Six months passed like one long, dusty day.
The sun in this world burned with personal malice. Amanda wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her hand and flicked the drops to the ground with a crooked grin.
The porcelain skin that once screamed “noble” or “sickly” was now hidden beneath a stubborn tan. Hands that had once been purely ornamental now proudly wore calluses. Fingers strong, nimble, and honestly filthy with earth.
She walked the dusty streets of the trade village, a basket of apples swinging at her hip.
Hungry? Hardly.
It was the perfect disguise.
With a basket and a peasant dress, she could go anywhere and hear everything. The prosecutor’s mind worked like a vacuum, sucking in every scrap of information: prices, rumors, debts, secret feuds. Everything was neatly filed and cross-referenced inside her skull.
This entire world felt like one endless trial.
And from the moment of rebirth, Amanda—no, Yamada Light—had prosecuted it with ruthless aggression.
Suddenly…
Her trained ear caught a desperate, muffled sob hanging in the still air.
A crowd had already gathered by the smithy.
In the center stood Olden, the village woodcutter everyone knew, while towering over him was Gart—the red-faced, bull-necked owner of the sawmill.
“Thief! Where’s my money, you old bastard?!” Gart jabbed a thick finger at a broken plane.
“I swear, Gart, I only tried to fix it… it just broke! I never touched your coins!” Olden’s voice shook like an aspen leaf in the wind.
The crowd rumbled. They always sided with the strongest. Pack law—primitive and brutally unfair.
Then a single voice cut through the noise like a blade.
“He’s telling the truth.”
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Every head turned.
Golden hair. A seemingly fragile girl. Basket of apples.
Gart snorted. “Amanda? Run along to your mother, little girl. This isn’t your business.”
Amanda took one calm step forward.
Her blood-red eyes slid across the broken tool, Gart’s face, and terrified Olden in one smooth motion. She wasn’t watching a fight.
She was reading a case.
“That plane didn’t break because of sabotage,” her voice was low, steady, heavy as a judge’s gavel. “The central axle was already worn to nothing. See the hairline cracks? Olden just delivered the final blow. He’s innocent.”
Gart froze for a heartbeat.
Then puffed up again. “And where are my five silvers?!”
“Coins?” Amanda’s smile was sharp. “You lost those yourself yesterday, didn’t you? Dice behind the mill after sunset. I saw everything.”
Dead silence. Gart went white as chalk.
He never thought anyone had seen—especially the quiet girl who, after her fever, had turned terrifyingly clever.
“You… lying little—”
“Careful,” Amanda whispered, yet every soul in the crowd heard it clearly. “The old gods are listening, Gart. Swear on your axe that I’m lying. Everyone knows what happens to iron sworn over a false oath.”
She knew exactly which superstitious string to pull. She had learned them all.
Gart broke. Muttering curses, he backed away.
Case closed. Quietly.
Olden would fix the plane. Gart would “forget” the debt.
In this fragile world, fragile, inconvenient truth had won—for a moment.
Night. On the road home.
The village elder caught up with her, his face grave.
“Amanda. Ever since that fever… you’ve changed. Those eyes of yours… they see too much.”
A familiar thrill tightened her chest—not fear, but the adrenaline that always came before a hearing.
“We have a problem,” the elder continued. “Livestock thefts. Tracks lead to the neighboring village… but it’s not that simple. We need your gift. We need those eyes.”
She nodded once.
Deep inside—far deeper than the borrowed heart beating in this chest—the soul of Yamada Light thrummed with excitement.
The thrill of untangling a knot.
The taste of justice.
The taste he had studied five years for, lived for, died for.
“I’ll take a look tomorrow, Elder.”
She turned and walked home.
The wind played with her golden hair.
She was Amanda, daughter of Elena.
But inside that fragile body burned the iron will and razor mind of Yamada Light.
She hadn’t merely survived.
She had found her battlefield.
Absurd, ridiculous, and entirely her own.
A prosecutor in a skirt, fighting with words and observation in the corner of a fantasy world.
Fate tasted bitter… and strangely sweet.
“Well then, world,” she thought.
For the first time in months, a real smile curved her lips.
“Show me what you’ve got.”
And somewhere very, very far away,
someone else silently mouthed the exact same words.