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After around 20 months spent rebuilding Khura’in, Nahyuta and Apollo are returning to the States for good.
Nahyuta really has no right to be as excited as he is about this. Apollo definitely does, since everyone he knows is there. Nahyuta honestly still can’t believe that his brother would drop everything so easily to stay in Khura’in in the first place. Did he not have friends ? Was he that desperate to reconnect with his roots?
On the other hand, Nahyuta has no real reason to want to move. Rayfa and Apollo are his only family, and his only friend is Ema - who, incidentally, has already moved back to L.A. as well, but has not contacted him in the past month. So he should be more than willing to let Apollo move back by himself.
But that’s the thing - for whatever reason, he wants nothing more than to escape Khura’in.
While he, Apollo, and many others were busy rebuilding their legal system, there were many new lawyers that started popping up in Khura’in - people from other countries who wanted to help out, lawyers in hiding from the Defense Culpability Act, and even many Khura’inese citizens who had wanted to get involved in their justice system, but couldn’t until Ga’ran had been overthrown.
(Just thinking about her name gives Nahyuta a terrible chill down his spine. Ah, that might be part of why he wants to leave….)
And so Nahyuta sits in a first-class seat on a flight out of Khura’in, next to a six-year-old boy and his mother. The boy keeps grabbing at the end of Nahyuta’s braid and the mother does not seem to be paying attention, watching some kind of soap opera on her seat-back TV. Apollo is somewhere in economy - Nahyuta offered to pay for a better seat, but he stammered his way through several variants of “ no I’m fine ” and something about wasting money.
Nahyuta’s never really been on a long-term trip or moved before, so he didn’t really know what to pack. He already thought of about six things he forgot by the time he got through ticketing.
As the plane takes off, Nahyuta watches Khura’in fade into a small mountain range and the clouds come into view. It strikes him how small the country really is, when it was everything he’d ever known.
When they land and trudge through L.A.’s airport terminals (Apollo starts complaining about their lack of a “terminal train”, whatever that is), Nahyuta has not slept a wink and is buzzing with perhaps 80% anxiety and 20% excitement. Apollo had apparently slept the entire flight, despite being in an uncomfortable seat, and he looked pissed off to have been woken up.
Their weariness is spontaneously interrupted by a loud popping noise and a shower of rainbow confetti. Apollo yelps and jumps backward, and a blur of blue and white barrels toward him and nearly knocks him over.
“Hi, Trucy,” Apollo manages. “Can I breathe, please?”
As the confetti flutters to the ground, Nahyuta surveys their welcoming party; it consists of Phoenix and Trucy Wright, Athena Cykes, and a blond man in a purple jacket that Nahyuta’s never seen before. They’re all here for Apollo. He feels a pang of jealousy, and then immediately dismisses it when he remembers that having friends requires making friends and becoming close to them. After a few minutes of discussion between the newly reunited Wright Agency plus mysterious blond guy, they start walking toward the parking lot.
“Nahyuta?” Apollo turns toward him with an all-too-familiar vaguely concerned expression.
“Hm?”
“Do you… have a ride?”
A ride. Make that seven things he’s forgotten. “I… do not. It must have slipped my mind. Apologies.”
“That’s okay, we’ll make it work,” Apollo mumbles. “Hmm.”
“Don’t bother yourself,” Nahyuta interrupts. “I’m sure there’s a train station near here somewhere.”
Behind Apollo, Trucy whispers something in Blond Guy’s ear and they both snicker. He sends them a glare and they both put on a poker face. (For such an expressive person, Trucy’s poker face is scarily blank.) Blond Guy clears his throat.
“Apollo can ride with me,” he says. “And Herr Sahdmadhi can go with Athena. Problem solved.” Nahyuta doesn’t know what “ Herr ” means, but it sounds enough like hair to make him worry that Apollo’s stranger is insulting him.
Apollo nods and follows Klavier off to a fancy sports car parked in the corner of the garage.
“Come on, Prosecutor Sahdmadhi!” Trucy chirps, leading him toward a beat-up cream-colored car.
“Shotgun!” Wright shouts when they’re about 5 or so meters from the car. Nahyuta whirls around.
Where? They seem to be the only people in this part of the garage. Is Phoenix Wright really more perceptive than Nahyuta is? Is he really that good at identifying gun types? Come to think of it, they are surrounded by cars. Maybe Wright can see someone that he can’t? Why would someone bring a gun here , of all places? Is it an assassination attempt?
“Aren’t you a little too old for that, Daddy?” Trucy huffs, walking over and opening up the back door of the car. Why isn’t she more bothered? Is Wright joking?
Trucy catches his gaze as Athena and Wright get in the front seats. “Uh… are you okay? You seem kinda tense.”
“Your father just yelled about a gun. Are you not worried?”
Trucy actually laughs . “It’s an expression. Whoever calls it first gets to sit in the front seat.”
“... Oh.” Seems impractical to him. What if someone really did have a shotgun?
Trucy giggles again, then takes Nahyuta’s bag out of his hands and throws it between the two back seats in the car. Nahyuta gives Athena the address of his new apartment.
After they all get in the car, Nahyuta discovers that Athena drives like an absolute maniac. He doesn’t get carsick, but he feels a little queasy after Athena makes a third inadvisable swerve-y lane change and barely checks her mirrors.
“Why is she driving?” He asks Trucy.
“Daddy doesn’t have a license,” she explains. “And I don’t like driving on the highway.” She pouts. “I wish Uncle Miles could drive us.”
Trucy seems to pick up on his discomfort, and takes to performing assorted magic tricks to distract him. She manages to make his necklace disappear from around his neck twice, and shows him several card tricks that are definitely impossible. He’s never been one for magic tricks, but Trucy is so enthusiastic that it’s a little infectious. She manages to make him laugh when she pulls his hoop earring from under her hat.
Nahyuta’s new apartment isn’t very big, but it’s not tiny, either. As a member of Khura’in’s royal family, he could probably get whatever apartment he wanted, but he really doesn’t think he needs anything very large. As long as it has a kitchen and a bathroom with a shower, he’s not picky.
The walls are painted a stark white, which is a welcome change from the colorfully painted walls of his old room. The sheets on the bed are slightly dusty, the water in the sink takes a minute to warm up, and every so often, he hears a pair of roommates arguing furiously in the next apartment over.
Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth tells him he’ll start prosecuting cases ina month, which means Nahyuta has the rest of January to explore L.A. and become familiar with the city. And studying up on things is something he’s always been good at. He is nothing if not booksmart.
He memorizes the locations of three cafés, five shops, and a clothing store withing walking distance. He makes a list of places he needs to visit, including the zoo, an aquarium, the Cosmos Space Center, and several other randomly selected attractions.
In L.A., it’s mostly women that have long hair, although people don’t generally send him any judging looks. In fact, after he orders a drink from some café, the barista’s eyes widen and he hears her mumble something about him being so pretty under her breath. When she hands him his drink, he stammers his way through a thank you and leaves abruptly. Nahyuta has no idea how to handle a compliment that isn’t related to his work quality, let alone flirting .
At the zoo, Nahyuta takes about fifty pictures of a panda and sends all of them to Blackquill, who responds with a middle finger emoji and a stock image of a crying nun. A girl approaches him and asks if he’s a princess.
“No, I don’t think so,” he says with no small amount of confusion. The girl seems disappointed. “Why?”
“Cause your hair is so pretty! And you walk like a fancy person does and I saw a butterfly land on your shirt.”
“...Is that what makes someone a princess?” There aren’t princesses in America, are there? He thought it was a democracy. Perhaps princess was an honorary title, or there was some sort of cultural misconception going on.
The girl nods.
“Then… I suppose I am a princess,” he says hesitantly, hoping it’ll cheer her up, and it does.
“I KNEW it!” She shrieks.
A woman runs towards them. “Hayley! There you are. I am so sorry,” she adds, looking up at Nahyuta apologetically.
“No, it’s -” he starts, but the woman scurries off with the girl before he can say anything else.
He goes to the aquarium and watches fish drift by. When he still lived with Dhurke, they used to go fishing sometimes, for food. Nahyuta remembers Datz fishing a large one up that the four of them had to try desperately to prevent it from escaping.
The sign in front of him informs him that it was a trout. The fish stares ahead at the tank walls. Nahyuta wonders if the glass is one-way, like an interrogation room; if the fish knows what’s outside of its tank. He hopes it’s one way. It would be awfully cruel, knowing you’re trapped in such a tiny box compared to all the space around you.
When he goes to the Cosmos Space Center, he spends several hours inside the planetarium, watching the ceiling recreate the skies of California, New York, Africa, China and a dozen other places.
A long time ago, he and Apollo had sat on the roof and looked at the stars. They named constellations until Dhurke found them and made them go to bed.
A woman’s voice snaps him out of his thoughts. She tells him the space center is closed. He says sorry about three times and leaves.
He goes to bed.
When February starts, he meets his fellow prosecutors.
Blond Guy From Airport, as it turns out, is also a prosecutor, and his real name is Klavier Gavin. He is obnoxious, flamboyant and a general nuisance; his office is a mess and it has a full wall that’s just a display case for guitars. He might actually be the most outwardly likeable person at the office, due to his almost aggressive friendliness. Personally, Nahyuta doesn’t care for it.
Simon Blackquill is a bit of an enigma. Nahyuta remembers him standing as co-counsel for Athena Cykes when they faced off in court, so he found it odd, at first, when he encountered him in the building. Blackquill is polite and gives him space, which is kind of unnerving in a way, because he seems to be so rude to everyone else. Nahyuta’s sure that he saw Blackquill almost call the Chief Prosecutor a bitch to his face, but then caught himself at the last second. He’s heard that Blackquill is an ex-convict and he makes a mental note to check out the case files later.
Sebastian Debeste is another newbie, apparently. He’s nice enough. Like Gavin, he seems to have an interest in music - there is a violin hung up on his office wall and a music stand by the window. The first time Nahyuta snaps at him, Debeste nearly starts crying, and tiptoes around him for the next week or so.
Franziska von Karma has recently moved back to America from Germany; Nahyuta actually has heard of her, because it made the news around the world when a 13-year-old became an official prosecutor. Von Karma is frankly terrifying; she carries a whip around with her everywhere and nobody seems to want to take it from her, a decision that Nahyuta understands, because she’d probably attack anyone who tried. As long as she isn’t being annoyed or presented with shoddy work, she is civil, if a tad arrogant. She makes Debeste cry three times in Nahyuta’s first two weeks at the office.
And then, of course, there is Chief Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, who is nothing at all like the Demon Prosecutor that the news made him out to be nine or ten years ago, other than his penchant for adhering to rules and procedure. It’s refreshing to have a superior who listens to him and seems to actually care about prosecuting and ethics.
All in all, it’s a much more friendly workplace than Nahyuta is used to.
His first trial is the following Tuesday.
He’s up against a defense attorney he’s never met, who has a fairly good win record and a polite disposition. Nahyuta thinks that he’s probably being a little too harsh with refuting her arguments, but he doesn’t really know how to go about it any other way.
In the end though, she does win, and he has to give her some credit for being able to push back against him. Even after the revolution, Khura’in still needs more lawyers like her.
The judge brings down his gavel. Not guilty . It rings in Nahyuta’s ears.
Justice has been served; they’ve explored all the facts; the defense attorney has won, and rightly so. But his chest feels tight with anxiety. He doesn’t get it.
He leaves the courtroom in a daze - what is Ga’ran going to - no, she’s not here - Edgeworth, then -
And he knows it’s a dumb thing to worry about, knows Edgeworth would be more angry if he’d gotten a false conviction, but he still can barely breathe leaving the courtroom. The defense attorney approaches him, perhaps to discuss the trial, or have a friendly chat, or berate him for being so terrible, but he pretends not to see her.
The ache in his chest doesn’t leave even when he returns to his office. He collapses at his desk and tries not to smudge the ink on the freshly printed case files.
Nahyuta thinks sometimes about what it would be like to cut his hair.
He’s sure he’d be looked at anyway even if he did; after all, it is still pale lavender. He could dye it black, but he doesn’t think it would look like him . (Although, what does that mean, anyway? Who is “he”? Still Ga’ran’s minion?)
It’s really long, and it’s also really annoying. Nahyuta is willing to do what it takes to make sure it looks nice, but it is getting inconvenient. Especially because he really doesn’t like looking at himself in the mirror.
And then one day, as he’s entering the bathroom, it gets snagged in the door. He tries to yank it out and only succeeds in tripping on the small trash bin next to the toilet, whacking his head against the mirror, and falling down with the shards of glass.
Nahyuta takes a deep breath to push back the adrenaline; his left palm stings, but there are no deep cuts. Mirror shards litter the white tile; some of them are quite big, so he’ll have to be careful picking them up. His face is reflected in many of them; his green eyes and his pale hair and that gods-forsaken braid still stuck in the door.
Nahyuta makes a decision; it is stupid and impulsive and he knows the next time he sees Rayfa he’ll never hear the end of it.
He bunches his shirt sleeve around his hand and reaches for the largest shard.
Work does not stop for Nahyuta’s internal crisis, and so he dutifully shows up the next day. He swears he feels Debeste staring.
“You changed your hair,” Gavin says with an insufferable grin, eyeing Nahyuta’s now much shorter braid. “Not trying to copy me, are you?”
Nahyuta scowls. “Absolutely not.”