The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 3 (9 page)

“…So where’s Urushihara, then?”

Chiho asked a second time as she pondered over yesterday’s events. The reply came from an unexpected angle.

“Ugh, dude, it’s so hot. You got that food ready yet, Ashiya?”

The closet door clattered open, revealing a sweat-soaked Urushihara.

“Oh, hey,
you’re
here, Chiho Sasaki?”

Chiho was rendered speechless at the suddenness of the scene.

Urushihara had brought his computer, a flashlight, and a small electric fan into the closet. Hopping off the middle tier, he trudged over to the fridge, took out a plastic bottle of barley tea, and returned to the closet.

“Well, uh, make yourself at home, I guess?”

With that, Urushihara—more useless than a Roomba on an ice rink—shut the door.

“…Ashiya…”

“I saw nothing.”

The response was instant, if nearly comatose.

“As long as he remains out of sight, everything is fine. My liege and I took turns attempting to assuage Alas Ramus last night, but her wailing never stopped. Hour after hour, it was ‘where’s Mommy, where’s Mommy’… Ever since last night, Lucifer has spent most of his time in the closet.”

“Well, we can only hope Urushihara dries up and turns into a prune, I suppose.”

Chiho sympathized with Ashiya from the bottom of her heart.

Suzuno was dead set against Maou taking on Alas Ramus at first. But the girl herself, upon awakening, said she wanted to be with Daddy—and with that, Suzuno stepped aside with surprising grace.

She didn’t forget to make one point clear to Maou, however:

“We must respect the desires of the child herself. However! If you do anything that has an ill effect on this infant’s education, I will seize her immediately.”

Suzuno had the strength to back up her threats, given that her holy power was stronger than all three of the demons combined at the moment. That, and she lived next door.

But the real problem here was the “Mommy” factor. Emi, unlike Suzuno, didn’t live within earshot.

Once Emi saw Alas Ramus’s contentment at staying with Maou, she proceeded on with her original plan of going out to shop with Suzuno, reasoning that the most pressing issue had been solved. Alas Ramus, however, quickly showed signs of unrest.

“Mommy, don’t go again!”

Emi was at a lost to respond to the tearful request.

“…?”

It threw Maou a bit as well, but he quickly took an admonishing tone.

“Hey, listen, Alas Ramus… Mommy’s just going out for a while, all right?”

“Going out?”

“Right. Yeah. She’ll be coming back, okay?”

“…Really?”

The child’s pleading gaze made Emi hesitate. Maou, watching from behind, attempted to telepathically communicate
Lying or not, just SAY it!
to her.

“R-really. I’ll be back soon, all right?”

“Okee. I’ll wait.”

Apart from Urushihara, the sight of Alas Ramus meekly nodding at Emi’s words was like a stake through the hearts of everyone in the room.

After all the hectic events of the day, it was almost evening by the time Emi and Suzuno finally left. Chiho had to leave soon after. That was the last she knew of the situation.

“So Yusa never came back?”

“No, she did, along with Crestia…but that only made things worse.”

“The child’s intention was to sleep together with Emilia.”

The Devil’s Castle door opened to reveal Suzuno, carrying yet another shopping bag.

“Oh, Suzuno!”

“I’ve brought the bento boxes and nutritional drinks you requested, Alciel.”

She curtly offered the bag to Ashiya, who sluggishly leaned over to take it.

“…Do not expect any thanks. How much was it?”

“One gingerspice pork bento from Orion. Five hundred yen. You can have the nutritional drinks. Those were part of my stockpile.”

“……”

Ashiya silently plucked a five-hundred-yen coin out of his pocket, handed it over, then stood up and removed the lid to his bento lunch.

“…I hope you don’t mind if I have some lunch, Ms. Sasaki.”

“Huh? Oh! No, not at all! Go ahead.”

“Hmm? Food?”

Urushihara, smelling out the ginger, opened the closet door just wide enough to stick his face out.

“Silence, wastrel.”

The look on Ashiya’s face, and the tone of his voice, truly befit the terrifying name of Alciel, the Great Demon General who had conquered all of Ente Isla’s Eastern Island in the space of a year. It was enough to strike Urushihara uncharacteristically dumb as he retreated behind the closet door.

“I have to admit, Ashiya, I’m surprised to see you actually shell out the money to get something from Orion Bento delivered.”

Chiho wiped away a tear. The thought of what kind of hell he must’ve gone through if he was too fatigued to even care about keeping frugal with his food budget made her shudder.

“The child’s crying fits last night were grueling to endure. Even with a wall between us, I was woken up multiple times.”

Taking a closer look, Chiho noticed that Suzuno had applied an atypically full array of makeup today.

That was rare. Extremely rare, in fact, given that she usually walked around in public with no makeup whatsoever; last night must have had a serious impact on her. The corners of her eyes sagged low with exhaustion.

“And her fury was even more unrestrained this morning. She made every effort to keep the Devil King from reporting to work. Emilia had left and never came back, so she must have assumed the Devil King would pull a similar escape.”

“Oh, no… But it’s not like Yusa can just stay over all the time either, huh?”

It was easy for Chiho to surmise that Emi would never stoop as low as sleeping on the floor of Devil’s Castle. That’d likely apply even if she wasn’t the Hero and everything.

Emi actually
did
stay over once, long ago, but what Chiho didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

There was always the option of sleeping in Suzuno’s room, but that presented its own difficulties.

Suzuno had no shower or anything, of course, and she retained only the barest minimum of toiletries in her room. Given the midsummer weather, a bath and a change of clothing would be a must.

But with Emi still making regular stops at her condo in the Eifukucho neighborhood of Tokyo, the public bath in Sasazuka would have been long closed by the time she returned. And there was no way Emi would report to work the next day without bathing.

“Emilia is not without concern for our plight, of course, but it seems that not even she can fend off the vagaries of reality.”

Suzuno produced a mobile phone from beneath her sleeve and showed the screen to Chiho.

It showed a text message from “Emilia” reading:

“I’m sorry, can you take care of her? I’ll show up tomorrow.”

Chiho was less interested in the message than the presence of the phone itself. She gave Suzuno a glance.

“You bought a cell phone, Suzuno?”

“Mm? Ah, yes, yesterday. Emilia taught me a great many things.”

“Oh, wow! Hey, let’s trade numbers while we’re thinking about it! You went with DokoDemo for your carrier, huh?”

Suzuno’s phone was the once-ubiquitous flip-open type, a fair bit behind the times by now.

“N-numbers? Hmm. How does one do that? I think there is some kind of infrared light-gun function that can transmit the number over…”

She tapped away intently at the phone for a few moments, as if controlling a giant robot by remote as it faced off against a city-destroying monster. Eventually, though, she resignedly handed it to Chiho.

“…I apologize, Chiho. I am all too unfamiliar with this. Please perform the required deed for me.”

“Okay, but are you sure you don’t mind me using it?”

“It is quite fine. I have only just made the purchase, and Emilia’s is the only name we added to the directory.”

Chiho, while no gadget genius, figured she had enough phone experience to figure out the basic functions with a little experimentation.

But, as she opened up Suzuno’s phone, she was greeted with a somewhat unfamiliar scene.

Emi used one of DokoDemo’s flip phone models herself, but compared to her model, the text printed on the phone buttons was quite a bit larger.

That, and there were three large, conspicuous buttons, labeled “1,” “2” and “3,” on the very top of the keypad, something Chiho had never seen on her phone, her family’s phones, or any of her friends’ phones.

The clincher, though, was the button on the lower-left labeled “Help.”

“Suzuno, is this…DokoDemo’s ‘Jitterphone 5’?”

Suzuno nodded, her face betraying her surprise. “Good heavens, Chiho! You could tell what model it was with a single glance?!”

“Well…
this
one, yeah.”

“I had no particular interest in this or that model. As long as I
could make calls, I would be content with anything. That, and I have little confidence in my ability to operate machinery, so I requested a type as easy to use as possible. That is what they provided me.”

There was a misguided twinge of pride in Suzuno’s explanation. Chiho decided to put the whole thing behind her.

The TV ads mostly depicted elderly retirees smiling vacantly as they gushed about how easy it was now to nag their grandkids in the big city, yes. But it wasn’t like Japanese law defined a minimum age for Jitterphone owners.

Discovering the IR transmitter on Suzuno’s phone, Chiho lined it up with her own phone’s sensor. In half a second, they had traded contact information.

“And there we go! I sent my phone number to you, too, Suzuno.”

“My thanks to you. My knowledge of telephony before I came here was limited to large, black, rotary-dial models. The instruction manual was so full of unfamiliar terms, I simply wanted to throw my hands in the air!”

Suzuno sheepishly accepted the phone as she spoke.

“…Daddy!”

Everyone in Devil’s Castle shuddered and turned to the source of the interjection.

Alas Ramus, put to sleep just a moment ago, was now stirring, her sleepy eyes gauging her surroundings.

“Grkkk…”

Ashiya, caught off guard, let out a muffled groan as a piece of ginger-spice pork lodged itself in his throat.

“Where’s Daddy?”

Failing to find Maou or Emi among the grown-ups surrounding her, Alas Ramus’s face grew visibly redder as the group watched her erupt into large, globular tears.

“Daaaaaaaddyyyyyyyy!!!”

The explosion followed soon after. Forcing the pork down with a swig of barley tea, Ashiya hurriedly tried to assuage the girl’s fears, but was left to pat her head awkwardly as the firestorm of tears raged on.

“Here, let me look.”

Chiho, the only coolheaded person in the room, brushed the limp Ashiya away.

“Ashiya, this diaper…”

The diaper Alas Ramus sported was starting to look distressingly swollen.

“Ah, yes, I purchased that yesterday.”

Suzuno spoke up.

“After Emilia left, Alas Ramus had quite the little accident. I failed to consider hand-washing her clothing, and the pharmacy was closed by then, so I had to visit the convenience store by the rail station…”

Next to the Devil’s Castle john, a small pile of diapers was strewn around a hastily-torn plastic bag.

“…Ashiya, you should really know better.”

“What…what about?”

“I mean, of
course
she’s crying. You didn’t change her diaper once since last night, did you?”

Chiho’s voice was harsh and chiding as she took out a clean diaper and spread it on the floor. In a moment, Alas Ramus was lying on top of it.

“There should be a bottle in my bag that looks like a big medicine dropper. Could you fill it up for me? Tap water’s fine.”

“Y-yes, but, um, the pipes are hot right now, so it’s going to be a shade lukewarm…”

“That’s even better. Hurry!”

As Chiho nimbly gave orders, Ashiya and Suzuno watched as she grabbed both of Alas Ramus’s legs with one hand, lifted them up, and undid the tape on the diaper with her free hand.

“All right, how about we get you nice and clean?”

Accepting Ashiya’s bottle, Chiho pointed it downward and slowly squeezed. Ashiya and Suzuno was thrown off guard for a moment, but the diaper absorbed all of the excess flow.

Putting the bottle down, Chiho used a wet tissue to wipe away the
remaining waste, tossed it alongside the old diaper, and lifted Alas Ramus’s legs just a little higher to bring her into position.

Showing the one-handed dexterity none of her onlookers knew she had, Chiho gently placed Alas Ramus’s rear end upon the new diaper, then briskly taped it shut.

Before they knew it, Alas Ramus—crying with the strength of a mile-wide tornado just a moment ago—had stopped.

Ashiya stared at the girl and her caretaker, eyes like saucers.

“…She was crying out for Emilia, so I reasoned she was just feeling lonely…”

“Well, I’m sure she
is
lonely, but babies don’t really have a lot of different ways to express their concerns, you know? If something bad happens to them, all they can do is cry out, the only way they know how.”

Chiho balled up the old diaper with the rest of the trash and threw it into the burnable-refuse bag. Using another wet tissue to wipe her own hands, she picked up Alas Ramus and brushed cheeks with the red-faced child.

“There, see? Feels a lot better being clean, right?”

“Oooo.”

It was hard to tell if Alas Ramus was agreeing or simply growling to herself, but she responded to the question nonetheless.

Now it seemed clear. The cause of Alas Ramus’s endless carrying-on last night wasn’t emotional, but physical. Around her rear end, to be physically specific.

“It’ll be all right, okay? Daddy will be home soon, and…um, Mommy…too, okay? So be a good girl until they do!”

Chiho felt an odd sort of psychological barrier keeping her from calling Emi “Mommy.” But there was no point brooding over it. Keeping Alas Ramus warm and supported took priority.

“Okee!”

Her eyes were still tearful, but Alas Ramus flashed a meek smile as she looked straight up at Chiho and nodded.

“Awww… There’s a cute little girl.”

Chiho couldn’t help but grin as the child fervently brushed away her tears with her little hands.

“Hmm…?”

Just then, Chiho noticed a purple, crescent moon–shaped mark appear on the placid Alas Ramus’s forehead. Her entire body emitted an ever-so-faint glow, the same color as her yellow dress.

It was barely noticeable, and it disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Chiho sighed. The event didn’t seem to bring about any major changes, but it was a timely reminder that this infant was a being from another world.

Still, all she could do was approach Alas Ramus with the kind of love she thought she needed. She hugged her tightly.

“Ahp!”

Alas Ramus blurted out in surprise.

Watching on, Ashiya put his hands on the floor, all but defeated in spirit.

“Truly, I am no match whatsoever for you, Ms. Sasaki… How embarrassing it is! Yes, embarrassing to let my previous name as the demon forces’ master strategist go to my head…! And such deft maneuvering you demonstrated to me in the way of diaper application… Truly, the scales have fallen from my eyes…”

The universe may be a vast, inscrutable place, but it still seemed fair to say Ashiya was the first and last demon to ever be asked to change a baby’s diaper during his quest to conquer the world. Even so, he deeply regretted the dishonor he showed at failing the task.

Chiho, unable to find the words to console him, turned to the wall clock in an attempt to distract him instead.

“When do you think Yusa will come back?”