The door to the 513th flat wasn't left ajar—it jammed open.
A crumpled soda can was stuck below, and whoever was inside tried his best to shut it despite that. They didn't bother to check what was wrong, though, and left the whole thing as is.
Konrad knocked, his knuckles touching the wood without making much sound, then—
No, he couldn't leave it like that. He tried to nudge the can out of the way with his feet.
The metal scraping against the floor was louder than his knock, but it came free after a minute of fiddling. Still, it didn't make it any easier to get inside.
When he tried to push the door open, he heard more clanking and clattering from the inside.
It took him quite an effort to force his way in, and he soon realised why.
There was a damned trash heap blocking the way right on the other side.
Dozens of halfway crumpled soda cans, discarded plastic wrappings, boxes, and more.
Konrad wasn't a clean freak by any means, but he almost doubled over, trying his best not to throw up. And of course, the garbage was only part of it—the stale air itself was much worse.
This was no way to live, not in any world.
"Hello? I'm coming in," he said once he regained his footing and took a step inside. But again, it was more of an alibi he whispered, rather than to get someone's attention. "Midori-kun?"
Once the scrap pile settled, it was all quiet.
He tried not to step on anything, but it was impossible. The trash flowed like water at high tide, reaching past his ankles as he tiptoed over it. Those cans were the most abundant of them all.
Energy drinks? From the packaging, they looked like it.
He used to grab a few when doing his endless overtime in his previous life, but—
Fifty cans, only in the tiny, cramped space beyond the door?! If the Demon Lord arrived three months ago and hadn't thrown out his trash ever since, this was still way too much.
Was he even human?!
He saw no sign of him yet, but the flat itself was tiny.
Despite how huge this building was, it must have been smaller than the one Kaede got for him.
Beyond the pile of junk, there was a main room, but getting there was quite a hike. The blinds were all closed, but the light was on, and the composition of the mess changed deeper inside.
More papers, a few books, much less actual trash, but it still looked like a disaster.
He noticed a can at the room's threshold that wasn't crumpled yet. Its bright red color must have grabbed his attention, and its spraying head made him wonder.
Konrad picked it up to check the spicy emblem on the front.
"It doesn't look like he cooks, though," he mumbled, turning to the scattered pages instead.
The messy writing didn't resemble any of Earth's languages, but Konrad recognized them.
Even the handwriting was familiar, bringing back painful memories.
He used to copy an entire codex's worth of the Green Mage's notes, and his wrist never forgot.
This time, the theme was—
"You missed your only chance to kill me," Midori-kun yelled, startling him.
Konrad couldn't even see him before.
He was too distracted by the mess in the room and missed the young boy hidden underneath.
Now he clutched another spray bottle—that one's green—holding it like a weapon.
Was it, though?
Kaede said it was impossible to buy guns in Japan, and he came without anything to defend himself. She also told him he was harmless, no mana or anything, but—
Konrad almost fell back onto the trash he had avoided so far.
To brace himself and find his balance, he also raised his red spray without realising.
He pressed its head, and a tiny amount of substance squirted out into the stale air of the room.
In that enclosed space, it was more than enough to make him tear up. And Maou Midori's response made things a thousand times worse. He pushed down hard on his own bottle, and—
Bug spray? It was bug spray. The cheapest bugrepellent he had ever seen.
Nothing lethal, but again, with all the stale smells mixing in a tiny room—
"Stop, idiot. We'll both suffocate to death," Konrad yelled, trying to cover his mouth and look for an escape route. "The window," he coughed. "Open the fucking window."
He tore open the blinds and lunged for the latch.
As soon as he yanked it down, he realised it was a door to the tiny balcony, not a window.
But it worked all the same.
He drank the fresh air as if he couldn't breathe for an hour. It was intoxicating. Almost too much. And when he looked down and realised he was six stories above the street—
As he got older, Konrad realised more and more that he wasn't fond of heights.
Riding a dragon into battle? Fine. Flying on a passenger jet? Okay.
Standing atop the world and looking down into the abyss? Oh, no, no, no. No.
He gripped the railing on the one-foot-wide balcony as if his life depended on it. And when the Demon Lord finally crashed by his side, desperate for the clean air, too, it almost did.
"The fuck is wrong with you?" Konrad panted, doing his best not to look down.
"You're one to talk?!" Midori-kun moaned, looking no more than a startled child right now. To think this was a two-hundred-year-old man aiming to take over many worlds—
"I'm talking," Konrad said, puffing his chest. "I came to bring you today's notes, and—"
"And you tried to kill me in my sleep with pepper-spray," the kid claimed, giving him a pause.
"A pepper-what?"
He didn't answer, only pointing at the can he was still holding.
The red marking on it was a big, angry chili curving around Japanese letters.
So it was him, holding an actual weapon?!
"I picked this up from the doorstep and thought it was for cooking," Konrad shoved it into Midori-kun's hands. Now that he said it out loud, he found it ridiculous, too.
"Are you insane?!" the kid asked, gripping the can and turning it straight back towards him.
"I'm not the one living inside a trash heap," he scoffed, looking back into the messy room. "I'm surprised you haven't contracted a nasty disease already. What the hell?"
"What?!" the Demon Lord scoffed. "What am I supposed to do with it?"
Was that a serious question?
"You serious?!" Konrad repeated, having no idea what else to say to something like that. "Throw them out?! Why on Earth would you pile up your junk inside the flat?"
Another scoff, as he looked down the street. Konrad felt dizzy even without following his gaze.
"Throw them out? That feels very rude. Look how clean that street is."
Wait, hold on.
"Are you for real?" he asked again. "I mean, throw it out into the trash, not into the street. There is garbage collection everywhere. Did you live under a rock, you—"
Oh. Well, in a way—
Things like that didn't exist on Kasserlane. It was obvious to him, having already lived an entire lifetime on Earth. But for this old man looking like a kid? He took a deep breath of fresh air.
"Okay. I meant to give you today's notes, but before that—let's clean this place up."