“Me…?”
It was hard for Chiho to connect her situation with Suzuno’s whacked-out analogy. She still attempted to give it serious thought, however.
“I-I don’t know a thing about flower arranging…and what kind of school would use that for their admission guidelines? I don’t think I’d want to join that school too much anymore, maybe.”
“But you understand the concept, at least—that one can use flowers to express some sort of emotion or visual sequence. Let’s say the test officer presents you your choice of colorful flowers. Would you still attempt it?”
“Well, even if he does, that’s still kind of—”
“The university would still offer you a challenging, enriching program in the academic field of your choice. The only difference is, instead of history or English or mathematics, the admission test involves flower arrangement.”
“Um, this is still an analogy, right? So, basically, you’re saying that you aimed for this thing your whole life, but now you got thrown for this crazy loop and it’s making you rethink everything?”
“Indeed. Very observant, Chiho. That is why I was being rather flippant with the topic. It might feel too depressing to discuss otherwise.”
Suzuno chuckled to herself and looked at the wall separating her from Devil’s Castle.
“I think the Devil King is no longer the target for revenge Emilia originally wanted to slay.”
“…Huh?”
Chiho was unable to grasp the portent of the short sentence.
“In fact, the father she thought she lost at the hands of the Devil King’s Army is apparently alive and well. That, despite the fact she chased down the Devil King in order to exact revenge for that man.”
Emi, the savior of Ente Isla, had fought for most of her short life to defeat the Devil King. That much Chiho knew already.
“Once she killed him, her work would be done, her journey at a final and triumphant end. Yet her father is revealed to be alive. Emilia’s path was snatched away from her.”
“Wh-what? But all that means is there’s no need to kill Maou here in Japan. She can just go search for her father instead!”
“All right. So why are you refusing that flower-arrangement test, Chiho?”
“…………………Oh.”
Now Chiho understood the crux of Suzuno’s argument.
“Everything she had done up to this point, believed up to this point…was all a waste? None of it had any purpose?”
“I imagine that is exactly what she thinks,” Suzuno said. “Other people may say there is no such thing as a wasted life, that one’s experience will always help out later, and other such banal adages. But that cannot change a person’s feelings. The moment you are presented with a table full of flowers, you would be filled with a profound emptiness as you wondered to yourself why you bothered with all of that study. And who could fault you for it?”
“……”
Suzuno’s face scrunched up, as if she had drunk something tart.
“And worst of all, Emilia has already been betrayed by Ente Isla once.”
Chiho remembered what Emi’s friends had told her—right inside Devil’s Castle next door, in fact.
“Um, you mean how the Church lied and said Yusa was dead?”
Suzuno nodded. “Precisely. If Ente Isla had offered valid praise for Emilia’s efforts as the Hero—if they had showered her with the admiration she so rightly deserves—that would have driven Emilia to carry on. To retain her desire to slay the Devil King and make him pay for his transgressions. But now…” Her face darkened. “We face the exact opposite situation. The Church has announced Emilia’s death for their own sinister reasons, and the people believe them. We, the people of Ente Isla—including the very Church that Emilia saved!—have cast away the Hero as obsolete, unnecessary, now that the Devil King’s Army is gone. We betrayed her.”
But not everyone was duped. Olba, and the denizens of heaven, were after Emi’s holy sword, sending assassins to strip her of it, fearful of the power she’d retained after the Devil King’s defeat.
“But,” Chiho said, fired up, “but Emeralda and Albert are trying to restore Yusa’s good name, aren’t they? They’re both pretty well-known people in Ente Isla, right?”
“Not to great effect, sadly,” Suzuno replied, her expression unchanged. “That is how vast and unquestioned the Church’s power and belief base is. And it seems to me that Emeralda is so busy dealing with the backlash in her own nation that she lacks the power to directly confront the Church itself. Even before I came here, there were many of the opinion that Emeralda should be branded a heretic for so often taking positions that go against the teachings of the Church.”
“Oh, no… But she’s not lying or anything…”
“No. We are,” Suzuno shot back in self-depreciation. “The Church, that is. But it would be unthinkable for the Church to withdraw a statement. That would be admitting they are fallible. If the Church says white is black, or up is down, the people will say it is so. That is the land of Ente Isla…the Western Island portion of it, at least.”
She stood up to refill her glass of barley tea. It was clear the Church’s stance on this made her physically ill. Closing the refrigerator door, she returned to the window and took a breath, attempting to give the chat a fresh start.
“Emilia was able to fight as the Hero for as long as she did because she had the goal of killing the Devil King, and thereby avenging her father, waiting for her at the very end. But the Devil King was not her father’s killer at all. Her indignation at the tyranny of the Devil King’s Army was trampled upon by the very people she saved. And yet—”
“—she found out that all the anger and hatred she had bottled up inside was meaningless…but she couldn’t just drop it.”
“Indeed. But Emilia must, or else it will create a new sadness and hatred within her. Her memory of the tormented people she saw will rekindle her spirit, and then she might strike at the Devil King anew.”
It was just a wild guess, but the idea made something twist in Chiho’s mind. She imagined what kind of faces Emi and Maou would make at each other, as they squared off.
“With the Devil King dead, Alciel and Lucifer would certainly not stand by idly. But right now, at this moment, none of them could defeat Emilia. Three demons would be dead, gone from the world forever. Could you forgive her, Chiho?”
“I…!”
I couldn’t. But being unforgiving is itself unforgivable. But I really, really couldn’t forgive…forgive who…?
“Yusa is… She’s just as important to me, too…”
“Indeed. Something Emilia is fully aware of. That is why she is at such an impasse right now. Her father remaining alive should be her primary focus, but nothing about it fills her with abject delight…a fact that, in itself, demoralizes her.”
“And…Emeralda and Albert could never help, could they?”
“No. She is unable to confide in them. Even if they understood where her heart lay and were willing to accept it, do you think Emilia could simply go up to them and say, ‘My father is alive, so count me out of this Devil King business’?”
Emi’s duty-bound mind would never allow that. Not in a million years.
“Right now, Emilia cannot even figure out which color of flower to pick first. She is stewing, unable to even start on her next project.”
That, in a nutshell, summed up Emi’s bizarre behavior around Maou as of late. Her internal agitation was making it difficult for her to retain her usual hostile distance from him. That opened her up to moments of inattention, which itself distressed her greatly. She could no longer tell where her heart lay. The paths were all twisty and dark, and there was no guide to lead her.
Suddenly, Suzuno’s eyes turned toward Chiho’s forehead.
“Perhaps…that is why she decided to help you with this effort, Chiho.”
“What do you mean?”
Suzuno used the hand holding her glass to point at Chi
ho’s head. “The memories you tried to relate to Emilia,” she said, her face pained. “It only makes sense that the man standing in the wheat field is her father. And this Acieth Alla you spoke of, too. In the Centurient language of Ente Isla, the term means ‘blade wing.’”
“‘Blade wing’?”
“Yes. It means little by itself, I am afraid…but there is one thing near us with a wing motif.”
Chiho gasped, the image clear in her mind as well.
“Alas Ramus… Her name means ‘wing branch’ or something, right?”
“That is correct.” Suzuno nodded solemnly. “I think it safe to assume that this Acieth Alla is a term related to either Alas Ramus or another of the Yesod fragments. Camio did mention there were two holy swords, after all.”
Chiho nodded her reply.
“Perhaps this Acieth Alla is the name of the second blade…or, perhaps, the presence imbued within it. And think of this from Emilia’s standpoint. The fact that her father is alive; having Alas Ramus in the Devil’s Castle; the Better Half that she herself wields; and the ring on your finger—to her, it must feel as if someone is deliberately arranging all of these pieces around her. And that person’s identity…”
Suzuno didn’t bother continuing. Chiho, with her front-row seat to every major battle held in Japan so far, knew the answer well enough.
“Yusa’s…mother, isn’t it?”
Emi had come close to saying it outright at the hospital: “Why…? If she’s watching me, why won’t she come to me…?”
Chiho could only guess at the swirling emotions behind those choked words.
“Whether it be Sariel, Gabriel, Raguel; Camio or Ciriatto; Barbariccia and even Olba, too—one could say that they are all puppets being played for a show by Emilia’s mother. Or, indeed, all of Ente Isla at this point. There is, after all, a cross-nation war about to break out over Emilia’s sword. What do you think, Chiho?”
“About what?”
“If your mother went into hiding when you were a young child, never returning home once, then started spreading the seeds of conflict around not just your friends and family, but everyone, worldwide—and if she then left you to handle all of the fallout…”
Chiho tried to imagine.
What if her mother were actually a spy for some foreign country who suddenly left her sham marriage and fled from Japan? A woman involved in conflicts across the globe that made her personally responsible for countless lives lost, who then one day texted Chiho along the lines of “The fate of the world is up to you”?
Well then, that would toss Chiho into a struggle against terrorists over some missing nuclear weapons, so that Chiho had to undergo special-forces training to turn her into a cold, emotionless war machine and join the US Navy SEALs; but then she would find out that it was really her dad pulling the strings the whole time, and so after a years-long struggle laced with bloody tragedy, Chiho would track down her mom just in time to see her confront her dad in a spectacular, special effects–laden final duel—only to be taken out by an assassin’s bullet, at which time she would ask Chiho to carry on her noble mission before dying in her arms. So then—
“Then I’d be the only one left to stop my father…and then they’d both wind up dying!”
“I… Pardon me? Why is your father involved?”
Chiho blinked, then hurriedly walked away from the Hollywood summer blockbuster in her mind. Suzuno, overwhelmed by her friend’s flights of imagination, coughed before continuing.
“…Regardless, though. In a situation like that, Emilia’s life could no longer be the same. And along those lines, if you can learn how to defend yourself, Chiho, not only would that make you more secure—I think it would help Emi collect herself a little. That is why I did not put up a great deal of resistance to the idea. She might not want to hear it,” Suzuno added with a chuckle, “but Emilia was driven purely by revenge and a sense of duty up to now. She never had the time to think, or question, what she was living for. That ultimately led her to Japan, and I think it blessed her with a chance to reconsider her motives.”
Suzuno stood up, brought her and Chiho’s empty glasses to the sink, and began rinsing them off.
“It would be best for Emilia if she took her eyes off the Devil King for a bit. And fortunately, now that MgRonald is open once more, we no longer have to keep him on such a short leash.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Remember the demons who attacked us at Choshi? The force led by Barbariccia that parted ways with Camio were duped into doing Olba’s bidding, and apparently are preparing to invade Ente Isla once again.”
“What?! That… Is that okay, or…?”
It was turning into a messy state of affairs—demons going away from the Devil King’s command and forming their own armies, Olba sowing the seeds of discontent in the background…the works.
“It is cause for concern, it is true. But what worries myself and Emilia is less the current invasion and more the possibility of them kidnapping the Devil King and Alciel and propping them up as the figureheads of the New Devil King’s Army. The Devil King does not seem to approve of Barbariccia’s behavior, but we must remain vigilant nonetheless.”
“Y-yeah…”
Hearing such an ominous tale, Chiho had trouble figuring out how that was related to the MgRonald opening back up.
“Lord Sariel works at the Sentucky across the street, yes? The angels are pulling some very suspicious moves of their own, but they are not at all connected to Barbariccia and his ilk. If they were to attack the Devil King at work, Ms. Kisaki would naturally be caught up in it, and Sariel would hardly allow that to happen. I do feel poorly for making Ms. Kisaki into our personal defensive buffer, but so be it.”
“Ah…”
“And while Lord Sariel would never come to the Devil King’s aid, the amount of holy power within him is more than enough to keep any sensible demon at bay. There is no merit to Olba or the demons taking the risk of stoking an archangel’s ire. Barbariccia may very well find the wrath of heaven pointed upon him if he does.”
Chiho tried to imagine the position Suzuno painted for Sariel in this. In so many words, the archangel’s lack of a direct connection with Olba and Barbariccia made him an effective deterrent—one triggered, in a deep, lizard-brain level, by Kisaki. It sounded convincing for a moment, but then Chiho recalled something.
“Um,” she said, “I…I think that might not wind up working out.”
“Why not?” Suzuno, in the kitchen, turned around. “How do you mean?”
“Well, the day before we went to Choshi…”
Chiho explained what she had seen in front of MgRonald on that tragic day—Sariel giving her (to say the least) the hard sell, Kisaki banning him from the location until further notice, and the way it all made the archangel melt into mush.
“I spotted Sariel on the street a few times since then, but it’s like he’s…hollow. Like, his whole face is. I didn’t know people could do that kind of thing and be alive still. He walks around in those flashy Sentucky uniforms, but he projects so little of a presence. One time, I saw a dog mistake him for a telephone pole and pee on his leg.”
Suzuno’s eyes opened wide at the sordid tale. Then, an uneasy memory flashed across her mind—a holy-force reaction, notable mainly due to how weak it was, picked up by the sonar bolt she unleashed from the Dokodemo Tower in Yoyogi.
“Ha-ha-ha! Oh, don’t… Enough of that silliness. He is an archangel, remember! How could he ever let a—”
Chiho pensively shook her head at Suzuno’s nervousness.
“It was a Chihuahua.”
It was simultaneously the most damning evidence possible and the least important part of the story.
“Welcome! We’ve got a large-print menu right here for you, sir!”
The next evening, the crew at Sentucky Fried Chicken in Hatagaya was enjoying a slight lull before the dinner rush; the dining area was about half full. Things were still bright and ch
eery inside, though, the woman at the register throwing all the sprightliness she could into her voice as she greeted Chiho and her group.
The sight of the freshly cooked chicken tumbling down the hoppers behind the counter could whet any carnivore’s appetite, but the trio of women who approached the register had other things in mind. Chiho, Emi, and Suzuno, freshly ordered iced coffees in hand, set up shop around a table near the registers, taking a quick scan of the dining area as they did.
“I don’t see him. Maybe he’s in the backyard…or maybe the kitchen or upstairs?”
“Hopefully this doesn’t mean he has the day off…”
Chiho’s latest bombshell was enough to make Emi hurry right over upon wrapping up work. Given how much she was counting on Sariel to play defense between the Devil King and the forces of Ente Isla, the news that he was now a shell of his former self was something she couldn’t ignore.
“No,” said Suzuno. “I can feel his presence, albeit only slightly. He may be hiding under the furniture or in the shadows.”
This made Sariel sound like a termite, but Emi paid a closer look to her surroundings nonetheless.
“You’re right… But if we’re this close to him and this is all he’s letting off, he must be doing pretty bad.”
Chiho, meanwhile, had no idea how they picked up on his presence. “Is that another holy-force spell?” she asked.
Her friends gave each other a bemused look. “Not…exactly.”
“It is something we can sense, is the only way to put it. …Well, do you remember how you had difficulty breathing when the Devil King transformed atop the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building?”
“S-sure.”
During that battle against Sariel himself, Chiho felt her breath literally being taken away by the dark force the newly revived Devil King exuded in all directions. She recalled how Suzuno had to erect a magical barrier to keep her from suffocating.
“You might not have felt it, but the dark power had clearly detectable effects on your body, yes? With training and experience, one can hone that sense into something as powerful as smell or sight.”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 6 Page 9