“I’ll…pass on that, thanks.”
Chiho internally questioned what kind of recruitment standards Ashiya had if he was willing to appoint her to the top command in exchange for taking a walk down the baby aisle in the supermarket. It unsettled her slightly.
“Besides, all I did was use some of the money Maou gave me to shop for a few of the things you need. Oh, lemme give you the change and receipt. Could you give this to Maou for me?”
“…Yes. Yes, I most certainly shall. I, Ashiya, stake my very life upon it…!”
Chiho smiled a bit as Ashiya fulfilled his blood promise and accepted the change.
“It was kind of fun, too, so…”
She looked toward Alas Ramus, still sound asleep.
“My cousin on my dad’s side got married, and he’s already had a kid. Whenever I come to visit, I like helping out with him while we’re playing around together. His wife taught me a lot about this kind of thing while we chatted.”
“I…see! Is that how you learned…?”
“Yeah. That, and…um…”
Just as she concluded her trip down memory lane, Chiho suddenly grabbed her left hand, her cheeks glowing red as she hesitated to continue.
“And I… I thought…someday, with……Maou………I wouldn’t mind that…”
“Um, Ms. Sasaki?”
“Huh? Oh, uh, um, um, never mind never mind never…!”
She flailed her hands and shook her head, her face bright red. Luckily, she noticed something that gave her an opportunity to rapidly change the subject.
“Oh, but did Urushihara go somewhere?”
Urushihara, the consummate listless lout, the resident money drain in Devil’s Castle, the angel who fell both from the heavens and commonly accepted standards of cleanliness, was nowhere to be seen.
That, and the desk he was always found crouched over was gone, along with the laptop computer that rested on top of it.
“He didn’t…escape from you, did he?”
Anyone who knew Urushihara would never imagine the man finding a job, or going out shopping, or making any other positive move with his life. Besides, his criminal past meant he was still in no position to walk around his surroundings in broad daylight.
“Pfft… If he had the guts to attempt something like that, do you think I would be as exhausted as I am?”
Ashiya’s temple twitched in time with the edge of his lips. He let out a deep, pensive sigh.
“…As I am sure you could imagine, Ms. Sasaki, the volume and frequency of Alas Ramus’s crying overnight was beyond anything we could have imagined.”
With a newborn infant, being up and wailing half of the night was just part of the package. But for a child who could speak and understand her surroundings to some extent, outbursts like that represented a demand for some particular need.
Family needs forced Chiho to return home that evening. She had no idea what transpired after that.
Judging by the extent of Ashiya’s fatigue, it was hard for her to remain optimistic.
It gave Chiho a chance to recall everything she did witness before she had to leave.
For her (apparent) age, Alas Ramus was picking up on language remarkably rapidly.
That much was clear between “Daddy is Satan” and her fingering Emi as the other side of the couple.
But Emi, after regaining control of her rational thoughts, fervently attempted to prove her innocence, just as Maou had denied everything.
Despite the initial chaos, the other four people in the room never truly thought there was something going on between Maou and Emi. The Hero and the Devil King were like oil and water. Two identical poles on a pair of magnets. They couldn’t…interact, not in the least bit. Alas Ramus’s age level made that particularly and abundantly clear, and more to the point, neither party had any recollection of the events that would’ve been required. It would have led to utter chagrin if they did.
Still, it was only natural that after having been turned away by both of her certified parents, Alas Ramus plunged into a fiery, cacophonous crying fit.
Maou, still bewildered to the core, tried his best to keep the girl serene.
“Hey… Hey, calm down, Alas Ramus. Your mommy and daddy are right here, all right? Me, and that girl over there.”
“Erraaggghhhhh! Satan, Daddyyyyaaahhhh!!”
She was crying and screaming simultaneously out of her tiny mouth, creating a noise akin to the shrieking of hell.
“Oh, man… Hey, what’re we gonna do about this?”
“……”
“Hey, Emi…”
“……”
“…Hey!”
“Agh!!”
Maou clapped her hands in front of Emi’s confused, downtrodden face.
Surprised, she fell to the floor, almost into Suzuno’s hands.
“Mwaaaammmmiiiiieeeee!!”
Alas Ramus, face covered in tears and snot, chose this moment to fly into her arms, shouting.
It sounded like the guttural groan of some enraged beast, but she appeared to be saying “Mommy” as she clung to her.
With no escape in sight, Emi pulled the child upward.
“Weeaaaaannnnngggghhhh!!”
“Whoa, hey, uh…”
With a thunk, she thudded into Emi’s arms. She was heavier than she anticipated.
To a Hero, a crying child seeking companionship was someone who required protection at once.
But this girl? A girl saying Emi was her mother? Emi, elbows bent oddly as she attempted to wrangle the ball of forlorn rage in her arms, had no way to deal with this unimaginable situation.
“What am I supposed to do about this?! …Ah!”
Emi, at her wit’s end, turned her eyes upward.
“…Don’t just stare at me like that!”
There she found the rest of the group watching her with every fiber of their bodies, on the edge of their figurative seats, waiting to see what happened next.
“Uggghh… You people haven’t forgotten already, have you? This child stopped my holy sword without a scratch. She can’t be any regular kind of baby, all right?”
“Yes, Emilia, but stating the obvious will do nothing to improve our lot. Think of this child, this mere babe, seeking out the only mother she knows in life.”
“Bell! Quit lecturing me like an advice columnist! This is your problem, too!”
“Weeeaaaannnnhhh!!”
“You should be happy for this, Yusa! I almost wish I could take your place, even!”
“Yeah, I’m sure, Chiho! Probably for different reasons, too, am I right?!”
“Mrraaaammmmiiieeee!!”
“I told you, I’m not your mommy or anything… Please…”
Signs of resignation began to flash across Emi’s face as she slowly, gingerly, put her hands on Alas Ramus’s shoulders.
For now at least, just to calm her down, she tried lifting her into her arms…and found her much lighter than she imagined, this time.
“……”
It was honestly a shock, how heavy she felt when she jumped on her. And now this.
Her skin and body frame were soft, so soft that the slightest application of force seemed enough to snap her apart. The memory of Emi’s sword meeting its match flew away from her mind as she timidly lifted Alas Ramus. The child latched on to Emi’s chest and turned her face upward.
“……”
Emi looked downward, now fully defeated. A silvery bridge of snot arched between Alas Ramus’s nose and Emi’s shirt, glistening in the light.
“Ngh…snif… Mommeee!”
Even as she quivered and cried, her large eyes sought out Emi’s face, pleading in their young, immature, begging way for protection.
“O-okay, okay… Ugh, what am I gonna do with you…?”
Emi, thoroughly beaten down, gave Alas Ramus her first true full-body hug.
The girl placed her chin on Emi’s shoulder as she clung tightly to her neck and shoulders, the baby fat on her arms
soft against her body.
“Ennghh… Mommy…uwahhh…”
The sobs wrung themselves out into Emi’s ear as serenity returned to her face.
It was cute. Less than welcome, but cute. But unwelcome. That was Emi’s honest take.
She rubbed Alas Ramus’s yellow dress calmingly as her eyes turned to Maou.
“So…what’re we gonna do now?”
“What? I dunno, what are we gonna do?”
“I asked first!”
“Not that it matters, but you sure give a mean hug, you know that?”
“…You realize that’s just tightening the noose around my neck, right?”
“Hey, uh, if I could ask a question, how come that girl knew Maou was Satan?”
Urushihara gauged Maou and Alas Ramus.
“I mean, I’m one thing, but Maou as a human looks pretty different from his demon days.”
“Don’t ask me. She smelled my hand just now, but maybe there’s something about that only she could tell, or something.”
“Dude, the only thing she could’ve smelled from your hand was MgRonald fry oil.”
“So what? That smells great!”
It was not exactly the retort Urushihara expected.
“…But, man, I guess we’re stuck with this, huh?”
As he spoke, looking at Alas Ramus, Maou’s face suddenly grew glum.
She was almost out of Emi’s arms before wriggling back into position, grabbing on to her neck. Emi offered Alas support from the bottom in response.
“I know!”
Chiho raised her hand.
“This must be like imprinting, right? She must think Maou and Yusa are her parents because those are the first people she saw.”
Maou shook his head in response.
“It looked kinda that way, yeah, but she wouldn’t have instinctively known my name, too. She said ‘Satan,’ and I know that apple wasn’t around to hear that. Or did she?”
“Oh…guess not.”
“I mean, Satan is a pretty common name to give a demon where I come from, but she just plopped right down here and called me Satan. I kinda doubt she’s referring to anyone else.”
“So…so do you have any recollection of Alas Ramus at all, then, Maou?!”
“Chi, Chi—this isn’t a custody battle.”
Chiho’s sudden obstinacy wore on Maou. Suzuno prompted him to continue.
“It strikes my curiosity to hear that Satan is a common name in the demon realms…but what are you trying to say?”
He nodded in response.
“Well, here’s the simplest theory. Somebody did up Alas Ramus into that protective apple thing and sent her over to me. And…”
“…And whether that somebody’s friend or foe, we should probably expect a visit soon. Right?”
Emi, still holding the toddler, gave Maou a suitably stern look.
“Yep. Pretty much. And I hate to say it, but you’re probably involved in this as much as I am, too. Yet again. No way that girl’s got any demon in her.”
“…Thanks for reminding me. I feel bad for Chiho alone, though…getting her involved in all of this.”
“Don’t say ‘alone.’ How ’bout expanding that to us, huh?”
“W-wait, what do you mean? I don’t get what you mean by ‘Yusa’s probably involved.’”
Emi, in response to the worried Chiho, looked at her right hand, which was currently embracing their tiny, otherworldly visitor.
“This kid stopped my sword. She reacted to me when I had my holy sword out. That much is all I need to know. You remember how Sariel wanted his hands on my sword, Chiho.”
It seemed hard to believe, but the archangel Sariel kidnapped both Chiho and Emi as part of his attack just a few days previous. He attempted to use his Evil Eye of the Fallen to all but rip the sword out of her body.
“Sariel never said why he wanted the holy sword so badly. And no way am I gonna let him have it—not as long as this penniless Devil King lives and breathes. And now, with all those questions still unanswered, we have this kid who could stop a holy sword. It’d be crazy to think that wasn’t related somehow.”
“Hey, stop weaving little slams against me into your long-winded diatribes, all right?”
Emi, ignoring Maou’s observation, turned to Chiho.
“Oh, speaking of which, how’s Sariel been the past few days?”
“He’s gaining a lot of weight.”
Her reply was to the point, certainly.
“Huh?”
“Well, I mean, he’s going to MgRonald multiple times a day so he can see Ms. Kisaki. And he orders a supersize combo every time! I can totally tell Ms. Kisaki’s just acting nice ’cause he’s helping her reach our sales targets. But anyway, you’d be amazed how much of a gut’s starting to show up after just a week.”
Sariel, his mission thwarted by the rebirth of the Devil King, had decided to take his cover story on Earth—as Mitsuki Sarue, head manager at the Sentucky Fried Chicken in front of the Hatagaya rail station—and make it his permanent gig.
Smitten at first sight with Mayumi Kisaki, manager at the nearby MgRonald and Maou’s direct boss, he had now completely forgotten about his mission, and the world of heaven itself. His new goal was to travel to MgRonald daily and make Kisaki his own.
Kisaki wasn’t there all the time, though, leading to some awkward encounters whenever Maou was supervising a shift. But Sariel was resolute. He was willing to take the fall from heaven, as he put it, to make his love for Kisaki a reality.
What was more, despite the rampage of just a week or so ago, Sariel was now almost eerily congenial toward Chiho and Maou. He must have surmised, and oh so correctly, too, that the entire crew was reporting every move to Kisaki.
“…Well. I don’t know if that slopeheaded angel is involved with this or not, but if we get any more trouble, the farther away he is from it, the better. That guy routinely gets in my way, after all.”
“I…I doubt that Sariel is directly related to Alas Ramus, regardless of his past behavior.”
It was Suzuno who interjected.
“He most certainly did not use up his holy magic powers in our previous battle. He remains here by his own free will. If he and Alas Ramus were aware of each other, he would have come to us at once.”
The observation struck a nerve. Unprompted, Urushihara turned on his surveillance webcam, Chiho peeked out the kitchen window to the outside hallway, and Ashiya shot a quick look out the front door.
“Besides, ‘Alas Ramus’ means nothing in the heavenly tongues. It is human—the very language spoken in Ente Isla.”
“Oh?”
“Alas means ‘wing.’ Ramus means ‘branch.’ Both are terms from Centurient, a language used only in Isla Centurum.”
Centurient, literally the “central trade” language, was an international auxiliary tongue created to encourage common standards and trade in Isla Centurum, the central city that linked trade routes from every direction of Ente Isla.
The language was spoken chiefly by politicians, high-level Church clerics, and merchants involved with international trade, but—in theory, at least—it was a common language that would make one understood across the entirety of the world.
“This tells me that there is a set of parents somewhere in Ente Isla, a mother and father who loved their child enough to give her such a deeply meaningful name. Whether they are human or angel, I cannot say. I sincerely doubt she is demonic in origin, but…”
But who named her that, and for what purpose? There was no way to tell. Maou looked on sternly.
“So how ’bout I summarize everything we know? We’ve got this kid, Alas Ramus, whom we know nothing about. And we’ve got no way to respond. We just have to wait for this friend, or foe, or whomever to show up.”
Emi and Suzuno listened on, a rarity when Maou was speaking. Urushihara picked up where he left off.
“Yeah, so basically, that brings us back to the first problem. Who’s gonna take care of
the girl?”
For a moment, the thudding truth made all sound, even the whine of the cicadas outside, disappear from Devil’s Castle.
“Did she fall asleep? She’s been pretty quiet.”
Maou noticed Alas Ramus’s head, still resting on Emi’s shoulder.
“…I just hope this little girl isn’t wrapped up in some kind of weird conspiracy.”
With a sigh, Emi patted her back as she rested.
“Kinda too bad, though, huh? If it weren’t for that weird apple shell, she’d just be a normal baby. Wouldn’t you, huh?” Leaning down, Maou lightly pinched one of her cheeks.
Emi winced in dread.
“Don’t do that! We just got her asleep.”
He pulled his arm back as Chiho watched on. It dawned on her that this was looking awfully like the birth of a fully fledged family unit.
“Aww, you really got it good, Yusa…”
It was a pleasant image to behold, but the jealousy bubbling within her refused to stay bottled up. Her cheeks puffed up in possessive rage.
“Chiho, Chiho, your feelings are painted on your face!”
Suzuno managed to pull her from the brink just in time.
Emi, keeping her distance from Maou (who seemed to enjoy playing the weird uncle in this family all of a sudden), sighed again.
“Well, I can’t take her in. I’m a single woman with a job. I can’t watch over her all day.”
“Perhaps, but having another mouth to feed within Devil’s Castle will stretch our finances to bursting. Plus, as three men under one roof, I feel we are ill-suited for the business of child rearing.”
Ashiya fired back briskly. They were three men in a tiny AC-less room, one of whom did little besides eat them out of house and home. It couldn’t have been a less suitable place for an infant to live.
Chiho looked as apologetic as Emi.
“I’m sorry… I really want to help you out, but I don’t know how I could get my mom and dad on my side.”
“There is no need to feel tormented, Chiho. This, after all, is an Ente Isla matter.”
Suzuno placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“Seeing a young, abandoned child go from home to home through no fault of her own would be difficult indeed to stomach. I would certainly not mind taking her in. I am not particularly employed at the moment…and I have experience with great numbers of children from the past.”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 3 Page 7