“Hello, Your Demonic Highness. Did your apology at Lord Chiho’s residence go well? …Your Demonic Highness?”
It must have been the middle of his afternoon break. Libicocco, entering the staff room next to the changing area, removed his crewmember cap and sat on a folding chair, munching on a bag of something from the nearby convenience store and reading a magazine.
“Everything okay? You look kind of pale.”
Maou all but fell into the staff room, his breathing ragged. Feeling the AC breeze on his face, he dragged himself inside.
“You’re sweating a whole lot. Is it that hot outside?”
“…No……… It…… It’s nothing…”
“My liege?”
Maou was acting off. His panting was more of a wheeze, and despite all the sweating, his skin was a paler shade than usual.
“Urr…p… Libby… Sorry, that, that bag…”
Before Libicocco could respond, Maou grabbed the plastic bag from the convenience store…
“Nn…oo…gghhh…”
“M-my liege?!”
…and expelled the contents of his stomach into it.
“Wh-what has happened to you?! Did—did you get food poisoning…?!”
“D-don’t say that…in here… It’s not that… I’m sorry about, about the bag…”
“It’s fine, it’s fine! But you have a fever, too, don’t you? What happened?!”
“Don’t raise your voice. I feel a little better now. I can push myself to calm down. Ngh… Haah…”
His skin tone went from white to blue as he stood up, bracing his arm against the wall.
“Are you really all right? You should ask Ms. Iwaki to give you the day off…”
“I’m fine. Really. Unlike last time…there was no contact, so probably…”
The warm feeling came back to the pit of his stomach. He could feel himself recovering.
“Or is it the other way around…?”
Maou shook his head as he changed clothes, still catching his breath.
A kiss is a way to express your love, strongly, via physical contact. If his body had a negative reaction to love, the opposite of fear, he could understand that. But back there, he hadn’t even held hands with her, much less shared a kiss. Despite that, though, he immediately felt the demonic force inside him being rent apart.
He had touched Chiho several times before. They held hands all day during their date in Shinjuku. She had even held him in her arms once. If his body was going to physically recoil over a little affection, it should have happened well before now.
Was it because her feelings up until now had been more of a childlike puppy love? Or a blind sort of romance that hadn’t quite matured into full-on love? That couldn’t be the case, either. Rika Suzuki had told Ashiya she had a thing for him; Suzuno had told Maou she loved him. They were adult women, and their love was backed with supreme confidence. Even when Chiho grabbed his hand as they went upstairs to Laila’s apartment, her feelings couldn’t have been much different from now. She had even demonstrated her loyalty to him as a Great Demon General, and he physically picked her up during the zirga after obtaining the Spear of Adramelechinus.
So why only now?
“Ahh, this is…” he groaned.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Why is Japan so hot?!”
That was the first thing Chiho shouted as she jammed the button on her AC’s remote. It was a familiar unit in a familiar space, and once it detected the temperature in the dank, humid room, it let out a whine and began blowing cold air in. At almost the same time, the door swung open.
“Chiho! You’re back?!”
Riho, her mother, was standing there, holding a back scratcher for some reason.
“Oh, hi, Mom. Why the back scratcher?”
“I heard a strange noise, so I was scared. When you come home, can come through the living room or front door? It’s bad for my heart.”
“The last time I did that, you spilled curry all over the carpet, remember? I can’t open a Gate in places where I could run into someone.”
“Honestly… Then at least text me when you’re coming back or something. I know you have ways to. Because when you open a Gate, it causes a lot of noise and shaking, you know.”
She lightly shook the back scratcher in her hand as she let out her complaints.
“Well?” she went on. “Tell me, which one was better?”
“Hmm… If I had to pick, Ente Isla.”
“It wasn’t cheap, you know, having you study abroad in London.”
Riho hung her head, although she’d half expected that answer.
“As your mother, you know, I’m happy with any job you think is your calling, but…you know, having you tilt this much toward another world…”
She sized up Chiho, head to toe.
“I mean, what kind of country were you even in?”
Her baggage was the usual wheeled sort, but Chiho was sporting the traditional wear of somewhere or other, featuring a rainbow of colors woven into shiny, silk-like fabric.
“Well, the design comes from the Wurs clan, but the fabric’s made by the Welland clan.”
“Yes, yes… You’re a lot more impressionable than I thought. You purchased that picture book with the cute British characters in London, too.”
“You could at least call it being broad-minded.”
“Well, look at it from my perspective, too, won’t you? My broad-minded daughter, going off to a whole other world…”
Riho smiled, a mix of emotions behind it.
“So how’s your stomach?”
“Hungry!”
It was a routine Chiho had played out with her mother thousands of times since childhood.
“Great. Your father’s been in Kyoto since last week, helping with security at this international conference. When I’m alone, I always wind up cooking too much…”
“I’ll eat anything if you made it, Mom.”
“Oh? Well, that’d help a lot. Eat it all, for all I care… But before that, go take a shower, will you? You’re smelling pretty dusty.”
“What? Oh! Sorry!”
Realizing this, Chiho blushed then left her baggage behind and made a beeline for the bathroom.
“Don’t put that outfit in the washer! I’d hate for all those colors to fade!”
“Okay!”
“Oof…”
The way she stormed around the house hadn’t changed one bit since her early childhood. It hadn’t…but now she was a college junior. She was past twenty, a grown woman. Riho sighed as she used the back scratcher on her spine, even though it didn’t itch at all.
“Maou’s perfectly happy working in Japan, so why is she so eager to work in Ente Isla…?”