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

“…Did that, uh, cost more than you were expecting?”

Maou tried to get back on Suzuno’s good side, even though the woman had pulverized his bike and attempted to kill him not long ago. Suzuno opted against returning the gaze, sighing listlessly under the parasol.

“I think I am beginning to understand why Emilia allows you such leeway in this world.”

“Oh?”

“Are you on friendly terms with the owner of that bicycle shop?”

“Yeah. …Well, not really at first. We both met when we kept volunteering for neighborhood cleanup duty. But his wife liked taking their kid over to MgRonald a lot. We’ve kinda come to know each other a lot more since.”

The friendship, as Maou described it, couldn’t have been more run-of-the-mill. Turning a street corner to duck into the shade, Suzuno sighed—partly in relief that she escaped the sun, partly due to a sinking sense of disillusionment.

“I had resigned myself to my fate once you said we were traveling to the bicycle shop today.”

“What d’you mean by that?”

Suzuno removed a thick booklet from her tote bag and handed it to Maou.

“I am referring to the monetary figure that you, the Devil King, would attempt to extort from me. It sent shivers up my spine, to be frank, wondering what exorbitant sum you would ask for. I appreciated, after all, that I did owe you a substantial debt.”

Maou thumbed through the pamphlet with one hand. It was a bicycle catalog.

“‘Mountain bike,’ ‘road’—no, ‘load cycle’? Or even one of those wilderness galloping BM-whatevers! I was perfectly expecting one of those to come my way!”

“…You don’t have to pretend you know anything about bikes, Suzuno.”

“Diligent study is the key to life itself! My point is that, even with the antitheft registration, it was…
disarming
to be asked for only thirty thousand. I had withdrawn two hundred thousand yen from the bank earlier.”

“Look, did you seriously think someone living in abject poverty like I do would ask for a top-of-the-line bike model? The Dullahan you destroyed goes for 6,980 yen brand-new at the Donkey Hottie Discount Store over in Hounancho.”

Maou tossed the brochure back as he boasted of his cheap spending habits. It only served to make Suzuno further disconsolate.

“The barbarous Devil King is given the chance to make a purchase with a human being’s money. I would have expected anything and everything from you!”

“You could
try
trusting me a little, man. Or are you just that dead set on the Devil King being a total prick all the time? Besides, no offense to Mr. Hirose or anything, but he doesn’t really deal in, like, Tour de France stuff.”

Maou inserted an indifferent laugh midway. Suzuno looked up, a woeful expression on her face. She quickly turned back down, though, as Maou realized something and dared a look at her.

“But you withdrew two hundred thousand yen? You only just came here, you haven’t worked a single day, and you got that much in your account? ’Cause, like, I’ve been working this hard and I don’t think my balance has
ever
gotten past two hundred thousand.”

“Well, unlike yourself and Emilia, I had the time to make ample preparations.” Suzuno shrugged. She did not go into further detail.

Not long ago, she had ventured into Shinjuku for the first time with the Hero Emilia, known as Emi Yusa to most here. The precious gems and other relics she brought into Mugi-hyo, a well-known pawn shop in the neighborhood, fetched a price that would have made Maou’s eyeballs pop out of their sockets.

She had zero intention, naturally, of informing the personification of evil living next door of the exact number, but it offered Suzuno enough freedom that she could enjoy several months of modest living going forward without having to find work.

“Huh. Well, neat. Better keep my pinkies up around you, I guess.”

He pouted a bit as he spoke, but Maou’s attention was still more focused on his bike. He rang the bell on it, like a child with a new toy.

“Anyway, though, thanks. I appreciate this.”

“……”

Suzuno looked up at Maou and his unexpected words of gratitude. This time around, their eyes successfully met. She hurriedly used her parasol to shield her face.

The idea of evil incarnate so easily, guilelessly smiling and thanking people was nothing short of outrageous. In fact, when was the last time someone had offered
her
such meek and unadorned gratitude?

“I-it was restitution. And only that. It is now yours, and you may use it as you wish.”

“Sure thing.”

They walked silently for a few moments.

“D-Devil King?”

“Yeah?”

Suzuno, unable to remain silent for reasons she couldn’t verbalize, stopped and pointed to her side.

“Wh-what is that? It seems that a great number of establishments have suddenly begun dealing in flowers.”

She was pointing at the front door of a flower shop.

Bundles of unadorned white tree branches were lined up in the middle of the shop space by the dozen, pushing away the colorfully blooming flowers to the side.

“Oh, those? Those are
ogara
sticks.”

“Ah, I see. So is that a dried version of the remnants you’re left with after preparing tofu?”

“…What?”

Maou had difficulty understanding what Suzuno was talking about before realizing that they had just passed by a tofu and natto shop.

“Oh, uh… No, that’s called
okara
. I’m talking about
ogara
. O-Ga-Ra.
Ogara
sticks, all right?”

Suzuno, a veteran officer serving the church’s Department of Diplomatic and Missionary Operations, was pretty well acquainted with Japanese culture and customs for an Ente Islan.

In some ways, however, it often backfired. She had a habit of patching up holes in her knowledge with things she already knew about, which occasionally led to stumbles like her obsession over training wheels a few moments ago.

“Ah, right! Perhaps we could have some
okara
croquettes for dinner tonight.”

“Jeez, Suzuno, what are you, some kind of housewife?”

“I have to hand it to the chefs and cooking experts of Japan. Croquettes are a wonderful cuisine indeed, but using the
okara
usually disposed of during the tofu-making process to create a lovely low-cost, low-calorie foodstuff was a stroke of genius!”

As Suzuno reflected on the origins of her upcoming dinner menu, a housewife stopped by the flower shop to pick up a bundle of
ogara
sticks.

“Look, the Obon holiday is coming up, yeah? Those
ogara
are used to light the
mukaebi
and
okuribi
, the fires that’re meant to welcome in and see off the spirits of the dead that visit during the holiday.”

Maou pointed at another bundle as he spoke.

“Obon… Ah, yes, the festival when families offer their respects to their ancestors, yes? But that begins in the month of August, does it not?”

When it came to religious customs, at least, Suzuno had done her homework.

“Yep. It used to be celebrated in the seventh month of the old Japanese calendar, which is August nowadays. But in the Tokyo area, people light those
mukaebi
fires to bring in the spirits in July. That’s what those sticks are for.”

“Hohh! I had thought this nation was rather secular by nature. Perhaps these traditions are more a part of the culture’s fabric than I anticipated.”

“But, why does the Tokyo holiday come sooner, then?”

“Well, there’s a few different theories, but back when Japan switched to the Western calendar and the shogunate moved their ceremonies to the same dates in the new calendar, it was really just the Tokyo area that followed suit. The rest of the country didn’t so much. Kinda weird to do things the same time for hundreds of years and then get told you have to start doing it some other time from now on, after all.”

“I see. Interesting.”

“Wowww…”

“Most people in Japan get time off of work around the middle of August for Obon, you know? But the government at the time had the strongest grip on power in Tokyo and part of the Kanagawa area, so only those parts switched over to the seventh month of the new calendar. Everyone else celebrated Obon the same time as before—the seventh month of the old calendar, or August.”

“…You’ve done your research, I see.”

“You sure know a lot for being Devil King and all, Maou!”

“Yeah, I kinda read up on that stuff last year. Not that it’s much more than trivia these days, but…um?”

“Hmm?”

“Yes?”

Suzuno and Maou slowly turned around, both realizing their conversation had gained a stowaway passenger at some point.

“Aghh!! J-jeez, Chi, when did you show up?!”

“Chiho! Since when were you there?!”

Chiho Sasaki, Maou’s coworker and the only Japanese person to know the truth about Maou, Suzuno, and the world of Ente Isla, was there in her prim school uniform. There was no way of telling how long she had been standing there.

She was carrying a silver-colored portable cooler instead of her school-issue bookbag.

“Did I surprise you?”

She smiled in triumph.

“I got you back for what you did to
me
before, Suzuno! …Of
course, all I got to hear was about how you were going to make
okara
croquettes for dinner, but…”

“Ohhh… Ha-ha! Neat. But you’re out of school already? That’s kind of early.”

Chiho answered cheerfully: “It’s all half-days ’til summer break. All our final exams are over, so…”

Come to think of it, it wasn’t that long ago when Chiho was going on about this or that examination, although she never whined about her test scores or took special time off her scheduled shifts. The fact that her involvement in the vast conspiracy that seemed to be unfolding between Ente Isla and Earth didn’t seem to affect her test performance at all made Maou wonder if she had nerves of galvanized steel.

As Maou pondered over this, Chiho’s eyes turned downward.

“Ooh, new bike?”

“Yep. Suzuno kind of trash-compacted my old one.”

He lovingly patted Dullahan II’s saddle.

“The Devil King said he had found a worthy bicycle. I have merely paid for it.” Suzuno spat out each word, trying to cover up her surprise at Chiho’s sudden appearance. “But enough of me. What brings you here, Miss Sasaki?”

“Oh, I was about to buy just what you were talking about.”

Chiho pointed between the two, toward the same flower shop as before.

“
Ogara
?”

“Yep! My mom asked me to. And I was planning to visit your apartment after that, so…”

She raised a shoulder upward to point out the portable cooler hanging from it.

“One of my dad’s relatives gave us some ice cream, but neither of my parents have much of a sweet tooth. But we have a ton of it, so I thought maybe I’d give some of it to you guys.”

“Ice cream?! Seriously?! Are you sure?!”

Maou’s eyes gleamed. Something cold and sweet, tumbling down like manna from heaven!

“Man, that’s awesome! We’ll take it, we’ll take it! Thank you so much!”

Chiho smiled, watching Maou all but leap into the air in joy.

“Oh, good! So give me just one second, all right? I need to buy that
ogara
.”

From the side, Suzuno watched the Devil King see the high schooler off.

“…Should I just leave him as he is? Would that hurt anyone?”

The doubts she had begun to feel recently slipped from her lips.

Shouts of glee soon echoed across the steaming Devil’s Castle, a groaning fan stirring the acrid, spirit-draining midsummer air inside.

“Ice cream?”

“Ice cream?!”

Alciel and Lucifer, fellow Devil’s Castle denizens and two of the Devil King Satan’s former Great Demon Generals, gasped in excited surprise as Maou stepped in with Chiho.

“And…and, and it’s a premium gift pack from Haggen-Boss?! Are—are you truly sure about this?!”

Chiho removed her shoulder-bag cooler and pointed it in Ashiya’s direction. “Don’t worry about it, Ashiya. We still have more than enough back at home.”

Alciel, the resident accountant and housekeeper at Devil’s Castle and a man who went by Shirou Ashiya more often than not these days, fell to his knees, the sight of the cooler seemingly framed by rays of brilliant sunshine.

“I…I could hardly begin to thank you and your parents enough, Ms. Sasaki…”

Ashiya bowed his head deeply, his tall frame almost kowtowing before Chiho. The sight was enough to fluster her.

“Ooh, wow, look at all the flavors in there! C’mon, Ashiya, let’s do this! Get the spoons out!”

“Urushihara… You know there’s something you need to say to Chi first.”

To the scandalous youth whose eyes were already filled with nothing but the sight of frozen treats, Maou spoke with scorn.

Hanzou Urushihara was the name adopted by Lucifer, the former general who now lived a leechlike lifestyle in Devil’s Castle. As such, he paid his former master no mind.

“Oh, it’s fine, Maou. I know how Urushihara acts by now.”

Chiho’s unhesitant castigation was delivered with a smile.

Thanks to her awareness of the truth behind Maou and his cohorts, she had few good words for Urushihara, who had still been Maou’s enemy when she first met him.

Even now, with him more or less back in Maou’s demonic army, he rarely moved an inch from his computer, day after day, not even bothering to help with housework. The classic unemployed freeloader lifestyle, in other words, and Chiho was less than warm to it.

Maou smiled bitterly to himself and gave Chiho a light pat on the shoulder, diverting her attention.

“Yeah… Well, anyway, thanks. Really.”

“…! Um…uh, yeah. Yeah. You’re welcome.”

The redness to Chiho’s cheeks at that moment had nothing to do with the heat.

She had already publicly acknowledged her feelings for Maou. But since she didn’t frame them in a way that demanded a response, the true nature of their relationship remained unclear, dangling in the air like flypaper.

This was something Chiho had made peace with. She understood, after all, that Maou wasn’t the sort of man to give a response without applying serious thought to it first.

Little moves like these on Maou’s part, however, were still enough to throw her off guard, sending her pulse skyrocketing at unpredictable times.

“Um… Oh! Oh! Suzuno, we should let Suzuno have some… Huh?”

Chiho attempted to call the presumably present Suzuno in order to cover up her blushing. But, even after sticking her head out the door and scoping out the hallway, she was nowhere to be found.

“You looking for her? She went right back out once we got here.”

“Oh… Really?”

“Wow, strawberry, green tea, mint… Daaaaang, dude, is this pumpkin? Whoa!”

“Whoa whoa whoa! Save some for Suzuno, Urushihara!”

Chiho had to hurriedly rush back inside to keep Urushihara from claiming the goods for himself.

“Aww! Who cares about Bell, dude? Finders keepers, losers weepers!”

Urushihara was clearly peeved. Chiho puffed up her cheeks in anger as she plucked one of the several half-pint tubs of ice cream nestled in his arms.

“Either
she
gets some, or
you
don’t get any! How many of these were you planning to eat, anyway? You’re gonna get brain freeze!”

“Dude, I’m not a child, okay?! I’m, like, several million years older than you!”

“Years don’t matter with you, Urushihara! You’re still a child! Even a grade-schooler would be a lot nicer than you!”

“Guys, can you keep it down? It’s too hot to be yapping at each other.” Maou gently stepped in, picking up the cooler and handing it to Ashiya. “Let’s just take one each and leave the rest for later, okay? Nobody’s gonna mind if we give the vanilla to Suzuno, right?”

“Absolutely, Your Demonic Highness.” Ashiya deferentially accepted the cooler, giving Chiho another respectful bow as he methodically stacked the cups in the freezer compartment.

“Oh, come
onnnn
. Just one?”

Urushihara pitifully mewled in protest, strawberry half pint still in hand.

“Why do we hafta leave any for Suzuno? She’s our mortal enemy and stuff.”

“U. Ru. Shi.
Haaaa.
Ra?!”

“Wh-what, Chiho Sasaki?! She’s kinda
your
rival, too, dude! In a lot of different ways!”

The mostly dissipated warmth resurrected itself within Chiho’s cheeks.

“Well…yes! She, she is! She’s my rival,
and
my friend!”

She put as much firmness as she could into it.

“Huhh? What’s
that
s’posed to mean?”

“I mean the rival thing’s
one
thing, but the ice cream’s
another
! That’s why you’re a child, Urushihara! You don’t even understand
that
!”

“Oh, yeah, yeah,
I’m
the child and
that’s
why it’s all my fault, huh? No way I’d ever understand some crazy girl acting all jealous of—
oww
!”

Urushihara groaned at the sudden impact thudding upon his temple as he attempted to give Chiho his most finely honed, well-polished sass.

“That’s enough, Urushihara! If you dare to pelt our kind and generous guest with any more verbal abuse, I’m confiscating that strawberry cup and canceling our Internet!”

Urushihara, teary-eyed, looked up at the goblin face of Ashiya from below.

“A demon like you, eating all our food, wasting all our money, not lifting a finger to help out around the Castle…I would put Crestia and the Church-anointed food she’s poisoning us with over you any day of the week! And now you berate Ms. Sasaki, a walking saint who’s provided nothing but support to His Demonic Highness and sincerely cares about the state of our Castle! The gods above may forgive you, but never shall I!”

The chief househusband of Devil’s Castle kept Chiho behind her as he rained lightning downward.

Ashiya had been less than welcoming of Chiho’s advances toward his demonic superior at first, but his suspicions had been thoroughly quelled by the cooking Chiho and her mother provided. Now he saw the Sasaki family as nothing less than the savior of their monthly budget.

Urushihara’s face twitched beneath Ashiya’s withering rage. He took a step backward.

“A-all right, all right… Man, that teenage girl’s got you whipped. Maou, too.”

One hand was to his head, the other still gently cradling the
strawberry ice cream cup as he retreated back to his default position in front of the computer.

“Now then, Ms. Sasaki… Please, come over here. There’s a bit more of a breeze closer in. I have some barley tea to drink.”

Sitting Chiho down on the low table at the center of the room, Ashiya presented a Haggen-Boss cup and a glass of tea, adjusting the fan behind him to provide more relief.

The Villa Rosa Sasazuka apartments the Devil’s Castle was currently situated within did not offer air-conditioning as a standard option.

It was possible for tenants to obtain permission from Miki Shiba, the building’s landlord, to install a unit. Theoretically possible, at least. But Shiba was still out in the tropics somewhere, declining to offer any kind of return date.

Maou was motivated enough to investigate, given how (unlike last summer) he had a regular income to fund some AC with. He contacted the property management firm Shiba had left contact information for, but apparently she had never contracted this outfit for matters related to individual building maintenance.

In other words, the so-called property management guys could change the fluorescent lights that lined the hallway, but anything involving private tenant spaces had to go through the landlord first.

She had done so in the past. Take two months ago, when Shiba herself stopped by to discuss the earthquake-proofing work she had scheduled.

However, installing AC in Devil’s Castle involved cutting a hole in the wall to connect the outdoor condenser with the indoor fan. That counted as making “major adjustments” to the building, apparently.

It was especially galling because, while Shiba was overseas somewhere, she was hardly in hiding. On regular occasions, she sent Maou letters describing where she was and what she was up to.

Said letters, though, were usually dated several weeks prior to when they finally reached Maou’s mailbox. By the time a dispatch
from one tropical paradise or the other arrived, she would already have moved on to her next idyllic retreat. Making contact was all but impossible.

And more to the point, neither Maou, nor Ashiya, nor Urushihara were willing to open her mail in the first place. They gathered dust deep inside the Devil’s Castle’s prefab shelving. The scars from the “landlord cheesecake pin-up massacre” that befell the trio not long after Urushihara arrived still remained embedded in their hearts.

Thus, the ex-demons had diligently ignored every piece of mail from Shiba until Suzuno moved in next door. Their new neighbor had given them a mouthful about this habit, bringing up the specter of Shiba sending them some sort of important notice and them remaining blissfully unaware. So, not too long ago, the gang decided to open up the most recent letter.

It was the same envelope as always, the gold-lined border giving it the air of contrived luxury. The address was written in an elegant hand using some sort of fountain or quill pen—a sight they were used to by now.

This time around, Maou’s landlord was over in Indonesia. The cheesecake pin-up massacre had taken place in Hawaii, but she wasn’t soaking up the rays on Bali or anything—instead, for motives and purposes that only Shiba could ever truly understand, she had traveled to the island of Borneo to join some spiritual ceremony held by the local indigenous people.

Swallowing nervously, Maou dared a peek at the photograph included. There was his landlord, wearing a highly conspicuous gold-and-silver-spangled dress and a broad-rimmed hat with several dozen colorful feathers jabbed into it like a mutant peacock’s rear end. The inch-thick makeup, meanwhile, was a much more familiar sight.

At that moment, Maou instinctively knew there was no point trying to make contact with her. What happens, happens.

They survived the summer heat last year AC free, after all. Besides, they now had Urushihara, a walking, talking package of bad debt, pushing upon their budget.

Maou decided this was God’s way of telling him that just because they had some monetary wiggle room didn’t mean they could bust out the caviar. He did not ask himself why the revelations of an Earth-based deity should take precedence over the Devil King of a wholly unrelated planet.

“You know, I thought it would be hotter in here, but this apartment gets a pretty good breeze, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess that kind of saves all our hides, huh? We got the corner room, so there’s a few more windows than normal.”

To keep the sun from directly beating down on their room, he had placed bamboo blinds (purchased at the Donkey Hottie shop in Hounancho, the birthplace of Dullahan I). All the windows were wide open, the fan deftly positioned to encourage proper airflow. This rewarded them with a draft, albeit a dank and muggy one. The fact that Villa Rosa Sasazuka wasn’t adjacent to any nearby buildings, but was separated from them by a tiny, bare-earth front yard, no doubt helped.

“Maouuuu, are we really not gonna buy an AC unit this year?”

Urushihara, in contrast to Chiho as she enjoyed the summer breeze, had fallen into the depths of hell.

“I told you, man. We can’t contact the landlord, and we can’t afford to install it anyway. Besides, if we bought some cheapo AC, the electric bill next month would kill me.”

“Barrrrfffff…”

“I’m not really a fan of air-conditioning myself.”

Chiho chimed in as she methodically pecked at her rum-raisin.

“They have AC in the classrooms at school, but whenever we’re done with gym class or whatever, someone always turns it, like, all the way down. It’s freezing!”

“Indeed, the greatest achievements of civilization wield the power to destroy all of us. The mere thought of the electricity bill is enough in and of itself to send shivers up my spine!”

Ashiya voiced his agreement in a way only he could as he enjoyed his green tea ice cream.

“Yeah, I can totally picture the guy, too. Probably never shuts
up, I bet, huh? Then, if you turn up the thermostat at all, he’s probably like ‘Ohhh, it’s so hot, it’s so hot!’ and turns it back down the moment no one’s paying attention.”

Maou grimaced as he stabbed away at his Cookie Crunch.

“Yes! Exactly!”

Chiho nodded eagerly.

“I’m pretty familiar with guys like that. It’s like their mind’s always short-circuiting on them. They just want to satisfy their urges
right now
without thinking of the consequences. And they’re
always
the biggest loudmouths, too.”

“Right, right! Wait…”

“Hmm?”

Chiho suddenly realized something as she smiled in agreement.

“How do you know all that, Maou? You didn’t actually go to school in Japan or anything, right?”

“Nope.”

“It always seems like we’ve had a lot of the same experiences, but…you know, that’s kinda strange when you think about it, right?”

“Yeah… I guess, so, maybe.”

Maou scarfed down the last mouthful of Cookie Crunch. Standing up, he tossed the plastic lid and clear vinyl cover into the bin for burnable garbage, washed out the paper cup, flung it into the bag for recyclable papers, leaned against the sink, and sighed.

“I guess you could say demons have more…forceful ways of solving their problems. But stuff like that… I guess it’s not much different between humans and us.”

“……”

Ashiya listened on silently as Maou spoke.

“…Ugghh, one of those little cups isn’t enough…”

Urushihara, oblivious to the conversation, placed his strawberry cup on the computer desk, his eyes greedily swiveling toward the refrigerator.

Just then, Maou’s eyes pricked up.

“Oh? Hey, Suzuno, where’d you go? Chi wanted you to have some ice cream, too.”

Maou spied Suzuno passing by the open kitchen window, carrying a set of large objects in front of her.

“Ah, my thanks to you. I will gladly partake of it once I am finished with this task.”

They spoke between the iron bars that covered the window. Suzuno appeared to have something resembling a set of small, square logs in hand.

“…Hey, what’s that?”

“Hmm? Logs. Why do you ask?”

“I can see that. I was asking what you’re gonna do with it.”

The reason why Maou was so insistently asking about his neighbor’s possessions was that, in her opposite hand, she held far more
ogara
sticks than she had any business needing.

“As a member of the Church’s Missionary Office, I have an interest in this Obon holiday. I decided it would be best to experience it for myself.”