Read Novel Full Chapter 204: Moving Day
Chapter 204: Moving Day
The Zhengping Firm's doors weren't even open yet, and Tang Guo was already sitting on the bench outside the noodle shop downstairs.
The bowl of noodles in front of her had gone soft in the broth, her chopsticks resting unbroken across the rim. Shen Zhixia came down to buy soy milk, stopped for two seconds when she saw her, and set the soy milk beside her hand.
"What time did you sit down."
"Five forty." Tang Guo pushed her phone toward her. "I didn't want to turn on a light in your room and wake you."
Shen Zhixia didn't take the phone. She looked at her eyes first. The lids were swollen, dark rings pressing underneath.
"How many times did you charge it."
"Three."
"Sitting here alone this long, how many things did you think about."
Tang Guo smiled. It wasn't a good smile. "Two. One was shutting the account down. The other was going live, slowing the clip down, blowing it up, shoving it in everyone's face."
"Don't do either."
"I knew you'd say that."
"You knew and asked anyway, so you wanted me to say it again." Shen Zhixia picked up the phone, flipped it over, and set it face-down on the table. "Give me the number first."
"Three hundred twenty-four."
"Last night."
"By midnight it was one seventeen."
Shen Zhixia tapped the table with her knuckle. "Top three. Read them yourself."
Tang Guo turned the screen back up.
The first, a string of numbers for a username, sent at 2:11 a.m. — "Third floor, Minsheng Road. Moved in May twenty-third. Did you change the lock."
The second, another account, 2:26 — "Two trips that day. Seven cardboard boxes. Next time you move, ask first."
The third, 4:03 — "I've got the landlord's number too. Want me to call him for you."
She finished reading, set the phone down, and pressed both hands on her knees.
"Don't look at me," she said. "I know you're going to say don't be scared."
"I wasn't going to say don't be scared." Shen Zhixia pushed the soy milk into her hand. "I was going to tell you to do something first. These three messages — account name, timestamp, which column they sit in — screenshot every single one, in full. You handle the phone. I won't touch it."
"Last time at the notary's office, you said the same thing."
"And why did I say that."
"You had the notary click it himself." Tang Guo took a sip of soy milk, her voice steadier. "If you'd clicked it, the other side could say we only captured the pages that helped us. When you screenshot, you drag down first, pull the account name into the frame with the message."
"And."
"And screenshotting isn't the same as reading it. You have to read it out loud." She paused. "Reading it out loud is for the people who hear it later."
"The second time around, you said it better than I did."
While Tang Guo read, Shen Zhixia recorded from the side with her own phone — the frame held her hand, the screen, and the cup of soy milk. All three accounts were newly registered, less than a month old: one had a blank avatar, one had no bio at all, and the third had nothing on its homepage but this single private message.
[Thud. People who mean to curse you out don't ask which day you moved.]
To curse someone, you don't need to know the date. One line — "paid-off dog" — is enough. Someone who can cite the exact date is someone who knows the date.
"Eat your noodles."
"Can't."
"Eat half." She broke the chopsticks apart and held them out. "Someone out there is counting your days. Someone who counts days isn't in a hurry. We feed ourselves first."
Halfway through the noodles, Shen Zhixia pulled out a fresh sticky note and wrote at the top: June twentieth — who knows May twenty-third.
"Me." Tang Guo leaned in. "I packed everything myself that day. Two trips, borrowed e-scooters from two guys in the rider group. It rained for a bit that afternoon."
"Landlord's in the east side. Broadband was installed in person. The lady at the convenience store downstairs saw me hauling boxes in." She kept counting. "And that person in my livestream — the one who comments 'reported' every single day."
"Write all of them down."
"You think it's one of them?"
"I don't." Shen Zhixia turned the note around and drew a line through the word "who." "What I want you to write in is the other column: which piece of paper had May twenty-third written on it."
Tang Guo froze.
"The broadband installation form has a date on it." Shen Zhixia said. "Change your delivery address with the courier, the system keeps the date. Your takeout address changed once — that has a date too. If you handled a receipt that day, signed your name once, that piece of paper has the date on it."
"I said it on my livestream." Tang Guo pushed the bowl aside. "The June fifth one. I said, 'I just moved last month.'"
"Did you say May twenty-third."
"...No."
"Right." She laid the pencil flat across that column. "What slips out of your mouth doesn't slip out to the exact day. Which slip of paper your date leaked from — the paper will tell us."
Tang Guo stared at those two lines, then suddenly pressed her finger on the words "door lock." "I changed my own lock."
"Mm."
"That message asked if I'd changed the lock."
"So either he went upstairs, or he got his hands on a document with that date on it." Shen Zhixia tucked the note into the hard-shell folder. "One of those two, sooner or later, is going to land on paper. Until then, don't open the door for anyone you don't know, and have packages left downstairs."
Someone upstairs moved a desk. He Xiufen was usually out the door long before this hour, but today she came up the back stairs, a string of garlic in one hand, water on her heels.
"That bowl of noodles by the door, half-eaten." She hung the garlic on the wall. "Little Tang's here."
"Tang Guo," Shen Zhixia said. "I'll show you something first."
At 10:20, Tang Guo's phone buzzed on the table.
On the platform's complaint page, a block of black text had appeared. Proper, formal, unsigned:
Upon re-review, the content of this video does not violate the community guidelines and will not be removed. Real-name information and backend data for the accounts involved are provided only to judicial authorities, upon presentation of a court investigation order or a public security bureau retrieval letter.
Below it, a line of small print: If you object to this determination, you may seek resolution through judicial channels.
All three of them finished reading. None of them spoke first.
"Filed yesterday at noon." Tang Guo scrolled back up. "It said three business days."
"They answered overnight." Shen Zhixia memorized the placement of those two pages. "They looked at this one."
"Record it."
Tang Guo did it herself: screen recording first, capturing the reply along with the complaint number, timestamp, and the page scrolled to the top and back down once. Then three screenshots. Then print. The printer sat under the cabinet; the paper jammed once when she pulled it out. Shen Zhixia extracted the half-stuck page, fed it back through, and two pages came out, with the URL and print time in the footer. She wrote in the margin: Printed at 10:27 a.m., June twentieth; printed by Tang Guo.
Then she made a call.
"I'm not asking about the outcome," she said. "I'm asking one question: 'Will not be removed' — is that a determination, or is it a scripted reply."
The customer service rep paused. "Ma'am, I can only respond based on the re-review result."
"When you re-reviewed, what did you compare it against."
"The video content and the community guidelines."
"Is there a record of that comparison."
"That cannot be provided."
"I don't want the record." Shen Zhixia said. "I want you to write that exact sentence back onto the complaint page: 'We have re-reviewed, and we have retained the relevant records.' Can you write it or not."
The rep paused again. "I can forward it to the backend team. No guarantee they'll write it."
"I don't need a guarantee. Just forward it."
After hanging up, she sat back down. The video's play count had climbed from 170,000 overnight to 218,000. The repost list was two pages longer than yesterday, and the first three names were still Sukan, Selected, and Hot News.
"It shut the door." He Xiufen held the two printed pages in her hand, reading for a long time, her finger stopping on the last line. "But it also wrote something onto paper."
"It admitted the data's in their hands," Shen Zhixia said.
"It admitted it, and specified it's only for judicial authorities." He Xiufen flipped the pages back over. "That one line does more for us than ten lines we could say ourselves."
"So we still need to get the investigation order first."
"An investigation order needs a case." He Xiufen flattened out the plastic bag from the garlic and laid it under the printouts. "No case, why would anyone look at you."
"Then we give it a case."
"Mm." He Xiufen took off her glasses. "File suit. Two lines in the defendant column."
"First line, the platform."
"Full name." She tapped her glasses stem against the paper. "The full name from the user agreement. The full name from the filing records. Copy it character by character, down to the last stroke. One wrong character, one line of 'you're suing the wrong party,' and you're sent right back."
"The second line."
"The account." He Xiufen drew a line on the paper. "The name is eleven digits. Write the eleven digits. Homepage link, posting time, that video's ID number — one by one, right behind it. Write it out until the judge can click and land on it with one tap."
"We don't know the name."
"Not knowing the name doesn't mean you can't sue." He Xiufen pressed the pen into her hand. "Same day, file a second application: request the court to obtain from the platform this account's registration information, login records, and backend data from the time of posting, in order to identify the defendant. That page is called an application for investigation and evidence collection."
"Same day."
"Same day." He Xiufen said. "One day late, they'll call it an afterthought. The filing window only looks once. Submit everything at once, that's how you stay ahead."
"The platform will come defend itself."
"It will." He Xiufen pressed a finger to the corner of the page. "Once it comes, it has to send someone. Once someone comes, they have to talk. Once they talk, there's paper. You got two pages today. Tomorrow you might get four."
Shen Zhixia opened the case intake register and added two lines under Tang Guo's case: Defendant, operator of a certain video platform; Defendant, account (eleven-digit number, identity pending, application filed with the court for retrieval). Above the box for appointed agent, He Xiufen wrote four more characters — trainee lawyer.
"How do we phrase the claims," Shen Zhixia asked.
"Four items: removal of the video, elimination of impact, apology, and notarization fees." He Xiufen said. "Nothing else for now."
"Not malicious intent."
"Don't write it."
"Not organized."
"Don't write it." He Xiufen turned the pen in her hand. "Not MCN either. You know how to write it, but you don't have that page in your hand yet — and writing it only to cross it out looks worse than never writing it at all."
"That frame with the three-stroke star."
"It goes in the evidence volume, not the complaint." He Xiufen said. "That one frame only proves there's a table corner somewhere in the world. Who's behind the table corner — wait for the paper."
"The trip on the twenty-fifth," Shen Zhixia said.
"Same as before." He Xiufen looked at her. "I said it yesterday. I'm saying it again today because you might be tempted to push this case forward first. You can't. That certificate of yours has only one road right now."
"The receipt's on the first page of the folder."
"Keeping it on the first page is enough." He Xiufen picked up the garlic and headed for the kitchen. "Water's on the stove. I'm making two bowls."
Tang Guo put the two printed pages and her phone into her bag. Before zipping it, she glanced once more at the three screenshots.
"I saved all of them," she said. "When I saved them, I held the phone as far from my face as I could."
"Three accounts, three messages, less than two hours apart," Shen Zhixia said.
She pulled out her own phone and sent a message to that unsaved number: The platform responded in writing. They want an investigation order.
After sending, she turned the phone face-down on the corner of the desk. No reply came.
When He Xiufen came back out of the kitchen, she saw a fresh sheet of paper spread on the table. The header read June twentieth, with three lines beneath: 2:11, 2:26, 4:03.
"The defendant can be amended later," He Xiufen said, resting her hand on Shen Zhixia's wrist. "Tomorrow afternoon would still be fine. Today there's only one thing."
"Which is."
"Have Little Tang screenshot every private message containing the words May twenty-third. Every single one. Not one missed."
"I saw three just now."
"Three." He Xiufen set her chopsticks along the rim of the bowl. "Three, sent separately."
Shen Zhixia flipped the hard-shell folder to a new page and wrote the date at the top. Tang Guo turned her phone over, laid it on the table, and scrolled through one message at a time, the screen light washing over the back of her hand.
"All three are new accounts," she said.
"Behind a new account there's still someone counting days for somebody." He Xiufen said. "Screenshot everything. There's more below."