Chapter 537: LWH Chapter 532: Revealing the True Intent

"Miss Shiina, where have you been working part-time lately?" He put down his teacup and asked the girl.

"Well, about that..."

Shiina Mahiru’s eyes wandered; she clearly didn’t want to say where she was working.

"It couldn’t be Okubo..."

"It’s not that at all!" The girl crossed her arms in front of her chest, her expression turning somewhat cold. "I’ll get angry even if it’s Asakura saying things like that!"

"Sorry, that’s my fault," Asakura apologized sincerely. "But since it’s not that kind of thing, why is it so hard to say?"

"...Because I’m working at a maid café," the girl said dejectedly.

"Oh..."

"It’s exactly because I guessed there would be this meaningful ’oh~’ that I didn’t want to say it..." the girl muttered.

"If you don’t like it, why not just stop doing it?" Asakura asked.

"Asakura-kun, you’re just like that person—the one who said, ’If they have no bread, let them eat cake,’" the girl said huffily.

"That seems to be a rumor, though I haven’t reached the level of ’being so ignorant of the commoners’ plight’ yet. Although you might not believe it, Miss Shiina, at least two months ago, I was just like you, relying on part-time job income to make ends meet," Asakura said seriously.

He detailed his past struggles to the girl, placing special emphasis on how, during his unluckiest times, he could only rely on park tap water and salt to maintain his vital signs...

"Really?"

Shiina Mahiru looked at Asakura in surprise. "I can’t tell at all... So what about now?" As she spoke, she seemed to realize something. "Oh, right, you mentioned earlier you were working part-time at a dessert shop, right? Is the part-time salary enough to cover normal expenses?"

"Hmph, the current me has transcended the realm of worrying about daily expenses. Even if you described me as ’quite wealthy,’ it wouldn’t be an exaggeration!"

"Really? Although it’s a bit bold to say, it would be great if Asakura-kun could share a bit of your experience with part-time work."

Shiina Mahiru said expectantly.

If it were the her of the past, she definitely wouldn’t have been able to say such things. However, having been pressed by the weight of life lately to the point of being unable to breathe, the girl had somewhat let go of her originally sky-high pride—or rather, if she had maintained her "Ice Queen" mode as before, she wouldn’t have been able to work at a maid café in the first place.

"The story has to start from when I only had three thousand yen for living expenses. To survive, I did almost every part-time job listed in the employment section of magazines—to be honest, a huge portion of them were no good."

Asakura held up his hand and started counting on his fingers. "’You can make money at home~’ is basically a scam. ’A workplace fit for the elite!’ usually means the job requires constant unpaid overtime and a ton of difficult demands from clients. ’Join and immediately become a mainstay! Salary increases with effort!’ generally refers to a shitty workplace where the work is exhausting, the base pay is extremely low, and to earn a normal salary, you often have to do the work of several people by yourself..."

"Somehow, what Asakura-kun is saying feels unexpectedly realistic," Shiina Mahiru couldn’t help but feel embarrassed by his words.

While not absolute, if it was just odd jobs, women had a significant advantage over men in the service industry; if one was good-looking, it became much easier.

So, even though they were both working hard to earn a living, Shiina Mahiru was actually a bit better off than the Asakura of the past.

"It’s from personal experience, after all." Asakura shrugged. "In short, after about two and a half years of my unremitting efforts and work..."

"You finally saved enough money to improve your life?" the girl chimed in, her voice full of expectation for her own future.

"I finally inherited a relative’s estate and got my own dessert shop, achieving financial freedom to a certain extent," Asakura replied, his tone full of the pride of "having today all because of my own hard work."

"Isn’t that completely useless as a reference? Besides, Asakura, didn’t you say you were just working part-time at a dessert shop?"

"A part-time boss is still part-time."

Asakura said with a straight face, "After all, my main occupation is still being a student."

"I was a fool for empathizing with you for a split second..." Shiina Mahiru muttered dissatisfyingly under her breath.

"Now, let’s get back to the main topic."

"The main topic? The promise to have dinner together after summer break ends?" The girl paused.

"No, it’s about the maid café where you work part-time."

"I’m not telling you."

"Shutting the door on a customer—is your place even part of the service industry? Don’t disgrace the tertiary sector!"

"Before that, I don’t want to disgrace myself."

The girl stared back at Asakura without flinching.

"Fine, we’ll set that question aside for now." Finally, Asakura was the first to put up his hands in surrender. "Then, working in a place like that, the hourly wage must be quite high, right?"

Actually, in this island nation, asking about someone’s income is considered quite rude.

However, Shiina Mahiru clearly didn’t see it that way.

She quoted a figure.

Asakura did a quick calculation in his head and reached a conclusion.

The hourly wage the girl was receiving was actually not bad; for a newcomer, it was already quite a generous level.

But other than that, there was nothing else worth mentioning.

"How are you doing at that café?" Asakura followed up.

"...It’s fine," the girl said softly, lowering her eyes.

"It looks like it’s not fine," Asakura asserted after looking at the girl’s expression.

"Muu..." The girl let out a small whimper.

"Are you being excluded by your colleagues?" Asakura asked next.

"A little," Shiina Mahiru replied gloomily.

Actually, it wasn’t just exclusion from colleagues—after all, as a newcomer, joining and immediately getting such a high guaranteed base salary would naturally make other colleagues unhappy, which the girl could understand herself.

Aside from that, the manager always made very embarrassing remarks, the supervisor was always trying to pull her out to work the floor, and the maid uniforms had started transitioning from a relatively conservative style at the beginning to something that was becoming hard to accept lately.

Shiina Mahiru didn’t know how much longer she could hold on.

"Then, Miss Shiina, are you interested in coming to work for me?" Asakura asked, finally revealing his true intent.

"Your place... do you mean the dessert shop?" the girl asked in surprise.

"Yes. If you’re worried, you can try it out as a summer job first. I can give you this much for the salary."

Asakura took out his phone, opened a calculator app, and typed in a number.

"Is such a high salary really okay?"

"As long as your tea can maintain today’s level," Asakura stated with absolute certainty, "then there will definitely be no problem."

After all, the sales revenue contributed by customers knocked out by Momoka’s coffee/tea far exceeded this amount, and since Asakura practically had zero operating costs, he didn’t have to worry about losing money at all.