Read Novel Full Chapter 218: The Gray Jacket
Chapter 218: The Gray Jacket
Zhi'an tore a page out of his exercise book, folded it in half, and set it on the shoe cabinet.
"Copied it out clearly." He stood in the doorway with his backpack on. "Three of them, nicknames written exactly as they appear, no mistakes."
The three names on the paper were crooked but pressed hard, stroke by stroke. She read them, folded the paper back up, and clipped it to the back of the new folder.
"Come straight home after school."
"I know." His backpack strap scraped against the doorframe, and he was down the stairs.
Tang Guo sat cross-legged in front of the coffee table, her laptop balanced on her knees, the screen glaring bright. She'd shoved the livestream light into the corner of the table to make room, its cord still coiled.
"I was up until three." She didn't look up. "Twenty-one seconds, twenty-five frames per second. I went through every single frame."
"What'd you find."
Tang Guo turned the screen around. A row of small frames lined the top, each with a timecode stamped below it.
"The face first." She tapped twice, and the image froze on the frame where that person smiled. "Blinks every two seconds, same duration every time. Humans don't blink like that. At second five she smiles—mouth moves first, eyes don't follow."
"Go on."
"Ears." Tang Guo jabbed her finger at the upper rim of the ear on screen. "This part's blurry, like it's been smudged. Look at the photo from last winter, the one downstairs."
She scrolled through her phone. It was the photo of her and He Xiufen at the noodle shop entrance. The fold along the upper edge of her right ear showed clearly—it ran all the way down, unbroken.
"When a face is animated, ears are the easiest thing to fake." Tang Guo said. "Whoever made this didn't bother with the ears."
"The room."
"The room was even less effort." Tang Guo dragged the progress bar to second six and zoomed in on the wall. "Look at the shadow. At second six her hand moves, and the shadow on the wall moves with it—one frame late. And that square clock—the second hand glides. A real clock ticks. The white mug on the table has no shadow at all. Light comes from the left, so the mug's shadow should fall to the lower right."
[Thud. The room was painted. The clothes were not.]
Tang Guo switched to another image: the cuff of that gray jacket, blown up past the point of blur.
"This half of a stain. Look at it yourself."
On the inside of the left cuff, a small blotch of smeared ink—dark at the edges, pale in the middle. A while back, when she'd been copying materials for Peng Weidong's case, her pen had leaked. Three washes hadn't gotten it out.
"Second button." Tang Guo tapped again. "Black thread, stitches at a slant. The original thread was gray."
"So the clothes are real."
"The hands are real too." Tang Guo dragged the footage back to the first second. "That callus on the side of your middle finger—from writing. That can't be faked."
That hand, resting on the red envelope.
"That one gesture isn't you." Tang Guo said. "When you take something, you fold your fingers in first, then turn."
"I know."
She stared at that hand for a few seconds, then nudged the laptop half an inch toward the middle.
"The room is painted, the face is pasted on, the clothes and hands are my own." She said. "Which means someone has a real clip of me somewhere."
"A real clip of you." Tang Guo said. "Wearing this jacket, cuffs hanging down."
"The cuffs—"
"On my phone, you in this jacket, twice total." Tang Guo flipped her photo album around. "Once at the noodle shop entrance—you were checking the order list. Once downstairs at the firm—you were crouching tying your shoes. Both times the cuffs were rolled up twice."
"I only roll them when I'm working."
"Right." Tang Guo said. "In the video they're not rolled. You're just standing there, both hands empty. And that three-hundred-thousand-view one from May—I went through that too. You're wearing a black jacket in that one."
She took the jacket off the back of the chair, shook it out, and examined the left cuff. The stain was still there, the darker edge still as dark as it had been lately.
"Standing, hands empty, cuffs down, and a camera pointed at me." She said slowly. "A day like that—which day."
"Think." Tang Guo pulled the laptop back onto her knees. "Those days when I wasn't with you."
She thought. May, June—which day had she worn this gray jacket and stood in that position for that long.
"If I'd been running around with you those days," Tang Guo said, "I'd have a baseline copy right now."
"If you'd been with me, the shoot list would've had one more name on it."
Tang Guo didn't answer. She dragged the progress bar back and watched that hand again from the start.
Her phone lit up on the coffee table. It was the landline number from the firm.
* * *
She got to the office after ten. She could hear the thread being pulled from the stairwell.
He Xiufen had spread a stack of legal aid case files across the desk. An awl punched holes, and cotton thread passed through them, one end wound around her finger.
"You're back." She didn't look up. "How late did Tang Guo stay up."
"Three."
"Did she find anything."
"The room is painted, the face is pasted on." She held out the key frames on her phone. "The clothes and hands are real."
He Xiufen pulled the thread taut, tied a knot, then took the phone. She looked slowly, her finger stopping on that cuff.
"This stain."
"Pen leaked while I was copying materials for the Peng Weidong case."
"I remember." She pushed the phone back. "The room has no source. You can't trace who painted it. The clothes have a source—who wore them, what day, who filmed it. Those are all answerable."
"Asking about the clothes is asking who had a camera that day."
"Correct." He Xiufen stuck the awl into the spool of thread. "Have you remembered."
"May twentieth." She said. "Wenchang Road Subdistrict's Public Legal Service Day."
"It rained that morning." He Xiufen said. "You were wearing this gray jacket. When it warmed up at noon, you draped it over the back of the chair, and I told you—don't put it there, it'll get dirty."
"That's the day."
"How many people were shooting that day."
"I don't know."
"I do." He Xiufen pulled open the drawer and took out a laminated schedule, then from inside it extracted a piece of paper folded twice. "I kept the schedule the subdistrict handed out. The organizers hired one videographer that day—just one, brought in from outside. Two people from the subdistrict took a few shots on their phones. The District Justice Bureau posted one video after the event."
"I've seen it."
"You've seen it, but you didn't watch yourself." He Xiufen pressed the schedule flat on the desk. "Two things today."
"Two things."
"One, pull every clip that's publicly available and check whether you appear in this jacket. Two, find the paper left over from that day—the sign-in sheets, the schedule, the name of whoever was filming."
"I'll go to the subdistrict office now."
"Not now." He Xiufen said. "Nail down the public clips first. Wait until you can put on paper: 'None of the public footage shows this jacket.' Then ask for names."
"Why."
"Because the question 'Does the footage from that day still exist?'—if it leaves the subdistrict office today, someone tomorrow will know someone's looking for a specific piece of footage." He Xiufen looked at her. "It doesn't take long to destroy a memory card. He says one line—'I already formatted it'—and you won't even have the strength to chase."
[Thud. There's a card behind the door. Don't knock first.]
"What about the unit's copy."
"The unit's copy is official property. The paper has a source. If you need it later, you go through channels and put it in the request." He Xiufen said. "The card in the videographer's hand is his own property. He has to be willing."
"What use would that card even be for the appraisal."
"An appraisal needs something to compare against." He Xiufen put the spool back in its box. "That file someone uploaded—he can dismiss it in one sentence as 'rendering effects.' But if you can produce another unaltered clip shot the same day, same jacket—then the appraiser has something to compare: two clips from the same camera, one original, one doctored. With a baseline, your two pages of paperwork actually have teeth."
"One lead is paper, the other is a person."
"Both are behind the same door. So before you knock, be clear about what you're asking for: a written statement, or that memory card. Missing either one and it's useless."
The landline rang. She answered, said a few words, hung up, and glanced over.
"Nothing from the Bar Association. Your certificate's still pending."
"While it's pending, I'll work."
"Go work." He Xiufen said. "Before five p.m., watch everything public and tell me how many clips there are in total."
* * *
At five-thirty, Tang Guo had three windows lined up side by side.
"Three in total." She said. "The District Justice Bureau's video channel: one minute forty-six seconds. The subdistrict's official account post: three photos. And one clip from a resident that day: fifteen seconds, shot of the stage, and he stopped recording when the speeches ended."
"Am I in any of them."
"In the video channel clip, you appear for three seconds, at a distance, standing by the booth." Tang Guo enlarged that frame. "In those three seconds you're wearing a faded blue T-shirt. The jacket is draped over the chair."
"The post."
"Three photos: one of the banner, one wide shot of the booths, one of the row of people on stage." Tang Guo zoomed in on the second photo. "You're in this one, sitting and writing, jacket still on the chair."
"The resident's clip."
"It's pointed at the stage, sweeps past the booths for half a second, gone in a flash."
Shen Zhixia took a piece of paper and wrote line by line:
District Justice Bureau video channel, 1 min 46 sec, self appears 3 sec, not wearing jacket;
Subdistrict official account post, 3 photos, self appears in 1, jacket on chair;
Resident clip, 15 sec, booth swept for half a second.
She finished and drew a horizontal line at the bottom.
"In the public footage, there's not one second of you in this jacket." Tang Guo said.
"So the source footage for that jacket was never made public."
"Never made public." Tang Guo said. "And the shot wasn't far away—the jacket took up almost half the frame. That day, standing across from the table holding a camera—there was only one person."
She propped her phone up and recorded the screen: she played the video channel clip from start to finish, the phone's timecode running alongside the on-screen progress bar. She saved it with the usual filename convention: 0706—1740—video channel three seconds.
"That old fan didn't ask again today." Tang Guo said. "Four more messages came into the backend, all reposts from other accounts."
"Ignore them."
"Ignoring." Tang Guo closed the laptop. The lamp still wasn't plugged in.
She called He Xiufen and read the three clips out loud. When she finished the last line, paper rustled on the other end.
"Locked it down." He Xiufen said. "Tomorrow, draft a letter to the subdistrict office. Request a written statement: the list of filming personnel present that day, where each party's footage was used, and who currently holds the original material."
"Once the names go on paper, that person will know someone's looking for him tomorrow."
"Yes." He Xiufen said. "So tell me—which door do you knock on first."
Someone downstairs yelled that they were closing up their stall. The sound rolled up through the alley and rattled the windowpane.