Bringing the morning breakfast special upstairs on a tray, Maou saw Mitsuki Kisaki, better known to him as Sariel, sitting limply on a floor cushion. On a nearby pastel-colored play mat, baby Yuzuki was playing with her favorite blocks.
“You worn out? You got rings around your eyes.”
“Yeah, last night was, well, she cried a lot.”
“Not even an archangel can beat a crying baby, huh? I made your iced coffee on the strong side for you.”
“Thanks. Hey, Yuzuki, time to eat! C’mon, let’s eat together.”
At Sariel’s bidding, she obediently toddled over and sat on a pillow next to Sariel.
“She doesn’t need a high chair?”
“She doesn’t like them. She kneels on these pillows when she’s eating at home, too.”
“Precocious kid. What do you want to drink, Yuzuki? No juice for now, right?”
“Barley tea is fine. What do you say, Yuzuki?”
“…’nk you.”
Sariel shrugged at the soft whisper of a voice, but his daughter, unfazed, began to eat.
“Well, enjoy,” Maou said, watching Yuzuki begin with the mini-tomato as he went downstairs. Kaori met him halfway.
“She showed up downstairs, so I came up to—ooh, Yuzuki, you’re a good eater, huh? That’s great.”
“Just tomatoes and udon,” Sariel replied. “That’s all she eats lately. It’s driving me up the wall.”
“Oh, right, Mr. Kisaki! I have some news.”
“What is it?”
“You’re on the clock, Shoji.”
“Aw, but I can’t keep this to myself! Did you hear about Chiho Sasaki?”
The moment the name came up, Maou shivered a little. It didn’t escape Sariel’s attention.
“Of course. What’s up with her? I heard she went on a little study-abroad trip a while ago.”
“That’s right! She had a homestay in the UK for three months, and she’s coming home from it today…but despite that, the president here made other plans instead of picking her up at the airport.”
“Oh? Well, that’s hard to excuse.”
“Right? Totally!”
Sariel, playing along with Kaori, looked up at Maou.
“When my wife comes off work, I always drive over to pick her up, you know.”
“Aww, how nice! You could learn from that, president!”
“Well, I get to be a stay-at-home dad, thanks to her job. It’s nothing to praise me for.”
“Enough, Shoji. Get back to work. Go check the self-serve drink machine for me! And don’t encourage my staff to goof off, either, okay?”
“Okaaay.”
Once he had chased off his overbearing employee, Maou turned to Sariel.
“But you pick her up every day? Isn’t she a manager in the customer support department now? That has to keep her late sometimes. What do you do with Yuzuki?”
“I don’t remember telling you about her promotion…but yeah, if it’s past ten, I don’t bother. On days when she gets off on time, I brush my kid’s teeth so she can doze off in the car while I go pick her up. It’s just hard otherwise. If she can’t see her mom before she goes to sleep, the crying gets three times worse at night.”
Then Sariel hushed his voice, ensuring Kaori in the upstairs staff kitchen couldn’t overhear him.
“I tell you, I really respect Emilia now. I’m shocked she could handle that baby by herself back then—”
“I know,” Maou interjected. “I had a small army of people lecturing me about it.”
“But Chiho’s studying English abroad, huh? I’ve heard people talk about doing it, but I never knew anyone who went through with it.”
“Yeah, her university arranged with a sister school so she could do it during summer break.”
“I see. I only heard about it from my wife, but she said it was one month, not three.”
“One month in London.”
“Oh! Well, that must’ve been a valuable experience. So where did she go the other two months?”
“You know that, don’t you?” Maou winced, still keeping a careful eye out for Kaori. “Well, she didn’t give me any details, either. She’d dodge the question whenever I asked.”
“So she’s completely lost her trust in you, huh? But I guess Chiho’s a junior in college now, isn’t she? Once she’s back, she’ll have to plunge right in to the job search. But not only were you unaware of her return date, you even put other plans first… It won’t be long before she abandons you entirely, I think.”
“Will you stop that? Like you know anything.”
“Hmm? But hang on. Wasn’t Shoji high school classmates with Chiho? Has she found a job yet?”
“I took a gap year, sorry! I’m still a sophomore, so I’m workin’ here instead!”
“Oh, pardon me.”
Kaori blurted it out as she passed by on her business, not looking none too concerned about it.
“We don’t have any extra toilet paper left, prez.”
“We don’t? Okay, can you buy some at the drugstore across the street? You can use our petty cash.”
“All right. The usual brand? I’ll be right back.”
Kaori took up the wallet they used for incidental purchases like this then lightly strolled out of the café. After she had disappeared into the summer sunlight, Sariel let out a small sigh.
“Three years… Well, five, from the very beginning. Compared to the rest of my life, it went by faster than the blink of an eye, but the days were certainly packed, I think.”
“I firmly agree. I didn’t even imagine any of this would happen at first…and you actually marrying Ms. Kisaki was completely beyond the realm of possibility. The news flipped out the whole Sasahata Shopping Arcade.”
It was three years ago when the archangel Sariel and Mayumi Kisaki, Maou’s former boss and benefactor, made the shocking announcement. Those who knew Sariel’s true nature, and the relationship “Mitsuki Sarue” had maintained with Kisaki originally, all treated it as some kind of tasteless joke. Once they had learned it was the truth, though, they all felt a shotput tossed by an Olympic athlete into the air in the middle of an earthquake. This was Kisaki they were talking about, after all, alongside Sariel, aka Mitsuki Sarue. Anyone who knew them both didn’t need any further information to see why this was such an impossible couple.
But now they had a child, Yuzuki Kisaki—and as Sariel said, he’d quit his job at Sentucky Fried Chicken to raise her. Mayumi Kisaki, meanwhile, was still working her way up the ranks at Japan MgRonald Holdings, demonstrating her shrewdness on a daily basis. (When asked why she married Sariel, Mayumi always had the same answer: “For my life, he’s the most convenient partner in the universe.”)
“Hee-hee-hee… Honestly, I still feel like I’m living in a dream right now. Every night, when I see my wife and child before going to bed, I say a little prayer, begging to not wake up from this dream. Even though there’s no ‘God’ in my life at all.”
I can’t believe this happened. He had thought it, stated it, and shared it with others more times than he could count. It was a complete shift from his life up to that point, and he felt like he had to put it into words, lest it proved to be an illusion all along.
“Yeah… And if anything, I value the time I spent here far more than you do. I wouldn’t trade my time in Japan for anything.”
“But you didn’t know that Chiho Sasaki was coming home today.”
“Look,” Maou spat out, “customer or not, you gotta watch your mouth, all right?”
Sariel gave this a smile as he bit into his breakfast sandwich. “Well, it’s what you get for holding back at the end. I wish I could give you even a tiny slice of the happiness I’m feeling right now.”
“No thanks. I got enough.”
“So what’s this appointment that’s so much more important than Chiho?”
“Man, lay off. I don’t wanna say. If I do, Shoji’s gonna start yellin’ at me again.”
Maou almost seemed to despair at the thought.
“But it’s a work meeting. And along with that, my ol’ ball and chain’s coming back with our daughter. They made a couple stops on the way and have a lot of baggage to carry, so I agreed to meet them at Tokyo Station.”
“Ball and chain? That’s a pretty old-fashioned term. I don’t think young people these days would understand it.” Sariel grinned as he pictured the “ball and chain” in question. “If you’re making metaphors, why don’t you call her your ‘gal Friday’ or something?”
“Shut up.”
Maou let the joke slide.
“As your friend, let me give you some advice: Watch your step if you’re out on a moonless night. If you get stabbed and this place shuts down, that’d be a crisis for the entire Kisaki family. We’ll lose our favorite rest stop.”
“You’re not my friend. And I ride a scooter to and from work, so I’m fine. Anyway, I got work downstairs, so enjoy your breakfast.”
Kaori had just brought up her bag from the drugstore, so Maou passed by her on the staircase.
“Eesh. Don’t even remind me of moonless nights.”
The mumbling was overheard by Yoshiya Kohmura, the other part-timer at this café; he had already changed into his uniform and had just taken an order from another customer downstairs.
“Good morning, president. Did you say something?”
As he began grinding the coffee beans prepared in advance for him, Maou groggily recalled the events of three years ago. The end of the “assault on heaven,” as he and his friends called it. The conclusive event that eventually led him here, right to this moment.
“Oh, good morning, Yoshiya. No, nothing.”
Waving the question away, Maou set off to prepare for the lunch hour…