’ll still be on time if I leave now.”

“Your Demonic Highness…”

“Oh, yeah. Tie up Lucifer for me, could you? I don’t want him doing anything weird.”

The fallen angel was still unconscious, lacking the strength to do
much of anything for a while. Ashiya was awake, to his credit, but failed to muster enough power to stop Maou.

“…Hey! Chiiiii… Chi, wake up! C’mon, you got a shift today!”

Chiho had steadfastly refused to leave with Emi (or, to be more exact, with Albert). She squirmed, facedown, on the tatami floor.

“Nnngh… Albert, you’re such an idiot…”

Maou sighed, his face troubled to the core.

“Ugh… This is what you get when you mess around with Heroes.”

Sales for the Hatagaya MgRonald restaurant were beyond awful that day.

And for today, at least, it was pretty clear who was at fault.

The local streets were empty. Maou had wiped every last bit of damage clean and used wide-area hypnosis to convince everyone that nothing had happened, but deep in their hearts, everyone still held the nagging impression that something ominous had just happened nearby.

Chiho was in a bad mood all day, never even trying to approach Maou. Figuring this was due to the battle with Lucifer and the misunderstanding between her and Emi before that, he finally decided to speak up.

“Hey. Chi?”

“…Yes?”

The voice was frigid. She didn’t appear to be scared of sharing a fast-food workplace with the Devil King, but if that wasn’t the case, Maou couldn’t figure out what was riling her so much.
Is it because I got her involved in all of this? At any rate, if this keeps up, it’ll start to interfere with work.
Maou pressed onward.

“You know, with my power, I could erase all the bad memories… you…uh, have.”

He realized midway this statement would come back to bite him. He could tell because, the moment she heard it, Chiho’s eyes welled
up to the point where she appeared ready to bawl at any minute. She glared straight up at Maou as he stumbled his way to the end of the sentence.

“No thanks.”

“Huh?”

“You’re so
stupid
, Maou!”

“Huuuuhh?”

This response was completely unanticipated. Chiho turned her back to him, not saying another word until ten in the evening.