Read Novel Full Chapter 20 : Pressing the Scale
Chapter 20 : Pressing the Scale
The phone on the desk vibrated a third time.
She turned it over. A message: Sis, the materials fee.
Half a minute later, another: Four hundred twenty. Teacher says it's due next week.
She stared at the two lines for a while. The last time this text had come, she'd been spreading twenty-three screenshots across the desk in three rows. The card had had 3,920 on it. Rent was due in two days. She'd turned off the screen.
Now there was less in the account. She opened the transfer, typed in 420, and left the note field blank even though it glowed. Then she exited and sent another: 100, note: Food.
Two minutes later, the reply came back: Are you still at that same firm?
She got up and walked to the window. Downstairs, the noodle shop's rolling shutter had long been pulled down. A little leftover cooking smell still climbed through the stairwell cracks.
She typed back: I switched firms. A small one. I take cases for ordinary people.
The other end went quiet for a while, then a three-second voice message popped up. She tapped it. Shen Zhi'an's voice was very low, like he was hiding in a stairwell: "Someone posted online saying Hengzheng fired you and that you deleted their data."
I didn't delete anything.
"I know you didn't," he said quickly. "Who spread it? Give me a name."
Focus on your studies.
"I am." He paused. "I screenshotted the post and saved it." A moment later, another message came: "I lined up a flyer distribution gig this weekend. A hundred twenty a day."
She stared at those two lines, pressing her finger against the screen. This kid had been sticking up for people since he was twelve. His loyalty was bigger than his ability, and he couldn't keep his hands in check. She deleted the half-typed message and typed again: No flyers.
I can handle it.
You're a high school sophomore. Forget the flyers.
The other end went quiet. After a while, four words appeared: Then you eat too.
She put the phone face down on the desk and pushed the desk lamp a little farther forward. The four items had sat on the desk from morning until midnight, untouched. At the far left was the original Weighing Slip, its corners worn soft. The three characters after "Delivering Party" had been written for him by someone else. In the middle were the receipt she'd copied out and the characters she'd traced. On the right was Wang Changshun's Power of Attorney, held down by the six characters Liu Fugui had written that morning.
She pushed the Weighing Slip half an inch closer to the light. The crossed-out number and the one below it lay stroke over stroke.
[Thud. Three techniques: Justice Checklist, Testimony Comparison, Evidence Echo.]
Her fingers stopped at the edge of the desk.
"Evidence Echo."
[Thud. Use on an object. One object. See what that object has been through.]
"Redemption."
[Thud. Half-case Justice Points. One per case.]
Half a case. That was all she had on her ledger. In Ma Jianjun's case, no money had come in; the ledger showed only half a line. If she spent it, the ledger would be empty. If she couldn't get more from this case, she wouldn't even have that half-case left. The half-line she'd fought for in Ma Jianjun's case would turn into something as thin as that page on the desk.
Outside, a late-night freight truck rolled through the intersection. The windowpane shivered.
She pressed the pad of her finger over the three characters of "Delivering Party." The paper was brittle; its edges scraped her palm.
"Redeem."
[Thud. Redeemed.]
[Thud. What is seen cannot be used in court.]
"Then why redeem it?"
[Thud. To point you in a direction.]
First came the smell. Diesel, dry corn husks, and a trace of burned coal.
October 11, morning, frost on the ground.
The purchasing point's gate faced the highway. Just inside stood a concrete pad, and on it the scale—iron plate ringed with rust, its deck littered with bits of corn husk that the wind swept to one side. The weighing room's door stood half open. A lamp hung inside over a wooden table with a ledger, an ink bottle, and a box of stamp-pad ink. A coal stove sat in the corner, its mouth blocked with a brick. The plastic curtain over the doorway swelled and sagged with the wind.
A truck backed in and lined its bed up with the scale deck. Woven sacks were stacked waist-high, and two loaders on the bed handed baskets down.
Lao Wang was up on the truck bed too, an old jacket over a dark blue work coat, sleeves twisted to his elbows and bare forearms showing. He passed baskets down one after another, putting his strength toward the middle, his face turned away, never looking at the scale's gauge.
Weighed baskets were stacked to the side. A thin frost covered the scale deck, marked by a few footprints.
The young man standing by the scale clutched the slip. Around twenty, short-haired, cuffs rolled to his elbows, a red string tied around his left wrist, the ends frayed. The instant a basket hit the deck, his foot shifted half a step; the edge of his canvas shoe pressed against the platform edge, bearing down. His body didn't move. His eyes stayed on the gauge.
The digits on the gauge stopped, lower than the basket before.
He dropped his head and marked the slip. When the next basket came up, his foot slid over another half step.
Seventy-three baskets. When the seventy-third went onto the deck, the truck bed was empty. He shook out his wrist and breathed into his palm.
Lao Wang leaned down from the truck bed. "Is the tally enough?"
"It's written down," the young man said.
Lao Wang pulled back. He couldn't read, and the counting wasn't in his hands.
On the windowsill of the weighing room sat an enamel mug, steam curling from its mouth. Under the lamp sat an old man in a blue padded jacket, hands folded in his sleeves. He lifted his gaze to the scale deck.
He watched for two seconds.
Then he lowered his head and took a sip of water. The mug came down on the sill with a clink.
Lao Wang wiped his hands on his trousers and jumped down, his soles slipping on the frost. He walked toward the weighing room, stopped at the door, and glanced at the gauge on the deck. He didn't recognize a single mark or number on it.
The young man spread the slip on the wooden table in the weighing room, dipped the pen in ink, and wrote down the numbers.
Halfway through, he stopped and looked back toward the counter.
Someone stood at the counter in a padded vest, back to the light from the doorway, only half their figure visible. The person said something, but the sound was swallowed by a truck passing on the highway.
The young man dipped the nib again, tapped it against the mouth of the ink bottle, and drew a line through the top number. He wrote another number below it. The one below was smaller.
The slip was handed over. Lao Wang leaned in, pressed his fingertip to the paper, then smeared the red print at its edge with his sleeve, leaving a red stain on the cuff. He tucked his hands back into his sleeves and stood there waiting for the rope to tie down the load.
The half-seen figure turned farther inside.
The image faded.
[Thud. This page has seen only this much.]
The slip's story ended with that hand pressing down. For the next three years, the paper lay in a woven plastic sack. It didn't see what happened after.
She'd held that line under the lamp three times and couldn't tell which stroke came first. Now she saw clearly: the top number had gone down first, the line crossing it was a straight slash from upper right to lower left, and the bottom number had been added afterward.
First came a ringing in her ears. A hum, and every sound in the room fell far away. She sat with her eyes open for two seconds. Her temple throbbed, beat by beat, out of time with her heart. The black speck on the fluorescent tube suddenly flared into a glare.
Behind the bridge of her nose, heat bloomed.
A drop fell onto the page she had copied, onto the traced name "Wang Changshun," blurring the first stroke of "Shun" at one corner.
Blood.
She reached for a tissue, too slow. A second drop hit the desk and spread into a small patch.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. One step at a time, slow, steady, stopping after the final stair.
The door opened. He Xiufen stood in the doorway holding a bowl of ginger soup, a small piece of rock sugar resting on the rim. She looked for two seconds, set the bowl on the corner of the desk, folded two tissues into a strip, and pressed them into Shen Zhixia's hand.
"Head down and pinch," she said. "Don't tilt your head back. If you do, it'll run down your throat."
Blood ran from her nostril down to the corner of her mouth. She wiped it with the back of her hand, leaving a red streak. By the fourth minute of pinching, the bleeding stopped. He Xiufen pulled the copied page from the desk and held it to the light; the blurred spot was still wet. She set the page on the windowsill. The wind lifted one corner.
"Reading case files until your nose bleeds—I've seen it twice in this house," she said. "This time of yours isn't either of those."
Shen Zhixia lowered her head and didn't answer. She flipped her notes to that page. The triangle she'd drawn next to "Weighing room, one scale watcher, name to be verified" was still there. Beside the triangle she added two words: Seen him.
She turned the notebook back to the front. Under that half-line was a question mark, and after it the four characters she'd added the night before: a third person. She picked up the pencil and added two words below: red string.
"I won't ask how you saw it," He Xiufen said, pulling a chair over to the opposite side of the desk. "Tell me what you saw."
"October 11," she said. "The scale at the door of the weighing room. When they lifted the baskets, the young man by the scale pressed the edge of his shoe against the platform edge. Each basket came out a few pounds light."
"Dozens of baskets?"
"Seventy-three."
He Xiufen tapped one finger on the table.
"Who was there?"
"Inside the weighing room there was an old man in a blue padded jacket, an enamel mug on the windowsill. He raised his head and watched for two seconds."
"Watching where?"
"The scale deck."
"And by the counter?"
"There was someone standing there, in a padded vest." She paused. "The young man turned and looked at him once, dipped the pen, scratched out one number, and wrote another. The one below was smaller."
"You didn't see a face."
"No."
He Xiufen picked up the Weighing Slip, turned it over, then turned it back. She studied the crossed-out number and set the slip down on top of the copied page.
"A weighed slip is made in three copies," she said. "The weighing room keeps one, the purchasing point keeps one, and the farmer keeps one. All three are called slips, but the only one that can match your number is the weighing room's copy."
"That weighing-room copy is what Liu Fugui has been after since the day before yesterday."
"And so have you." He Xiufen stood, took the empty bowl in hand, walked to the door, rested her hand on the frame, and looked back. "If you've got your eye on it, go early. Three days can change everything."
"What I saw can't be used in court."
"I know."
"Good that you know," He Xiufen said. "Seeing isn't proof. Your dad stumbled on the same thing back in the day."
Shen Zhixia looked up.
"You need to get the Carbon Copy."
She half rose, then sat back down. That sentence had a price: a case she'd won on her own, money in hand. She still owed.
He Xiufen didn't leave. She reached back and nudged the bowl toward her hand. "Drink. The sweetness is at the bottom."
Her footsteps fell down the stairs one by one. Halfway down, she stopped. Without turning back, she added:
"That case of yours—the money is still in someone else's hands."
Downstairs, the kitchen door clicked. The room went quiet except for the refrigerator humming from the kitchen.
The page on the windowsill stirred in the wind. She went over, took it down, and touched the blurred spot. It was still damp. She sat back at the desk, moved the lamp a little farther away, and below the vertical line in her notebook wrote two words:
Carbon Copy.