The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 2 (24 page)

“This is my power. The Evil Eye of the Fallen. The power to overwhelm all wielders of holy magic. It’s mine, and mine alone.”

“The Fallen…?! You couldn’t be…!”

“Oh, I am. I’m here to release you from the cruelties of our mission. Sleep well.”

As the silky voice continued, violet light began to gather toward the center of the mask.

“I’ll be taking that holy sword back now.”

“What are…!”

At that moment, a completely different kind of light whooshed past Emi’s line of sight.

“Yusa!!”

Chiho’s warning scream was an instant too late.

A huge, gold-colored streak advanced upon Emi from a place unseen, sending the pinned Emi flying with the force of a massive shock wave.

“Gahh!!”

Her body was steeled against one attack, only to be struck by an even more punishing one from another direction. She groaned as she flew through the air.

Blown like a cannonball right past Chiho, frozen in fear and quivering, she slammed against the side of a building and immediately lost consciousness.

The holy sword dropped out of her hand as she did.

The scythe-wielding maniac watched on as it did.

“…!”

But the metallic-looking sword fell softly, like a feather, down to the ground, before disappearing into a million particles of light.

Like a huge swarm of fireflies, the particles rushed toward the fallen body of their master, emitting a soft glow as they completely covered her. Then they flickered out of sight.

The scythe-wielding maniac greeted the sight with an annoyed clicking of his tongue.

“Yusa! Yusa!!”

Chiho, meanwhile, was half-crazed as she shook Emi’s body.

Emi was on her stomach and unresponsive. Chiho was unable to lift up her loose, limply sagging body with her thin arms, leaving her to clutch Emi desperately while glaring at the other attacker, the one who wielded the golden light.

“Why? Why did you have to
do
this?!”

Chiho was screaming.

“Suzuno! Why?!”

Suzuno’s hair, usually held together by her hairpin, was for some reason down to her waist as she carried a large war hammer in her hands.

“You were just like them all along, Suzuno, weren’t you?! Yusa’s just an obstacle in the way to you, just like she was to Olba!”

“……”

Suzuno looked down upon Chiho, a pained expression on her face.

“This…this isn’t even fair! If Maou is a demon, what does it make
you
, stabbing Yusa in the back right when she’s fighting for all of us?!”

Suzuno shut her eyes, no longer able to withstand Chiho’s verbal attack, and shouted.

“Silence!”

Chiho froze in shock and fear, letting Suzuno advance upon her in a moment. Suzuno placed a finger on Chiho’s forehead.

“Maou…h…help…”

Her consciousness fell into darkness.

The pink cell phone in her hand clattered noisily to the ground.

“Ooh, there go the cops.”

Maou noticed the shrill sirens of the emergency vehicles as they zoomed down the Koshu-Kaido Road. Night was finally starting to settle in, and as he pored over his cash-register printout, he anticipated that, while the customer stream went back to normal around dinner, it wouldn’t be enough to make up for the damage done in the morning and afternoon.

The Greenland demotion was a joke, presumably, but Maou knew there was every chance Kisaki actually
would
dock Maou’s hourly wages. His only choice was to attempt a catch-up tomorrow.

The tree-decorating gimmick had done wonders, though. It had attracted more families and large groups than usual, and—even more unexpectedly—a fair amount of couples and young women were interested in placing wishes on the tree, not just the children Maou anticipated.

Thanks to that, the bamboo tree was now completely swathed in colorful strips of folded paper.

The Star Festival decorations Maou had directed his staff to make were all things he learned about as part of his investigations into planet Earth’s magical and occult folklore.

He had conducted a wide range of research in areas like religious ceremonies, alleged sources of magic, spiritual philosophy, and ancestral spirits. The bamboo décor was nothing if not authentic as a result.

It also gladdened Maou to have a teacher, one who said she worked at a nearby preschool, ask him to show her how to make Star Festival decorations. This kind of professional compliment was a real source of pride for him—she must have already known how to make simple origami for the class curriculum, after all.

Maou vowed to pick up a fresh tree from the Watanabe residence as soon as possible, hopefully tomorrow. He put together a rough schedule for the next morning in his mind as he directed his crew to prepare for closing procedures in between orders.

Then the phone rang.

Not Maou’s cell phone, but the MgRonald office telephone.

Maou quizzically glanced at the clock, but picked up the receiver before giving it any further thought. The customer-service manual said never to let the phone go past two rings, and if the manual said it, it was law to Maou.

“Thank you for calling MgRonald at Hatagaya rail station. This is Maou speaking. How can I help you?”

“Hello? Oh, dear, hello!”

It sounded like a middle-aged woman, one who seemed bewildered by the fact that anyone had picked up.

“Is this Sadao Maou, perhaps? The shift supervisor and assistant manager?”

Who’s this weirdo who knows my entire job title?
Maou’s eyebrows arched up incredulously, but he didn’t let it show in his voice.

“Yes, this is Maou, shift supervisor for the evening… May I ask who’s calling?”

“Oh! Well, my goodness, I’m very sorry! I was just surprised…
I didn’t think you’d actually be the one answering the phone! Hee-hee-hee-hee!”

Maou silently begged the woman to stop laughing and just get on with her request.

“This is Chiho Sasaki’s mother. Thank you for taking such good care of her in there!”

“Uh…”

Maou could feel the muscles in his back twitch like a tightly wound spring as he let out a short groan.

“W-well, thank you very much. You’re Chi…er, Ms. Sasaki’s mother, then? It’s good to hear from you!”

He folded his upper body into a bow as he spoke, even though she wasn’t actually there. It almost made him bang his head on the drink dispenser.

There was no need to get worked up. It was just the family of one of his employees calling.

It’s not like he had some kind of especially close relationship with Chiho. Well, okay, they
were
pretty familiar with each other. But they definitely weren’t a couple or anything. …But, considering that Chiho’s home cooking was apparently parent-approved, Maou found himself unable to figure out how to approach Chiho’s mother, or even what he should call her.

The slight quiver in Maou’s voice as his entire body erupted in a cold sweat must have been clear across the phone line.

“I do have to apologize, though. I understand Chiho’s been causing assorted trouble for you as of late? Let me tell you, it was quite the surprise this morning, her coming home with a bicycle I’d never seen before!”

She almost seemed to be enjoying this.

“N-no, it’s no trouble at all. Chiho is a wonderfully talented crew member, and…well, not to speak too personally here, but I’m on a rather tight budget at the moment, so I very much appreciate the large breakfast she prepared this morning.”

“Ah, well, Chiho, you know… It’s not that she never helps out
around the house, but she’s certainly never prepared that much food by herself before, so, you
knoooow
, if anything was undercooked or tasted off to you, don’t be afraid to come out and say it, all right? Because I taught her everything I could think of, but whenever I offered to help, she turned all red and said she didn’t need me around, so I just kind of let her do her own little thing!”

“Ah…yes… Well, I do appreciate it immensely. It was a truly delicious meal.”

“Oh, my, my, my! I do apologize if I’m making you feel, you know, on the spot or anything! I know it’s not a, ah,
serious
relationship or anything even
close
to that, but that girl, you know, she’s always taken to her father, and it’s not that she’s never been friends with another boy before, but I tell you, I’ve never
seen
her work so hard on something like that before, so… Well, it makes a mom proud, you know? Seeing that. Oh, but I’m sorry, you’re still working, aren’t you?”

“No, er… I apologize.”

That was the best Maou could manage. He had done nothing wrong, but the anxiety was making his entire body shiver.

But when Chiho’s mother turned off the mom-of-a-girl-in-her-prime smarm and got down to business, the anxiety disappeared, replaced with something even more unpleasant.

“Is Chiho still working over there?”

“Huh?”

Maou peered at the clock. It was just past ten in the evening. Over an hour would have passed since Emi and Suzuno escorted her home.

“Is…she not home yet?”

“Well, I told her to go buy some milk for us at the convenience store on the way home, but she still isn’t back yet, so I thought she was just, you know, hanging out over there after work again.”

Maou could feel his mind freeze.

He’d never visited Chiho’s house before, of course, but it couldn’t have been that far away.

She seemed on pretty good terms with Emi, and it looked like she
was opening up to Suzuno as well. Maybe the three of them went off somewhere else for a while.

But Maou wasn’t feeling optimistic enough to believe it.

A thought that bounced around Maou’s mind ever since Suzuno first moved in began to sound an alarm bell.

If Emi was with them, he doubted their being together would lead to any weird, out-of-control misunderstandings. But maybe that was just wishful thinking.

Ugh. That Hero is
so
useless.

“Um, Mrs. Sasaki?”

“Oh, dear, there’s hardly any need to be so formal! Ooh, I’ve never had a young male friend of my daughter call me
that
before!”

Resisting the urge to ask Chiho’s mother what the hell she found so joyous about this, Maou took a deep breath and plunged forward.

“I’d like you to just relax and stay at home until your daughter gets back.”

The sound of his voice was transformed into digital signals and ferried over to the ear of Chiho’s mother.

She grew quiet, the previous cattiness now very much a thing of the past, and hung up without another word.

Maou mentally patted himself on the back. Long-range demonic hypnosis was always a bit tricky.

A crew member called to him as he hung up the phone.

“What’s up? Chi isn’t home yet or something?”

“Doesn’t sound like it. She’s probably just out somewhere, I bet.”

“Yeah. She had those friends with her, too, right?”

That was enough to put the employee’s mind at ease as he ventured into the kitchen area, alcohol-based disinfectant and dust mop at the ready.

Maou flew into the staff break room, taking his cell phone out from his personal belongings. He sighed painfully once the screen came on. A call had come in nearly an hour ago.

It was from Chiho.

The phone had rung for ninety-nine seconds, the longest his provider allowed. Maou was far too cheap to sign up for something like
voice mail, and his phone didn’t allow him to automatically record calls to the internal voice-memo function.

If it was clear Maou wasn’t going to pick up, Chiho was always polite enough to leave a text or call back some other day. And if someone like her was letting the phone ring for a minute and a half, something was definitely wrong.

He tried giving a call back, but her voice mail picked up after half a minute or so. The same thing happened on the following two attempts.

Stricken by anxiety, he next tried placing a call with Emi, the woman she was theoretically together with.

After several more attempts and banal voice-mail encounters, Maou jammed the
END CALL
button with a vengeance.

“Crap…!”

Emi’s lack of responsiveness only served to further ratchet up his sense of dread.

Hopefully this wasn’t anything more serious than the Hero ignoring his call.

“Maou? Oh, Maou?”

The employee from before was in the break room, apparently searching for him. The portable handset from the office telephone was in his hand.

“There’s a phone call for you.”

“From Chi?!”

The sudden, urgent response made the staffer shake his head in alarm.

“N-no, uh, it’s from a Mr. Urushihara.”

“Huhh?!”

Maou couldn’t hide his surprise. Of all the people to be calling right now…

“…Hello?”

“Oh, Maou? Yo, it’s me!”

But there he was, the former fallen angel and current Devil’s Castle parasite, on the other end of the line.

“What the hell are you calling the office phone number for?! Where are you even calling from?”

Urushihara was under strict instructions not to venture outside unless absolutely necessary. There were no public phones anywhere near walking distance of Devil’s Castle. So why was Maou faced with his nasal, whiny droning right now?