Read Novel Full Chapter 203: The Half of a Sign
Chapter 203: The Half of a Sign
Tang Guo screenshotted the comment, deleted it, then screenshotted it again two seconds later.
"Screenshot it three times." Shen Zhixia snapped the hard-shell folder shut. "It's not going to run off on its own."
"Someone replied to me underneath. Asking if I admit it or not."
"An account you don't recognize?"
"Yeah."
"An account you don't recognize, asking whether you'll admit it." She set the folder upright. "What he wants is for you to reply with a single word."
Tang Guo turned her phone face-down on the corner of the table. The last pot of noodle broth still simmered downstairs. He Xiufen's seat was empty, the desk lamp had been moved to the center of the table, and the ledger lay open to the page she'd been writing on.
"Two things tonight." Shen Zhixia said. "First one. That one-hour-forty-minute playback of yours, you go through it second by second. Until you've finished, don't listen to anything anyone says."
"And the second?"
"I'm walking you home."
"I can get home by myself."
"I know you can." She picked up her bag. "You've got a computer at home. This computer of mine doesn't have video editing software."
The repair stall still hadn't closed up. Someone on the radio was telling old tales. Third floor, that livestream light leaked through the window, white and glaring. Tang Guo went in and put water on to boil, told her to sit on the sofa.
Her phone sat right by her hand, the screen still on the first-publication page. The top headline had "took money" boxed in the platform's highlight frame, red background, white text.
Justice Checklist, item one: who cut it.
She turned the phone over, pressed her fingertip against the headline.
The room dimmed for a moment, then brightened.
Inside, two screens, one on the left, one on the right. The left one played Tang Guo's livestream. The progress bar was dragged back and forth, a hand stopped the image, stopped it at a place where the speaker took a breath, then backed up half a second. The right one held a table, one column of timecodes, one column of two or three words each. A notebook lay open at the corner of the desk, page after page of timecodes, tiny handwriting, written fast.
The windows were black. Someone moved around the room, lips moving, saying words she couldn't hear.
On the wall behind that person hung a sign, dark wood edging. The door stood half open, cutting off most of the characters. She could only make out a single "Xing," with half a stroke still visible behind it.
The tendon in her temple jumped, and her nose went hot.
She lifted a hand. Red on her fingertip.
Tang Guo came out holding a cup. "What's wrong with you?"
"Stared at the screen too long."
"Don't tilt your head back." Tang Guo wadded up a tissue and pushed it at her. "Pinch right here. Pinch hard. Count to a hundred."
By the sixties the bleeding had stopped. The pain wound from her temple around to the back of her skull, then slowly withdrew until only a dull ache remained. Tang Guo crouched by the coffee table, studying her for a long time. "How many hours a day have you been sleeping lately?"
"I have things tomorrow."
"When do you not have things."
Shen Zhixia wadded the tissue and tucked it into her own pocket. Not into the trash.
"Tang Guo."
"Yeah."
"Your video editing software on your computer. Still there?"
"It's there. What do you need it for now?"
"Teach me to count frames."
Tang Guo carried the laptop over to the coffee table. While it booted up, Shen Zhixia propped her phone against a stack of books, the camera pointed at the screen, and hit record.
[Thud. What you saw can't be written into a judgment.]
[Thud. If you want to know which desk that frame sits on, go back and count frames.]
"We don't stop from here on," she said. "You go step by step, I record step by step. If it's interrupted, if it cuts out mid-way, if a call comes in, it all counts as broken. If it breaks, we start from the top."
"What do I read out?"
"Read what you're doing. The words on the page are for your eyes. Spoken aloud, they're for whoever comes after."
Tang Guo exhaled before she began. "June nineteenth, 10:05 p.m., operator, me, Tang Guo. First, download the file."
That thirty-seven-second clip. She downloaded a copy from the platform. The progress bar filled frame by frame, then she dragged it to the ten-second mark and used the right arrow key to step backward, frame by frame. At the cut, the sound read: "this case, I."
"Stop there." Shen Zhixia said. "Memorize this frame. Now the other side."
"That's when I was halfway through talking about that case." Tang Guo pulled up the original one-hour-forty-minute playback and scrubbed back and forth twice, stopping at forty-one minutes eighteen seconds.
"Read it."
"'This case, I never took a single cent. What I want is for it to have an outcome.'" Tang Guo read it slowly. After she finished, her eyes were still stuck to the screen.
"Read it again."
"That's the eleventh time." Tang Guo said. "I don't want to watch myself anymore."
"After this one, you won't have to listen to it alone again."
After the second read, Shen Zhixia started a new page in the hard-shell folder and wrote two lines:
Playback, 41:18 — "This case, I never took a single cent. What I want is for it to have an outcome."
The thirty-seven-second clip, 0:10 — "This case, I took money."
Between the two lines she left a blank row, then had Tang Guo switch to the audio view and isolate those three characters to play on their own.
The sound was a half-step brighter than the sentences around it. The seam was sharp, cut straight up and down. No breath.
"That line was patched in." Tang Guo said. "The original audio wasn't this loud."
"Write it down."
She wrote the third line: At the ten-second mark, those three characters sit higher in level than before and after; no breath at the seam.
"There's also that word 'money,'" she said. "Find it in the playback."
Tang Guo scrubbed back and forth twice, stopping at one hour twelve minutes. "That money was compensation. That line was about a different case."
"He pulled a character from there, too."
After writing the fourth line, Shen Zhixia added the date and operator at the top of the page. In the verification method column she wrote: Two files side by side, advancing frame by frame, full screen recording, no interruptions throughout.
"One more thing." she said. "That second cut, run it again. This time frame by frame. No skipping in between."
Tang Guo parked the image on the second cut, pressed the right arrow, and stepped backward one frame at a time.
Eight frames back, the picture changed.
The frame held no livestream backdrop. It held the corner of a desk, the edge of a screen, and on the wall behind the screen, a hanging sign made of wood, with a stack of paper beside it.
The sign's characters were cut off by the edge of the frame. What remained: a single "Xing," and behind it, a half of a stroke.
"That's not my room." Tang Guo said.
"Stop. Don't move." Shen Zhixia said. "What's this frame's name."
"Thirty-seven seconds... let me check." Tang Guo stared at the timecode. "Eleventh second, eighth frame back."
"Save it. Save one copy as-is, and one at eight-times magnification."
When the enlarged image filled the screen, that "Xing" character took up half the display. The half-stroke behind it was just a vertical with a tiny flick at the top.
"Why would there be this in his room." Tang Guo said.
"Don't worry about who he is yet." Shen Zhixia said. "First, look at where this frame is."
"In his room."
"Right."
She saved the image under two names. One: June nineteenth, second cut, eleventh second, eighth frame back. The other, just two words: Under review.
Understanding how to cut frames. Knowing to drop the blade at the speaker's breathing points. Knowing to pad the audio level half a step. Being able to get eleven accounts to repost those three characters within minutes. All of that could be put on paper. The other things in that room — she'd seen them, but they couldn't be put on paper.
"One person shut in a room can't cut this video." she said.
"Then what do I do."
"Stockpile paper for now."
Tang Guo's phone buzzed twice on the coffee table, then twice more. She turned it over, looked, and started to turn it back.
"How many."
"One hundred seventy thousand." Tang Guo said. "Yesterday at noon it was one hundred ten."
The private-message tab, a red dot followed by a string of digits. The top message: How much did you take, name a number. Below it: Legal-education blogger, taking money to do things counts as a trade, too. Further down, one politely worded: This isn't hard. Admit you were wrong, delete it, it'll blow over in two days.
"I gained two thousand followers." Tang Guo held the phone up. "This account. Getting cursed at still counts as followers."
"Don't reply to any of them."
"I know."
"Put your hand here." Shen Zhixia pressed her hand flat against the coffee table. "You've looked at enough today."
"What if I can't hold out until we get that paper."
"You can." She pushed the laptop screen down a little. "Right now you don't need to do anything. Every day, do nothing."
At a quarter to eleven, her own phone rang. He Xiufen.
"Two things." He Xiufen's voice had a bit of breathlessness to it, like she'd just climbed the stairs. "One, no matter who asks, don't answer. Not one word. Two, every step you two took tonight, write up a page, get it to me first thing tomorrow."
"Understood."
"What are you two doing."
"Counting frames." Shen Zhixia said. "One extra frame. It's not her room."
Silence on the other end for two seconds.
"Save a page." He Xiufen said. "One frame can't identify a person. One frame can prove someone was working for him. Don't use that frame as your conclusion."
"Mm."
"The trip on the twenty-fifth, as scheduled."
"As scheduled."
"Right now that certificate of yours only has this one road left to travel. Don't keep it waiting."
"I know."
"Put Xiao Tang on."
Tang Guo took the phone and walked out to the balcony to listen, answering with a couple of "mm"s. When she came back, she put the phone on the TV stand, far from the coffee table.
A while later, that phone on the stand lit up again. Tang Guo walked over and tapped the voice message. A rough voice filled the room:
"Xiao Tang, I listened to that clip. What you said that day, I remember it, not a word wrong. Whoever tells you to delete it, you don't delete it."
Tang Guo held the phone up in midair, motionless. Tears fell onto the back of her hand.
"How do I reply." she asked.
"Not the others." Shen Zhixia said. "Him. Reply with three characters: 'Understood.'"
She sent a message to that unsaved number: One extra frame. It's not her room.
The reply came fast.
Hold on to that frame. Don't give it a name yet.
She stared at those two lines for a while, then copied the latter half onto a sticky note, pressing it down beneath that "Xing" character.
"That half-character, you figured it out?" Tang Guo asked.
"Figuring it out doesn't count." She folded the sticky note and tucked it under the first page of the hard-shell folder.
Tang Guo reached over and turned off the overhead light. The screen on the coffee table still glowed, the enlarged image filling the entire display — the wooden sign hanging dead center in that frame, a single "Xing," half a stroke missing behind it.