The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 15

by Satoshi Wagahara

  The dinner rush was exactly as hectic as Kisaki said it’d be, with Chiho barely having a moment to breathe until her shift ended at ten in the evening.

  “Oh, you getting off now, Chiho?” Emilia asked.

  “Yeah. Sorry to leave you, Yusa.”

  Despite sharing most of her shift with Emi today, the two of them engaged in almost no conversation. Only when Chiho was seated in the break room, trying to gather up the energy to change out of her uniform, did Emi have a chance to chat a bit.

  “Sure was crowded today, huh?”

  “You said it,” Emi replied. “And it’s like every single delivery today’s on the far edge of our radius, too. I think Kawata’s been out driving in the cold all day, poor guy.”

  “Yeah, he said working outside is pretty easy once you get used to it, but not in this weather, I bet.”

  “Totally. And I don’t really see the point of the Christmas tree sticker on his helmet, either.”

  These MgRonald-logo holiday stickers, sent from the main office, looked quite literally tacked on. Kisaki was griping about them earlier, too.

  “Oh, speaking of that, was Ms. Kisaki talking to you about decorations?”

  “You saw that?” Chiho stood up and pointed at the Christmas tree drawn on the break room calendar. “I was just looking at the decorations, figuring out what kind we should get. Looking back, I kinda stopped paying attention to them once I stopped being a kid.”

  “Ohh, I see. I bet Eme reminded you of them, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  Emi smiled and took Chiho’s hand. “I’m sorry. I know Eme’s super gung ho about this.”

  “Oh, no! I’m really looking forward to it. We don’t get to all eat together so much lately, and I dunno if Emeralda told you or not, but it’s kind of turning into a rally for our cause. It’s really exciting.”

  “A rally?”

  That sounded hyperbolic to Emi at first, until she realized what Chiho meant.

  “Ohh, right, is that why Eme wanted to invited Laila and Rika?”

  “Yep! We’re not gonna let go of our friends that easy!”

  Chiho was aflame with enthusiasm. It was almost too bright for Emi to look at.

  “So I thought I’d go out and do some handmade decorations and stuff, but it’s a little different from making stuff for the Tanabata festival.”

  “Maybe. It’s not like we’re gonna go climb up a mountain and chop a tree down or anything.”

  “Right. And things like tinsel and tree ornaments—I’d have no idea how to make those myself anyway, so we’re gonna need to invest a little bit of money, I think.”

  “Do we really need to go all the way like that…?”

  “Totally! We can’t take it easy on this if we want Alas Ramus to enjoy Christmas!” Now Chiho was burning even brighter. “But I don’t wanna go too far, of course, or I really will wind up like Maou after Tanabata. So I was just thinking that I’d need to discuss it with someone if we’re gonna spend money on it, and then Ms. Kisaki showed up.”

  She smiled awkwardly at Emi. Emi smiled back.

  “Yeah, Tanabata was pretty rough…”

  Not long after Suzuno came to Japan, Maou picked up a little bamboo decoration to celebrate the Tanabata festival in July from a regular customer who lived nearby. He decorated the MgRonald with it, and between that and the other crew-crafted decorations, the setup really wowed all the midsummer customers. But then Tanabata ended. This was a living bamboo plant, so they couldn’t just abandon it. They allowed customers to snip off pieces of it before the festival ended, but most of the bamboo grass was still there after it was all over, so Maou wound up bringing it back to the apartment. He couldn’t put it out with the garbage—the guy who gave it to him might notice—so it just sat on the outer corridor for a few days, getting in everyone’s way. It eventually withered up despite Maou’s best efforts, so he was forced to dispose of it in piecemeal fashion with the rest of the household trash over several days.

  “I don’t know what drives the Devil King to do stuff like that.”

  “Huh?”

  “Like, is that good for the company, him playing it by ear like that?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, customers usually like the stuff he does, right? He owes a lot to Kisaki for letting him do it, of course, but…”

  “Yeah…”

  Emi sat down across from Chiho, her face serious. “But in a business like MgRonald, what people want the most is, you know, this homogeneous package, right? And the Devil King’s bamboo stuff was pretty off script.”

  “Oh.”

  Chiho recalled back when the MgCafé space first opened in the Hatagaya station location. The coffee clearly tasted different depending on whether Kisaki or Maou made it. Chiho didn’t see what the fuss was—if the coffee’s good, the coffee’s good—but as Maou put it, if Kisaki wasn’t around, he’d be forced to give customers what he knew was an inferior product.

  “And you know what? I had a customer tell me the other day that Ms. Kisaki’s coffee is going down in quality.”

  “Really?!”

  This was a shock to Chiho. There was no way Kisaki, of all people, would slack off on the job. Did this mean…?

  “Right.” Emi nodded. “It didn’t get worse; it had just gotten normal. On script. Akiko heard the same rumors I did about it. It was kind of funny, but…”

  “Ms. Kisaki was trying to keep it homogeneous, too…?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. I mean, I don’t know for sure. It’s not really something I can ask her point-blank. But looking back at Tanabata and how Maou handles his customers, I think he’s been able to get away with a lot of it because he’s got Kisaki watching out for him.”

  The fact was that quite a few trainees never got a full-time job offer. And between Kisaki’s ramblings, the “normal” coffee, and Maou’s “nonhomogeneous” workplace habits, perhaps there were more obstacles to Maou’s career efforts than Chiho thought. The company had its own vision of how to maximize profits, and there were standards behind that vision, which couldn’t be quantified in monetary figures. To put it another way, MgRonald wanted to build a trust with customers, and that trust couldn’t go too far above or below the norms that had been established over time. Maou and Kisaki’s work was going above and beyond these norms, and it could even be affecting people’s trust in the other MgRonalds around them. Being able to provide better service, but deliberately avoiding doing so, might seem terribly unfair at first glance. But if you don’t put an upper limit in place, you might find people who inadvertently destroyed that trust and made things worse for others.

  To Chiho, Maou pursuing a full-time job was directly correlated with him and Emi staying close to her for the foreseeable future. This new realization put a pall over her heart. Realizing this, Emi felt obligated to say something.

  “You know, I want him to keep trying. I don’t want him to give up.”

  “Oh?”

  Chiho gave her an astonished look. It wasn’t like Emi to voice her support so clearly like that.

  “I mean,” Emi replied with a nod, “if he gets that job, then he can stay devoted to that, Ente Isla can fully rebuild itself, and we’ll never have to worry about him invading or doing anything else stupid ever again.”

  “Yusa…”

  “And you know, sometimes I come over to his place with Alas Ramus to check up on him. Seeing if he’s doing anything dumb, I guess you could say. And every time I do… You know, I really want to be around next year. I want to celebrate Tanabata and Christmas again, with you, and Alas Ramus, and everyone else I hold dear. I mean…”

  She stood up and headed toward her locker.

  “I’m sick of living in this kill-or-be-killed world. So I’ve decided. I’m sorry, but we’re gonna have to make Alciel cry—in two different ways. First, he’ll be weeping for joy when Maou gets that job, and then he’ll be wailing when he realizes the demons will never get to take over our worl
d.”

  “…! S-so you’ll…!” Chiho half leaped out of her folding chair and embraced the still-changing Emi from behind. “You’ll do it, Yusa! You’ll really do it!”

  “……I can’t beat you, Chiho. It’s all happening just the way you want it. It drives me nuts.”

  Her voice grew softer, her face still turned away.

  “I…I’m not going to fight anymore.”

  Marveling at the sight of Chiho and the rest of the group giving him astonished looks, Gabriel picked up where he left off about Ignora, Satanael, and Lucifer.

  “Yeah, so Lucifer was born after we left our home planet, after Ignora found a way to make ourselves immortal. But it was still in the experimental stage at that point—kind of like, we’re pretty sure we can do it, know what I mean? You won’t really know if you’re invincible against disease or old age until at least a few years pass. But anyway, the lab found a way to deal with the pandemic, and the whole world was freakin’ out big-time about that. And then, like I told ya at the start, people got into fights over the tech, and it pretty much ruined our planet.”

  “W-wait a moment! You are abridging yourself far too much!” Suzuno protested.

  “Yes, I’m well awaaare that the discovery triggered a waaar, but what about it was enough to destroy the entire plaaanet?” Emeralda added.

  “And besides, that doesn’t explain how you wound up on Ente Isla’s moon!” Chiho exclaimed.

  Gabriel raised both hands to quiet his guests. “Chill, chill, chill! There were a lotta reasons for it, all right? But just like Crestia Bell said a second ago, there’s nothing particularly surprising or noble about any of it. It’s just a cavalcade of terrible events that proved just how stupid the human race really is.”

  When the pandemic first took root, the first nations to fall were the economically disadvantaged ones, with less of a developed military. Their populations weren’t wiped out by the disease, but it did decimate their numbers enough that they couldn’t continue as a going concern. As small as these nations were, their downfall wasn’t something the world economy was prepared to absorb. The larger powers scrambled to preserve their own finances, and as Ignora and her team continued their research, tensions across borders rapidly approached the breaking point.

  Once word got out that the lunar lab’s work might provide a solution to the disease, many nations sent people and money to the facility, in hopes of reaping the benefits ahead of anyone else. The lunar base itself was a melting pot of sorts, with Ignora, Satanael, Camael, Raguel, Gabriel, Sariel, and Laila all from different nations, but they had grouped together to try to save the planet.

  Once the day came when Ignora’s results were formally announced, their home planet began to crack along its national borders. Her country attempted to summon her back home, as did Satanael’s. Anyone even slightly involved with the immortality research received similar orders. But from the researchers’ point of view, their work had only just begun; it wasn’t anything they could put to practical use yet, so going home right now was unthinkable. Satanael and Sariel served as their representatives, trying their best to negotiate with each nation, but their efforts failed to bear fruit.

  In fact, the world began to lodge all kinds of shortsighted accusations at the international group formed to manage the lunar base. All sorts of loony stories started going around—researchers being held against their will on the moon, spies being sent to kidnap team members, countries laying claims to the spaceport that all the lab’s goods went through. Everyone wanted the immortality formula, no matter how foolish their efforts made them look.

  Some nations even tried to duplicate the research themselves, using the information released by the facility and moon colony to the press as a guide. This led to acts of terrorism, carried out by people who believed that one nation hoarding its research was a crime against humanity. This research was supposed to save the world; instead, it plunged the world into chaos—and the pandemic kept spreading the entire time.

  The harmful particles in the air that had covered Gabriel’s home planet triggered several symptoms at the same time, in multiple areas of the body at once. If someone caught it, unless the victim was very lucky, there was no saving them. Once these particles made their way in through the respiratory organs, they blocked both the body’s digestive functions and the nervous system’s ability to send and receive signals. If they struck the lungs, they would drastically impact the victim’s breathing ability; if they got into the blood, they would turn into a substance that caused blockages and cardiac issues.

  This disease struck people in different ways. Some could live out their entire natural lives without being affected, while others would present multiple symptoms after a single, tiny exposure. Most traditional medical approaches were quickly exhausted. All in all, over 30 percent of the population caught this disease, and given that it killed over half its victims within five years, the effects on the world’s average life span and population were devastating. By the time the immortality research began to look like the “real thing,” so to speak, the human race was willing to fight to the death with one another for even an incomplete version of the findings.

  Leaving the planet wasn’t an option. Colonies on the moon and elsewhere were accessible only to the highest reaches of society, and there was no guarantee that the harmful particles littered across the star system wouldn’t get you there, too. The disease even took a few people in Ignora’s laboratory, forcing Gabriel to sound the hazard alarm multiple times.

  Even so, these were still the good old days—back when the rule of law still prevailed among the larger nations.

  The lunar researchers did their best, finding ways to extend the deadline on their return home while advancing their immortality research. However, the lab was facing more and more obstacles that had nothing to do with academic or technical issues. As chief of security, Gabriel was faced with the grim task of shifting the directive for his personnel from controlling outside threats to actively fighting them off.

  Still, Ignora, Satanael, Laila, Camael, and everyone else involved with the research worked tirelessly on, believing that all this strife would come to an end once their job was complete. Facing up to the threat of kidnapping or attacks from foreign nations—or even worse, their own—they went over to the giant tree on the moon to gather samples many times, figuring out not only how to become immortal but how to mass-produce the miracle. In the midst of this storm—none of it their fault—their only support was their fervent desire to save the human race.

  Then one day, it happened: Gabriel learned about it from Laila first—Ignora and Satanael were engaged in a heated argument.

  “This child is the greatest hope the human race has,” Satanael shouted. “The dawn of a new age, one that will bring the light of new dreams to our imperiled future!”

  Ignora refused to back down. “But it’s complete! It’s finally completed! I’ve done it! We can save the world now!”

  As out of the loop as he was, Gabriel knew what this meant. Immortality was near.

  Then all of a sudden, a warning alarm sounded off across the entire facility. Gabriel sent a message out asking what was up; he was greeted by the screams of the dying.

  “And y’know what they said? ‘It’s Caiel and Sikeena! They’re here! They’re mowing us down! Get everyone out of here!’”

  THE DEVIL KING IS OUT OF THE OFFICE (4)

  Just as Emeralda was heading off to MgRonald to eat dinner and snoop on Emi and Chiho, a thundering roar from inside Castle Ereniem sent the pigeons roosting in the building’s unique steeple flying into the air.

  “I swear to you, I hate every man, woman, and child in this country!!” The large man leaped out from his tiny desk, paperwork thrown into the air like sparks from a campfire.

  “Enough, Albert. People have been sent to tribunals for less reason than this tirade of yours.”

  Albert Ende, by far the largest of the Hero’s quest companions, was raging like a h
ungry predator, darting from here and there as he fumed to himself—but the woman with him didn’t bat an eye.

  “Oh, shut up, Hazel! I hate you, too! I can’t take this any longer!!”

  This wasn’t a battlefield, so she was in civilian clothing, but the dignity she exuded was impossible to hide. It was General Hazel Rumack, chief director of the Federated Order of the Five Continents and the de facto leader of Saint Aile’s military branch.

  “No wonder Eme never wants to come back! I’ve never seen a bunch of people as malicious and treacherous as you idiots from the West!”

  “And what will telling me that accomplish, Director Ende?”

  Rumack’s icy rejoinder was met with more hellfire from Albert. “‘Director’ now, is it? All right, yes! I am acting director of the Holy Magic Administrative Institute! But I can’t sub in for a real court sorcerer, all right? And yet I have all these pricks at the Institute going on like ooh, Emeralda would have handled it in the blink of an eye with one another, right in front of my face so I can hear it! If you don’t like me that much, I’ll happily resign right this minute! Just get that broccoli-haired li’l girl back for me! It’s not like I’m sitting on this ridiculously tiny chair because I think it’s comfortable!”

  “So idle chatter from the sorcerers is enough to set you off? You are rather more thin-skinned than I thought.” Rumack raised a surprised eyebrow. “I’ll admit to being biased, but the sorcerers and researchers here live in their own little world, you could say. You wouldn’t be so angry if you just accepted that dealing with them will occasionally rankle you.”

  “Oh, I am well past that point, thank you! Why do I have to scrutinize this research report analyzing the density of holy force in the atmosphere?! And that’d be one thing, but why do I need those snot-nosed brats sniffing their noses at me the whole time?! Oooh, look at this, you messed it up again—shut up already!”