“R-right!”
Even in his helter-skelter state, Maou faithfully followed Emi’s orders, running off in search of a vending machine.
“Is she all right?”
Suddenly, someone called to Emi, Alas Ramus still in her hands.
Looking up, Emi saw a fetching young woman standing before her, clad in a long white dress and a broad-rimmed white hat.
Her eyes, which seemed to absorb everything they saw, fell upon Emi and Alas Ramus.
“Uh, yeah, she’s fine. I don’t think it’s heat exhaustion, so she must have an upset stomach or something…”
“…Mommy?”
Suddenly, Alas Ramus—oblivious until now to Emi’s voice—came back to attention.
Emi brightened up as she peered into her face.
“I’m right here. Are you okay?”
“Uh-huh…”
Her face didn’t appear flushed, but the voice indicated she wasn’t all quite there. Emi tried to hide her forehead, pretending to wipe her head clear of sweat.
“May I have a second?”
Then, the girl in white knelt down to eye level, bringing her hand above Alas Ramus’s head.
“Wh-what’re you doing?”
“Sshh. This will take just a moment.”
There was nothing threatening to her voice, but Emi still fell silent as instructed. On the new girl’s ring finger, there was a ring embedded with a small stone.
For a moment, Emi noticed that it seemed to shine purple in the sunlight. Then:
“…Oo…ooh?!”
Out of nowhere, Alas Ramus picked herself up.
“Ngh? Ooh? Huh? Daddy?”
Squirming as if waking up from a bad dream, Alas Ramus swiveled her head around to gauge her surroundings.
To Emi, the biggest surprise was that her forehead—exposed to the world after the sudden motion knocked the hat off her head—was back to normal, the moon mark wholly disappeared.
“Ah, Mommy—wpph!”
Moving quickly, Emi picked Alas Ramus up, keeping her safely to the rear as she rose to face the girl in white.
“There’s no need to be so distrustful. I am not your enemy.”
The girl, perfectly composed, brushed her skirt away and smiled.
“Nor am I the enemy of this child, either… You have done well to keep Alas Ramus safe.”
“!!”
Emi never voiced the name in front of this girl.
“How did you know that…?”
The woman smiled serenely.
“How could I not? It is a very important name to me.”
Emi’s heart skipped a beat as she watched her.
The conversation with Emeralda three days ago flashed across her mind.
Obviously she was indicating that she knew Alas Ramus.
Was this woman…?
Emi felt a warmth quite different from the summer heat, but the smiling woman suddenly melted into a serious-minded glare.
“You need to be careful. They’ve probably noticed the Yesod fragment in that girl’s forehead now. The enemy will make their appearance soon. The Heavenly Regiment in Gabriel’s command are on the move.”
“Yesod…fragment? Who’s Gabriel…? Wait. Are you—”
“Hey! Emi! I got some stuff!”
The moment the enraptured Emi attempted to ask the fateful question, Maou thundered in, bearing a bottle of water and a can of juice.
Emi’s attention was distracted for just a moment, when:
“Mommy…”
“!!”
The girl in white was gone.
It was completely without warning, like she had been talking to a daydream.
“Good thing there was a whole wall of vending machines nearby. Here… Huh? Oh, did Alas Ramus wake up?”
“Hi, Daddy!”
“Oh, uh, hey. Well, jeez, that wound up being a lot of nothing, huh? I mean, great, but… Hey, what happened, little lady?”
“Whaaa?”
“Um… Ah, never mind. But hey, Emi, what’s—urphh!”
“Why can’t you ever see what’s going on? You never do! Never, never, never!”
“Wh-what?! What did I ever do?! Why’d you have to punch me like that?”
“Mommy’s scaaaary!”
“Ooh! There he is! That’s him over there!”
“Hee-hee! Good job, Chiho! There’s the power of love, huh?”
“Aw, stop messing around like that!”
“Ughh… You must have a pretty wimpy stomach, Ashiya. Who ever heard of someone getting sick on olive oil? It took a long time finding you, you know.”
“M-my apologies…”
Thanks to Ashiya’s stomach proving overly sensitive to the olive oil from the Italian restaurant they dined at, Chiho and her friends had lost sight of Maou, Emi, and Alas Ramus.
Failing to spot them among the crowd leaving the stage show, they decided to walk around the park grounds for a little while. Soon, Chiho noticed Emi from behind, Alas Ramus in her hands, all but dragging Maou as she walked.
They were headed for the Tokyo Eye, the gigantic Ferris wheel that jutted high above the park.
“Are they going on the Ferris wheel? Emi looks like she’s dead set on it, but…”
“It must get pretty hot on that thing this time of year.”
“Oh, all the gondolas on that Ferris wheel are air-conditioned. As long as you’ve got sunscreen on, it’s pretty comfy.”
“H-how wastefully luxurious!”
Ashiya proved typically quick to criticize any AC usage that didn’t involve his permission.
“But you have to wonder… Why’s Emi so eager to drag Maou into an enclosed room suspended in the air, hmm?”
“Suzuki!!”
“Jeez, I’m just joking, Chiho! Boy, you can look really scary when you want to, huh?”
Knowing full well that Chiho was aware it was a joke, Rika was just being a bitch.
“Well, you wanna follow them? I doubt we’ll see anything, but… Are you okay with that, Ashiya?”
“I think so…”
He nodded, arm raised upward, his face still a tad pale.
Given the intense heat and the sad state of his regular diet, eating a sumptuous Italian meal in an open-air café was enough to KO his stomach with one punch.
“Y’know, I don’t know what drove the both of you to do this, but I don’t think anything bad’s really happening, huh?”
Rika’s overly sunny observation, the result of her lacking a few pertinent points of knowledge, made Chiho and Ashiya exchange glances with each other.
“Hello there, and welcome to the Tokyo Eye Ferris…wheel…?”
The ticket attendant at the Ferris wheel entrance found herself groping for words at the sight of the young family before him, a cloud of black, ominous miasma hovering over their heads.
Perhaps ominous wasn’t the right term. The husband appeared downright frightened at the seething anger demonstrated by his wife, their two-year-old daughter seemingly unsure which side to take up with.
“Three!”
The wife presented three passes like a boxer throwing a jab. The attendant vigorously nodded and pointed forward.
“Right! Good afternoon! We’ll be glad to take a photo for you guys right over there! Then you can buy a print of your special day at that booth over there!! Feel free to take a look once you’re done on the wheel!!”
Another attendant stood near the gondola entrance, a large digital camera in hand, ready to sell a photo to them for the usual amusement park ripoff rate.
“I…I don’t really need one…”
“Oh, we’ll be glad to delete it if you aren’t happy with it, ma’am! If you could just stand over there… Good! Okay, if I could have Dad pick up that cute little girl and stand in the middle… Perfect! Oh, would you mind putting her balloons behind you a little?”
The attendant seemed oddly amped up for this dysfunctional family photo.
“Daddy, what’s that?”
Alas Ramus’s eyes set upon the camera in the employee’s hands.
“Hmm? Oh, that’s called a camera. They’ll use it to take your photo.”
“Photo?”
As gifted in the Japanese language as she was, she still had trouble with concepts that didn’t exist on Ente Isla.
“Uhh, you know, a picture… It’s a tool that can draw pictures with magic. Just stay still and look into that black, round thing the girl’s carrying.”
“Ohhh!”
Whether she understood that or not, Alas Ramus peered intently into the lens as her curiosity took over.
“Okay, can I have Mom look this way, please?”
“……”
Emi had been anxiously turned to the side up to this point. But, not wanting to act too contrarian around an innocent stranger, she made a token effort to readjust her pose.
“Greeeat! Okay, here we go! One, two, and…cheese! …Super! That was a nice picture! Come on back down here if you’d like to make a purchase later!”
Sent off by the oddly intense attendant, the trio finally boarded their gondola.
“…Ooh. Chilly.”
They were expecting a sauna inside the booth, but a blast of cold air emanated from behind the seats’ backrests, accompanied by some peppy background music. The seats were hard and bleacherlike, but it was surprisingly comfortable inside.
“Be careful with those balloons, okay? It’ll take about fifteen minutes to go around once. No smoking, eating, or drinking allowed inside the gondola. Have a great trip!”
The attendant quickly went over the basic rules before shutting the door.
“Ooh, they’re already on!”
Outside of Emi’s or Maou’s notice, Chiho, Rika, and Ashiya had just made it to the Ferris wheel ticket office.
“They’re gonna get away! Hurry!”
Pushed on by Rika, Ashiya and Chiho hurriedly threw some money into the ticket purchasing machine.
“Um, excuse me.”
“Huh?”
Someone suddenly called out from Chiho’s side.
Turning around, she found an older woman, a child young enough to be her grandson next to her, looking helplessly confused by the adjacent ticket machine.
“Do you have any idea how to work this machine?”
“Oh, sure. First, you put your money in here… This is a touch panel, so…”
Chiho was well aware by now that some of the older generation still had trouble following the concept of how a touch panel worked.
The money slot on this machine was a fair distance removed from the panel itself, and the screen offered little in the way of guidance, displaying nothing but a simple numeric keypad. User friendliness wasn’t a priority in this design.
“I don’t think there’s a children’s rate for this Ferris wheel, so they’ll both cost this much. So just push the number for how many tickets you want…”
Chiho was all but forced to take the woman step-by-step through the purchasing process.
Thanking her profusely, the woman headed for the Ferris wheel.
“Dahh! Oh, no!”
Then it struck Chiho. All this fervent instruction was costing the three of them time.
“……Huh?”
Then it struck Chiho again. The ticket booth and gondola entrance weren’t that large, and yet Ashiya and Rika were nowhere to be spotted.
“Huh? Huhhh?”
She stared upward in a daze, only to find her eyes meeting with Rika’s as her friend stared through the gondola window, face frozen in an awkward smile.
“Huhhhhhhh?”
“All right. Can we talk now?”
Maou, caged inside the small gondola, found no escape from the glare of Emi’s pinlike pupils. Her gaze, seeping between the helium balloons in Alas Ramus’s hands, was nothing short of terrifying.
“I should’ve known from the start you were acting fishy. Why did you come out and say that you’d take this girl? You hate dealing with annoying crap like that.”
“Oh, well, that…”
“And back when that moon thing appeared on her forehead, you acted like you knew what it was, didn’t you? Out with it! Everything! Right now!”
“Mommy! What’s that? That big thing?”
“Um… That’s the Tokyo Skytree.”
“Yeah. That’s where all the digital TV transmitters are. Thanks to that, Daddy has to pay for some stupid set-top box if he wants…”
“Don’t change the subject!”
The gondola swayed slightly at the shuddering impact of Emi’s voice.
Two gondolas behind, Rika and Ashiya were alone.
“Dehh… If we were just a little faster, we could see what was going on inside…”
They had successfully clambered into a gondola, but the booths were hardly see-through, and getting a clear vantage point on the gondola two places ahead was easier said than done.
“…………”
Rika sat opposite from Ashiya, eyes fixed downward around her feet.
Chiho must have gotten caught up in something. Rika thought she was with them, but the next thing she knew, she was alone with Ashiya.
“Is there something wrong, Ms. Suzuki?”
“Agh! Huh?!”
Rika, as loud and gregarious as she was a moment ago, was suddenly as quiet as a clam. Even Ashiya took notice.
“Uh, I, um, she, I’m sorry that—that I left Chiho, is all…”
“We were certainly in a great hurry, yes…”
Rika’s forced response was enough to put Ashiya’s mind at rest. With a sigh, he sat heavily on his seat.
“……!!”
The gondolas on the Ferris wheel weren’t exactly roomy by design. With someone as tall as Ashiya sitting down, it was unavoidable that they’d brush against each other with their knees or legs.
The sheer love for life Rika showed up to now was, in the end, something she could express mainly because Chiho was around to egg her on.
If a third party was there, touching bodies or being cramped in a tiny space was nothing that bothered her. But here, alone with a man in an enclosed area, was something she had never experienced before in her life.
Especially if the man was Ashiya.
When they met a week ago, in the midst of all the furor surrounding Emi and Suzuno, she didn’t think of him as much more than kind of an off-kilter young man. In the past several hours of activity together, that impression only deepened.
“Are you all right? Your face is a little red. Did you get sunburned?” Ashiya asked.
“T-too close!”
“Hmm?”
“Oh! Um. No. It’s fine, it’s fine! I guess that sunscreen sure doesn’t work as advertised, huh? Yep.” Rika flailed her arms in response, pulling herself as far back as humanly possible.
Ashiya, paying this act no particular mind, began taking in the view outside.
The attendant said one ride around the wheel would take fifteen minutes, but to Rika, the sheer embarrassment was something she questioned how long she could withstand.
Meanwhile Chiho, seated on a bench at the gondola entrance, was brooding over a can of chilled green tea labeled “Yo! Tea!”
“So, what?! Are you talking? Are you not talking?! You want to die?!” Emi demanded.
“Give me some more choices, man! You’re gonna be a bad influence on this kid!”
The we-have-ways-of-making-you-talk ultimatum continued in the lead gondola.
“I mean, c’mon, does it really matter? It’s not like I did anything. I’m just fine with being Alas Ramus’s dad, okay?”
“Maybe you are, but I’m not! Didn’t you see her?! That girl in the white dress, standing right in front of me? She talked about the Heavenly Regiment or something! If you want to stay on my good side, you better spit out everything you know, start to finish, right now!”
“See her? See who?! And since when was I ever on your good side?!”
“I’m not talking about you! I’m ta
lking about her!”
Emi’s eyes descended upon Alas Ramus, staring out the gondola window.
As the two of them watched the girl from behind, the gondola gradually reached its highest point on the wheel.
“…Someone gave it to me a long time ago.”
Maou sighed, resigned to his fate, his face a grimace.
“Back before I was Devil King… Really, I was just a snot-nosed little kid. Like, maybe I could’ve taken on a goblin.”
Emi, realizing that Maou was finally in the mood to talk, lowered her guard and sat down to listen.
“Back then…and I’m talking way before you were ever born…the demon realm was a real pile of crap. There were all these different roving tribes, and all it took was eye contact for them to start ripping one another apart. I was part of one of the weaker tribes—you could’ve blown us away with the flick of a finger. And one of them did. This huge, musclebound demon with a peanut for a brain annihilated us all by himself. He couldn’t cast any magic, but he didn’t need it. The first and last memory I have of my parents is watching them breathe their last on the dirt.”
The personal narrative began without warning. It was perhaps an even worse influence on Alas Ramus’s upbringing than anything Maou had done before, but Emi sat silently, not wanting to break the mood.
“The survivors were all slaughtered in a battle against another rival tribe. I was tossed out like garbage with the rest of them. I was pretty close to dying. But one person cared enough about a dirty little brat like me to save my life.”
Looking at some far-off point in the distance, Maou continued, his voice taking on a nostalgic twinge.
“That was the first time I ever met an angel. I’d never seen such pure white wings before.”
“Daddy, what’s that?”
“Hmm? Ooh, you got a good eye, Alas Ramus! That’s called a blimp.”
“Bliiimp?”
Alas Ramus stared up at the dirigible for a moment, mouth agape.
“Uh, where was I?”
“At the point where an angel saved your life…”
“Oh, right. Anyway, I was basically this goblin-level goon, so I tried taking her on, even though I was wounded. Looking back, she must’ve been a pretty high-level angel, but anyway, she didn’t even bother paying attention to me. Not that she killed me or anything, though. I was still a demon, more or less, so I would’ve healed by myself, but that bastard kept checking in on me, talking to me about all kinds of different crap. I wasn’t able to move much, so I was forced to listen to it all. She taught me about a lot of stuff I didn’t know.”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 3 Page 15