Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 201: Don't Speak First

Tang Guo turned her phone around. The progress bar was stopped at fourteen seconds.

"Play it from the beginning."

"I can't."

"I'll do it."

She took the phone and started it from the first second. The opening seconds were Tang Guo's face, hair tied back casually, the livestream backdrop behind her with two pens still clipped to the corner of the cloth. She was talking about that mother's case, sentence pushing after sentence, pace unhurried—on the night of June fifth, she had laid out the timeline of Chen Xiaoman's surgery, line by line, straight into the camera.

Tenth second. "This case, I—"

Cut.

The cut fell between two words, half a second. Half a second later came "took money," and the voice was half a shade brighter than before.

The white caption underneath jumped out on cue: Legal-education blogger personally admits, this case, I took money.

Thirty-seven seconds. Done.

"Did you catch where the second cut is?" Shen Zhixia set the phone flat on the coffee table.

"I've listened six times." Tang Guo said. "It's between 'took' and 'money.'"

"He stripped out 'not a single cent' and then pulled a 'money' from the second half of your voice, spliced it in."

"What was I saying in the second half?"

"You were talking about another case. Saying that money was compensation." She dragged the progress bar back and played it again. "He picked your breath well. People talk, the breath breaks—that's where he cuts."

Tang Guo took the phone and played it from the top once more. This time she watched her own mouth.

"Whoever did this has the full replay of that night." She said. "He even knows exactly when I take a breath."

"He at least has that segment." Shen Zhixia said. "Don't start guessing who yet."

After hanging up that call, she finished copying the last page of the case file index, pressed it into a hard-shell folder, and didn't leave with her bag until nine forty. By the time she reached Minsheng Road, the night market downstairs was just closing up. An old man swept bamboo skewers into a pile, a line of greasewater running from beneath his sheet-metal cart. Tang Guo lived on the third floor. The lights weren't fully on—only the livestream light on the bookshelf, its white glow cutting across half of Tang Guo's face. Two takeout containers sat untouched on the coffee table, a skin crusting over the tips of the rice.

Tang Guo's phone buzzed. A platform push notification.

"A hundred twenty-three thousand." Tang Guo said. "It was only a hundred ten thousand at noon today."

"Open the profile."

The avatar was a gray frame. The name was a string of numbers, the bio empty, the follower count short. Scrolling down, there was only this one video.

"I searched that name." Tang Guo said. "Nothing comes up."

"Stop searching." Shen Zhixia took the phone and flipped to the settings page. "Do you have a second working phone here?"

"There's an old one in the drawer. Cracked screen."

"Get it out. Charge it."

Tang Guo crouched down and dug through the drawer, a whole drawer of charging cables tangled together. Shen Zhixia took out her own phone and laid it screen-up on the coffee table. Once the old phone lit up, she set the two side by side, both opened to the date and time page.

"First, sync the clocks."

The year, month, day, hour, and minute on the two screens sat side by side, two seconds apart. She pressed record.

"From this moment, the old phone records the new phone. No stopping in between. Locking the screen, switching apps, a call coming in—all count as a break. If it breaks, start over."

"How long?"

"Until everything that needs recording is recorded."

"What do I say first?"

"You read. The words on the page are for you to see. What you read aloud is for the people who come later to hear."

Tang Guo lifted the new phone and aimed it at the cracked screen's camera.

"This is June eighteenth, twenty-two forty-seven." She read slowly. "Original posting account: a string of numbers as the name, blank avatar, only one video on the account. Video title: Legal-education blogger personally admits, this case, I took money. Time posted: June seventeenth, sixteen oh two. Play count: one hundred twenty-three thousand. Likes: four hundred twelve."

"Read the numbers exactly. Don't skip a single digit."

When she reached the play count, Tang Guo's voice wavered, and the phone in her hand shook with it.

"Put it down and read." Shen Zhixia pushed the cup toward her hand. "Water's here. Screen up, stay in frame, no need to hold it the whole time."

Tang Guo set the phone in a stand and read that line again.

She read down line by line. When she reached the comments section, she stopped, finger hovering over the screen.

"Read."

"First comment . . . asking which hospital the mother case was at." She swallowed. "Second one—someone pasted last month's local news underneath. The title has 'Chengbei' in it. Third says—if she took money, a quick check will show it."

"Finish."

"Finished."

"Scroll down. Three pages. Slowly."

The screen moved page by page. The little red recording dot in the corner of the old phone never moved.

"Exit the video page. Open the share record."

The first ten shares were clustered tight. Sixteen twenty, sixteen twenty-one, sixteen twenty-six, sixteen thirty . . . the account names all carried tags like "Quicklook," "Curated," "Hot News." The avatars were the same image re-colored a few times.

"Ten minutes, eleven shares." Tang Guo's voice dropped. "Real netizens don't move like that."

Shen Zhixia held the words this was staged in her mouth and didn't let them out. What went on paper couldn't be a guess.

"Write it down first." She said. "Who staged it—tonight's page won't show that."

She reached over and stopped the recording. Two files: one just over three minutes, one under two. She renamed both, prefixing them with "June 18 evening, Tang Guo screen," sent one to her own phone and left one in Tang Guo's. Neither deleted the originals.

"Does this count as evidence?" Tang Guo asked.

"Not right now." She said. "It can't prove the video is fake. It can only prove that at 10:47 tonight, this was what the page showed. Pages change, numbers climb, and people delete posts faster than anyone. Tonight just gets nailed down here."

Tang Guo looked at the two phones on the coffee table—one cracked screen, one still glowing.

"The comments are already asking which hospital." She said. "That local news piece from last month—the reporter wrote 'Chengbei' in huge letters."

"The medical case was decided on May fifteenth. Decided is decided." Shen Zhixia said. "Once this video is up, what people can spin from it is something else—that the mother's case was cooked up online from the start, that someone paid for it."

"I never took money."

"I know. So there needs to be a piece of paper with 'never took any' written on it."

"I'll go preserve evidence tomorrow." Tang Guo said. "The link, the page, the comments—save each one, then go to the notary office."

"Right. Don't switch phones, don't clear the cache, don't touch the original video."

"If I touch it, I'm a dog."

"One more thing. Tomorrow afternoon, come to the firm and sign the retainer agreement." Shen Zhixia said. "Your matter goes under Zhengping Firm's name; the letter comes from the firm. If anyone says you're just stirring things up online by yourself, I'll show them the contract."

Tang Guo stared at her for a long moment.

"And your certificate?"

"Still needs one more piece of paper."

"And after that?"

"After that, we'll talk."

Shen Zhixia tore a sheet from the sticky note pad and wrote two lines.

June 17 morning: Assessment Committee notice, signed.

June 17 afternoon: First post.

She stared at the two lines for a while, then typed one of them into a text message and sent it to the number with no saved name.

First post was the afternoon of the seventeenth.

A long time passed before a line lit up the screen.

Yours was the morning.

"Who's that?" Tang Guo leaned over.

"An unsaved number."

"Why does he talk so sparingly?"

"When he stops being sparing, I'm not sure I can hold up my end."

She laid the phone face-down on the table.

"What if I do a livestream tomorrow and replay the original clip?" Tang Guo said. "Slow down that one second, let them hear it frame by frame."

"No."

"So I just sit here and let them curse at me?"

"Anything you say right now can be re-cut the same way." Shen Zhixia said. "Right now the question is whether that thirty-seven-second clip is real. The moment you respond, it becomes two people each talking past each other. That's exactly what they want."

"Then when?"

"When there's a piece of paper standing in front of you." She said. "The day the paper is in hand, if you want to curse them out, I'll save you that line."

Tang Guo lowered her head and wiped the back of her hand across her face, silent.

"The backend keeps dinging. I turned it off." She said after a while.

"Keep it off." Shen Zhixia said. "Whatever your numbers drop over the next few days—that's not the column you should be looking at right now."

"People in the group are telling me to just admit fault and delete the video. They say it'll blow over in two days."

"Admitting fault means owning those three words." Shen Zhixia said. "That original video is your property, not your liability. Delete it, and it's dead for good."

"Brother Peng." Tang Guo said suddenly. "He scrolls this stuff every day."

"If he asks, read him the original words from the night of June fifth again, word for word, not one changed."

"Will he believe me?"

"The day of the hearing, he stood outside the Bar Association door all morning." Shen Zhixia said. "When I came out, he told me he'd heard every line I read. He was holding a plastic bag in his hand."

She sent He Xiufen two lines: Tang Guo's account got clipped. Will explain at the firm tomorrow morning.

The reply came fast: Log it first. Don't let her be alone with that clip tonight.

Half a minute later, another line.

The trip on the twenty-fifth—don't let this push it aside.

She glanced at the three characters on the sticky note: Send to window.

Tang Guo flipped her phone face-down on the armrest of the sofa, then two seconds later flipped it back. The number on the screen had jumped again.

[Thud. Justice Checklist, three items.]

[Thud. One: who cut it.]

[Thud. Two: who spread it.]

[Thud. Three: who paid for it.]

She ran the four lines through her mind. Tonight she'd grazed the edge of the first item. The other two hadn't even shown a shadow.

[Thud. All three items on paper, and this case closes.]

"Zhixia."

"Yeah."

"That livestream on June fifth—I exported the full replay twice. It's saved on my phone." Tang Guo's thumb rubbed against the screen. "I couldn't bring myself to watch the second pass."

"Why?"

"That day, after I finished the case, I forgot to end the stream. I sat in front of the desk and talked for another ten-odd minutes." She turned the phone over. "At the time, I thought I was the only one listening to myself talk."

Shen Zhixia set the cracked-screen phone face-down and steady on the coffee table, took Tang Guo's phone, and opened the longest file in the album.

"What did you say?"

"Watch the whole thing and you'll know." Tang Guo said. "That's how I watched it the first time."

"Which second should I start from?"

"The first one."

The progress bar began to move.