"Eve has to get ready for school too. She needs to stay home and study so she can catch up with the class, so I didn't let her come along."
"It's such a shame you two couldn't make it to the last get-together."
Ryoko Mikado watched Mizuho Kazami and the others welcome the two of them with overwhelming warmth and sighed inwardly, because she knew this bunch was just welcoming her to come get screwed along with them.
She hadn't wanted to come in the first place. She didn't need to learn the Service Club's inner rules to know what Hachiman was capable of. Just seeing so many girls at Sobu High every day with his scent clinging to them was enough.
He'd aided beautiful girls of so many races, succubi among them, and races that rivaled succubi, and still Hachiman's vitality only grew stronger. His blazing, overflowing life energy was like a rising sun, shining so bright on her that she had no mind left to slack off.
Even Princess Lala had fallen. So many girls, big and small, had been thoroughly devoured, and with one careless slip she could very well end up one of them.
But she'd had no choice, since her best friend Tearju had been duped.
"How are you feeling, Tearju? Any better?"
"I feel... a lot better..."
Tearju, the blonde glasses girl with the huge b**bs, wasn't wearing her glasses now. She had even changed her hair color a little, from a brilliant, dazzling gold to a lighter platinum blonde.
She was soaking in the hot spring in a nun's habit with a high slit up to the waist, and the wet cloth outlined her full, voluptuous figure perfectly.
Her platinum hair hung over her shoulders and floated on the water, a few strands crossing between her brows and eyes.
Her pretty face was burning red, but her eyes stayed fixed on the scenes playing out on the light screen in the air.
Still, at Ryoko Mikado's concerned words, Tearju was flustered. She looked left and right, saw everyone staring at her, and lowered her head in embarrassment, nearly burying it in her own chest.
She had chosen to join knowing what the Service Club was like.
After she'd put on the maid outfit that supposedly gave instant mastery of cooking, her head had been full of Hachiman.
Only by taking it off with the thought of changing into other clothes to go serve Hachiman, of taking off the maid outfit in order to serve Hachiman, could she get out of the outfit that kept her from sleeping.
But taking it off and then not serving Hachiman wasn't allowed either.
She'd tried several times. Whenever she entertained the thought of not keeping that promise, the outfit she'd just taken off would reappear on her body and, worse than before, "play" the battle videos of the maids who had come before her inside her head.
In the end all she could do was faithfully keep the promise she'd made in her heart and go serve Hachiman.
There was nothing she could do. The maid outfit paid no attention to her pleading, and at the slightest disagreement it played her combat footage.
She had to look after Eve, and she had class at school tomorrow. With things like this, she didn't dare to go out at all.
Now she'd been invited into the Service Club and had seen Hachiman's sturdy, powerful young body with her own eyes, and on top of her shyness, she felt relieved too.
This time she'd been out of the maid outfit for a long while, and it didn't seem to intend to return to her body and make her stay up all night studying "battle footage" to perfect her maid skills.
But she knew that if she let her guard down and didn't want to keep her promise to serve Hachiman, the maid outfit would come back onto her just like before.
This time the punishment for breaking her promise would be even more brutal than before.
Because to join the Service Club she was now wearing an Empathy Collar.
If she really broke her promise, then it wouldn't just be other people's battles playing in her head; her body would "play" them too.
But even though she had come to the Service Club prepared for that, she was a woman who had never been with anyone and yet had a daughter, and she couldn't bear the suggestive looks of others at all.
"Glub glub..."
Kirisu Mafuyu, the real culprit, who had "given" Tearju the maid outfit that could instantly master all kinds of maid skills because Tearju had asked her about cooking, said nothing and lay silently in a corner blowing bubbles.
Shame!
She had actually let a young wife raising a daughter alone bear that humiliation for her!
But she'd had no choice. She'd put on the maid outfit without managing to serve Hachiman, and her head was full of nothing but Hachiman. If she couldn't get rid of the outfit, even going to class would be a problem.
When she learned that Ryoko Mikado wanted to introduce Tearju to Hachiman, and that Tearju didn't even object, it would have been strange if she could have held back from passing the outfit on.
Of course, once the maid outfit had slipped away and she'd calmed down, she'd realized she had been too hasty. Tearju only wanted a "matchmaking meeting" with Hachiman. She hadn't decided on Hachiman yet.
"Ahem, ahem. Kirisu, you don't need to blame yourself. It's on me. I didn't make it clear, and I didn't stop you in time."
Seeing how guilty and ashamed Kirisu Mafuyu was, Ryoko Mikado gave a soft cough and tried to explain and comfort her.
She had been right there when Kirisu Mafuyu passed the maid outfit to Tearju. She could have stopped it in time. She had simply let it go.
She'd meant to introduce Hachiman to Tearju all along, so when she saw Kirisu Mafuyu setting Tearju up with an assist, she was naturally glad to see it happen.
Even so, this plain-looking maid outfit was a little too marvelous. Tearju couldn't hold up once she put it on, and she not only had no way to fix it, but when she tried it on herself, she couldn't hold up either.
It was terrifying. Only a girl who devoted herself to serving Hachiman could handle this maid outfit.
The moment a girl entertained any thought of not wanting to serve Hachiman, or any other thought that disrespected her master or went against the maid's principles, the outfit began a bombardment-style education, playing one battle video after another without stopping until she was dazed.
In the end, it was only with the thought of delivering a wife to Hachiman that Tearju had been able to put it back on, and then they'd come to the Service Club together to find Hachiman and settle the maid outfit problem once and for all.
You could say that one maid outfit had directly ruined three people.
Once a maid, always a maid.
To get free of the outfit's torment, unless her master allowed it, a girl had no choice but to find the next maid willing to serve the master.
"All right, all right, let's not talk about this. Since everyone's here, you must all be mentally prepared, and we have plenty of time to enjoy ourselves tonight."
Seeing the newcomer Tearju, with Ryoko Mikado in an awkward spot and even the usually cold, stern Kirisu Mafuyu giving up on herself, the livelier young female teachers, Hanamori Kotomi, Mizuho Kazami and Itashiro Kurumi, hurriedly changed the subject.
"Tomorrow we'll have new colleagues. We can talk about this then."
"Are we going to have a welcome party for them?"
"New colleagues... a welcome party... Uh-heh-heh-heh..."
At the mention of new colleagues, they all fell silent and looked at each other.
After a while, several of them suddenly burst out laughing.
They didn't even have to guess. With things the way they were at Sobu High and the Service Club now, the new colleagues would all be young female teachers.
The new batch of students, transfers and exchange students alike, were also all girls, though they might come from different factions.
"Have you seen the new teacher list? Anyone on it who used to be a colleague of yours?"
"I haven't looked. It makes no difference whether I look or not."
"Senior Shizuka should know."
"...Can I not say?"
Dragged into the conversation out of nowhere, Hiratsuka Shizuka rubbed her face hard and looked, a little speechless, at this bunch who had lost so much face that they'd grown more and more shameless.
These juniors used to be respectful and reserved around her. Now that they'd all gone at it in front of each other so many times, the distance between them was gone, and so was her authority.
Sigh... But with a question like this put to her, she really couldn't pretend not to know.
Because the capable are always the busiest, and the young people were supposed to do more work or whatever, and on top of that she was on good terms with Hachiman, though the good terms between her and Hachiman weren't good in the ordinary sense.
[🎉 Shoutout to BaTheboss for joining p@treon. Consider joining if you appreciate the work. Thank you very much. Have a great day~🤗]