School Festival

I'm standing in a familiar room. The floor is covered in a nice carpet, and the walls are painted a cerulean blue. My parents are sitting at the dinner table, having a pleasant conversation. I feel a nudge and turn to see who pushed me. Our family's waifu smiles at me and moves me along to the table. She comes from a world full of heroes and wears her super suit, as she would any typical day. I sit down at the table. My sister is here as well. She is small but has a large smile on her face. I look down at my own hands and see they are small as well.

"My, Amplifier, what another great meal you have prepared for us today!" my mother joyfully says to our waifu.

"No need to thank me, ma'am," Amplifier sits down at the table. She smiles at my sister and me before starting to eat.

I look around at all the faces.

"Tai-Kun, is something the matter?" my father asks me.

I look into his eyes and shake my head no. Then I start to eat dinner. It tastes good.

With a groan, I opened my eyes. What an unpleasant dream. It takes me a minute to remember where I was. This is the spare bedroom at the Naka's house. After arriving here yesterday, we heard on the news that our apartment building had burned to the ground in a case that was being investigated as arson.

I had filled the Naka family and my sister in on the events that had transpired earlier that day. It was decided we would stay with the Naka family for the time being. I had already planned to stay for at least the night after the day's events.

I push myself to sit up on the bed. I am alone in this room. Chika-Chan and Ia-Chan had wanted my sister and Trash-Chan to sleep with them. I think Junkers may have joined them as well. I can only imagine how long they must have been talking. I hope they at least got some sleep.

I grabbed a change of clothes and began my walk out of my room. The guest bedroom was on the top floor of the house, opposite of Shin-San's bedroom. I had a long descent before I would get anywhere close to the bottom floor.

My walk down was uneventful. The stairs creaked a little, but it was still early enough in the morning that some people were still sleeping. I stepped off the stairs and looked in the direction of the kitchen table. Naka-Otousan was already sitting at the table with a cup of coffee.

He was a large man with a tall and wide frame. He had the same light hair that Shin-San had, but it was always well combed. Naka-Otousan's face always looked angry and stern, and when he spoke, he had a deep booming voice. That was no different today when he saw me come down the stairs.

"Ah, Tai-San, good morning," he said in a manner that was as friendly as his deep voice would allow it to sound. He smiled as he spoke. I smiled back.

"Good morning." Despite his demeanor, Naka-Otousan was actually a rather friendly and peaceful person.

"Going to take a bath?" he asked me.

"Yes, I am."

"Why don't you sit down here so we can talk before you do. I will have to leave for work before you are done."

"Sure."

I sat down at the table as he finished his cup of coffee. He was already dressed in a suit for work.

"What are your plans for now?" he asked me.

"For now, I will need to find us a new apartment we can stay at. I should probably make sure Emiko-Chan has someone to escort her to school." I said. I would probably have to send Trash-Chan to school with her just in case someone tried to kidnap her on the streets. They had already resorted to arson, so I had no idea how far my mother would go at this rate.

"Tai-San, why don't you plan on staying here for the time being. We can have Junkers escort your sister to school. Except for Shin and Chika, everyone is in the same location for school anyway." Naka-Otousan said.

It seemed like a good enough plan. The junior high building and elementary school building were right next to each other, so even if Junkers were to accompany someone else to school, she wouldn't be going too far out of her way to join them afterward. She wouldn't' have to stay with my sister all day at school as they wouldn't try anything when there were so many waifus at school.

"Thank you for the offer... but you've already done so much for us. I can't keep relying on you like this."

"Now Tai-San," Naka-Otousan said sternly, "it's okay to rely on us. You shouldn't have to do this all alone."

I sighed. I had met Shin-San shortly after our mother had left us. At the time, Naka-Okaasan had been on the school's board of directors. She personally met with my father after my mother left and supported us staying in school. When we had to leave our apartment, the Naka family also allowed us to stay in their spare bedroom until we found our dingy little apartment. I had relied so much on them in the past and had done little to pay them back.

"We will stay here until I can find us a new place to stay if that's alright."

Naka-Otousan sighed. He looked at his watch.

"Well, it looks like it is time to get going. You go take your bath." With that, he left for work.

The rest of the morning went rather quickly. I took my bath and got ready for school as the rest of the family was getting up and getting ready as well. We all ate breakfast and left on our way to school. Naka-Otousan had already talked with Junkers about her going to school with my sister. So, she joined the group of Ia-Chan, Hikaru-Kun, Kiyoshi-Kun, and my sister. I walked with Trash-Chan, Shin-San, and Chika-Chan to the high school.

"Don't worry, Tai-Kun. If anyone tried to get Emiko-Chan, I'll break their legs so they can't run avay and interrogate them fully!" Junkers told me with a happy smile as they walked off. I shook my head. If something were to happen, I would be more worried about the potential kidnappers' wellbeing at this rate.

I walked to school with the others. It was a relatively quiet walk at first. I am sure neither Chika-Chan nor Shin-San knew what to say. Given the situation, I couldn't blame them. They had some idea of my family situation, but I never let them know too much about it.

Trash-Chan, however, did not pick up on the general mood as we walked.

"Wow, Main-Kun, is this the first time you've walked to school with friends?" she excitedly asked.

"What? Of course not," I stammered.

"Oh, when was the last time?"

"I, er, 3rd grade maybe..."

"Tai-Niisan, has it been so long?" Chika-Chan joined the conversation.

"Chika-Chan, don't pick on him too much. I'm sure he had his reasons." Shin-San also joined in the conversation.

"Is it really so weird? I usually go to school before anyone else, after all!"

"Yes, you are there much too early," Trash-Chan said. The other two nodded in agreement.

"There is no need to get to school as early as you do, Tai-San," Shin-San added.

I looked down. The rest of the walk consisted of a conversation about my bad habits.

"And you always leave before anyone else in the class."

"Your kind of grumpy all the time."

"You spoil your sister too much."

"You work too much."

The conversation went on like this until we reached the school. I was happy as I finally was able to slide into my desk in the corner. I put my head on the table for most of the class.

"Alright, everyone. We will have our school festival coming up soon. We will need to decide what we will do as a class."

Before I realized it, our class rep was in the front of the room.

"Let's do a play!"

"Let's do a coffee shop!"

"Let's do a manga library!"

Many suggestions were being yelled out as the class rep was writing them down.

"Main-Kun, what's a school festival?" Trash-Chan whispered to me.

"Um, people set up displays or do performances, and people can come to the school to see them," I explained.

"Oh, I see," she happily said before turning her attention to the front of the room.

"How about a maid café," a voice came from the door. We all turned to look. A thin figure in a long grey cloak strode in the room. Even from under the cloak, it was clear that they had trained their body intensely, whoever this person was. The cloak formed around his arms to show that they were well defined, and the posture showed he carried himself well. He lowered the hood to reveal a round face with thick glasses.

"Tanaka-San!" the class rep exclaimed. He had not been in class for weeks, so I could understand the surprise.

Tanaka-San chuckled some before speaking.

"Yes, I am. I have gone on a quest of self-discovery to better myself, and I have returned as a changed man!" he proudly declared.

"Well, that's nice. Please take your seat so we can continue," the class rep said while writing the suggestion of maid café on the board. Unlike the other suggestions, this one was written small and off to the side of the same list.

Tanaka-San walked over to his desk and pulled off his cloak. He may have slimmed up and now had a slightly muscular build. However, he still wore a shirt and buttons that had waifus plastered on them. I am not sure if anything inside him had changed.

"Adding on to Tanaka-San's maid café, what if we did a waifu maid café?" a student suggested.

"That's a great idea!" another student yelled.

"Now everyone, I don't think..." the class rep started to say. It was too late; the rest of the class was beginning to murmur excitedly. Tanaka-San sat with his arms crossed and a satisfied look on his face.

"Main-Kun, what's a maid?"

"You would have to wear clothes like that waifu you played cards with the other day wore."

"Oh, I could wear something that cute!" Trash-Chan said with sparkles in her eyes. "I, too, support this waifu maid café!" She suddenly stood up and yelled out.

Trash-Chan's support was all that it took for the class to decide to go through with it. The class rep wiped off the other suggestions from the board with their shoulders slumped.

We spent the rest of class planning out what the maid uniform would look like. Then we spent the next day getting the costumes made and fitted on the waifus. After that, we started arranging the class for the café. On the last day before the festival, we finally prepared the meal plan.

Trash-Chan and I walked into the classroom on the morning of the festival. A plethora of maids greeted us.

"I'm going to go change!" Trash-Chan said excitedly. She ran off to get her uniform.

"My, she sure is excited," Junkers said as she walked over to me. "I have to say. A maid café seems like a fun idea." Junkers wore the maid costume we had decided on in class. We had decided to go with a simple frilly maid dress. The original design was going to be black and white, but it had been decided to go with green and white somewhere along the way. Junkers wore this dress now, as did every waifu.

"Good to see you, Juyo-San," a defeated voice said to me. I turned around to see Estouls. Like Junkers, he also wore the maid outfit we had come up with. Osana-Chan stood next to him with a happy smile on her face.

"Ah, good to see you two," I said. "I really should thank you properly for helping with Junkers..." I hadn't had much of a chance to thank them for helping with that whole situation properly. It only now occurred to me that I had spent so much time alone with Osana-Chan during that time. My face must have been a little red as I spoke.

"Oh, don't worry about it, Tai-Kun," Osana-Chan replied. "I'm just glad we were able to talk again..." her face was a little red too. Perhaps I was making this awkward.

"More importantly, Milady, why do I need to wear this too?" Estouls asked while pulling on his dress to emphasize it.

"Oh, Estouls, you just look so cute in it!" Junkers said.

Osana-Chan gave a nod and thumbs up of approval. Estouls sighed.

"Main-Kun, how do I look?" Trash-Chan came back into the room and spun around to show off her outfit.

"Ah, that looks good on you, Trash-Gozen," Junkers said.

"Looks good," I agreed.

"You look amazing, Trash-Sensei!" Tanaka-San entered the conversation.

Trash-Chan blushed and twiddled her fingers.

"Oh... thank you..."

"More importantly, we need to get to the kitchen and begin cooking!" Osana-Chan said.

We had set up a large curtain in the class that hid the dining area's cooking area. In the dining area, we just placed a series of tables around the room with fold-up chairs. The tables were covered in cheap table cloths and had electric battery-powered candles set up as the centerpiece.

In the 'kitchen' area, we placed several fold-up tables in an L shape. We set up several portable burners, microwaves, mini-fridges, and electric kettles. Everything was routed into the same outlet in the wall through several adapters plugged together in a manner that was probably a fire hazard.

Our menu was designed to come in a series of courses. The first course was an appetizer of apple slices that had been cut to resemble a bunny. This was brought out with tea steeped from tea bags and water boiled in the electric kettle. For the second course, our customers had a choice of a small omelet rice or a small plate of yakisoba. This came with an option for the customer to drink. The final course was a microwaved chocolate chip cookie with a scoop of ice cream on top. The waifu maids would deliver everything while the students worked in the back.

We had some prep to do before the day started. The ingredients had to be prepared to get it ready for the cooking to start. The class had been divided into several teams that would manage the cooking. The prep team would get things ready, and the cook team would do the cooking. A marketing team would also stand at the entrance and pass out fliers throughout the school.

Since I could not be on the cooking team or marketing team, I was placed on the prep team. I couldn't argue with that decision. I began to look at everything I had to prepare for our day. We were responsible for dividing ingredients into dishes at the measurements the chefs needed to start.

This is precisely what I did as I grabbed a measuring spoon and began to dish rice into several dishes for the omelet rice. I was joined by Osana-Chan, who stood next to me. She started to put ingredients in bowls for the microwave cookies.

When we divided up the class, we were allowed to volunteer our roles in the café. Osana-Chan was in the same boat as me, not being able to be a part of the cooking team. Honestly, you couldn't even call what the two of us do to food cooking. She had decided to join the prep team, even though many others in the class thought she would be a good fit on the marketing team. She had decided against it, however.

Tanaka-San was on the marketing team. He was gung-ho on joining the cooking team at first, claiming that he learned how to cook on his epic quest. Once he found out that we would be cooking indoors, he changed his mind. Apparently, he only knew how to cook on an open campfire in the wilderness or something to that extent.

Shin-San was on the cooking team. He had lots of cooking experience. Since he was the oldest, there were many times he had to cook for his siblings when his parents were going to be home late. I guess that made him a more responsible older brother than me, who relied on my little sister to do the cooking.

"Hey, Tai-Kun..." Osana-Chan started talking to me. At the moment, we were the only two on prep duty. We had divided the teams into shifts so that people could enjoy the festival at the same time.

"Yes, Osana-Chan?"

She didn't answer me right away, so we just stood next to each other in silence for a moment—awkward silence. I looked around the room.

"So... after our shift here... do you want to walk around the festival?" she finally asked.

"Oh, yeah, I wouldn't mind that." I think my heart did a somersault when I answered.

"Oh, really! Then I saw a group selling some doujinshi in a part of the school that I wanted to check out! Oh, and I think there would be a performance later today that I wanted to see! And I heard there was a place selling some good food down the hall!" Osana-Chan's eyes lit up as she began to rattle off everything that she wanted to see.

"Woah, calm down, Osana-Chan. We still have to finish here first."

She took a deep breath and gave me a determined nod.

"Yes, let's get to work." She began to focus on her task at hand.

"I had forgotten how excited you could get over things like school festivals."

"Huh, what- what are you talking about?" She was caught off guard by my comment.

"I mean, I remember in elementary school during the festival. You were so excited to be the princess in the class's play that you ran through the school in your costume shouting, 'I'm the princess'..." I turned to look at Osana-Chan with a smile, but her face was beat red.

"Ahh, don't talk about that!" she yelled. "I mean, we were just kids. Kids do dumb stuff all the time. I would never do that now!"

"Calm down, Osana-Chan. I was just reminiscing."

"Ugh, well, why don't you reminisce about something else then?" she frowned and turned away from me.

"Ah, I'm sorry?" I tried apologizing to her, but she only ignored me."

"Excuse me, you two," Shin-San poked his head in from the other side of the curtain, "we are starting to get customers lining up in the hall... and they can all hear you."

Osana-Chan and I immediately began portioning food into the dishes in rapid succession.

"What do you think he could be talking about Osana-Chan? We were just working back here," I said frantically.

"Yes, I don't know. Maybe he means that they can hear all our hard work!" she backed me up.

Shin san sighed and walked back into the 'kitchen' with us. He turned on one of the burners.

"Well, I might as well get started cooking," he said while shaking his head disapprovingly.

"Yes, Shin-San, we have hungry customers to feed."

"Indeed, Naka-San, I hope you knock them out with your excellent cooking!"

It was then that our café became very busy. People began flooding into the café, and a line out the door stretched out down the hallway. At least, that is what I was told. I was frantically scrambling to keep up with the orders that came flying through.

I would fill up dishes just to have them immediately snatched away for the chefs. We ended up having to call several of the off-duty people to come in and help us out.

"Um, Tai-Kun?" Osana-Chan said after an unknown amount of time. I had been so focused on keeping the food coming to the chefs that I had not kept track of the time. I turned to Osana-Chan as she poured out the last bag of chocolate chips. "I think we are out of chips for the cookies."

"Oh, that's not good..."

We stared at each other for a moment. Just then, Junkers came in.

"Ve need about five cookies right away."

Then Trash-Chan walked in.

"I need three cookies."

"Where's the stuff for the cookies?" our chef at the microwave said.

We looked back at the final amount of ingredients for the cookies. Altogether, we had about ten cookies worth of ingredients in front of us. Osana-Chan handed what we had to the microwave chef.

"What do we do?" she asked me. I put my hand on my chin and looked over at Trash-Chan and Junkers, who were waiting for the cookies.

"Trash-Chan! We need to get some more ingredients; can you go get some!" I suddenly said.

Trash-Chan looked confused for a second, then nodded.

"No problem; what do you need me to get?"

"Chocolate chips for sure..." I took a survey of the rest of the ingredients that we looked low on. I quickly jotted them down on a piece of paper and handed it to Trash-Chan. "Alright, go get all of this and take Junkers to help.

"Wait, Tai-Kun," Osana-Chan said. "I don't think we can afford to lose two maids right now.

I peaked out from behind the curtain and looked around the room. We were crowded with a long line at the door. Tanaka-San and another student were standing at the door talking with the customers, likely telling them they would be in soon. The maids were running around the room, serving all the patrons we had. I closed the curtain.

"Alright, take Tanaka-San with you. He has someone there that can cover for him."

"I'm on it," Trash-Chan said before running out of the room.

I started to prep whatever I could. The crowds did not let up, and the cookies we had prepared were gone in no time at all. People were beginning to grow restless in the kitchen.

"Ah, I need eggs for the omelet rice!"

"We need cookies. We have customers expecting it!"

"This apple no good. They should be better than this!"

"Ah, my sleeves on fire!"

"We have people at a table starting to complain!"

"Someone dropped a plate of yakisoba!"

"We need a clean tablecloth on table 5!"

We used a fire extinguisher to put out our chef, who had caught on fire, and got fresh table cloths for the table. All we could do was wait for the rest of our ingredients to come to us.

It felt like an eternity, but Trash-Chan and Tanaka-San finally came bursting through the curtains with bags of ingredients in hand. Their clothes were in pieces, but they gave a victorious smile when they walked in.

"What-" I didn't get to finish speaking. The groceries were shoved into my hands, and we had to get back to work.

The rest of our shift went on without much trouble. The crowds finally began to slow down after we got ingredients, and we were able to take a deserved break at the end of our shift.