To Chiho, Rika seemed like a superstar: falling in love with an Ente Islan, not letting that truth faze her, and actually saying her feelings instead of running away from them. She was just that—a great, shining star—and it scared Chiho. The mere thought of Maou turning her down after all this made her legs shake. She could imagine a million reasons why Maou might say no, but—for now at least—not a single reason for him to say yes.
Rika hadn’t given up after Ashiya’s refusal. She had cried about it, but she never gave up. However, imagining herself in that same situation, Chiho didn’t know how she’d ever manage to recover if Maou refused her. Maybe throughout the last few weeks, she had been unconsciously trying to avoid thinking about Christmas at all.
Whatever Maou’s choice was, it would have to be directly linked with his other future decisions. That future involved far more than her—it could mean that Chiho lost not just Maou but Emi, Ashiya, Urushihara, Suzuno, and all her other Ente Islan friends. That puppylike drive to not be away from the one she loved for a single moment froze her, preventing any action.
But at the same time, Chiho had another voice running through her mind: If there is something to say, just say it fast or else lots of regrets.
These were the words of Acieth Alla, a girl separated from her own companions for eons longer than a seventeen-year-old girl could ever imagine—but Chiho still understood the portent behind them.
She knew Kaori, and she knew Acieth, too. And that was what made Chiho’s own heart freeze in place, descended upon by thick clouds and preventing any movement.
Such were Chiho’s mid-December days.
“Don’t just say ‘but—but’! I can’t believe you let Christmas just slip through your fingers like that!”
Kaori couldn’t be blamed for seeing all this as Chiho just screwing up a chance at having a hot guy in her life. But to Chiho, the things she was letting “slip through” made something as inconsequential as a romantic Christmas impossible to think about.
“Can you do anything else at this point?” Kaori asked. “We’ve got a little time until Christmas. Could you find someone to cover your shifts?”
“Ooh, I dunno…”
It was the obvious question to pose, in a way, and Chiho had thought about it. But while she could maybe jump off a shift she was assigned to, getting someone else to take one for her sake was another matter. And there was no way Chiho could ask Maou, of all people, to take off Christmas Eve so they could take care of some business.
“Oh, wait! Maybe I could tell my mom that we’re short-staffed and go in on the twenty-fourth, too…”
“Sasachi, why is that what you’re coming up with at this point?”
“Huh? What’s wrong with it?”
“What’s wrong? Everything! You go to work that day, and it’ll be just another shift, from start to finish! Plus, you’ll still have to go home before he does, right? Are you even serious about this, Sasachi?”
“S-serious?”
“You’re the one who was all like, Ooh, I don’t wanna drift away from them! Well, guess what? You’re already, like, half faded out from the picture!”
“Well, yeah, I guess I know that, but…”
If Maou and friends accepted Laila’s plea to save the people of Ente Isla, it’d be just like when Maou set off to rescue Emi before. Chiho, in other words, wouldn’t be along for the ride—or couldn’t be, really. The reason was simple: If things erupted into war, she’d be a drag on Maou and Emi, like she always was. They were fighting against a total unknown, in a number of ways. Bringing the totally defenseless Chiho into that war zone would force Maou’s side to devote too many resources to protecting her. It wouldn’t be like before, when she used the Yesod to take advantage of Laila’s force for a while. Laila had made herself known to them all, and now that she had, there was no good reason for Chiho to fight alongside Maou.
But somewhere in her heart, Chiho couldn’t deny that Kaori was right. She did have a little time, and she had ample reason to believe Maou wouldn’t return to Ente Isla that easily. That was because, on a wholly different dimension from what Laila had offered him, he had another huge job offer potentially in the works.
“…But if the shifts are all set up, no changing them now, huh? Well, are you at least thinking about stuff you could do for the thirty-first or New Year’s?”
“Oh, I think my mom or dad were saying something about going back to my grandparents’ place, so…um…Kao?”
Chiho was so occupied thinking about Maou’s current situation that she hardly noticed how Kaori was staring at her like a cobra ready to strike. Demons struck her with less terror than what she now felt.
“Sasachi…”
“Y-yes?”
“I’m seriously angry now.”
She had been seriously angry enough before, but Chiho was too cowed to offer any complaint about the torrent of sass and lecturing that followed.
It was already dark by the time archery practice was over.
Chiho wasn’t working today, so she was on her way home when she received a text from her mother, directing her into the crowds at the 100 Trees Shopping Arcade. The whole outdoor mall was set up in holiday colors, although some of the shops had already taken down the red bows and replaced them with New Year’s décor—the specialty food, fish, and noodle shops in particular.
“Oh, Chiho Sasaki?”
She was reading over the impromptu shopping list her mother had texted her when she heard a wholly unexpected voice in the crowd. It almost made her drop her phone. “Huh… Whaaa?!”
She turned around and received another shock. It wasn’t just her ears playing tricks on her.
“U-Urushihara?! Since when did you get out?”
He winced at this appraisal, not that he had much to defend himself with. “Dude, don’t make it sound like I’m a violent felon just outta prison.”
“Yeah, but I mean, I couldn’t even imagine you released to the general public on your own recognizance like this…”
“Look, do you guys think I’m some kinda wild animal or zombie or something? Maybe you didn’t notice, but I’ve been going out alone a lot lately, and I even picked up a job or two back at the apartment.”
“Wow, really? Um, I’m sorry…” Chiho bowed. Maybe “released” was going a little too far.
Thinking about it, though, this was the first time she had seen the former angel outside without Maou or Ashiya accompanying him since back in the spring, right when she had learned the truth about all of them. It wasn’t pure laziness, she recalled, that kept him from leaving the apartment.
“But, um, are you sure you’re okay going around alone?”
“Meaning, like, should I be worried about the cops arresting me for what I did before you met us?” he asked.
“Huh? Oh, yeah…I guess…” Chiho raised an eyebrow. His tone sounded odd to her. He clicked his tongue.
“Yeah, like, Bell said that basically if I go out alone, I’d be screwed and maybe I wouldn’t even make it back to the apartment in one piece, so…”
“Yes…”
“Hey, don’t just agree with that.”
“S-sorry…”
It was easy for her to imagine Suzuno saying something like that if she knew Urushihara was out wandering the town alone.
“Yeah, so anyway, if you’re asking whether it’s okay or not, then it’s still not really that okay, I don’t think.”
“Oh?”
Chiho froze at the breezy confession. A big reason why Urushihara was largely housebound was that, in the period between traveling to Japan and settling down in Villa Rosa Sasazuka, he had essentially gone on a spree of serial robberies. Chiho didn’t know everything he had done, but judging by how Maou and Ashiya reacted, chances were good he had committed at least one crime near a surveillance camera. There was a nonzero chance he was still on the police’s radar.
“But in terms of what you’re probably worried about, I bet I’m fine.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. Like, thanks to Maou, we got enough demonic force that I have pretty much free rein to use it. A buncha cops don’t scare me.” He grinned.
“Whoa, don’t say that!”
There was something devilish about Urushihara’s smile that made Chiho, daughter of a police officer, panic.
“Hee-hee-hee! I’m not planning to rub out Japan’s police force or anything, dude. But if things get real hairy, I’m just sayin’, I got that on my side and a lot of other things going besides that. I feel really good right now, y’know? Gettin’ to tackle all this new stuff.”
“A lot of other things”? “All this new stuff”? Chiho was too scared to ask for specifics, but given the demons’ activities over the past few months, she could make a few assumptions. And although Urushihara didn’t mean to, his remarks gave Chiho a hint about something that had been on her mind for a while now.
“So that means you have demonic force again, too, Urushihara?”
“What d’you mean ‘too’?” he asked, the grin still on his face.
Chiho responded with a confident smirk of her own, as she revealed a couple of facts she knew.
“Well, Ashiya is walking around with his own, yeah? Enough to go back into demon form whenever he wants.”
“Oh, you knew that? Like, what happened the day he bought the phone?”
“…More or less, yeah.” Chiho was more than a bit interested in Urushihara’s take on that day’s events.
“But… Huh,” he muttered. “How d’you know about that, though? ’Cause Bell sure doesn’t seem to know.”
“That’s because I didn’t say anything about it.”
“Oh? ’Cause, I mean, dude, I know you. If you knew we were keeping demonic force hidden from Emilia and stuff, I figured you’d be so freaked out you’d run over to her for advice.”
Chiho grimaced. “You don’t have to act like I’m a double agent or something. I know full well Ashiya isn’t the type of person who’d go around like that for no reason.”
There were other reasons why she had never told Emi and Suzuno, but being treated like a tattletale irked her a little.
“Huh. So maybe Emilia doesn’t know, either? Hmm.”
Urushihara nodded, not letting on whether this meant something to him or if he was just stringing the conversation along. He raised a hand into the air. Chiho had been too amazed by Urushihara’s mere presence to notice, but it was holding a plastic shopping bag filled with snacks, dinner items, and more.
“I mean, I figured Emilia woulda known once Ashiya decided to transform in front of Rika Suzuki, but… Ah, it doesn’t really matter if she knows anyway. Like you said, we ain’t doing this for no reason, and it also connects to this shopping run I’m on.”
“…What do you mean?”
“Mmm…”
Urushihara carefully looked around at his surroundings. Finding a nearby café, he pointed it out to Chiho.
“I’ll tell you if you buy me something hot to drink. I’m cold.”
“…”
Chiho raised her eyebrows up in a really? look before grudgingly nodding. In the end, it turned out this really was the same shameless Urushihara as always.
“It’s really nothing big,” the fallen angel began, sipping from the most expensive seasonal coffee special on the menu. “It’s just that Maou, Ashiya, and I don’t fully trust Laila yet.”
“Don’t fully trust her?” Chiho asked as she dumped a generous portion of milk into a cup of the cheapest house blend on offer. “What’s that mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like, my dudette. She’s been on the run from heaven for ages now, right? But she’s leaving herself super wide-open in all this. She’s making both Maou and Emilia worry about her.”
“Yeah, she is.” Chiho immediately nodded. Even she could tell that Laila was doing herself no favors.
“Just because Gabriel and our landlord said that heaven closed off all Gate access to and from itself doesn’t mean we know that for sure. It being closed doesn’t guarantee our enemy’s stuck there. Maybe it’s more of a one-way thing, where they can keep sending people on down from above. We’re not willing to believe that Laila’s keeping everything perfectly balanced for herself here. You remember how me and Ashiya didn’t join you guys when you went to Laila’s place?”
“Oh, right, you didn’t.”
Laila had opened up her apartment in the Nerima district to them, in an attempt to gain their trust. Ashiya and Urushihara declined to tag along, and given that Rika’s utter failure at a love confession took place just the day before, Chiho had been reluctant to ask why at the time.
“Yeah. And I mean, personally, I really don’t care about Laila’s place. But that was all Maou’s idea.”
“Maou’s idea?”
“Yeah, like, you stay behind in case something happens. Like, if worse comes to worst and the enemy takes advantage of a distracted Maou and Emilia to attack MgRonald or Rika Suzuki, or hell, even your house or whatever, we could instantly respond to it that way.”
“…Oh.”
“Plus, all that woe-is-me crap from Laila might’ve just been her trying to pull on Maou’s and Emilia’s heartstrings. So it might be more than just Raguel and Camael we have to deal with.”
“Huh?”
Chiho had trouble understanding Urushihara’s point. He responded with a disdainful snort.
“Like, my dudette, why are we assuming Laila’s one of the good guys just because she’s Emilia’s mom? None of that seems weird to you? I mean, not that I’m one to talk, but are any of the angels you know good guys so far, Chiho Sasaki?”
“No.”
Sadly, she could instantly reply to that.
“Right, see? And I’m totally not one to talk, but I kinda got a perspective on angelic assholery that Maou and Ashiya don’t have. What if all that airheaded screwing around on her part’s just an act? What if she tries to use your family or the MgRonald manager or Rika Suzuki or someone else important to Maou or Emilia as hostages, so those two’ll do what she wants them to? ’Cause the chance of that is a lot higher than none, y’know?”
This sounded like the kind of four-dimensional subterfuge Laila didn’t exactly seem capable of engineering, but Urushihara’s point made sense.
“Well, what do you think, Urushihara? About her?”
“What do I think?” he quickly countered, not giving away the slightest hint of his impression. It forced Chiho to be more specific.
“I mean, Laila and Gabriel… They want Maou and everyone to, uh, kill her, right, umm…”
“Oh, right, you heard about my parents, huh?”
“…………Heard about them, yeah.”
His addressing it straight like that threw her a little.
“So you gonna treat me with a little more respect now?”
“Uh, what?”
Chiho was floored at this sudden change of subject. How did that connect to anything?
“I mean, look at this crazy pedigree I got! My mom’s literally a god. Head of the second generation of angels. If she was human, she’d be so high up, you’d be afraid to even look at her.”
It was hard to tell how serious he was being. Chiho felt the need to address him honestly anyway. “Can you stop being ridiculous and answer my question?”
“Dude, you’re even pickier about that stuff than Emilia is, huh? Well, all right. I give up. I mean, really, you guys can do whatever you want. If Maou believes Laila’s really being sincere about this and says yes, then I’m not gonna try and stop them.”
“Are you sure?! Because, I mean…”
“Yeah, I know, I know. They’re trying to kill my mother in heaven, right? Laila, and Gabriel, and somebody else for all we know.” Urushihara’s voice was just as flat and monotone as his facial expression. “Or what, you think I’m suddenly gonna start loving my mom and tearfully plead for her life? Or like, suddenly change myself entirely at this point to bring her on to our side?”
“Man, you guys think you can just say whatever you want about me, huh? Well, come over to the apartment sometime, dudette. I think you’re gonna be surprised.” Urushihara winced again. “Ughh… I mean, I’m not lying or whatever when I say this, but I really don’t remember my parents much at all. I know as a fact that Ignora, ruler of the heavens, is my mother, and I kind of have these vague memories of her, but if you’re asking me whether she has any impact on my life as it stands, the answer’s a big fat no.”
“Oh…”
It was hard to believe for someone with as healthy a family life as Chiho’s. But Urushihara didn’t seem to be acting.
“I mean, I don’t live in this dimension where we have feelings for each other for no reason, just because she’s my mom and I’m her son or whatever. In the demon realms, if your dad or your brother gets in your way, you kill him. It’s that simple. If Laila’s telling the honest truth right now, then all I can say is, Hey, thanks for taking responsibility for all the crap my mom did.”
Ignora, who had taken on the role of God among the angels in heaven, was Urushihara’s mother. Gabriel was the first to reveal that to Chiho and the other visitors at Laila’s Nerima apartment on that day. He also reminded them of the assorted nefarious deeds she did to the Sephirah children, as well as what she was doing to Ente Isla right now—but to Chiho the noncombatant, the first thought on her mind was how Urushihara was taking all this. Seeing him respond so nonchalantly to it all was, in its own way, even worse than if he took more drastic action.
“But if you want me to comment on all this as her son or whatever…hmm…”
Chiho perked up, hoping for something more substantial from him.
“…I guess I kinda resent her tossing me into the demon realms by myself? That, and not bothering to search for me afterward. But it’s been fun with the demons, so… Like, I think it was a much better life then I woulda had up in heaven, where most people ain’t much better than living zombies. It’s not like I hate her so much I wanna act on it or whatever. I mean, it was a zillion years ago, so I seriously don’t remember most of it.”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 15 Page 2