The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 3 Read Free

it.”
    Maou was the only one of them who expressed clear surprise.
    “Whoa, is that…?”
    But Hirose paid it no special mind as he filled out the receipt and ripped it off of the pad.
    “And there you go. Thanks again! Take good care of that thing for me, Maou. It’s a gift, I guess, yeah?”
    “Um, yeah…”
    Waving at Hirose as they put the bicycle shop behind them, Maou and Suzuno walked side by side as they headed toward the apartment building they each called home.
    Maou almost skipped as he giddily walked along, shiny new ride in hand. In Suzuno’s was a summer parasol, protecting her face against the pounding summer heat.
    “Hey, like, what’re you even gonna
do
with that receipt, anyway?”
    “If I retain a full account of my monetary resources here, I may be able to receive the equivalent amount back in the future, once I am finished with slaying you.”
    “Oh, you’re gonna report to the Church that the Devil King you were sent to kill bummed a bike off you instead?”
    Suzuno glared from underneath her parasol.
    “I would be happy to spread the word far and wide across the Church that the Devil King is a vile, conniving demon, one not even beneath begging a Church official for a bicycle.”
    “Hey, you know how politicians and stuff like to pretend they’re all ‘of the people’ and like that, right? I don’t see what’s so wrong about
me
doing that. Gotta prove that I got my finger on the pulse of the common man, you know? Plus, for me, it’s not even some fake act I’m putting on.”
    As the Devil King of the People bragged about his environmentally conscious (if dirt-poor and, indeed, conniving) lifestyle, he turned around to peer into a shop he almost walked right by.
    “Hang on, Suzuno. I wanna hit the stationery store.”
    Hitching his new bike at the side of the road and locking it up tight, Maou went into the small shop. The retail space was devoted more to cheap candy and kids’ trinkets than pens and paper, but Maou’s purchase was purely stationery, although still enough to make Suzuno tilt her head in confusion.
    “What do you need glue for?”
    “Hee-hee! How nice of you to ask. Behold!”
    With a greasy grin, he fished a small, red plastic plate from his pocket.
    “This is a reflector plate from my beloved Dullahan. The one you crushed into a pulp, if you recall. I pried it off after the cops called me over to haul it away. Kind of a memento, you know?”
    As he spoke, he used the glue to attach the piece to the shining metal bike basket.
    “With this, the soul of Dullahan, the noble steed who gallantly abandoned his life to protect his master, shall survive into the next generation! From this moment forward, you shall be named Dullahan…
II
!”
    “…How exciting.”
    Having an affinity for one’s accoutrements was hardly unusual, but a grown man giving a name to his mode of transport—his bicycle, no less—in this day and age was a pitiable occasion for anyone unlucky enough to witness it.
    “Are you quite ready then, Devil King? We should go.”
    That went double when the man in question was Satan, the Devil King, mortal foe of all mankind.
    The girl who went by the name Suzuno Kamazuki in Japan sighed a deep sigh as she proceeded on, not bothering to wait for Maou’s response.
    The clean, clear-glass hairpin stabbed into her hair shone a bright white in the afternoon summer sun as she dejectedly walked ahead.

    Satan, the Devil King. That was the name awarded the demon who mounted an attempt to conquer the faraway world of Ente Isla.
    Sadao Maou. That was the name of the young man living a shade away from downtown Tokyo, working an hourly fast-food job to keep himself fed.
    No one, neither man nor god, could ever have conceived of the bloodthirsty, ambitious Devil King going from world domination to eking out a part-time living in the Sasazuka neighborhood of Shibuya ward, Tokyo.
    It had been just over a year since he was defeated by the Hero Emilia Justina,