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Azur Lane: Episode of Belfast Volume 3 Chapter 3 Part 7

「But I would like to see if there is something that can be done here……」

After arriving back at the Royal Navy’s dormitory, Bel-chan immediately headed for the large public bath in order to wash herself thoroughly.

As she undressed from her maid uniform in the dressing room, she frowned hard and continued to worry about the current situation with the Meowofficers.

Right next to Bel-chan, Sheffield was also unbuttoning her uniform button after button.

「Listen to me, Bel-chan. I think that what we need to do in order to resolve this situation is abundantly clear. We simply need to show those guys who stand higher in the hierarchy once and for all. Do you understand? Showing them the pecking order is the quickest and surefire method of resolving this situation. I highly recommend it.」

「B-But! Sheffield-san!」

Sheffield took off her garter belt and put it together with her gun holster into the clothes basket. Her face being as expressionless as usual, she then turned towards Bel-chan who objected with a loud voice.

「Don’t worry, Bel-chan. That was just a joke on my part.」

Honestly, the seriousness with which Sheffield spoke those words just a moment ago did not sound like a joke at all, but Bel-chan decided to keep her mouth shut about it and just stayed silent.

「Goodness gracious…… I know that sometimes solving the problems with force is the quickest and the most efficient way, but it just doesn’t seem right here……」

Saying that, Bel-chan cast a quick sideways glance st Sheffield who was right beside her and,

「…… Hm? What happened?」

All of a sudden, Sheffield’s white skin was completely exposed. While watching her naked body, Bel-chan unintentionally opened her mouth wide as she froze still in place.

She had bathed with her sisters Belfast and Edinburgh many times before, but Bel-chan had never been in the company of other members of the Maid Corps before when taking a bath.

In that single moment, Bel-chan was completely captivated by the beauty of Sheffield’s naked body.

The humble fullness of her breasts contrasted heavily with that of Bel-chan’s older sisters, but instead all of her curves and her entire figure were very slim and slender. No matter how you would want to look at it, Sheffield’s figure was just perfect, just like that of a porcelain doll.

Her fine, flawless skin was as beautiful as that of a sculpture that Bel-chan would see from time to time inside of her textbooks..

「…… Bel-chan? Is there something wrong?」

At that moment Bel-chan heard Sheffield’s voice in her ears once again, and that was the trigger that let the small maid come back to her senses.

「N-No! It’s nothing! Nothing at all!」

She inadvertently realized that she had been staring at Sheffield with thoughts and feelings completely unbecoming of a maid coursing through her mind, and then Bel-chan shook her head as she headed towards the big bath with furiously blushing cheeks.

* * *

Ever since that bucket incident. Sheffield and Bell-chan have been troubled by Lime’s interference every time they go to clean the their assigned Meowofficer’s room in the Cat Lodge.

When the two would come in order to clean up, Lime would always make various schemes in order to obstruct their work, and she would oftentimes pull other Meowofficers into her misdeeds as well..

However, no matter what the Meowofficer were up to, every single time Sheffield served as a deterrent that stopped them in their tracks.

No matter what the Meowofficers were trying to accomplish through their actions, being exposed to the terrifying aura emitted from Sheffield’s sharp gaze, any mischievous child would be frightened to their core and would no longer be able to try and obstruct the two maids’ work.

In the meantime, Bell-chan, who was troubled at first, had learned how to handle Lime and her schemes before she even realized it. Even if she suddenly grabbed her toy and tried to slide it at Bel-chan’s feet without any warning, she would anticipate her movements and dodge it just in the nick of time.

In the first place, the way in which Lime would try to interfere their work was always more or less the same and akin to something that a small child would come up with, so it was quite easy for the small maid to actually anticipate her next action and react to it accordingly, but it would seem that Lime was completely unaware of that simple fact, which was all the more surprising.

So before Bel-chan and Sheffield even knew it, their cleaning routine seemed to be going smoother and smoother with each passing day.

As for Lime herself, she would just sit in the corner of the room, puffing out her cheeks in apparent dissatisfaction and looking all lost in deep thought.

—— And all this time she was thinking of a possible way in which she could outwit the two intruders.

But what should she do? Was there even a way in which she would be able to do that?

And one day, as she was thinking about such things, her stomach suddenly rumbled really loud.

「Hm?」

Bel-chan, who just happened to notice the loud sound, stopped her cleaning at once and stared at the grumpy Lime.

When Lime pretended not to know anything about that sound just now, the small maid just smiled brightly and said,

「I will be done with my cleaning in a moment, so please be patient and wait, okay?」

It was truly a smile worthy of an angel.

However, for Lime, it was nothing short of a complete and utter embarrassment to let some outsider hear the loud rumbling of her small stomach.

—— Now, if only Lime was able to make that small maid feel as embarrassed as she was feeling right now, she was sure that the child maid would never want to come in here ever again.

At that moment, there was a flash of inspiration striking through Lime’s head, an inspiration that was so genius that it made her small face blush in excitement.

Outside of this very Cattlery, there was an old storage shed with an orange roof. She once stopped by it when she took the other Meowofficers out to explore the nearby perimeter, but the inside was completely soundproof and you could not hear anything from the outside even if you were to speak really loudly.

—— If she were to trap those two inside of the shed, their absence wouldn’t be noticed by anyone else for a good while.

It would surely be cold and lonely there, and she was sure that they would go hungry in there as well.

For Lime, there was nothing more painful than being hungry in this world.

She grunted devilishly, laughing while holding her hands to her mouth so that no one would see just how wide she was grinning just now.

「—— Lime-san, I wonder what happened to her?」

Bel-chan watched Lime from a distance.

She was so grumpy just now, but suddenly she was laughing for some reason.

「She must have thought about something funny on her own. It’s best to just leave her to her own devices. Don’t worry about it too much.」

Without hesitation, Sheffield quickly began to put away the cleaning supplies.

As she listened to their conversation, Lime was really happy thinking about the future that was to come.

Later that same day, at night.

Lime quickly woke up the sleeping Bugles.

「………!?」

Not knowing what happened, Bugles jumped up with his eyes still half-asleep.

Even if Sheffield and Bel-chan were to be confined in a storeroom, Lime thought that it would be necessary to confirm the structure of the storage shed beforehand, so she thought that going there at night when there was no one else nearby would have been the best course of action.

Once she and her comrades got outside and approached the storage shed right next to the Cattlery, she saw a large lock hanging from the iron door to the shed, which seemed to have been conveniently unlocked with the key still being left inside of the lock.

Lime immediately instructed Bugles to go inside the storeroom.

When she opened the door and checked with Bugles, he did not seem to have heard anything.

For a final check, Lime herself went inside of the storeroom and ordered Bugles to lock the lock from the outside.

Immediately, the two of them together push out the wooden boxes that were piled up in the storeroom.

Because the Meowofficers were really small to begin with, their height did not allow them to reach the lock all that easily, so they decided to climb onto the wooden boxes and use them as stepping stones while reaching towards the lock..

Lime carried Bugles on top of her shoulders.

However, Bugles was heavier than she initially expected, and Lime started to be carried towards the right on the spot.