Chapter 7: Lenient Bashing【P3】
【言語に関するご注意 / Language Notice】本作はすべて、英語と英語の表現で書かれています。翻訳作品ではなく、オリジナルの英語ライトノベルです。あらかじめご了承の上、作品をお楽しみください。
Shun
“Thank you—but I will take it from here your unmatched, objective brilliance!” the prosecutor interrupts, throwing out a hand at her. He glares across the aisle. “The defense is playing mind games. Mind games! Cause and effect! It is as simple as that.”
He massages his fingers against the piece of paper before him, shuffling it back and forth. “The theft triggered a pursuit. Good Samaritans intervened to stop it, and they were beaten for their trouble.”
He snatches up the sheet and rips it down like an emotional husband tearing the divorce papers. “That is a physical altercation! Trying to escape justice? Rookie mistake, veterinary assistant. I expected nothing less from someone who needs an instrument just to see better.”
The severed halves flutter slowly to the ground—apparently, they were empty.
He sits down rigidly like a knight in armor, scooping up his pen. “That is all.”
Tick. Tick… Tick… Tick. Tick! Tick… Tick!
The judge waits, looking intensely at his silence before opening her mouth—but the defense attorney beats her to the punch. I pan my head, tracking the death ray from the prosecutor’s eyes as it beams across the aisle.
“The prosecutor’s imagination is as vivid as ever,” he scoffs. “A creative attempt to inflate a thin portfolio by magically tying unrelated cases together. I have heard my colleague could use the extra work.”
He nudges his glasses up the bridge of his nose, deflecting the burning stare right back.
I chew slowly, bringing the canned coffee politely to my lips without breaking eye contact with the floor. Neither of them has looked at the accused kids yet.
She hammers the gavel. “Let us maintain procedural flow. Prosecution, rise.”
The prosecutor springs up like a gymnast executing a perfect landing. “Paragon of justice, you called!”
Huh. I did not imagine he could move that smoothly.
“Is that really necessary?” She waves her gavel toward his unchanged stance. “That, and the added charge?”
“Of course!” He looks her straight in the eye. “Ever since I was a little boy, I always felt that I needed to—”
A sharp clack echoes through the room.
She glares at his deflated stance. “Today, please.”
“Well, we are free.” He huffs. “To choose our own wording on how we present our case—”
The defense attorney lets out a loud, deliberate chuckle. “Allow me, everyone! I will save us, once more, from the endless stream of fabrications coming from the sweets factory on the other side of reality.”
“Hey!” The prosecutor breaks formation, slamming a hand onto the desk. “You cannot do—”
Clack.
“Sustained. Silence on my left,” the judge commands, swaying the gavel to her right. “Defense, proceed.”
Her deadpan glare pointedly ignores the defense attorney’s low bow. The clicking of the pen stops.
He strokes his chin as if evaluating a fresh shave. “My thanks to the all-seeing beacon of justice. I will put this in simple terms for the boy with the top hat. How do we try someone for a crime at which they were not present, let alone with any supporting evidence linking them to said incident? With little orange men, perhaps?”
He sits down for the first time this session, letting the words rest on the other side of the room.
She turns her head toward the right table. “Clarify. The recent submission states they were, and I quote, ‘involved in the subsequent violence’. Were the accused present at the scene?”
The prosecutor hesitates, landing a hand flat on the table. “Esteemed guardian of the high bench... The-high-forces-of-the-infinite-void-cannot-be-limited-by-stardust-alleging-consciousness-for-they—”
“Just a yes or no will do on this planet.”
His mouth is left hanging open. I can practically see the gears grinding in his head, debating whether to continue his cosmic lecture.
“No, highly praised chosen judge, but—”
“And do we have any evidence linking them to the subsequent violence?”
“Of course! They wore these masks, commonly linked to—”
“Anyone can wear a mask. Concrete evidence!”
His gaze darts sideways and hooks onto the empty wall. “No, esteemed appointed judge... Nothing else of note to report.”
“And to confirm, both of the accused denied their involvement in this?”
“That is correct!” the defense attorney interjects.
The judge’s glare moves back to the prosecutor, waiting.
“They did. Judge.” He drops the pen onto the table, its clattering fading into silence.
“Then it is settled,” she says, looking down at her paperwork. “This case will only cover the appeal regarding the theft of a backpack at the central square yesterday.”
Tsk. The OPB really messed up the paperwork on this one. How could they have gathered so little evidence for a court filing and then have the guts to submit whatever they had anyway?
She finally begins her formal opening remarks. The defense attorney rests his hand on his ledger, slowly stroking the leather cover like a super-villain’s cat. The pen rests abandoned on the table.
I take another bite of my baguette.
They really went light on the tomato this time, almost as if they were trying to compensate for it with the cucumber, which crunches perfectly with every bite. But it can only do so much. It is no substitute for the rich tomato flavor I was craving.
But everyone knows the bread is what really makes the sandwich. It must be crusty on the outside to keep everything well contained, while soft on the inside to accommodate the ingredients within.
Down on the floor, the trial blurs into words I have never heard before, but their body language speaks volumes.
The defense attorney paces the floor like a robot vacuum. He gestures with his planner like a maestro conducting a symphony, frantically flipping through his notes to prevent his sentences from faltering.
Across the aisle, the prosecutor refuses to go down without a fight. Resorting to character assassination and a conspiracy theory about gravity. He tries to bring up the masks again, but gets sucked up by the defense before he can finish his fox imitation with a howl.
You cannot turn dirt into gold.
The arguments keep flying over the judge, who is treated like a net in the middle of the court. I track the arguments like a high speed ball as they go back and forth.
The accused pan their heads between the players like spectators at a championship tennis match, with expressions gradually relaxing the longer the circus goes on.
I swallow my final bite right as an argument from the prosecution is sliced in two.
“It is decided then,” the judge announces. “By the authority vested in me, and in the name of the Student President, the punishment of the accused will hereby be changed—”
She brings the gavel down with a loud clack. “—The argument by the defense has convinced me to—”
With a long sigh, the accused slump forward. The prosecutor keeps slamming his palm loudly on the table, demanding attention as the judge stoically reads over out the reduced detention time over the noise.
The defense attorney stands up and gathers his items into his briefcase with a smile, barely listening to the whispers of his clients. The prosecutor stays seated, holding his forearm and squeezing his fist in the air as if trying to crush the defense attorney’s head from afar.
Slowly, the room empties as people avoid each other’s eyes while I slurp up the last drips of my drink.
I crumple the brown paper wrapper and stuff it into the empty cup, waiting near the threshold for the other visitors to leave.
The sound of footsteps catches my ear. I look back down behind me, where the prosecutor is the only one left below, picking up the two white remnants of the supernova from the floor.
Justice, huh?
Maybe I should stick to a trespassing case for tomorrow’s breakfast.
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Discover what happens next in: Chapter 8: Remotely Close【P1】
Written by Limited_Infinity. Extras, official publishing platforms and updates are publicly available only on the Patreon page “_Limited_Infinity_”
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