The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 2 (12 page)

“Don’t you need any soy sauce on this
hiyayakko
tofu?”

“Oh, no. I use a solution of white soup stock diluted in water. That way, the taste of the tofu won’t clash so harshly against the saltiness. It results in a much softer, smoother flavor.”

Chiho and Suzuno were deep in conversation.

Emi faithfully listened on, a tad nonplussed by this turn of events.

Chiho, learning that Suzuno had come to help Maou keep his home affairs in order after the summer heat got the best of Ashiya’s health (and that she simply had the habit of referring to people by their first names), had finally shooed away the tears from her eyes.

After taking a disdainful look at Urushihara, idly wasting away
the morning as he let his neighbor handle all the hard work, Chiho reintroduced herself to Suzuno.

“Well! I should say that the variety of food Chiho brought for us will result in quite a lovely breakfast.”

The dining table was already largely filled by the time Chiho added her own fried chicken breasts and potato salad to it. For breakfast, it was almost too extensive of a buffet.

“Uh…well, hey, thanks a lot, Chi. This is kind of a surprise. Can’t wait to tuck into it.”

Maou thanked her as his hand wavered over the table, belying his total inability to decide on his first dish.

“Of…of course!”

“Thanks a lot, Ms. Kamazuki…”

Ashiya, sitting up, looked almost emaciated as he bowed his head.

“Hmm. We’ve got a lot of people here. Do we have enough teacups and chopsticks?”

Maou began a quick head count.

“Oh, I brought my own.”

Chiho cheerfully took a small box out from her bag.

“Very well. In that case, Emi, I do hope you will sit next to me. I am afraid I have nothing but disposable chopsticks to offer, but…”

Suzuno invited Emi, who had been all but tossed aside by now, by offering a set of wooden chopsticks.

It was a remarkably lively morning meal, a scene that made Emi wonder if this was really the Devil’s Castle after all. By the time everyone had cups and chopsticks, Urushihara finally drummed up the energy to sleepily lurch over.

“Huh. Breakfast already?”

He brushed off the dirty looks all of the other diners flashed him.

“I don’t see any seat or chopsticks or teacup for me, man.”

Maou, Ashiya, and Chiho each occupied one side of the
kotatsu
table, with Emi and Suzuno sharing the fourth. There was no room left for Urushihara to sit.

Instead, there was a plastic container and fork on the computer desk.

“Our guests come first. And the person who contributed the least to the meal comes last.”

Ashiya was cold as ice.

“…Dude, you’re gonna so regret this. Like, isn’t that the container my Sugiya dinner came in?”

Urushihara half muttered it to himself, dejectedly looking at the disposable plastic bowl as he forked some rice into it.

It was what he deserved, given that even Chiho, who treated nearly everyone she met with kindness, couldn’t conjure any sympathy for him.

“So…how are you, anyway, Ashiya? Are you feeling okay?”

“Thank you for your concern, Ms. Sasaki. Thanks to Ms. Kamazuki’s kindness, I have been given ample opportunity to rest my weary bones. I hardly wish to be any more of a burden to our Devil’s Castle, so I plan to return to my regular routine beginning today.”

“And we have Chiho to thank for that. Such a cornucopia of rejuvenating ingredients she brought along! Nothing like some good meat to revitalize a man’s appetite.”

“Well, thank you! I wish I could cook like you, though, Suzuno.”

The breakfast conversation couldn’t have been friendlier. Emi gauged Suzuno carefully as it unfolded.

The words they exchanged yesterday plainly weren’t enough to dissuade her away from Maou, but judging by her cooking and her friendly demeanor toward Chiho, there wasn’t anything suspicious about her.

And think about this: The maniac burglar from last night took a paintball right on the ski mask. That paint, and the smell, isn’t the sort of thing that comes off in a day or two. It seemed fair to conclude that Suzuno couldn’t have been Emi’s scythe-wielding attacker.

“Ah, experience has a way of making anyone a veteran over time, Chiho. I am sure the day will come when you surpass even me in the kitchen.”

“Yeah, but Mom cooks for the family at my place, so I don’t really get much of an opportunity to practice.”

“Oh, the opportunity will come, trust me on that. I, too, was fed very well by my family through all my life, but in many ways, it was more a matter of them continually pushing food in my direction. Why, when I moved away, they made me bring a virtual larder filled with supplies!”

That solved another lingering mystery in Emi’s mind. Given her experience with the inside of the Devil’s Castle’s cabinets, she was wondering who was footing the bill for all these ingredients.

“They were kindly hoping to aid me with my finances until I found useful employment in the city, but having such an enormous quantity will only lead to it all spoiling in the summer heat. So, if I may say so in front of all of you, having three hale young men with healthy appetites next door has been a great help to me.”

It was hard to tell if Suzuno was trying to relieve Chiho or prove to Emi that she took her advice to give up on Maou. Or neither.

She mentioned she wanted to find a decent job yesterday, come to think of it. Emi, tossing her doubts and worries to the wind, picked up the conversational thread.

“What kind of work are you thinking of, by the way?”

Suzuno, for reasons only she was aware of, gave Emi a strange look.

Emi was a bit thrown by being stared at from point-blank range, but Suzuno took a look at Maou and Ashiya before nodding to herself, seemingly convinced to herself about something.

“I will not ask for a salaried position. As long as the proceeds allow me a bare pittance to live on, I have no complaints.”

The response was crisp and clear. The use of the word
pittance
was perhaps a bit behind the times, but given her location in Sasazuka, right near the heart of Tokyo, she had a wealth of options to choose from. And given it was toward the start of the month, if she hurried, she would have a decent-sized paycheck waiting for her in just a few weeks.

“A job to make my homeland proud” was setting the bar rather low, but given that she and Emi had only just met, it was the sort of noncommittal response she expected.

Emi didn’t have long to chew on this.

“Well, why don’t you come work at my place?” Maou, as unthinkingly as always, completely failing to read the atmosphere around him and just blurted it out.

“!!”

“!!”

“?”

“……”

“…Ah, jeez.”

Chiho froze in place, Emi’s eyebrows furrowed, Suzuno tilted her head to the side, Ashiya’s eyes turned toward the ceiling, and Urushihara verbally expressed his disgust.

“We’re kinda low on staff for a lot of shifts right now, so I don’t think we’d have a problem taking someone else on. Because, Chi’ll be there, so you’ll have someone familiar around while you’re learning the ropes.”

Did Maou ever stop to think that familiarity with the staff was far from the problem here? Or, for that matter, did it even occur to him why Chiho was on his doorstep this morning in the first place?

Urushihara, sitting away from the dining table, could see the whirlpool of awkward emotions whirling around the center of the room.

“Well, you can’t really make her answer that question right on the spot, can you?”

Emi, finding no other way out of this, tried to extend a lifeline to Chiho.

“You can think of her as a potential applicant, of course, but…you know, there are good things and bad things about having personal acquaintances as your coworkers. So maybe you should, you know, think about it a little more first?”

Chiho looked at Emi, eyes held helplessly open.

“True… You do have a point.” Suzuno nodded her agreement. “Thank you very much for the offer, Sadao. I will give it due consideration. And who knows? Perhaps I will ask you for a formal introduction at a later time.”

“Yeah, uh, sure thing.”

“And if I do, I do hope you will put in a good word for me, Chiho.”

“A-all right.”

Chiho stole a glance at Emi for a moment before bowing her head at Suzuno. Emi’s eyes darted back slightly as she noticed this.

There was no pretense. No hidden meaning. Just a simple exchange of words. A dining table filled with honest devotion and skill. A direct, to-the-point personality to match her direct, to-the-point speech.

To both Chiho and Emi, there was absolutely nothing they could seize upon to make them suspicious of Suzuno Kamazuki.

“Would you like me to maybe show you around Shinjuku and so on?”

Emi decided to bite the bullet first.

Neither Emi nor Maou was willing to let this woman remain content with living in abject poverty and starvation. Emi knew they had to get her introduced to modern society to some extent, even as she knew it would be pointless to expand the circle too much further.

If Suzuno really was just a typical Japanese woman, Emi wanted her life as distant from Maou’s as possible.

“It’ll be easier to pick up on things if it’s just us women together. Let these guys take you, and who knows what kind of weirdo things they’ll teach you.”

“Hey, that’s just being mean!”

Maou spoke up, dissatisfied with this appraisal. Emi paid him no mind.

“Well, even if it is, I’m confident I could do a better job of it than
you
could.”

Emi snorted haughtily at Maou. He shrugged in response, but declined to take it further.

“And how ’bout maybe you lend her some clothing or something? You know, for work and stuff. I think she looks cute in a kimono, but she’s, like, gonna need a suit and a bag, right? Like, office casual, like you’ve got on, Emi. You could be a secretary or something, right?”

For once, Urushihara said something Emi could agree with, which she appreciated. She was not, however, as much a fan of how he picked up her shoulder bag and bandied it around without permission.

“Hey! You can’t just touch that! You’ll infect me with your unemployed-itis!”

“It’s not a disease! I was just looking at it! Jeez!”

Urushihara bit back at this (in his mind) uncalled-for assault. Chiho gave a cold rebuttal.

“I’m amazed you can just
do
stuff like that, Urushihara.”

“Aw, quit it already! You’re all treating me like some sort of idiot!” He retreated back to his lair, howling in anger along the way.

“Indeed, however, my chest of drawers is lacking in such things. I have little in the way of purses or footwear. Perhaps I had best atone for that, if necessary.”

“You’ve got more than just…kimonos, right?”

Emi asked the question casually. She had never seen Suzuno in anything else.

“I do not. I have kimonos, and sandals, and these socks, but none of the pairings that you or Chiho are sporting so dashingly.”

The confession was as shocking as it was so breezily given. Her audience exchanged glances with one another.

“Is that…strange, in some way?”

Suzuno looked around, a slight twinge of concern on her face. Even she noticed how this seemed to surprise everyone.

“No, nothing strange about it, exactly, but…”

Ashiya trailed off midway.

“Damn, Suzuno, you’re like some kind of samurai princess.”

Even Urushihara seemed thrown by this revelation. The other two women in the room were less forthright with their amazement.

“…Yusa, if you could perhaps introduce me to a clothing store as well…”

“Umm, sure! If we have the time.”

Chiho and Emi nodded to each other, the nervousness painted on their faces.

Maou interjected between them.

“I dunno, as long as you don’t come out looking all weird…”

He nodded to himself.

“Well, thanks again for letting me visit so early in the morning. Get well soon, Ashiya.”

“Not at all. Thank you for all the lovely things you brought over. Now, no funny business before you take Ms. Sasaki back home, Your Demonic Highness.”

Maou and Chiho left the apartment, Ashiya seeing them off. Chiho blushed a bit in response, a smile on her face.

“What are you, my wife?”

Maou flashed a glare back at his roommate.

“She has loyally served you, my liege, in both personal and business matters. It is only right that you repay the debt with equal kindness.”

“Pfft…yeah. Anyway, see you.”

Maou wore a hangdog look on his face as he went downstairs, Chiho following behind. Ashiya watched for a few moments before shutting the door.

The two of them weren’t due back at work until the afternoon. But it was Ashiya who pushed Maou into seeing Chiho back home, reasoning, “How could you allow Ms. Sasaki to merely wander off after she just brought this sumptuous feast to our door?”

Ashiya did not always have such a rosy opinion of Chiho’s advances on Maou in the past, but apparently he was willing to loosen the reins with anyone willing to help the demons break even on their monthly budget.