Obedient Bitch

Chapter 7: Court room

It was a pleasant weather when Pete left the apartment that morning. The commonly dense and polluted air that usually gathered in a haze over the buildings had eased up, and that was a good reason to make some people's day better.

Pete had always been a morning boy. He always loved to leave the house and feel the first rays of the sun touch his face and warm his cheeks. Because it was early in the morning, the sun was not so intense, and it seemed as if the star was hugging him and wishing him a good day.

His college building wasn't that far from where he lived if Pete decided to take the subway, so the open route was only a few minutes walk to the nearest station. On the crowded and busy streets of greater Seoul, there was a noticeable rush in everyone's steps, each focused on his or her own life, as they bumped into each other with little chance of meeting up again with those who had accidentally touched a shoulder or an arm while crossing the street. With the remnants of summer completely gone, there was already a difference in clothing due to the change in climate. It was not cold, but it was quite ventilated.

The foliage was also changing, and everything seemed to adhere to a less colorful and more neutral tone, transforming Seoul completely. A traffic light after the building where he lived, and Pete smiled as he smelled the familiar aroma of ready coffee, sold by a lovely little coffee shop, all decorated with varnished wood furniture, and golden lamps that made the place cozy. There was one of the best bean mochi  Pete had ever tasted in Seoul. That feeling of routine was at the same time strange and funny, because it reminded the boy how quickly a human being can adapt to his environment.

At college everything was going wonderfully well. And every day that he had more contact with the law and its concepts and areas of practice, Pete became even more enchanted. He still remembered his own parents' and Thankhun's reaction when he revealed that he wanted to be a lawyer. His father looked at him worriedly, while his mother choked on her tea, needing a few minutes to recover. Thankhun laughed, in disbelief, and after noticing that Pete remained serious, he looked at him as if a banana tree had sprouted among the blond strands on his head. This was because Pete had already chosen what he wanted to do for the rest of his life ㅡ or at least he thought he had. He wanted to be a fashion designer, and even won a scholarship to one of Thailand's colleges at the time, but soon realized that liking to dress well and wanting to learn how to do fashion were completely opposite things. Fashion was just a hobby, and law quickly proved to be the right field for Pete.

He always liked investigative books and movies, and his favorite parts were when the lawyers were called in and came on the scene. Whether it was the conversations with the culprit, or the victim, or even the crucial trial moments, that profession seemed to fit like a glove to the boy's argumentative and curious personality. He even took some vocational tests in his school days, and law was always in first or second place. And normally parents would love to know that their child chose such a renowned occupation to follow, but Pete's parents were a little different, and they worried about finding out the real intention for their son's change of choice. They didn't want Pete to feel pressured into doing something he didn't like just for the prestige, and this allowed the boy to always explore his own possibilities without fear. His mother's tears when Pete got the scholarship in Seoul were as much of joy as of anticipation, and the goodbye was hard but necessary.

That day, the speech of one of the professors made everyone very excited and anxious for Friday to arrive. This was because they were going to attend a trial of a murder case that appeared to be a passionate one, and that had been postponed a few times due to new evidence. Since it was open to the public, the professor thought it would be interesting to show the real atmosphere inside a courtroom, and allow the students to take notes on the posture, speech and positioning of the lawyers of the day.