Chapter 11: There Is a Man in a Maid Outfit, and Nobody Is Okay

Dawn came.

I was not ready for dawn. Dawn was not ready for me either, because Dawn took one look at the thirty-five first-year students standing in the training yard in the gray half-light and probably wished it had stayed in bed. I sympathized. Rin sympathized harder. She was standing behind me with her face pressed between my shoulder blades, using me as a wall against the concept of morning.

Gale-sensei handed out maps.

One per pair. Folded paper, hand-drawn, with a red circle marking each pair’s checkpoint. Our checkpoint was deep. Northwest corner of the Thornwood, past two streams, up a ridge, into the thickest part of the forest where the canopy blocked the sun. I looked at the map. I looked at Gale-sensei. He took a sip of tea.

“Problem, Takafumi.”

“Our checkpoint is the farthest one.”

“Yes.”

“By a significant margin.”

“Yes.”

“Is there a reason for that?”

“You are the grandson of the man who built the wards. If you cannot handle his forest, I will be very disappointed in his bloodline.”

“That is not a reason. That is a threat.”

“Mm. Dawn, Takafumi. Move.”

We moved.

The gate in the training wall opened into a short dirt path that ran fifty paces to the treeline. The Thornwood began without ceremony. One step you were on packed dirt in morning light. The next step, you were under a canopy so thick the air turned green. The temperature dropped. The sounds changed. The courtyard noise cut off behind us like a door closing, and what replaced it was the deep, layered quiet of old forest — wind in high branches, water somewhere far off, the small private conversations of birds who did not care that humans had arrived.

Rin’s ears went straight up.

Her whole body changed. The sleepy, clinging, blanket-seeking creature from the dormitory was gone. In her place was something alert and focused and very, very still. Her eyes tracked the canopy. Her nostrils flared. Her tail was low and steady behind her, not curled, not flicking—hunting posture. I had not seen it before. I was seeing it now.

“Rin.”

“Quiet.”

“…okay.”

“Things are watching.”

“What things?”

“Small things. Fur. Teeth. Not dangerous.”

“How do you know they are not dangerous?”

“They are afraid of me.”

She said it the way a person says the sky is blue. Not a boast. A fact. The forest had things in it, and the things had looked at Rin, and the things had decided to be somewhere else. I found this both reassuring and deeply unsettling.

Sakuya walked on my left. He had the short blade at his hip and the waterskin over his shoulder and the map in his hand, and he moved through the forest with the quiet, easy stride of someone who had done this before. His feet found the solid ground without looking. His breathing did not change on the incline. When a branch hung low across the path, he held it aside for me without breaking stride.

“The first stream is three hundred paces ahead.”

“You can read that map while walking.”

“It is a simple map, Alfred-kun.”

“It is a hand-drawn map of a four-square-mile forest.”

“The contour lines are clear.”

“The contour lines are smudges.”

“They are clear smudges, Alfred-kun.”

We crossed the first stream. It was shallow and cold, barely ankle-deep, running fast over smooth stones. Rin jumped it in one leap. She cleared it by a full body length and landed on the far bank without a sound. Sakuya stepped across the stones with the careful grace of a person crossing a drawing room. I stepped on a wet rock, slipped, caught myself, did not fall, and pretended the whole thing had been intentional.

Nobody commented.

Rin’s ear twitched once. Sakuya’s mouth twitched once. Nobody commented.

We climbed.

The forest got thicker. The path — if it had ever been a path — disappeared into undergrowth and fallen branches and the kind of ancient moss that grows on everything and makes everything slippery and green. The canopy closed overhead until the sky was just a memory. Light came through in thin gold shafts that moved when the wind moved and vanished when it stopped.

It was, I had to admit, beautiful.

It was also full of things that wanted to eat me, according to Rin, who had begun cataloging threats under her breath like a shopping list.

“Boar. Left. Sleeping.”

“Thank you, Rin.”

“Snake. Above. Not poisonous.”

“Good.”

“Snake. Also above. Poisonous.”

“Less good.”

“Bird.”

“Is the bird dangerous?”

“No. It is ugly.”

“Rin, you do not need to report ugly birds.”

“It is very ugly, Alfred.”

“Noted.”

We had been walking for perhaps an hour when Sakuya stopped.

He stopped the way a deer stops. Full halt. No transition. One moment he was walking, the next he was still, and his hand was on the short blade at his hip, and his dark eyes were fixed on a point ahead of us in the green gloom between two old oaks.

“Alfred-kun.”

“I see it.”

“Do you?”

“…no. What am I looking at?”

“Between the oaks. On the ground.”

I looked.

There was something on the ground between the two oaks. It was white. It was fabric. It was arranged in a way that suggested a person had been there recently, or was there currently, or —

It moved.

The fabric sat up.

The fabric had a person inside it.

The person stood.

The person was tall. Taller than me. Broad in the shoulders. Strong jaw. Short blond hair cropped close to the skull. Arms like fence posts. The kind of physique that said I have been swinging heavy things since I could walk, and I have not stopped. He had a sword on his back. A real sword. Not a practice blade. Steel, long, in a leather scabbard worn smooth with use.

He was wearing a maid’s outfit.

I need to say that again.

He was wearing a maid’s outfit.

Black dress. White apron. Frilled headband. Knee-length skirt with a petticoat underneath that rustled when he moved. White stockings. Black shoes with a low heel. The apron was ironed. The frills were crisp. The headband was pinned in place with two small clips that caught the thin forest light.

He looked at us.

We looked at him.

Rin’s ears went sideways. I did not know ears could go sideways. They went sideways.

“…”

“…”

“…”

“Good morning.”

His voice was deep. Calm. The voice of a man who was standing in a forest in a maid outfit at dawn and saw absolutely nothing unusual about any part of that sentence.

“…good morning.”

“You are first-years.”

“…yes.”

“Evaluation.”

“…yes.”

“Checkpoint retrieval.”

“Yes.”

“Good. I am your first obstacle.”

“You are our first obstacle.”

“Yes.”

“In the maid outfit.”

“Yes.”

He looked down at himself. He smoothed the front of the apron with both hands, the way a person smooths a uniform before inspection. He adjusted the headband. He squared his shoulders.

“Is there a problem with my attire?”

“There are several problems with your attire.”

“This is a warrior’s garment.”

“It is a maid uniform.”

“It is a warrior’s garment. The Hero himself introduced it to this kingdom.”

And there it was.

My grandfather.

Of course, my grandfather.

Because my grandfather, the Hero from the Other World, the Savior of Three Kingdoms, the man who had built the Tower and the Academy wards and half the infrastructure of modern magical defense, had also, at some point during his legendary career, introduced the maid outfit to this world. And he had introduced it, apparently, as combat attire for women. He had looked at the maids of the other world and thought, yes, this is what a female warrior should wear, and he had presented this to the kingdom with the full authority of a man who had killed the Demon Lord, and nobody — not one single person — had told him no.

Because you do not tell the Hero no.

You especially do not tell the Hero no when he is holding a sketch of a frilly apron and saying, with complete sincerity, that it improves aerodynamic mobility in close combat.

The kingdom had accepted it. The warrior women of the realm had, after much debate and at least one attempted assassination of my grandfather, adopted a modified version for ceremonial purposes. The full version — the black dress, the white apron, the headband, the stockings — had quietly fallen out of favor within a generation, because it turns out that fighting in a petticoat is exactly as impractical as any reasonable person would expect.

But some people remembered.

Some people kept the tradition.

Some people, apparently, were tall blond men with swords on their backs who stood in forests at dawn and called a maid outfit a warrior’s garment, straight-faced.

“…what is your name?”

“Garreth von Stahl. Third-year. Obstacle course proctor.”

“Garreth-san.”

“Yes.”

“You are a man.”

“I am.”

“The warrior maid attire was designed for women.”

“The Hero did not specify gender.”

“I am reasonably certain the Hero specified gender.”

“The original text says ‘warriors of grace and beauty.’ I am graceful. I am beautiful.”

“…”

“Do you disagree?”

I looked at him. He was, objectively, built like a siege tower. His arms were thicker than my legs. The maid’s dress was straining at the shoulders, as if the fabric were experiencing emotions it had not been designed for. The frilled headband sat on his cropped blond hair like a small doily on a boulder.

“I do not disagree.”

“Good.”

He drew the sword.

He drew it with one hand, smooth and fast, and the blade caught the thin forest light and threw a line of silver across the moss. It was a real sword. A good sword. The kind of sword that had been used for real things by a real person who knew how to use it.

“The rules of the obstacle are simple. You pass me. I try to stop you. If I stop you, you go around. Going around adds an hour to your route. If you pass me, you continue on the direct path. I will not chase you. I will not hurt you. I will tap you with the flat of the blade. One tap and you are out.”

“One tap.”

“One tap.”

“From a third year with a real sword.”

“The flat of the blade, first-year. I am not a barbarian.”

“You are in a maid outfit.”

“These are unrelated facts.”

Rin stepped forward.

She stepped forward with the smooth, low, silent step of something that had stopped being a sleepy girl on my chest and had become the thing the forest animals were afraid of. Her ears were flat. Her eyes were narrow. Her tail was straight behind her.

“Rin.”

“I will handle this.”

“Rin, he is a third-year.”

“He is wearing a dress.”

“That does not make him less dangerous.”

“It makes him stupid.”

“RIN.”

Garreth looked at Rin. His expression did not change. He shifted his weight, just slightly, from the front foot to the back, and the sword came up to a guard position, and I saw, in the way the blade settled, in the way his shoulders dropped, in the way his knees bent just enough to absorb a charge, that he was not playing.

The maid’s outfit was cosmetic.

The swordsman inside it was not.

“The cat girl is your summon.”

“She is.”

“She may participate.”

“She is going to participate whether I allow it or not.”

“I respect that.”

Sakuya had moved. I had not seen him move. He was three steps to the right, in the shadow of an oak, his short blade already drawn. He was not smiling. For the first time since I had met him, he was not smiling. His face was calm and focused, and his dark eyes were fixed on Garreth as if watching a fire they were deciding whether to walk through.

“Alfred-kun.”

“Yeah.”

“I will go left.”

“Sakuya —”

“Rin-chan will go right.”

“Sakuya, we need to —”

“You will go through the middle.”

“I am not going through the middle.”

“He will focus on us. You are the objective. You go through.”

“I am not the objective. The checkpoint is the objective.”

“You are always the objective, Alfred-kun.”

“PLEASE STOP SAYING THINGS LIKE THAT.”

Garreth von Stahl, a third-year student, obstacle course proctor, and six-foot-two swordsman in a maid outfit with a frilled headband, watched this exchange with the polite patience of a man waiting for his opponents to finish arguing before he struck them with a sword. He held his guard. The sword did not waver. The petticoat rustled gently in the forest breeze.

A bird sang somewhere above us.

It was, according to Rin, very ugly.

I took a breath.

“Okay.”

“Alfred-kun.”

“Okay, fine. Left, right, middle. We do it your way.”

“Thank you, Alfred-kun.”

“If I get tapped with a sword because of this, you are making me rice cakes for a month.”

“I was going to make you rice cakes for a month regardless, Alfred-kun.”

“OF COURSE YOU WERE.”

Garreth raised his sword.

Rin dropped into a crouch.

Sakuya vanished into the shadow of the oak.

I stood in the middle of a forest, directly in front of a man dressed as a maid, holding a real sword. I thought, very briefly, about a quiet house, a decent breakfast, and a cat that politely ignored me.

Then I ran.