Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 117 : The Old Case Number

Eggs rolled in a small pot, steam misting the tile above the stove. He Xiufen lifted two out with chopsticks and pressed them into the side pocket of her bag through a plastic bag.

”Theyʼre fine cold.”

”Iʼll buy something on the way.”

”The 11 bus is one transfer, forty minutes. Youʼll just stand in line for a bun.”

She slipped the eggs into the side pocket. He Xiufen turned the flame down, the lid clattering against the stoveʼs rim.

”The purpose field. Youʼve decided what to write?”

”ʼReview.ʼ”

”Right.” He Xiufen wiped her hands on a rag. ”Donʼt write ʼappeal.ʼ If you write appeal, the first thing theyʼll do is make you hand over materials. Once those go in, you wonʼt get to see this file today.”

”The bank column numbers — Iʼll keep calculating this afternoon.”

”The numbers can wait,” He Xiufen said. ”Today you have one job.”

The household register sat at the very bottom of her bag. The first page bore her fatherʼs name; a square seal had been stamped across it at an angle, red ink covering the middle of the strokes. Her own page was second, the relation-to-head-of-household column printed with the single character ”daughter.”

”The register proves your relationship to him.”

”Is it enough?”

”If it isnʼt, ask the window what else they need.” He Xiufen draped the rag over the stoveʼs edge. ”Donʼt guess, and donʼt argue with them. Youʼre going to pull a file today, not to make a case.”

As she headed downstairs, a voice came from behind her:

”Whatever you see, whatever you copy — come back and go over it with me line by line. Donʼt add anything of your own.”

Friday morning, one transfer on the 11, forty minutes. Chengnan District Court sat on the Old Town side, a building from the nineties, its facade tiled in small white squares, black grime settled into the cracks. The filing hall was on the first floor: a row of windows on the left, benches on the right. The window at the far end had ”Archive Access” stuck to its glass, and below the glass a small aluminum plate read: Archives Room — Fang Yaqin.

She slid the household register, her ID card, and the photocopy of the judgment from home under the window. Inside sat a woman in her early fifties, reading glasses dangling from a cord around her neck. She turned over each of the three items, her finger pausing at the square seal on the registerʼs first page.

”Case number.”

”First line of the judgment.” She set the photocopy straight.

Sheʼd memorized that string of numbers at the dinner table when she was fifteen. In her family, anything involving paperwork had always fallen to her to sort through. She took out a pen and filled in the archive retrieval slip from memory, box by box: year, court designation, the long string of digits after — not a single pause. Only after finishing did she push the photocopy over to cross-check.

The woman compared them and looked up.

”This number range — itʼs old. We stopped using it long ago.”

”Can it still be found?”

”Can. The system reindexed them under new numbers, so this one means going into the stacks and digging through the paper.” She set her glasses on her nose. ”Take a seat and wait.”

[Thud. The number range is old. The file remains.]

Three people sat on the benches. At the far end, a man argued with the next window over: the bank wanted the original judgment, the window said they only issued copies, copies stamped with a viewing seal, and whether the bank accepted that wasnʼt their problem. The man said heʼd already made three trips; the person inside said the fourth would get the same answer. In the middle, an old woman spread a stack of materials across her knees, then gathered it back, then spread it again. At the other end, a young man made a phone call, voice low: ”Iʼm handling it right now.”

The air conditioner vent blew straight at the window, rattling the sticker there. Her phone buzzed once in her bag.

Shi Lei had sent a photo: the fifteenth-floor corridor of Jianghai Building stood empty, two cardboard boxes against the wall, half the ceiling lights out.

She replied: Donʼt go upstairs.

About twenty minutes later, the woman came out holding a kraft paper box, bound crosswise with two lengths of twine.

”Shen Qian,” she said. ”A file from nine years ago, two volumes. One main file, one investigation file. The investigation file canʼt be viewed. The main file you may read. Bag in the locker, phone stays away — reading yes, photos no.”

The reading room was to the right of the window, behind a glass door. Inside: a long table, a desk lamp, and the Reading Room Rules tacked to the wall, corners curling. She opened the box and lifted out the first volume. Its cover was kraft paper, edges worn pale, bound with three strands of white cotton thread, the punched holes frayed all around. The lower-left corner had a printed grid, and inside one box, handwritten: Shen Qian. The characters were small, stroke by careful stroke.

The woman didnʼt leave. She stood by the table watching as she turned pages.

”This oneʼs been read before,” the woman said. ”Came the year before last, sat until 5:30 p.m., didnʼt say a word, pushed the chair in when he left.”

The file index was on the first page, printed ruled lines. She read down line by line: indictment, defendantʼs statement and defense, witness testimony, expert opinion, trial transcript, judgment, proof of service. Each line had a page number after it, consecutive.

She finished the whole index before turning to the pages behind.

The indictmentʼs opening paragraph listed name, date of birth, address; under occupation: lawyer. Below came the charges, not long: while representing Baixi Village residents in a pollution damages claim, he had provided a falsified water quality test report, obstructing testimony. She read that sentence twice. At the word ”falsified,” her finger pressed into the paperʼs edge, then she read on.

The defendantʼs statement and defense ran three pages: question, answer, answers kept short. The defenderʼs opinion was only a page and a half, never disputing the facts, addressing only the attitude of confession. She read that page and a half twice, her hand resting there.

The expert opinion sat in the middle, a commission letter before it and a photocopied qualification page from the appraisal institution after. On the commission letter, the ”Sample Submitter” field was filled with an institutional name, stamped with a departmental seal, no handwritten name anywhere.

The trial transcript stretched over a dozen pages. The recorder had written fast; several places were scratched out and rewritten. She turned to the last page: the presiding judge asked the defendant if he had anything else to say. Below, one recorded line — Defendant stated: The signature on the report is mine. Beyond that, I have nothing to say.

She stared at that line for a long time. The half-sentence at the dinner table nine years ago and this line in the transcript — they were the same sentence. So even in court, heʼd only ever offered half.

Two pages earlier, the questioning had covered family circumstances. The transcript read: Has one daughter and one son; daughter is in middle school.

She pulled the lamp closer to her side. The judgment lay at the back of the volume — official copy, sealed, the same words as the photocopy at home. One was a full page of paper; the other had been pulled from the bottom of a box, its corners trimmed.

At the very end, the inside back cover had a form pasted to it, also printed with grids: date, borrower, purpose, return.

Four rows were filled in, in two different hands.

The first row was that winter nine years ago. The borrower column held a name written flat and compressed, the strokes crowding together; the purpose column was blank. The next three rows were later dates: one in March the year before last, one in November last year, the last on September 30th of this year. All three borrower columns bore the same name.

The characters were thin, the horizontal strokes level, each finished with a slight pullback before lifting. The inner horizontal of the ”Bai” character never touched its frame — heʼd written it three times, and all three times it stopped short.

She knew that handwriting. Signatures on statements of defense, at the end of agreements, on that proof of service — sheʼd seen it dozens of times over the past year. On the afternoon of September 30th, just after the 83,000 had been transferred into the special account, sheʼd been at the office with He Xiufen checking the inquiry receipt while Tang Guo sat at the long table calculating which row her household fell in. That same afternoon, someone had sat at this very table, turning over her fatherʼs file page by page.

[Thud. The name is his. The date is real.]

She carried the volume back to the window.

”The form on the inside back cover — is it in every file?”

”Every main file has one.” Fang Yaqin pushed her glasses down. ”Why do you ask?”

”Itʼs been filled in three times. March two years ago, November last year, September 30th this year.”

”Three times is rare,” Fang Yaqin said, thinking. ”His first visit I remember: arrived at two, left at five-thirty, just turned pages the whole time, no water, no bathroom. When he left he pushed the chair in, gathered the paper scraps on the desk himself, dropped them in the trash.”

”Heʼs not a party to this case.”

”No.” Fang Yaqinʼs gaze moved to her face. ”A lawyer comes with a firm letter, we allow viewing but not copying. What goes into your head — once you walk out that door, it doesnʼt count.”

She held the volume half an inch above the counter, then drew it back.

”He couldnʼt take a single sheet.”

”He couldnʼt take any.” Fang Yaqin said, ”Youʼre the daughter. You may take.”

[Thud. He could see, not take; you could take, and only arrived today.]

Standing at the counter, the past year clicked into place: every time heʼd spoken in half-sentences, maybe it hadnʼt been unwillingness. A man with not a single sheet of paper in hand — what he said might as well be unsaid. He Xiufen had taught her that. He understood it better than anyone.

The copier sat in the inner office, its paper swaps audible through the half-glass. She read off page numbers from the index: judgment, trial transcript, defenderʼs opinion, expert opinion, file index, plus the form on the inside back cover.

”The form canʼt be copied,” Fang Yaqin said. ”Itʼs not a main-file page.”

”Then Iʼll transcribe it.”

”Transcribing is fine.” Fang Yaqin nudged the lamp toward her. ”What you write down yourself becomes your own words once you leave that door. To use it, youʼll need other paper to back it.”

She sat and copied the form row by row: date, name, purpose, return — box by box, tracing each one. At the row from nine years ago, she paused. That flattened name had strokes fused into a single mass, as if someone had crushed three characters into the corner of a box, impossible to tell surname from given name.

After each page she finished, she held it up to the lamp to check for missed boxes. By the third page, her pen halted on the paper: the bank column numbers still uncalculated, 1,039 households still behind the schedule, and nothing on these pages touched that matter. She pressed the pen down and kept copying.

The copies stacked into a small pile, a red stamp at the edge: Verified Against Original. She tucked the notebook and the stack into her bag.

Fang Yaqin returned the two volumes to the box and tied the twine. At the second knot, she suddenly said:

”When you were checking pages against the index, I noticed something — this file. Itʼs missing a page.”

”Which one?”

”The inspection form from the year of archiving notes a missing item, dated one month after the judgment came down.” Fang Yaqin turned the box over and slid out the index page, laying it on the counter. Her finger moved down the list and stopped on one box.

That line sheʼd read earlier. The row name was printed: Attachments. She hadnʼt noticed at the time that the page number after it was blank.

At the edge of the box was a faint pencil mark, a single character: ”missing.” So light it looked like it had been written, then erased.

[Thud. The index lists the page. The file doesnʼt have it.]

She pressed her finger on that box. The paper beneath it was thinner than anywhere else.