"I know," Fohl said sheepishly. "But like I said, our uncle has a lot of pull around and-"

"-and you can't find anyone else to take your case, huh?" I finished for him.

I stared at the pile of documents. I honestly didn't like reading even when it came to my assignments- let alone reading something of this size when I didn't absolutely have to.

Yeah, I knew I was going to make for an amazing lawyer in the future.

"Can you help us?" Fohl asked, uncertainty in his voice.

"The answer is quite honestly 'no,'" I said to him. His face fell. "However, I very well can't ignore a call to action, now then can I?"

"But you just said that-"

"I think I know of someone who might be able to help us somewhat," I said to them. I sighed. Hadn't talked to him in a while though, so I couldn't be sure he'd take us up on this... but he was a licensed attorney at least, which was more than I could say for myself. "I'll have to look through this myself once before I dump it all on him- could take two or three days. When is your uncle making a move?"

"Next week."

"Kid, you really should've mentioned this earlier," I said to him. Something then occurred to me. "Wait- you know Eclaire, right? Why not ask her or Melty's family to help you out? I mean, she comes from a very big law firm and-"

"That won't work," Fohl said with a disappointing sigh. "You see... our uncle..."

"...is a part of that law firm," Atla finished for him. "That's how he recognized her- he had seen her on the premises during a... what's it called? Demo? Depo-demolition-"

"Deposition," I corrected. "So, that route is out. Alright then, like I said, I'll have to go through with this, and then I'll get back to you. What's your number?"

This turned out to be a mistake- I had asked for his number so that I could communicate with them, but Atla took the opportunity to flood my phone with texts later on.

If it got out that I was texting someone Atla's age (and with the kind of texts she was sending me), I was no doubt going to get cancelled at the very least or even arrested.

I told Fohl that he needed to keep her in line while I went over the pile of documents, and two days later, after college, went to a small shop an hour away from law school.

It was due to this distance that I hadn't been by in a while, though I hoped the owner of the shop wouldn't hold it against me.

"Yo- how's it going?" I asked as I walked in.

The place was littered with appliances- old and new, some of which were far beyond any hope of salvaging. The clutter made it so that it was somewhat difficult to walk around, something I'd chastised the store owner for many times now, though he had not changed his ways.

A bald head poked its way out over the nearby counter- one which I'd come to recognize after my fall from grace.

"Kid!" he yelled out.

"I have a name, you know," I said.

This was Erhard- and his story was widely known among our law school as one of our most infamous alumni.

He had been a brilliant student- and graduated with full honors, but one week into his job he had basically gotten fed up with actually being a lawyer and quit.

Perhaps that wouldn't be that much of a big deal in some other country, but that was not something you did in Japan. As it was, that law firm in question now no longer hired graduates from our law school, so many of the faculty hated him and if rumors were to be believed the security at the gate was instructed to never let him back on campus.

I for one, had actually reached out to him because I had actually intended to drop out at the time, and had wanted to ask him about what options I'd had.

He was one of the people, along with Shindo, who had actually supported me after my ex's betrayal. Well, there were my parents as well, but they had never physically visited me unlike Shindo.

Erhard had actually convinced me to continue studying law- which kind of surprised me at the time as he had taken such a drastic step which basically blacklisted him from ever having a real career in law in the future.

So what gives?- that was what I thought at the time.

"Why do you want to quit?" he had asked me then.

"Well- things aren't going well for me and-"

"What will you do if you leave?"

"I don't know but-"

"Kid, there are no halfway prizes for quitting your degree in the middle," he had told me. "You don't get anything for attending a few months of law school. At the very least, if you pull through, you have a degree, don't you? It'd be another thing if you were thinking of switching streams like to engineering, but, what are you going to have to show for it if you drop out now? What about whatever effort you've already put in?"

I was a bit intrigued by how passionately he had told me to keep going. "Do you- do you still use your law degree?" I mean, he was working in this appliance repair shop even back then, so it didn't really look like he had gained anything out of his labor of going to law school.

"I still read up on the law," Erhard had told me. "And hey- if I ever get into a dispute, I'll know what to do. I still read over my contracts myself, you know?"

"Right..." I then said.

I did make the decision to keep on going, something I was now glad I had done. I was happy that I hadn't given up in the middle out of a bout of despondence.

Erhard and I began chatting about how things were going- his appliance repair shop was going with business as usual.

"How is my alma mater?"

"Not much interesting but-" I was about to say, then I recalled that something interesting had happened. "There's this girl who joined actually." I told him about Melty.

"Wow- real child prodigy," Erhard said. "That's quite impressive."

"Quite sad actually," I said to him. "She seems bored half the time- and I get the impression that she doesn't have many friends."

He nodded. "Yeah, child prodigies usually don't do that well once they've grown up."

"Something tells me you're not here for that though, kiddo," Erhard said. "What's up?"