“Soooo…………………………what do I do?”
After they’d finished explaining everything that had happened, Maou and his four companions each taking turns, those were the first words from Sen’ichi Sasaki. He was thoroughly flummoxed.
“Well, why don’t you say whatever’s on your mind?”
His wife, meanwhile, was almost blunt by comparison.
“What’s on my mind?”
Sen’ichi gave her a look like a lost puppy. Then he turned toward Maou, Ashiya, and Urushihara, seated on the sofa opposite him. Emi and Suzuno stood behind them. He stared at them all—plus the two girls packing away the MgRonald order, oblivious to everything else—then his eyes settled on his feet.
“For now… Yeah. For now, I…understand. Yes.”
He didn’t actually mean this. He was just mumbling to himself as he organized his thoughts. Maou and the rest got that, so they didn’t move an inch as they waited for his next statement.
“I understand why my wife didn’t say anything to me. Certainly, I wouldn’t have taken her word for it alone…but also, unlike her, you know, I’ve hardly met any of Chiho’s friends. If I came in expecting an apology from all of you, I probably would’ve been all tensed up, with my preconceptions and so on, so… Yeah.”
He took a deep breath then finally looked at Maou.
“The last time we met, I figured that if there was ever a next time, it’d probably wind up being this big, shocking incident. So I was prepared for that…but never for this, sort of.”
“Oh?”
Maou raised an eyebrow, unsure how to take this roundabout observation.
He had last met Sen’ichi in the summer of the previous year, in the town of Komagame, Nagano prefecture. Maou and his friends had come to Sen’ichi’s family home to help out with farm work. Riho had pointed them over there, after the Choshi job ended early and they had a free summer on their hands, and Maou had met up with Sen’ichi once to thank him. They simply chatted a bit over tea before parting ways, and in Maou’s eyes, nothing had happened that would’ve put Sen’ichi on edge.
Now Sen’ichi looked from Maou to his daughter before letting out another deep sigh. “Well, you know… It’s not like I’ve fully digested all of this yet, but yes, I understand the long and short of it. What all of you are doing and everything. But this… What did you call it? The assault on heaven?”
“That’s right. Our term for it anyway.”
“And you say that’s the only thing left; you guys fighting against your enemy. But Chiho’s not gonna be part of that, right?”
“Of course not. We would never take her there. We can’t, for that matter.”
“And is the war gonna reach here at all? Through your…warp Gates or whatever?”
“No, sir. If they catch even the slightest sign of that, the Sephirah here on Earth will block it with all their might. I think they’d cut off all connections between Ente Isla and Earth at once.”
“All right. Also, one other important thing…”
“Yes?”
Sen’ichi took a deep breath, a few beads of sweat on his brow.
“…You, Maou, and Chiho… You aren’t a couple or anything right now, are you?”
“Ah… Huh?”
Unlike Chiho, Riho, or even the absent Rika Suzuki, Sen’ichi had learned of Ente Isla strictly through verbal discussion. Maou was ready to give sincere answers to any questions he might have, but nothing could’ve prepared him for this.
“Are you two romantically involved?”
“D-Dad!”
Chiho blushed instantly.
“Um… I’m sorry, what do you mean by that?”
“Well, I mean it pretty plainly,” Sen’ichi replied, his pace accelerating. “I’m asking whether you and my daughter are in a romantic relationship with each other!”
“Huh?! No?! No, um, we haven’t… Not that, no!”
For a single moment, the memory of what had happened with Chiho after the summit flashed in Maou’s mind. But that didn’t quite seem to connect to what Sen’ichi meant, so he ignored it. Regardless of how Sen’ichi took that hesitation, he spent a few moments leering doubtfully at Maou. Then he turned away.
“Fine, then.”
“Y-yes…?”
“Because if you were like that with my daughter, I’d have a few things to say about it, but if not, then I don’t. I can talk it over personally with her later. You don’t have to say sorry about anything.”
“N-no, but…”
“If you really need me to,” said Sen’ichi, talking louder to stop his guest, “I’ll accept your apology for this.” He picked up the envelope Maou had placed on the living room table early on in their discussion. “I don’t remember the incident at all, but I do recall doing some shopping on the way home and having less cash in my wallet than I thought… Or, at least, I was pretty sure.”
The envelope contained a 10,000 yen note.
Right after Maou and Ashiya came to Japan, they were caught wandering the streets of Harajuku late at night and taken to the police station by none other than Sen’ichi Sasaki. Maou then used what little demonic force he had left to steal a 10,000 yen bill from him, to cover expenses for the time being. It was a crime, one that Maou and Ashiya deserved to be judged for, but until they came here today, nobody apart from Maou and Ashiya had been aware of it. Even Urushihara was a little surprised.
But even after he learned about it, Sen’ichi exhibited nothing but confusion and puzzlement. There were no signs of anger or disappointment.
“You know, when your beat has an entertainment district in it, you run into drunks passed out on the street, people screaming unintelligible nonsense at you… It’s not uncommon for me to take in foreign people with no passport and nothing to prove their real name with. Honestly, even if you told me exactly which night it was, I don’t know if I’d find any records of your time with us. I didn’t even feel victimized at all. This is kind of like opening an old book and finding money you forgot about inside. Nothing to really get angry about.”
“…Thank you very much.”
“And when it comes to lying about who you were, well, if my wife and daughter don’t mind it, I don’t see any need to, either. We’re not the type of parents to pry into our child’s acquaintances and decide who’s right and wrong for her. With the career I have, I keep telling her she can’t get involved with antisocials, but you don’t exactly count as that.”
“Antisocials?” Acieth asked, unfamiliar with the term.
“Sorry. That’s police shorthand for people who’re a threat to law-abiding individuals. The ‘bad guys’ sort of thing.”
“Oh. But in that case, Maou and friends, they are the worst bad guys, no? They are anti-human, not antisocial.”
Please stop, Maou thought—but she was telling the truth, so he didn’t fight back. But Sen’ichi seemed to take a liking to the unreserved girl, so he gave her a sincere response.
“Well, that’s the thing. That’s part of the reason Maou and his friends stick out, of course. But this is all so far beyond common sense. There’s so much that I can’t measure by our standards, and in a way, I don’t think it matters.”
“Aww, you do not say that! You are the dad! You must yell strongly at them, for Chiho’s sake!”
“Acieth…”
“Daddy! Don’t be mean to Chi-sis!”
Alas Ramus, despite not understanding any of this, took advantage of Acieth’s momentum to lord it over Maou, distracting him and Sen’ichi from the topic.
“Ah, girls, can you be a little more quiet…?”
He was still here to apologize, and he didn’t want them derailing everything before Sen’ichi was done talking. But, unexpectedly, Sen’ichi flashed his first smile of the day.
“Alas Ramus?”
“Yeh!”
“Do you love your daddy?”
“I’unno!”
“…!”
Maou had expected an emphatic yes in response. He didn’t get it, which floored him—a fact Sen’ichi picked up on.
“You must wonder why I’m not angry at all, don’t you? Well, Alas Ramus right now is one reason.”
Maou was thrown a bit by the riddle-like response.
“Girls unconditionally love their fathers only until about the age of four or five. But it’s important that they don’t after that, and lately, I’m finally seeing it as a good thing.”
“Oh, really?” Riho interjected.
“Don’t distract me,” Sen’ichi said, looking aside at his wife.
Maou mulled over this statement, the words of a man with seventeen years of fathering experience. Alas Ramus certainly didn’t always do what he or Emi wanted her to do. When they’d all lived at Emi’s place, he could tell that she acted a fair bit less well-behaved than when she lived with Maou alone. Nothing drastic—she just sometimes sassed back or rebelled a bit in order to bother Emi. She expressed herself in a lot of ways, which she never did when she was just an occasional visitor to Emi’s apartment.
“My daughter’s made a lot of choices for herself. She’s learned, and experienced, so much in her life—and your powers, and your presence, were an indispensable part of that. And if they are, then as her dad, I don’t deserve any kind of apology from you.”
“…Father…”
“Not to stop you, but it’s a little too early to start calling me ‘Father.’”
“Oh, um, yes. Sorry about that. B-but still…we’re demons, and we caused a lot of damage to Ente Isla…”
“Well, look, when you’re a cop, you learn pretty quickly that there’s no such thing as superheroes, or absolutes, in this world. And I’m definitely not someone high up enough that I’m going to judge a war taking place in some faraway world. Don’t you think that’d be irresponsible?”
“…I can’t really say.”
“Now, if all of you were on one side, maybe I’d take pity on you and get angry at the other side. But you, the Devil King, and you, the Hero, are raising a kid together, and so I can’t feel that way at all. It’d be like trying to evaluate who was ‘right’ in the Hundred Years’ War from our modern perspective. It’s pointless.”
Sen’ichi looked at Alas Ramus, currently stealing some fries from Acieth, and reached over toward her.
“Right now, all I want from you guys is to keep being good friends to Chiho.”
Everyone there—Maou, of course, as well as Emi, Ashiya, Urushihara, and Suzuno—knew what he meant when he said that, gesturing at Maou’s own “daughter.” Alas Ramus was beloved by many people, and so was Chiho Sasaki. What he meant, spoken in the plainest of terms, was “never do anything that would sadden those who love her so much.” He wasn’t speaking to the Devil King of another world. He was speaking to his daughter’s friend.
“…All right. I will.”
The answer, too, was just as simple.