They’re six years old, and it’s the middle of fall.
“It’s not like you,” Dia says, sitting next to Kanan on the beach, “to be so upset over something like this. Especially if it’s about Mari.”
Kanan just pouts some more as she hugs her legs close and sinks her head deeper into the space behind her knees. She’s making odd grumbly sounds that Dia’s heard before, but hasn’t yet gotten very used to.
“How do you…” Kanan pauses there. Her brow wrinkles just a bit. “How do you… fight rich people?”
“They have money, you know?” Kanan says, now more assured of herself. “If you’re really rich, you can do anything! But they have to have a weakness somehow!”
It’s not even very deep inside that Dia knows Kanan shouldn’t be trying to “fight” Mari like this, but her impulses to help and be the one with the answers gets the better of her. “Father mentioned once,” she says, recalling a conversation she’d overheard once after dinner, “that people with money fight in the court of law.”
Dia nods. “Mm-hm. It’s where people argue about things while a judge listens decides whether to put them in jail or not. Father says that to really scare someone with money, you threaten to sue them for what they did. The law is more powerful than their money, so they’ll be afraid of being put in jail!”
“Wow,” Kanan says, wide-eyed at Dia. “That’s scary. I don’t know if I want to put Mari in jail…”
“Y-You don’t have to!” Dia says. “You can say you’ll sue them without actually doing it. Just to scare them enough to stop.”
A thoughtful look crosses over Kanan’s face.
“Mari,” she says the next day, “if you throw my shoes into the pool again, I’ll sue you!”
“Sue me?” Mari says. “What’s that?”
