Chapter 5

    Honami, Sakura, Sudo and I arrived at the student council room and sat down at the long table, I saw a second witness I brought by the door and entered, leaving them behind.

    Inside the room there was the student council president, vice president, and secretary all sitting at the head of the table.

    There was a huge contrast between the president and vice-president, the president and good posture and had a tense look on his face, while the vice president was lounging casually with his feet on the table.

    The Class C students and their teacher were sitting on one side of the table, I planted myself across the table, right next to Chabashira-sensei. Honami sat to the left of me and Sudo sat on the left of him. The secretary Tachibana started speaking.

(A/N: play the Ace Attorney soundtrack for an enhanced trial experiance)

“We will begin the hearing, three Class C students claimed that Sudo Ken from Class D called them out to the special building and assaulted them. Is this correct?”

“Yes” the Class C students responded

“Class D’s Sudo-kun, claims that he was called out to the special building by the Class C students and the injuries that you see on the students occured when he fought back in self defense”

“Thats right!” Sudo exclaimed

“Then during this trial we will work towards finding the truth between these condradictiary statements”

    Honami stood up, and with all of the eyes in the room on her she walked towards the TV which had map of the special building on it. She turned around and began to talk.

“I will begin my case then, first of all Sudo-kun is completely innocent” everyone was shocked that she started out by making such a bold statement. She then dramatically turned around, pointed at the Class C students and said “This was a set up made by Class C to try and get an advantage in the class competition!”

“What an outrageous claim” Sakagami-sensei responded “first of all do you have any proof, or is this mere conjecture?”

“Class D calls Akimura Mako to the stand!” after saying this a girl from Class B walked in. I had my questioning prepared, I stood up and walked next to Honami.

“Akimura, is it true that 5 days ago you witnessed an incident behind the main school building during your tennis practice. And this incident occured between 3 Class C students and Sudo?”

“That is correct”

“And from your perspective who was it that instigated that encounter?”

“The Class C students instigated it”

“Were any of the 3 you see in front of you involved?”

“None of them were involved at that time”

“W-what does this mean, Ayanokoji?” Sudo asked me not understanding what I was getting at.“It means that whoever is leading Class C was attacking your credibility. The man who planned out this frame-job wanted nobody to believe you when you claimed it was a set up”

    With both myself and Honami making outragous claims with little to no evidence backing us up everyone was a little shocked. The first one to speak out was the Vice-President

“I believe them, how about we just accept their words and expel those Class C guys”

    The president responded to his horseing around with a glare, then sighed, and spoke out

“If you don't provide any proof, then these are just outlandish claims, maybe borderline slander”

“We haven’t finished showing our proof, Horikita-senpai!” Honami said “You may leave now, Akimura-san… because Class D calls Sakura Airi-san to the stand!”

    Honami took over the testimony, we continued our high energy push for Sudo’s innocence. Though I knew that his innocence wouldn’t be proven during this hearing. As long as we continue pushing the idea that we know more than we let on, then the Class C students will continue to feel more and more pressured.

“Sakura-san, would you please tell everyone what you saw that day?”

“Y-yes, I saw Sudo-kun and the Class C students in the special building”

    Everyone’s interests were piqued, the introduction of an actual witness to the incident would probably be the most important aspect of the trial moving forward.

“Sakura, right? Do you have any proof that you witnessed the incident? I find it strangely coincidental that a witness suddenly pops up out of nowhere, and their a Class D student nevertheless”

“I-I have proof” Sakura then took something out of her pocket that looked like a computer chip “This is the SD card from my camera, I have a picture of myself with the fight occurring in the background”

    Tachibana took the SD card and placed it into her laptop and turned her projector on. On the screen appeared some sexy photos of her in strange clothes, after searching through those skimpy photos we found a picture of exactly what she described. Sakura in a picture with a fight going on in the background.

“Even if we have proof that Sakura was at the location at the time the fight broke out, there is no way of knowing whether her testimony was corrupted by her peers”

“Are you calling her a liar?” I responded to the Sensei’s claim

“Sakagami-sensei is correct, peer pressure is a powerful influence so we must take whatever she says with a grain of salt, that doesn’t mean it is unreasonable to listen to her. Please proceed with your testimony Sakura” The Student Council President spoke out

“I was too far away to hear any of the words exchanged at the time, though I saw that the Class C students were the first to arrive, and were the first ones to throw punches. After a few punches were exchanged the Class C students ran away and Sudo-kun yelled loud enough for me to hear him call the Class C students cowards”

    It seems like myself, Honami, the student council members and both of the adults found a slight contradiction in the evidence as we looked at Ishizaki, who had a cast over his ankle. Honami spoke out taking full advantage of the situation.

“Ishizaki-kun, is it true or false that you obtained that injury to your foot during your fight with Sudo-kun?”

“Uhh, it’s true”

“And is it true that you ran away from Sudo-kun out of fear?”

“Yeah, that guy is a monster”

“How did you run away with that serious ankle injury”

“I’ll answer this, Ishizaki” said Sakagami-sensei “adrenaline is very potent, often times during firefighters soldiers won’t notice that they got shot until their comrade points it out to them. This is the same case, adrenaline nullified the pain long enough for him to escape”

“What he says is certainly reasonable” said the student council president “does the defence have any more evidence?”

“No”

“And how about the plaintiff?”

“No”

“Then due to not having conclusive evidence I will postpone the official decision for two days from now, if I don’t have enough evidence by then, the consequences will be very serious for both side. And for punishment of both fighting and lying during this whole process, expulsion will be on the table for the official decision that will happen two days from now, and that is all”

    This process may have ended without anything decisive occurring, but we in my eyes that was a victory. Even our outlandish theories have been proven as plausible, along with a lot of pressure being put on the Class C students

    Right after we left the classroom Sudo jumped in the air very excited, he high fived Honami and then put me in a celebratory headlock while saying

“Thanks so much guys! You were awesome!”

“Don’t worry about it, Sudo-kun” Honami replied. He then ran off because he was late for his club, I’m not sure why he is going even though he isn’t allowed to practice for the time being, but I guess it just shows his dedication.

    While we were leaving I could feel us being stared down by both the Student Council President and the Vice-President. When I checked my phone which had been silent for the whole time of the hearing I noticed that I got a text from Sakayanagi.

    It read “all done” and there was an attached picture to the message which showed security cameras and all the tools needed to set them up.

    I waited for the next day to pass and when it did I met up with Sakyanagi, then I set up the trapped and had Honami, who somehow managed to get their numbers contact them and set up a meeting time, and just as expected the came.

“Huh, why are you here?” they asked me surprised

“I am here to give you a warning, you three are all going to be expelled”

“Huh, what do you mean?!” Ishizaki replied

    I pointed at a security camera, to which they had a horrified look on their faces.

“W-well if you the camera was there then why didn’t the school use it as evidence and expel us already?”

“Because they are promoting student autonomy, it is the student council that is judging our hearing correct? Then is it not also the job of students to collect crucial information?”

“W-well, if you did collect this information, then why did you tell us? Don’t you want us expelled?”

“Because I want Sudo to participate in his tournament more. Even if you guys were to be proven as the aggresors Sudo still participated in a brawl. However there would be no punishment sent his way if you guys withdrew the complaint, and of course that rule about no punishments would apply to you guys aswell.”

“L-let me make a call” Kanzaki replied

    After saying this a loud bang could be heard at the top of the stairwell, Sakayanagi slammed her cane on the floor, looked in their eyes menecingly and said

“Do you think we will wait for you to finish your phone call? Withdrawal the complaint immediately”

“Kanzaki! We need to take their offer, I don’t want to be expelled”

“Yeah we have to!”

    After the other two voiced their opinions, Kanzaki resigned himself to call Secretary Tachibana, then talked to the Student Council President and asked to withdrawal the complaint, and he accepted the offer.

    Sakayanagi and I walked outside and we found Honami sitting on a bench waiting for us, after seeing us she immediately waved over to us and ran in our direction.

    Sakayanagi departed and left the two of us to walk back to the dorms by ourselves. We went to her room and she just laid on the floor and thought for a while.

    I made her some tea, then sat on the floor next to her and asked her what she was thinking about.

“I was just wondering, is this how the school is going to be? Are we going to be constantly lying and tricking each other?”

“Its quite possible that it ends up that way” I responded “But that doesn’t mean you will have to be like that, even in a school based around deception, you can still end up as a truthful person”

“Your right, thank you, Kiyotaka”