Mingzhe took the front door, despite Lady Yang's presence behind him.
The guards had glanced at her, unsure, but Mingzhe had pushed open the door himself and stepped out into the daylight before they could stop him.
"One should never make rash decisions due to their emotions," Lady Yang murmured, just loud enough for him to hear.
Mingzhe fought back the urge to laugh in her face. To ask if she even felt emotions. He stopped on the top step and glanced back at her. "I'll remember that, Lady Yang."
He could see her desire to say more. For all that she was beloved and respected, she'd never been very good at holding her tongue.
The crown outside the gate of the manor had thinned; most of them now spent their time outside the main castle, watching the participants of the trial come and go, and trying to get some hint of what was happening inside.
But there was still a small group, and the security wall did not completely hide the view of the front doors.
Of Lady Yang and Mingzhe.
Lady Yang may have been confident in her coming victory, but she wasn't completely stupid.
It was what made her so hard to defeat. She never assumed anything was guaranteed.
It was infuriating.
Not that she could deal with things so well…well, a bit of that too. It was annoying how well she seemed to handle everything.
Did nothing rattle her?
Or did she work to project an aura of calm so no one knew how she felt on the inside?
There was no way for Mingzhe to know. It wasn't like she would tell him if he asked. Hikari would, but Mingzhe doubted that Hikari knew his mother as well as he thought.
Or that she trusted her son as much as Hikari believed.
Mingzhe forced himself to start walking. Down the stairs. Out the gate. Through the crowd. He kept his head held high, could feel the weight of Lady Yang's eyes on his back with every step.
A gob of spit landed on his shoe, and Mingzhe didn't have it in him to do anything but be relieved it hadn't landed on his face.
He didn't stop. It felt like even slowing down would be admitting she'd won, so Mingzhe kept his eyes straight ahead and walked.
Even though he wasn't sure where he was going.
His mind raced; it seemed like it had been doing nothing but that since the trial started.
How did he use this to stop Lady Yang? How did he find a way to make sure Emmy and Patrick were discovered in time?
He couldn't tell Chenzhou and Eirian. He couldn't tell the court. He couldn't tell the High Court.
The latter wouldn't believe him, and the former would get dragged down with him if he so much as said hello.
Even Chenzhou and Eirian might not believe him if he couldn't show them the bodies.
Never mind the High Court, which already looked at Mingzhe as an accomplice, and the Court itself, which didn't particularly care if Mingzhe was guilty or not. They hated him regardless.
He cleared the crowd and stepped onto the bridge.
To the left were Chenzhou, Eirian, and the main castle. To the right was the rest of the estate, the training grounds, the family neighborhoods, most of the noble families…the High Court's small building, nested between Supply and a small medical clinic branched off from the main hospital.
People glanced at him with suspicion as they passed him. Even those who weren't quick to assume he was guilty were too wary of being seen as sympathetic. No one wanted to be on the wrong side once it was decided what that was.
Mignzhe would never shake the suspicion. Even if the High Court announced that Mignzhe was completely innocent, people would talk about the trial for years. Every time someone mentioned Mingzhe's name, it would be followed by "Do you remember when he was on trial?" and a discussion of whether or not they thought Mingzhe was guilty or innocent.
Chenzhou and Eirian would never escape it either. People would invite them to meals and add a note not to bring Mingzhe. Or they wouldn't, but the conversation would be stilted and awkward.
They would only be free and comfortable in private, but what kind of life was that? Hidden behind walls and in empty rooms. No glimpse of the sunlight that had only recently returned to the Camelia.
The green growth on the rocks was expanding every day. Little flower buds were starting to pop up in a few areas. Gardens that hadn't grown in decades were starting to flourish. Birds and insects were coming back.
The Camelia felt alive in a way it never had before.
A pang of sadness ripped through him. It hurt to think he would have to leave the Camelia now, when it was finally alive.
It hurt even more to think that he didn't have a choice in whether he stayed or went…
….
But he did have a choice in how it happened.
The High Court didn't believe anything Mingzhe said because Lady Yang had done such a good job convincing the world he was guilty. Any attempt to claim he was innocent would see him laughed out of the room.
….
But they wouldn't laugh at him if he came to them as a conspirator.
He knew enough about the Yangs' plans from Hikari that it would be easy to convince them he'd been a part of it for years.
That Lady Yang had ordered him to send his men into the ambush.
That he'd seen Emmy and Patrick alive in the Yang Manor weeks ago.
~ tbc