Free Web NovelChapter 207: Chapter 188: A Historic Finale (Part 2)
Moved by the scene, an audience member was overcome with grief.
"She took my Nuonuo, too."
"Huh? Nuonuo is your child?" the person next to them asked curiously.
"Of course he is! I raised him for three whole years, fed him the best bones, but that wicked woman secretly led him away. He used to lick me awake every morning..."
Well, another one who treats their pet like a child.
The person next to them didn’t get it, but they respected it.
More and more people had been treating their pets like children these past few years, which was still considered acceptable. But if the trend continued, who knew? Maybe people would start treating their pets like their fathers.
With all the known information laid out, the play arrived at its core segment: the courtroom trial.
The lawyer with the heart condition even brought a bottle of strong liquor to court.
So much so that many in the audience worried the lawyer character might drop dead right there in the courtroom.
Sir Turt, however, could no longer relax. Anxious and grim-faced, he stared at the stage.
He’d already been proven wrong twice.
Of course, the main responsibility wasn’t his. It was all his secretary’s fault for failing to stop him, completely failing to fulfill the duties of an excellent subordinate.
Besides, this courtroom scene was indeed exceptionally brilliant.
It was one of the best courtroom scenes he had ever seen.
With the evidence overwhelmingly against his client, the lawyer astutely pointed out suspicious details in the prosecution’s testimony.
The prosecution claimed to have used magic to speak with the dead, but the deceased’s vocal organs were destroyed, so that magic shouldn’t have worked.
The noblewoman’s old servant claimed to have overheard a critical conversation through a door, but the lawyer exposed the servant’s poor hearing by suddenly lowering his voice during questioning.
Each scene concluded, earning a fresh round of applause from the audience.
Sir Turt was now feeling extremely conflicted.
He had entered the theater with the sole purpose of finding fault, a duty dictated by his position. Yet, as the play progressed, he found himself starting to like it.
He wouldn’t admit it, but he felt like a Princess who’d been captured by an Evil Dragon only to fall in love with it.
He had always believed such love stories were only good for duping adolescents.
But now, he had become the "Princess."
After a few scenes, there was a short intermission, allowing the audience to use the restroom.
Sir Turt slumped in his chair, defeated. ’I’m going to fail.’
The defeat of the Drama Guild at the hands of the New Drama Guild seemed to be an inevitable destination at the end of the road, and "Prosecution Witness" was the very road leading there.
He was walking down that road, even enjoying the journey a little.
If the second half of the show maintained the same quality as the first, Sir Turt had no doubt it would become the most talked-about play for a very long time.
Every play the Guild had scheduled for the near future would have to be postponed; otherwise, they wouldn’t draw any sort of crowd.
And with the influence generated by this one play, the New Drama Guild would surely attract a flood of new talent, no longer having to settle for the outcasts and rejects from the Drama Guild.
Everything seemed to be heading in the worst possible direction.
’No, the plot is weak.’ Sir Turt tried to convince himself. He clung to his theory of a two-protagonist drama where the main plot—the lawyer exposing his own client—would remain the central thread.
’That way, I can still criticize it as a mystery play, pointing out how its most crucial element—the design of the central mystery—is laughably bad.’
He was determined to make one last stand.
As if things weren’t bad enough, while Sir Turt was trying to rest his eyes, several audience members approached his secretary.
"Here, take the money back. We can’t do this job—this heckling. Besides, the cues you gave us for when to boo were all wrong!"
The man said all this right in front of the secretary and the Sir’s seat, exposing the whole deal.
He didn’t even lower his voice. One could reasonably suspect he was getting revenge for the two bouts of public humiliation he’d suffered during the first half.
The surrounding audience members all noticed the commotion and turned to look.
Caught red-handed taking money to disrupt the show... and with someone recognizing the man in the seat as the Chairman of the Drama Guild? This was a huge scandal.
"What money? What heckling? I don’t know what you’re talking about! This is slander! Do you know who I am? Would I do something so despicable? Proof! An accusation requires proof! Otherwise, I’ll sue you..."
Agitated, Sir Turt sputtered out a torrent of denials.
The man who’d come to return the money wasn’t angry at all. In fact, he smiled broadly. He knew that the moment the Chairman issued his denial, the job was off, and he wouldn’t have to return the money.
Ultimately, it was the bell signaling the start of the second half that rescued the Chairman from being the center of attention.
Everyone’s attention shifted back to the stage.
He had the theater’s rules to thank: no cameras, no video recorders, and a strict ban on recording Magic. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have had to wait until the end of the show.
#Drama Guild Chairman Hires Thugs to Suppress Rival# Trending!
That headline would be trending in minutes.
Onstage, the trial continued.
An unexpected Prosecution Witness appeared on the stand.
More than halfway through the play, the title finally made sense.
The Prosecution Witness of the title was none other than the client’s wife—the woman who had scammed him into marriage.
What shocked the audience even more was that the wife chose to reverse her testimony on the stand.
She didn’t give the testimony she had shared with the lawyer in his office—the one piece of evidence that could prove her husband’s alibi.
Instead, she changed the timeline, destroying her husband’s alibi. She even twisted the knife, testifying that when he returned home, he had claimed to have committed the murder.
"Wicked woman!"
"It’s for the money! It has to be for the money!"
"I knew she was no good!"
"SOB SOB SOB..."
The audience, forgetting all theatrical etiquette, erupted while the performance was still underway.
