Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 309: One Page Missing

December 18th, eight in the morning. The door of Zhengping Noodle House was still closed. He Xiufen stood on the front step, her canvas bag at her feet, the mouth gaping open, the ears of three kraft paper envelopes sticking out. She wore cotton gloves and was pressing the envelopes down one by one.

"One envelope with the applications, attachments included." She counted. "One with one copy of the agreement and one copy of the articles. One with three certificates and three copies of practice-experience proof."

Shen Zhixia crouched down to count, reached the bottom envelope and found a sheet of fuzzy-edged paper inside, looked up. "What about this one?"

"Asset proof. Printed by the firm ourselves. My signature, my seal." He Xiufen said, "At the window, whether they accept it or not depends on them."

"Accounts show 388,000. On the 17th, transferred in 145,217 and 150,000. This morning Li Huilan went to the counter herself and transferred 50,000. Plus the original 42,783." Shen Zhixia spread her notebook across her knees. "Not a cent off."

"Numbers are dead. Paper is alive." He Xiufen snapped the bag shut. "Let's go."

Lu Jibai arrived at one minute before eight, a thin briefcase in his right hand. He walked over, lifted the canvas bag off the step, and slung it over his shoulder. He Xiufen glanced at him, didn't fight over it.

"You carry it," she said. "But when there's a page missing, don't speak for me."

Eight-ten, bus stop at the end of the alley. A tricycle selling soy milk rolled past, two steel drums banging and clattering in the cart bed. The bus was packed. Shen Zhixia held the paper envelopes and stood near the back door. He Xiufen gripped the handrail. Someone offered her a seat; she waved it off.

"Once inside, I'll sit downstairs," she said. "That trip upstairs—I'm not going."

"If you don't come, what if they ask questions?"

"Ask what? It's all on the paper." He Xiufen smoothed the thumb of her glove flat. "The person handing things over is the person signing later. You go up."

The Municipal Justice Bureau was three stops away, a gray-and-white concrete building. A blue sign stood by the first-floor entrance, listing: Third floor—Lawyer Management, Legal Professional Qualifications. A man on the steps was smoking; when he saw the two of them coming with paper envelopes, he stubbed it out. Five minutes to nine, four people already lined up outside the third-floor window. Inside the window sat a woman in her forties, a handwritten note pressed under the glass: If your materials aren't complete, ask first. If they are, take a number.

Lu Jibai laid the three paper envelopes out on the counter one by one. The woman took the document list and worked through page after page, ticking with a pencil. She wasn't slow. When she reached the articles of association, she paused and looked up.

"Jiangzhou Zhengping Law Firm. Converting from a sole proprietorship to a general partnership."

"Yes."

"Three partners, all with three or more years in practice, practice-experience proof here." She aligned the three certificates. "Assets over 300,000, asset proof—"

She pulled out the fuzzy-edged sheet, looked at the round firm seal on the front, and pushed it back half an inch.

"This page won't do."

Shen Zhixia's heart sank half a notch.

"You need a certificate of deposit from the bank, stamped with the bank's business seal, stating the point-in-time balance, dated recently." The woman recapped her pen. "Something the firm prints and stamps itself doesn't count."

"The money in the account is real." Shen Zhixia said.

"I know it's real." The woman raised her eyes. "What I need is a piece of paper with a bank stamp on it that says it's real."

"What time does it need to be in by?"

"Four o'clock. Bring it back before four, it's accepted today. After four, you re-queue tomorrow, and I can't tell you which day you'll be seen." She flipped the list back to the first page. "And there's another page you didn't notice. The last page of the change application—the 'Person in Charge' column is blank."

Lu Jibai said, "The proposed person in charge is me."

"The proposed person in charge is a different column, and it does say you." She turned the page around and tapped it with a fingertip. "This column needs the current one to sign. Until the certificate is replaced, the registered person in charge is still He Xiufen. In the system, on the practice license—it's all her. She needs to come up here in person to sign. I'll need to check her ID."

When Shen Zhixia came downstairs, He Xiufen was sitting in the first-floor lobby, in the chair closest to the door, the canvas bag in her lap, both gloves pressed flat over the bag's opening.

"You need to go up and sign a column." Shen Zhixia said.

He Xiufen stood up, stuffed her gloves into the bag's side pocket. "I said I'm not going upstairs."

"This one needs your signature."

She followed upstairs, not walking fast. The stairwell had a window. Winter sun rose late; light slanted onto the wall, stretching her shadow long. At the window, she passed her ID inside. The woman took it, looked at her, looked at the card, then slid the last page of the application under the glass.

He Xiufen stood in front of that column for two or three seconds. The column was printed "Person in Charge (signature)." She picked up the pen on the counter and signed slower than usual, character by character, the last stroke of the final name pressing down just a little harder.

"Signed." The woman took the page back and checked it. "You're still the person in charge in this column. Until the certificate is replaced, the paper says it's you."

"I know." He Xiufen said.

She pulled her hand back from the counter, stepped back, and stood behind Shen Zhixia. The woman continued checking, flipped to the asset proof page, and set it aside again.

"Bring that page in, and everything else is complete. Before four."

Downstairs, on the steps, He Xiufen said, "One page missing."

"It wasn't rejected." Lu Jibai said. "They gave us the day."

"I'll grab a bite with you at noon." He Xiufen said. "After eating I have to go back. Someone's got to open the door."

"The seals." Shen Zhixia said.

He Xiufen felt around the very bottom of the canvas bag and produced a small tin box. Inside, pressed into red ink paste, were two seals—one with a red plastic handle, one with a small chip missing from its edge. She tipped both into her palm, wiped the dust off with her thumb, and handed them over.

"Firm seal, finance seal." She said. "The corner-desk one, I took back the day before yesterday. These two don't get handed over until the 20th. Today I'll lend them to you for half a day. Return them when you're done."

At noon, a small eatery two streets behind the Justice Bureau sold wontons and noodles. Three tables inside. An aluminum pot on the stove gave off steam; the glass was fogged with condensation. They sat down. He Xiufen peeled off her padded coat and draped it over the chair back, warming her hands by the radiator.

"Two bowls of wontons, one bowl of noodles." Lu Jibai ordered, then added, "The wonton one, same as usual—no cilantro."

Shen Zhixia looked up at him.

She had never mentioned it at the dinner table. She couldn't even remember exactly which year she'd stopped eating cilantro—maybe when she was little, maybe after some time she'd crouched outside a courthouse eating half a bowl of leftovers and simply never ordered it again.

"How do you know?"

"Twice eating noodles downstairs, you picked the cilantro out first and set it on the bowl lid. Very thoroughly." He said it evenly, like reading figures off a form.

He Xiufen watched the two of them, pulled her warmed hands back, and set them on the table edge. "The bank doesn't handle corporate accounts until one-thirty. Don't sit around for this hour and a half. Count out what you need to bring."

Lu Jibai had already counted: business license, legal representative's ID, handler's ID, unit application, firm seal, finance seal.

Halfway through eating, He Xiufen laid her chopsticks across the bowl. "Serious talk. How this firm moves forward—the two of you need to have a sense of it."

"You tell us."

"What I'm telling you is for you to tell each other." She pushed her bowl forward. "A partnership isn't one person making decisions. From now on, three things don't belong to one person: whether to take a case, where money goes, which way the door opens."

"Cases." Lu Jibai said. "Three of us work separately. Each person decides whether to take their own. Anything that touches the firm's reputation—the three of us look at it together."

"Money." Shen Zhixia said.

"Money gets reported monthly. Reported to whom, who signs." He Xiufen said. "The person who signs isn't the person who handles the money. The person who handles the money doesn't sign."

Shen Zhixia wrote those three sentences into her notebook, then looked up. "What about me?"

He Xiufen didn't answer. She looked at Lu Jibai.

"Your name goes on the files." He said. "Someone whose name is on the files has to be heard when they speak. Of the three of us, at least one has to listen to you."

Shen Zhixia's pen paused over the paper. She wrote that sentence down too, and added a date at the end.

"Director He, the Kang family case." She closed the notebook. "Judicial confirmation has to be filed within thirty days. I've got the materials sorted. Just waiting for Kang Youxing to set a date."

"You schedule it yourself." He Xiufen said. "Once it's set, write the date in your notebook so it can be checked later."

At one-twenty, He Xiufen put her padded coat back on, shouldered her bag, and turned at the door.

"Today's trip is for the two of you to run." She pulled the door open; a layer of vapor rushed out. "Money matters come back and go in the register. Forty kuai, twenty kuai—every single one."

The bank was on Zhongshan Road, the ground floor of an old building. A printed sign was taped to the glass door: Corporate business, please go to the second floor. Five people were waiting upstairs—an accountant hugging a ledger at the front, a man on the phone talking very loudly behind her.

The teller at Window No. 3 was very young. She looked over the unit application and laid it out: a certificate of deposit costs twenty yuan, requires authorization from the manager, and the manager was in a meeting. They'd have to wait.

"How long?"

"Hard to say. These past two days they've been checking statements. The manager's in the back reviewing." She slid a form out. "Fill this in first."

Shen Zhixia filled it out. Lu Jibai stamped it, both seals pressed once each, onto the unit application. When the finance seal went down, red ink paste bled slightly past the edges of the words "Finance Special Seal." He pressed it with the corner of a paper. The teller took the form, stood up, and went toward the back.

While they waited, the two of them sat on plastic chairs in the hallway. He took the seal usage register from his briefcase—dark blue cover, corners worn white—spread it across his knees and wrote: "December 18th, bank certificate of deposit issued, handler Lu Jibai, original destination: Municipal Justice Bureau, two copies."

He wrote one line, then the next. Shen Zhixia craned her neck to look. All four items were there: date, purpose, handler, destination of original.

[Thud. Seals pressed. All four items accounted for.]

"If any one of these four is missing, the register is incomplete," he said. "An incomplete register—anyone who flips through it can tell something went wrong inside."

The radiator was burning hot, the red light on the water cooler at the end of the hallway glowing. Shen Zhixia took out that fuzzy-edged asset proof and looked at it. The corners had curled even more.

"That page—a whole morning wasted."

"Not wasted." Lu Jibai said. "If we hadn't gone, we wouldn't know the window requires a bank-stamped certificate. Now we know. It'll be useful later—license renewal, annual report, filing."

"When did you start thinking about things like this?"

"From the day I signed my own name." He put the register back in his briefcase. "Once your name's on it, you can't just think about the next case."

At two-forty, the teller came out with two sheets of paper and counted them off through the glass: basic account point-in-time balance 387,380 yuan; legal aid subsidy account 620 yuan. One copy each, all stamped with the business seal, the header reading Jiangzhou Zhengping Law Firm.

"Forty yuan total." The teller said. "One receipt."

Lu Jibai reached for his money. Shen Zhixia pressed forty yuan onto the counter first. "The firm pays. Goes on the firm's books back at the office."

The paper was thin. After the balance line trailed a small-print note: This certificate is issued solely to verify the point-in-time deposit balance. Shen Zhixia held it up to the hallway light; the watermark showed through.

Three-fifty, they were back on the third floor of the Municipal Justice Bureau. Two people were left outside the window. The woman took the paper, checked page by page, then pulled back the list she'd ticked that morning and drew one final check on the last line.

"Complete." She stood, pulled a page from the printer behind her, stamped it, signed her name and the time—exactly four o'clock—and passed it through the glass. "Notice of Acceptance. Hold onto it."

The top half of the page held five characters. Below: three lines—application matter, acceptance date, review period. The last line read: Review within twenty days from the date of acceptance, then forward to the provincial judicial administrative department, which shall make a decision within ten days of receipt.

[Thud. Accepted. Twenty-day review, ten-day decision.]

"What date is twenty days from now?" Shen Zhixia asked.

"Do the math yourself." The woman slipped her pen back into the holder. "Twenty days is our side finishing the review. Ten more days after it goes up. Count it out—it could land before or after New Year. Don't plan by the smoothest timeline."

"So acceptance means approval, right?" She realized the question sounded rushed the moment she asked.

"Acceptance is not approval." The woman looked up, her tone even. "I only check whether the materials are complete and correctly filled. Whether conditions are met—that's for others further down the line to review. On the day of the replacement, the original practice license, original and duplicate, both come back. The old one gets taken back."

"One more thing." Her gaze shifted to Lu Jibai. "Until the license is replaced, documents issued externally and cases taken in—the signature is still the original person in charge. Keep that clear in your heads. Don't write the new name before it's time."

Lu Jibai nodded. "Understood."

Shen Zhixia slipped the Notice of Acceptance into a case file envelope and copied the deadlines into her notebook: twenty days, ten days; December 18th, 4:00 PM. When she finished writing and looked up, the woman was already calling the next number.

Outside the main door, the sky was still light, but the sun had slipped behind the building. The glass door still carried the reflections of three people going up and down. Wind funneled through the gap between buildings, cold on her face.

"Where's Director He?" She asked.

"Took the one-thirty bus back." Lu Jibai rolled the empty paper envelopes into a tube and stuffed them into his briefcase. "She said the soup needs to start early. People will want noodles tonight."

The two of them didn't head for the bus stop. Three stops—he said they'd walk back. He didn't walk fast, and she didn't rush him. He took the outer side, closer to traffic, leaving her the inside. A street vendor selling roasted sweet potatoes lifted the lid off his barrel; a cloud of white steam puffed out.

"Back to the office for noodles." He said.

"Seven o'clock?"

"Now."

She tugged her scarf up higher. All day she'd done two flights of stairs, two queues, signed her name at check-in once—and somehow her stomach hadn't felt hungry at all. She was about to say something; he finished the thought.

"Today's bowl, eat it slowly."

"Why slow?"

"After we eat, I have something to say."

The traffic light changed and the crowd moved forward. Shen Zhixia followed half a step, paused, and pressed the two seals against the inner pocket of her padded coat. They were still warm.

"What is it?" She asked.

"I'll say it at the noodle shop." He switched the briefcase to his left hand. "First, return those two seals."