The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 2 (9 page)

Her face, normally willful and resolute, turned white as a sheet. Without a word, she grabbed Emi’s arm, pulling her outside of the room.

“Uh? Ah! Wait a…!”

Slamming the door behind her and sneaking a quick look inside, she turned toward Emi and spoke in a hushed, slightly frazzled voice.

“What…what will we do if he hears you?”

Emi was quizzical at first, wondering what about her observation had made Suzuno turn ghostlike so rapidly. But it made sense. If she had hit it on the nose, then perhaps it wasn’t the most delicate thing to say, in a whisper or not.

Observing her strong will, dignified presence, and oddly hardened face, she assumed that Suzuno wasn’t the sort of girl to wear her emotions on her kimono sleeve. But women are women, she concluded.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t think you really…”

Emi meekly apologized, her voice similarly hushed. A sheen of cold sweat appeared on Suzuno’s usually marblelike face.

“I…I must say, I am quite impressed.”

She put a hand to her heart, taking a deep breath to calm her nerves.

“How did you ever know?”

“How did I know? Well…I dunno, I just kind of thought so…”

That was the best explanation Emi had to offer. The namby-pamby response seemed to convince Suzuno well enough.

“I…see. Very well done…”

She couldn’t guess what was “well done” about that, but regardless, Suzuno seemed honestly impressed at Emi’s clairvoyant skills.

Watching her, Emi couldn’t help but regret hurting her feelings just a tad. Still, she had to say it, sooner or later.

This was a girl, after all, who appeared out of nowhere to become a core presence in the Devil’s Castle. Not asking would have made Emi wonder if she was an assassin from another world, or—even worse—an apprentice demon in Maou’s bloodstained service.

But think it over logically
, Emi told herself. An assassin wouldn’t move in, then sit there doing nothing for a whole week. And Suzuno was far too prim and proper to be from the demon realm.

“Listen, Suzuno. I’m sorry if I’m being too intrusive, but there’s something I want to tell you.”

“…What is that?”

If this was just a regular woman, Emi would prefer to keep her out of their angel-and-demon struggle as much as possible.

“I think you better keep your distance from him. Otherwise, it’s just gonna make you unhappy.”

“Unhappy…? In what way?”

Suzuno looked up at Emi, her face confused.

Lambasting Maou too much to her face would have the opposite effect. Emi knew that much from previous experience.

“That’s…not the kind of guy any regular person can handle. I’m just saying, it’s best if you don’t get too close to him.”

“…! B-but, but, I may not seem that way, but I’ve been through a great deal of trials and tribulations in my life!”

Suzuno seemed to be awfully hard on herself as she shot back.

Emi had little interest in this girl baring her entire life’s story to her, but Suzuno gave her no time to speak.

“But…all right. If that is what you say, I will keep a respectful distance away. I am sure there is something between you and he that I am not aware of.”

She had an odd sort of sixth sense about what Emi was thinking at any given moment. Emi had no idea why she was so in tune with her mind, but in the very short time they’d known each other, the amount of trust this girl had thrown upon her feet was wholly novel to her.

“But no matter what you may say, I am in no position to leave at this point. I know this is terribly audacious of me, but I hope you will provide me with whatever assistance you deem appropriate.”

The beauty had returned to her face as she gave a respectful standing bow.

Emi felt at fault here as well. Here was this poor girl, unwittingly caught up in the intrigues of Ente Isla, and Emi’s inability to vanquish the Devil King once and for all had left the door wide open for her.

“Certainly. If I can.”

She smiled and nodded.

On the condition, of course, that it didn’t involve playing matchmaker for Maou.

“Very well… Thank you. My mind is at ease now, a little.”

The stone wall that was her usual facial expression seemed to relax itself slightly.

Not even Emi suspected that Maou and his cohorts had forced anything upon Suzuno. But the experience of being the sole woman in their “household” must have put her on pins and needles.

Speaking with Emi, the first female companion she’d ever had in Tokyo, must have been just the release valve she needed.

“Oh! Hang on a moment.”

Emi gently pushed Suzuno aside and ventured back into the room.

“You guys didn’t do anything weird while I was gone, did you?” Emi glared at Urushihara as she groped around inside her shoulder bag.

“I ain’t in
that
much of a hurry to die.”

Keeping one eye on Urushihara as he sullenly replied, Emi took out her memo pad and pen, ripping off a piece of paper. Jotting something down, she handed the sheet to Suzuno.

“This is my address, my phone number, and my e-mail. If these guys do anything to you, you can call me for help anytime.”

“Very well. I owe you a great debt.”

Suzuno nodded as she delicately placed the paper into her kimono.

Emi had no idea until now that women stuffed things under their kimonos like that.

“Look, who do you think we are, anyway?” Maou, wiping off the morning’s dishes, finally had to speak up.

“I think you’re a bunch of hideous monsters that I’d put even a cockroach above, that’s what. I doubt you’d do it now, but if you do anything weird to Suzuno, I’m gonna rip your head off and hang it out that window, all right?”

“What are you, Dracula?”

Emi paid the comeback no mind. “…Well. I better push off. But don’t worry. They may not look it, but they’ve got every reason not to break any laws right now.”

Emi aimed the last part at Suzuno as she draped the shoulder bag over her body. Then she turned toward Maou.

“Be good to her, all right? I’m serious here. Men and women run on
real
different wavelengths!”

“Yeah, I don’t need to be reminded. But at least I’m not gonna ignore the help she gives me, unlike
certain
people I know. Get out already!”

Emi accepted that response, although she knew a Hero placing too much trust on that was undebatably shirking her duty.

“Right. See you.”

She was kind enough to shut the door behind her.

Suzuno stared at the door for a moment.

“Y-y-yaaaagghhhhh!!”

Then, at the sound of Emi’s scream, she lunged for it. On the
outside corridor, still in her two-toed socks, she was greeted with the sight of Emi halfway downstairs, sweating profusely, her hands balled tightly around both handrails.

“I-I-I’m fine. I’m fine this time, okay? Really.”

She let out a hoarse chuckle, then ever-so-slowly sidled down the second half before briskly walking off in very apparent shame.

“She bite it again?” she heard Maou call out from inside.

“No, she regained control of herself halfway.”

“…Yeah, looked that way. She’s sure going fast, though. Like she’s trying to run away from us.”

Urushihara mumbled his agreement, eyes fixated on the PC screen.

“Okay, Marko! The fate of tomorrow’s afternoon shift rests upon your shoulders. Stay diligent! Don’t let that new Sentucky Fried Chicken get the jump on us!”

Kisaki laid the pressure down hard on Maou that Friday evening, several hours after Emi blundered her way into his apartment.

Starting tomorrow, for the next week, Maou would be the shift supervisor for the afternoon hours. In other words, his career as assistant manager was just about to kick off. When he reported in for the lunch rush, Kisaki rewarded him with a custom name tag reading
SADAO MAOU
in shiny lettering, indicating that he was the man in charge for that shift.

His old
SADAO (A)
sticker tag seemed like a relic from his ancient minimum-wage days now. Starting today, his tag gave his
full name
. It made him proud, somehow.

Thanks to the careful tutelage Kisaki instilled in him up to this day, he was ready in mind and body, a fairly comprehensive understanding of store management practices drummed into this brain.

“I’ll make sure to have my phone on me in case any emergencies come up, but unless it’s something really catastrophic, you can go ahead and make any decisions that need to be made yourself. This is meant to help you grow, after all.”

“Absolutely.”

“Good. I like to hear that. Do your best out there, okay? Don’t make me have to send you to Trinidad and Tobago.”

“I thought you were joking.”

Maou pulled at his face nervously.

“The only time I tell jokes is when I want people to laugh.”

He got the message.

“We don’t have much staff on hand this shift, so you better brace yourself. Think of it as getting a head start on your shift-supervisor job.”

“Huh?”

Maou took a glance at the shift schedule posted on the wall. The only lines extending all the way to closing time at midnight belonged to Maou and Kisaki.

Between five and ten
PM
, another line joined them down the grid.

“Ooh. Chi, huh…?”

Maou whispered it to himself. Kisaki keenly picked up on it as she peered at the schedule.

“You aren’t still having a tiff with her or anything, are you?”

“Not a tiff, no…”

His voice trailed off before he could finish the sentence.

Chiho Sasaki, “Chi” to her workmates, was a crew member Maou had more or less personally raised from her first day forward. She was one of those rare teenage girls with a real talent for customer service. A career in the hospitality industry may well be waiting for her someday.

What she
also
was, was the only girl in Japan who knew that Maou was the demonic overlord of another planet, and that Emi was the Hero who looked forward to violently murdering him.

Not that Chiho’s knowledge of these events particularly bothered either party. They made no special effort to ensure the girl kept it a secret, and they didn’t expend any magic attempting to erase her memory.

Chiho, for her part, wasn’t the kind of modern Japanese citizen who’d go around shouting,
That guy’s the demonic overlord of
another planet!
No one would believe her, and she knew any efforts along those lines were futile.

A more relevant concern was that, two months after the battle against Lucifer—where Chiho stumbled upon all these unbelievable truths—she was still being oddly standoffish around Maou.

She wasn’t terrorized by working at MgRonald alongside a bloodthirsty alien monster. Even Maou was starting to twig to the fact that the cause lay elsewhere.

Kisaki, gauging Maou’s response, squinted coldly at him.

“Well, if whatever it is starts affecting our daily sales, you’ll
wish
you were in Trinidad and Tobago.”

The aura she projected instantly flipped itself into Northern Arctic Blizzard mode.

“You’d probably wind up somewhere like Greenland instead.”

“What, above the Arctic Circle?! Does anyone even
live
there?”

“Well, that’s pretty rude to the Greenlanders, don’t you think? Greenland’s part of the kingdom of Denmark; it’s got its own parliament and everything. Over one hundred thousand people live there! There’s even a movement to make it independent from…”

“I didn’t ask for geographical trivia, and besides, I’m not going anywhere
near
there! What do you mean by ‘whatever it is’…?”

“I
mean
, if some young new manager can do the work but has trouble dealing with a teenage girl taking a fancy to him, then fine. That, I can laugh off. But if that trouble starts affecting my bottom line…don’t expect any mercy.”

The very definition of straight talk. A palpable dizziness swayed Maou’s mind, forcing him to lean against the front counter for balance.

Indeed, Maou may not have realized it, but Chiho had fostered some real feelings for him as they worked together on the front lines of fast food. And even now, when she knew he was the Devil King, it was still the case.

“I mean, you know, am I going to have to bar female employees from working with you, or what?”

Kisaki continued her rant, unaware or simply uninterested in Maou’s emotions.

The clock inexorably wore on, and before he realized it, it was almost five
PM
. He had trouble staying calm, but nevertheless bellowed a hearty “Welcome to MgRonald!” when the automatic door opened in front of him.

“Oh, um, h-hello.”

Chiho Sasaki was reporting to work, still dressed in a summer outfit. She clumsily greeted Maou at the counter.

“Uh…mm…hey.”

They spoke to each other the bare minimum amount necessary to perform their work duties, but otherwise, the amount of daily chitchat had plummeted. Even today, Maou had no idea where to even begin mending the fences.

“Oh, hey there, Chi.”

A voice sounded out to his side.

“Uh… Oh! Um, good afternoon, Ms. Kisaki!”