Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 10 : Window No. 3

A sheet of printer paper was taped to the glass at Window No. 3: Acceptance, Service of Process, Inquiries.

She slid the Service Address Confirmation Form through the opening. The girl behind the window looked down at the address line, then up at her. "Whose place is this?"

"My client's out on the road all day. Nobody's there to sign for mail at that rental."

"Then put down a designated recipient." The girl flipped the form over and tapped the back with her pen. "Who's the designated recipient?"

"Me."

"Relationship to him?"

"Representative."

The girl pulled a file from the clip, flipped a couple of pages, and stopped at the Letter of Recommendation. "Issued by the community, right?"

"Yes."

"Bring the original on the hearing day. Power of Attorney, Letter of Recommendation, ID. All of it." She stamped it, kept the top copy, and slid the carbon back out. There was no line at the window today; behind the glass, only the sound of turning paper.

"Ma Jianjun." She pulled one sheet from a stack and read aloud. "Respondent: Hurricane Express (Jiangzhou) Network Technology Co., Ltd. November 6, 9:00 a.m., Second Arbitration Tribunal. Evidence submission deadline is the 23rd of this month. Failure to submit by the deadline is at your own risk."

"Give me two copies of the Hearing Notice."

"One for the party, one for the representative. Is he here?"

"No."

"Then sign for receipt and pass it to him."

She signed. The girl pulled out another thin sheet and handed it over with the two forms. "The other side came in this morning to file their representation paperwork and submitted a Supplementary Defense Statement. Sign for this too—signing just means you've been informed, not that you agree."

She took it. The first line was the respondent, and the string of characters that followed—she recognized it. She had copied it stroke by stroke once, onto the back of her application. The second line was the authorized representative: Lu Jibai, Hengzheng Law Firm.

She carried the paper to a bench in the hallway, sat down, and read line by line.

First point: No employment relationship exists between the applicant and the respondent. Ma Jianjun registered as a crowdsourced delivery worker on his own initiative. Whether he accepted orders, how many, and how long he stayed online were all decided by him personally. The two parties were in an equal service cooperation relationship, with no personal or economic subordination.

Second point: The payments received by the applicant were settled monthly by an external service provider. The paying account bears no relation to the respondent, and the applicant cannot therefore claim payment from the respondent.

Third point: The IOU submitted by the applicant was issued by an individual outside the case, without the seal of any unit, and cannot prove that the respondent owes any payment obligation to the applicant.

Final line: Request that all of the applicant's arbitration claims be dismissed.

She read it twice, front and back. None of the three points said he never delivered a single order. None said those three months shouldn't be paid. Not one word mentioned the thirty yuan deducted that morning. The whole page did one thing only: took this person out of the "company's people" column.

[Thud. The name you came for is printed on someone else's paper.]

Leather shoes sounded at the stairwell. She looked up. Lu Jibai came down from the second floor, a kraft paper envelope under his arm—much thinner than the last stack.

"Sixth," she said. "You knew before I did."

"I'm the representative." He sat on the bench diagonally across from her, two empty seats between them. "You signed for the copy."

"I did."

"Point three."

"I read all three." She held the paper in her hand, her fingers pressing a crease into the edge. "What you're saying is that IOU has no company seal on it."

"What we're saying is that the person who wrote it isn't the respondent." He leaned back against the bench. "Doesn't he have a Work Badge?"

"He does."

"Where is it now?"

She couldn't answer.

"Go ask him," he said. "Don't ask here."

Outside the window, a car backed into a space, its warning beeper sounding twice before the echo faded down the hallway.

"His money each month—what account did it come from?"

"A personal account under the name Wang. The memo said delivery fees."

"Is that our company's account?"

"Then who wrote that memo?"

He looked at the window at the far end of the hallway, open a crack, and said nothing. She turned the paper in her hands so that the third point faced her knee.

"He ran for three months. Fourteen, fifteen hours a day." She said, "You won't acknowledge that either."

"There's nothing in my defense about those thirty yuan."

"Why not?"

"It doesn't need to be there." He stood. "I only need to prove he isn't one of ours. Then those three months and those thirty yuan—I don't have to answer for either. You're the one who can't answer."

"He asked a question once." She stood too, rolling the paper into a tube. "There's still not a single answer in your filings."

"Which question?"

"Am I one of your people or not?"

Lu Jibai looked at her, the length of a bench between them. Someone wheeled a suitcase down the far end of the hall, the wheels clacking twice against the tile.

"Will you be submitting the shift schedules?"

"You'll see at the hearing."

"You'll be there on the sixth."

"I'm the representative." He walked toward the stairwell, stopping on the third step. "The address changed."

"It did."

"Above Zhengping Noodle House." He recited it like he was checking a door plate. "You're lodging with He Xiufen."

"You know her."

"That firm of hers—barely takes a case worth more than ten thousand all year." He didn't look back. "You plan to stand above her shop, then first get one sentence straight in your head."

"Which sentence?"

"Whose employee is Ma Jianjun?"

The leather shoes went down to the second floor, then the first. She unrolled the paper, smoothed it flat, folded it, and put it in her document folder.

There was no one at Window No. 3 now. She pushed a sheet back through. "My last Application for Evidence Collection—has there been any response?"

The girl flipped through a notebook. "Forwarded to the case handler. Shao Hong. If you want to ask, go up. She's on the second floor right now."

"I have another one to file today."

"For what?"

She tore a page from her notebook and wrote on the counter: Apply to obtain the Work Badge issuance and collection records for Chengnan Station No. 1; apply to obtain the notice and name list from the period when the station organized riders to change SIM cards. She filled in the items requested, the holding unit, and the purpose—three lines—then signed, dated, and made two copies.

The girl took it and read it through. "Written up nice and complete." The stamp came down, one copy kept, one returned. "Sign for receipt. Don't expect it to be fast. Work badges—they'll say they don't have any."

"I know."

[Thud. Of the three points, not one denies that he ran orders.]

The little room above the noodle shop didn't get sun until afternoon. When she got back, scallion oil was frying downstairs, the smoke creeping up through the narrow window in the stairwell. She moved the folding table to the window, smoothed out the two sheets of paper, and took out a red pen.

Beside the first point she wrote: dispatch, shift scheduling, fines. Beside the second she wrote: who is this Wang. Beside the third she wrote: Sun.

The pen stopped on the third character. Lao Song had said the one in charge at the station was surnamed Sun, but the paper only had a surname, no given name after it.

He Xiufen came up with a stack of case files and set a hardcover account ledgers on the corner of the desk. "Today's books."

"Two entries." She opened the ledger and recorded the noodle shop's two transactions for the day—one bowl with an extra egg, one to-go order—then pushed it back.

He Xiufen didn't leave. She fished her glasses from her apron pocket, settled them on her nose, and held the defense opinion at arm's length. She set it down after the first point.

"Labor cases—the first cut always lands here." She said, "Saying 'he's a person' does nothing. You have to answer 'who manages him.'"

"They didn't deny a single thing he did on the ground."

"They're not going to reckon with you over those three months. First they'll reckon over whose person he is." He Xiufen took off her glasses. "If you can't answer that point, you don't even need to read the other three."

"Then how do I answer it?"

"Don't ask people things over the phone." She tucked the files under her arm and headed for the door. "On the phone, people think they're saving you trouble, so they only say the convenient things. Have him come in tomorrow. Sit here, at the table, and ask face to face."

The door clicked shut. She looked at the three sheets spread on the desk, then picked up her phone anyway.

Ma Jianjun's phone rang six times before he picked up. There was wind on his end, like he was standing at the base of a building. "Shen, the lawyer."

"Three questions."

"Go ahead."

"When did you buy your phone?"

"The winter before last. Secondhand, four hundred twenty, from a fellow townsman."

"Whose name is the SIM card in?"

"Mine."

"Ever changed numbers?"

Silence on the other end. "Changed once. The year before last, the station called us all to a street—said the system was upgrading, old numbers were being discontinued, we had to get new ones with new cards."

"Who called you there?"

"Someone from the station. Station Manager Sun wasn't there. It was some data guy. Left as soon as it was done."

"The old card?"

"Pressed at the bottom of a box." He said, "They were collecting old cards that day. I said I still had credit on mine, so I didn't hand it over."

She held the pen still. Outside the window, someone in the building across the way was hanging sheets on the balcony, one after another dropping down.

"Second question." she said. "The Work Badge."

"They issued one. Blue, with a photo. Hung around the neck."

"Where is it now?"

"Collected. Just a while back."

"Who collected it?"

"The station manager. Said it was a system upgrade—old badges collected for destruction, new ones issued."

"Did they give you anything in writing? A receipt, a voucher, anything at all?"

"Nothing." He said. "We're all one station. They said hand it in, you hand it in."

"Did you ever take a photo of it?"

Ma Jianjun thought for a moment. "Someone posted one in the group chat." He said. "People posted them all the time. I don't remember who."

"That old phone—don't turn it on and mess with it, don't delete anything, don't take it to get repaired." She said. "Wait until I come over."

"Okay." He answered, then added, "Shen, the lawyer—that credit on my card, is there anything left?"

"Even if there's a few yuan left, it's yours."

She hung up and flipped the notebook to the middle page. The three columns were still there: what he did, who managed him, who paid him. The middle column was the thinnest—just a line and a half before. She added two lines beneath it:

Work Badge: collected by the station a while ago. No receipt given.

Old card: bottom of a box. Station told him to switch numbers, card swapped along with it.

All three lines ended with blank space. At the very top she wrote the sentence from earlier, stroke by stroke:

The question to answer before the hearing—whose employee is Ma Jianjun.

When she looked up, only the one lamp was lit in the room. Downstairs, the rolling shutter clattered to the ground.

[Thud. In the ledger, this line is also blank.]