Yeah, This Is Cheating! (continued)

Even so, he felt as if he could sense Yukino watching his back with a curious gaze.

Oreki ran out of the park.

"..."

So what was he supposed to do now?

Oreki had a very old-fashioned digital watch on his left wrist, and the time read 13:15.

Sojiro, the teacher at school, had told him to return to school before five to hand in his manuscript. If he went back now, wouldn't that be like going to school for nothing?

And Bailixiang's treatment for the day was already over.

After thinking it over, he headed to the mayor's office.

"Isn't that Mitsuha?"

One of the staff members recognized him.

And while it was called the mayor's office, it was actually just an ordinary three-story office building.

He could see one of those huge loudspeakers used for rural announcements.

"It's school time right now... Do you have something important to discuss with the mayor?"

"Is something the matter?" Oreki recognized this staff member. He was the person Oreki had snatched the spare loudspeaker from that morning.

Then a passerby called him Mr. Teshigawara.

Oreki then realized that this was a town, and one of his two friends, Kawahara, had the surname Teshigawara, so this Mr. Teshigawara was probably Kawahara's father.

"More or less," Oreki said with a nod.

And so he easily learned that the mayor was in the reception room.

Only, before Oreki could knock on the reception room door, he heard the sound of someone on the phone inside.

It was the mayor's voice.

He was looking for money.

To be precise, he was collecting money for the election.

Oh.

An election. Of course that would require money.

That was perfectly normal.

But some of his farsighted moves, such as building parks and the like, had failed