“This is your order, Master! Now, we shall perform a little magic to fill your omurice with love!”
After placing the pea-laden omurice on the table, Alice, in her black and white maid uniform, bowed to the customer. She then produced a tube of ketchup, intending to draw a heart on the dish.
Watching her, one might think this was a typical scene. While such establishments were usually found in places like Akihabara in their original world, a series of minor historical coincidences had propelled maid cafés and restaurants in this world to global fame. From Buenos Aires to Dublin, their renown was widespread.
Alas, decades of portal cataclysms had since confined these charming eateries to city-states under the control of the Council or the Free Army, where the emergence of uncontrollable interdimensional portals was not a threat. Such as the area within New Ravenna’s city walls.
Alice’s current location was a maid restaurant situated less than two hundred meters inside New Ravenna’s first layer of city walls. Besides her, the other three members of the “Pink FM Frequency” band—Xia Hua, Anastasia, and Cassandra—were also present.
The reason for her donning a maid uniform was simple: gaining entry into the secure inner city-state was no easy feat in these times.
While Anastasia could theoretically procure disguised corporate employee IDs for them—be it from Helios Tech or any other company forming the Council—the challenge lay in passing off a group of high school girls as senior corporate staff. Granted, this world boasted incredibly advanced biotechnology, capable of freezing one’s apparent age to a certain extent. However, due to significant risks, only a handful of tech oligarchs, masters of the craft, would “freeze” themselves in such a manner, primarily to flaunt their technological prowess.
In other words, the vast majority of corporate employees, especially senior staff authorized to work within the “Castle” zone, were at least middle-aged. A group of unknown high school girls swaggering in would, by all appearances, be an insult to anyone’s intelligence.
However, infiltrating the heavily guarded “Castle” without being senior corporate employees was exceedingly troublesome, let alone gaining entry to the Honorius Palace where Shirley was located.
Fortunately, just as the team crafting the infiltration plan was grappling with this dilemma, Cassandra suddenly experienced several premonitions.
Unlike the abilities of her sisters, Cassandra’s power of premonition, though also stemming from the mysterious forces of the Lihentian, was beyond her conscious control. Fragmented glimpses of the future could manifest unexpectedly at any moment, and their content varied wildly, making it impossible to pinpoint exact times or locations.
Yet, serendipitously, this time Cassandra not only saw a calendar in her vision but also the destination’s house number, allowing her to make a rare and accurate deduction.
She foresaw two things: first, that their group would begin working at the “Sweet Magic” maid restaurant in New Ravenna’s Upper City a week later; and second, that after a short period of employment there, they would have an opportunity to enter Honorius Palace as maids.
“What even is this? It sounds like some idiotic plot point from a brainless, silly manga like ‘Maid X Diaries’! If this were in a novel, readers would tear it apart!” Ji Bingyao immediately exclaimed after hearing Cassandra’s premonition.
“Indeed, I also find it quite… idiotic,” Anastasia admitted, her face flushed crimson. “I-I-I… I am the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Free Army! For a dignified Lieutenant General to become a maid, even if it’s just for show, it’s… it’s…”
“But don’t you want to save Sister Salome anymore?” Cassandra asked, her eyes welling up as she looked at her eldest sister.
“Then I’ll just go!” Finally, Anastasia, with a hint of self-sacrificing resolve, made up her mind.
“Everyone, Cassandra’s premonitions have one major advantage: while uncontrollable, what she ‘sees’ will come to pass, as long as we don’t actively try to avoid it! So… so…”
“So we’re going to be maids?” Alice asked.
“Ah, yes. Though it will be an inconvenience for a few days, but…”
“Wonderful! I’ve wanted to do this for ages!”
Alice’s reply nearly made everyone’s jaws drop to the floor.
“I’ll show everyone the true capabilities of a maid! Let them witness the essence of the Maid’s Way!”
Indeed, Alice truly meant it. According to her, during a trip to Akihabara several years prior, she had been struck by a profound longing upon seeing the maids in a café, sparking a peculiar urge to become one herself. Unfortunately, due to her age, she had never been able to fulfill her dream of working in a maid café or restaurant.
Cassandra’s premonition, for her, was undeniably a chance to make that dream a reality.
With the plan solidified, the group swiftly completed their preparations. Aided by an infiltration squad under Anastasia’s command, they arrived on the Apennine Peninsula and subsequently slipped into New Ravenna.
Unlike the heavily fortified central “Castle” district, the densely populated Upper City had less stringent entry restrictions; as long as one passed screening and was confirmed not to be a parasite host, blending in was simple.
The only complication was Anastasia’s cat ears and tail…
However, the Lieutenant General simply leveraged her extraordinary athletic abilities, scaling the city wall and slipping through a section where surveillance equipment was temporarily malfunctioning.
According to Cassandra’s premonition, all they had to do was work diligently at “Sweet Magic” for a period, then await their chance to enter Honorius Palace…
The only problem was that Alice’s “skills” seemed to differ somewhat from everyone’s expectations.
To be precise, while her desire to become a maid and embody the spirit of the Maid’s Way was commendable, there was often a significant disconnect between ambition and reality…
“You idiot! Is this your ‘magic’?”
After being splattered head-to-toe with ketchup, the customer, who had been smiling moments before, suddenly erupted, leaping to his feet.
“What are you doing?!”
“Whoopsie-daisy! So sorry, so sorry, so sorry!”
Alice frantically fumbled for a white towel, attempting to wipe the ketchup off the customer. This was already the third time in four days she had “bloody-ied” a customer due to excessive force.
Unexpectedly, just as she bent down to first wipe the ketchup from the customer’s trousers, her ample bosom “opportunely” brushed against a freshly served cup of coffee, spilling its entire dark contents between the customer’s legs!
“Waaahhhhhhh—”
The customer, having suffered Alice’s unique brand of service, erupted into a hoarse scream, leaping high into the air. Simultaneously, every patron in “Sweet Magic” fixed their gaze upon him.
“I’m so sorry, truly, truly sorry!”
A flustered Alice immediately knelt, preparing to perform a “dogeza”—a gesture of profound apology common in both her original world and this one.
But then, an even worse calamity struck: the white towel she had just pulled out to wipe the ketchup off the customer had, by sheer misfortune, fallen right at her feet!
This compounded the trouble significantly: Alice, losing her footing on her own white towel, slipped abruptly and tumbled directly into the unfortunate customer’s arms.
Her two enormous “fat spheres” nearly suffocated him instantly, and as the hapless patron fell, he even flung his briefcase from his grasp.
“Uwaah!”
The briefcase flew a considerable distance, and through a confluence of various coincidental factors, it precisely struck Shijō Yurizumi, who was playing the saxophone in the center of the restaurant, dressed in a maid uniform.
A large bump instantly swelled on her forehead, and she rolled her eyes back before collapsing.
“Huh? Are you alright?”
“Snap out of it, chuunibyou… ah, no, Yurizumi!”
Anastasia and Eileen, who had been performing a pole dance behind Yurizumi as cat-eared maids, rushed over and helped the dazed Yurizumi, whose eyes had turned into spirals, to her feet.
Meanwhile, the poor customer finally escaped Alice’s suffocating attack of massive “fat spheres,” gasping for breath as he stumbled toward them.
He was a tall, thin man of ordinary appearance; though he seemed quite young, his head was already bald and shiny like a polished gourd. Covered in ketchup and with a large wet patch between his legs, he looked utterly jinxed.
For a moment, Anastasia assumed the man intended to confront the owner. Yet, strangely, despite his furious gnashing of teeth, he merely snatched up his briefcase with a hurried expression, then, without a word of complaint to anyone, turned and headed straight for the restaurant exit.
“Phew… I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”
Since the customer neither assaulted anyone nor demanded compensation, Alice, having caused trouble yet again, let out a long sigh of relief, then began tearfully apologizing to everyone.
“I didn’t mean to…”
“Yes, we all know you’re notoriously clumsy,” poor Yurizumi said, rubbing her forehead where the briefcase had struck her. “Back then, you tried to play both guitar and saxophone, but you just couldn’t get the hang of either, eventually becoming the band’s lead singer… Now look at us; if this keeps up, we’re definitely going to get fired, boo hoo hoo…”
Of course, Yurizumi’s talk of “being fired” was an exaggeration.
The owner of the “Sweet Magic” maid restaurant was, in fact, an informant for the Free Army. Although he typically operated as a “sleep cell” unit, refraining from proactive actions, he was obligated to provide assistance to allies when necessary.
While he didn’t know the exact identities of the maids, he had been informed that they were “their people.” Thus, while Alice’s antics would certainly earn her a severe scolding, dismissal was highly improbable.
“Ugh, I must intensify my Maid’s Way training, aiming to become an excellent maid! I won’t disappoint the customers again!” Alice mumbled.
“Still, this customer was remarkably magnanimous… Why did he leave without saying a word?”
“Indeed, something’s amiss,” Anastasia immediately realized, prompted by Alice’s comment.
When the clumsy Alice had “anointed” him with ketchup moments ago, the bald young man had clearly been on the verge of erupting in anger! Yet, he had suddenly abandoned the idea and simply walked away.
Could Alice’s massive “fat spheres” offering a face-to-face “greeting” have healed his wounded spirit and quelled his rage?
Of course, such a possibility was virtually nonexistent; at the very least, when he approached them, the customer was still seething with fury.
His sole objective, however, seemed to be his briefcase!
If that were the case…
“Hey, you! Stop right there!” Anastasia called out as the customer was about to exit the maid restaurant.
“Put down the briefcase!”