Akame_Watsu

Akame is the oldest and longest-serving maid still alive at Maru’s, present at front-of-house for a whopping year and a half where most girls don’t last a month — and she didn’t make it that long by asking unruly customers nicely. Ending up on the receiving end of a “Watsu Wallop,” as her signature strike has come to be known, is something of a rite-of-passage for the regulars, delivered without warning for anything from trying to swallow a maid to stiffing one on her tip — and while crude, that dangling sword of Damocles has proven enough to keep the dining room almost civilized while she’s on her shift.

It’s little surprise then that the other girls have begun to schedule their shifts alongside hers, a habit she encourages and supports by signing up for as many as possible. There’s hardly a day you could drop by without seeing Akame hard at work, always keeping one eye on the others: despite her “tsuntsun” shtick, Akame cares deeply for her coworkers, consistently stepping in to help extract them from dangerous situations and offering advice to the new hires. That protective instinct coupled with her experience and seniority has made Akame something of a “big sister” to her junior maids, a title she wears with fierce pride.

But, of course, she hasn’t been able to save them all. In the changing room, when she thinks she isn’t being watched, her coworkers sometimes catch her staring at empty lockers; occasionally, after a long shift, she’ll turn reflexively to joke with a friend long gone. Losing them wasn’t her fault…but you just try telling her that.

In the end, it wasn't a customer that put an end to Akame, but one of her own coworkers: Katie_deshou, a new hire who proved far more dangerous than any handsy guest. No sooner had Akame finished giving her new junior some heartfelt survival advice than she was lured into the cafe bathroom and ambushed: head met stall wall, and before she could even begin to put her fearsome fighting skills to work, the poor girl found herself sliding head-first down the neko's throat.

Katie, for her part, opted to enjoy the company of a male guest while her senior digested. The last thing Akame felt as her body melted away was a customer filling her predator with a whole new litter of kittens.

She died on her birthday: a proud, sisterly girl, reduced to naught but gurgling chyme, identifiable only briefly by the forlorn black-and-white costume and red-violet hair still clinging to her softening skeleton. Her experience and importance to the other girls meant nothing to the new neko, whose body converted the birthday girl into little more than nutrients for her new, growing litter.