Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 16 : Weighing Slip

The ticket machine on the first floor of the Bar Association spit out a slip: B47.

He Xiufen tucked the document folder under her arm and climbed the stairs two at a time, her soles thudding against the concrete steps one after another. Shen Zhixia followed behind, the strap of her canvas bag digging into her shoulder. A row of photographs hung on the wall of the third-floor corridor. The one in the middle was a group photo of the council, two rows of people. The man standing at the very center had his chin raised, smiling as if he were talking to someone outside the frame. She shifted her gaze to the names below the photo and read half a line.

At the corner of the corridor, a woman carrying a stack of case files was walking toward another room, labels stuck to the corners of the files. The last time Shen Zhixia had come to this building, she had asked whether her internship period could continue to count. They had handed her a piece of paper that said: start over from the beginning.

The Internship Management Division was at the far end of the third floor. Behind the window sat a woman in her forties wearing blue sleeve covers, squaring up a stack of forms by their corners.

"Director He." The woman looked up and greeted He Xiufen first. "Your materials are as complete as always."

"I brought everything I should." He Xiufen pushed the things over: registration form, two one-inch photos, a copy of her diploma, legal exam score report, ID card, the Internship Agreement stamped by the firm, and a copy of the supervising lawyer's practice certificate. She laid each item out on the counter.

The woman turned to the line marked "Previous Internship Employer" and her finger stopped. "Hengzheng Law Firm."

"Mm."

She tapped the keyboard a few times, the light from the screen falling on her sleeve covers.

"There's a record in the system," she said. "In the field for reason for termination, it says the trainee herself requested the termination."

"I never requested it."

"That's what the record says." The woman lifted her eyes to look at her. "I can't change this field. It has to be corrected by the original firm."

He Xiufen reached over from the side and drew the papers on the counter closer to herself. "If it can't be corrected, does it affect today's filing?"

"It doesn't. The internship period starts from today, for one year. At the final assessment, this section will go into the assessment materials, and she can explain it then."

"Then let me say something now," Shen Zhixia said. "That day, they told me to delete the 'late' and 'absent' entries in the attendance sheet, then sign the 'data verified correct' line. I didn't sign. On the back of that sheet I left a line: I personally did not make any changes to or deletions from the original attendance data."

The woman didn't respond to that. She flipped the registration form to the last page and pushed over a pen.

The last page had several printed lines, to the effect that during the internship she would not independently handle cases, would not act in the name of a lawyer, and would report matters truthfully. She read each line, signed, pressed her right thumb onto the ink pad, and pressed it to the corner of the page. The pad of her finger felt a little hot.

The woman printed out a receipt, then took a dark blue booklet from a drawer, attached the photo, and embossed it with the steel seal. When she pressed the seal, she turned the booklet, held it up to the light, and looked.

"Internship Certificate. If you lose it, you have to publish a notice in the newspaper." She slid the booklet out through the window. "In a year, bring this back to exchange it."

[Thud. Trainee lawyer, one year.]

She opened the little booklet and closed it again. The cover was hard, the corners dug into her hand. In the photo, her eyes were barely open.

On the way downstairs, He Xiufen walked quickly ahead. At the stairway, she glanced back. "What are you looking at?"

"That photo on the wall."

"There are plenty of people on that wall, and not a single one missing," He Xiufen said as she continued down the stairs. "Put that booklet away. This year, no one can walk this road for you."

At noon, the noodle house hadn't filled up yet. She put the Internship Certificate into the old pen holder on the corner of the table, thought for a moment, then took it out again and tucked it under the internship registration receipt.

A little after two in the afternoon, the noodle house was empty. He Xiufen was in the inner room doing the accounts. A pot of water sat on the stove, white steam rising from the rim.

Ma Jianjun's electric scooter pulled up at the door. He hung his helmet on the handlebar, came in, and pulled the stool out a little before sitting. In his hand he carried a plastic bag holding the old cell phone and several printed pages.

"Those six from the group," he said. "I asked them one by one. Four said they'd go with me."

"When did you ask?"

"Last night. I told them no pressure."

"The day after tomorrow, nine in the morning, have them come here." Shen Zhixia opened her notebook. "Those with IOUs bring the IOUs. Those without bring their bank statements. Don't switch phones, don't leave the group. When you get here, don't all speak at once. One at a time."

"Got it." He took the printed pages out. "Here's another copy for you."

"Let me be clear about the separate case." She spread the photo of the three signs on the table. "Last time, the one we sued was Hurricane Express. That's the company that owns the app you take orders on. This time we switch to a different one: Jiangzhou Sutong Delivery Service Co., Ltd., the third sign on the door, registered at the same address as the platform. In their own Explanatory Statement to the Arbitration Office, they wrote that the Chengnan Station riders were hired, managed, and paid by the contractor, a certain man surnamed Sun."

"The one who set my shifts and fined me was Station Manager Sun."

"Right. The whole station was contracted out from Sutong. It was contracted to a person who isn't a legal entity himself, so when something goes wrong, the one who contracted it out has to answer. This time, we go after Sutong first."

"Is it also them paying out the money?"

"The money is still transferred from that account under the name Wang. Same surname as Sutong's legal representative—this isn't evidence, just bear it in mind."

"Can we even get at them?"

"The office is there, the sign is there. They can be served."

"What about Sun?"

"We only have a surname. Put him aside for now. Once we have a full name, we'll add him."

"Add him where?"

"In the defendant column."

He nodded, pulled out a paper folded over twice, and smoothed it flat: six names, six phone numbers, written large, each stroke deliberate. She copied them into her notebook. At the third name, she looked up. "What about your orders these last two days?"

"My account's still locked." He rubbed the opening of the plastic bag. "I'm covering runs for somebody else. A hundred twenty a day."

"The day after tomorrow, just bring yourself."

"About the letter of recommendation." She capped her pen. "The last one was issued by the community, and it only covers this one case. For a separate case, we'll have to go ask for another one."

"Wu Yuhua."

"You still remember."

"That day she stood downstairs and watched us for a long time." He folded the paper. "I'll go with you. I'm the party. If I stand in the doorway, she'll have to look at me."

"Okay."

Someone leaned half through the doorway. Xiao Duan, his helmet still on his head and the chin strap unfastened, stood outside the doorframe without coming in.

"Come in," Shen Zhixia said.

"I'll talk from here." He pushed his helmet back. "My account came back the day before yesterday. I've been running nonstop these two days trying to scrape together last month's rent."

"Your money can be recovered. Come with those four. Bring the originals."

"All right." He paused. "That thing he said that night—are you still asking about it?"

"Do you remember?"

"The fifteenth of last month, a little after nine at night, at that barbecue stand by the station door." He spoke slowly. "The station manager had been drinking. He said, 'This station is contracted by me. I take twenty-five fen per order. The people don't belong to the company, and if something happens, it's my problem too.'"

"In front of whom?"

"Me, and two others." He scratched his neck. "One went back to his hometown last week. The other's still running at the station. Whether he'd dare say so, I don't know."

"Write down what you just said." Shen Zhixia pulled three sheets of paper from her bag and handed them over. "The time, the place, the people present, what he said—don't change a single punctuation mark. If you don't know how to write something, ask me."

Xiao Duan took the pen and squatted on the threshold to write. On the second line, he looked up and asked how to write the word "contracting." She wrote it on the edge of a scrap of paper, and he copied it carefully. When he finished, he signed and pressed his thumbprint—his palm was slick with sweat, the print came out crooked, so he pressed it again.

"Whether you appear in court, you decide when the time comes." She put the paper into her bag. "I won't force you."

"I know." He stood and fastened his helmet strap. "By the way, yesterday on a delivery I passed an old building, five floors. That room had someone in it. The door was open. Only one sign left on the wall."

"Which building?"

"The street where our station is, go north, turn in at the second light."

She wrote a line in her notebook: Sutong's office—someone there.

[Thud. The man without a name runs faster than the company.]

As the sky darkened, she went upstairs.

At the top of the stairs hung a wooden sign with peeling edges. Beneath the words "Zhengping Law Firm" was nailed a tin plate that read Legal Aid. Inside, only the lamp by the window was on. Two rows of metal filing cabinets took up half the wall, their doors pasted with faded labels. On the desk against the back wall lay a pile of unbound materials, and an old copy machine crouched in the corner, a layer of dust on the lid.

"The ledger's here." He Xiufen placed a hardcover notebook on her desk and opened it. "Receipts on the left, expenses on the right. On the expense side, even bus tickets get recorded—nobody's money falls out of the sky."

She picked up the pen and wrote the first line: photos, eight yuan; bus, four yuan.

"Case files have to be put together like this." He Xiufen pulled a bound case file from the cabinet and showed it to her. "One volume per case: table of contents, page numbers, evidence list. If the client gives you a few sheets of paper, you have to be able to tell them whether any are missing."

The file was bound with white thread stitched twice along the left side. The first page was the table of contents, and the pen-written lines were neatly aligned.

[Thud. A well-prepared case file lets the paper travel far.]

"Small cases are usually lost on a single piece of paper." He Xiufen closed the file. "The client only says, 'He owes me money.' What the judge needs to see is the piece of paper underneath those words. Without that piece of paper, you can shout yourself hoarse in court and it won't mean a thing."

"You heard Rule Three last night." She tapped the desktop. "From today, it governs you. In the future, whatever anyone says to me at this table, once you walk out that door, you don't repeat it."

"I'll remember."

"The desk by the window is yours. The computer is secondhand. It can boot up, but don't download a bunch of junk on it."

She sat at that desk, took the Internship Certificate from her pocket, and put it in the back of the left-hand drawer. After a moment she took it out again and pressed it under the ledger. The monthly allowance was eight hundred yuan. She went over the numbers in her head twice: the rent of eighteen hundred had been covered by Tang Guo, and she had promised to pay it back next week. From now on, she would have to rely on the Legal Aid Case Handling Subsidy, settled case by case. She added a line on the expense side of the ledger: owes Tang Guo, 1,800.

He Xiufen lifted a bundle of case files tied with hemp rope from under the cabinet, set it down in front of her, and pulled the rope free. The smell of paper spread through the air.

"These in the cabinet, no one takes them all year." She pushed the bundle forward. "Five cases. Starting tomorrow, organize the files first—complete the tables of contents, list whatever is missing, because the Legal Aid Center is waiting for the materials. Once the files are organized, then we'll talk about taking them on."

She took out a pencil and, in a blank line on a case file's table of contents, tried writing a "1." The pencil lead was soft, and the mark pressed deep.

She opened the first case. On the cover, the cause of action was five characters: Consignment Payment Dispute. Beneath it was the client: Wang Changshun, Hewan Village, sixty-seven years old.

The first page was the Legal Aid application. The second was a certificate from the village committee. The third was a photocopy of a Weighing Slip.

On the paper, the handwritten net weight had been crossed out once. The crossing-out was faint, gray. Beside it, another number was written, smaller than the crossed-out one. Clipped beneath the Weighing Slip was a note with yellowed edges, in He Xiufen's handwriting, a single line:

Shen Qian's first case was this one. He started from this slip.

She looked up.

He Xiufen stood beside her desk, holding a rag, not wiping anything.

"This case is exactly the same as the first case your dad handled back then," she said. "Look at the slip first. When you're done, come downstairs for noodles."

She lowered her head and turned back to the third page. On the photocopy, the two crossing-out marks overlapped. The groove pressed by the ballpoint pen still showed even on the reproduced page.

Downstairs, the water on the stove came to a boil with a gurgle.