“Mmm?”

  “Maou… That person…”

  Suddenly, Maou noticed something strange. The mystery person’s back was turned, but something about it seemed familiar to him.

  “You see, Maou? That has to be it, but…why?”

  It was more than simply familiar, in fact. Maou and Chiho knew that rear like the backs of their hands.

  Her being at the restaurant wasn’t that unnatural. She had made several visits before. But why was she having a personal conversation with Kisaki? Why was she taking her into her office? She wasn’t just a customer? She wasn’t being expected to make an order and sit at a table somewhere?

  “……!!!!”

  Maou, unlike Chiho, was at a loss for words. He had no idea what he should even say. His mind was a blank as Chiho kept a shaky hand around her arm.

  Suddenly, the woman leaving MgRonald with Kisaki turned toward them, immediately spotting the two employees staring slack-jawed at her. She flashed a slightly awkward smile, gave a light wave to Chiho (and not Maou), and followed Kisaki out the door.

  “E…Emi…”

  “Yeah, you see?! That was totally Yusa just now, wasn’t it?!”

  Emi Yusa, the final interviewee of the day, was just there, right before their eyes.

  “E-E-E-E-Emi! Youuuu!”

  “Wow, that’s how you say hello?”

  His shift wrapped up, Maou opened the door to Room 201 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka and pointed a finger straight at Emi—who was sitting in the middle of the room, along with Ashiya, Suzuno, and Chiho, like it was her God-given right.

  “You…!” he stammered again, suddenly frozen solid at the doorway.

  “Welcome home, Your Demonic Highness,” Ashiya said, giving Maou a sympathetic look. “I hope your day at work went well. Why don’t you come inside for the time being?”

  Maou stayed planted where he was, lips trembling.

  “It must have been quite the shock,” Suzuno observed.

  “Oh, it sure was!” Chiho replied. “I almost jumped out of my clothes when I saw her.”

  “Ch… Um, Chi, like…”

  “Yeah? Oh, I got my parents’ permission for this.” She pointed at the nearby wall. “I’ll be staying at Suzuno’s place tonight.”

  “No, I… I mean, yes, that’s great, but, uh…there’s no more trains now…”

  The clock on the wall read half past midnight. Maou got off work at midnight, so reaching home this quickly took a concerted effort on his part—and Emi and Chiho were waiting for him here, as if counting on that. He looked at Emi, then at his own watch.

  “I’m staying with my father tonight,” Emi casually stated, pointing a finger at the floor.

  “Ah, yes. Devil King, I have just given Alciel the remaining unpaid half of your week’s salary,” Suzuno said. “That only leaves the scooter, which I hope you will decide on soon. And that marks the end of Emilia’s monetary repayment, so I do not want to see you attempt to charge her interest on that scooter.”

  “Uh, sure… Wait. Already?!” Maou put a hand to the wall, almost collapsing at his own doorstep as he looked at Ashiya. His associate meekly showed him a white envelope.

  “Are you… Are you sure you can do that?! What’re you gonna live on this month?!”

  Even ignoring the scooter, Maou had asked Emi for over 200,000 yen. Seeing it returned this quickly made him worry about her continued financial health. But Emi simply nodded at her, nonplussed.

  “Remember, I made seventeen hundred yen an hour. Plus, I don’t waste money on too much stuff. I could pay you right now for a scooter, too, as long as you don’t get too fancy.”

  The calm, composed declaration made Ashiya look honestly impressed. “Such broad-minded confidence!” he exclaimed. “You truly are the detestable Hero we have always known you to be, Emilia.”

  “That makes her a Hero to you?” Maou countered. He took a deep breath, attempting to gather his composure as he removed his shoes and came in, his face tightly wound as he took a seat next to Emi. Seeing this act, Suzuno and Chiho couldn’t help but exchange a wry grin.

  “What?”

  “Don’t ‘what’ me,” Maou spat at Emi. “What’re you trying to do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…” He rapped at the tatami-mat floor, almost pleading at her. “Why did you apply to join my location?!”

  “It’s a little late, you know,” Emi calmly replied. “You really shouldn’t beat on the floor like that. You’ll wake up Alas Ramus.”

  “Whaaaa…?” Maou’s face reddened. He tried his best not to explode in front of the serene Hero. The mention of their child’s name forced him to place his hand back in his lap.

  “Look, I talked to Kisaki!”

  “Yes? The manager? What of it?”

  “She said she was gonna hire all three of the guys she interviewed today!! You’re gonna be—”

  “Oh, she did? Wow! Great!” Chiho exclaimed. For whatever reason, she was much more upbeat at the news than Emi. She beamed with joy, leaning over and giving her a hug. “Yusa! We’re all gonna be working together! This’ll be so fun!”

  “Yeah, it’ll be nice having you show me the ropes. Thanks in advance for that.”

  “Such great news, Emilia,” Suzuno chimed in, “finding your next occupation so quickly. It certainly puts my mind at ease.”

  “Yeah, sorry if I made you worry. I’ll have to tell Rika and Eme later, too.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, guys!” Chiho’s sheer glee made Maou relent a little bit at first. He struggled to regain the initiative. “Wait a second! Let me speak first!”

  “About what? We’ve already talked about everything. I told Bell and Alciel and of course Chiho about the story, so go ask one of them later. If Ms. Kisaki really calls me for the job, I’m gonna be working there, all right? So stay out of my way.”

  “That’s what I wanted to say!” he argued, although Chiho’s doe eyes stabbing into him as she hugged Emi blunted his momentum. “Emi, look, please tell me. What could possibly have driven you to apply for that job? You’re gonna be making a whopping eight hundred and fifty yen an hour during your training period, you realize? That’s, like, half your old salary. You’re okay with that?”

  It was true that Maou considered giving Emi a reference for the job, just like he told Chiho—no matter how much he had screwed up the execution. But he never thought Emi would volunteer to apply.

  “Ughhh…” Emi sighed as she gently removed Chiho’s arms from her body. She gave her and Suzuno an ironic grin—and, seeing the three girls share some unknown, unspoken secret with each other, Maou realized that Ashiya had the exact same grin upon his face as well.

  “…Devil King,” Emi said. “I know I’m repeating myself, but I really do appreciate what you did for me back there.”

  “…Huh?” Maou replied, eyes bugging out.

  “I apologized a lot to Chiho and Rika. I told Eme and Al, too. I…” She turned her head up and looked around the room, her gentle eyes taking in all of the Devil’s Castle here in Room 201. “I really like the meals we all eat in this place.”

  “…”

  “I don’t know if you intended it or not, but the way it all turned out, my father, Alas Ramus, and I are pretty much free from anything in Ente Isla that could hold us down. It wasn’t easy all the time, but I survived it without abandoning hope for mankind—or demonkind, even. And that’s all thanks to you.”

  “Y-yeah… Well, that… Yeah.”

  Maou edged back a little from Emi, looking supremely awkward as he kneeled on the floor. He wasn’t sure she had ever talked about herself like this to him—and so gently, no less.

  “But, you know…” Emi continued, her voice suddenly growing stiffer as she fixated her stern eyes upon Maou. It made him hold his breath a moment. “That’s why I can’t let myself depend on your goodwill like this. Because, I mean, you really screwed up my and my father’s lives, and I’m afraid I just can’t let that slide. You’re… You’re still my enemy, after all.”

  “Yeahhh, um. Yeah, I guess so,” Maou replied, meekly nodding. He used his peripheral vision to size up Suzuno, unsure where this conversation was headed. She hadn’t blabbed to her about that fireside “confession,” had she? But whether she failed to notice Maou’s gaze or simply chose to ignore it, Suzuno did nothing in reply, listening to Emi speak.

  “And when you stormed into my father’s room to demand payment from me… You never really intended to take this much money from me, did you?”

  “Huh?! Ah, um, like… Chiiii?!”

  “I didn’t say anything,” Chiho responded, shaking her head. Just as calm and serious as Suzuno, Maou observed.

  “Indeed,” Suzuno noted, “your childish antics provided little in the way of camouflage for you from the start.”

  “Right. You played your stupid game because you were waiting for me to say ‘No way, I’ll never take that in a million years.’ Then, once I did, you’d tell me to get a job over at MgRonald. Am I wrong?”

  “Nnnngh… No, it’s just…”

  “Maou?”

  Chiho’s voice was sharp, pointed, as Maou continued to search for some kind of excuse.

  “Give it up,” Suzuno said as she took out the half-wadded up classified magazine from under the table. The sight of it made Maou’s eyebrows arch upward. It was a different free publication from the one Maou showed to Chiho at MgRonald; he thought he had tossed it in the trash after his overtures toward Emi had failed.

  “Is that…? Geez, Ashiya! I told you to throw that out!”

  “I could not, my liege,” Ashiya explained, eyes averted. “We had just missed the date for recycling pickup.”

  “Then burn it!” Maou shouted, shaking Ashiya’s shoulders. “This is exactly what our demonic powers are for, man! We can use our dark forces to hide all the evidence!”

  “And that, Your Demonic Highness, is exactly why I told you it was best not to prod Emilia so much. To leave her be instead. This was your doing, and your responsibility to bear.”

  “Responsibility…?” Maou turned to Emi, his hands still on Ashiya’s shoulders.

  Then:

  “Wh-what the—?!”

  With a near-scream, he swiftly retreated to a corner of the room. The moment he turned around, he had been greeted by the back of Emi’s head. She was bowing toward him. Emilia, the Hero. Emi Yusa, the woman who hated Maou like nobody else in all the worlds. And now she had her head hung in the air.

  “Thanks. For thinking about me.”

  “Whoa, stop, stop, stop! Are you really Emi?! You aren’t Gabriel transformed or something?!”

  Maou’s body shook, like a rabbit being leered at by some unknown, slavering beast. Emi lifted her head and smiled.

  “With what you did, at that battle in Efzahan…you helped my father and me, and our village, slip away from the dark conspiracy threatening all of us. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Just think of the money and the scooter as a token of my appreciation. No matter why you said that, all right? But like I just said, I still can’t forgive what you did. So now that I’m back here, I can’t let you consider my feelings any longer. That much, I want to be sure we’re clear on.”

  “……”

  She slowly stood up, and Maou tensed his body in dreadful anticipation for what she might do next. Instead she turned to Chiho and Suzuno.

  “Well, it’s late, so I need to go back to my father’s room. Good night, Chiho. And thanks for helping with my father again today, Bell.”

  “Sure, have a good night!”

  “It is my pleasure. I will do what I can to help Nord get used to his new life.”

  “Thanks. Alciel, Devil King… Sorry to bother you so late.”

  “…Not at all.”

  “…”

  Nodding at Ashiya, and not bothering to wait for Maou to summon a reply, Emi put on her shoes and left. The sound of the door closing behind her echoed for just a moment, and as if it was a cue, the other three people in the room turned to Maou.

  Before he could figure out what they were looking at him for, his body was in motion. He flew out the door, and after Emi. Just as she said, she was staying in the apartment downstairs. There was no great need to rush out at top speed, but somehow, he felt like he had to stop Emi before she closed her door. He spotted her in Villa Rosa Sasazuka’s front yard—or, really, she was looking up at him frozen, perhaps realizing he wouldn’t want to end it at that.

  “Nh…!!”

  The shock of realizing Emi was waiting for him made Maou’s body pitch forward, almost losing its footing on the stairs. He had to grab the handrail with both hands to steady himself.

  “Ugh, don’t fall. I’m not kindhearted enough to catch you if you do.”

  “E-Emi,” Maou stammered at the half-joking voice from below. Then he fell silent. He had her attention, but no idea what to ask. But Emi, understanding what was on his mind, gave him a faint smile.

  “What made you want to work at that place anyway, Devil King?”

  “…Um?”

  Maou didn’t understand the point of the sudden question, but it was still far more comprehensible than most of Emi’s behavior today. “Well,” he meekly explained, “they were okay with zero experience, it was close to this apartment, and I figured I could score some free food out of it. Also, like maybe I told you before, I could get promoted to a permanent position…”

  “Right, so you had a lot of motivations to work besides just money. And I’m the same way.”

  “Oh?”

  Emi took her eyes off Maou, directing them toward the Villa Rosa building.

  “I had Father and Bell look after Alas Ramus during my interview today. Dokodemo paid well, but I couldn’t let her come out in physical form all day, so I felt kind of bad for her. If I worked over there, though, she could stay here and not feel all cooped up inside me. Bell said I probably couldn’t take Alas Ramus into the restaurant itself, but…”

  She smiled, perhaps recalling the story of the chaos Maou and Chiho inadvertently caused with Alas Ramus at MgRonald.

  “So I decided on that once Father was set to move her. That I’d work there for my next job. I was pretty sure they’d hire me—you kept harping at me about how short on people you are, and I figured my phone experience would help out for the big delivery launch.” She exhaled deeply. “So I’m not doing this because you asked me, or because I’m just going with the flow. I applied at the MgRonald by Hatagaya station of my own free will. I wanted to work there because it’s the most ideal place for me right now. So that’s why I interviewed.”

  This still left Maou less than satisfied, but he had nothing to counter with.

  “I’m glad I stayed here tonight. I got to repay you and fully thank you for Efzahan.”

  “Emi, you…” Maou looked at Emi’s face, lit up by the moon above.

  “And starting tomorrow, I’ll be moving forward again.”

  She flashed a pure, guileless smile at him.

  “…”

  Silent, Maou thought it looked familiar. Where had he seen it before? It was only once, but he was sure he had seen a similarly honest, non-ironic smile from her before. He couldn’t remember when.

  And that…

  “Oh, speaking of which…”

  …was because Emi…

  “Kisaki remembered who I was, like I figured she would. We got to talking about you and Chiho—it was kind of just chatting, for a lot of it. And if I’m really hired, we’re gonna have to conform to company policy when we’re around her. So…”

  …gave him the shock of his life.

  “…it’s gonna be first names from now on. Good to work with ya, Sadao!”

  “Whoooaaaaaaaa?!”

  At that moment, despite standing bolt upright, Maou still slipped on the stairs. He fell forward, annoying the neighbors with his primal scream as he did. All three of the upstairs residents came out the Room 201 door, as did Nord from his own apartment, carrying Alas Ramus.

  “My liege! What happened?!”

  “Maou?!”

  “Not again, Emilia…”

  “What is the meaning of this noise?!”

  “Mmm…nffhh…”

  They were greeted by the sight of Maou sprawled out at the bottom of the stairs, covered in dust, along with Emi, who had to step aside to avoid him.

  “Um, are you all right? I said I wouldn’t catch you, but the way you fell, I couldn’t have done much even if I wanted to.”

  “Oh. Ah…oh,” Maou exercised his lungs enough to groan. His eyes, as he stared at Emi above, housed a palpable sort of terror. “You… You… That…”

  “What? You hate it that much?”

  Emi must have known. But she played the fool and asked anyway. The evidence for this: the laugh she had just barely avoided bursting out with.

  “Well, fine, then. Like I said, I haven’t forgiven you. I’m gonna relish calling you that for a while, Sada—”

  “Noooooo!!”

  Maou shot up to his feet, using all four of his limbs to crawl up the stairs, slink his way between Chiho and Ashiya on the hallway, and plunge into his apartment.

  “What has gotten into him?” Suzuno audibly wondered from the side. But once the door was closed, they began to hear sounds from inside. She knocked. “Hey! Devil King! Don’t lock the door! What are you doing?!”

  “M-Maou! Maou, open up! My stuff is still in your room…”

  “What is the meaning of this, my liege? I’m opening the door.”

  “Keep it closed, Ashiyaaaaaa!”

  Ignoring the pained scream of the King of All Demons, Ashiya took a key out from his apron pocket and unlocked the door.

  “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  It was too much for Emi to bear. Now her laughter was all too audible.

  “Mm?” Nord asked, rubbing his eyes. “Emilia, what happened?”

  Emi shook her head, still smiling. “Nothing, nothing. Sorry we were so loud this late.” Then she waved at the still-dumbfounded Chiho and Suzuno above and stepped into Room 101. “At least now, though, it’s all over.”

 

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