Read Novel Full Chapter 4 : A Gavel Strike
Chapter 4 : A Gavel Strike
Twenty-three screenshots were spread across the table in three rows, by date.
Shen Zhixia lined up their edges one by one. Once they were straight, she pressed down the curled corners with her fingers. The inner room door had closed; when Tang Guo went in, she left the desk lamp outside for her.
He took one screenshot a week, on Fridays. Twenty-three of them over nearly half a year, the top one from the end of last month.
The top two were settlement pages, the amount column all zeros. Another was a dispatch record: July 18, first order out at 6:52 a.m., last delivery finished at 10:20 p.m. He didn't rest that day.
She laid the clock-in records alongside the dispatch record. That day, where he was and how many orders he ran—all of it was there on paper.
She pulled out the July 18 sheet and placed it on top of the IOU.
Clock-in: 6:40. Late.
That day the city was under an orange rainstorm warning. She remembered, because that afternoon she had been sitting in Hengzheng's first conference room. Condensation from the air conditioning was dripping down the pipe onto the corner of her notebook when Lü Hang pushed a stack of papers over and said the late arrivals and absences on these pages should be removed.
On opposite sides of the city, two things landed on the same line of numbers.
She picked up her phone and played an unread voice message from the rider group. Someone said in a low voice: "Lao Ma, take a couple of days off first. The account matters more." Below that came a string of agreeing voice messages, one after another, like people trying to talk someone out of throwing himself at a wall.
She hit back.
In the browser she searched "labor dispute arbitration citizen representative." The page explained it in plain terms: a party may appoint a representative; a citizen representative must be recommended by the community where the party lives, by their workplace or a relevant social organization, or be a close relative of the party.
Ma Jianjun's "workplace" didn't regard him as one of their own. His family was thousands of miles away back home. She had no law firm here, and she couldn't get any organization's recommendation stamp attached to his name.
She scrolled down to the Arbitration Commission's service guide: if a representative's qualification review fails, the representative cannot appear in court.
She stared at those words for a while, then turned back to the IOU on the table.
The IOU had been torn from an exercise book, one side ragged with a row of rough edges. On it: a handwritten surname "Sun," a red thumbprint, and no official stamp. Three months' wages were pressed onto that piece of paper, and the man would only acknowledge this piece of paper; the company that paid the wages never once let its name appear on it.
The case receipt was underneath. The officer had written: the assailant was "a security guard hired by the company." Which company, the receipt didn't say. She remembered Ma Jianjun saying the wages had been transferred from a private account belonging to a man surnamed Wang, with the note "delivery fee." A security guard hired by the company didn't count as company personnel, and the account that paid him wasn't in the company's name either. Whichever way she reached, she'd first have to connect a line.
The things in her hands could show that he hadn't been late that day, and that someone had beaten him. To show who he actually belonged to, she was still one step short.
She opened her phone's photo album and scrolled back. Twenty-some photos earlier, there was the photo of Hengzheng's handover form, with that line on the back written in her own handwriting while she was hunched over the small conference room table. She had photographed it because she was afraid she'd later need to prove she hadn't touched something.
Now what she needed to look into was what someone else had touched.
There was still an unread message on the lock screen, from Shen Zhi'an half an hour earlier: Sis, the materials fee. She looked at it for two seconds and turned the screen off.
Last night she had already written three lines on the back of the IOU: three months' wages; stitches and X-ray, 630; July fines, 120. The fourth line was blank.
She meant to write: the pages they'd erased.
The pencil was one of those twenty-cent ones, the tip blunt. She scratched it twice against the edge of the table, exposing a bit of lead.
The inner room door opened. Tang Guo shuffled out in slippers to get water. Seeing her still sitting there, she paused with the cup half raised.
"What time is it?"
"No idea."
"This case of yours." Tang Guo took a sip. "Are you taking it or not?"
"I can't." She turned the phone screen toward her. "Citizen representatives need a recommendation. Without one, they won't let me appear in court."
Tang Guo glanced at the screen. She pointed at the three rows of paper on the table. "You can't even appear in court, so why line them up?"
"Lining them up gives me a clear picture."
"What good is a clear picture?"
"It's useful," Shen Zhixia said. "At least I'll know how much is owed."
Tang Guo looked down for two seconds, then set her cup on the counter. "So you're just going to sit and watch?"
"I'll go ask another firm tomorrow."
"Ask as many as you want. Same answer." Tang Guo drained the water. "You're not sleeping?"
"Go on ahead."
Tang Guo turned back toward the inner room, her hand on the doorknob.
Bang.
Wood against wood. A single knock. Short, solid, contained, like something padded striking hardwood.
Shen Zhixia went rigid and looked at Tang Guo.
Tang Guo pulled the door open, went inside, and closed it behind her. The click of the door was very soft.
The room went quiet. The refrigerator hummed over in the kitchen, on and on. The window was closed. There was no sound from the inner room; Tang Guo was probably wearing headphones.
Not downstairs. Downstairs was a metal rolling shutter, loud and clattering. Not Tang Guo. This was a sound she had only heard on TV—in a courtroom, the judge's gavel coming down.
She waited several dozen seconds. Nothing.
Probably hunger. Over these past two days, by her count, she had eaten one real meal a day. She got up to boil water, filled the aluminum kettle halfway, set it on the stove, and watched the flames lick the bottom.
Bang.
The kettle jolted in her hand.
[Thud. The Jiangzhou City Justice System has activated.]
The words floated in front of her, as if behind a layer of steam: clear, yet unlike anything produced by any screen. She blinked twice. The lines were still there.
She opened her mouth, and it took her a long moment to make a sound. "What is this?"
[Thud. This system only takes cases of injustice. Whether it is injustice does not depend on what the client says, but on the facts.]
"Who said anything about injustice?"
[Thud. Injustice or not, the facts decide. This system is only responsible for keeping accounts.]
[Thud. This system does not provide evidence and does not alter judgments. If you want to win, you have to rely on what you can get and what can stand up in court.]
She stared. She turned off the phone screen; the lines were still there. She turned the lamp to its dimmest setting; the lines still glowed.
The words "does not provide evidence" rolled through her mind. The printouts, the IOU, the receipt—what she had were all genuine. Whether genuine things could stand up in court, she had no confidence.
"I don't believe it," she said. She wasn't sure who she was talking to.
[Thud. Use what you really have.]
She froze.
That afternoon, someone had wanted her to erase those pages. This thing only wanted her to look.
[Thud. Closing a case is settled according to the justice recovered: if a judgment or mediation takes effect and enforcement is completed, the full amount is credited; if enforcement is not completed, half is credited.]
[Thud. If evidence is obtained by illegal means, this case's reward is forfeited and Justice Points are deducted.]
[Thud. Justice that cannot be recovered is recorded in the Unsettled Ledger, until the day it is recovered.]
The last line hung there longer than the others.
"What are you called?"
[Thud. This system has no name. Just think of me as a bookkeeper.]
She lifted the kettle off and set it on the counter. The room was quiet enough to hear water dripping back down inside the kettle. She reached over and pinched her own arm.
It hurt.
"Where are you from?"
No answer.
"I asked you, where are you from?"
The line still glowed, lighting the IOU on the table and that handwritten surname "Sun." The refrigerator hummed. Outside, a car rolled through standing water, swished past, and the room went quiet again.
It wouldn't answer that one. It only reported accounts.
She slowly sat back down.
Yesterday afternoon she had stood in front of the Bar Association window, listening to the person inside say, "First get it sorted out with your firm, then come back." This morning she made three calls by the flowerbed. Chen Wei's "wait until this storm passes"—she still remembered the pause. She had told people she had no materials and no law firm that dared to issue a recommendation. By the time the last word was out, she herself felt like she was reading someone else's lines.
"Ma Jianjun's case," she asked quietly. "Is that you knocking?"
[Thud. Client: Ma Jianjun, Chengnan Station No. 1, delivery rider.]
[Thud. Cause of action: three months' wages, a beating, and several pages erased from the attendance records.]
Her grip on the pencil loosened.
The night before last, this man had pressed a bag of materials into her hands in the emergency room, saying, "You hold on to these first." Last night he called again, asking, "Can I still work this month?"
"Why me?"
[Thud. You have his materials. He has come to you twice.]
She had no answer.
"What is the Unsettled Ledger?"
[Thud. Everything that cannot be recovered is recorded in it. On the day it is recovered, it gets crossed out.]
She stared at the line. A very thick ledger, one you could turn to the last page and still not finish. Some people stayed on it their whole lives.
"Is my name in it?"
No answer.
"This thing." She paused, then changed the question. "Can it pay the rent?"
[Thud. Justice Points cannot pay the rent.]
She almost laughed. She really almost did. Rent was due next Wednesday, eighteen hundred. Her card had 3,920, and Shen Zhi'an needed the materials fee this week. The case in front of her, no matter how she figured it, would leave her paying out of pocket.
She still didn't move.
"What if I lose?"
[Thud. Take it or not, that's your choice.]
[Thud. If you lose, Justice Points reset to zero and Skill Freeze applies to one case; his injustice will be recorded in the Unsettled Ledger.]
Something inside her sank a little deeper.
The deduction would be hers; the ledger entry would be his. If she won, it would be her ability. If she lost, it would also be her burden—but in the end this account would fall on Ma Jianjun. It wasn't so different from Hengzheng delivering those pages to the Arbitration Commission.
She lowered her head and remembered something unrelated.
Once when she was little, a client her father was representing came to the house, also wearing work clothes, with mud on his shoes. At the door he started digging in his pocket. He dug for a long time, then pulled out a handful of small change and placed it on the coffee table. Her father pushed the money back and said, "Let's look at the materials first."
That day the living room had been piled with case files: half paper, half bowls.
She felt around in the side pocket of her bag for the fountain pen. There was an old nick on the cap. During her first month at Hengzheng, she had used it every day to sign for documents. On the day she was fired, she had placed it in the side pocket and never taken it out again.
She uncapped the pen, then capped it again.
The bag of materials under the chair, she lifted it up and placed it by her hand, then tightened the opening.
Tomorrow she would have to call Ma Jianjun. Yesterday he had asked, "Can I still work this month?" She still owed him an answer.
The line on the table was still there, unchanged in brightness.
When she spoke, her voice was hoarser than she expected. "I'll take it."
[Thud. Before the retainer is finalized, first see clearly what exactly was taken from him.]