Ryu-chan and I went to my apartment and parted ways. As though on cue, rain started pouring when I made it back to my room. It was fortunate that it didn't fall earlier, or else the paper bag with the leftover sweets might have gotten soggy, even if I used an umbrella. I put the sweets in the fridge and started preparing a meal for dinner later.

In the afternoon, I took some time to relax after the stressful events involving Prosecutor Mitsurugi and Nonda-san. At night, though, I called Chinami. I hadn't called her in quite a while, since she often texted me about trivial stuff and I usually replied expressing agreement. However, this time I felt like I had to report to her the slip-up I had with Prosecutor Mitsurugi, which was my fault, but also could have been avoided had Chinami told me about the Onamida (Fawles) case in the first place.

She didn't pick up my first call, so I waited half an hour to place it again. This time, she picked up.

"Ayame? I was watching a show and couldn't pick up the phone. Don't call me between 7 and 8. What's up?"

"Umm, I spent the day out. Ryu-chan invited me to watch a court case down in the District Court."

"Yikes. Why would anyone want to watch something so boring?"

The way she said it, I could almost picture her shrugging and shaking her head.

"I'm not surprised though. I met that guy in the courthouse library. It's a given he'd be into boring stuff."

"It wasn't boring, and besides he's interning at a law firm. I think I mentioned it to you," I said, remembering a string of conversation we had the week before. I was sure to have mentioned at least in passing, but perhaps Chinami had been too busy getting ready for a date or something to pay attention to what I wrote.

"I don't remember that. I have no interest in your fake-boyfriend or law stuff," she said. "Just get me the damn pendant so we can put this topic to rest."

You should have some interest in law, even if just a bare minimum to keep yourself out of legal trouble, I thought but dared not say aloud.

"Well, as I was saying... I went to the hearing, and guess what? I met Prosecutor Mitsurugi," I commented with a nonchalant tone. "You probably know of him."

"Who?" she said annoyedly.

"P-prosecutor Mitsurugi. He remembered you quite well, I must say... from the Onamida case."

There was a few seconds of silence, and for a moment I thought the call had dropped. However, Chinami soon spoke again, this time with a lower pitch.

"I remember him now. The prosecutor with the excessively pretentious clothes."

"I thought he dressed like a noble gentleman," I said.

"A noble gentleman from the 18th century, perhaps," Chinami said and laughed with her nose.

"The Onamida case, Chinami-neesan. Could you tell me about it so I can avoid looking clueless when it's mentioned? I think I got the rough idea, but..."

Yes. The case had received quite a lot of media coverage little under a year ago. In fact, I had heard of it on TV when I was in the countryside as well- just that I didn't know it was personally relevant to me at the time, and thus didn't pay enough attention to remember the names of the people involved. Chinami was never mentioned, and the specifics were omitted entirely other than to place blame on the bailiffs for allowing the defendant to keep a vial of poison in his possession, which he then used to commit suicide in front of everyone attending the hearing. What role Chinami played in this case as to elicit such a strong response from Prosecutor Mitsurugi? I was afraid to even think about it, but the vial of poison... sounded a little too familiar for my liking.

"I was a witness in that case," she said at last. "That's why I didn't tell you about it. It's irrelevant to your mission."

"Um, well, it wasn't irrelevant earlier today..."

"You know, you'd actually know about this case had you not chickened out and betrayed me," she snapped. "You would've even met Michiru Onamida, who was my 'boyfriend' at the time."

"I'm sorry..."

"Whatever. Listen carefully, because I'm not going to repeat myself," Chinami warned. "In the infamous kidnapping, I jumped to the river and my stepsister, who was an officer, called backup so that Onamida would be arrested for kidnapping and suspected murder."

There I stopped her, because when she explained the plan to me over three years ago, she told me this was going to be a fake kidnapping- nothing involving the police, and just enough cover to make Mr. Miyanagi give up on retrieving the diamond. After all, Eagle river had very strong currents, and so far nobody has been found after they plunged into it, which would make it impossible to search for a transparent rock. My sister and her kidnapper supposedly falling with the diamond down to their fake-demise would be enough to allow her to keep the jewel.

"Yeah, sure. I could keep the diamond if we went according to plan, but I changed it last minute. Dividing the money from the diamond between 2 is better than 3. Living in hiding by myself to fake my death wouldn't be cheap, you know."

"S-so you framed your boyfriend for your murder, which wasn't even a real murder?" I asked, hoping I was understanding wrongly.

"I guess you could put it that way. He was sentenced to death row then, but escaped jail briefly to go kill my stepsister. That's what the Onamida trial was about. He was tried for murdering my stepsister, and when everything looked hopeless for him, he drank poison to kill himself. He was crazy, apparently," she said, and added as an afterthought: "Though, he was going be killed either way, so I guess he merely chose how he wanted to die."

I was beyond shocked by what my sister told me. I knew she had acted immorally by stealing a jewel from her own father, but I never thought she was capable of planning and executing such a macabre plan as to have an innocent person sentenced to death row and then driven to insanity. The fact I was talking to her on the phone already scared me, as though I could be endangered by someone whose true intentions I couldn't read.

Should I keep pressing her about this case, or drop the topic like a hot potato, I thought with much distress. If I keep bothering her, and she starts thinking of me as a threat...

I couldn't finish that sentence in my mind.

I gripped my phone tightly to keep it from slipping out of my trembling, sweaty hand. There was one last point I needed to understand before I dropped this topic.

"Chinami-neesan. I don't know, but Prosecutor Mitsurugi was a-actually quite hostile to me when we met," I said with some difficulty. "He seemed to think you- or I- were plotting something just by, err, showing up to a court hearing. What could that've been about?"

I heard Chinami click her tongue, but she said nothing so I quickly confessed to her that I had to let Prosecutor Mitsurugi in on the secret that I wasn't actually her.

"I'm really sorry Chinami-neesan, but the prosecutor was scaring me and he wouldn't let me go without explaining how I didn't know of him or the Onamida case," I apologized.

"You're really useless," she said. "It doesn't matter to me, anyways. This was your idea in the first place, so if it fails, all that remains for me to do is to kill your 'Ryu-chan' and get the pendant that way."

"N-no, no. Don't do that yet," I said, panicking. "Prosecutor Mitsurugi and Ryu-chan never talk to each other. Ryu-chan still doesn't know about any of this. I guarantee it."

"Fine, but hurry up. I also prefer not to risk getting caught attempting murder on someone else, but it'll all be meaningless if that pendant passes onto the hands of the police by some chance."

I promised I would with exaggerated insistence, and renewed the question to her as to why Prosecutor Mitsurugi was so distrusting of 'Chinami Miyanagi'.

"That's because I was called in as a witness for the Onamida trial and he was the lead prosecutor," she explained. "And he probably thought at some point that I killed my stepsister instead of Onamida. The nerves of some people, don't you think?"

"What? But why would he think that?" I blurted out and then elaborated. "Um, he's a prosecutor, not a defense attorney... Why think ill of the witness he called in?"

"Don't ask me. He was a useless prosecutor, getting thrown around by a newbie lawyer," she said. "Guess I shouldn't have expected much from a new and young prosecutor, but still."

"Who was the defense attorney?" I asked, just for reference.

"Mia Fey," she replied, surprisingly immediately. "Are you done with your questions? I have to go to sleep early or it'll damage my skin."

"Yes, um, thank you for answering my questions."

"I don't know how any of that could be useful to you, but whatever. Good night," she said and hung up the phone.

I sat there with the phone still to my ear, thinking about everything that Chinami had just revealed to me. That was a lot of information to digest at once, and I wasn't even sure I had gotten everything organized in my brain. A few things were clear. The chances of my sister entering Nirvana were slimmer than I expected, and there was a certain Mia Fey I had to avoid at all costs. If Prosecutor Mitsurugi acted the way he acted and we were supposedly in a witness-prosecutor relationship, I didn't want to think what would be Fey's reaction to the sight of me.

I placed my phone on the dining table and sighed. The phone call had left me quite drained, but I still stood up from my chair and sat on a cushion on the floor in the seiza form. I placed my hands together and prayed to the spirits of Onamida-san and Chinami's stepsister.

In my eyes, both of them were tragic losses: one for being betrayed by the one they loved, and the other for suffering the consequences of the seed of despair the betrayal sowed.