Read Novel Full Chapter 270: Thrown Away
Chapter 270: Thrown Away
On the morning of October 11, three stacks of paper sat spread across the long table on the second floor of Zhengping Firm.
Left stack: photocopies of two pages of medical records, four photos of the school uniform, a printout of the explanatory statement. Middle stack: Wei Changlin's three pages of investigation records, weighed down by a small plastic bag containing a memory card. Right side, no stack—just Lu Jibai's blue notebook, lying open with the twice-folded copy of the inventory tucked inside, one corner sticking out, faint traces of dark ink-paste from the police station register smudged along the edge.
Lu Jibai sat down and flipped the notebook to a blank page past the back, writing the date first: October 11.
Then, one line at a time:
"The phone broke. I threw it away." September 29, phone call with the case officer.
"Only a few seconds start to finish." October 3, Wei Changlin, Investigation Record, page 3.
"This is a mutual fight." September 27, Chen Maolin, police station corridor.
Shen Zhixia stood at the corner of the table reading. At the third line, her eyebrow twitched.
"You're quoting that one too?"
"Quote it." He set down the pen. "These three lines are what other people said. Everything else is what we said. You read a whole page of nothing but your own words, and halfway through they stop listening."
"The 'threw it away' line—we've only heard once," she said. "And that was over the phone."
"Which is exactly why it carries attribution." He tapped the line with his knuckle. "As told by the case officer in a phone call on September 29. Without those words, it sounds like I said it."
"What if they deny this line?"
"Then strike it." Lu Jibai said. "Losing one line doesn't matter. Fabricate one, and the whole thing collapses."
She committed that to memory but did not write it in the notebook.
"Two phones," she said. "Meng Yang's is in police custody for examination, and Qin Hao's—smashed, thrown away."
"The thrown-away phone belongs to the side accusing us of assault." He pushed the notebook half an inch toward her. "We don't know what Meng Yang's phone said. Their family says Qin Hao's broke and was thrown away. Two devices. One in someone else's hands, the other reduced to a single sentence."
[Thud. The words "threw it away" are a quotable sentence. Quote it; write down clearly who said it, on what day, and whether it can be traced back in the file.]
"That sentence can make it into our submission, but it can't make it into evidence." Lu Jibai said. "A submission is us speaking on his behalf. Evidence has to be other people speaking on his behalf."
"Out of five pages, how many lines does this take up?"
"Two." He said. "It doesn't take up space. But if it's there, someone will have to go back and pull that September 29 phone call."
Three in the afternoon, Chengdong Police Station.
The same person sat behind the duty desk, forms pressed beneath the glass counter, the wire basket still there with two extra sheets of paper on top.
"The September 1 entry." Lu Jibai placed his practice certificate on the counter. "Did you find it."
The officer looked up, flipped through the register at his hand, turned two pages.
"Found it. Seven or eight lines. It's in the file."
"Who was questioned."
"The homeroom teacher. Two people from the security office. Both questioned." He closed the register. "What was asked is all in the file. Each person's answers belong to each person."
"I only have one question: all three items were handled."
"They were." The officer said. "We do our work. It goes on paper."
"Then I have nothing else."
He tucked his practice certificate back into his jacket pocket and turned. At the far end of the corridor, a door stood half open, and a voice burst out, syllable by syllable, striking the tile floor.
A woman's voice, raised: "I didn't write those three pages."
Lu Jibai's steps slowed a half-beat.
"They drafted them and brought them for me to sign. I signed every character myself." She said. "I wasn't even there that day. I only got there after my son was taken to the hospital—"
"Auntie." Another voice, polite, held low. "This is a corridor."
Chen Maolin. He stood half-turned in the doorway, a kraft paper envelope tucked under his arm, a corner of white paper sticking out with a red seal stamped on it.
Lu Jibai walked past that door without stopping, without looking back.
"Lawyer Lu." Chen Maolin called out to him anyway. "Come to ask another question today?"
"Just one."
"Got your answer?"
"Found it."
Chen Maolin nodded, stepped back half a pace, and the door swung shut by half a foot. The woman inside was still talking, her voice lowered, the remaining words swallowed by the door panel.
"Then I won't keep you." Chen Maolin said.
Nineteen hundred hours. The seats downstairs at the noodle house were full. The exhaust fan whirred, the smell of scallion oil pressing over from the stove, a thin sheen of grease on the low table by the wall that stayed shiny even after a wipe-down. Shen Zhixia sat first and, without thinking, moved the chili oil jar from his side to hers.
He Xiufen's strainer made a circle in the pot without her looking up: "The medical record says bilateral."
"Bilateral nasal bone fracture, left maxillary frontal process fracture." Shen Zhixia said.
"One punch can fracture both sides?"
"Yes." Lu Jibai pulled chopsticks from the holder and laid them across his bowl without touching them. "Straight to the center of the bridge. Both sides cave together. The forensic doctor wrote bilateral. That doesn't mean two hits."
"The Qin family's three pages lean hard on those two words." Shen Zhixia said. "They write it like one punch landed twice."
"Let them lean." He Xiufen tipped noodles into a bowl and scattered a handful of scallions over them. "The injury is real. We're not disputing the injury."
"Then what are we disputing?"
"Whether, at the moment that punch landed, the other person had retreated."
He Xiufen set the two bowls on the low table, wiped her hands on her apron, and didn't sit: "Say it clearly. I don't understand these words of yours."
"Four points." Lu Jibai said. "First: there was prior infringement. The one in the delivery uniform grabbed him from behind and lifted him until his feet left the ground; Qin Hao ran up and kicked him. Both moves are on the footage, and both are in Wei Changlin's three pages."
"Did Wei Changlin see clearly?"
"He was very firm: the grabbing man came first, the kicking man came after. He wrote it himself, signed it himself, put three fingerprints on it himself."
"And the second point?"
"Who threw the first blow. They wrote that Zhi'an pulled and pushed first. In those twelve seconds, the two hands and that leg all get arranged as the first moves."
"Third point." He Xiufen wiped her hands on the apron again.
"After breaking free, he threw only one punch. After that, no pursuit, no second strike. He stopped himself."
"Fourth point."
"At the moment he threw it, had the other person retreated."
He Xiufen picked up her own bowl and blew on it twice by the stove: "Minor injury—they keep saying it like a prayer."
"'Excessive' requires two things together." Lu Jibai said. "Clearly beyond necessity, and causing serious harm. Serious harm means serious injury or death. A minor injury, second grade, doesn't fit that category."
"Then leave that out."
"Include it. On the last page, one sentence." He said. "Leave it out, and they'll think we don't know it exists."
"These four points, put on paper—who reads it?"
"The handler reads it. It goes in the file, moves up—the branch's legal affairs section reads it once, the procuratorate reads it again. Before the investigation closes, I have to say everything I need to say. That's the rule on paper."
"How many pages?"
"Five."
"Five pages is enough for those four points."
"One point per page."
[Thud. The line between self-defense and mutual fighting isn't in how serious the injury is. It's in the cause, in who struck first, in whether the other side retreated when you hit back.]
Shen Zhixia reached for the vinegar bottle and her hand paused in midair. She was silently asking half a question: exactly where do those two words—"in progress"—get stuck.
[Thud. The statute only defines one end: what counts as "in progress." The other end is in the case itself.]
[Thud. The Supreme People's Court, Supreme People's Procuratorate, and Ministry of Public Security have a guiding opinion on distinguishing self-defense from mutual fighting. It gives direction. It doesn't decide cases.]
[Thud. You have to pull the analogous cases yourself. I don't have any judgments here.]
Four lines passed. She made no sound.
She sat on the edge of the low table and spread the notebook on her lap, writing: October 11. Below that, one more line: At the moment that punch landed, had he retreated.
"That sentence has to become real words tomorrow." Lu Jibai looked at the line. "The machine at the firm can access China Judgments Online. Pull a few analogous cases and see how other courts have handled 'the infringement paused, but could still resume.'"
"You pull them."
"You pull them." He nudged the bowl toward her. "What I want is for you to pick them out yourself. Whatever I read to you, you'll only remember once."
"How many."
"Three to five is enough. One case that clarifies: the person retreated, the other still hit back—how was it handled. One case that clarifies: someone holding on and not letting go—how was that handled. Don't get greedy. Too many, and they'll never get through them all."
He Xiufen added from the stove: "Check the year, and check which level of court decided it. The cases they read back at us have to be weightier than ours."
Footsteps on the stairs. Shen Zhi'an came down with his schoolbag on his back, half a head of garlic in his hand, and stopped on the last step.
"School's out?" He Xiufen asked.
"Out."
"Eat. Finish and go upstairs to do homework."
He started toward the low table, then stopped, running his eyes over the three faces.
"'In progress,'" he said. "What do you mean by 'in progress.'"
He Xiufen took the garlic bowl from his hand and set it on the far side of the stove, then pressed him down onto a stool.
"Eat your food," she said. "These words are not for ears."
"I'm not stupid."
"Even if you're not, don't be smart here." She slid a bowl of noodles in front of him. "Answer the same way you answered on the eighth. Don't add a single word."
Zhi'an lowered his head to eat. His chopsticks clicked against the rim of the bowl twice, then stopped.
Halfway through the meal, Lu Jibai finally spoke. He repeated the half-sentence from the corridor exactly, stopping at the point where the door closed.
Shen Zhixia's pen was already in her hand.
"You can write it in the notebook." He Xiufen said. "Write the date, write who said it, write where you heard it. But not on paper."
"Why not." she asked, pen still raised.
"Because she didn't come to us." He Xiufen set down the soup ladle. "She came with her son's side to deliver documents. People on the injured party's side, and people testifying for them—we can only question them with permission from the procuratorate or the court. The case is still under investigation. No permission exists. If we use this half-sentence to do anything, tomorrow she becomes someone who was 'questioned,' and her son's case gains one more item: defense counsel had private contact with the injured party."
"So for now, this sentence isn't alive."
"Whether it comes alive later isn't up to us, either." He Xiufen said. "Once the file reaches the procuratorate, whether to question her is their business. Right now it lives only in your head and in your notebook. Remember it. Don't touch it."
[Thud. What you overheard is not testimony. Testimony requires a name, a date, a signature.]
Shen Zhixia wrote in the notebook: October 11, 3 p.m., Chengdong Police Station corridor. Finished, she looked up: "What's her name."
For a moment none of the three spoke.
"We don't even know her name." Lu Jibai said. "I recognized her by two things: Chen Maolin called her 'Auntie,' and she said, 'I only got there after my son was taken to the hospital.' The signature at the bottom of those three complaint pages from September 27 is the mother's."
"I've seen her at the duty desk." Shen Zhixia said. "She was holding a film bag, saying 'my son is still in the hospital, two fractures.' She let her eyes rest on my face on her way out."
"That look found its answer today." Lu Jibai said.
She added a line beneath: She said, I wasn't there that day.
"Those four words—'I wasn't there that day'—are the foundation under three pages." Lu Jibai said. "She wasn't there. So whoever wrote who pulled first and who pushed first—who actually saw it?"
"That's why they want us to accept it."
"The moment we accept it, that sentence never has to be answered."
"Write it." He Xiufen said. "Five pages. One point per page. Finish it and file it. Whether they read it is their business. Whether they get the chance to read it—that's the rule on paper."
When the table was cleared, He Xiufen called Zhi'an to carry the bowls to the back. Lu Jibai went upstairs, gathered the three stacks, bound them with a thick rubber band, and pressed them under the old, unnetworked laptop. Coming back down, his heels knocked twice against the stair treads.
"You can start writing now." he said.
"Five pages." she said.
"Five pages."
Lu Jibai's phone rang on the low table. He glanced at the number, answered, and walked to the foot of the stairs.
"Lawyer Lu." Chen Maolin's voice, polite as always. "You free tomorrow night."
"What for."
"Downstairs. A bowl of noodles. Just the two of us."
"What time."
"Seven thirty. I'll get there first and take the table outside."
Lu Jibai didn't answer.
"Some things are better not said in a corridor." The other end said.
The call ended crisply.
He came back and laid the phone face-down on the table.
"What does he want to talk about." Shen Zhixia asked.
"Numbers." he said.
He Xiufen draped the rag over her shoulder and switched off the exhaust fan above the stove; the white steam above the pot collapsed by half: "Numbers get talked about last. What he'll come to say first is that this matter has other ways of going."
Lu Jibai opened the blue notebook and added a fourth line beneath the "This is a mutual fight" entry: October 11, 3 p.m., corridor. Qin Hao's mother, to Chen Maolin: "I didn't write those three pages." And after it, four words: Not testimony.
Before going upstairs, Shen Zhixia completed the last line of that page: October 12, 7:30 p.m., noodle house downstairs. And beneath it, one blank space, with two words written in it: Opening offer. The rest left to be filled in tomorrow night.