“One Airenia gold coin each? Dude. What a rip.”
When he heard how much Emeralda and Albert had paid Shiba, Urushihara immediately winced.
“Well, we have no alternative, do we, dear? Think of it as a border crossing fee, and it seems reasonable enough, no?”
The two of them had dropped in on Maou and Urushihara’s deep discussion on the Tree of Sephirot. They quickly realized that Emi, Chiho, and Suzuno likely needed to get in on the Acieth food-sourcing issue, so before long, Room 201 was seeing its largest crowd in a while. Considering all the racket they had heard from the Sephirah children down in Room 101—which Nord and Laila were still renting as their Tokyo base—Maou and Suzuno awaited news about Room 202 with bated breath.
Once Maou had passed around the iced coffee blend he’d tested on Urushihara earlier, Emi spoke up first.
“Well, maybe this was good timing after all. We all knew that we couldn’t rely on Ms. Iwaki and MgRonald forever. We’re planning to hold an emergency meeting on this tonight—would Eme or Al mind joining me at work for a bit?”
“At your work, Emilia dear?”
“Yeah. Well, more like Father’s and his work, but…”
Maou grumbled at Emi’s signaling. “Yeah, yeah… That’s the best option we have. I’ve been keeping in touch with Iwaki about this the whole time, so it’s a good opportunity. We’ll see how things are at our Eifukucho café, and if it’d be tough to stick with that, we’re talking about a second location, too, so we need to think about handling it that way as well.”
“Would you hire new employees, then?”
“I don’t have the cushion for that, sadly. Either I’d move Aki over, or I’d cover it the whole time.”
“That’ll put more work on you, though. You can’t have that much free time.”
“If we’re doing this to handle Alcieth, it’s gotta be someone who knows, so I can’t hire my way out of that problem. Honestly, instead of trying to force it into our location structure, why don’t we just cater it each time?”
“You saw how the Kobe beef worked out. Maybe it’s fine now, but if this goes on for years, we’ll need staffing and raw ingredients each time. Isn’t that gonna be tough to budget? If anything, I think we should consider bringing on some new demons.”
“Demons, huh…? I’d really like them to adapt to life in Ente Isla, not here. That, and I’m afraid of what the landlord would say, so I don’t want too many of them fleeing over here…”
All this talk was just about how they’d keep Acieth fed going forward—but to Emi and Maou, it was serious stuff. They continued talking about it on their end of the table.
“Chiho, dear, are you okay with that?”
“Oh, are you dredging that up again?”
“I’ll bring it up as many times as I want, dear. After all…” Emeralda’s eyebrows arched lower as she motioned toward Maou. “She’s totally dominating him, no?”
“I can’t do very much about that, Emeralda. Besides, isn’t that partly your fault?”
“Ooh, I just hate to be reminded of that…but I didn’t think he would turn out like this, you know…”
Emi frequently gave Maou her two cents about how The Maou Company managed their storefront. She occasionally debated at length with the supposed “president” of the firm, and sometimes she even followed orders he gave her.
“Well, if you and Saint Aile can stop with that stuff, Emeralda, I think that’ll pull Yusa and Maou apart, at least…”
“…You say that because you know we can’t do it, riiight?”
“Right. Because it’ll take the reins off Maou and make Ente Isla and the summit members all nervous.”
Chiho smiled warmly.
“Ooh… Out of the frying pan, into the fire…”
“I’m not completely sure that applies here, but anyway, that’s how it is. You’ll have to give it up. You’re the only one who’s not accepting it, you know.”
“Oooooh… This is so unbelievable…”
“Besides, we have Alas Ramus to think about. Nobody’s going to allow Maou to do something as irresponsible as completely sever ties with Yusa. Plus…”
Chiho smiled at Maou, currently being cowed into silence over one topic or another.
“I like to watch those two.”
“Hmmm… And that’s why, Chiho, dear. Because you act like that.”
“Mm-hmm. Because I act like this. Thanks to everyone here, this is how I’ve turned out.”
“Arg!”
There was no malice, no ulterior motive to Chiho’s smile. Emeralda had no choice but to bite her tongue.
Meanwhile, Emi finished her tirade against Maou with a familiar refrain: “Well, don’t you have a nice life for yourself! I tell you, it would have been so much better if I’d killed you instead of letting you go, way back when!”
“Sooo,” Emeralda asked as she fell silent, “what are you taaalking about?”
“Well, The Maou Company’s thinking about launching a restaurant that’s focused around bread and grains, and the wheat Father’s growing at the Sasaki’s Nagano farm is one candidate for their flour.”
“Huh? Candidate?”
Albert picked up on Emi’s odd wording.
“Yeah, it’s not decided yet. Today we need to discuss all the costs involved, and then tomorrow, we’ll rent out an industrial test kitchen and try a few recipes. Father will be there, along with Chiho’s cousin Kazuma Sasaki, and they’ll make a final presentation. Kazuma’s staying at a hotel in Tokyo somewhere on other business tonight.”
“Ahhh… Keeping a sharp eye on work, are you, Emilia, dear?”
“Hell yeah I am,” Maou interjected. “I’m not gonna hire ’em just because we got a connection. I gotta pick good stuff, and then I gotta figure out how to sell it!”
Thus, all the luggage Nord and Laila were carting around contained material for their upcoming presentation.
“But Nord has been cultivating wheat for a very long time. I hardly think he will fail to make the grade.”
Maou pondered that a bit. “Well, we’ll see when we get there. We did a test bake over in Komagane, and we wound up with some really sour-tasting bread. Maybe we could sell it as healthy, but if we want it to be our flagship, we’re gonna have to work on the yeast, and on making it a good match with our cookware, and stuff. If we need to invest in a more expensive oven, that’s gonna affect our price points, so…”
“Oh… I see. So it is more than a matter of Nord and Kazuma producing good food?”
“When you’re making something, the ingredients ain’t the only cost you have to worry about. There’s the cooking costs, the work costs, the equipment maintenance costs, the supply costs, the storage costs… You gotta calculate all that, plus all the other work and customer rates and so on, and then you gotta pick something you’re willing to serve. That’s what craftsmanship is. On the other hand, even if you have a cost overrun somewhere, if that element is good enough in my eyes, sometimes I still go with it. And of course, the food’s gotta be ‘good,’ as you put it—and if customers see a lot of value from it, then we can sell them on other products, too. And so on.”
He paused, satisfied with his speech.
“And I tell you, when it all comes together right, it feels so great. You really feel like you did a good job.”
Maou truly looked invigorated, not an ounce of malice on his face. There was no doubt that he put his heart and soul into his job.
“So to sum up,” Emeralda whispered to Chiho, “he’s saying that Emilia’s making correct choices?”
“Yeah,” she whispered back, “I think so. Oh…”
Then, hearing a dull thump, Chiho turned around in her seat.
“Excuse me, guys…”
Attracting everyone’s attention, Chiho put a finger in front of her lips.
“…I think we’re making too much noise. I hear something from inside the closet…”
“Oh…?”
Maou, eyes open, turned toward Room 202. Suzuno (the former tenant) and Urushihara did the same, mixed emotions on their faces.
“Anything new?”
“Well, the landlord barged in there this summer to install an air conditioner…but I haven’t seen it running too much.”
“But she’s eating, isn’t she?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Suzuno seemed a tad relieved over it.
“You see,” Urushihara casually tossed out, “how tenacious she is. She wants to keep living real bad. She’s not the kind of wimp to let her heart break over something like that. I’m sure she’ll have some other nefarious scheme in mind before long… Maou?”
“Huh?”
“Keep a close eye on her. I really don’t need anything messing with my current work.”
“…Gabriel, Amane, Laila, and I are watching her in rotation. Stop acting so haughty about it.”
Maou gave Urushihara a kick.
“Ow!”
“She’s your mother, y’know. You take care of her.”
“Oh, like that’s my duty? Not like she ever took care of me as a kid. You oughtta thank me for taking care of the Sephirah, dude. Doesn’t that kinda make up for it? …Oh.”
She must have heard Urushihara’s complaining. Because Ignora—forced into Suzuno’s room after the assault on heaven three years ago, after Suzuno had to move back to Ente Isla to serve as an Archbishop—languidly knocked on the wall a few more times before she fell silent.