When he awoke, it was already dark.
Maou had been laid down on his back, the orange light from the miniature lamp blinding him.
“Oogh…”
His breath felt tepid as he came to. He was still unwell, but not as scarily limp as he was outside the MgRonald.
“What…time is it…?”
He tried to look at his wristwatch…then realized it wasn’t on him.
“Huh? Ah… Wait… When did I take it off? Where’s my phone…?”
His foggy mind ordered him to twist around, seeking the phone in its usual position by his bed.
“Mmh…”
Hearing a light groan, he realized that someone was lying next to him. He blinked, his eyes finally getting used to his surroundings.
“…Huhh?!”
Realizing it was Emi next to him, he gasped. The sudden intake of dry air made him choke. He coughed a few times.
“Mmm…”
Emi scowled a bit at the noise but quickly took a deep breath, turned over, and faced away from him.
“…Wha…?”
Maou had been placed on a futon, with Emi sleeping directly on the tatami-mat floor, using a seat cushion as a pillow.
Thinking hard with his addled brain, he moved his heavy head around. No matter how hard he squinted, it looked like nothing but Room 201 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka—with Emi sleeping next to him. Then, finally, he spotted his phone plugged into the wall, as well as the clock hanging above it.
“Ah… Seven…”
Not that much time had passed since he’d left his shift early. If this was how he was, Iwaki was right to order him off duty—but he still had no idea how he got here. Vaguely, he could recall leaving the restaurant, becoming incapacitated outside, then someone helping him out. It was probably Emi, but he had no idea why Emi would be there, and even if she was, she had no reason to be sleeping in the same room with him.
“…”
They had shared an apartment not long ago, if only for a little bit, so he could tell whether Emi was in a deep sleep or not. He also knew that Emi had a knack for waking up and falling asleep almost instantly. She told him about this at some point—being raised on a farm meant lots of early mornings, and during their Devil King–slaying quest, there was a lot of camping out and accommodations in rough regions. If you couldn’t get yourself awake fast, it could cost you your life.
What’s more, life with Alas Ramus, dealing with her crying at night and so on, meant her sleep was shallower than most people’s. Whenever Alas Ramus was involved, Maou usually couldn’t protest too loudly, so he hesitated to bother her about the noises she made while asleep, but…
“…I gotta go to the bathroom.”
He had a sudden urge—probably why he woke up from this nap—but he knew Emi didn’t have much chance to sleep soundly like this, so he couldn’t help but stop himself. The toilets at Villa Rosa Sasazuka were ancient; when he flushed his, it was loud enough that he feared waking the neighbors. Still, if he held it in, his tank was gonna be beyond full later if he went back to sleep. Should he stay, or should he go?
Just as Maou began waging that lonely war against himself, he felt a vibration from somewhere.
“Hmm…?!”
He thought his phone was ringing at first, but the vibration pattern didn’t sound right.
“Mmm…”
It must have been Emi’s smartphone. With a light yawn, she sat up.
“Oh, you’re up? How are you feeling?”
She turned toward Maou, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
“…Ah…um…”
The response was so thin and pathetic that his unnaturally tense reaction to Emi’s natural greeting was brutally obvious. Unable to respond, Maou watched as Emi stretched out, rubbing her sleepy eyes as she naturally brought a hand to his forehead.
“Ah, what…?”
Her fingers pushed his hair away, her palm resting on his head.
“No, there’s no fever. In fact, you seem kind of cool. Is your blood pressure going down?”
“Ah, ah, um…”
“Why’re you so nervous?”
Emi smiled a little under the mini-light. The sight of Maou acting so perturbed must’ve struck her as funny. A little while ago, he would’ve eagerly spewed vitriol at Emi, no matter how afraid he was that she might harm him—but by the look of things, she’d definitely helped him out after he collapsed outside the MgRonald, and his mind was still too befuddled to come up with anything snappy.
“I’ll turn on the light.”
Emi stood up and pulled the string twice. Light filled the room.
“I put Alas Ramus in my body. If that really is a cold, I don’t want her catching it, so don’t worry about that.”
“Ah, yeah… Urp…”
Even the fluorescent light beat down powerfully upon Maou. It made him feel nauseated all over again.
“The light’s too painful?”
“…No, um, if you could turn it down a notch…”
“Right, right.”
Emi pulled the string again. Out of the two circular bulbs in the socket, the larger one shut off.
“…Why…?” he bluntly asked.
“Chiho contacted me,” Emi quickly replied. “She said you were acting weird.”
“…I couldn’t have been…”
“You were just barely all right when you left her, weren’t you? But it still looked unnatural to Chiho. You had your mind all made up, but you still fled right at the last minute.”
“No, that…”
“So you gave Chiho an answer, then?”
“…Stop badgering me. You knew, didn’t you?”
It was Emi, after all, who had gone on about Maou’s suit at Sasazuka Station.
“I didn’t know anything. I just couldn’t imagine you’d do anything else.”
Outside of apologizing to the Sasakis, Emi could think of only one thing Maou would feel obliged to address while he was here tying up loose ends. It was the only scenario that made sense to her—and she was right. And since Emi’s take made perfect sense from Maou’s perspective, he very quickly changed clothes, so he and Chiho would feel as natural as possible around each other.
“You know, I’ve thought this a few times before, actually, but you like looking the part before you dive into something, don’t you?”
“…”
“I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Once you’re grown up, it’s hard to really put your mind to something unless you do. I’m like that in some ways, too.”
“Stop acting so grown-up. You’re only one year older than Chiho.”
“Yes, but I spent my time differently. I was in a different culture.” Emi, unruffled by Maou’s jab, put a hand to her hip and sighed. “So the way Chiho put it, you were all dressed up and ready to go. You gave her an answer, and the moment you did, you made a disgraceful exit.”
“Chi wouldn’t have phrased it so nastily…”
“Well, what do you want? That’s basically what happened. Also…”
Even the soft fluorescent light was a bit strong for Maou. The glare made Emi’s face hard to discern.
“…She seemed pretty shocked that I knew you’d reply to her feelings.”
“…Huh?”
He thought hard with his woozy mind. Why would that be a shock to Chiho? Emi must have known something that Maou didn’t.
“So thanks to that, right after you replied to her and ran off… Before she could be happy about it, she brought up Alas Ramus first.”
“…Sorry, I don’t understand yet. Why would Alas Ramus come up?”
“I’m impressed you still don’t know after everything I said,” Emi replied, honestly exasperated. She sat back down by Maou’s pillow, elbow on one knee as she peered into Maou’s face. “Now I’m getting a bit angry. At you, and at Chiho, too.”
“Huh…?”
“She said she thought that if you chose her, it’d be removing Alas Ramus from her father.”
“…What was that?”
“Chiho can really be a handful to deal with sometimes, can’t she? She reads too much into things, I guess, or thinks about them too much. It’s almost rude, in a way.”
This surprised Maou, hearing Emi criticize Chiho at this point.
“But I understand you a lot more than she does. And to me, it sounds like you all but gave her an answer, but now she’s lost all her confidence. Like, ‘What if this destroys the family you and he and Alas Ramus have?’ and so on.”
“That…”
“That was the gist of it anyway. And along those lines, the way you ran off on her, she was worried that you were still hiding something.”
Emi, smiling above him, was a scary sight to behold. He was unable to respond as she went on, the look persisting on her face.
“And if you’re like this after running away, your illness must have something to do with Chiho, doesn’t it? And I get it if you don’t want Chiho to worry over you, but me, I don’t want her to have the wrong idea about us forever. If you ask me who I’m gonna care about more, you or Chiho, it’s gonna be Chiho every time. You understand that?”
“Y-yeah…”
“I mean… You realize that, in just a few days, you and I are gonna be leading the army in the assault on heaven? Think about the timing a little. If you knew it would turn out like this, why didn’t you take action sooner, or maybe give your answer some other time so it didn’t come to this? ’Cause whether I want to or not, we’re gonna be partners up in heaven, trusting each other with our lives. Do you know how it makes me feel if my partner’s bedridden and he’s hiding why for some stupid reason? You realize that we’re fighting a battle where children’s lives are at stake, right?”
She smiled the whole time, unrelentingly. That was what was so scary.
“Come to think of it, weren’t you under the weather before we launched Devil’s Castle, too? I’m not gonna give you the right to remain silent here. Tell me what’s causing all of this.”
“…All right.”
Maou tried to take his eyes off Emi’s stretched-out smile. But he had no choice except to relent.