“Not you again. This early in the morning? Look, I have work today, so could you let me sleep some more?"
It was hardly that early. Emi, after all, had left the same time Rika went off to work.
Rika tried to stop her, suggesting she take another day to rest. But she didn't want to cause too much trouble for her friend, and the thoughts she dwelled upon over the previous night had driven her to room 201 of the Villa Rosa Sasazuka apartments as quickly as she could manage.
Since her own clothes were bloodied, she borrowed a blouse from Rika. She wore the same suit and shoes from the night of the accident as she
clambered the Villa Rosa staircase and mashed a finger on the doorbell. She expected that Maou might not exactly heave the door wide open for her, so she had an excuse in hand—a brown paper envelope she purchased from the convenience store. It was enough to capture Maou's notice as he cracked the door open, still not ready to remove the chain.
“Don't worry. There isn't poison or a razor blade inside or anything." "I don't think I've received anything from you I didn't regret."
"Oh, well, in that case, I think I'll just keep this thousand yen—"
Maou snatched the envelope away. ''Okay, we're even now.''
"Hey! I thought we promised you'd stop interfering with us for a while.” "I think me rescuing you from the cops more than makes up for that." "Ugh, you stupid little—"
Emi interjected before Maou could finish his evaluation. “Yesterday!”
“Uh?”
“Was Ashiya...I mean Alciel all right?”
A look of clear suspicion crossed Maou's face.
"Did you get clocked in the head or something last night?” "We're talking about him, not me. He wasn't hurt or anything?”
She knew this was an in elegant way of picking, his mind. But there was no other way to broach the topic.
"No, no injuries. Major blow to his ego, though.” The look of suspicion remained on his face.
"And he didn't turn back into his demon form or anything, either.” "Ah...!"
"What? Isn't that what you were asking about?" Maou snorted at Emi, who was unable to hide the shock. The confrontational tone drained from her voice.
"Well, what if I said he was a demon? Would you bust in here and kill us?" “I…”
Maou continued, not expecting a useful response.
"He could tell I reverted back, too, for a little while. He spent all night crying about ‘Ooooh, I failed to serve my liege at his hour of need,’ et cetera, et cetera, and now he's sleeping in this morning. What the hell am I gonna do for breakfast now?"
Ashiya had remained staunchly human. Internally, this disturbed Emi. Rika's monologue suggested to her that Maou regained his demon form temporarily because his body had consumed the terror and anguish from the nearby survivors, converting it into magical force.
If that theory proved true, Maou could have used the power he had before yesterday to summon any manner of disaster. Say, an earthquake strong enough to make an underground corridor collapse. And he could repeat the process, continually feeding off the negative emotions of his victims, until the Devil King Satan finally resurrected himself. And if this was Maou's plan, there was no reason for him to hesitate any longer.
Satan, in his conquest of Ente Isla, was a cruel, merciless tyrant, one who thought of a human being's life as no more consequential as that of a blade of grass. It was easy to picture him immediately moving to take action.
So she flew to his squalid apartment in a state of half panic...and found the same dopey-looking face peeking out behind the crack in the door, whining about how he needed to be on time for his shift. What was this Devil King thinking, going on with his human life? It was beyond Emi's comprehension. His next question brought Emi into an even higher plane of bewilderment.
"But, hey, were you all right? I saw your forehead. And you used some of your power when you put Chi to sleep, didn't you?"
"...What?"
Emi froze on the spot. ''What are you ...saying?"
"What do you mean, what am I saying? I'm just asking if you're okay. Your power isn't back, right?"
The easy explanation would be that she had suddenly, inexplicably, failed to comprehend the Japanese language. If only it were that easy.
"Are you being...serious?"
"What? Am I not allowed to be concerned about people?'' Maou acted honestly peeved as he fired back.
Emi could feel the blood drain from her face. She felt sick. What could this man possibly be saying to her?
She was gripped by an intense loathing, one far stronger than what rose up upon he first encounter with Maou and Ashiya in Japan. It was almost the same hatred as she felt the day she learned of her father's death.
"I am not so weak...that my enemy should be concerned for me." That was all she could say, at the end of it.
"Oh?...Yeah, I guess so, huh?”
That was all the response Maou had to offer.
"Anyway. If that's all you needed, you mind leaving me alone?’ "With pleasure.”
Emi quickly turned to make her exit. She wanted to feel out Maou a bit more, in hopes he'd drop a clue to the riddle behind his transformation. But if she stayed here any longer, she honestly wasn't sure what the disgust bubbling within her chest would make her do.
Maou looked on, concerned, as she left. Whether he understood her feelings or not, he plainly found her behavior puzzling. Suddenly, something sprang to his mind.
"H-hey! Emi!”
But Emi showed no sign of stopping, in a hurry to leave as quickly as possible.
"You're gonna slip if you—”
He wasn't quite able to relay the intended message before the moment came. The sound of corrugated iron panels loudly scraping against each other greeted his ears.
"Ah!”
That was all the reaction Maou heard from Emi.
The corrugated -iron stairway structure, replete with peeling paint and visible rust, had long been tilting to the side, the result of long years of supporting itself against the wind, rain, and weight of time. It had achieved an odd concave shape, just barely skirting legal regulations.
A soundless scream was heard as the weight so cruelly placed upon these stairs consumed its potential energy and tumbled to the ground.
"—If you go downstairs in those heels.”
* * *
A sulky-looking Ashiya, wearing a jersey he had lying around on the floor, opened the cabinet that held their first-aid kit.
Atop a stack of job-search magazines bound with twine in the corner, Emi sat staring into space, unable to figure out where to direct her emotions any longer.
Considering she had slipped the moment she set foot on the first step, her injuries were miraculously light. Unfortunately, her suit, which had survived intact up to this point, was now a ragged mess of dirt and tearing. One of the pumps that flew off her feet landed right on a concrete-block flagstone,
adding a patchwork of scratches to the external leather.
As for Emi herself: One sprained finger, caused by reaching out and
jamming it against the handrail. Bruising on her buttocks, which was the first to hit the stairs. A scrape to the bridge of her nose, as she landed facedown below.
Overall, far more serious than the damage she took from an entire underground corridor collapsing upon her.
“My... The Hero Emilia had the Devil King-in a different form, yes, but still the Devil King!—cornered in his lair once, and now she's been roughed up by falling down the stairs of our apartment? A black mark on His Demonic Highness more than anyone, perhaps, but..."
The impact on her forehead also reopened the wound from the previous night. Blood was beginning to show on the bandage, making its way past the gauze below. The dressing itself had turned brown from the dirt and would
need a change shortly. Ashiya, however, looked dejected as he showed the emergency kit to the Devil King.
“Nothing in here but adhesive tape. We did buy gauze and so forth somewhere else, no?”
"Maybe. We weren't planning on anything as rough as this. We'll probably have to go buy some stuff. Hey, Ashiya, you mind going out to the pharmacy by the rail station and buying bandages and gauze? They oughtta be open by now. I don't want this girl yelling at me even more.”
"Yes, my liege. May I be permitted to borrow Dullahan from you? I have other shopping to take care of as well."
“Permission granted. Hey, if you got that much money on you, why don't you cook something better for me?”
“I am afraid, Your Demonic Highness, that your spending habits are such that have to build my own stash and save my money carefully. I will return soon.”
Maou snorted derisively as he heard Ashiya, still wearing the morning's jersey, pedal off.
“You better get that disinfected for now, at least. I have some stuff over here, so let's get that washed and..."
Maou sat down in front of Emi, wet towel in hand. Emi, snapping out of her torpor, snatched it from his hand.
''D-don't touch me! I'm not a child! I can do it myself!" “Sure, sure, sorry. Tissues are over there."
The box of tissues that Emi had flung at Maou still laid where it fell. She
wiped the dirt from her nose and forehead, then used another tissue to apply the disinfectant. Then, she was struck by a crushing wave of sadness.
"What, does it sting?" ''No.”
Emi answered Maou's simple question by throwing the bottle of disinfectant, lid still open, full bore at him.
“Whoa! What was that for?”
“Shut up! What is with you, anyway?! You're the Devil King, you idiot! Why don't you act like one and start wrecking this world already?!”
“Huh? Where'd all that come from?”
Maou was honestly surprised, unsure what Emi was trying to say. Emi continued shouting.
“What?! Who the hell ever heard of a dirt-poor, junk-food-eating, rising-star- in-the-workplace, loved-by-teenage-girls Devil King?!”
“Ngh..."
Maou was taken off guard by this astute observation, but quickly rallied. "Well, I've never heard of a Hero who started crying after falling down the stairs and had a demon fix her up!"
"And what kind of Devil King sends his minion off to the pharmacy for the Hero's sake?! And what kind of Great Demon General actually says yes to that?!"
"Ergh..."
"Why are you so damn kind to me?!"
The screamed question hit Maou where it hurt.
"Why are you kind to me, to other people, to the whole world?! How can... How can you be so nice all the time?!"
Maou was at a loss to answer. The unexpected sharpness of the query stabbed directly into his heart.
"And if you can be so nice...then why... Why..." Emi shouted through the tears.
"Why did you kill my father?!"
The scream made the apartment's wooden frame shudder. The moment of silence afterward seemed even more deafening.
Emi sobbed, out of breath. Maou stood there, unable to give any response. "The...the Devil King I pursued was a malicious monster! He treated people like they were nothing more than insects! He loved nothing more than the despair, the blood that tan across the world!"
"I—"
"You turned our fields into gigantic firestorms! You crushed our castles with your lightning! You washed away entire towns with your floods! You allowed your horde of demons to perform any kind of savage brutality they wanted! Devil King Satan! Even when you die, I will never forgive you! You took my home, my father's fields, my father's life, my peaceful, quiet, childhood...! Everything! And I'll never forgive you!"
"Emi, I—"
It was clear that Maou's mental makeup had veered considerably away from his time on Ente Isla.
He was a tyrant back then. Even now, he remembered how he treated the world as his personal plaything and resolved to eradicate the human race from all the land. That desire, at least, was still there. So why was he
presenting no resistance to the idea of living a comfortable life in a human- dominated world?
"I...I haven't really thought deeply about it.''
Maou, unable to formulate a clear answer in his mind, forced the words out anyway.
“But...well, sorry, I guess." “……”
Emi did not reply. Instead she looked up with her red, tear-moistened face at the man in front of her, mouth open as she stared.
His approach was casual, but Maou was apologizing from the heart. “I mean, I didn't know anything about any Hero at first. I was busy taking over the Central Continent and controlling my demon forces, so I guess I didn't really pay full attention to what was going on, over on the surrounding islands... Well, I don't mean to shift the blame to Lucifer, either, though. But what could I have done? Demons and humans... Well, we're always in
conflict with each other."
He was clearly frustrated with himself. His eyes swiveled from one point in the air to the next, gesturing as he tried his hardest to formulate a decent excuse.