The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 1 (8 page)

Ashiya, however, sized up the unlikely couple in front of him.

“Do note that I have not dropped my guard yet. Try anything
underhanded, and it will be you who pays the price. A good night to you!”

With that rather bizarre farewell, he laid himself down and quickly fell asleep himself, one of the few ways the servant resembled the master. They had acted so cautious around her, and now they had left themselves wide open in their slumber.

She watched them sleep for a moment, but soon found the idea of remaining vigilant in front of these senseless, comatose corpses too silly to consider. Soon, she had lain down as well.

“I’m gonna have to cancel my Kakui credit card… My bank card, too. Oh, and how many rides did I have left on my pass?”

Recalling all the life necessities she held in that purse made her feel even gloomier.

“Why am I even doing this…?”

Only she could hear herself whispering this final statement before her fatigue and emotions drove her to the land of dreams.

Around the time that Emi’s breathing grew slower and more rhythmic, Maou spoke up, his eyes still closed.

“We’re a team of two, but it seems she’s alone, huh?”

“Indeed.”

“We were pretty miserable at first, too, weren’t we? And she had to deal with all of that by herself. You think about it that way…I’m not gonna be her friend, no, but I do feel bad for her.”

“You’ve grown complacent, Your Demonic Highness.”

“Just for the moment, Ashiya. I made her promise not to hang around me any further.”

“Well, so be it, then.”

“Exactly. So…huh?”

From the corner of his eye, Maou noticed something glinting in the air.

“What is it?”

“We got a text.” Maou scooped the phone up from where it was last tossed on the floor. The screen showed two new messages. “Huh. One’s from Chi… Hey, stop looking.”

Maou wriggled away from Ashiya, who was also trying to peer into the screen. “The other one’s from an unknown number. Weird.”

It was from an unregistered source, a mail address that seemed to be a random mishmash of letters and numbers. Either spam or the wrong number, Maou figured…at first.

“Your Demonic Highness?”

Ashiya was moved to speak as he watched Maou’s eyes suddenly grow pointed, serious.

“Hey, Ashiya? This is kind of nuts, isn’t it? I got pretty much the same text at the same time…from someone I know and someone I don’t.”

The texts from Chiho and the unknown sender seemed almost to dovetail with each other.

The earthquakes will continue. Be careful.

Maou, there’s gonna be another earthquake. What should I do? Chiho

By the time Maou and Ashiya woke up the next morning, Emi was already gone.

Her bath towel was neatly folded up and placed on top of the washer. The key to the front door was on the floor beneath a window, and next to the kitchen sink…

“What’s that?”

“Some kind of pickled dish?”

It was a small bowl of chopped-up
konnyaku
gel and cucumber, tossed with vinegar and miso paste. Ashiya had no memory of preparing it.

“Her way of repaying us for the lodging, perhaps? Here, allow me to test it for poison.”

Removing the plastic wrap over the bowl, Ashiya flicked a slice of cucumber into his mouth.

“Hmm… She is our foe, yes, but she’s also a gifted cook.”

“It’s good?”

“I do not find it wanting, my liege.”

“Huh. I don’t usually eat anything vinegary like that.” As he spoke, Maou tried a pinch for himself.

“I do wonder what the key is doing on the floor, however…”

“If I had to guess, she opened the window, locked the door, then
tossed it back in through the window. The bars over the windows facing the corridor would’ve kept anyone from getting inside anyway.”

“Impressive. The Hero is a woman of high morals.” Ashiya sniffed derisively as he picked the key up off the floor.

“And what would you have done if you were her?”

“Simple. I would have locked the door and taken the key with me.”

“Devilish.”

“Your point being?”

Emi was safe in Room 501, the Urban Heights Eifukucho condominiums, seven minutes from Eifukucho station on the Keio Inokashira rail line. And Emi was still kicking herself over falling asleep before the trains began running again.

It may have been just a crummy apartment, “Villa Rosa” in name only, but it was still the Devil’s Castle, a dark domain of ultimate evil. She had been blatantly reckless in her behavior. What’s more, it was the Devil King’s own filthy lucre that paid for train fare. She gritted her teeth in frustration.

“I feel so
unclean
…”

But she needed the remaining cash for the fare to Shinjuku. Today was another workday.

She could withdraw money easily enough with her passbook and seal, but Emi’s bank didn’t have any manned branches near Eifukucho.

Hurriedly, she made a bum rush for the shower, eager to wash away the stink of the ancient tatami mats that lined Devil’s Castle.

She had ample time to take it easy this morning, but the thought of demonic corruption writhing its way through her pores made her blood freeze.

Savoring the hot, cleansing water, Emi suddenly put a hand to her head, right where Maou touched her as they were dodging magical blasts. She recalled, a shiver of disgust crossing her spine, how Maou had virtually palmed her head like a basketball.

Lucky thing she’d thought to purchase a new bottle of shampoo. Spending twice the usual time lathering up her hair, she ran the conditioner deep into her scalp, following it up with a thorough hair pack treatment.

Methodically, she rubbed a freshly purchased bar of medical moisturizing beauty soap repeatedly against each area where Maou’s fingers touched her, as if they were contaminated by some hideous disease. Soon, nearly half the bar was gone.

Walking from the shower to the living room as she wrung the excess water out of her hair with a towel, she picked up a remote control from a low table covered with a flower-print cloth and turned on the TV.

Japan, as a nation, was always overly sensitive to gun-related crimes, no matter how far out in the sticks they took place. Their “gunshots” were magical in nature, of course, but they had still made holes in the asphalt, broken a traffic signal, and ripped apart a protective shutter. If something like that took place in the middle of Tokyo, it was only natural that it was the top story once the morning news programs went live.

MHK was airing a traffic report for the train and highway systems. The JR and private train lines were all running on schedule, so Emi shouldn’t have much difficulty riding the Keio Inokashira line to work.

After a moment, the program shifted to the morning’s news. As expected, the shooting dominated. They began with a shot of the intersection at which Emi had spoken with Maou the night before, now lined with cameras and TV reporters.

The police had shut the intersection down, lining it with yellow D
O
N
OT
C
ROSS
tape. Images of the innocent building shutter, now twisted into an unrecognizable shape, were inserted into the coverage here and there. The reporter used the term “shots fired,” but said that no further details were uncovered as of yet.

Switching through the channels, Emi found largely the same story elsewhere. Then:

“Whoa! It’s them!”

Maou and Ashiya were clearly visible among the crowd of onlookers in one of the camera shots.

Emi resisted the instinctive urge to shut off the TV. They were on-screen for only a moment, but it seemed like they were discussing something with each other, somber looks on their faces. Perhaps Maou was explaining the scene to Ashiya.

“…and a bicycle with two flat tires was abandoned in the middle of the intersection. Police detectives are in the midst of determining the bicycle’s owner, since they believe it may have something to do with the case.”

Emi’s eyes opened wide at the on-scene reporter’s script.

“You…
idiot
…”

That
was why they looked so somber! Presumably they didn’t think anyone would care much about any of this. He must have thought it’d be fine and dandy to stroll on over early in the morning and pick up the bike then. And
now
look at him.

It wouldn’t be long before the police seized the bike and figured out who owned it. And from there, it wouldn’t be long before they rooted out Sadao Maou, lurking within Villa Rosa Sasazuka.

“…Well, not
my
problem.”

With that conclusion, she returned to the bathroom to dry her hair, leaving the TV on.

Maou was the victim here, after all. It didn’t bother Emi much if the police thought he was related to the shooting. In fact, him getting arrested would be nothing but good news for her.

After a few minutes, the news switched over to a report about a string of late-night convenience-store robberies and muggings of women and the elderly, apparently carried out by a crazed maniac wearing bizarre clothing. Listening to the lurid details was enough to darken Emi’s mood all over again.

Some days, it just felt like one depressing thing piling on top of another.

Emi was a part-time contractual employee for a call center.

Her office was in a branch of Dokodemo, a nationwide cell phone
provider, located in a business district about ten minutes from Shinjuku station’s east exit. Her department chiefly handled complaint processing and customer service.

Very few people, even the kind of people who willingly worked at call centers, actively volunteered for the complaints department. That was why she landed that for her first job in the world, and why she still held it down now.

Being constantly short on staff, the department paid handsomely. Someone like Emi, with an attractive voice and a chip on her shoulder, was an invaluable resource.

What was more, Emi was gifted with the ability to grasp every language spoken in the world.

Even when greeted in a language she’d never heard before, her brain had a sort of telepathic ability to understand at least the general outline. All she had to do was reply with her own general emotions, and the caller understood. To an impartial observer, this would apparently be interpreted as her fluently speaking English, French, Korean, Chinese, anything.

Walking into the office locker room, Emi changed into her uniform: a gray vest, a tight skirt, a blouse, and a bow-tie-shaped ribbon. She then clocked herself into the company system and sat down at her assigned cube. Not being a full-time employee, she had yet to be granted her own exclusive desk, but given the department’s chronic staff shortage, she usually found herself among the same island of cubes.

“Morning, Emi!”

“Oh, hey, Rika.”

Rika Suzuki had called out from the adjacent seat. Her employee number was only one removed from Emi’s, so they would always find themselves seated next to each other when both were on duty. Her short brown hair was a smart match for the gray uniform.

“Hey, did you hear about that crazy shootout? That was right near you, wasn’t it?”

Emi’s heartbeat accelerated for a moment, but she was never the kind of girl to wear her emotions on her sleeve.

“Well, three train stops away, but…yeah.”

“Oh? Well, still, a gun battle right in the middle of Tokyo! Nuts, isn’t it? Japan’s gonna go down the tubes before too long if
that
keeps up.”

The morning news simply reported that shots were fired, but in Rika’s mind, it had already escalated into an action-film bloodbath.

“And, you know, there’s been all these earthquakes lately, there’s some weirdo robbing people on the street… It’s outrageous! The whole world’s going crazy, and it’s draggin’ all of us down with it. Oh! There’s a new curry place opening up today, did you hear about that?”

Emi was already used to the unexpected new directions in which the women of this world could suddenly take a conversation.

“No, I didn’t.”

“One of the big joints in Shimo-Kitazawa opened up a new location. Wanna join me there for lunch, maybe?”

“Ooh, but if it’s popular, won’t there be a line and stuff?”

“It’ll be worth it!”

Ever since she arrived in Japan, Emi had been repeatedly floored by the vast variety its kitchens offered. Curry, in particular, was a revolution for her senses and her taste buds when she first tried it, exceeding all expectations she ever had for a decent lunch. That astonishment remained today, long after she had grown accustomed to other aspects of the Japanese lifestyle. Rika’s invitation sorely tempted her, but for today, with painful reluctance, she found herself shaking her head.

“Well, sad to say, I don’t have time to stand in line today. I lost my purse.”

“Oh, no
way
! Really?!”

Rika’s reaction was so grandiose, Emi was concerned she would tip over her office chair.

“Yeah, and it had everything in it, too. Train ticket, bank card, credit card… So I have to go visit my bank to deal with all that and withdraw some money.”

“Ooh, yeah, no waiting around for lunch today, then.”

“Sorry about that!”

“Oh, no problem, no problem. So you wanna just hit up Maggie’s or whatever instead?”

“Ooh,
anything
but Maggie’s.”

To Emi, Rika was more than just a coworker—she was the first friend she’d found in this world. Her influence was part of the reason Emi had fallen into the habit of saying “Maggie’s” instead of “MgRonald,” for one.

Maou had picked on her for not having any friends, but the only thing she lacked for on Earth were friends from Ente Isla. A pity that no acquaintances lived nearby the Hatagaya neighborhood in Sasazuka. Then maybe she wouldn’t have gone through all that anguish overnight.

“You better cancel all those cards real soon, though, right?”

“I already put a temporary stop on them, yeah. That much you can do over the phone.”

“Oh, I see. Well, you just name the place, Emi! It’s on me today! Don’t want to leave you heartbroken, after all.”

“Ah, you don’t have to do that…”

They continued on in this fashion until the starting bell rang.

Emi checked the interoffice mail on her assigned PC, where the day’s special issues to watch out for would be waiting.

The first call signal had already sounded off from one cube or another.

Being a subsidiary of Dokodemo, the calls were naturally all about issues related to cell phones. The morning report mentioned that phone service had been knocked out for a period last night in part of the city’s center due to electrical issues.

If anyone was itching to complain today, that would be the main reason. Emi could hear Rika sigh in the next booth over. Plainly she thought the same thing.

Emi received her first call practically the moment she set her terminal to standby mode. An elderly woman, having trouble understanding the jargon in the instruction manual. After politely walking her through the problem, she received another call five
minutes afterward. It was a transfer from another station with a “foreign language” code attached.

The department would be loath to admit it, but the staff relied almost wholly upon Emi for all non-Japanese support.

Apparently it was a Chinese man who couldn’t read the Japanese manual and decided to just try the phone number printed on the back.

And so the flow of inquiries continued, Emi handling each one efficiently and effectively. By the time she noticed the clock, it was already near her lunch break. The call load always tended to slow down a bit once the afternoon rolled around.

“Ugh! There’s just so many complaints today!”

Rika was groaning in the adjacent cube.