The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 3 (2 page)

Well-polished gears groaned to life in a room that smelled of machine oil and metal.

The power was enough to spring the connected drive-train system to full initial power, its state-of-the-art gear control allowing for flexible drive operation.

Its performance was aided by the buffed, sparkling framework that formed the body. It was lightweight, but remarkably sturdy.

It was also outfitted with a full line of safety features. The front safety flashers were automatically activated by optical sensors, and an audio warning device allowed the operator to immediately inform others of the vehicle’s position. The reflector plates facing all sides were also standard equipment, providing vital support for unexpected enemy ambushes.

Yet despite all of this hands-on functionality, the vehicle lost nothing in terms of transport capacity and driver comfort.

The seat was upholstered in leather. In addition to the large-capacity container on the front, several optional freight-storage units were bolted on to the sides, ready for use.

“Whaddaya think? That’s everything on your list, right there.”

A man in a greasy workman’s jumpsuit pointed at the vehicle, his voice full of confidence.

“…Lemme try it out before I say anything.”

Another man, younger, shook his head, his face stern. The machine oil mechanic fired back.

“Yeah, I thought you’d say that. It’s fully machined and ready to go—I did all the fine-tuning myself. It’ll put up with whatever you put it through for at least the next hundred years, yeah?”

He crossed his arms, as if challenging his partner to defy him.

“I’ll be holding you to that.” The young man grinned as he climbed onto the pilot’s seat. “Whoa… Dang.”

The workman flashed a grin of his own as the young man voiced his approval.

Toward the side, someone muttered to herself sullenly:

“…How longer must we perpetuate this charade?”

The young man paid the commentary no mind as he brought both hands to the steering wheel and stomped down on one of the two pedals.

As he did, he let out a whoop of pleasure.

“Whooaaahh! Wow! It’s so light! I can’t believe how light it is with this gearshift!”

The young man, pumping the gearshift to and fro as he navigated out of the maintenance garage, gleefully shouted to no one in particular.

“This is
awesome
!”

“Thank ya much, Maou! And I’ll cut you a deal, too. How does 29,800 yen sound?”

“Sweet, Mr. Hirose! She’s got the money for you. You got it ready, Suzuno?”

The young man called Maou tilted his head toward the woman sitting on a folding chair near the wall of the garage, her puffed-cheek insolence ill-befitting her traditional Japanese kimono.

The oil-stained man raised his eyebrows as he turned toward her.

The girl Maou called Suzuno took a crepe-fabric purse out from the goldfish print tote bag in her hand, a look of utter chagrin on her face.

“Mr. Shopkeeper, was there any manner of meaning behind your conversation just now?”

Hirose, owner of the Hirose Cycle Shop in a shopping arcade on Bosatsu Street—just five minutes’ walk from the Keio Sasazuka station in Tokyo’s Shibuya ward—removed the towel wrapped around his head and laughed heartily as he wiped the sweat off his brow.

“Hey, it’s just part of the package, ya know? Part of the package. You really gonna pay the tab this time, though? Ya seeing Maou right now or something?”

The girl’s facial muscles visibly tensed at the question.

“I would like you to refrain from such jests. Circumstances beyond my control are forcing me to pay this bill. Sadao, would you stop cavorting like a child? Return here at once so we can complete whatever antitheft paperwork we need.”

“All right, all right.”

Sadao Maou returned to the garage, grinning from ear to ear, riding his mint-condition, gleaming, high-end urban bicycle.

It was a Stonebridge citybike with six gears, perfectly attuned to Maou’s needs. Reflector panels had been installed in all directions over its aluminum frame, and the front light was programmed to flash automatically in the dark.

“Twenty-nine thousand, eight hundred yen for the bicycle, three hundred yen for the antitheft registration… Ah, you don’t have to worry about the last hundred. Thirty thousand works for me.”

“I appreciate the gesture.”

Suzuno unfurled three neatly folded ten-thousand-yen bills and presented them to Hirose.

“Thank you much! Say, while you’re here, are you in the market for a bike at all, ma’am?”

Suzuno shook her head at the suggestion.

“I will pass for now, thank you. I have yet to undergo the relevant drilling.”

“The rele-what?”

She continued in a wholly deadpan manner to the confused Hirose.

“I understand that although no licensing procedure is required, one must undergo a process of education that involves the use of a support device known as ‘training wheels.’”

Maou pictured the compact, kimono-wearing Suzuno pumping away at a child-sized bike with training wheels attached. Perhaps some pony decals and handlebar streamers would be involved. He had to resist busting out in laughter. “That could be pretty cute, actually, huh?”

Suzuno glared a bit at Maou. “Honestly… Mr. Shopkeeper, I would have the receipt, please.”

“Oh? Uh, sure. I’m gonna have to handwrite one, if that works for ya. Hang on while I find my receipt pad.”

“If you could make it out to ‘Sankt Ignoreido Co., Ltd.,’ I would appreciate it.”

Maou was the only one of them who expressed clear surprise.

“Whoa, is that…?”

But Hirose paid it no special mind as he filled out the receipt and ripped it off of the pad.

“And there you go. Thanks again! Take good care of that thing for me, Maou. It’s a gift, I guess, yeah?”

“Um, yeah…”

Waving at Hirose as they put the bicycle shop behind them, Maou and Suzuno walked side by side as they headed toward the apartment building they each called home.

Maou almost skipped as he giddily walked along, shiny new ride in hand. In Suzuno’s was a summer parasol, protecting her face against the pounding summer heat.

“Hey, like, what’re you even gonna
do
with that receipt, anyway?”

“If I retain a full account of my monetary resources here, I may be able to receive the equivalent amount back in the future, once I am finished with slaying you.”

“Oh, you’re gonna report to the Church that the Devil King you were sent to kill bummed a bike off you instead?”

Suzuno glared from underneath her parasol.

“I would be happy to spread the word far and wide across the Church that the Devil King is a vile, conniving demon, one not even beneath begging a Church official for a bicycle.”

“Hey, you know how politicians and stuff like to pretend they’re all ‘of the people’ and like that, right? I don’t see what’s so wrong about
me
doing that. Gotta prove that I got my finger on the pulse of the common man, you know? Plus, for me, it’s not even some fake act I’m putting on.”

As the Devil King of the People bragged about his environmentally conscious (if dirt-poor and, indeed, conniving) lifestyle, he turned around to peer into a shop he almost walked right by.

“Hang on, Suzuno. I wanna hit the stationery store.”

Hitching his new bike at the side of the road and locking it up tight, Maou went into the small shop. The retail space was devoted more to cheap candy and kids’ trinkets than pens and paper, but Maou’s purchase was purely stationery, although still enough to make Suzuno tilt her head in confusion.

“What do you need glue for?”

“Hee-hee! How nice of you to ask. Behold!”

With a greasy grin, he fished a small, red plastic plate from his pocket.

“This is a reflector plate from my beloved Dullahan. The one you crushed into a pulp, if you recall. I pried it off after the cops called me over to haul it away. Kind of a memento, you know?”

As he spoke, he used the glue to attach the piece to the shining metal bike basket.

“With this, the soul of Dullahan, the noble steed who gallantly abandoned his life to protect his master, shall survive into the next generation! From this moment forward, you shall be named Dullahan…
II
!”

“…How exciting.”

Having an affinity for one’s accoutrements was hardly unusual, but a grown man giving a name to his mode of transport—his bicycle, no less—in this day and age was a pitiable occasion for anyone unlucky enough to witness it.

“Are you quite ready then, Devil King? We should go.”

That went double when the man in question was Satan, the Devil King, mortal foe of all mankind.

The girl who went by the name Suzuno Kamazuki in Japan sighed a deep sigh as she proceeded on, not bothering to wait for Maou’s response.

The clean, clear-glass hairpin stabbed into her hair shone a bright white in the afternoon summer sun as she dejectedly walked ahead.

Satan, the Devil King. That was the name awarded the demon who mounted an attempt to conquer the faraway world of Ente Isla.

Sadao Maou. That was the name of the young man living a shade away from downtown Tokyo, working an hourly fast-food job to keep himself fed.

No one, neither man nor god, could ever have conceived of the bloodthirsty, ambitious Devil King going from world domination to eking out a part-time living in the Sasazuka neighborhood of Shibuya ward, Tokyo.

It had been just over a year since he was defeated by the Hero Emilia Justina, and thrown into the alien world of “Japan.”

He lived in Room 201 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka, a wooden apartment complex built sixty years ago in this neighborhood. The hundred-square-foot, single-room rental served as his temporary Devil’s Castle as Satan attempted to achieve independence through low-wage labor, even though the past few months had proven rather frantic for him.

The first year was a constant battle with poverty and disaster, but he nonetheless devoted himself wholeheartedly to his work on a daily basis.

Then, nine months ago, he found a long-term gig at the MgRonald restaurant situated in front of Hatagaya station, a single stop from Sasazuka. After that—in no small part thanks to being blessed by
a talented, fast-track manager—he finally began to find some semblance of stability in his life.

This humdrum routine began to rip at the seams the moment the Hero Emilia, still chasing after the escaped Devil King, appeared before him under the guise of “Emi Yusa.”

Whether Maou’s completely lawful, high-fructose-corn-syrup-heavy lifestyle could really be described as a “humdrum routine” for a bloodthirsty space alien demon was a matter for debate, but that can be discussed later.

Regardless, there was no doubt that “rip at the seams” is an apt way to describe what happened next, what with one of his ex-generals attempting to assassinate him and the Hero herself being double-crossed by the humans allegedly supporting her.

But once it all passed and normalcy returned to his life, it was back to his old Joe Shmoe job, back to three meals a day and a warm floor to sleep on. Maou devoted all the strength he had to keeping this status quo…well, the status quo.

Even when the Hero took the train three stops down in order to gripe at him on his doorstep, even when a chief cleric from the Church on Ente Isla moved in next door in an attempt to poison him with her allegedly demon-poisoning sacrosanct food, the Devil King stuck to his daily routine, doing what he believed necessary to jump-start his goals of world domination.

Living a sound personal life, and faithfully building up his reputation in hopes of climbing the MgRonald corporate ladder, was what Maou believed would propel him once again to the throne of overlord.

After Suzuno Kamazuki—known on another world as Crestia Bell, chief of the Church’s Reconciliation Panel and a girl currently attempting to poison the Devil King by being his private chef, to little effect—destroyed his bicycle, Maou made her pay restitution for it, exaggerating a great deal of its feature set in the process.

She still looked peeved as they walked along, not entirely convinced Maou was dealing fairly with her.