“This is an entirely different matter!”
“Different how?”
Duke Willias turned with a frown toward the familiar man standing before him.
He had neatly swept-back hair and wore square-framed spectacles.
The man was Hans, a long-serving aide who had spent years as a trusted assistant to Duke Kineart.
Hans spoke now — politely, but with a tremor of barely restrained emotion in his voice.
“You gave us your word that you would lend your support to this trial. But just now, the judge received word from someone outside and… his entire demeanor shifted. He’s been making accommodations for that writer — Sonnet.”
“Has he? I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“……Duke Willias!”
The moment Macton Willias feigned ignorance, Hans went pale.
Being absent from the courtroom was already a problem. He couldn’t afford to waste any more time here.
Hans darted an anxious glance toward the door, and Duke Willias responded with a cold smirk.
“How dare a mere aide come to me directly?” he said, his voice like ice. “Since when does Duke Kineart keep such ill-mannered men in his inner circle?”
“……!”
“If everyone conducts themselves according to principle, the trial will proceed as it should.”
“……May I ask, then, what caused you to change your mind?”
Hans steadied himself and pressed on.
His plan was to hear the duke’s reason for reversing course — and then offer a counter-proposal in response.
But Duke Willias only let out another thin, contemptuous smile.
“Go back.”
“……”
“Or shall I have someone slip a word to the reporters still waiting at the courthouse entrance?”
Duke Willias clicked his tongue and cut a glance toward the knights standing guard at the office door.
The knights each took hold of one of Hans’s arms and began dragging him out.
“W-wait, please wait, Your Grace! If House Kineart loses this trial… House Willias will not be spared either! ……Her Majesty the Empress said today that…!”
But Hans’s words were never finished.
Thud.
The office door slammed shut.
The moment Hans was fully removed, Duke Willias’s expression hardened into stone.
Of all the times for the investigation into the Empress to fall through…!
If only that had gone properly, he wouldn’t be standing here so completely cornered.
Duke Willias had directed the investigation himself, and in the end, he had come away with nothing of worth. The Empress’s lady-in-waiting, rumored to have vanished without a trace, had never been found. And on top of that…
“……That should do it, shouldn’t it? Make sure every piece of evidence on your end is destroyed.”
“But of course, Duke Willias. I’m certain my master will be most grateful for this.”
A woman with silver-white hair and an air of dangerous elegance stepped out from behind the wall, a satisfied smile playing on her lips.
It was Milia.
She strolled unhurriedly through the office, casting leisurely glances around the room.
Duke Willias’s face crumpled with displeasure.
“Today’s arrangement is one that will prove beneficial for you as well, Your Grace — that much I can promise.”
“……What do you mean by that?”
“I’m simply relaying what I was told,” Milia said with a bright, artless smile.
Then she vanished.
His pride wounded, Duke Willias slammed his fist against the desk. From outside the door came a startled knock from one of his knights who had heard the sound, but the duke ignored it.
What in the world is going on?
A moment later, Duke Willias pushed himself up from his chair.
He needed to see that trial with his own eyes. Nothing else would satisfy him.
⁂
“I have been… struggling greatly these past years because of the lawsuit brought against me by House Kineart. I was ordered to pay damages in excess of one billion gold.”
Sonnet’s delicate voice drifted through the courtroom.
She pressed a handkerchief to her perfectly dry eyes and arranged her features into an expression of pitiable suffering. Behind her, Oberon — who knew every detail of Sonnet’s history — let out a short, humorless laugh.
Even Riersha was so stunned by the sheer audacity of it that her mouth fell open.
“As the judges are no doubt aware, I am a commoner. And… where would a commoner find one billion gold?”
“……That is true. It is an enormous sum for a commoner to repay.”
“Yes. But I have been paying it back, faithfully and diligently. You need only look at the payment records to confirm that for yourselves.”
“Mm. I see.”
The judge stroked his chin, then pushed his spectacles down to the tip of his nose and squinted down at the paper before him.
The comparatively younger judge seated to the left tilted his head.
“It’s clear that Sonnet has been keeping up with the interest payments, even if the principal is another matter. That speaks well of your efforts. Still, there’s something I don’t quite understand.”
“What is that…?”
“You’d already been through this once before. Surely you knew this new production would cause problems as well?”
“That is because—!”
Sonnet looked up at the bench with eyes full of earnest feeling.
“I had absolute faith that the honorable judges would finally deliver the just verdict this time.”
“……I see. A fair point. The court always renders judgment in the name of justice.”
“And furthermore…”
Sonnet glanced briefly behind her.
Her eyes met Riersha’s.
Start.
It was time to set the plan into motion in earnest.
Riersha mouthed the word go, and Sonnet gave a single small nod in reply. She turned to face the front again and spoke with quiet, steady resolve.
“I also took on this work with a sense of duty.”
“A sense of duty?”
“Yes. Although I was the one who wrote the script for this production… the story itself is based on fact.”
“……Are you saying the events depicted in that production actually occurred?”
The judge at the far right — who had been silent throughout — sat upright in alarm.
He stared at Sonnet for a moment, his expression unnerved, then turned sharply toward Duke Kineart.
He was a young judge who had, at one point, received the patronage of House Kineart.
“……Ah — the court was not made aware of any such claim beforehand. ……Sonnet, you declared that you would speak only the truth, as your conscience dictates. Is that correct?”
“Yes. That is correct. Your Honor, everything I am telling you right now is the truth. How could I possibly offer false testimony before this court?”
The room went still.
Sonnet’s declaration that the story was grounded in fact spread through the chamber like cold water poured into a flame — a silence that swallowed everything.
Someone swallowed hard. Someone else slipped quickly out the door — most likely an acquaintance of one of the waiting reporters outside, moving faster than anyone else to deliver what was shaping up to be the story of the season.
And in that moment, Duke Kineart shot to his feet.
“Those are lies — all of it!! How dare this court be swayed by the ramblings of some common girl?!”
“……P-please, settle down. Sonnet has not yet finished her statement.”
“Why should I have to sit and listen to this to the end?! ……Is this not a direct insult against the Imperial House?!”
He had a point, in a manner of speaking. The judge, finding himself confronted with a statement far above his authority to handle, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and began dabbing at the cold sweat gathering on his brow.
Why is all of this happening in my courtroom?
And on a Monday morning, no less — the very start of a new week.
The judge hastily took a sip of tea.
He was just about to open his mouth and call a brief recess, when—
“Um, ’scuse me.”
A child’s clear, bright voice cut through the tension and rang out across the hall.
Every head turned toward the source of the sound.
Riersha had one hand raised high in the air.
“Esteemed cort.”
“……”
“Could I pleese have permishun to speak?”
“……Who — who is this little one?”
“I am Riersha Arachrene!”
Riersha answered with the confidence of someone who had practiced carefully under Oberon’s instruction. Beside her, Pernoa bit back a smile.
The judge stared at her in blank bewilderment for a moment, then looked to the adult beside her with an expression that plainly asked: is this actually happening?
Pernoa gave a nod.
“……Very well,” the judge replied, with a tone caught somewhere between bewilderment and helplessness. “You may speak.”
Meanwhile, Duke Willias — who had arrived midway through and was watching the scene unfold — found he could not close his mouth.
The words that writer, Sonnet, had just spoken would not leave his mind.
“Although I was the one who wrote the script for this production… the story itself is based on fact.”
