Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 37 : The Two Words Left Unwritten

Shao Hong pushed two pages to the edge of the desk, the paper corner knocking out a light sound.

One page was Shen Zhixia's Written Opinion on Joint Hearing, submitted on the 20th. Its upper right corner was marked in pencil with a check. The other, stapled behind it, was the platform's Application for Separate Handling and Preliminary Review of Subject Qualification. The same spot was marked with a horizontal line. Three staples held the two pages together. A check, and a line.

"Joint hearing," Shao Hong said. "No separate filings. Twenty joint applicants. Deng Wei as representative."

Footsteps passed back and forth in the corridor. Someone nearby was submitting materials. Shen Zhixia didn't rush to agree. She kept looking at that horizontal line.

"I sent the platform's application back. I wrote two lines for the reason: same respondent, same time period, same alleged conduct. If they want a reconsideration, there's no opening for that here." Shao Hong capped her pen. "And don't thank me too early. Joinder isn't a finding. It only means these twenty people are standing in the same place today. It doesn't say which company has to pay."

"I know."

"In the fourth paragraph of your opinion, you wrote one line: same account-banning conduct." She looked up. "If you dare write it today, you'd better be able to produce it on the day of the hearing."

"I can."

"One more thing." Shao Hong pulled a page out of a drawer and slid it over. It was Shen Zhixia's Application for Preliminary Enforcement, submitted on the 20th, with a few lines of small notes in the margin. "I read it. If you want money, you have to be clear about who you're asking for it from. Ask Sutong, and there's no money in its account. Ask the platform, and on those three sheets you're holding, the account that paid out belongs to Wang Yuhai. Your thread is still one section short of connecting in the hearing."

"I'll connect that section myself."

"December 26, nine in the morning, Third Arbitration Tribunal." Shao Hong wrote a couple of quick strokes on a sticky note. "Submit another name list. Under 'Ma Jianjun and 19 Others,' write every name clearly. The representative's authority column gets copied from the Representative Election Form. Don't add a single word. The joint applicants have to appear in person. No one can substitute for anyone else."

[Thud. Joint hearing means stapling twenty sheets of paper into one file. The staples belong to the Arbitration Commission; the names on the paper belong to themselves.]

She folded the page refusing separate handling into the case file. Going downstairs, the wind poured down the steps. She stood in a sheltered spot and called Xiao Duan, telling him to get word under the tarp: joint hearing, twenty names on one page, December 26, nine in the morning, and everyone had to come themselves.

On the other end, Xiao Duan lowered his voice. "That platform lawyer—is he still coming to break us apart?"

"He's coming," she said. "That trip of his is meant to split twenty names apart."

"So he didn't manage it?"

"No."

"I'll read the signature sheet to them again," he said. "Reading it once is better than sending ten messages."

On the night of December 25, at the long table in Zhengping Firm.

The scallion-oil smell from the noodle shop downstairs climbed up the stairwell layer by layer, mixed with the clatter of the wok. She spread out the papers she'd gathered over the past few days across the tabletop in a long row, left to right, each item touching the next, no gaps in between.

He Xiufen brought a bowl of noodles over from the stove, set it beside her hand, sat down, and didn't touch her chopsticks.

"Read."

"First item. Yunfan's Data Recovery Statement, with three sheets stapled behind it. On July 18, the system dispatched the order to Ma Jianjun's Rider App, the platform deducted thirty yuan from him as an overtime deduction, and the money went out of Wang Yuhai's account. Under the three sheets is the checksum."

"Second item. The December 10 cleanup work order. Wang Yuhai is in the approval column."

"Third item. Twenty Account Ban notices. The reason column is identical, word for word. The times are squeezed in between 23:57 and 0:19. Twenty-two minutes, twenty accounts, and there's no appeal entry at the bottom. Paired with it is one page of customer-service call records. Seven minutes and twelve seconds."

"Fourth item. The two accounts unblocked on the morning of the 19th. Lao Chang at 7:40, Luo Cheng at 8:10. No notice, no reason, no approving person."

"Fifth item. That voice message on Xiao Duan's phone—getting the business license was shouted out in the group chat. And the signature sheet photographed by his roommate, Xiao Xu."

"Sixth item. The agent from Back Street said it himself: the forms were given to him by someone else, thirty yuan per head, he counted twenty people, took photos, and sent them back to that Sun person's number."

After listening, He Xiufen reached out and separated the row from the fifth item down into two piles. Three items on the left, three on the right.

"The left pile can go into the hearing," she said. "The statement, the work order, the recovery file—add the twenty notices and one page of transcript, and it holds. The right pile is only good for looking at. Xiao Xu's photo—whether he was there, when it was taken—he has to stand up and say that himself. That agent didn't even leave a name. He says ten words, and in the hearing someone asks, 'Who said that?' and you'll be speechless. Lao Song recognizes the hand that lifted the table, but Lao Song won't be walking into that hearing."

"Mm."

"Then tell me. Put all of these together, and what's the one sentence they say?"

Shen Zhixia ran her finger along the row from far left to far right, then back again.

"The hand that dispatches the work, the hand that deducts the money, the hand that pays it out, the hand that bans the accounts," she said. "Four hands, one hand."

He Xiufen tapped her chopsticks against the rim of the bowl. "Write that sentence at the very top. Don't let people count how thick your stack is. The people in the hearing won't remember twenty-six pages. They'll remember one sentence."

She pulled out a sticky note, copied the sentence onto it, and stuck it to the first page of the case file. After writing it, she glanced at the right-hand pile again.

"I handled a group case once with eleven people," He Xiufen said, moving the bowl toward the middle. "On the day we filed materials, nine came. On the day of the hearing, four came. Not because anyone was bad. By then, the work in their hands and the bills at home wouldn't wait. So no matter how much paper you're holding today, it's not worth as much as how many people will be standing at the door tomorrow."

"I've counted the doorway."

"That you've counted is your business." He Xiufen paused. "Whether they're willing to come themselves tomorrow is theirs."

"The three sheets—are they originals?" she asked after a while.

"They're recovery files. The originals are in Yunfan's backups and in the platform's backend."

"What if he only bites down on that one point? 'Not originals; authenticity in doubt.' Eight words, more useful than your whole stack."

"Engineer Ruan's signed Data Recovery Statement matches the checksum," Shen Zhixia said. "And I still have an evidence collection application I haven't written."

She pulled a fresh sheet from her pen case, bent over the corner of the table, and wrote. She requested that the Arbitration Tribunal obtain from Hurricane Express the original dispatch records, deduction records, and their generation logs for the Rider App and backend from July 18. In the applicant column, she wrote "Ma Jianjun and 19 Others." In the respondent column, she wrote three times, all three companies, not one missed. She dated and signed it, then slipped it into the very front of the case file.

Only then did He Xiufen pick up her chopsticks. Chewing noodles, she said, "Write the evidence collection application. But don't expect to collect it today—the logs are in their server room, not on this desk of yours. What you can stand on today is how these papers came to be, who signed them, and who's willing to stand up and match them."

"I understand."

"The original you want is for the next round." She took a sip of soup. "This round, first make your words hold."

Close to ten, Xiao Duan's voice messages came in one after another: who was unloading at Chengnan Cold Storage, who was in a truck heading back to Jiangzhou, who'd had his phone suspended and switched to a new number, whose number was registered under his wife's name but who was coming himself. She replied "Got it" to each one. Counted to the end: twenty accounts, twenty people.

At a quarter to ten, Deng Wei called to say he'd read the list aloud and they'd gather at the gate of the Arbitration Office at 8:20 the next morning. "Twenty names, twenty will come." After a pause, he added, "Luo Cheng asked for a day off from the cold storage tomorrow. Two hundred forty a day. He said he'd take it."

He Xiufen stood up with her bowl and walked toward the stove. "A day's wages to buy one 'appeared,'" she said. "That math was his own."

When clearing the table, she didn't open the Unsettled Ledger. That page wouldn't be touched until the case was closed.

At 8:20 on the morning of December 26, a row of yellow vests sat along the edge of the flowerbed in front of the Arbitration Office. Lao Song sat at the outer end, a notebook open on his knee, no name list in his hands.

"Ma Jianjun."

"Here."

He made a mark in the notebook. 8:21.

"Xiao Duan."

"Here."

"Xu Li."

"Here."

At the ninth name, he stopped and looked across the street. Luo Cheng came running over the crosswalk, clutching his helmet, white breath puffing from his mouth. "Here, here."

Lao Song waited until he'd stopped moving, then wrote down the name and kept reading. After the last name, he closed the notebook and tilted his chin toward Shen Zhixia.

"Twenty."

"All came themselves?"

"Themselves," he said. "I read names. I don't recognize paper."

Someone by the flowerbed laughed. The sound scattered thin in the cold air, not much behind it, but real. Xiao Duan crouched on the steps and typed the twenty names into the group chat again. Ma Jianjun pulled the photocopy folded into quarters from his inner pocket, squeezed it once, stuffed it back, and came over. Lowering his voice, he asked, "Should I take this out today?"

"Keep it on you," she said. "I'll tell you when to take it out."

A young clerk came down from upstairs with a copy in his hand and passed it to her. "Respondent No. 1's Defense Opinion. Turned in at the window yesterday afternoon. It only came up this morning."

She stood by the window at the end of the corridor and read. Two and a half pages.

Part one: Respondent No. 1 is an online information-matching platform. No employment relationship exists between it and the applicants, and it bears no employer obligations.

Part two: The applicants registered independently and accepted orders voluntarily. They may choose their own online hours and travel routes. Whether to accept an order and when to rest are entirely their own decisions.

Part three: The applicants' remuneration is settled by Respondent No. 2 and Respondent No. 3. Respondent No. 1 only provides a collection-and-payment channel and collects an information service fee.

Final line: All of the applicants' claims against Respondent No. 1 should be rejected.

Attached were three evidence lists: Rider Service Agreement, Platform Service Rules, and Registration Process Description. All three were form documents. All three were paper from their own side. Not one word had come out of the backend.

She turned back to the second page, read the words "voluntarily accepted orders" twice, and pressed a faint mark beneath them with her nail.

Account Ban. Zero times.

The December 10 cleanup work order. Zero times.

Wang Yuhai. Zero times.

Someone approached from the other end of the corridor, leather heels knocking cleanly on the open floor. She looked up and saw Lu Jibai. He carried no paper. His gaze passed over the two and a half pages in her hands, then moved away. He didn't stop. He went into the tribunal first.

[Thud. Leaving two words unwritten doesn't mean not knowing how to write them.]

A lawyer trying to prove "I wasn't managing anyone" should have used every bit of force to deny that hand. Twenty accounts, twenty-two minutes, the same reason, and not a single appeal entry at the bottom. That was the one place where the hand reached down in public and pressed. He didn't write a single word about it.

She closed the two and a half pages, pulled the hardcover notebook from the case file, and turned to the page labeled "Things to ask, things to count." There was still one blank line at the bottom of that page. She took her pen from the pen case and wrote two words on the empty line: Account Ban.

The door of the Third Arbitration Tribunal opened from inside. Shao Hong stood in the doorway, the thick register already open in her hand.

"Ma Jianjun and 19 Others, labor remuneration dispute. Applicants present."

Outside, Lao Song fell silent.

She closed the notebook and walked in.