After the red light disappeared, I saw I was in a small room with pictures of girls in maid costumes in all the walls, there was file cabinet as well and in font of me there was desk and a chair in front of a wall with a big picture of a girl in maid costume and on it on one side written in big letters was "Love Love Maid Café". The maid costume was a white and blue one. Well hooray I can travel through magic circles unlike Issei I thought.
And on the desk a middle-aged man was sitting, he was fat and wearing glassed and he was staring at me.
I cleared my throat and said, "Hello I am a devil in service of Gremory.". He glared at me and asked, "Where is Koneko-chan? Who are you?".
This kind of greeting really? Just after appearing? Sigh. I took a deep breath and said, "Koneko-chan is busy right now so I came as her replacement my name is Akira".
"Hmph" he said, "As if you can replace Koneko-chan and more than that you are a guy, this is something only a woman can do".
I gulped I didn't want to fail my first contract like Issei so I desperately asked, "Please if there is anything I can do please tell".
He then looked at me and contemplated and finally sighed and said, " Sure we are short on staff anyway, it wouldn't be bad to have extra help, since Koneko-chan can't come I guess you will have to do, but you need to dress up first".
I was happy to finally be able to do something and asked excitedly, "So what do I have to do".
"It's simple", he said with a smile, "Be a maid in this café".
"WHAT", I said in shock. The guy casually said," You see I summon Koneko-chan here when we are in short supply of maids and she does her work well and is liked by the customers as a little sister character, so the only thing you can do to help is to replace her, of course you can't take the role of younger sister type maid but you can do an one-san type maid character instead".
I was flabbergasted and utterly stupefied, me dressing up as a maid that's ridiculous? I am not even into cosplaying let also cosplaying, there's no way I can do this.
I nervously asked, "Isn't there anything else I can do? How can I even dress up as a girl? I don't have any makeup or anything else".
"We have makeup and all the stuff you need to be a maid even fake tits and that's the only thing you can do to help, so are you in or not?", he asked.
I bit my lip in tension, I if wanted to have this contract I must dress up as a maid but if I do that my dignity will be lost, so what should I do? It's a choice between my dignity and the contract, man this is hard.
Sigh…I thought, I need to get the contract or else I will appear useless and about my dignity well, I lost it once today guess I have to lose it again today. Yes I must sacrifice something to get something, this is a fair deal and I have done it once, no big deal, with these thoughts I calmed my mind for the moment. Yosh let's do it.
"Ok I'll do it", I said finally.
A smile appeared on the guy's face, he extended his hand to shake and I took it and he said, " Great, welcome to the Love Love Maid Café, I am Kyosuke the owner and manager, don't worry about appearance and conduct as our makeup artist will take of it", with this he rand a bell and a woman entered, she looked at her mid twenties, when she first heard it she was shocked but she quickly overcame and gave a professional nod and told me to follow her and Kyosuke gave me a thumbs up before I left.
The woman took me to a room where there were many mirrors and a big dressing under them and a changing room, currently there was no one in there and she gave me a pair of maid clothes big enough for me to wear and took out a pair of fake boobs from a drawer on the dressing table and told me to put in on in the changing room while she waits outside to put make up. Before going to the changing room , I asked her out of curiosity as to why they had fake breasts when they employed only women.
She looked at me with a look which seemed to be something like "men can't understand" but sighed and finally said that some women are unsure of their sizes, suddenly Koneko-chan body appeared in my mind with focus on her chest area and I understood that I asked something forbidden, so I quickly excused myself of avoid an awkward situation and put on the dress.
After I came out she did all the makeup and even put on a wig and the result was shocking. "IS this really me?", I asked while looking at the mirror, I looked really like a big boobed one-san straight outta anime with Ara-ara vibes.
The girl didn't say anything but handed me a script of how to act when serving guests. I looked at the list and the more I looked at the list he more disgusted I was.
I had to stand in front of the guests and doing cringy cute poses and say things like , "Moe Moe Kyun". Honestly not only was this disgusting but it hurt my pride as a man but I remembered the contract and with great pain decided to roll with it.
After I got the lines into my head , he was introduced to the other stuff, when they heard I was guy they looked at me in disgust as they probably thought me to be a weirdo who had a cross-dressing fetish but I couldn't blame them, I had to use as much of a girly voice as possible so I had to practice beforehand until the other maid were convinced and then I began my service.
I nearly cringed at my first assignment where I had to greet guests and lead them to their seats while saying," Welcome home master", while bowing, but I had to endure it.
Next was to do those cute poses and lines when serving, I endured those as well. But I almost snapped when I saw those nerds look at me with pervy eyes and looks on their faces, which were not so subtle and some even kept staring at my butt. I felt so humiliated and exposed that I was about to snap but one of the maids saw me and stopped me. After calming down I did my duties, I became more careful after nearly failing to obtain the contract.
Overall my work was satisfactory and everyone including the manager was happy, they even took a picture with me, after finishing the contract payment, Kyosuke told me that he would like me to come again.
After thanking Kyosuke and telling him that I will love to, I left the place on foot instead of the magic circle as I wanted to get some fresh air after all that fiasco.
"Please come again, hah as if", I grumbled begrudgingly, I was already very humiliated already, no way was I willing to go through that humiliation again.
I sighed and thought, today was really unlucky, I lost my dignity twice in one day, but on the other hand I did manage to obtain a contract, with this small achievement I felt kind of happy after all, all that humiliation was kind of worth it as issei will very likely fail his first contract, but I remembered so my smile was only small.
I already told me parents on the phone before leaving the ORC that I joined a club and will take time to reach home, they were surprised but happy that I joined a club so I could finally make some friends , they weren't completely wrong though but anyway they wouldn't worry so that's good.
My thoughts then turned towards when suddenly my phone started to ring, it was a black flip phone and since this era was the early 2000's this made sense, I flipped open my phone to se Rias calling.
Why would she call me I thought? Shouldn't she be calling Issei instead? Or maybe she already called him? And was calling him afterwards cause she cared about all her subordinates? Yes that must be it, I thought as I picked up the phone.
"Hello Buchou", I said after picking up the phone.