Read Novel Full Chapter 262: Mid-Autumn Noodles
Chapter 262: Mid-Autumn Noodles
At a little past ten on the morning of September 25th, He Xiufen carried an enamel basin upstairs. Soaked wood ear mushrooms floated in the water—two pieces on the surface that sank the moment they were touched. She set the basin on the windowsill and wiped her hands.
"Six-thirty tonight," she said. "Anyone who's late can cook their own noodles. The door planks go up early downstairs—we're not doing overnight business today."
Shen Zhixia was writing the date on the front of a file envelope. It took her two tries to get the pen cap to snap on.
Lu Jibai's phone buzzed at the corner of the desk. He glanced at the screen and answered.
"Lawyer Lu. Just letting you know." The voice belonged to the older officer from the Chengdong Police Station, a corridor's echo behind him. "The kid in the same class—we questioned him this morning too."
Lu Jibai pulled a pen from his breast pocket. "What did you ask."
"Can't tell you that."
"Is the father present."
"Minor. Legal guardian is present."
"How many pages of transcript."
The other man laughed, not heavily. "Lawyer Lu. The second item on your application—we're working on it. One person at a time. What comes out of those interviews, I'm not always going to tell you once we're done."
"Understood," Lu Jibai said. "I'm making a note of this call. Want me to read it back to you."
"Go ahead."
"'The kid in the same class—questioned this morning too.'"
"That's it." The other man said, "Don't write it as something we said officially. I can't carry that."
The line went dead. Lu Jibai pressed his pen tip to the blue notebook and wrote line by line: September 25, 10:12 a.m., call from Chengdong Police Station officer, exact words: "The kid in the same class—questioned this morning too." Below that, three more lines, all recording what he hadn't gotten: What was asked—not disclosed. Who was present—legal guardian present, name not disclosed. Pages of transcript—not disclosed.
He Xiufen stood at the sink picking through the wood ears without turning around. "How many of your questions did he answer?"
"One."
"Then leave the unanswered ones blank." She scooped the wood ears into a strainer, water rushing through. "Blank spaces—either they get filled in later, or they stay blank forever. Don't go filling in words yourself."
"This month I've got a handful of pages on my side." Lu Jibai flipped backward through the notebook, showing them page by page. "The application draft from the twentieth. The appraisal opinion notice, the release-on-guarantee decision, the obligation notice from the twenty-third. That page from the twenty-fourth—his sister wrote it, it doesn't go in the file. Add it all up, that's the only material we can put forward."
"That's enough," He Xiufen said. "Enough to show that we filed at every step."
Shen Zhixia listened, sliding her hands under the table. She'd already done the math in her head: Xu Qing on the twenty-fourth, the classmate on the twenty-fifth—one person every other day. Finishing the count told her it was useless—the sequence was in other people's hands, and she couldn't even guess who the next slot would be.
Footsteps on the stairs. Zhi'an came up carrying a kettle of hot water, the spout wrapped in cloth. He set it down and stood there, not leaving.
"Is it the one who filmed," he said.
"I don't know," Shen Zhixia said.
"Because you don't know, or you won't say."
"Don't know."
He untied the cloth from the spout, folded it into a square, then unfolded it again. "What if he says he didn't film."
"Then that line doesn't exist." Lu Jibai didn't look up.
"Then all that's left of me is that one punch."
He Xiufen knocked the strainer against the counter. "Downstairs. Peel garlic. There's a whole pile waiting."
Zhi'an went down, his footsteps descending one floor at a time. He Xiufen came over wiping her hands and glanced at the three blank lines in Lu Jibai's notebook. She said nothing, only nudged the file envelope inward and straightened it.
[Thud. One person every other day. The sequence isn't in your hands.]
At six-thirty, the long table on the second floor had been pushed half a foot toward the wall, one extra square stool added. The door planks downstairs were up to the third slot, a crack left open, and through the crack you could see the dried-goods shop at the lane's entrance had hung two red lanterns. The wind nudged their corners against the wall.
Tang Guo arrived right on time, her heels clacking on the narrow stairs. One hand held a tin box of mooncakes; the other set her phone face-down on the corner of the table.
"No filming today," she said. "Old Guo went home for the holiday. The equipment's resting for a day. He messaged this morning asking if we're shooting tomorrow—I said we'll see."
"Nice of you to let him rest." He Xiufen was over at the stove.
"I pay him." Tang Guo lifted the lid. Four mooncakes: mixed nuts, red bean, lotus seed paste, salted egg yolk. "Cut them small. A few slices each."
The noodles were scallion-oil noodles, one bowl per person, a spoonful of lard tucked under each mound, topped with braised pork, greens, and a poached egg. He Xiufen had a rag draped over her wrist, setting down bowl after bowl, and when she was done she flicked it over her shoulder. "Eat. They've been sitting long enough to get gummy."
Halfway through the bowl, Zhi'an laid his chopsticks flat across the rim.
"Lawyer Lu."
"Yeah."
"That punch of mine. What is it, legally."
Lu Jibai pushed his bowl in half an inch, picked up his chopsticks, and tapped three spots on the tabletop.
"You're standing here. He's coming at you from this side. There's someone sitting on the ground."
"Yeah."
"From those two hands of his to your punch—how many seconds in between."
Zhi'an thought about it. "Three or four seconds."
"Those three or four seconds won't show up on paper." Lu Jibai set his chopsticks down. "Right now, only three things land on paper: who was injured, how badly, and who threw the punch. None of those three can be changed—changing a single character would be difficult."
"So I just hit someone."
"You threw one punch." Lu Jibai said, "The phrase 'hit someone'—that's three characters someone else assembled for you. And when they assembled it, they added a few things we can't see."
Zhi'an stared at him, not touching his chopsticks.
"Once the file reaches the procuratorate, those seconds become visible." Lu Jibai said, "You can see whose hands were on you in those seconds. You can see whether you had anything in your hand."
"When does it reach the procuratorate."
"I don't know. Investigation has its own timeline."
He Xiufen leaned over and loosened the noodles in Zhi'an's bowl with her chopsticks before speaking. "What he just said was the word 'visible.' Don't go hearing it as 'it'll be fine.'"
Zhi'an lowered his head, his chopsticks clicking against the rim of the bowl.
"I know," he said. "I can't even send a 'Happy Mid-Autumn' message."
Shen Zhixia said, "No."
"I know I can't." He lifted his eyes. "I'm just saying it. I'm not sending it."
"You already said it." Shen Zhixia pushed the vinegar bottle toward him. "For the next twelve months, you can say it in this house, but don't say it once you're past that staircase."
The table went quiet for a moment. Tang Guo flipped her phone over, lit the screen, then turned it face-down again.
"Someone in the comments yesterday asked," she said, "whether we take cases for students. I didn't answer. Didn't even reply."
"Don't reply," He Xiufen said. "They ask one thing, you answer one thing. By the third exchange, they'll have twisted what you wrote into something else entirely."
"Before I came up, I took a shot downstairs." Tang Guo changed the subject. "Just the moon. The moon in the Old Town isn't full—it's squeezed between two buildings, peeks out and it's gone."
"Don't post it if you took it," He Xiufen said.
"I didn't." Tang Guo brought up the photo and pushed it to the middle of the table. A moon in the frame, pitch-black on both sides, a narrow gap in the middle with one speck of white—like something pried out from between the buildings.
He Xiufen glanced at it and pushed the phone back. "Keep it. Look at it yourself."
"Zhi'an." He Xiufen turned. "The school still hasn't said anything, right."
"Nothing."
"On the twenty-eighth, you go by yourself. Stand in front of her homeroom teacher's desk and ask one thing first: 'Can I come back to class.' Wait for her to answer. Then say your second thing."
"What if she refuses."
"If she refuses, you take out the printout of that 'received and reviewed' photo and show her—her signature's on it. After she looks at it, you stand there and wait for her to speak again."
Zhi'an nodded and picked up the last bite of noodles from his bowl.
The mooncakes were cut after dinner. He Xiufen used the cleaver, quartering each cake into four slices—sixteen slices total, arranged one by one in front of each person.
"No one's asking who doesn't eat sweets today," she said. "Three slices each. Only after you've eaten do you call it a holiday."
Zhi'an ate two. He left the egg-yolk slice untouched, propped against the edge of the plate.
"Saving it?" He Xiufen asked.
"Saving it."
"Put it in the fridge. It'll still be good tomorrow." He Xiufen said.
Shen Zhixia said nothing. Tang Guo gathered the empty bowls, worked her way around to him, detoured around that egg-yolk slice, and kept stacking all the way to her side.
The sink was by the stair landing. The hot water had been carried up from downstairs, and by the end of the washing it ran cold. Shen Zhixia did the dishes while Lu Jibai carried over the plate that had held the egg-yolk slice and set it by her hand.
"Water's cold," he said.
"I know."
He placed the rag on the counter near her wrist and went back to clearing the table. The blue notebook sat open at the desk corner, the wind slipping through the window gap, lifting a page and dropping it back. He pressed it down with a finger.
"Director He," Tang Guo said from across the table, "this time next year, I'm treating you all to a real restaurant dinner."
"This time next year, I'll be downstairs cooking noodles." He Xiufen stacked the last bowl into the basket. "If you want to eat, you come downstairs yourself."
[Thud. Those seconds aren't on paper. They're in the hands of the people who hold the other things.]
At ten o'clock, the last door plank went up downstairs. The two red lanterns at the lane's entrance still glowed, their light muted.
Upstairs, Shen Zhixia turned on the desk lamp and flipped to a fresh page of the notebook.
At the top she wrote: September 19, night, below the Chengdong Police Station building, Xu Qing said. After writing it she paused, and changed "night" to "after 8 p.m."
Below it she copied that one line:
"He kept filming with another phone the whole time."
Her pen stopped on the words "another phone." That night she'd only had time to jot two characters, and she hadn't thought about whose hand it was in. She considered a moment, then added another line: Xu Qing said, the camera was pointed at the two of them. She only saw him holding it up the whole time—held higher than Qin Hao's.
Below that, she wrote: Qin Hao's phone was pointed at her.
After writing "her," she stared at it for a while, then set down a line on its own, below:
Two phones.
The lamplight fell on the paper. The tin plate that had held the mooncake sat upside down at the desk corner, a ring of grease still on its underside. A bicycle rolled past downstairs, its chain clicking the whole way.
[Thud. The punch only happened once. What needs asking is—whose hands held those seconds.]
She let the pen tip hover over the paper, then lowered it slowly and wrote, beneath "Two phones":
Where is the second phone.
She didn't lift the pen after writing. The tip bled a small dot into the paper. She closed the notebook. The lamp stayed on.