The middle-aged police officer exhaled quietly, his voice steady yet bearing the weight of restrained authority.
"Alright then. In that case, we'll begin with the chronological reconstruction of this incident—from the school's perspective."
The principal rose from his seat with a tense, practiced smile, proceeding to explain the sequence of events with eloquent, carefully measured diction.
Each word chosen as though weighed on invisible scales, crafted to sound neutral on the surface, yet to those perceptive enough, the ambiguity and manipulation woven into his speech were unmistakable.
What he conveyed was nothing more than a curated outline of the alleged assault and the fabricated documents he had previously shown to Al.
He narrated it with rhetorical polish, framing himself and the elite fathers as the righteous side, subtly steering the narrative so that Al's supposed wrongdoing was neither emphasized nor directly stated, but implied through tone and structure.
