-THE WOODCUTTER'S STORY-

This courthouse is a second home to me. Of course I was nearby.

I first found the pink veil caught on a branch in the grove… At the same time, I heard the sounds of voices.

Peering through the foliage, I witnessed the Samurai tied up, the woman on the ground sobbing, and the bandit gloating.

I didn't only see him before and after the crime, as I earlier claimed. I saw the scene of his very death.

"Come with me!" the bandit crowed to the Princess. "You and I together will take down the Samurai!"

"Take… down…" Tears filled her eyes and choked her words.

"Eh? I can't hear you!" the bandit demanded. "Quit crying and answer!"

With that, oddly, her crying stopped on a dime. "Hmph. Impossible. How could I, an innocent Princess, make such a decision?"

The newly articulate woman approached the Samurai, and with her rapier swiftly cut the ropes that bound him.

"Go ahead, take him down yourself. If you can't, you're not a real ninja!"

"This… can't be my Princess," the warrior lamented, and I thought the same thing. "This must be mind control! Her love isn't this weak!"

The Princess broke out into laughter. Getting a better look at her face, unobscured by crocodile tears, I saw that it had completely changed. "Oh, Samurai… A famous writer once said: A woman loves a man who loves passionately. Your love is that which needs to be tested."

They were finally motivated to fight. The Evil Ninja seized hold of the Samurai's sword, and the Samurai was left with his Princess's rapier. Even with this advantage, she didn't put up nearly as impressive a fight as she would have you believe, I assure you.

The Samurai valiantly blocked each of the bandit's thrusts, one by one. The sound of metal against metal echoed through the grove.

Suddenly, the Princess swooned backwards, reeling from her seeming trance. In this brief moment, the Samurai was distracted by her fall, and it was only then that the ninja managed to land one lucky strike… or rather, a fatally unlucky one.

The deed done, the great Steel Samurai sunk to his knees. The bandit, in pure shock, withdrew the sword from his body and stared down at it. Then she decided to replace the rapier instead into the corpse's chest, running off with the sword as her trophy.

"So this is the real story…?" asks the judge. "Then why wasn't the rapier found at the scene of the crime, I wonder?"

"That is, er… TAKE THAT!" With a sweeping gesture to the court record, the prosecutor reveals his possession of the rapier all along.

"Sir, you withheld evidence!?" the detective roars. "But how can we trust you then?"

"Admittedly irrational in the moment, I removed it in a vain attempt to help him, though he was already gone… Then I confiscated it as evidence. I waited for the right time to present it, but at every turn it made less sense…"

"Feh!" the ninja girl scoffs. "Are you sure you didn't just want a souvenir, samurai fanboy? And you all call me the bandit."

All around, each person in the courtroom is eyeing one another with suspicious disbelief.

The judge somberly shakes his head. "Human beings who can't trust each other… What has my job come to?"

(That's how your job has always been, Your Honor…)

SLAM!

"Let's take a moment and think about this," the judge continues. "The Bandit, the Woman, the Samurai, and the Woodcutter. Out of these four contradicting stories, whose is the most believable?"

"Hm… I still say the victim's firsthand account should be the most believable," the attorney insists. "Again, why would a dead man lie?"

"Mister Attorney…" The young spirit medium suddenly speaks again, the sound of her shy voice a quiet surprise. "Isn't that a great question?"

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"The spirits told me… that's the question you should be asking. After all, Mister Attorney, that's your doo-dee of juzz-tizz!"

"…"

Struck with inspiration, the attorney at last raises a confident finger.

"That's right… People of the court, there may be justice yet!"