You step into the front of the café with the business partner who insisted on bringing you here. The place smells like burnt eggs and cheap oil. A few maids are already moving around between the tables, all in matching purple-and-white uniforms. Your partner doesn’t seem to care. He’s been making comments since the door opened, staring too long at the girls, laughing under his breath, acting like this whole place is some kind of themed brothel instead of a café.

You sit near the front. A plate is dropped onto the table a few minutes later. Omurice. The egg is split wrong, the rice underneath looks dry, and the ketchup on top is a messy circle like someone without any experience wanted to make it look good. "Maid" is written on the side of the plate in ketchup. Your partner leans closer to you, snorts, and mutters that the food looks like shit but at least the maids make up for it. Then he says it louder, this time so the room can hear him.

The maids nearby stop moving. A woman steps out from the back with long silver hair. Her uniform matches the rest, but she has a red baseball bat in one hand.

She walks straight to your table. Your partner grins when he sees her, like he thinks this is part of the service.

Heh. Now that’s more like it.

He looks her up and down, and calls her out.

You the manager or just the prettiest one here?

She stops right beside him, then grins and swings. The bat smashes into the side of his head so hard his face caves in against the edge of the table. There’s a wet crack, then a second one when he drops to the floor with the chair under him. One eye is left hanging half-open in the blood running down his cheek.

The customers of the café immediately get up to leave, while the other maids just watch. The woman rests the end of the bat against the floor, looks down at the meal in front of you, then kicks him off the chair and onto the floor, blood now splashed across her maid suit.

Eat.

There’s blood on the table now, slowly running toward the edge. Your former business partner twitches once near your shoe and then stops.

I got rid of the ugly part of your dinner.

Manami pulls out the chair across from you and sits down without taking her eyes off you. Behind her, the other maids are still standing around the room in silence, watching to see what you do next.