Insanity

The guards lunged at me as I bit down at the officer's hand, blood spraying everywhere. Before they reached me, I managed to dig into the officer's eye with my elbow, blood flowing out as he wailed in pain. Tears streamed from my eyes as I erupted in laughter at the top of my lungs.

I'm sorry... I'm sorry... Oh God, I'm sorry...

"Stop this madness! Guards, restrain him at once!" Exclaimed the judge, slamming his hammer into the wood as hard as he could.

I screamed as loud as I could as I was body slammed onto the ground, my arms and legs locked and swiftly immobilized. It didn't even take a minute. These guards were trained well.

After I was handcuffed to a wooden pillar near my seat, the judge finally decided to address me directly.

"What is the meaning of this, Oni Hanzo? Are you out of your fucking mind?" He couldn't have put that more bluntly.

I moved my shoulders from side to side, like an injured animal before spitting at him forcefully, making sure my saliva reached him. He squirmed into his seat, trying to avoid it.

Yule was staring at me with an expression of shock on his face. By his expression, I knew he could tell what I was up to. I looked over at Nile, who was standing up from his seat, prepared to speak. He knew that everything depended on the words he was about to say, so he chose them carefully.

"Your honor, due to the current circumstances, I would like to appeal against the death penalty previously sentenced to my client Mr. Hanzo," he said in a robotic tone, with no expression or emotion.

"Go ahead, let's hear your appeal," said the judge.

"As you and all the members of the court can see, my client is no longer of sound mind. I request the death penalty be revoked, since executing a mentally unstable man is against morality."

Yule immediately cut in, suspecting my behavior.

"Objection, your honor," said Yule, getting up almost immediately.

"Objection sustained," said the judge, seemingly on Yule's side.

"Your honor, I believe Oni might be faking insanity, since he's been behaving normal this whole time until now. In yesterday's trial he didn't make any commotion," said Yule, the earlier confident tone returning to his voice.

"The court acknowledge's the prosecution's valid point," said the judge, turning to Nile. "How does the defense respond to this?"

Nile gave a passive look towards the judge before speaking.

"Your honor, my client's always on medication while he's at court. He's diagnosed with IED, or Intermittent Explosive Disorder, and he takes Fluoxetine for it. It appears he's skipped his dose today, and must've been acting as he had taken it. People with IED are prone to experience sudden violent bursts of anger, after all," said Nile in a calm tone, now in control of the situation.

"You are to submit his diagnosis report and medication prescription to the court," said the judge, suspecting Nile's words. "Plus, why didn't you mention that he was suffering from this disorder earlier in the case? Why are you mentioning it after the judgement has been passed?"

"Certainly," he said, handing the fake medical report he had prepared to the court. "To answer your question, my client had requested me to keep the details of his illness confidential, even if he had gotten the worst of penalties, due to personal reasons. I refrained from revealing this information to protect his attorney-client privilege until it was required that I do so. You see, my client is an orphan, and his disorder has gotten really severe due to the stress and grief he's faced throughout his life. He finds it very, very shameful to be abnormal, and to protect his request I didn't divulge the information, even though he had gotten the death sentence. But to think such a person would skip his dose and reveal what he had tried to hide his whole life all by himself..."

As his last resort plan worked out perfectly, I felt that every penny I paid for Nile's services was worth it, because before he took up practicing law, he worked as a criminal psychologist. Something like forging a fake medical report was child's play for him, considering the contacts he had. He had years of experience in the medical field, and I was glad then he was new as a lawyer because he had an absurdly cheap price tag compared to what he had just delivered. I was ashamed of ever doubting whether he could pull it off.

He'd done it. The sentence would be re-evaluated.

The final judgement after an evaluation of the severity of my illness by a psychologist, which I managed to get through because of the training I'd received from Nile on how to enact this disorder accurately, was that my illness was found to be severe enough that my death sentence would be revoked and I would be sent to an asylum until I was of sound mind, in which case the trial would be held again.

As I walked towards the van that would transport me to the asylum, I took a deep breath in the outside air and smiled out of relief, discreet enough to hide it from the people escorting me.

It was the air of freedom.

But I was not fully relieved yet. There were a few things I didn't know about. Why was I in that warehouse with Sakura? What circumstances had brought me there?

And most importantly,

Who killed Sakura Fujikawa, the person I had loved?