“Wow~ So this cute kid is the new maid you scouted, Manager?”
“Hey, don’t scare her. Sakura is still a high school student, you know.”
“Whaaat—I thought the Manager was committing a crime, abducting a middle school loli to be a maid!”
“…”
In the staff room of the Soft Cat Cafe, Akiba Sakura sat in a chair, trembling like a lab mouse being studied as she watched Niijima Yukina and another blonde girl wearing a pink maid uniform.
“Is it really okay to hand such a cute kid over to me?”
The blonde girl smiled as she bent down, bringing her delicate face close to Sakura’s, startling the latter and making her instinctively lean back.
“Eek—!”
“Careful!”
That lean caused the chair Sakura was sitting on to tilt, and then she fell backward completely.
“Ouch!”
With a crisp sound of the chair hitting the floor, Sakura fell flat on her back.
“Oh ho, white…”
Hearing the blonde girl’s words, Sakura hurriedly and instinctively moved to cover her skirt.
“So cute~”
As if she’d seen something very interesting, the blonde girl nodded with a smile, completely unaware that a fist the size of a sandbag was slowly approaching the back of her head…
“…”
“This is Hoshikawa Chinami. She’s the barista at our Soft Cat Cafe and also the makeup artist for the staff.”
Niijima Yukina clapped her hands, ignoring Hoshikawa Chinami behind her who now had a big lump on her head, and looked calmly at Sakura.
“Ah, oh… Hello, Senior Hoshikawa! My name is Akiba Sakura, pleased to meet you!”
“Mhm mhm, hello, Sakura-chan. You can just call me Chinami~”
Hoshikawa Chinami greeted Sakura with a smile, her gaze still fixed on Sakura’s face.
‘Is it my imagination?’
Ever since Sakura arrived at the Soft Cat Cafe’s staff room to report in, Hoshikawa Chinami’s gaze had been locked on Sakura’s face.
“Hey, Manager, I’m getting a bit impatient.”
Just as Sakura was about to open her mouth to ask why Hoshikawa Chinami kept staring at her, Chinami suddenly turned her face to look at Niijima Yukina, the impatience in her tone barely contained.
“You hold it in.”
Niijima Yukina shot a glare at Hoshikawa Chinami, then turned her gaze back to Sakura, who still looked utterly confused.
“Sakura-chan, do you have any prior experience working as a server or something similar?”
“Mhm mhm, I do!”
“Oh?”
Sakura’s answer surprised Niijima Yukina.
She hadn’t expected a sixteen-year-old girl to actually have experience.
‘She’s not lying to me, is she?’
“Mhm mhm, if that’s true, it’s a huge help. But I still want to remind you, being a maid cafe staff member is a bit different from servers at other restaurants. Normally, terms like ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ are all changed to ‘Master,’ you know? And the way you speak needs to be a bit more… affected, to provide customers with sufficient emotional value…”
“I get it, I get it. It’s just like the maids in manga, right~”
Sakura nodded with a smile, looking quite confident.
“Not quite, Sakura-chan. It’s not that simple, you know?”
“Huh?”
Hearing this, Sakura was immediately taken aback, not quite understanding what Niijima Yukina meant.
“Everything depends on the character persona you establish for yourself,”
Niijima Yukina explained with a smile.
“Your attitude towards ‘Masters’ all stems from the character persona you set for yourself. If your persona is that of a gentle and approachable maid, then what I mentioned above are the key points. But if…”
At this point, Niijima Yukina leaned in mysteriously close to Sakura.
“Man… Manager?”
“Sakura-chan, do you have any ideas yourself?”
Niijima Yukina didn’t continue, but instead asked Sakura.
“I… I don’t.”
Sakura seemed flustered by Niijima Yukina’s question.
She had indeed worked as a restaurant server before, but that was in her past life.
Plus, now she was going to be a maid at the Soft Cat Cafe.
Before coming here, she thought it would just be like in the manga, calling people ‘Master, Master’ and acting cute.
She hadn’t expected she’d need to establish a character persona for herself.
“It’s fine if you don’t. I actually have one in mind for you, one that suits your temperament perfectly!”
“Huh?”
Sakura suddenly felt a very bad premonition and quickly asked, “What… what kind of persona is it, exactly?”
“Let’s set that question aside for now. First, let’s get you all dolled up, okay?”
With that, Niijima Yukina gave Hoshikawa Chinami a look.
The latter nodded excitedly, then fixed Sakura with an intense, almost predatory stare.
“???”
‘Wait, why do I feel a sudden, inexplicable murderous intent?’
The Hoshikawa Chinami in front of her picked up an eyebrow pencil and foundation, approaching Sakura with a ‘kindly’ expression.
“Tha… that, Senior Hoshikawa?”
“…”
“…”
“All done!”
Hoshikawa Chinami looked at Sakura, who was now wearing her work uniform, pinched her nose as if it were bleeding, and admired her masterpiece with relish—
The girl’s hair was now styled into twin tails, the ends falling naturally.
A pink cross-shaped hairpin adorned the left side of her hair, and each tail had a small pink ball decoration.
“Se… Senior Hoshikawa…”
Sakura’s eyes, under the effect of colored contacts, now showed a light pink hue.
The peculiarity of the outfit and Hoshikawa Chinami’s scorching gaze made her eyes dart around shyly, a faint blush mixing with the beauty mark at the corner of her eye.
“So incredibly cute! Sakura-chan, you’re so adorable. You were already very pretty without makeup, but I never thought a little light makeup would elevate your cuteness to a whole new dimension! It’s making my heart race, I just want to hug you!”
Hoshikawa Chinami looked at the little beauty before her, her own heart pounding.
‘This time, my skills are just… too perfect!!!!!’
“St… stop joking, Senior.”
Sakura instinctively covered the deliberately heart-shaped cutout on the maid uniform’s chest, inwardly complaining about how oddly designed the outfit was.
“Sakura-chan, stop covering it! Be careful not to mess up the falsies, okay?”
Hoshikawa Chinami, never one to miss a chance to stir things up, covered her mouth and chuckled lightly.
“Ugh…”
Sakura pouted unhappily.
“Senior Hoshikawa has such a twisted sense of humor. There was no need to wear any falsies…”
“Not wearing them would be a waste of this outfit’s design, wouldn’t it?”
Hoshikawa Chinami gave a thumbs-up, looking at Sakura with fervent enthusiasm.
“Don’t worry, you look super cute like this!”
“Yo, all finished?”
Niijima Yukina chose this moment to return to the staff room, her eyes lighting up when she saw Sakura.
“My, my, who is this adorable little maid? Since when did our shop have someone this cute?”
“Stop teasing me, Manager!”
‘I feel… already tainted.’