The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 3 (26 page)

“Y’know what I did? I ate the sword.”

“…Huh?”

Alas Ramus ate the holy sword.

Chiho’s eyes nearly bugged out as she attempted to parse the sentence in her mind.

“It was like she just bunched it up like a wad of bread and popped it in her mouth. Could you imagine how much of a panic that put me in?”

“……”

There was no way she could formulate a reply to that, either.

“Anyway, I guess that was her way of ‘fusing’ it with the Yesod fragment she has. Gabriel and I were shocked. Neither of us knew what had happened.”

“I’m with Mommy forever now!”

“So then, I guess those were two Yesod fragments brought together, and the sword is kind of part of my body, so I guess that kinda led to the next thing.”

Emi put her hands above her head, attempting to keep Alas Ramus out of sight from the other cafégoers.

“Wah!”

Then, Alas Ramus disappeared into a swarm of light particles.

In the time it took for Chiho to blink in surprise, a beautiful knife had appeared in Emi’s right hand.

It must have been Emi’s holy sword, but it was wholly different from the one she had before, the purple globe of light around it glowing noticeably brighter.

Then a gauntlet of finely forged silver appeared over Emi’s hand, something Chiho had never seen in battle before. Then:

“Mommy, you scared me!”

The sword talked.

“It…talks…? Whaaa?! Is that really…”

“Sure is.”

“How do I look, Chi-Sis? Do I look cool?”

“…Alas Ramus became part of the holy sword. And the Cloth of the Dispeller.”

Chiho’s jaw fell to the floor.

“So…so you didn’t tell Maou or anyone else? I mean, you should see how depressed he is right now. He’s totally not himself at work.”

“Oh, no? Well, huh. Must’ve really hurt him, I guess.”

“Well,
yeah
! You saw how much he liked having her around…”

“Tee-hee… I’m sorry. But I figured I could get away with this much. Besides…”

In another moment, the dagger disappeared from Emi’s right hand, and Alas Ramus came back into existence before Chiho’s eyes.

“I thought it’d be best if he understood what it meant to lose something a little, too.”

Once the glow accompanying the transformation dissipated, Emi gave Alas Ramus a reassuring caress on the head.

“Gabriel went home with his tail tucked between his legs. Not that he could do much. I mean, if Sariel’s Evil Eye of the Fallen wasn’t enough to pull the sword out of me, what
is,
you know? The last thing Bell and the Devil King saw was Gabriel whining like a schoolboy before diving back through his Gate… But anyway, that’s not what I wanted to ask you about.”

“…Um? Oh, uh, so what is it?”

Chiho’s brain was having trouble keeping up with this conveyor belt of revelations. Emi continued to show her no mercy.

“…So as you can see, Alas Ramus fused herself with my holy sword, so now we’re able to move around with a little more freedom.”

“Right.”

“But—and this is something she said before all of that happened—but apparently she’s under the notion that me and her ‘daddy’ are gonna be together forever…”

There was brief silence. It was followed by a groan from Chiho’s side of the table.

“Uhhngh?”

“I mean, the whole day through, all I heard in my mind was ‘I want to see Daddy, where’s Daddy,’ and so on ad nauseam… But if I keep leaving this girl in Devil’s Castle, what if something happens then? I won’t have my holy sword on me.”

“I don’t know if I’d worry about
that
first—”

“And the
worst
part, you know, was that Rika was no help to me at all today. She was all freaking out about something, too.”

“You mean Rika Suzuki?”

“All through our whole shift… Even afterward, too, she was acting all weird and fidgety, you know? And she kept checking her phone, too.”

Emi gulped the remains of her lukewarm coffee blend and brought a hand to her head in despair.

“I can’t do this! If this keeps up, I won’t be able to work—at the call center,
or
as the Hero! I still have to slay the Devil King, but that would mean having Alas Ramus kill her own ‘daddy,’ and if I store her in my body in holy-sword form, she’s whining and moaning in my mind and I can’t focus on anything… I just don’t know what to do…”

“Kind of a weird case of postpartum stress…”

Chiho could feel a headache forming as the Hero of the Holy Sword whined apace. None of this was helping her understand the situation at all.

In her mind, Emi owned one of the most envious positions in the world, one which she’d gladly trade places for in a heartbeat.

“I don’t know if this is gonna be a solution or anything, but…”

“But what?!”

Chiho continued calmly as Emi nearly leaped off her seat.

“But, um, if you moved into an empty room in Maou’s apartment building, that’d at least make Alas Ramus happy.”

“Nuh-uh.
Not
happening. That’d make me feel like I lost to him, kind of.”

“Yusa,
you
don’t have to start acting like a child, too!”

“But, come on—“

“Whee! Moving to Daddy’s house!”

Alas Ramus, the apple girl completely oblivious to Emi’s anguish or the ways of the grown-up world, continued to pick up solely on the things that mattered to her.

“You’re lighting that campfire again?”

Emi and Chiho, visiting Villa Rosa Sasazuka together, stared on
listlessly as Maou burned a bunch of
ogara
sticks. The wisp of smoke extended upward into the sky as the western sun just barely peeked above the horizon.

“This is called the
okuribi
, okay? Could you at least
try
to learn a little about Japan?”

“
Okuribi
? Huh. Great. …So why’re you doing that?”

“It’s so I can guide the souls of the ancestors I called over here with the
mukaebi
back to their own world. Normally you’d do this at the end of the Obon holiday, but I don’t think anyone’s gonna care if I push it up a bit.”

Maou let out a languid sigh.

Out of the corner of her eye, Emi noticed that Maou’s listlessly dangling hand was holding the framed photo they took together with Alas Ramus.

“This is my way of getting Alas Ramus back up there, to…wherever, okay? …And I guess I wasted my money on
that
, too. Didn’t even use it once.”

Maou’s eyes were pointed at Dullahan II, its yellow plastic child’s seat reflecting the white light of another summer sunset.

A light breeze entered the scene, taking up the wisp of smoke and dispersing it into the sky.

“I don’t feel like talking to you today. Go away.”

“Oh, thanks a lot. I’m here because I wanted to ask you something, okay? And I better get an answer.”

“……”

Maou distractedly turned his grimace downward without a word.

“Lemme ask you about that charm the traveler got from the angel. What happened to that once he became king?”

“!…”

Maou let out a soft groan, face still turned downward.

“I just want to know for reference. If you had that planned out, can you tell me?”

“…So that’s all? You’re just here to screw around with me?”

“Sure. Fine. It’s just me, coming over here to laugh at the Devil King while he’s moping all by himself.”

“You Heroes and angels are just the nastiest bastards, aren’t you?”

“Not as much as you demons are.”

Chiho silently watched the exchange unfold.

She thought Maou would erupt in rage, but after a few moments, he faintly spoke.

“…Once the traveler became king, he forgot all about the charm. Then a lot of stuff happened to him, and once he was back on the road as just another dusty wanderer, he came across it again. He swore he’d treat it better this time, but…maybe it was payback for what he did as king, who knows, but anyway, someone took it from him, probably.”

“Hohhh. Innn-teresting. But he still remembered that it really meant something to him, huh?”

“…Look, what do you want?”

Maou glared at Emi, shooting daggers from his eyes.

But, for her own reasons, Emi was no longer ready to bully Maou around. Her face was a little red, her eyes removed from Maou’s.

“…Huh?”

Seeing this made Maou even more suspicious.

“So I think he’ll probably treat it really well next time. What do you think?”

“I agree.”

Chiho spoke up for the first time.

“What is
with
you two today…?”

Even the normally slow-on-the-uptake Maou noticed they were hinting at something.

“Well, it’s not like I know what kind of great treasure this was for the traveler, but if that’s how you put it, it must’ve been really important, wasn’t it?”

Emi raised her right hand. It emitted a dull glow.

“Do you know how it feels to lose something precious to you now? If you do, then you better treat it right this time.”

Then, a small miracle suddenly unfolded before Maou’s eyes.

“Daddy!!”

Maou was astonished to see the little girl appear, as if materializing from thin air in front of the
okuribi
fire. He froze, eyes wide open, like a deer scoping out an advancing minivan on the highway.

“Alas…Ramus…? What on, hang on, how did you…?”

Staggering to his feet, Maou accidentally dropped the photo he was holding.

Alas Ramus, the girl he thought gone forever, was unimpressed.

“Daddy, no! Don’t drop it! You’ll hurt it!”

She nimbly picked up the picture and held it against her chest.

“Is…? No way, is this for real? Are you really Alas Ramus?!”

Maou fell to his knees on the ground, patting the girl on the head, face, and shoulders as she held on to the photo.

“Eek! Daddy, that prickles!”

Alas Ramus laughed like a puppy in response, grabbing Maou’s hand with her own.

“So…there you have it.”

Maou paid no attention to Emi’s words.

“Wow, so…so he didn’t take you away…”

“I figured I’d let you stew in your own juices for a while longer. But Alas Ramus kept going on about seeing her daddy, and it struck me as kind of a ‘demon’ move overall, so I brought her over here. I hope you appreciate… Wait.”

Emi’s flurry of excuses was cut off by something that stunned her.

“Are you
crying
?”

“Uh? Huh? Buh?”

Maou brought a hand to his own face. There, for the first time since that day when he thought he’d lose his life, lay a single stream of tears.

“Wh-what kind of Devil King are you?
Crying
like that?! What are you, stupid? Quit it!”

Emi, flustered by Maou’s reaction, couldn’t decide what to do next. She opted with the safe choice of yelling at him.

“Daddy, are you hurt? Are you hurt?!”

Alas Ramus, also noticing the tears, looked up at Maou, looking about ready to cry herself.

“No, this is just, um, it’s like, kind of an accident, and things.”

The ex–Devil King tried his best to hide the tears. It didn’t work.

“You must be really happy, Maou. I mean, Alas Ramus is back!”

It was Chiho’s smile that did all the explaining for him.

“Everyone cries when they’re happy like that, you know.”

Maou blankly looked at Chiho.

“So, did you learn something new about this world?”

“Chi-Sis, is Daddy okay? He isn’t hurt?”

Chiho patted the head of the tearful Alas Ramus.

“He’s okay. Daddy’s just really happy to see you, is all.”

“I’m
not
crying!”

Suddenly, Maou indignantly stood up.

“Wh-who the hell’s crying here?! Besides, I knew all that anyway! I’m the father of this girl! And I knew Gabriel and the Heavenly Regiment ran away, too!”

Not even a grade-schooler would put on a strongman act like that in this day and age.

“Wabpf!”

His point made, he then abruptly picked up Alas Ramus.

“We…we even made Alas Ramus’s food for today! Yo! Ashiya! Suzuno! We’re eating! It’s time to eat!”

With that, he ran up the stairs, not even bothering to put out the
okuribi
fire.

“…I’m amazed he could keep the act going for that long. But are they really going to eat in there?”

“I think they’ll be eating in Suzuno’s place for the time being. They’re still gonna sleep in their own room, though. It’d be cooler that way anyway, is how they put it.”

“Yeah, that sure sounds like them.”

With a wry smile, Emi looked at Villa Rosa Sasazuka’s second floor.

Seeing this very Sadao Maou–like reaction, she was forced to admit that there was a sense of relief somewhere in her heart.

The mysteries behind her Better Half sword had only deepened, and she had no idea how the Devil Overlord Gabriel mentioned was involved.

Upstairs, she could already hear Ashiya and the gang exclaim their surprise.

“You know, though…you don’t think anyone’s gonna call the cops or anything, do you?”

“I was just thinking about that, actually, but…well, it’s getting a lot of looks from people, but that place is kinda falling apart anyway, so… Besides, we wouldn’t really want the police here anyway, right? All’s well that ends well.”