The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 5 (16 page)

All the TVs lined up on the shelves, the same ones they so intently studied a few moments ago, were shattered down to the last screen.

The floor was littered with pieces of LCD panel. The customers and staff were stuck dumb, unable to parse the events around them.

The supervisor who climbed the stairs ahead of Maou grabbed a nearby employee—by coincidence, the same one who waited on Ashiya and Suzuno.

“Wh-what happened?!”

“Um, uh, the screens… The floor-model screens all flashed white at the same time…”

“All of them?!”

“Yeah, it was like a camera flash or something. I shielded my eyes for a moment, and then…”

Another employee ran up to them to finish the sentence.

“…the next thing we knew, they were all in pieces.”

“Th-that’s absolutely crazy! That’s… All right, we better get everyone outta here, now! Someone call the cops and the fire department…”

The supervisor, despite his difficulties assessing the situation, still managed to consider customer safety first.
Must be a talented boss
, Maou mused.

It wasn’t long before the staff rounded up Maou and Ashiya as well, escorting them downstairs. Taking a final, concerned glance at the TV section, Maou descended the staircase and exited the store.

“Well? What was it?!”

“Are you okay, Ashiya?!”

Suzuno pounced on Maou, as if he had caused the whole thing. Rika was more preoccupied with Ashiya. It wasn’t exactly the warmest of welcomes for Maou, but he righted himself toward Ashiya.

“Hey, Ashiya, you should take Rika home just in case.”

“Huhhh?!”

“Yes. By my very life, she will be safe.”

Rika let out a crazed whimper. Ashiya merely accepted his orders.

“Um… Allow me to see you home, Ms. Sasaki. You mentioned you lived in Takadanobaba, yes?”

“Ummmmm, I, w-wait, I think this is a little fast, I haven’t prepared and my room’s all messy and— Hey!”

Watching Ashiya head for the station, the hand of the suddenly panic-stricken Rika in his own, Maou gestured toward Suzuno.

“I’ll explain this on the way home. We better regroup with Urushihara for now. You get Emi over there, too. Ooh, and I better call Chi and warn her to stay away. It’s gonna be pretty rough around my apartment for a bit again.”

“Let me confirm one thing first.” Suzuno’s voice was far more acerbic than before. “That was demonic force, yes? Barbariccian in nature?”

“Dunno. But…and I know this ain’t gonna matter to you…this ain’t us.”

The miasma-like air on the second floor was unmistakably demonic energy.

Nothing of Maou’s or Ashiya’s doing, of course. And Maou had no idea why the mere presence of demonic force would be enough to destroy several dozen TVs.

The only thing certain: This was no natural occurrence.

“I
know
that.”

Suzuno pouted as she accelerated her walking pace. She and Maou were carrying their TVs while walking as quickly as they could, causing beads of sweat to appear on each of their foreheads.

“You and I were engaged in that pointless argument. I don’t need further pointless excuses to see it wasn’t you. For a king, you act remarkably timid.”

“Eating dinner with an assassin sent by your sworn enemy would put anybody on edge, most nights.”

The breezy smile was back on Maou’s face.

“…Say what you will. We must hurry.”

Suzuno, no longer possessing the mental capacity to deal with it, turned her face away and walked on ahead.

By the time they half-ran back to Villa Rosa Sasazuka, Emi and Urushihara were there—the former looking even more peeved than usual, the latter far more serious.

“The Devil King was with you the whole time, Bell?”

“Y-yes…as was Alciel, until a moment ago.”

Emi looked relieved to hear that for a moment, but quickly scowled back at Maou.

“Where’s Alciel? What happened to you?”

Something wasn’t right with Emi. Even Maou could tell.

Her eyes were quivering with anxiety, something he’d never seen before.

Even in the past, when the two of them were slashing away at each other, her eyes constantly burned with a strong, powerful will. Now, they were filled with a dull, unguided glow. No one else in the room had seen that before.

“Part of me wishes this was your fault…but part of me’s glad that it’s not. I want to be sure on this. You were together with Bell
all
day today? You didn’t go out again after visiting the real estate office yesterday? Do I have that right?”

Maou and Suzuno nodded in unison.

“Chiho’s been poisoned by a concentrated dose of demonic force. She’s unconscious in the hospital right now. Her mom told me she was already acting weird last night.”

To Maou and Ashiya, who’d been on everything from a Ferris wheel to an ambulance at this point, there was one method of transportation they had yet to try out.

The humble taxi.

A very convenient way of navigating the city, getting you where you wanted to go with pinpoint accuracy (assuming the driver cared enough), its convenience came at a cost. It was the most expensive ride Maou had ever been on.

The base cost alone of catching a taxi within the city center was equivalent to boarding the Keio Line in Shinjuku, taking forty miles or so to the last stop at Mount Takao, then doubling back and going almost all the way back down the line before getting off at Kami-kitazawa.

Besides, Maou had never been in a position where a taxi was a necessary choice. He and his demon cohorts were the kind of Tokyoites willing to walk anywhere within three station stops of their current location, if it meant saving on train fare.

And yet, when Ashiya arrived back home, Maou and crew wasted no time calling for two taxis to their apartment—the Devil King’s army in one, the Hero and her servant in the other—and heading straight for Yoyogi.

The scene inside was grim. No one said a word.

Maou, in the front passenger seat, wistfully watched the cab ahead with Emi in it, grabbing the strap above the window with undue force.

Ashiya looked equally pensive. Even Urushihara, ever ready to ruin the atmosphere with one inappropriate quip or another, simply stared out his window.

Before the meter had much chance to tick above the base rate, the two taxis entered the roundabout in front of the Tokyo Hospital, run by the Seikai University Department of Medicine.

Once they stopped, Maou asked Ashiya to handle the fare and flew out of the cab without so much as a “thanks” to the driver.

Emi was already out of her own taxi, Suzuno apparently volunteering to pay.

“This way.” Emi motioned toward Maou, then headed on toward the hospital’s front desk. “We’re here to visit Ms. Sasaki in Room 305…”

“Certainly. If you could just fill out these cards and take them to reception on the third floor…”

The time it took to jot down everything the visitor cards demanded from them seemed a colossal waste.

“I know you want to, but we can’t run inside the hospital. Just calm down. Her life isn’t in danger right now.”

“…Yeah.”

Maou took a deep breath to ready himself, face still knotted with concern. Emi, watching on, picked up a visitor card for him.

“Don’t lose this. They won’t let you see her if you don’t give it to ’em.”

“Jeez, I’m not a child. Just take us up there.”

“Right. This way.”

For now at least, Emi didn’t bother taking the bait as she took the lead and briskly set off.

Riding the large elevator to the third floor, they each presented their visitor cards to the nurse station.

“All right. You can see her now. It’s a shared room, though, so try to be quiet if you could, please.”

The staffer, clad in white, pointed out the door to them.

Emi and Maou nodded their thanks to her and headed for Room 305. The door was already ajar.

Inside were four beds, separated by privacy curtains. The plethora of strange and ominous machines installed near one made Maou’s blood freeze. Emi picked up on it at once.

“Not that one. This one.”

She grabbed his sleeve and pointed out the much less cluttered bed in front of them, a nameplate reading S
ASAKI
poised on the edge of the curtain railing.

“…Sorry to bother you again. It’s Yusa.”

Emi’s reserved voice was enough to summon another familiar one from inside.

“Sure, come on in.”

“Thanks.”

It was Riho, Chiho’s mother, seated in a chair next to the bed. Maou tried to greet her, but something else caught his eye first.

“……”

In the hospital bed, Chiho was asleep. She looked healthy enough, breathing on her own and all. But the fact she was sleeping in a hospital bed at all made Maou lose his voice.

Riho, noticing him, stood up and bowed lightly.

“Oh, hello, Maou! How nice of you to stop by.”

Her smile was warm and unpretentious, but it failed to hide a tint of fatigue around the edges.

Maou finally managed to gurgle up a question.

“What…what happened to Chi, ma’am?”

Riho bent her neck downward, troubled.

“Well, if only we knew…”

Her tired smile warped with anxiety.

“She was sleeping on the sofa when I came home around dinnertime last night. I told her to get some rice cooking for me, but I thought she was just having a nap or something instead…”

Riho tried her best to retain her serenity. It wasn’t working.

“But… It was the strangest thing. She just wouldn’t wake up. I called for her, I shook her… Nothing. It was so weird. I tried slapping her, even though I knew she’d be angry at me…but she didn’t respond to that, either.”

Realizing this was no ordinary nap, she had immediately called for an ambulance. They had brought her here, to Seikai University Hospital.

Neither the first responders nor the doctor who admitted her could diagnose why Chiho was in such a deep sleep.

Her breathing and brain waves were normal and she had no external injuries, so the hospital decided her life was not in danger and admitted her for observation. That, as Riho put it, was the story.

“And, you know, there wasn’t a gas leak or anything. She didn’t hit her head. There’s just no telling what happened to her…”

Riho turned her eyes toward Chiho, clothed in flower-patterned pink pajamas as she lay there. Emi and Maou found their gazes similarly fixed.

The girl seemed perfectly tranquil. No suffering at all.

But if Emi was so sure this was demonic force poisoning, something grave must have happened.

Suzuno entered, dragging Ashiya and Urushihara behind her.

“Chiho.”

“Ms. Sasaki!”

“Dude, you’re too loud, Ashiya.”

“Oh! I’m so glad to see all of you. I’m sorry it had to be in these circumstances… Um, you’re Suzuno Kamazuki and Hanzou Urushihara?”

Riho bowed deeply to these unfamiliar faces.

“I hate to bring this up now, but I do appreciate you watching out for Chiho over in Choshi. She didn’t bother you too much, did she?”

Maou stepped up to respond. “Oh, absolutely not. We—Chi’s always been a huge help to us. Without Chi…and you…we probably couldn’t have the life we have right now.”

“Well, make sure you tell her that first thing once she wakes up. I don’t think there’s much that makes her happier than a compliment from you.”

“……”

Riho’s casual observation robbed Maou of words all over again.

“So…there’s no telling what this is or how long it’ll last, so I haven’t gotten around to contacting her friends or school yet… Honestly, I’m not sure what to do.”

In Riho’s hand was Chiho’s cell phone, a familiar sight to Maou.

Riho was, by nature, a cheerful woman. That must have been why she tried to hide it. But the fear and anxiety of seeing her daughter stricken by some mysterious…event, or whatever it was, was clear as day, all over her.

But there was no way Maou, or Ashiya or Emi or Suzuno, and especially Urushihara, could find any words to cheer her up.

“Chiho…”

Suzuno’s voice was shaky as she took a step forward, grasping the right hand that stuck out from under Chiho’s blanket.

“……”

Emi looked on sternly.

“Oh! Actually, Maou…” Chiho’s mother began.

“Yes?”

Cheerfully, if a little shakily, Riho placed both her hands on Maou’s shoulders.

“Was that…you, perhaps?”

“That…? What’s that?”

“Oh, don’t be silly! You know I’m not angry or anything. Although I will admit that from a woman’s perspective, I’m not sure it suited Chiho very well.”

What was she talking about? Riho pointed to Chiho’s left hand, opposite to the one Suzuno held.

Not even that was enough to make Maou understand. He looked doubtfully toward Riho.

“You’re sure it wasn’t you? I wouldn’t think she’d go around in public wearing that if you didn’t give it to her, but…”

Riho went around the bed and picked up Chiho’s hand.

What she revealed made everyone except Emi gasp.

On her left index finger was a ring. If it was any normal ring, one could explain it away as a teenage girl’s experiment with accessorizing.

But the stone in that ring sparkled as it reflected the sunlight from outside, transfixing everyone who looked at it.

At that moment, Maou finally realized why Emi knew where Chiho was first.

They had exchanged a few words before she traveled to Choshi, but it seemed hard to believe Riho would contact Emi before even Chiho’s school.

Emi was after that ring. And it just happened to bring her here.

There, inside the Seikai University Hospital southwest of Muddraker’s in Yoyogi, was the polished Yesod fragment Emi had been guided to.

Each floor of the hospital had a public space, giving visitors a place to rest and the more ambulatory patients a chance to take in some TV.

Urushihara was the one staring glassily at the TV. Maou, Ashiya, and Emi, meanwhile, sat silently in chairs, their faces tormented.

Suzuno, by herself, was using Emi’s Relax-a-Bear notebook, and a pen with Relax-a-Bear’s friend Yellow Bird perched on top of it, to jot out a long set of what looked like mathematical equations.

To the uninformed observer, a quick peek at her writing would have produced more questions than answers. It would have looked like nothing but a bizarre, seemingly random string of patterns.

She was writing in Holy Vezian, one of the common languages shared across Ente Isla’s Western Island.

Holy Vezian saw use chiefly on the continent’s western side, where the Church’s influence was particularly pervasive. On the eastern side, nearer to the Central Continent, there was a dialect known as Common Vezian. The common tongue saw more widespread use as a spoken language, thanks to the influence it had on Ente Isla’s universally taught language of Centurient, but Holy Vezian was the working language of higher education across the island.

This was the language that saw the most use in specialized pursuits, from politics and government to law, medicine, and the arts. If you wanted to participate in any of these fields, a working knowledge of Holy Vezian was a must.

The Western Island was the only one of Ente Isla’s major landmasses that the Devil King had failed to conquer. Maou, Ashiya, and Urushihara could understand Common Vezian to some extent, but—from the written language onward—they were wholly unversed in the Holy variant.

Maou tried asking Emi what she was scribbling away at when Suzuno began, but Emi shrugged it off, telling him to “shut up and wait.”

Over an hour passed after they’d left Chiho’s hospital bed. It was still bright out, but darkness would no doubt be spreading across the horizon soon.

In no part thanks to that, Maou and the gang were the only ones left in the public space.

Right when the TV switched from a quick news update to a series of ad spots for the day’s wacky variety programming:

“I have it!” Suzuno finally lifted her head above the notebook.

“You have what? What have you even been doing this whole time?”

“This is the first time I’ve had to write out all of the formulas from scratch since…my time at the seminary, if I recall. I’ve found it, Emilia.”

“And?”

Suzuno beamed.

“Chiho’s body is the perfect picture of health. She is young, and strong. As soon as tomorrow—no later than two or three days—her body will neutralize the demonic force, and she will awaken.”

“S-seriously?!”

Suzuno’s appraisal made Maou jump out of his seat with a clatter. Ashiya looked dubiously at her.

“How…how are you so sure of that?”

“It would perhaps be easier to demonstrate with an experiment. Give me your hand, Alciel.”

“What?”

He extended his arm, eyebrows still arched downward, and obediently clasped hands with Suzuno. Then:

“Nrrhh!!”

With a groan, Ashiya’s entire body glowed dimly for a moment. The next instant, his hair stood on end, as if he had just stuck a fork in a power outlet.

“
Gnh…nh
… Wha-what are you
doing
?!”

Ashiya glared at Suzuno with unfocused eyes, having trouble articulating his complaint at first.

“That hard on a demon, is it? That was the same level of force as the sonar I probed Chiho’s body with.”

“…Sonar?”

Maou’s eyes came to attention. He hadn’t heard that word in a while.

Come to think of it, Suzuno’s compassionate caress of Chiho’s hand seemed a little too forced to be sincere. She must have been sonar-ing up and down her body then.

“Before one can undertake full training in the holy arts, they use this method to measure your body’s core receptiveness to magic. This can greatly affect how one’s holy magic affects their body, as you know.”

“Y-yeah…”

“A form of holy sonar is run across the body, containing a spell meant to examine its contents. Gauging the reactions one receives from each section of the body allows you to gain a general idea of their receptiveness. The human body can react in a variety of complex ways, so normally you would use specialized instruments for this procedure, but a caster can use their own senses if an approximate calculation will suffice.”

Suzuno pointed out the ten or so pages of Emi’s notebook she had filled with her mysterious scrawl.

“Of course, even an approximate calculation can take quite a bit of time if you do it by hand.”

Maou and the hair-on-end Ashiya pouted ruefully at her. Urushihara was still focused on the TV.

“Look, I don’t need the deep-cuts version, all right? Cut to the chase!”

“Before that, I need to ask. Emilia, why did you diagnose Chiho’s condition as magic poisoning?”

“I followed this light into the hospital.”

Emi extracted the bottle with the Yesod fragment from her bag. It made Maou’s eyebrows arch up a bit.

“…That’s the piece Camio had, huh? You didn’t give it to Alas Ramus?”

“If I fuse it with her, I can’t pluck it back out later, you know? I kept it because I thought we’d have to look for the other fragments, sooner or later. I can’t go brandishing my holy sword around in public to search for them.”

“Oh… Right.”

Emi explained her motives—the woman in white at Tokyo Big-Egg Town, the way she healed Alas Ramus, and the Yesod fragment she tried to track her down with.

“I busted it out near the Tokyu Hand in Shinjuku, but I wasn’t expecting to find it after less than thirty minutes of walking. And who could’ve known Chiho, of all people, had it…”

The story of Chiho in a coma at the hospital was shocking enough. But when Emi came to see her, she could feel, clear as day, the residual signs of demonic force.

That, combined with the ring on Chiho’s finger, made it impossible for Emi to figure it out by herself—so off she went to Devil’s Castle for assistance.

“So why did you not call myself or the Devil King?” Suzuno inquired.

She had a good point. Emi knew perfectly well that Maou, Ashiya, and Suzuno were somewhere in Shinjuku at that point in time. But the reply came from Urushihara.

“’Cause
I
called
her
. I needed to talk to her about somethin’…but it kinda doesn’t matter now. I wanna hear Bell’s full diagnosis first.”

His eyes never left the TV screen.

“…So, that’s the long and short of it. I saw all kinds of people afflicted by demonic force in Ente Isla, and Chiho reminded me of all of them. That, and there’s no way I should detect demonic power from Chiho, of all people. So I figured she was poisoned right off, but…”

Suzuno nodded in agreement.

“Emilia’s intuition is half correct, half mistaken.”

“How so?”

“Chiho, indeed, suffers from demonic poisoning. But not from an external source. The demonic power was generated from within, due to a dangerous energy imbalance in her body.”

“?!”

Maou and Ashiya joined Emi in a clear gasp of shock, striking the point home. Even Urushihara looked back toward Suzuno sharply.

“Generated from within Chiho’s body?”

“One might say that Chiho’s own spiritual energy transformed into demonic force.”

“Uhhh, wait. Hang on a sec.”

Maou raised a hand in the air.

“Is that kind of thing even possible?!”

“Assuming my calculations are correct, yes. That, and the equations themselves, handed down from generations of Church doctrine.”

“Well, do it over again,” Maou demanded.

Suzuno pouted, indignant.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I could not believe it myself at first, so I double-checked every calculation before reaching my conclusion.”

“But…demonic power from
within
? Chi’s a human being. A Japanese girl. She’s from Earth!”

“I understand what you are trying to say, but have you already forgotten your past? You regained your Devil King form on more than one occasion here in Japan by absorbing demonic energy from the hearts of mankind.”

“I… Well, yeah, but…”

“Regardless. After estimating the remaining demonic force within Chiho’s body with my sonar, it is clear that this is a case of poisoning, though not one serious enough to threaten her life. She fell into a coma due to her body consuming its strength in the act of trying to push it back and neutralize it, but the holy force I infused within my sonar should help catalyze the process. Once that is complete, she will wake up naturally.”

“So if all the pieces are put together…you’re saying that you almost vaporized my person just now?”

Suzuno let the irate jab from Ashiya slide with a smile.

If she was telling the truth, no one had any reason to worry about Chiho’s safety. But discovering the cause only led to a completely different problem rearing its ugly head:

Chiho, a mere human, was generating demonic force within herself, and they had no idea what was inducing this. Furthermore, in her comatose state, she was wearing a ring festooned with a Yesod fragment.

Emi racked her brain for some sort of hint.

“This may not lead to anything…but I think Chiho’s ring is the same kind as the one that woman in white had on.”

“You
think
?”

“Well, I was kind of in a panic, all right? I don’t really remember what kind of ring it was. But I think it looked like that.”

“Yeah, great. Really useful, Emi. So why’s that ring on her finger?”

“Maybe…that woman in white put it on her, for some reason…”

“Oh, come on! Let’s worry about where it came from later, okay? The thing we
really
need to be thinking over right now is…”

“The external cause of Chiho Sasaki’s body generating that force, right?”

“…Urushihara?”

Everyone focused on the man, whose gaze was still fixated upon the TV.

“Demonic force in her body is weird, dude. Real weird. But judging by how you guys keep on transforming, it’s totally likely that humans in this world…you know, just
do
that, right? But either way, someone or something acted upon Chiho to make her do that.”

“Could you at least stop watching TV and
face
us?”

Emi was clearly irritated. Urushihara paid it no mind, currently enthralled in a local-interest news story about a regional cook-off in one rural burg or another. “I told you that I called Yusa, didn’t I? Yusa, the girl who never saw me as anything besides a breathing vending machine and line wrangler. Why do you think she bothered answering my call?”

Emi scowled.

“Because you said that Gabriel paid a visit to Villa Rosa Sasazuka.”