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“I ask the defendant to avoid sleeping in the courtroom of all places,” A sigh is heard from above him. Casper blinks his eyes open, once and twice until he can see clearly and process the voice that is so familiar to him lately, sometimes even haunting him in his sleep. Fully awake after a few more moments, his vision shifts upward, to where the sound came from, and he feels content at first at being right–that it is indeed the person he thinks is talking to him, until the next second comes and he realizes you are far, far away from him. Farther than even the distance of your room from the bed where he clearly recalls his last location, so it wouldn’t and shouldn’t make sense that he is in a literal courtroom.
He knows what one is, after having stalked–Er… Observed you from afar. This is where you’d be most of the time, but this is the first time he’s seen you while being inside here himself, and from what you’ve taught him before, he pieces together that he’s in the defendant stand. And according to you, this exact spot is where the guilty are, so it increases his confusion tenfold.
“Has the defendant finally come to his senses?” Your voice is loud enough for him to hear even at this distance. He so badly wants to question you, and he voices out his concerns right away. You blink at him, your brows starting to form a frown of concern. Do you also not know why he’s here? Then the two of you should be elsewhere–
You tap on something on your desk, your nail pointing at a bulb attached to a hunched stick. Casper looks down at his own desk of sorts to search for his own… whatever you’re pointing at. He finds it on the corner, and taps on it in the same manner as you did and he flinches at the sudden vibration and echo from the loud tapping. Ah, it’s a microphone. Another device he used to see no need for until now, when he has to speak louder to reach you. That explains why he can hear even your sighs of exasperation.
“Why am I here?” Is what he first asks you when you can finally both hear each other. And Casper has to admit, he has so many other questions, but he’s heard that you can’t fire all of them at once while court is in session. Based on your serious demeanor right now, as silly as this empty trial–no jury, no audience, and no lawyers to be seen–sounds, he can at least indulge you especially when it’s possible you dragged him here on your own.
“Please refer to the judge as ‘Your Honor’.” You shift in your seat, leaning down to look at him while your face is still contorted to a frown. “How are you unaware of your own trial…?” You mock, before fixing your expression to the familiar bossy one he’s known(...and loved).
“Starting today, you’ll be tried for all your love crimes!” Your voice booms across the entire court, and even Casper has to admit you make it sound like an actual trial. But then again, as much as you had legitimate… powers against him right now, the script you must be forming sounds so cheesy. “...Love crimes?” He parrots back.
“How many could there be…” He watches you make a pondering pose, crossing your legs and folding your arms. As you look up to pretend counting his ‘crimes’, he immediately interjects your sing-song act. “I don’t want to know.” You eye him while tapping your nail on your desk, until he notices your silence and corrects himself. “...Your Honor.”
You huff. “Well, you have no choice in the matter. Since the judge and the defense and prosecution are ready, the trial will now commence!”
Wait… You were serious? “What do you mean the defense and the prosecution are ready, there’s nobody here but us, Your Honor!”
“You, my dear defendant, are your own defense lawyer.” Explaining like a mother to a child, you smile down on him as you recall the things you’ve taught him a week prior. While this was your silly little ploy, you were still grateful he’d never outright bail out of the room–because with how high up you are on the judge’s bench, it’d be easy for him to escape and outrun you yet he’s stuck by his spot–meaning he trusts his safety(and perhaps literal innocence) in your hands.
That, or your sweet little reaper is actually thinking he’s guilty for the charges you are about to place on him. To be honest, that’s a whole lot funnier than the former possible reason he’s still indulging you, but with how clueless Casper is on human behavior, it might actually be more true.
“I’m my own defense–Then, Your Honor, who’s the prosecution, there’s no one on that side!” He’s even more confused–basing everything off the short lessons in between stories you’d tell him, he recalls you say that there are always two sides to justice: the defense and its opposition, there is no in between, and you’ve taught him that being in the middle of both isn’t as morally good as it sounds. So where, pray tell, is the so-called opponent in this trial?
He thinks he’s found a flaw in your sudden declaration of the trial’s start, but your smile turns smug as you lean more so he could see the shit-eating grin on your face more clearly than he thinks should be.
“I’m glad you asked.” You stand up and curtsy. “I shall be the judge, the jury, and the prosecution, all in one.” Giving him no time to react, you take a seat once again on the bench and pick up the mallet on the side, showing the gavel to Casper to at least help jog his memory of what it is. “And with that, the trial resumes!”
//
“I’m a lawyer, actually.” You type on the chat. “So I know what I’m doing when I say your installment of this server to my laptop is illegal, Grimmy.”
“The joke is on you, then, mortal. I reside in the Underworld; your laws don’t affect me.” ‘Grimmy’ writes back. He refuses to tell you his name, so you had to come up with a nickname. While ‘Steve’ and ‘Nagito Komaeda’ were honestly funny names, neither fit the bill when it came to calling your little reaper. So you decided on ‘Grimmy’ which was short for ‘Grim Reaper’.
“Aw, I would’ve loved to sue you for that. Though I would plead that you wouldn’t be behind bars for it, so you’d owe me something more than just your soul.”
“Behind bars?”
“Yeah, you could go to jail for up to 25 years for hacking. It’s a cybercrime.”
“Another one of your silly jargons?”
You pout. “No, it’s a real word.” With the thought of crimes, though, you recall all that Grim’s done so far that would really land him a scary sentence if he were to reside here in the human world. Your curiosity gets the better of you and you type your findings to him. “You know, it’s not just the hacking. Getting my location and sharing it should make you and your fellow reapers also guilty of doxxing.”
“What in the nine hells is that?”
“It’s what it says on the tin. Sharing someone’s location unsolicited.”
“Okay… Say we didn’t… dox you. How do you think a grim reaper can do their job without… doxxing their target?”
“I dunno, but it’s still a crime over here.” You add an emoji with a poking out tongue. “With human world laws, that makes all of your kind guilty of at least one crime.”
//
“Court is now in session for the trial of a former grim reaper named Casper.”
Casper doesn’t know what to feel about you looking so serious up there in your seat on the judge’s bench. Maybe these jumbled feelings are what criminals feel when they stand before their prosecutors? You’ve called his crimes… love crimes, so maybe you were really just pranking him? You’ve teased him, sure, but the air in the courtroom isn’t giving him the so-called ‘vibe’ that this is a mere joke. You continue talking, unaware of his rooted anxiety.
“As the prosecution, I will now give my opening statement. The defendant, during his time working as a grim reaper, has accumulated a list of offenses to human law. Namely: doxxing, hacking, theft, stalking, and attempted murder.”
Glancing down at him, you call him by his current role: the defendant. “As the defendant is now upon the stand, please state your name and profession to the court.”
You gesture to the empty seats all around you two, but he steels himself and takes your statements so far very seriously it’s almost surprising to you. “My name is Casper, Your Honor. I used to be a grim reaper from the Underworld.” He replies.
“Casper,” The notes on your desk are shuffled from your animated movements, hands traveling across the table from the gavel’s spot to the microphone that you adjust every now and then as you shift in your seat to avoid immediate fatigue. “Is it true that grim reaper’s take information of their target in ways illegal to human world laws?”
Object, and say it’s leading. You think to yourself, pleading that your little reaper would get it right. You told him about this, the types of objections. There were a lot, but you know to be lenient and only use questions that beg relevancy, leading, and hearsay objections. You find this starting question easy enough, but it seems Casper has yet to take on your challenge and immediately ends your first part of interrogation with a–“Yes, it’s true.”
You would have pushed his buttons more by pressing for an address of ‘Your Honor’, but since he was talking to you as a defendant to a prosecuting attorney, you think he gets a pass for now. That, and since he’s blown his chance to refute the claims of doxxing. That’s one crime down for you, at least. “Your honesty is appreciated, as there was supposedly evidence that indeed supports this.”
Your bag is placed beside you, so you take out your laptop and plug the projectors on it. Casper blushes as he spots the familiar software application you open, the chatroom that you used to flirt with him in taking up the entire screen to embarrass him more. You’d taken the precautions of screenshotting the backread moments wherein he admitted to knowing ‘absolutely everything there is to know about you’, and the exact moment of your chat about aspirations.
You’d told him back then that you’d love to sue him for his crimes if he ever was in the human world, but you didn’t think the day would actually come.
//
“Remember when I said that you being the grim reaper is such a scam?”
Your chats have all but ceased once he’d confessed to liking you, now the two of you are ardent lovers separated by screens and worlds apart. “Yes, and I vowed to make you eat those words.”
“That sounds crunchy so I’ll pass, but anyway… I wasn’t lying when I said it. Your existence alone is more than how morally gray you wish it to be because it breaches the point of being illegal.”
“Again with your mortal laws. I am not bound by that.”
“Being with a lawyer means you’ll have to live with me talking about it. I like thinking about things like these.”
“Like getting me ‘behind bars’?”
“ Yeah . Maybe you’d even fear that than the probably-confusing-for-you brick of laws you’ll have to abide by.”
“How so?”
“It’s a… running joke that prison is scarier than a million laws a government can make.”
“I think by your hesitation that would mean it’s better I don’t ask you to elaborate.”
“You’d be correct, yes.”
//
“Moving forward, is it also true that a bouquet you’d recently given someone was actually stolen?”
Put up a fight, please. Don’t make this the easiest sweep case I’ve ever had, satirical or not. You mentally beg, wanting more of this kind of formal setting with him as it also genuinely helps you determine loopholes in interrogations by trying a hand on them yourself. It doesn’t exactly help much though when you’re faced with a man who used to ‘not be able to lie’ and have him on the stand. “Yes, it’s true.”
“The victim has not placed any charges upon you for that. Still…” You gesture to another piece of evidence you had in your bag and present it to the ‘court’. The flowers were safely preserved in a case, but it’s actually because you genuinely wanted to keep them, not for evidence purposes like you made it seem. “It goes under theft which you can be imprisoned for.”
You’re starting to get a headache at how Casper is getting too willing to ‘atone’ for anything he did in the past. “While your honesty thus far is still greatly commendable, it will not reduce your sentence, if that is your end goal.”
“It’s not, Your Honor.” He immediately responds. You huff once again.
“Very well. For the next offense…”
//
“You stole these from an old lady?!”
“I didn’t steal them; would it be stealing if they were hanging from above?”
Casper takes your silence as contemplation over the situation, and you also think it draws a stalemate on legal matters, depending on the area–which, of course, Casper does not tell you. “See? Even in laws, there are gray areas it’s yet to reach.” He smirks at you. “Guess that means I’m ‘scott-free’ from that?”
It takes that response to immediately build back your confidence–or pettiness, neither of you are sure–to retort back a “With your confession just now, it counts as evidence for me to counter you with should you ever try and escape my charges.”
“Like that’ll ever happen, sunshine. You can keep daydreaming, though.”
You sigh. “I’m seriously just coping by looking at you through a fork. It helps me pretend you’re finally imprisoned for your crimes.”
//
“And lastly, attempted murder.” You shuffle the papers together and close your binder of notes at last, finally being able to look at him with no more glancing downward. Even now, Casper has not denied any of your accusations, which gave you a total landslide of a win over the case so far, but it kind of deflated your ego because you expected a proper battle of wits against him. Maybe you really should have walked him through the trial after all? “Is it true that you attempted homicide on the judge presiding over this trial?”
Casper agrees yet again once the words leave your mouth and it makes you think he’s not listening at this point with how quick he answers. “Yes, it’s true.”
“With all the facts in account, then,” There’s no backing out of the trial you’ve placed yourselves in, so with no further(any, for that matter) objections on the client’s part, it’s now finally time for handing the case over to the jury for their due decision. In this case, though… the jury is also you, so… “According to the judgment of the jury, it is clear without any shadow of a doubt that you, Casper…” Both of you hold your breath.
“...Are declared guilty.”
//
“A trial?”
Nodding, you smile at your neighbors whom you’ve only just befriended after revealing you are of the same situation as them–falling in love with a reaper and protecting them as technically a refugee–so you found it to be of no problem letting them into your little scheme. After all, you were bound to come clean to them in regards to your awareness of their relationship.
“I’m an attorney at law,” You explain. “And what better way for my reaper to understand this world’s laws than a first hand experience in court?”
“Are you asking us to be witnesses? We’ve never… listened in on your… encounters with him.” Your neighbor asks.
“No,” Immediately, you interject with a point towards your door across the hallway. “I will need your help bringing him to the courtroom.” Turning back to smile at them innocently, you whip out your phone to send them the directions to the courthouse. “Do not worry, I will be responsible for any charges against you regarding this matter.”
“Do you think he’ll be declared guilty?”
“With his sense of responsibility, I very much think he will be. It is possible he’d agree to every accusation.”
With their missions done and Casper being brought to the courtroom safely, they suppose they’re no longer needed but your neighbor is worried about leaving the two of you to your own devices in such a public setting. While they worry over your–and more importantly, your reaper who is equally as missing in action as their own reaper from the Underworld–safety, they also worry about the possibility of now being risked of their own.
But judging by how you’re so confident that you’ll have the entirety of the room to yourself, they suppose you indeed have everything under cover and tug their reaper home, wishing you and your reaper the best, as well as silently cheering for your story just as much as you were cheering for theirs.
//
“As against Casper the grim reaper, I, the jury, award compensatory damages in the amount of…”
Casper fidgets in his seat. None of this is in the short lessons you’ve given him, but with the way you’re speaking, perhaps this is the part where he finally pays you what he is due, so he waits for your judgment to fall upon him like– “...his soul, as part of procreation of soul babies.”
Soul babies. That’s easy, at least it wasn’t mortal currency– Wait. Hadn’t he heard that before?
Soul babies– You’re still talking about that?!
He jumps from his spot to stand and point at you accusingly. “This–was this just a ploy to legally bind me to have those silly soul babies with you?!”
Your mouth parts and you stare at him. “Did you… actually take this trial seriously?” At his silence and widened eyes, you are now as equally shocked as him–your intuition was right? Gods above, this ridiculous man really said nothing the entire time because he deemed the comically empty courtroom to be genuine? “Still, now that you’ve let me ramble on during the entire trial, you might as well own up to the verdict handed to you.”
You stick your tongue out to tease him when he whines at your insistence. “After all, I am the judge and the jury in this case.” With that, you pick up the gavel one last time and pound on the surface with an air of finality. “Court is dismissed!”
With that dismissal, it signals your freedom from the overbearing seat by the judge’s bench and skip over to your man, who is still upset that you’ve pulled such a grandiose prank on him like this. But you have no time to tease him further, because his curiosity now bombards him like the bricks falling.
“Can a verdict really demand soul babies from defendants?” You blink in bewilderment that this is his first question out of the many understandable ones you’ve mentally prepared yourself with, but refuse to let him notice your moment of shock.
“No, that’s a verdict made specially for you.” You wink. Casper frowns, but relents. This day alone was already tiring enough, he might as well let all your teasing slide for today. It’s not as if he’s not yet completely embarrassed anyway. He fires his next question, curious still. “How did I get here?”
“Teleportation.” He refuses to believe your joke. Humans are rarely capable of magic, and you weren’t even aware of your abilities before he was, so he doubts you have the skill you claim as teleportation.
“You mean transportation?” He presses, this time making you pout.
“Yeah, I had our reaper-human neighbor couple next door help carry you over here. I figured our reaper neighbor knew how to keep you asleep while being carried, so I let him join our party roster.”
“You and the interesting vocabulary I keep learning about..” He sighs. “And you had to trouble other people, as well. Your trickery knows no bounds.”
“At least my trickery is still borderline legal. I haven’t eavesdropped on them while recording–which, by state laws, is what makes eavesdropping illegal.”
“Then, like how morally gray grim reapers are, you mortals also have loopholes in your rules.”
“Maybe, but that’s why you’re lucky to have me,” You smile before wrapping your arms around him. He doesn’t shy away. “You have someone who knows their way around the world.”
Your gaze cast upon him, eyes twinkling with sparks of light. He is still correct in that aspect that 'sunshine' suits you, because with your happy expression, he knows instantly that you are just as guilty as him in the grand scheme of life.