The True Endgame

As they pulled up to the front of the apartment building Kris lived in, he realized that he was going to need to act quickly. Extremely quickly. Fortunately, he had been training. He already rented a car the other day to practice getting out of it and opening all the other doors. He stood inside of his apartment and practiced opening and closing doors as if he was an NPC inside of a blocky village from a classic computer game. He did everything he could to prepare.

Speed.

Strategy.

Efficiency.

He had it all down.

As soon as the vehicle came to a stop in front of his apartment building, Kris looked at his door and grabbed onto the handle to open it!

But it was not he who opened his door.

Anastasia was already standing outside of his door. Having opened it, she took a step back and politely bowed.

And when Kris looked around… he saw that all of his girlfriends were already out of the vehicle.

“Tch, how are you all so fast?” Emily grumbled, standing at the back of the line which consisted of Anastasia, then Rachel, then Iris, then Abigail, and finally herself. “I blame these damn udders weighing me down.”

Emily might have felt regret over her slow speed, but even she was impossibly fast compared to Kris when it came to getting out of the car and trying to open the door.

“Woah, you’re all so fast,” Kris said, realizing just how difficult it would be for him to try and give any of his girlfriends service. On one hand, it was disappointing. He wanted to be a gentleman and open their doors for them. On the other hand, he was extremely impressed. “You’re all so badass.”

Everybody but Abigail straightened out and blushed a little when they received praise for him. As for Abigail, she continued bowing while having no idea what was going on since her eyes were closed.

Kris realized, in that moment of them all blushing and being distracted, that he had an opportunity.

He jumped out through the door and ran to the apartment’s front door! Sure, it was automatic and would open as soon as he was close, but at least he could be the one to trigger its motion sensor before any of his girlfriends could!

Only, Abigail was already standing there. And as the doors opened, she stepped back and bowed again to let Kris go first.

“Woah… you’re like, a sports car,” Kris said since that was the first thing he could think of when it came to something that could go really fast. Of course, he said that to his deaf girlfriend who was currently bowing with her eyes closed again, so she had no idea that he even said anything to her.

And it was in that moment that Kris realized he made a fatal mistake.

He turned around to rush back to the vehicle only to realize that the others already took out all of their luggage and were approaching with it. He might not have succeeded in taking the luggage first, but he could still ask them for it!

“Hey, let me carry something for you,” Kris said to the others.

And his ridiculous idea was obviously shut down instantly. “Absolutely not,” Iris said. “As maids, it would be a great shame if we allowed anybody else to carry our luggage, especially when said somebody else is our boyfriend.”

“Yep, yep!” Rachel added on.

“Yeah,” Emily said. “I keep getting beat in everything else, so at least I can carry my own things.”

“But,” Kris said, “I’m your boyfriend. I’m supposed to help out and carry stuff for you.”

“Please, Kris, do you know what year it is?” Iris asked. “We are not helpless girls who believe in outdated gender roles. It is not a man’s duty to handle everything for his lover anymore, nor is it a woman’s duty to maintain the house for her lover anymore. However, it has been, and always will be, a maid’s purpose to dutifully handle everything for her master, and a boyfriend is but another form of master to a maid.”

“Yep, yep!” Rachel added on again.

“What she said,” Emily said.

As for Kris, his eyes were spinning inside their sockets. There was so much talk about gender roles, purpose, duty, lovers, masters and maids, that it all got jumbled together inside of his head and he had no choice but to take their word for it. “Uhh… right. Alright.”

It was clear how confused he was, so his girlfriends made mental high-fives to each other. Convincing him to let them handle everything for him was a shared goal between them all. For as maids, it was the most righteous future they could see for themselves—being with a master/lover who allowed them to handle every single aspect of his daily life.

Every.

Single.

Aspect.

One could potentially argue that what the maids truly wanted was a dog in human form who they did absolutely everything for, a master/pet rather than a master/lover, but Kris satisfied the role of being both a master/lover and master/pet to them.

And Kris was perfectly happy to just be with them no matter what.

Though… as happy as he was, part of him still wanted to be more of a boyfriend to them, and he had no idea what he could do. He wasn’t as fast as them, wasn’t as smart as them, wasn’t as badass as them, so what could he do to help them out? What could he do to service them? It wasn’t fair if he was the only one getting serviced all the time.

Then he heard something.

“Watch out!” somebody shouted from above, instantly catching his attention.

When Kris, and four of his girlfriends looked up, they saw a large pot used for plants rapidly falling through the air.

And one maid, who just so happened to be deaf, was still bowing with her eyes closed directly underneath where the pot was falling.

Kris had no idea what she was still over there standing perfectly still like a mannequin, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was rushing past the rest of his girlfriends and throwing himself into Abigail, knocking her out of the way just in time to avoid having a pot half her size crash into her head.

When Abigail opened her eyes from the sudden force, she saw Kris leaning over her with one arm wrapped around her waist, another holding her arm, and sweat dripping down his forehead.

“You alright?” he asked her, letting out a deep sigh of relief that he made it to her in time.

Abigail had to look around to figure out what happened, and it became clear when she saw the broken pot shattered across the ground behind him… and she saw blood dripping down his right leg from where a sharp shard of it cut him. Her eyes widened as soon as she saw that.

The next thing Kris knew, he was being princess carried inside, placed on a couch in the lobby of the apartment building where multiple people were standing around watching from how strange the situation was, and then he felt a disinfectant get poured onto his cut before having it wrapped up in a bandage. As for where the disinfectant and bandage came from, he had no idea since it all happened so fast, but there was a medical kit sitting on the ground next to Abigail.

And once again, Kris felt like he wasn’t doing enough for them. There he was, being tended to the instant he received even a minor wound, after having all of his doors opened for him and being unable to carry any of their luggage. And what did he get to do for them other than exist? They did everything for him and he didn’t get to do anything for them.

Kris let out a sigh before bringing out one of his best bro’s greatest techniques. He placed a hand on top of Abigail’s head… and petted her. “Thanks,” he said, once she was looking at him to read his lips.

In that instant, Abigail felt like her heart was about to explode.

Outside of the apartment lobby, the other four maids were still standing there trying to process everything that just happened.

“Since… since when could he move that fast?” Rachel asked. “That was like, way too fast, wasn’t it? He was over there before we even knew what was happening…”

“We’ve failed,” Iris said. “We aren’t ready. We need to train more. At this rate, he will continue doing everything for us, depriving us of our purpose as maids.”

Anastasia, in a rare moment of wanting to speak, parted her lips to say something… but then shut them and instead nodded.

“That stupidly perfect man is going to put us out of work at this rate,” Emily grumbled.

Back inside the lobby, Abigail kept on pushing her head up against Kris’s petting hand, behaving almost like a dog to the point where she even began to wag her hips a little.

For once, instead of a white-haired deaf girl being the one treating others like dogs, the white-haired deaf girl was the one being treated like a puppy.

 

After the initial distraction down below, Kris and his girlfriends finally made it up to his apartment on the seventh floor. Of course, his girlfriends managed to do practically everything for him in the process. They even managed to select the right floor in the elevator despite it being their first time there, and Kris was too impressed to ask how they knew what floor he lived on.

Then, when he made it to his room, Rachel managed to sneak his keys out from his pocket when he wasn’t looking and unlocked the door for them, happily opening it up and stepping aside to let him go first.

Kris couldn’t even use the whole, “Ladies first,” line to get them to go inside first. That would be relying on old gender norms, which he thought was bad… from what he could remember from earlier, and there was no saying such as, “Maids first,” to take its place.

But he didn’t want to go first. Even if it was his apartment, they were his girlfriends.

An undersized hamster that only knew how to build things raced itself on a hamster wheel within Kris’s brain.

The hamster was happy and in love, and the hamster knew how to solve any architectural problem, but it had no idea how to get his girlfriends to let him act like a proper boyfriend.

So, with no idea what to do, it was time to resort to WWRD?

What Would Ryouta Do?

If Ryouta wanted to get one of his girlfriends to do something, and they were being stubborn and not listening and trying to make him do it instead, then what would he do?

A scene played within Kris’s mind. It was a scene of his time inside of the MMO they all played together, and it featured Fenrir and Cassiel.

“But I’m fishing,” Fenrir said. “Why don’t you do it?”

“Because I’m fishing too! And you already caught a fish! I haven’t caught anything yet!” Cassiel replied as the two sat on a bench next to the river that ran through Nameless.

Kris—or rather, Rao, was just casually walking by when he heard them get into it.

“Look, we’re both going to be hungry by the time we’re done playing,” Fenrir said. “And I’m on a roll. What if all the fish leave by the time I’m done ordering the pizza?”

Cassiel rolled her eyes before asking, “Why don’t you just ask Saya to do it?”

“Because she’s not our personal pizza orderer. Also, she’s still upset that I teased her too much in public earlier.”

“You should have taken it easy on her. Public teasing is only fun at the start, it just gets too embarrassing before long.”

“Yeah, I know, but she was so cute. And her tail was wagging, so I thought she was actually fine with it.”

“You can’t only go off of somebody’s body language.”

“I know. I’ll be careful next time. Anyways, I’ll wake to order food the next time if you do it this time.”

“Waking, ordering pizza, and immersing again is such a pain. You do it this time and I’ll do it next time.”

Fenrir went silent for a couple of seconds before saying, “I’ll bite your neck until you have to wear a scarf from all the hickeys later if you do it.”

Cassiel’s face went red, then she grumbled something under her breath, and then her body went limp as she woke from virtual reality.

Rao, now Kris again back in the real world, knew what he had to do.

“I’ll bite your necks if you go in first,” Kris said.

Four of his five girlfriends blushed and looked like they had no idea how to respond to that… while the fifth, Anastasia, happily stood inside with a light blush and smile on her face.

Emily went in next, not even sure that she properly heard what he said, but she couldn’t pass up the possibility that she heard him correctly.

Then went Abigail.

And then Rachel.

And finally, Iris.

Kris, for the first time, felt the taste of victory. He finally got to service his girlfriends by making them go through a doorway first!

It was a moment he would never forget for as long as he lived.

Though, he had no idea why offering to bite their necks had any sort of persuasive impact on them.