The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 2 (14 page)

Emi’s eyes shot open.

Besides the residents of Devil’s Castle, the only people who knew that Emilia the Hero teamed up with Satan, the Devil King, in battle were Chiho, Emeralda, Albert, and Olba.

There was no way Emeralda and Albert would spread stories that would put the Hero’s name in question. The only alternative was that Olba, still in custody of the Japanese authorities, had found a way to transmit the news to Ente Isla.

And, from there, it was easy to surmise the sort of Ente Islans who could receive that sort of news.

Emi decided to start by declaring her innocence.

“You have
got
to be kidding me! We had a common enemy! There was nothing I could do about it besides defeat him while the Devil King was in the same location! And anyone who calls it ‘fighting alongside’ him is making a terrible, terrible mistake!”

It was the very definition of splitting hairs, but to Emi, said hair was as long, wide, and visible as a brick wall.

In terms of her intentions, at least, the Devil King remained Emi’s foe during that battle, even as she fought against Lucifer and Olba.

As for how
other
people interpreted it…that, even she had to admit, was a different story.

It was clear how an external observer could have believed he was watching the Hero and Devil King tag-teaming against an archbishop of the Church. And then she was attacked on the very day she handed over her address and phone number.

“So, what, you thought I joined sides with the Devil King so I could get revenge against the Church?! Is that why you dressed up all funny and attacked me at the convenience store yesterday?!”

Someone closely allied with Olba would no doubt step up to fulfill his most fervent of wishes. That was easy enough to surmise.

And there was every chance that someone would simply want vengeance against the archbishop’s nemesis, completely unaware of his crimes.

But Suzuno, suddenly looking quite a bit more suspicious than a
few minutes ago, stared quizzically at Emi as she crossed her arms in thought, acting for all the world like Emi’s accusation was out of left field.

“A ‘convenience store’? How does one sell convenience, exactly? I am not sure what you mean.”

“Oh, if
you
don’t, how do you think
I’m
handling this right now, huh?! Are you pulling that act on purpose, or are you really that stupid?!”

Emi used a hand to cup her face.

“I was attacked, all right? At the store! On the day I gave you my info! By someone from Ente Isla! And not to defend the Devil King, but it wasn’t a demon, because whoever it was had the power to cancel out my holy sword! Which means it had to be you…!”

Emi stopped cold. Now everything was out in the open, on the laundry rope of confrontation.

“W-wait a moment, please. Me, attacking you? I have done no such thing! I knew full well that you were Emilia, the Hero! I knew the strength you possessed as a knight of the Church! And while I am not wholly useless in battle, I was hardly so foolish as to wage a duel I had but little chance of winning!”

Emi watched the surprised Suzuno carefully as she defended herself.

That scythe-wielding maniac had taken a paintball point-blank to the face.

Her well-defined features and supple skin made it difficult to notice at first, but up close like this, Suzuno was clearly wearing no makeup.

Those antitheft paintballs were made with a compound you couldn’t rub off with household cleaners. But if Suzuno were last night’s assailant, she would resemble a fluorescent-orange panda right now.

And when they sat next to each other this morning, Emi didn’t smell anything off—neither the telltale scent of the paintball, nor any unusual perfumes that could have hidden it.

Resisting the urge to further shout Suzuno down, Emi gave the dourest face she could muster while hissing angrily:

“…Well, look, I’m sorry if I’m a little slow on the uptake. Can you clue me in? Who are you, and what’re you trying to do, just waltzing into the Devil’s Castle like that?!”

Her voice had grown desperate. And loud, although it wasn’t the sort of conversation any passersby had the courage to butt into. Still, Emi made a point of looking around to ensure Maou or Ashiya weren’t spying on them.

“…My true name is Crestia Bell, chief inquisitor of the Reconciliation Panel.”

Emi did a double take. The term
Reconciliation Panel
was not one she was expecting here.

“I apologize if we experienced a breakdown in communications earlier. So, once again, I ask you. Could I ask for your help, and your cooperation, Emilia Justina, as the Hero of Ente Isla? I promise I have not come here to hurt you.”

Suzuno bowed her head. It was a sincere gesture, Emi thought. She sighed, noticing the bright red hairpin with the four-petaled flower entangled in a whorl. It was modeled after the Cruciferae family of budding plants—the “cross-bearing” flowers. She looked up at the station clock.

“Let’s save this for after we reach Shinjuku. I don’t want to be late for work.”

With that, she set off for the turnstile.

“Ah…um, what?”

Suzuno stared goggle-eyed at Emi’s back, perhaps surprised that the Hero would put her Japanese employer ahead of her true identity.

“Look, this is the kind of country Japan is, okay? Let’s get moving.”

Emi, feeling a tad victorious, placed her fare card on the sensor and walked through the turnstile.

“W-wait a—
ngh!
”

She turned around at the sound of Suzuno’s odd groan.

“L-let me go! I—I cannot afford to be stymied here…”

“……”

She looked at Suzuno, the tip of her kimono’s belt caught by the closing gate as she tried to follow Emi through the turnstile.

The thought of the yawning culture gap they would have to traverse, and all the associated trouble they’d have to navigate on the way to Shinjuku, threw Emi into a deep depression.

The true fate of Emilia the Hero and Satan, the Devil King, was discovered within the papers Olba left behind.

From there, she used the Church’s sonar to track down traces of the waves emitted by the Holy Silver of Evolution, the divine tool instilled within Emilia that formed the core of her holy sword. She found what she was looking for from another world.

She also found a shard from the single horn Emilia had reportedly sliced off the Devil King’s head in their final battle. Using it to weave a special sonar pulse that could pick up on the pattern of his demonic magic, she spread signals far and wide across the universe.

The results showed a concentrated presence of demonic force focused in a certain area. But even before she learned of those results, she already had more incontrovertible evidence at hand.

This evidence, however, was not something she reported to the sanctuary. If she did, it was easy to picture the entire panel of archbishops falling dead on the spot.

It came into her hands via a completely unexpected coincidence.

As she pored over the papers in Olba’s study, a transmission arrived on the Link Crystal she used to form idea links across worlds. It had come from Olba himself.

The link was laden with noise, but she could still tell that he was alive, confined in an alien planet with no ability to open a Gate, and seeking help.

And while it sounded too good to be true, she had also taken full note of what he said next:

“Emilia the Hero formed a team with, and fought alongside, the Devil King.”

“I served the Church in its missionary arm…and now it pains me to think I considered myself an expert at analyzing the ways of foreign lands. This nation, Japan, is far beyond my feeble understanding… There is not a single city similar to this on Ente Isla…”

Suzuno was nothing short of shattered.

The uproar within her mind began the moment she was stopped by the turnstile gate at Sasazuka station. She successfully purchased a ticket afterward, but—still unable to tell the difference between a paper ticket and a chip-embedded fare card—she was ruthlessly blocked once more after trying to wave the ticket over the touch sensor.

“You still dare to interfere with me?!”

After screaming at the machine, she tripped over herself at the top of the escalator, sending a wooden sandal flying. This was followed by her politely replying to an station intercom announcement, raising eyebrows across the platform, then losing her footing inside the train during the maze of rail junctions that preceded the final stop at Shinjuku.

Once at her destination, she was awed by the great crowds of people, mistook the red cross in front of the blood donation center for a Church outpost, and—once safely up on the surface—gaped in abject amazement at the innumerable high-rises and cars and human beings that surrounded her.

By the time they finally arrived at Sully’s, a café nearby Emi’s workplace, her face had been drained of all vigor. The sensory overload had quickly proven too much for her.

Sully, by the way, was the name of the man who first founded the chain, in a faraway realm known as “Washington.” Emi avoided mentioning this, figuring it wiser to keep the scope of Suzuno’s terminal culture shock to one nation at a time.

“So…what were we talking about, then…?”

“I know you haven’t seen a TV before, but I didn’t think you’d seriously shout out, ‘Ohhhh. There’s a man inside that thin board on the…’”

“Please, stop talking about that!”

Suzuno clapped a hand on the table to make her point, cheeks already blushing a tinge.

If she was to be believed, she had conducted research into such modern Japanese trappings as computers, mobile phones, and television sets. But the shock of seeing all of this in person was something she just couldn’t control, judging by the barrage of comical exclamations she was making to no one in particular.

“The documentation I had at hand indicated something larger and box-shaped! Then I wouldn’t have been taken so aback! One can hide a person inside a box easily enough!”

“The shape of it doesn’t really matter…and, just so we’re on the same page here, there isn’t a guy inside.”

Picking up the glass of iced coffee delivered to their table, Emi took a sip to quench her thirst.

Suzuno ordered a cup of tea, but had no idea how to use the little cup of nondairy creamer it came with, ultimately rocketing its contents straight onto the adjacent floor.

“What kind of ‘documentation’ did you have, anyway?”

The question had been wiggling around Emi’s mind all morning. Given her claims of having studied the local culture beforehand, her behavior was a poor fit for modern Japan.

“I learned that the kimono was a traditional Japanese garment, so I studied the resources where they appeared the most often. I think you call them ‘samurai dramas’? I also viewed several long-running documentaries depicting modern Japanese life. I thought I could trust them! Some dated from this era that I understand people call ‘the fifties’!”

Suzuno turned her eyes upward as she tried to recall her primary sources.

“Well, that explains all the goofy anachronisms, I guess.” Emi smiled wryly to herself.

“Hey, but which samurai drama did you like the best?”

There was more than a hint of curiosity to the way Emi asked the question.

She was a fan of the genre, after all, but nobody around her expressed even the slightest interest in her fandom. Now, she hoped, she finally had a fellow woman to share her personal tastes with.

“Well…I do like the ones that star wandering
ronin
, like
Oarashi Montaro
or
Lone Lion and Cub
or
Three for the Slash!
Things like
Vice-Shogun Mito
, or
Maniac Shogun
… They did not quite touch the same chord with me.”

“…Oh.”

In nearly every way, they seemed to have nothing in common. Emi sighed as she returned to the main topic at hand.

“So…if we can go back to Sasazuka for a moment… What does the head inquisitor of the Reconciliation Panel want with me? What could possibly possess you to live next door to the Devil King?”

Despite her position in the Reconciliation Panel, it had to be said that Suzuno demonstrated no sign of being a Church assassin after Emi’s life. So far.