The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 13 Read online

  Chiho fully agreed with Urushihara’s assertion, but something about seeing him and Maou carry on surprisingly like old times helped ease her initial butterflies. Then, as if timing her change of heart, there was a knock on the door from outside.

  “Chiho! Chiho, you are there, I know it!”

  “Acieth? Um, Maou…”

  “Maou! You may think you hide the smell of Chiho from my nose, but the world, it is not so much easy as that!”

  “What is she carrying on about…?”

  “We are hungry in the stomachs! If Chiho is there, there must be the fried chicken, too!”

  “I…I didn’t bring anything this time. I’m just here after work, is all.”

  “No, Chiho, it’s fine,” reassured Maou as he rubbed his head, Chiho herself having half withered at Acieth’s all-too-sudden appetite. “Nobody would expect you to.”

  “Oh! Nothing? Aw. Too bad.” Surprisingly, it was Urushihara who lodged the first complaint. “Ashiya and Bell have been constricting our diets really badly in order to help Acieth and Erone eat healthier, so I was kinda hoping Chiho Sasaki would have some chicken for us maybe…”

  “Wow, Urushihara, talk about literally feeding off Chiho’s generosity,” Maou spat back.

  “Um, I’m sorry,” Chiho said, flustered, “I’ll make some next time, so…”

  “No need for you to concern yourself with it, Chi; it’s nothing for you to worry about. Ever since he left the hospital, he’s gotten more shameless than ever.”

  “Shameless? Oh, as if anyone cared how I was doing during and after my hospital stay! You all went crazy for Emilia’s friends and Ashiya. You could at least give me a little something extra to eat, okay?”

  “You aren’t actually being serious, are you?”

  In Maou’s eyes, despite Urushihara’s hospitalization, he hadn’t undergone the sort of change debilitating enough to merit any particular concern.

  “Are you serious, Maou? Like, hell, Amane and the landlord never even told me what I was being hospitalized for, right to the end. Don’t you think something must’ve happened to my body for me to be there at all?”

  “Well,” Chiho tried, “all we can say is that Ms. Shiba’s strange force had a negative effect on you…is all.”

  Apart from Shiba and her relatives, Chiho was the only one there to see Urushihara be taken to the hospital. She had set things up so that Urushihara could listen in on her asking Amane about Earth’s Sephirah, but just as she was getting to the crux of it, Shiba had walked in, putting Urushihara into a coma and sending him off to treatment. If that treatment had been to heal his body after protecting Chiho and Suzuno from the archangel Camael’s brutal attack on Chiho’s high school, that would be one thing—but if the cause of any damage was simply “I ran into our landlord,” it was hard to drum up much sympathy.

  “Come on, I’m still losing my hair color any time she’s nearby! Something’s got to be messed up with me!”

  “You’ve got too much hair on your head anyway. You could stand to lose some.”

  “I’m talking about the color, Maou, not the hair itself!”

  “Oh, hush up. Losing your color, though… Did that ever happen to you, Laila?”

  “No. It’s been this color ever since you healed me a little while ago. Meeting with Ms. Shiba didn’t change it at all.”

  Laila’s hair had undergone the opposite transformation of Urushihara’s. Originally a silvery shade of blue, it segued into an Urushihara-like purple hue right when Maou had used his demonic force to heal her wounds.

  “The color’s different, but it hasn’t affected my health or anything.”

  “Yeah, and it didn’t affect Urushihara’s, either,” Maou finished. “You’re carrying on too much about that color, man. It’s not like you willingly go outside anyway…ever. Just stay away from the landlord, and you’re fine. It’s not from the aftereffects of fighting Camael, either, so quit whining.”

  “Well, no,” the dubious Urushihara replied, “but—”

  “You say ‘something extra to eat’! I hear it! Give up and open the door!”

  The glutton on the other side of the door bellowed far louder than Urushihara, choosing to focus only on the parts of the conversation that meant the most to her. At a loss for any other solution, Maou stood up, bringing Chiho into the room as he stepped down to open the door.

  “Whoo-hoo, Chiho— Eek!”

  At that moment, the ravenous Acieth—mouth agape at all the edible gifts that Chiho didn’t have for her—turned into a swarm of purple particles that were sucked into Maou’s body.

  “…In the house, please.”

  It was a rather forceful way of shutting her up but one that Maou and his fusion link with Acieth granted him unique access to.

  “Ugh, all this racket… I’ll let you out once we’re done talking, so chill out for a while. Also, Chi’s just back from work and she’s tired. Don’t give her any trouble!”

  Maou winced and lectured Acieth, who was screaming at him at full volume in his mind, something that putting his hands to his ears wouldn’t ease.

  “Huh? Where’s Acieth?”

  But Acieth wasn’t the only one outside. There was also Erone, his skin looking quite a bit healthier now, and, thanks to the Japanese clothing Nord and Laila bought for him, overall he appeared not at all different from any other neighborhood boy. Acieth did say “we” out there earlier—and now that Erone was tranquil and no longer “berserk” (as Laila and Amane put it), he was usually right by Acieth’s side, manipulating Nord or Laila or Amane and forcing them to come up with the funds to satisfy both of their appetites. Today, though, the Sephirah child was clearly on the hunt for something, ferreting out the smell of Chiho (or the general MgRonald funk she had on her) and seeking a few freebies.

  “You shouldn’t hang out with Acieth all the time, either,” Maou said to him, finger pointed at his own head. “You keep following behind her, and you’ll start to act as brazen and pathetic as she does.” Then he winced—no doubt Acieth yelling at him to “stop being so the rude” again, that much Chiho could tell.

  “I don’t want to go away from her, if I can,” the boy suddenly blurted out. “We were separated for so long. Just getting to eat together every day… I still can’t believe it. The past few days have been like a dream.”

  “Yeah, I can’t believe how much you guys eat. And the funds we’re going through for that aren’t any dream at all. It’s a cold, hard reality.”

  “Ah-ha-ha…ha-ha…”

  Chiho had to laugh. She knew the extent of Acieth’s and Erone’s appetites all too well. But the chuckle subsided quickly as something occurred to her.

  The two of them both had a seemingly insatiable hunger, but none of it had changed their bodies’ shape at all. That was weird. The archangel Sariel—aka Mitsuki Sarue, erstwhile manager of the Sentucky Fried Chicken across the street from Maou’s workplace—had attained a blimp-like appearance in very short order after getting smitten with Kisaki and subsequently living off nearly nothing but MgRonald value meals. It was obvious what eating so much fatty food should do to a body—either Sariel’s or the Sephirah’s—and even then, Sariel’s gluttony was only a speck on the map compared to what Acieth and Erone were doing. They were absolutely stuffing themselves; it hadn’t fattened them at all, and there had to be a reason for it.

  Chiho tried to dismiss the vague concern from her mind, but the next words from Erone plunged her into a veritable ocean of worry.

  “But if this isn’t a dream, then this isn’t any place for us to live.”

  “…!”

  It may have been Chiho, or Maou, or both of them who gasped at the assertion.

  “Acieth and Alas Ramus and I all have places we need to return to. But if I lose myself like I did before, I may never be able to go back.”

  “Don’t say any more,” Maou said, his voice suddenly stern. Erone ignored him.

  “I have people I want to meet. I need you to lend
me your power.”

  “I said, don’t say any more.”

  “…Please, Erone, hold it back,” Laila added, her voice low but sharp as she felt the danger lurking behind Maou’s tone.

  “All right. I’m sorry.”

  Following his apology, the boy bowed briskly at Maou, then did the same to Chiho, her face still tensed with anxiety.

  “Sorry to you, too, Chiho. I’ve done nothing but scare you.”

  “Uh…ah…”

  She wasn’t scared at all, no. But the boy born from the Sephirah must have keenly picked up on the other kind of terror that was lurking deep in her heart.

  “When we first met and later on, too. I have to protect people like you, Chiho, but look at me…”

  “Protect…people like me?”

  “I could never apologize enough to you, Chiho, but you always make such good food for me. You treat me so nice. And I…I’m trying to take these precious things from you, Chiho. I don’t know what I should do.”

  “Erone…?”

  “Will you quit it already—?”

  “Oh! There you are!”

  The voice of a harried-sounding Nord thundered up the outdoor stairway.

  “I’m sorry. I took my eyes off him for a moment, and he ran off on me.”

  With all the lecturing Maou had given him lately, Nord was still having trouble figuring out exactly how to deal with his neighbors. He looked around the room.

  “Did Acieth merge with you?”

  “…Come on out.”

  “Agh!!”

  It almost looked like the sour-faced Maou spat Acieth out, sending her reeling against the tatami-mat floor. She quickly picked herself up and turned toward Chiho.

  “Chiho! I think you should give it the more thought!”

  “Huh? More thought about what?”

  “About Maou! You go in love with that man, you will receive the serious injury! If you marry Maou, it will be all of the trouble!”

  The sudden marriage keyword took the already vaguely discomforted Chiho’s mind and sent it well past the boiling point.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaacieth?! What? Where did that come from?!”

  “I mean it! You see, too, Chiho! When Maou feels— Oh no! I do not like this. He puts me in him! I promise you, all he say in future will be ‘food, bath, sleep’! He is no good! Arrogant! And he will be ruling roost with aghhggghh!!”

  Nobody had any idea where Acieth picked up this TV-sitcom griping-housewife tone from. But just as it was starting to make Chiho’s mind go in circles, there was a dull thud, followed by a weird and not at all Sephirah-like groan of pain.

  “Ooh, that had to hurt,” observed Urushihara.

  “W-wait, Satan!” Laila added. “You should treat girls like Acieth better than that…”

  The brisk, closed fist from Maou was enough to give both his plaintiffs instant pause.

  “This is the only way I know to make kids who don’t listen to reason sit down and shut up.”

  He then grabbed Acieth by the head and scruff, forcibly ejecting her from Room 201 and into Nord’s arms, then slammed the door shut. Judging by the extended whining, cursing, and “I’m hungry!!” emanating from the corridor, Maou’s tactic hadn’t succeeded very much, but he ignored it all, locking and dead bolting the door and letting out a long-suffering sigh.

  “…Sorry, Chi.”

  “H-huh?”

  “Uh… Don’t worry about it. Like, about what Erone and Acieth said.”

  “Oh, uh, o-okay.”

  Chiho nodded mechanically more than anything, her mind still racing. Seeing him sit down on the floor toward Laila again, she recalled why she came here in the first place and did the same, unzipping her coat to kneel down. That was why she couldn’t say it—the question, heavy enough to have a physical presence, that made itself gently known in her mind as her brain cooled down. Right here, right now, it was a pointless query and really a doubt that meant nothing to anybody except her.

  She knew why she was called here. She was witness to a conference between the Devil King and an archangel, covering topics that involved the fate of the human race on Ente Isla. Being asked for by name by Maou, a man she cared deeply for, was something she had to rejoice about. Being close to him, helping him, providing him strength—the perfect opportunity for all that.

  So she swallowed the question, placing a lid over her complex, convoluted thoughts.

  After all, in regard to Erone’s and Acieth’s words, what exactly was there not to worry about?

  Despite being asked to accompany Maou and Laila in this talk, Chiho really had no idea what they’d be talking about.

  Judging by the events around Urushihara’s hospital bed, Laila probably wanted to enlist Maou and Emi’s aid to help the Sephirah of Ente Isla out of their current crisis. Everything Laila had done up to now had to be driven by that, she knew, but when Chiho put everything she had learned together, it seemed like Laila was responsible for pretty much the whole bit—the young Maou becoming the Devil King Satan, and Emi being pitted against him as the Hero Emilia.

  On Maou’s side, the Yesod fragment that formed the mold for Alas Ramus. On Emi’s, the one that formed her Better Half battle gear. The two of them clashing against each other should have been a great calamity for the people of Ente Isla—which should have been a cause of concern for both Laila and Miki Shiba, a woman closely involved with the Sephirah of planet Earth.

  And Chiho herself, despite having nothing to do with Ente Isla, had an Ente Islan Yesod fragment of her own. She had lately taken to carrying it in a locked accessory case she bought to keep on hand at all times. A high school teen wearing a gaudy ring in public raised too many eyebrows, and the ban on jewelry at her job meant she almost never wore it anyway. Owning it once put her in mortal danger at the hands of angels, but between Maou, Emi, Amane, Shiba, and all the other forces protecting her, the heavens were no longer much of a threat.

  Besides, given the place Chiho was granted with this ring and the person who did the granting, she had to surmise that Laila and Gabriel—both apparently living in Japan long-term now—had their reasons for not wresting the ring back from her. Those Yesod fragments were at the core of the vast mystery Chiho had been staring at, and today that mystery was about to be solved.

  “First,” Laila said, “I want you to see this, Chiho.”

  “All right. Huh? Is that…? Huh?”

  She reflexively looked at the item presented to her from the side. Her face had been deadly serious as she looked, pondering, but now her eyes were wide with surprise.

  It was a plain old clear plastic file, blue in color, the kind you could find at any stationery shop or convenience store in Japan. Chiho took it from her like nothing was amiss, opened it up, then gave both Laila and Maou looks once she realized it.

  This… This is just too crazy.

  “Um… The crisis facing the world… Wow.”

  Could you really take all the dangers facing another world, another planet, and fit it in a standard letter-sized file, twelve pockets, straight from the hundred-yen shop?

  The first page was the cover, the sort that’d lose out even to an ad flyer for a cultural studies course at the local community center in terms of flashiness. The title—“The Potential Danger to Ente Isla’s Humanity Caused by Interference with the Tree of Sephirot”—was written in outlined characters that curved across the top of the page, a rainbow color gradient slapped over the white space below, and it had been printed notably off-center on the sheet.

  “…Laila?”

  “I tried working the layout so it’d be easy to read.”

  Chiho sighed at the angel, whose eyes were brimming with confidence at her own computer skills. This was, in its own way, dangerous. Any threat to humanity would involve a vast number of lives. Were rainbow colors and chunky letters really the way to go with this?

  “Um, what do you call this stuff? This fancy 3-D lettering and design and so on?”

  “WordArt,”
Urushihara replied. “From a really old version, too. I don’t have any software that can do that, but I definitely think they upgraded all those designs for the current version.”

  “Oh, yeah, I think I learned this stuff on the really big computers they had in the AV room back in grade school…”

  “That…that was brand-new technology back then!”

  Faced with people as steeped in modern computer culture as Urushihara and Chiho, Laila suddenly felt less confident in her digital literacy. Her face reddened in shame. At least, Chiho reasoned, she knew now that this archangel, mother of the Hero of another world, had used her own PC to create this.

  “It wasn’t as cheap as what they have now and they weren’t so easy to buy, but I worked hard to save up for my computer! I saved up a lot of money for my own family, too.”

  “It was, um, seventeen years ago when you first came to Japan, right, Laila? Back when the C drive on your average desktop had, what, two or four gigabytes?”

  “Oh, I’m not using the exact same computer from seventeen years ago,” Laila countered. “I replaced it around seven years later, so I got a sixty-gig hard drive and the newest business software suite they had at the time! And I’ve gotten to work with a lot of other computers, too!”

  This wasn’t exactly the debate everyone had come here to have. A ten-year-old business software suite would be an antique you’d have trouble even finding nowadays.

  “Y’know, dude, it’s practically criminal how much of an old model of notebook PC Maou got for me, but it’s still got an eighty-gigabyte hard drive. If your computer’s ten years old, they must’ve dropped support for the OS ages ago. It’s dangerous to even use that thing.”

  “Oh, it’s fine! It’s not connected to the Net!”

  Given her direct experience with the threat Laila’s powers portended, it was difficult for Chiho to feel as close and casual with her as Maou and Urushihara seemed to be. But the sight of an archangel and fallen angel weighing the specs of their hopelessly outdated computers against each other still seemed oddly charming to her. Scenes like this were no longer any great surprise.