20 The Cafeteria: Part 1

Tap. Tap. Tap.

His black dress shoes walked across the stainless steel floors of the cafeteria as he made his way between the lunch tables. There was nothing weird or magical about them, they just looked like normal high school lunch tables, only much cleaner. He thought he could probably lick each and every one of them without contracting some kind of sickness or tasting something he didn't want to. It was a gross thought, but it ran through his head like the typical young man he was.

As he ventured his way through the tables, he saw the "lunch line", as he called it, and there were two different entry points meant for two different lines. Above the right entry was the letter 'A' and the left had the letter 'B'. From as many meters away as he was, he couldn't quite make out what was inside, but he assumed there was probably some kind of long food-holding serving station that the lunch ladies would stand behind and serve you through. They'd scoop up some poorly made mashed potatoes and meatloaf with chocolate milk, feeding you your daily nutrients of vitamin C and dog shit.

He walked over to entry A slowly as if he was expecting someone to yell at him and tell turn back, but no one ever did. Instead, he was successfully able to make it to his destination.

"Uhm...excuse me?" he called, his voice reverberating quietly throughout the empty cafeteria.

"..."

There was no response, but he didn't exactly expect one anyway.

Then, "Hm?"

A random sweet voice "hm'd" its way into Nakayama's ears like water filling a vase. He made a nasal exhale in reaction, but he ultimately said nothing. He was inside the lunchline, but he neither saw nor smelt any food whatsoever. In fact, there weren't any ovens, microwaves, shelves, sinks, and whatever else one might need in a kitchen as far as he could see. It was as if this was a space accompanied by nothing but silence, other than whatever voice popped out of nowhere.

In front of him, there was a long stainless steel serving station that effectively blocked all entry to the empty space at the back, but it had no food nor a place to hold any food on it. It seemed as if it was just a stainless steel counter that ran from one side of the large room to the other. Of course, there was a turnstile gate on each side that would theoretically allow entry. Though, he assumed that one would need some kind of card to get in. No, it probably required magic of some sort or some kind of mana identification thing.

Something like a thick wall or pillar stood in the middle of the open room and it panned out as far as it could from right to left. To get behind it, you'd have to pass some curtains that seemed to dangle over a door-shaped hole in the wall. Again, on both sides. He couldn't see what was behind the curtains, but he knew he definitely heard a woman's voice from behind it.

"Who's there?" a woman asked calmly and sweetly from somewhere Nakayama could not see. Her voice was so angelic and feminine that it made his boyish antics become riled up just thinking about what she might look like. She stuck her hand through the curtain and began to pull herself through gracefully.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I must have lost track of time. I didn't expect anyone to--" she said before she looked up, her beautiful eyes meeting Nakayama's. Her cheeks became red, but she seemed not to be embarrassed.

"O-oh, uh...hi…" Nakayama spouted out of nervousness, gazing at the beautiful woman who now stood before him. "Cuuute~!!" he shouted in his mind.

She kept staring at him before gasping and breaking out of her trance

"Oh, well hello there~!" she said while giggling a little. "You must be the new student everyone was talking about."

She was a cool blonde woman with long hair tied into twin tails, though those twin tails weren't nearly as long as Kiyomi's. Her skin was slightly tanned and her eyes were a gorgeous shade of an angelic violet. She wore something like what one would see a casino employee wear, a white, long-sleeve, collared undershirt with a red vest on top. Though, the top seemed to be quite tight considering the outlandish size of her chest. They were almost the size of Itsuwa's, though maybe they could even rival hers. On the lower half of her body was a red pleated skirt that rode above her navel and her upper half's clothing was tucked into it. The skirt made it a few inches above the knees and she had on black leather boots.

Definitely not traditional lunch lady attire.

Speaking of the lower half of her body, she was quite curvaceous, rivaling Ms. Itsuwa once again with her feminine charms. Though, Ms. Itsuwa seemed to be a bit more gentle than this girl and perhaps even a bit older. She stood around Ms. Itsuwa's actual height, though probably a little shorter at around 5'3 or 5'4 as compared to Ms. Itsuwa's 5'5 or so.

"O-o-oh! Y-yeah, that's me, I guess…!" Nakayama stuttered, putting a hand behind his head while blushing. The girl behind the counter gave a puzzled look and peered around Nakayama as if she was looking for something.

"Hm? Is something wrong?" Nakayama asked as he looked over his shoulder in confusion. The woman put a finger below her bottom lip, her arm pushing up one of her large breasts, and looked at Nakayama.

"Huh. Well, I thought that, since you were here, it was time for Class F's lunch. Did you come early?" she asked somewhat innocently, her violet eyes practically shooting lasers of sparkles and striking the boy in the face.

"Ah? Oh, well...I actually came to the cafeteria to look for Ms. Akayoru's office, but she wasn't in there. Any idea where she might have gone?"

"Ms. Lea? Hm…I'm not really sure. I only clocked in about 15 minutes ago and I didn't see her leave. I thought she must've been in there."

"Well, apparently not. There's still some paperwork on her desk, so she clearly plans on coming back. But, who knows? Maybe she got abducted by aliens or something." he said as he put his hands behind his head.

The woman giggled with her mouth closed and leaned her body over the stainless steel counter, mounting her breasts on top. "Mmhm-hm-hm-hm~!"

As a man, Nakayama couldn't help but notice that change in posture and took advantage of how she rested against the counter with his eyes.

"That was cute," she said with a smile, to which she then used her tongue to wet her pink lips.

"...E-ah-huh?" Nakayama stuttered as he took her eyes off her funbags and focused on her face, not noticing the action she made with her mouth. He laughed nervously and pressed the tips of his index fingers against one another as if he was taking a page from Koko's book. His face became beet red and his body wiggled around in embarrassment.

"I-uh...well, uhm-he-heh…"

"Oh, by the way…" she said as she rested her cheek in her palm. "My name is Erika Shiino. Most of the time, I go by Ms. Shiino. But, since you're so special, I think I'll let you call me Erika."

Steam practically emitted from the boy's ears as if they were smokestacks on a locomotive.

"A-ah? Is that so?" he asked while waiting to die from how much blood was rushing to his cheeks.

"Mhmm~." she nodded with narrowed eyes. "So tell me, where did you transfer from?"

Nakayama tried to calm himself down and answer her question, but the best he could do was dial his embarrassment down a few percentages.

"U-uhm. It's this place called Moku City. We don't really use magic all that much, so that sort of makes it a lot harder for me to understand how a lot of things work around here." he said. "I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the toilets here transferred waste to some other dimension."

She giggled again while looking into his eyes filled with lusty emotion.

"Well, I can assure you that at least some things a normal. According to your standards, I suppose."

"So...normal toilets?"

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The sound of heels, no, boots were slightly heard entering the cafeteria. At first, he thought it must've been the students coming out to lunch, but there was only one pair of footsteps. And, it's not like it was lunchtime yet anyway, so who could it have been?

"Hngh?" Nakayama grunted. "Say, do people usually come this early like me?"

"Hm? Well, not students," she responded. "Though, most of the time, some of the staff will come and grab their lunch before the Class F students. Oh, would you perhaps be one yourself?"

"Y-yeah, I am. Still though, I get the feeling that…" his voice trailed off as he turned around to peek outside the entrance to the lunchline to get a glimpse at who was arriving. Maybe it was Ms. Akayoru returning from somewhere. It would make sense if she was in the building, and it would work out perfectly for--

He froze.

His jaw practically dropped to the floor at who he saw arriving from the depths of Hallway 1A. It wasn't a student, it wasn't some janitor and it sure as hell wasn't Ms. Akayoru. No, who he saw was someone he desired to avoid for quite some time, and he did for a moment. Though, obviously, such an aversion wasn't going to leave a long-lasting effect.

It was a woman, not too tall. That white pleated dress, that tight skirt that only reached about halfway down her thighs. That shoulder-length red hair and those cute glasses on her pretty face. It was quite obvious who that woman was as her black boots continued to clack on the floor, drawing nearer to Nakayama's location.

"It's that weird Maiya girl!" he said in a shouting whisper. He took several steps back in an instant and his teeth started to chatter in fear of what her reaction might be if she found him there.

Maiya Ichida. She wore a casual grin on her face as she walked into the cafeteria, and she pushed up her glasses before putting her hands on her beautiful waist.

"Hm? Oh, so you know Maiya, do you?" Erika inquired. "Well, I guess it would make sense. You'd have to get fitted for your uniform, I suppose. Then again, there are several other fitting rooms, so I guess it's kind of the luck of the draw that you happen to know her." she rambled on. Nakayama felt as if she was making fun of his obvious fear of the approaching young woman.

"Luck? Luck!?" he whispered loudly. "That's the scariest woman I've ever met!"

Erika gave him a look of confusion before putting on a smug grin and raising her eyebrows. "Ohh~? How so?"

"How so!? Do you know her methods when she's fitting us? Huh? Do you?"

"Hm? What's the big deal? I'd think a cute boy like you'd love a girl like her fitting you. Or, perhaps you're not being honest with yourself?"

"D'ah-!? You---"

Suddenly, as if to tease everything she'd discovered about him within the last couple of minutes or so, she cupped her hands around her mouth. She inhaled slowly and then…

"Oh, Maiyaaaa~! Look who I found snooping around---mnff!?"

Suddenly, Nakayama gasped and rushed over to the young blonde, grabbing one of her wrists and shoving a hand over her mouth.

"Hey-hey-hey! Please don't do this to me!" he whispered frantically. "Listen, she's crazy! You probably already know that, right? Please take it easy on me! Try to get her out of here somehow or-uh-gah!?"

Just then, Erika licked the palm of Nakayama's hand.

"Ahhh~" she exhaled a steamy breath as she seductively used her tongue to caress the boy's hand.

"Ah-? Wha-?" he spouted, not quite sure what to make of her decision to do such a thing.

"Hm-hm-hm-hm-hm~..." the girl who looked almost as young as Maiya giggled before wetting her lips with the same motion of her tongue that she used to lick Nakayama's palm. It was almost as if she was spreading his essence all over her mouth.

"Don't worry, handsome. If you don't wanna be seen that badly, then I've got a hiding spot meant just for you~."

"Is everyone in this school as weird as one another!?" his mind screamed.