“Yes…but…”
Ashiya was in a deep mental conflict with himself.
Part of him agreed to his master’s proposal. He wanted to give his assent, if he could. But their budget, and the presence of several alternative tools, dragged at his mind.
Urushihara put Ashiya’s anguish into words for him: “We’ll have to pay the license fee to MHK, too…”
“…All right. Let me propose you this, my liege.” Ashiya lifted his pained countenance upward. “I am in complete agreement with your feelings, but our budget presents us with certain very real obstacles. So perhaps we could begin by conducting a marketplace investigation.”
“Investigation?”
“First, we should visit the real estate agent to see how the new antenna affects whatever sort of license fee we would have to pay. If it falls upon us as tenants to pay the fee to MHK, I fear this simply will not work.”
“Everything except the utilities are included in my place, but…”
“Do not interject with your babbling, Emilia! I truly do not want to buy this, deep down!”
“That’s kind of mean of you, isn’t it, Ashiya?”
Maou and Urushihara just nodded, well used to Ashiya’s occasional outbursts whenever money was the topic.
“But if we are lucky enough to have the MHK fee included, and if our rent does not increase as a result, we can then visit an electronics store to examine prices and features. I understand that flat-screen digital televisions are notably more expensive than their analog counterparts. If the baseline prices are too high for us, then once again, I fear it will not work out.”
“Jeez, that’s rough…”
“Of course it is! All three of us were supposed to be working at that snack bar for half of August! And, yes, we were remunerated well—more than half a month of your MgRonald wages—but we are not flush enough that we can lavish money on expensive home appliances on a mere whim!”
Ashiya had his reasons for playing the spoiler so much: With their jobs at Ohguro-ya gone, Maou was de facto jobless until the remodeling work at the Hatagaya-station MgRonald was complete.
The three great demons were safe from the specter of homelessness, but considering what they could expect in wages next month, Ashiya was hell-bent on surviving the rest of August with the 150,000 yen the three of them had earned for their time at Ohguro-ya.
Maou’s wages for July would be deposited in their checking account on the twenty-fifth, of course, but it was not the kind of payday that easily allowed for purchasing a TV all by itself.
“Yeah, but I think the smaller ones go for pretty cheap these days, no? If you don’t care about the brand, I don’t think you’ll have to pay too much.”
“Ms. Sasaki… Please…”
Ashiya, capable of hurling a constant stream of hatred at Emi, was far weaker against Chiho.
“…?”
Emi, meanwhile, looked disbelievingly at Chiho, wondering why she said that all of a sudden.
Just a moment ago, Ashiya shot down her attempt to advocate for the TV purchase. She didn’t expect Chiho to take up the banner again.
“Well, judging by Emi and Chiho, I think we have a pretty decent chance of buying one. So, Ashiya, assuming we clear the MHK and rent hurdles, how much you think we can afford?”
Ashiya needed little time to respond.
“Considering what we made at Ohguro-ya, I can take ten thousand yen from each of our wages. So, thirty thousand yen. Maybe thirty-five thousand. No more than that.”
“Whoa, dude! That’s my money you’re taking!”
Urushihara blurted out his honest surprise at the demon’s calculation. Ashiya fired back, his face like the mask of some mythical monster.
“I have every right to garnish your entire paycheck to make good for all the wasteful spending you’ve done, you!”
“Heh-heh-heh! Thirty-five thousand! You said thirty-five thousand, didn’t you?”
Maou, meanwhile, had a cheese-eating grin on his face.
“Ashiyaaaaa, don’t you think you’re forgetting something?”
“Mm? What?”
Ashiya involuntarily shuddered at Maou’s smile, now beyond cheese-eating and venturing into the realm of demented.
Maou shot a finger toward the refrigerator, grin still plastered on his face.
“Where’d we buy that fridge? Where’d we buy the washer outside?”
“The fridge…?”
The two most expensive items in Devil’s Castle. Maou had blown through nearly all of his savings to buy them earlier in the year.
Both quite a bit more budget friendly than what Suzuno had in her own room. But still.
“That…that was at the Socket City in Shinjuku, my liege… Ahh!”
It finally dawned on Ashiya.
As he watched, Maou produced a plastic wallet from somewhere and ripped open the Velcro keeping it shut.
Then, as if trying to make this as mentally tortuous for Ashiya as possible, he slowly, dramatically removed a silver card from it.
“Finally noticed, huh?”
Like a well-honed sword, the card glinted in the air as Maou thrust it at Ashiya’s face.
There was the familiar Socket City logo, the phrase POINT CARD below it. At the bottom. 6239 POINTS was printed over the silver film.
“This… How?!”
Ashiya found himself floored, literally brought down to tatami-mat level by the unexpected shock.
“You wanna know how we made it this far without using any of these points, right? I can see it on your face, man! You wanna know?! Well, look around you! Count all the consumable goods we have that you’d buy at an electronics store!”
When it came to consumable goods you’d buy at an electronics store, lighting and batteries were usually the first to come to mind.
But Devil’s Castle was illuminated by fluorescent lighting, with no other lights besides the bulbs in the bathroom and by the front door. The former bulb had burned out once, but otherwise, nothing since Maou bought the fridge and washer.
The only thing around the Devil’s King domain that used replaceable batteries was their emergency flashlight. Urushihara’s old computer, and the digital camera–printer combo Maou used to record every aspect of Alas Ramus’s life, were purchased on different occasions at discount shops in Akihabara, meaning no Socket City points were ever sacrificed.
The printer was also old enough that not even the larger stores bothered to carry official ink cartridges any longer. They replaced the red cartridge once after tracking down an off-brand version.
Some of the big-box electronic shops also carried food and other household items, but never at much of a discount. It was never worth traveling all the way to Shinjuku for that, considering all the deals they could find locally in Sasazuka.
So, throughout the whole summer, the only thing they used these points for so far was a single lightbulb.
“Thirty-five thousand yen?! Hah! Don’t make me laugh! Add these points in, and we can raise that limit all the way up to 41,239 yen! And if we have forty thousand, we don’t even have to get the crappiest one they got, either!”
“In…incredible!!”
“Bah-hah-hah-hah! You miss one hundred percent of the shots that you don’t take, Ashiya! That’s one more obstacle between us and a TV out of the picture! Now I’m really looking forward to visiting the real estate guy!”
“Heh…heh… Ha-ha-ha! But, Your Demonic Highness, failure to plan is planning to fail! There is no guarantee that our rental contract won’t strike a lethal blow upon all of us! As long as there remains even a slim chance of them pinning the license fees on us, you promised we would drop this entire line of thinking, remember?! Then the points mean nothing! Nothing! Prepare yourself for a hearty meal of crow and humble pie shortly, my liege!”
“You’re on! I’m gonna march right over to the real estate office right now and get this show on the road!”
“Very good, Your Demonic Highness! I would v
ery much like to see your face when you realize the folly of ignoring the commonsense pleas of your humble servants!!”
The others in the room might as well have excused themselves out while the Devil King and his Great Demon General bickered at each other about a point card.
“…I’m sorry. I’m ashamed of these guys, too.”
All Emi and Suzuno could do was nod their agreement to Urushihara.
But Chiho watched Maou and Ashiya’s somewhat misguided arguing intently, an oddly serene smile on her face. “You wanted a TV that much, huh, Maou?”
Emi shrugged, exasperated. “Yeah, well, he mentioned he goes to movies and stuff, so he must’ve been interested in one for a while…”
Suzuno, still living quite comfortably thanks to her travel prep, had other things in mind:
“…Hmm. Perhaps I could consider one of my own, if the fancy strikes me.”
With the completely clueless and arguably witless Maou and Ashiya off to the real estate office and all of the major moving work complete, Emi and Chiho said their good-byes and left the apartment.
“It’s pretty nice, though, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
The pair struck up a conversation along the warm summer path.
“I mean, all of them making it back to Sasazuka, despite everything,” Chiho continued. “Maou and Suzuno and everyone having their apartments all fixed up. Everything feels kind of normal again.”
“Normal, huh…?” Emi grumbled. “I think I’m starting to lose my grasp of what ‘normal’ even means any longer.”
“I think it’s nice, too, how Maou and Suzuno both wanna get a TV.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
Suzuno was one matter, but having another appliance in Devil’s Castle indicated that, at long last, they had a little breathing room.
And having a little breathing room was all the reason Emi had to feel on edge.
They needed to team up just to carry a refrigerator a little way, and Emi had just watched them yelling about point cards like a pair of elderly retirees. But they were still arch-demons, tyrants who once made an entire world shudder in fear.
And—as she continued rolling the thought around her mind—even if they did have a little more breathing room, there had to be oodles more things they needed to buy ahead of a television.
Emi had learned just other the day that during those few days Alas Ramus was at Devil’s Castle, they were having her sleep on the bare tatami-mat floor with a rolled-up towel for a pillow. She gave all the demons a good slap on the head for that.
“I mean, now that Ohguro-ya’s gone, they’re jobless, right?” Emi protested. “But they’re still acting like that they have a bunch of money to spare.”
“I guess so,” Chiho admitted. “Our location doesn’t reopen until the fifteenth, either…”
MgRonald wouldn’t open for over a week. It was a tad difficult to imagine Maou and Ashiya vegging out in front of the TV that whole time. Urushihara, sure, but not the other two.
“But if I know Maou, I’d say he’s got something in mind. There’s still a lot of day labor–type stuff out there.”
“Hmm… Maybe.”
If Maou had any great ideas in motion right now, that made Ashiya’s opposition all the more bizarre. Ashiya had a habit of playing the “we’re so, so poor” card too often, but he was usually pretty tolerant when it came to sensible investments.
Emi arched her eyebrows upward. “Well, it’s fine by me. Not like it’s my problem if they spend themselves into a hole.”
There’s no need at all for me to worry about their financial situation. Why am I going on as if I care about what happens to the Devil’s Castle?
Maou mentioned several good points when he defended the TV purchase, but it wasn’t like a TV was a perfect font of constantly useful information.
To Emi’s mind, a lot of it was just celebrities she’d never heard of chatting with each other, or comedy bits that she hadn’t lived in Japan long enough to understand. Or home-shopping shows selling the kind of junk you only see in home-shopping shows and nowhere else. Gossip about this or that big name that had absolutely no bearing on your own life at all. Programs that Emi had no idea what the creators were trying to say to the world were all over the airwaves, often across every channel at the same time.
That was just the take of one alien visitor, of course, and the samurai dramas she preferred were no less time wasters than any other show format. But it wasn’t like obtaining a TV was a meaningful step in the demons’ plans for world domination.
Chiho, seeing all this complex thought written clearly on Emi’s face, chuckled to herself and opted to reel in the conversation a little.
“…But either way, if Maou and Suzuno are buying TVs, I guess that means they’re staying in Japan for a while, huh?”
“What do you mean?” Emi tilted her head a little, not understanding what she was getting at.
“You saw all those demon guys at Choshi,” Chiho began.
“Demon guys” made them sound friendlier than they deserved, but Emi nodded regardless.
“I was kinda scared that everyone would go back to Ente Isla because of that,” Chiho continued. “If they hadn’t shown up offshore like that… Like, if it was in the middle of Shinjuku instead—that would have been a huge disaster. At the time, I thought to myself, what if you and Maou had said, ‘We can’t put all this burden on Japan anymore!’ and took off?”
“I wasn’t not thinking that…”
The words fell from Emi’s lips. Chiho flashed a carefree smile.
“I don’t think a TV’s something you buy just because it’s cheap. You buy one because you’re expecting to use it for a while to come. So if they want one, I just thought that meant that you’re all gonna be in Japan for the foreseeable future.”
“Well, I appreciate the warm welcome, but aren’t you afraid at all?”
Emi had to ask.
“You’ve thought about it, right? If things ever go south, so to speak, all these angels and people and demons… We won’t be afraid to hurt this country if we have to. You’ve already faced death once, Chiho.”
Thanks to a human, not a demon, and one of Emi’s former companions, to boot. She still felt guilty about that.
“Mmm… I’m not all that afraid now. It was kind of a shock at first, but you and Maou have always been there to protect me, so…”
Whether she understood Emi’s feelings or not, Chiho’s reply was surprisingly straightforward.
“I don’t know very much about Ente Isla, but both of you—the strongest human in that world, and the strongest demon anywhere—are protecting me. It’d be kinda rude if that didn’t put my mind at ease.”
“Oh… I see.”
Logically, she was right. Chiho was about the only girl in the universe to enjoy close ties with both the Hero and Devil King. There were elderly clerics in the Church who could only dream of such powerful connections.
“…And I haven’t forgotten, of course, that you and Suzuno want to defeat Maou at the end of it. I know you could never forgive those guys for what they did to Ente Isla. So I’m always thinking about it. Thinking about how I can take all these people who’re really dear to me and have them all be happy.”
“Can’t be done.”
“You didn’t need to reply that fast…”
Chiho gave Emi a playful scowl. She knew to expect that from her; Emi made her outlook clear enough on a regular basis.
Chiho turned her eyes to the large shoulder bag the other girl was holding. “I know this is just a personal request and I don’t really have any right to ask you this or anything, but can I count on you guys for Alas Ramus, at least?”
“…That is an issue, I’ll grant you that.” Emi shrugged, reluctant to discuss the topic.
“Is she still asleep?”
“Yeah. If she doesn’t get up, maybe I should just take the train home before I bring her out.”
Alas Ramus was stil
l fused with Emi as she enjoyed her afternoon nap.
That was the rule Emi stuck to outside of the nighttime hours. That way, she didn’t have to worry about the stifling summer heat inside Villa Rosa Sasazuka.
Still, she always carried diapers, water, a sippy cup, and a bunch of other gear in her shoulder bag. The whole “mother” thing was starting to seem familiar, even normal to her.
“It’s kind of a different thing, now that she’s fused with my holy sword. If she still thinks the Devil King’s her dad, I can’t really fight him with my sword. I can’t have her kill her own father like that. But…I know how children help bind the family together and stuff, but I gotta draw the line somewhere, you know?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
Chiho bowed a bit to apologize for bringing it up.
“…That, and I’m not really in a position to go back home right now anyway. As long as the Devil King doesn’t get bitchy about the TV and decide to return to Ente Isla, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Not in a position to? You?”
This was the first Chiho had heard about this, but Emi shook her head softly. Chiho opted not to pursue it further, and the pair continued on in silence until they reached Sasazuka station.
“Well, guess I’m off.”
Emi gave Chiho a light wave as she approached the turnstile.
But then her eyes widened as a lightbulb went off in her mind.
“I’m sorry, Chiho, can you wait there a second?”
She made a beeline for a nearby instant-photo booth. Chiho could guess why—and, in a few moments, Emi emerged with a sheepish grin and a stretching Alas Ramus.
“She insisted on saying good-bye to her big sister.”
“Nffhh…aye-bye, Chi-sis…”
Her pronunciation wasn’t quite all there this early on from her nap, but she lifted her heavy eyelids high and waved a pudgy hand at Chiho.
The sight made Chiho relax her facial muscles.
“Bye-bye, Alas Ramus! Let’s play together again soon, okay?”
“Mnh… Let’s go splish-splash again…”
“Sure! Maybe we can all go to the pool together.”
“…ooofgh…”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 5 Page 4