After they’d been at the café for about an hour, they began to practice the fundamentals of being a maid. Rule #1: Greet the customer the minute they enter.
“W-welcome to the shop, Master,” Manako stammered, face completely red. She tugged at her short skirt to try and cover herself while her eye wavered with anxiety. She was trying her best to look at the customer and smile, even if she wasn’t succeeding. “Th-thank you for your order, sir. Moé moé kyun. ♡” She made a heart with her hands and assumed the traditional maid pose.
“Whoooa! That was amazing, Manako-san!”
“Manako-san, now I’ve seen your maid outfit, I’m happy to die for the cause!”
The two human men she was posing for were the MON support they’d been promised.
After a crash course from Ren, Manako had changed into the maid outfit and started practice right away. That made the duo practice dummies of a sort. Not that they minded—they were so enthusiastic about this assignment that it made them seem young again.
“This is too embarrassing,” Manako said.
“No way! It’s awesome, Manako-san!”
“Even your embarrassment is cute! I don’t know why you need to practice!”
They weren’t receiving a bonus like she was—they were just that excited to see Manako in a maid outfit. She moaned and hid her face behind the tray she was holding.
Kimihito was seated at the next table, watching. The men’s sharp suits struck a contrast with their behavior. In fact, they were wearing the same style of suit that Smith wore, which probably meant they were her colleagues. “Uh,” he interrupted.
“Oh!” The shorter one straightened himself out. “Sorry about that, Kimihito-kun, we might have gone overboard.”
“D-don’t worry about it. We haven’t met, have we?”
“No, no.” He bowed his head, and the other followed. “I work at the Office of Interspecies Cultural Exchange. Code name: Salmon.”
“I too am an employee of the Office of Interspecies Cultural Exchange. Code name: Double Two One,” the taller agent said, “but, please, call me Dubtwo.” He stood out as much more built than his coworker.
The two of them, given their excitement, were clearly big Manako fans, but as they handed Kimihito their business cards, they transformed into serious civil servants.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Kurusu Kimihito. Are you, uh, Smith-san’s subordinates?”
“Essentially, yes. The government is still developing its approach to liminals, so our function and workload varies. At the moment we get stuck wi—err, assigned—almost any job related to them.”
“Our specific role is supporting the actual field members of MON, like Manako-san and her team.”
They both bowed their heads again.
Kimihito only really saw Smith, who was his personal Cultural Exchange Coordinator, and the field members of MON. But of course there would be other government agents involved—as many roles as there were liminals in the program. It was thanks to their efforts that liminals like his girls could experience Japan safely.
“We owe you, Kimihito-kun, for taking on this craz—this sudden—request.”
“Yeah, we were at a total loss how to get the test cases done otherwise.”
So even Smith’s own employees though she asked too much.
“Thanks again for all your help!”
“Yeah, and we’ll help you out here in return, to make sure Manako-san does okay.”
Salmon and Dubtwo finished summarizing the situation with broad, gleaming smiles.
With two government employees in the mix, Kimihito assumed there wouldn’t be any trouble this time around. Or rather, he’d started to wonder whether he was even needed today. Ren was also here, advising Manako and Cerea from the back, and though he had concerns about her as a person, she’d already shown she was a reliable maid. Everything seems under control, he thought.
“By the way, Kimihito-kun!” Dubtwo called.
“Hm?”
“About Manako’s uniform…” Salmon continued.
They both pointed at her.
“Isn’t that shy smile, serving customers despite her embarrassment, totally perfect?”
“Not that I don’t love her sniper outfit, but with all those frills, the maid outfit is something else!”
“One-eyed girls are the best!” When it came to Manako, they immediately lost their professionalism. He couldn’t come up with a good response, and Manako seemed upset, too.
“I-I’m sorry about them,” she said to him. “They just—they get distracted when I’m around.”
“They’re just being fanboys, right?” He didn’t understand the appeal himself, but they seemed fixated on her single eye.
Overhearing the word “fan,” the men nodded agreeably.
“No way, that’s impossible!” Manako shouted, simultaneously adamant and disappointed.
Kimihito was surprised she’d try to deny it, considering how open they were about their feelings.
“I’m unreliable. They’re just here because Ms. Smith was worried that I’d mess up. Look, I can’t even wear the outfit right. It’s super weird on me.”
“That’s not true at all,” he replied without hesitation. “It looks great on you.”
“Ah…th-thank you very much.” She continued hiding her face with the tray, but her grip relaxed a little as his reassurance sank in. As she lowered it slightly, her smile seemed more genuine. “Am I really going to be okay at customer service? Won’t I scare people?”
From the kitchen, where she was wiping some cups clean, Ren yelled, “Don’t worry about it!!” She’d been listening in on them the whole time. “The owner sent a text to our regulars saying we’d have a cyclops and a centaur on shift today, so everyone who comes by will be here to see you two! Or at least to see liminal maids!”
“Ahhh,” Manako sighed, “I-I guess I should thank you.” She gripped tighter on the tray again, her eye welling with tears.
Even the owner of the café seemed dependable; they hadn’t shown their face, but they’d managed to sort out the customers, the support, and the training. Ren’s voice came from deep within the kitchen: “We’re gonna be busy today! It’ll be packed!”
“Don’t worry, Manako-san. Because of the ongoing cultural exchange between our worlds, the discrimination against cyclopeans has sharply decreased. Furthermore: this is Akihabara! It’s at the forefront of cultural change, and locals can find ‘moé’ in anything. In fact one-eye moé has been around for ages,” Salmon said.
“That’s right! None of these customers will be scared,” Dubtwo added.
“I’ll be in the kitchen, so the floor’s all yours, Manako-san and Centorea-san,” Ren said nonchalantly as she leaned over the counter.
“Wh-what?!” Manako gasped.
Ren balled up her fist and grinned. “You’ll be fine! Just don’t forget the warm hospitality I taught you earlier. You’ve done the coursework, now it’s exam time!!” If any trouble arose she’d probably intervene, but until then, it seemed she’d be spectating from the other side of the divider. This was too much tough love in Kimihito’s opinion, but he kept quiet. Ren tended to be harsh on herself, so it made sense she’d apply the same standards to others, whether she realized it or not.
“O-okay. Okay. Don’t forget…hospitality…” Manako said to herself.
“We’ll be cheering you on, Manako,” Kimihito said.
“This is an important duty… I’ll do my best!” She was serious to her core, but she was also very receptive to their support. Her shyness faded as she found the resolve to do her job. If she could survive the kind of action MON got into, she could survive this.
“Besides—” Kimihito was interrupted by a figure emerging from the changing room.
“Master,” Centorea greeted him, now in the same style of maid outfit as Manako.
Centaur women were large, and while they’d made a blouse to accommodate her figure, they’d underestimated just how big her bust was. It looked like she’d burst the buttons if she breathed too hard. Her horse-like lower half was hidden inside a voluminous skirt. When Kimihito did her laundry, he sometimes mistook her regular skirts for blackout curtains. This maid skirt, made of much finer fabric, could’ve been a curtain in a Western manor instead.
One agent began, “Manako’s a regular girl other than the eye, but Centorea needed her clothes custom-made—”
“—so we had the MON outfitters sew it from scratch,” the second agent finished. Kimihito wondered what MON’s paramilitary outfitters thought of being asked to make a maid outfit, but it would’ve been impossible to source otherwise, so he was relieved it’d been taken care of.
“Er, Milord,” she said, “what say you?” She looked composed, but her blush gave her away.
“It’s great, Cerea,” he said with a smile.
“A-are you certain? I fear I am unsuited to this style of garment.” She adjusted her arms to keep from bursting out of the blouse.
“Hmm? Yeah?” Her movements were distracting. The more she fussed with the blouse, the more attention she called to her jiggling breasts.
“Um, Miss Centorea,” Manako said, “I’m embarrassed by the outfit too, so let’s just focus on the job together, okay?”
“C-certainly. It’s for the sake of interspecies cultural exchange—we sacrifice our dignity to a noble cause.” She nodded in assent, duty-driven as ever.
Manako made another attempt at forming a heart with her hands. “Moé—moé—kyun—! ♡”
“M-moé…” Centorea’s fingers trembled as she made her own attempt. “Moé…moé…” Actually, her whole body was shaking. “Moé, moé—moé, moé—rrrgh, I refuse!” She gave in and threw her hands over her face.
Through them, she continued to speak. “I cannot allow myself to perform such weak, childish movements! Augh!!”
“W-weak?” Manako spluttered.
“Not to imply that you are weak, Manako—”
“No, it’s okay, I’m kind of a coward.”
“The trouble is how foolish I feel, failing to perform such a simple motion. This ‘moé,’ it vexes me!”
“It really is terrible,” Manako anxiously agreed.
Both of them looked to Kimihito, their reliable chaperone.
“Hmm,” he said. If they couldn’t handle a simple “moé moé kyun ♡,” there was no chance of them completing the maid job. Manako was close to getting it, but Centorea’s failure was making them both nervous and putting the whole day at risk.
More than that, though, Centorea was falling into despair. Her tail and ears sagged, and it was impossible not to feel bad for her. Kimihito had to do something to help. “F-for now, why not try out the rest of the menu?” He grabbed around for it.
“The rest of—the menu?” Manako asked.
“Right, uh, like—” As Kimihito fumbled, Salmon came to the rescue with the main menu sheet, while Dubtwo provided the special menu. There was a highlighted listing for The Maid’s Ketchup Omurice. “Why don’t you try this one?”
Salmon and Dubtwo nodded energetically.
Manako and Centorea looked at each other, then reached a decision. Cerea scrutinized Kimihito with a sharp expression, and Manako turned her eye over to him. In unison, they gave him a nod.