The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 2 (3 page)

“I don’t think that’s the problem…”

“Regardless! I officially name you our newest shift supervisor! For one week, I want you to stake your life protecting this place and destroying that godforsaken new SFC location! Defeat means death!”

“N-no way…!”

Maou tried to defend himself, but Kisaki responded by crossing her arms and walking right up to him. Thanks to her already tall stature and the heels she wore, her vantage over Maou was even higher than usual. Her eyes were aglow with an eerie, foreboding light, just as disquieting as the dull flames that roared behind the Devil King’s visage.

“What are you trying to say, Marko? Are you saying you want to take all the trust and hope I placed in you and toss it in the septic tank?”

By now, Maou realized there was no escape. It was far too late to do anything, with Kisaki already unloading this great, burdensome commitment onto his shoulders.

Still unable to respond coherently, Maou watched as Kisaki suddenly let the dramatic energy drain from her face, returning to her original serene smile.

“As your boss, I have an obligation to give you the stick sometimes. But every stick needs to have a carrot, too. If you respond to my trust in you and emerge victorious, I’ll make sure you’re generously rewarded for it.”

“…!”

“Depending on how things go with the daily customer and sales figures, I may consider a further raise. And if you can build more experience as a regular shift supervisor and assistant manager, I could even recommend you for a full-time position, too.”

It would be fair to say that Maou was completely under Kisaki’s spell by this point.

“Yes, ma’am! I’ll do it! I promise I won’t let you down, Ms. Kisaki!!”

A look of supreme satisfaction spread across her face.

“But how would she even know how many customers visit your rival?”

Ashiya’s question interrupted Maou as he retold the story.

“She said the main office is sending observers over to keep tabs on foot traffic. We had a temp job like that once, too, remember? Like, not long after we first came here. They gave us that handheld counter thingy we had to click every time someone passed by us.”

“Ah, yes. That was in the dead of summer as well, if I recall. Spending hours under the hot sun counting passersby was nothing short of deadening, both physically and mentally. We had to bring our own drinks and shade as well.”

It was hard to imagine a demon that once waged an epic, near-apocalyptic war against the human race on Ente Isla ever reminiscing about crappy summer jobs.

“So in the course of a week, she’s teaching me how to do the daily books, how to enter sales figures into the office computer, and how to run the attendance-management system. Then, next weekend, I’m betting my salary on this all-out war. It’s making me, like,
crazy
nervous.”

“Your Demonic Highness, now is no time to grow weak at the knees. Being granted such a substantial post is nothing short of a high honor. I, too, recall the intense pride I felt upon being named supreme commander of the Eastern Island invasion force…!”

Ashiya, hand on chest, was already striding across Ente Isla in his mind as he reminisced. Maou cut in, his voice unnaturally loud.

“Yes! Right! Anyway! There’s no weaseling my way out of this now regardless. My work schedule’s gonna stay the same, though, so hopefully you’ll still be able to cook for me.”

Whenever the topic of discussion turned to Ente Isla, Ashiya would inevitably spring into
I want to invade our homeland
,
stop screwing around, Your Demonic Highness
mode. It was his way of expressing homesickness.

“Y-yes… Certainly, my liege.”

Soon, the front light from the Devil’s Castle—or, as anyone else would put it, the Villa Rosa Sasazuka apartments—grew visible in the distance. Maou breathed a sigh of relief now that the topic was buried before reaching full fruition.

“Hmm?”

“Hohh…”

Maou and Ashiya both exclaimed out loud.

There were two lights.

One came from the corner apartment upstairs. This was Room 201, the Devil’s Castle that Maou and his generals called home.

The other was from Room 202, the apartment next to theirs. Maou’s crew were supposed to be the only tenants in Villa Rosa. There couldn’t have been any construction or maintenance people onsite at this time of the evening. Oh, no. Had Miki, the landlord, returned?

Miki Shiba, the owner of Villa Rosa Sasazuka, let out every intimation before the battle against Lucifer two months ago that she was fully aware of who Maou and his band of demons really were. Then she up and disappeared.

If the note she left was to be believed, she was somewhere overseas. But what kind of landlord would simply abandon her property for two months?

Not that she was taking great pains to keep a low profile. In fact, despite zero requests from Maou along those lines, Room 201 was receiving letters from her at the rate of two or so per week.

When the first one arrived, in the sort of frilly envelope usually reserved for wedding invitations, he opened it with almost reckless abandon.

What rewarded him was a neatly worded chronicle, written in an elegant, practiced hand, of the joyous vacation she was experiencing on a private beach in Hawaii. Less-than-humble bragging, in other words.

And included in the envelope was a photograph of his landlord, lying on a deck chair underneath a beach umbrella, tropical cocktail
in one hand, her rainbow-colored bikini and devil-may-care wrap leaving far more of her wine-barrel-shaped body bare than wholly necessary, tanning herself to a golden brown as she made the most of the Hawaiian climate, in a pose that reminded Maou of a slab of beef covered with bits of multihued barbecue sauce.

The moment they set eyes on the photo, Maou’s vision turned sheer white, Ashiya stumbled for the bathroom with one hand covering his mouth, and Urushihara—who had never even met the landlord in person—fainted on the spot, ultimately requiring three days to fully recover.

Ever since that incident, when Maou learned that nuclear terrorism was the last thing Japan had to worry about as long as Miki Shiba was cavorting around beachside unattended, the Devil’s Castle was gripped in fear whenever an unexpected piece of mail arrived.

Just as the memory of the now-infamous landlord cheesecake pinup massacre raced across Maou’s mind, a truck carrying a container with a giraffe logo passed them by.

Maou and Ashiya exchanged glances. Even though they didn’t own a TV to bombard them with the ads, they still knew the logo belonged to a well-known moving company.

“It would appear we have a new neighbor.”

“Yeah. Wish he coulda moved in some other time. I’m kinda gonna miss being the only tenants in that whole place.”

“Quite true. Hopefully it won’t be someone of low morals. The sort of person to play loud music at night or bring their garbage out on the wrong day.”

Maou shook his head. Something about a demonic overlord worrying about someone else’s morals struck even him as ironic.

“Ah, I’m not really worried about that sort of thing.”

“No? Well, considering this apartment is dirt cheap and requires no deposit or advance fees, what kind of people would you expect to move in…? Besides, when we came here, we were homeless, jobless, and dare I say
quite
suspicious.”

Maou shook his head once more at Ashiya’s concerns.

“Maybe we weren’t exactly model tenants, but think about it. Remember what kind of…
lady
is renting this place to us, Ashiya?”

The word “lady” was enough to make the memory of that ghastly photograph grate across Ashiya’s brain.

“I, er… I imagine anyone moving in under our landlord’s auspices would never seek to get on her bad side, no.”

“That’s not what I mean, but… Ah, well. What happens, happens. Let’s get moving. I don’t want Urushihara whining at us.”

They were already on apartment property as Maou spoke. The outdoor stairway, the same one that had struck such a lethal blow (in assorted ways) upon the Hero once, seemed even more tilted and decrepit than before.

“…Huh?”

As he placed a foot on the first step, Maou looked up, catching sight of a shadow lurking upstairs.

The figure, standing in front of the fluorescent light over the second-floor corridor, was peering down below.

The backlighting and awkward angle made it impossible to know for sure, but the small size and delicately curved body suggested it was a woman.

“Uh…”

Maou, not expecting this sudden encounter, froze in place, his gaze still pointed upward. The figure upstairs jerked awkwardly, apparently caught in the same reaction. Then:

“Ah…”

“Ah!”

“Ahh!”

All three raised a voice at once—the person upstairs first, Maou second, and Ashiya at the end.

The shadowy figure, resolving to head downstairs, had slipped off the first step.

Her body flew through space for a moment.

“No way…!!”

Instinctively, Maou extended a hand.

Whatever odd angle the figure had flown off the stairs from caused her to fall wildly, limbs flailing, in a virtual bullrush straight toward Maou.

“My liege!”

Ashiya shouted out just before the moment of collision.

“Whoa, that was close…”

Maou muttered to himself after a moment’s confusion.

The small, unfamiliar woman was safe within his arms. She was tensed up, eyes open, perhaps still in a state of shock after falling down the stairs without so much as a scream.

That and, for whatever reason, the outfit she chose for the occasion was a Japanese kimono, a long cooking apron, and a triangular head scarf. Her footwear must have slipped off, but instead of socks, she wore traditional Japanese
tabi
with two separate toes. The only people who wore clothing like that these days were the matriarchs of cartoons set in the ’60s.

“Uh…umm…” Gingerly, Maou said this to the woman—really a girl—in his arms, who was staring listlessly into space.

Then:

“Danger comes when one least expects it…!”

With that, the girl suddenly closed her eyes, her body growing limp.

“Well, uh, yeah, but that’s not the problem here…”

Maou couldn’t help but give his take on the now-unconscious girl’s non sequitur response.

“Are you…all right?”

Ashiya ran up to them, carrying one of the women’s
geta
sandals, which must have flown off her foot.

“You talking about me, or this girl?”

It was difficult to judge which of the two demons was the more baffled.

“So this girl fell from the stairs, and I caught her, and…
now
what?”

“You’re late! I’m hungry!”

The complaint was lodged from within the moment Maou, master of the Devil’s Castle, opened the front door.

“We came as fast as we could. You could at least say ‘Welcome home, master’ or something.”

Maou and Ashiya bumped against each other as they took off their shoes in the cramped front foyer.

“Here, Lucifer. Got a souvenir for you.”

Ashiya offered the bag with the bento dinner inside. It was snapped up by a young man, small in stature, a good head shorter than Maou. Purple eyes peered out from between tendrils of hair, which had gone beyond fashionably long and were threatening to enter the realm of lazy bum.

“Hey, I thought you guys went to a
yakiniku
place. Why’d you get me a Sugiya pork bowl?”

“Oh, uh, sorry, Urushihara. Ask him to give the financial rundown.”

The young man, called Lucifer by Ashiya and Urushihara by Maou, followed Maou’s finger as it pointed toward Ashiya.

“You could point the finger at yourself, I would say. Your extravagant spending habits as of late are too much for me to tolerate.” Ashiya’s glare was just as abrasive as his opening salvo.

“Yeah, but…dude, this is kinda a huge difference, isn’t it? I mean, come
on
…” The young man mumbled under his breath, aware enough of what he was being lectured about that he quickly backed off. He removed the plastic bag and pork-bowl cover, tossing them off to the side.

“Lucifer! Don’t spread your garbage around the room. Clean it up!”

Ashiya, looking on, angrily picked up the paper wipe that fell out of the plastic bag.

“Also, would you mind cleaning the area around your computer already? All these chip bags and empty juice cans… It’s going to be a bug magnet in the summertime!”

Outside, the night had finally progressed from twilight to darkness. Underneath the fluorescent bulb lighting the room, a table holding an outdated notebook computer sat in the corner, an equally outdated fan whirring loudly behind it.

Surrounding this workstation was a pile of empty snack-food boxes and bags, discarded juice cans, and an assortment of devices
and cords whose uses were not immediately obvious to the casual observer. Whenever the fan hit the pile of garbage, little bits of food and plastic wafted their way across the tatami-mat floor, raking Ashiya’s face as they did.

The young man, nonplussed at Ashiya’s tongue-wagging, looked expectantly at the microwave as he spoke, not bothering to turn around.

“I’m hungry, okay? If you’re gonna yell at me, do it when I’m done.”

He was not quite demonstrating enormous regret for his actions.

The man’s name was Hanzou Urushihara. His true identity was Lucifer, one of the four Great Demon Generals and the assassin who was sent to Ente Isla two months ago to rub out Maou and the Hero.

Robbed of his magic force after a violent confrontation, Lucifer had once again returned to Maou’s camp—now as Urushihara, a nondescript, listless, sullen Japanese youth.

Olba was detained by the police at the end of the previous battle. He was arrested for violating Japan’s weapons laws, thanks to the pistol he was packing beneath his robes, but it likely wouldn’t be too long before they realized he was the man behind the string of burglaries that gripped the city in fear a few months back.

Exhausted by the fight and fully aware that the Hero was alive and well in Japan, Olba wasn’t likely to try anything else for a while, but there was every chance he would name Lucifer as his accomplice.