The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 5 (8 page)

“I see. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, one could say.”

“What?”

“Something I read in a book recently.”

“Oh.”

With a groan, Emi stood up. Suzuno pretended not to notice the slight red twinge in her eyes.

She sniffled and shook her head.

“…If only…”

“Hmm?”

“If only they had AC in that apartment…”

“The savior of our world has has grown soft indeed.”

It was uncharacteristic sarcasm, coming from Suzuno as she caressed Alas Ramus’s hair.

Emi bunched up her face and looked down upon her.

“How much is the rent over there?”

“Forty-five thousand yen, if I recall.”

“’Cause this place has more than a few problems, but I got it for fifty thousand.”

The price quote drove Suzuno to take another look around Emi’s room.

“Could that be the case…? Truly?”

A large closet. Two rooms, each about 150 square feet. With air-conditioning, a bathroom, a fully electric range, and an autolock down in the lobby.

“No. This cannot
possibly
be fifty thousand yen per month.”

“Well, I mean, there’s a
lot
of backstory to that, so… Ah, well. I guess there’s a lot of empty space over there, still. I’ll have to make up my mind someday.”

Where was “over there”? When was “someday”? Suzuno decided not to ask.

“Oooogh…Mommy…”

Just then, a pudgy hand placed itself on top of Suzuno’s as Alas Ramus babbled in her sleep.

Patting her soft, adorable skin, the cleric found herself smiling.

“I do not so terribly mind, shall we say, the lukewarm bath I find myself in.”

“Huh?”

“How else could I describe our current situation? As long as the Devil King remains in Japan, he will be the perfect picture of hard work and diligence. We sit here, living in the most glorious civilization we have ever known, surrounded by caring friends and confidants, allowing the days to leisurely tick away. But how much…”

Suzuno gently picked up Alas Ramus’s hand, running a towel up to the shoulder socket.

“How much longer can we live like this?”

It was question neither Suzuno, nor Emi, nor the Devil King could ever know the answer to.

“Mommy, when will we go splish-splash next?”

By the time Emi returned to her condo in Eifukucho, Alas Ramus was wide awake.

“I wonder,” Emi replied vaguely. “If you’re a good girl, Alas Ramus…if everything stays as it is, I bet we can go real soon.”

“Let’s go! Splish-splash peep peep!”

Whether she was aware of Emi’s feelings or not, Alas Ramus picked up on “go real soon” and nothing else, eyes shining with glee.

Recalling her conversation with Suzuno last night, Emi found it suddenly difficult to look Alas Ramus in the eye.

“…All right, Alas Ramus. You’ve been sweating a lot today, haven’t you? Let’s go take a bath together.”

“Bath! Splish-splash!”

One never had to drag Alas Ramus into the tub.

The outings to the public bathhouse with Maou, back when she lived with him, apparently left a positive imprint on her mind. Whenever the subject of a bath came up, Alas Ramus would faithfully spring into action.

It took until now for Emi to realize that it probably had little to do with her genesis. This was just a little girl who loved playing in the water, was all.

A lukewarm bath might be just the thing for tonight. Too hot wouldn’t be good for her. And in this summer heat, it’d make for a delightful soak.

“Okay, I need to get a few things ready. Can you be a good girl?”

“Okey!”

Alas Ramus raised her hand in the air, trotted to the living room, took off the hat she was wearing, placed it on the table, and sat down on a chair. She picked up the papercraft birdcage on the table and began spinning it around, keeping a careful eye on Emi.

It was her way of saying
I’m being a good girl!

Emi nodded, face considerably lightened, and tossed her shoulder bag toward a corner of the kitchen before heading to the bathroom. Draining the water she used for laundry purposes in the morning, she took up a sponge to give the tub a quick scouring as she reached for the shower valve.

“Mommy! Whirr whirr whirr!”

Then she spotted Alas Ramus at the bathroom door, not being a good girl at all, the smartphone from her shoulder bag in her hand.

In fact, judging by the screen, she had already answered the incoming call, hadn’t she…

Must’ve brushed a finger the wrong way when she took it out of the bag.

Emi was crestfallen as she took the phone away. Whoever called must have heard the child shouting across the room at her.

“Um, hello? Hello? Emi?”

The voice from the speaker, along with the name screen, filled Emi with a profound sense of relief.

“Well, thank you, Alas Ramus. But don’t touch Mommy’s cell phone without permission, okay?”

“Don’t?”

“Emi? Helloooo?”

“Oh, but thanks for bringing it to me, though.”

“Ee-hee! Okeh!”

Emi patted her on the head. The little girl gave a ticklish grin in response and trotted back to the living room.

“Emi, are you there?”

“Hello? Sorry, Rika. Alas Ramus picked up my phone for me.”

It was Rika Suzuki, Emi’s friend and cube mate at her workplace.

She didn’t know about Ente Isla and everything surrounding that world, but she knew Maou, Chiho, and Suzuno well enough. She also knew Emi was watching a toddler named Alas Ramus.

“Whoa, that was close. If you weren’t there, she might’ve decided to call up Saudi Arabia and give you a massive phone bill!”

“Yeah, sorry, I’ll be more careful with it. What’s up?”

“Oh, um…”

Rika uncharacteristically clammed up.

“Hmm?”

“Hey, where are you, Emi? Your voice is kinda echo-y.”

“Huh? I’m in the bathroom. I was just about to scrub the bathtub a little.”

“Ohhhh. Okay. Well, if you’re busy, it doesn’t have to be right now or—”

“What? Wow, what’s up with you today, Rika? Is this gonna go for a while, or…?”

Rika couldn’t have sounded more reluctant. Compared to her usual sunny self, it was hard to imagine.

“No, no, nothing that long, but… Oooh, how should I put it? Maybe it kinda will, actually.”

“Rika…? What’s up? Something going on?”

Emi stiffened her voice a little.
Something troubling her, maybe?

Depending on how you gauged it, this might be Rika acting agitated over something. Whatever it was had to be serious.

Emi sat down on the edge of the tub, preparing for an extended chat.

“If something’s on your mind, just say it, okay? You called because you wanted to talk to me, right?”

She could feel Rika agonizing over something across the line.

“…Well, don’t laugh, okay?”

That relieved Emi a little. If Rika was afraid it’d make her laugh, it couldn’t have been too much of a doggie downer.

“I won’t, I won’t. So what’s up?”

“Um… So, like, I know it’s
really
weird to ask somebody this…”

“Yeah?”

“But I don’t have anyone else I can ask, so…you mind if I bend your ear for a little bit?”

“Sure, go ahead. What’s on your mind?”

Emi tried her best to squeeze it out of her. If her friend was in trouble, she wanted to help if she could. She’d done so countless times in the past, and Rika also helped her out of a pinch more than once.

If she was pussyfooting around the issue this much, it must have been tormenting her pretty badly.

“Okay, so…”

Rika, her voice more resolute now, took a deep breath.

“Um, what kinda clothes do you think Ashiya likes?!”

“……………………………………………………………………”

Emi, seated on the bathtub, mobile phone firmly planted against one ear, froze.

“…Emi?”

Rika took Emi’s lack of immediate response with a hefty dose of suspicion.

It wasn’t enough to release Emi from her shackles.

Whenever someone runs into a completely unexpected set of circumstances, they try to harness their past experiences, tossing all of them into the wind in a mad attempt at a solution. Much of the time, though, all those past experiences offer little more than a lot of wishful thinking.

There was no better way to describe Emi at that moment. Which was why the answer that finally dribbled out in the end was:

“Something…cheap, maybe?”

“Cheap? So, like, no fancy brands or anything?”

“Y-yeeeaaahhh.”

Emi was still frozen, her voice bereft of emotion.

“I’ve never seen him wear anything besides stuff from UniClo. There’s no way he’d be wearing those cheapo shoes because he
likes
them…”

“Huh? Whoa, whoa, Emi, that’s not what I mean. I’m not talking about what kinda stuff
he
likes to buy for himself.”

“…What
do
you mean?”

Emi’s face began to twitch a little again.

A dark foreboding spread across her mind. She could literally feel her organs squirm uneasily in her chest.

“I mean… Oh, you
know
what I mean, Emi! I’m talking about what kinda outfit you think he’d find cute on a woman!!”

It must have taken a lot of courage for Rika to ask the question.

Of
course
she couldn’t have brought it up with anyone else.

The only women who knew Ashiya before Rika were Emi, Chiho, and Suzuno. But as far as Emi knew, Rika wasn’t chummy enough with the other two to ask them questions like
this
.

She and Chiho had gotten closer, certainly, thanks to the whole Alas Ramus thing. But this was a more intimate issue. Really, asking someone what to do in order to make a man pay more attention to you was the same thing, 99 percent of the time, as confessing you have a thing for him.

“Can…can I ask you a question before I answer that, Rika?”

“Wh-what?!”

Emi, for her part, was shocked to the point where she thought her heart would stop and she would remain a statuesque figure on the bathtub forever. But across the phone line, it was clear that this coming-out party was sending Rika’s internal temperature off the charts.

“Is there something with you and Alc…and Ashiya?”

If there
wasn’t
something, Rika wouldn’t be asking any of this.

She
did
notice, when they had both run into Ashiya in front of the Hatagaya Sentucky Fried Chicken, that Rika acted a bit odd around him. Not quite herself, somehow. Did they have a chance to interact with each other after that?

“N-no! Nothing! Nothing, I swear! But, it’s just that…um…”

Emi could picture Rika flailing her hands in the air.

But her voice trailed off as it continued on, down to a barely audible whisper as it proceeded to bring Emi’s body down to absolute zero.

“Ashiya…invited me…to go shopping with him…”

Emi’s vision went black.

“Dude, I should’ve known you were still in Japan. What’re you here for? If it’s Maou, he’s out right now.”

Urushihara didn’t bother removing his eyes from the PC screen.

The floor that Chiho took the time to clean up for him was already littered with empty plastic bottles and snack wrappers, forming a kind of magical barrier that seemed to naturally spring from the ground wherever Urushihara decided to lurk.

The summer sky was blue as blue could be, the sun’s rays pounding mercilessly upon the town of Sasazuka as Urushihara took a sip of barley tea from a nearby cup.

“Oh, I
know
. I was watching. I’m here ’cause I wanted to talk to
you
! The Devil King’s confidant and his next-door neighbor were nice enough to go away for me, too, so…now or never, y’see?”

“For what.”

Urushihara kept his back to the voice.

“My word, though, this room is
hot
! How can your computer operate, or you move around? As I recall, it’s bad for computers to run in such heat.”

“Not really. It’s not like I’m overclocking it or anything.”

“Oh no? Well, that explains why your desk is right by the window, I s’pose. Guess you got the barest excuse for a breeze that way, mmmm?”

“Dude…”

“In any event, it sure is hot. This chocolate mint from Len and Mary’s is deee-lish!”

This, finally, was enough to make Urushihara stir. He turned around, the annoyance writ clear on his face.

“Can you just say what you want? Otherwise, I’m gonna call Maou on SkyPhone and tell him you stormed in, raided the fridge, and ran off, Gabriel.”

Facing him was a large angel who was, as he spoke, about to bite into an ice cream bar he had just casually helped himself to from the Devil’s Castle refrigerator.

“Ooh. Sheesh. He’s got you
that
tight on a budget, mmm?”

“Dude, just stop it.
I’m
the one he’s gonna get pissed off at.”

“Oh, don’t be such a grouch! What’s so bad about a loaf of ice cream, a jug of barley tea, and
moi
?”

“Nobody asked for you, dude. Just tell me what you want and get outta here. Don’t blame me if they burst in and whine at you to pay for the wall you knocked down.”

“Hey! That’s not exactly how
I
remember it. It wasn’t me who knocked it down, exactly. It was that Alas Ramus girl who punched me through it, remember?”

“Yeah, and who made her do that?”

Urushihara was impervious to this game.

Gabriel couldn’t have known that their landlord covered the entire wall repair, but he did appear to feel at least slightly at fault for the unplanned Devil’s Castle home renovation.

“Wow, though…
You’re
the one he’s gonna get ‘pissed off at’? Reeeeeally?”

Gabriel grinned a smarmy grin as he greedily licked at the bare wooden stick that once held his purloined ice cream bar, tossing it into a side wastebasket.

“That box is for plastic. The regular trash can’s next to the fridge.”

“Oh, who are you, the Grand Pooh-Bah himself? Come onnn…”

“No! No ‘come
onnnnn
’!
I’m
the one he’s gonna yell at, all right? Just go away! You’re driving me crazy! Why are you even
here
?”

Even Urushihara was nearing his limit now, no longer bothering to hide his irritation.

“Y’knowww…”

“What?!”

“You were the golden child. The archangel closest to Mr. Big himself. And now you’re griping and moaning about some bozo getting angry at you? Now
that’s
rich. And you actually care about separating the garbage. This’s too surreal. I can’t even find it in me to laugh.”

Gabriel knew exactly what he was going to do with this topic.

But Urushihara betrayed no sign that it riled him any more than he already was. “Yeah, sorry. That was then, this is now. ’Sides, you were the one who talked about how important image is to us. If you’re gonna call yourself an angel, you could at least try to recycle.”

Urushihara sniffed derisively and focused his attention back on his screen.

Gabriel paid it no mind.

“Why’re you even with that young demon wannabe anyway? I mean, I know everybody’s saying how much of a wimp you are right now compared to your glory days, but I kinda wasn’t around for those, you know? So I’m just wondering, what were you thinking? Like, sue me for asking, but what drove you to shack up with the demons over in their world…?”

“It’s ’cause I was bored.”

“Bored?”

There was a chuckle lodged in the response.

“Yeah. And it’s fun here.”

“Fun? Sitting in this sweat lodge, watching Web videos, cowering in fear that your new lord’s gonna chew you out for tossing a bottle in the wrong bin? Not to rub it in, bro, but I’d take the Internet café
I’m
staying in any day over this pigsty.”

“It’s fun. And at least it’s not—”

“Whoa there, tiger! No making fun of Internet cafés.”

Urushihara’s purple eyes made their way through the overgrown hair covering his forehead on their way to staring Gabriel down.

“At least it beats staying up
there
. Staring into space for hours on end until it finally drives you insane.”

“Yeaaah, and your little escape’s
kiiiind
of becoming a huge pain in the neck for me.”

“Helps pass the time, right?”

Gabriel declined to answer. A huddled mass of cicadas swarmed around the trees in the backyard, making the heat and humidity feel even worse with their incessant cries.

“I hung out with Satan ’cause I had nothing to do, dude. I was so devoid of anything to occupy me that it was freaking me out. No other reason besides that. So, we done here? If that’s all you needed, the door’s that-a-way.”

“Ah,
there
he is!”

“Uh?”

Just as he was about to shoo him outside, Gabriel stopped him cold.

“I slogged my sorry hide all the way down to beautiful sun-soaked Sasazuka because I wanted to ask about that Satan guy.”

“So? Ask him about himself. It’s not like Maou’s out on a trip or anything. He’s somewhere in Shinjuku.”

“Ahh, but he’s not gonna tell me anything
now
, is he? Plus, he’s still pretty young, yeah? Not like you. I just thought asking the likes of
you
would save us all a lot of headache.”

This manner of coercion was familiar to Urushihara. He had heard enough of it up in heaven.

“Plus, the way I see it, instead of asking someone with nothing but secondhand knowledge, asking someone who knows the guy directly would give me much more accurate intel to work with, am I right?”

“Huh?”

This made little sense. Sadao Maou was the Devil King Satan himself. There was nothing secondhand about him.

Gabriel wagged a chiding finger at Urushihara.