“Hey, Hirin-chan.”
Hiyori sighed, pressing his fingertips to his temples. “Yes?” His boss’s fingers ran down the sides of his wings stop touching me stop touching me stop touching-
His boss smiled, sending chills down Hiyori’s spine. “Could you not spend all of your time staring at the ground, sweetheart? You’re giving off a cold impression to your customers.”
Maybe if you let me wear sunglasses indoors, then it wouldn’t be a problem, would it? Hiyori put on a fake smile, pressing down the frills on his maid uniform. “I’m sorry, it’s just…”
His boss rolled his eyes. “I know, I know, your-” He moved to stroke Hiyori’s cheek, the mutant shivering under the touch. “Lovely eyes are so sensitive to sunlight, but sunglasses won’t fit with the image we have, sweetheart.”
Hiyori grit his teeth beneath his smile, his antennae twitching. “I’ll try to look up more in the future, sir.”
“Good.”
The door swung open with a ding , and Hiyori turned, seeing another human guy walk through the door, dragging someone else behind him. A sharp stab of pain shot through his head as he walked over, forcing a smile on his face as the iron-hot nails drove further into his temples.
He bowed, shifting his voice into a high, overly-kawaii pitch. “Welcome home, master! Our signature drink today is the KiraKira~Lemon Shine! What would you like to-”
His eyes caught on the other person sitting at the table. Bright gold eyes peered up at him from behind a black facemask, slender hands twisting in his lap.
The heck’s a mutant doing here ? “Ehm. Would you like Combo A, which comes with a drink, main meal, dessert, some animal-ear headbands, and a picture of a maid of your choice, or Combo B, which comes with a-”
“We’ll take Combo B!” The mutant stuttered, his eyes darting wildly around the room. Fuck! Loud!
Hiyori studiously wrote down their order, a migraine pounding in the back of his head the whole time. Why does he look so familiar?
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Takemasa’s heart wouldn’t stop pounding. It started pounding when Mahiro dragged him through the door of that maid cafe and it didn’t seem to be stopping any time soon.
“Take-kun, what do you want to order?” Mahiro leaned over the table, concern in his eyes.
Order.
Food.
Eat.
Eating food.
Eating food in front of people.
In public. Eating food. People.
Mahiro tilted his head. “You okay?”
Nope! “Yeah, I’m...fine.”
Mahiro made a noise that sounded suspiciously like suit yourself, busying himself with the details of the pastel-colored menu.
Takemasa drew his knees up to his chest, letting loose a sigh. The brightly-lit cafe was teeming with customers, almost none of them mutants.
Well, there’s no visible mutants, he can hear Junji chirp in his ear, and he focuses his attention on the maids. Two cat-therians, one dog-therian, a short-haired “alien” with golden-white hair and stardust on his cheeks, and a “demon” with bright blue skin and cute stubby horns.
No one like me, he thought, no one who looks like a monster.
“Take-kun, you OK?”
Takemasa gave a pained grin, a tooth puncturing his lip. “I’m fine.” I really should get those filed down sometime soon.
“Hey, the maid’s back. Have you decided on what you want to eat?”
Takemasa very quietly whispered scrambled eggs with ketchup, his mind so consumed with thoughts about the customer’s eyes, raking down the bodies of the mutants, dressed in their frilly pink and white maid outfits, that moth mutant standing in the corner, blinking hard and fast like he had something caught in his eye.
It’s the light. His eyes are probably meant for night-vision, with those big black irises, so they hurt in the daylight. Normally, you’d wear sunglasses in the light, but the cafe wants us to see his eyes because they’re exotic or something like tha-
“H...hey?”
Mahiro looked up from the table. “Yeah?”
Takemasa grabbed the edge of his shirt. “I want to go.”
“Like, now ?”
Takemasa nodded. I’m sorry, I’m sorry that I can’t even go to a simple maid cafe without freaking out, so sorry that I can’t handle myself and that I freak out at basic hostility, they were right, they were right all along-
He barely even notices Mahiro’s hand around his wrist, barely even notices Mahiro dragging him out the door, barely even notices the sounds of customers and maids alike looking up in shock, but he does notice the moth-therian staring at him, his shining black eyes piercing into Takemasa’s own.
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After the customers had left, and those piercing gold eyes had caught his own a final time, that he remembered that face.
A pair of eyes, peeking out over that black face-mask, his black hair falling in his face, a slender hand reached out to help him up from the bar’s floor-
Hiyori sighed, another stab at his face turning it into more of a whimper.
Fuck, I was rude, wasn’t I?