As expected, it had to be the two of them who defended Big Sister's standing.
Hachiman and the Rem and Ram cosplayers and the rest were heating up the mood, while Momo and Nana played the 'masterminds' behind the scenes, and the Play segment had gotten lively the moment it began.
But not every part of the Service Inn was this lively.
The Service Inn, formed by merging several hot-spring inns, was huge, and apart from the places where the cliques crowded together, it was fairly quiet.
Just past the end of the stalls selling doujinshi and cosplay outfits, there was a spacious area that lay silent.
All kinds of ingredients were laid out around the edges of the area, and nine cooking stations stood at its center.
This had originally been the venue for the "Culinary God Tournament," where everyone would watch the chefs show off their skills while enjoying dinner and heating up the mood.
But now, because of Momo's move to skip the planned order of things, the cosplayers acting as NPCs had all run over to the stalls and surrounded Hachiman.
The Totsuki Culinary Academy chefs in their assorted cosplay outfits, and the guest chefs who were just there to make up the numbers and get turned into dishes, had been affected too. They couldn't hold back and had run off early to hide somewhere else.
Beside the judges' seats at the very top of the "Culinary God Tournament," two girls dressed in completely different styles stood side by side.
One of them was a girl with long, straight black hair. A pair of fluffy animal ears sat on her head, and a wolf tail hanging behind her hips swayed gently.
She wore a jacket that was black on top and white below, black shorts, black stockings and sneakers.
A Pocky stick was in her mouth, and her eyes were fixed on the cosplay stalls in the distance, which were still somewhat chaotic.
Wearing the Empathy Bracelet or turning on empathy, she could already faintly hear their voices rising and falling, carried over to this side.
"What should we do now..."
Yukinoshita Yukino, cosplaying Texas from Arknights, was thoroughly gloomy.
This hot-spring convention had been set up on a huge scale. The overall hosts of the Service Game were Momo and Nana, but each game segment also had a dedicated person in charge.
Yukinoshita Yukino was the one in charge of the "Culinary God Tournament." She was to coordinate with the Totsuki Academy chefs and arrange Hachiman's meal, and after he finished dinner, move on to the next game segment.
If something had gone wrong because of a slip on her part, she would have owned up to it. But she hadn't done a single thing.
Now the audience had run off, the chefs had run off, and even the judges were tied up over there.
Could tonight's "Culinary God Tournament" even go on...
Or should they skip it and play the other games, and pick it back up when their President got hungry and wanted a late-night snack?
"Yui, how is that friend of yours? Did you explain how things are here and invite her to join?"
Yukinoshita Yukino let out a long sigh and turned to the pink-haired girl beside her, who wore a peaked cap and had a can of spray paint hanging at her waist.
She was in shorts too, and the girl's fair thighs were left completely uncovered.
Her white T-shirt, covered in colorful graffiti, was tied up at the front, which bared her snow-white belly and also set off her lovely chest.
"I haven't explained it to Tomoe properly yet... I only mentioned that we have a fairly private get-together after school, and she said she'd be willing to come. At the next Service Game I'll try to bring her along."
Yuigahama Yui, cosplaying Rappa from Honkai: Star Rail, stiffened at the question and answered in a small, halting voice.
Tomoe Koga was a friend from her clique in class, someone she thought was fairly well suited to being brought in.
But thinking it and actually doing it were different things, and when it came to acting, she was dragging her feet.
Pulling people into something like this felt like something only a B-bitc... would do...
And a scene this big, this shocking, like today's, was something she hadn't experienced herself. She had no idea how to explain it to Tomoe Koga.
"..."
Looking at Yuigahama Yui's awkward face, Yukinoshita Yukino felt no urge to blame her. It only made her think of her own past self.
Joining the Service Club was an opportunity ordinary people could hope for but never go looking for, and the sooner they got in, the better.
Even doing nothing, just tagging along with a clique and mooching food and drink, you'd become a senior to the latecomers and enjoy all kinds of perks. Money and things like that were minor.
But in the past, she would never have recruited anyone herself, and she'd have been even less likely to let Yuigahama Yui bring in her friend.
"Let's go over to the hot spring."
Yukinoshita Yukino didn't dwell on it. She sighed again and took Yuigahama Yui to the open-air hot spring to ask the head of the Yotsuba family and the head of the Aoe family what they thought.
The rule for tonight's hot-spring convention Cosplay segment was that everyone had to wear a cosplay outfit, and the snow woman Aoe Mai and the others were naturally no exception.
But to avoid embarrassing themselves in front of the younger generation, they had chosen to stay away from the battlefield early on.
As long as they stayed away from Hachiman and didn't trigger any storylines, they wouldn't lose control so easily, even in cosplay outfits.
"Mm, okay..."
Yuigahama Yui followed Yukinoshita Yukino with a face full of shame. She looked down at her own full chest, then sneaked another look back toward that chaotic cosplay, which no one could say how long would go on.
There was a reason she had picked Rappa, the ninja from Honkai: Star Rail.
Rappa's outfit was fairly daring too, with the T-shirt rolled up to show her belly and navel, and the jean shorts, which looked harmless enough, outlining the shape of her hips very clearly.
But compared to the outfits you could slip a hand into straight from the side or behind, or the ones you only had to flip up a little to lower your head and taste, hers was already conservative.
And of all the game characters whose profiles she could have cosplayed, Rappa's setup was relatively good. Rappa wasn't the President's lover and didn't have a crush on the President, so she wouldn't go into h*at the moment she saw him.
If she cosplayed Rappa and her body got out of control, at worst it'd just be that she was in the mood and was having a round with a buddy (the President).
Little Yuki had chosen Texas because Texas had a cold personality, but Little Yuki wasn't choosing to run away out of nervousness like she was.
Little Yuki had just picked it because she was in charge of one segment of the games and didn't want to embarrass herself too much.
The colder a character's personality, the more violently their "affection" burst out once it came, but at least it could be held down for a while, and afterward you could go to the next game segment and use up the "affection" built up in your body.
She hadn't expected things to change so fast. The place over there had already descended into chaos without anyone needing to hold anything down on purpose, and even if Little Yuki joined in now, nobody would care how different her expression was from usual.
Hmm... if even Little Yuki turned out like that, she couldn't imagine what that feeling was like.
She'd already experienced it through empathy, and she'd even worn the Empathy Bracelet before, but it must be different from actually going out there herself, or why would so many people be fighting over the President's favor?
There had to be a flavor she hadn't really experienced yet...
With her mind on the scene of her and Yukinoshita Yukino truly becoming good sisters someday, Yuigahama Yui, her face flushed red, came with Yukinoshita Yukino to the edge of the Service Inn's open-air hot spring.
Before, everyone had liked to chat and talk business in the big bath at the Service Club. Now that Hachiman had set up a spring source producing special spring water in the Service Inn, they all liked to gather in the Service Inn's open-air hot spring.