And then there we were—at class 2-B’s maid café.
“I believe I’ll have...the omelet rice and a coffee, please. What would you like, Yotsuba?” asked Mio.
“Huh? Uhh... Orange juice and a slice of cake,” I ordered in a fluster.
Okay...who is this girl I’m sitting with all of a sudden?! She’s all graceful and ladylike and stuff! I can practically hear one of those fancy-shmancy sound effects they use to show that characters are high-class playing in the background!
As Mio watched me fall into a state of total bewilderment, a very slight, satisfied smile flashed across her face. It was like she was silently saying, This sort of persona matches nicely with how I look now, doesn’t it? or something along those lines. The thought had already crossed my mind when I first saw her by the shoe cubbies, but I was more sure than ever now: She wasn’t a pro idol who took on acting gigs for nothing!
“And...will that be all for you?”
“Hyeeek!”
And then, with a spine-chilling sensation that I had to imagine was a lot like how it felt to take on the Ice Bucket Challenge, my easygoing admiration of Mio’s acting chops was swept away by a voice so frigid it felt downright lethal! It came from a certain waitress who I’d been doing my absolute best to not focus on—even though she’d had my full attention since the very moment that I stepped into the room—and now I did my best to give her a nod without looking her in the eye, or anywhere even close to it.
“Yup...’s fine, thanks...”
“Understood. Your order will be ready momentarily.”
I could actually hear her inner voice, I swear. Specifically, I could hear the inner voice of the (frilly, floofy maid-uniform-clad) waitress saying, “Why are you here?”, “Leave. Now,” and “You’ll make a decent meal for the sharks in whichever corner of Tokyo Bay I end up sinking you in.”
“Hmm. You know, I don’t think I was giving this cultural festival enough credit,” Mio said, shifting back to her usual tone as the waitress went on her way. “It’s pretty decently put together, actually. The uniforms are on point, and that waitress was seriously so pretty. A little stiff in the expression department, though... In fact, she was glaring at us so hard, you’d think we murdered her whole family or something. Then again, I guess pretty girls who want nothing to do with you are popular in their own right.”
Right? They really did go all out on this café. And the waitress really was pretty, wasn’t she?
There was just one slight problem: the very real possibility that said waitress was, in fact, going to kill me at some point in the immediate future. Yes, indeed—the slender, well-endowed girl who looked incredibly natural in a frilly maid uniform and had a name tag with “Mai (heart)” written on it pinned to her chest was, in fact, an emissary from the netherworld sent to drag me down to the Great Beyond.
That’s right. I’d found myself in class 2-B. Which is to say, Mai Koganezaki’s class.
The moment I looked at the cultural festival booklet and saw that Koganezaki’s class would be doing a maid café, I’d sent her a text saying, “I’ll stop by for sure!” She’d responded with a text that read, “I’ll kill you if you do,” complete with a middle finger emoji. It had, to put it mildly, stuck out in my memory a little. And so, when Mio told me that was where she wanted to go, I’d started feverishly praying that Koganezaki wouldn’t be working a shift when we arrived—and ended up having precisely none of those prayers answered. Given my track record for these things, of course they weren’t.
“I wonder if she’ll take a picture with us if we ask? What do you think, Yotsuba?”
“Huh?! Yeaaah, I, umm, think she probably wouldn’t be very happy about that...”
“Oh? Isn’t that the point, though? You can just tell that she doesn’t want to be wearing a maid uniform, and the fact that she’s being forced to wear it anyway is exactly what makes it work so well.”
“I...kind of get that, actually,” I admitted.
Koganezaki really did look pretty darn good in a maid uniform. That wasn’t surprising, of course—she had the sort of figure that would let her look good in just about anything. Seeing her dressed like that, by the way, reminded me of how I’d ended up wearing a maid uniform as well when I went to visit her apartment with Emma. It was really embarrassing, but knowing that I was doing it for her sake had given me the drive I needed to muster up my courage and put it on anyway.
Considering that she’d seen me in a maid uniform, maybe this was a fair trade? Maybe it was okay for me to feast my eyes on her maid-uniformed figure? Surely it was, right? These were all rhetorical questions, right? Of course they were!
Wham!
“Pgyah!”
“Thank you for waiting. Your coffee and orange juice.”
O-Oh, jeez, that scared me...
The sound of my glass being slammed onto the table dispelled my defiant attitude in the blink of an eye. Needless to say, the merciless, maid-impersonating assassin who’d brutally dispatched my will to assert myself was none other than Koganezaki herself. She’d set my glass of orange juice down so forcefully that she just barely avoided spilling any of its contents, then set down Mio’s coffee with the gentle care you’d expect from a waitress. The message couldn’t have been clearer: If she wanted to, she could end me at any given moment. And even if she didn’t, my heart might just give up the ghost and do the job for her!
“Here’s your omelet rice and cake!” a different waitress said as she brought our food to our table.
Oh, that was close... I thought. I’d been worried that Koganezaki would shove my slice of cake right into my face if she was the one who delivered it. In fact, I was totally convinced she would’ve!
“Umm, excuse me,” said Mio.
“Yes...?” Koganezaki replied.
“It said on the menu that you’d cast the ‘yummy-yummy spell’ on our food if we asked? And I’m asking.”
“Wha—?!” I gasped. I almost tried to stop her, but it was already far too late. Mio had already finished making her request by the time I realized what she was doing, and since the waitress who’d brought our food had already moved on to another table...the only one left to fulfill her order was Koganezaki.
Koganezaki paused for a moment...then shot me an incredibly pointed glare.
“You brought her here, so you deal with her”...? Wha— Huh?! Did Koganezaki talk to me telepathically just now?! S-Sorry! Don’t know her! She’s a total stranger! Just happened to sit next to me!
“Is that not okay...?” Mio asked. Her shoulders were slumped, and she had tears in her eyes. She looked so genuinely depressed that for a moment, I almost believed that she was a perfectly ordinary, slightly timid high school girl who’d worked up her courage to make the request.
Her acting’s incredible... But no, seriously, please stop! You have no idea what sort of price I’m going to have to pay when this is all over!
“...As you wish,” said Koganezaki, ignoring my terrified shivering. It seemed she’d taken pity on Mio—or, really, on Mio’s totally fake schoolgirl persona—and agreed in the most purely emotionless tone of voice I’d ever heard come out of her mouth. I watched on pins and needles as Koganezaki turned to Mio’s omelet, gulped...
“Y-Yummy yummy, in your tummy...”
...and somehow, just barely, formed a heart with trembling fingers that she aimed at the dish. Her whole face was bright red, and she looked like she was on the verge of tears as she forced herself to recite the “spell” in the most weary, reluctant way imaginable.
“...That’s all.”
“Oooh,” Mio cooed, throwing in a round of applause for good measure. I had no idea what she was so impressed by.
Koganezaki turned to face me, her fists clenched as tightly as they could possibly go. The glare she shot in my direction all but screamed, This is your fault, and you’ll be dead three times over by the time you finish making up for it.
“Okay, but that was really cute, Koganeza— Owww?!”
She flicked me in the forehead! Why, though?! I was just trying to be nice!