The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 5 (27 page)

The Hero of the holy sword, meanwhile, was at her cube.

“Yes. I very much apologize for that, sir. We’ll be happy to apply a credit to your bill for the period of downtime you experienced…”

“You can expect an apology to be sent to each of your customers in text and written form within the day…”

“Texting, Internet, and voice… Yes, sir. Absolutely. I deeply apologize for the inconvenience…”

The three women, sitting adjacent to each other, ended their calls and together let out a remarkably well-synchronized sigh.

“I-I was expecting this the moment I heard the news this morning, but…”

Maki Shimizu, the college student part-timer, looked ready to burst into tears.

“Yeah… Man, this is one serious workout.”

Rika Suzuki was uncharacteristically lifeless and pale herself.

“………………”

And Emi Yusa, for her part, remained doggedly silent.

The phone network at the Dokodemo Customer Support Center was breathing its last.

That was the sort of thing that happened when every Dokodemo phone within the twenty-three central boroughs of Tokyo lost all functionality for seventy-five or so minutes in the middle of the evening.

The complaints started streaming in the moment the morning shift began. The customers asking to be refunded for the outage were, if anything, among the kinder, more accommodating ones. Businesses and civic departments calling to demand reparations for the outage, on the other hand, were beyond anything Emi and her coworkers had the power to handle.

The cause of the outage, reported as the lead story of every early-morning TV news show, was undoubtedly the twin sonar blasts Suzuno and Chiho bounced off the Dokodemo Tower antenna during their little skirmish the previous night.

She couldn’t berate the idea, at least—fighting TV signals via a high-energy transmission sent through cell phone bandwidth.

But, due to some miscalculation on Urushihara’s part or Suzuno firing a stronger pulse than she intended—or maybe just the general interference dominating the skies over Tokyo that evening—the blasts took over Dokodemo’s entire mobile spectrum for what seemed like an eternity.

That made it impossible to connect to certain Dokodemo phones, and the resulting cascade of failures led to the quagmire Emi faced today.

Every chair in the room had a call handler sitting on it. From early morning, the team leader had been texting out desperate pleas to unscheduled staff to sign on for an extra shift or two over the next couple of days.

So Emi was back at work the day after. Her conscience wouldn’t allow anything else. This time, at least, there was no shunting the blame over to the demons.

And she needed a distraction anyway. She still hadn’t sifted through everything she’d experienced the night before.

The shocking truth Gabriel revealed to her was more than enough to send mighty waves of stress crashing over her heart.

Her father was alive.

Thinking about what that meant, and what effect it would have, filled Emi with a tormenting fear that made her feet stop in their tracks.

So this was good for her, dealing with irate customers, not given so much as a millisecond to dwell on her own thoughts. As she told herself, she needed to focus on handling customer issues as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Her
issues could wait.

“Think we’ll get a lunch break today…?”

Rika’s exasperated complaint, voiced between the endless barrage of calls, made the blood drain from Maki’s face.

“Uggghhh… I stayed up late watching TV last night and felt kinda sick this morning, so I haven’t eaten yet today…”

“TV…?”

Emi, remembering something, addressed her coworkers on both sides.

“Hey, guys, um…”

“Mm?”

“Yes?”

“Did you guys see anything weird when watching TV last night? Like…any kind of flashing, like everyone’s talking about?”

Rika nodded. It sounded familiar to her.

“Oh, yeah, it affected more than mobile video this time, didn’t it? I wasn’t really in any shape to watch TV last night so I wouldn’t know, but…”

“Me, I haven’t bought an HDTV yet. I’m still on analog, but I didn’t see anything.”

“Oh…”

Rika and Maki didn’t run into any trouble. It was a relief to Emi.

“What were you doing, though, Ms. Suzuki?” Maki asked Rika. “Wasn’t one of your favorite dramas on last night?”

“Aaaahh!!” Her observation sent Rika into a panic. “I
tooootally
forgot…”

“…Do you maybe have a guy now or something?”

Straight down the middle.

“Oh, c-come
on
, Maki! He’s not my ‘guy’ or anything yet…”

“……!”

Emi grabbed her head.

Maki’s face brightened at Rika, who was rapidly digging her own grave right under her own feet.

“Not
yet
? You said not
yet
, didn’t you?!”

“Uh, ah, n-no, I, ughhh! Maki! Take a call already! We’re at work!”

“Well, I’m expecting a full report later!” Maki shot back. “Thank you for your patience. This is the…”

Rika turned her exasperated face toward Emi for emotional support.

“Sorry. Can’t help you this time.”

“Aw, that’s
mean
, Emi!”

Emi returned to her calls. She had a headache of her own to deal with.

Not even the fact that Rika clearly had feelings for Ashiya was enough to make Emi’s mind budge from the subject it was currently obsessing over.

Thinking over why she went through all that effort to demolish the Devil King’s Army… If she trusted what Gabriel said, it could make her doubt everything she lived for, in the end.

But something still tugged at her.

“Can’t turn back time now, I guess…”

Whether she doubted herself or not, as long as she was alive, she had to keep moving forward.

In fact, maybe she should be happy. She finally had a goal in life aside from slaying the Devil King.

“No point beating myself up pondering over it. That’d just be spinning my wheels by now.”

She could start by doing what she could, right this moment, fully gauging what life had in store for her.

Just as she felt her resolve start to firm up, a voice in the back of her mind addressed her.

“Mommy, Chi-sis’s lucky charm going boom-boom?”

She must have woken up.

It was highly questionable how much Emi could focus on her work while trying to keep Alas Ramus entertained. She had to smile at the absurdity of her situation.

Once she escaped work today, she was due to visit Chiho at the hospital, giving her a chance to both listen to her side of the story and teach Alas Ramus how to say
Get well soon
to people. She began to write a mental list of sweet shops on the way home that she figured Chiho might like. Alas Ramus caught on to it.

“Senbei! Senbei! Wice crackuhs!”

She was always ready to pitch in her two cents.

“Welcome back, Your Demonic Highness. How is Ms. Sasaki faring?”

Suzuno, for some reason, was waiting alongside Ashiya when Maou made his return.

“Ah, you’ve returned? Anything happen to you?”

“Nah, Chi’s just fine. Couldn’t be healthier, in fact. And no, nothing happened to me; what’s that question supposed to mean?”

Even if the threat wasn’t explicitly targeted at Maou and Ashiya this time, Suzuno still hesitated to see Maou venture outside alone. But today presented a vastly different picture from yesterday. Nothing about Tokyo seemed unsafe at all.

Having Suzuno accompany Maou without Ashiya tagging along would create its own raftload of misunderstandings, so Suzuno instead fretted by herself at Villa Rosa Sasazuka, awaiting his return.

“N-nothing, but…”

She stopped. This sounded suspiciously like she was worrying about him. She raised her voice. Enough of that.

“Enough of that, Devil King! The television! We have the television on!”

“Hah, really? Welcome to the fifties, I guess.”

“…Yes. Thank you…”

Something about Maou’s sarcasm embarrassed Suzuno a little.

“Thought you’d be more excited than
that
, dude. You’re the one who wanted it,” Urushihara added in.

Maou shrugged at his griping.

“Yeah, dealing with those two bastards kinda cooled me to the whole thing, I guess. I’m glad we got another tool to let us know if something’s going haywire, but it’s not like they’re dumb enough to try the same trick on us twice, so…”

By modern standards, the TV screen was miniscule. But within the current Devil’s Castle, it was more than enough.

“Oh. Hey, Ashiya, I got this.”

Maou tossed a wad of paper out from his pocket.

“Hmm? What is it?”

It was a receipt from their bank.

Ashiya carefully unwadded it. Then his eyes expanded into saucers.
Deposit: 50,000
, it read.

“Y-your Demonic Highness?! What on earth is this deposit?!”

“Well, after we screwed up Ohguro-ya, I’ve been outta work, right?”

Maou opened the refrigerator door and chugged what remained of their barley tea supply straight from the bottle.

“…Pahh. I still got a little bit before MgRonald starts back up, but with Ciriatto back in the demon realm, they might decide to send a Barbariccia squadron or two back over here. We could be in serious danger, for all I know. I figure it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to go off somewhere far away for day-labor crap. We probably better stick together more.”

Suzuno stole a glance at the receipt from the side, her own eyes popping out of their sockets at this highly irregular deposit.

“There were more jewels embedded on the scabbard of Camio’s magic sword than just the Yesod fragment, y’know. So I plucked one of ’em out—nothing too big, you’d never notice it if you didn’t know what to look for—and I pawned it over at the Mugi-hyo in Shinjuku. That way, we can budget the TV for next month and you can actually buy a decent phone with what’s left, okay?”

“My liege…”

Ashiya’s reaction went beyond astonishment and entered the realm of blissful ecstasy.

“Why just one, dude? Might as well just cash ’em all in, no?”

Maou scoffed at Urushihara’s sensible suggestion.

“Oh, yeah, a guy in his early twenties dressed head to toe in closeout UniClo gear carrying a box full of precious jewels with him? You think I’m in
that
big a hurry to arouse suspicion? That’s more than enough right there. We’d get taxed out the ass if I sold it for too much, besides.”

Maou rinsed out the bottle, refilled it with water, stuck a barley-tea packet inside, and placed it back in the fridge.

“Once work starts back up, I’ll have to deal with Sariel across the street again. If everything goes to hell, I suppose I can try using him to save my own ass…but until then I figure, hey, why not enjoy some time off for the first time in a couple centuries? All work and no play, and all that.”

With that, he picked up the TV remote and instruction manual on the table, referring to one as he tapped away at the other.

Watching him as he crouched over his new toy made Suzuno whisper:

“…So. He
is
thinking about matters, yes?”

Ashiya didn’t acknowledge it. He was too busy admiring every digit, every contour of the words
Deposit: 50,000
in front of him.

Gabriel, sitting in the CyberSafe Net café he was currently using as his main base of operations on Earth, spotted a familiar face.

“Satou! Hey, someone’s lookin’ chipper today, huh? You find some decent work for a change?”

Satou, ever-present glass of oolong tea in hand, waved as he took a sip.

“Hey, Greek! You been hearin’ about all the trouble they’ve been having with TVs and cell phones and whatnot?”

“Oh? Uhm, yeahhhh. Yeah. Sorta.”

Gabriel, the chief cause of said trouble, found it difficult to reply coherently. Satou, beaming, paid it no mind.

“Well, the phone companies are all staging top-to-bottom maintenance inspections of all their equipment! You wouldn’t believe how many traffic guides and security guards they’re hirin’ for the thing! I’m gonna be up to my eyeballs in work for at least the next two weeks!”