I’m kind of surprised to see an absence in the comments here, but anyway…
This sure is a fair trial, huh? On one side we have the shadowy organization who has the power and resources to find all these people and stack the deck, and on the other we have… two high-schoolers. That can’t talk to their client. I thought they didn’t do boring games?
My money’s on beanie-guy being the liar. If shibe had actually knocked up a girl in middle school and paid to shut her up about it there’s no way in hell he’d have volunteered during the sugoroku game, not in front of a girl he liked. There’s also a low chance that they wouldn’t have pulled that out instead of whatever his dad was up to, though, again, it’s possible he did, forgot, and they used his dad because it would hurt him, but then like. They had no idea this game would be necessary, why sit on that. I’m not saying he didn’t pay the money, because he seems like the kinda guy that might do that if he saw someone in that much trouble, but i think it’s unlikely he committed the actual act. It’s also possible that beanie guy was telling the “truth” as far as he was told. She might have been seeing someone else, got caught (or would have been, if she was actually pregnant), and accused shibe because, well, it’s hard to disprove, and his family had enough money that they could bet on getting paid to keep it out of court. That’s awful devious for a middle-schooler, though. What exactly is with this author and middle-schoolers?
That all only counts if it actually happened though. Also, has no one in class wondered why the hell they’re being sent all this from what must be an unknown number?