“…Took you long enough.” Urushihara eloquently summed up what everyone else was thinking.
“But how does that connect with purchasing a TV?” Chiho asked. “Not to take Ashiya’s side, but you could still look that stuff up on the Internet if you wanted to.”
Maou nodded at her.
“Yeah, but I’d never see that kinda stuff unless I actively searched for it. I mean, failure breeds success and all that, but if I’m failing to avoid mistakes I could’ve easily avoided if I cared a little, that’s not a mistake so much as sheer laziness, right?”
“And that, my liege, is precisely why the Internet is there! That is as wide a net as anyone needs to cast. The news is no different between the Net and television, is it?”
Maou grinned bitterly at Ashiya, whose fervent desire not to blow their budget on a TV purchase was oozing out of every pore in his body.
“Lemme put it in a way you’d understand. Let’s say you heard ground beef was cheap at the supermarket, so you go out expecting to make some burgers for dinner, but when you show up, you notice that the sliced salmon is actually a lot cheaper. So you decide to change the menu to buttered salmon and use the extra change to buy some bean sprouts to flesh out dinner a little. You ever have that kind of thing happen?”
“Um? …Well, certainly, yes. If you put it that way.” The sudden topic shift to household errands perplexed Ashiya.
“So instead of buying buns or ketchup for the burgers, you buy some butter for the salmon. And from that point forward, you know how to whip up a meal of buttered salmon and bean sprouts for really cheap. That kinda thing.”
“Yes… Indeed.” Suzuno, who cooked for herself just as often as Ashiya, could empathize.
“But that’s the thing about the Net. You can’t
learn
stuff like that online. If you search for burgers, you get hits about Worcestershire sauce and barbecue grills and upscale burger chains and Wagyu beef and maybe Hamburg, Germany, too, I dunno. But you aren’t gonna get anything about buttered salmon with bean sprouts. You don’t get that kind of happenstance going on.”
“Happenstance, huh…?”
Urushihara sat up a bit, uncharacteristically attentive.
“Of course, things spread in all kinds of ways, so you can’t say that about everything. But with the Internet, once something loses your interest, you don’t go back again, right? You don’t need to.”
“Yeah. I suppose you wouldn’t. But TV’s the same way, isn’t it? You don’t like it, you turn it off.”
Maou shook his head at Emi, the only extraterrestrial with a television.
“But with TV, there are things you don’t care about
now
, but might care about later. It’s not just an on-or-off thing. With the Net, meanwhile, all you see are the things you want to see. And you need a guide for that sort of thing, right? For things you don’t actively want right now, but might come in handy later.”
“…Your Demonic Highness, how did you come to know so much about television in the first place?”
“Oh, that was back when we just arrived here. I had this temp job where we all congregated at a soba noodle place for lunch, and they had a TV in there. It was playing the news, and they were advertising this piece about how the temp agency I was working for was under investigation for something or other. So I waited around for the piece, but then another customer changed it to some stupid variety show. Man, that pissed me off.”
“I know now’s a different story but, Maou, you
are
another world’s Devil King, right?”
“Enough of that topic, Chiho. All it would do is serve to depress me even further,” Suzuno interjected. “The Devil King, going on about noodles and tuna and hamburgers… It disgusts me.”
In many ways, Maou’s enemies seemed far more concerned for his future than he was.
“Anyway. I just figured it’d be nice to have some play, you know? Some more exposure to unintended discoveries like that. I know the Net’s easier and you can look up anything you want and stuff, but in terms of creating chances to take an interest in something new, I think TV’s still a lot more vital. Then, if I want to examine a topic more in-depth, I can hit up the Net for that.”
“Yeah, true,” Urushihara admitted. “A lot of people brag about never watching TV, but if you look at search term rankings and trends and stuff, TV still affects them a lot.”
Maou, uncharacteristically, nodded his approval at Urushihara’s point. “I don’t need a 3D set or a blue-whatever player or anything fancy like that. I’m just saying, if we can have this media device that plays a major role in human society, I think that’ll help us later on. Help teach us about the human world, and help us once we’re ready to conquer it.”
“Hmmm…” Ashiya grunted as he weighed Maou’s thought in his mind.
“And…” Now Maou turned to Emi. “TV gives you live reports on accidents and disasters and stuff, right? Like, flood warnings and so on.”
“Yeah. So?”
“If something happens, that could help me take action faster.”
Maou used the index and middle fingers of both hands to form makeshift claws in the air.
“…!”
Emi knew what he meant. The Malebranche, the demons they fought over in Choshi.
“That’s kind of a secondary reason, but still, if some kind of major incident happens that makes no sense by human standards, we could at least check it out to see if someone from the other side’s messing with us again.”
That was a concern on everyone’s mind. Downtown Tokyo had been the site of several angel/demon duels by now. They barely fended off a full-scale demon invasion off the Choshi coast a few days ago, too.
They had managed to keep casualties to a minimum so far, if only by the skin of their teeth. But there was no guarantee their luck would continue.
Where they stood in Japan, forced to deal with crises as they reared themselves, having as many information sources as possible—the way Maou framed it—seemed to make sense.
“Yes…but…”
Ashiya was in a deep mental conflict with himself.
Part of him agreed to his master’s proposal. He wanted to give his assent, if he could. But their budget, and the presence of several alternative tools, dragged at his mind.
Urushihara put Ashiya’s anguish into words for him: “We’ll have to pay the license fee to MHK, too…”
“…All right. Let me propose you this, my liege.” Ashiya lifted his pained countenance upward. “I am in complete agreement with your feelings, but our budget presents us with certain very real obstacles. So perhaps we could begin by conducting a marketplace investigation.”
“Investigation?”
“First, we should visit the real estate agent to see how the new antenna affects whatever sort of license fee we would have to pay. If it falls upon us as tenants to pay the fee to MHK, I fear this simply will not work.”
“Everything except the utilities are included in my place, but…”
“Do not interject with your babbling, Emilia! I truly do not want to buy this, deep down!”
“That’s kind of mean of you, isn’t it, Ashiya?”
Maou and Urushihara just nodded, well used to Ashiya’s occasional outbursts whenever money was the topic.
“But
if
we are lucky enough to have the MHK fee included, and
if
our rent does not increase as a result, we can then visit an electronics store to examine prices and features. I understand that flat-screen digital televisions are notably more expensive than their analog counterparts. If the baseline prices are too high for us, then once again, I fear it will not work out.”
“Jeez, that’s rough…”
“Of course it is! All three of us were supposed to be working at that snack bar for half of August! And, yes, we were remunerated well—more than half a month of your MgRonald wages—but we are not flush enough that we can lavish money on expensive home appliances on a mere whim!”
Ashiya had his reasons for playing the spoiler so much: With their jobs at Ohguro-ya gone, Maou was de facto jobless until the remodeling work at the Hatagaya-station MgRonald was complete.
The three great demons were safe from the specter of homelessness, but considering what they could expect in wages next month, Ashiya was hell-bent on surviving the rest of August with the 150,000 yen the three of them had earned for their time at Ohguro-ya.
Maou’s wages for July would be deposited in their checking account on the twenty-fifth, of course, but it was not the kind of payday that easily allowed for purchasing a TV all by itself.
“Yeah, but I think the smaller ones go for pretty cheap these days, no? If you don’t care about the brand, I don’t think you’ll have to pay too much.”
“Ms. Sasaki… Please…”
Ashiya, capable of hurling a constant stream of hatred at Emi, was far weaker against Chiho.
“…?”
Emi, meanwhile, looked disbelievingly at Chiho, wondering why she said
that
all of a sudden.
Just a moment ago, Ashiya shot down her attempt to advocate for the TV purchase. She didn’t expect Chiho to take up the banner again.
“Well, judging by Emi and Chiho, I think we have a pretty decent chance of buying one. So, Ashiya, assuming we clear the MHK and rent hurdles, how much you think we can afford?”
Ashiya needed little time to respond.
“Considering what we made at Ohguro-ya, I can take ten thousand yen from each of our wages. So, thirty thousand yen.
Maybe
thirty-five thousand. No more than that.”
“Whoa, dude! That’s
my
money you’re taking!”
Urushihara blurted out his honest surprise at the demon’s calculation. Ashiya fired back, his face like the mask of some mythical monster.
“I have every right to garnish your entire paycheck to make good for all the wasteful spending you’ve done, you!”
“Heh-heh-heh! Thirty-five thousand! You said thirty-five thousand, didn’t you?”
Maou, meanwhile, had a cheese-eating grin on his face.
“Ashiyaaaaa, don’t you think you’re forgetting something?”
“Mm? What?”
Ashiya involuntarily shuddered at Maou’s smile, now beyond cheese-eating and venturing into the realm of demented.
Maou shot a finger toward the refrigerator, grin still plastered on his face.
“Where’d we buy that fridge? Where’d we buy the washer outside?”
“The fridge…?”
The two most expensive items in Devil’s Castle. Maou had blown through nearly all of his savings to buy them earlier in the year.
Both quite a bit more budget friendly than what Suzuno had in her own room. But still.
“That…that was at the Socket City in Shinjuku, my liege… Ahh!”
It finally dawned on Ashiya.
As he watched, Maou produced a plastic wallet from somewhere and ripped open the Velcro keeping it shut.
Then, as if trying to make this as mentally tortuous for Ashiya as possible, he slowly, dramatically removed a silver card from it.
“Finally noticed, huh?”
Like a well-honed sword, the card glinted in the air as Maou thrust it at Ashiya’s face.
There was the familiar Socket City logo, the phrase
POINT CARD
below it. At the bottom.
6239 POINTS
was printed over the silver film.
“This… How?!”
Ashiya found himself floored, literally brought down to tatami-mat level by the unexpected shock.
“You wanna know how we made it this far without using any of these points, right? I can see it on your face, man! You wanna know?! Well, look around you! Count all the consumable goods we have that you’d buy at an electronics store!”
When it came to consumable goods you’d buy at an electronics store, lighting and batteries were usually the first to come to mind.
But Devil’s Castle was illuminated by fluorescent lighting, with no other lights besides the bulbs in the bathroom and by the front door. The former bulb had burned out once, but otherwise, nothing since Maou bought the fridge and washer.
The only thing around the Devil’s King domain that used replaceable batteries was their emergency flashlight. Urushihara’s old computer, and the digital camera–printer combo Maou used to record every aspect of Alas Ramus’s life, were purchased on different occasions at discount shops in Akihabara, meaning no Socket City points were ever sacrificed.
The printer was also old enough that not even the larger stores bothered to carry official ink cartridges any longer. They replaced the red cartridge once after tracking down an off-brand version.
Some of the big-box electronic shops also carried food and other household items, but never at much of a discount. It was never worth traveling all the way to Shinjuku for that, considering all the deals they could find locally in Sasazuka.
So, throughout the whole summer, the only thing they used these points for so far was a single lightbulb.
“Thirty-five thousand yen?! Hah! Don’t make me laugh! Add these points in, and we can raise that limit all the way up to 41,239 yen! And if we have forty thousand, we don’t even have to get the crappiest one they got, either!”
“In…incredible!!”
“Bah-hah-hah-hah! You miss one hundred percent of the shots that you don’t take, Ashiya! That’s one more obstacle between us and a TV out of the picture! Now I’m
really
looking forward to visiting the real estate guy!”
“Heh…heh… Ha-ha-ha! But, Your Demonic Highness, failure to plan is planning to fail! There is no guarantee that our rental contract won’t strike a lethal blow upon all of us! As long as there remains even a slim chance of them pinning the license fees on us, you promised we would drop this entire line of thinking, remember?! Then the points mean nothing! Nothing! Prepare yourself for a hearty meal of crow and humble pie shortly, my liege!”
“You’re on! I’m gonna march right over to the real estate office right now and get this show on the road!”
“Very good, Your Demonic Highness! I would very much like to see your face when you realize the folly of ignoring the commonsense pleas of your humble servants!!”
The others in the room might as well have excused themselves out while the Devil King and his Great Demon General bickered at each other about a point card.
“…I’m sorry. I’m ashamed of these guys, too.”