The backdoor opens with an unceremonious metallic groan. The sound grates at her nerves that already feel like bare wires sticking out of her pores.
She’s losing, she knows - as does everybody else. She’s so obviously on the losing side that at this point the trial isn’t about in whose favor the scale will tip, but how theatrically Obi can annihilate her.
She is trying her best. If she wasn’t, if she let the events take their natural course, the trial would have been over three days ago. But despite the fight she’s been putting up, her stamina has been plummeting in proportion with each of her objections getting overruled by the judge.
She can tell the judge is getting impatient with the case, and it’s to her consolation that she doesn’t seem to like neither Blaker nor Obi.
But people love him. I fuck well with big crowds, she remembers the smirk with which he said it years ago.
(He fucks well, period - a small voice in her head reminds her, but she dismisses it angrily, even though she can’t stop herself from following him around the courtroom with her eyes, getting reacquainted with his little tics and gestures.
He’s stopped combing his hair. He’s even started rolling up his sleeves, revealing toned skin of his forearms as if he was at an office coffee break. With the public approval in his pocket, he can safely slip back into his real self without anyone suspecting him. His brashness will be regarded as no-nonsense honesty, his cynicism – as good-natured humor.)
His attacks on her client have been relentless and vicious. She’s had to comfort crying Kihal several times - mostly out of genuine empathy, but partly to prevent her having another meltdown in the middle of a trial and revealing confidential information again.
All the same, as Kihal drenched her blouse with her tears as she sobbed on her shoulder this morning, Shirayuki’s apprehension flared to full-blown rage.
When she meets him behind the building by the garbage during the break, he seems pleased to see her, and it only fuels her anger.
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