Emi forged a smile—it took a conscious effort—and showed it off.
“Well, thanks for telling me. It’s a big help.”
“Um…Yusa?”
“Yes?”
Emi attempted to give an even brighter smile to Chiho, but for some reason she shrugged instead, as if under pressure.
“Are you, like, really angry, maybe?”
“Huh?”
“Um, I mean…I’m sorry. I apologized about it to Maou, too, but…I don’t know, just going out there in battle without any training. I thought I might be getting in the way a little, but, um…you know, making people worry about me and all…”
The words of apology came in rapid-fire fashion as tears began to form in Chiho’s eyes. Emi put a hand to her face.
“…Is it showing?”
“Oh, I knew it!”
The response only unnerved her even more. Emi wrangled her expression back to something more normal for her than a smile in order to calm her down.
“I’m sorry. I’m not angry at you or anything, Chiho.”
“…Eh?”
Emi sighed. “Maybe this would be considered kind of passé in modern Japan, but I really think children need to pay respect to their parents. Unconditionally, even, to some extent.”
“Um…yeah. I mean, I guess so.”
“They feed you, they give you a home you can be safe in, they send you to school…you know? And the older you get, I think, the more you truly realize how much of a blessing all of that is.”
“Uh-huh…”
Chiho nodded her agreement, not having much clue what inspired Emi’s reflections on life.
“But…I mean, don’t you think there has to be a limit to that sooner or later?”
“A limit to what…?”
Emi smiled darkly. She was hardly an ugly woman, but the sight still made Chiho shiver.
“I mean, I have no idea where she’s bumping around, she’s painstakingly engineering all these headaches for me, she lets everybody else clean up the messes she makes, she scrounges off her daughter’s friends, she leaves these stupid cryptic messages that never tell me anything I actually need to know, and now she’s causing all this trouble in another world, too… It’s driving me crazy!”
“Y-Yusa, you need to keep your voice down…”
They weren’t alone in the hospital room. Chiho tried her best to assuage the Hero from another world as she shook her head and ranted.
“Why…? If she’s watching me, why won’t she come to me…?”
The soft question from the crouched-over Emi made Chiho freeze. There was an unquestionable twinge of loneliness to the words.
“…Sorry. I’m getting too worked up.”
“Oh, no, I…”
Chiho hung her head down awkwardly, unable to find the right words.
“I apologize. This isn’t something you’d know about anyway.” Emi sighed deeply to collect herself, then picked up the paper bag at her feet. “I got you a little get-well gift. It was Alas Ramus’s idea, so it’s not exactly a traditional one, but…”
Inside the bag was a pack of fried senbei crackers from a top-end candy store. The sight made Chiho finally relax a little. Thanks to the child remaining awake inside her head during work, Alas Ramus was currently enjoying a nap, still ensconced in Emi’s body.
“Thank you, though,” Emi continued, tying to guide the subject toward more pleasant lands. “This has helped me understand a lot, actually. And I’m glad to see you’re doing fine in here, too.”
Chiho nodded, crackers in hand.
“Um, Yusa?”
“Hmm?”
“I really want to apologize about all this. It was incredibly rash of me…”
It was out of character for Chiho, apologizing so profusely about something already done and over with.
“Oh, that’s fine, Chiho,” Emi calmly replied. “You’re safe now, and that’s what matters. Plus, you helped save us, a little…”
“That’s the thing!” (Emi’s eyes widened as Chiho’s tone grew sharper.) “It turned out okay this time, but what about next time? There’s no telling what might happen then.”
“Wh-what’re you trying to say?”
This restlessness on Chiho’s part was giving Emi pause. Chiho’s eyes turned to the ring on her left hand.
“That power I had is all gone now. Next time I try jumping out of the hospital window, I’m sure it’d kill me. We’re on the third floor.”
I don’t think that’s really the problem, Emi thought as Chiho fell silent.
“The way Maou put it, I don’t have that much…capacity, I guess? For that kind of holy magic. That’s why I wound up getting poisoned by demon force—it was a reaction to that. So that really wasn’t my power at all, I don’t think. I just borrowed it for a little bit.”
This line of conversation was starting to unnerve Emi more and more.
“But after all the stuff I did to Gabriel and Raguel…well, it’s not like I can just stay away from Maou’s apartment if something happens any longer…”
“Whoa! Stop right there! I thought you’d say that!” Emi put a finger to her temple and groaned. “Lemme try to guess what you’re gonna say next. It’s something like ‘Teach me some skills so I can defend myself,’ right?”
“Huh? H-how did you…” Chiho’s eyes widened at how easily her intentions were guessed.
“You just said it yourself, Chiho. You worked on borrowed power, and it’s not the sort of thing you were ever supposed to use. I really don’t want you thinking that holy force is some kind of handy magic trick to have lying around. Acquiring the power to attack and defend with it requires years of careful training and study. It’s literally playing with fire.”
The only way to fend off Chiho’s upcoming defense was with a preemptive offense. The pace of Emi’s voice quickened.
“You should know what I’m talking about. Your father’s a police officer, right? You wouldn’t give a service pistol to a teenager who’s never been trained to use it. You wouldn’t be able to defend yourself with it, much less fight crime or whatever. And even if you knew how to fire it safely, you’re dealing with goons who aren’t gonna listen to reason. The only rule is that there are no rules. They’re gonna go at you with everything they’ve got, and they’re not gonna stop until they take your life. Can you imagine yourself in that situation?”
“That…”
The extra tone of authority to Emi’s voice paid off. Chiho fell silent.
“There’s no way to tell what’ll happen on the battlefield. It’s on a whole different dimension from someplace as peaceful as Japan. You learning how to use holy force would be like taking a handgun to a minefield with bullets flying all over the place. You’d be surrounded by people who see your gun as a weapon and you as the enemy. They’ll attack you relentlessly until you’re dead, all right? They’ll never go easy on you.”
Emi took a breath before continuing.
“As far as heaven, the demon realms, and Ente Isla go, you’re still just a casual observer, Chiho. Neither Gabriel nor Raguel think that power you busted out at Tokyo Tower was actually your own. But if you actually picked up your own weapons and appeared on the battlefield, somebody out there’s gonna see you as a target to eliminate. And once you cross that threshold, we might not be able to swoop in to rescue you any longer.”
She took a glance next to Chiho’s bed. Lying on the floor was a large paper bag with Chiho’s personal belongings. It was brought in by her mother Riho, who had written “Separate your dirty laundry for me, please” on it in marker.
“Listen, your mother was seriously worried about you. I can’t help it that you’re involved in this now, but we can’t have people start seeing you as ‘the enemy,’ all right? And I’m pretty sure this is one of the few things me and the Devil King agree on.”
Emi figured invoking Maou’s name would help make her argument more convincing. But, when Chiho lifted her head back up after a few moments,
she found her eyes imbued with a very different type of force.
“Thank you very much. You’re right. I think I see what I have to do now!”
“Huh?”
Emi had been trying to scold Chiho into submission. Apparently Chiho took it quite differently than intended.
“My dad says that sort of thing a lot, too. Like, when he sees an ad in a magazine or whatever for self-defense courses. He’s always like, ‘If you just copy those moves without any training, all you’ll do is hurt yourself.’ I guess that’s what you’re talking about, huh?”
“Um…well, yeah, pretty much. Kind of on a larger scale, though.” Emi found herself puzzled, unable to guess what Chiho would say next.
“But…I mean, if I can, I’d like to use holy magic like you guys, Yusa.”
“But I just told you that—”
“When Sariel kidnapped me, Suzuno took my cell phone.”
“What?” Emi’s eyes darted back to Chiho at this unexpected turn.
“But I wasn’t hurt, and my life wasn’t put in danger or anything. That was because I was an ‘observer’ instead of an ‘enemy,’ wasn’t it?”
“…Yeah, maybe so. I think Sariel maybe had some dirty thoughts about you and me, but…”
Emi, kidnapped herself at the time, felt fairly sure about this point.
“Maou managed to save me then, thanks to Urushihara getting the word out to him in time. But what if Gabriel or someone else kidnaps me and takes me someplace where you and Suzuno and Maou aren’t looking and I can’t use my phone? You wouldn’t have any way of knowing where I am.”
“…Yeah. True.”
Chiho balled both of her hands into fists. “My dad always tells me: ‘If you think a crime’s taking place, don’t try to get involved. You have to call the authorities instead!’”
“Call…?”
Something about the declaration made Emi parrot a certain word of it.
“So…if I get caught up in some kind of Ente Isla trouble or I think I’m about to, I definitely won’t try to do something about it myself. What I want to do”—Chiho tightened her face up, eyes locked on Emi—“is be able to make contact with you and Maou as quickly as I can. I want you to teach me how to use that telepathy thing that lets you talk to people far away… I want to know how Idea Links work!!”
“Th-the Idea Link?!”
“Yes!”
Thus…
“Wh-where’d you learn that name?”
“Albert mentioned it. Remember? Back when we were all in Maou’s room?”
…Chiho’s debating skill overwhelmed Emi’s.
“Nhh…”
Emi had nothing to dispel Chiho’s argument with. It could make everyone safer, she had to admit. She did, however, refrain from giving an answer until she could stop by Suzuno’s apartment in Sasazuka on the way home and discuss it.
Suzuno, as expected, had been pretty leery of Chiho’s idea, but something about the way she described it as “calling the authorities” was oddly persuasive to both of them. A long, heavy silence pervaded over Room 202 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka before Suzuno spoke.
“The Devil King said it himself. If we continue to whine about not wanting to involve the people of Japan in Ente Islan affairs, why have we not erased Chiho’s memories?”
“What’re you talking about? That’s…”
Emi recalled the argument Chiho and Suzuno had not long after the latter arrived on Earth. Suzuno was ready to erase her memories on the spot for the sake of her own safety, but Chiho refused, stating that she didn’t want to forget about all of them. Emi had stepped in as well, professing that seeing sacrifices like wiping Chiho’s brain as a necessary evil—closing your eyes to the fact you made your friends cry—was, as she put it, not the kind of peace she was fighting for.
Suzuno chuckled softly, likely remembering the same exchange. “If safety was our only concern,” she reasoned, “we should erase Chiho’s memories, torch the Devil’s Castle, and return to Ente Isla. And yet, neither of us has done that. And we have many reasons for that, but one powerful one is that Chiho has become a friend to us, someone we feel safe in revealing everything to.”
Emi nodded. “You’re saying that that’s how we…want her to be?”
“Indeed. Thus, we have a duty to take whatever measures we deem necessary to protect our friend.”
With that, Suzuno stood up and took out a 5-Holy Energy β from the refrigerator.
“This may be presumptuous of me.” She smiled, holding the chilled bottle in her hand. “But seeing Chiho take such a strong stand… It pleases me.”
“…Yeah.”
Emi, following Suzuno’s lead, slowly cracked a smile.
The smile on Chiho’s own face when she left the hospital and was formally granted permission to study holy magic was like a spring sunflower in full bloom. She thanked Emi over and over again, to the point where Emi was starting to feel self-conscious about it.
They decided to begin her training on the first day Emi and Suzuno both had ample free time to work with—in other words, today. The morning yard work was, in a way, Chiho’s first tuition payment.
“Very well, Chiho. Before you disrobe, we should begin by instilling some holy force within you.”
Holy energy drink in hand, Suzuno tied the belt back on to her kimono and sat Chiho down in a changing-room seat. Then she opened the cap and handed the bottle to her, placing her free hand on top of Chiho’s.
“Now, drink just a tiny amount at a time. If anything feels strange to you, I want you to stop immediately.”
“Okay…”
This was Chiho’s request, but something about coming into contact with an unknown force like this still unnerved her. Taking her hand, Suzuno used her magical-sonar probing abilities to keep tabs on Chiho’s internals as she slowly drank the 5-Holy Energy β, taking care not to overload her body with the magical force it held.
Once her capacity for the force was filled to maximum, it was time to begin training.
An Idea Link, as the name implied, allowed two or more people to link together on the same wavelength and communicate over vast distances, as well as gain an innate understanding of people speaking foreign languages without any lost-in-translation mishaps. Maou and Emi were fluent in Japanese now, but when they first arrived, they had little choice but to use Idea Links to convert speech to and from Japanese for the sake of the locals.
In a way, the whole reason Chiho was caught up in the angels’ conspiracy and sent to the hospital in the first place was due to an extremely long-distance Idea Link sent by Emi’s friend, Albert. But if Chiho could master it for herself, it could serve as a kind of insurance in case she needed to contact Emi, Maou, or Suzuno about an Ente Islan issue and couldn’t do it on her cell phone.
“Given that there is no one on Earth with holy-magic abilities, you will not have a very large capacity for this energy, Chiho. Take due care not to imbibe too much.”
Emi gauged both of them from the side. “She had a ton of power at her fingertips at Tokyo Tower, though. How did that work?”
Chiho raised an eyebrow, apparently wondering the same thing.
“Likely in the same manner as the procedure I am conducting now,” Suzuno explained. “In addition to the holy energy we are trying to infuse in her, Chiho’s body is being probed by my holy-magic sonar. However, that is run off my holy energy, which has nothing to do with her total capacity for it.”
The hand Chiho held the bottle with had a magical ring on it, and Suzuno examined it. Afterward, she nodded to herself.
“I imagine the caster actually used that ring as a medium to refract the holy energy into Chiho. To put it in a more brusque manner, one could say that Chiho formed a part of the caster’s body at that time.”
Emi and Chiho furrowed their brows at this explanation, each for their own reasons.
“Just using people like that… Who does she think she is?”
Emi, for one, was complaining at someone n
ot in the room.
“So I guess I was being manipulated that whole time after all…?”
Chiho, for her part, frowned at herself as she realized the full danger of exposing her body to such a powerful, unknown force.
“Well, I suppose the fact you were not used for nefarious purposes is the silver lining to that cloud, yes. …Halt, Chiho. Drink no more.”
Suzuno stopped Chiho’s hand. Emi took a glance at the bottle on the table. “Wow, she drank a lot,” she observed. “That’s about a third of the bottle.”
Suzuno took a look for herself as she kept her hand around Chiho’s. “To put it another way, one could say that 5-Holy Energy β is not so terribly concentrated a supply of holy force. An entire bottle is not enough to restore your energy to what it was in your heyday, is it, Emilia?”
“Well, no, but…”
But Emeralda still had warned her never to drink more than two bottles a day. At first, Emi had thought this was because more than two would overload her body’s energy capacity. Drink enough regular energy shots at once, after all, and you might be seeing the inside of an ER before the night was through.
“Guess it’s kind of like medicine, then, huh?” Chiho said. “Isn’t your supply of energy naturally replenished on Ente Isla anyway? It’s kind of like how the label on a bottle of supplements still tells you to eat a good diet and exercise and stuff.”
“…Maybe so, yeah,” Emi agreed. It’d be one thing if they could generate their own holy energy like back at home, but instead they were storing it in liquid form in their refrigerators. Taking too much of it this way might affect their natural ability to replenish it in assorted ways.
After a moment, Suzuno finally removed her hand from Chiho.
“All right. Your body has stabilized itself, Chiho. Do you feel unwell at all?”
Chiho scanned her body visually for a moment.
“No… It doesn’t feel like anything’s changed, really.”
“Likely not. Regardless, we’ve completed the basic preparations for wielding holy power. Now, off to the bath with us.”
“S-sure!”
Chiho sat up straight and bowed her head to Emi and Suzuno.
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 6 Page 4