“Did Maou or Yusa force you into any of that Ente Isla stuff, Chiho?”
✦ ✦ ✦
That was the question Riho had asked her yesterday, eyes pointed straight at her.
Chiho, of course, denied it with all her might. The only times she’d really been put in danger against her will were when the underground mall collapsed in Shinjuku and during the Shuto Expressway rampage that Urushihara and Olba had carried out. Even those two experiences were cherished memories to her now—and in every other case, Chiho had actively volunteered to be by the side of Maou and his friends. In fact, whenever they tried to push her away, she’d use this or that tactic to stay close by and involved.
When Chiho explained all this, Riho smiled, trying to calm her down.
“Do you remember when Maou and Ashiya and Urushihara took that summer job over in Choshi? You wanted to go with them, but I stopped you then.”
“Yeah…”
“I wound up thinking better of it, but when I asked Yusa and Kamazuki to take you over, Yusa was actually against it at first.”
“Huh?”
“Yes, I think Yusa understood that you wanted to go, too. And she didn’t phrase it this strongly, but basically she said that Maou had work to do, she couldn’t let a teenage girl be by herself that long, and they couldn’t take responsibility for you at all times if something of the otherworldly sort happened. So she couldn’t agree to it. It’s pretty funny now that I look back at it.”
“Funny? Why?”
“I mean, aren’t those perfectly normal reasons?”
Chiho had wanted to join Maou on that job purely out of her own selfishness. And the fact Riho had wanted to push her on him—if you saw him and Emi as regular people—had to have been nothing but an annoyance. Thus, to a typical resident of Japan like Riho, Emi’s reaction was common sense.
“So I think it’s because of that. Even after I knew everything, I could tell this wasn’t Maou and Yusa getting you involved—it was you consciously getting yourself involved. I know I didn’t raise a dummy who’s clueless about what she’s doing. So even if you ran into danger, it’s not my job as a parent to be mad at you for that.”
“…Is that how you think of it?”
“Well, if you’d wound up dead or permanently disabled, that’d be a much different story. But getting angry about that… I don’t know. I just don’t feel like that’s what I should direct my frustration at.”
Riho was searching for words, a little unsure of her own feelings.
“But anyway, if they feel they have to apologize, I’m sure that’s something they see as necessary for themselves. So why not have them come over?”
“O-okay…”
Riho had already been given the chance to meet all of them, after all. To Chiho, this was enough to convince her that, well, that’s how it was.
✦ ✦ ✦
Now that everyone was here, and Chiho realized that her father not only didn’t know about Ente Isla, but also wasn’t even expecting a massive crowd and magic show, she was having a lot of trouble dealing. Despite that, though—as she took in Alas Ramus’s and Acieth’s appearances, and all the fallout from that—she began to think her mother had made the right choice after all.
“Well, if you need another clued-in third party to comment on anything, let me know, all right? And…if Acieth’s there, we’ll be ready to take any extra orders you may have, okay?”
Iwaki left them with those words, but having her daughter’s boss from work walk into this mess did nothing to soothe the mind of Chiho’s father.
“Will this…be enough? It won’t, will it?”
Looking at the receipt and knowing that Acieth’s voracious appetite still hadn’t settled down, Chiho assumed with a sigh that nobody else was likely to get a chance at this food order.