Chapter 56
School Festival Preparations ~Classmates~
By late October, preparations for the school festival were reaching their final stages.
Our class’s attraction? That’s right— a Butler and Maid Café.
Since we were only second-years, no one was going overboard. The idea was to keep it simple and safe—just pull it off without incident and finish smoothly. There was no silly “gender-swap” gimmick or anything; boys were butlers, girls were maids. A perfectly normal café.
The outfits were already taken care of, thanks to the student council president and our resident noble lady, Kudo-san, so there were no problems there.
Or at least, there shouldn’t have been—until a crisis suddenly struck at the last moment.
“What’s with this massive order of food and drinks?”
Mizusato-san was staring at the ledger and comparing it with the purchased quantities. The amount was obviously too much—so much that there was no way a regular café could ever use it all.
Apparently, there had been a mix-up in the numbers that made the quantities look doubled. One mistake led to another, and here we were—drowning in supplies.
And so, as the unlucky “representative” of this fiasco, I was currently sitting in formal seiza position on the floor.
Even though it wasn’t entirely my fault! Isn’t this a bit unfair?
“Taiyō-kun, what should we do about this?”
As the class’s festival committee representative, Kagaya Mizusato was giving me a look of reproach that made me tear up a little.
Though, weirdly enough, a small part of me felt… happy?
No, this is bad. Seriously bad.
“We’ll have to turn over customers fast if we want to use all this up. Should we talk to Kudo about prepping larger batches?”
Hōjō Kasumi offered calmly. Consulting Kudo-san was probably smart, but we’d need a clear plan first—she was also busy with her student council duties.
The plan we came up with was simple:
To draw more people in, we’d rename the place “Beautiful Butler & Lovely Maid Café.”
The “Beautiful Butler” role would obviously go to Seiya, and Hōjō-san, who was popular among the girls, would dress up as a boy.
As for the “Lovely Maids,” the lineup would be Mizusato-san, Hi-chan, and Yumisaki-san.
We really wanted to include Kudo-san in a maid outfit too, but alas—the student council president was far too busy.
“U-um… I’m not that pretty!”
“You’ll be fine, Kanaha-chan! Just show off those boobs and we’re golden!”
That’s blatant sexual harassment!
Yumisaki Kanaha, who wasn’t used to the spotlight, went bright red as she protested, but Mizusato-san—clearly too stressed to filter herself—just brushed it off.
Still, we had no choice but to go through with it.
But if we only used the “good-looking” members for front service, we’d have a serious manpower problem.
“With our current staffing, it’s impossible. The issue isn’t cooking—it’s the number of servers in the hall,” Hōjō-san said after a quick calculation based on the food quantities.
As expected from the second-highest student in the year—her math was lightning-fast. (Technically, Seiya and Kudo always get perfect scores, so she’s effectively third.)
“We’ll need at least one more boy and two more girls for the floor.”
“Alright. I’ll handle adjusting the food quality and quantity. Kasumi-chan, talk to Aya-chan about expanding the kitchen space. Kanaha-chan, take care of the time slots and schedule.”
As always, Mizusato-san knew how to take charge when it counted.
Maybe it’s because her family runs a traditional inn and she’s the daughter of the proprietress—she’s used to organizing people.
“Now then, Taiyō-kun, I have a mission for you.”
“Uh… I’m not doing a butler role.”
“If you can get plastic surgery before the festival, maybe I’ll consider it.”
“…That’s absurd.”
She smiled sweetly—way too sweetly.
“Go gather some people. That girl you think is the cutest—use any means necessary to convince her to join.”
“…Understood.”
At that moment, I realized something important:
You should never go against a woman who’s gone serious.
