Most people don’t consider themselves criminals. And yet crimes of convenience are committed on an almost daily basis. Pirating tv shows or music because legally acquiring it is too hard or expensive. Speeding because going the speed limit would not get you to your destination in time. Lying to get out of jury duty because you don’t want to waste a day sitting in an unairconditioned room waiting for the possibility of being called to sit in another uncomfortable room. When the odds of serious consequences are low, people will often ignore the law if it is easier for them.

  Ever since my encounter with that car thief, I’ve frequently reflected on what relationship with the law my new lifestyle entailed. At the time, I chose to lie to a police officer on the logic that the effort of working with the police and testifying against the thief was more than lying to protect her, but I’m no longer sure that was the right call. If I had been called out for my lie, I could have been labeled an accomplice and wound up in legal trouble myself.

  Dealing with legal consequences, possibly even going to jail, would be a huge inconvenience. I certainly wouldn’t be allowed to continue spending my days sleeping and gaming. The smarter thing to do would be to remain on the right side of the law. But what if that required a substantial amount of effort? For someone who has given up, where was the line between obeying the law and it being too much of a hassle?

  It was early the next morning (well, technically the afternoon, but it was basically the morning to me) when my phone rang with an unfamiliar number. Assuming it was one of the building’s residents who I had not yet met, I rolled out of bed to answer it.

  To my surprise, it was Derek’s voice on the line. “Kit! I’ve been arrested! I need to come down to the jail and pay my bail.”

  I was still half-asleep, so it took me a minute to comprehend what he had said. “You’re in jail? What happened?”

  “Well, you know those tags on mattresses that say, ‘Don’t remove under penalty of law?’”

  Suddenly, I was awake. “Wait, they don’t actually arrest you for cutting those off, do they?” I remembered all the times I had removed the tags on my own mattresses.

  “Maybe not. But when you run around a mattress store cutting off tags while yelling about how they’re a government conspiracy to test our compliance, you can get arrested for ‘disturbing the peace.’” He sighed heavily. “I thought taking some mushrooms before going mattress shopping would be a good idea. Normally they make me feel like I’m melting into the furniture, so I’m like, it will help me figure out which mattress I sink the most into. But I guess this batch made me super paranoid instead. By the time I came down, I was in custody.”

  I rubbed at my sinuses. It was too early for this. “How much is the bail, Derek?”

  “Only a thousand dollars. If you go into my apartment, the bottom left drawer on my entertainment unit has a bunch of cash in it. You can take a few bucks for yourself, too, to pay for gas or whatever for doing me this favor.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I groaned. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Great. And do try to hurry, if you can, Kit.” He sounded uncharacteristically nervous. “My cellmate compared my head to a beachball, and the way he said it … I’m not entirely sure what he has in mind, but I really don’t want to find out. Ah, time’s up. They’re taking the phone back. See you soon, Kit. I hope.”

  I wasn’t sure if ‘bailing your boss out of jail’ fell under the typical duties of a building manager, but it didn’t feel right to complain about it too much given how much Derek had done for me. But it didn’t stop me from wishing this would have happened later in the day. I quickly washed my face to wake myself up, found some clean clothes to throw on, and went looking for my master key. Once again, I found them in my previous day’s pants.

  Just as I was throwing my keys in my pockets and preparing to leave, I heard a knock on my door. I sighed. A renter with an issue this early as well? I guessed I would have to judge if the matter was more pressing than Derek’s head being used to play volleyball.

  The woman standing outside my door was wearing a dark black business suit. Her red hair was tied back in neat ponytail, and her makeup was professionally applied. She would have had all the aura of an intimidating businesswoman – if at the moment I opened the door, she hadn’t been in the process of pushing up her breasts.

  Now, I’m no pervert. Okay, well not that big of a pervert. But even I can’t help but notice when a woman’s chest is huge if she’s pushing them up in my face like that. Nor can I really help if my eyes are immediately drawn down to them.

  “Ahem,” the woman uttered.

  I realized I had been staring far too long. I forced my eyes up meet hers, though I continued to be aware of the mammoths at the periphery of my vision.

  “Yes, can I help you?” I asked.

  She seemed a little flustered but managed to pull herself together. “Are you Kit, former student of the online academy OUS?”

  I arched an eyebrow in surprise. “Yeah, that’s me.”

  Her face brightened considerably. “Oh, good, I got the right place this time. I’m Melanie, an associate at Fakner, Brighnam, Coral, Morrigan, Thyme, Sugar, Johnson, Jonson, Jhonson, Alpha, Tango, Sullivan, and Associates, Law Firm.”

  I started to zone out about halfway through. “Was that the name of the law firm or a shopping list?”

  She pressed on. “OUS was found to have improperly expelled a large number of their students due to a bug in their AI detection software. Our law firm has engaged a class action lawsuit against the university on behalf of the expelled students to recoup the tuition and other fees that the university had collected. As an impacted individual, I am here to see if you would like to sign onto this lawsuit.”

  This was an unexpectedly welcome development. I had spent tens of thousands of dollars on my tuition alone. Thinking about all the things I could do with that money put a smile on my face.

  “Really?” I said, unable to hide my greedy glee. “If I could get back all my tuition, that would be amazing!”

  “Well…” She broke eye contact with me. “We would ask for the full tuition and fees, but the way these kinds of lawsuits go, there would probably be a settlement with the university for a quarter of that amount.”

  “Oh…” That took a little of the wind out of my sails. But it was still a decent amount of money we were talking about here. “Well, I won’t say no to getting back a few thousand dollars.”

  “Well…” Her eyes drifted to the other side. “The firm would take its cut first, and then other fees would be taken off, administration to handle the payouts, and then taxes …”

  My smile faded more and more the more she spoke. “So how much, exactly, would I expect to gain if this lawsuit was successful?”

  She smiled timidly. “A few hundred dollars. Probably. Possibly more in the five or six-hundred range is our recovery efforts go well.”

  It’s funny the way expectations work. Had someone come to my door just minutes ago and said they were here to give me a few hundred dollars, I would have been pretty stoked about it. But after briefly believing I was about to recoup tens of thousands of dollars, a few hundred dollars seemed horribly insufficient.

  I sighed. “Well, I guess a few hundred dollars is better than nothing. What do I need to do, sign a form?”

  She excitedly lifted a briefcase. “A few forms, actually. I’ll also need to take a statement, get copies of your identification, biometrics, blood samples. Oh, and we’ll need to schedule some follow-up interviews, of course. The whole thing shouldn’t take more than a few hours.”

  The last of my waning enthusiasm for this lawsuit dried up in an instant. “Uh, actually, I’m pretty busy today. I need to run to go help a friend out. Sorry.”

  I tried to walk past her, but she stepped back in my way.

  “If this is a bad time, I can schedule a time to come back later today,” she said, smiling sweetly.

  “That’s really not necessary,” I replied, again trying to get past her. “I’m sure you have better things to do.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  She stepped in my way again. “Oh, it’s no problem at all. I have nothing else going on at all. In fact, I could just wait out here by your door until you get back.”

  I was beginning to get very uncomfortable. Were all lawyers this aggressive? “I’m not interested in joining this lawsuit anymore. So please, go on to the next guy. I’m sure they will be more than happy to sign up.”

  “What? Why not?” She seemed more frantic now. “Don’t you want to recoup some of the money that was stolen from you by that negligent university?”

  “If it was more, maybe,” I said with a sigh. “Or if it was easier. I’m living my life under a philosophy of putting in as little effort as possible, and what you’re talking about seems to be way too much hassle for too little reward. So, I’m going to pass. And I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but maybe in the future, don’t be so upfront about how little money your clients stand to make. I was really excited until you broke it all down.”

  “But I don’t want to be dishonest.” She sounded so dejected.

  She finally let me get passed her but left me feeling guilty. Which was stupid. Why should I feel guilty about refusing to be part of a lawsuit? Just because she was honest, doesn’t mean I owed her hours of my time.

  “Mr. Kit!” Maddy, the young girl from next door, called out to me as I passed her apartment. She rushed out to greet me. “Mr. Kit! Are you busy today? I have math homework I could use some help with.”

  I’d nearly forgotten that I had promised Maddy I would come over sometimes to help her with her schoolwork. But this was bad timing.

  “Sorry, Maddy. I can’t right now. I’m on my way to jail.”

  I probably should have phrased that better. Been more specific about why I was heading to the jail. But between how tired I was and how distracted my interaction with the lawyer left me, I hadn’t considered how that statement might be taken.

  Maddy’s eyes started to swell with tears. “Oh, no, Mr. Kit! What did you do? You can’t go to jail! I don’t want you to!”

  I was quick to try and correct my mistake. “No, wait, I didn’t mean I’m going to jail. I’m just heading there to help someone out. I’ll be back later, I promise!”

  She sniffled and looked up at me like she didn’t really believe me. Then she looked beside me. “Who is she?”

  It was only then that I realized that Melanie had sidled up beside me during this encounter.

  “Hello, I’m Melanie,” the lawyer said, her voice as sweet as could be. “I’m Mr. Kit’s lawyer.”

  “I didn’t agree to that,” I muttered.

  Maddy ignored me and rushed over to the lawyer. “Please, Ms. Melanie, you have to help Mr. Kit! He’s a good person! I’m sure he didn’t mean whatever he did.”

  Melanie knelt down to be at Maddy’s level. “I promise to do everything I can to help Mr. Kit. Now, you should run along and do your homework. I’m sure Mr. Kit will help you with any problems you are struggling with later.”

  “Okay.” Maddy looked me. “Don’t do any more bad things!”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  After Maddy rushed back into her apartment, Melanie said to me, “Such a sweet kid. Children are good judges of character, you know? I believe her when she says you’re a good person.”

  Another hit of guilt. I buried it down and turned away from her.

  I made my way down to Derek’s apartment and let myself in using the master key. Immediately, I was hit with the musty, faintly foul scent that I had come to associate with my landlord. I put my arm over my mouth and nose to try and keep from breathing as much of it as I could.

  The apartment was so filled with stuff it was hard to navigate. Piles of notebooks, loose pages with drawings on them, and art supplies. Shelves full of books, DVD’s, and video games, as well as older media formats like VHS, audio cassette tapes, and even some vinyl records. I vaguely remembered one of Derek’s rants regarding the necessity of physical media ownership, and not giving into digital subscription scams.

  And then, of course, there was a lot of ‘paraphernalia.’ Stuff I was careful not to touch as I made my way through the apartment. I really didn’t want my fingerprints on any of it.

  I reached his entertainment unit, on which sat a massive TV that barely fit, and which was connected by a tangled web of wires to gaming consoles that were piled on the floor beside it. It was an impressive collection: a mix of new systems. retro consoles from before I was born, and everything in-between. I wondered how he got that all working on one modern display, but I wasn’t about to try and trace those wires to make any sense of it.

  Ignoring my curiosity of what else Derek might have lying around, I restricted myself only to going into the drawer that I had been instructed to open. As promised, there was a fairly large stack of cash stored here. I counted out the thousand bucks for his bail money, took twenty bucks for myself to get some gas, and put the rest back.

  Derek must really trust me to let me know where he keeps such a large sum of money, I realized. I had no idea how he was comfortable even having that much money in cash just sitting around. Maybe he also didn’t believe in banks.

  As I left the landlord’s apartment, I found the lawyer standing outside, waiting for me. I groaned as I locked the door behind me.

  “Why are you being so persistent?” I asked as I started towards the parking lot.

  She followed after me. “I need to get you to sign onto this lawsuit.”

  “I already said I’m not interested. Wouldn’t your time be better spent recruiting someone else?”

  “There is no one else.” She looked to the ground. “I … I haven’t been able to recruit anyone onto this lawsuit. Everyone on my list either turned me down or was poached by another lawyer in the firm. You’re my last chance. If I can’t bring you on, they’ll remove me from this case, and I’ll be back pushing papers in the file room. I know it’s not really your fault but … I can’t go back until I’m absolutely sure there’s no chance of changing your mind.”

  Now I felt really bad. And that left me torn. Rule three said that I shouldn’t be a dick. But did that leave me with an obligation here? This wasn’t the same level of urgency as a child trapped in a window. I couldn’t deny she was in distress. And yet the amount of time and effort that was being requested of me was far more than I wanted to deal with. How did I break the tie when rules one and three conflicted with each other?

  I was still contemplating this as I reached the parking lot, and was only broken out of my musing when I noticed someone sitting on the hood of my car.

  He wore the same dark business suit as Melanie, though his seemed more well-pressed. Possibly more expensive, too, though I didn’t have a great eye for these things. His shiny blond hair was slicked back and seemed to shimmer in the sunlight. He was exceedingly, obnoxiously handsome. I swear when he smiled, his teeth glinted like he was in a toothpaste commercial.

  “Hello there, Kit,” he said with a confident, smooth voice. “I’m Lawrence, an associate with Fakner, Brighnam, Coral, Morrigan, Thyme, Sugar, Johnson, Jonson, Jhonson, Alpha, Tango, Sullivan, and Associates, Law Firm. And I’m here to help you recover your tuition from the scumbags at OUS who improperly and negligently expelled you. Just spend a little time signing up for our class action lawsuit, and you’ll be on your way to a massive recovery.”

  “Another lawyer?” I asked. “When did I get so popular?”

  “Another?” He smirked. “Ah, Melanie. I didn’t see you there. Still haven’t given up? You should stop wasting time. I know the partners have a lot of paperwork piling up that they are ready to assign you. The quicker you accept that fate, the quicker you can start making progress on that pile.”

  “I wouldn’t be in such a bad situation if you stopped following me around and stealing all my clients!” Melanie retorted.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m working off the same potential client list you are.”

  “You always show up at the same time and place as me!”

  “It isn’t my fault all of our clients prefer to go with me instead of you.”

  I looked between the two arguing lawyers, wondering if there was an opportunity for me to slip away. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going anywhere while the asshole was sitting on my car.

  “Would you mind –“ I started to say, trying to ask him to get the hell off.

  “Signing you on as a client?” Lawrence interrupted. “No problem at all. Just a few quick signatures, and a couple of other trivial technicalities, and I’ll get to work recovering tens of thousands of dollars of your tuition for you.”

  “Is that right?” I narrowed my eyes suspiciously at the smarmy lawyer. “I was told my recovery would likely wind up in the hundreds.”

  “You shouldn’t listen to anything that woman says,” Lawrence assured me. “She’s a total mess. A failure as a lawyer, among other things. Stick with me. I’ll maximize your recovery.”

  “That’s not how class action lawsuits work,” Melanie argued. “You shouldn’t be dishonest to the clients. It is just going to make them upset later.”

  I didn’t really know about legal proceedings, or class action lawsuits, or how any of this stuff worked. Maybe Lawrence was telling the truth, and he could somehow get me more money than Melanie promised, despite being involved in the same lawsuit and working for the same firm. But one thing I did know – I did not like Lawrence. He radiated dishonesty and ego. I got the feeling he thought I was stupid, easy to manipulate. And while he might have been right about that, it was not nice.

  Now I realized what the tiebreaker was going to be for the conflicting rules of my life philosophy: spite.

  “Sorry to break it to you, Lawrence,” I said, trying to summon some smugness into my own voice, “but I already signed on with Ms. Melanie here, and I’m quite happy with her, so I intend to keep her as my representative during this lawsuit.”

  “You did?” Melanie asked. Then, finally catching on, “Oh, yes, you did.”

  Lawrence scowled. “Whatever would possess you to do that? Were you hypnotized by those giant knockers of hers? She uses a padded bra, you know. Always pushing them up to look bigger.”

  “It’s not padded!” Melanie insisted. “It’s just orthopedic, cause I have back problems. And they don’t fit great in this suit, so I sometimes have to adjust them to be comfortable. Look, I’ll show you!”

  To my astonishment, she started to unbutton her shirt right there in the middle of the parking lot. I quickly rushed over and pulled her shirt together before she could expose anything to the public.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded, flustered.

  “I was just going to show you its not a padded bra.”

  “I believe you! Just keep your shirt on!”

  Lawrence shook his head. “This is what you signed up for. She’s not just a failure as a lawyer, but as a woman. But I guess she’s your problem now. Congratulations on just barely avoiding being tossed off this lawsuit, Melanie. But the moment this guy comes to his senses and decides he’s had enough of you, I’ll be here to take over.”

  He walked away, leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth. I decided then and there that however bad Melanie was, I was never going to work with that asshole.

  “Thank you, Kit,” Melanie said, positively beaming. “I promise I won’t let you down as your lawyer. Now, we just need to get you to sign all these papers.”

  “Later,” I said. “I still need to go bail my friend out of jail, and I’ve already been delayed enough.”

  I got into my car, and was surprised when Melanie got into the passenger seat.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I promised that little girl that I would help you with your legal troubles,” she explained. “So I’m coming with you.”

  “Doubt I’ll need help. It’s just paying bail.”

  “Never know.”

  I decided it was not worth wasting any more time arguing. Rule number two: Just let it happen.

  Shaking my head, I started the car and got on the way to the jail. I didn’t know at the time that the day’s challenges had only just begun.