They were much like the three bodhisattva-type gyaru, Yuina and the others. The three-girl triangle of Reina and the others also had very different personalities.
The blonde gyaru Reina, like Minami, was a rather carefree blonde gyaru with short hair. Tall and well-endowed, she had also been a starting player on the girls' basketball team in middle school.
Yukina, with her long wine-red hair, also liked to let her hair fall over her shoulders like Rin, but her personality was much calmer. Unlike Rin, she did not lose her temper and snap at people all the time.
And among them, the silver-haired beauty with twin tails who was currently going on about the differences between one young lady and another was Ruri, the daughter of the president of a major cosmetics company.
Because they had different perceptions of wealth and power, they were looking around the hot spring inn and marveling at it.
"Otherwise, why do you think so many daughters of zaibatsu families joined the Service Club? There's no denying that this Hachiman-kun you're talking about is very charming. Maybe I'd like him a lot too after spending some time around him. It's even possible that someone might fall in love with him at first sight."
"But how could so many daughters of zaibatsu families all fall in love with him at first sight? The magical-girl power you possess is more precious than you realize. Huh? Liliana from the Hoshimiya family..."
As Ruri was speaking, she suddenly spotted a familiar figure in a certain direction. She paused, then left them with a sentence and jogged over with a smile.
"Could you wait here for me for a moment? I'm going to say hello to an acquaintance who came with me."
"Liliana!"
"Hm? That voice... Ruri-chan?"
Hoshimiya Liliana, who was chatting with several girls beside her, turned around when she heard someone call her. When she saw Ruri running over, a trace of surprise flashed across her exquisite, flawless fair face, but she quickly composed herself, covering her mouth as she gave Ruri a light laugh and greeted her.
"Ruri-chan, you really came too. Who did you come with?"
Although their fathers were competitors in the cosmetics industry, the two of them had a fairly good personal relationship and did not immediately start arguing whenever they saw each other.
"I came with some friends from Sobu High. They're over there. I also saw someone from the Hojoin family just now. It's a shame I'm not very familiar with her, otherwise I'd have gone over to say hello to her too."
As she explained, Ruri looked at the three beautiful girls beside Hoshimiya Liliana, whose builds differed quite a bit from one another, and asked tentatively,
"Liliana, what about you? Aren't you going to introduce your friends?"
Reina, Yukina, and the others came from ordinary families, so she could not exactly drag her friends into this circle of young ladies. But the few friends beside Hoshimiya Liliana clearly were not ordinary people.
"Sorry, I forgot to introduce you to them, Ruri-chan."
Hoshimiya Liliana exclaimed and covered her little mouth, hurriedly preparing to introduce the three friends beside her.
But before she could, the girl beside her, who was exceptionally tall with waist-length jet-black hair, spoke first.
"Hello, Miss Kurusaka. I'm Tenryuuji Koto. The two friends beside me are Kurosaki Akira and Shiratori Yui."
"We previously attended Seikosha Gakuen High School with Liliana, and we're about to transfer to Sobu High. I didn't expect Sobu High to have not only Yukinoshita and Ichinose, but also the daughter of the Kurusaka family. It seems the information everyone has been passing around isn't entirely accurate."
"Uh... just call me Ruri. Actually, Sobu High doesn't only have the Yukinoshita and Ichinose families. There's also the Chitanda and Kotobuki families. They might be busy with club activities, so they haven't learned about the recent developments. We don't usually have much contact with the club president, so very few people have noticed us."
Hearing the other girl's surname and realizing her identity, Ruri immediately became more serious and politely greeted Tenryuuji Koto and her two friends. Although she did not pause in speaking, her eyes involuntarily fell on the black collars around their necks.
"This time, I only learned about the Service Club because some gyaru friends invited me. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't even have known that Hikitani-san, the Service Club president, had also opened a mysterious Service Club outside school..."
Although Ruri knew that these empathic collars were essentially the Service Club's passes, possessing special empathy functions as well as shielding and rescue measures to protect members, and that without one, she could not become a member of the Service Club, she, Reina, and Yukina had only been allowed to teleport here after putting on empathic collars.
But seeing Tenryuuji Koto and the others wearing the same collars with her own eyes still left her shocked and surprised.
Tenryuuji Koto of the Tenryuuji Foundation... A young lady of this level would probably be among the very top even at an elite girls' school filled with daughters of wealthy families, right?
Tenryuuji Koto of Seikosha Gakuen High School, Ichijo Hibiki of Oharu Girls' Academy, Shiramine Kusakura of Tenshi Academy...
And now, there were many daughters of zaibatsu families at the hot spring inn who were on the same level as Tenryuuji Koto, or even more powerful...
When Tenryuuji Koto had just said that she had not expected Sobu High to have other families, it was not that she truly could not find information about the students registered at Sobu High.
Rather, to these top-level zaibatsu families, Chitanda, Kotobuki, Yukinoshita, Ichinose, and Rurikawa were all insignificant. If the Yukinoshita and Ichinose families had not established a connection with Hachiman, even those families at Sobu High combined would not be enough to stand against a single top zaibatsu.
Although many large groups were called zaibatsu, truly powerful zaibatsu were giants spanning many industries. Their every move seriously affected the livelihoods of people working in related fields. A local family that simply focused deeply on one industry could not accomplish that.
But... the Service Club was probably no longer simply a special platform for private exchanges... It was more like a card table where the life and death of companies could be decided with ease.
Looking at the smiles on Hoshimiya Liliana and Tenryuuji Koto's faces, Ruri suddenly thought of a very serious problem.
Many zaibatsu had distinctions between main families and branch families, and had many descendants, but not every zaibatsu had an heir. Take the Arima Group, whose influence was even slightly greater than that of the Tenryuuji Foundation.
The leader of the Arima Group, Arima Isshin, had a daughter who ran away with someone in her early years. Now he had neither a son nor a grandson to inherit the Arima Group.
Nowadays, some zaibatsu had young ladies who could personally step into the fray. But without an heir, the Arima Group did not even have the qualifications to join the Service Club. It would probably be wiped out by the other zaibatsu working together before long.
She and Hoshimiya Liliana, whose families were merely competitors in the same industry and could still get along harmoniously, were one thing. But the zaibatsu whose tentacles reached into countless industries and whose businesses clashed in every field would probably pounce the moment they smelled blood.
"Then Ruri, you can call us by our names too. I see everyone else in the club calls each other by their names. Your friends are over there, right? Can we walk around together with your friends?"
"The maids at the inn are all very busy. We can walk around on our own and see how many familiar people show up at this hot spring inn tonight."
Tenryuuji Koto saw that Ruri seemed to have gotten lost in thought while looking at them, but she did not say anything more. She merely exchanged a glance with the petite Kurosaki Akira and the pink twin-tailed Shiratori Yui, then looked toward the direction Ruri had come from.
Over there, Yuina, Reina, and the others had been waiting for Ruri, occasionally turning their eyes toward them.
They had just arrived and did not know much about the Service Club or Sobu High. Getting acquainted with the gyaru group at Sobu High was a good way to make an opening.
"Walk around with Reina and the others? This... I'll go ask them. They should be fine with it. But if they accidentally say something rude or otherwise offensive, I hope you won't take it personally."
Ruri was stunned when she heard this. She had only come over to say hello and had not expected Tenryuuji Koto and the others to want to walk around with them.
Although she was not quite sure what Tenryuuji Koto was thinking, she could not exactly refuse outright. After hesitating for a moment, she hurriedly gave them a warning in advance.
"Do you think we're sheltered young ladies who've been locked inside our mansions since childhood and have never interacted with normal people?"
"Don't worry. The Seikosha Gakuen we attended before wasn't a girls' elite school. We saw no fewer ordinary students than you did."
"Even if we bicker or argue, we can just clear up the misunderstanding after we calm down. If you're worried that a little friction might make Mr. Hikigaya dislike us, don't we still have Liliana, the [Saintess]?"
"Have Liliana go beg the club president for forgiveness. I'm sure he'll be satisfied."
Kurosaki Akira and Shiratori Yui smiled at this. They did not mind Ruri's concern. While teasing each other, both of them subconsciously touched the black empathic collars around their necks.
In terms of influence, how many of the many daughters of zaibatsu families in the Service Club could compare with the elven princess? Even the elven princess was peacefully serving club president Hachiman in the Service Club. What right did they have to cause trouble?
They had come to the Service Club not to cause trouble, but even more to repay Hachiman, the club president.
If they had not become provisional members of the Service Club, they probably would never have imagined that someone at school would dare to target them.
Fortunately, the special collars they had been wearing around their necks recently could not only block mental control, but could also automatically call for magical-girl assistance when they encountered danger. The people at school who had intended to do something to them were easily dealt with as well.
"That 'Saintess' thing... It's such an embarrassing title, so don't call me that at the new school..."
Liliana lowered her head in embarrassment, even her fair, delicate earlobes turning red. However, she did not object when Kurosaki Akira and Shiratori Yui told her to go serve Hachiman. She only asked them not to call her by the nickname the boys at her previous school had given her.
Because of her gentle personality and the way she got along well with everyone, she had once been called the Saintess by people looking for something to gossip about. Although she was embarrassed by it, she did not actually dislike the nickname.
But who could have imagined that she, who was called the Saintess, would be hated by someone and become the target of revenge simply because she rejected a boy's confession?
That boy had been bullied and mocked by other boys, while she simply was not familiar with him and naturally rejected his confession. Yet he had taken her as a target for revenge.
Even now, she could not understand why that boy wanted to join forces with others to take revenge on her. No matter what, shouldn't he have gone after the bullies who had bullied him?
It was precisely because of this revenge that ended before it even began, leaving only lingering fear, that she and Tenryuuji Koto, Kurosaki Akira, and Shiratori Yui had deeply realized the strength of the Service Club and wanted to serve Hachiman together.
Although they had not actually met club president Hachiman yet, and the club president did not know about their desire to serve him.
"Our Ruri really has an amazing network. She even has acquaintances here."
"No, wait. They're coming this way!"
Reina and Yukina were teasing Ruri from behind while watching her in the distance, but they soon realized something was wrong, and their expressions stiffened.
Although it had not been apparent at school, in a setting like this, Ruri, the young lady of a wealthy family, was obviously different from girls like them from ordinary families.
However, when they thought about how those daughters of zaibatsu families who were even more prestigious than Ruri were just the same, they stopped dwelling on it. They even looked forward to seeing the moment those daughters of zaibatsu families embarrassed themselves.
Now that they suddenly saw Ruri bringing several young ladies back, they almost thought their "malicious" thoughts had somehow reached the other side and been discovered by those young ladies.
"What are you afraid of? We're all club members. No matter how powerful these young ladies' families are, they can't affect us."
"In terms of seniority, we're their seniors. In terms of our relationship, there aren't many people who can compare with how close we are to Hachiman! Don't forget, even though we rarely get into fights, we're magical girls. These newcomers aren't magical girls yet."
"That's right. They're obviously here because of Little Hikigaya! We have to properly vet them for Little Hikigaya."
Minami, Rin, and Yuina also noticed the group of young ladies, with the extreme height difference between Tenryuuji Koto and Kurosaki Akira, but after exchanging glances, they firmly showed Reina and Yukina their status in the Service Club.
They were not young ladies, nor were they demi-humans. Their looks were not even among the best in the club. But they were among the earliest people around Hachiman.
They had already been good friends with Hachiman before the elven princess Aylis came to Hachiman for help.
Yumiko had been brought in by them. Gabriel, Honami, Nijika, and the others also had quite a bit to do with them being brought into the club.
In terms of the value of their close relationships with Hachiman, they were only slightly behind his childhood friends, the twins Hoshizuki Kaede and Hoshizuki Suzu, who had known him since childhood.
Precisely because of this, they could go to Hachiman and throw a party whenever they wanted. It was just that even the elven princesses did not cling to Hachiman all day, so they were too embarrassed to do that themselves.
Everyone was working hard. How could they use Hachiman's favoritism toward them to take a shortcut?
Mm... They could be very tough with the new young ladies whose backgrounds were powerful and whose influence was astonishing, but they were not very optimistic about recruiting new members in the future.
Unlike Hayase Saki, who was socially anxious and introverted, Yuina and the others were not like that, but there were not many people they could recruit either. Most of the people they knew at school were gyaru. They did not have particularly good relationships with the good students, who would naturally become wary when faced with their obviously unserious way of recruiting people.
As fellow gyaru, Kita Ikuyo and Kitagawa Marin were even more popular and had more pull than Yuina. Besides those who had already joined and those who were difficult to recruit, there were not many trustworthy gyaru candidates they could bring in.
Although the small group's parties did not necessarily have to consist of gyaru, people like Ichinose Honami, Miura Yumiko, and Ijichi Nijika, as well as Hayase Saki and Narahashi Miki, would be more than happy to join if they wanted to hang out together, they still needed a core group. They needed some gyaru who specifically hung out with them.
Fortunately, Kita Ikuyo had recently been busy playing in a rock band, while Kitagawa Marin was also busy working on conventions and looking for cosplay enthusiasts. Otherwise, they might not even have been able to recruit Reina and the others. If they wanted to expand their gyaru group in the future, they would have to look outside the school or among the new students.
Being a gyaru was not a high-barrier group. In fact, there was almost no barrier at all. Gyaru also started out as ordinary students. If they wanted to expand the gyaru group, they only needed to find some suitable people among the incoming freshmen.
They did not even need to lead them themselves. Some excellent students, for various reasons, would deliberately dress in a gyaru style and try to take the initiative to join them, such as Karuizawa Kei and Hayasaka Ai.
There should also be quite a few top students who were gyaru among Monday's freshmen. And at times like this... they could bring these top students pretending to be gyaru in and have them hang out with Little Hikigaya...
The gyaru culture was different in every place. The gyaru rules at Sobu High were simply like this: only after serving Little Hikigaya together could someone be considered to have successfully joined their gyaru group.
After all, counting the Reina trio, the largest gyaru group at Sobu High was now in the Service Club.
———
Besides the socially anxious group and the gyaru group, many other small groups were coming and going through the central reception hall of the Service Inn.
The Ichinose clan, who only wanted to rely on their close sisters; the magical-girl group that treated the Service Club as its base; people from idol agencies;
Because the Service Inn had only recently become the Service Club's exclusive hot spring inn, many official members were visiting for the first time. On top of that, the upcoming hot spring convention had brought many provisional members over to join in the fun. The inn's maids were so busy they could barely keep up. The maids from the Kurusaka family alone were not enough. Fortunately, Yukinoshita Haruno had also arranged for maids from her own family to come over, allowing them to barely cope with the flood of people arriving tonight.
The main reason was that the new provisional members were in awe of the Service Club and did not have that many questions. When they saw that the maids and servants were too busy, they simply wandered around with their friends. Otherwise, the beautiful idol girls invited from the idol agencies alone would have been enough to keep them completely overwhelmed.
"Mixed-race super-popular top idol Himemiya Arisa... pure-type idol Kujo Sakura... Mizuhara Honami... Ogata Rina..."
"Is that Kaede Takagaki, the one who likes terrible jokes?"
Amid the crowd, a mature beauty with short dark-green hair, a beauty mark beneath her left eye, heterochromia with a blue left iris and green right iris, and a tall, curvy figure wrapped in a blue yukata seemed to hear someone calling her name. She turned around and saw a girl with long blue hair and a white headband, then smiled and nodded at her.
"She's so mature and beautiful... I heard she's a popular idol who likes terrible jokes. I didn't expect her to have such a presence in person too..."
Furuhashi Fumino had not expected her unconscious exclamation to be heard even in the somewhat noisy surroundings. Feeling embarrassed, she bowed from a distance. Seeing that the elegant Takagaki Kaede did not mind her words and smiled back before turning away, she quickly lowered her voice and continued chatting with Ogiso Setsuna and Tsukimi Chifuyu beside her, though she could not help praising the other woman's presence.
Perhaps because most of the Service Club's members were girls, and even many of the daughters of wealthy families were very young, there were very few mature women. She felt that even among the many beautiful girls in the Service Club, the mature idol Takagaki Kaede could still stand out.
Furuhashi Fumino was not interested in following celebrities, and normally did not pay attention to them at all.
It was just that she had a good memory and remembered many of the popular idols, veteran seniors, and new idol groups that the girls in her class often talked about.
Of course, although she recognized quite a few beautiful idols in the crowd, some of whom could even be called nationally famous idols, compared with the world-class mermaid songstress at Sobu High, they were still far behind.
It was not simply a difference in looks or figures, but the boundary between the supernatural and the ordinary. Even in their own world, the singing voices of the mermaid songstresses like Elio were top-class, let alone in this "magicless" world.
If the anime industry had become extraordinarily popular because of the elven princesses, then the idol industry had become even hotter because of the mermaid songstresses. Countless girls wanted to become idol singers like the mermaid songstresses.
Of course, considering how many daughters of zaibatsu families, rich young ladies, magical girls, and demi-humans there were in the Service Club, Furuhashi Fumino should not have been surprised. It was simply that Furuhashi Fumino normally knew little about those circles and instead knew more about idols in the entertainment industry. Seeing so many beautiful idols all at once made it difficult for her to suppress her surprise.
"I didn't expect Kaede to have fans even here. That's really enviable."
"Hayazuki-san, please stop teasing me. That girl obviously isn't an idol fan."
"She's not a fan and still recognizes Kaede. Doesn't that make you even more impressive?"
"Stop making fun of me. Let's think about how we're going to meet our producer."
"A producer... It feels like we were only invited to make up the numbers. There's absolutely none of the pillow-business development those little girls were speculating about."
Out of Furuhashi Fumino's sight, Takagaki Kaede returned to the crowd and continued talking in low voices with Hazuki Nanakusa, Chiyuki Kuwayama, Azusa Miura, and other relatively "older" acquaintances and friends from the idol agencies.
They walked out of the reception hall while looking at the quiet, secluded scenery deep in the mountains around the hot spring inn, while also observing the Service Club members who had come here with them to enjoy the scenery.
Having realized their awkward situation, they could not help feeling somewhat complicated.
Entertainment agencies of all sizes throughout the industry had been acquired and merged, leaving only attractive female entertainers. All the male entertainers had been split off.
Now, these idols had not only been assigned to do cosplay at the hot spring convention, but had also been called to the hot spring inn at night to bathe in the hot springs. No matter which activity it was, there was only one man, while every other participant was female. All these signs made it impossible for them not to let their imaginations run wild.
Not to mention the little rookie idols who had not debuted yet and were still training. Even Takagaki Kaede, as a senior, could not say what would happen to the agency after its mysterious behind-the-scenes owner changed.