Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 266: This One Can't Be Posted

"I shouldn't have thrown that punch, should I."

The apple peel snapped in Zhi'an's hand. He stuffed the broken piece into his mouth and set the remaining half beside his exercise book. Underneath the book lay a stack of holiday worksheets. The name field was half filled in—the last stroke of the character "An" hovered there, unfinished.

Shen Zhixia was working through October's accounts. Utility bills sat at the corner of the desk. There was another sheet with a grid she'd drawn herself, one line per row, running down: noodles, pork bones, bus fare, iodophor. At the "shoes" row she paused, crossed it out, and added a tiny question mark beside it. His right shoe's toe had worn through. She'd spotted it two days ago when he changed shoes at the door—the white rubber sole poking through a split in the canvas.

"Did you wash your hands." She didn't look up.

"Yeah."

"Then say it again."

He offered her half the apple. She didn't take it, so he repeated himself word for word.

"Why are you asking."

"Last night in the shower, the bruise on my stomach turned yellow," he said. "A few more days and you won't be able to see it."

"Not being able to see it is a good thing."

"The injury's gone. The thing that caused it isn't."

The pen tip paused on the paper. A sentence rolled to the tip of her tongue and back down again. During that phone call on the night of September 19, He Xiufen had laid down three rules, the first being: you're just his sister. Not one word of legal advice. That night wasn't this night, but the rule still stood where it always had.

"How much homework have you done."

"Two pages of math."

"Is that enough."

"No."

"Then why are you still sitting there."

He didn't move. Outside, someone pushed a cart past. Metal scraped against concrete, rattling out a string of noise, fading as it went.

"Jie."

"Yeah."

"I'm asking you something."

"I heard you." She pushed the utility bills aside and capped her pen. "What I remember is something else."

"September 20, six-fifty in the morning, I was waiting for you outside the police station. Your left sleeve was torn from the shoulder to the elbow. I put a jacket on you. You held the sleeve down with your right hand the whole way. Back home, washing your hands—I used iodophor on three cuts across the back of your hand. You flinched from the pain. I held your arm down so you couldn't pull away."

"Those two things are the same thing."

"I know they're the same thing," she said. "I'm saying I only remember my half. The other half isn't mine to hold."

Zhi'an set his pen down and straightened up a little.

"So I threw that punch for nothing."

"There's a sentence you wrote," she said. "September 23. Someone asked what you were thinking in that moment. You crossed out 'really angry' and wrote 'wanted to break free' instead."

"They made me change it."

"When you changed it, I was sitting in that room," she said. "No one moved your pen for you."

He flipped his hand over and looked at it. The three cuts had scabbed over, pale at the edges with a dry film pulling up around them. He closed his hand and pressed it onto his knee.

"I wasn't fighting him."

"You've said that one before." She folded the grid paper in half. "Say it again and I'll write it down. Then if anyone asks later, you'll be able to read it yourself."

"Does saying it to people like that even help."

"Keep those words," she said. "When people ask, read what you wrote. If you ask me, I'll only answer about things at home. From today until this is over, when people ask about that day, you don't say one extra word."

"Not even to you?"

"You can tell me," she said. "But I won't answer. You ask, and I'll just listen."

He went and flipped the worksheets back to page one. He finished the name field—the final stroke of "An" pressed down hard, leaving an indent through the back of the paper.

That night she opened the notebook and added a line to October's page: October 2, 8:00 p.m., he asked "was the punch a mistake." The pen stopped over the page, and she added two characters: didn't answer.

She picked up her phone and sent a line: He asked me if he shouldn't have thrown that punch.

Less than two minutes later, Lu Jibai replied with two characters: Don't answer.

She set the phone face-down on the desk and tossed the apple core into the trash.

On the morning of the third, at nine-thirty, Lu Jibai and He Xiufen went to the fried skewer stand diagonally across from the school's back gate. She didn't go. Before leaving, He Xiufen tucked her practice certificate into an inner pocket of her coat and patted it twice: "Two lawyers sitting at his stall—he'll be scared."

"Scared, he'll talk slowly."

"If he can't get the words out, don't push," He Xiufen said. "Push once, and the three sentences before it are wasted."

At noon, they came back. He Xiufen had three pages in hand—signed, fingerprint pressed. She didn't set them on the table; she folded them straight into the case file bag, leaving only "this man will talk." Not another word. Shen Zhixia didn't ask.

On the fourth, all day, no one mentioned it.

At three in the afternoon on the fifth, the stove downstairs was off and the exhaust fan had stopped. Tang Guo climbed the stairs, a bag of roasted chestnuts in her hand, the paper bag already blotched with oil at the bottom.

"I've been holding it in for four days." She set the chestnuts on the table. "Four days, not one post."

"Lost followers."

"Two hundred thirty a day."

"That's a lot."

"You're keeping count too."

"I keep count of everything."

Tang Guo laughed. The laugh shut off quickly. She pulled a folded sheet of A4 from her bag and spread it on the table. Four lines, big characters, arrows running from the first line down to the fourth.

"Hear me out before you shut it down," she said. "I wrote three titles. In the end I went with the plainest one: A student cornered for nineteen days. He called the police."

"Read."

"One, opening three seconds: a school uniform sleeve, torn shoulder to elbow. No faces."

"Two, three sentences in the middle: three people, cornering one student, for nineteen days. He called the police. And then—what happened in that alley that night."

"Three, what can't be shown: names, school gates, building numbers, license plates. Not one. The school is just 'a middle school in Chengnan.'"

"Four, ending: one line—'If the same thing's happened to you, come find me.' Nothing else attached. I know that office phone. I leave it for the clients to call. I don't attach mine."

She slid the paper toward Shen Zhixia. Shen Zhixia waited for her to finish before pulling the case file bag over in front of her.

"The first one's a problem already," she said. "A minor's case."

"I didn't write a name."

"No name, but it's still me." Those words weren't hers.

Zhi'an was doing worksheets at the table by the window. He hadn't looked up once. Now he set his pen down.

"A sleeve torn shoulder to elbow—those few days, I was the only one," he said. "Forty-seven kids in my class. One glance and they'd know exactly who it was."

Tang Guo turned to look at him, her fingers still pressed on the paper.

"I... I didn't even think of that."

"You sit in this room writing, and people who've never set foot in this room will still read it plain as day," Shen Zhixia said. "Second one. How many people watch when you post."

"At the most, over three hundred thousand."

"Out of those three hundred thousand: his mother, their lawyers, and a crowd of people who have nothing to do with this at all." She stood the case file bag up, leaning it against the teacup. "Whatever they have in their files right now, we can't see a single page. Whatever we have, they can see all of it. This post goes out, and you're serving us up on the table first."

"I want people to see," Tang Guo said. "The reason they dare do this now is because nobody's watching."

[Thud. This one post goes out, and three days will pass. This case, at its longest, can run twelve months.]

"It's not that no one's watching them," Shen Zhixia said. "The person sitting up on the bench August 12—that was a judge."

"The judge has to wait until the case lands in his hands." Tang Guo's voice dropped. "I've cut video of people cutting my video. I know what one cut can do to a story. That's why this time I said: no cuts, original footage stays, daily updates. I stake my craft on it."

"I believe you won't cut it," Shen Zhixia said. "The people cutting you are online, and they're there every day."

"Then you want me to just watch?"

"There's another layer to the second part," Shen Zhixia said. "The words people leave in the comments will follow him. Later, school, work—when people search, the first thing they'll find is that video. Not the case file."

Tang Guo didn't push back. She twisted the top of the chestnut bag into a knot, then twisted it again.

"I understand everything you're saying. I just—" She stopped. "I won that case because someone was watching."

"You won that case because of the hard drive, Guo Shifu's card, and the lines read out on the judgment," Shen Zhixia said. "The people watching you only gathered after those three had already said everything."

"Then who reads it out, this time?"

"Someone will, when it's time."

[Thud. No name, but it's still me—that sentence is worth more than a video.]

Tang Guo didn't move. Her eyes stayed on the A4 sheet for a moment. Then she folded it in half, tore it, stacked the halves, and tore again—four pieces.

"My drawer's full of torn-up drafts," she said. "Then we wait for the verdict."

"Wait for the procuratorate."

Tang Guo's hands stopped.

"How do you know it won't get to court."

"I don't know," Shen Zhixia said. "That's why I'm not saying 'wait for the verdict.' A verdict is someone else's paper. As for how certain it is, I can't calculate it."

The four pieces went back into her bag. Zipper closed. Tang Guo stood and split the chestnuts into two piles, pushing the larger pile to the corner of Zhi'an's desk.

"Half for you."

"Thanks, Tang Guo jie."

"Study hard."

"Mm."

At the stairs she turned back: "If it really does get to court—do I make it then?"

"That day, ask if he's willing himself," Shen Zhixia said. "What I say doesn't decide it."

"Then I'll ask him that day." She went down, her heels knocking on the wooden stairs, fading as she went.

At 5:40 in the evening, Zhi'an's phone rang on the table. He knew the number on the screen—it was the one he'd called on the morning of September 1.

"Hello."

The other end spoke at some length. He kept answering "yeah," "yeah," "got it," then set the phone back on the table.

"The eighth, nine-thirty in the morning," he said. "They want my sister to come with me."

Shen Zhixia flipped the notebook back to October's page: "What time do we get there."

"Nine-thirty. He said if you don't want to leave town, don't go far. Jiangzhou's big enough."

"Anything else."

"He said to bring my own thoughts. Don't recite someone else's words."

She copied that line down exactly. When she finished, she looked up at him. He was sitting there, both hands on his knees, the backs of his hands facing out—three scabs catching the lamplight.

He Xiufen brought up half a bowl of noodles, the bowl resting on an enamel plate. She'd heard "the eighth" and set it beside his hand.

"The eighth it is," she said. "Eat a proper breakfast that morning. Answering questions on an empty stomach makes a person edgy."

"What should I wear."

"Something old."

"Does it matter?"

"You're not going to a banquet."

Zhi'an lifted the bowl and took a sip of the broth. Shen Zhixia reached for the case file bag. Beneath the line on the cover—"if they ask again, bring this bag"—she added a smaller line of characters: October 8, 9:30.

When she finished, she tucked the pen back into the notebook and pressed her fingertip against the bag's cover, leaving a faint indentation in the paper.

Zhi'an set the bowl down and pressed the three scabs on the back of his hand.

"I'll answer whatever they ask," he said. "I'll just tell it from the moment I was grabbed from behind, all the way to this hit on my hand."

The light fell on the back of his hand. The three scars were a little whiter than the skin around them.