Aria Account balance: 426.3 BTC
The Sanhedrin Trial
She was brought into a room without windows.
The ceiling was white. The walls were gray.
A camera in the corner stayed lit.
The air held the smell of disinfectant and the bitter trace of old coffee grounds.
The table was clean. There was only an old computer and a stack of documents.
No one spoke.
The sound of the door closing was soft, but it could be heard.
She sat down, leaned against the chair, and did not move.
Her hands were not bound.
No one stood behind her.
The computer screen lit up.
The playback began automatically.
The first segment showed her social media posts.
The years were not in order. The tone was unstable. Some deleted entries had been restored.
One post read: "If you do not manipulate, you will be manipulated."
Another: "I do not believe in regulation. I believe in volatility."
And another, posted late at night one year ago: "If I disappear, it means I am free."
She watched in silence.
The second segment showed a visualization of her transaction records.
The movements between accounts were drawn in blue lines.
Leverage nodes, withdrawal paths, and cold wallet addresses were marked one by one.
The system explained.
It was an automated voice.
The rhythm was even.
The tone was without emotion.
"This action triggered an audit on the T+1 account due to irregular arbitrage."
"Funds were routed through an anonymous bridge account. Amount: 6.8 million yen."
"This pattern aligns with six other known financial crime cases."
She closed her eyes, then opened them again.
Her gaze stayed on the screen.
The third segment showed her social graph.
Photographs appeared one by one.
A picture with Kobayashi.
A screenshot of Yuji's messages.
Surveillance footage from Ramesh's shop.
An anonymous questionnaire signed by Rina.
A distant image of Julian outside the café.
Beneath each photo, there was a line of text.
"Cohabitant. No longer in contact."
"Former supervisor. Filed prior misconduct report."
"Capital intermediary. Suspected knowledge without report."
"Anonymous informant. Tagged as a high-risk collaborator."
The image stopped on Rina's face.
The system spoke slowly.
"The witness stated, 'She did not always seem like a normal person.'"
Pages turned.
One was a psychological evaluation.
The conclusion read: "Displays structural isolation tendencies and goal-directed behavioral patterns."
The doctor was unnamed. The file carried only a number.
She looked down at her hands.
They did not tremble.
They were not asking questions.
They were compiling.
They were not seeking to understand.
They were preparing to archive.
From the moment she sat down, the only sound was the breath of machines.
It was not the wind. It was not human.
It was the system.
The air conditioning kept a stable temperature, not warm, not cold.
It preserved the room as one might preserve a frozen sample.
She looked around.
There was no clock.
No watch.
This was not a place for time.
It was a place for measurement.
They did not measure time.
They measured data.
Her movement frequency.
Her gaze.
The length of her silence.
Even the changes in her heart rate.
She knew this.
She could see the reflection of her shape in the wall.
She knew the pressure sensors beneath the chair.
She knew the gray line on the edge of the desk hid the sound detection wires.
She knew.
Because she once worked in an information systems company.
At the time, she believed she still belonged to the world.
She closed her eyes.
Not from fatigue.
She was aligning her breath.
Waiting for the system to define her.
Those statements.
Those fragments replayed as evidence.
She remembered them.
She wrote them.
She posted them.
But they were not all of her.
A person cannot be captured in a sentence.
But a system only needs one to place you in a file.
This was not an investigation.
It was a record.
She looked up.
She spoke for the first time.
"This interrogation is not to find the truth."
She paused for two seconds.
Then she said,
"You already decided the outcome."
No one replied.
The system continued to read the next page.
She listened in silence.
The screen kept shining.
One page after another showed her last ten years.
Her words.
Her actions.
Her contacts.
Login records.
Web paths.
Failed conversations.
No one asked her who she was.
No one cared what she wanted to say.
That night, the trial ended without sound.
There was no court.
No jury.
Only a name pre-labeled.
And an auto-generated criminal profile.
She sat until the lights went out.
The trial was over.
She did not defend herself.
She accepted the fate that the system had written.
Not confession.
Recognition.
It could no longer be undone.
She had always known.
The Denial of Peter (Reenacted)
After nightfall, the interrogation room remained lit.
The white light was steady. There were no shadows.
On the table: a recorder, a laptop, a printed transcript.
Yuji sat at the center. His fingers were interlocked.
He did not raise his head.
The door closed.
An officer sat down across from him.
The file opened.
The paper made a soft sound.
The questioning began.
"Has she contacted you recently?"
Yuji paused.
He said, "No."
His voice was calm. His tone was flat.
The second question followed.
"Has she been to your residence?"
Yuji shook his head.
"She barely keeps in touch with me."
The pen touched the page. A note was written.
There was a brief silence.
The laptop screen stayed on.
Time blinked in the corner.
The officer asked again.
"Do you know if she engaged in any financial operations?"
Yuji replied, "I don't know."
His voice was quieter than before.
The red light on the recorder flashed.
The questioning ended.
The files were gathered.
The officer closed the laptop and turned off the recorder.
Only the hum of the air conditioning remained.
Yuji lowered his head. He looked at the table's reflection.
He spoke softly.
"I'm sorry."
No one answered.
The light on the recorder had gone out.
He looked up. His eyes turned toward the door.
The door did not open.
He said nothing more.
Someone walked past outside.
The footsteps faded.
Yuji stayed seated. His hands still rested on the table.
He knew this was the third time.
And the last.
The record would be filed.
The names would be removed.
He remained in the system.
But she was no longer part of it.