Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 317: Three Private Messages

December 27th. Twenty past eight in the evening. Three knocks on the door.

Tang Guo called from outside: "Open up, both hands are full."

Zhi'an went to open it. Tang Guo had a bag of sha tangerines hanging off one arm, the other hand holding up her phone, the screen's glow lighting her chin. She stepped in, glanced around the room, and when she saw the papers spread across the table, her pace slowed.

"You're busy."

"Not busy." Shen Zhixia flipped the page she was working on face-down. "Sit."

The two pages on the table were photocopies of Old Kan's work-hours logbook from the wages case—Li Huilan had brought them over that afternoon. The hearing was set for 9:30 a.m. on the 29th, and the appendices were still missing one witness's name.

"You eaten?" Zhi'an stepped aside.

"Already did." Tang Guo set the oranges on the table. The bag tilted and two rolled out. She bent down and picked one up; the other went under the cabinet. She scratched at it with her fingers, couldn't reach it, stood up, and wiped her hands on her pants. "Forget that one. Keep writing, I won't disturb you."

She pushed her phone over to Shen Zhixia, both hands braced on the edge of the table.

The screen showed private messages. The avatar was gray, a two-character name: Ah Nan. The first three messages had come minutes apart, one line each:

"Are you the lawyer who fights cases for people?"

"We've got something over here."

"The kid got blood drawn at the township clinic and they said to go to the city to get it checked."

Shen Zhixia scrolled down. The fourth message hadn't come until over an hour later, its typing a mess, half of it spaces:

"My daughter is ten. Township drew blood once, said one eighty-nine. Told us to get rechecked in the city. City drew blood again, still the same number on the slip. I can't read those characters. I just want to ask, is this number high."

"There's more," Tang Guo said.

The fifth was a photo. A lab report spread on the edge of a kang, its corners curled up, a round watermark in the upper right corner like a wet bowl had been sitting there. The photo had been taken sideways; the phone screen's glare washed out two lines in the middle. Only two things were legible: on the left, "blood lead," followed by the number—one hundred eighty-nine. Below, the reference range printed as "0–100."

Shen Zhixia enlarged the photo, looked at that number first, then up at the top field.

The name was there. Three characters, the third pressed under a thumb, pressed white.

"She didn't blur it," Shen Zhixia said.

"She doesn't know how." Tang Guo took the phone back. "And I didn't ask her to resend."

The second message's avatar was a woman holding a child, the photo so blurred only a red padded jacket showed. This one was longer: the township had done one round of tests, and several kids in the village were all high; someone had gone to ask and come back with "go get it checked in the city"; they went to the city, brought the slip home, and stuck it in a drawer—nobody had any idea who to see about it. At the end, one line: "Nobody around here does anything about it."

The third message was only three lines:

"Are you the one who fights cases for people."

"Over here we don't dare talk."

"If you reply to me, I have to ask my husband first."

Shen Zhixia finished reading and pushed the phone back.

"Three slips," Tang Guo said. "First message had one, second had two. I counted the names one by one. Six."

"Six children."

"Six names." Tang Guo said. "One's her niece, two from next door, and one she doesn't know—heard about them from someone else. She wrote all that out herself. There's also a serial number on the slips, letters and numbers. Got photographed too."

"When did these private messages come in."

"A few days ago." Tang Guo flipped the phone over, screen-down on the table. "I posted a few short videos in December. One was about who's responsible when a kid gets hurt at school. People in the comments started asking whether stuff in a child's blood counted as something. I ignored it at first. Two days later, the DMs started—one after another."

"From comments to DMs, how many days apart."

"Four or five." Tang Guo said. "I watched for three days, didn't reply once. I only just got this account back on its feet in September. I'm not afraid of getting flamed—I'm afraid that if I open my mouth, I won't be the one taking the heat."

Shen Zhixia didn't answer that. She straightened the orange bag and gathered the strays back to the opening.

Zhi'an stood at the door to the back room, a pen still in his hand. He stood there a moment before asking: "Tang Guo-jie, are you going to post about this."

"I'm asking her exactly that." Tang Guo glanced back at him, then turned forward again. "I want to put up one post. No village name, kids' names covered, slips cropped to just the number. No pointing fingers. Just ask one question—'This number: who do you even talk to.'"

"No."

"I post it tonight, people will be on it tomorrow. Believe me—within three days, someone will go ask."

"Ask who?" Shen Zhixia said. "The name's on the slip. Blur it all you want, it's still that child's slip, that serial number's still on it. The second you post, the whole village knows whose family is testing for this. How do those families walk down the street after that? Her third message says she has to ask her husband before she can even reply to you."

Tang Guo's hand stopped on the screen.

"And here's another thing." Shen Zhixia said. "You shout it out, by tomorrow the whole street knows. But the paper? Whose child, what age; what day the blood was drawn; which hospital issued it; who's holding the slip—you can't answer a single one of those four questions. Shout to a million people, you still can't catch it."

"So I just watch."

"I'm telling you to ask the questions first."

Shen Zhixia went to the cabinet, took her own notebook out of the tin box, flipped to a fresh page, laid the pen on the paper, and slid it toward Tang Guo.

"Ask five things," she said. "Whose child, what age; what day the blood was drawn; where it was drawn—township clinic or city, which hospital, which department; who's holding the slip, original or photo; and what the township clinic told them, word for word."

Tang Guo bent her head and wrote it down, murmured each line aloud, and on the second pass changed "which department" to "which hospital, which department."

"What good does asking do." she asked.

"First, we find out how many families are willing to talk." Shen Zhixia said. "Someone opens their mouth, then there's a next step. If nobody will talk, I don't even have a single name."

"What do you need a name for."

"A name is a house number." Shen Zhixia said. "No name, I can't even find the door."

"So is this a case or not."

"Right now, no." Shen Zhixia said. "No client, no signed piece of paper from anyone—just three crooked photos of slips. The case comes after."

Tang Guo picked up her phone, typed it out again on her end, and looked up when she was done: "I won't post a single thing. I'll ask one-on-one in the DMs. When I get clear answers, I'll screenshot them for you."

"Don't save screenshots to your album."

"Why not."

"The album auto-backs up to the cloud." Shen Zhixia said. "Take the shots, save them to your computer, one folder, dates marked."

"Fine." Tang Guo tucked the phone into her pocket and paused. "I got cut to pieces last time. Took half a month of getting dragged line by line before it stopped. I know better than anyone what happens when you shout without paper in hand."

"That's exactly why this time, we bring paper first."

At the back-room doorway, Zhi'an was still standing there.

"Back when it was me," he said, "Tang Guo-jie, you didn't post a single thing."

"I didn't." Tang Guo said. "I even tore up my outline."

"So it worked out anyway."

"It worked out," Tang Guo said, her voice lower now, "because someone helped you smooth every page into place. Not because strangers on the internet shouted for you."

Zhi'an didn't ask anything more and went back inside. The door stayed half-open, a pen nib scraping quietly across paper.

At 8:55, Tang Guo put on her coat. She picked up the oranges to take with her. Shen Zhixia pressed the bag back down.

"Leave them. Zhi'an will eat them."

"I bought these."

"Buy more tomorrow."

Tang Guo set the bag down, stood by the door winding her scarf, looked up halfway through: "Zhixia, where is Baixi Village."

"Out the west side of the city, past Qingshi Ridge."

"Qingshi Ridge." She repeated the name. "So what about this Qingshi Village."

Shen Zhixia took out her phone and searched "Qingshi Village."

The map zoomed in. First a thin road appeared, then three blue characters. She pushed the map up a little; Baixi Village appeared, above Qingshi Village, a ridge between them. Along the ridge ran a waterway, coming down from the Baixi side, one line drawn all the way to Qingshi Village, then turning east.

They both stared at the screen. Neither spoke.

"Same name?" Tang Guo asked.

"I don't know." Shen Zhixia said. "Don't jump there yet."

"Then why'd your face go white just now."

"It's the light."

Tang Guo didn't press. She pulled the door open, the hallway's sound-activated light clicking on. She'd gone two steps before turning back: "Whatever I find, I'll send it to you piece by piece. Just answer me one thing first—is that number high."

"It is." Shen Zhixia said. "The printed reference range goes to one hundred. Anything above that is over. Tell her to take the child in first, don't wait for anyone's permission."

"And the money?"

"Health first." Shen Zhixia said. "The money—that waits until we have names."

The door closed. The hallway light went out, came back on, and footsteps descended a step at a time.

At 9:20, the notebook on the table lay open. She first wrote a date: "December 27th." Below it, one line: "Qingshi Village." Below that, left blank.

Line by line, she copied the three private messages into it: one line whose family, one line what age, one line the number, one line which township clinic, which hospital—and at the end, a parenthetical: "original slip not seen, photo only." When she reached the three lines of the third message, she paused, then copied "Over here we don't dare talk" exactly as written. Not one character changed.

Under the desk lamp, the white of the paper had a slight shimmer.

She set the pen down and waited, listening.

The notebook lay open. The only sound in the room was water moving through the radiators.

Nothing.

She got up and took the first volume from the cabinet. She'd finished its index on the 25th, wrapped it back up, and brought it home—the index still tucked behind the title page. The newspaper corners were still folded over the back; she didn't unwrap it, only held the spine toward the lamp and read that line of small writing: volume number at the very top, the date dead center, equal margins on either side.

"Baixi Village," she murmured.

When she was done, she set the volume back in its exact spot.

Her phone buzzed on the table. Lu Jibai.

She typed back: "Qingshi Village, right next to Baixi Village. Six children, blood lead at one eighty-nine and up. Tang Guo got the DMs."

The reply came fast:

"We'll talk tomorrow in person. Don't answer a single DM."

Half a minute later, another line: "Whose hands are the slips in—find that out."

She sent back an "OK."

She'd just set the phone down when the screen lit again. A screenshot forwarded from Tang Guo—the third account had added a message, four lines, the last one reading:

"The ones who came back high—it's not just our family."

Below the screenshot, Tang Guo had written: "She deleted this once, then sent it again."