“I earned it because I thought that we needed it. Judging by your behavior as of late, I doubted you were capable of passing the retest before we departed.”
“Yeah, but…but why did you…?!”
Maou stood up, throwing his body toward the window on the wall. He pointed a finger down at the backyard.
“Why,” he cried, “did you pass that test and immediately come back home on a scooter?! You’re just picking on me! You’re messing with my mind, aren’t you?!”
There, emitting a soft sheen in the sunlight next to Maou’s Dullahan II fixie bike, was a scooter. A Honta Gyro-Roof, no less, a model that saw frequent use among delivery businesses. It came standard-equipped with a roof and three wheels for extra stability—perfect for pizza parlors and other outfits that transported small loads around in unpredictable weather conditions.
“Hey, Chiho, what’s up with Maou?”
Rika couldn’t help but ask. She had hoped Chiho’s ice-cream bribe would be enough to restore his motivation, but ever since Suzuno returned from her errands, Maou had been acting unusually freaked out. Childish, even.
Chiho let out a distressed smile as she stood up to whisper into her ear. “Maou’s failed the scooter driving test twice,” she whispered. “He messed up the written exam the first time, and during the second time, he had to ditch the test center to help me out.”
“…Oooh.”
“I can’t believe you’re being so mean to me! That’s the exact kinda bike I’d be using for MgRonald deliveries! What the hell is this if it’s not a dis against me?!”
“How can I help it?” Suzuno countered, Maou’s flailing panic not bothering her at all. “I could hardly return home on a scooter unless I had my license—thus, I had a need for a license.” Her stern eyes settled upon him, seated next to Chiho. “Or…what, were you expecting to travel around Ente Isla without any sort of long-distance transport?”
“I… No, but…”
“Someone with your or my powers—our presence would be detected the moment we started flying through the air. We are fighting against at least two archangels and a high-ranking Malebranche, I remind you.”
“Y-yeah, but I’ve got their positions nailed down…pretty much…”
“Perhaps, but be that as it may, we need a way to quickly hide ourselves if our Gate opening is detected. Otherwise, this mission will be over before it begins.”
“Well, sure, okay, but a scooter in Ente Isla? Like, they don’t even have engines in Ente Isla. If we wanna stay undercover, shouldn’t we buy some horses or something once we show up?”
“Can you even ride a horse?”
Suzuno was clearly growing impatient at Maou’s aimless whining. Her parting shot was enough to shut him up.
“We have no idea how long we may be forced to wander Ente Isla! We will need to bring ample supplies with us! I have no idea how accurate our Gate control will be yet, and speed is going to be everything with this effort! That is precisely why we must put our ducks in a row in Japan, ahead of time, as much as humanly possible! Or, what—were you intending to pedal a bicycle across the Eastern Island?! Could you even earn the money for a team of coach horses?!”
“…”
Maou sat down next to the window, sulking in silence. “Okay,” he groaned. “No, I’ve never handled horses before. If we’re talkin’ wyverns, though, I’m the best damn expert in the land.”
Even in a land as exotic and mysterious as Ente Isla, no human had ever attempted to tame a wyvern before. The sight of a man mounted on one would be even more conspicuous than any motorbike.
Suzuno sighed.
“…Listen, Devil King.”
“What?”
“Look at that scooter. It seats one person.”
“Yeah?”
“The laws of Japan will not apply to us over there, but I am not interested in you riding piggyback with me.”
“Uh…no?”
“Th-that’s a twenty-thousand-yen fine!” Chiho exclaimed, oddly sensitive to the mere suggestion.
“That’s for a bicycle, Chiho,” Rika butted in. “There are different fines and points and stuff once it’s a driver license you’re dealing with.”
“Indeed. So…”
“So?” Maou asked.
Suzuno paused for a moment, then continued, her well-formed lips forming a sentence nobody expected to come out:
“I have purchased another scooter for you to ride. You will need no license for navigating Ente Isla.”
“……Another?”
“Yes.”
“A scooter?”
“Yes.”
“…You bought it?”
“Who else would?” Suzuno fired back.
The room froze for a moment.
“No waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!”
“Dude…Maou, seriously—quiet down,” came the protest from the closet.
“L-look, I was always kinda wondering about that, but… Geez, how much of a one-percenter are you, anyway?!”
“Yeah!” Even Chiho was shocked at this. “I don’t really know or anything, but I don’t think scooters are that inexpensive!”
“They are not, no. Used models, however, are reasonable enough. And Amane should be here soon with the second one. Together, the two of them cost, oh, I’d say around five hundred thousand yen. They come from a reputable dealer, and thankfully, they had some inventory ready at hand.”
The six-figure sum tumbled all too easily from Suzuno’s lips.
“Five… Five hun…hun…dred thousand…”
Maou’s brain attempted to picture the amount of zeroes involved. It short-circuited. He promptly fainted, crumpling to the floor as though he had practiced the act several times before. Chiho and Rika immediately ran to him.
“M-Maou! Maou?! Maou, speak to me!”
“Is—is he all right? He looks pretty pale…”
Chiho peered into his face, white as a sheet and emitting an oily sort of sweat. Her view was then blocked by the back of Acieth’s head.
“Okay! Mouth-to-mouth, mouth-to-mouth, okay!”
“He’s breathing!! He doesn’t need it!!” Chiho attempted to pry Acieth away from him, face locked in horror. “Just go back to your ice cream, Acieth!”
Rika, watching their struggle, cooled Maou’s face with a nearby fan.
“…This sure ain’t what I thought was gonna happen…”
Then, from afar, the sound of a small engine puttering along came into earshot. They could all hear it stopping in front of the apartment building, followed by the sound of someone climbing the stairs. The door to Devil’s Castle opened, revealing Amane Ohguro, tanned skin and jet-black ponytail shining brightly from underneath her helmet.
“Hey, sorry, guys! I had another stop to make and I kinda got lost. Found some supercheap gas, though!”
Then she spotted the unconscious Maou and the half-wrestling Chiho and Acieth. Her eyes opened wide.
“…Uh, what’s going on in here?”
Inside Devil’s Castle—which, between Chiho and Suzuno and Rika and Amane and Acieth, was seeing far more of a female presence than usual—Maou was lying on the floor. He was awake, but still notably paler than before.
“Five hundred thousand for two, huh?” he murmured. “Like, I’m glad we’re well-prepared…almost too prepared, even…but aren’t you spending too much money for this? Do we really need to prep that much in advance?”
Suzuno rolled her eyes before turning to Acieth, who was currently gauging the scene from a corner as she licked at her ice pop.
“You do, indeed, possess overwhelming power right now,” she said. “Considering what happened to Emilia after her, ah, merger with Alas Ramus, you might be able to defeat Gabriel and Camael in a simple battle of muscle, Devil King. But do not forget that Alciel, Emilia, and Alas Ramus are being held as de facto hostages at the moment. We may not be able to avoid a fight at the end of it all, but until that fateful instant strikes, we must take every pain to work qui
ckly, work undercover, and engage the enemy as little as possible.”
“They made my sis hostage… They suck! Give them electric chair!”
“Whoa, you’re gonna drop your ice cream!”
Amane’s warning fell on deaf ears. Acieth’s second dessert of the day slipped through her hands and made a not-so-clean landing on the tatami mats.
“Aaah! My ice cream… The angels, they will be paying!”
“Oh, I’ll wipe that up,” Chiho said as she went to the sink and came back with a wet washcloth.
“Chiho! No throwing it away! It is the waste!”
“Oh, um…okay?”
She returned the ice pop to Acieth as she began wiping up what was left on the floor. Acieth promptly brought it right back into her mouth, not a care in the world.
“Hey, um…” Rika raised a hand in the air. “Can I ask a question?”
“Ah, yes,” Suzuno replied. “My apologies for Sada…ah, for the Devil King’s petulance. We had promised to explain matters to you.”
Rika turned face-to-face with Suzuno.
All in all, the scene inside Devil’s Castle didn’t look too much out of the ordinary. The only real difference was the cast of characters—a tad different from the norm—and the fact that Suzuno was calling Maou “Devil King” in front of Rika.
“Okay, so… Um, I’m sorry to butt in on this when you’re all busy with…other stuff, but… So what’re y’all, anyway?”
Chiho felt an unexpected well of emotion inside her. It was the exact same question she had asked, not all that long ago.
Then Amane pointed at her. “Hey, we’ve got Chiho here and everything. Why don’t we have her talk about it?”
“Huh?” Chiho blinked, washcloth still in hand.
“If we leave it to just Maou and Suzuno, I think Rika probably wouldn’t know what to believe once they were all done. Chiho, on the other hand—she’s involved with this the exact same way Rika is, so that kinda impartial viewpoint would be a lot more believable, no?”
“Indeed,” Suzuno said with a nod. “That might be a good idea.” And even within his current befuddlement, Maou’s thoughtful gaze at Chiho seemed to indicate that he agreed with it.
“W-well, if you think that’d be all right, then sure. Assuming you’re okay with it, Suzuki?”
“Uhmm… If I could ask something before that, I guess you’re pretty used to whatever wacky stuff’s going on with Maou and Suzuno, right, Chiho? You aren’t, like, some kinda comic-book superhero who flies around and fights bad guys and stuff, are you?”
“Pfft!”
Rika’s reply was, in many ways, not quite what Chiho had expected.
“Well, um… I’m not sure, actually.”
But she couldn’t deny it out of hand. Even if it was only a single piece of holy magic from Ente Isla, she had a gift that no other human on Earth enjoyed.
“Chi’s not like that, no,” Maou answered in her place. “She wasn’t involved with us at all at first—she was just a new hire I was training at MgRonald. Just another teen.”
His wording hurt Chiho a bit, despite herself. She let it slide, knowing that Maou didn’t quite mean it that way.
“But then she got involved with me and Emi’s stuff, and she kind of found out. Just like you did. And she’s had to deal with a lot more horrors than you have—or I’d say she has, anyway—but Chi told me that she didn’t want to forget any of it. That’s why she’s still with us. With me and Emi and so on.”
“Really?” Rika asked, turning to Chiho. She found it hard to gauge how serious she really was about this. Chiho pondered a bit before reacting.
“If you put it that way…more or less, yeah.”
Not like Rika has it easy, she thought. It wasn’t every day a squadron of armed attackers storms the building you’re in.
“For me,” Chiho said, “I guess the first time I saw how much power Maou and everyone had was when that highway overpass was about to collapse and crush all of us, so it was—”
“Uh?”
Rika’s face tightened. Chiho made it sound as though she were talking about last night’s dinner menu. It was a tad hard to swallow, but then Chiho kept on going—telling her about how she was taken to the roof of Tokyo’s city hall; about how she was surrounded by the armed Heavenly Regiment; about how she witnessed all-out war between demon factions at close range; about how she was admitted to the hospital after being exposed to too much demonic force; about how she flew around Tokyo Tower and fought against her aggressors; and about how she had deliberately faced down gigantic demons on two separate occasions and never blinked.
“Looking back at it all,” she concluded, “I guess it’s pretty amazing that I’m alive and well, isn’t it?”
Silence.
“…”
Chiho knew it wasn’t her imagination—the blood had drained from Rika’s face a bit. “Oh, but,” Chiho hurriedly added, “but Maou and Yusa and Suzuno protected me every time, so I’ve never been really hurt or anything!”
“Y-yeah, but you keep getting into all this dangerous stuff, right? And you did get sent to the hospital…”
“Well, that, uh… That was kind of unavoidable. Or, really, more my fault than anything else. There wasn’t any problem with me in the end, though, so they discharged me after two days, um…”
Chiho, realizing she had mostly succeeded in stoking Rika’s fears, fell silent. Maou felt obliged to throw her a lifeline.
“The thing is, though, she’s had the right to have her memories of all of us erased any time she wanted. You’re free not to believe us if you think this is too loony to accept. But no matter what you decide, we’ll fully respect it. And whether you decide to forget about us or not, I promise you we’ll do everything we can to keep anything from happening to you.”
“Ooh…”
“If you don’t want to see any of us again, that’s perfectly fine—but we’ll never stop protecting you, if we need to. And if this is too much for you to deal with today, you’re free to come back some other day, too. ’Course, I’m gonna be out for a little while, so you’ll have to wait ’til I’m back, but…”
“Y-yeah, but if I leave here after all that, I’m just gonna get more curious… More scared. But…but if you go off to wherever you’re going, that…that’s gonna be pretty dangerous for you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Maou admitted. “Could be.”
“I doubt it would be as safe as your typical holiday in Japan,” Suzuno added.
Rika sized both of them up. “So,” she began, choosing her words carefully, “if Emi’s really from this different world…something that isn’t Japan…then, like, she’s been gone from there a pretty long time, hasn’t she? Is… Is she all right? It can’t be all that safe for her there either, right?”
“““““…Ah.”””””
Something about the question made Maou, Chiho, Suzuno, even Urushihara in the closet realize something all at once.
“Wh-what?”
“…Okay, so this might sound kinda cold, laying it out for you like this…but if you’re asking whether Emi’s hurt or her life’s in danger or whatever, then, um, I don’t think we need to worry about that, no.”
“Huh?”
Maou found himself struggling to articulate his intentions.
“…So Emi… She’s strong—like, really, really strong. I mean, beyond any scale built around the human race.”
“Yeah,” a crestfallen Chiho added. “She said she broke her leg when she saved me once, but looking back, it sure healed up pretty fast…”
“I suppose,” Suzuno said, “we are all struggling to explain this, Rika, in a way you could swallow.”
“Dude, it’s easy,” the voice in the closet countered. “If she’s back in Ente Isla, you couldn’t hurt Yusa with a knife, or a gun, or even if you shot her with a tank round at point-blank range.”
“That’s totally a comic-book superhero!” Rika exclaimed. She had to. But Maou coolly
accepted it.
“Yeah, that’s a pretty normal reaction. But look at it the opposite way: All that strength, and Emi still hasn’t come back. That’s a problem. If it’s not something physical keeping her over there, then it could be something emotional, and that’s what I’m more worried about.”
“Huh?”
“Oh?”
“Mm?”
“Uh?”
Something about Maou’s reply caught Chiho, Suzuno, and Urushihara off guard. Maou grunted in reply, surprised at this.
“Wh-what, guys? Did I say something weird?”
“…You haven’t realized?”
“…Guess not, dude.”
“Maou… You really are such a kind person, aren’t you? I’m glad to see that.”
“Wh-what? Come on, guys!”
“Um, hello…?”
Maou was honestly clueless. Rika, even more so.
““Oh, nothing,”” Urushihara and Suzuno said in unison.
“Eh-heh-heh,” Chiho added as she gave Maou a doting look.
The halfhearted reaction unnerved Maou more than a little, but he kept his eyes on Rika.
“Uh, anyway, what I’m trying to say is that, sure, Emi can take a tank round and brush it off like it’s nothing, but she’s still human. If you can’t overpower someone, you can take advantage of their feelings, or their connections, instead, right? If something’s keeping Emi down, I think that might be it. And maybe you know this already, but due to assorted reasons, Alas Ramus is together with her right now. We gotta think about her safety, too. It might look to you like we’re being pretty chill about all this, but we really need to take the time here to assess the situation and make the preparations we need.”
“Oh.” Rika brought a hand to her forehead. “Y’know, it’s getting kinda hard for me to grasp the scale of all this…”
“So what’s it gonna be? I guess we’ve already revealed a lot, but are you gonna cut yourself off from us, or…?”
“Like I said, I gotta hear the whole thing before I decide on that.”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 9 Page 3