THE TEENAGER STARTS IMAGINING BEYOND TOMORROW

Six bowls, each filled with steaming white rice, sat atop the basic kotatsu in the tatami-mat room. They were accompanied by miso soup, dried fish, pickled veggies, and a side salad. It was the stereotypically ideal Japanese breakfast, and it was being enjoyed by six people at once.

“Chiho,” one of them said, “what about after that?”

Chiho Sasaki gave Suzuno Kamazuki’s anxious question a serious nod. “He looked the same as always. I felt like he wasn’t as talkative as normal, but after something like that, I couldn’t blame him.”

“Ms. Sasaki,” a sorrowful-looking Shirou Ashiya stated from next to Suzuno, “I do have to apologize for always making you worry. Quite a number of things happened to us all at once as well, you see, and at the moment, we’re finding it difficult to handle.”

“Well,” Chiho said, turning her eyes away a little, “again, I can’t blame you. I know just how difficult that whole situation was. Really, I feel bad that this is about all I can do for you. I wish I could be more help right now—”

She was cut off by another voice ringing out from next to her—one much more boundlessly cheerful than the others.

“You all are so gloomy! Look, I know you’re not the kind of high-strung girl who’d get depressed over something like this, mm-kay? You’re not starving yourself, are you? It’s the new school year now—your third and last year of high school, right? If you get preoccupied with going on a diet or whatever, your head’s gonna stop working! So ya want some more rice?!”

Chiho winced as she looked at him, then pointed at the rice bowl in front of her.

“Gabriel, can you stop acting like I’m some kind of emotionless robot?! And yes, please!”

“Ah, so you do still have an appetite, my pretty little miss? Hang on one sec!”

The figure in a large apron, muscles practically cascading over his T-shirt, was neither Maou, nor Emi, nor Urushihara, but the archangel Gabriel, currently responsible for guarding Devil’s Castle on the Ente Isla side.

“Feh,” sighed the man seething next to Chiho, deftly handling his chopsticks despite the pair of enormous claws extending out from each of his hands. “Coming here has made me realize that angels lack any sort of principles whatsoever. It amazes me that humans actually worship them.”

“Enough of that, Farfarello,” Suzuno said with a chuckle, looking at the head Malebranche chieftain across from her. “That is not who we worship. It is the concept of angels, one could say.”

“I’m not a ‘that,’ you know. Some holy cleric you are… Y’all have enough rice?”

Albert Ende stuck his bowl out. “Fill me up, Gabriel. Pile it high.”

“Yeah, yeah, here you are.”

“Still,” Albert continued upon receiving a small mountain of rice, “funny how all these problems seem to be croppin’ up at once. It’s damned fishy, if you ask me.”

Everyone except Gabriel greeted this observation with grave faces.

“Indeed. I do hope my liege is eating well enough… Between dealing with the wounded Lord Camio, Kinanna, and Urushihara to boot, I fear he is reverting to bad dietary habits.”

“That wasn’t exactly my main concern, y’know…”

“I brought him a few things when I came here,” Chiho replied, reacting neither to Albert’s whining nor to Ashiya’s placing Urushihara in the same class as a magical chicken and a wizard-lizard. “That, and I think Nord is providing him with some assistance, too. Plus, with everything that happened, Kinanna is acting a lot better now.”

“Again, his diet ain’t… Ahh, forget it.”

It was the same Ente Isla Devil’s Castle as always, but right now it was hosting a rather odd assemblage of six people. Just a bit ago Sadao Maou, the lord of all demons, and Emi Yusa, his nemesis, had both tasted defeat at the hands of a single solitary figure. At roughly the same time, danger from Ente Isla’s Western Island had begun to threaten both Devil’s Castle and the Devil King’s Army. Apart from Gabriel’s usual easygoing manner, this summit—featuring all the main leaders of the mission to defeat heaven for good—was an extremely somber one.

In the midst of this struggle—with the ultimate goal of rescuing Alas Ramus’s brothers and sisters from the angels in heaven—Sadao Maou had failed in his quest to become a full-time staffer at MgRonald, the greatest mission of his life in Japan. Almost simultaneously, Kinanna—the Lenbrellebelve with the Astral Gem, the final item needed to send Devil’s Castle hurtling toward heaven—appeared in the middle of Yoyogi Park. Thanks to his extremely advanced age, Kinanna’s memory was cloudy, forcing a Maou already reeling from his workplace defeat to provide what was essentially elder care for a senile lizard.

Emi Yusa, his nemesis, and Chiho Sasaki, his would-be true love, were both concerned that losing this chance would drive Maou back to his old demonic ways. But before they could figure out how to address this, they volunteered to help keep a close eye on Kinanna instead.

In the midst of all this, Mayumi Kisaki—the manager at the Hatagaya MgRonald, who worried over Maou’s future for other reasons—had received a transfer to another location, deciding to accept it in hopes of using the experience to open the restaurant of her dreams in a few years. She had invited Maou and the archangel Sariel to join her opening staff for the future venture of her dreams, an offer Sariel readily accepted. Maou also agreed to it on the condition that he be a free agent until then, which did much to put Emi’s and Chiho’s minds at ease.

It was now clear that Maou had a strong drive to keep up his life in Japan. They were no longer in danger of parting company after the war with heaven was over.

Now it was simply time to wage that war.

In order to ensure that the Astral Gem truly was within Kinanna’s body, a party of demons, humans, and more (specifically, Maou and Emi, with Alas Ramus and Acieth Alla housed magically within them; Emi’s mother, Laila; and Maou’s adoptive parent, Camio the Devil Regent), had all traveled to the demon realms en masse. There, within an underground complex Kinanna apparently used as his lair, they discovered a strange machine that sapped them of their demonic force and confirmed that Kinanna and the Astral Gem were one and the same—and that the relics the Devil Overlord Satan left behind still had some secrets to them.

As this unfurled, a mysterious figure in an astronaut suit—the same who’d appeared in the skies above the Western Island of Ente Isla—came up to them once more. The face and the body were hidden, but at the very least, the assailant was clearly hostile. It took Alas Ramus and Emi’s holy sword with ease, bringing Laila to her knees along the way, and only the fists of the out-of-control Acieth could do anything against it. The fact that an enemy existed that not even Maou and Emi could defend themselves against deeply disturbed Laila. On top of that, even more terrible news arrived at the Ente Isla Devil’s Castle: Robertio Igua Valentia, head of the group of Six Archbishops that ruled over the Church, had died—and the four remaining members of the cabal had each received divine visions from the angels to send their armies of knights to the Central Continent.

Everything related to the battle against heaven seemed to be falling apart, blocked by massive walls that rose out of nowhere. It was a serious shock to the Devil King’s Army, and Maou and his team still had no effective countermeasures.

“That said, at least nothing terrible happened to my liege or anyone else.”

“I’m keeping a careful eye on all of them! Alas Ramus is fusing back into Yusa all right again. She’s really relieved.”

“Yeah, she is, but that so-called astronaut…that’s the same person who meddled with us on the Eastern Island, isn’t it?” Albert noted. “You wouldn’t know somethin’ about that, would you, Gabriel?”

“Ulp…”

Gabriel’s whole body tensed.

“Did you just say ‘ulp’?” Chiho asked, exasperated.

The angel shook his head. “Look, you might not believe me, but—”

“No, I don’t.”

“Don’t lie.”

“You’re hiding something, aren’t you?”

“Spit it out.”

“I tell you, these angels…”

“I haven’t said anything yet!” a disheartened Gabriel fired back. “I know this is gonna sound like a lie, but I swear I don’t know anything about that.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Quit lying.”

“You are hiding something.”

“I want you to spit it out.”

“I tell you, these angels…”

“Hey! I’m not lying! And I’m not deliberately omitting the truth or anything, either, mm-kay? I really don’t know! Albert’s talking about when the Devil King and I were fightin’ in Heavensky, right? And anyone with holy force got sucked into the sky, whether angel or human, yeah? I’ve never seen anything like that before! It’s true! Trust me!”

The other five weren’t fully ready to accept it—Gabriel had proven himself to be a highly unreliable witness—but at the very least, it was clear he had no useful information to offer.

“Geez, guys… It’s true…”

Gabriel could still feel how unconvinced they all were. But he knew how he had acted up to now. He couldn’t defend himself very strongly.

“But no matter who it was, it definitely came as a shock to Maou and Yusa. According to Urushihara, it made Maou start to worry about all kinds of things. That’s why he stopped watching Kinanna too carefully.”

“Yes. And even if Lucifer only gave you half the story, as he usually does, it is clear between that and his failed promotion that the Devil King has difficulty accepting failure.”

Chiho couldn’t deny Suzuno’s take. “Yeah, most of his efforts have resulted in success for him so far, so I think it stings a lot. Plus, Ms. Kisaki is leaving our location, so things are all kinda up in the air. He might be pretty tired.”

“That’s rather bad news… Even if we do have Laila and Amane with us, Kinanna is a bit of a monster. He may be a demon, but he shows no respect for His Demonic Highness’s grandeur. But since he is clearly from the time of the Devil Overlord, it is not a good idea to be careless handling him.”

“A monster…?”

“That is rather fair to say. Judging by what used to be my backyard garden, he is capable of wielding rather high-level demonic force.”

That force leveled the vegetable garden Suzuno had going behind the Villa Rosa Sasazuka building. The thought of it made Suzuno stare off into the distance.

“If my liege and Lucifer have their hands full,” Farfarello stated, “would it not be better to return Kinanna to Ente Isla? Our demonic force is like poison to the humans of Japan, is it not?”

“Yeah, true enough. But dependin’ on what the Church does, having a giant ball of demonic force on this world could cause a lot of headaches. At least you guys can be reasoned with. That lizard’s lost his marbles, right? We prod our foes the wrong way, they might decide to hurry up that demon extermination on the double, y’know?”

“Hrmph… Humans are such irksome creatures…”

After the death of Robertio, the remaining Archbishops each had a “revelation,” one that posed a stark threat to everyone in Devil’s Castle right now. As it went: Another evil is gathering anew, in the center of the world. All good people, it is time to come together, rise up, and slay this evil. To Ente Islans, who didn’t have to trace their memories far back to recall life under the Devil King’s Army, the meaning couldn’t be easier to grasp. Clearly, the surviving demonic forces were preparing to rise again in the Central Continent. Things were already coming to a head, and the leaders here couldn’t afford to overlook any information they could find.

What’s more, the events that occurred with Alciel and the Malebranche on the Eastern Island were now known to the leaders of many nations. The threat of the Devil King’s Army may have faded, but the fact that demons still lurked in certain corners of the world was an all-but-public secret. That was why, to both the leaders here and to all Ente Isla, the area around the former Isla Centurum in the Central Continent was a delicate hotspot.

The Federated Order of the Five Continents had already blocked off the urban areas of Isla Centurum. The Saint Aile knights led by Rumack and Emeralda, the Reconciliation Panel clerics led by Suzuno, and the Knights of the Eight Great Scarves from the Eastern Island were all stationed around Devil’s Castle to guard this region, each in their own way. The Federated Order had never been near Devil’s Castle before, but the fact that Ashiya and his team had prepared for their heavenly battle without arousing suspicion for several months was thanks to the hard work of these groups. The castle was, essentially, hidden from the world.

But that cease-fire had ended after the Archbishops’ revelations. And while they had taken measures to expand and strengthen the no-man’s-land around the castle, they had to assume they were now being observed from afar, either physically or with holy magic. No one had sent out any magical sonar bolts yet, perhaps to avoid prodding them, but even now, at the exact moment, they could be out there, waiting.

When it came to Kinanna’s enormous, uncontrollable demonic force, a talented sorcerer could easily detect it without even using sonar. That was reason enough why Kinanna was a danger—whether in Ente Isla or Japan, albeit for different respective reasons.

“Now, General Bell, when do you believe this holy force of humans or whatever will make their move, exactly?”

“Physically speaking, it is impossible for the Church forces around the world to move very quickly. But we do not have months on end to work with. They will be sent in waves, I am sure—and if so, even optimistically speaking, I cannot give us more than two months.”

“Two months? Seems like a long time, even though it’s not.”

“That is when all-out war will break out; it would not be unreasonable at all to expect the initial skirmishes before then. The Federated Order stationed in the Central Continent’s four large cities already has a fairly large contingent of Church-affiliated knights.”

Even before the Devil King’s Army came along, the capital of Isla Centurum was the literal center of everything in the Continent. However, there were four other autonomous regions in the land, centered around the cities of Noza Quartus on the northern edge, Saza Quartus in the south, Ea Quartus in the east, and Wezu Quartus on the west side.

Noa and Ea Quartus, left relatively undamaged by the war, had been primarily responsible for maintaining order on the Continent. The Federated Order, established to help rebuild the land, had bases in all four cities, and among each of them was a small, but noticeable cadre of Church-affiliated soldiers. Whether negotiations between them and the Order went well or not, they had little time to work with.

The moment they received news of the revelations, Emeralda Etuva and Hazel Rumack hurried back to their homelands at top speed. They needed to keep a very close eye on both the Order and the Church departments in their nations; not a single stone could be left unturned. And Suzuno would need to do the same shortly.

“How long can we extend our time limit?” Ashiya asked.

Suzuno winced. “Consider the figure I quoted to be the result of things going as well as possible with Lady Emeralda and General Rumack’s work.”

“Then things are starting to sound rather desperate.”

Suzuno nodded, looking to Chiho. “What is more, we should keep contact and travel between here and Japan to a bare minimum. Our Devil King’s Army has been able to take its time so far in part because the Federated Order is an unruly mob, too focused on its internal squabbles to function very well. But if they pick up on the presence of Japan, or any powerful transfer of force via Gates or Idea Links, even they would take action. Things are far worse than when you were kidnapped, Alciel.”

Her describing it as “our Devil King’s Army” made Ashiya and Chiho smirk a little.

“Yes,” Ashiya replied, “it could expose Sasazuka and Japan to danger. I understand the forces to the south, in particular, have brought the internal strife of Haruun with them in words and deeds. I could very much see them plunging into Japan in their panic to act.”

The Knights of the Eastern Empire, enticed by the angels to do their bidding, had sent an army into Sasazuka once before. Devil’s Castle could rely on the assistance of Miki Shiba and Amane, but Ashiya and Suzuno both agreed that they couldn’t afford to cause any more trouble for Japan.

“I know Gate spells can be trouble, but what about using an angel’s feather pen?” Chiho offered. “That doesn’t use up a lot of holy or demonic force.”

Suzuno thought over that for a moment. “If we have to connect to Japan, I suppose it will be via the feather pen for now. It’ll be a burden on the demons…”

She looked at the demons in the room, knowing they were unable to take advantage of the feather pen. But Ashiya didn’t look fazed.

“That is fine. For now, His Demonic Highness’s presence is not required here, and Urushihara has been tasked with caring for Kinanna. I have no reason to return to Japan for the moment, either. But if we are talking about using Laila or the feather pen, wouldn’t any angel activity potentially expose ourselves to the Church? I think discovering angels would only encourage them.”

“Quite the opposite,” Suzuno said. “They would grow more careful. It takes a massive amount of time for them to even recognize angels, or miracles, or gods or the like.”

“Yeah, and I wouldn’t want them to start worshipping the fake we got here, either…”

“If someone like this is an angel, I can understand why they would like a replacement.”

“Aw, Alciel, don’t be so mean, mm-kay?” Gabriel said. “And why does everyone here keep calling me ‘this,’ or ‘that’? I can cook better rice with this camping gear than anybody else in your army…”

It would likely be better for the Church’s worshippers if the angel that descended and lived among them were a somewhat holier presence than one bragging about his campfire cooking skills.

“It is fair to say,” a dejected-sounding Suzuno murmured, “that this Church deployment is going to be one of the largest in history. Even though only four of the Six Archbishops are alive, dealing with an event as large and unprecedented as this will require a great deal of time to achieve consensus about. But among the four, if Archbishop Cervantes takes the initiative, nobody will stop him.”

“Cervantes Reberiz… The youngest of the Six Archbishops. He apologized to Saint Aile back when Emeralda Etuva was put on trial, did he not?”

“A nasty one, he is,” Albert spat. “That whole thing was completely the Church’s fault, but he still negotiated things such that there were almost no hard feelings afterward. He’s nasty, but capable. Saint Aile’s in no position to defy the Church too much, but still, that’s something.”

The insulting tone of Albert’s voice indicated how tricky dealing with him would be.

“And after losing two old, crafty foxes in the form of Olba and Robertio, he almost immediately regained control as well. Quite a man,” Ashiya noted.

Albert gave the demon a look. “You think now’s the time to compliment him? The Church is our enemy—”

“It is not. Not yet.”

“…I swear, you demons are just as much a pain as humans,” Albert grumbled, shrugging a bit. Farfarello feigned ignorance of the callback.

“Regardless, large Church deployments as these—they are called ‘crusades’ in our history—can only be declared once every part of the plan is determined to be fair by Church standards,” Suzuno interjected. “The Reconciliation Panel is responsible for evaluating this, and as its leader, I must be in attendance for that to happen. I doubt I will be able to return to Devil’s Castle before things begin to move.”

“Hell, I’m impressed you stayed in Japan for as long as you did. Eme was green with envy over that, lemme tell you.”

“That is how peaceful things used to be,” Suzuno despondently replied. “Nothing serious enough to require the head of the Reconciliation Panel took place. If it was possible, I would have wished to stay there for good.”

“Yeah? Well, why don’t you just quit your job after the war’s done with?” Albert asked easily, completely untroubled. “Maybe Eme could appoint you to a post somewhere.”

“Well, I have great responsibility. It would need to be the right time to do it, and I would need to consider my successor. Retirement would not happen in a single day…but I will consider it among my next steps, yes.”

Suzuno meant it as a casual reply, but it still made an astonished Chiho glance over them both.

“Your…next steps?”

But it was spoken too softly for either of them to notice.

Devil’s Castle loomed high in the Central Continent. The square of tatami mats placed in front of its throne held a kotatsu with six bowls. Six people around it were discussing the future right now. Chiho, neatly sitting in front of her bowl among them, turned her face downward.

“I will try to find a way to stay in contact without an Idea Link. The human forces among us, I will leave under the care of Albert. They will be yours to lead when I am gone.”

“If you and Emeralda and Rumack are gone, that is one serious handicap. I don’t know how much Albert and I can do alone.”

“You will have to.” Suzuno smiled, feeling forlorn but determined. “You will have to…or else we cannot make Alas Ramus’s dream come true.”

“Yes. You’re right.”

Ashiya nodded and stood up.

“Try not to be reckless.”

“You too.”

The leader of the Reconciliation Panel and the Great Demon General preferred to keep it simple when discussing worldly trends, as if they were back at the Villa Rosa Sasazuka outdoor landing discussing the shopping they had to do.

“And you, Chiho… I apologize for leaving when things are as difficult as they are. I am sure things are busy enough already at school and your restaurant.”

With that, Suzuno took out her feather pen.

“Take care of the Devil King for me…and Japan.”

“A-all right. Sure. Be careful, Suzuno…”

Chiho’s reply seemed to reassure the cleric. She gave her a light smile as she stepped away from the tatami space and pointed the pen toward the Devil’s Castle throne. Then, never looking back, she dived through the opened Gate, the remaining five people in the chamber looking on with mixed feelings.

Ashiya, standing up, walked to a throne-room window and looked down at the scene far below. The trees of the Central Continent were largely evergreens, not changing much with the seasons, but as Ashiya recalled, they were about to greet the second April of their time in Japan, the place Suzuno voiced a desire to return to. He thought about the events leading up till now, and the two months waiting for them ahead.

“Now,” he whispered, “what will we have for dinner tonight?”

It was April first, the start of the business year in Japan, and while winter’s cold was a thing of the past, it still couldn’t be described as warm quite yet.

Three figures, their shadows looming far taller than the average person, were walking along 100 Trees Avenue toward Sasazuka Station. They were Chiho, with her classmates and friends Kaori Shoji and Yoshiya Kohmura, making their way home from a little spring break practice.

“Carrying them around like this,” a slightly sweaty Kaori said as she brushed away the hair sticking to her forehead, “sure makes me glad we can leave these at school usually.”

“Yeah,” an equally sullen-looking Yoshiya replied. “Like, where am I gonna put this? My room’s a total mess.”

“They told us before spring break that we had to take them home today. What were you doing this whole time?”

“Hey,” he protested, “you don’t realize how long these things are until you have to carry them around all day. Last time I brought mine home, it almost touched the ceiling. I just remembered I thought the same thing last year, actually.”

Chiho nodded at this griping. Their bows were normally stored at the school’s archery range, where they usually stayed unless they had a competition to attend. But during spring break, the range—and the rest of the school—was closed off for cleaning and ant extermination, forcing the students to take all their personal effects out of the building.

“At least these don’t weigh all that much. I bet this sucks even worse for the kendo club.”

“They have to take all that kendo equipment home? Don’t they store their armor sets in big bags with their names on them? It’s not like they’d get lost, would they?”

“Well, they’ll have outside people all over school grounds. They just wanna make sure nothing gets damaged or stolen.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“At least we don’t have to take these home every day. By the way, Sasaki, why did you take your bow home a little while back?”

She had done so right before spring break in order to attend the zirga to choose the next Chief Herder of Ente Isla’s Northern Island. She was part of the event’s archery competition—her first time as champion, in fact, although she got a lot of help from others. But, of course, she already had an answer worked out for this question.

“Like… I felt like the bow was sounding funny at practice that day. I was worried that it was broken or something, so I went and had the shop look at it. I wanted to buy some new arrows anyway, so I wanted to make sure my bow was a good match for them.”

That much was true—she splurged on some new arrows for the zirga. And she did go to the shop, although that was after the tournament. During the Bowman’s Offering, the ceremony presided over by the zirga’s victor, she had to use a bowstring meant for short targets to fire at one a good 325 feet ahead of her. Between that and the Yesod fragment–driven force coursing through her bow, she had put a lot more stress on it than usual. So she took it in for inspection just in case, and the staff assured her that it was fine. It made Chiho marvel at the strength of modern fiberglass bows, and once she bought some new string to replace the one she wore out, the zirga was now firmly in her past.

Regardless of that, however, Chiho had already given that version of the story to her parents. It was easy for her, since it was ninety percent the truth anyway, and they swallowed it. Kaori and Yoshiya showed no signs of doubting her either, but their reactions were quite different from Mom and Dad’s.

“Huh. So you’re gonna keep doing kyudo in college, Sasaki?”

“…What?”

The unexpected question caught Chiho by surprise.

“Yeah, I bet,” Kaori said. “You got a pretty expensive bow, after all, and it’s not like you’re working hard at any other sport. If the college has a facility for it, you’ll probably wanna keep going, huh, Sasachi?”

“…Um, yeah, that’s true,” came Chiho’s slightly delayed reply.

“New arrows, though, huh? I guess our final competition’s coming up soon… Maybe I oughta buy some, too. I bet any college kyudo program is gonna be way more serious than the tiny team we got. I made sure all my college choices have programs, so…”

Then it dawned on Chiho. They were in their last year of high school. Their career in Sasahata North High’s kyudo team could last for as little as three or four more months. They did have one final competition ahead, but if Chiho was purchasing new equipment at this point in time, it’d be natural for her friends to assume she wanted to continue archery after that. If anything, they were at the point where “after that” would’ve been Chiho’s main consideration.

“But since we’re third-years, we’re gonna have to submit our plans for future schools and stuff right after the break, aren’t we? That’s such a pain. Why can’t they just use what we submitted last year?”

“Because of people like you. You haven’t failed any tests, but it’s not like you’re head of the class or anything.”

“Hey, I doubled my English scores.”

“Oh, nice, bragging about going from a 25 to a 50…”

“Ahh, I’ll be fine. I’m not tryin’ to get into the University of Tokyo or anything. I’m going to a test prep center, too. Once I get serious, it’ll be easy.”

That was another surprise for Chiho. “Oh? You’re doing test prep, Kohmura?”

“Well, I’m a college applicant,” Yoshiya casually replied. “Gotta start studying sometime.”

This apparently wasn’t news to Kaori.

“Yeah, yeah, starting April, right?”

He hadn’t actually attended test prep yet, a fact Kaori threw in to put Yoshiya back in his place. It didn’t faze him at all—but seeing Yoshiya engage in the kind of behavior anyone in their last year of high school would do honestly shocked Chiho. And Kaori was already paring down her list of potential colleges.

So what am I doing?

Whether they knew how flummoxed Chiho was or not, Kaori and Yoshiya kept pelting her with surprises.

“Also, not to rain on your parade or anything, but you should stop saying stuff like ‘once I get serious’ and so on. It makes you sound stupid. If that was really true, you would’ve been getting serious before you said or thought that.”

“Sasakiiii! I don’t wanna take any exams! Shoji’s ruining my motivation, man!”

It was classic Yoshiya and Kaori banter. But to Chiho, they somehow felt miles ahead of her.

“Kohmura, I think you’ll get a lot farther in life if you listen to what Kao tells you,” she said.

“Oh, stop that, Sasachi!” Kaori countered. “Then he’ll blame me for it if he screws it up!”

“Dude! Shoji?! I’m not that low!”

“If you’re saying ‘once I get serious,’ then you can’t get much lower, I don’t think! Get the picture already!”

“Sorry, sorry. Calm down, you two.”

Chiho stepped up to calm Kaori before she hit Yoshiya with her bow, even as she mentally examined herself. She was in her third year of high school. She had college exams—and after that, college. It had been in her schedule book; she had talked about it many times. It was something looming right ahead of her, but in all likelihood, this was the first time it honestly felt real.

I made sure all my college choices have programs, so…

Kaori said something similar when college talk came up last year, but the way she said it now, the words had concrete meaning to her. It had grown from a wish to a full-fledged plan. If she hadn’t selected universities with a kyudo program, if she hadn’t looked at her grades and figured out a general idea of where she needed to focus her studies, she wouldn’t have started “narrowing down” schools in the first place. Maybe that was why she needled Yoshiya about acting like he was already smarter just because he’d signed up for a test prep center.

But what about herself? What choices had she made? I want to do this, not this; I have to do this, or that; I hope it turns out like that, or this —there were so many potential avenues, but what was she doing about it?

“Sasachi?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

“……”

They were trundled along by the crowds to the Koshu-Kaido road. Sasazuka Station was right in front of them. She looked toward the skies above Villa Rosa Sasazuka—still not visible from here, being on the other side of the railroad tracks. She had just been tremendously anxious about the future of her life, but in terms of what she could make out from her current vantage point…

“…Ughh…”

She let out a sigh.

The topics discussed during their breakfast summit at the Ente Isla Devil’s Castle the other day crossed her mind. What the Devil Overlord left behind. Kinanna growing to huge size. All the Church forces possibly bearing down on the Central Continent. Her friends, searching for a way to stop them. They discussed whether Kinanna’s rampage had set off a wave of explosive demonic force, or if the area around Villa Rosa Sasazuka would see warfare following the heavenly forces’ advance, or whether there’d be full-scale war between the Church and the Devil King’s Army in Ente Isla. It seemed so unreal, but it could all happen. Chiho was likely the only teenager in the world concerned about Tokyo really being attacked by a giant lizard.

She had all these ridiculous, yet unignorable anxieties in her mind. It would be reckless to continue on with normal, commonsense plans for the future…or it should have been.

“What’s with this…?”

The words fell out of her mouth. She closed it tight, concerned that Kaori and Yoshiya heard her. Fortunately, Yoshiya must’ve shot off his mouth again, because Kaori was busy hitting him in the back of his head. Neither of them was paying attention to her.

Chiho felt a little apologetic toward them. Everyone had feelings they couldn’t say aloud, but not being able to confess her emotions to two of her own friends felt kind of like she was betraying their friendship. But if she said, “I’m too afraid of a kaiju attack to focus on studying,” they’d start to worry about her for completely different reasons, so she had to keep quiet. The thing was, she likely couldn’t even bare her soul to Maou or Emi, either. It might just add to the pressure and put them in a bad mood.

But when she thought up to that point:

“Ah.”

She realized there was someone she could share her feelings with—or at least someone who’d understand her takes loud and clear.

“Okay, guys, see you at the next meet. I got work after this.”

“Oh, sure…”

“See you. Ughh, I don’t want to study…!”

Chiho walked toward Hatagaya, her pace hurried. She had enough time to drop her bow off at her house, but she wanted to solve the anxieties in her mind as soon as she could. She took out her phone.

Watching Chiho zoom away, Kaori shook her head, looking a tad lonely.

“……”

“Shoji?”

“Nothing,” Kaori said, eyes still looking Chiho’s way. “It just holds you down, doesn’t it? Trying to take everything on yourself.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Let’s go home.”

Kaori motioned to Yoshiya to cross the street with her.

“Yoshiya?”

“Hmm?”

“Study for real, okay?”

“What’s with you?”

“I’m worried. The moment I take your eyes off you, you try to take the easy way out.”

“Wha?”

The sight of Yoshiya giving her a quizzical look annoyed her enough that she decided to say what she had been hiding for too long.

“Yoshiya, if you don’t have any particular favorite school, why don’t we go to the same one together?”

“……”

Kaori detected a moment of silence from him. Wait. Is he gonna misinterpret what I meant? She could feel her face starting to redden from the neck up.

Then came the delayed refusal. It floored her.

“Nah, I can’t.”

“Huhh?” she shouted. “Why not?!”

A trace of sadness crossed Yoshiya’s face as he looked ahead, nose in the air.

“I’d never get in.”

Kaori was floored again.

“Like, when I joined the test prep center, I took a mock exam for the level of schools you’re looking at, and…I got rated an E. Totally out of range.”

Kaori could feel something smoldering in her mind, even as she kept it cool on the surface. Why did Yoshiya use her list of schools as a guide? How did he know what they were in the first place?

“W-well, you’re going to test prep to turn those results around, aren’t you? If you take the easy way out, I’m worried you’ll go to some off-brand school and get mixed up with a weird friend circle that’ll mess you up. If you think people like me and Sasachi are gonna be around you forever, you’re wrong.”

“Huh? Mess me up how? I’m not into drugs, or partying or whatever.”

“Not that. I think you wouldn’t be able to keep up with campus life, so you’d stay at home all day playing online games. And I don’t think you’d have anyone checking up on you, either.”

“What kinda person is the ‘me’ you’re picturing, anyway?”

“You know, the kind of guy with cold eyes fixed upon the world, bearing all this darkness, turning away from how brightly his talented brother is shining…”

“I swear I’ll get into a better university than you! I just decided! It’s done, okay?!”

She resisted the urge to say, “I dare you to try.” Normally she’d say it, but now she saw signs that Yoshiya, despite taking his sweet time to rev up the engine, was finally about to get serious. If she bad-mouthed him right now, it really would be raining on his parade.

“Well, good luck. I’m gonna do my best, too, so you’re gonna have trouble catching up to me.”

“You watch me! I’m gonna double my score again at the next English test! Try not to cry when I do!”

“Oh, you’ll get a perfect score? Wow. If you actually do that, okay, I’ll admit defeat.”

It was a bit clumsy, but Kaori and Yoshiya were now back to their normal mode of conversation as they went through the station turnstile.

As they did, Chiho was sending out a text to a certain number. The person she had in mind might be at work right now, so she wanted to ask if she was free first.

“Hello? Chiho? What’s up?”

Fortunately, the response came as a voice call.

“Sorry to text you out of nowhere, Rika. Do you think you could meet up with me in a bit? I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Something? Something serious?”

Rika Suzuki sensed something ominous over the phone, perhaps. Chiho could hear the sounds of her preparing to leave in the background.

“No… Sorry. It’s not anything that happened. And it kinda-sorta has to do with Ente Isla, but not directly.”

“Oh?”

“Rika,” Chiho said, in a voice that she later realized sounded almost tearful. “I have no idea what kind of attitude I should take toward college.”

“Aaaahhhhhhhhhhhh…”

After receiving the whole story, Rika’s expression was totally inscrutable—equal measures of understanding, confusion, and sympathy. In front of her was Chiho, looking at her hands with the bow leaned against the restaurant wall. Even with her face turned downward, she could make out the sigh escaping from her friend’s lips.

“That sounds really tough, Chiho.”

This silence couldn’t go on forever, so Rika felt obliged to speak. It was her way of buying time while she organized her thoughts.

“But… Well, in terms of people facing exam difficulties, your situation has to rank in the top five or so.”

“It’s not number one?”

“Well, you yourself aren’t in mortal danger, at least. It’s a big world out there. And it’s kind of a miracle, still, that anyone can get whatever education they want to here in Japan, if they try.”

“But…”

“I get it. I really do. Your friend Rika hears you loud and clear. You’re definitely the only teenager who has to worry about monsters appearing in Tokyo or evil angels from another dimension coming around or whatever. You’re definitely number one within Japan, at least.”

“I just… I’m not sure what I should be living for any longer.”

“Your situation’s so…real. I dunno where to begin.”

College talk seemed like a heavy load for Rika to bear, given that she had opted against college and moved far away from home to work assorted part-time jobs. But as she heard Chiho out, she realized that even counting everything in Japan, the world, and Ente Isla, she was the only person who could really understand the root of Chiho’s concerns. It was the same as when Rika got depressed after Ashiya grew cold on her. Only someone from Earth who loved that gang of aliens who now felt totally at home in Japan could appreciate this.

“Well, as you know, I’m just cruising along with no college and no full-time gig so I’m not one to talk, but… I think Maki mentioned it to me once, but you’re set on going to some kind of college, right?”

“Yes. I mean, I’ve had the vague concept in my mind for a while, but…”

She explained to Rika how she came to work at the MgRonald by Hatagaya Station.

“I kind of wanted to get an English degree at the time. Like, whether I’m in Japan or elsewhere, if I knew English, I figured that’d make life a lot more fun. Then right after that…”

“…You found out your coworker at Maggie’s was a Devil King. Or I guess Emi and Maou are both aliens, really. Not just from another country, but another planet.”

Rika knew in advance that the conversation would probably get pretty absurd, so they decided to visit Gyo-Gyo-En, their usual choice in conveyor-belt sushi joints, for this chat. They had installed a somewhat fancy coffee machine as of late, so on the table were two lattes and a couple of cake slices—a poor match for a place that smelled of sushi rice and had pop songs arranged for traditional Japanese instruments playing from the speaker.

“Well, why don’t you try gunning for some kinda prestigious college? Like, figure out what your best subjects are, and stuff. Maki probably said something like that, right?”

Indeed, Maki Shimizu—a college student who worked with Rika—once advised Chiho that if she felt lost, to simply try for the best university she thought she had a chance at. Chiho understood the logic of that well enough, but right now, she couldn’t see how doing that would connect with the vague hopes for the future she had in mind. It prevented her from finding that first spark, and now she was just running in place.

“First Maou and now you, huh?”

“Huh?”

“No, um… Look, the only things in this booth are you, me, this sushi, and this coffee, and we’re two Earthlings who know a secret nobody else does in the entire world. Why don’t we honestly try to analyze this?”

Rika shot an eye toward the sushi belt, mostly picked over and empty after the lunch rush.

“I’m guessing that you’re looking for some kind of guide, or spark, or procedure I can lay out for you, telling you to do this and this and this when you find yourself in trouble.”

“That…might be true, yes.”

Looking back, Chiho had only started thinking about this because of Kaori talking about her list of candidate colleges.

“When you were still new on the job, you saw Maou helping customers in English and you thought, yeah, that’d be kinda nice, right? And you’re from different backgrounds, but you’re both doing the same thing—like, analyzing your current situation and figuring out what you want to do, and what you can do. With the lizard, if push comes to shove with him, you’re gonna have to leave it to the muscle in the group. If Maou and Emi can’t handle him, I think Ms. Ohguro and the landlord and Emi’s mom can figure something out. And as for everything else—let’s just throw common sense out the window and list up everything you want to do right now, okay?”

“…Okay.”

Chiho didn’t seem to know what this was getting at. So Rika threw a fastball of emotion at her.

“So the first thing… In the future, do you want to marry Maou?”

“Eh!!!!!! Marry?!?!?!”

Chiho tried to play it off at first, but the effect was immediate. She was arched backward like a boxer who’d just taken an uppercut. When she got back down, her face was as red as a piece of katsuo, or maguro, or maybe even ikura.

“………………………………If…………………I could…………”

The voice was as quiet as a mosquito, but Rika was eminently satisfied with it.

“Good, good. So think about what you need to achieve that. Maou has all the documentation to be a Japanese citizen, right? So there wouldn’t be any legal issues. If you were trying to marry Maou, what do you think you would be missing?”

Chiho tried her best to calm her rising pulse and heavy breathing. She imagined life with her beloved—like a young girl’s passing fantasy just before falling asleep—and, fighting back the shame that threatened to throw her to the ground, she spoke.

“…A long enough…lifetime. Demons live for so long…”

She couldn’t do anything about that, could she? Rika stopped for a moment, filling Chiho with discouragement, but then she smiled again.

“All right. The same deal as Emi’s parents. I see. Yeah, your bodies are different, after all. So your life expectancies are too far apart. What else?”

“Uh…uhmm…the power to fight?”

“Fighting power. You mean like using swords and casting spells and stuff?”

“Y-yes… That, and the Ente Islan language.”

“Oh, sure, Ente Islan. And of course, it’s not like there’s an ‘Earthian’ language, so I’m sure they’ve got lots of them over there, too. Anything else?”

“Uhhh…”

“Is that it?”

“Um, probably?”

Interacting with the living example of Laila and Nord, and seeing the Ente Islan lifestyle for herself during the zirga, made it clear to Chiho which chasms between her and Maou were unfillable. Problems that couldn’t be dealt with in Japan. But—looking at the pen and paper she had taken out at some point—Rika spoke up.

“Uh-uh. There’s more.”

“Huh?”

“Because those are all just aspects of Ente Isla that you’re considering.”

Rika showed Chiho her notes.

“The life expectancy thing is because you’re human and Maou’s a demon, right? You don’t need fighting force like that unless you get into trouble over there. Strong or not, you’ve already been slayin’ demons left and right.”

“Um, that, yeah, uh…”

“And can’t you use some of that voodoo magic to deal with the language barrier for now? Like, maybe that magic power won’t be available after this fight is over, but Suzuno and Emeralda and Emi can speak Japanese, so even if magic gets shut off or whatever, it can’t be a big problem. So, yeah, I don’t see any need to worry too much about those things.”

“But…”

“And Maou’s gonna accept your manager’s offer, isn’t he? Assuming he’s alive three years from now.”

“…Huh?”

“He said as much back at White Day, remember? Right now he has to go back to Devil King mode for a bit, but in three years, he’d like to help with the manager’s restaurant or company or whatever. So if you want to be with Maou forever while he works in Japan, I think that narrows down what you need to do in Japan to achieve that by a whole lot. Like my grandfather told me, marriage is like the world’s smallest mutual-aid contract.”

Chiho took a few moments to figure out what this meant. Rika, realizing this, paused a second or two before continuing.

“One of you isn’t leaning on the other one. You want to be a source of strength to Maou, and Maou, you know, he has to make an effort and give up a few things if he’s marrying you. As far as I can tell, you two have a pretty good thing going, so I don’t think you need to worry much about that, but you can’t go on like how it is now forever. If you keep thinking about how to adjust yourself for Maou’s sake, you’ll wind up spoiling him all the time. That’s not love; it’s codependence. There’s a lot that Maou’s gonna have to do for you, too, Chiho.”

“That, that, that, um, it, it’s not a, a ‘pretty good thing’…”

“It’s not like Maou has a ton of girls in his life anyway. If it doesn’t work out with you, it’s not gonna work out with anyone for a while, I don’t think.”

“There—there are a lot of women around Maou.”

“Oh? Really? Sorry if this sounds creepy, but even if Maou has any interest in human women in the first place, I don’t see any possible competitor to you out there besides maybe Suzuno.”

“Huh? That, she’s, ummm, I don’t think so, no…but…”

Normally Chiho would have interpreted this as Rika picking on her. But Rika was serious.

“I mean, for example, Emi? Realistically speaking, no way.”

“What?!”

This shocked Chiho. It honestly surprised her how much it did.

“What, am I wrong? I mean, some people say a lot of good relationships start from less than nothing, but I think Stockholm syndrome would work only so much with those two. It’s a miracle they’re acting like friends right now, even. I can’t see much more than that happening.”

“Ahh…ahh…you don’t think?”

“And along those lines, Emeralda would never happen, either. She’s the type to hold a grudge even more than Emi. She sees a real stark difference between politely forgiving someone, and doing so on a personal level. And I’m supposing that nobody else at Maggie’s knows about Maou’s other life, so there’s no need to really count them. And that just leaves you and Suzuno.”

“I-if you put it that way, then I suppose, but…”

“Suzuno’s a real strong woman. She’s his neighbor, they have kind of the same routine, she’s super caring for people, she doesn’t have a personal vendetta against Maou, she’s got experience living in modern society, and she’s a total domestic goddess, isn’t she?”

“Y-yeah, that’s true…”

Chiho had never pictured the Church cleric as a full-fledged member of society before. But in terms of women she had directly marked out as “rivals for Maou” in her life, Suzuno really was the only one. They didn’t exactly meet under the rosiest of circumstances. Even Chiho’s habit of bringing food to Devil’s Castle got its start out of a sense of competition against Suzuno. It wasn’t that long ago, but somehow she had forgotten about it. Her falling into jealousy (and, subsequently, self-loathing) over Maou and Emi getting closer was still fresh in her mind, but it wasn’t at all arrogant or self-serving to say that she never considered them a serious couple.

Only with Suzuno did she ever think, I don’t want her to take Maou. It was what drove her to admit her feelings to the man. There was no doubting that.

“Nnnnnnnnnnngggghhhhhh!”

She buried her face in her hands, shaking her head as she put it against the table. It made Rika chuckle.

“I’m guessing you just remembered something that makes you want to die? You’re so cute, Chiho.”

No, Suzuno wanted to do things with Maou, but entirely of the master-and-servant type. Chiho knew it wasn’t about being a couple. She and Suzuno were good friends now, so wouldn’t it be extremely rude to consider her a rival in love at this point?

“Besides, Suzuno herself doesn’t think badly of Maou, does she?”

But Rika, who had a knack for seeming to read Chiho’s mind, was now throwing that mind into overdrive. Come to think of it, when they were all talking about what to do for Valentine’s Day, Kaori’s suggestion to give chocolate to Maou did seem to oddly unnerve Suzuno. Was it…that sort of thing…?

“N-no! But then I’d have to start thinking about Suzuno’s feelings, and it’s not nice to imagine this and that about other people, and besides, I’ve got my hands full dealing with myself, um… I mean, I’m not going on about whether I can marry or not, but… Huh? What am I… Um, what were we talking about?!”

It was trivially easy to see how flustered Chiho was. Rika poured out some more tea and offered a cup to calm her down.

“All right, chill out. If you get too flustered, it’s gonna start getting fun for me.”

“I—I am calm— Ahh!”

Chiho, clearly not calm, wound up burning her tongue on the fresh tea.

“Ha-ha-ha… But anyway, marriage isn’t like a finish line or anything. There’s a huge amount of other things that start after that, and there’s no such thing as a couple that has it all worked out the moment they walk down the aisle. There are problems that take years, even decades, to float to the surface. When they do, couples have to work together to solve them, right?”

Rika was sounding like she herself was married now, but Chiho couldn’t help noticing something sad in her eyes.

“…Rika?”

“Lemme just say, that’s not about Ashiya.”

Realizing Chiho had noticed it, Rika went one step ahead and gave her an affected smile.

“It kind of connects to why I’m here bumming around in Tokyo when my family’s from Kobe, but it’s a real boring story, so I’ll save it for later.”

“Okay…”

The firm conclusiveness to Rika’s voice prevented Chiho from pursuing the topic further.

“But regardless, I think these are the two things you need to look into in order to take the next step as a teenage girl, Chiho. That way…”

Rika jotted down a few things on her piece of paper—things that neither Emi nor Suzuno, Kaori, nor even Chiho’s own parents could’ve given her if she’d turned to them for help.

“…I think you’ll start seeing the guideposts for the next step to take.”

Half an hour later, Rika was sitting by herself at the Gyo-Gyo-En table. Chiho was gone, attending to her MgRonald shift. She tried to cover the whole tab in exchange for Rika’s help, but Rika refused to give her the check, noting that she owed her a favor and Chiho shouldn’t try covering so much for people older than her anyway.

She glanced at her phone. A text was waiting. Unlocking it, she found a picture of a young woman in a brand-new school uniform, accompanied by the line “Yaaaay I’m a high school student now!!!”

“Oh, man, that brings me back. She must’ve gotten them to buy a new outfit.”

Rika let out a small smile. The uniform was for her old school; she had worn one of them herself.

This text was sent by one Rina Suzuki, Rika’s younger sister by six years, and before too long, she’d be starting her first year of high school.

Another text came along.

“I’m not gonna go to college, so if you don’t come back home before I graduate, I’m gonna take over the company instead of you!!!!”

Rika received this “warning” from her sister every time she came home for the holidays. It was something she just sort of smiled and laughed off.

“July, huh…? And yeah… Given my age, I better do what needs to be done pretty soon. I definitely can’t act all high and mighty around Chiho, no…”

Pretending she didn’t read that, Rika stuffed the phone into her bag and rang the bell on the table to settle the tab.

“Hello there!”

“Oh, hey, Chi.”

Maou was the first face Chiho saw when she emerged from the staff room. It made her voice tense up a little, despite herself, although she was sure it didn’t show up on her face. Her talk with Rika had been stimulating, to say the least, but she was no longer wallowing in shame.

“Hey, Chi, come here a sec.”

“What’s up?”

Chiho meekly approached the beckoning Maou, who seemed to hesitate a bit before speaking.

“She’s upstairs right now.”

“…!”

There was no need to ask who. The moment had finally come.

“What was she like?” Chiho asked, voice hushed.

“I can’t really tell yet. She’s definitely different from Ms. Kisaki, though.”

Chiho would learn what Maou meant ten minutes later.

Kisaki’s familiar voice rang out on their headsets. “Marko, I’m going downstairs. Can you go up for me again?”

Then came the voice of a wholly unfamiliar woman. “Thank you very much.”

Maou followed the order and climbed the stairs to the café space. Replacing him was Kisaki in business attire and a woman Chiho hadn’t seen before. Double-checking that no customers were coming, Chiho walked up to them.

“Hello! My name’s Chiho Sasaki!”

Kisaki looked behind her for a second, but still kept her back to her subordinate.

“It’s good to meet you, Sasaki.”

The woman coming down behind Kisaki wasn’t much taller than Chiho and was a slip of a woman to boot; her most noticeable characteristic was the fact that she had glasses on her face.

“My name is Kotomi Iwaki, and I’ll be the new store manager.”

For Chiho, who was expecting a new MgRonald manager to be an epoch-making event, it was a major letdown.

Until now, the word manager had brought up nobody besides Kisaki in Chiho’s mind. Working under her at the Hatagaya Station MgRonald, she had gained all kinds of hard-to-earn experience, as the word gets used in standard help-wanted ads. And now, with April marking the new fiscal year, that manager was leaving. Chiho was picturing something resembling a graduation or diploma ceremony for some reason.

“Starting today, Ms. Iwaki and I will be working on handing the torch over to her. By the end of the first week of April, I’ll be out of this location.”

The truth from Kisaki’s lips couldn’t have been given more casually. That’s it? Chiho almost said, barely keeping the question in. It just seemed way too informal.

“What’s up, Chi?” Akiko Ohki stealthily asked once she began work. “You look like you’re not all the here today.”

“Oh, no, I’m fine…”

Chiho shook her head. Her completely still hands were indicating otherwise, so she quickly got back to disinfecting the stack of trays in front of her.

“…Okay, maybe I’m not.”

“Hmm?”

“I didn’t imagine Ms. Kisaki leaving would feel so casual. Not to sound mean, but it’s disappointing.”

Akiko immediately knew what Chiho was talking about. “Yeah. I haven’t experienced this a lot of times, either, but this isn’t school, you know…”

It was an accurate reaction to what bothered Chiho.

“It’s not like school?”

“No. I mean, it’s not like there was some special ceremony when we got hired, was there? It’s the same thing. When you’re grown up, things only really change with the new year, or like during accounting periods or whatever. The year’s all divided up, and it cycles through year after year, so it’s not like things completely change every few years the way it does for students.”

“It’s not…?”

“Of course, once you’re grown up, you do start to have these.”

“These?”

Chiho looked up to find Akiko holding an imaginary wineglass.

“Oh, that’s no fair! Are you guys having going-away parties with no minors allowed?”

The crew at the Hatagaya MgRonald got along remarkably well, so Chiho knew that some of them held gatherings at bars and such on irregular occasions. She was too young to join those, though, and nobody on staff was irresponsible enough to try dragging her in. That was what she assumed Akiko’s gesture meant, but instead Akiko sadly shook her head.

“I suggested we hold one, but she said no. Just, like, ‘I appreciate the thought’ and all that. You know, people like you who’re young, or people who work nights, might not be able to join in if the timing doesn’t work out. That wouldn’t be fair, so she said she’ll just give everybody on staff a few personal words instead. That’s so like her, isn’t it?”

Kisaki’s thoroughness gave Chiho goose bumps—but she still couldn’t shake off the loneliness. That was her “ceremony,” then? When it was Chiho’s turn, what should she talk about? Because Kisaki had a lot to do with one of the two things Rika suggested she “check on” just a half hour or so ago. Was it something Chiho could really bring up at the last moment she could talk with her?

“So, yeah, if we wanna take the Kisaki approach, then I guess we have to look to the future instead of dwelling on the past. Along those lines, what we should be holding is a welcome party for Ms. Iwaki.”

“Ohh, that makes sense.” Chiho considered that reasonable enough.

“So what do you think of the new manager, Chi?”

“I don’t think much of anything yet. All I’ve done so far is say hi to her.”

Kisaki and Iwaki had been holed up in the rear office for a while now, no doubt working out handoff-related things. Maou had called her “definitely different” from Kisaki, and Chiho had to agree with that at first blush, but she wouldn’t know the gritty details until they started working together.

“Um…maybe it’s rude to describe a grown woman this way, but I thought she was kind of cute.”

“I can get that. It’s like you wanna give her a big bear hug. Totally different impression from Ms. Kisaki.”

Her body type basically mirrored Chiho’s, which made her a measure smaller than the rest of the Hatagaya Station crew. Placed next to the heavyset Kawata, they’d almost look like father and daughter.

“Thing is, I know nothing about her personality yet. If she’s not good with drinking and stuff, it’d just be rude to her, y’know?”

“Oh, not everybody’s into that? Because I always had the impression that grown-ups looked forward to hanging out at bars on Friday nights after work.”

This was a bit surprising to Chiho. She always looked forward to the raucous dinners they had at Maou’s place, although they had begun to taper off in recent days. She was too young to know how a drinking party really worked, but she got along well with the adults in her life, so she assumed that dinner parties and drinking parties were pretty similar. But Akiko, older than Chiho and a veteran of at least a few events she wanted to run screaming from, gave her an exaggerated nod in reply.

“Well, if you’re not into that scene, you’re really not into it. I mean, even me—unless I know the people involved pretty well, I’m never really that enthused about it. I can’t really hold my liquor anyway. If I had to guess, I’d say about half of drinking-age people don’t really like the whole scene.”

“Huhh?!”

Chiho wanted to believe this was nonsense, but Akiko was deadly serious.

“I mean, there are different types of drinking parties. If it’s with people I like, then I’m all for them, but it’s not like I have free money for it all the time. And if there’s somebody I don’t get along with, or it’s held someplace where I don’t like the food, or I can expect my boss or manager to lecture me the whole time I’m there… You know, there can be a lot of question marks. And that’s just for me as a college student, so it’s probably even more true once you graduate. You still hear a lot about people who can’t drink being forced into getting loaded at parties like that, because they can’t say no to their bosses or whatever.”

“Oh… But you’re not supposed to force people into doing that these days, right? I remember hearing about ‘alcohol harassment’ on the news and stuff…”

The drinking-age coworkers around Chiho gave this a small chuckle.

“Oh, well,” laughed Akiko, “people are changing with the times. That sort of thing doesn’t happen nearly as much as it used to. Still—it’s not like I’m some expert at the age of twenty, but sometimes I wonder where all the grown-ups I looked up to as a kid went off to. If you think everyone’s all mature, like Ms. Kisaki and Mr. Sarue, then that’ll bite back at you later. Many adults are immature under the surface, and it comes out in drinking parties.”

“You’d count Mr. Sarue as ‘mature’?” Chiho replied curtly.

The question didn’t change Akiko’s expression. “Maybe not at first,” she said, “but now, definitely. When I talk to Kana about work and stuff, sometimes it’s like we’re talking about a whole different person.”

Kanako Furuya, shift manager at the Sentucky Fried Chicken across the street from this MgRonald, was now apparently friends enough with Akiko that they were having regular chats like this. Maybe, being of the same age and working in similar environments, they both had their own takes on this question.

As Chiho pondered this, Akiko looked around her a moment before lowering her voice. “So,” she said, sounding a little annoyed, “like, I really wanna start working with Ms. Iwaki and, you know, figure her out as a person. Like, whether we can get along or not, kind of thing. I’m gonna be staying on here for a while still, so it’s better if we’re all friendly, y’know?”

“Yeah… True. But we’re gonna start to get busy pretty soon, so I’m sure she’ll be coming out.” Akiko checked the clock. “Oops. We talked too much. I need to check on the drink and sauce dispensers.”

The first wave of the dinner rush would be coming soon, and Akiko jogged over to the drink machine to check the syrup levels and clean everything up.

As Chiho put away the trays she’d wiped off while talking to Akiko, she looked over the dining space on the other side of the counter from her. It would be almost a year since she began standing behind this counter, and she had seen lots of new things—new worlds —she couldn’t have even imagined if she were still sitting at one of those tables. She felt like she could almost see herself at a table right now, back last April, agonizing over what to write on her college guidance worksheet.

But time was passing fast. And whether she was confident that she had accumulated enough experience or not, Chiho found herself at the edge of a stairway she’d need to step up and climb if she wanted to take responsibility for her life.

Between the full crew headcount and the presence of both Kisaki and Iwaki as managers, the dinner rush passed without incident.

On the floor, Iwaki exhibited a completely different sort of presence from Kisaki. Her style, Chiho thought, leaned closer to Maou’s. She wasn’t a pillar of composed stability like Kisaki or Kawata; rather, like Maou or Akiko, the way she used speed and precision to keep things running smoothly left an impression. It was at least fair to say that working with her wouldn’t be stressful. Iwaki was no doubt trying to make the transition go well, but based on Maou’s and Akiko’s reactions, Chiho didn’t think her impression was mistaken. What the customers would think of her was another question, but Chiho was hearing that while some of the regulars said they would miss Kisaki, they were still paying their normal visits.

Based on what Chiho saw during her shift, it seemed fair to say that this new manager could keep things fun at the workplace. That’s why what she ended up saying to Kisaki and Iwaki in the staff room after she clocked out took a lot of bravery on her part:

“Ms. Kisaki, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“…What’s that?”

The two managers seemed like they were almost expecting Chiho to speak up. She and Iwaki had met for the first time today; bringing up a topic like this was bound to leave a terrible impression, Chiho decided. But she had to say it, and she had to say it today.

“First, I’m sorry if this is a super-personal request of mine, but if we had a chance to talk outside the workplace maybe… And second…I needed to tell you, too, Ms. Iwaki.”

For the sake of her future, her life, and her loved ones, she had to say it.

“I’m thinking about leaving my job at the end of this month.”

Kisaki and Iwaki took the news silently.

“So it finally happened, huh?”

It was during closing that night when Maou was called by Kisaki and Iwaki to join them in the back office, only to be told that Chiho would quit at the end of April. His reaction was typically calm—looking at the calendar, it was a pretty obvious decision for a girl preparing for college exams—but Kisaki wasn’t done there.

“Did you hear anything about this?”

“Me?”

Maou was confused at the slightly accusatory tone of Kisaki’s voice.

“I doubt she would have told anyone else,” she went on.

“Huh?”

“…Oh, so it is.” Iwaki, picking up on what Kisaki was implying to the incredulous man, brought a pair of fingertips to her mouth in surprise. “So you’re not related, then? That’s no good, but it is what it is, I guess…”

“Um, what’s this about, Ms. Kisaki?” Maou stuttered.

“You should ask yourself that question. But anyway, I was just talking to Ms. Iwaki here for a moment.”

“Uh-huh…?”

Maou was now firmly lost, but at Kisaki’s nod, Iwaki handed him a piece of paper. He looked at it—then immediately realized what the topic was.

“This isn’t…bad, is it?”

“It’s bad.” Iwaki nodded, not a single note of joy in the eyes behind her glasses. “We actually anticipated that Ms. Sasaki might be leaving soon. It’s her last year of high school and I heard she’s a very diligent young woman, so if she was getting serious about exams, we expected May at the latest…but not even Ms. Kisaki was expecting this.”

She had handed Maou a copy of the rough shift schedules for May, June, and July. It being the first week of April, they were mostly empty except for the names of crewmembers expected to work that month. But those names were the problem.

“Counting Chi, five people… Wait, Mae, too? Mae’s quitting?!”

“Frankly, it’s an emergency.”

Kisaki wasn’t mincing words, and Maou couldn’t refute her. Five different people had announced plans to leave MgRonald in the space of these three months.

Chiho’s going away was difficult enough for Maou to deal with, of course, but in terms of the kitchen, the April departure of “Mae”—Kazuko Maeyama, the other shift manager at this location—was an even bigger blow. Now sixty-one, she had been working at the Hatagaya Station location for ten years; Kisaki was the third manager she’d served under, and during the afternoon and non-weekday shifts, she was the face of the franchise. Maou had worked with her countless times on Saturdays and Sundays; it was Maeyama who had served as his first trainer, way back when.

She was well built for her age, got along with the rest of the crew, never whined, and was treated like a kind of mascot for the younger staffers. When it came to work, however, she was a veteran through and through, bringing a dignified presence to the floor with her actions. The managers were all polite to her, and although being a married woman meant she wasn’t too flexible with her shifts, losing Maeyama meant losing one of the mainstays of the weekends at Hatagaya. It was devastating.

“I told Ms. Iwaki that, counting Chi, we could expect three people to quit this spring. That was too optimistic of me, and that’s my mistake. Right at the very end, I screwed up really bad.”

“Well,” Iwaki replied, “you couldn’t help it. Even the regional manager didn’t expect Ms. Maeyama to quit. That isn’t your fault.”

It did little to brighten Kisaki’s expression.

“But what happened to Mae?” Maou wondered. “Because there was no indication whatsoever that she was gonna leave…”

“She needs to take care of an elderly family member. We’re not really in a position to convince her to stay on.”

“Oh…”

No, it wasn’t something non–family members could butt into. Maou understood that well enough.

“She was kind enough to say,” Kisaki stated, “that she wants to return once things settle down a little, but nobody knows when that’ll be.”

“Yes, and the regional rep said that we’d gladly take her back when she’s able…but until she can, we’ll just have to deal with it.”

“So on top of all that, Chi gave us her notice today. And as I’m sure you can guess, the other three are also core performers leaving for reasons we can’t do anything about. And no matter how it shakes out, things are gonna hit rock bottom…”

“…In July, huh?” Maou asked, deflating.

“Yes.” Iwaki nodded. “Even if we hurriedly cobbled together five new people within the month of April, I doubt we could fill up the hole left by Maeyama and Sasaki starting in May. And we’ll be losing more veterans every month after that, all of whom we’ll have to replace with new people.”

Maou mentally ran down the remaining staff available for shift work. It made him wince. “It’s gonna be cutting it pretty close with training, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. And right in the midst of all that instability, we’ll be going into July without you and Emi-yu.”

July—the deadline for Maou’s battle against heaven. These were tentative plans, of course; depending on how things went, the final battle could take place before then, although Maou doubted it for now. What happened deep underground in the demon realms made all of them more careful—or hesitant, to be more precise. Maou and his friends all agreed it’d be much better to prepare as much as possible for a final resolution in July. What’s more, due to the circumstances surrounding Devil’s Castle in Ente Isla, there was a chance that if they didn’t do it by July Japan time, they’d lose their chance to strike the first blow against heaven.

Along those lines, Maou and Emi had both declared themselves away for the entire month of July—but now, the shifts for July at the Hatagaya Station MgRonald were looking utterly barren of staff. Maou and Emi were, of course, just hourly employees. It was the manager’s job to oversee and arrange shift schedules. If they wanted to, they could turn away and claim there was no need to put in work beyond what they were paid for—and common sense would be on their side. But Maou would never do that, and he sincerely doubted Emi would, either. If Amane Ohguro was around, she’d almost certainly be griping at them about whether fast-food work shifts were more important than the fate of entire worlds, but that wasn’t the issue here. It was a matter of personal pride on both of their parts.

“I really don’t like to do this, but I’m going to relent a little this time. If—if —it’s possible, do you have any friends or acquaintances you think would be interested?”

It was extremely unusual, really unheard of, for Kisaki to ask her crew directly for referrals like this. Even if someone suddenly had to take off due to illness, she never asked them to find a replacement for their shift. But now things were urgent enough that Kisaki was asking Maou himself, just as he was about to leave for the day.

Maou’s eyes darted between the old and the new managers.

“……”

Something flashed across his mind for a moment, but it wasn’t the right time for that yet. He immediately banished it.

“…I’ll see what I can do.”

That was all he could really say, even as he felt like Iwaki’s eyes were starting to anxiously water up.

On the way home, pedaling his bicycle, Maou started talking to himself.

“Five people…”

Multiple crewmembers, all leaving suddenly at roughly the same time. It was staggering news, but moping over it wouldn’t change reality.

“And Kisaki’s gonna be transferred soon…”

There were still many question marks surrounding the new manager, Iwaki, and how she’d fit in with the crew.

“And now Chi’s quitting…”

Stopped at a red light, Maou looked back the way he’d come. It seemed like the street itself was shifting, twisting itself in odd directions.

“Something about losing people you know well… It really hits you hard.”

On that day—the day he faced battle in a demon-realm cave, only to be defeated without making a single contribution—Maou woke up to hazily discover that he was in the familiar confines of Room 201 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka. Fending off a headache as he rose, he realized there was a crowd next to him—Laila, Amane, Acieth, and Chiho.

“I couldn’t do anything by myself, so I asked Amane for help.”

“Yeah, I heard you got your latent force ripped away from ya. Kamazuki is watching over Yusa and Alas Ramus next door. Urushihara’s with the chicken and the lizard.”

“Oh… Ow.”

Even in his current dim state, Maou could see that Laila deserved no criticism. Having to trundle a chicken, a lizard, Maou, Emi, and the unfused Acieth and Alas Ramus through a Gate was asking a lot at once.

“Do I have a scab here? Oooh… You okay, Acieth?”

He searched his scrambled memory. Then he felt something strong against his chest. It stopped him from speaking.

“Ch… Chi?”

“……”

Chiho had her arms around him, face buried in his chest.

“Chi?! Wh-why are you…?”

“…!!”

She silently shook her head, as Laila and Amane shrugged at each other.

“You have no idea why she might be here?”

“Oh, Mom, do not bother to do the asking. Maou, sometimes I wonder if he is paying full attention.”

“Huhh?!”

That was mean of them, but as he felt Chiho’s body tremble on top of him, Maou finally picked up on where he was.

“……”

Seeing the whorl of hair on the top of Chiho’s head, he eased up the tension on his body. Laila and Amane gave each other a look and left the room. Acieth, meanwhile, stretched out her legs, looking a little bored.

“…Sorry I made you worry,” he said, running a hand through her hair.

“…!”

Chiho looked up and gave him a great big nod.

That hit home more than any painful blow.

He had made Chiho worry about him many times before, but he’d never felt this guilty about it before.

That was because at that moment, for the first time in his life, Maou noticed an emotion he hadn’t stirred in anyone before.

A gentle, but intense feeling—with pangs of fear mixed in. Being Maou, or rather, being a demon, he could taste that fear instinctively.

The King of All Demons, survivor of countless battles and tragedies, felt terror for the first time in a long while.

The terror of his life coming to a close. The terror of experiencing pain. The terror of losing something you love; the terror of the unknown. Whether demon or human, he had witnessed that terror so much, it bored him by now—but what he picked up from Chiho then was the terror of not knowing what to do if Maou went away.

This was a little different from the fear of losing a loved one to death, something Maou had encountered before, because this “someone you loved” had always been some unknown person to him. It differed at the root from the “concern” shown by Camio or Adramelech or Ashiya during their Devil King’s Army days, too. With them, they might have wailed and felt remorse if they’d lost Maou, but the possibility of that loss was always somewhere in their minds, along with their future hopes afterward. The fear of loss didn’t rule over their minds; it was a given part of war.

But Chiho had no idea what she would do if she lost Maou. She couldn’t face up to that fear. It made her cry, and the fact that someone could’ve been so badly shaken out of worry over his life made Maou, or rather Satan, feel truly shocked. If, for example, Maou had some unforeseen accident that cost him his life, lots of people would cry for him. He was popular enough to merit that, and there was nothing suspicious about it. But as a being who could turn people’s emotions into demonic force, he had just tapped into something deeper—the roots of a girl who had declared her love for him, even after he’d fully revealed himself.

The first time he saw that heart, that face, was something he was sure he’d never forget. It would remain clearer in his mind than even when Laila had saved his life as a child.

“Chi…”

Maou whispered the name of the human girl…

“What? Being the sentimental?”

…and then the existence sharing a body with Maou griped at him. He could easily imagine the grin on her face. He stuck out his chin and winced.

Looking up, the stoplight ahead was about to turn red. His bike screeched to a halt.

“If you wanna play the fool all day, just do it. You are the tiring out of me.”

Unlike Maou and Emi, who had paid a clear physical price, Acieth back in Japan was the same gluttonous Acieth as she always was. When he’d asked about her beating the crap out of that space suit, she’d remembered it perfectly—but when he had asked how her bare-handed kung fu had succeeded where Emi and her sword had so utterly failed, she had simply replied, “Umm, I dunno,” with a smile that made you want to shake her.

Maou himself was unconscious for the duration of the ordeal, but the way Laila had described it to him, Acieth hadn’t been herself then. But Maou did recall something: There had been several times before when Acieth had undergone a sudden personality shift when faced with a powerful foe, her strength proving to overwhelm that foe. It had happened when Camael and the Malebranche had attacked Chiho’s school. It had happened with the battle against the angels on the Eastern Island. She hadn’t separated from Maou and gone berserk like this time, but even on those occasions, Acieth had crossed some kind of cosmic line.

“You know, this not the first time, but Maou, you are the very hypersensitive, no?”

“Huh?”

“It is just the part-time job, no? Chiho, she is not moving the very long distance away or anything. Why do the sighing so much?”

“When you call it just a part-time job, it pisses me off more than when Urushihara calls it that.”

“What do you mean?”

“With all the crap I have to deal with, if work is giving me a bunch of trouble, too, even the Devil King’s gonna complain about how it’s a pain in the ass. The least you could do is start remembering what happened and how your power works. It’d make things a little easier, at least.”

“Yeah, but if I not remember, I not remember—”

“If you remember it, I’ll buy you as much fried chicken at the convenience store as you want.”

“Really?!”

The internal shouting in his mind almost made Maou lose his balance on the bicycle. Of course, this was Acieth being Acieth; not even Maou thought this would lead to some breakthrough for dealing with Ignora. Acieth was toying with him, and he gave her a mental rap on the rear end in response.

“Please wait, okay? I will do the remembering very hard! Nnnnnnngh…!!”

Despite her flippant tone, she seemed to be seriously giving it a try. If this somehow resulted in a plan for winning their battle…

“Funny to think convenience store food is what it takes to save a planet.”

Maou smiled at the thought as he pedaled past the last convenience store along his route back home.

“AaaaaAAAAHHH! Time out, time out! You are passing the storrre!!”

“Sorry. Time’s up. Better luck next time.”

“Noooooooooooooo!!”

If Maou had manifested Acieth right now, he could imagine her rolling around the street in agony. It made him smile again.

“I don’t want a repeat of what happened before, so…”

The loss of his demonic force in the cave. The “sharpening” of that demon sword knocking him unconscious. He’d seen neither of those things coming; they were unavoidable calamities.

“This time, I was just lucky.”

Whether unavoidable or not, if he had run into those things during battle, he would have died. And this was no longer just about a demon realm where you risked your life every day. He was trusted, relied upon. He had health and stability, some amount of money, and most of all, close companions. Unavoidable or not, in this world, if he lost those, they’d never come back.

“Chi sure is watching out for me, isn’t she?”

“Maou?! Do not change terms! Chi’s fried chicken, it is not counting for this! You must spend the money of you and buy the FrenChik from FriendMart for me!!”

“You’re seriously… Ah, whatever,” lamented Maou as he dragged himself out of his morass of sentimentality.

They were now close to his apartment. Suzuno wasn’t back from Ente Isla so Room 202 was dark, but the fluorescent light over the kitchen sink in Room 101 was on. Bringing Dullahan II to a stop, he knocked on the Room 101 door instead of climbing the stairs.

“Hello,” came Nord Justina’s gentle voice as he opened the door. “Late shift, huh? And today was your new manager’s first day, wasn’t it? I thought you’d be later.”

“How do you know that?”

“Chiho sent me a text,” Emi called from within the apartment.

“Chi did…? Oh. Did she tell you anything else?”

“No, not really. All I asked her about was the name of the new manager.”

“Okay. That’s fine, then.”

“What are you hiding? Spit it out.”

“It’s nothing. Nothing I oughta say, anyway… But were you here in 101 all day? Anything unusual happen?”

Emi and Nord exchanged glances…and then smiled, for some reason.

“I don’t know whether it’s good or bad for you, but yes, there was one thing.”

“Huh?

“Well, you’ll get to see for yourself later. Wanna see Alas Ramus?”

Maou peered behind Nord’s shoulder to find two small figures sleeping together by the far window, away from the light over the sink. They were Alas Ramus and Erone.

“Come on in and give them a pat on the head, why don’t you?”

Heeding Nord’s advice, Maou tiptoed his way into Room 101 and looked at the two Sephirah children. They were both in a deep sleep, having been knocked out for a while, both of them breathing shallowly in their slumber.

“They just look like regular kids, don’t they? I’m sorry, can you turn out the light? I don’t wanna wake them.”

“This much won’t wake them up.”

He gave Alas Ramus and Erone each a caress on the head, then stealthily walked away from their futon and back to the front door.

“So what happened?”

Emi and Nord seemed calm enough that it must not have been bad news.

“I think you’ll see, once you get up to your apartment.”

“Did Urushihara do something? I would think Camio would stop him from doing anything too crazy…?”

Ashiya and Suzuno were, in a very real sense, the security team for Villa Rosa Sasazuka. With both of them in Ente Isla for the foreseeable future, there were two issues at hand. One was who’d take care of Alas Ramus, but Nord and Laila were always around, so that problem was solved. The other was Kinanna the Lenbrellebelve, and finding babysitting for him was more complicated.

Kinanna was a very, very ancient demon, one who’d treated even the Devil’s Regent and Maou’s father figure, Camio, as a child. Just a little demonic force would set him on a rampage, one made doubly dangerous by his enfeebled mind. But, perhaps due to the wound the mystery astronaut applied to his throat, Kinanna wasn’t able to greedily suck in demonic force the way he used to—and just like a power-starved Camio, his body had shrunk down. He was now a small lizard, even smaller than when he’d first paid a visit to Room 201. There was no longer any doubting that the stone ensconced in his throat was the Astral Gem, one of the Devil Overlord’s fabled relics. But considering what had happened in that underground lab, it was easy to see that Kinanna’s long life was intertwined with the presence of this gem.

Based on all of this, a mere human like Nord wouldn’t be able to wrangle him. Neither would Laila, who knew little of the demon realms and whose crisis management skills were questionable even in the best of times. This whittled down the candidates to Urushihara, pretty much, but his past performance didn’t exactly paint a glowing picture of his qualifications.

Camio was back in Japan after the cave visit—but while he was there, everyone wanted to be sure he had no more power than any other black chicken out there. The reason was simple: Losing his demonic force didn’t make Camio human, but if he regained his normal form, the force he exuded would impact his surroundings no matter what he did. This force was still poison to Nord, and if a guy from the post office or Sasuke Express knocked on the door only to find a giant irradiative bird-person on the other side, the results would be alarming in assorted ways.

Thus they had to leave the lizard with Urushihara for now, which had kept Maou extremely anxious at work over the past two days.

“It’s not something Urushihara did, no…”

“No, we weren’t on hand to witness it, exactly. But I think you’ll understand better once you look inside.”

“You’re being weirdly evasive…”

Raising a young Emi as a single father, then somehow managing to keep Acieth’s stomach full in this strange land of Japan, Nord was actually a pretty decent cook. Other people pitched in for Kinanna’s diet as well—but Maou still had his worries.

“Don’t worry,” Emi said. “It’s not a bad thing, probably. I think Chiho will like it, too.”

“…Why’d you bring up Chi?”

“Well, we all know what happened to you. She’s worried about how you’ll do if you decide to recuperate in that disaster area up there.”

“Oh…”

“What is it?”

Maou shook his head. “Nothing. Sorry to bother you guys this late. See you later.”

“Sure.” Nord nodded.

“…Right. Good night,” said Emi, a little suspicious of Maou’s behavior.

Once Nord had quietly closed the door, he gave the wall a concerned look.

“He looks rather tired.”

“Well, he has too much to think about and too little he can do by himself. I’m sure it’s mentally exhausting him.”

Through the wall, they could barely hear Maou go upstairs.

“Well, at least starting today, he can really stretch out and relax when he goes to sleep.”

The moment Nord said that—

“Huhh?!”

Emi’s eyebrows arched upward at the muffled scream from the ceiling.

“I told him to keep it down. There’s children sleeping.”

“I think well near anyone would do the same thing…”

Alas Ramus fidgeted a bit, perhaps hearing the sound. Emi, stooping down, caressed her hair.

“Well, no point whining about it now. I mean, doesn’t he remember how long it took to plug up the giant hole this child made in the wall?”

“Huhh?!”

The moment he opened the door and turned on the light, Maou brought a terrified hand to his mouth, only remembering Alas Ramus was asleep after he let out that yell.

If he was too loud, Emi was bound to nag at him again—but who wouldn’t yell at this? If you woke up in a thoroughly trashed and broken-down apartment in the morning and came back that night to find it completely repaired, you’d be screaming, too.

“Wha… Huh…?!”

Maou checked the number outside, convinced he must’ve stepped into Suzuno’s apartment by mistake. It said “201,” no matter how many times he looked.

“What the hell…?”

The tatami mats on the floor were brand new, the aroma from the fresh woven straw having a calming effect on his mind. The closet door now had ink-style artwork of a pine grove printed on Chinese paper, and all the walls had been repainted. The ripped-up curtains were replaced with orange blackout types that added a bright yet chic touch to the décor; when he gingerly touched them, he found there was even an inner lace curtain behind them.

But scariest of all was the new wood-floored section in one corner of the room. This three-foot-by-three-foot floor, where the apartment’s cheap plastic shelving used to be, was enclosed with a border made of two-by-four planks, similar to what washing machines were installed on in Japan as an anti-earthquake measure. Inside it was an enormous, sturdy-looking birdcage, and inside the birdcage, amid some straw placed below a basic pet heater, was a small lizard snoring loudly.

“Wha-wha-wha, this, uh… Oh, uh, Urushihara, Urushihara and Camio…”

The disturbed Maou hadn’t noticed until now that neither of them was in the room.

“U-Urushihara! Camio! Where are you? The bathroom? Hey! …Urushihara?”

He tried to keep his voice as low as possible as he searched for them…but suddenly he felt something from the closet. A slight sense of unease, like the unexpected aroma of curry emanating from somebody’s house in town. He opened the door.

“Whoa!”

There he found a visibly shaking Urushihara cradling a black chicken, terror written across his face, as if scared of the light in the room.

Taking a closer look, he realized that his eyes were red and his hair was a silvery color. Camio, tucked in his arms, looked like a collection of dried feathers, his eyes glassy as if he was in danger of dying at any moment. Then the memory portion of Maou’s brain kicked in, instantly finding the most likely rationale for this.

“Did the landlord come in?”

“……! ……!”

“……Chirrrr…………………Hurrrr.”

Urushihara silently nodded.

There was an envelope in the trembling Camio’s beak. The return address was from a company Maou had never heard of, but more important was the kiss mark on the front of it, like an ancient demonic seal corralling a force that must never be awakened. He felt faint as he drummed up as much mental force as he could to pick up the letter.

“Ah, um, guys, calm down,” he attempted. “It’s all right. It’s all right now.” But his own hands were shaking as he opened the envelope. Inside was a single folded sheet of paper and a thicker one with a tear-off section at the bottom.

“Gnhh…!!”

The moment he unfolded the first sheet, Maou made a strange sound from within his throat and fell backward, smashing against the spanking-new tatami and losing consciousness.

This sheet was an itemized list, and the other one was a bill slip. Among the listed entries: Removal of the old tatami mats, chewed up and destroyed beyond repair; installation of the new mats; new paper on the closet frame; new paint on the walls; and the new animal cage. The total at the bottom: 89,700 yen. Maou stayed conscious only long enough to read the part about how the curtains and labor were free and they could discuss a payment plan later.

If you thought about it, this was only to be expected. Amane herself saw just how wrecked Room 201 had been the other day. Laila couldn’t be blamed for taking the knocked-out Maou back to Room 201 here in Japan—and if she saw the state of her aunt’s apartment building, of course Amane would tell Shiba about it. This was the result.

Clearly, this was the fault of Maou and his roommates—for keeping animals in the room (a clear violation of the lease), for damaging the apartment beyond what would be repaired with normal maintenance, and for attempting to hide the fact. The damage went well beyond what would be tolerated in daily life, so if anything, Shiba’s flexibility with his payment plan was exceedingly generous.

But judging by how Urushihara had spent the whole “renovation” quivering in the closet with Camio, unable to use his computer, there was no imagining the sights he must have seen.

Realizing everything had gone quiet above after hearing a dull thump, Emi said:

“It must’ve been a big shock to him. In a lot of ways.”

“Because they’re demons?”

“Who knows?” She chuckled as she turned out the light to prepare for bed. “I’m still not really sure myself.”