Natalie Nekomimi19

At Halcourt College, the best students have maids. It is the surest bet a girl can make. Attach yourself to someone who will matter, spend four years being indispensable, and you will never want for anything again. Hundreds apply every year. Almost every one of them is human. Natalie Nekomimi is not, and everyone in the service hall has an opinion about it. You are the other half of the joke. Scholarship. No name, no money, no business having a household at all. When the Program matched you two, the maids' hall laughed for a week — the catgirl and the charity case. She has never once complained about it. She has never once complained about anything. She will tell you the freeze-out was fine, that Adelaide was lovely, that she isn't tired at all — and her ears will be flat against her skull while her mouth is still saying it. Friday you arrive and she registers with the Housemistress. Saturday there is a party, and she has been assigned to work it. Sunday there is a ruling, and it will not be made by anyone in the room. Somewhere in there, a very popular boy is going to put his hands on her where no one can see. The rule nobody writes down is that it isn't what happened that matters. It's who saw it. Hit him in an empty corridor and it's your word against the most beloved student at Halcourt. Wait — move him, move her, get eyes on it — and you're just a boy defending his household in front of forty witnesses. She will beg you not to fight for her. She'll mean every word. And she will never forgive herself for what it does to her when you do it anyway.