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Azur Lane: Episode of Belfast Volume 3 Chapter 3 Part 4

Bell-chan muttered with a sullen expression while holding a peculiar broom in her hands.

「Those tools are utterly useless.」

They tried looking for something else that they could use here, but they were only able to find tools that were in equally bad or even worse state.

Sheffield looked at the featherless dusters and perforated rags with a resigned look visible on her face.

「I was hoping to actually find something in here that we could put to a good use, but none of those things seem to be work-ready. I will bring some tools from the dormitory tomorrow.」

After leaving the storeroom with the lock and key placed aside, the two maids returned to the entrance of the Cat Lodge.

When they went inside, Bel-chan and Sheffield looked around for a map of the entire building that was hanging on the nearby wall. There, they could see that the map had the plan of all the rooms in the entire building, with nameplates for each faction neatly lined up from left to right.

As soon as the two maids walked down the adjacent corridor,

「Look, Sheffield-san! There is a broken broom right over there!」

Bel-chan picked up a badly damaged broom that was tossed to the side in the corner of the hallway.

It was a relatively new broom unlike the one that was placed inside of the storeroom, probably used by some of the inhabitants of this building to do some light cleaning here and there.

「It’s a shame that this one is just as useless as that one before, Sheffield-san.」

「Yes, but please look at this. This broom is a little different than the one that was in the storage room.」

Sheffield said so in a firm tone of voice, and she held the plastic handle of the broom with both of her hands.

「The one in the storeroom was all worn out, but this broom is brand new, aside from the fact that it seems to be broken.」

While saying that, Sheffield lightly applied force to the curved part of the handle, and the broom bent even more and even quicker than one might have expected it to do.

「So, it was destroyed on purpose……? But who would want to do such a thing? Do you think it could have been one of the Meowofficers?」

Sheffield nodded her head to Bel-chan’s question, who was in apparent disbelief that Meowofficers could do such a thing, and stood in front of the door with the name plate with the clean “Royal Navy” writing on the wooden board.

「There is no way for us to know that for sure at the current moment, but I think that we can safely say that the probability of such a cause is highly possible. However, the way in which that broom was broken is not the way in which you would intentionally break something out of pure malice. This is more like someone actually broke that broom because they were playing around with it for way too much.」

「Playing around with things that you are not supposed to do…… That sounds like something that a genuine cat would likely do.」

「It seems that it’s just like Hood-sama has said. It would be best for us to remain vigilant at all times, Bel-chan. Don’t let your guard down, not even for a moment.」

With that being said, Sheffield knocked onto the door about two times, and when there was no response from the inside of the room, she decided to open the door slowly and enter the room on her own.

「Excuse me.」

The situation inside of the room seemed to be quite normal. The room was equipped with small furniture that would match the size of the Meowofficers, and was equipped with a TV, refrigerator, bed, sofa, and some cushions. There were also houseplants and exercise equipment used for small exercises.

「It looks like the Meowofficers are gathering on the sofa over there.」

Looking at the direction Bel-chan pointed towards with her finger, there were certainly some cat ears sticking out from the direction of the sofa.

Since the sofa was placed so that it would be facing the left side of the room, all the figures sitting on it were hidden behind the armrests and could not be seen. The two maids had no way of knowing just how many Meowofficers were actually sitting there, but they seemed to be relaxing while watching the TV placed across from the sofa on top of a small table.

The volume on the TV was not that loud to begin with, so there’s no way that they did not hear the knocking onto the door just now.

So the only possible explanation here was that apparently the inhabitants of the room did not care about the presence of the visitors in the slightest.

There was also something else. Sheffield managed to spot a bunch of fluffy purple hair sticking from in between the visible cat ears.

That purple hair led Sheffield to believe that this particular Meowofficer must have been Lime.

「Excuse me.」

While she was thinking about why Lime did not answer the door or react in any sort of way, Bel-chan quickly entered the room and approached the sofa.

「Please wait just a moment, Bel-chan.」

Seeing just how seemingly unsuspecting Bel-chan was, Sheffield decided to stop her just in case.

「Hm? What happened, Sheffield-san?」

「I told you to not let your guard down.」

「But Sheffield-san, everyone seems to be watching TV while staying on the sofa, wouldn’t you agree?」

It was certainly just as Bel-chan said. The distance from the seemingly fully occupied sofa to the entrance was several meters, so even if something was about to happen here, the distance should be more than comfortable enough to let Sheffield and Bel-chan deal with it as needed.

And it was just as Sheffield was about to think that maybe she was indeed worrying too much in here and was about to let her guard down as well when she saw that there was now a shadow looming over Bel-chan’s body.

「Here it comes! Bel-chan!」

Sheffield then quickly reached out towards Bel-chan and pulled on her arm.

Right after that, there was a wall clock that fell down onto the floor right where Bel-chan was standing just a moment ago.

「Huh!?」

Right in front of Bel-chan’s face, who did not know what exactly happened just now, when the wall clock fell down, the dial of the clock hit the floor, and the glass from it scattered all over the place at huge impact.

「Ahh, that was really dangerous right now……」

In an instant, Sheffield pulled Bel-chan closely to her chest and shielded her.

Then, once she made sure that the danger had already passed, Sheffield released Bel-chan from her embrace and let out a sigh of relief. At the same time, the small creature with a storm of purple hair jumped up in the air from the sofa and the Meowofficer landed a short distance away from the broken wall clock..

This must have been the work of this particular Meowofficer. As proof of this theory, the purple-haired Meowofficer seemed to have come down from the side shelf, and there was a mark right next to that particular shelf right in place where the wall clock was hung a moment ago.

「…… That was quite a rude greeting just now. You do realize that if any of us got hit by that clock, we could have been seriously injured, right?」

When Sheffield glared at the purple-haired creature, the Meowofficer simply scratched its head, apparently unable to understand the meaning of Sheffield’s words.

Seeing that irritating demeanor of this creature, the one that revealed a huge disappointment that its prank did not work out the way it intended it to without showing any ounce of guilt, Sheffield’s hand naturally reaches out for the gun holster attached to her garter belt.

「S-Stop it, Sheffield-san! You can’t!」

In a panic, Bel-chan quickly grabbed Sheffield’s hand.

「I get a feeling that if you were to open fire at it, you will only make matters worse than they already are!」

「…… Personally, I don’t think it would matter all that much.」

However, Sheffield obediently decided to do as the little maid said for now.

Sheffield took her hand off of the gun holster and she suddenly felt a gaze centering on her and in response to that she sharply turned towards the sofa once more.

「…… That brat.」

Before Sheffield knew it, Lime was staring at her with a huge grin on her face.

Her expression was as if she was intentionally provoking the two visitors to react in an angry way.

「She’s been looking at us this entire time.」

「Bel-chan, please. No matter what you do, do not make eye contact with it.」

Sheffield slowly approached Lime and groaned that command at Bel-chan.