Read Novel Full Chapter 302: The Transparency Sheet
Chapter 302: The Transparency Sheet
The iron box lid opened with a smell of rust.
He Xiufen pulled out two transparency sheets, one corner curled. She pressed the curled end against the table edge twice, couldn't flatten it, so she tilted her head for a look and simply turned it the other way. The two pages of the will lay spread across the long table, with the fifth medication log standing beside them, open to January. Two enamel mugs pinned down the paper corners on both sides.
"December fifth." Shen Zhixia wrote on the first line of the notebook, then looked up at the clock on the wall. "Sixteen hundred hours."
"It's getting dark," He Xiufen said.
The oil pot downstairs hissed once, then went quiet. Dinner rush was over; the noodle shop was closing up. Someone below was stacking plastic stools one by one, stumbling on the fifth.
"These two sheets are twenty-some years old." He Xiufen held one up to the window, where the sky had faded to a sliver of pale edge. "Used to match an IOU once. The character was 'three.' That man held out six months, then he confessed."
"Same as this time?"
"Different." She set the sheet down and flipped the will's second page over, signature facing up. "That case had two people's handwriting, a question of who it resembled more. This time there's no one else in the room—just her own handwriting. She wrote one line a day for nearly four years. The writing on this page can only be compared against itself."
She laid the transparency over the signature line, letting one corner bite into the paper's edge.
"When tracing characters, the pen has to stand upright." She drew a pencil from the holder, sharpened to a fine point. "Tilt it even slightly, and the traced stroke shifts half a millimeter. Half a millimeter, transferred to another sheet, and it won't line up."
Shen Zhixia leaned in close. He Xiufen traced slowly. The first character "one" came down with a slight upward flick at the start, no pressure at the finish; then "moon," the vertical hook curving inward, short; in "two," the top horizontal short, the bottom long and pressed hard; in "ten," the vertical extending a small tail below; "eight," two strokes wide apart, the left one light.
By the fifth character, He Xiufen's hand paused. She switched the pencil to her left hand, clenched her right fist twice against her knee, then switched back.
"Let me trace one?" Shen Zhixia said.
"Trace 'day.'"
Shen Zhixia took the pencil and tried holding it upright. Her first "day" came out too wide, the two verticals splaying outward, unable to close.
"Too heavy," He Xiufen said.
The second was too narrow, the left vertical overshooting the original stroke on the paper.
"Now too light." He Xiufen took the sheet back and ran a fingertip over the opening. "Trace each character three times, until it's exactly the same width as the one on the paper. Only then does it count as traced."
She did this one herself in a single pass.
After all six characters were traced, she nicked two marks on the sheet's corner with a fingernail, aligning it with the paper's edge. Then she lifted the sheet and turned to the fifth logbook, positioning it directly over the open page. The two nail marks landed on the paper's edge first; looking down, the traced "one" on the sheet landed exactly on the "one" on the paper, not a fraction off.
"January twenty-eighth." Shen Zhixia read it aloud. The book had no "day" character. The entry for that date: Morning, one antihypertensive; night, half a sleeping pill; blood pressure 132/80.
The room went quiet for a moment.
She leaned in. The horizontal on the paper was a hair wider than on the sheet, but the small upward flick at the start was there; the vertical hook curved inward the same short amount; the two strokes of "eight" spread apart, light left, heavy right.
"It matches," He Xiufen said.
She moved the sheet away, then back for a second pass, then a third. The third time she only checked "one" and "eight."
"What about connected strokes?" Shen Zhixia asked.
"She didn't connect much. Same style for years—wherever the strokes connected, they connected there." He Xiufen pointed. "In the January 2023 book, the characters were bigger, the strokes looser. By now, the writing's smaller, her hand not as steady. But the starts and finishes never changed. When people age, their writing shrinks and shakes—the starts and endings stay the same."
"What about those characters in the body text?" Shen Zhixia asked. "'House.' And 'give.'"
"The fifth book doesn't have them."
"Not a single one?"
"She wrote one line a day, medicine and numbers. She never wrote 'house,' and she didn't keep accounts in this book." He Xiufen pulled the sheet away. "I don't fabricate missing characters. Anything invented wouldn't be her writing—it'd be mine."
"Then what does this count as?"
"It counts as me confirming it for myself." She set the sheet on the iron lid, the corner still curled. "This isn't an appraisal. An appraisal has to go through the court: hire an expert, match samples, open a file, take records. This whole afternoon was just so I'd know, myself. If I didn't know, I couldn't open my mouth at that table tomorrow."
"What if mediation falls through? Apply for an appraisal?"
"Appraisal only if it falls through. Once appraisal starts, both sides pay and both sides burn months. Ask Wenying if she's willing to spend half a year just to hear 'yes, it's her handwriting.'"
Shen Zhixia wrote two lines in her notebook, then the pen stopped.
[Thud. When the handwriting matches, a person dares to speak.]
He Xiufen didn't look at what she'd written. She flipped back a page, then forward one.
"Look at these three days."
January 27, with a note below: "Wrote half." January 28: "Wrote all evening, slept well." January 29: "Finished."
"Three mentions of writing," she said. "All by one person. What she wrote that night, the paper doesn't say. But she finished it, and the next day she could still get up and log her own line. That line counts. Handwriting can be faked—days can't."
She went downstairs and came back with a thermos of hot water, topping up both enamel mugs. In her hand she'd also brought a stack of paper.
The paper was cut to palm width, the same width as the stack from the old house's drawer, the edges uneven—clearly cut with scissors.
"Brought these back from there last time." She laid out four sheets on the table. "She cut paper this way too—fold a sheet in half crosswise, cut it open, leave a rough edge. Didn't care."
She pulled a ballpoint from the drawer and uncapped it.
"I call a column, you write a column. Leave one blank line after each."
"What's the blank line for?"
"For whatever we settle on."
"First column: the old house." She dictated, and Shen Zhixia wrote: No. 23 Jianping Lane, brick-and-wood, two main rooms and one side room; the deed is in Feng Wenzhen's name; agent's appraisal of 960,000 yuan.
"Second column: old paintings." Two chests, one per person, under the bed in the inner room; paintings not yet counted.
"Third column: grave relocation." Parents to be reinterred together, cemetery plot plus relocation; cost to be named by him.
After the four sheets were done, He Xiufen capped the pen and studied the header's three characters.
"The header. You don't agree with it?"
Shen Zhixia had noticed earlier. "'Settlement'... can we switch that word?"
"Switch to what?"
"'Tally.'" She said, "A settlement implies debt. A tally is just laying out the numbers. When this sheet hits the table, nobody owes anybody."
He Xiufen studied her for a moment, then pushed the sheet in her hand to the table's edge.
"Rewrite all four."
"Can't we just fix this one?"
"Fix one spot, and everything else starts compromising." He Xiufen counted out four fresh sheets. "Thinking clearly before the pen falls beats cleaning up after it."
Shen Zhixia rewrote. By the third sheet her wrist ached, but her writing came out steadier than on the first two. He Xiufen stood beside her without a word, only nudging one crooked column's paper edge back into line.
Four sheets laid out, header reading "Mediation Reconciliation Tally Sheet," with a small note beneath: All items listed herein can be verified against paper.
The four used sheets He Xiufen didn't throw away. She bound them with paper twine and pressed them to the bottom of the case file.
"Keeping them?"
"Keeping. Bad drafts are still something." She tied a knot. "Tomorrow night, don't leave. Have Jibai run the other side's numbers."
December sixth, 8 p.m.
The noodle shop had closed. The roll-up shutter was down, a brick wedged beneath it. One light still burned over the small square table by the door. He Xiufen brought two bowls of noodles, pushing one to Shen Zhixia and setting the other across the table, chopsticks resting on the rim.
Lu Jibai came in with a gust of cold air through the door curtain. He unwound his scarf onto the chair back and reached first for the four tally sheets.
"Eat first," He Xiufen said.
"Read first."
He went through them one by one, looked up at the third sheet.
"The two chests of paintings—counted?"
"No." Shen Zhixia said. "We count on-site during mediation."
"Add a line to this column: 'Subject to on-site count at handover.' Put it after the third line, don't start a new one."
"The will only says one chest per person, no number of paintings."
"That was her intent." He handed over his fountain pen. "The contents of the chests need to be counted in front of both of them."
Shen Zhixia added the line and blew on the ink. He Xiufen nudged the noodles half an inch toward him.
"These four sheets aren't about what's on the paper," she said. "They're about what happens at the table."
Lu Jibai turned the third sheet over and wrote on the back: 960,000, drew a line beneath, wrote 480,000 below it.
"Half of the old house: 480,000." He tapped the number with the pen tip. "What's Kang Wenying's monthly pension?"
"Haven't asked."
"No need. She can't produce 480,000, and he can't produce 480,000 to buy out her half. The house can't be split."
"Then why does he keep gripping half so hard?"
"He doesn't want that half." He set the pencil down and looked up at her. "He never meant to take any of the 960,000. What he's preparing for is the day someone asks: 'Who carried your father's bones up the mountain?' He wants to have an answer."
Shen Zhixia pulled the paper over and worked the math herself. Finished, she looked up at his face.
"You'd already subtracted it."
"Twice," he said.
"Then why doesn't he just say so?"
"Saying it directly is asking his sister for money. He wants her to give it on her own."
"Her giving on her own versus him asking—what's the difference?"
"The giver keeps her dignity."
He Xiufen draped the hand towel over the chair back and sat down.
"When he wrote those two lines last time, the last three characters were 'Dad's grave,'" she said. "A person puts the hardest thing to say at the very end. His pen paused on the paper, ready to strike—never did."
"Once money's on the table, 'Dad's grave' has to land somewhere," Lu Jibai said. "The amount has to come from him; if he's to handle the arrangements, the money has to pass through his hands."
"His back's bad," Shen Zhixia said. "Coming from the old power plant, he'd have to transfer buses twice."
"It's not about his back." He Xiufen said. "What he wants is that day in the old village, standing on the dirt slope, carrying the bones himself."
Shen Zhixia gathered the four sheets and stacked them in order.
"Tomorrow, nine thirty. Which item do we raise first?"
He Xiufen rolled the sheets into a cylinder and bound it with paper twine.
"Tomorrow, don't speak first. If I look at you, then you open your mouth."
"When Xu Qichang asks, which of the three do we put down first?"
"The handwriting," He Xiufen said. "Once the handwriting's settled, people will listen to the money."
She bit one end of the twine and yanked the other with her free hand. The knot pulled tight.
"This mediation, I won't be the first to mention money."
"Why?"
"The first person to mention money positions himself as the one asking. The moment I open with it, Wenying is left with nothing but the money path."
[Thud. The side that names money first leaves nothing else on the table.]
Streetlight leaked through the gap under the shutter. Wind squeezed through the door crack and lifted a corner of one sheet on the table; Shen Zhixia pressed it flat. The sound-activated light on the stairs clicked on one floor up, casting down two steps. He Xiufen's soles struck the stairs four times, each step farther than the last.