The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 3 (5 page)

“I don’t think that’s what she’s talking about, Maou.”

Chiho’s aside was just as cold.

“Are you going out somewhere with Suzuno, Yusa?”

“Mm-hmm. We’re gonna look at some appliances and phones.”

“Appliances and phones?”

“Indeed. It seems I am destined for an extended stay here, so I
need to shore up the necessities of daily life, but it seems my pretrip research was a tad behind the times. I thought it best to have Emilia accompany me in case I should find myself at sea midway.”

“Ohh, I get it.”

On the one hand, Chiho was happy to discover her new friend wouldn’t be leaving soon. On the other, the thought of a woman—the nemesis of her crush, in fact—living right next door to Maou indefinitely somewhat tempered her joy.

“Not that she’d have to stay if I could ever get around to slicing that destitute Devil King in two.”

Emi, as if reading Chiho’s mind, laughed impishly as she sized up Maou.

Maou erupted in a cold sweat, unable to discern how to respond. Chiho, looking on, was unsure whether Emi was joking or not.

“…Of course, I guess I already said I wouldn’t be doing that anytime soon. And since I’m not the kind of Hero to break a promise, I’ll just have to station her here until I figure out a Plan B, you know?”

“Uh…yes.”

She wasn’t joking at all. Chiho’s response seemed drained of emotion.

“Ha-ha-ha! Oh, I’m sorry. It’s all right. I’m not gonna do it right in front of you or anything, Chiho.”

“…I’m a bit concerned about what you’ll do when I’m
not
there, but…”

Chiho finally felt it safe to chuckle.

“Well, I suppose that depends on how the Devil King acts, hmm?”

“Gah! There…there isn’t a Devil King out there as meek and diligent and environmentally conscious as I am! And I don’t even care a little bit about whatever kind of illegal drug handoff you just did right in front of me! So rest easy and get the hell out of here!”

Maou put his hands forward as he pouted like a child, shooing Emi away with both arms.

“You don’t find that embarrassing at all? Trying to convince your mortal enemy that you’re a meek, diligent, environmentally conscious Devil King?”

“My aim is to be a Devil King I don’t have to be embarrassed about, man!”

“Huh. If anything, maybe the people of Ente Isla should be embarrassed about how much trouble they had finishing you off.”

Emi shrugged an exaggerated, what-are-we-ever-going-to-do-with-you shrug. Then she questioningly looked down at the nearly extinguished dish of
ogara
at her feet.

“…That, and what’re you doing, starting a fire in this heat? I noticed the smoke on the way here. I thought maybe you were burning something.”

“Uh…”

“About that…”

“You weren’t aware, Emilia?”

Now Maou, Chiho, and Suzuno all exchanged glances.

“…You really don’t know? Man, way to give ammo to all the old folks living around here. I can just hear ’em now: ‘Kids these days! So ungrateful!’”

“…I’m sorry, Yusa. I can’t defend against
that
.”

“So be it. I will explain to her later.”

“Uh? …Uhhhh?”

Emi panicked slightly. She had no idea what triggered this indelicate response from Chiho and Suzuno—though she expected that sass from Maou—and began wondering what land mine she had inadvertently stepped on.

“Regardless, Emilia, I thank you for this donation. I will be ready in just one moment.”

Bag in hand, Suzuno bowed at Emi and turned to climb the stairwell.

Still unsure where she went wrong, Emi looked at Suzuno, then the nearly dead ashes at her feet. Chiho smiled distractedly, attempting to put the awkward moment behind her. The final piece of
ogara
fizzled out, bringing the smoke to a halt.

The stage was set for the next moment.

“Oh?”

“Huh?”

“Wha?!”

“Yaghh!”

“Whoa whoa whoa whoa!”

Maou, Chiho, Suzuno, Emi—even Urushihara, still spying on the scene through the front door—all reacted in shock when they saw the light.

It wasn’t the kind of sharp, blinding light thrust downward in salvos by the sun. This was a dazzling explosion, something with real weight behind it, and it suddenly materialized right above the burned-out
ogara
.

“Oh, crap!”

Maou was the first to take nimble action.

“Agh!”

He held Chiho close, shielding her from the nearby clay dish, before dragging her toward the apartment’s sole tree a safe distance away.

Maou groaned out a shout amid the torrent of light, now so bright that it was impossible to keep one’s eyes open.

“Grab on to something! It’s a Gate!”

“!!”

“What?!”

Emi and Suzuno reacted quickly, all but dropping everything in their hands as they held on to the stairway guardrail with both hands.

The paper bag in Suzuno’s grasp fell down the stairs with a loud, heavy thud.

The behavior of a Gate between two worlds depended greatly on the goals of the mage who created it, as well as the nature of the power used to summon it.

But one thing all Gates had in common was that anything that touched it, assuming it was transportable, was immediately sucked inside with no chance of escape.

And with an unexpected crisis like this, Chiho, unprotected by any sort of holy or demonic power, was the one exposed to the most danger.

“Which way’s it going? In, or out?!” Maou shouted, his hands full attempting to keep Chiho away.

“Something’s coming out!”

He could no longer see her, but Suzuno provided the response.

An “out” Gate. In other words, someone was going through a Gate from somewhere to reach Japan.

Realizing the Gate didn’t have the power to suck in everything nearby after all, Maou released Chiho from his grasp, keeping her behind him as he turned toward the light.

“…What
is
that?”

A large spherical shadow could be seen within.

“It…it’s not a human or a demon!”

Emi must have caught sight of it, too.

Once the silhouette appeared, the light quickly began to dwindle away.

The Gate’s magnificence was still extremely bright, even given that this was the middle of a summer afternoon, but with the initial torrent of energy ebbing away, color and detail gradually became clear across the sphere that appeared within the Gate.

“Some kind of fruit…? No, that couldn’t…”

“It’s pretty big…”

Suzuno and Emi, closer to the Gate than Maou, carefully drew near the hovering shape.

In a moment, the brilliance of the Gate collapsed, like a flow of water cut off by a closing tap.

Color returned to the world, the summer sun reintroducing itself to the Villa Rosa Sasazuka front yard.

The object they were entranced by, which had just appeared without any advance warning, landed on the
ogara
ashes with a plunk.

“Man oh man…”

“Whoa whoa whoa.”

“Ah! Ah…ah…”

It wasn’t that the object was unrecognizable. It was its presence on top of the burned ashes that made the three of them spring into action.

Maou picked it up, Emi gingerly moved the dish to the corner to keep from breaking it, and Suzuno nimbly wiped the remaining ash off it with a handkerchief she had on her person.

Luckily, the
ogara
had fully burned out, and the object didn’t appear to be singed at all.

The trio breathed a quick sigh of relief, before:

“My eyes! My eyes!”

The groaning voice of Urushihara, who apparently had stared right into the intense light, rang out from upstairs. Maou, Emi, and Suzuno were startled back to attention.

Exchanging glances with one another, the trio looked at the object picked up by Maou and polished off by Suzuno.

“What are you yelling about, Urushihara?!”

“Dude, my eyes! …Agh!”

“Q-quit squirming around on the floor! I may wind up kicking you!”

“You already
did
kick me!”

“And that’s what you get for lying around by the front door! …Your Demonic Highness, what is that enormous fruit in your hands?”

Until Ashiya’s casual query, the three acquaintances in the yard below had trouble coolly analyzing the situation.

It was a hilariously oversized fruit of some sort, large enough that a grown man like Maou needed two hands to carry it.

It was yellow, apple-shaped, and tremendously heavy.

No one could drum up the courage to eat it. Not this. This was something the Guinness folks would hold champagne parties over.

“Is that…really an apple?”

“I guess it could be a pear, depending on how you look at it…but…”

“…They don’t grow ’em this big. Not even back in the demon realm. Don’t tell me this is a demon shaped like an apple or something. Someone could’ve at least stuck a shipping label on this thing for us…”

There were, it had to be said, demons that could imitate plant life in Maou’s kingdom. Most were humanoid, though, their bodies
gnarled and wooden like ancient, sentient trees. He had never heard of one of his minions transforming into some prize-winning pickin’s from the county fair.

Gates weren’t something that popped up naturally. There had to be some mage or alchemist deliberately sending this apple over to them.

There was no way to tell who quite yet, though. That answer would arrive once they figured out whether it was sent here on purpose, or it was just a coincidence.

“Ugh. Give me a break.”

Emi’s mind was the first to wander off the present subject.

“How many times
is
this now? Something incredibly weird happening whenever the Devil King and Hero are in the same place? It’s barely been a week since the whole thing with Sariel! I swear, nothing good ever happens around you!”

“I could echo that right back at you, lady.”

Maou refused to remain silent as Emi accused him of assorted bad-seed behavior.

“Besides, most of this recent crap was kinda set off by you humans, wasn’t it?!”

“Ngh…”

“Yes…well, my apologies.”

Suzuno turned her gaze away toward the sky as Emi fell silent.

“I mean, did you even think there’s a demon out there right now who can open a Gate as blinding as that one?! It’s probably some troublemaker from the heavens again, no doubt! So here! Take it! Why don’t you stick it in the fridge for a few hours so it’s nice and cold before you dig in?!”

Maou brought the apple closer to Emi. Emi took a confused step back.

“What are you, stupid?! We’re about to go shopping downtown! How’re we gonna carry
that
thing around?!”

“I don’t care! That’s
your
problem! You’re the one skulking around me and getting all up in my business all the time! You weirdo stalker Hero!”

“How… How
dare
you call me a stalker! If you weren’t a demon, do you think I’d even
dream
of hanging around
you
, you Devil Welfare King?!”

“Ngh… Just shut up! Look at you, dressed up like you’re CEO of the world or something! Stupid Business Casual Hero!”

“Pfft! It beats having to go around in faded, threadbare UniClo junk all day, you Beefy-T King!”

As the words flew to and fro, resembling less an argument and more a very incompetently performed rap battle, Maou finally made the mistake of going one step too far.

“Well, a lady like you, you’d need to wear a kid-sized UniClo sports bra! Flattest Hero Ever, am I right?!”

Emi, fatigued by the sizzling heat and killer slams, shot her eyes wide open, flames of aggression suddenly burning behind her.

“That’s
it
! I’m gonna hack you apart right where you stand!”

“Uh—ah—whoa, wait a second, Emi! People’re gonna notice! C’mon, no holy sword! Please, we can talk this out!”

“Silence, fool!! My power shall smite all demonic perversions!!”

A burst of holy force shimmered a golden hue in the air, shooting across Emi’s right arm as she summoned her Better Half to her hand.

It was the only holy sword on Earth, a weapon wieldable only by a Hero imbued with the Holy Silver, which was guarded by the Ente Isla Church since time immemorial. Its purpose: demon slaying, and nothing else.

“Agh! Ahhh, ahh, ah, are you serious, Emi?!”

“My liege!”

Emi had summoned her most powerful of weapons, a development that went far past their usual unfriendly bickering. Ashiya, unable to stand by idly, took two steps down the stairway.

“Ah, ah, aahhhhhhhh?!”

Still wearing his indoor slippers, Ashiya’s feet found no traction whatsoever on the half-rotted steps. With a clatter and a scream, he fell downward.

“Oh, good job, twinkletoes.”

Urushihara, meanwhile, eyesight finally recovered from the blinding light, watched on from behind, still lying haphazardly on the floor.

“Hmm? Where’s Chiho Sasaki?”

He looked around the scene, realizing that Chiho was oddly absent in this furor so far.

He noticed Chiho staring a distance away from under the cicada-laden tree, then shrugged quizzically, quite a feat to perform while on one’s stomach.

“You have my full permission. Slay him.” For some reason, Suzuno was engorged with rage as she glared at Maou.

“Hey! Don’t add gas to the fire! Stop her for me! …Oh, dammit, you’re on Emi’s side, that’s right! Crap!”

“Devil King! Prepare to die!”

Who could have predicted that an off-color comment about a budget-priced sports bra would cause such an abrupt end to his dreams of world domination?

That pointless pang of regret was all that passed through Maou’s mind. None of this “life passing before his eyes” stuff. That was for humans.

He had nowhere to run, no way to dodge Emi’s lightning-fast strike. His only recourse, though he knew it was useless, was to heft the apple in his hands upward, blocking the holy sword as Emi swung it from heaven above.

“Huh?”

But the air-rending, earth-shattering blade of her sword never quite got around to neatly halving Maou vertically.

Fearing the worst, Maou slowly turned his face upward.