“Daddy, um, Daddy is Maou!”

  “Maou? That’s his name?”

  “Ms. Shimizu, please stop! You should be ashamed of yourself, bribing little children like that!”

  “You’re making me angry, Maki!”

  All three ventured on, paying no mind to the neighbors downstairs. But Alas Ramus’s one-girl play continued anon.

  “Maou… Name. Mmm, yeh, Daddy, Maou.”

  “Maou, huh! Well, that’s a funny name!”

  They couldn’t physically close the child’s mouth, so Emi and Chiho attempted to close Maki’s instead.

  “Daddy, um… He loves money. But he’s poor. And, uhhh…foo-gal?”

  “Um, Alas Ramus, I think that’s enough…”

  Chiho didn’t want Maki to know about Maou, of course, and having this sweet little child refer to her own father as “poor” almost made her cry on the spot. But just before she could put a finger to her lips and shush her:

  “And, and, Daddy is reawwy…lonewy.”

  “Oh?”

  “…Alas Ramus?” asked Emi, frozen to the spot even as she had Maki in a wrestling-style headlock.

  “Maou’s lonely?” Chiho exclaimed.

  “Daddy reawwy likes his friends. He wants ’em to…stay. Not go.”

  “Y-Y-Yusa, I—I can’t breathe…”

  “Daddy likes his money, and, and he likes his fwiends, and he likes work. And dat’s why Mommy ’n’ Chi-Sis ’n’ Suzu-Sis like Daddy!”

  “I—I never said that…”

  She knew it was pointless to deny it in front of her, but something about her “daughter” claiming that Emi loved Daddy was highly disturbing.

  “And, and Daddy likes his friends, so…that’s why he was mean to Mommy.”

  “…Alas Ramus? Do you mean…?”

  Chiho took her arms off Maki and turned toward the child. She had the feeling Alas Ramus was trying to discuss something very important. Emi must have picked up on it as well, because she removed her arms from her groaning friend Maki and turned to the toddler.

  “Alas Ramus,” Emi asked, “when you said ‘Mommy’…are you talking about Laila?”

  She nodded.

  “Daddy likes work, he likes fwiends…but Mommy tried to make ’im work. For her… Reawwy mean!”

  Laila had tried to make Maou work for her. Emi and Chiho couldn’t say what that meant—but somehow, it made a lot of sense to them. Everyone in their circle figured that Laila was trying to take a thorny situation, one involving all of Ente Isla, and place it in their laps. But both Emi and Maou had turned her down. They hadn’t even listened to her. Why couldn’t they inspire themselves to do even that? Something told them the answer lay somewhere within Alas Ramus’s words.

  “Tried to make him work, huh…?”

  Alas Ramus, taken out of the hospital with Emi, wasn’t there to hear the full story. There was no way she had a full grasp of Laila’s intentions. But seeing Laila closer to her than ever before, and neither Maou nor Emi deigning to interact with her, must have seemed strange to the child’s mind. She must have been looking for an answer.

  “Alas Ramus?”

  “Hi, Mommy!”

  “That Relax-a-Bear belongs to Maki. I’ll buy a new one for you when we get home, all right?”

  “Reawwy?!” Her face shone, the meekness of a moment ago quite gone.

  “Really. We have to go home for now, but I think the store will still be open in Shinjuku when we stop by.”

  Emi looked at the clock in the room. It was just before seven.

  “Huhh? You’re going home today, Yusa?!” said Maki, fully recovered from Emi and Chiho’s tag-team attack but now shocked for a different reason.

  “I’ve already stayed here two nights without any warning. I can’t put any more trouble on you.”

  “Oh, you can stay here as many days as you want, Yusa!”

  She sounded sincere enough, but Emi couldn’t let that happen. “Sorry, but I’m good, honestly. I have someone staying at my place right now anyway.”

  “You mean that Maou person bephpphhhhh ftorry, sorry, sorry!”

  It wasn’t anything Maki thought too deeply about before saying it, but it was still enough to make Emi grab both of her cheeks at once, smiling the whole way.

  “Listen, girl. Remember that friend from when I was overseas? I told you about that first thing.”

  “Mmph, yeph, yeph, ftorry… Pahh… But seriously, if you ever need anything, just give me a call. I’ll be glad to help if I can!”

  “Sure,” she said, the smile returning to her face as she released her and gave her a loose kind of shoulder hug.

  “Agh!”

  “You were a big help.”

  “Oh, no, no, yerrelcome!” Maki said, putting her head over Emi’s shoulder and nodding awkwardly a few times. And watching them, Chiho thought she knew why Emi had come to Maki.

  “Come back soon! I mean it! Soon!”

  After they walked out the door, Maki reluctantly seeing them off like they’d never meet again in this lifetime, Emi and Chiho boarded the Fukutoshin Line off Zoshigaya Station. They were headed back home to Eifukucho, and fortunately, their local train bound for Shinjuku-sanchome wasn’t at rush-hour levels of crowd.

  “I’m sorry, Chiho,” Emi said once they found a pair of adjacent seats. “I guess I have this habit of getting you involved in my personal affairs.”

  Chiho took a moment to look at her reflection in the subway window, staring off into the distance. “Well,” she said, “at least I think I know why you were at Ms. Shimizu’s place now, Yusa.”

  “Rika suggested it. She thought my mind could use a reset somewhere. Like, with someone who isn’t involved with Ente Isla or angels or Heroes or whatever.”

  This was Maki, after all, a woman who positively adored Emi. Even on a normal day, she went full-court press on her; if Emi was in some kind of trouble, she’d no doubt do everything she could to make her feel better. Maki didn’t seem to know the truth about her, so it wasn’t like Emi could’ve told her anything too deep—but that college campus visit wasn’t strictly for funsies, either. Emi was at least somewhat serious about discussing higher education with her former coworker, Chiho felt, and Maki must’ve seized on that and wanted to help her out. Right now, that was just the companion Emi needed, probably.

  Emi ran a hand through the hair of Alas Ramus, who was currently wavering back and forth in her lap as she nodded off.

  “You know, after I got off work at the Mag, I’d go meet up with Maki and we’d go out to eat, or hit the gym, or whatever. She wasn’t surprised to see Alas Ramus at all, either. We went shopping for pajamas for her and everything. It’s really helped me refresh, for the first time in a while… I’ll have to compensate Eme for that later.”

  “I’m sure she’ll understand.”

  “Probably, but I still need to make up for it. She’ll have some food-related request for me, I bet. It’s already giving me a headache.”

  “Hee-hee!”

  Emi smiled at the laughter.

  “…You know, I think I probably went too far back there, too. I’ve really come to look at it that way, the past few days.”

  “Oh?”

  “It depends on how you look at it, but… I mean, I just spent the past couple days using Maki, essentially, to make myself feel better. Taking advantage of the fact she has no idea what’s up with me. Doesn’t it look that way to you?”

  “That’s what friends are, though, aren’t they?” Chiho gave a light shake of her head. “It’s not like Ms. Shimizu was looking to get anything back for it, and I’m sure you’ll kind of unconsciously make up for it later on with her, right?”

  “Yeah, but… Oh, how to put it? Sure, Laila’s put me through a bunch of crap, but I can’t deny that she’s expended a lot of effort for my sake, too. In her own way. Not because she needs me for her goals, but just because I’m her daughter, I think. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m not making any sense.”

  “No, it’s fine,” she replied with a nod. “I understand. I doubt Nord would marry someone who saw you as nothing but Emilia the holy sword–wielding Hero. I’m not in full support of her or anything…but you and she have been separated so long, I honestly think she didn’t know what to do with herself. That’s why it all fell apart like that.”

  “Yeah. So I think that…you know, I’m ready to meet her halfway a little. But if you want me to call her ‘mom,’ I’m not the least bit interested in that.”

  “Sure. And that’s fine. That’s a lot to ask out of nowhere. And she might be your biological mom, but to you, she’s just this stranger who stepped in from the crowd, you know? Nobody you know. It’s not like you’ll immediately learn everything about each other on the first day. I’ve lived with my parents for seventeen years, and we still argue about stuff sometimes.”

  “I have trouble picturing you arguing with your parents, Chiho. Like, ever.”

  “Oh, I’m not that good a girl.”

  “If you aren’t, that makes everybody else in the universe downright evil.”

  They shared a laugh over this. Then Emi recalled a term Chiho used:

  “Nobody I know, huh…?”

  She had heard it before, a long time ago, from someone else—before she knew where Alas Ramus really came from.

  “Who was it?”

  “Nobody you know.”

  That was the brazen way that man described the angel who once saved his life.

  Certainly, at the time, Emi didn’t think much of anything about Laila. She was her mom, she was out there somewhere, and that was it. She didn’t really know her, and when Emeralda and Albert brought her up in conversation, it didn’t really move her heart and soul the way news of her father’s survival did.

  But she still knew Laila was her mother. Maybe that was why Maou kept his mouth shut. About the fact that her own mother saved the life of mankind’s worst enemy.

  “…”

  “Mm…”

  She clutched at Alas Ramus a little tighter than before, bringing her body closer.

  “Yusa?”

  What benefit would it bring Maou not to talk about Laila back then? She couldn’t think of any. Having secret intel about Laila’s past didn’t give him any advantage over Emi—if that was his aim, he would’ve been far better off hiding the origins of the Yesod and Alas Ramus instead.

  If he could have had any motivation…

  “…Oh, give me a break.”

  …it’d be to avoid hurting her feelings. To keep her from worrying herself sick.

  This all happened just after Sariel came to Japan, when Emi had begun having doubts about the angels and their intentions. If she knew that Laila had rescued the Devil King himself, it could’ve been devastating. She was still being driven by her pride as a Hero and her duty to slay that Devil King. If he let on the truth to her, it’d create too much of a conflict between her Heroic mission and what her mother did. It’d destroy her. She wouldn’t be able to do what was best for Alas Ramus.

  “And he calls himself…Devil King…”

  It irritated her to know that Maou could see all of that. And she wasn’t confident enough to avow that learning the truth wouldn’t have ruined her.

  “Mommy?”

  The drowsy Alas Ramus listlessly looked up at Emi, noticing the extra force she was held up with. Emi responded by burying her face in the little child’s shoulder, as if escaping from the gaze. She wanted some other reason, some motivation for Maou to hide the truth about Laila from her. He must’ve been trying to get a leg up, somehow—or hiding it gave him some kind of edge. That had to be it. Otherwise, it just made no sense. It didn’t…

  “You okay, Yusa?”

  “……Yeah. I’m fine,” Emi said, looking back up.

  The train arrived at Higashi-Shinjuku Station in another few moments, one stop before their line change. The PA system announced that they would be stopped on the platform for approximately three minutes to allow an express train to pass by.

  “Yusa…”

  “I know.” She let out a heavy sigh and looked upward.

  “Did you stop breathing just now?”

  “Huh?”

  The sight of Emi’s uplifted face gave Chiho concern.

  “I just mean…”

  “Hmm?”

  “Your face is all red.”

  “…Huh?”

  She brought a hand to her face—not like she could tell her skin color by touch. But if the pale bluish-white of the subway’s interior lights made her look that way, she had to be blushing a little bit, at least. Why? She knew. No point denying it now.

  “Chiho, I…”

  “Yes?”

  “…I’m not sure I mind all this much.”

  The words came out freely. She didn’t have to summon any courage for it.

  The departure bell rang. The doors closed, and the train set off once more.

  “Huh? Don’t mind what?” asked Chiho, raising an eyebrow. The sudden crackling of the automatic PA system prevented her from receiving an answer.

  “Emergency stop! All passengers, brace yourselves! Emergency stop!”

  Before anyone had a chance to brace themselves, the freshly departed train slammed on the brakes. It made even the seated Emi and Chiho lose their balance, forcing Emi to hold on tight to her child.

  “Wh-whoa!”

  “Agh!”

  With the sound of screeching wheels, the train quickly bled off whatever acceleration the past few seconds allowed it. It was no longer rush hour, but given the subway line’s location—connecting the two mega-stations of Ikebukuro and Shinjuku—a decent number of passengers were very suddenly subjected to the law of momentum. Some fell to the floor.

  “Chiho, you all right?!”

  “I-I’m fine. How’s Alas Ramus…?”

  “Ooo, scary!”

  By the time it stopped, Alas Ramus was looking around the car, wide-eyed but otherwise unfazed. Nobody else nearby seemed too banged up, and the atmosphere was already turning back to normal.

  A somewhat harried-sounding conductor chose that moment to get on the PA.

  “Ahh, this train has just engaged its emergency-brake system… The train made an emergency stop after a public emergency button was pressed up ahead at Shinjuku-sanchome Station. Umm…”

  With every extended pause, they could hear the sound of machines operating and the radio springing to life in the conductor’s room.

  “We apologize for the inconvenience to our passengers, but this train will be stopped here for a period of time…”

  “Pretty strong brakes, huh?”

  “Hopefully, it’s not some huge accident,” Chiho replied as they settled back down. The rest of the passengers were similarly calm, if a little annoyed at the delay. Some were reading; some were listening to music; some were tapping away at their phones. One of them was already back to snoring in his seat—a veteran train commuter, no doubt.

  As Emi took a few moments to scope them all out, amid the oddly quiet atmosphere of a stopped train, the speaker returned to life.

  “Umm, this is an announcement from the conductor’s room. We have received word that a passenger has fallen onto the track at Shinjuku-sanchome Station. This was why the emergency-stop button was pressed, which brought this train to a halt earlier. We will begin traveling again once our team is sure that the track is safe for navigation. Once again, we apologize for any inconvenience placed upon our passengers and their schedules. Thank you.”

  “Guess you can’t blame the train company for that,” Emi remarked as she stared at the ceiling. Then she looked down at Chiho, who had an oddly baffled look on her face.

  “Hmm? What’s up?”

  “Oh, um… I don’t know, I just had a weird thought,” she replied, her voice unusually soft.

  “A weird thought?”

  “Did you see that thing going around the Net a couple days ago? About the jargon used in news broadcasts and what it really means?”

  “What’s that?” Emi asked.

  “Well, you know how we call the bathroom ‘Number Ten’ over at the Hatagaya MgRonald, right? So customers can’t tell what we’re talking about. Kind of like that. You hear terms on the news like seriously injured or serious condition or he was struck by the vehicle all the time, and they’re used to kind of whitewash over all the gory stuff that really happened.”

  “Ohhh, I heard about that, I think. Like, how the conductor might say ‘a passenger has entered the track’ when there’s really been a sexual assault or something. You think it’s that kind of thing?”

  As serious as that would be, Emi didn’t see why that required slamming on the brakes.

  “No. I thought so at first, but the conductor said someone ‘fell’ on the track.”

  “Oh? I wasn’t really paying attention.”

  “Can you do that, though? At Shinjuku-sanchome?”

  “Huh?”

  “’Cause I’m pretty sure there are automatic doors on the platform to prevent that, at least on the Fukutoshin subway line. It’d take a lot of effort to ‘fall’ on the track.”

  “Geez, Chiho, you’re starting to spook me. I’m sure it’s just a figure of speech. Maybe someone caught their foot in the gap between the train and the platform, huh? You hear about that a lot.”

  “Yeah, true.”

  Chiho wasn’t entirely sure why she’d brought it up herself. But something still seemed off to her. Looking at her phone, it was now past seven. Shinjuku-sanchome Station would be pretty full of passengers—and someone fell on the track? Not ‘entered’ or some other euphemism?

  She knew she was worrying excessively. She knew her time with Maou and Emi had made her mentally prepare for the most preposterous of situations at times. It’d be nice if the train could start up again. Emi was just about to get over her issues. Let’s get her to the station and keep anything else from happening.

  But Chiho’s plaintive prayer was, perhaps, too far underground to reach heaven. Out of nowhere, the interior lights went out.

  “Wha—?!”

  With nothing but the small fluorescent lights lining the tunnel to illuminate the car, it was almost pitch-black, save for the rapidly flickering phone screens. Some people were already hurriedly turning on their flashlight function.

 

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