"It's a fold, you're going to compete tomorrow, haven't you practiced today?"

When I said hello, Mamura's mother had a surprised look on her face, and she didn't seem to notice that a few of us were there. But she reacted quickly, giving me a kind smile and the three girls who walked behind me.

"It's enough to practice, and if you're too nervous, you'll lose your performance, so I want to relax a little bit."

I didn't care about Mamura's mother's reaction, and made up a little lie to fool the past, so I shifted my attention to the two members of the Board of Education, or rather, the focus was on the middle-aged man, Takashi Takeda. He is proficient in hypnosis and has hypnotized me many times before. With his skills, coupled with the combination of mana and tools, he can almost achieve the effect of completely brainwashing people.

If it weren't for the fact that I had applied psychological cues to myself and recorded daily action records to help me recall, even I would have been unable to avoid losing some of my memories.

This is a somewhat dangerous person.

I secretly raised my vigilance, but I still smiled at him, and pretended to be a little puzzled and strange, to make sure that others couldn't even see the slightest flaw: "Uncle, have I seen you before?" I feel familiar to me when I see your face. ”

As I looked at Takashi Takeda, he also looked at me and squinted his eyes, the wrinkles of the eyes were like cracked lines on glass, messy and deep. I could feel him looking at me with a scrutinizing gaze, which is probably a common problem for people of our kind, but he quickly licked his chapped lips and laughed softly, "I used to be a lecturer in a whole-person class, and your parents were considered my students, so your parents brought you to visit me a few times when you were younger, but I didn't expect you to still have an impression." ”

There is no flaw in both the expression and tone, which is not a lie, but also answers my questions sideways, and also blocks the possibility of me continuing to ask.

"I see, then I should call you grandpa...... Huh? ”

(In Japanese, the sounds of grandpa and uncle are similar, but grandpa has an extra i, and the protagonist deliberately lengthens the sound here in this i.) ）

I didn't intend to ask any further, it wasn't my purpose in the first place, but I deliberately lengthened the tone of the salutation, pretending to be dissatisfied because I was being looked down upon. He didn't care about it, smiled and didn't speak.

I couldn't find a breakthrough in him, so I looked at the young man next to him, and he smiled at me, but it was so stiff that I could see that he was very young. And his hair is neatly combed, and his face is baby-faced, so it looks as if he is in the stage of transformation between teenagers and young adults—maybe just graduated from the whole class?

"Uncle, you look so young."

Shifting the breakthrough to the young people, I put on an innocent smile imitating a child, and as if I inadvertently remembered something, I asked more: "By the way, why didn't you go to the venue to play?" Today there is a snowman building competition and an ice skating competition, so it's a shame not to see it. ”

"I really want to go, but my uncle is already an adult and has work to do, so I can't go. In addition, my uncle is only twenty years old this year, and he is not much older than you, so he is already very young. ”

The young man smiled and reached out to touch my head, but I took a step back to avoid it, so he awkwardly touched Mamura's head beside him. I remained silent, grasping the thread in his words to continue the conversation: "Work? But won't there be a holiday after winter? Why work? My mom and dad are resting. Could it be that the uncle is some kind of urgent job? ”

"Yes, as soon as I have urgent work, uncle, I have to get busy."

"Ah, that's right. But since he was working, why did his uncle come to Mamura's house? Is it work-related? ”

I watched Takashi Takeda's expression out of the corner of my eye, and noticed that his brow twitched inadvertently. The young man became a little embarrassed, he looked at Mamura, and showed a slightly stiff smile: "It has nothing to do with work, but I just passed by here, so I came in to visit this Aunt Misaki - when she was in the whole class, she was six seniors than me." ”

"Fold, he's lying, he just said it's an important job, so how can he have time to visit Aunt Misaki."

Sala tugged at my sleeve and "alerted" me with a quiet, but audible voice that was tantamount to handing me a knife to attack. Although I was a little surprised by the cooperation of the yarn, I still took the opportunity to make a dissatisfied look: "Uncle, you are lying, we have been in for so long, and the shoes you put at the door are almost dry, so it doesn't look like you have urgent work, right?" The education committee has two Chinese characters for 'education', but before teaching people, don't you have to do it yourself? How can a deceitful uncle educate others? ”

At this point, Mamura's mother and Takashi Takeda both seemed to sense that something was wrong, and the atmosphere became delicate.

"I ......"

The young man's face turned a little red, in fact, he could continue to prevaricate with the reasons of "because the work is over" and "a little lazy", and I have no choice but to start from a different angle. But probably because he rarely lies, he quickly gave up making up lies: "Okay, it was my uncle who lied, and I came to your Aunt Misaki's house because I had work to do." ”

"Takeuchi, you are really, the lie was exposed at once, and the children are smarter than you."

Mamura's mother chuckled and tried to pull the topic away: "Okay, fold, it's this Uncle Takeuchi who is not good and lied, so you can forgive him." ”

"Yes, but I'm curious about what my uncle and this grandfather do. Won't it ...... Something to do with Mamura, right? ”

I didn't pay attention to Mamura's mother's words, but continued to keep an eye on the education commissioner known as Takeuchi. If the matter of Mamura is not broken here, there is no way to change anything with the strength of our children, so we must break the matter here and win the help and solidarity of Mamura's mother, otherwise we can only passively wait for the end of the matter - maybe there will be no danger, or it may become a tragedy.

In any case, now is a very good opportunity.

"Fold, I can call you that, right?"

Before Takeuchi could speak, Takashi Takeda spoke first, still with a gentle smile on his face, but the deep wrinkles gave people a serious and cold feeling. I nodded, and he looked interested, "Tell me, why do you think that?" ”

"So you don't know, grandpa."

I put a smile on my face, undisguised, perhaps a slightly mocking smile to others: "When it comes to work, the work of each department in the town is different, and I have heard that the main job of the board of education is to be in charge of education, such as moral education and whole-person classes, which are all related to children. So if you're talking about the work you're talking about as a member of the Board of Education, there's a good chance it's going to be related to Mamura. ”

"And...... It's festival time, so if it's a normal thing, I'll wait until after the festival is over. It's only that kind of really bad, urgent thing that keeps Grandpa and Uncle busy during the festival - not a good thing for Mamura, right? ”

"What an interesting inference. Zhe, although I have known that you are a smart child, what you said is still very unexpected to me. ”

Takashi Takeda raised his eyebrows unexpectedly, looking a little funny with his square face. But he'd spoken to me many times before and knew everything about me, so he was only slightly surprised, not too surprised.

"You have a pair of discerning eyes and a spiritual brain."

He praised this, but shook his head and sighed: "But no one can tell whether this is a good thing or a bad thing." ”

"Do you want to change the subject?"

Ignoring the surprised glances of Takeuchi, Mamura's mother, and a few children. I pursed my lips so that my gaze was unwavering, so that he could understand that I was not talking about this as a joke or as a joke, but as an attempt to obtain the right to dialogue from an equal point of view.

"No, it's not."

Takashi Takeda shook his head and smiled again: "It's just the old man's feelings." So what else do you know? You don't know if that's the only speculation. I wouldn't admit your speculations if there was no evidence—the innocence of a child could not have made an adult compromise. ”

"Rats, you weren't long ago on the edge of Maolun Park with two rats. And you also sniffed Mamura's pajamas into rats, right? ”

At this point, I threw my important chips onto the stage and watched his reaction firmly - to my surprise, his face was marked by a look of astonishment and discrepancies, the corners of his eyes twitched violently twice, and the forehead lines on his forehead were puffed up, and the deep lines were like ditches.

"You see it."

He quickly reined in the changes in his face and calmed his expression. And Takeuchi next to him still had a wide open mouth, a look of surprise - after all, he was still too young.

"It has nothing to do with the fold, I saw it, I went to the bathroom next to the park, and I saw it by accident."

Before I could speak, Mika stood in front with her chest straightened, her expression a little frightened, but she still looked up at the adults.

"I see."

Takashi Takeda nodded, he looked at Mika, seemed to see her nervousness, and smiled softly: "You're Mika Hasegawa, can you tell me how you know that you are with us is a rat." I remember that they were all cloaked in cloak that covered their whole body, and from their appearances alone, they didn't immediately make people think of rats. ”

"Because Sasha and I saw those two rats on the first day of the Snow Festival, I have an impression of their size."

Meijia straightened her waist without showing weakness, her hands with pink cotton wool gloves clenched into fists, and her petite body revealed a heroic posture.

……