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

The assassin was actually a pair. One was the fallen angel Lucifer, a Great Demon General who Maou had thought was defeated at the hands of Emilia the Hero. His partner: Olba Meiyer, Emilia’s close confidant and a powerful archbishop in the Church that ruled over the human race in Ente Isla.

Sent on the run by Lucifer and Olba’s barrage of destruction, Maou and Emi were forced into battle, nearly losing their lives on multiple occasions.

But following a last-ditch stab in the dark, the Devil King Satan was unleashed once more. Teaming up with the Hero, who released the remaining holy power she had saved within her body, he turned the tables and successfully defeated the assassins.

With Satan reborn and the Hero’s own companions arriving from Ente Isla, the final confrontation between holy and demonic seemed about to unfold.

But instead of waging battle, Satan used his newly recovered force to repair the destroyed city and erase the memories of the many eyewitnesses to the conflict. His powers quickly atrophied once more, and soon he was back to regular old Sadao Maou.

Resolving to keep the Devil King on close watch after he blew his best chance of returning home, Emilia decided to remain in Japan herself. And so the stalemate between holy and demonic continued in the sleepy side alleys of Sasazuka, not exactly the most exalted of divine battlegrounds.

Putting the
yakiniku
restaurant behind them, Maou and Ashiya’s lungs were instantly filled by intensely humid air. It was almost
enough to make them choke—there was no fog, but it seemed like a cup of water had just been poured down their windpipes.

The season was just about to shift from early summer to
summer
summer. The days had grown long, and the temperature difference between night and day was quickly growing negligible. It was the rainy season, too, and the needles on their respective Annoyed-o-Meters were both about to pop right off their gauges.

“What the hell? It was cooler inside the restaurant! There were literally fires lit across the entire damn room!”

“We owe much to air-conditioning, my liege.”

Given how they had taken advantage of the early-bird special, the shopping street was still in the prime of activity. Herds of salarymen returning from work were walking en masse away from Koshu-Kaido Road, which served as Sasazuka station’s main exit point.

After purchasing the cheapest pork rice bowl at Sugiya, the beef-and-rice fast-food joint in the middle of the shopping arcade, Maou and Ashiya fought the waves of incoming traffic as they made their way toward the station entrance.

“These guys have to be crazy. It’s this friggin’ hot, and they still put on those full business suits like it’s nothing.”

“Well, a lot of those suits are made of much more breathable material these days. Even the discount chains like Akayama and Akaki are starting to sell them.”

“I know that, but how stupid do you have to be to want to wear long-sleeved shirts in the summer?”

“Your Demonic Highness, have you forgotten about our attack on the Desert Kingdom on the Southern Island?”

Ashiya’s face suddenly turned grim.

It was not quite seven o’clock, but with the long summer days settled in, the sky still retained its twilight colors, the streetlights lining the shopping street casting the unique shades one only sees on languid summer evenings like these.

At the end of the street, upon the intersection with Koshu-Kaido Road, the demons hit a red light.

“The sun can cause terrible damage to one’s skin. Do you recall
what the people of the desert wore? Their bodies were covered in thick fabric. Japan may not be the searing wasteland you saw in the Southern Island, but then, Earth is quite a different place from Ente Isla.”

“Wh-what’re you talking about?”

Ashiya grew more impassioned as he continued.

“Overexposure to the sun can lead to sunburn, my liege, and excessive sunburn can cause skin cancer. Aren’t you aware that the thinning ozone layer is exposing the cities of Japan to more and more ultraviolet rays every year?!”

“Uh, no? So what?”

Ashiya pointed a finger toward the sky.

“Even on cloudy days, or evenings like these where the sun isn’t out, those UV rays are still raining down upon us. They are the direct cause of skin cancer and cataracts, and in places like Australia that are closer to the Antarctic ozone hole, some states even require children to wear protective glasses as they travel to school.”

Ashiya was careful to not let the rice bowl in his hand bump into anyone passing by as he continued his soapbox rant.

“My point, Your Demonic Highness, is that even in the summertime, it is no longer strictly the wisest move to go around in short sleeves. If I could at least convince you to add a baseball tee and some sunglasses to your wardrobe, that would put me a great deal more at ease with regard to your long-term health.”

“Dude, baseball tees are one thing, but I’m
not
going around wearing sunglasses.”

It was hard to tell how serious Ashiya felt about the topic. Maou decided to nip it in the bud before it graduated to anything above idle chitchat.

“Hey, it’s green. Let’s go before that pork bowl gets cold on us.”

“Ah. Yes.”

The wave of people in the middle of the crossing began to lurch into action. Ashiya quickly turned his attention elsewhere.

The two arch-demons continued talking as they walked among
the countless hundreds of Japanese citizens surrounding them in the large crossing in front of Sasazuka station.

“By the way, Your Demonic Highness, did you know about that
yakiniku
restaurant in days past?”

“Hmm?”

Ashiya spoke up again just as they reached the other side.

“I know it’s not along your normal route to work, so I simply wondered how you came to be aware of it.”

“Oh… Well, I’ve kind of gone there before, actually.”

Just as he said it, Maou scrambled to explain himself further.

“And before you say anything, it was on someone else’s dime, okay? I didn’t use any of our money!”

He dared a glimpse at Ashiya’s face, only to find it perfectly serene.

“I would hardly be angry about that sort of thing.”

This was a total lie. If he told him he paid his own way, Ashiya would yell at him all night, then force him into a drastic rationed diet to make up the financial deficit. He had to be hiding something behind that shady smile of his!

“A-anyway, the first time I went—today’s the second time—Ms. Kisaki brought me over.”

Mayumi Kisaki. The manager of the MgRonald in front of Hatagaya station. Maou’s boss and the keystone of the Devil’s Castle economy.

“I see. A private employee party or some such, then? Come to think of it, I do recall you venturing by yourself eight months and seventeen days ago, stating that you didn’t need me to prepare dinner.”

“You know, the way you instantly recall dates like that is pretty damn scary.”

Maou knitted his brows.

The crowds quickly grew sparse once they passed by the station’s main entrance. They were approaching the latticework of extended back alleys that comprised Sasazuka’s old residential area.

“Ms. Kisaki called it, like, a welcome party for me. She said she
knew some people who worked at the place. It was me, her, and a few other folks, but she wound up paying the whole tab.”

“A grandly generous manager as always, I see. So this wasn’t your first time trying
horumon
-style
yakiniku
?”

“Welllll, I kinda didn’t wanna pig out the first time, since it was her treat and everything. To be honest, I don’t really remember exactly what I ate.”

It was, perhaps, the most pathetically sniveling thing a Devil King has ever uttered.

“Still…it’s not like I didn’t want it, but I’m not totally cool with how Ms. Kisaki sprung it on me.”

The thought gave Maou’s expression an odd air of depression. Ashiya, meanwhile, seemed honestly happy for his companion.

“It merely shows how much trust she’s placed in you, Your Demonic Highness. It hasn’t even been a year since she hired you. Quite the exceptional promotion, is it not?”

Maou listlessly shook his head in response.

“Yeah, maybe, but I’m still just as hourly as always.”

“Perhaps it is for restricted periods of time, my liege, and perhaps involving only a small number of people, but you are
ruling over
human beings! Surely it is something to be commemorated!”

“You say that, but…do you really mean it?”

“I would hardly have taken you out to eat if I didn’t. What kind of servant would I be, my liege, if I did not celebrate your grand promotion?”

“Shift supervisor?”

The words had fallen out of Kisaki’s lips right after Maou changed out of his uniform postclosing.

Just as he was nearly out the door, his manager had stopped him with some sudden news—she wanted him to be shift supervisor for the afternoon hours.

“So, you mean…”

”Right. You’ll be assistant manager during your assigned hours, Marko. You’ll get a raise to cover the extra duties, too.”

Assistant manager. It had such a fetching ring to it. Maou was unable to hide the shock.

“To be honest with you, the franchise bosses are calling me out for managerial training. Which, frankly, is a huge pain in the ass for me, because it means I’m gonna have to be away from here during the late shift for about a week, starting next weekend.”

Maou internally marveled at this. What kind of training could this whirlwind of region-beating sales figures possibly need?

“I know you haven’t even been here a year yet, Marko, but I think you’ve got some serious talent. I thought about calling for another full-timer to fill in for me, but if I’m going to leave this location in someone else’s hands for half the day, I’d rather leave it to someone I know’s up to the task instead of rolling the dice with some guy I’ve never even met. So what do you think? Can I count on you?”

This was faint praise indeed for someone who once had the entire demon netherworld wrapped around his finger, but to Maou, Kisaki’s sincere words were enough to send his heart soaring.

As he himself stated in the past, Maou’s ambitions for world domination would begin to formally bear fruit once he became a salaried employee. If he could fulfill his duties well enough in the shift-supervisor role, it would be another solid step forward toward that lofty goal.

“Yes! Absolutely! I’m not gonna let you down!”

So he snapped up the offer. After all, if he failed to live up to Kisaki’s expectations, he’d be a failure both as a man and as a Devil King!

Kisaki nodded in response, a warm smile across her face, before suddenly changing the topic.

“By the way, Marko, you know that those pricks at Sentucky Fried Chicken are opening up a new location next to the bookstore across the street, right?”

“Uh? Um, yeah.”

Maou blinked at this unexpected gear shift.

Sentucky Fried Chicken, a fierce competitor of MgRonald, was opening soon in the space next to the nearby bookstore, a whopping fifteen seconds’ walk away. They were already putting the hard sell
on the neighborhood, placing a huge advertisement in front of the under-renovation storefront and even going so far as to put fliers and coupons inside MgRonald’s own mailbox.

The serene smile on Kisaki’s face was now curled up a bit more, suggesting a wholly different emotion. Her eyes reminded Maou of a hunter marveling at the animal caught in his trap.

“Well, the grand opening’s the day my training begins. Hence, why it’s a huge pain in the ass for me.”

Kisaki ruefully spat the words out. The sharpness around the jagged edges forming every syllable suggested a deep-seated resentment of some sort. Come to think of it, Kisaki brought the SFC ads and coupons in the mail straight over to her portable shredder, didn’t she?

Maou thought over this as he nodded his commiseration. The next volley from Kisaki took him a moment to fully comprehend.

“So here it is, Marko. If SFC attracts more total customers during the evening hours than we do, I’m docking your pay ten yen for every guest we’re beaten by.”

“Uh?”

“If you lose by ten people, one hundred yen! Lose by a hundred…one thousand yen. Right off your hourly wage!”

“Wha— Uh, I, uh, hang on a second!”

As Maou struggled to articulate a response, Kisaki regrouped herself, flashing a razor-sharp smile that’d make even the Hero proud.

“Silence! That’s the kind of resolve a shift supervisor needs to survive in retail sales!”

“Yeah, but…I only make one thousand yen an hour! If you take one thousand yen off that, that’s basically working for nothing! There has to be something in the labor laws about that…”

“The only constitution that applies here is
me
!”

Not just the law, but the very constitution of the land. Maou began to feel dizzy.

“And you’d be
glad
to work for free, trust me. One of the guys I joined up with lost big to a competitor once. He wound up getting
reassigned to Trinidad and Tobago. Last I heard, he’s still there. ‘At least they speak English,’ I remember him saying.”