Elder Madam Keir was stunned before angrily pointing at him.
"Whose side are you on?! Besides, I never forced her to give me those jewelry pieces. If anything, she was the one who kept giving them to me just to gain my approval."
She then turned the accusation toward him.
"And don't you have some responsibility as well? It was your responsibility to marry someone of equal status, yet you went ahead and chose that Yeri Zhi from a third-tier family. Average education, a well-known frail constitution... Can she even bear you a child? Is that why you're keeping Tristan's son around, just in case?"
"Mother, you've gone too far!" Master Keir said sternly.
But Elder Madam Keir was already worked up and continued arguing, seemingly oblivious to the fact that both father and son had grown increasingly cold.
The atmosphere around them seemed to drop several degrees.
Xati had initially been preparing to side with the old matriarch.
But the moment she insulted his Empress Mother, his expression changed, and he couldn't have been more offended.
While Elder Madam Keir wasn't looking, the little prince deliberately drove his toy sports car straight into her wheelchair.
The wheelchair toppled to the side, and the old matriarch's shriek echoed through the garden.
"Ahhh! Xati, you little brat! Why did you drive into your great-grandma?!"
The nearby maids immediately rushed over to help, seeing the old woman have a rather unexpected romantic encounter with the grass.
Master Keir also stood up and turned toward Xati.
"Apologise. Did you do that intentionally?"
Xati pouted and muttered something under his breath that no one could hear, except Shin.
"Xati," Master Keir called sternly. "You know your great-grandmother is old and still recovering. If we weren't in the garden, you could have seriously injured her if she'd fallen onto concrete."
"It's fine. I'm fine," Elder Madam Keir immediately said, as though she were more concerned about her great-grandson being scolded than her own near-death experience with the lawn. "The child didn't mean it. He must have simply lost control of that car. Perhaps have it checked to make sure it's safe for him to drive around."
Master Keir remained stern.
"He made a mistake, and he needs to understand that what he did was wrong. If you indulge him, he'll grow up to be a scoundrel."
Elder Madam Keir immediately argued that he would learn proper discipline once he started school, but Master Keir wasn't having it.
"Xati, apologise to your great-grandmother."
Xati "..."
As a demon prince, how could he possibly lower himself and apologise to a human? And certainly not to someone who had just badmouthed his Empress Mother.
Shin glanced at the little abomination before casually suggesting, "He'll learn if you send him to do community service."
Elder Madam Keir looked at Shin as though he'd just declared war on her.
"What community service?! That's for juvenile offenders! Are you out of your mind?" She nearly jumped out of her wheelchair again. "I knew you've always wanted to harm Tristan's son! It's a good thing I decided to stay here. Otherwise, who knows what you would have done to him already!"
Even Master Keir was stunned.
He had only wanted Xati to apologise. Besides, he had never agreed with parents who believed physically punishing children was an appropriate form of discipline.
Shin merely scoffed. "Well, you look quite energetic for someone so frail and sick. Handle your case by yourself."
Then he turned and walked away.
Elder Madam Keir was left fuming while Master Keir could only press a hand against his forehead.
"Mother, calm down. Surely Shin was joking."
"Joking?" Elder Madam Keir glared at him. "It's exactly because you always assume your son is a saint that you can't see through his vile nature! Who would joke about sending a five-year-old to community service?!"
But unbeknownst to both of them, Shin had been completely serious.
A little demon like Xati wasn't going to change because someone demanded an apology. At the very least, community service would teach him something an ordinary scolding couldn't: human hardship.
Meanwhile, Xati approached the old matriarch with an innocent smile.
"Great-grandma, I'll give you some candy so you'll feel better."
Elder Madam Keir immediately forgot her anger, her face brightened as she looked at him with absolute adoration.
"What a sweet boy. You're really just like your father."
She happily reached out her hand.
"Alright, what kind of candy do you have for Great-grandma?"
Xati climbed out of his little toy car.
Then, from the palm he'd been carefully hiding behind his back, he casually tossed a grasshopper toward her.
The old matriarch "...?!"
Eeeeekkkk!
She shrieked and frantically waved her hands as it jumped onto her tea, then onto the desserts, bouncing from one plate to another while the maids scrambled around in panic.
"XATI KEIR!"
Master Keir's furious voice rang across the garden.
But the little demon had already run away, laughing as he disappeared around the corner.
---
Contrary to Calin and her legal team's expectations, Shin didn't back down or reach out to negotiate once they decided to involve Elder Madam Keir.
Initially, they had imagined an agreeable settlement behind closed doors for the sake of protecting the old matriarch's reputation.
Instead, their decision only opened the door to another case unrelated to the attempted murder charge, with Elder Madam Keir vehemently refuting the allegations and filing a countersuit of her own.
As the hearing finally moved to the attempted murder of Yeri, Shin attended in person alongside Yeri. Several students were also called as witnesses, particularly Nina and Loki.
Calin, who had been pretending to be mentally unhinged, couldn't help but steal a glance toward them.
Her conflicting feelings of love and hatred toward Shin Keir surged so violently that she nearly felt the urge to confront him right there.
Even now, she couldn't understand what made him choose Yeri Zhi.
What did Yeri have that she didn't?
If Shin had simply followed the arrangement laid out for him, none of this would have happened.
"There was an extreme blizzard that night," Nina narrated. "I remember someone hitting me from behind. When I woke up, the security personnel were already all over the room."
"So you didn't actually see who attacked you?" Calin's lawyer asked. "You were in the same room as Yeri Zhi. Did it ever occur to you that it might have been Yeri who knocked you unconscious and then made you believe it was Calin Ricci?"
Nina immediately shook her head.
Her gaze darted toward Yeri, worried that her answer might somehow be used against her.
"Miss Geun, don't forget that you swore an oath to tell nothing but the truth," the lawyer reminded her.
When it came to Loki, however, both the lawyers and the judge developed a headache.
The witness was hopelessly stuck on the subject of polar bears, making himself practically useless.
"Just please answer the question."
"Yes, but polar bears..."
The judge repeatedly banged the gavel.
"Witness, this court is not conducting a hearing on polar bears!"
Meanwhile, another classmate, Daisy, provided little useful information either. She even began crying on the stand, worried that whatever happened during the hearing would affect her social media image.
"I was filming whenever I could," she explained between sobs. "You could just watch my videos."
"So you never saw Calin enter Yeri and Nina's hotel room or encounter her anywhere inside the hotel?"
Daisy hesitantly shook her head.
"The only time you saw Calin was when she was already being carried out on a stretcher with her arm missing?"
Daisy reluctantly nodded.
The lawyer seemed to hear exactly what he wanted.
"Your Honor, you heard the witness clearly. Furthermore, this was an upscale hotel with VIP accommodations. How could Calin Ricci have entered a VIP guest's room so easily unless she had been invited in or perhaps led there by someone?"
The audience began murmuring.
Daisy's face paled, she wanted to clarify that just because she hadn't seen Calin enter didn't mean she was saying Calin couldn't have been there.
But by then, no one was paying attention.
Once Calin's legal team finished questioning the witnesses, it was time for Shin's side to present their evidence.
For a moment, Calin thought they were winning.
Then the first surveillance footage appeared.
It clearly showed Calin arriving at the hotel. Another angle showed the same person stealthily entering Yeri's hotel room.
"Objection!" Calin's lawyer immediately rose. "The surveillance footage does not show this person's face. There is no way to establish that this individual is my client. Someone else could have worn the same clothing and deliberately attempted to implicate her."
"Dermal and blood samples recovered from the scene match the defendant," Shin's lawyer countered calmly. "The clothing is merely corroborating evidence."
He then turned toward the screen. "And there's more."
Another video showed Calin at the airport and boarding the plane, her purchase records showed that she had purchased the ticket that very same day.
"Calin Ricci had no business engagement or prior arrangement requiring her to travel to the Arctic," the lawyer continued. "Our investigation also recovered searches from the defendant's phone relating to the hotel, as well as her viewing the students' social media accounts to determine Yeri Zhi's whereabouts."
He paused.
"Furthermore, we found no evidence of another suspicious individual who could have impersonated or replaced the defendant."
The courtroom erupted into another round of murmurs.
Calin remained outwardly calm.
These pieces of evidence could still be challenged. Her lawyer could dispute the interpretation, the chain of evidence, or the circumstances surrounding the trip.
Then the next surveillance footage appeared.
Calin's expression changed, her face gradually lost its color.
It was footage from a thermal-imaging security camera overlooking the balcony area.
Unlike conventional optical cameras, thermal imaging could detect heat signatures even when ordinary cameras were compromised by darkness, heavy snowfall, glare, or other visual obstructions.
And Shin's decision to upgrade the class trip and accommodations to VIP status had turned out to be an extraordinarily convenient coincidence.
The hotel had installed thermal security cameras throughout its VIP areas, including the balcony.
Even during the blackout, even through the blizzard, even when visibility had been reduced to almost nothing, the thermal camera had seen everything.
Amid the noise filling the courtroom, Calin's attention remained fixed on the balcony footage.
Her memory was hazy, but her body seemed to remember as she began trembling violently.
"Cold... so cold..." she muttered.
The thermal images showed one person being forced onto the balcony while another stood behind them, seemingly holding a gun. The two figures struggled violently before disappearing briefly from the camera's angle.