Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 75 : Entrusted Payment

Three sheets of paper were spread out across the long table. On the left was Tang Guo's loan contract—two pages printed from the electronic version on her phone, run through the firm's old printer, with a battery icon still lingering in the white margin where the screenshot had ended. In the middle was the deduction notice from her phone: June 20th, two thousand, not a cent less. On the far right was a page copied from Ren Dechang's soft-cover ledger, three lines struck through in red ink with two characters written beneath: "Never arrived."

A fourth sheet lay at the end—a photocopy torn from the asset inquiry statement, the final line reading "Counterparty Account Name," fourteen characters long. Shen Zhixia circled that line in pencil and placed it beside the "Merchant Name" field on page three of the loan contract.

One field held four characters. One line held fourteen.

She had read the contract through line by line the day before: a loan of twenty-four thousand, a one-year term, twelve installments, two thousand each—adding up to exactly twenty-four thousand. Salary statements, credit records, facial recognition—checked one by one. The signature on the last page was Tang Guo's own. Back then she hadn't recognized a single line of the fine print. What she recognized was the money—which to this day had never entered her card.

The money had come out of the bank; she'd confirmed that two days ago. Across the three ledgers, every incoming sum of twenty-four thousand bore the same six characters in the summary column: "Rent installment entrusted payment." But the receiving account names varied, and the dates were packed close together. She couldn't tell which one was Tang Guo's.

Tang Guo crouched at the far end of the table, gnawing on a steamed bun. It was from downstairs; the scallion-oil smell drifted up the stairwell, cutting through the old-paper smell that hung over the firm. She swallowed.

"You stayed up all night over a few characters."

"When you signed that contract, did you see these fourteen characters?"

Tang Guo shook her head. "Across from me was a young woman wearing a Youyu badge. She flipped through page by page, showing me."

"Did she stop on page three?"

"She paused. Pointed at this field and said it was where I'd be paying the money back." Tang Guo pointed at the small print beneath "Merchant Name." "She even made me read it aloud. Only after that did she let me sign."

Shen Zhixia lowered her head. The pencil tip slid slowly across that line of fine print. The characters were tiny, printed at the very bottom of the field, half the size of the body text.

Her phone buzzed at the corner of the table. Jiang Bo had sent two photos—loan contracts from two households in Chengxi, each page shot at a crooked angle, with the field on page three deliberately enlarged. Same position, same characters. Below was a line: "Both of ours look like this. What about yours?"

Shen Zhixia turned her phone toward the table and compared it against the printout. Same field, same characters.

From the stairwell came the sound of an enamel mug clinking against the railing. He Xiufen came down carrying a mug of hot water, steam rising from the rim. She set it on the corner of the table, didn't sit, and bent over the papers, reading them through from top to bottom. Her fingernail tapped the lower half of page three.

"'Entrusted payment.'" She read it aloud. "When you signed, did anyone explain to you what these characters mean?"

"She said it was where I'd pay the money back."

Only then did He Xiufen sit down. She lifted the mug, then set it back down.

"You borrow twenty-four thousand," she said. "But you never lay a hand on that twenty-four thousand. A name is written into the contract, and the bank sends the money out to that name on your behalf. Your hand never touches that money once."

"Sends it to who?"

"To the 'transaction counterparty' in the contract." He Xiufen nudged the contract forward. "What's filled into that field is those characters."

Tang Guo stayed crouched, motionless. Her twenty-four thousand had never entered her card for a single day, yet the debt hung squarely under her name: two thousand every month on the 20th, through May of next year.

"She took this money to sign a contract with me, and I take the contract to pay the bank." Tang Guo said. "So what kind of money is this?"

"So can I just not pay it back?" she added.

He Xiufen's mug froze in midair. "Miss one installment, it goes on your credit record. Miss three, they sue you. From then on, any time you want to rent, take out a loan, apply for a card—this follows you."

"Then I'll pay it off early. I can scrape together twenty-four thousand."

"Even if you pay off the bank, does the apartment come back?" He Xiufen set the mug down. "The apartment is under the landlord's name, and the landlord never received a cent of your money. That twenty-four thousand you fronted for Youyu? You're still paying it out of your own pocket. Money sent on someone else's behalf takes a detour halfway, but the debt still lands on your back."

Tang Guo asked nothing more. She lowered her head. On her phone screen, a segment of the tenants' group chat was open. The person who posted "When are we getting our money back" every single day had added another line.

"Money paid out to landlords for rent goes through ten characters," He Xiufen said. "Deposits collected from tenants go through the same ten. But when it came to you, the contract told the bank to pay by those other characters. Whether those characters were actually written on the money when it left the bank—that depends on the bank's own books."

"There's more than one incoming sum of twenty-four thousand with the 'entrusted payment' summary," Shen Zhixia said. "And it's gone into more than one account. With just these three ledgers, I can't tell which one is Tang Guo's."

"The bank moves this kind of money every day." He Xiufen drew the mug to her hand. "So ask it to its face: the contract says these characters—why did you pay the money into a different number? If it says 'we paid it according to the contract,' then it didn't look carefully enough. It sent money that shouldn't have gone out into an account that shouldn't have received it. The account is on them. If it says 'we didn't pay it according to those characters,' then it chose the number itself."

"Which means it knows who stands behind those characters."

"Right." He Xiufen took a sip of water. "Ask it that far, and it can't backpedal anymore."

Shen Zhixia dumped out her bag and counted through the contents. He Xiufen watched her sort the materials and put the mug down.

"When you go," she said, "its first line will be 'agents need notarization.' Its second will be 'internal materials, not for external release.' Its third will be 'wait for notification.'"

"Then I'll wait for notification."

"Don't wait." He Xiufen said. "If they refuse, that's them refusing. If you don't go ask, that's you not asking. Whatever comes out of their mouths, write it down word for word. Don't change a single character."

Shen Zhixia wrote that line at the top of a fresh page in her notebook.

At the other end of the table, Tang Guo flipped her phone over and pressed it against her knee, then flipped it back after a moment. The balance still read thirty-two cents, with "Amount Due This Period" below. She stared at it for a long time, but didn't read it aloud.

"So this twenty-four thousand of mine," she asked, "who actually took it?"

"The money's in the pool." Shen Zhixia smoothed down her sheet of paper. "And the far end of that pool connects to the bank through this pipe. Today I'm not asking about anything else. I'm asking who connected this pipe."

[Thud. The money never passed through her hands, but the debt grows on her back.]

She wrote two lines in her notebook: Entrusted payment—receiving account number (ask the bank); original documents (ask the bank). Then she packed Tang Guo's power of attorney, a copy of her ID card, the three contract pages, and the sheet with the two strings of copied names into her canvas bag, one item at a time.

At two-thirty in the afternoon, she stood inside the lobby of Jiangzhou Bank's Chengdong Branch.

Numbers ticked forward one by one. She waited ten minutes. The woman behind the window was in her early twenties, with a badge reading two characters: Hao Min. She took the stack of papers and went through them page by page, stopping when she reached the power of attorney.

"Tang Guo isn't here in person."

"She's minding the store for me." Shen Zhixia slid the ID copy further through the window. "This is her power of attorney with her thumbprint. Dated today."

"Agent inquiries into personal loan materials—this authorization needs to be notarized."

"I'm not requesting her personal materials." Shen Zhixia turned the photocopy around. "I only want that one item—the twenty-four thousand that went out from here. What account number does your system show for it?"

Hao Min listened to the end, tapped twice on her keyboard, flipped through a page and back. Her gaze lingered briefly on the edge of the paper.

"That's internal material," she said. "Not for external release."

"If the borrower came herself, could she see it?"

"She can see her own contract—she already has a copy." Hao Min squared the papers and pushed them back slightly. "As for the loan disbursement side, no one can view it. Not for external release."

"Then give me a reference number—the disbursement reference number."

"Reference numbers can't be given either."

"Then who do I see?"

"You could try our office building." Hao Min gestured toward one side of the lobby. "Credit Department's on the second floor."

A man in a suit approached from the corridor, a badge reading "Lobby Manager." Shen Zhixia stopped him and repeated her request. He listened, glanced at the stack of papers in the window, and raised a hand toward the stairs.

"This needs approval from upstairs," he said. "All I can tell you is the window can't do anything."

At the far end of the second-floor corridor hung a sign reading "Credit Business Department." The door was ajar. Inside sat a man in a short-sleeved shirt, filling in cells on an on-screen spreadsheet one by one. She knocked and stepped in, stating her business.

"Handling this requires proper procedures," the man said without looking up, his mouse clicking through cells. "Court documents, procuratorate documents, or the person herself with a notarized certificate. What you have there—I can't do anything with it."

"If she came in person, could she see the loan disbursement details?"

"Details are internal material too." The man glanced at her for the first time. "I've heard of this case of yours—the kind that circulates online. But rules are rules."

"Which rule says a borrower can't see where her own money went?"

The man smiled faintly, didn't take up the question, and clicked back to his spreadsheet.

She stood in the corridor, piecing the two statements together: even if Tang Guo came in person with the notarized authorization, all she could see was the contract already in her hands. The disbursement side would still be two words: Not for external release. Running that procedure to the end led to a dead end too.

[Thud. He recognizes procedure. What you're holding doesn't count as procedure.]

She came down from the second floor and returned to the lobby. The queue numbers had already passed the halfway mark. Hao Min was serving an elderly woman, looked up and spotted her, and shook her head through the glass.

Shen Zhixia didn't approach again. Tang Guo coming in person would be no different—the contract she'd be allowed to see was already lying in her canvas bag.

She hitched the bag higher on her shoulder and walked out through the automatic doors. The cold air behind her was swallowed in one gulp by the heat outside. The steps blazed white in the sun. An electric scooter brushed past her foot; the rider glanced at her—not Ma Jianjun.

"The housing case—don't just watch the landlords."

That sentence ran through her head again. She had indeed finished talking with the landlords; both had stopped on March 19th. Further upstream, there was another end—the one connected to the bank's pipe. When he'd told her not to just watch the landlords, had he been pointing at this end? She didn't know, and she hadn't asked.

She pulled up He Xiufen's number on her phone and pressed it.

"They said not for external release," she said.

There was a pause on the other end.

"Then don't ask them." He Xiufen said. "Ask the court."